"You're rather intent on my company, aren't you, Little Miss Maleficent?"
Hades folded his arms before his chest, hiding his emotions behind the cold heat of flames.
Ah.
It seemed she had decided to mirror him as well.
"You didn't reject me this time. Is there not something you find in my company too?"
Mal hadn't expected a reply, but his wistful gaze upon her said otherwise.
"I find you a lot like your mother."
"Oh, everyone says that on the Isle. I'll take it as a compliment." Mal shrugged the words off, not noticing that Hades had stiffened upon the mention of how everyone seemed to say that on the Isle. And then she waited, for Hades to continue with something when he had awoken from his wisteria, but the god seemed more entranced than she had intended, and her patience was wearing thin. "Look," She started, "I'm dating Ben now. I'm as safe as things can ever be. You can tell me now, right? What is it that you know that cannot be told to me? Who else does it affect?"
"I can answer you any question but that." Hades cut her off abruptly, "Mal, you're too young-" "I'm 16!" Mal burst out hotly, "Old enough to be on my own on the Isle, old enough to be treated as an adult! I want to know, because when our magic met that other day, it wasn't quite as simple as, 'oh pardon me, did I touch you by accident?'! Our magic melded together. You know it." "And what would you know about magic?" Hades countered, "A half faerie, whose powers only unlocked not more than weeks ago, when Ben first brought you all over to Auradon? All you've known is gateway magic of childish hair play!"
Mal opened her mouth, first in anger and about to spit something insulting as well, but the god's words wrapped well around her ears, and Mal swallowed back what she wanted to say. "A half faerie?" She spoke the words individually, as though they were every bit as important, and her eyes snapped up to his, "My mother is not fae. She is but a dark fairy." "A slip of tongue." Hades found himself unable to pull away from the interrogative green eyes, the ones that looked just like hers, "Faerie and fairy are the same."
"You, a slip of tongue?" Mal was getting more suspicious, "Lord Hades, known for being most manipulative about words, who would not even let slip a crack of what I don't know, mixed up faerie and fairy by accident?"
He just held his breath as her eyes glowed brighter, hoping that she would be deterred after a while.
"I don't believe it." Mal broke his bubble of hope, however, "What do you know about my mother?" "Nothing. I know nothing at all." Hades pushed her hand off his wrist, "Mal, I've already said. There are things that cannot be said, because they not only concern you, but others as well." "Fine!" Mal snapped, flinging her arm aside in her fury, "Fine! Then I'll ask you something that you, Lord Hades, as the Lord of the Underworld, should be able to answer."
"Who exactly is my father, then?"
...
Hades had never been this nervous before.
"What makes you think I know that?" He glared down at her, trying to disguise his fear with intimidation, but Mal was like a mirror, reflecting everything he was doing back onto him, "You even know that my mum is fae. Something I don't even know. Besides, my father is dead. You would have his soul. You would know, because you seem to know things that others don't." "And don't give me that bullshit about how it concerns people." Mal cut him off before he could even say anything, "If you were worried about interrupting the Fates, you won't. Because he's a dead man, right?"
"It will still interrupt your Fate, my dear." Hades threw this excuse out as a last straw, but he could already tell Mal was not buying it. "You said you could answer any question of mine. Except the first question I asked." She spoke sweetly, but he knew better that she was lacing it with menace, "So. Answer me this, or answer my very first question."
Sometimes I wonder how I'm still possibly alive.
"It's too risky, but..." Hades shook his head in resignation, "Hold tight."
And with a flash of a bright blue flame, they were gone.
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"So this is Hell?"
Perhaps she was skeptical, but Hades patted himself on the back at the impression in her tone.
"This is the Underworld, to be more vague." Hades gestured towards the door behind his monstrous dog, "And that is my lair." "Didn't know that your lair had three heads." Mal managed to keep a straight face, and for that she received a slight clubbing to her head, "The door behind it. That's Cerberus." "You know," Mal inched around Cerberus's sleeping bulk carefully as she ran after Hades, who seemed to move a lot faster in his territory, "You could have just told me the name. You didn't have to bring me here."
"Walls above the surface always have ears. Down here, even if someone heard us, they couldn't go yakking away to the living. In a way, our secret is buried...because almost all are dead here, and the living wouldn't blabber." Hades glided past his throne into a darker, smaller room, "Aside from that...what makes you think that I could remember his name, anyway? People are dying every day. I have received countless mortals over the millennia."
"That too." Mal accepted his reasoning, a casual flick of her hand lighting up a small green flame above her palm, and she could have sworn that the expression Hades had given her was both aghast and pride, "What? I can use my magic too, can't I?" "You use it too naturally for someone whose powers should be rusty, or almost gone, from being sealed that long on the Isle. Gateway magic should be all you can do, for now." Hades muttered as he held out a pointer, which lighted itself at once, and he suddenly stopped, causing Mal to walk straight into him, "What was the question you asked me, again? That I was supposed to answer?"
"You mean, who exactly is my father?" Mal repeated, and suddenly the room was consumed by a blinding flare of blue flames. "What was that?" Mal took an involuntary step back at once, her eyes darting around cautiously, "What spell did you just use?" "Compelling spell. In the case that I choose to chicken out." Hades took a deep breath, before he stared at Mal, "Do you know how long I've awaited your arrival, my daughter?"
Her heart stopped beating for a moment.
One whole moment.
"You? My father?" Mal almost choked on the words, and hysteria rose up her throat as she shook her head, "You are a good actor, Lord Hades. My father is dead." "Your father is the Lord of the dead." Hades didn't waver as he stared at her intently, "Your name was never Maleficent. Your name is Malinda Bertha Hades." "And why would my name be Malinda, and not Maleficent?" Mal questioned, backing away from the god, "My mother wanted me to be just like her-" "Your mother wanted you to be nothing like her." Hades snapped, advancing on her the more she retreated, "I gave you the name Malinda, to have a portion of her name in yours, because she refused to let you bear her name, and condemn you to her fate. Have you never wondered why I call you Mali? Not Mal?"
"No..." It finally dawned on Mal that the god was speaking the truth, and the purple haired teenager covered her mouth with a hand, trying to hold back the warmth that began to sprout from her lower eyelids, "Dad? You're really my father? Hades is my father??" "Indeed." Hades extended his arms to her, the gesture rusty as he did so, but Mal backed away even further into a bookshelf, her shock turning to rage, "What, you want me to reconcile with you? After you left me and my mother when I was just a baby?"
Hades shook his head. "Your mother wanted me gone." He spoke so firmly, so sure, "She changed, after a year, and threw me from Bargain Castle. She didn't let me take me with you, Mali. I didn't have a choice." "And after you came to Auradon, you didn't think of coming to save me?" Mal's hands shook as she balled them, trying to control herself, "You left me alone with her! Her!" "But I could not have done otherwise, Mali! I was vastly overpowered. The whole of Auradon could not have trusted my reformation, and Olympus itself has dozens of gods and goddesses who would willingly seal me away, or destroy me. At least she still wanted you, and I thought it was safest if you stayed with her." Hades sounded defeated as he stepped forward, "And I couldn't let Auradon know I had a weakness. And that was you, Mal."
"As if. Surely the whole of Auradon had to know that the two greatest villains had wedded, and had conceived a child." Mal sneered in distrust, "Or are you telling me that Beast did not tell them that?"
The heavy silence that answered her question caused Mal's stance to falter, and against the compulsion spell, Hades dipped his head once, and raised it again.
"No one knows who your father is, Mal. Except me, except Beast, except Zeus, Hera and Asclepius, who monitored you and your mother throughout the 18 months. And I can only tell you that the High King of Auradon is intent on keeping it this way. As far as any other living is concerned, Maleficent had a lover, whom she conceived a daughter with. And as far as Beast is concerned, I left Maleficent for her infidelity." The words came from Hades's resistant lips, and Mal could feel the anger slipping from her, leaving her bare and naked without the protection of anger she was so used to having as armour.
The silence hadn't lifted. It only settled further as Hades still held his arms out, inviting as ever.
But then his arms finally fell, and the whole of the Underworld seemed to sigh as he did.
"Come. Let's go. I think that's more than enough questions for today, don't you think so, Little Miss Maleficent?"
The lights flickered one by one as they dimmed, and Hades had been about to warn her not to mention anything they had discussed down here up on the surface, when Mal suddenly turned and wrapped her arms around her father.
"Dad?"
"Yes?"
"Don't leave me alone again. Please."
"I won't. I won't ever leave you on your own, ever again."
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