Bonus Content - Hekate & Hades

Hey everyone!

As you voted, the bonus content piece this month is from Hades's POV, and it's about Hekate, who in this instance features on her route. I hope you all enjoy the read.

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He follows her through the orchard, trailing behind her like a satellite to a star.

For she is very much such a thing today, bright and radiant in her happiness, exuding a sort of warmth that invites even a mere spectator such as himself to enjoy. It heartens him to see it; Hekate in such a state is a rare thing, and yet he has always wondered if maybe perhaps this isn’t the truest version of her.

Happy, not because there are not trials or difficulties before or behind, but because she is handling them capably, and everything that truly matters is as it should be. In these moments, she truly is magic.

“You really did a number on this place,” she observes, pausing to tilt her head at a fallen tree. Even her braids are bright today, an almost metallic, star-glazed white threaded in and over her dark hair.

Hades winces, but her tone softens the blow. There’s no denying it’s true, after all. “Alcyoneus was… difficult,” he says slowly. “It is hard, to handle someone of considerable power fully trying to kill you.”

“Hard if you’re making a point of not killing them,” she specifies, and he nods. It’s the truth, after all.

“Unfortunately, much of the orchard suffered the consequences. I’m not entirely sure we’ll be able to find what you’re looking for.” Whatever that may be.

But at a certain point, there’s no need to ask questions. His oldest friend had asked him to come to the orchard with her, so that she might do something important, and ask him something, and that simply means it was as good as already done. He wouldn’t decline anyway, but to do so while she was so obviously pleased about something would have been even worse.

“How is Seph?” he asks, well aware that the answer to this question probably has something to do with Hekate present state of radiant contentment. She wouldn’t be so pleased if their prognosis was bad, or if they’d taken things poorly upon waking.

“Recovering,” she replies with a nod, pausing to give a half-uprooted tree a magical nudge back into place, then forming the soil over it again. The act sets it to rights; some of these will probably need a little more prolonged care and magic from the resident horticultural experts, including Seph themself, but he’s glad to see that not all the trees are damaged to such an extent.

He’d have preferred to fight almost anywhere else, but allowing Alcyoneus near the city where Hekate and Seph were trying to set up defenses was unthinkable.

“And does that have anything to do with why you’re in such a good mood today?”

“Am I?” Hekate looks back over her shoulder, half her mouth pulled up in a playful smile. “I hadn’t noticed.”

“Hekate, you’re literally glowing.”

“Oh, right. That. Look, not all of us can make things cold and dark when we’re upset. Some of us are silly and sparkle when we’re delighted.”

“I think I would vastly prefer to be of the latter type, actually.”

She wrinkles her nose, but this, too, has the air of amusement to it. “Really? But the—” she snorts—“the ‘tall, dark, and brooding’ thing works so well for you. Shimmering would be entirely against type. No one would know what to think of you.”

“...You continue to reinforce my opinion.”

She laughs outright at that, something almost girlish, in a way he doubts she ever got to even as a young girl.

Were either of them ever young? It’s hard to imagine, anymore. Perhaps they must have been, once, but any memory of it is nothing more than a vague impression of a stranger, swallowed almost wholly by the thing that killed those strangers.

But then, the Titanomachy killed lots of things.

“To answer your original question,” she says, a sing-song lilt to her tone. “I’m here because I want to ask Seph to stay in the Underworld. Or rather, since we’re being sticklers about pressure, to give them the option.”

He blinks. This must be the part she wanted to ask him about. “You know why we’re being ‘sticklers,’” he points out, arching one brow above the other.

“Yes, yes, of course. And while I’m making light of it right now, it is important. But I also think it’s important for them to know we actually like them and want to be around them. Holding back too much on that front because we’re worried about pressure might achieve the opposite. They might feel like they aren’t welcome to stay here, because we’ve all been too distant and polite. Well… except Pyri. I don’t think they’re capable. But my point stands.”

And it’s a good one. Hades would have no idea how to achieve such a balance, and he knows he has erred on the side of ‘polite distance,’ because that’s how he is more or less all the time. His friends know he loves them, fortunately, because expressing as much is not his strength.

“Well, then. I shall leave you in charge of making the offer in whatever way you see fit,” he replies.

She grins back at him, and with that, the matter is decided.

They walk a while longer, though; Hades a bit lost in his thoughts. Mostly about what they’d just discussed, and what it might mean for Hekate, not just Seph.

“Do you think they’re…”

“Maybe,” she says, on a gusty sigh. “But in the end that’s really for them to decide. I always wondered why it was so uncertain, but if it were them, that would make sense.”

He nods slowly. There is no tying a human-blooded person to Fate. At least not so fully as the gods can be shackled.

“Well… I hope, for the both of you, that it works out well.”

Hekate huffs. “No need to be so serious. Things are only beginning, you know? I for one am enjoying the part where it’s just fun and interesting to be around them. I’ve not made a new friend since Pyri.”

“…They haven’t been here that long, you know.” Hades pauses, helping her right another tree and then stepping well away so as to allow her magic to work without interference.

“No, but I like making friends. Now—aha! I had a feeling.”

She approaches a much more intact tree, floating herself up among the branches to sort through what she finds there. “You’ve managed to rot most of these, I think.”

“...I apologize.”

A sigh, and she pushes a branch aside to look down at him disapprovingly. “Don’t apologize for your powers. Better you have them than anyone else I can think of, and I mean anyone. I’m just pointing out that maybe they’ll have something to plant to replace some of the destroyed ones. Decay is a natural process that aids the life cycle, you know.”

“I am aware.”

She seems willing enough to let it lie there, rather than retreading old argumentative territory, and a few moments later, Hades hears her make a sound of approval, after which she lands, clutching a slightly-dull, red apple that must have somehow survived the conflict.

“Perfect,” she declares. “Now I just need to decide when to give it to them.”

“Best not leave it too long,” he observes. “Who knows what will happen between now and then?”

“Yes, yes, realm of barely controlled manifest chaos and all that. I do love it here.”

Hopefully, so does Seph.