Bonus Content - Reprehensible

Hey all,

As promised, here's a bit of angsty Charon POV for you all. They have a lot of similarities to Hades when it comes to self-esteem, but those feelings are coming from very different places, and he handles them quite differently, too.

I hope you enjoy!

----------------------

“What would it hurt?” Hades asks.

Charon has always admired him for being able to do that. For being able to ask a question like that with nothing but complete sincerity. If Hekate had asked such a question, there would have been a hint of a push behind it, because while she often knows best, she isn’t always aware that other people need to catch up with her version of reality. If Alekto had, there would have been a tiny hint of ‘you already know this,’ and that, while true, is also something that sometimes a person isn’t ready to hear.

Hades asks it, and it is only the question. No expectation. No assumption. He is willing and open to Charon coming up with something it might hurt, and being able to argue it. Not possible, of course, but they’re going to try anyway.

“...Your marriage?” He winces as he says it, feeling the awkwardness of the words on his tongue. The ‘marriage’ is a non-entity. Dionysus and Hades get along, but not at all like a married couple with actual… marriage-related feelings for one another. If anything, Charon’s best friend has settled into something of a comfortable mentor role for his young husband, and there isn’t the faintest hint of impropriety to it. There never will be. Hades is many things, but he is not his brothers.

Hades tilts his head like he’s considering this, and shakes his head. “No, I don’t think so. I am certain it will end relatively soon, but it would do that whether or not you went to see him.” The older god smiles faintly, something gentle in the red of his eyes as he meets their blue. “I know you are very good at talking yourself out of things you want to do, but I think in this case there just… may be no good reason not to do it.”

Charon sighs quietly. “I don’t suppose you could forbid me?” It’s just… they shouldn’t. They shouldn’t do this. It’s too much. The others can go, visit with well-wishes and concern in the way friends are meant to do. He can’t. His feelings, what he is, these things are too… impure. Unfit.

“I could,” Hades replies, briefly glancing over yet another missive from his desk and setting it aside into one of the two piles growing on the right side. “But I don’t intend to.”

Of course he isn’t. Hades hasn’t come right out and said it, yet, but Charon knows that for some reason he actually approves of all this nonsense. Of the way the storm god’s chest feels like it’s barely containing thunder and lightning between their ribs.

And Charon, not forbidden by forces greater than himself, will not be able to hold himself away now.

So it is that, no more than an hour later, they find themself outside the door of the room where Dionysus convalesces. This, too, is their fault, and it is with a stabbing sense of guilt that he enters, pressing his lips together as he takes the chair at the young god’s bedside. The other have been in and out, they know, watching over him not only out of medical necessity but friendly concern. There isn’t a single person in Charon’s inner circle who hasn’t come to like Dionysus in one sense or another. Even Alekto has, in her own way, and she keeps vigil here as often as anyone else does.

The more surprising thing is that even Styx has found something grudgingly-positive to say about him, specifically his handling of the in-person incident with Kronos. A very daunting thing to have to face down, even if Dionysus didn’t fully understand to whom he was speaking upon the unlucky chance of their meeting.

Charon isn’t sure what to make of his propensity for finding danger wherever it lurks and throwing himself headlong into it. On the one hand, it’s entirely his business what he wants to do with his time. And admittedly, he has shown a great deal of courage. Heroic, even, might be one way to describe it, and in some sense, Charon can imagine him as some half-human hero, walking the mortal realm and setting to rights whatever wrongs he finds. Certainly with more competence and goodheartedness than many other such ‘heroes’ have a tendency to show.

But the thing is, such courageous tendencies are, more often than not, eventually deadly. And this, perhaps, is the rub. That matters to them, and there’s no point attempting to deny that much. They expel a breath, eyes tracing Dionysus’s features with something between tenderness and resentment. It is a middle they will, perhaps, have to get used to occupying, foreign as another might find it.

Standing, he paces to the door, then back again, setting his feet carefully, in measured steps, if only because it’s all he can do to have a hope of settling his restlessness. They can still remember the fight with perfect clarity, of course. Well, perhaps not perfect clarity. The details are there, but it’s as though there is a film over them, a filter belonging to a person they no longer wish to be. Like the memories are crystallized in amber, invariably tinting them with a color Charon no longer feels any affinity for and does not want clouding their vision. But the color is experience, and as close as their metaphors are to getting out of hand, they cling to them, because there’s no better way to explain.

Not without admitting to themself something they don’t want to admit to anyone.

I almost became a monster. I might become a monster, for you.

The thought fills them with such a bitter swell of rage, of despair, that for a moment they’re simply frozen, trying to process it. To let themself feel it, and then let it go. The way they’ve learned to cope with all kinds of troubling emotions. But they don’t think they’ve ever met someone who makes them feel as many troubling emotions as Dionysus does.

“Why did you have to come here?” he whispers. “Everything is different now. And I needed it to be the same.”

They stride towards him, unsure of their own intent until they come to a stop. It’s just… it’s magnetism, of some kind. It must be. Something as inexorable as a natural force of the universe draws them to him, and they can’t seem to stop it from pulling at them, even if it would be much better for everyone if they stayed well away from all of this.

“You will ruin me,” they say on a quiet sigh, tone almost resigned.

He reaches forward, as if to touch the side of the young god’s face, but stops short. He shouldn’t be here. Certainly he shouldn’t be contemplating such a thing. However benign a touch might otherwise be, to affect it without knowledge or consent would be monstrous in a different way than the one he’s meant to be worrying about. Another thing to add to the list of his sins, perhaps.

Curling his fingers in towards his palms, Charon drops their hand away and retreats several steps. They need to get their head clear. They cannot possibly face him like this when he wakes. Reprehensible as they find the need, they are going to need to ask Hades for a spar, now. Something to get rid of that burgeoning restlessness, to exhaust themself on someone who is in no real danger, even if they do exhibit their monstrous tendencies.

Yes. That first, everything else later.