11 - Honest Intentions

The sky never turned black; Zeus' stars were too bright. His constellations span a web of light across the cosmos - all those ancient heroes honoured by nets of twinkling, white light forever shifting in a dome above their heads; from the very oldest warrior of the Greek people to their latest and most beloved addition - Hercules. Hermes tried to smile at it, but his fingers hit a flat note. He sank down with a sigh. Wings drooping on his heels, his feet dangling from the end of a cloud's curl, something about the solid dome of mighty warriors seemed, suddenly, depressing.

Still, he plucked the strings in a meandering tune so he wouldn't be all by himself. His eyes followed the proud stances of those athletes and fighters, moving from the spears in their hands to the slings on their belts. Dropping his gaze back to his music, he muttered bitterly to himself, "Great job today, Hermes."

Something twinkled above his head. Like a split in the firmament, he noted with some trepidation the line of planets that had ushered in so much misery for Olympus only a few weeks ago - they sparkled, dim and muted, from beyond the dome of the constellations. None of the other gods had mentioned them since - they, like so many other things, had become unmentionable.

The moment his eyes landed on it, a thunderbolt raced down to his stomach and his wings shook as if he'd been plugged into a socket.

A new star shone in the very centre, and he was certain he had never seen it before. His playing stopped, he leapt to his feet - this was big news, an omen, something. Then, as they so often did, the constellations rolled over those stars, and the thought occurred to him as if from a brand new voice; Zeus had not made those ones, and there was something beyond this sky.

His wings pushed him off the ground. Following the curling cloudbanks, his eyes fixing on that distant strip of light, he flew up. He kept his lyre gripped to his side. He aimed for Orion, the great hunter, and wondered if he'd hit the firmament.

The constellations parted like mountains as he drew closer, growing so large that they faded away. The deep blue of the sky grew lighter as he sped towards them, but those distant stars he chased stayed just as far away. He rose up like a diver speeding to the surface of the ocean, closer and closer, trailed by the beating of dragonfly wings, as Zeus' heroes - now static, now faceless - became nothing but random points of light.

He must have passed through the dome because suddenly the sky turned black. With a cry of awe, he almost threw his lute into the abyss.

A canyon of light cut the universe in half. Uncreated, so deep he could never imagine finding the end, so long that he could never hope of finding its source, wound through a black nothingness that seemed, still, to hum. His mouth hung open. There were so many stars.

There was nowhere to stand. If he looked down, he would see darkness beneath his feet, then the pink-and-blue opening in the sky, then miles of baby-blue clouds stretching down into Olympus. But he never looked down - he was looking left, right and high above his head at the infinite stars he had never known were here. And that eternal chasm of light above his head - all he wanted to do was make for it. His lyre hung from his fingers.

No matter how loud he could have yelled, he would never be heard over the vast distance that spread out before him. Infinity was very big, and he was - as he was quite aware - very small. Even Zeus' mighty lungs couldn't have carried far enough. He'd spent so long bent under Zeus' shield, and he'd never known there existed an infinity above it. There was more here than he could ever have imagined, and the air (not that he could call it air) was cool.

He brought his lyre to his chest and played a single note. It didn't ring very far, but something tugged in his chest. He plucked another string, hopeful and plaintive, as joy somehow managed to pin his awestruck gasp into a smile. Like a radio transmitter hearing the words of Eternity, his heart filled with sentiment and understanding that came and went like a dream; thoughts he had never had before, but knew deep down inside of him.

Nobody ever remembered that he was more than a messenger. He was a god of astronomy, of the stars, and the god of shepherds.

Hermes floated in place for a long time as the stars shone above his head. He played a song for the cosmos and, because he was loved no matter how small he may have been, no matter how little he compared to Zeus, the Titans, or even Hades, he could hear the low hum of the cosmos singing back.

The night had deepened, though the sky still sat half-lit and solid, when Hermes returned. His feet touched down on a marble outcrop, his ears thrumming with the silence that had surrounded him for hours. He hugged his lyre to his chest as if it were a stuffed animal, as his heart sat full in his chest and the invincible feeling of excitement made his face and hands sparkle.

Something pink moved below him, down a few layers of cloud, and his heart jumped. "Hera!" For some reason he was so, so pleased to see her.

She stood within a delicate pavilion made from spiralling baby-blue vapour. Rising from the end of a winding boulevard, it stood in the shadow of the empty, dreamlike palace of ever-changing size which she and her husband inhabited. Hermes still remembered the day she dissolved Hercules' bedroom.

He fluttered down to her, spinning clumsily over rolls and valleys, and she turned to him in a gentle rustle of translucent veil. Her hair, tied back for bed, bounced around her face in tangled zig-zags that seemed far too private for him to be allowed see. "Hermes," she replied in greeting. He staggered to a halt on the railing in front of her - which brought him up to her height. Whipping his hat from his head, he replied,

"H-how's it going? You're up late - shouldn't you be-" Hera held up a slender hand and brought her fingers closed like a pair of lips. He snapped his mouth shut with a gulp, but she beamed at him so kindly that his twinkling invincibility remained. His wings stopped beating. She moved to his side and he turned, so that both of them could watch the sky.

Eventually, when things seemed right, he asked in a quieter voice, "Is everything okay?"

She wilted like a snowdrop, her cheeks receding into the coils of her hair. "I've just been thinking..." she began, her voice low, "About Zeus' old cup-bearer."

Hermes tilted his head. "Really? Right now? With all the other stuff going on?" Hera's hands came up to hold on to her own shoulders, cupping herself together as her profile fell into shadow. He watched her with quiet, hopeful concern as the silence held them close. She seemed to think, then move on to something else.

"What do you think Hercules would think about all this?" she asked. "This whole situation is..."

"It's a mess, for sure," Hermes replied, shifting down to sit on the railing. Speaking honestly felt the same as letting out a long-held breath. He spoke gently. "But I can't imagine Herc would mind the gods going down to the Underworld to give Hades a little divine justice." The wings on his heels flexed in discomfort as the memory of the Labyrinth's closed door returned. "I-I mean, it makes me a little uncomfortable but..." He looked to Hera and her grief - though she hid it well behind a noble sort of maternity. "I didn't lose what, you know, you two did..."

Hera's lips quivered like the string of a bow until she bit down on them. He reached out a hand an dared to touch her arm, and was shocked by how warm she was. She was shocked by how cold he was, and the sensation of something beyond the mild weather of Olympus seemed to bring her thoughts that bit closer to the surface.

She turned her gaze on him, not just towards him, as tears twinkled on her eyelashes. She stammered regally for a few puttering syllables, the spoke with emotion as simple as a child's;

"What?! That's not true! You're his mom! He loves you!" He was standing on the rails again. Valiantly crushing down her feelings, Hera replied,

"Hercules loves the mother who raised him." He saw a flash of bitter envy in her eyes and figured it was pretty reasonable. "And he's in awe of his father. Who wouldn't be impressed by Zeus? But me..." Those tears pushed back against her and she bent into her hands with a final sob. "When Hercules was born, I never expected to become fourth in line!" Hermes darted to her, cold hands be damned, and took hold of her shoulders. "I thought I would have eighteen years!" she wept through her hands, "I thought I would get to know him!"

Now was the time to pull her into the hug she needed, but they were separated by the wall of her importance. Neither her nor Zeus would have allowed it.

"Could... you go down and see him now?" he asked, letting his hands fall to her upper arms. She sniffed and brought up a hand to crush away the tears. She tried to fold them all away again.

"Oh, of course," she said with a soft bleat, "But I'll never get back what Hades took from me." Hermes wilted.

She sighed and raised herself up to her usual eminence. Her face took on a false look of certainty, like a little girl playing soldier. "No," she replied, and Hermes' chest unclamped. "I think it'll only make everything worse. If Hercules were to ever catch wind of that cup-bearer..."

Hermes couldn't for the life of him figure out what she meant by that, and was starting to wonder if he was missing something crucial regarding that vicious little supermodel, but before he could beg her - or anyone - for clarification, she turned to him and closed the topic. She looked at him, and saw him.

"Thank you for listening to my nonsense, Hermes," she said. "I meant to say - you seem remarkably happy."

"I do?" he laughed, "Sorry if that seems kinda off, in these circumstances." She shook her head.

With a swing, a soft thuck and a gentle arc, the ball sailed through the air. Pain, Panic and Ganymede clapped politely.

"Good form," Ganymede said, leaning on his golf club, a fuzzy hat on his head and a patterned sweatervest replacing his tunic.

"Aah," Hades cupped his hand over his eyes and squinted into the mist, "I'm still a stroke away from the green."

"It's a 5-par," he replied as he ambled over the grass and stuck his own tee into the ground. "You're gonna be fine." With a sharp slice, his ball swiped after the first and vanished into the fog.

Panic started up the caddy as Hades tossed his club to Pain - both of whom were in jodhpurs and berets. Hades himself had a hat with a skull-shaped bobble sewn into the top (hiding his hair, making him seem all the balder) and a colorful vest over the top of his robes. Ganymede swung his club over his shoulder and they made their way across the course.

"The shorts were an interesting choice," Hades said as they moved through the grey-green grass.

As they approached the clearing, Hades took in a deep breath of air. The fields around them, though steel-coloured and featureless, nevertheless rolled around them in all directions, and the way the air parted as they walked through it almost simulated a breeze. The mist obscured the top of the cavern (which, by Ganymede's estimations, must have been half a mile above their heads) but hung thinly enough on the lateral to allow them glimpses of the horizon. This place was the closest thing the Underworld had to a park - it even had dead trees sticking into the ground like thorns.

"Drink it in, boys!" Hades declared as the caddy pulled up. "This is what freedom feels like!" He took a putter from Pain's outstretched claws. "Don't you just love it when the justice system works?"

"Speaking of justice," Ganymede said, "We got the cup - that means it's time to re-neg my contract."

"Ap-ap-ap-" Hades scrunched an eye shut and lined up his next shot. "I never mix business with pleasure." He gave the ball a smack and sent it rolling across the grass. It went slightly too wide, crawling to a stop some few inches from the hole. His jaw jutted into a pout. Ganymede strolled to his own ball and wiggled his centre of gravity.

He kept his eyes on the head of the golf club as it twitched back and forth from the ball. His mind was working and he knew Hades' was too - and if their eyes met, they'd both know it.

"This?" Hades frowned as Ganymede's ball rolled to the lip of the hole. "These are the Elysian Fields. Not a bad spot for new families, exchange students, young professionals, that sorta thing."

"It looks empty." Ganymede tapped his ball into the hole. Now a stroke behind, Hades followed suit.

"Yeah, it doesn't see a lot of through-traffic. Supposedly, this was gonna be where all the 'righteous dead' funnelled but... well, funding. Tale as old as time." Hades waved them onto the caddy, hopped onto the back, and the little cart went leaping over the hills like a motor-powered rabbit.

"I used to have big plans for this place!" he called over the engine and dead wind whistling past their ears, "Personalised nametags, gym membership, a whole inescapable basement area filled with brimstone; you name it! We even tabled some ideas for a few ironic punishments, got as far as the testing stage-"

"What happened?" Ganymede asked, his hair flying out behind him. "Where'd the funding go?"

The caddy pulled up beside a black-coloured sand trap and the passengers dismounted. The sound of groaning metal floated over their heads, and as Ganymede, Pain and Panic whirled around to see what had broken, they were met with Hades bending his golf-club in half like a coat-hanger.

Pain handed him another club as Ganymede ambled over to the tee to line up his next shot. As he adjusted his stance and angled himself, Hades cast entirely disinterested eye up the backs of his legs. Zeus had Hercules, Athena had Ulysses - heck, even Poseidon had Theseus. It was just his luck, he figured, that his human had gotten himself neutered. Even if he did kinda like the twerp.

"I'm probably gonna regret asking you this," he said in a low drawl, "But what made you decide to..?" He made a scissoring motion with his fingers.

There was silence, but for the swing of Ganymede's club and the soft thock of the golf ball flying into the air. Ganymede blinked, his ears ringing, and readjusted his clamped fingers as they started to creak. Anger numbed his lips, shocking him with how quickly it came. Whether it was the thoughtless question or the topic itself that had caused it, he didn't know, but his jaw tightened against the tantrum flooding up from his stomach.

As a rush of humiliation flushed his skin a deeper green, he tried to figure out if this was part of Hades' attempts at manipulation, whether 'falling for it' meant screaming or swallowing it, and whether he felt personally betrayed by the sudden question. They were, after all, not friends. They weren't even colleagues. Hades was something between jailor and a police escort, and only an absolute idiot would trust that.

Hades' eyes followed the trajectory. "Ooh, tough luck, kid. You'll be chipping that outta the sandbar for-"

Hades bit his tongue so hard he almost bit it in two. "Oh," he replied, an octave higher.

"Among other things," Ganymede snapped, though his anger had nowhere to go. He pulled another golf ball from his pocket and tossed it to the ground.

Ganymede wrenched the muscles in his back as he slashed for the new ball. "Of course it was him!" he snapped, refusing to look at Hades. "Since when did the gods care about personal property?! It was just the fashion!"

He threw the next ball overhand into the dirt. Glaring at it, imagining it to be the wide-smiling head of Zeus, he swung at it with all his might. He missed it - too high - and swung again. The wedge lodged itself into the dirt in a burst of mud and grass, shocks quaking up his arms.

"Forget my strength!" he yelled, voice breaking as he swung the club from above, the head like an axe, and brought it down to the ground - missing again. "Forget my voice!" He missed every hack as his yelling split his throat. "Forget the thought of ever having a family!" His hands slipped, the force too much to cling through, sending the club bouncing merrily over the green. He seethed, panting through gritted teeth, his reddened fingers like claws at his sides.

Hades glanced down at his two minions, who quaked behind him. He rolled his eyes. "You two are such big babies." He slunk over to the young man's side.

He'd been sniffing for a weakness in the young man for a while. Sure, he preferred the kid's company to the silence of the grave, but that wasn't the most important detail to rear its ugly head these past few days. The most important details were that this kid was desperate, he was ruthless, and he was smart. Traits he generally liked in people up until he had to renegotiate a contract with them.

But this was blood in the water. Most feelings (such as his own, he insisted) drifted like smoke on the surface of the water, useful as weapons with but with no real attachment to the spirit underneath. They didn't signify want, they didn't signify those little unfulfilled holes in a person's soul that meant they could be sold to. What Ganymede had just given him was a telegraph wire straight to the core of what was really going on in that vindictive little head of his - one of those emotions that loomed at the very bottom of the ocean and dragged the tides of a person's being with it.

"Okay, so hey - he ruined your life. He ruined mine too! Granted, yours was a little more... personal..." he gave a somewhat uncomfortable trill of his fingers, "but let's just say I know where you're coming from." With snakelike ease, he placed his own club into Ganymede's hands and gestured to the ball on the ground. "You wanna take the big guy down, right? Rip those Olympus blowhards off their thrones, see how smug they are when we've ripped the golden gates off their hinges..." He watched him with yellow eyes, "Sound good?"

Ganymede watched him, the dark shadows of his eyes pulling his raised eyebrow into a cartoon of suspicion as his anger sank back down to its usual black tar pit in the pit of his stomach. Hades continued, moving to his other shoulder, drawing lazy arcs in the air with his hands. "So far you've been a real asset, a real go-getter. I mean - that last job you went on we came back with a bonus Minotaur, what more could I have asked for? Which..." He came to a rolling stop and smirked over Ganymede's shoulder. "Makes me think you and I might be able to push through some real changes together. Let's call it... spearheading a new initiative."

The young man adjusted his stance and did all he could to ignore the slight pain in his chest. He levelled his attention in the ball.

His swipe hit the ball clean. It cut through the vapour and disappeared into nothingness. He took a breath. Then, lifting his chin to Hades, his sallow eyes dim, he asked, "And what's in it for me?"

Hades' grin fixed itself in place. "Didn't you catch me the first time, kid? I said I'm giving you a promotion." Ganymede thrust up his hand and rubbed finger and thumb together, fuelled suddenly by a sting of betrayal.

"Rr!" Flames erupted from the god's shoulders like a plume of magma, and they burned along his arms as he began his fluid gestures. "Again with the deals! Whatever happened to honest work?"

Balling his fists, knuckles cracking, Ganymede snapped a very loaded sentence he didn't fully mean. "Oh, wouldn't you'd just love it if I let you take everything for free?!"

The grass around Hades robes swept orange, then black, the curled to charcoal as his mantis-like pupils narrowed. "Yeah!" A deeper, discordant second voice joined his shout. "Actually, I would!"

A reptile blinked to life behind Ganymede's eyes, draining what little sentimentality he still had. That flushing numbness swept his body as anger moved it for him. His sharp voice found its depth. He bellowed, "THEN COME AND TAKE IT!"

Fire leapt from Hades' fists and sent him spinning into the dirt, slightly singed. Yanking himself from the ground, he spat grass from his teeth, clawed at the earth, and threw himself at his attacker. Hades, now a sharp, featureless, furious black shadow lunged for him.

Their clash ended predictably. Hades snatched him up by the vest. Flames trapped Ganymede as the needle-filled mouth of a great white shark opened up, ready to eat him alive. He finally let out a terrified yell, one foot kicking up to try and get free.

It all sucked back in, and Hades' hooked face sneered, "I'm not my brother, kid." He tossed him back to the ground, one hand hooking grumpily but professionally behind his back. In a flash of smoke, the golf equipment disappeared and with his usual good cheer he announced, "Well, I think that's enough fun for one day, don't you?" He gave a sharp and humourless thumb towards the horizon. "Back to work."

Ganymede pushed himself up off the ground, his ducked head hiding red-hot, hate-filled tears. Their eyes met for only a moment, but though fury met rage and betrayal met wounded pride, still a thread of familiarity connected them. They were the same kind of animal, and their anger could only burn so hard for so long because both knew, on some deep and wordless level, that each would have done exactly the same thing.