20 - Honest Intentions

The pink smoke fell. Hera stepped out in a mortal disguise - her pink skin now tanned and her glittering robes now modest and peasant-coloured. Her hair, the same colour as her son's, remained exactly how it was.

"Come along," she said, raising her stern profile above the workmen. "He'll be around here somewhere." The crowd parted for her as she strode through, but Ganymede had to weave and suffer the twanging curse of the occasional local.

"How do you know that? This early in the morning, I'd still be asleep."

Hera spoke with pride; "He would never do that when there people who still needed him." Ganymede edged around the crater of a giant footprint and considered with renewed concern whether Hercules would ever consider helping the patron who'd funded this little disaster.

The abrasive voice of an old satyr cut across the crowd.

"Push that thing up- yeah, just like that! Now, easy on the ropes!" Hera turned to the sound as Ganymede drew to her side. In the white light of the morning his green skin glowed a particularly sickly pallour, and further deepened the gouged-out shadows beneath his eyes. Folks passing him would glance his way before sharply averting their gaze, which admittedly did help somewhat in navigating through them.

"That's the ticket, kid! A little to the left!"

Over the heads of the crowd, an entire wall swung and lifted - a few loose blocks cracking from the top but otherwise remaining whole. They struggled closer, until Hera's red-headed son could be seen picked out against the cream bricks, the satyr bouncing along a marble log and his flying horse helping to nudge the smaller bricks back into place. Hercules shifted the wall of a tenement house over his head and set it down upright, hooking it into the ruin's framework as easily as if he was setting a chair down at a table.

"Big whoop. Bet he can't drive a manual," Ganymede muttered.

"Hercules!" Hera thew open her arms. Hercules span around, still dusting off his hands, and his face lit up.

He rushed to her and pulled her into a tight embrace. She clung back with all her might - Ganymede saw her arms tremble.

"Oh!" She tucked a coil of hair out of his face. "How are you, darling?" She pulled back, and with it the subtle veil of her grief drew aside. Her beauty flooded the ruined plaza, no longer an inert fact regarding the structure of her face, but a layered and inestimable something. People slowed as they passed her, noting with hitches in their stomachs that they were passing something divine, as her joy gave beauty back its meaning.

Phil hopped down from the column and, flattening down his receding hairline, he ducked his head in respect. "Lady Hera! If we'd known you'd be comin' to visit, I'd have neatened the kid up a little!"

"That's quite alright," Hera replied with warmth as Hercules' attention drifted over to his mother's yellow-eyed companion..

This newcomer sucked the light from all around them, and his first instinct upon seeing that awful pallor was to back up and put as much distance between the two of them as humanly possible - not out of fear, necessarily, but the bones of his evolution whispered that death could catch. Their eyes met, and the only thing that convinced him that he wasn't staring into the eyes of a corpse was the sizzling undercurrent of fury staring right back at him. His guts told him that something about this person was horribly wrong.

Before he could ask his mother about her frightening new handmaiden, however, she lay a hand on his Olympian forearm. "My dear," she said, "I need to speak with you about your father."

A pair of tradesmen carrying a beam of wood between them called a warning, and as they heaved the plank above them, they were all forced to duck. Clanging hammers, yelling street-hawkers and the sounds of shattering crockery continued filling the air around them. Phil waved to them. "Maybe we oughtta take this back home!" He whistled sharply, and a gangly youth zipped up to his side. He tossed him a set of keys. "Bring the chariot around, would ya?"

Phil's hooves echoed across the marble as he swung the heavy front doors open. "You wanna pot of coffee? A sacrifice? We've got some peacocks out back, it wouldn't be no trouble-"

"Truly, we're fine," Hera replied, her voice carrying easily in the cooler, calmer air. "I'm afraid there's something of a time limit."

Phil's tail flicked in concern. "Oh yeah?" He shot a glance at Hercules as the boy took Pegasus to his stable. "Hm. Just coffee, then."

Ganymede's sandals squeaked on the tiles and bounced off the walls as Phil vanished into one of the far rooms. His voice could be heard squawking through the open passages, but the sound of a rough and unpleasant voice ringing off of rock walls wasn't something that particularly bothered him. He ran a finger along a mantle. "So what kinda salary does a guy need to bring in, if he wants this kinda masonry work?" Hera tapped his hand away.

"Manners, Ganymede."

He rubbed the back of his hand. Hera drifted to the fashionable, sunken lounge but didn't take a seat - instead she dithered with a certain awkward regality. Realising that nobody had asked if she would like to sit down yet, he followed her with a smirk and squeaking shoes. He gestured widely to the angular couches.

"Would Lady Hera like to take her seat?" he asked in a feigned British accent. She looked to him in shock, then to his delight he saw her smile. She gathered her skirts with a flick of her wrist and took her place on the very edge.

"You're most kind," she said. He flopped down beside her and slung one leg over the other.

"Hey, I was raised in a shack, not a barn."

Hercules appeared a few seconds later, dusting his hands of hay, followed by Phil and a rattling tray of coffee.

"So, what's going on?" he asked. Ganymede pulled his tunic over his knee.

"And..." Phil fixed him with a beady glare as he set the tray down on a low table. "Who's Miss Thebes here?"

Ganymede's nose curled. "Ganymede," he drawled, "And it's Miss Troy, actually."

"Oh hey-" Phil blinked in shock. "He's a guy."

"I can vouch for him, Phil," Hera gently cut between them. Catching Ganymede's eye, she gave him a private smile he did not expect. "Provided he behaves himself." Spurred by that lick of playfulness, he puffed his chest and saluted. Phil's eyes narrowed.

"Okay, and what's he doin' here?"

"Ganymede is... well, it's rather a long story"

"I used to work for your Dad," Ganymede said, folding his arms over his chest. As Hera's attention came to rest entirely on Hercules, a knot slithered tight in the pit of his stomach. He leant back against the couch cushions, and as he crossed one leg over the other his foot started to bounce on the end of his ankle. "Now I'm-" He clicked his tongue and shoved his thumb towards the ground.

Hercules' understated alarm looked so much like Hera's. "The Underworld?!"

"Yeah, I got sick of all that sunlight and jubilation."

Hera held out her hands with ephemeral softness. "Your father has... unfortunately rather a lot to answer for. And I'm so sorry but we need your help."

As Hercules' head darted back and forth between his mother and her new friend, Phil took the liberty of voicing the cynicism growing in the back of their minds.

"And this ain't a scam?"

Ganymede flared, all of him locking tight. "Whaddaya mean, 'scam'?!" He rounded on Phil. "You think I'm low enough to waltz into someone's house and use a guy's mom to pull a fast one on him?!"

"Ganymede-" Hera began.

"I mean, why not?!" Phil snapped back, "Considerin' the track record of the team you've signed for!" He stabbed a finger at Hercules, who winced just like his mother. Hot, tearful envy burst to life in Ganymede's chest, as the words he'd always wanted to hear came out of someone else's mouth, to be used as a bludgeon against him; "The kid's been through enough thanks to you guys!" They burned like molten lead through the pit of his stomach, and Hercules saw the fury in his eyes twist into loathing.

Phil continued. "The only reason I ain't already catapulted your butt outta here is because maybe they didn't read you that part of the brochure!"

Animated against his will, Ganymede flung himself to his feet and hated every mosaic tile, every golden fixture, and every hair on Philoctetes' head. "Are you calling me stupid?!"

A plush voice slunk in from the other side of the room. "Then I'd hate to think what you still say about me."

A dark-haired, dark-eyed woman, already dressed for the day, her makeup as perfect and as angular as her nails, had emerged from Hercules' bedroom. Blinking with shock, it took a moment for Ganymede to draw back his shoulders and run his fingers through his hair.

"Oh, hey, wow - sorry. If we'd known Herc had a lady over we'd have kept it down." He adjusted the waist of his tunic as she crossed the tiles and joined them, his eyes starting on her hips and working all the way up. She paused before Hera and curtsied deeply, then turned to him and, smirking, held out her hand.

"The name's Meg, and I'm over pretty often." They shook, then she presented the huge diamond on her finger. Ganymede bit down on a groan of annoyance. "I'm the fiancee. Don't mind Herc's nanny goat - he doesn't take kindly to strangers."

Resting his hands on his hips, he let the turmoil settle before it could do any further damage. The knot in his stomach stopped shaking and simply held tight as he replied, "Thanks. You know, I've heard a lot about you."

"Oh?" Meg matched his smirk. "Knowing Hades, that's almost a compliment." She then turned to Hercules and gave him a kiss on the cheek that was far gentler than her sharp brows and voice would have suggested. "Why don't you talk to your mother in private? I'll handcuff the interloper."

"Wipe that goofy grin off your face, kid," Phil said to Ganymede, who for once did as he was told.

"Why don't we take a walk?" Meg said. Ganymede gave a sigh of relief as he took a stiff step out of the pressure that had been trying to pin him to the floor.

"Great! Yeah, I could use a little fresh air."

As they made for the doors, he felt the satyr's eyes on the back of his neck and to his growing exhaustion heard the clicking of his hooves over the tiles. As the echoes of their voices gave way to the outside air, and as the dew of the early morning hit his face, he tried to smile at him. "You, ah, don't have to tag along if you wanna wait for Wonderboy." Phil eyed him with a disdain that melted his attempt at a smile down into a sneer.

"I ain't lettin' you outta my sight until you're offa Herc's property."

"What, you think I'm gonna steal the silverware?"

Meg's skirt stopped Phil's sudden lunge as she placed herself between them. "Hey-hey! Cool it!" She turned her sharp features on the both of them. "Or I'm sending the both of you packing."

Phil grumbled himself into silence, but Ganymede's ears began to burn and his hearing sizzled. He bit down on it, setting his jaw tight, but the look in his eyes must have been venomous because Meg addressed him with renewed care.

"He brings out the worst in people," she said, raising a hand to his shoulder before he flinched away from her. Though her hand hovered in midair, she continued unabated, "And the best, but he sure does make you earn it."

"Well I'm sick of 'earning' anything I outta expect for free," Ganymede snapped, though he tried to will his heartrate down and focus his attention on the sounds of the dawn songbirds and bustle of Thebes starting to drift in on the wind. He raised his eyes to the clouds rolling above them and the tall buildings boxing them down.

Somewhere under their feet, he hoped Hades was having a better time than he was.

"Fair enough," Meg replied as Ganymede marched past the manicured hedgerows like a pacing circus bear. With only the barest huff of her breath, she swept up to him and fell into step. "Tell me about yourself," she continued, holding out her arm to lead him over the gravel path that wound through the gardens. "What's your story and how'd you end up working for the winner of 'Underworld's Worst Uncle'?"

His eyes rose to hers and watched her with caution. "He's not bad the whole way down," he began. "He's a piece of work, sure, but everyone has their off days."

"Oh brother," came a rough voice from his hip.

"I know what I'm talking about," he snapped.

"Hades has a lot to answer for around here," Meg said, shooting a warning glance at Phil and raising a hand to guide Ganymede away from him - this time without touching his bare skin. Ganymede's ears had filled with white noise again.

"We've all got a lot to answer for. Doesn't mean Hades can't be-" He froze, his mouth snapping shut, and glared down at his hands as if he'd somehow betrayed himself with the slip. Phil stepped into his field of view, and he eyed the little man like a snake.

"Can't be what?" Phil asked, raising a brow high enough that Ganymede hoped it'd snap his horn off.

"None of your business. I didn't come here lookin' for personal advice."

Phil's fur spiked. "Hey! You show up on our doorstep and you're givin' me attitude?!" With a scuff of gravel, Ganymede turned on his heel.

He marched for the front doors as numbness flushed his body. He couldn't feel his fingertips, his face burned, nothing in him would unclench, and for the first time he longed for the tomb-like silence of the Underworld. He didn't want anything to do with these people smiling down at him from the top of the barrel - not their kindness, not their condemnation. He wanted the people he'd finally realised were his - those unwanted and discarded idiots at the bottom of the barrel with him.

Before he could storm all the way to the front doors, they slammed apart on their hinges. "Woah, hey! Hold up!" He scrambled backwards as the furious figure of Hercules made straight for him. The floor vanished beneath him as the bigger man tore him from the ground by the front of his tunic and his broad, handsome face loomed in far too close.