21- Honest Intentions

"What did you say to her?!" Hercules demanded, his fists tightening, and though he wasn't exactly sure why, Ganymede noticed the man's restraint and, conversely, the immense physical power behind it. He dusted off his arms and tried not to snarl.

"I say a lot of stuff. You'll have to be more specific."

"A-about cup-bearing! About Olympus! And then going down to the Underworld and joining forces with my mom, to stop Zeus making Hermes the god of the dead!"

"So you admit that it is a lousy job," Ganymede drawled. Hercules yanked him from the ground again, but the blood pounding in his ears deafened him from any further concerns regarding his well-being. The whites of his eyes widened as he glared down the man gripping his tunic, and Hercules realised that he was now handling a cobra. Ganymede's lips drew back with a flash of teeth. "Which bit's givin' you trouble, Superstar?"

"My father would never do any of that stuff!"

The laughter that barked from Ganymede's chest sliced across the gardens. Hercules almost dropped him, as he watched the man in his grip transform into some demonic creature of wrath. Rage snarled his nose and stretched his eyes until their width made them appear almost slitted, and the formally very handsome man now seemed more akin to... well, Hades. "Really?" Ganymede's voice seemed level, except for the way it pierced the back of his teeth. "Kid, I worked for your dad for a summer and I spent more time with him than you have in your entire life!"

"Hey!" Herc gave him a hard shake with his fist, though immediately felt guilty about it as Ganymede's head snapped back. "Shut up!" Somewhere beside them, he was vaguely aware of Hera crouching down to Phil's level and explaining to both him and Meg what she had already said to him. Ganymede's green hands suddenly gripped onto his wrist, though he could barely feel them.

"Or what?!" He reared back in his hold as if aiming venomous fangs. "Whaddaya gonna do, big man, huh?!"

"That is enough!" Hera's voice carried throughout the grounds, and her feather touch landed down on Hercules' arm with both grace and an iron-clad will. "Hercules, put him down." Then, turning to Ganymede, she snapped, "Ganymede, control yourself!"

Ganymede landed on his feet this time, but it was with trembling hands that he straightened out his clothes. Hera spoke with a careful grandiosity, "I'm on your side, but you have to help yourself or there's only so much I can do!" He could barely hear her over the sound of his own breath, but those words managed to crack all the way down to the bottom of his stomach. When the impact hit, all of his dead insides coiled up like a creature in its death throes.

"Help myself?" he said, as finally that ringing in his ears drowned everything else out. "Help myself?!" He turned on her, he turned on Hercules, he spat out at Meg and Phil and raged at all of Thebes as something in him broke in half. "I'm always helping myself! What'd you think got me in this stupid mess in the first place?! You think it's the abundance of help I've had up to this point?!" The scattershot of his hot, wet rage narrowed down to a laser on Hercules as his screech echoed from the buildings that towered all around them. "You're supposed to be a hero! That means you help people that need you, no matter who they are!" Even with his strength, Hercules took a frightened step away from the zombie advancing on him. "I shouldn't have to play nice with your stupid nanny goat and smile through your insults just to convince you that I'm in need!!" That last word rang across the lawn as his words finally failed him, and all he could do was heave in his breath and try to unclamp his fingers. Hercules' heel hit the marble steps behind him.

"I just wanted to know if you had any evidence," he said, meekly.

The mask of Ganymede's anger cracked, and as the shards fell away they revealed the grief and terror underneath. "I thought Hera's testimony would be enough," he croaked.

Phil pushed forward, stepping between the two of them, and he tried to sound gentler. "Look at this from our point of view, kid," he began. "You're a shepherd who ain't got any sheep, a cup-bearer who ain't got any cup, and you're a sacrifice from a 'death cult'..." He paused to glance at both Meg and Hercules as the couple reunited, "Who didn't even keep the receipt! You catchin' my drift, here?"

A soft voice spoke, and all turned to see Hera - shaken, slightly paler, but still regal. "Ganymede, perhaps this group who sacrificed you would be able to plead your case?"

Ganymede's mouth dried up. "What?"

Hera drifted over, moving - he noticed - closer to him and not to Hercules. Her hand remained curled at her chest, and her son did not look directly at her. "If proof is what is required, that might be evidence enough that your story can be trusted."

As the mood of the room bent towards this new idea, Ganymede heard himself stammer, "N-now hold on-" The old goat jumped down to stand with Hercules and his future wife.

"It'd be a start," he said.

"Who will join me in the Underworld?!" Zeus cried over the roaring crowd, the red clouds roiling around them on every side. Hermes' shackles clanged in fear as he flinched away from one demonic face groaning too close to his elbow. The heat stuck to their skin, the gods howling their agreement like wolves, but he shook his head against the whispering in his own ears. His chest locking tight, terrified in case they broke through.

The stars had promised that he'd be alright, but these walls towered around him, had closed up over their heads, and there were far more of them than there were of him.

"Athena!" called Zeus, "Ares! Hephaestus! With me! Bring your men! The rest..." He seemed to think, but when he looked at his old friend, Hermes saw nothing in his red eyes but the lowest sort of cunning. He seemed to be listening to sounds that the rest of them couldn't quite hear. He spoke again, this time with a deeper and indefinable threat; "You'll stay here."

The gods of war cheered and bashed their shields like gongs, but the panic inside of his chest pulled together, rose to a peak and jolted him forward. He shouted over them as he tried to drag his chains to Zeus.

"But you can't leave us here! With-" The clouds jeered and shuddered all around them Zeus turned to him with the speed and gravity of stone.

"Can't I?" he asked. Hermes stood in his shadow, his eyes wide in the darkness, but he kept his shoulders pulled back. "As much as I'd love to take orders from you, Hermes, I've got something else in mind."

Hermes' wings tried to buzz, but he couldn't get momentum enough to lift himself from the ground. "You're not just gonna go down there and-" He heard his own voice quake. "- And blow the locks off the doors?"

"Ha!" Zeus' laugh echoed through the clouds as they crawled with the sound of beetles' legs. "Of course not! I'm going to go down there and give him one last chance! After all-" Zeus' hand hardened into a fist, and for a moment he stared through Hermes as if he didn't even exist. "He and I still have some unfinished business."

Hermes couldn't keep the detestation from his tone any longer. "You mean the cup-bearer, huh?"

Zeus turned away from him and held up his hands for silence. "Brothers and sisters!" he declared, "Today you will have your revenge! My armies-!" The gods of war saluted, their weapons drawn, "To me!"

Chariots were drawn and the gods with their summoned armies streamed through the clouds. Nostrils of steeds and gods alike flared as the vapours whirled, eddied and gathered into new, inhuman shapes. The chittering grew louder, the pressure in Hermes' head mounted, and all around him the peaceful socialites he had always known screamed in non-verbal rage. Aphrodite, Narcissus, Dionysus, Hestia and Demeter, all peaceful, all gentle, now all howled like the Furies as Zeus took his men and marched.

The screams closed over his head just as completely as the clouds, forming a wall of sound that blocked the silence of the stars - but still he believed they waited for him on the other side. But the noise rang in his ears and pushed out his thoughts, terror swallowing his reason, leaving him with only the instincts of his heart which right now told him to run and hide, until a new and somehow more awful sound cut through them all.

The ache of groaning metal dominated Olympus, though none of the others seemed to notice. He span towards its source, knocking his glasses askew with his chains.

The gates of Olympus had been chained shut.

Pegasus' chariot followed Hera's peacocks as she and Ganymede lead the way. She had an encyclopediaic knowledge of every temple in Greece, whether she had visited them or not, so all Ganymede had to do was raise a mute and miserable finger towards Troy. Above them the sky rumbled, the rising sun glowing pink through wisps of glowing, red cloud. Phil glanced towards them and muttered, "What's that old wives' tale? 'Red sky in the morning-'?" Hercules could only respond with a bemused shrug.

Up ahead, Ganymede remained locked in silence. Hera, too, exhuded a troubled quietness as her eyes fixed on the horizon - they battled the visions of the ones they'd left behind playing out behind their eyes.

"We don't have to do this," Ganymede said, his fingers still white-knuckled on the edge of the chariot. "There'll be other ways to prove that Zeus is a dick. If Herc would just go to freakin' Olympus and see for himself-"

"He's tired of taking orders," Hera said. Ganymede felt his fingertips hum with adrenaline.

"Me 'n him both, but is now really the time to work on those self-image issues?" Hera's eyes turned to him, and although the streams of her coiled hair dashed back and forth over them, he could see that they simmered with unfallen tears.

"Let him see what he needs to see. I dont want to ask any more of him."

Ganymede kept his expression carefully blank. "Is that what he said to you?"

Hera did not immediately reply, but he could imagine it all easily enough; Herc would be well within his rights to accuse Hera, and by extension all of Olympus, of coming to him only when they needed something. It had been Hercules who first approached the throne of Zeus, and Hercules who had been required to prove himself in order to rejoin his divine family. Couldn't either Zeus or Hera have lowered themselves to the mortal realm in order to be with him?

Ganymede's sympathy was a scant resource, and he wasn't about to waste what little there was on a man with so many people who genuinely loved him, but he could certainly understand this determination to, for once, do things his way. Or Phil's way. At least the old goat followed him to Thebes after he'd proven himself worthy of the trainer's company.

His arms snuck around himself as much as he dared, as a fresh wave of longing washed over him. Much though they, too, had asked him to earn his keep, the Underworld had one thing Olympus didn't; nobody down there cared one bit about 'worthiness' or had ever even tried to define it. Hades wanted a decent employee, but he'd never asked him to be good, evil, brave, kind or cruel. Whether by accident, rock-bottom self-esteem or through some strange sense of decency, Hades did not consider it his business what a man thought or how he felt. He had never once demanded affection from anyone.

Ganymede's stomach burned in grief as he thought of him down in the darkness, and of Pain and Panic huddled in the shadow of an oncoming army. His eyes rose back to the horizon, to the Trojan skyline, and he wanted to be sick. It hurt too much to think of them.

"So..." He decided against meeting Hera's eyes. "Why didn't you go down and see Herc after the whole, you know, mortality-potion debacle?"

There came a long pause, with only the beating of the peacocks' wings audible over the wind. Hera's voice, too, came forth carefully expressionless. "I couldn't watch another woman raise my child in front of me."