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Hades let out a sarcastic laugh and reclined in the seat. “Well, aren’t you just so noble? The hero brother looking out for the mistake.”
“You know that’s not what this is,” I snapped, reeling in the fire burning in my chest. Hades always pushed my buttons.
He slapped his thighs and stood up. “Whatever you need to tell yourself, asshole. Don’t act like you give a shit about how I feel now. If you cared that much, you would’ve stopped Hera from playing her games when she cursed me to fall in love with Persephone. And you wouldn’t have exiled me to the Underworld.”
“Are we still on this?” I started, but he went on.
“Don’t come to my house, intrude on my time, and sit your self-righteous ass on my couch to pretend like you fucking care, Poseidon. You’ve never given a shit. You had a hell of a long time to fix this, and to be frank, it’s far too little, too fucking late.”
I stood, also, the rage pouring through me. “Do you think you’re the only one who suffers?”
“What have you gone through, Oh Mighty God of the Seas? What have you struggled with that makes us the same?”
“I have to stand between you and Zeus all the time. Do you know how often I have to give up my own life to sort out some shit between the two of you?”
“Spare me, Poseidon,” he growled, rolling his eyes. “Don’t act like that’s half as bad as what you did to me. Besides, if you guys hadn’t fucked me over, there wouldn’t have been fights to mediate, so I think you got what was coming to you.”
I groaned. This was never going to go anywhere. We always revolved around to the same problem, over and over. He’d never forgive Zeus and me.
“Why don’t you get over it?” I barked. “It happened at the beginning of time! That’s a long while to hold a grudge.”
“Why don’t you just fuck off and leave me alone?” Hades marched out of the room and down a corridor, vanishing into the house.
I didn’t have to do what he said, but the conversation was over unless I followed him. And I wasn’t a sucker for pain. This was unnecessary. He wasn’t going to tell me anything about Persephone or X, not in his shitty mood.
I’d come here to reach out to Hades, not to fight.
So, I “fucked off” as he’d said. I left his shitty house and stormed down the road, seething. The clouds overhead crowded together, and hard raindrops fell around me. Not on me, but the world surrounding me was soon drenched, rivets of water running under my boots, splashing with each footfall.
Did I feel like shit about what Zeus and I had done to Hades? Yes. Did I hate that it practically ruined the relationship between my brother and me? Absolutely.
Was Hades going to forgive me? Probably not.
But I was sorry that I’d put him through so much, and for years I’d tried to mend the bridge between Hades and me, but I could never do enough. I saw that now.
I could only try for so long. Maybe the damage was so deeply entrenched in our history that there was no coming back, simply no way to mend our relationship.
I’d always assumed we’d one day get over the past one day, but now I wasn’t sure. It had taken me too long to understand how deeply this affected Hades. And now in my heart, I retracted all the bad things I’d ever said and done to him.
Guilt clawed at me. I’d hurt him and it was unfair that he’d wound up in an even worse spot than before. With Persephone leaving him, he’d probably realized he was hard to love. And more than anything, I wanted to be there for him and help him. But I couldn’t change what happened in the past. I wished Hades could understand that. Whatever ensued back then was in the past and no matter what happened from now on, the only direction to move was forward. I had to somehow make Hades open his eyes.
For a moment, I considered talking to Zeus. This was as much his problem as it was mine, after all. But I decided against it. Zeus wasn’t involved in all this bullshit on Earth thanks to X being set free. And Zeus had already taken care of what he could by appointing the Lowe family to protect the humans from godly monsters. Knowing him, he’d just as likely banish us from humans altogether, leaving them to their own devices. And as selfish as it sounded, I didn’t plan to lose Elyse.
But the three of us—Zeus, Hades, and me—couldn’t fight until the end of time.
At some point, I had to take responsibility for what had happened between us, without Zeus.
It was a strange concept, but I couldn’t only be the mediator like I always was. It might be a bitter pill to swallow, but I’d been a dick, too.
