Hestia, stood by the hearth, freshly sixteen and nursing a goblet of ambrosia.
...
It's quite simple really.
Babies are actually blind until two weeks after birth. Hades was no different. After all, humans are modeled after gods.
Immediately after birth, as soon as his cries ran out, Chronos pulled him from his mother's arms and swallowed him whole. Hades couldn't have felt anything more than the grate of his father's teeth on his back and the slippery slime of stomach acid as he landed next to his siblings.
His godly essence kept him from being absorbed by his father, and in a sleep-like state, he merely existed next to his unconscious brothers and sisters. Some many years later, a large stone grazed his head on the way down, leaving an ugly scar on his scalp. Unheard of, of course. A god such as him cannot have that tarnish his reputation.
A day many millennium later, Hades and the rest of his siblings were regurgitated, fully matured, at the feet of Zeus, strong, handsome, and superior. Hades, a pale, trembling, childlike god hung on his every word, and when told to fight, Hades fought for all he was worth, because if he could prove himself, somebody would love him.
He was ecstatic when Zeus gave him the realm of the underworld. He was so exceptionally proud of himself, so desperate for his brother's love. When Zeus claimed the skies and Poseidon ruled the seas, Hades took what was left over and believed it would be as amazing as Zeus convinced him it would be.
It wasn't.
Hades' new home was dark, dank, stunk of death and barren of all happiness. His siblings rarely visited, and trapped in his new prison, Hades and his hope withered away. He toiled in his palace carved entirely of obsidian, completely alone, mindless souls floating beyond the walls of his fortress.
Everything he was supposed to have, he never even came close to.
...
It was a couple hundred years after that Hades came upon Charon.
The dead and dying increased so much Hades expanded the underworld so far he couldn't see the end. Eventually he had to leave his fortress to go out and bring the souls back himself before leaving them to his judges. Back then, Hades chose three souls from Elysium each morning at random.
When the underworld expanded so much it touched the River Styx, Hades realized he needed to help the souls across. So he built a bridge, a rickety, trembling thing, precarious to cross and and terrifying to try.
Eventually the bridge broke down and a couple dozen souls broiled in the Styx. It was awfully messy to clean up, so Hades decided that damn it he needed a boat.
A simple rowboat would do. At least, he thought it would. But people in death are still pushy and ignorant, and the result of that was even messier and simply horrifying to look at.
Which is how the River Styx became so murky.
Charon, however, is another story entirely. When Hades met him, Charon was a child. A tiny, lonely child orphaned on the streets of Egypt. Hades was visiting Artemis, funnily enough, while she was in a teenaged phase. Convinced that mummies were the perfect target practice, she shot her way up and down the Nile, which, was just as murky as the Styx, although perhaps not as full of lost and abandoned dreams.
Charon mistook Hades for a common traveler and swiped his wallet.
Hades cursed him.
From that day on, Charon was bound to a life of loneliness and lies. When he died, Charon had never known joy and Hades' judges had no idea what to do with him, so they turned him over.
