Shattered

Hades

"Being mortal has to be the worst thing in existence," Persephone whimpered as Hades gingerly examined the series of stitches on her abdomen. "What kind of being can't push aside their pain?"

Hades bit his lip to hide a smile. His darling wife was in terrible condition, but he found her complaints on the mortal form somehow charming. But if she's strong enough to complain, then she should make a full recovery. He reached for a damp washcloth on the tray of medical supplied he had set on Persephone's nightstand. "This may hurt a bit," he apologized, before gently touching the cold rag to the blood caked stitches.

The depowered goddess' face twisted in pain as she let out a long hiss. "I haven't stopped hurting since I woke up," she cringed. "What about Nico? Is he okay?"

The god of the Underworld nearly dropped the washcloth at the abrupt question. Persephone hadn't asked about Nico with genuine concern since the thirties. "He's doing just fine, my love." He put a little more pressure on the rag and began to work the dried blood off. "I sent the boys away for the day so you could get some rest."

Persephone's already gloomy expression deepened. "Oh."

"Oh?" he repeated. Hades returned the washcloth to its place on the tray and grabbed a handful of Q-tips to clean the little pieces that were close to her wounds. "You sound disappointed that he's not here. Did something happen on your little jaunt?" he asked, dipping the Q-tips in peroxide. Persephone wouldn't look him in the eye, instead staring at the closet doors that occupied a quarter of the room's west wall. "Or not," he shrugged.

Hades continued to clean his wife's wounds, entirely focused on the task at hand, when Persephone finally spoke. "I'm a monster," His goddess said with a shaky voice.

Hades sat up and eyed his with curiously. "Why are you a monster?" He tossed the Q-tips into a wastebasket and slid onto the bed next to his beloved, and laid down next to her on the rose-patterned sheets. Persephone was a strong-willed goddess with a great sense of self-esteem, so to hear her speak of herself like that was troubling to the god.

"I hurt him," she said, her fists balling up the sheets. "And I continued to hurt him over and over again. That makes me a monster." Her body was trembling, and Hades worried that if she got too upset she would tear herself open again. "I made my angel's life a living hell."

Hades frowned and took one of her balled up fists into his hands. He knew she was talking about her treatment of Nico, how she had done what she could to make him feel unwelcomed in the Underworld and sending him off on life-threatening quests. But it wasn't her fault.

It was his and his alone.

Persephone had suffered a form of mental of mental break after Maria's death, but he had been too consumed in his own grief and rage to help her. He had wanted to tell her that Nico and Bianca were hidden away in the Lotus, but he knew that she would have pulled them out. And if Zeus was daring enough to attack Maria and the children in his presence, the Underworld wasn't as safe a haven as he had hoped. So instead he let Persephone hurt and break as she thought a woman she regarded as a sister and children she thought her own were dead and out of their reach forever.

Hades had thought that when he pulled Nico and Bianca out that Persephone would have been overjoyed at their return, but instead she was cold and callous. At first, he had thought she was merely keeping her distance until the cycle had completed, but when Gaea fell and she was still being cold to Nico, he knew something was off. Seeking a reason why, he approached Persephone in her garden and found out the sad truth.

Somehow Persephone had got it in her head that Nico was an imposter, that there was no way the sad, thin boy had grown up from the happy loving boy she had raised with Maria. And that the real Nico would remember her. He had tried to explain that Nico and Bianca had their memories wiped, but Persephone was quick to counter that the heart was untouched by the waters of the Lethe. So, without any other options, he tried to keep Nico away from her and hoped that something would make Persephone come to her senses.