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zagreus hates him.
he fucking hates him.
there’s not a single side of him that has ever made the slightest effort with him. or with his mother, or with his so-called underlings. the only thing he ever seems to care about is his never ending pile of work.
and the worst part about that is that he’s fully aware that that hatred does nothing to help him. if anything, it hinders him. binds him down and fills him up with such raging fire that he forgets all the things achilles taught him. he becomes a liability to himself.
it’s not often that zagreus grants himself the chance to sit still and think about his feelings. he’s been running away from those for longer than he can remember. but after a particularly brutal instance of getting skewered by gigaros, he reckons he has a bit of time before hades comes back down, gloating in his own particular and insufferable way, and so the house stands at peace; empty-throned.
his own reflection in nyx’s mirror seems to taunt him, red eye particularly bright when he gets angry. he tries not to get to this state too often, but he’s a god. a bit of indulgence from time to time won’t kill him. and even if it does, he doubts it’d hurt as much as a two-pronged lance through the guts and up into his lungs.
zagreus hates him.
he hates him so much his red eye acquires an even more menacing glow, and not for the first time, the prince considers gouging it out. once, after a grueling training session, he’d gotten so riled up that he’d let the comment slip the same way he’d been throwing bloodstones at the greatest of the greeks. the look on achilles’ face when the sentence registered in his battle-addled brain taught him never to repeat such things out loud.
there are people in his hell called ‘home’ that care for him. he knows that.
but his father’s all-encompassing shadow blots out any rebellious sliver of light that tries to reach him. his mentor; forever tasked with guarding an empty corridor. his adoptive mother; forced to work alongside the master of the house with no emotion on her face while pulling all her strings to help give zagreus a fighting chance. meg; cutting whip in one hand and cutting wit in the other, guarding the gates of tartarus. than; spontaneous rendezvous to help him that they both know he’ll have to answer for at some point.
every time he glances at his reflection from the wrong angle, he has to forcibly swallow down the fear rising up his throat and threatening to make a nest in it. fear is for the weak. fear is for the weak. fear is for the weak.
zagreus hates him.
and everything he’s ever done in his entire life has led him to the unsurprising conclusion that his father hates him too.
maybe not him, but rather whatever it is he sees in him. but he wasn’t about to start defending hades in his inner monologue.
he never gave him a chance, why should he be the mature one and offer his own father an olive branch (whatever that is)?
the only thing zagreus will offer him is a painful death and a swift return to the house of hades. he only wishes he were able to see him emerge from the pool of styx, bathed in that ignoble, mortal-red blood of his that he hates so much.
the idea of patricide really shouldn’t make him cheer up like this, he thinks absentmindedly, fingers picking at the flaming laurels in his hair. mortals end up in tartarus for lesser crimes.
but then again, he is a god.
and mortal rules simply do not apply to him, as achilles once told him.
still, he remembers himself answering his mentor, that won’t make him behave like his father.
achilles nodded, the faintest trace of a proud smile in his lips, before getting up and holding varatha in his expert grip once more. an invitation.
when he’d received his teacher’s codex, he’d thanked him profusely before sprinting into his room as fast as his flaming feet would take him and read the whole thing in one sitting. once again, he marveled at the width of achilles’ wisdom, even if the man himself refused to take the compliment.
he remembers he’d left hades’ entry for last. there, scrawled in his mentor’s firm handwriting, was the sentence ’the master claims that he alone can tend to their affairs, but not-so-secretly, i think, desires that his son assisted him.’
that was the closest thing zagreus had ever gotten to parental validation in his entire life. and he hated it. he’d had half a mind to fling the codex away from him and into one of the innumerable piles of random stuff he kept in his room, but remembering who had gifted it to him in the first place stilled his hand. he shall not punish achilles for his kindness and honesty the same way his father would. he shall not.
so he carefully shut it and tied the red string holding the covers closed, and tucked it into one of the pockets in his clothes.
and if he purposefully avoided his father’s entry whenever he browsed the book looking for information on fish or boons or foes, who would know? and even then, who would care?
zagreus hates him. he hates him like he hates his reflection on any of the rivers of the underworld when he’s having a bad run and he’s covered in blood and gore. he hates him like he hated the first times he ever slayed living creatures up in the temple of styx. he hates him like cerberus destroying the lounge area out of grief. he hates him like the times he’s unnecessarily brutal on skelly because he’s so wound up he might die if he doesn’t let the tension out (all those were followed by nectar offerings, apologies, and embarrassment from the prince. the animated skeleton would only ever take the first one). he hates him the way hades swings his spear and knocks the breath out of him, leaving his son gasping and dirtying the white snow red, with no trace of remorse in his eyes.
zagreus met his stare in the mirror of night once more.
he hates hades, and hades hates him. no matter what achilles might claim, or what he overheard nyx telling meg, or than’s nagging comments. they’re all wrong. they don’t know his father like he does.
his father hates him.
he takes a deep breath, red eye finally returning to normal right in time to hear the master of the house returning, voice booming down the corridors the same way lord uncle zeus’ thunder does whenever he calls on him and poseidon’s waves crash against him whenever he doesn’t pick him during a trial. he thinks his father’s voice getting closer is the most similar thing he’s ever experienced to what some shades call ‘drowning’.
the prince picks himself up from the floor and dashes out of the house of hades, already trying to map out a strategy for his next escape attempt. he remember orpheus' advice. he does not look back.