Grim Olympian Tales: The House of Flickering Candles (Part I)
Disclaimer: Nope, just a fanfiction writer. I would be a man, if I owned it, wouldn’t I? So nope.
Story: When Percy was born, Poseidon makes Hades his godfather to soothe his brother’s rage over the broken oath. Hades turns it around on them all, and gives Percy three chances to cheat death. At a price. Part of the Grim Tales one-shots, male Olympian style.
Set after “The Titan’s Curse,” and then AU afterwards.
Spoilers: For the first three books, and hints of the next two.
Pairings: Hades/Percy (Harcy -like Mr. Darcy!)
Grim Olympian Tales: The House of Flickering Candles
Hades/Percy -Based on Godfather Death
Hades is unhappy when he learns of his brother’s treachery, frolicking around with a human woman and breaking the oath all three brothers swore on the River Styx. It is an understatement, but Hades is too weary to do anything more than huff at the moment.
But he is appeased this time, unlike when Zeus broke their oath the first time and bore a human girl as his child.
Poseidon names him godfather.
He stares down at the little boy in the crib, tilting his head curiously to observe the cherubic boy watching him calmly in the darkness. The mother is quietly sleeping, and his brother is moping about in his underwater kingdom. Probably agitated to be left with his screeching wife and boorish son. Well, at least Hades would be. Amphritite and Triton were like Alecto and the rest of his Furies on their worse days. No wonder Poseidon left them to be with the human woman and to have this little boy.
Then again, his brother is probably moping because he couldn’t be with the human woman and this little one. It is understandable. Though again, Hades reiterates that it is preferable to the alternative.
Zeus is still unaware for now, and Hades will keep his mouth closed for his newly named godson.
He vanishes into the shadows to reappear in his dark kingdom, bright and eerie sea-green eyes (so alike and yet too serious and solemn to be like his brother’s) branded into his mind.
Hades makes sure to keep his monsters in line, and to never go after his little one. The stupider ones are easily handled by Perseus, and he is more than pleased to see his godson so adept at handling himself. He wonders how his own son would react to Perseus, and hopes the two of them would get along.
When he first sees Percy, the boy is frightened and awed by his presence, but determinedly demands Zeus’ lightning bolt. He inwardly rolls his eyes, though he has a flicker of doubt in him about his other brother’s guilt and his godson’s supposed treachery. And then he goes back to being furious, and refuses to doubt himself any longer.
This is his godson, but he refuses to let him make a fool out of him.
He doesn’t say anything about his relation to the boy, but merely demands his godson to return his Helm of Darkness and to quit lying about the Master Bolt’s place in his backpack.
Percy is furious as well, but his face pales upon finding the Master Bolt right where Hades knew it to be.
He doesn’t reveal his responsibility to the boy, but offers instead a choice.
“You have three chances to avoid death, Perseus Jackson. Choose them well,” he solemnly advises.
Percy looks confuse, but escapes with the others.
When Hades finds out his godson was telling the truth after all, and his Helm of Darkness is safely back as promised by his boy, as a mark of good faith he returns Percy’s mother to him.
He feels Percy close to death, pit scorpion poison it seems, and he feels his godson hesitate, on the edge of desperation as he tries stumbling back to camp.
‘Please, Hades. I don’t want to die.’
The thought reaches him, and he grants his godson his wish and fulfills his promise for the first time.
He doesn’t watch over Percy as much as he wanted to during his next year, but he does feel Percy’s presence entirely the whole time. He’s alive and strong, and Hades keeps that feeling with him always, and when it fluctuates he becomes agitated and reluctantly worried.
When he feels Percy more than near death, he looks in and sees Percy close to death after dueling with Hermes’ brat. He frowns and waits for the call, a plead, anything. Nothing. Annoyed, he mentally reaches out and whispers into the boy’s mind.
‘Seek me once more, boy.’
Percy closes his eyes and asks for life once again.
Hades smiles in cold satisfaction and gives life to his godson, who is reinvigorated and heals himself. His contentedness doesn’t last long, for Zeus’ daughter has been revived and he bares his teeth in anger. He has the urge to lash out and destroy her, but refrains. For now.
For it seems, his godson has an odd attachment to the girl and he grudgingly allows Thalia to live so long as Percy wishes it.
He decides to keep watch the next year, and is pleased when Percy finds and meets his two children. Regrettably, Percy does not seem to be too interested or attached to them, but Hades can be patient. Nico and Bianca will have an older brother in him.
He is disgruntled when that brat Artemis persuades his daughter to join her Hunters, but he concedes it for now and hopes that Nico will stick to Percy. The Orphiuchus has popped up, but he isn’t concerned about that. Let his brothers and sisters worry about it, he is more anxious to know about Percy and his journey. He is furious beyond reason as he watches Percy take the burden of the sky from Artemis and holds it far longer than any human has or should be able to. Not even Athena’s little girl had held it as long as him, before Artemis came to save her. He will acknowledge that Hermes’ brat must’ve held it almost as long, if not as long as Percy had…
Or maybe not as Percy stumbles away once Atlas has received the burden once more and very nearly collapses to the floor in a dead faint. He can feel his godson fading in and out of consciousness, his life force draining away like grains of sand in an hourglass measuring the time left.
‘Percy…’
He whispers into the boy’s mind, and Percy opens his mouth and mouths only one thing.
‘Hades.’
His lips twist cruelly upwards and he saves his godson. However, the burden of the sky has been too much for Percy and he is still grievously hurt. His existence swings from death to life and back and forth, and Hades stays quiet.
His godson calls out for him once more.
‘Hades.’
He doesn’t answer.
‘Hades!’
It is not him ignoring his godson’s pleas, but it is him solemnly waiting for his reparation.
“Hades!”
And for once, his godson speaks his name aloud and he concedes to this as well. In the infirmary of the camp his godson is staying in, he appears from the darkness and slips the boy into his arms and carries him away, back into the shadows and disappearing from the place as if he was never there and his godson had just up and vanished. What panic this causes, doesn’t concern him.
There is a bargain to be made.
He walks slowly, but deliberately into a large house hidden inside his castle and he opens a door and enters. His godson is awake by now and staring wide-eyed at him and the huge chamber filled with candles.
“Do you know where we are, little one?” he whispers smoothly.
Percy shakes his head.
“The House of Candles, and this is the Chamber of Demigods,” Hades takes several and has them float in front of them. He gestures to the middle one, much bigger than either of the three beside it. “This is yours. Each candle represents a life, and how long a person has to live.” He goes from the second largest, that’s close to death actually. “This is your friend Annabeth’s, and that is your friend’s, the Satyr. And the last is your archenemy, Luke, Son of Hermes.”
Percy shivers and looks at him in wariness and confusion.
“The three will die soon. The stress of the burden of the sky has damaged the girl’s and the boy’s life force. The Satyr is connected to you, and due to your fluctuating life force, he too is near death.”
“But you were supposed to have saved me!” Percy bursts out, panicked.
Hades smiles coldly.
“I did. You were to have died right then and there, were it not for me. But it is not my fault you are still near death. I saved you from dying, but I cannot keep you from death. Especially not again.”
“Then what does this mean for them? For me?” Percy asks quietly.
“You have a choice,” Hades murmurs. “Your candle shows your life to be long-lived. You have a destiny and that is why you can’t die. That you would have been saved, even without my interference.”
The paling of the boy’s face shows his understanding of Hades’ manipulations.
“Since I deceived you of your life, I will trade those three chances for three lives to be saved. The girl will die in two days’ time, the Satyr within 24 hours, and the traitor within hours, months, depending on his will and Kronos’ will. I know you still care for the Son of Hermes, so that is why I included him.”
Percy’s face closes off and he doesn’t answer the silent question. So Hades does not ask any more of it and continues on.
“You can save all three of them. But you must trade your life for theirs. As if you had meant to die each time I’d saved you.”
Percy does not hesitate. A part of Percy finds himself strangely attached and fond of Athena’s favorite, and the Satyr is a given and Percy will not be responsible for Grover Underwood’s death. It is his decision regarding the Son of Hermes that semi-surprises the Lord of the Dead, but only a little and briefly. Love is a curious thing, after all, even if Percy does not understand yet or even ever if Hades chooses to blind the boy further.
He saves Annabeth Chase, who lays in Camp Half-Blood in pain and paleness, her mother actually there in concern.
Zeus is getting soft.
In the same infirmary, Grover Underwood is unconscious but his vitals are getting better and are no longer critical. Hades has saved him as well.
And the traitor, who stumbles back into their presence, is accepted back with open arms as he mumbles apologies and pleas of forgiveness, and Hermes takes his favorite son into his arms and takes him into that same infirmary that stinks of death and yet death does not enter.
Hades has saved Luke Castellan as well.
And it is too late when they realize that Percy is the one who saves them, because now he is in the clutches of Hades and no one escapes him. Not even Odysseus, Theseus, and Heracles. Because all of them in the end die and enter his domain at last. And like his heroic predecessors, Percy Jackson too has lain to waste and caught in his web.
His gives Percy a pomegranate and watches as the boy eats every single bite, and does not feel remorse when the boy’s friends and family mourn and shouts at him for the hero’s return.
There will be no return for this one, his seasons are never-ending.
Part II