shanastoryteller:

Hades very rarely
leaves the underworld, especially during the six months when he rules alone.

But when he and
Hecate go where none but them dare to tread, to the dark, unknown corners of
the realm to push it wider, he can’t be disturbed. Icarus doesn’t know what,
exactly, they do, but he knows it’s dangerous, delicate work. As such, neither
Hades nor Hecate can be found during these long days, no matter the cause.

Hades only ever expands
the realm when his wife is here, so that she can rule over the dead in his
absence.

Except for this
time.

“But why can’t you wait?”
Icarus asks, wringing his hands together. “You’ve always been able to wait
before.”

“The realms are
tilting on their own right now, we’ll be able to push it farther than we ever
have,” he says, scanning over the plans that only ever look like a mess of
lines whenever Icarus looks at them. “If we wait, we lose this opportunity.
You’ll be fine. You know how to do it all.”

“I’ve never done it
alone! I’m not you or Persephone – can’t Charon do it? Or Nyx? They’ve been
here longer than I have,” he protests.

Hades looks up and
reaches out a hand to pull Icarus closer. He wants to resists, to be petty
because Hades is making him do something he doesn’t want to do. But Hades asks
for so little, and he’s quite terrible at denying him. His arm curls around
Icarus’s waist, pulling him flush up against his side. Icarus looks up at him,
and one look at those soft, dark eyes has him melting, as always. “You’ll be
amazing, because you are amazing. Nyx and Charon are wonderful. But only you
can do this.”

“Fine,” he says,
giving in, as he suspected he would from the beginning.

Hades has to go
meet Hecate, but he does spend several minutes letting Icarus pin him against
his bookshelves and kiss him, which is rather nice.

~

Icarus opens the
doors to the throne room. Guards line the wall, as is customary, even though
it’s not in use. Two thrones sit there. One is simple and made of gleaming
black obsidian. The other is more elaborate, made of silver and decorated with
bones and blooming vines. Both were made by Hephaestus.

He walks forward,
and no one stops him. No has the authority to stop him, they didn’t even before
Hades left. The only ones who could challenge him are Charon and Styx, and
they’re both staying far away just in case he tries to trick one of them into
taking his place.

There’s nothing for
it. Persephone is gone, Hades is gone, and someone must rule.

He drags his feet
as he takes his final steps forward. Both the thrones are cloaked in power, and
if any but their owners sit in them without permission they would be more
than simply killed, because most people in this realm are already dead. They
would be unmade, erased completely, and nothing could bring them back.

Icarus takes a deep
breath, legs trembling. The he takes the finals step forward and sits on
Hades’s throne.

Nothing happens.

He lets out a sigh
of relief and goes boneless. For all that it looks like it’s made of hard, cold
stone, it’s actually rather comfortable.

Styx and Charon
materialize in front of him, and go into a deep bow. “My king.”

“Shut up,” he
snaps, “You’re lucky I don’t force one of you into this thing instead.”

Charon is making a
raspy sound that Icarus recognizes as laughter. They straighten, and Styx is
grinning, “It suits you, I would just look silly.”

“Flattery won’t
hide your cowardice,” he says. “You’ve been here the longest. It should be you
in this throne.”

“I’m just a kid!”
she protests, “That would be a disaster.” She vanishes without another word. He
wonders if he could use his temporary status to make her come back, but he
won’t risk it. An angry Styx isn’t something he likes dealing with on the best
of days.

Charon holds out
his skeletal hands, and a fat scroll appears. “The most recent logs, King
Thanatos.”

“Please don’t call
me that,” he says, pained. He gets up off the throne and takes the scroll,
“I’ll be in Hades’s study.”

Charon vanishes.
Icarus walks out of the throne room, and the doors slam shut behind him. He
refuses to go back there until Hades returns. Besides, if his lover has taught
him anything, it’s that a ruler that spends more time on a throne than out of
it isn’t very good at his job.

~

For the first two
days, all is well. He’s been doing this work for hundreds of years, it’s
nothing new, evn though for the first time he does it without either Hades of
Persephone to guide him. Then Hermes appears out of beside him, holding a
writhing, reedy looking man. The man’s trying to scream, but no sound is coming
out. “Our King Zeus wishes for Hades to deal with Sisyphus, traitor to the
heavens, personally,” he says, face slack with boredom.

“Hades is busy,” he
says, “Put him in the waiting area with the others. He’ll see to it when he
returns.

Hermes blinks, then
looks uncomfortable. “Zeus wanted it dealt with immediately.”

Icarus is tempted
to tell Hermes that he doesn’t particularly care what the lord of the sky
wants, but he knows that’s not very fair. Hades would never let Zeus take out
his temper on him, but he knows not everyone has that same protection. “Fine.
But I’m too busy to be creative, I’m just going to tie him to a tree in
Tartarus and leave him there to get eaten.”

“That’s
appreciated,” Hermes says, and his instant relief is almost worth the
interruptions to his paperwork. The in-between places are almost full, he has
to start moving people out otherwise – well he doesn’t know what will happen,
but it won’t be good. And for that to happen, he needs to do an awful lot of
paperwork. So he better make this quick.

~

Sisyphus is far
from the first person Icarus has dragged to the depths of the Tartarus. So he’s
not sure how, exactly, he’s the one that ends up pinned and tied to a mountain
as the mortal darts away. Which is annoying, but it’s not like there’s many
places to hide in Tartarus, and he some celestial ropes aren’t really enough to
keep him bound for long.

What is should have
been was only a mild inconvenience.

Instead, it becomes
something so much worse.

In the few hours it
takes him struggle free, great hulking figures have already drawn near, and
Icarus isn’t just the son of an inventor anymore, he’s Thanatos, the Death God,
he’s Hades’s lover and the current king of the underworld.

But in all his long
years on this plane, in all the times he’s been to Tartarus, he’s never
actually seen a titan up close before.

Three of them crowd
around him now, their rotting, pulsating power like a stench clogging his nose
and lungs. He tries to leave, to slip through the planes of this place like he
has so many times before, but nothing happens. He tries again, and again, and
again, but nothing happens.

He’s stuck.

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