You hated him.

The most for his indifference. Maybe you would have forgiven the deception with pomegranate seeds — in time. But you hated him for the way he took you, with a touch of routine, with a touch of boredom, the way he looked through you. And you hated Hades — years of blinding hatred, even when you were planting flowers in your underground garden, you were thinking that most of all you would like to hurt him.

And the flowers grew — thorny, with scarlet drops, like blood-stained shackles.

Hades never returned until the next night, never fell asleep next to you. He snorted condescendingly in response to any of your glances — fierce, icy, angry, full of disgust. Sometimes it seemed to you that he never sleeps at all — like his world. However, when you asked Hypnos a question about that, he turned pale, muttered something incomprehensible and disappeared from the palace for a whole week.

But over the centuries of marriage, you've finally learned to look into his eyes without fear. There are two abysses. Two small Tartars. Hades has an abyss of horror in eyes. The searing cold of the ships. The trembling of the retinue. The groans of those executed in the Fields of Torment.

Not eyes, but a black wasteland parched by fire.

Was there anything but indifference in them when the final battle in Titanomachia began? When did the Hecatonheires rise and the seas boil? When the fire flowed from the sky and the earth screamed? Or did he not care even then — his horror and his pain were enough?

But you looked into his face — you stared into the abyss of abysses — and you felt that the horror tearing at your chest was giving way to a dreary hopelessness. You didn't ask for mercy: he didn't know what it was anyway. And if you was suffocating, struggling from something, it was from hatred and disgust for your father's brother. For the kidnapper, for the punisher.

"Do you want me to hurt you too much?" He asked indifferently when you started struggling. "I can do it like no one else. Be still."