Chapter Text
Hades didn’t want a baby
It wasn’t that he had anything against babies. True there had been that nasty business with his nephew, but that had never been about the kid. It had been about Hades greedy ass-biscuit of a brother and family quarrels going back countless thousands of years, the fact that the kid grew up to take everything so damn personally was, in Hades opinion further evidence that he was the only Olympian fit to rule. Clearly Zeus had spoiled the little bastard rotten, Hades would never spoil his kid. Not that he wanted a kid. Children, in the opinion of the Lord of the Dead, were like little miniature drunken adults, grubby and slimy and dripping various possibly caustic fluids everywhere. Babies were even worse though, they pooped, and they mewled when they were hungry, and they cried for no bloody reason. No Hades did not want a kid.
Maleficent wanted a kid.
They were having a kid.
Or more precisely they were having a minion. Some assembly required.
The marriage of the Lord of the Dead to the Mistress of all Evil had been an extremely political affair. The entire population of the Isle had been invited to attend, under threats of unspeakable pain should they fail to make an appearance. The very best of the Isle’s supplies were commandeered for the wedding feast, which really wasn’t saying much. And even the Royals in Auradon had made a token gesture of acknowledgment toward the day’s “festivities”, sending flowers and “well wishes” that sounded like nothing so much as a plea that the newly wedded couple not use their combined power to shatter the barrier and lay waste to Auradon. Not that Hades and Maleficent didn’t try, again and again and again, failure after failure, but despite their great power they couldn’t bring the barrier down.
All this, led up to why Maleficent insisted they have a kid.
His wife’s theory wasn’t bad per se. It was actually, magically speaking, quite sound, though not really moral. Even wed, their individual powers didn’t combine well, an incompatibility that Hades blamed at least partially on their mutually combative personalities; ‘A house divided against itself must fall’ and all that. Theoretically speaking though, a child of their combined blood should have their combined powers, the potent dark magic of an unseelie fae mixed with the inexhaustible might of a god. Power enough to rule the Isle, power enough to bring the barrier crashing down, power enough to smite Auradon and every one of its pathetic little goody, goody princes and princesses to ash.
And that was how Hades found himself pacing the balcony of his wife’s home, flinching at every enraged screech from their bed chamber and dodging Maleficient’s terrified, scurrying goblin henchmen. His own henchmen Pain and Panic had been at his side when she first went into labor, Panic having initially brought him word that the baby was coming…NOW. But he had sent them away quickly, feeling that perhaps their presence was in rather bad taste in this situation. Faery births were always particularly hard, or so he had heard, and he certainly didn’t want to make things worse…
The screaming had stopped.
For a moment everyone froze, the goblin henchmen shaking with fear until suddenly the high, strident wails of a newborn could be heard through the thick bedroom door. Slowly that door creaked open, and a goblin (one of the few female goblins, Hades thought) shuffled out, tenderly bearing a squirmy, screaming, altogether thoroughly displeased bundle of baby. Hesitating a little she offered it to him, and Hades felt his stomach flip, just a little, as he awkwardly cradled the baby for the first time.
She was so…small. So incredibly tiny and delicate. With lungs like a bellows that were currently shattering his ear drums, truly Hades wasn’t sure how he hadn’t gone deaf. Yet despite the absolutely atrocious racket she was making, Hades found he didn’t mind the noise. He was too busy focusing on the miniscule curve of her fingernails, the wee button of her nose and the shocking deep purple and blue of her little tuft of hair. And her eyes…Oh her eyes, they were the purest green of emeralds and summer leaves and the deep, cool river that flowed off Mount Olympus. And It was looking into his daughter’s eyes for the first time that Hades realized, he really didn’t mind having a baby.
“Hello Mali.”