A/N: After careful consideration of the later parts of this fic, I decided a cleanup and edit was required for the first several chapters. I blame writer's block, a few new ideas, and the wonderful Jurious for inspiring said cleanup.

Disclaimer: So far, I own Persephone, and that's about it, sadly. Everything else belongs to Disney. Taking a few liberties with the relationships of the gods, so just keep open-minded!

/…/ denotes character thoughts

I Won't Say It: Part 1

The Underworld.

The Pit of Suffering.

The Land of Eternal Darkness

The Halls of the Damned.

And so on and so forth.

Basically, not the best place to be if you happened to be mortal, and frankly, immortal tedium if you happened to be a deeply cranky and insanely bored God of the Dead.

Which Hades, Lord of the Dead, Ruler of the Underworld, and Zeus's baby brother, definitely was.

One year on from the little…incident with Hercules, and life was not being particularly fairer to him than before. For all his grandiose schemes of ruling Olympus (or at least a break from managing Club Dead), the flame-headed god was still stuck in the biggest pit known to the deities, with the fairly obvious exception of Northern Caledonia.

Of course, the icing on the ambrosia now was the teeny little nitchkin of a fact that he was barred from Olympus unless summoned by Thunder Boy himself.

All things considered though, that wasn't exactly what he called punishment. More of a bonus.

Sort of.

Ish.

Due to the extreme lack of current ideas for cosmic and/or Olympian domination, he had fallen back on one of his preferred pastimes - live target practice.

Pain and Panic naturally being the targets.

The chubby purple imp had made a fairly impressive indent on the far stone wall while his skinnier green counterpart was whimpering and smouldering perhaps a little too literally beside the giant chessboard.

Even from his throne, Hades could pull off some impressive shots when he was in the mood. Right now though, he was getting too bored even for minion roasting.

Grateful not to have ended up in the Styx for the fifth time running, Pain eventually managed to yank his head out of the masonry, while Panic reformed from a pile of ashes into his normal green form.

'Uuuhhh, boss? Why'd ya stop with the flaming evilness roasting deal?'

This was slightly too confusing for Pain's somewhat limited thought processes. Normally, he and Panic both had to end up as smoking piles of ashes before Hades would have an idea along the lines of overthrowing someone or something for either personal gain, or out of a need for entertainment. Ever since the business with Hercules, the boss had seemed a little too morbid, even for him. Probably the dip in the Styx had something to do with it.

The Lord of the Dead shot a half-hearted glare at the purple minion. The two shrimps had no idea.

Banned from leaving his…kingdom, for lack of a better or less obscene word.
Barred from Olympus.
By his own big brother no less.

And here he had though for the past few hundred years he was supposed to be the malicious one.

He rested his chin against one of his hands and sighed.

'Just trying to reflect on how my life managed to get even worse than it was before Golden Boy turned up as the big hero of Olympus. That, boys, does not a perky God of Death make.'

Panic nudged Pain in the ribs. 'Since when has the boss ever been perky?'

Pain thought for a second.

It looked fairly complicated.

'I think it's meant to be one of those rhetorical statement thingies.'

'Ahem? Lord of Dead in hearing range? Hello?'

Hades's left eyebrow twitched as his hair flared up to a worrying red.

The two imps backed into the wall. Their employer's legendary short temper had just reached its limit. On the overly optimistic bright side, at least a roasting was less complex to deal with than Hades' mood swings.

The blue and grey god raised a hand…and gestured at the doorway, his hair colour fading from red back to its normal blue. 'Go walk Cerberus. He's getting antsy.'

Growing steadily more confused, the two demon minions scurried out, grateful to get away from the flaming picture of weirdness that was occupying Hades's throne.

Settling back into his throne, the said flaming picture of weirdness sighed once again and stared out of the window, idly taking count of the souls flooding into the Styx. A minor plague in Southern Macedonia meant Charon the boatman had to put in double time shifts.

But at least he got to meet the latest stiffs from the topside.

Pain and Panic were currently trying to fit three gigantic leashes over Cerberus's three heads while trying to avoid getting eaten in the process, and they were failing spectacularly.

But at least they had something to do.

All he had to do was sit like a shmuck and look professional in case any of his so-called family turned up. And when the hell was that supposed to happen now?

All the other gods and goddesses had it easy. The sun, medicine, love, war, lightning…a strategically shaved and trained chimp could do their jobs. And at least they had company. Down here, the only halfway intelligent lifeforms around were the imps, the dog and Charon.

And he already had doubts about the imps.

/This isn't exactly how I pictured omniscience. Lousy stupid butt-kissing sons of Cronus…sitting up there laughing and schmoozing…won't even visit me either. A little bit of company is all I want.

OK, rephrase that; a little bit of company and eternal ruler of the cosmos, but let's stick to attainable goals./

Several hundred years of isolation had started to take its toll on the already cynical god.

Hades would never admit it, not even to himself, but he was incredibly lonely. More lonely than he ever cared to say.

And it completely sucked.

There was no way in Hades she was ever going to forgive her parents for this. As if being stuck in Asia Minor for the past Zeus-knows-how many years hadn't been bad enough. At least there she'd been able to hang around with the snake-god Naga whenever the It-goddess Parvati had been getting on her nerves.

But Olympus had changed drastically ever since she had left, and she wasn't sure she liked it. Zeus had become a lot more domineering ever since the 'incident', whatever that was, and her mom was, to say the least, smothering. Right up to the point where she wished to staple things to her head.

Her dad, luckily, had been as easy-going as always. Then again, it was pretty hard to imagine Bacchus as anything but easy-going. Unfortunately, he had agreed with Demeter that 'his lil' girl' was to make her debut on Olympus with all the trimmings. And on this subject, the god of parties and the goddess of the plants were immovable.

Persephone, the goddess of spring and rebirth, and daughter of Demeter and Bacchus, angrily kicked at a cloudbank in sheer frustration.

Three weeks she'd been stuck up here, ever since she'd returned from her training in Asia Minor, and every demi-god from Nemesis upwards had been appearing on Olympus cooing and fussing over her, saying how beautiful she was, and how she'd make one of the gods a wonderful wife and…yargh.

The atmosphere of sweetness and light and butt-kissing was starting to make her feel nauseous.

As a child, she had inherited her mother's light green skin tone along with her father's dark purple-pink hair. Most of the deities at that point had said she would be striking rather than pretty. At the time, she really hadn't cared.

After living with several pantheons of eastern deities for the past few centuries, her looks had drastically changed. Light green had been replaced with light red; purple-pink replaced with red-black.

Not exactly the appearance typical of a goddess of rebirth.

Or the personality, for that matter.

She looked down at the cloudbank and rolled her eyes. It had changed from a weak yellow-grey back to pure white, as had the other clouds she had stomped on after she had left her parents' quarters. The power of purification was an utter bitch at times. Especially when you just wanted to have a nice quiet skulk like a sane person.

She sighed as the sounds of fluttering wings reached her ears. /Great. Either the cloud of cutesy bluebirds didn't get the hint the first time, or Wing Boy came charging after me./

One glance upwards answered her query.

'Whaddya want now, Hermes?'

The blue-skinned messenger of the gods floated above her, the winged sandals he wore going currently in overdrive. 'Much as I hate to interrupt such a groovy display of rebellion and negativity at the cosmos; your mom's still on the warpath over the debut bacchanal.'

'I thought I was pretty clear on what I thought of the whole idea.'

Hermes peered at her over the top of his shades. 'Telling your mom you'd rather, and I quote 'cut off my head, fill it with water and give it to Zeus as a vase' unquote, maybe wasn't the mellowest way of telling her.'

'It was the only way to get through to her.'

'Seph, c'mon. Do this for me?'

The glare she gave him was worthy of Hades himself. 'Yeah, real mature Hermes; guilt-trip me.'

'Please? C'mon…'

'No.'

'Least you can do after I got you out of the wrestling match with Grishnu.'

Persephone sighed in resignation. 'I hate you sometimes.'

'Atta girl.'

She sighed again as she stood up, straightened her kitan, and followed Hermes as he soared ahead of her.

'Doesn't mean I'm gonna enjoy it, though.'

'Never said you had to, babe.'

TBC