#featuring aidan

BELLE: They left the Inn without Opal, but with the surety that these really were their children. 

At least, Belle was sure. 

She didn’t know if Hades was. They hadn’t had a moment since all of this started. The twins stayed glued to her and Belle didn’t want to let any of them out of her sight. She didn’t want to let Opal out of her sight either, but as the girl had reminded them: she was eighteen. An adult. And…there was no real authority they could have over her.

Which only made Belle wonder what had happened to make Opal look at Hades, and especially Belle, with such vitriol. 

A lump sat in Belle’s throat as they pulled away and she only cleared it to turn in her seat and ask the twins if they had proper jackets. Proper clothing. They’d said no, so into the Next Town Over they went in order to avoid the awkwardness of From Farm to Table. Quickly, methodically, they bought the boys a few new outfits--Belle realizing, as she flipped through racks, that she hadn’t noticed the fact Bellamy had been wearing the same three shirts since she’d met him months ago. And she’d never noticed that he didn’t have a proper jacket. Or hat. Or good shoes. 

The guilt carved even deeper inside of her, though she didn’t even know what she felt guilty about. Just that there was, clearly, something. Something so bad that all her children were afraid to talk about it. Afraid of triggering it. Or afraid of making it worse. Afraid, maybe, even of Belle and Hades themselves. 

They walked into the house, all carrying bags. Shuck greeted them at the door, tail wagging heartily, going even faster as he approached the boys and sniffed their shoes. Another hint that all of this was…true. 

Belle called Simba, who agreed to take Opal with him and the twins from InterPride, bringing them to the house. 

In the meantime, they did laundry, washing the sheets in Belle and Toulouse’s rooms on the third floor. No one spoke of anything significant. The air around them was as fragile as glass, everyone too afraid to break it. 

Simba appeared with the children. 

“Hi! Hi!” Opal skipped into the house, stopping dead when she saw the twins, sitting on the couch. “Woah! There are two of you.” 

Bellamy winced. Aidan laughed a little. 

Belle followed in with Bellamy, the baby, on her hip. Little Aidan clutching her hand. 

“Right, Opal, these are your…cousins. They’ll be staying with us.” 

“Okay!” Opal agreed. “I’m Opal!”

“Hi, Opal,” Aidan said.

Bellamy just pressed his lips into a thin smile. 

“O-al!” Baby Aidan repeated.

Belle shared another look with Hades but there was no time to say anything. Opal roped the older boys into playing with her, which they seemed perfectly happy to do. And with the twins, they had their hands full until dinner.

Dinner was a somber affair. Bellamy helped to quietly set the table while Aidan stood with his arms crossed and brow furrowed, looking much like Hades--who had been standing the same way for most of the day. 

Afterwards, it was time for bed for the youngest children and once they were settled, Belle and Hades stood in the landing for a moment, the older set of twins, downstairs playing a quiet game of chess. Though, Belle had a feeling as soon as Hades and Belle had disappeared, they had started whispering with each other the same way that Belle and Hades were doing right now.

“What are we going to do?” Belle blurted in hushed tones, standing in the hallway outside Opal and the twins’ bedroom. “They--they can’t just stay here. It is dangerous. What if something happens to them?” And then, Belle couldn’t help herself, she started to cry, bewildered at her own emotions. “Sorry.” She sucked in a shaky breath and reached up to scrub her eyes with the sleeves of her cardigan. 

“I just--what are we supposed to do? If they spend more time with us, some people will catch on, I know they will. Another set of twins? It’s practically shouting it. And Opal? At the Inn all alone? We’ve barely the room for five, six children here. But I don’t want to send them back somewhere so horrible that they thought their only option was bloody time travel. What if--what if we’re both dead and they’ve been alone this whole time? Did you see the way they were looking at you? And--and Opal. She’s so angry! What have we done?” 

HADES: Hades had one singular thought through this very long bastard of a day. 

What the fuck? 

What the fuck was going on? What the fuck had led to this? Why the fuck were his two sons a couple of scrawny teenagers, constantly whispering to each other, jumping at every move that he or Belle made? Why was his daughter– his sweet, perfect little Opal– the world’s biggest brat? 

There were questions too large to fathom and problems too complicated to absorb. All these questions felt like this– like Hades had been handed a bomb to defuse, only the code to do so kept spontaneously changing every thirty seconds. Or he had been led into a room full of the world’s leaders, and they looked to him to solve world hunger. Perhaps one day he would be the man to solve those problems. But his children were fifteen years older than they should be, while he reminded a pathetic twenty-eight. Twenty-eight-year-olds, in the throes of a break-up and while trying to handle the ins and outs of running a town, should not also be expected to parent their teenage children. 

He’d not gotten a chance to know any of them yet. Not like this. Not– these people. 

And maybe that was the problem, eh? It was implied. Well, Opal said it out right. He did not know his children. Not this version of Hades and not the future Hades. 

So, what the fuck, eh? 

“I don’t know!” Hades hissed back, not even pretending to have a clue. He was just as frantic as Belle. Normally, her panic made him firmer. Not the case here. 

“What else can we do? We can’t fix anything if they won’t tell us what’s wrong, and clearly they don’t know how to fix whatever it is anyway. If we could convince them to tell us but– jesus. Maybe that would ruin something. I dunno! I dunno!” 

Hades ran a hand through his hair. He felt like he’d aged fifteen years today; such a shame he hadn’t. 

“Maybe– we could talk to Howl. Right? He’d have more experience with all this. Maybe he could er, I dunno, brew us a potion to give us a glimpse into the future so we can at least know what the fuck we’re trying to avoid.” 

BELLE: I don’t know. That was what Hades said. Belle knew that was going to be the answer, but still, it made her heart squeeze. She was looking to him to have some kind of answer. Not that--not that she really expected him to. She just wanted him to, because if he didn’t have an answer and she didn’t--

Maybe Howl would? 

Belle…doubted it. Howl had experience with interdimensional travel, which had a sprinkle of time, from what she understood, but only because different dimensions moved at different times. They had never traveled, purposefully, through time, as far as she was aware. 

The whole thing was making her brain short-circuit. The panic turning up louder and louder as she thought more and more about the threat that the children were under. They had no idea the ramifications of whatever they were doing here. Something could happen and they could simply stop existing. Either here or in the future. And then, they’d never know if things had been fixed or if something had gone horribly wrong. 

Not to mention--now that she knew them, how was she supposed to give them up again? She wanted to hold them, snuggle them close and smother them with love like they were still babies, the only way Belle knew how to be a mother. Letting go of them…it was going to be hard, already. She had so many questions for them. She wanted to know what they were like. These young people that she and Hades had created, had raised. 

She ran a hand through her hair and tried to take a few deep breaths before she completely lost it. The solution that Hades offered was…the best they had right now. She was going to cling to it like the string of a kite during a storm. 

“A-alright,” Belle said, her lips trembling. She reached up to scrub her face again, brushing away the tears. The last thing she wanted was for the twins to see her crying. See her scared. She had no idea their impression of her, but she didn’t want it to be of someone who was…falling apart. There was no need for that. They’d handled worse. 

Hadn’t they? 

“Yes, I-I’ll call Howl in the morning. Tell them it is an emergency. What--what do we do in the meantime? I am sure a potion like that isn’t going to be easy to do. If it is even possible. And--if not…gosh, something must have gone so terribly wrong.” She knew she’d already said it, but her mind kept circling back to it. “And the way Opal was talking…like it was our fault.” Her eyes welled up with tears again, despite herself. 

HADES: More questions that Hades didn’t have the answers to.

He wanted to snap at Belle. It was an immature reaction– something Hades thought he had outgrown after all these years, but after today– after looking his daughter in the face as she told him that she hated him– Hades felt stripped all the way down to his most fragile parts. He didn’t know, alright? Belle needed to stop crying. She needed to stop whimpering and looking at him like he had all the answers because he didn’t, alright? Just shut up and let him think– 

If their years together had given him anything, it was the ability not to say all these thoughts out loud. He swallowed back the urge to lash out. He knew that he’d not be yelling at Belle. He’d be yelling at himself, because he wanted to cry and whimper and ask someone else to sort out his own problems.

Fuck that. He needed to get it together. He had to sort out his own problems for himself. After all, it was like Belle said– this was probably their fault. 

Only he was also rather certain… whatever happened, it hadn’t happened… yet. 

Hades decided this was the key fact to focus on. It gave him hope.

“Maybe it is,” he acknowledged. “But whatever it is– surely it hasn’t happened yet. That’s why the boys came back. They wanted to prevent whatever it was that we end up doing so– so that means there’s still opportunity to fix it, yeah? We both know the future isn’t set in stone. We’ve grappled with the Fates enough to know that.” He sounded much more confident than he felt, but it helped– hearing his own voice say these things he half-believed. If he just repeated it over and over, he’d believe it all the way.

“So… maybe we do nothing for now. At least, not until we talk to Howl and then– we–we let the twins do what they set out to do. They’re our sons, aren’t they? That’s gotta mean something.” 

BELLE: Belle was trying very hard not to cry, biting down on her wobbling lip and taking deep breaths, but what Hades said made her almost start all over again, albeit for different reasons. 

They’re our sons, aren’t they? That’s gotta mean something.

It did. It meant they were their sons downstairs, two boys who were tall, who had less baby fat on their faces, and mature voices--but still children. Their children. And Belle’s heart was squeezing, overflowing with love and affection for them and for Hades, who she had created them with. There was something marvelous about that. Something wonderful. 

Leaning forward, Belle pressed her forehead against Hades’ chest, hugging him tightly around the waist. “You’re right,” she told him, moving her head so her ear was on his heart and her gaze was down the stairs. She couldn’t see the boys, but knew they were just around the corner. For a moment, she gathered her strength again and then pulled back to look at Hades, her arms still looped around his waist. 

“They are our children. And that does mean something. They are our responsibility. We have to take care of them.” This was all obvious, but Belle felt the need to say it anyway. “We will have to…come up with some cover story for them. Long lost family? Neither of us have any that people know about so…it wouldn’t be hard for us to make up a cousin or something. Then, we can…work on a plan to get them home. To fix all of this. Us. Them. The future. Like you said: it’s nothing we haven’t done before.”

She didn’t feel confident about this at all, but she smiled at him anyway and she tried to be, because she knew from experience that half of confidence in the face of situations like this was simply…faking it until it was all you knew. 

HADES: Slowly, steps were forming on a path that led into a hazy, confusing future. It was not a future that Hades wanted, but at least it was something. Like always, Hades was comforted with making solid, concrete plans. One decision down, a couple hundred more, eh? 

Though he wasn’t sure if he agreed with Belle exactly. When he thought of his boys, he still thought of the little ones in their cribs. If he had a responsibility, he had it to those two, not to the teenagers who had come out of some mysterious, magical door. Yes, they were also his sons. But at the same time– weren’t they trying to make sure those boys didn’t exist, in a way? Wasn’t that what Bellamy and Aidan wanted too? They didn’t want to be the frightened, desperate kids who resorted to time travel to fix the mistakes their parents had–or would– make. 

Just as Opal wasn’t his Opal. And Hades had to hold this truth, to separate these three children from the ones he knew, or else his heart would break so completely he wasn’t sure he could take any steps at all. It would be like a death. 

He stroked Belle’s hair idly, taking a deep breath so it could cool down some of his own panic. Here, another step presented itself. Hades was used to this sort of thing too. His whole life had been a pattern of lies, and lies for the purpose of protecting himself and the people he loved. This wasn’t all that different. 

“Er– yes, we’ll ah, we’ll say they are–” Cousins? Nieces, nephews? No, nephews implied they had siblings. 

“Second cousins, perhaps? We can say they’re from my side. They’re mediums, after all.” They look just like me, after all, Hades thought quite against his own will. But they did, their faces each a spectre of his own from fifteen or sixteen years in the future, something like that. 

“They came here because– they’ve never experienced a magick friendly town before. Or perhaps we can say there was trouble in their hometown, back ah, up north. That’ll make people sympathetic, but they won’t ask too many questions. Not wanting to be rude, and all that.” 

BELLE: Belle nodded. 

“Yes, and—“ here she did smile, just a little bit, “—this is one of those times our reputation preceding us might work in our favour. People might simply be too afraid to ask.” 

Belle’s opinion on their reputation (Hades’ reputation really, but they were partners and shared all things) fluctuated. Sometimes she hated it simply because it was untrue. Sometimes she found it frustrating and she wanted to shout the truth from the rooftops, set the record straight. Most of the time she simply found it silly and pointless. And sometimes, like now, she saw the strategy of it. How they could use it to their advantage. 

“Alright.” Belle touched Hades’ chest once, feeling his heart there and took another breath. She leaned in and pressed up on her toes so she could kiss him once, like a handshake to seal a deal. “Let’s—go tell them.” 

The old house creaked as they moved downstairs and by the time the wall disappeared and the living room opened beneath the railing, the twins were standing in front of the couch, rigid, like soldiers receiving marching orders. 

Belle smiled at them, trying to look reassuring. Even if their task at hand made her nervous and the boys’ jumpiness set her on edge. “Please, sit down,” she told them softly, trying to make it a welcoming suggestion. Instead of a command. 

The boys folded back onto the couch with bouncing knees and darting eyes. 

Belle turned to Hades’ touching his arm briefly a command to him to sit down too. He had a habit of towering menacingly when he was uncomfortable. “Why don’t I make some tea, hm? How do—you both like it?” Belle turned back to the twins. 

“Oh, uh—splash of milk, dash of sugar…like, like you,” Bellamy said blushing. 

Belle’s heart squeezed in her chest. 

“Nothin’ in mine,” Aidan replied. 

“What?” Bellamy looked at his brother, startled. “He’s lying. He likes a tonne of sugar.” 

Now it was Aidan’s turn to blush. “No I don’t!” 

Belle smiled softly again. “I’d hope that’s not a normal thing, but considering the circumstances I’ll allow it.” 

She glanced at Hades again, another silent command in her eyes—couldn’t help herself—before disappearing into the kitchen, leaving Hades alone with the boys. 

HADES: “I should help you–” Hades had begun to say, but was silenced with that look. And just like that, his escape was thwarted. 

Now he was left alone with them. These two. Strangers. Sons. Hades’s mind and his heart were still pinballing back and forth between these options. He swallowed rough and glanced at them, and the pinballing merely continued. 

He did not know what to say.

It appeared that neither did the boys. .Bell immediately dropped his eyes. Aidan attempted to look occupied with other things in the room. The silence grew, like rising water, which merely emphasized the noise in the kitchen instead. All three Acheron men focused on Belle’s light, shuffling steps, the sound of cabinet drawers opening, and the whistle of the kettle. 

Hades should say something. As the adult and as their father, it was his job to make conversation and to put them at ease. He knew this, objectively. Hadn’t he been excited to have conversations with his sons anyway? This was his chance. This could be a good thing– a rare and special gift, instead of a curse or a problem. 

But here he sat, with nothing to say, no idea how to begin. His throat was dry. His heart was nervous. The room remained silent.

Aidan, several times, looked like he might say something. He took out a phone at one point and pretended he’d received a notification, but Hades was certain there was nothing there. 

The clocks ticked on the wall. 

Then, finally– Belle came in with the mugs. “Here–” said Hades, as he lifted one from the tray and guided it toward the boys, as if this gesture could make up for the painful three minutes of silence that all three of them had endured together. Bell took it and nodded a silent thank you. 

Now Hades cleared his throat. “We’ve talked it over. We’ll be going to Howl in the morning to talk about some options. In the meantime, you’ll be my ah– second cousins, from up north, visiting for– well, I suppose you can decide the exact reason yourself.” Hades glanced that Belle. “We discussed perhaps you wanted to see a magick-frendly down or ran into some prejudice–” 

“That one,” said  Aidan quickly. “Then people won’t ask many follow up questions.” 

Hades blinked slow. He’d said the same thing.. “Precisely.” 

Bellamy nodded again. “Okay.”

 BELLE: Belle stood awkwardly for a moment, trying to decide where to sit. Clearly, no one in this room really knew what to do or say. Hades had done nothing to thaw the discomfort, which was irritating because Belle was not good at this sort of thing! Not with people she knew well, and especially not with strangers. Put her on the spot and she could manage comfort or—whatever might be needed—but not when she had so long to stew in the stilted silence first. 

Did she sit on the couch? Between the boys? To try and comfort them? Maybe that would only make things worse. After all, she didn’t actually know them. They didn’t know her. Maybe she wasn’t a comfort at all. 

Yet, would sitting with Hades make her look cold? Unapproachable? 

She hesitated and then sat on the arm of the chair Hades was in. (Lou’s chair, but she tried not to think about that.) Her hand went over his shoulders, watching the boys as Hades laid out their plan. It wasn’t much of one, but it would buy them time until they could figure out a better one. 

When he finished and the boys agreed, she smiled at them. “It is important that you keep who you are on a need to know basis. We don’t know what will happen if too many people find out and this is powerful magic, alright?”

“Yes, Maman,” they chorused. 

“Is there any other questions you have? You can stay here, of course, until we figure things out. I—am sorry the rooms are not quite done up but it was a bit short notice.”

“That’s okay,” Aidan said. 

“Yeah,” Bellamy said again, nodding and nodding. 

“We’re sorry,” Aidan said after another moment. 

“Sorry?”

“We were just trying to fix things.” Aidan was looking at her now, his gaze pleading. She could tell that he had been trying this whole time to hold back tears. It made tears prick at her own eyes and she got off the chair arm and knelt in front of them both, as if pulled there by an invisible string. 

“We know,” she told him, touching his knee, squeezing it a little. “We know that. And—well, I suppose we are a bit pissed you did it, because it’s dangerous and you could get hurt but…we are sorry too, making you feel like you had to come back. We want to fix whatever it is too.” 

She looked over her shoulder at Hades again, not sure why. Instinct she supposed. They were in this together. 

HADES: Strangers. Sons.

The thought returned to him in another wave of indecipherable emotion as tears appeared in Aidan’s eyes. Hades didn’t know what to do. If he should go to the couch, put an arm around this boy, and tell him that he understood. Would that be a lie? In some ways, yes. He didn’t understand– there was too much that Hades was still in the dark about to truly mean that. After all, he preferred facts and didn’t like to extrapolate based on nothing…

But he was finding himself doing that anyway, if only because these boys were his boys. He couldn’t help but wonder if he would do the same thing, if he knew what Bellamy and Aidan knew. He’d fought death for Belle, hadn’t he? He’d changed the entirety of fate. Was going back in time any different?

If he focused on that alone– the feeling that came from wanting so badly to fix things– then yes, he understood exactly. His whole life revolved around the belief that Hades always knew best. It was his worst trait. It was his best. If Aidan had it, then he wasn’t a stranger; he was his son.

Still, Hades didn’t move from the couch. He felt younger in Aidan and Bellamy’s presence than he should. Hugging them would feel strange. He wasn’t sure he was the father they were expecting. 

“We do,” he agreed as soon as Belle prompted him with her eyes. “We– aren’t sure how, but we’re all Acherons.” He gestured. “That means we’re on the same team.”

That made Aidan smile, despite the tears. Bell smiled too, but not as wide. 

And then Hades stood up. “Right then, ah– we should all go to bed, shouldn’t we? It’s been a long night.” 

BELLE: Belle relaxed slightly when Hades agreed. She expected him too, but he said it with more emotion than he had necessarily needed to. We’re all Acherons, he said with that warm, affectionate pride that Belle loved. She wondered if the boys recognized it. Or if it was brand new to them. If they heard anything in it or if it was just words. 

The way they smiled made her thing that, at the very least, they believed him, and maybe it even comforted them a bit.

As soon as Hades stood, announcing it was bedtime, Belle felt the ache in her own back and the exhaustion heavy on her shoulders. She was still reluctant to sleep. She wanted to stay up all night talking to Aidan and Bellamy. Getting to know them. But, considering she knew this was the first night they would be spending in warm beds since autumn set in, she wasn’t going to keep them from that. They would have time. Hopefully. To talk. Tomorrow, maybe. 

So, she smiled and stood too, the boys standing up after her. They all made their way up the stairs, Hades turning the lights off as they went. Shuck followed behind them all, padding past them when they reached the landing, going up to the third floor and turning to wag his tail patiently, waiting for the boys, Belle assumed.

Belle smiled at them both and then, reached up and pulled Aidan down for a hug, kissing his cheek, feeling the scratch of a beard, which made her strangely emotional. Or maybe it was just having to pull him down for a hug. The fact he was too big to pick up, to hold. He probably wouldn’t appreciate a cuddle, either. Even the hug probably lasted a second too long. 

She repeated the same with Bellamy, her soft, sweet boy. At least that hadn’t changed, from what she could tell. Her baby. Her smallest, her quietest. As he pulled away, Belle had to try very hard not to start crying again.

“Bonne nuit,” she told them. “Your rooms are just up--well, you probably know.” She waved them away with a wobbly smile.

“Night, Maman,” Aidan told her. Bellamy smiled quietly, nodding his head a little. 

“Er,” Aidan glanced at Hades after that, hesitating with one foot on the stair. “Night, Dad.” 

Bellamy, a step always behind Aidan, turned and quirked his lips at Hades too, still not saying anything. 

Belle stood and watched them climb the stairs and waited until she heard the doors close before she turned to go into hers and Hades bedroom, crawling onto the bed at once, turning over to face Hades’ side of the bed and waiting for him to climb in too, rubbing one foot over the other beneath the covers. She reached out for him across the sea of blankets as soon as he appeared.