#hadie

Rough filled sketch I did a while ago. Cleaned it up a tad and posting because I don’t think I ever did?

Hadie was walking, trying his best to get home. He wasn't paying attention and he ended up tripping on something and falling. "Shit." He sighs, smiling at the person who offered their hand to him. 'Oh thank you." When he sees who helped him he gasps. "Whoa. You're sleepygamergirl right? I love watching your videos! And your streams!"

His name isn't really Hadie.

Everyone calls him that, but it's not his name. He doesn't remember his real name anymore. He would know it if he heard it, he thinks, but he'll only know it if someone says it, and no one does. 

Not even his father calls him by his name; his father does not wish to draw attention to him, banished and weakened as the once-mighty Lord of the Dead now is, even far below the earth beneath the suffocating presence of the barrier, and names have power, names attract attention that nobody wants. And so his father doesn't address him by any name other than "son."

That is what led to the name he is called. That is his identity. Hades' son.

In the first few years of the Isle, whenever anyone cared to notice the blue-haired boy running around, since no one knew his name, they called him "Hades' son." Eventually that got shortened to something sounding like "Hadieson," and sometime after that it became simply Hadie.

He doesn't think anyone else on the Isle even knows remembers that his name isn't really Hadie. Then again, why should they?

Hadie. Hades' son. That is all who he is. That is what gave him the only name he has. That is his reputation, his father's legacy, all who he is on the Isle, and he knows almost nothing but the Isle.

But he is not only Hades' son.

He is also the son of the Lady of Spring.

-

Hadie was very young when he last saw his mother.

He's not sure how young, exactly. He was old enough to remember her, but for someone of his bloodline that means virtually nothing. It's no use asking his father; living down in the Underworld as he did until the Isle, and living down in the catacombs as he does now, he's never had the best grasp of time.

When he thinks of her, he remembers an impression of colors and life: of green, deeper and more vibrant than any emerald; of ferns and forests, clover and moss, pine trees and sage, the pale green of new shoots and leaves, the dark green of a deep-rooted forest. Viridescent.

And there's brown, too, and not just one shade of brown but dozens. The brown of tree bark, of maple trees and pines, oaks and willows, even the reddish of redwoods and the different streaks of birch; and the deep brown of rich, healthy soil, bursting with the potential for life.

She was gone by the time he was five. Or rather, he was.

-

He remembers his father raging, flashes of blue, blistering heat. He did not go quietly, was not subdued easily.

He remembers his mother screaming when he was taken too. The earth shaking, not with his father's rage but his mother's, roots cracking open the floor and winding around her enemies, branches and vines growing from the chairs and attacking anyone near them.

He remembers the two sides talking, arguing, shouting, fighting. Over him. His mother and the vague, shadowy, half-remembered forms of his older siblings on one side, along with the denizens of his father's realm, the ones who served him, or who were his allies, or the strange creatures that called the Underworld home, that frightened strangers out of their wits but were his playmates.

On the other side, the ones from the upper world, too bright for his eyes, uncomfortable in the Underworld: the rest of his family, or so he's told.

But they were all family, weren't they?

"Do not try my patience!" His grandfather had shouted, glaring at Persephone as the air between them crackled with ozone. "They wished to investigate you, because you are his wife! I told them of the circumstances of your marriage, and that your ties to me no doubt outweigh it. Your half-brother spoke in your support as well, and they value his word. But your son is his! He will be just like him!"

"I thought you prided yourself on being different from your brothers, Father." Persephone paced furiously, sharp-thorned roses sprouting in her footsteps. "Is my son - the first child I have borne my husband in millennia - to be punished because you hate his father, just as your son was because my husband hated you?"

"That is beside the point!" Lightning flickered above them all, although it struck nobody, and the ground shook.

"Is it?" Persephone asked quietly. "And what about my other children, my adult children-" She gestured at them. "- who are at least responsible for whatever their actions have been, instead of my youngest, scarcely more than an infant?"

"He is a villain, like his father! Even if he isn't yet, he will be! If the Fates foretell it-"

"And have they? My husband is a villain, yes-"

"As well you know! He kidnapped you!"

"With your permission," she reminded him. "He may be a villain, but my son is not. None of my children are."

The ground shook again, roots breaking it open to snare around their ankles and hold them tight, the beams of the walls coming to life and trapping them in their branches.

But it wasn't enough.

He'll always remember how his other family looked, as they came for him.

-

Hadie remembers his small hand slipping out of his mother's large one, oak leaves falling between them, her eyes the brilliant blue of rushing water, her anguished wail piercing his ears. He remembers how she sounded as though it were yesterday. It is his last clear memory of her. Sometimes he wakes with her cry still ringing in his ears.

-

The weather has been strange in Auradon these past couple of decades.

No more do the temperatures rise in summer's balmy heat, to chill in autumn as the leaves turn red and brown and fall, to fall still more in winter as it rains and snows, to thaw with the advent of spring as birds sing and plants grow, only for summer's heat to fill the land again as the endless patient cycle begins once more.

There is no cycle anymore. It is either unbearably cold, or scorching hot.

For a full six months of the year now, not merely three or four, it is icily cold. Either it is raining near-frozen water, sometimes with actual chips of ice mixed in; or it is snowing hard enough to rival the worst snowstorms, with snowdrifts piling up everywhere; or the wind is slicing across one's skin, leaving it reddened and dry.

There is no springtime thaw. Oh, perhaps two days or three of warning, when the snow and ice melts, usually flooding a small town or two, but no more than that, not before summer arrives.

For the other half of the year it is summer, and not the balmy summer days the older generations remember with fondness. These summers have the full heat of the scorching sun, fiery and withering, raging down from the sky. Vegetation and skin is scorched. No rain falls, not at all.

These are modern times, and Auradon does not suffer from famine like the mortals of old. They build greenhouses, to protect their crops from the winter. They grow plants indoors, underground, to protect them from the summer. They import food from countries lucky enough to still have a normal weather cycle. They grow hardy food that can survive these strange winters or summers; turnips have become a common commodity.

And yet it is not the same. It can never be the same.

No one knows why the weather is like this now. It's chalked up to some strange climate thing. 

Schoolchildren dutifully learn about the four seasons, even though they have only ever known two.

-

It is always spring, on the Isle.

The weather is always perfect; not too hot, not too cold. There is always a light breeze, not strong enough to even be annoying, not weak enough to let the air stagnate, even if the smell it carries from the docks is mostly smoke and rotting fish.

The sun beams down gently, warming the Isle, yet not enough for anyone to get too hot or dehydrated. The rains are always cool and gentle, yet it never rains so much as for anyone to become sick with chill, or for it to flood.

No one knows why. It's chalked up to an unforeseen side effect of the barrier. None of the Isle children have ever seen snow.

-

Hadie loves being outdoors in the sun.

He spends most of his time there. He can sit for an entire day on a rooftop, doing nothing but basking in the sun like a cat. He'll make his way to the docks and breathe the salty air. He can and has been outdoors for days at a time.

When he's underground, away from the sun and the outdoors....well, he doesn't like it. It makes him tired and lethargic. It slows his mind down so that he cannot think clearly.

His father is the exact opposite; he lives underground, as close to his precious Underworld as he can get, and shies away from daylight, only venturing into it if he absolutely has to. 

This is why Hadie seldom sees his father nowadays. His father is a creature of the Underworld, while he - well, he is also a creature of the Underworld, but he is his mother's son as well.

-

Everyone knows that Hades can kill with a touch.

His powers are weakened on the Isle, but by no means gone. A single touch, skin to skin - merely a finger brushing a wrist - and death comes to those unlucky enough to cross his path.

After the first week on the Isle, everyone ceded to Hades. He was not challenged when he chose to take the catacombs for himself and his son, nor when he wished to be left alone on his own terms. Everyone does their best to avoid him unless they need him for some reason, and he likes it that way.

No one knows if Hadie can do the same.

But everyone knows that Hadie leaves footprints of dead grass behind him when he walks, and that, on the rare occasions he is angry, every plant for several meters around him will wither and die.

It doesn't make sense, there's no magic here, some whisper.

Death exists here just like everywhere else, others point out.

And so Hadie is avoided just like his father is. No one speaks to him. If he comes along people rush out of his way. Spaces in crowds magically open up for him, even in crowded places like the market.

The same thing happens to his father, but his father revels in it. He finds it amusing. Hadie doesn't.

On the plus side, this means that nobody ever bothers Hadie, and he is free from the many conflicts on the Isle.

On the minus side, it means he's never had anyone he could call a friend.

But he's used to being lonely, so it doesn't bother him, or so he tells himself.

-

Hadie is in between the generations of the Isle.

All the villains exiled here were adults, or nearly so, when they came. He wasn't. He was a child.

All the children here were born here. They are all younger than him by several years at least. He is an adult long before any of them are.

He is too young for any of the adults to see him as an equal, too old for any of the children to. He has no hope of forming any alliance, any friendship, even if it weren't for the fact that grass withers where he walks, no matter how much he wills it otherwise.

Everyone knows him, but no one is close to him, except his father. He has no equal on the Isle. On an island full of people, Hadie is still alone.

-

"I don't understand you," his father sighs, when Hadie has been in the catacombs for three days in a row and cannot bear to stay one hour longer, and has just told his father that he's going back up into the daylight. "None of your siblings were like this. I don't know how you would ever have managed in the Underworld."

His father speaks to him in Greek, Ancient Greek: the language he has always spoken, the language Hadie grew up speaking, the language they still speak to each other.

Hadie's not sure if his father actually doesn't speak any other language, or if he just likes the frustrated looks he gets from anyone trying to talk to him. Every once in a while, if any fight on the Isle takes too long to resolve, if too many people are taking sides, if they are all too stubborn to see any conclusion, someone will have the idea to get Hades to broker an agreement, the idea being that when the man talking terms can literally kill you with a touch both sides are suddenly very eager to agree to whatever he says.

So someone will come talk to Hades, who will stare in incomprehension without asking Hadie to translate, until they send Ursula - who, if Hadie understands the tangled family tree correctly, or what he's been able to make out of it from his father's terse answers, is a cousin of some degree of remove - to talk to him, breaking her teeth on the Ancient Greek she intentionally mispronounces and complaining that she's missing her soap operas for this. 

Finally his father will venture out to the upper world, complaining all the while, come up with some agreement both sides will listen to - usually something like "stop fighting over this stupid rowboat, break it up for parts if you have to, I could've been napping right now," - and go back to his beloved catacombs.

Hadie arrived on the Isle speaking nothing but Ancient Greek. He spent the first few years in the catacombs with his father, only venturing out for the first time when his father realized why he was so sick and tired, carrying him outside in his arms so he could sleep in the sun, waking lively and energetic by nightfall. After that he spent more and more time outside, but scarcely anyone would talk to him, with the result that he did not learn to speak the language most of the Isle speaks until he was nearly ten.

Even now that he is fluent in it, he still has an accent, still pronounces the words oddly, still has to search for a term he cannot quite remember. The only person you regularly speak to not speaking that language will do that to you.

It's just another thing that makes him different from everyone.

"Mother would have been in the Underworld," he tells his father. He does not think he would sicken if underground for too long in the presence of his mother. In her absence, he must suffice with her spring. "Some of the time, at least."

"True," his father acknowledges. "True."

-

Hadie can kill plants with ease. He's never dared try with an animal, or, well, something more than an animal; he is not ruthless like his father is. But he fells like he could.

Sometimes, however, he will sit down by a flower or a shrub and concentrate as hard as he can. And the flower will grow a foot taller, the shrub will sprout new leaves, a month's growth taking place in minutes.

He loves when he's able to do this, for it is a connection to his mother.

-

Sometimes he dreams of his older siblings. He hopes they're real dreams, and not just figments of his imagination. After all, isn't that what his sister Melinoë can do, give and take and affect dreams-

"-and nightmares, and madness, and so on," she finishes helpfully, ghostly pale on one side, dark as night on the other, both eyes burning a soft orange. "Nightmares can lead to madness, you know. I can drive people to insanity with them."

"Have you?" he asks.

"Oh, Melinoë, don't tease the boy," chides Zagreus, tall, dark and handsome. "He certainly has enough on his plate without you."

"Neither of you are helping," Macaria sighs, consternation overtaking her normally serene features.

They banter like all siblings everywhere, and sometimes even remember to include him in it. He likes it. It makes him feel like he belongs. He wishes he could know them more.

They tell him of their lives, and teach him about their family, who is related to who and who hates who and who owes who what, all of which will be important for him to remember if he ever gets out of here. They tell him about the Underworld and its denizens. They tell him about Mother, and send her love.

"What's my name, my real name?" he asks them, but he always wakes up before they can answer.

-

"Did you not expect the Underworld to have a queen?" Persephone asks.

"I had not thought of it," Ben answers honestly.

She laughs, sharply. "In my husband's absence, I must run the Underworld. I will speak to you as one ruler to another - did you never wonder at the weather?"

"The weather?" he echoes.

"Yes," she says. "The ancient agreement between my mother and my husband stated that for a portion of the year, I would be in the Underworld with him. My mother mourned me during that time, and so nothing grew then. When I returned to her, she rejoiced, and spring came. Life returned to the earth. Everything began to grow."

She paced. "But my husband is gone, taken to the Isle. My youngest son was taken with him. My other children are too set in their ways to take charge of the Underworld, and none of them would want to anyway. And as their mother, I have precedence over them. And so it is I who rules the Underworld, until my husband returns. And I cannot leave."

She faced him. "I cannot leave here, young king. I cannot return to the sun and the sky. I make this place into a parody of spring, to suit my tastes, but it is just that - a parody." She motions to the throne room they stand in, the vines wrapped around the pillars, the flowers and leaves on the walls, the floor covered completely with roots. 

I’m not recasting anyone from canon, just live action casting for Wicked World & Isle Of The Lost characters!  If I’ve forgotten anyone, or if there’s any interest in parent-casting, lmk because I had a lot of fun doing this!  Special shoutout to @humaudrey​ for helping me decide between a couple of options!

Feel free to use any of these ideas if they help you!  I’d appreciate credit but it’s not really necessary, but if you do use them please tag me or send me a link so that I can see what other people come up with!

I have my own collection of descendants characters ( part 1 / part 2 ) so some of my castings were based around my own collection of descendants kids (not reusing faces I used for mine & wanting them to work as siblings to some I’ve made) but without further ado, here we go!

Anthony Tremaine; son of Anastasia Tremaine ( Ross Butler )

CJ Hook; daughter of Captain Hook ( Madison Iseman )

Clay Clayton; son of Clayton ( Froy Gutierrez )

Diego De Vil; nephew to Cruella De Vil ( Justice Smith )

Freddie Facilier; daughter of Dr Facilier ( Letitia Wright )

Gaston “Trois” Legume the Third; son of Gaston ( Rudy Pankow )

Gaston Legume Junior; son of Gaston ( Joe Keery )

Ginny Gothel; daughter of Mother Gothel ( Alexa Demie )

Hadie; son of Hades ( Asher Angel )

Harold "Harry" Badun; son of Horace ( Aria Shahghasemi )

Harriet Hook; daughter of Captain Hook ( Samara Weaving )

Jade; niece to Jafar ( Fivel Stewart )

Jason "Jace" Badun; son of Jasper ( Diego Tinoco )

Jordan; daughter of the Genie ( Maitreyi Ramakrishnan )

Mad Maddy; granddaughter of Mad Madame Mim ( Peyton List )

Rick Ratcliffe; son of Governor Ratcliffe ( Noah Schnapp )

Ruby Fitzherbert; daughter of Rapunzel & Flynn Rider / Eugene Fitzherbert ( Sydney Sweeney )

Yzla; daughter of Yzma ( Isabella Gomez )

Zevon; son of Yzma ( Alberto Rosende )