Revelations [malexmale]

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Three

I didn't have enough fingers to count how many times I'd been rejected in my life.

It all started with the parents I had long thought were my parents. I'd been the first reject child, cast aside in a realm that would have killed any normal god. Then bit by bit, my siblings began to reject me as well. Once the situation with Zeus had reached its peak, my entire pantheon rejected me. After that, it was a domino effect of absolute fucking rejection.

It was a good fucking thing I wasn't on the Bachlor or some shit because I would've not only been kicked off the show, but given a straight up restraining order.

To put it simply, rejection was something I was used to. It happened so often, I'd gotten to the point where I just shrugged it off.

What surprised me was acceptance.

And that had started with Charon, probably. I hadn't really noticed it at the time. He accepted me, even though I'd turned into a fucking prick after Kratos and Zeus. Persephone accepted me, albeit very slowly and still got fed the fuck up with some of my shit-- and could you blame her?

Nah, the biggest fucking shock of my life was Lucifer accepting me.

That had been a real fucking blow to how I viewed reality.

It made no sense.

My mother's favorite childhood lullaby was, "You're unlovable, Hades. It's as simple as that. How could I possibly want to save you? How could you possibly expect Zeus to love you? How could you expect anyone to, honestly?"

My entire reality revolved around this shit. It obviously took me fucking centuries to realize the goddamn damage it had done to my view of the world. I was, and could still be, a cynical piece of shit.

Then, here comes this angel, crashing a fucking hole in everything I had been led to believe. Suddenly, I wasn't seeing things through this clouded lens of absolute trama, but seeing through the fog, into this incredible fucking world I was living in.

Don't get me wrong; it could be total shit. I was a god. I'd also experienced half that shit myself.

But there was some pretty incredible shit going on too. First of all, my kids. Second of all, Lucifer himself. Third, my realm that I could put into the future, instead of keeping them leashed to a damaging past, a past that was doomed to repeat itself over and over again if someone didn't put their foot down. It was why the laws changed. Why I changed the laws of the land. No more clinging to traditional bullshit that left people caged in their trauma and abuse. No more acceptance of horrible crimes that had become fucking normalized by a society desensitized by its frequent occurances. Done with shackled souls who just wanted to know what peace was like, what it was like to own their own souls for once in their fucking lives.

My realm was reborn. And that was amazing.

I did that. I helped it progress. I broke the shackles, I made the cures, I gave them the rights they should've been fucking born with.

And, contrary to popular opinion, I didn't want shit back from them. I just wanted to try and do this thing called enjoying life. It used to be a fucking myth to me. Now it was a reality.

And I--

Holy fuck, how long did it take to fucking shower?

I raked a hand through my hair, glaring up at the glowing window of a certain pretty bedroom with a balcony that was only big enough to hold a couple of potted plants. A set of gauzy curtains lay open and billowing gently in the wind. Inside, I could still hear the shower running, was just ten seconds away from just kicking down the door to the bedroom upstairs and making my presence known.