Lowering my head I fought the urge to strike him, “Why were you there?”
            “With hope.”

            My memory faded from the dream into something imitating reality. His voice continued in the vast darkness of my mind. Unable to move under my own control I remained motionless in the shadow of his voice. Left inside the unknown his voice guided me back.
            “With hope,” He began, “The beauty of your skin remained untainted by the touch of another.”
            The void emptiness consumed my being leaving me unable to touch or feel. All of my senses were hollow except for his voice. He continued as though I were something beyond the nothingness I had become. How he found me, I couldn’t be sure, but I was sure he was there with me.
            “As our eyes met on the road, I knew he stole your innocence. The only thing I could offer you was a different path than what he had chosen for you. I feared his plans, yet everything I tried failed to break the curse placed over you. You deserved so much more than this.” I could tell by the sound of his voice, Hades grew tormented by the truth he spoke. “The more the light embedded with your soul, I was afraid, I would break myself before it could be removed. Brutalizing you, it broke me in ways I still cannot comprehend.
            During your training, I hoped you could finally overcome that which devastated your entire being. Something deep inside of me knew your devotion would always remain true to him. But watching you take hold of the power inside of yourself was a vision I dreamed of for eons. Such radiance exploded from within after being contained for so long. All I ever desired was to see you free. Released from the prison he isolated you in, that’s the only thing I ever sought.
            Anguish tore through me once I thought you were liberated and then saw your eyes flowing with the blood, still holding you captive with a plague he afflicted on you. Vanishing from your side became the only way I could conceal the pain consuming me. Had I been able to hold myself together, I would have remained by your side.”
            Hades paused momentarily as I felt myself floating and no longer falling as I remembered. Fighting to understand what was happening, I realized I could not move. The deafening truth came through as I gained the knowledge, I had no body in which to move.
            “Please, calm yourself. It took so long to finally find you that I could not save your body.” I knew it was my imagination, but I could almost feel him holding me close to his own body. “Please be patient and rest.”
            With his last words I felt myself slip into something similar to slumber. The darkness took ahold of me as time as peace wore over my soul knowing Hades would protect me above all else in this world. I relaxed into the unknown and waited for him to wake me.

            Carefully without trying to disturb Hades I tugged at what was left of myself. Unable to free my soul from his grasp, I turned slightly allowing my wavering sight to try to adjust to the god who had rescued me from oblivion. With only a simple thought I removed the curtain of white hair separating us. He appeared to be sleeping, but the face I gazed upon, was not one I could remember.
            It seemed as though the brittle lines once holding it together quite literally broke into his skin. Piece by piece the skin which was once as magnificent as white marble fractured and became lost with all the hope he held inside. The last time I remembered, directly looking at him, the cracks slowly faded into the surface, but barely faceted. Pain embedded itself so far now, when in the end nothing could stop it from exploding against the surface.
            Ages ago his skin bleached white with the blackest eyes I ever looked inside, changed drastically. His entire presence used to create such a fear inside me, I would rarely ever look in his direction. I used to stand my ground against the pain he would cause, but now I see, it affected him so much more. With each time he came to me, another fissure split its way to the surface.
            Hair as dark as the blindness behind my eyes washed-out into pure white throughout the years. After all it has been several thousand years since we met so cruelly, but it wasn’t until he saved me from the bottomless pit, he confided in me about the truth of his own anguish. Now as I look upon the glory of being a god, I could see it transformed Hades into something beyond darkness. The misery wore through his entire being resting once and for all on the surface of his skin.
            Unlike the torture I succumbed to here in the underworld, his broke through his entire being. His skin now as dark as midnight burnt by the sulfur inside the coal dust floating freely through the corridors of his home. Accents of gold highlights etched the pain against his new layer of skin. His eyes were just as obscure as before with no light wallowing through as though they absorbed the reflection of the world they saw.
            “Do you fear what you look upon?” Hades voice rose from within his chest. As I struggled to allow my voice, any voice to produce from the nothingness I had become, Hades cringed in response.  “I can hear you, there is no need to scream.”
            I fought for tears to release the agony swelling through the core of my being, but I felt nothing as I tried to quiet the feeling. Every inch of what I was, the nothingness I became screamed for something to contain me, but the immenseness of everything stretched into the room. Calming the voice I desired to speak, I simply thought, “What am I?”
            A silver stream released itself down his cheek falling down over the darkness releasing the pain I so desired, “You are what we transcend to be. You are life, you are death, you are light, you are the dark, you are nothing, yet you are everything. You are finally free.”