Y'all... I can't even apologize to you guys with a straight face anymore! 

School and my nephew keep me so busy, that whenever I have spare time, I just wanna lay down on my couch and watch Shrek and eat popcorn :(   

I've been working on this chapter for like weeks now, lmao, and I've only just been able to finish it today! I'm so happy I can finally upload it. I hope you guys like it!

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Samantha

I'm becoming very familiar with crying.

I can tell by the flaring of my nostrils and the sting overtaking my face that tears are about to leak from my eyes. My hands are still up in the air shaking like lone leaves in the autumn wind, legs anchored to my stiffened knees, stricken with fear and a pain that drill past the marrow of my bones and seep further past my stomach. Hades might have lowered his weapon, but the damage is done. 

 The fact his arrow is lodged within my larynx withers the little bud of hope I was holding onto. He's pierced into something far more fragile than skin.

Assessing me, he remains rooted to his spot in the sand, his own arms lifted in surrender. He remains artfully still for several moments, and with him the rest of the forest. Only the crickets continue their tune, because even the wind seems to cease in its sound-- ceding to Hades as if somehow he was its master. As if somehow it's become an extension of who he is, like Elysium or the Fields of Punishment. It strikes me as odd, more so because in the timeline I'm from nature isn't exactly fond of him. 

We remain at a standstill for a while, him staring at me impassively, lips pressed into a thin line, shoulders set, me recoiling into the comfort of the distance between us, eyes no doubt widened in dreadful anticipation. Something about the pale stranger in front of me tethers my gaze to his form, uncertain of his character, of his actions. 

In my world, Hades liked me the second he laid eyes on me. I didn't have to actively work to get him to treat me like his equal. What's next? He's happily married? He's got kids? It would be the absolute death of me if he did. It would finish me if he doesn't do so first. It doesn't matter whether or not this man just tried killing me, it doesn't matter he's from a different timeline.

 He still has the same face. The same intense features. It would be painful to watch those same irises look at someone else the way they once saw me, with that concentrated expression his eyes would take whenever they landed on me, the one with a subtle, almost imperceptible flicker of awe. I don't know how to get used to this place, it's so distinct, so strange. I don't know what's going to happen next and it scares me shitless.

What if I'm doomed to continue a life here? I mean, it might've saved me from Thanatos for now, but what unexpected trials will this lifetime bring me? What enemies?

Movement from the corner of my eye shifts my attention to Hades' suspended right hand, forcing me to set aside my other concerns to focus on the one in front of me. With his eyes still fixed on mine, he twitches his fingers, easily bringing them into his palm save for his index and middle finger.

His gaze shifts to the golden substance oozing from my wound, hesitating before it returns to my face, probably debating on whether or not he can approach me-- it seems I'm not the only one cautious of the encounter.

Dipping the corners of his lips, he slowly lowers his arm in front of him, the action startling me for a second as after several moments of still tenseness, he brings his two fingers to the spot beneath his Adam's apple. Lightly tapping it twice, his eyes travel to my own-- waiting for me to say or do something. 

 Irritation flares up in my chest at the gesture. If he's insinuating I've got something stuck in my throat, I'm already well aware of it. I've got a golden substance trickling down my neck and an arrow protruding from it right before my eyes to remind me of it.

In fact, I have to suppress the urge to swallow because the arrow's apex is blocking my airway. It's not so much the pain that stops me, because in all honesty I don't feel much discomfort coming from the wound, it's the movement that scares me into stillness. It's the man behind the arrow that makes me hesitate in pulling it out.

I want to tell him it's obvious I've got something embedded in my throat, he was the one to put it there in the first place, but he wouldn't understand me. I'm tempted to make a run for it and risk being impaled a second time, but he repeats his movements, stopping me from turning around and breaking out into a sprint. He brings his middle and index fingers to his neck, tapping his throat twice before slowly raising his arms again, waiting for me to understand the meaning behind the action.

It's not until he moves to repeat the gesture a third time that I understand what he's trying to tell me. Well, at least I think I do. Watching him with suffocating caution, becoming so still I'm afraid I might start to feel a throb coming from my wound, he slowly makes a move to come towards me, setting his right leg in front of him, bringing himself one step closer to my spot by the river.

Whatever possessed him to approach me startles me, because not only are his motives foreign to me, his sudden change in attitude brings alarm to my veins. The last time I trusted a man who looked like him, I found myself giving him a vial full of powerful, concentrated substance and begging Poseidon to save me so he wouldn't catch me. To this day, I don't know what the extent of the consequences of my actions were. I didn't spend enough time alongside my Hades to know more about the aftermath. 

Sensing this, alternate timeline Hades returns his hand to its previous position in the air, stopping in his tracks. We go back to being still for a moment as he no doubt waits for me to lower my guard and I contemplate whether or not his actions meant he was apologizing for impaling me or was hoping to approach me. Either way, it doesn't matter. I don't want him near me. 

Numbed by the long stretch of silence, I feel a sudden burst of courage push me into scrambling into a run. My heart palpitates so harshly at the abruptness of my movement, I swear it stills for a second, as if debating whether or not it should stop working altogether. My legs feel like lead, my arms like useless propellers, and my nostrils burn from the cool night air. I think even a bug flew in, which makes me give Hades an awkward show of dry sneezes and coughs, which gives him the time to clumsily wrap his hand around my middle, index and ring fingers-- stopping me.

Incensed by adrenaline, the ridiculous desire to survive (even in this world), and the afterthought of my hair growing once again, I tug my hand away as hard as I can and breathe in sharply before turning around and falling to the pebbled dirt floor. The motion causes the arrow to pierce in deeper, erupting an asphyxiating fit of coughs and struggling, muffled gasps from my dry lips. I'm choking on my own saliva from having breathed in too deeply, and I can almost taste the combination of the arrow's leaded apex and my own blood seeping past my esophagus.

I can't even cry from how hard it is to breathe. And again, it's not the fact I can die or that the weapon is causing me agonizing pain that causes my stutter, but the previous sensations of human life which make the experience much more horrifying. My body's memory of human sensation intensifies the situation more than it probably should. It's like I'm suddenly on Charon's boat again, clutching to my invisible life thread in between fisted palms and twisted fingers, staining the vessel's wood with deep crimson, choking on the little oxygen that should have been keeping me alive as my ears blurred the lines between the voices of the people I should have trusted, the ones I shouldn't have, and the beckoning, seductive call of Death's assuring promises.

I can hear Hades again, panicked, calling, yelling and pleading, bargaining with Fate and Time itself, wishing he had someone to pray to who could bring me back to him. But he doesn't get to me in time. Willing the gales of the Acheron, summoning the power of the Underworld's crevices... it didn't make time stop, it didn't make his fingertips reach the strands of golden hair quickly turning into nothing but black, minuscule remnants of carbon. 

The memory of heat searing my skin into oblivion, of jagged steel penetrating flesh, it blinds me, makes the odd sensations of the embedded arrow feel much more severe than I originally thought them to be. I don't know if a single tear or a tidal of tears leak from my eyes, but I sense the sudden embrace of earth and fresh dew swallow me whole, washing away the arrow, washing away the sweat collected on my brown bone, shushing me and cradling me into an ocean of dense clouds tinted a familiar ebony. They lull my heartbeat to the rhythm only one has been able to elicit, and calm the frenzied storm of fingers desperate to anchor themselves to whatever life they find.

This time, my savior gets to me in time.

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Yay!!! We finally got a peek into Sam and Hades' interactions and what you guys should expect from here on out! What did you guys think? Are there any particular scenes you guys would like to see written into fruition? 

Also, who's POV should I do next? Do you guys want me to continue this chapter in Sam's perspective or return to the present with Hades and our curious little prince? Let me know in the comments, either way, our plot progresses!