Her outburst startled him. Not necessarily all the words themselves, but the fire and the pain behind them.
Some of the words too.
Hades took a small step back. His head tilted slightly to the side while he looked at her. His eyes were wide with a mixture of surprise and disbelief. He immediately rammed back any moisture that foolishly tried to accumulate and pressure the bottom of them, and shook his head. The way she phrased the question kept playing in his mind. He didn't quite know what to do with it. What he saw took processing. Processing that required things he wasn't sure he had.
She was wrong. Would it help that she was wrong? It wasn't about Zeus's experience with women. Not truly. Learning to seduce a wide variety of women wasn't something Hades had any interest in. Hades hadn't wanted a wide variety of women, he only wanted Persephone. And he hadn't wanted to trick her into bearing his illegitimate offspring, he wanted to trick her into loving him. Or at least knowing him well enough to make an informed decision. He would have settled for that if things hadn't spiraled so far out of control.
Hades finally stopped waiting for the silence to settle.
"I went to Zeus because he married you. Because somehow, some way, in spite of all the “proclivities” you mentioned and guaranteed future “proclivities” he got you to love him. He got you to love him enough to say yes to a completely ludicrous wet bird proposal.” The sheltered bird act sounded sneaky, manipulative, and utterly ridiculous. No one in their right mind should have fallen for it, least of all, Hera. But Zeus had made it work anyway. On Hera. Hades had to acknowledge that this said something about his brother.
He hadn't known much about love or relationships. Hades didn't learn about the correlation between love and sacrifice or anything until it was already too late for it to make any difference. But from what he'd observed then it had all seemed to be about a metaphorical reaching. People seemed to always be reaching for each other. Zeus reached up for Hera. Hera reached down to meet Zeus. It made the most sense to consult Zeus.
But he could have also talked to Hera.
He glanced at the ground, and then met her eyes. If she was going to be collected, Hades was going to be more collected. “I almost went to you. A couple times. But I didn't think that you would approve. I thought you'd try to change my mind.”
That was the main fear that stopped Hades from visiting his oldest sister. He'd thought it might annoy her that he went to Zeus, but he hadn't thought it would matter to her this much. Hades hadn't known he could affect any of his family one way or another. He never thought he could. At least not like this. Not deep. He'd damaged her. Hades wasn't supposed to be able to do that.