goldandjewels (goldandjewels) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2016-09-10 21:55:00 |
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Entry tags: | hades, hazel levesque |
Who: Hazel Levesque & Hades
When: During da grounder sickness plotz
Where: Their house
What: Hazel is sick and Hades takes care of her
Rating/Warnings: SAFE FOR READING UNLESS YOU DISLIKE THE BLOOD/THE VOMIT
Status: Complete
Hazel hadn’t told her dad that people from school had snuck her into a party or that she’d dragged Al with her so she didn’t have to stand around awkwardly and alone while everyone else drank. She hadn’t immediately told him that she’d felt terrible either. It had been a few hours since the party when the fever hit and she was starting to feel feverish. She’d taken medicine and drank some water before making herself go to bed. She woke up later feeling awful and suddenly glad it was Sunday and not later than that. But she still felt terrible. So she’d pulled herself out of bed and made her way over to her dad’s room and told him that she thought she might need him to get her cold or flu medicine. It hadn’t occurred to her to try any of the nectar or ambrosia for this because she didn’t know if those things would help.
She’d allowed her dad to lead her back into her room so she could lay down again and let him give her a little more tylenol for the fever. It really wasn’t until her eyes started bleeding that she found it necessary to start panicking.
“Dad?” She tried to pull herself out of bed, but fell on the floor. “Daddy?”
It was Sunday, a day of rest. Supposedly. But as usual, the to-do list for Hades was pretty long and daunting, with endless meetings and trips - Inferno, his movie guaranteed to bring Oscar gold, was still in post-production for another month. Then came the premiere, then came submissions to the Academy, and finally - nominations and invitation to stroll down the red carpet. Once the film actually premiered, everything was going to happen very quickly. It already felt like things were rolling at a fast pace, gaining momentum.
However, that was put on hold when Hazel came to his room in the early morning (sometimes he stayed with Meg and sometimes he didn’t - but let’s just say after dreaming of her death he was more than a little paranoid) and didn’t look so hot. Nor did she sound so hot, asking for flu medicine. That was when he got dressed and schlepped himself to the pharmacy, coming back with a few different kinds of OTC goodies - daytime, nighttime, right time, whatever the fuck. Something had to work, right?
A cold with a side of fever was pretty commonplace but what caused bleeding eyes? The frantic call for him caused him to teleport to her room rather than use the stairs like any other normal person. Poof, that puff of black smoke dissipated into the air as he knelt beside his daughter and felt his stomach flip-flopping.
“Honey, I’m here - it’s okay,” she was his baby, and this did not look good. Did not look good at all. “Back into bed, come on. What happened? When did this start?” He meant the crying blood, first and foremost. Which he wiped with his sleeve as he helped Hazel into bed again.
Hazel was glad for the help since she’d started feeling weaker than she had been a little while ago. “I don’t...know. I think it just started? I wasn’t really watching for it.” She felt like she was going to cry, though. She’d died in the dreams and that was one thing. It wasn’t permanent there, but what if she died here? What if she had gotten something that was going to kill her here.
She moved to grab for her dad’s hand, holding onto it tightly. “What am I supposed to do?” Because the only thing she was doing currently was panicking about not wanting to die. “Bleeding from your eyes is not okay.”
“It’s not, but you’re going to be fine - you know I won’t let anything happen to you,” Hades promised vehemently, and he meant that. If he had to summon his chariot and ride into the Underworld to personally retrieve his daughter’s soul, he would pull out all the godly stops and then some. No way was he going to let some bleeding eye thing take her away from him.
Tissues were retrieved, and he gave her a whole bunch to dab at what was coming out of her tear ducts. He sat on the edge of the bed, arranging the blankets around her - after fluffing the pillows too, so she could sit up a little. “I’ll get you some more fever medicine,” because after he put a hand to her forehead, he deduced she was burning up like the flames of his homeland. “And water.”
Though this begged the question, “Where were you? Did you eat anything weird?”
“You can’t fix everything,” she said, voice thick as she tried to keep herself from crying. She knew that he was still Hades, still the person that controlled the Underworld, but what if this wasn’t something that could be fixed? What if this was permanent?
She took the tissues, starting to cry as she dabbed at her eyes. She didn’t want to die. Not here. Not now. She just wanted to be okay, but she wasn’t. “Fever medicine’s not going to stop my eyes from bleeding.” She didn’t know what it meant, but she knew it didn’t mean anything good. Maybe it was something from the dreams that she just didn’t remember. All she could even think about was that she didn’t want to die.
“I don’t know.” Which was a lie. “I went to some party because people at school said it was on the beach. I didn’t know it was with older people till Al and I got there. I didn’t drink anything but water.” Her voice shook the whole time she spoke and she drew her knees up to her chest. “I don’t think I ate anything weird. I don’t know what happened.”
She didn’t know. Yeah, right. Hades wasn’t born yesterday, and it wasn’t that long ago (maybe...somewhat long ago? Oh, fuck) that he was this age and lying to his own parents. “But you started feeling bad after the party, and by the way I didn’t even know you were going to a party - “ That was a gentle scolding, Hazel, they’d deal with it later, “...so you must have caught something there.”
There was another poof, the result of summoning both a bottle of water and Theraflu - though, really, bleeding wasn’t on the list of afflictions that OTC stuff could cure. He gave her the water, first and foremost. What looked like orange horse pills were left on the bedside table. “Just drink this, keep yourself hydrated, and take another of the gelcaps in like a half hour,” he instructed. Not like he was planning to go anywhere so he’d make sure she got that down.
“And I don’t know if I can fix this, but damnit, Hazel. I’m not just going to let you suffer.”
She stared down at her cover, biting down on her lower lip. She was still upset about everything, but now she was guilty on top of it. “Sorry.” She felt terrible. Not just because she was sick and bleeding from her eyes. It was everything. “Maybe. I don’t know.”
The sound of things turning up out of thin air made her jump and she stared at the bottle of water for probably longer than necessary before she took it from him. “I’m sorry, Dad. Terrible way to learn a lesson. Go to a party without permission and you die.” She tried to laugh, but she just started crying again. She opened the water and started to drink from the bottle slowly. She didn’t feel like taking the medicine now. She didn’t feel like doing anything. Especially not trying to swallow down ridiculously big pills.
“Maybe it’s just everything I did coming back to bite me. Just doing everything she told me to. Hurting all those people.” She sniffled slightly. “Maybe it’s just me that’s cursed. Not the jewels. Just me.” Because that’s how it felt.
“What??” Alright, Hades was more than a little flabbergasted. Truthfully, he didn’t know what this was either - but he was about 100% certain that it had nothing to do with Hazel’s so-called transgressions. Or her bitch of a mother. That was a prime example of how you shouldn’t put your dick into crazy, but he had no regrets when it came to his daughter - just that her mother was so terrible. “Must be the fever talking - you’re not cursed,” he insisted. “You’re also not going to die. Let that sink in, I’ll get you a compress.”
He’d have summoned that too, but she seemed jumpy about things appearing out of nowhere. So he just went to the bathroom and wet the washcloth with cold water, then returned to place it on Hazel’s forehead. And also sit near her in bed, to put his arm around her and hold the compress in place so the comforting coolness helped with her sizzling hot skull.
“You didn’t even do anything, Curly. You’re a good kid. I couldn’t ask for a better daughter, but I’m lucky that I’ve got two.” All his kids were special to him - Bianca because she was the eldest, Nico because he was the only son, and Hazel was the baby. They kept him grounded, they helped put things in perspective for him - for someone who dreamed of having no one, and was so far gone that all his sanity and empathy began trickling out, it was essential to know that he was loved here. That they needed him.
Because no matter how old you got, when you were frightened (or bleeding from the eyes), everyone became a kid who needed their mom or dad for the purposes of comfort. “This...it’s probably Orange County plague,” he continued. “You know how it is here.”
She leaned back against her pillows as she waited for her dad to come back. She wasn’t convinced that it wasn’t to do with everything. Maybe this was what happened when you escaped the Underworld and gave people things that you knew would only cause them pain. She’d done everything in her power not to make the same mistake here.
When he came back, she stayed still as he put the washcloth on her head. The cool feeling against her head didn’t last for too long, but it was good enough. She was a little more comfortable. If you ignored the bloody eye problem, she could pretend it was just a very bad flu. “Maybe not, but the universe has other ideas. I’m pretty sure one of them involves punishing me.”
And it was true that she needed him. Part of her needed her mom, too, but she didn’t mention that because it probably seemed ridiculous. As terrible as things had been with her mom, she’d never gone out of her way to hurt her. She just hadn’t cared about other people as much. Especially since they weren’t her family and she didn’t have to nearly as much. Plus, there was the part where she was being controlled by an evil goddess.
“I wish Orange County had other quirks, then. This one is terrible.”
Hazel being away from her mom was difficult - and Hades felt bad about it, but he also knew that it wasn’t the best environment for her there. She was happy here in the OC. With her family, her friends, the normal flesh and blood horses to care for at the ranch and the zombie horse to feed rotten apples to (what the actual fuck was up with that though, really).
Of course, the OC also had...this. Whatever this is. Give and take, or something. There was good and bad in everything.
“I’ll check and see if anyone else has the same symptoms or if anyone knows where this came from all of a sudden,” he said. “If so, we might have to just wait it out. I plan to keep you hydrated and cool as best I can, Cranky.”
He was teasing. Of course she’d be cranky, while feeling on Death’s doorstep.
“Okay,” she said quietly. Because what else was there to say? Maybe someone would know what to do with it. She certainly didn’t know what to do. Nothing more than lay on her bed until death took her. “Do you think dying excuses me from homework assignments?” Because she was really hoping that she could avoid having to do homework when she felt like this.
“Shut up,” she said when he called her cranky. She really thought about throwing a pillow at him, but she didn’t think that she could even summon up the effort to do that. “You’re cranky when you’re sick, too.”
“I haven’t been sick in awhile,” Hades chuckled - and immortality probably assured he wouldn’t be getting sick again anytime soon. But that was a whole other bag of nuts and bolts, considering he didn’t exactly want to be immortal.
He had his phone with him, at least, and maneuvered to finagle it out from his pocket so he could give ol’ Valarnet a scroll-through. “There’s a lot of posts from people who are sick, and someone who says it should pass in a day or two,” he informed Hazel. “It’s from his own dreamworld.”
Man, shitty dreams, if that was the case.
The poster also said not to touch those who were bleeding from their eyes, but Hades wasn’t about to listen to that advice. “In the meantime, what else can I get you?” A bucket. More cold compresses. They’d treat the symptoms as best as they could, even if letting the illness itself run its course was all they could do for a cure from what it sounded like.
“You should be,” was her immediate response...even if she didn’t actually mean it. She just hated being sick and panicking about it when she didn’t have to. At least that’s the way it seemed when her dad mentioned that there were posts from people who said it should pass.
“Does it say whether or not anyone died?” Because that was the part she was the most concerned about. She really, really didn’t want to die. So it was important to know if anyone did die and what more to expect.
“I don’t know. I don’t really feel like anything except water. I doubt anything else will help. My stomach feels weird, so...I don’t know.” She really hoped she didn’t throw up. She’d done some of that in her dreams when they were on the boat and she really didn’t need a repeat.
He was going to choose to not take the wish that he get sick with mysterious crying blood syndrome personally - no, instead Hades set Hazel up with her water and blankets, shifting a little so he could get the washcloth wet again. Maybe an ice pack? No. That’d be too cold.
“No one’s died here, Curly,” he replied with fond exasperation. Or if anyone had, it hadn’t been mentioned - and he refused to consider that as a possibility, nope. It wouldn’t be fatal - even if it was, there had to be something to do on his end. Maybe he should look into that.
Really use those Lord of the Dead powers to help combat weird-ass bird flu.
“I’ll be right back. And will stay with you a little while longer. Until you fall asleep, maybe?”
It made her feel a little better that no one had died. She wasn’t sure what she’d do if it was fatal. Even if she couldn’t quite understand how this couldn’t be fatal. She was bleeding from her eyes. How was that not a sign of something fatal? She wasn’t even sure how she was still alive and talking now. She didn’t know how she was doing anything. “Okay.”
She tried to get comfortable, but the feeling of nausea was growing a little. “I think you might need to bring a trash can back with you. I feel sick.”
Hades was quick about it, choosing to teleport there and back - in for more soothing cold compresses and a trash can, back into Hazel’s room. She did look awful, bleeding tear ducts aside. If it lasted longer than it was supposed to, he was taking her to the doctor no matter what - or if she got worse. The situation was one he’d be keeping an eye on.
“Here, honey.” The warm washcloth was swapped out for something cooler, and he encouraged her to drink more water. Everything would just get even more fucked up if she didn’t attempt to stay hydrated; the trash can was also placed by her bed. “I’m not going anywhere - we’ll get through this,” he assured.
And if that meant she was going to barf into a plastic receptacle right now, then so be it. Battle stations!
Hazel closed her eyes, focusing on the coolness of the washcloth. It was nice. Considering how hot she felt right now, a little bit if cool was good. She just wished she could stop feeling so feverish. And so sick to her stomach.
“Thanks, Dad.” At least that was what it was supposed to be. Instead the ‘dad’ portion turned into vomit. She was just glad she’d turned and managed to get it in the trashcan. It was not okay. “This is disgusting,” she said after a minute before she even focused on the contents of the trashcan.
“More blood.”
Well, the contents of what had just come out of Hazel’s stomach confirmed that this whole thing was definitely disgusting - but also that she was losing a lot of electrolytes and stuff, by puking up blood. It was honestly a little (a lot) terrifying - of course he didn’t like seeing one of his offspring this way.
“Maybe Nico should stay elsewhere for awhile,” Hades mused, taking the trashcan to go and wash it out. He had a feeling that he’d be doing that for awhile, a literal cycle of wash, rinse, repeat. “Cherry or raspberry? Or...whatever flavor of Gatorade is out there. I’ll get you some of that too.” It’d probably be lunacy to suggest solid foods.
“I think he probably won’t mind,” she said after a moment, voice quiet. “Maybe he can spend more time with Will.” She wanted to say that it was all her being nice and supportive of her brother’s relationship, but really...she just didn’t want to see him now or get him sick. She didn’t want to worry about anyone else hovering either, but that was something else.
She looked up at him, about to argue about red gatorades, but she reminded herself that she was already puking blood, so it wasn’t like it was going to be any different. “Cherry,” she said, curling up on her side and hoping that he’d be back before she had to vomit again. She just wanted it to be over already. “Or blue. I don’t know.”
“I’ll find something, will only take a second,” Hades promised, bending to press a kiss into Hazel’s mass of curly hair. “Stay on your side like this.” Because he didn’t want her to choke - that would definitely add a whole other layer of ‘bad’ to the experience.
But fluids would happen, along with keeping her comfortable and relatively cool - they’d get through this. He wasn’t about to let some dream bleedover (ha?) keep them down for too long.