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Hercules Hansen has faced death so many times that he can't keep count any more.
The irony of his name is that Hercules is not only suppose to be the Gatekeeper of Olympus but also the Divine Protector of Mankind and that title (according to old Greek myths that he read as a sprog but only faintly remembers now) was dictated by the Gods and so it must be true. And well, he must be doing fuck all with that because how the hell would the world fare when he can't even protect the ones he loves?
Herc can't save anyone worth saving and here he is expected to protect the rest of the world and he feels more like Atlas and less like Hercules, forced to carry the weight of the his world on his shoulders.
But he knows he'll do it because he's made to do so, he's made to help others and put them before himself and put his loyalties as a soldier and pilot before his loyalties as a husband or father or brother-
Hercules Hansen has faced death so many times that he can't keep count any more and every person he meets is just another person he'll lead to heaven's doors.
Fuck it, he'd probably lead them to hell truth be told. And perhaps Herc is a little drunk right now and perhaps he's a little too honest but he needs his own thoughts to hurt, his brain to ache as repentance for all that he couldn't save. He needs to feel the pain that he felt every time that he put the greater good before any of them and the way he imagines they scream his name with rage the way Chuck screamed when he realized his father had been a good soldier and gone for his child before his wife an doh god it hurts but it also burns so much it numbs the edges of his mind and that in itself is solace, a darkness, a gift, a-
Hercules Hansen has faced death so many times that he
can't keep count any more
doesn't want to
keep count any more.
He doesn't want the weariness in his bones but it is his namesake, it is his life, it is, as Scott had put it, a curse and a gift rolled into one. Stacker on the contrary had told him that it was exactly that which made him weak made him strong and he didn't know which he preferred. All of Herc's fingers and toes and eyelashes and even every hair on his head and freckle on his body would not be able to count the number of lives he's seen lost, the number of times he's died with each person he lost, the number of times he's been resurrected again and again and again to do it one more time till infinity fades into darkness and he loses himself-
Hercules Hansen escorts another one to heaven's door only to let them go on and pass through, him turning his back to it.
He makes this walk every so often, never alone, each time accompanied by someone he loves only to provide them with the release of death, so close yet so far away with Chuck in Striker and Angela and Stacker and goddamnit come back to the land of the living-! And each time it is only Hercules that returns to the land of the living, a land that he was supposed to save, a land that holds nothing of value to him now that his family and even his friends are gone. And he knows that he is damned for it, damned because of the 12 tasks he carried out in his life, each one another death he had to watch and let it go by took every single strength out of him.
All Hercules knows that when he dies, half his soul will go to Hades and half his soul will go to Zeus and maybe he's read too many myths and maybe he's drunk but that doesn't make it any less true. After all, he'll just be following in the footsteps of the very first Hercules (Heracles, his mind corrects) that was said to roam the earth and repeat his god damn mistakes all over again and he's not sure if he's referring to himself or to Heracles but he doesn't care because they both all(?) walk the same path, the same path that was laid out in brittle gold buried within the sands of time only to be followed blindly never dictated and-
Heracles couldn't save his loved ones either but he saved the world and Hercules will continue to do the same.