Zelena lifted the glass to her lips. The water went down with a burn, much too forceful to have been all that coated the glass. She looked up to her mother, horror building in her eyes.

Her brain was screaming, but no noise came out of her mouth. She could swear the liquid was tangibly moving through her body, seeping into her bloodstream.

Her heart beat faster and faster, but she was helpless to assuage its cries as the liquid finally made contact with it. A feeling of intense cold spread over her, as though her heart had become frostbitten. She fought to hold onto the warmth, thoughts of her daughter and her almost lover flitting through her head, then suddenly half of them blinked out of existence.

Her chest grew unnaturally cold and tight as its warmth was sucked away. She was losing something irreplaceable and unable to do anything to stop it.

She fought to shout, to grab the indescribably something and pull it back, but slowly that razor-sharp clarity of anger fuzzed away to nothing, to a confusion of lost memory and she fainted, falling onto her own arms as they rested on the table.

Work done, the other two left, guilt painting only the heart of one.

Hades frowned and looked up from where he had been in his book. Someone was using magic in his realm again, a spell had just been enacted, he could feel it. For curiosity's sake, he waved a hand over the center of the room, waiting for an image of what had transpired to appear.

The book clattered violently to the floor and his feet hit the ground as the image of Zelena, seemingly collapsed on her arms, appeared to his eyes. He immediately rushed over, not even bothering to grab his coat.

His magic had put him right in her kitchen and he ran forward the minute he landed, running his hands frantically along her back and pressing two fingers to the side of her neck. She had a pulse and was still breathing, a fact for which he thanked whatever force stronger than him had allowed it.

Breathing rapidly with worry, he reached over and folded her into his arms, feeling he had to make certain she was still there.

Her head fell perfectly into the curve of his neck and shoulder, and through his fear a bit of his heart was glad he could hold her like this. His breath slowly calmed, fluttering several strands of her hair.

She stirred mere moments afterward and her head raised to look at him. He reached out for her shoulders and met her eyes.

"Are you alright? What happened?"

She stared at him blankly.

"Zelena are you alright? What happened?"

He was beginning to get worried as she continued not to answer until suddenly she shook herself and pulled visibly away from him. She cleared her throat slightly and her eyes swept over the table and the empty glass.

"Yes, yes, I'm fine. Maybe I just drunk myself silly."

Hades frowned. It wasn't like his lady to drink at all, considering what it had done to her adoptive father.

He reached out for the glass and she looked at him sharply. He stopped moving towards it.

"May I see it?"

She frowned slightly but handed it over, almost slapping it into his palm. He brought it towards his face and sniffed it.

His eyes slitted and he narrowly avoided the urge to raze the house. It was all starting to make some kind of horrible sense.

He turned gradually towards Zelena, not wanting to meet her eyes. When he finally did it was as though his dead heart had been broken open with a pick. She was clearly angry at him, confused, defensive, and most importantly, unable to look at him with any sort of familiarity at all. He unconsciously leaned towards her and flinched as her lip curled and she backed away.

"Zelena," he began, then felt his throat choke up and the next words come out in fragments. "D-do you know who I am?"

She scoffed at him, actually rolled her eyes and plucked the glass from his hand, setting it back on the table.

"No, I don't. You've somehow ended up in my house without my protection spell going off so you must be powerful but, nope, drawing a blank on a name or anything else."

His body froze. She continued to talk, theorizing, THEORIZING, of all things, who he could be, but the noise became a static filled blur in his ears, as his mind tried to shut out the clarity of her voice so as to spare him the pain.

Selective memory potion. That was what the glass smelled of. Very difficult to make, almost impossible to get the raw materials, but frighteningly effective. Regular memory potions could wipe out whole blocks of memory but selective ones were worse because they targeted a single event, a place, a person.

She had forgotten him.

And as he watched her gesticulating became more and more animated and her smile grew more and more fake; she was becoming the Wicked Witch in front of his eyes, putting up her walls around him of all people, the only one who truly loved her barring her child.

Her child. He'd never get to realize the dream of seeing that baby in its mother's arms, experience the privilege of hearing the little laughs and coos of mother and daughter as they swept around a room.

And he'd never get to see those things because he wouldn't be there, hell, if she got killed down here, he might not be able to save her in time, because now she wouldn't ever allow him near her again, he could already tell.

She was on high alert, having passed out with seemingly no explanation in her house and found a man who had gotten through her protection spell inside. He didn't even blame her.

But the grandstanding, the bluster, the motions he saw her going through killed him, because he had hoped his love would bring her to the state where she'd never use those walls again.

His brain tuned back into her one-sided conversation with a clink of the glass on the table. Zelena had picked it up and was examining it, turning it over in her manicured fingers.

With a sarcastic toasting motion she mirrored his action and smelled the glass, the same realization that had come over him striking her and her pale blue eyes going almost black with anger.

Before he could do anything she had thrown her chair back and pinned him to the fireplace, her hand wrapped around his neck.

"What have you done," she hissed. "What did I forget?"

He struggled against her but she was much stronger than she looked, a great deal so, which he suspected having come from years of living under the inability to use magic.

"Please," he gasped. "It wasn't me."

She leaned in close to his face, closer than she'd ever been before, but livid with anger.

"If it wasn't you, Magic Man, then who was it?"

Her voice was higher pitched but cracked like a whip across his face, retaining all the snarling power it backed up.

"I don't know," he breathed and then she sighed heavily, letting him drop to the floor in a heap. She turned her back on him completely, now confident in her apparent skill over him, unaware that he was simply unwilling to ever use his godly strength or magic on her.

He stood up and brushed himself off as best he could then stiffened as she turned back to him.

"Who are you Magic Man? Are you what I've forgotten?"

His heart breathed again but he was careful to not let the hope get out of hand.

"I believe so," he stated. Then, resigning himself to a completely new introduction, swept into a bow.

"I am Hades, God of the Dead, Lord of the Underworld."

He looked up at her. She seemed slightly impressed but back on guard now that she knew he was infinitely more powerful than she was.

"How do you know me, God of the Dead? You called me by name when the potion wore off."

Hades struggled with this one. It would be so easy to say they were lovers or spouses and claim all of his dreams by simple emphasis of the lie. However, the thought had slunk, unwelcome, into his mind and he almost gave himself whiplash with how fast he shot it down. His supposed vindictive side must be losing its touch.

He cleared his throat.

"I'm…a friend."

Zelena cocked an eyebrow at him.

"Really? I'm friends with the Lord of the Underworld? Do you really expect me to believe that nonsense?"

He took a step forward.

"But I am! I didn't break your protection spell, reach out, you'll feel it. I got in because you have let me in the past. If we weren't friends that never would have happened."

Zelena pondered this one for a moment. He could almost see the battle in her mind, deciding whether or not to trust him. His logic was sound but he was a powerful being who she had met, once again in strange circumstances, and nothing could be verified.

She narrowed her eyes at him and he did his best to look welcoming and innocent. It was a new sensation for him. He could easily drop back into the forthright appearance of overwhelming love he usually took around her but that might be coming on too strong for an already suspicious Zelena.

She sighed after what seemed like ages and waved him into a chair. He took a seat, unable to resist the casual power she just bandied around even in her smallest expressions.

"I may have forgotten you, but who knows what else I am missing. You'll have to stay with me for a while."

"Huh?"

"If we're friends then you know me, you'll catch what I'll miss. I need you to stay by my side so you can point out what I've forgotten."

He could do nothing but nod, a little shell-shocked and kind of disappointed. It felt selfish, but he had hoped the day she'd ask him to live with her would have been one on which she had all of her memories and made the choice out of want, not necessity. At least he'd be near her, even if this was the most exquisite torture he'd ever endured.

She sighed and he looked up. Her head had dropped into her hands, fingers digging deep into her scalp.

"I need to remember what I've forgotten, and for that I need to find out who did this to me."

She looked up at him wryly, but exhaustion ringed her eyes.

"Any ideas Magic Man?"

His heart broke for her. She was so conflicted on what to do and at the same time lost for anything to do. She wanted her daughter back, but that would come only with time, time she didn't have in the underworld. Not to mention that if her sister had been the one to do this to her, and it was very likely, she definitely wasn't getting that child any time soon, or maybe even ever.

So he saw her desperation, how she grasped onto whatever she could take, knowing her emotions weren't equipped to handle the complexity of the situation.

"We can trace the potion, find out where it came from."

Zelena shook her head.

"I thought you'd be smarter than that. It will only lead us back to the River Lethe, the river of forgetting. All memory potions come from there."

Hades sighed, struck a little. He hadn't really ever been on the receiving end of a guarded Zelena and it wasn't pleasant.

"While you are correct, in order to make a specified potion the user has to add something of the victim's to it, like a hair or a fingernail."

Zelena grimaced.

"That's disgusting."

"It is, but I don't think many people would have had access to you so they probably took a different avenue."

Zelena looked up, a little more interested. She had always been the better student of Rumplestiltskin's, so eager to learn magic that she ate theory up as quickly she could.

"I'm a bit reluctant to say it," Hades hesitated.

Zelena growled at him.

"I don't have time for this, Hades, tell me now."

He tensed a little as she hissed his name, obviously attempting to show how displeased she was.

"Blood magic. If the blood magic bond was strong enough, they wouldn't need something of yours, they could use something of theirs."

"Why didn't you want to tell me this-…oh."

The realization dawned on Zelena like the shadow of a predator. Her lips curled back and he saw her eyes flash purple, the dark magic feeding off her anger. Her nails scratched shrilly across the table top.

"My sister. She did this."

In spite of himself Hades almost cowered. He'd never seen her this angry, not even when she thought he was going to hurt her child.

He decided immediately he didn't like it. Even with the darkness of his heart and how he loved to see her best the people around her, this burning fire that sparked from utter betrayal was painful to watch.

She was so raw, so ripped to shreds in that moment that she was simultaneously as frail as a new butterfly and as strong as stone. The duality had never been clearer to him and he understood now how her brief terrorism of Storybrooke had brought equal parts strong dissent and helpless fear.

She was quiet for a moment then her lips moved around a single phrase.

"I'll kill her."

Author's note: Super sorry to BetYouCan'tFindMe for being a bit late with this one. This is just the first chapter and I am also sorry to say I will probably be updating rather sporadically. In my Zades fever, I have flung myself into several multi-chaps that will take a lot of work. Thank you for your patience, go Zades, please R&R.

P.S. You asked for angst and I have delivered. Mwahahahahahahaha.