All things truly wicked start from innocence.

-Ernest Hemingway

"Any last words?"

Kronos cracks open his swollen eye, regarding his son with utter contempt.

The Titan's own golden scythe brushes against his neck, sharper than any other substance known to man. Faintly, Kronos wonders how it will cut into his skin. It tore apart Ouranos like butter, as he recalls. To him it is bound to do the same.

With pursed lips he studies Zeus. Kronos had been a fool not to recognize him when he first presented himself on Mount Othrys, for in the light he looks like Kronos from hundreds of years ago – the young immortal who had castrated his own father and thrown the universe asunder.

Yes, the Fates had always told the Titan Lord that one of his progeny were bound to follow in his footsteps. He glances at his other children standing fast behind their new tyrant, somber faces darkened by their time spent in the pit that was their father's belly.

Craven little bastards, he muses, they would not have last a day against merciless Ouranos.

"Only a few, but not for any of you," Kronos snorts, masking the desire to curl his lips into a snarl, rip the very flesh off his own son's face with sharpened teeth.

He tears his eyes away from Zeus, turning his fury on the uninterested Titaness cowering at the edge of the gathered gods. Perhaps she thought herself unnoticeable but that had never been the case for Kronos, not even in his grandest of moments. He fixated on her always.

"Look at me, Rhea."

Her eyes – alien green and the spitting image of Gaia – snap to attention, narrowing in a way that could kill a thousand creatures with a single stroke. She lowers the hood of her cloak, steeling herself against him.

But the gaze of Kronos is nothing to be taken lately either – not when pain and rage swirl together in pools the color of ichor. He is almost pleased when she flinches.

"I want you to look at what you've done. I want my blood to haunt you throughout the eons."

Perhaps, when they recount the stories that led to this night, they will always mark her as a bystander in the universe's conflicts. But Kronos, even from the depths of Tartarus, will know better.

All of this was her doing.

Her bottom lip trembles slightly, for only a second. But it is enough for him, to see that knife twist in her gut: the guilt of betrayal. Her face hardens once more and she comes forward to stand beside her youngest son. "May Tartarus welcome you with open arms."

Kronos only smiles. Her words hurt but his words have hurt her too and that is enough for creatures like him.

"Do it now," says a small voice from behind Rhea. A small goddess in a hooded brown robe, blazing eyes like a fire. Sweet Hestia, the eldest of his children. "Let it be done."

Kronos bursts into a fit of laughter just as the scythe lops off his head.

A lot of the scenes featured in this short fic are from Defiance, only they've been modified or expanded to fit this standalone story. For anyone just looking to satisfy a Greek mythology itch, no knowledge of the Percy Jackson universe or a read-through of Defiance is required.