Chapter Text
The room had been made as safe as Olympus knew how.
Ares is safe.
That is the truth everyone keeps repeating, silently, like a charm against panic.
He has been fed until his hands stopped shaking enough to hold a cup. His skin has been washed clean of chthonic dust and old ichor, anointing oils worked carefully into places where chains once bit. Soft linen wraps him now, layers of warmth and weight meant to remind the body that it is held, that it exists in a world with edges and air.
It should be enough.
It isn’t.
The moment the light dimmed just enough for sleep to threaten, something inside him snapped tight.
His breath hitched, sharp and panicked, like he was surfacing from deep water. His fingers curled into claws against the fabric, searching for edges that weren’t there. His eyes flew open, unfocused, staring at nothing, pupils blown wide with remembered dark.
There was a sound he kept hearing that no one else could. A low, metallic hum. Just enough to make the air feel thick, like the walls were breathing.
The jar was gone. The jar was open.
But his mind still lived inside it.
Hera felt every tremor before he made a sound. She was already holding him, one arm beneath his shoulders, the other wrapped around his back, keeping him anchored against her chest. Holding him, the way she had when he was small enough to fit against her ribs, when nightmares had been monsters instead of memories.
“Easy.” she murmured, low and steady. “You’re here. You’re with me.”
Ares made a sound that wasn’t quite a sob. His forehead pressed into her collarbone. His hands fisted in the fabric of her robe like he was afraid it might disappear.
“I can’t—” His voice broke. “I can’t— it’s still—”
“I know.” she said. “I know.”
Another spasm ran through him, sharp enough to lift him halfway off the bed before she pulled him back, firm and unyielding. His godhood flickered under his skin, a weak, unsteady glow, more reflex than force. The war god, reduced to a body that kept bracing for impact that never came.
She tightens her hold, not restraining, never that, just surrounding him. One hand cups the back of his head, fingers threading through his hair, pressing his forehead against her collarbone where he can feel her breathe.
Her other hand rubs slow circles into his back, grounding, relentless.
“Breathe with me.” she says. “You’re not alone.”
His chest heaves. It takes several moments before his lungs obey her rhythm instead of the memory of suffocation. Even then, he doesn’t let go. His fingers twist into the fabric of her robe, knuckles white, as if any looseness might let the dark take him again.
Zeus watches.
At first, he stands at the foot of the bed, unmoving. Kingly posture stripped of meaning, hands clenched uselessly at his sides. He has faced monsters older than time, torn the sky apart with rage, dragged entire realms into order through force of will. None of that helps him here.
Each time Ares jerked, something in him twitched in answer. The instinct to strike, to fix, to tear something apart until the danger stopped.
There was nothing to tear.
So he moves instead.
He comes closer, then stops. Sits on the edge of the bed, careful, as if afraid the slightest wrong motion might shatter what little calm they’ve managed to build.
He stays.
Another attempt at sleep comes, hesitant, shallow. Ares’s eyes flutter closed again, exhaustion dragging at him with merciless weight. His body trembles, but it does not seize this time. The echo fades to a distant ringing instead of a roar.
Hera does not release him.
She adjusts, drawing him fully against her, cradling him without shame, without hesitation. Like he is small.
Zeus reaches out once, slow enough to be refused if needed, and rests his hand against Ares’s shoulder. Solid. Real. Proof.
The night stretches on.
Sleep comes in fragments, fragile and easily broken, but it comes. Each time his body jerks, Hera is there. Each time his breath stutters, Zeus remains within reach.
The war god survived the jar.
But the child did not come back untouched.
***
It happens in the late afternoon, light slanting warm and gold through the high windows. Ares is propped against pillows, wrapped in layers that still feel necessary even now. Hera sits beside him, one hand resting idly at the nape of his neck, thumb moving in small, unconscious arcs. Zeus is there too, seated across from them, deliberately still, as if motion itself might fracture the moment.
No one asks him to talk.
That matters.
Ares stares at nothing for a long while. When he speaks, it isn’t a story. There’s no beginning, no sequence, no neat line from capture to rescue.
Just pieces.
“It wasn’t just dark.” he says finally, voice rough, unused. He frowns, searching. “It… wasn’t a place.”
Hera’s hand stills, then resumes its gentle motion. She doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t rush him.
“It was like…” He exhales through his nose, frustrated. “Like when sound cuts out. When you know there should be something, but there isn’t. And it hurts because of that.”
Zeus’s jaw tightens. He says nothing.
Ares swallows. His fingers curl into the blanket. “The chains hurt. At first. I remember that.” A pause. “Then they didn’t matter. Because everything else did more.”
He lifts his hand briefly, pressing it against his chest, as if feeling for something that should be there.
“My power kept… folding in on itself.” he says. “Like it was being pushed down. Compressed. Every time I tried to reach for it, it was smaller. Quieter.” His mouth twists. “Like I was being packed away.”
Hera’s breathing changes—barely—but her arm tightens around his shoulders. She does not interrupt. She does not ask him to stop.
“It felt like being erased.” he continues, more quietly. “Not all at once. Slowly. Like someone was rubbing me out, bit by bit, to see how much they could take before there was nothing left.”
The room feels smaller now.
He shifts, uncomfortable, then forces himself on. “But I could still think.” he says, quickly, as if this matters most. “That never stopped. I could think. I could remember.”
Hera’s fingers curl slightly into his hair.
“I remembered you.” he says. His eyes flick to her, then away again, overwhelmed by the weight of it. “Both of you. Olympus. Hebe stealing my helmet. Hephaestus complaining when I dented his forge door. Everything.”
A breath catches in Hera’s throat. She swallows it down, face gone utterly still, carved from marble and pain.
“I could feel time passing.” Ares says. “I don’t know how. I just… knew it was happening. And I kept thinking—if I can still remember, then I still exist. So I held onto that.”
His voice drops to almost nothing.
“But I couldn’t reach you.”
That finally breaks something.
Zeus’s hands clench in his lap, fingers digging into his palms hard enough to draw ichor. He does not look away. He forces himself to stay present, to hear every word, even as it feels like something is being hollowed out of his chest, carved clean and left raw.
“That was worse than the chains.” Ares says simply. “Worse than the dark. Worse than the pain.” He shakes his head once, sharp. “Knowing you were out there. And I couldn’t get to you. Didn’t know if they suceeded. Couldn’t tell you I was still—” His voice falters. He stops.
Hera leans in then, pressing her forehead to his temple, holding him as if he might dissolve if she doesn’t. Her hands never leave him. Not for a moment.
Zeus exhales, long and shaking, the sound of someone restraining a scream by sheer force of will. He reaches out at last, resting his hand over Ares’s, anchoring him to the present, to flesh and warmth and proof.
The jar is no longer just bronze.
It is absence.
It is erasure.
It is thirteen months of thought without voice, memory without touch, love without reach.
And it will never be just a myth again.
***
They don’t all come at once.
For days, there have been shapes in the doorway—shadows that pause, retreat, linger. Voices lowered on the other side of the threshold. The quiet agreement that Ares needs time. That he is back, but not back.
This is the day the door finally opens.
Hephaestus is first.
He doesn’t announce himself. He just… appears, leaning slightly on his cane, gaze already fixed on the bed. His eyes take everything in with the precision of a craftsman assessing damage: the way Ares is propped up, the tension in his shoulders, the way his hands keep flexing like they expect resistance.
“Hey.” Hephaestus says.
It’s plain. Careful. As if anything louder might splinter something fragile.
Ares turns his head slowly. It takes a second—recognition lagging behind sight—but then his brow creases. “Heph.”
That’s it. That’s all it takes.
Hephaestus exhales through his nose, a sound halfway between relief and pain. He comes closer, stopping at the bedside, setting one heavy hand on the frame like he needs the grounding. “You look like hell.” he says, not unkindly.
Ares huffs out something that might be a laugh.
And that is when Eileithyia appears.
She stands in the doorway like she’s not sure she’s allowed to cross it. Her eyes go straight to Ares and don’t look away. She takes in the blankets, the way he’s held, the hollowness in his gaze that hasn’t quite filled back in yet.
Ares turns his head slowly. “Eili.”
The sound of her name seems to undo whatever thin thread of control she had left. Her face crumples. Tears spill before she can stop them.
“You were—” She swallows. “You were gone.”
He doesn’t have the words to answer that. He just opens his arms a little, uncertain.
She runs.
Not gracefully. Not carefully. She throws herself at him, arms wrapping tight around his shoulders, holding on like he might disappear again if she lets go.
“I thought you were never coming back.” Eileithyia sobs into his shoulder.
“I’m here.” Ares murmurs, voice shaking with the effort. He holds her as best he can. “I’m here.”
Behind her, small footsteps approach.
Hebe, who has no idea what all this tension means, who only knows absence and presence in the simple way children do. Her big brother was gone. Now he isn’t.
She climbs onto the bed with determined effort, ignoring Zeus’s instinctive reach to steady her, and plants herself right beside Ares.
“You came back.” she says, bright and certain.
No one corrects her.
Ares looks down at her, something warm and painful spreading through his chest. He lifts his hand just enough to rest it against her hair.
“Yeah.” he whispers. “I did.”
The room fills with sound—Eileithyia’s sniffles, Hebe’s small happy hum, Hephaestus’s quiet presence, Hera’s steady breathing, Zeus’s low exhale.
Ares is overwhelmed.
Not with fear. At least this time.
With life. With proof.
This is not the jar. This is not silence or metal or nothingness. This is warmth and voices and hands holding him in place.
This is being missed.
This is being home.
Ares falls asleep at one point.
It isn’t deep. It isn’t peaceful. But it is sleep—and that alone feels like a small victory. His breathing evens out, shallow but steady, fingers still curled into Hera’s sleeve like he might wake and need to anchor himself again.
Eileithyia has finally been coaxed into sitting quietly at the foot of the bed, Hebe curled up against Hera’s side like a warm, trusting kitten. Hephaestus has taken a chair near the wall, arms folded, saying nothing but missing nothing.
Hera doesn’t move.
Neither does Zeus—at first.
He watches. Counts breaths without meaning to. Watches the way Ares’s brow finally smooths, the way exhaustion pulls him under despite everything his body has learned to fear.
Then he rises without a word. He steps out of the room, closing the door behind him with care that borders on reverence.
The hall beyond is empty.
For three heartbeats, he does nothing.
Then his hands curl.
Lightning answers.
It crawls across his palms in white blue veins, snapping and hissing like something alive, eager. The air around him tightens, thick with the promise of a storm that has nowhere to go.
His breathing turns rough. Sharp in, sharper out.
“If you still lived…” Zeus growls under his breath.
There is no one left to punish. That is what makes it worse.
His fury isn’t just for the pain they inflicted on Ares. It is for the months stolen. The nights Hera spent weeping. The empty space Hebe toddled around without understanding why her brother wasn’t home. The way Eileithyia learned fear too young.
They took something that cannot be given back.
The lightning flares brighter, crackling against his skin, begging to be unleashed. For a moment he lets himself feel it—every violent, righteous impulse—until his hands tremble with the effort of holding it in.
Then, slowly, he exhales.
The storm does not vanish.
It coils.
Zeus closes his fists, forcing the power back into himself, containing it the way he has learned to contain so many unbearable things. His jaw is set, eyes dark, but his breathing steadies.
Not healed.
Just controlled.
When he opens the door again, the room is just as he left it—soft, quiet, full of small gods and fragile peace. Hera looks up. Zeus moves back to his place beside the bed, sitting where he can see Ares’s face, where he can guard this moment.
***
Hera does not move.
Not when the room grows quiet again.
Not when Hebe is carried out half asleep in Zeus’s arms.
Not when Eileithyia is coaxed away by Hephaestus with a hand on her shoulder and a promise to come back in the morning.
Not even when Zeus, careful and gentle, touches her shoulder and murmurs that she should lie down, that she should eat, that she should let herself rest.
“Hera.” he says softly. “You should rest. I’ll stay.”
She doesn’t look at him.
She shakes her head once.
No.
Ares sleeps fitfully in her arms, breath shallow, lashes fluttering like he is always on the edge of waking into terror. Hera keeps him against her chest, one hand cupped around the back of his head, the other wrapped around his small, shaking fingers.
Every time he stirs, she is already there.
Before a sound leaves his throat. Before his hands can start clawing.
Before the memory can drag him under again.
“Ares.” she whispers, soft and desperate and steady all at once. “I’m here. I’ve got you. You’re here.”
She says his name under her breath like a prayer she refuses to entrust to anyone else.
Sometimes that is enough.
Sometimes he only whimpers and presses closer, forehead tucked into the curve of her throat.
She lets him.
Hera’s hands never stop moving.
Smoothing his tangled hair. Tracing the line of his temple.
Holding his wrists just to feel the pulse beneath his skin, warm and stubborn and alive.
Real.
Every so often, she presses her lips to his curls—just a quiet, shaking touch, like she needs to remind herself that he exists. That he is not a memory. That the jar did not take him completely.
Her thumb brushes over the faint marks still ghosting his wrists, and her jaw tightens so hard it trembles. Once, when he murmurs something broken and half-formed, her breath shudders despite her effort to keep it steady.
Her eyes burn, red rimmed and exhausted, but she does not let the tears fall freely. They gather and blur her vision, sliding down only when she can’t stop them, soaking silently into his hair.
Zeus watches her from the other side of the bed, his chest tight with things he cannot fix.
Hera is unraveling right in front of him.
And yet—
Her grip on Ares never loosens.
Her voice never breaks when she says his name. Her body never turns away.
Her presence never wavers.
She is shattered. She is exhausted. She is terrified.
And she is still his mother.
Both truths live in her at once, breathing together, holding him through the long, aching hours of a night that refuses to end.
If the jar taught him what absence feels like, then Hera will teach him the opposite.
Again. And again.
And as many times as it takes.
***
Recovery does not arrive like a sunrise.
It comes in inches. In pauses.
In moments so small they almost don’t register until Hera realizes she’s counting them.
At first, Ares only responds when spoken to directly. Even then, his eyes lag behind the sound, like he has to reach across a distance inside himself to find them. He eats because Hera holds up the spoon to his lips and waits. He swallows because Zeus sits close enough that he can feel the steady weight of him at his back.
But he eats.
A few hours later, he asks—quietly, uncertainly—if there is more.
That alone nearly undoes her.
Over the next day, then the next, he starts staying present longer. The way his shoulders lock at every sudden sound eases, just a fraction. He begins to look at them when they speak, really look, eyes focusing instead of sliding past as if he’s still trapped somewhere else.
Focusing on Hera’s face. On Zeus’s hands when he brings water.
His voice comes back unevenly.
“I don’t like it when it gets quiet.” he says once, voice small but clear.
Hera nods and answers honestly, “Then we won’t let it.”
They don’t.
There is always someone nearby. A murmur of voices.
Footsteps. The soft clink of cups.
Hebe babbling nonsense from the floor while Eileithyia corrects her with grave seriousness.
At one point Ares starts to walk on his own.
He sways, a little embarrassed, and Zeus steadies him without comment. No lectures. No pride. Just presence.
Once—unexpected, unplanned—Hebe knocks something over and laughs at herself, bright and loud. Ares startles, then freezes, then—
He laughs too.
It’s weak. Rough around the edges.
But it’s real.
Ares blinks afterward, startled by himself, like he doesn’t quite trust that noise came from him. Hera presses a hand to her mouth, eyes filling instantly, and Zeus has to look away before the relief shows too clearly on his face.
He is not the war god he was.
His presence doesn’t fill the room the way it once did. His power hums low and cautious, no longer a roaring certainty but something fragile, something rebuilding itself slowly. He tires easily. Some days, memories hit him out of nowhere and steal the color from his face.
But—
He argues weakly with Hephaestus over nothing.
He lets Eileithyia braid his hair and pretends not to care.
He lets Hebe climb all over him like he’s a piece of furniture she missed.
He is Ares.
Alive. Present. Coming back in pieces instead of all at once.
And for now—
That is enough.
***
Night does not announce the change when it comes.
There is no warning. No sign. No careful preparation.
Ares simply… falls asleep.
Not the brittle half rest that snaps apart at every shadow. Not the shallow drifting that leaves his body coiled tight, ready to bolt. This time, his breath slows on its own. His grip loosens. The tension drains from him in a way that feels almost unreal to watch.
Hera realizes it only because her shoulder starts to ache.
His weight has settled there—truly settled. Not hovering. Not braced. His head rests against her collarbone, warm and solid, the rise and fall of his breath deep
Real sleep.
Zeus notices at the same moment. He can tell by the sound of it—the way Ares’s breathing drops into a rhythm that doesn’t stutter or catch. The way his power, usually so restless even at rest, goes quiet without vanishing.
Ares’s hand is still tangled in Zeus’s.
Zeus does not move.
He barely dares to breathe differently, afraid of disturbing something that feels earned rather than granted.
Hera’s fingers thread through Ares’s hair with unconscious care, smoothing, tracing, repeating the same gentle motion over and over. She has been doing it so long it’s muscle memory now. Her face is soft in sleep, exhaustion finally pulling her under too, but her hand never stops moving.
Motherhood does not clock out.
Zeus watches the rise and fall of their breathing. Two rhythms, imperfect but aligned. He does not think about what was lost. Not tonight. He does not think about the jar, or the months, or the fury waiting patiently inside him.
They are here.
Not restored. But together.
The palace is quiet.
And in that stillness, fragile and hard won, the family holds—no speeches, no promises—only the quiet, stubborn truth that they survived each other’s absence.
They are not whole the way they once were.
But they are no longer alone.