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There's an itch, small but there and constant, that has Dionysus asking himself if this is all worth it.
Which is a stupid question. He’s here, now. He’s sent the women into the mountains and he’s committed himself to whatever the hell this is. And sure, maybe a part of him - a sad part, a part that's far too human for his liking - is telling him to slow down. To look at his family for what they are. (Because that’s the awful thing, right? Pentheus, Cadmus, all of them, they’re his family. Something skips when he thinks about that fact. Moves all childish and skittish and scared. The truth that, even with all of his deity, there could’ve been a group of people who loved him unconditionally. Who loved him not for his power but for the truth that he was theirs.)
But Dionysus knows how to shut up the humanity that always seems to crack to the surface. His roots in Thebes are shallow, barely there, budding out the earth broken and unable to survive. He doesn’t want them to. There’s a reason, that he’s been gone. That he’s kept distance from this family for so long.
They, truthfully - awful truth, like a buzz of humanity underneath his palms - remind him of a part of his being that he isn’t that happy to remember. Sometimes he looks around the city and it screams human. Dionysus hates that he recognises the sound. Knows the beat and pulse of what it means to live like that. To live not like this.
To not live with this hatred, that in the face of Pentheus looking like the image of humiliation but also like a brother, a family member, seems to grow weak. Seems to make Dionysus stretch at the shell of this body he’s created and ask why. Push against the careful being he’s tried to form, and debate against Pentheus’ smile, if doing what he’s doing is worth it.
It’s a stupid, stupid question, but that doesn’t mean it grows any quieter in the face of Pentheus acting like they’re friends. And sure, he’s under Dionysus’ control but something about how he’s acting still feels very, well, Pentheus. Feels like if Dionysus was able to have grown up with him, have spent time with him as a cousin first and a god last (stupid to think of such impossible things like that), this is how Pentheus would’ve acted.
Dionysus turns away from where Pentheus stands. Fearful that, if he looked at him for too long, he would say something stupid, something terribly mortal and weak, like what game did you like to play best growing up? Would you have played it with me? Or the worst of them all, the one Dionysus fears might fiercely and softly leave his mouth the next time Pentheus laughs at something he says, Did you miss me? Growing up, Pentheus, did you miss me? My cousin, my tragic fool. I think I missed you.
Dionysus watches the hills for a while where they stand, until Pentheus is shuffling behind him, pulling at the skirt which Dionysus has put him in - which should be awfully embarrassing but if anything it’s just sort of endearing, like they’re making up for all the lost time when they were children and would’ve dressed stupidly, like now. Would’ve ran around the palace and laughed at how ridiculous they both looked but silently accepted that it didn’t matter because they were doing it together.
Dionysus on this foolish trip to Thebes has never felt more lonely in all his time.
Pentheus turns to Dionysus, says all friendly like this isn’t a piece in his demise, like Dionysus isn’t regretting - and isn’t that so horribly human? Regret? - this whole process, Pentheus says-
“How do I look?” He seems almost proud of what he’s wearing, but shy too. Like he’s in the same boat as Dionysus, one that can't decide if this is the best thing that’s happened or the worst, a boat that is very quickly sinking. Dionysus wants to laugh, push at his shoulder like they’ve known each other for a very long time and say he looks great.
Instead, something honest speaks first.
“This,” Dionysus starts, moves forwards, points towards Pentheus’ hair. “This curl has fallen out of place.”
Pentheus grins even while Dionysus steps back. He’s afraid he might betray himself, do something stupid like push the curl back into place, pat Pentheus on the back and say better. Scared he would think about how it wouldn’t be the first time that Dionysus would’ve fixed Pentheus’ appearance if they grew up together. Would distantly debate how, if they had lived in the palace, Dionysus would’ve adjusted where Pentheus’ himation sat on his shoulders before big dinners. Would’ve been the older relative that itched to come out in moments like these.
However, even with all of Dionysus’ restraint, all of his clear definitive lines drawn in his head about being Pentheus’ destroyer first and his family second, even with those rules, Pentheus ducks his head slightly, so Dionysus can reach his hair if he needs to.
“I must have thrown it out of place while dancing,” Pentheus keeps his head ducked, waiting for Dionysus to move the hair into place. And because Dionysus might be his own destroyer first and foremost, he tucks the curl back into place underneath the headband. Even from this angle he can see how Pentheus smiles at the action, and because that makes it so much worse he accepts his fate, speaks something broken next.
“Well, my job is to look out for you.” He lets the words slip out. He sounds brotherly. He sounds nothing like a god. He sounds, well, human.
It’s cruel. It’s a cruel truth to both him and Pentheus. It’s cruel most of all because now he knows, now he knows, that there's a part of him that can say things like this. Can be truthful. Can be caring.
Pentheus laughs, clear and loud. It does not scratch around his chest the way Dionysus’ laugh does. “I am in your hands, now.”
Dionysus, standing on the hills with Pentheus, smiles. Ruefully and sad, a smile that speaks of ending. A smile that accepts, says, you are, but also in the same beat, I wish it wasn’t like that.
My cousin, my tragic fool.
“I am sure you will call me your best friend.” Is what Dionysus says, instead.
He’s accepted it, now. He can be caring and he can be Pentheus’ cousin but he is also a god. It’s stupid to pretend to be less of something you are more of something you aren’t. So Pentheus can call him best friend. Pentheus can call him brother, can call him cousin, can call him whatever. It doesn’t stop the fact that, at the end of things, Dionysus is Dionysus. And Dionysus is a god.
Eventually, when Agave comes down from the hills holding Pentheus' head, Dionysus notices that a curl is loose. He does not correct it.