Chapter Text
Pollux didn’t sleep anymore.
He just stared at the empty bed across the cabin and hallucinated that his brother was still there until he passed out.
Being the son of the god of madness meant he was terrible at handling grief. He could convince himself of delusions where Castor was still alive.
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“I wanna see if we can turn water into wine.” Castor says, filling a bottle with water from the bathroom sink.
“We’ll get in trouble.” Pollux tells his brother. They were thirteen.
“What, you gonna rat us out? We have the cabin to ourselves, we won’t get caught”
“Uh, cabin checks?” Pollux points out.
“Well, we’ll just drink it all then. Or bury it. Or make them believe they’re just seeing things.” Castor grins.
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Pollux took one of the plastic water bottles that Castor turned to wine. He didn’t drink it, he just…stared at it. This was one of the last bits of his twin, this contraband bottle hidden in a mattress they cut a hole in with a sword. A part of him was convinced that if he talked to it, Castor would be able to hear him in Elysium, but maybe he was just insane from using his madness powers on himself so much. He sometimes swore he heard responses.
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“I told you this was a good idea.” Castor dumped all the money they made providing bored teenagers with alcohol onto the floor of their cabin.
“How do you even know it turned into wine? We didn’t even taste it to make sure our product was quality.”
“I guess we’ll have to fix that.”
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“I feel like you died out of spite.” Pollux says to the bottle, “I saved up the money to get us out of here and you laughed and asked me why I expected a future. We’re demigods, I should’ve known we’d never leave.”
Castor says nothing, as always.
“What if I joined you on the other side?” Pollux starts laughing uncontrollably “should I turn myself into a dolphin and flail around on land for a few hours until I die of dehydration? Would that be funny? It would be a better death than yours. You never wanted to go like that.”
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Castor and Pollux did test product. They were immediately hooked on the taste (as they were genetically inclined to, they were children of Dionysus after all) and drank maybe a bit too much.
“Demigods die in such stupid ways.” Castor giggles “they’re half god, and they die in battle from stab wounds?”
Pollux laughs too “it would be cooler if other demigods’ powers killed us.”
“Imagine Butch burning your eyes out with rainbows.”
“Can he do that?”
“Sure he can! Otherwise, Iris is a lame godly parent.”
“Would a camper die if dad turned them into a dolphin like he always threatens?” Pollux asks
“Dolphins breathe air. I think it would be a very slow death. Painful.”
“But cool.”
“Very cool.” Castor agrees.
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As it turned out, turning himself into a dolphin and flopping around his cabin in distress was very loud. Nico, the insomniac son of Hades, was awake and heard this from his cabin.
“Pollux what the fuck are you—“ Nico cut off, absolutely speechless when he saw a five and a half foot dolphin on the floor. He wasn’t sure how to react, because it was two A.M., way too early for this. However, he did know that Pollux making dying dolphin noises was because he was in fact a dying dolphin. He ran for help, specifically for Mr. D, because he didn’t think anyone else would be able to undo what Pollux did to himself.
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One day, for fun, Castor and Pollux turned themselves into dolphins and scared the new campers by swimming up to them in the lake and screeching. The Hermes cabin thought it was funny, but one or two kids actually cried, the two youngest that year. Harley and some other kid, they didn’t remember who it was. Unfortunately, they were immediately forbidden from doing that after Leo told Chiron they were harassing his little brother.
“Guess the only time we’ll ever get to do that is if we go out that way.” Castor said sadly as they sat in their cabin wrapped up in towels, having just been lectured.
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“I don’t even wanna know what you were thinking.” Mr. D grumbles as he stares down at the child he just turned back to normal and laid down on an infirmary bed. He actually looked concerned, a rare sight, he always insisted his sons were just as annoying as the other campers (despite the evidence to the contrary) and any “special treatment” they got was imagined.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Pollux couldn’t gaslight his dad with his powers, but that didn’t stop him from trying.
“Oh, so Di Angelo didn’t just come running into my office saying you were flopping around on your floor as a dying dolphin?” Mr. D raised an eyebrow, “I know you miss Castor, but this is not the appropriate way to deal with that. Suicide is not the answer.”
“I wasn’t attempting suicide!” Pollux insists, but he didn’t know what he could even say as an alternate explanation. He kind of was after all.
“Uh huh, definitely.” Mr. D says, tucking Pollux in. “We’ll talk in the morning. For now, sleep.”