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The air in the room was heavy, permeated with the smell of stagnant time. Which was funny, because Ares was almost certain that his room was cleaned every two days.
Or at least he thought it was.
Sometimes he saw shapes passing through the room, seemingly cleaning, so he thought that was it. But the smell was still there. Clinging to him.
Ares took a deep breath, trying to rationalize, but thirteen months inside a jar, in absolute darkness, in a silence that throbbed in his ears, in a prison that had no bars, but was more efficient than any iron cell, he was discovering that freedom was also a kind of prison.
The walls of his room in the palace seemed to move closer and further away in a capricious rhythm, distorting themselves as in a fever dream. The vibrant colors of the carpets—once familiar, comforting—now screamed in dissonant tones, hurting his eyes adapted to the darkness of his captivity. The white of the bed canopy flowed like water, the red of his coat of arms on the wall pulsed like an open wound, and whenever he closed his eyes, Ares heard an echoing, buzzing sound, reminding him of the confined space of the jar.
His brain, accustomed to interpreting the lack of everything, was now drowning in excess.
Fear was a living entity within him. Fear of the light that crept furtively through the window. Fear of the sounds of the palace — distant laughter, footsteps in the corridors, the clanging of armor — that echoed like threats. But, above all, fear of the stares.
The stares of his relatives, of the other gods, of the servants.
He saw them sometimes, or at least heard them, and he could swear that their voices were not filled with joy at his return, but with embarrassment, pity, a profound discomfort.
They seemed to see him not as Ares, God of War, fury personified, the roar on the battlefields, but as an invalid. A broken artifact, a relic of a shame everyone wanted to forget. He remembered Apollo's tone when he examined it, even though he didn't quite remember when it happened. That bright, blinding light that had Apollo's voice speaking as if Ares were worthy of pity; a poor wretch.
But as much as this separation hurt him, Ares, in a perverse act of self-preservation, was grateful for it. He was grateful to be able to hide, for them to be as dissatisfied with his presence as he was with himself. It was an agonizing solitude, but it was familiar territory. In the jar, he only had himself to hate. Here, he had an audience he didn't know how to handle.
He longed to be alone, even if sometimes strange forms with familiar voices appeared to keep him company. Ares could endure them better than the sight of his relatives' faces staring at him with that pitying look. Even if they had the same irritating voices as them. But that was the least of it.
He wanted to hide in the dark, but the dark also frightened him.
The dark reminded him of the inside of the jar. The dark reminded him of the lack of air. The dark reminded him of the absence of sound — or worse, the sound of his own thoughts echoing too loudly.
It was contradictory. Ares wanted to disappear. And wanted to be found too.
And that must have been why, that day, something inside him decided to take a risk. It was a tiny, almost extinguished spark of that courage that had once defined his existence. Not the strident courage of war, but a quiet, desperate courage.
The courage to take a step out of that room.
His legs trembled like those of a newborn foal as he got out of bed. The marble floor chilled his bare feet, sending a shiver down his spine. The door, massive and carved with its symbols, seemed like a gateway to a hostile world.
He pushed it open, and the creaking of the hinges sounded like a scream in the oppressive silence of the empty hallway. Ares hesitated at the door, trying to remember what that feeling of courage was like, the courage to move forward even when afraid.
That's how it worked, wasn't it?
With slow steps, Ares walked through the short space of the hallway to the outside of the balcony, which overlooked a part of the garden surrounding the Great Sanctuary.
The garden would help him. It was spacious, open, and beautiful, right? He could handle a walk through the garden. And the best part was that there was no one there in that part.
So, taking a deep breath, Ares went ahead, letting his feet touch the ground, trembling with the assault of sensations.
The garden was... strange. The colors blurred in his vision; a sea of green and a few colors sprinkled here and there that rippled like water as he passed. The earth felt as if the undergrowth wanted to climb up his foot and burrow into it.
It was too much. Irritating. Disconcerting.
But Ares endured it, because... because he needed to. How long had he been trapped inside that room? Weeks? Months?! …Years?!
How much longer would he act like a coward? Like a disgrace?
Ares took a deep breath, but coughed, the air too pure for his stagnant lungs. His eyes watered from the bright sunlight, and Ares felt that perhaps the garden was too big for someone who had spent more than a year confined in a cramped space, but his feet refused to stop, carrying him forward.
Soon the sea of green was replaced by a sea of blurred white, yellow, and soft pink that grew higher and higher, much higher than he thought flowers should be, forming living, dense walls. He was still in the garden, right?
Ares continued to wander within that sea, perhaps searching for a way out, perhaps trying to hide, only to find himself surrounded.
The path he thought he saw disappeared two steps later. Did Ares turn left; or was it right? The flowers seemed to be drawing closer. The scent was strong, too sweet, and when he tried to focus, the colors only blended more. Ares only knew he was still in the garden because he felt the leaves brushing against him, the blurs of color surrounding him slowly taking the form of branches that intertwined around him and, in some parts, above his head, filtering the sunlight into confusing, shifting patterns.
The air became humid, heavy with the oppressive perfume. Ares tried to go back, but all the paths seemed the same. He spun around, and the world spun with him, a meaningless cacophony of blues and greens.
When he came to, Ares found himself in a new prison. No bronze walls or silent spells, but a prison of beauty and confusion. And somehow, that was worse. Here, his impotence was not imposed by an enemy, but by his own flawed mind.
Panic, an old acquaintance of the jar, began to rise in his throat, icy and bitter as his heart began to race.
No.
No.
No. No. No. No. No. No.
He wasn't trapped. It was just a garden. It was just. A. Fucking. Garden.
But his mind didn't care about that. His mind saw a new prison and was making him react to it while reliving all those months of imprisonment, huddled in a space too small for him.
Struggling to breathe, Ares curled up on the ground and rested his forehead on his knees, wrapping his arms around his head, trying not to get lost in his own mind, without much success.
Stupid. Weak. You can't even get out of a garden. You think you're a god? You're a worm. A nuisance.
Your father is ashamed. Your family is disgusted. They didn't come to get you from the jar, they had to be convinced.
They would have let you rot there. And they should have. Look at you. The great Ares, huddled and whimpering among flowers.
The War? You can't even face the daylight.
Nobody wants to see you. You're just a burden.
You should have stayed in the jar. At least there you wouldn't bother anyone.
The tears, hot and humiliating, burned his eyes. Ares swallowed hard, his shoulders shaking. He felt tiny. Not just smaller than the sea of blurs that surrounded him, but smaller than anything, an insignificant point in a universe that functioned perfectly well without him.
“What are you doing here?”
The voice came from above. Deep, firm, and familiar.
Ares slowly raised his gaze, blinking in confusion when he saw a pillar, its blurry shape above the smudges and beyond his hazy vision. Rubbing his eyes slightly, Ares realized that the pillar was a column of immaculate white marble, adorned with fine gold threads that gleamed even in the dim light.
The pillar took on a solid, static, immutable form, and amidst the terrifying fluidity of the garden, that solidity was a beacon. Ares stood still, staring, unsure if it was real or just another illusion of his troubled mind.
The pillar moved, and that strangely familiar voice, cutting through the murmur of his own mind, repeated itself once more: “So, what are you doing here, little lost thing?”
“I-I am… trapped.” Ares heard himself say, and the voice that came from him was thin, broken, the voice of a frightened child, not the imposing voice of an war god.
The presence laughed. The sound was like the clinking of fine crystal, but for Ares, it was the sound of all his insecurities being confirmed.
"Trapped? In a garden? What kind of prisoner is made by hydrangeas, you silly little thing?" The question wasn't malicious, but it was curious, almost amusing. And it was the amusement, the lightness of that observation, that broke Ares completely. The humiliation was a tightness in his chest, stronger than the fear.
He shrank further, wishing the earth would swallow him as his face flushed with immediate shame.
Of course. Of course it was ridiculous. He was lost in a damned garden.
Ares wanted to disappear, to return to the predictable darkness of the jar. At least there, no one laughed at him.
Stupid.
"I can't get out of here. I can't... find my way." He confessed in a tearful tone.
A heavy silence followed the laughter. Ares felt, more than saw, the change in the atmosphere. The colossal presence seemed to diminish, its focus intensifying. The gleam of the gold and marble softened, the rigid lines curved until it ceased to be a pillar and became a statue. A statue of an imposing man, with a serious and beautiful face, sculpted in the purest marble, with gold details in the eyes and hair.
The statue knelt, and the act was so gentle that when Ares realized it, its marbled face was at the same level as Ares's.
And there was something in that face… a curve of the lips, the depth of the sculpted gaze… that triggered a dormant memory. Something that belonged to a time before the jar, before the confusion. A feeling of… recognition.
“What’s wrong?” the statue asked him, the curiosity in its voice giving way to something that could be concern. “Tell me. What holds you back, if not the flowers?"
Ares blinked, taking a while to understand the question. He felt he should know that shape, that jawline, that profile, that presence. But his brain was still too scrambled.
He hesitated.
He shouldn't say it, because it was ridiculous. It was weak.
But Ares was tired. So tired…
Tired of pretending, of appearing strong, of holding back what didn't fit inside him. It was a weariness of the soul that went all the way to the bones.
And along with this weariness was a desperate desire, repressed by thirteen months of solitude and more weeks of self-imposed isolation, to be heard. To have his pain, his confusion, recognized as real, and not as weakness.
The words flowed from Ares in a torrent, interspersed with sobs he could no longer control.
"I can't see properly. Think properly!" He confessed, his voice a mere whisper. "The colors… they move, they blend together. The shapes don't stay still. Nothing makes sense. I… I know where I am, I know this garden, but my brain… it doesn't obey. It plays tricks. Everything is a labyrinth. Everything is a trap. And I… I get lost inside my own head. I'm pathetic. Stupid. A pathetic god that nobody wants around and who gets lost in his own garden. Stupid. Stupid!"
He waited for another laugh, this time a mocking one. For a disdainful comment. For a silence that signified contempt.
Instead, the statue moved. The marble arms, which had seemed so cold and hard, closed around him, and Ares discovered, with a shock that stopped his breath, that they were not cold. They were warm. And they were not hard as stone, but firm as the embrace of…
The marble and gold disguise dissolved like mist in the morning sun. The statue was still imposing, still majestic, but the stone gave way to lightly tanned skin with a familiar scent, the gold gave way to golden hair, and the sculpted eyes became living, deep, and wise eyes that now looked at him with an expression that Ares could not decipher, but that made something inside him tremble.
Ares froze for a second and then realized that it was not a statue.
It never had been.
It was Zeus. It was his father.
Ares froze. The already confused world completely crumbled. Self-loathing roared in his mind, ashamed of having cried, of having confessed his weakness before the King of the Gods.
He felt even more stupid, childish, and pathetic.
He should step away, straighten his shoulders, swallow his tears, and make some empty statement about just… resting.
But his father… his father was there. Not in the throne room, not surrounded by his other children or just pretending he didn't exist (as he had pretended for thirteen months, his treacherous mind whispered).
Zeus was there, kneeling on the damp earth of the garden, holding him, offering support instead of judgment.
And then, Ares broke. Like a frightened, confused, and deeply wounded child. A deep, convulsive sob tore through his chest, and he clung to his father like a shipwrecked man to a plank. He buried his face in Zeus's broad chest, his fingers closing in on the rich fabric of the robe, as if he feared that this solid, real, and stable contact would dissolve into yet another illusion.
Zeus did not push him away or reprimand him. He simply held him firmly, one strong arm around his back, the other hand resting on the back of his head, in his disheveled hair.
Zeus simply sat down on the ground, pulling Ares with him, unconcerned about the dirt on his immaculate cloak. He settled his son in his lap, as if Ares were still a small child, and continued to stroke his head, in a slow and steady rhythm, ignoring the wet sensation on his chest, simply letting him cry, until Ares's storm of sobs gradually subsided to sparse sobs, then to gasping breaths, until it became an exhausted silence.
The surrounding garden hadn't changed. The hydrangeas still formed their tangled walls, the colors still dancing in Ares's eyes.
"Sorry," Ares murmured, his voice muffled by the fabric. He now felt more tired than lost, but the chaos had a center now: his father's lap, the sound of his heart, slow and powerful, and the familiar scent of distant thunder.
"For what?" Zeus's voice echoed in his chest.
"For… this. For being like this. For not being… what you expected from me. I am weak. Ridiculous."
Ridiculous. Ridiculous. So ridiculous.
Part of Ares expected at any moment to hear a: "That's enough.", "Get up." Or "Stop it."
But none of that came.
“You are not stupid. And it’s not what I expected. It’s more. You are strong, my son. You will be alright. I will not abandon you; I will not make you feel abandoned again. I swear by the Styx, if necessary.” Zeus promised.
Ares felt new tears stream down his face, but these were different. Less painful. They were tears of relief.
He closed his eyes, allowing himself, for the first time since being rescued, to simply be. Without trying to decipher, without fighting, without hating. The fear was still there, the confusion too, but there was something more: his father.
The same father he had so often feared disappointing. The same father whose approval had always seemed distant.
Ares was certain his father would find him stupid. Stupid for being afraid. Stupid for getting lost in a stupid garden. Stupid for crying. But instead, he comforted him. Zeus had come looking for him when he noticed his absence, heard his chaotic confession, and instead of turning his back, had opened his arms.
If Zeus thought he was stupid… would he have come?
If he considered him a burden… would he be there now, sitting on the ground, ignoring the dirt?
Ares let out an undignified squeak as he was lifted by his father, carried like a princess, something that made him squirm with shame and groan a dismayed “father…” that made Zeus chuckle a little.
“You need to rest, Ares. Your mother will be very upset that you left without telling her.”
His mother... Ares remembered seeing a colorful bird in shades of emerald green and blue gently caressing his forehead and singing to him sometimes, but Ares couldn't quite remember its shape and face. Was it his mother? Had he forgotten her?!
This made him feel bad. His mother must have been sad.
"I'm sorry..."
"It's alright. Just rest and everything will pass. In time, it will pass. We are with you." Zeus assured him, rubbing his face against Ares's forehead, making him sigh with tiredness and satisfaction before taking a deep breath.
The scent of the flowers was still present, but now it seemed only a garden smell, not a suffocating mist, muffled by the scent of Zeus; the smell of rain and something warmer, that only his father had. The colors of the flowers that surrounded him still trembled, but not with the terrifying intensity of before, looking more like flowers than blurs.
Ares was not healed. He was lost. He was confused. He was afraid. But right there, in that moment, he wasn't being left to die inside his own mind, which still whispered his insecurities.
Ares tightened his grip on the fabric, burying his face further against Zeus's chest.
"I don't want to be alone," he murmured in a low, almost childlike voice.
"You won't. I promise."
And Ares believed Zeus. He believed him because he was his father, and Zeus had never lied to him. So, at some point, everything would be alright, right? Even if it took a while, if he wasn't alone, everything would be alright.
One day. Until that day, he just needed time to recover and heal.