Chapter Text
They invoke his name on the battleground, prayers in the form of war cries passing through their lips. In ancient times, he joined them in a golden chariot inlaid with images of drakons and pulled by flesh-stripped horses, all pale bone with manes of Greek fire. They would see his gleaming helm and the spear tipped with Akhlys' own poisoned blood, and they would know fear.
He rides into war and feeds on their bloodlust, a sharp tug on his chest drawing him into battle every time. Weapon in hand, his grin is as feral as the wolves his sister surrounds herself with. In that moment, he’s high on their terror, their devotion. Nothing exists but the screams cut short by his spear in their throats, gurgling their last words around the warm blood that chokes them. He inhales their prayers as they thank him for a warrior’s death, for it is every soldier’s wish to die at the hands of Ares Andreïphontes, the Destroyer of Men himself.
Dionysus has his wine. Hermes and Apollo, their lovers. Artemis rides out the thrill of the hunt, her eyes blown wide with adrenaline when her arrow meets its mark. Like her brother, she has her lovers too. An eternal virgin does not mean eternal chastity, and Ares pities the gods who dare mock her for it. No, the Lady Artemis drinks goblets of elks’ blood like wine and lets out a pleased hum for the huntress between her thighs.
They all have their vices of choice. Those delights they gorge themselves on that sate their divine hunger more than nectar or ambrosia ever could.
Ares' indulgences are shaped by ringing swords and victorious battle cries. He feasts on bloodshed and the wars of men. In his most feral, when his bloodlust is at its worst, he fervently licks beads of crimson off his lips—the ones that splatter across his face when he guts a man, belly to chin. Vicious and feral and monstrous, he moans at the taste of blood, rich with adrenaline and fear, and laughs. He laughs and laughs until he can no longer breathe. Until his body is too big for his armor, and his skin feels like it’s being devoured by maggots.
He laughs because he is afraid of what will happen—what he might do—if he does not.
It’s not until he finds himself in the tub next to Aphrodite and Hephaestus' bedroom that they slowly trail off. Dainty fingers and perfectly manicured nails massage oils into his scalp. Ares sits motionless in scorching water because that’s the only way she can wash away the layers and layers of blood that cake over his skin. Hephaestus has replaced it at least thrice, now blissfully clear of anything but Aphrodite’s delicate perfumes.
Sitting in the safety of the closest thing he has to a home, listening to the absentminded hums of his second love (he hates that his first will always be war), he allows his mask to fall. The numbness sets in quickly, as it always does when he tries to suppress it for too long. Ares stares blankly at the wall, a thousand and one deaths flashing before his eyes.
(Aphrodite has long learned not to startle him when he is like this, so she resigns herself to a mournful sigh and scratches her fingernails gently across his scalp.)
He feels them all. Every sword. Every spear. Every knife.
Over and over again, he breathes his last breath, sometimes at the hands of another soldier and sometimes at the hands of himself. He stares at his own face, caked in blood and viscera, and hates himself for loving it.
War is his vice of choice. It is his lover. His best friend. His worst enemy. He hates to love it, but no matter how he tries, he can’t seem to escape its clutches.
He’s not quite sure if he really wants to.
- - -
“War becomes you, my son,” Zeus had said after Ares’ first slaughter battle. He clapped a hand over the young god’s shoulder and beamed. “It’s what you were made for.”
It’s what you were made for.
It’s what you were made for.
It’s what you were made for.
Ares looked at his father, plum-colored circles beneath his eyes and blood under his fingernails that wouldn’t come off no matter how hard he tried. (It still doesn’t, thousands of years later). His tongue felt heavy in his mouth, and he glanced off to the side wearily, unsure if the bloody soldier lying on the marble floor of the throne room was truly there or not.
He couldn’t make himself speak, so he simply grimaced smiled and nodded, and breathed through his nose as he felt that thrice-damned tug in his chest again.
Centuries later, he will sit on a bench in his brother’s workshop, watching oil-stained hands that only know creation. Ares’ own have a permanent reddish hue, with calluses from weapons that only know how to kill and destroy.
“Am I…” Ares trails off, unsure, glancing at the table of razor-petal copper roses to his left and the bin of cracked swords below it. Hephaestus gives no visible indication that he’s listening, but Ares knows he is. He always is. “Am I broken?”
That, however, does make Hephaestus pause with the tiny mechanical spider he’s working on, if only for a moment. He looks at Ares oddly, like a child who’s just said something outrageously foolish.
“Nothing is ever broken.”
Ares blinks and points to the plethora of old projects strewn across various tables, shoved in bins and corners, and wherever there’s an inch of free space. It’s all covered in discarded weapons and half-built machinery. There are cracked glass figurines and unfinished swords and all sorts of twitching devices that are obviously—
“They’re not broken,” Hephaestus grumbles, frowning. Several pieces of his hair catch fire, and he huffs in annoyance as he pats them back down to smoke.
Ares raises an eyebrow. “You’re telling me that mirror I watched you drop last year isn’t broken?”
A crooked smile tugs at Hephaestus’ lips as he follows Ares’ gaze to the broken shards.
“I’ve been thinking of making a wind chime for Aphrodite with them. I think she would like it.”
Ares says nothing. He doesn’t understand. He wishes it would make sense to him like it did for his brother. To see not a broken mirror, but an unfinished gift for his wife.
“Nothing is ever truly broken, Ares,” he says, picking up the spider again and tinkering with it. “If something doesn’t work, find another use for it. Broken things don't exist. Only those that haven’t found a purpose yet.”
“Father says I was born to be the god of war,” he scoffs. “Didn’t you know killing is what I was ‘made for?’”
There’s a moment of silence before Hephaestus speaks again. “There’s more to a battlefield than just death.”
Ares grows silent. For a long time, the only sounds audible are the clanking of metal against metal as Hephaestus works on his little spider. He runs his brother’s words in his head over and over and over.
He thinks back to soldiers gathered around a fire, drinking and singing songs with their wineskins in hand. In the back of his mind, he hears distant cries, not of mourning, but of elation as soldiers reunite with their families. His ears ring with the joyous shrieks of wives and children when they see their fathers-brothers-sons standing at the front door.
Oh.
He sees men who step before the fatal swing of a sword as they shove their best friends aside to safety. Thinks of those dying warriors that push themselves to the brink of death and then one step further, letting arrows fly until Thanatos himself is forced to wrestle their stubborn souls away from them. Remembers the enemy soldiers who put down their weapons—the ones who stand in front of the children they’ve been ordered to kill, because sometimes sheathing your sword is the bravest thing you can do.
Oh.
(Hephaestus smiles and keeps working.)
It takes Ares another few thousand years to not just understand, but believe it. Somewhere in the late 1700s, Sweden and Italy begin bestowing medals of valor to outstanding soldiers. Still, it’s not until a century later, when some mortal is hanging a Medal of Honor around his neck, that it sinks in that maybe, just maybe, there’s a reason he’s the god of courage too.
- - -
Deimos and Phobos were to be expected. Of course, Ares would be the one to father the gods of terror and dread, of fear and panic. No one was surprised by their birth.
Similarly, when Eros and Anteros had first been born, not a single god batted an eyelash for two love deities to be borne of Lady Aphrodite.
And then, there was Harmonia. Lovely, fair-cheeked Harmonia, who, despite bearing her father’s coloring, was still rumored to have been a product of Aphrodite’s affairs. Her bone structure may have been as delicate as her mother’s, but there should have been no denying she was Ares’ trueborn daughter.
And yet, the Muses whispered in their gardens, and Olympus placed bets on who the real father was. For how could the bloodthirsty god of war possibly father the darling goddess of harmony and concord?
(They like to forget that war often ends in negotiations and peace treaties.)
Ares loves all his children with a ferocity that rivals even Poseidon's. He will defend then with his last breath. Memories of Zeus’ fathering him are few, and the several moments of pride he does remember were all brought on by a self-serving need to be seen as superior by all the gods he lords himself over.
What was once a jovial, “You were made for war, my son,” is no more. Now, the King glowers, his narrowed eyes flickering to the bloodstains on Ares’ cheek, and in an icy, condescending voice, says, “Yes, you were made for war, weren’t you?”
Ares isn’t quite sure when the shift began, only that his father's distaste fully cemented itself on the day of his farce of a trial.
Truth be told, he barely remembers it all happening. One moment he was looking down at his daughter's broken body, ringed bruises lining her wrists and her thighs wet with blood. The next, he was standing knee-deep in the ocean and screaming at Poseidon as he threw back the torn-off head of Halirrhothius.
The trial itself is like a series of flashes that he distantly recalls. It took his father and several others to subdue him and force a tonic of Hecate’s down his throat. Sometimes he still thinks about that day—remembers the taste of ichor and sea salt going down his throat and wonders if he actually would have been able to kill the Ocean King.
(It isn’t a question. Ares knows had he been given the chance, he would have torn his uncle apart and tossed him into Tartarus with his own two hands to avenge his daughter.)
If he hadn’t been mourning Alcippe so deeply, perhaps he might have laughed at Poseidon when he dared to suggest his lecherous son did nothing wrong. There was nothing left but a chilling numbness, though, brought on by grief and whatever concoction he had been forced to drink.
He was acquitted. Somehow. Athena and his father’s disgusted faces when they had to vote for his innocence were burned into his mind. Perhaps in the eyes of Athenian law, his murder was acceptable, but to the Olympians… he was nothing more than a savage beast who had gotten off on a technicality.
So many of his daughters suffered gruesome fates that led them to their deaths. The Amazons: Hippolyte, who was slain by Ares’ own half-brother Heracles—dragged off her horse by her hair and had her girdle ripped from her waist. Antiope, kidnapped and forcibly bedded by yet another sea spawn calling himself Theseus. She died with Molpadia’s spear through her belly, her sister who knew a battlefield death would be a kinder fate than to be captured once more.
On the Trojan battleground, Ares vividly remembers when Ascalaphus fell to one of Troy’s princes. To this day, he still hasn’t forgiven Athena and Hera for preventing him from avenging his son's death and humiliating him in battle.
Then Penthesilea, dying at the hands of Achilles, who had the audacity to mourn after witnessing her beauty. They built her a pyre and burnt precious treasures alongside her body as though she was no more than a vain maiden they had each missed the chance to wed. Penthesilea was an Amazonian Queen, and she would have spat in Achilles’ face and ran him through with an arrow before accepting his offer of marriage. She died a warrior's death and should have been entombed with her sisters, bow and quiver in hand so she might bring them to Elysium.
There were others, still. Diomedes and Cycnus, another two sons slain by Heracles, the accursed son of Zeus who stole three of his children from him. And of course, the lovely Harmonia herself, cursed into the shape of a serpent with her husband.
Far too many of his children have found their ends at the hands of sons of Zeus and Poseidon, and it’s gotten to a point where simply the presence of regular mortals who happen to share their features is enough to make him reach towards his spear.
In the early 18th century, Edward Teach and two of Aphrodite’s daughters go missing in the middle of Poseidon’s domain. Within two decades, Ares’ last living demigod is clawed to death by a pack of hellhounds, and the world spends the next two-hundred years without a child of war to fight for it.
The night the pact between the Big Three is made, Ares walks into a bar with Aphrodite’s blessing buzzing under his skin. Fifteen years later, the bunks in Cabin Five are almost full, and Ares finally stops snarling at the sight of green eyes and black hair.
- - -
In recent centuries, Ares has taken to walking the battlefields during the moments of the occasional ceasefire. Where silence hangs heavy in the air, along with the stench of blood and decay, he walks through the bodies and see their last moments flash before his eyes. War is his domain, and for all his faults, he will not sit still on his throne, indulging in women and wine while being only a god in name. Out of the entire pantheon, he is perhaps the god who truly embodies his domain down to every inch of his being.
Ares walks through the battlefields, and he lives every death as though it was his. He kneels by the soldiers who died without a penny on them and places a single golden drachma on their tongue. Just as battle-weary soldiers belong to him, so do the relieved, bullet-torn dead. They fought bravely and paid their devotion to him with their lives. Whether they end up in Elysium or the Fields of Punishment, these men and women are his, and he will hasten their trip across the Styx, regardless of what Pallas Athena has to say about it.
She thinks strategy wins wars, but she doesn’t know what it’s like to be a soldier. Gods shouldn’t know either, but Ares has died countless deaths, feeling every emotion his warriors felt the moment before their final breath passed their lips. Athena is an idealist. She believes logic is what governs the world and that wars are won with strategy, not “pointless bloodshed.”
All Ares can do is laugh—it is a wide, bloodthirsty smile full of ulcers and gum disease and tobacco-browned teeth—for what strategy is there in the face of imminent death? When you’re staring down the barrel of a gun, there’s no logic running through your head. No strategy or plans. Just a desperate fear, often followed by suicidal resignation and a grenade.
Athena has stopped bothering to fight with him on the topic, so she simply glares at the cigarette between his teeth and scoffs at his “human vices.” He rolls his eyes and pointedly reminds her of Dionysus and Apollo and Hermes’ nights out with the mortal alcohol they like to drink by the bottle. He blows acrid smoke into her face with each word and grins when she coughs and flashes away.
He doesn’t carry a lighter, for why would an all-powerful war god rely on a simple mortal device for fire?
(He doesn’t carry a lighter, for what better way is there to bond in the trenches than allow himself to be mocked for his smuggled cigarettes but no light?)
He has them, of course. He makes his own out of shell casings he finds and places them on a shelf in Hephaestus' workshop. The cigarettes, he rolls himself—keeps them safe in a 1916 (now bloodstained) silver case given to him at the Battle of Verdun by a German man, forcibly drafted into the army just two months short of his forty-sixth birthday.
Ares doesn’t choose which side he fights for. It’s simply a pull he feels that refuses to be ignored. In the old days, it used to be whoever could invoke his name more. Whichever side was more devout, burnt more offerings, prayed to his name—that was the side he would fight for, whether he wanted to or not.
Nowadays, it’s different. He still feels that same pull, but it belongs to the army with stronger beliefs. Not in Ares himself, but in their own cause. The zealous ones who genuinely believe in what they’re fighting for. The ones who are willing to die for it—that’s who he must side with.
(He’d never been more relieved when the United States and the rest of the Allied forces began to condemn the actions of the Nazis publicly. As the newspapers spread the atrocities of the mass genocide occurring—when soldiers’ word-of-mouth spread the conditions of the few camps they had seen—the tugging in his chest grew stronger and stronger and stronger.
The day he felt those fate-cursed knitting needles stabbing his chest, Ares massacred his own battalion and enlisted with the British while their blood was still warm on his hands.)
They say the god of war is cruel. That he rages across the battlefield with no care about who lives or dies. He is not one to cross, for violence runs through his veins.
His father is Zeus, the King of the gods. Zeus, who bleeds ichor and lightning, just as his brothers bleed salt and bone-ash.
He is the son of the King. He should bleed ichor and wrath and gunpowder. And yet, he does not.
They say Hestia is the most human-like of them all, for she sits and speaks with mortals as though she is the same. She may pretend, but Hestia is the eldest daughter of the Titan-King Kronos. She sits at her hearth and plays at being human, but divinity dances under her skin. Hestia Kronida bleeds fire and gold.
Ares does not.
(When Hera birthed her second son, her first thoughts were not of family or motherhood or love. She looked down at her perfect, beautiful, whole baby boy and thought, “not again.”)
For all that Ares is a rage-filled, powerful god, he will always be the most human of them all. He stands shoulder to shoulder with his men, taking bullets to the head and knives to the heart, and he does not fall, but nor does he bleed gold.
The patron of warriors is a vibrant mirror of his domain, and so, just like the soldiers invoking his name with their last breaths, Ares, son of Zeus, bleeds crimson and bright.
- - -
If it wasn’t so insulting, he might have found it funny the way the mortals of the twenty-first century paint him as the villain—the token misogynist of the Greek Pantheon. Somewhere along the line, they stamped him with a big red mark that reads “Antagonist.” He sometimes wonders how things might have been different if the surviving works of Ancient Greece hadn’t all come from Athens.
Once again, Athena gets the last laugh, he supposes.
Villain. Meat-head. Warmonger. Chauvinistic pig.
That last one is particularly interesting, considering he fathered the first Amazons and, to this day, loves them all as his own. They’re his daughters. Warriors of the highest caliber who deserve to be revered rather than having faded into obscurity.
Ares Gynaikothoinas, Feasted by Women; they named him in Tegea. Declared a feast in his honor and celebrated their victory without the company of men.
Now, they blot out stain after stain. Woman after woman. Shove Ares into the box of Sexist Brute as though he was the one forcing himself on women.
Ares hates it, but that’s what the world is now. He settles himself knowing he has the highest survival rate out of all demigods who make it to Camp Half-Blood. Other gods attribute it to his kids being natural fighters, and he doesn’t bother correcting them.
Zeus’s non-interference rules are strict, but there are still ways to get around them. Ares is one of the few who goes out of his way to find those loopholes. He wonders if anyone else has noticed how every time Dionysus’ punishment is a year or two from ending, he always manages to find some other way to fuck up and extend his sentence. Ares never mentions it. In return, his brother looks the other way when new children arrive armed with celestial bronze and stroll straight into the cabin with barbed wire, claimed or not.
Aiding and talking directly to his kids might not be an option, but that doesn’t mean he can’t offhandedly suggest sending one of the Amazons to teach self-defense classes elsewhere in the country. If it happens that one of Ares’ demigods lives there, it’s just a happy coincidence.
He’s not forbidden from sleeping with mortals more than once. If his dates get frequent phone calls from their children to complain about their babysitters, it’s not like they can just ignore those. And, of course, it wouldn’t be polite to answer their phone at the table, so they’re just being respectful when they introduce their kids, who absolutely, most definitely do not know the man on the line introducing himself as Ares.
Being discrete is not his strongest skill, but Ares would rend the world in two to keep his children safe, and in that respect, discretion is nothing.
Some years ago, there was a kid somewhere in Arizona, maybe in his early twenties, working towards his Ph.D. in Classical Studies. Raised Catholic, identified as agnostic. Didn’t practice any religion in specific. And despite all this, he now subtly carries the blessings of three separate Olympians.
He still remembers the day Aphrodite came to him, thoroughly debauched and glowing. Gave him a smirk and told him she found a student he might be interested in. A week later, she was leading him into a brightly lit university building.
Sitting in the corner of the classroom, shrouded in Mist, he spent fifty minutes with his eyes fixed on a well-muscled young man who looked more like a professional athlete than a Classics graduate student. The man spent most of the session viciously arguing with the professor, a historian almost thrice his age. It devolved into a shouting match until the student stormed out, still ranting about the biased portrayal of Ares they were being “force-fed.”
He never thought intelligence would attract him to a potential partner, but there he was, sitting in a dive bar listening to the young man rambling as he accounted Ares’ history to the god himself.
The night ended with having the police called and getting thrown out together. He’s not sure if it was for fucking in the bathroom or for the broken bottle of tequila that was worth around six-hundred dollars. In his defense, though, the glass was shitty quality, and the skinhead had a rather hard skull. Ares can’t be blamed for the stupidity of others, especially when those others are homophobic cockstains who like to call people “fags.”
When he recounted the night to Aphrodite and Hephaestus, his brother actually paused in his work for a moment to snort, and made a rare joke, asking how to felt to find his very own Prince Charming. Ares was too high on Faith to stab him.
Four years later, Andrew LaRue walked across the stage in his cap and gown, visibly biting back laughter at the scandalized expressions Ares’ whistles and obscene shouts of congratulations were garnering. Over those years, Andy won every single one of his kickboxing matches, never had difficulty finding partners, and not once did his car ever need any maintenance.
Two years after that, Ares stood in front of an apartment in Phoenix, a pair of steel-woven celestial bronze daggers in one hand and a baby carrier with an infant girl in the other.
- - -
The gods no longer have priests. They haven't in thousands of years. The temples and golden altars are gone, and yet worshipers remain.
Hellenism, they call it. Devout believers whose offerings burn brighter than those of the demigods, even without material proof of the gods' existence. These are the ones who take walks on sunny days and thank Apollo for his light. The ones who go hiking and offer Athena blurry Polaroids of owls. The ones who invoke Ares' name while playing a game of laser tag.
These are their modern-day mortal worshipers who say prayers they've made up on their own and who offer feathers and seashells and poems that no one else will ever hear.
But for all that the gods love them, they are just that—mortal.
It's ironic, isn't it? That the puny kid he fought way back in Santa Monica is the closest thing Ares has to a priest in this new world of Christianity and Capitalism.
He remembers their first meeting well. Took one look and saw a sea-green funeral shroud wrapped around his shoulders. Twelve years old, barely reaching five feet, and already being groomed into a perfect child soldier.
Took one look at the kid and had to stop himself from slaughtering him on the spot. Green eyes. Black hair. A child who hadn't known he was a demigod until barely a week ago. His face was still round with baby fat, but all Ares could see was the unapologetic expression Halirrhothius wore as he stood over Alcippe's bruised and battered body.
In the irritation and anger on Jackson's face, he only saw Theseus' annoyance when Antiope refused to go quietly. When she kicked and screamed and clawed until he forced a tonic of opium poppy down her throat. Ares remembers the way he gloated at besting an Amazonian warrior. The way the filth dared to find pride in forcing himself upon one of his children.
Ares shoved thoughts of funeral shrouds and child soldiers. He looked away from Perseus Jackson, and he loathed.
When the war with the Giants is finally over, he grinds his teeth and forces himself to look once more. Ares watches for months before he acknowledges the truth.
Scorching revulsion still bubbles up in him at the sight of Jackson's face, but not like before. Where once he hated him for the reminder of his long-dead brothers, he can't quite say he hates Jackson anymore. Now, he just despises how much of himself he sees in the brat.
Ares looks at the shaking hands being washed compulsively and at the purple circles around his TooBrightTooGreen eyes. He glances at his own, the same reddish shade they've been for thousands of years, and wonders if it's worth enlightening him that no one else can see stains—that it's all in Jackson's head. He'll probably die still feeling the dried blood under his fingernails while readjusting his too-sticky grip on his sword.
The kid spends his days glancing to the side, at the enemies only he can see. He grasps for the pen in his pocket and not-so-smoothly starts playing catch the second he notices the strange looks from his friends. Sometimes the monster is still there when he looks back. Sometimes it isn't. But regardless of which one it is, he only receives confused looks when people, mortal or demigod, follow his gaze.
(It took Ares several centuries to learn how to tune out the dead's wails and enjoy himself in bed again. He stands concealed in the corner of the classroom and wonders if Jackson will be a quicker study than he was. Ares looks straight ahead and staunchly ignores the rotting French soldier with half his jaw missing.)
Most nights, he listens to Jackson scream his throat raw and bloody, held prisoner by his own dreams. The few nights of reprieve he has are when he visits Camp, and Dionysus comes to steal the nightmares for himself. His brother always did miss the feeling of fear and terror when he became a god.
In the last five months, Ares has watched exactly two dreams.
The first was palatable. He dreamed of drowning. The pain and despair fed by the rivers of the Pit. Akhlys and whatever insanity allowed him to overpower a primordial's own domain. Ares doubts Jackson knew at the time the repercussions that would have.
(Ares wonders.)
It's easier to get away with denial when he's not around demigods. There's no one else to call him out on the glimmer in his blood when he cuts himself shaving or scrapes his knees on the pavement.
Ares doubts he's the only one who knows. Dionysus took one look at him after the war and went stone-faced. Poseidon presumably knows too. He's been far too cheerful lately, and it makes Ares want to gouge his fucking eyes out. How is it fair that the brat gets immortality when his own kids have spent thousands of years getting slaughtered?
The second dream he watched was also the last. He's not sure what he would've done in Jackson's place, but getting stuck watching the dream from the demigod's perspective was the most mind-numbing terror he has ever felt in his life. He thought the thirteen months in the jar had been bad, but seeing the face of Tartarus himself outranked that by miles.
And then, "You have made an enemy, godling," Ares' own voice rings in his ears. He thinks back to his parting words on the Santa Monica beach, and for the first time in a long time, he feels regret. "You have sealed your fate. Every time you raise your blade in battle, every time you hope for success, you will feel my curse."
He drops his sword.
Somehow, through the paralyzing mortal fear he's never had to feel before, he forces himself out of the dream. He never enters another one again.
On the weekends, Jackson visits Camp and tells them about school and how great it is to have a taste of a peaceful, mortal life. He lies through his teeth and hates himself for it.
A dry, humorless smile spreads over Ares's face. Maybe the demigods haven't noticed, but he certainly has at the way Jackson's breath catches, not in fear, but relief when a monster comes too close to the borders. It's the only excuse he has now that allows him to draw his sword and fight against real stakes, or so the boy convinces himself.
(Perseus Jackson has fought gods, titans, and primordials—he has walked through the belly of Tartarus and survived. A group of hellhounds is child's play, and he knows it. But there's nothing else left for him to fight, so he takes whatever comes.)
For all that the son of Poseidon claims to hate war, he finds himself in its grasp again and again, and there's a point when one has to wonder whether he's even trying to escape. It's a testament to his war-torn soul that he feels more at home on a battlefield than around a campfire with his friends.
Hestia shies away when he walks past now. She no longer appears at his hearth, for it is stoked with Greek fire and bones. He remains feeling cold and alone, with no one there to tend to it.
In April, he watches Perseus get expelled two months before graduation when an Army recruiter comes to his school. The boy gives a riveting speech about child soldiers and the glorification of war. Then, follows up his outburst by breaking the man's nose. Outside the classroom, he punches his locker twice and ignores the strains of gold woven through the crimson.
(Ares wonders.)
The following Monday, Sally Jackson gets a call saying her son was missing from his first-period class. She blinks, confused, and then angrily reminds them they expelled her son. There's a moment where the only noise over the line is shuffling papers before she's told there's no record of expulsion or disciplinary action anywhere. Upon further questioning, no one in the office even remembers an Army recruiter that past Friday.
Perseus returns to school, and Aphrodite is owed a very expensive date.
In July, he moves into an apartment in New Rome. Rather than unpacking, he walks down to the Legion's training grounds. He's Greek, through and through, and something about sparring with the Romans makes his blood boil. It's almost enough to remind him what a real fight is like, but not quite.
The slashes stop short. His partners help him back to his feet. The Praetors force him to wear armor that only slows him down. Ares watches the frustration build and build until one day, Jason Grace accidentally buries half a foot of his sword into his friend and yields just a bit too early for the son of Poseidon’s liking.
His eyes burn like Greek fire, and Grace freezes. Not out of fear, panic, or any other emotion. He freezes because Percy's left hand is clenched at his side, fighting the anger and months of frustration that whisper to him to bleed the Roman dry. To tear it all out at once and drink it by the goblet.
His self-control is good enough that he manages to let go. But his eyes still glow, and the wind starts to pick up.
One of the Praetors runs over and just about shoves canteens of Nectar into their hands. Ares isn't sure if anyone but him noticed, but the wound was barely a cut even before he took a sip. Twirling his hunting knife between his fingers, Ares looks again at what lies beneath the torn shirt. Among the mess of gold lie a few singular spots of red.
(Ares wonders.)
When he focuses back after a moment, some healer is shouting at Percy for being irresponsible and to pay more attention to how much Nectar he drinks. Ares rolls his eyes and flips his knife—rain starts to patter on the ground, and the wind hastens—if you asked him, she should be paying attention. Not to how much he drinks, but to how he's not fucking dead yet. Everyone knows that amount of Nectar would have killed a demigod with ease.
Percy's jaw stiffens, and his fingers grip his sword tighter. Along the coast of California, a Category 2 hurricane starts to form, and the healer probably should've stopped speaking…Well, she probably shouldn't have even started. Someone's hand moves to take Riptide away from him.
Idiot demigods. Ares rises from his seat towards the top row of the coliseum and rolls his shoulders. He moves, places a hand on the back of the boy's breastplate, and
yanks.
If it had been anyone else, the force with which he threw Percy back into the center of the training area probably would have killed them. Although, on the one hand, he'd definitely get some personal satisfaction over Poseidon if he killed his favorite son, on the other, this is sure to be the most entertaining thing that's happened in centuries. Oh, he knows all the gods will be furious with him, but whether they like it or not, Perseus Jackson is, first and foremost, a soldier.
A warrior who's gone through fucking Tartarus and back. He's fought more wars and battles than any other demigod alive. Ares will toss himself into Chaos before admitting it aloud, but there's no one alive who embodies his domain more than that brat. Poseidon was the cause of so many of his children's deaths. He can deal with the disappointment of Ares being the one to bring about his son's ascension.
No one sets out to become a child soldier, but that's exactly what Percy is. There's no changing what's been long since dictated by the fates. By now, the tapestry has been woven enough that a peaceful ascension would never have been an option. Not that Poseidon wouldn't try.
They all know he would spirit his son away to Atlantis. Try to make him ascend among "family" in the safety of the ocean. In the domain he was born to, and Percy will hate him for it. He will rage and lash out in all directions. Poseidon will only make it worse by offering pointless explanations of his love. He needs something to be angry at. Violence and anger will give him a target, a direction to send his rage in, or he will destroy anything and everything in his path.
It must be done in violence, and Ares is quite possibly the only one who understands this. If not here by the edge of Ares' blade, it would have been in a monster attack, or worse, standing over the body of a dead demigod after what was meant to be a friendly spar. Maybe one day—probably never—Ares will be graciously thanked for the kindness he's seen fit to grant Poseidon. Better to spend eternity hating the god of war than his own father.
Poseidon loves his son, but as he is towards all his children, he's blinded by his own perception of them. And in this new modern age, blinded by who he wants them to be. For all that he loves his children, gods and demigods, he can't claim to be an active participant in the upbringing of the latter. He doesn't know who they are—only who he thinks they are and who he wishes they were.
(Perhaps more than his looks, blindness is what Percy inherited from his father. Blinded by love and loyalty to those he calls his own. But unlike his Poseidon, Percy will instantly put aside his own safety and well-being to protect the ones who can’t protect themselves.
The phrase “casualties of war” makes him want to throw up, because it’s proof that he hadn’t been able to protect everyone. Proof that demigods are dead and he did nothing to save them.)
Poseidon looks at Percy and sees a mirror image of himself. Hurricanes and earthquakes all caused by this perfect godling child of the oceans. He's by far the most powerful half-blood Poseidon has ever sired and, against all odds, the kindest and most gentle too. He looks at his son and sees a beautiful Prince of Atlantis. One who was born to swim rather than walk. Glide through the riptides with a powerful tail rather than run on two human feet.
Ares knows better. When he looks at Percy, he doesn't see a beautifully bland Prince of Atlantis. He sees a boy. A boy covered in blood and dirt and viscera, glaring with death in his eyes and monster flesh between his teeth as he stands in front of a younger demigod. He sees a bloodthirsty expression, almost identical to Ares' own. Loyalty. Possessiveness. The innate drive to protect what is his down to his very last breath. Percy Jackson is no prince. He is a child of war.
Maybe if Poseidon had been there more, had he taken him to his kingdom or taught him more of what his birthright once was, maybe then, he could have been the perfect demigod of the oceans everyone sees in him.
In another life, maybe it could've been. But in this one, he grew up protecting his mother and fighting for his life, and when he finally thought he found a place to be safe, they threw him to the vultures and let them feast. They welcomed him, and then they shoved a sword in his hand at the age of twelve and told him, "Your only purpose in life is to fight your parents' battles. Try not to die, and if you fail, we'll kill you."
Percy might have been born by the seas' will, but he was dropped into an active warzone with his first breath. If Poseidon wanted a prince, he should have raised his son as one. He didn't know the water. All he knew—all he needed to know—was how to fight. He fought and talked back and protected.
The incident with the head of Medusa was the talk of Olympus for weeks. Perhaps it had been more brash idiocy than courage, but when returned, he didn't take it for himself. Didn't keep it as a trophy of his kills. Percy gave it to his mother. Gave her the tool she needed to protect herself, and that is something Ares can respect.
His hearth is stoked with Greek fire, and wartime is his home. It's all he has ever known. And now that there's peace, he's left restless. Unsatisfied. Ares can see it, even if no one else can, because he's seen it in himself for thousands of years.
A peaceful ascension in Atlantis was never in the cards. If Poseidon wanted his son to be an ocean god, he should have brought Percy up himself. Instead, it was left to the fates, and Ares will fight him one-on-one if he tries to take what is not his.
Demigods are born with their parents' power, but the moment they ascend to godhood, who they were means next to nothing. Dionysus is a perfect example. A child of Zeus, sparks flying off his fingertips from infancy. But when he ascended, his powers were his own. They came from his life and experiences, not who he was born as. Ascension came so easily for him because he never selfishly leaned into his father's powers like many of his half-siblings did. Dionysus earned power in his own right and was rewarded with it.
Percy is the same. He never claimed the water to his own name. Always knew in his mind the power was his father's, not his. He's not Kymopoleia, who uses the water for the storms she sees fit to create. Nor is he Triton, who rides the currents and the tides for speed, swimming colony to colony to deliver his messages. His father's domain has aided him, yes, but he is not his siblings who rely on the water for their daily lives. It is not his home or his forsaken birthright. It is his weapon.
It is not there to comfort him. It's there to keep him alive. He fights with Riptide in one hand and, in the other, water of his own kind.
Blood. Ichor. Poison. Misery—Overpowering Akhlys, showing his strength over a primordial, and claiming her domain as his own, that is what sparked his ascension. Poseidon himself does not have power over those liquids. It is Percy's power alone, and the fact that he's more comfortable with blood than with water is no surprise to Ares.
With war comes bloodshed. Percy knows intimately well the feeling of blood rushing through ones veins. The adrenaline as you barely slip away from the touch of death with a sharp twist.
The son of Poseidon will be no water deity. Oh, he's sure to have some connection back to the ocean, but whether with a fist or a sword, his entire mortal life, he did nothing except fight.
A fish that has lived all its life in the ocean can't comprehend life on the surface because water is all it's ever known. Percy might not like war, but he needs it to live because he knows nothing else. Without it, an integral part of his identity will be missing.
No, Percy will be no water god. He will not ascend in Atlantis in the peaceful currents it is known for. He will grow the same way he has for his entire life. With blood and sweat and pain. Here and now.
Ares doesn't allow Percy to process being tossed aside like a ragdoll. He doesn't need it. When the massive greatsword comes swinging downwards, Percy has already rolled out of the way without a glance as to who had thrown him. He's up on his feet and parrying before the other demigods even realize he's no longer in front of them.
A few years back, Percy would've been surprised, then annoyed, and then furious at the sudden attack. Now, he's none of those things. His skin has rapidly gained back some color, and his eyes are sharp. He hasn't looked this present since the war. No monsters are hiding in the shadows. No dead comrades screaming his name. There's himself, his sword, and his opponent.
From there, the fight blurs. Ares is sure the feral grin on Percy's face is reflected on his own. The coliseum shakes with the strength of their blows. No rules, no guidelines, no restrictions. They are not fighting to first blood or to a yield or to being knocked unconscious.
War has no rules. Percy will fight, or he'll die, and if the word "yield" dares leave his mouth, Ares will tear off the boy's head with his bare hands for making a fool of him.
And so, they fight.
It could have been hours or days. Ares doesn't know and doesn't care. Percy's breastplate and armor have been long abandoned, as has Ares' leather jacket. They both have wounds that would be fatal for mortals, but they aren't mortals, are they?
Percy's shirt is half shredded, with cuts and minor stab wounds adorning his skin. He should have lost his grip on his sword ages ago with the blood and ichor slicking his palms, but it stays in his hand, perfectly balanced as ever.
Likewise, Ares is covered in just as much ichor and nowhere near tired. He hasn't had a fight like this in centuries, where a true soldier—a worthy opponent— stands before him who can meet him blow for blow.
Then, Percy makes a mistake. Perhaps the grounds of the coliseum hadn't been cleaned properly, or perhaps something broke loose on one of the many times Ares' sword scraped across the stone, but the edge of Percy's heel slips off a small rock. It's barely larger than a marble, but it throws off his footing just enough to be his downfall. His balance shifts, and he opens himself up for Ares' sword perfectly.
The split second before it connects, Percy's face makes an expression as though he's annoyed in advance that Ares will stop short of attempting the final blow. He's grown far too used to sparring with mortals. The god of war barks a laugh that sounds like booming cannonballs. Then, he thrusts his greatsword straight through the front of Percy's chest and two feet out the back.
There's a moment where everything stands still as the storm halts in its tracks. Someone might be screaming, but it's all inconsequential noise in the face of the pure, gleaming ichor trickling down the front of his blade. He's sure that there'll be hell raised later—maybe an earthquake or two.
For now, though, Ares knows what's written across Percy's face. It's somewhere between unhinged euphoria from finally having a worthy battle and the look of a man who will fight tooth and nail until he drops dead. If he had to guess, the kid hasn't quite processed the lack of red among his ichor, probably thinks the color is from his own rather than Ares’. All he knows is he's not dead, and the fight's not over.
There's a split second where Ares pauses once his sword is in Percy's chest. This unwitting hesitation is his own small mistake. Before he can draw his blade back, Ares feels himself freeze. He can't move, can't speak. Percy's fist is outstretched towards him.
If he could twitch at all, there would probably be a smug smirk on his own face because—Fuck you Poseidon. If you wanted a shiny new sea god for your court, maybe you should've been a better fucking dad.
Percy's fist tightens, and Ares feels his veins constrict. The godlings' eyes flare with flakes of gold before hollowing out completely, leaving behind twin flames of Greek fire hovering in empty sockets. He fixes his grip on Riptide.
Then, with a steel greatsword still skewered straight through where his heart should have been, Perseus Jackson walks forward.
Ares stops wondering.