9 Zeus I A.K.A gods are hurt children that never really healed

He was both in Olympus and not in it. Sometimes, he wanted to escape the world. He wanted to forget the world under him, the world of immortals and mortals he was supposed. To be able to do such, he created with a lot of time and patience a realm that could truly be called his.

One no one except a trusted servant of him knew. A realm where he would be able to be Zeus and just Zeus. Here, he wasn't the king of the Olympians. Here he wasn't the hated one. Here he was free. The realm he had created was one of an endless sky made with silver clouds.

He had taken his original form, the one he had when he freed his siblings, the one that was truly him and not what most mortals of immortals saw him as. This was the form where he felt at his strongest and at the same time at his weakest. Vulnerable was the word used by the mortals. Yes... he felt vulnerable yet free.

If anyone saw him, they would have been surprised. He usually took the shape of a mature man. Mortals and immortals were both stupid. They saw someone older and unconsciously treated this person with deference and Zeus had learned this.

He gazed at the endless horizon and sighed. Sometimes, he wondered what was the point of everything. What was the point of existence itself? What was the point of Olympus? 

Sometimes he wished that they had lost the Titanomachy against their forefathers. Their essences would have been dispersed, mortals would have most likely not be living like they were right now. They would have probably been eradicated for good or used as tortured playthings for the titan or maybe things would have been better.

He knew at least one thing, he would have died proud his head held high with his siblings. If they had died, he knew that at that moment at least, they would have died loving him.

He was born the youngest of them, the hidden child of Rhea and Kronos. Since his birth, he had been taught what was his duty. He was to be the next king. He was to be the one to free his siblings. He was the one supposed to make things better. No one had ever asked him what he wanted to do. It had always been what he should be doing and not what he wanted to do.

In the mountain where he was raised with the nymphs, he had lived some of the best moments of his life. He remembered the tales, he remembered the song, he remembered the demented dance, he remembered the love and the care they had for him. Rhea may have been his biological mother but he had never seen her in his life as his mother's figure.

She had always been for him that too-terrifying, too-cold goddess with high expectations. He never truly cared about being her favourite. Sometimes, attention could be disastrous. He may not care but he knew that his older brother, Poseidon did. Their relationship had since long been too broken to be what it was before. There was too much resentment, anger, sadness and betrayal between them but when they quarrelled childishly about who was the favourite, it made him forget for a moment that he had lost his brother.

When he had been fifteen(15), it was decided by his mother that it was time for him to free his siblings. She had helped him infiltrate the stronghold of the Titans. He then did everything to be trusted by them. He did the most excruciating and humiliating thing with a smile. When he was hurt for their amusement, he laughed with them. He remembered what he had to do to be trusted enough to come close to Kronos to enact his plans. He remembered the titan lord and his siblings on his skin. He remembered their disgusting touch. He remembered his screams. He remembered bleeding gold. The day after it he was named cupbearer.

A cupbearer was a person that must have been regarded as thoroughly trustworthy to hold the position. He was the one after all that poured and served drinks to his better. He was one that had in his hands the power of doing great harm if he wanted to.

For 6 months, he stayed as both the cupbearer and the toy of the Titans. They had seen him as theirs. He was their whore Atlas called him. He endured with a smile and one day, with an alchemical mixture of nectar and other mystical components, he poisoned the Titan king and made him regurgitate his siblings.

They had never met him before and it was the same for him yet at this moment, they knew that they were the same, that they were all multiple pieces of a puzzle that didn't fit until they were reunited.

They had escaped Othrys bloodied and filled with the divine equivalent of adrenaline. They had survived. They had together gone back to the island of Crete. This night, the six of them had laid together on the grass contemplating the world. Zeus had wanted this moment to last forever but it didn't.

Kronos had been enraged and had called to his banner almost every creature and being. Kronos had rallied the world itself against them. The haven he grew in had been destroyed the day after.

They may have been born strong but they had never been taught violence or how to fight before. The Titans and their allies taught them savagery, pain and loss. Kronos had begged his mother Gaea to not allow Rhea to intervene and surprisingly, the goddess agreed to do such.

Zeus had never loved suffering but he had become accustomed to it each time they clashed with the Titans and their allies. Each time that they fought, they became better. They began to lose less and less until one day, they began to win.

The Kronides destroyed everything significant to the Titans and their rules. Hestia burnt their worshippers to ashes and danced in their ashes with them. They watched Poseidon remove from the living bodies of their enemies every trace of moisture leaving a living husk behind or used those enemies as puppets. For some, Demeter planted thorns into their bodies that grew and ravaged them from the inside. For some others, Demeter buried them in an inescapable prison at the centre of the earth alive and forever trapped. Hera tortured the immortal enemy they captured with her curses until they broke. Zeus learnt how to use precisely his lightning on their captured enemies. They gain allies that joined them either because of the opportunity they represented like Metis, the Oceanid possessing the domain of wisdom or because of their hatred for the regime of the Titan king or by freeing ancient enemies of The titans that became their allies.

Some of those enemies were the Cyclops that taught them things, secrets unknown to the Kronides and that they only knew because of their mother. They built the weakest of them divine weapons that enhanced their abilities, which could make them equal to their older sisters.

When they had won, when they had ended bathed in the ichor of their fathers, ten years had passed. They made sure to tear limb from limb their father and after that continued to the point what was left was an innumerable number of body parts. They destroyed him so that they would never have the source of their pain again. Together, they had opened a pathway to Tartarus and dispersed the remains of their father on the body of the primordial in every direction so that he could never reform and plague them again.

They had as close as it was possible for immortals to kill their father. They had committed one of the greatest sins, patricide and with it cemented their rule. 

The other Titans and defeated enemies had begged for Mercy. The children of Kronos and Rhea, new rulers of the cosmos gave them none. How could they expect kindness had Zeus thought in disgust when they had only shown the Kronides cruelty?

Many would say that the gods had been too harsh, that they could have been better as if by allowing those ancient enemies to continue to exist, they hadn't been kind. How could the gods have been kinder when they had seen each other suffer, and be broken under the attacks of their enemies? Zeus could remember how Poseidon had put himself on the trajectory aimed at Zeus' heart. He remembered how his brother had screamed. He remembered how the daughter of Atlas had laughed. He remembered how Hades had to protect all of them against armies as they had laid broken in his shadows. He remembered his sweet sister Hestia that abhorred violence that had to kill her heart to immolate their enemies, enemies that were what she had forever wished for, their family. He remembered how Demeter threw herself alone time and time again against Kronos and his army to make sure that they could flee. He remembered how Hera was the one to heal him and let him cry on her shoulder when it sometimes became unbearable. How could Zeus possibly forget? How could he forgive?

When they were together after winning, they had promised themselves only one thing, they had promised to stay as a family, they had promised to stay together and always be there for each other.

They each except him broke it and he resented them for it. He had sacrificed everything, he had given up his life, and all the childish dreams he had for them and their answer to his sacrifices was to leave him behind.

Hestia after the war left Olympus. Her throne stayed empty. The war had broken her, changed her. She went to the mortal world to wander aimlessly. Zeus had begged her to stay. She had told him that she needed time if she yearned for loneliness to put her pieces back into place but that she would soon be back. She had lied.

His brothers stayed with him for a moment before they decided that they wanted more. They left each to conquer a domain they saw themselves fit to rule.

Demeter went to the mortal world. She said that she loved the plant life existing in the mortal world so Zeus created natural wonders to which the mortal world couldn't compare. She had looked at him with sad eyes as if she had seen the reason why he had made it. She had kissed the crown of his head and had left.

Hera was the last one to go. She had said that she wanted to carve into the world a place for herself and that she needed to do it alone.

He was supposed to be happy. He had been appointed King of the gods. He was the all-powerful and supreme God of the sky. He was desired by the most gorgeous and beautiful women they represented yet none of those things filled the gap inside of him.

He had gone back one day to the island he had grown up trying to find anything that could help fill his empty heart. He had just found the wreckage of his childhood home. None lived on the island anymore. Maybe the nymph had their essences destroyed or maybe they had been able to flee. Zeus had hoped that it had been one of those reasons why the island was empty because he honestly didn't want to know how Nymphs seen as good-looking would be treated by Kronos and his subordinates when labelled as traitors. 

A resolution had bloomed in his heart after having seen what his childhood home had become. He would make sure that the reign of his siblings and he don't end like the reigns before them. He would do everything so every sacrifice made would not be in vain. He would grow powerful, so powerful that nothing could shake The children of Rhea's reign.

He had gone back to Olympus and married Metis even if he hadn't wanted to because it had been the clever thing to do. She was a link to the ocean and knew how to govern perfectly due to her domain.

He reigned for centuries with Metis at his side. He did despicable things that sometimes were advised by Metis and sometimes they were not. He dirtied his hands with the worst actions possible. He destroyed and killed adults, elders and children. He destroyed foreign cultures entirely. He killed or orchestrated the fall of mortals and immortals in his pantheon and other pantheon. He made so much Ichor and blood spill that it could have replaced the water of the oceans with it.

The Gazes of Love and adoration that were etched on the face of his subjects turned little by little into disgust and hatred. He acted as if it didn't exist, he ignored them.

His siblings that had abandoned him had come to see him centuries after. He had been overjoyed until he found out that they came to him because of the rumours and not because they yearned for his presence the way he did for them. He had told them to not worry, that everything they heard about him was wrong. He smiled at them when inside he screamed. He was doing this for all of them, for their sake but they didn't understand. Zeus would have understood if he had been at their place. 

One day, while he had been away from Olympus trying to ignore the world, the Sky Father himself had talked to him. He had told Zeus that everything he built, that he wanted to protect would be destroyed because of a snake and that the snake would be the future king. He had told Zeus that the snake will be a child of Metis and him.

When he had come back shaken to his core to Olympus, he will be announced by his wife that she was pregnant with a child, their child.

Zeus had known at that moment what he had to do. Fighting against the fates, the daughters of the inescapable never worked as shown by his predecessors. It was useless to fight but Zeus would have been damned if he didn't do everything in his power to avert the destruction of him and his family.

He had played the role of the happy soon-to-be father. He showered Metis with gifts and played her like a fiddle. She didn't see anything coming.

The prophecy had told him that the child of Metis would be the one destroying everything he had built and become the next king. If he wanted to avoid the prophecy, Zeus knew that the only way he could succeed would be by realising it. 

The child was still in the stomach of Metisband most of the divine strength of Metis went to the growth of the child which meant that she was weaker.

Zeus invited her to his childhood home, on the island of Crete. He told her that a child was always a cause for celebration. Zeus may not have been the wisest or smartest god but he understood Metis more than she thought he did.

He proposed her a wager, a battle of wits he had told her where the winner could be afforded any boon they wanted from the other. When he had seen indecision in her eyes, he had struck by saying" You don't have to do it if you fear losing". This sentence was enough to hurt the pride of Metis. 

"I am going to win husband" she had declared sure of her. "What is the wager had she asked?"

"We will be going to Olympus shapeshifted as animals. Me as a predator and you as a prey. If I catch you, you lose but if I don't you win. I'll even give you some time to put some distance between us" he had told her.

To be fair to her, she almost won. She was almost at the bottom of Olympus where caught her and swallowed her and their unborn child. He had hated doing it. What he was doing could be considered worse than the actions of his father because his father hadn't tried to swallow Rhea.

Using Obscure rituals that he found, he tried to do what his father should have done to succeed. He succeeded in absorbing Metis. He had through it grown stronger and usurped the domain of Metis. Alas, he hadn't known at that moment that he had failed to do so with the child. Metis in a last act of defiance had used before being absorbed completely by him her powers to assure the well-being of the child.

The child, Athena had been the cause of his fall. All the immortal world learnt about what he did and hated him because of this. They called him a tyrant, a king worse than his father. He carried on because the only thing that Zeus knew how to do was to go forward.

He had become one day inflicted with what seemed to be a curse when he was a god. When it shouldn't have been possible. It had been said that it was his punishment from the Moirai. They were not wrong.

Athena was the punishment that came out of his head. He had tried with all his might at her birth to destroy her completely. He failed. Metis must have known what would Zeus do the first time he saw their child because she had been adorned at her birth in an armour, one that saved her from having her essence dispersed, that protected her from his lightning strike.

Athena had fallen from his attack into the ocean, a domain where Zeus could not go after her. He had been scared. What Ouranos had prophecied to him was happening.

All the sacrifices he made for the sake of his family, of Olympus would be turned nought. He had expected everything except betrayal from his siblings. He had accepted that the world itself would be against him. He didn't care that his children that were born from indiscretions didn't side with him. He just didn't expect his own siblings to be against him too when everything he had ever done, everything that he had ever sacrificed was for them.

Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Poseidon with Athena, his accursed child rebelled against him. He begged his siblings to understand but they didn't want. For them, he was just like their father. He asked for the help of his brother Hades. Maybe his eldest brother would have been able to do anything to stop what was called the first Olympiomachy. The answer of his brother had been to laugh in his face and call him a tyrant.

He had lost against them. He was toppled from his throne, bound into divinity-neutralizing chains made by the spawn of Hera and found guilty. Nothing had ever hurt him more than the looks of disgust and hatred of his siblings. He had done everything for them and they paid him with hatred.

He had been only sentenced to be exiled by them. Maybe, a part of them still cared about their brother. It hadn't mattered to Zeus.

When banished, alone after his defeat, Zeus had given up. He had stopped caring. He had chosen to let himself go, to fade. What was the point of existing when he had lost everything that mattered?

The god Zeus had died and stayed dead for more than a millennium until he was brought back by one person, Hera.

Hera was not satisfied with the power handed to her. She craved more and knew that she was not strong enough to get it by herself alone, so her solution was her fallen brother.

Zeus had asked her why did she believe that he would help her after everything she did to him. Hera was a family deity. She knew what was the deepest wish that Zeus held In his heart. He had accepted it.

They freed some of the Titans, recruited from foreign monsters and divinities. They didn't love each other but made a child to serve as a weapon against Athena. This child would be sacrificed to Ares to make him the equal of Athena, to give him the war domain.

The new regime didn't know any of this. They didn't know that Hera planned to betray them. They waited until it was a day of celebration for the new regime, a day when they would have their guard down.

They used the chains that had been used against him to trap Athena. With the help of Hera, they had been able to poison the nectar and the ambrosia.

It evened out their odds. Both sides fought bitterly and Zeus was happy that the wife of Poseidon didn't intervene. He doesn't think that they would have succeeded if she had acted.

They had at the end won. Zeus had been kind to his traitorous siblings. He commanded Hestia to carve out of herself most of her domains. He restricted his brother Hades to be on Olympus except for the winter solstice. Hades had stood alone, so may he stay mostly alone.

When it came to Poseidon, he made him go through what wasn't even a quarter of what Zeus went through. He made him a mortal slave to the king of Troy. He would have let his brother live the life of a slave and resurrect him after to humble him, something that other gods wouldn't have done. If it had been any other supreme God, Poseidon would have suffered way much worse. Alas, the intervention of his brother's wife changed the duration of his punishment.

His brother after his punishment was lifted had left for a while their pantheon. Zeus had let him because he knew that sooner or later, his brother would have come back. They may all hate each other but they were the only ones truly able to understand each other.

As he had thought, his brother had come back from his self-inflicted exile. He welcomed him to Olympus and acted as if he didn't see the hatred in Poseidon's eyes.

His family was broken and could never truly be called healthy but this facsimile of a family was everything they had, it was everything they knew. They were linked by thorny chains that burrowed into their skins and made them bleed but it was alright for Zeus.

Almost half a century before, a great prophecy was issued by the oracle. The prophecy had said that a half-blood of the eldest gods Shall reach sixteen against all odds And see the world in endless sleep. A single choice it was said shall end his days, Olympus to preserve or raze.

This prophecy was the reason why Zeus hadn't cared about his half-blood Thalia's fate or why he had given Jason to Juno as a gift. They may have been his children but in the great scheme of things, they didn't matter. What mattered was Olympus, his family, not short-lived mortals even if they came from his loins.

He had seen what the demigod of his brother was able to do. He had seen him bring the sky down on the Kindly one, something a mortal of twelve years shouldn't be able to do.

They had told him that he was a child, that he couldn't be the thief but this child even if he was mortal had ichor running in his veins. It made him capable of doing things mortals shouldn't be able to do.

Only a mortal would have been able to steel his lightning bolt. He knew that Poseidon hated him. Poseidon also knew about the great prophecy and yet brought to this world a powerful demigod that he claimed. The child had lived in the same city as Olympus and had always been known as a troublemaker.

It all meant one clear thing to him. His brother wanted to use his child to raze Olympus. His brother said it wasn't the case yet every one of his actions showed the contrary.

"Bia" he called. The Goddess appeared kneeling behind him. She had taken the form of a muscular young adult woman with sun-kissed skin and black hair. She was with her siblings the only one that Zeus truly trusted this day.

He would not say that he loved them as much as his siblings but they came right after. They had been with him since the beginning of the Titanomachy and had never betrayed him. When he was usurped by his siblings, they refused to swear oaths of fealty to their new rulers and because of that were imprisoned in Tartarus. When Hera had come to him, one of his first priorities had been to free them.

He knew he could ask Bia or any of her siblings to jump into Chaos itself and they would do so with smiles on their faces. 

"Put in my name," he told her" a bounty of a billion drachma on the head of the half-blood of my brother".

"Your desire will be done, my king" she replied before disappearing to do what he had asked her.

"Thanks, Bia" he spoke. She may have been gone but he knew that she would hear him.

His brother's bastard was a menace. The child was his own blood and shared the same eyes as the brother and the mother of Zeus. Looking at the child was like looking at his brother at times when things were both better and worst. His brother would hate him even more for this but Zeus was sure that one day, he'll understand.

Zeus had all eternity to repair his family. He was doing it for them and he was sure that one day, they will understand.