#and also about how hades goes the 'selective mutism' route for managing this specific trauma

[words-writ-in-starlight]

day 6: "touch starved"

It was a strange thing to think about, that Poseidon could barely recognize his own brother. In a way, Aidoneus had been his only company for years in the dark, but this person—tall, sharp-featured, wrapped in white bandages staining iridescent gold with ichor—was a stranger. The only thing that Poseidon recognized was the coloring. He remembered, hazily, being envious of his father’s deep blue skin, flecked with stars. He had looked like a king. Like the king of time and everything that bowed to it.

Aidoneus didn’t look like a king, Poseidon thought privately as he hesitated in the half-open door of the small shelter that Metis had transformed into an infirmary. His blue skin was a softer shade than Kronos’, and his stars were an illusion, nothing but flecks of ichor dried into glittering flakes of gold in his long hair and on his exposed skin. Aidoneus just looked—tired, and hurt, and shockingly small despite his feet hanging off the mat beneath his back.

“Um,” Poseidon said, awkward. “Aidoneus?”

The one visible eye flickered open, and then squinted shut again, a painful-looking twitch running down the arm nearest to Poseidon. Poseidon hastily shut the door behind him. It was after sunset, but before full dark—he had been so delirious with glee over his first day of freedom that he nearly blinded himself for good, and Metis had started limiting him to wandering around near dawn and dusk, to acclimate himself to the light. Aidoneus, she had told him quietly when he asked to visit, couldn’t even bear that much light, not yet.

“Sorry,” Poseison said hastily. “Sorry. I’m, um. I’m Poseidon? I guess we haven’t really—met.”

Aidoneus blinked at him, a flicker of interest ghosting across the weary planes of his face. Poseidon tried his best to grin down at him, and hoped it looked right. He’d been trying to relearn the trick of—people, and Metis and Hera and Hestia were kind enough to let him blunder and fuck up and fix it, and Zeus was a whole other force of nature. Poseidon had figured out quickly enough that it didn’t really matter how uncomfortable he was with talking to people, when it came to Zeus. He could just stand back and let his younger brother carry the conversation, and Zeus would take any remotely positive engagement as his due, and ignore anything else. Poseidon knew that Metis worried about Zeus overtaxing him, but it was perversely relaxing.

He was nervous about talking to Aidoneus. He felt like he needed to get it right, with Aidoneus.

Aidoneus’ lips trembled for a moment as Poseidon hovered uneasily just inside the door, and then he swallowed and raised a hand—slowly, so stiffly that Poseidon’s own bones hurt just watching. Aidoneus touched his own face, just under his exposed eye, and his lips pressed together on a letter that he couldn’t quite form. He managed a faint hum, like he was trying to force his voice into cooperating, and tapped his cheek again, more forcefully.

“Oh! I mean,” Poseidon said, scratching a little sheepishly at his own cheek, beneath the bandages hiding his eye. “I guess we technically met then, yeah, but there wasn’t a lot of time for small talk, you know? You were in pretty bad shape, you probably remember, and I was in shock, or something, and you were also, you know, bleeding out, so maybe you don’t actually remember. I’m not an expert or anything but I figured it was a ‘if he lives, we can hang out under non-mandatory circumstances where we can both talk and see things’ kind of deal, at the time.”

Poseidon shut his mouth with a sharp click on the words, realizing that Aidoneus was watching him with a steady gaze. “Sorry,” Poseidon said again. A cool flush was rising on his cheeks, and he could feel his fins threatening to make an appearance under that dark red stare. “You probably don’t want to think about it. Um—I talk too much. Metis thinks it’s like you not being able to talk, except the other way around. If I say something that pisses you off, maybe just point to the door? And I’ll leave you alone.” He swallowed his next words, and forced himself to think, to take a breath before he spoke. The silence between his words was a living thing, making it hard to breathe. Poseidon hated silence. “Do you want me to leave? You can just nod or shake your head.”

For a moment, he thought that Aidoneus wasn’t going to do anything—that he was just going to sit there and stare Poseidon down until he left out of sheer discomfort. But then, a tiny movevment, careful. A shake of Aidoneus’ head.

Poseidon gestured at the floor next to Aidoneus’ sickbed and asked, “Can I sit?”

A nod, this time.

Poseidon took a deep breath, let it out, and walked around Aidoneus so that he was facing the door, then dropped himself down on the floor. He could see the end of the wounds, on this side, the bandages stopping just above Aidoneus’ left wrist, and without thinking, Poseidon reached out and grabbed his brother’s hand.

Aidoneus went tense, hissed in a breath through his teeth.

“Sorry!” Poseidon released him so quickly he heard the bone at the bend of Aidoneus’ wrist knock against the floor, and he clenched his hands in his lap for fear that he might make it worse. “I didn’t think—I just, I don’t really like the dark? And it’s getting dark out, and I’m not really tired, and I didn’t think.”

That clear red eye was back on him, and Poseidon bit his tongue to shut himself up.

He remembered what it had been like, when Zeus first yanked him into a hug. Poseidon had felt like his skin was on fire from the simple act of being touched, really touchedby another person, someone he could see and feel and talk to. Zeus had thumped him on the back, and then left an arm slung around Poseidon’s shoulder as they watched Metis direct the others through stopping the worst of Aidoneus’ bleeding. They had both still had ichor on their hands, from holding Aidoneus together until they could get him real help, and Poseidon was holding a pad of bandages over half his face, waiting quietly for someone to be free to look at his wound, and somehow the thing that had sent him into a boneless pile on the ground was his brother giving him a hug.

The thing Poseidon had missed the most, in the lonely dark, was being touched. He had lived in fear of Kronos, of course, but Rhea’s hands had been so kind, the rare, precious touch of her forehead against his so warm. He had missed many things about the world, but touch—it was so simple, so essential, so shattering to have it restored after so long. It had probably scared Zeus half to death, when Poseidon simply crumpled out from under his arm and started sobbing.

And Aidoneus had been alone in that darkness, with no one but Kronos for company, for thirteen years.

Just thinking about it made Poseidon feel sick in every fiber of his body.

Poseidon didn’t realize that his eye was closed tightly until he heard, for the first time in his life, his brother’s voice. It was rusty with disuse, a broken stutter with barely enough breath to be audible, but it was a whole word.

“Hhh-h-her-re.”

Poseidon opened his eye, and—

Aidoneus was holding his hand out again. It was trembling from the effort of holding his hand off the floor, but it was there.

“I’m not gonna hurt you, am I?” Poseidon asked, already reaching out. “I don’t want to be mean, but you look really bad.” Aidoneus shook his head, hand dipping as if he was already running out of strength to hold it up.

He flinched again, just a little, when Poseidon took his hand, but this time, Poseidon didn’t let go. It took a moment, but Aidoneus’ fingers slowly relaxed in his.

Aidoneus’ hand didn’t feel summer-wind-hot, like Zeus’ did. Instead, it was cool, only slightly warmer than Poseidon’s own chill. Poseidon told Aidoneus as much, and Aidoneus watched him with that same solemn, steady gaze.

“I guess it makes sense,” Poseidon said. “I never really thought about what wealthwas like as a domain. Like, the ocean is a place, right? But metal is cold, and rocks are cold unless you leave them out in the sun. Hey, once you can stand sunlight, we should see if you hold heat, it would be like one of Metis’ things. An experiment. Has she told you about those?”

A head-shake.

“Oh, she was telling me about one the last time I got my bandages changed. Do you want me to tell you about it? I could shut up if I’m being too loud. Sometimes everything is so loud, but also, I hate it when it’s quiet. Everyone else is on a bunch of errands, and I was supposed to be letting you sleep, but it was really—quiet. I hope you weren’t actually asleep when I came in. I just figured maybe you weren’t, and if you weren’t, I would feel a little less stupid talking to you than I would talking to myself, even if you didn’t talk back, and—”

A light tug on their joined hands interrupted Poseidon mid-thought, and he looked back down at Aidoneus, startled.

“T-t-e-ll m-m—” Aidoneus couldn’t seem to get past the start of the second word, his hand becoming a fist in Poseidon’s grip as his face creased with frustration.

“Tell you—about Metis? She said that the new salve for your wounds was an experiment, I didn’t really pay attention to most of the details but I can try,” Poseidon said gamely. Aidoneus’ features slowly relaxed, and he nodded again. “Okay, so,” Poseidon said, tucking his feet under him so that he was sitting cross-legged, with Aidoneus’ hand in his lap and his other hand free to gesture. “She was saying that she found some plant, she called it comfy—or, um, comfurry, or something like that…”