Chapter Text
Kronos would not necessarily call it dreaming, but he thought it was probably as close to the mortal concept as he would get to. The thought grated, but it was true. For millennia, all he did was dream. The world changed, was razed and built anew from its ashes, a new throne, a new age of gods, of heroes, and humans, brutalizing and worshiping and Kronos lay scattered among the ruins of his deadened kingdom, scattered in a million pieces in the deepest pits of Tartarus, and he dreamed. The children he had prevented from taking his power as was prophesied, had risen to it anyway and destroyed him. Kronos was many things, but he liked to think he learned from his mistakes. He had brought upon his own demise by devouring his threat, eliminating it in his gaping toothy maw, smiling bloodily at his wife. She had looked beautiful, as she always had, a lion pacing by her feet and lotuses blooming along her arms, providing each heir, and looking away when he took them from her.
She had only tried to change his mind once, cupping his face and pressing their foreheads together with tears spilling down the corners of her sea eyes, just as they had when he had taken his mother’s wish, scythe held over a shoulder, right before he had set out to destroy their father. (“You have grown weak, Rhea,” he’d told her, and her tears came harsher now, her chest heaving in a stuttered half-laugh, and he didn’t know how he hadn’t realized she had turned from desperate to enraged, “No, Kronos, you have simply forgotten yourself.”)
Ah, Kronos did love when things came full circle. Perhaps an aspect of his domains over time. His children’s age had reigned long enough, and their own children’s minds were opening to that same rage a violent rebellion always started with. Time could be both painful and sweet, and as it passed, it grew ever easier for Kronos to creep into those bitter minds and taunt that despairing fury into his own leash. It was beyond a dream, in a way, and always it was Kronos bringing his demigods to his heel.
And yet-
His first soldier was a son of the thieving god, useful in that way, useful because of the thick well of poisonous wrath that clouded his mind, a new scar slashing his face in half. He didn’t notice the intruder on their time yet, and so Kronos pushed him out, back into his own mind. And then he turned to look at the tiny spy.
It was- practically an infant, really. A child, quite a few years younger than his first soldier, but still ichor and blood: another demigod. The infant thing wore ratty looking modern clothes, a purple bruise overlaying brown skin, crawling up his jaw and cheek, and it was staring right at Kronos with sullen, rather unimpressed eyes. Eyes, Kronos observed, as shifting and turbulent as the oceans. Poseidon’s eyes. Rhea’s eyes.
The godling crossed his arms, “could you leave?” he said, “you’re creeping me out, dude.”
More than the eyes, he looked so much like Poseidon. Ringlets like the wine dark sea, swaying as the waves and gleaming and black as the depths. The regal cheekbones and sharp jaw softened by baby fat, the hint of shark-like sharp teeth, the dark brow and unreadable expression.
Perhaps, Kronos thought, the fates were on his side for this. He reached to cup the infant's face, ignoring the disgusted curse, and examined him closer, smoothing his thumb over his cheek and lips, tilting his jaw this way and that. Poseidon’s appearance had always taken after his father, even if his unsettling unpredictability had wrestled Kronos for the future, snapping teeth and whirlpools and crashing waves as the world shuddered under his loping gait. When he’d been born, Kronos had in fact stopped for a moment, fleeting regret he hadn’t felt since his first, his golden eyed daughter. Poseidon had looked like a child of destruction, a true legacy of Gaea, and Kronos had always had a soft spot for his mother.
“I said get your hands off , you psycho!” the child flailed in Kronos’ grip, head turning and biting down hard on his hand.
It…hurt. He had not felt pain in ages, eons. It was unfathomable that he could feel it now, now as golden ichor welled up to stain the child’s teeth as he was dropped to the ground, smearing it against his cheek as he wiped his mouth with the back of a hand. Such a small thing, Kronos thought, elation slowly igniting in him, creeping up and outwards like trails of fire. He was looking into a mirror, but if he could only turn those eyes into honey gold, swaying wheat fields, amber waves of grain…
He banished the boy from his mind with a thought, lifting his hand to taste his own ichor. His tongue laved over the bite mark giddily, picking up the subtle traces of the godling. Kronos would rise again, he knew, and the boy would stand at the forefront of his ascension.
He had found himself a body. Olympus shall be razed. Long live the Titan King.