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Hera adjusted the small bronze clasp on Ares’s little tunic, smoothing the fabric over his shoulder with the practiced touch of a mother who had done this hundreds of times. He stood remarkably still for a four year old — chin up, chest puffed out, trying so hard to look like a warrior already. Beside him, three year old Hebe swayed very slightly on her feet, curls bobbing, gripping her mother’s thumb with both hands and blinking up at her with wide, sleepy-sweet eyes.
“Alright, my loves.” Hera murmured, voice low and warm as sunlight on marble. “Your father has work to do, and I have a ceremony to oversee. I need you both to stay in your rooms until we return.”
Ares nodded once, serious as a tiny commander receiving orders.
Hebe, who absolutely did not understand the instruction, nodded purely because Ares had.
Hera laughed softly — the kind of laugh that curled into your chest and stayed there — and pressed a kiss to each soft little head. Ares tried to pretend he didn’t melt into it… and melted anyway. Hebe threw her arms around Hera’s neck, then released with a wide grin like she’d accomplished something grand.
Zeus watched from near the door, leaning on his staff, wearing that particular expression he only ever wore around these two — the mixture of awe, humor, and mild fear shared by every father of small children.
Hera straightened, brushing her hands together. “I’ll be back soon.” she announced.
“Okay, Mama.” Hebe chirped.
Ares saluted her. Hera kissed her fingers and tapped it against his forehead, making him beam.
Then she swept out, regal and effortless, the doors closing firmly behind her.
A single heartbeat of silence.
Two.
Three.
And then—
Ares turned around with absolute conviction.
“We’re staying with you today.”
Hebe nodded so hard her curls bounced like springs. “NO leaving!” she declared with the confidence of a child who had never followed a rule in her entire short life.
Zeus stared at them.
They stared back.
He tried logic first — always a mistake with toddlers.
“…I have council in five minutes.”
Ares blinked slowly, unimpressed.
Hebe blinked back, but faster, because that’s what she thought blinking contests were.
Their faces remained identical: pure determination, tiny chins lifted, stances wide like baby goats preparing to charge.
Zeus exhaled through his nose.
“…Right.” he muttered finally. “Of course you do.”
The king of gods had many powers.
Stopping his children when they had made up their minds was not one of them.
***
The grand bronze doors of the council chamber swung open with their usual ceremonious weight… and for the first time in centuries, the entire pantheon stopped dead in the doorway.
Right in the center of the gleaming marble floor stood Ares — tiny, fierce, already red-cheeked from exertion — running in a tight, dizzying circle like he was generating his own personal battlefield cyclone. His curls bounced with every lap, his little feet slapping the floor with surprisingly rhythmic determination.
Three paces behind him, doing her absolute earnest best, was Hebe.
Hebe was not running so much as committing to movement. A sort of wobbling, purposeful toddle — arms out for balance, face scrunched in concentration, curls bouncing wildly. Every few seconds she shouted, “WAIT!!” and increased her speed by exactly half a millimeter per hour.
Not a single adult was supervising them.
Poseidon took one step into the room, blinked hard, then took a second step — slower — as if he was afraid sudden motions would trigger something.
Demeter whispered, “Where is Hera?” like they were witnessing the beginning of a natural disaster.
Ares shriek laughed as he turned his tenth circle. Hebe tripped. Caught herself. Then tripped again for good measure. She didn’t fall — toddlers have a peculiar physics system — but she did spin in a full circle, regain balance, and continue after her brother like nothing had happened.
Up at the front of the chamber, Zeus sat at the head of the massive table, elbows planted on the polished surface, fingers pressed to his temple in that distinct I’m coping, I swear I’m coping posture.
He did not look up as the gods filed in, though his jaw tightened ominously.
Finally, he cleared his throat.
“We will…”He inhaled. Then exhaled. “…ignore them.”
Silence.
Pure, unanimous disbelief radiated through the room.
Aphrodite raised a single brow. Athena looked like she had just witnessed a strategic impossibility. Hermes mouthed the words no we won’t to Apollo, who snorted so loudly Zeus opened one eye in warning.
But despite their doubts, every god instinctively understood the stakes.
Rule One: Do not upset Hera’s children.
Rule Two: Do not upset Zeus’s children.
Rule Three: For the love of all things holy, do not make either of them cry.
Rule Four: Don’t even look directly at them. They sense fear.
The last time Ares had cried in a council session?
Let’s just say the walls had never quite recovered.
And the last time Hebe had cried? Two immortal attendants had quit on the spot.
So all the gods did what any terrified, self-preserving deity would do:
They pretended nothing was happening.
Ares zoomed past Hermes’s chair in a blur. Apollo stared at his scroll but did not read a single word.
Athena attempted to maintain her stoic composure but twitched every time Ares skidded dangerously close to her sandal.
Poseidon whispered, “This is chaos.”
Demeter calmly sipped tea like she’d seen worse — which she had.
Zeus lifted his head just enough to give the room a look that said:
If you acknowledge this, I will smite every single one of you.
Thus the meeting began.
Ares continued his war tornado routine.
Hebe followed like a determined little moon orbiting the sun.
And the entire council pretended — valiantly, desperately — that this was normal.
Poseidon tried — truly tried — to begin the meeting with dignity. He set his trident beside the table, cleared his throat, and opened his mouth to speak about something involving tides or treaties or a sea-serpent migration—
But the room shifted before a single word could escape.
Ares launched himself across the floor with all the subtlety of a miniature comet and, without a flicker of hesitation, hurled his entire tiny war god body straight into Zeus’s lap.
A thunderous crash of papers rustled, a scroll slid to the floor, and half the council gasped like they’d just witnessed an assassination attempt.
Zeus did not even blink.
He simply steadied the child with one hand, gathered his strewn parchments with the other, and settled Ares against him as though this interruption had been penciled into the meeting agenda.
If anything, he looked… practiced. Like this was hardly the first time his son had derailed legislation with a flying leap.
Ares curled comfortably, small fingers fisting in the fabric of Zeus’s tunic, head pressing against the familiar warmth of his father’s chest as though he had never feared anything in his life.
Poseidon, thrown completely off rhythm, stared for a long second before murmuring, “Right then.” and pretending this was perfectly normal for the King of Olympus.
Meanwhile, Hebe — who had grown bored of spinning circles and shouting her triumph into the acoustics — paused beside Aphrodite’s seat. She blinked up at the goddess of love with enormous, dewy eyes.
Then came the toddler’s most ancient, universally understood invocation:
She lifted both arms.
A simple gesture. Absolute magic.
Aphrodite melted so quickly it was almost audible.
“Aww— sweetheart, come here.” she breathed, scooping Hebe up like she’d been waiting all her immortal life to do exactly that. Hebe tucked herself under Aphrodite’s chin, curls brushing soft against silk, little fingers patting her cheek with complete trust.
Aphrodite went soft, radiant, undone. The rest of the council exchanged the helpless look of beings who knew they didn’t stand a chance either.
But toddlers never stayed still for long.
Ares wriggled off Zeus’s lap just as Hebe scrambled down from Aphrodite’s arms, the pair taking off again like two tiny explorers who had just discovered the world was bigger than they remembered.
The council made a valiant attempt to start properly — truly, they did — but their words were constantly derailed by the patter of small feet, the clatter of tiny fingers investigating priceless artifacts, and the occasional shriek of joy echoing off ancient marble.
Ares inspected pillars. Hebe pushed chairs taller than her. Both of them circled the table with the unstoppable intent of adventurers on a sacred quest.
Business proceeded in halting stutters, every member of the council pretending they were not repeatedly interrupted by the joyous chaos of the king’s offspring.
And Zeus, for his part, sat at the head of the table with a look that said he had accepted this as his fate.
Stormborn king or not, he was also the father of toddlers.
And today, the toddlers were winning.
The council watched the slow, steady unraveling of Zeus’s composure with the kind of fascination usually reserved for eclipses or prophecies. It wasn’t malicious — just deeply, irresistibly entertaining.
Hermes leaned back in his seat, lips twitching.
“My king… perhaps a recess would be wise?”
Zeus inhaled, squared his shoulders, and answered with the confidence of a man who had absolutely no idea what was happening in his own house.
“No. They’re calm. Look at them. Perfectly—”
His sentence disintegrated in real time.
Ares, having rediscovered his boundless energy, marched toward Athena’s massive throne and began climbing it with the determination of a tiny general scaling enemy fortifications.
Athena didn’t even blink. She simply reached down, plucked him off the stone like one might relocate an especially opinionated housecat, and deposited him neatly back onto Zeus’s lap.
Before Zeus could readjust, Hebe toddled over, gaze fixed on her brother as if he were a comet she must follow. She climbed onto Zeus’s other leg, immediately tangling her fingers in his hair with single minded devotion.
She wasn’t pulling. She was braiding. Or… attempting to. Two strands, a knot, another knot, a tiny grunt of effort — artistic chaos.
Zeus now had both toddlers on him, one wriggling, one styling his hair like an eager apprentice beautician.
He continued the meeting anyway.
The greatest king the cosmos had ever known sat there discussing border disputes while a preschooler braced a foot against his ribs for leverage and another attempted a hairstyle that could only be described as “battlefield chic.”
Ares eventually wriggled free — because staying still was against his nature — and burst across the room again. Hebe slid off Zeus’s lap with a soft plop and toddled after him, curls bouncing like springy little storm clouds.
Athena straightened her scroll and prepared to present her military report. Her tone was crisp, her posture impeccable.
She got exactly six words out.
Ares appeared beside her and declared, “That strategy is BAD. You need more horses.”
Athena didn’t sigh — she exhaled in that patient, bone deep way only an eldest sister could.
“You’re four.”
Ares folded his arms, unimpressed. “And you’re wrong.”
Zeus pretended he didn’t hear that. Athena pretended she didn’t consider debating a toddler.
They moved on.
Poseidon cleared his throat to bring up sea treaties, posture regal, expression composed—
Hebe marched up to him with absolute ceremony, placed a small seashell in his lap, and stared up at him with the solemn pride of someone offering a sacred tribute.
There was a beat of silence.
Poseidon — earth shaker, sea lord, terrifying force of nature — accepted the gift with both hands and nodded gravely.
“Thank you, little one.”
Because refusing a toddler? That was braver than any monster slaying quest.
Demeter’s turn came next. She spoke softly, outlining harvest issues, the rhythms of grain and earth—
Then felt a gentle tug on her skirt.
She looked down to find Hebe peering up, face earnest as sunrise.
“I like your hair.” Hebe announced, as though delivering a message from fate itself.
Demeter’s eyes instantly filled. Her smile softened into something warm enough to ripen fruit on the branch.
“Bless you, child.”
Apollo tried next — but found himself paused by the small weight settling on his knee. Ares inspected his bow with the intensity of someone evaluating the worth of a legendary blade.
“Can I have it?” he asked, tiny voice extremely serious.
Apollo blinked. “No.”
Ares stared at him. Not a tantrum. Not a wail.
Just a slow, deeply wounded look — the kind that suggested Apollo had personally betrayed him, his ancestors, and possibly the entire concept of childhood.
Apollo wilted.
He still didn’t give him the bow. But he looked like he considered it.
And through it all, the council lurched on — a meeting held hostage by two tiny immortals who had absolutely no idea the universe was supposed to revolve around anything but them.
Hermes lasted longer than any reasonable god should.
Once he realized Zeus was slowly fraying around the edges, he stepped in with the bright, effortless charm that usually kept half the world from murdering each other.
He crouched beside Ares and Hebe, tapping their noses, pulling shiny trinkets from thin air, juggling quills until Hebe squealed and Ares tried to catch one mid-spin. Zeus shot Hermes a look that was genuine gratitude disguised beneath kingly stoicism.
For a few blessed minutes, the council proceeded like a normal divine assembly — or as normal as it could be with two toddlers ricocheting through the airspace.
But toddlers have stamina even gods can’t match.
Hermes’s cloak became the first casualty. Hebe tugged on it until she decided it clearly belonged to her now. Then she spotted a soft, overstuffed cushion and dragged it across the floor with the determination of a migrating bird carrying its entire life in its beak.
Next came a scroll — one of Athena’s carefully prepared ones — and a reed pen clutched triumphantly in her fist.
The scroll was meant for military strategy. Hebe absolutely did not care.
Without hesitation, she gathered all her stolen treasures under the massive central table. It took her a moment to arrange everything; her tiny hands patted the cushion into position, her curls bouncing with the seriousness of an architect designing a new wing of Olympus.
When she stepped back to admire her work, she nodded once.
A nest. Perfect.
She wriggled into it on her stomach, rolled onto her back, then curled into a shape that defied laws of comfort, blanket of Hermes’s cloak tucked around her shoulders like she’d earned it in battle.
Ares watched this with envy for exactly two seconds before following her, dropping onto all fours and disappearing under the table’s edge like a miniature warrior entering his mountain stronghold.
Ares, seeing the new sanctuary, didn’t hesitate. He crawled under the table beside her like it was a hidden cave only he and his sister were allowed to enter. The two of them exchanged tiny, conspiratorial giggles, whispered plans, and occasional nudges. Sometimes a head bumped the underside of the table with a soft bonk. A soft ow that was more offended than pained.
Ares whisper yelling: “You hit me with your foot!”
Hebe whisper yelling back: “Your face was THERE!”
The council froze more times than they cared to admit.
Every ankle received at least one mysterious poke — a small, curious finger prodding like a new species investigating unfamiliar terrain.
Zeus didn’t even flinch anymore when a chair leg rattled or a sudden “bonk!” echoed like an omen of toddler violence. He just rubbed the bridge of his nose with a sigh that carried equal parts exhaustion and unshakable paternal softness.
At least — mercifully — the two were contained.
Under the table, yes. In a questionable nest made from stolen council property, yes. But contained.
And that meant Zeus could finally continue the meeting.
Not gracefully, not majestically, but with the resigned dignity of a father who had accepted that chaos was simply the soundtrack of his life.
His voice was steady, his posture regal, but his eyes unmistakably warm — the kind of soft, helpless fondness only small children could pull out of a god who ruled storms.
Eventually, the chaos dwindles.
The little “under the table fortress” stops rustling.
First comes Hebe, crawling out on her elbows like a tiny adventurer returning from war.
Her curls are full of dust. Her dress is crooked. She looks proud of herself anyway.
She yawns — a small, squeaky little thing — and without hesitation marches straight to Demeter, arms lifted.
Demeter, who has been pretending for the last hour that she is not desperate for toddler affection, gathers her up instantly. Hebe curls right into her lap, thumb in mouth, already half gone.
Ares, surveying the room like a tiny general checking his ranks, took deliberate, measured steps back toward Zeus. He approached with the solemnity of a soldier finally relieved of duty. “Dad…” he said softly, voice small but steady, “I’m tired.”
Zeus, whose patience had been tested in ways only toddlers could manage, leaned forward and scooped Ares into his arms without hesitation. The boy folded immediately into his father’s chest, body heavy with the exhaustion of relentless energy finally spent. His curls pressed against Zeus’s tunic, and for a heartbeat, the world narrowed to the steady rhythm of little breathing hearts.
Hebe gives one last enormous sleepy blink. Demeter hesitates, then carefully passes her to Zeus as well.
And suddenly…
Zeus is holding both of them.
One child snoring into his shoulder. The other dozing against his collarbone. Small hands gripping the fabric of his tunic. Two warm little bodies curled into him as if he’s the safest place in any realm.
The entire council falls silent. The whole room softens, the air itself seems to hush.
Zeus speaks, barely above a whisper:
“…As I was saying… regarding the northern borders…”
And without even realizing it, every god in the chamber responds in the same low, reverent whisper.
A whispering council session. Because two toddlers are asleep on their king.
And honestly?
No one would dare break that peace.
***
The council doors open with barely a sound.
Hera steps inside quietly, eyes sweeping the room the way only a mother does when she’s counting the heads that matter most. She spots Zeus immediately — not because of the kingly presence, or the lightning in his veins, or the way everyone else is whispering around him…
…but because he’s sitting there with both toddlers asleep on him like he’s the world’s warmest armchair.
His voice is pitched so low the gods practically lean in to hear him, and the sight hits her with a kind of unsurprised fondness.
Of course they’d come here. Of course they’d find him.
Zeus meets her eyes over the council table, trying to keep his voice at that whisper the whole room has adopted.
“They, uh… decided to stay.” he murmurs.
He looks like a man caught doing something terribly domestic.
And loving it.
Hera steps closer, brushing her fingers through Hebe’s curls, then Ares’s hair. She leans in and kisses each little forehead.
Then, just as gently, she turns and kisses Zeus’s cheek.
“Seems like you managed beautifully.” she whispers.
He tries to play it off, of course he does—king, thunderlord, embodiment of power that he is.
“It was nothing.” he mutters, attempting stoic…and failing, because the softness in his eyes betrays every word.
Hera hums, amused and warm. She eases Hebe into her arms with practiced grace.
Zeus stands, cradling Ares against his chest like the boy is made of spun gold.
Around them, the council begins to quietly adjourn as well.
No grand decree. No dramatic exit.
Just a king walking out with a sleeping child on his shoulder, trailing his queen and their daughter.
Zeus leaves the council chamber with his family in his arms, softer than anyone else will ever get to see him —and Hera walks beside him, knowing exactly why.