#hypnos:thread

His hunger was all-consuming, Hypnos’ need to finally eat something after being starved for so long, keeping his thoughts distracted from anything else for the time being. He knew he was hurt, at least, but his wounds could wait until the torturous gnawing sensation in his stomach had been quietened some.

He was too distracted by it to even notice how much things had changed in his home, or to check to see if anyone else was there as he stole through the house to the kitchen, hands shaking as he went through the stores of food, scarcely able to open the packaging properly before he was trying to eat it, desperation taking over his actions as he ate.

Cayden had thought he was home alone for the night. He had told Blake and Lilah to have their own little date night because he was exhausted and still trying to get back in the habit of staying awake like a normal person without needing to sleep for a week or so. Plus, he liked making sure they got some time to just the two of them, too.

So the sounds coming from downstairs startled him awake and almost had him reaching for a baseball bat before he figured it was probably just his psychotic little brother or something. Creeping downstairs, he stopped dead when he glanced into the kitchen and saw just who was actually there.

“D-daddy?”

With how thin, dirty and dishevelled he was, Hypnos looked practically wraith-like in appearance, his hair matted and his eyes hollow.

“Cayden…”

His son’s name was barely a cracked whisper after spending so long having not spoken to a single soul during his imprisonment. He almost dropped the food he’d piled up in his arms when he saw him, only barely managing to function enough to put it all down on the counter instead before turning back to the younger male, trying to find a relieved smile among the sudden torrent of emotions that flooded into him.

It took him a moment to remember how to move, but when he did, he lurched forward and all but tackled his dad. It had been hard enough when his sibling had left, but he had honestly thought his dad had abandoned him too, and that had nearly broken him.

The hug was tight, probably too tight, as he broke down sobbing. It didn’t matter to him that Hypnos looked like a walking horror movie extra, all that mattered was he had come back. That he was home. The momentum of his son almost knocked him off his feet, and tight enough that it stole the breath from him for a moment, but it was returned with as much strength as he could muster, even as the injuries he bore reminded him of their existence with the sudden physical contact.

“H-how long have I been gone?” he asked, tears already making the words difficult to get out.

Hypnos was afraid to know the answer. More so when he thought about how everyone else might have reacted to his absence.

It was a long moment before Cayden could slow his sobs enough to even try to make words came out. He had just been so devastated that it had been a struggle to not push away everyone else that he loved too.

“O-over twenty years,” he finally choked out before completely burying his face against his dad’s shoulder.

Hypnos froze, the answer hitting him like a slap in the face.

“Twenty years? I’ve been in that place for…”

He was shellshocked. The worst he’d imagined in his confinement had been far fewer. Perhaps no more than five or six at most, but not twenty. The realization made him suddenly lightheaded, and he had to force his focus back to his son to maintain enough equilibrium to not collapse.

“Cayden, I’m so sorry. I-I…”

He whimpered a little, trying to calm himself down but not being able to. The entire thing was a fresh wave of emotion and heartache.

“You vanished a-around the same time as Ma- my brother and sister and I thought you left me too,” he wept, hating just how weak and vulnerable he sounded about the entire thing. But he had spent the years thinking it was his fault that they all left him.

“Papa and Hecate and Aunt Ava tried finding you…”

“No. No, I didn’t leave you.” Hypnos answered quickly, panicked and heartbroken at finding out Cayden thought he’d been abandoned.

“A coven of witches caught me. They were trying to summon and capture your uncle Thana, but they caught me instead.” he explained, clinging to the boy as though he was afraid either of them might disintegrate at any moment.

“They kept me prisoner all this time. The magic they used, I don’t know where they got it, but it is old, forgotten magic, and it weakened me, stopping me from escaping and from anyone finding me.”

The words and explanation helped, but he was still feeling so terribly lost and raw. There was so much he had to be caught up on and Cayden had no idea where to even try starting.

“How…how did you get out?”

“I don’t know, exactly.” he admitted, closing his eyes to try to lessen the tears and finding it to be no help at all.

“After I’d been trapped a while and had become weak, I fell asleep, and when I woke again, the place had been burned down, and I only escaped after the building caved in on the cage and broken it open. I don’t know how long before I woke it happened, but I came straight back here once I got out.”

“S-so no one else know y-you’re home?”

He knew he was going to need to call his papa at the very least. Or aunt Ava, both of them surprisingly good at getting anyone and everyone else to answer their phones no matter how busy they were.

Hypnos shook his head, although, in truth, he had no idea if anyone had picked up his presence at all after he’d finally escaped and could be traced again.

He had no idea even how the building had burned to the ground in the first place, or what had happened to those who had held him against his will, but those thoughts were furthest from his mind right now, simply just trying to hold himself together enough to begin to recover from his ordeal.

Cayden pulled back slowly and tried to wipe his face dry, but it didn’t help that he was still crying. His nose was all stuffed up from it, making it hard to breathe, but he was trying to pull himself back together and be logical.

“We gotta…gotta call papa or Cate. They need to know.”

As much as he feared how Moros would react to seeing him again after so long, Cayden was right, and Hypnos was just as desperate to see his loved ones as his son had been to see him.

“I know.” he murmured, fighting a spell of lightheadedness that had him rocking a little on his heels and almost reaching out for something to steady himself against.

When he finally got himself even remotely under control, Cayden really looked at him and it broke his heart even more. The fact that anyone could treat his dad like this… It made him understand why his aunt and uncle were so protective of him.

“You need to sit,” he mumbled, reaching out for him to help steady him better.

Hypnos nodded in agreement, reluctant to let go of his son, but glad to not have to stand any longer with how little strength he had in his current physical state.

“I’m so sorry I put all of you through this.” he mumbled tearfully, too exhausted to try to hold back his emotions, his relief at finally being free and home coming up against his struggle to comprehend that he’d been missing for over two decades. “I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”

As soon as his dad was settled, Cay curled up against his legs, cheek resting against his knee. He was almost afraid it was all just a dream and that his dad would vanish again if he let go of him for even a moment.

The apologies had him curled tighter around his legs, a small whimper escaping him. Everything was still sort of messy for him, getting back into things difficult at best, but he was trying. “Don’t go away again, okay? Please? Just stay?”

“I’m not going anywhere.” Hypnos murmured, stroking his sons messy hair. “I promise. I don’t know what happened to the coven that kept me locked up, but I don’t think they can do it again. The place they kept me, it was completely destroyed.”

He stilled under his dad’s touch, but he didn’t loosen his grip. It was almost as if he were a child again and dealing with his first nightmares, but he didn’t really care. “Good. Fuck them. I hope they’re dead,” he growled, voice still thick from crying.

Hypnos let out a shuddered sigh, nodding and closing his eyes. He wasn’t normally one for wishing death on anyone, but this was a justifiable exception that he doubted anyone could argue against.

He didn’t say much else for a while, content to focus his remaining energy on comforting his son. Cayden was half in his lap, needing the closeness more than he realized. A small part of him kept saying it was just a dream and he was too terrified that it was. He probably wouldn’t believe it until his other father told him it wasn’t a dream.

“You need to eat,” he finally mumbled, still not letting go.

A weak smile barely made its way onto his lips to acknowledge Cay’s words. He’d gone without food for so long that he was both ravenously hungry, and far too thin to eat very much without making himself sick. It would take time and rest for him to recover and be much more like his old self, but at least now he was home and had his family there with him, and that was all he cared about.

He shifted around a little, just enough to reach the counter without letting go of Hypnos, and began blindly grabbing at food. “Eat.” His tone was soft, more begging than demanding, but he still didn’t leave a whole lot of room to argue in his worry.

Hypnos complied as best he could, unable to help the sounds he made as he remembered the taste of things he’d long since forgotten, devouring each of the things his son gave him like he was eating for the first time in his life, and it didn’t take long to reach the limits his terribly shrunken stomach could bear for the moment, and he had to refuse anything further before he ended up vomiting. Cay stay curled around his lap, clingy like he did when he was small. He knew he looked ridiculous and bordering on pathetic, but he couldn’t help it. He hadn’t thought he would ever see his dad again and he wasn’t ready to let go. “Don’t leave again?”

“I won’t. I promise.” Hypnos smiled, his mouth still half full as he stroked his sons hair reassuringly, smoothing out a few unruly curls that had broken loose from the main mass.

“Nothing and nobody will ever take me away from you again, okay? I swear.”

The promise helped and, had he been a little more calm, the way Hypnos was smoothing out his hair would have put him right back to sleep.

“Everyone got broken…” he mumbled, knowing his dad ought to be filled in on everything that happened. “Because I was gone?” he asked, sounding suddenly worried.

The thought concerned him, but of course, he had no idea that he wasn’t the only one of the family they’d lost during that time. It had just been a terribly unfortunate coincidental event.

Cayden shook his head, hair flopping over his eyes as he did.

“Not just you. Matty left, Tass and Evander left Lyri, even Lyric left and Mac tried to drink himself to death. Thrasos lost basically everything to a fire and the only thing that made aunt Ava even remotely okay was she had Jack to take care of…”

“W-what?”

The word pinched as it caught in his dry throat, his mind taking a moment to process what his son had just told him.

“Matty left? And…. Oh gods, my dear sweet boy. I’m so sorry. I had no idea. I…” he trailed off, tears welling in his eyes. It broke his heart to hear the extent of the devastation, and it suddenly made such terrible sense that they’d thought he’d just happened to have left too.

“I’ve missed so much. How could I have missed so much?”

His grip on his father’s legs tightened a little, the pain he was still feeling clearly pushing to surface. He didn’t want to lose anything else.

“No one knew where you were. Ava couldn’t track your chip, nothing Hecate tried worked… And papa’s knowing everything doesn’t work when it’s something that affects him.”

His words were muffled from how his face was pressed against Hypnos, but he wasn’t about to shift backwards or lift his head for anything at the moment.

Hypnos’s heart was breaking all over again. Part of him was angry at himself for missing so much and worrying the ones who loved him, no matter how much he tried to remind himself that his absence hadn’t been his fault, but he couldn’t help feel robbed of that time when he’d been needed so much.

A few tears cut fresh tracks in the dirt on his cheeks as he cried silently, trying to process everything.

Cay tried to press himself closer to his father, but he was already damn near in his lap like an overgrown toddler. He had tried to heal, to press down his hurt enough to carry on with life, but it was evident that he wasn’t doing quite as well as he was letting people believe.

“Please don’t go away again…”

“I won’t. Never again, I promise.”

Hypnos was fighting his exhaustion hard. If he didn’t have so much he needed to do and a distraught son to comfort, he would have easily slipped into a near-coma-like sleep until he regained enough of his strength to be at least semi-functional again. He couldn’t rest yet though. Not until he’d made things right.

The words helped, his breathing slowly beginning to even back out. He was still trying to convince himself that it was a dream, but there was always a little part of Cayden that had a hard time telling the difference. It wasn’t something he told people though.

“Okay..”

He played comfortingly with Cayden’s curls, his sons hair almost as unruly as his own but not nearly as matted and tangled. It brought the barest of smiles to his chapped lips.

His thoughts turned to all the things he needed to do. He’d eaten enough to tide him over for now, so that was one less thing to worry about. Then, of course, he’d need to let the rest of his family know he’d returned.

“You need rest,” the boy finally mumbled, emotionally exhausted. He could only imagine how much worse his dad felt with literally being sleep. Not that Cay really wanted him to pass out for the next month or two.

“I will rest once I have fixed the things I have broken,” he stated matter-of-factly, although the exhaustion was clear in the laboured breath beneath his words.

“I have too much to do, too many people to set things right with. I promise I will rest after that, but I won’t until then. You need me too much.”

“Just being home is enough,” he countered softly, knowing everything else could wait. Even if that meant he had to make the calls himself.

“They’ll understand when they see you.”

Hypnos had wanted to argue further but his exhaustion wouldn’t let him, and if he was entirely honest with himself, it wasn’t the urgency that bothered him, but the apprehension of how the rest of his family would react after thinking he’d abandoned them all, but he trusted Cay’s word enough to believe that his son was correct in his assumption despite his own feelings.

It took him a moment, but Cayden stood and helped his father up, keeping an arm around him. He just looked so frail that Cay was honestly afraid he’d just fall over without someone to lean on. “We kept your room the same…”

Hypnos smiled weakly at that. He would be glad for some familiarity after what he’d been through. Leaning against his son, Hypnos sagged under his own weight, stumbling a little as he struggled to keep himself upright until he had reached another place he could rest.

Cay kept a hold of him, supporting his, well, lack of weight pretty easily. It would have probably been easier to carry him, but he knew his dad would never regain any muscle that way.

“I’ll call around once you’re settled, okay?”

Hypnos nodded, all but collapsing as soon as he reached his bed, his entire weight barely enough to make an indentation on its surface.

“It’s been such a long time since I slept in a bed,” he confessed hoarsely, already struggling to keep his eyes open as he recalled the comfortless cell he’d been kept in and the hard floor that had been his only option for trying to rest upon.

Cayden immediately set about getting him tucked in like he used to do for him when he was a child. It was the least he could do at the moment, the only thing that was making him feel useful.

“Sleep. I’ll call Cate and dad and aunt Ava,” he promised, knowing the three people he needed to call first.

Hypnos nodded faintly to acknowledge his son’s words just as he started to lose his fight against unconsciousness. Even if he only took a short rest, for now, he’d still need to sleep a while longer later anyway for him to begin to recover from his ordeal, and he hoped his family didn’t hold too much against him.