"You wouldn't know that you can't do anything. You just don't exist anymore." Ares had been forgotten once, and he ceased to exist for many years. It wasn't like he was aware of it, or that he wanted to have existed in those times. It was like going into a dreamless sleep - there was just nothing there.
And it wasn't half as scary as sleeping either.
"But I guess it wouldn't be fair. I'd be leaving people behind, the Greeks would throw a drinking party and no one would bully Hephaestus anymore." And the parents - always the fighting with the not-father and not-mother, getting burned again after not having learned the previous time, going back to the uncles and the whores for rough sex and drink enough to start the cycle all over again.