Work Text:
6:15. The bus comes at 7:00 am, up a block, around the corner. Half an hour to get to campus, without the stops. Frederick Chase springs up at the third ring of his alarm, like he always does. The first ring, his heart stops and starts, startles his mind to consciousness. The second, he tells himself to take a long breath to start the day, the third hits a nerve half a second later. His ears ring and flinch, and he reaches to turn it off. If he tries to snooze, he’ll never be able to fall back asleep. Three blaring rings are too much for his blood pressure, and he’s wide awake with the jittery energy of few thoughts and stumbling feet.
Today, he spills a stack of papers to the floor, nearly knocking over a mug of tea on his bedside table. He’d fallen asleep partway through an assignment again, a long graphite streak down the side of the paper, the pencil somewhere lost in the comforter. It’s mostly finished, either way. Squinting at the page, he thinks he must have gotten distracted on question number twenty-four out of thirty, gone on a rambling stream of thoughts in near illegible handwriting. An open book on the history of aviation slumps down from where it had been sprawled across his chest.
He rifles through the stack of papers helplessly for a minute before gathering them together haphazardly and filing them into his bag. He can organize them later, he tells himself, pulling on his socks (turned inside out, always socks first so he can’t feel the dust on the ground- ew), then his shirt and his favorite pair of pants. Tea in the mornings, always filled an inch down from the rim, and a bowl of plain cereal because if he wants to brush his teeth afterwards, he can’t have anything too sweet lingering on his tongue or else the mint will do more than burn pleasantly, it’ll actually have a taste too.
Frederick checks his watch, stiff fingers warming against his mug. It’s even more important to be on time today. He hates being off schedule in general, partly because the bus is his only efficient way to get to class and having to wait another fifteen minutes for the next one gives him very little time to reach the right building once he arrives, but on days that he’d planned to meet up with someone his nerves are even worse. He’s never been one to socialize much, too introverted and awkward for other kids to want to sit with him on the playground. He likes the company when it comes, but it’s rare he doesn’t end up accidentally chasing it away. When he was younger, his sister had been the only one to indulge him.
But college is supposed to be different. He’d been hoping to surround himself with like-minded people, who he could talk planes with in peace. It hasn't really happened yet, but he’s holding out hope on this. Just a few months ago he’d met a woman in an architectural engineering seminar who had seemed interested in Frederick’s work, and they’d spent the next hour after class simply talking about it. It was probably the most compelling discussion he’d had in his whole life, and Frederick is half convinced he’s in love with her mind. He thinks he’s made a friend.
And Thea doesn’t seem to grow bored of him either. She helps him study on a number of occasions, shows up at the coffee shop he’s stuck in to engage in a talk about architectural design and avionics, and even sometimes sits in lecture with him even if she’d told him she isn’t actually a student. They’d been working through thoughts of his future, internships and study abroad, and PhD programs, when she’d suggested they meet before class, a glint in her sharp eyes.
“It will be worth your while, Frederick,” she promises him, words measured and carefully thought, even his name as though she had debated extensively as to whether it was worthy of resting on her tongue.
He doesn’t know why he agrees. Usually, he doesn’t like to make short notice plans, but this is Thea, and she always helps him out when he needs it. It’s almost scary how she always knows when he wants advice, whenever he’s debating calling home to ask but too nervous about what his parents will think. They never thought he was cut out for university, even when he gets a full ride scholarship. Calling them almost feels like proving them right, though he wishes he could ignore that feeling. But Thea always seems to appear then, offers to sit and talk about his fears and his plans and about how he can achieve them, not whether he can or can’t. He figures he can rely on her for this.
Frederick arrives at the bus stop exactly a minute before the bus pulls up to the corner, as he always does, tugging on the sleeves of his knit sweater and adjusting the strap of his bag as he balances up onto the vehicle. He drops a few coins into the slit, waving distractedly to the driver who smiles warmly at him, and shuffles to the back row where he can have the space to reorganize his papers.
It’s a bit of a job, with all the stopping and starting, and he’s forced to take a break part way through on the account of looming motion sickness, but by the time he’s at his stop, he’s satisfied enough.
Thea is waiting for him outside, her dark hair pinned up around her head and the rest falling down her back in a thick dark braid. She looks out of place on the college campus in a way, a little too regal amongst the stressed faces and sweatpants and dark circles. Her eyes are gray and gleaming with shadows darting through them, and if Frederick concentrates on staring into one of them, it almost looks like a marching army, a Trojan horse wheeled into the walls of a guarded city, or the dash of a pen across a battle plan. He tells her this when he first meets her, fascinated, and she looks at him with renewed interest like there’s a piece fitting into the puzzle of how she sees him.
“I have met very few who notice,” she says back, faint amusement and plain, cold curiosity, “even when the details are often the most important. Tell me, what is your name.”
The order had raised the hairs on the back of his neck, but the words are pried from his mouth as he responds, and her satisfaction flickers across her precise features, “I must get to know you, Frederick Chase. I believe we will get along well. You may call me Thea.”
She’s dressed in a wool gray blazer and straight legged pants this morning, a no nonsense set to her sharp features that have students curving away from her skittishly, but she softens ever so slightly as Frederick approaches. From her bag, she procures a file and wordlessly hands it to him, “good morning,” she notes, despite the cold, brisk air, and lingering snow on the pavement, “I found a scholarship for that abroad trip you were considering.”
Startled, he looks down at the file, eyes going wider with every word he reads. It’s a semester in Greece, partially with the Classics department, but opportunity in aviation, just as he was hoping for. He blinks rapidly, excitement bursting up through him as he looks back up, shaking his head in disbelief, “how did you find this? I was looking everywhere.”
“I have connections,” she says, though it’s not much of an admittance. He grins at her nonetheless, fingers tapping at the edges of the thick pages. The only things is,
“I don’t know any Greek,” he tells her. Her eyes flit to him amusedly,
“Your mind is formidable, you can be taught.”
He frowns, and she arches a single brow, “you would refuse my help?”
Oh. Frederick shakes his head, “no, of course not. I didn’t realize-” he wants to slap himself on the forehead in embarrassment, “nevermind. Thank you.”
She nods sharply, “the language has undergone several changes throughout the millennia, but you’ll find even it’s modern form has practicality,” the way her eyes turn to him makes a strange cold feeling travel down his spine, but he doesn’t have the time to ponder what it means before she’s setting off at an efficient pace towards his first class, “applications are due within the month, but I doubt that will be a problem for you.”
Another thing about Thea, she always had a sort of unwavering belief in him that he’d never gotten from anyone else before. Even when her expectations seem so high they feel unreachable, her steady faith makes his chest warm. It is inexplicable, but comforting.
“You were a Classics graduate as well as architecture?” he asks curiously.
“In a manner of speaking,” her lips twitch at one corner, “I shall meet you in the library after classes as usual where we can go over your application.”
He nods in agreement, shoving the new file into his bag, “thanks again, Thea,” he says sincerely, “I don’t know what I’d have done without you.”
She considers him, “you would have figured something out,” she says at last, and as a rush of students enter the hall for their morning seminar, he loses sight of her.
Frederick smiles to himself. He doesn’t know how he’d gotten so lucky. For someone who’s never had a friend before, she’s like a miracle.
Thea continues her advice and company all throughout his increasingly excited goal to get himself to Greece, and she’s the first person he tells when he gets the scholarship grant to go. Even in the months abroad, when he doesn’t see her at all, he feels like she is guiding him. Maybe it’s the memory of her belief in him, or her strength of wisdom, but he finds himself in times of hardship reminding himself of her helpful words and tokens of insight she’d given him before. But her absence too is almost a test in and of itself, a challenge he looks at with the sparkling eyes of someone told they couldn’t do something for so long and finally proving everyone wrong.
He wants to show her, his parents, even himself, that he can achieve things, that it isn’t a mistake to trust him, to help him, and to believe in him.
He works on his first ever plane there, and the flush of success and innovation doesn’t leave him for months and months. He doesn’t think he’s ever been so happy. He’s not someone who allows himself to feel much pride in his intellect. He thinks everyone can get there, and he has felt behind in so much of his life that he wants his own efforts to bear fruit, not some latent genius waiting in the corners of his mind, not the backs of others or the connections he doesn’t have extending their hands to drag him up from below.
It is so, so satisfying. His first airplane, which his own hands have worked on, stands in the large warehouse-like construction building, and he feels small in the best way possible. In the back of his mind, he can almost hear Thea speaking to him, “your mind is fascinating, Frederick Chase,” she muses, “I do admire when mortals turn to creation rather than destruction. You have that spirit of my people, you have pleased me greatly.”
He doesn’t see his friend for months after he comes back, but he doesn’t think much of it. Thea is busy, often talking about meetings and some sort of advising position to a council in some governmental branch she doesn’t specify.
He only gets a little worried after he’s unable to get in touch otherwise. He hadn’t realized they’d never exchanged numbers until they aren’t meeting regularly on campus for drinks and studying, and his worry only grows when no one else seems to have known her. He even talks to the librarian in the library they had regularly met at, but the woman seemed to be under the impression that no one named Thea had ever been there at all.
“I’ve asked you for references and books before,” he tells her, wiping his palms nervously on his pant legs.
“Well I recognize you of course, honey,” she raises a brow, “you fell asleep after hours about a dozen times before, I was the one to wake you up.”
“Yes but,” he hesitates, frowns, “I was almost always with someone else.”
She looks at him, a little confused, and shakes her head, “no, I don’t think so.”
Now he really feels like he’s going crazy, “Maybe you’re remembering wrong?”
The librarian gives him a pitying look, “honey, I always thought you looked so lonely. I think I’d remember if you finally brought in a friend.”
His chest tightens, and he nods clumsily, muttering an apology as he swiftly leaves the building. Surely he hadn’t made up an entire friend. Surely he- He clenches his hands and shakes his head to himself. Who is he kidding, he absolutely could have. Maybe his parents are right, and he’s too childish to exist on his own, too much in his own head.
Don’t be foolish , he thinks at once, half his own voice and half the ghost of someone who didn’t exist, he’s done well here. He can’t give up now.
Life goes on, as it generally does. Frederick finishes his junior year and takes on an internship over the summertime in between building airplane models in his apartment. And then, mid July, there’s a knock on his door.
“Coming!” he shouts reflexively, tongue peeking out as he glues a piece onto his current model. Then he pauses. He doesn’t have people over, and his parents and sister never pop by unannounced. Maybe it’s the mailman, and they’ve already left by now after silently judging his probably unintelligible assurance.
He gets up, and shuffles towards the door, reluctantly leaving his project half finished. A rumble from his stomach tells him he needs to eat sometime soon, and he almost goes to grab his favorite plain cereal before remembering the mail at the door.
Frederick pulls the door open, and promptly chokes.
Thea stands on his porch step, the concrete staircase leading into the street falling behind her. Her hair is crowned around her head, a braid like laurels, her eyes as piercing and unforgiving as ever, and by her side is a hand weaved basket carried by two brown feathered owls, one with a white face and eyes so black they seem to be sucking the light from the air, the other with an unnerving yellow stare. Frederick stares at them, mind going utterly blank.
“Thea?” he blurts. There’s relief, that he hadn’t made her all up, a fear that he’s hallucinating still, an anger at the silence, but mostly too much confusion to process any of these feelings.
“Hello, Frederick,” she smiles coolly, “would you invite me in?”
He steps aside, because he isn’t sure what else to do, and she smoothly walks past him, her owls trailing her, cradle rocking gently from side to side as it dangles from their talons.
Frederick sucks in a sharp breath as his eyes fall on the little thing inside said cradle. She’s small, so very small, and he wonders how anyone could be so delicate. Had he been that small, as an infant?
“You have a baby,” he says.
“I do,” Thea agrees, apparently completely unperturbed by anything that was currently happening. Frederick knows that people have babies, he’s just- he’s a little confused. It hasn’t been nine months, has it? Maybe she hadn’t been showing when he last saw her? Maybe that’s why she’d been missing? Or maybe it isn’t hers? Or maybe its adopted? That’s always a possibility, and Thea has never struck him as someone who wanted children, but he doesn’t want to make that judgment. Something tells him it would be rude.
His eyes are still glued to the infant, soundly sleeping, as he asks, “where have you been?”
She doesn’t answer him, her eyes also on the cradle. Without a movement other than a flick of her eyes, the owls drop it onto the small wooden kitchen table.
“I have enjoyed our time together, Frederick,” she says at last, “but as all things do, it must come to an end.”
“I,” he opens his mouth, closes it, “Thea, what? I don’t understand.”
“My name is Athena,” Thea informs, fingers lacing, “this is a gift of our shared intellect and mind.”
This? He looks again at the baby, and his heart stutters. The little girl, he thinks, looks like him. It’s silly he hadn’t noticed it before, but she really, really looks like him. She has the slope of his nose, the curve of his brow, the shape of his mouth. But when she blinks open sleepy eyes, they are gleam with a keenness that reminds him of Thea. Athena?
“Athena,” he repeats dazedly, “like the goddess.”
“You are as astute as always, Frederick,” she looks amused at him again, “I have chosen well.”
He still doesn’t understand. This is his friend but- she’s a goddess? Goddesses don’t exist. Except, there’s a baby in his apartment being carried by two owls.
“You aren’t going crazy,” Thea says, with as much gentleness as he’s ever heard from her, “this is your daughter. She will grow to be a formidable warrior, with the strength of both of our minds. She will make me proud.”
He jolts again at the word daughter, “but we never,” he stammers, “but we haven’t-”
Athena looks at him sharply, “I am a maiden goddess. I only require a melding of minds, a thought, to create this gift.”
His mouth goes dry, and he can’t think as panic claws up his spine. He’s- he doesn’t know what to do with a baby. He’s a college student. He doesn’t even have a good relationship with his own father. How is he supposed to raise a little kid himself?
“There will be dangers after her,” Athena warns, “and one day she will need to train. But for now, she is in your care.”
“I don’t-” he blinks a few times, unsure what to do with his hands as they flutter by his sides helplessly, “if she’s in danger, shouldn’t- isn’t it not a good idea to leave her here,” he eyes the baby again, “I can’t- you’re a goddess, couldn’t you protect her better?”
“Demigods are raised by their mortal parents,” she says with finality, “and one day she will learn to protect herself, as do all my children or they perish.”
That’s terrible, the part of him that’s not close to hysterics thinks. He opens his mouth to argue, to say, I don’t know how to take care of a kid , but before he can even get a gust of air out, Athena is turning around and leaning over the cradle. She places a palm over the baby’s head silently for a moment, before retracting as the little girl reaches out to her mother.
She nods once to him, like they are on the same page and always have been, and whirls away in a twist of air.
The baby begins to wail in the silent apartment, and he kind of wants to do the same. Instead he picks her up awkwardly, bracing her head, and wonders how on earth he’s supposed to do this. He’s never been able to keep a potted plant alive for more than a week, he has enough money to feed himself regularly but only himself, and now he’s responsible for a whole other real person.
He needs to start planning around this baby. Right now.