Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

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Lord Zeus; who is ruler over the sky and so much more, King of the Gods, the mightiest and most powerful of them all; had many, many different children. The important ones, in turn, were almost all gods as well, though lesser than him – for there was only a single one who could have been more powerful. An heir, unborn but soon prophesied to come from his first wife Métis, a boy destined to overthrow his father like he himself had once overthrown his own .

Zeus, of course, had none of it.

He ate Métis, who was pregnant with child already – and one shall find that giving birth is quite hard when being in the stomach of the god of all gods. And so time passed, much of it and none at all, that is, like things tend to be in immortal life. Zeus forgot, more or less, his first wife, having taken a second one – Hera, queen now, and she bore him…

Well. 

She bore him children.

So did other women (many of them, in fact), though that is not of any matter right now. Fact is that Hera brought into existence the first princes of Olympus, the first sons of her husband who would sit by his side like she did.

That is when the issue arises: because at around the same time, which meant maybe a couple decades before or afterwards, Zeus adopted the one who was born from the white foam of the sea – Aphrodite, who became the actual first child of his to sit at his side. 

Also, his head broke open and Athena emerged.

Athena, who was not of Hera’s blood, in a way far more dangerous than Aphrodites; Athena, who was not a son but a child prophesied still; Athena, who took a seat by her fathers side despite it all, like her adopted sister had done, and her brothers as well – though, again, they don’t even remember which one of them came first. Especially with Ares, there was that problem – had he claimed the war as his, before she did, or did she come before him? There could not be more than a century between their births, but that didn’t help.

The issue of being immortal and also surprisingly forgetful caused that neither of them, and no one else, really, knew exactly their order of birth, which still did not make them any less of… siblings , so to say, in matters of official relations: for they shared their fathers blood after all.

The issue of Hera was that way too many of her son's siblings were not her own, but her husband's bastards . 

Aphrodite had been acceptable – she could simply be married to one of the king’s and queen's legitimate sons, though that quickly went wrong in the most annoying way imaginable. Athena had been balancing between being acceptable and the opposite of that – not only was she technically the first born of Zeus’ first wife, but also was technically the child that had been prophesied to upsur and overthrow him, even if she was not a son. Then again, technically , she also came from her fathers thoughts only, and was not properly birthed: there was no mother, not really, even if Métis had been pregnant with her. Which meant that, upon seeing just how wonderful this new child of his was, Zeus claimed her as his own creation solely, and claimed the girl's wit and intelligence all the same. This act also, somehow, made it complicated to call Athena a bastard: since there was no birth, except for the splitting of Zeus’ head, there was no mother, except Métis who was as dead as she could be anyway, so calling the grey-eyed daughter of the king a ‘bastard’ would be a direct insult to the lord himself.

It was different with all of the other illegitimate children.

The twins were the worst blow – two times the unacceptable offspring, made with a titan no less, facing the same issue of an uncertain difference in order of birth as Ares and Athena did. And on top of that, the boy one, Apollo, quickly rose to be his fathers favourite son. The girl one, Artemis, at least seemed as if she would rather be anywhere but the halls of Olympus, which did not stop her father from giving her a throne there. 

By the time Zeus brought first Hermes, then Dionysus to stand in front of her and claimed them as his sons and heirs as well, Hera had long since given up on hoping that the heirs to the god king would solely be of her own blood. Her husband saw duty in producing many, many boys and girls, after all: mortal ones, especially, meant to rule the kingdoms of the human realm, meant to carry out his divine right as king. At least the mortals could not threaten her position as god queen, and if they did she just killed them, but it was different with the godly ones.

At first she hated them all.

The children, that is.

The second generation of olympians, especially.

Her own offspring too – in the name of chaos, she had even attempted to end the miserable life that had been Hephaestus in her rage before – for who else could she despise, really? Her husband? How funny of a joke. Yes, his affairs had ruined their bloodline and wounded her deeply – she was, after all, the goddess of marriage, which meant loyalty – but because of that very same reason, she could not hate him, at least not as openly and deeply as she could hate his sons and daughters. But there was little joy left in that, after the first few centuries. 

And…

Well, sometimes, she found herself wishing for a proper family.

She would call her husband's other children her own, sometimes, would give them nicknames and show them kindness too, from time to time, but Hera was not the only dysfunctioning part of their dynasty, and she could not fix what had been broken aeons ago. Zeus was a portion of the problem, too, and so were his brothers and sisters and their father was even more than that. 

They were gods though, after all, the lot of them, the ones of them who ruled – and being a god meant being better , above everything else. They were worshipped, were prayed to, were praised and loved; they were power and might and divine. 

Being a god meant that her husband's children (her own children) were never really children at all, and the cosmos did everything it could to throw them against each other. They were gods , after all: none of them were people, in the way mortals had always been, they were concepts and abstractions and things like ‘war’ or ‘love’ or ‘wisdom’ balled together until it formed the echo of a person. Human, except not. Better, divine, powerful. A hull, a shell, an aspect – their fathers children, all of them: Aphrodite and Ares and Hephaestus, Athena and Artemis and Apollo, Hermes and Dionysus. 

They were their fathers children, Zeus’ children, and not Hera’s, except for her two sons.

Not hers, even though she was queen and married to her husband, god king; not hers, even though by all rights she was above them; not hers, even though sometimes she wondered about what ifs and could have beens, and called them ‘godling’ or ‘baby’ in the most affectionate voice she could make. Not hers, even though, in moments of weakness, she placed a gentle hand on a shoulder or caressed cheeks when the children (not hers, never hers) were asleep; not hers, even though she watched them carefully, from the distance, and took interest in what interested them; not hers, even though she whispered words into her husbands ears to ease the punishments he would unleash; not hers, even though she was Hera, goddess of marriage – and should that not have meant that all of her children had to be her husbands, too?

That he never had slept with any other women, and that the aching cold in her chest when looking upon them was lost love and not hatred?

For these sons, these daughters, these heirs – the second generation of olympians.

Made to embody power and might; made to be essential parts of the world.

They were not her children, most of them, but they were their fathers, and sometimes she pitied them for it. Because there was something cursed, about their kind, about their bloodline, something wicked and vile and dark. Doom and pain and suffering, darkness and tragedy to come their way – except they were gods, and none of those things meant anything.

To be honest, neither did the term ‘kind’ or ‘bloodline’ .

In all truth, they should probably call themselves anything but that.

And yet…

Lord Zeus, king of the gods and ruler of the sky, had many children.

Lady Hera, despite being his wife for most of her existence, had only two of her own blood of the eight that sat in the halls of Olypus, and the hundreds that wandered the earth.

They were not, by any means, a ‘family’ .

Somehow, in a really twisted way only gods could manage, the daughters and sons of her husband grew to be ‘siblings’ in their own way, still.

˗ˏˋ — ‧₊˚- ᓀ ᵥ ᓂ - ˚₊‧ — ˎˊ˗.

And Zeus spoke:

"Quick on your way now, Iris, shear the wind!

Turn them back, don't let them engage me here.

What an indignity for us to clash in arms.

I tell you this and I will fulfill it too:

I'll maim their racers for them,

right beneath their yokes, and those two goddesses,

I'll hurl them from their chariot, smash their car,

and not once in the course of ten slow wheeling years

will they heal the wounds my lightning bolt rips open.

So that grey-eyed girl of mine may learn what it means

to fight against her Father. But with Hera, though,

I am not so outraged, so irate—it's always her way

to thwart my will, whatever I command."

So he thundered and Iris ran his message, racing with gale force

away from the peaks of Ida up to steep Olympus

cleft and craggy. There at the outer gates

she met them face-to-face and blocked their path,

sounding Zeus's orders: 

"Where are you rushing now?

What is this madness blazing in your hearts?

Zeus forbids you to fight for Achaea's armies!

Here is the Father's threat—he will fulfill it too:

he'll maim your racers for you,

right beneath their yokes, and you two goddesses,

he'll hurl you from your chariot, smash your car,

and not once in the course of ten slow wheeling years

will you heal the wounds his lightning bolt rips open!

So you, his grey-eyed girl, may learn what it means

to fight against your Father. But with Hera, though,

he is not so outraged, so irate-it's always your way

to thwart his will, whatever Zeus commands. You,

you insolent brazen bitch—you really dare

to shake that monstrous spear in the Father's face?"

~ Homer, Iliad Book VIII

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None of them had expected anything, when their father had called them here.

As usual, when he did so, they followed, not daring to ignore his orders – and really, it had not sounded bad. The invite, that is. Life as a god could be boring and entertainment was welcomed and needed, so a challenge sounded like a fun thing, in all honesty. Of course, none of the ‘challenges’ or games their father posed most of the time were normal or kind, and usually they were either means of punishment and embarrassment or served as the reminder of one's place, but this one hadn’t seemed threatening in any way, shape or form.

Four of them had been asked to come – the children of the god king who had the unfortunate timing of being present on Olympus when their father heard of the approach of his eldest daughter by blood. He had asked the four of them to ‘help him’ minutes later – even Hera would come and participate, which was a rarity ever since the Trojan war ended some years ago. 

Whatever the ruler of the skies had planned was important.

It was meant to be a spectacle, too, hundreds of people having been invited to this ‘event’ a few hours ago, nymphs and centaurs and satyrs, filling the ranks of the colosseum now, and spectacles and large audiences normally meant that there would be no punishment and no curses, no roaring thunder and no sparks of electricity. Spectacles and large audiences normally meant that their father would remember who he was – he had a reputation to uphold, after all, had respect to keep and entertainment to be earned. Spectacles and large audiences normally meant safety.

Apollo watches the lightning gather in his fathers hands.

His vision flickers – he is the sun is the light, is music and art, is prophecies and the future. He knows what will happen, he sees it seconds before it does. Really, he does not even need his godly powers to know. The anger on the god king's face is hint enough, the rage that burns in the air around him so hot that even them, the other contestants of this ‘game’ , can sense it from their place far at the edge of the arena.

His eyes see, see with power and see with experience.

White and gold gleams through the arena.

His fathers voice roars like thunder as he raises his hand above his head, fury dripping from his tongue like poison and the ichor Apollo knows will stain the ground soon. Words are spoken, words he understands and doesn’t, layering above each other. Clouds bunch up in the sky, turning from white to grey to black, dark like the deepest see and blackest night, and the lightning is still gathering, is still growing in power and immortal, godly might, is twitching and flashing and dangerous, dangerous, dangerous –

Athena does not back down.

She stands in front of their father, her head raised, spear and shield clutched tightly in her hands. Her cape whips behind her in the air as the storm above their king feeds off of the god’s rage, until the light is almost blinding, brighter than the sun itself. Power seeps through it, and fear sparks in his chest – a mortal thing, a deadly thing, unworthy and unacceptable for a god like him.

They’re gods.

They’re gods, they’re gods, they’re gods .

Zeus unleashes his lightning and Apollo cannot avert his eyes.

It is blinding – he is sure that the others only see the second half of what happens, not used to this sort of brightness. They will see the fall, will see molten steel and golden ichor and all after that, but not what comes before, never.

But he himself does.

One of the only three who do.

He should not, cannot avert his gaze.

The lightning – bright and white and golden and deadly – flashes and hisses through the air. It finds its mark directly in Athena’s chest, burns through the metal of her armour and melts the outer layers of it away as if it is nothing. The thunderbolt seems to impale her, the main branch almost like the spear she clutches in her hands as it pierces her torso, smaller branches reaching out towards her shoulders and arms and neck and face. He sees, a sickly feeling in his chest, the sparks that scorch her cape burn into her skin as well. Sees the way her muscles convulse and spasm, twitching out of control, sees the way her torso caves in and curls forward, as if to protect herself from the power that tears through her.

Except she cannot protect, cannot save herself; she is a god, but none of that matters, for none of them are more than their father. Less, they are less – less mighty, less powerful, less important. Less, less, less. So Athena tries to protect herself against a blow that could kill a minor god , except she can’t, she can’t, she can’t . 

Thunder booms.

By the time the sound reaches his ears, his sister – because that’s what she is, at the end of time itself – has been ripped off of her feet by the power that cursed through her, is flying backwards almost as fast as the light impaling her, and for only a split moment he manages to catch a glimpse on her face – of surprise and confusion and anger and pain . 

Her back arches.

The lightning, as if a mind on its own, caves deeper into her chest, burns through her armour and skin and flesh – he knows, he knows, he can already see the gold staining the ground. He can already hear choked gaps and the blubbering of blood, coughing it up like a mortal would, can hear the crackling of fire as the thunderbolt the god king had thrown at his daughter tears through her chest completely and burns further through her back, setting her cape on fire and reducing it to ashes and torn blue fabric, stained dark and golden like the rest of her armour. 

Like a javelin, the lightning impales his sister and burns a hole into and out of her torso.

A sickening crack echoes through the thunder as Athena's body collides with the ground.

Dust rises.

Then, he realises that it's smoke.

She’s rolling, isn’t stopping, momentum carrying her down the stairs that had been carved into stone and then some, limbs still twitching, convulsing and spasming out of control. Molten metal flickers through the air, gleaming oddly silver and standing out in the drops of rain that drips down on all of them now – courtesy to the storm his father summoned – and he realises that it’s pieces of Athena's armour. 

Three seconds.

Within three seconds, Zeus had unleashed lightning on his daughter that was powerful enough to seriously harm her and had sent her flying halfways through the colosseum with the force of it. Punishment, punishment. This was a punishment – for embarrassing the king of gods, for calling out his tendency to create bastards with women who were not his wife, in front of the crowd he had personally gathered to enjoy this ‘game’ of his. Punishment, for embarrassing herself with this mockery of their divinity, for fighting so desperately to save the life of a single mortal man.

Punishment, because Athena had forgotten her place.

Athena, who lies crumpled in the middle of the arena, her body still twitching and shaking with the energy her father had unleashed upon her; Athena, who always held herself highly and stern, who was not one for petty disputes and unruly fighting, and now bleed golden into the sand of the colosseum. It pools around her head, slowly, like the beams of the sun almost; it paints the silver of her armoured chest and the torn dark blue of her cloak; it burns itself into Apollo's eyes, like all the cruel things his siblings went through always did.

Punishment.

Athena does not move.

The twitching of her limbs is not her own – it’s the electricity still cursing through her veins, tugging and clawing at her muscles, one he himself had never personally felt before – not like his half sister did right now.

He can sense it, radiating off of her, though the goddesses' entire presence is muted and weak, fading like the light does at dawn, and for a second he sees glimpses of something. Someone. He is visions, after all, is prophecy and future, but also past and present and everything that will come and everything that was. A melody hums in his ear, soft and melodic.

Odysseus of Ithaca looks happy, in the memory.

Athena does not – there is uncertainty, written onto her face, and he had never seen her as nervous as she looks when the human man steps towards her, a bundle of something in his hands.

A child.

A son.

And Apollo sees all, except he usually doesn’t care – he had not cared , for the Greek who had managed to offend half of Olympus apparently, had not been hurt or held a grudge because of the Trojan war. Achilles was dead and that was all that mattered to him, so Odysseus could have lived and he had not seen offence in it. Not even in the sirens: to be honest, that was the only thing Apollo could think of when his father had asked him to participate in this… game.

Except it isn’t one.

Zeus names it that but he names many things so.

This game stopped being what it’s called the moment their father took offence in a single sentence and gathered lightning in his hands to unleash upon his daughter.

A daughter who lies unnaturally still, her golden blood staining the ground.

“Is she dead?”

He blinks.

It takes him a moment to realise that it was Ares who had asked the question: his voice trembling just the tiniest bit, the usual bite and anger gone, words quiet enough for only them to hear. Because if father did, there is no knowing if the next thunder bolt will not strike them , so Ares asks like a child would, so small and scared and unlike himself – afraid, like they all are, eyes widened at the sight of his lifeless sister down in the colosseum.

And Ares hates Athena, and Athena hates Ares, Apollo knows that – they fight all the time and the animosity and hostility that always burns between the two sometimes even rivals the one of Poseidon and Zeus. Ares hates Athena, and he had been delighted about getting to duel with her today, had been burning with bloodthirst earlier, had almost howled with laughter when his sword had connected to his sisters armour during their fight; and Athena hates Ares, had been radiating nothing but fury and annoyance at him when the other god had interrupted her talk with Aphrodite, had shown no hesitation in cracking the wood of her spear across is helmet. 

They hate each other – they are two sides of the same coin.

Both are war, both are bloodshed and cruelty and death, and Apollo knows that they would claw into each other if they could, would bite and tear and rip out eyes and hearts, would set the other one on fire and not think twice before burying a sword or spear in one another's backs.

It had happened before, after all.

And yet…

“Is she dead?” Ares asks, and there is nothing but worry and concern in his voice – they hate each other, but they are still siblings, like all of them are, and he does not seem to want her to die. 

“Is she dead?” Ares asks, and there is fear in his voice, fear in his eyes, fear in his body, and Apollo does not think that he ever saw his older brother scared like this. But it is understandable – the same terror burns in his own chest, after all. It burns in every single one of them. Aphrodite has drawn into herself, hands clasped above her mouth as if to keep in a scream, her eyes widened and halfway hidden behind Hephaestus, whose mouth is opened and hand on his cane trembling, as if she wishes to flee their fathers field of vision. 

They are afraid.

Because if their king, if their father , can strike down his favourite daughter like this, if he could potentially kill her with a flick of a wrist and burning divine lightning, without breaking into sweat or care, then there is no saying how easily he could get rid of other children. Because all Athena had done was annoy and embarrass Zeus and perhaps herself too, and their king had deemed it enough to unleash power onto her that he saw fit for his own father, back in the war between gods and titans.

Apollo is trembling.

He only realises now.

A memory flickers somewhere on the edge of his consciousness – and then he realises that he and his siblings, the ones that are here today but the others as well, had somehow forgotten just what exactly their father was.

The king of gods, the god of gods.

Not a father, not really.

A man to respect; a man to be feared.

Then, Athena shivers.

Not because of the lightning that has stopped burning through her, by now, not because of the remnants of electricity and fire he knows are still in her blood – he has treated his sisters and brothers before, when their father grew too angry, though none of them ever got hit this badly, and so he knows how she must be feeling right now. 

It’s impressive enough that she manages to move so soon again, even if it’s more trembling, more shaking, than not, even though she seems to not fully have control over her own body and limbs.

That does not stop her from tightening her grip around her spear.

Dread washes over him.

His eyes widen, just a little, and he takes a shaking step forwards, to the railing of the stands they are on, trembling hand brushing over stone as tension builds in his shoulders and he prepares himself to interfere, if he can, silently praying that she is too smart for what he thinks she’s trying. 

But who does a god pray to?

What else is there, more powerful than him?

Titans, yes, giants, perhaps – but he can only think of Helios, in the panic and white that begins to build inside of his mind, light that is growing stronger and brighter, as another vision flickers. But he does not see clearly – his fathers power is all around them, like a vacuum of might and strength, and it drowns out, overshadows , everything else. His powers flicker, extinguish, and there is nothing he can do but watch and pray and hope.

He holds his breath,

Gods do not technically need to inhale and exhale air, not in the same way humans do, at least, but that is not why he stops doing it right now. It’s the fear, the terror, the dread and the anticipation, tingling in the colosseum and churning in his stomach like a winding, burning monster. 

Quietly, he begs Athena to stay down.

A bolt of lightning like the one their father had unleashed on her was cruel and brutal, and it must have hurt, too – he knows that they do, because Artemis had told him and he could feel most of what his twin felt – but it was only one . A single one, even if it had been a javelin of focused divine power, enough to maybe kill someone who was not an olympian and enough to take out the goddess crumpled on the floor for a week at least, before she would be able to walk again, but it is only one . 

She can still heal from it.

He can still heal her.

Athena's arms tremble as she pushes herself up again.

Ichor drips from her nose and temple – he can see it, where her helmet is dented and no doubt cutting into the side of her head, and sweat pours over her face. Her hands, quivering and twitchy, tighten around her spear and shield.

She raises her shoulders.

“Please.” Apollo wishes to beg, terror gnawing at his heart, trembling and shaking and eyes widened, because he senses something terrible and agonising in the future ahead of them. He does not know for certain, because his father drowns the entire world and weaves it around himself and his lightning instead, but he knows something , still. “Please, please, stop, do not anger him any further, do not pour oil over the fire of his hatred.”

Athena, however, does not hear his thoughts.

Here is what being the god of prophecies means:

Phoebus Apollo might not have spoken every single one himself, but he knows them all the same. Every hero that walks the mortal world, every human and demigod, every fate that has been determined since the beginning of time itself: he knows, he knows, he knows . There are countless prophecies for everyone else: there are few for the gods, and even fewer that are actually dangerous.

There was a single one Zeus feared.

Given by an oracle of gaea, about a child that would be mightier than his father and overthrow the god king like he himself had overthrown his own father and grandfather. Most dangerous, most powerful, and more so than the god of the gods himself. A child of Métis – an unborn one. A son, presumably. Except there is a born one now, a heir, a daughter: there is Athena, clever and divine and favourite daughter of her fathers, for she represents all he had lost when she sprung from his head, and she is all her mother was, before her death. Athena, who is not the son that was prophesied, but maybe it does not matter whether she is women or man.

Athena, who had never truly agreed with everything Lord Zeus did and said, who had questioned his methods and stood against him; Athena, who came to these olympian halls to demand that her father undoes his latest decree, the banishment he had placed upon the mortal Odysseus; Athena, who won a challenge that was meant to be impossible, with half of Olympus on her side.

Phoebus Apollo is a god, like all of his family are – and he realises how this must seem to their father. Not like his daughter asking for her friend to be released; but like his daughter, defying him for all of Olympus to see and the entire world to know, with other gods agreeing to her wishes.

For a man who was prophesied that he will end up like his own father, overthrown and forgotten, all of this is dangerous to Zeus.

“Do not pour oil over the fire of his hatred.” Apollo thinks to himself, leaning over the railing of the colosseum, his mouth already opening to speak the words out loud as he watches his older sister fight and struggle to her feet, shoulders shaking and head lowered. “Don’t you see how this seems to him? Please, please, you must realise what you’re doing, stay down, you cannot anger him further–”

There is a hand on his shoulder.

A second long, he is distracted, flinching away almost as his eyes flicker to the side. Lady Hera’s face is unreadable, closed off and emotionless, but there is the faintest tremble in her fingers as she keeps him where he is, stops him from drawing their king's attention to this side of the colosseum.

A second long, he is distracted.

A mere second.

But a second is all it takes Athena to seal her fate.

Her grip around her spear tightens, and then she charges at their father.

Apollo's head whips around, terror and dread burning in his heart. Aphrodite somewhere between Hephaestus and Ares gasps, a strangely choked sound tumbling from her lips, filled with fear and anxiety. 

The air around all of them shifts as the moments tick by, like grains of sand falling towards the ground one after another. It smells like ozone, like something inorganic burning thrown together with the scent of charred flesh and ichor – similar to but heavier than the copper of human blood. The taste of the air changes, too, strange and hard to describe. 

A dull ache settles over his eyes and mind, the divine presence of his father, as Zeus raises his head and hands higher.

The clouds pull together even tighter, towering and black.

Thunder roars.

It is the only audible thing, for the spectators of this so-called game have gone quiet, fear squeezing their throats shut and freezing them in their seats.

Pallas Athen does not seem to notice.

The sound of her steps is lost in the raging storm above them as she throws herself at her father, shield and spear raised, her blue cape and the hair on her helmet whipping around in the ruthless wind. 

He sees her face, if only for a moment, sees determination and anger and resolve, sees specks of silver and blue in her otherwise godly white eyes and molten gold, pouring from a wound at her temple and over her brow and eye, smearing immortal blood over half of her face. 

Bared teeth and blazing gaze; the cosmos shakes and so does whatever power is the one that made the gods, whatever light is the one that fuels their holiness. Above his head, the stars seem to gleam, and he is visions, is future, is prophecy – he feels a familiar wave of something wash over his shoulders, a foreboding and presage. Whispering into his ears, words winding and winding around his throat, urging him to speak them. 

And…

Fate is at a tipping scale.

This is one of those rare moments where the entire world could have the potential to change, where suddenly all there is hangs on to a single thread. Thunder roars and the ground shakes, yet Pallas Athena snarls and burns with more than the lightning her father blazed through her chest – there is an aura of divinity, around her, of power . And the gods are all powerful, but they are less than their king is, who storms and flares with nothing but force and vigour up upon his throne, and whose presence and aura alone is enough to send them all tumbling to their knees.

Apollo, seer of the future and past and present alike, knows that destiny right now is as broken as his sisters armour, as reshapable as the molten metal and as unsteady and fragile as what was once a masterpiece of Hephaestus’ work, now burnt and crumbling.

Athena, spear and shield still raised in her hands, sets a foot on the lowest of the steps which lead up to her fathers throne.

Zeus balls his fist.

Lightning hisses, fast and bright and golden, from the clouds towering and building above their heads, crashing into the Aegis the king had once given his favourite daughter, the golden tassels adorning the shield tearing away in the power of the blast as the goddess carrying it deflects the blow.

He catches another glimpse of her thoughts.

A boy, bright eyed and wearing a crown, grinning up at her, destiny wrapped around his shoulders like it was with his father too. Little wolf and uppercut him, bruised knuckles yet a smile as bright as the sun.

Athena takes another step up the stairs.

Her teeth are still barred, and her shoulders shake with effort as she presses through the divine power their king unleashes upon her – and through the blazing flaming burning gold of the lightning, Apollo can see drops of blood splattering onto the floor.

He knows how this will end.

He knows, he knows, he knows.

That is his curse – to know, always. 

It does not matter that destiny is shaken; there is only one end to this.

His sister does not hear his silent begging, does not stop her stumbling advance, does not falter even though he senses exhaustion and pain radiating off of her, and for a moment only, he wonders what kind of mortal Odysseus of Ithaca is that he’s earned this willingness of self-sacrifice from a goddess.

Then, the lightning cracks through the sky and the thunder roars, and the weapon and shield of Pallas Athena are powerful, but can carry the wrath of the god king as badly as the woman wielding them.

The spear goes first – polished wood cracking and splintering, the metal of the blade at the head melting and tearing away.

Aegis, godmade and ageless and immortal, follows shortly after, glowing red and orange with the heat unleashed upon it, strong enough to char the palms of Athena's hands.

Neither thing makes any audible noise as they crash down onto the staircase and clatter away over the floor, any sound lost in the raging thunder of the storm above the colosseum.

For only a second, the lightning stops.

A boy, bright eyed and his hair free in the wind, different from the one before, though they are definitely related. There is a small owl in his hands, carved from the wood of an olive tree, and he says aren’t we best friends, Athena?, which would normally earn any mortal who dares to speak like that a trip straight to Hades. Except there is merely an almost amused huff as an answer and We will see where that ends.

Blood drips onto the steps of the staircase, more than before.

Athena does not regard her burned hands or the ichor still pouring from her face and painting golden trails onto her damaged armour – she sways in the force that tore her weapon and shield away, but her face turns up towards the god king, brows furrowed with determination.

She snarls and bares her teeth.

Fight, little wolf, son of your father, and wooden swords on a clearing in a forest, the grass green and breeze fresh, laughter in the air and a spark of familiarity as two warriors move and train in tandem.

Thunder booms, as if the world is collapsing.

Sparks surround Zeus’ hands once more.

And Athena, goddess of wisdom and knowledge, raises her own arms in defence, stumbling forwards still and shaking with what must be pain or fear – and Apollo knows that she will not succeed.

She cannot defend herself against the wrath of her father.

Not with her bare hands.

Not with anything.

They are gods, but they are less : less than their king, less divine and less powerful, no matter what destiny whispers about. And whisper it does, as the lightning grows into a javelin once more, cracking through the colosseum and causing the ground to rumble and shake, rain beating down on all of them as the storm continues to rage on, worse and worse than before. 

He cannot hear the words, though – all he hears is the hissing of the thunderbolt as it is unleashed once more, snarling and snapping like a rabid animal as it claws through the air and into the armguards of Athena's armour.

Gold blazes.

Something horrible and twisted tears at the divine threads of light that connect the gods: he had never noticed it before, never really noticed them before, some sort of strange holy link, but now he does, and so do his siblings and step mother next to him. 

Athena is powerful – but she is no match for their father.

The lightning bites into her hands and arms and shoulder, flashing bright and sizzling, tears through her nerves and flesh and skin, sinks its teeth into her heart: Apollo is the god of healing, and he knows the second her pulse stumbles. Terror fills his mouth like bile would.

The blue of Athena's cape turns into black and then licking flames, red and orange and as golden as the lightning that tore through her chest a second time now, as the fabric is set on fire. It burns as bright as their fathers eyes do, and he knows that it’s supposed to be sturdy and almost indestructible. But in the raging wind and the biting flames, the cape is torn away within moments, reduced to scraps of blue and ashes, leaving nothing but blistering and melting skin.

I don’t know if I can heal this . Fear buries its teeth into his heart, like it hadn’t anymore since the last time he found Artemis bloodied and bruised in one of his temples, a decade ago. I don’t know how.

He should avert his eyes.

He knows what will come – he knows how this will end.

There is no need to do that to himself: he will not ever get rid of the memories, if he continues to look now, will carry them in his mind like his older half sister will carry the scars, if she survives this.

The smell of ozone in the air grows thicker.

Athena's knees crash onto the steps and her blood paints the marble golden.

Dull pain spreads through his shoulders, then – and he realises that Hera has not let go of his arm, ever since placing a hand there. A hand that is now clawing, not on purpose if he were to assume anything from the look in her eyes, at him, as if the queen of Olympus is desperately trying to anchor herself.

Behind her, Aphrodite has her hands pressed against her mouth and her face turned almost completely away, buried in Ares’ shoulders, who in turn looks small and shaking almost, the fire that had burned in his eyes earlier extinguished and replaced with freezing dread. Hephaestus, on the other side of his mother now, is squeezing his cane hard enough for the copper to splinter and crack underneath his calloused fingers.

Over the roaring storm, he hears a choked cough – Athena, gasping for air, her head bowed and her torso curled forward, ichor seeping from scorched skin and torn flesh, immortal blood bubbling in her mouth.

A laugh in his ear and that clearing again, a man and woman leaning against each other and you know you don’t have to stay in the shadows as an owl, my lady, why don’t you join us? An infant, pressed into uncertain and too-large godly hands, and tiny teeth nibbling at her right pinky and ring finger.

“Get up.” He whispers, but Athena doesn’t.

Her body is convulsing, muscles spasming and trembling and shaking, her face a mask of pain and armour a mess of melting metal, burnt fabric and ichor, her eyes squeezed shut and her heart stuttering, stumbling, failing.

The grip on his shoulder tightens.

“Show no fear.” Hera whispers, quiet enough for only them to hear. “None of you, children. Do not let your father see.”

Zeus, down in the arena, raises his hands yet again and the lightning follows his command, flashing and sizzling through the air from the pitch black clouds above his head, like branches of a tree running together as they crackle with a power that was last displayed in the war against the titans.

Athena, body seizing and arms uselessly dangling at her side, can no longer defend herself.

A moment long, he sees her eyes as she raises her head towards their father.

The storm whips against them and the man in front of her is screaming, words like knives as they cut into her heart and soul, but she is angry, scaringly like her father. So she bites back and snarls and bares her teeth, and abandons him before he can abandon her, except she cannot bring herself to do the same to his family: so she watches his son and wife, careful and from a distance, just to make sure; and she ignores the burning ache in her heart and this day, this way, it is her who decides that death through her fathers hands feels less violent than Odysseus of Ithaca's words had, all those years ago.

The wooden owl he had carved for her is hidden at her side still.

Selfish and prideful, all in vain.

Realisation seems to dawn over Athena.

But it’s too late.

Her eyes widen, for a moment, and their colour turns into bright gold and white, like the lightning above her head as Zeus brings down his hands once more.

Blinding, by the gods it’s so blinding .

Apollo can see because he is the sun; his father can see because he is the one who wields the sizzling branches of electricity. For his sister, it will be amongst the last things she ever lays eyes upon.

Because Zeus – he does not stop.

Athena crumbles underneath the attack, crashes into the marble of the stairs, already stained with her golden blood, as she's thrown backwards and forced into the ground under the Force of the thunderbolts: but the god king doesn’t stop . The entire world shakes and crumbles as the blazing gold in the clouds above the colosseum crack and whip together, fuelling each other, until the force behind the attack is enough to crack and destroy the marble ground. Stone shatters, in the same moment as the screeching sound of tearing and bursting metal reaches his ears. The lightning, bright and flashing and blinding, branches out and grows and grows, until Athena's crumpled form disappears into the winding and furiously sparking white and gold. A wall of the tempestuous storm slams into his face, and his gaze blurs as it lands on his father, in the eye of the raging gusts of wind, where the king of the gods is still roaring and fuming, still fueling the divine lightning that is killing his daughter .

Through the clouds of dust and smoke, Athena's helmet, scorched and molten and partially torn apart, clatters over the marble floor and away.

Ozone in the air: a smell, a taste, everything.

It is not Apollo who suffers through the wrath of his father, but that means little: he is his fathers favourite son, but his older half sister, the one who is buried underneath the blazing white and gold of a power strong enough to kill titans, is their fathers favourite daughter. And if father can hurt her like this, can kill her , then does that not mean that he can do the same to any other god too?

It is not Apollo who suffers through the wrath of his father, but that means little: he feels it in his heart, feels the light that is the goddess at their god king's feet fading, feels her pulse stuttering and stumbling, feels how this will end.

Death.

Gods can’t die, though.

A moment long, the lightning burns out.

Zeus’ hands are raised still, as he summons his power again already, his face twisted and pulled into a snarl and mask of rage and fury. And at his feet lies Athena, armour torn and molten and destroyed, limbs shaking and convulsing.

Gods cannot die.

A man standing upon a cliff.

His hair is long, and a scar runs over his cheek: he looks far older than he used to, as if ten years had aged him thirty. There is no spite in his eyes, not anymore: he used to be as prideful as his mentor, but now he’s a broken man, haunted by dead friends and bathed in the blood of all those who he killed.

His hands clutch at an empty leather thread around his neck, which once held the symbol of a goddess he worshipped, as he raises his face towards the sky and screams her name.

Gods cannot die .

Athena’s hand trembles as she raises it.

The action seems to take all of the strength that she has left – her fingers shake, quiver and twitch, and her charred skin glisters disgustingly sickly in the golden glow of her fathers wrath. 

Thunder still roars, the rain still falls.

Phoebus Apollo who sees all looks upon his sister as she dies.

Her gaze gleams with tears, or perhaps it is her blood, as she raises it towards the king of the gods, and the sky above them is the colour of ichor and rust, molten together like holy armour and an ageless, sacred shield.

Gods cannot die .

“Let him go, please .” Pallas Athena says, and her voice shakes as the world around them does as she pleads and begs, in tears and struck down by her own father, essence shattered and body broken. “Let him go.”

Gods cannot die.

Athena's hand falls to the ground.

A moment long, her light still gleams, faintly and weak: then it dies out.

Blood pools. The colosseum is silent. The marble steps are painted in ichor and scorched with flames, the stone shattered and destroyed like a crater around the lifeless form of a fallen goddess.

Open eyes stare into the distance.

Then, they fall shut.

Faintly, Apollo realises that Athena does not think of her family as she dies – but of a mortal man and his wife and son; of Odysseus and Penelope and Telemachus of Ithaca; of a carved wooden owl and olive trees; of an infant in her arms and bright smiles.

Silence.

A moment long, time stands still.

The grip on his shoulder tightens.

“Get your sister.” Hera whispers into his ear, almost inaudible, and she does not move, does not show any emotion on her face as his terrified gaze finds hers. “As soon as I’ve cleared the way, get her and heal her: hide her from your father.”

He does not get a chance to reply.

The queen of the gods disappears from his side, feathers of green and blue and gold gleaming as she flashes through the arena like the lightning had before , and reappears next to her husband, painted lips pulled into a smile as she reaches for his still sparking fists.

“A winner!” Her voice echoes through the colosseum like the thunder had before , as she raises her king's hand into the air and ignores the blood that stains her boots and legs as she moves past Athena. “The games have been won! Cheer for your king, you people of his!”

The audience does.

It does not sound honest, not entirely – fear has a tight hold on them, but they are not gods: they do not know, not completely, what the broken and battered body at the feet of the god king's throne means.

So they cheer and scream and laugh and applaud.

His siblings do not.

Aphrodite is still trembling, looking sick almost, as if she will throw up any moment; Ares is holding on to her, his shoulders drawn up and his head lowered, his breathing erratic and close to panicked; Hephaestus is pretending to adjust the metal that supports his bad leg, but his hands tremble and his fingers turn and pull at screws that don’t matter in any way.

Apollo cannot tear his gaze away from Athena.

Not as Hera calls for a feast and kisses her husband who just beat down his own daughter into a bloodied mess; not as the king hesitates and then laughs and speaks with booming voice to his subjects, declaring something about deserved punishments and knowing ones place; not as the people that had come to see this spectacle slowly begin to leave their places and follow the invitation to wine and food, as it was custom after games like this.

Not until Zeus turns his back towards the girl of his he just brutally beat down, a hint of guilt in his eyes that surely is not real; not until their father, the god king, disappears in a flash of light with his wife at his side, just as the last spectators leave the arena.

All that is left are the four olympians.

For a second, there is silence.

Then Aphrodite gurgles out a strangled sob and in the next moment, Apollo is running as fast as the light itself, his feet slamming into marble ground as he jumps from the balcony they had stood on. He sprints faster than he ever did before, his breath rattling in his chest and the racing of his heart echoing in his ears – he is all seeing, all-knowing, a musician but a healer, too .

He fears for the worst.

There is no movement.

The air is thick with smoke and soot and ozone.

A retching and churning feeling in his stomach: dread and fear and the knowledge that something is utterly, completely wrong.

So Apollo runs, and soot and ichor paint his feet black and golden as he reaches the staircase, the steps slippery with blood and uneven where they were cracked earlier. But he runs still, despite stumbling and almost falling, taps into what power he possesses over teleportation to shorten the path as much as possible. He knows, already, that it will not be enough.

“Get your sister.” His mind repeats and his mouth is filled with bile. “Hide her from your father.”

“Let him go, please. Let him go.”

He passes the remnants of a shattered spear and specks of the molten and torn helmet.

Odysseus of Ithaca.

Smiling, first, a young and unbroken man.

Smiling, again, still young, eyes beaming with respect and care.

Smiling, troubled, as the call for war comes.

Blood and bared teeth, screamed words and a broken heart: pain, so much pain, a kind far worse than what Zeus had unleashed upon his daughter.

Odysseus of Ithaca, his family by his side.

A family more welcoming, more loving, more caring than the one they, the gods, were born into. And is that not tragic? They are supposed to be more , more than humans in every way possible and yet, somehow, this is the part where they’ve failed.

Laud to them, the mightiest of all: divine and powerful and above all mortal, ageless and holy and fated to be great.

Laud to them, the mightiest of all: a father who struck down his child and her siblings who stood by and did nothing but watch.

What does it mean, to be a god?

He does not have an answer.

And then his vision blurs and he’s at Athena's side, knees crashing into the ground as he falls down next to her.

His hands shake.

But he is the god of healing: he has seen things worse than that before, even if never one of his family , he has healed mortals and gods alike. His eyes are still widened and panic still burns in his soul, but he knows his duty now, knows that he cannot afford to falter and fail.

“Sister.” He says, because that is what she is; but the goddess underneath his palms does not answer, does not move. “ Sister .”

Nothing.

Her body still sizzles and sparks with the remnants of electricity, and the lightning burns the tips of his fingers and sends strange tingles through his veins as he gently places them on her shoulders, but Apollo does not care. He can bear it. 

Steps, somewhere behind him.

There is no need to look, so he does not.

“Is she dead?” Ares asks, a second time, and his voice sounds even weaker than it did before: pained and defeated, scared almost, shaking with barely hidden terror. “She can’t be. She isn’t, right?”

And how he wishes to agree.

But Athena is lifeless underneath his hands, and does not react as he presses them against the charred flesh of her neck. She hates other people touching her, despises physical contact enough to stab those who try, and he half expects her to grab a hidden knife somewhere and gouge his eyes out.

She doesn’t.

There is no heartbeat.

He inhales, shakingly, and reaches out to turn his older sister onto her back.

˗ˏˋ — ‧₊˚- ᓀ ᵥ ᓂ - ˚₊‧ — ˎˊ˗.

Odysseus of Ithaca screams a name into the evening and out towards the open sea. He screams and screams and does not expect anything – he would not blame her, if she never laid eyes upon him, not after the things he said to her. The thunder roars, the lightning strikes, not him though, never him. Zeus seems angry.

Odysseus of Ithaca screams a name into the evening and does not expect an answer. Something twitches at the back of his mind, then, only to die again a second later. He has no time to wonder before darkness closes in on him.

Chapter Text

˗ˏˋ — ‧₊˚- ᓀ ᵥ ᓂ - ˚₊‧ — ˎˊ˗.

“Why so much grief for me? 

No man will hurl me down to Death, against my fate. 

And fate? 

No one alive has ever escaped it, 

neither brave man nor coward, 

I tell you - it’s born with us 

the day that we are.”

~ Homer, Iliad 

˗ˏˋ — ‧₊˚- ᓀ ᵥ ᓂ - ˚₊‧ — ˎˊ˗.

Lord Zeus; ruler over the sky and so much more, King of the Gods, the mightiest and most powerful of them all; had many, many different children.

He loves them.

But this is the truth no one dares to speak: love, for immortal and holy beings, is far more twisted, far less loving , than it is for those who age and die and are forgotten. Being eternal changes many things; it shifts priorities and ideas and standards, it sets apart and divides ruthlessly. 

It is a competition, always, eternal love.

It comes with a price; it comes with pain and consequences.

It feels like burning swords or blazing lightning and centuries slipping past, it smells like copper and ozone or maybe grapes and wine, it looks like battlefields bathed in crimson and waving green grass underneath the sinking sun. It is like hearts torn out of chests and the taste of blood on one's hands afterwards, like a war that can be tipped with a single breath, and cosmic law which shatters and breaks, for who cares about it, truly?

The wrath of the stars; the love of a father.

For that is what he calls it – and who are his children, to question their king?

˗ˏˋ — ‧₊˚- ᓀ ᵥ ᓂ - ˚₊‧ — ˎˊ˗.

A soul without name floats in the river styx.

A soul without name; a soul without purpose; a soul without soul.

A soul that is nothing.

Here is what being a god means:

They speak a foreign tongue, with accents of blood and divinity, vowels like the sounds of people cheering and screaming, of pain and delight. Of light and dark. Of everything the cosmos holds.

They carry gold in their veins instead of blood, except it spills just the same. So what is the difference, then? Between them and the mortals they crush like the earth and dirt underneath bare feet. Are they not human, too, at the end of the day, if just a little off, just a little different?

They gaze upon the world with eyes made of blazing fire and suns and stars and moons, and yet the light inside can flicker and fade and die as what makes the god a god does, too.

Here is what being a god means:

Nothing.

(Sometimes, Lady Hera, Queen of Olympus, pities her husbands children for the fate that was bestowed upon them: for being gods gives them something that makes them more in so many ways – yet it takes, too.)

(What use is being immortal without humanity?)

A soul without name floats in the river styx.

It’s shattered.

It has no name, no shape, no purpose: it is what’s left after divinity and holiness was torn away. It is a splinter: merely a shard of what once was great, a fractured remnant of a holy aspect, a power and domain wrapped together and curled up, placed in the chest of a fully formed warrior (never a child, never, none of them were) like some source of life. The human part of something that perhaps, maybe, was so much more once.

Divine existence.

Burnt and broken and lost to the world; gods are like humans, maybe, but they aren’t mortal, and what makes them ageless is what makes them more, too. They do not get to choose who they want to be, they simply are, are mission and purpose and holy tasks wrapped like cord around throats that do not need to provide air to lungs which need not breathe.

A god can still be a god if a part of them is missing.

A god can no longer be a god if their very existence, their very purpose and meaning (to serve the father king; to create the greatest warrior) has been shattered and burned beyond recognition, if something that was more powerful saw defiance and danger and feared it like a mortal would , and raged with thunder and lightning until there was nothing left but molten gold and empty eyes. 

A god can survive lethal and grave wounds.

A god cannot survive a judgement call; a god cannot survive when their kingdom falls.

Cosmic law is as it follows:

Nothing in the world is ever set in stone.

No rumour, no myth, no divine being; no truth, no thought, no prophecy.

Neither is the belief that ‘gods cannot die’.

( What happens instead is far worse. )

A soul without name floats in the river styx.

A soul without name, except for the friend it remembers: Odysseus .

(Lord Hades is informed of it and rages like he hadn’t in centuries.)

(His gaze burns like fire and the underworld shakes.)

(Then, fury in his heart and eyes still blazing hot and brutal, like the lightning that had sent that lost soul his way, he does something that is both cruel and necessary, and denies what is left of his niece her entry into the underworld.)

˗ˏˋ — ‧₊˚- ᓀ ᵥ ᓂ - ˚₊‧ — ˎˊ˗.

Phoebus Apollo had seen a very many different grave injuries.

He had seen broken wood and blades stuck in infected skin, blood forming pools as deep as the sea underneath shivering and convulsing bodies. He had seen shattered bones, white and twisted, had seen the spill of brain and organs alike. He had seen sickness, a lot of it, feverish eyes and impossibly pale skin, crimson bile and red stained foam around toothless mouths.

Healing is his domain: he has grown used to the violence it involves, and takes no issue in seeing it, similar to how Ares can walk through mountains of cadavers which fell through his sword and not raise a single brow.

Healing is Apollo's domain, and there are hardly any things that can shock him still.

Shaking hands turn Athena onto her back and his eyes burn.

It takes him a moment to realise that those are tears.

It takes him even longer to realise that he truly is looking at his sister.

She is almost unrecognisable.

And he had known that it was going to be bad, he knew the entire time, but– By the cosmos itself, what lies underneath his hands could barely even be described as a person anymore, even less so as his sister . Her torso and stomach are one molten mess of ichor, torn armour and charred skin, gold and silver pooling together, still hissing and emitting immense heat. The patterns and symbols that had been carefully carved into the chest plate centuries ago are unrecognisable, and the piece of armour is bent and broken, a crater in the middle, completely black. It’s the size of Apollo’s hand, with all of his fingers spread out, and that’s the damage he can actually see right now. Her shoulders and arms are almost as bad, the burns both less severe and worse, especially between her wrists and elbows.

He cannot bring himself to look at her face.

If there even is a face left to look at.

White flickers in front of his eyes.

For a moment, he sees a familiar face – Hades, eyes burning red and teeth bared, Persephone behind him as she watches her husband wade into ink black water – before the vision vanishes once more, replaced by so much damage, too much, too much , he won’t be able to heal this –

He tries anyway.

The sun burns bright inside his chest, next to his heart, burns warm and gentle and soft, not like the lightning had been before. It is what fuels his healing, is what helps him mend broken bones and torn flesh, is what helps him even out skin until it is only covered in thin lines instead of gaping wounds. The sun has never forsaken him, but there is a first time for everything. His hands are coated in light as he places them on Athena’s chest – but all he does is stain them golden as her blood smears over his palms, and the shine of the sun flickers and twitches. 

His fear comes true.

Apollo pours his divine power into wounds that should do as he asks and heal, and watches as nothing happens in return. The light that threads through his fingers, the warmth and beams of soft yellow he attempts to patch up gory burns and torn flesh with, struggles and fails to follow his will.

The sun weakens, and he fails.

The divine golden glow flickers and fades from his fingers, and all that’s left is ichor of the same colour staining his skin.

No , He thinks, and his eyes burn until the torn mess that is his sister's body blurs together, until all he can see is blood, blood, blood. No, no, this is unfair. Please, gods, titans, giants, please: this cannot be–

“Brother.” Someone says, and then there is a rough and calloused hand on his shoulder, shaking him angrily. “Brother, brother. Is she alive? Athena, Athena , is she– don’t look at me like that! Do not, do you listen?! Brother! Brother! Is she breathing? ”

Apollo’s mouth is dry and his hand’s shake, even though he is the god of healing and he should be better than this: but for some reason, the twisted, uncertain, terrified expression on Ares’s face scares him, too. 

There is no pulse underneath his fingers.

The sun next to his heart fails to heal torn flesh and burnt skin.

And, even worse, he feels the faint echo of Athena’s divine essence sizzling and slowly but surely fading away.

“No.” He replies, voice toneless and almost too quiet, and the words feel like acid on his tongue – because it’s impossible, it’s impossible , gods cannot die, they can’t , and yet there is no heartbeat underneath his shaking finger and no divine energy left in the shell he once called sister. “No, she isn’t.”

A moment long, there is silence.

“NONSENSE!” Ares roars, fire burning in his eyes as his fist tightens around the grip of his sword, causing the metal to screech and wail as it’s reshaped. “What kind of lies do you tell?! Seer, they call you, all knowing – you are wrong, do you hear me, Apollo? You are WRONG !”

The yells echo through the empty arena.

Distantly, he notes that it still smells like ozone.

Grey clouds continue to fill the sky, yet somewhere beneath them, the sun is golden and slowly sinking, but not fully gone yet.

He is a god; he will act like one.

This is not the time to give up.

The cosmos hums as Phoebus Apollon grits his teeth and once more dips his fingers into blazing light as one would with a stream of water. His eyes are closed, his eyes are wide open, filled with white and nothing at all. He sees what others don’t, as the colosseum fades away and into the background, sees strings of the future and past and present alike, sees the power that hums inside of the gods.

Sees the remnants of a shattered soul that sits in Pallas Athena’s chest.

I don’t know how to heal this , He thinks, and wishes to cry just a little, or for his twin to be here. I don’t know if there's something left to heal.

Because Athena is dead except she isn’t, except she is.

Because Athena does not breathe, but gods don’t need to, and Athena is mortally wounded, but gods can’t be, and Athena is is fading, but that is only possible when they are being forgotten by the mortals, and there is at least one who still remembers her.

Odysseus of Ithaca.

He thinks of the name, just for a fraction of a second.

The shattered soul underneath his un-shaking hands flickers and, if only for a moment, fades slower, stuttering and uncertain.

“Do something!” There is a thud, somewhere next to him, as Ares stomps and slams his heel into the crumbling ground, and all Apollo hears for a moment is the sickening crunch of Athena’s bones. “You’re just sitting there, brother . You need to help her–”
“Be quiet !” He hisses back, and glares with all of his might. “I’m trying to think, brother .”

The god of war snarls.

His helmet is discarded, somewhere on the stands behind them still, and his face on full display – dark skin, the scar that runs over his brow, eyes that usually burn like the most violent and rabid of all fires, and now seem more like weakly gleaming coals at the brink of extinguishing. 

And behind the rage and growled words, behind bared teeth and furrowed brows, behind anger and roared demands, there is one thing: fear.

Because Ares cannot help Athena.

No one can help Athena, Apollo is beginning to think, not even he himself, but this must be just as bad for his brother, who is used to being bested by their sister, who is used to bloodshed and violence and death, but only in the mortal world, who is used to fury and screams and crimson staining his skin. They are gods, they are not human, not really even if some parts of them might be, which means that they are born with purpose and purpose only. And Apollo can never shed the sun or the music or the healing; Athena could never shed wisdom and war and crafting, even though now, he fears, she’ll no longer get to reign over any of those things ever again ; and in the same way, Ares can never shed the blood and pain and violence. 

His brother is bruised knuckles and decay and rage.

He is not patience, not gentleness, not knowledge: he has never seen a god fall like this before, not even millennia ago, when divine wars still raged over the world and human civilization was nothing compared to them. 

Ares, right now, is like a cornered animal.

There is no way out, other than acceptance – acceptance that their father is even crueller than they believed, acceptance that nothing and no one is save from his thundering wrath, acceptance that Athena is dead – so instead, he snarls and roars and drills his burning gaze into Apollo's eyes, because he, too, is afraid to look at what’s left of their sister.

Somehow, this is as cruel as war.

Here is what being a prophet means:

He is blinder than most, and simultaneously not.

It takes his brother's fear for both of them to understand something.

Phoebus Apollon and Enyalios Ares; sing of them, o silent muse, for they are the first to gain this knowledge; both realise, at the same time, the ichor of their sister staining the marble and their clothes, her burned and broken body lifeless at their feet, that the godly fate which was bestowed upon them is not one of endless joy and might and power: but a fight that will never stop, only ever in death, against an opponent they cannot defeat. 

How does one kill their king, after all?

How does one kill their father?

“Banish the pity out of your eyes, fool.” Ares growls, but the ire and hatred behind the words is missing, and he looks smaller than usual, as if his muscles and flesh had been taken away in an attempt to hide himself. “I am not the one who lies injured underneath your hands; I am not the one you refuse your help.”

“I’m trying to.” Apollo replies, and means many things at once. “And I understand it, brother. What you and I just realised. What it means for our sister. I am the god of prophecies, after all.”
“And have your prophecies foretold you this.” The older god snarls, his hand motioning into Athena’s general direction as he still refuses to fully look at her. “Do they give you a truth, now, of what can save her?”

They don’t.

All he sees is flickering light: a fading soul.

He can heal almost everything in the entire cosmos, but a god’s aspect is not one of those things. 

His silence seems answer enough, because Ares stomps onto the crumbling marble once more, droplets of ichor flinging into every direction. “How useless can you be? This is your power, is it not? What kind of sick coward holds it back when he could do so much more–”

“It is not the severity of her wounds that are the issue.” Apollo hisses back, his fingers bathed in light still as he attempts to reach for the struggling core inside of Athena’s chest once again, somewhere underneath her silent heart and her lungs filled with blood. “They would be hard and complicated to fully heal, and it would take years, yet she’d survive them. But fath–... our king did not just injure her, like you would a soldier on a battlefield, brother. I don’t know if he meant it – you know how he is, from time to time, as angry as you are, not fully in control of himself – but if he did… then this is far worse for all of us than it is for Athena.” 

The sun at the horizon manages to break through the storm clouds, and somehow happens to give the gold of their sister’s blood an even richer colour. His eyes find her chest once more, finds molten armour and torn flesh, finds scorched skin and blackened metal. 

“Stop speaking in riddles.” His brother replies, shivering in a sudden breeze. “I do not care for any of you, right now. I want you to tell the truth: is she dead?”

(Lord Hades wades into ink black water and gathers a body in his arms. The soul is broken, torn, is rotten and decayed already, like it had been the moment her mother was eaten and killed. It is a mortal thing, the part of an im mortal being that was human, still.)

(It looks, almost, like a child.)

(Shivering and pale and sick, eyes white and empty and its skin burnt. Blood stains ashen skin and a white chition: blood that is red, the deepest of all crimsons, not yet holy, not yet divine. In its hands, there lie the remnants of a scorched and charred wooden owl.)

“Yes. And no.” Phoebus Apollo replies, and threads strings of light around Pallas Athena’s shattered soul, hoping and begging and praying that he, at least, can stabilise it and slow down her fading. “I fear that it is far, far worse.”

Before Ares can bite back, Hephaestus gets into view for both of them, struggling up the staircase. His cane creaks and so does the metal supporting his bad leg, as he slowly fights himself over the steps. The spilled ichor there does not make it easier for him, and the other god seems to stumble multiple times. 

He never falls, though, courtesy to Aphrodite, who stays in her husband’s shadow and gently assists him whenever the other god seems to struggle.

Her expression, to Apollo, is almost unreadable in the few moments he looks at her before redirecting his focus to Athena, the beautiful face of his adopted sister void of the fear and terror she had displayed before. She is, unlike her brothers, barefoot, and the blood of Athena stains not only the other woman's feet, but the white of her dress, too.

Distantly, he recalls the goddess of love talking about how this particular piece of clothing was one of her favourites, during a party on Olympus where both of them had attended and discussed the various fashion disasters they’d encountered all day.

Now, she seems to be unable to care less about the carefully crafted dress.

Clutched at her side, delicate and slender fingers almost white with the effort to suppress their shaking, are Athena’s molten helmet and shield.

Apollo realises how serious this is for his siblings when Ares does not immediately sneer at Hephaestus, who in turn does not attempt to hide the limp of his bad leg like he usually does in his family's presence as he struggles to rush up to their side, while the woman both of them are in love with carries the possessions of a sister she always claimed to hate.

If golden blood wasn’t still staining his hands, still pouring out of open and grave wounds, he’d thank their father for bringing his children together like this.

“This looks bad.” 

“Oh really .” The god of war snarls, his ire now directed at the only brother he shares all of his blood with. “Perhaps you can be the new god of healing, then, since Apollo can’t seem to do that anymore. Or maybe you could even fix our sister like you did your knee.”

“Ares.” Aphrodite hisses, immediately shutting her lover up, and now there is a glimpse of nausea on her face as her gaze flickers over Athena’s crumpled and beaten form, before finding Apollo. “Is it true? We… we heard you two yelling, as we made our way towards here, but– you can still heal her, can’t you? It’s your domain: there is no one better than you, not even your son. I’ve seen you save hundreds of trojans on the fields during the war. Hector should have died a thousand times before he did.”

“That was different.” He replies, and swallows down the uneasiness at the mention of his late champion. “Mortals and immortals are not the same in many aspects: how to fix and mend their wounds is one of them.”

“But you’ve healed other gods before.”

For a second time, he says: “That was different. Those injuries were different. Father–... He did far worse than simply strike her with lightning.”

Tension stands in the air around them.

The sunlight he’s trying to pour into Athena’s chest flickers and wails as it fails to heal, seeping through her wounds without mending a single piece of burnt flesh.

Gods do not fear: but children do.

And most of them never got to be that, children that is, yet they have a father nonetheless. A father they serve; a father they fear. As his sons and daughters, not fellow members of the council of gods. And right now, that fear is like a cord or rope, tying them together by their wrists and ankles, the lines connecting them anchored in the crater that was burn through Athena’s torso. 

Earlier, he had wished for Artemis to be here, at his side: now, he is glad that she isn’t. His twin was never one to at least pretend as if this strange and doomed family of theirs was anything but a tangle of obligation and threats, and he cannot help but think that maybe, she could have ended up the same way their older sister did today, if she’d angered their king at the wrong time.

Gods do not fear: but none of them are gods, really, in the light of Zeus’ power.

“Worse?” Aphrodite asks, and now the facade she had managed to put up cracks and begins to crumble as her voice shakes, just a little bit. “What do you mean, worse ? That’s exactly what he did, is it not? We all saw it.”

Thunder strikes in the distance.

All four of them flinch.

Athena’s soul, still under his hands, seems to almost cry out.

“We need to leave.” Hephaestus says, fingers twitching against the grip of his cane as his worried gaze finds the towering storm clouds in the sky above them. “Now. Before father returns.”

“Are you mad ?” Spit flies through the air as Ares growls, his lips pulled back to reveal a cracked canine tooth, the fire in his eyes regaining some of its strength. “We can’t just– I am not even a god of anything related to healing, but even I know that moving a gravely wounded person is dangerous!”

“Of course you do.” The other man replies, frowning. “You’re usually the one who injures them after all, aren’t you?”

“Speak not of things you don’t understand–”

“Don’t you two dare to begin to fight right now.” Aphrodite hisses, and then seems to almost choke up as she points at both of her lovers. “That always ends in bloodshed, and I don’t need any more almost-dead family members today.”

Apollo has never felt as grateful to her as he does now.

The soul fading underneath his hands struggles and shivers, as if it’s trying but failing to hold onto life and existence. Yet, despite the fight it is putting up, it still fails to reach for and accept the healing light he is trying to send its way.

Thunder roars again.

The air tastes like ozone and their fathers divine powers.

Maybe… maybe that is what’s preventing him from healing? He had felt it earlier, too, when Zeus had called the storm and lightning down upon his daughter, had felt the heaviness of the world and the tension and pressure that draped over him like night did over the world. Using his power of prophecy had been impossible in the light of father summoning his might, and even though the king had left the arena, remnants and echoes of the crackling electricity still burned through the air. 

And through Athena’s veins as well.

Apollo’s eyes, unseeing and blind all the same, widen just a little.

“Perhaps Hephaestus is right.” He says, interrupting the voices of his siblings, his fingers still twitching with the light of a sun that refuses to follow his will. “Perhaps we really have to leave this place.”

“And kill Athena in the process?”
“Well, if it eases your worries,” There is an edge to his voice, one he doesn’t quite manage to lose, as he turns towards his older brother, golden eyes meeting red ones. “She’s as dead as a god can be already anyway.”

Rage flames in Ares’ gaze, and Apollo is certain the only reason why the older god doesn’t punch him in the face is Aphrodite, who slips in front of her lover and leans, hesitantly, over their sister.

“Dead?” She asks, voice shaking. “I thought you said it was something worse.”
“It is.” Heavy weights the burden on his shoulders, all of the sudden, and it reminds him that he’s not as young as he looks, but has seen many centuries of suffering and pain already. “Do you remember Lord Zeus saying that-... that he would make Athena’s ‘kingdom fall’?”

The looks on his siblings' faces are enough of an answer.

“It’s her soul.” He continues, and his all-seeing gaze finds the still fading essence of existence next to his sisters still heart, the light dim and almost extinguished now as threads and light dissolve into ash and dust. “Her aspect .”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means, Ares,” And the smell of ozone is still so heavy, underlined with something richer than blood and charred flesh, heavy enough to send tears burning behind his eyes and bile biting into the back of his throat. “That you soon may very well be the only god of war there is.”

˗ˏˋ — ‧₊˚- ᓀ ᵥ ᓂ - ˚₊‧ — ˎˊ˗.

(The soul does not react to him. If he could call it that, even: really, there is not much about the transparent body he holds in his arms that could be considered anything at all, other than a memory, perhaps.)

(If those unseeing eyes were not the colour of a storm, he’d doubt himself.)

(But the grey is the one thing that seems still strong, still present; that and the wooden owl in the souls hands; so Lord Hades calls out the name of his niece and frowns when she does not reply. He presses a hand against her cheek, then, as he slowly begins to wade further through the river Styx, and away from his kingdom. It comes away with the same blood that stains the aspects chest and arms already. Distantly, he senses his brother's power.)

(Words ring inside of his head: a servant, uncertain and trembling with terror, telling him about a god game and a defiant daughter; about a lightning bolt that turned into many, and about golden ichor staining white marble floor and streaking a black river with colour.)

(Hades wonders if Zeus still claims to be better than their father.)

(If he could only leave the underworld.)

(But he can’t, and he will never be able to – just like he won’t be able to help his niece other than guide this part of her back towards what should hopefully be left of her soul and aspect, and hope that that is enough; or like he won’t be able to help the mortal she died for – Odysseus of Ithaca, who was somehow involved with almost a thousand of the the deaths that had happened over the course of the last years. A desperate and violent man, but one who wanted to return to his wife, and that Hades could understand, if anything. And a friend to his niece, too, the first one she had made since the soul of Pallas, daughter to Triton, had arrived at his doors with a spear-shaped wound in her chest: weeping not because of her own death, but the guilt her accidental killer would have to carry for all of time itself.)

(A friend to his niece, that’s what Odysseus of Ithaca is, and a loyal husband too: there is no reason to spite him, and if Hades could help him, he perhaps would. But there is no time for ‘ifs’, there is little time at all.)

(So he wades further and further through the river, until he reaches the mist and fog beyond and emerges from the ink black water. Souls surround him, gaping mouths and empty eyes, but they are slow and he is their ruler, so he passes through them without issue.)

(He can no longer feel the cold of their presence.)

(The fragment of an essence in his arms shivers and fades more and more, the further they get from the centre of his kingdom, until even her storm-grey eyes are almost white and blind, the blood staining her and him red streaked with gold, skin ashen and paler than it had ever been, coated in sweat.)

(The only thing that stays solid is the wooden owl.)

(His eyes find the small token, as the sand and dirt underneath his boots crunches like bones would, and he realises that it’s old already, the wood withered and streaked with burn marks and notches. Yet, somehow, what was once the human part of Pallas Athena – the one that died when the first bearer of her epithet did, blood staining her hands and her mouth the taste of death itself – clutches the small owl like an anchor.)

(One that keeps her here; one that keeps her in the mortal world.)

(“Thanatos.” Lord Hades says, as he reaches the outer border to his kingdom and the gates through which the dead pass on, greeting the other god with a nod as the winged man bows. “Call for Hermes. I have a message to deliver and a lost family member to send home.”
“My king.” The child of Nyx replies, hesitating before he speaks. “Are you sure that you ought to send a dead soul back to life? Surely, this goes against all the laws of the cosmos and the god king himself–”
“I care not for my brother's rules.” Persephone and him have not been blessed with children, not yet, but the aspect in his arms feels and looks like one, small and shivering and dead, dead, dead: it fills him with a rage that is not natural to him. “I cannot fathom what would cause him to shatter the very being of his own daughter: but I know that gods cannot die. There is no reason to let my niece suffer in a darkness between every shard of her splintered essence, lost to the chaos of her own being and thoughts, and thus I ought to send this part of her back where it belongs. Now: call for Hermes. Tell him this is about his sister and that great-grandson of his.”)

(Thanatos does.)

(It could be imagination, but Hades swears that a flicker of light gleams in the carved owl’s eyes at the mention of Odysseus of Ithaca.)

˗ˏˋ — ‧₊˚- ᓀ ᵥ ᓂ - ˚₊‧ — ˎˊ˗.

Apollo's claim is first met with silence.

Then follows panic, in the form of Aphrodite almost fainting; disbelief, in the form of Hephaestus shaking his head with widened eyes and muttering to himself; and rage, in the form of Ares howling and roaring about lies and bloodshed and terror.

Thunder roars.

A single bolt of lightning flashes through the sky – away from all of them, distant amongst the clouds, but bright and golden anyway. The light flickers in Athena’s blood, still pooling around her broken form.

The four of them flinch once more.

Distantly, he remembers his son, body no longer smoking and dead on the rough ground; then, the picture makes way for his sister, body still smoking and as good as dead on the normally smooth marble. Asclepius maybe could have helped; but Asclepius was torn away from this world by the same divine power that stopped Athena’s heart, burned her flesh and filled her mouth and lungs with blood. 

Gritting his teeth, he sends a silent prayer to any higher power that might listen.

Phoebus Apollo will be damned if he lets his father take yet another loved one from him – even if his older sister and he never had an incredibly well relationship, even if they never spoke about the same things and fought on different sides of the trojan war – one of the reasons, he assumed, why Zeus had asked the gods he did to compete in this game. Save for Hera and Hephaestus, who mostly kept out of any trouble in general, none of them had supported the Greeks like Athena did, and he assumes that father must have thought this past difference in opinion would make that challenge of his harder. 

For a moment, he wonders if the goddess of war would still be standing next to them, if only they had refused her the win.

“There is no honour in this.” Ares bites out, once more pulling him from his thoughts, and his fingers seem to dig into the metal of bronze armguards, almost strong enough to dent it. “I see no issue in wearing that title as solely my own, but if I am to claim it, I want it with honour . What kind of god of war would I be, if I didn’t fought for and won my title in battle?”

“Since when do you care for honour?”
“Since father proved that he has none.”

The remark seems to slip faster from the older gods lips than he wanted to, going by the suddenly scared and panicked expression on his face as he throws his head back and gazes up into the stormy clouds.

But there is no lightning, no thunder.

Whatever feast is going on in the halls of Olympus – a feast to a father who struck down his child – must be enough to distract their god king. That, or Lady Hera is taking care of it herself.

Her words ring in his ears, then: “Get your sister. As soon as I’ve cleared the way, get her and heal her: hide her from your father.”

Lord Zeus’ divine power, his might and wrath and lightning, still burns in the air around them and the body of a goddess he saw fit to beat down over a silly game.

Hephaestus is right.

They need to leave, now.

“We can’t stay here.” 

His words are more mumbled than not, his attention still focussed on the crumpling soul underneath his useless hands. His vision blurs, just a little, as he attempts to heal her once more, even though he knows that it won’t be of any use. Frustration sparks in his chest, next to the terror and fear.

A vision flickers in front of his eyes, hazy and unclear, images smeared and faded underneath the sizzling remnants of his fathers power: a world without wisdom and a less savage and bloodthirsty side of war, a cosmos in which Pallas Athena fades away and leaves a hole gaping where divinity should be. Other prophecies, spoken for mortal heroes and demigods, disappearing and rearranging themself: a promised family that never exists without a girl who wields a small dagger, a coin depicting an owl that burns away and a war as terrible as only the one against Chronos had been, made worse though the imbalance of the Olympians.

A future he will not allow to come true.

“What?” Ares asks, and now there is uncertainty in his voice, more visible than it had been before. “What do you mean?”

“That I agree with Hephaestus.” Apollo replies, nodding into the direction of his other older brother, who in turn inclines his head, even though there is a bit of surprise on his face. “We cannot stay here.”
“Because father will return.”
“Because he hasn’t even left yet.”

Realistation seems to dawn on his siblings, then.

He sees it in their eyes, sees it in the way their shoulders pull up and nervous glances wander through the arena. They must sense it, like he does, too: the mingling electricity, the weight on their backs and the eyes that seem to watch them, still. Thunder roars, as if to agree, and the rain picks up in pace again – it had been almost unnoticeable, before, but now it reaches a steady downpour.

Athena’s blood pools and flows over the marble steps, a rich colour of gold, still.

The rain does not wash it away – not from the ground, at least. Instead, it seems to make it even worse, for no amount of water will ever be able to thin out the divinity of a god’s ichor, so instead, the holy blood seems to become more and more and more, enough for them to drown in it.

He certainly feels as if he does.

His siblings seem to, as well.

“There is a temple of mine, close by.” Aphrodite finally says, her voice barely more than a whisper, molten helmet and shield pressed against her chest, as if it could somehow protect her from the world that cursed them so. “I know it is by far not enough for what I assume you will need to help her, but still. I don’t think father will look there – I’ve complained too many times about it having a terrible location. No one ever comes to this side of Olympus except for these… games ,” The word sounds strange and twisted as she speaks it, almost as if it is disgusting in her mouth and causes her a great deal of pain. “And in those instances, there is no need to pray to me. I haven’t been there in decades because of that: but it is still mine. And father thinks that I refuse to set foot into it.”
“Mother did say to hide her.” Hephaestus adds, inclining his head towards Athena – and none of them can properly look at her still, not even Apollo, who has inspected the mess of her chest and the damage to her arms, but cannot yet bring himself to lay eyes upon his sister's face. “I trust the queen that she will distract our king for now, but there is no saying what he will do tomorrow. And… we should probably warn the others. Call for Hermes and have him inform Artemis and Dionysus of what happened – those two will be too far away from all of this to know, and we don’t know what… what father might do, if he cannot find Athena when morning comes.”

The implication is enough: there is no need to put anything in words.

For only a splinter of a second, Apollo wonders if this is normal for a family: to hide from and fear their father like a monster, to warn their siblings of his ill mood and anger so that they may stand a chance to avoid his ire and lightning. He knows that they are complicated – they’re gods, after all, nothing is ever easy with divine beings – and that their family was built on many terrible acts and vows, most of which the mortals would call inhumane and vile. Then again, the humans aren’t immortals, so really, should they, the gods, measure themself to a standard of those who are less, in every way, shape or form?

(Except, He thinks , The one of family. Odysseus of Ithaca, as I’ve seen him in Athena’s mind, may be a man bathed in blood, but he would never lay a hand upon his son. Other then father, who burned his daughter to the ground and left her drowning in the gold of her ichor.)

The soul underneath his hands shivers once more.

It has already lost most of its solid form, and a big chunk of it is missing: half of it, almost, pieces torn away as if a hand had reached for crumbling ground and tore it into an abyss. Darkness gapes there, reeking of decay and pomegranates, and ringing with what could almost be choked sobs accompanying a dying breath. A spear through a chest; a body reduced to water and flowing through trembling hands. The rest of the dying soul is different, slowly disintegrating and burning into ashes. It smells like ozone and charred flesh, and seems to wail like a scared child with every new crack, every bit of divinity that escapes and fades away into nothingness. A light going out; angry words screamed into the darkness of a mind as a mortal man screams and screams and throws words through the air like he shoots arrows with a bow. 

Regret and guilt and pain.

Wishing, begging, crying to make up for it.

(A frightening thought comes to him, then: if maybe, perhaps, Pallas Athena does not even want to continue to exist anymore. He does not know what’s worse: the fact that what’s left of her screams of loneliness and sin, or that a impossibly small part of himself believes that maybe, the only way to prevent her more suffering is to let her go. It’s nonsense, of course. They’re gods, after all: doomed to be ageless and suffer, for all of time itself.)

He bites down on his lips and goes to work.

There is no way of healing his sister, not now, not here. He’ll have to try again, in a place where their fathers mingling presence is not as brutally strong and violent, where they are unseen and unheard. Where none of them have to fear for more punishment, and where he can work in peace to try and figure out a way to restore Athena’s essence as a god.

But to do that, he needs to stop her soul from disintegrating any further, so Phoebus Apollon; sing of him, o muses, and of his light and glory the same; reaches for the sunlight in his chest and pulls and pulls, clawing fingers into his powers and refusing to let go. He grits his teeth until his mouth tastes like bones and dust, and snarls until his teeth are bared like the fangs of a rabid animal. It is Ares’ rage that helps him do what he wishes, is Aphrodites’ determination that causes him to pull through, is Hephaestus’ talents in a smithery and the molten gold and metal surrounding them that gives him the idea.

He reaches for his sun, his soul, and does not thread single beams of it through Athena’s fading essence, but pours his entire being around hers, until there is no darkness, no shadow, no death she can escape to.

˗ˏˋ — ‧₊˚- ᓀ ᵥ ᓂ - ˚₊‧ — ˎˊ˗.

(Lord Hades notices.)

(A blazing golden owl is hard to miss: and so is the light that suddenly burns his hands and arms and chest. Scorching hot and blistering so, he does not feel it in the slightest. But the soul does, whimpering and crying in his arms; and her skin is still pale, still ashen, her lips still flecked with blood, her eyes a wrong colour – the one of the sun, now, and no longer storms, as she begins to slowly burn and burn and burn away. Into the carved wood: old and charred and worn down with time, feathers and other details long since gone, marked with the same lightning that he knows sent his niece to him in the first place.)

(For the first time since he had found her, floating and drowning in river Styx, she seems to realise that he’s here.)

(A hand reaches for him, then, the other one still holding on to the token as if it was an anchor, trembling and shaking as fingers grab a hold of his chiton in a desperate attempt to pull him closer. He curls forward, then, because he knows that she had never been a child like this: he knows that what he is holding is her human part, and something she never got to be in the same breath. An opportunity lost, when her mother was eaten; an opportunity lost, when her father distracted her in a fight, and for the first time in her life, his niece took a life.)

(Her innocence and childhood, as much as he could call it that, drowned in blood that day.)

(Sometimes he wonders who is truly cursed: the mortals, who live and die and are forgotten, or the immortals, who live and live and yet never do.)

(Quivering lips attempt to form words.)

(He tells her to not try to speak, and runs a hand through her hair as she shivers and shakes – fear, he realises, maybe of him, maybe of something else. Her skin dissolves into flakes of ash, slowly, and the red that paints her chiton and flesh turns golden. Hair floats in an invisible breeze, and the smell of charred flesh fills his nose. The carved owl stays. It is the only thing that does.)

(Seconds before she is gone, his niece’s eyes find his and she whispers the word father into the stale air around them, like a asking prayer or as if to beg.)

(Hermes arrives a few minutes later.)

(Lord Hades, who is ruler over the underworld and never once felt sorry for any being in the entire cosmos, except himself in his wife, perhaps, swallows down a churning knot in his throat and asks his nephew to return something to the overworld for him.)

(For some reason, letting go of the wooden owl feels like a betrayal.)

˗ˏˋ — ‧₊˚- ᓀ ᵥ ᓂ - ˚₊‧ — ˎˊ˗.

Getting called to a meeting by one of the major three gods of the parthenon is rare and worrying enough already, especially if it is for a personal request.

Getting called to a meeting by two of the major three gods of the parthenon, both for a personal request and both on the same day, too, is almost an impossible odds, and he wonders if his uncle Poseidon too will send for him. The day isn’t completely over, at least not yet – surely something could be found that is worth discussing and asking for.

Then again, both Lord Hades’ and Lord Zeus’ wishes are related to the very same thing, and while the god of the sea is involved in the affairs of that dear great grandson of his, he’d probably not ask him out of all gods for help.

“Son.” His father says, head propped up on his hand and white eyes lowered, his hair and beard waving to their own will, like the clouds themself. The feast around them is still loud and eager, though the worst of it has died down already. Wine and nectar and a very many different meals fill the tables and half empty plates; nymphs are singing and lesser gods brawling, much to the entertainment of others. In distant corners of the room, bodies are intervined and kisses exchanged.

Yet not even the alcohol and lust in the air manages to fully overshadow the biting fear.

“Son.” Lord Zeus says again, and Hermes bows his head. “Have you heard what happened to that sister of yours?”
He has.

It’s really hard to miss when your sibling gets burned to the ground by her father, even if he wasn’t actively present – and that, truly, is not something he regrets now, in the aftermath. The terror the god king inflicted is ringing in his bones and flesh, even though he wasn’t even in the arena.

Lowering his gaze, he refuses to think about what Athena must feel.

If she’s even still alive, that is.

“I have.”

“Of course.” Zeus scoffs, then, and takes another sip of his wine as his eyes follow some of the nymphs who show more skin than not and giggle amongst each other. “I’d be surprised if you hadn’t.”

The silence between them stretches.

Distantly, Hermes wonders where his step mother went.

“Odysseus of Ithaca.” Zeus scoffs a second time, wrinkling his nose, and then his gaze finds his son. “He’s your descendant, is he not? How come that insolent daughter of mine came begging for his life like a whore would for my cock, yet you didn’t?”

There are many different answers, and perhaps normally, Hermes wouldn’t have minded to use a more ironic once: but now, he has smelled ozone and sensed lightning, and he had heard the screams and felt something flicker and fade away. 

This is no time to take risks.

“I know better, father.” He says, and bows his head. “Better than to defy you. Better than to question your judgement.”

“Tch.” Zeus makes, and rolls his eyes, a hand reaching out to pat his back. “See? It’s not that hard. You needed to understand, all of you. Tell your siblings that, the next time you see them – I am not harsh, but just. I give punishment where it is fit. Your sister has embarrassed herself and me: she brought shame over all of us gods when she came to kneel at my feet for a mortal .” Disgust fills his fathers voice, together with disbelief as he shakes his head and laughs. “A mortal, and one like that especially. For her to call him loyal to his wife and use that to win over Hera – how dare she, how dare she .”

Thunder roars in the distance.

The singing of the nymphs grows a little shrill.

“You are right, father. And I’ll tell it to my brothers and sisters, just like you’ve said.”
“Good, good.” Zeus replies, and then he’s frowning, fingers tapping against his cup. “But let it be known that the king of the gods is not solely a ruthless man. I am just, I am fair: I bring punishment, yes, but never without reason, and never without kindness.”
Hermes wonders if anyone who wasn’t his father would call getting struck down with lightning kind at all.

The man next to him continues, however, unaware of his son's thoughts as he pours himself more wine and balls a sparking fist. “Let it be known, messenger of the gods, that the king knows he was harsh, but that he did what was necessary to remind you all of who I am. But do not fear me: you are my family, after all. There is little I love less. And as a token of my kindness: let it be known that I love my daughter, and that her display of loyalty , may it be to a worthless mortal, was honourable to at least some degree. And thus, I may have deemed it necessary to punish her for defying me, but I will not be harsh alone. I shall release the man she seeked to free.”
A million words swirl in his head.

“Release him?” He manages to ask, after a second of silence. “From Ogygia?”

“Yes.” Zeus waves his hand at him dismissively, and rolls his eyes. “Athena won the games after all, more or less, and I am not unjust. I merely had to remind her of her place, but Olympus shall know that such actions are important, and that I am a fair king, still. Tell Calypso to let the man go. Help him yourself, if you wish – gods know you did so before.”

“Yes, father.” Hermes replies, and bows his head again. “I will run immediately. To deliver your message to my siblings, first, and then to Ogygia.”

“Do so. Make sure to point out that this was allowed in my mercy and grace.”
“Of course, my king.”

Then, he bows once more, and rushes away.

Hera passes him on the exit to the hall of the feast, looking as regal and collected as always. There is a bruise on her lip that was not there this morning. Her eyes are cold and her gaze unreadable as her mouth moves almost unnoticeable.

“The arena first. From there, the almost hidden path down the mountain, past the olive tree. The temple is small.”

He does not stop to thank her, but turns in the right direction and runs.

In his pockets, the halfway decayed wooden owl flickers with a gleam of golden light.

˗ˏˋ — ‧₊˚- ᓀ ᵥ ᓂ - ˚₊‧ — ˎˊ˗.

This is what death feels like:

Nothing.

Nothing, nothing, nothing.

In truth, she has felt like this for a long, long time already.

She is a haunted god, after all: a monster. Crimson stains her hands and her face is a mask of stone. Selfish and prideful, never guilty, never, unknown to the world, alone.

Alone.

Alone.

Alone.

This is what the truth feels like:

Bitter.

Pallas Athena, in all her centuries of existence, had two friends whom she considered her closest. Two friends whom she actually considered friends. The first one fell through her own spear, and it does not matter if it was an accident, for fate shall forever remember her first kill as a cruel and meaningless one, and she will forever wear the shame in carrying the name Pallas. The second one fell through his own undoing, and she stood by and watched, more or less, until he was no longer the bright and kind boy she had met, but a man haunted by terror and bloodshed, and it does not matter that he abandoned her as much as she did him, for people shall forever deem her as vile and cold for it, and she will never again grant herself the full kindness of a friend, a mortal one even less. 

(Pallas Athena, in all her centuries of existence, will have few children, sprung from her head like she once did from her fathers, and she’ll love them from the furthest distance she can bring herself to maintain. After all, nothing good ever happens to humans she takes a liking on.)

(She will survive her father, somehow. After all, what kind of myth, what kind of legend, would praise the death of a god? Even though tragedy swims in her blood.)

Chapter Text

˗ˏˋ — ‧₊˚- ᓀ ᵥ ᓂ - ˚₊‧ — ˎˊ˗.

“Ruin, eldest daughter of Zeus, 

she blinds us all, that fatal madness —

she with those delicate feet of hers, 

never touching the earth, 

gliding over the heads of men to trap us all. 

She entangles one life, now another.” 

~ Homer, Iliad 

˗ˏˋ — ‧₊˚- ᓀ ᵥ ᓂ - ˚₊‧ — ˎˊ˗.

Lord Zeus; ruler over the sky and so much more, King of the Gods, the mightiest and most powerful of them all; had many, many different children. Most of them were important in some way. His godly children were part of what formed existence, of course. They were love and war and bloodshed and healing, were the sun or the moon and cups full of wine. His mortal children were part of what lived within said existence, and they were almost all fated for grand and glorious things. There was Perseus and Heracles and Helen of Sparta; people who had been foretold to wander the earth. Prophecies were written with those names, and with many others too: they were, after all, the human children of a godly king, and thus greatness was written into their very blood, and so was their fate. 

What an oracle speaks, after all, always comes true. 

There is a single immortal child of his with the same kind of prophecy, and it is the only one which will never, ever be fulfilled. The stars will burn out and the sun will die, the earth dry out and crumble and shatter into dust, the human race and all else that lives will slowly but surely vanish from the face of the world, until nothing is left, before Zeus, king of the gods, will ever allow his daughter to take his place as the ruler of Olympus.

Not that that matters, anymore.

He’d rather take his hands stained with ichor that belongs to his own blood; would rather her body crumpled in front of him, forced into an eternal bow; would rather the flickering and fading of divine existence; yes, he’d rather take all of those things instead of ever losing what makes him Zeus, god-king: and so he does.

Stains his hands with her blood, forces her face into the marble and her body to burn, until she cannot rise anymore, blazes lightning and roars with thunder, until the world remembers who rules it.

There is no ounce of guilt in his bones.

Because he is the king of the gods, he is the father, the all-knowing, the all-named; he is Alastor and Anax , is Areios and Astrapaios ; he is Basileus and Brontios , is Keraunios and Koryphaios , is Kosmetes and Hyetios ; he is Maimaktes and Meilichios , is Nephelegeretes and Nomos , is Lykaios , is Olympios . He is Ouranios and Pankrates and Sthenios , Terpikeraunos .

There is no ounce of guilt in his bones – because he is the avenger, is the king, is of the war and of the lightning; he is the king, by the gods, and the thunderer, is of the storm and the leader of all, is the orderer of the cosmos and of the rain; he is the stormy and the gracious, is the cloud-gatherer and of the law, of the wolf, of Olympia. He is heavenly and all-powerful and the strong one, who delights in thunder.

There is no ounce of guilt in his bones – because he is Lord Zeus, king of the gods, husband of Hera, ruler of the skies and earth alike.

(There is no ounce of guilt in his bones; and yet, sprawled over one of the many tables in the hall of feasts, cheeks red from the heat and wine, his mouth the taste of nectar and grapes, he cannot help but think that maybe, he was just a little it too hard on his daughter. And yes, maybe it’s because Hera had told him so, and then… well, he hadn’t meant to grow as angry at her, too, but really, it wasn’t his fault – she just had to come and pester him, about something he was annoyed with already anyway.)

(He hasn’t seen his wife ever since she’d stared him into the ground, her lip busted and her ichor mixed with his daughters on the back of his hand; he hasn’t seen his children either, except for when he called for Hermes to release that blasted king of Ithaca, and he can’t help but think that maybe, they’re avoiding him; and really, he hasn’t seen any of the other gods, except maybe in passing.)

(Word travels fast on Olympus.)

(Hestia had glared at him before disappearing, when he and his guests – frightened, they were all so deliciously frightened of him – entered the halls of Olympus, ready for the feast he’d called for; Demeter had merely regarded him with a emotionless look before declining his invite to this party, claiming that she was just on her way to visit her daughter; and Poseidon was somewhere in Ethiopia for a feast in his honour.)

(Zeus scoffs.)

(Then, he empties his wine and rises to his feet.)

(The others must have all forgotten who he is, just like Athena did – or maybe, they’re all scared of him, reminded of his power now, just like Hera had told him. And that was his goal, was it not? To set an example, and show what happens to those who defy their king. This has nothing to do with that blasted prophecy about Metis, and it has nothing to do with the way half of Olympus picked his daughter's side above his own, even his goddamned wife . His wife, who had praised and kissed him, and declared him winner in the arena, her smile as fake as it hadn’t been in a long time; his wife, who had hissed cursed words into his ears and raised a brow as if to say ‘no lightning for me?’ even after her skin bruised and gold stained her busted lip; his wife, who had refused him her body and left this feast shortly after Hermes did. ‘To rest’, she had said, and caressed his cheeks with fingers that hadn’t felt as loveless as they did now in all of the past centuries; ‘You know how much large crowds cause me headaches’, she had said, and he’d kissed her knuckles anyway, his own void of his family's ichor by now.)

(Of course he knows that she is lying; that she’s probably on her way to Athena by now.)

(He doesn’t care.)

(There is no ounce of guilt in his bones.)

Lord Zeus, who is ruler over the gods and so much more, stands alone in a hall full of people who are not his kin for only a moment, before he scoffs a second time and turns to look for company this night. Those nymphs by the back wall of the room do look pretty hot, after all, and if his wife refuses him pleasure, he’ll just get it from somewhere else.

˗ˏˋ — ‧₊˚- ᓀ ᵥ ᓂ - ˚₊‧ — ˎˊ˗.

“Still, 

we will let all this be a thing of the past,

 though it hurts us,

 and beat down by constraint 

the anger that rises inside us.

Now I am making an end of my anger. 

It does not become me, unrelentingly to rage on.” 

~ Homer, Iliad 

˗ˏˋ — ‧₊˚- ᓀ ᵥ ᓂ - ˚₊‧ — ˎˊ˗.

(The sky above her is golden.)

(She can see the sun, just a little, can see it peeking out behind the olive trees, as if her brother is waving his goodbye before night falls over this part of the world. The clouds are orange and purple, towering in the distance behind the islands, and the breeze coming from the ocean smells of rain. The leaves rustle, and a few birds sing their evening songs, chirping and tweeting. Somewhere on the other side of the clearing, water splashes and falls over stones, dripping into a small pond. The world smells like wood and olives.)

(There is no pain, here.)

(Grass rustles and whispers, as she shifts her stance, and the bark of the tree behind her scrapes softly over the metal of her armour. Her cape is gone – the day had been hot, after all, and she’d spent it in mortal disguise anyways, trying to somehow calm down and distract her student from fretting around his pregnant wife. That poor woman had needed everything but her husband bursting out in tears whenever she groaned in pain at yet another contraction.)

(Her lips twitch.)

(Something warm and loving sparks in her heart.)

( This is wrong. Something is wrong, this happened so long ago, what– )

(A yell in the distance – a name, her name, even though she isn’t quite sure she remembers it right now. But it belongs to her, she knows that it does: there is a pang of recognition in her chest, an echo of something familiar, and so she raises her gaze from the grass and flowers underneath her feet and turns her face to look over the clearing.)

(Except it is a garden, now, though a wonderfully grown one, filled with enough flowers and herbs and bushes to almost fully conceal the palace walls.)

(Steps, coming closer.)

(Someone is making their way over one of the paths.)

(Her lips twitch once more, and she wants to smile so badly.)

( The taste of ichor is bittersweet. )

(That name, again – her name, her name, she needs to remember: she still can’t quite grasp it but it’s hers, hers, hers. For some reason, if only for a moment, her canine teeth sharpen into fangs and her hands into talons, blood boiling and heart racing, eyes searching for something to fight. Like a rabid and wild animal, cornered and injured – kill, kill, she needs to fight needs to kill needs to protect herself against an enemy she cannot see–)

(Someone laughs.)

(The shadow of the tree she’s under seems to darken, if only for a moment, and ghostly hands reach for her chiton, clawing into the white fabric, stained with gold. ‘Don’t leave us’, they seem to whisper, sad and lonely, ‘You’re one of us too, now, friend’. ‘Your uncle would be sad’ and then she’s drowning and burning, ‘This is not your fault, ‘thena, it isn’t-’ and her spear is stained with red, red, red, except she does not even hold it in her hands. ‘You can stay’ and then there is a gentle hand on the back of her neck, curling a single strand of her hair with a motherly tenderness she never got to feel, ‘Don’t you think a parent should be allowed to talk to their child at least once, in death or not?’.)

( ..-ter-... pollo we-... -is way, quick–..-sist.--..no, don’t– )

(Can a god burn?)

(She’s never thought about that before.)

(What an interesting thing to consider – Prometheus and her created the humans in their divine likeness, more or less, and humans could burn: she’d seen it, in her many millennials of existence, had seen the charred flesh and molten bones, had smelled the twisted and sickening stench of scorched skin and heard the howls and screeches of pain.)

(For the third time now, someone yells her name.)

(A man steps into the garden, then, with hasty feet though in all honesty it seems more as if he had been holding himself back from running up until now – careless, given the fact that he cradles an infant against his chest, wrapped into blankets and silky fabric.)

( Wake up. )

(His smile brightens as he sees her.)

(She feels the urge to scold him, then, as he rushes over the clearing towards her, the child momentarily safe in his arms – but children are easily breakable, are they not? Mortal ones especially. Not her, of course, or any of her siblings; then again, they weren’t human anyways.)

(Did that mean that she could burn or not, now?)

(The sun is golden and slowly sinking, the air fresh with a gust of wind, grass rustling and the sweet scent of flowers mixing with the one of olives; the sky and clouds are purple and yellow and blue and orange, the ocean in the distance a deep, deep turquoise.)

(Her world shifts until all she sees is the infant.)

( Wake UP. )

(The man is smiling at her.)

(Then, stopping just at her side, he slowly and carefully raises his arms, holding his child, his son, towards her. ‘My lady. I wanted you to meet him’, he says, and his hair sways in the gentle wind, the band of gold around his head shimmering in the evening light. ‘We’ve named him Telemachus. Would you do me this honour, goddess, and bless my boy?’)

(She does.)

(How could she not?)

(The man says her name again, and laughs as he takes a step closer.)

( W akE UP. )

(‘Great, now–)

(W AK E UP. )

(‘- hold him, like this–’)

( WA K E U P!)

(‘- what? No, of course he didn’t come from my head , why would you think that–’)

(SISTER, WAKE UP!)

(A scream tears from her lips, and her world drowns in pain and blood.)

˗ˏˋ — ‧₊˚- ᓀ ᵥ ᓂ - ˚₊‧ — ˎˊ˗.

Everything we know of the times before is passed down in song and book.

So? Listen now, mortal thee.

This is how the world will come to know about the decay of Pallas Athena:

Sing, o muse.

Sing, o muse, of the glory of Phoebus Apollon, son of the mighty lord Zeus and the lady Leto; he who is the kind sun and the light and the art, he who heals and sings and paints with a laugh, he who is warm and gentle and gives us the day.

Sing, o muse.

Sing, o muse, of the glory of Phoebus Apollon, son of the mighty lord Zeus and the lady Leto; he who is burning sun, raging and blazing hot, he who kills and claims to heal, but fails and flames until there is nothing left.

Sing, o muse.

About a blazing heat, about a molten core: about what makes a god a god shattered and twisted and fading away, about reaching darkness, whispering sweet nothings and gentle words, about the rage of the one who rules all death and a deep and black river, streaked with gold; about the desperation and unspilled tears of a family doomed and broken by fate itself – more, more, they’re supposed to be more, about the fragments of a broken soul and the light poured over it, in one last desperate attempt to keep a goddess, a sister, within this plane of existence.

Sing, o muse.

About eternal darkness that will soon come to swallow this world.

(The humans sense it.)

(Something is wrong, in their lands, in their homes.)

(The skies seem strangely colourless; the ocean is freezingly cold and dark; no birds sing and no deer runs. The grapes taste sour and the wine herb; all laughter echoes strangely from marble walls and no fire feels as warm as it did before.)

(Emptiness: that is what the world is grasped by.)

(Odysseus of Ithaca dreams of his mother’s ghost and the burnt feathers of an owl.)

This is how a brother refuses to let his sister die:

Phoebus Apollo reaches for his sun, his soul, and does not thread single beams of it through Pallas Athena’s fading essence, but pours his entire being around hers, until there is no darkness, no shadow, no death she can escape to.

His sister screams.

It is almost the worst sounds he’s ever heard, third only to the sickening thud of that discus cracking against Hyacinth's head, and the sobs of his twin after what Orion had attempted to do to her in the forests of Crete.

Athena's eyes widen and her mouth snaps open; ichor and spit drip from her teeth and lips and chin as she howls and chokes. Like a rabid, wounded animal: her fingers claw into the air, against nothing and the entire world as her muscles convulse, back arching from the marble beneath them. She’s shaking and spasming, is thrashing around, her legs kicking out and her head thrown back against the ground with a sickening crack, again and again and again and again –

Light flickers in front of his eyes.

Fate and destiny, twisting once more around each other, changing and changing back again, faster and faster, as if uncertain: kingdoms fall and empires rise, the blood of a million mortal men soaks the ground red as war rages across the world, fire sinks its hungry teeth into homes and houses and burns, burns, burns as the gods are slowly but surely forgotten.

Light flickers – a prophecy, he realises, at the edge of his consciousness.

And o, how badly he wants to speak it: his lips are moving, already, eyes rolled back, his gaze directed into the depths of the cosmos, and his murmured words are underlined with the pained screams of his dying sister, ringing out like some twisted composition of eternal music. 

Her voice is raw and broken, like her bones and body are, and he hears the gurgling of blood in her throat together with wet sobs and choked gasp. There is a choir, singing in his ears, using the sounds of Athena’s agony as their own tool as they vocalise around her screeches, and o , he wants to sing with them, wants to raise his voice to thundering volume and roar this prophecy out into the world, so that his father up in the halls of Olympus may hear and know what he has done.

Someone says his name, but that hardly matters: he has many, after all, is many, is so much, he is the sun and the light and all things important, right now; he is the knower of the truth and the future to come. 

He is blind but he sees, in the golden ichor staining and pooling on the marble underneath him, what fate has decided to do, how it has decided to punish Zeus, who is god-king – but o, o , for how long will he continue to be? – for his utmost act of betrayal; for his daughters ichor, spilled and spent.

Destiny does not take kindly, to the death of a goddess.

Phoebus Apollo sees his fathers throne and someone who is not his father resting in the marble and gold, and all he wants to do is throw back his head and laugh at the sky, for the fate it bestowed upon itself in hope of preventing another.

He wants to.

He wants to.

So, so badly: it is all his father deserves, yet less and more at the same time.

Distantly, he realises three things:

First, that someone is still yelling his name, and that there are hands on his shoulders, shaking him violently, as if desperately attempting to wake him up from whatever trance he has found himself in.

Second, that his sister's screaming has quieted and been reduced to a wheezing and weakening attempt to breathe, that she’s choking on her own blood and coughing up molten gold, again and again, as her face is painted with it like he would a canvas.

And then, surprise crashing together above his head like a icy, cold wave, his vision and mind clear just a little as the fog that had settled above him begins to ease away, making it possible for him to sense something , anchored into the light of his soul – the part he had poured over Athena, in a last and desperate attempt to keep her aspect and existence bound to the physical world.

The presence of a third god.

There is a ringing, in his ear – the choir is still trying to sing, and their voices mix with the one of Ares, who is yelling at him still, is the one shaking his shoulders, kneeling almost in front of him as he does.

But Apollo does not care, not right now, as his gaze wanders past his older brother.

Aphrodite is crying, he realises.

Her feet are still stained with gold, had been ever since she came climbing up the stairs, but now her hands are, as well, holding Athena’s in her own. She seems to be shaking, and a very many different expressions flicker over her face – he remembers, then, that his adopted sister loves , in a way he could never comprehend: that she senses and feels all emotions around her, and o , how must she feel right now? 

To sense all this pain, all this terror between them; to sense their god-kings rage to her core; to sense the fear Athena must have felt, in the moments before their father struck her down. 

And Apollo knows that, similar to how Ares hates Athena, Aphrodite does, too: that they never understood each other, never were able to see eye to eye, especially not after the passing of Pallas, who was daughter to Triton. 

That war and love go hand in hand, both violent and cruel and soaked with red, but that Aphrodite was more like Ares’ bloodshed than Athena’s cunning. 

Because love turns people into mad fools and idiots, it makes them desperate and irrational and ignorant; love starts wars and ends lifes, brutally and with red-stained hands. It rips apart hearts with a delighted giggle and enjoys the sound of screams and tears and shattered souls. 

Ares and Aphrodite go hand in hand; Athena and Aphrodite do not.

They clash and fight with all but weapons and fists; with bared canine teeths and bloodstained mouths, with clawing fingers and stinging words, sharper still than any sword. 

Love, maybe, is cunning too: but in a treacherous, deceitful way, not with wit and smarts and strategy; but Athena, always proud and stoic in her appearance, has always refused to accept that similarity; and Aphrodite, just as proud but far more emotional about it in her own appearance, has always refused to accept that similarity as well.

Had the golden apple not been proof enough of this?

And yet-...

Yet now, here, Aphrodite is crying – and she does it often, there is no doubt in that, ‘You would too,’ she had told him once, ‘If you had to feel everything I do’ – but there is something twisted and sick about this time. His adopted sister is the goddess of love: which includes all kinds of love, not just romantic one.

‘He claims to love his mother,’ Aphrodite had hissed, earlier, during the game, the gaze of her eyes cold and angry. ‘But let her die of a broken heart.’

Here is the truth, one of many spoken in this hymn:

Love comes, at its core, in a very many different forms.

It can be, of course, a tender and sweet thing, and the exact opposite of that. It can be brutal and vile, can drive daggers through the hearts of the one who wields it and rage sparking in the minds of those who go without. 

It is a kiss onto the lips of those we might consider our soulmate; it is, also, the gentle caress of a kind hand, brushing a strand of hair from our faces and wishing us goodnight with caring words.

It is philia, pragma, storge, eros, ludus, mania, philautia, agape .

Affectionate, enduring, familiar, romantic, playful, obsessive; the love of oneself, and the love that is selfless.

Like Ares hates Athena, Aphrodite does, too: and like Ares should not, can not, exist without Athena, neither can Aphrodite. 

Because love is cruel and love is vile; and Aphrodite Urania is the one god who will always, for all of time and eternity itself, suffer under the curse of her own domain. And she will always love her family, too.

There is still wax in his ears; he still does not hear.

The prophecy rests on the tip of his tongue.

He does not speak it.

Instead, his eyes bore into the ones of his adopted sister, and he understands, perhaps for the first time in millenia, that he is not the only one who is plagued and cursed by his divinity. That he is not the only one who suffered under the weight of his powers, because of the prophecies he told and the lives he ended; that he is not the only one trapped in this form of existence.

He remembers Adonis; remembers why roses turned red.

He remembers that golden apple; remembers that it was less about the actual competition, and more about that gnawing, violent uneasiness, the one that had begun to settle into his own bones a few thousand years after he began existing, once the world started to become boring and less and less capable of showing him new things. Because being a god might be interesting for some time, and it is certainly fun and empowering to hold divine power and do with it as they please – but what sets the life of a god apart and gives it a higher purpose is what curses them in the end, too.

Something uneasy has been growing inside his chest.

He realises now, his gaze bound to Aphrodites, that he is not the only one.

This hunger is a demon that follows them all – and he is light and prophecy, and already knows how this will end, one day, many centuries in the future.

There is nothing they can do.

The rain has calmed down, by now.

He didn’t even notice.

Athena underneath his hands is still weak, still dying, still choking on her own blood: her flesh is burnt and he hasn’t yet dared to brush the scorched hair in front of her face away, to take a full look at it. He sees the gold staining her lips and the paleness of her skin, sees, underneath the layers upon layers of divine ichor, cracks and chasms that reach further than just her physical form.

Ares says something.

Apollo does not listen – he is too busy focusing on his own godly essence, wrapped around his sisters; and on Aphrodite following his example, threading her own strings of silver into shattered shadows and burning gold, as if to dampen the full extent of his powers and shield their sister from him.

He hears her voice, then, through the rushing of blood and the racing of his heart, quiet and weak like it had never been before. “You were hurting her.”

It is the only explanation for her interference she gives – it is the only one he needs.

˗ˏˋ — ‧₊˚- ᓀ ᵥ ᓂ - ˚₊‧ — ˎˊ˗.

(Somewhere far away, she awakens with a soft groan at the pain flaring in her muscles, to a gentle hand caressing her cheek, and a familiar smile on thin lips.)

Chapter Text

˗ˏˋ — ‧₊˚- ᓀ ᵥ ᓂ - ˚₊‧ — ˎˊ˗.

“Ah how shameless – 

the way these mortals blame the gods. 

From us alone they say 

come all their miseries yes 

but they themselves with their own reckless ways

 compound their pains beyond their proper share.” 

~Homer, Odyssey

˗ˏˋ — ‧₊˚- ᓀ ᵥ ᓂ - ˚₊‧ — ˎˊ˗.

Lord Zeus; ruler over the sky and so much more, King of the Gods, the mightiest and most powerful of them all; had many, many different children. 

He also had many, many different mistresses.

He did not have as many wifes per se, though there were still quite a lot of them. At least by mortal standards, that is: most human kings or husbands may have one woman or two, but not even they went through four other wives before settling for the fifth. 

Not that Zeus was like any of those mortals , no. He was better than all of them and naturally, he had more wives as well. They did bore him though, after some time.

First, there was Métis, whom he ate; then Themis, with whom he had a surprisingly civil divorce; Eurynome, who went back to being queen of the universe (or something like that – he isn’t really sure, to be honest); Mnemosyne, who he swallowed in similar fashion to how he did with Mètis; and lastly, Hera, for whom he settled (but even then, not even his wife could satisfy him all the time, so honestly – he can’t be blamed for his desire, can he?).

All of this is not to count the mortals he took interest in – though, to speak the truth, they really weren’t more but a little fun on the side. Hera always got worked up about nothing, in his opinion. 

Anyway, none of that ever really mattered to him: not his many wives and not his many mistresses and not the many, many children that inadvertently came with those other two aspects. 

Of course he loved them, in his very own way – but even if he could, Lord Zeus would never love them more than he loved himself.

(And his throne.)

(His throne is more important, too.)

(It’s Athena’s own fault for daring to challenge him for it.) 

˗ˏˋ — ‧₊˚- ᓀ ᵥ ᓂ - ˚₊‧ — ˎˊ˗.

“Take courage, my heart:

 you have been through worse than this.

 Be strong, saith my heart; 

I am a soldier; 

I have seen worse sights than this.” 

~Homer, Odyssey

˗ˏˋ — ‧₊˚- ᓀ ᵥ ᓂ - ˚₊‧ — ˎˊ˗.

(She is young, in the memory.)

(She’s also drowning.)

(Naturally, the first one of those two realisations is far more interesting.)

(Even though she’s young, she is not a child, no: she never was one after all. Gods were different from mortals, and even though some of them – the twins, especially – had still had a time period in their lives where they stayed by their mothers loving side, she had never been amongst them. It sort of came with being born fully grown already. And also not having a mother.)

(For the longest time, she saw no issue with it – not having a childhood, that is. She refused to think about Métis. )

(Until the day Odysseus of Ithaca looked at her with widened eyes, cheeks still full and round like any twelve year olds should be, and asked in the most unbelieving tone he’d ever used in her presence: ‘What do you mean, you’ve never played ‘ephedrismos’ at all? What did you do for fun with your friends, then, back when you were younger?’)

( She had swallowed down the taste of salt and stopped herself from snapping back something along the lines of ‘murdering them’ .)

(But she’s young, in the memory.)

(Not young like a child she never was, but young with a certain sense of innocence that she hasn’t had in many, many centuries. Young in a way that her hair is longer, a far brighter sunburnt auburn then these days, curling and waving in the current of the ocean. Young in a way that her chiton is a simple white and her body not hidden underneath layers upon layers of varying blue himation’s and grey chlamys’, as well as heavy golden armour. Young in a way that her face lacks all that makes her look old nowadays, even though she is a god and gods do not age.)

(A smile spreads over the lips of her other self as she laughs.)

(The sea swallows the sound.)

(All that remains is bubbles of air, fanning out like a wreath around her head before being pulled away, away, away–)

-as the sun burns bright and there are hands on her, causing fire to rage and burn and devour all that’s left of–

(-- into the dark turquoise of the sea. Sand and seashells seem to almost dust up, as the younger version of herself brushes over the bottom of the ocean, still grinning with bared teeth and gleaming white, godly eyes.)

(No.)

(Not just godly , but something else, too.)

(Pure, unwavered joy.)

(When was the last time she felt something… something like that?)

(It must have been with Od–)

(A hand breaks through the dark water, then, slender fingers reaching out to grab a hold of her memory self’s own one. And then she’s being pulled up, and the ocean rushes and murmurs in her ears, echoing with the same giggles that still leave her own lips, carrying this soon-to-be lost amusement far into the depths, where it will continue to rest for all of eternity.)

( Where it will outlive the youth of the one who laughed it; where it will outlive the life of the one who caused it. )

(She does not want to leave the bottom of the sea.)

(It is cold here, and quiet: there is no fire, no sun, no thunder. No crackling lightning and no electricity burning through her veins. There is nothing but the distant memory of joy and lightheartedness, nothing but the caressing touch of the waves and the melodic humming of the ocean.)

(She does not want to leave – but she is not in control of this remembrance.)

(The waves do not want to let her go – but even though uncle is a god, his domain is not, so it holds little power against her and the grasp of the one pulling her up.)

(“Cursed be you, At–”)

“–hena, please, you–”

(“–cheater!” The same slender hand that pulled her out of the water smacks her over the back of her head, but there is no ill intent in it. The touch is almost soft, merely a knock of annoyance, and immediately followed by a huffed laugh. “Pretending to have drowned is not how you win this game!”)

(“Ha!” Her younger self replies, shaking her head as she squints her eyes against the white and golden evening sun, and a wide grin spreads over her face. “You’ll find, my dearest friend, that it’s not explicitly stated in the rules that any sort of deception is banned from this game. Meaning, nothing speaks against the way I attempted to earn the win!”)

(A splash of water.)

(The memory version of herself lets out an almost high pitched shriek as a wave crashes into her back and pushes her forward, tangling strands of curly hair and shoving them like a curtain in front of her face.)

(“Hey! The sparring’s already over.” She says, after spitting out some of the salt water, and if she didn’t know herself, she’d have thought the tone of her voice to be almost aggressive. “Now who’s the cheater, Pallas ?”

(Dread washes over her.)

(The memory flickers, for a moment, and suddenly she’s freezing cold – except, of course, for the distant burning of her limbs and the blazing sun that flares in her chest, painfully hot. Her knees wobble, then, and she stumbles forwards.)

(The girls of the past don’t notice her.)

(As if a door had been closed, the ocean becomes nothing, even as she sinks into it to her waist, falling to her knees. Sound blurs, as does her sight.)

(A gasp leaves her mouth – a strangled, choked sound.)

(Almost like a dying animal: something gurgles, in the back of her throat, and her mouth suddenly tastes like ash and nectar and blood, mixed together into some strange cocktail of divine suffering. As if being a god made even the life that runs through her veins better than the red that keeps mortals alive.)

(It matters little.)

(She’s learnt, now, that both spills all the same.)

(A droplet of gold rolls over her lip and drips into the clear water underneath. The shallow waves stain golden immediately, hungrily, greedy, as if they had only been waiting for a feast like this. The blood of a god – not even the sea could deny itself to devour it, devour her , and she feels the current pick up once more, dragging at her stained himation’s and charred flesh.)

(She’s drowning again.)

(The sun burns in her chest, still, burns–)

– and burns and fills her lungs with smoke and soot–

(– hot and bright and with enough power and divinity to set the entire world ablaze.)

(Steam rises all around her.)

(Her shoulders shake; her throat is squeezed shut with a scream that won’t leave her lips. It’s stuck, right in her trachea and underneath the larynx – a nervous and twitching sphere of rageandpainandfearanddespair.)

(She snarls, but there is no enemy to attack.)

(All she has is this memory, this cursed, damned memory, one she didn’t even want to recall, because she can’t even think of the name Pa-... of her name, can’t even bring herself to raise her gaze to the nymph she remembers, can rarely ever keep a straight face whenever people address her with the name she had chosen, to honour the friend she had killed.)

(That is her self-imposed punishment.)

(So there is no enemy to fight, no brother to sink her teeth into and no father to defy – and suddenly it dawns on her that maybe, just maybe, it might be because she’s the enemy, in everyone else’s stories.)

(Her fingers twitch.)

(Then, she’s clawing at her own chest: her nails splintering and her charred fingers breaking as they sink into molten and shattered metal and tear, tear, tear , obsessively almost – that sun, that awful sun, she needs to get it out of her chest, now, she has to, she needs to, there is something wrong with her soul and she’s a god and god’s aren’t good or bad, but Pallas died by her hand and Troy fell because of her hubris and Odysseus was lost from home because of her pride; and how many more had suffered because she was a god and did as she pleased, simply because she could.)

(It feels like an odd time to come to this realisation.)

(Here is the truth: gods are not moral beings, not like mortals are. They lack humanity; they possess, in turn, divinity. What more is there to explain? How can Apollo heal and spread the deadliest diseases at the same time? How can Artemis protect young children and ask a man to sacrifice his daughter the very same day? How can Ares be the defender of women yet help the men who will rape said women as spoils of war? And how can Athena give mortals oh so many things that will help them lead a better life and still be the one who dooms them with her selfishness?)

(How can, indeed.)

(Here is the truth: because they are gods. There is nothing more to it.)

(Bones creak and crack and ichor foams in her mouth – she hardly cares. Something violent and vile sits in her chest, enclosed by the foreign sun, caged in and protected and held together with loving hands, more powerful than she is: a dying fight, a losing–)

“– her, we’re losing her, Apollo–”

“Get her up, now–”

And flickering beams of light; the distant feeling of falling rain (or are those tears?); the humming of loud voices; gods, the smell of ozone – the world reeks of it, reeks of it–

(A hand smacks against the back of her head.)

(Someone is–)

– holding her hand, and now she’s sure there is a strangled sob to her right and –

(– patting her on the shoulder, gently, carefully.)

(Her vision clears, then, if only a little.)

(The ocean is stained golden; the sun is gone. So is her memory self. Somehow, except for her blood, every colour has faded out of the world: the cliffs and sand are pale and grey, and so are the olive trees in the distance. There is no blue to the water, not anymore, no faint pink to the seashells and greenish brown to long submerged rocks.)

(Nothing.)

(Nothing, except for her still golden ichor, and the murdered girl at her side.)

(“Athena.” Pallas, who is daughter to Triton and also very much dead, says, and it’s the first time in an eternity that she’s heard her own name and knows that it belongs. That abomination of a soul in her chest shudders, spasms, and then it calms down, if only a little bit. Not a single breeze blows – Pallas’ hair waves in an invisible one, anyway, because she’s always been like that, lovely and beautiful, even in death.)

(Her fingers are still stained golden; still broken and clawing into her own ribcage.)

(She breathes.)

(“Athena.” Pallas, who is still daughter to Triton and still dead, says a second time; and it sounds different, now. Her voice does, that is, it’s a little higher than before, with a bit more of a rasp to it. Like the white sand they used to sprawl out in, after hours of sparring and play-fighting. Like the rough stones they used to climb, when one of the palace servants said a ship would arrive some time that day, and they’d make a game out of who could see it first. Like the split bark of the olive trees up on the cliffside, which made for the perfect thing to rest against after being stuck inside all day, and where they would giggle and exchange gossip and rumours, while eating enough olives to last for an entire week.)

(“ Athena .” Pallas, who will be daughter to Triton and dead as well forever until the end of time, says now a third time: and her voice sounds yet again different.)

(And Athena, who is daughter to the god king and technically incapable of dying, realises that she has forgotten the actual voice of her dead best friend a long, long time ago.)

(It is enough to send tears into her eyes.)

(“Hey now.” Pallas, who died centuries ago and is only remembered because someone else took to wearing her name, hums, caring and gentle like she’d always been, and pats her back a couple more times. “Did I take it too far? Normally you’re not this exhausted after sparring – are you alright?”)

(She chokes out yet another strangled sound.)

(Ichor drips into the water.)

(“I’m sorry, dear friend.” Pallas, who smiled when she died with bared and bloodstained teeth, whispers, and then her slender fingers gently thread through curly auburn hair in a soothing motion. “I fear I cannot help you any more than this.”)

(Athena finally convinces herself to turn her head, then.)

(She wishes that she hadn’t.)

(“Look at us.” Pallas, who choked and trembled before her impaled body turned into the seawater she had come from when death caught up with her, huffs out, almost like a laugh, and her lips seem to widen into a melancholic grin. “Both so very foolish; both doomed through your fathers hands.”)

(‘Look at us’, Pallas, who is dead dead dead , says; and Athena has never wished to be able to do anything as much as she wishes for it, now.)

(But she can’t.)

(She cannot look at the face of the only person she ever wholeheartedly loved, because even though the nymph is at the core of her most cherished memories, Athena can no longer remember Pallas’ face.)

(This, she thinks, might be the worst one of her sins.)

(“Who do you shed your tears for, goddess?” Pallas, who died with a spear she herself had made as a gift through the chest, asks, tilting her head, and a flicker of confusion gleams over the blurred features of her face. “Me, who is dead already, or you, who is on the best way to be, too?”)

(A moment long, for an eternity, there is silence.)

(“Both of us.” Athena manages to choke out, then, and her throat is raw and bloody and tight, her mouth flooded with sickly sweet ichor and her nose filled with the stench of ozone. “Of what could have been; of what I took from us.”)

(“My darling fool.” Pallas, who will never stop being dead but seems oh so lovely alive with the way she throws her head back and laughs, replies, shaking the head with her curly hair – brown, it is, or maybe black? “It was your father who caused my death.”)

(“But I am his daughter.”)

(“And for that I pity you. He surely is the worst man alive.”)

(“Put like that, there is no one who could take his place.” Athena says, and her brows furrow just the slightest, like they always used to do when she had discussions about matters of logic and philosophy with her friend. “He is immortal, and gods cannot die. If he is the worst man alive, he will be so forever. It is an extreme point of view – hardly fit for a evenly matched discussion.”)

(Sand and fire lick in her throat – but she has dreamed of this, of getting to talk to her again, and she will not let this opportunity go to waste.)

(Pallas huffs out an over dramatic sigh.)

(“And hardly the point I wished to make. Must you always be so complicated?” Then, she leans forward, placing her fingers on Athena’s charred and scorched chest, right above the hand-sized crater the lightning had burned through her. “Pray tell, dear friend, for you’ve said so yourself – if gods cannot die, then what are you doing here?”)

(Thunder roars in the distance.)

(“I defied the god-king. I am his daughter; it was his will to punish me. If that punishment is death, then I have to accept that.”)

(“Liar.” Pallas, who is dead and all those other terrible things, replies, and rolls her eyes. “You’re the most stubborn person I know. You would not simply lay down your defences and weapons, and admit to the fate a cruel man deemed himself important enough to bestow upon you. Now answer me: what are you doing here?”)

(Athena is quiet for a moment.)

(Then, after a few seconds, she turns her face away and whispers: “How could I leave? I miss you.”)

(The two of them are silent for an eternity.)

(Finally, Pallas huffs, and sinks down into the water as well.)

(Her skin shimmers – green, at first, then turquoise, then a deep blue.)

(“I miss you, too.” She says, and for once the fact that the nymph is dead, dead, dead, isn’t the only thing Athena can properly think about, as the other woman gently threads their fingers together. “But I need you to listen to me, now. I am dead already. There is nothing you can do to save me; there is nothing you can do to get me back. You have to let go of me.”)

(“How could I?” Athena replies, and her voice is still shaking – with pain and fear and grief, all mixed together. “I fear my soul is bound to yours – it has been, ever since the day we met.”)

(“You are a god, my dear.” Pallas sighs, and turns her blurred face towards the horizon. “And I never was. I would not dare to claim your soul as part of my own.”)

(“But I give it to you. Is it not mine, to do with as I please?”)

(“Not like this.” The ocean surrounding them is dark, now, and only the faint light of the stars and the gleaming of golden blood in the waves illuminates them. Pallas speaks with a heaviness to her voice that had never been there when she still lived, and the scales adorning her arms have lost their shine. “Not by giving yourself away to a cruel and undeserved death.”)

(“I am a cruel woman.” Athena replies, then, and thinks that the entire ocean could be stained crimson with the blood of the mortals she’s killed and doomed to suffer. “And I brought my fathers wrath upon myself. It was my own fault.”)

(“My darling fool.” Pallas sighs and laughs, though it sounds sad and void of any true humour. “You cannot blame yourself for another god’s actions. He is your father – he should not make a game out of his children’s suffering. And you should not have to bear the guilt of it – even though I know how you blame yourself for everything wrong that happens to the people you like.”)

(A moment long, a spear flashes.)

(Thunder in the distance; red blood, splattering onto sand.)

(The light dying out, in once so pretty eyes.)

(“I killed you.” Athena says, and it is, perhaps, the first time she’s ever spoken those words out loud. They cause her heart to spasm and her soul to convulse – pain radiates from her chest, but it is of a different kind than the burning sun and crackling lightning. “I know I did. That is the truth: it was me who brought destiny upon the both of us, even if my father influenced it.”)

(“You are a god, my dear.” Pallas hums, and tilts her head back as if to look at the stars. Their hands are still entangled. “Divinity has always stained your soul with doom. Your fate is whispered between the stars with bloodstained words: you were made for a purpose and the cosmos will make sure that you serve it well. I knew, from the day that I met you, about the end. How could I not?” The nymph turns, then, to face the goddess next to her – and Athena still can’t remember her features properly, still can’t make out more than a blurr, but she is sure that Pallas must be regarding her with a solemn and somehow loving gaze. “I knew that you would have to lose me, to take your place upon Olympus. That was a certainty that awaited me – and it was one I would live through over and over and over again.”)

(Her shoulders are shaking.)

(She thinks that she might cry.)

(“But,” Athena manages to choke out, and gold splatters over her lips as she bites her tongue and averts her gaze, to stare back into the waves. “ Why ?”)

(“Because,” Pallas says, and reaches with a gentle hand to turn their faces towards each other. “You are right. There was indeed a time where my soul was tied to yours and yours to mine, and not the sharpest sword or honed blade could have cut us apart.”)

(Here is what neither of them says: I love you.)

(Because it is, at its core, not true.)

(There are some things, some connections, that run far, far deeper than even love ever could.)

(“I yearn for you.” Athena says, because the word ‘love’ is stuck in her throat like a shattered bone, jagged and sharp and cutting through her flesh, and she imagines, for a moment, that the burning in her chest is something other than excruciating pain. “In every one of my waking moments. If not clearly, then somewhere at the back of my mind. I swore I wouldn’t forget you – but here I am, and yet, I cannot even remember your face. If I’ve ever known devotion, at its purest and rarest, then it was the warmth that I felt for you.”)

(“My darling fool.” Pallas replies and laughs, shaking her head and baring her teeth. “My face is not what makes me, me. You will not forget me, so much is true – if not for your own stubbornness, I’m sure the universe would not let you. You’re a god, after all: my ruin is part of your tragedy.”)

(“You’re more than that.”)

(“I needn’t be. You, however?”)

(There is a metal taste in her mouth.)

Hands holding her down, shouts in the distance.

The air smells of ozone and underneath, molten wax and scented candles.

(“Don’t.” Athena says, and her voice is toneless. “I know what you will say. You’ll try to convince me to fight for my life, or something sappy like that.”)

(“I was always the more reasonable of us two.” Pallas replies, with a hint of humour in her voice, as she rises to her feet. “But you are right: there are still people that believe in you. Still people that you’ve promised support. You cannot leave them behind – not now.”)

(She thinks of Ithaca.)

(Immediately, guilt washes over her.)

(“They’re doom is my fault.” She replies, and averts her eyes once more. “I had influence on the cause of the Trojan war. I made Odysseus my champion and then abandoned him. If it weren’t for me… I don’t think I want to. To go back, that is. To fight. I think it might hurt too much, in a way far worse than my fathers lightning did.”)

(“Listen to me, now: I am asking you to endure it.” And Pallas is dead, her chiton stained with crimson red blood and godly tears, but she seems stronger than ever before anyway. “Call it me being selfish; call it me being arrogant, to dare use my kinship to you in such manners. I cannot justify this request in any of your beloved rational and logical ways, cannot offer you any sort of argument in its favour. It is simply the fate I wish upon you – to endure and to survive, and to find back the love I so very deeply believe you deserve. That is the outcome I desire to see. There is little use in you holding on to me, even if our souls were bound and torn apart. You cannot ruin yourself over a past that is unchangeable, Athena; you cannot ruin your future for guilt and shame about something that lay far outside of your control.”)

(“Are you asking me to forget you?” She replies, and her voice cracks up at the end – tears spring to her eyes, and she realises that she has shed more of them this day than in the entirety of the past millennia.)

(“No.” Pallas, deaddeaddead, replies, and gently leans forwards, until her hands are both cupping Athena’s scarred and bloodied cheeks. “I am asking you to find happiness once more, my darling fool. That is what I wish for.” And then, leaning even further until their foreheads are pressed together, she asks: “Can you promise me? That you will live ?”)

(Thunder roars, the ocean rages, lightning burns.)

(“I will try.” Athena says, because it is all she can right now, and she will not lie to the one person who's always cared for her. “I can promise so much, at least.”)

(“That is more than I was hoping for.” Pallas replies and smiles, and for a moment she closes her eyes. "Thank you. Perhaps we will see each other again, another time, my dear.")

(They both know that it's a empty hope.)

(Then the world fades into nothing around them.)

(Pallas Athena, once more, is alone and this time, she does not fight unconsciousness as it takes her.)

˗ˏˋ — ‧₊˚- ᓀ ᵥ ᓂ - ˚₊‧ — ˎˊ˗.

Somewhere far away, an eternity later, she awakens with a soft groan at the pain flaring in her muscles, to a gentle hand caressing her cheek, and a familiar smile on thin lips.

Chapter Text

˗ˏˋ — ‧₊˚- ᓀ ᵥ ᓂ - ˚₊‧ — ˎˊ˗.

“Pallas Athena! 

the terrible blazing of those eyes,
and his winged words went flying:
"Why, why now?
Child of Zeus with the shield of thunder, why come now?
To witness the outrage Agamemnon just committed?
I tell you this,

 and so help me it’s the truth –
he’ll soon pay for his arrogance with his life!"

~ Homer

Iliad, Book One, lines 235-240.

˗ˏˋ — ‧₊˚- ᓀ ᵥ ᓂ - ˚₊‧ — ˎˊ˗.

Lord Zeus; ruler over the sky and so much more, King of the Gods, the mightiest and most powerful of them all; had many, many different children. In fact, some might even claim that he had too many of them, though he himself found that claim rather hilariously stupid. How, after all, could he have “too many” children if no one, not even he himself, knew the exact number of offspring he fathered?

Most of them were boring anyway.

He, obviously, is not.

His is the word that counts, his is the will that rules. The power he holds feels like honey coating his tongue, sugary and rich and smooth. Every speech he roars, every order he thunders; all that he speaks is sickly sweet from it. It drips to the ground, almost, from his lips and tongue, golden like the ichor did from his daughter's shattered form. 

Zeus delights in it.

There is something complete and utterly delicious in it, that nectar-like taste of might and power and strength in his mouth. He need not even speak a threat to make his target listen, need not even form a sentence to let his victim know. They’ll fall to their knees by the time he has hissed out the last of his words, their heads pressed to the ground and their hands raised in prayer, as if there was any other god capable of stopping him.

He loves their begging.

They have learned, as they should, that his is a crown made out of the blood of his own kin, and that he will not shy away from drowning the world in everybody else's, too.

At least, he thought that everyone learned.

That they submitted themself to his will and leadership, anyway.

Apparently, he had been wrong – but he is Zeus, god-king, ruler over the sky and so much, much more. He is not wrong , not him, not ever. It does not matter that his knuckles are stained with godly blood, as golden as the sun that is setting behind the highest temple on Mount Olympus. It does not matter that he has washed his hands a hundred times already, with far more desperation than any god should ever display, and that the ichor stays still, staining him for all of eternity – a curse, visible only to himself.

(He had asked some of the satyr servants, quietly and discret, if they too were able to lay eyes upon his sin.)

(Shattering their skulls afterwards had been fulfilling; but there was still a lightning storm, brewing angrily in his chest, at the thought that he, out of all the gods that walk this world, would fall victim to some strange hallucination.)

(Every single one of the servants had answered no to his question. )

(The golden blood stays, no matter what river or fountain he submerges his hands in.)

Distantly, at the back of his mind where all irrelevant things went, Zeus wonders why Phoebus Apollon has not sent news of Pallas Athena’s recovery yet. Was healing not the boy’s domain? What was taking him so long? Afterall, it is not as if Zeus had hit the insolent girl with more lightning than she deserved.

Surely, he thinks and scoffs, this is yet another one of his children's plots.

˗ˏˋ — ‧₊˚- ᓀ ᵥ ᓂ - ˚₊‧ — ˎˊ˗.

“Each man delights in the work that suits him best.”

~ Homer, Odyssey

˗ˏˋ — ‧₊˚- ᓀ ᵥ ᓂ - ˚₊‧ — ˎˊ˗.

Contraire to most if not all of his siblings, Amphigyḗeis Hephaestus never really paid much mind to glory or fame or the desperate devotion of mortal followers wringing their hands towards his altar and slaughtering their children to gain his favor.

Or whatever it is his family enjoys about human struggling.

No, he never once in his millenia of existence cared about it much – that is, at least mainly so, also the reason why he pays no heed to the names and epithets they’ve bestowed upon him. He cares little that they call him Amphigyḗeis , the lame one; or Kyllopodíōn , of dragging feet; or Aithalóeis theós , the sooty god.

That last one isn’t even bad.

And those human-given names do fit other gods – like Phoebus , the shining bright and pure, fits Apollo, or Enyalios , the warlike, fits Ares.

(In truth, he is quite sure that both of his brothers would not hesitate a single second to slaughter entire mortal kingdoms, if any human ever dared to insult them with a cruel and bad name.)

(In even more truth, he is also quite sure that a certain part of him does mind his bad leg being the part of him people care about the most.)

(That, however, is not a truth he wishes to consider now.)

Ichor stains the soles of his sandals.

Ichor stains the soles of his sandals, and really, Amphigyḗeis Hephaestus never really paid mind to his name or to the musings and antics of his family – he tries to stay away from most of them, if he can, with the occasional exception of Artemis who, like him, is an outcast of their family, and from time to time Aphrodite, who he knows loves him in that strangely twisted way only she can do. 

He does not care, tries not to care, because there is that difference between him and the others of his kin: he is not glorious, not in their eyes. So he spends his time with fire and coals and the hammering of his tools instead, which quite frankly is far more enjoyable, tinkering and creating, crafting the most beautiful and intricate weapons and wagons and whatever else he can think of.

The only times he ever sees Pallas Athena is during what father and mother like to call “important council meetings” and what the rest of Olympus has come to give the title of “bi-yearly screaming joust”.

Those discussions tend to be rather tedious affairs, ones in which he usually keeps his mouth shut, unlike the goddess of wisdom. Arguing has always appeared like a favourite way of passing time for her, or more likely, making other people realise how idiotic they sound in comparison to her – needless to say, she’d always been a pushing force in those discussions, and he made sure to stay out of the sight of her piercing steely gaze.

Hephaestus has many sisters – Athena is the one he knows the least.

Ichor stains the soles of his sandals.

A rotten, burned tension lingers in the air – electricity and charred flesh, the sickly sweet scent of nectar and ichor, accompanied by the smell of rain. His leg aches as tiny drops rain down on him, on all of them, plink plink plink . 

The wind has grown harsher, by now, sending clouds of dust and sand over the shattered marble of the arena's floor. 

It tugs at the many golden layers of himations Apollo wears draped over his white chiton; it tears at the blood red of Ares’ chlamys, revealing his bared and scarred chest; it plays with Aphrodites hair as af she alone is the exception to its cruel and harsh behaviour; and it shoves and pushes against Hephaestus himself, until he is swaying and clutching the cane in his hand, praying silently that he does not stumble and fall.

Zeus must still be angry – rage is the one thing the god king excels at, and not even the feast he said he’d be throwing in the halls of Olympus right now could possibly distract him from the fury and wrath he had displayed earlier.

His father always had a certain… temper .

Ichor stains the soles of his sandals.

Ichor stains the soles of his sandals and his father had always had a temper worse than the war against the titans and giants combined, but rarely had said temper ever truly affected his children in a way that was not just painful, but dangerous too. 

All too often, Zeus grew angry with his kin: at Dionysus for throwing a feast in the most sacred of his fathers temples without said fathers knowledge; at Artemis for once again skipping one of the meetings of the olympian council, or for the way she tended to avoid looking him in the eyes when they spoke; at Ares for merely existing; at Hephaestus himself for the way he couldn’t quite keep up when walking alongside his family; at Hermes for mingling too much with the mortals, and so on.

Never once had father been angry with Athena.

And never once had father been angry enough with the misdeeds of one of his children that he felt it necessary to take extreme measures.

“I only wish for you to understand,” Zeus used to say, whenever he had backhanded Ares after his son spoke out of line or grabbed Artemis by the back of her neck to force her to look at him. “That I am helping you. This is no punishment, my child – this is just me reminding you to not step out of line. There is no need to be scared, though: I would never do something to hurt one of you. You’re my kin, after all.”

And Hephaestus had believed him.

Or perhaps a part of him knew that it was all a lie, but he wanted to believe it so badly; because his mother used to tell him all about family and love and loyalty , back when he was a newborn god, and she’d hold him in her arms in one of the many garden on Olympus and gently cradle him as they watched the blooming flowers and the swaying grass.

Obviously, that was before his mother had thrown him off the mountain.

But Hephaestus, always the fool, the lame, the useless one, couldn’t help but hope, for the sake of himself and his younger siblings, that all of them would be spared of whatever their father deemed a worse punishment than the ones he already bestowed upon them.

Ichor stains the soles of his sandals.

And it stains Athena, too.

He stands there, frozen, in the whipping wind and pattering rain – his siblings blurred at the edge of his consciousness, their voice drowning in the distant thunder and the echoing lightning, Aphrodite frantic and trembling, Apollo panicked and insecure, Ares angry, angry, angry –

And Hephaestus is still, anyway, does not move to their sides, does not think he would, even if he could bend down and kneel next to–... next to…

Water drips over his face, and the soles of his sandals are still stained with ichor. 

He thinks, distantly, that he might have to replace them. Then he thinks that he definitely has to replace Athenas, too. The greaves that protect her shins are bent and dented from her fall through the arena, but not irreparable damaged so he can repair those; but her sandals are completely ruined, the leather torn and stained golden, partially reduced to nothing but soot. And her armguards, shattered and turned to molten steel and ashes they are, will need to be made anew as well; the chestplate too, with one look at the torn and charred bronze already telling him that it would be easier to make an entirely new one.

He doesn’t think anything about it is salvageable.

Distantly, Hephaestus wonders if that means Athena herself is unsalvageable as well.

But his sister is not a thing, not a machine, not a tool – at least not in the way the swords and shields and chariots and instruments he usually fixes and builds are – instead she is a living being . 

Well, at least in the way a god can be.

They are not mortal, of course, none of them are, but her body went unnaturally still some time ago anyway, and Apollo had been shaking when he’d told them she wasn’t breathing, and Ares had been raging about the fact that the heart of his idiotic, most hated sister had stopped beating and that it would dare to fail in a fight as dishonorable as this one, and–...

And gods cannot die, because if they could, Hephaestus would have died the moment he had been thrown off of Olympus; but where his mother had acted out of hatred for her husband and herself, as inexcusable as her actions were he had known, even as he was fallingfallingfalling that she never meant for him to die. There had not been any divine will, when she’d grabbed him by his leg and dropped him over the edge of the railing in the garden they used to spend their days together, no divine intention of ending his life.

Thunder roars in the distance, and Amphigyḗeis Hephaestus remembers the killing intent in his fathers eyes as Lord Zeus, god-king, raised his fisted and brought lightning down upon his daughters form.

Ichor stains the soles of his sandals.

Ares is still screaming, still roaring, still raging around: his fists are clenched and his teeth are bared, the look in his eyes the one of a caged animal, uncertain what to do and so desperately angry about that. Aphrodite has fallen to her knees, by now, her shoulders shaking and her hands clutching one of Athena's own, as if she were trying to anchor their sister in life. Apollo by now seems not just panicked but frantic as well, his golden eyes widened and the white of his chiton stained with godly blood, and Hephaestus sees the moment his brother realises that nothing he would normally do to heal can save Athena now.

None of them are fools.

If the absence of a heartbeat and the uneasy stillness of her motionless chest were not enough, the gaping chasm where their sister's divine presence should spark tells them all they need to know.

She is dying.

And then Apollo screams, filled with rage and anger and all things Ares, and slams his hands onto the mess that is his sister's chest. Light explodes into all directions, bright and white and hot, like a beam of the sun itself, and suddenly the air smells of rain and ozone and burnt flesh so much more than it did before, as the sizzling of reignited flesh reaches Hephaestus ears. 

Divinity flashes, like the stars in the sky, with a fate that had been set since the beginning.

Athena bares her blood stained teeth and wails.

The sound etches itself into his mind, deeper and deeper and deeper, until he knows that he will never forget it again. And neither will he forget the sight before him: of his sister, burnt hands clawing at the air as if to fight it off, spasming and shaking with terror and suffering as a sun is ignited in her chest, scorching her from the inside out – her back arches, her mouth wide open to make way for all the screams that tear from her raw throat. 

Ichor pours over her skin like the rain does his, staining and staining and staining, so much that he already worries if she’ll ever be able to wash it out of her skin.

It is a cruel thing.

And Amphigyḗeis Hephaestus is many things. 

A coward was never one of them, or so he thought; but now he watches his sister writhing on a ground that was shattered by her crashing into it, watches the way her armour which he had so carefully crafted cracks and breaks further and further from the damage their father had already inflicted upon it and Apollo now makes worse with his flames, watches the way his sun-like brother presses burning hands onto burned flesh and Ares, who is war and cruelty and blood-shed and pain, flinch and tremble at the sight in front of him.

Bile rises at the back of his throat.

Hephaestus swallows once, and turns his head to avert his eyes.

Breathes in, breathes out.

Focuses on the way the air feels in his mouth, his lungs, his blood – he had never cared this much before, but now he does, inhaling and exhaling in a way the gods never really had to, but learned to do anyway.

Athena is still wailing.

The rain is growing a little softer, and he wonders for a moment if their father can hear his daughter's cries – he knows, of course, that even if Zeus could, the king would hardly care and more than not sit back to delight at the sound of it. But he tries to imagine it, anyway, his father stopping at the sound of the pain he has caused, guilt and shame wrapping themself around his throat like they do with Hephaestus’ now.

He knows that Aphrodite is still clutching Athena’s hands, that Apollo still has his cursed fingers pressed into molten gold and torn flesh, that Ares is shaking his brother and yelling at him to stop hurting their sister. He knows that they are there, with her, at her side – and that he himself still stands frozen, knuckles white as he clutches his cane, breathing and breathing and breathing as he tries and fails to take a step forwards.

His bad leg protests; his knee twinges with pain and agony.

None of them, he recalls, were there when he had first fallen from the sky. It took them weeks to find him, curled up in a crater filled with his blood as he was; and even then, he was immediately brought to the infirmary where visitors had been limited to his parents only.

Is it fair of him?

To now leave his sister alone like she had left him?

Even though his other siblings are there by here side, helping where he can’t bring himself to move?

Something twitches in his chest, vile and disgusting and treacherous. Jealousy , he realises as bile once more rises at the back of his mouth, this is jealousy . 

He thinks he hates himself for it as much as he hates his father for doing this: it is not Athena’s fault, after all, that people were there to witness her shame and punishment; it is not Athena’s fault that their father had not thrown her off of Olympus, but left her in the middle of the arena, for all to see what would happen to those who defy and insult their king.

She is his sister – he does not hate her, like he knows Ares and Aphrodite tend to do, does not avoid her, like he knows Dionysus tries, does not spend time with her because of their mutual interest in the mortals like Hermes does. Instead, he shows her the same neutrality he displays with everybody else; except, now that he thinks about it, he had always been just a little bit colder towards her than the others, if only because he shared the same… dislike Ares had, when Athena had first arrived on Olympus.

Because Hephaestus was the oldest son of the king and queen of Olympus by blood, and by all rules he should have been heir; but he was a disappointment through and through, as his father liked to point out, and so was Ares; but Athena, wise and cunning and talented Athena, was powerful and perfect and everything Zeus needed in an heir. 

Why else would their father have declared her his right hand?

(But why, then, had their father thrown her aside so, so easily?)

With godhood like with human life came a desperate need to survive.

Except, of course, divinity cannot be broken as easily as a mortal existence. Both are the one thing that cannot be changed: a destiny forced upon all who open their eyes to the world, either as the one thing or the other. But that is where the most important similarity changes.

For where mortality is like cupping water in your hands, well knowing that it will seep through cracks and over skin to find its way back to the ground, well knowing that it is limited and will run out, and that your hands shall be dry again soon; where mortality is all things wasteful and passing, divinity is holy and undying and eternal.

It is not fragile, not within your own control: instead, it stains your fingers and hands and mouth and teeth like the eaten flesh of a pomegranate; it seeps through your veins and blood and flesh, until it is all that is left of you; it swallows you whole and takes over control, for there is nothing mightier than the most holiest power of them all.

The word alone is enough to convey all that.

Divinity sounds like the sweetest wine and most refreshing nectar, like the choir of a thousand godly voices or the sound of everything beautiful that exists in this world. Divinity sounds like a promise, like an oath, like something that should oh so desperately be hoped for – and perhaps that is why the humans reach for it with greedy fingers, and why their clean hands slip away without a single stain. 

For they do not know the burden that comes with being a god; perhaps, if they did, far less of them would try to become one.

With godhood like with human life came a desperate need to survive – except, of course, mortals were not bound by the laws of the cosmos like the gods are, were not molded by the stars and by fate to perfectly fit into the roles that had been made for them, were not doomed for all of eternity to live under the rule of a king who was lord and ruler and punisher first and father last.

Survival is easiest when close to the most powerful being there is; and Athena had always been close to their father, the moment his head broke apart and let her emerge. And Hephaestus had not been jealous for the rank it brought her, like Ares was, or the power she held, like Aphrodite envied; but instead it had been the freedom that came with being their fathers favourite that made him lower his gaze into a glare and grit his teeth in more than just the pain from his leg.

Because Athena had always seemed so much more free than any of them were; never visibly scared of father, never cowering or bowing her head when begging for forgiveness.

The screams break, then, as if her vocal cords shattered apart; and all that's left is the choked wheezing of someone desperately attempting to breathe.

Hephaestus wonders if his sister was ever as free as he thought her to be.

“You were hurting here.” He hears Aphrodite say; she sounds out of breath, tired and frightened, but there is a certain hum of authority to her voice – one that she had adopted from Lady Hera aeons ago. “You were hurting her.”

A huff of breath – Apollo does not say a word, but the startled noise is clue enough to tell that he did not know.

“What did you do?” Ares whispers, sounding so quiet, so wrong. “Is she– is she really…?”

Plink, plink, plink, the rain keeps going, far less harsh now than it was before, as if it had changed from being ruthless and angry to almost melancholy. Plink, plink, plink . 

And underneath the rain, underneath the howling of the wind and the shaking voices of his siblings, there is something else, something he can’t quite make out, the slight grating of metal on metal and of metal on stone, the faint sizzling of molten metal onto wet floor and the scraping of leather over the ground.

If only he could look.

Perhaps, then, he could ease his worries; perhaps, then, he could confirm the faintest flicker of hope that gleams in his chest. 

But Hephaestus thinks that he might be a coward, that perhaps he was one ever since he was thrown off of Olympus, and he can’t get himself to look – because what if the hope in his chest is futile? 

What if Apollo had truly failed to heal with those blessed hands of his; what if Aphrodite was now so disturbingly quiet because there was nothing left to shed tears about; what if Ares had gone silent because he realised that it would not be him who history will remember to have defeated Pallas Athena, but their fathers cruel justice instead?

In the distance, thunder grumbles.

Ichor stains the soles of his sandals.

His gaze wanders, uncertain and unsure, frightened of what if may find if it follows the streams of golden blood to the pool where they originated, scared of the possibility that the roaring silence surrounding him means that now, he will no longer need to be jealous of the freedom his sister once held.

The handle of his cane creaks as his fingers twitch.

Plink, plink plink , so goes the rain, on and on and on, oblivious to the godly ichor its failing to wash away. Plink, plink, plink . And he breathes, raises his shaking free hand to place it on the other one as he wonders what his mother might have thought, when she threw him off that cursed mountain; and what Athena’s mother might think of the way her daughter was so brutally punished for stepping out of line, if she weren’t dead, that is.

( He thinks, suddenly, that Athena must have been awfully lonely from the moment she was born. )

His eyes roam the shattered and ichor-painted arena surrounding him, wandering and wandering and wandering, if only to keep them busy, when his gaze suddenly settles on something that is so out of place that it tears him out of whatever trance he was in.

Brows furrowing, he ever so slightly tilts his head, unwilling to step closer – his leg is still protesting, and the ground is wet and slippery with the rain and the blood. And perhaps he is fooling himself, or seeing things that are not real, but as he stares towards where Athena's helmet lies, past the shattered remains of her spear and the beaten and dented form of the shield Aegis, a sense of dread and sorrow settles around his shoulders, like freezing cold hands desperately holding onto something real.

There, in a pool of ichor and its weathered surface splattered with specks of gold, lies a small, charred, once lovingly carved wooden owl.

He blinks and guilt sinks its teeth into his heart, within the splinter of a second, and rushes like poison through his veins until his entire body brims with it. 

Amphigyḗeis Hephaestus tears his eyes away then, and wills himself to finally lay them upon his sister – crumpled on the ground as she is, her limbs no longer convulsing but motionless instead, godly blood dripping from too many wounds for him to count.

He takes a step closer, then two, slowly and careful not to fall, until he stands right next to the kneeling Aphrodite, who offers him her shoulder to support himself on as he leans closer. “Does her soul still exist?”

Apollo frowns at the wording, but once more presses his stained hands on the charred crater their fathers lightning tore into their sisters flesh. “Yes. I think Aphrodite and I are managing to hold it together.”

“How do we fix this?” Ares asks, then. “Can we even?”

Athena twitches, then, and ichor sprays over her bloodied lips as she chokes.

“Oh gods,” Aphrodite sobs, shoulders shaking as she clutches her sister's hands in her own. “We’re losing her, we’re losing her, Apollo, you have to–”
“Ares.” The god in question hisses. “Get her up, now.”

In any other circumstance, the god of war would have hollored with laughter.

But not this time.

Instead, without a single complaint, Ares does as he was asked; with a care and gentleness he only ever displayed with his lover, the god scoots forwards on his knees, bending his torso as he slips his arms under his sisters shoulder and legs, before ever so gently cradling her against his chest. 

She twitches, then, weakly baring her teeth against an enemy she cannot see, struggling and failing to fight him off. But Ares only leans closer, whispering words Hephaestus cannot hear over the wind and rain. 

He does, however, see his brother's face – the fear on it is nothing if not true.

Athena continues to shake anyways, though there is no fight left in her broken bones and charred flesh. She wheezes once, twice, as if attempting to breathe, but all it does is send tremors down her body and more ichor spraying over her lips. 

He thinks, as her head tilts to the side and comes to rest upon her brother's chest, that the blood and sweat and tears on her face are nothing like the sister he’s used to.

Ares seems to notice as well; but his grip does not falter as he rises to his feet, Athena still clutches against his chest, as if he could somehow protect her against every evil and danger the cosmos would ever attempt to throw at her again. 

They have never looked more like siblings – if only it had not needed her divinity to be shattered into pieces for all of them to realise that.

“There is a temple of mine nearby.” Aphrodite says, voice trembling and shoulders shaking, tears still pouring over her face. “We can bring her there for now. Rarely anyone ever comes to visit it.”

Father won’t find us , she doesn’t say, but they all think it anyway. We’ll be hidden.

And Hephaestus has never truly been much of a leader, so he merely inclines his head as Apollo nods, taking the arm his wife offers him as they watch him dart off, Ares close behind him, and slowly move to follow.

˗ˏˋ — ‧₊˚- ᓀ ᵥ ᓂ - ˚₊‧ — ˎˊ˗.

(When Hermes arrives not much later, hoping to bring the news of his great-grandson’s release to his sister, all he finds is a burnt, little wooden owl.) 

Chapter Text

˗ˏˋ — ‧₊˚- ᓀ ᵥ ᓂ - ˚₊‧ — ˎˊ˗.

“Men are so quick to blame the gods: 

they say that we devise their misery. 

But they themselves

- in their depravity- 

design grief greater

 than the griefs that fate assigns.” 

~ Homer

The Odyssey

˗ˏˋ — ‧₊˚- ᓀ ᵥ ᓂ - ˚₊‧ — ˎˊ˗.

Lord Zeus; ruler over the sky and so much more, King of the Gods, the mightiest and most powerful of them all; had many, many different children. 

He thinks that they must love him – how could they not?

After all, he is their father, and he is better at it than his own father once was: and that alone should make them bow their heads in devotion and fold their hands as if praying to him like the mortals do to their gods.

What he does not know, or perhaps does know but refuses to fully acknowledge for himself, is that he confuses love for duty and respect for fear.

˗ˏˋ — ‧₊˚- ᓀ ᵥ ᓂ - ˚₊‧ — ˎˊ˗.

"Some of the words you'll find within yourself,

the rest some power will inspire

you to say.

You, least of all

- I know -

were born and reared

without the god's good will.

~ Homer

The Odyssey, Book 3

˗ˏˋ — ‧₊˚- ᓀ ᵥ ᓂ - ˚₊‧ — ˎˊ˗.

In all his years of existence, Enyalios Ares had never once hugged one of his sisters.

It is like this: Aphrodite lives in his home before he does, and she is not much of a sister anyways. He likes her in an utterly different way – she once explained it to him, all the varying forms love could take, but to be honest he had been too focused on running his rough hands through her silky hair to listen – and does not interact with her like he would a sibling. There is no blood connection between them, instead, something else connects him to her, like a flaming, churning bond, knitted with adoration and attraction.

Aphrodite is not his sister – and so, he does not know what a sister is supposed to be, when Athena comes to Olympus.

She is not like him and his brother, with sharper features and stormy eyes, and Ares finds that he doesn’t like her as he does Aphrodite, in fact, he does not like her at all . He is in the room when his father howls with pain, and Hephaestus breaks his head open. 

There is a sickening crack and a flash of light, and then Athena stands there in all of her glory, skin painted golden with their fathers blood.

(He wonders, centuries, aeons later, as a broken body flinches away from his hands, whether this is some sort of long overdue payment, divine retribution – whether his sister has finally paid the debt she owed for being born, or, perhaps, if she had been paying for it all along.)

Athena leaves, shortly after arriving on Olympus.

When he sees her again, she has changed – before, there used to be a certain softness in her eyes, confusion, even, not that she or he ever told anyone about it. Such things came with being a newborn god. She had already been in the form of an adult, when she emerged from their fathers head, but something young had still clung to her features. And then she comes back from the palace of Triton, of all places, as he had heard his mother sneer one dinner, with cold words and even colder eyes.

He sees the way her fingers twitch, restless.

War is his domain, but it is not his alone, and he knows without words or thoughts exchanged, that Athena had taken a life. 

Aphrodite is not his sibling and he shares the hatred half of his family seems to feel about Athena, and then Artemis comes along and Ares, still, does not know what a sister is.

He sees the twins interact and wonders, however briefly, if it is something he could have had and maybe, perhaps, can still achieve. 

But then Apollo quickly rises to be their fathers favorite son and Ares is angry, all the time, so he turns his spite towards all of them, all of his siblings , and he does not put an effort into building some sort of relationship with Artemis either. She’s barely there as it is, always running around alone in the wilderness, as if the company of other gods makes her sick, and if she doesn’t want to form some sort of bond, why should he ?

There is something strange about her anyways, the way she squirms when forced to talk, the way her gaze flickers around restless and her fingers twitch, as if she desperately wants to bury them in the fabric of her chiton and hide them from the sight of the world. 

He finds her, once, after one of fathers many attempts to teach her better, as the god king had called it. And Ares never had a sister, or, to be more precise, he did have a sister, but Athena was born as his counterpart, as if fate itself decided that they could never be anything but rivals – and so Ares doesn’t know what to do, what to say. Artemis shies away from his touch, when he moves to pat her should, and he doesn’t think he’s ever made skin contact with Athena outside of fighting reasons, and Aphrodite is different , and–

In all his years of existence, Enyalios Ares had never once hugged one of his sisters.

Now he wishes that he did – if only once. 

Then, perhaps, the first time he held one of them in his arms would not have stained his skin with her godly blood.

Lightning sparks as he wraps an arm around Athena’s shoulders, and her ichor leaves golden smudges on his hands. His fathers anger still seems to burn underneath her skin – he can feel it, all of it, the twisting and twitching of furious electricity, the heat it radiates and sends burning through his sister's veins.

She flinches at his initial touch, undoubtedly unconsciously so, body shaking and trembling with the godly anger that had been inflicted on her still, as he carefully moves to lift her up. 

There is not an ounce of resistance: he would have preferred it, truly, if she had woken up, if she had yelled at him for daring to touch her so openly, so carefree, if she had slapped his hands away and sneered at him with sharp teeth and sharper words.

Athena does none of that.

She is strangely still as he lifts her, except of course for the lightning-induced convulsing of her muscles, though he knows for a fact that that is outside of her own control. Tattered pieces of her armor crack and fall further apart, crumbling to the gold-stained ground the moment he tightens his grip around her shoulders and underneath her knees.

He does not know how to be… gentle and soft, like Aphrodite is – he had only ever tried to be with her, but Ares' hands are made for bloodshed and fear and death, and not much else. They are not made to hold his family; they are not made to bring comfort and a feeling of safety.

And yet…

It is like this: in all his years of existence, Enyalios Ares had never once hugged one of his sisters.

The first time he does hug one of them, she’s half dead and her blood pours from eternal wounds, staining his skin golden as he holds her.

Lightning burns underneath her skin, radiating a heat he knows from his fathers slaps, but far more ruthless than he himself had ever experienced. The rain is a soft drizzle, but even minutes before, when it had still been stronger, it wasn’t enough to wash the gold that pours from countless wounds away. A smell of ozone and copper and burnt flesh hangs in the air: there is a crater, in his sister's chest, the size of a fist and blackened by the fire that had blazed through her. 

Her face is as much of a mess as the rest of her is – and he has seen violence and gore before, of course he has, brutal and gruesome deaths are part of his domain after all, but never quite like this . Because this is his annoying, smarter sister, who would always glare with disdain whenever they interacted or spoke: and now, her eyes are closed, hidden somewhere underneath the ichor painting her skin and the burnt, twisted branches which crisscross over and scar her face, leaving torn and raw flesh in their wake.

And Ares had never been gentle, and he had never hugged one of his sisters, and he isn’t kind or soft or someone who anyone would feel safe with.

He lifts Athena in his arms, as careful and slowly as he can.

Her head falls back, then, before rolling to the side as he readjusts his grip just a little, coming to rest on his chest. 

Apollo is saying something, but Ares cannot focus on him – all he sees is his sister, impossibly small in his arms, her cheek pressed against his torso and her face void of any emotion, covered with blood and sweat and tears as it is. And then thunder rumbles in the distance, and perhaps he is imagining it, perhaps it is the wind and the rain and his state of mind playing tricks on him – but as he clutches Athena closer to his chest, as if he could protect her from the weather itself, her head turns just the slightest bit: further towards him, as if to hide herself, her cheek and temple pressed against his torso.

In all his years of existence, Enyalios Ares had never once hugged one of his sisters.

He does for the first time, now.

It makes him want to cry, somehow.

“There is a temple of mine nearby.” Aphrodite says and only now does he notice the tears on her face, and the way she clutches her hands in front of her body as her shoulders shake. “We can bring her there for now. Rarely anyone ever comes to visit it.”

Apollo nods at that and Ares follows his brother as he takes off, careful on moving without hurting Athena as much as possible.

˗ˏˋ — ‧₊˚- ᓀ ᵥ ᓂ - ˚₊‧ — ˎˊ˗.

(Odysseus of Ithaca stares at the god in front of him and, not for the first time, wonders what his life has become.)

(Hermes appears to be delightfully happy – but there is an edge to his grin that was never there before, and his features are sharper, more refined, less of a childish trickster god and more of a man who has seen something to be afraid of.)

(He knows, because he himself has been that man far too often.)

(“Hermes?”)

(“Hello, old friend.”)

(“So you’re the one that spoke to Calypso.” A shiver runs down his spine at the name – the god in front of him frowns, for only a second, as if he wishes to say something but doesn’t. “Why are you here?”)

(Hermes speaks with his usual vigor; but something about it, something he cannot quite place, sounds forced, almost painfully so. 

Here is the thing: Odysseus is a liar, and that, in turn, makes him good at discovering other lairs, too.

The god of lying itself might be a divine being, but he, too, has his tells: his impish laughter is just a little too shrill, the joyful grin just a little too wild, bordering on being more animalistic than human. And of course, a god is no human, and Odysseus had had too much trouble with too many of them, so he does not ask about the glint of worry in Hermes’ eyes, or the way there are splotches of gold on the gods leather sandals, as if he had walked through puddles of it.)

(He does not ask – but such things have their way to him anyways.)

(“Hermes.” He says, once that cursed island and its lone inhabitant disappear from view, and there is nothing anymore between him and home but the ocean. “Thank you.”)

(The salt in the air suddenly smells like sadness.)

(Hermes averts his eyes at the words – he stands next to where Odysseus sits on his raft, the wood underneath his feet, as he suddenly realises, covered in charred splotches, perfectly aligning with the gold on his shoes.)

(The breeze is sharp and cold, and smells distantly of ozone.)

(He wonders if it will rain soon – the sky, after all, is dark in the distance, stormy grey clouds towering towards the stars, as if somebody had offended Lord Zeus himself.)

(“Don’t thank me, friend.” The god finally says, and seriousness weighs on his voice like boulders of stone, underlined with something akin to grief , almost. “I am not the one who fought for you.”)

(Thunder rumbles.)

(“Then who?” Odysseus asks, ignoring all divine signs to keep his mouth shut – he cannot imagine which fool would have possessed the brave stupidity to fight for his freedom, when the one who exiled him was the god king himself.)

(He thinks, for a moment, of a cliff at night, and a name he screamed into the dark.)

(But if it had been her , where was she, now?)

(Should she not have the decency to face him, then?)

(Hermes next to him laughs.)

(He sees, for only a moment, something clutches in the god's hands – it appears to be, from the short glance he gets, some tiny piece of charred wood, soaked with the same gold that stains Hermes sandals.)

(“Good luck.” The god says, and then he is gone.)

(Odysseus of Ithaca stays on his tiny raft.)

(His grip tightens around the rope in his hands and his gaze is lost in the clouds for a moment – then, he shakes his head, and pushes his thoughts as far away as he can.)

(Pallas Athena, after all, was not known to be a forgiving person – and after all which he said to her, after all the time that had passed, she had probably long since forgotten about him.)

˗ˏˋ — ‧₊˚- ᓀ ᵥ ᓂ - ˚₊‧ — ˎˊ˗.

“The armour is too molten.” Heaphaestus says. “You won’t be able to properly heal anything, as long as it stays on.”

Apollo frowns.

His gaze flickers to his brother for only a moment, before focusing back on Athena, who lies sprawled out on a low stone table in the backroom of Aphrodite's temple, protected from the cold surface only by a few linen blankets.

It is not an ideal arrangement.

The building is a small one, etched into the side of the mountain, reachable by a dirt path diverging from the bigger one which leads to the arena. They had to walk for a couple of minutes and down a few sets of stairs before arriving at it; Aphrodite had been right when she said that no one would be there, given the remote location – in her own words, this place was like a secret little sanctuary for her – but that also meant that no one had properly taken care of the place in quite a while. The ante chamber was damp with rain that had poured in through the open doors, and the rest of the rooms were cold and dark. He had ignited as many candles as he could see, while Aphrodite scurried off to get the blankets – that way, there was at least some light in the dim main room, but the temperature had not risen by much.

Which is why now, Athena long since carefully placed on an makeshift bed by Ares, Hephaestus sits closest as Apollo works, the natural heat the forge god emits being the only source of warmth in the room.

Athena’s skin might have felt awfully hot when he placed a palm on her temple earlier, no doubt so because of both his fathers lightning and the sun he had placed in her chest, but Apollo does not want to risk her getting a cold out of all things as well. 

Not that any god ever actually had a cold, but then again, gods are also not meant to die and go to Hades, yet here his older sister was. Once again proving she was the best by being first in anything.

His frown deepens.

He lets his gaze wander over Athena’s broken form – the hole in her chest; the charred marks stretching over her whole torso and shoulders, continuing on her back; the raw, torn flesh on her forearms where her vambraces had been before the lightning ripped them apart; the cuts on her shins and feet where shattered pieces of marble had broken skin; and, worst of all, the mess that was her face, disfigured and gory. 

That is what he can see – and with this already bad enough, he worries what else he might find underneath what’s left of her armor.

But Hephaestus, of course, is right.

The worst of the injuries is the one to her chest, where divine lightning had impaled her like a godly spear. If she were a human, her lungs and heart would be gone, and most other organs irreparably damaged – they are gods, so they do not have organs in the same sense as mortals do, but Athena had something else necessary for her survival broken: and Apollo, damning himself, does not know whether it is irreparably as well.

The spectre of his sisters soul, small and flickering, but still alive in its encasing of both his and Aphrodite's divine will, twitches with fear as he hovers a hand atop of Athena’s chest.

He tells himself, even as she continues to drag air into her lungs with weak, shallow breaths, even as her heart still fails to pick up in pace again, that as long as his sisters soul still exist, she will live again.

But lying had always been Hermes' domain, not his.

All Apollo can try to do is take what their father had broken and attempt to put it back together, to heal it at least in its physical form. 

(He cannot, knows not how to, heal her spirit and will.)

“You are right.” His voice waivers not as he addresses Hephaestus, the older god lifting his gaze from the body between them to focus on him as he speaks. “I can’t treat her like this. At least the chestplate will have to go.”

Except, of course, the chestplate will not simply go – the heat of the lightning had molten it, pushed divine steel out of its original, carefully crafted form. 

All detail that was ever carved into the metal is gone, the armor itself reduced to ash at the centre of the impact and faring not much better anywhere else. In fact, other places are even worse, as he quickly discovers: here, where the armor had not given in to the god king’s power, but attempted to take the burnt of the attack, the material is not reduced to nothing. It has, however, been dented and bent by both heat and the force Athena went crashing into the marble floor with. It is digging into her skin or, worse even, in some places has begun to burn into it, molten steel sinking into godly flesh – the same, as far as he can tell, has also happened to the greaves on her shins and the vambraces on her forearms. But those two are minor problems, to worry about later: the main issue stays with the chestplate which has basically become one with Athena’s torso.

He is decisively slow as he inspects it, fingertips hovering over his sister's chest – she seems to tense, just a little bit, whenever he actually places a hand on her, and the pour of godly blood strengthens whenever he does.

There is no doubt taking the plate off will be of any fun for her.

In fact, it might make the injuries worse, irritate them and cause more bleeding, but as his brother said – the armor needs to go. If it stays on, the still warm metal will cool down and completely become inseparable from Athena’s skin, the broken and sharp edges will cut deeper into her flesh and, worst of all, he won’t be able to treat that terribly gruesome wound in her chest, where residue of his fathers lightning still crackles and hisses.

He has Ares hold Athena down while removes it.

Hephaestus is next to him, helping where he can with burning hands, melting away steel where it needs to go while Apollo himself points out more shatter points and curls his fingers around the edges of the plate to lift it up, piece by piece.

The first one is the worst.

He’s barely touched the broken armor, barely even began to peel it away when Athena goes stiff. Her back arches off the makeshift bed – then, she begins to scream. 

It is an utterly broken sound, full of pain and misery, worse even than her wailing from earlier had been, back when he encased her soul in sunlight as to keep it together – now, there is nothing but raw agony as Apollo tries to pull at the piece of armor as he can, tries and tries and fails to spare her the pain, still. 

The armor peels away and Athena’s skin and flesh peel off right with it. 

He hears it tear, before he sees it: a disgusting noise, wet and crunching , somehow and it takes him a moment to realise that it’s because the skin peeling away is completely charred and dry. 

Bile rises at the back of his throat, for only a second, as he lays eyes on discolored skin and the raw, open flesh underneath, so similar to a mortal’s one. Then, more ichor begins to trickle from the new, fresh wound, and he is quick to place a piece of water-soaked clean fabric on top of it, not capable of doing full bandages yet.

Athena, once more, begins to trash as the cool cloth is placed on her skin, but Ares holds her down with a steady hand, though the other god’s gaze is averted, as if he, too, cannot bare to lay eyes on the full extent of his sister's misery.

The only one who does look at her is Aphrodite – she sits by Athena’s head, holding it as still as she can while running a hand through auburn hair in slow, calming motions. It does not do much – the goddess of wisdom still trashes and flails, with all the strength she has left – but Aphrodite keeps going anyways, whispering soft, sweet words he himself cannot quite understand.

The piece of armor peels off and Hephaestus places it carefully on the floor, while Apollo places the first makeshift bandage.

Then, he starts anew.

Athena begins to lose the little bit of strength that she had left, with each piece of armor that comes off – her screams turn into snarls turn into groans turn into whimpers. 

Ares keeps holding her and Aphrodite keeps brushing her hair – at one point Hermes comes sauntering through the door, while they are still working, pretending to be not at all interested in what is going on, though Apollo sees the worry in his younger brother's eyes. He sends him to get supply from his infirmary.

Hermes does. When he comes back, he places a tiny wooden owl next to the requested supplies.

Chapter Text

˗ˏˋ — ‧₊˚- ᓀ ᵥ ᓂ - ˚₊‧ — ˎˊ˗.

“Now they made all secure 

in the fast black ship,

and, setting out the wine bowls all a-brim,

they made libation to the gods,

the undying, 

the ever-new,

most of all to 

the grey-eyed daughter of Zeus.

And the prow sheared through

 the night into the dawn.”

~ Homer

The Odyssey

˗ˏˋ — ‧₊˚- ᓀ ᵥ ᓂ - ˚₊‧ — ˎˊ˗.

Lord Zeus; ruler over the sky and so much more, King of the Gods, the mightiest and most powerful of them all; had many, many different children. The important, godly ones, came to his palace one by one: Aphrodite first, then Ares and Hephaestus; then Athena followed by the twins, and finally Hermes and Dionysus.
Rather obviously, those were not his only children: but they were the ones closest to him in power and might – of course, still, nothing in comparison. He saw their potential, their future with interest, and perhaps sometimes worry in… specific cases, and so he did what every good father would do. He challenged them and helped each one of them grow, until they became mighty and prosperous.

Oddly enough, all of his children seem to be avoiding him.

Not even just now , after the game he held in the arena yesterday.

They’ve all been avoiding him for quite a while already, he’s slowly beginning to realise. 

Hermes flitting around in the mortal world, apparently too busy with delivering messages; Apollo constantly socialising with his nymphs and muses, or trailing behind yet another one of the human men he fell in love with; Hephaestus with his forge and Artemis in her forests as always; Ares with the multitude of wars that had broken out in the world; by his lightning, even Athena had taken interest in things far away from home, and she was supposed to be the best of his heirs.

He told her as much once.

After she returned from weeks spend with that mortal fool, Odysseus, back when the man was still a boy and his daughter still overly careful around him – Zeus had watched them, from afar, curious at where Athena was going and then soon frowning in disdain at the un godliness she displayed herself with. She had, of course, immediately apologised the moment he brought it up with her – and oh , how he loved that she never needed much further motivation, that she was always so quick and eager to please his anger.

But still, she did not stop teaching that mortal, which was a waste of time if someone were to ask him, and neither did any of his other children stop their little adventures out in the mortal realm. 

He made his resentment towards all those trips, and how it seemed as if everyone was avoiding him, quite loudly clear – often in the presence of his eldest daughter, for she was, after all, the one assisting him with most of his tasks, and smart enough, unlike her siblings, to not spent her entire time away from home. Mostly she just stood still and nodded along as he spoke his frustration into the air and lightning hummed underneath his skin.

Once, she had dared to ask him: “But should we not mingle with the mortals, if they are the ones who pray to us? Surely, you cannot blame my siblings for doing what they were created and born for.” “They were made to serve me.” He had replied, after lightning cracked and thundered from the force of his backhand meeting her cheek, his brows furrowed as she stood still like always and let his wrath pass over her. “Their duty is not to the humans – it is to their king. That does not exclude you, storm-eyed daughter of mine. You would be wise to not forget that.” Her answer had been simple: “Of course not, father.” That is what he liked about her, how quickly and quietly she accepted the truth and his divine right, and knew her place.

Except, of course, she didn't.

Didn’t know her place; did forget what she had promised him. 

That she, like all of them, was his – he had made her what she was today. He had birthed her, had let her grow and prosper inside his head; he had given her her divinity as his own blood was spilled for her freedom, and taught her the price and shackles of it, when he distracted that sea nymph she was enamored with during their sparring match; he had helped her kill the humanity tied to her own soul with blood stained hands and a cursed spear, and praised her for it afterwards; brought her to Olympus and gave her her rightful place at his side. 

He made her.

He made her.

It was him who created the goddess Athena.

And still, after everything he did for her, she could not even stay the loyal servant she had always been, could not even accept his judgement like she always did, because of a cursed mortal out of all things. 

It’s not his fault.

It’s not .

Odysseus of Ithaca is to be blamed; Athena herself, of course, as well.

She should have stayed away from that mortal man when he told her to – if she had, none of this would have happened; she wouldn’t have forgotten her place and he wouldn’t have had to punish her. 

It’s as simple as that.

His children are avoiding him.

He really does not get why.

˗ˏˋ — ‧₊˚- ᓀ ᵥ ᓂ - ˚₊‧ — ˎˊ˗.

“Down the goddess swept 

from Olympus’ craggy peaks
and dove like a star 

the son of Cronus flings.
Cronus with all his turning, twisting ways –
a sign to men at sea 

or a massive army marching,
blazing on with a stream of sparks showering in its wake.
Like a shooting star 

Athena flashed across the earth,
plunging down in the midst 

of both camped forces.”

~ Homer

The Iliad, Book 4, lines 86-92.

˗ˏˋ — ‧₊˚- ᓀ ᵥ ᓂ - ˚₊‧ — ˎˊ˗.

Pallas Athena had known pain before.

It came with being multiple millennia old – gods are above mortal things, but they are not immune to them, no matter what they might claim or think. Humans, after all, were created in their divine likeness: and human struggle, all the same, has its roots someplace holy and all-mighty.

(She wondered, from time to time: would they find peace in it, the mortals, or unending pain? To know that the twists and turns of their lives, tragic and horrible and cruel, were crafted someplace higher? That they never possessed the power to change them?)

But yes, she has known pain before – though not a lot of it, that much she prides herself with.

Being born, for one, was painful.

(And the centuries before that, time she spent trapped and caged inside her fathers mind, cursed to catch only ever glimpses of the outside world, just barely out of reach; time where there was nothing but her and darkness. That hurt, too. Not that she would ever admit as much.)

Being born was painful – she remembers exactly how it had felt, to slam her hands against the inside of her fathers skull, again and again and again, desperately needing to get out. How her knuckles had ached and her fingers cracked with each punch, the soreness of her shoulders and the sharp twinge of her teeth, sinking into her lips. 

Inside of her fathers mind, there was nothing but pain for her: and once she managed to get out , once his skull split from Hephaestus' axe and she finally clawed her way to freedom, there was nothing but pain, as well.

Breathing had hurt.

The light of the sun had hurt.

Her fathers blood, golden and divine, had hurt .

She was an adult already – she had spent no more but five seconds in the world. Being born, her first realisation, her first thought came to be, was utterly, gruesomely painful.

They didn’t call her goddess of wisdom for nothing.

Living itself had never been full of pain like coming into the world had been.

That is, until living turned to existing and life itself turned into a weird, foggy veil, passing by her quicker than she could keep up with.

Crimson stains her chiton.

And a sad smile is lost to bloody sand.

Nothing.

Nothing.

Nothing.

That is what her life has become.

Nothing.

Without purpose – without cause.

(The sun is sinking.)

(Triton is raging: Lord Zeus is, too.)

(Athena does not care. The only thing she ever cared for lies dead in her arms.)

Centuries pass – Pallas’ blood still stains her hands, ever refusing to be washed away. 

Existing (not living , not truly, not anymore) is painful in a way different from what she experienced before.

The light of day no longer blinds her, even when she looks at the sun itself; breathing has become natural, an automatic response, something she tends to enjoy from time to time, when the day is fresh or rain has just fallen; and her fathers burning blood has long since washed away from her skin.

Those things no longer matter.

And yet, she wishes them back somehow – if only she could exchange them for whatever hell her soul has been placed in; if only tears would come to her eyes when looking at the sun, not when she’s alone in her palace and that awful, numbing sadness claws its way out of the pit in her stomach and bites and bites into her heart, until she finds her shoulders shaking with grief. 

If only she could choke on fresh morning air, instead of the guilt that wrapped itself around her throat centuries, millennia ago, lurking and waiting until she lets down her guard before striking out of nowhere, venomous teeth tearing and tearing at her vocal cords and trachea until she digs her fingers into her own neck, desperate to be free.

If only her fathers blood would still stain her skin – perhaps, then, she would not see the mortal red that covers her hands and arms and feet instead, eternal markings of all those whom she had wronged, starting with Pallas.

(Lovely, innocent, wonderful Pallas.)

But Athena is wisdom: she knows, first hand, that those wishes are childish and she, after all, was never a child. She is above such nonsensical daydreams and products of imagination.

So life, living, is really more like existing, and existing is painful.

Yet pain is a human thing, and she is a god, thus it should be below her – so she closes off the rotten, bruised thing inside her ribcage (gods, after all, do not need a heart) and burns away what was left of the humanity, which was tied to her soul at birth (and ends up burying it deep down in the labyrinth of her thoughts instead, because no matter how hard she tries, she cannot rid herself of that awful, tiny, mortal spark, cannot rid herself of the things that killed lovely, warm, innocent, kind, wonderful Pallas).

Ares talks to her about it once.

He is awkward and shifty the entire time, avoiding her gaze and rubbing the back of his neck as he speaks. It is more of an insult than anything else, really – he has never been one good with words.

“I know what it looks like.” He tells her, the scar over his cheek and temple shifting strangely as he squeezes his eyes almost shut, frowning at her. “When someone has killed for the first time. I looked the same as you do now, when I did.”

(A moment long, she imagines him: young, boyish and his skin still flawless, hands eternally red like hers are now. She imagines the way his shoulders shake as he stares into a mirror – imagines how wide his eyes must have been, youthful and bloodshot, and not yet turned crimson with age and death.)

(But it’s only for a moment.)

Athena ignores him.

Ares never did know what he was talking about (except, just maybe, this time he did .)

She does get injured a few times in that odd, foggy time between Pallas and Odysseus.

It is never something truly notable, really, the only reason why she does notice is because how rarely it happens. A cut during sparring with Ares here, a backhand of her fathers there, a stray arrow accidentally finding its mark this.

Little things.

Somehow, they are also the only things capable of lifting the clouds on her awareness, if only for a second: then, it slips away again.

‘After Pallas’ and ‘Before Odysseus’ becomes, almost, like a gap in her memory. But of course, she is the goddess Athena, so she does not simply forget . Things merely pass by her, blurred and foggy: still there, but unimportant. 

How strange – the most significant people, the major focus points of her existence, are two mortals . 

One whom she bound her soul to and brought a fate of tragedy in return; one who wrote his own tragedy, but had said tragedy fated upon his head the moment she took an interest in him. 

And does that not say horrible, terrible things about her?

It was Pallas who died by her hand; and Athena was left to suffer the aftermath, as she deserved , alone for decades, centuries, millenia to come. And perhaps she lost herself a little bit, in her self-pity, in her grief  – she heard Aphrodite daring to whisper about it a single time, when the other goddess had found her during one of the worse days, the ones where she felt like she was either back in the darkness of her fathers head, or drowning in the waves of Pallas blood.

Were gods supposed to feel pain like that?

Apollo had lost many of his lovers already – not that Pallas was her lover – and he was devastated, of course, every time, but never quite like this. It took him a decade to get over them, a century at most and only once, when Hyacinth had died. So there must have been something wrong with her, no? Something about whatever that stabbing coldness inside of her chest was, that thing which Aphrodite had named ‘a knife called grief’.

And then Odysseus had wandered along. 

She had come to love him, somehow, different from how she had loved Pallas, for he would never be able to replace the only person who got to see her heart (no one, no one , would ever be able to take Pallas place) – but she had loved him still.

It came over time: he had been nothing but her student, at first, a promising warrior for the war to come. But Odysseus possessed a certain skill, one which allowed him to worm his way towards her affection somehow – he had no qualms chatting with her, did not hold back with the things he said or initiating the physical contact he so loved.

The first time she had been hugged by anyone since Pallas’ death was when she had stood by his side before his coronation: it had been more for his own comfort, no doubt, which is why she did not throw him out of the window the moment he wrapped his arms around her middle and buried his face inside her chlamys. 

It was… nice.

She supposes.

But nothing good ever happened to the mortals she took an interest in – Pallas herself being the prime example – and so, when he called her a friend, she did not return the sentiment: she treated him as professionally as she could, desperate not to make the same mistake twice, and when the time of reckoning came, when he refused her advice and called her ‘selfish and prideful in vain’...

It was a spear, her spear, that pierced Pallas’ heart.

In a way, she did the same to Odysseus: his blood was not actually spilled, but she knows her words must have hurt him as much as his did her.

And then, Athena left.

(She is the goddess of wisdom – she barely remembers ‘after Pallas’ and ‘before Odysseus’.)

(She doesn't remember ‘after Odysseus’ at all.)

(Not more than shattered images, at least: helping Penelope sleep after the Queen spent a week without rest at night in fear, watching over Telemachus and finally, finally offering him her mentorship after that one fight against one of the pigs that had taken up residence in the palace of Ithaca.)

Seven years pass.

Guilt is a nasty, cruel thing – it does not spare the gods.

She had known pain, before.

And then Odysseus screams her name, wails in the darkness of the night and spits a single worded prayer with a desperate heart and frightened mind.

(Her fathers lightning burns, burns, burns.)

˗ˏˋ — ‧₊˚- ᓀ ᵥ ᓂ - ˚₊‧ — ˎˊ˗.

There are arms around her.

Death and slaughter hum against her skin. 

Ares then.

A fight, was it, or a brotherly embrace?

She does not know.

There are arms around her – rough and warm.

Has her brother ever hugged her in the past?

She does not know .

Only that they have spilled each other's blood before.

There is something inherently violent about siblings.

Still, it is the only kind of family she knows.

(Her father does not love her.)

(Her mother is dead.)

Ares holds her in his arms

– once more, she wonders:

– has he ever done that before? –

And it's warm.

She feels as if it’s suffocating her.

(There is blood in her mouth,

And lightning in her chest.)

(She wants to say:

I know you.)

(She wants to say:

I have hated you all my life.)

(She wants to say:

We’re similar, you and I.

Two sides of the same coin.

Both children of the same monster.

Both capable of his atrocities.)

(But there is blood in her mouth,

And lightning in her chest.)

(And she finds she can’t speak.)

˗ˏˋ — ‧₊˚- ᓀ ᵥ ᓂ - ˚₊‧ — ˎˊ˗.

Athena does not feel the actual impact of the lightning.

It’s odd.

One moment she is standing in the middle of that arena, head held high and voice firm as she speaks.

The next there is that awful booming of thunder she’s all too familiar with – she sees the flash of white and gold, sees the way the stormy clouds explode outwards at her fathers divine calling, sees the blinding light of it all.

Something sends her flying backwards: the floor underneath her feet is gone and her mouth tastes like metal and nectar, all at once. Time shudders, shifts, hesitates and slows for the splinter of an eternity as she considers opening Quick Thought. Above her, the clouds are still towering into the sky – beyond that, in the far, far distance, the stars burn brightly.

She hits the floor. She does not feel the lightning hit.

The pain comes after.

(Burning, she's burning. Blazing like the sun. Her insides are set on fire: she can practically feel her organs melt. Her heart stutters, shakes, trips over itself as it weakly fights to continue beating; her limbs convulse outside of her own control and bile rises to the back of her mouth. A thousand knives are stabbing her all over, again and again and again, slicing into godly flesh and spilling her blood over the ground. Her vision flickers, is gone – she opens her mouth to scream and fails to make a single sound. The stars no longer burn in the sky: they have taken over residence in her torso instead, with unforgiving flames and cruel, agonising rays of light. She wants her mother. The pain does not care: it keeps on burning, burning, burning, blazing like a beacon in the dark – and dark it is, now, a shadowy and cold one, grabbing a hold of her with greedy and slick fingers, tugging and pulling on her shoulders, begging her to give up. This is what dying must be like – she wonders if Pallas felt the same, the moment the spear broke through her skin.)

She knows that she makes it back to her feet.

She knows that she begs , like some sort of pathetic and useless, broken tool. That desperation and fear sits in her voice, claws at her raw throat as she begs and begs and begs . 

Please , she says, and thinks to herself please please pleasepleasepleaseplease–

She does not feel the second strike of lightning either.

She does not feel much more at all.

˗ˏˋ — ‧₊˚- ᓀ ᵥ ᓂ - ˚₊‧ — ˎˊ˗.

After the lightning, there is nothing.

She is fine like this.

Being nothing.

Fate is an odd word –

It means destiny.

It means doom.

Which one of them is this?

She is floating.

The river is rough around her–

It doesn’t like her.

(No one likes her.)

This is not your place,

It seems to whisper,

Angry souls lost in the sand of its ground.

What are you doing here,

Goddess

Child

Daughter

Fool?

Your life,

The ocean hisses into her ears.

Was not worth your pride.

My darling,

The water seems to whisper,

And then there is a hand on her shoulder,

And she is drowning still.

(Someone carries her out of inky black water.)

(Someone else pulls her out of the ocean.)

Promise me you’ll live,

They both seem to say.

She can’t.

She can’t .

My darling fool,

Pallas whispers,

Ever so kind,

Ever so gentle.

And Athena feels like dying all over again.

(She fears she might be starved of love.)

˗ˏˋ — ‧₊˚- ᓀ ᵥ ᓂ - ˚₊‧ — ˎˊ˗.

This is what death feels like:

Nothing.

Nothing, nothing, nothing.

In truth, she has felt like this for a long, long time already.

She is a haunted god, after all: a monster. Crimson stains her hand and her face is a mask of stone. Selfish and prideful, never guilty, never, unknown to the world, alone.

Alone.

Alone.

Alone.

This is what the truth feels like.

Bitter.

And Pallas Athena is a bitter being – cold and heartless and cruel.

Or at least, she was.

There is little left of her, now.

Bits and pieces: broken, shattered, burnt and useless. 

A memory here, a curse there.

(It’s a strange coincidence – Zeus had scorned her, all of them, for being so close to the mortals not too long ago. He had said that his children are to serve their king: that he is the one who loves them, who protects them and granted them life and power.)

(And now?)

(Now Pallas Athena is dead in all ways that should matter, with a hole in her chest and her body mostly burnt and charred beyond recognition, more torn, raw skin than healed, unbroken one. She is dead – her heart can no longer beat and her lungs no longer draw air. Her eyes, one a mess boiled into bloody, unrecognisable goo and the other lifeless and empty, stare towards the sky, never blinking, never closing.) 

(She is dead : her father killed her.)

(Her spine is shattered and so are both of her arms and wrists. Her fingers are bent at an unnatural angle – twisted backwards and deep purple, bruising beyond death. Ichor leaks from her ears and nose and mouth: in the blurriness of the rain, it looks like tears almost.)

(Pallas Athena is divine even in death.)

(Lord Zeus killed his daughter – he gifted her life, perhaps, but he is not the one believing in her. The mortals are, foolish and dumb, unaware of the power they hold. It’s the little things, really: a broken prayer on a battlefield, a whisper into the night of her temple, a single man on a shattered raft.)

(Athena is dead .)

(And then, she isn’t.)

˗ˏˋ — ‧₊˚- ᓀ ᵥ ᓂ - ˚₊‧ — ˎˊ˗.

Somewhere far away, 

she awakens with a soft groan at the pain flaring in her muscles, 

to a gentle hand caressing her cheek, 

and a familiar smile on thin lips.

How odd.

A question comes to mind,

As she lies there,

Motionless.

About what will happen next.

She knows,

They won’t grieve her.

For she would never grieve herself,

If the roles were to be reserved.

And yet…

If you have a sister

And she dies,

Do you still have one?

Do you stop saying you have one?

Or is she always your sister,

Even when her part of it,

Her place,

Is gone?

Would her siblings remember her?

(She had thought about Métis like this.)

(Athena had never known her mother:

Did that mean that she didn’t have one?)

(Father seemed to believe it.)

(He made her swear it, too.)

(But she wondered, still:

She had a mother once,

And then her mother died,

And Athena was a coward and a fool,

And never once confessed

To being her child.)

(But she still had a mother, right?)

(Right?)

(Please. )

She awakens –

Or at least a part of her does.

Death, after all, 

Does not let go easily.

There are pieces of her she will never get back.

And now,

There is a hand on her cheek,

Softly caressing her skin.

Someone is smiling.

It’s like this:
There was lightning.

Before that, Odysseus

And the memory of Pallas.

And suddenly, she was all alone:

With a body that couldn't love her,

And a will that couldn’t save her.

How odd.

She knows what it’s like to be holy, to be divine:

Thousands of voices screaming inside her head,

She is a lone fragment of a shattered mirror,

And a cruel smile in the reflection,

Of a cleanly broken, gleaming white bone.

Ripped edges and torn flesh.

Ichor drips from her fingertips.

She does not know how to be anything else.

My child,

Someone above her seems to whisper,

And Athena’s mother is dead, had been dead since forever.

So it cannot be her, it cannot–

My child,

The whisper goes and goes,

And that careful, soft hand is caressing her cheek still.

You are beautiful in a way only broken things can be.

(And she wonders.)

(Does she have a mother, even though her mother is dead,

And she never knew her in the first place?)

(And more quietly, she wonders,

If her mother had ever wished for a different child,

A different daughter instead of her.

Cowardly Athena, 

Who did not dare to break her fathers will,

Who lives with guilt and guilt alone,

As the only friend in a darkness,

She herself brought upon her existence.)

(A frightened fool who refused to confess to the crime,

Of being her mothers only daughter.)

(So she wonders.)

(Would Métis have been happier, had she given birth to someone else?)

(Someone worthy?)

(She does not want to hear the answer.)

Hush, little one,

The darkness seems to whisper,

And it feels, almost, as if someone is smiling down on her.

Why do you fret?

Know this, my daughter:

I would die for you to live,

 in every other universe.

I do not regret what I decided so surely aeons ago,

And you shall not feel guilt over a choice you did not make.

You deserve better,

She wants to reply,

But death holds her tongue and has its hands around her throat.

The darkness hums.

The hand wanders from her cheek to her head,

Sofly, gently, fingers threading through her hair,

In calming and gentle motions.

I love you.

It whispers, kind and sad.

I love you, I love you,

Oh, my sweet child.

My daughter. 

My baby.

I love you.

(Her fathers love was only ever rough,

Raised fists and thundered words,

Blood in her mouth and fear in her heart.)

(Her fathers love was violent and brutal and cruel and gruesome –

It fed off of fear and expectations and hate.)

(She never had a mother.)

There are fingers in her hair,

And it seems odd, somehow,

How anyone could touch her with this type of kindness.

It’s mundane, it’s stupid:

There is no logic behind this,

No ulterior motive.

It’s just someone playing with her hair,

Stroking her head and humming a tune.

(She never had a mother.)

(She never had a mother.)

(And oh, how her heart breaks now,

How she wishes and wishes and curses her fate,

For taking everyone who could have ever loved her.)

Pallas Athena is not a coldhearted monster,

Incapable of loving.

She yearns for it, even.

To be loved,

To be held,

To be cherished.

To place her head in her mothers lap,

And have her stroke her hair with nothing but soft care,

To rest her eyes for a moment and forget about life.

To laugh and talk with her soulmate,

And sit by the oceans late in the evening,

Hands interwoven as they stare at the sea.

To listen to her best friends jokes and stories,

And follow him around his palace,

All the pain between them forgotten.

How peculiar –

To be divine and holy and all-mighty,

And still incapable of saving what could have saved her.

(The lightning burns.)

(Pallas Athena is dead.)

(Then, she isn’t anymore.)

(She has never know her mother –

This is the closest she’ll ever be.)

˗ˏˋ — ‧₊˚- ᓀ ᵥ ᓂ - ˚₊‧ — ˎˊ˗.

Gods, one should know, wear the burden of time – and they will wish to collapse underneath it.

Yet it is not time which kills Pallas Athena.

It is not her father, either. 

(Or at least, one should clarify, it is not him alone.)

He sends the lightning which pierces her chest: but his daughter had been broken before her spine snapped in two, before her lungs were burned and her heart stopped beating and her inside boiled. 

Perhaps she had been dead all along.

When did it happen, then?

Was it the moment her mother died, lonely and cold in her husband's mouth? Skull crushed between all-mighty teeth, ichor drowning his tongue like nectar and her screams muffled by the crunching of his jaw? Leaving nothing but a mushed and dissolving corpse – and the unborn child within it, cloaked in darkness and eternal blood?

Was it the moment she wielded that cursed spear, with all of her ever-new might and glory? The crack of bones and tearing of skin as the sharp head of her weapon broke through a chest like it was nothing, and sent blood and gore splattering onto white sand? Trembling hands and choked sobs – the laughter of divinity echoing in her ears alongside with a fathers screams, as the hand in hers grew limp and lifeless?

Or was it the lightning, in the end?

No, she thinks – it must have been the grief.

It must have been.

Aphrodite – (a hand in her hair and muffled sobs as she whispers ‘mama’ into the darkness of an temple, pain lacing every syllable of the choked word) – had said something about grief once: something about it being the last and final translation of love. Something about it being a final act of devotion: something that never ends.

Athena is the coldhearted, cruel goddess.

The mortals praise her in their stories – but they write about her with disdain, too, with barely hidden apprehension. Fear laces their words and sentences, and anger, as well. In their eyes, she is spiteful: she curses without thought and care, and slaughters her way through innocents. In their eyes, she is unlovable and incapable of loving, too: not her friends, not her siblings, not her parents (and not the children they sometimes write for her, ignoring the virginity she swore herself to).

And some of it – most, to be honest – might even be right.

But her mother loved her.

Métis loved her – she died for her.

And should that not mean something?

To be loved, unconditionally, for simply being ?

Is her mother not proof enough that she, too, can be loved?

(Is Pallas not proof?)

(Isn’t Odysseus?)

There is a gently, soft hand,

Caressing her cheek and patting her head.

‘Wake up’, the darkness seems to say. ‘Wake up.’

A sun burns within her chest.

‘Come back’, the shadows seem to whisper, desperate and pained. ‘Come back to us, sister. Please.’

The river has let go of her long ago,

And so has death.

It’s touch has scarred her for all of existence,

But it is gone, now.

Greedy cold fingers no longer wrapped around her throat.

This is her choice.

This is her choice.

It’s hers –

– and hers alone.

When did she ever get to make a choice?

Being born wasn’t.

The prophecy wasn’t.

Her purpose wasn’t.

She could stay.

She could stay, here.

At peace – back with the only ones who ever loved her.

(Odysseus loved her, she thinks.)

(Maybe. A long time ago, perhaps. She needs to make sure he got back .)

Pallas must be here, somewhere.

Her mother is, for sure.

How odd.

She thinks she misses both more than she actually remembers them.

(Odysseus remembers her.)

‘Sister’, someone whispers, once more. ‘Sister.’

It’s a strange word.

By technical definition, a sister is a woman or a girl who shares parents or a parent with another individual; a female sibling. By emotional ones…

She doesn’t think she’s ever been much of a sister to any of her siblings.

Athena hated most of them and most of them hated her.

There is a specific kind of fighting you can only have with your siblings. You share the same monster for a father: you have learned to use your words like he does. It’s the kind of fight where you say things you cannot take back. You say them because you can’t not : you’ve grown up in an angry home. There is nothing but violence here. All you see is blood.

She thinks of Zeus and of lightning.

Of all of her siblings, cowering in fear. 

Of Ares face bloodied and Apollos shoulders shaking, of bruises on Artemis’ cheeks and the dissociation in Dionysus’ gaze; of fear in Hermes voice and tears in Aphrodite's eyes, of Hephaestus tumbling to the ground without his cane.

Of how she never once stepped in the way of their punishments.

She thinks of Zeus and the word ‘father’ rots in her mouth.

Distantly, thunder rumbles.

He stares out into the storm with golden eyes,

And wonders, for a moment, if his judgement was just.

If guilt has a right to sink it’s teeth into his heart.

(He thinks of a time long ago,

Lonely amongst the mountains,

And how he swore to never call Chronos father again.)

( History always repeats itself. )

A wooden owl lies in the darkness in front of her.

It’s charred and damaged – but someone has cleaned it, as carefully and detailed as it was crafted years ago. There is love, hidden in the action: both the carving as it was done in the past, and the way someone took care of it. 

‘I’m waiting for you.’ It seems to say. ‘Please, come back to me.’

‘Come back.’

And she stands in the darkness.

Skin unbroken and chest not impaled; her hands free of crimson and gold and not a single muscle convulsing under the stress of electricity. 

There is no pain here.

But there is nothing else either.

Nothing, except for memories she can’t remember.

Of people who loved her so much, they decided she was worth dying for.

And did she not do the same?

Did she not decide that Odysseus was worth trading herself for?

Did that not mean that she, too, could love, and be loved in return?

The hand is soft in her hair. 

‘I don’t think she will wake up.’

‘I do.’

‘Why do you take care of me?’ She wants to ask, desperately. ‘It’s rotten work.’

‘Not to me.’ The echo of her siblings seems to reply.

‘It’s not rotten to me.

Not if it's you.’

The owl sits still in the darkness in front of her.

There are nothing but memories in her back: she cannot gain back what was lost long ago. Attachment is a cruel, possessive thing – she does not own her mother, or her love. She never did. 

Perhaps, then, it is time to let go.

To look ahead instead of back.

To know her grief, but no longer let it control her.

To fight against fate and doom: to undo her fathers sentence and undo her prophesised destiny all the same.

‘Come on now.’ The wooden owl whispers – a token of love, is what it is. Of admiration and devotion, of friendship and kindness. She longs to see the one who made it for her. ‘You’ve waited long enough.’

And she has.

She has.

She closes her eyes and carefully lifts the owl in her hands.

˗ˏˋ — ‧₊˚- ᓀ ᵥ ᓂ - ˚₊‧ — ˎˊ˗.

(Pallas Athena awakens like this – her body seizes up and her limbs convulse. Foam pours from her lips, stained with gold, her wails lost in the shouting of her siblings.)

(She lies still quickly enough.)

(Her chest rises – once, then twice, slowly, painfully.)

(It is the greatest struggle of her life.)

(A single eye struggles to open, the other one broken beyond repair: she sees blurry shapes and silhouettes, feels the sun and love and war and fire and pain, pain, pain.)

(Dead is the most alive she’s been in years.)

(“Gods,” Ares asks, sounding utterly frightened. “Is she crying ?”)

˗ˏˋ — ‧₊˚- ᓀ ᵥ ᓂ - ˚₊‧ — ˎˊ˗.

Odysseus of Ithaca, at home at least, steps out onto his bedroom's balcony late at night.

Sitting on the railing is a tiny, wooden owl – carved from an olive tree long ago.