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When Hephaestus had made up his mind to tell Hera about the whole Pandora thing, he had imagined a large number of her possible reactions. Utter disbelief at the whole situation. Screaming at his invasion of her privacy. A fair amount of the scenarios involved how he would defend himself if she got really angry, honestly.
None of the scenarios he had thought up happened. Instead, Hera just sat there, pensively, time stretching out between them for what felt like forever before she spoke up. "You ... made Pandora?" she asked, her voice quiet, too quiet to detect an emotion, though honestly even if her voice had been louder Hephaestus probably couldn't read it.
"Uh yeah! Well, sorta. I made the program Pandora, but the Pandora you talked to evolved from the program. It's this whole concept of machine learning, basically you start with ..." Hephaestus rambled, before trailing off. Hera just watched him, her face blank, before beaming.
"That's so cool!" Hera exclaimed, and even the socially-awkward Hephaestus could feel the sincerity radiating off of her. "I mean, I knew you were talented. You made Cupid's Bow and all. But," she waved her arms in the air helplessly. "I never would have imagined you could've created something so real."
"Yeah, well, with the amount of time I spend down here in the labs, I better be at least decent at programming," he quipped, returning Hera's smile. This was definitely better than his scenarios. He wasn't getting maimed, or facing invasion of privacy charges, or, worst, losing essentially his only real-life friend.
But for some reason, Hera's grin wavered, just a little. "Yeah," she laughed a little, but it was hollow and they both knew it. "I think every time we meet, it's down here. You're really dedicated to programming."
"It's basically my whole life." Hephaestus nodded, a bit disturbed not by the shift in Hera's mood, but her attempts to hide it. He had seen Hera at her worst and at her best, but, at least down here, she tended to be incredibly open about her emotions.
"Yeah. Your whole life, huh." Hera's voice was soft, and though her face was unreadable, her hand hovered by her collarbone, twitching.
"What happened to your necklace?" Hephaestus knew how enamored Hera was with it; he had read her squealing e-mail to Pandora when Zeus had presented it to her and had never seen her without it, even that one time when it was closer to dawn than midnight but they had stayed up together as he polished Pandora (under the guise of a project) and she had written an essay on gender roles in Antarctica. ("Just say there are no gender roles because no one lives there to fulfill them the end!" "You're not helping.")
Hera's face dropped, and this was a side of Hera he was familiar with. A Hera with eyes rimmed red, voice sore. It was a Hera he recognized, but never a Hera he knew how to deal with.
Hephaestus did the only thing he knew how to: change the subject. "So, uh, the way Pandora works is that the initial program basically has a set of parameters that tell it how to write e-mails and ask..."
"I broke up with Zeus. For real, this time." The confession was soft, but still froze Hephaestus in his tracks. He had read the e-mails detailing the sordid history of Zeus and Hera, from their meeting to the honeymoon period to the cheating to the makeup rinse repeat for two years until Hera put her foot down, and though they talked all about the fights and the screaming and the why-am-I-still-with-him-again, Hera had never, never followed through on the threat. Until now.
"Why?" Hephaestus prodded lightly, though he suspected he knew.
"I ... I caught him and Ganymede. At the party last night. He confirmed it a few hours ago, told me he couldn't say it wasn't nothing. So we broke up." Hera ran her fingers through her hair, obviously frustrated. "It ... It's just I couldn't do it anymore, you know?"
"Yeah," he said, even though Hephaestus had exactly zero knowledge about relationships personally, but through watching Hera and Zeus's relationship blossom he felt deeply empathetic.
Hera leaned forward on the stool, resting her elbows on her knees as she splayed her fingers across her face. "I just don't know what to do, now. I ... I won't go back to him. But for so long, it's been me and him. Hera and Zeus. I don't remember a time without him. I don't remember a me without him."
Hephaestus watched her, watched her for a long while, before turning back to his laptop, still propped open. “You know, ‘cause of the whole virus thing, this backup Pandora doesn’t have any memories of you being her pen pal. Of everything.” His fingers flew over the keys, before turning the screen to face Hera. “So! Why don’t you two start over, and tell Pandora about yourself. Maybe you two can figure out all about Hera, together.”
Hera looked at him, eyes glistening, but any possible tears seemed to be happy. “Thank you,” she said, her voice thick, but she was smiling. Eventually, though, she wiped away her tears with the back of her hand, and turned to the laptop.
“Hi, Pandora. I’m Hera. I’m about to graduate Pantheon University with a major in Gender Studies...”