Work Text:
For the majority of young Athena’s immortal life, it was a natural, everyday occurrence that she was to be level-headed and objective when faced with a problem that could not be solved within a discussion, a council meeting, or a quick word with her father.
But even she is not above feeling emotion,
The hurricane in her heart testament to her heartache.
Storming out of the halls she grew up in, the young grey-eyed goddess could understand the turmoil of the whirlwinds Zeus would send down to the humans, as the storm inside her chest grew larger and larger, consuming all other emotion except for the wretched anger in her heart. She walked and walked straight as tears filled and refilled her eyes, direction aimless. All logic points to going back inside, talking to her father, and coming up with a solution that would be amenable. Reason. Logic. Things Athena stood for but cannot grasp now.
Calm down.
But how can she? How dare he? How could he deny her this? It was unfair. She had not asked for anything her whole life; every spear she brandished herself, every scroll on her shelf procured herself, every Gaea-damned thing was freely given without prompt by her father or earned by her. How can he deny her this! Instead, he rips her heart in front of the family table, chastised in front of everyone!
In the distance, Athena could hear a voice similar to her stepmother’s calling out her name.
“Hold her,” Hera said to her servant Thero, handing the year-old princess Enyo in her arms, seeing to the troubled child with all her attention. After her initial outburst, Hera resolved to set things straight with her stepdaughter. Her genius of a father was too tactless in his delivery of words, though she could not disagree with what he said.
Athena’s outburst was unprecedented indeed, yet the rage in her eyes was too much to look at. She had never seen her stepdaughter’s emotions laid bare like this. Not until now.
Were it any other day, Athena would stop and pay respect, but her heart is too broken for due deference, and her feet would not stop taking her away to a place farther from her Father.
“Athena,” Hera tried again, to which she received a half-hearted don’t follow, before eventually reaching the balcony, a dead end for the teenage goddess. Rubbing her eyes with the fabric on her sleeve, Athena stared at the cloudless sky, a blue-green sky with no sun, feeling the tear stains on her cheeks and unwilling to face the one behind her.
After a long moment, she turned, ever so slowly, to see the queen patiently waiting, her gaze towards her direction before casting it down on her, shifting to an empathetic look. If Athena were a fool, she would’ve even described it as motherly. Her round brown eyes bore soft into her, a thing of beauty in itself. Boōpis.
“I am alright. Please leave.” Athena stated, voice with conviction. Only the state of her face betrays her.
“You are not,” Hera replied, briskly stepping to join her side, maintaining a distance. She rubbed her knuckles in deep thought, caressing her marriage band, waiting for Athena to continue. Seeing that she would not, she started.
“Your request was unreasonable; you should’ve known your father would not agree to it.”
Of course you’d side with him. “And how was it void of reason? If anything, he was the foolish one to refuse to even—”
“To what? Refuse to have you change your name? Your identity? Change who you are?”
“The day Pallas died, I have died as Athena.”
The girl seethed, her anger palpable, her bloodshot eyes begged her to understand.
Hera looked away.
It marked the sixth month of the day Athena had lost her friend. Two years ago, as Athena was growing up, Zeus and Hera agreed to send her to the Ocean below, to be taught by the Potamos Triton, a river son of Okeanos who had fought alongside them in the Titan War. The girl was restless to cultivate the art of war, and mastered too quickly anything Priapos, Ares’s tutor, had to teach her. (Hera would have also sent Ares to Triton along with her to learn as well, were it not for her young son’s immediate cry of despair and “don’t kick me out, Mama! I don’t wanna to live with Grandma!” while holding tightly to her leg. Knew exactly where to tug at her heartstrings.)
Bold, stubborn Pallas, Athena mentioned many times in her letters to home. Her father is Triton, and with her, I have forged a bond. Though we have just met, her courage is equal to mine, and in her company, I am not the quiet, sage girl you know. She often challenges what I know; she sharpens my mind just as her father steadies my hand.
She is my rival and dearest friend. She is the spear that clashes towards mine, mirror of my soul. I cannot wait for you both to meet her.
It was not fated. As the day Zeus went to check on his beloved daughter from above the clouds, he acted on his protective instinct, skittishly throwing out his aegis to shield Athena from a backhanded blow, startling Pallas and giving Athena little time to think clearly, fatally injuring her companion’s neck as a response.
The last words of Pallas were of Athena’s name, a sad smile on her lips as she took her last breath. The latter’s cries were heard all over Olympus, holding her lifeless body. At that moment, Zeus looked to his wife in fear and trepidation, haunted by what he had done.
And oh, the first few days of her return were horrible. Athena would not leave her chambers, no matter how much coaxing done by her or Zeus. Even when her favorite sisters Artemis and Persephone came to visit, or when Ares prodded her to spar, or even when Enyo cooed at her, she remained despondent; nothing could take the gloom away from her being, even as she tried to weave and read through her scrolls and gain a sense of normalcy.
Then one night, the girl slipped away when assumed all were asleep, coming back late in the morning with a fresh barrel of wood and ignoring every deity on her way. The few times she did come out, Hera would notice many cuts on the girl’s fingers. The queen was at first alarmed that Athena had been hurting herself on purpose, before looking closer to see that the marks were cuts and splinters as a result of wood carving, a craft Athena had indulged in and mastered at a young age.
It was… hard to see her stepdaughter like this. Before, they would have a daily conversation after council meetings. Hera would never say it out loud, but she treasured Athena’s sharp wit, the way she had just the right advice or caution, even at a young age. It was not hard to understand why Zeus favored her out of all his children.
(And if Athena reminded her of her mother, of silver eyes and lost promises, well, that would be something Hera would keep to herself.)
The girl was more than smart; she had a natural knack for understanding complex ideas and was wiser than her years, which is how she distressingly knew that Athena did not get those cuts from a lack of experience, but from a lack of focus and care. There were times that Zeus tried to talk to her, but being partly to blame for her suffering resulted in nothing but a cold stare and polite platitudes.
After two weeks of reclusion, Athena revealed to her father what she had been carving: a wooden likeness of her fallen friend, perfectly sculpted, now tied to the Aegis that took her life. With a neutral look, she asked her father to honor it, which he did, out of respect and a heavy sense of guilt on his part. Athena was detached in her approach, but Hera sensed this had not given her catharsis.
Still, that should’ve been the end of it. Athena seemed to move on from the loss, visiting her sisters and talking to her father again, once again giving advice after meetings. In the months that led up to this, Hera assumed she had at least opened up to her aunts, as Demeter and Leto were known to be more open about talking out their feelings better than Hera could try to muster.
It wasn’t that Hera couldn't do it herself. If this had happened to Eileithyia or Eris, Hera would have resolved this faster than the speed of Zelus. Athena lives under her house and is almost like her own child, but the perpetual line between stepdaughter and daughter weighs heavily in her mind. It was strange, Athena never imposed or suggested that she wanted a maternal figure, but looking back, maybe Hera should’ve tried.
She remembered the day Athena came into her life, a frail little girl born of a headache Prometheus had the pleasure of relieving, a lookalike of her, their friend long ago. The same brown hair, same silver eyes, but eyes carried the starkness of Zeus. A scared little girl, waiting for one to comfort her. “My girl,” Hera approached her first, kneeling to her level, before embracing her as if she were her daughter, a most precious gift bestowed by the Fates. That frail little girl would grow up to be a competent goddess, start reading through complex scrolls, pick up her first spear, and now could even yell at the King of the Gods during what was supposed to be a quiet supper.
Funny, Hera cannot remember the last time she hugged Athena after that first time.
Maybe she really should have tried.
“I understand why you would think that,” Hera replied coolly. This only irritated Athena more.
“You do not. He had no right to deny me this, after what he made me do!” Athena let out a harrowing sob. “I need this. Instead, he brushes off my request and suggests I honor her through epithet. Epithet! As if she were just a colorful descriptor to my Gaea-forsaken godhood!”
“An epithet is insulting?” Hera could not stop herself. “I’ll have you remember that your father carries the name Heraios in many temples. Tell me, am I just ‘a colorful descriptor’ to him?”
Athena did not immediately gratify that with a response, dying down the moment of anger.
“That is not the same and you know it.”
Hera closed her eyes. She was not a patient goddess by nature, and arguing with a teenage goddess is no better. But even with this ill treatment, only one goddess in this room was an adult who was not in pain. After a few seconds, she opened them again. “You are Athena. You have always liked being Athena. You change your name to Pallas today in your grief, what will stop you from going down and down further, until you forget who you are? As you hurt and blame yourself more and more until it becomes all you feel?” She gestured at Athena’s hands, which the girl covered self-consciously.
Seeing the girl finally listening, Hera softened her approach, drawing nearer to Athena.
“We immortals bear the burden of living life unceasingly. Mortal humans, nymphs, giants, animals, and even monsters are beloved by the deathless gods. We all had to lose someone. I know she meant so much to you, but your life did not start the day you met her, and it will not stop just because she died. As guilty as your Father feels, and I know you know that, he does not want you to drown completely in your sorrow.”
“Yet I am drowning anyways,” Athena whispered brokenly, leaving a pang in Hera’s heart. “I cannot bear this life hearing my name, knowing hers will be forgotten.
“She was my best friend.”
Seeing the girl start to crumble, Hera caught her in her arms just in time. Athena lets herself fall, uncaring of the tears staining her Queen’s dress or the inconvenience of their position on the ground. After feeling a soothing stroke of her hair, Athena sobbed harder. She cried long and hard, sniffling and wiping her eyes with the fabric, saying, crying–
“She’s gone and she’s never coming back! And it’s all my fault! My fault my fault my fault my fault my fault my fault my…”
No, it's not, it never was baby, Hera whispered back repeatedly, carefully rubbing circles in her back, soothing her the best she could. Hearing this, Athena wrapped her arms about her parent tighter, as if Hera was the solid ground among deadly quicksand, or a fleeting bird wanting to escape the hold of a motherless child. Never again, Hera vowed, Never would I make you feel that you cannot find comfort in me.
There will be time to create a solution, one that will mend both Father and Daughter’s relationship. There will be a time where Athena tells her all about Pallas, the way Pallas lived and inspired her to be bold and selfish and bright and strong. It will be an even longer time before Athena will naturally come to her for anything, be it advice or plotting or a genuine want to see and spend time with her.
But for now, Hera holds her child in her arms, and that is everything and more than enough.
“...Pallas Athena?” Zeus leaned against the doorway, looking at his sleeping daughter.
“Compromise,” Hera replied, from the other side. “An epithet, but to be treated as if it is her first name in cult and worship. We all shall address her as such. Had she not been clouded in her grief, I believe she would have thought of it herself.”
Zeus nodded deep in thought before mustering up a gentle smile. “You’re great with her, you know? Were it me and not you, I would have caved in, maybe would’ve lost her completely in this. But you got through to her.”
“Were you not involved in this matter, she would have ran to you.”
“But if not me, you.” Zeus smiled, and at that, Hera could not think of a counterargument. A yawn emerged from her.
“I fear this day has left me without rest, dear husband. Let’s start the apologies tomorrow, shall we?”
He took her hand. “We shall.”