He opens the way for her at her birth, taking an axe to where she had swelled and grown. He steps back as she rises up, she sees him first of all in this world where everything comes to her so readily and well. She shouts and brandishes what she knows at once to be weapons and up, up, up she goes, leaving her father behind her on the ground as his flesh knits back together. She will look to him later, but for now all of this goddess's sight is filled up with the one who set her free.
She is his student for a short time, until she has learned all that he has to teach and he then becomes hers. So many thoughts are in that dark head and behind those grey eyes that he could sit and listen to her until forever comes to claim them, and forever is a very long time indeed.
They talk most of all about the mortals, of all the things they might do and be. He teaches her to love them in all their brief, burning splendour; she teaches him how he can help them to shine through the ages.
She is by her father's side when he attends the sacrifice, and she smiles upon all the mortals present so that they do not fear her. When she sees the two platters and him standing there between them she knows that there is a trick about to happen and that she should say something. Yet she says nothing, and Zeus is true to his nature and picks that which looks most appealing as his share for all time.
She does not know whether to laugh or frown when she learns they have been tricked into an eternal offering of bones.
While he still goes on with his deceit, it is harder to do so when she never looks away from him throughout his speech. But she will not betray his game, they both know that.
The king of the gods predictably chooses the more enticing sacrifice, and he shuts his mouth against a laugh as he pulls aside the glistening fat to show the true offering, the bare bones that are the gods' lot from now on. There is not a sound from any mouths that are open; they and he and she know what this will reap full well.
The mortals are cold, helpless. She has watched in the warmth and light as they hide in shelters they build against the chill and scratch a small living from the earth. She pities them, they are meant for more than this. She is disgusted by the way her father delights at their suffering, when they have done him no wrong. Her siblings and the others do not care.
When she meets him and he asks – he does not beg - for her help, she agrees that this must not go on. Yes. She will help him steal from the gods.
He cannot bear to let them suffer for his trickery. He sees them shiver in the night and tear at meat they have caught with nails and teeth that are not suited to the task, and dress themselves in un-tanned skins, and he knows that he must right this. He looks at the sun and thinks of all that the chief god's cruelty deprives them of, and the things that they will never do or gain if he does not do this for them.
He asks for her aid. She stares at him in knowledge, but still she says yes.
She stands where he had set off from at a run, and she watches the light as it grows smaller and smaller but never quite goes out. She remembers the look of him, his prize concealed within the fennel stalk, eyebrows singed off from the heat of the sun chariot, and how he smiled. She does not know if he even saw her.
She knows that the next time she sees him, he will be at her father's mercy, and her father is seldom merciful. She knows-
A sky full of thunder, lightning reaching the edges of life. He knows.
He had not thought that anything could be as bright as the sun, or as hot as the piece he broke off it. It did not burn him, but the heat stays in his fingers. Anyone who sees his face now will know what he has done; even a Titan cannot touch the sun and stay the same.
The rain makes it hard to see where to tread, but she told him to run until he dropped or he would be caught and that must not be, not while he still has the reed. The lightening shows his path. Run.
All the gods are there when her father charges him with his crimes, and all watch as she tries to reason with him and quell his anger at her friend. All react with righteous shock when her father throws back her words and calls her a whore, inviting the traitor to their sacred home to satisfy her base lust.
The mortals will believe that she is his favourite child, but at this moment she looks at the king of the gods and longs to spit in his face.
She can do nothing for him now. She turns and walks away.
He is stretched out on the rock with no chance of dignity or shelter and already he can hardly feel his hands and feet as the chains tighten. The sun is in his eyes and even closing them will not help. And yet he knows there must be more to this. He is prudent, but he could never bear to stay silent, though it might cost him.
This is why, as Hephaestus prepares to depart, he tells him the tyrant is destined to fall as his father fell, and only he knows how to avoid this doom.
And he laughs.
The king of the gods fights for something to say when he hears those words. The old prophecy caused the former ruler to turn his teeth against his children, it caused civil war, it caused the death of her mother and now it has returned once more, and the one who knows how to avoid it remains silent.
She remembers – how could she forget? – that she is a failure of that prophecy. But Zeus thinks her to be tame, and she continues to let him think this as he roars that he will tear the secret out of that traitor.
The full horror of seeing and hearing and feeling his skin and muscle tear lasts even as the pain begins and he sees and hears and feels oh how he feels the beak pulling and ripping to find what it wants and there can be no torture greater than this this violation no no no-
When it at last retreats with much more than just his liver in its beak, Hermes asks if he will reveal the secret. There is disgust in his voice as the feast begins.
His body feels so light now there is less in it.
"No."
She cannot refuse the order of the king; once Hephaestus is done with shaping it she dresses the thing her brother has made in cloth of her own making and teaches it how to practise the crafts she has devised, how to hold the spindle and the distaff, how to judge the warp and the weave.
Once her task is done, she leaves. She does not want to see her fellows fill the thing with cunning and deceit and lies, wretched curiosity and all the things that will unleash the torment and doom of the mortals that they both love.
Hermes tells him during one visit of the creature that his brother has espoused. It – she - is known as Pandora, 'All-gifted', a present from the gods, and Epithemus did not listen. He never listens.
The box has been opened by now, and all that he had hoped to shield his people from has been set loose. And now life will be hard for them, a constant struggle until they leave it behind.
Zeus has been satisfied, the gods are great and powerful. But men, and yes, women too, they will be better than the immortals. They will be glorious.
She faces her uncle for the right to the unnamed city. He would have fought her for it, but she tricks the prize away from him. He makes the people a gift of salty water and expects them to be grateful.
She smiles at the mortals, and they know not to fear her. She does not give them a show; she gives them what they need. The olive tree is theirs, and the city is hers, and her uncle is left deceived and perhaps even ridiculed, but unable to fight her cunning ways.
Now she knows why he did this.
Hermes no longer comes at all. He has grown sick as even a god can be sick, sick of the torture and his shrieks and the sight of the eagle feasting and the unchanged unswerving reply of no that he never fails to give. And Zeus is probably sick as well; sick of hearing the same answer again and again, even if he does not ever watch the way he is trying to obtain the answer that he wants.
Still, he almost longs for him to return again. It is hard to be forgotten when your punishment still goes on.
Tireseus sees her naked while she bathes, and the sight of her divine flesh strikes him blind where he stands. She cannot give him back his sight, but she sends the serpents to lick his ears so that he has sight of another kind.
Arachne deserved to be brought low but she did not deserve to die. She can spend the rest of her days weaving to live, since she loved it so.
Medusa. Her uncle's slut. She desecrated the temple; now no lips will kiss her, no arms will embrace her, her lovers will be a grove of statues.
His skin has grown tough and the sun cannot mark it any further. He can ignore the cold of the winds and the pain of his hunger. He does not miss the feeling in his hands and feet, and since he has no need to speak and his mouth has long gone dry the rawness of his gullet does not plague him.
But he is never prepared against the dual pains of the eagle's beak plunging through skin and flesh and dragging his insides out, and the feeling of the back of his throat ripping open again as he screams.
How many years since the punishment began she can no longer recall, and her father summons her to his throne – the throne where he had named her as a whore – and commands her to go to the prisoner and beg the secret from him. All who watch her think, and she knows, that faced with his pupil, his teacher, his friend (his lover?) he will surely give in.
"I will not go to him, my lord. You know why I will not."
The god king rages and threatens and pleads, she does not care. Again she turns and walks away.
How long into his torture he does not know, and Hermes comes to him as he has not since the early days. He waits until the eagle has done its work and then he tells him that Pallas Athena has renounced their ties of friendship. He says that it is Zeus's order that the traitor should know: now even his closest companion has abandoned him.
He waits until her brother is gone before he smiles at the tidings. She will not let him give in. She knows how to tell him that he is the better one, always and forever.
Zeus is talking loudly of Heracles and what he has done and what he will do yet. She only begins to listen when he mentions that he will allow his son to free the Titan from his chains and kill his torturer.
She does not look at him but she feels that he is looking at her, thus she smiles for him. The proud god king, the one who has never let himself be refused, has finally given in and admitted defeat. Or perhaps he has learned mercy. Whichever one it is, she is impressed. And he will be free.
They look at each other when they have finished looking at the place where the eagle hit the water and turned it red. The half-mortal has his father's features in him, unnaturally handsome, but he can see the traces of care and pain and waste that mark him on more than just his face. This one has had a hard life and that hardness will go on after this latest quest.
And yet he is here, filled with pity and pride and valour and so many things that same life taught him. He is glorious. Oh, it was worth it.
They have not aged but they are older. She is stern and stands with the weight of all her duty, the head of the one she cursed attached to her shield. His voice is harsh with disuse and he hobbles and there is a dreadful scar at his stomach that will never go away. They come together.
They sit and talk of all that has passed since last they met. She has far more to say than he, but they do not care and they do not tire. What's done is done, what's said is said, and they have forever.
While Prometheus does not have much of a role in most of Greek mythology, there are a few legends that tie him to Athena more than any of the other gods. He is one of the contenders for the person who wielded the axe in the famous legend where Athena emerges fully formed from Zeus's head, and some versions of the story of Prometheus stealing fire include Prometheus asking her for help and her inviting him to Olympus, implying that she was in on the take. Going one step further, there is even a version of the story where Zeus angrily accuses Athena of having invited Prometheus to Olympus in order to fulfil a secret sexual tryst between them. After that, however, this relationship is invention on my part.