OWL TO THE CHASE
As the planes spiralled down upon No Man's Land, thousands upon thousands of soldiers scattering under their deadly fire, shells whistling and rocketing through the air, somebody appeared in a doorway in a house in San Francisco.
"Frederick?" the voice sounded faintly amused, as he knelt there, tiny models of planes clutched between excited fingers as he re-enacted the most epic of air battles to his sons. Matthew and Bobby Chase, in between periods of fighting over Lego, would often stop squabbling for moments and gawp in pure, unadulterated awe at the swooping models and the sound effects, however amateur and downright childish they sounded, as provided by their father.
He dropped the hand-painted models, obliterating several fleeing soldiers who had been a finger's length from their trench and salvation.
The voice.
A voice that he never thought he would hear again. It had been fifteen years ago now. Fifteen years ago in a stuffy university lecture hall on the East Coast, he had first heard that voice.
Frederick Chase pivoted around on a heel, looking ludicrous in his aviator goggles and Parka jacket that he kept his boundless, almost childlike fancies carefully wrapped up in.
"Still playing with model planes?" said Athena, the goddess of wisdom, as she sauntered into the room (entirely uninvited manner, as only a goddess can) and knelt down beside him. Matthew and Bobby stared, dumb-founded, at this sudden newcomer, who appeared to have appeared almost out of thin air. She smiled at them, albeit that it still intimidated them despite its apparent warmth.
"Athena," Frederick stuttered, sweeping the planes and figures aside with a clean backhand sweep and onto the floor, which prompted Matthew and Bobby to swarm and mock up their own version of World War One, interspersed with Lego.
"No need to be embarrassed." She smiled mildly, deftly removing one particular plane from the heap of models that the boys had moulded them into. She fingered it and turned it over and over in her hands, examining it with interest. "A Sopwith Camel, is it not? I seem to recall that was when we first met – a lecture on military history in that awful room, wasn't it?"
Frederick felt his face flush violently, biting his lip in a fruitless attempt to hold back the memories. His skin had become darker than his hair, a fuzzy blond thatch.
"Bobby, Matthew? Could you leave us alone?"
Matthew and Bobby, or possibly Bobby and Matthew, exchanged knowing looks and fled the room, Bobby chasing Matthew with a Red Baron – or perhaps Matthew chasing Bobby with a Red Baron. His memory eluded him even now.
"Well – it's been a long time, hasn't it?" Frederick finally arrived at the subject of what exactly have been said and done. "Fifteen years, hasn't it been?"
"Fifteen years, seven months, two weeks and four days," Athena interrupted him almost immediately, facing the window, her face pointing away from him.
She turned, and Frederick's heart skipped a beat when he realised her cheeks had reddened, and tears were now falling slowly down her face. He had never seen Athena crying before – not even when they had parted all those years ago.
"Athena –"
"I've been counting."
The awkward silence, so frequent in every relationship been and gone, resumed again between them. Athena composed herself and returned to her normal character, icy and level-headed.
"I think we should go somewhere else, shouldn't we?"
"Yes – we should," Frederick agreed quickly, keen to sap the tension brewing inexorably between them.
"I heard there's a coffee shop down the road from here," Athena continued, struggling to retain her dignity and not give way to emotion as she had so foolishly allowed herself to just moments ago. "Ellie's Espressos?"
"Yes – Ellie's."
"Indeed."
Frederick faltered, not knowing whether it would be wise for him to make the next move. It felt strange to talk about wisdom in front of the actual goddess of wisdom, but that was certainly beside that point.
"I'll just get my coat then."
"Frederick – you're wearing your coat."
Frederick looked down at his chest, wrapped up entirely in his aviator's Parka. He felt like grinning sheepishly, or flushing embarrassedly.
All that left his mouth was a plain and simple word.
"Oh."
His eyes forced themselves to stop staring at her and instead travelled to the window, where it was clear it was raining heavily.
"I'll just get the umbrella, and then we can walk down."
"There's no need," she said, almost too quickly. "Take my hand."
Frederick thought that he must have imagined those latter words. Take my hand. It repeated over and over in his head. Take my hand.
"Take it," she repeated through her teeth.
Hesitantly, I let my hand creep softly into hers – and the memories came flooding back again. It felt strange to hold that hand, that familiar cold hand he had not held for fifteen years now.
He remembered the last time he had held that hand, and it had pulled away from his. It had been a morning, raining as heavily as this one – he had stood there on the pavement, with no umbrella, her hand held in his. He remembered little of it – only that her hand had left his, and left him standing in the pouring rain as white light engulfed her and she disappeared forever. Until now.
And he let that same white light engulf him, as that cold hand – the cold hands that they said hid a warm heart – gripped his, almost clinging onto it, as they span through the sky together.
--
They appeared outside Ellie's Espressos, as the rain still poured down unrelentingly. They hurried inside, not making eye contact at all throughout, and quickly found a table in the crowded café. They ordered their separate drinks, without a word passing between them, and as little words as possible to the friendly waitress. Athena finally found it within herself to start an inevitably brief conversation.
"Ellie's Espressos has moved, hasn't it? In the past fifteen years?"
"Yes," Frederick said, now being the one cutting off the other's sentences almost too quickly. "They branched out over the past fifteen years. This one opened a few days ago, apparently."
Athena waved her hand dismissively, still staring fervently out through the window, eager to avoid Frederick's gazing eyes.
"Days, weeks, months, years – what do you think it is to me, a goddess of thousands of years of age? They fleet past like summer birds."
"You remembered how long it's been, though," Frederick reminded her, biting his lip to suppress the memories again. "Fifteen years, seven months, two weeks and four days. To the day."
For the first time in that café, her eyes met his, and their glacial quality locked with his. He could only focus on the storm clouds of grey gathering in her eyes, and felt knocked off balance by her next words.
"Because some things – some things I do remember. Because – because you have to, you don't have any choice! Because – because I loved you."
"I loved you too," Frederick commented, her iciness having been transferred him with that eye contact, and his haplessness having been given to her in exchange. "But that doesn't change anything, does it?"
"Love changes everything – that's what the song said, wasn't it?" Athena mumbled. The silence lay again, as we lost all idea of what to say next. "We went to Ellie's Espressos for our first unofficial date, didn't we?"
"We did."
"As I said, time is fleeting to a being who has lived for millennia upon millennia. It still feels like yesterday – although, I suppose if that was yesterday, I still remember last night."
"Last night?"
"When we parted. When I held your hand in mine as I began to disappear – it was standing in the pouring rain, and you had no umbrella. You wouldn't let go at first, would you?"
"Would I have wanted to let go?"
"Perhaps yes, perhaps not. But you have to understand I didn't want to let go either! I wanted to carry on holding your hand in mine forever, perhaps even to freeze time at that moment so we could stay there forever – I didn't want to let go!"
"Then why did you?"
"Because of who I am!" she hissed. "I am a goddess – I am immortal! You are not a god – you are simply mortal. You would die eventually, I couldn't bear to stay and watch you wither away like that. I explained it all to you before, didn't I?"
"You did – and it still makes no sense," he admitted.
"People think I cannot love anybody, because that is what people such as I are. Brilliant – yet unloved. I loved you too much – and I couldn't bear it. I didn't want to see you wither away, while I, forever the same, was forced to stay the same. Your life would be like the fleeting summer bird, the hand you eventually have to let go."
"You sound like you work only for yourself then," he remarked quite bitterly.
"Ha!" she crowed with equal bitterness. "You call a goddess self-absorbed – I never did introduce you to my family, did I?"
He laughed quite dryly – he could only imagine the mythical Olympians, though Artemis had seemed quite humble previously. He supposed that was the effects of holding the sky for ages.
"But you could have stayed longer," he found himself saying.
"I couldn't!" Athena protested. "If I had stayed to care for you and Annabeth, then the monster attacks would have gotten worse."
"But when they did come – where were you then?"
"I am a goddess, Frederick!" she snapped. "I look after wisdom and weaving, arts and crafts, defensive war – I have duties, and I have to be there for all of Western civilisation. I felt – I almost felt distracted."
That hollowed him out entirely – a rising sense of anger roared in his stomach at those words.
"And that's what we shared? A distraction?"
She realised her mistake as the words slipped out of her mouth, and ran her fingers through her hair, looking devastated at her choice of words.
"No! No – I didn't mean it like that! I just couldn't cope! Do you think I don't regret it, everyday – every waking moment, I curse myself perpetually, wishing to turn back the hands of the clock those fifteen years, seven months, two weeks and four days? I wish I could grasp that hand again, standing in the pouring rain on that street, and never let go of it. I want to be her again."
"You still can."
I laid my hand, now aging fast and daily, upon hers, and let the coldness seep into mine, knowing that beneath that frigid exterior, there would always be that warm heart. She pulled away, with a noise almost like a sob.
"No. You've moved on. You have a wife who adores you and stands by you, even if she thinks you're as mad as a hatter and his march hate combined. You have children you love each other and you, no matter how much they squabble and fight."
"But for old times' sake?"
"No," she said firmly, restrained entirely. "Like I said – you have moved on. And I, the sad and pathetic me for whom time fleets by and who still counts the days passed to this day – I have not moved on."
"Don't say that."
"It feels strange, maybe even ironic, doesn't it?" she laughed through her brimming tears. "Here I am – the goddess of wisdom and such – who finds it impossible to be wise and sagely enough to move on with herself!"
"Love makes fools out of everyone," he quipped.
"Ha! Even the goddess of wisdom herself, it seems. I swear I'll kill Aphrodite, that scheming girl, when I get back to Olympus – even if she is immortal!"
Frederick laughed too, and they seemed united for a moment in happiness. In my joy, he noticed the water seeping away outside, and the sky was entirely clear and flooded with sunlight. It seemed the weather itself had moved to reflect them and their relationship.
"The rain's cleared," Frederick said.
"Indeed. Delicious coffee, wasn't it? I say we take a walk in the park for awhile."
"Yes," he sighed happily. "Yes – that would be nice."
A/N: Well! I return to fanfiction after an extended break! Hello there! How are ye all? I'm trying to write a novel in a month in practice for NaNoWriMo (which some of you I know are probably doing)
Anyway, R & R kindly people! This is a kind of sequel to Great Minds Think Alike (look on my profile – shameless plug) but you can understand it if you haven't read it anyway. I do love Frederick/Athena anyway. There are more chapters, in case you were wondering, which I'll be writing shortly! Byeee!
EDIT: I just realised my next few chapters are a load of rubbish, unfathomably so, but I've decided to cut the story off here. I know it's quite hasty and everything, but I think this ending's quite a nice one to finish off on. You can make up your mind as to what happens next!