A.N.: Chapter number two! This one is all thanks to Jesse James, to whom I am very, VERY sorry for not responding before – if it helps, this chapter basically IS your response, as you are the reason I got off my lazy butt and posted this.
And to all of you who have kindly asked whether more story is coming (and very tactfully asked what the heck I'm doing with this) the answer is: I don't know. This is more a reinterpretation of Hera's life and character than a plot-driven STORY story, but I do have a general idea of where I want to go with it, and I'll try to make that work, especially now that I am (!) out of school.
Again, all thanks to Jesse James – and to Iris Aquarius, who were sweet enough to ask for more chapters, and Warrior Bunny, for badly needed concrit – you rock!
Further plot-related note: This chapter takes place in the "present" of the story – chapter one took place in the "past." Hope there's not too much confusion.
Hera went out at night, sometimes – more often, when he was away from her and her mind hurt with pretending not to know what he was doing, with being a dutiful wife, with living into what she was supposed to be because she had she had sworn the vow and changed herself and that wasiswho she is now. Sometimes she would shuck her clothes and run and run until she had found a center from which the earth was still, from which she could finally catch her breath to see. Sometimes she would walk out no farther than the doorway, immobile and dignified and paralyzed somewhere far from body or eyes. It did not matter where, or when; she was always naked before him.
And she comes now while he is still with her, too. More and more often, with the real God lying beside her, she would slip silently away in the dark times of morning and watch his incarnation change from deep blackness into light.
He was always breathtaking, beautiful. Sunrises, moonrises, cloudy jewels boiling their delicate yellow gilding down into the elemental melted metal of the dawn, and the deep blackness of midnight, clean of Apollo's or Artemis's polluting presence, to which she would have given her soul if it had ever been asked. Watching, and guessing at the shapes of the clouds, always dancing one flicker behind her eyes, one flicker before the lights could catch them, and keeping herself from thinking too much anymore. She looked and looked until there was nothing left to think with. Until her heart sang at last with the bitterness of it and she was reminded of why she hated him underneath him all. Until she could not stop herself from loving him, for the rest of their years or their days or their centuries, until the sky fell and their power crumbled and there was nothing left to hurt her anymore.
And then she would wake up in the light of day and find him missing, and it would all begin again…
Somewhere in Argos, a mortal cowers: nameless, faceless. A thousand mortals had knelt as she did, barely shells of flesh already, before the trial of their deaths began; a thousand mortals had begged, exactly as she begged now.
"Forgive me, Hera, Great Wife, Mother of all, Forgive me, Hera, Protectress of Honor, Protectress-"
Hera's lip curled, spume curling into her belly, sickening, at the sight of the mortal's groveling form. She stepped forward gracefully…
Black shadowy beasts curled around the edges of the stones, and wind howled, rushlike, around the clearing. The winds may be called upon by any of the gods depending on their whim and the amount of power currently held by the obscure and at best extremely minor wind god, Aeolous, and it suited Hera's whim now. The winds suited her restlessness, and, even better, her wind would signal to the skies what she was doing. The beasts, dark, squat, and ugly, suited her current mood. But it was the knife in her left hand, long and silver, that did the work this time…
The attack was like a drug to Hera; longtime abuse had brought her perilously close to craving this feeling of ultimate power, hovering like a knife between her breast and the mortal's, the terror, the expectation, vengeance… She needed it, needed the blood to fall, she needed it to clear her head for just a few moments, so she could breathe again…
Yes. The word burst from her lungs and was over in a sigh, and suddenly the clearing was empty, of soul, light, knife, beasts, and wind. The girl was dead.
And she, Hera, was his wife again. She was his only, and he would never, never, look away for another. She had the power to keep him still…
Her face darkened.
Power. And she was losing her power.
Somewhere out there, there was a mortal who would pay.
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