Hermes whistled a familiar tune as he turned down the hall alone, avoiding certain gods purposefully in hopes to obtain a day free of work. His given job was appreciated in the fact that he was freely able to leave and return to Olympus whenever possible, not obligated to stay, like Hestia, or forced to walk like the rest. But he had also come to be known as the messenger for everyone, not just the privileged few. Every so often he was able to toss a message off to someone else, such as Iris, but most of the time it would be an insult not coming from him.

He certainly didn't see that when he was free and able to do as he wished, he caused trouble; he would reign chaos on mortals and immortals alike when bored, so Zeus had been extremely careful to make sure boredom never struck him. Even his good friend Apollo would toss out a request when a sigh lingered on the messenger's lips, just to get him out of his room and away from his precious supplies. So the cycle went: Hermes worked and tried to find freedom, while everyone else tried to find him and keep him occupied. As he slipped around the corner, keeping his eyes locked on the hallway behind him, he failed to notice Zeus was standing at the end of the hallway, waiting and watching. With an eyebrow lifted, he watched his son eyeball the area around him, searching for no doubt his demanding father. When the messenger turned around to face him, his eyes grew wide in a slight surprise and panic before he grinned, conceding to the god's authority.

"Follow Rhea," Zeus announced as he lifted his arms up against his chest, crossing them and letting a small grin form across his lips. More often than not, it was Hera who kept him busy or kept an eye on him – as it was often her job to watch over the others (or so they had silently agreed upon). In this moment of seeing the god stricken with the annoyance of being caught and the anticipation of being free afterwards, Zeus wondered why he hadn't done this more often. "Explain to Gaia that we only side with her on certain conditions: this is a punishment for the mortals, not an extermination. When we have destroyed all that harms her, we cease and start over. Perhaps this mercy on them will lighten Nyx' opinion of us."

Hermes nodded quickly and started down the hall, but his hand was forced out against the wall to stop him when Zeus called after him. Turning over his shoulder, the inevitable doom of the next words were lingering and Hermes, once the words were said, was bound by obligation to return.

"Report to me when you're done."

Resisting the urge to groan, he forced a nod and disappeared behind the corner of the hallway. Zeus let a larger grin form afterwards, unable to resist the humor the moment had given him. As he spun around, he was put in Hermes' position by the sudden presence of his wife, Hera and his eyes grew wide for a moment. He, however, took the moment to look around and wonder where she had been hiding. Her nose scrunched up as she realized what he was doing and she placed her hands on her hips, muffling a huff with not much success.

"Why didn't you tell that to everyone?" she asked quietly, her voice soft and concerned – a tone Zeus rarely heard from her. He blinked, now taking the time to look down, locking eyes with her. She had concerned laced over her face, something more pleasant to the eye now than he had seen in the past few days. Unfortunately, his annoyances with her masked the moment and he broke the eye contact, waving a hand in the air.

"It is a decision of a king, not a council," he muttered under his breath, clenching his jaw tightly when he spoke the words through his teeth. His grudges with her were evident in his body language and speech, something often common between them and while he was turning away, he anticipated her reciprocation.

He was, instead, met with a soft hand on his arm and a quiet sigh.

Zeus' eyes twitched for a moment, as if flinching from a trick of hers or awaiting the true punch line of this joke. Hera, trying hard not to notice every movement of his and take it personally (which was a great feat for her), was looking up at him as neutrally as possible. Her mind was racing with the words of Poseidon and the blatant rage he had towards her in the chaotic council room.

"Sweetheart," the word came out of her lips so casually and honestly, but the unique nature of it coming from her was not lost on either of them. His eyebrows lifted slightly and she twitched her lips into a small smile, pausing to feel the word settle upon them. It was almost as if they had forgotten what it was like to be together, as a couple rather than a feuding pair of leaders. His shoulders seemed to relax into the idea and she placed a hand up onto his cheek, causing his eyes to close momentarily.

"Please," Hera sighed as she tilted her head forward towards her husband and placed her forehead on his chest. Leaning against him, she let her hand slid down his cheek, neck and onto his arm while she sighed again. "Please let's talk."

The word talk never sat well with Zeus; he was neither a great conversationalist nor one to explain his actions or emotions. Hera, on the other hand, believed most things were cured through expression and did her best to pull him into conversations about their problems. Overtime she had slowly began to learn that he didn't fix problems by talking them out, but rather reacted to actions. It was how Hera learned to target his mortal conquests and children, as it was the only way for him to recognize them and what he did - and face her for it.

But the weight of carrying their grudges, with everything else he was cracking under, was enough to relent to her wishes and follow his wife to her room - apparently her version of a neutral ground. His blue eyes ignored the details of the room as they were burned into his memory from the years of laying at her bedside. When she turned and sat in the same place he had not budged from in the years proceeding, he flinched slightly and moved to sit in her desk chair instead. Straining to not look pained by his choice, he failed to recognize the pain in her eyes and sat down ignorant of her thoughts.

Hera sat up perfectly straight and waved her hand in the air, letting the door bend to her will and close of its own accord. Her eyebrows twitched as she carefully thumbed through the scrolls of things she wanted to say to him, but held her tongue for a different time. When she finally seemed to have a handle on what she wanted to say, she shifted her shoulders and stared him directly in the eye.

"Why did we marry?"

The question caught the god completely off guard; he had imagined a speech, explaining all the things he had done wrong over the last few months. He expected her to berate him for his lacking leadership skills and his inability to form a strong council. He was visibly confused by her question as he leaned forward, as if waiting for her to laugh or start yelling at him instead. When she was unmoved, he leaned back with his eyebrows raised high on his forehead.

"What do you mean?" he asked rather ignorantly, not trying to play stupid but rather legitimately confused.

"I don't remember anymore," she replied quickly, her tone coming off cold and heartless at first. She seemed to hear herself immediately and brought a hand up to her mouth, scratching her lower lip and trying to change the manner in which she went about this. "I feel like we fight so often. The only thing that brought us closer was the threat of death, and even then -"

"Not death," Zeus corrected her, not wanting to relate her sleep with death. Though the technicality was small, he needed that assurance that it wasn't final; death was finite, sleeping was not. Unfortunately he did not have the hindsight to realize how correcting her would offend her and, just after noting the glare she gave him, he realized it.

"Even then," she continued on despite her aggravation. "It was limited. We were fighting within months."

"What are you saying?" he asked suddenly, his tone warming up into a defensive position.

Closing her eyes, bringing her hands up to her face and pressing her fingertips into her forehead. The headache that was forming was bound to get bigger as the conversation went on. For him (and males in general), the conversation wasn't the point but rather the end meant more. Where this conversation was going to lead them was more important to him than the road to it, which was the opposite of Hera's (and females') intentions.

"I'm trying to figure out where we're going wrong," she groaned behind her hands, her patience already thinning.

"We're not doing anything different than before," he commented quickly, wondering why their rocky relationship was suddenly being questioned.

"And that doesn't bother you?" she asked loudly, her face emerging from behind her hands to look at him shocked. "Why do we do this?"

"Because we love each other," the words came out quickly, meaning he didn't have time to think about it or make it up, but his tone was most certainly awkward. The pair hardly said the word love, let alone to each other. Though his ability to say it was endearing, Hera couldn't act quickly enough to suppress a laugh.

"We certainly don't act like it," she tossed off, turning over her shoulder to look away from him. The comment caused him to stand up, his eyes hardening in a slight anger as he took offense to her laughing at him.

"We aren't those kinds of people," he stiffly explained, unable to eloquently word what he meant by it. She shook her head, still keeping her shoulder blade to him and refused to look back. He clenched his jaw, doing his best to not burst out into a rage; most of the time, their arguments ended in that manner and he had noticed she was avoiding that same usual fate. Feeling uneasy by the topic at hand, he told himself perhaps bursting out into a rage wasn't the most appropriate way to deal with this.

"Listen to me –" he said, pausing for her to turn back at him and when she didn't, he turned around to face the wall. Clenching his fist and tensing up his arm, he held back punching the desk or wall in front of him and rather looked up to the ceiling and took a breath. "I didn't marry you because you were soft and gentle, or weak. I … fell in the love with you because you are strong, stubborn and everything I am too, but different. You are … just different than me, enough to be a better king than I am at times." His tone changed from a softer, loving manner to a more stubborn, subdued anger. It was difficult to admit this to himself and near excruciating to say it aloud to her. He had been perfectly satisfied with the bulk of their relationship being untold, just silently understood. "I can't do this without you and I won't. So this conversation is moot."

Spinning around to face her, in hopes that she had turned around by now and when she hadn't, a growl was released in his throat. He started to step around the bed to physically confront her and that's when he noticed a hand fly up to her face and wipe away a tear. His eyes widened as he froze suddenly, stunned by the visual. In all of their immortal years together, even when the worst was before them, he had never seen Hera cry. He had never known her to shy from an argument, to step down from a fight or crumple under pressure. It was, most certainly, the reason they had so many fights and disagreements but it was also an admirable quality. At even the suggestion of her backing down from something, he had always assumed in his mind he would love her less – but now seeing his solemn queen shed tears, he felt a surge of guilt that he had never known before with her and a sensation to protect her, even if it was from himself.

"You," he started quietly, stumbling over the words to explain how strange this was for him. "You never cry."

"You never see me cry," she corrected after she sniffed, her thumb rubbing the lower orb of her eye where a tear had been resting. She continued to refuse eye contact, ultimately not proud of her inability to hide her pain any longer. She, like Zeus, had assumed the worst would happen if she ever presented weakness to him; weakness was not a quality of leadership, and tears were a visible and tangible weakness in her mind. Despite knowing this expression of emotion might lead to a dangerous path between them, she was slowly realizing how comforting it felt to finally show him what was going on. She breathed in a few times, trying to soothe her racing heart as she turned her eyes slowly to the left, begging to make eye contact but fighting the shame she was still feeling. "I don't understand how you can … say you love me when you …"

The sentence wasn't completed as she was overwhelmed by a sob and her head turned away. That final attempt to hold it back did the very opposite it wished: it unleashed a flood of sobbing and painful cries from her chest, sounding as if the emotion was actually physically harming her. The years of pent up aggression, jealousy, sadness and hurt balled up into this moment and blinded her from understanding why, exactly, she was crying. It just poured out of her without reason and, though painful in essence, was physically satisfying to release.

Meanwhile, Zeus was utterly devastated by the turn of events. Finally seeing his wife in a moment of pure sadness and hearing that pain in her cries at first paralyzed him. He stood there in shock, listening to her sobs with a dumbfounded look and a breaking heart. For all the pain and suffering he had caused in the world and to her, he had always been a compassionate and caring god. Often the decision he had to make or the actions he took justified the means or taught a valuable lesson, but it was more often than not he who saved mortals from a perilous doom or longtime suffering. The compassion that flooded him simultaneously instigated the guilt for all the times he had cursed at her, called her names or ripped her apart verbally. He had flashes of the physical torment he had caused her when yelling didn't work and then the nights when he couldn't find her – when she was hiding from him, or so it seemed, he imagined were the times she let these tears flow in silence and isolation. The guilt was overwhelming, but for the current moment, her sobs were physically harmful. Every tear that fell down her cheek felt like a rip at his skin and each sob was like a punch to his stomach.

Desperate to stop this, he sat down next to her on the bed and wrapped her up in his arms. Normally his touch in the heat of argument was unwanted, but Hera simply leaned up against him and attempted to bury her burning face into his chest. Zeus started to tense his arms up, tightening his grip on her and he kissed the top of her head.

"Stop," he whispered to her, closing his eyes and hoping this was over soon. "I can fix this."

"How?" she barely whispered between the sobs and the muffling of his chest. She suddenly started to push against him and he eased his hold on her, allowing her the space to back up and looked up at him. Her eyes were bloodshot red and her cheeks were flushed, a sight that would be endearing if not for the circumstances. Her eyes focused on him intently as he simply stared down at her and she tried to find his thoughts, attempting to read what he was thinking before his mouth opened.

"Don't worry about it," came out without thought or hesitation, thinking perhaps giving no option to think it over would help the situation. Unfortunately it aggravated Hera to be left out of the plans and his thoughts once again and she narrowed her eyes, her stubborn nature flaring up behind the red eyes and burning cheeks.

"How am I supposed to know you mean it this time?" she tried to sound menacing but her nose had become stuffed from the crying. "You can't just say you're going to fix it. I need to know how."

The frustration within Hera seems to reignite that of Zeus' and he tensed up momentarily, tempted to shut her down and end the conversation at this point. The newfound guilt he had acquired by her tears was the only thing holding him back, though even that could not contain his nature forever.

"I can and I will," he stubbornly replied.

Taking in a breath quickly, Hera held it for a moment as if to hold her breath forever. She looked away from him, staring off into the distance as her thoughts were placed in order appropriately. She constantly struggled with loving the man for his stubbornness and leadership, but not when it was directed at her. Letting the breath out in a long sigh, she stood up from the bed while wiping the remaining wet from her cheeks. Rubbing her fingers underneath her eyes, she closed them as she placed her mindset back into her stoic nature. Turning to face him, it almost looked as if the past few minutes had never happened. She placed each hand on either side of his face and leaned down, placing a soft kiss on his lips and just as he leaned forward into it, she pulled away.

"I love you and that will never change. But if this is going to work, you can't keep doing this to me," she asserted in a very serious manner, barely changing her face to emphasize what this meant to her. "I can't believe you until it's done."

As she tried to move around the bed to leave, he grabbed her wrist and shot up from the bed, his eyes glaring down at her fiercely. She paused as her arm felt tugged by it and she looked over her shoulder, up to meet his angry look.

"Or what?" he demanded from her, his voice low but strained with a warning. There was a real sense of threat coming from her and, as much as he loved her, he would not accept intimidation on any level. Her eyes flashed down at his hand that easily wrapped around her wrist and she glared at it.

"Let go of me," she chided as she curled her hand into a fist. Even knowing he was impossible to physically defeat, she tensed her arm up when he didn't immediately let her go. Zeus clenched his jaw, feeling her muscles tighten and the two were frozen in that position for a silent few seconds. When he finally released her, Hera took no hesitation in storming out immediately after. She launched forward towards the door, which opened at the flick of her wrist and before he could breath, she was gone.

Left to realize the intense variation this entire conversation had had, he was left with nothing but the anger of her ability to make him feel guilty and then storming out on him in a rage. He hand clenched into a fist, unable to find any other way of expressing himself than punching a column in her room. His knuckles slammed into the marble, causing the room to quiver slightly and the weather outside to darken. When he removed his fist, an indent of his middle and index knuckle were left behind and a small crack climbing upwards. He sniffed at the mark, unapologetic and turned, marching out of the room to find something (or someone) to take his mind off of his rage.