Athena was slowly running out of patience.
She had tried everything to educate her brother and shape him to his best, but so far there was no progress at all.
She spent time with him, because their father Zeus never did. And at first the boy was obviously grateful.
But while she felt bad, that her father neglected him in favour of her, Ares was extremely difficult to spend time with.
He was painfully stubborn, didn't bother to control his temper (which, as she soon found out, was quite violent) and seemed to have an attention span of three minutes.
The only time they seemed to get along was, when they were training. But she could never do something peaceful together with him and even their training sessions soon became frustrating, when he realised, that he could never measure up to her.
She had no idea, why he was so aggressive, but it made her extremely unhappy. Just what had happened for him to become this way?
One day she offered to teach him a board game and he agreed. But he lost the game and as a result his temper too (what a sore loser!). He swept the boardgame off the table in a fit of rage, broke it and accused her of trying "to make him look dumb" by acting "so fucking smart". Then he had screamed a lot of nasty things at her, until she finally snapped and broke the table and a chair.
And to make it worse, right as she had finished, Zeus came in. Assuming, that Ares was responsible for this destruction, he smacked him across the face.
"WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?", Zeus roared and sent his son up to his room.
Ares had rushed off in tears and with a lot of profanities and "I hate you!"s.
This made Athena feel incredibly miserable.
She told her father what really happened and promised to replace the furniture, but it made her feel in no way better.
Although Zeus apologised to his son for the slap later, he also demanded that the boy apologise to Athena for the insults. Ares only got angrier – and refused.
Now Athena was sitting in front of her newly invented loom and weaving gloomy scenes on it.
This was not how she had imagined sisterhood.
Her older half-sisters were so much more sensible, her younger ones so much nicer, but Ares …
he had so many negative emotions pent up within and it seemed like a deep pit she couldn't reach the bottom of – if that pit even had a bottom.
Later she decided to go to his room and apologise for getting him punished over her tantrum.
However, when she knocked on his door, he refused to let her in.
"Go away!"
She frowned. "No. Ares, why do you hate me so much?"
She had noticed that a while ago and wanted answers.
At first Ares didn't answer. Then he suddenly screamed: "YOU WANT TO KNOW WHY? FINE! YOU PISS ME OFF! IT'S NOT FAIR! YOU'RE THE ONE, WHO BROKE ALL THE FUNRNITURE AND I JUST BROKE THAT STUPID BOARD! AND I'M THE ONE WHO GOT STRUCK! AND YOU? HE DIDN'T EVEN SO MUCH AS SCOLD YOU! IT'S NOT FAIR! I'M HIS FUCKING SON AND HE LIKES YOU BETTER THAN ME?! WHY?! WHY DOES EVERYONE LIKE YOU BETTER THAN ME?! NO ONE CARES ABOUT ARES, IT'S ALWAYS ATHENA THIS, ATHENA THAT! IT'S ALWAYS THE SAME! 'OOHH, ATHENA IS SO SMART!', 'ATHENA IS SO STRONG!', ATHENA IS SO TALENTED!' IT'S ALWAYS ABOUT YOU, YOU, YOU! I HATE YOU SO, SO MUCH!"
Ah. So he was envious.
But what was she supposed to do about something she couldn't help?
So what, if she was the most popular goddess on Olympos now, so what if everyone liked her! She didn't really care, had never asked for popularity in the first place.
Sure, popularity opened many doors, but she didn't need this much attention!
She was perfectly content with the things she was goddess of.
But Ares was different.
Everyone scorned him and he hadn't even got his patronage yet.
Athena had a dark suspicion of what he would become in the future, but she had hoped to prevent this.
Yet, Ares was naturally volatile and there was so much pain within him.
He only found friends among the Kakodaimones, dark spirits, who brought woe and evil, wherever they went. They were the children of terrible Eris. Who just so happened to be strife and discord incarnate and was also the person behind the name Thero (the name of Ares' former nurse).
Of course this company was a bad influence on him and only got him more isolated on Olympos.
It was a vicious cycle.
Her musings were interrupted by faint sobbing from the other side of the door.
Apparently Ares had assumed, that she had left and was now allowing himself to break.
Athena's heart shattered.
Oh, her poor brother!
"I'm sorry", she sadly spoke through the door. "I never meant for things to turn out like this. Maybe we can resolve this and get along again? Some day?"
Please.
For a long time the silence weighed down on them, heavy as lead.
Then it was finally broken by Ares' voice.
But it was cold and void of all emotion, so unlike him.
"Leave."

This chapter contains a scene from the comic "Daddy's Girl" by Li Österberg, a Swedish comic artist, who was so kind as to allow me to use it for this chapter. It's a comic about Athena's birth and youth and you really should check it out, because it's awesome.