A/N: An idea I had when connecting two myths. I hope you like it! Reminder that if you are reading my Zeus/Hera stuff…just be prepared for dysfunction. But also be prepared for them not to actually hate each other either. Also, Hermes gets some shine here. I enjoyed writing for him and hope you enjoy reading my more expansive version of him.

The evening's festivities had had a thunderous feel to them for the last several days, and all of Olympus knew why, Hermes thought to himself as he sat on the fringes and glanced around over his plate.

Many things were quite the usual way: Ares and Aphrodite were becoming less boisterous and more handsy, Apollo and Artemis were arguing about a recent hunt without any real fury (which meant the subject of Orion had not reared its ugly head), Hephaestus and Hades were both long-departed to their individual domains and their work fervor, and Dionysus had just arrived—already drunk.

Athena was sitting with Aunt Hestia, surely listening to her steady advice with a patience for her quiet life that none but Athena and Hestia's sisters possessed. It was nothing personal, Aunt Hestia was a dear and Athena could be quite interesting on her own, Hermes would just rather not be bored to tears at a party.

Beyond all the common scenes, there was one thing that was certainly not of the usual way: their King standing with his sister, Demeter, and talking in low voices. And that alone, without the ominous skies, was evidence enough that Zeus was unhappy. Demeter was famous among Kronos' daughters for getting along very little with each of her brothers. Her falling-out with Hades was a more recent souring, but obvious all the same. Being said, Zeus rarely sought the company of his middle sister unless he was having issues with his wife.

Rather, the occupants of Olympus would have had to be blind and deaf to be unaware of the issues between their feuding monarchs.

The one thing that these last several evenings had in common was that they were dark and stormy, and the Queen had not graced any of them with her presence.

It was true that the business with Alcmene and Zeus' newest infant bastard had been marginally worse than most of them could have anticipated. Hermes did not pretend to be apprised of the intimate details of Zeus and Hera's marriage, but he couldn't name another time when the goddess had seemed angrier over one of Zeus' myriad of affairs.

Of course, he hadn't been around for the affair with Leto… he had only heard tales.

Hermes mused to himself that things may have gone better if Zeus hadn't gone looking for his wife when she fled off Olympus to recompose herself. She had only been away for a few weeks when Zeus gave chase and demanded her presence back on Olympian Council.

It was a strange thing, that he had done so as abruptly as he had. Normally, he would have exercised patience for at least a month. And the incident with the serpents had been one of the worst acts of retribution Hera had ever deigned to afflicted on a child of Zeus, so one would logically think the angrier she was, the longer his father would wait for her fury to dwindle.

Then again, his father was rarely a paragon of scrupulosity, least of all when it came to Hera.

Feeling the beginnings of boredom and also a substantial amount of curiosity, Hermes made his way to his royal father and aunt without any stealth. Better for him to project his intention than to get caught trying to eavesdrop, in his opinion.

He turned out to be right. Zeus spared him only a moment of appraisal and hesitation before continuing on as if Hermes hadn't appeared.

"What's done is done," he said, sounding as if he had crossed the threshold of irritation some time ago, his arms were tensely pressed against his chest. "What I'm trying to do now is move forward from it. Not change what I've done."

The goddess, for her part, blinked at her lord brother as if stunned by his retort. Hermes would wager that whatever she had told Zeus, his last words reflected that he was quite unable to grasp her point. She had that look in her eye. Twin spots of flushed anger slowly came into her cheeks and she rolled her eyes.

"You know, what's truly galling about all of this is that you know that she knows why you went to fetch her and you simply don't see why that would infuriate her."

"She's my wife."

"Yes, yes," Demeter hissed. "We know. We can never forget it and neither can she. Which is why you should have allowed her to nurse her wounds instead of forcing her back here before she was ready. And all for—"

"It wasn't just that."

"—you've already as much as admitted it was! You went to Kanathos, waiting there. You should have consulted Hestia or I, we would have told you it was a terrible idea!"

The spring at Kanathos. Many things now dawned on Hermes, but he didn't dare shake his head in dismay at the King. However, now it made all the sense in the world.

"She was the one who tried to kill my—" Zeus began to shift the topic, outraged, but the goddess of Agriculture would have none of it.

"Brother," she interrupted pertly. "I gave you my advice. I fear that if you wish to throw stones, you will find no quarter with Hera." She nodded at Hermes. "Nephew."

The Messenger god inclined his head charmingly. "My Lady." Both gods watched her leave and the King of the gods huffed.

"Trouble, Father?"

He didn't even have to ask, for Zeus had already begun to gather energy for his righteous indignation. It probably pleased him that he could bend another's ear with the subject. "My wife tries to kill the boy and I'm to blame? Explain the logic of women to me!"

Hermes would not voice the fact that if Zeus had not been philandering in the first place, Hera would have had no child to make the attempt on. He would also not voice that his father was obviously deflecting on the subject of why he had demanded the Queen's presence so soon, and that these things may have had something to do with it all.

"Well, perhaps retrieving her right after her renewal bath sent the wrong message," Hermes said tactfully, deciding to call out the issue outright and with some amusement. "That is, if it did send the wrong—"

"She's angry when I find company elsewhere, and now she's angry when I seek her out as well?!"

Hermes grimaced, more than sure that Zeus had said exactly that to Hera's face when he went to her. He suppressed a groan and eyeroll at the very thought.

"You could have waited a proper interval," Hermes suggested carefully to his father's ever-more blackening mood. "And I would have fetched her for you…"

Zeus glanced at Hermes, as if just realizing who was listening to him. "You would have fetched her," he muttered. Then did a double-take, as if something had just occurred to him. "Hermes." He lowered his goblet, setting it on the table, as he might when he was truly thinking about something. "Why is Hera so fond of you?"

The Messenger god raised his eyebrows, surprised that Zeus didn't already know. But it always pleased him to know something that others didn't, so he smirked widely. "Why, Father, has your lady wife never told you?"

Zeus stared, but slow, creeping suspicion was changing his expression slightly. "So then, there is something to tell."

"I have always been kind to Her Majesty, I've always shown the deepest respect for her station, and she enjoys my humor even if she pretends—"

Zeus made a noise of impatience. "Yes, but before—when you were nothing but a boy and Apollo was dragging you through the halls, demanding compensation—as I think of it, she rarely sides against you. And it's not as if you avoid trouble…"

Of course, being a Queen, Hera would prefer children and Olympians who gave her the fewest headaches—her own children excepting. But Hermes was as illegitimate as most of them, and yet…

Hermes watched the King of the gods lay all the pieces together, moving toward the right conclusion. It was true, he had done some chicanery long ago, when he was nothing more than a babe and three times as bold. And as it had paid off immensely in his favor, he rejoiced in it.

"I don't wish to speak out of turn—" he demurred.

"I command you to tell me!" Zeus predictably ordered. Hermes sighed, shaking his head, but was as obedient as ever.

"It was very shortly after my dear brother Apollo, as you so splendidly put it, dragged me through the halls, that I had an idea of a sort," he admitted with false humility. "My mother, as you know, was not the most attentive or tender type, so I was under no loss there."

Maia, his mother, was a recluse nymph and hadn't wanted a child in the first place. Hermes had long thought that his ability to escape her eye so often and easily had not just been a product of his own cleverness, but of her lack of maternal instinct.

"Yes," Zeus prodded, now with eyes rapt on his most boyish of sons. Enjoying the attention, Hermes spared his wandering thoughts and continued on.

"I saw, of course, that Queen Hera didn't much like my brother. I may not have known why then, but I certainly wanted her to like me better. Especially then, I felt quite the sense of competition with him and could see that I would do well to have Her Majesty as friend rather than foe. I hatched a plan immediately."

To this day, it shocked Hermes how quickly the brilliant plan had come to him. If the Fates had one day told him that they had known he was to do it all along, he'd have felt a sense of satisfaction over his own instincts. And with that also came a confidence that he would not fail in it. It had to have been of special design.

"I was so sure I would be successful," Hermes intimated, milking the moment just a bit. "Hardly more than a newborn, I returned to Olympus and went straight to Her Majesty's gardens."

Zeus looked slightly incredulous over that. Hera's Gardens were not exactly open to all of Olympus. He flouted that unspoken rule regularly, but no others would, especially one who was a reminder of his dalliances.

"I was very young," Hermes stressed, knowing what Zeus was thinking. He grinned. "Young enough, in fact, to disguise myself as Ares and complain of hunger."

"You..."

Hermes smile widened. "Hera readily complied and breastfed me, thereby putting the bond between us. It was only after that she discovered who I was…"

"You what?"

Hermes identified that snarl immediately and spun to address the War god lightly. "Oh, I hadn't realized you were coming this way, Brother."

"Did I hear correctly?" Ares snapped.

"That I sucked your mother's teat while pretending to be you? Yes, in fact, you did."

Ares drew back his arm to launch it into Hermes' face only to find Aphrodite clinging steadfast to it. "Let go!" he grunted furiously, but not willing to risk injuring her by swinging anyway.

Hermes noted that he was likely a bit in his cups, but he still stepped back out of range. Ares' fists were painful and Hermes was not about to give him even a small chance of landing a blow.

"Oh, calm yourself!" Aphrodite shot back. "It happened ages ago, if he pretended to be you to do it!"

"Actually, it was just yesterday..."

This time, Ares actually almost laid a hand on him, but Athena suddenly appeared, shoving herself between Hermes and their irate brother. "He's obviously baiting you," she told Ares condescendingly. "And here you are swallowing it…"

"They were lovely breasts," Hermes added whimsically and laughed as Ares let out a garbled cry of rage and made for him again. Athena then gave Hermes the look, quite annoyed.

"This is low-hanging fruit," she admonished.

"It is." Aphrodite agreed with Athena for once. The goddess of Love kept a bracing arm on her lover, probably exerting some of her power to calm him.

"He shouldn't be so bothered," Hermes argued. "It's ridiculous he is, so why not make it more so?"

"You didn't have to take my guise!" Ares said, now that he was several jots less enraged, proving that Aphrodite had worked her wiles.

"Who else?" Hermes said quizzically. "As I heard it, Hephaestus was too busy sailing downward to Lemnos to suckle at the queenly breast. I had limited options."

"Degenerate," Ares grumbled.

Hermes laughed again, tickled by the god's petulance. "I was fresh out of the womb, you fool. I'm still rather impressed with myself. Who better to take for a mother than she who is the goddess of them?"

"You would think that," said Apollo derisively. It was then that Hermes realized that a few of the gods had been drawn by the commotion. Both the god of Light and his twin were standing with them now.

"You're just envious," Hermes told him. Apollo scoffed and Ares, now almost docile, rolled his eyes.

Aphrodite pursed her plump lips in question. "So…what did Hera do after she discovered your trick?"

"When she noticed I wasn't her darling babe Ares," he couldn't help but wheedle the god once more, "she laughed."

"You're not serious!" Apollo contradicted like he had borne witness to the event himself.

"I am fully serious. At first, I may have seen a hint of anger, I believe because she was ashamed she could have been fooled in such a way. But then she laughed and called me a 'clever little thing'. She extracted a promise from me to never play such a trick on her again." Hermes dimpled at his audience. "I've done my best to keep it, and she's done her best to be the surrogate mother she was enlisted to be."

Aphrodite hummed, appearing amazed. And Artemis muttered "ingenious" from the edge of their misshapen circle and Athena nodded at the single word, probably surprised she had never heard this story before tonight.

"Does that answer your question, Father?"

Hermes had been so enthralled by the sizable increase in his listeners, that he had missed the King's leave entirely. Zeus was no longer there.

GXGXGXGXGXGX

Zeus had had some trouble obtaining his infant son from Alcmene. The woman was terrified of relinquishing her boy to the husband of the goddess who was actively trying to smite him. But Zeus was the King of the gods, this was his child, and he didn't accept refusals.

The infant was incredibly burly for his age, and squalling with an unnatural lung capacity. It was a wonder to think that any household might be able to sleep through it. Zeus had endured it for less than a half hour and was very ready for it to be over.

A nymph was just exiting his Queen's chamber, mouth already open to meekly refuse him entry, but Zeus held up the boy and gave the girl a sheepish smile. "This concerns my lady's duties," he said over the incessant wailing, "you wouldn't want her to feel remiss in them, would you?"

"Oh, no," the servant answered, horrified by the prospect. "Please go in, my King. I will just announce your purpose."

Zeus had already disguised the child to look fully mortal and wretched—something that neededsustenance. Heracles now bore only peripheral resemblance to the demigod infant who strangled two serpents in his crib. And if babes were meant to feel at home in their father's arms, this one decidedly did not. He continued to scream as the nymph hurried them within.

"At least there is a baby," his wife said from where she was reclining, surveying the sight, and the helpless look that her husband had on his face. It was clear she had been about to retire, her veil gone by this point and a soft dressing gown draped over her shoulders.

"I came upon him on mortal land, he was clearly abandoned," Zeus lied. The wailing noise ensured that any tic in his voice or tone that may have given him away to one who knew him so well would go unheard. It was the one blessing of Heracles' insistent, loud crying.

Hera raised an eyebrow at the vague explanation, "you could have sought out another to do this," but agreeably held her arms out for the child. It was very likely she already thought that this was an excuse to see her, but she had always had a heart for pitiful-looking creatures.

"He's fussed," she tutted. "A little big for his age, but boys eat so much."

Heracles' sobs had tapered to whimpering as soon as Hera touched him, and Zeus felt a prick of annoyance at that. The infant surely didn't know that this was the goddess who had sent poisonous snakes after him and his brother, but still… she had done that, and Zeus was the boy's own father.

"Hush now," Hera soothed him as she adjusted Heracles in her arms in order to part her gown. As soon as Zeus caught sight of her white breast, his mouth went dry and he looked away, cursing his impulsivity at Kanathos and forgetting his entire purpose in being here. As he turned, he saw Hera's eyes upon him and knew immediately that she was thinking he had gone to such lengths just to catch sight of her. It was an incredibly insulting idea, but he forced himself not to preemptively give any explanation lest he seem strange.

"You are predi—" Hera gasped and Zeus looked back to the scene. His wife was now staring down at the child in consternation as he suckled furiously, like he hadn't had a meal in weeks, with unnatural voracity. "He's very strong," she said warily. Then she glanced back up at her husband with a furrowed brow. "This is a mortal child?"

Zeus opened his mouth to reply, not sure how he was going to respond when he was saved from doing soon as Hera cried out a little and withdrew from Heracle's seeking mouth. The child immediately dissolved back into tears at the loss, but Hera was staring hard at him, too alarmed to be moved by the sound.

Zeus held his breath. She couldn't know…

But then his eyes fell back to Heracles and saw that the glamour of wretchedness had retreated away. Zeus had been distracted and Heracles was not immortal—he didn't have the ability that Hermes did, to hold such deception in the arms of the Queen of the gods, especially not with the powerful, immortal properties of her milk.

Oh, she knew… His wife's face froze, and then her eyes snapped to Zeus and for a horrible, sickening moment, he actually thought she might end the child's life and he would not be able to snatch him away in time. And then her arms trembled in reflex of immense control and she thrust the babe back at him, who now began to wail in earnest.

"Get him out of my sight!" she said in a vicious undertone. "And yourself too."

Hands full of distempered infant again, Zeus realized belatedly that his jaw was lax and closed it as he watched his Queen readjust her gown and fly out of the room and into her private audience chambers, allowing the door to close with almighty force.

Unable to cope with just how angry he may have made her, but knowing he couldn't leave this incident to settle in her mind, he numbly went to the door where he had seen the attendant nymph and dropped the screaming Heracles in her open arms.

"He needs to go back to his mother," was all he said.

The girl gaped at him before looking down at the child and then back up, stuttering. "But Your Majesty, I do not—"

"Give him to Hermes!" Zeus declared furiously. The nymph shriveled back, clearly thinking that he was angry at her for failing to read into his remark. In truth, he was damning his blasted son for ever telling him that story in the first place, ignoring the fact that he had given the Messenger god a royal command to tell it. "He'll know where the boy belongs!"

He slammed the doors in the nymph's face and marched resolutely to where his wife had cornered herself, determined to make her see reason. Of course, she sensed his presence.

"Leave, Zeus!"

Instead, he burst through the entrance, prepared to crash through whatever barrier she may have vindictively laid. He caught himself out of a stumble and saw that she was sitting on a delicate throne that was Hephaestus-crafted, turned completely away from him and rigid.

He stared at the impenetrable line of her shoulders, calculating how furious she would be and concluding a quantity much larger than his liking.

It would be important to start with the right words. He had been to battle with his wife enough times to know that whatever was spoken first set the tone for the rest. Without her eyes to see it, he swallowed and gathered some courage.

"I thought, after you tried to murder the boy, that if—"

He never finished the sentence, for the Queen of the gods came alive suddenly and Zeus was unable to comprehend what was occurring before his wife sprang up and lunged at him.

"Get out, get out, getoutgetout!" she shrieked, beating her hands against his chest as hard as he could. He had never seen her come so undone and he could only think to lift his arms and close around her elbows as she spat and raged like an angry cat. It filled him with alarm to see her lose composure so quickly, a revelation and explosion of emotion that all he could do was try to keep her from attacking.

"Hera!" he exclaimed, a desperate moment where he held her half-still and wondered if his voice could knock some sense into her the way it had knocked it out of her.

"Just leave me in peace! I hate you!" she screamed, ripping her arms away from him and giving herself some distance. "Isn't it enough that you forced me to return, but you then think to trick me into breastfeeding your BASTARD SON, right after we've quarreled about him?! Using my own compassion to manipulate me again!"

Zeus' growing anger and bewilderment shuttered to a halt when he saw something he hadn't seen in centuries: tears in Hera's eyes.

"What…" he mouthed the word impotently as she hurried back away from him, as if it would be a tragedy for her husband to see her weep and he was at an utter loss. All of the burning problems between them evaporated at this.

What could have made her cry so? He ran over her words quickly, repeatedly and each moment he began to feel more terrible than the last. In her mind, he was a fiend of the highest order, and he actually saw what he had done—the awful connections she had made. He had manipulated her heart for his own ends, by having her tend to what she thought was a poor abandoned child. Even Hermes had been so, in his own way.

"Can I have nothing to keep sacred?" Came a low, trembling hiss from her as though she had read his very mind. Zeus felt true mortification and the disastrous need to do something, anything to keep her from falling apart in sadness. For he was quickly discovering that her tears were worse than any scream she had ever delivered him.

He couldn't not comfort her. Readying himself for an onslaught, he grasped her shoulders and brought her into his chest like he could bury her within it. When she didn't even fight him, he somehow felt lower than he had.

"Please," he said quietly, the sound coming through the hard clench of his jaw as he wrapped huge arms around her until she was engulfed and burrowed firmly there against him. "Please, darling… stop. I'll stop. I… I understand."

I'm sorry.

He felt a warm, tremulous huff of air across the apex of his chest as she sniffed and his hand came up to caress the flowing auburn hair that trailed to her back. At least she wasn't trying to free herself, he thought. He could make it better. How could he make it better?

"Why couldn't you have just let me stay away?" she finally said miserably. He tightened his grip, not ready to admit that he was wrong for retrieving her… or really, to apologize for anything else. It was always everything but that.

"I didn't want you to be away," he said honestly.

Her laughter was half-scathing, half-wet. "That's not what you said before."

"I was angry, I say many things that I don't mean." The relief he felt at the fact that she was even willing to hold this conversation was immense, not that he would ever admit it. Still, he felt the need to say something grand.

"I think you could lay waste to every single child of mine and I would still love you."

It was such an absurd, Zeus thing to say that when Hera pulled back from him, there was the slightest twinkle of affection in her eyes. "Not Athena."

"You wouldn't kill Athena," he responded, thinking this may be some sort of banter with her and hoping it was.

But then that small light faded from her eyes and she was both serious and weary. "Zeus… you can never do again what you just did. You expect me to…" She closed her eyes, briefly, before beginning again. "If you care at all for our marriage, if you even hold it sacred by any shred, you won't use my domain as a goddess against me. I cannot bear it."

He had expected her to threaten to leave, and he knew well how to react to that. But her admitting her vulnerability left him to curse himself once more. He held the moment for a little longer, so she would know that he meant it.

"I won't."

Her smile was pained, but that was also how he knew it was genuine.

"Away with you," she dismissed him. But it struck him that if he allowed her that, then she might stew in his crime and that would not bode well come morning. So he enveloped her again, his flesh pliable to coax her into melting. She rolled her eyes but didn't evade his reach.

"Let me stay," he said cajolingly. It was a tone he didn't think he had ever used with another being, mortal or immortal. It was a sweet, humbler thing he reserved for her, and only on rare occasion.

She made a negative sound and he presumed what she might say in refusal, his unwelcome presence at the spring still fresh in her mind. "I promise not to molest you, unless you invite it."

"It would hardly be 'molestation' if I did," she said dryly. And then she looked him dead in the eye. "And I won't be, just so you're aware."

"Whatever you proclaim, my Queen," he agreed easily, knowing that her relenting was to be good enough. "Whatever you proclaim."

GXGXGXGXGXGX

A harried, upset nymph almost came flying into Hermes as he was leaving to his chambers. "Oh my."

"I'm sorry, my Lord," the girl rushed out in a breath. And she dumped a crying babe, of all things, onto his chest, his arms having no choice but to instinctively wrap around it. The volume was highly unpleasant, and he cringed.

"Who?"

"The King, my Lord, he bid me to bring it to you. His Majesty said you would know where his mother was. I'm sorry, my Lord, I must return to the Queen." The nymph quickly curtsied and hurried back the way she had came.

And attendant of the Queen? Who had been commanded by his father to bring a baby to him?

Hermes looked down at the bundle and blinked, horror jolting him like a cold stream.

"He didn't…"

A/N: I try to keep away from the tried-and-true "Zeus has affairs and Hera gets mad" but hopefully, this was unique enough in its own way. Review to let me know what you thought!