Platforms and Politics.
Meryl Holmes was brilliant, intuitive, creative. She was the wife of a wealthy politician who never appreciated her talents and skills, despite the fact that Meryl was close to single-handedly keeping her husband's platform well-liked.
Meryl didn't know that the grey-eyed woman who worked at the office was a goddess. She didn't know that the goddess watched her, carefully, taking in the mind hidden behind the short hair. She didn't know just how much attention her genius had gotten from Athena.
Athena saw the woman, working endlessly, with a brain power unrivaled by any Athena had seen in years. She knew that Meryl was barren, and that her husband resented her for it. Athena scheduled Mrs. Holmes' doctor appointments, sitting in the rolling-chair that really wasn't much different from her own throne on Mount Olympus.
Athena didn't come to Europe for the freedom, like Dionysus. She came for the minds, because genius knows no country lines and therefore neither does she. She found one in the tall, imposing politician's wife, and knew that a child here would succeed, away from the problems that made their home with the gods.
Meryl never truly believed the goddess, when Athena turned up, nine months later with an infant. It didn't make sense, logically, but it also didn't matter. Even when Athena showed a small bit of her true form and said "He's mine" it was irrelevant to Meryl. She had a son, who was already brilliant in the purest sense of the word, snuggling in to her chest like he knew he was hers.
He was hers, the office-woman-turned-goddess insisted, and Meryl agreed. College biology disagreed, but where Mycroft grew up to be logical and calculating, Meryl was more inclined to let her emotions rule, just this once.
That didn't stop her from reading the DNA test her husband insisted on, because he refused to accept it.
She never told Mycroft he was a demigod. She assumed he knew she didn't carry him for nine months, because he was so clever and there was never any evidence to prove she did. She let him think that he was adopted, as she was a logical woman and she was comfortable hiding secrets.
Mycroft got that from her, not Athena, and just try telling Meryl otherwise.
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