The boy has begun sacrificing his meals to her.
Today Hera received half of a (blue, of course) peanut butter and jelly sandwich, slices of an apple, a dozen or so potato chips and an assorted number of something ghastly named gushers. These are supposed to go to his father and instead he is, for some unfathomable reason, sacrificing them to her.
Something must be done.
The beast is lying on what she's sure he would call a bed, but is truthfully more comparable to a shoebox. He shovels something into his mouth periodically, perhaps the chips he'd sacrificed to her earlier, as music blares in all directions. The room itself is a mess and everything, from the clothes strewn across the floor to the unconventional rhythm of the instruments, is exactly the type of chaos Hera expects someone like him to live in.
She clears her throat and glares at the boy as he finally notices her. "Oh. It's you." He says and sits up, neither looking surprised nor particularly comfortable with her presence. Good. As it should be. "D'you, uh…" He offers the bag to her and she turns her glare to the unholy concoction of oil and grease. He frantically tries to smother out the resulting flames with his hands and succeeds, wincing. "Right," He mutters. "No more chips."
"No more anything." Hera snaps, and honestly, she cannot believe that she is discussing this. There was a time where he never would have dared to sacrifice to anyone other than his father, where he would have been imprisoned just for the thought. Alas, that was then. "You sacrifice to your father, to your patron if you have one. You do not sacrifice to me."
He says nothing, and for a moment she begins to feel satisfaction well within her, before the boy reaches into the bag and starts chewing once more. He holds his finger up as he swallows and Hera stares in sheer bewilderment at his arrogance. "I eat a lot," He finally says. "So my dad isn't missing anything."
"That is not the point." She's sure her face is quite red now, whether from confusion or frustration or altogether unhappiness.
"Then what is the point?"
"That you do not continue what you have been doing." Hera says tightly. He'd certainly inherited his father's acute denseness. In fact, besides the pretty looks, she'd be hard pressed to say if her brother had passed anything positive along.
"But you looked so sad in the Hall!" He protests. "I mean, when was the last time anyone sacrificed to you?"
Quite long, she thinks. Long enough that she'd misplaced the feeling, in a different time and place, until she had felt it rush back to her earlier this week. "That is irrelevant." She says instead.
"No way." He shakes his head, black curls bouncing back and forth. She finds herself following the movement. "You might be upset, but I don't think it's because I gave you half of my PB and J."
"Oh?" And she smiles at him then, the one that she usually reserved for Zeus, the one that is nothing more than a mocking invitation for pain. "You seem to know much, demigod. Enlighten me then, dear Perseus." She extends her aura, enough so that Hera can see him forcefully exhale, like a weight had been pressed on his chest.
He is silent for many moments and she begins to feel satisfaction curl inside her once more. Until, of course, the boy ruins it. "You're just being mean now," He says, taking short breaths. "Because this isn't about food. So what's the point of this?" And Hera thinks she goes a bit mad at that.
"The point is for you to obey!" She all but screams. "I am your queen and you live and breathe by my mercy, and if I say no more of the food then there will be no more of the damn food!" The bed starts to shake as the room begins to take on a purplish hue, a localized tornado swirling into form around her.
But the boy only stares at her blankly for a moment and she thinks he looks, frankly, a bit unimpressed with her spectacle. "See, that," He says, hand diving back into the bag. "Is why nobody likes you guys."
And then all her anger, her righteousness and pride swallow themselves whole, swift black holes folding in as Hera starts to feel quite small. The room returns to its normal state as the air pressure regulates and colors return, and it seems like the stereo itself has felt the shift in energy as a much softer melody begins to play.
"I do not understand you." Hera says finally, and with more than a touch of resentment. It was not an easy thing to admit, compounded much more from how completely two-dimensional he had seemed the first time she'd laid her eyes upon him, but it was the truth.
He did not fear her as would have been the most sensible reaction. He did not worship her, which would have been at the very least acceptable. He did not even seem to like her very much if she was honest. No, he was nothing that she could rationalize, nothing at all that she could even fathom. Yet he keeps watching her, looking at her so very sadly as if he knew something terrible that she did not.
Something was not right with this boy. Something more than his blasphemous parentage, more than his tactlessness and disregard for authority, more than what he represented for her future. That was the only explanation, she decided.
"I won't hold that against you." His face twists into something that vaguely resembles a smile.
"Why do you sacrifice your meals to me?" Hera asks, and if nothing else she must understand that. If for nothing more than her own satisfaction.
The boy frowns then, and it is such an utter contrast from that smallest of smiles that he had just given her that Hera finds herself in a small state of shock for a moment. "I just… notice things." He says thickly. Mournfully, she dares to think. "The things people try and hide, the things they push down, the things that they don't even want to deal with, let alone force other people to."
He shakes his head, and for the first time his hand leaves the bag and stays rested on his faded jeans. "My mom, she says that- That sometimes, not always or anywhere close, but that sometimes it's okay to just… let it be. To let people just… figure it out on their own. And that's hard for me, even on my best days."
Hera says nothing. She's unsure of what exactly she's witnessing, a confessional it seems, but she knows that she does not like it. The boy is personal, trusting even, and she finds it hard to express just how repulsive that is. No, she does not like this at all.
"And then I saw you." He speaks reverently, fervently as he lifts his head and pierces her with his viridescent eyes. Upon closer inspection, Hera realizes they are not the carbon copy of his father's as she had thought. They're too bright, too sharp and not quite as trusting. "I saw you in the Hall and I- I didn't need to notice anything. You weren't hiding, you didn't put on a face, you just sat there looking as miserable, as beaten down and sad as I've ever seen, and everyone just… let you be."
Her breath catches in her throat as he punctuates his statement like he had revealed some great truth. And so he had.
"There- There's something wrong up there." He points to the ceiling, and she follows it like a beacon. "Something's not right and it's- It's hurting you. You need something- Want something, and you're not getting it." And he dares to move closer, swinging his legs down to the floor and leaning towards her. "What do you want?" He whispers with a confidence that does not suit him. As if he could do anything for her.
"I want-" And for only a moment does Hera think to tell the truth, but her weakness passes quickly and she hardens herself. "I want to feel my hand against your throat," She grinds out. "As I push."
She vanishes from his view then, though she does not actually leave his presence. He stares at where she had been for a long while and she stares back, seething.
This demigod, this beast in a child's skin, presumed much, and more than that he presumed much about her.
Hera flits through his mind for a moment, just long enough to discern the whereabouts of his school before taking her leave. Percy Jackson claims to know many things. She wonders how much he knows of Laistrygonian Giants, if anything.
It was of no consequence. He would learn all he needed to know soon enough.