Foolish, Hera thinks. You foolish little girl. And that's all she was. Because she was here, again, in his room.

Not visible to him, of course. She hadn't completely lost her mind. But really, she didn't understand how- why she was here. She had absolutely no intention of visiting him today. It did not matter that he always seemed to be on her mind, she had more self-control than that.

Didn't she?

"Some people say my love cannot be true. Please believe me, my love, and I'll show you."

Once more, music blared throughout the tiny room. Perseus himself laid on his bed, and she wasn't sure if he was even awake. This was particularly troubling, as she had been standing here for the better part of a half hour.

Standing. And watching.

"I will give you those things you thought unreal. The sun, the moon, the stars, all bear my seal."

She had not visited him in months, though not a day passed where he did not sacrifice to her. Perhaps that was what had drawn her here; his laughable persistence.

Or maybe it was something else. Something that she would be wise not to think about. But she did.

Maybe she missed his attention. Maybe the lovely scents he sent to her were not enough anymore. Maybe she didn't want to spend all her days tending to her garden as the weather turned colder. Maybe she just wanted to see him.

But Hera was looking right at him, and she could not see his eyes. She found that that did not sit right with her for some reason. She found that she wanted more.

She was never one to deny herself much. And if she was foolish, then let it be so. She deserved to be a little foolish now and again. She deserved what she wanted.

Hera makes herself visible and he senses her instantly- because of course he does. He's supposed to be a messiah or an apocalypse or both rolled into one, and so she is as surprised to see his eyes snap open to her as he is to see her looming above him. Which is to say, not at all.

"Follow me now and you will not regret living the life you led before we met."

They stare at each other for epochs. Suns turn to dust and whole universes end in the time it takes her to fully map out his face. It is different, she realizes. Contrasting and divergent while also somehow remaining completely unchanged. She is unable to put it into words, really. He is… more mature somehow, and not necessarily in the obvious sense of aging. Yes, his shoulders are broader, his jaw sharper and even laying down she can see that he's shot up a few inches, but his very presence oozes a self-confidence that is not gained without experience that should be beyond his years.

It is more intriguing than she thought possible. He is more intriguing than she thought possible.

"Did you like the food?" He asks suddenly, breaking her from her musings. She's found that his lips are always drawn into an almost permanent smirk when speaking to her, as if this is some great game and he holds the winning hand. It infuriates her in a way that does not make her angry, and she struggles to understand how such a thing can be.

"You are the first to have this love of mine, forever with me till the end of time."

"It was acceptable." Hera says distractedly, his new face taking most of her attention. His pretty new face.

"You liked it then." He says, but Hera barely hears him, much more preoccupied with other things.

She changes the subject quickly, hoping her thoughts follow suit. "This music…" And it was music, though not like any she had ever heard before. "It sounds… heavy."

It seemed like an apt description to her, but for some reason he only laughs at her. It's disrespectful and rough and irritatingly masculine, and she finds that those awful, traitorous thoughts increase tenfold at the sound of it. He lifts his right hand from the covers and pulls his ring and middle finger down, striking a gesture at her. "Right on, dudette."

"What?" She asks, baffled, but he only laughs again and shakes his head. Infuriating, she confirms. Oh, so infuriating.

"So, you're back." He says offhandedly, as if it meant nothing and not a great upheaval in the very foundations of her being. But she knows, as daft as he may seem, that he sees this for what it is.

And still, he smiles.

"I am." Hera says, and she cannot remember a time where she felt as uncomfortable as this.

"Why?"

"Your love for me has just got to be real, before you know the way I'm going to feel."

"I do not know." She admits. This was becoming a worrying habit. She wonders where she'll find herself next, drawn by some invisible force into a confrontation that she neither wanted nor needed.

"Maybe you missed me." He grins, pushing himself up so his back is flush with the wall.

"Like a boar misses an arrow to the neck." She drawls, silently rejoicing that she has not completely

lost her mind.

He laughs (will he ever stop?) and folds his hands behind his head. "You're quipping sarcastically instead of blasting me into a million tiny pieces. I think you missed me."

"There's still time for that."

"I rest my case." He says victoriously.

She scowls, not really at him but at herself. Partly because he's right, and partly because how could she let him realize that?

"Now I have you with me under my power, our love grows stronger now with every hour."

"You like this?" He asks, nodding to the speaker in the corner, surrounded by dirty laundry. She wrinkles her nose at the sight.

"It is unlike anything I have ever heard." She responds, swaying unsurely side to side.

"That's not a bad thing. But I guess you're more used to, like, lyres and flutes and stuff." He says before noticing her uneasiness. "Sit down." He crosses his legs to make room on the bed for her.

"I do not intend to stay here long." Hera declines.

"You didn't intend to be here in the first place." He counters. "Just- Sit. You're making me anxious just looking at you."

She frowns again. Was she truly so transparent? Or only to him? She can't decide which is worse. "I believe I warned you of your presumptuousness last we spoke." She says as she lowers herself to the bed. It does make her feel slightly better. Damn him.

"Yeah. Thanks for that, by the way." He rolls his eyes, as if she had not seriously injured him. "I had to tell Annabeth I tripped getting out of bed and she hasn't shut up about it since."

"I would have thought you would have been eager to tell your tale of righteous rebellion against your queen." She remarks, but she knows better. He, for a reason she has been unable to think of, covets these secret meetings of theirs as much as she does.

"Well, my queen," And even though his voice remains steady, it is somehow laced with the most potent sarcasm. She should set him ablaze for the disrespect. She refrains. "I don't think that's the way it went down."

"Oh?" She gasps mockingly. "Well, don't keep a woman in suspense, my dear."

He rolls his eyes at her. The last mortal who did that was now a very lovely peony somewhere off the coast of Crete. She does not understand why this demigod does not share the same fate. "All I did was stop you from making a bad choice. You hurt me, but only because you were already hurting. I get it."

"Look into my eyes, you'll see who I am. My name is Lucifer, please take my hand."

"But I have hurt so many people, Perseus." She says, feigning sadness. "And made many more bad choices. If only your sweet guidance was always with me." She shakes her head. "I fear yours is a quest doomed to fail."

"Okay, whatever." He huffs. "Far be it for me to tell you how to live. I just think you can end this cycle if you want to."

"Cycle?"

"Yeah. Y'know," He points to the ceiling. "Big guy up in the sky hurts you-"

"I believe I also warned you of trying to empathize with that which you know nothing about." Hera interrupts.

"By getting with some mortal or nymph." He continues, ignoring her blithely. "So you do… something to them, or to his demigods, hurting them. And hurting them hurts him. And it just keeps going."

"You blame me?" Hera says, angry and vengeful and more than anything hurt. Because she could have never expected that. Not from him.

"No!" He almost yelps, waving his hands back and forth. "Gods no! It starts with him, but you can end it. It can end with you."

"So, your great wisdom then, is to act like the perfect, proper wife, while my husband galivants across the country, fucking any man, woman or animal that moves?" She spits at him like poison as she stands, preparing to turn him into a pile of ash.

"Damn it, Hera, just listen to me!" And the shock of him using her name gives him time to shoot from the bed and grab her hand. "All I'm saying is there's so much pain in the world. You don't need to be a part of it."

She stares down at her hand in his own. Their fingers are not entwined, but Hera finds that she would not mind if they were. "But I am pain." She whispers. "I am jealousy and I am vengeance. I am what he has made me."

"No." He responds. "You are what you make you."

They stare at each other for a moment, and in the silence the song ends. Loud, cacophonous noise rains down before the instruments blare anew.

"Alright now! Won't you listen?"

"My husband has never needed a reason to hurt me." She says, and she's quite sure it's a sentence she's never spoken aloud.

"I know. I'm sorry." And he squeezes her hand gently as he speaks, one of Zeus's bolts trailing up her arm into a great void of entropy. "I've known people like that."

"Then you know he will not stop." Hera says, her own helplessness drowning her.

"I know." He says again, sitting back down and pulling her with him. She lets him, if only because she does not want to let go of his hand. "But I also know that you're not him. You're better- So much better. I think you've forgotten that."

"I don't think I've ever known." Hera says breathlessly. Did he know the things he was saying? Did he know what he was doing? Her eyes flit across the room endlessly, desperate not to be drawn back into him.

"Yeah." He says with palpable disappointment. "I think that's part of the problem."

"You… you are sweet." She almost chokes at the end, disbelieving of herself, that such words could ever come from her own mouth. "But you are wrong." Reality clasps its cold hand around her throat, forcing her to end this farce, to end any illusions he had of her. "I have… done things. Things that would make you think twice about being so close to me. They are well documented."

"When I first met you, didn't realize. I can't forget you or your surprise."

"I can't see the Hera in the myths being the same Hera that's sitting next to me right now." He says so confidently and so wrong.

"You must." She says desperately. This was spinning wildly out of control, as most things seemed to be recently. "I have not changed."

"But you can change."

"No!" Hera pushes back forcefully, even as he starts rubbing slow circles into her hand with his thumb. "Gods are stagnant, uncompromising beings! We cannot change! I cannot change, and I will hurt you Perseus." Again, she thinks. "I will hurt you if this continues."

"If you hurt me, it'll only be because you chose to. Not because it's woven into you." He is so utterly, maddenly calm as he challenges her very perception of reality.

"Binary." She snarls. "You think in binary. Gods are multifaceted, ever-expanding things. We wear collars so that mortals can be truly free."

"And who holds the leash?" He pushes back, and she does not miss how close he has become. She lacks the conviction to push him away.

"Chaos." She says, trembling from both anger and fear. "He stands above the stars, ancient to ancients. He bound my father, and his father before him. He hears my cries and denies me." She stares through the ceiling, above the clouds into the great beyond, where she knows he is staring back. "A God up there listening." She finishes, a ball of rage building in her chest.

"Liar." He whispers, and she can feel the heat of his breath on her face. "First it was your husband, now it's some eldritch god amongst gods. You've just been doing this so long you don't know how to do anything else."

"No." Hera shakes her head. "No. No."

"Yes."

"You introduced me to my mind, and left me wanting you and your kind."

She spins her head, prepared to scream at him for his impudence, but their noses brush as she does and she's forced to understand just how close he really is.

Inches. That's all there is between their lips. And his are so full and soft and for once not smiling. She drags her eyes upwards, both of them holding in deep breaths of anticipation. He's handsome and young and he listens to her. Zeus had been all those things once, but never at the same time.

"My life was empty, forever on a down. Until you took me, showed me around."

All it would take is a lapse in judgment. All it would take is one push forward, and from the look in his eyes, it seems as if Perseus himself might be the one to do it.

"I… I," She leans forward slightly. "I…"

"My life is free now, my life is clear. I love you, sweet leaf, though you cannot hear."

Must not do this.

It feels like a slap in the face from the air itself as she realizes the magnitude of the situation she's found herself in.

"I must go." She says quickly, wrenching her hand from his grasp and stumbling to her feet gracelessly.

"Right." The demigod coughs, and oh, how she hates that she is unable to think of him as a mere boy anymore. "Yeah. You're probably busy."

"Exceedingly." She lies, but even she can tell that it's not a very good one. "My- My garden. I must attend to it." Is that really the best she can think of?

"I've got homework anyway." He scratches the back of his neck, face red and staring down toward the hem of chiton. "So, I'll…"

"Yes. Of course. Studies are important." Kill her now. "So, I- I'll be off now."

"Bye." He waves minutely. "I'll, uh, see you when I see you."

"Soon." She promises before she can think, and then she's staring down at the floor as well. "Goodbye." She offers a pathetic wave back.

He smiles at her and she vanishes, appearing in her garden instantly. Her heart aspires to leap out of her chest, and try as she might she cannot stop it.

Foolish, she thinks again, but not nearly with the amount of contempt as she had before.

Perhaps it was not so bad to be a fool.