Author's Note: Hey guys! So with Christmas right around the corner I don't really know how much time I'll be given to write. I'm not sure if I'll be able to get another chapter out before the new year, so to help tide ya over until then, today I'm putting up a two-for-one! Hope you all have a good day, a Merry Christmas, a happy Chanukah, a festive Winter Solstice, whatever you celebrate, Happy Holidays!
"W-what?" Alexa asked in a strangled voice. It was almost two weeks after Luke's escape and, true to her word, Alexa had gone straight to Olympus the moment she was able. Her foot had a scar that would remain there for the rest of her life and her eyes would be slaves to eyedrops for the next month or two but she had escaped the Luke incident all but unscathed. The days of bed rest had left her anticipating this moment… but she had never anticipated the words that had come out of the goddess' mouth.
"But Queen Hera, w-what about Luke? You can't expect me to wait around while he's out there." Alexa said, trying hard to keep the dread out of her voice.
"The situation is being handled." Hera said with a careless wave of her hand.
"B-but I could be of so much use! Wouldn't it be better if I helped look for him?" She asked, the desperation starting to worm its way into her voice despite her best efforts.
"That isn't your task. I've given you your next labor." Hera responded firmly.
"But what you're asking is impossible! I can't do it!" Alexa cried.
"No, you simply won't." Hera said evenly, her gaze as hard as a piece of marble. "What I ask is not impossible, it's just hard. If you can't bring yourself to do this, then I'm afraid your labors will have to end."
"But…but that's not fair!" Alexa pleaded.
"This isn't about fairness, it's about penance!" Hera snapped, her eyes blazing all at once. "That's why it's hard!"
Seconds ticked by with the demigod and the goddess glaring at one another. In the end, Alexa was the one to break the stare. With a huff she turned and stomped across the throne room, Luna hot on her heels. She was just about to the door when Hera's voice stopped her.
"Alexa. I hope you realize I'm doing this because I care about you." Alexa turned to glare at the goddess who met her stare with a surprisingly gentle expression.
"I'm not asking you to do this for my own enjoyment, I'm doing it because it needs to be done." Hera continued. Alexa responded by glaring all the harder at the goddess. Without another word to her benefactor, Alexa marched out of Olympus with the full knowledge that she was going to end up in the Fields of Punishment for her decision and not regretting it in the slightest.
10 months later.
Alexa stumbled into her favorite bar and gave the bartender a lazy wave.
"Hey Dave." She grumbled as she moved closer to the bar. The bartender looked up from the bottles he had been restocking. Dave was a short man, much shorter than Alexa, with pale skin covered in freckles and thinning hair and a mustache the exact same shade of orange as a carrot. He was exactly the kind of person who you'd expect to run a bar like this, with the Irish flag hung up on the wall, soccer playing on the TV and a song about a man being revived by whisky playing over the speaker.
"Alexa." Dave said by way of greeting, just the lightest shades of his accent left after years in the states. "Hard night?"
"They're all hard." Alexa grumbled. Every day since Hera's decree had only served to remind her of her own doom. These days, she barely spent more than an hour fully sober…speaking of which…
"Give me a shot of…that stuff from last week." She said, pulling out the card Aug had given her.
"Last time I gave you poitín you broke a chair and cried in the corner until the taxi came." Dave pointed out.
"That was after the beer and all that Guinness! " Alexa shot right back. "I can handle it."
Dave gave her look, then with a sigh and a shake of his head he reached under the counter. Alexa heard a click and clack of the compartment opening. Dave brought up an old glass bottle, the original label long since scraped or rubbed away, replaced by a strip of masking tape and a handwritten label indicating it was 15 years old.
"Older than Percy and Annabeth." Alexa thought glumly, the familiar ache of regret and guilt stabbing into her heart accompanied by the whispers of her own uselessness in her ear.
Dave poured a healthy amount of the clear liquid into a highball glass. As he swiped her card, the stuff was already disappearing down Alexa's throat. The moment it hit her stomach the burning of the alcohol shot up through her throat and sinuses, immediately quenched by the toffee aftertaste. She shivered lightly and let out a soft sigh. Already the alcohol was dulling the pain, hiding it underneath the numbing euphoria that accompanied the drink like a jagged rock hidden under the boozy tide.
Dave returned her card and placed a glass of Guinness in front of her.
"There's your usual, please don't make me regret it." Dave muttered, Alexa responded with a noncommittal grunt, and got up with her prize. She took the glass to her favorite booth at one end of the pub. One of the things Alexa loved most about Dave's place was the solitude. It wasn't a place for college kids (Except for one day of the year when they pretended to care about Irish culture as an excuse to drink) but for people like her, drowning their miseries with cheap beer. This booth still insulated her from the few people who thought that a casual fling with the unusually tall woman could help ease their sorrows.
Alexa sat with a sigh, her head getting a pleasant swim to it as the poitín began to work its magic. She stared down at her Guinness, her head blissfully empty for the first time that day. She was only barely aware of the door to the bar opening and two figures entering. The clink of coin entered her little bubble. Probably a homeless guy, buying protection from the night until closing time with some spare change.
"That seat taken?" Alexa looked up from her drink. The man who had already started sliding into her booth did have the wild beard she associated with some of the homeless men she saw around the area, but the blotchy face was far more recognizable, even if she had only seen it once.
"Mrphff…" Alexa grunted.
"What?" Asked Hephaestus as he slid into the booth, followed immediately by another familiar face.
"She said that although the spot is unclaimed, she would prefer to sit alone." Mr D translated helpfully. Alexa made a small confused noise and Mr D spoke again. "Your father asked for my help, and there's no way I was going to pass up a chance to get away from that camp, and to a bar no less! He convinced Zeus to let me tag along, so long as he keeps an eye on me."
"Hmph!" Alexa huffed. "M'fine"
"No you're not." Her father sighed, lowering his bulk into the seat.
"Psshh. Yaden't evebn now…firsh both…sept…" Alexa grumbled into the head of her Guinness. If she was going to be subjected to this, she might as well get a bit more of a buzz going.
"She said 'You don't even know. First time you bothered to visit since I was six.'" Mr. D translated again. "Rather presumptuous if you ask me."
"She's drunk." Hephaestus pointed out.
"Ayup." Alexa agreed, punctuating her statement with another pull from her drink.
"A twelve pack of cheap beer, a large helping of Irish moonshine, and half a pint of Guinness. All in the last hour. You don't have to tell me she's tipsy. Doesn't make her any less presumptuous." Mr D responded with a roll of his eyes. Hephaestus sighed and shook his head, a few stray sparks popping from his beard.
"Alexa, I'm here because I'm worried about you." Hephaestus said "A lot of us are…"
"Uh huh…worried 'bout quasts mrrr like." She grumbled under her breath.
"Blast it!" Hephaestus growled, slamming his open palm on the table. "I can't talk to you when you're like this! D!"
"Right." Mr. D snapped his fingers and sobriety slammed into Alexa like a runaway truck driven by all of Alexa's shames and anxieties.
"What the hell did you do that for!" Alexa half shouted.
"I feel dirty." Mr. D muttered idly.
"He did it because you need to hear this and you can't properly hear it if your brain is pickled!" Her father growled. Alexa glared at him but her father's ruddy face lost a shade of it's color as he worked to calm himself.
"Alexa, you're not well." Her father began.
"I'm just fine!" Alexa snapped, going to take a drink only to find her pint filled with diet coke. She fixed Mr. D with a dirty look but the wine god ignored it in favor of fiddling with a cell phone.
"No, Alexa, you're not." Hephaestus said, reaching out and squeezing her hand. "I hate Hera for giving you this task, it's best to do it in your own time. But the fact of the matter is you have it now, and you need to face it or it's going to destroy you."
"It's already started if this place is any indication." Mr. D commented behind his phone.
"I keep telling you two, I'm fine!" Alexa growled
"Alexa, where do you think you are right now?" Hephaestus asked in exasperation.
"In a bar, so what?" Huffed his daughter.
"Take a look at the bartender." Hephaestus said gently. Alexa rolled her eyes and turned to look at Dave. What Alexa saw standing behind the counter only barely resembled the man as she had come to know him; For one he was much shorter, only about three feet tall using a box to see over the counter top. His red hair looked all the brighter as his skin took on a slight green tinge, his pupils had expanded to the degree that they had swallowed up the iris and a lot of the white and his ears came up to a much more pronounced point than any dryad she had ever seen.
"I…what…?" Alexa managed to say.
"You've been so out of it that the Mist hid him entirely. I bet you didn't even realize he was a leprechaun. I bet you didn't even notice Luna left you three days ago, either!" Hephaestus sighed as Alexa's confusion and hurt doubled at that. She hadn't realized that her faithful pup had gone…
"Alexa, I know how you feel-" Before he could finish his statement Alexa slammed her hands down on the table.
"No you don't! You have no idea what I'm going through!" Alexa snapped, shame washing over her as tears stung at the edges of her vision.
"Typical." Mr. D muttered. "Mortals always have the mentality that they're the only one who ever suffered. It's not like we ever had anything worse happen to us."
"I do know what you're going through, Alexa." Hephaestus continued, ignoring the grape god. "Pistons and sparks, girl! You think I don't remember how it felt? I remember every moment; the shame of it all threatening to crush me like an ant, burying myself in making something beautiful to try to fill the hole in my heart, trying to drown myself in the sea when the fear got too much, destroying islands when the fear turned to rage…"
He sighed and shook his head, staring down at his clasped hands for a long time before he could bring himself to continue.
"I'm not going to lie to ya, this is gonna hurt, but you can't fix a sword without a hammer and heat. You have to face this, Alexa. Blast it, I wish there was another option but it's the only way! You can't let this be the thing that beats you, you're stronger than that." He hesitantly reached out and squeezed his daughter's hand. "You're the strongest daughter I've ever had."
Something about those words unleashed the flood gates. Shame, regret and fear seemed to pour out of Alexa, streaming out of her in a flood of tears and racking her frame with sobs. Dimly she was aware of the two gods whispering on the other side of the booth.
"Did..is this okay..?" Whispered Hephaestus.
"Think of it as draining the oil before replacing it." Mr. D responded, putting it in a way he hoped his half-brother would understand.
"Ah…" Hephaestus responded. The two let Alexa cry herself out. After almost half an hour the sobs died down, and Alexa wiped her red eyes on a napkin.
"I…I'm sorry…" Alexa sniffed. "I'm sorry I've been letting you down lately."
"Shh…" Hephaestus hushed her in a surprisingly gentle tone. "If life were easy to get through it'd hardly be worth it. You just blew a tire, that's all." Alexa let out a weak laugh, the first real laugh she had been able to make in almost a year.
"So what're you going to do now?" Asked her father.
"I don't know…" Alexa admitted.
"Then I'll give you one last word of advice. You can only balance a bicycle on one wheel for so long. For it to go very far, you need that second wheel." The forge god and the wine god both got to their feet, Hephaestus gave her one more squeeze on the shoulder, then they both vanished. Sometime later Alexa heard the familiar sound of metal claws on a wood floor. She was unsurprised to find Luna padding up to her hesitantly.
"Guess it was you who tattled on me, huh?" She asked with a hollow sounding laugh.
"Woof…"The canine responded. Alexa sat silent for a heartbeat before she nodded her head.
"Good girl…" She finished her diet coke and stood. "I think I needed to be called out."
She took a deep breath, placed a hand on Luna, and tried to get her trembling under control.
"Let's go…I need to pack." Alexa muttered.
The next day
Luna and Alexa touched down in the afternoon, the summer heat making the blacktop shimmered. Why was Alexa feeling so ashamed and nervous standing outside the house? This was supposed to be the easiest part. Luna gave her a nudge with her nose and reluctantly Alexa opened the gate. Only a few steps into the yard she heard the sound of work from the garden. She made a beeline for the sounds of activity while Luna made herself at home on the porch. Just as she turned the corner she was met by a toddler no older than two, wearing a pair of overalls lightly dusted in dirt, reddish brown hair hanging down around his eyes. He seemed just as surprised to see her as she was to see him.
"Hey little buddy, is your mo- ouch!" Halfway through her question the boy had reared back his leg and delivered a surprisingly hard kick directly to Alexa's shin, his little shoes lighting up almost as if to celebrate the deed. He then turned and sprinted along the wall of the house towards a particular section of the garden, screaming at the top of his lungs.
"Nana!" At the sound of the tot shouting, a pair of legs shifted, the owner rapidly crawling backwards and dropping the pair of pruning shears to catch him.
"Eddie, what? Oh!" Melody got to her feet, a small smile mixing with the concern on her face.
"It's good to see you, sweetheart. How're you doing?" Melody could obviously see the signs of something off on Alexa's face. The nervous jittering was always difficult to hide from her aunt.
"I've…been better." Alexa admitted. "Sorry I haven't been around much." Melody responded to this little bit of nonsense by pulling Alexa in for a one armed hug. Eddie, although still suspicious of the other woman, seemed mollified by his grandma's familiarity with the stranger. Alexa practically melted into the maternal affection, a bit reluctant to pull away when it eventually ended.
Holding her at arm's length, Melody made a show of giving her the once over. She had showered before leaving, so she wasn't nearly as greasy as she had been during her days of hiding, but there must have been something in her face that tipped Melody off to just how bad it had been.
"Is Jazz home?" Alexa asked hastily. "I need to ask her for a favor."
"School let out last week, so yes. I'm giving her a break to show this little ragamuffin a bit of gardening. " Melody's answer tugged the ghost of a smile onto Alexa's lips.
"How's that going?" She couldn't help but ask.
"Well he likes the digging part, but he gets bored after that's done." Melody laughed as she motioned Alexa inside. She called Jazz and the daughter of Ares popped her head out of a doorway. She had her hair in a sloppy ponytail, and she was dressed in workout shorts and a sports bra. With both hands wrapped in boxing tape and a sheen of sweat on her toned arms she looked far more like a school's no nonsense gym teacher than the school guidance counselor and child therapist she had become.
"Spits!" She greeted happily only to pause midstep. The smile seemed to drip off her face as she picked up on the cues. She could read all of Alexa's tells like a second language and what they were screaming right now sent up the granddaddy of all red flags. What Jazz was seeing wasn't the brave, hard headed and determined woman she had helped shape, this was almost worse than the little girl she had taken under her wing.
"Alexa, what's the matter?" She asked, keeping her voice calm and steady through sheer force of will. Alexa looked away and Jazz felt a pang of panic. She was putting the wall back up! Jazz reached out and took Alexa's hand. She kept her face stoic, despite the tremors she felt beneath her fingers. Alexa clearly needed her rock.
"Spits, I can't help you if you don't tell me what you need. Remember what we talked about? You need to tell me when something's bothering you." Jazz said in a gentle, probing way. Alexa didn't answer at first. She worked her jaw but no words came out. Finally she managed to half whisper.
"I need your help…with one of my labors." She explained. She couldn't bring herself to go into more detail…it'd make it real. Jazz glanced at Melody and Eddie. Melody had the same hard expression as Jazz did while Eddie looked thoughtfully at Alexa while his finger dug in his nose. Both women seemed about ready to throttle Hera for putting her in such a state. Their fury on her behalf could only bolster her mood such much, however.
"What…does she want you to do?" Jazz asked. No going back now. Alexa took a shaky breath and squeezed her eyes shut, as if blocking out the room could help her fight down the panic rising in her throat.
"She…" The words died on her lips. She couldn't bring herself to say them. But her father's words decided now was the best time to echo in her head.
"You're the strongest daughter I've ever had. You can't let this be the thing that beat you!" They encouraged her and bolstered her up, filling Alexa with just enough courage to keep going. Alexa worked her jaw and managed to force out the words she dreaded.
"I have to go see my mother."