"Finished with my woman 'cause she couldn't help me with my mind. People think I'm insane because I am frowning all the time."
"This music follows you everywhere, doesn't it?"
She hates how he doesn't even jump anymore, hates how normal this has become for them, to the point where Percy doesn't even look up from the steering wheel at her words.
"It's just the radio." He says with a wry smile. "But it is technically Apollo's car, so I wouldn't be surprised if he has something to do with it."
"Hm." She mumbles, looking around the interior of the sports car Percy has claimed for himself. "I'd be careful if I were you, there's no telling what he's done in this car." She does her best to give him an innocent smile, though admittedly she's rather unpracticed with those. "Or who."
"Ah!" Percy yelps, leaning forward so that he presses as little of his skin to the car seat as possible. Try as she might, she cannot suppress the horrifically girlish giggle that escapes her throat. "Gods, you don't actually think…" He trails off dramatically.
"Of course not, I'd think this would be a bit cramped for him." She surveys the leather dashboards and seats, her eyes becoming akin to blacklights, and finds the upholstery (thankfully) absent of any white spots. But Hera was not finished with her fun just yet, and so she looks at Percy with faux sympathy. "I stand corrected. You should thoroughly bathe yourself as soon as you can."
"Oh my gods, oh my gods, oh my gods…" Percy wraps his arms around himself before suddenly flinging them towards the windshield. "Fuck! All of you gods are just freaks, aren't you? How could you even position yourself in something like this?" He looks at her in horror, but unfortunately her bottom lip won't stop trembling and he sees through her quite easily. "I liked you better when you were just threatening to kill me, I think." Percy says with no conviction.
"A highly unusual perversion, Percy. I would advise against saying such things to women in the future." Her jest betrays the burning rage that flows through her at just the thought of him trying to woo another woman.
"Thanks for the advice." He says, and it's absolutely the wrong answer, but he smiles in a way that unknowingly begs for forgiveness and Hera has always thought of herself as a gracious woman.
"It seems the huntresses have accepted your presence." She says, purposefully changing the subject lest she enrage herself any more. "Though I'm sure your striking personality does not make that easy."
"Yeah, that's me, striking." He does this sometimes, making it sound like the phrases and words she uses are somehow humorous. Hera has no doubt they are to him, any word with more than three syllables must take an excessive amount of brain-power for him to process. "She tolerates me well enough - Zoë, I mean. Bianca just joined so they haven't really gotten through to her yet."
"Perhaps that's why the lieutenant puts up with you." She drums her fingers across the center console. "You're doing her job for her in that regard. I doubt she could present any more convincing evidence of the male sex's failures than yourself."
It has become increasingly hard for Hera to tell what insults she truly means and what has become almost foreplay for them, but it doesn't really matter as he seems to treat any jab she has for him as the latter.
Percy rolls his eyes. "I am not that bad."
"You are horrifically masculine." Headstrong, overly emotional, prone to rash and often unplanned decisions, Percy Jackson had it all. "It is impossible to ignore."
He smirks at that. "Pretty sure you weren't complaining about how masculine I was last night."
"You brute." Hera murmurs as she blushes to her roots. It was a miracle that he was physically unable to leave any marks on her neck (it took an inhuman amount of pressure to do that to a goddess), though not for lack of trying. "Have some decorum."
"Of course, my queen." And he knows, he knows exactly what he's doing to her with those words, winding her up like she's nothing more than a toy. "Forgive your humble servant."
She might lunge at him under different circumstances and force him to take responsibility for the state he puts her in, but truthfully, it's not a very good idea. For one, the windows might be tinted but they were hardly soundproof. And truthfully, Hera was worried she might break something if she let herself be lost in the throes of passion. "No." She says firmly, knowing that he would understand her meaning.
Percy pouts, and for a moment all she can see is that little guinea pig caged on Circe's Island. "You're tired of me already? And I was just starting to gain a little confidence."
A devil in disguise. Satan, Lucifer, Beelzebub, Mephistopheles and Baphomet synergized into one beautiful demon, sent to bend her halo and dye her wings black. And she was only too happy to let him, but not right now.
"N- No." That was much less firm than before. Hera clears her throat and tries again. "No. And behave."
He smiles disarmingly and reaches over the console to grab her hand. It seems he has a limit to how much he would tease and push her. Hera could not say the same for herself if the roles were reversed. "There was someone named The General at the Smithsonian." He says, trailing lines on her palm. "Massive, in a suit that must've taken an entire flock of sheep to make. His skin was almost gray." Percy looks curiously at her. "Y'know anything about him?"
"Much." Hera says, a cold sense of dread pooling in her stomach. "And much more I cannot tell you."
Atlas. The Telamon. The strongest there is. More had fallen by his hand during the Titanomachy than any other, her father included. A mind that could perfectly predict your every move, combined with eyes that could see your very nerves cluster before you ever raised your sword, alongside strength to rend you atom by atom with a flick of his finger.
A most troublesome development, to say the least.
"Laws?" He asks rhetorically, pursing his lips. "Seems all they ever do is make things harder for everyone."
"Those laws are everything that separate our rule from my father's." And that was true, but Hera could not help but agree with his annoyance. It was that pestering mortal need for "free will" that always got in the way of the important things that needed to be done, and so the level of interference a god could have with a mortal was strictly regulated. Unfortunately, what Percy wished to know was buried deeply within that red tape. Hera would need to call a council meeting to vote on whether such information was necessary to be shared, and then all sorts of uncomfortable questions would be asked.
"So what can you tell me?" He seems frustrated, maybe even with herself. She knows he has no small number of grievances with the Olympian Council, and she's the only one he has any sort of regular contact with. If there ever came a time where he began to see her as a representative of those problems…
Something to be monitored going forward.
"Brace yourself." It's so far from what she wants to tell him. She wants to say that his quest will surely end on Mount Orthys, she wants to say that Atlas likes to talk, that he has a scar that Hades gave him on the right of his stomach that never healed properly, that his daughters, the Hesperides, were loyal to a fault to the Titans and would sooner see everything burn than any harm come to their father. But she does not, she cannot. Even to tell him the one thing that he absolutely must know if his life was sufficiently threatened.
She is forbidden to tell him that Ladon would likely leave him alone, that her scent would be so thoroughly blended with his own that the dragon would know that he was important, and that an Apple from her tree could be easily retrieved if needed.
Retrieved. And then used.
And still, Hera's mouth remains closed and her jaw remains firm, because these stupid little creatures that live and die in the blink of an eye need to be allowed to decide if they want to die even faster.
"Brace yourself…" Percy mumbles, looking even more troubled than before. "This summer, after we got back with the fleece, my dad sent me a note that said the same thing." He looks up at her, eyes sharpened into green arrowheads. "Things are getting real now, aren't they? I mean, we're not fucking around, looking around for your husband's lost toy anymore, we're tracking down kidnapped goddesses and monsters that can destroy Olympus."
"Yes." She says, unable to keep no small amount of dread out of her own voice. "And I do not believe it can be stopped."
Percy nods minutely and folds his hands across his mouth, exhaling deeply into them. "How long?" He stares unfocused through the windshield. "Until things… boil over?"
"A year." Hera says. "Two if we're fortunate." They seemed to be anything but as of late.
"And there's no way to avoid it?" Percy asks a touch desperate. "It will happen? Even if we get Luke?"
"That boy is nothing more than a willing host now, and my father has no small amount of those now; he was merely the first. If he should fall, another will quickly take his place." Her words do little to pacify him, and even though they were not intended to, the despair on his face is hardly acceptable. Through no conscious thought of her own does she decide to reach for one of Percy's arms and pull it closer to her, wrapping the limb in a strange hug.
She hates how she didn't even hesitate to comfort him, hates how these bizarre thoughts pop into her brain without warning, and she hates how the appreciative smile Percy sends makes her feel so hot. Not warm or blissful or remotely anything so tame. He makes her burn and sputter and broil and leaves her as nothing more than a pile of cinders with the simplest, most basic, bare-minimum respect. And he doesn't even know it. Not really, not the true amount of hold he has on her, and Hera would like very much to keep it that way.
"We'll survive." She says with a hope that is not becoming of her. "We did it before."
"What was that like?" He asks gently, aware that he's dredging up bad memories, and his tenderness is the only reason she does not immediately snap at him for asking. "The first time?"
"A war of pyrrhic victories, on both sides." She murmurs, the images in her mind becoming all too real for her. "A clash of unstoppable forces against immovable objects, a battle of knowledge versus power and a contest of unwavering wills." She's breathing heavily when she finishes, ugly feelings emerging from those years and years and years of conflict. "Awful." She whispers quietly. "It was awful."
"You fought through it, though." And now it seems it is Percy's turn to comfort her, and he does so in a way that makes it feel like he's done so for years, like he's been accommodating and putting up with her far longer than he really has been. "You never gave up, right? And you won! I'm here right now because you did all of that."
"No." Normally Hera adored his praise and flattery, even when it was thoroughly undeserved, but she could not take credit for the outcome of the Titanomachy. Not to him. "I did not fight. And I did give up. And I lost."
"I-" She can't be certain if it's her words or the expression on her face that causes such duress in Percy. "I don't understand."
"Yes." She mumbles, hot shame baptizing her so much she thinks she'll drown. "I could never expect you to."
"No, I mean- What do you mean you didn't fight? You all did, that's like- that's documented."
Hera ponders why she's even bothering to divulge this secret to him. He was well trained, he wouldn't push if she told him no, but she hasn't and she's not going to.
But why?
It's not because she likes to kiss him sometimes and it's not because he says wonderfully nice things. Those things can be true, and still, she would not want to reveal what she had to him already, let alone what she would tell him next.
There was something wrong with her. Something far beyond this recently begun affair. Something deeper, something unrelenting and unbreakable, something guised in elation but internally rotten and hysterical.
But she can't be bothered to look deeper into it at the moment, because maybe, just maybe, it would be good to lay this skeleton to rest.
"I do not like fighting-"
She stops suddenly at the noise Percy's mouth makes, his face turning white as she glares daggers at him. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry." He holds his hands up. "I just never expected you to ever say that."
"What is so unbelievable about that?" Hera hisses.
"I mean, c'mon, Hera," He holds his palms out and shifts his eyes side to side. "That's, like, your thing. Causing conflict."
Her eyes go wide in anger. "How dare y-"
"Which is totally understandable given your circumstances!" He cuts her off complacently. "But, still."
"Conflict is the only language gods understand." She grinds out. "It is of no fault of my own that they suddenly become deaf when I try to speak to them."
"No way." Percy shakes his head stubbornly. "My dad's not like that.
"An outlier." She dismisses. "And an extreme one at that. Your father is barely of Olympus anymore, the sea is home now, and they are a much more… sentimental people."
"But-" He thinks better of whatever he was about to say, taking a deep breath before speaking again. "Okay. This is a discussion for another day. What were you going to say about the Titan war?"
"If you're quite finished interrupting…" She huffs, trying to regain the bravery she'd felt before, but all she can conjure up is a pale facsimile. "Again, I do not like fighting, and during that time, that's all there was to do. A single battle would last for days on end, sword scraping against sword, arrows blotting out the sun, and the noise…" She shakes her head, as if she can still hear it. Millions screaming in victory, loss, pride and agony, all combining into one. You don't even really hear anything, it's just a constant, unending stream of pure sound. Even now, it proves to be inescapable.
"So you were there." Percy says. "You did fight."
"I tried." Hera murmurs. "The Hekatonkheires forged me a spear. It was beautiful, gleaming gold, the blade inlaid with rubies. I named it dákry tou ouranoú." It had felt perfect in her hands, thrumming with power and promising victory. "It never saw any use." She says bitterly.
Percy says nothing and she feels a pang of gratitude for him, and she knows how difficult that is for him. "The first battle, on the plains of Arkadia, we were surrounded by hundreds of thousands of cyclops's, and several titans had already defected to our side. We thought ourselves unstoppable, our victory inevitable."
She clenches her fists without thinking. "And then Hyperion turned the sun black and brought its flames to Earth. The fields turned to hot magma, and everything burned. I burned. I could see my siblings charging forward, our infantry running on limbs that were charred away to nothingness, but all I was focused on was him. Floating high in the sky, armored in black hellfire, hands clasped behind his back watching, analyzing." Gooseflesh rises on her arms at the thought. His eyes were shielded, but she imagines them well enough in her nightmares. "And I could not move, as if I was trying to mirror him. I thought then that there was nothing I could do. That this battle was not meant for me. But the next, surely the next, I would join my siblings in battle."
"The next battle, Krios rode down to the battlefield with thousands of meteors. The next, Koios rained entire icebergs from above. Again, I remained frozen, watching as Hyperion did. And still, I thought that the time would come, when I would be forced to act, when I would be needed and I would answer the call." She's not aware of when her hands started shaking, but Percy grabs them to stabilize them. "But after Iapetus rode in on Kampê and after Atlas shifted the tectonic plates with a single punch, that surety lessened. And then years went by, and the battles never ended and I realized that there would be no call to action for me. That the sickness that prevented me from lifting my spear would never be cured. Whether we won or lost, the outcome was never predicated on me. So, I left."
"Left?" He asks softly, rubbing circles with his thumbs. "Just like that?"
"It was no big thing." Hera answers. "I think my brothers and sisters were almost glad to see me go. It was one less thing to worry about."
"And the myths?" Percy questions. "The stories that say you were all there?"
"Propaganda." She says tonelessly. "It was decided that the new Queen of Olympus could not be chronicled by our subjects as someone so weak." She smiles cynically. "History is written by the victors, my dear." Hera faces him fully, bearing every single inch of her humiliation on her expression. "So you see, I am nothing but a coward who throws knives from the dark, and I feel that shame every time this story is told with the young goddess Hera fighting valiantly, shoulder to shoulder with her siblings. You are only here because my husband got lucky one day, so please, direct your thanks to Tyche."
Percy is silent for ages, his eyebrows knit together firmly. "I think…" He says finally. "I think there are worse things to be than a coward."
"Then you are not Greek." Hera says. "But I am not surprised to hear you try to minimize my sins." She looks at him with a tenderness that she did not believe was within her. "Such is your nature, for better or for worse."
"Well, look at it this way." And his eyes sparkle in the way they do when he's about to say something wonderfully sweet and unquestionably stupid. "You've got a second chance! You can fight them this time!"
"I'm not so sure about that." She murmurs. "Somehow, I feel as if I have less to fight for now."
Percy grimaced. "Well, that's not what I wanted to hear."
"That's what you get when you try to spin an entire war into a positive." She snarks back at him.
"Fine. Be all doom and gloom, it's my favorite face on you." He rolls his eyes before suddenly becoming serious. "Thanks for telling me that, though. Seriously. And thank you for trusting me. I know it wasn't easy."
"I don't even know why I did." She whispers, embarrassment suddenly slapping her in the face.
"Because you like me, duh." He flashes a grin and waggles his eyebrows. "And because my striking personality makes you feel so at ease that you just can't help but spill all your deepest, darkest secrets."
"I don't like you, I hate you and I will make sure you live out the rest of your days as a guinea pig if you keep overestimating your importance." That thought secretly thrills her. While he was much more handsome in this form, nothing could compare to how precious he looked as a five inch ball of fur.
"Yeah, yeah." He opens and closes his hand repeatedly, and if she isn't actually tempted to make her threats reality. "Now, are we gonna make out or what?"
Hera rolls her eyes at his impatience. "Oh, fine."
She really, truly hopes he survives this damn quest. And if he somehow manages to trip and consume an Apple of Immortality along the way?
Well, Hera's always made it a point not to kiss and tell.