Percy Jackson is a bastard.
Literally, of course, but he's inexplicably benevolent and altruistic to the mortals and satyrs and nymphs who don't matter and scornfully hostile to the important gods who do. He is exactly like Aeneas, Paris, Pelias or even the whoreson of her husband, who still prances around on his little island with his millennia-old lion pelt. It makes her ichor run hot as he shuffles into the Hall of the Gods with the Master Bolt thrumming in his hand and sand spilling out of his shoes onto the pristine marble, looking so undeniably pleased with himself that Hera feels bile rise in her throat.
They were supposed to be done with this. The age of heroes was supposed to be through. But here this sea-spawn walks in, wearing her brother's grin and with the undeniable afterglow of a battle won - against her own son no less - and he tells her that she is wrong with his very presence.
She hates Percy Jackson before he can even open his mouth, and it is the Morai's greatest joke (and failure, she thinks) that he is even allowed to exist.
Her husband calls the bolt back to him with an outstretched hand and makes a big show of himself. Pontificating in silence is a skill he's honed and sharpened since his birth, and normally Hera would sniff or frown or altogether make her displeasure known, but she cannot tear her eyes away from the green-eyed little mongrel who dares breathe in her presence.
This is wrong. He sullies the very ground he walks on. She'll have to overhaul the entire Hall now that he's entered and she has to fight the urge to scream. Her Hall had been perfect, every detail filed down to utter perfection and he has dragged sand onto the pristine throw rug that had been Tethys' wedding gift. Her Hall had been perfect, and now it is tainted.
She tries to convey this to Zeus. She stares at him so hard that Hera can see his skin start to burn. Her husband is too blind to notice, obviously. He's been reunited with his favorite toy, and he slaps her in the face by asking Percy Jackson to explain how he'd found the bolt. Her husband invites the beast to speak, and Hera mourns. All these years later, and he still finds ways to disappoint her.
His voice is unevenly pitched and boyishly unconfident, but Hera can see through him. He thinks he is humble, as he imprints upon the council that his tale is woven from two parts blind luck and one part divine intervention, but then why is he smiling? Does he know? Does he know he threatens not just a pantheon, but an entire world while he mispronounces Echidna and blushes at his mistake? Does he know that the mortals have written about beings like him, and they place him on a pale horse with a bow and a crown?
But no, she thinks. That would mean there was some spark of activity in the boy's brain and she knows there is nothing in there but vain dreams of glory and gold and women in his bed. He is not a man now but he is a man then, and if he wants to drag a new age of heroes into the world, then he will live as they did and he will most certainly die as one.
Sixty years ago, in the blink of an eye to her, there was a pact. And while she blinked it was shattered. First by her husband, not once but twice, and then by her brother. Her husband she had expected, and could even feel a sweet sense of pride at denying him of a woman for so long, but her brother? Her sweet, loyal, stubborn little brother? He had ruined them, utterly and completely, with the presence of his spawn on this world that she had tried so desperately to make perfect.
It is an apt punishment, she thinks dolefully as the boy recounts his battle with Ares, that the Morai would let this child be born. They had thought to bind Fate itself, wrap them in gilded chains that so closely resembled her own, if not in form than in function. Punished once by her husband's daughter, once again by his son, and then a thousand more in the form of this would-be-hero, dissenting from the sky like a murder of crows to pick the bones of the once great kingdom of Olympus.
And then he is finished with his tale, face flushed red from his speech and Hera wonders if he'd forgotten to breathe as he talked. If she squints, Hera can see him as he presents himself, as nothing more than a boy who'd ended up at the wrong place, at the wrong time, and had done his duty to his king and nothing more. That is the Morai's final punishment, she decides. That they would give him this visage instead of something more fitting for the terror he will undoubtedly inflict upon her lands.
It's a pity they decided to give him this soft face and green eyes, something undeniably pleasant to look at, instead of the hulking stature and sharp fangs of his half-brothers. A pity because she can almost forgive him for his transgressions if he was what he appeared to be, all messy hair and easy smiles, if he was not to be their death.
But he was. And that was that.
Her husband has, in one of his moments of mercy that he will no doubt regale her with later as an example of how just he can be, has decided to let the boy live. And furthermore, to not even put it to a vote. Zeus has decided the boy will live and it is another knife in her heart, in the same vein of all of his other cuts and nicks that have slowly bled her dry.
Poseidon stands then. "I would have a word with my son." He says, not asking his king, but telling. Another example of how inverted this world has become. There was a time when this king, this council and this kingdom meant something. It is not Percy Jackson that has caused this, she acknowledges, but he is a most fitting representation of what has.
Poseidon starts to lead his son out of the Hall, placing a hand around his shoulder. Zeus had been like that once with Ares, a steady hand and a strong voice of reason. Now they bellow and sulk and insult each other until they can no longer stand each other. Another mark against the boy, she decides.
Before they leave the Hall, the boy turns his head and looks back at the council. She sees his eyes flit across the semicircle, first to Hephaestus, tinkering with what very well might be a bomb or an equally insidious dinner plate. He eyes Dionysus next, exchanging frowns before the boy actually sticks his tongue out at the god.
She takes a mark off for that.
He passes over Demeter, Apollo and even Aphrodite easily before he hones in on her. He looks at her like she's some maiden, like Andromeda, and his eyes fill with such pity and sadness that she feels herself begin to ache. His eyes pass to Zeus and those green eyes that could've been plucked from emeralds harden into onyx, and he stares at her husband as if he's the Kraken itself.
He looks back at her, and she finds herself slightly breathless. He sees through it, through all the masks and faces and tripe that they surround themselves in. He looks through her - as if she's become transparent to him and is searching for something deeper. She finds herself strangely off balance, and the more he stares the more Hera wants to claw those pretty little eyes out.
She adds a dozen more marks. How dare he? How dare he think of Hera as anything more than a queen - his queen. He thinks to know her? To know her troubles and to know her strife? She invites him to take a second more, to look deeper before she leaves him a pile of ash on the floor. The floor needs to be redone anyway. But then he is gone and Poseidon with him.
Bastard, she thinks.
Yes. Percy Jackson would need to die, prophecy or not.
ah, enemies to lovers, my beloved. let me start off by saying that this will not be a healthy relationship. i would go as far to say that this will not even be a good relationship. there are all sorts of uncomfortable elements that come with your standard enemies to lovers that will be further compounded by the characters being a married goddess and a young demigod. there are age, power and altogether moral imbalances between the two. also, as I hope you've noticed, Hera is very much an unreliable narrator.
next: sea of monsters!