He's mortal still. Hera can feel it before she can even see him, as the two great golden doors are pushed open. She's not entirely sure how to feel about that, as there are so many possibilities of what could have happened.
Did he have an Apple and refused to use it for some insane reason? Did Ladon find him wanting? Did the dragon not follow her instructions, and he didn't even see Ladon?
These thoughts are put to a stop quickly as he comes into her view.
Percy looks fractured as he shuffles into the Hall behind Artemis, half-lidded eyes bleeding unsteadiness and altogether appearing completely incomplete. His knees buckle with every step he takes, and he has to steady himself on Zeus' bastard's shoulder to even keep a forward pace. This is worrying, tremendously so, but she cannot completely focus on his shambling stride, because her eyes refuse to leave the pure, blinding shock of white in his hair.
The Sky. He held The Sky, and whether it was for only a second or minutes (she damns herself for falling asleep at the worst time), it was an unabashed miracle that he was even breathing.
It seems all Percy Jackson was able to do was refuse to die.
He must feel worse than he looks, worse than he could ever display on his person. It is no wonder he looks like a walking corpse, as he should be being ferried to Elysium by Charon at this very moment.
Oh, gods. He looks awful and she feels awful looking at him. He should be laid up in bed for weeks, let alone standing. He needs a chair, a stool, anything to get him off his feet. She's about to conjure something for him when he makes eye contact with her, and she's suddenly uncomfortably aware that they are not alone.
Hera hates him for this, she hates him so much for stepping into her presence, life barely clinging to his body, and not being able to do anything about it.
She knows she shouldn't stare at him, not with the company they keep right now (or in any company, for that matter), but it would be nothing less than totally inappropriate to look at anything but him. She does her best to look angry, in case any other Olympian notices her gaze. This is extremely easy, as internally, she's fuming.
Her husband is speaking, but she cannot be bothered to listen because he's so small and weak and fragile and more than anything important. How dare he. How dare he be contained in this husk of tiny bones and useless organs, constantly casting a shadow over her that is so much bigger than how he appears. He's closer to a rat than she is to him. He's one life in the trillions she has seen in her lifetime, one speck of dust in the wind, one measly piece of nothingness, and still, he's important.
Damn him. He'd created something within her, something dark and vacuous, seething and hungry but never satiated. Even when his lips are on hers. Even when his hands are on her body. Even when his words are sailing throughout her mind. It's not enough, it will never be enough, and Hera hates him for that.
She hates how he's done this to her and hates even more how lovely he makes her feel. She hates how he didn't do any of this on purpose, hates how easy it was for him to pervert and twist her into him, hates how he'd breathed sweet, new life into her and hates how insistent he is on showing her how to live.
She hates him so much, so fully and completely in this moment, that Hera has absolutely no problem with voting for Percy Jackson to die when the time comes.
This was to be expected of her, and she would have done so no matter what. But Hera does not vote for Percy Jackson to die as to not arouse any suspicion. She does so because everything would be so much easier if he was gone. Everything would go back to normal and she would no longer have to feel this awful sense of responsibility towards this green-eyed mongrel.
She means this; she really does. It's not an overreaction and she's not overwhelmed by her emotions. She wants him dead. She wants him far, far away from her, someplace where she can never reach him, where he is forever out of her grasp and her temptation can fall into the abyss that it had originated from.
But the vote is tallied, and Percy Jackson is allowed to live. She knows that, for all the hatred that burns throughout her body, black and menacing like Ladon's flames, she will visit him again. Because she misses him when she's not with him, and she worries when he does something spectacularly stupid. She'll visit him because he makes her laugh, and because he doesn't mind if she laughs at him.
She'll visit him because she doesn't know how to stop anymore, and she hasn't for a very long time. He has attached himself to her, like a parasite, and injects her with sublime fantasies and ravenous, ripping want.
It would be easier if Percy Jackson were dead, but he is not, and so Hera must do what she has to do. And she does have to, now. It's not a choice, merely an inevitability.
He has, for all his good intentions, awakened something terrible within her. A monster in every sense of the word, one that feeds and feeds and feeds. A black hole implanted beneath her left breast, inching itself outward every day. It cannot be stopped, it cannot even be contained, so what's the use in trying?
No, Hera will march proudly on the road to Hell that Percy Jackson has paved for her.
There's no music playing.
She finds that worrying. Hera cannot recall a time where loud, caterwauling sounds did not echo throughout the wooden walls of Cabin 3. Percy has a massive black binder full of CD's that she'd seen during one of her many midnight vigils, watching over him from Olympus. The discs vary in genre, in tone and in intensity. A song for every single emotion he could possibly feel. But not one for right now.
Again, worrying.
He just sits there on his bed, staring at floorboards, unmoving and unfeeling. He needs comfort, a gentle touch and sweet words. He needs a soft smile and a warm hug. He needs empathy. He needs all the things Hera cannot give him.
She walks over to the bed and sits beside him. It takes all the strength she has not to say anything, to simply sit and accompany him, to not poke and prod him, looking for injuries. Instead, she simply grabs his hand.
There are calluses on the pads of his palm that she's sure were not there before, bulging, rippling skin that could only have been created from heaven itself trying to bury him into the earth. She shudders to think what his shoulders might look like.
"I think I'm done going on quests that aren't meant for me." He says suddenly, his eyes still directed at the floor.
"That would be for the best." Hera responds, silently rejoicing. If nothing else, he'd learned an important lesson in self-preservation from this experience.
"There was always danger," Percy whispers. "On quests, I mean. Always danger and monsters and sometimes gods." His hand curls into a fist around hers. "But there was never death."
She pauses at his words, thinking back to when he had walked into the Hall. Who had perished? Not the satyr, she had seen him, and not Athena's whelp. "The huntresses?" She asks after a moment.
"Bianca was so young." She's not sure if he's talking to her or if he even expects her to respond. "Older than me, but still, so young. And Zoë, she didn't deserve to go out like that."
Her tongue feels like sandpaper, locked to the roof of her mouth. Death. What could she say about death? She'd caused enough of it, but Hera could not say she was accustomed to its effects. "Yes, well," She bites her lip, unsure. "These things happen."
"What?" He turns to her sharply, eyes blazing and dilated.
It seems she'd said the wrong thing.
"Well, death," She struggles more and more, biting harder into her skin. "It's just- you know- it's a part of life and all that." She's trying, she really is, to tell him what he wants to hear. To think about what she would want him to say if the roles were reversed. "It- Um- It would have happened sooner or later."
"What the hell are you saying right now?" His eyes are red, and he's fully glowering at her in a way he never has before.
"I'm trying to help you, damn it!" Hera snaps back, squeezing his hand without thinking. "I don't- I don't have all of these… feelings that you do. The people around me don't die. It's- It's hard for me to- To understand."
"Really?" He says sarcastically. "Why's that? Not used to lowering yourself down to mingle with mortals?" He spits that word like a curse, as she has many times in the past.
"Do you expect me to go back on myself?" She snarls at his cheek. "No, I'm not used to being around mortals. You would understand that if you were in any sort of right state of mind."
"Okay, let me educate you, then." He snatches his hand back from her. "It feels bad when someone dies. It feels like shit. It feels not good. D'you understand that?"
"Mind your damn place." Hera growls. "Do not overstep your bounds."
But Percy Jackson does nothing but spit over well-drawn lines and barrel through millennia old walls. "I absolutely refuse to believe that you can claim ignorance on something like death." He continues. "How long have you lived? Long enough to see everyone in the world die a couple hundred-times over, right?"
"Long enough to learn how to ignore it." She meets his glare with one of her own, one that had caused billions to flee, but Percy only burns brighter.
"Why? Too pathetic to notice?"
"Too fragile to notice." Hera says. "Too stupid to live and too temporary to care about."
"Is that what you think about me?" Percy grits his teeth.
"I only wish I did." Hera answers truthfully. "Do not- Do not take this personally, Percy. You are- You are not like them."
"I'm exactly like them." He denies. "I am them. You think I'm special? I'm not. It could've just as easily been me instead of Bianca or Zoë!"
"I made sure that would not happen." She regrets the words as soon as they leave her mouth, because he knows. He knows exactly what she means, as he opens up his bedside table's drawer to reveal an Apple.
"You." He says as he holds it in front of her, nary a speck of skin removed. "This was you."
"Of course it was me." She snaps. "Did you think I would just let you die?"
"So you do understand death." He holds the Apple dangerously tight. "You do understand how it would feel if someone died, because you went through the most extreme methods to prevent it from happening to me."
"I understand nothing when it comes to you." She rebukes his ridiculous idea. "Why on earth have you not used it?"
"Because I don't need it." Hera cannot possibly hope to wrap her mind around what that could mean. "I tried to give it to Zoë, but she wouldn't take it."
The sound of breaking glass rings throughout her mind.
"You what?"
He rolls his eyes as if he has not just backhanded her across the face. "What is it now?"
She seethes, anger bubbling in her stomach. "Of all the stupid, idiotic, reprehensibly vapid things. Why would you do that?"
"Because she was dying and I wasn't." He angers her even more by acting like it's so simple. "Why wouldn't I?"
"Because they're not important!" She yells loudly, her voice ricocheting across the room.
"And I am?!" He bellows back.
"Yes!"
"Why?!"
"I DON'T KNOW!" Hera screams, full gusts of wind blowing throughout the cabin. "All I know about you is I know nothing! Only that you're important and no one else is!" She needs to stop talking. She needs to stop talking. But she can't. "I hate you, I hate you so much, but this need I have for you outweighs it! It's an ache, a longing, a yearning that tells me nothing! It laughs in my face and mocks me for daring to try to understand it! So, that- That is why you are important." She whispers. "Because you could never make me feel these things if you were not.
Percy stands still, shocked by the words that leave her mouth, but he cannot possibly be more shocked than her. How could she have said that? It didn't matter how true it was, it never should have been said aloud. Now, he knows. He knows just how far gone she is, just how inverted she has become. He knows how truly powerless she is before him.
She's gone too far. They've gone too far. Something has compromised her, some innate passion, and now he knows.
He knows, he knows, he knows.
"Hera, I-"
"I must go." She cuts him off before she can destroy herself even further. "You will not see me again."
And she is gone, leaving Percy, and their eternity together that he holds in his hand, behind.
She appears outside her chambers.
She thought him a fool. A bumbling hero who stumbled into her heart and would not leave. A grand joke from the Morai.
But she was the joke. And the punchline, too, after what she had just said.
She needs to sleep for centuries, to shut her eyes and let every last faint memory of Percy Jackson fade away forever. Yes, she thinks. That is exactly what she will do.
She steps towards the doors and-
"You're so strong!"
A girlish, sultry voice sounds from her chambers, and Hera's fury is renewed. She slams the doors open to find Zeus, naked but for a bedsheet, holding a barely clothed sea nymph above him with one hand.
"Ah." Zeus says as the nymph shrieks and leaps to the ground, fleeing outside the bedroom. "It would seem I am discovered."
"Is this a joke to you?!" She cannot do this right now. Every last bit of patience has been thoroughly claimed by Percy Jackson, and it will take her millennia to replenish it.
"A joke? No, no, my dear. Areti was just showing me this wonderful trick she can do with water bubbles." He frowns suddenly. "Areti? Or was it Achaia?"
See, now. See how he dismisses her. See how he blatantly lies to her face, naked in their bed with another woman. See how much their marriage means to him.
"I wish you were dead." She says softly. "I wish maggots would fill your eyes and your Ichor to be fed on by Hellhounds. I wish Porphyrion had separated your head from your neck and I wish father would have swallowed you whole."
"Oh, come now, Hera!" He does not even acknowledge the things she has said, because truly, she has said much worse with much more venom. She hates him, more than their father and mother and more than Percy Jackson, but all her hate is useless now. All her energy has been drained and all her initiative stolen. Had she not just severed a part of herself off, her fury would be all consuming. Olympus would tremble and the sky would fall. But a part of her is missing, and with that, her vengeance.
"We were just having a bit of fun, the Solstice left me terribly tense and Anastasia was kind enough to help relieve me." Zeus continues, before looking downcast. "Ah, but I forget myself. You simply do not understand."
"Understand what?" She asks with far more wrath than she thought herself capable of right now.
"That you are not like other gods." Zeus responds. "That you do not desire as we do."
"Desire?" Hera whispers to herself.
"Yes. I must say, at times, I find myself feeling sorry for you." Her husband has the gall to pity her now? "But it is just your nature. Chastity is woven so deeply into you, as desire is for the rest of us."
Might he be right? Might she be fighting against her nature, and the trouble she had caused herself was the result? Might it just be her role to stand by? To endure Zeus' unfaithfulness? To be the bigger person, untainted by desire and secure in her chastity, for the good of their marriage?
But Hera did desire and Hera did not want to be chaste. She had felt another's hands on her, heard sweeter words from his lips that have ever dropped from Zeus'. She had contained herself, her need and her want, as had Percy. But that did not mean it was not there and she had not buried it. No, far from it. Her craving was only skin-deep, barely caged and gnawing on the bars.
Hera thinks about Metis, Themis, Eurynome, Demeter, Mnemosyne, Leto, Maia, Selene, Io, Europa, Semele, Danaë, Leda and the sea nymph from only moments ago.
She can't go back to it. She can't, not after Percy had let her escape it so completely.
No, her choice was quite clear.
Hera smiles demurely. "I suppose you are correct, husband. Tis not my place to pass judgement on what I know nothing about. After all, what knowledge have I of desire?"
Zeus grins broadly. "I knew you'd see things my way eventually, my dear. It would be a crime against our mother if I were to deny myself of what I truly am, would it not?"
"Quite so, my husband." She bows her head in deference, an action that is as familiar as it is repulsive. "I must attend to my garden now."
She turns around and exits the chambers, stopping shortly down the hall.
What did she know of desire?
More than Zeus would ever know.
Hera appears back in the cabin, and Percy jumps up instantly. She can feel the Apple now, thrumming from the drawer in his nightstand. He's kept it, and that's enough for now.
Now, it was time to stop denying herself.
"Hey." He greets, looking troubled. "Look, about what happened-"
"Take off your clothes." She demands.
"What?" She has never seen him more confused, his eyebrows straining to jump off his face. "Hera, the things we said-"
"You're forgiven." She says as she starts undoing her dress. It would be much easier to simply vanish her garments, but if Percy remained so infatuated with mortals, then she would do as they do.
"I wasn't asking- Wait, hold up." He sounds as if his oxygen is being cut off with every inch of skin being revealed to him. "You just said I wasn't ever going to see you again."
"I lied." She says as her dress drops to the floor. "Or, I was telling the truth, but then it became a lie. It's all very confusing, the things that you do to me."
He stares openly, his jaw attempting to touch the floor, as she stands before him in her undergarments. "Hera, what the fuck?"
"That's the idea." She starts removing her bra. "Why are you still clothed?"
"Because- Because we can't just-!" He seems to be searching for every possible excuse he can use and finding them all wanting. "Are you for real?"
"I'm beginning to worry about your mental state." Her bra falls. "Did Atlas' burden affect your attraction to me?"
"No!" He shouts before coughing into his hand. "I mean, of course not, but if we do this…"
"Yes?" She slides her panties down her legs.
"…" She is left with the vague sounds of hacking coughs and unintelligible mumbles. Hera looks up to find Percy, his face redder than Ares' eyes, completely mesmerized by her. Unfortunately, his clothes are still on.
If you want something done…
"Hera, just-" Percy takes a deep breath as she walks toward him, and it's really rather flattering how hard he's trying to look her in the eyes, even if he's failing quite spectacularly. "We can do this, I want to do this, but- If we do, all those blurred lines are gonna become invisible. I just- Are you sure?
She gently grabs Percy's shirt, pulling it over his head. "Very." She answers. "Are you?"
But he's not looking her in the eyes anymore, and truthfully, it's hard to pinpoint where he's looking. "Yes." He says after a moment. "I'm sure."
The bed is slightly too hard and the sheets are too thin and it's altogether much too small, but she finds that she doesn't mind that much.
The company more than makes up for it.