Work Text:
It is a crime, to be born whole.
It is a curse.
She does not remember her childhood. There is nothing to remember, though, which is the trick of it.
(Or, that is what she tells herself.)
***
Here is the truth that no one wants to face: there is never an end to suffering.
***
She sprang from his head, cloaked in ichor, a spear rising from brain matter, pain screaming across her body as her flesh touched air for the first time. She rose to her feet, and then straightened more, her shoulders rolling back, her eyes catching on the faintly murmuring crowd.
She sucked in one breath, one moment of measurement, before she dropped to her knees, far too wary of him to be worried about the way pain slithered through her.
"Father," she intoned, refusing to let her limbs shake as they grew accustomed to space, as her fingers flexed in empty air, as she felt her lungs and ribs expand into her true shape.
Zeus let out a noise of disbelief, a noise, which she would learn, of disappointment.
"Ah," he said, uncaring of the way his skin was split, of his bloodied face. "Another… child."
She dipped her head lower, his tone prickling across her sensitive skin, watching as someone moved beside her, before a hand reached out and wrenched her head up. She swallowed back her scream, biting her through her tongue, as Hera tightened her grip and tsked, her eyes dark with malice.
"Metis' whelp," she said scornfully, her perfect lips twitching into a snarl, before it smoothed out into nothing. "I see." She dropped her hand, wiping her hand on a towel a nymph had brought as though she had been contaminated, and hissed. "Get out."
Athena rose, her hand tightening against the spear, even as her skin shrieked at the action, the pain grounding her in, before she dipped her head and left, unsure of where she even was.
***
Here is a truth that nobody wants: children born from swallowed mothers do not make good ones.
*
Here is a truth that he will not hear: killing the mortal tether does not oblige the child to trust you.
***
When one is born from the head, it is assumed that they are strong-minded, logical, practical. It is assumed that they will understand the how's and the why's and that they will ask pertinent questions, but that they will not have a problem with the answers.
They are sensible.
They are not trouble, or a pain, or an issue. They are just, and they are smart, and they are thankful - so thankful - for their gift of life, that they cannot even comprehend an idea of going against their father.
***
Here is a truth that nobody heard: people who are born from pain do not make decisions sensibly.
***
She walked Olympus once, with her eyes closed, and then once again with them opened, as her senses adjusted. She felt a breeze for the first time, was confused at the tug against her stinging skin, and took a deep breath for the first time in her life.
She felt her feet burn against the grass as she walked, blinked against the inconcievable brightness of the sky, even as inky darkness spread before her.
She walked and walked and walked and walked because she had nowhere else to go. She had nowhere else to be.
She was no one.
And that was fine with her.
***
She tripped over herself, eons of running herself ragged, of feeling the flush of pain.
She held herself to a standard none could meet, one she flung herself after, heedless of the fact that she was in control. She spiraled through arguments, backed herself into corners.
She contorted herself to become a paragon of godliness, snapping at any who questioned her, letting herself sink into hurting those who kept her, even as they (even as she) did not understand.
She learned their words. She followed their steps.
Still, she hurt.
***
She watched as their halcyon days passed, as laughter, incessant meaningless platitudes spilling from her clenched teeth as she looked for purpose. She needled at the gods, hiding her fear and confusion behind her desire to know, twisting herself into their expectations as she began to grow.
She turned, spinning slowly on an ever-raising pillar as she began to correct her siblings, her uncles, her aunts. A quiet word there, a shorter whisper elsewhere, as she began to tug at the strings that covered the whole mount.
There was nothing to be done as a god. Just mindless appeasement for her father, endless flattery for Hera.
Her cracks began to show the longer she clung, splinters chipping from her under the unyielding weight of godlihood. Her wisdom began to falter, her brilliance slipping, her patience coming to an end, as her questions uncovered nothing, as her seeking overturned emptiness.
What was the point she wondered.
***
Give a man a fish, and he’ll learn nothing. Teach a man to fish and he'll feed himself for life.
Such is the way of the mind.
Give a mind idleness and it will become complacent, weak.
Worse than that; give a sharp mind, a brilliant, wise mind, nothing, and she'll spin herself into the worst outcome.
***
Here is a truth that nobody likes: brilliance is brilliance, even when it's cruel.
***
She began her rebellion, her tiny minute revolt - whispering in the ears of a mortal.
Desecration, she murmured as they slept at night. Destruction, an arrow in the night, swifter than the wind.
She watched, her interest in them hidden behind sharp barbed words, as they rose, their mind fixed on their task, an unwieldy sword in hand, as they strode into the closest temple to them and proceed to attack.
She watched, a smile of satisfaction playing about the corners of her mouth, as blood wet the blade and bodies fell to the floor, a thrum of deep contentedness rising within as she watched pain be meted out onto the world.
She watched, as her mortal fell to another's blade, the abrupt disappearance of them a faint tug against her senses, before she rose from her seat, thick tendrils of madness wrapping themselves even more tightly around her, as she strode across the marbled floor.
***
The sharpness of pain is one that humanity is eternally familiar with. With each turn of the earth, so too does the suffering of the world grow.
Babies suck in their first breath and use it to wail, children scrape their skin against the hard concrete, teens feel the sting of rejection, adults taste disappointment that lays thick across the globe.
With all of the sheer pain in the world, with all of the misery, and all the worry, and all the fear, people still press onwards.
***
Here is a secret that everyone wants: you are strong on your own.
***
Here is the secret which Athena lived: say anything with enough force, and it will be deemed wise.
***
She did not scream.
Not as she was born from the flesh prison of her father, not as the stray arrows pierced her skin, not as she stared out across battlefields and watched her chosen few die.
She would not give a voice to pain. She would not lend it any power.
It had enough.
It had taken enough.
***
Hear me, Goddess of Wisdom, and grace me with-
-but oh, Athena, most revered of the Parthenon-
-I lay down this sheep for you, O' Wise One!
And with your blessing, I shall-
-I have stripped myself bare for you-
I hear and obey, Wisest of the Goddesses-
-one chicken will be killed in your honor-
-this is not a prayer, this is a demand-
Gray-eyed One, lay your blessing down upon-
-I am your most humble-
-I will mete out the justice I see fit-
-by your grace, Lady Athena, it will be done!
***
She eyed the flames, the clamor rising in her mind as more and more prayed to her. None had ever taught her how to push it out to the back of her consciousness, and so she had suffered through eons of murmuring, a rushing river of thoughts not her own that she could drown in.
None ever thought to teach her much.
Give a god the thread of wisdom, and suddenly they will have all the answers, no matter their truth.
***
"I do not believe that to be true," she said idly, her words casual as she spun a silvered knife between her hands, its piercing tip embedded into her palm, golden ichor pooling slowly. "If you would care to make a wager, I believe that I will beat the odds handily."
Hermes eyed her steadily for a moment, before huffing and slouching back. "I hate playing war games with you," he muttered. "If I didn't know how much you respected the laws of the land, I'd suspect you of cheating."
She arched a brow, her knife never faltering as it carved a deeper line into her hand. "I do love rules," she murmured, smiling as Poseidon glowered at her, his eyes stormy with muted rage still festering from the Athens debacle years before. "But even if I didn't, the trick of things is that I am always right."
"I don't think that's right," Hermes said sourly, missing how her eyes flashed in response, as he peered down into the world, watching armies collide in a writhing mass. "I think it's just luck."
***
She hated the darkness - the whole of it. But not the darkness of the world, the darkness of night.
No, she hated darkness. The darkness that suffocated, that forced itself upon one, that drowned one with its thick opaqueness.
She hated how in the beginning, she would startle awake, her chest heaving, her heart pounding, her eyes slowly peeling back in case she was trapped inside another dream, another fantasy.
No one asked why in the beginning she could not stand to sleep. No one asked why she could not take naps in the sun, or by the stream, or on a cloud.
No one cared.
As she swallowed down the gasping mouthfuls of fresh air, so fast she often choked, she luxuriated in the way it was not tinged with the taste of sinew, of muscle, of blood.
Still, though, she reassured herself, she had no childhood.
She had been born whole, with no waiting period of an eternity trapped in the mind -
She had been born whole. There was nothing more to it.
***
She had her favored few, her chosen soldiers, her paragons of virtue, her beloved ones.
And then, she had her favorites.
***
She kept herself coiled up, a snake in a woman's body, an owl on the hunt, fierceness constrained to an earthly body. She kept to herself, refusing to be friends with any of the gods on the Parthenon.
However.
***
There is justice, in bloodshed. There is justice, in balance. There is justice, in chaos. There is justice, in revenge.
***
However.
She was not the only dangerous thing that prowled the halls of Olympus.
She was not the only woman constrained to ideals chosen for her.
She was not the only one, used by Zeus as he played favorites with the world.
***
She met Eris' eyes, twisting her face into a scowl of disapproval as the minor goddess bowed before them.
She watched as Nike dipped into a curtsey, her face set into a neutral mask.
She swept an arm out, cutting through Nemesis' words and silencing her with an arched brow.
***
When justice is only met through a knife in the back of a victorious leader, when chaos is needed to bind the world together, when wars are built on nothing more than revenge, when the world burns and burns and burns.
Athena rises.
***
Here is a truth everyone fears: the battle isn't over until everyone is dead.
***
She pieced herself together, one jagged fragment at a time, as familiar pain bloomed under her skin time and time again.
She woke monsters in men, rattled chaos from her cage, and gathered herself into a woman of dignity, a woman of respect.
And yet, as she strode through the halls of power, as she became more and more valuable, the pain which had borne her into the world continued.
***
She was a goddess of brilliance, a goddess of battle, a goddess of justice.
No one asked just what war she was fighting.
***
As she heard the whispers of prayers of the fighters, of the women who were forced to become soldiers when war was waged on their bodies, of the people who were forced to lie for their safety, of the damned who wanted justice to be done, of the students who wept as their knowledge burned before them, she did not falter.
She heard the damage they wanted, the unsaid desire for power.
She heard.
She answered.
***
Here is a truth that has always been true: absolute power corrupts, absolutely.
***
Athena walked the vaunted halls of Olympus, with no flashy powers, no towering weapons.
She walked as the people who prayed to her walked; with danger as her shadow.
***
There is power in pain.
There is power in knowing.
And give someone a childhood of darkness, a childhood of smothering -
They will not be whole.
There is power in that.
***
The battlefield drifted below the gods, their murmuring voices background noise as she studied the bloodied ground.
"So?" Hermes said, jostling her shoulder roughly.
Athena turned to look at him, her skin screaming with pain still, a few days from her emergence, and let her lips curl into a smirk. "The ones from the land with caves will win," she said smoothly, as he snorted at her words.
"Sure, they will," he said, rolling his eyes.
She shrugged her shoulders, turning back to look at the ground. "They want it badly enough," she said. "And by now, they know what they must do to win."