“He fucks everything he can touch! What realm its from matters not! Willing or no, it matters not! And then he brings home his little bastards and he expects me to just accept them! I will never…”
“And when have you ever? Which of my bastards did you ever accept? They must hide or die before adulthood. You will kill an infant in his bed, you crazy sow!”
“Gladly, a thousand times over, and if it bothers you, stop impregnating other women! I don’t kill them because they are bastards. I kill them because you are a bastard!...”
Dr. Emily Lieberman started to wonder if perhaps the Christians were right about the existence of hell...Hearing Zeus and Hera bicker back and forth certainly felt like torture and it seemed to be eternal, even though they came in not even fifteen minutes before. It seemed as if Gods were held to a much different standard than humans, with talk of rape and the murdering of babies eclipsing all of the infidelity in the world as far as Emily was concerned. Hera certainly would’ve disagreed with her there, that much was evident. All Emily knew for sure was that Hera and Zeus should’ve split up long ago but she knew it was best not to say that. Let them go to that therapist on television for such truth. Emily was just trying to put a bandage on the bullet wound that was this marriage long enough to get them all through Ragnarok.
“...a fucking swan, Zeus! That’s pathological!”
“Oh, come now, Hera! Are you reading self help books from amazon again? What do you know about ‘pathological’ behavior?”
“I know what it is when I see it and that...I mean, what other word could I use? I was so disgusted by you for doing that, I couldn’t even go after the human you raped or the bastards she bore!”
“I suppose it had nothing to do with the fact that one of those particular bastards was Helen and you heard a prophecy about how that would end and you simply thought that would be more fun?”
“You son of a bitch!”
Emily feared if she let this go on much longer, the two might start a war of their own right there in her office so she asked, “What was your first affair, Zeus?”
He started laughing. When he finally answered, the answer surprised her. “Hera was my first affair. Apparently, so long as she was the one I was screwing around with, the one getting pregnant with my bastard behind my wife’s back, all was well. It was when she became the wife that suddenly the man I am became a problem for her. Isn’t that right, sweetheart?”
Hera looked at her husband with a darkness that made Emily think of all those innocent women and children she went after because of her husband’s actions. If she ever turned that venom toward him...Emily felt certain he would discover very quickly that he did not have as much power as she let him believe their entire marriage. There was something raw there, something potent. It was the kind of force that could create universes...or tear them apart. As interesting as it would be to watch her take him down, Emily knew it was her job to keep all of the Gods from destroying one another for the time being…
“I hate you!” Hera said in a way that made Emily and Zeus each believe she meant it. But that was no surprise to him. He had known she hated him for thousands of years.
“Yes, you do. But you’ll never do a thing about it. We’ll go home and you will go to your side of our large mansion while I go to mine. We’ll see each other again at the meeting in three days and after that?” He shrugged. “Who knows. Who cares. But you’ll stay. Just as you always have, you’ll stay.”
As if she were intent upon ignoring her husband, she turned her attention instead to Emily. She was really a remarkable beauty and the fire that hate seemed to light in her eyes only made them more mesmerizing as she explained, “When he tried to court me, I would have none of it. I knew what sort of creep he was. All of Olympus heard stories of his inability to lay with just one woman. We also knew what he did to Metis. She may not have been a friend of mine but she did love him completely and he took that love and he twisted it until it was a rope that he put around her neck, so to speak. Once she had Athena, there was no need to kill her. What’s done was done. He did it so he would be all that Athena had, seeing that as his best chance to avoid being murdered at her hand. And then, when the girl was weeping so that her entire body was wracked by the sobs and she was begging to know where her mother was, I had to look at her and call her mad until she believed she never had a mother at all.” For the first time since they came in, Hera started crying. After the way Athena spoke, it shocked Emily to see this pain on Athena’s behalf. “I wanted to love that girl. My first child was a son, Aries, and I wanted a daughter so much. Athena was so loving and kind. Aries was never loving nor was he kind. I couldn’t have had a daughter that was better than Athena and I was not allowed to be her mother, to love her or to have her love.” Shaking her head against painful thoughts, she paused a moment to wipe her tears with the tissues Emily gave her.
“I digress. Athena aside, Metis aside, I did not want to be with him because Zeus, at the core of his very being, is a bad man. I knew that. I grew up with the son of a bitch, didn’t I? He is my brother. He may have been kind as a small child but the older he got, the more he acted like his bastard father. Power was all that he truly wanted and, as if to prove that point, he raped me the first time we laid together. He disguised himself as a bird to sneak into my room and then he raped me and he kept me by his side by telling me the rape was my own fault, shaming me if you will, until I believed him. When I discovered I was with child, I agreed to the marriage. I tried to console myself by telling myself I could raise Athena, who was a small baby at the time, and Aries together. They could’ve been great allies. Instead they were raised as rivals. The only one among us allowed to get near Athena and show her love was Hecate…” Turning her attention back to her husband, she declared, “I nearly forgot...what do you plan to do about her? I told you long ago, if you wanted to weave all of these lies and cruel intentions around Olympus, you should’ve killed Hecate. I truly cannot believe she has allowed you to get by with it all for so long. But she means what she says about taking control of her crown once more. I know how much you love power so for our sake, you must subdue her.”
It was clear to Emily that this conversation was not really meant for her but she was damn sure going to listen to it. Her heart was thudding with the anticipation of what he would say next. “Are you really so stupid that you think I let her live knowing full well that I was only borrowing the power of control over heaven? There is no one I love so much that I would risk that! She is alive because I do not have the power to kill her. I couldn’t even subdue her. If all of the Gods in Olympus joined with me, and in truth very few would, I do not know that I could harm Hecate then. If she means to take her power, and I know she does, there will be a new queen of Olympus, my dear. But fear not. I’m sure she’ll let us keep the house and your fine things.”
Something flashed across Hera’s face that was not anger. In fact, Emily could’ve sworn it was relief. She had a wild thought then. What if Hera took sides with her aunt? What if all of the women Zeus wronged in Olympus stood against him at last? Would he still be so smug, so cocky? He reeked havoc in the lives of women. He raped and he pillaged and he did what he wanted to whomever he wanted. But what if the tables soon turned against the king of the Gods…?
At the end of the hour, Emily asked Hera if she was interested in having a session by herself. With a brilliant smile, Hera accepted the invitation. Emily was confident that the wheels started to turn in Hera’s head during that first session and she was certain that, if she brought her in every week, she could really make sure that Hera was capable of standing on her own two feet and standing against her abusive husband when the time came. Emily never dreamed she would find a victim of sexual, verbal, mental...and who knows what else?...abuse while treating the Gods, a classic case, really. But if there was one thing she knew, it was how to help a woman prepare herself to leave her abuser. And she was proud that she could do it for the Queen of Heaven.
Moral of the Story? How you get ‘em is how you’ll lose ‘em.
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