easy on me | p. jackson

prologue

hera, the goddess of family and childbirth, will never get to hold her own children. that was the tragic tale of olympus. mother to all, mom to none.

this was not by her own choice, of course. she would have loved to hold her children and really watched them grow. but that wasn't in the cards for her.

until april 14, 2007. the day that hera somehow (and totally by accident) cloned herself.

☀️

she isn't quite sure how it all happened, really. all she knows is that one moment, she was mourning the children she could have raised. and the next, she was holding a baby who looked just like her.

she knew she couldn't tell zeus— he'd pitch the poor baby girl off of olympus, as he liked to do for some odd reason.

contrary to popular belief, olympus wasn't full of fighting. it was only occasional, and it was usually the men who had such... altercations. so, it was quite normal for aphrodite to walk into hera's room.

she just so happened to have the worst timing possible.

"hera, you must hear this n— where did you get that baby from?"

"i.. made it."

"you made it? you made the baby?"

".. yes."

"i hadn't even noticed you were pregnant! oh, that's wonderful! when does zeus plan to pitch the baby—"

"it's not zeus' child, dite," hera sighed.

"hera, you scandalous woman!"

"no! i meant.. i quite literally.. created.. the baby."

".. out of thin air?"

"yes."

"well.. that's a predicament."

"yes, it is."

☀️

it turns out, aphrodite could be exceptionally smart at times. she told hera to hide the baby from zeus at all costs (especially after the little freak out moment of realizing hera had created a mortal baby, who would most definitely not survive being punted off the edge of olympus).

in the meantime, aphrodite took hera's baby around (whom hera had named.. hera, and aphrodite took to calling little hera), and got all the gods and goddesses present in olympus to give the girl some type of gift.

"ares," she called.

the man in questioned appeared.

"i need you to bless this baby."

".. bless the baby? i'm not blessing some random baby. where did you get that thing?"

"unimportant. bless it. give her some.. good fighting skills or something."

when he didn't do so immediately, she raised an eyebrow, and he quickly blessed the baby (which was really just transferring some power to her).

in the next two weeks, little hera had been given gifts from aphrodite, hera, ares, apollo (who had way to much fun playing with the baby and offered to take her on a ride on the sun.. hera called him crazy for offering such a thing), artemis (she'd stopped by very briefly and aphrodite cornered the poor woman), hermes (who was impossible to find), athena (who asked too many questions), hephaestus, and demeter.

the only olympians left were poseidon (who rarely ever visited because he and zeus fought so much), dionysus (he was at that camp for half-bloods), hades (for obvious reasons, he was in the underworld, and, in hera's words, my daughter will not be going to the underworld this early), and zeus (again, obvious reasons).