Day One Thousand And Nine

Dear Diary,

Yeah, I'm really torn when it comes to Aphrodite. Mixed emotions and shit. Probably need talk that out with the fam at some point, but for right now, all I can do is sit here pondering my orbs.

On the one hand, my first couple interactions with her wound up being kinda confrontational. First in the Phileo Council chambers, where I managed to scare her off, but she clearly tried to influence everybody with her Divine seduction woo. Then again, I'm pretty sure when it's that core to a Deity's Domain, it ought to count as mojo rather than woo.

For those keeping score at home, 'mojo' is cool, 'woo' isn't. Which makes me think that my problem with Aphrodite isn't her Domain. Really hope not, anyhow, because I'm a kind of angry parallel to her, almost like... Whoa, I was about to say 'her and Ares had a baby', then I remembered that here and now Zeus married her off to Ares. Okay, I'm pretty sure I remember the myths back in the day saying that Zeus gave her to Hephaestus in exchange for H man crafting his thunderbolts. Then she just banged Ares and begat a couple really awful kids; Fear and Discord, if I remember right. Just to be clear, I might be wrong, that part of the book always pissed me off for no good goddamned reason.

Okay, weird, I think it might have been her running around behind Hephaestus' back. Like, if they were doing the poly thing, or even some kind of ethical non monogamy, I might have felt different. Okay, that idea does not fill me with the same kind of loathing that still fills me at the thought of actually cheating on somebody. Which is only weird until I remember that first conversation with Saffron and Marie. Cheating is breaking the rules, and I am fully on board with the only rules that matter in a relationship are the ones that the folks in the relationship agree to.

But here and now Hephaestus doesn't exist. The closest her and now has is Vulcan, and while I'm pretty sure his Domain covers volcanos, it's more as that his Domain covers 'everything that pops up and ruins everything around it without any fuckin' counterplay at all' rather than volcanos being like, the ultimate place to forge stuff. Sauron might have been evil, but he knew his ring crafting. Okay, I don't know one way or the other whether 'live volcano' is a good place to do smithing work, whether black, white, gold, silver, divine, or arcane, but it definitely passes the Vibe Check, y'know? 

At any rate, that all means here and now Aphrodite is married to Ares, and given my core competency at shit wrecking is pretty chaotic, and I am also a Goddess of Passion and Ecstasy, not to mention part of a Pantheon of fuckin' Terror, I think if I wound up following them home after an outing they might not be able to tell me apart from their own kids.

Of course, I think it's a bit telling that Aphrodite and Domnu are in a fuckin' race to the bottom when it comes to which I'd rather have as a mom. I mean, my answer would obviously be 'Sigyn', although that's no slight on my own mom from back in the day. If I could snap my fingers and bring her here, I sure as fuck would.

Yeah, I kinda feel bad for Phobos and Deimos, not to mention wondering if Eros even exists here, or got replaced with some kind of got of... Yah, no, just threw up in my mouth a little bit. Wait, Phobos and Deimos, Panic and Dread, if I remember right. Discord was Eris, the bitch with the apple.

Anyway, as noted my first couple interactions with her did not go well for her, and honestly I had no notes regarding any of them. Seriously, I think the best thing I could say about her then was 'didn't actively kill her High Priestess', which means the bar was pretty low. Then I had those couple convos with her via Alexandra, wherein she didn't really impress me, but seemed almost like she, I dunno, felt some kinda way about something.

Which, to be fair, she's married to Ares. Back in the day his myths painted him as maybe less of a sack of shit than he is here and now, but then he's had three thousand years to entrench his entitlement. I can't even imagine what it would be like to be married to a dude like that. I can't really tell if being handed to him like some kind of prize for winning the Biggest Asshole contest would make that better or worse, what with being handed off like property being awful, but at least would come with knowing I hadn't chosen Bronze Age Roid Rage as my life partner. The fact that all of those standard methods of dealing with an awful arranged marriage, like 'feeding them rat poison', 'giving them a brain piercing at fuck o'clock', and 'outliving them naturally' aren't options for a Deity here and now would just make that suck eternal.

Yeah, now that I think about things from her perspective, I can't really judge her on the fact that she seemed to be a very cultured kind of addict. I mean, I can judge her on how she went about feeding that addiction, because how she did was skeevy as fuck at best and outright horrifying at worst, but needing something to kill the pain...

Shit, that was my whole fuckin' life back in the day.

At any rate, sundown yesterday, after a day of chatting with the fam about Co-Locating, Acts of Service as a Love Language, and maybe being a better partner and mom, Karen showed up to let me know that Aphrodite had shown up aboard the Questing Tentacle.

I turned to Saffron, who just nodded to Karen and said, "Go, love. We'll take care of the children."

"Thanks, Kitten." I gave her quick squeeze and a kiss, did the same for Siobhan, then again once each for Sigyn and Loki, only minus the kiss, then stepped over to Karen. "Didn't we have Alexandra sorta locked up?"

She shook her head as she reached out to take my hand. I slipped my uniform on as our fingers intertwined, and she stepped me to the foredeck of the Questing Tentacle as she murmured, "she's here in person, Goddess."

That gave me the tiniest pause, but then I'd scared the crap out of her back before I'd begun advertising my Mimic identity to everyone with eyes to see and ears to hear. During that pause, I took a look around, then up. So many fuckin' stars to see without even Phileo or New Amsterdam's mild pre-electric light pollution. Then again, Franklin had started Domnu's fall with his streetlamps, and I'm pretty sure I'd seen a couple of those in New Amsterdam. "How far out are we?"

Karen shrugged, smiling a little. "Your High Clergy should probably attend the Naval Academy, at least enough to navigate by the stars."

"Did you just call yourself out? Also why?"

She chuckled as she led me down to the main deck, then back toward the big cabin in the stern. "The Imperator seems intent on using your High Clergy as her Captains of choice for the Alliance's warships. The Tentacles, at any rate."

"You guys are the ones she can talk to directly." As we approached the rear, I pondered, "wait, shouldn't you be, like, flag officers then? Admirals and shit?"

Yeah, Karen had the good sense to look horrified by that. "Oh, Goddess no. I can just about parlay duBois' lessons on strategy and logistics into knowing how to run an army unit or maybe, sometimes, a ship. But sorting out more than one? I mostly have one of the Admirals tell me where to go, and let my first mate get us there."

"Wait... One of the Admirals? How many do we have now?"

She shrugged. "Technically? Three. Admiral Pesce, Admiral Swanson, and Admiral Crow."

At that point we'd reached the door to the stern cabin. "Okay. Before we go in, did she just show up aboard or something? Also, if you're not sure how far out we are, do you have any idea where we..." I paused, feeling something drifting through M-Space. "Wait... We're near the edge of my tentacles, aren't we?" Karen nodded. "When you said you came across her...?"

"She was sitting there on the water, like she was waiting for us."

I took a deep breath. "Right." I opened the door and stepped inside, Karen following along behind me. The woman in front of me both did and did not remind me of Alexandra. Where Alexandra had a kind of 'meth chic' skinny look when I last saw her, only without the inevitable concurrent hair and tooth loss, Aphrodite was, in a word, stacked. Voluptuous. Curvy as fuck. In a contest of who had more curves, she and Saffron would wind up neck and necking.

Yeah, being in the room with her that whole aura hit me just a little. Which did not make me as happy as it otherwise might, what with her husband sending his poorly trained fighting dogs to fuck with my people, ending in my very own Darling and her no-longer-a-bean getting stabbed. I might have let out a low growl without even thinking about it.

She flinched.

In that one flinch, I saw so much. So many aunties whose baby daddies got out, came home drunk, and took a swing when they couldn't get it up. So many who had to stay with somebody who hit them, hurt them, screamed at them, took out every injustice on the world on them, thereby perpetuating them.

I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, ever so gently let go of the inevitable urges, and let it out. When I opened my eyes, she sneered at me. "Are you not Deity enough to put me in my place, then?"

I shook my head. "Aphrodite... Shit, that name is long as shit. I'm gonna call you Venus. Fuck it, no, you mind V? I'm gonna call you V. Wait, no, that's Vyenemoinen's handle. Shit." I paused as she blinked at my torrent of verbal bullshit, and realized that where Alexandra's natural hair color was, like a lot of Dan, a kind of strawberry blonde, Aphrodite was rocking a full head of tight black curls, not unlike a maybe nappier version of Menace's. "Okay, look, I'm gonna call you Phro."

"You would disrespect one of the Twelve Olympians, wife of the God of War?"

I shrugged. "Yeah, look. You came to talk to me. You've been kind of a bitch, but lately you've seemed like you're trying to do better. So I'm willing to talk. If your hubby shows up? I won't kill him."

She snorted. "Of course you would not..."

I very carefully did not raise my hand or voice, but I cut her the fuck off. "Because after he sent his fuckin' Spartans to sneak in and stab my pregnant Concubine in the belly? I won't let him fuckin' die. I will feed him his own eyes and testicles, use his own cock as a rammer to force them down his throat, shove his own broken limbs up his ass as far as they'll go, then mineral bond everything in place and throw him in my son's Hole Spawn tank."

Yeah, while she'd blanched a little at my dispassionate description of the destructive desecration of her husband, especially when I started talking about feeding him his own wedding tackle, at the end of that whole quiet tirade, she surprised the fuck out of me with a single word.

"Please."

I blinked. "Please what?"

"Please, if he comes here, comes after me? Please."

"He abused you."

She nodded. "He does."

I sucked at my teeth. Karen?

Yes, Goddess? I realized right then that she'd stepped back out of the room about when Aphrodite's funk got thick. No shame in tactical retreat rather than becoming a liability.

Is the Temple's oubliette clear?

She paused a moment. The Spartan you captured is still there.

Fuck. I'd totally forgotten I'd stashed that asshole there. Uh, can you find a safe spot to stash him? Non-Lethal, we might still be able to get some useful info out of him.

I think the Imperator wanted him transferred to the Alliance Headquarters in any case.

Okay. Make it so. I'm gonna sit here with Phro until you're ready.

Let it be so. I felt her step away and turned back to Aphrodite. "Okay. You seem almost like you're looking for asylum."

She shuddered, but nodded. "I... I..." She sounded almost like she was gagging, but forced out, "I cannot say."

When those words slipped out of her, something in me got just a little less controlled. "Yeah. Okay. Which means it might be a lie, and you're here to fuck with me and my people, or you might be under some kind of mind controlled sleeper agent and shit, or you're just a little bitch who refuses to commit to anything." She opened her mouth, and I held up a hand. "I do not have the energy to sort out which right now."

She slumped. "I understand."

"But..." She perked up. "Your husband abuses you." She nodded. "You want safe passage to Atlantis." She nodded again. "Want it bad enough to take my hand and step to the other side with me?"

She stood, her hand half extended, like she'd forced herself to go that far. "Is this how I meet my end, then?"

I shrugged. "I dunno. If I find out you had something to do with that shit your hubby pulled? Maybe. But right now? I need to protect my people from you, and the easiest way to do that is on the other side." I held out my hand.

She lunged at me, grabbing my hand. "So be it."

I stepped us to M-Space, where tentacles writhed around us. She shuddered, and that fear tasted so, so sweet, but I held back. Her eyes went wide at that. "Okay, Phro. I'm gonna mark you. Hold you, so you can't do shit without my permission."

She slumped again. "Will you use me then?"

I took half a step back, honestly horrified. "Oh, fuck no!" She flinched like she'd been slapped. "I might play games like that with somebody who clearly wants to, but no, Consent is important. This... This is more like shackles. Only for Deities."

She head tilted a little. "You speak like you've done this before." I nodded. "Who?"

"Diana and Domnu."

She nodded. "That explains the Huntress' behavior."

"Oh, shit no. I let her go a while back. Same day I killed her. Same day I Revived her." Yeah, I wasn't super proud of myself, but I enjoyed how her emotions whipsawed at my description of what I'd done to Diana. Thoughts of Diana firmed up my resolve. "Okay, look, Phro. You let me do this, I'm gonna put you in time out for a bit, but you'll be safe from your asshole hubby. Otherwise I'm flinging you back to Europa."

She sighed, then closed her eyes. "Do it."

I slipped those hair thin tentacles through her ears, into her brain. She stiffened. I tasted... Something there. Something like fire and sweat and blood. It writhed around my tentacles. It hurt. I ignored it.

I've gotten pretty good at ignoring pain. Aphrodite still winced. She opened her eyes. "Is it done?"

I forced her eyes closed and open again. "Yeah. Now we wait."

"For?"

"For your room to be ready."

Time moves oddly in M-Space. We stared at each other for a moment, for a minute, for a month, until Karen thought. The oubliette is ready.

"Okay. Did you leave anything in the cabin? Aboard the ship?"

"No."

I stepped us both to the Temple, to the entrance to the oubliette. Cradling her gently with one of my tentacles, I lowered her into the cell beneath us. She looked up at Karen and I, then around her. "How long must I remain here?"

I shrugged. "Until I figure out a way to tell if you're safe or not."

She looked back up. "May I commune with my High Priestess?"

I thought about that, then shook my head at Karen's subtle head jerk. "She's really not in great shape."

Aphrodite sighed. "I thank you for caring for her."

"Yeah. Maybe when she's feeling better, the two of you can talk. Like people. But any visits like that are gonna be supervised."

She just nodded, then sat down on the bunk in the room. I realized right then that the room looked a lot like my old Academy cell, minus the altar and the armoire. "So be it. May I have food?"

I turned to Karen. "Make sure she doesn't starve, okay?"

"Let it be so."

I nodded to Aphrodite, said, "okay, I gotta get back," I checked the sun, "fuck, I gotta get to class. Let Karen know if you need anything desperately." Let me know if you're not sure about something, but for the moment she's as much guest as prisoner, okay?

As you say it, let it be so. If Karen felt some kinda way about being given power over a genuine Olympian Goddess, she didn't let it show.

Definitely weird running Cadets through their paces after imprisoning a Goddess who willingly let me do so. Not bad, just weird. But this is my life.