down the rabbit hole
ATHENA STOOD AMONGST THE CROWDS OF DRUNKEN TEENS, HER FACE MARRED WITH A FROWN AS SHE LOOKED FOR HER GIRLFRIEND. The blue and red lights of the cop cars disoriented her tipsy state and she groaned as she pushed her way through the crowd, her eyes glassy and an obvious giveaway of how much she'd had to drink.
"Care? Care, where are you?"
She got no answer, and though she was concerned about how pissed Caroline's mom was going to be at them all, she was in no state of panic about her girlfriend's whereabouts, far too drunk to care about anything but getting into her bed.
She grunts as she runs into somebody, and a head of white hair blurs through her vision. She frowns, twisting around to see the person that had run into her. "Hey, watch it!"
The person stops, turning to face her, and Athena's confusion deepens when she sees their angled features and inhuman eyes that flash gold before dimming into a pale blue. The person's hand comes up, and Athena flinches when it lands on her bare arm.
"Go home with Elena,"
"What? Who– who are you?"
The person shakes their head. "Elena is looking for you. Ride home with her."
Athena begins to argue, but she blinks tiredly and when she opens her eyes again, the stranger is gone. Huffing to herself, she turned around, only to find Elena standing before her with a tired and apologetic look in her eyes.
"Liz found Caroline first, but my parents are here. You want a ride?"
Athena nodded silently, and though it was still on her mind, she said nothing of the person from moments ago. For all she knew, she'd made it up. "Yeah. You can just drop me off at mine."
"Is your dad home?"
"He's in Washington right now. I told him I'd be with Caroline anyways,"
Elena nods, pulling Athena over to her parent's car by her hand. "He won't be mad at us if Liz calls him, will he?"
Athena smiled slightly at Miranda and Grayson, waving at the two as she and Elena piled in the backseat. The adults stayed outside for a moment, talking to the police officers, and Athena turned to look at Elena in the dim backseat of the car as the Gilbert girl put her seatbelt on. "No, he doesn't care. Plus he loves you and Caroline, so,"
Elena laughs slightly, leaning her head against the seat. Her gaze drifts slightly and she looks at the crowd of busted students all standing with varying levels of irritation and fear on their faces. "I wonder who snitched,"
"Probably some lame freshman," Athena snorts, earning another laugh from the Gilbert girl. "God, I'm so tired."
Elena hums in agreement as her parents get in the car, and they begin to drive off, an air of tension settling in amongst the four of them. Miranda suddenly sighs, turning around to face her daughter. "Elena, I told you that you weren't allowed to go to this party tonight and you did anyway. And you got your friends in trouble too, I mean, what could've happened if the police hadn't shown up? Did anybody's parents even know where it was? What if one of you had gotten hurt?"
"Mom,"
"And what about Athena? What if she got hurt and none of us could get a hold of Raphael?"
Athena grimaces, opening her brown eyes to give Miranda an apologetic look. "I'm sorry, Mrs. Gilbert. We all wanted to go to this party really bad,"
"No, no, you don't have to make excuses for her, Athena. She needs to learn her lesson,"
Elena rolls her eyes. "Mom, it's not that serious. Everything's fine, right? Nobody got hurt."
Miranda begins to argue with her daughter, but she twists in her seat frightfully when the car suddenly swerves. Her eyes widen at the sight of the deer standing on the bridge, and she reaches out for her husband as they turn dangerously across the pavement.
The wheels screech in Athena's ears and she hears Elena's screams as the metal of the bridge crumbles and gives way to the car plowing through it. Athena is thrown forward, her body slamming through the windshield as the car hits the water. The glass shatters around her and when the cold water hits her skin, all of her senses come back to her and she lets out a piercing scream that is suffocated by the water encasing her.
Pain shoots through her entire body and as she struggles, lodged in the shattered glass. A pain that feels like a thousand different pinpricks tears through her face and she opens her mouth to let out another chilling scream.
Her vision blacks out, spots dancing in the murky water as her eyes burn. She swipes her hands through the sudden splotches of red floating and she realizes belatedly that it's blood. Her blood.
Her vision begins to go black again and she reaches out, hoping for something or someone to help her. Her eyes close, and she struggles to reopen them, but as she does, she sees Elena's Converse kick through the water. Hope floods her burning lungs and pounding head, and as she reaches out for Elena's foot, hoping to grab the girl's attention so she can be drug to shore, she realizes that Elena is swimming away from her.
Fear follows the realization as her eyes fall shut once more. Athena wonders if Elena is going to save her, and she wonders why she listened to that stranger.
Athena blinks from the painful memory, her chest heaving with slightly panicked breaths. Her hand comes up, clutching at her scarred cheek as it aches and ebbs like it had that night in the water. Her eyes burn with tears, fueled by her fury, and she points an accusing finger at the person standing before her.
"It was you," Athena shakes her head, gritting her teeth. "You knew what was going to happen. You knew what would happen to me, and you still told me to do it."
"I'm sorry!" The white-haired Fate holds their hands up, grimacing at the rage radiating off the goddess. "I'm sorry, but it was the only way to break you from Zeus's control!"
"You don't understand," Athena shook her head, her voice a startling contrast to the brisk yell it had been moments before. She swallowed roughly, trying to bite back her tears. "I lost everything that night. I– I died, and it hurt. And coming back hurt even worse. I lost my friends, I lost my girlfriend, I,"
She stops, brows twitching into a frown as she takes a seat in an old wooden chair that creaks beneath her sudden weight. "I lost my father. After that, he stopped being my dad. He was never home, and he was just so distracted all the time. And I thought it was all my fault this whole time, because even after I found out about all this bullshit, it was still somehow my fault that my fate changed, and this whole time,"
She trails off, voice breaking. "This whole time it was you. And what was the point? I still ended up here, all by my own hand."
Future sighs apologetically, pity shining in their eyes. "I'm sorry, Athena. You may never truly understand the reasons behind my actions, but it was the only way. You were made for so much more than being Zeus's foot soldier, you weren't made to be a soldier in the first place. You were made to be a goddess, a lover, a fighter when necessary. You're a protector, and you keep those you love close to you, no matter what."
They take a seat across from Athena, eyes darting nervously to Ares who bows out and leaves them alone once he's sure Athena's anger won't get the best of her. The Fate places their hands on the table, looking into Athena's glistening brown eyes. "From the second Zeus told us about you, I knew you would be so much more. But my sisters follow Zeus blindly. I was the only one brave enough to question him, and I was ridiculed for it repeatedly. I tried to convince them all to change your fate, to make things better for you, but nobody listened. So, I took matters into my own hands."
Athena clenched her jaw, her anger slowly ebbing away as the Fate explained themselves. "So, that night at the party, the accident,"
"I came to Hermes with my plan, and he agreed to help me so long as he came along to protect you. Hestia had her safe haven on Earth– the cafe. It was a place for people like us to be normal, and it wouldn't raise any red flags if Hermes were to decide he wanted to go work with her. A lot of us have used the cafe as a way to break into humanity,"
Athena's face furrowed deeply. "The cafe isn't just a cafe? It's..." She stops, recalling all the times people had seemed like they didn't know what she was talking about when she mentioned it. "Humans can't see it, can they?"
Future shook their head. "I needed you to learn about your powers before Zeus told you and brainwashed you completely, so I told you to go with Elena. That car accident was going to happen no matter what you did. Elena would survive and her parents wouldn't. But when you got in that car, it changed your fate."
"My fate," Athena whispers, looking down at the floor of the old, empty building that Future was holed up in. "With loving the undead back to life comes strife, she will pay with a life."
"Yes! That is what Aphrodite told Zeus when he announced your birth! How did you know that?"
"He told me. My father, I mean," Athena quickly clarified, watching Future's brows furrow. "When Aphrodite told him of my fate, he tried to prevent Stefan and I from ever meeting. But we did anyways,"
Future nods, looking more sure than before. "The doppelgängers. Amara, Tatia, Katerina, and Elena. And of course, Silas and Stefan."
Athena frowns, tilting her head confusedly. "Stefan is a doppelgänger? Wait– there's more than just Katherine and Elena?"
"Zeus created them when he found out you'd have a soulmate. He went back thousands and thousands of years just to make these creatures, and once I found out, I tweaked Katerina's future just enough that he wouldn't notice. Because of Katerina's actions in 1864, Stefan became immortal, and that led him to you."
Athena shook her head slightly. "He came looking for Elena, though,"
"He was seeking out a part of his soul that Katerina had taken. Once he found you, though, he didn't need it. Nothing will ever compare to what you have given each other."
The goddess bites the inside of her cheek, Stefan's green eyes a vivid picture in her mind as she thinks of him. She lifted her gaze, meeting the Fate's hesitantly. "Is he okay?"
They smiled knowingly at her hesitant question. "He is lost without you. He's angry, and he's tired. To him, there is no point to his immortality unless he's spending it with you."
Athena dropped her head, resting her hands over her thumping heart as pain echoed through it. "What did my father do? Why did he do this to me?"
Future seemed to shiver with irritation. "My sister, she has always followed him without question. There is nothing he could do wrong in her eyes. He came to us, ordering us to take him back so he could 'fix' things. I refused, but my sister didn't," They bent their fingers in mocking quotes. "He went to a vampire, an Original. Promised him impossible things in return for Stefan's compulsion, which led to the inevitable argument between you two about Elena Gilbert's fate."
"Finn," Athena straightens her spine, narrowing her eyes at the Fate. "He went to Finn and made a deal with him to compel Stefan to protect Elena from Klaus so that Klaus would never become a hybrid."
"Precisely," Future nodded at Athena. "When you completed the ritual with Klaus and Bonnie, you weren't following Zeus's orders. He expected you to leave Stefan and Elena to be together as he tried before, he didn't expect you to go behind Stefan's back to have Elena killed."
"Look at me now, though. No matter how much I unintentionally changed my fate, I ended up in the palm of his hand," Athena scoffed at herself, shaking her head. "That's all I've done my entire life."
"That is all we've ever done. Zeus defeated the Titans and promised democracy, he promised peace for everyone, yet there is a war that the city is fighting against itself. And so long as you are doing his bidding, he will never stop."
Athena's gaze darted to the Fate's, and she blinked rapidly, all signs of sadness disappearing in turn for grim determination. "How do we stop him?"
Future grinned and leaned forward on the table. "I'm so glad you asked,"
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'I no longer feel Finn's compulsion. Whatever happened to me is gone, and it doesn't matter because I failed. I lost everything.
My humanity took me away from Athena, it led me to want to save Elena, and that tore Athena and me apart. Nothing is worth losing Athena, not even saving a life. I'd kill Elena today if it would bring Athena back to me.
I don't even know if she's alive, let alone where she's at. Would she even come back to me? And if she did, would she want to be with me again? I broke her trust. I broke her heart. I went behind her back, and I lied to her and Damon about my intentions. I let my empathy get in the way of my happiness.
Damon was right. I should've been stronger and resisted the compulsion, but I was so terrified of losing my humanity that I lost everything else instead. Now I'm alone, and all I feel is regret.
I know I can't go on like this much longer. The thought of forever haunted me until Athena came along and told me one day we could have peace, together. No eternity is worth it without her.
What do I have to do to get her back?
Or perhaps I should ask myself, what am I willing to do to get her back?
I already know the answer.
Anything.'
"You still have that thing?" Damon's voice came from behind him, and Stefan quickly closed his journal, letting it sit on the cheap hotel desk.
"Some of us like to keep a coherent recollection of our lives and the people in them,"
Damon faked a wince, rolling his eyes. "I prefer decades of blacked-out benders and bodies I don't remember,"
Stefan huffed, mirroring his brother's eye roll. "You're a true romantic, brother. Is it entirely possible that Katherine Pierce took away every bit of adoration and passion for life?"
Something bitter crossed Damon's face, but it was quickly drowned out by a glimmer of something Stefan would hesitate to say was in denial. "No, brother, she didn't manage to take it all. I just so happen to use it on select things and people."
"Like piling up a body count, and drinking your meals in the form of bourbon?"
"Sure," Damon smiled bitterly, clapping his hand down on Stefan's shoulder as the younger man stood up from the rickety chair. "But no matter what I do, I know it'd be almost impossible for me to screw things up as bad as you did."
Stefan sighed, his eyes falling shut as Damon chuckled to himself. No matter how much Damon taunted him, they both knew he was right.
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author's note; idk if I like this chapter.... but we sort of got an insight into how big of a rule future fate has played into Athena's life, and how important they will continue to be. I was gonna leave this chapter at the end of their conversation, but I figured I'd add in a little journal entry from stefan and have a little damon cameo bc the next few chapters will be focused entirely on Athena + Olympus before we get back to regularly scheduled chaos
originally published; 4.20.21.
edited: 12.5.23.
- liz