golden god
ATHENA DOESN'T WANT TO BE OUT OF BED RIGHT NOW. It's the last thing she wants to be doing but here she is, walking up Elena Gilbert's front porch steps, ringing her doorbell.
God, she doesn't want to do this.
Athena rolls her eyes and taps her foot impatiently, throwing her head back in sheer annoyance as footsteps come from the house, growing closer.
The door opens and she drops her head back down, her smile fake and passive-aggressive as she meets Elena's suddenly fear-filled eyes. "Hey, Elena. Up for an impromptu girls talk?" She shoves past Elena and heads towards the stairs, stopping halfway up when she realizes Elena isn't following after her.
"Hey," She jabs a finger towards the second floor of the house, her smile gone in place of a glare. "Upstairs, now."
Elena reluctantly follows after her, and Athena leads them into Elena's room with a frown. She hasn't been in Elena's bedroom since before the accident, and it's exactly the same, unlike everything else. It makes her uncomfortable, the memories that being in here bring back up.
"So obviously, you know," Athena shrugs and throws herself down on Elena's bed, the picture of nonchalance. "Questions, comments, concerns?"
"Are you one of them?" Elena asks, looking at the girl on her bed fearfully.
Athena scoffs. "No. I am obviously not a vampire, Elena. You think I would've just let myself drown in that accident if I was a vampire?"
Elena sits down on the opposite end of her bed and wrings her fingers nervously. "All those animal attacks, the people drained of blood–"
"Weren't Stefan," She cuts in. "He doesn't drink human blood, he drinks animal blood. He's a vegetarian vampire, just barely getting by strength-wise. Damon drinks human blood. All those tragic deaths were him."
Athena rolls her eyes and Elena eyes her incredulously. "How do you know? And– and why are you so okay with it?"
"I know because Damon told me. He trusts me, therefore he didn't kill me. You on the other hand," She tilts her hand back and forth, watching Elena's fear spike visibly. "As for why I'm so cool with it, I don't know. Maybe it's just another thing I'm better than you at."
Elena bites the inside of her cheek, holding back her instinctive snark with Athena, and her growing urge to cry, knowing that she would only be mocked for it. "So Damon was the one that killed all those people? Why?"
"He's gotta survive somehow."
"Why can't he feed off animals like Stefan?"
Athena shrugs. "He could. But it makes you weaker, which is dangerous for vampires. I mean, you can't live that long and not have some people out to get you. Or, just, general threats to existence."
Elena flinches as the reality sets in. "How– what– how long have they–"
"A while." That isn't her story to tell, and they both know it. Athena sits up and smirks at Elena's discomfort, practically radiating off the girl. "You know, I wonder how much like Katherine you really are."
Elena furrows her eyebrows. "His ex-girlfriend?"
"And your carbon copy. But I can't explain that, hopefully Stefan will. I just have this feeling that ruining people's lives runs in the family."
"Athena, I know we don't have a good past but this is crazy. Can't we put it behind us for now?"
Athena scoffs and sits up, throwing her legs over the side of Elena's bed. "Are you kidding? What happened between us can never be forgotten, I don't care if you're hosting the fucking pope in your house. You don't deserve to be forgiven in any aspect, seeing as you haven't apologized or tried to in the slightest."
Athena rounds the bed, coming to a stop before Elena, looking down her nose at the girl. "You are the one that ruined my life. And I did nothing to you. Sure I can be a bit of a bitch, but so is Caroline, and you're perfectly fine with her–"
"You made up with her, though! Things are fine now," Elena exclaims.
"No thanks to you! God, Elena, it's almost unbelievable how shitty you are,"
Athena rolled her eyes and stepped away from Elena, grabbing her doorknob. She looked over her shoulder, meeting Elena's eyes again. "I don't think I have to tell you not to tell anyone, but just in case– if anyone finds out about them, I won't have any problem sending Damon to tie up the loose end."
When she leaves the house, walking back to her car, she pulls her phone out and dials Stefan's number. Waiting for him to pick up, she can't help but laugh to herself, remembering how utterly terrified Elena had been. She had to find joy in the little things.
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"Why so down, Stefano?" Athena muses from her place in the hammock seat she's got hanging from her bedroom ceiling. She's softly swaying back and forth while she spoons vanilla frosting into her mouth, looking amusedly at the vampire that's sitting on the end of her bed.
"Elena thinks I'm a monster," He shakes his head, running a hand through his hair and shoving it in every which way.
Athena shrugs. "No, she doesn't. She's hurt that you lied, sure, but she'll be fine. She's just such a great gal like that," Her tone is mocking towards the end, and it's something Stefan can't hold back a smile at.
But his smile falls as he looks at the girl sitting so casually across from him as if he's not some creature that could kill her in the blink of an eye. As if he's not every fear-filled, vitriolic word Elena could come up with in her haste to get away from him. "I, uh, I know I let Damon out but I– I kept his daylight ring."
Athena's lips purse for a moment before she sits her tub of icing down on the window sill silently. She crosses her hands over her stomach, the jolting actions making the hammock sway a bit more. "Do you have some sort of personal goal to see how much you can annoy me?"
"Of course not– I just– he's got to realize that his actions have consequences."
"He's not a toddler, Stefan. And you're not his parent, you're his brother," She scoffs. "I get that he's not a standup guy all the time, but he's a vampire. What do you expect from him?"
"He shouldn't kill innocent people just to get back at me–"
"Then stop giving him reasons to get back at you!" She stands up quickly, with more grace than he thought possible. Her feet carry her straight to him, standing above him where he sits on the end of her bed.
Stefan cranes his neck to look at her, and he frowns when he sees the glare that overtakes her features. "Athena, a lot has happened between Damon and I. I don't know if we'll ever be able to forgive one another."
Athena sags, her anger deflating from her body visibly. Her shoulders go lax, and her face falls into a tired, pouty frown that he finds endearingly adorable for their current situation.
She crawls around him onto her bed, laying face down in the bed and smashing her face into the pillows.
Stefan can't help but chuckle at the muffled groan she lets out.
"It's not funny," She turns her head to the side, making the side of her face squish up.
"It's kind of funny,"
She groans again, this one louder as it echoes through the bedroom. "You guys are so dumb, I can't handle it sometimes. You stress me out. I'm going to have frown lines by the time I turn eighteen!"
Stefan laughs and shoves her thigh, only sort of jostling her. "I don't think that has anything to do with us, I just think you frown a lot."
"God, he's rude and he laughs at me when I'm distraught, I'm swooning." She rolls her eyes and flips around until she's face up again, looking up at her ceiling. "God has forsaken me with idiot vampires for friends."
Stefan shoves her leg again, earning a laugh when she sees the offended look on his face. "How am I the rude one?"
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Her father took her to see Swan Lake at the local theater when she was six. Since then, it's been her favorite piece of art in any form it's been recreated. The ballet, though, remains her favorite because of the story it tells.
Odette, the beautiful white swan, meets her handsome prince in the middle of the night, the only time that she's human. The prince thinks she's the most beautiful woman ever, and he simply can't fathom one not thinking the same of the swan princess. But sadly, Odette is cursed to live her days as an animal, and her nights are the only time she can be with her love.
As the story unveils, there is the sorcerer who has cursed Odette to live her days as a lonesome swan, crying her silver tears into the water she's doomed to float upon forever. When the sorcerer finds out that Odette has fallen in love with the prince, therefore ruining his chance of marrying his daughter Odile into the royal family, he curses Odette and the rest of the swans to dance upon the lake made of their tears shed for their lost souls.
The prince knows he has a duty to his kingdom and must marry a princess deemed fit to rule at his side, but he cannot fathom the thought of the position going to anyone but his Odette. Nonetheless, he does as told and charms the women attending his ball with one dance each as they try to sway the lovesick prince into the palms of their hands.
In a brief and weak moment of relief, the prince thinks that Odette has come to declare her love for him and dance in the sunlight with him before everyone. But the evil sorcerer has made his daughter, a black swan of his making, appear as the prince's lovely Odette.
In a moment of chaos, all is revealed and Odile's true identity is exposed. Betrayed, and horrified, the prince goes after Odette's upset form.
They appear in the woods they once met in, cornered by the sorcerer and Odile.
When the fight is said and done, Odile and the sorcerer, two black swans, drown in the lake they created with their dark magic, their souls trapped forever beneath the water. But Odette and her prince ascend into the heavens above, finally at peace together.
As it goes, the story ends in tragedy, but love prevails.
Athena loves the story, now more than ever, really, because she feels she is simultaneously Odile and Odette. A white swan in her brighter moments, yet a true black swan in her core. She likes to imagine herself as ethereal as Odette, wearing a crown and beckoning a lovesick man to her side. Loving her even in death.
Yet she knows she is doomed to live as Odile did at the end of the day. She is tainted with darkness, not even from her hand. Raised by a man who wanted more than he was due, and tainted his child's life with the outreach of his greed. In the end, Odile died with nothing and no one to love her, not even her father, and that is how Athena fears she will end up.
It is ironic, she supposes, that she thinks herself a twisted version of Odile. In the proper ballet, both Odile and Odette are played by the same girl. It's something of a poem to be both the lover and the fighter.
Everyone wishes they were some version of Odette, pretty and prim with someone who loves them and risks it all just to share a measly dance beneath the moonlight each night. Everyone laughs at Odile's undeserved plight, and how she was just a spoiled brat who felt entitled to more than she was deserving of.
When in reality, like the story, people are both Odette and Odile. They are the same, two sides of the same coin and cut from the same cloth. Odette is the mask of innocence atop the water with her pretty jewel crown and her piercing eyes, and Odile lies beneath the surface of that silver lake awaiting for her prey to follow the allure of Odette's beauty so she may sink her talons into every person that does so and drag them down to their drowning death just as she once suffered.
Odile strives for the perfection that she has put on as a mask, like Odette. The pretty face, the serene smile, all hiding the dark smirk and the evil eyes.
Athena likes to think she is Odette, tortured by her enemies on her quest for love in a cruel world. Just as Odette did, she drowned in that lake and ascended to her heaven, only this time, Odile was reborn in her place. With a vicious, evil heart that would take and take until it was satisfied.
Athena blinks from her thoughts, the calming melodies of the Swan Lake composure slowly fading from her CD player before another melody starts. Her eyes drift upwards to her mirror, and for a moment, she thinks she sees a fleck of molten gold trailing down her cheek like a tear. But she blinks, and it's gone. And she's left with the reflection of her mask, broken and scarred as it may be.
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Athena walks into the boarding house with an annoyed glare cemented on her face.
She'd been headed to the cafe, mostly to get a free scone from Josh, but also to get out of her empty house until something else came along to occupy her. But a thought occurred to her that she hadn't heard from Damon in a while, for his standards anyway, and she figured there was no harm in dropping by the boarding house on her way to town.
After last night, she told Stefan that Elena was going to have more questions because she wouldn't just leave it alone. So she sent him on his way to answer anything at the girl's whim and retrieve Damon's daylight ring so he wouldn't lash out and try to kill anyone else. Athena knew that she and Damon had a decent friendship, but she wasn't going to underestimate him at any turn– it would make her as stupid as anyone else, and that just wasn't how things worked around here.
She's realizing, though, that she might have accidentally underestimated Damon in one small area.
She followed the loud, annoying music to the parlor room and stopped abruptly at the sight before her. Destruction and mayhem had been had throughout the room, but that's not what bothered her.
"Are you kidding me?" She calls out, feeling the breeze from behind her as Damon appears in the room. "You killed Vicki?"
She gestures to her classmate's body, lying limp on the floor. Her irritation trumps any sort of incredulity she could be feeling at the sight of the dead body.
"She was annoying me. There were so many emotions, Athena. I mean, she cried." Damon rolled his eyes and Athena groaned loudly in frustration.
"Okay, but now look at what we have to deal with! She has a brother, you know!" Athena stomps over to Vicki and looks down into her open, unresponsive eyes. "This is totally ruining my plans, Damon."
"What could you possibly be doing that's more important than giving me attention?"
"Literally anything," She glares at his petulant pout and storms over to the window, yanking the heavy blackout curtain back. Damon winces at the sun when it burns his skin and he darts over to the dark side of the room, his smug smirk traded in for a glare in her direction.
"Dick move, Athena,"
"You're a dick." She retorts, feeling the childish need to stick her tongue out at him. She throws her purse down with a thud and walks over to Vicki, grabbing her bare arms. She drags her a few feet over and glances down at her, suddenly gasping.
She drops Vicki like she's been burned, stumbling backward towards Damon who eyes her oddly.
"What? What was that?" He gestures to her physical response, eyeing her stock still stature closely. "I know this is the first time you've touched a dead body, but she can't possibly be cold yet."
Athena shakes her head and clasps her hands to her chest to try to stop her pounding heart. "You can't see that, can you?"
Damon frowns, looking between Athena's wide-eyed gaze and Vicki's corpse, bare of anything that could garner such a reaction from her. "No," He shakes his head, taking a wary step towards the girl. "There's nothing there, Athena."
Athena swallows roughly, still looking at Vicki like her eyes are glued there. "You snapped her neck, didn't you?"
"Yeah," He nods. "You can probably tell by the fact that her head is turned at a very uncomfortable angle."
"No," She shakes her head, that tone of frightful disbelief something he's never heard from her. "No, I can see it. It looks golden. It's moving," She breathes out. "Like water."
Damon's eyes widen and he ducks his head to finally meet Athena's gaze. "What does that mean, Athena?"
"I don't know."
It's a terrifying admission.
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author's note; Lol...
originally published; 11.6.20.
edited: 11.27.23.
- liz