Before? [i]Before?[/i] Do pardon her, Lady Hestia, but had you not already conveyed the gravity of the moment, she might have thought you were joking. And if you’re not joking, then do you mean to say that you’ve genuinely not taken notice of her for her entire life, until this very day? That, yes, alright. Hrm. Was not an option she’d ever considered, to be frank. Usually, to avoid someone, you had to at least acknowledge they were there. Unless it worked rather differently for a goddess? 

...questions for later.

“Perhaps it would be best if I started at the beginning,” she says, folding her legs to sit beside Hestia. “Where I began, born on Lakkos to one of the great noble families. A rising star of a rising star. I made my name in the Olympics, winning favor in the eyes of the gods and the people alike. There wasn’t a soul on the planet who hadn’t heard my name. As I climbed, I sought to use my position to forge peace for all, on a world that had known none for generations.”

She sniffs. “...I won’t bore you with the details. Suffice to say, I did no better than all who’d come before me. I paid dearly for compromises that bought nothing of value. My plans forever remained a day ahead of me. All the while I swam drunk in ceaseless admirations and imagined virtue.”

“Then the Starsong came, and accomplished in a week more than I had in years. And I was expected to help fight them.”

“Instead, I allowed their escape. No, more than allow, I [i]was[/i] their escape. Of my life and fortune, I brought those of my staff who wished to fee with me, and the clothes on my back. Nothing more.”

Not even a heart.

“I drifted with the Starsong for a time. I was handy in a fight, and good enough at parties. ‘The exile with the dark past, only spoken of in hushed whispers.’ I think they had a betting pool going on what terrible fate I'd escaped from. But they were as good as they were on Lakkos. I had nowhere else to go, and nothing else to do; their causes were just enough for me.”

And are there no other names in this story, Captain? No faces to tie to these ideals? In all the years of living among the best people you’d ever met, wasn’t there at least one that touched your heart? Changed the course of a life spiraling down? Won’t you tell us of a miracle, Vasilia?

“It was...pleasant.” She shifts, suddenly uncomfortable on the cold floor. “As nice a position as I could hope for, and so it was for a time. I rose through the ranks, never so high that would have to direct the Starsong themselves. And when word came we had a...moonshot of a chance, to overthrow Tellus’ grip on the galaxy without ever fighting them directly, I made sure I would be the one they chose.”

She reaches into her coat, and takes a long pull from a precious flask. The past was thirsty work.

“What I am trying to say, Lady Hestia, is that I’m afraid I have no ‘before.’ I do what I have always done. Of second chances, all mine were burned away on Lakkos.” She gives a distant, wan smile. “Never quite gave up enough to find anything else.”

*********************************************

Could he tell you a secret?

It’s not [i]always[/i] intuition. 

It might seem like that, when he shows up with a favorite dish in your lowest moment. But maybe you just forgot when you said how much you enjoyed this sort of bread those seventeen months ago, and so it seems like magic when he produces a loaf now. But sometimes there aren’t enough months, or lucky moments, or thoughts going [i]right[/i] that he can turn to the question at hand. And when that happens, he returns to the altars.

For Hestia, he leaves out a mug of her favorite cocoa. Shredded dark chocolate, hot, but not too hot, cool whipped cream, to give the ideal sip, a sprinkling of cinnamon to bring it all together; just how she liked it. What few thoughts he had, they all agreed that perhaps Mynx could use a little taste of home, and so to Hestia he must turn.

For Hera, he leaves a humble stew. Prepared with care, of scraps secreted away from greater dishes, in a quiet corner of the kitchen where no-one goes. And before her, he kneels, and he thinks, and he kneels, and he thinks, and he is oh so grateful that Hera is not one to mind her time too strictly.

“Hera. I’m afraid something’s gone terribly wrong with me, and I don’t know what. I cannot think. I can hardly sleep. I am useless in the kitchen-” Pause. “Well, I can cook, yes, but it just isn’t right. I make food, but little else besides. And what little I make is slow, much too slow for the mouths we need to feed. Something’s broken, and I am full of uselessness, and please, can you tell me what it is? Can you fix me? Why-?” Oh, Hera. Do not mind your time too strictly today. Grant him a moment, please. Just a moment. “Why can’t I do my job anymore? Am I so far gone that...that I cannot even do what I was made for?”

And he waits. With his head pressed against the cold floor, a shivering tangle of emotion, he waits for an answer.