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“Hey Athena,” Adrian called out one day as they were walking home from school together.
“Yeah?” The Greek goddess looked over at Adrian.
“You got a dog recently right?” He asked, remembering when the red-haired pomeranian had tried to attack him.
“Ares?” Athena asked, confused. “What about him? Did he try to attack you again?”
“No, no, nothing like that. I was just wondering, Ares is the name of a Greek god right?” When Athena nodded in confirmation, he continued. “Why did you name your dog after one of your gods?”
Athena was silent for a moment, musing over how to respond.
“More than after the god, I named him after my brother.”
“Brother?”
“Well, yeah. Everyone in my family is named after a Greek god or goddess. Athena, Apollo, and Ares are just a few of them. I have as many siblings as there are gods so, at some point, I kinda stopped thinking about the names as the names of the gods and they just became names of my family.” The white-haired boy looked up at the clear skies, a nostalgic look on his face.
“My brother, Ares, has a very… prickly personality, being named after a war god and all, I guess. The dog is the same way as you can probably guess by the way he tried to attack you. I named him after my brother because of that. Well, that, and, I kinda miss him a little, I guess.”
The last sentence had been whispered, probably not meant for Adrian’s prying ears, but he’d heard anyway.
The reincarnated god wanted to ask, wanted to know more about his elusive friend, but held his tongue. If the transfer student didn’t want to tell him, he wouldn’t ask.
The next day, at school, the nagging thought wouldn’t leave him alone and he found himself in front of the nurse’s office.
Knocking, he entered the room to find Athena’s older brother sipping on what Adrian could only assume was coffee.
“Adrian Lee, what brings you here today?” He sighed as if he had been expecting Adrian to make an appearance soon. To be fair, what with him being The Human Calamity, it wasn’t that odd for him to be in the nurse’s office.
“Um, nothing medical, if that’s okay.” A look from Apollo urged him to go on. “I just, uh, was wondering if you could tell me a little more about Athena? We were talking yesterday and he looked kind of sad and I didn’t want to ask him because I didn’t want to make him upset but I would really like to know so I don’t step on any landmines accidentally and-”
“Okay, I get it, close the door and sit down,” Apollo said, cutting Adrian’s ramblings short. Adrian blushed and did as asked. “Now then, what were you two talking about?” The older man asked with a bored tone.
“Well, uh, I was wondering why you guys have a pet dog named after one of your gods. Athena said that he? She?” Adrian stopped to wonder if the dog was a boy or a girl. After all, if Athena was named after a Greek goddess, why couldn’t they have a female dog named after a Greek god?
Apollo choked on his coffee at the thought of Ares hearing Poseidon’s reincarnation calling him a bitch but corrected the boy so he could continue his story.
“Right, so, um, Athena said that he was named after your brother, not the Greek god, and then he got kind of sad and we just dropped the topic after that,” Adrian said, finishing his recount of the day before. “I was just wondering why he looked upset. Athena also said that he missed your brother too and so…”
Adrian trailed off, not knowing how to end the sentence. He wondered if maybe the reason Athena had been so upset was because this brother was dead and, for some reason, a tiny morbid part of him was oddly happy at the thought of Ares dead. He shoved that aside though, in a deep dark corner that would never see the light of day. How could he think such a thing of his friend’s brother?
“Athena said he missed Ares?” Apollo said with a hint of shock in his voice. “That’s certainly something.”
Adrian blinked a few times. “Why?”
“Ares and Athena hate each other. They fight the minute they see each other.” Apollo said as if it was common knowledge. After a beat, he added, “but they used to be the best of friends due to their… interests. They are, for all intents and purposes, two sides of the same coin after all.”
“Then why do they hate each other now?”
“Ares took away the person who meant the world to Athena. There really isn’t much to say about after that. Athena hated him for it and Ares, due to his hotheaded nature, reciprocated the feeling.” Apollo shrugged as if the idea of siblings hating each other with a burning rage was a normal thing. Maybe in Greece, it was. Adrian couldn’t be sure.
“He took away the person who meant the world to Athena?” The mortal repeated, not quite following.
“There was a person who was Athena’s world, who lifted Athena from hell when we were younger. That person raised Athena, is the reason Athena is who he is today, and Ares took him from Athena. He made sure that Athena would never see that person again, never be near them, never speak to them, never feel their love again. Obviously, Athena couldn’t take that.”
“No way,” Adrian said softly, tears in his eyes.
A part of Apollo wondered, was that the human born from a curse, Adrian Lee, crying or was it his uncle, the god of the seas, Poseidon? In his heart, he hoped it was his uncle, if for no other reason than to know that his uncle was still there in the useless mortal, listening to Apollo.
“The brother that he was most like took away Athena’s reason for living. Athena hasn’t been the same since then, and his relationships have suffered because of it. That’s why I found it surprising that Athena would say such a thing.”
“I had no idea,”
“Of course you didn’t, Athena doesn’t share information about himself with others. He only shares the necessary minimum. Perks of being born in our family, I guess,” The last sentence was said so bitterly Adrian had to wonder just how awful their family was.