#i know nobody cares about afk anymore but pls read it guys

[lovestruckthief]

Juno

I must have written this almost two years ago, but didn’t have a blog back then. My ramblings about Juno (Astreaus’ and MC’s daughter) because I’ve always been intrigued by her and what it must be like to grow up as a half-titan while the dust from Olympus’ fall is still settling. 

Especially when her parents cast such long shadows.

....................................................

It's not easy, being the daughter of two worlds, especially when you don't quite belong to either of them. Some would argue that it's three worlds, but they would do so under their breath and out of her parent’s earshot. As far as her family is concerned, there’s only two that matter.

Earth and Tartarus are in her blood. Olympus shifts and flutters like a fragile mist behind her eyes and somewhere beneath her skin. Her aura is a bright and brilliant magenta but at times she can see that it's flecked with gold. Though nobody else seems to notice that. But for her it's yet another reminder of how she is not fully anything, but simply in between. 

She is a child born into a world newly awoken. She hears of how things were before in the stories of her parents and the other Titans. Tartarus was poisoned, frozen, a place holding its breath. Until her father freed her mother and together they freed Tartarus. And finally, finally, the world lived and breathed again. 

Alive is the only way she has ever known Tartarus. When she was very young it was like early spring. New shoots sprouted between cracks in rock and flowers bloomed in the unlikeliest of places. And now the nature in Tartarus had come to resemble its inhabitants. Uncontrolled and unrestrained so that the whole world seemed to overflow with life. She knows Tartarus as wild and beautiful and dangerous for those who aren't clever or quick or careful enough. But fortunately she's all three. 

Well that's a lie. ‘Careful’ is not a concept she is very familiar with, so she’s really only the first two. But she has those two in spades and that's usually enough. Her parents have taught her the safe routes in Tartarus and the dangers she needs to watch for. Selene has taught her the thrilling shortcuts and scenic routes and Juno likes those the best, because she has to be quicker and cleverer than ever and she doesn't have to give a thought to being careful. 

She knows Earth as well, in its vastness and infinite variation. It is her home just as much as Tartarus is and she grows up somewhere in between the two. 

When she is little she takes everything all at once, running as soon as she walks and she is quick to try and argue or make a point in meaningless strings of toddler babble mixed in with dashes of English and Greek. She refuses to be carried or even have her hand held and she doesn't hesitate to wriggle out of arms and slip out of hands. Fortunately, her parents seem content enough to watch her run ahead of them. She navigates the beautiful but treacherous pits of Tartarus with the untamed grace of a Titan. She runs and climbs and leaps—and sometimes falls, though her mother and father are always there with a steadying hand when she needs it—and grows up a daughter of two worlds (though some would argue three, but at that age she knows little of Olympus and less of her connection to it). She brims with the reckless, insuppressible courage reserved to the very young and her father laughs and spins her in the air and calls her fearless. 

Her best friend is a dark haired boy who is quick to frown but faster to laugh. A dozen glowing water snakes twist around the two of them when they play together. Her other best friend—because she can have more than one is—softer and gentler but still has a quiet kind of steely bravery and their aura is sometimes a lion and sometimes a lioness. When the three of them are young Juno pulls them into every kind of trouble because her friends are too loyal to let her get into it by herself.

She grows, as children do. She begins to notice things she'd never seen before. The way eyes always turn to her parents when they enter a room. Some slide off quickly, nervously. Others stare unabashed, sometimes curious and sometimes guarded. Sometimes the gazes are hard and cold and sometimes they're directed at her. The first time she really notices she is barely five and it is the first time in a while that she's in a room full of monsters and Titans and demigods. The stares make her skin prickle and burn and she is left feeling a sickening mixture of hot and cold. She drifts closer to her father’s side, almost without realising it, and her little fist twists itself into the fabric of his coat. 

She is the daughter of legends. She is fearless and fierce but at the end of the day she's also only five. Her eyes drop to the floor and she looks away. Her father looks down at her, first with surprise and then with understanding as he scoops her up. She lets herself be carried, despite her usual stubborn insistence to walk on her own two feet and she buries her face in his chest. Heat flushes her cheeks and she pretends she doesn't feel the stares still directed at her back. 

But she isn't one to be restrained for long and she had soon perfected the long, steady look that ensures that they are the first ones to look away.

She hears things too. Things that are said when her parents aren't around and people think that she isn't listening. Some people are reverent, some are wary, some are fearful. Some are… worse things. And she comes to the realisation that the people she knows as her parents are actually a great deal of different things to a great deal of different people. 

Heroes. Traitors. Revolutionaries. Criminals. Legends.

It's difficult for her to reconcile the images of her parents with the stories that are told about them. It's hard to believe that the man who sings her soft lullabies and the woman who bakes cupcakes and dabs her nose with frosting were also responsible for tearing down Olympus.

The stories she hears are different every time. Told by dozens of people in hundreds of different ways. The details shift and change and the truth is harder to pin down than mist. She hears the stories where her parents are heroes, where they’re monsters, where they’re victims. As a child she only ever believed the stories where her parents were good. But she grows, as children do, and knows that the truth, much like her, is probably somewhere in between. 

As a young woman she is wild and bright and fiercely independent. She is never short of things to say with a retort always waiting on her lips. She doesn't do speechless. Except maybe once, when she was kissed by a pretty girl whose eyes can turn people to stone but who only ever looks at Juno with light and laughter and something both soft and strong which neither she nor Juno quite have a word for yet.

She is growing up, as children always will. The pull of Olympus is stronger now, far more than it ever was when she was little. It echoes behind every heartbeat and burns under her skin. It leads her with an insistent tug, back to the broken, empty ruins of Olympus. She feels like a ghost as she drifts silently through its shattered halls. Aimless and directionless but somehow always finding her way back to the circle of broken thrones. 

She wonders what it means to carry the seeds of Hera’s power. What it is that she feels stirring beneath her skin. Some people, she knows, see her as a last fragment of the Gods, the only hope of their return. Others see her as the main force preventing it. 

 She hopes, secretly, that some people can just see her as Juno. 

She loathes the idea of fate and destiny, of a predetermined path. The thought that her choices mean nothing because everything was decided before her birth makes her skin prickle and her stomach churn. She hates to admit, but she doesn’t feel very fearless. She mostly feels young and uncertain and like she’s being backed into a cage that everyone can see but her. 

She keeps those feelings deep within her and tries her best to not let them show on the surface. It doesn’t always work though and her friends exchange worried glances and the pretty girl with the pretty eyes holds her hand and promises that she will listen when Juno is ready. 

It comes out eventually of course. To her mother first, and after that it becomes a bit easier to talk about. She is the daughter of legends. She is fierce and bright but at the end of the day she’s only sixteen and sometimes she just really needs her mom. It’s a relief when it all pours out, in a flood of agitated pacing and frustrated tears. Her mother lets her talk and rant and cry. And at the end of it she holds her daughter and calls her brave. Destiny can get bent. The only person who is going to decide Juno’s future is Juno. Hearing it is almost enough to set off Juno crying again. She hadn’t realised how much she needed to hear that.

She asks her mother what she thinks of the belief some people hold, that she is going to return the Gods to power and her mother just shrugs. “Maybe you will” she says “and maybe you won’t. Either way, it won’t be because of destiny. It will be because you made a decision and acted on it. Don’t be afraid of making choices.” Juno notices, but doesn’t comment on how her mother has dodged answering what she would think if Juno actually did make that choice. 

She grows up with different worlds twisting through her veins and singing beneath her skin. In time, she feels less in between and more like she simply carries parts of those worlds within her, without slipping through the gaps. 

There is rebellion in her blood. There is selfishness and sacrifice. But there is also hope and love and a spirit which will never bend or break in its quest for what is right. She is so much more than the daughter of legends or a child caught between worlds. She is a thousand different things all at once and she is the only one who gets to decide her future.