The Lies That History Tells (Greek Mythology, Aphrodite/Hephaestus)
Title: The Lies That History Tells.
Fandom: Greek Mythology.
Pairing: Aphrodite/Hephaestus.
Author Note: for Porn Battle VII. Prompt was the fandom, pairing, and these: quiet love, forgiveness. Originally posted as this comment.
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The history books will say she never loved her husband. That she was given to him as a way to free Hera from her prison of a throne, and maybe it's true that that's how they first began.
They'll tell stories of his kindness intermixed with tales of how he raged against her for her affairs, how he divorced her when he found her twined around Ares in the bed that should be theirs and later took his revenge on her daughter, but they'll forget the most important part of it all. That they are gods, powerful and playful, and their lives aren't governed by the same rules that govern the rest of the world.
The follies of their youths will be endlessly documented. The changes that occur many, many years later won't be. And long after the world forgets them, long after their power fades and their subjects abandon them, when they reunite in the shadows of the world they once lorded over, older and wiser and ready for what they hadn't been before, those are the stories that will never be told.
They don't have the once in a lifetime love-lust that she's seen destroy so many and they've both loved other people -- gods and demi-gods and mortals alike -- but in the end none of that matters, because what they do have is rarer and more precious, the kind of quiet love that's built upon a foundation of life experience and compounded by the passage of time.
When she eventually returns to him and the secluded comfort of the home they shared a lifetime ago, when she's in his bed and he's writhing beneath her touch, she knows that this is the kind of love that endures. Flaws and all, he's hers and she's his, and all the things that have come before and come between them are lost to who they are now.
When he kisses her she tastes forgiveness and forever and knows that their marriage, which never really ended but was merely put on pause, is the one thing that remains true in the face of everything else. Their world has changed but this-- this hasn't.
The history books will say she never loved her husband. But the history books will be built on the tales of mortals who do not know her, and the history books will be wrong.
Fandom: Greek Mythology.
Pairing: Aphrodite/Hephaestus.
Author Note: for Porn Battle VII. Prompt was the fandom, pairing, and these: quiet love, forgiveness. Originally posted as this comment.
--
The history books will say she never loved her husband. That she was given to him as a way to free Hera from her prison of a throne, and maybe it's true that that's how they first began.
They'll tell stories of his kindness intermixed with tales of how he raged against her for her affairs, how he divorced her when he found her twined around Ares in the bed that should be theirs and later took his revenge on her daughter, but they'll forget the most important part of it all. That they are gods, powerful and playful, and their lives aren't governed by the same rules that govern the rest of the world.
The follies of their youths will be endlessly documented. The changes that occur many, many years later won't be. And long after the world forgets them, long after their power fades and their subjects abandon them, when they reunite in the shadows of the world they once lorded over, older and wiser and ready for what they hadn't been before, those are the stories that will never be told.
They don't have the once in a lifetime love-lust that she's seen destroy so many and they've both loved other people -- gods and demi-gods and mortals alike -- but in the end none of that matters, because what they do have is rarer and more precious, the kind of quiet love that's built upon a foundation of life experience and compounded by the passage of time.
When she eventually returns to him and the secluded comfort of the home they shared a lifetime ago, when she's in his bed and he's writhing beneath her touch, she knows that this is the kind of love that endures. Flaws and all, he's hers and she's his, and all the things that have come before and come between them are lost to who they are now.
When he kisses her she tastes forgiveness and forever and knows that their marriage, which never really ended but was merely put on pause, is the one thing that remains true in the face of everything else. Their world has changed but this-- this hasn't.
The history books will say she never loved her husband. But the history books will be built on the tales of mortals who do not know her, and the history books will be wrong.