justprompts; A time when you were wrong but refused to admit it.
The gods mentioned in this story are not meant to represent any of the gods that may currently exist in the variety of prompt and roleplaying communities on Livejournal or elsewhere. They are gods inside of Athena's universe only, and their actions and personalities have no relation to, or effect upon, any other characters but Athena.
The Destroyer of Worlds
"They won't do it." We were sitting in a garden, plucking at the late summer flowers while we sipped plum wine. Plum wine was always too sweet for me, but Victoria had a taste for it.
She looked over at me, her dark eyes twinkling. "You underestimate the Americans' fear." She was dressed in the style of the locals, and had changed her physical appearance to match. It was a good look on her: jet black hair, straight as an arrow but pulled back into a bun. Pale skin made paler by makeup. Tiny red lips. Still, I liked her hair curly and her face natural, eyes lined with kohl, in the style of the Romans, which she knew.
Looking back on it, I think that's half the reason she did it; to let me know that she wasn't happy with me. The war hadn't exactly been a high point in our relationship. I hadn't wanted to get involved, but knew I had to, and she'd been the one to make me realize that. A large war always requires me, even if I'd rather leave it to Ares. The last one and its mustard gas had turned me off of twentieth century warfare, and made me think that these people and their inventions were best left to my brother.
Needless to say, I wasn't exactly grateful to her for making me realize and accept my duties.
"They fear the bomb as much as they fear the Japanese. A strange culture is one thing, the ability to destroy the world is another." I finished my wine and set the glass to rest on a rock.
Victoria shook her head. "It worries me how much more difficult it is for you to understand war these days."
I shot her a look. "I understand war just fine. It's the people I have problems with." I have seen some disturbing things in my long life, but when the Allies finally got off their collective asses and liberated the camps in Europe... the only one who wasn't moved was Ares. I picked another flower from a bush and twirled it in my fingers. "I was at Trinity."
"I know."
"You know what he said?"
She nodded.
"He was right."
"You don't know that." She plucked the flower from my hand and tucked it behind my ear, smoothing my hair back. "Ares is upset that he's no longer the only one with that kind of power. What's your problem?"
"Ares is stupid. The Hebrew god has had the power for thousands of years. And Father, and Bhairava Shiva, and -" She raised her eyebrow and I stopped. "I like being alive. If they destroy themselves, they destroy us."
"Ah."
It wasn't a popular theory amongst us, this belief that we didn't predate the mortals we once ruled over. It still isn't. None of us, from any pantheon, like to admit we're dependent on lesser beings. The fact remains that if there's no one left to worship us, whether we're more powerful or whether we existed at the beginning of time or not, there's not point to us. That's not an easy pill to swallow.
At the time, Victoria certainly hadn't swallowed it. "You know how they are. They all need to have the best weapon. This will start an arms race. They know that. Eisenhower and Truman had plenty of people telling them that. They know better."
"Do you know why I'm here?"
"I'm afraid to ask. Nagasaki has really great gardens?"
Victoria sighed and rolled her eyes at me. "I need to find a better god to spend my time with."
"Who's better than me?" I looked up at the sky, waved my hand, and added woodenly: "except Father, of course."
She smiled. "It's the anniversary of Tennyson's birth."
That was an odd thing to say. She knew he was my favorite poet in a long while. He told the heroes' stories well for someone who'd never even come close to the life. "I'm missing something, aren't I?"
"'Thou madest Death; and lo, thy foot is on the skull which thou hast made.' You've spent the last week trying to convince Hirohito to sign Potsdam, you haven't been paying attention to the Americans."
Damn. "They're going to do it."
"It'll drop in ten minutes."
"Fat Man?"
"Little Boy. Fat Man's due if Hirohito doesn't give in."
"Kyoto?"
She shook her head. "Hiroshima."
"And we're here because..."
"Fat Man's due if Hirohito doesn't give in. The target is Kokura, but luck and weather won't be with them."
Damn. I felt sick to my stomach. "I can't believe I missed this..."
"I told you I'm worried."
I stood, glancing angrily down at her. "Why didn't you tell me? I need to go there."
Nodding, she stood from the ground. Her form shifted back to the one I was used to, with curly hair and kohl-lined eyes. "So let's go." And then, as we moved from one place to another: "Would you have listened?"
I said nothing. I wouldn't have, she was right.
Victory and I stood on a hill overlooking Hiroshima as the first nuclear bomb was dropped on human beings by human beings. Ares had appeared next to me, grinning his grin as the mushroom cloud rose up towards the sky. There's no way to explain what it was like to watch.
That's not true, there's one way. Oppenheimer said it and, long before him, the Hindus wrote it down in their scripture. "If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the mighty one..."
The sick feeling in my stomach didn't go away for a long time.
[Research: Hiroshima, August 6, August 7, Nagasaki, Trinity, Oppenheimer, Tennyson, Manhattan Project, Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japanese dress. If you want to see something creepy, watch this video of Oppenheimer talking, in 1965, about his reaction to the Trinity test.]