Hera, Queen of the gods, returned from her meeting with the Fates in a thoughtful mood. Dismissing her servants, she withdrew to her inner sanctum and brooded as she sat beside the pool, absently dribbling her fingers in the cool water for the fish to come and nibble gently. She could be confident that no-one would disturb her. The other gods would also be considering what they had learned from their meeting with the Fates and no-one else would dare to impose themselves upon her when she had made it obvious that she wanted to be alone.

So Deianara and the children were fated to die. A small, a surprisingly small, part of Hera rejoiced at the thought of that hated bloodline withering before it could flourish. Of all the illegitemate children Zeus had spawned, she couldn't ever remembering hating one as much as she loathed Hercules. Damn the creature for his perfection, for his inherent goodness and his incorruptible soul! Why couldn't he be arrogant, or cruel or just plain stupid, like so many of her husband's semi-divine get had been? It would be so much easier to bear if he had some flaw she could take comfort in. Instead he was pure and generous and honest, and even while she hated him for what he represented, Hera also admired him for the spirit and courage which refused to yield to her spite.

And now he was going to feel more pain than he had ever felt in his life. True, he had experienced anguish when Iolaus had been killed that time they fought against the Amazons, but Hera had distracted him by possessing Hippolyta and giving him a focus for his rage, sublimating the grief. She hadn't even objected when Zeus had gone against all reason and custom and turned back time so as to save the people who had died. It was Hades who had screamed and ranted about all the paperwork his brother had created, but since bureaucracy was one of Hades' pet hates, few people had really listened. Everyone had expected the Fates to step in and countermand Zeus' action, but to everyone's surprise, nothing had been said and the new reality had been allowed to remain.

Of course, some things hadn't changed. The Amazons still didn't get on very well with the men of the village. Without Hercules there to stop them from making the same mistakes all over again, the temporary truce had soon cracked, but Hera had never instructed them to pursue their dogma with the same force and things were better than they had been. In a little while, Hercules and Iolaus would be forced to intercede, but now Hercules was a different man and Iolaus not quite as suicidally impetuous as he had been back then.

She smiled faintly as she considered Hercules' best friend. She knew that it unnerved Hercules that she had never moved against Iolaus, Deianara and the children when she had lashed out at everyone else he had come in contact with. She liked him unnerved, she liked the taste of his uncertainty, the gnawing fear that she might go back on such incomprehensible mercy and destroy them. She might, at some point, play with Iolaus, just to keep the two of them wary, but the hunter would never be in any real danger from her. That one small action of his when he had been younger meant he would always be safe from her unless he did something really stupid.

Although she was, of course, thinking about Iolaus....

No, Iolaus was safe. And up until a few hours ago, she would never have dreamt of harming Deianara and the children. She was the goddess of legitimate marriage, the protectress of women and children and the last thing she was going to do was lash out at someone like Deianara, who had always shown her due respect even in the face of her husband's disapproval. And the children, even if they were the product of the hated Hercules, were innocent and beautiful.

And fated to die....

Hera sighed and lifted her hand away from the water. Normally she experienced a sense of tranquility when she sat here, but not today, not with this burden on her heart. Like many of the deities, she always had specific questions to put to the Fates when they granted their audience and she always asked after Hercules, ever-hopeful that they would tell her of his approaching doom. They never did, but this time they had told her that he was destined to experience great sorrow and that his life-path then diverged off into three possible threads. Depending on how he reacted, two of the threads would shrivel while the third remained to be worked into the Great Tapestry, but no matter what happened, the threads which represented Deianara and the children would soon be given over to Atropos.

And she would cut them.

Hera shook her head angrily and rose to her feet, pacing about the sanctum like a caged griffon. Why should she care? All mortals died! It was their lot, their destiny. What did it matter if four of them would contract a virulent plague and die in agony while Hercules was off fighting the snake-demoness who was plaguing some village? What did it matter that Hercules, on returning home and finding their bodies, would probably go mad with grief and either destroy himself there and then or become some dark version of himself, a byword for atrocity and savagery which would make Ares look like a beginner?

Hera heard her screamed words bounce off the cool marble walls of her sanctum and knew them to be only partly true. Yes, she wanted Hercules dead, but not at so high a price. She hated him, she was wildly jealous of him, but deep inside her, a part also loved him, because he was Zeus' perfect son, the child she had never been able to produce.

And that was the heart, the bitter kernel to her frenzy. She loved Zeus, deeply, utterly and hopelessly. She always had and the pity and fury of it was that she always would. No matter that he sought other lovers; she still longed for his touch against her skin, his lips on hers. Every time she had conceived a child, she had hoped that this would be the one to bring the light of pride to his eye. And every time she had failed.

The first time she had realised she was pregnant, her triumph had been short-lived. The pregnancy of a goddess can be a long one and eventually Zeus had looked elsewhere for a lover. Hera had given full vent to her fury and when her poor, crippled son had been born, she had realised that the corrosion of her rage had done this to him, the elemental energies which had surged through her warping him in his womb.

She had sent Hephaestus from her, too ashamed of what she had done to look at him. In a pantheon of perfect gods, she had condemned her eldest born to be eternally ugly. In time she had learned that his physical ugliness had been counterbalanced by an ability to create beauty beyond any other immortal's skill and she had given thanks to Themis for that small piece of mercy. It hadn't been enough for poor Hephaestus, of course, tormented with his love for Aphrodite and longing for the perfect features of Apollo or Eros, but Hera had realised that it would gain him more than any amount of pretty features and patiently waited for the inevitable to happen and for Aphrodite to stay still long enough to actually talk to her son.

The second time she had felt a child growing within her, she had been more careful. No matter what the provocation Zeus had given her, she had remained calm, throttling back her rage until it threatened to choke her. She had known a moment of overwhelming joy when Ares had been born and she had seen his perfect features. For a while - a brief, wonderful while - Zeus had been ever by her side, his pride in his newest son plain to see. But all too quickly the inner sickness of Ares had become plain to see. An accurate reflection of her mental condition during her pregnancy, Ares was all beauty and perfection on the outside, but dark and twisted on the inside.

The realisation had devastated Hera. Despite her best efforts, she had condemned yet another of her children to the horror of incompletion. Ares never seemed to realise just what was wrong but he sensed that something wasn't quite right. Perhaps that was why he hounded Hercules so unmercifully, unconsciously aware that even someone as impure as a demi-god was actually superior to him.

She had become pregnant twice more, and on both occasions she had absented herself from Olympus and refused to allow any news from home to disturb her mood. She had been lonely but calm when she had given birth to Hebe and Eileithyia, and both daughters had proved unmarred by the faults of their brothers. Neither of them had the power and beauty that Hera had hoped for, though. Hebe had grown until she was a young woman, then she had settled into the eternal state she would inhabit for the rest of eternity. Pretty rather than beautiful, gentle and amusing, she was someone to cherish but not someone who would set the firmament afire. Eileithyia had showed no interest in anything other than childbirth, an obsession so all-consuming that Artemis often allowed her to officiate in her stead, relieved to be rid of a responsibility which didn't really interest her.

No, none of her children could ever hope to match Hercules and that was the real reason why Hera hated him so. The other bastards had felt her wrath whenever their path through life took them under her eye, but there was more habit than malice to her lash and she rarely pursued them for long. Hercules, though, had overcome every single obstacle she had ever placed in his path and his victories had never tainted his basic, innate goodness. With every hardship he endured, with every lesson he learned, Hera could see the godhood within him flourishing and she knew that he would one day be a true god.

A god which would put to shame her own crippled children.

Thinking of children brought her back to the subject at hand. She knew the plague which was set to sweep through that area of Greece. It was virulent and had no cure, barring divine intervention. That had been prohibited by the Furies, though. For some reason best known to themselves, they had carved the deaths of Hercules' family in stone, declaring it immutable and giving Zeus a hard stare while they did so. Her husband had taken his will being thwarted as well as he ever did, raging out of the Chamber of the Fates and storming off to sulk. No doubt he would find some accommodating mortal or dryad to take his mind off what he couldn't alter.

Hera, though, didn't have that luxury. She kept coming back to it, worrying away at it, and she finally had to admit that she wanted to do something about it. "But what?" she wondered out loud. "What can I do to deny what the Fates have ordained?"

She had no idea how long she paced, but slowly a solution presented itself to her. Not a plan on how to save the family; they were already doomed and there was nothing she could do about that. Hercules, now.... well, that was a different matter. She paused for a moment and laughed at the incongruity of her, Hera, Queen of the gods and arch-enemy of Hercules, actually conspiring to help him!

Not that he would see it as that, of course.

"Let me see," Hera mused as she went to her throne and settled upon it. "What if they're already dead when the plague hits? What if I send fire down from the sky while Hercules is still around, so that he sees his family die and knows that I was responsible?"

It would work, she was sure of it. If she waited until the family were asleep, they would never feel anything when her Fire descended. A painless death; all she could give them in the face of the Fates' decree. The knowledge that it was she, Hera, who had killed his family would give Hercules a focus for his hatred, rather than the mindless rage he would take out on anyone and anything around him.

And, if she planned it just right, she could also arrange for Hercules to work through that rage and initiate the healing process...

"Let's see," she mused as she moved over to the scrying glass she used to study the mortal world, "if I delay that messenger so that it's Iolaus who goes after the she-demon, and then tell one of my priests to find a slave from that same village to sacrifice just as Hercules comes to destroy my temple...." The plans continued to buzz through her mind and she finally nodded. "Yes, it will work. I only hope the Fates aren't too harsh when they learn that I've disobeyed them."

Despite herself, she shivered as she started to put her plans in motion. Why she was doing this was something she preferred not to dwell upon. Her only comfort was that no-one was ever going to guess what she was doing, not in all eternity.

oooOooo

Clotho sighed and selected a new thread. "She begins the design," she commented.

"Of course," Lachesis said complacently as she studied the choice briefly before nodding. "She has no choice."

Atropos carefully snipped another thread and sighed as she felt the energy leave it. "Everyone has a choice, Lachesis. We just don't let them realise it all that often."

Clotho snorted and picked up another thread, wrinkled her nose as she studied it and then let it fall. "If they didn't have their choices, our work would be a lot easier!"

"And a lot more boring," Atropos shot back. "You want to weave something in plain black and white, plain and purl, exactly the same number of stitches, for the rest of eternity? I don't."

"We don't knit," Lachesis said in exasperation. "We weave. What's with this obsession you have with knitting? Every time we run up against something, you have some knitting anecdote. I'm sick of it."

"Tough," an unsympathetic Atropos shot back. "If you can't stand the tension, don't cast on the stitches."

Lachesis threw her spindle at her while Clotho rolled her eyes and went back to sorting out threads.

And far away, just a heartbeat away, Hercules proceeded towards his destiny, aided by the goddess who hated him the most.

oooOooo

DISCLAIMER: Nobody was harmed during the writing of this story - although quite a few people are going to buy it in the near future. What was restored, however, was the reputation of the Queen of the gods, who has been consistently and unfairly portrayed as a slobbering bitch-goddess from Hell by far too many people for me to stand for much longer!