I'm Outta Love

**Though the Characters in this story are original (or Mythological and therefore not owned by anyone), the lyrics that open this first chapter are from I'm Outta Love by Anastacia from her album Not That Kind copyright 2000**



Now baby come on
Don't claim that love you never let me feel
I should've known
'Cause you've brought nothing real
Come on be a man about it
You won't die
I ain't got no more tears to cry
And I can't take this no more
You know I gotta let it go
And you know

I'm outta love
Set me free
And let me out this misery
Just show me the way
To get my life again
'Cause you can't handle me
I'm outta love
Can't you see
Baby that you've gotta set me free
I'm outta love

Said how many times
Have I tried to turn this love around?
But every time you just let me down
Come on be a man about it
You'll survive
True that you can work it out all right
Tell me
Yesterday did you know
I'd be the one to let you go?

Let me get over you
The way you've gotten over me too, yeah
Seems like my time has come
And now I'm moving on
I'll be strong yeah

~ Anastacia "I'm Outta Love"



It had been years. No, centuries. Actually... no. I had been eons.

And yet there were some things that never changed.

Like the Gods and Goddesses of Olympus.

Hera looked at herself in the full length mirror she'd hung on the outside of the closet door for just these occasions. She looked the same as she always had, and yet, she looked totally different. Probably because, for all that she was destined, or cursed, to live forever, her powers had waned as humans had stopped believing, stopped worshiping. Now, she, like the others, was trapped in the horrible limbo of being one of the gods, and yet being forced to live as a human... forever.

At least she didn't age. But then, it became harder and harder to function in mortal society. In this information age, where records were accurate (mostly) and easily kept, she couldn't just show up in a new town when people became aware that she was perpetually in her late twenties. And even if she really looked like she were in her early thirties, well, she wasn't, damn it to Tartarus.

When the gods had lost their powers with the rise of Christianity in the lands, Olympus had begun to crumble around them, and Hera, like the others had abandoned ship lest they be buried under the ruins of the mountains for all eternity. In their flight, they'd become separated, and though she'd searched for the others, she'd never found them.

She wondered if they'd looked for her, too, but part of her doubted it. She wasn't well liked on Olympus, she knew. They all thought of her as a jealous bitch. And maybe she was. Maybe she should have turned her back on her husband's affairs and pretended like it didn't tear at her heart, her core, her sense of self to see him gallivanting around with every female on the planet (or so it had seemed most days). But she couldn't. She couldn't, and still be true to herself.

And so for the last two thousand years, she'd been alone.

Well, not completely. She'd made friends, if you could call them that. She'd taken lovers and born them mortal children. There hadn't been a choice through out much of history, for as a woman she'd had little chance for freedom. Although, she knew that men's lives were almost as constrained as those of women, there were still options most of them enjoyed that she... did not.

But that was changing. This last century had seen many changes, and for Hera, they were wonderful, enlightening changes. Finally, FINALLY, the world, at least the Western world, was catching up and coming to hold the same beliefs she did. It was no longer acceptable for husbands to hold more than one wife, to have more than one family. That didn't mean than men were all that much more faithful, it didn't. But it was no longer looked on as a good thing.

Hera, called Kate Washington in these times, wondered how Zeus was faring with these changes. She wondered how many women's hearts he'd broken with his infidelities. How many he'd loved.

And most of all, she wondered if he'd kept his vow to her, all those years ago, that he'd love only her....

Somehow, she doubted it. She doubted he'd ever meant it, no matter that he'd sworn it on the Styx. If he'd loved her, truly loved her, he would have cared that he'd spent all their centuries together destroying her. And he never had. And he never would.

Slipping into her jeans and a soft teal sweater, she twisted her hair back into a bun and grabbed her backpack. It held the tools of her trade that she carried with her. All but the rumpled lab-coat that she left at the clinic. Tying on her sneakers, she dashed out the door just in time to catch the bus the half mile to the clinic where she worked. It amazed her how much a difference there was in neighborhood in just that half-mile. The neighborhood she'd found an apartment in was working class, and probably always had been. But it was still working class. The people there worked, and worked hard. The clinic itself was in a run down area infested with crack houses, drugs, whores, and all manner of people who lived on the wrong side of the law.

Still, she'd never been happier than she had been since she'd come here to work with Dr. Ricardo Alvarez, an older Hispanic man who'd founded the clinic ten years ago. She'd been here for the last five of them. At the time when he'd hired her, she knew he'd been hesitant, not sure that he wanted to hire a white woman, not trusting that she'd stay. But she had, and now she was his second in command. Well known at the clinic, too, for caring. And she did care. She had taken her boards as an OB/Gyn before coming to the clinic, but here she mostly worked with kids. And pregnant women. And it felt... right. A small part of her powers, come back. Unless it was an emergency or he was swamped, since the patients had a certain ebb and flow around here, she left the men to Rick and took the women and children herself.

But as she stepped into the curtained off room Rosie waved her to next, she was surprised to find a man sitting there. Well, maybe there were a ton more men than women and children today. But as she took a step closer to the man, as he in turn looked up and met her eyes, her heart stopped.

This was no man.

"Zeus?" she breathed.