New MC accidentally gets into trouble by using her artifact after years of not using it and it brings the attention of HERA. Alex goes to see what's happening.
anon i love u so much i cant believe i jsut wrote??? whatever this is, for an MC that Does Not Exist but that i desperately wished did now
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Alex knows her- they know just about everyone, and they know New MC hasn’t used her artifact in ages. HERA keeps tabs on anyone with an artifact, after all- even Medusa, who had hers taken.
So it shocks them, when they find New MC, clutching at her artifact and begging the aura to go away, trying desperately to drop the artifact, or throw it down the street. It looks like it’s hurting her, and not just physically.
Alex has read her file. It struck close to home when they almost couldn’t protect Hera MC. They know it’s New MC’s actual life, but they couldn’t help seeing it as a what-if; if they had failed to save their own MC. They had thought they might go down the same path, of not using their aura anymore had it failed.
They can only imagine the sort of anguish she must be feeling, what could have made her use it again when it clearly caused her so much pain.
Summoning their own aura, they cut between New MC’s aura and herself. They know it’s not really her fault that it’s out of control- an aura is part of someone, and after so long of not being used... it must be reacting to her grief, still fresh as the day she’d taken it off.
So rather than be rough, trying to use force to get he situation under control, they’re gentle. While their aura fends hers off, they kneel before her and wrap their hands around hers.
“You can let go, now,” they tell her. They make sure that their voice is calm, a gentle command. They give her an out.
Finally- finally she lets go of it, and her aura disappears. Alex asks where she normally keeps the artifact, and she shows them a little jewelry box-type contraption, made out of aura marble. They put it inside for her and latch it closed before handing it back.
Standing, they offer her a hand up, and though she bats it away, it only takes a moment for her to stand, too. She doesn’t look around her, at the damage she caused, or the monsters she’d hurt. She doesn’t seem to be seeing much at all, and Alex can guess where she is just then, trapped in memories brought to the surface from the situation.
They lead her into one of HERA’s cars- they have to take a statement, after all. But they don’t handcuff her or act unkindly. And when they get back to the office, they find out what had really happened:
Those monsters her aura had taken out, they were threatening someone very dear to her. And she wasn’t going to hesitate to protect the person she loved- not again.
Never again.
