ＷＨＩＴＥＲＡＢＢＩＴ ¨ˢᵉᵐᶤ⁻ᴬᵈᵛᵃᶰᶜᵉᵈ ᴿᴾ¨ discussion

Hera's dark hair was already short, but as she leaned over her work and it continuously fell into her way, she was seriously considering chopping it shorter. With an irritated sigh she straightened up from her notepad, running a hand through the short locks to try and get them out of the way for sure. But as she spared a glance back at the pad, her concentration was broken and she didn't know what to write next anyway. So she flipped the small pad closed and dropped it into the large pocket of her unbuttoned lab coat, planning to head back to her locked office and store her notebook as she always did. As she turned to the door she brushed an almost infinitesimal speck of dust off of her nice black blouse and slacks, shaking her head slightly.

"You make such a fuss about your hair." Zeus had slipped into the room with such silence you would think he was a ghost. Quickly making his way to a nearby console he began to enter a command. From one corner of the machinery a depository emerged ready to accept the gene splicer in Zeus' left hand. "I might need your help." He spoke with such a smooth yet raspy voice as he made his way over and placed the splicer into the depository to begin the splicing sequence with what was already logged. "Who am I kidding, I will need your help." A slight chuckle escaped his mouth as he used the right hand to rub his eyes through the mask he had began to wear recently.

Used to his silent comings and goings by now, Hera didn't even flinch as he suddenly spoke from behind her. She strode over to him, leaning on the table it sat on in order to examine what was flashing across the screen. "What will you need me for?" She asked with a vague sense of curiosity, turning to look at him. Here she sighed slightly, shaking her head. She was perfectly fine with his quirks and insanity, but this was her. There was no reason for him to hide behind a mask, or to use it for intimidation. He was one of the few people that could legitimately scare her, and they both knew it wasn't by jump scares. The scares she got from him were by accident, when she thought she was going to lose him into that insanity. Of course she got along with his insane side as well and adored him like a brother, but she couldn't have intelligent conversations with it. "Zeus, this is just me. Please take off the mask, even if you have to lock the door to feel comfortable doing so." She sighed, forcing an air of resignation despite the concern she studied him with.

Lock the door Zeus did. Returned to the various and mass amounts of genetic codes that swam across the screen. Hearing her request a sigh escaped the respirator in his mask. Reaching up with a hand filled with tremors Zeus pulled the mask off of his face. The mask dropped onto the table without so much as a sound, in truth it was becoming a second skin to mask not only his face but his mind. Zeus began to write new codes of genetic materiel using the strand he retrieved from the willow tree and the subject Kilo from earlier in the day. "Remember my garden, of course you do, it's back up and running." Erasing a single chunk of code he replaced it with another. "Well I....I invited Aphrodite in to see it and we spent most of the morning talking in my garden. I couldn't help but stare at her, I fear I am growing worse."

Hera raised an eyebrow, looking over at him. "What kind of staring is it you mean? Did you find her attractive, did you want to hurt her, how we should proceed depends on how you felt." She explained. Studying his codes she leaned across him and changed just a line or two, then straightened once again to study him, lifting the mask. She brushed it off briefly, examining it as she set it down with a sigh. She indulged his insanity, but this was getting ridiculous.

"I find her attractive yet something more. I don't think I want to hurt her otherwise I would have let her touch any plant without giving her a warning. You know how my garden is deadly except for the rose mother gave me." Mother he began to think the only time he spoke about Elizabeth Shaw like that was with Hera. "What is it to find attraction to someone who is not family? What is it to love?" Zeus glanced over towards her and stared a look only a brother could give. "So in truth you have more experience in this matter while I have none. So...." He gave a look around. "....help please."

"I fear I have even less experience in this matter than you. You at least have felt attraction to someone, where as I have not." Hera shrugged indifferently, brushing dark hair from her face. She sighed slightly, looking at him in concern and when she spoke, it was entirely without self-pity. "The only people I care for are you and Poseidon, and in a vastly different variety than you feel for Aphrodite. I do not feel emotions and the subsequent attraction in the way that most do, even you. And I scare people away, so people do not have attraction to me and even if they had, it would not phase me. This is an area I do not believe I can help you with, unfortunately." She shrugged only slightly apologetically, studying him with her unnaturally blue eyes.

"Your a person who can barely even scare a fly." Zeus laughed a bit louder than normal before quickly covering his mouth. "Sorry." He mumbled. The code he managed to finish was far from perfect but it would suffice once he began to place it back inside the subject known as Kilo. "As you probably can already tell." He motioned to the mask. "I am getting worse I fear it might not be long before you have to lock me away."

Hera raised an eyebrow, and for a moment it was evident that her infamous temper was rising, but she bit her lip and closed her eyes taking a breath. It was only around Zeus and Poseidon that she actually managed to calm down, or even attempted too. "Never." She said instantly, turning to examine him fiercely. "No matter what happens, no matter what you do, I will not lock you up. You are my brother and I will not let anyone lock you up like an animal, insane or no. Even if you destroy everything on this island I refuse to shove you into a cage."

"I can only hope that you won't regret that decision." Zeus sighed before reaching out to take a hold of her hand. Using Hera's hand he placed it against his face. "At the very least I can still do this." A slight chuckle left his mouth as he took the gene splicer out of the receptacle. "So tell me how has your amount of experiments been?" As Zeus awaited a response he fumbled with the settings on the splicer. A slight click of a tumbler and the splicer was re-calibrated to only inject instead of extract for the time being.

With a smile, Hera gently patted his cheek. "Never would." She promised him. "I don't know what I'd do with myself if you were in a cage. I know my temper is bad enough as it is, who would help me keep it from getting even worse?" She asked in a teasing tone, despite being quite serious. "It's not so bad, nothing I can't handle. I'm planning to turn my focus to reattempting to get rid of emotions."

"Might I suggest something from my garden. The nocturnal groaza might be what you could use. It has been know to turn off inhibitors in the brain that access emotion by brewing the leaves into a tea." Zeus smiled for a quick moment before twisting towards on monitor. "Remove one divided by six bring the three to face up and the four to face down you have yourself one potent strand of a dna sequence." The clarity sometimes came without the insanity but with the cost of a strain on his mind worse than ever.

"I'll need to test the affects of just the groaza before I even begin to properly work out an equation and solution." Hera sighed, perching on the end of a stool. "Which means I'll need a subject to test on. Any opinions on which?" She checked, looking over at him as she pulled out the small notebook again, picking up a pen and scribbling herself a brief note about the plant on one of the pages.

"India, Tango maybe Kilo. Any of those would do." Zeus tilted his head back before slouching towards the ground. His hands shot up to hold his head as a pain shot through the spinal cord, signaling a shift towards insanity. "The voices" Zeus began to stomp his left foot into the ground before slamming his right hand through a nearby stool. A silent scream left his open mouth. Turning Zeus' hands found another stool, he took said stool and without warning began to slam his head into the solid piece of furniture.

Hera started to shrug, indifferent about the choice of who to test on, when she looked over at him. When his hands went up she tensed, having a pretty solid guess that some onslaught of insanity was coming, and was already moving to get beside him. She kicked the stool away and got a good grip on his shoulders, but what from there? So she just took him straight down to the ground, shifting so that her death grip on his shoulders to prevent him from doing anything was more of a side-hug. "Shh, it's ok. I've got you." She promised him, for all the good it would do.

Zeus heard each word clearly. His mind went back to the past remembering how mother would say that during these moments as well as Hera. Slowly his body jerked once then twice before his eyes closed, sleep taking him. His hands had been clenched into fist so tight that each knuckle turned bone white. As Zeus exhaled his fist loosened color returning quickly. A light sheen of sweat had formed across his forehead and a patchwork of veins began to vanish. During the moment of insanity he managed to break his glasses, the remains lay near where they lay.

Unfortunately, Hera had had to grow used to Zeus and his issues. It still bothered her that she couldn't fix them like she could fix almost everything else. But she was prepared for them. So she carefully stood up, heading across the lab to a small drawer from which she pulled out a new pair of his glasses. Moving back over to him she set the glasses on top of the console still near them and sat down beside him again. She wouldn't give him the glasses when she was still unsure of his current status.

With a grumble Zeus sat up slowly. His hands slowly rubbed his eyes and with a sigh he spoke. "It happened again didn't it?" He didn't need an answer for he knew all to well how to read the signs. Waking up with no memory of sleeping, a throbbing headache to match and a feeling of depression. "I am sorry." Was the only thing Zeus could say as he opened his eyes to study what ever damage he may have done during this episode. "Did I hurt you?" He would never have but he dread the thought that it could happen.

"Nothing to be sorry for; it's not something you can control." Hera shrugged calmly, smiling faintly as she looked at him. "Of course you didn't. You're not so bad that you'd turn on me. You've had plenty of opportunities and here I am, still just fine and unaffected by you." She promised him, still sitting fearlessly next to him. "Besides, it'd take more than you to hurt me."

Zeus stretched his arms up till the sound of bones releasing tension echoed through the laboratory. Wiping the sleep from his eyes Zeus managed to get to his knees before standing. Once on his feet he quickly held onto the table to steady himself. "Feels like I haven't walked for days. So I can safely assume it was really bad." A pair of glasses awaited just inches from his hand. Placing them on he looked around for any other damage. "Well at least I didn't break any of the equipment. We'll have to get someone to clean my mess...again." He said with a sigh.

"This isn't that bad. Subjects have done far more damage in far less time." Hera dismissed, waving a hand briefly. "Even you have had far more intense fits. Don't worry about it, this is easy to fix." She shrugged, looking up at him. She sighed slightly, knowing she should get up, but also just not wanting to move since she had gotten there. At last she hauled herself up to her feet, though she perched on the very edge of a stool with her ankles crossed in front of her.

"Look at that and they say I'm the voice of reason." He teased to lighten the mood. "I have been wanting to ask you a rather personal favor that I know you would never agree to." A deep sigh left his lips. He inhaled deeply before he began to move tables and stools in front of him to separate the two of them from each other. He slid the last table in front of him before staring right across to Hera. "I want you to dig around my brain and shut off parts, it might get rid of my......issues."

For an instant Hera's blue eyes reflected the anger she felt, but she forced herself to take a breath, closing her eyes. She spoke without opening them, pinching the bridge of her nose. "I have considered it before, actually. But I am not a neurosurgeon. There is always the risk of me just worsening your condition. I did that to myself once before, and I will not put you on the line as well."

The word surprised could not even begin to describe Zeus' expression. He had been expecting a full on tantrum, a table thrown there a stool smashed here. With a sigh he slowly made his way back over to his sister."You never told me, when did you consider this?" His dark eyes stared intently at the shattered remains of the stool from earlier. "Do you ever wonder if we would even have these problems if mother was awake?" A simple yet complex question that plagued all aspects of his mind at all times.

For her part, Hera looked surprised that he was surprised. "It's a perfectly logically and frankly obvious solution. Of course I've considered it. But I don't trust the others to go rooting around in your brain, and I don't trust myself to do it when the one time I did change someone's mental state was not a success. Myself." She explained. It was obvious she was trying to stay calm, but it was also evident that she was worked up. There was no way she would do it and she didn't want him to push her because it would be harder for her to control her anger. Usually she didn't even try, but she hated taking it out on people she cared about. A faint scratching at the door made her look up, and she crossed to unlock the door, her big attack dog wandering in calmly. She relocked the door and sat down once again, Xerxes sitting on the ground beside her stool with her hand on his head.

Crouching low Zeus stared Xerxes right into the eyes. "Your skill for dancing around and away from my last question is admirable to say the least." His eyes began to study the dog from all possible angles until he spoke once more."I can make him more than what he already is. I could rewrite his genetic structure if you want me to." /he glanced up to gauge Hera's reaction. "Nothing to drastic he would still be the same dog mentally but physically I could alter him."

"I know you could." Hera said calmly, scratching behind the big dog's ears. "If I wanted it I'd ask. He may not be perfect but he's still my favorite." She smiled faintly in a rare show of affection, sliding off her stool to sit next to the dog on the floor, where he promptly laid his head in her lap. He seemed like just a big fluff ball and usually was, but Hera knew he was also very very dangerous, which was why she bought him in the first place.

"As you wish." Zeus raised to full height with a stretch and a yawn. "Time for me to get back to work." He slowly made his way over towards the door gene splicer in hand. Sliding the mask back over his face Zeus turned to look back at Hera. "Same rules apply, no telling anyone about this insanity moment please." And with that said Zeus punched in the unlock code and left the laboratory.