“You look nice.”

Kurt looked up, blinking as he turned from the white clouds below to the dark-skinned woman standing in the doorway. He raised an eyebrow.

The woman took a few steps forward. Her legs were long, and lean, and her dark hair was pulled back in an intricate braid. “I don’t like men on principle, of course,” she added. “But you do look nice in this form. Strong, courageous. Independent.”

Kurt rolled his eyes. Artemis was always getting on his nerves. Their token virtues didn’t exactly mesh well.

“Thank you,” Kurt said anyway, his gaze slowly returning to the sky.

“Are you going down?” she asked.

Kurt shook his head. The feel of short hair was so foreign, but it was nice. Different.

Artemis continued. “I am. I think Ares is messing with my archers. Have to go sort something out in Las Vegas.”

Kurt only nodded vaguely.

“Aphrodite,” Artemis said suddenly, sharply. Kurt felt his core pulse at the sound of his true name, the human pronunciation of his identity, and his human form flickered before solidifying again. He didn’t answer, but Artemis went on. “If you’re not going down, why are you in that form?”

Kurt sighed, closing his eyes. Behind his frail, human eyelids he could still see the imprinted image of the boy with slicked curls, golden skin, supple lips.

“You’re still pining over that human, aren’t you?”

Kurt opened his eyes and turned back to Artemis. “Last time I checked, I was the expert on love. Don’t you have something emotionless and robotic to go attend to?”

Artemis only smirked. She was beautiful in this form, and Kurt wondered if she had intended that. Then again, Olympians tend to outshine the average human in any form.

“Di immortales. There are millions of mortals, Aphrodite. And there are gods, too. How are you and Ares doing nowadays?”

Kurt ignored her and shut his eyes again, maintaining the picture of the boy. Blaine. He would not forget this boy. This boy meant more than the other mortals that populated the planet. Blaine was better than them. Blaine made Kurt want to give up his petty post, but also embrace it all the more so - is this what real love felt like?

“I’ll be leaving now,” Artemis announced, and when Kurt turned around, she had disappeared. He let out a sigh.

Turning back to the clouds below where he lounged in a room on Mount Olympus, he tried to see through them to that tiny town in Ohio where he’d found something that made love and beauty worthwhile again.