She didn't know it, nor did she know him, but he was watching her.

He had known her from the moment he saw her so many years ago. He had only just begun to open his eyes and see the world for what it was - a once beautiful world rendered crippled and pathetic by pathetic people with their pathetic buildings and all for the same of their pathetic need for advancement. He had been scornful immediately, though he hadn't known why, just as his mother hadn't known why he had been born with a strange marking on his forehead and why he didn't make the sounds she and her other kittens made. In both of their ignorance, she had been afraid, and turned him out just as soon as she could.

It was his first day as an abandoned child, and he had been walking down her street, head bowed, putting one foot in front of the other. He had been trying to puzzle out why he was different, why it mattered so much, and how he was supposed to go on with his life. How he was supposed to live it all.

That was when he heard her laugh, but he only knew her for what she was when he looked up to see what could have made that wonderful sound.

She was young, though not so young as he. She still had her baby fat collected around her cherubic face, but it was obvious to anyone who gave her so much as a passing glance that she would grow up to be beautiful. Her smile was wider than any he had seen before and any he would see thereafter (save for one exception). She laughed as she danced around her front yard, twirling and spinning with an imaginary partner with a child's unabashed grace. Finally, she became too busy and she collapsed to the ground, rolling around on the fresh cut grass as if she were the luckiest little girl in the world.

He knew her immediately, and he knew that she was quite the opposite.

He did not recognize her face, but the light that shone about her. Gold and unwavering, as if she were sweating sunshine. And in that instant he knew that she had once had a name that was taken from her and given another, Venus. She had been blessed with many brothers and sisters, though she only ever saw one of them after her childhood. She had been a warrior, a good one, good enough to be the leader of legends and to almost have beaten back the purest form of evil they had ever been cursed with.

She had been in love, and she had been betrayed. She had watched for of her sisters in all but blood die at her feet. She had been the last to stand, watching the kingdom she had sacrificed everything for collapse around her ears. And she had been almost grateful for death when it took her soon afterwards.

She was Venus, and he was her mentor. He was Artemis, and he always would be, just as she would always be a fearsome warrior with beauty and power renowned by all who knew her. He was her confidante, her advisor, and most importantly, her friend.

And she might hate him when he told her all of these things.

He turned away as the light that poured out of her body was beginning to make his eyes water. He left her then, vowing not to return unless it was absolutely necessary. She was still but a child, one of the few blessed with such happiness. And that would only remain as long as she was ignorant of her cruel destiny.

Artemis was certain then that ignorance was truly bliss, and he wept at the knowledge that when they met next (for he knew they would), he would be the one to kill that part of her.