Now was the most delicate part of all. Telling her that he cared because she was a good soul was a lie, and she would know it. Prometheus happened to find that she was neither good nor particularly likable as she was now. While certainly her own choice, it wouldn't do to lie about that while demanding change. At the same time, he wasn't going to say he simply didn't care. Obviously the subjects he raised mattered to him for a reason, and it was a fairly simple reason. She'd tried to ruin his life. Nearly successfully, in point of fact. Between Apate and Aphrodite he didn't need any more enemies than he had. The fact that he had more - many more - was not particularly comforting, but it was what it was. He'd deal with those later, if at all. Right now she was posing the problem, and he needed to come up with something that resembled a solution before it was too late to salvage whatever was left.
"I care because you tried to ruin something that matters to me," Prometheus finally answered. "I came hoping to give you a little understanding of the situation. I think if you understand, you can move past it."
And because the alternative was something out of hard warfare against a hated enemy. Take everyone who loved her. Turn them against her. Destroy the few relationships she had that mattered. Apate thought she had nothing to lose because she'd protected herself from attachments - Prometheus would have found every weak point, identified every soft spot, and ruthlessly exploited it. By the time he was done with her life she would have seemed a social butterfly beloved by all in comparison. The Titan had been close to pursuing that goal, in point of fact. Eos' words had stopped him. Only that. No one needed to know that he'd hoped to make Apate weep bitter tears forever because of what she'd tried to do to him. Aphrodite was still going to weep, because she never learned her lesson. She didn't have the faculties for it.
Apate did.
Would it even matter to her, he wondered, that the goddess she'd hurt the most had asked Prometheus not to hurt her?
It was hard to tell.
All of her answers, all of her statements, were nothing he'd expected. Instead it was as though Hope answered him every time by making his wildest dreams come true. Apate was willing to lsiten, against all odds, and for once she was judging dispassionately instead of throwing her ego and her frailty into the equation and using them as filters for every piece of information she received. He had to go slowly. One step at a time, one answer at a time, and never too much. Never too critical. Prometheus still felt like this conversation balanced on the edge of a knife, and it would come back to his original plan. Erebos would hate him for that, but Prometheus didn't care what he had to do. He was leaving here with one fewer soul in the 'enemy' column.
He stayed in the doorway for now - for now. If there was something else for him to do, he'd handle that when it came up.