The ambulance carrying Chimney trundles away, and Hen retreats to where Buck and Eddie are huddled for a breather. She gives Eddie a light tap on the back as she joins them, and he wraps an arm around her shoulders in what she assumes is half reassurance and half leverage to keep himself upright.
Honestly, Hen is just impressed he's still standing. Its been one hell of a day.
"How'd he look?" Buck asks, face locked tight into careful neutrality.
"Well, he was cracking jokes with Julie." Hen smiles shakily, the feel of her best friend's blood on her hands making her skin itch.
"He'll be okay," Eddie tells them both, quiet conviction in his voice. "He's got too much to live for."
Hen watches the look Buck and Eddie share with curiousity. Its a loaded look full of unspoken words Hen could never hope to understand. But then Buck nods, his shoulders lose just the slightest bit of tension, and he turns back to the rubble.
"We've got more work to do," he says gravely. His eyes flicker to Eddie's hand where its pressed against his ribs. "You can sit this one out, Eds. I really think you should."
"We need all the help we can get, Buck." Eddie shakes his head and pushes off Hen to steady himself. "I'll take frequent breaks, but I'm not stopping until I have to."
Buck clenches his jaw, but before he can protest their radios crackle to life.
"Firefighter Diaz, do you copy?"
"Linda?" Eddie frowns, and Hen feels a sickening stone of dread drop right through her stomach.
"Eddie." Linda's voice wobbles, and Hen's chest tightens. "Eddie, I'm so sorry. I just got a call from Christopher."
For a moment, the scene goes deathly silent. Hen can only hold her breath and remember the way the world had dropped out from under her when she'd got the call about Karen's lab.
"W-what?" Eddie croaks, eyes wide and unfocused.
Hen reaches out to grab Eddie's hand, glances to see where Buck's comfort is, always the first one to be at Eddie's side. She knows its a mistake the moment she looks at him. Captain Buck has vanished, replaced instead by the sodden, dirty, bloodied Buck they'd found in the aftermath of a tsunami. Tiny, shaking, frozen with fear.
"Christopher was under the bridge when it collapsed," Linda carries on, words trembling. "He's stuck in there."
"Is he-" Eddie chokes back a sob, chest heaving with his breaths, and rolls his eyes up skywards. "Is he still on the line?"
"Yeah, do you want to talk to him?"
"Please," Eddie rasps.
But before Linda can patch him through, there's an almighty grumble like the earth itself is growling and another section of the bridge collapses in on itself.
Hen throws her arms out on instinct, unwilling to lose anymore of her team to this goddamned bridge, but its useless. Eddie's too weak with pain and shock to do much more than nudge her, and Buck's still frozen in place. But Eddie's scream. Well, that's not something Hen will ever be able to forget.
She'd thought the way he screamed Buck's name on the ladder had been bad. But now Eddie's half hunched over as he screams his lungs out, a thing so primal that Christopher's name is almost unrecognisable where it falls from his lips. Hen feels his grief all the way down to her bones as she catches Eddie before his buckling knees can hit the floor.
He's heavy, too heavy for her aching arms, and she looks to Buck for help only to find an empty spot.
"Please," Eddie whispers over and over, voice wet and raw.
Hen follows his gaze and finds Buck at the fresh wall of rubble, tearing chunks of debris away with nothing more than his bear hands. She blinks, expecting to find herself in darkness and soaked to the bone by rain, but Buck is screaming Christopher's name not Eddie's.
Hen lowers Eddie to the floor, propping him up against the car and making sure he has a clear view of Buck's frantic work. She turns just in time to watch Buck bark orders at a group of gathered firefighters, but then he's right back to scrabbling through the rubble and screaming his lungs out.
"Linda," Hen murmurs into her radio, "is Chris still with you?"
There's a pause. Too long. Hen squeezes her eyes shut tight.
"T-the call hasn't ended, but..." A deep breath. "He's not answering me."
Hen curses quietly to herself, sends a prayer up to a god she doesn't believe in, then turns back to Eddie, his eyes still fixed on Buck with something desperate and pleading. Her eyes drop, unable to stomach the expression of pure anguish on his face, and she finds Eddie's gloved hand wrapped around his St Christopher medallion.
She wants to promise him that Christopher will be okay, wants to promise him that he'll make it out the other side, wants to make a hundred promises that she absolutely shouldn't. But Hen loses her own voice when she thinks about how she'd react if it was Denny under tonnes and tonnes of bridge.
The next thing she knows, Buck is calling out for a gurney with a hoarse voice and diving into a hole in the wall of rubble. Hen wonders if he realises he doesn't have a helmet on or if he just doesn't care. She watches the small opening with baited breath, gripping Eddie's hand as tight as she can possibly manage.
Its a long five minutes before Buck emerges from the hole with a dust-covered body in his arms. The sob that bubbles out of Eddie is almost as haunting as his scream. Buck cradles Christopher against his chest like he's the most precious thing in the world as he picks his way through the chaos towards them. Sooner than Hen can comprehend, Buck is falling to his knees by Eddie's side, his own eyes glassy with tears.
"Hey, buddy," Buck chokes out, "told you I'd get you to dad."
"Chris," Eddie sobs, reaching out for him. Buck doesn't miss a beat, manoeuvring himself and Chris closer so that Eddie can hold his son without aggravating his injuries. "Hey, Chris. Hey, I'm here."
"Dad?" Chris mumbles weakly, but for the smile that breaks across Eddie's face you'd think it was the most beautiful sound in the world.
"Yeah, mijo, I'm here." Eddie shakes a glove off to brush the curls off of Christopher's forehead, and Hen waves the paramedics with the gurney over. "I've got you. You're gonna be okay."
Hen makes the mistake of looking at Buck again, and her eyes fill with sharp tears at what she finds. Buck, the gentle giant, cradling Christopher with the most care in the world, and looking down at father and son like they're the reason he's still breathing, his heart is still beating. Buck watching Eddie murmur reassurances to Christopher like he's just found faith for the first time in his life, like a resurrection, like this is why he came back from the dead.
The gurney breaks them from the moment, and Hen helps Eddie to his feet as Buck lays Christopher down. Eddie takes his hand the moment he's upright and he's staggering along with them to the ambulance before he's even steady on his feet.
Hen watches them roll Christopher into the rig, watches Eddie climb in after him, watches as Eddie turns to catch Buck's eyes just before the doors close between them. Hen doesn't have to know Buck and Eddie's secret language to know that that look meant thank you. She turns to Buck, a few steps in front of her, suddenly looking lost in all the debris. When she lays a hand on his shoulder, he clears his throat and sniffles before composing himself.
"Back to work," he mutters and then he's off again.
Hen hears her own voice echoed in her head: are you capable of being a father and walking away?
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what the fuck. what the fuck what the fu k.
rick riordan I am a whole ass adult now how tf are you taking a wrecking ball to my emotions AT THIS POINT. SHOULDN’T WE BE PAST THIS.
what the fuck Meg took in all of her foster siblings to help them live a life after Nero. she’s showing them a world that can be kind, where people will say what they mean, and where mistakes don’t deserve punishment.
BUT THEN ALSO. Apollo. Went back.
And for Meg and her siblings, everything about their lives has changed and improved. But Apollo just… goes back to Olympus. Where Zeus continues to rule with an iron fist, where no one was even able to stick up for him, where every other Olympian lives in fear of Zeus’s anger. And he’s still there, he’s still in charge, but Apollo knows BETTER now. He knows that things can be different. He knows that he can be different, and he’s making the decision to be better now than he was before.
But now he doesn’t fit. He doesn’t fit with the Olympians, who weren’t a healthy family even before this, and he doesn’t fit with his new friends, either, because he’s a god again. He can go see them and talk with them and help them, but he’ll always have to leave again. He can never stay.
The last few chapters of The Tower of Nero were so beautiful and amazing - getting to see everyone else living their happy endings (as much as any demigod can), but they were always tinged with… loneliness. Apollo is separate from them all again. He can teleport at will, he can change his appearance to anything, he can separate his consciousness… and that’s all great, he wanted all of that back…
But by the end? He kind of wanted to stay human. And there’s no resolution for him. He’s gone through this incredible, difficult, terrifying, life-changing adventure… and he came back, and everything’s the same. Kinda makes me think of Luke, going off on his quest, coming back different, harder, sharper… and finding Camp exactly like how he left it, with everyone expecting him to just slot himself back into the place he had before, when that space doesn’t fit him anymore.
And Apollo has what Luke didn’t - friends who knew him as he was changing, who love this new person he’s become, and even a sister whose affection won’t change no matter what happens. He’s going to be okay, I know that.
But there’s just… something so quietly tragic in the end of Apollo’s story. He doesn’t get his own personal happy ending. His “triumph” is a return to a divine status that he’s not necessarily sure he even wants anymore. He has to forge his own path forward towards his own happiness, and we don’t get to join him on it. We got to be with him through his Trials - his future is up to him, now.
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