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tsarisfanfiction · 8 days

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Family Reunion

Fandom: Trials of Apollo Rating: Gen Genre: Family Characters: Apollo, Lee, Will, Michael, Cabin Seven Apollo-as-Lester wakes up for the first time in Cabin Seven. Having children older than him is just plain wrong, thanks. TOApril day 11 - First Meeting! This is set in the aftermath of an AU of mine that I haven't yet written, and for the sake of avoiding spoiling the whole premise of that AU before I do write and post it, there is a distinct lack of explanation hanging around, oops.

Apollo jerked awake, his breathing shallow and rapid while his weak, mortal body trembled and sweated in a broadcast of distress to anyone in the vicinity – and any hope that his immediate vicinity was, in fact, vacant of company was immediately dashed into tiny pieces by the gentle touch on his forehead.

It was cool, which meant that either they ran cold or Apollo was running hot (and yes, Apollo was always hot, in both senses of the word, but Lester was not, a fact he was still struggling to come to terms with). Apollo did not consider that a good sign, although the gentleness of the touch at least suggested it was no-one meaning immediate harm.

“Can you open your eyes?” they asked – a familiar voice, and while the identity of the owner currently escaped Apollo (an alarming fact, given Apollo wasn’t used to forgetting sounds, or anything at all), he was reasonably confident that it belonged to a male. “Blink once for yes.”

There was a wryness to the voice, a thread that might be light-hearted at the joke.

“What if I cannot?” he asked, cringing at the raspy slur that came out of his mouth.

“Well, you can always just tell me that,” his companion pointed out, and Apollo might feel half-deaf but he could still tell there was a new note to the voice – one associated with relief. “But given I know you’re awake, I’d rather you at least tried before giving up.”

Rather annoyingly, he had a point – and Apollo was also getting rather fed up with not being able to place the owner of the voice by aural clues alone. He knew he knew that voice.

His eyes resisted opening, perhaps basking in the chance to be lazy for the first time since crash landing in a dumpster and becoming the servant of one Meg McCaffrey, but his companion had more or less asked nicely, so Apollo persevered until his eyelids cracked open and he could make some sense of his surroundings.

The elegant ceiling was the first thing to catch his attention, simple but homely. It was also vaguely familiar, a feeling that increased as more of the cabin – because that was clearly what he was in – came into focus. Plain white walls, simple wooden bunk beds, and wide windows with heart-achingly familiar yellow flowers blooming along the sills.

“Curse of Delos,” he rasped, digging a clumsy elbow into the soft material beneath him until he could force his unwilling sack of mortal flesh into something resembling a sitting position, although perhaps a pathetic recline would be a more accurate description.

“Your flowers,” his companion agreed. “They’ve grown here for as long as I can remember.”

Finally, Apollo’s sight landed on the companion in question. A young man, tragically older than Lester’s body by a couple of years, with short, honey blond hair and eyes closer to green than blue was perched on the edge of the cot he had awoken in. His face was thin and drawn, a little too much to be strictly healthy, and there was dark shading around his eyes as though his eyelids had forgotten how not to have bags.

It was a sight that made Apollo’s already aching body ache a little bit more, because it was wrong. So much of it was wrong, more wrong than right, although he’d seen those eyes before, set into the face of a first chair violinist in the Portland Symphony Orchestra.

“Lee,” he said, the name escaping him in as a breath. His son – and the fact that his body was physically younger than that of his son’s was one of the things that was so, so, wrong – gave him a glimmer of a smile, tired and weary but a twitch of the corner of his mouth nonetheless.

“Hi, Dad,” he said. “It’s good to see you again.”

Apollo couldn’t help the scoff that wrestled its way out of his choked up throat, because how could anything be nice about his current situation. “Is it?” he asked despondently.

“Yes,” Lee said without hesitation. “Don’t get me wrong, it’s not great that you’re mortal now, but I’ll take that over not knowing.”

He didn’t specify what he didn’t what to not know, but even Apollo’s patchy mortal memory could put together enough of the pieces that he couldn’t really argue that point.

Or perhaps more importantly, that arguing that point would only drag Lee’s mental state down further, and his son didn’t need to suffer any more.

He pushed himself up further, internally grumbling at his reluctant body as it begrudgingly obeyed. Lee’s hand dropped from his forehead, but settled on his arm instead, a cool touch to Apollo’s forearm. His son had thick, soft wrist warmers on each wrist, the flicker of gold barely visible beneath the long sleeves of his hoodie. Had he always liked those? Apollo couldn’t remember.

Instead of letting on just how many holes his memory seemed to have, enough to make his mind a fully functional sieve, no doubt, he turned his thoughts elsewhere. “Where’s Meg?”

The smile that crept across Lee’s face was fond. “Making friends,” he said. “Connor’s going to need an eyepatch for a few days, and Sherman’s going to be walking with a limp for a while after that kick to the crotch.” He sounded amused.

Apollo couldn’t say he was surprised, given his brief but intense crash course in the consequences of spending time in the personal space of Meg McCaffrey, but he had to ask. “Making friends?”

Lee’s smile grew. “Michael was the same when he was her age,” he said. “And she’s Kayla’s age. Either those three are going to tear each other to pieces, or become a gremlin trio. They’ll be fine.”

He seemed wholly unconcerned at the prospect of Meg potentially tearing apart other demigods – or other demigods tearing Meg apart. Then again, the necklace around his neck was laden with beads, reminding Apollo that Lee was as close as an expert to camp dynamics as any demigod.

The cabin door crept open and quiet feet pattered across the floor, accelerating the closer they got to him until there was another blond young man in his eyeline, this one still a teenager, although still too close to Apollo’s mortal age for comfort. “You’re awake!” he said, his hands immediately reaching for Apollo’s head. “How are you feeling? I tried to heal you, but-”

“Take a breath, Will,” Lee interrupted him gently, the hand that wasn’t still resting on Apollo’s arm coming to wrap around his younger brother’s shoulders. “He can’t answer you if you’re still talking.” Will – his hair had the exact same curl around the ears that that Texan country singer had had, this was her son – obediently silenced, and Apollo found himself the recipient of twin expectant looks.

If he hadn’t already known the two of them were brothers, he would’ve realised then. Lee’s eyes were greener than Will’s pure blue, and of course he was about five years older, but the look was identical.

“I ache,” he admitted, his voice whining pathetically. “I have acne and flab.”

“Welcome to mortal teenagerhood,” Lee said wryly, as Will gaped. “Will, want to give him the rundown?”

“Swollen nose but not broken,” Apollo’s younger son – and Olympus he was not going to be getting used to this teenage son being a similar age to his body, let alone the son that looked to be more or less out of his teenager years and into full adulthood being obviously older – reported. “Your ribs were cracked but are healing well, and your vital signs are all good for a mortal.” His voice broke on the last word, and to Apollo’s alarm, his eyes started to dampen. “I gave you nectar,” he admitted, his voice shaking. “I didn’t know- your lips started smoking-”

Lee tugged him closer, rubbing his hand along Will’s arm. “We didn’t know,” he assured him quietly, but that didn’t stop Will’s lip from quivering. “It’s not your fault.”

Apollo distantly hoped that that explained his fire-and-brimstone-esque nightmare.

“I take it Meg didn’t think to tell you,” he said instead, and got a fond head shake from Lee.

“I think she was too busy screeching at us to remember to give medical critical information,” he said. “Connor and Sherman winding her up didn’t help.”

“She’s waiting outside,” Will added. “Along with everyone else.”

As if on cue, the door slammed open, the person responsible clearly not particularly caring that Apollo might have still been passed out. It was exactly the sort of behaviour Apollo thought Meg would be capable of, but while the height of the figure was about right, the black hair was too long, and there was a distinct lack of glinty rhinestone glasses.

They were also, unmistakably, another boy.

In his wake trailed several other figures, all taller but something told Apollo they were all younger, too. It might have been the impressive collection of beads around his neck, or – and Apollo was going to persuade himself it was the second option – his memory wasn’t so terrible that he didn’t recognise more of his children, even if some of the newcomers were also the same age or older than his Lester-body.

It took him longer than he liked to put names to faces, but at least they did come, before he had to face the awkwardness of admitting he’d forgotten any of his children. The two African-American boys, both in their early teens and blessedly younger than Apollo’s current state still, were Elias and Austin – Elias with the long locs, and Austin with the intricate cornrows – while the third boy, the one with a permanent limp and a strangely-dangling jacket sleeve, to say nothing of the trio of slashing scars across one side of his face, was Nathan. The older girl, liberally freckled with her hair dangling in brown bunches, was Joy, and he was pretty certain the youngest of the group with hair the colour of Greek fire was Kayla.

Then there was the oldest teenager at the head of the pack, striding forwards with all the confidence of someone that was going to get his answers, regardless of anyone else’s wishes – or Apollo’s injuries.

Michael came to a stop next to Will, flanking his younger brother and just about in arm’s reach of Lee if the young man chose to reach out any further, and Apollo found himself fixed with an unimpressed look.

“Where the fuck have you been?”

#trials of apollo #trials of apollo fanfiction #riordanverse #riordanverse fanfiction #toapril #toapril 2024 #tsari writes fanfiction #pjo apollo #lee fletcher #will solace #michael yew #austin lake #kayla knowles #original character #elias robinson #nathan lister #joy norris #cabin seven #apollo cabin

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tsarisfanfiction · 13 days

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The Ponytail

Fandom: Trials of Apollo Rating: Gen Genre: Family Characters: Austin, Yan, Will, Kayla Yan gets a new hairstyle, and it brings a ghost back to the cabin. Austin takes matters into his own hands. TOApril day 6 - Hair Holds Memories. This went through various iterations from my initial thoughts to what I ended up writing, especially when Austin decided to get involved, whoops...

To start with, Austin couldn’t work out why Kayla and Will looked like they’d seen a ghost. Both of them had been a bit off for most of the day, his younger sister more than once looking on the verge of tears, quivering lip and all, while Will just went blank, as though he was shutting down, and Austin couldn’t work out why.

At least, not until he saw the ghost.

It was just a flicker in the corner of his eye, a short, low ponytail, black hair on a head that was closer to the ground than his own.

Michael, he thought, startling himself because it had been three years since his first head counsellor had fallen from a shattering bridge to never be seen again, and he’d thought he’d moved on. He’d certainly moved on better than Kayla, who had been obsessed with their tiny big brother while he was still with them, and Will, who had just known Michael for ages. Austin didn’t think he’d been close enough with the older boy, really, to justify sudden hallucinations of him three years later.

Then he turned his head and the hallucination theory disappeared out the window as fast as it had arrived, because it wasn’t Michael, of course it wasn’t Michael. Michael wasn’t Apollo’s only other black haired kid, and Michael had been killed by Kronos years ago.

It was Yan. Austin knew their hair had been getting longer – they’d forgotten to get it cut before the main contingency of Aphrodite kids went home for the fall, and for various reasons they didn’t trust the year-round kids from any cabin to actually cut their hair, so they were waiting for one of the trusted kids to reappear either at Christmas, or next summer.

Until today, they’d been keeping their hair loose, because it was only just getting long for them, but something had clearly changed – quite likely their hair had started posing a risk in archery – and they’d tied it up in the obvious, low-effort style that kept it out of the way effectively.

No-one would have given it a second glance if it wasn’t exactly the same hairstyle Michael religiously pulled his hair into every morning. Austin didn’t remember ever seeing Michael with a different hairstyle.

From the way Will kept doing a double take whenever Yan passed through his periphery, he didn’t think that just held true for Michael’s last six months in camp, either.

Yan had clearly noticed something was up with both of them, and probably with Austin, too, because they kept glancing over at them, mouth screwed into something puzzled, but they clearly weren’t sure enough to ask, which meant they weren’t sure they weren’t imagining it – Yan was quiet, yes, but they were also completely unafraid of calling people out.

They weren’t much of a healer, but the attitude still helped when dealing with idiots that thought they knew better than the healers.

Austin remembered Michael doing something similar, when he thought about it – except Michael hadn’t been quiet, ever. For a tiny guy he’d been loud, even if that was mostly because he kept arguing with Clarisse and various other campers that annoyed him.

Neither Will nor Kayla were doing to do anything about it, though. Will was too soft, too unwilling to imply that Yan was hurting him, even if it was unintentional, and Kayla preferred to shoot problems rather than talk about them – but she wouldn’t shoot Yan, so that meant this was a problem she was going to bury, instead.

No-one else still in the cabin had ever met Michael, so that meant it was down to Austin to sort this out, preferably without one of his siblings breaking one way or another.

Ah well, this was Will’s last year in camp, given everyone knew he was off to New Rome University at the end of the next summer, and Alice was a summer camper so while she was going to inherit the head counsellor role officially, Austin knew full well who was going to be holding down the fort for the rest of the year. He might as well start getting some practice in.

His chance came when Yan entered their cabin later in the day, while Austin was cleaning his saxophone – the jazz one, not the one he carried around in combat because, yes, Sherman, they were different. One was for combat music and storing useful contraptions, including his blowpipe and assorted ammo, and the other was for performance.

Honestly, he wasn’t a heathen. Mom had bought him the performance one, and the combat one had been a gift from Dad right before Manhattan. Not that he couldn’t use the jazz saxophone in combat at a pinch, but he’d really rather not if he had the choice.

Austin didn’t know why Yan had come into the cabin, but he wasn’t about to let the chance slip away while there was no Will and no Kayla to realise what he was about to do.

Will in particular was annoying like that.

“Hey, Yan,” he called, setting aside the polishing cloth and carefully setting the saxophone down on its stand. His sibling glanced over at him, the short ponytail swaying with the movement just enough to catch Austin’s attention, and gods, did a trick of the light have to make them look so much like Michael?

The hair was the only thing about them that was the same! Yan was so clearly of Chinese ancestry, and Michael had been white – tanned, Austin thought, but still white, with skin tone and racial features to match. True, they were also both short, but Yan was a normal degree of short, instead of Michael’s tiny.

Yan looked over at him, and from the look on their face, Austin realised they’d noticed his split-second distraction, again. “What is it?” they asked.

“Let me do your hair.” Austin beckoned them over.

His sibling sighed and ran a hand through the hair in question. “It’s the ponytail, isn’t it.” It wasn’t a question, and Yan didn’t wait for an answer before heading over to him, snagging their hair brush on the way. “Why?”

Austin shuffled some scattered reeds out of the way, so Yan could sit in front of him, and took the proffered brush.

“Kayla ever mention Michael to you?” he asked, pulling the hair tie out of his sibling’s hair and snapping it around his wrist. He didn’t bother asking if Will had; he knew the answer to that.

“The head counsellor before Will?” Yan replied. “A few times. He died, didn’t he?”

It only took a couple of passes with the brush to get rid of any stray tangles Yan’s hair had picked up during the day. “Yeah,” Austin confirmed. “Kayla and I didn’t know him for long, but he was pretty cool. Kayla adored him – I think Michael used to struggle to go anywhere without her following him, and if it was the archery range it was a total lost cause, not that I think he cared about that.”

“He was an archer,” Yan said confidently. “Kayla said he was the best.”

Austin snorted slightly at the memory that arose of both of them trying to outshoot each other. They’d done that several times – although it was really Kayla trying to outshoot Michael, because she was good even back then, but Michael had been better. Austin didn’t know if that was still true, but they’d never know that.

“Yeah,” he agreed, leaning over to grab a box of hair elastics from his dresser. One generic hair tie was not going to work for this at all. “He was.”

He grabbed his own comb, too, and got to work partitioning Yan’s hair, reminding himself that Yan��s Asian hair was not going to take to braids the same way his did. His sibling didn’t react to the tail of the comb against their scalp, so Yan had probably expected Austin to do something like that.

They sat in silence for a few minutes as Austin concentrated, splitting Yan’s hair down the middle and clipping the half he wasn’t working with away before he split the other half into three more sections.

“Michael wore his hair in a short low ponytail all the time,” he eventually said, once he had the sections to his liking and ready to braid. “And his hair was black.”

Yan’s shoulders slumped. “I see,” they said. “Sorry.”

Austin jabbed him in the shoulder with the end of the comb. “Not your fault, you didn’t know. Besides, it’s not like he gets to monopolise hairstyles.”

“Which is why you’re redoing my hair so it isn’t like that,” Yan pointed out dryly. “I can take a hint, Austin.”

“Braids are cooler than ponytails,” Austin sniffed. “I’m doing you a favour.”

“And stopping Will and Kayla from looking like they’ve seen a ghost every time they see me,” Yan continued, not giving Austin any wriggle room to deny it. “I know. It’s okay.”

It wasn’t, not really, but Austin knew there wasn’t anything they could do about it.

“And thanks,” Yan continued. “I know you don’t do just anyone’s hair.”

Austin tied off the first braid with a flourish and got started on the second. “You’re my sibling,” he said. “Why wouldn’t I?”

Braiding took some time, especially because Austin had to keep remembering not to tighten the braids too much in deference to Yan’s hair type – no-one wanted Yan losing hair when the braids were taken out – but he kept to a simple straight pattern, until Yan had six braids running from their hairline to the back of their neck. Yan was patient, though, and they filled the time with various chatter – a lot of it questions about Michael, leaving Austin a little astonished at both how much and how little he remembered his brother.

It was all worth it, though, when they were summoned out of their cabin later by the dinner conch, and Kayla and Will didn’t flinch, pale, or otherwise show signs of seeing a ghost when they caught sight of Yan.

Yan noticed that, too, and the smile on their face was easy and comfortable as they settled onto the stone bench next to Jerry, who didn’t even seem to notice the change in hairstyle.

“You didn’t have to do that,” Will murmured in his ear, but Austin shrugged.

“I did,” he said. “Yan wanted stories about him in exchange.” He wasn’t enough of an asshole to say Michael’s name to Will, but his older brother still winced a little.

“Sorry,” he said, “I should’ve-”

Austin flapped a hand at him impatiently, cutting him off. “It’s fine,” he insisted. “I wasn’t as close as you, or even Kayla. It was easier for me.”

Will still didn’t look happy about it, but Jerry suddenly exploded into some rant or other about cricket (again – Austin did love his British brother, he did, but his obsession with that sport could get seriously grating at times), which made attempting to have any more conversation pretty much impossible.

From the satisfied smirk on Yan’s face, and the nod they sent Austin, he was pretty sure his sibling had provoked Jerry on purpose.

Whatever worked, Austin supposed.

#trials of apollo #trials of apollo fanfiction #riordanverse #riordanverse fanfiction #toapril #toapril 2024 #tsari writes fanfiction #austin lake #toa yan #will solace #kayla knowles #michael yew #cabin seven #apollo cabin

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tsarisfanfiction · 4 days

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Love Or Hate

Fandom: Trials of Apollo Rating: Teen Genre: Family/Hurt/Comfort Characters: Will, Apollo A long overdue conversation about family, betrayal, and loving them anyway. TOApril day 15 - Without Requisite or Deadline. Halfway there and this was such a weird prompt, so thanks to @fearlessinger for translating it as "unconditional" for me, which finally got my muses churning on something...

Will opened his eyes with a gasp, residual light taking its time to fade away from the explosion his mind had conjured up once again. It wasn’t the first time he’d dreamed of that moment, when he’d listened to Nico and death and his own hatred over the urge to heal and save within him, and he knew it wasn’t going to be the last, either. Some demons just never go away, and regret was one of them.

What made it worse was that Will still didn’t know if he did regret it, and if he didn’t, did that make him a bad person?

He wasn’t sure he wanted to know the answer.

Around him, dawn broke softly, a gradual light intensifying oh so slowly in the inverse of the explosion. There was no sign of the sun, but there didn’t need to be. Will wasn’t in his bed, wasn’t in his cabin, wasn’t even in camp, and that told him that the dawn wasn’t real.

It was symbolic, instead, a caressing comfort to match the warm hands that were settling on his shoulders, drawing him against an even warmer body.

Apollo had drawn him out from nightmares into a dream safe space enough times in his life that Will had no problem recognising the signs again, here.

He closed his eyes for a moment, watched the rest of the explosion finish fading away, and then took a deep breath. “Hi, Dad.”

“Hi, Will,” his dad said, and Will leaned back willingly as Apollo snaked an arm around his torso, resting his head against his father’s shoulder and tilting his head up to look at him. “More bad dreams?”

“Yeah,” Will admitted, letting his eyes fall to half-mast again. The nightmares wouldn’t come for him again tonight; once Apollo had pulled him out of one, the rest of his night was always far more pleasant, if not necessarily more restful. His body got to keep resting, sure, but his mind and soul wouldn’t.

Not that Will cared, if it meant he got to spend some time with his dad, uninterrupted and unshared.

“Thanks,” he added, somewhat belatedly, but that didn’t really matter with gods, with Apollo, because they always knew what he was referring to even if it took a while for him to say anything.

“You’re welcome,” Apollo murmured into his hair, and Will felt a light pressure in his hair for a moment.

These gestures of affection had never been missing from Apollo’s various dream visits over the years, but they’d become far more commonplace since his mortality and all the various fallouts from that. Will was sure he didn’t need them to know that his dad loved him, but that didn’t stop him enjoying them whenever they were dished out.

Apollo loved all of them, and Will was sure they knew it. He certainly did.

Echoes of the explosion flickered behind his eyelids, rudely dragging him out from his gentle relaxation with his dad, and a flicker of… of something, danced inside his chest. It wasn’t comfortable, rather closer to dread, and in a dreamscape there was no way Apollo wasn’t going to notice it.

“Will?” he asked, probing lightly. “Is something wrong?”

Will appreciated the offer of an out, a way to dodge the topic, because Apollo knew something was bothering him, that was as clear as the dream-dawn sky above him, but he’d given Will an opening to lie about it. They’d both know it was a lie, of course, but that didn’t really matter, because it wasn’t about lie or truth, it was about whether or not Will wanted to talk about it.

He didn’t, not really, but it was something he’d never had a chance to mention to Apollo, what with his father’s absence and then mortal stint, and he was self-aware enough to know that he wanted answers, somehow.

He hoped he wanted answers, anyway.

“Can I ask you something?” he asked instead of answering directly, glancing towards his father’s face. Blue eyes, the exact same shade as his, met his look evenly and softly.

“Of course,” Apollo said. “You can always ask me anything, Will. What is it?”

Will took a deep breath. “Octavian,” he said, and felt Apollo still behind him. “I… How much was the truth?”

He’d never been able to reconcile what Octavian had to say about his father with what he knew of Apollo, but as much as he hated it, the older boy had been a descendant of his all the same, and Will wondered what that meant for their relationship. He hadn’t really met many legacies of Apollo; they seemed to be a rarity at Camp Jupiter, for reasons his father had never explained.

Apollo sighed. “Octavian… was not evil,” he said. “Nor was he… entirely wrong.”

Will’s chest tightened. “He wasn’t?” he asked, his voice cracking and coming out far too small. “But-”

“I did search for more power,” Apollo confessed, “and Camp Jupiter was an obvious place to start. Octavian was more than willing to help me. Perhaps it was just because he grew up hearing stories of me from the cradle, but he was always devoted to me.” Will thought Apollo sounded a little pained at that. “How he reached the conclusion that he needed to destroy Camp Half-Blood, however, I don’t know. That was never my intention, or my implication when I spoke with him. We spoke of uniting the camps, much the same way they are now, not subjugating.”

“I hate him, for that,” Will admitted quietly, looking away from Apollo because he didn’t want to see disappointment in his father’s eyes. “Everything from his attitude to what he did annoyed me, but it was what he was trying to do that was the worst. He was going to pin the blame for it on you!”

“I know,” Apollo said, “although I don’t think he saw it as blame.”

Will swallowed. “Do… do you hate him?” he asked, not knowing if he wanted to know the answer to that. He didn’t know if he actually wanted to know if Apollo was capable of hating his own descendants, because it felt wrong but Octavian had done so much bad, caused so much hurt, that Will couldn’t comprehend not hating him.

His dad didn’t answer immediately, which could have meant anything and Will didn’t know which anything it was. There was a tenseness in his body, where Will was leant against him.

“I… felt betrayed,” Apollo finally answered. “And angry. Definitely angry. Camp Half-Blood is my creation, and for anyone, let alone my own descendant, to attempt to destroy it…” He trailed off, and shook his head. “But at the same time, Octavian is my descendant. He might not be my son, but… that doesn’t matter, really. I still loved him.”

“Loved?” Will wondered, and Apollo’s arms wrapped around him, encasing him in a glow of warmth.

“Loved,” Apollo repeated, before shaking his head. “No. Not loved.” He paused. “Love.”

The emphasis on present tense startled Will. “But he’s dead,” he pointed out.

“You hate him,” Apollo reminded him gently, and Will felt a little cold at the words, no matter how true they were, because his dad clearly didn’t, and that felt like he was the one in the wrong. “And that’s okay, Will. There is no law in the universe that says you aren’t allowed to. Family doesn’t have to love each other.”

“They should,” Will mumbled, “shouldn’t they?”

Apollo sighed. “Not if they’ve only caused pain. You don’t owe anyone love if they’ve hurt you, not even family. Octavian only ever hurt you. It’s okay if you hate him.”

“But you don’t,” Will mumbled. Apollo shook his head.

“No,” he agreed, “I don’t. But that doesn’t mean you can’t, or shouldn’t. It’s okay, Will.”

“Even though I killed him?” Will didn’t mean to ask it, hadn’t even realised the thoughts had been swirling around in his mind until they gave themselves a voice, but he couldn’t take them back.

“You didn’t kill him,” Apollo said instantly. “Octavian made his own choices, and followed the fate he carved out for himself. Don’t take on a burden that isn’t yours to carry, Will. His death is his burden, not yours.”

“But-”

“But nothing.” Will’s hair bowed under the pressure of something pressing against his head instead. “Don’t do this to yourself, Will. You did nothing wrong, and his blood is not on your hands.”

Will didn’t know if he believed that, but arguing the point against his dad was clearly a futile endeavour.

“Why don’t you hate him?” he asked instead, dragging the conversation back a few steps.

Apollo sighed into his hair. Will felt the strands move around with the force of it.

“He’s my child,” he said, “even if there are a few more generations between him and me than there are between us. I could never hate him. I could never hate any of you, no matter what you do. I’m not strong enough, not to hate family.”

Will supposed he could understand that, at least. Maybe if he’d ever actually seen Octavian as family, he’d be the same, but he hadn’t – and if he was honest, he probably preferred it the way it was.

Finding the strength to hate family seemed like it would be exhausting.

#trials of apollo #trials of apollo fanfiction #riordanverse #riordanverse fanfiction #toapril #toapril 2024 #tsari writes fanfiction #will solace #pjo apollo #pjo octavian

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tsarisfanfiction · 6 days

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Ghostly Reinforcements

Fandom: Trials of Apollo Rating: Teen Genre: Family/Hurt/Comfort Characters: Lee, Apollo, Diana Tarquin was mutilating and disrespecting Hades' domain. Hades decided he wasn't going to stand for it. TOApril day 13 - Curse of Eternal Youth. Twisting this prompt dramatically here until it basically means "Apollo's Dead Kids". Vague what-if scenario I've toyed with in my mind for a while, where Hades/Pluto decides he's had enough of all the undead hanging around in TTT and does something about it.

There was something about being back in the Overworld that felt wrong, for all that he had used to live there. Once upon a time, the Overworld was home, was normal, was where his soul felt settled and comfortable. Now, it wasn’t. Now his soul fidgeted, uncomfortable with the large expanse of sky above him, the sensation of the wind brushing past him, with earth below his feet. Everything felt weird and displaced.

But it made sense.

After all, he was dead, and the dead didn’t visit the Overworld. Eurydice had tried, with the help of Orpheus, but he’d failed and she’d been sent straight back to her forever home in the Underworld. No-one else had even come that close, until now.

Hades was furious about something. He didn’t know what, wasn’t privy to exactly what his god and king had been so provoked by, but he knew enough.

Lee knew that his dad needed help, and that was all he needed to know.

There was an army of them, familiar faces to him. Some of them he’d known while he was alive, several were his siblings, or his friends, people that had died both before and after him during the titan war, and whatever had gone on after that. Some of them he’d only met in Elysium, others considered heroes by the standards of the Underworld.

He was directly flanked by his siblings – Michael was almost his age, having almost closed the gap between them and dying only two months younger than the age Lee had been when he’d found himself on the bank of the Styx with the heart-wrenching knowledge that he wasn’t going to make it to adulthood after all, that his dreams had been crushed underneath a giant’s club. There were Hunters he recognised, too.

Lee had never known for certain that the red-headed girl, Phoebe, had been his sister. Not while they were still alive. She’d admitted it when he’d met her in Elysium, and it had made so much sense. She and Michael still didn’t get on – but here they were, both in the army Hades had raised.

It was a huge army, but still barely a fraction of the residents of Elysium, and it hadn’t escaped Lee’s notice that so many of them were somehow connected to Apollo. Children, lovers, other descendants – legacies, they called themselves.

Over the millennium, Apollo had made more mortal bonds than Lee would ever have been able to comprehend while he was still alive. Now that he was dead, it was one of those things that settled in the back of his mind with a quiet of course and no need to think about it further. It was simply a fact.

And now, they’d been unleashed.

It was temporary, Hades had stressed. There was a matter that required his intervention at Camp Jupiter – another of those quiet of courses that would have sent living!Lee into a headspin but now sat simply as a fact of existence – and for that intervention to occur, he was sending warriors to deal with it.

Their march was a mishmash of styles. Romans settled into cohorts, Greeks scattered into whatever groups and arrangements made sense to them. People who were neither found their own thing, too, as they all adjusted to the bizarreness that was being back in the Overworld. For some of them, it had been millennia.

Time didn’t mean anything in the Underworld, not to the dead, but Lee knew it hadn’t been too long since he’d died. The young, most-recently dead of all of them had had enough time to confirm that before he took his place near the head of the army, with the other Romans.

Camp Jupiter was burning, but that didn’t matter to the dead. They didn’t have lungs that cared about smoke, or hearts to pump oxygen around their bodies. They didn’t have bodies the way that the living did, something that instead seemed translucent under the light of the sun, even though they could interact with the Overworld, a little bit.

It took effort, but the dead didn’t know exhaustion so that didn’t matter as they advanced, falling upon the army trying to raise the Roman camp to the ground and charging through them.

They could interact enough to kill.

The living couldn’t touch them.

Defeated monsters faded to Tartarus before they could lash out, and the souls of the defeated mortals, well. Clearly Hades was keeping a close eye on things, because the souls of the slain Romans joined their ranks and threw themselves back into battle with a vengeance when death didn’t stop them.

Thanatos was whisking away the dead mortals of the Triumvirate before they had a chance to try and keep their own war going.

The reinforcements of Artemis – Diana – and her Hunters simply sealed the deal. The goddess herself disappeared deep into the heart of the city, and Thalia barely blinked as her dead sisters of silver rejoined her ranks, fitting seamlessly back into the Hunt as though they’d never left. Romans gradually slipped back into their own cohorts, and Hades’ army of the dead gradually dispersed throughout the battle until it was over.

It was the first time Lee had made it all the way through a battle, he realised with some bemusement, but being near-untouchable and already-dead was rather a cheat. The dead pulled their weight as the fighting faded to be replaced with clean-up, pulling bodies to where they needed to be and searching for cowering survivors from both sides (there were children, in the city, children that the Triumvirate had been willing to slaughter alongside the warriors).

Lee wanted to say it was an accident when he stumbled into a bookshop, but while it hadn’t been his intent he didn’t think it was a coincidence, either. The silver-gold eyes of the twelve-year-old goddess that showed nothing but expectation when he accidently met them all but confirmed that something had pushed him there.

Some things didn’t need to be thought about.

“Lee?”

His name was a broken gasp, coming from a scruffy-looking teenager that Lee had never seen before in his life and who certainly looked like he’d seen better days. Actually, the only one in the room he did recognise was Diana herself; the other girls were also strangers, to him, but at least they were also eyeing him like he was a stranger.

The younger girl was eyeing him like an enemy, and Lee distinctly hoped she wasn’t about to try and kill him for a second time.

He was more interested in the teenage boy staring at him like he’d seen, well, a ghost, and the face was unfamiliar but there was something his eyes that wasn’t.

When the boy’s knees buckled, Lee surged forwards, and caught his elbows. It took all of his focus to not drop him, and the sudden movement from the other girls – excluding Diana, who seemed content to simply watch – implied he’d startled them.

Their weapons went straight through him, and he ignored them.

“Hi, Dad,” he said, because there wasn’t anyone else the teenager could be, even if he was all wrong for Apollo.

Lee was all wrong, now, too.

“What- How-?”

“Pluto took exception to Tarquin’s encroaching upon his domain,” Diana said. “My Hunters were not your only reinforcements.”

The black girl’s shoulders slumped in relief, and Lee realised there was something familiar about her, too. Not her face – he had never met the girl before, in either his life or his afterlife – but her soul.

“Father couldn’t have given me a warning?” she wondered, clicking the familiarity into place, because she felt like Underworld. Not the same way the dead did, but like their Lord did.

Lee fell to his knees, too, lowering his father the rest of the way down in the process. “My Lady,” fell out from his mouth without his control, because she was still living but her father was his Lord, and it was ingrained.

She looked flustered, and he felt a little bad about that.

“So what, you’re another zombie but on Apollo’s side?” the other girl, the one that looked a similar age to Diana but was probably actually that age asked. She sounded like she was trying to be dismissive, but Lee had spent years with Michael and still had eternity to go with his prickly younger brother. If she genuinely didn’t care, he would eat his arrows.

“I’m dead, not undead,” he corrected, and hated how Apollo flinched when he said it. “But yes. I was on Dad’s side when I was living, and I’ll stay on his side now.”

“Unless that’s overridden by Pluto,” Diana reminded him, and it was Lee’s turn to flinch, because it was true – Hades was his god, now, and obeying him was in his being just the same kneeling for his daughter was.

Being dead was a freedom that only lasted as long as his god decreed, even for souls in Elysium.

Apollo burst into tears.

Lee had to concentrate hard, as his father wrapped him up in a solid embrace, to make sure they didn’t slip through each other. The dead and the living were not meant to interact, not like this, and Apollo wasn’t quite a god.

The glimmer was there, deep inside him – so deep that Lee couldn’t see it, only knew it was there because if it wasn’t then no amount of Lee’s concentrating would have let the hug work – but he was overwhelmingly human and that made it hard to touch.

But not even the gods came into Elysium, so this was still more than Lee had had since he’d died.

Diana permitted the reunion for a few moments, before heading for the door. “This place still smells of burnt Cyclops,” she said, and swept out, her wolves – which Lee had barely noticed until they brushed past him – following.

“C’mon,” the younger girl said. “Let’s go, dummy.”

Lee didn’t like anyone calling his dad dummy, but Apollo’s next sob almost sounded like a chuckle, and Lee knew he didn’t know enough about any of this to judge.

“How long are you here?” his dad asked as he pulled himself to his feet – somewhat aided by the impatient tugging of the girl.

Lee shrugged. “Until Hades recalls us,” he assumed, and Apollo’s head snapped around as fast as a giant’s club falling into a skull.

“Us?”

Lee gave him a gentle smile. “Yeah,” he said. “Us.”

He wasn’t surprised when Apollo bolted for the door, although he was surprised enough at the teenage body trying to grab him in the process that he didn’t manage to let the contact stick. Fresh tears welled up in Apollo’s eyes as his arm passed straight through him, and Lee immediately lurched forwards to grab his wrist.

“Sorry,” he said as they walked out, the two girls following closely behind them. Ahead, Diana was waiting in the street, arms crossed. “I have to focus.”

“It- it’s okay,” Apollo replied, his voice shaking in a way that said it wasn’t okay at all, but there was nothing Lee could do about it.

All he could do was stick close to Apollo as they headed for where the survivors – and the dead – were cleaning up – and savour the unexpected chance to interact with his dad one more time.

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tsarisfanfiction · 11 days

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Not Til Sunrise

Fandom: Trials of Apollo Rating: Teen Genre: Angst/Family Characters: Apollo, Will Two children missing, and an order that stops him going after them. TOApril day 8 - Moonlight's Reflection, although this ran a little way away from the prompt, whoops. This is set in an AU where Apollo landed in camp, and Will claimed his service - if this sounds familiar, it's because I did another snippet of this sort of thing back in 2022, called Order-Bound.

“Apollo, no! Stop!”

The order settled over Apollo like a thick blanket on a midsummer’s day, too warm and constricting as he froze in place, arm outstretched towards the forest.

“Will,” he growled, unable to even turn his head – although whether that was due to the order or his own desperate emotions, he refused to consider. “Let. Me. Go.” It wasn’t like earlier, when there had been injuries to treat and his son had a duty that he would never abandon. Now, everyone was treated, everyone would live, and there were still missing demigods.

Two more missing demigods, his children, and the fact that Will, of all people, was holding him back, was unfathomable. He knew Will was as desperate as he was to find and rescue Austin and Kayla from the clutches of the forest and whatever had ensnared them in the middle of a camp-sanctioned activity, so why was his son stopping him?

“No,” Will said, his voice perfectly even. Too even. “It’s too dangerous.” Apollo felt him rest a hand on his arm. “Come on, Apollo.”

Apollo had no choice but to follow his son – his master – away from the edge of the forest, but Will’s feet betrayed his reluctance, and Apollo was desperate.

“If they-” he started, before his brain caught up with his mouth and he realised what, exactly, he’d been able to say to his son. “If they’re hurt-” he corrected, but Will was either too smart or was already thinking the same thing, because he didn’t let Apollo’s slip pass.

“If they die, it’s on me,” he said, and his voice was still too, too even. “I know. But I’m not losing you, either.”

There was nothing Apollo could say to that.

The rest of their reluctant walk back to cabin seven was in silence as the sun finished setting and twilight settled in. Above their heads, Artemis took to the sky in her chariot.

“Will,” Apollo demanded, begged. His son just shook his head.

“Not tonight,” he said. “You can’t enter the forest until sunrise.”

The fresh order snarled around him like vines – or a snake, but Apollo much preferred the imagery of the former, given the current state of Delphi. That was more than enough ensnaring serpent, if you asked him.

It wasn’t that he couldn’t see Will’s logic – his children rather famously did better in the sun than at night, and it made sense to assume the same held true for Apollo himself, in his current mortal meatsack. The problem was that he had two children out there, in danger, after dark.

“Dibs on the bathroom,” Will said, too lacklustre to be anything other than habit, and he ducked inside the room in question immediately, leaving Apollo standing in the middle of the cabin, feeling helpless.

He hated it.

It wasn’t that he didn’t understand Will’s fear – Will had lost so many siblings, and several of them after dark – but he also didn’t understand why his son was able to stand aside with more siblings in danger in the dark. Surely Will wasn’t placing his pathetic father’s safety above that of his younger siblings’?

Apollo’s memory was not pin sharp any more, and he hated that, but he still thought he remembered Will well enough to know that that wasn’t like his son. And yet Will had done it, ordered Apollo outside of the forest until dawn, which was far too many hours away, given it was scarcely a month past midwinter and the sun had only just set.

Will hadn’t ordered him to stay in the cabin, though. He’d made that oversight, and if Apollo wasn’t allowed to go in the forest, then he was going to sit vigil outside it, instead. He half-heartedly snatched a book about him from Will’s bookshelf, barely glancing at it, as he fled the cabin. No doubt Will would come looking for him, but he’d be tired now that the sun was fully set, and maybe Apollo could at least convince him to let him stay keeping his vigil overnight.

In his haste, he didn’t notice the silence from the bathroom.

He didn’t bother searching for a comfortable place to sit – he didn’t deserve to be comfortable as he waited the night out, knowing that his children were in there, in an unknown condition with no guarantee of survival until dawn. Instead, he threw himself down on the cold, hard ground and simply stared into the darkness, cursing his mortal eyesight.

Why did mortal eyes just stop being able to see things properly in the dark? Apollo felt blind, and that was not an experience he had ever wanted to endure. All his feeble, mortal eyes could make out was the light swaying of the trees in the nighttime breeze, the shadow of the clouds passing past Artemis’ chariot causing darker patches to run across the ground, periodically cutting him off from his sister’s light entirely.

It was cold, too. Human skin raised in weird-feeling pimples, the minute hairs sticking up on end, and at another time Apollo might have found it fascinating to experience, but right then it was just another deserved discomfort in aid of keeping him awake all night, staring into the depths of the trees for any sign, any sign at all, that his children had escaped and were making their way back.

Austin and Kayla were resourceful. They could do it, he was certain.

He had to be certain, because the other choices were far less, well. Certain. Apollo couldn’t entertain them, because if they did, then that meant there was a chance it wasn’t certain.

If they died-

Movement caught his eye, a flicker of something in the corner of his eyes. A silhouette, and then another. Two of them, walking side by side, although it was more of a desperate run, and Apollo was on his feet immediately, hurtling his way towards them because-

He stumbled over his feet and his face became suddenly and intimately acquainted with the cold, hard January ground. His nose ached in protest, joining his aching ribs and assortment of other bruises his mortal body had acquired in its brief existence, but he ignored it as he pushed his way back to his feet, staggering and almost collapsing again before he finally managed to stagger to his feet again.

The moonlight bleached everything in silver, even the all-black shadow of the son of Hades – although silver always looked good with black, so the shimmer in Nico’s hair made him look alive. It did not have the same effect on blond.

Will looked washed out and faded in the faint light of the moon, monochrome in all the wrong ways, sick and pale instead of healthy and hale. He was more like a wraith than a living soul, and Apollo’s heart twisted.

“Will!” he shouted, tripping over his own feet again but somehow keeping his balance enough to not face-plant the ground a second time, instead staggering and stumbling forwards until the momentum from the near-fall finally exhausted itself and he was able to gain some control over the rhythm of his legs. “Will!”

His son’s head whipped around, faded blond waves swaying with the moment, and his eyes widened. They were faded, too, silver instead of blue and looking like the moon had taken up residence in his irises.

“Apollo?” he exclaimed, shaking his head several times as if to clear it. “No, no.”

“Will, what are you doing?” Apollo demanded, feet finding a small pebble, this time, to trip over. His son was already past the treeline, and as Apollo reached it he slammed to a stop, as though an invisible brick wall had formed in front of him.

Not until sunrise. The order held firm, even as Apollo pounded at empty air.

“I can’t lose you,” Will said, and there were many emotions shining through the silver of his eyes, “and I can’t lose them. I’m sorry, Apollo, but I have to do this. They’re my responsibility.”

“They’re my children!” Apollo shrieked. “You’re my child!” He threw himself at the trees again, using the entirety of his mortal body’s strength and momentum to try and force his way in, towards Will and Nico and their obvious intent to go into the woods alone, at night.

The order stood firm.

“I know,” Will said, and mortal hearts weren’t supposed to physically break but the pain in Apollo’s chest couldn’t be anything else, as his son continued. “That’s why.”

“Will-”

“I’ll see you in the morning, Apollo,” his son carried on, as though he hadn’t heard Apollo sobbing out his name in despair. It was said with conviction, but no promise. “I’ll bring them back.”

He and Nico faded into the darkness of the trees, disappearing from Apollo’s pathetic, blind, mortal sight even with the silver highlights from Artemis’ chariot kissing their hair.

“No!” Apollo screamed, throwing himself at the unrelenting order again. “WILL!”

#trials of apollo #trials of apollo fanfiction #riordanverse #riordanverse fanfiction #tsari writes fanfiction #toapril #toapril 2024 #pjo apollo #will solace #nico di angelo

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tsarisfanfiction · 7 months

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A Single Drachma

Fandom: Percy Jackson and the Olympians Rated: Teen Genre: Hurt/Comfort/Friendship Characters: Michael, Clarisse, Chris Alone. Injured. Hunted. Michael doesn't know where he is, but he knows he's running out of time, and he's only got one shot at calling for help. He's got to make it count. I'm a bit late posting it here because rl, but this was a fic written for @pod-together and my podficcer partner for the event was once again the amazing @stereden, who I also worked with for this event last year and once again had an absolute blast with! I pushed the boat out rather further this year in terms of length (there is actually a lot more to this story planned, but it became unrealistic to podfic... that being said I am still hoping to finish writing it at some point, for all that this does currently work as a stand-alone). We both had a lot more free time this year, and we definitely made sure we used it! I've lost count of how many times I've listened to Stereden's various takes on the podfic but it's been so much fun to work with her on this again this year! I was in a massive Michael&Clarisse mood when the event first started, and Stereden is a fantastic enabler who was more than willing to let them be the focus of the plot for our project, so here we are, and I hope you all enjoyed reading and listening to this as much as I did creating it! You can find the podfic to listen to here (go, listen to it! It’s amazing!)

After so long in darkness, the light of the sun was blinding. Michael’s tolerance for bright lights had always been higher than most, just like his siblings, but as he staggered out onto the street, limping heavily and doing his utmost to ignore the various signals of this fucking hurts different parts of his body were sending to his brain in discordant harmony, his eyes narrowed into a blurry squint. He stumbled, biting back a curse as his leg protested loudly at the bulk of his weight being forced onto it, and raised a dirty, shaking hand to shade his watering eyes from the worst of the glare.

Where was he?

With a wince he couldn’t hold back, he limped a few steps forwards, impatiently waiting for his eyes to adjust to the brightness, until he almost collided with a wall. Knocking his shoulder - the less-bad one, the one that was only bruised and not taunting him with fears of dislocation - against it, he awkwardly shuffled until he was leaning heavily against the painted brickwork, shifting his weight until it was off of his right leg.

It still had the audacity to fucking hurt, and Michael could feel his left leg trembling from the strain, less injured but no less exhausted than the rest of his body, but there was nothing he could do about it except lean harder on his shoulder, shoving as much of his weight as possible onto the building.

He needed to keep moving; he knew that. His arm stung, his newest injury still bleeding sluggishly. Michael could hear the slow yet steady drip, drip, drip of the liquid onto the ground. He’d run out of useable fabric to tear into makeshift bandages a while back - his clothes were in tatters, and stained with so many things he didn’t want to think about that using them to wrap an open wound was probably begging for a dose of tetanus, as though he needed any more problems on top of everything he had already.

Leaning against the building was the most relief he’d had in days, though, and Michael was at loathe to give it up. He glanced towards the sun again, still blindingly bright and near-impossible to look at. Hi, Dad, he thought, his mental tone somewhere between bitterness and despair. Apollo hadn’t contacted him for a long time, not since the night before they left for Manhattan, and Michael missed his father’s dream visits. He didn’t understand why they’d stopped - he’d feared, for a while, that Apollo had fallen to Typhon , that despite the lack of Kronos stomping around suggesting that they’d won the war his father had been lost for good.

Deep down, he still feared that - despite the freak saying things to the contrary - because if it wasn’t true, if Apollo hadn’t been destroyed, then that meant his father had been ignoring all of his pleas for help.

Apollo had been answering him reliably since he was a small kid, before he’d even realised the guy he dreamed about frequently was real and his father. There was no good reason for him to have stopped.

And yet he had.

Where the fuck are you, Dad? he thought at the sun. And where the fuck am I?

He lowered his hand, squinting against the bright light of the sun as it inflicted a fresh assault on his eyeballs, and took stock of his surroundings.

It was some sort of side street. Not enclosed enough to be an alley but no major thoroughfare - Michael could see a busier street, if he squinted against the shadows and too-bright sun hard enough, running perpendicular to the end of the street he was in. People passed through with purpose, none of them batting an eyelid at a messy, injured demigod leaning against the painted bricks and no doubt leaving some crimson stains behind. Was that the Mist at work, or was he somewhere where no-one even noticed bleeding teens?

Michael didn’t really care. Both options were far better than where he’d been, where he was running from.

He needed to keep moving, no matter how much his body protested, but first he needed a plan. Running blindly wouldn’t help; he hadn’t shaken his pursuers despite his best efforts so far, and he wasn’t naive enough to hope he’d shaken them now, either. But now that he was out, he had a chance.

His hand tightened its grip around his precious prize, the one small shard of hope that had crossed his path amongst the pain and fear. Firm edges pressed into his palm in a way that would be almost painful, if his body’s resting pain threshold wasn’t currently up around ten out of ten, a reassurance that he hadn’t lost it, hadn’t dropped it as he ran.

Michael had no weapons. He had no way to fight off his pursuers, no way to make them stop following him for good. Hand-to-hand had been out of the question even before the injuries started stacking up; he’d never done well enough in that during training to treat it as anything other than a last, desperate, resort. Here, where defeat meant getting dragged back to the freak, it was even lower on his list of non-existent options than normal.

But what he did have was one, single golden drachma. A stroke of luck amongst everything else, because drachma meant communication, and communication meant help. He could call Chiron, ask the old centaur to send someone his way, and warn him about the freak while he was at it.

Once he knew where he was.

He only had one drachma, one chance to make a call. He had to make it count.

It didn’t take Michael long to come up with a plan, if it could even be called that. Step one, find out where he was. Step two, find a rainbow and make the call.

Don’t get caught in the process.

He’d lingered too long. He knew he had. With a groan he forced his body upright again, biting back a scream as his right leg buckled and almost collapsed, and shoved himself away from the wall. The movement pushed him into a run, one leg in front of the other with no pause to think, for all that they both threatened to crumple beneath him as he staggered forwards, each step sending a bolt of pain up his right leg.

Michael stumbled his way towards the busier street. He didn’t know if it was a major enough street to have helpful signs like “welcome to”, but it was the best shot he had at finding where he was.

Several times, he almost fell, barely catching himself on the building walls, but he made it to the larger street without picking up any more injuries.

It didn’t have a “welcome to” sign, or any other defining characteristics that might have at least given Michael a clue. Cars drove past him without a second look, not that Michael intended on getting in one, anyway. It would be infinitely easier than walking, but the freak had a lot of influence. Michael couldn’t trust anyone not to be part of his many, many circles. Until he made contact with Chiron, he couldn’t risk talking to anyone.

The street ran east and west, as straight as an arrow, and Michael barely even had to think before he was turning east, glancing up at the sun as he did so and sending yet another silent and rushed prayer his father’s way.

Apollo had guided him to safety before. Why couldn’t he do it again?

Passing mortals paid him no more attention on the major street than they had on the side street. Michael still didn't know if that was due to the Mist concealing the various injuries and blood dripping from hastily wrapped (and in some cases unwrapped) wounds, or if they really just didn't care in this place. Not that the why actually mattered; at least no-one was stopping him.

It was only going to be a matter of time before they found him again, and Michael needed to have figured out where he was and called Chiron by then. If they caught up to him here, he didn’t stand a chance.

The thought spurred his protesting body on, legs screaming and lungs hauling in as much air as they could stand. There had to be some sign, somewhere, to tell him where he was. A café name, roadsigns, billboards. Something.

He reached an intersection just as the lights turned green for the cars. A glance behind him didn’t show any obvious pursuit but Michael couldn’t risk it. He dashed forwards, dodging honking vehicles, and felt his leg buckle halfway across, but he snarled and pushed on, refusing to let it surrender to the break just yet.

Not until he was safe.

It was probably more luck than skill that got him across without being knocked down by a irate driver, but Michael didn't pause when his feet met the sidewalk once more, leaving the cacophony of chaos behind him as he kept running. His lungs were starting to burn; no demigod endurance could keep going forever, and Michael had been fleeing for days, weeks, he didn’t even know. He’d long since lost track of time.

There were more than a few near-misses with crashing into mortals on the street, his legs not quite up for intense manoeuvrability and reliant mostly on other people getting out of his way, and more side streets crossed - more than one involving a game of chicken with cars and the accompanying soundtrack of blaring horns and swearing drivers - but Michael didn’t let himself stop. Couldn’t stop.

Where was he?

His eyes scanned the streets as he ran, desperately searching for any sign, a familiar name to latch onto, but his dyslexia kept jumbling anything that might be helpful and he didn’t dare stop long enough to decipher it. He couldn’t hear any pursuit yet, but he knew with a certainty deep inside his bones that they’d come. If he hadn’t lost them in there, he wouldn’t lose them here.

Another intersection - complete with more cars and horns, and Michael almost collapsing in the middle of the asphalt as his leg buckled alarmingly - and the buildings sharply receded on the other side of the street, leaving a large lawned area with a broad paved path leading directly up to an impressive building. People milled about, sitting on the edge of the cacti-infested planter that ran up the middle of the path, signifying it as a public place, and Michael made a snap decision.

It was the first thing he’d seen that seemed like it could tell him where he was, and further down the street he could see a fountain.

He clutched the drachma tighter, certain it had to be leaving jagged red marks in his skin, and ploughed across the street, his run disintegrating into more of a rapid limp as he dragged himself towards the building. There were words emblazoned above what was clearly the entrance, and flapping banners covering the outside of the second floor windows, more images than words.

When he drew to a stop outside, chest tight with pain and almost all his weight on his left leg, which trembled frantically as it desperately tried to bear it, he blinked at the large words, willing them to arrange themselves in a way that made sense.

AZRINOA STATE MEUSUM

No, that wasn’t right.

Arizona State Museum.

Arizona.

Michael had never been to Arizona before in his life, but the state name triggered an immediate memory of crackling spears and loud, abrasive words.

Clarisse.

He’d had a lot of time to think, while the freak had him. Time to get angry at the daughter of Ares, time to shout and curse her existence, to blame her for the battle going wrong, for the hellhounds tearing Nathan apart, for the shockwave that had sent half his siblings cascading off the shaking bridge-

But then time to go hollow, time to remember that the Ares cabin was never going to be stationed with the Apollo cabin, that the deaths wouldn’t have been prevented.

Time to realise that it wasn’t Clarisse’s fault. That in the grand scheme of things, their argument had been petty and inconsequential.

Gods, but the Fates had a sense of humour, dropping him in Arizona, of all places.

Michael didn’t know which city held the state museum, if it was Phoenix or Tucson or somewhere else entirely, but… Clarisse would know.

Clarisse, for all that they’d never got on, had always been a strong leader. She might hate him, might have told him she hoped he died (and he almost had and that still stung, a little), but she was prepared for trouble and Michael had never seen her without at least two visible weapons on her.

Hades, he’d been on the receiving end of them a few times, when their arguments got too heated. Lee, and Emily before him, had always told him off whenever he landed in the infirmary again after a fight with her.

The drachma felt heavy in his hand.

Michael turned away from the museum and pushed his body to start moving again, a walk that turned into a jog until he dragged it into a full run again, leg screaming in agony but something almost like hope starting to bloom in his chest.

He just had to reach the fountain. The Arizonian sun blazed down above him; there had to be a rainbow shimmering in the droplets somewhere, and then he could call for help.

The back of his neck prickled as his staggered run took him out of the museum grounds and back onto the street, and the blooming hope stuttered before it had much of a chance to grow. He threw a glance down the street, back the way he’d come, even as he pressed forwards towards the fountain, glistening in the sunlight. No sign of pursuit, but that didn’t mean anything. Michael hadn’t survived this long by not listening to his instincts, and the sudden tenseness at the top of his spine told him he had to run.

So he ran.

Jagged agony shot up his broken leg as he pushed it further, stumbling but refusing to fall even when tears of pain started leaking from the corners of his eyes and his breathing took on a whine of desperation that rang in his ears.

He almost crashed into the edge of the fountain, hands reaching forwards to brace himself against it and absorbing the impact. The drachma in his hand dug in deeply enough Michael wouldn’t have been surprised if it had drawn blood, but he’d take that a thousand times over dropping it now, so close to being able to use it.

Exposed and with no cover, if he lost it and the cry for help it afforded him now, it would be over for him.

Dashing away the tears of pain with the back of his hand, and wincing as the salt stung open scratches, he glared at the fountain, desperately searching for the glimmer of colour that had to be there, somewhere. The sun and the falling droplets of water were present, he just had to find -

There.

It was halfway around the fountain from where he’d stopped, and he clawed his way around the edge, leaning heavily on the white stone rim and letting his right leg abandon his weight. His left leg, and the arm he was bracing himself with, both trembled angrily, but Michael wouldn’t fall here. Not now.

The rainbow shimmered in front of him and he forced his fingers to unfurl from their death grip around the drachma, streaked red with angry lines where the coin had imprinted almost every detail onto his palm.

“Oh, Goddess, accept my offering,” he mumbled. His voice rasped in his ears after however many days it had been since he’d last had a reason to talk out loud, hoarse in his throat - maybe he should’ve taken a drink from the fountain first, but there wasn’t time for that - but hopefully the words came out clearly enough for Iris to understand. He tossed the drachma into the rainbow with a shaking hand.

“Clarisse La Rue.”

Fuck.

He hadn’t planned on calling Clarisse.

Even if he was in her home state, Chiron would know where things like the state museum was, and crucially, the centaur had never told him to die .

But the drachma was gone, the only one he had, and he’d said the name now. He dashed more tears - pain, frustration - away and stared at the rainbow, waiting for the call to go through and knowing he wasn’t at all prepared to talk to Clarisse, but that he had to.

Nothing happened.

The rainbow shimmered, glistening in a way that didn’t quite seem natural, and Michael stared at it in horror.

“C’mon,” he muttered, glancing back the way he’d come. Still no signs of pursuit, but his instincts were screaming at him. “C’mon, connect, why aren’t you fucking connecting?”

The rainbow pulsed lightly, as though it was still waiting for something, and realisation crashed over Michael.

“Fuck.” He hadn’t said where Clarisse was - where was Clarisse? He didn’t know, didn’t know if she was even still alive, let alone if she was at camp or if she’d left camp now, or... “Fuck. I don’t- Where the fuck is Clarisse? Iris- fuck- Lady Iris, please.” His hand clenched into a fist as he leaned forwards and rested almost the entirety of his weight on the rim of the fountain. Breathing was supposed to be easier than that but the air kept getting caught in his throat and distantly he realised he was panicking, sensing his hope slipping away from one slip of the tongue. “Clarisse La Rue at… fuck, I don’t know. Camp Half-Blood?”

His right leg buckled and he clamped his mouth shut against the cry of pain as broken bone fragments slipped against each other. More tears welled in the corners of his eyes and he turned his head, wiping them away frantically in the dirty remains of the fabric on his shoulder.

When he looked back up, Clarisse La Rue was staring at him out of the centre of the rainbow, eyes wide in shock.

She looked older than when he’d last seen her, hair semi-neatly chopped around her cheeks and small scars he didn’t remember peppering across her face. She was bigger, too, always broad-shouldered but now easily twice his width, and Michael was pretty sure she was even taller.

“Clarisse,” he rasped, too relieved to even care how frantic he sounded. “Help. ”

“Michael?” she asked. “You’re dead.”

The bark of laughter that erupted from his mouth wasn’t humorous in the slightest. Fuck, camp thought him dead? It made sense, explained why no-one had ever come looking, but-

Fuck.

“Not fucking quite,” he replied hoarsely. The back of his neck tingled again and he glanced back the way he’d come. Still no sign, but that didn’t make him feel any safer. “Not yet.”

Her brown eyes sharpened, narrowing from wide-eyed shock to the assessing daughter of Ares Michael had seen so many times before. “What happened to you?” she demanded. “And why are you calling me?”

“Fuck if I know.” He looked around again, and caught sight of movement in the distance. Movement that didn’t seem natural for mortals going about their day. “Fuck. I’m in Arizona, don’t know where the fuck except the state museum’s just down this road and if I don’t find somewhere safe to hide - or at least some fucking weapons to fight back with - now I’m fucking dead for real.”

“I know where you are,” Clarisse said. Michael saw her glance away from the IM for a moment, then nod firmly, a familiar stubbornness settling into her expression. “There’s a big building behind the fountain.” He looked up and nodded. “That’s the state university. Get around the back of it then follow the boulevard east through the campus. Once you’re out of the campus, keep following the street east for six blocks, then go left, then get to the park on the right. There’s an unused building in the far corner; mortals think it’s locked but it’s not. It’s one of my safehouses. You’ll find weapons there.”

Through the college campus and then another six blocks. Michael’s leg throbbed in protest but he set his jaw and nodded. He could do that.

He had to do that.

“Thanks,” he rasped, glancing back again. The shapes were clearer, bulky individuals that clearly hadn’t figured out exactly where he was yet but were searching. “Fuck. Gotta go.”

He slashed an arm through the rainbow, cutting off Clarisse’s “Mi-”, and pushed himself away from the fountain.

Time to run.

Michael knew that his leg shouldn’t be able to keep moving, let alone running. A mortal could never have managed it, and he was pretty certain most demigods couldn’t, either. Being the son of Apollo had its perks, but that didn’t stop it sending vicious stabs of pain up through his body with every step, reminding him loudly and furiously that son of Apollo or not, he wasn’t doing it any favours and sooner or later it was going to run out of endurance.

Oblivious college students didn’t even seem to blink as he ran past them, adrenaline flooding his body and pushing him further, further, faster. Fear of being caught and the hope of safety ahead of him worked in tandem to urge him on, slamming away the pain with extreme prejudice and forcing his legs, both the broken one and the merely exhausted one, to keep going, one foot in front of the other and jarring with every step. The campus stretched out before him, seeming impossibly long, and in the back of his mind a small voice despaired that he’d never make it.

He told the voice to shut the fuck up and kept going.

The sun beat down as he ran, sweat joining with blood to leave a trail behind that he was painfully aware of but could do nothing about. All he could do was hope that he had enough of a headstart to outrun them to Clarisse’s safehouse. And that Clarisse would think to tell Chiron, because fuck, he’d forgotten to tell her to.

The first sounds of active pursuit reached his ears as he passed a set of tennis courts near the end of the campus, lungs burning, chest heaving, legs screaming, and he glanced over his shoulder to see students being pushed out of the way by larger, armed and dangerous, figures.

Fuck.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

His body had nothing left to give but Michael wasn’t going to let it surrender. Not now, not when he finally had a chance to get away. He ignored the voice in his head that said that a safehouse wasn’t much good if they saw him go into it, and that he didn’t stand a chance in combat even if he did get his hands on weapons, because it didn’t matter how true it was, it was still all he had.

He accelerated again, finding speed he didn’t know he was capable of even with two intact legs and not on the cusp of exhaustion, and bolted across the last few yards of the campus, hurtling across the street without stopping and forcing cars to swerve to avoid hitting him, and kept going.

One block.

Behind him, more car horns sounded and drivers started shouting. Something sounded like it hit something hard.

Two blocks.

Something went crunch and the shouting abruptly stopped.

Three blocks.

Michael’s lungs were on fire. He couldn’t even feel his legs any more, which definitely wasn’t a good thing.

Four blocks.

Fresh shouting started up, low and guttural and undoubtedly aimed at him.

Five blocks.

His lungs transitioned from on fire to non-operational, each breath a constricting choke as he ploughed on.

Six blocks.

Michael skidded around the corner, crossing the intersection to more irate cars and almost toppled over at the change of direction. He caught himself on a wall and all but bounced off of it, lurching down the sidewalk and knowing it was too much to ask that his pursuers hadn’t seen him make the turn but part of him begging whichever gods might be listening that they’d missed it anyway.

The park on the right, Clarisse had said, and Michael almost stumbled over his own feet as he caught sight of greenery after a moment of desperate running.

A javelin sailed past him, missing only because his leg buckled and listed him to one side for a heartbeat, and Michael’s stomach leapt up into his throat. Not now, not now he was so close.

He threw himself into the greenery the moment it opened up, using the shrubbery for what little cover it could give him, but it was barely moments before he heard the leaves get brushed aside behind him. Guttural cursing in a language Michael didn’t know but had got used to hearing was far too close as he frantically scanned the far side of the park for the building Clarisse had mentioned.

Where was it where was it where was it where the fuck was it-

There!

On the far side of the park, sheltered by trees on multiple sides, was a building that looked old and rundown. Chains and padlocks wrapped around the door, but as Michael focused on it, they shimmered and fell away.

He hadn’t known Clarisse could manipulate the Mist that well, but he wasn’t going to complain.

He didn’t have time to complain.

There was still half the park to cross and he wasn’t going to make it unless he found another burst of speed from Hades-knew-where. He choked on more air, willing his legs to go faster, but he still couldn’t feel them, not even the pain from the break, and he definitely wasn’t speeding up.

If anything, he was slowing down.

Fuck no. He wasn’t going to get caught, not here. Not now . He leaned forwards, desperate for just a little more speed, and felt something snag his feet.

He landed on his front hard enough to see stars, every part of his body compressing in a way that made him feel sick, or perhaps that was the knowledge that he’d never get up and away in time. It didn’t stop him trying, pushing himself upright on arms that were shaking almost too much to bear his weight, one shoulder screaming as it reminded him it probably wasn’t in its fucking socket, determined to fucking crawl if he had to.

Electricity crackled.

“Back off!” a female voice roared , footsteps running towards him from where he’d been trying to get to. Michael’s first thought was that he must have hit his head when he fell, because that was Clarisse’s voice.

He dragged his head up just in time to see a figure jump over him, barely an instant before there was the clash of weapons behind him.

Rolling over was marginally easier than trying to stand up. It brought with it a reprise of pain from his broken leg that jolted back into awareness so quickly he barely choked down a cry, but more importantly gave him a front row seat to Clarisse La Rue in nothing but jeans and a t-shirt wielding a familiar electric spear with a vengeance against the freak’s employees as they found themselves on the back foot, clearly not expecting to face anything more than a desperate, injured demigod they’d already run into the ground.

A skilled daughter of Ares with a weapon gifted to her by the god of war himself was not a desperate, injured and run into the ground demigod.

Michael had seen the Germani fight before, when the freak wanted entertainment. They were skilled and powerful, far more so than most demigods - but Clarisse was not most demigods, and had surprise on her side.

He pulled himself backwards with trembling hands, away from the fight, until his back hit something solid. A panicked glance upwards revealed that it was the trunk of a tree - not a rogue Germani trying to get around Clarisse - and Michael reached up with his less-bad arm for a low-hanging branch to haul himself to his feet with, much to the protest of his entire body.

If one of the Germani did get around Clarisse, he refused to be vulnerable on the ground. He could still run to the safehouse if he had to, leg be damned .

For the moment, he let the trunk of the tree take most of his weight, keeping his right leg off the ground and gripping the trunk with white knuckles to stay upright while he watched Clarisse fight.

She’d always been an impressive fighter, but the demigod in front of him here was a whole different class to the one he remembered from before Manhattan. The IM hadn’t deceived him - she was slightly taller and muscular since he’d last seen her - but there was a confidence to her that felt different, almost more natural.

Or maybe he was just so relieved to be saved that his mind had entered delirium. That was certainly possible.

Whatever it was, Clarisse clearly needed no help in finishing up the fight, her spear whirling around and dispatching the startled Germani in a typically child-of-Ares display of aggression, until the last one disintegrated into dust.

Michael was not ready for Clarisse to turn and face him, towering over him the way she always had done and racking him over with narrowed brown eyes. There were some bleeding scratches on her front, and a rather more considerably bleeding gash on one arm, but she didn’t seem to notice them as she stepped towards him. Instinctively, Michael straightened, his weight automatically transferring back to both his legs, and provoking another blinding protest from the right one.

“Clarisse,” he croaked.

“What happened to you?” she demanded, voice sharp and unyielding. “You died in Manhattan.”

“The fuck I did,” he protested. “Some fucking emperor-god-wannabe fished me out the river and dragged me off.” At least, that was what he’d gathered after the fact. He didn’t remember anything between the bridge collapsing and waking up in the freak’s floating villa, which had taken far too fucking long to escape from.

He didn’t expect Clarisse to believe him, though. It sounded fantastical, he knew it did, wouldn’t have believed it if he hadn’t lived it himself. But it was the truth.

To his surprise, Clarisse’s gaze sharpened. “Emperor-god?” she demanded, and there was something in her tone that made Michael’s default defensive snap back falter briefly, because it sounded like she did, somehow, believe him.

Still, “that’s what I fucking said,” he retorted after a few seconds, the familiarity of arguing an unlooked-for comfort washing over him even though he didn’t want to argue, still needed Clarisse’s help badly. “Freak said he was one of the Roman bastards despite the fact they’ve been dead for fucking millennia. Called himself Caligula.”

The soft shit that slipped out of Clarisse’s mouth seemed like a reflex, and Michael blinked as she set the butt of her spear on the ground. “Let’s move,” she said, glancing around. “We can talk once we’re somewhere more secure.”

That, Michael agreed with, and he took a step away from the trunk.

His body did not agree.

Enough, said his leg, at the same time adrenaline drained away, leaving his head lighter than air.

He crumpled.

“Shit!” Large, warm hands caught his shoulders in a grip of iron. “Michael!”

Michael snarled weakly and tried to get his leg under him again. “I’m fine,” he insisted, knowing it was a lie. He wasn’t fine, but he hadn’t hit his limit yet - he refused. He dragged his head up to meet Clarisse’s searching gaze.

She snorted. “Pull the other one, Yew.”

To his surprise, she sank down in front of him, and by the time his brain realised what was going on he was slumped over her shoulders, pinned in place by an arm around his leg and hand clamped around his wrist.

“The fuck, La Rue?” he yelped as she grabbed her spear with the hand not holding him in place and straightened up. “I can fucking walk!”

“This is faster,” she said. “Instead of slowing us down, keep an eye out for more of Caligula’s people.”

Michael tried to be offended, but as she broke into an even jog, he had to at least privately concede the point. The movement jostled his broken leg, thankfully not the one she was using to hold him in place, and he fought back whimpers, but after so long running under his own steam, it was a relief not to have to, anymore.

Even though it meant a fireman carry from Clarisse.

It was easier to let his head hang than try to hold it up, and his matted hair made a curtain that was difficult to see through, but Michael had no desire to be ambushed by more Germani - more of Caligula’s people, and he was starting to wonder how much Clarisse knew about the freak, how she knew anything about him in the first place. He squinted past his hair, watching the park behind them as Clarisse jogged forwards, and then the street as she passed the safehouse without pausing.

“Where’re we going?” he asked, watching the building get smaller for a moment before flicking his attention back to the street.

“My apartment,” Clarisse said shortly. “It’s more secure than that.”

Clarisse’s apartment? “Your mom’s place?”

She snorted. “No. My apartment. You just ran through my college campus.”

It hadn’t occurred to Michael that Clarisse would be in college, now. Fuck, they were the same age; if she was in college, then if it wasn’t for the freak, he probably would be, too - if he’d ever decided what the Hades he wanted to do.

“Huh,” was the only noise he could summon in response, followed by another muffled whine as his broken leg jarred again. Fuck, he missed the pain numbing properties of adrenaline. Clarisse’s grip on his wrist shifted, and he realised that she’d heard it. She didn’t mention it, though, just kept up with the jog as though he didn’t weigh a thing.

In his current state, he probably didn’t as far as she was concerned.

Wherever Clarisse lived, it felt a long way away. Maybe it was because she wasn’t running in a flat-out sprint, but the journey seemed to take forever. More than once, Michael found his eyes starting to slide shut, exhaustion fighting for dominance, and forced them open again, unwilling to risk missing a threat.

Nothing attacked them. Michael could feel the tension in Clarisse’s shoulders rising the longer they went without being attacked, but she drew to a halt outside an apartment building unchallenged.

“Still awake?” she asked.

“Yeah,” he muttered.

“Good.” She turned around, looking back the way they’d come for herself and giving Michael a clearer view of the building, complete with the flight of stairs they were no doubt about to go up. Seemingly satisfied that he hadn’t missed anything, she then turned back and continued towards what was clearly her apartment door.

Michael’s leg did not approve of the stairs. Clarisse went slower than he expected, the rise and fall of her body minimal, but still his leg complained and more than one hiss forced its way past gritted teeth on the ascent. Her grip on his wrist tightened, but she still said nothing. Michael appreciated it.

Eventually, they came to a stop outside a plain door, indistinguishable from the rest of the apartment doors. Michael wasn’t sure how Clarisse was planning on opening it with her spear in one hand while the other kept hold of him, but he wasn’t expecting for her to call, “it’s him.”

The door was yanked open so fast, Michael half-expected it to fly off the hinges.

“Michael?”

He forced his head to raise, his hair falling mostly out of his face so that he could see over Clarisse’s shoulder.

“Chris,” he rasped, not liking the way the son of Hermes was looking at him in horror. “Take it you two are still together, then?”

“Yeah,” Clarisse confirmed as she walked past her boyfriend, who shut the door behind them. At the click of the catch falling into place, Michael let his head sag again. “Down you go.”

Michael didn’t manage to brace himself before spilling out of Clarisse’s grip, but he didn’t have to as he was gently laid on a throw-covered couch, his limbs limp and boneless as he sank into the fabric.

It felt heavenly.

“Gods,” Chris breathed, kneeling on the floor next to him, dark eyes surveying him from head to toe. Michael heard the quiet click of a catch opening and his eyes flitted to look at the floor, where Chris had a large plastic box cracked open on the rug. “Eat.” A small square of ambrosia was held up in front of him. Michael forced a shaking hand to take it from him and slipped it into his mouth, instantly feeling the relief that came from eating the godly food.

Hades, how long had it been since he’d last had ambrosia? The freak certainly hadn’t ever given him any.

He let his arm fall heavily back onto the couch as he savoured the taste.

“Let me treat your wounds,” Chris insisted. He was already pulling on gloves, and Michael eyed him in surprise. The son of Hermes huffed. “I know I’m not an Apollo kid, but my dad is still a patron of medicine, even if he’s not strictly a god of it. I might not be able to instantly heal you but I can make sure you don’t die of sepsis.”

It wasn’t like Michael could do much more for his own wounds than he had already; he healed fast but not instantly.

“Fine,” he agreed, and Chris broke into a relieved look. Clarisse shifted her weight.

“I’ll make sure the perimeter is secure,” she said, grabbing a small vial of nectar and taking a sip from it.

“Could you grab Michael something clean to wear before you go?” Chris asked her. Michael felt him gently take hold of one of his arms, then hissed as he gently dabbed at the exposed cut with antiseptic. “These clothes are filthy.”

“Fuck you,” Michael muttered, well aware that he was right. They weren’t clothes he was attached to - the freak had got rid of his clothes after Manhattan and replaced them with some sort of sailor’s outfit, which Michael had had no hesitation about tearing up for makeshift bandages.

He was still furious about the loss of his camp necklace, though.

Clarisse headed further into the apartment without another word as Chris wiped down the skin around the gash before peeling away one of Michael’s makeshift bandaging attempts and getting to work treating the wound underneath it.

“You know I’m right,” Chris replied. “Those rags need cutting off, anyway.”

Michael bristled. “I can-”

“I know a broken leg when I see one,” Chris overrode him. “I don’t even want to think about how much damage you’ve done to it running around - or how the Hades you managed to run around on that - but it won’t thank you for moving it again.”

Clarisse returned before Michael could come up with a retort, dropping a bundle of fabric over the back of the couch. “I’m securing the perimeter now,” she said.

“Be careful,” Chris replied, and Michael watched as she stalked out the front door, shutting it with a loud click behind her. “Okay, let’s get these rags out of the way.”

Chris’ hands were gentle as they tended to each cut, scrape, gash or worse. It wasn’t the same as one of his siblings, but it was enough to make Michael feel halfway human again, if completely helpless.

“I’d run you a bath now but I think you’d fall asleep in it,” the son of Hermes told him as he probed gently at the probably-dislocated shoulder. As much as Michael hated to admit it, the older demigod was once again right; he was well aware of the exhaustion doggedly gnawing away at him now that the adrenaline had faded away. “I’ll do that later.” He frowned at Michael’s shoulder. “This, on the other hand, I’ve got to deal with now.”

One good thing about the encroaching exhaustion was that Michael’s muscles couldn’t tense up too much, even if they wanted to. He grit his teeth as Chris carefully manipulated his arm into extending, before slowly starting to rotate it. The earlier ambrosia was not enough to completely muffle the sensation of the joint grinding back into its socket; some whimpers slipped out past his clenched jaw. Like Clarisse earlier, Chris had the tact to not mention it.

Even worse than the dislocated shoulder, predictably, was the broken leg. That was by far the worst part of the treatment as Chris gently poked and prodded at it before resetting the bone. The ambrosia was no more effective as a painkiller for his leg than it had been for his shoulder, and Michael couldn’t help a short, high-pitched shout as it shifted back into position - thankfully also passing unacknowledged by the son of Hermes.

“No walking on it,” Chris said firmly as he fitted a splint to keep it in place. Michael grumbled a string of curses under his breath as it was secured. “It - and the rest of you - needs rest.” It was obvious that he wanted to ask about what had happened to Michael, much in the same way Clarisse had, but to Michael’s relief, he wasn’t actually broaching the subject.

Then again, Chris knew a lot about traumatic experiences.

Once all his wounds were treated properly, Michael pulled on the spare clothes Clarisse had dug out for him, begrudgingly accepting Chris’ help. Unsurprisingly, they were all far too big for him - Clarisse was easily twice his size, now, and Chris might have been rather lither than his girlfriend, but he was far taller than Michael. The only advantage was that it meant they were easy to pull on over the various bandages and even leg splint, which didn’t negate Michael feeling like he was swimming in fabric.

“I’ll get you something that fits better soon,” Chris apologised as Michael flaked back down again, finding the couch far more comfortable than it had any right to be.

“Whatever,” he muttered.

The apartment door opened and Clarisse strode back in, bolting it behind her and propping her spear up beside it. “Secure,” she reported, heading for them. “Done with the first aid?”

“Done,” Chris confirmed. “He won’t be walking on that leg any time soon, but otherwise it’s mostly exhaustion.”

Clarisse sat down on the rug; with Michael laying down on the couch, their heads were at similar heights. “So what happened after Caligula grabbed you?” she demanded. Chris’ sharp intake of breath at the name told Michael that they definitely knew something about the freak. “That was nearly two years ago.”

Michael grimaced.

“Couldn’t get out,” he admitted, glossing over the gloating, the leering Germani and the self-important big-eared pandos, to say nothing of the fucking horse and the freak himself. They’d found his attempts amusing. The freak had even dared him to get out, promising him that he couldn’t.

The freak had said a lot of things, and Michael still couldn’t shake the shivers at the promise that he would be the new sun god. It was delusional - it had to be, Apollo was the sun god and wouldn’t be usurped by some fucking wannabe - but the freak had always sounded deadly serious when he’d said it, like he fully believed he would . He’d said Michael would help him, too.

Michael’s attempts to escape had always got more frantic whenever he heard that gloat.

He didn’t say any of that, didn’t think he could if he tried. Neither Clarisse or Chris pressed him for details.

“Had a fucking boat villa. Never let the thing near land.” He’d managed to get on one of the boarding boats, once. Mortal security guards had spotted him and dragged him back, citing some nonsense about the boss’ son not being allowed to leave. “Took for fucking ever to get off.”

Eventually, one day, the guards had been distracted by something. Michael still didn’t know what, but it had been enough for him to finally slip past them, onto land for the first time in eighteen fucking months, and run for it.

It almost hadn’t been enough, he’d almost been caught, but a door he’d run through had ended up in tunnels and more tunnels and more and more and more fucking tunnels with monsters with claws and teeth and other appendages they shouldn’t be allowed to fucking have that wanted a piece of demigod flesh and-

“Michael, breathe.”

A hand rested on the couch, not touching him but enough to catch his attention. His eyes snapped to it, then followed the arm up to a shoulder and up again until he was looking at Chris’ face. The older demigod’s brow was furrowed in concern, and Michael realised he was breathing too fast, air not actually reaching his lungs.

Fuck.

Michael closed his eyes, only to be assaulted by memories of being tracked, hunted, and snapped them open again, focusing instead on Chris’ face as he tried to wrench his breathing under control.

“Don’t push yourself,” Chris told him gently as air started to reach his lungs again. “It’s okay if you can’t talk about it.” Michael glanced at Clarisse, still sat on the rug behind her boyfriend but frowning, face all twisted up.

“No,” he said, hating how thin his voice sounded. “I- fuck.” If it was anyone else, he’d take the invitation to stop talking, because they wouldn’t understand, wouldn’t get it. But these two…

“Fucking Labyrinth.”

Chris’ face paled, and Clarisse moved, putting her hand on the son of Hermes’ shoulder. Her knuckles were white.

“It got me away,” Michael admitted, because it had; without its twists and turns and traps absolutely everywhere the freak’s men would have caught up to him within a day.

He didn’t know how many days he’d been running through the fucking thing before it finally spat him out in Arizona.

“But- fuck .” He’d never been in the fucking thing before, but he’d seen what it had done to Chris, how pale and shaken Annabeth had been when she re-emerged alone after her quest. Had seen the monsters spill out of it into camp, had seen Lee’s head smashed open-

The fucking thing was supposed to be destroyed. Why was it back?

He could’ve done without experiencing the inside of the fucking living nightmare for himself.

“You made it,” Chris told him, voice shaky but assuring. “You made it out, Michael.”

“You’re safe,” Clarisse added, tone firm and leaving no room for debate. Michael looked at her, remembering too many arguments and disagreements and threats from the daughter of Ares but seeing only pure sincerity and stubbornness there now. “Those shitheads won’t get you, and you’re never going in there again.”

Michael swallowed around a lump in his throat. “Yeah,” he agreed, voice shaking just as much as Chris’. “Yeah.”

He was out. He was safe.

The knowledge settled over him, heavy and warm as it finally sank in, and with it came a looming darkness his battered, aching and exhausted body finally stopped fighting and instead welcomed with open arms.

potentially tbc...

#riordanverse #riordanverse fanfic #percy jackson and the olympians #percy jackson fanfiction #trials of apollo #trials of apollo fanfiction #michael yew #clarisse la rue #chris rodriguez #toa caligula #tsari writes fanfiction #stereden #podfic #podfic of my fic

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tsarisfanfiction · 9 days

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Discordant

Fandom: Trials of Apollo Rating: Gen Genre: Family Characters: Austin, Apollo The string quartet didn't match the vibe of the battle at all. Pop Goes The Weasel fit so much better. TOApril day 10 - This Isn't Goodbye. This was not my original plan for this prompt - my initial thoughts rolled somewhere around the end of TON when Apollo leaves camp after dropping by as a god again - but I like this a lot better. Austin needs more content, anyway.

His dad certainly looked like he’d seen better days, although from what little Will had been persuaded to tell them of their time with the trogs, Austin wasn’t surprised that Apollo looked rough. That wasn’t to say he was happy about it, but this wasn’t his first time in battle.

There would be time for cleaning up later, once it was over, if they all made it through.

Normally, Austin didn’t have much time for ifs and buts, especially not ones of those nature. He’d made it through two wars, and this was practically a skirmish in comparison, and his dad had been through far, far more during his godly lifespan. From the stories they’d received from Camp Jupiter, Apollo had been through plenty of skirmishes even as a mortal, so there was no reason for him not to get through this one, either.

But something felt wrong. It was probably the music, a string quartet emitting from hidden speakers in the elevator and so painfully at odds with the vibe of the tower. Discordance was unsettling at the best of times, designed to raise hairs on the backs of necks and send shivers down spines, and while there were times when that was good, the unpleasantness a pleasantness of its own, there were other times when it was very, very bad.

This felt like the latter, and he couldn’t stop his fingers from fidgeting on the keys of his combat saxophone – not enough to make them clack with the movement, but enough to put pressure on the pads of his fingers as he tried to imagine a counter-melody that would harmonise the gentle, self-assured strings with the chaotic fighting below and behind them.

Next to him, Apollo clearly hated the music, too, or at least its timing and lack of appropriateness for the setting. Austin somehow doubted there was any music that his father hated, given the whole god of music thing. He thrived on terribly composed poetry, so there was no reason he wouldn’t do the same for music.

Situational appropriateness, though, was a different thing altogether.

Just fingering out a solution silently on his saxophone wasn’t enough, not even close, and with some effort he stilled his fingers.

“Wish it was Miles Davis,” he commented, mostly to interrupt the strings, although it also wasn’t a lie. He would much rather be listening to some jazz trumpeting over the classical strings right then. For one thing, it would be a much more battle-oriented vibe, rather than the unsettling nothing is wrong vibe the elevator music was trying to brainwash them with.

“That would be nice,” Apollo replied immediately, and Austin wondered if he’d been thinking the same thing already, or if his agreement was instinct. It was difficult to tell, sometimes, although after spending some time with his father recently – even if it was because said father was temporarily mortal – Austin thought he could hazard an accurate guess towards the former. Of course Apollo would have been thinking about more appropriate music.

Unfortunately, the soft strings were getting to Austin, prickling under his skin with subtle silkiness, and he didn’t mean to start talking about the future, but the words came out before he could think them through. “Hey, if we don’t get through this-”

Apollo cut him off instantly, all sharp and jagged edges, discordant with the elevator music the same way the elevator music was discordant with the battle vibes. “None of that talk.”

Austin appreciated it, but if he was opening that can of worms then he was going to open it all the way, no hesitation in sight. Hesitation was not one of Austin’s preferred traits and he wasn’t going to fall into it now.

Besides, he had things that he did want to say to his dad. It was difficult getting alone time with a mortal god, because everyone wanted to talk to him, and Austin did have several siblings to share with, to say nothing of Meg and Mr D back at camp.

He couldn’t completely blame his unease that this would be the end of his time with his dad on the strings, as much as he would love to.

“Yeah,” he shrugged, catching Apollo’s attention and holding it, thriving on being in the spotlight of his father’s attention, the same way any other spotlight had him thriving. Austin was a performer, after all. “But I wanted to tell you, I’m glad we had some time together. Like… time time.”

Duets by campfires, jokes and laughter at the dinner table, hugs in all sort of situations. Time with his dad the same way he spent time with his mom, with his siblings. Time that felt real, not fleeting and fading like a note that could only last as long as the player’s lungs.

Apollo didn’t say anything back, but Austin felt him squeeze his shoulder, and that was more than enough. A physical reaction, contact that they’d lose again, when Apollo got his godhood back and visits went back to nighttime, during dreams he always prayed he’d remember when he woke up. The body of Lester ran warm, warm enough for the heat to radiate through Austin’s shoulder with ease, but not so hot it felt dangerous.

He didn’t let go until the elevator came to a stop, the doors rolling open silently and more smoothly than the smoothest sax in existence, and Austin wished he could keep holding on forever. The string music hadn’t felt so wrong, had been almost right as a background to fatherly affection, but stepping out onto the mosaiced floor, the discordance came back to him.

Battles were not fun.

They needed some atmospheric music as they padded down the hall, something to echo the tension building in their bodies and disperse it. Or perhaps something energetic and upbeat, defying and reducing the tension until it disappeared entirely. Unfortunately, being the source of any sort of music would bring Nero’s army down on their heads, and Apollo was in rough enough shape that Austin couldn’t risk that, so a silent advance it was.

Of course, spending time with his dad was always too good to be true, and despite his intentions when he’d taken over from Kayla in escorting Apollo further up the tower, the moment his mirror caught sight of a crowd of Nero’s minions directly between his father and his father’s destination, he knew exactly what was going to happen.

He also knew his dad wasn’t going to like it, because Apollo had never been subtle about trying to keep them safe, even when he was a god, and as a mortal he was so blatant about it, Austin wondered how anyone could ever forget that one of his domains was the protection of youth.

But Apollo couldn’t stop him, not as a mortal, and not with Meg’s safety on the line, and this was something that Austin, double-war veteran, knew he could do.

Fifty or sixty of Nero’s goons? Not a problem.

He gave his dad a reassuring grin, trust me, I’ve got this, as Apollo protested his plan, and didn’t give him a chance to try and stop him. “You hang back until I draw them out. Then go find our girl. I’ll see you on the other side.”

Apollo was still going to try and stop him, so Austin didn’t waste any time. The violins still had him on edge and he needed something far more battle-appropriate to settle his bones, so really this was killing two birds with one stone with all the accuracy of an Apollo kid.

Clear a path for Apollo to get to Meg, and reset the musical vibes of the tower.

“Hey, idiots!” he yelled, darting out from the cover of the corner and settling into his performance, nice and simple. He loved performing live. “You’re all gonna die!”

Pop Goes the Weasel was a classic, and it did exactly what it was supposed to as it reset the vibes from discordant to chaotic in an instant.

Some people would probably call it working a little too well as it instantly gained him a following of fifty plus angry guys with weapons they knew how to use, but Austin wasn’t settling for anything less than being the centre of attention, so he was calling it perfect, instead, as he put his musician’s lungs to the test and ran, saxophone still in his mouth.

He didn’t get the chance to look back at where Apollo was hiding, to make sure Apollo was hiding, that no-one had caught sight of him, but that was okay. He’d meant what he said.

He was going to see Apollo on the other side. Not just of this manoeuvre, with Meg retrieved and back where she belonged, but of the whole battle, with Nero and Python taken down and his dad a god once more.

No matter what some strings tried to make them believe.

#trials of apollo #trials of apollo fanfiction #riordanverse #riordanverse fanfiction #toapril #toapril 2024 #tsari writes fanfiction #austin lake #pjo apollo

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tsarisfanfiction · 12 days

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Call On Me

Fandom: Trials of Apollo Rating: Teen Genre: Hurt/Comfort/Family Characters: Yan, Apollo, Jerry A simple shopping trip into the city goes wrong. TOApril day 7 - Fathers Who'd Kill. This prompt was easy, and of course it's Apollo! I love protective!Apollo and this prompt was begging for it, so here we go...

This wasn't supposed to happen.

It wasn't like they were on a quest or anything. True, all demigods were in some degree of danger from monster attacks outside the protective borders of camp, but once they were at least somewhat trained, it was a moderately low risk, and one that most demigods didn't really consider.

Or maybe Yan had just got too complacent, given the only times they'd left camp before had been as part of a larger group, or even an army, that first time, when their dad was mortal and Nero was threatening to end New York while Python was slithering around Delphi. That had been horrible - traumatising, even - but it had been once, and Yan was stronger, now. More experienced. More confident.

Overconfident.

It should have just been a quick trip into New York, for an American value of quick. Jerry had been grumbling about the two hour drive the entire time, and how big America was. He'd never really got used to the massive upsize in scale compared to England (and nor had Yan, really. They'd never left London during their year there, and it had felt pretty similar in scale to Hong Kong. America was an entirely different beast for both of them). They'd been at camp for years now, lived through not just their father's mortality but also the overthrowing of Zeus, and whatever reshuffle was going on up in Olympus. Apollo had never really given them a straight answer on that, just that it would take time. Given how long the gods had lived for so far, Yan suspected it was the sort of take time that would last beyond a mortal lifespan, but as it didn't seem to be affecting the mortal world much, if at all, they could mostly put it out of their mind.

Everyone knew that quests went wrong - it was practically a rite of passage, to have a quest that went drastically sideways at some point or other. Yan had never gone on a quest themselves, and was content to keep it that way, but they'd heard stories from others who had. What wasn't supposed to go wrong were short shopping trips, but here they were.

Jerry wasn't moving. His blood was splattered across the pavement, and stained Yan's shoes, and there was nothing Yan could do about it. They weren't the strongest healer, couldn't deal with things like this, and they didn't have the chance to, either.

They weren't a close combat fighter, either. True, they had a knife for emergencies, but their strength lay in their bow and the moment they had to make the switch was the moment they were going to fall, just like Jerry.

Gods, they didn't know if Jerry was even still alive. The hellhound had barrelled into their younger brother at speed, and what made it even worse was the fact that Jerry had deliberately put himself in its way, because it had been charging towards them. Jerry wasn't an archer, not really - he could shoot a bit – but he did better with the sword. That was a rarity for Apollo kids, but Jerry always equated it to swinging a cricket bat, even though Yan was certain cricket bats were not wielded that way under any match circumstances. It meant he tended to put himself on the front line, especially as he was one of the biggest Apollo kids now, certainly bigger than Yan despite being a year younger.

It worked in Capture the Flag.

It didn't work against a hellhound.

Yan had felled the first one before it reached them, before it could do more than just maul Jerry, but now there were more, a whole pack of them, and Yan didn't have enough arrows to take them all down. Didn't have the time, either, with the speed the hunting pack were advancing. Their knife would do nothing here, and even if they could make the opportunity to grab Jerry's sword, they didn't have the skill to use it.

They only had one thing they could do, one chance at survival, and they hoped it would work but they didn't have proof. They knew it hadn't always worked in the past, definitely hadn't worked while Zeus was in charge, but he wasn't in charge anymore and Yan didn't want to die. Didn't want Jerry to die.

"APOLLO!" they shrieked, letting their fear and desperation loose as they fired off another arrow. It lodged itself firmly inside a hellhound eye, but didn't go deep enough to hit the brain. It yelped but kept running, teeth bared and tongue lolling out disturbingly. "DAD, HELP!"

The sun exploded.

Yan had high tolerance for bright lights, higher than anyone outside of their siblings, but this had even them wincing against it, instinct driving them to throw their arms up across their eyes as they screwed them shut. It should have made them feel vulnerable, blinded and at the mercy of the ever-approaching pack of hellhounds, but it didn’t. It made them feel safe.

They fell to their knees, eyes still shut but bow discarded in favour for reaching blindly for where Jerry lay, gripping their brother’s wrist tightly. There was a faint pulse beneath their fingertips, a promise of life beneath the façade of blood and death that had flashed before their eyes as Jerry fell, and amongst the sound of tortured screaming that could only come from the throats of hellhounds, Yan relaxed.

The light beyond their eyelids slowly faded away, and the hand that rested on their shoulder was warmth incarnate. Comfortable, reassuring. Yan let themselves bask in it for a moment, taking deep, grounding breaths, before they opened their eyes again.

In front of them, Jerry was glowing faintly. There was still a hand on their shoulder, but there was another hand on Jerry’s bloodied chest, one that was clean as it rejected the searching stain of blood, rejected the injuries beneath it.

The lightest shift on their shoulder had them slumping sideways, into the comforting warmth, and they dragged their eyes away from Jerry to look up at their father.

Apollo’s brow was furrowed in concentration as he looked at his son, but Yan didn’t detect any panic. They hadn’t been set aside as a lower triage, and that meant that Jerry was going to be okay, because Apollo didn’t let any of them feel like there was a favourite, but he would prioritise based on the situation, and Yan would demand nothing less of him, right now.

Equal priority meant that Apollo wasn’t scared.

And if Apollo wasn’t scared, then Jerry was going to be fine.

They let their eyes drift again. There were no hellhounds to be seen, corpses or otherwise – not that there would be, because they’d all be scattered dust – but there were scorch marks on the pavement that hadn’t been there before.

The silence reigned for a few minutes, before Apollo pulled his hand back from Jerry. His clothes were still bloodied and torn, but his skin was unblemished and clean, and his chest was rising and falling normally.

“He’ll wake up shortly,” their dad finally said, and his hand rubbed up and down Yan’s arm for a moment, not letting them go. Yan knew he wouldn’t let go until they pulled away, but for the moment they were content to stay where they were. Apollo visited them more in person since Zeus’ destruction, but it still wasn’t often. Most visits were still dream-visits, and while dream-hugs were still comfortable, in-person-hugs were just that much better. “He’ll be okay.”

“I know,” Yan said simply. “You’re here.”

#trials of apollo #trials of apollo fanfiction #riordanverse #riordanverse fanfiction #toapril #toapril 2024 #tsari writes fanfiction #toa yan #toa jerry #pjo apollo

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tsarisfanfiction · 15 days

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Leaving Home

Fandom: Trials of Apollo Rating: Gen Genre: Family/Hurt/Comfort Characters: Jerry, Yan, Jerry's Mum It's a long way from London to New York, and an even longer way when it means leaving behind your family. At least Jerry still had Yan, though. TOApril day 4 - Facing the Unknown, and I continue to write about the youngest canon Apollo kids, apparently. Given how little we know about them, this is of course completely full of headcanons. I have spent entirely too much time thinking about the logistics of a London kid and a Hong Kong kid ending up at Camp, whoops... And am I relishing writing a canonically British kid and not having to overthink whether or not an American kid would say that? Of course not, why would you ever think that? (Yes, yes I am)

Heathrow Airport was huge. Jerry was a born and bred Londoner; crowds didn’t bother him, and while he knew to keep his few valuables – wallet, passport – hidden away beneath layers of clothing where it wasn’t going to get lost or stolen, he had no fear of bodies pressing against him as they rushed past on their way to wherever they were trying to get to.

Jerry wasn’t rushing. He didn’t want to rush, because this was scary.

Not the crowds at the airport. That wasn’t scary. Jerry was used to crowds, grew up with them, knew how to dart through bodies to get where he needed to be.

He gripped his mum’s hand more tightly as he watched his suitcase – it was huge and heavy and also far, far, too small – trundle down the conveyor belt to get eaten by the thick dangling plastic strips and disappear from sight. It started to feel real, now, and Jerry’s stomach was churning because he didn’t want it to be real.

It had been scary when the thing had attacked him, all claws and teeth and dangerous, and he laughed about the old janitor with a limp battering the thing away with a sopping wet mop when he thought about it, because that was funny. A monster wanting to kill him and only not killing him because the janitor was actually a satyr like Mr Tumnus from that book his junior school had forced him to read, except this Mr Tumnus was a good fighter and something about his mop had made the monster explode into dust, was scary.

Even if the satyr thing was sort of cool.

No amount of satyr Mr Tumnus coolness (except Mr Tumnus was not cool, Jerry hadn’t really liked him, but then he hadn’t really liked the book, anyway. Peter with his sword was pretty cool, and some of the creatures were, but Lucy was annoying and Edmund was stupid and he didn’t even remember the name of the other girl) could make up for this, though. One too-big but also too-small suitcase full of all his favourite clothes and cricket bat and mum’s ball and crowds in an airport, and holding his mum’s hand tightly as though he was a baby.

Jerry didn’t want to leave. He didn’t want to go to America, or New York, or whatever the name of the camp he was being sent to was. He wanted to stay in London, watch Middlesex’s next match at Lords because he knew Grandma had promised Mum to buy him tickets, play with his friends, and keep training to be the England captain when he was grown up.

He couldn’t be England’s captain if he wasn’t even in England!

Stupid monsters attacking him. Stupid camp in America he had to go to. Mum wasn’t happy about it, either, but she’d been firm when he’d tried to tell her he wasn’t going. He’d eavesdropped on her Skype calls with some bearded guy that apparently ran the camp, and she’d had a lot to say that didn’t sound happy, but she was still sending him away.

Jerry had tried every trick he could think of to not go, but now all his favourite stuff was going on the plane – all his favourite stuff except his mum – it was all real and big boys don’t cry but Jerry wanted to so badly.

The stupid airport had barely anything to do. It had crowds everywhere but they were all queues, either for the Costa Coffee that Mum had taken him to earlier, letting him have a triple chocolate muffin for breakfast, or for the big metal arches that everyone had to go through one at a time.

Everyone who was going on a plane, anyway.

Those metal arches were where Jerry was going to have to say goodbye.

They were where Mum was guiding him now, looking at her watch and then the departure boards. Jerry didn’t get what the rush was – it was still hours until that stupid plane to New York took off – but she was acting like they were running out of time and he needed time to stop, go backwards, make it so that this didn’t happen at all.

Yan appeared next to him, with just their backback slung over one shoulder carelessly now their own big case had also been munched by the heavy plastic strips. Mum didn’t let Jerry wear his like that, and Jerry knew better, anyway. Yan had lived in London for a year but they still hadn’t worked out that being careless with bags was stupid.

Jerry liked the older kid. They didn’t make fun of him for not being able to spell, or for caring more about cricket than school (who cared about school more than cricket, anyway?). He hadn’t known them very long, because they were in the year above him and the older years didn’t mix with the younger years, but he’d met them a few times in the gym, and on the playing ground at lunch time. They were good with throwing a ball, and good at batting, too, even if they still refused to admit cricket was the best sport in the world.

They’d also been there when he was attacked.

When they were attacked, because Jerry wasn’t the only one being forced on a plane to stupid America-New-York-Camp-Stupid, but Yan didn’t seem to care much.

But Yan’s mum was back in Hong Kong and Jerry didn’t think they’d spoken to her much since they’d arrived in England. They hadn’t said much about why they were in London without their mum, why they called the adults they lived with Mr and Mrs with manners and nothing else, but Jerry thought this wasn’t the first time they’d been told they had to go move elsewhere.

Yan didn’t say stupid things like “you’ll enjoy it” or “you won’t even miss England once you’re there” or any of the other things Mum had tried to say, and not-Mr-Tumnus had tried to say. Yan didn’t say anything at all on the topic, agreeing with him that America was full of heathens that didn’t understand how to play a perfectly good game instead.

At least he was going with Yan, if he had to go with anyone, Jerry supposed. Yan was pretty cool.

The man that met them near the metal gates had a big smile and sharp cheekbones. His ears were kinda pointy, which was weird but also cool. Jerry hadn’t known people could have pointy ears like that. He wore a smart dark blue suit and a colourful red, dark blue and white tie, which looked a lot like the sorts of things the flight attendants wore on the billboards.

“Hey there, kids,” he said, and he had a weird accent, mostly British but with a little bit of a twang when he said hey. “My name’s Geoff and I’ll be looking after you guys until we meet with your escort Stateside.”

Jerry didn’t want to go with him. Going with him meant saying goodbye to Mum and he didn’t know when he would see her again, because she wouldn’t say when he asked! All he knew was that this was because he got attacked, because his Dad had ways to keep him safe if he went to America that apparently couldn’t happen here, in London.

No-one had told him how Yan fit into this, exactly. The older kid was looking at the flight attendant intently, before nodding.

“Yan,” they said. “They/them.”

Jerry prepared to punch the guy if he said anything mean. Almost everyone at school, including the teachers, and insisted on calling Yan he for stupid reasons like “you’re a boy,” when Yan wasn’t, and not-Mr-Tumnus had been one of the few cool adults that didn’t.

The guy didn’t say anything stupid, though. “Neat!” he said instead, “thanks for telling me. You okay with ‘guys’ or do you want me to drop that?” He didn’t even sound sarcastic, and Jerry saw Yan relax a little.

“Guys is fine,” they said, and Jerry saw them grin, a little bit. They liked this guy, he realised, and that meant he couldn’t be mean to him, because Yan didn’t like many people.

“I’m Jerry,” he said, and because Yan had, he added, “he/him.”

They got another grin from Geoff. “He/him for me, too,” he said, a bit late but it was better than pretty much everyone else. “We’ve got to tackle security soon,” he added, and Jerry frowned, because that meant leaving. Geoff put a hand on his shoulder and he wanted to snap at him to mind his space, but there was a look in his eyes that made Jerry falter.

“I-” he started, and to his horror he started crying after all.

Mum grabbed him in a tight hug. “Oh Jerry,” she said, and her voice was shaky. “You’re so brave. Get Chiron to call me when you arrive, and screw the timezones. I expect you to Skype me regularly, okay?”

She’d said all of that before, back before Jerry had had to say goodbye to his bedroom and its weirdly bare walls. His posters were carefully rolled up in his too-big-too-small suitcase, too. Jerry had already promised all of that, but he promised it again, sobbing and trying not to feel like a baby.

Yan and Geoff had walked away a few steps, he discovered when Mum finally pulled back, but not after leaving a disgustingly wet kiss on his forehead. “I love you, Jerry,” she told him firmly. “Never doubt that.”

“Love you too, Mummy,” he admitted, wiping his eyes with his sleeve because he was not a crybaby. Yan’s host family had left them at the entrance as soon as they’d seen him and Mum, and Yan had simply shook their hands and thanked them for letting them live under their roof for the past year. They hadn’t cried.

He didn’t know if they had when they’d left their mum, though. Maybe they had.

Maybe Jerry would be brave enough to ask, one day.

“Ready to go on your adventure?” Geoff asked him, and Jerry wasn’t but Yan was waiting for him and he was done being a crybaby.

“I’m coming,” he said, and gave Mum one last, tight squeeze around the middle, before he straightened his back and walked away.

Yan slipped their hand into his and squeezed it lightly. Boys didn’t hold hands, but Yan wasn’t a boy so that was fine. Jerry squeezed it back, tighter.

He was still terrified, but he could be brave. He wiped his eyes furiously as Yan and Geoff led him towards the metal arch and once he was certain they were dry he turned around.

Mum was crying, but she was smiling, too, and he waved at her, not stopping until Yan led him around a corner and he lost sight of her.

“It’s rough,” Geoff said as he directed them into putting their backpacks and coats into deep plastic trays, and made them take their shoes off. He did the same thing. “I was about your age when I had to move to the States without my Mum, too. Don’t let anyone tell you you’re not brave for doing it, because it’s hard and by the gods we deserve medals for that.”

Yan snorted. “I want two medals, then,” they said.

Geoff grinned. “I’ll see what I can manage,” he promised. “Now, through the box you go, then we’ll go watch the planes come in from the VIP lounge until ours gets here. How does that sound, guys?”

VIP lounge. Jerry supposed he liked the sound of that, at least.

#trials of apollo #trials of apollo fanfiction #riordanverse #riordanverse fanfiction #toapril #toapril 2024 #tsari writes fanfiction #toa jerry #toa yan #toa jerry's mum #gwendolyn allen #geoff keys #original character

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tsarisfanfiction · 3 days

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Adult Supervision

Fandom: Trials of Apollo Rating: Gen Genre: Hurt/Comfort Characters: Gracie, Will, Nereids Chiron and Dionysus aren't the only adult supervision at camp, but they tend to be the only ones that make themselves known to the kids. TOApril day 16 - Nymphs and Negligence. Figured this prompt was as good a time as any to explore whether the adults in charge of the camp are actually any good at it. Sources suggest the answer may not be yes.

Camp was different.

Gracie hadn’t really registered it, her first summer, but then her first summer had been full of mortal Apollo and threat of destruction and other rather distracting things, to say nothing of the whole experience of discovering she was a demigod. Her first summer had been a dramatic mix of fun and trauma, all bundled up into a single, demigodly package, and she figured she could be forgiven for not paying attention to the details, then.

Well, she had paid attention to details, like daughter of Apollo, and archery lessons, and how not to die. She just hadn’t paid attention to other things. Mundane things, her mom would call them. Things like who did the laundry, and the cooking. Who did all the things that Mom did while she was home.

It was difficult to miss the satyrs, especially as one of them had escorted her to camp personally, a strange look on their face when the golden lyre burst into existence above her head (she had discovered, later, that that had been weird, because Apollo couldn’t have claimed her, or Yan, or Jerry, but they’d all been claimed just the same. Not even Apollo had ever explained how that had happened, when asked). With their goat legs and funny gait and little horns poking up through thick curly hair, they were rather obvious, and rather obviously different to demigods even if they wore the same orange t-shirts.

It was difficult to miss the harpies, too, especially when Will went out of his way to introduce her to the main trio, explaining the curfew rule and how it worked when there were medical emergencies in the middle of the night – not, he’d stressed, that she was likely to get involved in that for several years at least, but it was useful to know from the start. Gracie liked the harpies, even if their eyes were sharp and their fingers were razor talons and they were all in all a little bit scary to look at.

No, it was the nymphs that Gracie had barely noticed, the first time around. Will had waved in the direction of a bundle of nereids in the lake on her welcome tour, and given her strict instructions not to climb trees without permission unless she wanted several furious dryads after her blood, but he’d never really introduced her to them, and unlike the satyrs and harpies, the nymphs didn’t actually interact with the campers all that much.

Her first summer, it had never even occurred to Gracie that, perhaps, the nymphs were also supposed to be supervision – after all, Chiron was amazing, but he was only one centaur, and Mr D certainly didn’t care enough about them to make sure they were behaving on a day to day basis. The satyrs had their own roles to deal with – Protectors, mostly, constantly coming and going as they searched for more demigods to escort to camp, preferably in one piece.

It took two summers and a capsized kayak for Gracie to really register the nymphs.

There hadn’t been any particular reason why she’d been in the kayak. She liked them, liked sitting on top of the water (but not in it, not getting soaked although there was inevitably some water at the bottom of each one that got into her pant legs and travelled up, up, up) as the lake bobbed gently underneath her. There were other campers dotted around in kayaks, too – not a full camp-wide activity, but enough that she wasn’t alone, even if she was the only one in her kayak.

They were just messing around, splashing each other by slapping their paddles on the surface of the water and laughing as it erupted upwards into their target’s face. Nothing dangerous – certainly nothing as dangerous as her previous summer, when the risks had involved a high chance of death – but fun and a little exhilarating, as her kayak rocked around her.

It was probably an accident. No, she knew it was an accident, because she didn’t have any real enemies amongst the campers – in fact she liked to think most people liked her well enough – but it didn’t stop a paddle getting tangled with hers, and in the attempts to separate them, the water moved (someone else slapping it, probably not noticing the danger) and Gracie found herself under the water, still trapped in her kayak but barely any air in her lungs (she was a drummer, not a woodwind or brass player. Her lung capacity was barely a fraction of Austin or Alice’s!) and a stream of bubbles in front of her face.

Gracie wouldn’t say that she panicked, but she certainly didn’t enjoy being suddenly upside down with no air and no quick way to get air. Her paddle was gone, as was the one that had been snagged with it, and Gracie didn’t even know how to get out of the kayak while it was upside down, not with the cover supposedly keeping her lap dryish, let alone how to un-capsize herself.

Okay, maybe she panicked a little.

A lot.

She thrashed against the fabric pinning her inside the kayak, feeling her lungs burning as they realised they weren’t getting any more water in and were filling with old air they’d stripped of anything useful and wanted to send back out of her body with some waste elements attached. She needed to get out, needed to breathe-

Slender arms with webbed hands passed in front of her vision, pushing against her kayak, and there were hands she couldn’t see pushing and pulling at her body, too. A sudden jerk had her kayak flipping right side up again, with her still successfully inside it, and she gasped, trying not to let water drip from her hair into her face and open mouth as she panted.

“Gracie!” The cry came from the shoreline, and she turned her head to see Will making exaggerated come here gestures, which meant he was worried by her dip in the lake.

If she was honest, after that, Gracie kind of wanted to get out of the kayak and onto solid, dry land, anyway. She jumped out of her skin when her kayak started moving without her input, but it made a beeline straight for Will, so she didn’t question it too hard.

He was there the moment her kayak ran firmly aground on the beach, far too firmly to be a result of just the light waves lapping around, yanking away whatever was keeping her pinned inside it until she could scramble out and gratefully accept the towel he draped over her head – and inflict a soaking wet hug on him, because okay she had been scared, and Will was her big brother.

It was only when she asked, much later, how her kayak had righted itself, that she remembered the nereids in the lake. Will had shrugged about them. “They exist,” he said, “and they make sure no-one drowns in the lake. I don’t know much more about them than that, honestly.”

Given how long Will had been at camp, that was a little alarming, if Gracie thought about it enough. She decided not to.

#trials of apollo #trials of apollo fanfiction #riordanverse #riordanverse fanfiction #toapril #toapril 2024 #tsari writes fanfiction #toa gracie #will solace #pjo nereids

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tsarisfanfiction · 6 months

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Braids: Chapter 1

Fandom: Percy Jackson and the Olympians Rating: Teen Genre: Family Characters: Michael Yew, Apollo Cabin Five times Michael braided a sibling's hair, and one time a sibling braided his. It was pointed out to me that I don't give Michael much by way of fluff, so to prove I can write fluff, here is some Michael&siblings, well, fluff. I've also wanted to write a 5+1 format fic for years but could never come up with a concept that fit - until now! Also you guys get to see some of my Apollo kid ocs again, and also a few for the first time! I have a discord server for all my fics, including this one! If you wanna chat with me or with other readers about stuff I write (or just be social in general), hop on over and say hi! Character ages in this chapter: Michael - 10 Ceri - 17

1) Ceri

“Michael, can you give me a hand?”

Michael jerked his head up from where he was sorting out straight shafts from bent shafts. The arrow that had been spinning on the palm of his hand toppled as it ran out of momentum and he fumbled the catch, almost dropping it onto the floor.

“Huh?” he asked, setting the shaft down in the fucking bent pile – much larger than the straight pile. “With what?” He twisted around to face the older Apollo kid that had walked up behind him and baulked at the sight of a fucking hairbrush in her hands.

“Can I sit?” Ceri asked him, gesturing at the floor next to him. It was strewn with shafts that Michael still needed to check, and with a grumble he nudged a few out of the way until there was room for her.

“Whatever,” he muttered. “What do you want?”

Ceri settled cross-legged on the floor next to him and held out her hairbrush. “Do my hair?”

Michael stared at her. “You can do your own fucking hair,” he said. He knew she could – her hair was long but he’d seen her twist it up into a messy bun in the blink of an eye when she got called to the infirmary. “You don’t need me to do it.”

She gave him a soft smile. The hairbrush didn’t move from in front of his face. “No,” she admitted, “but I’d like you to.”

“Why?” he snapped, wondering why the fuck she’d want him to do her hair – why anyone would want anyone else to do their fucking hair. Did she want half her hair torn out of her head? Now that he thought about it, he’d seen Baird and Emily and several other Apollo kids perched on Ceri’s bed with her before, doing something with her hair.

Ceri’s hair was a really pretty red that fell in waves most of the way down her back. Michael couldn’t understand why the fuck she’d risk it like that.

“Just because I can do it myself doesn’t mean it’s not easier if someone else does it,” she told him. “And I like it when other people do my hair. So… please, Michael?”

She sounded earnest, like she actually did, for some fucking reason, want Michael to do her hair. She looked it, too, light green eyes fixed on his as she tilted her head fractionally to one side and gave him another soft smile.

Michael didn’t get it. It didn’t make sense.

But Ceri was asking, and the fucking hairbrush was still in front of his face, unwavering, and part of Michael’s chest felt warm that she was asking him. That she was trusting him not to fuck her hair up.

“Fine,” he huffed, snatching the brush from her fingers. She let him take it easily, her hand falling down to her lap, and then swivelled on her butt until her back was facing him, complete with the mass of red spilling down it. Michael shifted so that he was facing her back and not the strewn shards on the floor and raised the brush, before pausing. “What the fuck am I supposed to do?”

She didn’t laugh at him, which was a good thing because if she had, Michael would’ve thrown her hairbrush somewhere, likely out the fucking window, and then run off into the woods with the intention of never coming back. (Baird, or Lee, damn them, would probably find him and coax him back because they were getting good at that, to Michael’s frustration.)

“Start by just brushing it,” Ceri said. “It’s the same as brushing your own hair. Don’t worry if it tugs a bit.”

Michael still felt unsure, but reached forwards with the brush until the bristles were touching Ceri’s hair, then pulled down. Immediately, it caught, jerking Ceri’s head back, and Michael instantly dropped the brush. It stayed where it was, snagged in red hair. “Fuck.” He scrambled back, but Ceri reached behind her and snagged his wrist.

“It’s fine,” she assured him, lightly tugging him back. Tentatively, Michael settled back down again, and watched as she extracted the brush from her hair. “Try again.” She handed it back to him. “My hair is quite thick so it might be easier if you do it in sections, like this.” With deft fingers, she grabbed a small part of her hair and lifted it away from the rest, offering it to him. “Hold it with one hand, and brush with the other.”

Not quite believing that Ceri was letting him continue – wanted him to continue – Michael cautiously did as he was told. The brush still wanted to get stuck, but it was easier to stop it from actually getting stuck, and if he was hurting Ceri when it snagged, she didn’t show any signs of it. Eventually, he figured out that it was easier if he gripped the sections at the top and brushed underneath where he was holding it. Ceri’s head stopped jerking around when he did that, even when he tugged quite strongly on snags.

There was something satisfying when he passed the brush through her hair and it didn’t snag on anything, all the bristles running through smoothly with no resistance at all. It was especially satisfying when he finished doing all the different sections and could run the brush smoothly through the entire bulk of Ceri’s locks.

He let himself brush all of it a few times, before stopping. “Done.”

Ceri didn’t accept the brush when he tried to give it back to her.

“Can you plait it?” she asked him instead, and Michael frowned, confused.

“Plait?”

Now she let out a small laugh, light and airy. Michael scowled, crossing his arms. “Sorry,” she said, “I forget Americans don’t call it that. I meant braid.” He huffed – he still hadn’t worked out what Ceri’s accent was – and shook his head.

“Why the fuck would I know how to braid hair?” he asked.

“Do you want to know?” she countered, peeking back at him over her shoulder. “You might find it useful.”

“Huh?”

She gestured at his own hair. “You’re growing it out, aren’t you? Plaits – sorry, braids – are useful for keeping long hair out of the way.”

Michael chewed the inside of his cheek. She had a point, he supposed. “Fine,” he said, and she turned her head back around so that he was once again just facing the waterfall of red hair.

“I’ll talk you through it,” she promised. “They’re easier than they look. Split my hair into three sections. The more evenly sized, the better.”

Michael reached out and grabbed a handful of her hair, and then another handful with his other hand, leaving a bunch free in between. Despite being brushed out, the hair still clung to each other, making his three sections messy. He scowled at them and dropped one side to tidy up the other, which worked fine until he realised that to do the other two sections, he had to let go of the one he’d just done, which would make the neat one messy again.

Ceri came to his rescue. “Here,” she said, “I’ll hold this one while you sort the others out.” Michael gladly let her take the neat section, although he was sure people didn’t normally need to do that. “You’ll find separating the hair out easier with practice,” she assured him as he pulled the rest of her hair into two sections, running his fingers through the strands until they looked neat. She offered him the third section back again, and after a moment, Michael dropped the middle section to take it.

“Now what?” he asked.

“Move one of the outside sections until it crosses over the middle one to become the new middle one,” Ceri instructed, and Michael did so, scowling in concentration as he had to drop one section and pick up another one, and they tried to tangle together again.

This did not seem fucking easy.

“And?” he prompted once he had the two sections somewhat behaving themselves.

“Do the same with the outside section on the other side,” she told him. Michael obeyed, finding it no easier to keep the two sections from trying to merge together. “Then take the outside on the other side again and do the same thing.”

Michael figured out the pattern after a few more passes, although that still didn’t make keeping the hair in its different sections any easier. It seemed determined to mingle back together again, and more than once, Michael realised too late that he hadn’t managed to restore them properly. Ceri didn’t tell him to stop or redo anything, though, so he carried on, frowning at the mess he was creating.

If he squinted, it probably did look like a braid, but it looked bad.

“Now you tie it off,” Ceri said, as though she didn’t realise her hair was a mess. “Here.” She handed him a hair tie.

Michael hesitated. “It’s fucking awful,” he admitted, because it was behind her, of course she didn’t realise. She couldn’t fucking see it.

“I’m sure it’s fine,” Ceri told him.

“It’s not-”

“And you worked hard on it,” she continued, ignoring his correction, “and that’s more important, so tie it off, Michael.”

“Not that fucking hard,” Michael muttered (lied), but took the hair tie and looped it around the end a few times. He knew how to do that much, at least, and when Ceri actually looked in a mirror and realised how fucking awful it was, she could take it out and redo it.

Ceri ignored his words as she stood up again, the tangled mess of a braid swaying with her movement. “Thank you, Michael,” she said, smiling widely at him. “I’ve got an infirmary shift, now, so I’ll let you get back to your shafts.”

He shrugged. “You’re welcome, I guess,” he said, and picked up another shaft to spin on his palm. Still, he couldn’t help watching Ceri out of the corner of his eye as she left the cabin, not even checking her hair in the mirror before she went out. He wasn’t stupid; he knew she’d fix it soon, and while he knew it was a mess and deserved to be fixed, the thought still made him a little sad.

Michael spun the next shaft super-hard, ignoring the feeling of the point trying to bore into his palm. He was just being stupid.

The next time he saw Ceri, several hours later when they were getting ready for dinner, he stared, feeling that something warm in his chest again.

She was still wearing his braid.

Chapter 2>>>

#percy jackson and the olympians #percy jackson fanfiction #michael yew #cabin seven #apollo cabin #ceridwen priddy #original character #tsari writes fanfiction #braids

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