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its grind time (real)

A gift for Badboisupreme written by @manrats using the prompt “Apollo and Thalia being little shits together and messing with Zeus” (though uh i'm not sure if i actually filled the prompt that well)

no warnings i HOPE i think its just like normal apollo Grief

“I’m sorry.”

She turns. “What for?”

An inhale, exhale. Steady. “You don’t know?”

Thalia frowns. “If this is about Jason, listen –”

“No – no, gods. I don’t – I mean, I am sorry, Thalia, I promise, but this is –”

Breathe.

“This, this isn’t your problem. Not Jason. She shouldn’t have asked you –”

“Hera? It was my choice to make.”

“That isn’t – it’s not your duty!”

“No, you don’t understand. I agreed. They all agreed. We want this.”

“That – regardless, Thalia, look, you can’t. Hera shouldn’t have dragged you into it. It’s not your war to fight, Thalia, listen –”

“No. My birth dragged me into it. My existence dragged me into it. Everything I’ve gone through, everything that everyone has gone through under his rule – can’t you see? This is exactly my war to fight.”

Silence hangs in the air. They both know exactly what remains unsaid.

This is for Jason.

And isn’t it sad, truly, that Thalia and Hera, enemies from the start, had only become allies due to her baby brother, her darling champion’s death? The death that – gods, gods, he was the only one at blame for.

“That –” he exhales, long and winded, words lost, “That isn’t what I meant. And look, it… it’s completely your right to want to fight. I’d – sorry, if I were you, I’d hate this too. But it’s just. Thalia, I swear… disregard everything you’ve seen him do in the past. You don’t know what he’s capable of.”

His heart – his stupid, stupid, heart – thrums in his chest, does flip flops, traces the firey outline of a Catherine wheel’s path in the sky. Thalia can’t go. She will not win against this final beast, as good as she is, as much goodwill their father has for her.

Apollo knows that firsthand.

She narrows her eyes. “I know that. You’re gods, of course in the end I don’t know. But he needs to pay. I need him to pay. I’m going, Apollo, I can’t just not.” Her shoulders are tightly strung, like the string of a bow just about to be let go.

He can’t, can’t can’t can’t can’t can’t. It’s far from a stupid war that they are fighting, but he thinks of heroes and sacrifice, thinks of every person that he’s ever failed, and wonders what the point really is. His head starts to pound. Because isn’t Apollo supposed to be saving their children, not just sending them off into war to fight their parents’ battles yet again? “Thalia… I can’t just let you die,” he pleads, settles on instead.

She reads him like a book, though, sees the grim line that his mouth had settled into, relaxes fractionally. Lets her voice become a little softer. “Look, Apollo. He’s terrible. The system is terrible. We both know that, and we know that it has to change. It has to happen, Apollo, and this time this war is our choice to fight.”

But it wasn’t her duty, and it wasn’t your fault, your punishment, he wants to scream, wants to tear into the sky for making things this way. For making them all just pawns in the end, subjects to his every whim, for making it this neverending war. Wants him hurt and gone and dead.

He wants everything, and yet nothing at all, at heart, because he is not a good person. He would miss him, he thinks, hysterical, would miss their goods days together. Father and son, father and son, all the way down the lineage, and the son always kills the father. His hands begin to shake, and truly was that not pathetic? This whole conversation was, in the end, and he lets go a shaky laugh. “Hades, Thalia. I…”

He has to fight this war. Needs it, really, but do they? Must they? He can’t let another sibling die, not like this, and even Thalia in the end was not invulnerable, could have her life snipped away like just another string of the Fates. “I’m so sorry,” he says again, disconnectedly, repeats his apologies like he’s just another broken toy whose company-manufactured words mean nothing.

Beside him, Thalia tries to crack a smile. Punches his shoulder one, two, three, seven times. “There you go,” she says, grins a little. “Your lucky number. Now let’s go fuck up Zeus’s shit. Together.”

Apollo rises, and his shoulders are still curved.