Japan, 1984.
"There won't be a third time," his brother warned him. Hermes, still brokenly trying to claw his way into a bomber jacket three times his size, didn't answer. But he clocked what Apollo meant, through the heroin had and incense clogging the room. The first time Hermes surrendered his immortality, it was for a slave boy in Syracuse who found his face on a temple wall and kissed it, begging for freedom. A war criminal, allegedly, hadn't a hope of release in any form. He would work until he was dead, and that was the mortal world. Hermes retrieved him from darkness without his caduceus and raised him to walk on green fields to envy Elysium. His repayment was a destruction of his temples, and a laying to waste of his offerings by a man who boasted of fooling the gods. Hermes had wandered, a broken amnesiac who was nothing without his worship. Afraid and reduced to a shell of his former self, Apollo found his brother crouched in a cavern in Crete, screaming hoarsely in their ancient tongue of love lost and betrayal's sting. Until Apollo, all Hermes could remember were the eyes of his betrayer, and the scars he left oh his skin with mockeries of burnt offerings and thrown stones from demolished places of worship. Of love. Apollo filled him once more with the flaming power of the gods, and the younger, more naive God became just a bit bitterer. It didn't stop the second time from happening, though. He locked eyes with his brother in the crooked mirror. It was 1984, a decade after the second disaster and two or so before he'd meet Rowan of Only One Name. In the tense electricity of the room, Apollo silently judged him, a figure of black, white, copper, and gold - surveying one of tin, rust, neon, and garbage. The myriad of colors smeared across Hermes' form suggested joy but inferred worse. Nagasaki had been unkind. Most cities were, especially in this particular decade. It had taken Apollo almost four years to find him again. "If you came to berate me-" Hermes was cut off as Apollo raised a hand, the gesture eerily similar to the one he used to conduct his power. Dark fingers curled and the sun god sighed, clove smoke blowing into tepid air. "I came to remind you. To warn you. To not love again." His voice hardened with warning on the final words. Hermes scoffed, then coughed, rummaging around in the costume trunks nearby - the old stage was his hiding place, his life a comedy of errors. It seemed only fitting. Dionysus would've been proud. Or laughed. More likely the latter.
“Who the fuck are you to tell me about love? Your idea of love is to chase girls till they turn into monsters and to love men until they burn or bleed out.” The words were venomous, but spoken lowly. Apollo cocked his head with a vague hint of warning, and Hermes instead focused on finding something in the backstage drawers once more.
The stage also reminded him of her. His dancer. The second coming; as it were - how he had tried to breathe life into cells corroded by cancer and caught hell for it instead. How he had to watch her waste away, how he gave whatever he could to her who made him feel alive again. How she wanted freedom; too, and he, a thief to his porcelain bones, tried to steal it for her. Even if it meant freedom from her own mangled and decaying body. He'd give her that, give her all, and still he was not enough. Apollo found him curled on her grave still wet with fresh earth, howling drunk and shuddering apart. The sky had opened and lightning struck, and Hermes was himself again - but worse. And here they now stood, watching one another in a mirror, each thinking he was in the right. Or more likely, one right, and the other bluffing. So were the chess matches between the gods. And, as always, between the brothers. "You can't just throw your immortality around like a fucking boomerang, man, because I'm sick of fetching it back for you," Apollo said abruptly. Black eyes burned in the dark, filled with sparking scorn as Apollo spoke again. "That ain't my job, and neither are you." There was a beat, then, more urgently, Apollo said, "I can't keep aiding in your gods-damned self-destruction, Hermes. I won't do it." "I got it," snapped Hermes, temper rising as he finally wrenched the jacket into place over his bony shoulders. "Where the fuck're my sandals?" Apollo raised his eyebrows, then Laughed. A soft, ugly sound. Three syllables worth. Hermes froze in front of the mirror, glancing back at his brother with doubt in his eyes. Apollo's smile was cruel as the midday desert sun. "How fucked up were you that you don't remember?" Hermes' stomach dropped to his shoes. Apollo shrugged with his brows and tapped his cigarette, getting to his feet. Golden brown skin shimmered with power as he adjusted his cuff links, each a golden wink in the gloom. "Apollo, please." Hermes' sharp tone faded away to almost nothing. Apollo looked at him with a blank face, eyes flickering over the thin frame and stuck-out bones defiantly trying to make an exit from paper thin skin. The cigarette found his lips again, and the smoke found Hermes' eyes. "Pathetic," breathed Apollo. When the smog cleared, he had vanished, leaving his half sibling behind in his ruin. He was true to his word. Mostly. When Hermes fell in love a third time, Apollo came back - If only to watch the inevitable unfolding of the play, and one last curtain fall.
