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Perpollo Week 2021 Challenge
Day 6/Friday, December 31st:
- “You don't understand, you should never know how easy you are to need.”
- “You want to hear something honest? I would do anything to keep you.”
Apollo is rolling grapes between his fingers, daydreaming of hand feeding his love, draped in the robes of his acolytes of old and adorned with his symbols and chained in delicate gold to his altar. He’s trying to come up with a poem to describe Perseus’s eyes when in the throes of passion when the flickering rainbow of an incoming IM catches his eye.
He’s vaguely tempted to not allow it to form, but allows it to come through. His mood abruptly takes a nosedive when he sees that its a tearful Annabeth Chase. Of those that had to call, of course it had to be the one he would love to see permanently erased from his Perseus’ life.
He doesn’t bother to shift from his lounging position, but his eyes go from cheerful blue to a cold, burning gold.
Annabeth immediately ducks her head. “Lord Apollo,” she hesitates. The undertone of fear in her voice gets him to set the grapes he was toying with, down.
He’s well aware that this demigod would never wish to call him. The fact that she hasn’t simply said what she’s calling for already is odd.
She takes a deep breath. “I’m so sorry.”
Before his eyes can do more than narrow, she forges on. “Percy- he’s gone missing. He hasn’t been seen in days, and-”
Apollo doesn’t overly care what else she was going to say. What he does care about is-
“ Why am I only just now being informed?”
A coronal hole forms on the sun, his now clasped hands tensed in an effort to contain himself.
The demigoddess flinches. “Poseidon thought you may have taken him.”
Waves of heat are blooming from where he sits. “I see .”
A breath.
He chooses to stare at his clasped hands in an effort not to incinerate the chit.
“If he was here, I would have never bothered to waste my time talking to you . Needless to say- He’s. Not. Here.”
She straightens to look at him. “As you say, Lord Apollo. Apologies for the delay, I’m aware that Percy would have wanted you to know.”
Its not at all hard to hear what she didn’t say, with that sneered tone.
His hands tighten, and he’s aware that his eyes are smoldering in resemblance to Ares’, now.
“You truly think I don’t care?” His voice is soft, and he looks back up from his hands.
Annabeth does a full body flinch. The oldest part of him is only slightly mollified. It’s just enough not to burn her to ash where she stands for the audacity.
Her idiotic jealousy bids her to continue. “You had your time with the hero of the new age, after all. It honestly can’t be a surprise to expect you to move on to the next body.”
His lip curls. “You truly are one of Athena’s spawn, aren’t you? You know nothing about me.”
He’s backed her into a corner- she can either attempt to refute his words in defense of her mother and face his obviously increasing rage, or wisely take the loss.
She takes the loss.
--
How little Annabeth Chase thinks of him is nothing, just like she is little more than a lurking irritant that wouldn’t be worth swatting just to have to face her mother’s wrath.
He and Athena are actually on decent terms regarding Percy- neither of them want Annabeth involved with Percy. Apollo is content to ignore her for as long as she doesn’t try to address him or take Percy. And Athena is pleased that her daughter isn’t romantically involved with a son of Poseidon. It works- for as long as nothing upsets the balance.
But now? Percy is gone. He’s not allowed to be gone like this. He’s not a dime a dozen hero to be tossed aside like yesterday’s trash. He will be found, he will be okay- there’s simply no other option to be had.
---
Its for months on end that he searches for Percy. His all-consuming drive to find him causes the weather to flux even more than it has been, every one of his aspects tied to his domains taking up arms in his search.
Massive dust storms rise and fall, solar flares blinding and burning even the wary, leaving beaches and shores barren. (Apollo watches any who head for the ocean shores- surely, somewhere…)
Hospitals and clinics are checked for any intakes of Percy’s name or appearance. Doctors and scientists scramble to find a vaccine for the rapidly evolving super-flu. Apollo couldn’t risk anything too deadly, but he needed something the doctors didn’t have an easy cure for. Any who come close to creating a vaccine find the answer just out of reach, and a new variant is introduced.
Musicians find themselves composing songs that call for an answer, a response in kind. Sea shanties find a revival- anything that Percy might possibly respond to.
Apollo was preparing to capture Hades’ sole surviving demigod child to bargain his way into the Underworld when his Roman side informed him of a commotion in Camp Jupiter… and it had to do with a black haired, green-eyed male.
…Could it be?
He paused his plotting to apply his full focus- and yes, yes! It i s Percy!
“Juno, huh? If I passed your test, can I have my memory and my life back?”
His joy abruptly plunged back into rage. How fucking dare-
He throttles his rage as much as he can to prevent Juno from escaping his wrath as he uses his millenia of experience with Hermes and steals Hera’s ‘prized’ deity binding nets that had once held her husband. He has to act fast- he may be the most stable of the Greco-Roman gods, and both sides of him are fully on board with recovering Percy, but even Hera/Juno will notice him smashing through the wards she has on this particular prize. But she will try to finish her grandstanding first- and that gives him the advantage.
---
Its to her saying, “For months he has been slumbering, but now he is awake. His fate-”, that Apollo slams down on top of her, a localized Geomagnetic solar storm in the wake of his rage appearing over Camp Jupiter. He has her bound thrice over in the deity nets before her words can bind his love.
“His Fate is what Juno?” He snarls in her face, eyes as molten gold as they have been ever since Percy was taken. Juno begins to burn under the force of his rage, and he gleefully listens to her screams.
“Apollon?”
He immediately turns to leave her there to burn as he turns to his love, and oh, how it hurts to see Percy in such a poor state. He looked thin, and he was clutching at his head in pain.
The pants wetting fear of the legionnaires isn’t even background noise as he finally, finally approaches Percy, his face softening as he nears his love, who looks to be more on the verge of collapsing at every second that passes.
“Perseus.” he breathes, gently reaching to cradle his face.
“Ever since you have been taken from me, I have searched for you. She should have known better than to have ever tried to take you.”
---
Percy… is so lost right now. He had just been listening to the grandstanding goddess that had taken his memories while everyone else knelt in respect. Then the next thing he knew she was curbstomped before she could finish disclosing his supposed fate by a golden god; who caused a sudden surge of emotion to tug at his heart and a sudden, immediate headache.
“Apollon?”
The pain of his headache is eclipsing, and the goddess screaming in pain and rage certainly doesn’t help.
He hears the golden god say his name, and his headache becomes near crippling. Its only his sheer will keeping him on his feet now.
Its at the edge of his hearing as his vision begins to darken that he hears that his golden god has been searching for him as his face is cradled in warm hands, tendrils of heat sinking into the storm of his headache and weakening its leading edge.
“Why do all of this for me? I’m no one, with no memories and constantly hunted down and chased away.” Percy manages to rasp.
The his golden Apollon? god smiles sadly at him, one of his hands moving to cradle the back of his head.
“You don't understand, you should never know how easy you are to need. You are the greatest hero since Achilles or Horatius, without you Olympius would have fallen to Saturn three times over, and this world already lost to plague, famine, drought and destroyed further by your fathers rage and mine had Pluto not confirmed you still lived. Disregarding your achievements, to which you turned down godhood, I find you valuable as a person, as lover, and spent my every moment since I found you gone searching for you.” Apollo stated earnestly, the hand not in his hair now clutching his hip.
Percy went to shake his head in disbelief, but the hand in his hair tightened.
“Please don’t lie to me.” he whispered, tears beginning to bead at the corners of his eyes.
“Oh darling boy, I promise you, I have never once lied to you.” Apollo kissed his forehead, and brought his hands back to cradle his face once more, gently wiping away his tears with his thumbs.
“But if you want to hear something honest? I would do anything to keep you.”
Juno’s screaming finally stuttered behind Apollo, and turned into gasping sobs. Juno had been left a black, burnt looking husk. If she had been anything other than a goddess, she would have been long dead.
“Probatio Frank Zhang.” Apollo didn’t look away from Percy, apparently drinking the sight of him in.
“Y-yes, Lord Apollo?” By the voice, that was apparently the boy who he had gone through the tunnel with.
“It would be wise of you to hand over the Gorgon Spoils.”
“Of course, Lord Apollo.”
Apollo barely even glances at the two vials Frank had handed him before uncorking one.
“Blood from the right side of the Gorgon can heal any injury.” Apollo tells Percy. “As much as I would love to simply burn the mortal out of you to give your memories back, I am… unwilling to face your rage once you get them back, nor would I stand to be spurned by you when I had another solution on hand.”
Apollo tilts the vial to Percy’s lips, gold eyes pinning those of the wine-dark sea. “This will burn at first.”
Percy smirked tiredly. “So do you.” And drank to Apollo’s laugh and Juno’s sobbing cries, still cradled lovingly in his arms and surrounded by terrified, kneeling legionnaires.