Chapter Text
It was a beautiful ceremony. At least, I think it had been — I can’t remember any of it. I’m pretty sure I had gotten up to say a few words, or even sing, but it’s all just a big blur. Maybe I’ll remember later, maybe I won’t.
During my quest, I’d experienced the horror and tragedy of watching short lives being cut even shorter. Now I was experiencing the tragedy of watching my friends’ lives come to a different kind of ending. Their deaths were peaceful — never a certainty with demigods — and relatively long. But for me? They weren’t long enough.
No, never long enough.
Jo and Emmie from the Waystation. Luguselwa. Sally Jackson. Percy Jackson. My son Will, and his husband Nico. Rachel Elizabeth Dare, my Oracle.
And now, Meg.
I lifted a hand to my face, brushing away the tears I don’t remember shedding. I sniffled. Gods don’t need to suffer the indignities of grief — the snotty nose and puffy eyes and croaking voice — but I let myself experience them. It would have felt wrong not to.
I paced the path outside of Aeithales’s greenhouses, but avoided entering any, worried I might encounter one of the dryads. Later, I would greet them and offer my condolences, but I didn’t want to talk to anyone right now.
I thought about the last time I’d seen Meg. She’d been sick with some sort of upper respiratory infection. The illness itself wasn’t serious, but it took her so much longer to recover than it used to, her aging body struggling to match the vigor it’d once had. She tired easily, and thus spent most of her time in bed, but her spirit was as vibrant as ever.
It was a short visit — I’d had to leave in a hurry, more flustered than usual because Zeus had called an emergency meeting. Meg caught my hand before I could completely pull away, her wrinkled, bone-thin arm belying the strength of her grip.
“Apollo,” she’d said.
“Hm?” My mind was already halfway to Olympus, wondering what had happened this time.
“I’m glad,” she drew a slightly labored breath, “that I met you.”
Even as distracted as I was, that had brought a smile to my face. “I’m glad I met you too.”
“The best servant I could have ever asked for,” she mumbled, her eyes starting to drift shut.
I bent down and kissed her cheek, but when I pulled back her eyes snapped open. “Wait!”
I waited. Meg’s gaze was so intense that I was reminded of the first time we met in that alleyway, all those years ago. A foolish god newly turned mortal, and sharp young child of Demeter with rotten fruit and wicked aim.
Her eyes softened. “Goodbye, Apollo,” she said.
“Bye, Meg,” I’d said lightly, already backing away. “We’ll talk more next time, okay?”
She didn’t respond verbally, just smiled sweetly. I didn’t think about it at the time, but looking back, it was strange. Since when was Meg quiet and sweet?
Our eyes met for one last moment, and then I was gone, vanishing in a flash of gold.
That was it. The last time I would ever see or talk to one of my dearest friends, and all I could manage was a perfunctory goodbye.
I felt a spark of anger. If only Zeus hadn’t called his stupid meeting—
Just as soon as the feeling came, it flickered out. There was no point in being angry at Zeus, and besides, he wasn’t really even at fault in this instance.
Meg… I should have— no, I did know that her mortal lifespan was drawing to an end, but I didn’t want to admit it. Even if my visit had gone uninterrupted, would I have treated it with any special importance?
My mind kept going back to that last “goodbye,” from Meg, so intense and heartfelt. Somehow, she had known that we would never see each other again.
And I, the god of prophecy, had missed it.
Embroiled in my guilt, I will admit that I was not paying the closest attention to my surroundings. As such, not even my godly agility and grace could save me from falling flat on my face after I tripped over something roughly the size and weight of a small boulder. Cheek pressed up against the dirt, I found myself face to face with a pair of bright green eyes and two rows of very sharp teeth.
“Peaches,” growled the demon baby.
I sat up warily, backing away a few inches. “Ah, Peaches. It’s… been a while.”
Meg’s friendship with the little karpos had been unshakeable over the 90-some years since our quest. He didn’t like the dry climate of Palm Springs so he wasn’t around all the time, but I understood that he’d visited frequently, especially these last few years. We had never grown very fond of each other though, so our respective visits to Meg had always been like two ships passing in the night — if that’s what you called it when one ship was a god and the other was a feral demon plant baby.
“Peaches,” he said again.
“Yes, yes, it’s good to see you too. You have my most sincere apologies for tripping over you. But, uh, if you don’t mind, I have some urgent business that I need to take care of somewhere that is not here, so—” Pain flared in my hand as his pointy little teeth sunk into my fingers. “Ow! Peaches! What was that for?”
“Peaches,” he said reproachfully.
I yanked my hand away. “I just said I was sorry.” I examined my hand. Little beads of golden liquid welled up at the points where his teeth had broken skin. Ichor, of course, not blood. I’m not sure why, but for a moment I thought it might have been.
“…Peaches?”
The word was spoken much more softly this time, uncertain. He was trembling. Rather than demon spawn, he now looked like a lost toddler.
I felt a twinge in my chest that I was surprised to find was sympathy for the grain spirit. Who would have taken it on themselves to alert Peaches to Meg’s passing? How could they even have found him? No, Peaches had undoubtedly been like me — arriving for an ordinary visit only to find out that he was too late.
Carefully watching for signs that he might bite me again, I placed my hand on his head. “You miss her, huh?”
“…Peaches,” he said somberly.
“Yeah,” I said, a lump in my throat. “Me too.”
The two of us sat together in silence — heavy, but strangely companionable. We would never speak of it again, I can tell you that much, but I was glad to have shared this moment with him. Meg’s two oldest friends, taking a moment to remember her together.
I looked down at my bitten hand, which had long since stopped bleeding. It wouldn’t scar of course — probably not even for an ordinary mortal, but I couldn’t help but wish that it would, somehow, leave a lasting mark. It felt almost like it would be a tribute to something, though to what I couldn’t quite say. To Meg? To a truce between myself and Peaches? Maybe just to show that it all mattered for something, the way that all of Lester’s scars showed that he— that I had gone through the fire and came out changed.
A horrible honking startled me from my reverie. I looked up to see a large flock of wild geese high in the clear blue sky, on their journey to a warm winter’s home. An old memory erupted — A teenage Meg teasing some geese with a loaf of bread, me warning her she’d get bitten, the stupid bird turning its unbridled rage on me instead — a silly, inconsequential moment, but one that made me smile.
I would miss Meg terribly, just as I missed others whom I’d loved and lost. But the world, as always, goes on. And as Lester, as Apollo, as the person I could have only become through knowing Meg, I knew that I would too.