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apollo will forever be haunted by the memory of bone-crushing waves. when he looks down at his hands, they’re dripping wax, and he stumbles back into the wall to press his palms into his eye sockets and wishes that he was simply a statue melting in a wax museum.
the wax he sees on his hands was never there in the first place, it never had a chance; because icarus had proved that he could fly all on his own, he had dipped and soared and bared his throat to the skies that he could not be restrained, he was born of earth and iron and this ground did not contain him.
and he had gone to see apollo, radiant as the rays in which he controlled, and he had ignored how his back had began to sizzle. he had spread his arms wide and let the sun bear down on him, and apollo had reached for him; closer, closer, closer, and yet all too far away.
the rays in which he controlled had made a home inside his veins and so the sun itself might as well have been reaching for icarus, scorching him as he came near, turning the wings into candles that had been lit a thousand times over and watching them melt, melt, melt.
there was no way he could reach him in time.
the sun had reeled his arms back in, willing the wings to stay intact, hoping this iron-born boy would glide down to the sand with what he had left and let apollo find him on the shores.
but apollo’s hands that were crafted to heal had hurt too much in his attempt to catch a boy made of wax and he slipped through his fingers, down into the depths.
apollo had caught many things that icarus had thrown his way before then, things that he could count on all his fingers and toes and hoped it added up to something worth bringing his iron-boy back. ideas, mostly. he prayed to apollo and told him his ideas.
the sun is not a thing of war, nor is it bound to steel and forgeries, but there was something about icarus’ ideas that broke past the barriers of mechanics and turned him into a poet of his craft. inventor’s hands like artist’s fingers and the whirring of machines like plucking a lyre. it was his own song, of fire and silver and hammers and blueprints and apollo could listen to it for millennia.
icarus played this song for apollo. he played it while they danced around each other as if they were on hot coals and pretended that they couldn’t have what they wanted. while they pretended that godhood meant anything, that apollo wasn’t just a boy born of sunshine like icarus was born of iron, that there were rules they couldn’t break.
but that boy had too much l’appel du vide in him and not enough common sense to leave apollo’s heart alone. because it would never be apollo stealing icarus’ heart, icarus surrendering himself to the sun; icarus was not a foolish boy. no, icarus was all sharp wit and confidence and he knew he could steal a god’s heart if he wanted, and he did. if only he didn’t love apollo so much in return. perhaps it might’ve hurt less.
icarus falls, and artemis says, did you really love him, and apollo bites his tongue and spits out of course i did because what a stupid, stupid question. his sister is, in most ways, more all knowing than apollo could ever be, and it catches him off guard that she doesn’t know this.
he says a prayer for the ocean to love icarus better than he did because in the end, both their hearts are fire, molten gold- except apollo’s pumps ichor and it damns him to burn everything that he touches.