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Footsteps made with no attempt to soften them broke Apollo from his reverie. He blinked quickly but couldn't clear the tears in time. Cal's outline swam for a few seconds longer, blurry until he swiped his palm across his eyes.
"Hey…" Any efforts of brotherly affection or teasing failed to come to him, so he looked back at the weapon on the table in front of him.
He had disassembled it, cleaned it, then put it back together twice already. Just because it kept his hands and mind busy; just for something to do. He couldn't stand to be upstairs, his very presence cutting into the tension that hung between his parents. Ever since their mom had gotten home, not a word had been spoken, but they all knew what she had done to save Theo.
So Apollo had gone to the last place he had seen his brother — because maybe Mom was right, Theo was his brother even after… — so he could pretend that it kept him close to him somehow.
"Where do you think she took him?" Cal asked, stopping at the bottom of the steps and just staying there, like she couldn't take another step. Her voice still thick with the tears she had spent for Theo and for…
For her.
Apollo couldn't think about them. That whole family. Not now.
"I don't know." Apollo reached for the gun and started dismantling it again.
Cal didn't walk away and didn't walk closer. Didn't do anything but watch as Apollo stripped the gun down piece by piece.
"It feels like it's right here, just out of reach," Apollo said, tapping the side of his head, words falling from his lips before he could hold them back.
Finally the footsteps restarted, getting closer until Cal sat opposite him at the table. "You mean, what happened?"
Apollo nodded, fingers grazing metal as he turned the pieces over, cleaning for the sake of something to do; the damn things were spotless already. "I keep trying to…" — He put one piece down, took up another — "I keep trying to remember, but nothing feels right. Everytime I come up with a story that fits, it feels like that's all it is, you know? Just a story I'm telling myself to feel better."
"It can't be your fault," Cal said. "This was them. All of this was them, not us."
Apollo nodded along, his heart rate spiking in shared fury at the reminder of the Fairmonts and the harm they had done, but he didn't believe it. Or, at least, not all of it. He wasn't sure Cal really did either given the way her voice caught with the last few words.
It was just another thing they were telling themselves; another tale they would pretend to believe while the truth lay somewhere else, unreachable and foggy like the bedtime stories from childhood, once so clear but now barely more than faint inklings of something once known.The truth was messy and gnarled, blame shared between them all — though, yes, some more than others.
Seeing Theo as a… like that had shaken all that Apollo had once known to be true, and it was a good thing no-one could see into his heart when he said his brother was gone. Because he hadn't believed it; not one goddamn word.
He put the gun back together again, telling himself — lying to himself — that this would be for the last time tonight. It was so much easier to tell themselves these stories they could cling to, rather than think about the truth.
At least for tonight.