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“Do you ever think about asking Ms Fey to channel your father?” Nahyuta asks, pen momentarily stopping in its scratching.
Apollo doesn’t reply immediately, scrunching his brow as he looks at him, twisting around on the couch, resting an arm along the back. “Not really… why?”
“Why would you not?” Nahyuta sets down his pen, and Apollo knows this conversation isn’t going to end until he’s gotten the answer he wants, “over two decades not knowing your true heritage, and now you have a name and face. Is that not all you need to have him return?”
“It’s…” Apollo shifts a little in his seat, “more complicated than that.”
“Is it?”
“Not the– not the channelling, I mean,” Apollo defends, “more of… he’s been gone for twenty-three years, you know? Pulling him back now would be…” he searches for the right words. None come to him.
“There’s not a time limit to this–” Nahyuta says, “Her Benevolence could perform a seance for him even after so long.”
“It’s… it’s not that.”
Nahyuta sits back a little, watching Apollo with a strange expression. “Apollo.”
“Don’t get me wrong– I’d love to meet him, even for a short time, it’s just– I–” he breaks off, letting out a sigh, “doesn’t it… rub you the wrong way?”
“What do you mean?”
“Channelling,” Apollo says, “after all that. After everything… how can you look at it with such a flippant view?”
“I am part of the Khura’in royal family,” Nahyuta replies, as if it’s obvious, “channelling is part of my blood.”
He’s right– he always is, about this kind of thing.
“Still…” Apollo turns to the old pinboard, the photos hanging on the wall. “I don’t know. Like I said, it’s complicated.”
Nahyuta hms, tracking his gaze to the photo of the two of them as boys, Dhurke resting a hand on each of their shoulders.
“Dhurke…” Apollo says, “he did everything he set out to, didn’t he? Said what he wanted.”
“So that’s it?” Nahyuta says, “you’d never see either of them again?”
Apollo’s life has been defined time and time again by people leaving. None of them have ever come back in a way that matters.
He thought that Dhurke had, even for a brief time, only to be proven wrong.
It’s hard to look someone in the eyes when it wasn’t always their eyes staring back at you.
“Most people go through their lives without seeing their lost loved ones again, ‘yuta.”
“You don’t have to.”
Apollo lets his eyes slide back over to Nahyuta, to find his green eyes staring right back, piercing and clear.
That’s just the thing, isn’t it? Apollo has spent most of his life walking one side of a line he didn’t think was crossable more than once. Nahyuta toed the line, even when they were kids, sitting quietly under tree shade and on riverbanks and sunlit stones, flocked by pink pu’dhali any quiet moment.
They never sought out Apollo, loud and disruptive even back then.
Mr Wright always speaks of his old boss as if she were still alive, as if she was a mere phone call away. Nahyuta sometimes does the same thing when he speaks of Dhurke.
Apollo’s never considered death to be something other than a finality, not when everything else in his life has been.
(there’s a big difference between an is and a was)
“I… Dhurke hid the fact that he was being channelled from me. I didn’t know he was dead until…”
“He hid it from everyone,” Nahyuta says.
“That’s not the point I’m trying to make,” Apollo resists the urge to pinch the bridge of his nose, “you’re looking at this with impartiality.”
“Is that not what you want?’
Apollo doesn’t know how to respond to that, so he doesn’t.
Neither of them speak for a time, but Nahyuta doesn’t pick his pen back up, doesn’t return to his work.
“Don’t you resent him?” Apollo says finally, picking at the crumbling leather of the couch. He knows with the Office open for business once more they should invest in a new one, but he’s attached. Old couches are always comfier, after all.
“Hm?”
“Dhurke. After he died. His final thoughts were to see me again – not you.”
“Why would I resent him for that?”
Apollo breathes out something akin to a laugh. “Be selfish for once in your life, Yuty…” he mutters, “your own father’s dying regrets were of me. I don’t know, doesn’t that bother you even a little?”
“Brother,” Nahyuta gets to his feet, and oh, he feels a lump in his throat at the word.
Nahyuta strides across the room easily, boots barely making a whisper as he crosses the floor to stop behind the couch, face to face with Apollo. “You were gone from our lives for over a decade. How can I resent him from wanting to see you again after that long? I would have wished the same.”
“That–” Apollo pauses to clear his throat, “that isn’t…” He motions uselessly in the air, bracelet catching the light. “You hadn’t seen him in years, either, by that point…”
There's a tightness to Nahyuta’s expression at that. “No time at all compared to–”
“Nahyuta,” Apollo cuts in, staring up at him, “Dhurke was your father.”
“Just as much as he was yours.”
Apollo twists back around in his seat to face the front again, dropping his hands into his lap.
He hasn’t called Dhurke any form of the word dad since he was a child, running wild through mountains with hardly a care in the world, even raised by outlaws in a country where that could mean death.
The word lost all meaning when he was left behind in the States, thrown into a system where nobody wanted to keep him long enough for the word to stick.
The couch dips down next to him as Nahyuta sinks into it, but he doesn’t look at him, watching his fingers as he presses them into the carved patterns of his bracelet.
“You do think of him that way, do you not?”
“It’s complicated.”
“It seems as if you are picking up on a new catchphrase.”
Apollo huffs at that, eyes still tracked downwards. There's not enough tension in the room for the metal to react, but it's still a grounding motion, something for him to focus on. “You asked me about my father,” he says, “I shouldn’t have brought up Dhurke.”
“It’s only natural your thoughts led back to him. Their deaths are intrinsically linked.”
“That’s not as much of a comfort as you think it is.”
Apollo can still feel the lump in his throat. He runs his fingers along his bracelet, forcing tears back as he tries to think of something — anything that isn’t going to send him tipping over the edge.
He sometimes wonders if it’s a case of lingering spirits. The only ones that seem to be called upon are the ones with regrets or loved ones that still aren’t ready to move on.
He sometimes wonders if there’s a distinct difference between channelling and divining, if one is bound to time when the other can continue on and on.
He sometimes wonders if the ones that used to be called upon a lot get upset when they’re no longer needed.
He sometimes wonders.
Nahyuta’s hands are cold – (they always are, always have been; Apollo used to shriek when he put his cold hands on the back of his neck) – as he rests them on top of Apollo’s, stilling the movement.
“He was more of a dad to me,” Apollo says finally, “Dhurke, I mean. Jove may have been my real father, but he never got the chance to raise me. And it feels wrong to wish otherwise, because I don’t remember him at all, and anyone who did is gone now, and—” he breaks off with a shuddering breath. Nahyuta’s hands tighten their grip over his.
“I don’t want to forget,” he admits quietly, “not this time. I chose to forget, once. I won’t do it again.”
Nahyuta doesn’t respond instantly, instead turning his head to the pinboard once more, tracing the planes of people’s faces with his gaze, darting from one photo to the next.
Apollo can feel his chest tighten, his throat close up. Still, he forges on; knowing if he doesn’t say it now, he’ll lose his nerve. “I think, after that– that damned case… after everything that happened… don’t you think he should be allowed to rest?”
Two decades of building up a revolution that didn’t happen until his death. Two decades of hiding away and working from shadows and slowly piecing a plan together that wasn’t set into motion until he was taken down. He knows Dhurke would’ve liked to see how it all turned out, knows the man would’ve found joy in seeing his homeland rise into what it was meant to be. He knows after everything, Dhurke was just one man pushing for the dream of thousands – but his life ended too soon; and his children have to pick up the pieces and carry forth.
(Apollo sometimes wonders how Dhurke felt at the idea of all three of his children knowing him by his name and not dad)
“I think he would be one to linger, do you not agree?”
Apollo’s laugh is wet: “Isn’t part of your job to send away restless souls?”
Nahyuta smiles a little at that. “Sahdmadhi’s are stubborn creatures,” he says, “we refuse to give up– surely that was never trained out of you.”
“No,” Apollo agrees, “it wasn’t.”
“So,” Nahyuta finally turns his face back to Apollo, “do you truly think Dhurke has left?”
There’s a prickling sensation behind his eyes, and Apollo ducks his head so Nahyuta doesn’t see.
“Even if his soul has moved on,” Nahyuta continues, squeezing Apollo’s hands in his own, “his spirit is still present– we carry it within us, now.”
“I…” Apollo chokes out, “you asked about Jove, I’m sorry–”
“It’s fine,” Nahyuta says, “this was to be expected.” At Apollo’s questioning look, he continues. “You’ve been avoiding the topic in its entirety. We haven’t spoken about Jove since the trial, and any mention of Dhurke had been relegated to his last rites. At some point, you were going to come around to it, so…”
“So you pushed me over the edge?” The words come out harsher than intended, but Nahyuta doesn’t flinch back. The momentary flash of anger dissipates as quickly as it came on, and Apollo clears his throat before trying again. “Why bring it all up?”
Nahyuta squeezes his hands again, “I didn’t want you to be alone for it,” he says simply.
There’s something hidden in his tone, and Apollo’s bracelet senses it.
“‘Yuta…” Apollo says, slipping his hands out from underneath Nahyuta’s; flipping them over to display the black ink in the centre of his right palm. He traces the swirl of the dragon with a fingertip.
“You’re allowed to grieve for him, too,” Apollo says quietly.
Nahyuta’s smile is paper-thin. “Even if I can meet him again whenever I wish?”
Apollo’s never considered death to be anything other than a finality, not when everything else in his life was.
(there’s a big difference between an is and a was)
“Even then.”