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One thing which Leto had always told him was: “Don’t borrow grief from the future.”
In terms of parents, he hadn’t done too badly. One out of two was enough, he could have done a lot worse, you only had to glance at Ares, Angelos, Arge, Eileithyia, Eleutheria, Eris, and Hebe to know that. Hera only had “family only” (her brother-husband, and exclusively their children) dinners every few centuries, but the damage afterward was always notable. Even becoming an underworld god hadn’t gotten Angelos out of it, and the thing with Eileithyia and chainsaws after the most recent one, around the late eighteenth century, well… the less said, absolutely the better.
Young gods, at least in his and his sister’s case, didn’t need to be raised or reared like mortal children, but Leto had been consistently there, with orange juice nectar, and ambrosia muffins. She’d sat with him as he’d cried, laurel wreath in his hair, hyacinths at his feet, black crows dotting the landscape, talked to him, tried to get him to talk back. Artemis had always been their father’s favourite, perhaps even out of all of his children, but neither of them had ever felt unloved by their mother.
“What does that mean?” he’d ask. Or: “I know, mom, I got it,” or: “Of course, mother.” It depended on the type of day, and whoever she was trying to get him to stop mourning while they still breathed air, and their hearts still pumped blood.
But Meg had had a grey hair today, and when she smiled, the lines around her eyes hadn’t disappeared when she had stopped, and he could see the beginnings of arthritis in her joints, the swellings in her knuckles, degenerating disc operations (both of which he cured without a word or any acknowledgement, soothing it away when she hugged him).
In the six months he’d been missing, between the battle against the giants and his fall, Perseus Jackson had fought Geras, and instead of losing, or bringing him to a standstill like a certain other demigod had, he’d embraced him. Poseidon had raged, even when Apollo had returned to Olympus, almost a year later. His son had embraced old age, mortality, the idea that his body would get slower, weaker, and that he would die. Apollo could see that Meg, though less literally, had done the same thing.
He was four thousand, six hundred, and sixty two. An ancient being. He’d loved and lost more people than were ever recorded in any myths. He couldn’t forget, not while he was a god, but they faded away, only present if he really tried, really thought about them. His lovers, children, champions. His friends and companions. The boys he’d protected, poets he’d inspired, archers he’d guided the hands of.
It hurt when they died. He had literally cried a river for Asclepius, and the Eridanos still flowed, thick with his tears. He was no stranger to grief, but time had worn him down, as it did all things. He would survive Meg’s death. But he would suffer.
In the old days, they had had the word πάσχω. It was to suffer, to experience, to be affected by. He’d certainly experienced a lot, and suffered more.
Melpomene loved it. She was always talking about “to be alive is to suffer, better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all.” The latter of which Apollo knew very well, given that he’d been in the same room when it had been given, but whatever. Tragic muses were going to trag as the saying went. He was pretty sure that that was what it was at least. He’d definitely heard it over the years.
“The years start coming and they don’t stop coming,” was another one he found all too true, especially in the affairs of mortals. One visit, and they were fine, the second they had a cough, the third they were dead. Sometimes these visits were weeks, months or years apart. Possibly decades. The years didn’t feel like years when you were a god, but each time he’d gone from god to human to god again, he found himself grasping a little more strongly onto the timestream, clutching it tighter, holding it to himself as much as he could as the people he loved were torn away by the current.
Ageing and death were natural. As a healer he knew that better than most. Asclepius had never been able to grasp the concept as well, but even he knew necrosis, the wither and the way things went. It was, to put it very simply, and very badly: the way of things. The Fates wove a tapestry, and threads were cut along that tapestry, and all you could do was hope for their mercy, and that they wouldn’t snip the thread too soon or too cruelly.
Was there such a thing as a kind death? Humans liked to tell themselves stories about passing in their sleep or tripping on the stairs, but more were shot, succumbed to illness, beaten, bombed, hit by cars, drowned or starved.
He couldn’t prevent every death for Meg, but he could do his best: monitor her health, keep her vaccines up to date and her vitamin levels right. Ward her home, and keep as much of an eye on her as he could get away with while trapped under Zeus’ overzealous thumb.
He’d unwoven tumours in her body before he could even tell if they were malignant or benign, and even a sneeze or the common cold couldn’t take her now. He did what he could for her, even though it wasn’t much. In a thousand years he would still be here, still driving the sun chariot, guiding archers, inspiring poets and musicians, forming the words in politician’s mouths before they could even think of it.
And she would be ashes in a grave. He knew she’d get Elysium. There was never an exact guarantee, but if she were sent to Asphodel or the Fields for whatever contrived reason he couldn’t even conceive (but wouldn’t necessarily put past his father), he would rain down literal holy hell. And probably get human’ed again for it, but it was the thought that counted.
He saw Meg again on the next Tuesday, she poured him a cup of nectar and passed him a plate of whole grain cookies that were somehow really tasty despite being… that. She sipped her coffee, and he focused on the brightness of her eyes and her scoffing laugh, still the same as it had been when she was an irritating twelve year old and he was a whiny not-a-god. “How’ve you been, Lester?”
He swallowed his bite of cookie, and loosened some crumbs from a molar with his tongue. He didn’t need to, he was a god, but he liked to do things “the mortal way”, at least when he was with her. “Oh you know,” he exhaled the carbon dioxide and inhaled more oxygen. “Just dandy.”