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The first time he wanted to never feel anything again was in a funeral home where he’d helped dress the corpse of one of his best friends, wrap her in a shroud, and with all the others who had come to mourn her, see her off, into the Underworld with a obol under her tongue with which to pay Charon for her very last trip.
He hadn’t gone numb like he usually did. He hadn’t been able to turn it off, even though that had been all he had wanted to do for the entire time. He’d felt all of it, wrenching at him like it could pull him apart. It hadn’t been godly rage or grief though. He hadn’t sent out solar flares to scorch land for decades or cast down plagues, nor had he cried a river from his tears for Meg McCaffrey. He had just sat like a stone at the bottom of the sea, being slowly eroded, broken down into pieces.
Remember what it is to be human , Jason had demanded of him.
He was a god again. His battle with Python had been seventy years ago, a lifetime for mortals. A blink of an eye for a god. He didn’t know where it sat for him.
But he’d remembered. Even when all he wanted to do was forget, and cast it all aside, forget because it was easier if he didn’t remember why he hurt, and if he didn’t remember why he hurt, then he might stop hurting one day.
He’d shed more than a few tears for Meg, but those were wiped away by a handkerchief, and all he’d done was just watch as the flames ate away her body.
Her mother hadn’t come to the funeral, but that wasn’t unexpected. Demeter was utterly uninvolved in her daughter’s life. Why on earth would she begin to care when she was dead?
After that, he’d gone away for a while. Just performed his duties. Drive the sun. Shoot arrows. Heal the sick. Spread plague. Write poetry.
But he didn’t go down to Earth. He didn’t spend any time on the mortal realm unless he had to be there. Cabin Seven emptied out for two decades at least, and the camp’s infirmary had to depend on Chiron, children of Hermes who’d picked up on the medicine part, and the very occasional child of Asclepius.
But he had no flings with mortals, no summer long romances, no flirtations in a lecture theatre or in a concert hall. He wasn’t there in any capacity unless he had to be.
Artemis came to him a few times, and she took him out hunting, just the two of them and a few wolves, some of hers, and some of his.
“None of your daughters have joined me in a few years,” she said to him one time while they roasted rabbit over a fire. It was small game, but it had a nice quality to it, though he still preferred venison or grouse.
“I have no demigod children right now,” he started running a knife down the back of the skin.
“None?”
“Zero.”
She hummed, “There’s never been a time when I’ve… taken a step back from recruiting, but there have been times when I’ve left it off to my lieutenants to take care of it for me. I understand it isn’t really the same thing, but after Zoe,” the tendons around her neck flexed, like a deer surprised to find an arrow in its side, “I let Thalia recruit on my behalf and lead the hunt when I went off to be alone. You came to me then, a few times I remember.”
“You shot me,” he said, trying to smile, but finding he couldn’t quite bring himself to do so. “Each time.”
“Well,” she huffed. “It was annoying. Alone does not mean alone with you.”
“I was trying to… comfort you. I apologise.”
“Thank you.” The silence overtook them again as they hung their scraped pelts in frames by the fire. “I could snap my fingers and do it instantly, I know, but it's nice to get my hands into it, to do it like-”
“A human,” he interrupted. “It was part of the promise I made.”
She wrinkled her brow. “To whom? Your companion?”
“No,” he gathered up the bones, picked clean, and promised himself again to never let his hands anywhere near Artemis and her dinner. She could give any daughter of Demeter a run for their money any day. The thought of that didn’t hurt as much as he’d assumed it would. “To our brother.”
She kept looking at him blankly. “Jason,” he continued. “Our brother, the son of Jupiter and… I don’t remember her name but Piper McLean said something about a washed up starlet with too much fake tan?”
“Beryl,” she said. “Thalia’s mentioned her. And Jason, her Jason?”
“That’s the one,” he said. “He died for me. But that was the promise he made me keep. Or made me make, I suppose.” His throat tightened, but he forced it down, “I’m not sure exactly how well I’ve been keeping it.”
“I’m not the most fond of mortal men,” his sister began, her appearance shifting between her usual child - kore - form, and an older, more seasoned hunter. The strong jawline and hard set eyes he remembered when she’d stopped the Achaeans at Aulis until Agamemnon had sacrificed poor Iphigenia to her. He’d never been clear on if she had swapped the poor girl with a deer at the last second or if that had just been a very clever rebranding on her part.
“That’s an understatement,” he muttered. She glared at him. He shrugged. “Am I lying?”
“You are not. Regardless, if you were to ask me about how much you are like a mortal man… I’d say there isn’t a dissimilarity.”
“You know how I feel about double negatives, Artie.”
She smirked, “Yes. But look at yourself.”
It was shallow but he did it. His skin was still pasty, and his cheeks had the faint idea of acne scarring. Since it was just them, he hadn’t really been holding onto a mortal form, but when he focused, his hair was brown and curly, and he was only about 5’6 or so.
“Apollo-Lester,” she said. “You have not forgotten. You just have to stop being so scared.”
Her appearance shifted again, not to an eight year old girl, nor a forty year old woman, but to a twelve year old, with bobbed hair, still in her favoured auburn, with silver eyes, but to all intents and purposes, otherwise looking like someone he’d missed for a very long time, “Now stop being an idiot.”
He rolled his eyes, “I’ll do my best.”