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Apollo arrives in Khura’in Airport at 11:39AM, approximately nine years after the last time he was there.
It hasn’t changed much. There are a couple of extensions and runways that he doesn’t recognise, but all in all, it’s how he remembers it. He can look out of the same windows, walk on the same tiled floor, look up at the same direction signs. If he glances to a particular spot outside, secluded in now-overgrown shrubs, he can see the exact spot where Dhurke kneeled, took Apollo’s little hands in his own and promised him that he’d pick him up soon.
Apollo’s had a gruelling twenty hours of flight time to think about everything he wants to say. Why did Dhurke abandon him? If it was about his safety, why didn’t he send Nahyuta, too? Why did he never come back? Why did he break his promise?
Because he tried so, so hard to forget about him. Forgetting was easier than thinking he was abandoned, unloved. Forgetting was easier than remembering Dhurke’s broken promise and how much he ached for it to be fulfilled. Forgetting let him grow up semi-normally, let him stop clinging onto the memory of the man he thought loved him more than anything.
At least he thought he’d forgotten. But after he’d turned eighteen there was always a nagging voice in the back of his mind - that however much he pretended to be over it before, he can do what he likes now. He’s old enough to have control over his finances. Old enough to book a plane ticket. Old enough to confront the man who abandoned him and finally get some answers after all these years.
His documents are all real this time, not painstakingly forged by Dhurke and Datz after everything was burned up in the palace fire. Not many kids get to pick their own birthday - but Dhurke had narrowed it down from how old he seemed when he first picked him up, and then from that short period of time he and Datz had deliberated which star sign Apollo was most like.
(He’d only been nine at the time, so they probably could’ve fit him into any box they liked - but Datz thought he was a Libra, and so an October birthday went on his passport).
He carries the same amount of luggage as he did back then, though: just a backpack, compact and small enough to fit in the overhead carrier. Now it only has the essentials, enough to survive on for a few days until he returns - but back then, it was filled until bursting, so much so that Datz had to sit on it in order to get it zipped up. He’d shoved as many things from home in there as he possibly could, terrified of the prospect of forgetting; minimising silly things like his clothes to fit in toys that Dhurke had given him and pictures Nahyuta had drawn.
As he leaves the airport, he’s struck less with nostalgia and more how odd everything is. He grew up in constant danger of being followed and pursued, even being killed if he was with Dhurke. He would sleep with one eye open, ready to escape at a moment’s notice if the Royal Guard ever got too close to their house - but now he’s just… free.
Nobody even spares him a passing glance. The bazaar was so dangerous to them when they were little, and so he’d only been a couple of times in his whole entire life - however, now he walks through openly and unchallenged. Part of him had been expecting to be shunned, like these random citizens would somehow know who he grew up with.
The nostalgia does start to hit after a little while. The market streets have changed but the feeling is the same - the uneven cobbled stones under his feet, the occasional cry of a warbaa’d, the smell of the street food Datz would sometimes bring home for them if Ga’ran’s soldiers had been lax recently. It makes his heart seize in his chest.
Even worse, however, is the long hike up to their old hut, shrouded in the cover of the mountains and away from the prying eyes and ears of Ga’ran’s soldiers. The dirt path from the outskirts of town to the hills is familiar, too, worn down from nine years worth of use since he last walked this route.
He used to dream of this. For years he fantasised about coming up this path, walking through the forests and past the river, seeing his home on the horizon and running towards it, hugging his father and brother again. He would console himself with thoughts of it, of an imaginary Dhurke holding him close and telling him how sorry he was, that he really did love him and would never let him go again-
Apollo shakes his head. He didn’t come here to reminisce, or to get lost in old delusions. He came here for answers, and so that’s what he’s going to find - and trudges up the hill with a newfound determination.
How is he even going to start? What if they’re not in the house anymore? Earthquakes are especially devastating up in the mountains, so what if even the house itself is gone? What if he’s come all the way to Khura’in, spent all of his savings on a ticket just to find somebody who isn’t there?
He knows it’s morbid, but a part of him had always hoped something had happened. That Dhurke never contacting him didn’t mean that he didn’t love him, it just meant that he couldn’t. Because to a ten, eleven, twelve year old Apollo - anything was better than thinking that Dhurke hated him, didn’t want him anymore. The very idea of it made him feel like he was going to break apart.
Apollo just doesn’t get it. They told him that he would understand when he was older, but now he is older. He’s a legal adult and he still can’t fathom why Dhurke abandoned him when he supposedly loved him so much. Surely those two things can’t coincide, can they?
And so by the time he finally reaches the old house, he’s seething with anger. The door is locked but if he remembers correctly, there’s a rusty window frame in Dhurke’s bedroom that can be opened from the outside with the right amount of rustling and fiddling.
Once he manoeuvres a small entrance to slip through, the first thing he notices is that the bedroom is completely empty. And thank the Holy Mother for that, Apollo thinks - because he’s so overwhelmed with emotion he almost falls to his knees.
It’s just a bedroom. He shouldn’t be so affected by it. All is it is four walls and a ceiling and a floor-
And he finds himself nearly tearing up. It’s just a room, but here he is, shoulders shaking under the weight of it all and vision blurring at the nostalgic sight of it all.
To anyone else, it’s just a room - but there are his and Nahyuta’s heights marked on the doorframe in black marker pen, with Nahyuta’s extending all the way upwards and Apollo’s ending at a measly four and a half feet, the height he’d been before he left for America. There’s a child’s drawing, his own if his memory is right, still hung up on the wall by the window, picturing him and Dhurke and Nahyuta and Datz in the mountains together under a scrawled yellow sun with a smiley face. There’s Dhurke’s bed, with the same faded blue bedsheets that he remembers, where he used to scramble into when he couldn’t sleep and hold onto his father’s hand until he finally drifted off.
The nostalgia overtakes him in waves as he moves through the rest of the house. Dhurke could still be in the house even if he isn’t in his room, he supposes - but with every step he takes on creaky wooden floorboards, he feels tears welling up in his eyes again, and so keeps his hood firmly over his head.
This is the hallway where he’d taken his first steps, moving a short length on his own before falling into Dhurke’s outstretched arms. This is the kitchen where he would ask Dhurke to turn on the radio so he and Nahyuta could dance to the music. This is the counter he would sit on when he grazed his knees playing outside and Dhurke would tend to the injury; the couch that he would lay on when he was ill; the house he’d spent the happiest years of his life in and the house that he’d yearned for in those long nine years he was apart from it.
His and Nahyuta’s old bedroom isn’t as painful as he’d been expecting - mostly because it’s changed so much, and it’s clearly now just Nahyuta’s bedroom. Traces of Apollo still linger in the scribbled red crayon on the walls and the dusty old chest they used as a toy box, but their old tiny beds are pushed together to form one bigger one and there’s a distinct lack of the childish happiness that used to grace the room.
…Perhaps that’s just how Apollo remembers it. With his back to the door, he starts to make his way over to the chest, wondering if there’s anything worth looking at still inside of it-
“Put your hands up.”
It seems that, in the nine years he was in the States, Apollo had forgotten how careful they always had to be. He hadn’t listened out for footsteps or creaking floorboards or opening doors or even at the very least looked behind him as he’d entered the house. How was he more vigilant at nine years old than he is now?
And he would be scared. He would be scared that he’s led the Royal Guard to their safe house, their years-old sanctuary within hours of arriving in Khura’in. He would be scared that he’s about to die at eighteen years old for associating with Dhurke Sahdmadhi, supposed terrorist and assassin of the late Queen.
He would be scared, if he didn’t recognise the voice speaking.
It’s gravelly and deep, definitely the voice of an older man, but the aggression and hostility in it is clearly forced. Apollo knows that for a fact because it was the same voice that took him and Nahyuta on fishing trips, brought them treats from the bazaar since Dhurke was too recognisable to go himself, picked him up and swung him around in the grassy fields outside the mountain hut.
“How did you find this place?” Continues the stoic voice of Datz Are’bal, clearly still unaware of Apollo’s identity under the dark hoodie with his back still turned. “And who told you about the secret entrance?”
“There’s nothing wrong with going in my own house, Datz,” Apollo hisses as he turns around, and comes face to face with a man he hasn’t seen in nearly a decade.
He hasn’t said Datz’s name aloud since he left Khura’in. But now he’s here, looking older and more rugged and more tired than he had done when Apollo had left. His cheekbones sit more pronounced on his face and his eyes have a hallowed sort of depth to them. When Apollo was on his flight to Khura’in, he hadn’t even thought about seeing Datz - he’d been too busy thinking about Dhurke, and everything he wanted to say to him.
“Holy shit,” Datz curses, mouth involuntarily dropping open as his kukri goes clattering to the floor. “AJ?!”
Apollo’s suddenly struck by how not over any of this he is.
He hadn’t even thought about Datz before he got here - but now he’s faced with the man who helped raise him and Nahyuta, and it all comes crashing down on him. Datz could’ve let him stay. Datz could’ve convinced Dhurke not to go ahead with it. And he didn’t. And Datz, even though he was less recognisable and less wanted than Dhurke, didn’t come to America to get him either.
“I thought this was a bloodless revolution,” Apollo says bitterly. “And here you are, threatening me with a knife.”
“Threatening is fair game, kiddo. You know I wouldn’t actually use it,” Datz tells him, body language softening into the playful demeanour Apollo is familiar with. “But Holy Mother, little AJ. What are you doing here?”
‘Coming to see what took you so long’, is Apollo’s knee-jerk answer - but as he tries to speak, he finds that nothing comes out.
Because Datz looks genuinely happy to see him. And however much he wants to pretend that he didn’t, Apollo’s missed him. There was nobody like Datz in America. Nobody to teach him how to climb trees or play pretend games with him when he was upset. Nobody to pull pranks on him or lovingly pretend to fall for the pranks Apollo would attempt to pull in revenge.
“I mean- no way. Dhurke’s gonna be…” Datz trails off, face still frozen in shock.
“What? Dhurke’s gonna be what?”
“Well. Extremely happy to see you again, obviously,” Datz tells him. “But AJ, things are worse. So much more dangerous. If Dhurke wanted to keep you safe back then, it’s gonna be a hundred times worse now.”
“I’m eighteen now,” Apollo mutters, rolling his eyes. “I can protect myself.”
“Not from Ga’ran’s regime, you can’t,” Datz says, suddenly far too serious. “And trust me on this one: eighteen isn’t as old as you think it is. But I still can’t believe you’re here. In the flesh, all big and tall. I thought I’d never see you again!”
Datz’s tone is lighthearted and happy. There’s nothing in there to suggest it isn’t genuine, to suggest that he’s anything but excited to see Apollo again - but how can he not be bitter?
“That much was clear. I noticed when you all abandoned me,” Apollo scoffs, unable to stop the vitriol from creeping into his voice. It was nine years of suffering, of being shunted between foster homes with nobody that loved him and no real friends besides Clay, all the while missing a man who sent him halfway across the world - he’s returned to his home full of pain and anger, and Datz doesn’t get it.
“Oh,” Datz falters, and for the first time in Apollo’s life, he actually sees a flicker of pain on the man’s usually easygoing, cheerful face. “Oh, AJ, we never meant to-”
“But you did,” Apollo spits. “I was left in a foreign country with a fake passport and no English and nothing and no-one. And Dhurke did that! And you didn’t stop him!”
“I- I know, buddy. And it’s not my place to talk to you about this, but it wasn’t easy for any of us.”
“Right. It wasn’t easy for any of you, all living here together in the house. Imagine what it was like for me! You all had each other and I just- I just had nobody!”
Full to the brim with hot shame and years worth of hurt, Apollo feels his eyes start to well up. His face quickly warms and his speech is interrupted by the slowly-forming lump in his throat, crushing his words as they come out - and oh god, he thinks, if he truly wants to become a lawyer, he’ll have to build up some tolerance. He can’t just cry every time he gets into an argument.
Datz notices, of course. He steps tentatively forward like he’s approaching a stray animal, something cornered and vulnerable to be treated with caution.
“I’m so sorry, AJ,” Datz says gently, lowering his voice to something reminiscent of how he used to talk to a young Apollo when he was ill or upset. “I can’t tell you how good it is to see you again. I’m worried, more than anything - things are dangerous here - but I really thought I’d never get to have you back. And I know you didn’t come here for a happy reunion, but I missed you. I missed you so much, buddy. I would’ve laughed at your little stag horns if I hadn’t missed you so much.”
Apollo frustratedly swipes at the few tears that have already fallen. “It didn’t feel like you missed me.”
Datz’s face crumples into something sympathetic, and he places a hand on Apollo’s shoulder. And despite having nearly an entire day on the plane to envision how he would push everyone away, how he would shout and scream for what they did to him, for how much he suffered and for leaving him alone-
But the hand feels so nice, so familiar. It feels like home-cooked meals at the kitchen table with whatever they foraged from the forest and stole from the bazaar. It feels like going on fishing trips, catching nothing in his inexperience and not caring about it anyway. It feels like having a home, having somewhere with the people he loved that he always felt safe in.
It feels like having a family. Because however much traditional family roles would insist that Datz didn’t count, he did. He did in every way that mattered. And having that warm, sturdy hand on his shoulder brings back years of loving memories that he’d repressed as hard as he could.
“You have every right to be mad, and I won’t stop you. Neither will Dhurke,” Datz says softly, truthfully. “But please, kiddo. Go and see him. For both of your sakes.”
Apollo remembers the route to the old Sahdmadhi Law Offices.
Datz doesn’t come with him for obvious reasons, and was insistent that Apollo be deathly careful even after he’d told him that he wasn’t even glanced at in the bazaar earlier. He had also told him that there was a meeting going on in there, and while he wasn’t certain whether it would be over by the time Apollo got there, the sight of Dhurke’s long-lost son would make him end it by any means.
He seems convinced that Dhurke has missed him, and is going to be happy to see him. Apollo isn’t so sure.
Upon seeing the rusty manhole cover that marks the secret entrance, Apollo tries desperately not to cringe. It’s going to be harder to climb in now he’s grown, and of all the things he missed about Khura’in, one of them was not smelling like sewage every time they wanted to get into Dhurke’s old office.
He slips down easily, checking for anyone looking before sliding the cover off and grimacing once his shoes splash in the water. The low echo of voices in the tunnel suggest that the meeting is very much not over - and as much as he wants to believe Datz, he doesn’t think Dhurke is going to stop an important rebellion meeting just because Apollo barged in out of nowhere.
Even as he gets closer to the hideout, seeing the ladder that leads up to the trapdoor where the hidden entrance is, he can’t make out what the voices are saying. There sounds to be quite a few people up there. The revolution must have at least grown since he left-
There’s something nibbling at his leg.
Oh, god, the rats. How could he have forgotten? Of course, when he and Nahyuta were little they had thought it was cool that there could be tiny animals on the way to Dhurke’s old office - but now he’s older, the childish wonder has worn off, and he realises where he is: in the sewer. With a rat.
He holds back a very emphatic eww before tripping over his own feet to scramble away from it, shoes banging and water splashing everywhere and making a giant racket as every noise echoes off of the damp tunnel walls-
And then the voices have stopped.
Apollo looks up to see the trapdoor open and a couple of horrified faces staring down at him, and he doesn’t have time to even start to explain before somebody’s angrily shouting something to the rest of the room about an ‘eavesdropper’ and hauling him up into the office.
There are still spiderwebs and pictures pinned to the walls and the reminiscing needs to wait, Apollo thinks, because he kicks and struggles and they don’t seem to understand that he’s on their side, he wasn’t eavesdropping but instead waiting for Dhurke, but he has a feeling that if he tells them he was hiding in wait for the rebel leader outside the secret entrance to their hideout, they might take it the wrong way.
There’s only one gasp in the room when his hood slips from his head, exposing his face to the Defiant Dragons.
It’s… exactly who Apollo expected it to be.
Dhurke looks different. He looks like he’s aged much more than the nine years Apollo was gone - he’s older, seemingly wiser, his hair longer and one eye covered with an eyepatch. He claps a hand over his mouth, eyes glistening something solemn, and he struggles to manage any words out even when everyone is looking to him for answers.
“Let him go,” Dhurke whispers. The harsh grip on Apollo loosens and then there he is: facing his father for the first time in nine long, long years.
“We’re not sure how much he heard,” says the person on Apollo’s left. “What should we do?”
Another speaks up. “He could just be a tourist. He doesn’t look like he’s from around here, we could just send him on his way.”
“He’s found us. We can’t just let him go when Ga’ran has started bribing people now.”
“He looks like a kid, what do you want us to-”
“Enough.” Dhurke’s commanding voice silences the room. “Everyone, out. The meeting is adjourned for today.”
There’s an ensuing chorus of confused noises - but even when Apollo was little, nobody ever really contested Dhurke. He looks even more intimidating with the longer hair and the eyepatch, and so the rest of the Dragons (all of whom Apollo doesn’t recognise) clear out quickly through the trapdoor as Apollo just stands there and stares daggers through his father.
“Son,” Dhurke’s voice trembles. “It’s… it’s really you, son?”
Apollo just shrugs.
He has no idea what to say. He’d had twenty hours on the flight and nine years of Dhurke’s absence to think about what he wanted to say to him after all this time - and all of a sudden, his mind has gone blank. He has almost a decade’s worth of things to say and under Dhurke’s warm, paternal gaze, he can’t think of a single one.
“Oh, my boy,” Dhurke is gasping, and then doing something Apollo hadn’t expected in a million years - he’s running over to hug him, tripping over his own feet on the shanty floorboards of his old, run-down law offices just to get to Apollo and envelope him in his arms, squeeze him so tightly he can hardly breathe.
He gently kisses the crown of his hair as he rests his head on top of Apollo’s, his longer hair falling down in a sheet of pitch-black as if shielding him, and hugs him so hard that the force of it rocks them both slightly where they stand.
It’s warm. It’s… exactly what he remembered it to be like, when he was lonely in America and wanted his dad, when he was touch-starved and tearily gripping at lumpy pillows and wanted Dhurke to hold him the way he used to. And he hates that it’s so easy, that Dhurke can just hug him for a few seconds and he’ll melt into it like a Pavlovian response - he’s so filled with anger that it hurts, but his head rests on top of Dhurke’s shoulder like it’s muscle memory, his body moving on its own before he can stop it.
He despises how safe he feels. How nine years of resentment can suddenly fade into background noise under Dhurke’s heartfelt, fatherly hold.
“I never thought- oh, you’re back, after all this time and you’ve come back to me, Apollo,” Dhurke babbles feverishly, voice so happy it’s almost unintelligible. It’s difficult to associate the sheer joy in the man’s voice with this newer, more rugged version of Dhurke. “I missed you so much, son, I can’t believe you’re real, you’re here with me, and-”
“No thanks to you.” Apollo finally finds his footing and pushes Dhurke away, rage bubbling underneath his skin - because the hug was nice for a moment, but it was only a moment, and Apollo had suffered for years because of Dhurke’s decision.
Dhurke, to his credit, steps back willingly, because there’s no way Apollo is physically strong enough to actually move the man anywhere. “You abandoned me.”
Dhurke’s face flashes with hurt. “Son-”
“No!” Apollo interrupts in a shout. “You- you left me, you don’t get to say you’re glad I’m back when it’s your fault I was gone in the first place! I- I was all alone and I wanted you and you promised you’d come and get me- and, and now I’m an adult, I’m here because I’m eighteen and I can do what I want and you didn’t want me! So- so stop pretending like you do!”
It’s with a hot and embarrassed sort of shame that he realises tears are already falling down his cheeks. Dhurke looks miserable, a sharp contrast to the pure happiness he’d been feeling just moments ago as he hugged Apollo.
“I’m so sorry, son,” he whispers, keeping his distance even though Apollo can spot his nervous twitches like blaring neon signs, and knows that he desperately wants to reach out and hold. “I- it’s the truth, I promise, when I said I missed you. I sent you away for your safety, and I hated every minute of it. It was the hardest decision I ever made as a parent, son… and I’m so sorry I made you think for even a second that I didn’t want to.”
“You can’t- ugh!” Apollo swipes roughly at his eyes. They just won’t stop leaking, tears continuously dripping down his cheeks like infallible proof of his weakness. “You can’t just say that like it makes it all okay. It’s not true, you wouldn’t have sent me away if you loved me!”
Dhurke shuts his eyes (or eye, Apollo supposes now), and bows his head solemnly in thought.
“Anything was better than you being shot at,” Dhurke says, voice pained. “And… you were too young for me to tell you everything back then, son, but I suppose I can tell you now. Your father was murdered. I told you he died in the fire, and I suppose he did, in a sense - but when I re-entered the palace that night to find Amara I found him on the floor, bleeding from the head, with you lying just out of his reach. And oh, son, I couldn’t keep you in danger when your father had died keeping you safe.”
“You never told me that.”
“You were nine. You were so little, so innocent, and I just… I did want to come and get you, son. With all of my heart. Which is why I told you I’d come and get you as soon as things settled down - and I was stupid, naive. I thought promising you that would give me the push I needed to finish this revolution once and for all… and that clearly didn’t happen. I wanted to come and get you anyway, but they’d find me easily if I went to the airport, or even tried to cross the border on foot. They have an execution order for me now, son. I feared that if I tried to get to you, I’d be shot on sight, and I couldn’t risk never seeing you again. But I still won’t excuse what I did. I left you all alone, son. I left my little boy alone. And I’m so sorry for it.”
Dhurke looks scarily close to tearing up himself - and Apollo has never seen his father cry. It sets off alarm bells in his head that he didn’t even know existed.
He’d never been expecting Dhurke to apologise. He supposes he hadn’t even thought about what Dhurke would say to him - he’d been too busy pondering what he was going to do, what he was going to say, all the different ways he would shout and yell and scream at the man who left him. But not once did he think about what would actually come from all of that. He hadn’t wanted to let himself hope. And now… he’s not sure what to say.
“You lost an eye,” is what he comes up with, his angry tears finally beginning to slow down.
Dhurke just nods, lightly touching his fingers to the eyepatch. “Things are more dangerous now than they used to be. Ga’ran has changed the legal system enough that her soldiers can do as they please, and the poor amount of attorneys we still had is now nought.”
“Where’s Yuta?”
Dhurke’s face sours and Apollo immediately assumes the worst.
Nahyuta can’t be dead. Datz would have told him. …Wouldn’t he?
But he did say that Dhurke should be the one to talk to him, and that talking to him would be for both of their sakes. Maybe Nahyuta is dead and Dhurke needed to see his other son alive. Maybe Nahyuta is gone forever and Apollo has just been standing here, yelling at Dhurke-
“He’s become a prosecutor,” Dhurke says gravely.
“He’s what?” Apollo responds almost involuntarily, the words forced out of him. Nahyuta, a prosecutor? Under Ga’ran?
“He’s, well. Trying to infiltrate from the inside,” Dhurke sighs, clutching a hand to his chest. “We tried to tell him no, that there were other options, but he was determined. You know how stubborn he is. He wanted to reform the legal system any way he could.”
Apollo just feels like crying. He’d returned to Khura’in expecting everything to be the way he left it - and their family is broken. Everyone is aged and exhausted and Dhurke is missing an eye and Nahyuta is gone for reasons Apollo can’t quite comprehend and is still struggling to process.
Not that he still isn’t angry about being abandoned. He’d take anything the country’s tyrannical rule threw at him as long as he was here with the rest of them.
“I just… son. I can’t believe I get to see you again,” Dhurke says, so heartfelt it makes Apollo’s chest ache.
“Yeah, well.” Apollo shrugs, gesturing down at himself. “Here I am.”
Dhurke looks at him with something akin to pride, stepping closer again just to gauge Apollo’s reaction - and smiles wider than Apollo has ever seen before.
“Have all your teeth grown back yet, son? You still had some missing when you left. Have you been cleaning behind your ears? Getting all your vitamins?” Dhurke cups Apollo’s cheeks in two warm, calloused palms, tilting him every which way as he looks at him and takes in every change that’s happened in all the time that he missed. “You went to school, right, son? Did all your homework? Stayed away from any more river rapids?”
Dhurke looks at him with something unintelligible in his eyes, something fond and proud and gentle - and surges forward to hug him again.
This time Apollo lets him, leans his head on Dhurke’s shoulder and shuts his eyes as he tries to process the fact that he still loved him. That he didn’t want to let him go. And not once did he ever hate him.
“You’re all grown up,” Dhurke murmurs into his hair. “My little boy, all big and strong. You’re so tall now, and coming here all by yourself - and oh, I missed you, I missed you so much, I’ll make things up to you for the rest of time, son, I swear.”
Apollo wants to protest after all those years of pain and abandonment - but he wants that, wants what Dhurke is saying so desperately. Those nine years culminate in this moment, where he’s finally gotten what he wanted, and nine years of hurt pour out of him all at once until he’s sobbing vehemently into his chest, gripping onto his jacket for dear life.
He still uses the same detergent. Apollo breathes in the scent between sobs and clutches as hard as he can, Dhurke soothing him with small circles between his shoulder blades and hushed whispers into his hairline followed by soft kisses pressed to his forehead.
“There’s my boy,” Dhurke squeezes him tightly again. “I love you so much, son, so much. And I’m so proud of you. And… oh, if Datz sees you now- he’ll be so happy, Apollo. He’s missed you too. We all did, more than anything. I promise you that.”
It takes Apollo a moment to gather himself up enough to be able to speak. Dhurke is patient, though, fingers idling in the baby hairs on the nape of Apollo’s neck and arms still holding him tenderly.
“I saw Datz,” he says, voice muffled into Dhurke’s jacket. “You guys are so old now.”
Dhurke snorts in laughter, caught off guard by the statement. “A rebellion ages you, son. Wait, when did you see Datz?”
“I went to the old house. He thought I was an intruder.”
“Can never be too careful,” Dhurke says. Apollo can feel him smiling against his hair. “But we’ll go back to the old house after this, son. Set your room up again. Can’t have my little boy staying in a hotel when I have a free room for him, can I?”
“You’d really want me to…?”
“Don’t be silly, son. I bet Datz is preparing you cooked lizards as we speak.”
Apollo is about to jokingly say something about flying back to America so he doesn’t have to eat that - but he’s just so happy. Content in a way he hasn’t been in a long time, finally feeling safe and loved and whole again.
Nine years is a terribly long time. Apollo’s grown up since then, properly learned English, finished school - yet he still falls into Dhurke’s arms like he’s that same boy who departed from the airport all that time ago.
It’s with a nonchalant stroke of his hair that Dhurke, completely unknowingly, says the words that Apollo had yearned to hear for so long.
“Come on,” he says gently. “Let’s go home, son.”