Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

When Meg hit me as she passed me, I almost cried.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Fen stifle a laugh. Which absolutely did not help me feel any better.

Maybe I should explain.

It was a gloomy, rainy day. The sort where you just want to curl up by the fireplace like a big orange cat. I was planning on taking Fen and Riley to the beach for some more much needed bonding time, but the weather absolutely spoiled that. Instead, after about an hour of deliberation, we finally decided upon Beauty and the Beast. We had hardly gotten past the intro song when there was a knock on the cabin door. Before anyone could answer, it swung open. Meg, looking like a particularly soggy rat, stood there.

“We were supposed to hang out.”

If I were either of the two sitting next to me, I may have sworn.

“Oh, hello to you, too, dearest Meg,” I said instead. “How nice to see you. Meg, this is Fen and Riley. Fen and Riley, this is Meg. What a lovely surprise.” Meg didn’t respond, walking over to us and standing between us and the projector screen. “What are you--” I started to ask, but never got to finish as she began to shake off herself like a dog.

“Shit!” Fen swore.

“Swear jar,” Riley countered.

Fen jumped up, rushing to stuff a dollar in his swear jar as Riley gathered a blanket from his bed, handing it to Meg. Fen did the same, not realizing Riley had already handed her one, leaving her standing with two blankets. She wrapped them both around her, because of course she did.

“We were supposed to hang out,” she repeated. “And instead you’re here with these two weirdos watching some stupid movie?”

“Beauty and Beast is not a stupid movie,” Fen protested. Meg held up a hand to him.

“You,” she pointed with her other hand at me, “are coming with me.”

Next to me, I could see Riley slouch even more than his usual amount, only to try and straighten back up immediately. As if he didn’t want me to see he was upset. But I was not about to have that.

“How about we all do something together instead?” I suggested. Sure, I could always split my form, but that felt wrong in this situation. Like I would still be choosing between them.

“We could play a video game!” Fen smiled. “Like Mario Kart.”

Meg seemed to like this idea, Riley seemed neutral as usual, but I tilted my head at Fen.

“Mario? Is this some Italian game?”

“Oh my gods, you’ve never played Mario Kart?” Fen’s expression grew serious. “We have to fix this. Right away.”

His tone frightened me quite a bit. To my surprise, Riley didn’t protest this. Perhaps he knew this would be torture to me and enjoyed to see me suffer. Sometimes, it felt like we had taken a step forward in our relationship. Others, it felt like we had taken four back. It was difficult to tell how he felt about me on any given day. Or anything, really.

Fen, on the other hand, was an open book. I had learned far more about Riley through Fen than through Riley. If there was a story to tell, Fen would be the one to tell it-- and quite well. I couldn’t help but feel a sense of pride in his storytelling abilities. Had he been alive in the time of Greece, I suspect he’d have been a fine rhapsode.

Fen handed us each a control. Meg stared at him intensely. “I want to be player one,” she said, not breaking her eye contact. Fen stared back as he processed what had been said. And then continued to stare. Neither of them seeming to be about to break eye contact, Riley decided it was his place to step in.

“After we get it set up, you can be player one,” he said. 

She seemed satisfied enough with this answer, taking the remote that had been handed to her and watching the screen as the game was set up.

I had played video games before. I still did, although I was admittedly playing on a bit of an outdated system. You could hardly blame me though, the Repton series were some of the best games to have ever been released. Through the years I had heard talk of other games, and I had played some, but in general competitive video games were banned on Olympus. Some of us did not know how to play nice (for the record, this is not about me. Artemis, on the other hand…).

I watched the projection as Fen clicked to the game. Meg waved her control around the screen as he did, the little hand with the number 2 flying wildly as she did so. As we reached the character selection, Fen handed her the remote.

“I call Baby Peach!” She proclaimed, clicking on the character and then looking at me. “You’re gonna be Baby Mario.” Before I could reply, she took my remote, clicking on the character, then handing me back the remote.

“I’m going to be… Yoshi, I think,” Fen said. Then, it was only Riley left to decide.

“I don’t know. Or really care,” he said. “I don’t even know any of these characters apart from this game.” At least I wasn’t the only one to not really play video games.

“Okay, so, obviously there’s Mario and Luigi,” Fen began. “And they’re brothers. Mario is really the main one. Although they’re called the “Mario Brothers” so I kind of wonder is Mario named Mario Mario or are they just going by his name? Or is he going by their last name? Anyway. Mario usually has to rescue Princess Peach from Bower’s castle because she’s kidnapped, and you sometimes get to ride Yoshi, and Toad--”

“I’m just going to be Luigi,” he said, clicking on the character. That was one way to do it. “What track are we doing? We should probably start with something simple, like--”

“Rainbow Road,” Meg interrupted with him, selecting the track. He frowned.

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

“Nope!” She smiled as the starting music began.

The road was, in fact, rainbow. An actual rainbow, not just rainbow colored. “What are the controls?” I asked, looking from the screen to the remote then back to the screen.

The screen blared it’s final note, displaying “GO!”

As the rest of the cars moved forward, mine did not. I pressed the large “A” button on the controller. My character did start to move, but not forward. Instead, I started spinning backwards. None of the children seemed to notice my plight, too focused on their own corners of the screen. I tried pressing another button, the forward arrow. This time, I didn’t move at all. Third time’s a charm, I figured, pressing the plus button. Instead, the entire game paused. The three looked at me.

“What the hell, man?” Meg said. “I was winning!” I glanced at the screen. She was not winning.

“I was trying to move,” I said. “No one told me how to move.”

“Okay!” Fen smiled. “So! You hold the remote side-- oh, you’re already doing that. Good job! Next is, you might think that it’s the arrow pad, but actually for this game, it’s not. The arrow pad is for using the powerups that you can collect. The powerups are mushrooms-- the mushrooms make you go faster, and you can get either one or three or the golden, and the one gives you one speed boost, and the three gives you three, and the golden gives you a whole bunch. I don’t actually know how many, I usually just spam press the button, but--”

“It’s the button with the number two on it,” Riley interrupted. “And the A button makes you go backwards. You tilt your remote to turn.” I nodded, thankful for an answer. I would have to ask Fen later for the rest of the information on the game. “Right. Are we ready to continue?” 
The numbers count down again to the game restarting. My cart this time actually did move forward this time. The moving rainbow arrows were speed boosters, I quickly learned as my cart sailed over a jump. Finally, I was actually playing the game.

Which was when I drove off the edge of the track. No big deal, I would just try again. But again, I drove off the edge. And again. And again.

By the tenth time I drove off the edge, Fen and Riley had each completed a lap, and Meg wasn’t far behind. Actually driving was far easier than this game meant for children. The three of them plus a character not played by anyone passed me. Great.

When Meg hit me as she passed me, I almost cried.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Fen stifle a laugh. Which absolutely did not help me feel any better.

Eventually, I was able to get the hang of it. I would fall off only two or three times per turn, rather than fifteen. And then, the finish line was in sight. For my first lap, sure, but it was something. I was almost there!

Which was exactly when the game ended. I scanned the placeboard. Fen had finished in first, Riley second, and Meg in fourth. And I in last, having not completed even a single lap. I stared at the screen in defeat.

“That was good for your first go!” Fen encouraged me. “Rainbow Road is the really tricky one. Like, famously difficult. It was kind of mean to do it first.”

“It’s the fun one,” Meg rolled her eyes. “Everyone knows Rainbow Road.”

“So!” He clapped. “Which one do we want to do next?”

“Moonview Highway!” Meg shouted.

“Coconut Mall,” Riley said at the same time.

“What? No, that’s lame. We’re doing Moonview Highway.” Meg started to move the controller to the track. Riley in response took the remote and held it over his head. Meg stared at him for a moment, calculating if she would be able to jump and reach it, although seemed to realize that Riley was about a foot taller than her and decided against it. She looked at Fen, decided that he would also not be able to reach, and the finally turned to me. “Get me the remote,” she demanded.

“We can do that after Coconut Mall,” Riley rolled his eyes. “We just need to let Apollo get a better feel for the controls.” There it was again. Meg crossed her arms and pouted.

“Fine,” she mumbled, plopping back down on the ground. Riley selected the track, then handed the remote back to Meg as the game started.

The next rounds went about as expected, and by the end I was finally getting a hang of the game. They even let me pick the last round-- Something called “MooMoo Meadows” (It had cows. I am but a simple god, sue me). When the final scores flashed across the screen, Fen and Riley ended in first and second, Meg in fifth, and I in eleventh. Which, should be noted, is not last place, and should therefore be considered a victory.

By this point, Meg had clearly grown bored of the game, digging around the games for something new. Knowing her, probably something equally as difficult as Mario Kart. She finally pulled out a blue and white CD box with four pictures on it-- some sort of fighting with large glowsticks, water skiing, basketball, and, much to my delight, archery.

“This one,” she declared. “I want to get to beat him up.” I hoped she meant in the glowstick fighting game that was on the cover.

As Fen set up the game, Meg began to wander the cabin, the two blankets trailing behind her on the ground like a cape. Occasionally, she would pick something up, only to set it down again. Riley looked like he was about to say something each time, but before he got the chance, she would have already put it back. Fen’s eyes darted to a set of jars on a shelf by his bed-- one a pyxis and the other a bell krater. The designs were a lovely ionian pattern, I noted, carefully painted by hand. He must have done them himself, like the swear jar, in which case I understood entirely why he would want people to keep away. It was heartbreaking to see your work destroyed.

“Hey!” Meg protested, reaching for the plastic recorder that Riley had just taken from her. “I just wanted to play one note.”

“No,” he said firmly. “It’s not a toy.”

“Sure looks like one.”

“Well, it’s not, okay?” He placed the recorder back where Meg had stolen it from. “You shouldn’t even be touching any of this stuff.”

“You’re boring,” she said, sticking out her tongue at him. Surprisingly, he returned the gesture.

“Game’s ready!” Fen handed back Meg the player one remote. She skipped the introduction scene, sending the game to the main menu.

“We’re doing sword fighting first,” she said, bringing us to character selection. “And then I guess we can do the archery one. If you really want to.” Looking at the screen, there was already a character who looked similar to me.

“We get bored sometimes,” Fen said sheepishly, handing me the player two remote. “And so I-- I mean, we figured why not. It would be a fun thing to do.”

“Aw, no fair. I have to be a guest.” Meg made a face. “After this, I’m making a Mii. And no one is gonna delete it when I leave.” She selected a guest “Mii,” whatever that is, the game beginning. She stood, getting into a proper sword fighting position, holding her remote like the hilt of a sword. The game began, and she swung her remote to hit me. Not just in the game, but physically hit me. In real life!

“Ow,” I complained-- I did not whine. I do not whine, no matter what the others in the room would tell you. I was complaining in the most dignified of ways. “You’re not supposed to actually hit me.”

“And how do you know that?” She countered, hitting me again.

“Because why would that ever be a game?”

“Ughhhh fine,” she rolled her eyes. “You’re no fun.”

It might’ve been less painful for her to actually keep hitting me. She easily won, swinging her sword wildly, without any regard for proper technique.

“This game is inaccurate,” I said simply, handing the remote back to Fen.

“Just wait until we do the archery,” Fen said, taking the remote and selecting his own Mii. “It’s even more inaccurate.” He swung the remote, smacking Riley’s character.

It took us several rounds of the sword fighting to get to that point. Meg was insistent in fighting all of us, winning against all but Fen (although I suspected Riley may have let her win). After his loss, Riley moved to sit on the edge of his bed-- the lower bunk, below what I assumed to be Fen’s based on the notebooks and general disheveled appearance.

Fen was right about the inaccuracy of the archery when we finally got to it. It was a lot easier than actual archery, but if you were used to real archery, it was annoying, to say the least. When it came time to Fen’s turn, he didn’t aim at the target. Instead, he aimed far off to the side. 

“You missed the..” I started to say, only to trail off when the fake arrow flew into a large orange. Meg and I both stared at him. “That’s…”

“SO COOL!” Meg shouted. Riley, who was sitting next to her, winced, covering his hands with his ears. “Are there more secret things to shoot? Can you show me them? I want to be able to impress people.”

“Yeah!” Fen smiled. “There’s one in every level of the archery!”

I was pleased to see Meg getting along with my children so well. Not that I had been worried that they wouldn’t be. Well, maybe a little. It wasn’t really on either side, more about their personalities getting together. Fen was less of a concern, he seemed to be able to get along with anyone, but Riley could be… tough to get to. Not that there was anything wrong with that! Besides, they seemed to get along fine.

“How are you so good at this?” She asked.

“I played this game a lot as a kid,” he explained. “And a lot of games in general.”

At that moment, Riley went to stand from his position on the bed, smacking his head on the frame as he did so. He sat back down, hand to his forehead and eyes starting to tear. Fen burst into laughter, much to my surprise, Meg joining in. I, on the other hand, was an excellent father and rushed over to make sure that he was okay.

“I’m fine, Apollo,” he mumbled, not meeting my eye.

“He does that all the time,” Fen chimed in helpfully. “His record is five times in one day.”

“Shut up,” Riley glared at Fen. 

“What?” Fen smiled innocently. “I’m just letting him know it’s nothing to worry about.”

I gently grabbed Riley’s cheeks, pushing his hair out of the way to actually be able to see his face. I put the back of my other hand to his forehead. This gesture may seem useless to the outsider, it was clear that Riley did not have a fever, but the same method could be used to scan for other injuries within the body. For instance, I could tell that he had a bruise developing on his shin, likely from walking into something. However, as for his head, everything seemed alright for the time being.

“Apollo?” Riley’s voice broke through my analysis. “You’re squishing me.”

I instantly let go. “Sorry,” I apologized. “Just making sure that there was no need for any medical attention. Head injuries are no joke, you know. They can cause lasting damage. But don’t worry!” I added quickly, seeing his expression shift. “You’re all fine! No head injuries for you!”

“... Thanks?” He said, seemingly more confused than anything.

“You guys have Guitar Hero?” Meg asked, holding up a fake guitar.

“Well, yeah. Duh.” Fen gestured to me.

I stared at the group. “Guitar Hero?”

“It’s a music based game,” Riley explained. “But not really, because it’s not really accurate at all to how to play. Guitar is probably the most common to play, then drums, but there’s also bass and vocals. Not that you’re really playing guitar or bass or drums, you’re just pressing buttons. The closest one is probably vocals, but it’s still not…” He trailed off when he realized that everyone was now staring at him, suddenly becoming self conscious. “I mean… um… it’s a game. It’s not realistic.”

“It’s still fun,” Meg stated. “Also, I call drums.” Meg shoved the guitar into my hands, pulling out the drum set. Fen pulled out a microphone.

“I can do vocals,” Fen offered. “I know the perfect song, too,” he grinned, booting up the game.

“This song sucks.” Meg frowned at the screen like that might change the song. All three of us looked at her. She dropped her drumsticks, holding up her hands in defense. “Woah, I didn’t know those were fighting words. It’s just some dumb old song.”

“It’s Hotel California. It’s a classic,” Fen pouted. “If there’s one thing I know about myself, it’s that I don’t have shit music taste.”

“Swear jar,” Riley said, not looking over.

“Damnit!”

“Again.”

Once again, I met the situation of a game being nothing like the actual activity. Guitar was far easier than whatever this was. Meg’s strategy seemed to be hitting all of the drum pads and hoping that one of them was the right one. Fen seemed to be having fun with it, acting out the lyrics for an imaginary audience. Riley stood near still except for the movement of his hands across the buttons of the bass, staring at the screen with a blank expression and hitting every note.

I, on the other hand, missed every note. I hadn’t felt so embarrassed about playing a song since I had first arrived at camp all those months ago. It really wasn’t fair. At the very least they could have added strings. Then you could learn and play at the same time.

I was pleasantly surprised to see that I had earned three stars by the end. “That’s not that bad,” I said.

“That’s the lowest score you can get,” Meg said unhelpfully. “Also, I think he cheated.” She pointed at Riley.

“Me?” He also pointed at himself.

“Yeah, you. You got a perfect score. I bet you have some freaky music power and play some weird instrument.” She shook her head. “You’re just like him.” This time, she pointed at me.

“First of all, I play guitar. This is a bass. They’re entirely different instruments. Second, if it was some “freaky music power,” don’t you think Apollo would’ve done better?” He pointed at me when he said my name.

I frowned. “Hey, wait…”

It was Fen’s turn to point at me. “Yeah, wait. Why aren’t you good at this game? You failed.” Gee, thanks. “It’s a music game. It’s just about hitting buttons at the right time.”

This wasn’t helping me feel any better.

“I’m not used to guitars not having strings,” I tried to defend.

“Keytar?”

“How did you know about that?” I asked immediately. I could’ve sworn I burned those tapes years ago.

“What?”

“Nothing!” I shook my head. “I’m done. I don’t like any of these games. They’re too…”

“Oh! I have the perfect game!” Fen climbed up to his bunk, grabbing a small rectangle shaped object off the shelf, pressing a few buttons and handing it to me. “Here! You can’t fail this game.”

I read the title on the screen. “Littlest Pet Shop?” I looked at him confused.

“Yeah! You earn coins and buy pets and clothes.” His expression went serious. “Don’t delete my save file. Actually, let me set up the save for you so you don’t accidentally delete it.” He took the gaming device back, tapping the screen. “My favorite is the guinea pig. But you’ll have to play a while to get there.” He smiled brightly, handing me back the game. “There! All good. You just relax and play now.”

I sat down on the bed as the games opening cutscene began, a pastel train driving across the screen with a dog, a bunny, and a strange looking cat.
“We should play some more Mario Kart,” Meg suggested. “Now that there’s no noobs.”

Riley frowned. “Do you even know what that means?”

“Yeah, it means like. Uh. A word gamers use?” Riley sighed.

“Close enough, I guess.”

I didn’t pay much attention to what they were doing the rest of the day, truthfully. I found far more comfort in the colorful animals. Although, perhaps the most comforting thing was actually being able to spend time with the people I cared about.

Chapter Text

“Okay! So! You hold the remote side-- oh, you’re already doing that. Good job! Next is, you might think that it’s the arrow pad, but actually for this game, it’s not. The arrow pad is for using the powerups that you can collect. The powerups are mushrooms-- the mushrooms make you go faster, and you can get either one or three or the golden, and the one gives you one speed boost, and the three gives you three, and the golden gives you a whole bunch. I don’t actually know how many, I usually just spam press the button, but, actually, I think next time I get the golden mushroom I’ll keep count so I know how many boosts it gives you. The mushrooms are kind of cool, because they do something different here than they do in the rest of the Mario games. In the rest of the games they make you bigger, or give you a life back. That’s what they do in my favorite Mario game, which is Super Mario Galaxy. It’s set in space, and it has this one galaxy that reminds me of you, It’s called Cloudy Court. Actually I think that one’s from Super Mario Galaxy 2. When I was really young that galaxy is what I thought Olympus looked like. And at the end of each level, you collect stars, which I think is the coolest thing to get as a reward. Oh! Speaking of stars, one of the powerups is an invincibility star. When you pick that up, no other powerups can hit you. Actually… are gods invincible? Are you invincible? Because like, I thought you were, but then there’s a whole bunch of myths where gods get really injured, so I guess that’s not true? Can gods die from injuries, or only fading? … What were we talking about? Oh! Powerups! Ok so here’s one that you’ll probably need to know, because you're new to the game. It’s a bullet bill, which, bullet bill’s are such weird enemies, I wonder who came up with them? Anyway, when you get the bullet bill, it gives you a huge boost and you can make up for how far behind you are. And then there’s the fire flower, and the blooper, which is a cute little squid, and I feel like I’m missing something, what am I missing …? Oh right, the shells. So there are three types of shells: green, red, and blue. The red one auto aims, but you have to aim by yourself with the green one, and you can get three of either of those too, just like the mushrooms. The blue one always hits the person in first place, so, here’s a trick I use, if you’re in first place and a blue shell is coming, you can stop accelerating for a bit so that the shell hits both you and the people in like, second and third. Oh, and there are also fake item boxes, they’re a slightly different color, so don’t drive into those. There’s also the thunder… actually you probably won’t get that one so it doesn’t really matter haha! What else is there? Um… ok I don’t remember the rest of the powerups, so I guess I’ll just move on. So, to steer, you gotta turn the remote, just like a steering wheel. How does that work on the Sun Chariot, by the way? Because like, when it’s in car mode, I’m sure you have a steering wheel, but how does that work with the horses? Actually, wait, where do the horses go when your chariot looks like a car? Sorry, I’m getting distracted, um. What did you ask me about again? Acceleration! Sorry yeah that’s the number 2 button. Yeah that’s it.”