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In her defense, Apollo’s death was entirely his own fault.
He was already injured to start with (not good), surrounded by three different people (really not good), and his lane partner had ziplined off to Broadway a minute ago to help with another scuffle (the surest sign to turn tail and run). But perhaps Apollo felt a princely duty to defend his team’s Guardian — and that, together, they could find a way to pull through.
Whatever his reason for staying was, it didn’t help with the fight.
Graves looks at the aftermath of one man taking a jar of Deadheads, a dragon, a spiked bat, and three exploding ghouls to the face. As someone with years of experience in dealing with the departed, she could tell that Apollo was very, very dead.
“That seemed a little excessive,” she says. The air smells like burnt hair and sulfur.
Billy snorts. “His fault for thinking he could take on all of us!”
Graves shifts from foot to foot. She’s used to being surrounded by death, but causing it? That’s still foreign territory. There’s something strange — and a tiny bit unsettling — about seeing the guy who chewed her out two days ago for not colour-coding their lab charts lie face down and motionless on the Cursed Apple’s asphalt. Her silence is loud enough that her teammates circle back towards her.
“You okay, Graves?” Paige asks kindly. “I know it’s your first ritual.”
“Uh-huh,” Graves mumbles.
“What, he a friend of yours?” Billy says. He yanks an empty magazine from his gun with his teeth and flings it over his shoulder. “I figured with the matching uniforms and all…”
“He’s my lab partner.” Graves stares down at Apollo’s body, a little dazed. “Or, well. He was.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry.” Paige covers her mouth with a hand. “That must be awful!”
Billy cants his head up with a sneer. “Awful or not, get used to it, kid. You’re gonna be seeing a lot more of that from now on.”
“I know, I know. I just…” Graves takes a deep breath, steeling her grip on her mentor. “I’m fine. Let’s keep going.”
It was pretty stupid of him to fight all three of them at once.
-
Graves walks into her lab class fifteen minutes late, as usual. Apollo is already sat at their desk, as usual, and raises a perfectly sculpted brow as she slinks into her seat — as usual. There’s a bit more ire in his stare today, though.
“Graves,” he says curtly.
She nods. “Apollo.”
She looks straight ahead at the lesson, and so does he. A bit hard to broach the subject of murder, after all. Especially when you’re both the parties involved. It’s not until the class starts testing microscope slides at their tables that Apollo finally speaks.
“You know, Graves,” he says as they snap on their goggles, “I misjudged you.”
She glances over with narrowed eyes. “...Okay?”
“I didn’t think you’d be such a coward.”
Her jaw drops. “Excuse me?”
“You heard me.” Apollo clips a slide of onion cells onto the microscope, turning the focus knob without even bothering to look at her. “You summon the dead to do your dirty work. You barely lifted a finger while your mooks swarmed to kill me. How do you enter the ritual when you don’t even have the courage to pick up a weapon and fight?”
The lab report in Graves’ hand crumples as she grits her teeth. “Necromancy is my way of fighting, you prick. Sorry a few skeletons without working brains was too much for Ixia’s generational talent to handle.”
And she sees how Apollo tenses at that, his hackles starting to raise. “It appears my standards were misplaced," he scoffs. “I was under the impression that everyone there would be fighting with some skill and grace.”
“Oh, now we’re talking grace?” Graves glares at him. “You backhanded me in the face!”
Apollo whips around to gape at her. “I didn’t — that was one time! And you didn’t leave me any choice! Your ghouls knocked my sword out of my hand, then you started coming at me with that — that thing — ”
“My mentor.” Her glare intensifies.
Apollo rolls his eyes. “Fine, your mentor, so I simply fell back to the quickest method of self-defense. What was I supposed to do, stand there and twiddle my thumbs?”
“You — ”
“Darcy! Apollo!” Professor Campbell strikes his chalk sharply against the board, expression severe. “Is your conversation so important that it takes precedence over my class?”
They both straighten in their seats as snickers resound around them.
“No,” Graves says.
“No, sir,” Apollo says. “My apologies.”
Professor Campbell huffs before turning back to the board. Apollo leans back into his chair, crossing his arms with a scowl.
“You’re the one who killed me in the end, anyway,” he mutters.
“Tough,” Graves shoots back quietly. “Just be better next time.”
There’s a gleam in Apollo’s eyes when he looks at her next. “Oh, you’ll see.”
-
“I took down Viscous!” Graves yells. She watches as the goo… thing collapses into a heap, making a sad burbling noise she would’ve felt bad about if slime wasn’t all over her clothes.
“Not bad, kid!” Holliday says. Graves feels her lungs fill with pride.
…And exertion. A lot of it. The full force of which hits her only after the adrenaline high wears off. She sways a little on her feet, catching her breath. She’s getting used to the rhythm of fighting, but she still wears out quick. Not to mention how chasing Viscous has landed them firmly in enemy territory — if someone got the jump on her right now, she’s not sure she’d like her odds.
“Hey, Holliday?” she calls.
The sheriff doesn’t look up from reloading her gun. “Hm?”
“I-I’m gonna head back to base for a second,” she says. Pulling back would be the smart thing to do, before —
“Itani Lo Sahn!”
Ice shoots down her spine.
She doesn’t know those words, but she knows that voice — and the way it hisses, proud and sharp and merciless, tells Graves that she has to get out of here now. She whirls around, diving towards the road’s bend —
And something pierces straight through her. She doesn’t even have time to feel pain as the world washes out to grey.
-
When she takes a seat in class, Apollo gives her a sidelong glance and a smile dripping with satisfaction.
“I got you good, didn’t I?”
Graves stomps her mud-caked boot down onto his white sneakers. The shriek Apollo lets out is more distressed than anything she’s heard from him in the ritual.
-
Graves is whittling down a group of Troopers when a shot rings out over the Cursed Apple’s skyline.
“Got him,” Vindicta’s voice crackles into her ear, soft and delighted. “The fencer is low and headed down York. Someone be a dear and finish him off for me.”
“I’ll handle it,” Graves replies. With a quick thank-you from Vindicta and some well-wishes from the rest of her team, she takes to the zipline to intercept her target — the lane is mostly theirs, anyway. From the direction Apollo is travelling, he has no easy way of evading her.
Sure enough, she spots a figure moving sluggishly towards the enemy base. It’s with practiced ease that she casts a line of grasping hands in his path, and the hoarse shout of pain that follows tells her that it’s caught its target. She drops down to the road to see the prince of Ixia in very rough shape.
“Your little minions are the worst,” Apollo spits in lieu of a greeting. The hands release him, letting him topple onto his side. It takes a second for Graves to register that the sock on his right calf is soaked in blood.
“She shot you in the leg?” Graves says, slightly horrified.
“No, she failed to shoot me in the head,” Apollo says. He gives her a sardonic little grin, which only shows off how the red trail running down his cheek has reached to stain his teeth. “Guess I’m even too good at dodging.”
Graves raises the lich hand. In a flash, Apollo rises to meet her, but he barely makes it two steps before his leg buckles, tumbling to the ground as his grip on his rapier spasms. His usual grace has disappeared entirely. He bites back a wince, and Graves makes the mistake of looking long enough to see the tears drying on his face.
God, she thinks, fully horrified. He’s crying.
It shouldn’t matter to Graves in the first place. A bleeding heart makes you your own worst enemy — her mentor has hammered that lesson into her again and again, that she can’t afford sympathy in the ritual when she has so much to do as a necromancer — but as a weight settles in her throat, Graves realises that she really wouldn’t feel great about killing her lab partner right now.
She purses her lips and takes a step back. “Get out of here.”
Apollo blinks. “What?”
“I’m not killing you. Get out of here before I change my mind.”
His face twists. “I don’t need your pity.”
“I’m not — oh my god.” Graves scowls. “Just take the out! My whole team’s at your base, anyway. Hurry back home so someone else can kill you.”
Apollo eyes her with a tense expression. He starts to inch away, sword still held at the ready. “You’re making a grave mistake here.”
“Apollo, shut up and start running.”
“But don’t think this means I owe you anything! My father always said — ”
Graves holds up a jar of Deadheads, and he scrambles in the other direction.
-
The next time they meet in class, Apollo gives her a look. It’s not quite frustration, not quite gratitude, just… something. She doesn’t know what.
“I really didn’t need your pity,” he says.
Graves sighs. “Don’t worry. Next ritual, I’ll be sure to sic all my ghouls on you.”
-
The next ritual turns out to be a one-sided massacre.
It stings a little that they were so close to winning, too. One second she was overwhelming the Archmother with the rest of her team, and the next, things kind of just… went black. Then white. Then she came to and her head was pounding, her left arm was near-charred, and Billy was dragging her by the collar towards the base’s exit while letting loose every single expletive under the sun.
She nearly trips as he shoves her through the doorway. “Hide!” he barks.
“Wait.” Her own voice sounds muffled through her ears as she tries to grab at Billy’s jacket. “Wait, I — what about — ”
“You better not still be here when I get out of this,” he says, and that’s all he leaves her with before he brandishes his bat and charges back into the base. The fight is four against one. He’s buying her time, Graves knows, and she isn’t stupid or ungrateful enough to disregard it. So she runs.
…Then she gets shot off the zipline five seconds into her escape, because she is the butt of a cosmic joke.
There’s a moment of pure, weightless panic that seizes her as she falls — then she hits the ground, and there’s just pain. The white-hot burn of every wound in her body being jostled, followed by the sound of the culprit landing softly beside her.
“And where do you think you’re going?” crows a high, lilting voice.
“Fuuuck,” Graves hisses. “Of course it had to be you.”
Apollo’s smug smirk falters a little as he peers down at her. “What’s with that tone?” he says. “You should be relieved that it’s me. Would you rather face off against Seven?”
“I’d rather face off against someone I won’t see on Monday,” Graves croaks. She squeezes her eyes shut, trying to will away the splitting pain in her head. When she opens them again, Apollo is (unfortunately) still there, but his smile has faded entirely. He studies her with a look of muted surprise.
“They battered you to hell and back.”
“Yeah,” Graves says. “They did.”
“Infernus’s work?”
“Could’ve been Infernus, could’ve been Seven. I don’t…” she groans, rubbing a hand over her face. “It happened so fast. I don’t really know. Now my team’s dead, I used up all my summons, and I’m gonna be dead, too.” Her arm flops to the side as she laughs listlessly. “Didn’t even get to sic my ghouls on you. Shame.”
Apollo is still staring at her. His brows furrow, and he presses his lips together. His grip on his rapier shifts.
“Go,” he finally says.
Graves squints at him. “What?”
“Go back to your base,” he motions towards it with his weapon. “Go on.”
“I thought you said you didn’t owe me.”
“I don’t.” Apollo's posture is stiff as he looks straight ahead. “There’s just no honour in hurting someone who can’t defend themselves.”
Graves considers pointing out that she’d already be safely back if it wasn’t for him, but she isn’t stupid or ungrateful, so. She peels the upper half of herself off the ground and blinks when Apollo offers her a hand. Gingerly, she takes it, letting him pull her up with ease.
They stare at each other for a moment. “Thanks,” she says.
Apollo hums. “You’re wel—”
“GOOD WORK KEEPING HER HERE, CHILD.”
And there’s the cosmic punchline. It’s almost comical how both of them jump as Seven rounds the corner and shoots a lightning ball straight into Graves’ chest. At the very least, Apollo’s wide-eyed expression as everything goes black tells her he wasn’t expecting it, either.
-
“Here.”
Graves looks down to see a tiny pouch slid towards her. Apollo has his head turned away.
“What is that?” she frowns.
Apollo scoffs. “You have arms, don’t you? See for yourself.”
Glaring at him, she tucks her fingers into the opening and pulls it loose. Inside is an assortment of… pearls? They’re coloured in varying floral shades, with simple, curling patterns carved onto them. She takes a sniff. They smell like sugar.
“They’re sweets,” Apollo explains. “Precisely a North Ixian specialty, but they’re not so different from the chocolates you have here.”
“Oh,” Graves says. “And you’re giving this to me because…?”
“My father sent over a package from home yesterday, and there’s more food in there than I can finish on my own. Besides,” Apollo shrugs, still only gracing her with the back of his head, “your team’s performance in the last ritual was pitiful. I felt a little bad.”
Graves rolls a pearl between her fingers. “Did you feel bad about letting that asshole kill me, too?”
Apollo goes very still. “I didn’t let him,” he says, and nothing more.
So you’re the type that’s allergic to saying sorry, Graves thinks. There’s something almost akin to warmth that bubbles up her chest, some gross kind of fondness, but she doesn’t verbalise it — she has a feeling that this is as far as he’ll extend the olive branch. She eyes the sweet for a moment longer before popping it into her mouth. It’s nothing like she’s ever tasted before, rich with a hint of fruitiness in the center.
“It’s good,” she says.
And when Apollo turns to look at her, he’s smiling.
“Isn’t it?” he grins, his tail swishing with pride.
Graves has to admit — Apollo has a nice smile when he’s not busy being a prick.
-
An unexpected side effect of beating the shit out of each other every week is that a lot of things about Apollo feel… familiar, now. As time goes by, their classes together run more smoothly. She can tell when he’s hesitant about a result, when he wants to swap tasks, and every now and then she can even finish what he’s saying before he can do it himself. She doesn’t know how. She just does.
“You were already dead,” Apollo sulks as he mixes the solution in the flask. “How were those creepy little heads of yours still chasing me down?”
Graves hides her smirk in her worksheet. “I can’t help that they’re sooo happy to see you.”
They still bicker, of course. But their jabs carry a new weight when it’s a reference to the ritual only they can understand; like Apollo accidentally getting hooked out of a chase by Bebop, or Mo and Krill’s burst from the ground startling Graves so much that she threw her mentor at them.
It’s actually kind of fun. Sometimes, she almost finds Apollo’s company enjoyable.
-
They each have a pack of Troopers trudging ahead of them when they clash on Greenwich.
Though clash might be a strong word. The overall battle hasn’t ramped up to that degree just yet, and as the two of them start taking shots at each other Graves even finds the space to make conversation.
“Heard about your tournament win, by the way.” She raises her voice to carry over the fight. The enemy Troopers shatter like glass under her mentor’s power. “Congrats.”
Apollo lights up. “Why, thank you very much! They even invited the local fencing clubs, you know. None of them were any match for me.”
“Did you go up against adults?” A line of hands erupts from the earth, barely grazing Apollo’s ankle as he backflips out of reach. Show off.
“Of course I did. They’d brought in a group of veterans — all with thirty plus years under their belt, supposedly.” He leaps off another wall. “There were one or two decent fighters among them, but the rest were, eh…”
“Middling talents?” Graves guesses.
Mid-air and upside down, Apollo shoots her a grin. “Exactly that.”
As his feet meet the pavement with unnecessary grace, Graves can’t help but think he’d make a good dancer. “I know you’re supposed to be the best at everything and all, but I have no idea how you manage to fit all that into your schedule. Especially with the work we’ve had recently…”
He cocks his head. “Don’t your errands for the dead take up the same amount of time?”
“Still more flexible than being a team captain and tournament champion.” (He visibly preens at the word champion.) “That stupid compound paper took so long I barely had time to hit the graveyard this week, anyway,” she scowls, remembering how restless her friends had gotten.
“Huh. You finished it already?” Apollo’s brows raise. “Not like you to do your work early.”
And Graves just — pauses.
“...What do you mean?” she says. “It’s due tomorrow.”
Apollo’s past five minutes of non-stop movement screech to a halt. “Excuse me?”
“The… the compound analysis paper. For Chemistry lab? It’s due on the eighth.”
“Was it not the eighteenth?”
“No?”
Graves has never wondered what red skin turning pale would look like, but she’s getting her answer right now. “You’re joking.”
“I’m seriously not.”
“I-I — hold on.” He holds up a hand, voice strained. “This is — just so we’re clear. This is about the paper we’re writing together? For Professor Campbell’s class?”
“I already said it was for Chemistry!” Panic bleeds into Graves’ voice, and Apollo goes even paler. “You didn’t do your part?”
“I didn’t — I thought it was due on the eighteenth!” The Hidden King’s Troopers triumph over the Archmother’s, but Apollo doesn’t spare them a glance as they march past him. “So you’ve already done everything on your end?”
“No shit!”
“The method, the results? The sources of error?”
“Don’t push this onto me, you — ” Graves stops, suddenly feeling very cold. “I thought you were doing the sources of error.”
They both stare at each other. In the distance, an explosion goes off on York.
“I am not failing this class.” Apollo is the first to break the silence. “Get your books and meet me back here in five.”
“What?” Graves says. “But what about — ”
He’s ziplining off in the opposite direction before she can finish her sentence.
Graves huffs. “Asshole.”
-
“That is not — you can’t just write those numbers down, you have to explain it!”
Graves clicks her tongue. They’ve sequestered themselves and their papers into a room in one of the farthest corners of the city, where no one will find them if everything goes to plan (the plan being skip out on the ritual to do homework). “Don’t — hey!” She swats Apollo’s hand away with her pencil. “I was getting to that, you prick. Can you just mind your own business and let me work?”
“This paper is our business,” he sniffs.
“Fine! Then let me remind you that the professor specifically asked for all charts to be in ink.”
Apollo looks down at his own paper and hisses. “Oh, shoot.” He starts fishing around Graves’ bag for a pen.
“Graves?” There’s a buzz in her ear before Holliday’s voice crackles to life over the Patron’s communication line. “Graves! Kid, where the hell are you? I haven’t seen you in ages!”
Graves rubs at her temple with her free hand. “Holliday, hey. Um, I’m really sorry. I just… ” she trails off, unable to come up with a good excuse, because really, what can she say? Apollo looks up and their eyes meet. She glowers at him before slicing a finger across her throat in what she hopes is a sufficient communication of this is all your damn fault. He frowns. “I’m busy right now. I won’t be back in the fight for a while.”
“A while? How long’s a while?” When she’s met with no response, Holliday just groans. “Goddammit, kid! Swear to god…”
“We better be getting an A on this,” Graves says.
Apollo sets his jaw, resolute. “We will. I’ll accept nothing less than perfection.”
-
“Look, I’m sorry, okay? I really was busy. That lab report is worth, like, eighty percent of my grade!”
“And the ritual isn’t worth something-percent of our wishes coming true?” Billy scowls as he paces the floor of their base, cursing under his breath. “A fuckin’ lab report… unbelievable.”
“School can be demanding sometimes,” Dynamo says sympathetically.
“I mean, we won in the end, right? And it’s not like I made it an unfair fight,” Graves mutters, crossing her arms. “The other team was down a guy, too…”
Holliday quirks an eyebrow from her spot by the wall. “Yeah, come to think of it — I didn’t see that Ixian kid around the whole match, either.”
Everyone in the room turns to look at Graves. She just stares back at them, incredulous.
“Yeah, because we were working on our lab report? And he’s my lab partner?”
Paige covers her mouth with a hand. Holliday’s eyebrow arches higher.
“Hah!” Dynamo chortles. “Oh, kids these days.”
“So you’re telling me you two were out the entire ritual,” Billy deadpans, “because you were working on a lab report?”
Graves frowns. “...Yes?”
He snorts. “Sure you were.”
-
They make the deadline by the skin of their teeth. There’s a special type of hysteria reserved for writing down the last few words of your paper while the professor is just a few tables away from collecting it. Once class ends and everyone files outside, Graves and Apollo totter over to the courtyard to collapse onto a bench.
For a long moment, they stay slumped there, looking up into the sky.
“I made it,” Apollo breathes.
Graves elbows him. “We.”
“Yes. Sorry. We made it. And my perfect record remains untainted.” He pumps his fists in the air before sinking bonelessly into his seat.
“Good for you,” she mumbles next to him, smiling despite herself. Honestly, she doesn’t think she’s ever seen him this… spiritually disheveled, before. Not even in battle.
“I am never misremembering a due date again,” Apollo says.
Graves snorts. “I am.”
She doesn’t expect him to laugh, but he does. Then he turns to look at her, eyes still half-moons, and she definitely doesn’t expect him to raise a hand and plop it down onto her arm, but — well. He does.
“Um?” Graves says, suddenly very awake.
“Thank you,” Apollo says. He’s maintaining an alarming amount of eye contact. “If not for you hanging back during the ritual to help me, I would’ve had to kiss my grades goodbye. I know you got in trouble with your team for that, so…” He pats her arm. “I’m in your debt.”
Graves wants to tell him that he didn’t give her much choice in the matter, that it was more or less him saying we’re doing work now and her going along with it, but it’s hard to form words when there’s a really, really, warm hand resting on her bicep. Darcy Graves is not used to being touched by anything humanoid and alive, and she certainly isn’t used to contact this prolonged.
“Uh,” she manages. “Okay.”
Blessedly, Apollo doesn’t seem to know what to do beyond that, either, so he extracts his hand and returns it to his side. There’s something like a swarm of wasps breaking out in the pit of Graves’ stomach, and it bothers her that for how weird that was, she can’t say she hated it at all.
“Anyway,” Apollo clears his throat, staring hard at the opposing wall. “Now that that’s over, I’m going to celebrate. I’m thinking of getting brunch at the Baroness Hotel on Sunday.” He pauses for a moment. “Would you like to come with?”
The wasps explode. “What?” Graves says.
“I — why do you sound so offended?” Apollo sputters. His face is stuck in this weird half-grimace as he looks at her, and he turns back to the wall before she can start finding it funny. “It’s my way of saying thank you. Brunch at the Baroness on Sunday, my treat. Yes or no?”
“Just…” Graves points at herself. “Just me?”
“Is there a third lab partner I wasn’t aware of?” Apollo turns back to ask, flabbergasted.
“No. Just the two of us, then,” she mumbles. Her head feels foggy. When was the last time she was invited to something, if ever? When was the last time someone her age actually wanted to be around her?
She watches the fascinating sight of Apollo’s red skin flushing even redder as his expression evolves into a full-on grimace. Graves isn’t sure what face she’s wearing, but she’s sure it’s something equally stupid. “Yes. Yes, it’s just the two of us, so — are you coming or not? I’m not asking a fourth time.”
“I mean, I… yeah,” she says. “Sure.”
Like a pin to a balloon, every ounce of tension in Apollo’s person seems to leave all at once. “Good!” He straightens, his usual bravado seeping back into his voice. “They have some of the best food in the whole of Manhattan. You won’t regret it.”
I know, Graves thinks. Did you forget my family’s loaded, too? Her tongue feels heavy as she keeps quiet. In less than a week, she’ll be going out to meet with a friend. This whole thing, seeing each other outside of school or other obligations — this makes them friends, right?
It’s embarrassing how a sliver of excitement worms its way into her stomach at the notion. It’s downright childish. She’s never needed anything more than her mentor and the dead, and she’s certainly not needed anyone from the pool of snot-nosed, insufferable kids coasting around at Blackmore. Which is still true, for the most part, but — having someone among the living that she can actually look forward to seeing… might not be so bad.
“I’m kind of glad you’re in the ritual.”
The words tumble out of her before she can stop it. They both blink, wide-eyed as Apollo looks over. Then he smiles — his nice smile, the one that softens all the sharp lines of his face, the one he uses when he’s not busy being a prick — and there’s a shine to it that makes it hard to look away.
“I’m kind of glad you’re in the ritual, too,” he says. “But, don’t think that means I’ll go easy on you.”
“That’s my line.” Graves elbows him again, and Apollo laughs.
Somehow, the added death and destruction has her days at Blackmore looking just the tiniest bit brighter.