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Apollo had always been a performer.
He’d already been singing when he was finally on his way out of his mother’s womb. As soon as he’d set his tiny feet on the ground, he’d started to dance. He had been born performing.
But he had been more than that. At least at first.
He wasn’t sure when it started. When he started to perform every second of every day. When it started seeping into everything he did. When it started to become his entire life. When he had started to become the performance instead of the performer.
Apollo knew what everyone thought of him. An egotistical idiot, as stupid as he was handsome. Shallow and vapid and vain. The god with a ridiculous amount of domains who was somehow skilled at almost none of them. A pretty face and not much else. Annoying and arrogant and dramatic.
As pathetic as it was possible for someone like him to be. Not at all a threat to anyone who mattered.
He knew what they thought of him. He’d spent centuries doing everything he could to make them think that way. It was all a careful balancing act, to make himself seem harmless but still competent enough to be kept around, to keep everyone at arm’s length without pushing them away completely. He’d gotten it down to an art.
And he’d hated every moment of it. He’d been miserable out of his mind. But he’d been convinced that it was what he had to do. He had to do it to protect himself.
The person Apollo really was, buried beneath everything he showed the world- that person wasn’t the sort of person who endured on Olympus. And if Apollo did anything, it was endure.
He’d thought so, at least. But-
He wasn’t sure how much he’d actually endured. He’d let Olympus take away everything that made him who he was and shape him into someone he could barely even stand to look at. He’d let them put him down and pull him apart. He’d let them consume him. He’d let them take everything he had and tear his heart out and make him lose his mind.
He wasn’t sure that any of that could actually be called enduring.
If he’d learned anything from his latest encounter with mortality, it was that there was so much more to living than he’d let himself have. There was more to him than he’d let himself show the world. More than the insincerity and the irony and the masks.
The person he pretended to be- that wasn’t him. That wasn’t who he was. He’d tried to convince himself he could become that person if he tried hard enough, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t be that person.
And- more than that- he didn’t want to be that person.
Apollo was done with performing. Done with pretending. Done with masks and facades and faces that weren’t really his. Done with that miserable song and dance he’d been doing.
He knew who he was, and he knew who he wanted to be.
He was so, so much more than what Olympus had made him. He was better than that. He would be better.
He would be sincere, in everything that he did. He would love with his whole heart and live his life with arms wide open. He would keep learning for as long as he lived. He would try his hardest at everything he wanted to do. He would see the possibilities, in everything and everyone. He would fight for all he was worth.
Apollo would be himself and no one else.