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lifeofroos · 3 years

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Part 16. I felt a little meh about this chapter while writing the first draft, but now I think it is pretty alright.

In short: Nico gets therapy from Dionysus. In this chapter, they continue talking about Cupid, which they also did in part 4. The rest is on AO3 and Fanfiction.net!

This Might Be Crazy: Part 16: Cherry Coca Cola

‘Where are we going?’ I asked.

‘Long island beach.’

‘And why are we going to long island beach?’

‘Thematic appropriateness.’

‘What do you mean?’

Dionysus sighed. ‘What did we talk about last time we were at the beach?’

The corners of my mouth sunk. ‘About Cupid. And then you said you wanted to talk about him more in the future. And then I brought him up last time, when we talked about Jason. So... now the time has come to continue.’

‘Exactly.’

I sighed and dropped down into the sand. ‘Alright then. But I don’t even remember where we left off last time.’

He did not say anything back while he sat down next to me and handed me a bottle of Cherry Coca Cola. ‘Here. Also for thematic appropriateness.’

‘Because I had Strawberry Coke last time?’

‘Indeed. Now, first of all, how do you feel about your coming out go after what happened at Diocletians’ palace?’

I shrugged and took my time to think while I uncapped my soda. ‘Ehm… at first, it did not go so easily. With the help of Jason, I managed to tell the rest of the seven…’ Dionysus rolled his eyes when I called them that, ‘And Reyna about it. Eventually, I told Thalia, because she was Jasons’ sister. Then, to a few other people who were important during the Giant war, so coach Hedge, his wife, Gwen and Dakota from camp Jupiter, and then eventually most of camp Half-blood and camp Jupiter. The gods learned along the way, and slowly basically everybody knew. I don’t wear a pride flag on my sleeve, because I do not feel comfortable with that, but furthermore I am pretty open about it. You know, I would say my coming out was pretty smooth after the first bump.’

‘Glad to hear that. Last time you said that most people are accepting, right?’

‘Yes. Most campers were open to it, and those who weren’t quickly grew to be. I mean, we are the descendants of the ancient Greeks and Romans, after all. I think I told you last time about Wills’ relative, how she makes tasteless comments, but also that she does not really bother me all that much. I… this might sound weird, but I think the fact that most people accepted me helped me work through my internalised homophobia, which surely was there. And still is, but... less.’

‘It is nice to hear that you are feeling that way. Do you think your internalised homophobia is still something we should talk about?’

I shrugged. ‘I don’t know if there is a lot to be said about it that I haven’t already said. It was there and it was a real issue for a while, because of all the propaganda from Fascist Italy. But now that I am in a more accepting time, with nothing but accepting people around me who indirectly tell me each day that being gay is nothing to be ashamed off. That I should not be hating myself because of it. And… and then I began to date Will, and slowly I began to… actually like it that I was gay. Not just tolerate it, but like it.’

Dionysus nodded a few times. He was smiling. ‘Wonderful, Nico. It is really nice to hear that you managed to get through it. And of course we all know you’ve got Will, you are superglued to him all the time.’

‘Hmpf.’ I took a sip of cherry coke. I was not glued to Will all the time. Sometimes I had therapy, after all.

‘Now, do you think this would have gone differently if Jason had not reacted the way he did when you were at the palace?’

I took some time to think about that. ‘Maybe… no, yes, I am sure it would have gone very differently. I… I would have been way more secretive about who I truly am and I am pretty sure my internalised homophobia would have been a way larger issue than it is now. I am sure I would still be suffering from it a lot.’ I took a sip of coke. ‘But that… that is just what Jason did. I told you that last time. Jason cares… or cared, for the people around him, and he basically always saw the positive. And he carried that attitude in a way that wasn’t even tiring.’

Dionysus wrinkled his brow. ‘That’s remarkable.’

‘It is.’ I took another sip. ‘And you are right about the fact that I am not ashamed of walking around with Will while we hold hands, or something like that…’

‘As if all the PDA we see from you is holding hands.’

I wanted to tell him to shut up, but that seemed stupid. ‘You know what I mean!’

‘I know exactly what you mean and I think it is very good that you feel comfortable enough to do it.’

‘Well then!’

He shrugged, which was probably his way of saying sorry. ‘Hm. I don’t feel ashamed of that. That is partly because nobody can hate on me when I walk next to Will Solace, of course.’

Dionysus laughed. ‘You seem to have a good relationship with him.’

‘I do. I think.’ I don’t really have a frame of reference. ‘I feel safe with him, and loved.’

Dionysus suddenly got a sad look in his eyes. ‘Those are the most important parts. If you just love each other, and trust each other… the rest will come.’

I took another sip of coke and thought about his words. ‘Is… I mean, people say that often, but is it really true?’

He looked at me. ‘Are you really going to ask me about that? I am the god of alcohol.’

‘I mean, I don’t know a lot of other people who have been married for literal thousands of years and managed to still care deeply about their partner, after all.’ My face soured a little. Except for Cupid, that was.

Dionysus did not notice the change in my facial expression. ‘Yes, it is pretty much true. But you have to know that relationships are different for immortals. Regular humans live maybe eighty years if they’re lucky. Some people might be together for decades, but most couples don’t reach further than a couple of years. Even if you found the one, so to say, and you reached the stadium of the relationship where it is not so much about being in love, but more about loving each other, you’d still be far, far away from what being in a relationship for thousands of years is like. It is not about someone being the ‘one’ anymore. It is about that person being the one you love the most and who will always be with you in spirit, even if you don’t see each other for years. They’ll be there for you and you’ll be there for them, even if you both love others as well. You can feel their presense in your life. Unless you are forcefully send to a summer camp and separated from them, which made the ties that you had looser not in the sense that you love each other less, but that you literally can’t feel the bond that connected you anymore.’ He stared at the sand. I took a sip of coke. For a second, he stayed lost in thought, until he seemed to wake up. ‘I just said that all out loud to some fourteen year old.’

‘Hey, I am fifteen!’

‘That matters about nothing.’

I took another sip, but the bottle was almost empty. ‘I have been telling you a lot about my life. This is only fair…’

‘That is not how therapy works.’

‘...And I think it might be important to know this about the gods, because… well, with all the children going on and stuff…’ I needed to stop talking right now and I knew it. I got up. ‘But I have classes in a little while.’ Dionysus did not look at me.

‘Use that information wisely.’

I shrugged. I would try my best. ‘I am going to Will now.’ That made him look up at me.

‘Yes, go do that. You deserve someone like him in your life.’

I nodded again and walked away. On one hand, I felt smug because I managed to get a shred of information about immortals out of him. On the other hand, I felt a bit sorry. I wondered how it was to be seperated from someone you loved so much. And on the third hand, which I did not know I had, I felt happy that the subject of Cupid and internalized homophobia had been seemingly closed off and I had said absolutely nothing about Percy Jackson. Now I could talk about that when I felt truly ready for it. Which might be never.

A/N: A chapter I thought was necessary, because I left the chapter with Cupid unwrapped and it has been quite some time. After Jason, I thought it was the most logical, even if it is not much. The next chapter will be a bigger set piece again.

I am not sure about this chapter. I just am not. I have already written out the next part, however, about Hazel, and that feels a lot better.

I have a bunch of ideas written down and a lot of things were mentioned by you guys. If you really, really want to see something, tell me and I’ll add it to the list and maybe (but only maybe) put it higher on the list.

Spoiler alert: Nico will tell Dionysus about Percy... someday. He just does not know when yet.

#Nico di angelo #dionysus #trials of apollo #pjo #tower of nero #percy jackson #percy jackson and the olympians #fanfiction #fanfic #writeblr #writing #cupid #will solace #solangelo #tw homophobia #cw homophobia #therapy #hurt/comfort

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flightfoot · 5 years

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A Convergence of Apollos Chapter 4

Percy’s POV

We caught the subway to the Empire State Building.

I know, I know. We could’ve just walked, it wasn’t THAT far. But none of us felt like hauling an upset metal bird around farther than we had to. Plus, while I felt great (that rain did wonders for my energy), and Grover and Meg looked reasonably energetic, Apollo was BEAT. He’d been so excited about the new clothes he’d crafted... and had crashed a few minutes later. I’d thought I’d have to carry him to the subway, which would’ve been hard since I was already carrying the birdcage. I guess summoning all those things took a lot out of him.

Some other passengers looked at us disapprovingly as we hauled our bird cage around. I guess they didn’t like how rough we were being with our ‘pet’, but after what the Celedon had put us through, I REALLY didn’t care.

Apollo collapsed on a nearby seat, breathing hard. He didn’t look sleepy at least, just exhausted.

Was all of this tiredness just from playing the lyre?

Then again, I didn’t know what he’d been doing BEFORE he materialized in the park...

Now seemed as good a time as any to find out.

“Hey Apollo?”

He looked up at me wearily. “Yeah?”

“How DID you wind up time traveling anyways?”

He let out a long sigh. “Meg and I were looking through Tarquin’s Tomb-”

“Who’s Tarquin?”

“The last Roman Emperor. He was SO bad, he was overthrown and the Roman Republic was instated.”

Apollo continued, “Anyways, we were looking through his tomb for the Sibylline books, which contain a lot of ancient prophecies. I always thought they’d been burned, but apparently not. At least, not all of them. We didn’t really know where to look, so Meg and I just kinda wandered around trying not to die.”

I nodded sagely. “Always the best plan. Dying sucks. No blue food in Elysium.”

Ok, so I didn’t actually know whether that last one was true. But considering how happy the dead were with simple Happy Meals, I figured that they didn’t have very good food down there.

Apollo laughed, a bit more life returning to his face. I grinned back at him. Was this really the same person who’d proclaimed that heroes were for running the god’s errands? He just seemed like another kid, like another demigod, fighting beside us and trying not to let anyone he cared about die, or die himself.

I still didn’t get how a god could change so drastically, but maybe... maybe they really weren’t that different?

This kind, dorky teen... maybe this side of Apollo was hidden away in the present Apollo too.

I hoped so.

Apollo chuckled, “Well, I don’t know about THAT, but I agree about dying. Pretty sure my sister would charge into the Underworld herself, drag me back, then kill me again for dying on her.”

Yes, that did sound like Artemis.

“ANYWAY, getting back on track here, we searched the tomb for awhile with no success.”

“Unless you call ‘getting chased by your nose moss’ a success,” Meg cut in.

“Eurynomos,” Apollo corrected.

“Whatever.”

“So I asked my magic prophetic arrow where I needed to go-”

I knew I shouldn’t interrupt, but I HAD to ask. “Magic prophetic arrow?”

“The Arrow of Dodona. It talks in a fake Shakespearean accent and insults me constantly. It’s quite annoying. Plus I’m the only one who can hear it, so I look like a crazy person when I consult it.”

Well, not the weirdest thing I’d heard of. Heck, not the weirdest thing I’d heard of TODAY.

“The arrow told me to go to a particular room and find a cloth woven from Fate’s threads. We searched around for awhile and found it tucked away in a chest. Then SOMEONE-” Apollo glared at Meg, who looked back, completely unperturbed, “-thought it was a brilliant idea to grab hold of something woven by the Fates themselves. I grabbed onto Meg, we vanished, then fell onto the ground with a bad case of motion sickness. And, well, you know the rest.”

I frowned. “Do you know how to get back to your time? WHETHER you can get back?”

Apollo closed his eyes, his brows furrowing. “I- I hope we can get back. No, we MUST get back. Our friends need us! I have to believe that the Arrow set us on this path for a reason.”

“Wow, you have a lot of faith in that Arrow,” I observed.

Apollo laughed wryly. “Nope. But if I allow myself to believe that we’ll never get home and that all our friends and family will die, I’m going to panic.”

Oh. Fair enough.

I decided to change subjects.

“So anything you can tell me about what’s gonna happen? Anything that will help?”

Apollo was quiet for a moment, thinking. Finally he spoke.

“First of all, you should know that I’m only from two years into the future. It’s going to be a BUSY two years. And I don’t remember that much. I wasn’t paying much attention to the world around me all of the time. Also, shoving four thousand years of memories into a mortal brain REALLY doesn’t work well. I’ve forgotten a lot, and what I DO remember isn’t always useful. But I’ll try to help.”

“Typhon was freed, and we gods left to fight him - well most of us, anyway. We didn’t succeed against him until Poseidon joined the fight.”

Apollo looked at me thoughtfully. “I believe that you were the one to convince him to intervene. I don’t remember how you persuaded him, unfortunately.”

He continued while I mulled that over, “Typhon was a distraction. While he kept us gods busy, you demigods defended Mount Olympus from Kronos’s forces.”

He frowned, looking at me, “I don’t remember a lot of details, but I remember this much: the fight started a few days before your birthday, and ended ON your birthday. You’re the child who reached sixteen, but NOT the Hero of the Prophecy. LUKE was the hero. He chose to save Olympus at the last second.”

Wait, what? “Uh, Apollo, you realize that I’ve never actually heard the full prophecy, right?”

He blinked.

“Really?”

“Really.”

“You should probably learn it then. If I remember right, it goes:

A half-blood of the Eldest gods

Shall reach sixteen, against all odds.

And see the world in endless sleep.

Hero’s soul, cursed blade shall reap.

A single choice shall end his days,

Olympus to preserve or raze.

Well that didn’t sound great. Then again, prophecies rarely did.

I pressed Apollo for details, wanting every bit of foreknowledge I could get. “What choice did Luke make? What endless sleep? What’s the cursed blade?”

Apollo shook his head. “I’m sorry Percy. I don’t remember.”

Looking at his mournful face, I believed him.

“So what else CAN you tell me?”

He hesitated for a moment. Carefully, he asked, “Percy? Do you remember how I mentioned Thalia’s brother?”

I nodded. How could I forget?

“Well, the reason he and Thalia were separated, the reason she was led to believe he was dead... is because he’s ROMAN, not Greek.”

What?

The confusion must have been clear on my face. Apollo elaborated, “We gods change to fit the culture we’re in. The longer and deeper the impact of that culture on us and the more different that image is, the more we differ. For most of us gods we default to Greek as our sort of ‘base’ form, but we have Roman forms as well who can look act differently. We sometimes have kids while we’re in Roman form. Those kids don’t go to Camp Half-Blood. Instead they travel to the Wolf House, where Lupa decides whether they’re strong enough to train. If she accepts them, then she’ll train them off and send them towards Camp Jupiter. If not... well... let’s just say that Lupa isn’t kind to the weak. And she doesn’t mind the taste of demigod flesh.”

I felt slightly ill. “How many does she... erm... usually fail?”

Apollo thought for a moment. “You know, I can’t actually remember her failing anyone in recent decades. I wasn’t paying much attention to Camp Jupiter though, so I can’t say for sure.”

Well that was comforting.

“Anyway, Hera was FURIOUS when Jason was born. Bad enough Zeus cheated on her with that mortal, but to then go back a few years later and have ANOTHER child with the same woman? He went too far. Jupiter, Zeus’s Roman form, gave Hera - or rather Juno - Jason’s life, even naming him after her favorite mortal as an attempt to appease her. Because naming one of his kids in her honor went SO WELL with Heracles. Luckily she took a liking to Jason. By ‘taking a liking’ I mean that she told his mother to hand him over to the wolves when he was two years old. Both she and Thalia assumed the wolves had killed him. No one corrected them. Greek and Roman demigods were supposed to be kept separate.

“But why?” I asked. “Wouldn’t we be stronger together?”

He tilted his head towards me, giving me a small smile. “Indeed you would be - if you could stop fighting.”

I frowned. “Why would we fight each other?”

“Greeks and Romans have a long-standing grudge against each other,” Apollo explained. “It didn’t help that some gods and goddesses did NOT take the Greek-to-Roman transition well. Most notably Athena.”

Annabeth’s mom?

I leaned forwards slightly. Annabeth would DEFINITELY want to know about this, if she didn’t already. “What happened to Athena?”

“The Romans stripped her of her status as a war goddess, reduced her to a goddess of crafts and wisdom, and stole her most sacred statue. They tried to break Greece’s spirit by stealing the Athena Parthenos. They succeeded, but they made a powerful enemy. Athena has NEVER forgiven the Romans for disrespecting her like that. She’s pushed the two sides to fight ever since, hoping that the Greeks would crush the Romans. There’s already a natural animosity between the two sides, it doesn’t take much of a push to get them fighting. After the Civil War, which had Greeks and Romans fighting and killing each other, we gods decided to interfere to stop our children from murdering each other. Athena disapproved of course, but she was outvoted. We increased the level of Mist around your groups, erasing all memories of the others existence from your minds. We kept an eye on any quests where you guy were likely to pass close by, increasing the Mist whenever you almost stumbled across each other. It worked! ... For a while.”

“What changed?”

Apollo grimaced. “Great-grandma started waking up.”

“Who?”

Apollo shook his head. “I don’t want to say her name. Best not to attract her attention. Ask Annabeth. She should know.”

I filed that info away for later. “What’s so terrible about your great-grandmother waking up?”

“She wants to destroy all of humanity and all the Olympian gods. She actually had some kids, the Giants, who she made for the sole purpose of destroying each of the Olympians.”

“She had kids JUST to use as an army?”

“Yep.”

“That’s messed up.”

“I’m not going to disagree with that.”

“Anything special about these Giants? Are they just like the Titans, but bigger?”

Apollo looked pained and... guilty? “It’s worse than that. The Giants can’t be defeated by a mortal or a god working alone. They can only be killed by a god and a mortal working together.”

My heart sank. “So the gods obviously teamed up with all of us demigods and helped us send them packing, right?”

“Well...” Apollo rubbed the back of his neck, looking embarrassed and ashamed. “You see... Father thought that maybe if we gods holed up and didn’t interact with the mortal world, that great-grandma might settle down. She didn’t.”

“Gods disobey Z- your father all the time, though! They helped, right?”

“I... guess so?”

“You guess?”

“I was kinda hiding for most of the war, so I was out of the loop.”

I frowned. “Why were you hiding? Shouldn’t you have been helping fight the Giants?”

Now he REALLY looked ashamed. “I... may have had a role in making things more difficult. Unintentionally, of course.”

I stared at him, waiting for him to continue. After a moment, he did. “One of the Campers at Camp Jupiter was a descendant of mine named Octavian. He told me that he’d make Rome strong, like it was back in the old days. That he’d make sure I was honored as one of the most important gods, above even Zeus! I liked the sound of that. I gave him my blessing. I ignored his hatred of the Greeks and his growing instability. He told me what I wanted to hear, so I ignored the warning signs.”

Apollo avoided my eyes, but kept on talking. “When Camp Half-Blood sent an envoy to Camp Jupiter, it looked like things would go well... at first. Then an Eidolon, a spirit, possessed one of the Greek demigods and forced him to fire on the Camp. The Romans assumed that the diplomatic envoy was a trick and promptly declared war on the Greeks. Luckily they didn’t know exactly where Camp Half-blood was. All of the Seven had to get out of there in a hurry.”

I frowned. “The Seven?”

Apollo blinked. “Oh yeah. You guys don’t have that prophecy yet. It went like this:

Seven half-bloods shall answer the call,

To storm or fire, the world must fall,

An oath to keep with a final breath,

And foes bear arms to the Doors of Death

“The ‘world falling’ sounds pretty bad,” I observed.

Apollo rolled his eyes. “It’s not, actually. This is one of those cases where the prophecy is PURPOSELY deceptive. ‘The world’ is great-grandma, it’s foretelling her defeat. As for the Seven, they are you, Annabeth Chase, Piper McLean, Leo Valdez, Frank Zhang, Hazel Lavesque, and Jason Grace. Frank, Hazel, and Jason are Roman.”

I wasn’t thrilled about being part of ANOTHER prophecy, but at least I’d survive past sixteen.

Apollo continued his story. “We gods are reflections of the culture we come from. When our two groups of children started fighting, the Greek and Roman sides of ourselves started fighting too. Gave most of us SPLITTING headaches, incapacitating us. Well, except for those of us who were either exclusively Greek or Roman, or who were pretty much the same in both forms. So most of us couldn’t help even if we wanted to. But I had an additional problem.”

Apollo stared at his feet. “One of the Praetors, Reyna, was pretty reasonable. She tried to rein in the Legion. But then she had to leave, and OCTAVIAN took control of the Legion. He took my blessing as a sign that whatever he had planned had my full support. He thought that the best way to ‘solve’ the gods’ headache problem and ‘save’ New Rome, was to wipe out the Greeks entirely. Father blamed me for Octavian’s poor decision, and decided to blame me for basically the entire war.”

He smiled bitterly. “I think he just wanted to scapegoat someone, pin the blame on anyone who wasn’t him. Him sticking his head in the sand had made things way more difficult than they needed to be, and he didn’t want to look weak or stupid. Not after the embarrassment of the Second Titan War. He was SO angry with me. But he couldn’t harm me on Delos, mine and Artemis’s birthplace. Being on Delos also protected Artemis and I from the incapacitating headaches. We sat out the whole war there, until the Greeks and Romans made up. That united us gods’ essences, allowing us to FINALLY recover enough to fight back. All of us gods rushed in to fight off the Giants with you Seven, defeating them easily. Then Father called me forwards, blamed me for the war, and sent me to Olympus. I can’t remember anything else until six months later, when I awoke, mortal, hurtling out of the sky, and landed in a dumpster.”

I winced. Sounded like gods weren’t necessarily any more caring towards their divine children than their demigod ones.

Apollo’s voice cracked, self-loathing seeping in. “I discovered just how BLIND we gods had been! Some Roman Emperors managed to make themselves immortal. They’ve been plotting their takeover for MILLENNIA. They helped fund Kronos’s army and Octavian’s attack on Camp Half-blood. They’ve been kidnapping young demigods and raising them to serve in their army.”

The subway started to slow down. “What do I need to know?” I asked hurriedly. I had a nagging sensation that I wouldn’t get to talk to Apollo much longer after this.

Evidently Apollo felt the same way, as he spoke hurriedly while the four of us (plus the bird) departed the subway and headed towards our rendevous with the current Apollo.

“If campers start to go missing a few months after the Second Giant War ends, it’s probably due to the Grove of Dodona regrowing itself in Camp Half-blood and calling for help. Nero tries to burn the grove and attacks Camp Half-Blood with the Colossus Nero. The Cave of Trophonious is in Indianapolis. Georgina was being held prisoner by Commodus. If that happens in this timeline as well, you’ll need to break into Commodus’s palace to rescue her. She also might be my daughter, not sure on that one. And- and then there’s-”

His voice cracked, ”There’s Caligula. His forces attacked Camp Jupiter shortly after I consulted Trophonious. Leo flew away to warn them. Meanwhile, Meg, Grover, and I left to rescue Herophile, another one of my Oracles, who Caligula had locked up. But we needed to retrieve his sandals in order to navigate the Labyrinth - that’s where she was being kept, yes it came back, no, I don’t know how. That’s when everything went wrong.”

A small sob escaped Apollo’s throat. “Jason, he- he’d gotten a prophecy MONTHS ago, saying that we’d only succeed if he and Piper came with Meg and I on our quest, but that either he or Piper would die. He decided right then that it WOULDN’T be Piper. He fought off Caligula long enough for us to get away, but died in the process. Crest - he’s a Pandos - he helped us get away. He helped us the next day too. He held off Medea, stopped her from destroying me, at the cost of his own life. We would’ve been finished if not for-”

Apollo startled, wide-eyed. “The Silver Wives! The Meliai! If we had just waited until they’d woken up, Crest would still be alive!”

He grabbed me urgently. “Percy. There are several special seeds that Meg’s family had been working on for MILLENNIA. They’re at her childhood home, Aeithales. Meg MUST be the one to plant them. Only she can make them grow. Wait to attack until those dryads are awake if possible. They’ll be invaluable.”

I nodded. “I will.”

Apollo let out a breath of relief and let go.

The four of us rounded the corner. I saw the god Apollo pacing around by the Empire State Building, waiting for us. And beside him...

Mortal Apollo stood still for a moment, slack-jawed. Then he came to his surges and surged towards the second figure desperately, the three of us following in his wake.

#trials of apollo #a convergence of apollos #fanfiction #percy jackson #apollo #lester papadopoulos #Meg Mccaffrey #grover underwood #toa #the trials of apollo

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