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tsarisfanfiction · 7 months ago

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Remembrance

Fandom: Trials of Apollo Rating: Gen Genre: Family/Hurt/Comfort Characters: Kayla, Apollo, Michael Human memories fade, and details get forgotten. Godly memories don't, and Apollo will always help his children, if they ask. TOApril Day 30 - Fading Memories. Longest fic of the month to round this TOApril up! Once again it took me a while to work out what I wanted to do with this one, but I definitely need more Apollo&Kayla and also more Kayla&Michael content in my life, so that's where this ended up. There's also a few easter eggs in here for some of my other fics, for the observant/readers with good memories!

Kayla huffed, dragging the box out from underneath the bench. Damn musicians, shoving all their stuff in the area that was supposed to be her nook, and especially damn the musicians that were also head counsellors that had enabled it.

Also Will, because Will hadn’t been a musician but he’d still let it happen (and Michael, but Kayla would always forgive Michael anything). No more. Kayla was head counsellor now, and even if it was only for her final year in camp, this nook at the back of the cabin was going to at least have space for her to stuff all the annoying things like chore schedules.

She wasn’t Austin, or Alice, or Will (or Michael). She wasn’t having that stuff in her personal part of the cabin, stressing her out with duty-based things in her safe, stress-free bunk. Not a chance. It could get banished to the back of the cabin like she knew other cabins did, for her to pick up when she had to and ignore when she didn’t.

Well, Kayla was realistic. She wasn’t going to get all of the instruments out of there; there was an entire orchestra’s worth, at least, and several of them were large and heavy, or otherwise not easily moveable – she sent the harp and the full sized drum kits a half-hearted glare, knowing full well that she was never going to win a fight with those particular sisters over the placement of their main instruments. Still, she could at least clear the flutes that hadn’t been used in years – Kayla didn’t think she’d ever seen any of them come out – off of the desk and find a different cranny to stow them in.

The same went for the crates worth of sheet music stowed under the desk, which was what she was currently trying to wrangle. For being simple sheets of music, they got heavy when there was a lot of them, rather like a whole pile of target faces all at once, and it took more than a bit of pulling and shoving before she got them moved over enough that she could pull a chair up and sit in it without her legs being crammed against crates.

Well, almost. She growled as her feet kicked against another one, and ducked back down under the desk to see if she could push that one further back, outside of accidental kicking range.

It refused to, so with another grumble she started to yank it forwards instead, not quite sure where she was going to move it to but determined that it wasn’t going to stay in too-close kicking reach. Kayla wasn’t tall like Austin or Jerry but she also wasn’t short like Yan and needed some leg room while she was doing head counsellor things.

When it finally came out, it was covered in dust, enough to make her nose itch. It also wasn’t sheet music, like she’d expected. Nor was it spare archery targets, which she would’ve been delighted to find – they were forever running out of those.

It was full of photographs.

Curious, she picked one up, puffing until the dust shifted. There were two boys in the photo – one young and gap-toothed, and the other… well, still young, but maybe at least a teenager. He had a lot of beads for someone Kayla guessed might be thirteen or so, but the younger kid – and he was really young, definitely nowhere near double digits – didn’t have a camp necklace at all. He had familiar blond waves and blue eyes, though, and Kayla realised it had to be Will, back when he’d been the baby of the cabin. The older boy must have been one of their siblings, with his own blond hair and darker blue-green eyes, but Kayla didn’t recognise him.

She set that one down and picked up another, wiping the dust off against her sleeve. This time, the faces were more familiar, more blond kids, but ones she knew she’d seen before. Their names didn’t come to her, but she was pretty certain that if she read through the names on the first bead of her necklace, she’d make the connections again. Unlike baby Will and the unnamed boy, these two were more rough and tumble, with the girl having the boy in a headlock while he clearly fought to get out of it. Both of them were laughing, though, and the camera was held at an angle, as if the photographer had been laughing too hard to keep it steady, too.

The third photograph made her freeze when the dust came off.

It was her, from behind. Her hair had been freshly dyed, with no sign of her natural colour at all, and Kayla had only dyed her hair like that for a short time before deciding she preferred to keep the crown of her head visibly ginger. She was at the archery range, bow in one hand and gesturing wildly with the other. Next to her, also with their back to the camera, was someone with black hair in a short pony tail, more or less the same height as eleven year old Kayla – gods, this had been taken six years ago – and gesturing back at her.

She didn’t recognise them. Not really. She knew who it was – of course she did, it was Michael, and she was sure she’d always remember the way he kept his hair tied back like that – but what she recognised was his bow, the beautiful horn horse bow that now lived in the attic of the Big House.

Staring at the photograph, she was suddenly hit with the realisation that she didn’t remember his face. She didn’t remember his voice, either. She remembered him being her big brother, that he’d spent hours and hours with her at the range, better than any of the Olympic archers Da had coached but completely disinterested in competition shooting, but she couldn’t remember his face.

Kayla had no idea what colour his eyes had been. If he’d had bangs or if his hair was all swept back into the ponytail. Details that felt like they should never be forgotten, but she couldn’t remember them.

Logically, she knew she’d only known Michael for a few months, which was basically no time at all compared to the length of time she’d since spent at camp, but with how often his name still flittered through her thoughts, it felt like she ought to remember him better than that.

It hurt, to realise that she didn’t.

Kayla dived back into the box, trying to find more photographs of him. There were a lot where there was a blur of black hair in the corner, or turning away, or with his back to the camera. She even found one with a younger-looking Alice braiding his hair, but Michael hadn’t been looking at the camera then, either. He’d been looking back at Alice as best he could without turning his head.

Still, it was the clearest one she’d found so far, and she cleared away more streaks of dust with her fingers until it was clean.

Seeing Michael with Alice reminded her that she was the only camper left in their cabin, now that Austin had left, that had met Michael. Raphael and Emma had arrived the next summer, and everyone else was even later than that. There was no-one else to show the photograph to and reminisce with, or try to remember with.

Okay, maybe she could go to Chiron, but as great as Chiron was, it didn’t feel right. Chiron hadn’t been any closer to Michael than he was to any other camper, she didn’t think. She didn’t know how he could have been. It wasn’t like he was family, really, although she was pretty sure he and Apollo-

Apollo. Dad.

Her dad, Michael’s dad.

She didn’t even finish thinking it through before she called him, startled when her voice sounded thick, like she’d been crying. She didn’t think she’d been crying.

The instant appearance of her dad, and the way he immediately wiped tears from her face, told her that she had been.

“What’s wrong?” he asked her, sitting cross-legged in the small patch of floor that wasn’t covered in photographs or musician things. It put him right in her personal space, but Kayla never minded that with her dad. Either of them, actually.

“I found these,” she said, waving photographs in his face. One of them was the first one she’d found, with her and Michael. Another was the one with Alice. “And I don’t… I don’t remember him, Dad.” A sob erupted from her throat. “I’ve always said he was my favourite brother, but I don’t… I don’t remember him!”

Part of her waited for him to poke her in the chest and tell her that actually, she did remember him. That he was in her heart, her favourite brother, and it didn’t matter if she couldn’t remember the exact shade of his eyes, or whether he usually had bangs. That was the sort of sappy thing people usually said, after all.

But he didn’t. He wrapped his arm around her and pulled her against his side, tucked under his arm like she was younger than she was, like she wasn’t now the most senior Apollo kid in camp.

“Do you want me to talk about him?” he offered, and her head snapped to look at him.

“Yes,” she said, latching onto the offer like it was a lifeboat. “Yes, Dad.”

He chuckled, quietly enough that it didn’t feel like he was laughing at her. “Okay,” he said, and plucked the photo of her and Michael from her fingers. She barely felt it go. “Michael was a fighter. And I don’t just mean because of the war, or his arguments with Clarisse – and he got into a lot of those with her. He was a fighter because he had something to fight for.” Kayla felt Apollo squeeze her shoulders. “You.”

The noise that escaped her was both unladylike – not that she cared – and very startled. “Me?”

Apollo gave a one shouldered shrug. “Well, his siblings. All of you,” he admitted. “Michael was always one for loving deeply, when he let someone in. He had a reputation for being harsh and prickly, especially with other campers, but beneath the thorns was a massive heart with so much love to give out, if they could make him believe they were worth it.”

“I don’t remember him being prickly,” Kayla admitted. “Except for the arguments with Clarisse.”

Apollo gave another chuckle. “He was always arguing with Clarisse,” he said, sounding fond. “That started his first day at camp and never stopped. Then again, I probably didn’t help matters,” he added, and that sounded sheepish.

Kayla twisted in his grip to look at him, astonished. “What did you do?” she demanded. Apollo’s smile definitely twisted into something sheepish.

“I claimed him,” he said, and Kayla frowned, because of course he did.

“How-?”

“I claimed him because he shot her in the thigh,” he clarified, and she felt her jaw drop. “It was the first time they’d met, and both of them were very volatile back when they were that age, more so than by the time you got here. They got into a fight, and well. It was the first time Michael had ever held a bow, and it was a beautiful shot. How could I not claim him for it?”

“You claimed him… because he shot Clarisse?” Kayla repeated slowly, trying to wrap her head around that. In some ways, it made sense. In other ways, it really didn’t. Then she registered the other thing he’d said. “Wait. He’d never held a bow before camp? Really?”

The one thing she definitely did remember was how amazing an archer Michael had been. It was the sort of skill that came from being an archer from the moment he was old enough to hold a bow – Kayla should know, she had the same skill – not from being a preteen, or maybe even a teenager, before ever touching one. Actually… “how old was he?”

“He was nine, at the time.” There was a story there, Kayla could tell, but Apollo didn’t show any signs of expanding on it, and she decided it wasn’t worth asking.

Demigods didn’t turn up at camp that young without a reason, and the reason was never a good one. Kayla didn’t need to know what Michael’s was. She didn’t want to know.

“He was amazing at archery,” she said, instead, and Apollo smiled fondly.

“That he was,” he agreed. “He could out shoot some of my sister’s Hunters. They hated him for it.” Kayla could imagine that – Thalia and Reyna were chill, but some of the Hunters were definitely snobbish over their perceived archer superiority. It was one of the reasons Kayla kept rejecting their recruitment pitches; they didn’t like being challenged by an archer who didn’t wear Artemis’ silver colours. She bet it was even worse with a boy.

“Serves them right,” she muttered, and leant back against her dad’s side again, reclaiming the photo of Michael and Alice. “I remember him being an amazing archer,” she admitted. “And his arguments with Clarisse. I just… I wish his face hadn’t faded.” She tapped at the photograph with a chipped nail. “The photographs aren’t clear enough.”

“I can make them clearer, if you want,” Apollo offered, and Kayla didn’t know how but she wasn’t going to turn down a chance to re-memorise Michael’s face. Properly, this time. She nodded.

Apollo held up a hand in front of them, palm up and loosely cupped, and hummed lightly.

Whatever Kayla had expected, it wasn’t for a ball of light to convalesce in front of them, swirling and shifting until Michael appeared in front of them, perching on the box full of dusty and abandoned photographs.

Kayla had forgotten how short he was.

She’d seen it in the photograph, how a sixteen year old Michael had been the same height as an eleven year old Kayla, but being seventeen herself now – gods, she was older than Michael when he’d died – and more or less fully grown it was stark, seeing him in front of her and realising that he really had been tiny.

He didn’t say anything, probably because he wasn’t real, just Apollo manipulating the light until it showed her her big brother again. Still, there was life in the way he looked like he was sitting, one leg straight down and the other knee raised up, foot on the edge of the box he was perched on, with one elbow resting on the knee. He wasn’t looking directly at them, but he was focused on something that only the apparition could see, and it was good enough for Kayla to finally, finally, remember the exact shade of brown his eyes had been.

He didn’t have bangs, either. There were some loose hairs that didn’t quite reach back into his ponytail that stuck out a little, but no bangs. He did have earrings, though, a single golden stud in the ear lobe.

Kayla had forgotten he’d had those. She wasn’t sure if she’d ever noticed them when he was alive and she’d taken his presence for granted, unlike the way she was drinking every detail in now, because this felt like a last chance.

Mortals weren’t supposed to dwell in the past.

Something warm dripped onto her cheek and she glanced up on instinct to see silent tears rolling slowly down her father’s face as he looked at the apparition he’d created. It was a comfort, to know that she wasn’t the only one affected by it.

Still, her eyes were drawn back to Michael, the ephemeral sight that wouldn’t last forever. His mouth was twisted into a slight smirk, confidence pouring off of him from his expression to his pose, and even though he looked small and young in a way Kayla knew he hadn’t when he’d still been alive and she’d been five years younger than him, rather than a year older, it felt right. Familiar. She was sure she’d seen that expression on that face many times before.

Apollo gave a shuddering breath, and raised his hand towards Michael again. His fingertips dipped into the illusion, and it rippled slightly. Kayla knew what was coming, and refused to look away as, slowly, Michael faded from sight again.

“It’s good to remember,” Apollo said hoarsely as her brother disappeared. Kayla wondered if she was supposed to feel worse, losing him again, but instead she thought it felt more like closure. “But don’t get trapped in the past. Keep looking forwards.” He squeezed her arm. “You’ve got a future ahead of you, and if he was still with us, Michael would be the first to tell you that you’ve got that Olympic gold in the bag next summer.”

Kayla remembered archery lessons with him, being pushed past anything Da had ever tried with her, because he’d known she could keep up, even back then. “He would,” she agreed. “I miss him, Dad. I know I only knew him for a few months, but… I miss him.”

“I know,” Apollo said. “So do I.” He reached out and picked up some of the other photos, of familiar and semi-familiar and unfamiliar faces. “I miss all of them.”

Kayla plucked another one from the floor – the one with the two blonds wrestling. Both of them had died in Manhattan, she was more certain of that, now. Siblings she’d known but not for long enough, although with her mind in reminiscing mode she found names finally climbing to the front of her memory. Nathan and Robyn. She didn’t think she’d ever seen one without the other.

Looking at them, with their semi-familiar faces, and the other photos still strewn around from her frantic hunt for pictures of Michael’s face, she found an idea forming in the back of her mind, and she barely let it finish before she spoke.

“Dad?”

He hummed, turning his head towards her.

“Help me put these up on the walls?” She gestured to the box. It wasn’t like it was doing anything except getting in her way under the desk, and photographs deserved to be looked at. Her siblings deserved to be remembered, not stashed away and forgotten.

He stared at her for a moment, clearly not expecting the request, before his whole body softened.

“I’d love to.”