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tsarisfanfiction · 9 months ago

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Leaving Home

Fandom: Trials of Apollo Rating: Gen Genre: Family/Hurt/Comfort Characters: Jerry, Yan, Jerry's Mum It's a long way from London to New York, and an even longer way when it means leaving behind your family. At least Jerry still had Yan, though. TOApril day 4 - Facing the Unknown, and I continue to write about the youngest canon Apollo kids, apparently. Given how little we know about them, this is of course completely full of headcanons. I have spent entirely too much time thinking about the logistics of a London kid and a Hong Kong kid ending up at Camp, whoops... And am I relishing writing a canonically British kid and not having to overthink whether or not an American kid would say that? Of course not, why would you ever think that? (Yes, yes I am)

Heathrow Airport was huge. Jerry was a born and bred Londoner; crowds didn’t bother him, and while he knew to keep his few valuables – wallet, passport – hidden away beneath layers of clothing where it wasn’t going to get lost or stolen, he had no fear of bodies pressing against him as they rushed past on their way to wherever they were trying to get to.

Jerry wasn’t rushing. He didn’t want to rush, because this was scary.

Not the crowds at the airport. That wasn’t scary. Jerry was used to crowds, grew up with them, knew how to dart through bodies to get where he needed to be.

He gripped his mum’s hand more tightly as he watched his suitcase – it was huge and heavy and also far, far, too small – trundle down the conveyor belt to get eaten by the thick dangling plastic strips and disappear from sight. It started to feel real, now, and Jerry’s stomach was churning because he didn’t want it to be real.

It had been scary when the thing had attacked him, all claws and teeth and dangerous, and he laughed about the old janitor with a limp battering the thing away with a sopping wet mop when he thought about it, because that was funny. A monster wanting to kill him and only not killing him because the janitor was actually a satyr like Mr Tumnus from that book his junior school had forced him to read, except this Mr Tumnus was a good fighter and something about his mop had made the monster explode into dust, was scary.

Even if the satyr thing was sort of cool.

No amount of satyr Mr Tumnus coolness (except Mr Tumnus was not cool, Jerry hadn’t really liked him, but then he hadn’t really liked the book, anyway. Peter with his sword was pretty cool, and some of the creatures were, but Lucy was annoying and Edmund was stupid and he didn’t even remember the name of the other girl) could make up for this, though. One too-big but also too-small suitcase full of all his favourite clothes and cricket bat and mum’s ball and crowds in an airport, and holding his mum’s hand tightly as though he was a baby.

Jerry didn’t want to leave. He didn’t want to go to America, or New York, or whatever the name of the camp he was being sent to was. He wanted to stay in London, watch Middlesex’s next match at Lords because he knew Grandma had promised Mum to buy him tickets, play with his friends, and keep training to be the England captain when he was grown up.

He couldn’t be England’s captain if he wasn’t even in England!

Stupid monsters attacking him. Stupid camp in America he had to go to. Mum wasn’t happy about it, either, but she’d been firm when he’d tried to tell her he wasn’t going. He’d eavesdropped on her Skype calls with some bearded guy that apparently ran the camp, and she’d had a lot to say that didn’t sound happy, but she was still sending him away.

Jerry had tried every trick he could think of to not go, but now all his favourite stuff was going on the plane – all his favourite stuff except his mum – it was all real and big boys don’t cry but Jerry wanted to so badly.

The stupid airport had barely anything to do. It had crowds everywhere but they were all queues, either for the Costa Coffee that Mum had taken him to earlier, letting him have a triple chocolate muffin for breakfast, or for the big metal arches that everyone had to go through one at a time.

Everyone who was going on a plane, anyway.

Those metal arches were where Jerry was going to have to say goodbye.

They were where Mum was guiding him now, looking at her watch and then the departure boards. Jerry didn’t get what the rush was – it was still hours until that stupid plane to New York took off – but she was acting like they were running out of time and he needed time to stop, go backwards, make it so that this didn’t happen at all.

Yan appeared next to him, with just their backback slung over one shoulder carelessly now their own big case had also been munched by the heavy plastic strips. Mum didn’t let Jerry wear his like that, and Jerry knew better, anyway. Yan had lived in London for a year but they still hadn’t worked out that being careless with bags was stupid.

Jerry liked the older kid. They didn’t make fun of him for not being able to spell, or for caring more about cricket than school (who cared about school more than cricket, anyway?). He hadn’t known them very long, because they were in the year above him and the older years didn’t mix with the younger years, but he’d met them a few times in the gym, and on the playing ground at lunch time. They were good with throwing a ball, and good at batting, too, even if they still refused to admit cricket was the best sport in the world.

They’d also been there when he was attacked.

When they were attacked, because Jerry wasn’t the only one being forced on a plane to stupid America-New-York-Camp-Stupid, but Yan didn’t seem to care much.

But Yan’s mum was back in Hong Kong and Jerry didn’t think they’d spoken to her much since they’d arrived in England. They hadn’t said much about why they were in London without their mum, why they called the adults they lived with Mr and Mrs with manners and nothing else, but Jerry thought this wasn’t the first time they’d been told they had to go move elsewhere.

Yan didn’t say stupid things like “you’ll enjoy it” or “you won’t even miss England once you’re there” or any of the other things Mum had tried to say, and not-Mr-Tumnus had tried to say. Yan didn’t say anything at all on the topic, agreeing with him that America was full of heathens that didn’t understand how to play a perfectly good game instead.

At least he was going with Yan, if he had to go with anyone, Jerry supposed. Yan was pretty cool.

The man that met them near the metal gates had a big smile and sharp cheekbones. His ears were kinda pointy, which was weird but also cool. Jerry hadn’t known people could have pointy ears like that. He wore a smart dark blue suit and a colourful red, dark blue and white tie, which looked a lot like the sorts of things the flight attendants wore on the billboards.

“Hey there, kids,” he said, and he had a weird accent, mostly British but with a little bit of a twang when he said hey. “My name’s Geoff and I’ll be looking after you guys until we meet with your escort Stateside.”

Jerry didn’t want to go with him. Going with him meant saying goodbye to Mum and he didn’t know when he would see her again, because she wouldn’t say when he asked! All he knew was that this was because he got attacked, because his Dad had ways to keep him safe if he went to America that apparently couldn’t happen here, in London.

No-one had told him how Yan fit into this, exactly. The older kid was looking at the flight attendant intently, before nodding.

“Yan,” they said. “They/them.”

Jerry prepared to punch the guy if he said anything mean. Almost everyone at school, including the teachers, and insisted on calling Yan he for stupid reasons like “you’re a boy,” when Yan wasn’t, and not-Mr-Tumnus had been one of the few cool adults that didn’t.

The guy didn’t say anything stupid, though. “Neat!” he said instead, “thanks for telling me. You okay with ‘guys’ or do you want me to drop that?” He didn’t even sound sarcastic, and Jerry saw Yan relax a little.

“Guys is fine,” they said, and Jerry saw them grin, a little bit. They liked this guy, he realised, and that meant he couldn’t be mean to him, because Yan didn’t like many people.

“I’m Jerry,” he said, and because Yan had, he added, “he/him.”

They got another grin from Geoff. “He/him for me, too,” he said, a bit late but it was better than pretty much everyone else. “We’ve got to tackle security soon,” he added, and Jerry frowned, because that meant leaving. Geoff put a hand on his shoulder and he wanted to snap at him to mind his space, but there was a look in his eyes that made Jerry falter.

“I-” he started, and to his horror he started crying after all.

Mum grabbed him in a tight hug. “Oh Jerry,” she said, and her voice was shaky. “You’re so brave. Get Chiron to call me when you arrive, and screw the timezones. I expect you to Skype me regularly, okay?”

She’d said all of that before, back before Jerry had had to say goodbye to his bedroom and its weirdly bare walls. His posters were carefully rolled up in his too-big-too-small suitcase, too. Jerry had already promised all of that, but he promised it again, sobbing and trying not to feel like a baby.

Yan and Geoff had walked away a few steps, he discovered when Mum finally pulled back, but not after leaving a disgustingly wet kiss on his forehead. “I love you, Jerry,” she told him firmly. “Never doubt that.”

“Love you too, Mummy,” he admitted, wiping his eyes with his sleeve because he was not a crybaby. Yan’s host family had left them at the entrance as soon as they’d seen him and Mum, and Yan had simply shook their hands and thanked them for letting them live under their roof for the past year. They hadn’t cried.

He didn’t know if they had when they’d left their mum, though. Maybe they had.

Maybe Jerry would be brave enough to ask, one day.

“Ready to go on your adventure?” Geoff asked him, and Jerry wasn’t but Yan was waiting for him and he was done being a crybaby.

“I’m coming,” he said, and gave Mum one last, tight squeeze around the middle, before he straightened his back and walked away.

Yan slipped their hand into his and squeezed it lightly. Boys didn’t hold hands, but Yan wasn’t a boy so that was fine. Jerry squeezed it back, tighter.

He was still terrified, but he could be brave. He wiped his eyes furiously as Yan and Geoff led him towards the metal arch and once he was certain they were dry he turned around.

Mum was crying, but she was smiling, too, and he waved at her, not stopping until Yan led him around a corner and he lost sight of her.

“It’s rough,” Geoff said as he directed them into putting their backpacks and coats into deep plastic trays, and made them take their shoes off. He did the same thing. “I was about your age when I had to move to the States without my Mum, too. Don’t let anyone tell you you’re not brave for doing it, because it’s hard and by the gods we deserve medals for that.”

Yan snorted. “I want two medals, then,” they said.

Geoff grinned. “I’ll see what I can manage,” he promised. “Now, through the box you go, then we’ll go watch the planes come in from the VIP lounge until ours gets here. How does that sound, guys?”

VIP lounge. Jerry supposed he liked the sound of that, at least.

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