#i wanna dunk on Apollo a bit

[sunset-peril]

Decided to change Lazar's design up a bit to make him look at bit more like his mama. He's ginger now and I'm fixing his hair.

Athena's official SP:C design ref is scheduled to release tomorrow for Thena Thursday

Working on some Objection.lol adaptations for some of my chapters. I don't have a computer right now so they're going mega slow 😂

Working on two chapters at once for Sound of Our Silence, one that was planned out on the outline and one that I'm cramming in.

Oh yeah, happy birthday DD you are literally my favorite game aside from BotW

Also, I played the first Ace Attorney. I didn't like it. Don't @ me.

[tsarisfanfiction]

Past The Breaking Point

Fandom: Trials of Apollo Rating: Teen Genre: Angst Characters: Will Solace, Nico di Angelo

Kayla and Austin were gone.  Lester was gone.  Apollo was gone.  Will didn’t remember getting in the canoe.

Day four of TOApril organised by @ferodactyl, “Losing My Reality”.  This is where I take a random bit of canon that seemed weird to me and stuff it full of angst as though I’m not cruel enough to Will on a near-daily basis anyway.  Otherwise known as: why were Solangelo in that canoe?  A dunking in water can hide a lot if you try hard enough.  Warning for dissociation.

If you saw this go up earlier, yeah, I spotted some canon compliance errors and had to rewrite bits.  Whoops.

There’s now a discord server for all my fics, including this one!  If you wanna chat with me or with other readers about stuff I write (or just be social in general), hop on over and say hi!

Will didn’t remember getting in the canoe.  He didn’t remember leaving the cabin, where he’d stared at Lester’s retreating back as he headed on a rescue mission, alone, barely healed with an oath on the Styx holding him back and very little going for him.

He didn’t know how much time had passed between the two moments.

He didn’t know what had happened between the two moments.

Apollo was Lester.

Lester was mortal.

Apollo was mortal.

Mortals could die.

Lester could die.

Apollo could die.

Thoughts. Realisations.

He’d kept them at bay. While Lester was in camp.  While Kayla and Austin were in camp.

Lester needed healing. Kayla and Austin needed a big brother.

Pablo needed healing. Lester needed distracting.

Lester needed help.  Harley needed information on ukuleles so he could make a combat one.

It had taken all night to make and all day to tune.

Will wasn’t Austin. Will wasn’t Lee.  Will wasn’t Apollo.

Tuning took time. Tuning was hard.  Tuning needed all his concentration.

He’d waited by the forest all night.  For the promised dawn.

For the half-dead, alone, Lester that collapsed in front of Chiara.

Lester needed healing.

When did Will last sleep? Before Kayla and Austin.

Before Lester.

Kayla and Austin were still gone.

Lester was gone again.

They were mortal. They could die.

Apollo shouldn’t be able to die.  Gods couldn’t die.  Apollo was a god.

Apollo was Lester.

Lester had a barely-healed concussion.

Lester was mortal.

Lester could die.

Apollo could die.

The thoughts couldn’t be kept at bay any longer.

Will didn’t remember getting in the canoe.

Water sloshed around, reverberating through the wood and into his ears where he was laying down along the bottom of the dugout, head pillowed on something comfortable. Will’s eyes were closed.

He kept them closed.

Maybe then it wouldn’t be real.

Maybe it would just be a bad dream.  A nightmare.

Not real.

His throat hurt. Burned.

The corners of his eyes stung.  The sides of his face were stiff.  Something crusted the skin in unmistakable tracks that ended in his ears.

Water sloshed around.

The canoe rocked slowly. Gentle, like a lullaby.

Will felt heavy. Something had replaced his muscles with lead.  His head ached.  Maybe Athena was inside, trying to get out.

It felt like it.

Getting his head smashed open wouldn’t solve anything.  He wasn’t a god.  He was a mortal.  That would kill him.

Had killed Lee.

Liquid leaked from his eyes, following the crusted tracks and pooling in his ears.

The water sloshed louder for a moment, then quietened.  Something solid rattled against the dugout, cool but relentless where it brushed past his too-heavy arm before settling still.

His hair shifted, a deliberate movement.

The pounding in his head didn’t abate.

He cried harder, nose leaking to join his eyes.  His nose was sore, too.  He hadn’t noticed that.

His hair moved again. Snatches of words washed over him, too quiet to hear.

Familiar.

Will.

His name.  Said with love.

Said with pain.

Whispered.

Understanding.

Not a dream.

Why couldn’t it be a dream?

Why was reality so much worse?

He opened his eyes.

For a moment, he couldn’t see anything.  Everything swam out of focus, blurred beyond all comprehension.  It didn’t help that they felt raw, exposed to the world rather than cocooned behind the protective shield of his eyelids, and he had to blink once, twice, thrice before anything registered.

Black locks were haloed by the blue sky, unmarred by clouds and lit brightly by the sun without a god.

How did that even work? It wasn’t supposed to work. If it worked without a god, why did it have a god in the first place?

Why wasn’t it affected, its reality turned upside down and inside out the same way Will’s life was?

Slight movement snapped his attention back to the dominant feature in his eyeline.  Dark, dark mahogany eyes overflowed with concern and love, contrasting with the pale skin that refused to darken no matter how much sun it caught.  Nico’s face was upside-down, because of course it was.

“Will?”  He saw it more than heard it, his gaze caught by the way chapped lips shaped his name.

His hair stopped moving.

“Nico,” he replied, his voice coming out hoarser than expected but he couldn’t bring himself to care, or try again.  His body still felt like everything had been swapped out for lead; he couldn’t bring himself to try and move.  “Why are we in a canoe?”

Nico’s wince was well-hidden but still there.  Will braced for the question – don’t you remember?, or maybe how much do you remember? – but it didn’t come.

“No-one could bother you here,” his boyfriend said instead.  Will’s hair moved again and he realised that it was Nico, running a gentle hand through the tangled mess.

His head was resting on his boyfriend’s lap.  The observation blinked into existence.

“I know you hate people seeing you upset,” Nico continued.  “They can’t see you here.”  Another pass through his hair.  “You don’t need to be strong for anyone.”

He did.

Austin.  Kayla.

Lester.

Apollo.

But they weren’t there.

They weren’t there.

Nico was.

Nico, who refused to let him push too hard.  Who leaned on him and let Will do the same.

Encouraged Will to do the same.

Was asking him to do the same here.  Now.

To keep doing the same, because Will had returned to awareness with his head already on Nico’s lap, wrecked in a way he didn’t remember happening.

He shouldn’t.

But.

He could.

The sobs came, not for the first time if the pain in his throat was any indication, but the first time he could recognise them.  Remember them.  Fresh tears cascaded down his face, snot flooded into his mouth, and his chest heaved erratically.

Nico kept stroking his hair, wisps of comfort and a promise that he was allowed to break down like this, with no witnesses beyond the godless sun and the boyfriend that gave him the permission to be weak, be selfish.  He said no words.  Will was grateful.

Empty platitudes didn’t help.

His siblings were gone, his dad was mortal, killable, and it was just too much.

Nothing was right. Nothing was as it should be.

There was nothing they could do.

He cried until there was nothing left to cry, drained drier than a sponge wrung out by Poseidon himself, and it hurt in a way that had no words.