#took ages to decide what tack I wanted to take with Apollo and Hektor

[littlesparklight]

so close to the end, so have this snippet.

"Hektor." Apollo tipped his cup and took a sip, gaze falling onto the gleaming nectar within. "Even if I hadn't known him before I came to glory in him for these past years, I always would have. But I've known him since he was a child - he and a companion of his were born on the same day as I call my own, the day my divine mother and sister brought me into the world when Eileithyia had finally been appeased and lured away from her mother's side. Polydamas I gave the clear-sightedness of knowing the paths and signs of birds and omens, for that was a fitting gift for the son of a priest of mine. Hektor I needed time for; before Kassandra and Helenos, the closest that family has brought out in augurs were Priam's oldest."

Pausing, Apollo cocked his head, glancing up to meet Hyacinthus' gaze. There was a curl of amusement in the corner of his.

"Perhaps I became too fond of listening to that child as he grew, for he was an ardent worshipper in the connection of our shared day of birth, and I could still find no fitting gift than my continued attention. He was earnest and gentle, someone I could see would be, and quickly became, a defender both of what I'd helped build and what was housed within. No great skill at the lyre or with poetry, and he preferred other weapons than the bow, but his company was… soothing."

"Soothing?"

Only part of this was what Hyacinthus had expected to hear. Even the parts he'd expected fitted ill to what he'd expected would be the whole those parts would fit into. He'd overheard Apollo talk about Admetos, about Kassandra, and Helenos. Knew how Apollo talked about him, both to him in their bed and to others. But there seemed to be no desire at all as he spoke of Hektor, though fondness was the beating heart found within each and every syllable.

"Soothing," Apollo agreed, taking another sip. Briefly, his expression was an open wound. "Not a son, not a lover, and I needed not be either of those things for or with him - I can see what my dearest sister find in companionship with her girls. He was a warrior, but a gentle one, and even before the war I'd begun to give him what I knew would serve him best, though it's a role I haven't exactly embodied until recently."

Apollo, not the poet or the hunter or even the plague bringer, but the rouser of armies.

Apollo of the bow, not in play or in search of sustenance, but the gleaming edge of bronze of an arrow nocked to find the heart of a man, a sword swung to kill, a spear thrown. Stormgod of the army, as the Trojans called him. In relief, in need, though not, as far as Hyacinthus had been able to tell, because of the hostility of Pallas Athena the sacker of cities, nor that of the more uncertain support of bronze Ares.

"So you gave him a helmet, with your own hands," Hyacinthus said slowly, thoughtful and understanding both, reaching out to stroke Apollo's knuckles of the hand he had clutched, and far tighter than it appeared by sight alone, around his kylix.

"I gave him a helmet," Apollo agreed, and threw back almost the whole contents of his cup in a single swallow.