#pjo hyacinthus

Fandom: Trials of Apollo
Rating: Teen
Genre:Family/Romance
Characters: Apollo

Everything had its own song.  Apollo couldn’t hear his, so he improvised.

Day twenty-five of TOApril organised by @ferodactyl, “Songs That Never Go Away”.  I don’t have a clue what this is but also my brain’s been in a slightly weird place all day so that probably contributed to this.

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!

Music and life were closely intertwined.  Everything had its own song, and as the god of music Apollo knew them all.  He knew the sounds of nature, every ditty and warble the birds made, every cry of an animal, every hum of the plants.  He knew the rhythm of heartbeats, the way no two humans’ sounded exactly the same even though humanity had the measure of pulses and what they meant.

He knew that all those heartbeats had a finite length, that one day, too soon, they’d fall silent, never to be repeated again.

Apollo didn’t remember making the conscious decision to memorise the unique sounds of human heartbeats. Not all of them, he’d seen billions of humans across the millennia after all, but the special ones. His lovers, his children, the mortals he intertwined with deliberately and personally, who flickered through his existence for such painfully short yet bright times, those he memorised. He could recite them all, one after the other, from the first to the latest.  Sometimes he did, weaving them into a single, continuous melody made up of parts that didn’t last long by themselves but as part of a whole had yet to end.

As a god, he didn’t really have a heartbeat.  Not in the same way as a mortal, not a countdown to his demise.  Gods had their own songs, too, their essences singing out to him in their own way, but it wasn’t the same thing.  Not at all.

The only song Apollo couldn’t hear was his own, the same way mortals couldn’t hear their own voices the same way everyone else did.  Not even the best recording was truly accurate to the inflections that made every voice unique, and not even the sharpest ear for music in existence could hear his own song.  He created his own instead, to fill the silence.

It was that same song of the mortals, a storyline to music the way the best songs were, emotions and experiences spinning together into something unique, reflecting the way they shaped him, because they did.  Apollo was not so naïve he didn’t know that the mortals he loved didn’t have an impact on him, one way or another.

Most were subtle, barely there and only a few bars of the song, too quick to be identified if Apollo didn’t concentrate on them.  Others were far more important, major events in his timeline even if they were still the tragically short existences of mortals.  Certain lovers who had left their mark, for good or for ill.  Admetus, Hyacinthus, Daphne, Commodus, to name but a few.  Each of their heartbeat songs spanned several lines, accentuated with a vast array of emotions as Apollo recalled with perfect clarity how each of them had made him feel.

Some of his children also took up large parts of the song.  Asclepius was one, the mortal heartbeat before he joined the ranks of the gods and his song shifted to one of an essence drenched in regret, sorrow and a deep pride.  Will was another, on the far more recent end of the spectrum with a heartbeat that sang of compassion and kindness.

Then there were other, rare additions of mortals who were neither lovers nor children.  Meg was the most recent example, somehow a sister in all but blood whose heartbeat sang of stubbornness, of blooming flowers and fond insults.

Apollo sang the song to himself, over and over again in the sanctity of his palace.  He never had a reason to, yet always had a reason to. His memory was flawless – he was the god of truth, god of knowledge, how could it not be – but he sang it to remember them all regardless.  He sang it to grieve for the too-short mortal existences he had no choice but to let pass to Thanatos and Hades one by one, he sang it to celebrate their memories.

He sang because he wanted to, because music was important and the mortals that had been and gone were important even when he was the only one left to remember them (who cared to remember them), or perhaps because he was so often the only one left to remember them as time continued its ever-progressive trudge and the mortals whose lives they’d touched passed away themselves, leaving nothing but whispered stories and legends of those who had made a loud mark on history, and nothing at all for those who had ghosted under the radar.

He sang and he saw them all in his minds’ eye, from the first time he’d laid eyes on them, to the moments he’d spent (snatched, more often than not, especially in the case of his children) with them, to the instant Thanatos summoned them and he rarely got the chance to say goodbye.

He sang so he wouldn’t cry every time he thought of them.  It didn’t stop the tears at other times, when he remembered their varying fates (so many far, far too cruel, mortal lives didn’t haveto end so abruptly but so few of them made to old age and a peaceful death in their sleep; not even the most recent ones, the ones where he’d interfered more than he’d dared for a millennia, had been afforded such a luxury), it didn’t always stop the tears anyway, but it was a way to remember their lives, and not their deaths.

The little things. The colours in their eyes, the music in their voices, the way their faces lit up when something went their way, when they were happy.  The things that made them them, as unique as their heartbeats.  Their parts weren’t even in length because his time with them wasn’t equal in length, for a variety of reasons that sometimes weren’t even Apollo’s fault, but they were the best reflections he could show.

It wasn’t enough.  It could never be enough; for such short lives they all shone so bright.  It was all Apollo had, as millennia passed and everyone else forgot but he remembered.

And it never stopped growing, new heartbeats threading in where the previous had fallen silent, because they were mortal but Apollo wasn’t and the world, his existence within it, wasn’t over yet.

ToA, a series mostly about platonic love, actually handled the few romances the protagonist did have really well (unlike certain other rrverse series). Yeah, Apollo was single by the end and didn’t have any active romantic relationships throughout the books, but the way his exes were written with him?? The drama, the angst, the intimacy??The way he whispered their names. The way they haunted him all his life. The way he pretended not to care about them, but could always remember their time together and how bad he was to them. The way they forced him to reflect on himself and grow as a person. How he realised it was wrong to treat Daphne like a trophy when she didn’t want him in the first place. How there was always sadness and love in his voice when he remembered Hyacinthus. How he could recall Will, Kayla, and Austin’s parents despite acting like he couldn’t. The Cumean Sibyl’s final talk with him and the way she never forgave him but let go of her hatred of him for her own sake. Don’t even get me started on Commodus’ impact - he and Apollo only had a few pages of flashbacks yet Rick completely sold me on their romance and you could feelall, and I meanall,of their pain.

Immaculate.