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You live your life
Unaware of the pain right next to you
Unaware of the silent screams for help
Not noticing them
Until they stop
The Council room was silent, everyone trying in vain to See what was happening.
Everyone watching through the Sight lent by Zeus, for his was the greatest.
But even the Sight of the King struggles to pierce some veils.
Hades and Poseidon’s domains were shielded by the slumbering Primordials their kingdoms lived in, Erebus and Pontus.
Tartarus was one of the most powerful out of all His siblings, and He did not sleep. He was always awake, watchful, alert, and wrathful.
And so the Olympians remained distracted as they tried futilely to find out what their (brother-lover-son-nephew-father-friend) was going through.
His trials had been harsh, even out of all the punishments set by Zeus.
Harsher than his father had intended when first setting them. But Zeus was the king. He could show no uncertainty, could never waver in his decisions.
You’re left wondering where you went wrong
Why he never came to you
Why you couldn’t help
Why he chose to suffer in silence
If you could have stopped it
But it’s all a moot point
He’s gone
And there’s nothing you can do about it
A loud crack split the silence, drawing everyone’s attention.
Apollo’s throne of gold, glowing and radiant, was gone.
Shattered into a thousand pieces scattered on the floor, dull and broken.
No warning had been given, no sign of danger. It just crumbled seemingly out of the blue.
At first, they could do nothing but stare in silence and shocked horror.
But soon the denials, the explanations and rationalizations came. Each trying to explain why the throne fell apart.
All trying to deny the Truth standing right in front of them.
Someone comes
They knew him
Saw him, when you missed it
When you missed every sign
They were like him, at one point
They understood him in a way no one else did
In a way no one else could
It lasts until Styx walks into the throne room. This in and of itself would be enough to silence the arguing gods. Styx does not show Herself often, and only for occasions of great import.
But what stops everyone in their tracks are the silent tears falling down the goddess’s face. In all the time they knew Her, Styx was Her river. Styx was Hatred, even as She remained ever silent.
And then She opens her mouth. “Apollo is gone.”
Rare indeed are the occasions when Styx verbally speaks, and this matches the theme of it only being for matters that will upend Olympus.
Immediately the Council is in uproar, denials and accusations being flung with careless abandon.
They say you didn’t know him
They say you didn’t care for him
They’re wrong, they have to be
You loved him
(But when was the last time you openly showed it?)
They’re wrong
They have to be
Throughout all the vitriol, Styx remains silent.
She approaches the hearth and tilts Her head in silent question towards Hestia.
The mourning goddess simply nods. She loved Apollo as much as any of them, but has accepted the Truth quicker than anyone else.
With a forceful exhale from Styx, the flames jump, freezing into an icy visage of Apollo.
He’s on the edge of Chaos, a place Hera vividly recognizes and quickly informs the others of. Behind him, Python’s corpse falls.
Tears line Apollo’s face in the image as he tries to pull himself up, sobbing freely.
Some (Artemis-Hermes-Dionysus) try to use this as proof.
“He isn’t dead, see? He’s trying to return to us, he’s crying because he loves us and wants to be back with us!” So was their claim, and they believed it wholeheartedly.
They could not See the Truth, blinded by denial.
Styx doesn’t speak, simply silently shaking Her head, and the flames change.
Apollo, breaking down sobbing in his palace.
Apollo, laughing and smiling with Hermes and Dionysus not even a minute later.
Apollo teasing Artemis, only to be coldly rebuffed for being childish.
Apollo’s smile faltering while she isn’t looking, only to be perfect the second she turns around.
Apollo, trying to impress his father.
Apollo, trying to gain the love of his stepmother.
Apollo, trying to find solidarity with Aphrodite.
Apollo, being banned from the Sea for the simple crime of being a child of the Sky.
A fire is ignited by these images, gods blaming each other for hurting Apollo or for not noticing when he needed help.
Styx just sadly shakes Her head again, and the flames change into one final image as She leaves.
Months pass
Becoming years
Becoming decades
They were right
You hadn’t truly known him
You hadn’t seen him
You look back
And you were never there for him
You had drifted apart
You didn’t see his struggles
Not because he was too good at hiding
But because you didn’t look
You saw the surface mask and scoffed
You didn’t look any further
One by one, the throne room quiets as they behold Styx’s parting words.
Not spoken, but still clearly conveyed.
An image of Apollo doing one of his rare performances floats above the fire, the god caught mid-split with the spotlight shining on him, and him alone.
The setting is familiar, with the Olympians even being seen in the audience.
But what they didn’t see was the ichor painting the stage gold, the tears streaming down Apollo’s face. The fractures clearly visible in his limbs, his smiling face cracking like an old ivory mask.
The message is clear. “He was suffering. He was in pain, and you didn’t see. You chose to ignore what was before you.”
It brings their minds back to the first thing Styx showed them, Apollo crying as he tried to pull himself up from the edge of Chaos.
And suddenly, they can see what they couldn’t before. Apollo wasn’t crying out of any determination to get back to them. He wasn’t sobbing out of love.
No, the tears were streaming down his face because he didn’t want to go back. He didn’t want to put the mask back on, but he felt he had to.
In the silence, Hestia speaks up, voice cracking with sorrow. “Apollo is gone. But he wasn’t truly here in a long time, that much is clear now. Styx did more for him in a minute than we have in millennia.”
With that, the goddess of the hearth leaves. She doesn’t know where she’ll go, just the vaguest of plans to try to understand what had happened to her nephew, what he had been feeling before he left.
He had spent much time among the mortals, maybe they would know more. He was always the closest of them to the humans.
The others drift off, until it is just Artemis standing there, heartbroken and confused.
She won’t understand for a long time, until she finally confides in her Lieutenant and asks for advice.
It was your fault
You may not have actively pushed
But you didn’t help pull him back
You hurt him
And then you expected him to be normal
So normal he was
He kept holding the expectations of the world on his shoulders
Until he couldn’t bear it anymore
You stand at his funeral, and can’t speak
This was your fault, even if only partially
A numb haze of shock is the most common reaction at first, when one learns of the ever-smiling and dramatic god’s passing.
Most of the Olympians moved to denial or anger, second.
Some later tried to bargain with Chronos, offering themselves as the price to go back and speak to him, but the Primordial always refused.
Time forever marches forward, heeding no one’s attempts to stop or change it.
Eventually all learned to accept it, learned to accept the Truth, long after Truth was gone.
Apollo was gone. He had been hurting for a long time.
And they had done nothing to help him.
They were to blame, at least in part, for what he did. They hadn’t noticed Apollo falling apart, hadn’t noticed him retreating into himself more and more until there was just a hollow shell of a god smiling and prancing around Olympus like nothing was wrong.
You don’t know what to do
How can you live with the knowledge that it was your fault?
You consider it, once or twice
Following in his footsteps
But you’re always talked back off that ledge
You live in limbo, unsure of what to do with your life
And then someone tells you to help
Go and help those who were suffering like he was
Make sure none of them have to feel like he did
There at the end
Help, where you had once overlooked