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Apollo is the god of music, and so when his half-sister comes to him with a plea for a mortal’s rescue, he yawns low and long.
But the sirens had such catchy songs, he says vapidly, and Athena rages.
There’s a musical quality to her voice, something like the last pluck of a lyre before a string snaps. It’s the sound of concealed misuse, of damage never repaired; the air resonates with it as she speaks, the dissonance painful. Apollo trembles in sympathy.
(He has composed countless songs about heartbreak and grief. He hears their echoes in her voice.) (The king of Ithaca means nothing to him, but he can’t bear to hear his half-sister’s guilt so clearly.)
If it means so much to you, release him, he hums, faux-casual, and the dissonance eases as Athena storms off. Within moments, the world is silent again.
- - -
Apollo is the god of archery, and so he treats the sudden appearance of his half-sister as the threat it is.
Athena wields her fear like a well-notched arrow, aimed and pointed. Apollo feels the air quivering like a bowstring, shaking with unreleased tension.
His half-sister has always drawn the world taut in her wake, watching and waiting for her fears to justify themselves before she acts. (She is unlike their father in that way, and unlike Apollo, both of whom prefer to find a target and shoot in the same instant.) Athena has the well-balanced warrior-pose of an archer, and her keen eyes are fixed on him, analyzing strategies and probing for weaknesses. She sees him as an guileless opponent, this conversation as a battle she will win. It sets his hackles rising and his competitive spirit pumping. A goddess of war is hard to defeat, but not impossible, and he knows his half-sister well.
He turns away, a target in an empty field. (The best way to divert a skilled archer’s aim is to provide a distraction.)
But it’s his fault I can’t listen to the sirens’ songs anymore, he laments, a ridiculous, idiotic criticism that strikes at the heart of her concentration. She reels backwards in shock. Bullseye. He loves seeing the goddess of wisdom lost for words.
But- But they were trying to-
Yeah, yeah, alright, he says, grinning. He’s won the battle. He doesn’t care much for the war. Release him.
She leaves, and he picks up his quiver, already wondering if he can goad Artemis into a duel before nightfall.
- - -
Apollo is the god of medicine, so he’s far too wrapped up in his own scientific pursuits to properly listen to Athena’s description of a fragile, breakable mortal trapped on some island.
The mortal is a warrior, he thinks absently, so he must be a killer. He’s listened to Poseidon grousing about one of his sons, and overheard Hades moaning about a recent influx of Ithacan souls. (And wasn’t there something about-)
He drowned all the sirens, he remembers aloud, surprised at the memory. The very idea of an aquatic creature drowning - it’s extraordinary. He wishes he could have studied them as they died, seen if their lungs took in water or if their gills were affected by their tail’s dismemberment.
In any case, setting that kind of murderous madman loose isn’t something any healer should support, and he says so. Athena nearly growls with frustration, burdened with the effort to justify the taking of a life, and quickly points out that the remaining sirens will have learned from the experience.
Apollo sighs. It’s true enough that no siren will ever be quite so cautious around humans again, at least for as long as ancestral memory lasts. (If anything, this gives him the once-in-an-immortal-lifetime opportunity to study how long it takes for their population to rebound. He might be able to generalize the effects on the nearby ecosystem to help other creatures, mortal and immortal alike, recover from similar environment-destroying phenomena-)
He turns back to his work, already scribbling out plans, and then remembers Athena. He waves dismissively at her expectant figure. Yes, fine, release him.
- - -
Apollo is the god of the sun, and of truth, and so even before his half-sister accosts him, he is well-acquainted with Odysseus’s story from the years he has watched the mortal from his chariot.
It’s grown exhausting to watch the warrior-king suffer under the daughter of Atlas. He remembers the boar-killing child, heart alight with triumph, and the bloodthirsty warrior, eyes burning with flame. It’s unfortunate to see the man now cringe away from every sunrise, to watch the light in the man’s eyes smothered and doused until all that’s left is cold detachment and dark unspoken longing for the people he will never again see.
(He imagines what it would be like, to shut oneself away. The horror of it, and the pain. He is certain that no man, mortal or otherwise, can truly survive it.)
Athena, desperate to convince, speaks to him about her friend’s kindness (Apollo remembers a decade-old dawn on the walls of Troy, a trembling fist releasing an infant’s robes), his wisdom (Apollo watched as Odysseus screamed his name to the Cyclops, doomed by reckless pride), and his integrity (“but we’ll die,” a soldier whispered as the last of the light overhead faded, and Apollo shuddered at the distant crack of lightning).
Athena is attempting to lie to the god of truth, and he smiles. What about the sirens? he asks quietly, and her eyes widen.
Despite the eons’ worth of opportunities of study that his chariot offers him, the Olympians often think him daft and uninformed of the mortal world far below. As a rule, he doesn’t care enough to correct them. He doesn’t mind that Athena is lying to him - rather, he hopes his half-sister isn’t lying to herself.
She hesitates, and he raises his eyebrows.
(Odysseus killed the sirens, of course, and perhaps it was even justified. But to truly help him, Athena must become aware of more than that - his intense hubris, his dangerous and all-consuming obsession with getting home, his burning grief, and what is most obvious to Apollo: that though the mortals’ war ended ten years ago, it is still raging in this mortal’s heart.) (If Athena deserts Odysseus again, breaks him again, nothing of their relationship will survive.)
Athena meets his eyes. There’s a new kind of grief in her expression - she has realized, finally, that the Odysseus she thought she knew will never return, just as each time the sun rises the sky is changed - and yet she looks all the more determined. Now they’ll tread with caution first, she says, and does not mean the sirens.
Apollo clasps his half-sister’s shoulder firmly. If that’s true, he says, smile warm, release him.
- - -
Apollo is the god of prophecy, and so he only pretends to be surprised when his half-sister (ichor-streaked, bones shattered, eyes empty) asks him (let him go, she whispers to their god-king, and falls) to free her friend (Odysseus: husband, father, son, fool, hermit, madman, warrior, god-killer, king) (grief kills him in a month if Apollo stays silent) (Charybdis kills him in two days if it is not Hermes who retrieves him) (time and mortality kill him regardless, and Athena is always broken at his bedside) (in three hundred years, his line will be obsolete) (in three millennia, they will all be the stuff of myth, weakened beyond despair).
But with so many sirens gone, he starts, a token argument (if he accepts without question, Father grows all the more vengeful) (if he presses too hard, Athena falters) (he has spent the last seven years collecting serums to heal trident-wounds and his thoughts keep straying to the water).
Athena (half-sister, goddess, wise, stubborn, half as alone as she thinks she is and twice as afraid as she wants to be) opens (the door to the weapons hall, the gift Odysseus gives her at his son’s wedding, her eyes wide and laughs for the first time after Odysseus’s death when Telemachus asks her to hold his daughter in her godly arms) her mouth (pressed lips as she surveys Poseidon’s broken body, cracked teeth from her encounter with Zeus) and says (whispers, sobs, snarls, praises, screams), The sirens (it takes a hundred years for their population to recover) (only a thousand for them to forget Odysseus’s name) were trying to do him worse (the survivors of Odysseus’s massacre try to end the line of Laertes seventeen times) (Athena never lets them succeed), all he did was reimburse them (“LOOK WHAT YOU’VE TURNED ME INTO”) (agony rips open a god, shatters oceans)-
If that’s true (it is), Apollo gasps (he will fade after Athena, before Zeus) (he is an immortal and it is so hard to care about anything) (he is so afraid of not caring about anything) (he has lost the will to care before and will again and so will Athena and so will every god he knows and will know because immortality means flirting with nihilism until you find something to care about for the heartbeat it will be alive) (for Apollo it is easy because he always knows what he will love) (for Apollo it is impossible because he always knows how he will lose it).
Athena begs (I’ve played your game and won!) him with her eyes (rolled up in her head, half-blind with pain he stands back and lets their father inflict). Apollo hesitates (he knows what he will say) (it is fated) (he cannot despise fate but his sister’s golden blood smells sickly sweet as it pools in his palms) (guilt will always taste familiar, and its bitterness will never ease) (he has no choice) (HE HAS NO CHOICE) (and he never will).
Release him, he says only, and his half-sister thanks him as she leaves (Bellerophon falling, Phaethon falling, Icarus falling, and always too late to be saved).