He wouldn't have noticed her if not for the hair. She was wearing a silly looking yellow poncho, slick and obnoxious, standing with a whole horde of other protesters. The rally had begun early in the morning with a definite anti-war slant, had transformed into anti-government two hours into it and by now it was vaguely a mix between the environment and saving the Endangered (unspecified) Species. All Apollo wanted to do was sketch a bit; he found the contrast of the bright yellows against the muggy grey sky rather pleasing in a bleak way- Artemis would have scoffed. Definitely, she would have.
Her-with-the-hair was in the front, shouting some intelligible comment or the other, her locks down to her waist and swinging around; it was a brassy, vivid ginger, streaked with deep red and shouts of gold that glinted whenever the sun shone feebly through the rain clouds. Apart from that her face was unmemorable, distinguishable only for a pair of bottle-cap glasses with huge, electric-blue rims. He tried to sketch her hair, cursing that because he just couldn't find the right shade.
About half an hour later the protesters decided it was time to take a break and they flocked off in packs. It was beginning to blow, the winds getting steadily stronger, lifting his bits of paper around his hands. He went into a little coffee shop down the street and ordered a steaming mug of hot chocolate; perfect for the dismal weather.
It was just his luck that the place was packed and there was no space left but where she was. He sighed and made his way over. Of course he had to turn on the charm every time he saw a girl; this was no exception.
"Mind if I sit?" He asked, grinning. She shrugged. Up close he could see that her eyes were a mottled, blueish not-really sort of colour.
"Fine by me." She sounded disinterested- a practised lie, though; her eyes would flick towards him every few seconds or so.
"You draw?" She asked, jabbing a finger at his sketchbook. He shrugged in a valiant attempt to feign modesty.
"Sure, a little bit... Doodles here and there."
Before he could react, she had snatched the book from him and was flipping through the pages with violent fervour.
"That's me, innit?" She glared jabbing a finger at the sketch of her he'd captured.
"I like your hair." He replied, winking.
"The ginger's real, as is the gold. The red bits are on purpose." She said shortly after blinking owlishly behind those glasses. He did wish she would take them off. She reached into a woven bag next to her and pulled out a book, something on the environment.
"Really?" he asked, poking a miniature fork through a fluffy marshmallow; powdery snow-dust flakes fell off into the hot, spicy and sweet drink.
"What?"
And then before he could help it, he had shut the book and was talking about how she should read some poetry instead. She countered with a response that poetry was nothing but whimsy and that he should very well concern himself with more concrete matters. They started arguing; it was pretentious at first, both throwing out unnecessary, overtly extravagant words that eventually found themselves hollow. After twenty minutes of intense debate they simmered down to simpler things. The language was simpler too: less what you'd have found on paper and more of what you would have heard spilling easily from mouths. It was, he thought, a rather interesting conversation and he found that he was pleased with the way things were going. He particularly noticed the way she would grab a twist of that Irish hair with her little finger and twirl it.
Then the crowd at the shop got up almost on the clock and she'd stood up as well.
"The protest's starting again." She hesitated. "You coming?"
He paused. To continue the conversation would be interesting, but he didn't fancy standing around with what he considered self-righteous and self-possessed youths to champion for something he had no interest it. She was interesting, he supposed... but he didn't feel particularly like interesting, he realised now. It was fun while it lasted he guessed. Might have better luck down the pier.
"Nah."
"Suit yourself."
And before he could call her back, she was out of the door, a little chime above the step twinkling morosely at her departure.
-x-
He had all but forgotten about her ten years later. The hillside in Scotland was both a mist-wreathed vision of both soft green and craggy grey. The lochs seemed particularly melancholy. He had caught wind of a party happening a ten minute walk away (and four hours later) and he was considering whether or not to join. He was either in the mood for alcohol or he wasn't, simple as that.
A scraggly line of backpacking adults-not young, not old; thirties, mid to late twenties- was walking past his idyllic little corner against the moss-grass and crumbling rock. He caught a flash of colour that reminded him vividly of something, of someone. Then he saw it: perched unceremoniously on a mane of mermaid hair was a pair of bottle-cap electric blue glasses.
She didn't look very much aged- a few lines across the face. He shrouded himself a little bit under his leather jacket and aged up as well, going from almost-adult to well... adult.
He scrambled up to the group and tapped on her shoulder; she was the straggler, not because she was out-of-breath, but because she was staring at the landscape with such profound and earnest amazement that he was finding it terribly hard not to laugh.
"Hey."
She frowned, not recognising him. "I'm sorry, but who are you? Were you with the group?"
He scratched the back of his head, "Protest rally... About ten years ago... We argued about poetry and I won."
Recognition flashed in those eyes. "Oh my God." She drawled as the rest of the group continued on. "You? How the hell are you in Scotland?"
"Wanted to travel, you?"
"Same, but... After all these years? My God... You look barely any different though!" She paused. "Not that I remember though, it's just that stands to reason you'd look older."
He wrinkled his nose at the stuffy tour guide and the pack of tourists in their pastel shirts and hiking shorts. "Want to go discuss poetry or the lack of it somewhere else? I can give a way better tour than this guy. Trust me." He winked.
"Not discussing poetry," she said, musing over the option, "but alright, what the hell."
-x-
They were in one of those mansions hewn out of stone; relics from the past century and long abandoned, sitting mournfully in the midst of the lonely moors. Through an elaborate window with carvings on the edges that seemed almost lace-like in their intricacy, he could see the landscape: a mottled brush of wild grass and hills in the background.
He's had her and it was interesting and it was fine while it lasted. But now she was asleep with a wayward, freckled arm over her forehead and the moon blessing line from her crown to her chin and there was a party he needed to get to.
Oh well.
-x-
"You're twenty-six." The doctor said calmly and slowly; very, very slowly as he tapped a pencil on a pad of paper. "Surely you can afford to take care of it?"
"It was a him, didn't you say?"
She was twenty-six, she had blown almost all her savings on a spur-of-a-moment trip to Britain, she didn't really have a real job and she stayed in a room that she shared with a hemp-wearing, peace-loving ghost hippie who she was pretty sure dealt crack down at Central.
"I really can't, doctor."
The man sighed slowly and laboriously. There was a cup of freshly brewed coffee on his immaculate desk.
"You still want to have it?"
"Of course I still want to have him!"
"What then, adoption?"
She paused, tapping her fingers on the table; he glared. "Well, you know the closed adoption thing that people do? I've thought about it and I figured that that would be best, won't it? I mean I don't have the means and I'd rather he grow up somewhere where he can have a chance, you know, doc? And if I'm still in his life, meddling... that would cause all this unneeded tension. I just want him to have a stable life. Can I do that- the closed adoption thing?" She felt a peculiar tingling behind her eyes because goddammit, she loved the child that was growing inside of her; it was a mother's intuition but she knew that he'd grow up well and if she couldn't do her best for him -if her best wasn't good enough- then maybe she should stop being so selfish.
"Yes, yes." The doctor snapped in a voice that told her he didn't really care. "You can do the 'closed adoption thing'."
-x-
The child spent thirteen happy and contented years with his adoptive parents before they were killed in a car crash; it was a hot, sweltering day and the truck driver coming from behind was sixty-five and had a failing memory.
They didn't have a chance.
-x-
They had had no relatives.
He didn't want to go back to his home, which wasn't a home at all without his parents. Anyway he had had monsters trailing him for quite a while, though they were mostly lurking and waiting. Of course, he didn't tell anyone, his friends would have just lolled out their tongues and crossed their eyes and gestured at the hospital down the street.
He would have been killed three days into his solo journey if not for the satyr that found him wandering aimlessly on the fringe of the forest. He'd been brought the Camp, where he learned about his ancestry, about his heritage. It was a bit of a rocky start at first, but at least his father had claimed him, and he was fast falling into the rhythm of things.
The kindly centaur who ran the place -less amusing but more welcoming that the old drunkard who gambled every day- assured him that all the legal business was taken care of, whatever that meant.
It took a few months to settle into the routine: summer brought camping and activities and freedom; the rest of the year those who were rounders sat in one of the buildings and listened as Chiron taught them 'real world subjects' because he was determined that should they be shuttled out into normal society, they would have a platform to success.
Dionysus sat in the shade of a willow tree and laughed.
-x-
He had decided to follow Argus down into the city with a couple of other kids-it was mostly full of Demeter children, plus two of Dionysus's kids-who had come along. The man was to be completing the orders that had been set by various shops in the city for crates of strawberries, the scent of them rich and heady; those luminescent red jewels carried within them sweetness, sunshine and fog.
For the rest of them, it was a chance to get away from Camp during the weekend and poke around the City a little bit. Argus made them promise to drop an Iris-message if they ran into trouble; he passed them each a drachma. He also made them promise to be back at four o' clock sharp. He didn't actually say anything of course, but he passed around a piece of paper and made them all sign a pact.
So now the boy ambled lazily down the pavement (alone, the rest of the boys decided that they'd wanted to spend the day watching some movie he wasn't interested in), internally laughing at the unnatural poses of the mannequins behind their shiny glass displays. Presently he came upon a hole-in-the-wall art shop, the door a rich teak with a delicate, carved knocker.
Deciding that he needed some charcoal for a series of sketches he would be embarking on, he went in.
Instead of the quiet he expected, he saw that the old shopkeeper was having a rather vehement argument with a college-aged boy wearing the maroon apron of the establishment.
"I told you, you signed up for the night so you have to toe it! There's no one else who-"
"Oh screw the hell out of it!" The kid shouted, wrenching off the apron, "I'm leaving, old man!" He crumpled the offending object into a ball and tossed it onto the counter, brushing past the boy as he left.
The old man put a finger to his forehead.
"You okay, sir?" He asked and the man looked up.
"Say, would you like to earn a couple of quick bucks?"
"Yes, sir!"
The man's face lit up in relief and he pointed at a crate standing in the corner. "Bring this down to the orphanage down the road, could you? And hand this form to the lady to sign, make sure she's the right one. Come back with the form and I'll pay you. The place is just a block down, can't miss it. Actually, you can, so best keep an eye out?"
He grabbed the crate and the form and rushed out. The place- a little elizabethian style building- was clustered between ramshackle, abandoned storehouses that creaked mournfully.
If not for the instructions, he would have thought that the whole street was unpopulated and empty save for rats, perhaps.
He rang the bell and a set of hurried footsteps rushed to the door after about three mintues.
"Yes, do you-"
Her mouth formed a clean, simple O when she saw the boy. He.. he had her brassy, gold-tinged hair (without the red streaks, and his was manageable). He had no trace of him-from-Scotland but he had her father's features; she herself took more after her mother. But his eyes, different shape, yes, but the barely-there colour, the iniquisitive expression... Those were her eyes, weren't they?
Closed adoption, she reminded herself. It might be a coincidence.
But the way he tugged on his left earlobe -a habit she had as well- and the way he stood with one knee bent in front of the other-just like her...
Closed adoption. She had given up and she had no right to barge in and ruin what was no doubt a pleasant life. His clothes were nice, he exuded an aura of someone who was well cared for and who was pleased with his lot, his face was exuberant and content- if somewhat puzzled.
"Yes?" She croaked.
"Um, yeah... We're from the Old Calligraphy place?" He said, reading from the form, forgetting that he was referring only to himself. The lady was creeping him out a little with the intensity of her gaze. "We're sorta... well we're stand-ins, I guess, and we've got to deliver this to you."
She took the box under her arm and took the form from his fingers, trembling.
"Sign here, please." He said with childish dictation.
"Of course." She handed him back the form.
She hoped briefly that he would recognise the surname but then realised that he would have taken on his adoptive parent's last name. She had to shut the door. She had to do right now before she could tell him, before she could ask him, before she could trample on his innocent, unknowing life.
"Thank you." She turned around and shut the door behind her, the latch falling with a measured thump.
Outside, he shrugged, confused but not thinking much about it, really, before running back to collect his earnings. Inside, the woman with the sunlight hair clutched the box of art supplies and tried her hardest not to cry.
-x-
Just as he turned the corner he was met by one of the boys from camp who had a harried expression on his face.
"Where've you been? Argus has been looking for you. Worried and stuff."
"Delivering stuff from some shop. It's an orphanage down there." He pointed.
The friend squinted. "That's just as a street of well, nothing, isn't it?"
"Thought so too, but apparently there's an orphanage."
"Oh. Well, let's hurry. Argus is getting pissed. He doesn't say it but he was glaring with all those eyes..." He gave an involuntary shudder and they both ran back to the van.
-x-
When he died, in a way not uncommon for half-bloods, she was unaware apart from a sudden throbbing in her skull. She suspected her usual migraines and she made sure that the children seated at the table were all ready for lunch before she crossed over to the medicine cabinet to take some of the pills that the other matron had got for her. She popped them and chugged down a glass of water, her hands gripping the edges of the sink tightly as she shuddered.
She did not feel better.
-x-
The whole of New York had fallen asleep; around them their friends were bloody and bruised and still fighting the enemy. Fires would break out here and there, their brilliant flames of homage paying heed to the dark and storming skies.
Williamsburg Bridge had collapsed and the Apollo cabin was picking their way through the ruin, trying to put out the fires. It was quiet in this part of the City; they were sheltered from the world even as it pressed down upon them, like goldfish in glass bowls.
"What's around the street, Will?" A girl named Kayla asked warily, her hand poised on an arrow.
"Nothing's there," the one called Austin answered, "Just old buildings, abandoned storehouses..."
Will Solace frowned, drinking in the scene. This was familiar to him; if only he could just remember... Then he got it, a memory of him trying to find a friend who was going to be late for a trip back...
"There's an orphanage down there." He said, "At least there should be."
"You sure?"
"Yeah, yeah I'm pretty sure." He wouldn't have remembered at all if it hadn't been for the woman who'd stared at his friend for so long, so oddly; like a little girl who had found her favourite doll, except in another child's arms.
They hurried down to the building to do the check-up. Sure enough, they smelled smoke; thick and harsh. They broke down the door and rushed towards the kitchen, which was empty apart from a woman in a nightgown with her head on the table. Streams of the puffy, choking smoke were rising from the stove, where a pot of soup had been set earlier. The whole countertop was awash with the grasping hands of the flames, a tiny stream of which was making its way towards the slumbering lady.
"Get her out!" Will demanded and Austin scampered to obey as Will, Kayla and their two other siblings brought in water from a pump-hose located near the kitchen exit and sprayed it at the flames. About twenty soot-blackened, sparkling water-wet minutes later, the fire was merely sputtering pathetically. Will gave it another feverish douse and the flames collapsed all together.
"We'll go check in on the rest of the place." Kayla said.
"I'll make sure she's okay." Will gestured to the lady.
He and Austin pulled her towards one of the sofas in the makeshift lobby and placed her atop it. Woven blankets in primary colours littered the soft, worn leather. An old bagpipe was set by the floor.
Will frowned at her. "Hey Austin, doesn't she look familiar?"
"Huh?"
"The lady: her hair... I dunno she just does. She looks a lot like... Lee." He said the name with nostalgia and regret and a fierce rush of pride because the war hero had been his brother and even in death he was dear to him.
"Yeah." His friend replied mournfully. "She actually really does."
The rest of their cabin clambered down the stairs and they left the orphanage to put out the rest of the fires around the city. In a while they would make their way back to headquarters to help the wounded.
Inside the old building, sheltered from the world, children lay asleep in their beds, tiny arms clutching friends made of stuffing and flannel.