A/N: So there's not much point in pointing out the chapter's late anymore, I should probably just start pointing out when I manage to get it up on time. Anyway, this sort of worked out since this first scene takes place on the Fourth of July and I wound up getting to post it on said day! Happy Independence Day, my American readers! This first scene was actually supposed to be chapter one, but that didn't work. Then it was gonna be chapter two but that didn't feel right either. Finally, I was able to fit it in here.
ForeverACharmedOne, well, it was bound to be poor someone else at some point, right? I'm sure Jack doesn't mind the break, either, haha. Bloody Rice Ball, Yeah, no one's really happy with Cupid right now. As far as whether Rowan comes back or not, patience! ArouraBorialice, thank you! AkariWolfPrincess, yes, we're only getting started with this story's drama! Fenrir Wylde Razgriz, I'm actually very superstitious and definitely believe in ghosts, so no jokes there! Thank you though. dinohuntsmen, at least someone's willing to ally with North. Hina, thank you so much! What a nice review, I'm glad that the story's been enjoyable for you so far.
If it was annoying to have North, who he actively liked and respected, fuss over his sleep schedule and how he was feeling, it was certainly annoying to have any of the Muses that he had previously avoided and disdained do it.
Chapter Seven: Wish You Were Here
The days were long this time of year, sunset not for at least another few hours. The sky was clear and the air was warm.
Small children whined in protest as their parents pulled them away from their play to slather them with SPF-something or another. They stared longingly at sprinklers, water balloons, and bicycles.
Not a single picnic table was vacant, and the smell of burning coals was thick in the air. A number of passionate debates could be heard over what the "proper" way to cook a hamburger was.
The latest summer hits were playing on old radios with long antennas, and newer devices plugged into small, sleek speakers.
Snow cones, ice cream, apple pie.
American flags.
Red, white, and blue streamers.
It was the Fourth of July, Independence Day, and there were plenty of places that Jack Frost should be that weren't Burgess, Pennsylvania.
This time of year, he should be making it snow in New Zealand, or lurking around somewhere further north.
If it were the Independence Day celebrations he was after, why not visit the capitol or any other city that might have more extravagant festivities?
Well, Jack had spent most of the last two-hundred plus July fourths here, in Burgess. He loved watching the picnic, the fireworks, the kids running around and having fun.
True, it wasn't the same as snowball fights and sledding, but fun was fun, right?
Or, at least, that's how he had felt previous years.
He had hoped that this would be a distraction, a break, a chance to have fun and feel good again.
But watching the kids play, particularly these kids, was leaving a bitter taste in his mouth. His gaze kept falling back to the road that led to the cemetery.
It was almost annoying, really.
Jack had never spent an Independence Day with Rowan, so why was he noticeably upset that she wasn't here for this one?
He adjusted his position on the high branch of one of the trees in the park as he thought about her.
He thought about her donning a pair of sunglasses and complaining of the heat. She had mentioned a preference for the winter months, and the snowflake featured on the tattoo on her side left him inclined to believe she wasn't just saying as much for his benefit.
He pictured her running through the grass after the kids, being coaxed into joining a water balloon fight.
He could almost see her, so clearly, sitting in the shade and telling them another story, her eyes lighting up, sparkling in the way they always did when she got lost in a tale.
His heart ached, wanting this imagined scenario so badly as he saw Jamie Bennett and a few of his friends go by on their bikes a ways away. Jamie was tagging along toward the back, rather than leading as he usually did.
In this imagined scenario, Jack's heart didn't sink every time he saw Jamie. The boy still looked at him with admiration and excitement. Jack Frost was still fun, and a welcome addition to the group.
Oh, how things had changed.
If he was going to spend the day thinking about her anyway, maybe he would go visit Rowan's grave. Maybe he would wish her a Happy Independence Day, now that he knew she was likely to hear him.
Bitterly, Jack supposed that she might actually be having a better day than he was, wherever she was.
How on earth could she be happy not to be here?
Guilt settled in his stomach again at his resentment toward her for daring to be happy.
Maybe coming to Burgess had been a bad idea. What had once been a place so significant to only himself now had Rowan Sawyer everywhere he turned.
"'Ey, Vato," came a voice from down toward the trunk of the tree. Jack was used to not responding when someone called. After all, he was invisible to so many. But this voice was familiar, and so close, that he glanced down, finding a short woman standing there, straining to look up at him.
Cocking a brow, Jack abandoned his place on the branch and landed gracefully on the ground beside her. Her dark hair was styled into a fauxhawk, with the sides dyed red. Her brown eyes and facial piercings were hidden behind a large pair of sunglasses.
"Isn't it a little warm for you to be hanging around here?" she asked. "Don't want to piss off Mother Nature, especially now."
"She'll be fine as long as I don't make it snow," Jack shrugged. He hadn't been expecting to run into any mythical beings today, and had been doing a fine job avoiding everyone for the past few days. He supposed that had to come to an end at some point, and was at least grateful that it hadn't been Melpomene that he had run into again. "What are you doing here, Euterpe?"
"Thought I'd visit my sister," Euterpe said, gesturing toward the same road Jack had observed earlier. "Then I realized there was a barbeque happening and I do like those…"
"This is a pretty small town, I don't know that you can crash their community barbeque without them questioning who you are," Jack said, eyes fixed to the road with a frown.
"I'm someone's cousin, that usually works," the Muse shrugged. "Or, you know, I'll just make sure none of them can see me. Like you're not gonna steal some food or something later, right?"
"I dunno, I was just gonna watch from a distance," Jack mumbled.
"Well. That's not creepy at all," Euterpe scoffed. Jack couldn't help but smile slightly. At least she wasn't fussing over him or questioning his recent sleeping habits or something. He would take a bit of teasing over that any day.
In the past few months, the Muses in general seemed to have joined forces with the Guardians not only in the alliance, but in worrying about Jack and how he was dealing with Rowan's death. He hadn't expected his truce with Calliope to result in the Muses suddenly caring about him.
While that sounded nice in theory, especially considering how long Jack had only had himself to rely on, he was having a hard enough time dealing with the Guardians and their concern. Not to mention, he had history with the Muses, unpleasant history.
If it was annoying to have North, who he actively liked and respected, fuss over his sleep schedule and how he was feeling, it was certainly annoying to have any of the Muses that he had previously avoided and disdained do it.
Euterpe wasn't annoying, though. If she was here solely to check up on him, it sure wasn't showing. She was relaxed, casual. There wasn't any pressure talking to her, and he could say that for very few of the Muses.
"Why don't you come with me to see Rowan? Stop moping around by yourself for ten minutes," the youngest Muse said.
"I'm not moping around!" Jack protested, knowing it was a lie. His entire day was destined to consist of watching everyone else celebrate and being sad that Rowan wasn't there and that Jamie hated him now.
"What do you call sitting in a tree all by yourself, sighing dramatically and watching other people have fun?" Euterpe asked. "Besides 'creepy,' I mean, we already established that."
"I wasn't sighing dramatically!"
"I like that that's the part you argue about," Euterpe laughed, turning her heel and heading for the street, gesturing for him to follow.
Sighing (though not dramatically, thank you very much), Jack kicked off the ground and caught up with her, hovering just a few inches above the ground the whole way. "I never said I was coming with you."
"And yet, here you are," Euterpe said. A woman walked by, passing straight through Euterpe. She shivered slightly, "That's always so weird."
"At least you can turn it on and off," Jack said, wishing he could do as much.
He could think of a number of things that would have been so much easier if he was visible to the average mortal.
Most of these things involved a certain deceased storyteller.
"Yeah, but it's hard to learn that. It took me over a year to figure it out. Our natural state is not to be seen by mortals. But, you know, sometimes people require different approaches to be inspired," Euterpe shrugged. "What's awkward is when you forget people can see you and you walk into them because you're expecting to just walk through them."
"Do you do that a lot?"
"More than I'd like to admit," she said with a smile. "So why are you here, Frosty? Visiting your girlfriend?"
"I'm always here on the fourth," Jack said, wincing a bit at her last comment. Was Rowan still his girlfriend now that she was dead? Was dying the same as breaking up? He supposed, technically, he was single again. "But I was probably going to visit her, too, yeah. I was thinking about her. Do you come by a lot?"
"Not too much, I usually come with Terpsichore if I come at all," Euterpe admitted. "But I felt like today would be a good day. What about you, visit her a lot?"
"Every now and again," Jack said. "Honestly, I don't think she would want me lurking by her grave too much instead of, you know, doing my job."
"Probably, but it wouldn't be the first time you blew off some of your responsibilities for her," Euterpe pointed out.
"Hey, winter still happened, didn't it?" Jack said, forcing a neutral expression. Of course winter had happened; Rowan got hypothermia and drowned thanks to winter happening. "I also like that you suggested I go visit her grave with you as an alternative to 'moping around,' because… obviously her grave is going to be much more cheerful, right?"
"Well, the company will be better," Euterpe shrugged as they passed the cemetery gates. "Plus, cemeteries don't necessarily have to be gloomy. It's all about perspective. I spent lots of time by my grandparents' graves when I was alive. I liked to keep them updated, especially my abuela. My family always believed they were still with us, keeping an eye on everything."
"Do you visit them any now?" Jack asked, curious.
Euterpe shook her head. "The graveyard's gone now. They built over it. Pretty messed up, right?"
Jack winced at the thought, nodding in agreement.
How long would he get to visit Rowan's grave before something happened to it? A few centuries? Maybe?
Did it matter? He knew the grave meant little if her soul was in some kind of afterlife. But he liked the idea of having a place to visit her.
The apartment she used to live in was now occupied by someone else. Jack had lurked by the window out of curiosity, finding it messy, with mostly bare walls except for a handful of energy drink posters. The boy who had moved in spent a great deal of time playing violent video games.
Her room at her parents' house was dark and mostly untouched. A few boxes from her apartment had been stored there. Her parents weren't yet ready to do anything with her belongings. He had visited a handful of times but it just wasn't the same without her there.
That left the grave as some sort of depressing consolation prize.
They approached the plot a moment later, fresh flowers lying before the stone. Euterpe let out a whistle at the amount. "Someone's popular."
"Yeah, her story's still in the news every now and again," Jack sighed. "The police haven't figured out what happened before she died yet, obviously. They think it was some kind of kidnapping but there's no real proof."
"Oh yeah, Terpsichore and I looked it up online a few weeks ago. I read that they want to make it one of those made for tv movies," Euterpe said. "And the conspiracy theorists are going wild, so many people are convinced she was abducted by aliens."
"A movie? What would the plot even be? They don't know what happened," Jack sighed.
"I imagine it would be a dramatic interpretation of her life beforehand, a re-enactment of that security footage they've got, and then a black screen with the caption, 'Rowan Sawyer mysteriously disappeared that night. The investigation is still ongoing.' And then that would be the end of it," Euterpe said. "But I'm sure her parents would never sign off on it."
"Yeah, I don't see that happening," Jack said, incredibly uncomfortable with the idea of strangers making up scenarios that might explain Rowan's disappearance, theorizing what her life must have been like leading up to it.
He wasn't sure how she would feel about becoming a character in a story, but he certainly didn't like it. He knew what happened, and it hadn't been fun or pretty.
"Just for laughs, though, who do you think would play her in the movie?" Euterpe smirked. "She kinda looked like that one girl from Twilight."
"I don't really see that," Jack said, shaking his head. He often had to look at the photos he had of Rowan, in the hopes that he wouldn't forget what she looked like. He had a mental checklist of all the features he'd memorized before her death.
Brown eyes. Pointed nose. Two beauty marks. Soft lips. Oval face. Knobby shoulders. Freckles. Long fingers. A scar on her right thumb.
The last thing he wanted to do was start to forget her.
"Not the main one, the other one, the one with the short hair that could tell the future or whatever," Euterpe said.
"Oh, okay, maybe," Jack said.
"Her, or like, the other actress that looks just like her, the singing one," Euterpe said.
"Do you know any of their names?" Jack laughed, thankful for a conversation topic that was at least somewhat lighthearted.
"I mean, some of them. They all come and go so quickly!" Euterpe said, shaking her head. "What about you, who would play you? The mysterious, possibly made-up, possibly an alien in disguise if you ask the conspiracy theorists, boyfriend?"
"Um, shit, I don't know. Probably some scrawny nobody," Jack shrugged.
"What about that, uh, that guy that's the new Spider-Man? He's got the sarcastic little asshole thing down," Euterpe suggested.
"Eh, maybe," Jack said.
"Or, shit, I know this guy's name. Wait for it. He was in some sci-fi movie… name's like a tree… shit… Chris Pine! Chris Pine should play you," Euterpe said with a nod, looking victorious as she managed to remember an actor's name.
"The Star Trek guy? We look nothing alike!" Jack said, cocking a brow.
"You have the same exact voice though," Euterpe said. "It's weird."
"No, we don't," Jack said, shaking his head with a laugh.
"Uh, yeah, you do," Euterpe insisted, nodding her head vigorously.
"No, we don't."
"I'm the Muse of Song, I think I know a thing or two about voices, and I say your voices are exactly the same and it's kind of creepy, so there," Euterpe said, as though that ended the argument. "But fine, what about, uh, I don't know, Leonardo DiCaprio or something?"
"Maybe Leonardo DiCaprio from like, fifteen years ago," Jack said. "Besides, I doubt he wants to play another guy named Jack that has shitty luck with ice."
"True. Plus, crappy tv movies could never afford him. Or probably anyone we've mentioned," Euterpe said. She turned her attention to the grave and said, "Hey, sis, you gotta get popular enough for your story to be major motion picture material, okay? We need a Leonardo DiCaprio budget here."
"You know what she would have liked?" Jack said, smiling slightly as he thought of the character designs she had drawn. "An animated movie."
"Oooh, problem solved! Chris Pine could voice you!" Euterpe said, eyes lighting up.
Jack rolled his eyes. "We don't sound the same."
"You do, though!" Euterpe said. She turned back to the grave. "You gotta come back just so you can back me up on this, Rowan."
"She's my girlfriend, if she's coming back from the dead to back anyone up on an argument, it should be me. Aren't there eight other Muses you could use for that?" Jack asked.
Although, honestly, he could see Rowan taking anyone else's side just to irritate him, especially with an argument this petty.
"Oh, like most of them are gonna care," Euterpe said, settling herself down on the ground at the foot of the grave. "There's way too much on everyone's plate right now. Did you hear about Cupid?"
"No, I haven't talked to anyone in a few days, do I wanna know?" Jack asked, taking a seat as well. He absentmindedly froze the droplets of water left over on the grass from the sprinklers.
"He's been, well, feeding information to Artemis this whole time. Since back before the New Years Eve Ball," Euterpe explained.
"Wait, seriously?" Jack said, not expecting that at all. So much for lighthearted conversation.
Euterpe nodded. "I'm surprised they didn't tell you, apparently she gave the Shadow People the information they needed to trick you that night in Paris."
"What?!" Jack said, eyes wide.
"Cupid didn't know she did it," Euterpe said quickly. "She set it up, but everything he did to help you out that night was genuine on his part. She was trying to solidify his place in the alliance so she could get more information. The hope was that we would get so desperate we would go to her for help. Cupid was trying to help, he thought he was helping by allying himself with her."
"So, Pitch was right?" Jack said, stomach sinking.
"More or less," Euterpe sighed. "On top of that, the reason so many people won't negotiate with us unless we kick Apollo to the curb is because she got to them first."
Jack turned from the Muse beside him and stared at the grave instead, unsure what to do with this information. He had come to trust Cupid, he had truly believed that Cupid didn't have it in him to put the Muses in harm's way.
Did this count as putting them in harm's way if his intentions were good? How much of Cupid's actions had just been an act to get information for Artemis?
Why exactly did Cupid trust Artemis so much, even after what she had done?
"Rowan didn't have to be attacked that night," Jack said, shaking his head. "I've been blaming myself this whole time for falling for it when someone else set the damn thing up?"
"For what it's worth," Euterpe said, "Cupid never wanted that to happen. He was the one that smudged her room and left the crystals. He tried to fix it. And like I said, he didn't know that Artemis had set it up, and he feels so guilty about it."
"You're going to defend him? He went on and on about wanting to protect you all and—and he was leaking information the whole time!" Jack said, shaking his head.
It occurred to him that he had advocated for Cupid's involvement in the alliance in the first place.
Between that and pushing for Pitch's involvement, it was becoming more and more apparent just how thoroughly Jack had screwed Rowan over in an attempt to help her.
His stomach sank. Hadn't Cupid done the same thing? Screwed everyone over in an attempt to help?
"He's my nephew and I love him," Euterpe said. "We're all very disappointed and needless to say, he's not invited to any future meetings. But we're not about to disown him or anything. He was trying to protect us and if Apollo weren't so stubborn Artemis wouldn't have had to go about it in such a round-about sneaky way."
"Yeah," Jack sighed, unsure how to feel, torn between anger over the revelation and understanding over making a huge mess without meaning to.
"We've got to focus on Artemis now, anyway," Euterpe sighed. "Calliope's going to talk to her soon, it sounds like she wants us to just ditch Apollo and join up with her instead."
"Well, Apollo is kind of an asshole," Jack commented.
"Yeah, but he's our asshole," Euterpe said. "I don't know, the whole thing is so complicated. Apollo and Artemis have been fighting for centuries, they only act civil every thousand years or so. Well, so I've heard. Terpsichore and I haven't actually seen them civil in our lifetimes."
"I'm suddenly thankful for the fact that Manny doesn't talk much," Jack said. Euterpe laughed.
"Oh, be glad you don't have to deal with all this, it's not the fun part at all, Rowan," she said, turning back to the grave.
"Oh, she's plenty glad," Jack said, unable to help the bitter tone in his voice. Euterpe raised her sunglasses in order to properly cock a brow at him.
"What do you mean?" she asked.
"I, uh, talked to Baron Samedi," Jack said.
Euterpe giggled. "I bet that was fun."
"Yeah, well. I asked how she was doing and he said she was fine, that she was worried but she was happy and that most people that have crossed over are happy," Jack explained dryly.
"Well, that's good news, right?" Euterpe asked.
"Right," Jack said with a nod, avoiding eye contact with Euterpe in favor of his slight reflection in the polished stone before them.
"Poly always says the afterlife is really nice, but we don't remember or we'd want to go back," Euterpe said. "And I mean, the Baron has no reason to lie. I'm sure she's fine."
"I don't doubt that she is," Jack sighed. That was the problem, after all.
Again, guilt consumed him.
"You… don't like that she's happy, do you?" Euterpe said.
"I didn't say that," Jack said. No, no, he would never say such a terrible thing out loud.
He would just think it and then feel guilty about it and let all those negative emotions stew inside him for an indefinite amount of time.
It was a pretty simple method.
"It's okay, you know," Euterpe said, leaning back on her elbows after setting her sunglasses back on her nose. "To be mad that she's okay with it."
"How on earth is that okay?" Jack asked, chancing a glance at her.
"It just means you're not ready to let them go," Euterpe said. "When my abuelo died, I was about eight years old. I had seven brothers and two sisters, so he and my abuela helped take care of us a lot. About a year after he died, my abuela got sick and didn't fight at all. She had lost all will to live and just wanted to be with him again. She had been such a strong woman, I was so close to her, I admired her so much and it made me so angry that she wouldn't fight to stay with us. She was done and she was content with her decision to die and be with him. I didn't understand how she could be okay with leaving us. I wasn't ready for her to go, but she was. I resented her for a long time after she died."
The two were silent for a moment, the slight breeze rustling the flowers set before Rowan's grave.
Jack hadn't expected Euterpe to share such a personal story from her past.
On one hand, it made him feel a bit better that he wasn't the only one that was less than happy to know that a loved one was fine with being dead.
On the other, Rowan had died so suddenly, and so young. Surely the circumstances were different?
Though, it would be a lie to suppose that Rowan hadn't seen this coming. She had developed such a strong fear that her death was coming, and coming soon, that she had gone as far as making arrangements with Jack so that her stories would be left to Jamie. Perhaps she had already accepted what was coming, as well.
"But you did stop resenting her?" Jack finally said.
"Yes. Being angry is just part of the grieving process. It's understandable to be angry about it. Angry that they're okay with it when you're not, angry at the circumstances that led to it, angry at everyone involved. It all comes down to being angry and sad that they're gone in the first place," Euterpe said. "Just have to ride out the anger. Soon enough you'll accept that she's gone, that it can't be changed, and let her go."
"It can be changed is what's messed up about it," Jack sighed, though he hoped that Euterpe was right, that he would in fact stop being angry about this at some point.
He wasn't sure it would be any time soon.
"Yeah, that must be terrible," Euterpe frowned. "Trying to grieve her and all the while knowing that maybe she'll come back in a few months. If she comes back then you kind of wasted time being sad about it, but if she doesn't, then… well, it could be like losing her all over again."
"Don't remind me," Jack groaned. Euterpe sat up and gently, hesitantly, set a hand to his shoulder.
"Hey, we're about halfway there, at least," the Muse said. "Then you'll have answers, and hopefully she'll come back."
"She didn't want to," Jack said softly. If there had been anything Rowan had made clear ever since finding out she was the Mortal Muse, it was that she did not want to be a Muse.
Euterpe frowned. "I'm not sure anyone really does at first. We weren't really welcoming, either."
"She liked you. Both you and Terpsichore after spending time with you at the ball. I mean, before the new moon when she kind of hated all of you again," Jack said.
"We liked her too," Euterpe said. "Maybe we all could have been friends if the circumstances had been different."
"Maybe," Jack said, having played over different scenarios of how things could have gone in his head over and over.
"Well, if you do come back, I promise to be a better sister," Euterpe said to the tombstone. "It's not gonna be like when I became a Muse. No, you're gonna have someone in your corner, I promise."
"Didn't have an easy time, huh?" Jack said, only having heard part of the story from Thalia.
"Not at all," Euterpe said, shaking her head and pulling herself to her feet. "Anyway, you were right, this wasn't any less gloomy. What do you say to stealing some snow cones?"
"I do like snow cones," Jack said.
"C'mon, then, we'll come back when we have something fun to tell her."
Apollo hadn't made it a secret when he had arrived. He wasn't one for stealth and the flaming horses pulling his chariot were sort of a give-away as they landed in the clearing where Cupid was lurking.
The clearing was used often as a sort of make-out spot for teenagers, but being the middle of the day, it was basically abandoned. Cupid had hoped for some time alone to think and clear his head, but apparently Apollo had other plans.
With a broken wing, Cupid couldn't retreat even if he wanted to, swallowing nervously as the older man made his way toward him, walking with great purpose.
He knew; he had to. It was only a matter of time before word got back to Apollo what Cupid had done. He knew the man would be mad, but just how he would take his anger out was unclear.
That is, until Apollo's fist, decorated with the usual rings, met Cupid's Jaw.
Cupid stumbled back at the sucker punch, wind knocked out of him and struggling for a moment to keep his balance.
"You ungrateful little brat," Apollo spat, grabbing Cupid by the collar and pulling him closer. Cupid could swear, even through the sunglasses the man wore, he could see flames dancing in his eyes. "I. Gave. You. Life."
"It wasn't just you—" Cupid started.
"If it weren't for me, you would have died a bundle of cells with no identity! I'm the reason you and your dear mother are here, the reason you are important, the reason you matter, and this is how you repay me?" Apollo snarled, shoving Cupid to the ground. Cupid couldn't help but cry out in pain as he landed on his broken wing before Apollo leaned over to throw another swing at his face.
"You need to learn some respect, boy! Don't think I've forgotten about your little prank all those years ago! I suppose it makes sense, doesn't it? That you'd run off to Artemis? Auntie Artemis is the whole reason I didn't punish you over Daphne in the first place," Apollo said as Cupid shakily attempted to get back to his feet. "That was a mistake. I should have taught you respect right then and there."
Cupid wiped his mouth, leaving a streak of blood on his hands. He wanted to say that the whole reason the incident with Daphne had occurred in the first place was because of Apollo's lack of respect, but chose not to.
Nothing was going to help his case now.
There was hardly any reasoning with Apollo when he was calm.
Apollo gripped Cupids collar again, slamming the boy into the nearby tree. Another groan at the impact with his wing.
"I could break your other wing. I could tear them from your back. I gave you those wings and I can damn well take them away," Apollo said, pulling Cupid away from the tree only to slam him back against it again. "For this betrayal? I should. I should rip them from your back and watch you bleed. I should make your wings a trophy, a warning to all those that plan to cross me."
Cupid found himself on the ground again after another punch, this one to his eye. His head throbbed and he couldn't help but wish that Apollo wasn't so fond of large rings.
There was little point in fighting back. Cupid wasn't great at hand-to-hand combat; his area of expertise was long-range fighting with the bow and arrow. Besides, this was the guy that had beaten a war god in boxing.
It wasn't a fair fight.
"I did what I thought was right," Cupid said after taking a moment to spit blood from his mouth, glancing Apollo's way again.
"What you thought was right? Who are you to make such a decision? Who are you to act against me, to betray me?" Apollo said, setting a foot to Cupid's chest and pinning him to the ground. "I gave you life, I granted your powers, I AM A GOD."
Cupid coughed as Apollo pressed his heel into his chest. "I am a god, you disrespectful son of a bitch, and I am not the weak new age kind that's all about forgiveness."
Another cough, Apollo's heel dug deeper. Cupid hopelessly reached for the other man's ankle, trying to push it off with no luck.
"I am the ancient, powerful, vengeful kind of god," Apollo said, pulling his foot away before kneeling down. This time he slid his fingers around Cupid's throat. "Let the damage to your pretty face be a warning to everyone. Crossing me is a death sentence, and once again, little Eros got off easy."
Cupid gasped for air as Apollo tightened his grip before slamming the boy against the ground again.
"You can tell my sister," Apollo said, standing upright and straightening his suit, "That if it's a fight she wants, it's a fight she'll get. That is, if you can even manage to speak."
Cupid coughed, wincing in pain as he attempted to pull himself back to an upright position. His entire body throbbed and it was beginning to be difficult to see out of his left eye, which had to be swelling by now.
The splint on his wing had been damaged during the one-sided fight and he would have to ask Clio to help him repair it. That was sure to be a very fun conversation, what with all the Muses angry at him.
Cupid glanced up in time to see Apollo's chariot fly off into the distance, still coughing.
Somehow, he remained unconvinced that Apollo was the best choice in leader.