maskormenacelogs | ( closed ) somebody told me this was a calling

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( closed ) somebody told me this was a calling

WHO: M and Lester
WHERE: Lester's apartment → eventually M's place
WHEN: shortly after Shamtheon
WHAT: Andy isn't anywhere to be found, and Lester has zero idea why - but he knows someone who might.
WARNINGS: none yet; will edit if any crop up.

It's been two days since Andy's answered any of his texts. One night isn't a big deal. Lester isn't her babysitter, and she probably got swept up in the same nonsense that had transformed Martin. (He hoped not. He also didn't know what else to blame it on - one-night stands? Multiple one-night stands?) But two, possibly bordering on three? He doesn't know what to make of her continued absence.

If any of his texts had bounced back, he would've thought that Lachesis had finally sent her home. Except the wall of text had just kept lengthening with time, and frankly, terrible haikus. After composing the third terrible one, he decides that he needs an answer of some kind.

Rather than bother Martin, he knows someone who might have more insight on her whereabouts. He doesn't hesitate to pull out the doorbell M gave him. Technically, it's for emergencies and knitting club. This counts as one, right?

So he rings it, taking a breath as he waits for M (and just for good measure, brews up some Greek coffee - he can't be a rude guest, after all). Whatever happens, he just hopes he gets a solid answer.

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M hears the bell go off in his head (it operates off the same implants that allow his assets to call him), but when he realizes who it is, it takes him a bit to actually send a Door. He isn't sure exactly what Lester knows about what went down, and if he's being completely honest with himself, doesn't exactly want to know. It's why he drowns out his implants as they start running the odds.

Eventually he relents, sending the familiar golden archway into Lester's kitchen. That's where the bells GPS had him, anyway.

Oh thank gods, M's actually letting him in. Lester allows himself a sigh of relief as he follows that archway into M's place (and of course, brings that beautifully roasted coffee with him).

"Hey," he offers, once he sees M, with a smile that doesn't quite reach his face. "I come in peace?"

One glance at the coffee and M has his answer, and Lester's greeting only drives the point home. Something tells him when all is said and done, that kid's going to wish he didn't bring it over here.

"Somehow I doubt that." M replies, not moving from his spot on the couch. "Have a seat."

More of a command than a request, his tone is a bit softer than it normally is.

That's an unusual amount of kindness, especially when it's just the two of them. If they had had an audience, and they were pretending to be father and son again, it would be one thing. But there's no audience here. No one to fake a reaction for, and no one to report on the doting imPorts to the nearest press.

"Okay." Lester swallows, setting down the coffee and taking a seat nearby. Clearly everything isn't okay, but he's not sure how to broach asking this. So he just tries for, "Contrary to popular belief, you know, I don't..." (Deep breaths, Lester.) "I don't think you're actually the worst."

Hey, he likes to play the jerk, but he always place the nice and/or lovable jerk (unless you're on his shit list, but Lester is nowhere near that list). And that's on a good day. Today... well today he's got no time for his trolling.

"Your belief in me is touching," he replies once Lester's sitting. "Though don't make declarations you can't keep."

As if an ex-god of truth would lie. Especially about something as important as how he feels about a mortal (immortal? kind of immortal?). Lester pauses, clasping his hands together and tapping his feet against the floor.

"I'm not lying." He would be offended, if the mood didn't feel so tense. "But I didn't call you about my truth-telling. I just... I haven't seen Andy lately, and if she's not with me, she's usually with you or Martin."

There's the question he was waiting for, but truthfully was hoping wouldn't come. He leans against his kitchen island and forces himself to meet Lester's gaze.

"She's gone," he replies, fighting to keep his tone neutral. "She was one of the people turned by that god nonsense... and I... took her out of the equation."

"You... what?"

He had to have misheard that. Sure, M's inhumanly strong. The guy is pretty much the poster child for all that Ares and Enyo represent. But Lester can't fathom M killing someone like Andy without a good reason. Besides -

Lester swallows, struggling to process this, "Isn't she immortal?"

Nope, he heard him exactly right.

"That's what I was banking on," he admits. "Still waiting for her to show up."

"Well, fuck."

Lester exhales, his shoulders sagging with a weight that suits someone far older and world-weary than this pale imitation of a teenage body. Andy, the Andromache of legend, was dead. It didn't sound, or feel, remotely real.

But M doesn't have a joke or witty quip at the ready, and Lester - no, Apollo doesn't feel like supplying it either. Murder is still murder. Andromache won't rise from the ashes unless her nanites decide to kick into overtime, and neither of them seem to know when (or how) that would happen.

Hastily, he rubs his eyes with his hand, drawing in another breath.

"Did she..." How should he phrase this? "Do you think she felt any pain?"

M's usually extremely proud of his ability to kill anything, but today is not one of those days. He did what he had to do in a shitty situation, but that doesn't make the situation any better. It was Andy.

"I wasn't in the business to hurt her," he mumbles. "I wanted it to be painless. She wasn't in her right mind."

"I gathered that much."

The words come out a little too fast and bitter, but honestly - Apollo doesn't bear M any real ill will. Murdering someone, even when it's for the good of the people, is heinous, and only the worst feel no remorse when staring down at the life he had just taken.

He grows quiet, rubbing away at tears that refuse to leave.

After what feels like an eternity, he manages to spit out, "At least... at least you got her before she hurt anyone else."

Normally "nothing" is exactly what M feels after killing someone. It's what he was made to do--he's got no qualms about doing it. It's only when it's a friend that it apparently makes a difference to the killing machine.

M doesn't expect to hear words of encouragement of any kind, not from Lester, not from anyone, so he's surprised when he does. Lester should be cursing him out (and rightfully so), not trying to make him feel better.

"Maybe one day I'll believe that," he replies quietly.

Another few seconds pass as Lester struggles to keep his tears under check. No matter how much he cries, he knows he can't bring Andy from beyond the brink. He's not capable of that anymore.

"You will, or well... I think you will," he begins, drawing in a breath and leaning forward, resting his elbows on his knees. "I had to kill someone close to me, a long time ago, and if I didn't, he would've brought an entire empire to his knees. Everyone else was unable, or... unwilling."

He can't look M in the eye while he's blubbering his eyes out, but he forces himself to at least round his shoulders and sit straighter.

"So I get it. Trust me, I get what you're feeling."

M looks away as soon as he can see the crying coming from Lester's body language. He had told himself he'd stand there and take it, and he will, but he doesn't want to see it coming. What he doesn't expect is words of... encouragement?

"You seem to," he admits. "And you shouldn't."

It isn't a knock on Lester, or M disbelieving, but keeping people like Lester from having to make a choice like that is one of the reasons he does what he does.

M has a point: Lester Papadopoulos, awkward sixteen year old who barely earned his driver's license, the kid who's all skin and bones and ragged acne, and the one with a stupid, uncontrollable mess of hair shouldn't have made that kind of choice. High school should've been his toughest encounter, the hardest battleground he had ever seen.

(But Lord Apollo, rightful member of the Greek and Roman pantheons, had seen far more than one person deserved to in a lifetime.)

Sometimes, he forgets how limiting this mortal body is. Then M makes that kind of statement, and once again, it feels like the rug's been pulled from under him.

"I didn't have a choice," Lester laughs, more bitterly than he anticipated, as he uncurls his fingers. "I had to take responsibility for my blessing, and for the consequences of something I couldn't have foreseen."

And to think, back then, he had been the god of Prophecy.

M knows better than to ask this kind of question, but he can't help himself:

"And what about you? Did you make it quick?"

He at least has the decency to not sound condescending when he asks.

Lester swallows, the color draining from his face as he desperately avoids M's gaze. "I wish."

You blessed me.

Even now, those words haunt him. Even now, he recognizes the hypocrisy in asking M if Andy's death had been painless, because Apollo couldn't have given his own lover that much.

Since he suspects M'll ask how it happened, he takes in another breath before admitting, "I - I drowned him."

He wasn't--he never jokes about serious topics like that--but he admittedly was curious.

"You shouldn't have had to make that choice."

There should always be someone like him there to keep someone like Lester from having to do that. Always.

"No one was willing." Lester feels like curling up on himself, but he can't run anymore. He's telling someone - someone who wasn't him - about the memory. This will set him free, or at least... at least make him feel less alone. "I don't usually get involved in mortal affairs, but he was going to grind an entire empire into the ground."

So it became an issue of one versus the many.

"That's what it was with Andy too, right? She would've gone on hurting everyone, so... it was the most likely choice."

Though M enjoyed messing with Lester, in saying that he believed he was full of shit (and it was still what he mostly believed), his implants gave him enough insight into the teen to know that there was more about him than meets the eye. This is the first time he's really seriously considered the possibility he wasn't lying about his whole godhood ordeal. It was a question for another day, but it at least kept him thinking about something other than what he'd done for the first time in a good, long while.

"Yeah," he concedes. "That, and whenever she came back to her senses, I didn't want those deaths on her conscience."

The immortal can say whatever she'd like, M knows she cares more than she lets on.

They're both big sweethearts, Apollo realizes. Even if they talk like a big bad wolf intent on blowing down all the little pigs' houses, they both have hearts big enough to fill an entire universe.

Gods, how had he been so stupid to not realize it before? (Maybe because M was acting like he didn't believe a single thing out of Lester's mouth?)

"Knowing her, her response to that - as noble as it is - will be one giant fuck you," he says with a laugh, finding that his amusement actually feels genuine. "So let me thank you. On her behalf."

In Lester's defense, M goes out of his way to make it seem like there's very little he cares about, when in reality all he does is care. He was made to brutalize, and he's good at it, but he refuses to be indiscriminate about it, and tries his best to point himself in the right direction.

"Pretty sure 'fuck you' was her response to everything," he replied. He doesn't feel fully comfortable with the "thank you" part, but doesn't bring it up.

"Fair enough," Lester concedes. He's known her long enough to also know that swearing colored nearly every aspect of her vocabulary (and then some).

Given that he doesn't have much else left to say, he finally reaches for his coffee - and frowns, upon realizing how it's gotten cold in the span of their conversation. Figures.

He holds the mug up and asks, "Where's your microwave again?"

M points over his shoulder without looking--it should be plenty visible on his counter behind him.

"You're a weird kid."

"Really?" Lester rises to his feet, glancing back at M as he heads to the microwave to warm their coffee up. He can't ever say he's thought of himself as the odd one out - not even when he was among gods. "How so?"

M is hardly one to say anything about the oddness of children, given that he was a much stranger teenager, but he's at least seen enough "normal" teens to know what they look like.

"Most kids don't stay in the house of an admitted murderer."

"That's because they're afraid that they'll be next."

Lester stretches out his arm idly, rolling it as he waits for the microwave to perform its magic. Gods, this body's more fragile than he keeps thinking it is.

"If you wanted to kill me, though, you would've done it a long time ago." He pauses to stretch out his other arm, holding it with his wrist. "Therefore, I've got nothing to worry about."

"The same could have been said for Andy," he says bitterly, mad at himself for even thinking it, let alone saying it out loud. "And she's a hell of a lot tougher than you."

She's. He can't bear to think that her death might be permanent. Not after all the thought he'd put into it. All the numbers he ran. No, she'd be back.

She had to.

"Gee, thanks."

Yet Apollo gets it. Of the two of them, Andy would be way more likely to survive anything (and her survival, in and of itself, felt like a superpower). Apollo had survived throughout the eras because people believed in him and devoted their passion, their energy into holding onto his name.

He hasn't had to survive by sheer willpower, let alone his own two feet, before.

Wryly, as he pulls the mugs out of the microwave, he can't help saying, "When she comes back, I'll have to tell her how little faith you have in me."

"You talk a big game, but a strong gust of wind will knock you over."

That was the universal trouble with teenagers, it seemed. They all thought they were goddamn invincible.

And a part of him almost wished they were.

Apollo rolls his eyes, yet his smile betrays his amusement as he walks back towards M. Figures. They're talking about the odds of M killing him, and he tells Lester (because M doesn't see him as Apollo) to bulk up.

"Don't give Zephyr that much credit," Lester finds himself saying as he sits back down. "We've fought before, and I've totally won."

"If it ever comes down to you and a peacock," because peacocks were somehow a myth thing too, right? "My money's on the peacock."

"Oh ye of little faith." Apollo finds himself laughing, despite the grave insult to his abilities, because the mental image is pretty funny. Even if he should feel offended.

"I made way too much food, by the way, so until she comes back..." Because Andy's coming back. Her name hasn't disappeared from his phone. "You owe me the company. It's the least you could do."

M finally looks over at him, confusion clear on his face. Congratulations, it takes a lot to get him to that point, by the way.

"You want to share food with the murderer of the person you were originally going to share it with?"

"Uh, yeah?" Apollo shoots M a bewildered look, almost as if he's offended that the guy would think anything else. "When you've been alive as long as I have, you figure out pretty quick that nothing's as black and white as mortals want you to believe, and well..."

He draws that last bit for emphasis, as if he's forcing himself to slip on a mask - a teenager full of shit, a kid who thinks he's absolutely invincible. A kid who hasn't just lost his big sister in a game that's bigger than both of them.

"I'm too important to die here." He believes it too, or acts like he does. as he offers the second mug of coffee to M. "So you'd better remember that, okay?"

He can't help but shake his head at that. He knows the kid is full of shit, but now isn't the time to call him out on it. It isn't the time, and he's not in the mood.

"Yeah, sure, keep telling yourself that," he said, barely stopping himself from rolling his eyes as he takes the mug.

"Got you to think about something else, didn't it?"

Right then and there, Lester gives his hand away as he settles back into his seat and takes a sip.

"Better that you think I'm full of crap than... well, thinking about whatever else is going on in that head of yours."

M is silent for a minute, then takes a long sip of his drink. Whatever Lester gave him, it's good.

"Something you need to learn about me, kid... I'm real good at multitasking."

Thank the computer in his brain. He's good at working through multiple things at once.

So much for that distraction, then. Lester leans forward, looking at M with new understanding.

"Unlike the rest of the population," he admits after a moment. "The rest of us have to make do with thinking about one or two things at a time."

A nod as he takes another sip.

"I know," He repsonds. "But I have no idea what that feels like."

He hasn't always had the computer brain, but he doesn't remember his life from before. For all intents and purposes, his implants are all he's ever known.

"The old me would've been envious."

It's a quiet kind of truth, one Lester thinks about as he wraps his fingers around the handle of his mug. When he had been a god, he could split his essence to be anywhere anytime - and now, he's forced to be in one place at once. Like a mere mortal.

"But now, I don't know." He frowns into his mug. "I think... being mortal has been humbling."

"I don't think I could stand the silence."

The background noise is a constant in his life. He doesn't know what it's like without it. To have it suddenly disappear is a.... disconcerting thought, to say the least.

"What have you learned? In your humbling experience?"

Good question.

Lester thinks about it for a moment, before he finally admits, "That even someone as old as I am is capable of change. All mortals are, really - that's what separates them from gods. Gods are stagnant, frozen. They're who they always are.

But humans? They can become someone else entirely, and whether that's good or bad depends on them."

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( closed ) somebody told me this was a calling

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