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i.
The horizon of Khura'in is jagged and lush. Towns are built on mountains and hills, the temples always breaking the clouds. The country of spirits bares its teeth at the world like a vicious beast and it's the subject of much art.
It also is the dread and fear of a young Apollo, who cannot put a name to this feeling at the age of six, but knows that if Nahyuta tries to make him climb a tree one more time, he'll just die. The feeling will get so big it will eject his mitamah from his body and he will pass on and it will all be Nahyuta's fault so there!
(It feels like a cavern in his chest every time he thinks about it. The sky snatches his body, the ground devours his heart, and all he can do is will his knees to stop quaking please. He doesn't have the words—not in Khura'inese, not in the limited English that Datz has been teaching them both—to inform the others what about it is so awful so he just yells. Yelling usually works. Nahyuta usually stops when he yells because Nahyuta doesn't like making his little brother upset.)
The arguments of children often are solved by adults but the only adults nearby aren't going to do much. Dhurke is of the mind that his boys are better off scrapping and scuffling until one of them comes out on top—the stronger idea, the stronger fighter. Datz, on the other hand, causes problems on purpose. Or, perhaps he thinks he's helping in one way or another, and it all goes rather wrong in a truly spectacular Datz fashion.
Apollo goes from being mildly unhappy with the thought of being anywhere high—and close to crying when made to climb trees to drag down snares and retrieve caches—to having nightmares on and off for a week. When they finally quell—broken pulpy bodies splattered across the ground, bones sticking jaggedly out of rent flesh, organs spilling from holes that should not exist in a human body—they have left their mark on the youngest Dragon. What was a fear he could not name is a terror that causes him to fold like wet thenthuk, leaving him sobbing and shaking, unable to move.
(And even as an adult, he's unable to breathe at the thought of being anywhere he could die from a fall. Being on a ladder—or a stepladder, depending on who you ask and if you're willing to argue—makes him nauseous. The fear never fades, even if he gets better and better at shouting it down. Being back in Khura'in just makes it worse, somehow.)
ii.
It's a stupid thing, considering how much of their easy meat comes from fishing but Apollo doesn't like the water. He's fine with bathing—a tub is only so deep, after all—but rivers and lakes and the ocean are different. They're vast, unfathomable, and unknown. If you fall in, you'd fall forever and ever and ever!
It's like if the sky was on the ground! But infinite and hungry.
Falling into the river and fighting for his life only cements the comparison. His little arms are exhausted and the river's current yanks and tears him away from where he started, Nahyuta tumbling alongside him. He moves to cry out, to call for Dhurke so he can help them but his mouth and lungs fill with thick, cold water and he realizes he's made one grave error in his fear.
Large bodies of water might be like chunks of the sky torn down to live on the ground, rivers eddies that carry hawks and songbirds across long distances up and around the mountains, but you can't breathe them. He sinks like a rock, tumbling smooth as he thinks about falling to his death, lungs filling with too-thick air as he cries.
When Dhurke hauls them back to the shore, all three of them shivering cold, Apollo coughs water out and takes greedy gulps of air that finally agree with him. He wails with his brother and clings tightly to their dad.
Now when the fear of water curls its fingers around his ribs he has something to compare it to. The fear is like sinking, unable to fight the current, the breathlessness of inhaling not-air in an attempt to live and choking and knowing that this chunk of the heavens are not meant for the living. Not like this.
Water is a portal to the Twilight Realm, after all. It's why it's used in the Divination Seances. Living people shouldn't swim. That's how Apollo rationalizes it, long into adulthood.
iii.
Dhurke has never kept it a secret. He always was so open about things like that with his sons—not just about heritage but about the rebellion and about the state of Khura'in and so on—but it never meant much to Apollo. Even if Dhurke wasn't his dad, he was his dad, right? Even if he wasn't Nahyuta's brother, he was his brother. It's about choosing and biting down and holding on, like a greedy, proud dragon.
Apollo wasn't Dhurke's blood-relation but he was a Dragon all the way through.
That's why the airplane ride feels weird.
Neither he nor Nahyuta have ever been outside of the country. Dhurke has once or twice—or so he says and they both tend to believe him coz he doesn't lie, not when it matters—and Datz isn't Khura'inese but he stuck it out coz of Dhurke. That's why Apollo doesn't think anything is off.
The trip to America—heralded by more intense English lessons from Datz, not that Nahyuta complains considering he's a big huge nerd who likes to learn—is some big secret or something. One morning before sunrise Apollo finds Dhurke standing by his bed, some weird look on his face that sets Apollo's bracelet squeezing his wrist something awful, holding a bag with a bunch of Apollo's personal things in it. He whispers that they have to go somewhere, that it's just them, that Datz will stay with Nahyuta because this is an Apollo-and-Dhurke thing.
Apollo is too tired to wonder why it has to be a secret, why Nahyuta isn't coming—because they're brothers and they do everything together but also he's ten and some years old so being independent and getting alone time with Dhurke is exciting—and he's too tired to question why his bracelet is nearly cutting his arm off at the wrist in intervals. He gets up and gets dressed and asks Dhurke a million billion questions as he leaves the mountains for the first time in a couple years.
Yes, he bought the tickets with money, don't look so cross. No, it's not one-way, they'll come back (squeeze). Yes, Nahyuta and Datz know because otherwise it'd be kidnapping (squeeze). No, this isn't a Dragons thing, it's personal. Shh, Apollo, we need to be inconspicuous. Inside voices.
Dhurke quizzes him on his English as they fly to distract him from being up so high. He knows Apollo hates heights. He's being so nice. All Apollo is thinking of—when his brain isn't fuzzy around the edges from sleep and fear and the constant pressure from his bracelet—is how this is the first time that it's just been Dhurke and him instead of Dhurke and Datz and Nahyuta and him. How precious this one-on-one time feels. It's like a warm sun blooming in his chest as they land, so big and bright it might eclipse everything before he's gotten a chance to express it.
And then Dhurke tells him the truth.
Things are bad—they've always been bad but they're getting worse with the Ga'ran empire making less subtle moves to try and stamp out the Dragons—and it's hard to hide the leader of the rebellion and two kids at the same time. Nahyuta doesn't have anywhere to go—he's full Khura'inese, born and bred, so he legally couldn't leave the country for too long without parental consent and a visa—but Apollo has always had claim to America because of his blood-dad. If one of them can be safe, then Dhurke can sleep easier. (No squeezing. Apollo doesn't know what that means yet, but he's starting to understand.)
Apollo isn't an idiot. He's young but he's not a child. The frustration and anger that bloom from the sun in his chest leap out his mouth like dragon's breath but neither he nor Dhurke pay much mind to it. He's upset and saying hurtful things to cause pain. Still, the thought that what was supposed to be a fun trip is just an extraction hurts more than he thought it would.
Dhurke says he'll be back. When everything is done, when the rebellion is over, when Khura'in is safe again, he'll come back and he'll bring Nahyuta and Datz and take Apollo with him back to the mountains and it'll be okay, won't it? (His bracelet is still and warm against his wrist. Apollo nods at him, tears of frustration burning away at his face.)
Dhurke never comes back.
All of a sudden Apollo's an adult with a job and a family of choice again and the open wound has long scabbed over. Durke digs his fingers into the chinks in his armor and heaves and he's in that awkward space between child and teenager again, face flush red, sun in his throat, tongues of flame spilling from his lips, his dad lying to him and leaving him behind forever.
The airplane takes off and Apollo is in it this time but it doesn't feel like going home, just running away again. (And if his younger self was watching him, would his bracelet tighten on his wrist? Could he ever truly lie to himself?)
iv.
He's always been the coward between the two of them. Clay was brilliant, bright, willing to shoot for the stars. Apollo preferred to keep his feet on the ground, his head out of the clouds.
(Apollo gets to live while Clay doesn't)
When they were little, they used to climb up on the roof of Clay's house and watch the stars. Clay would point out constellations and tell Apollo what they were and what they meant to him while Apollo told him all the stories he learned about them growing up. Clay spoke about flying like it was a dream, something wondrous. All Apollo could think about were broken limbs and Datz's booming laughter and nausea.
Clay would talk about dreams and Apollo would reach up and grab at the stars then pull his closed fist against his heart. It was a motion that meant nothing and everything. It made his stomach drop out from under him.
Clay is supposed to be far away from earth. He's supposed to be in space, away from the awful reach of the Dark Age of the Law. And yet—
Clay's jacket is a comfort. Clay's jacket is a weight meant to drag him down. Clay's jacket is a reminder. Clay's jacket holds his mitamah, the last vestiges of his soul, and Apollo tries to embody what remains of his best friend—the first person he trusted after Dhurke, the last person he told about Khura'in.
He throws himself into the fray and stands above Juniper, panic sending her into a coughing fit. He shields her with his body and prays that it won't hurt as much as he thinks it will. Rocks batter Apollo's back and neck, slamming against his head but he can't yield. If Clay cannot be a hero, then Apollo has to be. He has to be.
(Otherwise what does the tension he saw in Athena's expression mean? What purpose does the explosion during the HAT-2 launch serve? Why is he trying so hard to save Sol? What's the point if he's just falling from grace, further and further every day? What's the point if falling is what kills him, not Clay?)
He's hated heights as long as he's had words for the fear that claws at his insides. Age has only distilled that fear into something more clear, more refined, more potent.
He's less afraid of heights than he is of the fall that follows.
(Dhurke, who left him behind but didn't lie. Wright, on a pedestal, never meet your heroes. Kristoph, smiling down at him, condescension hidden. Athena, his friend, hiding things from him.)
v.
When Apollo was little, he was told that the sky and its myriad stars are the window to the Twilight Realm, the glowing pinprick lights a tapestry to show off the mitamah of the departed. When he got older, Clay told him about the science behind internal combustion and gravitational pull and quarks and light and so on. It never took the mystery out of stargazing. They both spent more of their nights looking up at the vast expanse than they did actually doing their homework or sleeping, but it was something new. Fascinating. An anchor to this country and this time. A hand extending out of the past and dragging him to the present, far away from the pain of memories.
In the cave, clinging to a piece of ocean driftwood, pinned against the spires of rock on the ceiling, all Apollo can think is that it looks like he's in space. The green glow of the mitamah moss truly evokes the feeling of staring at the souls-made-stone of his childhood, of the stargazing of his youth, and the weightlessness of nothingness.
This is what drowning feels like. It feels like going to space.
Green stars above him, green stars below, no air in his lungs. Maybe, if Clay had lived—if Clay had been lucky enough—they would have shared this experience. Maybe, when he finally joins him in the Twilight Realm—insofar as he believes in that place anymore, insofar as he ever believed in that place—Apollo can tell him all about the slice of space he died in.
(He can avoid thinking about how Clay never got this chance, bleeding out on the ground, unceremoniously discarded like a piece of rubbish by some hollow shadow wearing human skin. He can avoid thinking about how Clay wanted this and Apollo didn't. He can avoid thinking about how, once again, he's tagging behind Clay, running after him into the afterlife, chasing his back with hand outstretched. He just thinks about how he can see him again and tell him all about the constellations in that cave and how he was right, it was beautiful.)
The driftwood—his space shuttle—slips from his grasp. He exhales in fear, bubbles tearing from his mouth in silver sphereoids that wobble as they press against the glowing ceiling, new galaxies and celestial bodies in the distance as he sinks down and down and down, weighted down in this weightless place.
Yes, truly, drowning must be exactly like going to space. How lucky he is to see it where Clay couldn't. What a waste of a dream, to be given to him instead.
vi.
It aches. When Apollo realized Dhurke was never coming to get him, it hurt, true. But this...this ache is worse because - because this was—
They were friends—something more than that perhaps, something neither of them had words for that stood between the warm friendships founded in youth and the binding pact of families of choice—and it meant more to them than either could say. They were inseparable and, through thick and thin, bolstered each other. They were fine. They were fine.
And now - now Apollo is alone again.
(Not by choice—never by choice. Clay didn't mean to leave him. Clay never meant to leave him. They're compatriots, part of the no-mom club, they're fine! Clay would never—)
Apollo is alone in a place where he barely speaks the language, putting on a brave face because a dragon never yields. Apollo is standing in front of his best friend during the worst day of his life and shouting at him that he's fine! Apollo is looking at a photo of Clay's corpse and defending the man accused of the crime and just to his right is someone whose every breath is filled with tension but a lawyer smiles until the end.
He can't forget the language of the man that abandoned him, as much as he wants to. He can't forget the constellations Clay showed him during all those sleepless nights, as much as they burrow into his chest and root themselves in his lungs like kudzu.
He's fine. He's fine. He has to be fine.
(And when he finally sees Dhurke again, finally tears open that old wound with shaking hands curled into fierce claws, it hits him how much it really hurts. How much he wanted his worlds to come together in synchronous orbit. How much he wanted to show Clay the parts of him he buried in the backyard like a wounded dog, how much he wanted to show Dhurke the parts of him he cobbled together in the wake of being left behind, how much he wanted to introduce his new family—the Wright Anything Agency and its orbital parties—to the spiraling galaxy branches of his past and present. And it will never happen because Clay died.)
Dhurke is dead before Apollo even meets him again. Against all odds, despite how much Apollo might have said otherwise, that hurts more than he expected it to. No matter how hard he tries, he can't separate the naive young child in an American airport from the man he has grown into. The wound is open and bleeding, he howls agony in court while Nahyuta hides his own pain opposite him, and beside him, Phoenix Wright doesn't move to comfort him, knowing Apollo well enough to let him be.
He's fine. He's fine. He's fine!
(Everyone leaves him in the end, don't they?)
He's fine.