Archive of Our Own ^beta

“Hey, Dhurke? This isn’t forever, right? You’ll come pick me up from America someday, right?”

“Of course… I’ll come pick you up as soon as things settle down here. I promise.”

“Okay! You promised!”

…But that’s the thing. Dhurke isn’t certain things will ever settle down.

‘As soon as things settle down here’ is starting to become the new ‘when hell freezes over’. It’s like when Apollo refuses to accept that it’s bedtime and the only way he can possibly cajole his son into going to sleep is by telling him that he can stay up late when pigs fly, or when there’s a blue moon, or when he’s older than Nahyuta.

Apollo links his smallest finger around Dhurke’s in an optimistic pinky promise, one that Dhurke isn’t sure he’s going to be able to keep. Someday could be years from now. Decades, even - and he can’t explain to his nine-year-old son that he’s sending him away indefinitely.

He believes in the Dragons, he really does… but over the past couple of weeks, he’s been steadily losing hope. He’s not been particularly sure what started it, but after a brush with Ga’ran’s soldiers that encroached a little too closely on his children’s safety, he’d had to re-evaluate things.

Things being whether he can really justify keeping Apollo here in Khura’in.

The boy is his son. He’s never doubted that. But the fact remains that Apollo is also Jove’s son, and Dhurke endangers him every second he keeps him under his care. Would his late friend really want Apollo to stay here, in danger of being killed, when his mother is still out there somewhere?

He knows Apollo himself wouldn’t think this. But the boy is only nine, and doesn’t have a full understanding of how much danger they’re actually in. He’s perfectly happy to mimic the Dragons and the Queens’ Guard in pretend games with Nahyuta. He repeats ‘a dragon never yields!’ like he invented the saying, yells it out impulsively at the dinner table or when Dhurke tells him he needs to finish playing and come inside. He traces the tattoo on Dhurke’s palm and muses about how badly he wants one of his own when he’s grown up.

But Dhurke is a father. He wants what’s best for his son, and what’s best for his son isn’t growing up on the run. And after countless restless nights, tossing and turning and silently crying, he knows that he can’t in good conscience keep Apollo Justice here in Khura’in.

(He can’t keep Apollo in their family, in their little hut in the mountains. He can’t keep his son in their home without the wearying knowledge that Dhurke is putting him in danger simply by being his father. He can’t keep his little boy by his side, no matter how much he wants to).

And so, in the early hours of the morning, he’s preparing Apollo for his long flight to America - one he knows the boy won’t return from. Not for a long, long while, at least.

This mission has been well thought out, heavily considered. And so he’s already aware of the inevitable outcome. The understanding that this is a one-way flight.

Even if things do settle down, even if this is just a horrific bout of despair that isn’t truly reflective of the situation and - through some miracle - he’s actually able to go to America to find Apollo, he wouldn’t even know where to start. It would probably be the biggest example of looking for a needle in a haystack ever, if the haystack was one of the biggest countries in the world and the needle was his undocumented, below average height son, who has a tendency to hide wherever Dhurke can’t find him.

He might even be more wanted in years to come, rendering him even more unable to go anywhere with security, to try in any way to search for his boy. There’s been no sign of even a plateau as of late, and it’s truly the only reason he was pushed into evacuating Apollo: the certainty of three things.

One, that Apollo is in danger. Two, that things aren’t getting better, and the danger won’t go away any time soon. And three… that Dhurke isn’t his only father, and he has to consider Jove’s wishes in the boy’s wellbeing, too.

Night after night, he’s been scrambling for excuses to keep Apollo here with him… but realistically, he can’t justify keeping his late friend’s son in a situation that might get him killed, no matter how badly Dhurke wants to hold on.

Promising Apollo that they’ll see each other again is most likely the only thing keeping them both sane. Of course, he isn’t going to tell Apollo that this ‘trip’ is probably going to be permanent, isn’t going to let his beloved son think he’s been abandoned - but the lie is as much for him as it is for Dhurke.

If he lets himself think that he abandoned his boy to a foreign country with no hope of return, he isn’t sure what he’ll do. Letting Apollo go is hard enough on its own without the crushing knowledge that he might never see him again - and so he promises, a bad taste rising in his mouth as the words spill out.

If he can kid himself into thinking he’ll see Apollo again, it might make this operation bearable. It’ll keep him from picking the boy up and whisking him straight back to their little house in the mountains.

“Forgive me,” Dhurke mumbles in English around the heavy lump in his throat. Apollo won’t understand it, he knows that - but he begs for the child’s forgiveness anyway, aware that he’s going to have to learn this new language in order to get by. Maybe one day, he’ll be able to understand what Dhurke had asked of him… if he even remembers this moment.

A tear escapes his eye. He hadn’t even realised it was forming, but Apollo, ever-observant at reading his smallest tells, spots it and wipes it away with a clumsy yet well-intentioned hand.

“Don’t be so silly! I won’t be gone that long,” Apollo tells him, a wide smile etched upon his face. “It’ll settle down soon. Really soon. And then you’ll come get me. You’ll come get me, right?”

Dhurke blinks away any remaining tears lest he upset Apollo. The last thing he wants to do is make Apollo cry before his departure, and he’d even promised himself last night that he wasn’t going to cry in front of his son. He wouldn’t make this goodbye any harder than it needed to be.

And yet… crouched in front of his son as the boy comforts Dhurke, instead of the other way around… stopping his tears feels like an insurmountable feat.

“...Of course I’ll come and get you, son,” Dhurke whispers, his eyes slipping shut like even now, he’s checking if he can remember Apollo’s little face when he’s not in sight.

Apollo smiles wide, all gap-toothed and innocent, completely trusting. Too trusting, even. “A dragon never yields, right?”

“Right,” Dhurke says softly, taking both of Apollo’s hands in his own, stroking the backs of his soft, youthful fingers with his own calloused thumbs.

This moment has to be one of the worst in his life, he thinks - and while the days following this one will surely be terrible, there’s nothing worse than having to say goodbye. Than calculating a touch, a sentence, a look, knowing it’ll be the last.

“Apollo,” he says, looking into those deep, brown eyes- “I love you more than anything.”

Being only nine years old, Apollo doesn’t notice the emotional turmoil in Dhurke’s voice nor his face, despite the fact that - even without a mirror - he knows it’s written all over his expression. He just laughs, loud and childlike and carefree.

“Even more than Yuty? I’ll tell him you said that!”

Dhurke laughs until he remembers that Apollo might not ever be able to tell Nahyuta anything, ever again. That he might be separating his two boys for life, and they’ll never play hide and seek with each other again, they’ll never explore the mountains or run in the fields together again, they’ll never try and scare Dhurke from behind a door or try (and fail) to make him breakfast on his birthday from dubious forest plants ever again.

Apollo is… really leaving. He’s saying goodbye to his son for what might be forever.

Forever. The word makes bile rise in Dhurke’s throat.

But he can’t start second-guessing himself now. It’ll only put Apollo in more danger. He needs to do this, and if there was room for doubt, he wouldn’t be here, wouldn’t even be considering sending Apollo away.

Through all the panic and fear and guilt he has to keep reminding himself that this is for Apollo’s safety, so his boy - Jove’s boy, too - can have a childhood that isn't burdened by war and rebellion. Can perhaps have a chance of finding his mother again.

He pauses for a second, delaying his response so the words don’t come out choked and teary - and ruffles Apollo’s hair instead, trying to make a permanent tactile memory of what that soft brown hair feels like underneath his fingers, just in case he never feels it again. Just in case what he’s been fearing for quite some time is true, and his home is forever lost to a tyrannical rule.

He looks at Apollo’s brown, trusting eyes and his unwavering smile and the forehead he’d felt with the back of his hand when the boy was feverishly sick and the knees he’d kissed better when he’d grazed them falling over and the hair Dhurke would absentmindedly stroke when Apollo fell asleep on his shoulder and his son, his son, Dhurke stares at his son for what might be the last time, frantically trying to remember all of him.

With a stifling regret clutched in his throat, he wonders desperately why he never did this more. Why he never looked at Apollo playing happily outside with his brother mere months ago or why he never paid enough attention to what he looked like when Dhurke was putting him to bed or the bright, dazzling smile he’d had on his birthday last year, unaware it would be the last one they all spent together-

He can’t forget. He tries not to even blink as he looks at Apollo now, wishing and wishing he’d cherished the time he’d had with him more and wishing that he remembered so much more, too. Nine years has never seemed as fleeting as it does now, when he’s only gotten to keep his son with him for such a short amount of time.

Because when Apollo leaves, when he doesn’t have the chance to see him ever again except for in old pictures, he can’t bear the thought of forgetting. A picture, still and unmoving, can’t possibly capture all that his son is. Holy Mother, please don’t let him forget.

Apollo squeals when Dhurke kisses his nose, and the man chuckles quietly through a muffled sob.

“I love you both more than anything,” he corrects himself, and then takes in the sound of Apollo’s bright and booming laugh to burn it into his memory, imprint the sound waves into his mind.

And so, at 05:30AM, Dhurke Sahdmadhi watches a plane take off from his hiding place in the trees as the sun rises on the horizon, repeating the sound of Apollo’s laugh in his own head over and over again.

Only a short time later the plane is no longer visible in the sky anymore, the image having gotten smaller and smaller until the white dot in the blue sky had irreversibly disappeared, the plane already on its irretrievable, permanent way to America, with his son still inside.

His vision blurs, the skyline and the trees he’s hiding in becoming one through the veil of tears that mask his eyes. The plane is out of sight. Apollo is really, truly gone, probably swinging his legs off of the aeroplane chair since they don’t reach the floor and wondering why Dhurke was acting so oddly if he was going to get him so soon.

“Forgive me,” he whispers again, this time in his mother tongue - and presses a shaking hand to his lips, where he’d kissed his son’s nose no less than twenty minutes ago.

It had been so quick, watching the plane slowly shrink in the sky as it moved further and further away. As it was setting off, Dhurke had felt like he could almost reach out and grab it, like if he really wanted he could run and catch up with it and break in no matter who would see him and hold his son, tell everyone onboard that’s his boy and he can’t let him go, he can’t send him to America, he has to stay here with him and Nahyuta and Datz, and-

And now the plane is gone. Now Apollo won’t be able to see the mountains he grew up in from the plane’s window. Now Dhurke can’t see his little boy anymore.

When the sun has fully risen, it becomes much too dangerous for him to be standing so close to the increasingly-busy airport, vulnerable and half-crying, trying to stop himself from collapsing with the despair of it all. He’s not sure he’d even put up a fight if he was caught out now, too broken and defeated to even want to move his legs.

…But Nahyuta is at home. If he can’t return for himself, he’ll go home to his other little boy - the one who’s currently giving him the silent treatment because he’s mad at him for sending Apollo away - but still his little boy nonetheless. He can only hope that he’ll speak to him if he’s upset, and that one day he might even forgive him, and begin to understand.

Looking up at the empty, empty sky, Dhurke Sahdmadhi says goodbye to his son, already lost to the early-morning skies.