WHO: Apollo and Clio WHEN: Monday, May 24th WHERE: Clio's hospital WHAT: Muse and Musagetes WARNINGS: TBA
They’d given him oxygen too, the hospital staff. Though he didn’t need it as badly as Clio, his throat was almost as ripped up from smoke as hers was, and the oxygen was a blessing. He let it, rather than his powers, soothe the toxic feeling in his blood seeping into his blood from every tainted alveoli, soothe the pounding headache behind his eyes. He needed to save his strength for Clio’s leg, for any of her other injuries.
For Martin's parents - but they had to come later. Clio first. Always, Clio first.
They weren’t checking him in overnight, but for the first few hours after he and Clio had arrived on the hospital roof, everyone was pretty strict that he didn’t leave the ward. “The police want to have a few words with you about what happened, too,” said one doctor, looking over her tablet to give him a warm smile. “And I imagine there’s a few stations who wouldn’t mind an interview, either,” she added, giving him a long look, intrigued and impressed and memorising him to talk to her friends about, later. Apollo gave her a charming smile in return. “You learn to expect the unexpected in this job, but patients flying themselves to hospital is a new one for me. Keep that on,” she added, as Apollo had been about to pull the oxygen mask away from his mouth and speak.
Air traffic authorities had already rung. The absolute illegality of flying over the city without telling them he was about to be flying over the city seemed to have been balanced a little by the fact that he’d rescued a woman from a burning building, and Apollo got the feeling there was some debate going on behind the scenes about outcomes. Apollo had hoped he’d just get away with a fine and keep his license. But that could be an issue for a lawyer, later (just one of his 'dads' old school mates, this time; he wasn’t involving Athena in this one.)
As he lay resting on his bed by the window, he could feel Clio, still asleep in her room somewhere above him. He’d asked several nurses to let him know as soon as she woke up or the second she got worse. He was reassured that she was stable, though, and he’d get to see her, soon, and then next thing he knew a nurse was reporting that she was awake and her stressed out older boyfriend was already at her side. “I’m sure he’ll want to thank you, too, saving her life like that,” she said, taking his blood pressure even though it had only been ten minutes since the last nurse had done it. Nurses kept making excuses to check on him. Apollo couldn’t say he hated it. It was good to have people look at him like he was a hero again.
He only wished the pounding headache would piss off so he could properly enjoy it.
The headache wasn’t just carbon monoxide poisoning though, it was an after effect of the prophecy. The oxygen didn’t help it, really. The only thing that relieved the aftereffects of seeing through time was, hilariously or aptly, more time.
So by the time he got to see Clio, his head was still aching, a constant background thumping as he made his way up the corridor toward her. She’d asked for him, and he opened and closed his fists to try and prepare himself for the anger he knew he was going to feel when he saw again what Martin had done to her, and the relief, and the protectiveness, and the love, and the guilt he hadn’t been able to find her sooner, and any other surprise emotion that might well up at the sight of her.
He knocked lightly at her door, though she’d know it was him as surely as he knew it was her, and pushed the door open slowly, in case she’d gone back to sleep.