She found him where she always seemed to find him. Her brother was as predictable as, well, the sunrise. He sat in a mostly deserted forest, not that far away from a town that he knew he wasn't really supposed to be in.

Technically, he had told her once, he wasn't in the town and therefore wasn't disobeying Zeus's order. That didn't stop him from tamping down all of his powers, making him as invisible as a mortal in the eyes of the other gods.

“What are you doing here, Apollo?” 

Her twin looked startled to see her, golden eyes wide and body tense. He motioned for her to lower her voice, face pleading with her. She hoped (but knew she was wrong) that he was simply hunting something and was hiding from her because he didn't want her to show him up. Again.

“How did you find me?” he whispered, glancing back in the direction he had been staring before.

“My tracking skills are just so great that I can find you even when you've turned yourself off,” she quipped lightly. “Or maybe I just adore my darling brother so much that I can simply sense where he is.”

He glared at her. “You're a terrible liar, Artemis. You can't track that well and you don't like me enough to try.”

His twin sighed, a familiar look of disappointment on her features. “You're not hard to find because you're always in the same place. A place, I might add, that is going to get you in serious trouble.”

“I've told you,” he muttered angrily, still keeping his voice down. The downside to making himself invisible to the other gods was that he was entirely visible to morals, and if the boy sitting in the clearing not that far away saw or heard him, his little game was over. “If I'm not in the town then I'm not breaking any rules.”

Sighing, she stepped around him to look at what had caught his attention and glared when she saw the boy he'd been… well… stalking for several years now.

“Don't be an idiot,” she said, turning to face her brother again. “You know it's not the town you were ordered away from, it's him. Do you really think that Ze—”

He cut her off with a frantic shake of his head, dark curls falling over his face before he looked skywards. “Don't say his name, don't say his name.”

“Fine. Do you really think father dearest is going to accept your little excuse? That family was declared off-limits and the town by extension because you wouldn't stay out of it.”

“Someone had attacked my temple,” he shot back, crossing his arms defensively. “I had to see what was going on!”

 It was difficult, but Artemis resisted the urge to slap her twin upside the head. “That excuse would be a lot more believable if you hadn't already known who did it and then not only refused to punish him, but then decided to become obsessed.”

“It wasn't a decision and the entire thing was unfair to begin with.”

His twin's eyes were suddenly much colder on him and he flinched even before she spoke.

“Our lives aren't meant to be fair. Sometimes the boy you fancy yourself in love with is declared forbidden. Sometimes your brother tricks you into killing him. Deal with it. It's what I had to do.”

“I apologized.”

“That doesn't bring him back.”

They glared at each other, but Apollo broke eye contact first. For the most part she'd forgiven him, but it wasn't an argument he was ever going to win.

“You don't understand. He's… we're connected, I can feel it. We're supposed to be near each other now, and we're supposed to be near each other in his other lives. He could be my match, how am I supposed—”

It was her turn to cut him off. “You could be his match, Apollo, but you could also be his sworn enemy for lifetimes to come. You don't know which and since you can't ask the people who could tell you, you're never going to know. Find. Someone. Else.”

“I've tried!” he hissed. “He was a child when I found him; of course I put him out of my mind. But I was supposed to be able to come back.”

He looked broken and Artemis found herself softening. He was still incredibly stupid, but her twin nonetheless. She loved him.

“I don't remember his name. I know we were told it so that we knew to stay away, but…”

“Kurt,” he said softly before turning to stare again. “His name is Kurt.”

“What's he doing out here anyway?”

Apollo blinked up at her, apparently surprised that she was willing to humor him.

“It was a bad day. Kurt's father works for a man with a son who has been, been…” his fists flexed and he searched for words, “tormenting him. Constantly. His father tries to keep them apart, I think, but there's only so much he can do. And today that… that thing put his hands on him and.” He shuddered, and began breathing heavily to calm himself down. Too much anger and he'd show himself in one way or another. Either by yelling and scaring Kurt away or by losing control and alerting Zeus to his whereabouts. “Kurt… he got away. Nothing really happened, I don't think. It just scared him. But that other boy he… he said that no one else was going to want him anyway, so he might as well give in.”

Artemis stared in horror and for a moment Apollo thought he'd convinced her that he needed to be here. Then she spoke, “how do you know this? How? If you were in the town itself—”

He shook his head, defeated again. “He talks, when he's out here. It's why… it's why I watch from here. He speaks as if his mother his with him, like he's praying to her or something. Speaking to her memory.”

“An odd thing to do,” Artemis pointed out.

Her twin looked furious, “what else can he do?” he demanded harshly. “There's no one else for him to talk to, because I've ruined his entire life! He worries for his father and won't tell him and everyone else in the damned town refuses to be near him!”

“I fail to see how this is your fault,” Artemis said in what she hoped was a soothing voice.

Apollo slumped against a tree, the fight seemingly drained out of him. He watched dully as the boy in the clearing stood up, brushed the dirt from his clothes and the last of the tears from his eyes before walking back into town. 

“I could have saved his mother. Between the two of us, it shouldn't have been a problem. But we didn't.”

“We couldn't.”

“He doesn't know that. So he blames me and the town isolates him.”

“You have to let this go. If our darling father notices you going missing for long periods of time, he's going to start asking questions.”

Without waiting for a response she turned and walked away, leaving Apollo alone in the empty forest.