Between Lions and Men

33: even he could not escape the hands of death

Hecktor

"I can explain---"

"What happened to you?!?"

"I am changing my answer. I cannot explain," I wince, as Andy leans over my on the bed. She's tending to my wounds, which are more numerous than I supposed. With the exception of my chest.

"This is ichor," she says, pointing to the golden scars that lace where my skin was sewn back together. They are a thin membrane, pulsing if you will, such that my blood vessels and bone are clear beneath them.

"I know," I say, weakly.

"You were healed by a god," she says, her eyes dilated.

"I know," I say.

"Who? Why---?"

"I do not know; do not make me tell you, I was told not to speak of it," I sigh.

Tears fill her eyes.

"It's good isn't it? I lived to come home," I offer.

"Gods do not heal mortals for sport, they want something of you," she says, as I sit up to put my hands to her face. 

"It is nothing, a second chance, that is all," I say, stroking the tears from her eyes, "I promise you. I will be careful."

"Do not fight Peleus," she says, "Please? Do not take him on alone, I know you would. Even if you believe you have a god on your side."

"I shall not," I heavily, "For you. Anything for you. You know that."

"You didn't know?" she asks, her hand on my chest.

"What are you talking about?"

"Nector---ambrosia, they cannot heal mortals, only the gods, that is what was put on you, is it not? It turns to the blood of gods, Ichor," she says, softly, her hand on the scar on my face.

"What are you talking about?" I ask, as she withdraws her hand.

She holds out her fingers, smoothing my blood between them. It is red yes, but within it glimmers gold.

"He did that—today, he did something to me, that is all. I've been wounded before you've never noted that," I say, though I feel my gut clench, "I've been wounded a dozen times, you yourself changed my bandages, the blood was--,"

"Like this," she says, putting her hand back on my face, "I didn't tell you."

"What--?"

"You sought war enough. But I can't lose you, or him," she says, looking over at little Scam who is asleep, in our bed of course, his chubby face wrinkled with the cares of baby sleep.

"You're saying I'm a demi-god, like Peleus," I say, quietly.

"I'm saying somehow you got Ichor in your veins and now a god is helping you," she sighs.

"My mother would not lie to me," I say, "Nor my father I--,"

"It doesn't matter. It does mean this god might want something from you," she says, "Or want you dead---you are being encouraged to go fight again--? Are you not?"

"Phobeus Apollo," I say, quietly, touching Scam's chubby arm and stroking the soft baby skin.

"What?"

"That's who it was, that healed me---he is god of medicine I didn't think—,"

"Don't."

"If something befalls me, and he came for the boy, I wanted you to know," I say, looking back at her.

"You said you wouldn't leave me."

"Well, I'm trying not to," I say, kissing her  even though one of my lips is split and bloody.

"Please," is all she says.

"I will not fight him, and if I must I will not do it alone," I say. But if he's part god, and so am I, we are evenly matched then? Is that what Apollo was trying to tell me?