My Hit and Run

January 22nd, 2011
I have a brother.
Well, half-brother. And he's old enough to be my father.
And I feel really stupid for not realizing who he was.

You know what, let me start over.
The guys went to see their fathers, and I went to hang out with mine. Dad was the one who told me I had siblings. Two of them, actually. One is a younger sister, and the other is an older brother (making me the monkey in the middle).
Neither wants anything to do with Dad and his war. I can't blame them, currently. I might have thought twice if I'd really known what I was getting into, and that it was going to involve being shot and slashed at so damn much.
Also, fuck ninjas.

Dad gave me a hotel name and a room number. Didn't give me my brother's name, which I realize now in hindsight that I really should have asked.
There are a lot of things I really should have asked.
I'm no good at this investigation crap, which makes it a really good thing that I've become friends with a cop and a P.I.
At least, I think we're friends.
Gunnar's always hitting on me, and lets me crash at his place, and Nate has yet to try to arrest me (or Nevermore, who probably deserves it).

I got dressed at Gunnar's room, where I've been crashing since we met. I was dressed if not to kill, then definitely to distract. It was a red number, tight in all the right places with a low neck and a high slit on the side. I figured this was a great plan for getting past security.
It would have been a great plan. Except that I didn't figure that his security would be titan-fucking-spawn. I couldn't tell what they were, and I really only saw the one guarding the elevator exit the first time I tried to get up to talk to my brother.
I thought my heart was going to say, "Yeah, you have fun with that," walk out of my chest and leave me to handle this on my own. Then the guard just told me to turn around. So I did, because I'm smart like that.
No, I'm not. I turned around because I didn't really have any other options. And he pushed me into the elevator.

So I came back later, with Gunnar and Nate. I'm not sure where we stand with one another, but I am sure that they are already the best backup a girl could have.
We decided they would wait in the elevator and I would try again to get past the guard. If something went wrong I'd call the safety word or something. It would have been a great plan if we'd actually picked a safety word.

Then Gunnar mentioned that these guys were cyclopes. Two of them. And, having taken all those courses on Greek Myth after my dad popped up off my autopsy table, I remembered that they eat people and are generally unpleasant to be around.

I was filled with confidence here.
I stepped off the elevator, determined to talk to my brother. Or at least determined to live through this.
I tried deception, I tried diversion then finally I broke down and tried honesty.
I just wanted to talk to him. He was the only family I knew of (and my dad doesn't really count; he's in a league so different talking to him feels like trying to chat up a time traveler from 82 BCE).
They were reluctant to let me in because he might have been sleeping. I pushed, like I do because sometimes (and by sometimes I mean most of the time) I'm too stubborn to know better. Then one of them started groping me.
I freaked. Since Kabul, I don't do well with people trying to touch me.
I really don't do well with a stereotypically violent creature's hand on my breasts.
I just shouted Gunnar's name, because we didn't have a safety word. He and Nate sprang into the hallway, action-cop style and I... I almost caused a diplomatic incident.

It turns out Jim-Bob the cyclops was just trying to pat me down. Of course, I learned this after Gunnar put a bullet hole in the hallway.
It could have been worse, and I'm really surprised this didn't send the titanspawn into a rage. I decided just to come back in the morning, at Nate and Gunnar's urging. I never claimed to be the brains of the operation.
I'm just glad Nevermore wasn't there for that, I would never ever hear the end of it. I can't remember if I apologized to the cyclopes.

I should have. I blushed a little as I passed the hole Gunnar had left in the wall with his fancy Deagle when I came back in the morning.
I got into my brother's room with little incident this time. I'd actually taken Nevermore with me, because (and this is how I know the gods have a sense of humor) his memory is better than mine.
It was tense in there. I was on edge, and my brother was too. I told him I'd wanted to meet him as soon as I found out I had family. I left out the part where Dad sent me to talk to him, but I didn't lie to him at all.
I kept saying we had the same father, and he finally asked me point blank. No more subterfuge. "My father is Apollo." It still sounds a little ridiculous when I say it. His name was Don. He was older than myself, but easy enough to get along with. It took a while, a lot longer than it should have, to put it together.
My half brother is Don Henley.
Yeah, that one. He gave me a cord Dad had given him, catgut from when it was really made with catgut, taken from the Nemean Fucking Lion.
Yeah.
We talked for a while, about a lot of different shit. We exchanged numbers, because I wasn't lying when I told him I was lonely. It's hard being like we are, scions, I mean. Things tend to just change around us, and it's especially hard facing the fact that we were enlisted from conception... No, that's not accurate. We were actually conceived for the purpose of fighting someone else's war. That's what we were meant for, and trying to buck the trend or go against the grain can be disastrous.
And I'm speaking from experience there. I myself strayed from "the path" and I got people killed. That's what Scions do, and that's what Don wants no part in. Normal mortals rarely understand how this can weigh on a person's - a Scion's - shoulders. More than that, just acknowledging that one's parent was more than a normal mortal is enough to break you. If I walked into a police station and said, "Hello, I am a daughter of Apollo and I would like to help you fight crime," they would lock me up.
I'm really lucky now to have Nate and Gunnar to talk to. It hadn't occurred to me just how lucky until I met Don.
He's got a family, a normal family, and because of that... because of the presence of normal, jealous and ignorant mortals I can't really have any communication with my brother.
But I don't have to hide anything from Nate and Gunnar. Yeah, sometimes Nate has to look the other way when my methods become less than legal but that would happen if we were hanging out as normal people.
That's different, though. I don't have to worry with the guys, like I do when I'm in surgery. There's always that fear that I'll press the scalpel, squeeze a patient's hand too hard. I have to put makeup on to become -less- attractive because I've distracted interns and almost lost a patient because of it. I've had to wear contacts to "normalize" my irises because apparently they freak people out.
But with Nate and Gunnar I can be... I -am- completely myself. They're tougher than mortal men. I wonder if they know how cool I think that is.

As soon as I said that to Don, that I just wanted to know someone else like me, that it's tough being like us and it's lonely, he got it.
I have family. That's kinda weird.
Just before I left, he told me about the inspiration for that song, "Hotel California." It's a real place. I don't think I ever want to see it, but somehow I know I'll probably have to, eventually.