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Apollo survives the fall of Olympus out of sheer, dumb, luck. It hadn’t looked like luck at first. In fact when he’d first seen himself in the reflection of a window, covered in trash and sporting pimples, he’d thrown a royal fit. He’d raged and shouted and stumbled and shook his fists at his father. It had taken getting used to, being mortal. That is, he’d had to accept that there might be good things about being mortal before he could even begin to live as one.
It starts like this, the war ends and there’s no one to blame, no one that is except Zeus’ son (for Zeus would never blame himself) and so Apollo, god of medicine and Archery and Oracles, falls to the earth. It starts like this. A son of Poseidon looks angry as he stares down a fallen god on his doorstep and thinks not for the first time (and oh how treacherous his mind has become) that maybe Luke had the right idea. Maybe, just maybe. He tries to quell the thought. The thought remains (maybe Luke just did it wrong, they never needed a Titan, maybe the gods should fall).
Apollo learns to be mortal by inches and lines. Apollo learns to love Mortality by leaps and bounds. How wonderful he find it is to be able to know your children, to talk and laugh and sing with them. How incredible it was he finds to be able to love with so much fervor. How rewarding to master something and know it is because you learned and mastered, not because you just can be perfect. And when his time is up and Zeus formally offers him his godhood back and traitorous voice whispers in his head “Maybe Jackson had a point, maybe Mortality is better”
Apollo looks his father square in the eye and refuses to take the godhood back.
Zeus is furious, raging, terrible, foaming at the mouth anger, but there's nothing he can do, he can’t force him to take it, the oath wouldn’t take, it wouldn't bind and they all know it. So Apollo turns his back on Zeus and returns to mortality. Apollo goes back to camp half-blood and lives with his kids, he goes to high school and college, he fights monsters and learns to cook. And Apollo really has nothing to do with the gods or any of their offspring, but his own.
He knows of course that they're planning something. You’d have to be stupid to not know (of course they are the gods so…). But truly Apollo has very little interest in their plans and it only took a glance into their shattered eyes and scarred frames to know that what they planned didn’t have any intention of leaving the gods alive. They storm Olympus, those who are there are disemboweled on the blades of their children, their ichor dried in their veins.
Artemis stumbles bleeding and ash covered into his home as he makes dinner for his little ones. She is breathing hard and surprised to see him alive. “They’ve hunted me from sea to sea and yet you remain not a hair touched” he shrugs, they have no reason to kill him he will die anyway. But he patches her up, lets her meet her nieces, and then sends her away, because as much as he loves his twin, he won’t risk his babies.
The gods fall, and what an irony is that after all that has happened, the fallen god is the only one that doesn’t fall and fade without a trace. He finds it doesn’t much matter to him. It is hard in a human body trying to remember millennias that are fading softly away, to feel much more than a vague sorrow about the gods. He’d loved his sister, but they hadn’t spent enough time together in the last few centuries for her death to truly affect him. He’d been friendly with Hermes, but the god had been so worked to the bone he’d hardly had time to say hi since the Renaissance. He thinks he misses Aunt Hestia the most, but her death was easier to accept because she hadn’t died as the others, she’d simply chosen to fade. Percy had said she’d faded with a smile, and he was well content with that. Really, matters of Olympus hadn’t pertained to him in years. He says a silent goodbye to his twin, and then he lives.
He mows the lawn and finds cool rocks with his daughters. He goes to science fairs and late night trips to craft stores for supplies. He has water balloon fights and runs through the sprinklers. They make hot dogs and eat ice cream for breakfast. Apollo tucks his girls into bed and walks them down the aisle. And slowly, Apollo grows old. He sits in a rocker on the front porch with his wife. He talks about the weather with the neighbor. His hair is white, and his house is full of the laughter of his great-grandchildren. He wonders how he could have ever thought living forever was preferable to the wonder of a life filled to the end with joy.
Apollo is born a god, he is born with everything he could ever wish at the tips of his fingers. He is thrust down from the heavens to hardship and life, without magic or money or things. He dies a mortal man happier than any immortal could dream.