Me and My Family

by Ryan Lester Papadopoulos

Hi! My name's Ryan Lester Papadopoulos (obviously, I just wrote that) and I'm ten years old. I've got blue eyes like my Mum and curly hair like her too, but my smile comes from my Dad. I've got blond hair, which is a little weird 'cause both my parents have brown hair. They said it must be a recessive trait and I'd learn more about what that means in a few years.

As for what I like to do - um, well I like playing Mario Kart. My oldest brother Cameron (well second-oldest technically, I'll go into that later) is REALLY good at it. I've never beaten him at it. I'm getting closer though! I'm still MILES away from beating Mum. She smokes Cameron at it most of the time, so I stand NO chance of beating her. Cameron said that when I get a bit better at the game, we should team up and take her down together. I'm looking forwards to that, I want to wipe that smirk off her face so badly!

Cameron's a lot older than me - about sixteen years older in fact. He's actually adopted, which he apparently tried to use as an excuse to get out of chores when he was younger. I don't know why he thought that would work 'cause it never did. He's better at getting chores done now that he's an adult, but his apartment still isn't the cleanest thing in the world.

I also like archery and singing. I know archery's kinda an unusual thing to try, but Uncle Ollie let me try it out. I was REALLY good at it, like I managed to get a bullseye at 100 feet after only a week of practicing. Uncle Ollie's an expert at archery, so he's been teaching me twice a week. He says I'm so good I might even get into the Olympics someday!

Oh yeah, Uncle Ollie's not TECHNICALLY my uncle, we just call him that. He just kinda started coming around shortly before I was born. I think Mum wanted to adopt him into the family, but since he already has parents (though his dad sucks from what little I've heard about him), he just kinda became an uncle.

Uncle Ollie's also given me some singing lessons. His voice is MAGICAL, you just can't stop listening when he's singing! My voice isn't quite as nice as his, but I'm getting better and I DESTROY at karaoke.

Sometimes he gets this weird look when looking at me though, like I remind him of someone. He just smiles at me fondly whenever I catch him doing it.

I think I remind him of my technically oldest brother - I mentioned this earlier when talking about Cameron, remember? - Lester. He disappeared about twelve years ago, two years before I was born. No one knows what happened to him. He just vanished from our house one day without a trace. My whole family was completely devastated. He was declared dead a year later. Uncle Ollie came to be a part of our family around then. Apparently he knew Lester from… somewhere. I've never gotten solid answers on that actually. But Ollie vowed to always be there for us.

Lester was a lot like me from what my family have said. I look a lot like he did at my age, except my hair's blond. He was a GREAT older brother. He gave some of my other siblings piggyback rides and played pretend with them, read them bedtime stories, and just generally looked after them. He and Cameron were really close too, probably because they were close in age. He was only two years older than Cameron. Apparently he and Cameron were even able to team up and end Mum's reign of terror in Mario Kart - temporarily at least. I hope Cameron and I can do the same thing.

I wish I could've met him. He sounds really awesome. Even though I've never gotten to meet him I feel weirdly connected to him. Maybe it's because my parents gave me his name as a middle name, maybe it's because I've grown up hearing all about him, but I feel like I knew him really, really well. Like I hear stories about something involving him, and I can picture EXACTLY what happened. It's always from Lester's perspective weirdly, which kinda gets disorienting since I'm not as tall as him - not yet anyway. I'm getting there!

Ollie's not the only one who acts weirdly around me sometimes. Cameron sometimes gives me these weird fond sidelong glances when he thinks I'm not looking, and Dad does too. I asked Mum about it once, when SHE gave me a similar weird look. She smiled at me mysteriously and told me something her own mother had told her: that whatever you lost, no matter what you lost, would always turn up one way or another. Often when you least expect it.

I asked her whether that applied to Lester too. And she said yes, even for him. I felt like I should know what she was talking about…

Let's see, I've listed Mum, Dad, Cameron, Lester, Ollie- oh! I haven't mentioned my other three siblings yet!

So I've got three more siblings - Katie, Tyrone, and Tyler.

Katie just turned eighteen a few months ago. She's actually at college now. We all videochat with her several times a week. I miss her. She used to read bedtime stories to me when I was younger, after Cameron moved out but before I could read complicated stories on my own.

She's also a great singer and dancer. She's the one who introduced me to karaoke. I don't think she expected me to be as good at singing as I am, but she's not complaining! Sometimes she dances to songs I sing. It's a lot of fun!

Tyrone and Tyler are both twins and the resident troublemakers. They're both sixteen, six years older than me, but Mum often says I'm more mature than them. I can definitely see that. They've snuck around and played pranks before, and I have to be the mature one and stop them - mostly I miiiight have helped them once or twice. (They bribed me with Pokemon cards).

I don't get the same sidelong glances from Katie, Tyrone, and Tyler as I do from the rest of my family. I think it's because they don't remember Lester as well, and I'm pretty sure he has something to do with it? It's kinda sad actually. They loved Lester so much, but their memory of him is getting fainter with every year. Tyrone and Tyler have an especially hard time remembering him. They were only four years old when he went missing and their memories of that age are pretty faint. Katie's not much better. She was six so her memories are a LITTLE clearer, but not by much.

I found the three of them a couple years ago huddling in my bedroom (it used to be Lester's, but was revamped for me once I got old enough to sleep by myself). They were crying over an old family photo - the last one taken before Lester disappeared. I asked them if they were crying because they missed Lester, and they told me that was the problem. They DIDN'T miss him. Not like they should. That there should feel like there was a hole in the family, an empty place where he used to be, and there just… wasn't. That it felt like our family was complete, and had been for a long time. Like there wasn't someone missing, someone they'd loved with all their hearts.

I couldn't say I knew what they were going through. I didn't and I still don't. I never knew Lester, however much I wish I did. From my perception, our family has ALWAYS been whole, just with the shadow of a long-gone loved one in the background. But I knew that they shouldn't feel bad.

I hugged all three of them and told them that Lester wouldn't want them to be sad. That he'd be happy that they'd moved on with their lives and were happy. That they had nothing to feel guilty for.

Maybe it should have felt weird to put words in the mouth of someone I'd never met, but in that moment, I was absolutely certain I was right about what he'd say. I'm still certain.

They all hugged me back and cried for a bit, then thanked me. We've only talked about that day a handful of times since then, but I have a feeling it'll be seared into their memories like it was seared into mine.

So that's my family! I don't know what I'd do without them, and I hope I never have to find out.

(A/N) So if it wasn't completely, blatantly obvious, Lester was pretty much immediately reborn back into his own family. The Fates pretty much looked at Lester's situation and went 'yeah he doesn't deserve this much pain and misery, let's throw him a bone.'

I put in a reference to Baguette_Me_Not's own Papadopoulos Fam AU story, The Sun Can't Shine Without Darkness. archiveofourown works/18227948/chapters/43126244 . (inserted spaces so hopefully FFN doesn't hide the URL) It fit the theme of this chapter very well.

Oh, and just to be clear, Lester's Apollo-ish traits are NOT from being Apollo's son. He's Susan and Thomas's son through and through. When he did that merging thing with Apollo some of Apollo's essence kinda stuck to him, making him functionally similar to a demigod, even though he technically is just a clear-sighted mortal.

Susan, Thomas, Apollo, and Cameron figured out a long time ago that Ryan is Lester reborn. Katie, Tyler, and Tyrone have no idea.

Hope you all enjoyed the story! I'm a complete SUCKER for a happy ending, so while I might be cruel to Lester, I wasn't going to leave him in such a tragic situation permanently. The sweet cinnamon roll child deserves happiness!