Chapter Text
He sat on his throne, thinking about nothing.
This was not meditation. Poseidon did not meditate. Meditation implies a directed effort toward clarity, but what was happening in the mind of the Tyrant of the Sea was not directed in any sense. It was more like a machine fed an unprocessable input—gears spinning, cogs turning, producing no output and generating only heat and friction.
That child is yours.
The sea had spoken. Every current, every creature, every molecule of water in his domain conveyed the same message, delivered with the unwavering certainty of a law of physics. The divinity had reached out and recognized itself, much like a mirror recognizes a face.
He had looked at the baby.
The baby had looked at him.
Black hair. Sea-green eyes. An expression that held no fear—which was either very brave or very stupid, and Poseidon had not yet determined which it was.
He had turned around and left.
Now he sat on his throne, surrounded by the black-light depths of Atlantis that pressed in on him from all sides, and he struggled to think.
Day one was the hardest, though "hard" was a word that implied effort, and Poseidon had not exerted effort in a very long time. The problem was not that the information was complex. The information was, in fact, simplicity itself: there was a child. The child was his. The child was in his domain.
The problem was that Poseidon had no framework for this information. It did not fit anywhere in the architecture of his existence. He was a being who had watched stars ignite and die. He had shaped coastlines with the back of his hand. He had fought in the Titanomachy Tournament, stood beside his brothers when the world was young, and carved his kingdom from the raw material of chaos itself, long before the Big Bang shaped this realm.
None of that prepared him for a baby with his eyes wrapped in an octopus.
So he sat.
+
Day two
The bioluminescent creatures that normally drifted around his throne kept their distance. They could feel it—even the mindless ones Jellyfish or Sea Monsters, the ones driven by instinct and current alone—something was different. Their god was not moving. Their god was not commanding. Their god was sitting in the deep blue dark and producing nothing. No currents. No decrees. Not even a ripple of displeasure.
The whales in the distant trenches stopped singing.
+
On day three,
A delegation of minor sea spirits arrived at the edge of the throne room. They had paperwork. There were territorial disputes. There was a pod of merfolk from the northern currents requesting permission to migrate through a kraken's hunting ground. These were standard administrative matters that required his signature, nod, or, at minimum, his contemptuous dismissal.
Poseidon did not look at them.
The spirits waited for six hours. Then they left.
The paperwork piled up on the coral desk outside the throne room. By the end of the day, it had formed a small mountain.
+
Day Four:
Poseidon did something he hadn't done in about four thousand years. His family had finally learned to be silent and not bring them out when he visited.He thought about having children.
Not specific children, though. Not the concept of fatherhood. He simply turned the idea over in his mind, examining it from angles he had never bothered to consider before. Zeus had children. Hades had no children, but he loved his weapon very much. Poseidon had—
What?
Nothing. He had nothing. He had never wanted anything. The idea of producing an heir had never occurred to him, just as the idea of learning to breathe never occurred to him. It was unnecessary and therefore irrelevant.
And yet.
That child is yours.
The sea did not lie. But the sea did not explain how. It didn't tell him how. It did not tell him when. It didn't tell him who the mermaid was, why his divinity reached into her, or why it left something behind that grew into a small, black-haired creature that made fish bow.
He did not remember her.
This weighed on his mind more than anything else. Poseidon's memory was far from imperfect. He recalled every current he had redirected, every tide he had pulled, and every creature he had crushed beneath the weight of his domain. He remembered the formation of the Mediterranean Sea. He even remembered the last time Zeus sneezed during a council meeting and whether anyone acknowledged it.
However, he did not remember a clownfish mermaid.
He filed this away under "inconvenient" and continued to sit.
+
Day five.
He began to solve the problem.
Not the problem of why—that was still a blank wall in his mind, smooth and featureless and offering no handholds. But the problem of what now? The child existed. The child was in his domain. The child was, by every measure the sea could provide, his. These were facts. Poseidon worked with facts.
Fact: The child was a clownfish mermaid's offspring.
Fact: Clownfish mermaids were rare in his domain. They resided in the Prime Material Plane of Water, living symbiotically with anemones. While they were territorial, they were not aggressive and typically formed solitary lives or small family groups. Their habitat was not near his own, but rather closer to Nereus and Doris, which was outside his realm.
Fact: the child was currently living in an anemone.
Poseidon's eyes shifted—the first movement he had made since sitting down. A faint current rippled outward from the throne, disturbing the dust that had begun to settle on the coral formations around him.
He extended his divinity—not toward the child, but toward the archives of his realm. The records. The observations. Four thousand years of data amassed by every current, every creature, every spirit in his employ, much of which he had never examined because reading was a task for servants.
He read now.
Clownfish mermaids. Symbiotic bond with anemones. The anemone provided protection—its tentacles carried a sting that deterred predators. The mermaid provided defense and cleaning. The bond was lifelong. A clownfish mermaid separated from her anemone would experience distress and decline, eventually seeking a new one or dying. Since they feel safe around it, the anemone provides a sense of security, as clownfish are poor swimmers by nature. Clownmer-people are similiar while young.
The child had grown up in an anemone. The child was comfortable there. The child's fish—his retinue, his guard, his absurd little court—lived there too. His mother would feel okay not around one, but his child would need one, till it's older.
Poseidon processed this information with the same detached efficiency he applied to tidal calculations.
If the child came to Atlantis, the child would need an anemone.
+
Day six, he planned the room.
Not a guest room. Not a servant's quarters. A space filled with anemones—varieties from across the Plane of Water, clustered in configurations that would allow the clownfish to move freely while providing maximum coverage. The tentacles would sting.
This was important because it meant that anything entering the room without an invitation would be discouraged.
If Zeus visited, the anemones would sting him.
If Apollo wandered into his castle naked once more, the anemones would sting him.
If Hermes tried to sprint through at impossible speed, the anemones would sting him.
Poseidon did not smile. Poseidon did not experience satisfaction in any recognizable emotional form. But something in the machinery of his mind clicked into place with a precision that was, in its own way, pleasurable.
The anemones were practical. The child needed them. The fact that they would also discourage his relatives from entering the room was simply an efficient use of existing resources.
+
Day seven, he stood up.
The movement was slow. The water around him shifted, releasing pressure that had built up over seven days of stillness. The bioluminescent creatures scattered and then regrouped, tentatively approaching the throne as if checking whether their god was functional again.
Poseidon walked through the corridors of Atlantis. The spirits and minor deities who had been avoiding the throne room for a week pressed themselves against the walls as he passed. He did not acknowledge them.
He found Delphin first. The dolphin god was mid-conversation with a school of his namesakes, relaying navigation data through a series of clicks and whistles. He stopped when he saw Poseidon, his expression shifting to carefully neutral.
"Get a room ready," Poseidon said.
Delphin waited for more information. None came.
"...What kind of room, my Lord?"
"Anemones," Poseidon said. "Many varieties. Clownfish already present. A cradle of sea moss in an alcove. Temperature-tuned currents."
Delphin's neutral expression developed the faintest crack of confusion. "Anemones, my Lord?"
"Clownfish mermaids bond with anemones for life," Poseidon said, as if explaining water to a fish. "The tentacles sting. It keeps the child safe."
"And kept his family out", he did not say, as that would imply he cared about their visits, which he did not. He merely considered their presence to be an inefficiency.
Delphin bowed. "At once, my Lord."
Poseidon turned to leave. Then he stopped.
"He is bringing the anemone from the Plane of Water," he added. "The child's current home. Move it into the room. Intact."
"Of course, my Lord."
Poseidon left.
Behind him, in the corridor, Delphin remained frozen for three full seconds before swimming at top speed towards the residential wing, shouting for the interior spirits and leaving a trail of confused dolphins in his wake.
It was in this state—corridors buzzing with bewildered servants, anemones being imported from the Plane of Water at unprecedented speed, and a room being transformed into something that no one in Atlantis had ever seen before—that Proteus returned from Valhalla.
"What's going on?" Proteus asked.
Delphin, who was placing a particularly large crimson anemone, turned to face him with an expression balancing exhaustion and disbelief.
"He left to check what the fish told him. Then he returned after seeing it and didn't move for seven days. Now he is—" Delphin paused, choosing his words carefully. "—rearranging the castle."
"Stop talking about our Lord that way," Proteus said.
"But it's that way," Delphin said. Delphin gestured at the swarm of activity around them. "He didn't leave his throne for a week. Not once. He didn't do any paperwork. He just sat there, lost in thought with a blank expression. Then, he stood up and asked for anemones."
"What was the rumor?" Proteus pressed, redirecting with the efficiency of someone who had managed divine households for longer than most civilizations had existed. "I was in Valhalla, speaking with the other gods. Preparing for the council meeting in five years." His voice tightened almost imperceptibly on "council," but Delphin caught it. "I missed whatever occurred in our Lord's domain."
Delphin's expression shifted—subtle, but present. The faintest crease appeared between his brows.
"A demigod child was born in the ocean," Delphin said. "A small one. A baby. The child is Poseidon's son."
The current between them went still.
"What?" Proteus said.
"The rumors are true. I confirmed it myself. Our Lord went to see the child, looked at it, and then returned here. He sat on his throne for seven days without moving, eating, or speaking." Delphin paused. He didn't know what to say or do. So he just sat there. He left to prove it wasn't him."
Proteus stared at him.
Then, something happened to the old sea god's face that Delphin had seen only twice in his four thousand years of service. The formal mask cracked. His level-headed composure fractured. And Proteus—prophetic, loyal, eternally restrained Proteus—smiled.
"A child," said Proteus, his voice carrying a warmth that seemed almost foreign to him. "Our Lord has an heir."
"Proteus—"
"A child, Delphin. Do you understand what this means? After everything—after the empty halls and the silence that has spread through every pantheon for millennia—our Lord has a son." The cross-shaped marking on his forehead seemed to glow faintly, though that might have been a trick of the light. "This is magnificent news."
Delphin watched Proteus's joy with the detached skepticism of someone who had just spent a week watching the Tyrant of the Sea sit motionless on a throne, unsure of how to feel about fatherhood.
"Sure," Delphin said flatly. "Magnificent."
He turned back to the anemones.
From the direction of the throne room, a pulse of divinity rippled through the castle—not a command or a summons, but rather a shift in pressure that indicated movement. Their lord was on his way to collect the mermaid.
Proteus straightened immediately, his joy vanishing behind the mask of professional composure.
"Get that anemone positioned correctly," he said, all business. "If the child's home is not ready when our Lord returns, there will be consequences."
Delphin resisted the urge to point out that the consequences would likely be Poseidon sitting on his throne for another week—less a punishment than a continuation of the current crisis.
He positioned the anemone.
Delphin
delphin artist:zeldacw
