Archive of Our Own

The holiest place in the world, and he has never felt more like a sinner in his life. He wonders if he'll turn to glowing cinders and grey ash with the first step he takes on the marble bridge.

He doesn't.

All he hears is the squeak of his sneakers, the hum in the air as the nymphs prepare a celebration for gods who watched their children get slaughtered.

War makes a mess of everything. Even this once beautiful courtyard filled with heavy fruit trees and floating music is now desolate. Abandoned in an eery sort of way. The stone mends itself but there's cracks he can trace all the way back to the beginning of time. How many times can something be ruined and reformed before it becomes another thing entirely?

The doors of the throne room are pushed open by two unimpressed, stern looking cyclopses. Nothing at all like his little brother with a too wide smile and enough sparkle in his eyes to blind glitter.

“Ah Percy Jackson.” A warm voice sounds from high above the room.

He looks towards it. Aphrodite sits on the window sill, one leg drawn to her chest the other dangling down. Her head rests atop her knee, brown hand pushing against her chin. Even with her blood stained chiton and the wilting pink roses in her usually pristine hair she still looks like the most beautiful person in the cosmos. It's the way she glows. Like the sun takes its light from her. Like the stars make themselves dimmer in her shadows.

“Son!” His father sounds tired, weary down to bones he doesn't need to repair. Still there is excitement, pride in his tone. It's a strange feeling for Percy. To feel proud of. He supposes he shouldn't latch onto the lightness too quickly. It is as easily blown to him as it is diverted away.

This story may differ from what is known. The version presented in the public eye has been altered to keep details unwilling to be divulged quiet. But here and now, at the request of our dead god, the true and vicious story must be told. Please refrain from wishing it did not end up this way. If things had been different… Oh indeed if they had been.

“Percy Jackson,” A booming voice fills up the space. What thunder takes, thunder must make. “You have arrived. Well done.”

He doesn't reply, simply drops to a knee, bows his head. These beings don't always deserve the respect they so greedily survive on but he must choose between taking the bow or bowing his life.

“Stand son.” His father is quieter than his brother, but somehow sounds more dangerous.

“We have a proposition for you halfblood,” Zeus is yelling straight into his brain. Percy swears he's vibrating at a frequency that's going to produce lightning.

“Uncle?”

“Today, for your good service and bravery we offer you the chance to become a God.”

He doesn't breathe. No inhale to exhale.

“Tell him the stipulation Father.” Athena is frowning, as she always is, but her displeasure is only directed at the God of the Sky.

“There is a boy… on our Roman side.” Zeus speaks the way lightning strikes. In flashes. Never all at once. He is not Hades sweeping across the field. He is not Poseidon rushing over and then pulling away. He is striking trees and watching which forests catch alight. “There is a boy who will also be offered this honour. You and him—”

And he wants to yell ‘spit it out what, what, what could you possibly want me to do with him?’ He is as still as a sticky summer evening.

“You will have to rely on him and him on you in order for you both to have godhood.”

His daughter has had enough, frown flashing from her eyebrows to the downward tilt of her lips. “We do not have enough domains nor power to offer you both godhood but if we combine your power you will both gain.”

“And if only one of us were to receive it?”

She tilts her head, looks at him. His strategies are not laid out in blue prints but sparking and crashing as the moment takes hold. She hates him for being unorganized. He hates her for thinking organization will save them.

“If you both want it but are determined only one of you will have it, then you must fight for it. Otherwise you both sacrifice something and join forces.”

“Who is the boy? The Roman?”

“Jason Grace.” Aphrodite says, still perched on her windowsill. Hummingbirds floating around her shoulders. “Child of Jupiter and Beryl Grace.”

“And why does he deserve this honour?”

“He fought for the Romans in your war. For every blade you swiped he did too. You toppled Kronos so he toppled Krios.”

“And if neither of us want this godhood?”

The room goes silent. They hadn't considered it. That he wouldn't want this power. That maybe his only goal in his life is not to obtain something that is destroying the very essence of his world.

“Where is Jason?”

There's shuffling, someone knocks into something, and then a boy the same age as him is stumbling towards the middle of the room, towards where he stands.

In the story known, the boy of lightning and the boy of sea do not meet till much later on. Till they've both been stripped of being and reassembled into weapons. But this is not the way it goes. No, in the true version they meet in the throne room of the gods. They meet and everything goes quiet. Is this the beginning of an explosion or the start of a galaxy? How does a star become a blackhole? It collapses into itself.

Percy Jackson lays his eyes upon Jason Grace and his body becomes a blackhole.

They don't say anything. Don't move one step closer, two steps further. They're close enough to wound. Far enough to catch each other. This is how it will always be. A dance of violence. I love you, let me die for it. I love you let, me die with you. But they don't know it. Not yet.

“So,” The booming voice again. Where Percy flinches, Jason stiffens. “Will you take this offer half-bloods?”

“What will our domain be?”

Apollo looks amused as he strums a cord on his harp and raises a brow at them. “What would you like it to be Jason Grace?”

They look at each other, these demigods who watched their friends fall. These demigods who fought in a war the day after their mothers tucked them into bed.

“Protectors of half-bloods.” Percy says. His voice is steady. He was born for this.

“Keepers of the Hearth.” Jason follows.

Hestia makes herself known, a kind smile on her face.

“We want to be Patrons of the demigod camps.”

“That is all?” Poseidon looks at them. Old and wise, and young and curious. “Why?”

“We watched our friends lay down their lives for a fight not meant for them.” Percy is frozen lakes cracking under pointed pressure designed to be spread. “If we can protect them, if we can make them feel at home maybe they won't feel the need to find it elsewhere. Maybe they won't feel the need to burn the whole world down just to build one for themselves.”

His message rings clear in every syllable. But he doesn't dare make it more obvious than that. If you hadn't abandoned them maybe they wouldn't have abandoned you.

“And you will share this duty?” Athena, ever the keeper of balance.

“Yes.” They agree in unison. Beginning even before it has begun.

“Then so it shall be.” Zeus nods. “Perseus Jackson, Son of Poseidon, Jason Grace, Son of Jupiter. I Zeus, King of Gods and God of the Sky bestow upon you the honour of godhood with the domains of Demigod Protection and Keepers of the Hearth. Where one rules the other must. Where one falls the other must. Where you share it will be equal. Where you split it must be balanced. Where you join it must be together.” There's a single flash of lightning.

Percy looks at Jason. Jason looks at Percy. The world goes dark.

These new gods have their own story, told between scribbled meetings in complete darkness, behind time they've stolen for themselves. But no-one is privy to these notes. The notes being told here and the ones the Ancient Gods laid out to the world are the only ones available in this cosmos. Still what can be told is that they are successful gods.

Gods that cannot prevent a second war but can change the course of it. Gods that can stop unnecessary death before it has happened. They are not putting Thanatos out of business they are simply taking some off his plate. They have friends in high places. Their friends have them in higher places.

It has never been possible to save everyone but now people fight for the home they grew. Instead of fighting to grow their own. They make the scared twelve year old feel loved in this strange new world.

They hold hands with the twenty year old that still wakes up screaming because she can feel the hands of ghosts who loved her once.

These gods are loved by those they want to protect and feared by those they need to be protected from.

They hold their own hands and mourn lives they can never go back to. Nobody told them that taking this godhood means losing their humanness. As if you cannot be two beings at once. Maybe that's why half-bloods were always so fatal. You can't exist as both so you will be destroyed for either.

This story ends at the very beginning. The dead god still lives. It is not a death of body but of life.

Percy Jackson watches as demigods pray to him. As they bow before temples decorated the same colour as Jason's eyes, as his own hair. Brown stones like his skin, golden light like Jason's. He watches as Athena’s temple goes dusty, worn away, unused. He watches as Demeter goes pale with hunger. The campfires spark blue and gold, prayers muttered ‘thank you to Gods of Protection, Keepers of the Hearth,’ and nobody says thank you to the strategist of war. He watches as Zeus cannot produce lightning as powerful as Jason. He watches as his own father asks him to make a tsunami because he cannot.

This story, oh how it ends so violently.

He watches as the gods have a meeting without him and his partner. There is so much anger in their eyes.

Aphrodite is wild with the love they have formed, frothing at the mouth for a slice of their companionship. She wants to sink her teeth into them and see if they taste like the adoration they are flooded with.

They are called to the throne room. Summoned on wind weak enough to let them fall. He laughs and it echoes in Jason.

Oh how this story is sickening to belong with.

“We have spoken.” The once booming voice now rolls with the effort to spread across the room. A storm with too much reach and not enough power.

“Who are you protecting the demigods from?” Athena glares.

Jason smiles and it's the most beautiful sort of malevolence Percy has ever seen.

“Who do you think, Goddess?”

Apollo strums a cord on his Lyre and it no longer sounds smooth, amusing. It sounds like the chime of a bell tower before the guillotine comes down.

“Who, Jason Grace?” She is wrapping her fingers around her throne.

They still stand in the middle of the room, just like they did all those years ago. No space made available for a seat of their own.

“The Gods, Athena.” Percy grins. He feels beautiful lightning scream through his veins. Starting at the hand curled around his partners. He refrains from throwing his head back and eating it whole. Gods, this being next to him is perfect.

“From us Perseus?” His father is adamant to think he heard wrong. It could never be.

He simply smiles, matches the one Jason sports.

“We cannot let this go on.” Ares growls, stands and creaks.

This story has no happy ending. At least not in any fairytale way. You were warned at the beginning weren't you?

“Thank you for staying by my side.” Percy turns to his friend, his companion, his partner through this all.

“Thank you for loving me.”

“In trust and heart.”

“In safety and hope.”

There is a single flash of lightning.

Percy kisses Jason. Jason kisses Percy. The world goes dark.

This story is a lament and a warning. If you should ever continue the work of the Gods of Demigod Protection, Keepers of the Hearth, they will guide you. Should you attempt to destroy, demolish, or alter the roots they have tangled into this earth?

Well truly, the narrators wish you a painless death.

“Zeus,” Poseidon’s voice quivers. “I'm fading.”

“Dad?” Athena cries.

“And so the lovers reign.” Aphrodite laughs into the darkness.

The middle of the throne room runs a single crack, already mending itself.