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May Castellan has been waiting. Sitting in the kitchen; mixing kool aid, making pb&j’s, and baking cookies, doing nothing but passing the time and waiting. She looks out the window sometimes when she hears a noise or the wind blowing. If she tries hard enough she’s able to convince herself that it's footsteps heading toward her door. She knows, she can feel it in her bones, it’s a mothers intuition.
Her baby boy is coming home.
He’ll come home, blonde hair swaying in the wind and his blue eyes lock onto hers as he rushes into her open arms. She’ll hug him tight, never letting him go. She’ll tell how much she loves him, how she always knew he’d return to her, how she has a fresh batch of cookies baking in the oven and a fresh mix of his favorite drink cooling in the fridge.
People always tell her she’s crazy. How she shouldn’t wait for a ghost to haunt her in the middle of the night but she knows. There’s just this, this feeling in her heart that knows. Her son is coming back to her. So she has to be ready, she has to be prepared. She’s got him lunch, if he’s hungry. Got him dessert if his stomach still isn’t full. Got him a drink to wash it all down with. She is doing her duties as a mother. She’s doing it for her son. And if she tries hard enough she’s able to convince herself that every boy passing through he’s got some feature her son does. Even if she hasn’t seen him in a while she can imagine he grew up handsome. Can picture him, outside playing Cops and Robbers with his friends and laughing and being the boy he was always meant to be. Her little boy. All grown up how it was meant to be.
She knows, she feels it in her bones. Her boy is coming home to her. She’s a mother, and a mother always knows. Just like she knew grief and mourning, just like she could stomach fear and longing, she could hold on to hope and love. It always felt like just yesterday he’d been born, tiny fingers clutching tightly onto her own giant one. She always knew he was destined for something great, always knew he would grow big and strong
She would refuse to comment on the hint of fire she saw every time she looked at him. Refuse to comment on the faint whispers of backstabber and friend killer.
This was her little boy. She may be a lot of things, may be stupid, may be foolish, but she was not a bad mother. She was his mother, she was Luke’s mother, and for him she could be a good mother.
So she was here and she was ready, and she was waiting, waiting, waiting, as the clock ticked. Even after the fog had cleared and she’d been released from her curse she still sat in the kitchen, just waiting. Sitting and waiting. Sitting and waiting. Sitting and crying…wait, crying? Why was she crying? How could she be crying?
“May.” She's quick to turn to the voice. One she hadn’t heard in years but knew like the back of her hand. But if he was here then that only meant one thing, because if she knew anything it was that she’d never see him for anything other than bad news. And she didn’t want to hear it, she didn’t want to know. Because she was waiting. She was waiting for Luke to come home, waiting for her baby to come home. “May, come here. Sit down.”
“What are you doing here, Hermes?” She questions softly. Slowly, she allows herself to sit on a kitchen chair, the smell of cookies permeating through the air. They were almost ready to be taken out of the oven by now, and the kool-aid was probably cold by now. Everything was just right, and Luke would come home.
“I think you know why I’m here.” He settled on saying, because the truth was he didn’t know how to actually say it. How to cement it in stone, how to best land the blow. Because right now he wasn’t a god, he wasn’t just a man, he was a father. He was a father and he had failed to do the one thing he was supposed to do, protect his children.
“No, actually. I don’t know.” And May could refute it all she wanted to, but the fresh wave of tears streaming down her face gave her away. “I’m waiting…for Luke.” She tells him. “He’s on his way now, I can feel it.” And Hermes was a lot of things, but he wasn’t strong. Far from it actually. Because looking at her tears, and hearing her foolish idea, her hopeless idea and her lost love, it broke him deeply. He didn’t care if Zeus had a rule, had told them not to mingle with mortals any longer, it had to be him to tell her. No one else. Because even if no one else would admit it, the gods had messed up. Had truly made a mess of things and had truly done wrong by their children. They pushed them to the brink, and they were all suffering for it.
“May,” he cried softly, tears beginning to stream from his eyes, tears he hadn’t shed in a long time. “He’s not coming home.” And he hated the way he could see her start to break, hated seeing her try to hide her tears and her loss and grief as she tried to collect herself.
“What are you talking about?” She asks him, but it was in the way in which he knew she knew. Where he knew she was just trying to protect herself from it all, because it was just too much. “He’s coming home, I know he is.” She laughs, a broken sound from a hurt mother.
“He’s dead May. He’s dead because of me.” And she can’t even look at him, she has to fold her hands into fists and bow her head to the table. The cookies were burning now, turning sour from being in the oven too long, but she couldn’t bring herself to move. It was just another burnt batch, another unusable batch. She supposes that should have been a sign, but she wouldn’t allow herself to take it, wouldn’t let herself see it, wouldn’t even envision it.
“Stop…stop talking.” She begs more than she asks. She couldn’t take it, couldn’t stand it.
“There was a war.” He walks over to her and places his hand on top of her shaking ones. “Luke released Kronos, my grandfather. He became his vessel. He wanted to overthrow the gods.” He explains it to her, even as she attempts to pull her hands from under his in order to cover her ears. Even as she shakes her head violently, side to side as she tries to get him to stop talking. “Demigods,” he catches himself, because isn’t that how they excuse sending them to their deaths? By refusing to call them what they were, by refusing to see them as what they were, “children,” he corrects, “were lost on both sides. In the last moment, Luke regained control over his body, he sacrificed himself to end the war he started. He died, May.” And it was too much, because she freezes, tears making a mess of her face as she just stares down at the table because now he’d said it and neither of them could ignore it. “He died a hero.” He tried to soften the blow.
“He died a child.” She sharpens the knife. “He was supposed to come home.” She whispers, voice blank as she takes everything in once more. “A child that you pushed too far. A child that you bred for war. What did you think would happen?”
“We didn’t think,” he cuts himself off, because that was right, they didn’t think, “we didn’t think.” He repeats, softer this time. “We never thought about how this would affect the children.” There was silence for a moment as they both took in what he was saying, as Hermes took in his newfound revelation. “He loved you, ya know. There was never a moment he didn’t think about you.”
“Don’t say it like that.” She tells him sharply. “Don’t tell me his last thought was me, that he did it for me. Because you're shifting the blame onto me. This is your fault.” She chokes out. “My son is dead because of your selfish ego.”
“I’m sorry.” Because what else could he say to someone who had lost their entire world?
“What is sorry going to do for me? I’ve lost so much time with him, I don’t even know what he looks like now. The last clear memory I have with him is from when he was four, laying in his bed covers pulled over him while I read him a bedtime story. Now I don’t even have that. Because he grew up without me and he died without me there, by his side. Holding his hand and sweeping his hair out of his eyes.” Tears fell faster and she cried harder just imagining her boy laid out on the ground. “He was probably so scared.” She found herself wishing the insanity hadn’t been lifted from her mind. At least then she could forget this conversation happened, could convince herself that he was still alive, that her son was still walking around instead of fighting for his life and dying by his lonesome. She felt it as her heart began to rip itself in two, felt as her soul split itself apart and as she lost herself to grief.
“I’m sorry.” He simply repeated. She didn’t reply. Instead, she pulled her hands away and stood from her chair, walking over to the oven, pulling the cookies out and burning her hands in the process. Hissing, she rushed to the sink and poured water over the burns. Faintly, she hears Hermes come over to her side about to heal her hands but she pulls away from him. “May, please.”
“I think you should leave.” She closes her eyes, hearing him sigh as he looks at her.
“I’m not leaving. Not until-“
“Until what, Lord Hermes? Until you see me break even further as I deal with the fact that I have a son no longer? Until you watch me fall to my knees and scream my voice raw as I’m wracked with grief and guilt that we didn’t have more time together? Until you hear me die from the heartache of losing my son?” She looks at him, really looks at him as she tears into him. She wants him to feel her pain, wants him to see her anger, wants him to hurt, hurt, hurt, just as she was. “You failed him, you failed me. It may not be your duty as a god but it was your duty as a father to protect the lives you bring into this world. You watched him die and came here to watch me die. I don’t even have his body to bury.” She cried. “I’ll bury an empty casket for those children to burn his shroud.” Her voice catches as she talks, having to force herself to keep talking. She refused to call Luke their son, he was hers. Luke was her child, it was her who bore him. It was her who dried his tears at night and soothed his fears. It was her who bathed him and dealt with his childish tantrums. It was her who fought to take care of him before he’d left. Luke was her son, her baby. “I will break and I will mourn,” she says softly, “but it won’t be in front of you. So leave.” She doesn’t have to turn to see the bright flashing that came with his departure. She can feel the warmth that came with it and then the cold that envelops her once it’s gone. Then and only then does she allow herself to fall to her knees with her head in her hands. Because Luke was gone, her son was dead and she was truly alone.