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After several months with no word from his wife - for once, she really seemed to have taken him asking her to take a break to heart instead of doing something like a short family visit and is actually really, really taking a break - he sees her again for the first time on a beach near Montauk.
Quietly, he takes a human shape and appears beside her. "Hello", he starts, then stops, uncertain on how to continue.
She turns around, and her eyes widen in surprise. "Ah - hello. Uh, who are you?"
There's something strange about how she looks, less... divine, than usual, more mortal, a bit sharper, nonetheless, but she's still, definitely, his Amphy. "Poseidon", he answers, not quite sure why she's asking.
"I'm Sally."
He blinks, looks at her again, and a part of him wants to flicker, be younger and other, but no, she's not quite Salacia right now - instead, his wife looks mortal, and finally, finally he catches on: they're role-playing. What a grand idea for a break! After Amphy's been working so hard, too! And... he's missed having mortal lovers, whether they'd be a third to him and Amphy or just his own.
It's such a delightful idea, and so very much like his wife, too: to do something sweet for both of them even while she's supposed to be taking a break. He grins at her, just as in love with her as he was when they first met.
Weeks of spending time with his wife and falling in love all over again follow: of flirting and sweet laughter and the intoxicating knowledge that she'll always, always be by his side in the end.
He doesn't quite keep to being Poseidon, even though she's consistently a mortal Salacia; it doesn't matter much, whether he's Neptune or Poseidon, not with her.
It strikes him as odd, how dedicated she is to keeping up her human disguise, how she never, ever slips, not even when they go swimming. Usually, she's much less good at keeping track of humans; she's spent less time on the surface than he has. But it's easy to explain away - she's been spending a lot of time in the mortal world, after all.
Slowly, he starts feeling something odd about her body, something strange, and he still doesn't put things together.
It lasts until one day, when they're once again sitting on the beach, staring out onto their kingdom, and she tells him: "I'm pregnant."
For a moment, he's stunned, and then he can't help but smile wide - it has been so long since just the two of them had a child together, another tiny godling for the two of them to love, maybe he won't screw up raising this one as badly, he's got more experience now -
And then he feels for their child (their child!) and it all comes crashing down in a heartbeat when he realises that somehow, someway - their child isn't a godling, but a demigod.
For just a moment, he thinks he might have mistaken a mortal for Amphy, that he'll have to apologise for sleeping with someone without informing her for the first time in a long, long time,without sharing his joy about a new lover with her, but no, this is definitely his wife.
If she was that desparate for another child she'd let them have a demigod baby, then not with the prophecy hanging over all their heads. She wouldn't do that. She'd wait after the prophecy was fulfilled, preferably by one of his brothers' children. He doesn't want to lose a nibling, but he wants to lose a child even less.
Something is very, very wrong.
"Sally - Salacia", he starts, taking in her face again. Her oh-so-mortal looking face, still beautiful but not divine. "What do you know?"
She looks at him, and there's - no understanding on her face. "What do you mean?"
He starts and stops and tries to muddle a way through an explanation about who he is, and - she's seemingly guessed the part where he's a Greek god. He doesn't mention that he's been Neptune with her, too, not when -
Not when she doesn't seem to realise who she is. Not when they're not supposed to tell their mortal lovers about the way they'd fused with and become and yet not become their Roman counterparts. And right now, she is one of his mortal lovers, even when the thought tears him apart.
He tells her about the oath, about the prophecy, and it surprises her while it rips his heart in two, because the first child in millenia that will be just theirs might have the prophecy on their head, and he desperately tries to find out how to avoid it. Anything.
"I - you're a queen among women, Sally", and she is, as Sally and Salacia and Amphitrite, she's always been meant to be a queen. "Let me. Let me build you a palace, down under the sea, let me take me with you, let me -" take care of you, he doesn't say, but it feels like it echoes between them nonetheless.
It's the wrong thing to say: his wife has never wanted to be taken care of.
"What - what would that mean for our child?", she asks.
He opens his mouth, closes it, opens it again to try and find an answer. Maybe the babe would ascend to godhood even before being born, if his wife remembered again, maybe it would burn up in the divine if his wife can't control herself when coming back to herself, especially if she's somehow more Roman than not right now, he doesn't, can't know, doesn't think such a situation has ever happened before, and it's obvious from how she brought up her pregnancy, how she talks about the fetus, that she's planning on keeping this child. She'd never forgive him if he talked her into this and it meant their child's death. He'd never forgive himself.
"And - what about your wife?"
It's you, he doesn't say. It's always been you. If she knew, if she remembered - she might ascend, and then what? Even if their child survived, if they were a demigod - they weren't allowed to, couldn't raise demigods, and human children needed some parent. "She definitely wouldn't mind", he says instead, because Amphy wouldn't; she'd usually liked his lovers, and he'd liked. Well, most of hers. And Sally would have been a delight even if she'd actually been someone not-Amphy.
It sounds weak even to his ears, because his wife would mind having a palace built for her with no effort of her own, and -
"I have to live my own life, fight my own battles", she tells him, and she's always, always been too independent and work-minded for her own good. "I want - I want to write. I want to live."
Technically, a mortal life was a break she desperately needed. "I love you", he says, not sure whether he's begging her to change her mind or accepting what she's said.
She takes his hand, slips her fingers through his. "I love you, too."
He swallows. "Have you thought of what you'll name them?"
He won't be able to see this child grow up, yet again. But his wife will get to.
"Perseus, if it's a boy. Andromeda for a girl. They're - they're the only heroes in Greek mythology I could think of who got a happy ending."