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There was chocolate on her nightstand. Not a box, just a bar from the gas station. The wrapper and the chocolate itself wasn’t blue but Percy had had a fondness for it, and she’d bought him some when she had been grabbing some milk and bread from the bodega and the nurse had been seeing to him.
The nurse wasn’t seeing to him now. His side of the bed was cold, and he was being seen to by a funeral director. And she was alone.
“Percy,” she said, to no one in particular, holding the bar. The top line of it was broken off. He must have eaten it when she had been making dinner. He wasn’t going to finish the bar now. She had burned dinner. “I’m glad you died at home. I’m glad you died old.”
“I warmed up to him,” someone said behind her. She didn’t jump. She was far too familiar with gods popping up here and there by now. “By the end.”
“Mother,” she said, not smiling. “Did he make it to Elysium?”
“There was no contest,” she said. “You were both very lucky to have lived as long.”
“There’s not much kleos in killing an old woman,” she said, looking down at her hands, the skin wrinkled and loose along her swollen joints. “I think I’ll be fine.” She felt more fine than she thought she would have, but Percy had been dying for such a long time, riddled with this and that like someone had cursed him, his spine collapsing six months ago. There was only so much ambrosia and nectar could do, and there was only so much that mortal medicine could do. She had prayed and sacrificed to every god they could think of or find in books and from Chiron, but it hadn’t done much.
“You were always going to be fine,” she said, standing above her, bright grey eyes gleaming down. “I have always known that.”
“Is it wise to be sure?” she asked, quite genuinely. The intellectual argument interested her.
“When you have all the facts,” Athena said. “Which I always do.”
“As you say,” she said.
“I expect his father will be coming to the funeral,” she said. “As will I.”
“Can you not fight?” she said. “For one day. For our sakes,” she looked over at the empty side of the bed, still indented in his sake. She was going to have to get up and make the bed at some point, but for now, she was happy to let it stay like that.
“I am perfectly capable of not fighting with Poseidon for one day,” she said.
“Or being provoked by him,” she said.
“I promise I am,” she said. “It shall be the same as your wedding. Will it be at Camp also?”
“I have to ask Chiron.” She hadn’t been at Camp for decades, nor had Percy. They had come back sometimes to teach sword fighting, and strategy, but that had dropped off when they had become slower, and when they had grown too tired of seeing the faces change every summer, and so many campers failing to return when they should have, through no fault of their own.
It was tiring, this survival business.
She couldn’t imagine he would say no, and given that Mr D wasn’t there anymore to annoy them, there would be no dissenting voices to be heard.
“Why are you here, Mother?” she asked. “I thought there was to be no interference.”
“My father cares more when it’s the heroes in action, so to speak,” she said. “There isn’t much I can affect for you. And I wanted to offer you comfort.”
“Comfort would have been nice when I wasn’t busy scrimping together for medication and medical care,” she said tightly. “Or sitting with my husband when the doctor diagnosed him with everything wrong he could possibly get.”
“Tartarus,” she said. “I know Apollo wanted to help, even from a distance, but the effects were impossible to alleviate, I believe.” She looked almost sad. Like she was trying to approximate it.
“The Arai,” she said. “But they haven’t affected me.”
“No,” she said. “You were less powerful than your husband, in terms of literal ability, I mean. Power corrupts, in more ways than one.”
Which was to say, it undid his body, and his life, leaving her here without him.
“Will I see him again soon?” she asked, her hand pressed to her chest, eyeing up the bottle of heart medication on her nightstand.
“Soon is a term,” she said. “You will not last long, my child.”
“I’m fine with that,” she said. “I’ve lived a life.”
She had lived one with Percy. No children, Estelle moved away years ago, and she had never been close with Bobby and Matthew. Magnus was still in Boston, and she would see him, maybe go up to visit sometime, but it had been just them for years.
And now she was alone for the first time since she had been a teenager.
“My children live longer lives than most,” Athena said, her voice completely detached. “Tell me, were you happy?”
“I was, and I will be. I am not now,” she tried to smile, holding the chocolate tightly between her fingers. It was beginning to melt and she put it down on the sideboard, folding her fingers together.
“That is reasonable, I think. What will you do now?”
She looked around, thinking about it. Her whole day, every day, her whole job had been about taking care of Percy, for more than a year, even with a nurse coming in to help twice a week. Everything else had just fallen to the wayside. Their days had been broken into treats and treatments. Chocolate bars and medication, pancakes and rolling him over to avoid bedsores.
But she was alone now. Percy was gone, along with his pain, and she was going to have to find something else to fill her days, and spend the rest of her life with.
“I’m not sure yet,” she said, picking the chocolate back up and breaking off a square. “I suppose I’ll have to figure that out.”