Chapter Text
Luke hated him.
Not, was angry and lashing out in the way children did, a temper tantrum of strong emotions that would pass. Not, didn’t really like him but still loved him deep down, in the way it too often was with family.
Luke absolutely hated him.
In a different universe, Hermes’ grief and helplessness in the face of his son’s irrevocable fate would lead him to retreating. He was very busy in any case, always a ready excuse why he can’t be with his kids. But in Luke’s case, he literally could not be there for him and walking alongside him and being unable to help was painful. So why put himself through that if he really could not help? He distanced himself. Not just from Luke; from all his children. Yes, he still loved them. Made sure they reached the camp before the monsters got them. Passed on gifts. But always from a distance. He didn’t even claim them all, that’s how distant he held himself. They were in his cabin in any case, and the raw pain of one favored child facing a horrible future was enough to make him shield his own heart from his less favored.
Even in that universe, he kept trying to help however he could. He sent his son, fated to die, on a quest to obtain an apple that granted immortality. Sure it all went horribly wrong, and Zeus was not happy, but he tried. He approached Luke’s powerful demigod friend who, being a demigod, was allowed to break the rules, who might be able to reach him where he could not. Hermes tried, and he failed, and he held himself aloof and distant to protect his own immortal heart from completely breaking.
In this universe, however, he decided it was even worse to not be there in the only way he could; invisibly and still unable to help, but at least he would know if something went wrong. So while the larger part of Hermes was delivering packages and guiding the lost, a portion of his awareness shadowed Luke, telling himself he could not interfere but he could watch. And who was he kidding; he was totally helping in small ways. Just being there tipped luck in the kids’ favor. If Zeus ever caught on, there was a strong chance Hermes would face punishment for it. And there was a good chance of Zeus noticing; maybe he already had but was turning a blind eye until Hermes really interfered. It might be worth it. The worst punishment Zeus was likely to deliver could not be worse than the pain of watching his child suffer.
Probably.
But shadowing them meant he got to hear every rant Luke had against his dad. And Luke had a lot to get off his chest. To hear him, every monster they fought, every deprivation they suffered, every time he was ‘forced’ to use the gifts his dad gave him to survive, it was all Hermes’ fault. Luke’s companion, who likely had an equal grievance, seeing as she was also wandering the streets and facing deprivations no child should have to face while hunted by monsters, was kinder. Hermes was grateful, but Luke did not appreciate it and tended to lash out even more trying to change her mind.
“Why do you keep defending them? They’re absent parents, at best. Downright abusive, at worst.”
“I’m not saying you don’t have any reason to be angry, that you have to give them a chance. You’re right. Hermes has let you grow up on the streets, beset by monsters, with just another kid to help you. He’s a shit dad. But…”
“But?”
“But, think about it. What example does he have for being a dad? And what does he know about being a kid, for that matter? What do any of the gods know?”
There was a rumble of thunder from a clear sky, and a normal half-blood child would be huddling and begging forgiveness. This child rolled her eyes at the sky.
“You know I’m right! The first generation spent their childhood in their dad’s stomach. And the second generation…well, according to the myths Athena sprang fully adult from Zeus’s head. No childhood there. Aphrodite arrived, by all reports also fully adult, from the sea. Hephaestus was thrown away as a baby by his own mother so hardly a stellar upbringing. And Hermes…”
She trailed off. Hermes really shouldn’t have continued to stand around, listening in. He should either have left them to rail uselessly against the gods, or smote them for their daring. Just standing and listening was pointless.
It did, however, fit with a deity whose realm included commerce, diplomats, messengers, and thieves. He was stealing words not meant for his ears, trying to better understand where his son’s hatred came from so he could diplomatically come to an arrangement with him, to fix this. Besides, if he left, his luck would shift with him and with the kids’ luck a monster would immediately stumble onto their hideout. He stayed.
“You can’t say Hermes arrived fully grown or that he was thrown from a mountain by his mother,” Luke said, his tone bitter and angry. “He started his life as a thief and he never improved.”
“Exactly. Baby humans are, above all else, completely innocent.”
“Right. Hermes is far from that.”
The girl rolled her eyes again, and said, “You’re missing the point, Luke. Human babies…they don’t have the experience or ability to run and speak and plot from the very day of their birth. But Hermes…he may have had a childhood but it was nothing like ours. He might as well have arrived as an adult, for all the similarity his childhood holds. He can’t understand our struggles because he has never faced being small and defenseless and inexperienced.”
That wasn’t true. Was it? Hermes remembered that he was small, once. Well, smaller. Everything had been so large, so new. His childhood was brief, true, for gods grow as quickly as they need to and he…he had been needed from the start. As soon as there were real people who needed a god that was approachable. You couldn’t approach a storm, nor the sea, not as a whole. But a road can be travelled. Luck is very personal. As soon as there is a concept of ‘mine’ and ‘yours’ there is the concept of ‘what once was yours is now mine’ either through trade and commerce or less honest means. He had been small once, young once, but…
He had held Luke in his arms as a baby, and that baby did not babble stories at him. Did not try to pickpocket him. Did not jump up and start running. In the beginning, Luke could not even hold up his own head. He cried when he needed anything, and he needed a lot. Food. Safety. His mother’s warmth.
His dad?
Hermes gave a lot to his children. He always had. There was a time when what was expected of fathers was to provide for their family. Food, clothing, shelter. Preparing their sons to take over and their daughters to marry. But hugs, kisses, praise, attention? A father admired children who lived up to his name. Children were commonly named First, Second, Third, and the amount of attention one got was equally ranked. By the standards of most ages, Hermes was an excellent father.
Even if, maybe, what he was preparing his children for was a little different than taking over the family business. But that was normal for his family. Hermes was never, ever going to take over for Zeus. None of Zeus’s children were destined to succeed him. And none of Hermes’ children were destined to take on the role of herald for the gods, even if they might, the immortal ones, take on their own lesser realms that may or may not fall under their father. Hermes was preparing them, instead, to be heroes. He shared his own gifts with his children, and not just flying shoes or invisibility cloaks or trick cards. He shared his gifts; they were born with innate abilities to run fast, or to open locks, or to talk themselves out of anything. And he kept an ear open for their prayers, an eye on their situations. His mortal children almost always survived to reach Camp Half-blood because he interfered.
Technically, he wasn’t supposed to. That is, a god was allowed to be a parent but not to interfere with quests or fate; a fine line to walk because even training could be misconstrued as an attempt to interfere with a future quest. Gifts were okay, but teaching your children how to use the gifts? It was too easy to cross an invisible line and the punishment could be swift and brutal. Protecting your child from monsters meant stopping a Fates approved destiny as half-blood children were meant to live or die by their own merits, and in saving them the godly parent might well doom them. The more powerful the parent, the stricter the rules were enforced because the greater the consequences of ignoring them. Many gods chose not to parent at all.
Hermes’ methods were both more direct but also almost completely hands-off. If he parented at all, he limited his time and did it from a distant, avoiding anything to do with his role as a god. More often, he did not manifest for his children at all. That didn’t mean he didn’t watch over them. He was discrete and unseen in the ways he guided or protected, but guide and protect he still did. He was in a slightly unique position because no god was about to tell on him to Zeus if they noticed. Not when he continuously tried to do the same for their children. Anyway, it was within his realm to guide people on roads. Or provide luck. Or make sure children that the satyrs missed got letters of invitation to the camp.
Of course, then his son had to join up with Zeus’s daughter. He blamed Luke’s fate. Hermes had to be even more hands off than usual, subtler than usual, because he could not be certain that Zeus’s appreciation of Hermes helping his daughter would outweigh his annoyance at Hermes for interfering with half-blood children on what may or may not count as a quest. Not an official quest, certainly, seeing as they were not at the camp and far out of reach of an oracle. But both children were potentially already subject to a prophesy, which might as well amount to the same thing.
So Hermes shadowed, and smoothed their road where he thought he could get away with it. Unlike Zeus, whose own version of ‘helping’ (and of course he wouldn’t call what he did interfering) was to lead his own child, and Hermes’, into a trap that had been killing half-blood children for years. They survived, because Luke was able to draw on his father’s gifts. And when a ridiculously small child who shouldn’t even have been noticed by the monsters yet nonetheless was running around on its own, Hermes made sure they found each other with the minimum of trauma.
Things happened as the Fates had decreed they must happen, and Hermes was not such a fool as to outright defy the fates. Thalia became a tree. Luke became possessed. The children of the gods suffered and died as children of the gods almost always do.
In the midst of this, Hermes remembered Thalia’s words, and Luke’s.
“They can’t relate to us, anymore than we could relate to…to, I don’t know, raising a monster child. Different experiences, different needs. And, to top it all off, no good examples to follow! Did Zeus even help raise Hermes, or was it all his mother? I know my grandfather never helped raise Zeus. It’s a classic cycle of abuse; the abused child becomes the abuser.”
That couldn’t be right, Hermes was certain, but he was also uncomfortably aware that it didn’t fully sound wrong. He had been raised by his mom, for what little raising he had needed. His dad only ever really paid attention to him when he needed him for something or when Hermes did something particularly worthy of being Zeus’s son, and Hermes, in turn, tended to only go to his dad either when summoned or when he had a request. He wouldn’t say Zeus was abusive, though. Especially where Zeus could hear. Wouldn’t call himself abusive. Felt an irritated urge to smite the girl for even suggesting that. Not that he would. His son liked her. She was just a kid. She was Zeus’s kid. Also, smiting her might just prove her point.
“Why do they keep having kids if they hate them?” Luke wanted to know.
We don’t hate our children, Hermes did not say. Ground his teeth to keep from saying.
“They don’t hate us,” Thalia replied. It was so exactly his words that for one brief moment Hermes feared he actually had spoken in spite of himself.
“Well, they don’t want us. I think they just like having someone they can control. We can do the things they aren’t allowed to. And we are someone to worship them, now that the world has moved on.”
“Maybe,” said Thalia, with a shrug that made Hermes want to growl and shake her and say that wasn’t true. At least, it wasn’t true for himself. He’d never really asked any of the other gods why they chose to have children. Because it was always a choice. Well, almost always a choice. He himself, he liked children. They were natural liars and thieves, and their play often fell into his realm as they ran around and roughhoused with each other. And he liked women. He loved every woman he had ever gifted a child to, and he had never gifted a child to a woman who had not wanted one. Granted, he had never been big on monogamy, few gods were, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t, and didn’t love. He loved his children. And fertility was a part of his realm; not expressing that through gifting children might well have upset the balance of the world.
“Maybe,” Thalia said, “But maybe they just…had shit examples. They aren’t like the Christian God, you know, flawless and perfect. They mirror us, humans, and are just as flawed and messed up as any of us. Maybe more so. They’ve had a long time to pick up trauma. You don’t have to forgive him; I’d never ask that. And I’m on your side, not his. Always. But…I can sort of see why things are the way they are. I think I pity them, really. They can’t understand because they’ve never been real children. Never experienced real love.”
His son blushed, slightly, and Hermes had no doubt the direction his thoughts had taken. But for once, his own thoughts were in a very different direction.
Pity? Not know love? Aphrodite was the very embodiment of love. Hermes moved between both the mortal and godly planes and loved many who he met. He loved his family, even Ares. He loved the women he slept with. He loves his children. He was even fond of his cousins, nieces, and nephews, mortal and immortal. And what did she mean by trauma?
It didn’t make sense. Which was understandable, because how could a half-blood child understand what it was like to be a god. She had no plane of reference. Which, Hermes supposed, was exactly the point that she had just made about him.
So he listened, and he watched, and Thalia was a tree and his son was at camp and Luke still hated him, even as Hermes gifted him with flying shoes, and tried to give him a quest. The quest was what finally pushed Zeus over the edge into calling Hermes to him to be reprimanded for ‘interfering’.
“I do not forbid you from interference to be cruel,” he said, all disappointed and stern monarch. Not his father but his king. “You risk upsetting the Moirai, and your own fate in turn.”
“No one can change destinies that the Fates have decreed,” Hermes argued, because it was in his nature to argue. A wiser god might have bowed his head and agreed. Instead, Hermes added, “Trying to change things just makes them happen. Anything I do must have been decided by the Fates anyway.”
“You worked to change their prophecy. If your son were made immortal…”
“It failed, as it was always going to.” And if he sounded a bit bitter, who could blame him? His father, apparently.
“You risked yourself, and through you all of Olympus,” Zeus said, dealing with Hermes’ attempts to use words to get around him by plowing straight through and ignoring them. Like usual. “The Fates could have woven your destruction, our destruction.” And if Hermes had known then about Zeus’s attempt to murder the children of his brother on the off chance one might be the child of a prophecy, he might have gagged on the sheer hypocrisy. But Hermes didn’t know, not then, and Zeus maintained his stance.
“You should cast him out of Olympus,” said the honeyed voice of Hera. The most annoying thing about the summons was that it was not completely private. It was not the solstice and most of the thrones were uninhabited, but Hera tended to sit by her husband at moments like these, and she held no particular fondness for her husband’s bastard children. He was lucky it wasn’t more of his family; Ares had a sixth sense for getting to see his siblings humiliated and Aphrodite delighted in anything to do with love. Granted, the love of a father for his son wasn’t exactly her thing, but his love for Luke’s mother was and all that love was intertwined together.
Hermes wasn’t really scared that Zeus would do as Hera suggested. If only because it would not be easy to replace Hermes. He was useful. And Zeus was not wrong; if the Fates had somehow woven a destiny that struck down Hermes, the entire world would suffer for it. Zeus could not just cast him out without bringing about the very Fate he claimed to want to avoid.
Hermes wasn’t scared, but he couldn’t help but notice that Zeus was not exactly quick to say something like ‘of course I’m not going to cast my son out of Olympus’. Thalia’s words came to him, then, as they tended to at odd moments. A child, now a tree because her father protected her. A child who couldn’t possibly understand the gods. Who said the gods could not possibly understand their children.
“As punishment, I have not only ensured the quest has failed, but that your son is the sole survivor.”
Luke had not been Hermes’ only child on that quest. Luke had, quite naturally, included kids he knew to help him, and who did he know better than his own cabinmates?
So maybe Hermes was wrong. Zeus could do something to him that was worse than not interfering at all. Zeus always believed in the punishment fitting the crime. Hermes wanted to help his children? He would fail, and they would die. They would die and it would be his own fault.
Could Hermes not understand what it was like to be a helpless child with an absent father? Well, his children could not possibly understand what it was like to be a father not allowed to help his own children without dooming them.
And maybe, in that moment, the seed of an idea was born.
It didn’t take fruit, not then and there. Hermes was still too heart sore and Olympus was still in jeopardy and Luke was still alive but hated him. And he was too busy. Always busy. Always useful and needed.
How else does a son earn his father’s love?
But for a moment, Hermes fully understood Luke’s hatred. The seeds were there, and the idea would slowly grow, and it almost felt as if he had always known what he intended when, at the end of it all, Percy Jackson demanded that the gods acknowledge their children.