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Percy does his best to keep track of the passing time.
His little sister's birthdays, his mother's greying hair, the changing of the seasons, the aging of the demigods and buildings at both camps. All of it makes up the symphony of time - one that he and Annabeth and Thalia now watch from the sidelines instead of participating in.
He doesn't rage at it anymore, the way he used to. Doesn't throw a godly tantrum at how unfair it is, to be stuck the way he is now despite all of his best efforts attempted over and over and over again. He can't afford to - a fit thrown by a god has consequences. Casualties. And he'll go back to Tartarus before he makes others - now far more fragile and fleeting than he is - pay the price for his own displeasure. He’s had years, decades now, to get used to this.
He doesn't want to become their parents.
Still, with the passing of time comes change, slow and inevitable as Fate from where it creeps. The people he knew are older, the camps no longer the same. In what feels like the blink of an eye, his sister is married and having children of her own, and half the demigods he grew up with are gone. This life still isn't kind to them, despite the changes he's made himself.
The day of his mother's funeral, there's a storm that not even his father can tame, and it rocks the Eastern coast with a fury that the mortals still talk about years later.
She's guaranteed the best of the afterlife, at least. Percy had made sure of that. Paul too, once he joined her.
Perhaps the strangest change of all though, is the way he and Annabeth slowly shift their way into legend. As more and more of the people who knew them personally - who lived through the same events that they did - pass on, the stories warp. Become a tale rather than a story, then a legend rather than a tale. Percy knows that one day they'll shift into myth, and he's not sure what to think about that once it happens.
Already the stories are twisting. Details of events lost then filled in, small changes that happen from oral storytelling tradition.
After all, all myths had to start somewhere.
Never before has he realized just how much perception matters when it comes to the divine. There’s a reason Ares shifted from a warrior and protector of women to the meatheaded jerk he is today. There’s a reason Zeus was once so respected and honored, and now is someone Percy can barely stand to share space with. There’s a reason Aphrodite was once feared, honored, and respected and is now considered a vain ditz who is obsessed with promiscuity. There is a reason Hades was once so feared none would say his name, and is now so sympathetic in a lot of modern media.
When the spirit of the west shifted to America, the gods took on traits of how people perceived their domains and roles in the pantheon. War is no longer considered an honorable pursuit, instead only sought after by brutes. Kings and leaders are no longer respected, but considered corrupt. Beauty and war are no longer thought to walk hand in hand, and promiscuity is something only those who are ‘lesser’ indulge in. Death no longer follows close behind in people’s footsteps, but waits ahead with an open hand and promise of rest.
The people changed, so the gods did too.
Percy can already feel elements of Perseus the god intermixing with himself - a little more aloof, a little colder, a little quicker to anger.
Never at the demigods. They’re always safe from his shifting moods, perhaps because they are part of his domain. But one thing that the myths never mention about immortality is how minimal all mortal problems start to feel. Once you’ve encountered them once, twice, three times… they start to lose their importance and urgency.
Apathy is the true monster of the immortals. It was also what made monsters of immortals.
Percy has long decided that more than anything else, that was the one thing he feared about becoming immortal. Because who was he, if he didn’t care anymore? When he was mortal, there were days where he felt he could do nothing but care. It got him into more trouble than it should have, but he wouldn’t have traded it for anything.
If he didn’t care, he could too easily turn cruel - had seen examples of that even when he was mortal. He’d never wanted to be a god at all, much less a cruel one. With one of his domains being bloodshed in battle (which, the Fates had to have been laughing at that, between Ares, his various battles with immortals, Akhlys, and a gods-damned nosebleed), he is already feeling his temper worsening. It urges him to indulge his domain far more often than he is comfortable with, and with his natural temper already being so tenuous at the best of times, he is always alert to when the shift in himself comes.
When he changes from Percy Jackson to Perseus Aimatomachysía, the blood-spiller. When the sea-green eyes he got from his father turn ichor-gold.
He can make a difference, at the very least. Even though he never would have chosen this for himself, at least he can use it to do something good. The gods have to listen to him now, in a way they never did when he was just a demigod. Now, his words hold weight, and things can finally change.
Poseidon doesn’t entirely understand it himself; he’d never been mortal, and doesn’t understand why Percy continues to push back so hard against his godhood, even still. Percy doesn’t know how to explain to him that acceptance has never been in his nature due to him, and that the urge to fight for something better comes from his mom.
All the best parts of him came from her, and now that she’s gone, he has been floundering, looking to his sister and his wife instead. He can’t deny that he wishes there was a third voice to listen to, when he wanted input on decisions, but even gods cannot cheat Fate or death permanently.
Things have changed so much already, and as he watches, they change even more in what feels like the blink of an eye.
Years pass in what feels like weeks, decades in what feels like months. He has a little more understanding now, why the gods don’t seem to care the way their children want them to. Their lives are measured in eons, not a handful of decades. Less, in the case of demigods. It doesn’t make Percy excuse them from their mistakes or responsibilities, but he understands the deities in a way that he hadn’t so long ago.
Annabeth still doesn’t quite agree, but even she is reluctantly more tolerant of the mistakes the elder gods around them make these days.
They are wary of her too, the way she ascended too unknown - almost miasmic in the way she accomplished it. Almost antithetical to the nature of the gods. Had it not led to divinity, Percy is fairly certain it would have been blasphemous enough to land her in the Fields of Punishment upon her passing. If he hadn’t survived his own ascension, he likely would have been right there with her for allowing it.
Still, they both survived and are now gods, treading on the toes of all the others and yelling at them to do better. They are the youngest in the pantheon by millennia, and it shows in the way that none of them seem to truly know what to do with them. They are young, they are loud, they are disrespectful and irreverent. But, they are also powerful, and are well-known and beloved by the gods’ own children.
They are safe, as long as both of those things remain true - if for no other reason than that the gods need the loyalty of the demigods.
With both of their seats of power being in the camp itself, Percy doesn’t see the opinions of the demigods changing anytime soon. Though, he also would never have expected them to be where they are now, so perhaps it will with time, like everything else seems to.
All he and Annabeth can do is try to do right by the demigods, in the way they never got to experience. They will keep looking to the future, no matter how much time seems to creep on, because there is nothing else they can do.
Time will change everything anyway, no matter what they intend, regardless.
Percy will keep doing his best to track it, nonetheless.