Work Text:
Annabeth left the apartment slowly, her lips pressed tightly together. On anyone else, it would have looked like a mirror of the grief and terror Paul could see in Sally. But he’d spent enough time around demigods by now to recognise the excited flush in Annabeth’s cheeks, the sparkle to her eye. Her tight lips curved up into a grim line, and it was the closest thing he’d seen to a smile on her since they’d realised Percy was missing.
After months of stagnation, she was desperate to get going. Demigods. They had battle in their blood. It was the waiting that killed them more than anything else. Now that they had a strong idea where Percy was, and the ship was ready to take them there, only filial duty had brought Annabeth here, to report to Sally and Paul, before heading straight for California.
“I’ll bring him home,” was the last thing she had promised before she left. “We’ll find him. And I’ll bring him home.”
Sally had hugged her as she went, but now she stood next to the closed door, hugging herself. “Enjoy Europe,” she said, a little wistfully, to Annabeth’s retreating back. The words dropped like a stone in the silence.
Percy and Annabeth would not enjoy Europe. No matter how pleasant that Paris date of theirs had been—and Paul still struggled to wrap his head around that—they weren’t going to the Ancient Lands for a holiday.
“Percy doesn’t have a passport,” Paul realised. “Does Annabeth? Annabeth doesn’t even have a driving licence—”
Sally snorted. It was the closest thing to a laugh he’d had from her for months, so he’d take it. “They’re not taking a plane there. Even after everything, he would still strike Percy down.”
Paul didn’t need to ask who he was. “But what if they get into legal trouble in Greece and Italy? What if they need to go to the embassies? You know the issues he’s had with the police here—”
“They can manipulate the Mist,” Sally said, as if she was trying to convince herself. “They’ll be fine.”
The silence in the apartment was unbearable. For so long, Paul had been used to a teenage boy bashing around in it: playing some terrible alt rock music, doing push-ups in his room, rattling around the kitchen working on some new blue concoction to feed them all… Even when he was at camp, Percy had always left enough dirty laundry behind that his presence was felt. But Sally and Paul had finally made themselves clean the last of his laundry months ago. They’d dusted and vacuumed his room, changed his bed linens, and replaced the ocean-scented air freshener that made the room smell even more strongly of him. Now, there was no pretending that Percy hadn’t been gone for a long, long time.
Paul hadn’t been parenting a demigod for very long, though the time between marrying Sally and the Battle of Manhattan had been more than enlightening. He didn’t have endless experience of sitting quietly, waiting for their son to come back from a deadly quest. And this one, with Percy missing and Annabeth newly gone, broke the formula he’d established. He stood helpless, wondering what the hell he was supposed to do with himself.
So, he asked the expert: “What now?”
Sally’s gaze was somewhere faraway. The look on her face was the sort that had made him fall in love with her in the first place, sneaking glances at her across their creative writing classes. Her eyes were distant, but her jaw was set, and her brows furrowed. She was feeling so many emotions at once, and it was sheer determination keeping her together.
“Under the bed,” she said. “Our bed. In the emergency box. Can you bring me the book?”
Paul blinked, but he knew better than to question her. “Sure.”
He knew about the emergency box, of course. Sally had mentioned it to him shortly after he’d first moved in with them. She’d also, with a caginess that suggested just how unused she was to sharing her burdens with anyone, asked that he not open it. It was, she’d explained, just a box of tools she didn’t want Percy to know about. They might worry him. But they kept her calm. They made her feel at least a little in control of… everything.
There was nothing Sally could do to protect Percy. Not anymore—not now that he knew he was a demigod and trained to protect himself. Though the surviving demigods had kindly assured them that their assistance in the Battle of Manhattan had helped push back the endless tide of enemies just that little bit longer, both Sally and Paul knew that they had helped little, in the end. Both of them were mortal, and if a monster came for Percy, there would be little they could do.
If a goddess came for Percy, apparently, there was even less.
He ducked into their bedroom and knelt to feel for the emergency box. It was a shoebox, labelled with a brand of kid’s shoe, and Paul suddenly wondered how long Sally had had this emergency box. If she’d had it since Percy was very, very young, had it held other resources, once? Ones meant to protect them from the monster at home, instead of the monsters of myth?
It didn’t matter. Now it held packets of ambrosia squares, salt sachets, a small bronze bowl, a box of matches, and a book the size of a pocket dictionary. Paul knew what the ambrosia squares would be for. The bowl and the matches were probably for formal offerings, should they ever need to make them. And the salt sachets… He wasn’t sure. He had heard Annabeth and Sally discussing, once, how saltwater healed Percy much more quickly than freshwater or—gods forbid—the polluted water of New York’s rivers. Perhaps Sally had started stockpiling salt so she could make some DIY seawater in the bath one day. If it was needed.
But the book seemed odd. When he picked it up, he saw it was a student’s reference guide to Greek mythology. Sure, Sally needed to know about that, but she already knew them inside-out, as far as Paul could tell. And this book was worn, the spine thoroughly cracked, most of its pages half falling out. It was much lighter than it looked.
He brought it out anyway. Sally was standing in their little kitchen next to the gas stove. She’d switched on one of the burners and was watching the blue fire tremble.
Paul had never seen her like this. He didn’t know what to make of it.
When he emerged from the bedroom, giving her a quick, tight smile and holding up the book, she did her best to smile for him in return. But her gaze was fixed on the book. She took it from him without so much as a murmured thank you—not that he needed one, but Sally had spent so long role modelling politeness for Percy that it was unusual for her not to do it on instinct—and flipped it open.
The battered and broken state of the book should have clued Paul into the fact that it hadn’t been well-treated. Still, a small part of him wailed when she flipped it open and revealed it was even worse on the inside, with half its pages torn out. He didn’t do a good job of hiding his distress, it seemed, because Sally finally smiled properly at him.
“Percy would say you’re such an English teacher,” she said, her voice only catching slightly.
Paul tried to cling to the levity too. “He would. Nothing I say will get him to look after his textbooks better.”
“I get it,” she assured him, “but I think the thrill of destroying a book adds to the whole experience of what we’re doing.”
“And what are we doing?”
Percy had commented to Paul before that he wished he was more like his mother. It had shocked him to his core. Not the desire—it was no secret how much Percy adored her—but the fact that Percy thought he wasn’t already Sally in teenaged demigod form. Since then, Paul had been collecting evidence to lay before Percy to prove it to him, should the conversation come up again—Percy’s warmth toward the demigods in his care, Sally’s protective fury at Percy’s parents’ evenings, the kindness they both exuded as easily as breathing. He made a note to include this moment in the dossier. At his question, Sally’s face set with cold fury, like the harsh winds off the coast in winter. There was a tilt to her eyebrow and cock to her shoulders that proved that, no matter Poseidon’s crowing about how the sea didn’t like to be restrained, Percy had got his impertinence from her. Her lips twitched in a mirthless smile.
“Sending hate mail,” she said, holding the book back out to him. “Find Hera’s page.”
Paul raised his eyebrows, but he dutifully flicked to the index to find her page number. The index hadn’t escaped defacement, either, with individual lines and references cut out—sometimes with scissors, sometimes with the jagged edge of a mindless tear. A thought occurred to him, and he skipped from the Hs to the Ps, wincing at the state of that particular page. Sure enough, Poseidon’s entry had been completely obliterated from the book. As had several others.
“What happened with Prometheus?” he asked. Nestled between Promachus and Pronomus, he wasn’t sure who else from Greek mythology that entry could have been.
Sally’s eyes flashed. “He knows what he did.”
“I’m sure he fears you more than that eagle.”
She snorted more than she laughed, but it was progress. It had been a long time since Paul had seen her like this, and it frightened him a little. During the Battle of Manhattan, she’d been terrified, but at least they’d known what Percy was doing—how he was—that he still required his mother’s blessing. Now, there was no Empire State Building to light up blue. There was no way for them to know what was happening.
Paul’s gaze fell back on the empty spot—torn, not cut—that had been Poseidon’s entry. For a moment, he contemplated asking Sally which slight, threat, or abuse to their son had been the straw that broke the camel’s back. But Paul knew there were hundreds of potential answers. He’d met the man once, and he’d seemed kind enough, but he was still the god of myth. And he still used Percy like all the others.
Hera. Right. This was about Hera—the queen of the gods who had, apparently, kidnapped their son and sent him to military school, so to speak. Paul found her page number and flicked to it. She was sandwiched between two torn pages that he suspected had been Zeus and Poseidon, seeing as the next few pages dealt with other Olympians. Her page was mostly untouched, but Sally had written cow next to her head. It was the sort of pettiness he’d expect from Percy, too, and it made him laugh.
He cleared his throat. “So, what do we do? Just tear it out? Write on it? Make a paper airplane?”
Sally nodded to him. “You do the honours.”
“Me.” He looked down at the book. “Tear a page out of a book.”
“Think of it as an attack on her, not on books in general,” she suggested. “Makes the heresy of it feel good.”
Paul’s fingers tightened around the edges of the page. He took a deep breath, then ripped. The paper came away poorly, leaving a long strip still bound to the spine. It was mostly text, but one illustrated peacock glowered at him for his shoddy job. It didn’t matter. Most of the page sat crumpled in his hand. It was an old book and the colours in the illustration of Hera were faded, but she was still striking. Her eyes seemed to meet his, like she was watching. Listening. Noting their disrespect.
Hatred shot through his heart. Good, he thought. Note it. Pay attention to this.
“And now…” He glanced up. The burner was still on, its blue flame flickering. “We burn it?”
“I like to tear it up first,” Sally said. “Makes it last longer. And it means I get to attack their stupid faces.”
“Is the likeness any good?”
Sally shrugged. “Poseidon’s wasn’t. But I’ve never met the others, so I can tell myself that’s what they look like.” Her gaze fell on the frayed strip of torn paper behind what was left of Hera’s page. “He was the first one I burned, you know.”
Oh. Paul swallowed. He and Sally had long since had a detailed conversation about Poseidon and how she felt about him now, but he knew he might never truly plumb the depths of their complex relationship. “You didn’t buy the book to burn, then?”
“It was a reference book so I could teach myself and protect Percy, originally. But then Percy was at Camp Half-Blood, for better or for worse. Either he wasn’t going to come back to me at the end of summer, so I didn’t need to know that stuff anymore, or he’d come back, and we’d have bigger problems than a pocket reference book could handle. I’ve got so much of it memorised by now…”
She shook her head. “It wasn’t even the quest that broke me. I was furious that he’d use Percy like that, but I understood it. That’s what heroes are for, in the eyes of the gods. I always knew…” She choked. “I always knew I was raising a lamb to the slaughter.”
“Sally…”
“But after the quest,” Sally continued, “when Percy was at camp, we wrote letters to each other. He told me more about his world, unrelated to his quest. The Pegasi that chatted to him. The naiads. Whatever contraptions Cabin 9 were putting together. And he told me what Poseidon said to him, when they first met. He mentioned it like it was no big deal. But I know it hurt him. And it made me so angry.”
She stuttered to a halt. Paul put his hand on her shoulder, his gaze steady on hers, even if she was staring at the floor and blinking back tears. Sally had spent years parenting Percy on her own; he knew not to interrupt her now, when she was unburdening herself. Paul was here to help with all of that. Paul was here to love and protect Percy as well.
But Sally had been alone in that for so long. And she had so much rage.
“Poseidon apologised to him,” Sally sneered. “For his birth. He said a hero’s life is never easy. That he, Poseidon, had made an unforgivable mistake.” She sucked in a breath through her nose. “Useful advice, maybe, for a hero.”
Paul didn’t know what to do with the amount of horror that welled inside him. Percy had been twelve on his first quest, he remembered, and the horror only grew.
“You can tell he hasn’t had a mortal child in over fifty years,” he observed.
It was a cover up for the hurricane inside his head. He knew Percy’s self-esteem was bad. He’d assumed it was to do with Gabe and all those schools that had let him down, not that he was getting it from his biological dad as well. And from the moment they’d met! Children took things to heart…
What could Paul do to fix this? When Percy got back, and for now he wouldn’t let the word if cross his mind, what could Paul do to show Percy the kind of support he had never had from anyone but his mom?
“He called my son an unforgivable mistake,” Sally snarled. “When I read that letter, I didn’t even think. I prayed to him and shouted every obscenity I could think of. He didn’t show up for me to strangle with my bare hands, so I found the next best thing and tore up his face. I burned it as an offering and kept telling him just how much I hated him.”
“Did he… respond?” Paul almost didn’t want to know.
“He heard me,” Sally said with surety. “He’s always heard my prayers before and answered when it’s convenient to him. But he never answered that one. And I think he only heard me because he knows the sound of my voice. The others… I’ve cursed a lot of gods.” She gave the book a rueful look. It was half empty by now. “It was reckless of me to continue. Ares was the second one I did, just because cursing Poseidon had felt so good, and he’d— he’d— Do you know what happened on Percy’s first quest, Paul? Did we tell you that story?”
“In bits and pieces.” He kept his hand firm and steady on her shoulder.
“I’ll fill you in with all the detail I know later. You know Percy doesn’t tell me—doesn’t tell us—everything, but he hadn’t figured out what to censor at that point. And you can track his progress through old new stories about the prepubescent terrorists who blew up the Gateway Arch.”
Thankfully, Paul did have enough context to decipher that statement, but his concern still spiked. He tried to focus. “So, you did Ares next.”
“It was so reckless.” She closed her fist around Hera’s torn page and lifted her hands to her forehead. “He could have struck me down in an instant, and then where would Percy be? I should never have done it. But he never responded either. I don’t think he heard me.” She gestured to the book. “Nor have any of the others. And if they did, they didn’t care.”
Paul was ashamed to admit to a little relief at that. “That’s why we’re using their names without fear,” he guessed. “Because you know they don’t listen to mortals—not really. Just… eavesdrop on what certain demigods are doing.”
“We’re not important enough to impact them,” Sally confirmed. “I don’t know what’s worse. I like cursing them because it makes me feel like I can have an impact. They get their power from offerings and prayers. If I send them only hate, then at least I can do something instead of just letting them hurt our son over and over. It’s a stupid fantasy, but at least it made me feel better. If I think about it too much, the fact they’re not even listening just makes it worse. Even this, the last thing I can do to stay sane, is meaningless to them.”
With a snap, Paul shut the book. “It’s meaningless to them,” he said. “But not to you.” He nodded at the scrunched-up paper in her hand. “Why cow?”
“What?” She unfurled it enough to read what she’d written. “Oh. You know Annabeth hates her?”
“I’d hope so. She stole her boyfriend.”
“No, she hated her before that. Some squabble on a quest. She and Percy didn’t kowtow to her enough. Hera took offence. Cows are her sacred animal, and no matter where Annabeth goes, there’s always cow dung for her to stand in.”
It was terrible, but Paul had to laugh at that. “I didn’t know they could be that petty.”
But then he thought about everything he knew. The myths. Percy’s endless complaints. The fact that Poseidon, an immortal god older than Paul could fathom, had met Paul and immediately made the same blowfish joke he heard every day from children.
He had known they could be that petty.
“Cow,” he agreed. “Let’s burn her.”
Sally stared at the sheet of paper for several long moments, until Paul thought she’d set it alight with the sheer force of her gaze. Then she took it in both hands and tore in one harsh motion, the scrrr of the paper like the goddess herself had given a brief, scandalised squawk. Her body ripped in half diagonally, leaving her head, most of her torso, and her hips in one, and the rest in the other. Sally took the smaller piece, with her head, and handed Paul the legs. Even if most of his piece was made up of text, Paul shredded it into neat strips with the practiced hands of a man who’d done too much papier-mâché in his life. Sally seemed to be enjoying meticulously beheading Hera as well.
The burner beside them crackled merrily.
Saly took in a deep breath. Some of the tension had eased from her shoulders, but her jaw was still clenched. Her eyes were bright with tears.
She held one of her paper shreds out and watched the flame lick up it, the paper crumbling to ash. When it reached her fingertips, she dropped it and reached for another.
“She’s the Goddess of Marriage,” she held out another piece, “the Family,” another piece, “and Motherhood.” This time, she wasn’t quick enough in dropping the scrap before the flames touched her skin, but she didn’t flinch or yelp. Her fingertips just reddened with the burn.
But she didn’t reach for another scrap right away. “She’s the Goddess of Motherhood,” she repeated. “And she took my son.”
Paul was a well-read man. Even without the modern examples Percy provided them with, he could have cited several mythical instances of such a contradiction. Apollo was the god of healing and disease. Poseidon had created horses, a land mammal that could not swim. And Hera herself had famously thrown her own son off Olympus because she disliked his infant face. But he liked to think his tact was his winning quality, and he stayed silent.
When Sally held out the next strip of paper to burn, her tone darkened further. She wasn’t talking to Paul anymore.
“I hate you,” she rasped. “You took my son. Annabeth was right about you—you hate any family that’s not perfect, anything that doesn’t meet your standards. You’ll neglect your own domains to achieve your own bitter ends. And you bring ruin wherever you please, with no regard for the damage you do in your wake. You took my son.”
She wiped away the tears on her face with the heel of her hand. When she finally threw Hera’s face on the fire, her tone had lightened to something almost conversational.
“I don’t know what punishment can stick to a goddess like you,” she said. “Clearly, your husband and brother aren’t concerned about their oaths on the Styx. Not when there’s demigods to bear their punishment instead. But I hope that whatever comes for you is the worst there is. I hope you know torment that my puny mortal mind cannot fathom.”
Hera’s face burned quickly. Just before it blackened to ash, Paul wondered if he’d imagined the eyes flaring silver.
Sally stepped back, clearing her throat. “Do you want a turn?” she asked.
Paul gave her a reassuring smile and stepped forward. His strips of paper were longer and thinner, burning more like matchsticks, so it was easier to systematise his heresy. He frowned, trying to think of something to say.
“I don’t understand why you took him,” he said. “Annabeth explained, but… I don’t understand. Hasn’t our son been through enough?”
Why had she taken him? Why had she done something so contrary to her own mandate? It was to save the world, Annabeth had said. To save the Olympians.
To save, Paul supposed with an uncharacteristic bitterness, her own family.
He didn’t say anything else aloud. Sally was behind him, still shaking with rage. But Paul had never actually prayed before, and despite Sally’s example, apparently the instinct to plead to a higher power ran deeper in his mortal bones than he’d realised.
He’s my son, he prayed. Not by blood, but by marriage. That’s your domain as well, right? Percy is my son, he belongs in his family, and we want him back. Please. I know you need him to save your skins again, but please make sure he comes home. Please don’t protect your own family by destroying mine.
Please send us a sign that he’s alive. I don’t know how much longer Sally can live without knowing where her son is.
He burned through the rest of the page. Sally was right. Once it was gone, his anger and bitterness were still there, but they had muted themselves. Whether that was the catharsis of their symbolic violence or an effect of prayer that Paul, a lifelong atheist, had never anticipated, he didn’t know. When he turned away, he clasped Sally in his embrace, and they cried into each other’s shoulders until they were too weak to stand.
It was that night he got that sign, even if they didn’t find it until the morning. After seeing the Empire State Building glowing blue, this sign was mundane enough for Sally not to so much as suspect godly interference. Even Paul, who knew what he’d prayed for, couldn’t be sure the timing wasn’t a coincidence.
But it didn’t matter. Because when they woke the next morning to find a voicemail sitting on their phone, it was Percy’s voice that came out of the receiver.