Chapter Text
The sad look in Poseidon’s eyes did not help the guilt that Percy was feeling, knowing that the answer he’d given to such a gift was not what his father had hoped it would be. Still there was a pride there that warmed him; it wasn’t every day that a demigod had the guts and the humility to reject an offer of Godhood.
Percy sent a glib smile Annabeth’s way, their laced fingers releasing one another. “I’ll see you in a bit,” he offered and those flinty grey eyes flickered between him and his father, taut and narrowed as though she suspected the God of the Sea would steal his son away and force immortality upon him. She saw what Percy saw in Poseidon’s eyes, and though her brow puckered she relaxed just a little, gaze returning to her boyfriend before she nodded and left. Percy watched her go.
“You are so very much your mother’s child,” was his father’s greeting, and there was a melancholic but knowing acceptance in his eyes that Percy could not fathom. Like he’d hoped but expected nothing else.
“I am?” he asked through a smile. Percy certainly hoped to live up to his mom; Sally Jackson was awesome.
“I should have known you would say no,” Poseidon continued, his own smile that soft glow that Percy had always remembered intrinsically as attached to his father. “Your mother did, too, after all.”
Percy laughed. “Yeah right, like you offered mom godhood?” If there was any human who deserved it, it would be her, but this wasn’t Poseidon’s usual style of jokes. Did triumph make gods weirdly sentimental?
“Not godhood, no, but immortality yes,” was his father’s calm response and it washed over Percy with the same fatal impact of a body hitting the rocks at the bottom of a cliff.
Sea green eyes blinked as the pain of that impact surged out from his chest throughout his body, leaving the sixteen year old hot and tingling all over.
“Sorry… I-what?”
That soft glow that Percy remembered—that he’d held on so tight to growing up, his earliest memory—dampened. A frown was marring his dad’s expression, infinitesimal but present. Percy couldn’t find it in himself to care though. For once, he wasn’t nervous about his dad finding him lacking somehow, he wasn’t consciously making himself small, wasn’t overcome with adrenaline meant to help him duck from a beer bottle being hurled his way at a moment’s notice.
But something was wrong, all the same. Like, really wrong.
The room was too blurry and the floor under his feet no longer flat. Shit, was his dad angry? He hadn’t thought any of the Gods could use their more destructive powers within the throne room on Olympus so casually (seemed like a safety hazard, Gods and their tempers and their powers, especially with so many demigods present right now) but maybe he was wrong. He blinked and stared down at the marble flooring but there were no cracks.
He almost turned back to check if Mr D was standing at the throne room’s entrance—he couldn’t remember any way he could have pissed the God off, but anything was possible with him and his mouth. Maybe Mr D was pissed that he’d denied godhood because he’d be sticking around camp still? He couldn’t help a quick glance over his shoulder, but no one was there. He felt no better. He reminded himself of the Gods dispersing after the meeting until only his father remained. Even Zeus had left, eager for the post-war party to begin. There was no one else here, so what the hell was going on?
“—seus? Percy?”
A hand reached out to grasp his shoulder—gentle, large, warm—and Percy flinched.
He knew he’d made a mistake before he knew anything else. Before his dad’s hand could even squeeze where he gripped him still, he knew he’d messed up. It was only as a fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck joined the molten lava breaking open in his chest and flooding his insides that somehow also had jets of ice cold water freezing him in place that it clicked. He knew what this was. There was no outside interference. This was him.
He’d felt this before, many times, but only ever this bad because of Smelly Gabe. Never because of his mom—it hadn’t even occurred to him his mom could make him feel like this.
His mind recoiled, something in the depths of his soul screaming, and he answered its call.
“I’m fine,” he blurted out, forcing his gaze up to where sea green was now dark and stormy, looking like the tempestuous waves of a sea storm. It didn’t scare him like maybe it should. The same instincts that had always screamed Smelly Gabe was bad news told him his dad was not mad at him. “I’m seriously fine, I just-I don't think I heard you right? Could you-Could you repeat that please?”
“Repeat what, my son?” Though he spoke cautiously, his eyes gentled, like the surface of the sea calming while the depths remained violent.
“What-You said… you said you offered something? To mom?” he tried to ignore the tight reedy quality to his voice, but the tightening of his father’s eyes and the spasm of his jaw, the way his fingers carefully did not squeeze his shoulder again even as his entire arm up to the shoulder was wound tighter than steel made that harder.
“That’s right,” Poseidon answered, voice false-light, eyes glittering like an anglerfish’s lure as they searched his son’s, feeling like they were peering into his soul, delving into his secrets. Percy’s gaze snapped to his chest, watching the coral on his dad’s shirt—was it moving? Did his dad seriously enchant his shirts? “When she fell pregnant with you, I offered her a place within my kingdom, and immortality—my offer was for you both, of course. But she declined.”
Something splintered.
“Did she say… why?” Please tell him his voice was not as shaky as it sounded in his own ears.
Percy didn’t hear the inhuman chittering tone of an Atlantean child’s anxiety laced through the words. Poseidon’s arms twitched and Percy didn’t think he’d say no to a hug right now but his father made no move to embrace him. He was too busy still evaluating—or reevaulating, rather—Percy sure hoped his dad was not running through their past admittedly (thankfully? in this case? wow never thought he’d be grateful they’d rarely interacted but first time for everything) limited interactions to reframe them to fit that stupid fucking flinch—
“She did.” There was a stretch of silence. Percy waited, thinking his father would elaborate and probing when he didn’t. Poseidon pressed his lips in a tight line then sighed. “Your mother has always had the spirit of the sea in her veins. She felt that immortality and a home—well, palace—within my domain did not feel like protection and safety. To her, it felt like a cage, even if it was a pretty one. And that cage would become a prison. She was young, she wanted mortality, she wanted her freedom. So she declined.”
The splinter splintered. shattered. Still he tried to gather the pieces even as they cut and bruised his skin.
“She… but she knew, right? She knew, I mean, the prophecy—?” He couldn’t finish the question, choked it off, but his father knew. He stepped closer, and when his other hand came to rest on his other shoulder he did not flinch. His hands twitched, muscles in his feet flexing with the effort it took not to close the gap between them for a hug.
“Oh, yes,” Poseidon whispered. Percy’s eyes stung. “The day that we met, I had not landed on that beach aiming to find a lover, just a moment’s respite, but we caught one another’s eye, Percy. I could not help but notice her, and I could feel the threads of fate bringing us together. I knew our… meetings… would result in a child, and I knew that child would be powerful. I told her the prophecy in full, I gave her the most likely possibilities for each line’s meanings and a few other meanings that the council had debated over the years as well as my own insight as a former Holder of Prophecy. Your mother… she is a queen amongst mortals; she had to know, not just because she deserved to know what she would be getting herself into, nor just for her own safety but for yours.” Percy blinked and a tear fell down his cheek before it was washed away by his father’s thumb as the God cupped his cheeks like he was made of glass. His sea green eyes bore into his son’s. “You are so very precious to me, you always have been though I’ve not been allowed to show it. If I cared any less for you I would not have allowed these oaths and laws to chain me so, but I could not risk you further. It is seldom that punishments can reach me as a God, but I would not allow you to pay for my actions any more than you already would; The Moirai and the Lady Styx can be so very cruel, as I know you can attest…”
Percy’s chin wobbled as he nodded, just a flexing of his neck.
“I already knew what her answer would be when I offered it, but… the life that you would have had, the life you have had… I had to offer you both this chance,” the Sea King’s voice was soft and pleading, and Percy felt sick. “Please know, my son, I never wanted this for you. The hardships you have faced, the prophecy was not supposed to be yours to bear.” There was a trembling rage in his voice now, reflected in his eyes, and oh but that soothed the ache in Percy’s chest to hear, to see. It fortified his own building anger and resentment, offered shelter to it as he braved the crumbling of his strongest pillar.
Sally Jackson had always been the only thing that Percy could cling to in the storm of life, the bright spot in an otherwise bleak and dark and sad existence. His mother meant love, she meant safety, she meant belief. When no one else cared, when no one else offered kindness and patience—no one—Sally Jackson did. When no one else showed up, Percy could know she would be there. And he did know it.
But for every memory of his mother’s patience with his dyslexia and hyperactivity, her smiles and hugs as she reassured him he was loved and she was proud of him… he had a memory of Smelly Gabe or a monster or a mean teacher or even meaner kids. And the bad was so bad it threatened to outweigh the good. It was a huge blow that the call was coming from inside the house—not Gabe, well yes Gabe but… but only because his mom had unlocked the door. Not just unlocked the door, not just let him in, she’d thrown up a huge neon sign saying “shitty human beings, apply here.”
The final blow? Sally Jackson had chosen this for her son. She’d been offered everything that would have given Percy the childhood he wished he’d had, given him a dad who loved him and could show it (and now Percy could one hundred percent say he knew Poseidon would have). Percy could’ve had siblings, safety away from monsters and fear and pain and near death experiences, a father he could have called upon when he had nightmares or when a teacher didn’t believe him (not that they would have dared, this was Poseidon’s youngest) or a question he didn’t know the answer to or if he just wanted a hug from his dad! He could’ve—
Loyalty’s grasp on him fought back that Sally Jackson had given so much, that she was his mom, that she loved him and she did it all to keep him safe, that he wasn’t the only one who had to deal with Smelly Gabe. He was a troublesome child, a difficult one, would he truly have fared better in the sea, surrounded by his father’s domain, strengthened by it, made all the more unrestrained by immortality? But that same fatal flaw clawed back, bellowing from the same depths that it had when he denied godhood because he couldn’t abandon his Wise Girl like that.
And that was it, wasn’t it?
Even offered so much, Percy’s first thought at the tender age of sixteen with the entire world at his fingertips was of the girl he loved. But his mother had known the life that awaited him and still chose the life she wanted for herself first.
Adrift in a whirlpool of confusion and splintering trust and faith and loyalty, Percy sought to cling to the surest port—the port imbued with the strength of the sea itself.
“Dad…”
His voice cracked, doubled in sound, layered with Atlantean cries for a parent’s comfort. A deep whistle thrummed in his father’s chest as he was pulled tight into his arms, silencing the chitters and washing through his body until his limbs were featherlight.
He felt like a child again, so small in Poseidon’s arms. He still was a child, but he no longer felt like one; he hadn’t since he’d watched his mother disappear in a shower of golden dust (or was it when his mother saw the tension between himself and Gabe and chose instead to send Percy away to boarding school rather than banish the human monster from their home?)
“I know not what has upset you, and I won’t force the answer from you now, but I will have my answers at some point, Perseus,” Poseidon murmured, the rumble of his voice against Percy’s cheek unlodging the lump in his throat. There was a safety here in his father’s arms that even his mother’s had never quite managed, not since Percy was five at least. “For now it is enough that I am allowed to comfort you.” Gentle pressure against his scalp; his father laying a kiss to the top of his head—then silence stretched and the radiating power of his father’s roiling emotions lessened the longer he held his son safe in his arms. When he spoke again, it was with the same relaxed cadence that Percy had come to expect from his father. “Will you accept an invitation to Atlantis, Percy? There would be no strings attached, and it would be an open, standing invitation you could accept as many times as you wish, whenever you wish.”
Tears stung in his eyes all over again and he could only manage a nod. With the turmoil over with and the realization setting in, embarrassment was beginning to creep in, too. Like his father could read his mind (and maybe he could), he felt-heard the chuckle in Poseidon’s chest, blushing pink at the kiss pressed to the top of his head. He had to bite his tongue against any protest when his father drew back, Percy keeping his eyes on the ground.
“I think it’s time we join the festivities, my son, they will be wondering where the Savior of Olympus has disappeared to,” Poseidon teased, pinching Percy’s cheek with an easygoing grin, receiving the look all teenagers had perfected when they wanted to smile but wouldn’t let themselves. “You must at least show your face to appease the King and Queen.”
Percy scrubbed at his face, his shoulders dropping as he held back a groan. How much sleep had he gotten the past three days? The past several? He didn’t want a party or to make nice with the Gods, he wanted a nap.
“Show your face, appease my brother and sister, then come with me to Atlantis. None would dare bother you there, and you can finally rest.”
A deep sigh left him, but he squared his shoulders and straightened. Then, good little hero that he was, he nodded.