Chapter Text
It had been decades.
Decades of silence.
Decades of his cabin being empty, no child carrying the blood of the sea in sight.
He missed feeling the laughter filling the cabin walls, feeling the gifts of thanks from children to father, and he missed having a child to spoil. But he can't make a child, his child, suffer the burden of prophecy, to carry the dept of a broken outh, to fix his mistake, his inactions.
He still remembers the lifeless bodies of children, his children. Who all fought in the war. Of course, demigods die in battle all of the time, demigods who reached adulthood, not children. Children who just became eligible to drive, who were just still wearing braces, who....... who had so much to live for, all of his children who never got the chance to make their own families.
He failed them. He failed Alice, a capable leader, a leader who died at the ripe age of 16, stalling time for her friends to escape alas her sacrifice have been for nought, the enemies killed her and her friends. He still remembers her prayer for, strength and guidance, a blessing he gave but amounted to no help. Her dagger still hang upon the cabin's wall, he hates how he could only give a quest to one of his children to retrieve and prepare a funeral worthy for her, alongside her friends, he hates how he could not even do something as simple as that himself, and he hates himself on the burden he gave upon Jacob to bury his own sister, a boy just 17, the oldest of the bunch.
He failed Jack, he failed Eve, he failed Aqua, he failed River, he failed Rose, he failed Evan, he failed Jessica, he failed Ashly, he failed them, all of them to the very end. He regrets the moments where he could of been there for them, where instead of the only contact he has with his children where through quest, prayers and the occasional gifts. He wishes the Ancient laws never existed. He wished that all of his children knows he cares and loves them all. He wish he was better, a better father for them.
The only good thing he had done for them was making sure that they were reborn, not as demigods but mortals, away from all the family drama and feuds, where he had only mere minutes to apologize to all of them, an apology for being a deadbeat dad, apologies for putting them in harms way and for them being born just to die. Before....... they were no longer his children but regular mortals, mortals ignorant of the divide.
Maybe it was for the best, never again sire another child, only to damn them to suffer. But he wants a child, a mortal child, a human child. He knows he was being selfish, but were not all gods inherently selfish, some just hides it better than others. And he was selfish enough to even think, even want, to damn a child to a life of suffering just to fill the empty bottomless greed of his.
He was selfish, but that does not mean he'll put his child, his only mortal child, fragile and easily lost, to suffer.
He'll make sure he will never suffer, ancient laws be damned.