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Hecate let her fingers drift through the surface of the scrying pool, the water cool and warm at once, like moonlight made liquid.
She lightly tapped the center of the pool, causing ripples to spread outward from the center in perfect concentric circles, each one a possible path, each one a choice. Magic always loved symbolism, and so did she in her own ways.
Cause the thing was, gods and goddesses could get lost in their thoughts as easily as any mortal could, maybe more easily if she was being honest. Mortals at least had distractions to keep them busy, like laundry and taxes. Immortals, on the other hand, had nothing but eternity to just think, and eternity had a bad habit of looping back on itself so they distracted themselves with pleasures, vices and games. It's why most of Olympus ended up having so many children. Well, most of them. Some gods were just deviants.
So her thoughts, as they so often did, slowly drifted to her son, Danny.
Daniel James Fenton. Her son. Her little Enodia. Her favorite child and Olympus' migraine, though she would never admit that last part aloud, not even to herself deep within the privacy of her domain.
Because for as often as she was overlooked, it wasn't hard to forget that Olympus had ears everywhere, and that the Fates didn’t exactly like her anymore, so it was better to avoid tempting them in matters of chance.
In the waters of the pool, Camp Half-Blood shimmered into focus: strawberry fields glowing under the afternoon sun, the Big House’s latest paint job flaking just a bit more than last time, the training arena buzzing with demigods who absolutely should have been stretching instead of trying to outdo one another with pointy weapons.
She tapped her scrying pool lightly, causing the scene to shift to what she really wanted to see because the pool knew where her attention truly lay as it refocused on the camp’s infirmary.
‘I should have known he'd be there.’
Danny was sprawled across one of the beds, propped up on his elbows and grinning like he hadn’t nearly gotten himself skewered by a dracaena barely an hour ago while his friend looked him over with all the patience of a saint working overtime which technically speaking he was. Befriending chthonic demigods came with so many perks and just as many headaches after all.
She should really look into getting the poor boy some kind of gift to make up for all of the stress her son has brought him.
‘Maybe some enchanted arrows? Apollo's kids liked those kind of things didn't they?' It was something to think on when she could spare the time. The little healer deserved it after all even if it wouldn’t be an exciting day at camp if Danny wasn’t giving someone grey hairs.
Still, among the most recent generation of demigods, he was her strongest child by a wide margin. That wasn’t maternal bias speaking, well, not only maternal bias. It was a simple fact. Danny practically hummed with magic, almost like it was a low thrumming under his skin.
It had angered her in the past. Her child’s future had been tampered with by an old forgotten remnant of Olympus’ past, and she’d never truly get over it, but even if his beginning was planned out for him, his future was still his to decide.
He was a ranger by choice, which amused her endlessly.
Most of her children gravitated toward the obvious paths in an attempt at trying to gain her attention. Sorcerers. Witches. Ritualists who liked their circles perfect and their chants and prayers long and tedious. She'd taught a few of the more exceptional ones. Heck, she even tutored a few of the other Olympians kids when she felt like it, but it had always been a different flavor of boring wrapped up in the same books and teachings.
It was rare to find a child of hers with the right amount of ingenuity.
But Danny, on the other hand, had been a welcome surprise. He’d taken one look at the forest and the monsters lurking just beyond the borders of camp and welcomed the challenge.
His mortal parents had clearly taught him well.
Maddie and Jack Fenton had been a rare comfort. They’d catalogued the moonlit world with a scientist’s rigor and a hunter’s instincts, writing book after book about ghosts, curses, hauntings, and things best left alone by the inexperienced. And when they brought their children into the world they taught Danny and their mortal daughter Jazz how to identify supernatural threats long before her son ever had to set foot inside Camp Half-Blood’s borders.
Jack taught him how to tell when a chill in the air meant bad wiring versus an active haunting.
They showed him how to use a salt line in emergencies.
Maddie ensured their son could run, hide, and when needed fight.
Hecate’s lips curved faintly at the memory. She’d honestly thanked Aphrodite, in her own way, for nudging her toward that particular relationship. The goddess of love rarely did subtle, but sometimes she got things exactly right and Hecate appreciated their company.
Jack had been exceptional, brilliant, earnest, and fearless to a fault. He’d been a warm lover on multiple occasions, but Maddie had been sharp-witted, incisive, and just as knowledgeable as some of her brightest students. Her mind cut through the usual nonsense of the supernatural like a surgeon cutting into flesh. Both of which had been a wonderful thing to watch at work.
Truly, the Fentons had been a blessing that understood more about the darker parts of the world than most mortals could ever even dream of knowing because they'd openly hunted for them and more often than not found them skulking around their home. Most mortals who end up raising a demigod always worried themselves sick over little things like that, but the Fentons welcomed the monsters like a hunter baiting a trap since the ones that were slow enough or dumb enough to try and come after her family usually ended up strapped to Maddie’s operating table.
Oh, the way those beasts screamed as she cut into them was a truly exquisite sight to behold, and Hecate had loved every second she'd been graced with those anguished sounds. It was a novel experience, slowly tearing something apart. She'd even joined them when she could, just to experience the joys of working with a proper knife and fresh ingredients.
It was why she’d originally labeled Maddie as a legacy of some other god. It was an easy enough mistake to make with the way she moved through the world, but her lover was human, a clear-sighted mortal sure, but still just a human. She loved her family but beyond that, her wonderfully creative Maddie had little care for anything that crossed her.
It was so lovely.
They’d accepted her situation with a grace Hecate had never expected but then again the Fentons had always been full of surprises. That's probably what had her bending the rules.
Divine Laws were very clear about gods raising their own children, but they were also very clear about loopholes, and Hecate had always been very good at finding those. It was easy to do since so many other gods and goddesses were already exploiting them.
She’d visited when she could, when she wouldn’t be missed. As a minor goddess, it was easy to slip away when Olympus was distracted by its own infighting. Zeus’ temper worked wonders in keeping the rest of Olympus looking anywhere but where she was and it was always a matter of when not if something set the Lord of the Skies off.
Her reasons were even benign for once, but Zeus’s paranoia had never really cared about intent. His paranoia always led to fury, and his fury quickly led to lightning bolts. Zeus proved time and time again that had obliterate anything that displeased him. He wasn’t afraid to try smiting even Poseidon’s and Hades’ children without any real fear of repercussions so she’d been oh so careful with her little Enodia since her son had been so very small when she'd first brought him into the world.
Her first real meeting with him had been when he was around five. Maddie and Jack had been playing around with a truly repulsive vulture-like creature in their lab, and Danny had scraped his knees while running around outside.
He’d been such a tiny little thing back then, biting his lip, his eyes squeezed shut in a childish attempt at shutting out the pain, and she’d knelt down to his level (her, a goddess, kneeling for a child) and brushed her fingers over the wound, whispering a simple spell older than most civilizations that had the skin knit itself back together seamlessly beneath her touch.
"It doesn't hurt," he'd whispered, stubborn to a fault even back then with tears in his eyes.
And even then she couldn’t help but laugh. "Brave boy. But you don't have to pretend with me."
Still, that moment had stayed with her.
Pain meant very little to the gods. It meant nothing to her. She wasn’t a healer like Apollo, but as a goddess of magic, there was no wound she couldn’t fix. Still, she’d wondered then why her little boy thought pain was something to be endured silently.
After the fifth visit, he started calling her Mom. Maddie had allowed her to share that title and her heart or whatever passes for one among immortals had cracked like a geode, spilling starlight at the sound of it. Countless children before him whispered the word with the kind of detachment Olympus preferred, but hearing her little Enodia scream it in delight as he ran into her arms always seemed to brighten her day.
Years passed, and her little boy grew faster than she’d ever imagined, but so did his wounds.
Skinned knees became singed fingertips.
Singed fingertips became bloody knuckles, from schoolyard fights and monster attacks alike.
Bloody knuckles became chipped teeth and with it came the knowledge that the Minotaur had been a very solid wall of muscle under all of that fur. He'd died screaming all the same after Jack got his hands around the beast neck but it was still an interesting bit of knowledge.
With every injury, she poured a little more of herself into him. Not enough to draw notice, but just enough to strengthen, to anchor and protect.
There had been no injury she couldn’t heal.
None.
Not until he was fourteen. Not until that cursed day.
His mortal family had gone out for groceries, and she’d been distracted by a coven in New Orleans.
It was the one day of her son’s life that had been planned for well in advance, since it was the day the portal in the Fentons’ lab malfunctioned, and a burst of magic and science nearly ripped him apart.
Danny’s scream had ripped through her crossroads, raw and agonized, his voice carrying more than just sound. It carried magic that screamed her name.
That was the day she learned love could be a kind of pain, too.
She’d arrived too late to stop it. Too late to prevent his body from breaking, his soul tearing under the strain of something that should never have happened. It had been an impossibility that never should have worked, but it had, and she’d held him close as the Fates hovered, shears gleaming as her son’s thread trembled in Clotho’s hands.
And so she’d done what other gods and goddesses before her always did when it came to their favorite children.
She cheated.
Carefully, furiously, she’d stitched his soul back together piece by piece, anchoring it before Atropos could cut his thread. She'd worked until even her own energy was drained, the constant tick, tick, ticking of clocks driving her to a rage she'd never even come close to feeling before then as she sealed him between states, alive, but not untouched by what lay beyond. Not fully a demigod anymore. Not fully anything else.
She'd learned fractions of the truth that day after her son breathed again. While every laboured breath he took as he fought his way back to her echoed across the laboratory, she'd learned she was a player on someone else's board. A soul versus a mind. If she hadn't seen his face and felt his presence, even she wouldn't have believed such a thing was possible, but it had been and now she knew a few more secrets no one else on Olympus could ever know. It was still infuriating to think about how outplayed she'd been.
Hecate had to thank the benevolent face of a monster for every spare second she had to work her spells into existence. Clockwork... Hmmm... Even now she couldn't even think the bastards real name. He'd played his games well, rigging a geas with her son’s life as the prize, and even though she’d won in the end, he hadn’t lost either. He really was a monster.
She’d hate him until the end of time for that. If she had her way, she’d hate him far beyond it, too.
Still, Thanatos had reported the interference. Of course, he had. It was his job.
Hades had even noticed her parts in her dance with the sisters, but he hadn’t said anything.
Out of respect, perhaps. Or because he understood. She’d never know which, and he’d never admit it either way. It didn't matter really.
Cause, later on, Hades had decided he truly didn’t care when Danny befriended his son, that awkward, haunted boy of his who smiled just a little more easily around her son than almost anyone else besides Apollo’s golden healer who held the little prince's heart.
She'd forever be thankful for their roles in her little Enodia's life.
Still, some wounds changed you in ways even gods couldn’t undo.
Danny had still smiled after the 'accident'. He still cracked jokes from his hospital bed. He still thanked her, voice hoarse but sincere when she'd been able to visit. But the chill of the Underworld clung to him now, subtle and persistent.
His bright blue eyes carried a tint of ghost fire in them now.
Magic recognized him differently, and so did monsters.
It’s what pushed her towards finally sending him to Camp Half-Blood, where he’d inevitably meet the Underworld’s prince. It's what had her doing a lot of things differently. She’d claimed him the moment he crossed the barrier. Her symbol had flared above his head for all the world to see, torches, keys, crossroads burning brighter than ever before because he was magic and choice and liminality given form. He was her spark of light on long nights.
Danny had loved the archery range almost as much as he loved spellwork. He’d taken after both of his mother’s preferred habits, and Will Solace had been the first to truly welcome him to camp, all sunshine smiles and easy warmth. They’d clicked almost instantly, her son walking around with his hands behind his head without a single care in the world while Will showed him around camp, introducing him to every place he could think of like the infirmary, a place Danny would come to frequent with alarming regularity.
He’d even clapped her son on the back in support when he learned that Danny chose the bow over flashier weapons. Oh, his half-siblings had been jealous, but every god and goddess had a favorite child, and Danny had been hers.
Hecate had gifted him a longbow and a hunting knife, amused beyond measure when he learned to channel spellwork into his shots. He constantly made her and Maddie proud, but Danny was still her son, her pride and joy. He was a budding sorcerer nearly on par with Circe, one of her greatest students. He couldn’t overpower her in a battle of spells, not yet, not anytime soon, but he was still young, and nowhere near done growing.
It was little wonder that Olympus collectively aged five years every time he visited camp for the summer. But he took his studies seriously. His imagination, fostered by parents who hunted the supernatural, was a thing of genuine wonder.
A simple protection ward could become a labyrinth if reworked just right. Open one door, end up on the far side of camp. Or possibly even farther.
A ball of light meant to simply illuminate the darkness could become a miniature sun in his hands. Chiron had quickly banned that particular creation of his after the Hephaestus kids tried to turn it into a fuel source.
And yet, Olympus would never sing his praises.
Ares liked his spirit. Hephaestus saw too much of his own favorite in him, too much laughter masking too much pain.
She’d never spoken his name too loudly among the others. She knew what attention did. She watched Zeus strike at the children of his brothers. She’d seen what Hera did to powerful demigods. She refused to risk the same with her favoured child.
No grand prophecy would ever entangle Danny in the Fates’ web if she could ever help it.
She handed out quests strategically. Pushed him sideways when fate tried to pull him straight.
Now, in the infirmary, she watched Danny yelp as Will flicked his forehead.
“Stop grinning, you idiot,” Will scolded. “You almost died.”
Danny grinned wider before he started begging for mercy a few seconds later when Will made a point of tightening his bandages. “Sorry, sorry.”