Chapter Text
i.
She is four when she has her first taste of ashen promises.
It is three days from her birthday, and her parents are leaving on a trip that may take a week or more. She hates that they won't bring her along, or give it up to stay with her.
Little Sally Jackson is still young enough to hope, then.
“Mama,” she says earnestly, like the little fool, “promise you’ll at least call on my birthday?”
Her mother’s answer is prompt. “Of course, darling. Maybe we’ll just be gone a while.” She looks to Sally’s father. “Won’t we, dear?”
Her father guffaws. He says yes, of course. And she trusts him wholly.
And then they come back in ashes in delicate urns, just in time for her birthday.
Sally’s uncle blames her. She hates herself just as much.
She swears by no promises, after that.
ii.
She is five and six and seven and eight, and she is lonely and alone.
She has few friends. They come and go and not one ever stays. They let her go and she does, too; she does not cling to them so dearly when she only ever holds them loosely.
She is nine and ten and twelve, and she holds people like she holds water—impermanent things staying for a time before slipping through her fingers, eventually.
Her uncle hates her still and she doesn’t hold it all against him. He blames her for a childish wish but still puts food on the table and keeps a roof over her head. She is thankful for that, at least.
She is thirteen and fifteen and eighteen, and she knows what she wants in life. Books are a constant companion, and more than simply reading and studying and analyzing, she wants to write one of her own.
She is nineteen and her uncle falls ill and she drops everything to care for him. He hates her still but she is all he has. They are all each other has.
She is nineteen and her uncle dies and leaves her with neither debt nor fortune, only a small run-down property in Montauk she hardly ever knew about.
She is twenty and she is lost, untethered, unbound and free. She is neither promised nor promising, and college is impossible without tuition whilst the only work she can take are part-time jobs that pay small bucks that are just enough for her to scrape by.
She wants to hate, hate, hate her lot in life but she wants to reach her dreams even more. Head too empty and heart too full, she is longing and dreaming but even so she dares not promise herself a brighter future yet.
And then he appears before her and takes the choice from her, just as the Fates wove it to be.
(She hates, hates, hates and she dreams, wishes, hopes.)
iii.
The god appears in a burst of foam and the crashing of waves. Her only reaction is a slow blink, and she turns away with pursed lips and a racing mind.
She is not blind, never has been. She has always seen, but for the sake of peace always turned her eyes away—when she can. She knows well enough to run when she must. Whether or not she drags someone else with her.
There is blissful silence for all of a minute, before it must break.
“How do you do, young lady?” the god starts conversationally, and it is better than most.
There’s no other young ladies present for him to be talking to but her, but it still takes her a second or two to answer.
“Oh, I’m doing fine,” she responds, because that’s the standard reply most people expect. She doesn’t follow up with the mandatory “And you?” that convention demands, because that’s for people who want a conversation. With Poseidon—for that is who he is—Sally isn’t looking for one.
He misses the point, obviously, because he presses on.
“You don’t look fine to me.”
He has a nice smile, Sally notes, before berating herself for thinking so. He might be nice, for now. There’s no guarantee he’ll keep being nice to her. Because with gods, especially the Greek gods, there are no guarantees.
She glances at him once, before letting her gaze fall. “I’m not fine yet, but hopefully I will be, soon,” she returns his smile, because gods help her if she offends him.
Poseidon seems appeased by that. “Well, I hope ‘soon’ comes quickly enough for you.”
“...me too,” Sally murmurs, unsure if she missed some cue somewhere, but the god does not seem too annoyed or anything at her. Well. She’ll take what she can get.
He spends a few moments more studying her, and in the meantime she stares out at the waves pretending he’s not even there.
It feels like an eternity before he nods, satisfied, and leaves.
Sally just pretends he walked away like a normal man, that the waves didn’t swallow him up and he didn’t melt into them.
iv.
Poseidon keeps appearing there for some reason. He rarely speaks, and Sally doesn’t ask.
(She wonders, she dreads. Something is changing, and she can only just keep her head above the water.)
They spend their time watching the waves in silence. It’s peaceful, if nothing else.
(The waves toss and turn, and she is a ship lost and set adrift in the great vast seas.)
v.
Sally moves on with her life, eventually.
(She hates, hates, hates dreaming and hoping but they are all she has. Dreams and hopes that keep her barely afloat her rivers of hate.)
She doesn’t go back to school, not yet. Not because she feels old and worries she’ll stick out (eyes, eyes, eyes on her, and she has to run and hide), but because she has no money to.
She finds work instead.
vi.
Her prospects are better than expected.
On one hand, there’s not many places that’ll want her, but on the other hand there’s no shortage of places that won’t take her anyway. (Promises, promises, make no promises and keep your heart unbroken, safe.)
She chalks it up to a problem with manpower, and calls it a day.
After she secures herself three jobs—for security, of course.
vii.
Her life is bustling compared to before, but Sally still manages to have free time for herself.
Most of her salary goes to her living expenses, while two-thirds of what remains go to her savings. At the end of the day there’s little left for her to spend for her wants, but that much she expected.
(Dreams are all she has. Wishes and hopes are for fools, but dreams are for the living.)
The property at Montauk is enough for her, anyways.
(And yet she wants, more, more, more.)
Poseidon hasn’t stopped coming, for some reason, and Sally still doesn’t ask.
(Expect nothing, she reminds herself. You will break your own heart with the weight of promises.)
She wonders if he’s waiting for her to reach out first. It’d be a lost cause if it was, because she’s not that interested in him. Even if the sea being wonderful as always happens to be his doing.
viii.
Poseidon gives first. (This is how it always starts.)
“Are you happier now?” he asks, quietly. His voice is low enough to be lost in the waves, but Sally hears it anyway.
(She wants, wants, wants. She hates that she wants.)
“Yeah,” she hums, “yeah, I am.”
ix.
It’s a whirlwind affair from there.
Sally doesn’t have to ask for much, because Poseidon gives and gives and gives, even when she does not ask. It is overwhelming, but that is the nature of the sea, he assures her. But even when she keeps it in mind, it still gets to her sometimes.
(She is drowning, in wants and hate and hopes.)
Poseidon knows that she knows, of course.
Third date in, he asks her curiously, “Are you not worried about my intentions to you?”
Sweet as his worry is, Sally’s smile is sweeter, when she replies, not unkindly, “Well, Poseidon, I’ve always known who you were from the start, if that’s any comfort to you.”
To his credit, the only hint of shock he shows is the widening of his eyes. “Oh? What gave it away?”
“The trident was kind of hard to miss. Even considering the Hawaiian shirt and,” she gestures to his current ensemble, “your general theme when it comes to clothing.”
(Look away, look away, she cannot look away. Strings tie her hands and bind her by the neck, noose on the hanging tree.)
It’s a constant, that. Poseidon’s choice of wear isn’t anything Sally would call tacky, but combined with the knowledge that this was the Greek god of the sea (among other things), it was amusing, if nothing else.
Neptune, she learns, has slightly better taste. Though that might just be her being generous.
(And wasn’t that a surprise to learn of? The Greek and Roman halves of Olympus, divided but still arguably one pantheon? It’s a mess is what it is, just like everything else in their mythos.)
Sixteen dates (officially, but who’s counting?) and six months in, Poseidon not-quite proposes to her.
He calls her a “queen among women,” and Sally would be lying if she said she wasn’t flattered, but honestly! It was cheesy, corny, and downright charming. Especially when he offered to take her down to Atlantis, for a visit.
(Promising but not promised. Make no promises, it will kill your heart. Gone, gone, gone, just like them.)
It doesn’t escape her priorities to ask, “But what about your lady? I know she’s not like the Queen of the Heavens, but I still don’t think she’d take kindly to a mortal lover of yours...”
“You’re right,” Poseidon agrees, “Amphitrite is not my dear sister. We’re quite open when we take lovers,” he winks, as Sally’s eyes go wide. “Sometimes we share. So you don’t have to worry; she knows, and she doesn’t disapprove.”
There was more to unpack there than Sally was prepared for, but she took it in stride. It did explain how Poseidon’s marriage was apparently thriving still despite his legendary exploits in, ah, expanding the Greek mythology.
She still declines the offer, citing a need to “prepare her heart”. He isn’t too disappointed, and to her that’s what matters.
(She wants, wants, wants—she hates that she wants.)
It’s one year into their relationship when things change, irrevocably so.
x.
It’s a weekday when she feels the stirring in her belly.
The days have been blending into one another lately, and the only thing reminding her it’s a weekday is her alarm and the fact that she fell asleep in her work clothes.
She thinks it’s just nausea or something, at first. Perhaps the flu or the accumulated fatigue, returning with a vengeance.
Three days passing by with it not letting up is her first clue.
Her second clue is her monthly being late, or more accurately, absent.
The third and final clue was the pregnancy test returning positive—which, is less of a clue and more a confirmation.
In hindsight, she’ll thank her lucky stars it’s not a scream or a denial that escapes her mouth first, but rather Poseidon’s name.
The only thing that could’ve made it better was if she’d fainted right after, because then she wouldn’t have had to see the crestfallen, heartbroken expression on her lover’s face.
(Ashen promises and tears for their homecoming. Want kills.)
xi.
Poseidon tells her about his oath on the Styx with his brothers, the one forbidding the birth of any more mortal, demigod spawn.
(Promises upon promises, kept like ashes and abandoned to the winds.)
And with some cajoling, he tells her of the prophecy that led to the swearing of that oath.
It’s terrible is what it is.
(She has never broken a single promise.)
There’s nothing else she can say on it.
(She has made none and owed only one.)
And as much as she understands their reasoning, as much as she understands Zeus’s paranoia and Poseidon’s regret, she still hates that it makes her (yet unborn) child culpable for the sin of being born.
(Where is the justice? Where has fairness gone, o great kings? —Fate has never been fair, they have only been fickle since forever.)
(She hates, hates, hates—she hates that she hates.)
She hates it, and she hates that there’s nothing she can do about it.
(Or is there?)
xii.
Sally doesn’t quite wallow in indecision in the months following after, no.
Poseidon visits still, but the mood is almost always dampened when he looks at her belly, at their child, try as he might to not.
It makes something bitter writhe in her chest.
(Hate, hate, hate. She wishes she could not hate.)
She busies herself with work, prepares for motherhood as well as she can. She takes on more jobs, temporary ones, to help support her when she inevitably has to stop because, well, she’s pregnant.
(Ashes and promises, she thinks. Promises in ashes.)
Poseidon offers his help, and while she doesn’t outright reject it, she vetoes anything that could be “too much”.
It’s not indecision she wallows in, because she’s already decided to have this baby—screw the oath!—but it’s still a sibling to that.
Confliction, the part of her that never stopped writing and reading and learning names it.
(Oh, how she hates.)
Because Sally wants to have her baby, come what may.
(Oh, how she wants.)
She’s just not sure she has what it takes to follow through on that.
xiii.
It’s three months after she learns she’s pregnant, two months since Poseidon last took her out on a date, one month since she started dropping her jobs that she feels it.
(Burning, burning, cold and burning, miserable hate.)
She’s crying, because it’s her birthday but it’s also her parents’ death anniversary and it still hurts, the memory of her loss, even though years have already passed since then.
(Ashes, all in ashes, promises and dreams. A birthday wish of ashes.)
She’s crying because Poseidon had asked her if she was feeling fine, and as sweet as it was to be reminded of their first meeting and the day that she tried moving on and decided she’d work on being fine, the truth is that right now, Sally is not fine.
(Ashes and dust in the wind, pieces and spots, parts of a collective unmade whole.)
She’s aching and she’s dreading the days that promise to come, because learning the fate and futures that all demigods are bound to face don’t assuage her worries one bit; on the contrary, it makes it weigh even heavier. Can her child survive it? Can she bear to live with the constant fear? Does she have the heart to let them come, to let her child face them?
She’s wondering and she’s hurting and she’s worrying if she can even give her child that much. When her own parents had died, she was neither young nor old, still toeing the line, preparing to cross. She had been unprepared to lose them so young, yet she was thankful she only lost them when she was old enough. She’d lost them to a disaster that had no divine hand in it. Reminding her that danger is always there.
(Drowning, she is drowning in painful, awful misery.)
Sally doesn’t want her child to lose her as much as she doesn’t want to lose them. It’s crippling fear, and not an unreasonable one. And there is little Sally can do to prepare for it.
(There are no words for the despair of innocence and ignorance of misery, only silenced resignation of one who has had to learn.)
And—
She feels something kick in her belly.
It’s painful. It’s sobering.
And it makes her cry.
(She hates that she wants, and oh, how she wants to hate.)
“I don’t want to lose you,” she cries, “and I don’t want you to lose me either, baby.”
The baby kicks again, but this time she somehow braces herself for it.
It still hurts, she still lurches, but not as much, it does not sting as much as it should.
(Promises, ashes, wishes and wants.)
Sally doesn’t know what she can do yet, but she can start—no.
Sally will do everything she can for her baby.
(Promises, ashes, wants and wishes.)
(Hate rears her head in narrow-minded vengeance, red blood boiling, stirring, clotting black.)
xiv.
Her knowledge of Greek mythology is, admittedly, a little lackluster and out of date (and mixed up too, once she considers the fact that they have Roman faces too, and they are in dissonance).
(Her parents flew in from the west, back then.)
She’ll have to work on it if she is to teach her baby how to survive, and then how to live.
(Because there is a difference. And that is everything.)
xv.
Sally knows of the twelve (thirteen, if she’s feeling technical) Olympians well enough, she hopes.
Poseidon the father of monsters comes to mind second as father of her baby also, though his seat is third after cow-eyed Hera; for lightning-bearing Zeus is, of course, first. But the other ten are: Demeter of the earth and harvest, bloodthirsty Ares who brings war, wise Athena with her counsel, bright Apollo of truth and healing and many talents, maiden Artemis with her band of huntresses, Hephaestus the master of fire and forge, beautiful Aphrodite of love, fleet-footed Hermes with his cunning, mad ascendant Dionysus who changes seats with warm-hearted Hestia of the hearth.
Of course Sally will find no help with the god-king and his wife; the former would smite her soon as he can whilst the queen of the heavens would only see her and her child as affronts to her domain. Just because Amphitrite doesn’t disapprove doesn’t mean Hera would approve, after all.
And Poseidon has made it clear his side has generally stayed away from mortal affairs. Triton, who shares his looks, has never looked kindly on demigods either, so that’s unfortunate.
(Something tells her he cannot help, much. His hands are tied—not by threads but by broken glass digging deep.)
Artemis’s is a reminiscent name, but it’s one she’d rather not invoke; Apollo’s is familiar for different reasons but still an unfavorable name, no matter how favorable he is with Poseidon.
Hestia’s is one she forgets, thanks to her passive presence in the mythos despite the apparently major role she holds, but still. Sally knows little about her, and kindly as Poseidon speaks of her, she would rather not risk it.
In the myths, Athena has no love lost for Poseidon; Sally doubts time has changed anything. Even if she looks far enough, would bearing Pallas’s likeness change anything?
(Protectors of youth, helpless when it comes to their own. She runs and runs and runs, from flat blue and limp yellows and stony gray and silver-pointed marks.)
Ares, well. He is war, and her son might be a catalyst for a big one. That’s all she needs to know to not try him.
Hermes is a trickster and thief first, messenger second. Even if Sally does get his help, what can he do that won’t catch his father’s eye?
Troy, Helen, Psyche. Aphrodite is a warning unto herself.
As for the rest, Hephaestus might care less than she think, and Demeter is apparently still as focused on Persephone as before. There won’t be anything on that side either.
Of Dionysus, the last she heard was that he was on probation or something, so no wine for him. How well that’s been working out for him, she doesn’t know, but it’s probably bad. Also a no.
(Unhelpful, unhelping, loins and wombs too heavy and hearts too empty, hands never full enough.)
Of the chthonic deities, Hades is ruler, as the Underworld’s lord, if she recalls correctly, though not all submit to him. He’s one she has to watch out for, if only because he is known to be vengeful, as are his subjects. Not to mention their ties to death. Her child being forbidden by oath is only the cherry on top.
(Bodies upon bodies, how many has she seen and still is seeing?)
And the there are some of the more culturally major but mythologically minor figures, who she still needs to watch out for, for one reason or another.
Cupid is but Eros’s Roman face. His mother is Aphrodite. She needs only remember Daphne to cross his name out.
(She’s seen them play far too many games in her short life and they are impressive, terribly so.)
Eris, renowned for the Golden Apple that brought ten years of war to Troy. Why would she ever make the list? No.
(Hearts and bodies scarred, bonds and more severely frayed. Their toys always, always break.)
She’ll have to look into more obscure figures, it seems.
xvi.
When Poseidon remembers to mention that Styx’s curse may not be given to them, the breakers of the oath, but to their forbidden children, Sally almost strangles him.
Almost.
xvii.
Whether it’s a strike of genius or folly, Sally won’t know until much later, but—
(—hope is frail, but desperation burns brighter, and both cost stakes so high—)
—An idea so crazy, yet in hindsight so glaringly obvious comes to mind. It’s not really one, but rather an amalgamation of many, that just happens to deal with two of their three problems at the root.
(She refuses to let her promise end in ashes. She will live—her child will live—come hell or high water.)
The first problem is the prophecy, of course. There is little Sally can do about that. It’s up to the Fates, whether they will weave him a life of tragedy or a peaceful death. Though she doubts praying for their kindness will make them any more merciful, trying won’t hurt.
(Try, try, try. It’s all she can do. She’ll try and try and try and hope something will give.)
The second is the oath that makes them forbidden. What she needs is something to cloak or shadow Poseidon’s claim, and that—is hard to find. Hard, but not impossible.
The third is Styx’s retaliation. Myths say she has always cursed the breakers of oaths on her name, no exceptions; this time though the burden is her child’s to carry rather than Poseidon’s, because of course it is. Of course it is.
(The sins of the fathers fall upon the children. Always, forever.)
The second and third problems are more connected than she thought—but that might work in her favor, if she plays her cards well enough.
Her plan is simple but complicated, easy yet difficult. It is less plan and more chance and rides plenty on an unknown deity’s mood.
Her plan is this: if a claim is needed, then what better claim to borrow than the guarantor of her baby’s forbidden nature? Styx has always been said to be rigid and undaunted in her hateful vengeance.
Her gamble is this: if a curse must be given anyhow, can she not bargain it for another of the same severity? Nothing is free, that is what she has learned. For everything has its appropriate price.
It’s a risky gamble, one she doubts Poseidon will agree to.
But it’s what she has to do. For her baby.
(Ashes and promises, they haunt her still. But that will not be her, not while she lives.)
xviii.
She decides to do it on a day she knows Poseidon is occupied, on a day she hopes is meaningful enough to be something to the goddess she plans to call.
Halloween can’t come quickly enough, but come it does.
Sally builds a makeshift altar from stones she’d painstakingly chosen from the nearby riverside. The stones are flat, smooth and weathered from ages spent in the rushing water.
She offers her most precious possessions in hopes of better enticing the one she wishes to call: a sapphire necklace her mother had left her, the twin marriage rings that was all that remained of her parents, and a pearl bracelet that Poseidon had given her for their half-year anniversary.
She’d paused at the last offering, praying for forgiveness, but in the end she does not hesitate.
(There is no turning back from this.)
Styx arrives in a swirl of heavy ink, reeking of death and hate and vengeance, cloaked in waves of simmering resentment. How she smelt them, Sally doesn’t ask.
The River stares at her with something unnameable in her gaze, and if she had lips Sally would imagine they’d be pursed. “It has been a long time since anyone has dared to invoke my name,” she murmurs, pensively, at last, “and to think it should be a mortal, carrying a violation of an oath upon me. Should I be...impressed, at your audacity, or aggrieved at your desperation? What say you, Sally Jackson?”
Sally shivers. Whether it’s because of the river goddess’s acknowledgement of her name, or her voicing her confliction and giving Sally the chance to choose is not something she chooses to think about.
She chooses her next words that she’d spent weeks and months, agonizing over her script very carefully.
“I, I pray for the goddess’s mercy upon the child I carry,” Sally licks her lips. “I would not dare ask for the curse to be taken away, but nevertheless, I would pray the Lady Styx be merciful and not give one that should take my child from me. But if you must take him, then please–take him for your own, and not for his uncle the Dead Lord’s realm.”
(Ashes of promises, ashes upon promises. She hates and mourns having to consider him lost to her, even if that’s what it takes for him to live.)
She’d practiced, thought it over, beforehand. It pays off now, because despite the pressure of having the goddess’s gaze on her Sally doesn’t falter. Blood still rushes to her head, as the taste of ash curdles in her mouth.
Still, no amount of preparation can help her with dread from awaiting the goddess’s choice. Sally can only pray Styx doesn’t give her worse than she already has. Greek myths often don’t end well, when people try escaping fate and punishment.
The seconds that Styx spends watching her quietly stretch into minutes that feel like hours, but are only just moments. And when Styx does put a finger to Sally’s chin, lifting her head to peer into her eyes, well. Sally learns there is something deeper to be felt than dread when it comes to the divine.
Dreams of the dead cut short were entrusted to her waters, once. Now the living brazenly dispose abandoned dreams in her body, and hate only ever grows.
The Styx’s lips stretch wide and not into a smile. What a gruesome sight.
“...Very well. I hear your plea, Sally Jackson. And I shall consider it.”
A beat passes, and Sally’s heart races, drumbeats in her chest, hot bile rising in her throat before Styx continues.
“I had planned on either binding this one to a tragic end or perhaps incarnating one of its father’s enemies for spite...but I suppose a restless life should do just as well.” The River smiles kindly, and it is an ugly thing to see. “The child is yours, and there will be no Lethe to wash its soul, for it shall be new.”
Oh.
Oh. It takes everything Sally has not to choke on her sobs. She hadn’t considered the possibility of reincarnation. And yet here Styx was, telling her that it was real. That withholding Lethe was a punishment, and her baby would be collateral.
(This is what gods are, her bitter realization comes, and her despairing laugh comes out strangled. Mortal sensibilities are optional to them. They have always been.)
She doesn’t know how she’d take it if that—happened. To her baby, too. Her chest hurts, and her belly feels unnaturally still.
(A familiar stranger, strangely familiar—young and old and everything and nothing in between. It’d be a childhood lost before it could even begin.)
(She’d accept them anyways, of course. Whether they’d be a child wearing ages beyond them or a legend pretending to simply be her child. But she will mourn them anyways, for their innocence lost.)
It takes everything she has not to sob. Her throat settles for a choke, instead. “Thank– Thank you, my lady.”
Styx doesn’t reply for a while. Sally wonders if she’s mis-stepped, if she’d somehow offended the goddess. But Styx’s silence is more contemplating than simmering, so.
Sally hopes—
“It’s too early for thanks, Sally Jackson,” Styx says idly, and though her eyes are cruel Sally can’t help but see a glimmer of kindness there. It still makes her breath hitch and her heart skip a beat.
She knows even before Styx finishes that she will be grateful and hateful in equal measures for this curse. And this time grief will be unstoppable.
“My curse instead shall be thus: as his father once held Prophecy in his waters, so too shall your child bear prophecy in their body. Whether in waking or in dreaming, he will see, he will know, and the bliss of insanity will never be his. Never will he know Lethe, or Acheron before his time, but as he lives, Cocytus and I shall be his companions constant. And he shall not die before you, Sally Jackson.”
The pitch-black ink that flows from the River’s watery dress creeps, then surges toward her, towards Sally and her swollen belly. It crawls over her skin and seeps under it, unflinchingly cold and hateful and burning maddeningly.
What voice she wants to scream with dies in her throat, strangled and choked by the river of dreadful and cursed oaths.
“Your child will not die, for neither will he live.” Ghostly hands cradle her belly, her face, they tighten around her neck in a vice yet she does not, cannot choke, they ghost over her skin tender and loving and mockingly sincere. “You offer him to me, yet beg to keep him—so it shall be. He is yours until the day you give your blessing for him to be mine. But until then he shall neither be alive nor dead. Such is my curse on this child of broken oath, that only my waters can wash away on the Fates’ promised day.”
There is no booming thunder to punctuate her declaration. Only a second of deafening silence that lasts for an eternity and the rain that starts to fall outside.
Sally closes her eyes as the weight of the River’s cursed blessing settles on her back and her belly. And then Styx’s power departs from her.
This time, her heaving sobs cannot be stopped, they wrack her frame as she begins to weep. Every word of her curse is terrible, but it will be worth it, to protect her son. It has to be.
(She hates, hates, hates that it has to be this way. Ashen promises, promises to ashes.)
Styx only smiles hatefully at her grief. “Does this satisfy you, Sally Jackson? Or must I bring down more upon your unborn καταραμένος?”
The last word escapes a hiss, flushing black.
“It is enough, my lady!” Sally cries, her voice cracking. “It’s enough, it is enough...”
(It has to be this way, but all she wants is another way. There is no other way.)
She bows her head low, prostrating herself at Styx’s feet. They are blacker than her face, and heavier still. Something wraps around her neck and both ring fingers in a constricting vise, and though it does not obstruct her breathing her soul burns as if it had been branded.
“Do not presume to call upon me once more, Sally Jackson,” Styx’s voice whispers her ear as her body dissolves into nothingness. “I give my curses as I please, but I have been disrespected enough.”
(The gods do not respect me enough, she does not have to say.)
Sally tries and fails to shut her eyes; the goddess is gone, she sees, through stained-black tears that blur her vision. The hateful river hates all equally.
She sobs, one arm caressing her belly as the other feels around her neck. There are indents there that she can feel, like a noose tightening around her neck.
When she closes her eyes she can almost imagine the same marks staining a faceless child’s skin. And it makes her cry.
The wind carries one last message from the goddess, and she shivers.
“For this boon, your son is yours, but you are mine.”
She looks down, and sees Poseidon’s gift still there, lying on the makeshift altar.
But her parents’ keepsakes—they are gone.
(It was her mother choking her, like a reminder. Just as it was her father, reminding her of vows bound not in matrimony, but a cursed bargain.)
(She hates, hates, hates herself for choosing this, for believing there is no other way.)
xix.
She manages to keep her success a secret from Poseidon for three months.
It’s three months more than she expects, three months more than she should’ve ever done.
(She hates that it took him that long to find out.)
He does find out, eventually.
But he is neither angry, nor does he feel robbed, learning of her actions. Even if that would have made Sally feel just the slightest bit better.
No, he is resigned, instead. He understands, he says. But he understands nothing, or perhaps he does.
(Rhodes was newly sprung when Helios took her to wife. Kymopoleia was hardly grown when she was wedded to Briares. They say Charybdis was born a monster, but Sally never asked. She does not have to, to know Poseidon would give his divine children away so easily. A half-blood stands no chance. Her baby would’ve been offered up, too—but then he already was, to the Fates.)
And in the end she doesn’t know what is worse: Poseidon not resenting her desperation, or him looking at her like she is broken goods.
(Secretly, she mourns. He doesn’t know there is still more of her to break, does he?)
(Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.)
xx.
Poseidon does not love her the same as before.
(Must it be this way? He never did swear his love for her.)
Oh, he loves her still, but only as a friend loves a friend, now. Never as a man might love a woman, never as a lover loves their partner.
He still calls her a “queen among women”. One without a crown, but a queen, nonetheless.
It leaves a bitter taste in her mouth.
(At least their child is loved, in some manner or another.)
xx.
The marks on her neck and fingers do not fade. The fleeting sensation of touch still remains.
They set in, the color of ash, heal as if they’ve always been there. It’s a short walk from there that she starts considering turtlenecks and gloves for her wardrobe.
She wonders if they’ll fade and be forgotten, if she pretends long enough. But their presence sits in the back of her mind, Styx’s whispers a persistent echo, never intrusive but never fading either. She thinks about it more often than she’d like.
It’s only the lack of mentions and a distinctly confused response when asked that she figures out no one can see them. No one mortal, anyways.
(She ignores the curious and wary looks from nymphs and monsters alike.)
She still wears the turtlenecks. It’d be a waste not to use them when she already paid for them.
xxi.
The dreams start in earnest around a month after Styx’s visit.
A lovely baby boy wails in a baby blue crib littered with golden dust. In his hand is clutched what looks like a rotten rope, but she knows better than to settle for looks. She blinks and there it is, the corpse of a monster, or rather, the trophy.
It’s not what her eyes linger on.
No, her eyes are locked on the baby’s eyes—black as the Styx, with flecks of sun-gold and sea-green if she squints—reflected in them is horror, Sally’s horror-filled face.
She wakes with a gasp.
(It’s not the first time. It won’t be the last.)
xxii.
“He himself is a spirit of prophecy,” Poseidon tells her gravely. “Like the Pythia, the spirit of Delphi, my nephew’s main oracle. Except unlike the Pythia, our son is able to exist on his own.”
(“—bear Prophecy in his body,” the Styx had cursed, before. She—)
“What does this mean? For our son, what does this mean?” Sally asks.
The terrible look on Poseidon’s face is one she has never seen before. It fills her heart with dread.
(She should’ve—)
“It means he is something old and something new. I felt my old domains stir a while ago,” he looks at her meaningfully, “and one of them was prophecy. Prophecy that I have long since relinquished.” He levels her with a look that makes her wonder if it truly was worth it.
(She should’ve known—)
“But what does it mean, Poseidon?” Sally asks again.
His answer chills her to the bone.
“I don’t know, Sally. I don’t know.”
(She should’ve known it wouldn’t be something so simple as a gift.)
xxiii.
The dreams don’t stop coming.
Sights of a stormy-eyed girl and a young satyr plague her. She sees her would-be son with them, she sees him not—he looks her in the eye every single time.
The girl walks alone, once, twice, and again—in the Labyrinth, in a junkyard, into a monster’s lair. She survives but never unscathed. She shares a streak of white in her hair and more with her son.
The satyr finds something that brings him joy and grief in that same labyrinth, and Sally can only wonder what it was. Greener eyes the color of leaves darken to a toxic hue—there is pain and poison looking back, misery of hell.
And there is the girl with electric eyes and a shield she thinks must be Aegis, standing against a horde of monsters, and all Sally can do is weep and mourn for her as she falls. Lightning falls, and a great tree sprouts where a hero girl fell.
She hates thinking of the mischievous-looking boy who rallies an army of monsters less than she should. Many a dream shows him hurting her would-be son, and yet she has dreamed also of him and his tragedies, from his mother to that doomed quest to his sister-friend’s final stand. He swims in the dread waters where her son breathes. She pities the boy that he is and the man he has yet to be.
Twice, she tries looking for them. Folly would have her hope to help them, but then. The noose around her neck tightens and the Moirai do not help with their unblinking stares. Strings of many colors tangle and unravel and they do not wrap but she chokes and cannot scream—
There is no escape for her, because the visions come even when she’s awake.
The maddened whispers of Hermes’s lover visit her when she comes upon that hateful shade of green.
The red-haired painter’s visions ink and color the back of her eyelids, showing her more than she wants to see when she closes her eyes.
And Sally thinks she might soon hate blankets, because the burning shrouds of children keep flickering in and out of view.
And though she loved the sea once, though she loves it still, she thinks she might hate it too, for reflecting all the miserable things she cannot help but watch.
(She hates, oh, how she hates.)
xxiv.
She tries taking sleeping pills, once.
It does not end well.
She screams. He laughs.
The pit rumbles awake, the earth hums low.
Explosions of bluish-white, something bleeds gold.
Red spills over, overflowing.
And the black takes over.
She stays the fuck away from them after that.
xxv.
The day her son is born (finally), there is a storm brewing inside and outside.
Poseidon does not watch, he cannot watch. Sally doesn’t care, because she understands more than she wants to.
(She refuses to think of the not-nightmares where Zeus strikes her with lightning, where Hades multiplies her torments.)
She does not, cannot scream when the agony hits, because the invisible strings around her neck choke the air out of her.
She bleeds red but he is swaddled in black, and it is burning, burning hate and broken glass, scraping her insides and—
It feels like an eternity before the baby comes.
(She sees glimpses, vignettes, lifetimes flashing before her view.)
And then everything stops.
xxvi.
His eyes are black as the Styx.
—No, they are green as the sea. Flecks of gold blink in and out of view, but she knows those won’t last.
The day will come when that green and gold will be swallowed up in fathomless black, but that is not yet today.
His hair falls in ringlets, they will fall in waves. For now there is nothing but the slick of viscera.
Without thinking, her hand touches the temple where white may or may not fall to replace black. The wind that is not there caresses her softly.
Sally Jackson smiles and cries, looking at her son, cradling him to her chest.
“Hey, Percy. It’s nice to meet you after so long.”
There is a future yet for you, Perseus Jackson.
xxvii.
“Do not forget, Sally Jackson,” the restless pitch croons.
She closes her eyes and lets herself fall. “I will come see you soon.”
And she is swallowed up in pain and glittering gold.
xxviii.
“Are you sure about this?” Poseidon asks her. “Once this is done, it cannot be taken back.”
“I’m sure,” Sally replies, carefully. “No matter my wishes, what will be, will be. Isn’t that how it is?”
“...Whatever happened to ‘braving the storm’?”
“If a storm comes, let it come. How can we brave what we avoid?"
Poseidon’s tired laugh is the rumble of a dying storm. “I am glad to see that part of you hasn’t changed. Have I told you that yet?”
"Many times, yes,” Sally nods, lip curling.
Poseidon takes one long look at Sally, at Percy, and sighs deeply.
“Remember that what belongs to the sea will always, always return to the sea. I leave you this blessing, my son, Περσέας Κατάρα Τζάκσον.”
Pitch-black orbs stare out at them, watching, waiting.
Perséus, destroyer. One of the few heroes with a happy end.
It flickers green. It shines gold. Always, it returns to black.
Katára, curse. A girl bound to water, choosing the healer’s path.
“Never forget where you came from,” she whispers, soft as prayer, “and never forget to return.”
xxix.
And now the rain is falling, thunder is booming, the shadows are curling.
Something roars behind them, splitting trees and tossing up dirt and mud. Pasiphaë’s son, memory recalls.
They run and run and run, but there is no outrunning a god and their self-righteous wrath, justice be damned.
Sally is not afraid. Neither is her son.
It’s destiny a long time coming, coming to collect. They’ve known that since forever.
She looks into her son’s pitch-black eyes, and mouths, “Go.”
He does not. He holds her gaze until pain makes her wince and gold takes her away.
She does not need to be awake to see the carnage he wreaks. She already saw it long ago.
The shadows slip away as thunder booms one last time.
The rain does not stop falling.