Chapter Text
A storm rumbled like a lulliby across the slowly darkening sky. It sang not for the pedestrians stopping their busy lives in the heart of New York city to gaze at the peculiar lightning looking like fireworks against the clouds, nor did it sing for the animals huddled in sewers and burrows dug into the grass of the parks dotted around. No, the storm swirled and sang and celebrated for the tiny baby finally singing back to it with its first breaths after a very long nine months.
In the hospital room from where this baby was born sat its mother dripping in sweat in a white and blue gown open at the back. She pressed the crying newborn to her chest into the wails and slowed down in favour of sucking down food. The storm followed the baby's silence and the final raindrops dripped in through the slightly ajar window. A puddle formed from the scant drops, something far larger than normal but the new mother paid no mind. Instead she offered the small body of water an exhausted smile that beckoned it to her bed.
"Hello Neptune." The woman's voice was scratchy from overuse but it echoed the dissipating storm's rumbles all the same. The puddle allowed itself to be egged on by her greeting and took to bubbling until it rebealed it was no puddle at all but rather an abnormally tall man in a crisp navy blue suit with tridents tattooed on the backs of his hands. His face was set but the ends of his lips curved up just enough to hint at a smile being smothered underneath.
"It is done then Sally?" The man- Neptune asks in a deep voice that sounded as if the trenches of the unexplored oceans had been personified, perhaps they had. The woman, Sally as she was known, laughed out loud and for a moment her pale and spent face broke through with rounded rosy cheeks flushed with joy.
"Yes my love, our baby as been born. Must you always make such sweet things sound like some bad mafia movie?" She teased and the man grumbled before he could hold himself back no longer and rushed forward to the tiny infant in Sally's arms.
"The gender my love?" He asked as his eyes shone. He waited for no answer and instead gently pried the baby from her arms. She resisted for a mere second before relqishing it to his demanding grip. Neptune's eyes swirled a deep blue-green as he finally gazed upon his first mortal child in over three centuries.
"A son." He whispered in awe and the son in question simply wrapped a chubby finger around his thumb.
"Our son," Sally confirmed and Neptune let out a joyous laugh as he leaned down and pecked the tired woman on the cheek. She did not return his affection and instead stared at the baby clutched in his father's arms.
"Sally?" Neptune questioned and she looked up. He started at the tears prickling her eyes and rushed to sit down on the bed and hand the baby off to her.
"Sorry, it's-it's nothing." She looked away but Neptune took one hand and gently dragged her chin back until she was forced to look at him.
"It is not. What ails you?" He pushed and she tried to shrug his finger from her face but his grip only tightened. He would not be ignored, even by the mother of his newest son. "Tell me." He demanded and Sally let out a choked sob that had him immediately letting go of her to clasp her coarse hand in his soft one.
"He is my son, he will get my weaknesses." Her whole body began to shake and the baby let out a disgruntled whine before returning to his mother's chest. Neptune just raised an eyebrow and silently bade her to continue.
"My family… my parents. Both of them Neptune! They-he'll- I'm!" Her words were tumbling at a rate even a god could not understand and her tears made it even worse. The baby shifted more instantly but Sally's anguish pulled her far away from motherhood.
"You shouldn't have loved me, Neptune." Sall finally managed and the god's frown turned heavy and dark even as his hand's made to comfortingly rub the back of the woman. "I have tainted our baby, I am a terrible mother." She finally whispered and at this the got let out a relieved sigh and burst out laughing. Sally gasped and glared with her arms shakily clutching the newborn tighter to her. It was not often she felt true fear towards her lover, it was even less often when that fear came from his amusement but she could hear it tearing at her insides now. The divine being looked half mad and half radically joyful as be bellowed out in the otherwise silent and solemn hospital room.
"That was it? Fear of being a new mother? If you are truly worried my love I shall gift you a kingdom of your own in my ocean, you will be immortal and have all the room to make as many mistakes as you need. Our boy can simply be sent to Lupa now-"
"No!" Sally snapped and clenched her fists at the thought of that she-wolf getting her jaws near her son. Her lover had told her all about the wolf and Rome, about where her son would one day be sent off to. The god stopped laughing and his face settled into stone.
"No?" He repeated quietly but there was nothing subtle about the thunder joining the whistling storm outside.
"It is not motherhood or Rome I fear, I know what having a child of Rome means my love." Sally assured quickly and desperately tried to turn her baby away from the course hands of Neptune. He graciously ignored the way her voice shook and the little lie trembling behind that truth. It could be confronted later, it could all be dealt with later. He had a son!
"Then what is it? What could bother you so horribly on the day our boy is born? Tell me." His tone was light but there was no mistaking the order woven in his final words.
"I- I have a genetic predispoitsion for cancer." Sally flung the words out as fast as she could in a vain hope that the God would breeze past them. He did not. The ocean personified simply titled his head. She took the silent demand to continue.
"It is how both of my parents died. It is how my uncle passed and how my grandmother died as well. I'm going to get it, the doctors all but confirmed it." Still the god was silent and Sally's fear and grief turned to anger.
"Are you not listening? I will get cancer! Our son is doomed to get cancer because I was selfish and lied and doomed my child!" She sobbed and her son began to cry as his mother poured her grief into water dripping from her eyes. Water the confused infant could feel in his very veins. Water it had no way of understanding at such a tender age.
Sally didn't have anymore energy to fight as Neptune leaned forward and so very gently lifted the baby from her hold. He pulled the infant to himself and urged the baby to latch to the breasts he pulled from his more nurting forms. Finally, after ten minutes of Sally wallowing in her guilt, Neptune allowed the woman the relief she had been looking for for all nine months of her pregnancy. Perhaps for the entire spring they had shared together.
"Demigods are not burdened with such mortal matters like genetic conditions. They take only the best of your genes," he held out one hand and took hers with it, his thumb rubbed against the back of her palm, "and only the best of my diviness. He will be the best of both of us, and he will be strong."
The god straightened and looked at her with the seriousness of one who had been the gods' strategies once upon a time. "I cannot heal you. Physical injuries any god can do but only those within the domain of healing can do more than that. I'm…" He stopped there but Sally smiled, he had never claimed to be kind of close to the empathy of mortals like her but there were moments when she could see it. Past the myths, past the manner expected of a Roman god, past the disdain of Rome which had shaped him for thousands of years. It was in those moments when she wandered to herself what his Greek form would have been, if it had existed. A silly thought would creep up but she treasured it all the same: perhaps that one would have been kind, perhaps that one would have finished what he was going to say.
"It's alright." She finally spoke and mustered up the grace and resignation she had been building all of her life.
"I cannot stay long. It is not customary to linger long after the birth." The god suddenly stood and, as if understanding his father, the baby in his arms started to sob.
She knew this was coming. He had a wife and children of his own. Yet…Yet nothing. "Ok." She said firmly and held out her arms to take back her son.
"It is also customary to leave with the means for the child to survive, to become Roman." Neptune laughed and clutched his son, "Do you wish me gone so fast?"
Sally let out a small chuckle, "Of course not my love. What is it you wish to give our boy?"
"First, a name." He hesitated just slightly and Sally nodded her consent. "Persues." The woman fought to keep her jaw closed.
"Greek?" She managed to spit out and those whiste full (and most likely foolish) thoughts of a kinder side bubbled up. The god was quick to quash them.
"Destroyer. Of course my brother will still be delighted." He grumbled in a decidedly mortal way and she snickered at his preemptive eye roll.
"Second," he contained loudly over his lovers laughs and she relented into small smile. "I offer him advice," he shook his head and corrected himself, "I offer you advice. Go to New Rome, travel there when he is still young enough for monsters to ignore him and settle down where he will be protected. If you do not he will have to make that journey on his own. Lupa and the legion are unavoidable, Sally, but the journey is." The 'please' took form in his ocean coloured eyes. They widened that of a baby seal and it would have been adorable if not for the way everything crashed and drowned in his pupiless gaze.
"He will have to watch me die, Neptune." Sally whispered and the god glowered harshly at her, all grace for his lover dead and reborn as fericness protectiveness over his only mortal son.
"You would have him make such a journey, force him to adbond you at a young age? Sally. Once he goes to Lupa, once he passes her judgement, he cannot return. If you are not waiting for him in the city then that is it. I am giving him more time with you, either way you die but this way he know him for longer. This way he gets closure." The woman took a rattling breath and stared desperately at her suckling baby.
"He will mourn me." She tried.
"He will do that either way." Neptune replied. Sally did not relent.
"New Rome will not accept me! I am mortal."
He scoffed, "You are clear sighted, that is enough. Mortals are welcome in the city and even in the legion."
"But you said that the only way to gain entry is to be born there or serve! How can I care for Percy and serve the ten years? I am no fighter Neptune."
"Birthing and raising a demigod is service, Sally. As long as you are clear sighted and the one caring for the half-god child New Rome will shelter and care for you."
"Even though it was you who I loved?" She spat and the god froze. "I know they fear you, perhaps even hate you. How will they accept me? How will they accept Perseus?"
Thunder cracked even louder, the walls shifted like earth disturpted by waking tectonic plates. The air turned thick and humid even in the frigid December weather. The pipes graoned as water rushed faster and angrier, sinks froze over and staff rushed to turn up heating and cover vulnerable shivering patients has the heating coughed and died to a terrible frozen storm whirling throughout the humid air in a sickening clash. Neptune glowered and barely managed to stuff his son back into its mother's arms before his skin cracked and glowed and dripped like it was water barely managing to contain its vast shape.
"He is my son. I am a Roman god. They will accept him." The divine being gritted out and Sally curled around her child, pulling the blanket around them both as the air frosted.
"Of course, my mistake. I misspoke my lord." The title snapped him out of it and warmth flooded the hospital once again as the god sagged and sat down on the bed.
"No. No, you are right Sally. He will be feared and he will have to fight for a place of power among them because of me. But you both will not have to fight for a place. Plus," a slow mischievous smile carved its way out from his stone face, "it has free healthcare." She barked out a surprised laugh.
Sally had been complaining about the free healthcare problem in American since she had met the god and well before that to every friend she had ever made. It may not have helped her family with their illness but it was still ridiculous to have millions in medical debt after they had failed to save her family. Medical debt passed to her simply because those who were responsible for it had died. She hadn't realised Neptune had been listening during the late nights where they had sat and watched European films and she'd remind him of it every time a hospital scene played.
"Does it really?" She pushed and the god nodded. "Ok," they both stopped smiling. "I will make the journey- for him." Her hands gently petted the few strands of dark black hair sprouting from Persues' head.
"Free healthcare did it?" Neptune joked but Sally shook her head seriously.
"It is a plus but…you are right. I will not have him suffer anything I can save him from."
"Good," Neptune nodded and then reached a finger forward for Persues to grasp onto, "and there he will be able to know me should he visit my temple. It is how we are able to be in our children's lives without them needing to risk their lives of ridicules quests." The god sniffed in disdain and Sally whipped her head around to him.
"You could have led with that! I wouldn't have been too hesitant if I'd known it meant you could be in his life!" She almost smacked him but caught her hand last minute.
"It also means Salacia and Triton and my other divine children will have access to him, my temple is the only one for the sea gods so we tend to all be worshipped there."
"Salacia…" The smell of salt and ocean water wafted around the room, settling on the child for a moment before leaving. "Your wife?" Sally curled around her son more and Neptune sighed.
"It is not like that, anymore, we have come to an understanding. Nearly a century ago she had a child in Rome. The girl died before finishing her ten years but she managed to make optio, we were all very proud. "
"Oh."
"She won't hurt him." Neptune promised and Sally loosened up.
"Ok, we will go." She said with far more finallity than she thought she could muster. The idea of living in an acneit Roman city nestled somewhere in modern day America made her stomach grimace but she swallowed down that enough to feel a sort of excitement.
Neptune stood and clasped his hands in front of him looking slighty out of place without a Trident clutched in his grip. "My final gift for him will be a sword for when he joins the legion so I will suggest some sword training lessons before hand." Sally opened to her mouth to thank him but he spoke again," Also, you will find some many at the- at your apartment for the journey. Don't take a plane. Good- goodbye, Sally."
He didn't ait for her to reply and simply twisted away in a splash of fresh water that soaked in her and her baby and left them dry but rejuvenated.
"Ok." Sally whispered to herself. She looked down at the tiny baby who stared right back at her with swirling blue and green eyes.
"Ok." She booped his nose.