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In the beginning, everyone tells her about the love.
The bond between a mother and her child, precious and intangible and incomparable. She will love her child, they tell her, with a love is so singular, so unique, it will be like nothing she’s ever felt before. Unconditional and all-encompassing. The kind of love that could move mountains, turn the tides, start wars and end them.
They all tell her about this. The owner of the bodega on the corner with her kind eyes and understanding smile. The leader of the workshop for expectant mothers she can just afford to attend once a month. The gynecologist who’s a father to three children, a grandfather to twice as many, and the doctor to more mothers than he can count.
Even her college friends, all bright eyed and bushy tailed and so painfully, undeniably young, it seems to her now, with their assignments and frat parties and big dreams for the future. They tell stories of their tight knit relationships with their own mothers, of the things they’ve sacrificed for them, in a weak attempt to reassure her.
She had no mother of her own to do the same.
But Sally doesn’t feel reassured. She feels scared. It’s been three months since she last saw him, with his sea glass eyes and calloused fingers and apologetic smile, and her hands still tremble every time they settle over her stomach.
No one warns her about that part. No one warns her about the fear.
It’s a different kind of fear, she realizes, different from any other fear she’s ever felt before. Maybe the same way it’s a different kind of love. Maybe they’re two sides of the same coin.
Or maybe they’re one and the same. Maybe to love someone is to fear for them. And who fears for someone they love more than a mother who fears for her child?
And Sally does fear for him, for her son, long before she brings him into the world. She fears for him when she has to tell white lies so the doctors won’t think he’s developing too slowly, something his father warned her would happen. She fears for him when she looks at the bills piling up, and the growing list of problems with her new apartment she can’t afford to fix. She fears for him when he kicks for the first time, and she knows with a dreadful sense of finality that this is real and unavoidable and that for all intents and purposes, she will be going it alone.
She thinks, hopefully, naively, that maybe once he’s born, she won’t be as scared anymore.
She’s never been more wrong about anything in her life.
Percy is a month old, and he won’t stop crying, and now she can’t stop crying too, from fear and frustration and pure exhaustion. She doesn’t know what to do. He’s been fed, he’s been changed, he’s been held and rocked and kissed and sang to. And he still won’t stop crying.
As a desperate, ludicrous, last resort, she carries him to the bathroom. Lowering him gently towards the basin, cradling his tiny body, she turns the faucet on. Maybe she’s imagining it, but his cries seem to get quieter, less intense. Carefully, gently, she splashes a little water over his head, like a poor man’s baptism.
He stops crying.
Percy is three years old, and he’s babbling away to something in the pond. She’d walked away for just a moment, to snap a picture of him kneeling by the water. It was such a perfect image, the afternoon sun turning his little head of curls pure gold, his hand delicately skimming the surface of the water, his yellow raincoat a bright beacon against the green grass and gray pond.
She didn’t realize he was chattering away until she’d walked back over, and even then she’d assumed he was just talking to himself, like a normal toddler does. Until she saw the glimmer under the surface, the flash of unnaturally bright blue-green.
“Percy,” she asks, gently, kneeling next to him, trying to keep the panic from seeping into her voice. “Who are you talking to?
“The green lady,” he said simply, not looking away from the pond. “She says she knows my daddy.”
Sally feels it then, that white-hot stab of fear, burying itself behind her ribs. She reaches out, wrapping her hand around his tiny arm. “We need to go now, Percy.” She says, with far more calmness than she feels.
Percy’s face falls. “But I want to talk to the mermaid.” His tone is childish, petulant. Of course it is. He can’t understand it, can’t even hope to fathom it. The danger he’s in. Sally looks around, nervously, hoping against hope no one is close enough to hear the conversation. And if they are, that they’ll just assume her son has a very active imagination.
“You can talk to her another time,” she says, in an urgent whisper. “But right now, we need to go home.”
Percy is six years old, and he has skinned knees and a graze on his jaw, scarlet and unmissable. Sally is as angry as she is scared.
“It wasn’t my fault,” he tells her, when she kneels in front of him outside the principal’s office, settling reassuring hands on his knees. He sounds defensive and every bit as angry as she is. “He started it. He was calling me a freak.”
Sally brushes his hair away from his face. It’s getting a little too long, she notices. Just another thing to worry about taking care of. “I know, baby. I believe you.”
His eyes search her face. His father’s eyes, ocean blue and as changeable as the tides. “It’s not true is it, Mom? I’m not a freak?” He doesn’t sound angry anymore. He just sounds scared, his voice pitching up so high at the end of his question it almost comes out a squeak.
Sally is scared too, but she can’t afford to be. She has to be brave enough for the both of them.
“No, Percy, it’s not true,” She tells him, firmly, cupping his face between her hands. “Not in the slightest. You are exactly who you’re supposed to be, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that.”
His lip is trembling, his eyes wet, but he nods, something in his gaze growing steely.
Maybe we can both be the brave ones, she thinks, as she walks into the office with his hand clasped tightly in hers.
Percy is nine years old, and he doesn’t believe everything she tells him anymore.
He’s sitting at the desk in his bedroom when she comes home, scribbling away furiously in his notebook. She can feel the anger radiating off him. It seems far bigger than he is, dwarfing him, filling the small room with a simmering atmosphere of rage.
Was it his father’s anger, as volatile and merciless as the waves that battered ships and drowned their sailors. Or was it hers? Grown from resentment and bitterness and at a world that seemed determined to shake her resolve?
“I’m so sorry, Percy,” she begins, when he doesn’t even turn to look at her, closing the door behind her. She can tell he knew she was there, though, from the way his shoulders tensed up when she walked in. “I just got stuck at work, and the buses were running slow and-”
“They were all laughing at me.” He’s trying to keep his voice stern, unemotional, but it betrays him, wobbling treacherously. She knows her son too well, and he’s never been good at hiding his emotions. It’s a blessing and curse, like so many parts of their life. “He was the last one to show up, and he smelled even worse than usual, and he was making these weird jokes to Miss Reynolds, and-” his voice breaks off as his voice thickens with overflowing tears. Sally crosses the distance, and he immediately wraps his arms around her middle, pressing his face into her stomach and muffling his cries there.
“I’m sorry, darling, I really am” she whispers, stroking his hair. “I didn’t want to leave you waiting there, and I know you don’t like to be alone with him but..” she trails off, feeling like she’s running out of excuses. It’s hard to lie to Percy, she’s realized, but sometimes it’s even harder to tell him the truth.
Percy sniffles, pulling his face away, leaving a damp patch on her work uniform. “I wish you would’ve. I’d rather be alone forever than stuck with him.”
“Percy..” she starts, gently. “Don’t talk like that.”
“I don’t know why you married him,” he carries on, looking up at her, eyes wide and teary and confused. “Do you even love him?”
Sally feels like something’s lodged in her throat. For you, she wants to tell him. It was all for you.
“Of course I do,” she says quickly, like he won’t really hear the lie if she doesn’t let it linger. “But not half as much as I love you.” She strokes her thumb under his cheek, wiping the tears away.
His eyebrows furrow, and something flickers over his face. He doesn’t believe her, she realizes. Maybe he never did. The thought makes the thing lodged in her throat expand, filling up her esophagus, suffocating her.
She’s never cared about what people think of her, or at least she’s told herself she doesn’t. But this is different, this revelation that her son doesn’t see her as infallible anymore. That he knows she’s capable of lying, even for his sake.
It terrifies her.
Percy is twelve years old, and Sally already feels like she’s losing him.
Her hold on him, and his humanity, is slipping, and the brute force grip of the gods and the titans and all the divine and abhorrent things his father’s blood draws to him, is tightening.
And there’s nothing she can do to stop it.
She takes his face between her hands, and she tries to tell him, over the roar of the rain and the monster trying to take her son from her, to hold fast.
Brave the storm.
He looks younger than he ever has, and older than he ever should, and she knows that this is it. This is the moment. The last moment she has with him before any remaining semblance of innocence and childhood left to him is stripped away with violent force. The moment before her child becomes their soldier.
When the Minotaur has her in his grip, and her life is flashing before her eyes, all that she’d already lived and all that she never would, all that she’d never get to see Percy live, she’s almost glad it’s ending here. Past all the terror and the tragedy, there’s a relief in it.
She’ll never have to see past this moment. She won’t have to be scared anymore.
Percy is fourteen years old, and he’s heartbroken.
Sally didn’t expect it to be like this, although maybe she should’ve, considering the life he’s been forced into.
Because his eyes aren’t red from the sting of rejection, or the hurt of jealousy. The image of him wavering over her kitchen table, bordered in iridescence, shows a boy that is visibly, undeniably broken, but not because the girl he liked turned him down, or laughed in his face, or decided he wasn’t worth her time anymore.
It was because she’d disappeared over the side of a cliff, taken by a monster he couldn’t defeat,, something she could tell he blamed himself for. Annabeth now existed in a dangerous, unknowable limbo between life or death, and they both knew that could sometimes be worse than losing someone entirely.
Her heart aches for him, and it aches for her too, for these children forced time again and time again into impossible, dangerous situations where instead of fearing the regular heartbreaks of adolescence, they feared for each other’s lives.
She wants to tell him that Annabeth will be okay, that they’ll find each other again like they always do, that the next time she drops the two of them off at a dance together they’ll end the night giddy and blushing, and not terrified and inconsolable.
“He didn’t want her. He wanted me.”
His voice is so resigned, so dejected, that all she wants is to do is march right on down to Long Island Sound and take him into her arms.
But she can’t do that. All she can do is tell him to do the right thing, the brave thing, even though it terrifies her to say it, to willingly encourage him to run headfirst into danger once more.
He looks a little surprised by her insistence, and it’s a relief to see an emotion on his face that isn’t just pure devastation.
“You thought I’d try to talk you out of it?” She asks him, smiling softly.
“I don’t know.. I guess I thought you’d just want me to be safe, like Chiron said I would be if I just stayed put.”
“I do want that,” Sally says, honestly. “Of course I do. But I want Annabeth to be safe too, and I know you’ll never feel okay again until she is. So if you think there’s a way you can make that happen, you should do it. You wouldn’t be you if you didn’t.”
He smiles gratefully at that, although it looks a little forced, like it’s taking a great deal of effort.
“And I wouldn’t be me if it weren’t for you, Mom.”
She nods, feeling tears well up at the back of her eyes. “I hope you find her, Percy. I know you will.”
Percy looks away, his mouth twisting up in a way that she knows means he’s trying not to cry again. When did he start doing that so often? When did he start thinking he shouldn’t wear his heart on his sleeve?
“I hope so too.”
Percy is sixteen years old, to the day, and Sally feels that the pervasive sense of fear that she’s been carrying around with her like a second child might finally be ready to leave the nest.
The elevator doors open, and he’s standing right there, her son, her child, her boy, who’s starting to seem more and more like a man every time she sees him. His orange camp shirt tattered, his Greek armor dented, and he looks wearied and battle-worn, half-stumbling out hand in hand with Annabeth, who looks equally as harrowed.
Sally’s feet are moving before her brain can catch up to them, and then Percy is flying towards her with equal fervor, and then he’s in her arms, or maybe she’s in his. It doesn’t seem to make a difference.
She can’t remember when he’d grown taller then her. She just woken up one day, and found she didn’t need to look down to speak to him anymore, and then soon enough she found that she had to look up, and now he towered over her, like his father once had.
“I saw your signal, Percy. I saw it light up,” she mumbles, pulling away from him, blinking back tears. “It was a smart idea but I couldn’t really be sure until I saw you for myself.”
Percy’s hands squeeze her arms, and he leans forward, pressing a kiss to her temple. “I’m okay, mom, really. It’s over. We’re safe.”
Sally nods, and though she’s still not entirely sure safe is ever a word that can really be applied to him , he says it with such conviction that she can’t help but believe it. Her eyes drift over his shoulder, to where her husband is standing with Annabeth, frowning at a bruise blossoming on her temple.
Paul moves aside when they approach, and she can see him drawing Percy into a hug just as reaches for Annabeth, “Come here, honey. You’re okay now. You’re safe.” The girl shakes as she steps into her embrace, and Sally wonders when she was last held by someone who wasn’t just another scared kid.
She meets Percy’s eyes over the top of Annabeth’s head, where he still stands with Paul’s hand clasped on his shoulder, fatherly and protective, and finds him looking right back at them, wearing an expression she doesn’t think she’s seen on him since before he started kindergarten.
It’s the look of someone who’s just seen the sun rise after the seemingly endless dark of night, who’s stumbled out of a fire and just taken their first lungful of fresh, smoke-free air.
It’s the look of someone at peace.
Percy is twenty six years old, and he’s staring down at his newborn daughter the same way Sally had stared down at him all those years ago, with a look of wonder and terror and an unshakeable, unconditional love that he’ll carry with him for the rest of his life.
She should know. She’s still carrying her own. She always will.
“I don’t want to hurt her,” he whispers, as Annabeth hands their child over to him, and Sally doesn’t miss the way his hands tremble, or his eyes widen with concern.
She wants to tell him that he just needs to cradle her head, that he has a innate instinct far greater than anything divine or fated that will guide him through this, that he and Annabeth will figure this out the same way they figured out everything else the world saw fit to throw at them.
But Annabeth speaks before she can, with the steadfast conviction of someone who believes in what they’re saying wholeheartedly.
“You won’t.” She meets his eyes, and they exchange smiles, something passing between them that is entirely indecipherable to anyone but the two of them.
Percy looks down at his daughter, rocking her slightly and making nonsensical shushing sounds. “You’re just perfect, aren’t you, little one? Just like your mom.”
Annabeth laughs lightly, leaning her head against his shoulder where he’s curled up next to her on the hospital bed. “More like her dad,” she corrects, softly.
From her spot on the end of the bed, Estelle makes a face. “She doesn’t look like either of you. She just looks like any other baby.”
Sally shushes her daughter, though she laughs with the rest of them at her daughters blunt comment. She can feel Paul’s hand settling on her shoulder, and she reaches up to entwine their fingers, heart swelling with impossible joy as she looks at their children and grandchild, the first of what she hopes is many.
“It’s okay to be scared, you know.” she says quietly, without thinking, and both Percy and Annabeth look up at her. Paul squeezes her hand. “You’re supposed to be.”
She watches understanding flit over their faces, and she thinks that maybe, together, they won’t be quite as afraid as she was.