Chapter Text
CHAPTER 1
If someone, anyone involved in the matter, had stopped themselves —for a moment, a tiny instant— to contemplate the revolutionary idea that maybe, only maybe they could ask for his help— that there was no need to go Hera because Percy’s whole career seemed to be focused on solving godly trouble and there were few things he could say ‘no’ at that point of his life, then, well, Percy would still be stranded like thousands of years in the past.
But. But at least he would know why . The ‘where’, if Tyche was feeling particularly generous with him. Or, he could have been able to make some preparations, take a couple of rations of ambrosia and a change of clean clothes for the classic moment when he ended up covered in monster remains, or simply ripped out.
You know. The basic ‘Demi-god Adventure Pack’ that was not just He, Himself, and his current clothes.
He didn't even have his sword, which was all kinds of bad.
And. And he hadn’t said goodbye to his friends, hadn’t told his mother —and sister and stepfather, that he wouldn’t be going for Saturday Pizza Night. And who was going to cover the sword classes? Those gremlins didn’t listen to anyone except him, sometimes not even their godly or very human parents.
Percy sighed. At least I still have my memories , he consoled himself. He knew his name, knew his parents, his friends. Knew he had been eating doritos ten minutes before getting the strange tug on his gut. And knew, above all, that he had been taller and stronger and not a noodle child .
Like.
Why? A grimace crossed his face, and he felt the uncanny feeling of his teeth turning pointy, which wasn’t a thing on his Friday’s list, to be honest. Opening his mouth — could it be considered a jaw? — while looking at his reflection, everything that Percy could see was his twelve-year version with a whole set of shark teeth, less muscles than he should or wanted and a lot of scars .
Great. All the evidence of pain he survived and nothing of the fruits of his effort.
To think that morning had started so well, with a whole night without nightmares and then two whole hours of demolishing Clarisse on Sword practice before teaching the gremlins about how not to hurt themselves with their swords —still wooden ones, because there was a lot to learn for that batch of little shits until Percy felt remotely secured to lend them a real one.
And then—
Then he was eating doritos on Cabin Three, alone, because Nico had already home for summer vacation, that treacherous dork, and Annabeth was crashing hard on her cabin after two weeks of exams for her Mastery, and Grover was making Lord of the Wild things around the continent—
So, yes, he was alone, and—
Percy frowned. Wait. He had been planning to check New Camp, see how things were going in town and say ‘hi’ to the Stolls, and Katie. And, Thalia would come to visit that evening, and they would undoubtedly end up fighting one or two rounds, to what he looked forward to. There were too few who could challenge him those days, fewer than the fingers of a hand.
And then the strange pull forced him to stop , a searing pain that ripped him apart, as if someone had injected water from the Phlegethon straight on his entrails and then pulled off the charred pieces to opposite sides.
… He didn't even finish his Doritos.
A hiss escaped from his chest, not exactly snake-like but more like the deranged geese New Camp had adopted last winter —the same one that bit Cabin Eleven Michael’s ankles for trespassing ‘its’ territory, threatened Apollo when the guy ‘came to check the protections’ and had half of the demi-good population (and one god) believing it was an incarnate spirit from Pit, expelled by the god itself because its gooseness .
So, nop, it wasn’t exactly the best sound, or at least not the one he wanted to be known whenever the fuck he was now.
Luckily, he was alone.
Leaves rustled at his left.
Ha, ha. Yes, alone .
Percy missed Riptide as on any other occasion he had been left by himself without a functioning weapon, which wasn’t normal but, if they would have been given him nickels for each time it happened, then he would have a number higher than one. Which was already too much.
Fortunately, he had a wide range of skills at his disposal. Starting with W and ending with -ater.
A dryad emerged from the trees, an amphora on her head. Her leathery green widened when she saw him, and a terrible expression of fear and shock crossed her face.
Percy shut his mouth immediately, trying to conceal the very sharp, very lethal teeth, and focused on looking as inoffensive as he could. Which, of course, didn’t work. She cried something in what could have been Ancient Greek, Chinese or Alien and sprinted back to whatever place she came from, the amphora falling in the ground and breaking into fragments.
Broken as Percy’s hope of getting any information from her.
So, am I particularly scaring? He wondered, glancing at his reflection again. He touched the scar on his right eye, the result of a fourth battle against a group of hydras while protecting the newest group of campers, and a tiny bit injured by the dragon that had popped out of nowhere only a half-hour ago. What a day .
Uh. Even the Pit Scorpion’s sting had left its mark on his skin, so he moved the age of his body to almost thirteen .
With a small shrug, Percy approached what he thought was an amphora but ended up being a hydria , one of those water jars with three handles. Annabelle had shared bits and bits from her ceramic classes, so technically he could make a vague guess about the era he currently was beyond ‘before electricity was a thing ’ and ‘after Hellas was a thing ’, looking at the drawings. With a little luck, toilet paper would have already been invented.
But, he could work without it. The only thing he wanted was not to have been sent so far away that he had to fight another war .
Yeah. No thank you.
While separating the fragments with the intention of picking up the largest one, Percy accidentally touched a sharp edge. Making a grimace due to the sudden sting, he shook his fingers, careless of where the drops of blood fell. The only thing that mattered to him was that it was still red. It was such a little nuisance that he didn’t even want to bother himself with healing it.
But then he recalled that the hygienic conditions of those old times weren’t as great as people liked to think, and being a powerful demigod didn’t spare him from minuscule bacteria, as that time with the flu had taught him.
He crouched down and sank his finger on the water.
Magic, he snorted, and widened his eyes as the sound thundered on his chest. Frowning, he rubbed his chest, wondering what the fuck the gods had done to him this time. As if turning him twelve again wasn’t enough, now they were pushing towards the territory that lurked straight into his dad’s epithet of ‘Father of Monsters’.
Shark teeth were totally cool, though.
Percy checked his finger and confirmed that yes, he wouldn’t die from whatever sickness Apollo cooked up that century.
The ground suddenly trembled under his feet, and he stumbled, catching himself from falling flat into the water.
A big shadow spread under the surface of the river, and then It began to rise and rise and—
The earth stopped trembling, and everything went quiet.
Percy swallowed, the sound echoing in the place. His body screamed at him to run away, to turn around and leave before whoever the giant was attacked him, because there was no way that he, weaponless and with the water under the other’s control, could win. Could dream to.
Percy had survived, had gone against to Tartarus —and the fucking embodiment of the deepest hell could learn things from It.
His heart drummed, beating on his chest as if it would jump out at any moment, but Percy clenched his fists in his clothes and raised his gaze. Slowly, bit by bit, the behemoth revealed itself as a mass of darkness. Literally . But, then a pair of sparks, small lights, blinked into existence where he was looking at.
They pulsed, glistened.
Lured.
Percy’s eyes fixated on them, a small sound coming out of his mouth, without prompting. It shook him; the inhuman noise. But it had nothing against the rumble that reached his ears, that he felt on his own body, and against all odds, it caused his shoulders to relax, his heart to slow down.
( Without him knowing, his eyes changed; the sea green spread across his entire pupil, leaving only a slit. )
He tried to resist, gods knew he did. But the air rippled, and something soft and wet and warm coiled around him, enveloping him in a strange embrace that felt as home. His legs felt weak, sleep dragging him down, down, down . He tried to resist, and managed to make half a step back before the lights sang , and his body betrayed him, his will cut like seaweed.
Eyes closed, Percy thought that, of all the possibilities, this wasn't such a terrible way to die.
︵‿︵‿︵‿︵
It hissed and whispered, demanding, threatening, full of longing . Still trying to barter, to beg, to request. Always persistent, that one.
Centuries of pain, of bottomless emptiness, had reduced him to This . One of the most mighty beings, of the first creatures, of the primal forces. Pushed aside, to a remote corner, as if it were enough to make it disappear. Out of sight, out of mind .
But she could hear It; she was always listening to them.
And she knew, better than anyone, that he wouldn’t give up. That he would pull and push and drag the whole world down the deeps with It if nothing changed.
So she stretched far and far and far— and far and far — and far—
And then She Saw Him.
The perfect Thread —jaded and curled and tinted with golden and sparkled with red but still so blue. So Good .
And she knew what awaited him; she knew that none of the options would fill his heart. Because he was so Much More.
They deserved More.
And then She Gifted .
︵‿︵‿︵‿︵
It was with great shame that Poseidon admitted that at first, with his attention divided in several places—the affairs of the palace, the mortals' prayers at a festival in his honor begging for an early stop of the Stormy Season, the murmurs of movement in the territory of Oceanus, the quietness of his Queen, he almost missed it.
A simple whisper in the water, a drop of red thousands of miles from his main body, from his palace.
So minuscule ; the comparisons could be endless, and the meaning the same —yes, it was so easily overlooked that in any other moment he would wonder if it wasn’t part of the design. If it wasn’t done on purpose, to let him lose the last thread of hope that kept the monster chained, restricted by the loose promise of A Day .
In any other moment —but not this one. This one was seized by the sweetest and most terrific feeling, the one that made the Deepths unfurl from the Abyss and threaten with an eruption of cataclysmic proportions if he didn’t move now.
And so he went, with a bare blink of his thoughts, finding himself on the coasts of Corinth, not long ago given to him —and the city to his nephew, Apollo. But it was not the sea but the main river that called him, and thus he ignored the sudden warmth of sunlight streaming on his waters as he appeared in front of the source of—
Oh.
Oh .
A boy; just a hint of baby fat on his cheeks, round-eyed like baby seals and coloured as the waters of his domain. Strange clothing covered him, and— his skin— his skin was marred.
Scars.
On his tiny, precious child.
WHO DARED?
For an instant, It surged. It demanded him to siege , to sunder the bare bones of the culprits behind those marks, to drag them to the deepest depths where no light reached and no life breathed, so the world would never dare to touch his child.
His child.
His perfect, tiny child.
Alive and breathing and marred —
The Sun smoldered him, before clouds gathered in the Sky, blocking its rays yet hovering above him. Underground, darkness swept into his own, mingling and pulling. Trees ruffled in the wind, whispering lullabies of feathers and flowers and family .
The earth stopped trembling as He took control once again, hyper-focused on his child, his precious child — mine, mine, mine, m i n e — still mortal, so fragile . His seal-like eyes, no, round yes, but like those of a shark —something trembled within, fascinated and proud and possessive— looked down, at the riverbank. Afraid.
Afraid.
Being thrown again on his father’s stomach would have hurt less than the sudden realization that HE WAS SCARING HIM .
HE WOULDN’T NEVER —NEVER— HE ONLY WANTED TO PROTECT HIM, TO LOVE HIM F O R E V E R—
His child raised his chin. So brave, his child, so filled with courage and life and so wonderful.
Then the sound came —one he would hear from anywhere in the world, on his domain or his brother’s, it didn’t matter because it was for him. A call; the first call of a pup for his parents. No, for his father.
My child , he rumbled back, my baby, my precious, my little one .
Once he had his pup in his embrace, sheltered within smooth currents, sleeping as a babe in his father's arms as he should, Poseidon knew —It knew— that nothing would separate them anymore.
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