Chapter Text
Dear Calypso,
I don’t know if you’ll get this, but I’m hoping that you will. If this summer has taught me anything it’s that hope can carry you pretty far. There’s definitely less rules about it than prayer. (I did also sacrifice my dinner to Hermes for the best chances since it’s his delivery service, but I’m banking on hope.)
To the surprise of everyone, I’m alive.
Most people I’ve met thought I’d be dead by now, some have tried to make it happen. When I landed on your island, I thought they were basing that prediction on my poor life decisions but turns out there was a seventy year old prophecy that basically said “percy jackson will die at sixteen”.
Yeah, I was pretty messed up about that. It’s not that I thought I’d be the demigod to beat the odds and live a long life, but my mom had named me Perseus in hopes that I would. The chance of me dying was always a possibility long before I turned sixteen. I’ve literally seen two of my would-be funeral shrouds. The prophecy just made a possibility a certainty that I couldn’t avoid. It made me think of you, of what would’ve happen if I stayed. But just because I’d be free from that burden doesn’t mean everyone else would be free from the consequences. You know this, it’s why I left.
Okay, I don’t know how to say this gently, for all I know someone’s already told you, but Olympus hasn’t been answering me back for a while now and my luck’s always been piss poor when it comes to getting answers. I’m rambling. What I mean to say is that after Kronos was defeated, I was given a gift for leading the demigods against him and being the prophecy child. I asked for a few things and the king of the gods agreed. One of those was to free you from Ogygia.
You’re free, Calypso. No more heroes washing up on your beach and no more being stranded on that island. If no one comes for you, build a raft? I’m honestly just spitballing here. I’m sending some drachma with this letter and once you’re in the mortal world, send me a letter or Iris message and I’ll pick you up on Blackjack. He’s my pegasus friend, the coolest guy you’ll ever meet. Or I can pick you up with a car, I got my learner’s permit a while ago!
My mom’s been helping me grow your moonlace on our window sill, it’s not as big of a garden as you deserve, but I’ve been helping Grover, my best friend and the new Lord of the Wild, on his whole save the earth mission while I prep for my junior year of high school. The world has changed a lot, but I’m still your friend and want you to know that even though I couldn’t stay with you, I want to be there for you.
Love,
Percy
PS: I am not going to die because of a prophecy, it’s already passed and the next one, fingers crossed, shouldn’t happen for another lifetime.
—
It’s all fun and games joking about dams when you don’t see who’s being damned in the process.
He blinks at another fishway-less dam and has half the mind to hack at it with Riptide. He doesn’t listen to the horned figure on his shoulder that resembles a satyr more than a devil, that advises him down with private dams! Let the wild be wild! And instead plots another course along the Saugatuck River, because at the end of the day he’s not equipped to deal with an ecoterrorist warrant.
The river used to be host to a large variety of fish, once it was known for its brown trout, but dams as he’s learned through impassioned speeches from Rachel, Grover, and a ridiculous amount of river spirits, have bad side effects that include destroying biodiversity. Fishways, little fish steps that are made in dams to let fish migrate, aren’t always a one size fits all solution and aren’t even included into every dam.
He swims at a regular pace, not wanting his passenger to get discombobulated, and taking the chance to feel the flow of the river. Only one third of the world’s longest rivers are free running. He wonders if this is a topic of conversation in his father’s court. Somewhere below post-war reconstruction and before the top ten reasons of why Zeus sucks, they’d talk about the wild being bought up by business men and private citizens as if it doesn’t have a spirit.
The Saugatuck River has a spirit. He had introduced himself alongside Grover who’s taken to know every nature spirit that’s ever sprouted like a new boss making the rounds with employees. She had been bloated, skin a greenish brown and hair a rushing stream as she told them of the groups of brown trout she used to welcome before they stopped making the trip.
Contrary to what Clarisse would tell you, he’s not a sucker for a sad story, but when she introduces them to Bela, a brown trout who wants to have her babies in the first place she ever laid her fingerling eyes on, Percy can’t not help.
So here he is navigating dams while his best friend chats up a bloated river because it wouldn’t be Connecticut without a flood.
Are you sure you know where you’re going?
Is he ever?
“We’re going to get there soon,” he reassures. She dropped the “my lords” somewhere along the third time they’d been redirected. He gets that too much to even pretend at being offended.
Before or after I lay my eggs?
Percy rolls his eyes. If it was all as simple as going from point A to point B, Bela would be carried in a water bubble as he jumped over dams to her nesting ground. But she’s a migrating species, she needs to know the way as much as she needs to get to her destination. It’s not like riding the MTA where worse comes to worst you can use Google or just ask someone which train to take. There are things people need to do for themselves.
He follows the rush of the river, avoiding the stifled currents. This water empties into the Long Island Sound, but the movement of it is halted in a way that makes him feel sick. Like if the river was an artery, it’s one that’s been treated for coronary bypass.
He remembers how weak Pan was before he faded and how gods are half idea and half energy. Grover won’t give up on the wild, the same way he never gave up on Pan. If his beating heart is now linked to the wellbeing of this planet? Well, they already called him a terrorist for something he didn’t do, at least he’d earn the ecoterrorist label fair and square.
Percy guides Bela through the last current as they land in their destined pond, the Saugatuck and Grover pause their conversation to watch the fish swim in glee at her new territory.
Thank you, lost one! Thank you! Even though we took the scenic route, we made it!
Percy snorts, “Don’t mention it, Bela. Good luck with the kids.”
He swims up to Grover and holds a hand out that the satyr takes without hesitation to pull him out onto the marshy earth. He can feel the mud stick to his feet, he wiggles his toes. If he really tried, he could lift this dirt.
Grover raises an eyebrow at him and he returns it with a shake of his head and a smile.
“It’s a pleasure to see her kind reach my waters. I used to host so many,” the river’s mouth is long like a whale shark’s. Seeing human words come from it instead of aquatic bellowing keeps his eyes on her tadpole eyes rather than risk staring. “What was is often forgotten in favor of current events.”
Percy blinks. Did she just-
He locks side eyes with Grover, both of their mouths already open as if to ask “was that a pun? Did she really just do that?” And they close in muted amusement and understanding. No need to point out low hanging fruit.
Grover speaks, “I won’t forget. Things might not revert to what it once was, but we can build a future to be proud of right now.”
He speaks with the confidence of conviction. He’s grown in their years of knowing each other, but he’s always been one of the bravest people Percy’s known, doing what he believes in even when it scares him.
The river hums, “Perhaps we can.”
They part ways and pick their path into the surrounding forest. The silence is comfortable and punctuated by bird whistles and crunching leaves.
“Are they saying anything interesting?”
Grover snorts, “The robins are debating which group will migrate since this forest isn’t big enough for all of them. They’re arguing in circles since there’s a group that wants to stay and another that wants to go, but they’re so involved in their points they don’t realize they’re not disagreeing.”
Percy huffs, reminded of the way the Athena and Ares cabins tend to argue when picking teams for Capture the Flag.
He trips over a rock and waves off the shoes that Grover’s been carrying for him. “Our clearing is nearby, let’s just sit down for a bit.”
The fatigue from the curse hasn’t hit him yet, but it’s good practice for the cover Paul helped him sort out with his school. Accommodating for narcolepsy was easier for the administration to understand than “an Ancient Greek Curse that causes me to crash” or Sleepy boy disease as the Stolls called it.
He leans against a rock while Grover sits cross legged in the grass, panpipes pulled from his crossbody. The world seems to flourish around the satyr. The grass seems just that bit greener and the air just that much clearer. It reminds him of meeting Artemis, where the world seemed wilder under her silver gaze.
If Percy called out via their empathy link, he doesn’t doubt Grover would hear it. Is that so different from prayer?
Emily Osment’s Lovesick gets a wind instrument rendition by the Lord of the Wild and Percy doesn’t even wince once. Over the years his playing has grown better and in turn Percy’s music repertoire expanded from Nirvana and the Pixies to include pop hits.
As the last notes linger in the air, a thought that he never had the guts to acknowledge comes out of his mouth, “Did you feel it when I was in the Styx?”
Grover pauses, lips centimeters away from cajoling another melody, and startled like a deer in headlights.
The wind rustles the tree leaves.
The smile Grover offers is pained, “Not as much as you felt it, but yeah.”
The implications twist his mouth, his voice is strangled as he asks, “What did you think would happen on my birthday? Why would you—Everyone thought I would die.”
When he was thirteen and the first friend he ever had asked if they should destroy the bond between them, the answer was always going to be no. There’s a desperate, selfish thing in him. It gets so overjoyed at connection that it’ll ignore all consequences if someone asks him to stay. He’s a bad kid, a product of a broken oath, and is full of so much power that does nothing but destroy. He loves Camp, but he remembers those first weeks as an official child of Poseidon. A place filled with people like him and he was still the worst one.
No matter how many times he’s put his hoof in his mouth, the only person who has Grover beat in caring for him the longest is his mom.
“Why did you think I could find Pan?” Grover retorts.
“That’s not the same thing!”
He shrugs, “I placed all my bets on you a long time ago, Percy. If anyone could defy the Fates, it would’ve been you. I wanted it to be you.”
The sincerity of it rises in the back of his throat. “You can’t just do that. You could’ve died, people have already died. I wouldn’t survive it if you did too.”
He scratches his goatee, “Well, you’d be dead already. And if I died for you, that would defeat the point so I definitely won’t be doing that.”
“I’d die for you first!” Not really sure why they’re arguing this.
“Please don’t do that.”
“Then don’t do it to me.”
“Deal.”
“Good.”
They stare at each other for a beat and Percy can’t tell who starts laughing first but they’re laughing together. It’s stupid, as stupid as the robins’ argument jabbering above them. Grover isn’t a regular satyr and Percy isn’t a regular demigod and for once they’re living without the odds against them. He tries to forget Grover’s unconscious body under the grip of Morpheus and focus on the now, when it hits him then that he has two mortal spots and Annabeth already protects them both.
If he wasn’t so selfish, he’d feel bad about putting that on her.
“Does this count as a suicide pact?”
Grover bleats, “Dude, no! It’s like…it’s like that Death Cab for Cutie song!”
“I’ll follow you into the dark sounds like a suicide pact to me.”
“Well it’s not. Stop saying that, think of how Juniper would take it. Don’t do that to her.”
He raises his hands in surrender, “I was just saying.” His mind drifts to the new school year. “Are you sure you don’t wanna enroll at Goode for old times sake?”
Grover laughs, “It can’t be worse than Yancy.”
“Exactly, all the more reason for you to come.”
Grover scoots over so that they’re shoulder to shoulder. “You’ve faced the Lord of Time, you can make it through high school.”
“It’s crazy that I have to though, can’t Apollo do me a solid or at least give me my homework in Greek. I bet that’s what Luke pitched in his recruitment speech.”
Grover tenses, before giving a shaky laugh. “For some reason I don’t think he was concerned about future curriculums.”
All the more ways the guy was short sighted, he thinks bitterly.
“Are you still visiting her?” Grover asks cautiously.
“You know that I am.”
It’s not his favorite pastime, if anything he always leaves that house feeling a little worse than when he came in, but he can’t just leave her.
Not when her worst nightmare has come true.
“Just…take it easy, Percy.”
He grins, “When have I ever chosen the hard way?”
Grover snorts, fidgeting with his panpipes. “You know I’m just an IM away.”
“Don’t forget concerning dreams, you’re good at sending those.”
“I’m still waiting for you to return the favor.”
“I’m saving it for a special occasion. If I’m ever kidnapped.”
“Oh gods, please don’t jinx yourself.”
He knocks on a neighboring tree and jumps at the stink eye the emerging dryad sends him. His apology is ignored in favor of fawning at Grover. Percy’s nose scrunches, “He has a girlfriend.”
The dryad’s attention returns with full ire, but at Grover’s awkward insistence she returns to her tree.
Percy claps, “Well that’s enough nature for me today. Take me back to civilization.”
“City boy,” Grover shakes his head fondly.
“And don’t you forget it.”
They walk together until they reach the paved path to Westport, Connecticut. It’s the sort of place you’d envision when you think white suburban town by the water. It’s become familiar to him in the way that he can handle a trident but will always prefer a sword.
“I’m heading West.”
Percy raises an eyebrow as he accepts his bag back, “More meet and greets or…?” Unease and curiosity rise in equal measure like the beginning of a tummy ache through their bond.
“The earth has been feeling a little weird. It might be the after effects of Pan fading, but it feels different from what I’m used to. Somehow older than his magic.”
Percy frowns, “Keep me updated?”
“I will.” He looks down the street that Percy will eventually travel and pulls him in for a hug, “Take care of yourself, Percy.”
“Right back at you,” he murmurs.
—-
It was at a campfire, after Luke betrayed them and before finding out that Silena did too (in other words after the beginning and before the end) that Drew Tanaka told him a story about a lioness.
After the loss of her cub, the lioness adopted an oryx, some sort of goat-antelope that under normal circumstances would be prey. She protected the oryx, hunted meat that it couldn’t eat, and cared for it like her own. One day when she went hunting, her lion mate tired of the charade killed the oryx to eat. When the lioness came back to the murder, she attacked the lion, blinding him and chasing him out of the territory. And then she ate the carcass of her adopted oryx.
Drew was mean in a way that Percy understood. Her bluntness was only 35 percent ADHD and mostly just her personality. Worst of all, she’s kind of hilarious. He had asked her why she told him the story, she seemed disappointed before answering that Love is complicated.
At first he couldn’t stop thinking of Kronos and his kids, but now, at the doorsteps of a two story colonial house in Westport, Connecticut, he thinks of May Castellan.
“Luke, honey! I missed you!”
Thin arms wrap around him and he returns the embrace. “Hey, it’s been a while.”
“Come in, come in.”
He’s braced for the smell and manages to smile through the strong aroma of burnt cookies and peanut butter sandwiches. The hallway is still filled with candles and mirrors, he catches a glimpse of beanie baby Medusa through them on the way to the kitchen table.
“I got you something.” He tells her, pulling out the sandwiches and cut up fruit he had bought on his way, before she can offer food past its expiration date.
She gasps delightedly, “Look at you, taking care of your mom. You’re such a kind boy.”
He bites the inside of his mouth and misses the grounding pain from before the curse was in effect. Now he has to rely on pure emotional regulation, how fun. “I get it from my mom.”
May smiles softly and starts picking at the fruit. “I’m glad you’re home. You’re always traveling, you get it from the both of us.”
Percy hums, “Do you mind if I pack some food to go?”
Her grey eyes brighten, “Of course, baby! I made it for you. There’s Kool-aid in the fridge if you’re thirsty.”
Discretely, he pulls out a trash bag and cleaning supplies from his bag. He starts by throwing the inedible food into the bag and then moves to replace her water filter. He’s reminded briefly of cleaning the apartment that they had with Smelly Gabe. How each thing thrown away was like scrubbing the man’s influence from his life.
He’s not sure what cleaning here means aside from fighting mold poisoning.
May’s pleased voice is recounting a painting she made while pregnant. Something about a snake eating its own tail around the earth. He only interrupts her to ask about the lunch he bought, prodding her to eat more. She indulges him each time.
He’s seen some of her paintings. There are canvases propped against a lot of the walls and undoubtedly more upstairs. Not only are there paintings, but sculptures. He stopped looking when he got to the surprisingly good children’s drawings. He wonders if it’s a prerequisite of potential oracles to be able to create haunting pieces of art. Knowing Apollo’s Blue period, it probably is.
“How did you meet Hermes?” He asks before he can think not to. The house has evidence of many talents, from finished art to language books to sport medals to travel souvenirs. Before she was cursed, May Castellan lived a full life. He wonders who she was then.
May laughs fondly, “Oh my sweet Hermes. He’d run around everywhere with his cute feathered helmet. I wish he’d still wear it.”
He makes the executive decision not to mention that he does…when he goes to war.
“He didn’t know I could see him and tried to steal my sculpture.” A smirk cuts through her face and for a moment he can picture her before everything. “I sold it to him for four times the set price.”
Percy snorts. Hermes would be the kind of god into that.
“We ran into each other a few more times, I invited him home, and next thing we know I have the sweetest boy in the world.” She looks at him with such love that his heart aches. It’s like looking at his own mother, who despite everyone telling her her son is doomed, she asked for a sign that he’ll be home soon.
He clears his throat, “You used to sell your art?”
She waves a hand, “I dabbled in a bit of everything. Have I ever told you of when I was a tour guide in Madrid?” He shakes his head. “I was seventeen, finished high school early, and had a knack for languages. I didn’t want to be in one place forever so I got a passport and flew out. Madrid’s not a hard city to understand, I took a few walks to familiarize myself and then stationed myself in front of an art museum, Reina Sofia, with a sign about tours. I was serious about it at first, but when it got boring I would make things up.” Percy smiles, slightly awed at how coherent she is. She leans in as if telling a secret, “You have to start off small, say things that sound right and can’t be easily refuted. A personal memory, how you felt the first time you visited, even if you’ve never visited before. And then you can build up, treat it like a rumor, facts can be proven but gossip sticks.” May laughs, “They banned me from offering tours in front of the museum around the time I was convincing tourists that ostriches used to roam the city square.”
He huffs a laugh. “What did that have to do about your art?”
“Everything is an art,” May says serenely, the fog in her eyes returns briefly, like the sun behind clouds. She hums a song beneath her breath staring at the shadow of Hermes formed from the light hitting the Hermes cutouts taped on the kitchen window.
Percy goes back to cleaning. In the two times he and Hermes have crossed paths since the war, it’s always about Luke never May. And yet, she still talks about him like he’s her lover. There’s a celestial bronze snake hanging on the wall and the bills to this house are always paid, but it’s Percy who had sat the woman down two weeks ago to wash her hair in the water basin.
He has half the mind to ask for the Ancient Laws written up so that he can understand what in the world direct intervention even means. It’s like finding out that before Thalia’s treeification, Camp was protected by the same demigods who needed protecting.
He hands May a glass of water when she clutches his forearm in a vice grip. The water spills over them and Percy has to breathe through the adrenaline and instinct to break the hold. Her grey eyes are oracle green as that familiar smoke pours from her lips, “ Beware the earth, a mother’s curse rises from below. Foes or friends, gamble trust or triumph you forgo”
He flinches, staring at green that won’t stop coming, his heart beating in tandem with the sirens in his mind. Her hands are still on him, white knuckled and on any other person, bruising. He waits for the rest of the prophecy but she never continues, so he pulls the woman into a one armed hug, glass still in hand as he lowers them gently to the floor.
The green smoke is reflected by each of her mirrors, enshrouding the whole room in endless smoke. It’s terrifying, but not as terrifying as the sky on his back, not as scary as lava thrown onto his skin, not as frightening as a titan staring you down through the face of someone you once wished would be your friend.
Besides, Apollo said himself that just because a prophecy is spoken doesn’t mean it’ll happen soon. He ignores the voice that points out that May’s only ever seen the Great Prophecy in her visions and that this was not that.
He zones out, tracing cracked tile with his eyes as his fingers tap an absent beat on May’s arm. It’s that song she was singing, it’s only now that he recognizes it and mutters along. “ There must be some word today from my baby so far away. Please Mr. Postman, look and see, is there a letter, a letter for me.”
Softly, May joins, “ I’ve been standing here waiting Mr. Postman. So-o patiently for just a card, or just a letter, saying he’s returning home to me”
Her grip relaxes into a firm hold, she has calluses on the side of her fingers that he never noticed until now. Lee had the same—artist’s hands.
He’s never been much of an artist himself, only joining Rachel as more of a medium to her art than co-creator, his biggest art collaboration came from leaving Medusa’s head on his mom’s doorsteps and stepping aside.
“May?”
Her hand tightens as she corrects him, “Mom.”
He looks to the ceiling and wonders how strong a belief has to be to create something from it. “Mom,” he corrects himself. “Do you think you could teach me how to paint?”
She straightens, her eyes clearer in her excitement, “Of course, baby! You stopped wanting to paint so long ago, but you were so good.” Obviously she hasn’t seen his arts and crafts projects, but he hands her the forgotten water glass at the sound of her voice. She finishes the glass with a fond eye roll. “We’ll have to go buy more supplies, but I should have enough brushes for sure.”
He blinks slowly, his fatigue catching up to him.
She huffs, “I know you hate to hear it, but you’re so much like us. Always trying to do so much.” She holds his face in her hand and traces a scar that he doesn’t have. “Let’s get you to bed, Luke.”
Percy nods, stumbling towards the cot he set up in the living room rather than the time capsule that was Luke’s bedroom. May follows him, easing him down with a strength that still takes him by surprise.
“You know, I only started painting after high school. After the tours fell through in Spain, I painted in France.” She laughs, it echoes like her glass windchimes, “Don’t believe your father, I made an honest living there…”
Any interest he had in that story was weighed down by Clovis’ dad tag teaming with his curse to drag him to much needed sleep.
Percy opens his eyes to his family’s apartment. He’s sitting on a couch, a comfortable navy blue piece that his mom bought after that first summer at Camp Halfblood when he chose to come back. The couch is old but the apartment is new because it’s no longer the two of them.
He can’t make out the photos from here, but there are English books from Paul’s grad school days interspersed with his mom’s books. Pressed between the pages of an old library book on myths and legends whose borrowing history is inscribed with the jaunty cursive of Jim Jackson, are the remnants of a wedding bouquet featuring blue thistle.
On the coffee table there are letters sent to Mrs. Blofis, abandoned coasters, and a scythe.
Faint snuffling catches his attention to the arm chair where his mother sits cradling a blanket.
She looks content in a way he’s not used to seeing her. Even on Montauk, there’s a wistfulness to her eyes. Looking down into her arms, gone are the worry marks between her brow and there’s certainty in her smile. She looks happy.
Something lodges in his throat.
“This one is mine,” His mom breathes out, gaze still caught on the bundle in her arms while Percy is stuck on her. “I’ll save this one.”
He tries to move closer to her, his throat clicking instead of speaking when he tries to ask her to come. But somehow he manages to see the baby in her arms. The child isn’t him. It has dark brown hair and long lashes like his mom and a nose that looks like Paul’s.
He blinks and his mom is dressed in an earthy green veil, the child is made of clay. He blinks and his mom wears a goat skin cloak and the child is blond. He blinks and his mom has his eyes and the child is a rock. He blinks and wants to close his eyes forever.
“The thing about children is that you never get it right on the first try,” His mom tells him like a secret between them both. “It’ll be different this time.”
For most of his life, the only place he felt safe was in his mother’s arms. There is no space for him there. The walls seem closer all of the sudden or maybe it’s the roof coming down.
“Mom,” he croaks out.
And his mother looks at him chidingly, reading the request on his face. “You’ve already had your turn. Let it be different this time.”
There’s a scythe in his hands. It’s very different from a trident, he’d rather hold his mom’s hand.
The roof isn’t breaking down, but the floor is caving in from his seat as his mother watches sadly from her armchair. He falls, further than Icarus did, further than St. Louis’ Arch and there is no water to greet him. There is nothing but the open earth.
He wakes up to the taste of dirt in his mouth.