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“Do you hear that? That’s the heartbeat,” the doctor told her softly, apparently under the impression that Sally would need some kind of reassurance, being so young, and, noticeably, very alone. In all honesty, she had come in here craving validation, and some kind of confirmation that she wasn’t a delusional woman making a horrible mistake, but she wasn’t thinking those thoughts right now—they had fled the instant she’d heard the sound, the tiniest little thumping noise that meant there was a tiny little heart beating inside of her body.
Sally’s own heart seemed to swell to the point of bursting as she listened to the steady pulse emitting from the monitor. This was her baby. Hers. And everything else in the room, in the world, seemed to fall away but her and that little, tiny heartbeat.
“I know,” she whispered, so low only she could hear.
And that’s when the center of her world shifted.
—
Being a mom is a full time job, Sally discovered quickly. Which was unfortunate, really, because she needed another job to make sure she and Percy didn’t end up on the street.
So naturally she was the one that ended up getting neglected—the baby and the boss had first priority, at least until she could get a bit more financially stable. She sometimes amazed herself with how little sleep she could run on. These days, she was stretched in ways she never would have thought possible. She snatched up any extra hours she could get, often working overtime and filling in shifts for her co-workers. Half the paycheck seemed to go straight to the babysitter anyway, but it was progress. And by night, she was always on call, dragging herself out of bed at all hours, nursing, singing, changing diapers, and occasionally resorting to begging that the baby would just give up fighting it and go back to sleep.
She smelled like spit up and baby powder at all times, and there was usually some form of baby paraphernalia in her hands, purse, and spilling out of every corner of her apartment. By all rights, she should have been irritable and even depressed, probably, but to her surprise, she found rather the opposite was true. Certainly, there were times when absolutely could not imagine being more exhausted than she already was—when the alarm clock went off in the morning, when she woke up to wailing over the baby monitor, when she’d tried every trick that she knew of and he still would not stop crying. And yet, she found herself almost abounding with energy, as though, now that there was a tiny life depending on her for survival, her strength had maximized.
She found herself staring at the clock almost obsessively, drumming her fingers on the counter and trying not to think of how much of Percy’s day she was missing. Only a few short months ago, she would hardly have cared about the time—her lonely apartment had been as mundane as work. But now she practically sprinted home, hoping to catch him before he fell asleep. She didn’t even mind coming home to his wailing—sometimes she even liked that best, if only for the satisfaction of seeing the babysitter as desperate as confused as she often felt. She was his mother, after all, and she sometimes felt the need to prove she knew how to take care of him. Usually he calmed down as soon as she held him for a few minutes, to her absurd delight. She liked to think he’d been waiting for her to come home, too.
He would usually fall asleep in her arms soon after. She knew she should put him down and catch a few hours of sleep while she still could, but sometimes she just couldn’t bear it.
—
He didn’t resemble her much, she noted, with a tinge of disappointment.
He was only a couple months old, but his eyes were completely, almost startlingly green and she could already tell his hair was much darker than hers. She knew most babies coloring changed within the first year or so, but Percy wasn’t most babies, and she knew with complete sincerity that he would look like his father. She wondered if that was a trademark all demigods shared. It was a mind boggling concept; Poseidon didn’t even have DNA. Sometimes she would think about what that meant for Percy, but it hurt her head too much. It didn’t matter anyway; he carried her DNA, her blood. He was hers. He was perfect. Still, sometimes she wished he looked less like Poseidon and more like her. That way, it would be very clear where he belonged: with her.
There was nothing in his appearance that seemed to distinguish him from any other healthy baby. He grew at a normal rate, he showed standard developmental progress, and if she needed to feed him bit more without him putting on any excess weight, well, that was hardly an issue for her, and not something she’d ever felt the need to mention to a doctor.
In fact, he looked so human, sometimes she found it unfathomable that half of his blood was actually ichor, that he had a scent that bloodthirsty monsters could track, that there would be very powerful parties watching him grow up, interested in what sort of imprint he might leave on the world. If she didn’t think about that, though, sometimes she could almost pretend that he was just her son, and she could keep him with her forever, without having to navigate through meddlesome gods and vicious enemies who wanted him dead.
—
She began to expect the unexpected.
While Percy himself was relatively ordinary, extraordinary circumstances followed him everywhere he went.
Once, he’d pointed out a dolphin. She hadn’t been able to see it, so he’d cupped his hands around his little mouth and called it to the dock. She’d watched in shock as the dolphin changed course and leapt towards them, stopping in the water underneath them so they could touch it. Occasionally he’d wander away from her in Central Park and she’d find him talking to the nymphs as they giggled and fussed over him. Naiads would wave at him from the beaches in Montauk, smiling and beckoning. He’d wave back, laughing, completely indifferent to the bizarreness of the situation. She supposed for him it wasn’t bizarre, but she’d never quite get used to it.
She could never quite shake the nagging feeling that Percy would encounter much more than nymphs and naiads.
—
He was observant, she could tell that right away. She wasn’t sure if it was part of his enhanced reflexes or if it was unique to Percy, but he was clearly more perceptive than other kids his age.
Sometimes too perceptive. She never seemed to be able to hide anything from him, even if he was better off not knowing. She’d come in the door, beaten down and exhausted, and he would immediately ask her if she was alright (her answer was always yes, even if she wasn’t). He’d notice when she was paying the bills, stressed and running her fingers through her hair anxiously. And whenever she couldn’t sleep, he’d wander into the living room and sit on the couch with her, even though she was extra careful not to wake him.
Sometimes she thought he took better care of her than she did of him.
—
“Mom?” he called out to her one night, just after she’d finished tucking him in.
She sighed and pushed the door open again. “Hmm?”
“What’s going to happen to me?”
Sally frowned and reentered the room, hovering over his bed. It was such a loaded question, she wasn’t even sure where to begin. It was a question she’d asked herself on a nearly daily basis, starting before he had even been born. He couldn’t know the implications of what he was asking, he was just a little boy, but she wondered if maybe things were stirring in his brain, a feeling that this world had more to offer him than just the nuances of a mortal life, and not all of them good. “What do you mean?”
Percy shrugged. “D’you think I’ll be important? Or rich, or famous?”
It struck her hard, somewhere deep in her chest. Every day they went without a catastrophe seemed like a blessing, and she simply wasn’t sure how long she could hold the supernatural forces off. A son of the sea god hadn’t been born in more than half a century, and she knew that he would be a token of great interest to the Olympian world as a whole. Sometimes thinking of Percy’s future felt almost morbid, and the possibilities were so depressing she couldn’t bear to consider them. There was always the small chance that everything would work out, but then, there was a much larger chance that somewhere along the line, something would go horribly awry, and she would be powerless to stop it. But then, she supposed, there wasn’t a mother on earth who could guarantee her child’s happiness, or even their safety. Nobody could know what would become of them, and that was the wonder in living: you got to find out.
A smile tugged on the corner of her mouth. “Que sera, sera,” she whispered.
His tiny face scrunched in confusion. “What’s that mean?”
“Whatever will be, will be,” she said softly. “My mother used to sing it to me. It’s about how even though we can’t see the future, we still have to keep moving forward.”
“Oh,” he sighed, sinking back into the pillow. “Can I hear it?”
She ruffled his hair and started to sing. He asked for it every night after that.
—
He was six when the nightmares started.
The first couple of nights he would come and wake her up, and she’d stroke his hair and sing a lullaby until he fell asleep next to her. Que sera, sera, she’d repeat, over and over. He seemed to like that one best.
They gradually became less frequent, but every couple of weeks he would pad down the hall and slide her door open, eyes large and frightened.
So she sang and held him tight, because there wasn’t anything else she could do.
—
Things were moving too fast.
Poseidon had said it wouldn’t start until he was around twelve. That was four years away, and already she had started to spot them, more and more frequently. She became hypersensitive of it whenever they went out in public. For once, she was incredibly thankful she’d been blessed with clear sight, or she’s not sure she could have borne it. Still, even though she could see through the Mist, she was suspicious of everyone. She hated when people tried to talk to him or play with him, even though most of them were perfectly nice, friendly people who simply liked kids. She was tense and irritable whenever they went out, though she tried desperately to hide it. She slipped into full on panic mode whenever he went out of her sight, and it took everything in her not to reprimand him harshly for it.
Percy seemed to know how anxious she was. He begged her for answers, but she never gave anything away. He wasn’t ready to bear a burden so huge; she wasn’t even ready. She knew that telling Percy would only make matters worse, and he couldn’t control it any more than she could.
Every moment she was away from him the uneasiness in her stomach grew. It made her shoulders tense and her tone sharp at work, leaking stress into every aspect of her life. Whenever she had to leave she faced the sickening prospect of what might happen while she was gone. The worst part was that it would probably happen anyway, even if she was home, and there was absolutely nothing she could do to stop it. And that was downright terrifying.
She knew she couldn’t live in a perpetual state of fear. And it was only going to get worse as Percy got older. She wanted to grab him and run far, far away, where no one could ever touch him and she could protect him forever. But she knew that wasn’t possible. No matter where they went, the monsters would always catch up. That’s what they did.
Something needed to be done.
—
Telling Percy was worse than she could have possibly imagined. She hadn’t expected him to be thrilled with the idea of a stepfather, but she thought he’d at least be open to what she had to say.
Instead, he stared at her in shock, mouth open and eyes wide.
“Mom, you can’t,” he whispered. “Please don’t.”
She wished she could explain that she didn’t want to either, but she had to. She needed to keep him safe and close, and this was the only way that would work.
Instead, she tried to smile and pulled him into her arms. “It’s going to be okay, baby,” she whispered, although she wasn’t sure that was true.
—
She hated Gabe more than words could possibly describe.
She hated him because he was disgusting, rude, and possibly the most worthless human being on the planet. She hated him because he exposed Percy to things she never wanted him to see. She hated him because he made her feel so weak, so powerless. She hated him because when he hit her for the first time, she had to stand there and take it, because if she didn’t they’d be back at square one.
Most of all, she hated him because they needed him.
Sometimes she wondered if it was worth it. Well, often times she wondered if it was worth it. Yes, her plan seemed to be working, and Percy was fairly safe now. But on the other hand, living with an alcoholic had serious drawbacks. To make matters worse, Percy was absolutely miserable. He loathed Gabe, so much that he never wanted to come home from school anymore, which shocked her as much as it scared her. Percy despised school. Seeing him so angry, so sad, so confused made her feel guilty. And while she no longer feared monster attacks, she was paralyzed with worry that Gabe would raise a hand to Percy. Was it really better this way?
Sometimes Poseidon’s words would echo in the back of her mind, and she’d think of that drawer with Camp Half-Blood’s address tucked inside.
But she squashed the thought down. Percy needed his mother right now. There would be time for that later.
—
In the end, boarding school seemed to be the best option. She could still talk to him often and see him a couple weekends out of the year. Gabe’s stench was so strong it seemed to cover him even far away, and now she could at least be positive that he would never be hit.
But the distance was awful. She missed him so much it hurt. She wasn’t there to boost his spirits if he’d been teased or bullied, and she had no control over his homework or study habits, which showed in his report cards, but she suspected it had a lot more to do with being homesick than lack of effort. He always seemed tired when he called her, not at all willing to talk about his week.
When he came home for Christmas break, she could tell he was trying to look happy just for her. She tried too, but neither one of them managed it very well.
He looked so much older, like he’d aged five years in just a few short months, and her heart broke just a little bit. He didn’t come over and kiss her on the cheek anymore unless she asked, and he ducked away when she ruffled his hair, even though his eyes were teasing. He forgot to tell her goodnight, which stung before she realized that’s what he’d been forced to do for the past few months, which made her feel even worse.
The whole week, she could tell he was containing himself from begging her to stay. A couple hours before he had to leave, he’d looked at her with a hopeful expression, silently pleading. She would never forget how his face had fallen when she sent him back.
—
When Percy came home from Yancy in June, he was a little boy still.
When he walked back into her apartment less than a month later, he was a hero.
—
Sally hadn’t realized how difficult it was to keep secrets from Percy until she didn’t have to anymore.
She felt obliged to explain everything: the reason he had never quite fit in with the other students, why she’d put up with Gabe, why she’d always gotten so tense around strangers.
He cut her off halfway through. “I know, Mom,” he laughed. “I know. It’s okay.”
All her guilt melted away when he said that.
—
Despite how hard she tried to hide it, she never managed to stop worrying.
He was older, stronger, more mature, but when he left on another quest or solved another Olympian problem she couldn’t help but see the helpless baby who used to depend on her for everything. For so many years his safety had rested solely in her hands, and it was indescribably difficult to pass that responsibility on to him.
He was only a teenager, still so young and inexperienced. There was so much more she had to teach him. How could she let him go off on his own?
But he was Percy, and he always managed to come back to her. She had to trust him.
—
He was so much older, sometimes it startled her.
When he came home from his second summer at camp, she almost had a heart-attack over the depth of his voice. And once he’d started growing, really growing, he didn’t slow down—a final growth spurt when he was fourteen placed him taller than her, once and for all. And all of a sudden, he was strong—of course it was perfectly normal for teenage boys to get physically stronger, but it was made even more dramatic by his status as a half-blood and his relentless training. More than that, he seemed to carry an aura of power that she was completely unaccustomed to. It had apparently begun to develop without her noticing, and now it was impossible to miss—even mortal strangers seemed to pick up on the fact that he was a force to be reckoned with. There was also the addition of girls turning their heads when he walked by, which was all to her immense amusement, especially after he shot her a puzzled look when she would burst out laughing, having absolutely no idea he’d just been checked out.
There were times he looked like a man, brave and strong and handsome. There were other times when she still saw a little boy with dimples and gravity-defying hair, and she wished she could scoop him up into her arms again.
But he still had that peculiar way of looking at people, like he could look straight inside them, and his classic smirk that meant trouble. He still blushed too easily and fidgeted too much. He was still Percy, her Percy.
—
She couldn’t shake the insurmountable dread she felt when he turned fifteen. It was like a black hole had erupted inside her chest, sucking everything into a void of inescapable, all-consuming fear.
She knew there had been a reason for the pact, and she also knew Poseidon had broken it. And she had helped. And now, she was very aware Percy might pay the consequences.
Poseidon had told her the gist of the Prophecy—though she suspected he’d held some things back for her sake—and she knew that meant Percy had one year left before everything changed.
One year.
—
When he entered her apartment in the middle of August, Nico di Angelo trailing awkwardly behind, she knew something big was about to happen. It was his expression, she decided: Percy looked deadly calm, in a way that certainly meant he didn’t feel calm in the slightest.
The fear she’d suppressed all summer began to overwhelm her. She knew the war was coming, but the thought of having her son, her baby, fighting on the front lines made her sick beyond measure.
She wanted to strap him to the chair, chain him to the wall, bar the doors so he couldn’t leave her. Most of all she wanted to grab him and hold him tight tight tight until all the danger passed away, but she couldn’t do that. Even she couldn’t talk Percy out of something he’d decided to do.
So she gave him her blessing, trying not to burst out into a fit of wailing and begging. She had wrestled with feelings like this her whole life, but now they were all rising to the surface at the same time, and she’d never been more tempted to dig her heels into the ground and throw a tantrum. Why, why did it have to be her son to lead the war? She knew that he was brave and sweet and powerful and skilled and kind and caring and compassionate, but she wanted him to be safe, and it was all so unfair that she wanted to scream.
But she looked into his eyes and she knew he was scared, that he needed her to be there for him, to believe in him. So she sat up straight and she held her head high and she did her very best to smile.
—
Nico trudged out the door first and Paul retreated back into their bedroom, leaving Sally and Percy and tense silence behind.
She blinked tears away and put her head on his shoulder. “I don’t want you to do this,” she whispered.
“Mom…” he sighed, biting his lip in the way he’d done since he was a toddler. It was still adorable. He took a deep breath. “If my life is going to mean anything, I have to live it myself. I can’t let you take care of me forever.”
She winced at the words, remembering when she’d said them. She wished she could argue, but all her protests froze on her lips.
“Mom, I have to do this,” he said quietly, looking at her softly, but pointedly, too.
“I know,” she replied, gripping him so tightly it must have hurt. “I know.”
He gave her a sad smile. “Que sera, sera, right?”
She managed a laugh and wiped her eyes. “Whatever will be, will be,” she sighed, running a hand through his ever-tousled hair.
He walked out the door, and she tried very hard not to think this might be the last time she ever saw him.
“I love you,” he called back.
And then he left.
—
She didn’t panic when Annabeth first called her. She sympathized with Annabeth’s worry, she really did, but she was so accustomed to living with the constant fear of Percy’s fate hanging over her head like a guillotine that she was well adapted to keeping herself from falling to pieces at the slightest sign that something was wrong. It wasn’t unusual for Percy to leave on a brief side-project. He had the craziest adventures when he went off on his own, but they never lasted more than a day. He would be back.
But the days passed and there was no word, and she started to get anxious. Percy hated being fussed over; he would never intentionally let her—or Annabeth—worry about him. He had always been pretty good at checking in with her, and when the days turned into weeks, her mind started to think up horrible scenarios that kept her from sleeping at night.
As Christmas grew closer, she felt completely numb to the hustle and bustle. There was something very wrong. She could feel it in the air.
She prepared herself for the worst when she heard Chiron’s voice on the other side of the line. She dropped the phone anyway.
—
The waiting was unbearable.
Some days she could hardly get out of bed. There was a constant weight pressing on her chest, constricting her heart and crushing her windpipe.
Over the years, she had grown used to living with a pit of terror in her stomach: feeling Percy’s absence like a physical ache, never certain he would come home, always jumping to the worst possible conclusion and trying to talk herself down from a fit of hysteria. She was used to being torn in half, as wherever Percy was, there were pieces of her that would always, always follow. But this was something else entirely: the extended period of total silence, the complete failure to locate him, that utter lack of anything at all for her to cling to that might convince her that he would be able to find a way out of this. Everywhere she went it was always in the back of her mind, like twinges of pain from a phantom limb. She could never escape it, even when she slept. It didn’t help that there were echoes of him littered throughout their apartment. His bed still had his imprint, shoes still in the hallway, his backpack still tucked behind the kitchen table.
They had twice as many leftovers after dinner now, and she never seemed to be able to remember to make less. His rowdy, eccentric friends never tumbled through the door anymore, and she had no one to watch 24 reruns with. Music didn’t play through the house anymore, muffled through his door. She had to wait for Paul to come home to carry up the heavier groceries, and sometimes she still found herself glancing at the clock and wondering why Percy was so late from school.
And then she was jerked back to reality that her son was gone, missing, maybe didn’t even know her name, and she had no means of getting to him. If there had been a way, she would have tried it already—she was far past desperate, now; she’d reached hysteria and was possibly hinging the brink of delusional, considering there had been no word at all in half a year and she had no good reason to believe that there was any hope, except for the suspicions of Jason Grace, who Sally had never even met and had no reason to trust.
It wasn’t so much that she was hopeful Percy would return to her as that she absolutely could not allow herself to consider the alternative. She honestly didn’t know if she could survive it. She had abandoned hope a long time ago: now, there was only clinging to desperate wishes.
—
The phone rang loud in her ear, jarring her out of a fitful sleep. She rolled over, checked the caller ID, and groaned. She hated solicitation calls.
Eventually the ringing stopped and the answering machine clicked on. She was just starting to doze again when she heard a single syllable: “Mom.”
It woke her up faster than anything else ever could. She was so accustomed to hearing that word in that voice that it could probably bring her back from the brink of death, at this point. That was what it felt like, now, actually: something to cling to, through the all-encompassing haze of terror that surrounded every area of her life. It was so instinctual to answer that call that she felt like it had written itself into her DNA. She was on her feet before she even processed what was happening, rushing towards the source of her son’s voice.
She froze in front of the counter, listening as the words drifted from the tiny machine. He sounded tense, she thought, but she couldn’t tell through the garbled answering machine and the conversation in the background. His voice faltered a few times, and she knew that even now he was withholding information he knew would scare her. A lump formed in her throat. Always Percy, always thoughtful.
“I’ll make it home. I promise. Love you,” he finished, followed by the awful click that meant he was gone.
She stood there in shock and silence, unmoving. It was as though her feelings weren’t quite sure what to do. She felt relief flooding through her, but the razor-sharp edge of worry was still underneath it. He was alive but he was by no means safe; not yet. Her heart seemed to shrink with disappointment when she realized if she would have just picked up the damn phone she could have talked to him; maybe given him some small comfort in spite of the mess he was caught in.
She played the message countless more times, picking out random details and trying to picture his face as he said the words.
She knew she should wake Paul up, call Annabeth immediately, but she hesitated. Percy had a girlfriend and a whole camp full of friends anxiously waiting for him, and yet he’d called her. His mother. He had thought of her first.
She was gripped by a fierce love only a mother could experience. And she thought that just for tonight, she’d keep this message to herself.
—
Six impossibly bleak, miserable months after Percy had vanished, Annabeth stood in her doorway yet again.
Sally noted that she didn’t look quite so beaten down or exhausted. Her eyes had some sparkle in them again, and her smile seemed genuine.
“We’re leaving tomorrow,” she said, practically bubbling over with excitement and nervousness.
Sally tried to force down the bitter jealousy that rose inside her, but she couldn’t quite manage it. Annabeth could leave, Annabeth could help. Sally, on the other hand, had to sit here and wait.
“You bring him home, Annabeth Chase,” was the only reply she could manage, hugging the other girl tightly.
—
Now, she’s running.
She thinks she might have left the stove on but she doesn’t care, she doesn’t care. She’s sprinting faster than she has in years, pushing, shoving, elbowing people out of the way because she doesn’t care. Nothing in the world could matter more than this moment. She has never waited this long or this desperately for anything in her life, and she can’t even think past the desperation welling in her chest now that she finally knows exactly where he is and can get to him, and there is not a force in this universe that could stop her now. She is not sure what sort of person she might find waiting for her—it has been so long since she’s spoken to him, and she knows instinctually that he has seen things that he may never be able to tell her about, but none of that matters, because if she can just make it to him, then she will find a way to make it work out, they will find a way to make it through this, together.
She manages to call his name and he turns, surprised, excited, happy.
His lips form the word mom and then she grabs him, wrapping her arms around him with all the strength she has, laughing and crying and swaying back and forth.
“Mom,” he croaks, trembling and burying his head in her shoulder, rocking back and forth, from foot to foot.
“I know,” she whispers, through her tears. “I know, baby, it’s okay. I’m here. I’m here.”
—
He’s a foot taller than her now, but he’ll always be her baby.