Chapter Text
Sally Jackson was not a naive women, she couldn't afford to be. Her earliest memories where of paranoid stare downs at the monster creeping from under her bed, leathery skin slinking around the floors in horrible sweeping noises. She still couldn't forget the time she had helped a stranger find his way on the bus, and when he had turned to her she had stared up at a single eye placed right in the middle of his forehead. When she was 5 her parents had indulged her, cooing about how they'd protect her form the monsters stalking her across the street - but by the time she had reached middle school they'd gotten tired of her fears of things they could not see.
So she stopped talking about them, and grew up quick. A knife hidden on her person, a furrowed brow, a future where she could learn about these monsters swirling around her and prepare. She'd long since learned how to wield knowledge like a weapon, this is how she survived. Naivety is not a luxury she could afford.
Which is why when a God, one who emerged from the sea with eyes that bellied oceans and a furrowed brow, she truly hadn't at first been the slightest bit interested. Why would she? To invite this man in would be to invite all the dangers of the world onto her doorstep. But he was persistent, coaxing her into a conversation - then another - and another as he took bits and pieces of her along with him each night on the beaches shore. He stole her away for nights and days, seaside rendezvous sweeping her away in a riptide until her will to resist drowned in a wet sputter.
It hadn't been long enough, or long at all more like, when she found herself staring at a positive pregnancy test sitting atop her bathroom sink. Pregnant from a man, already lost to her before she had him - tying her down to forever chasing and chased waves that could only stop to crash affectionately at her feet. He asks her, begs, with bated breath and promised devotion to come with him to Atlantis - so he could keep her safe and kept. The thought itself was somewhat vile, and Sally had read about the changing tunes of Gods, and how not promise stood the tax of forever. She denied him quickly, and he dissipated the next day.
Given the circumstance the pregnancy was quick enough, 9 months spent growing and growing until she popped.
August 18, Perseus Jackson was born. He's, well, quiet. A slow heartbeat and even slower to cry, mouth barely wrenched open enough to get air. He's practically non existent as the room clambers to life - nervously pressing at buttons and calling for more help. The nurses whisper, conspiring beside her, careening down to whisper nervously about the slow glazed look he gives. Sally wants to wipe the pity straight off their face.
August 18, Perseus Jackson's heart stops beating minutes after he erupts form her womb, and she clutches his slowly cooling body against her chest. Beautiful (familiar) greens eyes stare into nothing, or maybe he see's something that she doesn't, anything is better then nothing at all. His mouth slacks open - devoid of the life necessary to scream. A head of thick black hair, pressed to his head from body fluid cooing him even more rapidly, along with the constant rain of tears form her eyes.
It's a fate so wretched it can only be the mechanisms of those so apathetic they've created and for saw wars, and she knows that she will never be able to escape the sight of her babies bluing skin. Nor wash the stench of death form her hands, they will follow her into the corners of her vision and phantom sights in the mirror. And she clutches her son, ad she feels such a viscous hate she's surprised horns do not sprout from her head.
How horrible fate is, how awful those crones are to rob her of her right to be a mother - to see all she gave just to love this boy and to take him before she had him for a day. A day.
And Sally Jackson is no fan of the divine but she bows her head - willing all the blood left on her hands and everything else to her name into a prayer. The name dances on her lips as she mouths furious silent prayers into her son's clammy skin.
Poseidon, Poseidon, Poseidon - whispers escape sharpening teeth of a mother quickly turning beast - give me back my son. She knows something has heard her, but it doesn't feel like the crash of waves. She wakes though she doesn't remember falling asleep, to the nurses are clambering all over the room. Barking orders, running around, tripping on their feet like fools to get blankets and food and water and she wakes most importantly not to their fumbling but her babies piercing cry.
A miracle, the doctor tells her. She knows a little better.
Perseus cries as if in pain, grieving something out of reach and frustrated, and when she finally manages to wrench him back to her chest she feels his heart beat strong against her own, screaming at her. It's familiar to be sure, but it's also beating so strong it feels like another thing entirely.
—
The panic of his first injury was something haunting - he was adventurous to a fault however so it really was only a matter of time. Her boy woke up every morning as if surprised to have fallen asleep in the first place, and he tanked through pain as if he'd never known the concept of stopping to rest. He's sweet as he tugs at her sleeve softly, reaching up to hold her hand as if to placate her. Whats wrong, he murmurs when he catches her frowning at a large bruise on his ribs - blossoming further out as if content to consume him whole. I've always bled red.
Despite the devastating fight for his life, the debt Sally knows she owes to something out there, Percy acts just as any other boy on the playground. He runs like he has all the time in the world, he falls and gets back up the way only youth allows, and he bleeds with all the blood he once lacked. Gods, does Percy bleed.
A scrapped knee can bludgeon into a overgrowing bruise for days and days, the slow ooze of thick syrupy blood oozes down his knee as if refusing to scab -emulating the river's he'd one day have domain over. But not today, today he's just 5 years old and bleeding and looking at his mother with worry as she nearly melts into the ground. He isn't bothered by it, this is all he's known.
But Sally knows more, better, everything that haunts her as she watches blue begin to curl across his skin again. The doctors recommend her a therapist but she never goes, not even when red clouds her vision the first time he scraps his knee, not even when she was near hysterics. In hindsight she should have brought him back to the hospital, to get his strange viciousness blood checked out, but who could blame her on the nightmares she's had. About them returning her boys body cold and still.
And it should have been enough alarm her more but her boy has always been, well, not quite right. Not that he wasn't perfect in her eyes - but there were things even she couldn't pass off.
Most of the time when he talks he's loud, boisterous in the way she's grown to accept waking up to. He loves rambling about the things he see's, of birds and fish and the figures he see's in the distance that wave hello to him. She tells him he's not allowed to tell others about his visitors - and he grows quite and turns to her, eyes looking past her flesh and bones to look inside.
Because usually her boy is loud and boisterous in the way young boys are who've been told the world is their oyster - rambling about everything he see's. He loves to talk on and on about the birds in the sky he's endlessly fascinated with and a fondness for fishing she's sure he inherited. He talks about the figures in the horizon, burdened with wings or faces that melt straight out of the book's he (tries) to read at school - and she is quick to remind him to be quieter. To not say names.
But then sometimes he will quiet and look right past her flesh and bones to look at something inside her. His voice will neutral out to something older and tired, jubilant but not young with an accent that sounds strange on his New Yorker tongue. Sometimes he will look at her without recognition under the light of the moon and hesitate to call out to her, as if he couldn't recognize her as his own mother.
And yet he's still the boy who comes to her when his stomach hurts, pliant in her palms like a young doe. How each night without fail he would get her to tuck him in at night, and kiss both him and his small stuffed mouse on the cheek. The truth of this twisted scenario is that at her core Sally has adopted the identity of a mother who above everything else in this world loved her son.
So when one morning he didn't wake her up by bouncing off the walls she had crept over to his shut bedroom door, she should have known the fates weren't going to leave her alone.
Percy is stuck in bed, under and over crumbled blankets that twist and tangled along his limbs and torso - a squished pillow splayed across the mattress. And he's so clearly sick, or really he's so clearly dying. She finds him hands clutching at his throat, mouth open as if trying to gurgle enough oxygen from the blood, blood, blood gushing from his mouth and right eye. It drips and smears across his flesh 0 across his skin in a disorganized painting of pain across a tinted blue body.
So so blue, like his heart wasn't beating.
She breaks at least 6 traffic laws rushing him to the hospital, one hand never leaving the bundle of blood wrapped in her softest white sheets. It'll stain, and the morbid part of her acknowledges that those stains will be all of what she has of him should he die. She knows, she knows, that demigods are often fated to die anyways in young and gruesome ways but not this way.Not this young, she had only just gotten him.
—
Somehow they make it thorough New York traffic and get to the hospital on time, and she practically rips through the ER with her baby clutched to her chest. It's too long, far too long, before they come out of the room they sealed themselves off in and announce they'd been able to resuscitate him - but need to run further tests. She fantasizes about clawing at the doctors face for a minute, before nodding her consent.
Percy has some sort of variation or mutation of polycythemia, excessive red blood cells in the body. Chronic, but not fatal in Percy's case.
He just bleeds more.
—
Nothing changes, nothing meaningful at least. The days continue to pace towards the future in a mutiny of traditions.
On Sunday's they still eat breakfast together, of waffles and syrup and Percy will grin with the power of the sun and scarf it down. Always ravenous, she attributes it to being a growing boy. He'll run around on a sugar high for a while, dashing through her halls in a burst of speed until he finally flops onto the floor to wait out the sugar crash. Afterwards, they huddle on the couch for a while as Sally listens quietly to his heart beat, and the double dissonance it creates as it reverberates through his chest. Almost like there are two nestled in his rib, keeping his blood addled body alive.
On Monday's he still struggles to wake up before elementary school, and Sally has to stand by the door to make sure he brushes his teeth properly. It's so painfully young and human it almost makes her heart squeeze out of he chest. But then the mint foam bubbles from his mouth to spill over his chin, and when he spits it too the sink tendrils of sinking blood flow into the drain along with it. She makes him rinse his mouth twice more with water, and when she pears into his mouth his tongue seems oddly red.
Friday's are less chaotic, often with her catching up on work and coming home just in time to pick him up from the bus stop. He beams up at her, a missing tooth gaping out and she laughs at her silly boy, who holds out a single synthetic feather. She wonder where he got it from, but he did have a habit of wandering. Exploring, he claims.
"Look!" he exclaims with some sort of innocence, "do you think it belongs to a bird?"
"I don't know Percy," she laughs, "Have you seen one this color?" The feather is a bright green - he wouldn't have. But he pauses anyways, and look sup at her with old eyes.
"Have I seen one at all?" He speaks now again, with some older tongue. Sally's heart drops, and she doesn't answer him at all, instead ushering him towards the house.
On Saturday she spends the day looking at the ceiling, accompanying Percy on the floor as he colors a stick figures feet red again, and wonders if children should be so confused about the only world they've lived in. Wonders if children should be so used to blood.
Sally Jackson is not a naive women, so at night she takes to the internet and learns about the river Lethe and the journey to reincarnation.
—
It scares her, deathly so. Someone else entirely was in her house, had eaten her food and had lived under the body of her son - someone whose name she can't even hear. It keeps her up at night, heart beating in her chest so loud she's sure it'll give her away - she already knows Percy has noticed somethings wrong.
She can't stay here - she can't. She has to leave.
Over the span on days she packs a bag, attempting to be discrete although he assumes she fails. It holds some toiletries and a change of clothes, along with her wallet and some food for the road - like she's going on a long road trip. She tucks Percy into sleep, kissing his cheek and then his mouse and sits despondently at her front door backpack leaned on her side.
The moonlight is harsh, almost accusatory her skin - like a watchful eye.Could she really outrun this? And if she could for how long? How far? Fate has a way of bending into your life despite your lack of faith in it - and Sally is just a mortal.
But wouldn't it be easy this way to untie herself? Leaving her son here - in this apartment? She had gone grocery shopping a day before this to buy enough food and water for weeks - and she's paid the bills to keep the lights on for at least the next month. He won't starve, not before the police get him and send him to a foster system. And she'll leave, get another job somewhere maybe, and be free.
Free from that something, someone, inside of Percy - who is whispering things in his ear that she can't hear - or is it that Percy himself never existed. She doesn't know the person, the stranger in her own home, and she wonders if all mothers feel like this.
But then - but then her precious boy would be a victim of not only fate but also his own mother. And she thinks back to the furrowed eyes and pitiable twist of the mouth he holds when they talk about Poseidon. Her loyal boy, who would break if she ever did leave like this. The backpack sits heavy at her side, tipping over to spill out the rest of her loose change and courage in reprimand.
When finally she hears soft footsteps patter to her, and and looks up to see curious eyes catch her own she knows this was instead an excersize in futility. Their soft, green and so incredibly trusting that she almost throws up. She swallows down the bile crawling up her throat to speak.
"What's wrong honey? Couldn't sleep?"
Percy nods, wiping at his eye in a movement she's seen him do a thousand times, and she wobbles up - moving towards him, him whoever he is, in an unsteady gait.
When she picks him up he weighs the same as a boy, when she tucks his face into her neck as she makes her way up the hall to his bedroom he feels like one too. He feels all the way he did when he was small enough for her to know him as nobody else but Percy.
She unpacks the backpack in the morning and neither speak of it again.
—
These days Sally is far more contemplative, wandering around with her head in the clouds and watching her son from outside of her own body.
Percy is growing well, and as he ages he seems to grow into his own body more - those patches of odd ancient consciousness slowly sinking down into his subconscious. He's more comfortable moving around now - settling into his own identity comfortably - or as comfortable as a demigod in public school can get. He still has to wear an occasional eye-patch on his right eye, and he still has to carry a pack of tissues with him when he begins to bleed, but he smiles now. Perhaps a bit more mannered then Sally remembers raising him to be, but she puts it down to the influence of whatever had combined with him. He still speaks with a sharp tongue, and she supposes at least that had been her blood.
Percy runs, he bleeds, he cries, and above all he laughs into the sky like he's trying to hear something laugh back.He seeks touch like prayer but always seems a bit surprised when she wraps him into a hug -she wonders. Who might he have been before he was Percy? And was he enough of Percy at all?
It's a bit like co-parenting, or at least what she imagines the influence of an older sibling presents as. It's easier to think of it like that, her son Percy and his older brother.
He's just entering 4th grade when he's referred back to the doctors office after a teacher had caught him eyes glazed once again. He's been having trouble in classes in general, being strangely over excitable and having trouble listening to teachers and others in long intervals. Apparently he's prone to insulting teachers right back, and taunting other students who talk bad to him with a smile. Sally has always found him relatively well-behaved with her so she's not quite believing of what she hears - but who is she to argue.
He's diagnosed anyways. ADHD, Dyslexia, and Oppositional Defiance Disorder - the marked inability in adolescence to follow authority. They tell her to watch for signs of developing ASPD - and Sally nearly laughs. Her Percy? Who had once cried over a dead bird? No way.
When they get home she offers him to sleep in her room that night, the hospital setting having put her on edge and he agrees with enthusiasm. She laughs when he bobbles his head - quickly scooting off to his room to grab his stuffed animal. He'd always been a bit of a mothers boy. As they lie together, waiting for Hypnos to finally reach them, she listens to his breathe, his slow rustling to get comfortable and reaches a hand out to lie it on his chest.
She can feel when he begins to speak through the vibrations.
"Where's dad?" The man on the beach, intensive eyes and a furrowed brow. Physical and warm under her skin. Waves lapping at her skin, washing away sand with care and leaving her pregnant and alone once she decides she will not lay with him again.
"Lost at sea." Finally Percy falls silent, and Sally falls asleep steady beat of two heartbeats under her hand that march her to the future.
—
Gabe Ugliano is everything that Sally hates in a man. Hideously greedy, gluttonous, hard headed, and painfully unintelligent to the point of violence. He bruises her easily enough - but he's so hideous he clouds everything else. He's perfect for one thing, to scuff over the scent of her Percy, so she grits her teeth and bares it. As long as he doesn't touch Percy, she can bear this.
Something in this boy is still the son she gave birth to, and she doesn't know who else is there, who had given him back his heartbeat - but shes sure she could learn to love them too. She calls them a family of three, and neither of them know she's talking about the second heart in Percy's chest.
After his third transfer of school Sally finds a god send, Yancy Academy, a private boarding school where he'd be able to get away. She signs him up and breaks the news later that night, and for the first time since she remembers he falls silent, before looking up finally. Tear's streaking down his face, spine curved into himself and knees drawn in as if to protect his heart further from any weapon coming his way.
"Are you sending me away? I can - I can be quiet if that's the problem."
Sally's heart cracks in her chest, threatening to fall to pieces and cut into the rest of her organs.
"This isn't about that Percy, please you have to believe me."
"I tried, I did! I can't - there was a man there I swear. I swear I'm not making it up."
"I know Percy, I know-"
"Then why are you sending me away?" His voice cracks, and Sally wants to cry. Instead she reaches out to hug him, as if attempting to absorb all of his grief. Trying to transmit at least some of her love thorough the touch.
The wind howls violently outside of the window and in the horizon Sally swears she can see sighting on the rooftop watching her. More specifically watching her son. They don't have much time left.
"It's because I love you Percy. Please remember this, I love you." Everything is for you.
They fall asleep curled together, her son pressed against her chest again like when he was born blue and tired. She presses a kiss to the crown of his head, and presses a hand to the beating thrum of his hearts as if to tether them together. "And whoever you are, please - have him come home to me."
Sally Jackson is not a naive women, and she knows there is another in her son. She wonders if their keeping him alive, she wonders why. It's not like she has the privilege to demand fate to answer, so instead she smooths black hair down, cradling her boys nape, holding him close for the remainder of time that she has him.
She swears she hears a heart stutter in answer.