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"I feel as if the years are passing very quickly," Percy said as he thoughtfully picked up the stones he'd picked up on the beach that morning. He looked young and full of eternal life. His lips curved in that divine gesture acquired over time that his father was famous for. That sadness and soft love that was read in just his fingers and the curve of his back. Grover shook his head uncertainly, feeling the weight of the horns that had grown back over the past decade. They were now curled into a bizarre shape, those who only knew him as a Lord of the Wilderness and not a mere satyr could never tell exactly what shape they were. They usually looked rounded at the temples to them, and that was almost true. At least that's how Lord Pan had always looked, so Grover had never corrected them. His curls were rolling down his shoulders now, reminiscent of Dionysus when he chose not to pretend to be an unkempt man. Grover's eyes glowed gold, though he didn't always notice it - sometimes it seemed he didn't care about his beauty or his strength. Sometimes he was the kind of satyr that only a few living demigods knew, but whether it was his habits of dealing with the gods that took over, or whether something that had been passed on to him from Pan manifested itself over the years, he looked less like a satyr and more like something distant and wild, something that had no definition.
But to Percy he always looked like the young satyr he had known for nearly fifty years. Percy could clearly draw the line between his life without him and with him. Now, along with the divinity that separated him from all things human and nailed him to the eternal, it was easier for him to see all the things of which he was usually ashamed. What is desired, what is fled from.
Fear seemed like a joke to him now. Very silly, very unserious. He felt only the bitterness of loss on his tongue as he watched his friends grow old, but at the same time - for a brief moment and maybe for decades - he envied them. They could die, and even though he no longer wished for Death, but did not fear it, he realised that he was no longer bound to them.
He was further away from them all. He never asked for it. He had become God because it had been destined by the Fates when he was born. They watched him, and in their fingers that wove his life, there was always gold stashed away to colour his thread with a golden ichor. The Fates are neither evil nor good; to them he was ‘maybe’ and later ‘definitely accurate’ and never just Percy Jackson. They were never ‘just a half-blood’ and never something completely definite. Something on the periphery, something imperceptible and yet aching, pressing, oppressive.
The prayers offered to him from the half-bloods were causing a burning in his blood that was looking less and less like human blood. Their pleas rumbled on his tongue, and for the sake of these children he clutched the hilt of his sword and struck. Their tears made his throat dry, their cries and their hands dipped in the water propelled his legs. They sounded in his ears the voices of his friends, and their laughter warmed him like Hestia's deepest fire. They smiled and he felt he was doing the right thing.
It was always them and Him. Never Percy and his own desires. Never his mortal self and peacetime. It was Him and the ichor that burned his fingers and choked him, pushed him forward, grated his skin, dried his eyes. He himself could no longer ask for help, and only in the forest, where the murmuring of the river and the trills of birds could be heard, could he rest. When his golden-blooded feet touched the ground and when he buried his nose in the grass, he felt Grover's presence. Putting his ear to the roots of the trees he could hear his laughter, and it brought him some semblance of joy. Grover was near. Grover was bringing him back to normal, gently sinking him into a sleep he didn't need. Grover held him close to his heart as the little bird perched on his shoulder and sang and sang until Percy closed his eyes.
After all these years, Percy can no longer say he feels anything. Or that he feels everything. He can't say because he only knows battles in the name of loved ones, war in the name of family, and the voices of children that make him smile. His voice is deaf and thunderous, his eyes piercing and unseen. He is destruction and He is creation. He is God and he is the smallest of beings. Percy smiles, but what could that smile mean to himself? He smiles in imitation of the way people smile and Sally Jackson slips into his features, kissing him goodnight and maybe sensing who he is to become. Sometimes in his eyes slides the child he didn't keep safe and sometimes in his fingers the old age he will never be destined to live.
Next to Grover, it's different. Next to him, his first friend, he knows he can be that twelve year old boy who held back the tears and the nausea coming to his throat. He could be that sixteen year old boy who saved Olympus at too great a cost. He could be that sobbing twenty-year-old God he never wanted to become. He could be his current self, whose sword would not waver, whose loyalty was unwavering. He could be, but right now he is Nobody. Not God, not Percy, and no longer mortal. Grover accepts him as he is.
"It's an illusion, Perc," Grover hums, and it reminds Percy of their teenage years, reminds him of the painful time of the prophecy looming over his head. He smiles, and the stones in his palms hit each other with a satisfying sound.
"Do they?" The sound of the surf makes Percy chuckle and Grover feels his longing with his own skin. A quiet sadness that he himself will eventually lose. Not now, but in time, when his horns grow back enough that he stops feeling them, when the Gods on Olympus see him as Pan instead of satyr. When he's old enough to forget his past. He doesn't believe it's possible. He's afraid to forget.
"I'm not sure," he finally answers, and his answer is as ridiculous as the question. Percy runs the palm of his hand through his black hair and for a long moment he looks to Grover like a statue made of coral. Percy had shown him the coral, they had sailed the Pacific and helped rebuild the reef for almost three months. In that time Grover had learnt their structure well and had found some pleasant oceanids who liked to talk about the distant past. They complimented Percy on how handsome he was and he smiled at them. Sometimes Grover wondered if these beautiful girls realised how haggard his smile was. And did they care? Perhaps they had lived long enough to ignore such things, but Grover saw the way Percy's lips curved. He always looked different when he smiled at him.
Percy looked up at him and his eyes squinted. Water from the depths of the ocean splashed in them. They were that ocean. Grover squinted back and the leaves of the forest rustled in his eyes. They were this foliage and trees. Percy grinned his shark-like teeth and Grover clenched his goat-like teeth. They could understand it, feel what the other felt, touch each other's skin without moving their hands and feet. They could touch each other's hair so that it wasn't strange and they could hug so tightly that their hearts almost joined. They could press themselves into each other's skin and forget where one began and the other ended.
But now they just watched and smiled. Read the slightest change in their faces and remembered the years they'd spent together.
"Percy!" That childish voice that Percy recognises like everyone else because of its divinity and patronage. He leans back and catches a glimpse of the little girl, Hermes' child. The same pointed elven facial features. She reminds him of someone, but he would never say his name unless absolutely necessary.
"Hey Ellie, how are you?" Percy holds his hands out to the girl and she eagerly falls into his lap without fear or stiffness.
"I stole some candy from Neil, do you want some?" The girl readily handed the candy to Percy, but he arched an eyebrow sceptically.
"If Neil wasn't Hecate's son, I wouldn't be so worried about you, but you know what they can do to you," Ellie stuck her tongue out at Percy's words and shoved several candies into her mouth at once. Percy laughed softly, watching the girl's cheeks turn an unnatural purple colour. Still, Niall was good at witchcraft and had been handling his mother's gift perfectly lately. When Ellie noticed the mischievous lights in Percy's eyes, she involuntarily touched her cheeks.
"He's been slipping those dyes in again, hasn't he?" She snorted loudly, but didn't drop the candy from her hands. Percy thought that she would try to offer the candy to someone else on a harmless pretext. He wasn't going to stop her.
"Did you want something?" He finally asked, coming to his senses. He loved talking to these fidgeters, and they loved him. That was why, and because of their ADHD, they often missed the original reason for their arrival.
"Mr D showed up of his own accord," Ellie whispered conspiratorially, as if she were relaying important information to her general. And the news was indeed important. Dionysus has been relieved of his post as camp director for several years now, but sometimes he comes back and plays cards as if nothing had happened. Percy grinned and ruffled Ellie's unruly hair. She giggles loudly as she wiggles her feet and glances back and forth toward the camp. The sea and Grover are of little interest to her, and she pays little attention to the Lord of the Wilderness. She is more interested in Percy's hands, or rather in his wrists, which are covered with the jewellery the children have made him. She runs her fingers over the bracelets of threads, stones, ribbons, and strings, as if memorising each one. She doesn't look at them with the eyes of a thief - she looks at them as something joyful. She finds the bracelets she has woven herself and tests them for strength. They're perfectly preserved, of course, she knows that, but her childish nature wants to see for herself. Percy allows her this whim, as he allows all the children of the camp. As Patron Saint of the half-breeds and their Master, he allows them everything.
"How long do you think he'll be here?" Ellie hums at Percy's question and hesitates. She had the ability to guess when someone would be travelling, for an eleven year old it was one of her main skills, though something told Percy that she would be great at playing some kind of stringed instrument. He covered his eyes, clicking his tongue like a orca.
"He'll be late, he seems to be used to being here," Ellie repeats the clicking of her tongue, echoing Percy. He nods, practised at putting Ellie's hair into a braid. She lets him do it because he does it quickly and does it well.
"How nice, Ellie," Percy glances at Grover and catches his smile. It's so soft and gentle that for a second he thinks he's going to let Ellie's hair slip out of his fingers and ruin her hair. But it doesn't, and within a minute her wheat hair is resting on her shoulder.
"I don't know how great it is, because he's always nagging you," Dionysus said out of spite, and Percy knows that all that feigned cheekiness in Dionysus had diminished when he realised that Percy could stand up for herself. Percy still thinks of him as an arrogant God with very blurred concepts of right and wrong, propriety and indecency, but he can work with that. Now Dionysus is more understandable to him than mortals or even demigods, even if not completely.
"It's from great love," he reassures Ellie, who has little faith in his words. He arches an eyebrow and purses his lips. Sometimes Percy forgets that these children are not afraid of him as he is afraid of himself. They sit on his lap and don't yet realise that he will be like this forever - young and full of life. Will forever watch over them, walk between the lodges, check on them, braid their hair, tell them stories, teach them how to fight, give them lessons, take them on excursions, sing songs, give them love. They don't understand yet, and those that have grown up under his guidance seem oblivious to the fact that only one strand of Percy's black hair is grey. They seem to remember only how he hugs them when they are hurt, how he shields them from monsters with his body, how he laughs when they manage to pull a prank on him. Sometimes Percy forgets that they don't know him not-God at all.
"Let him love you differently or I'll give him a taste of that candy," Ellie finally said. Her ringing voice, reminds him of a certain Artemis Huntress who died in her twelve some fifty years ago. Percy remembers her name but would never say it out loud.
"I don't think Mr D would appreciate it," his eyes sparkle with foam and waves. Now they are not at all like the dark depths of the ocean, now they are like the warm sea.
"Maybe," Ellie finally jumped up from Percy's lap and finally turned her attention to Grover. Not for long, though; she has little interest in satyrs or Lords of the Wilderness, and she doesn't even linger to bow or even nod goodbye to him. She simply snaps out of her seat and runs away faster than a normal child could.
Grover buries his palms in the sand and breathes in the salty air with his mouth.
"They love you," he says, knowing Percy is looking at him with a twinge of sadness. He knows his thoughts and emotions too. It's easy when you've been bonded by empathy, friendship and love for so long.
"I don't know what for," he exhales, but averts his eyes.
"For loving them, obviously," Grover pulled his hand to his side, and almost immediately Percy's palm touched his elbow. He's used to Percy's fingers being cold and hot at the same time, but somehow he still flinches. Probably just can't believe they're still together after all these years.
"Obviously," Percy echoes, and Grover finally meets his eyes. He leans forward and leaves a weightless kiss on Percy's lips. Soon they'll need to greet Mr D, maybe even play with him, but for now it's only a smoky future. Right now, only they exist, and that is perhaps the only thing that matters.