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Percy looked over to the kitchen of his home, sitting on the ratty old yet extremely comfortable couch his mum had had for seemingly forever, when the kitchen tap seemingly turned on by itself.
He was sitting curled up with Annabeth, who had come to live with the Jacksons so she wouldn't have to pay the exorbitant boarding fees for her fancy architecture school she was spending a year at before the two of them went off to New Rome uni. At the moment she was reading an architecture book, an ancient greek one she’d found in the bowels of her cabin’s library, while Percy had one eye on his baby half sister, who the two of them were watching while his mum and Paul were off on date night, and one on the TV show he was watching, with an earphone in, so as not to disturb either of the two girls.
He quickly checked to see if he was unintentionally doing it, the TV show was at a rather tense moment, but after confirming his control hadn't slipped, Percy paused his show and tapped his girlfriend on the shoulder, to wake her from the trance she slipped into while reading. When she looked over at him a couple seconds later, eyes slowly adjusting to focusing on things that weren’t words or diagrams, he nodded past her to the slowly filling sink, which was almost threatening to overflow despite the overflow drain.
“I think someone from dad’s side is about to turn up.” Percy answered Annabeth’s unasked question, speaking softly so Estell didn’t wake up.
Since the second war, and Percy despaired whenever he realised he had to make that clarification, and some clarification that the reason he was ignoring his duties and the culture of the people Poseidon ruled over was the fact that he didn’t know about them, not that he was an impertinent mortal who preferred the land over the sea, Percy had started to build better relationships with the rest of his dad’s family. Not that he blamed them that much for making that mistake, as him being both impertinent and mortal were just basic facts, but he didn’t prefer the land over the sea, he preferred Annabeth over both of them, outcompeting both land and sea by so much that the difference between the two became negligible.
He typically went down to meet them under the sea in Poseidon’s palace, but sometimes they’d come visit him, and feeling a tap randomly start filling a basin somewhere in the apartment, while not common, happened enough that Percy knew what it meant.
“Oh, like with Kymopelia and Rhodes?” Annabeth checked, still speaking softly.
The two had both visited his home while Annabeth was there before, she’d obviously just needed the push to make the connection, brain still tired after a long day at school. There were a couple of times he’d had to discreetly turn the tap off because there were mortal friends over, and his family understood what that meant when he did so and didn’t push, but they weren’t especially busy right now, so Percy didn’t bother.
Eventually, after only a few more seconds of waiting, the water spilled over the edge of the sink and some started to fall towards the floor, just as it was about to hit the tiles though, the falling water disappeared, the sink emptied, and the tap turned off, and in a blink there was a man standing there.
He was tall, wearing a suit, not the standard black and white that screamed secret agent, nor the slight variations typical among businessmen, but more of the slightly relaxed, ‘I have money and I know it, but still appreciate being formal enough to wear a suit’ type of suit, made distinct by the lack of a tie and the slight decorations on the undershirt. He shared Percy’s olive toned skin, bright eyes that seemed to shift back and forth between murky green and deep blue, and messy dark hair, though his fell to his shoulders while Percy kept his own short. If you looked closely they even had the same face structure, the same strong jawline, though the man’s was obfuscated by his short beard. The most out of place thing, which still somehow fit with the suit, was the conch shell in a holster hanging from his belt, just barely visible under his Jack. Recognisable in an instant even without his customary tail and greek garb as Percy’s oldest brother, the second child of King Poseidon and Queen Amphitrite of the oceans, crown prince Triton.
A smile on his face, he was about to say hello to Percy, when Percy quickly cut in before he could speak. “It’s good to see you brother,” Percy said, softly, “but Estell’s sleeping right now, so if you want to talk we will have to be quiet.”
The god gave a nod of acceptance. “It wouldn’t do to wake the baby.” He admitted at the same volume, before continuing, while starting to walk towards them. “It is good to see you as well Perseus, and you…” He cut off suddenly, foot halting an inch from landing on the floor, and stared at them. After a second, he snapped out of it, and entered a stronger stance, feet spread at shoulder width, hands clasped behind his back. “And what are you doing here?” He growled, thankfully remembering to keep his volume low.
“It’s my home?” Percy drawled sarcastically, eyebrow cocked questioningly.
“Not you, her.” Triton jerked his head at Annabeth.
“I live here?” Annabeth responded in the same tone as Percy. “I’m his girlfriend?” After a couple seconds, with Triton just standing there saying nothing, she looked back over to Percy. “Is this about your dad’s grudge with my mum?” She asked him. “Because Rhodes and Kymopleia seemed to be over that.”
“Yes and no.” Percy said. “This isn’t about our dad’s grudge with Athena, I’m pretty sure this is to do with his personal grudge with Athena.”
“Yes, it is.” Triton confirmed. “And knowing what you do about that story, I am surprised that you continue to associate with one of her spawn.”
“I have known Annabeth since I was twelve, I trust her completely.” Percy countered.
“And you have yet to show any difference from the tale.” Triton growled.
“What are you two talking about?” Annabeth asked, but the two sons of Poseidon were too busy staring at each other to answer.
“She is not her mother.” Percy eventually said. “Just like dad isn’t like grandfather, and Amphitrite isn’t her father.”
“No, she is not,” the god admitted, “but that does not mean that you shouldn’t still be wary.”
A few more seconds of staring later, Annabeth cut in again. “Can someone please explain what’s happening?”
Percy sagged slightly from where his shoulders had begun to tense up. “It’s not my story to tell,” he said to Annabeth, before turning to his brother, “but it is one I think you should tell, so you have a chance to work past it, even if only as an exception for Annabeth. I’d hate for my girlfriend and my second favourite brother to be at odds.”
Triton snorted and rolled his eyes, but did seem to relax slightly. “I’m only your favourite because all the others tried to kill you at some point.” He then seemed to process something before being taken aback and saying indignantly, but thankfully still quietly. “Second favourite? Who’s your favourite?”
“Tyson.” Answered Percy simply, causing the god to consider that for a bit before seemingly not being able to come up with any arguments against it. A couple more seconds passed before Triton took a couple steps forwards and then seemingly collapse into a comfortable armchair facing the two demigods, looking almost haggard.
He turned to properly address Annabeth for the first time since he’d arrived. “I will never forgive your mother, and I don’t think I can ever bring myself to ever trust one of her brood, but I will tell you this story, if only because of my brother’s respect for you.” Annabeth focused on the crown prince of the seas fully, her ‘I’m sitting in a class’ face activating as she slipped a bookmark into the open book on her lap and gently shut it so as not to make a loud sound.
“When your mother was born,” the god spoke, his tone a sort of somber reserved for talking about the tragedies all too common in greek mythos, “the queen of the gods, quite surprisingly understandingly from her, did not want her husband’s bastard hanging around Olympus.” He was about to say something, but then recalculated, and decided to explain some context first. “Part of my duties as the prince of Atlantis is the training of soldiers, we have camps like yours for the training of heroes, but soldiers and heroes are not necessarily the same thing, and I ensure all those who are sworn to protect our family and our people are skilled enough at their job. As part of that I train many young people, the children of soldiers who hope to follow their parents into the military one day, the children of nobility who are expected to have skill at arms, and even for random children who wish to learn the skills required to defend themselves.” He paused for breath, elbows on knees and looked sadly at the floor for a moment before looking back up and locking eyes with the attentively listening Annabeth. “And so,” he continued, “when the king of the skies needed somewhere for his new daughter, a goddess of war and battle, far enough away from Olympus that the queen would be happy, he asked if I would train her. And I accepted.” He seemed to be speeding up, as if hoping momentum would help him force through this uncomfortable subject. “I even gave her a rare honour I didn’t give to any but the most promising and desperate students, and have never given since. I raised her in my own home, cooked food for her, taught her the different tongues of Greek, teaching her all the other non combat things she needed to know as an Olympian goddess.” Triton faltered at that, eyes returning to the floor, not seemingly able to bare eye contact as he continued. “I raised her alongside my daughter Pallas.”
“Isn’t Pallas one of my mother’s epithets?” Annabeth asked when the silence had sat a little too long.
“We’ll get to that.” His tone was steely for that, but it returned to the same solemnity as he gathered himself and continued. “The two of them were inseparable, always doing everything together, fighting, learning, sleeping.” He gave a soft chuckle at that. “They were lovers.” Triton answered the question imprinted on Annabeth’s face, turning her confused look into a shocked one. “In fact, they got engaged to each other, the laws of Olympus and the laws of the land might not have allowed it, but the laws of the sea have always been a lot more flexible where gender was concerned, if fact the only reason I am the heir and not my older sister Rhodes is that she married a god not of the sea, where the husband was legally recognised as superior over the wife, and could therefore not take up the position.”
“Wait, but wasn’t one of Kymopelia’s complaints about getting married that she didn’t want to be subordinate to the man she married?” Percy actually cut in this time, he knew the story, but the laws of marriage under the sea hadn’t yet come up in his education from his father.
“In our laws the ‘wife’ is subordinate to the ‘husband’ yes,” Triton explained, “but by our laws anyone can take either position, husband and wife isn’t determined by gender, but by how you plan to split the official duties of the household, it’s not uncommon in marriages within our people for a woman to be the husband while a man is counted as the wife.” After a slight pause he got back on topic. “They planned for Athena to be the husband, and my Pallas to be the wife, the war goddess was always louder than the nymph daughter of the messenger of the seas, but they were devoted to each other.” He almost continued, before deciding that another tangent was in order. “An ability that immortals have is to condense their immortal power into a tool, a symbol of who they are. It allows us to amplify our own powers, making us more than we would be without it, but it would allow anyone else who got a hand on it an unthinkable amount of power over us, which is why there are laws, ancient magic laws that mean that no immortal is physically capable of stealing another immortal’s power.”
Percy was sure Annabeth knew at least some of this already, by hades Percy already knew most of it, so Annabeth certainly did, but she seemed willing to let the prince use the tangent as a break, just giving a quiet “mhm” of confirmation for him to continue.
“You’ve encountered many of these items before, mine is my conch shell, father’s is his trident, uncle king of the skies has his bolt, why he was so anxious to get it back,” he explained, “not just because of how deadly a weapon it is, but because whoever had it could control him. Percy even wields the immortal essence of the nymph who was once Zoë Nightshade. And my daughter and my ward loved each other so much that when they first learned how to forge that weapon out of their own essence, at almost the exact same time, like they did everything, they came out almost identical.” He waved his hand and an illusion flickered into being, identical to what he continued to describe. “Long spears, the handle and grips set perfectly for both of them, for they were the exact same height, the size of the head, the length, and the weight all perfect for their fighting style, for they fought in the exact same way, the only difference was here.” Triton pointed to a point halfway between the upper grip and the head of the spear, where a ring was set into the wood, a charm of some sort hanging from the ring, though the charm itself was blurry. “From Athena’s hung the symbol of an owl, from my daughter’s the symbol of a conch shell, the only difference between the two being the family they were related to by blood.” One especially heavy sigh, and some coughs after he tried to talk again and got stuck later, and he continued. “They loved each other so much that they did something that is usually considered solely purview of the ancient tales of epic romances, they swapped them, and used each other’s weapon. The problem is…”
Triton didn’t seem to be able to make himself finish, no matter how many times he tried, so his brother stepped in for him. “The problem is that for weaker immortals such as nymphs, making that sort of item gathers up enough of your immortal essence that unless they are holding it, they’re no longer immortal.” Percy explained. “From the time between when Zoë gave Anaklusmos to Heracles and when she joined the hunters, she was mortal.”
That was a shock to Annabeth, as it was a secret that the immortals of their world put a lot of effort into keeping out of the hands of the mortals, who weren’t bound by magic to be physically incapable of stealing a symbol of power.
“Then how…” Annabeth seemed confused. “If Pallas gave her symbol of power to Athena, but they wanted to live together eternally, wouldn’t that stop that from working?” She asked.
“I’m… not sure.” Percy admitted. “Brother?” He asked.
“Because between the people of the mythical world, there is magic within the bonds of marriage.” But it wasn’t Triton who responded, but instead a soft female voice. Both demigods turned as Triton flinched with his whole body, to see a brown haired grey eyed woman standing there. Athena looked younger than Percy had ever seen her before, a youthfulness unlike her normal steely nature, and dressed in clothes that were common, if slightly old fashioned, under the sea. It suddenly occurred to Percy that that must have been how she looked, while she was fostering under Triton’s care, the only difference being the mass of tears leaving streaks down her face.
While Triton was frozen, hunched over in his chair, Annabeth’s mother continued. “When we married, magic would recognise that while we were still two people, we acted as one, and then it wouldn’t be a problem, because as long as one of us held her soul she would have stayed immortal. And so we decided it would be safer for me to hold her soul, as only losing hers would risk one of our immortality, and that way anyone who wanted to take her soul would have to attack me, and risk angering the king of the gods, while anyone who attacked her would only risk angering me and lord Triton.” She gave a nod then to the man that raised her as her father, the two immortals falling into silence.
“Wouldn’t it have been safer to wait to swap until after the marriage then, so she would have never been not immortal?” Annabeth questioned, warily.
“Would it have been safer to wait? Absolutely.” Athena confirmed. “But we were young, and in love, and desperate to prove it to each other, and we didn’t think it through. ” She spat the last four words as if acid. Probably angry at herself, because as a goddess of wisdom and planning, her biggest mistake ever had been caused by her being reckless.
“What ended up happening?” Annabeth prompted once they’d had a moment.
“We were sparring.” Athena admitted simply.
“Because you were always too good for the rules.” Triton chuckled darkly. “You both knew you weren’t supposed to spar with live blades without supervision. Live weapon sparring is only allowed in the official training rings, and only with the supervision of a trained healer. Those have been the rules since well before you were born, and yet you decided you were above them.” He looked up for the first time since Athena had arrived, and glared at her, a vicious look on his face. “And then you murdered her.”
“We had sparred that way thousands of times, and hadn’t needed the aid of a healer after one in decades, we thought it was safe.” There was a pleading tone to her voice that seemed to Percy so incredibly unlike the cold goddess she usually was. She jerkily turned towards her daughter to continue the explanation. “We were almost perfectly matched in a spar, the vast majority of our spars ended in draws, but I was ever so slightly better, in the spars which one of us won, an incredibly rare thing, I won fifty four percent of the time. This spar, however, was one which she was winning.” She paused before adding. “And then father showed up.”
“And your father was oh so angry to see his precious daughter losing wasn’t he.” Triton spat.
“What did he do?” Annabeth asked waringly.
“The last time he came down to visit he showed me his shield, the aegis, and told me of how he intended to pass it down for me to use. My love was obviously fascinated by it, as we both were by anything to do with the other. And so when he saw me losing, he brought it out to distract her.” Athena explained.
“And then you murdered her.” Triton spat.
“And so when I thrust at her chest,” Athena continued, ignoring Triton's interruption, “I knew exactly how she would move, a slight side step to the left as she brought her shield round to rap my spear out of the way, giving me enough time to increase the distance between us and hopefully have a chance to rebuild my defence against her assault. And by the time I realised that that wasn’t what happened, she was splayed out on the ground in front of me as I kneeled at her side, doing everything I could to stop her from dying, all the while knowing my actions were futile.”
“You murdered her with her own soul .” Triton spat. And Percy realised that Pallas’s spear would have been the one that killed her, sparring with live blades meant sparring with the weapons that you would bring with you to war, and so Athena would have been wielding Pallas’s symbol of power.
“I poured so much of my divine energy into her that I ended up falling into a coma that I wouldn’t wake up from until years later.” Athena responded. Then, falteringly, added. “It bought her three minutes. Three minutes for us to say goodbye.”
“If…” Annabeth tried asking. “If it’d been her own spear, then wouldn’t she have been wielding it enough for the immortality to work, if in possibly the most awkward way possible.”
Athena just laughed the laugh of a broken woman, halfway between laughter and sobbing, but with just enough presence of mind to flick her left hand at where Estelle was napping, a grey shroud of magic settling around her, hopefully something that would keep her from getting woken up.
“When another being wields an immortal’s symbol of power, it colours the essence of the item ever so slightly with the soul of the wielder.” Triton ended up answering. “For Pallas to regain the full benefits of wielding her spear, including immortality, would require a ritual cleansing.”
“And there was just no time!” Athena screamed at the air. Venting her frustrations. Eventually, when Annabeth tried to add some desperate thing she might have thought of, she laughed that horrid laugh again before talking to her daughter. “I have been thinking about that moment for every second of my life since Annabeth, trying desperately to find any way I could have saved her, any eldritch rite I could have performed to save her. I would have sacrificed my life to save her in an instant if I thought it was possible. There was nothing I could have done.”
She collapsed down into a seat, and the four of them, five if you count the baby sleeping happily off to the side, just sat there for a long time, nobody saying anything, nobody doing anything.
Eventually, what could have been minutes or hours later, Triton mumbled something so soft the other three barely heard it.
“You bought her four minutes.” He said.
“What?” The goddess asked, head snapping towards Triton, a confused look on her face as she ran through a scene in her mind that she had seen billions if not trillions of times.
“Your power infusion bought her four minutes, you just collapsed at the end of three.” Triton clarified. “I arrived just as you collapsed. I knew something was wrong instantly, that’s just how long it took me to get there. I arrived just in time to see you collapse, and then hear her last words as she bled out under you. ‘I love you’ she said.” He spoke the words in the dialect of Greek they spoke under the sea, most similar to the Greek of Crete, but intelligible enough for Annabeth, the only non fluent person, to understand, as if even the act of translating them would be sacrilege. “ ‘I do not blame her.’ She continued. ‘I never could.’ ” There was a long pause then before Triton added. “And then she died.”
“ I do ” Athena admitted in a whisper in the same tongue.
“You blame my daughter for her own death?” Triton spat angrily.
“I blame myself for your daughter’s death.” She corrected. “It is my greatest mistake, a failure I will never be able to fix, a debt I can never repay.” She lay there a moment, staring at the ceiling before continuing. “And so I stay in mourning to this very day. I will never love anyone like I loved her, I will never laugh with anyone like I laughed with her, I will never take anyone else to bed, I have sworn myself to virginity, for there is nobody for me if there is not her.”
“There is nothing you can do to make up for it.” Triton said. “No epithets you can take, no statues you can build, no golden haired fakes you can produce will ever earn you redemption for what you did that day.”
“I know.” Athena agreed simply. “I will never succeed, and yet I will still try, for what else is love.”
Another long moment later and Annabeth had another question. “Golden haired…”
Triton chucked again. “You and your siblings,” he said, “she mocks me with your very existence. Look at your mother, look at her face, look at her body, look at her hair, you share none of it. Every single one of you she crafts in the image of my daughter, as if trying to replace the very person she killed.”
“They can’t replace her.” Athena corrected.
“You’re right they very much can’t.” Triton agreed. “But you certainly tried with that one didn’t you?” He gestured wildly at Annabeth, though if Athena was looking solely with her eyes she wouldn’t have seen it, as they were still fixed on the ceiling.
“What do you mean?” Percy was the one to ask the question this time.
Triton scoffed. “Your girlfriend is identical to my daughter, everything down to the slightest detail. If I did not carry the pain of her passing in my heart every day then I would have thought her alive sitting next to you when I saw you.”
“Everything except the eyes.” Athena corrected. “She had the eyes that are so particular to Poseidon and his children, that mix of blue and green. All of my children look like what I think our children would have looked like. Some more like me, some more like her, but I have never quite been able to get the eyes to work, which is why every single one of you has mine.”
That last admission seemed to take the last of the energy out of the conversation, and it was a long time before the silence was broken, this time by Annabeth.
“I think she would have hated this.”
“What.” Triton growled.
“I think that if my mother says she modeled my entire being except my eyes off of Pallas, I think she doesn’t just mean my physical form, I think she modeled the way I think off of her as well.” Annabeth stared at her mother for a second before asking. “Is that true?”
Athena just froze in response, but Annabeth seemed to take that as a sort of confirmation. “Assuming that is true, then I should be the one most capable to figure out what she would have thought about this situation, and I think that if I were in her situation, the part that would have hurt the most wouldn’t have been dying, it wouldn’t even be the way she died, because she would have known that accidents happen. The thing that would hurt the most would be watching my father and the woman I loved, the two people I cared most about in the entire world hurting themselves and each other over something that cannot be undone.”
“What are you trying to say.” Triton said dangerously, almost more a warning than a question.
“I’m saying,” Annabeth continued, “that if the two of you truly wanted to honour her memory properly, you should go pick up some blunted training weapons, swords or tridents if spears are too difficult, and you should run through some drills. Something that you and Pallas,” she was speaking to her mother there, “learned from you Triton.” She took a breath before continuing when they both seemed about to jump in. “I think you should find her favourite place to visit, I’m sure you both remember it, and you should go visit, together. This isn’t even like my relationship with my step mother, you two loved each other. You raised her. You thought of him as your father just as much as Pallas did. You two had such a good life together, and a single mistake, one horrible horrible mistake, destroyed it because you couldn’t figure out how to live as two instead of three.” Another quick breath before she soldiered on. “I think the thing that would make her happiest would be to see the two of you together, and one of the advantages of the life of an immortal is that there is always time to make up. You don’t have to forgive each other, and you certainly shouldn’t forget, but maybe, just maybe, you can learn to live with each other anyways.”
Eventually, after a short silence, Triton leaned forwards in his seat and reached across towards Athena, palm up, not saying a word.
The seconds ticked by, the goddess staring at the hand with a desperate mix of hope and pain, before reaching over and taking it.
The two gods disappeared into nothingness, whisked away into the water created by their own tears.
The two demigods slumped back into the sofa, the tension disappearing with the gods, as they tried to figure out what in tartarus had just happened. Their confusion was interrupted only seconds later however, by the door opening, with Sally Jackson stepping through in a fancy dress, followed moments later by her husband.
“Are you two okay?” she asked the two silent teens, once they were done with all the faff around taking shoes off and putting down bags.
“I think we just did relationship counselling for gods.” Annabeth said, almost questioningly.
“You did marriage counselling for a pair of gods?” Paul asked. “Well that can’t have gone well.”
“No.” Percy corrected. “Father daughter relationship counselling.”
“Honey.” Sally drawled sarcastically. “This is Greek mythology we’re talking about, the two aren’t mutually exclusive.”
That was seemingly enough to break the tension in the air, and the two teens out of their dazes, as well as Estell out of her sleep. She started calling out for mama, who went over to pick her up as Paul asked if she’d been any trouble.
“No.” Percy admitted honestly. “She was probably the easiest person to deal with in the entire room.”