Chapter Text
The front door slams, the sound echoing through the apartment. Seven-year-old Percy stays where he is, his muscles tense and aching.
He’s curled up tightly under his bed. Crammed into the corner as far from the light as possible, and breathing in the smell of stale cigarettes and sour, rotten trash. It covers the floor under the bed and makes everything gross.
If Percy angles himself just right, he can see one of the seahorse prints on the wall, the one that’s still mostly clean because it’s behind the broken chair across from the bed.
It’s nicer to think about the seahorse than anything else in the room.
This room is supposed to be Percy’s room. Except it has a fire escape on the window, and Sally doesn’t like Gabe smoking in their bedroom. Which means Gabe sits in here to smoke and drink beer when he’s not doing the same thing in the living room.
Whenever Percy tries to clean up all the trash, Gabe claims that he throws out important things along with the trash and gets super angry. So, Percy is careful not to move any of it.
Since Percy has to sleep somewhere when he’s at the apartment, Sally calls it his room. Sally says she put the seahorses up when they first moved in, especially for him. Percy doesn’t remember any of that, he was too little.
The silence lingers and grows. When he reaches out with his senses, the air is calm and quiet. Finally, finally, Percy can relax and start to uncurl his stiff limbs from their tight ball.
It won’t last. The thick, cloying scent of stale sweat — along with the ghost hands clamping down on his wrists — tells him that Gabe will be back soon. For now, he is alone, and he is safe.
Percy waits a little longer before he reaches for that bit of sunshine and salt and sand deep inside him. The part of him that, when he tugs at it exactly right, will tell him where his mother is.
Her tidal waves crash over him, and he hurriedly breaks the connection. Her latest guy has money, and she’s lost in a blur of sensation. She won’t remember he exists for a few days yet.
She always comes back for him, though. Eventually.
Nothing really holds Sally’s attention for long. She comes and goes as she pleases, always searching for the next new experience. Percy loves his mother deeply. Even when other people’s mouths go all flat and pinched and they watch her with sharp eyes.
Sally is wild and exciting and so incredibly intense. Everything she does, she focuses on so utterly and completely that her enthusiasm sweeps you away.
When Sally focuses on Percy — when she truly sees him — it’s like he’s the luckiest kid in the whole world. He feels how much she loves him, how much she treasures all of him.
When Percy has Sally’s full attention, it makes him feel strong and brave and big. Like it’s okay that he sees things no-one else can.
Not that she knows about that.
On other days, when something else catches her attention, he’s small and alone and so, so scared.
She’ll race through the apartment like a whirlwind, getting dressed in light, silky layers of clothing that bubble and puff around her, her blue eyes sparkling with joy.
When she leaves, she takes all the brightness with her.
He never knows when she’ll be back. Percy understands how much she needs the world to be new, and different, and exciting.
When she goes, she takes all the good with her and leaves only Gabe behind.
Percy doesn’t remember a time before Gabe. He isn’t married to Sally. Gabe lets them live with him, for reasons Percy doesn’t want to think about. He prefers to avoid the whole subject entirely, and he suspects most kids don’t want to think about their parents doing any of that. For once, Percy is almost normal.
He’s fairly sure that Gabe wishes Sally hadn’t come with a kid at all. Since she does, Percy serves as a punching bag whenever Sally isn’t home.
Sally says that Gabe does a lot for them.
Especially since Percy is a lot of work, with all the problems he causes at school and just in general. Not that Sally mentions that part. Gabe’s the one who talks about how much work Percy is.
Gabe handles Percy’s school every time there are issues. Sally says that they couldn’t afford to live in New York if they didn’t live with Gabe. She says the schools are better here.
Percy thinks he’d happily live in a shack in the woods and never attend school again if it meant not living with Gabe.
Sally actually likes Gabe, but she’s always super nice, and she never says mean things about anyone.
It’s a problem. It means Percy never entirely trusts what she says, because if she can say so much nice stuff about Gabe and Percy, doesn’t that mean that Percy’s as bad as Gabe?
When Sally is home, Percy can believe he’s a normal kid. A normal kid whose parents truly want to spend time with him. Except Sally is mostly gone, and his dad ditched him before he was born.
On the better nights, when Sally’s home and all of her intensity focuses on him, she’ll whisper to him about his father. Percy likes those nights.
He’ll sit cuddled in against her on the couch, ignoring how the not-real feelings slice through him. Those are the times he gets to be a normal kid. Sally’ll run her fingers through his hair and talk so quietly, like this is a secret just for them.
She’ll tell him about his father, who said that Sally was as wild and untameable as the sea. Percy agrees. His mother is a force of nature. She’s a tidal wave crashing down and overturning your entire world before disappearing again.
He’s pretty sure she wishes Percy was more like her.
Sally laughs at him a lot, teasing him for being so serious, calling him her ‘little old soul’. Sally finds it funny that he sees the world so differently. She likes when Percy talks to her about how things look to him. It always makes her laugh.
She loves to laugh more than anything else.
Even his name is a joke.
Sally told him that his father had been super into Greek mythology and had strong opinions about certain people. His father was ‘lost at sea’ before Percy was born.
The last time Sally spoke to Percy’s father, she had told him that if he didn’t show up for the birth, she’d name the kid Perseus Hercules.
And guess what Percy’s full name is?
What makes it stranger is that Sally doesn’t like the Greek myths. Percy is very careful not to mention his audiobooks to her. Sally’s face got all tight and scared-looking the one time he did.
She really hates Hermes too. Like, ‘she won’t go into buildings that have his caduceus on them,’ level hates.
Which Percy doesn’t understand. He doesn’t dream about Hermes often, but he’s not seen anything to explain why Sally would hate him so much.
He doesn’t get why his dad didn’t like Perseus either.
When Percy asked Sally, she laughed and said something about a cousin and brothers hating each other? Hercules makes more sense. It’s the Roman name for the hero, and Sally said that Percy’s dad was firmly focused on Greek myths.
If he’s being completely honest, the naming thing makes him uncomfortable. His dreams tell him that names have power. Names mean something. To name a person out of spite is unwise and, well, plain mean. No matter how much it makes Sally laugh.
Sally doesn’t often talk about his father, and when she does, Percy ends up very confused.
He doesn’t think she’s telling the truth. Not always. He can’t work out whether she believes what she’s saying, or if she’s lying on purpose. He’s not sure if she knows herself.
She’ll tell Percy that his father was the most beautiful, the most intense, and the most compelling man she has ever met. She also says that one meeting was enough and to see him again would be dull and boring.
Other times, she says that Percy’s dad was kind and gentle, or handsome and powerful. It’s like she can’t decide what she thinks of him, so she tells Percy whatever she wants each time.
Sometimes she says his dad would be proud of him. Then she gets a weird, unhappy look on her face. Percy thinks his dad being proud of him might be a bad thing?
Sally met his dad on a beach, though she won’t tell Percy which beach. Sally says she’s from Long Island, except Percy knows she wasn’t born there, it’s definitely a lie. So, that doesn’t help in working out where she met his dad.
Sally says that Percy looks just like his father, with black hair and green eyes. Sally also knows the name of Percy’s dad, but she refuses to tell Percy who he is.
She says his father knows about him and isn’t allowed to talk to Percy. Percy still can’t tell if this is because Sally told him not to, or if it’s because he did something bad and is in prison.
Sometimes, when she’s distracted and answering without thinking, she tells Percy that Gabe is a much better option than his father. Sally says she hopes ‘those people’ leave them alone.
She definitely believes this. It feels like the truth. So, maybe Percy’s right about his dad being in prison?
He’s not entirely convinced that his dad knows Percy exists. Or that the man she describes is really his dad.
Percy tried to see his dad once, stretching that sense of inner sunshine and salt to its limit. It was definitely a mistake. He’d passed out from the overwhelming swirl of absolutely crushing sensations. The power of electricity in his hands, a pounding war drum in his chest, liquid sunshine, shaking earth, molten metal, savage steel… It went on and on and on, and none of it made sense.
There isn’t anyone else he can ask about his dad. Gabe says his dad was a no-good deadbeat. Percy doubts that Gabe actually knows who his dad is.
Gabe just likes being mean. He’ll say whatever he thinks will hurt Percy the most.
No matter how often Percy tells himself this, the words still hurt. Maybe more than the punches. Bruises go away eventually. The words spin around and around in his head and never leave him alone.
So really, all he’s certain of is that his dad didn’t like Heracles or Perseus, and while he’s not sure the specific reason his dad hates them, Percy definitely thinks they should be hated. Heracles and Perseus were total jerks, absolutely nothing like the audiobooks he listens to.
Most of the old heroes were total jerks. No-one remembers that now.
Lying there under his bed, staring at the one clean seahorse picture, Percy really wishes he could tell his dad he was right about Perseus and Heracles.
To be honest, right now he’d take anyone who could get him away from Gabe.
He knows no-one will. Mostly, they send him back to Gabe because he’s Percy’s guardian on record or something majorly dumb like that.
The last time he tried to tell a teacher about Gabe, his teacher said Percy needed to stop making up lies. That he was being naughty, and it was cruel to talk about ‘his dad’ like that. And did Percy realise that Gabe’s life would be destroyed if someone believed the things Percy said?
That teacher spent ages making sure Percy understood how lucky he was to have someone like Gabe looking after him. Especially when he didn’t have to, since he wasn’t Percy’s biological dad. He wasn’t Sally’s husband either. Percy should have been grateful that Gabe was so willing to put up with him.
His teacher pointed out that Gabe answered the phone when the school called. Sally never did.
Then, that teacher said that even if Gabe had hit Percy, maybe it was because of how naughty Percy was being? Maybe, if Percy stopped being so naughty, Gabe wouldn’t need to hit him so much.
Percy may have deliberately lit a fire in the school toilets after that. He’d started thinking his teacher would hit him as well, and he really didn’t want to find out.
Gabe was bad enough.
He’d waited for a day when his teacher was sick and lit the fire. Then he’d stayed and watched it burn. It’d been interesting to watch and kind of pretty. It worked too. He got expelled the same day. Percy definitely didn’t think it through. Gabe had been really bad that time. Not that Gabe knew what Percy had done, but Gabe would have blamed Percy for the fire whether or not he’d caused it.
Sally had moved in with Gabe not long after Percy was born. While he sees a lot more of Gabe than Sally now, it wasn’t always like that.
She had stuck around more when he was little-little. Then the thing with the strangled snakes happened. Percy really doesn’t think he should be blamed for that one.
Percy was super little, so his memory is pretty blurry, but he could’ve sworn he hadn’t killed the snakes.
There’d been a couple of dead snakes, sure. They weren’t his fault, though.
What he remembers is a woman with snake hair, and Percy had thought her hair was completely awesome. He can remember his chubby fist wrapped around a chunk of hair. She’d had a scarf thing over her face, and he remembers her mouth was smiling.
Then there’d been a man with green fire in his eyes who was really angry. He’d had a pretty black plait too. Then the woman had left, the man following her out.
Leaving Percy with his fistful of dead snake hair.
Okay, now that he’s thinking about it, that sounds like a nightmare, not real life.
Except Sally definitely saw the dead snakes? She’d been really angry. Not with Percy though? She’d stalked off like the other two as soon as she saw the snakes.
Huh, that’s super weird. Maybe best to forget all of that?
Anyway, it was like Sally figured that if he could kill a snake, then Percy could take care of himself.
And he can!
Mostly.
Percy turned seven three weeks ago. He gets himself to and from school most days, and he eats pretty regularly, or, well, he eats whenever he finds food that Gabe won’t miss.
He’s not great at school. Percy never got the hang of reading, but he’s got a really good memory, and audiobooks are definitely a gift from the gods themselves.
After Percy discovered audiobooks, he used to visit the library and listen to them there. Then, a really nice librarian gave him an old phone that doesn’t work right anymore. All it can do is play audiobooks, which makes it perfect for Percy!
Percy has to keep it hidden from Gabe, and he doesn’t always have a chance to charge it, but it’s so worth it. There’s so many things to learn!
Audiobooks make sense in a way that reading doesn’t.
Writing looks so weird to him, he doesn’t get how anyone knows what it says. Percy doesn’t understand how weird black smudges count as words, it’s like everyone in the world got together to play a prank, and they’re all lying and claiming the random smudges are words.
Like how everyone says Australia is a lie. It sounded reasonable to Percy?
Teachers really don’t like being told that writing is a lie.
Percy has to skip school on test days. The teachers don’t like that much. He can’t risk taking a test, otherwise someone will realise he can’t really read. Or write.
Whenever the school tries calling Sally or Gabe, they tell his teachers to deal with it, because Percy’s their problem during school hours.
Which he gets. Percy is a lot. He never understands super basic things, and he’s always doing the exact wrong thing. Percy is hard work, and he knows he’s not worth that sort of effort.
He can live with people thinking he’s naughty. The problem is when people decide they’re worried about him. Things go badly when that happens.
Percy’s learned the right words to say when people are ‘concerned about his home life,’ and he’s gotten pretty good at seeing when other kids need help. It never takes much to redirect nosy people towards helping the kids that really need it.
Right now, Percy needs to make a decision.
If he stays hidden under the bed, it’s only a matter of time until Gabe returns and finds him here. If he leaves the apartment, he might have a chance to steal some food, but he’ll need to stay in the park overnight.
Percy’s not sure what he thinks about the park. There’s a man there, he’s like, super tall, and only has one eye. In his dreams, people like that are called cyclopes, and they are monsters. They eat people, and they hunt demigods.
A cyclops nearly caught Thalia before she was turned into a tree.
The man at the park is different. Somehow.
When Percy asks the spot of sunlight and sea and sand inside him, it says that this man will only watch, and he won’t hurt Percy.
He won’t help him either. Which is fine, because the other monsters avoid the one-eyed man. So it means it’s safe for Percy to sleep in the park. It’s definitely safer than an apartment without Sally.
Percy carefully picks his way through the trash in the lounge room to the kitchen. There’s no food here today. There isn’t any beer either, which explains where Gabe is.
The ghost hands on his wrists are getting tighter, and the smell of stale sweat is growing. That’s enough for Percy to make his choice.
Just the thought of seeing Gabe right now is gut-wrenching, and something inside him is whispering that Gabe will be returning in a way worse mood.
Yeah, the park will be safer. He might be able to fall asleep in the park. If he stays, he knows he’ll be awake all night.
Percy doesn’t remember a time when he didn’t automatically sort of just know things.
It’s a bit like the dreams, and also really not.
In his dreams, he watches heroes and gods living out the stories that became Greek myths. Sort of. Most of the stories don’t happen the way the audiobooks say.
Occasionally, Percy thinks he’s making it all up.
Which he would believe, except they’re not the only things he sees.
Sometimes, he sees things that he thinks are currently happening, and other times, he sees glimpses of what he’s pretty sure is the future.
The knowing is different.
It’s flashes of sensation and a strange certainty about words and facts. He’ll think about something, and then he knows what’s going to happen.
Like right now, when he thinks of Gabe, there are spots of heat growing on Percy’s body, in all the places where the bruises will form if he stays in the apartment tonight.
If he stays in the apartment, it will hurt.
When he thinks of the one-eyed man — is he still a monster if he doesn’t act like one? — Percy knows he’ll be at the park tonight, and the one-eyed man will leave him alone. It will be safe for him to sleep on his bench.
He also knows that if he ever finds his dad, he’ll keep Percy safe from the monsters. The sunshine and ocean inside him absolutely pulses with the certainty of it.
No matter what Sally says, Percy is certain that his dad is a better option than Gabe. If Percy could just find him and talk to him, his dad would make sure that Percy never saw Gabe again.
Except Percy doesn’t know who his dad is or how to find him.
Percy hasn’t told anyone about the things he sees or what he knows. Whenever he thinks about telling the truth to other people, that same inside place tells him not to, that it would make everything worse.
It tells him there would be more monsters and more danger. Things will go terribly if other people ever find out about what Percy sees.
It’s like that with the boy he sometimes dreams about, who can’t speak about what he sees ever again. Percy’s knowing says that Percy is not the same as the boy, but he’s still not safe if he tells. Not right now.
He’s never told Sally about the dreams. Or about the constant flashes he sees when he’s awake. As if something different overlays the real world. At those times, everyone and everything is older or younger for the tiniest of moments.
He’s never told her about how when someone touches him, he feels what they feel. That he can tell when Sally’s telling the truth. Or how every time she touches him, her aura crushes him under its weight. The lightest of touches hurt Percy so much.
It’s already too hard to be bright enough and interesting enough to keep her attention. Something inside him is certain that if Sally ever found out that Percy was the wrong sort of interesting, he would never see her again.
Percy’s been feeling like that a lot lately. As if each time she leaves the apartment, he won’t ever see Sally again.
At first, he thought someone was going to hurt her, but when he tried to stretch his senses, he was sure she would be fine. Her future is weirdly happy, actually. Nothing about it looks familiar though, so Percy’s not sure if that’s real. Gabe’s not there for one. Percy’s not there either.
It’s more like Percy won’t be there the next time she comes back. He’s not sure what he thinks about that, so he ignores it entirely.
Percy’s really good at ignoring things.
The sun is already low. Percy needs to stop looking for nonexistent food and get to the park before full dark. While the park may be safe, the streets between here and there will not be. If he’s quick, he might have time to steal some food too.
Digging out his too-small jacket with the tear on the shoulder, he sneaks out of the apartment, dodging Eddie, the far too nosy building superintendent, as he heads down the stairs.
Once he’s out on the street, Percy pauses at every corner and stretches out his senses to be sure Gabe isn’t waiting for him.
He’s pretty sure he’s not meant to use his abilities for things like this.
Percy spends a lot of time dreaming about seers, oracles and prophets. Like an intense amount of time. Not on purpose or anything, it just happens.
When he dreams of the Sun God and his oracles, they’re all super serious and sacred and important.
They sit in temples, and people bring them gifts of gold and stuff. Sometimes, they get a prophecy in return. Other times, the oracles keep the gifts and send the people away. They’re so important, no-one ever complains!
None of them ever had a Gabe, and as far as Percy can tell, they aren't around anymore to yell at him.
Well, the Sun God still is, he thinks. Or he will be? It’s hard to tell if what he sees is happening now or in the future when he has no connection to the Greek world.
He dreams about a blonde boy sometimes. A boy who sees more than he should. Percy’s not clear if it’s a past or future dream. All he’s sure of is that the boy believes he’ll be cursed with madness if he speaks of what he sees.
The boy isn’t the same as Percy. He sees a lot less than Percy does. Percy’s not sure why he dreams about him. He doesn’t know his name or much of anything about him.
Maybe it’s a warning? Not that Percy has paid any attention to it, if it is.
Because Percy uses his abilities for something else too.
It’s something he is absolutely certain he is not meant to do, but it’s the only way he survives. He would rather be cursed by the Sun God than give up hiding in his dreams.
Percy can’t remember when he learned how to do this. There must have been a moment where everything Gabe was doing got to be too much, and Percy’s mind sort of went sideways.
When that happened, the world would abruptly disappear and he would suddenly be dreaming, except he was still awake.
Now, Percy goes away every time Gabe takes his anger out on him. Instead of having to feel Gabe hitting him, he can watch Poseidon punish Odysseus for blinding Polyphemus, and a tiny part of him absolutely delights in Poseidon’s savage vengeance.
He possibly might have just maybe imagined it was Gabe, and not Odysseus, being punished.
Some people deserve to be punished.
Percy learned the hard way that these are inside thoughts.
At the school before the current one, he’d told a nice teacher all about Poseidon and Odysseus. That school had kicked him out straight after that conversation. But first, they’d made Sally and Gabe come and talk to his teacher.
Percy’d listened in at the door all about how ‘such violent tendencies’ were ‘deeply concerning’ and that Percy ‘needed professional help.’
Sally’d stayed home for a few nights after that. When she left again, Gabe gave Percy all the professional help he could take.
He didn’t start at his new school until almost two months later. That was when the bruises went away.
He spent most of those two months at the park. The one-eyed man was there a lot more than usual. Twice, Percy woke up to a bag of protein bars left beside his bench. That had freaked him out a bit, the knowing should have warned him before someone got that close.
The knowing isn’t always helpful or all that much of a good thing.
On days like today, knowing what Gabe will do to him is okay, because Percy’s already leaving and now it won’t happen.
On other days, he knows what’s coming, and he can’t escape it.
He’ll still try.
Percy will beg Sally to take him with her, or he’ll try to sneak down the fire escape outside his bedroom. On those days, it doesn’t work, and he’ll have spent hours with ghost bruises only to then have real bruises.
Sometimes, even though he knows he won’t be able to sleep safely at the park, he goes anyway, and that ends up being so much worse. He’ll think he’s safe, except the ghost bruises are still there.
That’s normally when some random ‘Good Samaritan’ finds Percy sleeping where he shouldn’t, and they insist on taking him ‘home’. When that happens, and the bruises become real, Percy’s really glad he knows how to force the dreams to come when he’s awake.
Some of his dreams are about people who are around now. They aren’t heroes, although they might be heroes one day. They’re interesting. Percy finds them kind of upsetting too. He mostly forgets those dreams as soon as he wakes up. Not very many people have good futures.
Percy remembers the dreams about the old heroes and the gods though, and his dreams are always different from the stories he hears.
Most of the time, they have a lot more people helping the hero out, and other times, their great feats aren’t so great.
Like the guy who defeated the Minotaur. The stories make it sound so big and scary. And then when Percy dreams of Theseus and the Minotaur, the ‘monster’ he kills is only a cow, or maybe a bull?
It’s not a half-human, half-bull monster, anyway. Though there is a monster like that. In his dreams, the monster’s name is Asterion, and his story is a lot sadder than the myths claim. Theseus never fought Asterion, and Asterion never wanted to hurt anyone.
Most of the heroes in his dreams aren’t nice people. They are often cruel, uncaring, and vengeful, stealing the achievements of others and claiming them for themselves.
Percy has grown to hate Heracles. He visits him often in his dreams. This huge, golden man, who speaks so grandly and yet always relies on others. He’s really good at twisting his words up so he says something that’s truthful but also not.
Percy especially hates him for how he treated Zoe, his favourite of the Hesperides. Zoe is the most amazing person he’s ever seen. Percy likes dreaming about her when he can’t escape from Gabe. She makes him feel strong.
So many people have been forgotten. The stories of a thousand people are now all attributed to one man.
At other times, his dreams add new information and completely change Percy’s understanding of a myth.
Like the story of Odysseus and Poseidon. As much as Percy loves the idea of a father utterly destroying someone for harming his child, Poseidon went a bit too far there.
Yet, when he dreams of Odysseus, he sees the moments that aren’t in the myths. Somewhere in the middle of Odysseus’s long, confusing journey, Percy learns that Poseidon sometimes knows the future. Kind of like Percy does.
The intensity of Poseidon’s anger at Odysseus isn’t because of the man’s stubbornness. It’s because Poseidon knows that in blinding Polyphemus, Odysseus wove a new future.
One day, Polyphemus will turn against the gods. He will turn against his father. When he blinded the cyclops, Odysseus permanently stole Poseidon’s son from him and sentenced thousands more to die. Killing Polyphemus would have been much kinder.
Percy dreams of Poseidon pretty often. He’s not sure why. He dreams of many other gods, but the only one he sees as often as the King of the Sea is the Sunshine Man.
Those dreams are the most dangerous ones.
Normally when he dreams, no-one knows he’s watching. Percy sees everything as if he’s inside a movie. He can’t change anything, the story still happens as it always has or always will.
It’s why he goes away when the world is too much. No matter what story he watches, Percy’s safe there.
It’s different with Sunshine Man.
Percy knows who he is, but he’s too scared to even think his name. Whenever Percy dreams of him, it takes only seconds before Sunshine Man’s head snaps up and his blazing blue eyes look straight at Percy.
It’s scary. It makes his dreams not safe anymore.
No-one else ever sees Percy when he dreams, but Sunshine Man can. Percy still isn’t sure what the man sees when he looks at him. Percy usually gets so frightened that he wakes up as soon as they make eye contact.
When he was younger, Sunshine Man only watched him. He always seemed kind of intensely confused? Then, a couple of years ago, Sunshine Man began speaking to Percy. It’s always the same questions. “Who are you? Where are you?”
A couple of times, Sunshine Man has asked him, “Who is your parent?” Not parents, but ‘parent’. Almost as if Sunshine Man thinks he’s meant to know Percy? That makes him creepier.
Recently, he’s sounded frantic and like he’s really worried? Every time he sees Percy, he desperately begs, ‘Tell me how to find you! Please let me help you! I can help you, I promise. All you need to do is tell me who you are.’
It scares Percy.
The Sun God is the god of lots and lots of things. Most worryingly of all, he is the God of Prophecy. Sunshine Man gives seers and prophets their abilities. He clearly doesn’t know Percy, which means Percy has somehow broken the rules.
He may say he wants to help, but Percy doesn’t believe him. Lots of people have said they want to help him, and they’re usually the ones who hurt him the most.
Gabe spends a lot of time “helping” Percy. Help is not a good thing. Help is scary.
Percy learned from his dreams that the stuff he feels is properly called an ‘aura’. In the Greek world, seeing auras is an ability Sunshine Man gives to people.
‘Aura’ means something different in the real world. The one time Percy had asked Sally about auras, what she described was nothing like what he knew. She said it was like a halo of light around a person or a thing. That’s not what Percy feels.
For Percy, when he uses his inner sunshine and ocean place to look at someone in his dreams, he knows who they are at their core.
He experiences it with every part of him: he tastes it on his tongue, feels it on his skin, hears it with his ears and in the way it vibrates in his chest. Percy sees and feels it inside him, not with his eyes but with something much deeper.
It’s why he thinks Sunshine Man knows more than he should, and that he might have found Percy already. For the past few weeks, Percy’s been seeing the same thing over and over.
A hand — his hand? — holding an old lighter, setting fire to a sandwich. There are silent words, words that his inner sunlight and sand want him to say. “Apollo, Protector of Youth, Patron of Prophets, hear me.”
Each time he sees the hand with the lighter and feels the words, there’s another image, this one filled with emotion.
A teenager in a golden chariot flying through the sky. He has golden-blonde hair, blue eyes, and a wide, teeth-flashing smile. He surrounds Percy with intense warmth and an impossible-to-describe sense of fierce protection and safety. It’s how he thinks having a dad would be like. Warm, kind, caring, and safe.
Percy realises he’s awfully good at not thinking about things.
He is a master of pretending something never happened. He isn’t stupid, though.
Like, seriously? Percy is not dumb!
Sunshine Man is trying to find him, and he is getting increasingly desperate. This same person has power over prophets and visions.
Percy is constantly seeing a non-scary, extra-friendly image of Sunshine Man. It may as well be a dude in a white van offering him free candy.
Why the heck would he trust the crazy man making impossible promises?
Especially Sunshine Man. Percy’s seen the things Sunshine Man did to those people who insulted his mother. That guy loves going full vengeance almost as much as Poseidon does.
Percy has nothing to do with the Greek world. For whatever nutty reason, he’s somehow accidentally ended up with the ability to see far more than he should. He doesn’t want to find out what the gods will do to him for knowing things he’s not meant to.
Percy would much rather be a seven-year-old incapable of acting like a seven-year-old, who also hallucinates, can’t sit still, and has intense sensory issues. And yes, the things he sees often come true. That still doesn’t mean anything!
Percy may not be as good at ignoring things as he thinks he is.
Before he reaches the park, Percy slips into a bodega, keeping a careful eye out for any adults wanting to know where his ‘mummy and daddy’ are.
Those adults are the scariest ones. Cops are a close second, because they take him straight to Gabe and lecture Gabe about ‘proper supervision.’ Percy’s so glad the knowing lets him avoid them now. Once was enough.
The guy at the counter is distracted, only glancing at him once before turning around and putting his back to Percy. It’s easy enough to grab a random protein bar and a bottle of water and leave again without being seen.
It’s kind of odd, really. Some stores chase him out the moment he so much as peeks in the door, and then there are others, like this one, where it’s as if Percy’s invisible.
A tiny whisper in the back of Percy’s mind sometimes points out that he’s super short, barely reaching most grown-ups’ waists. And he’s fully aware of how thin he is. Add in the torn clothes and constant grime, and the shopkeepers might be ignoring his theft on purpose. He doesn’t like that thought. Better to ignore it.
Percy’s ignoring a lot these days. He wishes he could live permanently in his dreams, waking up to the real world sucks so much.
He’s so tired of everything. Percy’s so sick of the overlay of images everywhere he looks.
Images of people dying and people living. Always, always, people.
Sometimes, in the awful moments, he wonders if dying would be better. Except Percy’s seen the Underworld in his dreams. King Hades on his throne, and the endless, endless fields of spirits. None are resting.
The heroes who earn Elysium all choose rebirth and live all over again, trying to earn the Isles of the Blest. It sounds so exhausting.
In the Greek world, there is no proper end to a person’s life. Percy’s unsure if he really is Greek, but if he is, he’s in no hurry to spend eternity like that. As long as he’s alive, he has the option of running, hiding, and fighting.
Percy’s not sure he’ll have a choice for much longer though.
One of the thoughts he can’t ever fully ignore is the one that asks what happens if Gabe kills him.
Percy isn’t doing well. He’s too scrawny, too tired, and his hair and fingernails are thin and brittle. Is dying slowly any better than dying fast?
As he walks to the park, the hand with the lighter flickers across his vision, and he hears the prayer again. With the same weird sense of urgency, as if Sunshine Man is begging him to answer him.
Maybe he should try it? Could Sunshine Man be any worse than Gabe? Worse than death?
Percy remembers his dreams of the things Sunshine Man has done. Gabe is mortal. Sunshine Man is a god. It would definitely be worse.
No, let’s not do that.
It’s best to just ignore it. He can’t tell if these are his thoughts, or if they come from the knowing. It’s too confusing, and he’s tired, so he’s not going to think about it.
Percy circles the park quickly before he settles onto his favourite bench. He gives the corner where the one-eyed man is a wide berth. As usual, the man doesn’t react at all.
He stands there like a statue, watching the park. Percy still can’t decide if the guy counts as a cyclops if he doesn’t eat kids.
It means he can eat his protein bar and get a decent night’s sleep. The same part of him with opinions on shopkeepers also thinks that Percy should be more concerned about how he feels safer sleeping in a park with a cyclops than he does in his own apartment.
That little voice can shut up now, thank you very much.
Percy is doing fine. Things could definitely be worse. Everything is fine. Totally fine.
Percy curls onto his side, pulling his knees up and wrapping his arms tightly around himself, trying to hold on to as much warmth as he can.
Nights are getting colder now. He’s not sure what he’s going to do when it gets properly cold. Gabe’s gotten a lot worse since last winter.
As Percy shuts his eyes, he prods at the sandy place inside of himself, pulling and yanking at it, trying to force it to show him his dad.
He doesn’t dare try to look for him directly again. The one-eyed man may think he has to do something if he sees Percy having a seizure in the park.
But maybe he can force it to direct his dreams? To show him an image of his dad, any image. Please show him something!
________________________
Percy falls asleep mid-demand, and he’s immediately swept away by his dreams.
They take him to a familiar story. He’d hoped that this time he might dream of his dad, except instead, he’s been returned to a forgotten moment in the story of Medusa.
Percy prefers not to think about Medusa. He hates what happened to her, and that the only people who cared about Medusa were actual monsters. People should have listened to her. Percy hates that she was punished.
Most of all, he hates what Athena did to her.
His dreams about Medusa are confusing, especially when he dreams of her speaking to the man with green eyes and his strange conversation with her. Percy can tell they’re not speaking English. Yet, in his dreams, he always understands them perfectly.
He dreams of an old garden with half-collapsed columns scattered through the wild growth. There are big rectangular chunks of stone disappearing beneath twisted vines. Medusa sits alone on a piece of broken marble, crumpled and sobbing into her hands as the snakes around her head writhe and hiss.
A man approaches her. He is tall and powerful with tanned skin, near-black hair, and sea-green eyes.
The air wakes up around him, swirling and spinning like the currents in the tide. Each step he takes sends a tremor through the ground like the promise of an earthquake that never quite takes hold.
The man stands watching Medusa as she sobs. When she feels his eyes on her, she stiffens and turns towards him, her face pale, eyes red and swollen, and her lips trembling.
“I was expecting you.” She sniffles, her eyes downcast. “The Grey Eyed One had no right to treat me so, yet I have greatly wronged you.”
Her back straightens as she raises her head to meet his gaze. “I will accept whatever punishment you see fit.”
The man watches her for a moment longer, his head tilted to the side and his mouth slightly pursed.
“I would first like to understand why you acted as you did. It is not logical to protect a mortal son by accusing the father. Especially when the father is a god.”
She shakes her head, one hand wiping at her nose, still watching him warily. “No, it was not logical. I have no desire to protect him. Nor would I need to. He is protected by his very existence. His reputation is impeccable, no-one would believe him capable of such acts.”
She looks away, her shoulders curling in. She speaks to the ground in a tiny voice. “Nor would they believe I refused him.”
Medusa’s voice drops lower, and Percy strains to catch her words. “He told me as such himself. I needed to find a way to tell my story, and your own history is much less clear.”
She winces and cringes away from the man. He waves a hand carelessly, as if being famous for despicable acts means little to him.
With another quick glance at him, she continues. “I was ruined regardless, and I had—” She stops and shuts her eyes, calming herself.
“I had only wanted someone to believe that I had refused him. That I had not wanted him to do it. No-one would believe him capable, yet I knew they would believe you capable of…”
She trails off before straightening her shoulders and facing him directly. She speaks clearly now. “I did not deserve what the Grey Eyed One has done. I do deserve your punishment.”
She falls silent again, turning her face once more to the ground, sitting tensely, her shoulders braced for what she expects is to come.
The man does not move, though it’s clear she feels the weight of his gaze.
Finally, as if unable to bear the silence any longer, Medusa risks another glance toward him. The man is standing quietly, watching her thoughtfully, as if she is something unique and novel. As if she is something unexpected.
When he speaks, his voice is soft and gentle, rippling through the garden like calm waves on a windless night. “I cannot understand my niece; to throw away such a disciple because of another’s crime, it is truly despicable.”
Medusa flinches slightly, still braced for punishment, and also a little confused.
His voice ripples on. “I cannot undo what she has done. You are not the first person to falsely accuse me for the reasons you name, nor will you be the last. All I ask is that you tell no-one of what you have done.”
Medusa stares at him, stunned. The snakes fall limp and silent as she tries to understand such unexpected words.
He grimaces slightly at her shocked expression. “I will ensure my son’s silence. I am deeply sorry for what he has done to you. While I cannot publicly take action, please be assured that he will be punished. He has broken the laws of the sea, and that will not be tolerated.”
After a brief nod, he strides from the garden, leaving both Percy and Medusa bewildered.
This was not the story Percy learned from the myths. It makes no sense to him that Poseidon — and that was clearly Poseidon, the living embodiment of the ocean — would be so accepting of an outright lie?
A lie that accused him of vile things, things he had not done. He was accused of disrespecting Athena’s Temple. Isn’t Poseidon married? Why would he be so kind? So understanding?
The gods make even less sense than the heroes Percy dreams of. Nothing he has learned about them in his own world matches up to the stories in his dreams.
As this thought crosses his mind, the garden dissolves into a new dream.
The change has a deliberate feel to it. Instead of his dreams moving randomly from place to place, it’s like he is now being shown something he needs to see.
All around him, threads are moving, weaving in and out and tugging him along.
Percy is now in a meadow, the sky above an impossible shade of blue. The sun coats the long grass and wildflowers in liquid gold as a gentle breeze twines through this little piece of serenity.
Far away, he can hear waves on a beach. This place is paradise, filled with warmth and safety and peaceful silence.
Something about this little island makes Percy’s senses sing with familiarity, like home.
Percy wants to stay here forever. This is so much better than the park.
Some part of him instinctively knows that there is a barrier surrounding the island. This barrier tastes of ocean salt, the beat of horses’ hooves, the power of a hurricane, and the snap of a ship’s sails catching the wind.
A barrier that refuses entry to almost everyone, permitting only those few it recognises.
Percy’s not sure how he can possibly be inside it. It’s probably best if he avoids being seen?
He focuses on hiding himself as much as he can, pulling on his strongest feelings of you-can’t-see-me/I’m-not-here until he’s a too-thin ghost on the edge of dissolving into nothingness.
It is so peaceful here, so calm. There are no confusing stories of gods and heroes to interrupt the peace.
For a little while, Percy drifts in this empty place, allowing his mind to wander as it pleases. This is a dream, but it is a real dream. One of the maybe-now, maybe-future ones.
It has the same weird intentional feel to it as the dreams of the blonde boy. The one whose face he can never remember when he wakes. The boy who sees too much and never talks about it. It’s like Percy’s being shown something that is important for him to see.
Minutes or hours later, Sunshine Man comes into view.
Percy should go. This man always notices him. He is always looking for him. Percy feels a quiet sort of peace, an inner assurance that, this time, the man cannot see him. So Percy continues to drift, not really focusing on anything at all.
Sunshine Man is very unhappy. He is pacing back and forth through the meadow, long strides eating up the ground, his hands pulling at his hair as he mutters to himself.
He is not speaking English. Yet, as always, Percy understands him.
“Why can’t I find him? Where is he? I should have told her. She would have found him by now. What if something happens? What if he finds him first? He needs help. I can’t sit here and wait, I need to protect him…”
The muttering goes on and on, Sunshine Man’s words spinning in circles. He sounds stressed, upset, and really, really worried.
It’s odd.
Percy has seen him before. Normally, Sunshine Man always sees him too. The moment he notices Percy, the feelings around him shift. He is always full of a sense of you-are-safe/I-will-protect/I-care that Percy does not trust one bit.
It’s no different from a teacher or a random adult telling Percy he can trust them. That they only have his best interests in mind.
And according to them, it’s in Percy’s “best interests” to live with Gabe. They’re not lying either, he can tell that they believe that it’s true. Which means Percy can never trust what people say. Even when they tell the truth.
Gabe told him once that, because Sally’s away so much, Gabe could get custody of Percy if Sally died. That whole day had been terrifying. Percy doesn’t remember much after Gabe said that.
Sunshine Man is the only one Percy’s seen change their aura.
Percy knows no-one else who can control the way they feel to him. It means that they can’t lie to Percy. Not when he can compare their words to what the sunshine and sand tells him. He might get tripped up because they believe what they’re saying, but they can’t lie.
Sunshine Man can control what the sun and sand shows him, which means he can lie to Percy.
Except right now, Sunshine Man doesn’t know that Percy is here. Percy can see what Sunshine Man is really like without the manipulations. Carefully keeping up his I’m-not-here/you-can’t-see-me thoughts, Percy pulls at the ocean within.
He looks.
Huh.
Percy had thought that Sunshine Man’s aura would be different, darker somehow. He had thought it would show some sign of the creepy way he keeps trying to get Percy’s attention.
It is different, but not in that way. It is loud, intensely so. Overwhelming. It floods the meadow, coating the island, rebounding off the barrier and folding back in on itself. The whole island pulses from it.
Sunshine Man’s aura ripples off him in waves. It’s so loud that he forgets who he is as he falls into all the feelings.
Liquid sunshine dances across skin, singing an impossible melody. On his tongue is the taste of perfectly rhyming words, the sound settling into the flight of an arrow with deep finality.
City streets in perfect order pass under his feet. The sharp, good cracking pain of a joint being set or a bone being healed. The itch of new skin under a scab. Long hair brushes his shoulders as the prickly leaves of a laurel crown wrap around his head.
The taste of deep, pooling possessiveness, golden and densely shadowed. Vengeance boiling beneath the skin, taking millennia to peak, yet impossible to cool.
All of it interwoven with a warm current of unshakeable loyalty, the slightest tang of the ocean to hint at its origins. Sunshine Man is liquid sun and protective rage.
His aura is coated with intense worry, verging on panic.
The jarring fear pulls him back enough that he remembers he is a boy named Percy and not a pool of liquid sunshine.
Percy has never looked so closely at him before — only catching glimpses of liquid sunshine before disappearing — and the recent flashes of him had felt flat and empty. They were full of promises to protect, but they didn’t have the strength of the Sun God’s aura.
This time, Percy can see the truth of it. The Sun God is scared. Really, truly scared.
Not for himself. For someone else. In all his muttering, he has not said who he’s worried about. If this is a now-dream and not a future-dream, could it be Percy he’s worried about?
There’s no more time to think about it, the man’s attention is caught by something only he can hear.
He rolls his eyes, muttering something about demanding sisters, and disappears from the island.
Percy would like to stay in this quiet place. Unfortunately, he can feel himself being pulled away.
The sound of car horns, and his own shivering body, returns him to his bench in the park.
The first thing he truly feels is bitter disappointment when he wakes to a cool morning in the much too busy New York City. He had wanted to stay on the island, where it was peaceful, without all the people everywhere.
Percy should enjoy what he has while it lasts. He can’t stay in the apartment this winter. He knows he can’t.
It’s only early fall, so he has a little longer before sleeping outside becomes a problem.
The one-eyed man lingers at the other end of the park. As soon as Percy sits up and acts a bit more awake, the one-eyed man will leave, disappearing to wherever he goes when he isn’t standing in the dark corners of the local park.
Once he leaves, Percy needs to leave too. The monsters will come for him if he stays in one place for too long.
Percy really wouldn’t know what to do if a monster got too close.
He hasn’t had to deal with many monsters. The knowing always warns him before they reach him. That doesn’t mean there aren’t monsters around. Hellhounds, cyclopes and sphinxes apparently love New York.
Maybe because Olympus is here? Not that Percy is meant to know that either.
Anyway, he needs to avoid the monsters, so he sits up and makes sure no more weird gifts have been left while he was asleep. He switches parks when that happens.
The one-eyed man is gone before Percy makes it out of the park. So now he needs to work out where he’s actually going today.
Percy doesn’t own a watch, but based on the stores that are opening and the movement in the streets, if he leaves now, he should get to his school on time.
There’s no point in going back to the apartment. Gabe will be there, sleeping off a hangover. The smallest noise from Percy will wake him, and then Percy won’t be able to go to school at all.
He doesn’t like school much. That’s okay, though. Gabe isn’t there, and that’s good enough for him.
His teachers don’t know what to do with Percy.
He’s only in second grade, and this is his fifth school. One school kicked him out for the fire thing. The other schools got frustrated with his skipping tests and not answering questions.
At first, they would try to talk to Gabe and Sally. Then, at some point, something would happen, like with the last school, or the school would lose patience with Gabe and Sally, and Percy would have to change schools. Yet again.
According to the office ladies at his previous schools, if Percy missed too much school, they’d call the cops on him.
Sadly, their auras say they’re telling the truth. Personally, he thinks that’s a total waste of everyone’s time. The cops’ll only take him back to Gabe. It doesn’t fix anything.
Percy hasn’t been to school for a few days, not since Sally left. He doesn’t have a backpack or anything, but the school’s used to that.
He thinks today is Wednesday? This school has art on Wednesdays. Percy really likes drawing. Especially with coloured pencils.
He ducks into the school and reaches his classroom right as the bell rings. The other kids line up, and Percy joins the end of the line. He doesn’t know the name of anyone here. There’s no point in trying to make friends, and even if he tries, it won’t work.
It’s the worst part of his dreams. When he’s awake, Percy knows he is seven years old, and, as far as anyone else is aware, he has only experienced seven years of life.
Time moves differently in his dreams.
He’s followed Odysseus every moment of his ten-year journey. Percy has experienced the lives of countless heroes. He can understand and speak languages he has never heard spoken in his waking life.
Then there are the times he goes away in his head.
Time moves differently there too. Maybe Percy would feel more like a child if he stayed in the real world? Except when he’s awake, his mind jumps around, thinking so many things at once, and he experiences so much. Way more than he should.
He’s very certain that the other kids never feel like this.
Sometimes when he’s awake, Percy feels like a seven-year-old. Those are the times when he wants to yell and run around and play pretend and be like all the other kids in his class.
Except when he tries to spend time with them, he will eventually do something or say something, and it’s wrong, wrong, wrong. Then, they don’t want to be friends with Percy anymore.
Sometimes their parents get involved. They talk about Percy being violent or inappropriate, and Percy has no idea what exactly he said that upset them so much. He just knows it was wrong. Again.
Percy doesn’t try anymore. He doesn’t learn their names. He doesn’t spend time with them. Percy isn’t invited to birthday parties or games of tag in the playground. Sometimes, he thinks he lives more in the Greek world than he does in the real world.
Percy isn’t Greek. He isn’t a hero or a god. He’s only Percy, and he doesn’t fit.
His teacher greets the kids one by one and sends them into the classroom, and Percy tries to be invisible and sneak past her. He really isn’t in the mood for her questions.
She sees him anyway and reaches towards him. Her hand stops and falls to the side when he flinches away.
Her smile is a bit too strained to be real. “Percy! We’ve missed you this week. You’re looking pretty rough, though. Is everything okay at home?”
Yay, she’s asking those questions again.
He smiles and nods, saying all the right things. Percy tells his teacher that he’s really worried about the little girl with dark hair. She’s standing across the street and is too scared to come to class.
He’s only seen the girl in his mind, but Percy knows she’s there.
It works too.
His teacher calls someone to keep an eye on her class, and off she goes to fix things for someone who is not him.
Unlike Percy, his teacher actually can make things all better for the scared girl across the street. The knowing says that this will help the girl a lot. It says that now Percy’s told his teacher, she’ll be taken to the hospital, and that little girl is gonna grow up. Her life won’t end tonight.
And Percy is finally free to slump into his own seat at the back of the room.
The teacher from next door comes in and hands out colouring sheets and pencils. She goes on about colouring quietly while Mrs What’s-Her-Name deals with an emergency.
Percy doesn’t care. He has coloured pencils and paper, and he suddenly, desperately, needs to draw Medusa in the garden talking to Poseidon.
Ignoring the printed outline all the other kids are colouring, he flips the paper over.
On the blank side of the colouring sheet, his dream comes to life.
He carefully sketches the exhausted droop of her shoulders. The twining, hissing snakes. The despair in her eyes and her deep exhaustion.
Poseidon’s tilted head, his sharp gaze locked on her. His broad shoulders and towering figure making Medusa’s defeated slump look even smaller. Percy loses himself in the drawing taking shape. He sorts through the pencils, trying to recreate the exact shade of Poseidon’s eyes.
The world is reduced to the cool, smooth surface of the pencil in his hand and the sharp, waxy smell of the colour smearing on the paper.
He stops when he hears the sharp gasp behind him.
Oops.
Percy feels his teacher’s horror, and for a moment, he’s confused. Then, he looks back at the paper and realises that, to his teacher, this is a drawing of something else entirely.
It is a drawing of a big, scary man towering over a small, frightened woman who believes she is about to die at his hands.
Percy’s about to get expelled again, isn’t he?
His teacher crouches down beside him. Oh no. That’s even worse.
He can’t dodge her hand this time when she places it on his arm. The knowing shows him Mrs What’s-Her-Name in a hospital early next year, a baby on her chest. A girl.
The echo in her aura means that she already has the baby inside her. She doesn’t know she’s going to have a baby.
With the image taking over his vision, she murmurs for his ears alone, “Percy, I think we need to have a little chat. Why don’t we go to the office?”
He sighs heavily, the sound full of exhaustion. Before she can steal it, Percy carefully folds his drawing up and shoves it in his pocket, glaring at her the entire time.
She gives him another pinched look and tells him to follow her.
The heat of new ghost bruises spreads over his body, and ghost hands clamp down on his wrists. Body odour and stale beer burn his nose.
The feelings are sharp. Something he cannot name is saying that this time it will be awful. Worse than anything that’s happened before.
The knowing is blazing like the lights on a cop car, overwhelming everything else.
Percy numbly follows Mrs What’s-Her-Name, not paying attention as she again asks the teacher next door to watch her class, sounding harried and stressed. Percy has no sympathy to spare for her right now.
He’s not really present when she leads him to the office, sits him down, and makes a phone call.
The images flash in front of him. They’re more real than the office he sits in. A hand, the lighter, silent words, Sunshine Man in his chariot, the promise of you-are-safe/I-will-protect/I-care.
Not-real sensations build up on his body. Blood pools under his skin. Bones shatter in his ribs and his leg. Percy’s hand is being crushed, though it hasn’t happened yet.
An overwhelming pulse of pain in his temple. Bone cracks. The hot red throb in his head growing, growing, growing—
It all stops suddenly in a way that is not normal.
Percy understands what that means. He’s not sure he cares anymore.
Guess he won’t need to find somewhere to sleep this winter after all. He’s hoping the King of the Underworld isn’t as scary as he looks.
Percy doesn’t need his teacher to tell him that Gabe is coming. Ghost hands tighten over his wrists, becoming more and more real, clamping down so hard he thinks there’ll be actual bruises when he looks down.
Percy would like to go away now, he doesn’t need to be here for these conversations.
When he pulls at the glaring sunlight and thrashing waves inside him, it throbs like a siren. It refuses to let him hide in his dreams.
All he can see is the hand, the lighter, a blonde teenager, the gold chariot, and then the barest flash of Sunshine Man and a silver girl sitting together near tall white columns.
Then the hand, the lighter, and the liquid sun that burns with you-are-safe/I-promise/please-ask/I-will-come.
Percy is walking into the apartment. Gabe’s hand is harsh against his back.
Gabe is talking.
Percy hurts.
Sharp copper taste. Hot wetness on his skin. Bright, burning, blooming red. Everything is red.
Percy reaches deep inside himself.
The sun is too bright. The waves are too high. They won’t let him leave.
Everything hurts.
A flame burns. Words vibrate. The Sun God. Begging, pleading, sunshine.
He’s not sure what has happened, what is happening now, and what will happen in the future.
Threads weave and twine around him, cocooning him in another’s story. One thread dances close, full of promises of everything he ever wanted. Everything is red.
She is waiting for him. She needs him. He needs her.
He can’t leave her. Not now. Not before it has even begun.
It is all happening at once. The past, the now, the future. Overlapping and hurting and too much.
It hurts.
He’s too tired. This is too much.
It hurts too much.
He can’t take this anymore.
It needs to stop.
The hand. The lighter. The prayer.
Twisting threads strain around him, about to snap. Red burns in his eyes.
Percy gives in.
“Apollo? It hurts so much. Please. Make it stop.”
________________________
Artemis is watching him.
Apollo knows he won’t be able to hide things for much longer. That he’s kept this hidden for nearly four years is a miracle in itself. Apollo had been certain he’d have found the kid by now.
What is he meant to tell his sister?
‘Hey, so, there’s this random kid who has been spying on all of us, and I don’t know what to do because he’s a stronger prophet than I am!’
That will go over so well.
Apollo dearly wants to find this kid. He needs to find this kid. Once he finds him, he can protect him. He’ll be safe.
He is terrified of what will happen if someone else finds him first. Or if they realise how much power the kid has.
If the kid’s lucky, they’ll kill him. If he’s unlucky, they’ll try to turn him into a weapon, and there will be a war.
With Apollo leading the charge.
Or, perish the thought! If Father finds him first… Well, it doesn’t bear thinking about.
Apollo hadn’t known about any of that until after it was all over. When Uncle Poseidon came to him and explained why Apollo had lost his only remaining oracle.
After everything with his son, Apollo couldn’t bring himself to bless anyone else with the sight.
He couldn’t bear the idea of putting another of his children — or a random mortal — through that. Not again. He’d allowed his domain to shrink down to the Oracle of Delphi, and then he’d lost her too. Most believe he lost her when he refused to heal her in an apparent fit of petulance, but Apollo had lost her before he ever met her.
Apollo cannot risk that happening again. He’s never told Artemis what Uncle said about Father’s plans. What Apollo had discovered Father was doing, with him none the wiser.
Prophecy is Apollo’s domain. Artemis understands much, but not this. Maybe if the new prophet were a girl, he would have considered it.
Artemis is excellent at hunting monsters. At finding terrible things and making them pay.
While Apollo is the Protector of Youth, Artemis’s domain is the Protection of Young Children. Prophets come into their abilities in their late teens, so they don’t fall under Artemis’s purview unless they’re a girl.
She protects girls with ferocity, and if the kid were a girl, well, Apollo would have told her straight away. She’d have joined the search, and his prophet would already be tucked away somewhere safe and sound.
When each of his prophets had taken their first breath as newborn infants, Apollo had immediately seen what they were. It was incomprehensible that one of his children could have hidden such power from him. Yet there is a new prophet who is not a newborn babe, and Apollo can’t find them.
Something else which should have been impossible.
So, when Apollo first realised there was a new prophet, he’d gone straight to the camp. While he’d seen no signs that Lee was a prophet, he was still the most likely candidate.
It definitely wasn’t Lee.
Next, Apollo had checked the rest of his children — including his immortal daughters who were sworn to the Hunt — and it wasn’t any of them either.
That’s when he started worrying.
Apollo went through an extraordinarily humiliating, much too long list of everyone he’d had some fun with in the past twenty-five years. Just in case a child was born by more mundane means and he’d missed it entirely.
And okay. Yes. He’d found a kid he’d missed.
Gracie’s a lovely girl, and her mother adores her. Actually, her mother was intensely pissed that Apollo had found her and the kid at all. Apollo couldn’t exactly tell her he’s a god and you can’t hide from gods.
Especially since she’s a scientist to the bone and had no interest in anything she couldn’t understand through a microscope. Absolute genius though, definitely going to come up with several miracle cures in the next few decades. How could Apollo resist?
Naturally, she’s now convinced he’s a psychopathic stalker. After some extensive negotiation, it was agreed that all future contact would go through his sister.
Artemis was not thrilled about being introduced as ‘Aunty Tammy’, but Apollo’s done worse, it’s fine.
Gracie also isn’t the prophet. Too young for one. Apollo found her when she was five, and she’s eight now.
He’d become so desperate that he’d checked Halcyon in his prison a second time.
Then his frustration had hit boiling point, and he’d enacted a plan he’d dreamed up years ago. It was so very accommodating of Father to move Halcyon and his prison to their new country when Olympus moved from London to New York.
Father even gave Apollo the necessary key.
If Father hadn’t broken his vow, Apollo wouldn’t have been able to free Halcyon. Yet with Thalia Grace roaming the country with May Castellan’s too-gifted son, Apollo had the perfect opportunity to spring the trap and free Halcyon.
Though Apollo doubts that Halcyon considered it to be freedom. Death is still a release when compared to an eternity in that festering trap of Father’s. He’d already spent nearly a century there.
Future sight is a catastrophic power. They have the ability to see whatever they want to see, with no understanding of the greater picture. A child with future sight has unfiltered access to the future with no ability to distinguish future paths that are ordained by the Fates and future paths that are the result of happenstance.
When Apollo gifts a mortal with the sight, he has control of what they see. They only ever see paths that they can safely change, and are never shown the Fates’ ordained paths. There is no risk.
In contrast, each and every time a person with future sight speaks of the future, they put the entire tapestry at risk. The very literal fabric of reality can be torn if they speak the wrong words.
Halcyon only had future sight. He wasn’t the new prophet.
Last year, Apollo had checked the Roman camp. He’s desperately hoping Father never finds out. The entire Council had agreed the gods would keep their distance.
It was worth the risk if only to be certain the prophet wasn’t there.
Which he wasn’t.
Only the old augur with the slightest touch of sight that Apollo had already been aware of, and a young descendant of Apollo’s last Roman son with an oddly potent form of haruspicy. He could see the touch of Egeria’s power on him as well.
Which is something that Apollo completely forgot to tell Artemis about. Egeria is one of hers, after all. Never mind that now. There were no prophets at the Roman camp.
So the only clues Apollo has available to him all come from when this new prophet is actively using their sight.
Which means he still really doesn’t know all that much about his new baby prophet.
Apollo’s relatively certain they’re a boy, or male-identifying? The vibe Apollo gets from the kid is that he’s a him.
Young too.
Most prophets don’t start experiencing visions until their late teens. This kid is definitely younger. He’s unsure how much younger. Probably mid-teens?
And he may have had some training already as well?
The prophet is incredibly deliberate in his movements, and he shields his presence to an insane degree. Every time, he disappears almost as soon as Apollo sees him, leaving behind a faint impression of a sunny day at the beach.
Apollo can’t identify whether it comes from the kid himself or from the use of his sight. Prophecy was Poseidon’s domain before it was Apollo’s.
Recently, the kid’s mental state has changed. It feels unhealthy. Dark and shadowed.
Apollo is dearly hoping that he’s mistaken.
Yet there’s been a couple of times in the last few months where the kid hasn’t vanished immediately and, well, the vibes were of the ‘I want to lie down and never get up again’ variety. Like he’s at the point of giving up entirely, and it’s completely freaking Apollo out.
The idea of a prophet feeling like that makes his skin crawl. Born prophets are incredibly rare, and each of them was one of Apollo’s own children. It has been two millennia since the last prophet was born.
Ever since he first realised something was awry with this new prophet, Apollo has started mentally shouting at the kid, begging him to reach out.
He focuses on the sense of the sunny beach and sends images and impressions. The same ones again and again. Pray, ask for help. I will keep you safe. I will protect you. I promise, just ask. Say my name and I will come.
All he needs is a single solid contact, and Apollo will go to him. He has yet to meet the kid, but for him to have a gift that strong, Apollo will go to war against Zeus himself if it means protecting this new prophet.
Except he can’t find him.
Which means the kid has never so much as spoken Apollo’s name out loud, or thought it with intention. If he had, Apollo would have heard him.
Any god would have heard the kid if he spoke their name, there’s too much power in him for that not to be the case.
Except the kid hasn’t.
So he’s sitting here in his temple, trying to look as laid back, relaxed and uncaring as possible.
The sun chariot’s running on autopilot, so Apollo has all the time in the world to laze about and think up new poems. Absolutely nothing is stressing him.
Nope.
And all this while Artemis watches him as if he’s the Hunt’s next prey.
Apollo tells her his latest haiku. She doesn’t break.
Perhaps it would be better to leave?
Apollo claps his hands and jumps to his feet.
That’s when he hears it.
‘Apollo? It hurts so much. Please. Make it stop.’
No, that is—No!
Apollo can hear Artemis demanding what’s wrong. Apollo is frozen.
He stands there, unable to process everything he had seen when the kid spoke.
Apollo is a god, nothing should throw him off.
This does.
This isn’t a kid. This is a baby.
A baby who is about to die if Apollo doesn’t go to him right now.
Apollo flashes away from Artemis mid-question, her hands grasping at air.
He arrives inside a filthy apartment.
There’s a tiny, blood-soaked child curled in a ball.
A man looms over him, his leg extending in a hard kick.
A heavy steel-toed boot is aimed at the child’s head.
It never connects.
With a thought, Apollo sends the man elsewhere. He’s not sure where. He’ll live, anyway. For now.
Apollo first needs to learn exactly how much pain to inflict before he allows him the kindness of death. He blazes with fury, but he pushes the anger down and locks it away.
This is not how he wanted to meet his new prophet.
He’d been planning to give the child time to come to trust him. To help him move past his fear before Apollo started acting too godly or intimidating.
Except this child is actively bleeding, he is terrified and in pain, and he is a baby.
Apollo pushes as much warm sunny peace, safety and protection into his aura as he can. He stretches his hand out and places it on the kid’s head as the kid hits out at him.
The moment his hand touches the kid’s forehead, Apollo learns something about the identity of the kid’s divine parent that he really did not want to know.
It doesn’t matter. Other things are more important right now.
The injuries are worse than he initially thought, and they go back years.
Apollo’s fury blazes hotter.
He shoves the burning anger aside — as well as the latest revelation — and focuses instead on healing the child’s injuries. He stops the bleeding, setting and healing bones, and brushing away the worst of the dehydration and malnutrition.
Apollo could do more.
He could get the kid clean and change him into new clothes with a snap of his fingers.
None of that will make up for how poorly this child will respond to such invasive action. Apollo has already touched him without his consent, and outside of actively life-threatening situations, he can allow the kid his dignity in this.
The kid is still hitting him, jerking himself upright and completely focused on getting Apollo away from him. There’s an impressive amount of force behind the blows, not that he can injure a god.
Apollo pulls his hand back and, with quick decisive steps, takes himself to the opposite side of the room. Crouching down, he makes himself as small and nonthreatening as he can, careful to give the kid a clear line of sight to both doors.
The kid stares at him blankly, and Apollo is gaping back, completely dumbstruck.
Because what the ever-loving fuck?
Since when did Poseidon have a demigod son!?
And why is he a prophet?!
How is he a prophet?!
Forcefully pushing those horrifying realisations to the side, Apollo takes a deep breath.
He smiles brightly and says, “Hi! I’m Apollo, I’m so glad to finally meet you. You’re my new prophet!”
