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The sun is beginning to set under the Acropolis when the man and woman meet in the Erechtheum.
They approach each other slowly, nodding in greeting. Both hold matching amphoras in their arms.
“I suppose I should have expected to see you here,” Athena finally says, when there are only a few feet left between them.
Poseidon tilts his head thoughtfully, and holds up his free hand as though in truce. “It seemed most appropriate.” Athena’s gray eyes bore into the amphora in his arms. It’s beautifully and intricately made, depicting the triumphs of a life well lived.
A hero’s life.
“I thought you would return him to the sea,” she says, and Poseidon smiles sadly.
“Who says I will not?” A trident materializes in his free hand, and he strikes it once against the stone, reawakening the long forgotten well. Water shoots up through the cracks in the floor, and Athena frowns as she watches him raise his hand again, calming the unnatural sea he has brought forth.
“Do not forget, this is Athens, Uncle,” Athena says sharply, before hugging the vase in her arms closer to herself and marching west toward the Pandroseion.
Toward the setting sun.
Poseidon follows behind her soundlessly, stopping abruptly when they both reach the courtyard. Athena takes a deep breath before reaching out one arm, keeping the other to cradle the amphora to her chest like a child. Before them, an olive tree takes root and begins to grow. It’s taller than both of them combined by the time Athena allows her hand fall.
Wordlessly, Poseidon closes his eyes and directs the water from his well toward the courtyard and the tree, slaking the roots and dampening the ground surrounding them. When he opens his eyes, he finds Athena already kneeling on the ground, a small spade in her hand.
She flicks her head as though to say, “C’mon, then.” No thought is spared to the mud now staining her once white peplos.
Not one to be outdone by his haughty niece, Poseidon summons his own small spade and gets to his knees, gently setting his amphora upright on the stones, standing next to its match.
The vases aren’t large, and the task is finished quickly enough. In a moment of indecision, Poseidon and Athena stare each other hard in the eye before tearing down the wall between the two holes they dug, making it one.
“We must say something,” Poseidon says, hugging the amphora tightly to his chest. Athena looks beyond the temple to the dusk settling over the Acropolis and sighs.
“She was a good and loyal daughter. Intelligent, clever, and kind. The only times she ever disobeyed me were because of your ridiculous son.”
On any other day, Poseidon wouldn’t stand for such a slight. But he hears his niece’s voice crack, hears the fondness and heartbreak of a mother mourning her favored child, and does not fight back.
After all, today he is but a father doing the same.
“He was a wild and impertinent son, whose goodness of heart cannot be matched. I love him desperately,” Poseidon admits quietly, and feels tears slowly fall down his face, settling in his dark beard.
Athena, to his everlasting shock, reaches out and quickly squeezes his hand.
Before he’s even comprehended what has occurred, Athena kneels in the mud once again, and raises the amphora to her lips.
“Goodbye my dearest, Annabeth. You will always have my love.” Athena reaches into a pouch at her side and pulls out a familiar leather cord. She ties it tightly around one of the vase’s handles before placing the amphora gently in the hole with slightly shaking hands.
With another sad smile to his niece, Poseidon pulls Percy’s necklace out of his pocket and does the same.
The shine of the golden wedding ring on the cord nearly blinds him as it winks in the rapidly setting sun.
“It is time to rest now, my son,” Poseidon finally whispers, kneeling in the mud and staring at the clay pot that holds the ashy, earthly remnants of his once beautiful child. “You have done the world proud, Perseus. You have done me proud. It is an honor to be your father.”
And he, too, kisses the amphora and lays his son rest next to his love.
Poseidon stands and swipes a hand over his face. Athena reaches out, and the once open and muddy hole is covered once again, and pink flowers grow in the wake.
“Lotuses?” Poseidon questions, and Athena smiles wryly.
“They’ve made me sentimental, Uncle. A reminder of our children’s first adventure together as they undertake their last.”
“The rites have already been said. They’ve been judged. My brother assures me they are together in Elysium.” Poseidon chuckles. “Some days it still shocks me, that your child and mine could love one another so much.”
Athena rolls her eyes. “Aphrodite has always appreciated irony.”
“She must weep now, for the world’s loss of such love.”
“She weeps with joy. They died together, and will never be parted again. This is a happy ending, Poseidon.”
Poseidon reaches into his pocket and grips the pen there tightly. “Happy for all but us.”
Athena swallows thickly. “Happy for all but us.”
The man and the woman sit together on the stone floor of the Erechtheum, millennia after their first encounter on that very spot. They listen to the water flow below them, watch the olive branches sway in the wind as night settles, and remember their heroes, their children, the only two who could ever bring such peace between them.
“He called her Wise Girl.”
“She called him Seaweed Brain.”
The constellations light up the sky above, and the man leans his head back and imagines the echo of familiar happy laughter below, far beyond where even his oceans can reach.