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Sometimes, Sally had problems accepting the life her son would have.
When she looked at the little boy, the one who just wanted to show her this amazing gift he made for her at school, the one who always tried to make her laugh when she was sad, she felt hate towards his father. She wanted him to have fun, to play, to laugh, to get a job, to marry, to get kids, and to die peacefully, without ever knowing what war was. Because of his father’s blood, that was never going to happen. Sally wished that she could’ve just used her brain and declined the God of Seas. She wished she had never even met him. She even wished that she had gone through with her abortion plans.
All so that her baby boy wouldn’t have to go through this life. The life she knew he would have.
The life of a soldier.
~Ω~
The first time Paul met an underage adult, it was 8:30, right after class had started. The man was just one of his many students, and he hadn’t paid any attention to him. Later, he could vaguely remember the faraway gaze he had had, staring out of the window, not paying any attention.
As the year went by, he started noticing him.
He noticed the way he always wore old clothes, never seemed to be properly washed and stuffed himself at school lunches. Once, he caught him making a list of the groceries in class, and doodling expensive food in his notebook.
After Leon forgot his books for the seventh time this month, Paul had enough. He kept the boy after class and asked him what was wrong.
He denied anything was, of course. Kept insisting everything was fine. Paul didn’t buy it for a second. After about half an hour, he told Leon that he was going to stay here until he told him exactly what was going on.
After another fifteen minutes, the boy broke.
In a panicky voice, the boy told him about his mother’s sickness, the way she constantly forgot everything, until the point where she forgot who he was, and naturally, didn’t care for him. He confessed that he had been balancing two jobs and school in an attempt to pay the bills and buy food. He didn’t have any time to do the housekeeping, so that everything was permanently filthy.
The boy tried to convince Paul that it was okay, that he could handle it, that there was no need to call social services. He didn’t want to be separated from his mother and, as he said, she needed him. Without him, she’d die within a week.
During the conversation, Paul’s image of a child started fading, only to be replaced with the picture of an adult.
He didn’t listen to Leon, of course, and called social services. Years later, a young man showed up at his doorstep, thanking him for his help.
Paul couldn’t help but think that he hadn’t changed a bit.
~Ω~
By the time Percy was ten, Sally knew he wouldn’t last much longer.
The amount of times Percy claimed to have seen a big, black dog and men with claws increased drastically, and while they did nothing more than stare at him, Sally knew what this meant. Gabe hadn’t been enough to protect him.
So, she started sending him away.
She knew that most of the satyrs resided in schools specifically designed to take troubled children, having knowledge of the fact that most of the demigods have troubled school lives. Sally desperately hoped that one of them would be able to pick up his scent, and take him to Camp Half-Blood.
Why she didn’t just take him herself?
She couldn’t get herself to.
Every time she even thought about it, she felt sick, like she’d have to throw up very soon. She couldn’t. She just couldn’t.
You could say that she couldn’t do it because she was afraid of what would happen to Percy. She knew that the Camp, despite what many demigods seemed to think, wasn’t about protecting them. It was about training them to become soldiers. She didn’t want her son to become a soldier. She didn’t want him to die.
But deep down, she knew that wasn’t it.
It was because she was selfish.
Percy might try to disagree with her on that, but really, she was. She wanted to keep him safe, but for all the wrong reasons. She didn’t want him to be safe so that he could be happy. If that was the reason, she would’ve sent him to Camp Half-Blood long ago, if only because he could rest there (for as long as it lasted, anyway).
No, she wanted him to be safe because she couldn’t stand to be lonely.
She had been lonely for as long as she could remember. No parents, and her uncle was nothing to speak of. Even with Poseidon, she knew that it wouldn’t last, and developed a small sense of loneliness underneath the love because of it. After her baby was born, she felt fulfilled for the first time ever. She loved him. She really, really did.
But she was selfish.
Which is why she could only hope for a satyr to do the job she never could.
~Ω~
By the time Paul met Sally, he had almost forgotten about the young adult. Sure, in the back of his head he was wary of other kids like him, but largely, he didn’t think about it.
He had never been in love before. Sure, he had had girlfriends, but he had never been in love. He didn’t know if he loved it or despised it.
They had met in a creative writing class, Sally wanting to become a writer, Paul wanting to crick up his knowledge of it. After being paired together during the first assignment, it went fast.
Before he knew it, they were in a relationship and he was lying upon her couch while she was getting their cookies out of the oven. His eyes fell on a picture that hang on the wall. The photo showed a young boy, probably nine or so, sleeping peacefully, half on the couch, half on the ground. There was another one next to it, showing the same boy, only older, maybe thirteen, holding a bag of blue sweets.
‘Who is that?’ He asked Sally, as soon as she came back.
‘My son, Percy,’ she said, smiling proudly.
‘You have a son?’
‘Yes.’
‘Where is he, now? I’d love to meet him.’
‘Oh, he’s just, erm, out camping with a few friends.’
Paul couldn’t help but feel a bit worried by the strain in Sally’s smile.
~Ω~
Eventually, a satyr found her boy. He didn’t bring him to Camp. He got Chiron to observe him.
Sally didn’t know what was worse. The fact that he wasn’t brought to safety immediately, or her apparent death.
She didn’t remember much, but she knew what happened. When Hades released her, she was scared out of her mind. There was no way of knowing that her boy was safe, and he most likely wasn’t.
When he returned home, she could’ve cried. She thought she did, but couldn’t be sure.
Her memory was too busy noticing the sword in his hand, the fatigue in his eyes, the defensive stance.
Her little boy had changed into a soldier.
~Ω~
Meeting Percy was like having a flashback.
When he first saw him, the déja vú nearly took over. He was supposed to see a rebellious teenager, a troublemaker, a young delinquent. Or he was supposed to see Sally’s son, her angel, a misunderstood boy.
Either way, he wasn’t supposed to see a tired, worn out, defensive adult. He wasn’t supposed to see a boy with grey hair (how did he get that?), worried lines on his forehead and a reaction time that was faster than that of a dog who smelled beef.
After the obligatory chat, he pulled Sally aside.
‘What is wrong with Percy?’
Sally looked nervous. ‘What do you mean?’
‘He looks... old.’
In that second, Sally aged ten years.
That’s when it occurred to him that adults could age too fast, too.
~Ω~
Through the years, Sally saw her boy age.
Every year seemed to be ten, and after two and a half years, Percy even got grey hair. Sure, it may have been from holding up the sky, but that didn’t matter to Sally. To her, it was a sign of fatigue.
At the same time, she also saw the smiles increase, the happiness whenever he talked about his friends, the liveliness that never seemed to have been in him before. She knew that he was happy, that he was glad to finally have friends, but that didn’t stop her from worrying.
It was all going too smoothly.
Yes, he had been on a number of quests, but nothing life changing. Bianca’s death came the closest to the life of a child soldier than anything. Kronos was rising, for Zeus sake, it should be more dangerous.
Then, during Percy’s third summer in Camp Half-Blood, her prophecy finally was fulfilled.
When her boy came home, nearly crying, and told her about the battle, she almost cried herself. Percy tried smiling, but he failed. He looked more tired than ever before.
Sally hugged him, and tried to convince herself that some people actually liked fighting.
~Ω~
They told him after he had seen Percy slaughtering a young lady.
The lady had been holding a bag full of groceries when Percy killed her with his baseball bat. Paul stared at him in shock.
‘Per... Percy?’
Percy had turned around faster than he thought was humanly possible. For a moment they stared at each other, before his stepson snapped out of it and ran a hand through his hair.
‘So, you saw, huh?’
Paul opened his mouth and closed his mouth, failing to utter any words. Percy smiled tiredly.
‘Whatever you think you just saw, it’s not what actually happened.’
That was when Paul finally found his voice.
‘So you didn’t just kill an old lady with a baseball bat?’
‘No.’
Percy extended the bat towards him. ‘Hold this.’
Paul did as he was told, despite every fiber of his being screaming at him to run away.
‘Watch.’
Percy touched the tip of the bat with what appeared to be a pen cap. Before his eyes, the bat changed into a pen. Paul’s hands shook and he dropped it, stumbling backwards. This couldn’t be true.
‘Wha-?’
And with that, his whole world shattered.
After Percy practically carried him back to their apartment, he and Sally introduced him to Percy’s world. A world in which Gods existed, monsters were out to kill you, and an Evil Overlord (Kronos, King of the Titans, as some called him) was out to take over the world.
Percy laid the pen before it, and uncapped it. Again, it morphed into a bat.
‘This is Riptide. It’s not actually a baseball bat, but a sword. It returns to my pocket, no matter what. Kind of awesome, really. Also very useful, because I’m a master in losing pens.’
After everything was over and done with, and they were all sleeping peacefully, he suddenly realized that this must be why Percy looked so old.
~Ω~
When Percy and Nico came to ask for her blessing, she didn’t see her child, her little, misunderstood boy.
She saw a fearless, determined warrior.
Knowing there was no going back, she gave them her blessing.
It wasn’t like anything had changed, really. Her boy had been a warrior for a long time now.
~Ω~
Paul didn’t know when he realized how wrong this all was.
Maybe it was when he woke up in the middle of the Battle for Manhattan, and saw a girl slay something that appeared to be an middle-aged man with a gun. She looked barely thirteen.
Maybe it was when Percy disappeared, and Annabeth showed up at their apartment with bags under her eyes to tell them. Then immediately continued searching.
Maybe it was after the Second Giant War, after he saw Percy break. Heard how he screamed at night, saw how he sometimes abruptly stopped moving, found him at school, in the hallway, hands pressed against his ears, mumbling to himself. After seeing him jump at the slightest noise, walking in on him zapping through the channels at three in the morning.
But somewhere along the line, he realized that he was dealing with something worse than an underage adult. He just didn’t know what, until they were doing a campaign with Goode. Raise money for charity. Charity: War Child.
An ex-child soldier came to talk to class. Halfway through, Percy had to excuse himself. Paul wanted to go after him, but stopped himself. He had duties to the rest of the class.
At the end of the story, the ex-child soldier told them about the after effects.
‘I couldn’t sleep, I was constantly aware of my surrounding, constantly scanning them, afraid for a bomb to drop, or some gunman jumping out of the shadows. I got flashbacks, nightmares, panic attacks, and was finally diagnosed with PTSD.’
Paul’s mouth went dry. That all sounded eerily familiar.
When he let Jaz out, he shook him the hand. Jaz paused for a second.
‘You know... Paul, was it?’
Paul nodded.
‘That boy that walked out during the story, look out for him. Find out if something is wrong.’
It suddenly seemed a lot colder than it was.
‘Why? What would there be wrong?’
Jaz smiled tiredly. Paul had the feeling he had seen it before.
‘The kid had the same look in his eyes as many of the kids in the army.’
Paul stared at him for a long time, before nodding.
‘I know. He’s my stepson.’
Not long afterwards, he received a call from the nurse, saying that Percy was sick. Someone found him vomiting in the toilet.
Paul went to the nurses office and found Percy lying on the couch there. He was staring blankly at the ceiling, fists balled.
‘Percy?’
‘I’m a horrible person.’
Paul was startled. He hadn’t expected that.
‘You’re not.’
‘Yes, I am. I should’ve felt sorry for the guy, you know? But while he was talking, I simply couldn’t stop thinking: “It isn’t fair.”’.
‘Why? What isn’t fair?’ Paul was beginning to feel stupider by the day. Also, worried. Really, really worried.
‘He was saved. He gets support, a charity devoted to his kind, therapy, sympathy, understanding.’ Percy laughed. It sounded rough. ‘Hades, he was able to get away. And why? He shot down a few people. Yes, it’s horrible, but ninety nine percent of us demigods go through almost exactly the same shit, and we should just deal with it. No help, no sympathy, no getting away. We –’ He suddenly stopped himself. ‘Sorry, I shouldn’t have said that. It’s just...’ His voice trailed off, slowly dying out.
Paul sat down next to him and hugged him closely to his chest. ‘I know,’ he softly whispered. ‘I know.’
He understood. Percy had already fought two wars. He had been a child soldier, hell, still was, technically. He had PTSD. He needed therapy, but he would never be able to get it, because people would think he was crazy.
He understood.
It was unfair.
~Ω~
Sally and Paul could both agree on one thing: being the parent of a hero was hard. Sometimes it was almost unbearable.
But, seeing their child smile when they presented him with blue cookies, laugh as he swam through the sea in Montauk, and proudly display his school diploma, made it more than worth it.
And honestly?
They wouldn’t miss it for the world.