Archive of Our Own ^beta

“Gods, I am exhausted” Annnabeth groans as she flops onto the bed.

“You know for someone with all that training you’d think Camp Half-Blood Halloween wouldn’t be so tiring.” Percy comments.

“Not all of us have your stamina, smart ass” Annabeth grumbles into the pillow. Pushing himself off the door frame Percy walks over to Annabeth. “I thought you liked my stamina?” He whispers into her ear.

Only to get hit with a pillow in return.

Dramatically sprawled across the floor he moans, “My girlfriend, the love of my life, has hit me with my own pillow, so broken is my heart.”

“You want a kiss to make it better seaweed brain?” Annabeth teases as she rolls over to look at him. Suddenly a bright flash lights up Cabin 3.

“Perseus… and Annabeth” Poseidon greets. “You told me you would be going to be at the ceremony tonight. To celebrate Atlantis finally being rebuilt, Son.”

“No, I told you I would be going if I didn’t have anything important going on.” Percy replies.

“And seducing a daughter of Athena in my cabin is more important than Atlantis?!” Poseidon grits out.

“No, the Camp Halloween celebration was tonight.” Percy says, “And yes that is more important to me.”

“You would abandon your people for some childish holiday? One that isn’t even Grecian.” Poseidon accuses.

“Fuck no. This camp is my people.” Percy says, rolling his shoulders and standing up. “I’ve read these kids bedtime stories and gone to school meetings. I’ve shown them what actual love looks like, because you and every other god seems incapable of doing it. And in return they give me purpose and support. You know, like a family is supposed to?” Percy says shooting him a thin-lipped smile and a slight New York accent slipping in. “And if you ask me to pick between spending time with my kids or going to celebrate some city I’ve never been welcomed in, you bet your ass I’m picking my family every time.”

“I am your father!” Poseidon exclaims, a briny smell fills the air and the waves outside crash against the shore.

“A pretty miserable one at that” Annabeth asserts from her spot perched on the bed, legs crossed. “And I would know what that looks like from experience.” Standing up Annabeth marches over to Poseidon. “You didn’t claim him until you needed someone to bail you out. You weren’t there when he thought his mom was gone or when he almost killed himself trying to get stronger after Zoë died.” Annabeth yells, her voice getting louder and tears welling up in her eyes.

“I prayed to you EVERY DAY for EIGHT MONTHS trying to find the son that you claim to care about, and you gave me NOTHING. You didn’t comfort Sally, or feed Mrs. O’Leary, or tell the campers that he isn’t dead.” Taking a deep breathe Annabeth collects herself and shoots Poseidon a cold glare. “You want to claim him as your son, but you've done fuck all. The only time you acted anything like a parent was when you showed up to his fifteenth birthday party for 5 minutes.”

“I will not be ridiculed by a daughter of Athena in my own cabin, and surely not about my own son!!” Poseidon roars.

“Annabeth is much more than a daughter of Athena and you’d do well to remember that.” Percy states, the temperature in the cabin drops as soon as Percy speaks, the ocean outside stilling instantly. With every breathe Poseidon takes a visible cloud comes out, yet the two demigods seem unaffected. “And she’s right, as usual. You left mom to work two jobs at once just to survive, sure you gave her the choice of becoming your little mortal plaything in a distant Atlantean palace, but that’s no real choice.”

The temperature plummets further and frost starts to grow on the floor, Percy’s left eye is alight with a spectacular blue, better fitted for Zeus’ skies than someone of the sea. While his right eye glows with a noxious green, like a miniature sun. And through it all Annabeth seems unfazed and unaffected by the icebox that was once Cabin 3.

“I learned to control ice when I was 7, mom couldn’t afford the heating bill. Gabe, the abusive dick you left us with, abandoned us. At 7 years old I saved my mother from frostbite in an icy New York apartment after she spent all day outside as a crossing guard, just so we’d be able to afford groceries. Not once have you ever showed that level of concern or love for me."
"I was content with that for a while, but now? Now that I have people to look after? Kids to protect and cherish and love. Fuck no I’m not. I’ve been stabbed, burnt, scarred, and broken countless times. And I’d do it again if it meant protecting my people.” Percy states. “But you don’t care. All the myths talk about you being overprotective, but you looked at me and mom, and you abandoned us. Then eleven years later you did it again, you looked at a 12-year-old boy who just lost his mother and used him because you didn’t want to talk to your brothers.”

“I mean what’s even the point in having a kid if you’re just gonna abandon them. Triton get tired of running errands so you had me?”

“I am not going to feel guilty about siring you Perseus” Poseidon chatters out angrily. Divine energy emanates from him, slightly warming the surrounding area and stopping his shivering.

“You already do! Or did you forget when we first met and you apologized for having me?” Percy responds, New York accent dialed up to 11, His left eye returns to its normal sea green color, pulsing slowly with light. While the glow of his right eye only seems to grow. Annabeth watches the encounter, invested but making no moves to say anything else. “I could’ve lived with all of that though, I could’ve remained content if it wasn’t for the oath.” Percy says. “I couldn’t imagine bringing my kids harm, I’ve gutted motherfuckers for even saying their name. But you set me up to die so easily.”

“You knew what the prophecy said, and you still had a kid, ‘Single choice shall end his days’ remember? You still had a kid knowing they’d die early because of a prophecy.”

“There was no guarantee the prophecy would’ve been about you.” Poseidon whispered, eyes locked on the floor, shoulders slumped. “Zeus’ girl was still alive at the time.”

“You still broke your oath” Percy hisses, his singular acidic green eye glowing so bright it melts the frost on the floor, soaking everything in the cabin. “You know what kind of consequences breaking an oath on the Styx brings. And yet you did it.” A layer of Mist seems to slowly lift from Percy’s body. Scales cover his neck and arms, his eyes dilate rapidly, and for the first time Poseidon sees his son as he is, no disguises. Some type of acidic green poison drips from Percy’s barred claws and teeth, burning holes through the floor.

“Thalia was struck down by the furies and kept in that hellish tree for 6 years. For no crime other than being the child of a broken oath. The sins of the father passed to the daughter.” Circling Poseidon like a serpent Percy whispers in his ear. “You could’ve learned from it, you could’ve gone to the shores of her river and repented. You could’ve taken whatever punishment the Lady Styx wished upon you for a broken oath and saved me. Instead, you hid, and your sins fell to me.” A smell-like blood and sulfur burns Poseidon’s nose and he hears screams echoing from somewhere, yet the daughter of Athena seems not hear them.

“Tell me FATHER, do you know what it's like to bathe in the Styx? To have your body and mind melted into nothingness until you rebuild yourself, through sheer power of will and devotion?” Percy asks, head cocked to the side.

Suffocating from the fumes of Percy’s poison, Poseidon falls to his knees. Even slumped in pain, eyes watering, he can’t escape the furious glow of his son’s eye, every part of his vision is encompassed by it, the entire cabin alit with a radioactive green haze. Every breath he takes is stained by that awful smell, and the screaming just seems to get louder and louder, yet the girl is still unaffected.

“For a normal mortal it is agonizing, but for me the Lady of the River needed her pound of flesh. I was made to feel the weight of the oath YOU broke, and when I rebuilt myself, she kept a part of me. You spoke of the difficulties you faced in your undersea war.”
Percy crouches down to match Poseidon’s level as the cloud of fumes seems to get stronger. Wheezing for breath, he has no choice but to stare at his son’s eye, a glowing green orb filled with dashed hopes and dreams. The longer he stares the louder the screams seem to get, smashing through his brain like the elder cyclopes' hammer smashes on hot steel. “How do you think I felt leading an army with one eye while the other was filled with water from the merciless river of mortality.”

Pushing away from him Percy stands. “You failed to protect me when I was a demigod, you failed to protect me when I was a child, and you failed to protect me before I was even born. It’s pathetic how the Lady of the River has been a better patron and parent than you, when given the right to take my soul, she instead took only an eye and made me stronger. When she could’ve abandoned me, she protected me and Annabeth in the pit. In return I need only help enforce her oaths. Something I already did after the reward ceremony for defeating Kronos. Somehow one of the five rivers of the underworld is a better parent than the gods who run the world.”

“I suggest you take your leave Poseidon. You and the other Olympians still have debts owed to the river, should any of you ever seek me out, you will end up upon her shores begging for mercy, and those cries will fall upon deaf ears the same way my cries for a father did.”