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Jason hated that he couldn’t drown.
He hated that as he sat at the bottom of the pool, he could breathe just as good, if not better than he could above water. Hated that his hair and clothes were dry despite being on the floor. Hated how pretty the sunlight filtered in and the quiet of it all. Hated that since his sudden recollection of his memories almost two years ago, his mind has been silent.
There was no pit in the back of his head, whispering and stoking the flames of his ever present anger. No festering rage that sat right next to his heart in his chest or the faint neon green in the corners of his vision. It was all gone. Nulled by whatever magic the water had over him.
He looked up to the surface. The water distorting their image before whoever it was jumped in.
Just like him, Percy couldn’t drown nor wet his clothes. The orange of his shirt was brighter, neon and bright beneath the chlorine waves, as were his eyes. It was more of a bio-luminescent glow that the absurdly brightness of the shirt—the shirt that was written in Greek and that he could read.
“How you doing?” Percy asked, crossing his legs as he sunk to the pool floor like Jason.
Truthfully? He wasn’t doing so hot.
First, he learned that his little brother was at the center of a war that, if lost, the world would revert back to the stone age. The gods would die and the titan of time and his buddies would take over and there would be nothing they could do to stop it. Then, he learned that not only was his brother the son of Poseidon, but that Jason himself was one too. Which would make a lot of sense considering all that’s happened to him since he’s retained his memories. And, oh! Not to mention that high probability that his little brother might just die in the fight to save the world.
Yeah. Jason wasn’t doing that good.
His head was swimming (no pun intended) with all that Percy had done since his death and whatever the future hold for them as two sons of the sea god. Of memories from when they were kids that, now in retrospect, made perfect sense.
For example, Jason’s first birthday with Bruce, he had asked to go to the Gotham Aquarium. They had been seeing ads plastered on billboards and on the sides of the public buses in the months leading up to august and how they had ‘renovated the tanks to include more fish and aquatic life.’ The two of them had been so enthralled with every aspect of the aquarium. Running up to each and every exhibit, asking all kinds of questions, despite them inherently knowing the answer and correcting the guide.
The most damnest thing about that visit, and every visit after, was that all the sea life was just as fascinated with them as they had been. Schools of fish would swim to the window, manta rays huddling up to their side of the shallow pool, jelly fish bouncing against the glass of their enclosure. Each creature desperately trying to get their attention, but it makes sense now that he thinks about it. They were technically princes of the sea, so they were tying to impress them to get on their father’s good graces.
“I don’t understand, Perce,” Jason confessed. “Our dad, our real dad, is one of the Olympian gods? More specifically, Poseidon? That doesn’t make sense.”
“It doesn’t, huh,” Percy said. “But that’s the truth. I didn’t believe it at first either, but, at least you already know who your parent was. I didn’t have that luxury.”
“Why’s that?”
Percy willed the water to move him next to Jason, the current gentle as it plopped him down on the ground. It was strange. Jason could see the flow of the water in front of him. The shape of it, the direction it was going—it was so convincingly tangible in his head that he almost forgot that it was water.
“When I first got to camp, I had no idea that Poseidon was our father,” he tugged the necklace out from beneath the collar of his shirt, “I was just one of the many undetermined children of the gods. They made me try everything to help figure out who I belonged to that when nothing worked, I was ready to accept the fact that I just would never know.”
“Never know? What do you mean?” Jason asked.
“Sometimes the gods forget their children and when they get to camp the kids don’t get claimed.” Percy took off the necklace. “I was one of the lucky ones who did, but if Poseidon hadn’t, I’d still be clueless. This first bead—” He separated it from the others, handing it over to Jason to look at. “Was from my first summer, when I got claimed. A hellhound nearly got me my first time playing capture the flag, but thankfully Chiron killed it before I got hurt. The camp figured out I could heal myself with water—which is a very neat trick—and from there a glowing trident appeared.”
He began to explain what each bead had meant. The quests in their entirety and the days of camp leading up to it and after. Each one sounding more fantastical than the last, as if Percy was the hero of his own book series. The people he’s meet, the monsters he’s fought—all of it sounded like something Jason would have loved to read back when he was a kid. But it wasn’t a story, this was real. His brother has the scars and the trauma to prove that this was something that Jason had to be careful with too. Another monster to watch his back against.
But with every monster Percy said he fought, Jason couldn’t seem to remember a time when he saw anything like that. He’s never seen a hellhound or a gorgon or a hydra. Never once seen a cyclops or a satyr or nymph.
“I think that’s because you’ve died, your scent is all jacked up or something, but there’s no way to confirm that,” Percy said. “Nico might know, or maybe Hades. But I think if he catches you in the underworld, he might not let you back out since you technically supposed to be dead.”
“Hm, yeah, I don’t wanna test that,” Jason chuckled and held up the sand dollar. “Where’d you get this?”
“Oh.” He wrapped his arms around his knees. “Father gave that to me for my birthday. Said I’d know when to use it before he left.”
“He…gave this to you?”
“Yeah, but I can tell you wanna ask if I talk to him often; No, I don’t.” Okay, so their father wasn’t playing favorites. He can’t tell if he’s happy about that.
“I’ve only interacted with him only three times. The first was after my first quest, the second was after the quest to save the goddess of the hunt. The gods tried to kill me because I was ‘getting too powerful,’ but father as well as the twin archers protested against it. Last time I saw him was the morning of my birthday, that’s when he gave me the sand dollar and told me that it’d know to use it, but I have no fuckin’ clue. Other than that, he stays in Atlantis and doesn’t really acknowledge me much.”
“If he’s a god, shouldn’t he be, I dunno, a better father?”
“You’d think, but not really. And that’s why Luke is going against the gods. He wants them to do better and to pay attention to their kids, but he’s too angry at them to try and make actual change. Kronos took advantage of his anger and now here we are.” Percy leaned his head back against the pool wall. “A war on the horizon and children training to be soldiers.”
Jason looked towards the other end of the pool, where the water was shallower and the light danced brighter in the lazy waves. He knew what they were getting into back when Bruce first took them in, when Batman decided to keep them as his sons. Jason knew at the age of ten that they were going to be more than just children, that they were going to be aware and conscious of the world in a way normal children aren’t.
Even if they had experience with that side of Gotham more intimately than they should have, growing up on the streets and homeless. Living in wooden crates and digging through trash for a meal. Listening from hushed whispers of gang members and goons about Batman and Robin.
And Jason knew what being Robin entailed when he was offered the position at the age of eleven. He knew that he was going to have to hurt people, bad people, mind you, but still hurt people nonetheless. He was going to be shot at, thrown about, punched, kicked, and tied up. Jason knew that’d he’d be going home with broken bones, sprained wrists, and cut up from the rogues.
He thought that if he did that, then Percy would never have to.
That maybe if he went out as Robin, helped Batman clean up the city, his little brother and every other kid wouldn’t have to worry about the rogues anymore. That they’d be able to play in the parks and streets without worry of Ivy taking control or Black Masks’ troopers speeding through. Percy wouldn’t have to take up a mask like him and Dick and Bruce, he’d be safe at home where the only way for him to get hurt was by his own actions.
And yet, somehow, Percy managed to find a way. He was out there, saving people—saving the world because his brother was too loyal. He didn’t have to go back to camp every year. Didn’t have to take up the responsibility of the prophecy and carry the weight of the world on his shoulders (literally in this case.) But he took the burden upon himself, wore every scar with pride and never took peace for granted, knowing what he does now about the prophecy that he’s never even read in its entirety.
“‘Cause I get where’s he’s coming from, sometimes I wish that father and the gods payed a little more attention to their kids,” Percy confessed. “But helping Kronos over throw them? That seems a little too much, a little over board.”
Jason chuckled dryly. He wanted to make a joke about that, how Percy himself went overboard when he tried to prove blue food existed. But his head just couldn’t seem to move past the fact that their father visited Percy on his birthday, that Percy knows what the man looks like and how he sounds. His brother told him that they look just like him, from the curls of their hair to the green of their eyes, but how was he supposed to believe it? How was he supposed to know if his brother was lying about it to him?
“You said father visited you on your birthday,” Percy looked at him, “why didn’t he—why hasn’t he visited me? Does he not like me or something?”
Percy opened his mouth and closed it, as if he didn’t know how to answer. “I-…” he started. “I asked father why he didn’t want to see you, he said…he said he felt guilty.” Guilty? Why would a god feel guilty? They were divine; mortal emotions and their concepts of right and wrong do not, and should not, apply to them since they were far more powerful and older than them.
“Why?”
“He couldn’t save you.”
Oh.
“He said that if he could, he would have. That he would have taken us to Atlantis or to camp where we would be safe, but since he broke his oath on the Styx, and because he’s a god who could not be punished, the consequences were for us to have a terrible fate.” Percy brought his knees up to his chest.
“So my death was because I was born?” He asked.
“Basically,” Percy said, “He couldn’t interfere, the ancient laws forbid him from interacting with us as long as we are mortal. But he said he was scared of how you’ll react if you were to see him, he didn’t know if you’d be mad or upset with him, which I’m not surprised if you are. I’m a little mad at him for making me the prophecy child, but, I dunno.”
There was a silence that fell over them. They sat against the wall of the pool, watching the small currents lazily move about the pool, the refractions of the sunlight against the surface of the water. Jason remembers doing the same thing back when he was in the league with Damian, spending hours in the spring, wondering how and why he could breathe underwater. Wondering why he could think clearly and why his clothes were also dry.
Now that he knows what he was and why, what does it mean now? Is he supposed to go with Percy to camp, help train the other demigods, join the war? If he does, would the prophecy shift from Percy to him? That won’t make sense if it did, Jason was older than sixteen, and when he was sixteen, the whole year was spent mostly catatonic at the league. But is he obligated to fight with Percy? Shock the Greek world by appearing to help out of nowhere, alert the other gods that Poseidon had not one, but two full-blooded demigod children?
“So what now?” Jason asked, his brother’s necklace still in his hand.
“I dunno, Jay,” Percy answered. “I dunno.”