Chapter Text
Percy was thrilled to be in a museum. No really. Normally, museums were much more of Annabeth’s thing: he had seen enough of the real-life versions of a lot of the stuff in there to ever really get a taste for it. Today though, he never wanted to leave. He and Annabeth were on spring break of their final semester of college, just about ready to graduate. For someone who didn’t think he would make it to sixteen, much less twenty-two, he was feeling pretty damn good about himself. A new rotating exhibit had just gotten to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, an exhibit showcasing the ‘True Hero’s Struggle’. It was an exhibit meant to highlight how difficult heroes of all definitions had it. Percy and Annabeth just thought it would be funny to make fun of some of the heroes they had met, seeing them depicted as ‘a symbol of the modern man’s struggle for acceptance’.
They had been in the museum for about an hour, just wandering around and looking at the exhibits. Neither of them were super into modern art, they just enjoyed spending time together without the pressure of school or overbearing gods. The exhibit they were currently in was an eco-art exhibit, using trash and recyclables to create depictions of the natural world. “Annabeth, check it out!” Percy was excitedly standing next to a 15-foot long statue of a great white shark made out of different types of glass bottles. “It looks just like Lenny!” Lenny, being the great white shark Percy somehow adopted on his last outing to see his dad.
Since the attempted rise of and subsequent fall of Gaea, Percy had been making semi-frequent trips to Atlantis to see his dad. The first few times had been awkward, with a lot of hurt on Percy’s side and a lot of unsaid things on Poseidon’s. Triton, ironically enough, had been the thing to break through the tension. On one trip down, Percy had spent the first four hours in awkward, stilted conversation with his dad. As a gift from his father, every time Percy willed it when he entered the sea he was gifted with a tail. To avoid the conversation, which had taken a turn towards how he felt about using kelp as an alternative form to soy, Percy started tracing the pattern of his scales. Before he could loop back down his tail for a third time, one of Poseidon’s advisors interrupted them with an urgent request from just outside the city borders.
“I really am sorry about this Percy, but one of the towns just experienced a massive thermal vent opening beneath them. Are you sure you don’t mind me dealing with it?” Percy quickly shook his head. “No! Nope! Not at all. Go deal with….that. Not a problem. I’ll stay right here and won’t bother anyone. Don’t even worry about me.” Honestly, he was kind of relieved. Poseidon did care, in his own way. That way just happened to be extremely overbearing questions with bouts of intense staring in between. It was making Percy twitchy. As Poseidon left, Percy took a look around the room he was in. It was pretty basic as far as Atlantean palace rooms went, which is to say, completely gaudy and over the top. It was decorated with carved pillars, depicting roaring ocean waves, coral reefs and patterns of underwater trenches. It was decorated with iridescent pearls and glittering shells. Percy studied the walls for about five minutes before deciding that wandering off couldn’t cause that much damage. He swam through halls, taking turns at random and admiring the interior decorators' hard work. Since dating Annabeth, he had gained a new appreciation for the amount of time and effort that went into making a building functional. While he was distracted with his wanderings, Percy ended up in front of a door he had never seen before. It was small, and easy to miss. Unlike the rest of the palace, where the doorways were adorned with jewels and rippling fabrics, this doorway was small and unassuming. Almost like it was meant to not be seen. Letting curiosity get the best of him, Percy gently pushed the door open and swam through the entryway. The room had an unnatural stillness to it, like it wasn’t meant to be disturbed. In it, there laid spears, most broken into small fragments strewn across the room. There were also ripped tapestries, torn beyond recognition.
The only thing laying untouched was an old trident. It was polished and sparkling, like it had recently been cleaned. It seemed out of place in the otherwise destroyed room. Hesitantly, reverently, Percy swam closer to the untouched trident. As he reached out towards it, a voice from behind him made him jump in surprise.
“You remind me of her, you know.” Triton. Percy and he had a sort of understanding, where neither acknowledged the other existed. “Her who?” Percy asked quietly. “My daughter.” Triton’s eyes were sad, and for the first time Percy could see just how old his half-brother truly was. The name Pallas floated through Percy’s mind. Of course. Pallas and Athena had been raised by Triton originally, born close in age. They had become fast friends, and often spared with spears together to entertain themselves and other gods. One day, during a public spar Pallas had been winning. Zeus, afraid to see his pride and joy Athena lose, had snuck behind his daughter and flashed Aegis, the shield bearing Medusa’s likeness. Startled, Pallas had missed an easy blow, and had been stabbed by Athena.
“I’m sorry,” Percy whispered. “About what?” “I’m just…sorry. No parent wants to outlive their child.” It was the most honest the two brothers had ever been with each other. Triton tipped his head towards Percy, acknowledging the apology. They stood next to each other in silence for a few minutes, staring at the trident.
“It was supposed to be a gift to her,” Triton finally spoke again. “Her success was almost assured for that spar. I was going to gift it to her after the match. When…after the spar, I couldn’t bring myself to destroy it. Nor could I exist in the same place with it, so I placed it here instead. I think she would have liked you, Perseus.”
It was the first time Triton had said Percy’s name without it sounding like a curse. Nothing came about that first conversation between them, but gradually the two ran into each other again and again. What started as conversations turned into friendly spars, which turned into trips just to see each other. As the relationship between the brothers grew, the rest of the ocean seemed to heave a sigh of relief. The tension between Poseidon's mortal and immortal sons’ released, and allowed Percy to slot himself into the Atlantis happenings more comfortably. Teasing each other turned into teasing their father, opening the door for Percy to approach his dad as a dad, instead of a disconnected distant figure he only had stories of.
Absent-mindedly, Percy twisted the seashell bead on his camp necklace as he wandered through the museum with Annabeth. It was a gift from Triton on his last trip down. It worked very similarly to the shells he used to clean the stables of the flesh-eating horses all those years ago. If he smashed it, it would summon a geyser of salt water, both allowing him access to salt water no matter where he was and altering his family if he was ever in danger.
“Hey seaweed brain, where did you go?” Percy glanced at Annabeth, who had noticed his absent-minded fiddling. “Nowhere. Now, how about we go make fun of some of our cousins?” The couple wandered to the exhibit, and immediately were on edge. There was something powerful in the gallery, something that felt almost familiar to them.
The gallery itself was fairly unassuming. Paintings of different stories plastered the walls. Some modern interpretations of older myths, some classic replications. Nothing out of the ordinary. Through the center of the gallery, there were statues. Some were of heroes, some of monsters, some of combat scenes. In the middle of the statues, there stood an intimidating, twelve-foot tall statue of what was obviously Kronos. Unlike the other statues that seemed fairly new and untouched, this statue was cracking down the middle, and looked almost like it had just been pulled from rubble.
“We need to go. We need to go right now.” Percy pulled on Annabeth’s arm, heading straight for the door they had just walked through. Instead of the door, they encountered a sealed wall. No evidence of a door ever existing. Schist. There were no other doors into the gallery. Looking around, there were also no other tourists, no staff members. Just Percy, Annabeth, and the world’s worst grandpa. Double schist.
Percy grasped for Annabeth’s hand, his fingers pressed to her wrist right on the pulse point. Reminding himself that she was there, right next to him. The couple slowly crept around the outside edges of the room, looking for an exit, or a weak point in the wall. As they got closer to the center of the room, the statue started to glow with an uncanny, sickly gold light. Nope. Not good. Whatever it was that was making the statue glow, Percy wanted none of it. He quickly dropped Annabeth’s hand, uncapped riptide, and in one fluid motion swung for the statue.
“Percy WAIT,” too late. Direct contact. The statue began to crumble, and every piece that hit the ground sent out tendrils of power out towards their feet. As the tendrils reached them, it grasped at their ankles, slowing them down as they tried to move towards each other.
“It was a conduit Percy! It carried remnants of power.” Annabeth was reaching towards Percy, trying to force her feet to move. “OK, what does that mean?” “It means you’re an idiot.” “Besides that!” Percy had managed to move forward a few steps, slowly bridging the gap. “It means that that power, his power, is now flowing out into the room.” Time magic. That’s why Percy had felt this before. That’s why moving felt like swimming through tar.
The magic tendrils on the ground had begun to spread and multiply. Every time Percy or Annabeth took a step forward, another crack of magic appeared beneath their feet. Just inches away from each other, hands reaching out, the tendrils exploded upwards, forcing them away from each other. The ground fell out from beneath their feet, and a howling like a severe storm whipped past them. And then they were falling.
Percy couldn’t see anything, couldn’t hear anything. All he knew was falling. And fear. The last time he had felt like this was when he fell into Tartarus, with the extreme winds whipping and pulling at him. Except this time, he couldn’t find Annabeth to take with him. Every time he tried to force his eyes open, the wind forced tears to blur his vision. He tried to yell for her, and the air was squeezed out from his chest. He could have been falling for minutes, hours, days, he wouldn’t know. Until finally, like an itch crawling up his back, he felt it. The sensation of seawater just on the edge of his awareness. Home. Something felt….off about this water. It felt younger, more rebellious. More chaotic. But Percy didn’t have time to think about that. All he could think about was that this was his domain now, and that meant he could regroup and find Annabeth. He wasn’t worried about her hitting the water, he knew his dad would never let anything happen to her in his domain. Poseidon was oddly supportive of their relationship, though to be honest Percy thought it was just to piss Athena off.
As the water rose to meet Percy, it seemed hesitant, like it didn’t quite know what to do with him. Son of the sea. Yes, yes, lost son. You shall go with the other. That was weird. The ocean always welcomed him, but it had never consciously talked to him before. “The other? Do you mean Annabeth? Is she OK?” Yes. Yes, the other sons. All of the sea in one place. Other sons? Percy hoped the ocean (?) was talking about Triton and Tyson, because he hadn’t had much luck with any other of his dad’s sons.
Instead of catching him like Percy had originally planned, the ocean seemed to slap him mid air, causing an abrupt course direction. Instead of flying directly down, he was now going sideways towards what looked like an island. But the island looked like it was covered in…cotton balls? No. Not cotton balls. Sheep.
Sheep. Other sons. Slapped by the ocean. There was no way right? Percy’s luck wasn’t that bad, was it? As he hit the island, Percy tucked and rolled, going head over heels directly towards a cave near the beach of the island. As he came to a stop, dizzy and disoriented, he chanced a look around. Yep. His luck was that bad. Standing directly in front of him, looking wildly offended that some dude had just crash landed into his home, was a cyclops. The last thing Percy saw was a malicious grin and a club the size of a tree branch swinging down towards his head.