Chapter Text
Sally had set up Estelle’s room for Annabeth, Percy and Lily to spend the night in, and Estelle had been moved temporarily to the floor of Sally’s writing room. Although the bedsheets had been changed to be plain white, the walls were covered with posters, artwork, and photos of Estelle with a small group of girls that looked about her age. School friends, Percy presumed. In the corner a travel crib had been set up for Lily, and she was laying sprawled on her back fast asleep. Percy couldn’t suppress a smile upon seeing her. He slept in that exact same position when he was really exhausted. At least, he used to.
Annabeth had started pacing the room, hugging her arms to her chest. Percy wanted more than anything to go and hold her close to him, but she didn’t seem like she would appreciate that right now.
“You okay, Wise Girl?” he asked softly instead.
“No. I’m not. There’s just a lot going on and I don’t know what to do about it.”
Percy sighed and sank slowly down the door until he was sat on the floor. “Yeah. I don’t know either. All I know right now is that I love you more than anything. I always will.”
Annabeth sighed. “Will you though? Percy, you’re… you’re immortal. You’re a god. I know you didn’t mean for it to happen and I know you’re not happy about it either, but you have changed since it happened. It feels like… well, you’re not. You’re not human anymore. It feels like you’re forgetting what it even feels like to be human, too. Maybe you will love me until I get too old and die, maybe you’ll still love me for a hundred years after. But how long until you’ve forgotten the time before you were a god? How long until you forget what it was like to love me knowing we would both die one day?”
“Annabeth,” Percy said softly. “I don’t know what’s going to happen to me in the future. I don’t know what I’ll be like a hundred years after you and Lily are both gone. But I know I will love you and you alone forever. Maybe I’m not human anymore. I’ll try harder to not forget. I’ll stay close to mortals so I never forget what it’s like. But as a god, I am the very idea of loyalty made manifest. And there is nobody in the whole world, nobody above or below, that I am loyal to more than you. I’m not having any demigod children at all, I swear it. Not with you, and definitely not with anyone else. You’re my Wise Girl, forever.”
Annabeth sank down onto the bed, shaking her head. “Gods, Percy, I hope that’s true. I just… I think I need some time to think about it all, okay? Do you mind if I have a moment alone?”
Percy tried to convince his loyalty that she had not asked him to leave her forever. “Of course. Just call for me when you need me. I’ll come for you straight away, I promise.”
He left Annabeth staring down at her hands in Estelle’s room and quietly closed the door behind him. He didn’t need to sleep anymore, so it wasn’t a big deal that he didn’t really have a bed for the night anymore. Annabeth had just never had to kick Percy out before. Sure, they’d argued; those first few months of living together were kind of hard to adjust to. Sally had raised Percy to keep a tidy, orderly home and Annabeth hadn’t really had a real home at all (besides Camp Half-blood) for most of her life, so it had initially been frustrating when he had to explain to her how to do what he felt were basic household chores and she been driven mad by his habit of leaving stuff in the wrong places. But even after every fight, they’d always gone to bed together at the end of the day and held each other tightly, thanking all the gods that at least they were together, even if the dishes hadn’t been done properly and the desk had all sorts of junk scattered on it. Percy found himself suddenly very lost not being able to lie in bed with his wife and hold her tightly. He headed back out to the balcony, looking out at the few stars still visible through all the light pollution and breathing in the cold night air.
“Can’t sleep?”
Percy glanced up, and saw Apollo hanging upside-down in midair just a few feet above him.
“You’re still here? I thought you left already.”
“Not really.” Apollo flipped himself over and dropped himself down next to Percy on the balcony. “I just waited out of the way until I could get you alone. Want to come for a drive with me? I’ll let you take the wheel this time.” He jangled some car keys enticingly in front of Percy’s face. The key didn’t belong to any car brand he knew of; the body was shaped like a stylised sun, and the various keychains depicted things like a lyre, a bow and arrow, a small bronze swan. Tokens of Apollo’s various domains.
Percy sighed. “As long as we aren’t out too long.” He snatched the keys from Apollo’s hand, and the sun god grabbed his arm. Before he had time to process Apollo’s power spreading into his body, they had both risen straight up in the air to the roof, where a sparkling golden Mercedes was parked right in the middle as if it were the most normal place in the world to leave a car.
Percy shuddered as his feet touched solid ground again. “Ugh. I may not be tied exclusively to the sea anymore, but I still don’t think I like being in the air.”
“Oh, then you’ll looooove the Sun Chariot.” Apollo swung the passenger door open and draped himself across the seat. “Come on, I’m not trying to kidnap you. Just want to talk with my favourite recently-ascended cousin.”
He’d had his license for a while now, but driving a car through the air was still wildly different from driving on a road. The first few minutes of the drive looked more like an impromptu driving lesson as Apollo talked him through how to handle going up and down before Percy finally got the hang of it and was able to drive more smoothly.
“Oh, this is going way better than the last time I let someone else drive.” Apollo leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes contentedly. “You’re not too bad at this, for someone who doesn’t like flying.”
“Yeah, well.” Percy shrugged. “It’s just a car. I can handle cars fine.”
They drove in silence for a little while. Percy didn’t know where he wanted to go, but found himself driving slowly over Camp Half-blood. The Sun Chariot could go pretty fast if he pushed it; maybe he could manage to fly over Camp Jupiter as well. Some part of him, despite his godhood, still felt an irrevocable tie to both places.
“So,” Apollo said finally. “Found any more domains yet?”
“Fluids,” Percy replied. “Anything in liquid form, I think. It… kind of comes from my dad. Sort of.”
“Sure, yeah.” The sun god nodded. “Percy, can I be honest with you?”
“Did my father ask you to keep an eye on me?”
“No. I mean, I am keeping an eye on you, but not because anyone asked me to. I’m the god of healing, Percy. I can tell there are things you haven’t healed from that are still affecting you.”
Percy gripped the steering wheel tighter. He’d made a circle over Camp Half-blood and was now speeding up heading west. “I went through a lot,” he said in a low voice. “You know that.”
“I know. And I won’t pretend there aren’t things that still bother me, either. Even gods aren’t perfect. You’re probably finding that out. The reason I’m particularly worried about you is that you haven’t been controlling your anger very well. No, I know why.” Apollo held up a hand just as Percy started to argue back. “I don’t blame you for being angry at all. You have every right. The problem is… ah, I don’t know if I should tell you this much. Oh well. One of your domains… it’s quite dangerous when left unchecked. And, given that you haven’t claimed it yet, it is very much unchecked. I won’t tell you what it is because there’s a chance that I’m wrong. I just… I don’t want you to get lost in your rage and end up doing something you’ll spend eternity regretting.”
A dangerous domain. Percy wanted to sink into the seat and wash away into the ocean, never to be seen again. He had been trying to promise Annabeth he would be one of the good ones. He couldn’t have just been the god of loyalty, fluids, and everyone always getting along nicely? Was it too much to ask to be the god of world peace? Why, in every situation, did Percy always end up being a weapon?
“Um… Percy? You seem to be melting.”
Percy blinked and realised he was much lower in his seat than he had been just a moment ago. His hands seemed to be dripping gradually as if his flesh was turning to liquid and seeping into the leather seats. He thought about Annabeth. Lily. Sally, Paul and Estelle. His human connections. When he shifted in his seat, he was solid again. “That was… new.”
Apollo smiled - one of his serious smiles, much less dazzling than the ones he used to impress people. “Fluids. Yeah, that’ll be it. I’m sure it’s a hard adjustment, but you’re not human anymore, Percy. You’re the embodiment of an esoteric idea. If one of those things is fluids, then there is every possibility that you are actually a high-functioning liquid.”
Suddenly feeling quite sick, Percy cracked the window down a bit. It didn’t help. He didn’t even know what an esoteric idea was, but all of a sudden he didn’t want Apollo to explain any more things to him. He would ask Annabeth later. They were flying over the Midwest now, starting to get out towards the desert with the mountains further ahead in the distance. If Apollo had realised where they were going, he hadn’t said anything about it. It wasn’t until they were practically in California before Percy summoned the courage to ask the question on his mind, but he needed to know.
“Do you think Estelle’s dream was right? Was I fated to ascend all along, no matter what I chose?”
Apollo let out a long sigh. “Fate is a tricky thing. I don’t honestly know. I’m sorry, Percy.”
They were flying over Camp Jupiter now. Percy slowed them right down just so that he could linger over the top of it, conscious in a sense he couldn’t quite place of all the Romans down there. His home was down there in New Rome. Somehow the thought of going back there, to his normal life, felt foreign to him. They didn’t even know what he was yet. When they found out, would they look at him differently? Would they build him a shrine? He wasn’t sure he wanted a shrine.
“What makes you the most angry, Percy?”
The question came from nowhere. Percy stared blankly at the sun god in the passenger seat for a moment before directing his eyes back ahead of them and thinking about it.
“I didn’t get a choice,” he answered finally. “After the Titan war, I said no. I meant it. The choice I made has not been respected. Now I’m stuck with something I actively rejected for the rest of all eternity. That’s… I can’t even begin to imagine how long I’m going to exist for now. Part of me…” he trailed off, not wanting to say the next part aloud.
Apollo did not let it slide. “Say it. Let it out.”
Percy gripped the wheel so tightly his knuckles turned white, his eyes fixed on the open sky ahead of them as they hurled back in the direction of New York. “I want to die. I want someone - something - to go ahead and destroy me. I don’t want to exist at all, let alone forever. I came so close to finally getting to die, multiple times! Every single time, I stayed alive because someone else needed me. It was never for myself. If it had ever been just for myself… I wouldn’t have lived. I would have let myself die. Now even the choice of killing myself has been taken away from me.”
Apollo didn’t speak, but his eyes closed and his skin began to glow with a soft yellow light that filled the car, filled Percy, with a gentle warmth that he had not felt for a very long time. Probably not since he was a child. Before he knew it, they were back on the roof of his mom’s apartment building in New York, and Percy was hunched over the steering wheel, sobbing hysterically while Apollo’s hand gently rubbed his back.
“I don’t want to exist,” Percy cried. “I want to die. I wish I had never been born. B-but people need me, so I don’t… I don’t get that choice. I never get to be selfish.”
“Percy,” Apollo said in a low tone that was somehow equally comforting and also frightening. “You have an eternity of choices ahead of you. You can choose to be selfish, or you can choose to exist for others.”
“I don’t want eternity.” Percy’s whole body trembled from the weight of his emotions, set free for the first time in years. “I don’t want anything. I want to die and not be responsible for anything or anyone ever again.”
“Not your wife? Not your daughter?”
The challenge made Percy’s insides clench. The god of loyalty, threatening to leave his family by dying? It would be his undoing. And yet, was that not exactly what he wanted? His own undoing?
Before he could exercise any conscious control over his body, Percy had drawn Riptide from his pocket, uncapped it and offered it hilt-first to Apollo.
“Please,” he croaked. “I can’t do this. I can’t be a god, I can’t exist forever. Please just kill me. Before it gets out of hand.”
“I couldn’t if I wanted to,” Apollo said firmly, pushing Riptide back towards him. “And for the record, I don’t want to. You cannot die, so you need to find a reason to live so you don’t live an eternal existence of suffering. I suggest you start with your family. They need you right now.”
Some part of Percy - his loyalty, no doubt - made him get out of the Sun Chariot, climb back down to the balcony and return to his mom’s apartment. Apollo had left him, but promised that Percy need only call for him and he would come back. Anything except the one thing Percy wanted him to do the most. Riptide weighed heavy in his pocket. His blood felt like golden poison in his veins. He felt like he should unravel, and yet he didn’t. He stayed. Maybe somewhere in his loyalty he would find his reason to exist.