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2024-11-14
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I want you to promise (claim your children)

Summary:

Demigod children are resilient, their existence a divine decree, no matter whether their mortal parent desired them.

“I know,” Percy repeats. “I know.”

Percy Jackson knocks on an apartment door.

Notes:

lines in brackets are novel quotes. title obviously from the same.

(See the end of the work for more notes.)

Work Text:

Percy has long known that not all demigods are wanted by their mortal parents. He thinks back to his high school Sex Ed classes, boiled down to don’t have sex, you will get pregnant and die, and the immeasurable weight of a life now placed in your arms and being told this is your responsibility now.

(“Ethan. Me. All the unclaimed. Don’t let it … Don’t let it happen again.”)

Having a child should be a careful decision, one made with love and – as an ever-steady part of Percy’s childhood screams – financial stability. He remembers late-night conversations with his mother and Paul about his college fund, about setting the same up for Estelle, but making him a priority because he needs support now and his sister is still a little kid, and they have time to save up for her.

He lingers on even earlier memories, the pennies in his pockets for Gabe’s gambling, the dollars his mother squirreled away for their vacation. Children should be born into a home, and too many of them are unwanted.

Having children is easy for gods, barely worth a single thought. Maybe two if you’re a child of Athena, the wisdom of the world incarnate. A demigod is proof of a god’s favor, of their gratitude, of a hundred different things necessary to bring glory to the name of your parent patron, but few resemble love.

(“We are supposed to be a gift, a blessing from Athena on the men she favors.”)

Poseidon gives him a sword, Paul helps him with his college application.

A god’s hero, a man’s stepson.

In all his knowledge of the gods and their children, Percy lingers on the absence of gods, on the presence of parents unable to cope with monsters on top of the usual ADHD-dyslexia unsuited to the American School System horror.

On the changes he can make for as long as he is still capable of making them.

(“The heck with laurel wreaths,” Luke said. “I’m not going to end up like those dusty trophies in the Big House attic.”)

Gods are unchanging unless the belief in them weighs heavy enough to force change into their ichor, bleed gold the new domains stuck like sharp puzzle pieces into a painting of another picture.

The gods don’t change.

Percy has been closer to divinity than mortality than any other demigod since the Age of Heroes, of Odysseus and Heracles. He feels his anger sharpen, become a constant steady thrum accompanying him at the sight of every injustice. His mind holds on to the demigods that pass him at Camp, their confusion, delight, fear, and joy becoming his own, every triumph laid at his feet in dedication, every devastation his own to demand retribution for.

Percy settles and settles, growing only in might. When he tries to find his friends, his nose bleeds from reaching for a power not yet his own, but the color remains red for a little while longer. He will hold on to that for as long as the fates will allow him, defiant until it hollows him out.

And yet it is the very same defiance, the fall down Tartarus, into what should not be touched by mortal hands, that leads him into an apartment complex mostly rented by college students and people in similar financial distress.

Percy has not lingered on all the other ways the gods might remain unchanging. He thinks of dead children and mothers, jealous lovers and the unclaimed, unnamed.

He stops in front of the last door down the hallway.

A faint crying can be heard through it.

He knocks against the door and it doesn’t take long for the door to be ripped open.

“Look, I’m trying my best to get her to shut up, but she won’t stop crying—”

(“No one wants them.”)

Percy does not know the name of the woman in front of him. She looks like she’s been through war, like his mother sitting on the sofa in the middle of the night when he’s eight, the TV turned on but quiet, dazed. She flinched when Percy suddenly put his tiny sticky hands on her.

“I’m not your neighbor,” Percy says. “I’m here to help.”

The woman looks at him in disbelief, utterly confused, then suddenly suspicious. Her image continues to overlap with his mother’s.

He does not wish to intrude into this piece of space she has managed to carve out for herself. Even from the doorway, the one-bedroom apartment looks only half furnished, quickly thrown together by necessity.

“May I?” Percy asks and points at the door.

Dazed perhaps, overly tired, trying to cope with what has been done, the woman relents. Were there more time, Percy would be gentler, calmer. He’s learned to speak quietly, with love, to children just as frightened as he used to be.

The woman simply lets him walk into the apartment to the crib standing at the very corner of the little flat. With enough practice carrying around his sister under his arms, Percy picks the crying baby up. She needs a bath and a new diaper, perhaps even just the slightest bit of ambrosia. Demigod children are more resilient than normal children or Percy wouldn’t have murdered a snake when he was the same age as this child, but that doesn’t mean they can grow up entirely without support.

The baby stops crying, and instead blinks up at him with eyes as dark as the storm. Her gaze is heavy even at this age, and Percy does not have to wonder about her parentage.

He didn’t come here with a plan. He’s barely acting with understanding in mind, guided by instinct.

He remembers Jason, dedicated to Hera in a feeble attempt to allow him to grow to adulthood.

Another broken promise.

“Who are you?” the woman finally asks, a single kitchen knife in hand.

She’s fearful, her eyes darting to the now quiet child in Percy’s arms. It’s a situation Percy wanted to avoid, but perhaps this is fate leading him too, against all his defiance.

It only takes a moment to let go, and for all the wants to hold on to what allows change, change itself is inevitable too, constant in its presence.

“Someone who can help,” Percy repeats.

This sentiment, at the very least, remains the same. He will help for as long as he can, until eternity if prophecies dare to speak the truth.

“Has—” He pauses, exhales, calms his anger. “Has her father contacted you?”

The woman rapidly pales, her hands become shaky. She lets go of the knife and Percy, too tall, too big, too fast, catches it. The action only scares her further as she covers, hands held up as if to defend herself.

“Please.”

“I won’t harm you,” Percy promises, speaks with weight without swearing on the Styx.

He sits down in front of the woman, the child still in his arms as she quietly observes what goes on around her.

“I promise, I won’t harm you. I know what he did.”

The woman’s eyes widen, but she does not lower her arms. “Do you know who—the police said they’d search, but I know they didn’t—they didn’t believe me. Nobody would. And I couldn’t, couldn’t get rid of—”

Her eyes focus on the child in Percy’s arms. The guilt and shame bite into her.

Demigod children are resilient, their existence a divine decree, no matter whether their mortal parent desired them.

“I know,” Percy repeats. “I know.”

He knows it all, that gods are unchanging, that Leda was raped by the swan, that the gods take and bestow and that their attention never invites anything good.

“I don’t,” the woman says, close to tears. “I don’t know what to do. I didn’t want any of this.”

(Look, I didn’t want to be a half-blood.)

“I can’t even look at her,” the woman confesses. “Her eyes—they’re just the same. It’s not, it’s not human. I’m sorry.”

She finally starts crying, quiet sobs she’s been muffling for months now breaking out. Percy does not move, does not want to scare her any more. He stays as she cries and does not move from her spot, pressed against the kitchen counter.

“I don’t want her hurt. I just—I just want her gone.”

(“It wasn’t the little girl’s fault.”)

“I can take her,” Percy offers when the woman has quieted down. “She will be safe.”

“Will she?” the woman’s question bears weight unlike any other. It is an offering, a prayer.

It tastes like desperation.

(“Burnt offerings for the gods. They like the smell.”)

“As safe as I can make her,” Percy promises. “She will be loved.”

The woman hesitates, contemplating. Percy can’t tell how much time passes until she finally speaks with a certainty he hadn’t heard of her before.

“Take her,” the woman says. “She is yours.”

And his the child in his arms becomes. She blinks at him, and the gravitas of her gaze does not lessen, but the weight becomes familiar, mirrors of his own.

He leaves the apartment as quietly as he entered it, the child rinsed off in the shower, in a new diaper and romper, Percy’s backpack all the heavier with the necessities. Already the mist weaves around the apartment complex, altering memories, wiping clean the misdeeds of another. He doesn’t know what story it will whisper into the ears of the woman, but he prays it is a kind one, where no blame is put on her shoulders.

Glancing down at the child sleeping soundly, Percy wonders if he still bleeds red.

(“Hail, Perseus Jackson, Son of the Sea God.”)

Notes:

the grip. the GRIP youngjusticewriter's college verse has on me. Various one shots in that series inspired me, but what I was mostly stuck on was this idea of Percy on the edge of ascending and claiming children who don't have parents (who acknowledge them).

In this case, this kid's mother was raped by a deity - Kratos in my mind, but I suppose any would do. She does not want this child, does not want them to be harmed either. This is why she is not "mother" but "woman" - she does not want to be a mother, does not want this term ascribed to her. I figured considering the whole divine blessing, a normal abortion wouldn't cut it either. I know, these sure are themes to put out in these times, but I think that probably makes them all the more important.

Anyway, Percy here claims the kid. This is hid now, potentially washing out all other remnants of the girl's actual divine parent.