Olympus Drive Book 3: According to Plan

Chapter 50

Jasmine

When I reach my grandmother's house I'm surprised to find Thyme there, lying on the sofa with his twins curled up with him, nestled in either crook of his arms. One is asleep clutching a toy purple bunny, the other is awake and eating Cheerios off of his dad's broad chest.

Thyme is in his usual state of being splattered with some else's blood, has various suspicious weapon shaped bulges under his clothes, and is still wearing combat boots despite, evidenced by the number of discarded snack food containers, the fact that he appears to have been here, on the sofa, playing Call of Duty all night. He looks uncannily like our father, but so much crueler. While their features are nearly identical, Thyme has a strange darkness about his eyes, malcontent thick in his skin, his movement quick and calculated. Though he smiles more than our father, there is nothing reassuring in it, just more cruelness seeping past his lips, like he smiles when he kills things (he in fact does).

"Waiting up for Anna?" I ask, coming and setting Darius down.  He squirms quickly to the ground, and I hand him his cane. How his father procures black things with skulls on them for every single household purpose I will never know. But of course, my child has a black cane with a sick skull pommel to help him get around. He's gotten quite good at maneuvering with it as well, though he still tends to walk into things if he gets excited about money.

"I'm going to go play with my coins," Darius informs me, stomping off to find a table, clutching the sack of coins I let him bring with him.

"Yeah, um, I guess Hector told you we made it to Tartarus," Thyme says, shifting a little, but otherwise still staring at his game. His skin is flushed and unusually pallid.

"I'll tell you when she gets back," I say, going to feel his forehead, "You're burning up."

"I'm waiting for her. I'll be fine. These guys miss me anyway," Thyme says, snuggling the sleeping boy a bit tighter.

"I know," but we both know you can't stay.

"Don't leave, daddy," the one awake boy says. Should I know the difference between them? Probably. Do I? No. Okay so I know there is a difference and they have different names but the thing is neither he nor Anna have competently explained which name goes with which child: the murder death combat child and the sweetness light happiness child.  I think this is because they don't know which they named which and continue to make it up so that they look good.

"I'm not, here you wanna help me play? You done with breakfast?" Thyme asks, picking up another controller. Breakfast was cheerios he spread out on his chest.

"Uhuh," the little boy says, "Can Darius come wrestle with me?"

"No, he can't he doesn't like wrestling-----I assume he doesn't like wrestling ? I mean his father hates being knocked over---,"

"No, he doesn't like wrestling," I say, quickly. He hasn't objected to being called 'he' this morning has he? No I don't think so. I sigh. He gets rather upset if we say 'he' when he wants to be called 'she'. I try to oblige I hate upsetting him but sometimes he doesn't bother to tell us so we upset him by mistake. To be safe his dad just calls him 'Dare' and avoids pronouns but I always slip and use his full name.

"Good morning---hi Darius," our grandma loves all her great-grandkids but mine best because he's really quiet and neat.  I almost feel bad about that, people feel the same way about Thyme's kids as they do about him and he knows it and it upsets him.

"Hi, grandma, sit down. I'll show you my coins," Darius says.

"That's nice you have—quite a lot."

"Darius, we've been over this just count, don't multiply," I say, going to pet his hair.