The Effort of Family

Farther Than the Sun

I take great liberties with Atlantean Culture, society, and biology.

I also play fast and loose with the ages of all the characters to make more sense to me.

Jason: 20
Percy: 14
Sally: 36

She never even got to hold him. When she woke up, there was only a nurse in the room. Her uncle was outside talking to the social worker.

It was hard to find her voice, but she managed to ask the nurse about her baby. "Where is he? Can I- can I see him?" She pleaded weakly. The woman looked almost alarmed before giving Sally a pitying smile. The nurse made no move to answer her or go find her baby. She heard the door open. Her uncle, Randall, had stepped into the room. She'd met with the social worker before.

Vivian had the papers in her hand. Sally didn't want them. She didn't want to give up her son. She just wanted to hold him. To name him. To keep him. Randall said that she wasn't ready to be a mother, that this was for the best. It felt like the room was getting smaller. The walls were closing in on her. Sally didn't hear what Vivian said as she put the papers down in front of her. She didn't hear her uncle's encouraging words or feel the firm hand on her shoulder.

Everything hurt. Her body and heart ached. She could barely see the documents in front of her, but she knew what they said. Sally only had one option. Her hands shook as she signed away her parental rights. Her uncle's words echoing in her ear from when she'd told him that she was pregnant. How she was too young. How she couldn't do it alone. That she needed to focus on school. That she would never be respected as a single, teenage mother. How he wouldn't let her keep a baby under his roof.

Sally signed the papers with shaky hands. Nothing felt right. She wanted her baby. She needed to see him, to know what he looked like.

She would never see him again. The glimpse she'd gotten before she passed out from the pain would be the last time she ever saw her son.

Sally wished she'd done things differently. Hindsight was both a wonderful gift and a terrible curse. Her uncle died only four months later. She never finished high school. The man she fell in love with several years later was secretly married. Sally ended up pregnant again. Her baby had powers that she couldn't understand. She never should have married Gabe.

She didn't regret her first baby. She wished that she knew him, but there was no way to find him. She loved Percy, but she wanted a better life for him. He visited his father every summer. She wished she would've known how hard being half-Atlantean made his life. Sally wished she'd known how awful Gabe was to Percy. She wished she never married him. She wished that getting a divorce was easier. She wished she got her GED earlier. Sally wished things were better.

Sally needed to stop reminiscing about the past. She should be working on her newest manuscript. Even so... she couldn't help but wonder where her son was now.

Jason needed help. Not that he would ever say that out loud. There was only one person he knew that could find what he needed, but he wasn't sure that it was a good idea. He needed to know, so he went to the manor.

Jason did not want Tim's help.

He showed up holding the folder. It had been curiosity. He'd been thinking about when Bruce took him in. Because of the Wayne's lawyers, the foster system was never directly involved with Jason. No blood test, no relatives reached out to, and no issues with his family. He wanted to know if he had family out there. He wasn't going to reach out because that went so well last time he tried that. Jason wasn't expecting what he found. He wasn't even related to Sheila Haywood- or Willis Todd for that matter. He'd run the test twice, thinking that the sample must have been contaminated.