Drowning in the Siren's Song -II

Chapter 18

Olympus was quiet that morning, the throne room fully lit, but mostly empty, the way it only ever got when the council wasn't in session and every god had wandered off to god knows where.

But mostly empty did not mean fully empty. Poseidon sat alone on his throne. His trident rested against the sea-green marble beside him, and for once, he didn't look like a king at all.
He looked like a man waiting for something he wasn't sure would ever come.

Apollo found him there, the sun still low enough in the sky that he could steal a few minutes before his morning route properly began. He didn't bother announcing himself. Poseidon had felt him coming three thrones away- gods always did, with each other. An itch under the skin that altered them whether they wanted to or not.

"Well?" Poseidon didn't turn around.

"He's well." Apollo settled onto the marble steps below his own golden throne, far too casual for the weight already sitting heavy in the room. "Grown taller since you last had eyes on him. Fights like he's got something to prove, though I suppose he does, at this point."

A pause, and then, quieter, almost reluctant to admit it- "Sings like nothing I've heard in probably a hundred thousand years. But you didn't hear that from me."

Something flickered behind Poseidon's ancient, sea-glass eyes as a single eyebrow shot up, gone before it could properly settle into an expression. He knew what this implied. Percy was probably stronger than any other siren child he'd ever sired.
"Did you ask him? About me?"

"I asked." Apollo didn't quite meet his uncle's eyes. "Whether he wanted to know anything. Whether he wanted you."

"And?"

"He said no." There was no use softening the blow. Poseidon had never much cared for it- storms didn't apologize for drowned sailors, and more often than not, neither did he.
"He wasn't unkind about it, Uncle. Just certain. Like it wasn't even a question worth asking him twice."

Poseidon was quiet a long moment. The trident hummed faintly against the marble, restless in the way the sea got restless before weather no mortal instrument could ever hope to predict.

"Good," he said, finally, and it startled Apollo enough that he actually looked up.

"Good?"

"He has every right to want nothing from me." Poseidon's hand, wrapped loose around the trident's shaft, tightened, then deliberately loosened again. "I was angry, once. When I first learned of him. That Sally had kept him and raised him and never sent word." A humourless huff of breath, more current than laughter. "I was angry for exactly as long as it took me to remember why she never would have. What danger I would have brought to her door if I'd come looking. What danger found him instead, the very moment the world learned that he existed at all."

It wasn't a small thing, hearing him say it. Apollo knew the story well enough- had known it since before Percy was even born, since the strange days when Poseidon first came to him half-delighted and half-terrified, confessing that his Greek and his Roman selves had folded into one being entirely without his permission, and that it all happened because of a mortal woman whom he seemed to worship.

No god broke that oath lightly. And no god forgot it, once broken.

"I asked you to check on him because I was still angry, back then," Poseidon admitted, and it plainly cost him something to say it out loud- gods rarely managed the shape of an apology, even to themselves, even alone. "I wanted to know if he needed me. If Sally had done him wrong, keeping the sea from her own son. His birthright."

"And now?"

"Now I know that keeping the sea from him did nothing at all." Something that might have been pride, quick as a wave breaking, crossed Poseidon's weathered face. "He carries it regardless. He doesn't need my name stitched into it to be a prince of it."