It has always bugged me how Sally basically turned around and murdered Gabe in cold blood with Medusa's head. I mean, I know that he hit her, but the books never showed us this, and for her to basically just kill him and then joke about it in a letter to her twelve-year-old son without any proper provocation that we've seen just seemed really odd to me. So I decided to write some justification for her actions. It's quite angsty, I guess, but after giving Sally ten years of the below I'm happy that Gabe is floating around in the Fields of Punishment right now. Maybe even Tartarus, if I can wangle it. ;)
As usual, enjoy! Or do not. I'm good either way.
The streets of the Upper East Side had been like a sponge. The humidity in the air had been practically solid and Sally, performing an amazing balancing act with two huge paper bags of groceries, could feel a film of sticky sweat and city grime coating her skin. She paused on the third floor to readjust the bags, looking up at all the flights of stairs she still had to navigate. Maybe one day, they could live in a building with an elevator. One day… She sighed, juggling the bags so she could scratch her nose. Her bitten nails slipped on the sheen of sweat on her face. What would Poseidon say if he could see her now? Mrs Gabriel Ugliano (technically, not that she'd ever actually call herself that). A woman who wasn't wearing any makeup because her husband, in his own words, didn't want her to look like a whore and whose hair had gone nuts in the humidity was definitely no longer the catch she had apparently been seven years ago in Montauk when she had first glimpsed Poseidon through the Mist. It wasn't just the way she looked or Gabe's Cracker Jack box wedding ring on her finger that would put him off, either. Marrying Gabe had practically broken her; when she had said 'I do' after the Justice of the Peace down at City Hall had asked her if she'd take Gabe to be her husband, she was sure something had snapped deep inside. It had been so hard that she was sure she was going to have to reach up and move her mouth manually to make the words come out. Then she had glanced down at Percy, who was the ring-bearer, and the words just slipped out. She would have pledged herself to Gabe a thousand times over to keep her son safe from harm.
Speaking of Percy coming to harm, she had better get moving. She started back up the stairs two at a time, ignoring the cramping in her thighs. She had just popped to the store to pick up a couple of things and would have been there and back faster, but Gabe said that the bus was a waste of money, so she had had to walk. Percy was safe from monsters as long as he was around Gabe, but whether or not he was safe from Gabe… Her heart was pounding and a bead of sweat was rolling down her upper back by the time she reached the apartment. It was not good to leave the two of them alone together for any length of time. Not that Gabe had ever actually made to hurt Percy physically (let the gods strike him dead if he had which, she reasoned, was probably feasible) but he still had a temper. She had made sure to plug Percy into cartoons on the tiny TV in the bedroom Sally and Gabe shared with a glass of juice, a cookie and strict instructions not to leave the room or interrupt Gabe but…
When she came in, though, she saw that she had worried for nothing. Gabe was sitting on the couch, watching the TV in the living room and, shockingly, had apparently even got up and found himself some chips in her absence. Percy was nowhere to be seen, which, she hoped, meant that he had stayed in the bedroom. Crisis averted.
"Sally, where the hell have you been?" Gabe asked immediately as she closed the door. "I had to get my own freaking chips and my beer's been empty for ten minutes!"
"I said I was just running to the grocery store," Sally reminded him patiently, dumping her bags on the counter in the kitchen and feeling her arms sigh a thank you. "It's a few blocks over, you know." She opened the fridge, wanting to crawl inside when she felt the cool air waft out. The AC in the apartment was on the fritz, still, and Gabe wouldn't let her call anyone to fix it because, working in the electrical goods business, he knew a guy who knew a guy who's brother would repair it on the cheap. The cooler had been in the throes of constant death-rattles since the end of May and had finally given up the ghost slap bang in the middle of June as the city braced itself against a heatwave. It was still dead now in August. The atmosphere in the apartment was even stickier than it had been on the street, which explained Gabe's sartorial choice: wifebeater (why hello, Irony, won't you come in?) and Y-fronts. His pot-belly was oozing from the lower hem and a forest of curly black hairs was making a break for freedom over the yellowing collar.
"Too damn hot for shopping," Gabe muttered as she popped the top of his new beer and handed it to him. "You should have waited until later."
Sally only smiled, counting to ten and beyond in her head to prevent a retort coming out, and moved back to the kitchen, where she started unpacking the groceries. She bent to root through a cabinet, but the space that her favourite blue mixing bowl usually took up was empty. She straightened, peering over the back of the couch and discovered that it was what Gabe had used for his chips. She sighed quietly but irritably. Every year, she made Percy's birthday cake in the same blue bowl. Weird and superstitious, yes, but every extra candle that she added to a birthday cake from that bowl represented another year that she got to spend with her son and she wasn't about to break the tradition now. Compared to the far-reaching powers of the immortal gods, she knew that a blue cake baked in an oven with a dead lightbulb wasn't going to make even a ripple in the grand scheme of things, but it got her through the years. It was something physical she could do to anchor Percy's birthday, and therefore Percy, deep within her psyche and it was an opportunity she revelled in.
Poseidon had warned her that Percy living in the mortal world may become too dangerous, and that he may have to become a year-rounder at a camp somewhere in Long Island, but the very thought was like a knife between her ribs. There was no way she was going to lose Percy to the world his father belonged to, the world that excluded her just because she was mortal. She just couldn't do it. He was the one thing that reminded her of the hint of a better life she had glimpsed in those days she had spent with Poseidon in Montauk, before she had fully grasped who and what he actually was.
She had bought ice-cream for dessert in honour of Percy's birthday, and the carton was already squidgy when she picked it up. Pulling a face she quickly opened the freezer and put it inside, hoping it solidified quickly enough. Gabe had finished his new beer already and stood up, stretching and shedding crumbs of chip from the shelf his stomach made all over the carpet.
"I'm going to take a cool shower," he said lecherously. "You feel like joining me?"
How she wasn't immediately violently ill at the mere notion of it was a mystery to Sally. Instead of revisiting the Pop-Tart she had scoffed after getting in from a half-day at work, changing and running back out to the grocery store, she only smiled and brandished a bottle of milk at him like some kind of ward as he pressed himself against her, pinning her against the counter behind her with his weight. Luckily, the milk was just about still cold enough to make him jump as it touched his chest and he stepped back, allowing her to sidle towards the fridge. "As wonderful as that sounds, honey, I've got to get these groceries away before they go bad. You go ahead, though." She smiled brightly at him and made herself look busy inside the fridge until she heard him walk away.
There really isn't much more of your naked body that you could show me, anyway, she thought, shuddering. Why couldn't he just wear proper clothes?
Now that he was gone she stole over to the coffee table and emptied his chips into a smaller bowl, crossing back to the kitchen to wash the crumbs from the bottom of her blue one. Better. Much better.
"Mommy!" Percy yelled excitedly, his bare feet thudding across the floor as he ran to her. As it was a Saturday he was still in his PJs.
"Hey you!" she greeted, using his momentum to swing him up awkwardly onto her hip. Now he was six there was pretty much no way for her to do that comfortably anymore, but she would do it until her spine gave out. She attempted to smooth the jet-black cowlick down to his head, but it sprung back up defiantly, so she gave up. "Were you a good boy for Gabe? Did you watch your cartoons quietly like I said?"
Percy nodded, his green eyes wide. "I was really, really good," he assured her enthusiastically. "Really, really, really. Quiet as a mouse just like you said."
"Oh, you're a good boy," she murmured into the side of his head. She kissed him and put him down, grateful that things seemed to have gone well. It wasn't often that she could get through to Percy. It was insanely hard to get him to concentrate on anything for more than five minutes at a time, but cartoons helped. Lots of colourful flashing images stopped the ADHD kicking for a little while, at least until the commercials. Which was why she had been hurrying home, before Percy forgot that he was supposed to be being good. "You go and watch some more cartoons. Mommy has to make a special cake."
Percy's mouth opened so wide with his grin that she could count all of the gummy gaps where his baby teeth had been. She smiled to herself and put the last of the groceries away, folding up the paper bags so that there was room to begin baking by measuring out flour.
"A cake?!" Percy squealed, bouncing up and down.
"It might even be a blue birthday cake," Sally elaborated, still adding ingredients and mixing. "But I don't think I know any little boys who like blue cake and have a birthday… Do you?" she teased, watching him out of the corner of her eye.
"Me!" Percy shouted excitedly. "Mommy, me!"
"You what?" Sally asked, feigning confusion as she played along, still mixing the cake. "You know someone who needs a special birthday cake?"
"It's MY birthday!" Percy said. "Six! Six! I'm six!"
"Oh, yes! Silly mommy, hey? How could I forget my little man's birthday?" The bowl was full of cake batter now so she put it on the counter so she could bend down and kiss Percy on the forehead. "I've gotta put this in the oven. You wanna go back to the TV?"
Percy hesitated. "Can I stay with you?" he asked, clutching at her skirt.
"Of course you can!" Sally said brightly, yet her eyebrows knitted in concern. Why the clingy? Had Gabe done something while she was out? "You wanna lick the beater when I'm done?" Percy nodded hard. "I better get moving then, huh?" She was just dripping blue food dye into the mixture when the bathroom door crashed open hard, slamming into the drywall with enough force to leave a dent.
Gabe was standing in the doorway, naked except for a towel clutched around his ample waist, his face contorted in rage and a big, ugly vein bulging out of his bald head. With the other hand he was holding aloft a box that still had small ribbons of Power Rangers wrapping paper clinging to it. The rest of the paper was strewn in a trail behind Gabe, leading from the linen closet to the bathroom door. In looking for a towel, he had obviously come across Percy's birthday present, a gift Sally had pretended to be persuaded that they were not going to give to him because it would spoil him and they couldn't afford it. Sally paled and put the bottle of food colouring down too quickly, knocking it over and spilling it all over the worktop.
"Percy, go to your room," Sally said quickly, reaching for some paper towel to mop up the errant food colouring. "And do not come out, you understand me? Me and Gabe have got to have a grownup talk." She glanced nervously at her husband, who was breathing hard like a winded rhino.
"But—" Percy started to protest, winding his fingers deeper into his skirt as he caught the full force of the vibes coming off his stepfather.
"No buts, sweetie," Sally said firmly, disentangling him and scooting him along towards his room with her hand on his backside. "Go now. Remember, you have to be a good boy for mommy. Go on!"
Percy looked between Gabe and his mom a few times before allowing himself to be cajoled and steered with a firm hand towards his bedroom. They had to get dangerously close to Gabe to do it, and Sally had barely shut the bedroom door before Gabe could contain himself no longer.
"What the fuck," he began, snarling and peppering her face with globules of spit tinged Cheeto-orange, "is this?" He brandished the gift at her, then shoved it into her chest so hard that she slammed backwards into Percy's closed bedroom door. Percy's kindergarten picture fell off the wall and hit the floor with a loud crash, bursting open the frame and splintering the glass front.
"Gabe, please," she said in a low voice, jerking her head in the direction of Percy's bedroom. "Mind your language. He's just in the next room, for God's sake." It was so strange that, in times like this, she slipped back into thinking of God as singular, one philosophical entity. It was almost as if her contact with Poseidon and his world had never happened, that it had never been real, and she was back to being the lonely little orphan girl who could not understand why, even though she had always brushed her teeth and then said her prayers every night before bedtime, that her parents had died in a plane crash and abandoned her. Old habits, she guessed.
"You told me that you weren't going to get the little runt anything," Gabe hissed, actually lowering his voice for once. Small mercies and all that.
Sally shrugged neutrally and breezed past him back into the kitchen, setting Percy's present down on the counter next to her mixing bowl. "Don't call him that. And I know I did, honey, but it's his birthday. It's important to him. It's important to me."
"You got the receipt?" Gabe asked, striding towards her. Sally avoided his eyes, so he grabbed her by the wrist and spun her round to face him. "What's the matter with you, are you deaf?" He gave her a little shake. "Did you keep the freaking receipt or not?"
"It's somewhere," Sally admitted quietly, wincing as she felt something grind in her wrist from the strength of Gabe's grip. "Gabe, honey, you're hurting me."
"Well, you've hurt me, Sally. Sneaking around behind my back? Buying stuff I specifically told you that you couldn't? What kind of marriage is this, huh? Huh?"
Sally didn't say anything, instead choosing to focus on the scuffed linoleum on the floor. She could feel herself trembling and she fought to urge to glance towards Percy's room lest she remind Gabe that her son was in the apartment and accidentally sic him on Percy.
"Go on, find the receipt. You are going to go down to whatever store you bought this from and return it. And then you are going to use that money to pick me up a six-pack, you got it?" He grabbed her chin and forced her eyes up to meet his. "I said, do you got it?"
"I'm sure we can talk about this," Sally reasoned, her voice muffled by the fingers gripping her jaw. "Maybe I can pick up some extra shifts at work. Some overtime. It is his birthday, Gabe. It's just once a year, after all." She paused, licking her dry lips and then reaching up with one hand to pry his hand off her face, distracting him by gently caressing his unshaven cheek with the other. Pain throbbed from the place each fingertip had been embedded in her face as the blood flow returned, and she immediately knew that she'd probably bruise. "Please? For me?" She slid her hand down from his face to rest on the wiry rug of hair covering his flabby, pasty chest.
He finally let go of her wrist and she had to suppress a sigh of relief in case it antagonised him. She smiled weakly at him, patting his chest. Still trembling, she managed to swallow the tears of shock and fear that were pricking at the corners of her eyes and turn back to the mixing bowl to finish stirring in the blue colouring. Now that he wasn't gripping her, she realised that he actually looked ridiculous with the white towel tucked in around where his waist should be and she had to focus on mixing to avoid an inappropriate giggle. At least she could laugh (inside) at him. One tiny little thing about this sham of a marriage that she enjoyed, laughing quietly to herself about the stupidity and failings of her husband. Well, that and Gabe's very presence meaning that she was able to keep Percy out of summer camp for as long as possible. When she had asked Poseidon if there was any way at all that she would not have to give Percy up, he had looked at her sadly, knowing that she was determined and already knowing the decision she would make. Marry a mortal, he had told her. Find the most odious, odorous example of mortality you can and stick to him like glue if you want to protect Percy. And so she had, and even when she had had to start telling the girls at work that she walked into walls and tables and doors and accidentally put the iron down on her own arm that one time, it was a simple decision to make. Stay with Gabe. Keep Percy from harm.
"You're always working," he spat, pointing a fat accusing finger at her. She glanced up, shocked at the renewal of his venom after being sure she had placated him.
"It's always work, work, work with you. Down at that stupid little candy shop every hour God sends to earn extra money for that little shit. Fancy schools for Percy. Birthday presents for Percy. Christmas presents." He shook his head, grinding his teeth together angrily. The vein was back, throbbing an ugly puce colour. "Cake!" he shouted suddenly, lurching forward and swatting the bowl out of her hands. It fell to the lino and broke, sending a tsunami of batter across the floor.
Sally gave an involuntary gasp, putting a hand to her mouth and falling to her knees to retrieve the pieces of the mixing bowl, already contemplating gluing it. The bowl that had made the cakes that had kept Percy safe… Gabe spat onto the batter, narrowly missing her arm as she scrambled to clear up.
"Everything is blue to please him as well," he raged, gesturing at the gooey mess that Sally was picking through for pieces of her bowl. "To please him and to piss me off, hmm? That's why you do it, isn't it? You like making me angry? Seeing me like this?" Sally shook her head in denial, the tears that had been threatening earlier spilling down her cheeks. She reached up to wipe them away with the heel of her hand, the only part of her hand that wasn't covered in cake mix. "Oh, Jesus Christ. It's just a fucking cake, woman. Get over it and get up."
"He's my son," Sally returned, flinching and getting up under her own steam as Gabe moved towards her to wrench her from the floor. The shaking now was for an entirely different reason. She had seen red: anger was coursing through her veins. "What do you expect? I am not going to treat him like dirt just because that's the way you want to treat me. I love him." She was speaking through gritted teeth, her brain screaming at her that she was saying all of the wrong things even as they came hissing out through her clenched jaw. "You will never change that and you will never replace him in my heart."
Gabe's face flushed the same colour as the vein. He lurched forward towards her, skirting the mess on the floor. Sally gave an involuntary shriek, thinking he was reaching for her, but he just grabbed Percy's gift from the counter and threw it with all the force he could muster against the fridge. As Sally rushed to pick it up from the floor he shoved her in the chest, sending her crashing backwards into the oven. Then he kicked the present hard against the fridge door before picking it up and tossing it out of the one window that wasn't painted shut and was open to try and cool the apartment down. It sailed over the railing of the fire escape and disappeared down towards the street. Sally's mouth opened in shock and she reached for it, even though it was long gone. She couldn't speak, only stutter out failed sentence starters.
"Give him that for his birthday," Gabe sneered triumphantly.
Sally's brain was completely disengaged now. Flashes of the disappointment on Percy's face that would surely register invaded her brain and she found herself lurching forward with an incoherent shriek. How dare he? There was nothing, nothing, that he could do to her that would make her this made, but when it came to Percy… Her hand was raised to slap him but he met her first with a left hook. Her vision shattered into hundreds of winking lights that multiplied to thousands when she fell sideways and cracked her temple on the fridge.
"I'm going out for a beer," Gabe told her. "I expect this mess to be cleared up by the time I'm back."
The fridge had caught her just at the wrong point on her skull; the blow had set the kitchen in motion on an insane merry-go-round and a deep nausea was growing in the pit of her stomach. She heard the apartment door slam, but as if it were slamming at the end of a long tunnel and not right across the room. Eventually the kitchen slowed with juddering, tilting stops. She touched her temple but found no blood so groped her way up the cabinet to the counter and heaved herself to her feet. The apartment lurched again but she glared at it, tightening her grip on the edge of the worktop so much so that her knuckles whitened until the room held still. So much to do…
There was no saving the cake. She stared down at the mixture creeping viscously across the floor helplessly before crouching and beginning to pick the larger pieces of the bowl up, scraping the mixture onto them. A drop of water exploded on the back of her hand, and another dashed itself to pieces in the batter. She suddenly realised that she was crying and touched the damp tear-tracks on her cheeks.
A door opened and small footsteps sounded hesitantly in the living area. Percy was hovering uncertainly between his bedroom and the kitchen. There was a white blanket trailing behind him, and Percy was worrying the label with the washing instructions on it, twisting and pulling it round and round as he wordlessly surveyed the kitchen.
Sally swallowed hard and blinked back the tears, raking her hair over what would be the bruise on her temple to try and make herself look more composed. She cleared her throat before speaking, to get rid of any squeakiness that the crying would have caused. "Percy, honey. What's the matter? Didn't I say to stay in your room?"
The label on his blanket had started to fray with the amount he was twisting it. His eyes were wide and shimmering; only confusion was keeping him from crying. "Gabe went away. You said I had to go in my room because you and Gabe wanted to talk but he went away."
Sally smiled at him, ignoring how tight and unnatural it felt right now. "Yes, he went out for a little while." Percy was still staring at her, his eyes moving slowly from the mess she was attempting to clear up to her face, which she kept hidden from him as much as possible by bowing her head as if she were intent on the task.
"Did you and Gabe fight?" Percy asked eventually, muffling the last word with the corner of his blanket as he held it to the lower half of his face.
"No, honey. Everything is fine," Sally said, reaching up to grab a plate from the counter and scrape the remains of the cake onto it. Satisfied she had got as much of it as possible she took it to the sink and began to rinse it all down the garbage disposal, which kept grating as it snagged briefly on shards of broken ceramic.
"You were yelling," Percy said, almost accusingly.
Sally bit her lip and turned off the water. She inhaled deeply and turned to face Percy, offering him the widest smile she could manage. "Look, sweetie. Sometimes grownups just don't get along. Just like children. You remember that time Peter Gibson stole your crayons in kindergarten and you tried to make him eat sand?" Percy nodded slowly, so she continued. "Well, it's just like that. We don't just stop fighting when we grow up. But just because Gabe and I don't always get along, it doesn't mean that I don't love you so much. Because I do, and that will never change, you got it?"
Percy seemed mollified and walked over to his mom, trailing the already-grubby blanket in what was left of the batter. Sally made a mental note to wash it as Percy threw his arms around her legs, turning his head so he was resting his cheek against her thigh. Sally smiled, and it didn't feel forced anymore. What Gabe had just done was already fading into a distant memory compared to this time she was getting to spend with her son. There was nothing he could do to take these moments away from her. Nothing.
She tousled his dark hair and stepped backwards, breaking the embrace. "Now, do you want to go and get dressed into daytime clothes? Silly mommy dropped her cake bowl and made such a mess that she's gonna have to get the mop out. So go put on some clothes, birthday boy, while I mop, kay?"
Percy nodded and turned on his heel, scampering away across the apartment with his blanket flapping behind him with the speed he was moving at. Sally watched him disappear into his bedroom then went to the narrow door that concealed a closet where she kept the vacuum cleaner, the mop bucket and other cleaning stuff, as well as a healthy accumulation of mess that she didn't want visitors to see. Not that she had many, of course: Gabe wouldn't allow it, but keeping up appearances made her feel better in general. She fetched the mop and bucket and walked back over to the sink, turning on the hot water and letting it run so it could heat up while she added detergent to the bucket.
A loud juddering noise startled her, and she dropped the bottle of detergent in the bucket. She looked up at the sink. The tap was sputtering and the steam coiling up from it had taken on a greenish tinge. As the plumbing began to shudder menacingly, Sally was away of a cool sea breeze radiating throughout the room, better than the broken AC could ever have achieved, that left behind a fresh, salty smell. Two small pearls came careening out of the tap with the water and landed with surprisingly heavy thuds in the stainless steel sink. Before her eyes they began to grow and change. One swelled into the gift Gabe had tossed out of the window earlier, complete with the pristine wrapping paper she had picked out and a blue bow on top. From the other sprung a fully-formed birthday cake, topped with blue frosting and 'Happy Birthday, Percy' written on the top in bright green icing.
She lunged forward to turn off the tap and fish them out of the sink before they got soaked, but she needn't have bothered: they were bone dry. Tears pricked her eyes as she laid both items out on the counter, and she put a hand to her chest, completely overcome with emotion. They were both shimmering and out of focus, in that way she had learned to mean they were shrouded in Mist, so Gabe wouldn't even know that they were there. She was so overwhelmed she couldn't speak, so she just prayed silently.
Poseidon, wherever you are, thank you for this. For everything. You have no idea what this means to me or Percy.
Yet even as she finished praying she knew that, actually, Poseidon knew full well what this gesture meant for both of them, and that was why he had sent them.
Even on days like today, he had never truly deserted them.