Annabeth still wakes up in terror, too.

As long as they've been sleeping side-by-side, it still took him time to see the shadow left on her by Tartarus. She's brave and composed, and that's what he loves about her... but he also loves the broken parts of Annabeth, even if he's never been sure how to tell her. So when she startles awake, babbling about the dark and the mist, he cozies up to her back and swallows her in his arms, where he hopes Nyx and the Weaver and the face of the Pit cannot intrude.

When she sleeps again and his own chest grows tight with both scars from the acid air and emotion, he goes down the hall and looks into the two rooms, one after the other:

Robert sleeps on his back, legs and arms splayed out like he's sky-diving. His black hair is thick like Annabeth's but wavy like Percy's, and he has her impish nose. He's smart, but likes to pretend he isn't. When he's asleep and not making Diet Coke and Mentos rockets explode around the house, he looks as angelic as a Greek cherub. But looks can be decieving...

Damara is the real angel, sleeping with her hands folded under her head. Mommy's little genius, she can keep up with her brother in mischief-making- but in her deepest nature she's more like Annabeth. Percy is stunned at how sensitive and aware she can be, at seven. It always seems strange to him that something like that could come from him- but then, miracles happen all the time.

Miracles like living long enough to have kids.

Something calms inside of him, seeing them peaceful and safe. He can usually go back to sleep, then.

In the daytime, though, they still work miracles: they bring home good grades, and they can read without the words jumbling up. Damara can move water sometimes, and Robert won an arts-and-crafts contest at Camp with a three-dimensional god's-eye weaving that he said just "came to him". His kids don't have to fight; that's a miracle enough in itself.

And then there's how they can make him feel...

When Damara climbed the roof of the Big House and wouldn't come down over some schoolkid crush, he was terrified and angry. He wanted to cry at her stubbornness and water-whip her down from there at the same time- but when she climbed down herself, safe again, a feeling like being underwater washed over him. When a crumpled-up school paper with an A+ on it, entitled "My Dad Is My Hero", fell out of Robert's backpack, that old offer of immortality and godhood couldn't compare.

When he comes home late to three smiling faces around the table and blue cake on his birthday; when Damara holds his hand crossing the Principia; and when he and Annabeth watch secretly from the kitchen window as their kids play-act the stories they've heard about the Titan War and the retrieval of the Golden Fleece, stories from their lives, it's a feeling beyond gods or the powers of the primordial.

When he sees them warm and safe in their sleep, his own nightmares dissipate.