Disclaimer: I only own the plot and my OCs. Anything you recognize as not mine belongs to Rick Riordan, Greco-Roman mythology, and/or their otherwise respective owners.
Author's Notes: So apparently between this and the other one-shot I published earlier today (Eastern Standard Time bitches), I have kicked off the New Year with 10k words in one-shots. Phew! And I'm not done yet. I'm expecting to write another Lukercy one-shot sometime before January 17th, on top of some MCU stuff. We'll see if I get around to doing all of that, though.
Major thing to note with this one is that my version of Greek mythology plays a major role in it. TLDR for those not aware: Poseidon/Demeter are a thing, and their kids are Apollo, Artemis, Persephone, Despoina, and Arion. Poseidon/Amphitrite are also a thing, but they're kids aren't really relevant.
Anyways, hope you enjoy!
Sincerely,
~TGWSI/Selene Borealis
~what a good wife you would be~
Sally met him in the summer, shortly after her eighteenth birthday.
It should have been the summer after her graduation from high school, too. It should have been the summer before her first year at college. But it wasn't. Because Sally had dropped out of high school to take care of her ailing uncle, her uncle who had left her with nothing. All she had to her name was five hundred dollars, her car, and the cabin her parents had owned in Montauk. She didn't even have enough for a down payment on an apartment in the city.
So, she moved into the cabin. She swept the sand outside with a beaten-looking broom, washed the windows with rags that had seen better days, and cleaned the spiders out of the cabinets. She slept the night she moved there on the couch, one of the few objects that had been left there when her parents had died. It smelled of mildew and mold, but it would have to do. At least for a while.
The next day, she went and got a job at one of the restaurants in town. It was a diner that had obviously been slowing down for years, but again, it would have to do. At least for now.
She met a lot of people as a waitress. Some of them recognized her as the daughter of James and his Icelandic wife Estelle who had died in that tragic plane accident all those years ago, or the granddaughter of the beloved local Joseph Jackson who had died not even ten years later. Most of them, though, were tourists.
He was a tourist.
"Got any ideas about what I should do?" he asked her when she went to wait on him.
She very nearly dropped her notepad in response.
He was handsome, with the messiest black hair and green eyes the color of the sea, but she honestly wouldn't have expected anything less from a god. The Hawaiian shirt was a little less expected, the fact that he had decided to appear as a middle-aged man even more so.
But then again, so was the presence of him in the diner.
"Lord Poseidon," she said, her smile tightlipped. "What can I get you to drink today?"
"Oh, just a water will do. Extra ice, but hold the lemon, please," he replied. His smile was wide. It made the wrinkles around his eyes crinkle.
Sally barely prevented herself from having a panic attack as she got him his drink. She had never seen a god before. Monsters, yes, she had seen a lot of those, had seen them take apart demigods like it was nothing in the backs of alleyways in New York City, but she had never seen a god. She had no idea about how she was supposed to act around him. She had no idea about what she was supposed to do, what she was supposed to say, what she was supposed to think.
"Here's your water," she said when she got back to his table. "Have you thought about what you would like to order?"
"I think I'll have the fish sandwich. That sounds good," he mused. "No pickles, though. I don't know why you mortals think it's a good idea to put pickles on fish sandwiches."
Sally tried to smile again.
She had a feeling she failed.
"Right away, sir," she said.
She checked on him more than she did any other customer, both before and after she had gotten him his food. The other waitresses snarked on her for it, joking that she obviously had the hots for him, but they weren't laughing once they saw him personally hand her ten sharp, crisp one hundred dollar bills. She almost cried as she saw those bills, but ultimately said nothing but a quiet "thank you." She had a feeling it was a one time thing. She had never seen a god before in her eighteen years of life, so it was only natural that she never see a god again.
You can imagine her surprise, then, when he walked into the diner the next day and asked for her by name, another wad of hundred dollar bills in his hand.
Poseidon was a nice man.
The gods were not nice people, Sally knew that to be true. All of the stories of old happened invariably because a mortal upset them in some way. For Odysseus, it had been the sea god himself. For Agamemnon, it had been Artemis. And for Jason, it had been Hera.
But Poseidon was a nice man. The millennia since the ancient world seemed to have mellowed him out. He was kind and charismatic, with a good sense of humor that had her choking on whatever she was drinking more than a few times. He told her stories of his fellow gods and the great heroes, stories of his wives Demeter and Amphitrite, stories of his children, stories of his siblings, stories of his nieces and nephews. And she listened to him, enraptured, staring into his eyes that contained the raging glory of the sea.
Before she knew it, the summer had passed. Autumn was right around the corner. Sally had enough money from Poseidon visiting her at the diner to buy an apartment back in the city, maybe even an apartment in Manhattan. She thought about moving back there, of raising a child named Percy with the messiest black hair and wide, sea green eyes.
She thought about it, up until Poseidon offered her a ring. It was not one she could touch; it was made of royal silver, and only beings of the sea could touch the metal. But it was beautiful. It had a diamond-shaped agate in the center of it, her gemstone, with a small diamond at each of its tips.
"Marry me," he said, softly.
She wanted to say yes. She loved him.
But when she blinked, she remembered the voice of her uncle in her mind. He had loved her, but he had always been a cruel man. He had told her many times that she was doomed to become a statistic, a teenage mother, a whore. And she was fine with that. Really, she was.
But a piece of paper documenting that? A lifetime of eternity, documenting that?
Nervously, she wet her lips.
"Poseidon," she began.
"Sally," he returned. He got down on one knee, in the kind of way that mortal men did but she had never thought an immortal one would. "Sally Estelle, you are a queen among women. In all my years, I have never met a mortal like you. Please, marry me. We both know what will happen if you don't. And while I know you don't mind what that entails, it will be a hard life. I don't want that for you."
Tears burned in her eyes.
"Life's not about being easy," she reminded him.
"Maybe not," he agreed. "But please, marry me. I don't want to lose you."
The last part, he said in a voice that was barely above a whisper.
Sally sniffled. She reached out, one hand grabbing one of his, the other coming to rest just above the metal of the ring. She thought about what it would be like to be able to wear it, the way that it would feel on her finger.
"Okay," she said quietly. "I accept. I'll marry you, Poseidon."
Their wedding was on Mount Olympus.
Sally wore a wedding dress designed by the youngest of her future stepchildren, Rhode. It was inspired by the dresses they had all worn long ago, the dresses that Hera and most of Zeus' other six wives still wore, sea foam white with pearls of all shapes and colors decorating its form. A crown made of anemone and amaryllis flowers, given to her by her future sister-wives, rested on her head.
Since she had no living family members, Apollo walked her down the aisle. Both Hades and Zeus had offered to do it instead, but she had said no. Having the god of death walk with her just seemed to be asking for trouble, and if Zeus walked with her, he would just steal the show.
Besides, Apollo was going to be her eldest stepson. If anyone deserved to walk her down the aisle, it was him.
"Dad was right," he told her when he saw her in her dress, giving her a smile that showed off his teeth, all perfectly and blindingly white. "You really are a queen among women."
"Soon to be just a regular goddess, though," she corrected him with a smile of her own.
Surprisingly, he shook his head. His eyes, usually dark blue, took on a greenish tinge.
"No, I don't think so," he said. "But, come on. Let's go."
Hera was the one to perform the ceremony. She spoke her lines in ancient Greek; the language was musical, but the meanings of the words flew over Sally's head. It was only when Poseidon nudged her softly that she realized it was time to say the ancient Greek equivalent of "I do," and it was only when he nudged her again that she reached out to grab the goblet of nectar, squeezed from the freshest of golden apples, and pulled it to her lips.
She didn't drink it for a moment, as any mortal would. Images of her burning to ash flashed through her mind, even though she knew that by her marriage to Poseidon she was now blessed by the gods to have immortality.
Finally, though, she took a sip of the drink. The heat of it traveled down her throat and to her stomach, then to the rest of her. It burned everything it touched, but in a good way. Bemused, she watched as her skin took on the slight golden sheen of the gods, as her shoulder-cut hair lengthened and became more voluminous, as her ocean blue eyes brightened and swelled in the reflection of Poseidon's eyes.
"I now present to you Poseidon, the God of the Sea, Earthshaker, and his third wife, Salona, the Goddess of Coral," Hera intoned. She was still speaking in ancient Greek, but somehow, Sally was able to understand it.
She was now a goddess, a creature of the sea.
Their honeymoon lasted three months.
They went to Europe, to the old lands. Sally had never been there before; she had never even been out of the state before. They visited all the major cities; London, Paris, Madrid, Barcelona, Rome, Athens, St. Petersburg, and Berlin. She met the god Triptolemus, as well as Tiberius and the immortal Rhea Silvia. The latter reminded her a lot of her mother; blonde, bubbly, and upon retrospect, a little naïve.
When their honeymoon was over, Sally returned to the cabin at Montauk and Poseidon returned to his godly duties. That wasn't to say he ignored her; far from it. She was added to the rotation Demeter and Amphitrite had set up eons ago, which functioned in weeks instead of days. She did, admittedly, get a touch lonely, but soon that didn't matter.
Because Sally was pregnant.
"It's going to be a boy," informed her Apollo for her first medical appointment, even though her stomach was still flat and he hadn't done any scans yet. Perks of being a god of medicine, she supposed. "Your pregnancy will last exactly nine months, as he'll be born on August 18th. Don't worry about the length of it; we gods actually age as mortals do up until the age of sixteen. After that...eh, not so much."
"And his destiny?" she asked.
Apollo's eyes flashed green.
He hesitated.
"He'll be strong," he said at last. "And worthy of the name you're going to give him."
True to Apollo's word, on August 18th, her Perseus was born. He came out with a sharp cry and gold-tinted cheeks, the only indicator that he wasn't mortal. Apollo handed him to her with a sunny smile. Next to her, Poseidon stared down at the two of them with a smile of his own, albeit a slightly unsure one.
"Are you sure you want to name him after my brother's son?" he questioned her. "You know names have power."
"I know," she said. She didn't tell him that that was the very reason why she had decided on it. "I'm sure."
Four years and one month after Percy came his little sister, Andromeda, born on the equinox. She had her father and brother's messy black hair, but her mother's blue eyes. Apollo assured her that her destiny would not be like her brother's. She would be strong, yes, and stubborn, yes, but she wouldn't have the weight of the world thrust on her shoulders.
Sally closed her eyes at the news, and prayed to Ananke herself that her son could somehow be spared his fate.
On Percy's twelfth birthday, she pressed the issue of him going to Camp Half-Blood with Poseidon.
It was something that they had talked about before. Percy, despite being immortal, was still a child, and a child needed friends their own age – of which, of course, among the gods were none, as he had been the first immortal born in nearly two thousand years.
But Poseidon had never agreed with her on it. He wanted to keep them safe, she knew. Supposedly, in Zeus' mind, since their children were immortal, they were safe from the Great Prophecy, the one that threatened to preserve or raze Olympus. Yet Poseidon was not of the same mind as his brother. Every now and then, she would catch him giving them all worried and concerned looks when he visited.
But Sally was also stubborn, and firm. That night, after tucking her two children into their beds – she had expanded the cabin on the inside with her magic long ago, turning it from a one-bedroom house into a four-bedroom one – she returned to her and Poseidon's room and laid down next to him.
"Our son needs friends his own age, Poseidon," she said.
"Well, I can bring over Benthesikyme's daughters when I come back in three weeks," he replied, not looking up from his book, one of the latest on marine biology. "Or I can bring over Despoina. Mother knows how bored she is up on Olympus, you would think that she didn't have the enter world at her fingertips."
"Our son needs to be around people not related to him," she corrected him. "At least, not closely. I know given the family tree finding someone entirely not related would be moot, unless I wanted to talk with the Norse or the Welsh. But I don't."
"I'll ask Hebe's sons if they want to come over, then."
"But they aren't his age, none of them are. Maybe physically, but not mentally. Not where it counts," she said. "Please, Poseidon. Let Percy go to camp. I haven't talked with him about it yet because you haven't said yes, but he needs it. It'll be good for him."
With a sigh, Poseidon looked up at her. His gaze was tired, the kind of tired one only achieved by living for thousands of years.
"You're sure about this?" he asked quietly.
"I'm sure."
"Then fine. Do it."
Camp was good for Percy, but not entirely for the reasons that she was thinking.
At the December solstice meeting in between his birthday and his first summer at camp, somebody stole Zeus' lightning bolt and Hades' helm of darkness from Olympus. All three of the brothers turned on each other, using harsh words and vicious threats of a war that would shake the very Earth to its core. None of them would listen to any of their wives, or Hestia, or even their mother Rhea.
In the end, it was decided that the only way to calm things between them was to send Percy, her Percy, on a quest, to find what was lost and see it safely returned.
Sally watched him excitedly go to camp at the news, eager to prove himself to his father (even though he had to do no such thing) and the rest of the Olympians.
She also watched him come back, face pale and with a still recovering wound from a magical scorpion in his side.
Ambrosia and nectar couldn't fix everything, not even for the gods.
"Did you at least make some friends?" she asked him while she sat next to him in his bed and ran her fingers through his hair. Andromeda was on the other side of him, happily sleeping, assured by the fact that her brother was now home.
"There's this daughter of Athena named Annabeth Chase. She's kinda rude, but also kinda nice. I convinced her to go back to her family for the school year. And a satyr named Grover Underwood. He's nice too," Percy said, before he paused for a moment. "There was also Luke, but...I'm not sure if we're still friends anymore. He said he hates the gods, and I'm a god. I don't see how he can't hate me."
For a long time, Sally was silent.
"It sounds like he hates what individual gods have done to him," she finally said. "That doesn't mean that he hates you. Give it time. I think he'll come around and realize we're not all that bad, and that we can change."
His second summer at camp, Percy went off on another quest, this time without the permission of anyone but himself. Both Poseidon and Sally scolded him for it when he got home, but not full-heartedly. Without him, the Golden Fleece would never have been retrieved, and Thalia Grace, the daughter of Zeus, never would have been revived.
(Child of the Prophecy or not, she hadn't deserved to die, and Sally was quite thankful she now had a second chance at life.)
The following winter was Percy's third quest. He went off in search of Annabeth and his half-sister, Artemis, getting help from Apollo along the way. Two of his quest-mates, the former titaness Zoë Nightshade and the daughter of Hades Bianca di Angelo, both hunters of Artemis, died. The fourth, Thalia, took Zoë's place as the Hunt's lieutenant.
She saw the look in his eyes when he came home, the realization what Thalia's decision could possibly – probably – mean for him.
Percy's third summer at camp, he traveled the labyrinth, and...that was all she knew, besides what she heard from Poseidon. Her son came home and locked himself into his room without another word, wouldn't talk to either her or Poseidon until his friend Nico came to visit him. The son of Hades was a shy and obviously traumatized kid; he stared at the blue cake – blue because of the sea – and only took a slice when she practically shoved it at him, whispering a barely heard "thank you" as he did so.
When Nico left, Percy came out of his room with tear tracks down his cheeks. He cuddled up to her for warmth; gladly, she accepted him.
"Luke became the vessel of Kronos," he said, his voice cracking.
"I know," she soothed.
"He's going to get himself killed."
"I know."
"I love him."
She blinked. Well, that was new.
If she had still been mortal, if her son's blood had run red instead of gold, perhaps she would have said something about the seven-year age difference between him and the son of Hermes. Not then, obviously, but eventually. Or perhaps she would have said something about him and the daughter of Athena.
But they were not mortal. They were gods, and they were going to live for eons. What were seven years in the face of eternity?
"It's not easy being in love, is it?" she asked instead.
"No," he whispered. "It's not."
On Percy's sixteenth birthday, the Great Prophecy came to fruition.
Zeus refused to acknowledge that her son was the child of it up until the last possible second; he was quite insistent it would be Hades' son. She thought it was because her son was immortal; he wouldn't be able to kill him without stripping him of his immortality, and if he did that, Olympus would be razed to the ground by half of the gods themselves instead of the titans.
The battle occurred in three different places. Poseidon, Amphitrite, and the rest of the sea-related members of their family fought down in Atlantis, protecting the underworld city from Oceanus and the monsters of the deep. The rest of the Olympians, plus most of the minor gods on their side, fought against Typhon on his path from Mount Saint Helens to New York. Percy, the demigods, and the Hunters of Artemis fought in Manhattan, defending it from the brunt of Kronos' army and the titan himself.
Sally, with twelve-year-old Andromeda at her side at her daughter's insistence, joined them. She may have only been a minor goddess, but she was the goddess of coral. There were things she could do with it that went beyond even her wildest dreams.
Plus, halfway through the battle, Hades, Persephone, and their four children joined them after Nico had rallied them in. Plutus and Makaria may have admittedly not been that terrifying, but Zagreus and Melinoë were. A few of the monsters even turned around screaming at the appearance of the half-dead goddess of ghosts.
She wasn't there by her son's side when Kronos was defeated. She only heard about what happened later. Apparently, the son of Hermes had turned the knife he had given the daughter of Athena on himself, stabbing himself in his mortal point from the curse of Achilles. It was a fatal wound. He should have died.
In fact, he would've, had Percy not cut his own wrist and forced him to drink his blood. She had no idea how he knew that it would functionally serve as a cure better than even that of nectar and ambrosia, though she had a feeling Nico's constant visits earlier that summer had something to do with it.
"Perseus," Zeus thundered when the battle was over and he, the rest of the Olympians, Percy, his demigod friends, Andromeda, and herself were all in the throne room. "Today is your sixteenth birthday, the day you are to receive your domain. It is also now the day you have saved us all. I first bestow upon you the title of the God of Tides, and second ask you if there is anything you would like to wish for."
The last part, he said with a sour look on his face.
She watched as her son turned to look at Luke, who he was holding hands with. There was something indescribable in his expression, even to her.
"Thank you, Uncle," he said, before his lips twitched. "But first, I would like to ask for a solemn oath."
What followed next made pride bloom in Sally's chest. Percy crafted a speech, one which she had never heard the likes of from him before, of what he had seen during his summers at camp. He spoke of demigods, who felt unloved and unwanted by their godly parents. Of the children of the minor gods, who lived cramped together in Cabin Eleven, Hermes' cabin, when he felt that they deserved much more. Of courage, and honor, and the bravest demigod he believed to have ever lived.
He also asked for a pardon, for this demigod, since it seemed like he wasn't going to die any time soon. And, after another glance his way, for him to receive immortality.
"Perseus, you ask for much. You presume much," his father said, but there was pride in his eyes. She could see it.
Percy smiled. "I know. I also will hold you to your word."
So Luke Castellan became Lukas, the God of Time. It was fitting, given his role in the war. Plus, there hadn't been a godof time yet. A primordial and a titan, yes. But not a god.
"It's nice to finally meet you, dear," she told him at the party hours later, once she had been introduced to all of Percy's mortal friends.
Luke regarded her with wide eyes.
"Salona," he said.
"Please, call me Sally. It's only been seventeen years since I was given that name. I'm not used to it yet."
"Sally," he corrected. "Percy's told me a lot about you."
"And he's told me a lot about you," she replied. Then: "Please, take care of him for me."
She delighted in how both of their cheeks flushed in response.
Sally let them get back to their festivities after that. She had a dance with Poseidon; he spun her around with a laugh, up until Demeter came over to snatch him with a wink.
"Hope you don't mind, Sally," she said.
She waved them off. She had learned long ago how to share her husband with his other wives.
As soon as they were gone, she felt a warm presence behind her back.
"Sally," Apollo said as she turned around to greet him. "May I have this dance?"
She smiled. "Of course."
Neither of them said anything for a while, as they danced.
"You knew all along, didn't you?" she finally asked. "His fate. What would happen."
Apollo grinned. "Why, dear stepmother, I'm the God of Prophecy. Of course I did," he said. Then he tilted his head over to look at her son and his friends. His smile turned more wistful. "They're not done. Not yet. They still have a bit more to do. But they'll be happy, Sally. I promise you."
She closed her eyes. A peace she had never known she could feel settled over her.
"Good," she said.
And that was that.
Word Count: 4,318