The Song of Perseus
Collab with LoverBoi2000
ἡ Σαλλῆς ἀοιδή
The Song of Sally
i.
When she was a child, Sally Jackson's parents died in a plane crash.
She goes to live with her uncle, her last remaining relative. He doesn't have a good enough job to support another dependent, but there's nowhere else for her to go.
She spends her days at school, working as hard as she can to afford a scholarship, at a bookstore where she works, reading the classics most of the time, or helping her uncle with chores and errands. They make a good pair; he respects her hard working ways and she respects his. She works towards an education, and he supports her.
She never makes it out of high school.
Her uncle is diagnosed with terminal lung cancer.
"Why?" She asks the doctor through tears.
"Poor living conditions, exposure to pollution on the job."
"Poor living conditions? We're not hoarders, we clean, we eat the best we can, we—"
"Sally," the doctor says, pity in his eyes, "you live next to a factory. There's not much you can do."
"Will I get it?"
"Cancer isn't contagious."
"Isn't pollution?"
The doctor chuckles, one of those morbid chuckles that are somewhat condescending.
"Yes, I suppose it is."
She drops out of school to take care of her uncle and to pay for his cancer treatments. They have no health insurance. He protests, telling her to let him go and live her own life. She refuses to. She can't lose anyone else she cares about.
She works odd jobs, as she will for the rest of her life. One of them is as a bartender in Montauk, where she spends her weekends. She doesn't read anymore.
She's working one day when she meets him. Dark hair, five o'clock shadow, body of a Greek god, and eyes that match the ocean behind him.
He orders Coronas from her, smirking at the way her breasts bounce in her bikini top.
ii.
He's gone after a month.
He's there through her hardest time, when her uncle dies a week or so after their first time.
He goes to the funeral, which is small since they couldn't afford a casket or a grave.
But he gets distant after a few weeks, and then leaves her in the dust completely when she asks if they can make it official.
Nine months later he gives her a gift.
A little baby boy with his eyes.
ἡ Περσῆος ἀοιδή
The Song of Perseus
iii.
His mother tells Percy that his birthday was the happiest day of her life, but he doubts her.
He's seen the one photo the nurses — the only people there for her — took. She's smiling like she's supposed to, but the smile doesn't reach her eyes. Her eyes are scared.
Even at twelve Percy can see that. He can see that because she still looks like that. She's looked like that as long as she's been his mother.
Sally endures the clutches and the stench of Gabe Ugliano (for reasons beyond Percy's comprehension).
Her only solace is the manuscript that she's always slaving over, when the night is dark and the only sounds are her keyboard strokes and Gabe's snores.
It's an imaginary tale of how things could be, she says whenever Percy asks what she's writing, it's my wish for better days.
Percy doesn't pretend to ignore the rainbow-colored bruises that he could see under his mother's Sweet on America uniform's sleeves. He especially hates Gabe's demand for pleasure , and he voices these concerns again and again.
Sally ignores him.
iv.
He starts to see all these monsters.
There's the half-man/half-bull, there's the leathery-winged demon math teacher, there are the creepy supernatural ladies who stared into his soul.
He doesn't tell his mother. She has enough to deal with, he reasons. He's just seeing things.
That's what Grover said.
v.
Grover is wrong.
These monsters catch up to them anyway, and in her last act of love she sacrifices herself for his safety, trying to get him to a summer camp out of all things.
Whatever that camp is, it must be important.
(O, how he wishes to have never seen or heard of it, in retrospect.)
vi.
Camp is… interesting.
Camp is supposed to be a sort of a haven for beings like him, he hears.
He can learn sword fighting and archery and how to scale a lava wall and how to race against nymphs and fight on triremes and build fire canons and forge weapons and and and .
But his mom just died. He's envious of all these kids having fun, doing cool things. His mom just died.
vii.
"We learn how to survive here," a grey-eyed girl tells him as they walk past the training center. Inside the open pavilion, kids fight with sharpened swords and spears and all kinds of weaponry, trying to kill each other and trying not to be killed.
He sees a kid, maybe a year or two older than him, getting stabbed through the gut with an electric spear. The medics calmly take him away.
How can you learn how to survive, Percy thinks, if you have already failed?
When he voices this question, the grey-eyed girl tells him to not think too hard about it.
"It's easier that way."
viii.
He does not agree.
For a supposed daughter of the wisdom goddess, Annabeth doesn't seem to know what it is like to love someone as much as he loves his mother.
Is "loved" the right term now? He wonders, not entirely equipped to think about mortality.
ix.
This supposed haven is not the fairytale as they make it out to be.
Rather than learning how to thrive, the camp teaches children the minimum about survival. The attitude is that he should be grateful for this opportunity. He feels conflicted.
Yesterday, a fourteen-year old's hands slipped as they scaled the lava wall and they fell. That evening, they gathered in the dining hall, burning the camper's shroud.
He was never claimed. His shroud was grey. His shroud reads ἈΝΕΥ ὍΝΟΜΑΤΟΣ. 'Without a name.'
He supposes that since they didn't burn a shroud last night, the maimed boy was doing okay.
x.
The next day they burn the other kid's shroud. He sees the big, bulky girl with the electric spear. She killed this kid, barely fourteen years old, and she doesn't bat an eye.
He wants to say something to her, but his counselor, Luke, shakes his head.
"Sometimes it's better this way."
xi.
His mother never got a shroud. Only glittering gold.
"Heroes went to the Underworld, right?" he asks Grover one day. The satyr stares longingly at the nymphs in the lake.
"Many did," the satyr replies. "But that doesn't mean you should."
Percy remembers the failure of Orpheus. A part of Percy thinks he'll be stronger than Orpheus.
xii.
At the end of the week, they play a game of Capture the Flag.
Percy gets claimed at the end.
"Being claimed is ecstatic. Almost literally. Did you know that word comes from Dionysos?"
Dionysos is the camp director. It's a punishment for him, apparently. Dionysos doesn't seem to mind. "I was mortal once," he tells Percy when they meet.
"It was a trip," the god, who looks like a 19-year-old stoner and smells like one too, chuckles. "Fun times, fun times."
"ἐκστάσις," Annabeth continues, looking out at the lake during one of their Greek sessions. "The frenzied state Dionysos sent his followers into. They would forget themselves as they joined with their god during the orgiastic rituals."
Percy doesn't feel himself joining with his father. He doesn't feel himself getting lost in any 'orgiastic rituals.' Instead he just feels the fear of the gathered demigods.
They stare up at him in both awe and terror, at the floating "Ψ" above his head. Chiron orders them to bow. They all do, some more reluctantly than others.
He sees resentment in some kids' eyes. He remembers the gray shroud.
He's reminded of what Luke hinted at days ago.
"The gods created this camp so that they can dump their unwanted," the older demigod grumbled.
Percy's shroud might no longer be gray, but he doesn't feel like anything's changed.
xiii.
The end of the world is heralded by Zeus' lost lightning bolt.
With that comes the daughter of Athena, Annabeth Chase.
He needs her, she tells him, he needs her to succeed, to retrieve Zeus' lightning bolt.
The only thing he wants, he tells her, is to bring back his mother safely.
They leave at dawn.
A/N: Thoughts? Reactions? Would love to hear what you think & what divergence from canon (if any) you would like to see!