A/N: Oh my gods, that was a tough chapter to write! Poor Sally :(. I am so, so sorry for the extremely long wait! As it's the end of summer, I've been busy, first on vacation, and then getting ready to go back to school (which includes awful summer homework.) I really hope you all enjoy this update. Please remember to leave reviews and please follow/favorite if you enjoy it! Thank you all! -Leslie
"Mom. Mom!" Nate said, unnerved. His mom was the toughest person he knew. He had never, never seen her cry before, unless she was talking about his older half-brother. But this...this couldn't be about that. Nate ran over to his mom and hugged her tight. "What's wrong. What's wrong with me?" He asked.
Sally stared down at him with unmeasurable pain in her multicolored eyes, and Nate couldn't read the emotion. Fear? Worry? Or maybe, just maybe, a flicker of hope. What the heck was going on here?
"Nate..." Sally started, but then paused. "Maybe...maybe we should wait until your father gets here. It should be any minute now, school is well over." Sally wiped away the few tears, regaining her composure. That reassured Nate a little bit, the fact that his mom was staying strong. Sally walked into their family room and sat down on a couch, and Nate was right behind her.
When Nate's dad got home, he joined them, sitting on the chair across from the couch. "What's wrong, Sally?" Paul Blofis inquired, noticing that it appeared as if she'd been crying. "Nate? Is everything okay here?
All of a sudden, Nate lost it. He was confused, his head was starting to hurt again, and his mom was upset with him for something he didn't understand. "I don't know! I have no idea what's going on. Just-just leave me alone," he shouted, running upstairs to his room and sitting on the edge of the bed. He was panting, filled with rage and a certain emptiness, as if there was just something missing, something that he wasn't sure he'd ever had.
The pain in Nate's head flared up, as if a knife was cutting his head from the inside-out. He clutched his head and flopped backwards on the bed as more images flashed through his head, similar to the last but different at the same time. The final vision lingered for a few seconds longer than the others. The picture dangling over a bottomless pit, with a white-faced, terrified girl (Annabeth? Hannah?) clutching his wrist, her face twisted with pain haunted his mind. Nate snapped out of it just as the boy in the vision let go, and he unknowingly screamed out that familiar name, "Annabeth!" at the top of his lungs.
His parents must have heard the scream, because just minutes later, Sally and Paul sprinted into Nate's room, looking shocked. "I was right..." Sally said, still disbelieving, "It...it is you." Sally Jackson then took on a pained expression, as if it was near impossible to get out the next word. "P-p-percy?" she whispered, taking on a faraway look.
Nate looked up, confused, angry, unsure. "Mom? I don't know what you mean...mom, snap out of it!" He yelled, bringing her back to attention. "My name is Nate. Nate Jackson. By the gods of Olympus, please tell me who the Hades this Percy is!" He exclaimed, then rushed his hands up to cover his mouth. Where had those words come from?
"Percy...Percy is-well, was- your older half-brother, Nate. Only he was something...something special." Sally began, tears already threatening to spill from her eyes. "I guess it's time for me to explain. You're ready now. But where do I start?" she asked, looking to Paul but really just thinking to herself./
"Nate, you've learned about the Greek gods in school, correct? With Mr., ah, with Mr. Brunner?"
"Yes," he responded to his mother, impatient and waiting to see where the heck this could be going.
"Well...those gods, those myths, they're all real, and they exist among us," Sally explained, looking to Nate. She was concerned as to how he would take this. He wasn't a demigod, but it could still be hard news for someone to learn. But somehow, he seemed surprisingly calm, accepting.
"Okay," Nate answered, only a little more freaked out then he was letting on. It did explain the visions, and the curses, and some of the weird things he'd seen over the years, after all. "And...Percy was somehow involved in all this?"
Sally looked at him, startled at his rational demeanor and direct questions. "Yes, honey, yes he was. Percy's father, well..." And she proceeded to tell all of Percy's story, from the day she had nearly died with the minotaur, to his tumble into Tartarus, and finally, to the final battle. The battle that not even the strongest demigod could survive. "At least...he and Annabeth were together. But it was hard on me, Nate. It was hard on your father too. Percy, I loved him so much. In the end, he was a great hero. Greater even than Hercules." Sally finished, and then she just lost control. She began sobbing, all the pain of missing Percy flooding back, as if there were a hole in the dam of her thoughts. A dam hole, Sally thought, remembering the joke Percy had explained to her. The tears fell faster, hotter. Nate curled up in her lap, unsettled by his thoughts, and by the sadness that was bursting from his mother, bouncing off the walls, and taking over the room.
"M-mom?" Nate asked tentatively. "What does this...what does this all have to do with me?" For even though the legacy of his older brother had finally been explained, Nate was still not sure of his part in the story.
"Nate," Sally replied, voice hoarse from all the crying. "I don't know how, and I don't want to believe it, but..." she took a deep breath, still reluctant to give herself to the hope. "I think, just maybe, Percy's soul has found a way into your body. It's weird, impossible, strange, I know. But I just...I just want to believe it so, so badly," Sally said, the tears trickling down her face once more. She wrapped her arm around Nate, and her other around Paul Blofis (Blowfish, she thought) and the family sat together in the small room, with no company but each other, some tears, and the ghosts of memories whispering at their backs.