When Percy first heard the woman's voice, he thought it was just another one of the whispers.
Percy's world had long become hazy, nothing more than a waking dream. He drifted endlessly, an unwilling spectator to the slow unraveling of his soul. Piece by piece Percy Jackson watched himself fade away, yet some stubborn part of him remained steadfast. The void was closer now than ever before - the ravenous gray was near enough to nip at his knees and shoulders. Still, the thinnest of threads tied him to the dais, to The Burden, to himself. The string had the face of his mother.
The female voice was distant in the beginning, so faint he almost missed her beneath the sound of humming.
"Hello, Perseus," she had said. The voice was soft, smooth like silk. Percy liked the way it wrapped around his body and eased the kink between his shoulder blades.
The sky bearer didn't bother to respond at first. He figured out that the whispers were only one way a long time ago. How long? It didn't matter. He just knew. The humming had stopped.
"Can you hear me, my love?" She was closer now, this new stranger.
The words teased Percy's ears, the brush of lips on skin. Whoever the lady was had to be pretty, if her voice was any indication. Still, it was a strange question to ask. Of course he could. That's all Percy did nowadays. The bottom of the sky loved to complain, and it wasn't as if he could reach up to plug his ears.
Percy snorted at the thought, adjusting The Burden. The vertebrae in his neck stopped vibrating dangerously. He tuned out the sky's perpetual head-splitting noise. In retaliation it stuck a knife in his side. Percy tuned that out too.
"It's very rude to ignore a lady, dearest." The voice was clear now, like the woman had dialed into the correct radio frequency. After an eternity of silence, even a normal conversation volume had Percy's face pinching in discomfort. After the pain in the man's head cleared, the words finally sunk in.
Percy wasn't trying to be rude, obviously. He might have actually felt bad about it if the woman sounded genuinely angered. Instead, her sultry voice seemed . . . pouty? Like a child denied a sweet treat at the grocery store.
The sky bearer couldn't help the chuff of what might have once been humor that escaped his mouth, nor the grunted "sorry" afterward. It came out as a slew of consonants, more 'srr' than a real word. His voice was deeper than he remembered.
"Vous êtes pardonné. In this case I suppose I can't hold it against you." The woman giggled with a sound like chiming bells.
Percy froze.
What?
It took the son of Posiedon several moments to come to grips with what had just happened. For almost a whole minute his entire being was blue-screened. Even the Burden seemed taken aback. When Percy finally came back to reality, the void was swirling the slowest it had been in what must have been forever and the gray had retreated a foot or two. He could actually feel the stone beneath his knees again.
The sky bearer wet his lips. His head had lifted up, eyes darting about. It revealed only the standard endlessness. The sudden movement stung, the muscles in his face protesting. His neck felt like it hadn't moved in centuries.
"Hello?" Percy's weak voice echoed in the void.
The surrounding nothingness remained unchanged. The sky bearer's vocal chords were scratchy as sandpaper, most definitely from a lack of use. There was a great bubbling in Percy's stomach as he knelt, waiting for an impossible reply. He couldn't decide whether it was unpleasant or not. Was this real? Gods, Percy hoped so.
Maybe that's what the emotion was - hope. It felt so foreign.
Finally, finally, his ears were touched by her voice once again. "Yes, bon matin, my love. We've already done this, you know." The woman laughed. The sound was brimming with emotion so bright it stunned Percy like a flashbang.
It took the sky bearer several stupefied breaths to realize that she was teasing him. Teasing! He was glad that at least that basic social cue hadn't escaped him, though the protocol for a proper response clearly had. Percy's chest was warm somewhere on the left side. That was strange. Normally it was his stomach.
This time Percy felt less silly speaking to the open air. "Who?" He grunted, unable to find the breath or wit to formulate more. A couple of shadows he hadn't noticed in the void beyond the dias were looking at him. "How?"
"Ah," the voice faltered. "Very good questions, mon coeur. But I'm afraid I can't answer them. Not yet, anyway." She seemed sad. There was more of that musical foreign language. French, was it? The name appeared dimly from the depths of his fogged psyche.
"Why?" Percy's voice felt stronger now, one he could somewhat recognize as his own.
"I'm sorry, my love. It's just . . . It's not yet the proper time."
Percy huffed. "Okay."
It was clearly an excuse, but not one Percy felt particularly obliged to call the woman out on. He'd rather keep her talking. Nothing this interesting had happened in a long time, and this new voice was decidedly more pleasant than a visit from a Titan. Briefly, the sky bearer found his mind distracted by a sort of niggling déjà vu. Had he forgotten something important? The woman replied before he could try to remember.
"Thank you, Perseus. Je suis redevable à toi." She sounded genuinely relieved. "Honestly just to see you, to speak with you after all these long years is more gratifying than I could have imagined." Percy could almost see a stunning grin hovering in the air after those words but the image was fleeing.
"Sure. 's fine." Percy smiled back, dry lips protesting. Was that the polite thing to do? It probably looked as natural as it felt. The unfamiliar motion hurt his cheeks. The few forms in the void floated away, skittish.
"Many things have changed since you were among us last, my love." There was something aching and wistful in her tone. "Certaines bonnes, et d'autres mauvaises. Much of it needed, though many are loath to admit it. It's all thanks to you, you know." Her words were warm at the end, almost as alluring as the way her velvety tone effortlessly switched between languages.
It had been so long since Percy had been exposed to this many emotions at once. His brain felt constantly bombarded with information, each dip in tone and context a complex cipher. The son of Poseidon found it almost impossible to follow along. Still, he was glad the woman seemed happy even if he felt terribly confused.
"How?" Percy asked the air. It had been so long since he had been stirred with something resembling curiosity that the feeling was a great rush of endorphins. The sky bearer was so taken with the conversation that The Burden was almost an afterthought even as his skin flayed from his bones. "How me?" It was a bit humiliating to be forced to grunt like a caveman, but Percy was long over such trivial things.
"Oh!" The voice seemed surprised, like Percy had caught her saying things she didn't mean to. "Well it feels horribly embarrassing to say out loud now that you've called me out, dearest. I suppose I could tell you." A pregnant pause. "If you insist." She coughed a bit at the end and Percy could picture a light blush dusting a pair of round cheeks.
"Yes." He answered, eager. "Please." Percy's fingers absent-mindedly moved to corral a bit of the sky that was dripping down near one wrist. It hurt, but what didn't?
"Very well." The woman sighed but it was a pleasant, fond noise. "I'm sorry if some of it doesn't make sense, my love. It's a rather long story. Once we are reunited I'll tell you all of it if you're still keen to hear it. For the moment I'll . . . have to speak generally, je suppose."
"Okay," Percy grunted. That niggling sensation in his brain was back. The word 'reunited' was important, clearly, but all memory of this woman's voice escaped him. Still, the sky bearer had figured a lack of specifics would be a given with the whole 'secret identity' thing.
The void was still, now. More shadows had gathered, empty eyes observing. Each new question, each train of thought felt more real than the last. The Burden wiggled, angry at Percy's lack of attention. It took little thought but significant effort to get it to settle.
The woman had begun while he was distracted. "I fear I am not a very good person, Perseus. It pains me to admit it but it's true." Her voice was airy but tinged with deep regret. "For a long time I didn't care about anything or anyone other than myself. I was terribly selfish. I worry I still am."
Percy hummed, unable to come up with an adequate response. Still, he found the woman's sentiment surprisingly relatable. Guilt was one emotion he could keenly understand.
"I ruined a lot of lives, Perseus. Il y en a tellement que je ne pourrais même pas les compter." The words kept coming at an increasing pace, as if the woman couldn't make herself stop. "I lied, I manipulated, I stole. Everything you aren't supposed to do, I did. I had a husband but I didn't love him, so I simply . . . cheated on him. À plusieurs reprises. Sans fin, simply because it made me feel good." She seemed half on the verge of tears. Percy was taken aback at the admission. "I squandered myself, buried my personality beneath a pile of meaningless trinkets and fake adoration. I was happy, with no reason to ever change. Or so I thought."
Percy sensed that they had reached a critical juncture. The woman's story seemed so achingly familiar but he couldn't place it through the endless fog in his mind. It felt just on the tip of his tongue and a thousand miles away.
"That was until you, Perseus. No one else really understood. They still don't, all of them blind to the great shift you caused. I felt you, that day when the Titan army first attacked. More keenly than I have ever experienced anything before. Comme une flèche vers le coeur, mon cher." Her voice fell to a whisper, a cross between heartbreak and something bordering on worship. "Do you know what it's like, to wake up one morning and realize how unlovable you really are? Sobering is a gross understatement, my love." She took a deep, fortifying breath. "I couldn't go back to who I was, you understand, so I decided to become something different. That's not a decision to take lightly, most especially for one in my position. But I had no choice."
There was another smile, a small one this time - just the slightest pull on the edge of a tantalizing set of full lips. The expression seemed deeply personal, like Percy was experiencing something no one else had ever seen. All of his other thoughts had been forgotten, swept away by the sheer emotion of the woman's voice. His chest burned from holding his breath.
"It was hard, becoming a new person. It still is. But it's worth it, chaque seconde." The woman's aching voice was literally arresting, a sonnet given physical form. "It was you who opened my eyes, dearest. You showed me what really mattered that day and I am stronger because of it. Stronger than I had even believed possible!" She was back to happy again, a ray of sunshine breaking through dark clouds. "You gave me the strength to change. But more than that, you were why I changed. Ma raison de vivre." The last phrase was nearly a prayer and a moan all at once.
Percy felt significantly uncomfortable at the strangely religious fervor in the woman's voice. He didn't feel responsible for much of anything. Certainly not anything good. The son of Poseidon opened his mouth but the woman beat him to the punch once again.
"Because of you, I got better. I became better for you, mon idée fixe." She tittered again, the sound a siren song. Percy found himself helpless to the warm fuzzy feeling it inspired in his core. "I got a divorce. A mutual one, I assure you. I made up with my family- well, some of them at least. I recently apologized to someone for the first time ever, did you know that?"
The woman's voice wavered for a moment, as if she was deciding carefully on her next words. "Your influence certainly shook things up out here, my love. Time and fear are powerful things. The world you knew is quite different now."
That was fine by Percy. The bits that he remembered weren't especially pleasant.
The woman seemed to echo his sentiment. "All for the better, if you ask me. I've done my best to steer things appropriately, but your presence n'a pas de substitut." Her last words seemed equal parts bashful and hopeful. "Still it's ultimately all thanks to you, mon coeur. Because of your strength the army of Olympus actually stands a chance against the forces of Kronos."
Percy couldn't hold his silence any longer.
"No," The sky bearer grunted, shifting the immense weight on his back. The stone of the dais chafed Percy's bare knees where the threadbare denim of his jeans had worn away. "Didn't do . . . anything."
A haunting glimpse of a girl tumbling over an indistinct cliff's edge flashed across Percy's mind. There was a terrified face in the desert, though everything but the crushing feeling of helplessness was hazy. There were more, their lives nothing but shadows in the dark with words from a past life. What was obvious was that people had died because of him. The Burden was nothing if not a punishment, after all. Percy could only wonder how many more there had been since.
The woman's reply crashed through the silence, nearly blowing him away in both meaning and sheer volume.
"Jamais! Never say that, my love. I beg you." It was like she was up in his face, poking his chest with a sharp finger. "No other mortal in the history of the universe could do what you have done. None would have dared to even try! The songs Apollo will write about you will be sung across the stars for millennia. Et quelle histoire c'est! Saving Olympus, holding up the sky, transcending your birth, becoming . . . well, anyway." Percy felt more than saw her flap her hands about, overwhelmed by her own emotions. "Trust me, dearest. Any transgression you feel you may have committed pales in comparison to my past actions. Vous n'êtes responsable de rien de tout ça! Arrêtez ces bêtises!"
"Sorry," Percy chuffed under his breath. The sky bearer was far too tired and in far too much pain to argue. It seemed her passion had overwhelmed them both.
"N- no matter. Just know, mon cher, that saying such things about yourself gets me all hot under the collar. And not in a good way. Hmph!" Yep, that was definitely a pout.
"Okay." That was fast becoming his favorite word. Percy realized his lips had twitched upwards again. He hadn't even noticed.
After that things fell somewhere silent between awkward and comfortable. The woman seemed anxious and probably more than a little embarrassed. For his part, the sky bearer hadn't held a conversation in so long he genuinely didn't know what he was supposed to do. The gathering shadows in the void had dispersed. Percy shuffled around as much as the dais allowed, adjusting the weight of the sky out of habit. The knife in his abdomen switched sides.
He had almost forgotten about that.
"Would you like me to go, dearest?" Her voice was soft, hesitant. "I understand that my past is not pretty. Perhaps I was hasty in thinking I had the right to talk to you so soon and with all my transgressions still fresh. I would never wish to make you uncomfortable-"
"No!" Percy's shout shook the floor. The Burden shrieked, taken aback as it was heaved upward with every fiber of strength Percy still possessed. "Please!"
There was torturous silence for a moment.
"Vraiment?" She whispered. "Truly?"
"Truly." Percy nearly cried with relief. "I need you."
It was the only way the son of Poseidon could think to put his emotions into so few words. Such was the bleak truth that Percy avoided thinking about but was always looming just beyond his senses. The yawning jaws of the abyss breathed down the back of his neck even now. This voice, this conversation, this woman had pulled him from the brink of something from which he knew he would never recover. Awkward, teasing, confusing, or anything else it did not matter.
The woman had been able to do something Percy had thought was impossible - keep him sane. Ground him, bring him back even just a hair. Before she arrived, each bout of pain from The Burden threatened to wipe him away completely. Eventually, inevitably, he knew that Percy Jackson would have ceased to exist. How long had it been since he had talked, smiled, done even anything at all? It felt like forever.
But now Percy felt real. He felt like a human being again, with thoughts and emotions and opinions. To him that was worth more than anything.
"Well. My word." The woman was flustered. "Who am I to deny such an impassioned admission?" More hand flapping? A blush, definitely. "Cieux, mon rêve! Vous rendez la patience très difficile. I may need a glass of ice water. . ." The sky bearer wasn't sure he was meant to hear that last part.
Percy huffed a couple times, trying to disguise his laughter. Apparently she wasn't immune to a touch of embarrassment herself. The bottom of the sky had continued wailing but it was almost distant now. Still crushing, but no longer mind-flaying. Percy found it a welcome reprieve.
"As delighted as I am to continue our conversation, my love - and trust me, I am - I'll admit I'm not quite sure what else to say." The woman giggled again, abashed. It was still beautiful. "I confess I didn't have much of this planned out. I was so eager to just . . . be able to speak with you that I seem to have gotten ahead of myself."
"Don't worry." Percy tried to reassure the woman of his intentions. "Just talk. I like it."
Speaking consecutive words was becoming easier with practice, even if he wasn't doing more than groaning half the time. The son of Poseidon readjusted the bulk of The Burden to keep his left arm from going numb. The throbbing static sensation moved to Percy's right side instead. The surrounding emptiness was still.
"Cher moi, Perseus. You're smoother than I gave you credit for." The woman rebounded from her discomfort quickly. That sultry tone was back, this time almost literally dripping with what could have been called 'adult intent'. "You've just said what millions of women have wished to hear from their beaux since the dawn of romance. I knew I had good taste." Percy was blindsided by shivers all the way down to his toes, these ones of the decidedly more enjoyable variety.
Percy couldn't respond. He wasn't sure how to deal with the heat in his face. Was she licking her lips? It certainly sounded like it. Oh gods, he could feel himself blushing up to his roots.
The son of Poseidon vaguely remembered his mother warning him once of girls who spoke with that tone of voice. The words were fleeting, just a couple of words taken from missing sentences. Either way, he dared say this woman could undress a man with words alone.
Sally would not have been pleased.
"Where to begin?" Heedless of Percy's emotional paralysis, the woman began wondering aloud. "I apologize for not being able to update you on the war, dearest. Personally, I felt that you of all people would have a stake in such information. Unfortunately, it has been forbidden. Bête." The woman's polite word choice did not match the absolutely scathing emotion with which they were delivered. Percy's forehead felt hot just from her tone.
"What would you prefer to hear instead?" The anger suddenly gave way to passive musing. "Oui! I know. I described how I have recently partially mended some, how you would say, tense relationships among my family members. Well, there is no shortage of drama with my relatives! I could regale you with some of my favorite tales." Percy felt that she was nodding. "There's certainly enough material there to last for a few years. I fear I could positively talk your ears off, mon coeur."
"Okay." Percy parroted, still trying to catch up to the sudden tone change.
The sky bearer was actually excited to hear more. Basking to this heavenly voice for that long sounded like exactly what his tattered psyche needed. Her rich tones were a cup of dark hot chocolate on a snowy day - everything seemed a little warmer whenever the woman spoke.
"You spoil me Perseus! Oh, I am terribly excited." Percy felt a playful phantom slap against his shoulder, light enough it could have been a breeze. The only reason he noticed is because the void contained nothing of the sort. "It's been far too long since I've had the chance to talk about these sorts of things. Plus, you'll need to know eventually anyway pour ce que j'ai prévu. I'll start with my father, then. And wouldn't you know it, there is some drama there already!"
Percy allowed himself to fall into the soothing music of her words, even as The Burden bucked and writhed on his shoulder blades.
The woman smoothly lowered to a conspiratorial whisper, words ghosting across the edge of his hearing. "Did you know that the one everyone thinks is my father isn't actually the one who sired me? Je sais! ~Scandalous!" The last word was sung, like Percy and the woman were two teens huddled in the schoolyard sharing gossip. The son of Poseidon thought it was a lovely sound. "It's a sort of open secret around my relatives, you see. I dare say it's the reason there is some bad blood in the house. Well, un parmi tant d'autres. My real father isn't so popular around the adopted family, love."
"He's a jerk?" Percy worked up the strength to ask.
That earned a laugh, as if he had told some great joke. "En effet. You could certainly say that. But I'm grateful, really. It's the reason I'm allowed to, oh, bend the rules a bit where my step-siblings can't. I dare say that my 'secret' blood is something not even Kronos accounted for." Percy perked up at that statement, but the woman seemed to sense it and moved to change topics quickly.
"Either way, it means that things get decidedly awkward whenever my birthday comes around. Father's ego gets all bruised, so he takes to strutting around like a ruffled paon and declaring how proud he is that I came from his precious bijoux." Even huffing with a mix of laughter and exasperation the woman was captivating. "My uncles love to hold it over his head. His wife, too, but for . . . other reasons."
Percy blinked. She didn't refer to the woman as 'mother', while this person who wasn't actually her dad was 'father'. What kind of complicated family was this? That déjà vu feeling was back and almost physically palpable.
"Still, father is insistent about making a spectacle every year. He throws these lavish parties, though I suspect it's to fluff up his own confidence rather than anything to do with me. I personally find them a mixed bag, to be honest." The woman sighed prettily. "They used to be far more interesting. Nowadays they are nothing but dreadfully tense, what with the war and all. I'll have to bring you to the next one to make things more . . . passionant- exciting."
The undertone of her words nearly made Percy choke on his spit.
The woman merely giggled. "Careful dearest! Make sure to breathe." Another blush-inspiring tease. "De toute façon. Many years ago, father decided to take things to a whole other level. He must have been having, shall we say, a bit of an off day or something of the sort and decided to pull out all the stops." Percy sensed more than a bit of an eye roll. "You should have seen the place, my love. I'm talking tinsel floor to ceiling, and a cake taller than a pine tree!" Percy could almost see various hand gestures to illustrate the point.
"In the end, that would be his downfall. You see, father had gone so overboard that there wasn't a single inch of ground you could step on without putting a foot in something scintillant or décoratif. It was truly absurd." Percy was coming to realize the woman's family must be obscenely wealthy. She continued, completely unaffected by her own outlandish statements. "And father, you understand, has a soft spot for flashy entrances. And not the flashy sort I would prefer but more the type that is physically harmful on the eyes. Think pyrotechnics, mon cher." She snickered at her own clever words.
Percy was beginning to feel increasingly strange. That wiggling familiarity had graduated from a subtle itch to a deep incessant scratching behind his eyes. It was like he had had a dream like this once, or maybe a few times. There were flashes of hair, powerful voices, and strange architecture the son of Poseidon couldn't place. What didn't he remember? Heedless, the woman's story marched on.
"So there we are, basically the whole family milling around and waiting for him to show up. That's quite strange on its own because he is always the first to arrive, my love. Toujours!" Percy felt that the statement would have been punctuated with more dramatic hand motions, though he couldn't see them. "His wife was fuming even worse than usual. My half-sister nearly put a hole in the wall when the bottom of her pants got smeared with pink glitter." The woman huffed, amused. "Her twin, le garçon agaçant, just laughed and started throwing the stuff around the room. That only dragged their older brothers into the fight before one of our aunts tried to step in to break things up. And then, just as things are escalating, father decides to appear."
Percy's knees were restless. He was holding his breath again.
"Crack! Boum!" The exclamation caught him completely off guard. "With an explosion of noise and light he appears!" The woman is on a roll now. "He had taken his usual spot right at the top of the room next to the cake. Normally, that wouldn't be an issue but these were circonstances différentes." She's nearly laughing between words now. "The strength of his entrance sets things ablaze. Littéralement! The whole cake was ringed with these absolutely ludicrous industrial sparklers invented by my ex-husband. There were dozens on each tier, you see. They all go off at once and start melting everything nearby!"
She snorted, the happy noise like a spear through Percy's chest.
"Soon the whole cake is on fire. Then it's the drapes, then the tinsel, and it isn't long until the whole room is ablaze. By that point, anyone who could have put the fire out was busy yelling at him, one another, or laughing at the whole thing." She sighed, half fond and half exasperated. "Naturellement the whole affair was ruined, which only incensed his wife further. This was back when they had at least somewhat of a decent relationship, mind you. At some point she has him by one ear in a death grip, and what does the fool ask?"
A pause.
"What did I do?"
As far as endings go, it was a realistically mediocre punchline. Percy knew it, she knew it. Either way, he couldn't help himself.
It was like a damn slowly breaking. The first crack was a twitching smile and then there was a huff or two and before he knew it Percy was guffawing out loud. The woman tittered along with him, stoking that warm glow in his chest to a raging inferno like the one she had just described.
Percy laughed and laughed, and once he realized it felt so good he never wanted to stop. The sky bearer continued until his lips tasted of salt from the trails of tears down his face and his vocal chords had no more sound left to give. For the first time in ages Percy could swear he felt his heart beat, actually move and pump and live.
"Thank you." It was all Percy could do to get the words out between the frog in his throat and the weight on his back. He meant it more than he could possibly express.
"Think nothing of it." The woman was tender, her tone a powerful sort of caring Percy wasn't used to. "In fact, I forbid it."
If Percy could have laughed any more at her gentle teasing, he would have. He settled for a wide grin.
"~Ah." The woman sighed contentedly. "Magnifique. Your smile is gorgeous, my love. I feel privileged to see it firsthand." Her voice turned a bit bashful, not so unlike a crushing school girl. "Would you like another story, mon amour?"
Percy had never wanted anything more in his entire life.
