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: And we're back! I don't have too much to say today. Mostly too tired to. Need caffeine ASAP.

As always, I hope you enjoy. Until next chapter,

~TGWSI/Selene Borealis

~The Finding Home Saga~

~Finding Home~

~Chapter 79: I Blow Up On My Parents~

My mom was at the bathroom door in a second. "Percy?" she asked. The doorknob jiggled as she tried to open it, but of course failed because it was locked. "Percy, are you okay?"

My body acting on auto-pilot, it opened the door for me. On the other side, my mom's face was as pale as my own. She looked at me, and then she looked at the pregnancy tests. Even from her angle, she was able to see the results of all of them.

I didn't think it should have been possible, but somehow, her face became even paler. "Oh, Percy," she breathed.

For some reason, that did it. Maybe it was the undeniable proof that this wasn't a twisted joke, because even if she had decided to pull something absolutely unlike her like that, she wouldn't have been able to keep up the poker face for this long. Or maybe it was something else.

Whatever it was, something inside me broke.

The calm before the storm was over.

"How could you?" I demanded hotly. My entire body began to feel like it was thrumming. "How could you keep something like this from me?"

My mom flinched back. "Like I said, I shouldn't have," she said, her lower lip trembling. "But, Percy – "

There was the sound of a liquid roaring in my ears, and it wasn't just my blood. It was taking everything that I could to keep my powers at bay, the pull behind my navel almost too powerful for me to control. The pipes for our water definitely had to be rattling from the conflicting efforts. Almost hysterically, I wondered if this was because of my hormones.

Because I was pregnant.

"You knew!" I shrieked. "You knew ever since before I was even born that there was a possibility of this happening, and you never even thought to tell me? What kind of a mother does that?"

The insult had my mom's lips thinning some. "Percy, I know you're upset, but – "

"'Upset?'" I cried. "I'm more than upset! I'm – I'm – !"

I couldn't finish my sentence.

If I did, the whole truth would've come spilling out right then. Not just about Luke, but about then, too. I would've wound up admitting to my mother that this wasn't the only time I could've ended up pregnant, with the limited knowledge that I had about how apparently this ability of mine worked.

And I wasn't ready for that yet. Not at all.

As it was, I felt like I was bordering on a panic attack. My breaths were coming out in hot pants, bordering on hyperventilating, and my heartbeat was increasing in pace even more.

So, I did the only thing that I could, the only thing that I could think to do:

"I can't – I can't do this," I said in between gulps for air. "Not right now."

Squeezing past my mom, I darted for the door to my bedroom.

My mom turned around. "Percy!"

She was met with the door slamming in her face. "Just leave me alone!" I shouted back at her.

She didn't, of course. For a good several minutes, she knocked at the door, begging and pleading for me to open it so that we could talk. She even managed to undo the lock – because naturally I had locked my bedroom door, too. But that was of no use: I'd locked the wheels on my desk chair before placing it underneath the doorknob, creating a wedge. She couldn't have opened it no matter how hard she tried.

The entire time, once I'd wedged my desk chair underneath my door, I was laying in my bed with the earbuds to my secondhand MP3 player that my mom had gotten me for my sixteenth birthday (though I didn't use it nearly as much as Callie did hers) plugged in my ears, playing at full blast. Tears poured down my face and sobs came out of my mouth, adding to the cacophony of the chaos.

Everything that I'd ever planned or wanted, even being the child of the Great Prophecy – it all felt like that had been snuffed out in an instant. Well, not an instant, but you know what I mean.

It felt like my life was over as I knew it.

And all because the one thing I should've known about myself and my abilities since I'd found out that I was a son of Poseidon, even before the Great Prophecy, I hadn't been told until it was too late and I'd had sex.

All because I was pregnant.

Eventually, my crying tapered off and I fell asleep. Like I said last chapter, it wasn't a restful sleep, although it was a long one. When I woke up, I saw that I had somehow managed to have slept the clock 'round: it was just after four o'clock in the morning.

I wasn't given a moment to pretend that I didn't remember everything that had been revealed to me the day before. The only reason why I'd woken up was because of my nausea, which had me sprinting to the bathroom for the umpteenth time in recent memory. The taste of my tears intermingled with the taste of my vomit as I heaved into the toilet.

My mom didn't wake up and come to check up on me, probably because of how early in the morning it was. That was fine. I didn't want to see her, much less speak to her, right now anyways.

Bob did. She mewled and pawed at the closed door until I opened it and let her inside, then laid down on the bathroom tile next to me until I felt ready enough to stand up and swish my mouth out with water. "Thanks, Bob," I croaked out to her.

She mewled again.

All I really wanted to do after that and peeing was go back to bed, but she wouldn't let me. Bob sat in front of my bedroom doorway and batted at my pants' legs with her paws when I tried to. "What?" I demanded her quietly.

She stalked off down the hallway, towards the main part of the apartment. Towards the kitchen.

I realized that she had to know that I was pregnant. I'd heard before that animals could know things in advance of their owners like that, thanks to their enhanced hearing and sense of smell in comparison to humans. As anthropomorphizing as it was, it seemed like she was trying to tell me that I needed something to eat.

Well, the last time I had eaten something was...lunch. Over sixteen hours ago.

Sighing, I followed after her. Not wanting to wake up my mom, I settled for making something simple: a peanut butter sandwich and a glass of milk. Bob watched me the entire time that it took for me to eat my meal, her eyes rapt. When I was finished, I set my dishes down as gently and quietly in the sink as I could, before I retreated back to the bathroom to brush my teeth and then my bedroom. Bob followed after me, leaping up onto my bed. I didn't put my desk chair under the door again in case she woke me up demanding to be let back out into the rest of the apartment. That would've simply taken more effort than I currently had to give.

I fell back asleep with her tucked in between my arms. The rays of the sun and the sound of talking from the main area of the apartment were what woke me up an indeterminate amount of time later. This time, thankfully, I did so with no nausea threatening to overwhelm me.

Cracking my eyes open, I checked the time. It was now almost nine-thirty in the morning. I must've turned off my alarm in my sleep, and my mom must've called me out of school again.

Honestly, I really would've rather had that she hadn't.

I didn't want to talk with her again right now. I didn't want to face the music, the reality that I was pregnant – I kept on saying the word in the hope that it would make more sense, but it wasn't so far – and apparently going to have a baby in less than nine months. And not just because I was still processing all of this.

Mainly, because I had no idea what I was going to tell my mom when she undoubtedly asked who the father – other father? – was, and because I had no idea what I was going to tell Luke.

There was nothing else for it, though. I had to go to the bathroom. My bladder was absolutely full.

Bob had moved into a different place on my bed sometime during the past five hours, and she woke up at me getting up. Hopping down from the bed, she was the first of the two of us to exit the bedroom when I opened the door. Vaguely, I was aware of how this made the talking in the main part of the apartment abruptly go quiet, but I didn't think about this much as I immediately went into the bathroom.

I used the toilet, sitting down again because I didn't feel like standing, then brushed my teeth. After I was done, I left the bathroom and walked down the short hallway, my shoulders tensing as I did.

"Good morning, Percy," my mom said, smiling at me.

She wasn't alone. Also sitting in the living room were two familiar faces: my patron, Demeter, and...Despoina, surprisingly. Demeter was dressed well for the season, as she was wearing a green plaid dress like you would see in those old '50s and '60s movies, and her brown hair was pulled into a simple, but elegant, bun, without the netting this time. Despoina was also dressed for winter, though she looked more modern and also...Christmas-y? She was wearing a blue dress with white fur borders, like what you would see Mrs. Claus or some other Christmas-related female figure wear in the movies, too.

Whatever. I wasn't going to question it.

"Great, you're all here," I muttered out.

...Well, not all of them. The one person other than my mom who should've been here right now, my dad, Poseidon, wasn't. I had a feeling that I knew why: "the Ancient Laws" and all of that jazz.

I knew that I was being disrespectful to literal gods, including my patron/stepmother, both with what I had said and my thoughts. In my defense, however, I was angry at all of them. Mm, well, maybe not Despoina so much, but still.

My mom glanced at Demeter and Despoina nervously, knowing my disrespect just as much as I did, but neither of them appeared to be offended. If anything, Despoina was giving me a small, but comforting smile. Yet, there was something...off about it. Something that hinted to me I would be told the reason for that later.

I didn't stay in place to look at my immortal half-sister, instead marching back over to the kitchen to get the milk out of the fridge and a cup out of the cupboards. For some reason, I was really craving milk today. It was probably because of pregnancy cravings. Hormones. Semantics.

"Percy, can we just talk, please?" my mom begged.

"Oh, so now you want to talk about this," I retorted snidely. "Informing me of this happening any time in the past almost sixteen and a half years just wasn't a good time for you?"

My mom's face flushed. "Percy!" she scolded me. "I know you're still very upset, but – "

"And he has a right to be, Sally," Demeter cut in. "He should have been told the truth well before now."

If she was hoping to have calmed me down with that, it didn't work. "Yeah, I should've!" I snapped. "And if Poseidon knew that my mom hadn't told me, he should've told me himself! Hell, he should be here right now too, but he's not!"

"Yes, he should be," Demeter concurred without any complaints.

I snorted.

Why was I fighting for these people, these gods? Up until this past month, I'd never really doubted being on the side of my parents – including my mom, because I knew where her loyalty always would be – before. But then Luke had told me about how he wanted us to go off to Alaska together despite him knowing I would say "no," and I was still worried if I had made the right choice there. And now I had found out my parents had been lying to me by omission for my entire life. It just didn't seem worth it to be fighting for them anymore.

Demeter, as my patron, sensed this. She frowned. "Percy, please," she requested. "Sit down and talk with us."

Her voice, as it had been when she'd spoken the other two times, was warm and inviting, and not to mention full of understanding, so much more so than my mom's was to me right now. It made it hard for me to resist her.

"You'll probably feel better afterwards too, Percy!" Despoina tacked on. She hurried to add, "If, well, only a little..."

I sat down in one of the two armchairs in the room. My glass of milk was clutched tightly in my hands. "Fine, I'll sit," I said, purposefully not making a promise to "talk."

They all knew this. Despoina tilted her head slightly at my antics, looking like she wanted to say something, albeit she remained silent. My mom sighed.

"Like I said, Percy, I'm sorry," my mom apologized once again. "Not telling you about this is inexcusable of me. I thought...I never had the feeling that you were gay – " well, I guess it was nice for my mom to realize now that I had a complete and utter lack of attraction to girls. But this still would probably be up there in the strangest coming out's of all time " – so I thought I would have more time to tell you. I wanted to figure out a good way to tell you."

"You could've just told me with the sex talk," I muttered, putting down my cup of milk on the coffee table to cross my arms. We both knew that she hadn't given me that, either. Not that my mom had ever needed to, unbeknownst to her. "Or told me after I came back from my first summer at camp."

"You're right," my mom acknowledged. "I just...I was scared, Percy. I wasn't sure of how you would react. I didn't want you to think that there was something wrong with you, or...that you're not actually a boy." She sniffled. "Because you know that that's not true, right? How your biology works doesn't define who you are; it's how you know you are."

...Begrudgingly, I was forced to admit (but only to myself) that she had a point with that. My reaction yesterday hadn't been good to say the least, but I didn't think it would have been any better if she had told me a few years ago. It didn't make things right, not by a long shot, but I could see where she was coming from.

My eyes flitted over to Demeter. There was something prodding at my mind, something new. "Is this why Ares told me back during my first quest that all of Dad's sons are pansies?" I asked her bluntly. "And why I was called a μαλακός when I was staying on that island of the Heliades?"

Demeter's lips pursed. "I do not like that term that they use. It is not quite accurate, as many of Poseidon's sons have been stronger and braver than most. But yes, it is true," she said.

It all made sense now, more sense than uh...the self-lubrication had, what Cleisthenes had meant when he'd said that. Why accepting that as my role in his society would have made me his wife. Because I would have been the mother of his children.

"Mother." I wasn't sure if I liked that word when it came to the context of me. The prospect of being called a feminine term still didn't bother me that much, and now I couldn't help but think it was because I possessed a uterus and pair of ovaries (or magic mimicking them), but...having kids? Raising them?

I couldn't picture myself doing that. Fuck, I was only sixteen. Sure, I was a demigod, but as I was abruptly realizing, that hardly meant that I was capable of taking care of myself in the non-surviving monsters and shit way, much less taking care of another being that would be even more dependent on me than Bob was.

...Shit, now that I got to thinking about it, what if my and Luke's kid was like us, since we were both demigods, and that meant our children would have the same godly percentage running through their veins? There was no way that I would be able to raise them like my mom had raised me, not letting me know that I was a descendant of the gods until she absolutely had to. They wouldn't have that protection. Did that mean that I would have to worry about having to protect them from monsters if they didn't have an ἒνδεσμα, too?

This was all rapidly becoming too much for me. I felt ready to absolutely lose my shit all over again.

"Can't I..." I started to ask, in spite of my refusal to promise to talk. "Can't I...you know, have an abortion?"

Perhaps this wasn't a wise question to ask my mom and two fertility goddesses. Despoina's smile slipped. My mom's expression became even sadder than it had been before.

"You could," Demeter said. Unlike them, she seemingly wasn't perturbed by the question. "If that is what you so wish, Percy. But it would not be the same for you as it is for mortal and other, demigod women, because of how this is connected to your powers. It would have to be through a ritual, not with a simple pill or a medical procedure."

I thought about that. I wasn't actually sure if I wanted to go through that. Granted, going through with having a kid would be a lot more work – not to mention, how would childbirth even work with me? I was suddenly reminded of Callie's wonderings about how she'd been born since she had two dads in the form of Poseidon and Mr. Blofis, and just like that I went to a mantra of don't think about that don't think about that don't think about that –

But I would, eventually. One way or another.

I decided on thinking about all that stuff later. I had time. I was only something like four weeks pregnant, after all. Human pregnancies lasted something like nine months.

"Six weeks," Demeter corrected me, stirring me out of my train of thought.

I blinked. "What?"

"You are six weeks pregnant," she explained. "Mortal pregnancies technically begin from the last period, which is often two weeks before conception. Therefore, although you do not have a period, you are technically six weeks pregnant. And the mortal pregnancy often lasts for forty weeks in duration."

...That was both less and more time than I'd thought.

Great.

I had more questions that I wanted to ask, one specifically of Despoina. She was still acting weird. Even without the smile, she wasn't her usual, bubbly self, if one in-person experience and hearing her inside my head could be counted as "usual," and I wanted to know why. I wanted to know if my sneaking suspicion that it had something to do with the "gift" that she had given to me was correct.

More importantly, if it did, then I wanted to know what exactly that "gift" had been, and what effect it was having on me.

But I was beaten to the punch before I could. "Percy," my mom spoke up. She was wringing her hands. "Before you make that kind of decision, whatever your choice is, there is one thing that we have to talk about."

...No.

No, no, no...

I thought I was going to have a bit more time than this! I hadn't even had time to think about what my answer would be yet!

"I – I would like to know who the father, or other father, is."

"Would like," I noticed. Not "need."

Based on her expression, she was considering the two terms indistinguishable. She was only saying the former to soften the landing.

My mouth opened. I was ready to say a plethora of things, including but not limited to that I didn't know who the father was, that it wasn't any of her business, and that it didn't matter because I would either have the abortion or would raise the baby on my own.

One look at Demeter had me stopping in my tracks before I could even begin to run, so to speak. Her expression had abruptly become deadly serious. "Percy, I know what you are thinking," she reminded me. "But it is time to tell your mother the truth."

Word Count: 3,552

Next Chapter Title: The Truth Comes Out