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: I'm excited about today's chapter for many, many reasons! If you can figure out what's going on with one of them, extra kudos to you! Although, it might require some rereading...

Anyways, as always, I hope you enjoy. Until the next chapter,

~TGWSI/Selene Borealis

~The Finding Home Saga~

~Finding Home~

~Chapter 80: The Truth Comes Out~

"You know?" were the first words that came out of my mouth.

Demeter was amused. "You are my champion, Percy. What makes you think that I would not know?"

...Well, she had a point there. Still, as I've said before, she'd never really given me one inclination or the other that she knew, so I'd been uncertain about it for all this time.

"I wanted to give you privacy," she clarified at that thought. "But also, safety. I did not want the other gods besides Aphrodite and Despoina – " she glanced at her daughter, who wilted under her gaze " – to know that I knew, because otherwise it might be dangerous. But, if you decide to keep the pregnancy, I suppose that there is nothing for it now."

My mom looked between the two of us, frowning. "What do you mean, 'dangerous?' Why would it be dangerous?"

In this context, even without the decision of keeping my pregnancy or not, Demeter was right with that last statement of hers. I sighed.

"The father is Luke, Mom," I said, ripping the truth off like a bandaid. "And...he's my boyfriend."

My mom stared at me.

And stared.

And stared.

I'd never seen her have this kind of reaction to anything before. It was like I'd broken her brain.

After what felt like an eternity, she blinked. It seemed like her brain's computing processes were coming back online. "Luke...Luke Castellan?" she breathed. "The son of Hermes? The traitor of Olympus?"

Of course she knew about all of that. She was intimately aware of the war, thanks to her son (me) being at the front and center of it.

I nodded, not breaking eye contact with her so that she would know that I wasn't lying. "Yes."

My mom floundered for words. "But...why? You told me that he's dangerous, Percy! He – he stole your uncle's lightning bolt! He started a war against the gods! And how? I – I could understand if it was another boy at camp, or at your school..." She trailed off as the most glaring piece of this entire shebang occurred to her. "When did you even have time to have sex with him four weeks ago? You were at home all the time!"

A wince was torn from my lips. "No, I wasn't."

"What do you mean you weren't?"

"I...might or might not have made a deal with Alabaster." Man, he was going to kill me later for this. But if I was going to tell my mother the truth, then I was going to have to tell her all of it. "He created a doppelgänger for me with his powers. That weekend when Bob was acting so weird around 'me,' that...wasn't actually me."

In a heartbeat, a hard look appeared in my mom's eyes. The kind that told me that I was going to be in trouble. "You snuck out of the house for the entire weekend?"

"It wasn't the only time," I admitted. "I mean, it was the only time that I snuck out of the house for days at a time, but...it wasn't the only time."

As you probably expected, I was metaphorically digging my own grave there. My mom's expression was becoming angrier and angrier, her face reddening, like she was about to blow a gasket.

"Sally," Demeter interjected. She placed a hand on my mom's arm. "Whatever his decision is, I think that he has been punished enough."

That made my mom calm down. A little.

I didn't want to make things too much worse right off the bat, so I decided to do almost exactly what I have been doing with you for the past seventy-nine chapters: I told my mom (almost) everything from the beginning. I told her about going to camp, staying in Cabin Eleven until I was claimed, and how nice and wonderful Luke was. I told her about the "deal" I had made with Silena to go on our first quest, how I had figured out that Luke had stolen the lightning bolt, and how I had decided to become Demeter's champion specifically because I wanted to save him from Kronos. I told her how that hadn't worked out in the end, even though we had started a romantic relationship that summer, almost at the cost of my life.

Then I told her about this past summer during the Sea of Monsters quest, when Luke had made the offer for us to have a relationship "behind the scenes." This was followed up by me accepting the offer in our apartment, which my mom's left eye gave a distinctive twitch at, and a brief overview of the reasons – the dates – why I had snuck out of the apartment since then.

Perhaps it might seem paradoxical to you that I was doing this in the attempt to not make things terribly "worse," but I was doing it all to illustrate one thing:

"He's not a bad person, Mom," I finished up succinctly. "I know that a lot of people think he is, but he's not. He's just – " I struggled for the right word. I didn't want to say "misguided," because that sounded too cliché " – he thinks he's doing the right thing," ish, I tacked on to myself, "even though he's not."

My mom wasn't just on the brink of tears: she was already crying. "Have either of you thought what would happen if you were found out?" she demanded of me. "How much danger you were putting yourselves in on top of everything else?"

I shrugged. "It doesn't matter. I love him."

"I know that's what you think, Percy, but – "

That almost had me blowing up all over again.

Before I could, Demeter was once more putting her hand on my mom's arm as a warning. "There is one more thing you should know, Percy, before you make your decision," she spoke. She looked back over at Despoina. I don't think I've ever seen a god or goddess so miserable before or since as my immortal half-sister abruptly became right then. "Something about the...gift that Despoina gave to you last summer."

All of the sudden, a cold feeling washed over me. The nausea started to return to my stomach. "What did you do?" I asked fearfully.

"I didn't think you would be having sex unprotected!" Despoina cried exuberantly, waving her hands in the air and everything. "I just meant it as a nice gift for when you did decide to have children, once you knew the truth!"

Her outburst did little to sway her mother. "Despoina," she warned. It was very fucking strange to see a goddess chastise another like this, regardless of how, to repeat myself, they were mother and daughter.

"Fine," Despoina huffed. "But I still say this would've happened anyways, because of his powers."

Demeter seemed ready to chastise her for the umpteenth time this day, but Despoina focused back on me. "I told you before that I'm a Goddess of Fertility, Percy dear," she said. "And that I used to give fertility blessings out. That's what I gave to you, so that when you finally wanted to have kids, there would be no months and months of trying or miscarriages or complications involved, as unlikely as they are because of your abilities as a son of our father. But, combined with those abilities..." She trailed off, her voice going almost a full octave higher. "Well, it caused you to become pregnant with...twins."

...Yep, you – or I, as I was soon going to have to remind myself, over and over again – heard that right.

Not only was I pregnant as a guy when I'd thought that otherwise should've been impossible, but I was pregnant with twins.

Suffice to say, both my mom and I were hot messes upon hearing that news, but not really in any way that would be interesting for you to read. I mean, I suppose I could tell you how I basically had a panic attack for hours after Despoina's revelation, and that my mom spent just as long crying her eyes out – but really, when there was no yelling or reveals like everything I've told you last chapter and up until now in this one, where's the fun in that?

So, allow me to fast-forward. Just a little bit.

The next few days were tense and morose in my and my mom's apartment, after Demeter and Despoina had left – for now. Demeter had told me before they'd gone that, depending on my decision on whether or not to keep the pregnancy, she would come back. She had something that she wanted us to do. Together.

I didn't wonder too much about what that was.

It wasn't hard for me not to. Morning sickness, as my "stomach flu" had turned out to be, was still knocking me down a few pegs every day. It wasn't quite hyperemesis gravidarum – I guess male pregnancies caused a bit more nausea than the female ones did because of all of the extra hormones running through me in comparison, though Demeter had told me that it would calm down some after probably another week. It wouldn't go away entirely until probably my second trimester, but throwing up once or twice a day was better than the alternative that I was currently dealing with.

But moreover, my brain was still trying to process my new reality...and come to a concrete decision. And figure out a way to tell Luke. Those three things were a lot to deal with, as I'm sure you can imagine.

In a way, though, my decision was made for me. Two nights after the talk with my mom, Demeter, and Despoina, I had a strange dream. It wasn't a demigod dream, not really. You'll see what I mean. But it wasn't like any other dream I had had before, either:

I was running through a field of wheat, at the stage where it's gold but not quite ready for harvest yet. This didn't really make a whole lot of sense to me, even in my dream, because I'd never really been around a lot of land like this before, let alone been running in it before. But some part of me was aware that the setting itself didn't matter: it was just a prop, something used to help make sense of whatever some deity was trying to tell me. I didn't know who they were, but I could sense the godly presence here.

"Luke!" I shouted out. "Luke, where are you?"

That...didn't make sense. Why was I calling out for Luke? I knew where he was, relatively speaking. He was –

I heard giggles to my right. I turned, and I thought I saw a patch of color in the field of wheat. A grin formed on my face.

So, I was on the right track.

"Luke," I called out again, but more in a singsongy-type of way. Then another named passed from my lips: I was aware of myself saying it, I could feel my mouth moving to say it, and I could even hear it, but for the life of me I couldn't figure out what the name was. It was like it was purposefully being obscured from me.

Yet, it didn't really matter to me that I couldn't decipher it. My heart was full of elation and happiness – they were tinged by sadness, yes, but they were still there. Still present.

"Come on, you guys," I said. "We're going to be late."

The giggles started up again. "We're never late, Mamma. We're always on time!"

I put one hand on my hip as I came upon them; the other was used to part the wheat in front of me so that I could see them properly. "Oh, really? Is that so?"

"Uh, huh," the same voice replied. It was the voice of a girl.

Because standing in front of me were a boy and a girl, about six years old or so, maybe younger. The boy had messy black hair and dark blue eyes, and a face that was so utterly like Luke's I felt my heart spasm. But as for the girl...

She had loosely-curled dirty blonde hair that went to her shoulders, a smattering of freckles across her cheeks and nose, and eyes that were only like one other person's that I had seen before. I knew who, but I couldn't make the connection right then. It didn't help that something about her felt familiar in a way that went beyond her simply being my child, as I realized. The same went for her brother.

"Do you understand now?" a voice abruptly asked me. It was raspy and hissing in quality, almost like the Oracle of Delphi's. But I knew without really knowing how that it was much, much older than even her – and not only because, with a jolt, it occurred to me that she wasn't speaking English or ancient Greek, rather a language I didn't know yet somehow understood nonetheless. Her voice was ancient-sounding, almost – "Do you understand what you have seen and what you know? What must happen...by Necessity?"

My eyes widened even in the dream as I figured out who was speaking to me, who had to be speaking to me. Holy shit, I thought.

This shouldn't be possible! Why would she want to speak with a –

"Do you?" she intoned again.

"I – I don't," I stuttered. And I really didn't. I had no idea what she was talking about.

What had I seen, besides the time that I had seen her on the stretch of highway coming back from Yancy Academy? What did I already know?

The nonsensical answer I had given confused the children in front of me – my children, to repeat myself. "Mamma, what's wrong?" the boy asked.

But I was shaking my head. "I don't understand," I reiterated. "What are you trying to tell me, Lady Ananke?"

She chuckled. "You will, in time."

Then the ground gave out from under me, and I was falling. Falling away from the field of wheat and my children, falling into –

– My bed.

I woke up with a gasp. It took me a second to remember that I was in my bedroom in the apartment. Dawn was just beginning to seep in through my window, though it was obscured some by the curtains. For a second, I thought that I had my right hand placed on my chest, right above my heart, but then it occurred to me that the flesh was too soft for that.

Looking down, I saw that it was placed on my stomach. My flat stomach.

But I knew it wasn't going to be that way for much longer.

Tears were streaming down my face. Whatever that dream had meant, if it had really been a dream from Ananke herself – I had some doubts, to be honest. It didn't seem like her to do something like that. Then again, it didn't seem like her to to show herself cutting somebody's fate to a fourteen-year-old kid, either – or simply something that my brain had concocted up, as unlikely as that seemed too given my imaginative capabilities, I suddenly knew one thing with startling clarity: I couldn't have an abortion. I couldn't give up my babies, now that I had seen them.

(Though I wouldn't have blamed for somebody making a different choice, if they would have been in my shoes, I want to emphasize. Their body, their choice. Not mine.)

Whether or the children had been a conjuring of my mind and nothing more, they had been – were – perfect. Not just because the boy looked like Luke and the girl had dirty blonde hair. Although those things made me feel good, they weren't really a factor. They'd been – were – beautiful, all on their own.

And even with the sadness, I'd never felt such happiness and elation before than when I'd been chasing after and looking at them in my dream. The intensity of those two emotions was like something cosmic, something mind-altering. It felt like they'd irrevocably changed the makeup and chemistry of my brain. It didn't matter from my own experience as the child of a single parent that I knew it wasn't going to be easy. Hell, that it was going to be tough.

I wanted them. Plain and simple.

But, if I was going to do this, then there was something else that I was going to have to do. It was something that went hand-in-hand with telling Luke.

About half an hour later, my mom woke up and found me in the kitchen, drinking yet another glass of milk. "'Morning, Percy," she said tiredly. Even though thins had been strained between us ever since she'd told me that I could get and waspregnant, there was a smile on her face. "You're up early. Nausea?"

"A little," I admitted. I'd had to go to the bathroom to throw up as soon as I'd gotten out of bed. The shifting of my blood flow had simply been enough to induce that. I fidgeted. "But, um, actually...I've made my decision. About the pregnancy."

My mom froze. "And?"

"I'm keeping the babies," I said bluntly. "I'm not having an abortion."

My mom's face went through several expressions in the span of seconds, before it finally became bittersweet – happy, but sad and worried. "Are you sure, Percy?" she asked me as she came closer. And she must've thought that was something inflammatory, because she hurried to add, "I don't want you to think that I'm trying to talk you out of this, because I'm not. But being a teenage parent is a lot of work. It's not easy."

Right. I knew that because I had the experience as the kid, but she'd had it as the mom. I'd seen her struggle a lot in life due to the lack of support system in raising me, her marrying Gabe and sticking with his abusive piece of shit ass (to say the lease) because his scent had disguised mine from monsters and the income he hadn't spent on alcohol and poker had helped pay the bills when the jobs she'd worked wouldn't have on their own. She'd sacrificed college up until recently, her happiness, her safety, and her security – all for me. I'd witnessed and experienced it, but not directly like she had.

And I knew that, because of that, no matter what happened, I wouldn't have as tough of a time as she had in that sense. She wouldn't let me, as she'd make sure with every bit of her power that nothing like those things happened. That didn't mean anything about the godly world per se, nor did it make her keeping the fact that I could get pregnant a secret from me right. But I knew all of these things and I could appreciate her for them, even as I was struggling to forgive her for that one glaring betrayal.

"I'm sure," I said. "I want to keep them. I know it'll be a lot of work, but...you taught me how worth it that is."

My mom's eyes shimmered. She let out a laugh as she pulled me into a hug. "I suppose I did, didn't I?"

"Yeah." She wasn't the only one crying now. Μὰ θεούς, I didn't think I'd ever cried as much in my life as I had over the past several days. When we pulled apart, I looked into her ocean blue eyes. What I was about to say next probably wasn't going to make things much better. "But, um, since I'm going to keep them, I'm going to have to tell Luke – " I was going to have to tell him regardless, as was said before, but neither one of us said anything about that " – and I have a plan on how to do it."

My mom wasn't an idiot. She could sense a "but" coming. "And what's that?"

"I'm going to have Alabaster get Luke to come here. It's the best place to tell him," I began gently. The son of Hecate was going to be angry at me even more for this, but it wasn't like I had another great way of contacting Luke. IM'ing him wasn't an option since Iris was on the side of the gods, and phone calls...he didn't exactly have a consistent phone because of being on the side of the titans. Usually, he was the one to contact me, not the other way around. "Since I'm going to tell him here, though, there's something that I'm going to need you to do."

There is no other way that I can describe her reaction other than this: she stiffened. My mom knew what I was going to say, but she asked anyways, "And what's that?"

I took my bottom lip into my mouth nervously for a brief moment, before I let go of it. "I need you to meet him," I said. "I know that you still don't like him because of what he's done, but I need you to, Mom. I can't do this alone."

Word Count: 3,544

Next Chapter Title: Mamma Mia