Sally Jackson never tells her son about the ache that rises in her chest when she sees his young face— the hair, the set of his chin, so similar to the force of nature that drifted into her life one day like a piece of flotsam on the current and never quite left. She never admits out loud her fear of the roiling tsunami that sits underneath his steady green gaze. She just packs him another lunch, sneaks another pack of blue candy into his backpack, and prays that he finds a safe haven for all of the stormy days ahead.
She doesn't tell him about that one night spent sobbing uncontrollably, the glass she hurled across the kitchen, the scar on her foot when she stepped on a missed shard a week later and Paul had to stitch it up. Chiron promised he'd be safe at camp. But camp isn't safe- not when she can see through the Mist over both rivers. What good is the sea when the whole of Manhattan is set ablaze?
She's almost obsessive about the matches and old lighter that live in her purse, in the back pocket of her jeans, sometimes tucked into the waistband of the uniform apron she wears at the candy store. People probably think she's a smoker but really it's the scraps left after bad-day ice cream sundaes, the last bite of a Coney Island hot dog, a pile of blue jelly beans and the lint from her pocket.
She never expects him to show up but she's stopped being surprised - surely the sea has more important things to do than listen to her. But he keeps appearing when she calls. Eventually she teases him that he must REALLY like pizza, because all she's had as an offering is the crusts, three days in a row. He just presses a kiss to her temple and fades away in the breeze, the taste of salt on her lips the only proof that he was ever there at all.
She doesn't tell her son about the day she realizes she'll have to send him away. She just sneaks out to the fire escape while her horrible husband snores sprawled out in her bed. She'll say it's a cigarette if anyone asks - and when she smells the salt and the sea in the air she barely even looks before she throws herself at him, pummeling a god's chest with her futile, mortal fists while he strokes her hair.
She never tells him but knows he suspects- that when the gods lost their grip on reality, so did she. That she drove up to Montauk and did nothing but scream until her throat was raw. That she lit a fire and burned everything she could think of - candy, a frozen waffle, a whole batch of blue cookies she baked for the son who wasn't coming back. And for the first time in almost twenty years, no one came. Sally can forgive a lot, but never this.
Abandoning her, that was fine. You don't ever expect the sea, in its grand expanse and earth-shaking glory, to love you back. But her son had just come home from a war- and taking him, hurting him, throwing him face-first into another - she'll never truly forgive the gods who allowed it.
There's a great deal she never tells him - he doesn't have to know, the lengths she'd go to in order to keep him safe. The yawning chasm of guilt inside her that she can't ever guarantee he'll come home every time he leaves. The burning ember of rage-tinged certainty, deep in her soul, that knows: the Fates have made their cuts and pulled their threads. There's no use defying a riptide - the best she can do is swim parallel to the shore.
Just some late-night thoughts about the fandom's favorite mom. Might play around and write a full fic about the summer in Montauk when Sally first meets the god of the sea, who knows... ~GT