Wow. Apparently last chapter was all about artsy stuff like flower language and symbolic names. The plan for this chapter was Triton dealing with his family's shenanigans and being Over It. Didn't go to plan. Have some angst instead. Hopefully Apollo is giving agent-of-chaos-middle-child, but I honestly don't know.

Tbh, I had to twist the myths, but only a little. Poseidon genuinely protected Apollo and helped with Python in some myths.

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The excitement of the day seemed to creep upon his baby brother and sweep him under like a riptide. Aestivus slumped against him with a soft sigh, and Triton was quick to adjust his hold, allowing enough of his mortal shell to slip away that he might easily prop the blooming god on his hip. He brushed back the long, inky hair so that it would not be pinched between their bodies and took a moment to inspect his brother's face. Pleasantly, he noted, there was a gentle plumpness to the cheeks, as well as a healthy flush.

Having Aestivus settled, he turned his gaze once more to his other brother.

Jupiter could zealously deny it all he wished, but Neptune had been far more a father to Apollo than the king god ever was. It was Neptune that had watched over a young Apollo and Diana quietly from the shores of Delos at the request of their mother. It was Neptune that healed Apollo in the aftermath of Python's defeat. It was Neptune that taught Apollo the secrets of the curse of prophecy.

Apollo had been reared at the feet of the Sea God's throne just as Triton had. He had loved and been loved in the royal family. That was the reason that the sun rose and set over the sea in ancient Greece and later Rome- Apollo had left each morning to fulfill his duties and returned to his loved ones each night.

Triton had only been a few years older than the boy god when Neptune had brought him beneath the waves - hardly a blink in the eyes of an immortal. They had been raised as close as twins when Diana had refused to submit herself to Neptune's very active parenting.

Of course, that had all come to an end when Apollo recklessly eloped with one of the Oceanids, but that was all resolved and ancient history at this point. These days, Apollo didn't hang around Atlantis often because it wrecked his 'twenty-something screw-me-right-now' persona. Or so he claimed.

However, Triton knew his brother. Apollo's greatest weaknesses were epic tales, children, his siblings, and angering the God Queen. Coming home would hit all the boxes.

Aestivus grumbled, brow furrowed, and tucked his head more fully into Triton's shoulder. With soft, golden eyes, Apollo stepped forward and smoothed his hand across the younger's skin, divine essence filling the pockets Aestivus had not yet burned away on his own.

"How tiny he is for such a noble hero. Much cuter than you were at this age- I never could get you to stop scowling and huffing like a pufferfish." Apollo was drinking up the sight, no doubt thrilled to have a brother far younger than him in his chosen family.

He glared with no real heat behind it. "As I recall, a certain devious sun god was always dragging me into antics that left our hides tanned and bodies sore from mucking the stables. If ever I made a face, it was your fault."

Triton received an eye roll for his troubles.

"Look, if this is about that incident with the sailfish, I was hardly involved."

He ticked up an eyebrow. "Apollo, you taught them to fly."

"All I did was give them a longer dorsal fin! They managed well enough on their own after that."

Right. As if that was the limit of his scheming. "You taught the sailfish to fly, then organized them into a naval regiment that attacked any deity that Juno was particularly fond of. If Father hadn't been so amused by your plan and proud of your artistry, you would have had far worse than a twenty-year grounding."

"Please, you're just upset I stole one of your sea serpents to use as the base."

"And implicated me in the process! I was grounded as well!" A millennium and a half later and Juno's handmaidens still shrieked and skittered away whenever Triton had cause to go to Olympus. It certainly didn't help endear the sea gods to the Romans.

"You have to admit, though. It was pretty funny."

"... Perhaps. Slightly."

Not wanting to dwell on the situation any longer, lest Apollo twist a further confession out of him about how easy it was for him to steal away one of the serpents, he hitched Aestivus to sit higher on his hip and gripped Apollo's shoulder proprietarily. It would be a cold day in Tartarus that he let Apollo wriggle out of family bonding. Especially when the sun god came to them willingly.

He wrapped his godly essence around his brothers and guided them towards his private gardens, leaving a blessing over his baby brother's first shrine. That small temple was an anchor point for Aestivus' divinity. He would not leave it unprotected.

A savage part of him was pleased to find his beloved and his mother safely tucked into his garden, his clutch of favored serpents twining around them and asking for pets. Poseidon loomed protectively over them while discussing un hushed whispers with Aestivus' attendants.

Out of care and love for his wife, who had not made the travel to Rome with them, Triton allowed his Greecian visage to surge forth. He dropped a sweet kiss on her forehead before settling beside her and propping Percy between them.

Percy paled and groaned once more, curling into himself. He gave off a whimper that only came from a child in complete agony and his divinity gutted like a dying flame. Triton was quick to scoop him back up in his arms as Apollo rushed to check him over. Amphitrite gasped and pulled a nauseous-looking Libya to her before she could pass out from the stress and terrible memories such a wretched sound brought.

"What happened?" Poseidon asked darkly, fangs flashing in the low light.

With no tiny mortals to look upon him and burn, his father hardly tried to contain himself. Five sets of eyes speckled across his face each picked a different member of his family to focus on. A set of wickedly clawed hands plucked up his treasures one by one and settled them into a shadowy nest of his making. The very waters and earth wreathed to his whims, yet the majority of his gardens stayed in-tact.

Just because Neptune was the more feral visage did not mean Poseidon wasn't just as beastly at heart. He held no fear, his father would sooner fade than harm his favored children, but Poseidon's full, weighty might was intimidating all the same.

He managed to rattle out the story quickly, Apollo chipping in when he had anything to add to the tale. His father nodded once after they had finished, turning the majority of his attention to Percy. However, even as Poseidon's upper body twisted and curled over his youngest child, his additional eyes never left the rest of his family.

"My tiny one," he cooed and clicked in a language beyond ancient.

Percy stirred and turned fever-glazed eyes towards the eldritch god. "Tata…" he slurred out over a thick tongue and baby fangs.

"Shh. My sweet pearl, forged in the pain and strife of a hundred lifetimes. Lovely one, do not fight the sea. Feel my strength and let me guide you."

Percy winced and whimpered and Triton was reminded of his and Apollo's youth, when Poseidon would hold them close and guide their inexperienced divinity and domains with the overwhelming and steadfast nature of his own.

"Breathe… breathe…"

Something raced over him like a hand ruffing his scales in the wrong direction. Libya cried out. And suddenly, his father was holding a much smaller, much younger, Percy Jackson.

His olive skin had gained a slight green tinge, milky white and azure blue scales flecked his shoulders and arms. The pearls in his hair took on a light of their own, shifting as tiny, sharp nails clutched at Poseidon. Most damning, a long, frilled tail had wrapped itself around his father's arm.

The silence was deafening.

Then, Apollo being the brat he was, smirked and hooked his sharp chin over their father's shoulder to look at the, now literal, child. "Sweet! I'm not the baby brother anymore."

Triton massaged his head with his hand, but didn't fight when his father started purring and pulling all his precious ones to his sides.

What even was this day? Why did he ever think Apollo would take such a fragile, dangerous situation seriously?

Triton resigned himself to staying in his father's hold and opened his arms to comfort his teary, shaken wife. She came willingly, sobbing quietly now that she didn't feel the need to shut down emotionally.

"I thought I was watching Pallas die all over again, Tri."

His throat closed with panic and pain, but he pushed through it. "It's alright, my love. I am here. Our family is safe."

His father gently set Percy into his mother's arms. After cupping Apollo's face and brushing his thumbs over his cheeks in affection, he turned to the shadows of his nest. He picked and plucked at the darkness, shaping it with a number of skilled hands.

The result was a large, humanoid figure with only a fanged mouth and two sets of blinking amber eyes.

"I name you Iereas, Guardian of the Summer Seas. Made of depths dark enough to drive away the demons that haunt your master."

The newly created monster chirped and clicked and gurgled as it bowed, first to Percy, then to Poseidon, before draping itself to Percy like a too solid shadow. The eyes closed and the grinning mouth shut, leaving only a dark thing waving gently in his currents.

His mother was overcome with emotion, holding a tiny thing like Percy once again. Grinning with rows of needle teeth, his father took his place solidly at her back, one hand running up and down her arm while rumbling like a distant storm. Even Libya was looking on in awe at the sleeping child.

Everything settled into the relieved quiet that came after devastation. Triton grabbed his wife's shaking hands and kissed her solidly to remind them both that they were safe and with each other, that their family was as hale and whole as it could be.

The whole thing had been one long nightmare of Pallas' death. Their little tide hadn't died peacefully, nor quickly. After Athena… after their daughter had been pierced by that spear, the waters of her father and grandfather had fought to save her. For three agonizing days, Pallas had slowly faded before their eyes. She'd been so scared, so betrayed. Truly, the broken heart brought on by one she would call 'sister' was the final strike against her.

Libya hadn't left Pallas' side the entire time, not since she had watched the foul deed happen before her eyes. Triton hadn't been able to face his failure as a father and husband and had locked himself away in the library with his mother's magic books, trying to find something, anything to help.

He should have been there with his wife- his poor, pained baby. Instead, he only left the tomes when his father had physically dragged him to Pallas' deathbed, where they watched her take her last breaths and melt into brine. Libya had left not even a decade after, and Triton had been left adrift, much as he was feeling now.

"Don't leave me this time, my love," he whispered into her silken hair, watching his parents and brothers.

She made a sound somewhere between a laugh and a sob. "Don't lock away your heart somewhere I cannot follow, and I will have no need."

Apollo pretended to gag, much to his embarrassment and his mother's exasperation. He looked ready to forcefully inject a sense of levity into the tense atmosphere, before eyes flicked over Triton's shoulder and his face cooled into a stern mask. His eyes blazed like the fiery gas ball the mortals believed the sun to be.

His currents did not warn him of any foreign bodies, even Percy's aides and his clutch of serpents had made themselves scarce, but he reacted all the same. Gently pushing his exhausted and vulnerable wife behind him, Triton turned, trident summoned to his hand. Threats would not be tolerated.

Prior to that moment, Triton had not believed that a mortal could simultaneously be pale with fright, red with rage, and green with disgust. But, through the defined rainbow image, loathsome Athena's spawn had managed it.

Triton's vision tinged gold and he let out a fearsome, snarling hiss that Apollo echoed in kind.