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Atop the highest peak of Olympus, a god sat and glowered.
Below the strongest currents of the Atlantic, a god sat and mourned.
And beneath them both in the depths of the Underworld, a god sat and pondered.
Zeus knew the very instant his youngest child abandoned his cabin in favor of his brother’s. And he did not appreciate the disrespect.
Thalia blazed with her own fierce inner spark, sharp and bold regardless of what challenge she faced, and while normally it filled Zeus with pride - in this instance, he could only feel annoyance. Not true rage, as the girl hardly yet understood her transgression, but annoyance all the same. If and when word of it got out...
Perhaps the refusal would not irk him so, if it were the Hermes boy Thalia went to instead, or Athena’s latest little prodigy, the children she’d fought alongside and defended. But no - she refused to set foot in his cabin, his shrine, his sacred ground, in order to sleep side by side with Poseidon’s child. A child his brother not only broke their pact to sire, but further overstepped the rules of all Olympians in order to shield from harm!
It left Zeus with a distinctly sour taste on his tongue.
He did not regret handing down a consequence for that overstep so swiftly, so harshly. He did not.
And yet...
Three days, and Thalia had yet to so much as enter his cabin, to see the trophies won by her elder siblings decades past, to see the glorious monument they’d made to their shared father’s power. And though he would admit it to no other soul, mortal or divine... Zeus could, reluctantly, in the recesses of his own mind, acknowledge that the rejection stung. Just slightly.
Poseidon only knew that Percy still lived.
He’d stayed nearby, at first, keeping watch over the little band of demigods and their satyr guide, sending the rain to provide cover as soon as their pursuers drew too close. But once they all made it over the boundary into camp... He went to Olympus, to demand an audience with Zeus.
As perhaps anyone could have predicted, it did not go well.
Afterward, banished back to his undersea realm for a full year’s time, Poseidon found himself at a loss. He knew it to be a risk, answering Sally’s prayer, going to see her in person- but in the moment he’d thought it worth it, just to be near her for a few moments, to give her the chance to speak what she could say to no other mortal. The chance to vent her emotions, to be heard, and feel understood.
If he’d known-
Well.
Poseidon still would have gone to her.
But he would have sat where he could see the door, could have seen the very moment Percy got up and darted outside, instead of only registering the absence when the boy was gone. Or he would have kept Sally right by his side, as he reached through the raindrops to find a little flickering form of mixed blood and ichor, instead of saying he’s going south, only a few streets from here, you can drive around the block and cut him off.
He should have committed, one way or the other, instead of trying to sneak through the narrow gap between two opposing currents. Should have either avoided them entirely, or ignored Sally’s wishes and kept them both safe under the ocean tides with him.
But he couldn’t. Try as Poseidon might, he could neither stay away, nor impose his will on the woman who’d given him everything, given him a son.
Which meant standing on that sidewalk, still tracking Percy through the raindrops as Sally drove off, sensing the monster that tried to make a snack of his boy but not the attention of an even more dangerous being above them.
I’m sorry.
I’m so sorry.
The sea encompassed all things, but even it came second to the sky which covered the world.
Which led to Poseidon sitting hunched on his coral throne, gaze distant, reaching through distant traces of water to keep watch over a little boy in a strange new world.
He could have kept Percy with him. Wanted to, desperately, but- Sally insisted their son have at least the chance of a human childhood before learning about the rest of himself. That chance vanished, between the claws of a monster and the impact of a lightning bolt. But the ghost of it remained, a shallow echo, in the form of Camp Half Blood.
Hades knew he’d made a grave error, just the instant after he snapped up Sally Jackson. He might even have known it the instant beforehand, but- well. Never let it be said that even primordial instinct couldn’t get the better of a god.
And then he managed to compound the error, by considering what to do with the woman for too long. After the third day, Hades sighed, and admitted to himself that there wasn’t anything for it.
“It seems you’ll have to be my guest a while longer,” he informed the mortal, though of course she couldn’t hear him, caught and framed in gold from the moment before her imminent death. “I am sorry for the delay, but at least you won’t age in this state. Small blessings, right?”
The most straightforward thing to do would have been to put her back just after the lightning struck, no fuss no muss. But then Zeus would almost certainly just strike her down again, and handy as his little trick could be, Hades didn’t get to use it on a single mortal soul more than once. In which case, he would have intervened for nothing.
Waiting for Zeus to be distracted during his subsequent argument with Poseidon might have been the next best moment to try slipping Sally Jackson back up to the mortal world. However- she would almost certainly cause a scene trying to find and retrieve her son, or at the very least demanding to see him, putting them both in the bull’s eye of his youngest brother’s ire. And with Poseidon caught in the binding of a brand new banishment, well...
By the three day mark, with no other developments he could’ve taken advantage of, it became unfortunately clear Hades would remain stuck with Sally Jackson in his possession for the foreseeable future.
Possibly Poseidon would come by some pretty trinket or useful tool that Hades could offer to bargain for; it would irritate his brother, certainly, but the Sea God would almost immediately get over the annoyance in the face of getting back his current favorite mortal. Or more likely, young Perseus would be tapped to go on a glorious quest, and somewhere along the way Hades might contrive to make a minor deal with him, retrieving some ‘lost’ item in exchange for the boy’s mother. Actually, once that option occurred, the god found he quite liked the appeal of it. Especially since he’d be in a good position to avoid stipulations such as don’t look back at her until you reach the surface, which mortals managed to consistently foul up.
Decision made, the Lord of the Underworld set aside Sally Jackson in a corner of his private sitting room, and went on with business as usual.
(And if he spent the following days remembering another mortal woman, and two small demigod children, and a larger bolt of lightning, well. That was no one’s business but his own.)