demons-and-demigods

[demons-and-demigods]

Ao3 version that lets you open the 'director's cut' where I, the author, explain every detail in excruciating detail to you and what it is in reference to.

[demons-and-demigods]

Demons and Demigods: Chapter Three: Fuck John Winchester, All the Homies Hate John Winchester (feat. Bamf Sally Jackson)

Hiya, babes! Here we are, finally, time for Sally to kill the fuck out of John Winchester, Paul to simp like hell for his badass wife, and for Thalia Missing Percy Hours and also wanting to be just like Sally when she grows up. Hope you like it fully written up <3

Ao3

~ ~ ~

Paul sat at the dining table, half-heartedly grading papers. When Percy had first gone missing, he had taken some time off, but as time stretched on and still there was no news, he went back to work. Goode had been more than willing to give him whatever time he needed, but to be honest, he could use the distraction. 

Paul took a moment to watch Sally as she moved about the kitchen, stress cleaning after her latest bout of stress baking (Paul was happy to eat any and all blue-dyed treats his wife made, but he wished the current hoard of blue desserts wasn’t because she was so worried about Percy). She finished wiping down the counters and began to fill the sink to start on the dishes while the blue chocolate chip cookies cooled. 

(They were Percy’s favorite, and Paul’s chest twinged at the reminder that he wasn’t here to help Sally make them, and then give Paul a heart attack by reaching in to pull the tray out of the oven with his bare hands even though Paul had watched him do it countless times and be perfectly fine each time because, as Percy loved to jokingly remind him, “I'm mostly fireproof, Paul, I’ve had lava thrown at me and caused a volcanic eruption. The oven hardly even registers as warm.”) 

Paul turned back to the essays he was supposed to be grading and tried to focus on the one he was currently reading. He made it through two more papers analyzing the themes of “The Yellow Wallpaper” before his attention was pulled from a (so far lackluster) third by a furious knocking on the front door. 

Sally met his wide-eyed gaze with her own and dried her hands on her apron before hurrying to the door. Paul stood to follow her, heart in his throat, unable to fully bury the desperate hope that it was Percy waiting on the other side. He’d hardly made it around the table when Sally opened the door and a tall, terrifying man barged inside their apartment, shoving Sally back.

Paul took an involuntary step back, eyes flicking to the knife block on the counter to gauge the distance in case he needed to grab a weapon. Sally, however, didn’t even flinch, just steadied herself, crossed her arms, and stared the guy down. (Gods, Paul loved that woman. She was so badass.) 

“John,” she said coldly, and realization crashed over Paul in an instant. John. Sam and Dean’s asshole father. Paul inched closer to the knife block; he had a feeling this wasn’t going to end peacefully. 

John Winchester cut a truly intimidating figure, well-honed strength evident in the harsh lines of his body, violence barely contained in his tightly curled fists and rage burning in his dark eyes. 

“Who the fuck do you think you are?” he growled, voice low and menacing. “Trying to turn my own sons against me? You have no right !” his voice rose steadily until he was yelling in Sally’s face, spittle flying. Paul grimaced in disgust and carefully wrapped his hand around the handle of the chef’s knife to pull it from the block. 

Sally (bless that woman) merely raised an eyebrow and reached up to casually wipe away some saliva that had landed on her cheek. “Your sons?” she said with a derisive scoff. “Please. You didn’t raise those boys, Dean raised himself and Sam. You neglected those boys, and you abused Dean.” Sally’s tone was sharp and cruel, unfazed in the face of a man nearly twice her size. “Mary may have been your wife, but she was my sister!” She stepped forward and jabbed a finger into John’s chest. “I have every fucking right,” she hissed. 

John’s face twisted into an enraged snarl as he grabbed Sally’s wrist and wrenched it away from his chest. He twisted her arm and shoved her into the wall, his other forearm pressing against her throat. “I raised my boys right! I made them strong and self-sufficient! And I never did anything to Dean that he didn’t deserve. I taught him obedience—” 

Paul’s vision went red. How fucking dare he—  

But before Paul had managed to do more than yank the knife free and lunge around the table, Sally had pulled some ninja, Black Widow, bullshit move and was now on John’s shoulders, choking him out with her thighs. 

(Holy shit. Paul couldn’t help but wonder if Sally would do that to him if he asked really nicely . . .) 

“I don’t know how Mary ever loved you,” Sally hissed, pulling a silver blade from . . . somewhere? Where was she hiding that? (Holy fuck, Paul was so lucky.) “She would hate you for what you’ve done, for raising her boys to be hunters. She didn’t want that life for them. Oh yeah,” she said, smiling ruefully when John’s attempts to pry her legs from around his throat froze momentarily. “Mary and I came from a long line of hunters, we were raised not so different from how you raised Sam and Dean. But it’s a shitty way to live, and you’ve condemned her children to the life she married you to get free of. She would fucking hate you, John.” 

John roared and finally managed to yank Sally off his shoulders, throwing her to the ground. She wheezed, the wind temporarily knocked from her lungs, as her knife skittered across the floor and out of reach. “You don’t know anything,” he snarled, lunging after Sally as she scrambled back to her feet. 

Paul threw himself forward, planting himself between them, and brandished his chef’s knife in John’s face. “Back off, John,” Paul said sternly, sounding much steadier than he felt, thank the gods. “You may not have done right by them, but Dean and Sam love you. They’re upset right now, and understandably so, but give them space and some time for everyone to cool off and they’ll reach out to you when they’re ready to talk about it. With time, I’m sure the three of you can work this out and move past it.” 

John glared at him. “You stay out of this,” he said harshly, unperturbed by the knife in his face, and shoved Paul aside. The knife clattered out of his hand and Paul landed on his ass with an oof, his head cracking against the floor and making his vision go a little fuzzy. Well, shit. 

John took a heavy swing at Sally, who was back on her feet now, and Paul watched through vaguely blurry vision as she ducked under his fist and then managed to land a roundhouse kick to his head, sending him staggering into the wall. 

“I don’t want to fight you, John,” Sally said, voice cold. “But I’m not going to stand here and let you attack me and my husband in my home. So you can either calm down and walk out my front door under your own power, or I will put you down, drag you out, and leave your ass on the street. It’s up to you.” 

Now, Paul was a little fuzzy on what exactly happened next, to be honest, because it all happened rather fast (and he might have a mild concussion), but he’s pretty sure it went something like this: John, further enraged by Sally telling him to get the fuck out of her house and subsequent insinuation that she was fully capable of beating his ass, said something truly heinous to her (that Paul is actually very glad he can’t particularly remember aside from the fact that it pissed him off) and drew what looked like a fucking machete (???) from where it was hidden somewhere under his coat. Then there was a lot of flashing metal and shouting, a few small spurts of blood that had Paul’s heart in his throat, and then John was on his knees, gagging as he clutched desperately at his neck. 

Sally stood in front of him with the machete in hand, blood dripping off the blade, her face contorted in a mixture of mild horror and disgust. John continued to choke, punctuated by the occasional gurgle, before his hands dropped from his slit throat and he fell forward onto his face in a grotesque, growing puddle of his own blood. 

“Well,” Sally said blithely, one hand on her cocked hip. “That complicates some things.” 

Paul must have made some vague noise, because Sally turned to him, face full of concern. She dropped the knife and hurried over to his side, checking him over as she helped him sit up. 

“Are you okay?” she asked gently, and Paul had to take a moment to just marvel at this gorgeous, badass woman in front of him. 

How the hell did I get this lucky, he thought, and Sally giggled. Oh. He must have said that out loud. Whoops. 

“I’m okay,” he said. “Maybe a little bruised, but I’m fine. What about you? Are you hurt? Did he get you with that knife?” Paul asked, suddenly remembering the small splatters of blood from throughout the fight, and he grabbed her shoulders, scanning her for signs of injury. He couldn’t tell if any of the blood was hers or if it was all John’s. 

Sally smiled softly at him and gently reached up to grab his hands, settling them in her lap as she gave them a comforting squeeze. “I’m fine,” she said. “Maybe a little bruised,” she said lightly, parroting his words from earlier, “But I’m fine.” 

Paul let out a breath and slumped back against the wall. His gaze drifted to the body in their entryway, the blood still pooling and no doubt staining their rug beyond saving. Paul wondered idly if they’d be able to clean the wood beneath or if they’d have to replace it and hope nobody asked too many questions. (Somewhere, he thought he should probably be more freaked out and upset that there was a dead body in his hallway and that he’d just watched his wife brutally murder a man, but whatever. It’d probably hit him later, right now he was a little more preoccupied with what they were gonna do about it.) 

Sally must have noticed his shifted attention and looked over her shoulder with a sigh. 

“I’m not upset that he’s dead, and I’m not sorry for killing him,” she said bluntly. “He was a fucking bastard, a shitty ass father, and I never liked him anyway, to be honest; I don’t think he treated Mary all that well.” she sighed again. “But you’re right, Sam and Dean do still love him. I don’t know if they’ll ever forgive me for this, but I have to tell them, they deserve to know that he’s dead, and they deserve to know the truth about how it happened,” she sniffled. “I don’t want to lose them again, not when I just got them back, not with Percy gone, too, but I can’t lie to them . . .” she dropped her head to stare at their hands, still intwined in her lap, before looking back up at him with teary eyes. “Lie to me and tell me it’ll all be okay.” 

Paul pulled her into his chest and wrapped his arms around her, tucking her head under his chin as she began to sob into his shoulder. “It’s gonna be okay,” he said softly. “It’s all gonna be alright.” 

— 

After Sally had calmed down some, the two of them just sat there for a little longer, taking comfort in each other’s arms. Eventually, they stood and Sally fetched an old blanket from the closet. Together, they rolled John’s body onto the blanket and moved it out of the way so they could mop up the blood. 

They worked in silence. Paul rolled up the long, narrow rug to be disposed of and Sally got to work on the floor underneath it. Paul was amazed at how thoroughly she managed to clean the wood; he could hardly tell that it had been bloodstained just minutes before. Paul collected the kitchen knife, Sally’s silver dagger, and the still blood-covered machete. He dropped the kitchen knife in the sink to be washed later (doing the dishes was pretty low on their list of priorities at the moment), set Sally’s dagger on the table for her to grab and resheath when she was done, and then stared at the machete. What the hell was he supposed to do with a fucking machete? 

After a moment, he shrugged to himself and went to rinse the blood off it in the sink, then very carefully dried it off and set it beside the dagger on the table so Sally could decide what to do with it later. 

Finally, they’d cleaned up everything else and Sally and Paul were left standing side by side, staring down at the dead body wrapped in a ratty old blanket in their living room. 

Paul broke the silence. 

“So . . . what are we going to do about him, exactly?” he asked apprehensively. 

Sally sighed and crossed her arms. “Last time I killed somebody, there wasn’t all this mess to take care of. I just sold his petrified corpse to a museum and called it a day.” 

Paul turned to his wife with an awed expression and hearts in his eyes. “Sally Jackson-Blofis, have I ever told you how much I love you?” he said, semi-dreamily. 

Sally laughed and gave him a peck on the cheek. “You have, but I wouldn’t mind hearing it again.” 

“I love you so much. You are the most amazing, caring, badass woman I have ever met. I wake up every morning and thank all the powers that be that I was lucky enough to catch your eye.” 

Sally looked up at him with a soft smile for a moment before her eyes widened almost comically and she snapped her fingers. “Oh! I know! I’ll Iris Message Thalia! I think she and the Hunters should be nearby.” 

Paul watched, rather confused, as Sally spun on her heel and dashed into the kitchen. 

Sally turned on the kitchen sink and grabbed a prism off the windowsill. She carefully angled the prism until a rainbow appeared in the mist from the faucet, then she plucked a gold coin from a small pile tucked behind the utensil crock. 

She took a deep breath and closed her eyes, closing her fist around the coin and holding it to her chest. “Oh, Iris, Goddess of the Rainbow, please accept this offering and show me Thalia Grace with the Hunters of Artemis.” She tossed the coin into the rainbow and it disappeared. 

Now, Paul knew what an Iris Message was, of course, he’d sort of seen one before, but he’d never watched someone make a call, just the random misty rainbow that his eyes skipped over until he heard a voice and saw someone else looking at and talking to it. Trying to focus on an Iris Message usually left him with a headache, though, so he usually ignored them once he realized that’s what was going on. 

Now, however, he was curious, and squinted determinedly at the little rainbow wavering in the air. He was going to see this one, headache or no. 

Then, he blinked, and there was a face in the rainbow, which still startled him, despite knowing it was coming. The girl had jet black hair and eyes that reminded him of concentrated lightning, a silver circlet glittering on her forehead. She looked tired and stressed, with slumped shoulders and dark circles under her eyes. In the background, he could see a couple other young girls wrestling playfully with each other and—was that a wolf? 

“Hey, Sally,” Thalia Grace, daughter of Zeus and Lieutenant of Artemis, said with a weary smile. “Do you have news on Percy?” 

“Hello, Thalia, dear, and no, unfortunately.” Sally greeted her with an equally tired smile. “But three new demigods were brought to Camp, one with amnesia and the other two with false memories of him having been with them for months. They received a quest and Annabeth believes that the boy with no memory might know something about Percy if and when he regains his memories. I’m calling because I have a favor to ask.” 

“Anything, Sally, you know that.” Thalia’s brow furrowed. Paul reached up to massage his temples, forcing himself to focus on the magic call despite the pain blooming in his head. 

“Well, I can tell you more about it later, but this is rather time-sensitive, so if you wouldn’t mind saving any questions until after this is taken care of, I would appreciate it. I just killed my nephews’ shitty, abusive father and was hoping you and the other Hunters would be willing to help me get rid of the body,” Sally said bluntly. 

Thalia blinked. She blinked again. She opened her mouth and then closed it. She stared at Sally silently for a long moment, then she barked out a laugh and doubled over. 

“Holy fuck,” she gasped, fighting to get herself under control again. “Yeah, yeah, of course, Sally. Fuck. Have I ever told you that you’re the coolest fucking person ever?” 

She wiped tears of mirth from her eyes as she straightened and turned to call over her shoulder. “Hey! Pack it up, people, we’re moving!” She looked back at Sally. “The others will get set up somewhere near Camp and I’ll come to you. It looks like you’re in your apartment, right? I’ll help you get the body out of the building without drawing too much attention, then we’ll drive out and meet up with the rest of the Hunters. We’ll have a bonfire and you can tell us all about it.” 

Sally grinned. “Thank you, Thalia. We’ll see you soon.” 

Sally waved away the message with a heavy sigh as Thalia started barking orders and slumped against the counter. 

Paul was immediately slammed with the mother of all headaches; pressure built behind his eyes as they started to burn. He blinked a few times and tried to push through the pain to go to Sally’s side, only to stumble and barely manage to catch himself on the table with a grunt. 

Sally whirled around and hurried to his side, settling a hand between his shoulder blades comfortingly. “Are you alright, dear?” she asked. 

Paul took a moment to breathe through the pain and very carefully nodded his head. “I’m fine, Sally, just forced myself to focus on the Message and now I’ve got a headache,” he said slowly. He could practically hear her rolling her eyes at him. 

“You silly, stubborn man,” she said lightly. “Now come on, let’s get you lying down and I’ll bring you some water and a couple aspirin.” 

She helped him stumble to their bedroom and kissed his forehead soothingly after she bundled him under the covers. She fussed with the pillows behind him for a moment before disappearing into the master bath. She returned with a glass of water, a damp washcloth, and the pills for him to take. 

He drank dutifully and then pulled Sally down for a kiss. “I love you,” he mumbled against her lips. He felt her smile and his own lips twitched upwards in response. “Now shoo,” he said, squinting his eyes open and waving her toward the door. “I’ll be fine, and I know you want to take care of a few more things before Thalia gets here.” 

Paul savored the soft smile she gave him as she leaned down to kiss his forehead one more time before laying the cool washcloth across his brow. 

“I love you, too,” she said, and then she was gone, and Paul closed his eyes, letting himself fully settle into the bed in hopes that he’d be able to drift off and sleep away the worst of his headache. 

~ ~ ~ 

Thalia bounded up the stairs, taking them two at a time. (The elevator was too slow, and she needed to feel like she was doing something, else her mind would get the better of her and her thoughts would start to spiral down pathways she’d rather not explore.) When she’d seen Sally in that Iris Message, she had let herself dare to hope that Percy had been found. She and the Hunters had been scouring the country for any sign of him and the longer they went without finding anything, the more Thalia began to fear that they’d never find him, that she’d never see him again. 

She couldn’t lose Percy; she couldn’t lose her brother. Not again. Not like this. Every time she closed her eyes recently, she saw Beryl sneering at her, telling her that her little brother was gone, dragging her from the park kicking and screaming. She saw little Jason, with his shaggy blonde hair and big blue eyes, imagined him sitting alone somewhere in the woods, cold and scared and crying in the dark, calling for her, begging her to find him and bring him home, only she never came. 

She knew, logically, that Jason had been a helpless toddler when he ‘went missing’, and Percy was sixteen and more than capable of taking care of himself. Percy had literally fought a war and survived a prophecy that everyone thought was going to kill him; she knew that he could handle himself, knew that he was one of the most powerful demigods alive and one of the strongest people she’d ever met. 

But her heart, it seemed, just could not get the memo. Sometimes, in her dreams, she saw Percy in Jason’s place, so much smaller than he’d ever seemed to her and more terrified than she’d ever seen him. He would reach for her, his frame thin and gaunt in a way that was painfully familiar, his little hands shaking, his bright eyes filled with tears and her name on the tip of his tongue. Then, a huge beast would reach out of the shadows and steal Percy away, Percy’s screams and the monster’s cruel, booming laughter echoing in her ears when she jolted awake. 

Annabeth was falling apart, working herself to the bone and pushing her body to the limit trying to find something, anything to tell her where Percy might be, that he was still out there somewhere. Thalia couldn’t do anything but watch as her best friend slowly killed herself, could only whisper empty assurances when Annabeth called her crying in the middle of the night. 

Thalia wanted to scream and rage at the world, wanted to break down Olympus’s doors and force the gods to fix this shit. She wanted to find the Fates and rip them apart. How dare they, how fucking dare they let this happen, orchestrate this clusterfuck, do nothing but sit there and fucking watch. Percy and Annabeth had already been through so much, sacrificed so much, for the gods and the Fates and the whole gods damned world, they had more than earned their happy ending, deserved so much better than the shit hands life and destiny had dealt them. 

(Sometimes, Thalia thought back to the Great Prophecy she had left for Percy to shoulder. Olympus to preserve or raze. Sometimes she wished she’d taken on the prophecy herself, when the fury overwhelmed her better judgement and she wanted nothing more than to burn that damn place to the ground. Sometimes she thought about tearing the throne room apart and using the gods’ seats of power as kindling. Sometimes her power built and built and built within her, crackled and groaned just beneath the surface, fighting to claw its way free of the confines of her flesh, until she barely felt human anymore, until she became the savage incoming storm, the pressure that made your ears pop, the winds that tore trees from their roots, the clouds that blacked out the sun and the rain that threatened to flood. Until she was the roar of thunder that deafened you and the crack of lightning that blinded you.) 

(Sometimes, that scared her.) 

She shook her head, trying to clear it. It did nothing to think about all that now, Sally needed her help. (To get rid of the body of a man she’d killed because he was an abusive shitstain to her family apparently and just when Thalia had thought that woman couldn’t get any cooler. She hoped she could be even half as badass as Sally Jackson someday.) She had to focus on the here and now, stop letting her mind drag her back into the past. There was nothing she could do about the ‘then’, but she could do something in the ‘now’. 

She blinked and realized she was standing in front of Sally’s door, painted a soft cerulean blue. (It used to be baby-shit-brown, but one day Percy dragged Thalia to the building’s super, and she’d used the Mist to convince him to let Percy and Sally paint their door. They’d then dragged Thalia to the store with them to help them pick out a color and roped her into painting it with them, too.) (That had been a fun day. She and Percy had written curse words in both English and Ancient Greek all over the door in sharpie before covering it up with the fresh paint. Sally had even added a few, as well as some strange symbols Thalia didn’t recognize. She still had no idea what those had been, but Sally had seemed to relax when she was done, so Thalia just shrugged and let it be.) 

She knocked. A moment later, Sally opened the door and pulled her into a hug. 

“Thank you for coming, sweetheart. How have you been holding up?” Sally asked as she guided Thalia inside. 

“Of course, Sally, you know I, and the rest of the Hunters, love you and we’re more than happy to help anytime,” Thalia said. “And, y’know, I’ve been hanging in there, doing everything I can to try and find Percy.” Her gaze dropped from Sally’s to the floor. “I miss him. I’m-I’m so scared that we’ll never find him,” she said softly, almost afraid that saying the words out loud would make them come true. 

Sally made a quiet noise of distress and tugged Thalia into another hug, holding her tight. Thalia buried her face in Sally’s shoulder and held on tight, soaking in the comfort and trying to regain control of her breathing before she started crying. 

“I’m scared too,” Sally murmured. “But we can’t give up hope. Percy is strong and he’ll find his way back to us, we just need to have faith in that, have faith in him.” 

Thalia nodded and took a deep, shaky breath. Sally was right. They couldn’t lose hope. She knew that Percy was still out there somewhere, no doubt fighting like hell to get back to them, and they would fight just as hard to find him. If Thalia believed in nothing else, she believed in Percy. She had faith that his love and loyalty to them would bring him home. 

After a moment, she pulled back and forced a smile onto her face, though she knew it didn’t quite reach her eyes. “So,” she said. “There’s a body to get rid of?” 

Sally nodded grimly and glanced over her shoulder into the living room, where Thalia spotted a body-sized bundle of old blanket on the floor with suspicious red stains next to a rolled-up, blood-soaked rug. 

Thalia let out a low whistle and studied the large, no doubt heavy, lump. “Is Paul around?” she asked. “We may need his help carrying that thing.” 

Sally shook her head. “He’s resting. Stubborn man fought to focus on our IM and gave himself a migraine.” 

“Yeah, that’d do it.” Thalia rolled her eyes fondly. She didn’t know Paul as well as she knew Sally, but she knew the man was good for her and Percy, had believed them from the moment they told him about the Greek world and had since done his best to learn about it and see what he could manage through the Mist. Thalia knew that with practice and time, some non-clear-sighted mortals could learn to see through the Mist when they knew to look for it, but it did generally lead to headaches and bouts of dizziness and weakness. 

She walked over and dropped down, trying experimentally to lift the body. Definitely unwieldy and heavy, but not as heavy as she’d thought. If not for needing to manipulate the Mist to keep Sally from getting the police called on her, Thalia probably could have managed to carry it on her own. 

As it was, she hefted the blanket-wrapped corpse over her shoulder and, with a grunt and some effort, stood from her crouch. She staggered back a step before adjusting to the new weight, widening her stance and compensating for the added weight on her left by leaning to the right. 

Sally started and hurried over, her hands fluttering anxiously about. Thalia grinned at her. 

“Okay, I’ll need at least one hand to work the Mist, but if you hold him steady for me when that happens, I can manage like this until we get to the car.” 

“Of course. Now, the stairs will take longer, but the elevator will mean a higher chance of running into people.” Sally gave her a questioning look as she bent to grab the rug and tuck it under her arm, clearly leaving the decision up to Thalia. 

She nodded and gestured for Sally to get the door. “Let’s take the stairs. I can only convince the Mist to do so much, so we should probably avoid being seen as much as possible just to be safe.” 

Sally checked to make sure the hall was clear before ushering Thalia out. Carefully, with Sally keeping watch for any potential ‘witnesses’, they made their way down to the parking garage without incident. They ran into their first (and thankfully only) obstacle as Sally popped the trunk of Paul’s Prius and Thalia unceremoniously heaved the body off her shoulder and dropped it in the trunk. 

Behind them, someone gasped, followed by a thud. Thalia whirled around to find a little old lady getting groceries out of her car. She’d dropped the bag of fresh veggies she’d been unloading and stared at them with wide, horrified eyes, one wrinkled hand pressed to her chest. 

“Oh, Mrs. Thatcher! Let me help you with those,” Sally said like nothing was wrong and hurried over to start gathering the vegetables that had rolled away. Thalia tried her best to smile innocently as she shifted to try and block the old woman’s view into the trunk. 

“Sally, dear,” Mrs. Thatcher said, voice weak and trembling. “Who is that-that delinquent? Are you safe? Do you need me to call the police?” The lady had to be going slightly senile or something, because she clearly meant to whisper so Thalia wouldn’t hear her and instead, she damn near shouted. 

Thalia frowned. Fucking rude. Sure, she had just dumped a suspiciously body-shaped bundle in the trunk of Sally’s car, but there’s no way she looked like a danger to Sally—oh . Wait. Mrs. Thatcher had to be at least ninety and, with the cross necklace and modest dress she wore, probably an old-school conservative Christian. And here Thalia was with her whole ‘fuck society’ punk aesthetic including multiple facial piercings and copious other pieces of jewelry. The old hag probably thought she was an evil satanist or gang member or something. She rolled her eyes. 

Sally’s smile turned forced, the corners of her eyes tight. “That won’t be necessary, Mary Anne,” Sally said, voice sharp and deceptively sweet. “This is my niece. She’s helping me get rid of some old rugs since Paul is feeling under the weather.” 

Thalia forced a smile back onto her face, then snapped her fingers. “Yep, just helping my Aunt Sally move some old rugs, that’s all,” she said, reaching out with her senses to coerce the Mist to reframe the woman’s memory and change her sight. “The grocery bag was heavier than you thought and just slipped out of your hand. Sally and I helped you pick up the spill and then we all went our merry ways.” 

Mary Anne’s eyes glazed over as she nodded slowly. In a daze, the woman took her recollected bag of groceries from Sally and walked mechanically to the elevator. Thalia and Sally watched silently as she waited for the car and then disappeared inside. 

Thalia let out a breath of relief and crossed her arms. That was close. And rude. What the fuck, lady. Thalia did not feel bad about basically mind-controlling her. A hand rested on her bicep and Thalia felt a pang of fear shoot through her. Sally had never seen her, or anyone else as far as she knew, manipulate the Mist like that, manipulate a whole-ass person like that. Realistically, Thalia knew that Sally had literally asked her to do that, but knowing in theory what it would entail and actually seeing it in action were two different things. What if Sally was mad at her? Oh gods, what if Sally was disappointed in her? Oh gods, oh fuck, is this what having an actual mom felt like? Oh gods, Thalia didn’t want Sally to be upset with her, she might die. 

“Are you alright, dear?” Sally asked, and Thalia’s spiraling thoughts came to a screeching halt. 

“What?” she said eloquently. Sally snorted. 

“Mary Anne Thatcher is a batty old bitch, and what she said was entirely uncalled for,” she said sternly and shook her head. “She is terribly superficial, not to mention racist. Every time she sees me and Percy together, she makes some remark about how it was so kind of me to adopt a kid like him.” she rolled her eyes. “And really, he’s just tan. Although, Poseidon did always take on a Pacific Islander-esque form when we were together, so there could be a bit of influence in his complexion there, I suppose,” she mused, then shrugged and smiled at Thalia. “Honestly, that woman is lucky I don’t want violence in or around my home if it can be helped, otherwise I wouldn’t give a damn if she was a hundred and two, I’d still kick her ass.” 

Holy shit, Sally was so fucking cool. 

“Sally,” Thalia said seriously. “You are my favorite person ever.” 

Sally laughed and pulled Thalia in for a hug. “You’re one of my favorite people, too, Thalia.” 

— 

They didn’t talk much on the drive to Long Island; Thalia got the feeling that Sally didn’t want to tell the story more than once tonight. Instead, they spent most of it singing along to the radio blasting punk rock, classic rock, and nineties alt. By the time they neared Camp, they were both red-faced and laughing at each other’s made-up lyrics and nonsense noises in place of lines they didn’t know or couldn’t understand. 

(Thalia had been half convinced that Sally would have to pull over from how hard she’d been laughing in response to Thalia confidently yell-singing nonsense when Loser by Beck had come on.) 

Finally, Sally pulled off the road onto a little, winding trail that Thalia hadn’t even known was there when they were maybe a half mile from Camp. It led to a little gravel square and a small, overgrown patch of land that probably used to be a campsite. 

Sally parked and turned to Thalia with a smile. “Well then, shall we go find the rest of the Hunters?” 

Thalia grinned. “Let’s go get this party started.”

[demons-and-demigods]

With more and more Ao3 authors restricting their works to the archive (due to AI scraping), they're going to be losing guest interaction. And probably generally feeling down because. You know. AI is stealing their hard work.

So! Now is a great time to stop by your favorite authors/stories and drop them some comments! They really appreciate it!

[demons-and-demigods]

Demons and Demigods: Chapter Two: Ewww, Emotions

Hey, y'all! Here is the brand new chapter two of dndv! This was originally going to be much longer, but I decided to break it up into two (possibly more) smaller chapters instead. As always, hope you enjoy and let me know what you think!

Ao3

~

Jason, Piper, and Leo were . . . well, they’re good kids, but Annabeth couldn’t help the frustration that bubbled up when there were still no answers about Percy, the bitterness that churned in her chest every time she saw Piper and Jason holding hands, nor the rage that boiled under her skin when Jason was revealed to be a son of Zeus. He didn’t deserve her ire, and she knew that, his parentage wasn’t his fault. 

And yet Annabeth couldn’t help but feel that whatever was going on here, whatever scheme was unfolding, whoever had orchestrated Percy’s disappearance, was trying to replace him with Jason. 

Despite his lack of memories, Jason had an air of authority about him. He spoke up with an ease that came from knowing he’d be listened to, carried himself with the confidence of a leader, wielded his weapon with the same surety she knew she herself possessed, the kind of surety that belonged to veteran campers who’d trained for years. 

He was a natural leader and, with Percy missing, Nico seldom at camp, and Thalia a Huntress, the most powerful demigod at camp, not to mention the son of the king of the gods. If not for the amnesia and the presence of older, veteran demigods like herself and Clarisse, Annabeth had no doubt that Jason would have quickly become the de-facto leader of camp. And that? Well, that pissed her off. 

After everything Percy had done for the gods, for the whole fucking world, after everything he’d suffered and survived and sacrificed for them, and this is what he gets in return? No. Not if she had anything to say about it. They didn’t just get to snatch Percy away from her and then try to replace him in the hope that they wouldn’t be held to their promise with him gone. Oh yeah, Annabeth was certain the gods were behind this, she just didn’t know which one or ones for sure. 

But rest assured, she would figure it out. And she would find a way onto Olympus. And she would get her partner back. 

~ ~ ~ 

Piper was starting to get sick of hearing the name Percy Jackson. Everywhere she went, it was ‘Percy this’ and ‘Percy that’ and ridiculously over-inflated tales of his adventures. With one exception. No one mentioned Percy around Annabeth, probably because everyone could see how close the daughter of Athena was to snapping.

Which meant that Piper took to spending as much time as she could with Annabeth to avoid talk of Percy Jackson. Annabeth wasn’t particularly open or chatty with her, but she didn’t send Piper away or try to stab her, so she counted it as a win and stuck around. 

Annabeth was clearly stressed out about her missing boyfriend, and Piper could sense that she was pissed off about something, though she had no idea what and Annabeth didn’t give any indication as to what it was, so Piper left that alone. All in all though, she thought they got along fairly well, given the circumstances. 

Sometimes, Annabeth would start to say something and turn, half smiling, only to freeze and straighten, her posture growing rigid and her face a stony mask of indifference. Other times, Piper would find her sitting quietly on the beach, watching the water with tears in her eyes, and she would say something small and inconsequential about Percy. She told Piper that he would sit at the edge of the pier and chat with the naiads, or how he sometimes disappeared into the Sound for a few hours to help some sea creature or other that got stuck, because apparently he could talk to fish and when they asked for his help of course he gave it. 

Piper always listened patiently, fighting to make sure her eye didn’t start twitching, because whatever her feelings on this guy and the almost reverent way some of the campers talked about him, his disappearance had hurt her new friend and it was clear that Annabeth needed to talk about him sometimes. If everyone else was too afraid to broach the topic of her missing boyfriend with her, well, Piper could put her own feelings aside and let her talk. 

That’s not to say that Piper was the only one that Annabeth talk to, she saw the daughter of Athena with the big, mean-looking Ares girl on occasion, and a scraggly, half-goat, er, satyr guy sometimes too. She picked up the strangest feelings from the satyr, though, often a distant sense of not-asleep-but-not-awake-ness, a feeling of half-masked unawareness. It always left Piper feeling drowsy and spaced out, so she tried to stay away from whenever he was at Camp. 

Unfortunately, she couldn’t spend all her time hiding from talk of Percy Jackson, though, and usually faced incessant questions about how Annabeth was doing and had she learned anything about what happened to Percy and an endless stream of exaggerated stories when she returned to her temporary ‘bunk’ in the Hermes cabin each night. Gods she couldn’t wait to get claimed so she could get out of that overcrowded, hazardous cabin like Leo, who’d been claimed almost immediately after stepping foot across the boundary, and Jason, who hadn’t needed a proper claiming for everyone to know who his dad was. 

And, honestly, why everyone was going on and on and on about Percy Jackson when Jason was right there was beyond her. Jason was pretty much the definition of classically handsome, with golden blonde hair, sky blue eyes, his perfectly sharp-cut jaw and broad shoulders. Not to mention the fact that he could fly and summon lightning, or the graceful, easy way that he wielded his sword and spear. Now, Piper hadn’t seen any pictures of Percy, but she’d heard enough kids talk about him to paint a vague picture in her mind of a slightly scrawny boy with perpetually messy dark hair, weird and uncomfortably bright eyes, and a crooked troublemaker smile. And that picture inspired no confidence or trust from her for the legendary Percy Jackson. She knew the type: a wannabe bad boy who talked himself up and pretended to be all humble but was really just an attention seeking asshole with no regard for others or care for the possible consequences of his actions. Part of her knew that analysis of him was unfair, having never met him, and the fact that she couldn’t see Annabeth going for a guy like that, but also she was so over the way everybody talked about him and wanted to write him off because she was sick and tired of it all. 

(A small, vindictive part of her that she didn’t really want to acknowledge kind of hoped that they never found Percy, just so everyone would have to move on and she’d never have to meet him and be confronted with how wrong she had likely been in her judgement of him.) 

Maybe everyone’s obsession with Percy Jackson and lack of awe in Jason was because they’d been around another child of Zeus before, even if it was for short, indeterminate lengths of time since she had apparently died, been turned into a tree, revived, and then gone on a quest and joined the Hunters of Artemis after only spending maybe a month or so at Camp. But Percy was the first and only child of Poseidon to have been born since like, the early nineteen hundreds. But, and she wasn’t stupid enough to say this aloud don’t worry, regardless of that, Zeus was way cooler and he had to be way more powerful than Poseidon, so she still didn’t get it. 

Finally, Piper was claimed (by Aphrodite of all the gods, and didn’t that smart. She wasn’t bitter at all, why would you think that? Fuck’s sake, the blessing her mom had oh-so-graciously placed on her still hadn’t faded and she was this close to trying to shave her head and go rolling in pegasus dung just so she wouldn’t look and smell so perfect anymore) and moved into her new cabin (which came with a whole new set of fucking problems and irritants, the least of which being her dad’s shirtless movie poster plastered all over the walls). 

Piper was going to lose her shit if she had to spend one more night in that egregiously pink cabin listening to her half-siblings gush about how hot her dad was and argue over lipstick shades and debate the current fashion trends and cry over how their hair looked. Also, she was about two seconds away from punching Drew in the face at any given point in time. 

Jason was distant with her, well, with everyone, but it hurt especially that he was so weird around her. They were so close before that stupid field trip to the Grand Canyon. Then she remembered that no, they hadn’t been, actually. In fact, she hadn’t even met him until the Grand Canyon disaster and all her memories of meeting him and falling in love and dating had been made up and rewritten and jammed into her skull by a bitchy goddess for some reason. It made her want to scream. 

Then there was a prophecy, and Piper, Leo, and Jason had a quest to go on. 

~ ~ ~ 

Dean, meanwhile, was stuck doing his least favorite thing: wrestling with his stupid emotions. His dad had lied to him. All these years, Aunt Sally had been alive and looking for them. They had never needed to hide in motel rooms or move from place to place every few weeks. Dean had always justified the way John had raised them, always on the road, frequently leaving them alone for weeks at a time, the way he was so hard on him. It was because he had to be, because family was the most important thing and all they had was each other, because there was no one else. 

But . . . had it all been a lie? It had to have been. Aunt Sally was alive, and dad had told him she was dead. She was family, though, and there was nothing more important than family, right? 

She would have taken Dean and Sam in in a heartbeat, but John hid them from her and told them that she was dead. Everything Dean had ever done, all of it, every sleepless night and skipped meal, every beating and punishment, every raw throat and hastily covered bruise, every single fucking thing, he had done to take care of his family, to protect his family, for his family. He had justified all of it because it was necessary. Dad was making him stronger, there was no other way to get the money for rent or food, he had to take care of Sammy, Sammy needed him, his dad needed him, he was the only one who could keep them safe. 

But he hadn’t needed to do any of that, he hadn’t needed to suffer and sacrifice his own childhood and youth. The whole time there had been an adult fully equipped and more than willing to take care of them in place of their father so he could focus on hunting the yellow-eyed demon. And rather than let her, John had let her believe them dead and left Dean to raise himself and Sam. 

He had no idea how to even begin to try and untangle and figure out the tangled knot of emotions that had taken up residence in his chest from the moment he’d answered Sam’s phone and learned that Aunt Sally was still alive. 

Sam, currently conked out in the passenger seat, snorted and rolled his head toward Dean. Dean took a moment to just watch his kid brother, the constant lines of stress and pain smoothed in sleep, leaving him looking peaceful for the first time in far too long. 

Dean’s heart clenched as he realized that Sam could have grown up with the normal, picket-fence life he’d always wanted. What could their life have been if Aunt Sally had raised them? Sam would probably still have gotten himself a full ride to Stanford, stubborn, smartass kid that he is. But . . . Dean struggled to imagine himself ending up anywhere else. He was a fighter and a killer, a weapon and a shield for his loved ones. He didn’t know how to be anything else. He thought back to the months he’d spent at Sonny’s all those years ago, how calm life had been, how happy he’d felt when he let himself forget about the worry and fear for Sam. If he had grown up in an environment like that, with a stable home and a loving, present adult to look after him and Sam, would he have joined sports teams? Made friends? Would he have dropped out still or would he have gone to college? 

Would John have visited them occasionally, for holidays and birthdays? Would Dean have wanted to go with him when he was older? To train and learn to hunt? Or would he have washed his hands of them and simply disappeared to hunt Yellow-eyes until he either succeeded or died? 

Would Aunt Sally still have met Poseidon and had Percy if Sam and Dean were around? If she did, what would Sam have been like as a big brother? Would Dean still love his kid brother and his little cousin as fiercely as he did now or would he be more like the brothers he saw on tv? Constantly annoyed and embarrassed by his younger brothers, not caring what they got up to, distant and cold with them. 

That thought left Dean feeling slightly sick to his stomach. He couldn’t imagine not caring for Sam the way he did, not falling instantly in love with Percy like he had just from hearing stories about the kid. 

No. No matter the circumstances, Dean would always end up taking care of his brother, would have been happy to help take care of Percy. Dean would have always been too old for his age, grown up too fast and too soon. But maybe he’d have been softer around the edges, gentler without the constant violence and pain and death. 

He wasn’t sure what he’d say when they found their dad. He had so much to work through, thoughts and feelings he wanted to figure out on his own without his dad getting in his head. Aunt Sally had been very firm in telling him that he never deserved the way John treated him, none of what John had done to him had been his fault, and the way John raised them had been wrong. She had carefully explained that John had abused and neglected him and Sam, that Dean had protected Sam from most of the abuse and raised him to be good, kind, and strong-willed, which was why Sam fought with John, because he could, because Dean had raised him and he was able to recognize that the way John treated them was wrong. 

Meanwhile Dean had been conditioned to never question his father, to always obey. Aunt Sally told him that he was exhibiting a trauma response commonly referred to as ‘fawning,’ where someone did everything they could to please or appease the perceived danger, in this case his father. Dean had spent most of his life in a state of ‘fawn’; those instincts and habits were going to take time to rewire and break. 

What would he say to his dad when they found him? What would his dad say? Would he have some excuse for lying about Aunt Sally’s death? Would he just expect Dean to accept that he had his reasons, that he did what was best for them? 

(Would he be angry with Dean for going to see her? For taking Sam to see her? How mad would he be to learn that Dean had told Sam stories about her growing up? What would he do if he knew just how confused and hurt and betrayed and-and angry Dean felt right now? Maybe he should make sure Sam was somewhere else for that conversation. Maybe he should keep Sam away from their dad for a while longer, let John work out his anger first before letting him and Sam be in the same room. When they finally find him and see him again, Dean will make sure it’s just him and John first. He’s managed to keep it hidden from Sammy for all these years, he’s sure as shit not gonna let him figure it out now.) 

Eventually, Dean pulled into a motel lot and got them a room. 

He gently shook Sam awake. “C’mon, kiddo. I got us a room. Let’s get you inside to sleep in a real bed, yeah?” 

Sam grumbled blearily and stumbled out of the car and into the room, immediately flopping face first onto the bed farthest from the door. Dean rolled his eyes but moved to carefully tug off the kid’s shoes and snagged the blanket from the other bed to drape over him, then let his brother be. He brought in their bags and took care of setting their usual protections about the room before crawling into bed himself, not bothering to take off his boots or get under the covers. 

~ ~ ~ 

The next morning, Sam woke up with no memory of leaving the car, taking off his shoes, and getting under the covers. He sat up slowly, not all that concerned with how he’d gotten there, and looked around the room. Salt lines had been laid down along the windows and door, their bags were sitting on the little table in the corner, and Dean was laying on his stomach on the other bed, his face turned away from Sam. 

Sam frowned and looked down at the blanket he’d kicked off at some point in the night. He sighed. Dean had given him the blanket from his bed because Sam had fallen asleep on top of the one on his own. He shook his head as he gathered the extra blanket and stood. His brother was ridiculous. 

Sam carefully draped the blanket over Dean’s hips and legs. He would have tried to take his brother’s boots off, but he knew that would wake him up, and he’d likely wake up swinging (which Sam would prefer to avoid). Plus, Dean could definitely use the sleep. 

Dean had always been great at taking care of others, but he was absolute shit at taking care of himself, so Sam had no doubt that Dean was not getting as much sleep as he should. 

So, Sam went about his morning routine quietly, digging clean clothes out of his duffle, taking a quick shower, and poking at the decrepit coffee maker in the kitchenette before deciding not to risk it and find a local coffee shop instead. 

When he came back to the room twenty minutes later with two coffees and breakfast, Dean was just waking up. 

“Hey, man,” Sam said, dropping the bag on the table. “I got breakfast and coffee.” 

Dean grunted and made grabby hands for the coffee. Sam laughed and passed him his drink. Despite the years of waking up at the ass-crack of dawn for training and being used to running on barely any sleep, Dean had never been much of a morning person. He’d always hidden it pretty well when John was around, but whenever it was just the two of them, Dean was grouchy, surly, and mad at the world for at least an hour after he woke up, or until he finished his first coffee. Sam didn’t take it personally; in fact, he had always been rather pleased that Dean showed a side of himself to Sam that he never let John see. 

Speaking of John, though . . . 

God, Sam was pissed. He’d spent a lot of time being angry at his dad growing up, picking fights and taking every chance to rebel and disobey John’s orders. He’d thought that the angriest he would ever get with his dad would have been the fight they’d had when he left for college, when John had told him that if he walked out that he door he’d better never come back. 

But God, the anger he’d felt back then paled in comparison to the rage and betrayal that simmered just beneath his skin having learned that Sally had been alive all these years. 

John had lied to them Sam’s whole life. He had raised them (left Dean to raise them) in motel rooms and run down apartments, constantly on the move from one hunt to the next, always living under false names and carefully constructed stories, treating them more like soldiers than sons, rather than let them live with their aunt to grow up safe and surrounded by love, rather than let them have normal childhoods and a stable home. 

And for what? Just so he could leave them to fend for themselves practically all the time and treat them like fucking soldiers whenever he was around? Was he that desperate to control them? Was he afraid of what Sally would tell them? Was he so blinded by his need for revenge that he didn’t care about his sons beyond ensuring they’d continue the hunt after he was gone? 

Was he so incapable of seeing past his own goddamn ego and self-righteous bullshit that he’d rather throw them to the wolves than risk letting them go, than risk letting them become their own people? 

Apparently, he’d spent too long brooding over his coffee and glaring angrily at his breakfast omelet without eating it and Dean’s mother-hen instincts had kicked in. 

“Hey,” Dean said, reaching across the table and flicking Sam’s forehead lightly. “What’s eatin’ atcha, Sammy?” 

Sam sighed and leaned back, running his hands through his hair. “I can’t stop thinking about it,” he said vaguely, but from the way Dean’s face went from open and playfully concerned to carefully controlled and blank, it was safe to say that his brother knew what he meant without him having to say it. 

Dean looked away and Sam stayed quiet, letting him sort through his no doubt turbulent thoughts. As much as Sam wanted to rage at John, he knew that Dean damn near worshipped the ground their dad walked on. Oh, Sam knew that Dean was angry with John, too, but Dean had never fought with or resented him like Sam had, he was probably feeling pretty conflicted. 

Finally, Dean sighed and dragged a hand down his face, the expression he wore when he turned to Sam was full of pain and exhaustion. 

“Me either,” he admitted, looking down at his hands and twisting the thick silver ring he wore. “I want to be angry with him, I know I should be angry at him, but, God, Sammy, I’m not sure I know how.” 

Sam’s chest felt tight. Dean sounded so . . . tired and resigned, in a way that Sam had never heard from his brother before. It felt wrong, almost, to see him like this. 

Sam steeled himself and forced a wry grin, saying the only thing that came to mind. “Well, I can be angry enough for the both of us until you figure that out.” That managed to draw an amused huff from Dean and Sam’s smile turned more genuine. “And uh, I’ll be honest with you, man, if I see dad, I’m probably gonna punch him.” 

“I wouldn’t blame ya if you did,” Dean said, then frowned. “We should probably let dad know that we found out about Aunt Sally. Maybe,” Dean hesitated. “Maybe ask him to keep his distance for a little bit longer while we sort ourselves out, so the talk about it doesn’t immediately turn into a brawl.” 

Sam nodded. “That’s probably a good idea. Though, I can’t promise that I won’t end up decking him anyway.” 

Dean snorted and rolled his eyes. “Alright, alright, now come on, I wanna get back on the road. Finish your breakfast and let’s get moving.” 

Dean got up from the table and ducked into the bathroom, leaving Sam to hastily finish his omelet and start shoving what little they’d gotten out back into their duffle bags. 

It wasn’t until half an hour later, when the motel room was a long-gone speck in Baby’s rearview mirror, that Sam realized Dean hadn’t eaten the breakfast sandwich he’d brought back for him. 

And for some reason, that left Sam far more worried than he thought it should have.

[demons-and-demigods]

Demons and Demigods: Chapter One: Family Reunions

Fully written chapter one! There are whole new sections and extended scenes added to this previously posted part, and I hope you enjoy! Ao3 did get this a few days ago, but that's only because I forgot to post it here right after lol

Ao3

~

This time, the call (or rather, the Iris Message) came mid-morning. Sally was sitting at the little dining table eating a late breakfast while Paul was out running some errands for the weekend, and then a rainbow appeared above the kitchen sink and Annabeth shimmered into view. 

“Annabeth!” Sally smiled and greeted the daughter of Athena (and her son’s girlfriend) warmly, getting to her feet and stepping closer to the sink. Then she got a good look at the girl’s face and her chest tightened. “Annabeth?” 

She looked exhausted, her face pale and drawn and her eyes sunken and red, like she’d been crying. Her hair was unkempt, barely pulled back from her face and no doubt a tangled mess, her usual curls flattened and limp. 

“Annabeth, sweetheart, what’s wrong?” Sally asked, worry knotting in her throat. 

Annabeth made a choked noise, like she was biting back a sob, and wouldn’t meet Sally’s eyes. 

“He’s gone,” she said, voice breaking. “Percy’s missing.” 

Sally stopped breathing. 

“He disappeared a week ago. We’ve been looking everywhere but we haven’t found anything,” Annabeth said desperately. “We said good night and went to our cabins and then the next morning he was gone,” she sobbed. “No note, no sign of a struggle, nothing. It’s like he just vanished into thin air in the middle of the night. I’m so sorry, Sally, gods, I’m so sorry.” 

Her baby was missing, stolen from Camp, from the one place he was supposed to be safe. She brought a shaking hand up to cover her mouth. 

“Mr. D was called back to Olympus just before Percy went missing, and nobody has been able to reach the gods since. They’re not answering any prayers, and I tried to go to Olympus, but it’s locked down, I couldn’t get in,” Annabeth sniffled, tugging anxiously at her hair. “I’m so sorry, Sally, I don’t know what to do,” her voice cracked, and then she broke down, sobs wracking her already trembling frame. 

Sally’s knees gave out and she crumpled to the floor with a ragged cry. She clutched desperately at her chest, gasping for air around the vice of terror and grief seizing her lungs. 

She wasn’t sure how long she stayed there, a sobbing wreck on the kitchen floor, but by the time she pulled herself back together enough to look up, the Iris Message was gone. 

With a deep, fortifying breath, Sally hauled herself off the floor and stumbled to the living room to collapse on the couch. She stared blankly at the coffee table and her computer sitting innocently before her. She’d left it there with the intention of getting some more work done on her next book, but everything felt hollow now, unimportant and inconsequential in the face of her baby’s disappearance. 

Numbly, she opened the device and clicked on the little notification that popped up in the corner of the screen. It took her to a news article only a few hours old, and renewed horror and grief took hold of her chest the more she read. There had been a fire in an apartment just off campus from Stanford, killing Jessica Moore, a young college student, while her roommate and boyfriend, Sam Winchester, had gone missing shortly after the fire. Eyewitnesses had placed him at the scene, having seen him dragged screaming from the building by a guy no one had recognized, only to disappear at some point between the fire department arriving to put out the fire and the police looking for him to get his statement. 

Oh gods. Jessica had died in a fire just like Mary. What if the yellow-eyed man had come back and killed Sam’s girlfriend? There was no way to know if Jessica had burned on the ceiling with her stomach cut open, but the circumstances were too similar for it to be purely coincidence. Fuck. 

Enough was enough. She had lost her sister, her nephews, her son—Sally was done standing by. She was a hunter, dammit. She was going to find the bastard that had killed her sister, and no matter what, she would find her son. But first, she was gonna need some help. 

Steeling herself, Sally grabbed her phone and dialed a number she’d long since saved but never used.  

“Sam’s phone, this is his brother speaking, he’s currently sleeping and this number isn’t in his contacts so make this good and make it fast. Who are you and how do you have this number?” 

For a moment, she forgot how to breathe. 

“Dean?” Sally’s voice shook, and she brought a hand to her mouth as tears welled in her eyes.  

“Who is this?” Dean demanded in a tone a voice she remembered Mary using when fighting with their father. She choked on a sob and let out a wet laugh.  

“I don’t know if you remember me,” she started, closing her eyes and begging anyone listening to let him believe her, “But my name is Sally. I’m your aunt.”  

It was silent for a moment on the other end of the call, and she worried that Dean had hung up.  

Then, quietly, tentatively, “Aunt Sally?” Dean’s voice shook just the slightest bit and Sally could hear his breath hitch. “Dad told me you were dead,” he said, and his voice broke. “I-I asked about you all the time that second year after mom died, once I started talking again. Dad musta gotten sick of me asking if we could go live with you instead of movin’ around all the time, ‘cause he told me that whatever got mom had killed you too.”  

Sally let out a sob. “No, baby. I-I tried to find you boys; I would have taken you in in a heartbeat. I begged John to tell me where you were when he stopped by a year after Mary died, but he refused to answer me. I swear, I never stopped looking for you. I thought John had gone and gotten you both killed when I could never find anything about him traveling with two little boys. It was like you two had just disappeared.”  

“Dad kept us hidden. Always enrolled us in school with a fake last name and didn’t want anyone to know we were with him if it could be avoided, since he left us alone all the time.” Dean let out a watery chuckle of his own. “Somewhere, I think he knew he shouldn’t have been raising us like that, but he was too consumed by his thirst for revenge to care.”  

He paused and it was silent a moment, so they could both regain their composure.  

“If you thought we were dead,” Dean asked hesitantly. “How come you got Sam’s number? How come you’re calling now?”  

Sally closed her eyes and braced herself. “I set up some systems, to alert me if anyone ever showed up under the names Dean or Sam Winchester. I got an alert when Sam enrolled in Stanford. I wanted to reach out, but I didn’t think he’d know who I was. I figured John wouldn’t have talked about me, and I wasn’t sure that you would’ve remembered me. I was content to know that he was alive and doing well.” She took a deep, shuddering breath. “I have a son,” she said with a watery laugh. “Percy. He’s sixteen.” Her voice broke. “He’s missing,” she sobbed. “S-someone or something took him and I can’t—”  

“We’ll help you find him,” Dean broke in, voice steady and sure. “Where are you?’  

“I live in Manhattan,” she said, then rattled off her address. “I-I have a lot to tell you. It’d probably be best to talk in person.”  

“We’re on our way. We’ll see you soon, Aunt Sally. And we will find Percy, I promise you.”  

“Thank you.”  

After a quick goodbye, the call ended, and Sally let herself break down once more.  

When Paul got home that evening after spending the day running errands, he was terrified when he found her curled up and sobbing her eyes out on the couch. He rushed over and tried to comfort her, asking her what happened.  

She filled him in on the IM from Annabeth, hiccupping through the news that Percy had gone missing, and then she told him how she’d had an older sister that had died years ago. How her sister had two sons that her brother-in-law had disappeared with, who she’d thought had died years ago, too. She told him about growing up a hunter, how the Greek world wasn’t the only one out there, how there were other monsters and evil creatures out there beyond those from Greek myth. She explained that she’d discovered that one of her nephews, Sam, was alive four years ago but had been too afraid to reach out. How she’d kept tabs on him and had finally gotten up the courage to call him after Annabeth told her that Percy had disappeared. 

She told him about the call, how Dean had answered and told her they were on their way to help her find Percy.  

By the time she was finished, it was nearly midnight and she was exhausted. Paul brought her to bed and held her close as she cried herself to sleep. 

~ ~ ~ 

The next morning, Annabeth showed up on the doorstep of the Jackson-Blofis apartment looking even more haggard and worn out than she had the day before. Her hair was a mess, her eyes red and swollen. She was pale and shaky with dark bags under her eyes. She looked like she hadn’t slept in days, like she’d barely been eating. As soon as Sally saw her, she swept the daughter of Athena into her arms and held her tight as they both broke down into tears again. Annabeth sobbed, apologizing over and over.  

Paul guided both women to the couch and made them both some tea before sitting with them.  

Eventually, Annabeth and Sally both calmed down enough to hold a coherent conversation, and Annabeth filled Sally in on everything she’d been able to figure out so far (which was approximately nothing) about what happened to Percy.  

 Sally took the time to fill Annabeth in on her family past and the hunter community so the girl would be prepared when Dean and Sam showed up. Learning that other monsters and shit were real and there were, presumably clear-sighted, mortals out there that hunted them was uh, well, a lot for Annabeth to take in, but she handled it like a champ. 

They spent the rest of the day with Sally giving Paul and Annabeth the rundown of as much hunter knowledge as she could. She gave them the basics first; salt, iron, silver, and holy water are gonna be at least semi-effective against most of the monsters out there, although she’d had a few run-ins with non-Greek monsters over the last few years and she was pretty sure that celestial bronze should work, too. Annabeth theorized that celestial bronze would probably work on anything non-human, but would probably be most effective against creatures that maintain specific mythological roots, like a kelpie or a banshee, rather than, say, a vampire or a werewolf, which tend to be of more nebulous origins nowadays, and ghosts were a tossup. 

~ ~ ~ 

At a little past noon two days after Sally learned that her son was missing, there was a knock on the door. 

Paul got up from where he and the girls were sitting around the kitchen table, going over Sally’s old hunter’s journal, to open the door and was met with two young men, both at least six feet tall.  

The one with floppy brown hair and big hazel eyes gave Paul an awkward smile. The other young man, however, drew most of Paul’s attention. His hair was dirty blonde and spiked up in the front with buzzed sides. He held himself in a way that Paul found familiar, although he couldn’t quite place from where. The leather jacket draped across his shoulders was just slightly too big for him, yet it did little to hide his well-muscled frame. He was staring Paul down with narrowed eyes, his full lips quirked down in the start of a scowl. Those eyes, however. Those eyes were what caught Paul’s attention. This young man had startlingly green eyes that seemed to be picking him apart. Now, Paul was no stranger to startlingly green eyes, not with Percy as his stepson. But while Percy’s eyes were the entrancing blue-green of open seas, unfathomably old and depthless, this man’s eyes were the shifting gold-green of ancient foliage basking in the dappled sunlight that managed to break through the canopy of leaves overhead, wise beyond their years and deceptively welcoming. They reminded him of Sally’s eyes, he realized.  

“We’re looking for a woman named Sally,” the green-eyed one said, his voice rich and gravelly.  

“She’s just inside,” Paul said and smiled, trying to hide just how nervous these young men made him. There was just something about them that set him on edge. That was when it clicked. They each held themselves with the same easy, lethal grace that Paul had come to associate with Percy and other demigods, the kind of grace that came from years of training and fighting, from years of knowing exactly what you were capable of. The apprehension melted away and he gestured the young men inside. “You must be Dean and Sam. I don’t know what all she told you on the phone, but I’m her husband, Paul. Come on in.”  

He led the boys inside the apartment and over to the table.  

Sally looked up at the sound of footsteps and Paul’s voice and froze, her eyes locked on the two young men just behind her husband.  

Dean had Mary’s eyes. 

“Aunt Sally?” Dean’s voice was soft, his eyes wide in disbelief. It was one thing to hear a voice over the phone claiming to be someone you’d thought long dead, and another to see their face for the first time in nearly twenty-two years. Sally cupped her hands over her mouth as fresh tears gathered in her eyes.  

She stood on shaking legs and walked toward them slowly. She stopped in front of Dean and reached a hand up to cup his jaw hesitantly.  

She couldn’t bite back her quiet gasp when he leaned into her touch and closed his eyes. Her gaze slid over to Sam, who was standing just behind his brother and biting his lip nervously. She reached over with her other hand to brush her knuckles against his cheek.  

“Look at how big you boys have gotten,” she rasped with a wet smile. “You both look so much like Mary.”  

Dean let out a teary laugh and Sally dropped her hands to the boys’ shoulders and tugged them down into a hug. The three of them clung to each other, savoring the moment. Even after they parted, there were no dry eyes to be seen. Sally sniffled and laughed as she wiped her eyes.  

“Come, sit,” she gestured at the table where Paul and Annabeth were waiting patiently.  

The boys sat down, unable to tear their eyes from their aunt they’d thought long lost.  

“Dean used to tell me about you,” Sam said with a shy smile. “When dad was gone, he’d tell me stories about you and mom before bed. I could tell it hurt for him to talk about sometimes,” he glanced at his brother with a soft smile, “but he never said no when I asked him for one.”  

Dean blushed and smacked Sam’s shoulder playfully. Sally grinned.  

“You always did love to tell stories,” she laughed. “You were always so talkative, even when it was unintelligible baby babble you would talk your momma’s ear off. And you loved to cuddle, too.”  

Sam laughed and Dean’s blush deepened as Sally continued.  

“And, oh, I remember how excited you were when little Sammy was born. You loved him from the moment you saw him in the hospital. You didn’t wanna let go. When Mary got to bring him home, you were insistent that she teach you how to make his bottles and change his diapers. You wanted to be the best big brother ever and take care of him all the time.” She paused to wipe her eyes and chuckle. “And Sam, oh you were the cutest little thing. You loved your big brother just as much. Whenever you two were in the same room, it was like you were drawn to him. You loved it when anyone held you, but the way your eyes would light up when you saw Dean,” she gave him a soft smile and shook her head fondly. “You’d make little grabby hands and sniffle until he picked you up or one of us put you in his arms. You were such a happy baby, too. Full of giggles and big, gummy smiles.”  

It was Sam’s turn to blush now and he gave Dean a look that dared him to say anything about it. Sally watched them for a quiet moment with a soft gaze before clearing her throat and dropping her eyes to where her hands were clasped on the table.  

“Sam, I assume Dean filled you in on the way here,” she asked, trying to stop her voice from shaking.  

“Yeah,” Sam said. “Though he said you didn’t explain much, said you wanted to explain in person?”  

Sally nodded and closed her eyes, taking a deep breath. Paul reached over and covered her hands with his own, squeezing them reassuringly. She gave him a thankful look.  

“My son is a demigod.”  

Dean and Sam both gave her wide-eyed looks.  

“What?” Dean asked, and his gaze flicked to Paul with a raised eyebrow.  

“Percy is my stepson,” Paul said. “I met him and Sally when Percy was about fourteen.”  

“His father is Poseidon.” Sally watched her nephews closely.  

“Like . . . the Greek god of the sea?” Sam asked slowly. Sally nodded.  

“You already know that monsters and mythologies are real, but the things we were taught about some of them were wrong. Most demigods are good kids made victim of bad circumstances. Some are more powerful than others, and the more powerful the demigod, the stronger their scent is to monsters. Most demigods don’t make it to adulthood and the ones that do are often not all that powerful or are the children of minor gods and goddesses.” She paused to give the boys a moment to soak that information in. “Not all demigods have powers, some of them instead have a natural affinity for their godly parent’s domain. Like Annabeth,” Sally gestured at the girl who met the narrowed gazes of Sam and Dean unflinchingly. “She’s a daughter of Athena, and Percy’s girlfriend.”  

“I don’t have powers,” Annabeth said calmly. “None of Athena’s children do. But Athena is the goddess of wisdom and warfare, so all her children are incredibly smart. We're generally very strategically and/or mathematically minded. Some of us are also really good at weaving.” She shrugged. “I want to be an architect. In fact, there was a war recently in our world, and a fair bit of Olympus was destroyed. My mother and the Council asked me to redesign and rebuild their city for them.” Annabeth’s eyes glittered with pride, and she sat up a little straighter as she spoke. 

“There are other demigods that only sometimes have powers, like Apollo’s or Hermes’ children. Most Apollo kids are great healers, either because they have that power or because they just have the instincts for it. Some Apollo kids aren’t so great at healing, and instead are phenomenal at archery. Like, Robin Hood splitting an arrow in half with another arrow good,” she glanced at Sally. “Percy has been catching me up on ‘the Disney classics’ as he calls them. And I did like that one. Although I don’t understand why they made Marian a fox when she should obviously have been a lion.” She frowned and shook her head. “Anyway, other Apollo kids are exceptional musicians or poets. Hermes’ children are, well, thieves, generally. They’re some of the fastest kids at Camp, and they’re always sneaky and love to get their hands on things that aren’t theirs.” Annabeth smiled sadly, and Sally realized she was probably thinking about Luke. “And while you should always regularly check your pockets around them, most children of Hermes are some of the most welcoming people you’ll ever meet; since Hermes is the god of travelers, his children are often very friendly and more than happy to help anyone that crosses their path, whether that be with a warm meal or a safe place to spend the night, or stealing toiletries and a sleeping bag for you from the camp store,” Annabeth laughed softly and Sally smiled, remembering Percy telling her about Luke doing that for him when he first arrived at camp. 

Sam looked thoughtful. “If that kind of thing is what’s considered ‘low-powered’ or having no powers, then what the hell are powerful demigods like?”  

Annabeth and Sally looked at each other.  

“Any demigod can be powerful, no matter who their godly parent is,” Annabeth said slowly. “And all demigods can be dangerous. But, well,” Annabeth pursed her lips, “children of the Big Three tend to, shall we say, exist in a league of their own.”  

“The Big Three?” Dean asked, leaning forward, brows furrowed.  

“Zeus, Hades, and Poseidon, the three sons of Kronos,” Sally explained.  

“After World War II, Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades swore an oath to stop having demigod children because they were too dangerous, too volatile. There are only three demigod children of the Big Three alive today; Thalia, daughter of Zeus, Nico, son of Hades, and Percy, probably the most powerful demigod to have been born in generations. Hell, he’s quite possibly the most powerful demigod to have been born since the fall of Ancient Greece.” Annabeth stared Sam and Dean down with her steely grey eyes, her expression grim.  

The boys stared back at her with wide eyes.  

“Percy and I have been through pretty much everything together. I have seen him do incredible things with his powers. I have seen him hold back the tide and stop waves on the open sea. He’s summoned storms and turned himself into a hurricane. Did you hear about the explosion of Mt. St. Helens last year?” Annabeth raised an eyebrow. Sam and Dean nodded. “Percy did that.”  

Sam choked on air and Dean’s jaw dropped.  

“It wasn’t on purpose, but that was him. Some monsters had taken over Hephestus’ forge there, and he sent us to clear them out. We went inside and there were so many monsters, and they were forging a nightmarish weapon. We tried to fight them off, but there were just so many,” Annabeth’s gaze was unfocused, her mind replaying the horrifying events of that day. “He told me to run, he had a plan, and he would distract the monsters so I could get away.” She closed her eyes, a few tears slipping down her cheeks. “I don’t know how he did it, but Percy was still inside the volcano when it erupted. We all thought he was dead,” she said, and her voice shook. She looked at Sally and gave the woman a teary smile. “Did you know that was our first kiss?”  

Sally shook her head, eyes glistening.  

Annabeth laughed wetly and sniffed. “We were hiding and he told me to get out of there because he had a plan, but his plans are always ridiculous and harebrained. So I leaned over, kissed him, said ‘good luck,’ and then I put on my hat and ran for the exit.” She gave a teary laugh and reached up to wipe her eyes. “I kiss him and the idiot goes and blows himself up.” She shook her head. “Then, he has the audacity to show up two weeks later to his own funeral!” she chuckled, and Sally, Paul, Dean, and Sam all laughed. “There I was, an absolute mess, about to burn his shroud and say goodbye to my best friend, and then I saw him standing there at the back of the amphitheater practically glowing with health. I must have sounded like an idiot, because I was in the middle of talking about him, and then I just pointed and said, ‘he’s right there!’ Everyone was so relieved that he was alive, and everybody rushed him to welcome him back and hug him, to pat his shoulder and slap him on the back.” She blushed furiously and ducked her head. “When I finally made it to him, I punched him in the arm and told him to never scare me like that again.”  

“Did you talk about it?” Sally asked; she couldn’t remember Percy telling her about Annabeth kissing him and then blowing up a volcano. Annabeth, somehow, blushed harder. She reached up and rubbed the back of her neck.  

“Well, no. Not really, anyway. He referenced it during the Battle of Manhattan, though. He asked for a kiss for luck before going to fight Hyperion. I told him to ask me again after we won. I mean, the last time I gave him a kiss for luck, he blew up a mountain and disappeared for two weeks. No way was I going to risk something crazy like that happening again when we were in the middle of such an important battle.” She shrugged. Then turned to Sally. “Hey, when you shot that monster, and said you’d learned to shoot about ten seconds ago—?”  

Sally laughed. “Yeah, I learned to shoot when I was eight years old. But before that moment, I hadn’t touched a gun in, goodness, probably close to twenty-five years at least.” She shrugged. Annabeth laughed. Then, Sally’s gaze turned sad. “I hated lying to Percy, but his life is already so dangerous, I didn’t want him to have to worry about all the other things out there.” She buried her face in her hands and Paul reached over to rub comforting circles on her back.  

“We’ll find him, Sally. And he’ll be okay until we do,” he said.  

Sally took a few measured breaths before lifting her head. She gave a determined nod.  

“Yeah, remember, he’s not only super powerful; Percy is also one of the greatest swordsmen Chiron has ever seen. Plus, he has the Curse of Achilles. And I know that he picked a good place for his mortal point. He can handle himself.” Annabeth sounded like she was trying to convince herself as much as she was trying to convince Sally.  

“Wait, wait, wait,” Sam broke in, astonished. “What do you mean Percy has the ‘Curse of Achilles’?”  

“He bathed in the River Styx and now his skin is impenetrable except for one place: his mortal point. Like Achilles’ heel was his one weak point, Percy has a small weak point, too, and if he’s hit there, he’ll die. You’re not supposed to tell anyone where your mortal point is. But during the battle, it was like I could sense that something terrible was about to happen and even though I knew Percy was invulnerable, I threw myself between him and a knife. I got stabbed, and later, Percy told me that the knife would have hit his mortal point and killed him if I hadn’t jumped in the way. When I asked where it was, he guided my hand to it. He trusted me with his weak spot, the one place on his body where he could be hurt and killed.” Annabeth looked down at her hands. “Neither of us are sure why I was able to sense that he was in danger like that, but I think Percy has a pretty good suspicion and just won’t tell me.” She shrugged.  

“Well,” Sam said, still reeling.  

“Holy shit,” Dean chimed in. Sam kicked him under the table. “Ow! Dude, what the hell?”  

Sam raised an eyebrow and flicked his eyes to Sally. Dean winced.  

“Oh, um, sorry, Aunt Sally,” he said and rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly. She waved her hand dismissively.  

“Oh please,” she rolled her eyes. “A little swearing doesn’t bother me. Shit, a lot of swearing doesn’t bother me. I don’t care, so don’t feel the need to censor yourselves for my sake. And don’t worry about Paul, either; he’s a high school English teacher. I doubt there’s anything he hasn’t heard.”  

“So,” Sam said, trying to steer them back on course. “Percy’s missing. What do we know?”  

Annabeth, Sally, and Paul filled Sam and Dean in on what little that had managed to figure out about Percy’s disappearance and they began discussing what they could do.  

Annabeth got up and grabbed something from her bag. She placed it on the table in front of Sam and Dean gingerly. It was a slightly tattered polaroid of a young man who had to be Percy. The boys both leaned in for a closer look.  

In the picture, Percy was half submerged in a body of water. His arms were crossed on a wooden pier as he looked up at Annabeth with a lovesick expression on his face. Annabeth was sitting on the pier in front of him and appeared to be in the middle of a rant, her face scrunched up and her arms blurry with wild gestures. The streak of gray hair, that Sam and Dean only just realized that both kids had, stood out starkly against Percy’s inky black hair and deeply tanned skin. His eyes, even in a still photograph, seemed to ebb and flow, the oceans themselves held within his eyes and it was almost like they could hear the crashing of waves. His smile was blinding, his grin spread across his whole face as bright white teeth glinted in the sun (but if Dean focused on that smile too long, Percy’s teeth seemed to grow sharp and elongated, the sunny grin turning almost feral). Scars littered Percy’s arms and peaked out from beneath the collar of his shirt. That was when Sam realized that Percy was completely dry, and his eyes widened. 

Annabeth must have noticed because she laughed. “One of the perks of being the son of Poseidon. He doesn’t get wet unless he wants to. He's told me that he has to concentrate on allowing the water to touch him otherwise the ‘veil’ as he’s called it will snap back into place, and he’d dry off instantly. He says it can be pretty exhausting, focusing on forcing his powers not to work, essentially, so he generally doesn’t bother with it at camp. He has to do it whenever we’re around mortals, though, otherwise it could be absolutely pouring outside and he would be walking down the street looking dry as a bone.”  

Sam let out a soft whistle. “Damn,” he said. “I bet that comes in handy.”  

Annabeth shot him a wry grin and nodded. “More often than you’d think.”  

Dean was still studying the picture; there was something about it that felt off to him, aside from the dry clothes while floating in the water, but he just couldn’t figure out what it was.  

Then it clicked.  

“Holy shit, his eyes are the exact same color as the water,” he gasped.  

Annabeth just nodded. “They do that, change to match the nearest body of water. It’s pretty disconcerting, at first, but you get used to it. I don’t think he even knows it happens. Once the weirdness wears off, though, it’s actually really fascinating. His eyes are constantly shifting colors, ever changing like the seas. If there’s no body of water nearby, they’ll settle on a shade of bright bluish-green like someone turned the saturation up to eleven. Often, they’ll also change to match the color of whatever water he’s controlling. If there’s nothing else distinctive about him, his eyes will always give him away.” She smiled softly, a faraway look in her eyes.  

Annabeth let the boys keep the photo so long as they promised to keep it safe and return it to her when Percy was found.  

Sam and Dean reached out to their hunter contacts to see if anyone had heard or seen anything that could have been Percy. Sally even reached out to some of her family’s old contacts as well. Nothing.  

Annabeth went back to camp to do everything she could there.  

Sam and Dean stayed at the Jackson-Blofis apartment for a few weeks, and in the time-betweens, Sally told them stories from when she and Mary were young and what it was like raising Percy. She recounted the stories Percy had told her of his quests and she filled them in on the whole ‘Battle of Manhattan’ and ‘we were fighting a war’ thing Annabeth had mentioned.  

In return, Dean and Sam told her and Paul some stories from when they were growing up. Sam seemed to have more that he was willing to share, and Dean didn’t share many stories about himself.  

Little details from Sam’s stories and the knowledge that John usually left the boys alone started to paint a nasty picture in Sally’s mind.  

Eventually, she managed to corner Dean and ask him about it. When he, reluctantly, confirmed that he pretty much raised Sam from the moment Mary died and did shit like starve himself and resort to any means necessary (including theft and prostitution) to keep Sam fed and taken care of and how John tended to ‘discipline’ him (he tried to make excuses for the man, but Sally quickly shut those down) and such, Sally apologized for him having to go through all that and promised that he could always come to her if he ever needed to talk or anything and she would help him in any way she could if he ever needed it. Privately, she also swore to herself that she was going to find John and kill him. (Maybe she’d ask Percy if he’d be willing to help her dip her toes back into sculpting once they found him.)  

Annabeth called to tell them she got a prophecy that might lead her to Percy, and she promised to let them know the second she learned anything new.  

A few days later, she called back and said that she hadn’t found Percy, but they may have a lead.  

Eventually, Sam and Dean, having grown restless after spending weeks in one place, decided to get back on the road after Sam found something he thought might lead them to the demon that killed Mary and Jess.

[demons-and-demigods]

I CAVED BECAUSE I'M WEAK SO HERE'S THE AO3 LINK TO THIS WORK <33

Demons and Demigods

SEE YOU SOON FOR CHAPTER ONE!

Demons and Demigods: Prologue

Okay, so! Here it is, the prologue for DnDV as a fully written, multi-chapter au. It's been done for a while, but I wanted to get a couple more chapters rewritten and expanded before I posted anything, except that's taking me longer than I'd like (sorry) so I decided to go ahead and post this here now! ^-^ I'm gonna hold off putting it on ao3 for a little longer, I think, but it will get it up there eventually. Who knows, maybe I'll change my mind and post it there tomorrow lol

Quick reminders before we get going: I have a potty mouth, so do the characters. And timelines are barely even suggestions to me, I play fast and loose with 'em because I do what I want and idc if it makes sense ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Uhh... Enjoy!

~

Mary Campbell was twenty-three and figured she was well overdue for some good ol’ teenage rebellion. And one John Winchester was perfect for her plans. He was handsome, hard-working, and, most importantly, not a hunter. The fact that her dad hated him? Well, that was just a bonus. 

Mary liked John well enough, but she loved the freedom he could bring her. The only thing she loved more was her little sister, Sally. 

Sally Campbell was a week away from eighteen and figured she was right on time for her big moment of teenage rebellion. She had her sights set on New York City: big, busy, and, most importantly, everything her father hates. The fact that most hunters steered clear of big cities? Well, that was just a bonus. 

She couldn’t wait to finally have the chance to live her own life, away from her father’s rigorous routines and expectations. She and Mary had been planning their escapes for years. 

At first, Mary had tried to convince Sally to come with her and John to Kansas, but as much as Sally loved her sister, she just didn’t want the quiet rural life that Mary was so enamored with. Also at first, Sally had tried to convince Mary to leave without her, that she’d be alright until she turned eighteen and could get out on her own, but Mary refused to risk their dad deciding to tighten his grip on her once Mary left, or the chance that he might cut them off from each other, might take Sally and disappear. 

So, they planned and waited, each carefully gathering what they would need to strike out on their own, until the night Sally turned eighteen. 

~ ~ ~ 

Sally had just enough money to get herself a shitty little apartment in Manhattan. She’d have to find a job before next month’s rent was due, but for the first time, she had a place to call her own. With the little money she had left over and some extra she scrounged up hustling pool in a small bar just down the street, she reached out to an old family contact and got herself a new identity: she was now Sally Jackson, a born and bred New Yorker who’d dropped out of high school to take care of her ailing uncle after her parents died in a plane crash. She ended up working three part-time jobs, running herself ragged to meet rent and feed herself, but she couldn’t be happier with her new life. 

Mary and John got married and bought a little two-story house in Lebanon, Kansas that looked like a suburban wet dream, white picket fence and all. Mary got a job as a waitress at a local diner and John worked as a mechanic when he was home from the Marines. 

Then, a few months into their new-found freedom, Mary called to tell her sister some wonderful news: she was going to have a baby. Sally was beyond happy for her sister and demanded Mary keep her updated so she could visit when the baby was born. 

True to her word, Sally was there to meet her brand-new nephew, little Dean Winchester, in the hospital. She stayed a few days to help Mary with the new baby. Dean was the cutest, sweetest little guy, all gummy smiles and happy baby babble. 

Sally and Mary visited each other every chance they had, Mary always with Dean in tow and usually John nowhere to be seen. Mary always claimed that he was just really busy and couldn’t get the time off work or that he was currently deployed, but Sally knew that wasn’t the truth, not all of it at least. She never pushed, though, if Mary wanted her to know something or needed help, she’d say. 

And she did say, nearly four months after little Sammy was born and Dean, now four years old, had taken to helping care for his little brother like a fish to water. 

The obnoxious ringing of the landline had woken Sally in the middle of the night, drawing her from her nice, cozy bed. Mary was crying when she picked up the phone. 

“Mary?” Sally said, alarmed and suddenly wide awake. “Mary, what’s wrong? What happened?” 

“You have to look after them, Sally,” Mary pleaded. “Please, promise me you’ll look after my boys, you have to promise me.” 

“Of course I’ll look after them, Mare, I promise. I’d do anything for those boys, you know that. You’re scaring me. What’s going on? Are you okay?” Sally said, trying to remember how to breathe around the growing fear. 

“I made a deal, years ago, and it was stupid, I know it was stupid, but I didn’t have a choice, I had to save him, you have to understand, I didn’t have a choice,” Mary sobbed, and told Sally about a deal she’d made with a man with yellow eyes to save John’s life. 

There was a lot of crying that night, and two months later, when Mary died in a supposed house fire. 

~ ~ ~ 

John disappeared with the boys before Sally could get down to Kansas. She tried calling him, but he never answered the phone. She tried tracking him, but he was always one step ahead of her. She couldn’t find him or any sign of either of her nephews, even though the report said only Mary died in the fire. 

Then, nearly a year after Mary’s death, John appeared at the doorstep of Sally’s shitty apartment, Dean and Sam nowhere to be seen. 

“John!” Sally cried, staring up at the worn face of her sister’s husband. She hadn’t seen him in over a year, not since before the fire. 

“Sally.” His voice was gruff and his eyes cold. He was tense, setting Sally’s old hunter instincts on edge. He entered slowly, cautiously, when Sally stepped to the side to let him in, stopping only a few feet inside the door. “Stop tracking me,” he growled. “In fact, it’d be best if you forgot all about me.” 

“What? John, what the fuck are you talking about? Where are Sam and Dean?” Sally crossed her arms and glared right back at him. 

“I’m hunting down the bastard that killed my wife. That fire wasn’t because of some bullshit gas leak, there was something else going on that night. A gas leak wouldn’t have Mary held suspended on the ceiling with her stomach slashed open.” 

Sally’s eyes widened and horror threatened to choke the breath from her lungs. God, she’d known that Mary’s death was because of her deal, but she hadn’t known that she’d died like that. Still, her sister had wanted her to look after her boys and Sally knew the path John was on was a dark one. She had to try and divert him. 

“John, I don’t think—” 

“I KNOW WHAT I FUCKING SAW, SALLY!” John suddenly roared, slamming his fist into the wall. Sally jumped. “I know what I fucking saw, dammit, and what I saw was my wife bleeding and burning on the ceiling in Sammy’s nursery. And if you think that I’m just gonna stand here and let you tell me that I’m crazy, then you’re gonna be sorely disappointed.” 

“Okay, I’m sorry,” Sally tried, holding out her hands placatingly. “Just tell me where the boys are, John. Please. Let me take care of them for you.” 

“Goodbye, Sally. Stop fucking looking.” John turned and stormed out of her apartment, slamming the door as he went. 

Sally ran after him, but he had managed to disappear already. She fell to her knees, and she cried. 

~ ~ ~ 

Despite John telling her not to, Sally tried to keep tabs on him, she really did, but anywhere she managed to track him to, he was already long gone, leaving no trace and no hint that he’d had two little boys with him. She tried to hold on to her hope, but as more and more time passed, Sally couldn’t help but fear that her nephews were dead. She had failed them. 

Sally mourned her nephews deeply, cursed her brother-in-law savagely, and prayed desperately that Mary could forgive her for breaking her promise.  

Eventually, she tried to move on with her life. She met a handsome stranger and fell in love, somehow, even though she knew that he was a god, and she had been taught that all gods are cruel, capricious monsters that needed to be put down, but Poseidon was nothing like that, she learned, nothing like she’d been raised to believe. Then, it wasn’t long before she had a little blessing of her own. 

~ ~ ~ 

Sally used what she knew from growing up a hunter to try and keep Percy safe and far away from the mythological world for as long as she could.  

She married Gabe for his disgustingly human scent, made sure to keep silver, salt, and iron around at all times, kept a go bag ready for both her and Percy so they could run if ever they needed to.  

Percy turned twelve. He was finally, inevitably, dragged into the demigod world and Sally had always known this day was coming but that didn't make the actual moment any easier. She had already lost her sister and her nephews, Sally didn’t think she would be able to survive losing her son, too.  

Then, Percy was thirteen, Gabe was dead, and their lives were getting better. And then one day, Sally got an alert from a search algorithm she had long given up on that a Samuel Winchester had just been enrolled at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California.  

(She wanted to reach out, but she had never told Percy about her sister or nephews, and she had to wonder if Sam even knew she existed. She doubted John would have talked about her and Dean had probably been too young to remember her. She resolved that she wouldn’t contact him, contented herself with just knowing that he was alive after all these years, but she would keep an eye on him and how he was doing.) 

~ ~ ~ 

Percy was sixteen years old and he’d never had the luxury of teenage rebellion. Sally watched as her baby grew and carried the weight of the world on his shoulders. She watched as he fought to hold it together for her, not to show her how heavily the Great Prophecy sat in his mind, but she saw. She knew the prophecy, what it said, what it meant. They had both known that he was going to die, and Sally knew he was afraid, but she also saw that he’d accepted it, saw the strong, capable leader and hero her little boy had become, and she knew that prophecy or not, he would give his life to protect those he cared for and end the war. 

(“Mom, when did you learn how to fire a shotgun?” “About ten seconds ago,” she lied. She felt bad lying to her son, but his life was dangerous enough with just the Greek world to worry about, he didn’t need to worry about everything else that was out there. From what she knew, the Greeks were pretty strict about not mixing pantheons, so she hoped that he would never run into any other kind of monster.) 

Then, miraculously, he’d survived. Percy had survived the Great Prophecy, defeated Kronos, turned down immortality to instead tell the gods to pay their damn child support, and then convinced them to light up the Empire State building blue just so she would know that he was alive. 

Her baby, her brave little Perseus was sixteen and traumatized but healing. And he had her, Annabeth, Grover, Paul, and all his other friends from Camp to help him. 

Later that night, when Percy had returned to Camp to help where he could as they tried to put themselves back together, when Paul had kissed her good night and crashed after the excitement of fighting off monsters he couldn’t properly see, when it was just her, sitting alone at the kitchen table, still wired with adrenaline and the euphoric high of knowing her son was alive and safe, Sally pulled out her computer and checked in on Sam. 

Sam, for his part, was twenty-two and about to graduate from Stanford as Valedictorian with plans to continue into law school. There were pictures of him online, posted to Stanford’s website and their digital yearbook, and Sally drank in the sight of him. He had Mary’s smile and John’s nose and she couldn’t be prouder of him, even if he didn’t even know that she existed. 

Sally had her baby boy, safe and by her side as he healed from fighting a war too young; she had Paul, a wonderful, loving husband that took care of her and Percy; she knew that Sam was alive and doing well, free from whatever hell John must have raised him and Dean in. 

And while she may wish that she knew if Dean was still alive out there, well. She would take what she could get and be happy with what she had, especially after spending so long thinking she would never have it, or be allowed to keep it. 

Yeah, life was finally looking up.  

But then Percy went missing, and Sally’s world fell apart all over again.  

[demons-and-demigods]

Demons and Demigods: Prologue

Okay, so! Here it is, the prologue for DnDV as a fully written, multi-chapter au. It's been done for a while, but I wanted to get a couple more chapters rewritten and expanded before I posted anything, except that's taking me longer than I'd like (sorry) so I decided to go ahead and post this here now! ^-^ I'm gonna hold off putting it on ao3 for a little longer, I think, but it will get it up there eventually. Who knows, maybe I'll change my mind and post it there tomorrow lol

Quick reminders before we get going: I have a potty mouth, so do the characters. And timelines are barely even suggestions to me, I play fast and loose with 'em because I do what I want and idc if it makes sense ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Uhh... Enjoy!

~

Mary Campbell was twenty-three and figured she was well overdue for some good ol’ teenage rebellion. And one John Winchester was perfect for her plans. He was handsome, hard-working, and, most importantly, not a hunter. The fact that her dad hated him? Well, that was just a bonus. 

Mary liked John well enough, but she loved the freedom he could bring her. The only thing she loved more was her little sister, Sally. 

Sally Campbell was a week away from eighteen and figured she was right on time for her big moment of teenage rebellion. She had her sights set on New York City: big, busy, and, most importantly, everything her father hates. The fact that most hunters steered clear of big cities? Well, that was just a bonus. 

She couldn’t wait to finally have the chance to live her own life, away from her father’s rigorous routines and expectations. She and Mary had been planning their escapes for years. 

At first, Mary had tried to convince Sally to come with her and John to Kansas, but as much as Sally loved her sister, she just didn’t want the quiet rural life that Mary was so enamored with. Also at first, Sally had tried to convince Mary to leave without her, that she’d be alright until she turned eighteen and could get out on her own, but Mary refused to risk their dad deciding to tighten his grip on her once Mary left, or the chance that he might cut them off from each other, might take Sally and disappear. 

So, they planned and waited, each carefully gathering what they would need to strike out on their own, until the night Sally turned eighteen. 

~ ~ ~ 

Sally had just enough money to get herself a shitty little apartment in Manhattan. She’d have to find a job before next month’s rent was due, but for the first time, she had a place to call her own. With the little money she had left over and some extra she scrounged up hustling pool in a small bar just down the street, she reached out to an old family contact and got herself a new identity: she was now Sally Jackson, a born and bred New Yorker who’d dropped out of high school to take care of her ailing uncle after her parents died in a plane crash. She ended up working three part-time jobs, running herself ragged to meet rent and feed herself, but she couldn’t be happier with her new life. 

Mary and John got married and bought a little two-story house in Lebanon, Kansas that looked like a suburban wet dream, white picket fence and all. Mary got a job as a waitress at a local diner and John worked as a mechanic when he was home from the Marines. 

Then, a few months into their new-found freedom, Mary called to tell her sister some wonderful news: she was going to have a baby. Sally was beyond happy for her sister and demanded Mary keep her updated so she could visit when the baby was born. 

True to her word, Sally was there to meet her brand-new nephew, little Dean Winchester, in the hospital. She stayed a few days to help Mary with the new baby. Dean was the cutest, sweetest little guy, all gummy smiles and happy baby babble. 

Sally and Mary visited each other every chance they had, Mary always with Dean in tow and usually John nowhere to be seen. Mary always claimed that he was just really busy and couldn’t get the time off work or that he was currently deployed, but Sally knew that wasn’t the truth, not all of it at least. She never pushed, though, if Mary wanted her to know something or needed help, she’d say. 

And she did say, nearly four months after little Sammy was born and Dean, now four years old, had taken to helping care for his little brother like a fish to water. 

The obnoxious ringing of the landline had woken Sally in the middle of the night, drawing her from her nice, cozy bed. Mary was crying when she picked up the phone. 

“Mary?” Sally said, alarmed and suddenly wide awake. “Mary, what’s wrong? What happened?” 

“You have to look after them, Sally,” Mary pleaded. “Please, promise me you’ll look after my boys, you have to promise me.” 

“Of course I’ll look after them, Mare, I promise. I’d do anything for those boys, you know that. You’re scaring me. What’s going on? Are you okay?” Sally said, trying to remember how to breathe around the growing fear. 

“I made a deal, years ago, and it was stupid, I know it was stupid, but I didn’t have a choice, I had to save him, you have to understand, I didn’t have a choice,” Mary sobbed, and told Sally about a deal she’d made with a man with yellow eyes to save John’s life. 

There was a lot of crying that night, and two months later, when Mary died in a supposed house fire. 

~ ~ ~ 

John disappeared with the boys before Sally could get down to Kansas. She tried calling him, but he never answered the phone. She tried tracking him, but he was always one step ahead of her. She couldn’t find him or any sign of either of her nephews, even though the report said only Mary died in the fire. 

Then, nearly a year after Mary’s death, John appeared at the doorstep of Sally’s shitty apartment, Dean and Sam nowhere to be seen. 

“John!” Sally cried, staring up at the worn face of her sister’s husband. She hadn’t seen him in over a year, not since before the fire. 

“Sally.” His voice was gruff and his eyes cold. He was tense, setting Sally’s old hunter instincts on edge. He entered slowly, cautiously, when Sally stepped to the side to let him in, stopping only a few feet inside the door. “Stop tracking me,” he growled. “In fact, it’d be best if you forgot all about me.” 

“What? John, what the fuck are you talking about? Where are Sam and Dean?” Sally crossed her arms and glared right back at him. 

“I’m hunting down the bastard that killed my wife. That fire wasn’t because of some bullshit gas leak, there was something else going on that night. A gas leak wouldn’t have Mary held suspended on the ceiling with her stomach slashed open.” 

Sally’s eyes widened and horror threatened to choke the breath from her lungs. God, she’d known that Mary’s death was because of her deal, but she hadn’t known that she’d died like that. Still, her sister had wanted her to look after her boys and Sally knew the path John was on was a dark one. She had to try and divert him. 

“John, I don’t think—” 

“I KNOW WHAT I FUCKING SAW, SALLY!” John suddenly roared, slamming his fist into the wall. Sally jumped. “I know what I fucking saw, dammit, and what I saw was my wife bleeding and burning on the ceiling in Sammy’s nursery. And if you think that I’m just gonna stand here and let you tell me that I’m crazy, then you’re gonna be sorely disappointed.” 

“Okay, I’m sorry,” Sally tried, holding out her hands placatingly. “Just tell me where the boys are, John. Please. Let me take care of them for you.” 

“Goodbye, Sally. Stop fucking looking.” John turned and stormed out of her apartment, slamming the door as he went. 

Sally ran after him, but he had managed to disappear already. She fell to her knees, and she cried. 

~ ~ ~ 

Despite John telling her not to, Sally tried to keep tabs on him, she really did, but anywhere she managed to track him to, he was already long gone, leaving no trace and no hint that he’d had two little boys with him. She tried to hold on to her hope, but as more and more time passed, Sally couldn’t help but fear that her nephews were dead. She had failed them. 

Sally mourned her nephews deeply, cursed her brother-in-law savagely, and prayed desperately that Mary could forgive her for breaking her promise.  

Eventually, she tried to move on with her life. She met a handsome stranger and fell in love, somehow, even though she knew that he was a god, and she had been taught that all gods are cruel, capricious monsters that needed to be put down, but Poseidon was nothing like that, she learned, nothing like she’d been raised to believe. Then, it wasn’t long before she had a little blessing of her own. 

~ ~ ~ 

Sally used what she knew from growing up a hunter to try and keep Percy safe and far away from the mythological world for as long as she could.  

She married Gabe for his disgustingly human scent, made sure to keep silver, salt, and iron around at all times, kept a go bag ready for both her and Percy so they could run if ever they needed to.  

Percy turned twelve. He was finally, inevitably, dragged into the demigod world and Sally had always known this day was coming but that didn't make the actual moment any easier. She had already lost her sister and her nephews, Sally didn’t think she would be able to survive losing her son, too.  

Then, Percy was thirteen, Gabe was dead, and their lives were getting better. And then one day, Sally got an alert from a search algorithm she had long given up on that a Samuel Winchester had just been enrolled at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California.  

(She wanted to reach out, but she had never told Percy about her sister or nephews, and she had to wonder if Sam even knew she existed. She doubted John would have talked about her and Dean had probably been too young to remember her. She resolved that she wouldn’t contact him, contented herself with just knowing that he was alive after all these years, but she would keep an eye on him and how he was doing.) 

~ ~ ~ 

Percy was sixteen years old and he’d never had the luxury of teenage rebellion. Sally watched as her baby grew and carried the weight of the world on his shoulders. She watched as he fought to hold it together for her, not to show her how heavily the Great Prophecy sat in his mind, but she saw. She knew the prophecy, what it said, what it meant. They had both known that he was going to die, and Sally knew he was afraid, but she also saw that he’d accepted it, saw the strong, capable leader and hero her little boy had become, and she knew that prophecy or not, he would give his life to protect those he cared for and end the war. 

(“Mom, when did you learn how to fire a shotgun?” “About ten seconds ago,” she lied. She felt bad lying to her son, but his life was dangerous enough with just the Greek world to worry about, he didn’t need to worry about everything else that was out there. From what she knew, the Greeks were pretty strict about not mixing pantheons, so she hoped that he would never run into any other kind of monster.) 

Then, miraculously, he’d survived. Percy had survived the Great Prophecy, defeated Kronos, turned down immortality to instead tell the gods to pay their damn child support, and then convinced them to light up the Empire State building blue just so she would know that he was alive. 

Her baby, her brave little Perseus was sixteen and traumatized but healing. And he had her, Annabeth, Grover, Paul, and all his other friends from Camp to help him. 

Later that night, when Percy had returned to Camp to help where he could as they tried to put themselves back together, when Paul had kissed her good night and crashed after the excitement of fighting off monsters he couldn’t properly see, when it was just her, sitting alone at the kitchen table, still wired with adrenaline and the euphoric high of knowing her son was alive and safe, Sally pulled out her computer and checked in on Sam. 

Sam, for his part, was twenty-two and about to graduate from Stanford as Valedictorian with plans to continue into law school. There were pictures of him online, posted to Stanford’s website and their digital yearbook, and Sally drank in the sight of him. He had Mary’s smile and John’s nose and she couldn’t be prouder of him, even if he didn’t even know that she existed. 

Sally had her baby boy, safe and by her side as he healed from fighting a war too young; she had Paul, a wonderful, loving husband that took care of her and Percy; she knew that Sam was alive and doing well, free from whatever hell John must have raised him and Dean in. 

And while she may wish that she knew if Dean was still alive out there, well. She would take what she could get and be happy with what she had, especially after spending so long thinking she would never have it, or be allowed to keep it. 

Yeah, life was finally looking up.  

But then Percy went missing, and Sally’s world fell apart all over again.  

[demons-and-demigods]

I've been seeing a lot about that AI company scraping ao3 for works and I know everyone has been filing DMCA take down claims for their work. The OTW has also filed on ao3 users behalf for the stolen works.

The good news is, that the data set has been temporarily taken down but the "creator" of it has filed a counter claim.

And after getting lost down a comment spital (which you can read here) its clear that the "creator" believes that they have a right to it since our works are based off of copyrighted content.

Their exact words in the thread linked were: "You do realise AO3 is a far more viable target for a DMCA than this dataset, right?"

As someone who knows a fair bit about copyright, this is so ignorant. If they bothered to do 5 minutes of googling then they'd see that when the materials are changed and non-profit then it is NOT a viable target.

To everyone who filed a claim and protected your works, keep it up!! People like this need to be shown that stealing from writers, artists and other creatives WILL NOT BE TAKEN LYING DOWN.

[demons-and-demigods]

AO3 has been scraped, once again.

As of the time of this post, AO3 has been scraped by yet another shady individual looking to make a quick buck off the backs of hardworking hobby writers. This Reddit post here has all the details and the most current information. In short, if your fic URL ends in a number between 1 and 63,200,000 (inclusive), AND is not archive locked, your fic has been scraped and added to this database.

I have been trying to hold off on archive locking my fics for as long as possible, and I've managed to get by unscathed up to now. Unfortunately, my luck has run out and I am archive locking all of my current and future stories. I'm sorry to my lovelies who read and comment without an account; I love you all. But I have to do what is best for me and my work. Thank you for your understanding.

[demons-and-demigods]

Heyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy babes, sorry for dropping off the face of the fucking earth again 😔😔

I am working on another part, I swear, I'm just Struggling™️ with it tbh. But I do miss this au and I was thinking about trying to rewrite some of it and get it actually written rather than all the stream-of-consciousness stuff I've got interspersed in there so I can put it up on ao3.

I'd post the updated/rewritten parts here still, of course, and such, it'd just most likely take a pretty long time (which isn't unusual for me as I'm sure you've noticed, but I still feel bad about it).

Anyway, I just wanted to put this thought out there and ask what yall thought (yes, all ten of you lmao)

[demons-and-demigods]

[demons-and-demigods]

Ghsjsns was finally trying to get more shit down for this au today only I ended up spending like, an hour looking for one specific deep sea creature that I vaguely remembered reading about once forever ago but couldnt remember the name of and then poking around to learn more about it and also some more fucked up fish that live in The Depths because I was fixated now, and by the time I decided to get back to writing I was exhausted and no longer felt up to it 😭

Anyway, Percy 100% makes weird analogies, comparisons, and references with/to sea creatures and just ocean related shit and the more obscure and weird the creature the better.

This all to say, I was gonna try and write more today but got distracted and then exhausted myself because I fixated on Percy needing to compare himself to a stoplight loosejaw but couldn't remember that's what it was called.

[demons-and-demigods]

Demons and Demigods Part Thirteen: Dreams are Weird, and Everybody's Confused

Heyyyyyy sorry for dropping off the face of the earth, whoops. I got distracted by other projects and going on vacation so I haven't done much work on this au in a while. But! I have a short little update here for you! I had originally planned to turn at least some of this into a fully written scene, and I might come back to do that at some point, but for now, have some nonsense that amuses me.

I wanted to do some episode rewrites for the spn boys because I missed them, and decided I'd do it for Ghostfacers and/or Jus in Bello. However, it felt weird to just veer away from the Argo II crew since there's so much going on there, and my brother suggested doing the episode rewrites through the viewpoint of Percy's weird ass demigod dreams so I started whipping up ideas for that because it immediately tickled me thinking about Percy watching the Ghostfacers nonsense go down.

I don't think there's much of anything for Jus in Bello mentioned here, I kinda fixated on Ghostfacers and then another idea I had instead. Anyway, here's some incorrect quotes style things I was thinking about and a bit of stream-of-consciousness writing.

Percy, dreaming on the Argo II: [witnessing Sam and Dean dealing with the Ghostfacers bullshit] The Ghostfacers: you have to go be gay for that poor dead intern/gay love can pierce through the veil of death to save the day Percy, a queer, waking up: what the fuck?  ~ Percy, dreaming: [eavesdropping on Sam and Dean's convos] Sam and Dean: [bickering about Dean only having a few months left] Percy, waking up and immediately Iris Messaging them: hey, the FUCK you mean Dean only has a few months left what the hades are you talking about? Sam and Dean: [high-pitched, startled screaming and flailing that ends up disconnecting the IM] Percy: . . . Rude. 

PERCY PARTY CRASHES ONE OF SAM OR DEAN'S DREAMS JUST LIKE 'oh hey haven't done this in a while' AND SAM/DEAN IS JUST LIKE 'WHY TF IS THIS KID HERE?' Bonus points: it's Dean's dream and it's a ~Trauma~ dream abt John being an abusive shit stain when he was little and Percy is just like oh fuck that actually and intervenes in the dream-memory to kill John (like mother like son) and then he and Dean trauma-bond over abusive 'dads' (Percy: hey next time I'm in the underworld I'll ask Uncle H if he knows where John is. that fucker better be in Hell or the Fields of Punishment and if he's not, he will be. // Dean: 👁️👄👁️ ) 

Dean pov on Percy gate crashing his dream and killing dream-john and them trauma-bonding over abusive ‘dads’ (neither John nor Gabe should be called a dad but for the sake of brevity). Percy pov on him watching the Ghostfacers nonsense through his weird ass dreams and overhearing the ‘Dean, you only have a few months left’ convo and resolving to call/IM the boys when he has the time to do so to demand an explanation for that bullshit and then Sam dropped the bomb that his brother is a dumbass and sold his soul to bring Sam back to life and now Dean only has a few months left before hellhounds are gonna come after him to drag his ass down to Hell and Percy is just like gods damn dude that’s some serious shit why didn’t you ask for our help? Did you ask for help from anyone in the Greek world? 

And Dean is very firmly like no we didn’t and we aren’t going to. Aunt Sally has enough on her plate to worry about without adding my impending doom on top of it and we don’t exactly know anyone else in the Greek world, let alone how to get in contact with them. Also, anyone we do know would no doubt tell Aunt Sally about it and like I said, I’m not laying that on her. (Because he’s dumb.) 

And Percy’s just like, what the fuck man, I mean I get it I always sanitize my quest stories for mom so she doesn’t freak out too much but still. What the fuck dude. And they have that whole heavy conversation where Percy promises to look into things on his end for any way to get Dean outta his deal and if nothing else talk to Uncle H and see if he can’t jailbreak Dean’s soul for him or smth. (Percy does, in fact, later ask Hades, begs him actually, to help Dean, to bring him back, to at least steal him and put him somewhere better than the Christian equivalent of the Fields of Punishment. Hades has to gently tell him I’m sorry but there’s nothing I can do and he is genuinely remorseful that he can’t help out his nephew because he has grown fond of him and he would be more than happy to personally place Dean Winchester’s soul in Elysium if he could but he can’t and so he holds his nephew as he sobs, mourning the loss of another loved one whose life was cut too short and prays that the Fates or the Christian God or whoever is in control of this all will give Percy a fucking break and that someone will free Dean Winchester from Hell.) (Enter Castiel, Gay Ass Angel of the Lord, who will grip Dean tight and raise his fine ass from perdition.) (But I am once again getting ahead of myself. So.) 

Devolved a bit into my Destiel agenda there at the end, but this is my weird ass au and I do what I want lmao

Like I said at the start, I might come back to this at some point and fully write out the Ghostfacers nonsense, but for now, I'm gonna leave it at this and try to focus on figuring out what scene to cover next for the Argo II crew. I'll try not to fuck off into oblivion again but no promises, sorry.

[demons-and-demigods]

Demons and Demigods Part Twelve: Written Scene #7: The Storm

Sorry for the long wait, my darlings, but it is finally here! This part got a little away from me, I will admit. But! I had a lot of fun writing it (even though it took me so long) and I hope that y'all have fun reading it <3 Thank you for being patient with me, and I hope this part makes up for the wait (at least a little)! Now, enjoy 8.7k words of everyone getting a little fucked up 😈

A storm raged around them, violently rocking the boat as the wind and the waves savegely tore at them. Somehow, Jason managed to drag himself above deck to join the rest of his friends (save Hazel, who was busy trying not to hurl her guts out). He swept his gaze across the ship, trying to account for everyone. Leo had lashed himself to the control console with a bungee harness of some kind, Annabeth and Piper were trying to save the rigging, and the gorilla that Jason assumed to be Frank was trying to untangle some broken oars. Even Festus the dragon head was trying to help, spouting flames at the rain, though it did nothing to discourage the storm. 

The only person who seemed to be having any luck at all was Percy. Which, yeah, made sense and all, but it was still mind-boggling and more than a little disconcerting to see Percy standing there in the middle of the deck, completely dry and unbothered by the raging squall while everyone else was barely hanging on. 

It was mesmerizing, almost, to watch Percy. He stood with his eyes closed and arms outstretched to either side, palms up. When a wave crashed into the hull, Percy would tilt his head and another wave would rise up on the opposite side of the boat to level them out. He’d curl his fingers as a large wave bore down on them and an even larger wave would grow to swallow it up and stop it from reaching the deck. He jerked his chin, and the rigging Piper and Annabeth were working on righted itself. He flicked his wrist, and the broken oars gorilla-Frank had been trying to detangle went flying. 

Jason had the sudden realization that if not for Percy, the Argo II would have been capsized or smashed to bits almost immediately. It was not looking good for them.

Jason staggered his way toward the center mast, praying that he wouldn’t get knocked off his feet before he got there. Leo saw him and shouted, probably telling him to get back in bed or something, but it was impossible to hear over the storm. He just waved. 

Thankfully, he managed to reach the mast without being sent overboard by the violent rocking of the ship. Percy opened his eyes and grinned at him as soon as he got close, almost like he had somehow known that Jason was there. It was a little creepy, but Jason couldn’t care less. 

Percy was the only one who didn’t start treating him like fragile glass after his injury. Percy treated him just as he always had, seemingly trusting him to know his own limits, and Jason was beyond thankful for it. It made him feel less like he was on death row. 

Jason smiled back at the son of Poseidon and then made a frantic grab for the mast when the ship gave a sudden, particularly violent lurch. Though, to his surprise, Jason found himself rooted to the spot, unable to move. The ship lurched again but Jason remained right where he was. He tried to take a step only to find it impossible to move his leg. 

His limbs felt leaden, and he realized he couldn’t move at all. It wasn’t just his legs that had locked up, but his arms and head too. Jason panicked. What the fuck was happening to him? 

But then, just as suddenly as it had happened, it was over; the ship rocked again and Jason stumbled forward, no longer frozen in place. He latched onto the center mast, panting as he tried to make sense of what had just happened. 

He glanced at Percy and found the other demigod watching him with concern, though there was something else in his expression that Jason couldn’t quite figure out. (He shrugged that off, though. Ever since he and Annabeth had come back from the Pit, it wasn’t unusual to find Percy with an unreadable expression on his face and some strange emotion swirling behind his far away gaze. It was always disconcerting to see his usually grinning face wear such a tumultuous expression when he thought no one was looking. Jason didn’t know if anyone else had noticed, but he’d been allowed little else to do besides watching his friends. Shit, if Jason hadn’t been injured and practically put on bedrest by his girlfriend and best friend, he doubted that he would have noticed anything going on with Percy either.) 

Jason waved off Percy’s concern with a thumbs up and a shaky grin. Percy seemed to take that to mean that he was fine and started gesturing. 

“—THING . . . UNDER . . . STOP IT!” he shouted, though half his words were lost to the wind as he pointed over the side of the boat. 

Jason cocked an eyebrow at him and gestured vaguely at his ears. I can’t hear you, he mouthed. 

Percy huffed and rolled his eyes. He pointed first to himself then to Jason, and then over the side of the ship again. He mimed diving into the water and pointed at the two of them again. 

Jason tried to convey ‘You want me to go with you? Are you sure?’ and ‘I can’t breathe underwater, dude’ with his expression. 

Percy rolled his eyes again and pointed at the storm clouds roiling above them, then took a running leap and dived overboard. 

Jason looked up to see Piper and Annabeth giving him matching ‘Are you crazy?’ looks, to which he just smiled and shrugged. He turned his attention to the storm and his eyes widened as he sensed angry venti swirling around up there. How the fuck had Percy known they were up there before he did? 

Whatever, that would be a question for another time. Right now, he needed to find a way to follow Percy. 

Jason stretched out his arm and imagined his will as a rope of wind, flinging it into the swirling mob of venti. He sought out the nastiest ventus he could find and snared it with his wind rope, tugging it down to form a cocoon around him as he jumped into the water. 

Immediately, he was surrounded by an eerie silence, his own breathing nearly deafening in comparison. It sent a shiver down his spine, but he forced himself to focus on the task at hand. 

He scanned the water around him through the filter of his personal cyclone. (Which, thankfully, allowed him to breathe. The air smelled strongly of ozone and the ventus was definitely not happy with the arrangement, but at least it was breathable air and Jason was strong enough to force the wind spirit to remain in place.) There was something about the ocean that had always set Jason on edge, more than the Roman’s hatred of it and his father’s rivalry with Neptune. 

It was similar enough to the sky, Jason supposed, in that they both stretched as far as the eye could see. But the sky had nothing to hide. Even full of clouds, nothing could remain obscured in the sky for long. The ocean, however, Jason shuddered. There was so much they didn’t know about it, more than just mythological beings and creatures evaded the notice of everyone who sought to know the oceans. So much was still unknown and unexplored, and the light only reached so little. 

Anything could be lurking in the depths of the oceans. Anything could be waiting just out of sight, hidden by the cloying darkness of deeper waters. 

In the sky, Jason felt secure, always aware of everything around him, cocooned in a blanket of wind and air. But underwater, Jason felt horribly exposed. His senses couldn’t expand into the area around him like they could in the sky, and he couldn’t sense let alone see all of his blind spots at all times. He was just out in the open, unprotected and unprepared; he would have no clue if something snuck up behind him, no time to react if something came hurtling out of the dark to attack him. 

Thalassophobia, Jason thought he’d heard it called before: the fear of large bodies of open water; although ‘fear’ didn’t feel like the right word, didn’t quite cover the absolute terror that gnawed on his bones. 

And here, floating in the middle of nowhere in the open ocean in his little personal tornado of lassoed air, a violent storm raging on the surface above him and who knows what waiting who knows how far below him. 

With nothing but dark, gloomy water surrounding him, Jason was terrified. 

But then, he spotted Percy. 

The son of Poseidon hung suspended in the dark water, illuminated only by the soft bronze glow of his sword. His long, inky black hair seemed to leach the light out of the water surrounding him as it floated around his head like a dark halo, dancing in some imperceptible current. His outline flickered, his form broken in places and replaced by dark, writhing masses of tentacles and stark, bony protrusions. He looked both unimaginably large, as ancient as the oceans themselves and just as monstrous, and like his skin was stretched too thin over bones that were too long with edges too sharp to be wholly human. He was dark and all-encompassing, filling the water with an inescapable presence, yet he was also pale and haunting, skin near translucent as it gave off an eerie glow. 

His body was threatening to rip apart at the seams, unable to contain the esoteric power lurking just beneath the surface. An arcane aura leaked from his ruptured mortal form, permeating the ocean around him and filling Jason’s mind with static. 

The eldritch creature playing at mortality turned its head to look at him and Jason realized that he had never felt true terror until that moment. Its face was that of nightmares; it had no lips, just thin, bloody ribbons of flesh stretched too far across a dark, gaping maw filled with rows and rows of razor-sharp serrated teeth. Its eyes were unsettlingly vivid, as though the saturation of the creature’s eyes had been dialed up to eleven, swirling blue-green voids that lacked sclera and pupils. Within those effervescent eyes, Jason swore he could see all the world’s oceans at once; raging storms and roaring waves, plunging trenches and abyssal depths dark enough to drive one mad. 

Its very presence emanated a dissonant, distorted screeching that Jason could feel vibrating through his bones, filling the surrounding water with static. Jason thought his eardrums might burst with the intensity of the high-pitched ringing and feared his insides might liquify from the infra- and ultrasonic frequencies he could feel quivering through his flesh and bones. 

Jason felt his mind begin to fracture as he stared at the being before him, pressure built behind his eyes and limbs seemed to have turned to jelly. He knew he needed to look away before his mortal body exploded or something, but he was powerless to make himself move, trapped in the vortex of its aura. He felt drawn to the creature, unable to bring himself to avert his gaze. He had no control over his body, locked in place by the deity’s whirlpool eyes. 

A scream built in his throat, but he had no breath with which to voice it. He teetered on the brink of madness, but he had nothing to grasp at to pull himself away from the edge. Something in the back of his mind screamed at him, but he couldn’t hear it over the static filling his head. He wanted to claw at his ears until it stopped and left him in blissful silence, he wanted to scratch out his eyes to relieve the pressure that had made a home behind them, he wanted to tear himself open to assure himself that the pounding in his chest was that of his still-beating heart and not some vestigial part of the monster looming before him. He needed to fill the yawning, cavernous void that had taken up residence in the place where his lungs should have been. 

His blood moved sluggishly through his veins where they burned beneath his skin. He was coming apart, his atoms threatening to fly apart, on the verge of disintegrating. He was nothing more than a tiny pest to this primordial of the seas, barely worth the effort it took this eldritch horror to kill him. His being was infinitesimal in comparison to this primeval monster, little more than a speck of dust floating through its waters. This was all the waters of the earth given form, and it was enraged at their treatment. And in that moment, he knew. 

He was going to die. 

Then, everything snapped back into place and Jason gasped. 

Air, sweet, ozone-scented air, filled his lungs and Jason could have cried. He clutched his chest and heaved frantic breaths into his aching lungs. He looked up and saw Percy hovering in front of him with a worried expression on his now normal-looking face. Jason’s heart pounded in his chest as he searched Percy’s face for any trace of the Lovecraftian nightmare that had been clawing its way out of his skin just moments before. 

“Jason, hey, are you alright, dude? You with me?” Percy said, though Jason had no idea how he could hear him so clearly under the water. He nodded slowly and ignored Percy’s puzzled look. 

“Yeah, yeah, I’m good, man. Sorry, just not a fan of the open ocean I guess,” Jason said and tried to laugh it off. 

Percy’s eyes narrowed, his gaze intense and searching, boring into Jason’s soul as though he could pluck the truth from Jason’s psyche if he stared long enough. Thankfully, though, before Jason could buckle under the strength of Percy’s gaze, a beam of bright green light split the darkness in front of them like a spotlight before it disappeared, coming from the depths of the chasm Percy had been hovering over the edge of. 

Percy snapped his head around to stare over his shoulder with narrowed eyes. “I was waiting for you before going to check it out, but I’d bet that whatever is causing this storm, is also the source of that light,” he said, glancing back at Jason. “Come on, let’s go.” 

As they sank deeper and deeper into the chasm and fell further and further away from the sun, Jason couldn’t shake the horrifying vision from his mind or the sense of unease in his stomach. It grew darker and darker until the only light came from Percy’s sword. 

Though, if Jason looked too long at his friend, he could swear that Percy began to glow too; an eerie, pale blue light seemed to emanate from strange markings on his skin, as though he was bioluminescent or something. A handful of his scars shed golden light into the water as his eyes illuminated the way ahead of them like headlights. It was fucking creepy, Jason thought, if kinda fascinating. (He wondered if Percy knew that he glowed, if Annabeth knew. He wondered if Percy only became bioluminescent underwater, or if he would light up in a dark room, too. Despite his curiosity, though, Jason couldn’t bring himself to say anything to the other demigod, the image of the savage creature tenuously caged beneath his skin still too fresh on Jason’s mind.) 

Eventually, the water began to lighten around them, and Jason saw the glowing ruins of a palace or something appear out of the dark haze before them. As they drifted toward the remains of a partially collapsed dome, Jason stared around the ruins with wide-eyed amazement. 

“What do you think this place was?” Jason asked reverently, yearning to reach out and run his fingers along the crumbling structures but unwilling to risk breaching his ventus cocoon just yet to do so. “Atlantis?” 

Percy snorted and waved a hand dismissively. “Nah, Atlantis is just a myth.” 

Jason squinted at his friend. “Uh, don’t we literally deal with myths like, everyday? Aren’t we technically a myth ourselves?” 

Percy rolled his eyes and stuck out his tongue. “You know what I mean, dude. Atlantis is a made-up myth, not, like, an actually true myth. Plus, Plato never intended anyone to believe in Atlantis, it was only ever meant to be a parable, to serve as an allegory to the hubris of nations and a cautionary tale warning against its dangers.” He shrugged. “All that flew over a lot of people’s heads though, and the original purpose of the Lost City of Atlantis was overshadowed by a bunch of idiots and their desire to find a place that was never real.” 

Jason gave Percy an incredulous, wide-eyed stare. 

“What?” Percy asked, defensive. “My mom is a published author, my stepdad is an English Lit teacher, and I’m dating Annabeth who loves ancient Greek philosophers and playwrights. I pick up a thing a two.” 

Jason often forgot that Percy was a lot smarter than most people gave him credit for, and he was pretty sure that was something Percy did on purpose. It was something he’d noticed about the son of Poseidon before, but he played the part of ‘dorky fool’ so well that it was nearly impossible not to fall for the act. Though he was never sure if it was an act that Percy himself actually believed or not. 

But rather than bring that up right then, Jason just shrugged and held his hands up in surrender. “Fair enough, Jackson,” he laughed. “But if not Atlantis, then what was it?” 

“I don’t know,” Percy said, face scrunched up in concentration. “But it feels familiar, like I’ve been here before or something . . .” he trailed off, leaning in to study some markings carved into the domed roof in front of them. 

“Maybe you have,” Jason said playfully. “Maybe you saw it in one of your weird-ass dreams; I’ve been told that they’re a lot more intense and prophetic than the average demigod’s.” 

“Oh, shut up, Grace,” Percy snarked back. “My dreams suck ass, but they’re not anything special. Besides, I always remember my dreams. This is something else.” He reached up to ghost his fingers over one of the markings. 

Then, that brilliant green spotlight flashed directly beneath them, blinding Jason for a moment. 

He dropped like a stone until his feet hit what felt like solid marble. When he finally managed to blink the spots from his eyes, he realized that they’d found the source of the storm. 

An ethereal woman in a flowing green dress cinched at her waist with a belt of abalone shells hovered before them. She had to have been close to twenty feet tall, though she shrank to something closer to ten at their startled entrance. Her skin was a soft, luminous white, mirroring the fields of algae covering the underwater ruins. Her hair fell across her shoulders in gossamer strands reminiscent of jellyfish tentacles, some swaying as though caught in a gentle current. Her face was as haunting as it was beautiful; her eyes too bright, her features too delicate, and her smile too cold, as though she’d studied human behavior but hadn’t quite managed to master replicating it. 

Before her stood a tall, marble pedestal, atop which rested a large, mirrored disk. Her long, slender fingers danced along its edge before she sent it spinning, and the green light cut through the water again. The water churned, shaking the palace ruins. Shards of stone from the domed ceiling broke off and slowly sank down to settle on the marble floor. 

“You’re causing the storm,” Jason said, careful to keep the accusation from his voice. 

The woman laughed, a sharp, violent sound like the crashing of waves. “That I am,” she said. Her voice was melodious, though it had a strange resonance, one that reminded him of the horrible ringing sound the creature clawing its way free of Percy’s form had emanated, like it extended beyond the range humans had the ability to process. That same, static pressure built up behind Jason’s eyes and his sinuses threatened to explode. 

Percy, both thankfully and annoyingly, appeared unaffected. He just tilted his head and squinted at her. “I’ll bite,” he said, and Jason saw a flash of that dark, gaping maw full of razor-sharp fangs. “Who are you and what the fuck do you want?” 

A manic glee sparked in the woman’s eyes and her smile sharpened, sending an involuntary shiver down Jason’s spine. “Why, I am your sister, Percy Jackson. And I wanted the chance to meet you before you die.” 

Percy tilted his head and squinted at the goddess. Jason tried to resist the urge to reach up and massage his sinuses which still felt like they were about to explode. 

Percy hummed and crossed his arms. “Y’know, I’m not super well-versed in mythology involving Dad, so I’m not sure who all my godly siblings are, but . . .” he gave the goddess a long, considering look before he nodded. “I’m gonna take a wild guess here and say you’re Kymopoleia, goddess of violent sea storms if I remember correctly?” 

The goddess’s eyes widened slightly in shock. “Most have never heard of me, little brother. I am surprised, yet none-the-less pleased that you do know me.” 

Percy shrugged. “At some point after I accidentally blew up Mount St. Helens—” 

Jason choked on air and started coughing. “After you what?” he asked incredulously, but Percy and Kymopoleia ignored him and continued on as though he hadn’t said anything. 

“—I’m pretty sure I heard Dad mutter something under his breath like, ‘I pray you never meet Kymopoleia,’ and I got curious, so I looked into the name.” He shrugged again. “Oh, and I’m just gonna call you Kym. Kymopoleia is a bit of a struggle and also it takes too long.” 

Jason watched the interaction carefully. Percy spoke so casually to the goddess it kind of freaked Jason out. But he’d heard enough stories to know that it was common practice for the son of Poseidon to be so irreverent. 

For her part, Kym appeared amused rather than angry at least. 

“I’ll consider it an honor to get a Perseus Jackson nickname before you die,” she said with another spin of her disk. 

“I don’t suppose catching our ship in your massive storm was an accident, was it?” Percy asked with a resigned sigh. 

“No, no it was not,” she said. 

“And there’s no chance that you’ll cut it out if we ask nicely?” 

“Not a one. Though I am rather impressed that your ship has held together this long; excellent workmanship.” 

Sparks flew along Jason’s arms and into his ventus tornado. He thought about Piper and Leo, Annabeth and Frank and Hazel up there frantically fighting to survive the storm. He and Percy had left them defenseless up there. They had to end this and they had to end it soon. 

“My Lady,” Jason broke in before Percy could say anything to potentially aggravate the goddess, “Is there anything we can do to get you to change your mind and let us get on our way?” 

Kym turned her faintly glowing eyes to him and tilted her head. “Son of Jupiter,” she said dryly. “Do you know where we are? What this place once was?” 

“Uh,” he said, glancing at the crumbling structure around them. “These ruins? Uh, maybe it was a palace at some point?” 

Percy snapped his fingers. “That’s it!” he exclaimed. “Dad’s new place in the Atlantic looks pretty similar to this. Last I was over there, it was almost done.” 

Jason gave Percy an incredulous look. He’d actually been to his father’s domain? To his palace? What the fuck was with this guy and the gods? 

Kym made a frustrated noise and crossed her arms. “I wouldn’t know,” she huffed. “I’m not allowed in our father’s court. He finds my presence disruptive,” she hissed, and gave her storm-disk a harsh spin. 

“I can’t imagine why.” Jason gave her a skeptical look as the ruins shook and more pieces fell slowly through the water around them. 

“I know!” she threw her hands up in exasperation. “I am an absolute delight to be around! I’m certainly better company than my total bore of a brother Triton,” she pouted and crossed her arms again. 

“Ugh, definitely!” Percy agreed. “I’ve met Triton and honestly, he’s such a pain in the ass!” 

Kym smiled. “Finally!” she said. “Someone who sees sense! He is such a πομπώδης μαλάκας!” 

Whatever that last thing meant, Jason had no idea as the Ancient Greek didn’t come to him, but he could only assume it was some kind of insult because Percy laughed. 

“Exactly! He never shuts up! He’s all ‘I am Father’s heir’ and ‘Father only likes you because you’re useful’ and it’s just like, ‘look, you absolute douche-nozzle, you’re both immortal! You’re not gonna inherit shit, ass-wipe,’ I mean, honestly!” Percy said, presumably mimicking Triton with comically furrowed brows and a fierce scowl, his chest puffed up and chin raised to look down his nose at an imaginary person. 

Kym burst into giggles (which reminded Jason of the clicks and whistles of dolphins). “Oh my—He sounds just like that!” she said, doubling over and clutching her stomach as she laughed. “Oh, that is just perfect,” she snickered. “I can see why Father hoped we might never meet, Perseus. You and I would have gotten along splendidly.” 

“Just Percy, please,” Percy said with a playful bow. “Only my enemies call me Perseus and I’d really prefer if I didn’t have to fight you.” 

Kym let out a dramatic sigh. “I don’t want to fight you either, little brother,” she said. “Unfortunately, Gaea really wants your blood, and she’s made me a wonderful offer that I just couldn’t refuse.” she shrugged and flashed a shark-like smile. “Gaea will allow me to wreak whatever havoc I please once she has risen so long as I help her and her children destroy the gods.” 

Jason tensed as the water around them seemed to shudder, he saw Percy do the same. He pulled his gold coin from his pocket and flipped it to summon his sword. 

“Now, I believe there’s someone here who is just dying to see you again, Percy. I do hope you can forgive me.” Kym gave them a faux-apologetic look. 

“PERSEUS JACKSON!” a thunderous voice boomed, sending ripples through the water and making the ruins tremble. 

Percy’s face twisted into a dark, angry scowl. 

“Do you know who that is?” Jason asked, tightening his grip on his sword. 

“Polybotes,” Percy snarled. “The anti-Poseidon. I’ve already killed him once; I guess he really wants a rematch.” 

Just then, the Giant rounded a corner ahead of them and Jason barely stopped a disgusted noise from escaping him. He’d thought the other Giants he’d met had been ugly, but Polybotes might just take the cake. 

Even underwater, the guy managed to look greasy and oily, like he had never heard of a shower before. He was absolutely massive, towering close to thirty feet or more in height if Jason had to guess. Like all Giants, he had scaled reptilian legs. His hair hung like shriveled up seaweed around his face. His skin was a murky blue, like the color of poluted water. His eyes were sharp and cruel as a hungry smirk spread across his harsh, mottled face. When he shook his head, basilisks fell from his hair and began circling in the water, hissing and letting out little bursts of flame. 

“I hunted you through Tartarus, son of Poseidon, and you managed to escape me then, but there will be no escape for you now!” Polybotes laughed cruelly. 

Percy snorted and raised his sword. “I killed you before with only a river to lend me strength; what makes you think you stand a chance against me here in mY dOmAIn?” Percy snarled, lips curled up in an equally cruel grin. His voice reverberated through the water the same way that eerie ringing that emanated from that creature hiding beneath his skin had. It shuddered through Jason’s bones and the pressure that had finally begun to fade from his sinuses returned with a vengeance. 

Polybotes barked out a laugh. “HA! Whether you are stronger here or not, little demigod, you cannot kill me without the aid of a god. And there are no gods here willing to aid you, sea scum.” 

Percy’s grin turned sharp and deadly as his form seemed to ripple, the monstrous horror lurking within his flesh straining at the seams to get free. “WHaT maKeS YOu tHiNk I NEeD a gOd?” 

He lunged. 

A few of the basilisks hurled themselves at him, but Percy turned them to dust with one sweep of his sword. Polybotes swung his trident through the water and left an arc of some thick, oily looking substance in its wake. 

Percy barreled right through it without slowing down and the smug look on the Giant’s face turned to shock then indignance before settling on rage. 

“I will torture you under the sea! Each day the water will heal you, and each day you will suffer worse than the last! I will bring you to the brink of death and beyond the edge of mortal agony until you beg for me to kill you, until I have reduced you to nothing more than a quivering mass of flesh desperate to die.” Polybotes snarled. “But you will only know the relief of death when your blood is drained from your wretched body to awaken the Earth Mother. You will die with the knowledge that your last act has brought about the violent end of everyone you love.” 

By then, Percy was on top of the Giant, fighting like a man possessed. He growled low in his throat and swung his sword in a vicious arc, leaving a deep gash on the Giant’s leg when he was too slow to block the attack. 

Polybotes howled and swung his trident. It slammed into Percy’s chest and sent him hurtling through the water to crash through a wall. He recovered quickly enough and shot towards the Giant, spearing through the water faster than Jason could track. Sword met trident and when their weapons clashed it sent a shockwave through the water. 

Jason gripped his own sword tightly and prepared to jump into the fight to help his friend, but before he could do so, the remaining basilisks zeroed in on him. The poisonous, fire-breathing snakes circled around him, hissing and snapping at him. Anytime one of them got too close, Jason managed to cut off its head. But the serpents grew bolder, swimming closer and closer to him. They stopped attacking one at a time and tried to rush him. 

Jason closed his eyes, sent up a prayer that he wouldn’t fry Percy, himself, or Kym, and lifted his sword toward the sky. He called down brilliant arcs of lightning and let out a breath of relief as they struck the dozen basilisks swarming around him. The snakes went belly up in the water before crumbling to dust. 

Percy and Polybotes continued their death match. Percy seemed to be doing just fine, ruthlessly attacking the Giant, slicing and stabbing relentlessly; but Jason could see the smoke curling off his skin as it blistered and sizzled. Whatever substance had spread from the Giant’s trident, some sort of poison or acid if Jason had to guess, was affecting his friend. And despite Percy’s, frankly unnerving, claim, Jason knew he’d need a god to kill Polybotes and there was only one available to them at the moment. 

Jason turned to Kymopoleia. She was watching Percy and Polybotes fight with a fascinated look on her face, totally enraptured by the carnage her half-brother gleefully unleashed on Poseidon’s Bane. 

“Kym,” he said, “What if I make you a better offer than Gaea did?” 

The goddess hardly acknowledged him, merely letting out a noncommittal hum. 

“She promised that you could cause raging storms to your heart’s content, but Gaea and the Giants are going to kill every mortal and demigod, wipe them off the face of the earth. What good is it to finally be able to ravage coastlines and annihilate shorelines when there’s no one left to cower and tremble in fear of you?” he cajoled her. 

“I do like cowering,” she said absently, not tearing her eyes from where Percy had dropped his sword and begun to cave the Giant’s face in with his fists. Jason winced at the sharp, resounding crack of Percy breaking Polybotes’ nose. 

“Yes! If Gaea and the Giants win, no one will be left for you to terrorize! If you help us, I-I'll make sure you are worshiped! I’ll build you a temple at each camp and-and I’ll do the same for all the gods and goddesses pushed aside by the Olympians,” he said frantically, watching Polybotes slam Percy to the ground with one massive hand wrapped around his torso, no doubt crushing his ribs. He winced when Percy let out a strangled cry of pain and turned desperately back to Kymopoleia to try and gauge her emotions on his offer. 

“Polybotes, does Gaea have a counteroffer?” she called to the Giant, face impassive. 

Polybotes turned his head to give her an incredulous look. “Counteroffer?” he sputtered indignantly. “Mother Earth does not need to make a counteroffer to the inane ramblings of a puny half-blood! She is offering you unfettered control of the seas! You will be allowed to let your storms rage to your heart’s content!” he said, affronted. 

“Yes, but will there be demigods or mortals or really anyone left to cower in the face of my storms or worship me in hopes of appeasing my wrath? Will I get my own action figure?” Kym said evenly, raising an eyebrow and looking down to inspect her nails which Jason only just noticed were colored a pale, florescent pink. 

“Well, no, bu—” Polybotes started, only to cut himself off with a cry of pain when Percy managed to free himself from the Giant’s grip by maneuvering his pen out of his pocket and uncapping it so that the blade of his sword sprung out and impaled itself right through Polybotes’ palm. The Giant snatched his hand back to cradle against his chest and Percy lunged after him with a feral snarl. 

Percy moved so quickly, Jason was barely able to piece together what happened. The son of Poseidon reached out and it was like the water solidified into an extension of his will, yanking his sword from Polybotes’ hand and meeting it halfway. He wrapped his hand around the hilt and shot straight for the Giant’s face. He plunged the bronze blade down and buried it to the hilt in one of Polybotes’ acid green eyes. 

The Giant howled in pain and Percy yanked his sword free, quickly backing away as Polybotes reached up to clap his hands over his bleeding eye. 

“You will pay for that, half-blood sum!” he roared. 

Golden ichor wept from his numerous wounds, seeping steadily between his fingers from his damaged eye and the hole in his palm. It saturated the water, hovering in shimmering globules. The Giant stared Percy down with his one good eye, pure hatred simmering behind his gaze. 

“Please,” Jason pleaded with Kym. “Only a god and a demigod working together can kill a Giant. Please, help Percy finish him off before it’s too late!” 

Kymopoleia merely shook her head, lips spreading in a feral grin as that spark of manic glee glinted in her eyes again. She cackled, a sound like cracking stone being split apart by an enormous earthquake, and it sent a shiver down Jason’s spine. 

“I do believe my little brother would beg to differ, Jason Grace,” she said, tone carrying a hint of that unhinged, feral excitement he could see spread across her features. 

Jason whipped his head around to stare in horrified fascination as all the ichor in the water began to flow in one direction, condensing into one quivering golden orb. Ichor seemed to flow from Polybotes’ wounds faster than it should have, like it was being pulled from his veins in thick rivers of divine blood, drawn towards the glittering ball. Polybotes sank through the water, hitting the sandy floor with a dull thud as his knees gave out on him. His hands fell from his face, as though he no longer had the strength to hold them there. Jason could see as the color leeched from him, seeping away with the ichor as it fled his body. Polybotes seemed unable to move, frozen in place where he knelt. 

The temperature of the water dropped several degrees and Jason shivered. 

“Wh-what is this?” Polybotes bellowed, feigning outrage, but the undercurrent of fear in his voice gave away how scared he truly was. He stared at Percy, one good eye wide and afraid. 

Jason turned to his friend. At first, he thought it was just a reflection of all the ichor in the water. But then, Jason came to the terrifying realization; it wasn’t a mere reflection. Percy’s eyes glowed a vivid gold, the same color as the ichor he was draining from the Giant’s veins. 

His face was dark, his features standing out sharp and cruel as he appeared to loom over Polybotes. That monstrous, ancient nightmare slipped through the seams of Percy’s flesh, leeching away all light until all that was left was the eerie glow of Percy’s golden eyes. 

His teeth flashed in the dark, long and curved, reminding Jason of the Cheshire cat’s grin. Jason swore that he could see things moving in the dark; massive, undulating limbs and sharp, ghoulish protrusions. Bones that snapped and cracked as they moved, gnashing teeth and glowing eyes where they didn’t belong. 

“YOu sAy tHat yOu FOLlowEd mE THrouGh tARtArUs, aNd yEt YoU HAvE nO iDeA WHaT i lEaRNeD tO DO dOwN THerE, whAT I wAS fORcED tO PIcK uP IN oRdER tO sUrvIVe?” Percy barked out a cruel laugh as his voice seemed to be coming from everywhere at once, sending tremors through the ocean floor. It was so deep, Jason could feel it vibrating through his bones and hollowing out his chest. Yet it was also so high, it sent his ears ringing and made his head feel like it was about to explode. 

Jason recalled the time he had been too slow to close his eyes and had, for just a moment, witnessed Juno’s true form. That had felt like he was on fire, like his skin was about to slough off his bones as his eyes melted out of his skull. It had felt like his cells were imploding and withering away into ash. 

But this— 

This felt like drowning on dry land; it was like he was being ripped apart from the inside out, his lungs had disappeared and the hollowness that had forced itself into the space where his heart should have beat was slowly filling with water. His mind was being pulled into a black hole, fraying at the edges and threatening to tear apart at the center. His eyes were being pushed from their sockets to make room for steadily mounting pressure building in his skull. He could feel water bubbling up his throat, choking him, forcing its way out between his lips and flooding into every empty space it could find. Water began to leak from his nose where it had filled his sinuses, began to stream from his empty eye sockets and gush from his busted eardrums. His mouth fell open in a silent scream, his voice lost to the torrent of water that eroded blood and bone until all that remained was a flimsy shell of decayed and rotting flesh. 

He swore he could hear a roaring, but that made no sense as he had to have gone deaf with the water pouring from his ears. Pressure built and built and built past the point of unbearable. 

There was a primal, agonized roar followed by an ear-splitting pop. And then: blissful silence. 

Calm swept over him like a warm breeze, and he felt like he was being wrapped in a silky blanket. He sighed and let himself sag into the gentle hands wrapping the blanket around him. He soaked in the quiet, peaceful moment languidly. After a moment, he slowly opened his eyes and immediately flailed around. 

Jason let out a rather undignified squawk and scrambled to pull away from Kymopoleia, who was looking down at him with an amused expression. The silky blanket he thought he’d been wrapped in was actually a gauzy, membranous shawl the goddess had pulled from her own shoulders and the gentle hands had been hers as well. He noticed with a start that his ventus shield had disappeared and slapped a hand over his mouth and nose as he instinctively gasped. 

Only when he heard Kym chuckle did he finally realize that he was, in fact, breathing and not drowning due to a bubble of air surrounding his head and neck like a diving helmet. 

He glanced to the side and saw Percy watching him with a worried frown, wringing his hands together. Jason returned his wide-eyed stare to the goddess and continued to gape for a moment. 

Eventually, Jason shook his head in an attempt to clear it and gulped, biting his lip as his gaze flit between Percy and Kym, both watching him quietly, one with concern and the other with bemusement. 

“Uh,” he said eloquently. “What, um, what happened?” 

Percy ducked his head and rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly, but before he could say anything, Kym spoke up. 

“Nothing you need to worry about, Pontifex. Polybotes is dead. And I have decided to accept your offer.” Kym looked down at him smugly and for a moment, Jason was confused. 

Offer? What offer? And—had she called him Pontifex? What was that abou— 

Oh. Right. He had offered to build shrines to all the minor deities and make sure they were all worshiped. (And—was he remembering right?—I also promised Kym an action figure, I think? What the fuck, Jason thought.) 

“Oh, uh, awesome. Thank you,” he said somewhat falteringly. 

“I expect a truly magnificent action figure, Jason Grace,” she said. “One of those articulated ones and it had better reflect my stunning beauty. I’d be happy to visit and model for reference.” Kym’s smile didn’t quite reach her eyes and Jason fought the urge to fidget. 

“O-of course,” he stuttered, and honestly, what the hell are you supposed to say to that? Cut him some slack, it’s a weird ass situation he has found himself in. 

“Wonderful,” Kym said, and turned to Percy, making Jason look at his friend too. 

Percy was wringing his hands nervously and biting his lip, gaze flitting around like he couldn’t bring himself to look at them. Jason frowned. He was about to ask Percy what was wrong when Kym spoke up again. 

“It was wonderful to meet you, little brother. I look forward to getting to know you better if you survive this war. I believe we could have much fun together.” She reached out and ruffled Percy’s hair with a laugh when he swatted her hand away. 

Percy gave Kym a small smile in return but still didn’t quite meet her eyes. He turned to Jason, expression tensing a little. 

“We should probably get back,” he said, gesturing vaguely upward. “Now that the storm’s stopped, before everyone starts worrying about us too much. If we’re not back soon, Annabeth will probably jump overboard to come looking for me.” he shrugged. He was still avoiding Jason’s gaze, and it looked like his skin was still smoking in places. 

Before Jason could say anything about that, Percy said, “Come on,” and shot toward the surface. 

He turned his startled gaze to Kymopoleia, wanting to ask her for more answers. She must have seen it in his eyes because she gave him a melancholic smile. 

“Percy is far more powerful than he likes to let on, Pontifex,” she said, reaching out to place a hand on his shoulder. “He has more power than a demigod should, and I believe that he is finding it harder and harder to control. Both he and Polybotes mentioned him having walked through Tartarus. I imagine something happened down there to push him over the edge.” She glanced upward, tracking Percy’s receding form through the water for a moment before continuing. “My brother is an impossibly good person, Jason Grace.” she fixed him with an eerie, unwavering stare, her overly bright eyes flashing. “But there is something damaged in him, something that broke down in that Pit. He has crossed a line that he cannot come back from even if he wanted to. I’ve heard that his fatal flaw is loyalty, so you have no need to fear him, nor do any of your friends. But remain wary, son of Jupiter, else you get caught in the crossfire of his rage.” 

With that final, ominous warning, Kymopoleia disappeared in a whirl of bubbles and froth, leaving Jason to slowly begin the long swim back to the surface. When he finally reached the opening of the trench, he found Percy waiting for him, floating peacefully in the water. 

Jason swam up beside him and waited quietly for what Percy would say. 

After a moment, Percy twisted his head to face him. “Sorry for leaving you behind like that,” he said. “I forgot you didn’t have your personal tornado to help you keep up,” he joked half-heartedly and gave Jason a weak smile. 

“It’s alright,” Jason said, smiling back. “I wanted to say goodbye to Kym first, and you seemed like you really needed to get out of there.” 

Percy sighed. “Yeah, I did.” he crossed his arms and hunched his shoulders, drawing in on himself slightly. “Speaking of Kym, what’s the deal with the action figure she mentioned? And why did she call you a car?” 

Jason snorted. “Not Pontiac, Pontifex. The Romans used to have someone called the Pontifex Maximus, a high priest who took care of the gods’ temples, made sure they were all recognized and worshiped, given proper offerings and things like that. While you were fighting Polybotes I made Kym an offer, to try and convince her to stop the storm and help you kill him. I promised to make sure temples were built for all the gods deemed ‘less important’ than the Olympians. The action figure idea just kinda happened? I don’t really know where it came from. I was kinda frantic, just saying whatever came to mind that I thought might sway her.” he shrugged. “You were holding your own just fine, but you looked to be in rough shape, too. Whatever that stuff Polybotes created that you swam through was, your skin was sizzling. You’re still smoking a little, too, by the way.” 

Percy glanced down at his arms, tilting his head at the new, quickly forming burn-like scars there. “Yeah, it was some kind of acid, I think. It hurt like a bitch, and definitely didn’t help my lungs any.” he shrugged and uncrossed his arms. “But I’ll be fine. The water’s already taken care of the worst of it; a little nectar or ambrosia and I’ll be all healed with a few more scars to add to the collection.” 

Percy rolled his shoulders and straightened, glancing up where Jason could see the shadow of the Argo II floating in the water above them. “Now come on,” Percy said. “I think Piper and Annabeth are getting ready to jump overboard.” 

Jason laughed, letting the topic change slide. If Percy didn’t want to talk about what had really happened with Polybotes, Jason wouldn’t force it. He just hoped Percy knew that he could come to him. Their fathers may have a rivalry to end all rivalries, but he didn’t want that for him and Percy. 

This time, as they rose through the water, Percy propelled Jason up alongside him. As soon as their heads broke the surface, Jason saw Annabeth getting ready to swing herself over the railing and drop into the water with Piper barely half a step behind her. 

“Percy!” Annabeth called when she spotted them, proceeding to dive off the ship. Jason raised his arms to shield his face as she hit the water with a truly impressive splash. Percy just laughed and swept her into his arms, lifting her half out of the water and spinning around. Annabeth laughed in delight as Percy threw himself backwards and they sank just under the surface. 

Jason wasn’t worried, though, having learned about Percy’s little air bubble trick, and instead began to paddle his way towards the rope ladder Piper had tossed over the side of the ship. 

When he finally swung up and over the railing, planting his feet on the blessedly solid deck of the Argo II, Piper threw herself at him, muttering angrily in Tsalagi, no doubt cursing at him for acting like an idiot. Jason just smiled and hugged her close, pressing his lips to her dark hair when she buried her face in his chest. 

After a moment, she pulled away and wiped angrily at the tears in her eyes, glaring at him. 

“What is wrong with you?” she cried, smacking his shoulder. “You can’t do that to me! You can’t just-just jump overboard in the middle of a massive storm like that! Especially not when you’re severely injured—!” she gestured at his stomach, frustration and fear coloring her tone. 

“I didn’t mean to scare you, Pipes,” he said, interrupting her gently. “But Percy needed my help, and I’m fine, I promise. No further harm done. See?” He lifted his shirt, stepped back, and spun around, letting her look him over for any sign of hurt. Honestly, he felt fine; great even! Hell, he felt better than he had since Michael Varus had run him through. 

When he finished his little one-eighty, he noticed Piper staring at his stomach with wide eyes. “What is it? What’s wrong?” he asked, glancing down to try and figure out what she was seeing. 

His bandages had come loose in the water, sagging a little to reveal the upper edge of his wound, only . . . only there was nothing but smooth, tan skin where there should have been torn and reddened flesh. His mouth dropped open and he carefully tugged the bandages away, letting them fall to the deck of the ship after the soggy material tore. 

Both he and Piper stared in wide-eyed shock at his unblemished abdomen for a moment. Piper reached out to ghost her fingers along the spot where the wound had been, her feather-light touch sending a shiver down Jason’s spine. 

“You’re healed,” she whispered, voice filled with awe. “How are you—what happened down there?” she asked, laying her hand flat against his stomach for a moment before looking up at him with those dark, earnest eyes he loved to get lost in. 

“A lot,” he said. “Though I don’t remember much of what happened towards the end.” 

Piper nodded slowly and grabbed his hand, starting to pull him across the deck towards the stairs. 

“Fill me in once we’re downstairs,” she said over her shoulder. “I’m getting you to eat something.” 

Jason laughed brightly and allowed his girlfriend to tug him towards the galley, more than happy to let her fuss over him. 

He tried to ignore the sinking feeling in his gut that hadn’t left him since he came to wrapped in Kymopoleia’s shawl, and the dread weighing heavy at his heart that it had something to do with Percy and what had really happened to Polybotes. 

[demons-and-demigods]

ITS DONE!!!!! I just gotta do a few more last minute things and then I'll get the next part posted!!!!!!!!

Update!

Hello, my darlings! Wanted to pop in real quick just to let you know I AM working on the next part, which will be another written scene because I have no chill (especially not about this scene in particular), but it'll probably be a few more days until it's done. I'm having a lot of fun with it, but it's also kicking my ass 😅 (it's gonna be a long one, folks)

Next up: Kym is here(!), Jason is terrified, and Percy, well. Percy fucks shit up <3

(At the time of writing this post, I'm abt 3k into this scene and we haven't made it to Kym yet oof)

Also, for your amusement: my brother's reaction to reading my current progress on this scene ^-^ (some stuff censored bc *River Song voice* spoilers~!)

[demons-and-demigods]

HELLO MY DARLINGS I'M BACK WITH AN EXCITING UPDATE FOR YOU <33

Okay, so I got a ton more writing done yesterday for the next part and this bit is at just about 6.9k words!!!! (lmao nice)

There's a bit more I've gotta get out to finish up the scene, but hopefully, I'll get this next part done and posted within the next three days or so if I can get my shit together.

Love you guys, and thanks for hanging in there while I lost my shit for a week.

Hope you guys are excited for this next part! It's a doozy 😈

Update!

Hello, my darlings! Wanted to pop in real quick just to let you know I AM working on the next part, which will be another written scene because I have no chill (especially not about this scene in particular), but it'll probably be a few more days until it's done. I'm having a lot of fun with it, but it's also kicking my ass 😅 (it's gonna be a long one, folks)

Next up: Kym is here(!), Jason is terrified, and Percy, well. Percy fucks shit up <3

(At the time of writing this post, I'm abt 3k into this scene and we haven't made it to Kym yet oof)

Also, for your amusement: my brother's reaction to reading my current progress on this scene ^-^ (some stuff censored bc *River Song voice* spoilers~!)