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Percy had always known that there was something wrong with him. It was a feeling he felt in his bones, felt it where his blood flowed.
He knew it, his teachers knew it, the other kids knew it. Even his mother knew it.
Percy had been sculpted by a different hand. They were made with care, with disregard. Percy had been made with violence and aggression. The person who created him didn't smooth down his edges but sharpened it.
He was a creature born from cruelness. No matter how many baby birds he tried to help, the cats on the street he would feed, the kids in school he smiled at to make them feel better, deep down, the urge to do the opposite, to stomp on the baby birds instead of helping them was always there.
It was a voice in the back of his head. Loud and brazen. It told him things he would rather not know.
Like how Mrs. Felice, his chemistry teacher, was attracted to one of the other seven year old boys in his class. Or how his principal secretly loved watching the children get bullied.
Percy used to think that these voices were another person. Another being. Someone who was connected to him but not him.
Percy was eight years old now.
He could feel his mother's eyes on him. Sometimes in pure adoration and love and other times in saddened resentment. He could feel how ashamed she felt for thinking of her son in that way. Even if it was only sometimes and momentarily.
Sally was good at hiding it though. He could give his mother that.
A few years ago, Percy would never have felt her regret of him this strongly. Percy knew that she loved him to death, and would die for him, but she never wanted to.
Sally Jackson wanted a normal son. And instead, she got him.
During the summer, they could escape his step-father Gabe and visit Montauk, his favourite place in the whole world.
It wasn't the cabin he loved. But the sea.
It called to Percy. Sang to him. It called to his blood and to his heart. To his soul and mind. His body and his spirit.
His mother never worried for him there. She would lay a blanket on the ground as she attempted to tan, and Percy would ignore all the bruises on her skin from Gabe that made him almost blind with rage.
He would swim for hours and he would ignore the voices, the language he recognized that he had never heard on land.
He ignored the two fish talking to each other and how he understood them. He ignored the thrum of energy he felt and how he could quite literally feel his father. And he knew that his father could feel him.
It was Percy's routine for three days. Those blissed three days on Montauk. Wake up, eat, play a bit with his mother, swim, swim, swim, and go to sleep.
It always hurt having to leave.
But he knew he was welcome whenever he came back and it was almost enough.
Back at home, was the darkness the sea should have been.
Gabe and his poker friends, all even worse than the next, would sit down and play and play and leer at his mother and eat.
Percy would hide in his room whilst his mother played nice and let Gabe kiss her on her cheek with his beer-tainted lips and grin at her with his cigarette stained teeth.
The men would all ignore the exhaustion in her eyes, the painful marks on her skin and stare at her curves instead.
Percy hated them all. He wanted to make them regret ever meeting him.
But he was just an eight year old boy.
So, he didn't do anything.
Percy tried to live in his own little bubble and ignore what was going on around him. His mother always warned him to stay away from technology but sometimes he'd read books in Greek online. Nobody had ever even taught him the language. And yet he knew it. It was his own little secret. It made him proud.
It made him feel smarter, even though all his teachers called him stupid.
At some point, Gabe's friends started to leer at Percy. One of them especially, Liam, his eyes were always on him. Percy could feel it but at that time, he didn't understand what it was for.
Thankfully, he had never acted on his emotions.
Percy grew up, getting kicked out of almost every school he was in.
He could feel his mother's disappointment in him though she would never show it.
He thinks he started to notice it - all the bad emotions she felt towards him - when she missed his seventh birthday and never made up for it.
Percy had never had any friends. Except for the sea creatures at Montauk and at the aquarium he had once visited on a school field trip.
There was something wrong with him.
His mother loved to play storyteller and tell him magnificent stories of Greek mythology. Percy loved the sea, he could speak to them, he could breathe underwater.
Perseus Jackson was different from all the other people.
When he looked in the mirror, Percy would see canines just a bit too sharp, eyes just too bright. In the right light, Percy could almost mistake himself for a mythical creature, his skin glowing lightly.
And he was okay with that.
At twelve years old, he made his first ever friend, Grover Underwood.
Grover Underwood had a limp and his feet sometimes looked fake. Percy should have expected what happened. He should have expected it all but he was living in his own little bubble, and nothing except an aggressive shove of reality would push him out of it.
When he found out the truth of his father, Percy couldn't even find it in him to be surprised. The sea had always loved him and he had always loved it back. It was his only friend and it felt fitting that he belonged in it.
The minotaur had been an even more painful wake up call. And so was his mother's death.
In Percy's heart, he always knew his mother would die young but it didn't stop the stab of pain at any mention of her.
The girl that decided she was in charge of him, Annabeth Chase, was the most annoying, self-righteous, know-it-all. She reminded Percy of the kids that used to make fun of him because of his dyslexia and everything else they could find that was wrong about him.
He didn't like her and he hated having to invite her on the quest but Percy knew, as much as he hated to admit it, that she was useful.
An encyclopaedia of facts Percy didn't give a fuck about. But he should have.
The voices in his mind told him to just push her onto his sword, riptide, and be done with her incessant, nagging voice.
It was probably around midway through his first quest (unfortunately not the last but twelve years old Percy didn't know that yet) where he realised that the voices weren't voices.
They were him.
His darkest instinct. His first thought.
No matter how much he tried to be kind, there would always be a part of him that just wanted to make things, make people explode.
Crusty, his half-brother, was the first to properly face his cruelty.
Luke should have. Percy should have boiled all seventy percent of water in his body. He should have made him beg for mercy but Annabeth had been there, and Annabeth was his friend, no matter the confusion and he didn't want to scare her.
He did inevitably traumatise her. In Tartarus. Percy would have apologised but she had told Piper and they had both stared at him with their stupid faces as though he was the monster and Percy was reminded of why he hadn't liked Annabeth in the first place.
It had been only two years since Gaia but Percy constantly had flashbacks to the past. His childhood and his quests and Tartarus.
It was a surprise when his father had reached out to him and asked him to visit Atlantis for the first time.
Amphitrite, his step-mother, had been full of anger. He could feel it from where she was staying on the opposite side of the castle.
The merfolk were another story, they were friendly. Too friendly. Percy was almost convinced that they were acting this way either for his father's favour or for his.
They called him the kind one among his other names. Not just them, but almost all of Olympus as well. They all seemed to have forgotten what he had done.
The major deities didn't.
He could feel their caution. Percy knew they were terrified of him. Of what he could do. Of what he was capable of. He knew some of them thought he was harmless albeit all his feats, because of his kindness.
But maybe Zeus could feel for birds like Poseidon felt for animals of the sea and he knew when Percy had crushed them under the sole of his shoe for his amusement. Or maybe he could tell from the look in his eyes, the way his smirk was always a little too manic.
Poseidon could feel it he knew, but he also knew what Percy wanted his reputation to be and pushed the sweet, kind son stereotype onto him.
Even his Immortal siblings, Kymopoleia, Triton, Despoina and the rest, all thought he was a sweetheart. A manatee, Despoina had once called him. It was like they forgot that all children of Poseidon had abnormally good hearing underwater.
As though he didn't feel Kymopoleia's murderous rage and distaste and Triton's weird mix of hatred and fondness and how Despoina thought of him as though he was a playful puppy.
Even Amphitrite thought he was an angel, after she had grown to like him. They all seemed to have forgotten what he was capable of.
After his unwanted birthday party, Percy began to see more of Kymopoleia. His most reckless sibling. And probably the least favoured.
After his birthday he went up to her to apologise for having this ridiculous party on behalf of Amphitrite and Poseidon even though he wanted to strangle her for her animosity.
“He actually isn't that bad.” She had told Benthesikyme later during the night. Percy hadn't been eavesdropping. Seriously, he hadn't. He was simply walking to his room when their ridiculously loud booming voices reached his ears.
Percy hated that he was pleased. He hated that he needed people to like him.
Once he left, with Poseidon all teary eyed like Percy was about to go off to war (where was Poseidon when he actually had?) Percy headed over to his mother.
She is married now. To a man that did actually deserve her.
Percy liked Paul, he did really. It's just that he didn't quite like his little half-sister Estelle.
She was an adorable little girl with cute chubby cheeks and big round eyes with her hair always up in cute little pigtails.
Everyone always fell in love with her, even Apollo who still came over to visit her.
Percy did love her, at least he thought he did. But the resentment and anger was too strong.
She was three years old. She had family, people who would die for her, a god who loved her as his own daughter. A support system. Estelle Blaufis would never not feel loved.
When Percy was three, he only had his mother who had not yet begun to wish she hadn't had him, a god that didn't love him yet, no family, with bullies and Gabe as his number one enemies.
He hated how his life had turned out and how Estelle seemed to be destined for a good life.
Percy wanted to love her. He finally seemed to understand his mother for how she felt about him.
She must have noticed it when he came back. The way he stared at Estelle like she stared at him.
It was almost midnight. Paul was asleep and Percy thought that Sally was.
Estelle was sleeping soundly in her bed.
The door creaked open and Percy didn't even bother turning around.
Sally took a seat next to him on the floor. The ground was freezing since it was midwinter but neither of them minded it.
Before indoor heaters were thin blankets trying to starve off the cold.
“I'm sorry.” Sally eventually said after a few moments of silence.
“I know all of this must hurt you, baby.” He had nothing to say but apparently, his mother didn't need him to speak.
“I know how hard growing up was for you. I'm sorry for all of it, for G-Gabe and how everybody treated you and-”
“Mom, “ Percy cut her off. He didn't think he could hear how much she pitied him anymore.
“You don't need to apologise. I forgive you.”
She nodded. “But you won't forgive her?” The girl in question turned to the other side, her face to the wall, hugging her Teddy bear tightly.
“It's.. complicated. You know that more than anybody, mom.” She sighed. “I want to try.”
“I hope you do. She deserves a better childhood.”
Anger struck him like lightning. So did Percy. Three years old Percy had deserved the comfort Estelle had too. She had everything he never had.
“She needs her brother.”
Sally got up but before she left, Percy said “No, she doesn't.”
His mother paused at the door and walked away but he could feel the defeatedness in her walk.
Percy turned back to Estelle one last time before getting up.
As much as he hated his father's coddling. He missed it. It was better than what he had here.
Percy did end up loving Estelle, of course. He had doubted it, so had his mother but once he finally separated his childhood from hers, it was easy to love a sweetheart like her.
No one would ever know about the conversation his mother and him had about her.
Visiting Atlantis, became a daily month sort of thing. A week every month.
Percy hated how much he loved it.
How much he loved how they all loved him, admired him, looked up to him. Even his siblings had begun to warm up to him, with time.
Percy had yet to begin college. He wasn't sure what he wanted to do with his life but he knew the people he wanted in it.
When Percy turned eighteen - an age he never thought he would reach - he celebrated it in his new apartment he had gotten in New Rome.
Zeus had tried to force him to get three recommendation letters from three different gods. Percy had, respectfully told him to fuck off.
A few days later, he was visited by Kymopoleia, her eyes glowing like his did, her teeth as sharp as knives and her pupils in slits. She grinned at him. “I never knew you had it in you.”
He raised an unimpressed eyebrow and leaned against his new kitchen counter. “I always have. I've done more than any of you ever could.” He said.
It was her turn to raise her eyebrows. “I never thought you could be so arrogant.”
“Maybe you shouldn't believe everything you hear, Kym .” He spat.
Despite being told by all of his friends that he would be lonely in a one room apartment, Percy enjoyed it. The peace and quiet. The calmness he had never, ever been able to experience.
Annabeth had tried to encourage him to major in marine biology. Percy knew it was Annabeth's code language for, it's the only thing he's good at.
Percy loved her but he had been so mad he had ignored her for a week. He ended up majoring in social work. He wanted to be the person that would have helped younger Percy.
It was exhausting but just the thought of helping children that deserved so much more made him want to try harder.
Percy was different to the other demigods. He wasn't scared of the gods, he wasn't scared of monsters, they should all be scared of him. Most of them were.
He spent his nineteenth birthday in Atlantis. It was an age he had never even dared to dream of.
When he arrived, Kymopoleia grinned sharply at him. Triton ignored him but he received a small pat on his shoulder which was the most he would probably ever get.
The rest all smiled warmly.
There would be a small place in his heart for his mother and her family but a bigger place would always be available for his family in Atlantis. No matter how much they annoyed him and how much his father's possessiveness made him want to stab him.
When Percy was five. He had his mother.
When Percy was seven, he had himself and his lake.
When Percy was ten, he had his bed that he would cry himself to sleep in.
When Percy was twelve, he had Grover.
When Percy was fifteen, he had Annabeth and Grover and Rachel.
When Percy was Seventeen, he had his father.
Now, at nineteen, Percy would happily say that he had more people than he could ever have imagined having.
It was refreshing. It was beautiful.
Percy was different. And he liked it that way. He may not have been born with kindness but he had grown to have it and that was more than almost all of the population.
After his unfortunate birthday party - third in a throw - Triton finally came up to him to wish him happy birthday.
He hated how his heart warmed up.
“Thank you.” He said.
There was silence as they stared out into the sea. It was quiet when Percy had decided to take a small walk (swim) in the palace.
Then he found a balcony to sit in and was content to watch little fish play.
“Maybe next year,” Triton began after the peaceful silence. Percy almost wanted to tell him to shut up. “We can celebrate your first Immortal birthday.”
“Finally want me to stick around?” Triton snorted. “Father will be devastated if you die. He pursed his lips and turned to look at him.
“Maybe the one after it.”