Sally had often observed how her son was so very like the sea. It wasn't just the brilliant green of his eyes that spilled the truth of his paternal heritage but the very nature of his irises. They way that the colour would shift depending on his moods and the way that their texture seemed to fluctuate like the tide coming in and washing out. She stood in the doorway of his room, her back leaning against the wood of the door. Percy's gaze flickered up to her own for a solitary second before fixing on something unseen, a blank space in the distance. She shivered, in that split second, Percy's eyes had been so still, dead. Like an empty wasteland, an endless expanse of sea. Her son's eyes no longer held any light. Her heart broke for him.

Percy didn't move. Barely acknowledged her. He looked out the window but his gaze didn't register the stormy Manhattan sky that cast a grey tint over the glass as raindrops spattered against it. Percy squeeze his eyes shut and teardrops rained down his cheek. Green eyes crying, grey sky crying. Sally let out a ragged breath.

"Percy." Her son tilted his chin defiantly. He had never rebelled against her. Sally had often wondered when the day would come. Everybody had warned her that one day her teenage son would snap. But she could never imagine Percy ever changing like that, not her son, the boy who dared to venture through the Underworld in a venture to bring her back. Sally's mind fluttered away from that thought. She couldn't -no, she didn't want to- think about what Percy would do to bring Annabeth back. Her mind defiantly suppressed such ideas and the idea flittered away and she caught herself forgetting what she was about to say. She rearranged her thoughts, tried again.

"Percy." Her tone was gentle. Soothing. The way you'd treat a dying animal. She pursed her lips at the thought and pushed it away. Percy was not dying. And her son was most definitely not an animal. No. He was an ocean. The boy looked at her. His face was creased almost petulantly. An eyebrow curved slightly, questioningly.

"C'mon, Percy." She didn't know why she kept repeating his name. Maybe to remind herself that this person, with all the sadness and sorrow hidden within him, was truly her son. "You, of all people, know that death isn't the end. Annabeth is in Elysium, waiting for you."

His eyes flashed angrily and reflected the grey of the outside world. Sally's breath hitched. In that moment, her son's eyes had taken on the colour of Annabeth's own piercing gaze. Was this the Percy his enemies saw? She'd heard Grover joke once that even Hades' furies whispered the name Percy Jackson is hushed exclamations of fear and admiration. But he wasn't Percy Jackson The Saviour Of The World to her. No, he was Percy, her son, and he was hurting and it was her job to make him better.

"For how long?" His voice was raspy, like a dagger covered in rust and blood, that had never been cleaned. It cut through her thoughts.

Sally cleared her throat. She sat down on the bed beside Percy. She stroked his hair, remembering the time he had come home with a gray streak in his dark waves. She had cried then. Her son had literally had to carry the weight of the world. Sometimes she blamed herself for the way life had worked out for him. All the problems in middle school and high school, the ADHD and dyslexia, that had been almost manageable. But fighting ancient deities. Watching your friends die around you? That was something that no child should ever have to witness. She took his hand, squeezed it tight.

"Oh honey, you know Annabeth. She will wait forever, if need be."

"How do you know?" Demanded Percy, his voice guttural and wild. The rain lashed against the window. Sally didn't have an answer. She just knew Annabeth would wait. Percy knew it too. It was just a truth. The sun would rise tomorrow morning. (Sally ignored her slight distaste for the flirtatious happy-go-lucky attitude of th Sun god.) Annabeth would wait forever. So why was he arguing? Sally's mind ticked over, trying to discern the root of the problem.

From an outsider's perspective, the fact that there was an actual afterlife ought to be reassuring. And Annabeth would have been granted Elysium of course -there was no doubt of that- so why was Percy so scared? His eyes flickered to hers, searching for a truth in her eyes and Sally realised what he was asking. How long. Not how long Annabeth would wait but rather how long it would be until he saw her again. How long it would be before Percy Jackson, per se, died.

The realisation dawned on her. Oh gods. She had never said that before but had laughed the first time Annabeth had said it in front of her. This was an apt time as any for that expression. Percy could not mean...? The sea green of his eyes took on a stormy complexion as he studied his mother. And, somehow, Percy Jackson felt a twinge of spiteful pleasure as he watched the colour drain from his mother's face. Fear and sorrow did strange things to a person.

"Percy! No!" Her hand gripped his own, tight. Too tight. "No! You are not to think about that-" He was absolutely not to venture into the Underworld. This wasn't some- some quest assigned to him by Camp Half Blood. This was real life. And real death.

"Stop." He didn't shout it. But he could have. The word felt restrained. As if he was holding back. And yet there was a measured assertion in that single flat tone of his. His eyes washed over his mother, cold and calculating, like a shark's.

He looked at her with those ocean eyes and within his dilated pupils, Sally saw the sea, wild and untamed. Vicious, cold and cruel. The deathly nature of the water, the way that it could envelop you with its salty embrace before luring you beneath its depths to throttle the life out of you. She had never considered the darkness in her son before but she was starting to.

"Percy-" She had to remind herself that this was her son.

"No!" This time he did shout. His voice had always been sarcastic and wry but never in a spiteful manner. The jokes and quips just made him who he was. This time it was different. There was an edge to his voice, sharp like Riptide. She shivered slightly as she considered his sword. Just how many enemies had Percy killed with it? Why had she never questioned him about these things? They were such serious matters. Her son was a hero. They said. But he was also a murdered.

"You don't understand." Each word was clipped, curt. "You have no idea what pain is." But she did, her heart was breaking for her son.

Percy snatched his hand away from her and stood up, flayed his arm around the room. Sally clutched her arms to her chest, hugging herself. The raindrops hit the glass like needles, tiny droplets that whipped the window, pierced it with an almost metallic ping.

"You have no idea of the pain I have endured. I have watched my friends die because of me. You don't know how much it ... hurts thinking about it, the things I have done. I laughed when I killed my enemies when I had the curse of Achilles. I made a volcano erupt, killing who knows how many people, and I awakened a giant that nearly wiped out half the country. I tortured a goddess so she would feel my sorrow."

Sally tried to interrupt but her son cut her off with a fierce look. She had heard Annabeth once saw that when Percy was fighting it was hard to tell whether he was a villain or a hero. He had this indiscernible look on his face. And Sally was seeing it now. And she was scared. She was seeing her son as the villain.

"I killed Arachne and I didn't feel anything. I manipulated Bob to kill his own brother because that's what friends do. I was abused by Gabe. I watched you die. I held up the fucking world. And now Annabeth is dead and it is my fault. You don't know what pain is."

Sally's hand was clenched, her fingernails digging into her palm, drawing blood. It hurt. But as Percy said. She didn't know what pain was. She didn't know what to say. She'd never heard even half of these confessions. And only the gods knew how many things he had left unsaid. Percy Jackson was darkness. And tears spilled for her own eyes when she thought of the insurmountable grief that must have settled upon his shoulders. A teardrop trickled down her cheek.

"Oh, honey." He stood there, in the middle of the room and he roared. The rain outside their apartment suddenly convulsed, threw itself together and suddenly there was an enormous wave crashing against the window. The Manhattan skyline disappeared. Percy's internal turmoil had taken on a quite literal form. Sally vaguely wondered what regular mortals would be seeing through the mist before her mind turned back to the matter of Percy's melancholia.

"Let me-" His sentence was drowned out by the crashing of the wave. Sally cast her son one last look. He had said 'let me leave' but what she had heard was 'let me be'. If Sally had known the words that spilled from his mouth, she might not have ever left her son alone.