sins of the father, blood of the son

Posted originally on the Archive of Our Own at https://archiveofourown.org/works/76581981.

Rating:

Mature

Archive Warning:

Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings

Category:

F/M

Fandoms:

Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan, The Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan

Relationships:

Percy Jackson & Poseidon, Amphitrite/Poseidon (Percy Jackson), Annabeth Chase/Percy Jackson, Chiron & Percy Jackson, Percy Jackson & Sally Jackson, Percy Jackson & Tartarus

Characters:

Percy Jackson, Poseidon (Percy Jackson), Annabeth Chase (Percy Jackson), Grover Underwood, Tartarus (Percy Jackson), original female daughter of hypnos, Pontus (Percy Jackson)

Additional Tags:

the dove is dead I killed it myself, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Body Horror, Gothic, Primordial Percy Jackson, Eldritch Poseidon (Percy Jackson), Eldritch Percy Jackson, the gods as anthropomorphized concepts, Blood, Death, Violence, Camp Half-Blood (Percy Jackson), Percy Jackson Needs a Hug, BAMF Percy Jackson, Powerful Percy Jackson, Dark Percy Jackson, Dark Poseidon (Percy Jackson), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Minor AU, Original Female Character(s) - Freeform, Enemies to Lovers, Minor Romance, romance as a backseat to percy's arc

Language:

English

Series:

Part 1 of you are a ghost and this is your haunted home

Stats:

Published: 2025-12-28 Updated: 2025-12-30 Words: 2,687 Chapters: 2/?

sins of the father, blood of the son

by AchillesComeHome

Summary

When Percy Jackson crawls his way out of Tartarus, there is blood in his teeth, cruelty in his bones and a new world order in his hands. He was the beginning and he will be the end. He has long been angry at the gods for their injustice and cruelty, but he has never had the power to do something about it.

Now, he does.

It's always best to fight fire with fire, but what about fire with primordial darkness?

Or, in which, Annabeth escaped Tartarus but it held Percy back briefly because it sensed something. It eventually lets him go so Percy can return and help defeat the Giants, and get Camp Half-Blood and Camp Jupiter to stop fighting. Everything should be returning to normal. And it is. Mostly.

But Tartarus has given Percy knowledge that changes everything he thought he knew about himself and the gods. He is different now and he can feel it, enough that he goes to Annabeth for answers, then Chiron, then his father. No one can give him the answers he's seeking. Except for one. And even she is not entirely sure, but she knows more than most, and that is all he can hope for.

Chapter 1: welcome home... son?

Chapter Notes

join the discord server! https://discord.gg/3CC5N5wRck

When Percy Jackson crawls his way out of Tartarus, there is blood in his teeth, cruelty in his bones and a new world order in his hands.

He was the beginning and he will be the end.

He has long been angry at the gods for their injustice and cruelty, but he has never had the power to do something about it.

Now, he does.

He survived what no one should survive, and when he comes back into Camp Half-Blood's borders, alive and strong if not well, he is different. He is changed. At first, it makes sense - Tartarus changes. It corrupts. It warps. So maybe he just needs time, the campers whisper when they step out of his path. His eyes are colder than the depths of the Sea (some say they don't look like his eyes).

Percy Jackson does not need time.

He needs knowledge.

Knowledge that has been locked away for millennia, knowledge that predates Chiron's existence and the hierarchy of Mount Olympus itself. Knowledge, the kind that cities burned for and gods hid in the wildest parts of their domains in some futile hope that it could not be recovered. Knowledge that did not come in scrolls and books like the ones Annabeth had laying around, but rather that is carved into a God's existence in language only those of the Primordial Waters can read. This knowledge predates written language, so it is not any kind of modern symbols that are carved into the God, but memories. Memories of a darker time, of when humanity coexisted with forces they could not understand until they did and they bound those forces into something more palatable, something anthropomorphized (and it is not that they understood these forces but that they grew ambitious enough to push them away). It takes power to bind forces of nature into something vaguely human, but it takes fear to gain that kind of power. And humanity had every reason to fear the Poseidon that lurked in the dark (not that he went by that name then, and not that names mean much except to force the unknowable into some semblance of being known so mortals can sleep easier at night under the pretense that a name could stop an ocean from drowning them if it pleases).

Scream. Scream until your lungs collapse in your chest and the ground gives way, until the sea reaches for you and you reject her.

Percy Jackson understands fear and pain and worry. He understands the strange looks given to him and the worry piled on when Chiron and Annabeth and Grover speak about what happened. He understands the questions: what happened and why did this happen and perhaps most importantly what were you told? Because they want answers. Clean answers in textbooks and historical experience Chiron lived. They want the simple version, the kind that can be defined and categorized and tucked away for future reference. But the thing inside him, the thing running in his veins, does not allow that. It sees simple answer and bites its throat out - because whatever is living in him, it's dangerous and it's ancient and it scares him. It scares Percy.

He is not sure what he is.

He just knows he is.

Blood stains the inner lining of his lip and his tongue swipes over it and he swallows.

He stands at the door of the Hypos cabin.

They may understand what he does not.

Chapter 2: dreamworld

Chapter Summary

Percy looks to the Hypnos cabin for help. Evangeline can help, but only so much.

Chapter Notes

i apologize if this feels weird or anything! haven’t written an oc for a while and also, haven’t written at all for like two months so i’m definitely rusty. plus the story is still shaping up and i gotta iron out some details so this may feel not as great. but i may or may not come back to it later.

anyway, it does pick up in the next chapter.

discord server: https//:discord.gg/3CC5N5wRck

The ground shifts beneath his feet when the door creaks open. A voice — not his own, not quite — whispers for him to turn back and leave. That this cabin is dangerous. That this woman standing in front of him is an unknown factor and those are dangerous.

But it’s too late for that (too late for a lot of things, really—)

“Percy Jackson.”

Usually, when people say his name like that, they’re either in awe or unimpressed. She sounds sleepy. He’s probably just woken her up. Hypnos’ kids do tend to sleep more than everyone else.

“Can I help you?”

He runs his tongue against his teeth again, lighter, gentler. No blood is drawn. He must be careful. “I’m having trouble sleeping.” It’s not a lie, exactly. “I was wondering if you could help.”

“No. Not… that kind of sleep issue. I get to sleep fine. It’s…” He sighs, shoving his hands into the back pockets of his jeans and feeling the warmth of Riptide greet his fingers. “Can we talk inside? Is Clovis here? I was looking for him.”

The daughter of Hypnos straightens from her lean against the doorframe. There’s a look in her eyes, one he knows too well, like she’s deciding whether or not she wants to be involved in whatever problem he’s having. The moment breaks. She sends him a tight, faint smile, but steps aside and gestures him in. “No. He’s back home. So is Arthur.”

“Who?”

She shuts the door behind him. “The other Hypnos camper. There’s only the three of us.”

“Right.”

He should have known that.

He should know a lot of things, but there’s only so much room in his brain right now and most of that room is being drowned with stuff he doesn’t want.

“Nightmare problems? Dreams getting too real? Are they bleeding into your waking life?” She’s disappeared down the hall and…

Percy stops. This isn’t like the Hypnos cabin he remembered (he was here once when he kept dreaming about dying and not the prophetic kind of dreams, the kind a 12-year-old who has lost his mother and been introduced to a terrifying world has). Instead of dark wood and lanterns and cozy couches, it is a long stretching hallway branching into other rooms and ending with a large, ornate staircase. Cabins have expanded interiors, that he knows, but this feels different. Hostile isn’t the right word. He is out of place here; an anomaly in a setting that has noticed him but hasn’t chosen to do anything about him yet. The very world feels dreamlike now, slow and unbothered and isolated.

Baby pink clouds curl around his ankles as he follows her down the hall, and crescent moons hung in corners seem to turn as he passes, like they have eyes and they’re following. The room she brings him to is spacious — sunken couches, TVs, and floor-to-ceiling windows that open out on an expanse of more baby pink clouds, stars and multiple moons, yet no other terrain. Dark blue light reflects off the clouds and furniture and brushes against his skin, curling around his wrist before dissipating.

She turns. “Sit.”

He does.

“I don’t think I got your name.”

She nudges a glass of water over to him. It wasn’t there before. “Evangeline. Eline or Eve for short, whichever you prefer. Try not to use my full name, though.”

“Try?”

“Most people say it like my mom did when she was having a breakdown,” she sighs. “Now, answer my questions. Are dreams bleeding into the waking world? Are you waking up with physical marks?”

He shakes his head. “No.” Wait. “Well… sort of. Sometimes. That I’m used to. Actually…” Riptide does aerial acrobatics between his fingers as he searches for the right words. “It’s less about what I’m seeing, if that makes sense.” He has to be careful now, because he can’t just openly admit what he’s after, but he also needs her to know enough that she can effectively help him.

Riptide’s clip scratches the pad of his thumb.

“I fell into Tartarus.” The bandaid he’s putting over what happened in his mind is being peeled off. “I got out. Obviously. But ever since then… I’ve been having strange dreams. Not the normal visions or magical eavesdropping, but…” His breath chokes in his throat, like he can swallow hard enough and swallow the truth back down where it should nestle in his chest. Denial denial denial. Safety. Familiarity. Home. “Visions of myself. In what I think is the future, but… also the past.”

Now for the ‘and this is why magical melatonin isn’t helping part’.

“I think these visions are being sent by Tartarus.”

Scream. Scream until your lungs collapse in your chest and the ground gives way, until the sea reaches for you and you reject her. Scream, little boy.

Not so little now, are you?

Stop rejecting it.

Reality is cracking because of you — it has since the day you were born. Did you not wonder why Zeus was so angry you were born?

‘There was a pact—’

Pacts mean nothing. Words are empty. You are not.

Humanity tried, but you cannot be contained. You cannot be restrained.

Tartarus chokes the air from him, steals the strength from his bones. The beast laughs and the ground shakes with the amusement as Percy denies it. Flips it off. The ground — the body of flesh and darkness and primordial ooze that burns the skin of gods themselves — is cracking and warping beneath his feet, wounds opening like fissures. Percy’s anger.

“Yes,” the primordial force that ate humanity’s first attempts at civilization, muses. “You need not go back yet, little demigod. I have more use for you here. In time, you will go back. You are needed in the war against my wife.” He says wife like one would say enemy. Or maybe fly. It’s hard to tell tone when staring into a speaking void’s face hole.

Annabeth is gone. Bob and Small Bob are… he doesn’t want to know. The rest of the army is scrambling and screaming now that the Doors are gone. But here, right now, it is a demigod with more power than he should possess staring up defiantly at the primordial whose existence shaped the universe.

They are more alike than he knows.

“Tartarus… is sending you visions?” Eline drags out slowly, blinking at him. “As in - the primordial Tartarus? The force of nature Tartarus?”

It sounds incredible. It sounds fake even to him.

“Unfortunately.”

A massive fucking understatement.

Eline nods slowly, and then tucks under feet under her on the couch. Some cup of mysterious steaming liquid shudders when her fingers begin tapping harshly on the ceramic. “And what is he showing you? What kind of visions?”

His thumb slips. A gash opens on the pad from Riptide — and heals just as quickly.

“You can’t get hurt here,” Eline explains simply, as if that makes this less confusing. “You’re not in your physical body. You fell asleep when you came through our door. I thought it better if we talked in my dad’s realm. No one can eavsedrop or crash here. Sacred law and all that.”

Ah. That actually makes sense. “And my physical body is…?”

“Asleep on the mattress we keep beside the door for this reason.” Her brown eyes sharpen. “Enough with the procrastination. What are you seeing, Percy?”

He glances up, meeting her gaze. It feels gentle, but insistent… like he really wants to tell her everything about himself because, well, she seems so easy to talk to… “Myself,” and the words hurt to speak. “But… it’s not me, at the same time. When I see these visions, the person I’m seeing looks identical to me and he answers to my name but he isn’t me.”

“How do you know? Maybe he’s a monster?”

“No. No, not that.” He presses his thumb into the palm of his hand, where a once-friend left him a wound years ago. The pain is long gone but the body remembers enough to replicate it just enough to ground him. “I just knew. Instinctively. Something was off with me- him- whoever it was. He wasn’t a monster, either. I saw him… He knew things only I know. Things you can’t guess.” Things that shape and define a person before they even know who they are. Things that tell kids monsters are real and they’re not Greek. “But something felt off. Like… like if I was evil, maybe. Or maybe mind controlled.”

Eline gracefully ignored the desperate theory that even Percy didn’t believe.

“These visions. Do you have them every night? And how often in a night?”

He woke up not screaming, but clawing at his own arms because two seconds ago, he was chained and screaming and furious. The taste of blood and ash was still in his mouth, and he almost thought he would feel bits of tendon stuck between his teeth if he ran his tongue over the back of them. Something akin to fury, an ancestor no human language could accurately describe, still coursed through his veins — and if he had to, he would say it felt like fury laced with all-encompassing judgement and wrapped in a very pure hunger.

A sob choked in his chest. It was so real, so vivid, and he had seen himself in the kind of rage that terrified him. He didn’t want to be like that, he didn’t want to hurt anyone, he just wanted to be left alone and go to college and do his own thing. He just wanted peace.

The cabin was suffocating. He fled it, down to the lake, and sank to the bottom of it, gulping in the water like a dying man.

He couldn’t get the feeling of containment, of a cage far too small for him, being carved into his skin.

Since then, the naiads in the canoe lake had started making a bed for him.

“These fragments of yours…” Eline leans in, elbows on her knees. Her brown gaze is alluring. Once more, Percy just wants to tell her everything, about Tartarus and the knowledge and the—

“Stop it.”

“What?”

“Whatever you’re doing, stop it,” he snaps. His eyes are right past her head.

“Oh, shit. Yeah. Sorry.” There’s a moment of silence, then: “Okay. It’s safe to look at me now.”

Very tenatively, does he glance back at her — now silver — eyes. When there’s no immediate desire to tell her all of his secrets and just let go, he relaxes fractionally. Better.

“Side effect of being in this realm,” she offers preemptively. “Everything gets enhanced, so you looking at my eyes here makes you basically try to spill your guts. Like a trance. Out there in the Waking world, it’s not as strong.” But her head tilts just a little. The silver in her eyes is cold. “Only really powerful demigods can resist that for so long. But,” she sighs, “these fragments of yours… these glimpses… whatever you want to call them… How do they feel?”

Feel? Did that matter? The question furrows his brow. “Unsettling. Annoying.”

“No. I mean, did it feel like it was currently happening or already had, or would be?”

“…All three,” he says and then he immediately lets out a shaky breath through his nostrils. He is curling his toe so hard it hurt, letting go, then redoing it. “Sometimes all at once, sometimes only one of them.”

Eline hums quietly. A finger twirls a strand of her hair around her finger, tangling it. “Then what we need to do is get into your subconscious,” she says matter-of-factly. Like that doesn't sound horrifying. “We need to see what your mind is holding onto.”

“What? But it’s Tartarus?”

“Percy, the way visions work is that a god, or in your case a primordial, will decide they want you to know something. But the language they speak is so different than the one we as mortals speak, translation gets murky. We use words. They just… know. Translating an innate message into written language into concepts humans understand is tricky. It usually gets warped and polluted, and if you're lucky, remains coherent enough to barely understand it. That translation manifests as visions or fragments of visions.” She takes a deep breath in after that.

Percy is not sure he entirely follows the concept of this, but she knows and it’s her dad’s domain, so… he trusts her on this. “So, my subconscious? How do we do that?”

Eline smiles. Tightly. Like she is worried but she won't say it. “Well… how do you feel about jumping off a cliff again?”

He groans.

Please drop by the Archive and comment to let the creator know if you enjoyed their work!

Table of Contents

Preface

Chapter 1: welcome home... son?

Chapter 2: dreamworld

Afterword