Chapter Text
The Fates weave, spin and determine the future, present and past of all beings.
Mortals, immortals and monsters.
All of their choice, every woven thread is spun with the aim of giving knowledge and determining the fate of deserving people.
The purpose is to acquire a clearer perception of humanity: where they have been, where they will go, the traps, the possibilities, the risks, the promises.
And perhaps an answer to the most universal of the questions: why?
But sometimes some of these plotted destinies are more complicated to discern.
Or to be accomplished.
There was a bright destiny ahead for a demigod destined for immortality.
But that demigod had refused and the Fates had had to remedy it.
They could not see their tapestry of the gods being ruined and a thread was needed for that fate.
One thread to keep all the others in order.
The Fates were to offer understanding to that demigod.
Otherwise there would have been no future.
******
Perseus Cassiopea Jackson thought she was done.
She'd led her friends, people she'd trained with, joked with, to war against the Titans.
She had lost many.
She had been robbed of months of her life and her memories, taken from her home and carried out into the street, monsters and mortals chasing her.
She had led the demigods against the Giants, crossed Tartarus and seen her worst fears come true below.
She had lost herself and had had to fight to find herself once again.
Percy was done with the Greeks and their mythology.
If the gods could not interfere in their children's lives, she could leave them alone to solve their problems, without interfering.
Of course, she would help those few gods who deserved it.
But no one else.
At this moment, after leaving her mother and Paul's apartment, deciding she didn't want to be included in choosing the best color to decorate the living room, Percy was walking down the street to the swimming pool near her house, where she had bought a subscription .
It was a relief for the girl to immerse herself in the water, even though the chlorine contamination was bothering her lungs.
She could keep her eyes open, they didn't burn like mortals' ones did, the blood of the sea offering her protection.
But it was like having an eyelash in her eye, annoying when she blinked.
Or having the feeling of having to cough, but not being able to.
Deciding that she might risk being under the water for so long, knowing the pool would be empty all day, Percy dropped to the bottom of the pool, lying down.
She closed her eyes and breathed deeply.
Though a pale imitation of sea and ocean, even that water offered her comfort.
Suddenly, something in the water changed.
The chlorine had disappeared, the salt present in minimal quantities had increased and become cleaner, purer, more marine.
The water had become hotter, cleaner, less contaminated by man and his work to clean it.
Percy had felt that particular sensation once before.
In Atlantis, when she and Charles had gone on a doomed mission and she had regained her strength in her father's palace.
That was the feeling.
Percy opened her eyes.
She looked up, and instead of seeing the ceiling of the pool, a clean blue sky, the sun bright and strong, awaited her.
Blinking, Percy swam to the surface, marveling at how deep it had become, leaving her to come upon a village completely out of time.
Blinking, Percy tried to figure out what she was seeing.
People were dressed funny, in those linens she sometimes saw on minor gods on Olympus, chitons.
The houses were extremely old-fashioned, no high-rise buildings, no statues of liberty she knew of at home.
No Empire State Building.
In fact, Percy wasn't even sure she was in New York anymore.
Or in America.
She turned her head again and blinked as she saw Athena and her father, both dressed in Greek garb, her father holding his trident, standing before mortals.
Since when could the gods show themselves to men?
"Dad?" She called, blinking as the god turned without a spark of recognition in his eyes.
Oh no, thought Percy.
She didn't know what was going on, but it didn't look nice.