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His brother hadn’t stopped crying yet. From what Triton understood, this wasn’t uncommon necessarily for humans and demigods of five winters or so, but still. It was a dreadful racket.
“Can you please cease your weeping?” he picked the boy up again, watching as his tears mingled with the ocean water. “It’s most unbecoming, even for one of father’s bastards.”
And there was one of his other problems with the child. It had been such a long time, relatively speaking, since his father had sired a demigod child. Much longer since he had had to interact with one of them. Triton wasn’t naive, he knew his father’s ways. But he had hoped that it would be a child of Zeus to break the prophecy. At least then, if and when it all went horribly wrong (and who could ever deny the Fates) the fault wouldn’t fall on their house and kingdom. But no. Alas.
“What is your name?” he tried.
“Does it matter?” he buried his head into his shoulder. The sobs rolled through him like waves crashing against a sea wall, over and over, breaking him down. “’M dead anyway.”
“What makes you say that?” He tried not to blink so obviously. Had the boy’s mother informed him of his fate so early? Triton hadn’t raised a child in… a while, but he did not think it was necessarily best practice to tell a child so small they were going to die when they turned sixteen. Especially when most humans died when they were fifty? Sixty? He wasn’t sure, when Athena came to see him she told him that lifespans were growing above the surface, at least in some places, but to him the difference wasn’t really so big.
He looked up at him then, and Triton had to wonder why no god had discovered the newest (he hoped) demigod of the sea god, when he was so obviously their father’s double. Stormy green eyes glared at him like he thought he was stupid. “I’ve drowned. Duh. You can’t breathe underwater. I don’t have gills?”
So he didn’t know then. Not even that he was a demigod.
“You are not dead,” he said.
“I am!” he insisted. “My—” his lip wobbled again, and Triton had a second to think here we go then. “My mom— they— the eagle— she—!”
“Yes,” he said. “I am sorry for your mother. Hades has her now.”
“Who?”
What on Olympus were they teaching these infants? Had one of those other religions or practices from the surface really overtaken so well? Which one of them was it? Manichaeism? The cult of Sol Invictus? When had this happened?
“She’s dead,” he said, a little softer this time. “My condolences.”
He peered up at him, and Triton adjusted his grip to hold him a little more comfortably. “But I’m underwater.”
“Indeed you are, child.”
“My name’s Percy.”
He knew the boy’s name was actually Perseus Jackson, but his own daughter Triteia had refused to be known in private by anything other than Tri for the first millennium of her life, so he decided to indulge him anyway. “Hello, Percy, I am your brother, Triton.”
“What?”
“He needs to be sent to camp,” his father demanded.
Triton tightened his grip on the boy, now sleeping from the potion he had had one of the healers concoct for him when he couldn’t stop crying again. “He needs no such thing.”
“It’s his fate,” he said. “This violates the Ancient Laws.”
“Yes,” he said. “You would know about violating laws and promises and oaths, wouldn’t you, my Lord?”
His father’s face clouded over. Triton saw the boy’s in it, both mourning the same woman now. “I am sorry for his fate.”
“Are you?” he looked at him blankly. “You were not sorry enough to prevent his birth.”
Poseidon floated closer then, reaching out, as if to brush a stray hair away from Perseus’ face. Triton pulled him backwards. It was petty, and his father could absolutely stop it, force Percy to come to him, and probably exile Triton to the seas at Antarctica, if he wished, although if he did, who would do all the paperwork he avoided? But he didn’t. He just stared at him, angry and confused.
“The boy is mine.”
“You said as much, you cannot raise him,” he said.
“The fate of a demigod is to be raised by their mortal parent.”
“And that’s worked out so well before? That’s possible now?”
He didn’t even justify that with a response. Distantly, Triton registered a cruise ship in the Caribbean cracking in half, dumping all its passengers in the ocean, screaming and terrified, even as the lifeboats were lowered and emergency services called.
“I will raise him,” he continued.
Poseidon stared. Triton stared back. He hadn’t even meant to say that. He hadn’t even realised that that had been what he had thinking, what his plan was, what he wanted.
But it must have been. Because why else would he not let his father take him to Camp Half-Blood? What were Percy’s other options here?
“And when his fate demands he be a hero? You cannot deny a prophecy.”
“I know that!” he snapped. The water around them warmed, and even in an unconscious state, Percy squirmed in his arms. Triton returned it to the regular temperature immediately. “I know. I am aware.” He took off, swimming up and down the room, his tails almost erratic behind him. After a few minutes, or maybe hours, he stopped again, his father still standing where he had been before, staring at the both of them.
“I—” he started, dragging the thoughts into words like rotten teeth needing to be pulled. “When the time comes, I will let him go. I will train him, and I will wish him on his way when he needs it.”
“Swear it on the River Styx.”
He did, wincing as the thunder rumbled through the water, all the way down to their palace.
“Very well,” his father said, frowning. “You know how much I can see the boy.” Was it his imagination or was his voice envious? Hungry.
“I am aware,” he said. “I shall— You will be informed when he goes.”
“I did not say,” he said, voice tight. “I would not be keeping an eye on things. Be assured that I will.”
“Good,” he said. “Is there anything else?”
The water between them could have frozen or boiled from the angry tension radiating from both of them. Triton pushed his thumb against Perseus’ cheekbone, pushing his hair back in the way he had denied their father from doing.
“No,” Poseidon conceded. “I suppose not.”
Triton turned Perseus away, out of the eye line of the sea god ascending to his true form, leaving for wherever he went to sulk, probably to terrorise some country with dangerous fault lines with an earthquake or six.
His brother remained asleep, head lolling in his arms, colour returning to his cheeks for the first time since the healer had put him under.
Triton smiled grimly, and went to make some arrangements for him.