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He had stayed for his son’s birth. He had stayed past it.
Normally he hung around long enough to make sure his lovers and his children were alright, before taking a step back, and keeping to the rules his father had set. Normally indeed. He had told May. She had been understanding. She had expected it.
Gods could be fathers and mothers. But they couldn’t be parents. Certainly, it was consistent. It wasn’t as if Zeus had driven Hermes to any soccer matches, or bought him a hot dog in the stands. Not least of all because neither of those would exist for a good few millennia after he had fully matured. And he hadn’t needed a father. He had been playing tricks and stealing from almost the first second he had been alive. Having a “dad” around would have only cramped his style. He had had enough trouble from his shiny older brother who was honestly far too protective over his cows. Hermes appreciated a good cow, but sharing was caring, wasn’t it?
All was well that ended well though, and Apollo hadn’t mulched Hermes, and Hermes had had a good steak or seven and an absolutely delicious brisket. Sometimes when he ate ambrosia, he could still taste it.
Most babies didn’t start eating steak. The human and demigod ones didn’t anyway. Their taste buds weren’t sophisticated enough, and their guts couldn’t handle it, he was pretty sure. Luke didn’t like eating anyway. He had tried “here comes the airplane,” and his son had launched the mashed banana and kiwi fruit all over May’s new kitchen backsplash. He had tried making other baby noises and his son spat in his face while May tried not to snicker behind her hand as she did the dishes.
He never usually stayed this long. He never usually got this involved.
It wasn’t as if there weren’t one-offs. An ex-lover here who was too tired to do something would suddenly find his dishes done and children fed and laundry all folded away. Another would have their child picked up from kindergarten, even though they had struggled to arrange child minding so that they could take this job interview or attend that audition.
But that had been snap of the fingers stuff, or bribing a naiad to wear a wig with a heavy use of the mist to cover everything the rest of the way.
This was… different. Intimate. Baby Luke glared up at him, his mouth opening and closing in frustration as Hermes tried to figure out at least some way he could get the boy to eat. This was… parenting. He was the boy’s father. He was his dad. Maybe he’d even call him as such. Maybe he’d stick around long enough to find out.
May looked over at him and smiled, “Were you ever this stubborn?”
“Absolutely,” he said. “And more.” He wiped some spittle away from his baby’s mouth and brushed his curls away from his face. There was a threat of a tantrum building on his face, his expression ready to screw up with a moment’s notice, but he could do his best to abate it. “He’ll do well.”
“He’s strong,” she said, smiling distantly.
He knew what she was thinking. He had seen that expression on a thousand peoples’ faces. Acceptance. Resignation. Knowing that he was going to leave and choosing not to fight it. Stepping down with dignity. She knew what he was a god. She knew that he had other lovers, was with some of them right then. Was doing a thousand other things with a thousand other people at that moment.
He wanted to brush her hair back from her face, and kiss her, and let her kiss the baby while he held him. He wanted to tell her that he was going to stay forever, that Luke would know his father.
He could see it in her eyes that she knew that too. And she wasn’t going to say anything because he couldn’t either.
“I love you,” he said instead. It held a thousand promises but tied no strings. There was no contract signed. No agreement made. He wanted to be here for as long as he could, but as he looked at his boy’s face, he knew that it wouldn’t be that much longer. It would soon be impossible.
“I love you too.” She understood this. And she accepted it.
He visited May when Luke wasn’t in the house. It was he who disposed of the rotten and mouldy and burnt trays of cookies, destroying the old ones and replacing them with brand new versions. He threw out the Kool-Aid she kept buying for Luke.
She stared at him dully, or cried about their son’s fate, and cursed and wailed. He stayed when he could. Luke stayed away.
He knew that he couldn’t stand to be in the house. He heard his prayers, when he hid in the cupboards because the spirit of the Oracle had risen again in their mother, a cruel approximation of what had once been.
He couldn’t do anything to stop it. His son’s destiny was to die young. It was the destiny of a great many demigods, whether they knew it or not. His son would die. It was a fact. He could not stop it. But he could try to get him into Elysium. Try to spare him the numbing of the Fields of Asphodel, or the agony of Punishment. But for that his son needed to be a hero. And in this day and age that meant that he could not have his godly father there.
So Hermes avoided him. He stayed away from the house in Connecticut when Luke was home from school and he never helped in a way his son would have recognised.
He performed his duties. Delivered mail. Guided travellers. Hosted demigods in his cabin at camp whom he never looked at twice. If he had, he might have realised that some of them were his children too. That he had more offspring in the world than Luke Castellan. For the most part he did not. His vision was myopic. He cared about his children. He loved them, when he knew that they existed. But that was where the care ended. It was where the love stopped. He did not know them, and that was by design. He barely knew Luke. He must have loved Kool-Aid and peanut butter sandwiches at some point. He must have been a fast runner and a quick thinker. But he didn’t know about his anger. He could only guess at his fright. He could not afford to know. He did not dare find out.
When Luke had run, he had been expecting it. May didn’t realise. Not for a few days. She was better when he was there, so when Hermes returned to dispose of her baking and cooking, her eyes cleared of the fog.
“He’s gone,” was all she said.
Hermes did not say anything. His quick tongue had no good resolution to this. He only nodded and held her as she cried.
As a traveller, his son could be guided by him. Helped by him. He could, to an extent, justify keeping him safe. Guiding him to the monsters he could beat, the ones with weapons he could take. Weapons those monsters had taken from other demigods. Many from his own children.
He guided him to the daughter of Zeus, determined to keep him safe. Desperate for him to have a reason to go to camp. He would not do it for himself, but he might do it for Thalia Grace, who had no chance to survive like he did. Not with Hades on her back for being born against the oath, or Hera on her back for being born full stop. He had urged his legs on forward when he had been running up Half-Blood Hill, the daughter of Athena with him, Hermes’ own half-sister behind them. He urged him past the boundary, into safety, even as Thalia Grace fell, and a tree grew over her. Immortalised in pine, like a fly in amber.
He had appeared then, as psychopomp, alongside Thanatos, but no soul appeared for them to deliver to Charon. His children, and all the children of camp were out of their cabins, running wild at the sight of the monsters Hades had delivered to their doorstep, all mostly ash now, except for the Furies, who had already completed their katabasis to their master.
Luke and the daughter of Athena were with Chiron, being fed ambrosia and nectar, wrapped in blankets and given various hot beverages to cope with… well, to cope with everything that had just happened. Or their whole lives. It wasn’t as if the existence of a demigod was an easy one.
His son may have not succeeded today but that would be fine. There would be time enough for him to become enough of a hero that he might not face punishment, that he might still be remembered. Hermes would make sure of that.
Interference on quests was forbidden. Especially for gods who had assigned them. Especially with their children. Only certain liberties were allowed, and Hermes had taken every single one.
His gift of the flying shoes had gone down well, or so he had thought initially. His son had sacrificed a double portion of his dinner to him, mumbling things he treasured to hear in that haze of sacrificial smoke. But when he had a listen in later, just when he was popping in to Chiron to check some details about a strawberry delivery going wrong, he had heard Luke cursing his name instead. Or, to be specific, just cursing him. His name would have been an alert, even for a god as busy and called upon as him.
He watched him set off from the skies, two friends alongside him, an unclaimed demigod who was sleeping in Cabin Eleven, and the child of a minor god whom he couldn’t be bothered to recognise on sight.
Apollo had told him what his oracle, in its haggard, terrible, evil state had told his son with a stone face, his eyes far off in the distance. Hermes wanted to have hope. He prayed for it to the Fates. The only beings who could know. But they couldn’t change it now either. The future had been set.
But prophecies were never as one expected them to turn out. He had been around long enough, he had seen enough to know that there was always a joke in it, a twist of the knife, a horrid little piece of irony trapped in the poem.
If this one was so devastating, then maybe that was the joke. If it portended only disaster then surely they would all return safe and sound, or at least Luke would. Could. Prophecies always turned out the way you never expected them to. Except for when you did. Except when you changed your expectations. Except for when your son was just too careless, just too slow.
Three demigods had alighted from Half-Blood Hill, chatting and grinning, full of plans, almost bubbling over with excitement, or fear.
One returned, his head bent to the ground so no one had to see the mark upon his face. Luke’s failure could be read the whole way through his body, through every sinew of his being. There was no apple. And there were no two demigods. Was there even a hero?
In the end, he might have had Percy Jackson to thank for it. The boy - not a man, sixteen hadn’t been man for a long time - stood over his son’s corpse as his vision tunnelled, immortal knees almost buckling. Luke had not been small in years. He had been a tall, lithe boy, and when he had- when Kronos had overtaken him, he had grown in stature, even as his own being had shrunk.
The boy lying beside the son of Poseidon, eyes glassy, staring up at nothing at all, was as small as a newborn infant to Hermes. As delicate and breakable.
“He was a hero,” Perseus Jackson insisted.
Hermes needed it to be kept like that. He needed it to be remembered like that. He needed Luke to be remembered.