Prompt #028 - Children

Prompt #028 - Children

Beside Still Waters
Time Frame: From Percy arriving at Camp Half-Blood Forward
Pairing: None
POV: Poseidon

**

“A day's light told me of my son's fate
Pulled under the raging waters, my child
Sank in the drowning currents, my son
Guardian of the shore will sleep in your warmth
Lull the folk of cold water
Banish the serpents of the dark
To the river let me go and fetch my son away
Untouched I shall walk by the river of the night
My child
My son”

-Silent Waters by: Amorphis

**

It is at moments like these that I cannot stand being a god.

What is the point, I wonder, of controlling the entire might of the oceans if there is nothing I can do for my son? I see him, I watch him from high up in the clouds on my throne and I can do nothing.

I watched him grow. My little boy having to face the evils of the world alone, not knowing how special he was, how important he was. That killed me. To see him sitting in class or in his room, thinking he was stupid and a loser and a nobody—for him to have to go through it alone.

I should have been there to tell him the ancient stories as he fell asleep at night. I should have been the one to teach him how to hold a sword. I should have been there, telling him how vital he was, how strong he would become.

I should have been there to be his father.

But I wasn’t.

And now my son is growing older everyday, and each day the powers of evil and chaos grow steadily closer to him. From up on Olympus I can see as he cannot on the ground. And I watch in anguish as a tangible dark cloud slowly closes in on my son.
And there is nothing I can do but watch.

I yearn to be down there, to help him, to fight for him—to show him his father is strong and powerful and there for him.

But the time for protecting him is long over. My chance for that has slipped through my fingers like water through a sieve.

I lost my chance to be there for my son.

And now he must face his trials alone, regardless of how much it kills me to watch him hurt and cry and feel lost and abandoned.

There is nothing I can do now but watch as my pride and joy—my Percy—attempts to navigate the rushing, violent currents of his life.

There is nothing I can do now but hope with every fiber of my being that calm waters await him further downstream.

~fin~