Chapter Three
“The smallest of ripples can grow to be a tsunami,”
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They spend only a day in Maryland, only long enough to clean up from the road and rest in real beds in a hotel room. Her father spends most of that time on the phone.
And then he is driving them to the airport, leaving the RV and their things behind indefinitely. When they get back, there will be no more road trips, no more star gazing in the middle of the night, no more lessons and no more hunting monsters that are meant to hunt her.
No more father and daughter touring the surrounding states.
No more.
•
Poppy is in the dark, deep in the dark where sunlight will never reach. This darkness is heavy, this darkness is oppressive. Poppy can not breathe.
Poppy can not breathe.
This darkness is not is not comforting, this darkness is not light or soft or gentle. This darkness will kill her before she even has a chance to live.
When she breaches the darkness, it is so so cold. And then the hands wrap around her ankles and pulls her
Down.
Down.
Down.
It feels like it’s already been hours and she has long learnt what it meant to drown.
Poppy is falling, and this darkness is not shadows or night. This darkness is heavy, this darkness is oppressive, and it’s pressure feels like the troll has grabbed him around the rib and squeezed until there was nothing left to squeeze.
This darkness is not her home.
It is the sea and she is not welcome.
This darkness is seeping into her lungs, taking up everything little bit of room her body has to give. It is taking everything she is, everything she could have been.
Death takes all.
Poppy can’t breathe and now she can tell you what it is like to drown.
•
She wakes with a scream stuck in her throat, and she chokes on it like she chocked on the water.
When her vision clears, she is on the floor of the hotel room, hands and knees digging into the carpet. She welcomes the burn of it against her skin. She breathes in the cool air, the smell of lavender incense so strong she can taste it at the back of her tongue.
She tried to forget the feel of water rushing down her throat, tries to forget the feel of hands like shackles wrapped around her ankles, tries to forget the feel of heavy heavy darkness that isn’t and never will be home.
She stays there for a long time, simply breathing.
•
Poppy is not arrogant enough to say she is fearless.
No, not even Harry had been fearless, no matter what Snape would spit at him. They are both afraid of dozens of different things. Harry was afraid of himself, more often then not, he was afraid of what or who he would become if he was friendless, if he was loveless.
Sometimes he would be afraid of freedom. He would be afraid of living a life outside of war. He would be afraid of what came after Tom Riddle and his Prophecy.
He was terrified of that Horcrux in his head. And it made him question he was, had been, and ever would be. Made him question himself, made him think; Where did Tom Riddle stop and Harry Potter begin?
Poppy is not too prideful to say she isn’t afraid of drowning or depths too deep for the sunlight to have ever touched. She knows the Potomac doesn’t go on forever, she knows it isn’t deep enough to hold monster and beings still untold, but it had felt like it.
She hasn’t taken a bath or gone swimming since she was eight years old. That is proof enough the Poppy has never been and will never be without fear.
Most nights the same dream wakes her before dawn can even come. She always comes up from that darkness with phantom water forcing its way down her throat and making a home for itself in her lungs.
Gods, as if almost drowning when retrieving Gryffindor’s Sword wasn’t enough to fuel her nightmares of water that run too deep for her to fathom.
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It starts like this; They board a plane, it is their last trip together and the final thing her father has to do to gain back his divinity. Their things are stashed away in Maryland and their two carry-on bags are on their shoulders.
They board a plane, the first one Poppy has ever ridden in either of her lives, and it takes them to Nevada.
[Tick, Tick, Tick.]
[Snip, Snip, Snip.]
Nearly five hours later, they step off the plane and into Las Vegas. The airport is crowded, filled to the max with people and luggage and noise.
Death lingers too, but not much for a place that is constantly packed to the brim and always open. After all, the planes don’t crash at the airport.
Her hand is held tightly in her father’s palm as he weaves their way out of the building and into exodus of tourists and taxis.
“The Lotus Hotel and Casino, please,” Tamas tells the cabbie with a flick from the black card that’s always in his wallet.
“You got it,” the cabbie says and her father slides up the divider.
There are bags under her fathers eyes, and faint stubble on his chin, and this man is unmistakably human, a face in the crowd that only stands out when you look to close at his dark eyes.
He’s always looked like this to her, besides that hazy moment before she hit the water where he had been toomuchtoomuchtoomuch, she doesn’t know how he will look when he is once again Thanatos - Personification of Death.
He would have no more bags under his eyes because he will not need to sleep, he will not grow stubble unless he wants to, his hands will not shake because he will be non-human.
He will not be Tamas Kimura again.
She doesn’t jerk when his hands smooths through her hair, doesn’t even scowl when he ruffles it. Poppy will love her father always, she will cherish every gentle and kind touch he freely and unconditionally gives her.
[Yes, Harry did have James, Sirius and Remus, but they were but fleeting moments in his life, a year or two before they were gone and he would never see them again.
Yes, Harry had father figures and people he looked up too, but he had never had a father who raised him, who stayed for him.
This is a novelty he doubts he’ll ever get used too.]
“Just three days,” he says to her then, “then we’ll get to visit your mother,”
“Okay.” she nods and lays her head in his shoulder. He is always so warm.
She’ll miss this.
•
The first thing she notices when she steps out of the cab is the lights, the sheer number, the quantity of lights. Flashing and beaming, she can’t see a single star in the sky. They seem to block out even the moon. It’s like she amongst spell fire again, in the middle of a battle again, with the blood of friend and foe staining her crimson again.
[It’s like she fighting a war again, like she sees magic again, like she’s dying again.]
She winced and decides then that she will spend their nights here inside and away from the headache. [Away from the memories, the cold, the white of the train station. The vast expansion of death’s domain, twisted into one of her favorite places.]
Her father steps out beside her and goes to help the cabbie pull out their duffel bags from the trunk. He thanks the man, hands him some bills that make the man stutter and then walks back up to her.
“Remember, do not eat anything they try to give you, always make sure you tell me where you are going, don’t play any of the games, and never be without your weapons,” he says in a whisper as they walk past the valet and into the pulsing building.
They are only two steps into the building when she feels it. Everything seems to still, just for a moment, the world goes hazy and her perception is warped. It feels like she ducked her head under water and then just stayed there.
If she hadn’t felt this before, when she was thirteen years old with that time-turner around her neck, they she probably wouldn’t have noticed it at all.
And that is a terrifying thought. Not noticing how the very time in this building went still and then sluggish, and then heavy like it was a physical weight stopping you from ever walking back out of those doors.
“I understand, Tou-san,” she says right back.
Then they walk forward and are immediately confronted with a metal tray filled with lotuses.
You’d have all the time in the world here, if only you’d stay.
Something whispers at her, rearing up when the flowers catch her sight.
Just one bite. Just one game.
It coaxes and the hair on the back of her neck stands on end.
Lotophagi, or Lotus-eaters. The temptation to grab one is easy enough to push away, but only because she had been warned. A glance around shows her that hundreds of other people didn’t get that.
They took just a bite, they played just one game, and now they no longer have a life. She wonders what the people under their spell see as they roam the game and bars.
All she sees are gaunt bodies slowly being drained of their life, willing and pliant food for monsters to feast on until their souls give out.
•
Las Vegas is riddled with death. Slow death and instant death, prolonged death and premature death. It’s near visible, like heat radiating from concrete, like the sun warming the road so much that when the rain falls, steam rises from it.
Sin City is overrun with it, the scent sticks to the very ground like alcohol can from a person’s and cigarette smoke can permeate from clothes.
The very core of the city itself soaked with death. The death of people, the death of life and love, the death of both happiness and sadness and everything inbetween. The death of a thousand different things.
[She feels the death do all things. He is the death of all things.]
But no place more than The Casino, where the bodies never die but the mind withers and the soul shrinks and the very life in their bodies are devoured.
She spends the first night there struggling to sleep. She lays in the bed provided by monsters, she twists and turns in a room that is no longer used but used to be. She can feel it, the slow seeping death that takes decades, and even now, floors above the lobby, she can hear that insistent whisper of you’ll have all the time in the world.
Just one, just one, just one, justonejustonejustone-
Distantly, she wonders if it hurts, this slow death that drags. She wonders if they can feel it, or if the food and the games are so hypnotizing that they really don’t notice.
She wonders if any of them fear it, or if they are glad they played that first game or took that first bite.
Would she regret it? If it meant she could spend what could be an eternity with her father. Would she want forever?
Poppy isn’t sure, but somewhere inside her Harry screams immortality isn’t all it’s chalked up to be.
[Harry never wanted forever, but Harry didn’t have a father, he didn’t have a family. He had never been someone’s son, just their savior and occasionally their friend.
Would Poppy die for her father? Yes.
Would she live forever for him? She doesn’t know.]
•
The first day, she spends it walking through the games with her sword brandished in plain sight. The waiters steer clear of her because of it and she really is glad.
She wanders through the very back of the top floor, where games are fading and the humans have near translucent skin. They will fade and fade and fade until there is nothing else to siphon from them.
It takes her hours to just get one of their gazes to leave their flickering games. And even if she killed every last Lotophagi, they wouldn’t survive, their lives have been stretched too thin.
They will die with their games just as they have lived decades with them.
Humans aren’t meant to live forever.
She looks at them and thinks yes, she would regret it. Trading her life for years that won’t even be her own.
She looks at them and thinks, Death would be a mercy. The voice, the lures, stay silent after that.
•
She rests easier the next time her father tells her it’s time to sleep. Either because of the now quiet temptation of all the time in the world or because she caved and crawled into her father’s bed. Poppy thinks it’s the latter.
She dreams of red eyes and whispering wands and shifting gentle veil as Sirius Black slipped through. She dreams of the way his scream echoed through that chamber as Sirius fell, the way Bellatrix Lestrange laughed under Harry’s curse and the way Voldemort tired to coax so gently that orb from his palms.
She dreams of the way she stared right back, right back into red slitted eyes, didn’t dare look away, then let that prophecy slip through his fingers and shatter at his feet.
The way Voldemort roared when he couldn’t burrow into Harry’s head, and the way Harry himself had laughed.
She dreams and the monsters around her rage.
After all, Harry would never really be tempted with Immortality. He’s seen what happened to humans who try to live forever.
•
What should feel like the second day has her walking out the door of the casino and just keeps walking, slid past the cars and the lightbulbs and the curb and walked into the mall across the street.
She is petty enough to stand outside the casino for what actually is hours just to show that these things will never have power over her, that lost sleep and nightmares will never get her to break or give in or give up.
Poppy walks outside and hopes they can hear her laugh. After all, even Voldemort in her head didn’t break Harry.
She’s looking for a table in one of the card game rooms when she see the little boy, a small thing with alarmingly pale cheeks and tense shoulders and too dark eyes.
This is where it starts, with a little boy who has too-dark eyes. Ones that Poppy herself shares with him. Ones that almost all children of the underworld share with each other. Dark eyes that see too much and stretch too thin because children do not come easy to them.
This is a demigod. She watches him for a while, watches him shuffle his cards and lay them out and do it all over again. Watches long enough to see that the waiter’s don’t approach him, and no games flare for his attention.
She walks over, breaches that bubble that keeps all from him, because Poppy is Harry and Harry could never let a mystery pass him by.
•
Her first words to Nico Di Angelo are “Would you like a chicken nugget?” As she brandished her Macdonald's bag and let’s her sword slip back into flashlight.
Because really, he looks like he needs to eat. Whatever food he’s getting here clearly isn’t doing its job. He eyes and cheeks are sunken, his skin pale, near translucent even, though he clearly isn’t caucasian, Spanish, Italian or Cuban maybe, he should have a tan. So she can also say the lack of sunlight doesn’t help either.
And she continues with these “Or some french fries? I’ve got plenty,”
He stares at her for a second before a shy smile slips on his face and he stutters out a “S-sure,”
Poppy smiles and pushed a happy meal over to him. “I’m Penelopeia, but my dad calls me Poppy. What’s your name?”
“Nico,”
•
It goes like this, they talk for what feels like minutes but is really hours and Poppy has found someone that also feels it but doesn’t know why.
The boy, Nico, has a sister who’s name is Bianca, he doesn’t remember his own last name, nor his mother, nor his father. He is twelve years old and he likes playing a Greek mythology based card game.
He doesn’t remember the year he is born or how long he has been in the casino, he doesn’t remember the last time he went outside or even if he has been to school.
Poppy can’t imagine how long he has been here for it to be so bad. For his memories to be fading and his eyes to sink and his cheeks gaunt and pale. They might not be eating at him, but they are killing him.
She thinks again; Humans are not meant for immortality.
This is how it goes, Poppy makes a friend even though she knows she will leave him behind just like she did all the others. Again and again and again, gods why must she torture herself?
[Because Harry was nothing without his friends and here he is, living again after leaving them behind. Here he is, still grasping for straws and souls and solace. Still searching for them, missing them, loving them.
Harry doubts he would ever stop, and hates that way he looks at these children and thinks not enough, not right, not RonHermioneLunaNevilleGinny.
Because Harry Potter would always be nothing without his friends, and he hasn’t learned to cope without them.]
They talk for hours and she doesn’t see her father watching them.
•
“Please, can't you stay?” He pleads, clutching the cheep toy, from the happy meal they had eaten this morning, in his hands. Her own are white knuckled around her suitcase handle.
“I’m sorry,” she choked out and wrapped her arms around him. Held him there. Because she was leaving, was allowed to leave, but this boy who had been stuck here for who knows how long doesn’t get to come with her.
He’s shorter than her, even though he is what should be a year older.
The man, the monster, pries Nico’s hands from Poppy’s coat and pulls him away. Back to his sister’s side. Back into the dozens of Lotophagi, back into the casino and away from the doors.
Poppy doesn’t struggle as her father pulls her away, knowing she can’t fight that monster, not here and not from who she thinks these kids are. She won’t win, not when her father is still Tamas and not Thanatos.
She wouldn’t win against who she suspects their father is.
She tries to smile.
[Have a spoiler: It doesn’t work.]
•
“Tou-san,” she says as they walk towards the entrance, “they were demigods, Underworld Demigods,”
He looks back, eyes dark and wide, and says “I know,” then put a large hand on her head and forces her to look away. The boy, so so small, just keeps looking. It almost makes her wish she didn’t have to leave, no matter how vile the very air in this place made her feel.
Then they walk out the door and leave the two children with dark shadowed eyes behind.
It feels like it’s been only hours, but really it’s been days.
•
“You can not speak of this to anyone,” he says later, after they are back on the ground in Maryland. “Not of those demigods, you need to forget about them completely.”
“But-” she starts.
“You have to promise not to tell anyone of those demigods, Penelope. Or your very life will be on the line,” he interrupts, eyes more desperate than they have been since that bridge.
“…Okay, I promise.”
[She doesn’t tell him about the phone she slipped into Nico’s pocket. Nor the notebook, map and wad of money she left in that Macdonald's bag back at Nico’s table.
This is the first time she has kept something from her father. She doesn’t know if she will regret it.
But she is so so tired of leaving them behind.]
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Poppy stares at the bridge in the distance, tall over the buildings, the angle is just right to view the entire thing.
She wonders what the people in the distance had seen when she and her mother were thrown off of it.
The police reports are filled with descriptions of two large trucks with red headlights swerving through the divider and smashing into their small car. They had rolled twice before hanging precariously over the edge.
Then the cars came again, and knocked the car clean off into the bridge. They flew out a good ten feet. Her mother was already dead by this point, died from the impact of the second flip. It must of been the force of the rushing water that tore Poppy through the windshield and out into the currents.
When the car flew, the two gigantic trucks with red headlights sped away.
Only Poppy and her mother had seen anything different. The glowing ruby eyes of the Colchis Bull, the gigantic bulk of their bronze hide and massive horns.
The horns had pierced straight through the windshield and the other just barely missed Poppy midsection. They flipped when the bulls flung them from their horns. They charged again and their car went flying.
Her mother had been dead by that point, and the last thing she had seen where those bulls’ red eyes.
You do not have to wonder why she hates them down to the very bones of her being, why the color still makes her flinch, makes her shudder, makes her nails dig into the into her palm until they bleed.
You do not have to wonder why Poppy, why Harry, will probably never get over her trauma she associates with the color red and everything it entails remembering.
•
•
“Hello, Kaa-san,” Poppy says to the stone craved with Lycoris Kimura’s name. Japanese does not comes as easily as Latin, Greek or English, but it was her mother’s so it will be hers.
Poppy sits crossed legged infront to the gravestone, fingers tracing over the dates beneath her mother’s name.
“In all actuality, I hope you do not hear me. That you won’t or can’t. I hope you’re somewhere happy in Elysium or somewhere happy in reincarnation. Somewhere happy and safe and loved,” The wind is soft through her hair, the gravel crunches under her toes, Poppy did not expect an answer. She knows that he dead are meant to stay dead.
“I’m going to Camp Half-Blood in just a few days. It’s been…a lot of work to get ready enough. With the Gods and the monsters and even the Demi-gods vying for my blood,”
Her father doesn’t say it but she knows what she will face there. Gods who think she shouldn’t be alive, monsters wishing for the first taste of Thanatos’ child, Demi-gods thinking she is a monster herself. Prophecies and quests and impossible things they will try and kill her with.
She will be in as much danger at camp then she is in the real world. Perhaps more so, with the easy reach the gods have there. Worshiped by the humans there, given prayers and food and power.
She knows that, once again, luck is the only reason she survived. Or perhaps, she knows that, once again, fate is the only reason she still lives.
“Tou-san has survived without his divinity for two years, though. Can you believe it? You had to teach him how to make pancakes just a little while ago.” Her smiles fades like the setting sun, and she tries to make up what her mother would say in respond, how she would talk. If she would laugh alongside her as they made fun of their god.
“I miss you.” She chokes up, words fighting past the lump in her throat, “I miss you so so much. I don’t know if I told you this enough, I can’t remember if I told you this enough, but I love you. I love you more than I know what to do with, and the grief I feel is still raw and open and bleeding out, your absence still aches and pulses with every beat of my heart,” Her heart cracks just like her voice does.
“I miss you so much. I love you so much. I think I’ve forgotten the sound of your voice, you know. Can’t quiet remember the way you native accent twisted around your American one. I can’t remember what you sounded like when you sung,” She crying now, tears she’s held back for many many months finally spilling. Without her permission and without any restraint. They darken the stone like rain, and she almost wishes it would. Her mother loves the rain, would take her out dancing when it stormed and laugh in the face of flash flood warnings.
They would drink hot chocolate each and everytime, soaked to the bone and dripping on the hardwood floor. Their laughs so loud the downstairs neighbors would bang on their roof with a broom. Her mother had bruised many hips slipping and sliding about with that bright smile on her face and shining auburn stars for her eyes.
“Am I going to forget your face, one day? Am I going to forget what you looked like? The exact color of your eyes? Am I going to forget the splotchy birthmark splattered on your thigh?” She’s sobbing, words coming out in too short gasps. She misses her mother like she misses her magic. She misses her mother like you would miss an eye or a limb or your tongue.
Sometimes she would turn to talk to her, and then breaks her own heart right back open when she realizes she would never be there to talk to her again.
“I’ll pray to every divine power out there that I don’t,” She says eventually, when breath goes a bit easier and her tears stop falling. “I’ll come back here again. It just might be awhile, but I promise I’ll come back and talk to you again. I’ll tell you all the stories of things Tou-san had to learn about,” Poppy stands, the rocks shifting beneath her. She lays a hand on the gravestone.
“I promise.” She vows with her tears and her will and her love. “I’ll be back.”
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She and her father split ways for the first and final time only a few days later. Her boarding a train at Pennsylvania Station so she can make her way to Montauk. Him driving their car to a storage unit and then making his way back up to Olympus for the first time in two years.
The next time she will see her father, he will be Thanatos, Personification of Death. She doesn’t even know when that next time will be, because time passes differently on Olympus.
It could be weeks, could be months, could even years before he’s permitted to even glance at her. Let alone see her in person. What if Zeus never let’s her see her father again? What if she will be alone until the day she dies? What if-
“My Poppy,” her father says when she jerks back to awareness, his hand passes gently through her hair. “We will see each other soon, they will want me to teach you to use your power. They don’t want a demigod running around with unknown powers without training or discipline. Especially a child of Death.”
She nods, but he squats down when she doesn’t hide the watering of her eyes fast enough. Curse that trip to the gravestone, now her emotions are all out of wack and not listening to anything she tries to do to get them under control.
“My dear, you are my one and only child. If they think they can keep me from you, then they have forgotten themselves entirely.”
The train announcement blares, Poppy’s knuckles are white from the force of her grip on the backpack strap. She hugs her father and relishes in the feeling of her arms wrapped tightly around her.
She will miss him.
They stay like that until the last call comes. She steps out of his arms and onto the train.
“I love you, πενελόπη*. Stay safe and stay alive.”
[Harry had never been good with goodbyes. He had never known what to say or how to say them. Before he was eleven, he didn’t have anyone to say goodbye too. And as the years went by, his fear of saying goodbye and then never getting to say hello again intensified.
He hadn’t wanted goodbye to be the last words he said to the people he cared about. And now he has to say goodbye to the only father she has ever had.
She’s never been good with goodbyes, she doesn’t know how to deal with the things these words make her feel. She never been good with letting these feelings out, never been good with putting them into words for people to understand.
She doesn't know how to tell her father she would rather be cast into Tartarus itself then never see him again.]
“I love you too, πατέρας*. See you soon.”
You could go one hundred lifetimes without seeing a god cry, but Poppy sees it now. Mortal body holding the Personification of Death itself, with tears gathering in his eyes as he kneels before her and brings her ear to rest on his beating heart.
One could go a hundred lifetimes, but Poppy has only had two, and she sees it now.
It makes him seem more human.
She wonders if he’ll still cry after he ascends once again, to become Thanatos and leave Tamas behind. To bleed ichor instead of iron, to accept divinity back into his body and his bones and his being.
To be a god.
[Would he still cry when she dies just like her mother did?]
She still doesn’t know how to tell him goodbye.