Rage against the Heavens: chapter 25: Crybaby

I heard the portal close behind me, not like a door slamming shut, not like a gate locking behind a prisoner but like a whisper ceasing mid-sentence, like breath halting on the cusp of confession. Soft, final, certain like a dying breath. 

 The air didn’t tremble when it vanished. It was as if the world in its entirety except just me forgot that something unnatural had been there. 

It would have been so very easy to vanish into the air, to reach out with thought and twist space around me, threading home from one point in existence to another like tugging on a stray string. I could have returned to my doorstep in less than the time it takes for a person to take a breath. I could have but I didn't. I wanted to think, kinda to relax and this early when the streets of L.A were not as they would be in hours, walking felt like the best option to do so.

So I walked.

Los Angeles in winter did not feel like a city. The morning sky had the color of forgotten Polaroids, pale blues fading at the edges, sunlight diluted by smog that carried the echoes of engines and burning hope. 

The palms leaned like old men nodding off during church sermons, proud and tired. Pavement still steamed in places, refusing the season’s lie of cold. Christmas decorations clung to storefronts when they were not necessary anymore. Neon buzzed, sharp and ugly, spilling color into puddles. This city felt as if it was a bruise made of light.

Beside me, Thalia slept, nestled in my arms, her breath faint and fragile against my collarbone. She was weightless in my arms, and yet heavier than what she had been in my memories. I did not know what she was dreaming of while sleeping.  I just hoped it was a kind one, a happy one. That was the least that she deserved after everything she had gone through.

I twisted atoms around us through the use of adaptive material synthesis, not like a weaver but like a surgeon, precise and deliberate. Invisibility was simple. Ensuring we could not be seen was basic. Photons were rearranged. But I knew better than to stop there. I bent sound, rerouted smell, unraveled the microscopic trace of our presence. We were not just unseen. if anything, it would be as if we unhappened.

Better safe than sorry. It better be overkill than not doing anything, even more so with my daughter sleeping in my arms

We passed billboards arranged like tombstones in a graveyard. And one of them, wide, ugly, shining with the leprous glow of televised fiction,spoke of me without saying my name.

“Natural Gas Explosion Devastates Alexander’s Island.”  

The words rolled like bad theatre. Dramatic. Hollow. False.

The screen flickered with images of ruin, what remained of the island: a fractured mass of stone, half-swallowed by the sea. Chasms where land had once laughed under sunlight. Ash blooming like rotten flowers.

And I smiled.

Because it looked as I knew it would like a god’s wrath. As if a blade forged from the spine of a mountain had been swung down by a hand drunk with fury. Which, in a way, it had. Slash Emperor,the black blade, the anti-divine weapon I had brought to bring a deity low had sung through the air like an aria of unmaking. I kinda was still salty about the fact that I missed Hecate. At least, all of this resulted in having Thalia back.

Even then, Olympus had dressed it all up in a scene worthy of the theatre, in a bad one.

Even then, Gas leaks? Really? That was the lie they chose? They could’ve said a meteor, or a naval bombing, or something else But no, gas. I thought I was reincarnated in the Percy Jackson Universe, not the Nasuverse.

And why? Because they knew nothing. I was sure that Hecate would make sure that the gods would not know more than the normal people. It was in her interest. More than that, if Olympus knew, truly knew—that their beloved Hecate had dueled me in secret and almost lost her immortal life for it even though it should not have been possible, Zeus, that petty roach-god with thunder for morals, would have had my face plastered on every screen, carved into schoolbooks, whispered in nursery rhymes under the label of “Public Menace Number One.”

So I smiled wider.

Still, with Thalia back, caution would be the meal and the meat. I would take no chances. Not with her. Hecate had lent me aid, yes but trusting her was like trusting a loaded gun not to fire. Useful, dangerous, unpredictable. Even allies had limits. And gods? Gods had expiration dates for their promises especially Greek ones.

My bodyguards didn't see me approach with me still being concealed.

My home stood waiting in Hancock Park. The façade hadn’t changed, white stone, black ironwork like scorched lace. Nothing seemed to have changed since I left to fight against Hecate but within, I saw something… unexpected.

I stepped in. Silent.

And then I froze, not because of danger. Because said expect proved itself true. It was not the bad kind of unexpected.

Beryl, my sister, was embracing Elpida.

Elpida. The artificial girl, the homunculus I had created. The one who wore my features like borrowed glass. The one meant to retrieve Thalia. The one I no longer needed to.

Beryl clung to her like she might vanish, her arms not tight but careful, trembling like someone holding a sparrow made of flame. “Be careful,” she said barely more than breath, soft as guilt.

She hadn’t seen me. Of course she hadn’t. But Elpida had. Her eyes flicked toward me, no wider than a blink but it was enough. Even with atoms twisted, it's as if she could sense the ripple made by my presence.

It seemed that had made her very well.

Standing like that, in the arms of my sister, she didn't feel or look like a thing, a tool but a person.

And that thought didn’t repulse me. It comforted me, in a way I hadn’t expected. She had a mind. A will. A self.

I would not deactivate her. Whatever came next, she deserved a path. A future. Maybe not the one I had designed for her but then, was there anything more humans to break all free of what others expected from u, designed for us to do?

And Beryl… she sounded like a mother, like when she had when she had been caring for me when I was younger, before Lance.

Not the woman Thalia had hated, that I had seen as a pale shadow of what my sister once was. Not the woman who once had hurt the ones she had loved because of a dream, not the woman who sometimes seemed afraid to breathe in my presence as if it would be enough for me to have enough of her, not like the woman who thought and acted as if she was damned and wasn’t sure she deserved redemption. But a woman who remembered what it meant to care. It had been years since I saw her wear concern like this, concern in such a motherly way. It didn’t fit, not yet. But it could. Maybe.

But Thalia had suffered under her hand. Too often. Too cruelly. I did not know if forgiveness would ever be a flavor Thalia could taste again. Or if she even wanted to. I wouldn’t blame her.

I hoped for healing. But I would not let hope blind me.

If Beryl proved a thorn again, I’d cut the rose, stem and all.

This time, I would raise Thalia. I already had, in many ways. The role of caretaker wasn’t something Beryl would probably hold anymore. Maybe, maybe, maybe she could become more again. But that depended on Thalia. Not on blood. Not on me. Not on guilt. Not on her.

I walked toward them. Carefully. With precision.

And then, I let the veil fall.

Sound returned to me. Presence returned to me. I became real to the world again.

Beryl’s head snapped up, eyes locking on me like someone seeing a ghost in the flesh. Her mouth parted. Her gaze dropped to the sleeping form in my arms, and her expression dear God it cracked open.

Not just shock. Not just relief.

Reverence.

As if she’d prayed to something she didn’t believe in and received an answer anyway. As if the universe had, for one reckless moment, been kind.

Tears welled. But she didn’t sob. She didn’t move. She whispered, as if daring to speak too loud would tear the moment like wet paper.

“You came back. You found her.”

I smiled. Not a grin. Not triumph. Just… warmth. The kind of warmth that’s never loud. The kind that burns without light.

“I told you, didn’t I?” I said. “I told you I’d bring her home.”

And for that moment, just that one there was no Olympus. No schemes. No gods.

Only a brother. A sister. And a sleeping girl who deserved a world better than the one we’d been born into.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I had laid her down gently, carefully, almost ceremonial… Her breath had steadied, a soft rhythm like the tide brushing the edge of a forgotten shore. She hadn’t stirred. Not even when I smoothed her hair out of her face, not even when I whispered her name, as if to remind her that this place, however unfamiliar it might first appear, knew her.  

Thalia was in bed. And she was safe.

That was what mattered.

The house, my house, had never been meant for more than me. When I’d bought it, I hadn’t thought about guest rooms, shared walls, or whether the sun hit the eastern windows just right in the morning. I hadn’t thought about how footsteps would sound on the hallway tiles, or how voices would carry if the walls were thin. I hadn’t thought at all.  

It had simply been a roof.  

And yet, now? The spare rooms had grown into small blessings, folded into the day like unexpected coins in an old coat pocket. More and more, I found myself grateful for every door, every hallway. A home too large for one man, yes, but just enough for what I had become.  

For who I had chosen to protect.  

I’d abused Adaptive Material Synthesis. That much was undeniable. I had used the  star I carried inside my mind to all its potential, using it to recreate, to draw memories into reality. To reconstruct the old bedroom Thalia had once claimed as hers in my old apartment, back when she still lived under my care. When I had not had to give up on her.

The sheets, the soft blue hue of the walls, the angle of the desk down to the little scuff marks on the floor where her chair had always bumped into the baseboard.  

I’d recreated everything.

Because familiarity, I thought, mattered.  

Familiarity was stability and this was one of the most important things she needed.

Because even now, after everything I’d done to bring her back, she deserved the comfort of something that remembered her, something that seemed as if it hadn’t forgotten the shape of her presence. Her room and mine shared a wall. It was a deliberate choice, and not one I regretted. If anything happened, if her breathing changed, if a nightmare clawed its way out of the past and reached for her, I'd be there.  

No more failing her.  

I took a sip of the coffee.  

It was strong, a little bitter, but not bad. Beryl had made it while I was putting Thalia to bed. Her own mug sat half-drained in front of her. She held it with both hands like it was a lifeline. The way she looked at me reminded me of a stray waiting to be kicked. Or adopted.  

It was honestly hard to tell what was more accurate.

Elpida stood to my left.  

Not sitting. Of course not.  

She stood like an obelisk, some mute protector carved by an unseen artist.  

“You can sit, you know,” I said aloud, even if the thought had crossed my mind a hundred times already.

“I think it best I remain like this,” she answered, her tone perfectly balanced between machine precision and something human enough to bleed.

I didn’t argue.

If I told her to sit, she would. She would obey like a soldier to their general, like a puppet to its strings, like an angel to God. But what was the point? My goal wasn’t to become what I despised.  

To tear down Olympus only to raise another mountain of chains?  

No.

My war was against the gods. Against those who bent mortals into shapes they never asked for. Against the divine hands that treated human lives like little stories in a bored mind’s diary.  

It would be hypocrisy, plain and sharp, to twist Elpida’s will because I could. She may have been born in a lab, sculpted from bloodless ambition and high theory but she still was human even if artificial. And that was all that mattered. She was human. Maybe not in the way the world would have deemed right, true, but then again, neither was I anymore.

“You look different,” Beryl said softly.

Her voice wasn’t accusatory. It was small. The kind of voice that used to ask permission before knocking on my door.  

“I know,” I replied, letting the self-deprecation creep in like smoke. “It wasn’t a choice. But if I didn’t look like this, if I wasn’t changed… I don’t think I would have survived Hecate. This version of me is the only one that gets to talk to you again.”

When I spoke her name—Hecate—the room shifted. Not literally. Not in a way any normal person could explain.  

But something watched.  

Or rather, something stopped pretending it wasn’t watching.

For less than two seconds. Maybe even less than one. But that second could’ve stretched forever.  

And when it passed, the silence that followed was too clean.  

Beryl’s grip on her mug had turned her knuckles white.  

Elpida had tilted her head slightly, searching the room for something invisible but hostile.  

Proof enough.  

She was listening.  

Always.

“She was the one I fought,” I said, the weight of it pulling each syllable down like stone dropped into a well. “I didn’t expect to survive. Honestly? I was aiming for mutual destruction. Things just… didn’t go the way I thought they would.”

“I’m sorry,” Beryl whispered. “Alex… I’m so sorry. None of this would’ve happened if I hadn’t… If I’d listened to you and Thalia. If I’d been a better sister. A better mother. You wouldn’t have needed to hurt, to change like this.”

“Maybe,” I said gently. “But what’s done is done. All that matters now is moving forward. And as much as I hate to admit it… without her, I wouldn’t have been able to bring Thalia back. At least not without backlash.”

Elpida tilted her head. “Creator,” she said again with that word I hated, a splinter beneath the skin, truebut wrong “If I am not overstepping, may I know how?”

I didn’t let the grimace reach my face.  

I was her creator. But I didn’t want that word. I wasn’t a god. I wasn’t like them.

“We made an alliance of sorts. She was… interested in my magic. Obsessed, maybe. She wanted to observe it, study it. In exchange, she gave me her vow to assist me to see my goal realized. And to prove good faith, she let me bring Thalia back home. We created a construct—one that made it seem like she never left.”

Beryl frowned. “Do you think we can trust her?”

I laughed, not because it was funny, but because it was absurd.  

“She’s a deity, a goddess. Trust doesn’t apply. But I do trust her interest in my magic. And more than that? She betrayed her own pantheon to help me. That means she has something to lose if this goes public.”

“Still,” I added, “we’ll need to prepare our own contingencies.”

“So,” Beryl asked, “what happens now? I want to make things right with Thalia, Alex, I do. But I don’t know if I even deserve to try. I may want to—but she might not. And…”

She didn’t finish. She didn’t need to.

I placed my hand over her wrist. She flinched, just slightly but didn’t pull away.

“The important part is that you try. That you give your all to show you’ve changed. What comes after… that’s up to her. But at least you’ll know you did something.”

Elpida broke in, clinical and composed. “Creator. While the goddess’s magic shields us from detection by divine means, if mundane eyes observe Thalia, her hair, her eyes, her name—then the illusion unravels.”

“You’re not wrong,” I muttered. “We’ll need to do something about that.”

I sighed. “Another headache.”

I tried to raise my cup again.

But I never drank.

Because a voice stopped me cold.

“What is she doing here?!”

I turned.  

Thalia stood in the hallway, her frame small but shaking, her eyes blazing. Not with heat but with hurt.

Her stare skewered Beryl.  

Then it turned to me.  

And it shattered me.

There was something raw there wounds torn open again. Her voice cracked around the edges like a mirror struck too many times.

“You were going to leave me with her again, weren’t you? Like last time? You lied to me again, Uncle Alex?”

The coffee cup was forgotten.  

I stood. Slowly. Carefully. Like I was approaching a wounded animal, or a dream I didn’t want to end.

I dropped to one knee.

“I promise, Thalia. I’m never leaving you again. I won’t give up. I won’t let you stay with her unless you want to. Just… don’t cry. You know I’m the real crybaby between us. You cry, then I cry, and then it’s just a mess. Pretty ridiculous, right?”

She blinked, and the tears spilled over—but there was a watery smile.

“Yeah. Ridiculous.”

Then, softer. Almost too soft to hear.

“I woke up alone. And I thought… none of this was real. I know I’m supposed to be a big girl, not act like a baby. But… can you stay with me?”

“There’s nothing more I’d rather do.”

I held out my hand.

She took it.

“Let’s go to your room,” I said.

We walked.  

Behind me, I heard it.  

Not a word. Not a sob. Just the sound of tears.  

Falling.  

From the woman who’d once seen as my second mother, that Thalia would probably never forgive, never call Mom.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Thalia was back under the covers, swaddled in softness, wrapped in the kind of warmth that didn’t just come from fabric. The pyjamas she wore weren’t the tattered scraps she’d been found in they were new, conjured through the silent use of my adaptive material synthesis, stitched from the memory of what she once had liked to wear. Blue, her favorite color, patterned with tiny silver stars.  

I sat on the edge of her bed, watching the way her fingers curled into the blanket, like she was afraid it might dissolve if she didn’t hold on tight.  

She shouldn’t have to be afraid of things disappearing.

I cleared my throat.  

"Once upon a time," I began, my voice dipping into the old rhythm, the one I hadn’t used in years, not since him, not since Zeus ripped the words from my throat with his bullshit and everything else "there was a very grumpy cloud named Nimbus."

Thalia’s eyes, wide and wary, flicked up to mine.  

"Nimbus wasn’t just any cloud. Oh no. He was the grumpiest cloud in the whole sky. Every time the other clouds tried to play, floating here, drifting there, Nimbus would just huff and puff and turn a thunderous shade of gray."

A tiny crease formed between her brows. "Why was he grumpy?"

"Because," I said, leaning in conspiratorially, "he was convinced the sun was stealing his spot. Every morning, there it was, hogging the sky, shining away like it owned the place. And Nimbus? He’d grumble, ‘That’s my blue up there! Mine!’"

A flicker of amusement. "Clouds don’t own the sky."

"Tell that to Nimbus."

She giggled.  

The sound was a fragile thing, like glass chimes in a storm, but it was there and it was all that mattered.

So I kept going.  

The story spiraled, Nimbus, in his fury, tried to blot out the sun, puffing himself up bigger and darker until he’d swallowed the whole horizon. But then the birds complained ("We can’t see to fly!"), the flowers wilted ("We need the sun to dance!"), and worst of all, the children couldn’t play outside.  

"So," I said, "a very small, very brave ladybug named Lulu marched right up to Nimbus, well, floated up, because ladybugs can’t march on clouds and said, ‘Excuse me, Mr. Thunderface, but you’re being a jerk."  

Thalia gasped. "She didn’t!"

"She did."

Lulu, it turned out, had a plan. If Nimbus wanted the sky to himself so badly, fine but he had to entertain everyone while he did it. No more moping. No more gloom. He had to perform.

"So Nimbus, grumbling the whole time, started shaping himself into silly things, a sheep, a boat, a grumpy dragonand before he knew it, the kids below were laughing, pointing, shouting, ‘Do another one!’ And the sun? It just winked at him and kept shining, because it didn’t care who thought they owned the sky. It knew the truth, the sky was big enough for everyone."

Thalia was grinning now, the kind of grin that lit up her whole face, that made her look seven instead of seventy in a child’s body.  

Then, like a candle snuffed, her smile faltered.  

"Uncle Alex," she whispered, "all of this is real, right? I’m back with you? This isn’t some god or monster playing sick games with me?"

I reached for her hand, folding her small fingers into mine. "This is real, Thalia. Sometimes, dreams can be real too."

She chewed her lip. "Can I ask you something? Do you promise not to get mad?"

"Yes, I promise." I extended my pinky. "Pinky swear."

She hooked hers around it, tight as a vow.  

"Why did you leave?" Her voice was so small. "Had I done anything wrong?"

The words were a knife to the ribs.  

"You did nothing wrong, princess. Nothing." My thumb brushed over her knuckles. "I wanted to see you. I tried. Through my sister, through judges, through every means I had. Nothing worked. Even though I hated Lance, I tried with him. It only made things worse." A muscle in my jaw twitched. "I don’t remember what happened, but I know he used magic, something, to mess with my mind."

It was not something I liked to think about but I knew that it had happened and I dreaded what happened while I was under it.

Her face paled. Horror flickered in her eyes, the kind no child should ever know.  

"I didn’t want to break my promise to you. When I said it, I meant it. But things went sideways. It doesn’t change that I should’ve tried even more, that I needed to—"

"No!" She lunged forward, cutting me off. "You did try. You were the only one who did! He told me you didn’t want to see me anymore, and I didn’t want to believe him, because all he and she ever did was lie.”

She didn’t say their names. She didn’t have to.  

Beryl. Zeus.  

The way she spat the words like it was poison, like it was the worst thing a person could be, made something in my chest twist.  

"I should’ve realized something was wrong," she muttered, fists clenching. "I should’ve never doubted you. I should’ve never believed his lies, just like Beryl did."

Not Mom. Not Mother.

Beryl.

A name, not a title. A stranger, not family.  

I expected this, still. I swallowed the ache I felt for my sister. "Hey," I said softly, cupping her cheek. "None of that matters anymore, Thal. You’re home. That’s all that counts. What’s better? Thinking about the past, or thinking about all the good things coming?"

She sniffed. "The good things."

I ruffled her hair. "Clever girl."

"You’re messing with my hair," she grumbled, but there was no heat in it. No attempt to bat me away.  

"Speaking of hair," she said, eyeing me, "why did you change yours? Your eyes, too."

"Wasn’t the plan. Just happened after decking a goddess."

Her eyes went round. "For real for real?"

I laughed. "Yes, for real for real."

"It gives you another look," she mused.  

"Good or bad?"

"Different." Her fingers plucked at the blanket. "That’s why I thought it wasn’t you at first. Sorry again for attacking you."

"Don’t worry about that, Thalia."

The words lingered between us.  

Different.

A thought crystallized.  

If my changed appearance had made me unrecognizable to her at first, then why couldn’t the same work in reverse?  

Thalia had Zeus’s hair, Zeus’s eyes but the rest? The slope of her nose, the shape of her smile? That was Beryl. And Beryl looked enough like me that strangers had often mistaken Thalia for my daughter even before.  

Elpida, crafted from alchemy and my own genes, was proof enough she could’ve been Thalia’s older sister.  

A plan took shape.  

But before I could voice it, I needed her to want it too. If she didn't want to, I would find something else.

"Thalia," I said carefully, "can I talk to you about something important?"

She stiffened, sensing the shift in tone.  

"To bring you back, I had to make sure monsters and gods think I never took you. But if rumors start about a Thalia living with me, they’ll realize the truth." I took a breath. "It won’t happen, though, if they don’t think you’re here even though you will be. All of that to say..."

My pulse hammered.  

"I want to adopt you."

For a heartbeat, the world stopped.  

Thalia froze. Her breath hitched. Her eyes went so wide I could see the whites around the blue.  

My own heart thundered louder than it had facing Hecate.  

"You don’t have to accept," I rushed on. "You can say no, and I won’t take it badly. I’ll find another way, so don’t—"

She launched at me.  

"I stabbed you! I doubted you! I believed him when he lied about you!" Her words tumbled out in a frantic, wet rush. "I’m scared I’m like them, but even then I want you to be my dad! I always wanted you to be my dad. I want you to adopt me! I’ll be the best daughter. I’ll do everything right—"

I caught her against my chest, cradling the back of her head. "Even if you were the worst person in this world," I murmured into her hair, "I’d still be proud of you, Thalia. You don’t need to do anything for me to love you. Now or ever."

She shuddered. A sob broke loose, muffled against my shoulder.  

Then, so quiet I almost missed it—  

"I always wanted to tell you this. I love you, Dad."

And just like that, the dam broke.  

Tears streaked down my cheeks. Truly, I was nothing else but a crybaby.

I pressed a kiss to her temple.  

"I love you too, Thalia.”