“What’s His Name?”

TW/CW: pregnancy, childbirth

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“Mrs. Jackson?” Sally was yanked from her fatigue by the timid young nurse’s voice. She was young. Inexperienced.

Sally shook her head, shaking the sleep from the corners of her mind. “It’s just Sally.”

The nurse smiled. Ellen, her nametag said. “Would you like to hold your baby?”

Already, before she could respond, Sally’s arms were outstretched, reaching toward the bundle in the nurse’s arms. Congratulations, Ms. Jackson, the doctor had said, it’s a boy.

Ellen handed the tiny boy to her, and Sally held her breath as she took her son and held him to her chest. Her son.

He was so small. His wrinkly brown skin would smooth out as he grew older, the way babies always seem to grow into their skin, like those little toys you could add water to that Sally used to buy from vending machines outside her local grocery store. His tiny little nose would grow up smelling cookies and wrinkling up at the thought of homework, and those tiny hands would grab and grasp and clutch at everything they could as he got older, learning to hold pencils and mugs full of cocoa and eventually a sword that carried a curse thousands of years old, and his little shoulders would one day hold the weight of the world on them, but for now, no.

For now, he slept soundly, this seven pound three ounce baby with a thin covering of dark fuzz on his head that Sally gingerly cradled because babies were so fragile, and this baby was the most important baby in the world because he was her son and he was in her arms and he was breathing peacefully.

She didn’t know yet, of course, that this baby, her baby, truly would grow up one day to be the most important person in the world. At that moment, he was just one of dozens of babies born in the early hours of a hot August day in New York. Sally held him tighter.

Yes, at this moment, he could be anyone, his fate not yet decided for him. Sally knew better than to believe that, of course, but she let herself hope for just one second that this was true.

“He’s beautiful,” Ellen said, and Sally nodded, careful not to wake her son. His steady breathing tickled her collarbone.

His eyes were shut tight, but she already knew they were as green as the ocean on an overcast day.

“What’s his name?”

His name. Sally had thought it through so many times, coming home to her tiny studio apartment, feet aching after a long day waiting tables. She would rest her hand on her swelling belly as she made a cup of tea for herself and thought of baby names.

Work friends had suggested cute names: Amanda, Rebecca, Maria if it was a girl, Ben, Jaime, Corey if a boy. None of those names sounded right. They were alright names, but her baby was special, she knew. Why give her child an average name when they would be anything but?

If it’s a girl, she thought, Atalanta. Addie for short. She would grow up to be strong and swift and independent. A survivor who needed no rescuing.

And a boy? This was harder. Sally pored over names. Jason didn’t seem right. Hector, she considered briefly, but she didn’t want her son to grow up knowing tragedy, especially not the tragedy of watching his home destroyed. Obviously not Paris.

Those nights, watching the hours tick away as she felt him kicking in her stomach, she never could have guessed he would know worse tragedy than she had feared. She wasn’t aware of the way her heart would break when she saw her son at twelve years old, cursing his father because would it kill him to come around once in a while? She couldn’t have known she would meet the girl with gray eyes that were thousands of years too old for such a little girl but who made her baby’s green eyes light up and his lips curl up in a smile even if he wasn’t aware of the way his face shifted near her. She didn’t know yet that one day, the Empire State Building would be lit up blue and she would drop to her knees by the side of a blue Porsche and listen to her heart just pound for a moment because it meant her heart was still alive.

She just needed a name, really. A name that meant he would overcome every monster, literal or figurative, he encountered - a name that would bring a long life of epic adventure. A name that meant a happy ending.

So she smiled when Ellen asked her what her son would be named. She made her decision under harsh fluorescent lights with dark circles under her eyes and her entire body aching, hoping that if she took all of these unpleasant aspects of life for her son, he could escape the pain for which he was fated.

What’s his name?

“Perseus,” she said. “Percy for short.”