poseidon cares about percy in his way, but the only future he could imagine for percy was tragedy, and so he regrets him.
sally not only didn’t regret percy, but saved him repeatedly from that hero’s fate by refusing to let him or herself be wholly absorbed into the world of the gods. when poseidon offered, she refused to join him in his underwater palace. she loved him but knew she would not belong there with him. she refused to reject her mortality—not in terms of lifespan, but as the world she belonged to. and percy followed in her footsteps.
when percy stands in his room with medusa’s head in a box, he considers that a greek hero from the stories would have taken it and used it to kill gabe right then. then he remembers how his father said heroes’ lives always end in tragedy, and he decides he’s not going to do it. he rejects the path his father presented as inevitable, and he makes his own.
he has the chance to stay at camp year-round rather than return to his mom and mortal life, and he chooses to go back. he has the chance to remain on ogygia, escape the prophecy, escape war, escape mortality and humanity and conflict, and he chooses to leave.
when he turns down the gods’ offer of immortality, he chooses mortality the same way sally did. he says this is where i belong—this is the life i’m supposed to lead. it would be unnatural for him to join the gods. to endure for all of eternity while the possibilities for his future blink out of existence and the people he loves fade away would have been just as tragic an ending for him as an early death.
percy’s mortal side is powerful, and he is protected by it because sally showed him how to embrace it.
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