Chapter Text
Will Solace had always been the odd one out among kids his age.
While children his age spent their time playing, he gravitated toward medical textbooks and books about plants, losing himself in pages that smelled faintly of ink and dried leaves.
When other kids were busy spending their days outside, Will stayed indoors, never growing tired of filling his time with reading.
His mom always encouraged him to go out-to play, to make friends, to do the things children his age were supposed to do-but Will was never interested.
Speaking of his mom-Naomi Solace was an alt-country singer, her voice soft and aching, the kind that lingered long after the song ended. Music filled their house the way sunlight did, warm and constant, and Will grew up listening to her practice in the evenings, her melodies drifting down the hallway like a quiet lullaby. Where Naomi poured her heart into songs of longing and love, Will learned early to pour his into knowledge instead, finding comfort not in chords and lyrics, but in the steady certainty of facts, remedies, and leaves pressed carefully between pages.
His mom once told him that when Will was born, he did not cry-a silence that sent fear crawling into her chest and made the doctors exchange worried looks. She said he had been a quiet baby, so quiet that she found herself terrified he might be mute.
His childhood had always been just him and his mom. Whenever he saw children his age walking hand in hand with their fathers, Will would fall silent, retreating into his thoughts, wondering where his own father was-and why he had never been there. Will was not a foolish child; he knew it was not normal for someone his age to grow up without a father-shaped presence in their life.
He had asked his mom once, quietly, carefully.
"Mom," he'd said, his voice small but steady, "where's dad?"
His mom had only smiled then-soft and unreadable-and brushed a hand through his hair, offering no answer beyond that gentle silence.
── ⋆⋅𖤓⋅⋆ ──
Will was seven years old when it first happened.
It was spring when he had the strange dream. He dreamed of a man-his face blurred, impossible to remember clearly. All Will could recall was that the man was crying, clutching another figure tightly in his arms, as if afraid to let go.
When Will woke up, he found himself struggling to breathe, tears streaming down his face. His chest ached, his heart pulsing with a sorrow that did not feel like his own. It was as if he were mourning alongside the unknown man, sharing a grief too heavy for a child to carry.
He tried to steady his breathing, just as he remembered reading in one of his books-slow inhales, careful exhales, grounding himself in the present.
Once he had finally calmed down, his eyes drifted to the window, where he noticed a freshly cut hyacinth placed in a pot nearby.
He stared at the flower for a long moment. For reasons he couldn’t explain, something about it felt special—important—but he shook the thought away, forcing himself to think of something else.
Then Will frowned, a sense of unease settling in as he realized something was off. There should have been a different flower in that pot.
Huh. That’s strange, he thought.
I’m pretty sure that wasn’t the flower in the pot before.
He glanced around his room, half-expecting to find some sign that his mom had come in while he slept, that she had moved things around without him noticing. But everything else was exactly the same, unchanged and familiar.
Or… maybe I’m just remembering it wrong?
The thought didn’t sit right with him, lingering like an itch he couldn’t scratch, and his eyes drifted back to the flower once more—its petals impossibly fresh, its presence quietly insistent, as if it had always been there, waiting for him to notice.
── ⋆⋅𖤓⋅⋆ ──
Will was ten years old when he learned the truth about who he was.
It happened after he and his mom returned to New York City from a brief stop in Albany. As they wandered through Washington Square Park, a sudden frenzy of wings erupted around them-a flock of pigeons revealing themselves as Stymphalian birds, steel-feathered and vicious, closing in as they attacked.
They were saved by luck, or perhaps fate. Maron, a satyr, had been nearby, and he leapt into action, defending Will and his mom before either of them could be seriously hurt.
Maron accompanied them back to the hotel room where Will and his mom were staying. There, in the quiet aftermath, he explained the impossible: Will was a demigod.
Not long after, Maron brought him to Camp Half-Blood, and Will's life was never the same again.