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Percy's feeling very awkward, right now.
His apartment in New Rome is… extravagant feels like the right word. Praetorial suite, too big to live alone in, mini altar for all Olympians inbuilt.
He'd smashed the intricate little statues, replacing them with a prototype of Jason's Hestia action figure.
It's cute. Her eyes are the wrong colour (the 3D printer was out of ink) and her hand looks AI generated (Jason never got around to getting them right), but it's cute. Has soul, the goddess had said, charmed.
Besides, it's the best he's ever getting. Its creator had died before finishing it, after all.
He smiles idly - a bitter expression - before gently wiping off the dust.
He's expecting a guest.
Percy had never been sure what to make of Leo.
Hazel and Frank? Those two had, within the span of a week, become pretty much everything he had. On the Argo, he'd been too distracted by his memories to properly notice everything.
But he remembers.
He remembers Frank's upset face after every interaction with the kid - how he would consciously tuck his arms around his waist, caged in and shrunken. He remembers Hazel, dazed and uncomfortable, pushed into memories of a life that had only led to death.
They were all buddies, now. Hazel and Frank and Leo and Piper, with weekly meetups and grinning photos.
He gets it. Leo was just a kid - they all were. The thing is, it gets real hard to make nice with someone who thinks dirt is better than you.
Well… considering Gaia, that's probably not the case, but the sentiment stands.
Percy is tired. He's tired of feeling like the only thing he deserves to be is an amalgam of the guilt he's collected over the years. He's tired of thinking of all the lives he couldn't save, all the lives he's ruined, all the people who call him hero without knowing a damn thing.
He's tired of trying to forget that it was his own life he ruined, first.
So he doesn't. He doesn't think, and he makes all the right faces in front of his therapist, and he carries on like his blood isn't flickering between dust and ichor everytime he sees it.
He saw Annabeth withdraw into a shell every time he used his powers for a month before he ended it.
Because damn it all to Tartarus, if he sees her look at him like he's Luke fucking Castellan one more time, he might beg Zeus to feed him the Masterbolt.
Winters have always been too cold for him to bear, ever since he was 14 and saw Bianca di Angelo die for him.
Sometimes, in the shower, he lets himself bring about a hailstorm - sharp stones, pelting against him with the most force he can think up.
Stoning sinners to death, he muses. Not very Roman of me.
Or maybe, just Roman enough.
Percy tries not to throw up as he turns off the faucet.
He tries not to do a lot of things, these days. Scream. Cry. Think. Destroy.
(The blood in his arms turns gold, just at that singular word. He tries to pretend he can't feel it. He tries to pretend that he isn't wondering whether it's gold ichor, or gold dust.)
He avoids the mirror as he tucks the towel around his waist.
Here's the thing - Sally Jackson's eyes changed colour with the ocean.
(Happier, freer, stronger.)
Her son's eyes change colour with blood.
(Older, wearier, stronger.)
(Here's another thing - it's not just Annabeth who looks at him and sees the martyred son of Hermes.
It's himself, too.)
Leo doesn't really fit into the apartment.
He'd asked if he could bring someone else around, and Percy had knocked it down before the sentence ended.
(He'd torn his moonlace into bitter shreds as soon as he could find it. He doesn't need it blooming in his life a third time, vitriol instead of beauty once more.)
Leo had just shrugged and rolled his eyes, though the shoulder bump softened it. “Oh, boy," he'd muttered theatrically to his toolbelt, “these five days are gonna be so fun, don't you think?"
His lips twitch at the thought. Atleast the kid knew how to be funny.
“Whatcha smiling at, man?" Speak of the devil.
He takes it back, he can definitely live alone in the too large flat.
“Nothing, dude. Just thinking of like, sarcasm and why we find it funny. Super philosophical." Percy smirks, leaning against the kitchen counter. It's so weird. He has a kitchen counter, where he cooks, like a full on adulting adult.
The perils of being 18 - your new monsters are slippery puddles of dish soap and regulating your strength around a microwave.
Quick advice. Punching a microwave doesn't heat your hot pocket quicker. Just causes an explosion. Although, well, explaining your new branding - no, tattoo - to your mom is much easier when there's soot on your face.
Leo throws out a flippant cool, fiddling with a wire and some coins, and the conversation ends.
Thank the gods.
Percy goes back to preparing them sandwiches.
It's on the third day, that he starts mildly regretting offering his place for Leo to camp at.
December 18. The winter solstice is two days away.
It's been four years.
Nico shows up at around 12, looking paler than an actual ghost.
“I fucking hate you." It's all the kid says, before collapsing on his couch.
Percy covers him with a blanket. He was shivering way too much.
Leo had, upon hearing the noise, rushed to the living room with a blowtorch in his hands. It was sweet, until his wary expression didn't dissolve upon seeing Nico.
“Uhh, is he a full on zombie now? My brain is very important to me - do we need to fend off a feral son of Apollo if we tie him up?”
Percy sighs. “Not today, dude. Don't wake him up, okay?”
Leo sobers at his tone. “No, seriously, man - he's good, right?”
Percy smiles, taut.
Neither of them miss the fact that he doesn't reply.
They don't acknowledge it, either.
Nico fights like a fucking monster.
It's nice. He does, too.
Swinging too sharp and too fast. Eyes, flitting black and gold as they keep up with the speed. Limbs which no longer seem contained to the body they've lived in for years -
decades, centuries, or months, days?
- they fight like animals, screeching and lunging at each other when really, their skin never touches.
Shadows against vapour.
Rage before regret.
Too many souls, next to the lack of even one.
They never draw blood.
(Dust is not blood, and neither is darkness.)
(Ashes to ashes? Percy cannot burn.
Dust to dust? What would be crueler - to always have been this, or to become this?)
(Nico never asks. Neither does he answer.
They simply attack. They simply never bleed.)
It's light, outside. Kind of weird for winter.
They're all there, in a room, six instead of seven.
There's an empty seat. It's between Piper and Leo, and they're careful not to let their elbows get too close, not to graze it and be reminded of how cold it is.
Annabeth is sitting right next to him, hands messing with a piece of yarn. They're curled around each other, a little. It's nice. Safe. A bit too warm, but worth it. They can keep track of the entire room, this way. Communicate strategy enough to win a war with the twitch of a muscle.
(Abruptly, he misses Grover something fierce.
The empathy link doesn't even twitch. He can feel it - it's there - but it's so weak.
Had started to fray ever since Pan.
It wasn't about their love, never. Grover had been the second person Percy'd ever loved; and he knows his best friend hadn't even looked for the Great God as fervently as he'd searched for Percy.
But -
But.
An empathy link exists between a satyr and a demigod.
They weren't much of either, anymore.)
Piper is saying something about Hermes - a quest, of some sort? Given to one of her sisters, maybe. She's rolling her eyes, they're all laughing, so he snorts.
“Seriously, Pipes, we all gotta teach the kiddos how to smack the door in a god’s face. Millennia old, and still asking tweens to what, find their key?” He leans back, relaxed, as Hazel throws a speck of dirt at him. It disappears as soon as he feels it, so probably the Mist.
“Oh, please. You know how many times you've asked me to find your key? And how many times I've found it at the bottom of the Tiber?” She ribs him, reaching around Frank and poking him in the forehead.
He grins, ducking behind Frank. Annabeth, of course, holds him in place. They proceed to high five at his misery while he pouts.
“And, Percy,” Frank continues drily, “I promise you, shove a God's face into a door and you'll catch fire sooner than the wood.”
He smirks. “Nope. When Apollo - well, Lester - came around for help, I did exactly that. Banged it in his face. Of course, mom made me apologize and share her dip with him, but yeah. So worth it.” Annabeth sighed, tweaking his ear even as her eyes practically shone with amusement. Everyone else was smiling, too - that, or mentally changing his name to impertinent.
“What did you say?”
…except Leo, apparently?
Percy cocks his head in confused enthusiasm. “My mom's seven layer dip! It's to kill for, dude, seriously, ’Pollo about passed out in bliss. You haven't had it? I'll have to bring you some next time I visit.”
Leo's expression is cold.
His eyes, on the other hand? They burn like a blackhole.
(He remembers Annabeth telling him that blackholes could be the brightest thing in the galaxy.
He hadn't understood, then.
He does, now.
Nothing stronger than nothingness.)
He’s reminded of Mount Saint Helens. Those final moments, as the telekhines swarmed him - the split second difference between feeling molten rock press against his limbs, torso, eyes, everywhere, and the peace that followed.
Leo's eyes glow hotter than that moment. Hotter, even, than the feeling of liquid fire coursing down his throat - the feeling of his blood, burnt and charred and churned, as the Phlegethon shattered more than it healed.
Understanding dawns too late.
Leo's mouth pulls into a sharp twist.
Percy's gut clenches.
“You did kill for it.”
He is full with anticipation.
“It should have been you, then? Instead of Jason, it should have been you.”
It's silent.
And then, his best friend snarls.
Annabeth looks ready to spring at the very thought of it, the lost look he'd seen over Luke's casket resurfacing. Her hand crushes his, and he grips onto her in turn, stopping her from lunging at their friend.
Frank and Hazel are the picture of shocked horror, as if they can't believe what was just said, by whom it was just said. Piper, on the other hand, looks like that was the stinkiest pile of bullshit she'd ever smelt.
Percy just breathes.
He really is fine.
Half a second of eye contact, and Annabeth’s posture sinks into one of regretful understanding.
This was far from the first time he'd heard something like this.
He'd led a war. A war fought almost entirely by teenagers, kids, who went on to lose people they'd loved.
(You think Drew Tanaka didn't sneak into his cabin to replace the shampoo with acid? You think he didn't notice Silena not even look in his direction for days? You think he decided that Nico must want to exchange his soul for Bianca’s out of nowhere?)
He breathes, and he bears it.
It's nothing he didn't expect.
To hear it stings in a way that's entirely too real, but… It's grounding.
He was always right.
Soaking in the terrible righteousness in that, he smiles carefully and leaves at a time where none of them could be concerned.
(He's fooling them all. That includes himself.)
At that moment, he doesn't know exactly why he cuts off the empathy link.
(Or maybe he does, in the hollow cage of his ribs, deep down somewhere.
Either way, when it snips clean through without the slightest resistance, the barest thrum?
It reinforces a feeling he can't quite name.)
The next month goes perfectly normally, and so does the next.
Within a week, Leo had come at his apartment and looked like he hadn't slept a wink. With shaky eyes, the kid apologised.
Percy smiled, and invited him in for cookies.
He declined.
Something in Leo's forced smile was older than it had been before.
He doesn't purposely dwindle down the number of times he IM’s his mom. It's just… easier, to spend that time soaking in the bathtub instead. Let the water run just over his nose, till the slightest tip of his head could let it flood in to fill his lungs.
(The water never stung. The soap, on the other hand, did.
It was nice. Grounding. Unassuming.)
He feels settled.
Hailstorms rattle his skin every day, now.
Coincidentally, they break his mirror.
He hasn't gone out much, these days. He hasn't seen his eyes for a long time.
(Allow me to tell you a secret.
They were, indeed, the colour of blood.
The question you must ask now, is, what is the colour of blood?)
He doesn't know, yet. What he will do.
He never has known.
On worse days, he contemplates what Leo had said, rather than letting it run in the back of his mind like a familiar tune - melding with the hundred other ways he had been told how wrong his being alive was.
Is that what he is? The cold remnant of lost souls, stoking a grief that could long have settled?
Or rather, the consequence and the reason for the pain, all wrapped in one neat package?
It's cold. He's on the edge of a familiar looking cliff, the sounds from that one military school distant behind him.
Their names are all ringing in his mind like a cacophony he can't escape.
(All names, carved into his heart like Anaklusmos is carved into his blade.)
(Bianca, Zoë, Lee, Castor, Daedalus, Beckendorf, Michael, Silena, Ethan, Luke, Jason.)
(More, too. Names he might never know.)
It's still bright outside.
He’s outside.
He realises, with a jolt, that he doesn't know how he got here.
Percy laughs.
He laughs till his cheeks are flushed, he laughs till his scars almost look like laugh lines, he laughs because as long as he's laughing, he's alive.
He stops laughing.
(In the end, it's really very easy. He can barely believe he's wasted so many years, so many lives, running from this.
He wants, with desperation he's felt only in war, to see them all again.)
His mind is a blank.
He can't move.
Until he can.
(He never wants to run again.
So he doesn't.)
His leg slips on the ice.
And just like that, easy as that -
He falls.
For a milisecond, it's black and red instead of blue and white. It's a nine day fall, instead of a few stray seconds.
The second before he hits the water, he relaxes completely.
He remembers, with crystal clarity, meeting Kymopoleia and Polybotes with Jason.
And oh, names truly do have power, don't they?
That resigned willingness, that eager hopelessness, it's all back at the mere thought of those names.
He lets the water flood him with ease, surrendering the ability to breathe almost enthusiastically.
Now for the hard part.
Almost immediately, he feels his Father's presence, terrified and urgent and tense. The water itself is fighting him, trying to stay away even as he pulls it towards himself, wrenching control from his dad with all the power he's got left.
It would be nice, to die like this. In something close enough to his dad's arms. A last memory to soothe Poseidon, where it would cause his mom only pain.
(…his mom -
Something buzzes urgently. He doesn't want to think about it, whatever it is. He pushes it down.)
With a final pull and a God's despairing cry ringing across the Seven Seas, Percy feels water choke his lungs. It's like the Styx, but there's no pain, and he's almost ecstatic with it.
He can't celebrate, so he settles for exhaling one last time.
The water seeps into dry lungs, killing only under the command of its master.
It pushes further, under the command of blood which is no longer blood.
(Polybotes was a parody of this.)
The legion branding is scraped off of his warming skin, as Percy's heart dissolves into the liquid gold roaming his veins.
(Gold settles to liquid, then - never to be dust again.
In another life, perhaps.
This one was kinder.)
A soundless, wordless scream rips itself out of his throat as the gold glows brighter.
Brighter, incinerating away organ and skin and soul, Brighter, boiling away the water around him, Brighter, killing the fish -
(Brighter, as the demigod is unmade and a God is remade.)
Poseidon carries the unconscious new body of his youngest son, still Bright, still Burning, all the way to Olympus.
He does not stop sobbing for a single second.