I Saw The Future In A Dream Last Night (There's Nothing In It)
They met for the first time when he tried to kill her for sneezing.
Okay, maybe that was an exaggeration. Or at least misleading.
They met for the first time when she sneezed and he whirled around waving a sword because apparently he was fighting zombies that had permanent colds.
Which, come to think of it, were still pretty unusual circumstances under which to meet someone.
She'd kind of liked him from the start: he was clearly as impulsive and impetuous as she was, with an air of being busy in the middle of something tremendously important, and a panicked expression which told her that much though he'd have liked to stay and chat, there were monsters trying to eat him, so he couldn't. His looks hadn't hurt much, either.
Rachel was no hopeless romantic. She knew that she wasn't going to be swept off her feet by a hero who'd save her from the monstrosity of her father's business, and she knew that she'd never build a stable relationship with her family. Some things in the world were just broken, and no amount of dreaming would fix them.
But just for a moment, there on the hoover dam, she'd fallen pretty damn – dam, as she'd since heard him joke – hard for Percy Jackson. Love – or the first sparks of a crush, anyway – at first sight.
Looking back, this was probably the moment that made her believe in fate, of lives carefully mapped out by three old ladies and a whole lot of string. She'd felt this nagging feeling that the lunatic boy trying to tell her that a three or four foot long sword was a pen was important, that he was somehow destined to be tangled up inextricably with her life.
And then he was gone, just another strange memory to add to her catalogue of the unbelievable.
She'd almost forgotten about it, until he blew up her new school on orientation day.
Well, that was another exaggeration. He didn't blow it up. He couldn't have: he was too busy fighting the monsters who had. But the school blamed him, or thought about it anyway (looking back, someone must have messed with the mist to exonerate Percy) and she was once more left alone to try and make sense of the hurricane that had just torn up her life that little bit more.
To meet Percy Jackson once is a strange coincidence, and one that burns itself into the memory, but nothing more.
To meet him twice begins to mess with the fabric of one's reality.
Once more, Rachel fought this voice at the back of her mind telling her that he was the most important person in her life. It was pretty obvious that he and that Annabeth girl were more or less a couple, anyway. But, it felt as though the universe was a little bit on Rachel's side. This time, it was possible she had a chance.
Reality unravelled further the more she hung around Percy Jackson that summer. They travelled through a three thousand year old tunnel and fought the titan lord of time, neither of which had been on her to-do list at the start of the vacation.
And she had to admit, it was a pretty great time.
The two of them hung out more over the next year, verging on dating but never quite getting there, partly from Percy not knowing his own mind, and partly from the spectre of Annabeth hanging over them both.
But for all that she enjoyed his company, spending time with Percy didn't make things good for either of them.
She'd always had her dreams, fantastical dreams of war and death, of the end of the world and of the heroes sent to save it. But that year, they wouldn't leave her alone. They plagued her every night, incessant and uncontrollable. She spent more time in the future than in the present. Her bed became an inescapable trap, and she was afraid to go to sleep.
She dreamed of Percy seeing his own death, watching himself gutted by Kronos's scythe as Olympus crumbled to ruin around him.
And every time she saw him in the daytime, he was a little more careworn and a little more tired from the impending doom of the prophecy.
He did a good job of hiding it, of course. Percy was nothing if not more concerned with his friends' pleasure than with his own wellbeing. But Rachel spent enough time with him to know for certain that he was just pretending, or else only there to try and block out the background noise of war with a human barrier.
The war got closer and louder though, and soon enough, he was off to fight it, leaving her to explain things to the confused mortals once again: this time why there were hoof-prints on the hood of a Toyota.
She was, admittedly, beginning to get used to the heroic lifestyle. Just because she was getting used to it, though, didn't mean it was any fun. There were no breaks or rests, and they had to be ready to jump into action at any moment. She began to understand Sally's life, constantly wondering where her son was, whether he was safe, and how he would make it home.
Each time, he felt less likely to reappear.
Even on the island vacation with her father, she couldn't exactly get away from the events in New York. She took to drawing her dreams out, day and night. The horrifying images looked no better on paper than they had in her head, but at least she could close her eyes to them that way.
Before long, she knew she had to go back. That tugging sensation was back, stronger than ever, dragging her straight towards Percy Jackson. She went so far as to make a deal with the devil – her father – to get back there.
Things fell into place remarkably quickly.
She told him what she'd seen, that he wasn't the hero. He saved the world, with help from Luke's sacrifice, and for a moment, it seemed like they could all live happily ever after.
Rachel had looked into the pithos, though. She had seen Elpis, the spirit of hope, fluttering, trapped inside.
It had looked like an insect, although its precise form shifted – a butterfly one moment, a dragonfly the next – and it was never anything robust. It flitted around the jar, frail and gentle and softly glowing.
Some versions of the story said that the reason Hope stayed when all others left was because it was man's most loyal ally. Rachel could see that this was not true: Hope stayed because, in the real world, unprotected, it would perish. That was why it was so precious, really. Because it could be crushed so easily, yet provided such warm light while it lasted.
Rachel wasn't sure that the gods' word for winning meant the same as hers. Before the battle's end, she could practically see them, storming into the throne and celebrating, the corpses of demigods, friend and foe alike, littering the battlefield around them. It made her feel sick.
But that tugging towards Percy had changed. She knew for certain now that he was the most important person to her, but she misunderstood their relationship: it was not that of lovers, but of the commander and the soldier, the bidder and the doer. She took on the spirit of the Oracle of Delphi, and it was now her doom to be the one who sent Percy to risk his life for the greater good.
And, on the whole, she couldn't deny that the good was greater than any single life. The subsequent giant war was a just one, keeping the world from the grip of a mad dictator in Gaia. Saving the world from itself.
The various quests she found herself sending demigods on were all necessary, saving others, or preventing conflicts. It soothed her conscience to know that the dangers of not going were greater than the dangers of going.
It helped her sleep at night that the montage of nightmares had mostly subsided.
Everyone always talked about camp life as before the second Gigantomachy and after it, but what they really meant was before and after Tartarus. You could feel the change in the air. If Percy, Annabeth or Nico were around, you could see it. They were worn, with sunken eyes, stretched skin, and scars all over that couldn't quite be hidden.
Even once the trio started to recover – Nico first, with Will's help, then, much more slowly, the other two, clinging to each other like the only firm ground in a storm – there was still a sense of weariness that followed them around, a fatalistic attitude or a nervousness that never quite left. Tartarus wasn't something you could just get better from.
Rachel found it harder to justify that cost to herself.
But the quests kept coming, and they were more often than not the only people who could do them. They were too competent, too famous, too damn heroic for their own good. The greatest heroes of their generation indeed, perhaps of all time. And they began to hate every second of it, greeting each new assignment with a hardening of the eyes and a setting of the jaw.
They never complained, though. The greater good was something they'd got used to over the years. Death became a travelling companion, the fourth member of their quest party.
The quests kept coming. Other demigods took them too, sometimes. Other demigods died.
Percy Jackson went to more funerals than weddings. Percy Jackson forgot what it was like to sleep through a whole night. Percy Jackson was a hero.
As a rule, demigods didn't make it past twenty four, and if they reached thirty, they could consider themselves blessed. Somewhere in the late thirties, the scent would decline and monster attacks would become rarer. For most, though, it was too late by then.
Percy and Annabeth were twenty-five now, still defying the odds daily. She hoped that they would continue to do so for a very long time.
They dreamed of settling down together to start a family and grow old, to see the bad times as nothing more than nightmares and to see the good times like dreams come true.
They planned out their destiny together, and Rachel couldn't doubt that as a couple, they were meant to be.
She watched him now, picking up his pack, kissing Annabeth goodbye, and swearing that he'd come back to her.
But Rachel Dare could see the future, and a hero's fate is never a happy one.
So, this was supposed to be a bittersweet and melancholy kind of one-shot, and then it just turned into this 'everyone I love dies and life is miserable' kind of thing. Oh well. Please review, and tell me if it works.