Beta read by the wonderful magniloquentChanteuse and WiggleWolf27
When Percy Jackson dies, it isn't a mistake, but it isn't a choice. He dies. Simple and long, painful and boring.
Cowardly, he dies. Impaled by a pole that travels straight through his stomach, pinned like a roach as details that he would have never seen before fade into focus around him. Like how he is clenching his fists, there is a tickling sensation traveling down his abdomen and pooling at his knee where he is bracing himself: the ground is uncomfortable and rocks jab into his feet through his socks. Distantly he remembers that he put on his lucky ones that morning: his favorite pair with a puffer fish on the sole.
His arms go limp first, struggling as spasms go up against his spine, and he lets go of Riptide. He can't hear the sword touch the ground-It's a pen. A final choking breeze of air deflates his lungs and he can't get a breath in.
Where is his mom?
When he dies and he does—he drifts off, feeling an unimaginable pain that is numbing his toes. He is cold, but wet, hot liquid is crawling up his throat, burning him from the inside out.
He is impaled. Suspended by the single metal pole that goes through him and out into the ground, he faintly feels like he could pick himself up but his strength is gone. He can't feel his arms.
It hurts—it doesn't hurt.
Questions swarm him, undertones of panic washed away by concern and something unidentifiable. He broke a promise—what promise? Where is Annabeth? He can't see her. He blinks. The dark confines smear together with red so he can't make out the shattered glass on what used to be a window sill.
Where is his family?
Percy Jackson is dying. He thinks of this. In a split second he realizes his socks aren't lucky anymore. The white fabric will stain: red doesn't come out easily. He has seen it before- Too many times.
After years of battle and death. He doesn't know if he is ready to die.
His lips open, tongue feeling heavy and swollen. He mouths a word to the empty area. There is no one to hear his words. There is no one here.
In this moment, there is no fate, there is no prophecy, there is nothing except for him. Buried under a building, impaled, and alone.
Around him is spacious, so empty despite him being there. It is so dark.
For a brief moment, he feels like he wants to smile. He's not alone because there she is, his mom, his Annabeth, his dad and his friends. They're looking at him with soft smiles and the need to comfort brewing in their eyes. Annabeth crouches down to his level, takes two fingers and brushes his forehead. They come away red.
"Please?"
She says something, no sound, but Percy understands. A real smile stretches across his face, eyes crinkling in an old pattern, worn through years and years. Too many years.
"It's okay," She says, "Come home." And he wants to: he leans into her touch but can't move. He's so cold his blood doesn't warm him anymore, instead it coats his skin and makes the shivers feel like splitting dead skin, no pain anymore.
His body makes an aborted movement. Spasming around the object in him. His feet shake and he can see his limbs move but he can't feel them. He wishes to stand but he can't. He can't move anymore.
Percy guesses that means it's time to go.
He thinks of all the things he has done before. Fought for love and friends and family and for everything good. Not once could he regret his actions. For now his mom and dad are at home, baking. Annabeth is at camp. There are many people missing. Empty seats at empty tables.
Percy supposes nobody will miss him. After all, he's done so much already. He wants to go home.
His heart is still beating, loud and more than a little fast. He tells it to calm down. Who is he? And it obeys, slowing with another flush of red down his thighs and soaking his shoes, socks, and feet. He wishes for something.
The sky breaks and falls: a chunk stirs dust and gravel and small rocks. The chunk of rock falls. It presses against his left arm and pushes it backwards. Percy doesn't hear the snap. He does hear himself distantly screaming, it hurts his throat, he should stop—he doesn't.
He is bleeding so much. When is it too much?
So he screams. The sky isn't supposed to scream with him. Percy remembers when he held up the sky. He wants to reach up and do it again. But he can't. Annabeth tells him no.
"Percy…," she whispers sadly.
Where is his family? He needs them.
Sound becomes grating, and with his numbness he decides to hate the feeling of nothing. His world is everything.
So dark, the sky, he doesn't remember it being this dark. Zoe lights up against the sky when darkness falls. So does every other fallen life. Glowing dots that provide so much light. He wishes to see the light again.
It listens.
He listens to his screams and the sky opens. A crack, a slab of rock. It's so bright, he can't take it anymore. He wishes it away.
It refuses.
Annabeth is gone, replaced with voices. Echoes and shouts. He can hear them, friends and family. Calling out his name.
A hand blocks out the reaches for him. Percy can't reach it but for some reason some part of him wants to.
Someone screams. His own voice crackles and together they make the most glorious symphony of agony. Percy isn't smiling anymore. It is too tiring.
He wishes he could breathe.
When Percy Jackson dies, it's long and boring but is cut short. The sky, however dark it is at that moment, is touched by the gods and the immovable object dislodges its crest. The pinned person underneath closes his eyes in a final, unsettling way that no one sees. A piece of someone's home crushes him. Completely.
Boring, cowardly, Percy Jackson was anything but.
The rescuers fail. The building grew too heavy. The friends watch with cold faces, too used to this. It is almost heartless grief. A lover, with strings of fate tied so tight it strangles her before finally snapping. The family mourns, weeps, and shakes at the foundations of what used to be; a mother escaping once a summer to a cottage on the beach, with her son.
His body is recovered, broken, and left to grace the sky. The sky he hated so much as he had felt the weight of it, strained beneath the judgment of a million lives lost before him.
When Percy Jackson dies, nobody could have stopped it. It isn't fate. He dies, plain and simple.
Slipping beyond mortal arms, moving away from the gods reach and disappearing, through memory and generations of stories.
One day, Percy Jackson dies and a millennial later he is forgotten.
The books describing his legends, his loyalty, and spirit—all untrue. They are gone, and where he remains for his afterlife is unknown—all he wanted.
Percy Jackson was, after all, not a hero. Just someone known for going through the unimaginable, for breaking down walls that never existed, for warming hearts and giving tears that stain paper.
Percy Jackson, was there, when the world came tumbling down-When he couldn't hold it anymore.
Mistake? To draw a last breathe is to say I give up, but Percy Jackson never gave up. That is his mistake.
We meet again... with yet another sad fic.
Did this make you cry? Please tell me, I live off tears. Did you hate this? Tell me why. I can make it better.
Anyways, before I disappear for another 3 months- potatoes are gross. That is a fact.
See ya