Percy Jackson looked like any other twentysomething.
He nervously stood in the line for the elevator ride up to the very top of the St. Louis Arch. He looked like any other tourist – a navy blue sports backpack slung around his shoulders, a grey sweatshirt over a slightly rumpled green shirt. But if you looked closer, his black sneakers were tapping against the ground with a soft hum of nervousness. His hands had the slightest tremble. He fidgeted with a paperclip in his right hand. The uneasiness in his erratic eye movement was nearly undeniable.
Percy wasn't usually nervous for something so mundane. He'd faced Kronos, Gaea, and a plethora of other powerful figures throughout his teenage years. He had been stabbed and shot at and screamed taunts in front of the most threatening monsters in all of mythology. And despite all of the horrors that Percy faced, in everyone's eyes, he remained the fearless and courageous son of Poseidon. The one who saved the world not once, but twice.
So why, or better to ask, how was he so scared of the imposing steel beam curving above the city's skyline?
It's not that Percy was scared of the toppling height of the Arch. He's not afraid of heights – he'd been shot out of a volcano, thousands of feet into the air, and stood on the edge of Olympus, hundreds of feet about the New York skyline. Sure, heights posed a danger, especially because he was a son of Poseidon, but that wasn't what was putting Percy at such unease.
It was something else.
Percy came to the Gateway Arch on his first quest, with Grover and Annabeth. Being the architectural nerd she was, Annabeth insisted they take that dreadful elevator ride all the way to the top. Needless to say, the entire situation ended badly – and even that's a bit of an understatement. The story still remains legend among demigods. Who could forget a preteen plummeting over six hundred feet into the icy, polluted waters of the Mississippi River?
(Snippets of an obscured version of the story even leaked into the mortal world of fanatical media. "Did you hear about the Islamic extremist who blew up the Arch?" "No, I heard it was a white supremacist." "ABC News said he was being held captive and forced to blow it up then jump! Can you imagine?")
Sometimes, young demigods would run up to Percy at camp, admiration alit in their eyes, and ask questions about the Arch incident. Percy didn't know how to answer.
For the first few nanoseconds Percy was falling, he was terrified. But then, in almost an instant, he learned not to fear the fall. Because falling, for a few spare seconds, almost felt like freedom. Floating through the air as gravity attempts to take a tight hold. And that moment when Percy crashed into the waters felt magical. Sure, at the time it was terrifying, but Percy always felt at home in the water. Even the murky and mucky river provided some menial level of comfort. He could feel the water seeping into his pores and skim across his skin, his hair dancing like flowers in the wind. It was beautiful. He was escaping all of the dangers of mythology and just focusing on his own pulse convulsing throughout his body's twisting figure.
Percy didn't fear the fall, and he didn't fear the water. So, goddamn, why is he so scared of the Arch? An answer finally begins to arise in his head:
Mostly, he was scared of the past. Confrontation.
After Percy was wildly kidnapped by his own aunt, Queen Hera, for over eight entire months, he returned home. He returned home beaten and battered from the war, but still the same little boy inside. Standing in front of the door to his mother's apartment, Percy shifted the weight of his feet. He felt so damn uncomfortable. This home didn't feel like his anymore, not after so long. Time had passed. Time means forgetting, forgetting means losing. Because time never stops, time never stops going in the one direction of forward, we are bound to forget and lose.
(Maybe that's why gods hated remembrance – they are bound to lose everything around them. Buildings will inevitably topple, all mortals die, and yet the world keeps going and so do the gods. They hate remembering because they know lose is inevitable, and after thousands of years, it becomes too much. There's too much loss. They'd rather drink and party and have sex as opposed to properly memorializing heroes.)
The craziest thing about time is we cannot stop it. Time only goes in one direction. Forward. Time is synonymous with moving on into the future, with forgetting the past. It means that we cannot hold onto everything – anything – forever. (That's why Kronos was such a powerful enemy – he was symbolic of the way we live our lives. Forward, forward, forward.)
And Percy hated this – the Gateway Arch. Because he would stand in the same spot he stood in decades ago. And he'd be forced to remember everything terrible that has happened since. There was a time he was twelve years old, on his first quest, naive. Now he's a grown man.
Percy has changed so much. He's taller, his figure is leaner and built, his eyes are darker and his look is narrower. His clothes fit better, his ADHD is under control, and he's no longer conscious over his slightly crooked teeth. Percy is a changed man, in every sense and way. War, family, and time changed him.
Yet this arch, this wonder, remained the same. Maybe that was why Annabeth always loved architecture so much. It's not like people. It's unchanging, stable, and it's guaranteed it will remain the same. Eventually, time will tear the Arch apart. The New Madrid Seismic Zone – the tectonic plates beneath the eastern part of Missouri – will shift, and the Arch will be torn in two. But unlike humans, unlike Percy, it is still the same and will be until it dies.
(Time inevitably moves forward. We all die. Buildings remain the same until they're renovated or torn apart. The gods don't change. The gods don't change. People change, though. We're always changing. That's kind of terrifying.
You are not the same person you once were.)
Shaking some of the thoughts out of his head, Percy stepped into the elevator.
There were a few other people – a little girl with blonde hair pulled into two uneven pigtails wearing a plaid dress, an old man in a track suit who smelled like he was just smoking, a mother with two toddlers who were wearing matching outfits, and a group of college-aged kids who looked like they stopped here on a road trip.
Standing next to Percy was Annabeth. She gave a light laugh as her curls bounced, her tan skin like a Mediterranean goddess. Those grey, cold eyes overanalyzing every crevice of the structure. Her words were like vomit; the animated, nonstop chatter never stopped spewing from her mouth, and no one really cared what she was saying, but she continued on talking anyway.
He blinked again, and she was gone. Percy closed his eyes and took a calming breath.
The elevator continued to inch up. Finally, they reach the top of the Arch, and everyone files out of the elevator.
From the observation deck, Percy could see the greenery that stretches beneath the shadow of the Arch, the Busch baseball stadium, and the tall beige and dark grey buildings that hold nothing against the toppling skyscrapers of Manhattan. Houses with brown roofs that sprawled into the distance. And Percy swore, if he could squint just hard enough, he could see the vast fields and rural land that extended all the way out to Kansas.
Despite the warning sign advising otherwise and the sicknesses and germs going around, Percy pressed his face against the glass of the window. He pictured himself falling through, tumbling in the air, and bursting through the surface of the water.
But the memory didn't feel real. He could no longer feel the ghost of the wind flying through his intestines and the piercing scream that protruded from his lungs, almost impossible to hear over the loudness of the air. Percy Jackson was no longer the kid who went on that crazy quest.
Percy Jackson is not the hero he once was – an energetic teenager with a brave ferociousness who grappled the world and made a difference. He's changed.
Percy Jackson is like any other tourist up on the Arch.
(if only he could go back and savor the sweet bitterness of childhood and heroism.)
If you're a follower, then hi! If you're new, then also hi! I'm kind of super bad because I always promise I'll continue something and then I highkey kind of never do because my motivation gets washed away. But if this gets some ~positive reception~ and people really want to see another chapter kind of in the same style as this, I actually have several others planned.
Each chapter is a city that appears in PJO and it's how Percy's grown and whatnot. Maybe I'll do different characters. I dunno, feel free to request. Not gonna lie, tbh I think if I make more chapters they'll be better. This was just kinda a warmup.
If you really liked this, my first fic, Georgetown, was the inspiration for this piece, so go check that out.