A/N: When I was a younger and more naïve PJO reader and The Last Olympian hadn't even released yet, one of my favorite pairings was Rachel/Luke. And the only reason I liked it was because it got both Rachel and Luke out of the way and made Percabeth the only option left. I gave up on Rachel/Luke long ago, but I decided to write this anyway, as a tribute to one of the most desperate pairings I ever went after.
Missing Pages
…
Some random song was blaring from my stereo; the only I could catch was 'insomnia', again and again. Ha. That was so ironic I smiled. I glanced out at the Manhattan skyline. The city was sprinkled with blinking lights, even though most of it was probably asleep. Gods, I wanted to be one of them so bad.
Gods. How had I picked that up from Percy so quickly?
Anyway, they were stupid, the gods. I hadn't met any of them personally, but I knew they were responsible for all of this. I stared around my room, my throat constricting. This mess of paper and ink and pencil…all of it was the fault of the gods.
I fell on to my bed. The sheets were crumpled, even though hadn't used them in a pretty long time. Sleep just didn't come to me these days. My thoughts were clouded with Greek symbols and images, floating just beyond reach. And when they did come up…
I automatically turned to my canvas of Luke. The guy came up everywhere. I had pictures of him, paintings, paragraphs. He haunted me, smiling from photos and glaring from memories. On those occasions that I actually managed to sleep, I dreamed of him. He was the little kid who feared his demented mother. He was the resentful teenager who yearned to be noticed. He was the demigod who survived a dip in the Styx. He was important, I could tell, but how? Hadn't he fulfilled his purpose by giving Kronos a body?
I groaned and got up, pacing beside my walls. Murals followed me – a Cyclops skeleton, a dracnae army, Pan with his singing Dodo bird…
I stopped at a painting of Kronos's sarcophagus. Luke was in front of it, shielding his face from my blue plastic hairbrush. He might've been good-looking at one point in time, but his face in the picture was unnatural and cold. I grabbed a paper off the floor – a sketch of Luke with his mother – and held it next to the mural. The kid Luke was smiling, his eyes bright. How had a cute little boy like that become the monster on my wall? Where had it all gone wrong? I knew bits and pieces of Luke's life, only fragments. It was like trying to read a book with half the pages gone.
The worst part was that it was a book I really wanted to read. There was something fascinating about Luke. He had been popular and likes, as far as I'd seen, so why had he made himself the villain? There were way too many questions and I wanted to answers badly. So badly that it was almost an obsession. Sometimes I wondered if I was keeping myself awake every night, pressing my mind for the final pages of the book I needed to finish. Because they were there. They just refused to be found.
I let the paper slip from my fingers and stared at the sketch on the floor. He looked so innocent. If I'd known him before all this, I suddenly wondered, would I have been able to save him from his fate as Kronos? I had a random, panicky urge to run all the way to Percy and demand that he tell me everything he knew about Luke. Maybe that way, I could save him… I could finish the book… I could get all the answers…
A sharp rap on my door snapped me from my reverie. "Rachel?" Dad called over the music, "Rachel! Turn it down in there!" I strode over to the stereo and twisted the knob. Dad 'hmph!'ed on the other side of the door; I could hear his footsteps fade away. Tomorrow we'd both have to go to the stupid beach – without Percy – and I'd never get to ask about Luke. I could only hope that the answers would come to me there.
I turned and stared at Kronos/Luke on my wall, the main character of my unfinished book. I knew him, but he was a stranger. I wanted to get closer, but he was the enemy. I was on the border of obsessed, but it wasn't enough.
I had barely met Luke, but he was driving me crazy.