They say that when you die, your whole life flashes before your eyes—just glimpses of memory, there and gone in an instant.
Percy doesn't know who they are, but they've obviously never died before. Dying isn't like that. Your life doesn't flash past you in that last second between living and dying; it plays out like a movie in front of you. It might seem like a second, but it feels like forever.
He remembers standing on Mount Olympus, giving up godhood for Annabeth. He remembers kissing her in the canoe lake and never having felt more alive. He remembers waking up from a months-long sleep with her name on his lips and her face in his head. He remembers lying on the ground in the forum with her on top of him. He remembers saying that he missed her too.
He remembers the endless tortures of Tartarus, and kissing her as she cried in the dark. He remembers staggering through the Doors with her in his arms. He remembers their last days on the Argo II before the battle, having idle conversations about college and camp and even, for some strange reason, the housing market.
He remembers that damnable smirk she wore as she leaned up to him and whispered, Let's put the future on hold for a minute here. We have priorities, after all.
And he remembers asking, What kind of priorities? to which she replied, After this is all over, I think I owe you another blue cupcake.
Zoo trucks and lightning bolts. Sirens and sea monsters. Gray streaks and the weight of the sky. A labyrinth and a laptop and a poisoned dagger and a bubble at the bottom of the canoe lake. Eight months of waiting for her to come back for him. As long as we're together.
Maybe the world had started spinning away from him a long time ago. Maybe he was never destined to be happy—and what was it that his father had said? I have brought you a hero's fate, and a hero's fate is never happy.
But the kicker was that Percy never really wanted to be a hero. He just never had the fucking choice.
Percy struggles to hold on, but the world is already slipping away from him. He hits the ground, feels the breath leave his lungs, struggles against the cloud that's closing over his vision. The stars are bright in the sky above him, and he can't help but say hello to them one last time.
A/N: I wrote this in June of last year and never published it for whatever reason . . . so YAY MORE ANGST! (it seems like I have a thing for killing off Percy. Somebody come take my laptop away from me.)
Really though, the reason I'm publishing all the angst now is because Blood of Olympus is so close and angst works better if you aren't totally sure that the character survives the next book. Once it's published I'll probably go back to fluff.
Which brings me, however indirectly, to my next point: PERCY'S BIRTHDAY YO! I have a fic in the works (not as massive as last year's . . . or is it? :D) that I can safely say will be 34647985492% Percabeth fluff. I have no idea how long it'll be yet but it will be sO ADORABLE. So adorable.
Sorry for the angst and the novel-length author's note. Fluffier things are coming! *wink wonk*
I love you all — EPC