a/n: for zoey (pallet town) in the gift-giving extravaganza 2014 and ray (liliths) on her birthday, which was on january 29th. this is percycalypso, but it's more like a character study. i have no idea why i used no dialogue. sorry for all mistakes (probably made a few canon ones and grammatical ones, sorry).
oh, and the tfios quote was definitely necessary.
immortal infinities
percy/calypso
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Calypso's life is just one big infinity.
Don't get her wrong, she loves being immortal and having an endless life. It gives her a sense of power and it's something that differentiates her from the rest of the world, but even though there are lots of good sides to immortality, there are plenty of bad sides, too.
The good: She is practically immune to death. She never grows old. She can live in hundreds of time periods. You can watch history unravel. In fact, she is part of history. She gets to enjoy everything life has to offer. She gets to watch the earth change and evolve over time.
The bad: She can never live a regular life. More often than not, life is extremely boring. She is a minor goddess, which means she doesn't get much can't get attached to any mortals, because it'll always end in painful goodbyes. Not everyone lives forever. She'll never be like the mortals. Her heart is different from theirs. Her heart is immortal.
And immortal heartbreak hurts a lot more and lasts a lot longer than mortal heartbreak.
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She is cursed by the gods to spend the rest of her infinite amount of days on an island called Ogygia, all because she supported her father, Atlas, in the first Titan war. It doesn't seem fair to Calypso, but life isn't fair.
Her island is very pretty. The ocean waves lap at the sand surrounding her island. She can clearly see the sunrise and sunset paint the sky every day. The Her island is everywhere, but at the same time nowhere. That's what makes it so mysterious.
Calypso's been given a paradise, but she is the only inhabitant of the island, with only invisible servants to keep her company.
There are infinitely many things she can do with her island. There are also infinitely many ways she can spend her days. There used to be more things she could do, but she thinks that island isn't so bad. She's isolated from civilization, from horrible wars between humans and gods alike. There are no more horrors for her to experience now that she's on this paradise.
But then again, paradises always end up being only illusions of luxury and happily ever afters.
Isolation means loneliness. Calypso can't see her family - they're not the best family, but they're still her family - or anyone else anymore. It hurts a lot. She regrets her decision every day, but if there's one thing she's learned about time, it's that you can't change it.
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The population of Ogygia is now one nymph, tens of invisible servants, and hundreds of flowers.
Calypso occupies herself with gardening. Herr gardens are full of iridescent flowers; they range from crimson peonies, to orange marigolds, to yellow daffodils, to green zinnias, to cerulean geraniums, and to violet lilacs. She has her own collections of rainbows.
And then there's moonlace, a native plant of Ogygia. It has to be the most beautiful and precious thing Calypso's ever seen. It's bioluminescent and glows silver under moonlight. It has a special place in her heart. She is the only person on earth who has even seen the plant, though, which saddens her. She would introduce it to everyone else if she could.
Everyone needs a hobby, and she thinks she's found hers. It's a nice way to pass the time and it keeps her from thinking about everything she's missing out on by being on this island.
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It seems like all Calypso knows how to do, other than garden, is get her heart broken.
Heroes start washing up on her shores every so often. They're always wounded in some way, and rely on her to heal them. She can't help but fall in love with every single one of them, even though she knows that there's no way it's going to last.
They always end up leaving her, and she always ends up heartbroken.
But immortal hearts can never fully break. After a period of time, her immortal heart repairs itself, only to get broken again many years later. It's an endless cycle of getting her heart broken and then slowly but carefully putting it back together, piece by piece. One day, she's probably going to lose all the pieces and not be able to fix her broken heart.
She doesn't even know how long it's been since she's been banished to Ogygia. Time moves differently on her island, and there's no way to actually keep track of time, unless she wanted to count every second, which she didn't, obviously.
Calypso wishes that it would all just be over and she could escape this island. She wants to live a regular life and have something actually work out for her in the field of love. It's painful, watching all the heroes leave on her magical raft, knowing that she'll never see them again. No one ever finds Ogygia twice. She keeps being stabbed in the heart, but there's no way to stop her feelings. Falling in love isn't something she can control.
The cycle of heartbreak continues infinitely, and there's nothing Calypso can do but put up with it.
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A boy with black hair shows up on her shores one day. He's out cold, and Calypso figures he won't be awake for a few days.
She immediately knows that he's a son of Poseidon because of the way the entire ocean shook when he arrived.
Calypso drags his body onto the shore and starts to nurse him back to health. The entire process is painful, though, because he can't see her, but she can see him, and he's just so beautiful and makes her heart flutter. She wants to throw him back in the ocean, but she knows that he needs help and she's the only nymph around for the job.
The boy talks in his dreams, about all his adventures. Calypso is envious of all the things he can do with his life. His infinities may not be as long as hers, but he certainly has more. She learns that his name is Percy Jackson.
In the next few days, Calypso does what she's best at. She falls in love.
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When Percy finally wakes up and opens his eyes, he is confused. Calypso explains the situation quickly, leaving out the part about how she's in love with him. She can't bear to look at him. It's too painful. She wants to cry every time she sees him, because he's a beautiful son of Poseidon, but he'll never be hers.
His eyes are a beautiful shade of green and seem to have the oceans in them. When she stares into them, she feels like he's drowning her in his oceans. She feels so helpless around him, so vulnerable.
Calypso lets him roam the island and do whatever he wants. She tries to avoid being close to him, but at the same time, she wants to get to know him more and treasure the time they have together.
Watching him fills her with this deep sadness. He just feels right and she wants to be with him. She says this about every hero she meets, though, which isn't very many. Even though she feels sad when she looks at him, she wants to look at him forever. She wants their little infinity to never end (but that is not quite the definition of infinity).
He knows she's leaving soon. She can't cope with that fact.
She lets the boy with the ocean in his eyes break her immortal heart.
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The truth comes out one day; she tells Percy all about how she ended up on this island and her horrible father.
He understands and they exchange stories about their two different words. Manhattan seems beautiful, but there are no gardens. Calypso wants to plant gardens there and make the city even more beautiful, but she's trapped on Ogygia, unable to leave.
She offers him immortality and the chance to stay on Ogygia with her, but he refuses. She understands - he has his own life and people who need him. He's going to grow up to do great things, and all Calypso can do is pray that he is successful.
Before she sends him off on a magical raft, Calypso gives him some moonlace and makes him promise that he'll plant a garden back home for her.
It's not much, but at least it's something.
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She watches his raft fade away, until it's only a mere speck in the distance. She walks away and does anything but look back, because it hurts. Calypso starts crying anyway. She doesn't know how much more her immortal heart can take. It just wasn't fair. Beautiful heroes are sent to her island, and she can't do anything but fall in love with them and let them break her heart.
Calypso knows that Percy Jackson will never come back. Centuries later, he's going to be only a memory. He's going to be just another boy who broke her immortal heart. He'll be just another name in the history books, another legend passed down through generations.
But Percy Jackson is not just a regular name to her. It's the name of the boy with the ocean in his eyes - the boy she loved.
Yes, loved, because she can't love him or refer to him in present tense anymore. He's only a part of her past now. Just another boy who broke her immortal heart.
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Over the course of the next few weeks, she starts to put herself back together. Everything goes back to normal soon enough. Calypso goes back to being disconnected from the real world. She's trapped in a fantasy world. Her world of infinities.
All she wants to do is escape this world of infinities, or at least become mortal, so she could die, and her life could have some meaning. But that's not how immortal lives work.
Because she's Calypso, and happy endings don't exist for her.
(What endings, really?)
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Calypso lives in a world of infinities. Infinite heartbreak. Infinite days. Infinite dreams that don't come true.
All she has, other than shards of her immortal heart, are memories of her little infinity with Percy Jackson. They will follow her around and haunt her for infinity.
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But some infinities are bigger than other infinities.