Realizations
June 3, 2011 Toledo/Ohio/Eastern Time
This one-shot was written for bookluva98's Not Just Words Challenge. Reviews would be lovely, but (I'm pretty sure) aren't nessacery for entry. You should totally check it out- it's so clever how she found that loophole!
This takes place during The Last Olympian, the night of Percy's 16th birthday, in Rachel's point of view. This is not a Rachel hating story, nor does it end with her ending up getting Percy. If you don't like that, kindly don't read the story.
Prompt One: Broken, just another word for defeated. Fancy yet detached, yes, but meaning is one in the same.
She beat me. The words pound in my head as I lay on my borrowed bed in one of the various empty rooms in the bighouse. It vaguely registered that this should bother me. Even though I was first to voice our... I supposed you could say our 'break up,' it was clear he had decided long before. Whether he realized it or not, he'd always known it. I realize that now.
It was pretty impossible to feel hurt, or even vexed. I should be broken, the thought swirled around in my mind, but I am more whole than I ever was before. Now that the oracle had taken residence in me, I felt like the hole that had been in me is finally filled. I was so scared of being broken, I never realized I already was. Now, now I am whole for the first time in my life. I'm not even sure I ever liked Percy that way. It was like that crush you get on that guy from homeroom because he looks like that cute celebrity. I wasn't being drawn to Percy, as I'd orginnaly percieved, I was being drawn to this... world he represented in my life.
I was drawn to the adventure, the monsters... and the prophecy. Looking back, that's what I most often thought about whenever my mind drifted to him. Don't get me wrong, I thought of his sea-green eyes, and tan skin, but it always seemed to loop back to his fate. He has to save the world, I had thought bitterly, with HER. I never understood that it was only the first phrase that raised my blood pressure, and that the second was fairly irevelant. I never realized how my mind lingered on his future. On the future of the world. It was clearly calling me, but I never heard it.
Even when the dreams began, and the visions appeared- I never noticed how I would wonder at this cruel fate. I asummed I was irratated that he could not spend more time with me, or was overwhelmed when I pictured the pressure that should have broken him. I should've known that you should never assume.
I didn't realize, until Hestia showed me the one vision I had never recieved. Percy was drowing. I know, impossible, but... the water here was different, if it was even water. The dark river flowed, and he was almost pulled into the current, and he barely held his ground. I could images flash in the outer layer of his eyes. Faces, memories. Nothing helped in the least. I could see his idenity draining away, his green eyes growing black and lifeless. Then, a single image appeared, splattered across the... things in the river. Annabeth stood on a dock somewhere, and the sky was a perfect cloudless blue. I could see an overturned canoe a few feet away. Annabeth laughed, and called him Seaweed Brain (I never understood that insult, only masking a term of endearment), then pulled him up. Like that, he was finally free from whatever force that had attempted to claim his soul. Just from her.
In that momment, I realized, I didn't really mind. I should have been jealous, but... I wasn't. I should have been broken inside because he chose her, and not me. But at that momment I knew there was nothing between Percy and I, because I didn't care. Expected it, even. Now I can see that.
I threw down the thin yellow checkered bedspred, and padded over to the window. I stared at the calm waves of the canoe lake here, there was the dock from the vision... did it take place just this morning? I was about to turn away, but something told me not to. I kept my eyes there for a momment more, and a two figures rose out of the water, latching onto each other tightly. They stepped onto the dock, and released each other, but grasped hands. The two silently made thier way to the cabins.
I stepped away from the window, and digested this sight. I realized I was okay with it. Their was no trace of jealousy or antagonistic ideas. In fact, I felt kind of... happy. I realized I could be happy here, at least until school started. I mentally cringed, but I wouln't think of that now. Now, I realized that I was complete. Why wouldn't I be? I had no more reasons to be broken, did I?
I began rummaging through the drawers in the old-fashioned oak dresser. I should be broken, but maybe, just maybe, I wasn't. Maybe, just maybe, I simply didn't care.
I found an ageing piece of paper, and an old pencil, and began my sketch of two figures walking down a beach, just two halves of a whole. Because they wouldn't be broken again, and neither would I.
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Peace, Love, & Life
PLKBerry
