Title: only the dead have seen the end
Summary: They make the same hard decisions and deal with the consequences. They have regrets but they move forward. They put everyone they love before themselves. They are leaders. They are siblings. / a serious percy's twin sister!au, for victoria and di
Forum: Querencia Quarter Quell Round Two / Caesar's Palace Monthly Oneshot Challenge
Prompts: [Querencia] — PercysTwinSister!AU, Bryce Lawrence, Jason Grace, Reyna Avila Ramirez-Arellano, Annabeth/Reyna, no contractions (personal challenge, except for the cp quote, because they were in there). [Caesar's Palace] — "It's weird. He can make my life so miserable, but when I really, truly need him, he's there, no questions asked." (Feel free to ignore the male pronouns.)
Reyna Avila Ramirez-Arellano is a proud daughter of Bellona. She is a Roman, a praetor, a girl who grew to be a woman too soon.
She is also, apparently, Percy Jackson's twin sister.
Damn, do the gods hate her. It is not necessarily that the revelation is terrible or going to lead up to another war (actually, you never know). It is just really unexpected and hard to deal with. And it is not something she wants to deal with right now. In the devastating aftermath of two wars in a row, she is already too busy with her people to deal with family drama. Some kind of family drama indeed.
It is Hestia that explains the situation to both of them together when they are having a private meeting. She shows up at the end of the meeting and Percy is about to leave when she says, "I apologize. To you both."
Then she explains the situation. I am the goddess of home, of family. When Sally Jackson gave birth to twins, one of them dead, I erased the memory of the stillborn child from her memory. She needed to be strong for Percy. She had the secret of Poseidon. She did not need another. I took the soul of the child and placed it in Bellona. You mother has always been close to Vesta.
She apologizes one more time before she warns them to close their eyes and disappears in a flash of light. Then Reyna and Percy stare at each other for the next hour, each neglecting to say a word, each trying to see themselves in the other's gaze. They find nothing. They are nothing alike.
And that, perhaps, is the reason why they are perfect for each other. Reyna's brown eyes are the opposite of Percy's green, like her mahogany hair is far from his black — but these are only the physical differences. There are also the mental ones. How Reyna is an organized leader who plans before she walks, and how Percy is sporadic yet effective. How she drowns with the weight of her people and how he drowns with the weight of his past and future.
They are not alike by circumstance but by destiny. If nurture was not such a large part of growth, it would to clear to both of them they are are alike. They make the same hard decisions and deal with the consequences. They have regrets but they move forward. They put everyone they love before themselves. They are leaders. They are siblings.
That is the realization that Reyna reaches when she looks into her brother's eyes. She thinks he makes the same one as well. It is hours later, after Annabeth calls both of them wondering where her best friend and boyfriend are, that they finally talk to each other.
"You are my sister," Percy says, and he starts doing that odd hysterical thing, laughing and crying at the same time. She does it too, and they fall into each other's embrace, hugging and smiling and acting a little insane.
That is when Annabeth walks in on them hugging and starts asking questions. Reyna answers them. The three of them walk out of the room happy.
Things change in life. It is a fact that things after a war definitely are never the same. People change, people die, people discover.
New Rome is in disarray. Camp Half-Blood is not much better. It is the duty of the two twins to go out and fix everything. But maybe they cannot fix everything. They can barely fix themselves.
Reyna is haunted by ghosts of her past. She does not know how to move forwards with her new family. She cannot get rid of the old one. Memories of spirits surround her. Her father and the brooch and that fateful day.
Bryce Lawrence seems to always be behind her. After Nico's fit of rage that day, he starts drifting behind her, whispering doubts in her ear, telling her that she is a terrible praetor, that she should be dead for killing her father. It builds up to a constant presence. She cannot destroy his ghost.
Just like Percy cannot destroy his past. He goes to sleep and is faced by post-traumatic stress disorder. He wakes up and is faced by things to do and people to help and events and choices and regrets he cannot back away from. Bob. Zoё. Bianca. Oh, he is lost, he is drowning, maybe not in water but in a flood of wrong choices.
They are leaders, and siblings, and together. But they are also breaking. The physical war was barely won. The mental one is just beginning.
Hylla is not surprised. That is a surprise in itself.
"Did you know?" Reyna asks. Hylla does not respond but the answer is in her expressive eyes. "Why?"
Why did you not tell me? Was I not important enough? Why did you not care?
"Time unravels as it must. You all might not have succeeded in the fight against Gaea had you known, Reyna. I could not have risked the revelation interfering in your individual leadership. Some risks I am willing to take. Others I am not."
"Why is this happening?" she whispers to her sister. "Why could the end of the war not end all conflict for everyone?"
Hylla pulls her close and lets her bury her face in her chest. "We are demigods, Reyna. We are cursed."
Then she pulls away to make eye contact. "Percy Jackson is a good man to have as your brother, Reyna. He is not mine but he is yours, and that makes him mine. Remember that family is what matters to our kind. Family can be chosen or given to you. The Fates gave him to you. Thank them for it."
She nods.
Rebuilding might be the hardest thing she has ever done. And she has done a lot of hard things.
She sits in her office and files paperwork and makes calls and sorts out the cohorts. Frank comes in occasionally for her help. She is the senior officer in their dynamic, and she finds herself lifting up his shoulders as well as her own when it comes to keeping both order and courage.
She calls Percy for hours at a time to try to figure out costs and payments and building up political corruption. She is young and powerful but there are plenty of other people with more military prowess who wish to gain power in chaos. Camp Half-Blood seems to be having the same problem.
It is a lonely winter night the second year after the war when Jason shows up above her tired face in an Iris Message. He is currently in New Rome.
"Octavian's father is trying to stage an attack, Reyna," he heaves. "Come to the Senate. They are fighting at the Senate —"
The call disconnects and she sits in silence for a few seconds as the situation starts sinking in. This is a rebellion in the middle of her beloved city. This is a rebellion against the organized government of her Rome. This is a rebellion against Reyna Avila Ramirez-Arellano, praetor of Rome, daughter of Bellona, sister to the Queen of the Amazons and twin to the greatest hero since Hercules.
This is not okay.
She knows that Jason has probably alerted Percy already so she calls Nico. He promises to come to her aid with his undead as fast as possible, and then she shoves her hand through the air and puts on her armor and runs outside to fight. To protect her legion.
The small battle is over by three the next morning. It should feel like an accomplishment to her but she feels void of everything. Before this, all the threats against her had been just that — threats. But now it all feels very, very real.
There is blood on her arm from an arrow that she had dislodged from her bicep hours ago. She feels no pain from it. She does not really feel anything anymore.
Percy meets her eyes from across the battlefield and gestures for her to walk towards him. She does. When she reaches him he tells her exactly what she does not want to hear. "Thirty-five casualties."
Her breath hitches for a moment and a small sob sounds in her throat. It is a miniscule sound but Percy still hears. He grabs her shoulder, his weight there reassuring. "We will get past this, Reyna. We always do."
Her face collides into his chest and her runny nose and watery eyes bleed onto his sweaty and slightly bloody armor. Neither of them care. "Why do we have to face it in the first place, Perce? Why can winning not be winning? Why do we have to keep to losing and rebuilding? Why can there not be peace?"
He only answers her last question. "The gods like to fuck with us. They messed with us during the war and after. They will keep on messing with us. They lie, I know. But we need to keep going," he lifts up her chin and stares into her eyes, "we will truly win if we keep going. True heroes keep going. They do not fear death or rebellion. They grow. They grow, Reyna."
She cries a little more and then backs away from him. She smiles blearily through the tears, sweat, and blood then says, "What happened to the idiot I met three years ago?"
He chuckles a bit. "He has grown up a little more, I think."
They decide to go and rest a little before Octavian's father's trial. Reyna falls into her bed fully worn out and dreading the days to come.
Annabeth and Reyna are close. Really close. They were best friends before Reyna's connection to Percy was found, and they continue to be.
One day Reyna wonders if they could be more. She kisses Annabeth when Percy is out teaching a sword-fighting class, and they both know it is not right.
"Maybe in another lifetime," Annabeth whispers to her after the moment, "but not in this one."
Reyna nods silently and turns away. She should not have done that — she knows she should not have done that — but she does not really have regrets. Maybe her attraction to Annabeth is only because of her strange bond to Percy. Maybe she feels like she should have what he has. Maybe.
Before she turns around and leaves, she asks Annabeth — "Why do you love Percy?"
The other girl has to think for a moment. "It's weird. He can make my life so miserable, but when I really, truly need him, he's there, no questions asked."
Reyna nods. Then she exits the room.
Fathers.
She finds Percy in his room alone late on a Friday night when she is about to go to bed. She hears thrashes from the guest room he is using in her house and rushes to him right away. She thinks it is the usual PTSD. Until he wakes up but cannot see her.
"Stay away from my mother, you bastard! Fuck you! You deserve to rot in hell."
She hears more of his sobbing pleas. They sum up to say this; do not hurt my mother. I will kill you if you hurt my mother.
That is the night that Reyna learns that Percy Jackson has more scars from his former stepfather than the monsters he fights. And he learns that her story is the same, but that her wounds are from her father. The father she had killed. And that they are from the nights that he had gone mad with paranoia and hurt her without knowing.
Julian Ramirez-Arellano too had PTSD — from his time in Iraq. But that is where his similarities with her brother end. Percy hugs and comforts her instead of locking her up only to become the monster he is trying to protect her from. They talk about the lines on their skin till dawn comes, and even after they finally sleep, they are together.
Reyna learns things after finding her brother. She realizes that she is not perfect. She realizes that she does not have to be.
Percy Jackson is her counterpart. He is not like her, and that is why she loves him so much. He offers her a new perspective on the world, one less based on order and more from base instinct. It is his way and it does work.
Maybe Reyna will never have Annabeth as anything more than a sister-in-law, and maybe she wishes differently, but maybe that is okay. Maybe that is part of growing and learning that she might be a leader but that she is not in-charge of everyone.
War, contrary to popular belief, does not only provide corpses. It is also valuable in its experience and in its wisdom. Reyna has learned a lot from this internal war. She has learned about Fate and Destiny. Some things are meant to happen at certain times. It is pointless to avoid them.
She will not get a tabula rasa. She does not need one.
"The art of war is simple enough. Find out where your enemy is. Get at him as soon as you can. Strike him as hard as you can, and keep moving on." — Ulysses S. Grant
— A/N: This story is complicated for me. Not only did I try to write it without contractions (don't do it, it's hard) but I also had to follow prompts. And I don't like writing crack!fics, so I had to figure out how to write a PercysTwinSister!AU without it being absolutely silly.
While I was trying to write a meaningful fic, I got lost. I truly did. I kept forgetting where this was supposed to be heading and instead spent much too much time thinking of the philosophy behind war. I like philosophy.
Then I started thinking about Reyna. This girl is a teenager who runs a legion. At least Percy had help in CHB — Reyna was always alone. And she kept cracking but pulling herself back together. She lost her people but she kept going. She was a true warrior.
If this story was not for a deadline I would expand it more so it would make more sense, but you're left with some level of Reyna learning something about herself. I'm not even sure what.
This story is dedicated to Victoria (extramundane epeolatry) and Di (cheadsearc) — the challenged me to not write crack and I hope I have succeeded.
Sorry for the long A/N. I hope you enjoyed my take on this AU :)
— Dee
[An additional note on how formal the characters sound — I know they don't sound like they do in the books, but that's part of the story. These are leaders who are in charge of people. This story is not canon-compliant, so I took it into my own hands to make them more like leaders and less like crazy teenagers. I don't care how Rick Riordan wrote them. People who rule people have some semblance of maturity, usually.]