AN: Here it is! I'll admit, this really isn't my standard or a kick-ass chapter, but it'll have to do. I don't even know what I'm doing with this, guys, but I've had this idea for a while now, and it's been killing me not getting it out there. Well...here you go!
Percy sniffled, and wiped angrily at his eyes as he paced around his room on the Princess Andromeda. He sighed and flopped down on his bed, kicking his shoes off, then getting up and pacing again.
What was he doing?
He should be at camp right now, with Chiron and Annabeth and Grover. He should be helping make battle plans. He should be helping to construct a plan to take down the Princess Andromeda! Not ON the Princess Andromeda, helping the monsters in their scheme to attack Camp Half-Blood.
What was he doing?
"I shouldn't even be here!" he thought and turned around, gasping as he came face-to-face with Luke. He stumbled back and fell onto the bed, letting out a stressed puff of air as he let himself fall backwards.
"Who cares what you should be doing?" Luke asked and Percy looked at him in confusion.
"I said that out loud?" The son of the sea god asked, and Luke nodded.
"Yeah." he answered simply and came to sit next to Percy on the bed. "You know...it's ok to struggle with it a little, hell knows I did when I switched sides." he said ruefully. Percy put an arm over his eyes and sighed shakily.
"I don't even know anymore, but gods do I feel..." he trailed off and felt Luke's warm hand in his shoulder.
"Feel...?" Luke asked. Percy knew Luke was making an attempt to cooperate with him, but he wasn't about to make things easy for him.
"Terrible." Percy said quietly. "Terrible because I just betrayed everyone who trusted me...everyone I loved." Percy couldn't believe it himself. Luke tensed ever so slightly next to him
"And it was my decision, so that makes it worse." Percy's voice was now slightly acidic. "It was my choice, and I chose you." He removed his arm and looked intensely at the blonde next to him. "I could be at camp right now, helping my family, but instead I'm-" he broke off and sat up, sighing angrily.
"Screwed." He finished, though he had much more to say. He put his head in his hands. Luke hadn't said a word yet.
"I hate you." Percy's voice broke, and he sniffled again. Luke's hand slipped off his shoulder. "I hate feeling like this." he felt hot tears run down his face. He knew Luke had made an attempt to cooperate with him, to console him, but he wasnt about to make anything easy for him. He remained quiet, and soon after felt Luke leaving, closing the door quietly behind him.
'Good.' He thought. 'Maybe I did hurt him after all. Gods know that sure as hell hurt me.'
The tears kept coming.
A few floors down on the ship, Luke was in a makeshift training hall, stocked with dummies and armour and weapons and all the other toys of demigods and monsters alike. He beheaded a hollow wooden roman dummy in one blow, and cracked the torso to pieces in a roundhouse kick. He needed to release the anger building in his chest somehow, before he got himself in trouble with Kronos.
Maybe it wasn't only anger in his heart...maybe it was hurt too. Thinking this, the son of Hermes felt the threat of tears sting his eyes. He lowed his sword.
'Percy said he hated me.' Luke thought, and the stinging in his eyes steadily increased until he felt the tears break free.
'He couldn't have meant it.' He tried to comfort himself. But doubt found its way back to him only moments after and he felt the tears run faster.
'What if he did?' He felt his chest jerk as he held back a sob. 'He has enough reason to.'
'No.' The logical part of his mind argued. 'If I think about it...we're the same, me and him. This curse was put on both of us.' He shook his head as he referred to the feelings as a 'curse'. It wasn't a curse!
'I could never hate him now...' Luke sniffed. 'So, doesn't that mean he can't really hate me?' There was the logical side again. He laughed a little, then sniffed. 'None of this is logical.'
He stood, and started to walk tiredly to his room. He kept his eyes down and pulled the hood of his jacket up as he walked past the monsters and demons on deck. His eyes, he expected, we're still red and puffy. He tried not to think of the green-eyed demigod who had made him cry, in fear that he'd break down again on the way to his room. Instead, he counted the floor boards, the steps he took, armor parts lying around the floors, anything to distract himself.
As he reached his room, went in and locked the door, thoughts of the camp he'd have to burn to the ground entered his mind.
For such a long time, it had been a haven for him. A place where he felt needed and wanted. A place he called home for years...a place he used to love, and maybe still did. He recalled the day he, Grover, Annabeth, and Thalia had entered the camp. Thalia's tree which he'd had to poison himself. The plan to blame it on his old teacher, Chiron...the old centaur that was more a father to him than anyone else, certainly more than Hermes.
Another wave of sadness washed over him. He'd left Annabeth, the little girl he'd seen as his sister since they met. She was a partial responsibility to him...how could it be that now, his goal was to destroy everything she loved? Thalia...he cursed the day he had to poison her tree, the day they had fought to the death in the mountains. It was never his goal to hurt anyone from camp...
He just wanted the Olympians to go down.
But right now, the son of the Sea God was fresh on his mind, accompanied by anger and a deep guilt and sadness. He tried to argue with himself that this mess wasn't his fault. He hadn't asked for the wretched love goddess to screw everything up. Up until a day or two ago, everything had been fine. Luke had been plotting to take Circe's Isle back from the pirates, and recruit the evil sorceress herself...that is, until he showed up. He assumed Percy had been planning with the camp some way to take him down. Everything was as it should have been.
Until Luke had started to get random flashes of the good times back at camp, and the guilt and sadness had started up again. He could only assume the same had been happening to Percy.
Truth being told, Luke wasn't sure what he would've done if Percy hadn't have shown up when he did. He would ever admit it to himself, but he probably would've started packing up himself, and set off for camp. The ache to be close to the other had been killing him.
One thing the son of Hermes would never forget was the look of pure rage on the other demigods face as he stepped aboard the ship, and threw his sword down in an act of surrender. How he gave Luke a wordless gaze that still somehow explained everything, and stalked off in the direction of the top floor bedrooms. He wasn't going anywhere.
Luke sighed, coming out of his memory, and lied down on his bed. Realising that stray tears had escaped the corner of his eyes, he wiped them away rather angrily. He sighed and fiddled around with Backbiter for a while, reflecting light off of it, and jabbing little holes in the wall.
'Why?' He wondered what he had avoided thinking about all day, up until that point. 'Why did that damned beauty goddess have to interfere and screw everything up? It was finally going the way we wanted!' The sandy-haired teen's eyes narrowed and he stabbed the wall above his bed again.
'I had no problem NOT caring about Percy before.' He thought angrily. 'He's stupid! If he can't see that the gods ways are wrong, he doesn't deserve my help! I gave him a chance to come with me. He still chose them. He cares about that stupid camp, his stupid friends and his stupid father more than he ever cared about me. Why SHOULD I care?'
Eventually, Luke slid his sword into it's sheath and yawned as he tried to relax.
'This...spell will be the end of me.' He thought, and felt a little jab of pain as he remembered Percy's tears. With a small stab of pain, he drifted into the welcoming darkness of sleep.
"Aphrodite, what have you done!?" Zeus's voice thundered across the throne room. The goddess of love walked across the room, slowly, taking her time and smiling all the while.
"I could have given us an extreme upper hand." She smiled and stood boldly in front of the lord of the sky. "And..I might have just saved us."
"Nonsense! You've just as well destroyed us all!" To say Zeus was angry was to say the least.
'He has reason to be.' Aphrodite thought. The child of the prophecy, his nephew, had just gone over to the dark side. And it was because of her. She frowned, for a second, guiltily, the straitened and began explaining things to the god of the sky.
"Lord Zeus, I assure you, my intentions weren't to strengthen the enemy." Aphrodite's face showed honesty, and Zeus sensed she was telling the truth.
"What, may I ask, was going through your mind when you cast your little love spell?" Zeus asked, still angry, but making an attempt to calm himself. He gestured impatiently for Aphrodite to go on.
"It wasn't a love spell," she protested. "I did a lot of things involving those two, but not love."
"Not love?" Zeus asked, sitting and leaning back on his throne, he leaned his head on his hand. "From what Hermes has told me, from the things he's shown me, it is love." His aged but handsome face took on an apathetic expression.
"Believe it or not..." Aphrodite smiled. "It wasn't my doing." She smiled, and sat on the marble floors in front of the lord of the sky, scowling as she brushed dirt from her flowing blue dress. Then she sighed and smiled up at her father-like figure.
"It seems that Luke Castellan and Percy Jackson were...infatuated with each other at Chiron's camp." She smiled. "They kept it secret...it went on for a while, until Percy had to go to the Underworld. Luke, already fallen into Kronos' plan, suggested they end it until things were settled." Her expression softened. "Things never settled. Luke, caring for Percy, and not wanting to make him an enemy, offered Percy a chance to go with him. Before this, Kronos had made it clear to Luke that if Percy refused to join his army, he would have to kill him. Luke had taken an oath to obey Kronos, so he summoned the pit scorpion." Aphrodite frowned. "As I said...things never did settle for those two."
"How is it you know all of this when the rest of us knew nothing?" Zeus leaned forward, raising an eyebrow. Aphrodite smiled.
"It's my business to know when love stirs." She grinned radiantly. "I told you...it wasn't entirely my doing."
"Well, you've interfered with some sort of magic." Zeus felt the anger coming back. "Speaking of which, you still haven't told me what you did. Percy Jackson has gone over to the enemy!"
"Yes." Aphrodite agreed. "I did tinker around with the two of them..just a little." she said, looking slightly guilty.
"And what exactly would this 'tinkering' be?" Zeus pressed.
"I simply resurfaced the memories the two have so desperately avoided these passed years. Flashes of their times together pop up out of nowhere as well as in dreams. Percy had been worrying about Luke's safely and well being, despite being an enemy. Luke regrets leaving, and still feels terrible about everything, but thinks he's doing the right thing. Luke will never admit it, but he hates having to leave his family, and having to fight against them."
"It was his choice to begin with!" Zeus' voice thundered across the throne room, and lightning flashed in the distance. He stood. "If he'd been stronger...if he hadn't have listened to Kronos-"
"Anyone can be fooled my lord!" Aphrodite stood as well. "God and demigod alike are vulnerable to trickery! We ourselves have been fooled and misled at the best of times." Her eyes narrowed. "I don't see how Percy Jackson or Luke Castellan is to blame for anything." she said daringly.
"I don't see how you could be as foolish as to force the child of the prophecy to Kronos' army!" Zeus shot back. Aphrodite's kaleidoscope eyes flashed dangerously, and she straightened herself.
"Percy and Luke's loyalties lie with each other." She said and turned on her heel, blue dress flowing behind her in a nonexistent wind. "I've made sure of that, for the time being." She began to walk out of the throne room, passed the towering columns and polished steps.
"You've just put us all on the line with this little love experiment Aphrodite! I will not forget this!" She heard Zeus yelling after her, and noted the powerful blast of energy when he left the throne room in a flash of lightning. She continued to walk, taking her time on the way to her temple.
"I wouldn't have sent Percy into enemy territory without good reason. I admit, my plan wasn't perfect, but it's just as likely to work as it is to fail. She spoke, knowing Zeus could still hear her. "Its not just a love experiment...I'm hoping he can save Luke...and ultimately, save us all."
AN: So...thoughts? Sorry it's not too long. I'm already a-workin' on the next chapter. And sorry for any OCD-ness.