title: don't let your crown fall

summary: and every morning she plasters on a smile, all icy lips and sharp teeth, and pretends that nothing changed. / reyna, struggling to be queen.

a/n: for writing practice and beautiful danielle. here's some pjo fanfic that isn't a high school au. :)


They're all waiting for her to fall. Their narrow eyes apprehend every move, every flinch, every stumble, and some sell their soul just to see her kingdom topple.

She knows this, so she tucks her fears into dark corners and scrubs the tears off her face and sews her mouth shut; even the Piper girl with her too bright eyes and sharp tongue can't see past her mask. And that scares her; her mask is plastered on so thick no one knows where it ends and the real Reyna begins, not even herself.

She peers into the mirror every morning just to see a broken girl stitched up with lies and pride, her broken heart stashed under gold medals and her fingers itching to grab a knife, and her heart still screams that this isn't her. The hurting eyes and canyons of wrinkles can't be hers, couldn't have been hers; there must be a poor doppelgänger trapped inside the mirror because that isn't Reyna.

Her soul shrieks that day after day, but her mind acquiesces that the broken girl prisoned in the mirror is certainly Reyna, so she simply drowns those voices out of her conscious.

And every morning she plasters on a smile, all icy lips and sharp teeth, and pretends that nothing's changed. That her kingdom isn't simmering because of foolish Greeks and her mother replies to her pleads and her blond-haired friend isn't tripping over the Native-American and her stomach doesn't flutter when she passes him, and everything is the same, they can gather up the pieces from six months ago and pretend rebooting relationships is easier than picking up a book.

She pretends, and sometimes believes, but that doesn't stop the world from shifting or cobble its changes. It only locks Reyna in a paradox called wishing.

But the people still yell in rage and the council mutters in worry and she wanders in silence. Her kingdom's crumbling, and she perches on her throne with a crown that weighs too much and the future crushing shoulders and her hard, obsidian eyes pleading for help. Because the world's tearing her apart, and no one wants to patch her back together because no one sees the struggle in her eyes; they only gape at her scars or gaze at her purple toga or latch onto her dark lips and every statement that pours from it.

They're waiting for her fall, but Gaea's awakening with rumbles that split the earth and monsters streaking from hell and friendships shattering with a crack.

The world's dying, and they need a queen.


[Chin up, queen. Don't let your crown fall.]