Loyalty and Promises
He's heard it time and time again. His fatal flaw. He's too loyal, and that that more than anything would be one of the reasons the world could end. Quite frankly, he never quite understood how loyalty to those you care for could be so bad. After all, he's always made it through every challenge, every trial, every quest, despite all their opposition to how he does things. And besides, as far as he's concerned, it's loyalty and camaraderie that gets him through each hardship he has faced. His friends have been there for him every step of the way, so isn't it only right that he reciprocates that with his own trust and loyalty?
So he continues to survive every quest, each more dangerous and impossible as the last. He conquers each without having to make the sacrifice they keep warning him about. And for a while, he started thinking that maybe he'd never have to. He just needs to keep getting stronger, just needs to believe that he can make it. All he needs is his friends at his side and everything will be okay. It had to be.
He had never been more wrong.
Now as he's desperately hanging on to the small ledge fifteen feet from where Nico is frantically trying to reach them, he realizes that the time to make that decision has come after all. Despite his every effort to prevent it, the day has come for him to make the impossible decision.
His arms are burning from the effort to keep holding on, his fingers scraped, and he knows he doesn't have much time. He looks down at Annabeth, her face gaunt and her normally steely gaze overshadowed by fear.
"Percy, let me go," she croaked, "You can't pull me up."
Even covered in dust and cobwebs, with the sun shining on her, she has never looked more beautiful to him. He drinks in the sight of her, knowing it just might be the last time he ever sees her.
With a deep ache, he realizes that the one promise he held above all is the one promise he wouldn't be able to keep.
"Never," he said.
"We won't make it. And you know it," she reasoned.
"You're right, we won't." It was then that Annabeth knew exactly what he intended to do, could see it in the grim resolution on his face.
"No- You can't possibly," she starts to plead with him, "Don't do this."
"The other side, Wise Girl. They're gonna need you to lead them there," his grip was becoming almost painful.
"No, please." Tears start to gather in the corners of her eyes and his resolve almost weakens.
Too late now, he realizes, he wouldn't be able to keep that promise after all.
Too late now, he realizes, maybe he shouldn't have made that promise after all.
"It's the only way. I can't-," he chokes back a sob threatening to burst through the surface, "I'm sorry, I can't keep my promise after all."
He grabs her tighter as if to never let go and, mustering whatever strength he had left, catapults her back up to a frightened looking Nico. As she passes over him he finally lets go of the ledge and pulls out Riptide and slashes the last piece of string connecting Annabeth to the fallen Arachne.
A one-way trip. A very hard fall.
He is barely aware of Annabeth's desperate cries or Nico's stunned expression or of Hazel materializing next to Nico and catching Annabeth. He focuses instead on the sunlight and the warmth that was quickly becoming farther and farther away, focuses instead on the tear-streaked face of the one person he couldn't give up. Not for anything.
For him, it was never a choice between her and the world. Simply because she washis world.
And has been since that fateful meeting when they were twelve.
"I love you," a wish whispered into the wind, and Gaea's first sacrifice falls into the deep abyss.