A/N: IMPORTANT TO READ BEFORE YOU CONTINUE!
This story is really angsty and overall just pretty fucking depressing. It was just a one-shot idea I came up with. This is just a warning, this story definitely contains triggers. So please, read at your own risk.
P.S. Depending on the popularity of this story I might add another chapter where somebody finds him and is able to save him and/or he dies and everybody has to deal with the grief. I don't know… It all kind of depends on you guys, so please enjoy and review with what you think.
The sun shone down on Camp Half-blood, basking everyone and everything in a happy golden light.
It was just a year after the Giant War, and all the campers were starting to get over the sadness of their losses. New campers escorted by satyrs flooded into the camp everyday, and the population had soon risen back up to what it had been before.
The smell of strawberries hung in the air, and the sound of swords clashing came from the sword practice arena. Accompanied, as it always was, by the sound of laughter.
The ocean, however, did not seem to share in the cheerful mood.
It was a dark green, turned slightly brown from all the sand that was being stirred up because of the wicked current.
A terrible riptide pulled and tore at the shore, daring anybody to try and swim in it.
Nobody seemed to notice this, though, too caught up as they were in their own happy moods. After all, no large waves crashed on the beach, no storm was brewing off shore. There was nothing to notice about the ocean at all that day unless you knew how to look.
They didn't know the ways of the ocean, though. They didn't know that it was when it was like this that it was the most dangerous.
A boy sat by himself in a dark cabin, the door closed and the blinds drawn. His thoughts swirled and crashed much like the currents of the ocean under the surface, and one could only wonder if the two were somehow related.
His raven black hair hung in his face as he sat on the edge of his bed. His breathing was slightly labored and his eyes closed.
He was lean, but muscles could still be seen just beneath the surface. Not to big, but not too small that you doubted that he could rip you apart if he truly wanted to.
His skin was paler than it usually was. Barely noticeable, and yet changing his complexion entirely.
Overall, Percy Jackson looked very much the same. Only those paying close enough attention could notice the difference, but he didn't have anybody like that.
He was Percy Jackson. Both the Hero and the Saviour of Olympus. He wasn't supposed to need help. People weren't supposed to have to check up on him as they did the others.
His eyes opened. The irises were, as always, a beautiful sea green. But now they were crowded with so much sadness and pain that he hardly looked like the same person anymore.
Of course, when he was out amongst his friends at camp he would put up a fake grin and smile and joke with the rest of them. Then his eyes were just neutral. But now they revealed how he truly felt.
Everybody always relied on him. He didn't blame them for that, of course. He was happy to help, and the sound of laughing children floating in from outside actually gave him a small burst of genuine happiness.
But it was soon gone, swallowed by his own hopelessness.
The war with Gaea was over, they were in an era of peace. Everything was perfect. So why did he feel like everything was falling apart around him?
He tapped the flat of the small blade he held in his hand against the exposed skin of his forearms. They were already littered with scars, some from Tartarus and his other various battles, but most by his own hand. Not that anybody noticed.
He was the great Hero of Olympus. His job was to save others, and now that that job was fulfilled, what purpose did he serve?
Annabeth was recovering. Slowly but surely she would get there. The horrible nightmares came less and less now, and whenever they did come she knew she could find comfort in Percy.
It was the same with most of the campers. After all, he had been there. Through all of it he was there, right alongside them. He understood them, no matter how weird or horrible the dreams were they knew that Percy would help them.
But nobody ever considered that he had had worse. Nobody ever thought twice about the bags under his eyes.
They cared. But at the same time... they didn't.
He felt totally and utterly useless, but at the same time the weight of responsibility was crushing him, and it was destroying him inside.
A memory flashed behind his eyelids, he and the others on the quest wandering in a destroyed junk yard, calling and yelling like they had been for the past four hours.
"Bianca! Bianca!..."
The small knife dug into the skin on his right arm, and he sighed in relief. Crimson blood oozed from the small wound and dripped down his arm and onto the floor. He didn't care. With his power over water it was easy enough to clean up afterwards anyway.
Another memory appeared, replacing the first one.
Horrible hag-like creatures surrounded him. They reminded him a little bit of the Furies, especially in the way that they were grinning at him, like they knew something he didn't.
A voice that he recognised way too much was crying and screaming to him from the edge of the circle of Arai. Annabeth, his wise girl, was on her knees alternating between clawing at her eyes and waving her arms out in front of her in an effort to see something. Tears streamed from the unseeing white orbs, and they made his heart break all over again.
"Percy! Why did you leave me?! Where are you, Percy?!".
"Annabeth! Annabeth, I'm right here! Hold on, I'm right here!".
Every time he moved towards her it seemed as if she would move away again. Not by her own accord, just as if he was walking towards her but never getting any closer.
With sickening certainty he knew that the curse had been given to her by Calypso. He felt all the same feelings that he had felt when he had been in Tartarus when all of this had actually happened.
Shame, sadness, anger, helplessness, and utter disgust in himself all washed over him as he was forced to relive his realisation of when the gods had not followed through on their promise, and he left Calypso, the poor innocent girl he had sworn to help, stuck on her island prison.
The disgust in himself washed over him now, twice as intense as it had been then. He slashed the dagger once more across his skin, and more blood spilt. The sickly beautiful red colour stained his arm and dripped down his hand where it gathered in a small puddle on the cabin floor.
With scary indifference, Percy realised that this time, he had cut just a little bit too deep. The blood didn't stop leaking out as it did on all of the other cuts, and Percy realised that he must of hit the main blood vessels in his wrist.
A rag lay on the bed next to him, waiting for him to use to staunch the blood flow. But he just stared at it before his gaze lazily drifted back to the still bleeding wound on his arm.
Would it really be such a bad thing if he didn't stop the blood flow? If he just let himself die?
The war was over. Neither the camps nor the gods needed him to protect them any longer.
So why are you still there? Your only purpose is to remind those of all the loss that they've suffered. You're so selfish: wanting to live when all you do is cause others pain. You disgust me.
Percy shook his head to try and clear the thoughts, but he no longer had the strength or the will power. He agreed with the voice in his head. He had served his only real purpose. He was no longer needed. This was a good thing.
The world around him began to blur and spin, and he closed his eyes to clear it, but it did no good. He opened his eyes again with much difficulty, and with all the strength left in his body, he laid back on his bed, and let his bleeding arm hang over the edge.
His eyes were closed, but he was still conscious. The only thing to keep him company was the methodical dripping sound of his blood onto the floor.
Drip. Drip. Drip. Drip.
His breathing was coming slower now, and it seemed like he could never entirely catch his breath. He didn't try to. He knew exactly what was happening and exactly what he was doing.
He had almost drifted away into peaceful oblivion when another sound interrupted his peaceful environment. The sound of footsteps on the wooden floor of his cabin's porch.
He would have groaned if he still had the energy.
Couldn't they just leave him alone and let him pass into Elysium in peace?
Who says you deserve to go to Elysium?
That thought made him hesitate for half a second. He had seen the horrors of the Field of Asphodel and the Fields of Punishment. He didn't want to go there.
Well unlike what you think, not everything is about what you want or don't want. It's about what you deserve, and that is it.
The voice was right. The voice was always right. Who was he kidding? The Fields of Punishment were exactly what he deserved.
"I'm sorry. It was just too much".
He heard the sound of the door opening, and the sound of somebody gasping, and then his vision went dark.