Requested by: A Guest
Pairing: Percy/Hebe, Percy/Annabeth
I in no way own PJatO or HoO
The eve of Percy's 25th birthday he realised that something about him was off, not in a completely bad way, but then again it wasn't something he would consider a good thing either. It was something that confused him to no end and even had his long-time girlfriend Annabeth slightly if not increasingly worried.
She had been the one to first point out to him that his usual rugged youthful looks hadn't really changed since they started dating. In fact he seemed to look almost younger then when they had first started going out nearly 10 years ago.
"Have you asked Poseidon?" Annabeth asked one afternoon after what had been a stressful day in New Rome, it had taken both him and Jason the better half of the day trying to calm down the second legion after a member from the fourth legion had stated that the second legion was an embarrassment to the camp.
They had only just avoided a civil war, something they couldn't afford, ever.
"What about?" he mumbles a pen in between his lips as he looks up towards her, his eyebrows are knotted together in furious concentration as he attempts to finalize a new battle plan for the next War Games.
She sighs loudly and puts her book down resting it on her lap. She gives him an annoyed look before raising a brow, it's sad to think but Percy honestly finds that look more attractive then he would like to admit.
"About you." She says, Percy can imagine her eyes rolling as she says it and would honestly believe she was if she wasn't looking directly at him with a no nonsense look.
Percy doesn't reply and only shakes his head before returning to the piece of paper in front of him. There is another loud sigh; the sound of movement and a book hitting the small coffee table in the T.V room before a pair of arms are wrapped around his neck.
"Just because I look younger then you…" he trails off with a little smile that earns him a slap on the back of the head. "Hey!" he grunts with an affectionate pout.
"Talk to him." she calls out from around the corner, he hears the front door close behind her.
He doesn't talk to his dad, he figures he doesn't need to; maybe he just has extremely good genes on both sides. His mum has always looked at least ten years younger than her actual age and his father is a god.
But he truly starts to worry about his age when even Jason starts to complain about back pain and fatigue during intense training.
"Seriously Percy, you sure you didn't eat one of the Hesperides apples?" he asks, a hand on his back as he catches his breath. Percy stands beside him, practically bouncing up and down.
He smiles at the man. "Pretty sure I would remember that." He twirls riptide around his hands quickly before capping the pen and shoving it in his pocket.
Jason frowns slightly and Percy sees them then.
Wrinkles.
He stares at them for what seems like an eternity, well for Jason anyway who gives the older demigod a concerned look.
"What do I have something on my face?" he questions wiping at nothing, no not at nothing at the wrinkles.
The ones that curve around his eyes and forehead, which dimple around his mouth as he talks and smiles and everything.
"Uh-" he shakes his head slowly and smiles at his friend, his eyes still watching the wrinkles slowly. "Nah just lost in thought."
Jason smiles and all Percy can see is wrinkles again.
'No.' he reprimands himself. He would never think he was this superficial. But is that really it? 'Shouldn't I have wrinkles too?' he questions to himself.
Sure Annabeth has wrinkles but he more or less saw them as caused by stress more than age, she did have to deal with him and their two kids. This wouldn't be an easy feat by anyone's standards. In fact he is still a little curious as to how she hasn't given up already and shipped them off to some kind of mortal boarding school in Europe.
"Cool. So will we be seeing you at dinner tonight?" he asks stripping the armour from his chest with steady hands.
This is what they have become, the heroes of Olympus, travelling the globe, saving the world from Ancient evils, to taking the kids to sword fighting practice and dinner parties every Thursday night.
"Yeah." He mutters non-committedly.
When he gets home he ignores his youngest daughters' questions on the difference between long swords and short swords in close combat and his sons pestering about not being allowed to watch television till his homework is done. He goes straight to her, sitting in the kitchen a cup of coffee on the table in front of her, a book in her hands and glasses, Hades the glasses.
He pulls them off her face, ignoring the protests as she lays down the book with a frown.
"Percy, what in Hades name-" his hands, muddy and sweaty grip her cheeks and pull her closer to him. He stares at her face in shock, because there they are, the lines and wrinkles that seem to appear on everyone's face, all his friends and families, but they don't appear on his face.
His young, youthful skin that looks as if it never aged a day past seventeen.
He is confused and scared, what is happening to him? How has he not noticed this till now. His stamina, appetite, face, Hades even his attitude seems to be the same as when he was seventeen.
"Honey?" Annabeth asks, her hands now on his, and all Percy can think of is how those lines deepen when she looks like this. "Are you okay?" he doesn't answer her question instead he simply collapses to the floor with a strangled sob, his head resting in her lap.
She pats his head soothingly as he cries.
His children stand in the door way watching the pair.
The boy is scrawny, with bright red hair and the bluest eyes he has ever seen, and Percy has seen some blue eyes.
"So what do I do?" he questions carefully standing in front of the small marble shrine, there is a candle just at the base and flowers on either side, that look as if they have only just been picked from the garden, but judging from the dust that has settled over them they have been here for a long time.
The kid looks at him in awe and Percy thinks for a minute the cool breeze that bristles through the pillars will pick the kid up and carry him away.
"J-Just make your offering and she should listen." He mutters before slowly backing out of the room, Percy raises an eye brow before turning back to the shrine. His hands are shaking but after years of trying to figure out what was happening they had finally received a lead and this was where it led to.
He steps up towards the small shrine, placing the bowel of freshly baked bread and grapes at the foot of the statue.
"Juventus, I ask you heal me?" He calls, his voice echoes through the room, his hands shake and his mind scrambles to sense something, anything that can be perceived as a sign from the goddess that she has in fact heard him.
But he is met with nothing but silence.
"Try Hebe."
He spins around on his knees, his hand already reaching out of his pocket holding riptide in his palms. He is meet with nothing but empty air, his sense are heightened sussing the area out, but there is still nothing, not even the augur he has long since vanished.
"Who is there?" he calls out slowly, cautiously getting to his feet his hands are now steady, his heart beating with purpose. He does not want to die in a temple. That is not where he picture himself dying, nor how, rather he would want to go out in a blaze of fire and energy the kind you only get when fighting and war. He truly is a Roman now.
"Try Hebe." The voice sounds again, it's feminine and sounds more like a child then anything.
"What?" he mutters spinning slowly in circles riptide raised high still.
"Try. Hebe." The voice says, its annoyed he guesses in his head, he frowns slightly before he quickly realises and turns back towards the shrine. He caps his sword quickly and shoves it inside his pocket.
"Hebe-" He looks up at the shrine with a sly smile. "Heal me."
"Please?"
"Hebe, please heal me."
"Better." The voice is closer now and accompanied by the sound of foot falls on tiles.
Percy turns his head around, still kneeling in front of the shrine. He almost gasps in surprise as the girl standing behind him.
She is short and slender, with dark curly hair that is parted perfectly into pigtails, the kind Annabeth had done when their daughter was younger.
"Perseus." She states with a smile.
"Percy." He replies dumfounded. There is no denying that this child that stands before him is the goddess Hebe. Goddess of youth. Why she looks like a child Percy doesn't really understand, but he doesn't want to ask her. He knows how temperamental gods can be and he is already here to ask a favour.
She smiles in reply and tips one foot back, he watches it as her legs shakes from side to side as her toes rest on the floor.
"What can I do you for?" she says with a light blush.
Percy raises a brow in response. There is no denying she was the voice from before, that and the fact she was the goddess he was praying to she should already know the answer to her own question.
He turns around and slowly stands, taking two steps towards her, he is surprised to note that her head reaches the top of his hip.
"Uh- I mean, I would like you to heal me." He says again, the words are starting to sound weird and wrong on his tongue. He would be a liar if he said he didn't practice what he was going to say in the mirror before he got here.
She giggles then. Downright giggles, he watches in morbid fascination as her pigtails bounce at the motion.
"Heal you from what." She says after a few moments of composing herself. He looks at her with a look that says 'Are you freaking serious right now?' but she takes no note of it and shrugs her little shoulders. "There is nothing wrong with you."
"How about the fact that I can't seem to age?" he questions, starting to get annoyed by the girl.
"Oh that." She says with a flick of her hand, Percy twitches. "That's nothing to worry about, just good genes." She gives him a sly look that suggests she knows everything about him, every memory, and every thought.
Percy scoffs, because that is the only motion he can do right now that doesn't involve trying to rip out the goddess's throat. Because yes, that was his first thought and after every waking moment, every worried conversation he has had with his wife of thirty years it has come back to that, good genes.
It wasn't until she had gone fully grey and their children had started that aging process that he truly began to worry about his forever youth.
She walks up to him then, slowly a condescending look on her face. With each step she ages a year until standing in front of him is a sixteen year old goddess, with a narrow face and curves that could make any man nervous.
"Doesn't every human wish to be forever young?" she asks him, her hand slithers up his face, until she is cupping his jaw with tight fingers that hold him in place.
"Maybe I'm not every human." Percy says between cheeks that are slowly being pushed inside his mouth.
"No." she says with a far off look that concerns the young demigod. "I suppose you are not."
She smiles at him, releasing his cheeks and giving them a hard pat, like a parent would to their child. Percy clenches and unclenches his jaw rubbing his cheeks.
"But aren't you happy?" she asks turning around to face him. "You will forever have the looks you had when you were a teenager. You shouldn't be sad." She frowns a little before that bright and cheery look returns. "What you should be doing is leaving that child of Athena and going out and seeing the world, partying it up with some bikini model in Venice-"
The mood shifts then, Percy forgets his caution and grips the goddess by the chin, they collapse to the ground with a thud, the marble tiles shatter at the impact. He ignores the look of surprise on the goddesses face and instead focuses on the anger that is welling up inside his gut.
"What?" he grits out.
Hebe for her part looks a little confused and concerned. "You know my husband will-"
"What" Percy interrupts. "What did you say before?"
She frowns a little. "What? I said a few things-"
The hand that grips her chin rises before slamming her head back down onto the ground, the marble cracks again. Before he can start his next question there is a sudden burning pain in his head that causes him to scream and fall back, freeing the goddess, who only smiles at his writhing body on the floor.
Slowly she gets up, watching the boy with a soft and satisfied smile.
"You really shouldn't start fights with your patron." She says as one foot rests on his chest. She licks her lips slowly watching him, the screams suddenly stop as the burning feeling inside his head alleviates.
"What in Hades-"
Hebe's head is ducked down by the side of his head now, her lips right beside his ears. Her tongue pokes out quickly licking the inside of his ear with a vicious smile.
"And seeing as how I have given you my blessing after all these years" she whispers, the hair on the back of his neck stands on end, his breathing quickens and his heartbeat beats erratically. "I would say you owe me something."
Her foot drops down from his chest and is replaced by a hand that grips his shirt tightly. Suddenly the air around Percy disappears and the world spins out of existence.
The young augur runs towards the temple after reports of screams from passer-by's. Guards quickly follow behind him, ready for a confrontation of any kind.
"What the-" he mutters as he enters the empty temple, along the floor there are cracks and chips of missing marble, but what concerns him the most is the lone pen laying in the dead centre of the room.
"Get Annabeth." He says distractedly to one of the guards as he slowly picks up the pen. "Tell her Percy has been taken."
Hope you all enjoyed.
Coming up in no particular order:
Percy/Mnemosyne
Percy/Heracles
Percy/Iris
Percy/Tartarus
Percy/Persephone
Percy/Thanatos
Percy/Hyperion
Percy/Bellona