This oneshot is sad - and it's about Percy realising what being a hero means, and that a hero's heart can never be set free. Love is a beautiful thing - but it can cause more pain than it heals sometimes...

Song Choice: 'Evenstar' from Lord of the Rings (The Two Towers)

Stood Alone

He shifted a little, trying to get comfortable. The chill was biting at the bare skin on his arms, but he dismissed it. His mind was wandering away from his body, so what did it matter?

It wasn't his fault. Any of this.

It wasn't his fault that she was all he thought about.

It wasn't his fault that his eyes would dart towards any golden glints, like her hair, as he walked down the street. It wasn't his fault that he saw her eyes reflected in the rippling storm clouds. It wasn't his fault…

But what if it was?

He ground his thumb angrily along the floor and looked out to the skyline of Manhattan. The roof was the place he came to think about her. Nobody else. Just her.

Sometimes it would just be the things she'd said. Sometimes it was her laugh. Sometime it was simply her face; smiling, thinking, crying, shouting, laughing. He'd seen it all.

But now, all he saw was the back of her head as she walked down Half Blood Hill, away from him. She hadn't looked back. She'd kept walking, like he wasn't there. She couldn't even allow him a glimpse of her face to last him the months that would follow. She had left him, stood alone.

And what was breaking his heart more than anything was the ease with which she had walked away, and didn't regret for a moment. And now, this cold evening, with the sound of taxis and people living their very normal lives, he wondered (and he hated himself for wondering) if that was, ultimately, what she would do. That would be the choice she would make.

To leave him, stood alone, as she walked to another destiny without a moment of regret.

Would she?

He'd always thought he'd known her. He knew her strengths and weaknesses like the back of his scarred hands; he could tell what she was thinking in one glance at her beautiful face. But something had changed this summer. He'd seen a side of her that he'd always know was there, but…

What it came down to, he realised, was choices. Like what Hera and Hephaestus and Calypso had said. She, Annabeth, would have to choose between him and them.

The enemy. And himself.

Unless he was the enemy.

Oh, don't start that again, he told himself, turning his palm over. His scar was clearly visible; it didn't hurt him anymore, but it hurt him to remember. And it hurt him to remember what Luke had done to Annabeth, to Thalia – to Camp, the one place in the world where he felt like himself, for once. Where he was accepted.

He just couldn't bring himself to understand how she could ever love Luke. Did he, Percy, not count for something, too? When had he turned his back on her? When had he betrayed her? He'd throw himself under a train without a moment's thought for her. Luke threw her under the sky and made her bear the weight of the heavens.

And yet Luke was the one that made her cheeks burn that fiery red. Luke was the one who she had shed so many tears over. Luke was the one she had loved.

He shut his eyes, his tense body relaxing slowly.

Could she ever love him?

He thought of her now; everything about her – everything so very Annabeth and he felt his heart start to crumble apart. She could never love him. He would never allow her to love him. Not while this prophecy was his, and not while his future held so much death.

It dawned on him, then. What his father had said to him all that time ago, about how siring him was an unforgivable mistake. Was this had what he had meant - this heroes half-life of a guarded heart and pain? The fact that the one person he loved more than anyone else in the world could never be his?

He would love her, always. She was his heart's, and she always would be. But he could live with the pain – because he had to. Because he was the hero and that was his burden to bear. He could never break her heart, or leave her here alone. He would never be able to tear himself away from her if she loved him, and then she would have to be left with an empty space beside her…

It was then that he promised himself that crushing truth. As much as he loved her, he would not let her love him. For her own sake's. She didn't deserve the pain it would cause her.

Annabeth Chase could never love Percy Jackson.

Because Percy Jackson would never allow it.