Hey guys! Thanks so much for all the reviews last chapter. Ok, vague responses! Since people didn't know how to reach the poll (wish someone would've asked earlier! :P), I will be keeping it open until the next update. Here are some instructions: Make sure you're on the desktop/tablet site. You can do this from a cell phone or mobile device, but you have to scroll to the bottom of the screen where it says desktop/tablet to access it. You'll know if you're on the desktop/tablet site when you see a blue strip across the top of your screen. Then, navigate to my profile. You can type my username (Izzybella12) into the box in the upper right corner, making sure you select the writer option (since it's automatically set to story, and I myself am not worth a story). Then, at the very top of my profile page, you should see the poll. It's really small, so you might miss it, but it's about a sentence or two long, just a thin strip really, with a link at the end that says "Vote now!" or "Vote here!" or something about voting. Click that link, and it should take you to my poll! Vote for up to three items, then submit it and I'll get the results! Thanks for everyone that's already voting and is going to do so before I post my next chapter! All you procrastinators, get your votes in! And if you still can't find the poll, send me a PM and I can try to help you in a more personal manner. Ok, as for the sequel to this, I was considering a pairing, don't worry. I was thinking either Pertemis or maybe Percy/Amanda. But I have time to think it all over before the sequel. There will be a story between this and the sequel, in case anyone missed the memo last chapter. I have also mentioned this before, but I will say this again, too: NO REVIEW WILL EVER ANNOY ME. FROM ANYONE. Honestly. I love and appreciate every single review I get, even the bad ones. (It sounds like a lie but it's not, I swear.) So none of you annoy me. Ever. Glad people liked the Oreo part of the last chapter. :) I had fun writing it. The oneshot idea sounds fun... I'll have to remember that! Thanks! And thanks for the tip on how to creep people out by eating ground-up Oreos! I'll so have to do that. Wonder if my boyfriend would appreciate the joke... ;) Anyways, I own nothing but please enjoy this chapter! Thanks! :)
Third Person POV
"Aegle," he breathed in shock, staring at his second-youngest sister. She must have heard him through the pain of being slowly crushed, because she wrenched her onyx eyes open and stared directly into his identical ones. In a soft, strained voice, she whispered, "Go."
He blinked. "What?" he asked, getting over his shock at seeing his sister trapped beneath the sky. "No, I won't leave you under the sky! I won't let you get killed."
She spoke, although the words obviously took her a great amount of effort to produce. "I'm an immortal, Brother. You are not an immortal anymore, not after you died. You cannot survive much longer underneath the weight of Father's burden without it killing you. I am not letting you get killed, either."
Perseus frowned. "Aegle, no! I can handle it. It's nothing. It's like a feather," he lied with breath that was still slightly labored, giving him away.
His younger sister smiled lightly at his blatant falsehood. "I know you lie, Brother. You don't need to lie to me. I know the burden that the sky is."
"I am the son of Atlas," he reminded her. "I can take the weight. You, however, cannot!"
"I am the daughter of Atlas," she retaliated shortly, already feeling her lungs constrict as they fought for more air than they were getting. Nonetheless, she added, "Can a daughter of Atlas not handle the same burdens as his son?"
"Now, you know that's not how I meant it, Aegle. I mean to say that I'm older than you, I've faced more endurance-based obstacles than you! And I have the blood of Atlas in my veins to assist me. I can handle the burden of the sky!" He narrowed his gaze slightly, a deep frown marring his features as he crossed his arms childishly. "Now let me have the sky."
With great effort, the youngest remaining Hesperide slowly raised a thin eyebrow at the claims of her eldest sibling. Slowly, as it was taking more and more effort to get the words off her lips, she said with a hint of a rebellious attitude, "I didn't see you handling the burden of the sky when I walked up that hill."
Perseus had the brains enough to blush as he tried to think of an adequate response. "Well, yes, but... But..." He saw her smug expression and realized that he'd been tricked. "But I was going to be fine!" he finally retorted. "Whatever, it doesn't matter. I need to take the sky back."
It took even longer this time for Aegle to work out a response to her older brother's unceasing demands. Even then, it was only one short word spat out from between two rows of gnashed teeth: "No."
Having expected a whole argument, or at least something longer than a single word, Percy was understandably taken aback. "No?" he repeated, frown deepening. "I need to take the sky back, Aegle! I can't let you hold it."
"No," she repeated defiantly. After a moment to force the words out, she tacked on an additional sentence. "I won't let you kill yourself under Father's burden."
"I'm not going to kill myself!" he protested, louder than he meant to. In a softer voice that still had the edge of argument, he said, "I can handle it."
She said nothing, the effort finally taking its toll on her as she hunched her body up and rolled her shoulders forwards to protect herself. But if the look she shot him was anything to go by, then she wasn't buying his plethora of falsehoods.
He kept trying to sell it, anyways, like a car salesman trying to sell a brand new Lamborghini to a man without realizing that the man's wife was standing just a few feet behind him with her arms crossed and an eyebrow raised.
"I can handle the weight of the sky," he persisted. "I faced worse in the millennia I was gone, Aegle. Believe me, it wasn't all eating free bagels for breakfast in the basement of a bakery. I encountered so many obstacles... Some of them I triumphed over! Many of them I triumphed over." He trailed off slightly before resuming his mini-speech. "Some of them... Some of them I didn't triumph over." He leapt over this hurdle of a memory, trying to leave it behind. "But that's to be expected! I can triumph over this obstacle. I know I can."
Still, she didn't seem convinced. Perseus lowered himself to the ground until he was slightly lower than her eye-level, then he made eye contact with her. "I know I can triumph over this obstacle," he repeated, never faltering in his eye contact. "I believe in myself." He swallowed hard, but refused to look away. In a voice that was somehow vulnerable and strong at the same time, he asked, "Do you believe in me?"
The silence stretched on for a long time, until Perseus began to doubt whether or not Aegle was going to reply at all. He was about to stand himself up and try a different tactic because gods damnit, he wasn't letting her take the sky much longer, when a small noise stopped him. His onyx eyes shot over to his younger sister, widening as he watched her shoulders shake slightly.
It wasn't from the overbearing weight of the sky.
A tear trekked down her cheek, rolling across the hills and valleys of her face, until it reached her chin and splattered on the billowing fabrics of her dress. Perseus watched, unable to do anything, feeling despair and helplessness rising up in his soul. She was crying. For Hades' sake, what had he done now?!
"I'm so sorry," he said in an easy tone, worrying his lip between his teeth anxiously. "I'm so, so sorry, Aegle. I didn't mean to-"
"I believe in you, Percy," came a small, wavering voice. Whether it was wavering with emotion or the struggle to produce a noise, he couldn't tell.
He hesitated, disbelief dripping from his tone when he say, "Y-you do?"
Using all her strength, she nodded carefully, her obsidian hair flying about her head. "I do." Slowly, she lifted her eyes up to meet his. "But I don't... I can't let you kill yourself. Arethusa would-"
"Arethusa would hate me even more if I let you die, Aegle!" he interrupted in a more violent manner than he had intended. Seeing his sister immediately tense herself, as if frightened by his loud tone, he scolded himself. In a more gentle voice, he said, "I wouldn't be able to live with myself if I let you die under the sky. Please, let me take the sky. I've waited for millennia to see you again, and if I die beneath the weight of this burden, I will die happily, knowing you're safe and I got to see you once more. Please, let me take the sky back. I can't let you die for me, Aegle."
He didn't realize he was crying (sobbing was the more accurate term) until he felt the hot wetness of the tears soak through the tattered top of his ripped black shirt. Still, he couldn't stop himself from letting the salty beads of sorrow drip from his eyes. He couldn't lose her. He just... He couldn't.
For a long moment, it looked like Aegle would once again deny him. Perseus braced himself for the pain that would stab into his heart once she told him that there was no way she would let him save her. Waited for the disappointment, the regret, the despair, the hopelessness. Because if he couldn't save her, his younger sister, the youngest of the current Hesperides, then how could he save himself? How could he tell himself that he could be redeemed, that he could rejoin his sisters as the Guardian of the Garden of the Hesperides, when he let the youngest Hesperide die?
He wouldn't be able to live with that constant hopelessness that came with watching his little sister die. She couldn't do that to him.
He, on the other hand, already died. At least to her. He was dead for the last several millennia in her memory, so she already knew the pain. She knew the pain of losing him, had lived it for centuries. And she was infinitely better than him, because she lived with it. She survived.
Would he? He knew and feared the answer.
He wasn't as strong as she was. He wouldn't survive. Couldn't survive.
He was a coward.
Aegle didn't utter a single word, not even so much as a noise. Perseus sighed.
"Please, Aegle, let me take the sky," he pleaded, his face fallen with defeat. "I can't live with myself if you die. Please." Another wave of hot tears burned his eyes, so he blinked and let them cascade down his face, filling the trenches that had already been forged. "Please."
When she made no move to give him back the sky that she was so obviously struggling under, he sighed and hung his head. Finally looking away from the trembling form of his younger sister, he dug the heels of his palms into his eyes and let them be slowly drenched by puddles of burning tears. He wouldn't leave her in what was soon to be her final moments, but it pained him too much to watch her life fade away.
A sob reached the ears of the hunched-over, heartbroken son of Atlas. His head shot up and he stared at Aegle, who's body trembled like it was being calmed by an earthquake. Her face was red, showing the strain that holding up the sky was taking on her being. Despite the unnatural pigment, he could easily make out the trails tears had made across her beautiful features.
She cried out, muscles shaking with spasms. With dawning horror, Perseus realized that she physically could not hold the sky up much longer.
"Percy!" she shouted as her knees buckled, dropping her weight so she was kneeling on the cold ground. The sky was only a few feet away from the earth. She let out another wordless shriek, body turning against her as it slowly began to shut down under the onslaught of such force.
In an instant, Perseus was next to her. "Aegle! Aegle, listen to me! I'm here for you! But I need to take the sky!" He eyed her neatly manicured fingers, the tips of which were digging into the handholds of the sky with an iron grip. "You need to let go of the sky!"
"I-I can't!" she forced out, eyes squeezed tightly shut in a feeble attempt to block out the pain. "It'll... It'll crush me!"
"I won't let it!" He replied calmly, but urgently. His eyes begged her to listen to him, even if she couldn't see. She was only half-sensible, as it was. Her perseverance was spectacular. Perseus repeated himself from earlier: "Please, Aegle. Let me take the sky!"
She let out a cry, shouting an ancient Greek curse that would make their father blush had he heard it. But her fingers did not relax their grip on the sky.
"Aegle!" Perseus shouted again, trying to get through to the young daughter of Atlas. "You said you believed in me! But you have to trust me! I won't let you get hurt. Please, Aegle! Do you trust me?"
Slowly but surely, the sky was pushing Aegle further and further into the ground, its weight far too much to bear. She grit her teeth, refusing to shout out again, but being oh so close to doing so. Perseus watched anxiously, wanting nothing more than to help her. But she wasn't letting him.
She was going to die, and he could do nothing more than watch in paralyzing terror. He had never felt more useless in his life.
Perseus sank to his knees in the grass, only slightly lower than he had been a moment ago. He stared at Aegle with a brow crinkled in desperate concern and helplessness. "Aegle, do you trust me?" he repeated brokenly, voice breaking as he said her name.
The sky continued to force its weight upon the weak girl, pressing her closer and closer to the earth that it eagerly longed to embrace. Aegle tried to hold her ground, but she was no match for the relentless force.
"Yes," she ground out softly, before shouting it louder. "Yes! Yes, Percy, I trust you!" Her voice wavered only once, when she called him by his nickname, but her words were unfalteringly loud enough to reach his ears.
Startled into action, because he knew that he only had mere moments to take the sky from Aegle before she could hold it no longer, Perseus moved as close as he could to her without forcibly shoving her out from under the burden. He placed his hands right beside hers, his flat against the sky whilst hers were curved and white-knuckled in an iron grip.
Once stably in a position to ease the burden off Aegle's shoulders, Perseus grunted out, "Aegle, you said you trusted me. Now let go of the sky. I won't let you get hurt."
Aegle nodded stiffly, her head jerking back and forth robotically due to her stiff, strained muscles. "I know," she breathed from between her clenched teeth. Slowly, she uncurled her paralyzed fingers, the small joints popping as they regained movement. Finally, her strong grip on the sky was gone and she was left with her hands flat against the bottom of the sky. She kept holding the burden up, even though her older brother was there right next to her, fully able to hold the sky.
"Go," Perseus whispered just loud enough to be heard, inclining his head to the side to indicate that she should leave that way. Stubbornly, the youngest Hesperide pretended she hadn't heard him and remained beneath the sky, able to hold out longer now that she wasn't the only one supporting the weight. The two were a near mirror image of what they had been earlier; the one that urged the other to go was now that one that ignored the other's plea to leave.
"Go," Perseus urged more urgently than before, shifting his body slightly to bump into Aegle's and nudge her in the direction he wanted her to go. Perhaps her hearing as was bad as his had gotten while he was trapped beneath the sky for however long a time. The physical contact and reminder, however, should help her.
Obviously, the girl was just stubborn. Her body rocked slightly at the push, but she carefully avoided his gaze. She did not attempt to depart from underneath the sky.
"Aegle..." he growled low in his throat, narrowing his gaze at her as he locked his elbows to better maintain his position. When the young, naively-foolish girl made no sign that she heard him or had any intention of moving, he gently hip-checked her and sent her flying out from underneath the sky.
Aegle tumbled down the hill, the same hill he himself rolled down after being rejected from the spot beneath the sky. She landed gently a few yards away, then lifted herself up and attempted to crawl back up the hill. She made it only a foot, if that, before exhaustion overtook her being and she collapsed, out cold in the grass.
Perseus wasn't able to pay that as much heed as he would've liked. Once again, the son of Atlas was trapped beneath the crushing weight of the sky. He only hoped the others would be back soon.
Hey guys! I really really meant to make this longer, but there was a whole bunch of shit that I forgot I had to do, and I was super stressed out, but I still like the chapter! Just wish it was longer. Sorry! I was testing early next week that I really need to study for, so next chapter will be Friday. And hopefully it will be a long chapter. Thanks! :)