AN: Just a cheeky little drabble/ one-shot, nothing serious. Just had an idea and thought I would explore it and maybe share it. Its always fun telling writing underdogs. But it is especially fun writing the conflicted loser of a bloody war, especially if that loser had good motivations behind his actions.
I don't know, I thought the idea was fun and I had a few hours free in the staff room at work, when I was on call and had my laptop to hand. Not enough time and motivation to update one of my proper stories so I said why not.
Either way please do enjoy, considering it is not about Percy I don't think it'll be popular. Then again who cares, I only write fanfiction because it is a bit of fun, and I enjoy writing out my ideas and being creative, that and I like getting feedback and meeting likeminded people with whom I can have discussions about my favoured fandoms.
Hope you enjoy, and leave a review etc.
Disclaimer: Surprisingly I don't own Percy Jackson or Harry Potter. Then again can anyone else see the blatant similarities in some of their backstory?
By the way, I have swapped this chapter with chapter 2, as I think it flowed better. So this is now chapter 2 instead of chapter 1.
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Chapter 2
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(21th August, 2004)
"Shit." Alabaster Torrington cursed as he stumbled over and fell to his knees. A pained hiss of discomfort leaving his lips as he pushed himself back up and onto one knee, his emerald green eyes idly inspecting the torn up knees of his jeans.
Brushing off the dirt and grime, he gritted his teeth and pushed himself up and on to his feet again. By this point his jeans were a lost cause, just like the rest of his clothing, everything he wore was in a state of complete disrepair.
His rune encrusted armour was little more than bronze scraps at this point, and the Kevlar vest he wore beneath was so torn up and shredded that it looked like it had been put through a blender. As for his coat, by this point the only thing holding it together were the runes and enchantments that had been imbued into it.
Mussing up his short, greasy, black hair with his grubby, dirt and blood encrusted hands, Alabaster sagged against the nearest wall.
His breathing was rough and ragged, and his eyes were stinging as he squinted around and took in his darkened surroundings.
Things had not gone the way he had expected them too.
He had gone into the second Titanomachy expecting a complete rout.
Or at least that was the way that bastard, Luke Castellan, had sold it to him when he had first started his recruitment drive all those years ago.
The gods had been divided and disorganised.
Some of them were still denying the growing threat the Titans presented, and instead squabbling amongst themselves for petty reasons. Whilst others, those in the know, were already negotiating for their place in the new hierarchy.
His mother, Hecate, was one of the gods in the second category.
By the time Luke had approached him what, two or three years ago, Hecate had already agreed to switch sides.
After hearing that, well his own decision had been easy.
The Age of the Gods was over.
That is what he had been told, and that is what he had truly believed.
What a fool he had been.
Letting out a grunt, Alabaster pushed himself off the wall and continued to stumble down the dingy, vine covered, stone-walled corridor. A hiss leaving his lips with every step as his body started to rebel against him, and proclaim its discomfort.
In the end. All of his struggles. All of his fighting. It had all been for nothing.
The Titans had once again been defeated, and their monstrous army had been smote.
The remains of that very same army were even now scurrying away into the dark places of the world with their tails firmly between their legs. Even as others fled into the dingy alleyways, and labyrinthine sewer systems and subways that infested the mortal cities.
They were all now running and hiding from the victorious gods and their children, fleeing from those that they once hunted, in shame and terror.
Spitting out a globule of bloody phlegm at that thought, Alabaster shook his head in frustration.
It was alright for them. Those eldritch abominations were immortal. The worst that would happen to them, was that they would die and then spend the next few decades reforming in Tartarus.
It was shit, but it wasn't like death was a permanent thing for them.
For those like him however, for the demigods that had thrown their lot in with the Titans, things were different.
Dozens of his demigod allies, some of them his own brothers and sisters had been killed. Some of them had been slain in the final battle on the streets of Manhattan. Others meanwhile had fallen on the slopes of Mount Othrys as they fought in vain to hold off the advancing Roman legions. That or they had been dragged beneath the waves after their floating base, the Princess Andromeda, had been blown to pieces by that damned bastard, Jackson.
It was heart-breaking to think about.
Dozens of young demigods dead, and why?
Because they wanted to be treated like they were actually worth a damn?
Because they had dared to fight to be recognised as actual living, breathing people, with their own hopes and desires?
Because they saw the unfairness of their situation, and the way they were mocked and demeaned due to their parentage, and wanted just an ounce of the respect that the other children of the gods, the children of the Olympians, received every day of their lives?
Hell, some of them hadn't even gotten to know the name of their parents, a right that every child should have. They didn't know their heritage, or where they came from. Instead they were denounced as 'unclaimed', and were treated like outcasts and pariahs, like objects of pity.
It was sickening and frustrating, to be treated as something lesser, just because of the circumstances of your birth, or because your parent happened to be a minor god or goddess, or just because they couldn't be bothered to so much as acknowledge your damned existence.
In spite of all of that though, and despite all of the mockery and humiliation they faced on a day to day basis. They were then expected to grovel and give offerings to the gods, to risk their lives, the one thing they had been given in this damned life, all in the name of beings that neither knew, nor cared, about their existences.
It was a joke.
The lives of demigods were just a massive cosmic joke.
Was it any wonder why so many of them rebelled against the status quo?
Not that that worked out for them either.
Wiping some of the encroaching dampness away from his eyes, Alabaster snorted in contempt.
No, they had dared to stand up for themselves, and to prove a point through their actions, and in return they were cut down and slaughtered like animals for having the sheer temerity to dare to want more out of life than they had been grudgingly given. To want to be treated like they actually mattered.
Alabaster sighed at that and shook his head, his eyes blurring slightly as he stumbled forward a few more steps.
They had all had a choice in the end.
Whether it was the right choice or the wrong one…, it really matter anymore.
They had made their decision, and had thrown the dice.
Where the dice then landed, well that was down to fate in the end, and obviously the Fates had not favoured their endeavour.
Not that any of this mattered anymore.
Kronos, Krios and Hyperion, the remaining Titan Lords, all of them had been defeated and banished back to Tartarus.
The turncoat gods and goddesses had all surrendered at the nth hour, and had already been pardoned for their treachery.
Luke Castellan and Ethan Nakamura, the other two demigod lieutenants aside from himself, both of them were dead.
Just how Ethan died, he didn't know.
But Luke, well apparently the main instigator and arch-traitor of their little rebellion had killed himself in the Throne Room of Olympus, and now, of all the injustices, was being treated as a martyr and a hero.
The thought of it made him sick to his stomach.
As for himself, the last living ringleader and demigod lieutenant, well he had survived the final battle.
Only he received no amnesty like the other surviving defectors, both god and demigod alike, nor was he being held up as a martyr, or a misguided fool with good intentions.
No, instead he was being hunted down like an animal.
There was no pardon waiting for him if he was caught.
No simple slap on the wrist for his apparent crimes.
A scapegoat that is what he was.
A sacrificial pawn upon whom all the sins of the other traitorous demigods' could be blamed.
It was beyond frustrating, and not only because he had had monsters and loyalist demigods on his trail for the past three days now.
No, the thing that annoyed him the most through all of this, was the lack of support from his mother.
He was her Champion, her favoured son, and she had encouraged him to join the Titans and fight for the new promised order.
She had suggested that he rally the other disenfranchised demigods, including his own brothers and sisters, around his banner and lead them against Olympus.
Only where was she now?
She was up in Olympus supping on Nectar and dining on Ambrosia, completely absolved of her sins.
It was galling, especially since the only aid he had gotten from her- and even then that had only been after he had dumped a sizeable offering to her into some hobo's fiery trash can, had been that he use the Labyrinth to escape, and that he then head back to his homeland, back to Britain where the gods and their loyal dogs wouldn't follow…
How was any of that helpful at all?
The Labyrinth was just that, a labyrinth. He had neither tools nor knowledge to properly navigate his way through the world spanning network.
As for the gods not following him to Britain, well that was a joke too. Firstly, despite being British, he had been raised since birth at Camp Half Blood and had only visited that soggy island a few times. He knew no one there, and thus had no contacts or friends to shelter him. And secondly, the gods might not be as connected to the Old World as they once were after their move to the Americas, but they could still go anywhere in the world, save for maybe Alaska, and so too could their monsters and demigods.
Britain was no safer than New York.
The only thing heading there would achieve, would be to buy him a bit more time to hide, and even then it would only give him a few days reprieve at most.
No, even as he stumbled through the Labyrinth, he knew he had been spurned and abandoned by his mother, just as he had been snubbed and rebuffed by every one else in his short, miserable life.
His mother had cut ties with him, and so too had his remaining siblings and his former allies.
They had all made their choice and cast him aside without a second thought, in order to save their own skin.
He had been disavowed.
Letting out another groan as he stumbled around a corner and collapsed to the floor, Alabaster realised another painful thing. He couldn't blame them.
He probably would have done the exact same thing in their position.
Rolling over so he was now on his back, Alabaster opened his emerald green eyes and stared at the gloomy, root covered ceiling above him.
It was over.
He couldn't do any more.
He hadn't eaten or slept in days. Instead he had been endlessly wandering through the depths of Labyrinth, lost, alone, and with nary of chance of ever escaping.
He was done.
He honestly couldn't take any more.
Letting out another rattling sigh, Alabaster closed his eyes and started to make his peace with his inevitable fate.
"So is that it, you're giving up?" An amused voice suddenly broke him out of his pessimistic reverie.
"What else should he do? His life has fallen apart around him, he has nothing left to live for…" Another voice, this one sad and solemn chipped in next.
"He should keep moving forward! You should never give up, never surrender!" The amused voice piped back up enthusiastically.
"What's the point though?" The gloomy one replied.
Groaning, Alabaster twisted around so he was now lying on his stomach, his dull eyes gazing ahead as he tried to find the source of the two voices. Only for the dullness in his gaze to quickly recede as he saw the corridor ahead of him was now lit up by some crackling golden fire, which blazed merrily in a pair of iron sconces.
Blinking in confusion, Alabaster surveyed the odd scene before him warily.
Where before there was a dark corridor with no apparent end in sight, now there was a stretch of dusky, golden coloured stone.
Not only that, he could also see a pair of identical, solid looking wooden doors that were set into the wall, with a pair of flaming torches, the source of the light, set within a pair of iron sconces which were sitting over each doorway.
"What?" Alabaster muttered, the gloomy haze over his fatigued mind lifting as he clumsily stumbled to his feet, his gaze now fixed on the source of the voice.
It was a person, of sorts...
Only this person was dressed like an old-timey porter of a fancy hotel. Only unlike a normal porter that one might see in films set in the 20s or 30s, this man was over eight feet tall, and had dual toned skin.
The flesh on the right side of his body had a burnished, healthy bronze tinge to it.
The skin of his left side however was a darker, almost unhealthy, greyish colour.
More unusually however, neither the height nor the dual complexion were this man's oddest feature.
No, that instead had to be the fact that he had two faces on one head. With one face, the one with greyish skin and red eyes, constantly looking left. Whilst the right face, with his bronze skin tone and dark, almost black eyes, was continually looking right.
Just the sight of the man unnerved him.
"W-Who are you?" Alabaster rasped, his eyes wide as he instinctively took a step back from the man.
"Janus." The left face sighed sadly.
"The God of Choices and Passages." The right sided face grinned, his lips curving upwards to reveal a set of sharp serrated teeth.
"And of Doorways and Gates." The grey skinned face said glumly.
"And Beginnings and Endings." The bronze skinned face chimed in cheerfully.
"We represent transition, and duality." The left side then grumbled out, finishing their introduction with another unhappy sigh.
"Janus." Alabaster nodded, trying and failing to focus on both faces at once. He had heard of this god in passing, a Roman one if he remembered rightly. But he didn't know anything about him, aside from his name.
"And you are Alabaster Torrington." The grinning face on the right side said delightedly.
"The traitor…" The sneering face on the left hissed, a sinister edge suddenly entering his voice.
"The hero…" The right side countered swiftly.
"The coward who fled from battle, so as to avoid being rightfully punished for his treachery…" The left side shot back nastily.
"The brave soul who dared to stand against what he knew to be wrong. The man who fought to the end, against all the odds, because he knew it was the right thing to do!" The right side returned boldly.
"The craven that even now flees his hunters, and justice..." The gaunt grey face jeered back.
"The weary traveller, nearing the end of his noble journey." The hale and hearty bronze face on the right finished.
"The question is...," The left side hissed.
"What will you choose to do now?" The right side nodded in agreement.
"Will you give up, and do nothing? Will you allow the Labyrinth to consume you as it has so many others?" The left side chuckled nastily.
"Or will you leave the Labyrinth, allow your hunters to catch up with you, and face their judgement with your head held high?" The bronze face suggested, an amused tone entering his chipper voice.
"That's practically a death sentence!" Alabaster retorted instinctively. He didn't know why Janus was down here, or what he was after. But he was done with being messed about. "Why are you here? What do you want from me?!"
"We are here to offer you a choice." Both Janus's replied in tandem. The differing tones of the two initially similar sounding voices, contrasting quite shockingly.
"A choice?" Alabaster replied uncertainly, his gaze shifting from one face to the other in askance.
"Yes, a choice." The left Janus sighed, his black nailed hand rising to gesture towards the lit doorway on his left. "This door will lead you out of the Labyrinth and to the surface..."
"This doorway meanwhile will take you elsewhere, it will take you beyond the reach of the gods…" The right Janus spoke up next, his clawed bronze coloured hand gesturing at the right hand door.
"If you take the left door, whether it be for good or for ill, justice will catch up with you, and your fate will be decided by the gods." The left Janus said, his tone once again gloomy.
Just from his tone, Alabaster could guess just what his fate would be.
A precedent had to be made in order to stop any further uprisings in the future. A scapegoat would have to be found and sacrificed for the greater good of Olympus, and unfortunately for him, he was that scapegoat.
"And the other door?" Alabaster asked warily.
"It would take you to the unknown, to where you maybe should always have been..." The bronze skinned Janus shrugged easily. "This choice would allow you to escape justice, but what fate would then hold in store for you, is beyond the ken of even the gods…"
"Three choices stand before you." Both Janus's said at once, their voices, one optimistic and one pessimistic, merging together awfully.
"You could remain in the Labyrinth and surely die..."
Alabaster grimaced at that, even as he looked around at the place that could one day become his tomb.
"Or you could take the left fork, and face the consequences of your past choices, your past decisions, with your head held high..."
Alabaster's lip curled upward into a snarl at the thought of prostrating himself at Zeus's feet, even as the rest of the gods watched on and laughed. Of bowing down before the King of the Gods for following his heart and fighting for all demigods to be recognised and to be treated with basic common decency. Only for him to then be blown away in a single flash of light, and a burning hot, crackle of lightning.
"Then again you could take the right fork, and duck the consequences of your actions, and instead brave the great unknown..."
Alabaster bit his lip hard enough to draw blood.
That choice sounded no better than the others.
All of them sounded like they would end in his eventual death.
That said at least with the third one, the doorway that would lead him beyond the reach of the gods. At least with that one he had a fighting chance.
Then again knowing his luck, that doorway would lead him to a fate worse than death.
"Those are your choices." Both Janus's said curiously.
"Will this be the beginning of a new adventure?" Janus's bronze face offered joyfully.
"Or the end of your current one?" The god's grey skinned face finished sadly.
He could feel his heart pounding away like a marching band in his chest.
His palms were sweaty.
Every inch of his body ached.
Despite that though, he suddenly felt lighter than he had in days.
He knew what he had to do.
His choice here was obvious.
He was a gambler at heart, he always had been.
Nodding his head resolutely, Alabaster walked past Janus and grabbed the cold, iron handle of his chosen door.
His choice was made, there was no going back now.
"And so your choice is made." The left Janus said sadly.
Pulling open the right hand door, and closing his eyes, Alabaster nodded.
"I hope you don't live to regret it." The right Janus suddenly chuckled nastily.
Snapping his eyes open at the sudden change in tone, Alabaster wasn't given a chance to so much as look at Janus, before the world lurched and he fell through the portal in front of him and tumbled into the abyssal blackness that lay beyond.
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With a cry of shock, and a moan of pain, Alabaster Torrington found himself falling forwards through a random doorway and face first onto a slightly damp cobblestone road.
"Shit…" Alabaster muttered, wincing slightly as he looked up and found himself partially blinded by the blazing sunlight radiating down at him from overhead.
Rubbing at his stinging eyes, and blinking them to get rid of the flashing spots that were now invading his vision after his sudden exposure to sun after several days of gloom, Alabaster then started to look around.
"Where in Aphrodite's saggy tits am I?" He mumbled to himself, his brow furrowing as he stiffly pushed himself up and onto his feet. His body creaking in protest to the mistreatment it had undergone these past few days.
Continuing to look around, Alabaster's brow furrowed even further as a sudden loud and persistent beeping caused him to leap back and out of the road, and back towards the doorway he had just left, even as a dark blue car suddenly raced past him. Its window already winding down as the driver gestured rudely at him.
"Watch where you're going you fucking wanker!"
"Fuck you too shitheel!" Alabaster called back on instinct, not that the driver was in hearing distance anymore as he instead raced down the road, before then turning the corner and disappearing.
Shaking his head at the rude man's actions, Alabaster instead turned back to his surroundings. His green eyes taking in the semi-busy streets as mortals in their modern, everyday garb walked around him. Some of them noticeably making sure to steer clear of him like he had the plague, as they instead either deliberately avoided looking at him, or just sent him looks of faint disgust, or even worse, pity.
The tinkling of several coins landing at his feet made him grimace, even as the following voice raised his hackles even further.
"Buy yourself a cup of coffee or something to warm yourself up young man." The sweet looking old lady said gently, her voice betraying her London roots as she gave him a compassionate look, before continuing on her way without a backwards glance.
Grimacing at that, and looking down at his ruined and stained garb- he could see why they might think he was a beggar, Alabaster then decided to throw his shame and pride to one side as he instead bent down and scooped up the £1.37 in coppers and silver shrapnel and pocketed it.
His gaze then swivelling around as he looked beyond the people walking around him, and instead at the surrounding buildings.
He didn't know exactly where he was, nor did he know just what Janus had been up to when he was handing out his choice.
But nor did he care right now.
Instead, he was focused on the fact that he was cold, hungry and tired.
More than that though, right now he was wondering just what £1.37 could buy him.
Focusing on the faded, aged doorway he had just been ejected from, Alabaster took a step into the road as he looked up and read the faded, barely decipherable golden letters on the sign swinging above the door.
The Leaky Cauldron.
It looked rundown, and dirty. But it was a pub, and hopefully it was a pub that at least served a cheese toastie or something.
Pushing down the sudden rumbling of his stomach at the thought of food, Alabaster shoved the loose change he had been thrown, into his pockets and headed into the pub, a slight gasp of surprise leaving his lips as the smell of fresh air, was quickly replaced by the unmistakable smell of BO, and magic.
"Because of fucking course…" Alabaster muttered to himself grimly, even as he allowed the door to the Leaky Cauldron to swing shut behind him.
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AN: So thoughts on the chapter and premise would be appreciated. I doubt it'll go anywhere, but wanted to share it anyway.
Catch you all later when I update Oncoming Storm, hopefully this week, if not then probably next.
Greed720.