Disclaimer: I only own the plot and my OCs. Anything you recognize as not mine belongs to Rick Riordan, Greco-Roman mythology, and/or their otherwise respective owners.

Author's Notes: Again, yes I am aware that I have several WIPs in need of update. Yes, I am aware that this could be longer...or better. But this was a lot of fun to write, so there you have it. ;)

~TGWSI/Selene Borealis

~once upon a dream~

Once upon a time, Percy had been a mortal.

He had been the son of Poseidon, the first one in over seventy years, the hero of the Great Prophecy. He had had friends, what had seemed like too many to count at the time but weren't actually more than a few handfuls. He had had a girlfriend, a family; a mother, stepfather, sister.

He didn't have these things anymore.

The day that it all changed was one he could remember like the back of his hand. There he and the rest of the Seven, along with Nico and Reyna, had stood in front of their Olympian parents, strong and proud after having defeated Gaea. One by one, they had been asked what their hearts' desires were, how the gods could have repaid them for what they had done.

Jason had asked for a place in New Rome for his new job as the pontifex maximus; done, easy. Piper had asked for admission of Octavian's soul into Elysium; a strange request, especially coming from her, but one that was easily granted. Frank and Hazel had asked for both of them to be freed from their curses, Leo for Calypso to be freed from hers. Annabeth had requested to be the architect of New Athens, a city she had had in mind for Greek demigods based on the Roman one. Reyna had wished for her metal dogs to be repaired by Hephaestus, Nico for Bianca's locket that she had apparently been wearing when she had died. All of these had been fulfilled, with only a wave of a hand on the gods' parts.

Then it came time for Percy's wish.

...Except, he hadn't gotten a wish. Instead, Zeus had stared down at him, his stormy blue eyes alight with both lightning and something indescribable. "Perseus Jackson," he had said. "This Council has already given you a wish once before; we do not feel the need to do so again. But we will give you another gift, the same one that you previously denied: immortality."

"I – uh – thank you, Uncle," Percy had replied with a frown. Immortality hadn't been something that he had really wanted, had ever wanted. "But I must – "

"You misunderstand," his uncle had interjected. "This is not a gift you will be allowed to refuse for a second time."

In the aftermath, when Zeus had hurled his powers at time and turned Percy's blood from mortal red to golden ichor, he tried to pretend that it didn't happen for a while. He was immortal, after all, but not quite a god; he wasn't bound by the same laws that they were. He went to college with Annabeth, spending four years of his immortality studying marine biology. He spent time with his baby sister Estelle once she was born, playing peekaboo with her and making funny faces at her. He even helped Apollo out a couple of times when the god was turned into a mortal, though there was something deeply ironic about their respective situations there.

But as time passed, Percy's family and friends got older.

He did not.

"I'm sorry, Percy," Annabeth told him a couple months after they both graduated. "I love you, but I want to grow old with somebody...and I don't think I could handle being a single parent."

"Sorry, Perce," Frank said with a grimace when he asked him if he wanted to go out for a beer sometime. "I'd love to, but Sammy and Emilio would be waiting for me back at home."

"I don't think it would be a good idea for you to attend my graduation, Percy," Estelle whispered when she was eighteen, her ocean blue eyes looking up at him somberly. "I love you, but...I think people would notice through the Mist that you still look seventeen."

Eventually, he couldn't take it anymore; couldn't stand to see his loved ones living out their lives without him, moving on from him.

He left.

Decades passed by. For the first and second ones, he spent his time with Thalia and the rest of the Hunt. Artemis could barely stand him, but she did take pity on him, so she allowed him to stay until he grew tired with their way of life. After that, he spent the next three decades simply traveling the world, taking in the sights while also studying in Athens, Rome, Paris, and London. He came to know many languages, both spoken and dead, like the back of his hand. Became intimately familiar with the cultures that they were from.

Finally, during his sixth decade as an immortal, Percy returned to one of the locations of his youth: Mount Tamalpais, otherwise known as Mount Othrys. It wasn't one of the first locations he would have chosen for himself to reside in, nor even the fifth or sixth. But nobody except for the Hesperides and Ladon bothered him there, and since stealing one of their apples would have been moot they became rather friendly with him.

Basically, Mount Tamalpais was nice. It was home.

Sometimes, during the years which followed, demigods would come up to visit, either because they wanted to steal a golden apple or because they wanted to see him. Percy Jackson, one of the greatest heroes in history. He didn't treat either of the two kindly, as he chased off the former ones with his sword and the latter ones with sharp threats. The gods even came to complain about it to him once or twice.

He promptly told them to fuck off.

But one day during his ninth immortal decade, a demigod like none of the others climbed to the top of the mountain. At first, Percy did not think much of him, just like he did not think much of the other demigods that came to it. They were all the same, after all, even if this one had curls of strangely reminiscent honey blonde hair and a fighting stance of long ago.

In fact, it was only when Percy had him pinned down to the ground, his sword hovering above the fourteen-year-old's chest, that he realized who he was. As when he looked into his sapphire blue eyes, saw the familiar gleam inside of them, it suddenly clicked.

"Luke?" he asked.

"Oh my gods, you're Percy Jackson," the reborn demigod underneath him breathed, his figure absolutely trembling. "Please don't kill me! I know you protect the apples along with the Hesperides and Ladon, but I was sent here on a quest by my mom, I promise!"

Percy drew away his sword.

"Your mom?"

"Aphrodite," Luke explained, before he frowned. "Wait, is that how you know my name? Did my mom tell you that I was coming?"

...Of course. Of course his name was the same. As if seeing him here, in the flesh of a new body, wasn't bad enough.

"I'm not going to kill you," he said. "I don't kill demigods. But you're not going to get the apples. Even if you somehow beat me to go to them, behind me is a dragon the likes of which you have never seen before. You should go. Unless you want to be killed, or worse."

"What could be worse than death?" Luke asked.

He raised an eyebrow. "Do you really want to know?"

The kid seemed to consider his options for a moment, before he shook his head. "Not really, I'll go," he said. "Going back home a coward is much better than going back dead. Or worse. Whatever that means. Thanks, Percy Jackson, sir."

He rolled his eyes. "Call me Percy only, kid."

He hadn't actually meant it. Of course he hadn't. He had fully expected Luke to leave the mountain afterwards and never return.

A couple of months later, though, during the early autumn part of the school year, the reborn demigod returned, a backpack on his shoulders and sunny smile on his face.

"I thought I told you that you weren't getting the apples," Percy said.

"I'm not here for the apples this time," Luke replied. "I'm here for you. You seem...lonely."

He proceeded to sit on top of a nearby rock, before he took out a sketchpad and began to draw the view from the mountaintop. As if he kept immortal beings company all the time, and not just this one time.

Except it wasn't just this one time.

For the first and second visits, Percy allowed him to stay without complaint, not knowing of what else to do. For the third and fourth, he grew wary, but said nothing.

It wasn't actually until the seventh visit, though, that he spoke up.

"Why are you doing this, kid?" he asked. "Don't you have...friends to hang out with? Kids your own age to talk to?"

"I don't...really have friends," Luke admitted, his already flushed cheeks from the now late autumn air turned even darker. "People don't tend to like me."

"Why not?"

The reborn demigod shrugged. "I don't know. I'd say it was because I came back from my quest empty-handed, but nobody really liked me before that. Maybe because one of the children of Hecate at Camp told me I have a 'dark aura' about me." He paused. "It could be because I get a lot of vision-slash-dreams, too."

Percy felt his heart quicken inside his chest. "What kind of visions?"

"They're...usually pretty hazy," Luke said with another shrug. But his eyes were resting solely on his sketchpad now; Percy had the feeling that he was lying. "Sometimes, they're of this girl with spiky black hair. She kind of looks like Thalia Grace, the Lieutenant of the Hunt. I've met her a few times. Other times, they're of a girl with curly blonde hair, or a dark voice coming from a pit. I don't like those last ones. Then...there are the ones of you."

"Me?"

Luke nodded, not looking up once.

Shit.

He left not long after that, citing some mortal reason that probably would've seemed reasonable to Percy even a few decades ago, but now seemed like the remnants of a strange, alien world. Percy didn't see him for a while afterwards. He thought it was because he had finally scared the kid off at first. Then he hated himself for how sad the thought made him feel, as if Luke was a friend and not the new version of one that he had let into his immortality for far too long now.

Yet, after autumn had finally turned into winter and winter into spring, Luke returned. Percy was admittedly gladder to see him than he should've been; it was a miracle he didn't curse himself for it out loud, actually.

"Luke," he greeted him instead, his voice carefully neutral.

"Percy!" the kid returned with a crooked grin. "I'm really sorry that I didn't get up here sooner than now. School got busy, then it started snowing, and my mom – the mortal one – told me I couldn't come up here until March. I wanted too, though. I almost did several times."

Despite himself, Percy couldn't help but chuckle. "That's alright. Your schoolwork is more important than me."

Luke scrunched up his face. "Not really, but we can agree to disagree. Anyways, I was wondering..."

It went like that for a couple of years. During the summer and winter, Luke was either at camp or in San Francisco where he and his mortal mother lived; the spring and autumn, however, were theirs. Percy spent their time together teaching the demigod a variety of things, not wanting it to be wholly for his own benefit; Italian and German, he learned, along with sword-fighting and a proper appreciation for literature.

Luke also grew up during these years, turning from the naïve fourteen-year-old boy into a charismatic seventeen-year-old one. His honey blonde curls darkened into something more ashen, his skin tanned, and he eventually became almost half a foot taller than Percy. Scars of various shapes and sizes formed themselves along his body, including one along his jaw which made Percy's heart twinge whenever he saw it.

He could not keep Luke forever, he knew. He was mortal; he would grow old and want things, things Percy would never be able to give.

But gods, did he want to.

"You know," mused Luke one particularly late foggy morning, a mischievous glint to his eyes that very nearly made Percy shudder underneath his gaze. "I recently learned there is something that the history books left out about the wars you were involved in a hundred years ago."

"Oh?" Percy hummed. "What's that?"

"Your relationship with Luke Castellan."

He froze.

There was literally no other explanation for it as he stood there, looking up at his once friend – once lover – with wide eyes. Literally none. Luke smiled at him when he saw this, his sapphire blue eyes full of something bittersweet as he reached out to cup Percy's face.

"Those visions I've had...I wasn't exactly truthful about them," he whispered. "It just took me some time to realize why I was having them, why I could see them so clearly. Luke Castellan was not just your friend, but your lover. And I'm not just Lucas Beauchene, son of Aphrodite. I'm also his reincarnation, aren't I?"

"Luke," Percy breathed.

Tears filled his eyes.

"Ah, shit, don't cry, Percy. You'll make me cry too," Luke replied. As if he wasn't already sniffling. "I know what you're about to say. You're going to tell me that you're too old, or too immortal, or too...something to be with me again. But you're wrong. I know what the gods put you through. I know what they put us through. And I'm going to fix it. I'm going to fix everything."

"...How?"

"Just you wait and see," Luke replied with a wink, before he kissed him like there was no tomorrow.

Three months came and went. At the annual winter solstice meeting, Zeus's master lightning bolt went missing. The gods went into an uproar as soon as it happened, especially since though it was one hundred years since Luke had stolen the bolt the first time around, it was not long enough for their immortal minds to not make a connection to the two. Hermes even came to visit him about it.

"Did you have something to do with this, Percy?" the god asked, his icy blue eyes boring into Percy's soul like two cold knives.

"Of course not," Percy replied. It was only half of a lie.

Another three months came and went. During the spring equinox, Hades's helm of darkness vanished. The chaos was more pronounced this time than it had been the first, since after the Battle of Manhattan Hades's reputation had increased. But still, they had no idea who the thief was. Suspects, sure, but Percy was not one of them. Nor was Lucas Beauchene.

At last, the last three months came and went. Poseidon's trident was stolen in the midst of the annual summer solstice meeting. There was no backlash this time, though. The gods didn't have long enough to realize what was wrong.

For that night, on top of Mount Tamalpais, Luke set the three sacred objects at Percy's feet. "I'd do it myself," he said, a smirk at his lips. "But I have a feeling you would have a lot more fun destroying them."

And he was right.

He always had been.

Truth be told, it did not take much for him to bring Olympus to its knees.

Once upon a dream, he had been their savior. Their precious golden boy. He had gone on quests for them, had saved the world for them – two times, in fact. Maybe that was why it was so easy. They never saw him coming.

Some of the gods, he saved; most of them, he killed. Persephone wept as she clutched her husband's decapitated head in her arms, while Demeter rubbed her back consolingly. She said nothing, though, when he later dropped the helm of darkness at their feet, her golden-green eyes full of grief, rage, and...acceptance.

Hestia pursed her lips when he came for her and Hera, also choosing the silent route.

Her sister was not of the same mind.

"Why don't you kill us, Jackson?" she snarled.

Percy shrugged. "For all of your faults, I don't think you two are actually bad people," he said. "You were both abused by the toxic men in your life. I might hate you for what you did because of them, but you're just as much their victims as their children are."

He set the lightning bolt in front of them.

Hermes looked like he wanted to die when he saw what he had become, golden ichor splashed across his face and the trident of his father in his hands, yet Percy did not give him that mercy. Apollo, Artemis, and Athena, he also spared: Apollo, because being turned into a mortal again so long ago had shown him the error of his ways; Artemis, because of her brother and those twenty years he had spent with the Hunt; Athena, because he discovered she was one of the only ones to protest Zeus's decision to make him immortal, and because of Annabeth.

Then there was Aphrodite.

"You knew," he accused when he finally found her. "You knew exactly what you were doing when you sent Luke on his quest three years ago, didn't you?"

"You forget," she replied, smiling. "I may be one of the youngest Olympians, but I am one of the eldest gods. The daughter of Ouranos and Thalassa, two primordials. I've lived for far longer than all of you, except maybe Hestia. I saw Kronos's rule. I also saw how much Zeus's was paralleling it. I knew, though, that you would make it right. You just needed a...push."

"And now that I've made things right?" he asked as he thrust the trident at her.

The goddess sighed, her hands wrapping around its handle. "I can't make you mortal, Percy. Zeus used his powers on you for a reason instead of making you bite one of his golden apples; he wanted to make sure you would never be able to give up your immortality even with his say-so. But I can give you something equally as good."

She snapped her fingers.

A golden apple appeared in Percy's hands.

"I – what – "

"It's the same one Paris gave me to millennia ago," she said. Her lips quirked. "I suppose you could say it's a gift from one star-crossed lover to another. Go back to Luke, Percy. Let him take a bite from the apple. Be happy. Us gods will clean up the rest of our mess."

He frowned. "What if – what if he doesn't want it?"

"He'll want it," she assured him. "He waited for you in Elysium, for many years. It wasn't until Annabeth died and went for rebirth that he realized what happened. Now, go get your happily-ever-after before I have to chase you there myself with this trident."

When Percy returned to Mount Tamalpais, sure enough, Luke was there waiting for him. He felt like a little kid again as he looked at the reborn demigod, the same twelve-year-old who had a crush too big for his chest, the same fourteen-year-old who had gotten his first kiss from a man who was definitely too old for it be seen as socially acceptable.

"Did you do it?" Luke asked.

Wordlessly, he held out the apple.

Luke stared at it, at first.

Percy watched him, not daring to say anything.

Then, he took it and bit into it without another thought.

Percy felt relief, then confusion, then guilt, then relief all over again.

"Are you sure?" he asked.

"About you, Percy?" Luke returned with a flush, a flush that quickly turned from mortal red to godly gold. "Always. And forever. I love you. I have since before I was even alive. Do you?"

Percy let out a shaky laugh in response as he grabbed Luke by the neck, pulling him down to kiss him.

Some things just didn't need to be said.

Word Count: 3,382