Luke grew up in a world with heroes. Even before he'd run away, before coming to camp, he'd heard of Odysseus. It had just been as "the sailor who got very lost," but Luke had still heard of him. Once he'd got to camp, it had been endless story after story about all the heroes and gods and the great things they'd done. He'd always hated it. Why would he enjoy it? His father abandoned him and his mom. Why would he celebrate that? Worship that?
Chiron was always careful to call it respect, not subservience or worship, what it really was. Hermes had never given him anything but pain, and had never been anything but absent. When Kronos started whispering to Luke, everything he said made sense. He hadn't always agreed with the methods — it was hardly the other demigods' fault that their parents were horrible — but… the gods had never done anything but hurt and abandon them. So Luke agreed to help him. Agreed to betray his little— to betray Annabeth.
That, maybe, was where it went wrong.
Or maybe that was when Annabeth — little Annie — begged him to save Percy on Circe's island. Circe, yet another example of the gods' cruelty, who'd only ever been wronged. Or maybe, it went wrong when he'd agreed and ran through an enchantresses' island with no sure goal in mind. Or maybe it was when he tripped face-first into a glowing black hole.
And he'd popped up back onto Circe's island, greener and emptier than it had been before, but with the same rocky outcroppings and geography, face to face with a horribly familiar man he'd never met.
The King of Ithaca stared back at him, with a scraggly beard and eyes terribly vacant.
"Where did you come from?" Odysseus rasped in very old Greek, stumbling towards Luke. The demigod steadied the king with a careful hand, glancing back at the hole he'd come from. He watched with rising panic as it was swallowed by grass and earth, glancing back at the desperate Odysseus.
"Run," the hero begged desperately, "You need to leave, boy, leave now, before—"
"Odysseus!" Circe called from afar, her haunting voice echoing across her island. "My darling Odysseus, where have you gone?"
"Do you hear me?" Odysseus grabbed Luke's armor by the shoulders, shaking him roughly. "Leave. Run from here— don't let her catch you. I can see the god in your eyes, boy. The things she'll do to you—"
"I can't just— how are you stuck here?" Luke asked, stumbling over the Greek dialect.
"She keeps us here," Odysseus said desperately, glancing wildly around the area. "You need to leave. Go!"
"But—" Luke stammered in English. "But you got out before!" he protested, "You can leave— can't you?"
"There is no before!"
"Odysseus! There you are, darling," Circe appeared over the crest of a hill, dress illuminating gold in the sunlight. She looked like Kronus had, in Luke's dreams of a new sunrise. She looked like the promise of death. "Who's your friend, majesty?"
Luke ran.
