To My Brother

Beautiful.

Few would call this place beautiful, but it is. It’s stark, sure. Willowy trees, leaves long abandoning them for better horizons, the river Styx flowing endlessly in all directions, and in the distance, Elysium. Without going there, it’s hard to say one way or the other what it’s truly like. If you go by the old legends, it’s paradise for heroes who have truly earned their way. I don’t know – I mean, I don’t qualify either, so I guess I won’t know.

Still, sitting here and watching the spirits, I feel almost more alive than I did before I died. Unlike them I remember everything from up there. Maybe it’s a gift from my father, the last he could give, but I’ve kept my sanity. I suppose the beautiful aspect leaves a little when you see the spirits here as they float aimlessly. A few will pause and reach for something no longer there, echoes of lives they cannot know or remember, and if I had a heart I’m sure it would crack at the sight. As it is, I find it beautiful in and of itself. I see what they were, even if they cannot, and they still try in their own minuscule ways to find themselves in a sea of infinite vastness.

I wonder what Nico would see, were he here. Not that I want him here, of course, though I miss him more than I can say. I see what he’s going through but I can’t reach out to him, to hold him through nightmares like I did when we were kids, to ruffle his hair and annoy him to no end. I can’t do any of that, and I can feel his anger like a poisoned dagger ripping him apart bit by bit. He’s vulnerable, and young, even if he’s older than most of his friends. He’s… naïve and hurting and lashing out and…

-sneaks back in- Well... it's been months. ^^; Started Grad school so things have been insane. Hope to get some new stuff up here at some point.

Downtime

A little giftfic for the wonderful @flyingcrowbar for her birthday. Love ya, you lovely, amazing person, you!

The idea of downtime was a foreign concept to Annabeth. If she wasn’t working on one project or another for Camp Half-Blood she was checking the outer defenses in New Rome. Daedalus’s laptop still had so many mysteries and things to discover. She almost wished she didn’t need to sleep just so she would have more time for everything in her life.

Things changed when a certain Seaweed Brain came into her life, of course, but Annabeth was still determined to solve every mystery under the sun (or in the Underworld - that held brand new possibilities). Even when she lay in bed, Percy’s head on her shoulder and mouth wide open as he snored, she couldn’t help thinking about all she had left to accomplish. It made her chest tight - what if she never solved the riddles so many beings had presented her with? What if she failed?

Somehow Percy seemed to sense when she started to slip. He would miraculously wake up, yawn like he was swallowing the whole world, and wrap his arm around her middle, muttering incoherently about monkeys or space or how much he loved her. She would close her eyes, snuggle closer to him, and finally let herself drift.

Today was a day of downtime. It made her antsy to not have a puzzle before her, but Percy’s arm around her and the warm sun keeping watch overhead made things a little more bearable. The blanket beneath them, spread out in the sand, had pictures of cartoon fish all over it, as did the small umbrella blocking out pretty much none of the light. Neither of them bothered with adjusting it. She felt him lean over and kiss her forehead as his fingers rubbed nonsense into her back.

“That one looks like a pig with a bowtie,” he commented. With his free hand he pointed up at a passing cloud.

Breath(e)

One breath.

He inhales. Just once.

It’s all he can afford to breathe. If he thinks any harder about his situation with the oxygen wisping away like so much smoke through his fingers he has around him, he’s certain he’ll hyperventilate or panic, or hyperventilate because he’s panicking. So he tries to not think, to not breathe, to not notice the marks he’s leaving on the wall, one for each day, one for each seed.

He sleeps, when he can, though it’s closer to death than sleep. He doesn’t dream or, thankfully, cannot dream - he isn’t quite sure which, can’t imagine actually succeeding in escaping long enough to ask his oh-so-dear father why it is his horrific waking nightmares are absent in this comatose state - and is grateful for the times of lost lucidity and infinite darkness. It’s better than waking to his reality, where he knows the chances of rescue are slim to none. He hopes, in his moments of awareness, that the dreams of his normal sleep do not invade this version of rest, but he knows too that his hopes rarely come true.

And in some ways, he doesn’t want to be rescued. He doesn’t want to be the end goal or the bait, and he’s certain that the latter is the case for these giants holding him prisoner. He can hear them, during his brief moments of wakefulness, stomping around outside and grunting at each other more than actual words. He shudders at each sound of their booming voices and curls in a little more on himself, his prizes - tiny, purplish-red seeds that, to anyone else, would mean certain death - spread out beside him as his oxygen steadily declines.

One. Two. Three. Four.

Four days left. Four breaths left. He closes his eyes.