The only exception is Luke.

Luke, who looks just like he did in life, short blond hair gleaming gold in the sun and face clean of blood, blue eyes untouched by death. Who stares at Hermes from afar, looking at him an expression that Hermes cannot decipher.

"I don't understand why you're like this," he says. "You never seemed to care for me, when I was alive."

Something old and hurt surfaces in his eyes, then, jagged like the scar that splits his right cheek, and Hermes wishes he could comfort him, take the pain from his expression. He wishes he could tell him the truth — that he would do anything to bring him back; would beg on his knees before Hades, would tear down Olympus brick by golden brick if it meant Luke would be alive.

But even in death, it seems, he's fated to disappoint the son he loves most.

"You won't speak to me," Luke murmurs. "Won't even look at me."

His gaze turns baleful. "Guess I should've known."

Hermes wants to — he so desperately, painfully wants to. But he cannot. He is a psychopomp, one who leads the dead to the Underworld — if he looks at Luke, speaks to him and acknowledges him, he will have to take him to Hades. He must; it is his duty, even if the word tastes like dust and ash on his tongue.

It is selfish, he knows. But Luke was taken from him too young, too young — is it any fault of his, to want to keep him in death? So Luke lingers, always at the corner of Hermes' eye, and Hermes pretends he does not see him, does not hear him.

They're not too disimilar, Luke and the other ghosts that cross Hermes' path. Like the other spectres, Luke haunts his every waking moment; always staring, always wanting something Hermes cannot give. Another sin to add onto his shoulders, another debt he can never repay.

The parallel to Orpheus and Eurydice's story also hits so much harder when you remember that Hermes, as a psychopomp, is probably intimately familiar with it (iirc some versions mention Hermes being the one to guide Eurydice back to the Underworld, or the one who bars Orpheus from entry after he looks back) — he goes from being almost a 3rd party observer in the original myth to someone intrinsically connected as the "Orpheus" in his own story.....him wondering if this is what Orpheus felt when he was leading Eurydice out of the Underworld, being told not to look back but doing so anyway....

The last tag destroyed me because we do know how the story ends. Hermes knows how the story ends. And it will destroy him too, when it finally happens, when he finally looks back — because just like Orpheus, there is no version of the story where he doesn't.

Musical Percy also sighing: And then Annabeth told me to apologize to the squirrel... So I apologized to the squirrel.

Show Percy also also sighing: And then Annabeth told me to think woolly thoughts and be a sheep.... So I thought woolly thoughts and was a sheep.