the hero pays the price.

#TITANSWAR.   a low activity + selective multimuse for canon and original characters of the heroes of olympus series. based entirely off the books, with absolutely no influence from the mistakes that were the movies. if you have not read the books, spoilers will be present. 18+ preferred, due to triggering themes. by lex, 24, she/her.  personals do not interact.

CURRENTLY RE-READING:   the dark prophecy.

ˣ 𝐈.        —ACTION MEMES,       CLOSED.      ANNABETH CHASE,

somedays his sleeping body can’t tell camp apart from his apartment bedroom in manhattan. on the days that he can’t, his hand clenches and releases like he’s still holding on the hilt of a very pointy sword, less from the possibility of an attack and more from the inevitability of one. in his dreams the land was molten smoke, and a hundred different hands that came at him like blurred photographs; there were the dead, who he couldn’t stop looking in the eye, and there were the living, who he wished he’d have the guts to let go of.

but that seemed to be when the whole of him would decide, it was a great idea to hold on. to drag the name and face he loved in the eye of that horrible storm, and wonder how they got here in the first place. tartarus cracks open beneath their feet; percy doesn’t shout anymore, only lets his muscles grow heavy with lead, feels the despair crawl up like bad heartburn.

| NIGHTMARE :ANNABETH COMFORTS PERCY AFTER A NIGHTMARE.

when he wakes, there’s only the dark of the ceiling— then he realises it was her hair, curling wisps stuck to her jaw where it pressed into his head. he hadn’t shouted, but @titanswar had heard him screaming like she was there in the terror with him. when he moved he felt his shirt soaked through with cold sweat, what he’d mistaken for blood, and when his ripped up gasps muffled into her collar, percy thought the earth might stitch itself back over them. that they would be trapped there, forever, alive and never dying in the dirt.

❛   you have to leave,   ❜  which he managed to say without choking up, sobbing, or any other embarrassing variation of hysterics in her arms. this was said with a critical calm, body trembling where she held him— the invisible sword was in his hand after all, clenching, releasing from muscle memory. ❛   before it comes back, before it … i’m right here.   ❜ 

why is it that even when they’re not at war, it seems impossible to find peace?  or rather, it seems impossible to accept peace. annabeth knows the answer, of course, no stranger to the subject of post traumatic stress, but even still, haven’t they earned just one peaceful night’s rest? for as long as she’s remembered, sleep had only meant one of two things— nightmares, or blissful nothing. no dreams meant no visions, no visions meant no fear, and that is about as close as a demigod could come to solace. she knows which one percy is having, woken up from his trepidation as if it were her own. it doesn’t bother her, no matter how often it happens. after all, she’s lost track of how many times she’s awoken him from slumber, simply because the feeling of her hair brushing against her own skin resembled too closely to the legs of a spider, flinching so hard she’d become his own personal alarm clock. 

you have to leave, he says, and if she weren’t so focused on comforting him, she might have laughed. as if leaving him was ever an option she would choose willingly. leaving him had only ever ended in chaos. she leaves him with the telkhines, he sets off a volcano and vanishes for two weeks. she parts ways to her own cabin for the night, he disappears for half a year. she ventures on her own for a solo quest she never asked for, they’re reunited in tartarus. as if she would ever leave him again.  ‘‘  not happening.  ’’   annabeth shakes her head, pressing a kiss to the top of his head. 

one of her hands moves down in search of his own, unclenching his fist and intertwining their fingers, hoping to remind him that he doesn’t need to fight. not here, not now. never again, if only she could get her way, but she knows the wish isn’t realistic. they would always have to fight, it feels like most days. annabeth remembers the night she met him, when she hovered over him at the infirmary at just twelve years old, spoon-feeding him ambrosia, hoping he would be the subject of the great prophecy, the hero the camp was waiting for— now, she would give anything to simply be percy and annabeth, not greek heroes.

YOU’RE FURTHER GONE THAN ME.   —𝐌𝐄𝐌𝐄 :   ＊  𝐀𝐂𝐂𝐄𝐏𝐓𝐈𝐍𝐆.

@titanswar had been beside him when she had said it quietly, though it was not immediately clear if she spoke in critique or morbid envy. a look over his shoulder and their eyes met, never budging, never flickering for anything lower than this exchange. ❛ if that’s the way to put it. ❜ what might have been a transgression to others, a violation of truth and what manner of oath keeping, appeared to him a straightforward business.

the marks against his skin dotted like black ink were less a virtuous tool to binding promises, to holding noble cause together in agreement without deceit, and more a conniving system of maintaining his hold on favours, eyes, hands and souls — it didn’t hurt to guise it like gold, something holy and reliable. shining things were often easier to trust. what did it matter, in the end ?

❛ an eye for an eye, and two hands. i don’t have time for less. ❜ the satyr before them had shuddered and stepped away, gawking at the ribbon of runes now blooming to life over their wrist. a favour for a favour had turned into a sentence, a binding the satyr could not escape or repay, nor speak against even as they tried, defeated by circumstance. when he looks back at her, his hands were a map of the same inked runes. ❛ do you feel pity for them? ❜

is she really any better than him, if she’s being honest with herself?  it’s hard to say, not only because of her blinding hubris, but because she’s not even entirely sure how she feels about the situation unraveling before her. she’s not completely corrupt, can still mostly recognize right from wrong— but she’s not good, either. mikayla knows this much about herself, knows she’ll do nearly anything in her best interest, because nobody else had ever cared to do that for her. the only true moral standard she has for herself is this: be better than your father.

it’s not hard when the bar’s set as low as tartarus.

the look on her face could easily be taken for apathy, though mikayla wouldn’t quite call it that. perhaps a part of her does pity the satyr, but mostly, she’s just glad she’s not in their shoes. that’s where the true fault in her moral compass lies; it’s hard to bring herself to care if she’s not impacted.