Work Text:
It's nights like these, blisteringly freezing nights with a nightmarish tenebrosity, when the regret creeps in, slithering its way into every nook and cranny of his heart, capturing every nerve. Whimpering neurons and synapses crouch for nonexistent mercy from the endless loops of flashbacks.
It leaves Percy gasping, knees digging harshly into the rough splintered wood of his apartment. Eyes seemingly focused on the eerie beautiful sights offered by the hole of glass and wood slashed into the walls, but every sunset and full moon slips through his fingers, never catching: rain sliding around the calloused palms regardless of the various attempts. But the lack of sights is inconsequential to the pure terror. The quivering limbs and curved red crescents on his palms which he knows will turn a garish purple or turquoise black in a few hours. The aftermath is a sight he can never look at. If for no other reason than the reason that he can’t stand looking at his failure to control his body. Him a swordsman who lives and survives by his control. The shame sweeps in once the regret leaves and the cycle repeats. It’s a culdesac of relentless torture—never-ending and uselessly accomplishing.
In the beginning, he had viewed it with disgust. Watched his panic attacks, his flashback with anything but hatred. Every attack, loss of control was just another chance to overcome his previous mistakes...but that was in the midst of battle.
It was between adrenaline rushed fights of desperation to live and hushed late-night meetings of painstakingly meticulous strategies. In there, emotions are another weakness to be discarded in the deepest pit. In those moments, time was too precious of a commodity to waste in solving his issues—and if his doctors disagree that’s their problem, not his.
Now he isn’t consistently subjecting his body to strenuous chases without break. He has practice fights and the occasional quest, but they aren’t encompassing, knocking him out every night or tiring his body to the point of exhaustion where base carnal instincts take over.
Instead, he’s always reminded of every mistake and the pain. He’s forced to remember that he's not just the same vengeful, fearful twelve-year-old boy longing for his mother and coerced to survive the impossible. He’s not much of a hero if he can’t control his mind or body.
More of a martyr than a hero.
Heroes don’t have the darkest of scars marring all of their bodies. Heroes don’t fail innocent people. Heroes don’t fail to sleep and spend their nights training.
At least the heroes that people want don’t, but he would never be that. No matter how much the world and people tossed him into the role. He was just a kid defined by his genetics. The genetics that lobbed him into a war that he never asked for.
And why did he think that he would come out of a war unscarred?
He wasn’t an idiot—though his friends would heavily disagree. He had known there would be scars and consequences, but he had equated it to the physical. Perhaps, it was because he had never really had a break from the war. The titans had been desecrated only for rebuilding and then Hera herself to toss him back into the fray. Perhaps it was his naivety. He had never been fully in touch with his emotions, never addressing the many issues his family and childhood had left him with. Never fully consider the abstract, metaphysical, or emotional aspects. Sadness is sadness. It couldn’t shred him into a child screaming and begging for mercy like physical pain.
Luke had clobbered that idea out of his head. Let Percy bleed the first edges of his innocence into the hardened mold of a soldier.
Not a warrior though. A warrior would have understood the consequences, would have foreseen them.
Whatever it was, it left him woefully unprepared. Left him all too vulnerable to losing himself, and it seemed as though he was the only one.
All his friends succeeded and found their peace, while he sank to the rusty ocean floor. He couldn’t even look at his powers the same way.
The previous powerful, comforting flow of water was replaced by the sounds of shuttered gasping and choking. Reminders of how he had spent time in literally the worst place in existence. The memories curl up in his brain and take their residence, confident in their influence. Even an innate reaction to danger recreates the uncontrollable rage. The red lenses of light twinged with maroon—the darkest marron as if mimicking the flaky crusted blood of the thousands of lives lost there—incapable of hiding the horrors cloaked in the thinnest veils of darkness. The stench of rotting corpses with the metallic blood and salty tears strong enough to be a consistent taste in his mouth. The viscerally wrong feeling of not belonging here, of invading. The surreal feeling amplified at times to the point of a nearly out of body experience.
But he had a duty to protect, to fight. Countless reminders and hauntingly accurate memories couldn’t stop him from prodding himself to continue.
Even without a war, he can’t stop himself from hurting. He can’t stop the pain, and now with the time, he can’t help but ponder and poke at the emotions. The initial attempts to ignore it or even hide are subdued by his curiosity and sheer exigence of comprehension. If he can’t stop them, he can at least understand them.
The pain is gorily intriguing. He’s been tortured, nearly killed, and starved. Having faced nearly every known variation of pain—there would be more in the future and it makes Percy almost glad to not be likely to survive that long—never rids the impact.
At least emotionally.
Each cut is never as luridly sharp as the first one: the feeling of cool metal sliding into his flesh and carving a chuck to take with it leaves. The warmth of his blood masking the discomfort. Each strike against his skin is never as bright as the first one, yet each heartbreak, betrayal, is as memorable as the first one. Each death is ingrained in his brain, serving to rob him of any chance of peace and wreaking havoc on the last strands of his sanity.
So pain is certainly intriguing. For no physical pain has compared to the abstract, and it leads him down rabbit holes after his flashbacks.
But for all he thinks, he can never find a solution. Never find a way to raise his voice to his friends. Never even utter the words to his mother. Each time, his lips choke around the syllables. The vowels catch in his throats and swallow his air while the constants scamper and slit his tongue. He always mumbles some incoherent joke and switches the topics, and excuses the anxiousness that increases after every failed attempt. For a while, he can justify even rationalizing his choice, but the longer he waits, the worse it gets. The more he knows he’s crawling down into a pit that he can’t escape, but he’ll never voice those thoughts.
Perhaps he’s being a coward or perhaps he’s being a savior, but he’ll never let the words cross his lips. Three words that someone else will need to wrong out of him. Words he’d rather carry to his grave.
I need help.
But he’s just a little cracked, there’s no real need to bother anyone else.
After all, some people are just meant to be broken.