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Somewhere, a boy checks the time in a swimming pool.
He takes a deep breath, then holds it, sinking beneath the surface. His eyes never leave his watch.
The boy counts silently in his mind. One, two, three. He reaches thirty. His lungs are burning. Reluctantly, he resurfaces.
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It begins with a slight pressure at his throat, not enough to stop him breathing, but just enough that he knows it’s there. Percy can hide it under fake smiles and nervous laughter. It’s fine. (It’s not.)
He throws himself extra hard into living. He swims a little harder, trains a little longer, even puts in a little more effort into his homework. Anything, everything, to distract himself from the invisible tether tying him to his grave. Distract himself from nightmares of golden eyes, of the bodies of his friends scattered like broken dolls, he the sole survivor.
It’s not enough.
Percy finds himself wanting to go back to camp more than usual.
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The boy slowly trains himself. Thirty seconds, sixty. ninety. It still isn’t enough. He needs more.
The water feels more and more like home.
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Camp was not the breath of fresh air he’d imagined.
Annabeth is not there, not yet.
While campers still talk to him, as soon as the conversation even remotely touches upon the next year, they trail off awkwardly, a silent apology hanging between them. Percy pretends not to be bothered by it, but fumes inside. It’s like they’re mourning for me already. I’m still here, you know. I’m not dead. I’m not. yet.
He channels that anger into swordfighting. Only the Ares cabin is willing to spar with him, and even that slowly trickles down into one. Clarisse.
The infirmary threatens to send Apollo campers to chew him out. They attempt to restrain a stubborn Clarisse. I can fight Prissy, easy. I’ll beat him into a pulp, you’ll see. Then you’ll apologise for ever doubting me in the first place. She is eventually held back by the entirety of the Apollo cabin. Passersby wince as she is sentenced to confinement in one of the infirmary beds until all her injuries are healed by one Will Solace, battlefield medic and overprotective mother hen.
Percy knows better now. He attacks the training dummies. He has to be better. He has to be better, better than Luke better than Kronos. Luke, who is the best swordsman in the last 300 years. Who will kill him if he’s not good enough. Kronos, who is an age-old titan of time that overthrew Ouranos and brought on a new age. He has to be better the best.
The rope chafes against Percy’s neck but as long as he gets enough air to train he is fine it’s fine.
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One day, the boy takes it too far. He becomes too complacent. He stays under for just a little too long. The tell-tale burn in his chest starts again. He begins to feel faint. The boy reassures himself. Just a few more seconds. A few more seconds, then I’ll come up for air.
The pressure is unbearable. His survival instincts kick in, forcing him to let go of the breath he’s holding and inhale. But that doesn’t work as it would have on land. Instead, the boy takes in a big breath of water.
He gasps. He chokes.
He drowns.
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The infirmary tries to dissuade him from his excessive training.
Percy rejects them with a bitterly determined smile.
The infirmary must find other means as to convince him.
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The boy wakes in a hospital bed. His chest feels sore. The last thing he remembered was the pool. He was underwater, and he was trying to reach three minutes. He—he drowned? No, that was impossible, he knew his limits. But all the evidence pointed to that conclusion: he was in the hospital, his chest aches (probably from compressions), his mouth tasted of chlorine…enough.
The boy looked around the spartan room. His parents were there, he noted with a bit of surprise, sleeping in those horribly uncomfortable plastic chairs they give you. He had an IV hooked up to him, and probably a —
An alarm went off, loud and annoying. He flinched, and withheld a groan. His parents were up.
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The solution comes in the form of blond hair and lemon scented soap and grey eyes.
With Annabeth’s presence, the rest of the summer flies by.
She’s an utter whirlwind of a person, and she helps Percy forget about the death-sentence hovering over his head, just for a little while. Prophecy? What prophecy?
Annabeth anchors him.
They meet each other’s eyes across the campfire, plan capture-the-flag strategies together, talk. and Percy feels just a little more normal, as normal as a demigod can be, that is.
And even now, as they’re laying under the stars, having snuck out of their cabins, Annabeth is saving him. She’s pointing out the different constellations and telling him all she knows about it, saying names he’s never even heard of, and he’s watching her. Though in the dark, Percy can see this aura of vitality surrounding Annabeth, lighting up her face as she talks with passion.
It’s beautiful. She’s beautiful.
He turns back to the stars. Percy wonders vaguely if she’d mourn him if when he’s gone. How she’d feel. His thoughts drift to his loved ones. Mom. Paul. His friends. Grover. Thalia. Nico. The campers. Or something more. Annabeth. It was his life in exchange for theirs. A fair trade. More than fair. And yet—and yet maybe it was selfish of him but he didn’t want to die. Not yet. Not when his life has barely begun. But Percy will. For them, he will.
He will. If only he knew how to make peace with that decision.
Even Annabeth can’t distract him from the giant bomb strapped to his chest, the timer tick tick ticking down to his sixteenth birthday.
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The boy waved off their concerns good-naturedly, held fast through the you-stay-away-from-swimming-pools-and-death’s-door-young-man-unless-you-have-a-deathwish-do-you-hear-me?-thank-god-that-nice-lifeguard-was-on-duty-that-day-you’d-better-thank-him speech, and suffered through the swimming pool ban.
He waited for a few more days, being the perfect son and model student, before sneaking off in the middle of the night to the swimming pool.
He’d been so close last time, he couldn’t help but try again.
Maybe he did have a deathwish.
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Percy goes home after an oddly uneventful summer.
By now, he can hardly breathe with the bonds crushing his windpipe. The summer away at camp was an illusion of how things could be, and as the school year rolled by, he’s had that illusion cruelly taken away from him. Percy’s trying to relearn how to breathe around the ropes strangulating him.
He’s out of his depth, and he relapses into bad habits. Getting into fights. Arguing with teachers. Honestly, he’s surprised that Goode hasn’t asked him to leave yet. Though that’s probably more because of Paul than because they knew that deep down, Percy was a “good kid”.
Gods, he knew he should be trying harder, but it was kind of hard to concentrate on his english essay when Kronos was rising. If Percy was going to go down, he sure as hell was taking Kronos with him. He should be out there, training, fighting monsters. But he couldn’t exactly say, “Mrs. Haversham, I’m sorry I couldn’t finish the homework, I was a little busy fighting the evil titan time-lord who wants to takeover Olympus and destroy the world as we know it. I’m going to die anyway, so it doesn’t matter if i don’t write that essay.”
Not to mention Percy had better things to do than homework. Like crossing out all the things on his bucket list. Which was pathetically short, begun after hearing his death the prophecy, but a list nonetheless. The thing was, he couldn’t just up and go do things on his checklist. Mom and Paul would never let him.
Of course, that was because Percy hadn’t told them about the great prophecy. And what it meant. Because he was a coward. Because he didn’t want to burden them.
Oops, his fault.
His breath catches in his throat. The camp necklace, always around his neck, feels like a vise. Percy takes it off, gently rolling the beads between his fingers. My life for yours. My life for yours.
The pressure remains.
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The boy sinks underneath. This time, he can do it. He can do it. (He must.)
It’s almost too easy for the first minute. To last past the second. Now comes the hard part. The third.
His chest feels warm. Sixty seconds left, he thinks. Almost there.
It burns. the boy has to fight to not float to the surface, take a blessed breath of air. he’s so close. black spots dance across his vision.
A few more seconds. He puts all in strength in focusing, in staying awake.
He blasts past all the warning signs his body gives. Not much longer.
Finally at his limit, the boy looks at his watch again. He can’t stay. Resignedly, he makes to kick off the tiled pool floor. The boy only succeeds in propelling himself forward. What the—?
There’s no strength in his limbs. No, this can’t be happening right now. not now, he pleaded. His lungs ache.
He kicks and thrashes. It only serves to tire him out. The boy’s hands fly up to his throat, clawing as if he could make a new airway there. It burns, it burns, his mind screamed at him, demanding to be acknowledged. itburnsitburnsitburns. needairairair. now.
He stops holding his breath. nonono. needairNEEDair. He watches, mesmerised by how the bubble floated and bobbed. air. AIR. AIRAIRAIR. The boy gasps, swallowing a big mouthful of pool water. notair. thisisnotair. needairneedit. ithurtshurtshurtsmakeitstop. The dots are getting bigger now, speckling his vision. He feels faint. can't breathcantbreathe.
The boy stops fighting.
He’s not going to make it.
His eyes dart around frantically. He’s not ready to die. He still hasn’t hugged his parents goodbye, hasn’t said i-love-yous for the last time. He’s not ready to die. The boy’s eyes land on his watch, the straps broken off during his struggle. The face gleams, the glow in the dark numbers flashing. Fifteen. Fourteen. Thirteen. Twelve.
He closes his eyes.
He feels himself slipping away, into a land of dark and unconsciousness. (Eight. Seven. Six.) The pain’s so distant now, it might as well be a dream. (Five.) He relaxes, and lets himself be swept away. (Four.)
(Three.) The boy’s body is as limp as a rag doll when his spirit leaves. Nothing but a shell. (Two.)
(One.)
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Deep down below, a timer goes off. The beepbeepbeep of the watch echoes in the silent pool.
He never did reach three minutes.