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He used to be nice.
Percy had been digging around the weapons room when his name had been shrieked like a dying animal. He had been looking for protective gear to give to little demigods in his sword-fighting class, when a scream like broken bones cracked through his body. He had been starting another calm, routine-controlled day at camp half-blood when he heard the news that made him snap.
*Two hours earlier*
“Jackson,” Annabeth knocks at his cabin door. He hears her voice carry through the open windows, and over the continuous sound of the ocean. “Pers, we have breakfast in half an hour and you have a sword class to teach today.”
The event had been printed on her wall of “to-dos” so that neither of their adhd brains would have the chance to forget. But he groans at the reminder, not wanting to escape his warm bed, or the duvet that wraps around him like a hug, or the pillows that hold his head as if he is a god. Sometimes he wishes he was a Hypnos kid. Their whole thing is sleeping . The knock sounds again.
“Seaweed Brain, come on,” His girlfriend sighs, “You promised we’d talk to Chiron about the—"
The loud and obnoxious cry of a harpy sounds somewhere in the distance and whatever she says next is drowned out completely. He knows though. Knows what she’s going to say and what they have to do. So he drags himself out of bed, like the last sack of potatoes on the crate. Heavy and bruised and discarded for the most desperate of the lot.
“I’m up,” He manages to rasp. He doesn’t like talking to people till he’s brushed his teeth, and eaten something, and spent at least half an hour staring at an empty coffee cup. A New Yorker through and through he supposes.
“Okay,” He hears Annabeth call, “I’ll see you at the dining hall then.”
He makes a sound half way between a grunt and a yawn and hopes she understands because that’s the best she’s getting out of him. The morning routine is quick, even done at the speed of a stubborn toddler. Soon he is sitting at the Poseidon table, scarfing down eggs and toast, and washing it done with a second cup of coffee. The buzzing in his veins is completely normal. And he’s definitely not speaking at a thousand miles an hour. This is how he always talks. Why on earth they allow coffee in a camp full of adhd kids, he’ll never understand. But it works in his favour so he isn’t going to complain.
By the time him and Annabeth are done talking to Chiron about introducing therapy to the camp, he feels like his eyes are moving faster than his sensory receptors can process and his thoughts are moving faster than his ability to process at all. So when his girlfriend, smiling at him about something, stops outside their training room he looks at her with furrowed brows and asks, “What are we doing here? Are we training for something?”
She frowns, “How much coffee did you have this morning?”
“Only three cups.” He shrugs, and clenches his hands in his pockets as if she can see through the fabric to the shaking body underneath.
Her grey eyes widen as if she’s about to scold him, a petulant child being chided by their ever tired caregiver. It makes the part of him still attempting to function slightly wild. He squishes that part down with the force of a thousand ships. Someone calls Annabeth’s name so with a quick peck to the cheek she leaves him in front of the training room and jogs towards the middle of camp and out of sight.
He stares at the room, trying to get his brain to stop focusing on things he doesn’t need to focus on right now, like the three lines of a song he heard at the grocery store a week ago that he hasn’t been able to get out of his head.
He used to be nice.
Entering the training room he scans the schedule and sees he’s teaching a class of small people, campers younger than ten who are just learning the ropes but should disaster ever strike will be ushered to the Cabin 9 bunkers to wait out the storm. It is a rule that no-one under the age of twelve be subject to war if they need not be. And he will make damn sure the need never ever surfaces.
He gathers swords of various shapes and sizes, along with a few daggers, and the straw dummies that have seen better days. It boggles his mind that they’re at a camp for children of literal greek gods but somehow there’s no funding for basic necessities like extra cots in the Hermes cabin, and better dummies to stab.
Muttering to himself he moves aside metal and stacks of straw, trying to find protective gear in the pile dumped at the corner of the training room. When he doesn’t see any he lets out a long suffering sigh... he has to go to the weapons room, which is more of a broom closet with deadly devices than anything else.
The room smelt musty, and the reek of rust slams into his nostrils at dizzying speeds. It reminds him of blood, and it made his skin itch with the need to get out. But still he bends down and searches through the mess of celestial bronze, and gold and—
The scream cauterizes his happiness. He is panic and pain and death and everything brutal in a single awful instant.
“PERCY!” His name has never sounded so full of agony, each syllable holds the stages of grief.
He is running towards the anguish before he’s even fully realises what’s going on. But what he sees when he crests the hill is enough to make the warmth of his heart run burning cold.
Annabeth is curled on the ground, tears like rivers of woe streaming down her cheeks and a purple flag clutched tightly in her fists.
“What happened?” His voice is soft. If he hears himself too loudly he’s going to shatter.
Annabeth cries harder, her whole body shuddering. Grief is overwhelming. Grief is all consuming. Grief will make itself known like thorns in your thumb or bullets in your heart.
“What happened?” He repeats.
And someone, far away, right next to his ear, inside his head, says, “It’s Jason, Jason Grace. He’s dead.”
He used to be nice.
It takes him three days. Three days of non-stop travelling, by foot, and air, and sea, to reach Caligula’s home. A palace. A grave. It is three days too long. Too long for a murderer to be walking free as if there are no consequences to his vile actions. But still he is here now and he will see the fall of a great, and watch how he bleeds just like everyone else. Not gold, the colour of the emperor’s one true love, but red, the colour of his victims.
Percy's eyes are almost black with violence, green so dark it reflects the night sky. His hands clench and unfurl as if practicing to wrap around a throat and squeeze till the symphony of breathing plays its last note. His body is strung taut, a bow string waiting to release. He is murder. He is nothing. He is your worst nightmare.
“Caligula.” He scrapes. It is the exact sound of a sword sparking against stone. “Come out, come out, wherever you are.”
Nothing but scared silence greets him. He can feel the fear coating the walls of this burial ground like a fresh coat of paint. He will make a playground of the blood he spills, will invite all manner of creatures to use it as a park. He will revel in the slaughter he is about to participate in.
“Caligula!” His voice is the sharp edge of a small knife. Unassuming but deadly. ‘“It is no use hiding. There is no place you could go where I couldn't find you.” He feels the earth sway underneath him, and he grins. Oh this is going to be fun.
“Fine Emperor, if this is how you want to do it.”
With a shrug, he flings out an arm and turns three columns to dust. He watches the stone crumble, feels the sand on his palm as if he was crumbling the columns in his hands like soft cheese. With a small stomp of his foot a crack rivaling the river Thames splits the marble floor in half. The entire structure shudders, creaks right above him. His grin only gets wider, more dangerous.
“I will level this place to the ground. I will erase it from history as if it had never been. You will not exist Caligula, because you will go with it. Will be crushed under the weight of your own wealth.”
“You’re a fool,” A voice, reedy and nasalled in a way that has his soul curdling, shouts from somewhere on the far side of the room. “You will crush us both."
Percy laughs. He laughs and the sound widens the cracks in the floor. It is deep, and wild, but in the way a wild thing is caged: snapping at it’s bars, hissing to be free. He laughs.
“You are a fool Caligula. A fool if you think i am not willing to die if it means you suffer. A bigger fool still if you think it will not give me great pleasure to spend my last moments watching the life leave your eyes,”
The distant sound of bubbling starts to fill the room. Percy wonders if he can make blood boil. His mother has certainly said so enough times.
“Leave now half-blood,” The Emperor spits. There is still something of arrogant, misplaced bravery in his voice. It amuses Percy. “Leave now and you will not face the consequences.”
“And pray tell,” He contemplates, “Who you think will deliver your consequences if i leave?”
A scoff that echoes into the pathways of his brain comes from the back of the room. “I do not need consequences dealt. I have done nothing to deserve them.”
The sound of bubbling is getting louder. He looks curiously at the cracks still spidering around the room. “Ah Emperor,” He tuts, “That is where you are wrong. People who deserve consequences hardly ever get them. It is those who don’t think they deserve them that become the unlucky bearers.”
“What are you going on about, boy?” He snarls.
The bubbling is loud enough now that Percy almost checks to see if a small brook has carved its way through the floor. There is nothing there except ever growing cracks, turning to rifts and canyons before his eyes.
He used to be nice.
“We can do this one of two ways Caligula.” He starts, honey bees with a sting a little too sharp to be defence. “You can apologise and I’ll kill you quickly, or…” His smile is sickening. “And this is my preferred method, I could watch you die slowly, watch the life drain from your body and into the soil of blood-crops that will grow here, and your dying words will be the mercy you will inevitably beg for.”
The bubbling spills over the cracks, leaking salty water onto the dying marble floor.
“Better choose soon oh dear Emperor,” He giggles, “I am the only thing holding this room together. As soon as I let go the floor will split like your loyalties. You will be crushed to death by your own greed. And if that doesn't happen you will surely drown.” To emphasise his point water starts gushing from the floor, no longer a bubbling stream but a raging river. His laughter is carried along the ripples that hit the walls, already leaking with the all encompassing ocean. “Wouldn’t it be a pity Caligula? To drown in your own home, surrounded by all the things you killed for, watching as they drown with you?”
“Shut up half-blood,” He screeches, “You do not have the power it takes to kill me. You are nothing compared to the centuries I have been alive.”
“Do you know who i am honouring Caligula?” He asks softly, a stark and terrifying contrast to his smile a moment before. “In all your centuries can you remember but one demigod, a dear friend of mine, but just another victim of yours?”
“Does it matter?” He scoffs, “They are all the same in the end. All bleed, and cry, and piss, and die the same.”
The grin Percy lets loose starts hurricanes. It is the absolute wrong thing to say. ‘“If it is all the same to you Emperor,” He becomes terror. “Then i think i’ll spill your blood at his altar.”
And before the doomed emperor could react an invisible hand wraps around his throat and he was being dragged to the middle of the room. His eyes wide, popping out of his head; hands clawing at his neck as if trying to remove the grip they cannot feel; feet flopping helplessly underneath him.
“Apologise for killing Jason Grace.” It is a command.
Caligula glares, attempting to spit at his feet.
Percy tilts his head and with a single crook of his finger he slams the emperor into the wall. The crack is deafening. It makes him grin.
“Apologise for killing Jason Grace.”
Caligula produces an ancient roman gesture, passed through time as if centuries cannot dismantle the insults of humans.
Percy twists his wrist and the emperor’s body contorts into something unrecognizable, bones snapping and shattering to fit their new mold.
“Apologise for killing my friend.”
“Fuck you,” He manages to choke out.
A wave of ocean water alarming in its beauty rises behind him. He is its god. And with a wink he shoves all of it down the emperor’s throat. The column of that pale neck bobs as if attempting to take the water down. He can see the body trying to retch it all up, unable to handle the sheer amount, the salt that comes with it.
“Watch Caligula,” He motions to the palace sinking under the weight of his ocean, “Watch as everything you have ever cared to love drowns.”
Percy grabs a shard of mirror, uncaring of the gash it sweeps across his palm. He holds it up to the ancient powerful Emperor, who is convulsing into nothing. “Watch.”
He used to be nice.
Sometime later when Percy Jackson walks up a hill, and into the fading sun there is nothing but content mania lining his features, and behind him where a grand home once stood, is a trickling river and a single spear carved with the words, “Neo Helios”. The only sign that Caligula, Emperor and murderer, ever existed,
He used to be nice.
Until someone killed his friends.