Chapter Text
My name is Percy Jackson.
You might know me already, and if you do, you probably also know that yeah, I was a troubled kid. Pretty sure I'd be considered a troubled adult now, or at least an adult who ends up in trouble a lot. So says my girlfriend, although she also tells me that I like to start trouble, which... Might be at least a little bit true.
Or it was.
And then I got absolutely, totally sick of dealing with all the troubles of the gods.
You might know this already if you know anything about me. Or if you don't, feel free to read any or all the books talking about my life as a demigod. Half-blood. Which sounds way cooler than it is, trust me. I mean sure I have badass water powers and can talk to horses and sea creatures and I've met a lot of gods and monsters... Yeah all of that probably sounds pretty fucking awesome.
But it's only awesome once you get, and keep, a win. Once your powers can do something that helps people, or protects your family and friends, or helps you and your girlfriend have the best underwater kiss of all time...ahem. Anyway the point is, I'm not starting trouble anymore, or I'm trying not to, at least. Grover is definitely snorting at me in disbelief, but whatever G-man I legitimately want to just live life undisturbed. Or less-disturbed, I guess, by gods and monsters.
Fucking worst had to have been the disgraced sun god showing up on my front stoop. Hello, Apollo, if you don't have your Maserati I don't want to get into the middle of whatever you decided to do. Or I guess, what your dad did to you. Because Zeus loves to pick on people for doing stupid shit when he's definitely the authority.
(Annabeth is telling me I should stop saying shit about Zeus, but she told Hera to fuck off the other day, so. She understands.)
The thing is, it'd be different if the gods or creatures I kept seeing were cool, but I haven't seen Thalia in a while, and Grover is doing his whole new-Pan thing (which is awesome, and he's got Juniper as like, queen of the forests with him and they're all decked out in flowering foliage or whatever, and it's super fucking cute, but still)
I miss him. And I miss Nico, or I guess I worry about the kid, still. Even though he's being watched over by Will way better than I ever watched out for him.
Or for his sister.
Or Beckendorf. Or Silena. Ethan, Michael, Castor... Zoe, and- Jason.
And that's the thing, the part about being a hero - we don't always win. We lose, and we actually lose a hell of a lot. And when we lose, it sucks more than losing sucks for other people, regular people, because when WE lose, we die. Or someone does.
And sometimes they get remembered, they get a constellation in the stars. But that isn't good enough. Not for me. You take all of us, the hardest shit we have to deal with and pull through, and our friends, our family die. And it sucks ass. But the gods don't care, at least not the same way we do. They think that honor and glory, that remembering is enough.
But I'm here to tell you that it's not.
How much misery could Misery take? That's not the question anymore. How much can we take? That's not it either. It's bullshit.
The real question is, how much is it gonna take for things to actually get better? And to stay that way? Tell me that, huh, Fates or - our resident scribe at Camp Half-blood. I was gonna say the Oracle but I don't even want to put that shit on Rachel.
When are the gods gonna stop messing around with all of us, huh?