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Time: One Day before the big battle in New York.
It had been a few years after Luke had backstabbed Percy.
The golden sarcophagus holding Kronos glowed as the final demigod needed to resurrect him… what was his name again?
Ah yes, Ethan. Demigod son of Nemesis. Fighting for the acknowledgement of minor gods.
Regardless, very soon, he would finally get his revenge on the gods.
Luke had waited years for this. His resentment for Hermes, his father, and the other gods had been growing larger and larger over the years.
He hated them for not caring, for treating their children like playthings. A toy to be used and discarded once they broke without a second thought.
He scowled as he thought about this again, it was a topic that had been on his mind many, many times.
Oh yes, back to that demigod boy. “ I-I pledge my loyalty to- ” Ethan (Luke decided that was probably his name) faltered as he saw the sarcophagus glow brighter. He seemed to be reconsidering.
‘Convince him to do it quickly, servant. And be quick about it!’ Kronos’ voice whispered in his mind.
Luke swiftly said to Ethan, though his tone was calm, way too calm. “ Having second thoughts?”
“ Well, ” the boy timidly replied, “ Is there a way I could maybe choose not to harm some people?”
Luke internally rolled his eyes. Not this again. “ I told you, if you want to get revenge on the gods and make the minor gods more well known, some sacrifices are necessary for the greater good.”
( Pushing down the guilt he felt at betraying Annabeth and Thalia. ‘I promise I’m not going to fail you like our families did to us.’ He was a LIAR. LIAR. LIAR.)
“And you should remember what we do with traitors. Or do you need me to remind you again? ” He added, gesturing to the giants surrounding the area.
Ethan nodded frantically, a fearful of the edge that was in Luke’s voice. “ N-nevermind. I pledge my loyalty to Kronos.” The sarcophagus glowed brightly once more as Kronos was once again reformed.
Wasting no time, Kronos immediately possessed Luke’s body.
“ Let us begin.” The voice was the same, yet different. With a cold, crueler edge to the tone than before.
The groups of people and monsters standing around gathered immediately and stood in attention as a slight chill ran down their spine.
Kronos/Luke? ( the body was his now, servant. ) told the armies of his plan.
After making everyone had gotten the details clear, and vapourising those that didn’t, the crowd quickly dispersed, planning to get some rest and prepare for the big day ahead.
Kronos ordered his servant, his vessel, (A.N. His little chrysalis in which he can become a beautiful titan butterfly loll) to go to sleep.
The titan of time wanted the body to be well-rested and ready to attack with full force on Mount Olympus the next day. Luke complied easily ( not that he had any other choice).
Luke fell into a fitful sleep, plagued with nightmares. But this one felt… different than usual somehow. It still started the same, a deep dark pit.
Tartarus was plaguing his dreams once again.
He looked around warily, hoping to find something familiar. Kronos’s throne maybe? Perhaps the Titan Lord wanted to brief him once again about the battle plans?
He looked around once again. Still nothing. It was eerily quiet, no sounds, no nothing. (A.N. Not yet there isn’t :D )
Slowly, a figure appeared.
“ Mom?” , Luke asked tentatively , a tinge of something in his voice.
Remorse, guilt, he didn’t know.
His mother spoke, sounding exactly like he remembered. “ What? What are they? My son… he’s turning evil!”
She burst into one of her maniacal fits. Just like when he was a kid, just like what had driven him out of his own house.
He shouted back at her, rage suddenly filling him. “ Look, when I needed you, you weren’t there. At least the ‘dark side’ actually cares. More than my own mother at least.”
His mother retorted, sounding more sane than he’d ever heard her. “ They’re not your parents! That’s not your FAMILY Luke!”
Rage overtook him as he took out Backbiter. “ They’re nice to me! They treat me better than my own family!” ( “Lies” a voice whispered “All lies” )
“ They don’t know you!” His mother spoke, albeit desperately.
Luke scoffed at that.
“ Ha! And you do? You’re crazy half the time, all your knowledge of me is based on me as a child. I’m grown up now, you think I still like those things you make?”
“ I thought I did.”
The reply sounded sardonic, he didn’t know his mother was capable of saying words like that to him.
“ Great, this is the longest conversation I have ever had with you and it’s an argument. Worse, it's not even real. What do you even know about me. You don’t know ANYTHING about me! You can’t even see me.” He slashes his sword at the mirage, only feeling an ounce of regret.
However, that feeling is multiplied when he hears his mother ( “she’s fake” his head says. But why does his heart wish it was real? ) say “ You are the ONE good thing that’s ever happened to me in my life, Luke. I’m sorry. Sorry…that I…couldn’t give you anything more than that.”
He angled his head up slightly, not wanting to meet the eyes of his mother ( why couldn’t he accept it was fake? It didn’t matter to him anyway, did it?)
“ Well it’s not my fault if others can.”
Gradually, music started playing.
“ What kind of dream is this?!?” Luke shouted into the void. “ How can things get worse?”
Almost as if taunting him, a shadowy figure of Annabeth appeared, materializing to look battered and bruised.
“ Annabeth.” Luke whispered, a sliver of his heart still caring for the girl, his sister in all but blood. Until he changed.
She sang out, her voice clear but the hurt in her voice was even clearer. “ So you found a place where the grass is greener. And you jumped the fence to the other side,”
A bitter smile formed on her face.
“ Is it good? Are they giving you a world I could never provide?”
“ SHUT UP!”
Completely ignoring the feelings of guilt, guilt, guilt. Luke slashed his sword down on the mirage, expecting it to dissipate, but it just reformed once more, continuing her singing.
“ Well I hope you're proud of your big decision. Yeah, I hope it’s all that you want and more. Now you’re free! From the agonizing life you were living, before~”
“ You’re fake. This isn’t real!” ( but why was his heart so certain it was?)
Another mirage appeared, holding Annabeth’s hand as the mirage of Annabeth became smaller, turning back into her when she was 7.
When they first met.
The person holding her hand was …Thalia.
“ Just great.” Luke sighed.
Thalia started singing too.
“ Missed me? You say what you need to say, so that you get to walk away. It would kill you to have to stay trapped when you got something new.”
She looked disapprovingly at him as young Annabeth stared up at him.
“ Didn’t you say you’d be different? That you wouldn’t abandon us?” Thalia continued her melody full of Luke’s regrets, “ Well I’m sorry you had it rough.”
Crossing her arms and laughing, almost as if she found it a joke, “ and I’m sorry I’m not enough.”
Her voice dripped with the familiar sarcasm she had when she used to tell jokes, but this time, Luke felt as if he was being suffocated with that sarcasm instead of it lifting him up like the jokes she told when they were on the run together.
“ Thank gods they rescued you!”
Luke tried once again to slash at them, but once again, they reformed just as quickly.
Annabeth and Thalia turned back to their current ages, but grew to surrounded him like mountains, making him feel small and insignificant under their glares and the reprimanding voices.
“ So you got what you always wanted, so you got your dream come true. Good for you, good for you, you, you.”
Gesturing at the numerous new statues of Kronos, of the Titans that appeared.
“Got a taste of a life so ‘perfect’ so you did what you had to do, good for you. GOOD FOR YOU.”
Luke swiped at them once more, trying to get rid of them. The attempt got rid of their massive height, but not of their forms.
This time, it showed scenes he had seen before.
Annabeth holding up the sky, looking pained. ( And it was his fault.)
Thalia, staring down monsters on Half-Blood Hill.
Their voices came from… somewhere.
“ Does it cross your mind to be slightly sorry? Oh! Do you even care that you might be wrong.”
They condescendingly sang out, as if speaking to a child.
“Was it fun? Well, I hope you had a blast while you dragged me along.”
“ You don’t know anything. Stop talking! Singing, whatever, just STOP!”
The mirages disappeared, flaking away. “ Yes! YES! Finally! Oh titans no. Now three?!”
Percy had a hand on Annabeth’s waist protectively, while of course, looking at Luke like he was algae at the bottom of a dirty fish tank.
“And you say what you need to say. And you play who you need to play, and if somebody’s in your way?”
Pointing at Luke as scorpions slowly scuttle towards him, just like what he did to Percy right after his first quest.
( The oracle warned you, betrayed by a friend. He betrayed his friend. Someone who had nearly no other people to lean on. Just like his father, leaving people who actually cared behind.)
As Luke stabbed the scorpions, chanting a mantra under his breath. This was a dream, this wasn’t real.
As he did this, the apparitions continued with their tune.
“ Crush them and leave them behind.”
The illusion of Percy and Annabeth chimed out in unison as if it was the most reasonable thing to do. ( Well, up till this dream, it kinda was. )
Percy, Annabeth and Thalia chorused, ignoring his internal suffering.
“ Well I guess if I'm not of use.”
Shrugging, they proceeded.
“Go ahead, you can cut me loose.”
As they hand Luke a pair of scissors, and they suddenly become little puppet dolls, each with an individual string tied to them, looped around one of his fingers.
As he snips the strings they sing with a lilt to their voices,
“ Go ahead now, I won’t mind!~”
Demigods he knew from camp, not close friends, but friends all the same. They all started showing up, being led by Percy, Annabeth and Thalia, singing out this deceptively peppy-sounding song.
(All it did was make Luke feel guilt- regret- hurt- pain )
Luke knelt on the floor, not even bothering to fight back.
A loud chorus of many, many voices, of all the people he screwed over, left behind, even demigods on his side, Luke had ignored them, becoming exactly what they were aiming to destroy.
“ I’ll just sit back while you run the show, is that good for you? Would that be good for you, you, you?”
Tears ran down his cheeks as he knelt and cried, choking (and singing) out words, overlapping with the voices in the back ground.
“ All I need is some time to think, but the boat is about to sink, can’t erase what I wrote in ink, tell me how can I change the story?”
Trembling as he stood up, breathing heavily, Luke frantically slashing his sword as he tried to clear a path through all the people he had wronged.
Wherever he looked, another familiar face stared back at him.
He gave an anguished cry, overcome with emotions he didn’t think he would feel when going down this path.
Luke slashed frantically, stabbing, repeating the motions as he slowly cleared a path, the tears still flowing steadily down his cheeks.
With a quavering voice, he continued the melody, “ All the words that I can’t take back, like a train coming off the tracks, as he rails and my bones all crack, I’ve gotta find a way to STOP IT ! STOP IT! JUST LET ME OUT!”
Luke couldn’t escape, there were just too many phantasms and they regenerated too quickly.
As the spirits grew and surrounded him once more, their voices grew louder and louder, all of them repeating and singing that slowly turned to shouting. All chanting out the same words.
“ So you got what you always wanted, so you got your dream come true, good for you! GOOD FOR YOU, YOU, YOU! GOT A TASTE OF A LIFE ‘ SO PERFECT’ NOW YOU SAY THAT YOU’RE ‘SOMEONE NEW’. GOOD FOR YOU, GOOD FOR YOU.”
They slowly started disappearing, each one showing a different death, but all were because of him.
Stabbed, poisoned, killed by monsters in his army, and various different methods.
Until there were only four apparitions left. His mother, Percy, Annabeth and Thalia. They circled closer and closer, darkness started surrounding him even more.
“ So you got what you always wanted.”
There was a crash and Luke got swallowed up by the darkness.
Luke sat upright in his bed, forehead covered in a cold sweat.
It was just a dream. (He knew that from the start. But why did it feel so real?)
Not for the first time, he wondered , “ Was this really the right choice after all?”
THE END!
Epilogue:
Kronos had full control of his body.
Normally Luke would have been all for it but Luke wasn’t so sure
about this anymore.
Maybe… maybe…if he just saw Annabeth… then sacrificed himself. Kronos would be gone, no one would really miss him. Maybe it could happen.
Then he’d try for Elysium, no, Isles of the Blest. He’d just have to wait and see.