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No one would notice the bottle of scotch was missing. At least, no demigod or monster in his army would.
His army. It had been nice to think that for a while, he might have been the permanent commander of all this. That he would lead the demigods into battle against the gods with the authority of Kronos. His loyal general. His willing servant.
Luke was not willing now. Luke had no interest in any of it now. His hopes had been resting on the shoulders of Percy Jackson and now they had been squarely shattered in more ways than one.
There were other plans lying in wait, eyes fixed on any opportunity to jump out and take their place. But he knew what the primary one was now, and he dreaded it.
He’d never been a drinker. Living at camp had made sure of that. Even if he could have regularly snuck it past Chiron, who occasionally forgot, or liked to pretend to forget that it was still the Age of Heroes, despite the past three thousand-ish years having passed, it was in Dionysus’ domain. Technically. His thing traditionally was just wine, but the alcohol, and bacchanalian culture of night clubs and dive bars had expanded, he supposed to encompass any alcohol. Or at least the type humans drank. Mr D probably wasn’t the god of hand sanitiser. The point was, he was pissed enough at being banned, and being stuck at camp, to deny anyone else any chance of having a drink.
Since defecting, Luke had attended dinners with gorgeous red wines, and dry whites. He had sipped at aperitifs with strange businessmen, while discussing funding and access. He had had the occasional shitty beer when he thought no one would notice, except one.
Kronos knew. He always knew, no matter what Luke did. He retreated most of the time, expending his energy on healing, and influencing demigods to just listen, just come and see what we can do. He didn’t need to babysit Luke, and Luke wasn’t interested in knowing if his lord and master took the time to watch him at the toilet.
The weight of Kronos was heavy, if you knew that it was there. If you knew what to look for. The darkening in the corners of the room. The way everything moved was just… slower. The way his brain sometimes failed to omit natural blurring from his sight.
Kronos would not be interested in having him drown his sorrows like this. It was a far cry from noble hobnobbing and socialising with their funders and would-be allies. This was personal and selfish, and Luke wanted it so badly.
Kronos wasn’t here right now. His vision was sharp. The room remained well lit. His body was as light as it would ever be again.
He was alone. And he might as well get started.
He coughed up the first sip of scotch. It burned its way down his throat until it got caught there and he spittled it around his mouth, and over his shirt. It was horrible. Slightly spicy but with no depth. It just hurt. That didn’t mean he didn’t lift the bottle to his lips again for another shot at it.
It went down more smoothly the second time. And the third. Luke could adapt to anything, no matter how painful or unpleasant, given time. He wouldn’t have survived as a demigod if he hadn’t been able to get as good as he gave, or so the phrase went. It was something like that. Probably.
He raised his own hand to his face, very deliberately. It had to be deliberate. It wasn’t his own body right now. He was just controlling its movements from far off. Very far off.
He knew it was his face. Mainly because… well. It was there. On top of his skull. His bones. Or whatever. He didn’t need to be on the receiving end of a Socratic (mono)dialogue over this. But it was very far away from him when he pressed his hand to it. The feeling was muted, like he had shoved his face in snow quite recently. One of his fingernails found an intent of skin and pressed in, pushing farther and farther down, sinking into it until he smelled something metallic. When he pulled his hand away, there was a red stain, still wet and shining, on the tip of that finger. It had caught all the way under the nail.
He drank again, deeper this time. He swallowed past the burning. He swallowed it all down. Vaguely, he was aware that he might be drunk at this point. For all his fancy dinners with mild imbibement, he had never genuinely been shitfaced. Even the personal shitty beers had stopped after the first one in the session.
It was nice. It was quiet. It was like his body wasn’t his, but he had chosen that.
Even if their gambit with the ophiotaurus and Thalia worked, and Luke knew it would work, if he could just talk to Thalia first. Sure she was at Camp now, but that was because he hadn’t been able to see her yet. He could talk to her, and she would listen. Their friendship had been built off of sitting up to watch out for monsters, and hating their parents. Wanting to make them pay. Wanting things to be better.
Now they had that chance, and he knew she would take it if he wanted her to. He knew that she would understand about him poisoning the tree, because he had known it would have gotten her back, instead of leaving her in a limbo at the edge of Camp and civilisation. He had only been doing what it would take to get them all back together. Him, her, and Annabeth. Just like it had been before, in those two weeks they had been running to Camp with no gods on their sides. With only monsters behind them.
It would have worked better before. It would have worked best if Percy and Grover hadn’t messed up with the Lightning Bolt. He was going to be the vessel now, even if Kronos was obfuscating about what that meant. He knew what it meant. But he was in this now. The only way out was through. The light was at the end of the tunnel; not at the sides.
He fell asleep next to the half-drunk bottle and slept terribly. In the morning, he set off for Connecticut to do what he needed to do there.