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Percy Jackson doesn’t really know where all of it started
Maybe when their adventure began and from Camp they departed
Him, along with Annabeth and Grover, young and pure
A trio of children monsters found quite easy to lure.
But along the way his feelings grew
His heart started beating for the one that he knew
Was the one for him, that much was true
But it never meant their love would arrive as due.
『••✎••』
Throughout his journey to the Lightning Bolt, he found himself falling in love. They were three, him, Annabeth and Grover, twelve years old and new to the world beyond the comfort of Camp Half-Blood’s protective barriers. It was foreign and shaky at first, but soon enough a strong bond of trust between them grew, as did his longing for the heart of Athena's daughter. Annabeth was just… it. He doesn't know how to describe it, but he just had to look at her, listen to her laugh, watch her smile, hold her hand to know she was the one. But just because she was the one for him didn't mean that he was the one for her.
『••✎••』
He loved Annabeth, he was one of the few
But the girl loved another, a friend from her old crew
Luke had her heart like she had his
His emotions were not reciprocated, as it is.
He loved her with all his being but she did not
He couldn’t help his skin burning around her, the way his body went hot
He wanted to be the one, to be the one at whom she looked
Her laugh, her smile, everything about her had him hooked.
『••✎••』
He knew from the start that Annabeth loved Luke. He could see it on her face every time they crossed the path of Hermes’ son. He knew they had history together, that much he could tell.
He hoped maybe there was a way that she'd fall for him too like he fell for her, but even when Luke turned to the dark side and kneeled to Kronos, she defended him, and this was when he knew he didn't stand a chance.
『••✎••』
But deep in his gut where butterflies once flew
Something more sinister had started to brew
His unwanted love had grown a seed
That bloomed into a flower that only pain could feed.
Petals of grey and and flickered gold
His curse is a secret he never told
The storm of her eyes and the blonde of her hair
The flowers he vomits are worse than any nightmare.
『••✎••』
He watches her grin to him before disappearing behind the door of her cabin, and something tightens in his gut. He brushes it off as one of the pangs of hurt he often gets when he sees her glance over in Luke's direction, but as he gets closer to his own cabin, ready to collapse on his bed and sleep for a good thirteen hours, the pull in his abdomen burns stronger.
His pace suddenly quickens, and he throws his door open to race towards the bathroom, bile rising higher up his throat, and he drops to his knees harshly to hunch over the toilet. But as his body heaved, where he expected to spew vomit, he started coughing, and something dry and flat rose to rest uncomfortably on his tongue.
With one last rasp, it finally came out, and Percy stares at the small petal floating serenely on the water of the toilet, grey and flecked with gold. It's beautiful.
But he thinks back to an old tale his mother had told him of late at night, of a curse for the heartbroken and the doomed, it doesn't look so pretty anymore.
And months later, when the first full flower falls from his lips, he knows he won't have long.
『••✎••』
The petals turn to flowers like the flowers turn to thorns
From the first snip of yarn his future death was mourned
That red string of the Fates was not Luke’s but his own
Annabeth was not his to take and he was not one to live, that much he had known.
His will to fight turned only half-hearted
He wasn’t fighting to live as that wish had parted
All he cared about now was keeping his friends alive
He tried not to think about whether or not he would survive.
『••✎••』
When he first saw that Fury cut that piece of string, Percy tried to ignore everything that told him the truth. He was convinced that life wasn't his, that he would live, but as time went by he slowly felt himself give in.
Now he attacked in battle to win the war, so that nobody else had to go through the things he had himself. So that the world could continue to thrive, so that all the joy and all the beautiful things he'd seen would exist, even if he was gone.
Loyalty was his fatal flaw, and it was fatal in the way that he thought of others’ safety before his own, but it was for the best.
It was for the best, he tried to convince himself day and night, in hopes that he would continue to live to see the light.
Because soon enough, the petals he coughed up doubled in number, and quickly turn into full flowers. And after the flowers came the stems, and with the stems came the thorns of the roses. And with the thorns, came the blood.
『••✎••』
He thought there might be hope, but there was none of it left
And when the time came Kronos stole his life and relished the theft
He knew his fall would come from the moment the prophecy was read
And didn’t curse at the sky in anger, just quietly bled.
The garden he nourished with his love killed him from the inside
He was caught, there was nowhere to hide
He didn’t have a chance, it so depressing he could laugh
From the bloodstained flowers to his life of string cut in half.
『••✎••』
The blow comes before he can feel it. He’s alone facing what used to be Luke at the top of Olympus with Annabeth, and time seems to slow down as he hurdles to the ground, and it doesn't seem to be an effect of Kronos’s power. But the moment he hits the floor is the moment where everything speeds up, numb shock searing across his back.
So this is how he dies, in the end. Maybe this is better, better than waiting till the flowers growing in his abdomen, the same place where what he needs to remember is Luke hit, takes his life instead. Is this not a hero’s fate? He didn't have hope left, so why does it hurt this much? Why does he suddenly crave to breathe easily when he hadn't cared about it hours ago? No chance, he remembers, between the curse and the red yarn, along with the prophecy.
So, he wonders, why does he crave the pain to end, but not in death but in healing?
But in seconds the feeling passes and he's reminded of all the people he's fought for and all the people he's met, and smiles. Death is okay, after all.
『••✎••』
“Hero’s soul cursed blade shall reap”
The chill of death took his secrets with it to keep
He welcomed the cold with open arms
It was the best way to end things without causing anyone harm.
No had one realised, but his funeral was inevitable and certain
The end of the show was assured, as was the last fall of the curtain
The flowers had kept growing and the thorns had continued to tear
The curse was when he knew of his death, but he found he wasn't scared.
『••✎••』
He had known it would hurt, and it did, but it was a good kind of hurt, although his body didn't seem to agree. It was the kind of pain that woke you up from a slumber you didn't even know you'd drifted in, the kind of hurt that made you realise everything and nothing all at once, that made you feel like maybe dying wouldn't be so bad after all.
He can't explain it, so maybe he shouldn't. It'll be his little secret with himself, he thinks. Sure, he was dying, ascending to the Underworld, but wouldn't them all? He was already doing so anyway. The constant burning in his gut reminded him of that.
So maybe he should do one last thing in this world. So he would be remembered. There would be no end to his story.
『••✎••』
With his last breaths he pulled Luke out of his haze
The golden eyes went back to blue and a regretful gaze
Shattered the control Kronos had and cut the puppet strings
Who would have thoughts he’d choose to save him of all things.
He ruptured the timeline and changed the plot
Smiling as his body fell to eternal rot
She came running to his side the moment she woke from her daze
“A single choice shall end his days, Olympus to preserve or raze.”
『••✎••』
He rasped, doubling over in pain, his hand clutching his abdomen, red blossoming across his fingers and dripping to the marble floor. His vision swam, but he gulped in as much air as he could, and lunged at Kronos Luke.
He has to remember who is the real enemy. It isn't the demigod before him, eyes a molten gold that repulsed Percy more than anything before, it's the lord of time behind the reins of Luke's body. His body burns from the effort, but he forces himself to think of it like every other time spent retching in front of the toilet.
His coughs and dry throat are a result of the flowers and stems rising up from the cruel depths of his stomach. The searing sting in that very place comes from the thorns tearing his flesh from the inside and the jealousy brewing in his gut. The aching of his bones that are begging him for the final rest of death is just his exhaustion after gagging up petal after petal laced with his blood.
Everything happens too fast, but when he finally collapses to the ground with thud, Annabeth and Luke are by his side, and the latter looks at him with the bluest tear-swarmed orbs he's ever seen. He smiles, and for the last time, convulses and trembles as he spits out one final flower, for everyone to see, unshielded from the facade he put up around himself. The stem is littered with thorns like the petals are splattered with blood, the grey and gold almost completely concealed by the ugly red. The sight is horrible, and his flesh is exposed from his wounds and bits of it stay stuck to the thorns on the flower.
As he breathes one last time, he stares into the stormy eyes that had been his joy but also his downfall, and grins. She sobs and shakes, finally understanding, she finally knows, but it's too late, and his sea green eyes close.
In the end, the curse had said true. The flower he cradles in the crook of his palm, and all the ones before, flash the colours that had meant his death. Grey, the storm of her eyes and his unrequited love had eaten him inside out. Gold, the control and regret in his eyes as he sunk the scythe in Percy's abdomen.
The dried red staining his shirt and the thorns confirms his death that would have come no matter how hard he fought against the inevitable.
Grey and gold.
Annabeth and Luke.
Her eyes show skies, his eyes hide lies.
But Percy's eyes are troubled waters, both hiding and showing his imminent slaughter.
He wonders if he could have lived, and what would have happened if he did.
『••✎••』
Percy Jackson doesn’t really know where all of it started
Maybe from when they met to when he bled and departed
It hurt too much, couldn’t his heart just stay intact and pure?
It was so easy, so simple, one look into her eyes and into her trap he had been lured.
『••✎••』
Percy's fatal flaw is loyalty. Loyalty to his friends, to his family, to all those he loves, especially the one who has his heart.
So when he saves Luke with his last breaths, he doesn't regret a thing. Doesn't regret the years of retching flowers and petals, eventually thorns and blood. Doesn't regret years of waking up passed out on the cold floor of his bathroom, because it means he got to love her like she loved Luke. So for Annabeth, and a little bit for Luke and for the world, he banishes Kronos back where he belongs and lets himself die in the process. He couldn't have stopped it anyway.
He now understands why fatal flaws are called this way.
Because his loyalty was fatal, in the end.
Sally and Paul never get the blue lights Percy had promised them.
After all, he hadn't promised with truth in his words, but with regret in his eyes, the one emotion that he couldn’t fake, as he knows that even with his fatal loyalty, this is a promise he cannot make.