Archive of Our Own

Dad

Paul,

Three days. Four crumpled pages. I keep writing the wrong thing. Jokes. Apologies. The same I'm fine I've been feeding everyone for months. I'm throwing them all away.

You married my mom. You moved into our house and you never asked questions you didn't want the answers to. You made coffee every Saturday morning. It was terrible. You never got better at it. You asked how my day was on Tuesdays. You kept asking. Even when I was silent. Even when I came home with blood on my clothes and a story I couldn't tell you.

I was twelve years old and I had already died once. I was fourteen years old and I had already held the sky. I was fifteen years old and I had already learned that the people who are supposed to protect you will let you fall if it serves their purposes. I was sixteen years old and I had never had a father who stayed.

You stayed.

You stayed through the monsters and the disappearances and the year I was gone when you had to watch my mother grieve without being able to tell anyone why. You stayed through the version of me that came back from Tartarus there, quieter, sharper, wrong in ways you couldn't name but could feel. You stayed through dinners where I didn't speak and mornings where I didn't come out of my room and nights where you heard me walking the halls at three in the morning because sleeping meant dreaming and dreaming meant going back.

You stayed. You stayed. You stayed.

I never said thank you. I never said anything. I took the coffee and the questions and the way you looked at me like I was worth looking at and I put them in the hollow places inside me and I never gave anything back.

I'm writing this because I need someone to know. In case. In case I don't come back one day. In case I finally figure out how to make it stick.

Take care of her. You already do. I know. But I need to say it.

And the baby. Make sure she gets to be a kid. Don't let the world find her early. Don't let it put things in her head that she can't get out. Don't let it hollow her out the way it hollowed me.

I love you. I've never said that. I've let you be my father and I've never given you the words that would make it true. I'm saying it now. On paper. In a letter I will never send.

I love you. I'm sorry I couldn't say it when it would have mattered.

Take care of them.

Your son,

Percy

Grover

G-Man,

You sent me seventeen pictures of a pine tree. I stared at them for an hour. And I couldn't figure out why you sent them. I couldn't figure out what I was supposed to feel. I couldn't figure out why my chest hurt looking at something so ordinary.

I miss you. That's not the right word. Missing implies there's a distance that can be closed. This isn't distance. This is a wall. I'm on one side and everything I used to love is on the other and I can't find the door.

When we were twelve, you were the first person who was nice to me without wanting something. You. You looked at the problem kid with the bad grades and the worse attitude and you decided I was worth standing next to. You ate tin cans at lunch and you let me sit across from you and you didn't ask me to be anything other than what I was.

I was twelve and I thought the world was simple. Good guys and bad guys. You fight the monster, you win, you come home. I built my whole self on that belief. I was Percy Jackson, hero. Percy Jackson, the one who saves people. Percy Jackson, the one who gets to come home.

I don't come home anymore. I go to places that used to be home and I stand in them and I wait to feel something and nothing comes. Just the space where the feeling used to be. Just the shape of it. Just the absence.

I'm not okay. I haven't been okay for a long time. I keep trying to find the moment it started. Tartarus There is the clean answer. Before and after. The place where I broke. But I think the cracks were there before. Luke. Bianca. The Labyrinth. The weight of being the one who was supposed to save everyone and never being able to save enough.

I kept patching the cracks with whatever I had. The next quest. The next fight. The next person who needed me to be strong. I ran out of material somewhere in the dark. Now there's just cracks. Now there's just the space where the person I used to be used to live.

I don't know how to ask for help. I've been the strong one so long I don't know what's left if I put it down. I think the strong one is all I am. If I stop being that, there's nothing underneath. Just the cracks. Just the pieces. Just the thing that used to be Percy Jackson and doesn't remember how to be anything else.

You were my first real friend. You saw me before I was anyone worth seeing. I'm still here. I don't know why. I'm still writing letters I'll never send.

I'm trying, Grover. I'm trying to find the person you saw. I'm trying to be worth the thing you gave me.

I don't know if I can.

I love you,

Percy

Jason,

I was jealous of you.

I still am.

You made being a hero look easy. You stood there with your sword and your jaw set and you just did it. You were scared, I know you were scared. I saw it sometimes. The way your eyes would go still before a fight. The way your hand would tighten on your weapon. But it didn't show the way mine shows. You had a steadiness I've never had. A center that held.

I've always been shaking. Even when I'm still, I'm shaking. Something in me is always vibrating, always threatening to come apart, always one wrong word away from breaking. I hid it. For years I hid it. I made jokes and I smiled and I saved people and everyone thought that meant I was fine. That the shaking wasn't there. That the cracks weren't spreading.

You saw it. I think you saw it. You were too decent to say anything. Too decent to point out that the hero of Olympus was falling apart in real time.

I wanted a brother. I told you that once. I wanted someone who understood the weight. The prophecies. The expectations. The particular loneliness of being the one everyone looks to. I found it in you.

I found it too late. Or just late enough to lose it before I understood what it was.

I regret we didn't have more time.

I regret you died and I didn't.

Every day I walk around with your death sitting in my chest. Another person who deserved to live more than I do. Another name on the list of people I couldn't save.

I'm trying to be like you now. Steady. The kind of hero who doesn't leave. I put it on in the morning like a jacket and I try to hold it all day. Some days it fits. Some days it's so heavy I can't breathe. Some days I think about taking it off, just for a minute, just to feel what it's like to not be pretending.

I wonder if you'd recognize me. The version of me walking around now. You were good at seeing people. You would have seen the cracks. You would have seen that I'm not steady, I'm just still, and stillness isn't the same thing.

I wish you were here. I wish you could tell me how to do this. How to carry the weight without it crushing you. How to be the person everyone needs you to be without losing the person you are underneath.

I'll carry the rest from here. That's a promise, not a fact. I'm not claiming to be doing it well. I'm not claiming I won't drop it. I'm just saying I'll try.

I hope wherever you are, it's quiet. No weight. No prophecies. No one looking to you to save them. Just rest.

You deserved that. You deserved everything I can't give myself.

I’m sorry.

Thank you,

Percy.

Thalia,

You left.

I know it wasn't personal. I know you had your reasons. I know the prophecy was a weight no one should have to carry and the Hunters offered you a way out and you took it. I know you didn't owe me anything. You were a tree for years. You came back to a world that had moved on without you. You found a way to survive. You found a way to be free.

But you left.

You dropped the prophecy in my lap and you walked away. You chose immortality and a family that would never leave you and you left me to carry the thing you didn't want to carry. You left me to be the one the prophecy was about. You left me to be the one who had to decide whether to save or destroy Olympus when I was fifteen years old and I had already died twice and I was so tired I couldn't see straight.

I don't know if you thought about what you were doing. I don't know if you looked back. I don't know if you watched from the Hunters' camp and wondered if I was going to make it. I don't know if you would have come back if I hadn't.

I was fifteen years old and I carried a prophecy that was supposed to be yours. I was fifteen years old and I walked into a war I didn't start. I was fifteen years old and I watched Luke die and I held Annabeth while she cried and I stood in the throne room and listened to the gods make promises I knew they wouldn't keep and I did it alone.

You weren't there.

You were running through the woods with your new sisters. You were free. You were safe. You were everything I couldn't be because you had handed me the weight and walked away.

I'm not saying this to make you feel guilty. I'm saying it because I need to say it somewhere. Because I've been carrying this too. Because the weight doesn't get lighter just because I pretend it isn't there.

You came back eventually. You fought beside me. You almost died. You called me cousin and you looked at me like I mattered and I let myself believe that was enough. I let myself believe that the years you weren't there didn't matter because you were there now.

But they mattered. They mattered when I was fifteen and alone and so scared I couldn't breathe. They mattered when I walked into the Labyrinth knowing I might not come out. They mattered when I held Annabeth in my arms and watched her grieve for a man who had tried to kill us both. They mattered when I stood in front of the gods and tried to make them see us as something more than tools.

You weren't there.

Do you ever look in the mirror and not recognize yourself?

I do. Every day now. I look and I see someone who's supposed to be Percy Jackson. The eyes are the right color. The scar on my hand is in the right place. But it's like looking at a photograph. Like the person on the other side of the glass is someone I used to know. Someone I used to be. Someone who died somewhere and I'm the thing that walked out wearing his face.

I don't know when he left. I don't know if he left. I don't know if he was ever real or if I just made him up, the way you make up a version of yourself that can survive anything, and then you survive and you're supposed to be grateful but you don't know who the person is who did the surviving.

Did you feel that way? When you were a tree? When you came back and everything was different and you had to figure out who you were in a world that had moved on without you? Did you feel like you were wearing someone else's face? Did you feel like the person you used to be had died somewhere and you were just the thing that walked out?

I'm tired, Thalia. Not quest-tired. Not we-just-fought-for-three-days tired. Something deeper. Something that lives in my bones. Something that's there when I wake up and there when I sleep and there in the spaces between where I'm supposed to be something else.

I keep getting back up. That's what I do. That's what I've always done. Get back up. Keep going. Don't stop. Don't look down. Don't notice that the person getting back up isn't the same person who fell.

But I'm getting closer to the day I won't. To the day when the thing in me that says get up just doesn't. And I'll stay down. And I don't know if I'm afraid of that or if I'm afraid of how not-afraid I am of it.

You made me believe I could be a hero. That first summer. Before you left. Before the prophecy became mine. Watching you take up space like you had every right to. Like your grief and your anger were real and valid and you were going to carry them like weapons. I wanted to be that. I wanted to be someone who could carry their own weight without disappearing under it.

Then you left. And I had to figure out how to be that without you.

If I fall— if I stop getting up— will you be there this time? Or will you be running through the woods with your sisters, free and safe, while I carry the weight alone again?

I don't know what I'm asking. I don't know what I want. I just know I can't hold this alone anymore. I've been holding it alone for so long I don't remember what it feels like to not be holding something. To just exist. To just be.

You're my family. That's supposed to mean something. That's supposed to mean you don't leave when the weight gets heavy.

You left anyway.

Please don’t leave me,

Percy

Nico,

I'm sorry.

I know that's not enough. I've known since it happened that it wasn't enough. I've been carrying the not-enough of it for years. It sits in my chest with all the other not-enoughs. The people I couldn't save. The moments I was too slow. The things I should have said and didn't.

I couldn't save Bianca her. I tried. I need you to know I tried. I've gone back to that day more times than I can count. The angle. The timing. What I should have said. What I should have seen. Every version ends the same way. Every version ends with her gone and me standing there, useless, watching someone I should have been able to save die.

I failed her. I failed you. I'm sorry.

I failed you after, too. When you were twelve years old and alone and the world had just taken everything from you. I was too busy being the hero to see the kid right in front of me who needed someone to just sit with him. I was too busy pretending I was okay to notice you were falling apart.

I saw you. I saw the grief you were carrying. I saw the way you looked at me like I was supposed to fix it. I saw and I looked away because I didn't know how to hold my own weight and yours too.

You deserved better. You deserved someone who didn't look away.

You walked into hell for people who hadn't earned it. You carried a secret that was eating you alive and you did it alone because you didn't trust anyone to hold it gently. You were right. No one held it gently. No one held it at all. You carried it until it broke you and then you carried the pieces.

You survived that. You found Will. You found something that looks like peace. You come to camp now and you smile sometimes, really smile, and I watch you and I think: he made it. He found a way back.

I don't know how you did it. I've been trying for a year and I'm getting worse, not better. The distance between me and everything I used to love is getting wider. The weight is getting heavier. The person I used to be is getting harder to remember.

You're one of the bravest people I've ever known. I should have told you that years ago. I should have said the words out loud instead of keeping them in my chest with all the other things I couldn't say.

The world would be darker without you in it. That's not a line. That's not something I'm saying to make you feel better. It's true. You exist and things are brighter because you exist. You take up space and the space is better for you being in it.

I'm proud of you. I'm proud of who you've become. I'm proud of you with Will. I'm proud of you choosing something warm after so long in the cold. I'm proud of you for surviving when surviving was the hardest thing in the world.

You're my family. I'm sorry I didn't act like it. I'm sorry I let you be alone when I could have been there. I'm sorry I was too broken to reach out.

You're not alone anymore. I hope that's real for you. I hope you feel it. I hope you know there are people who see you, who carry you, who would walk into hell for you the way you walked into hell for them.

Love,

Percy

To My Unborn Sister,

Mom talks to her stomach. She tells you about her day. About the books she's reading. About the blue cookies she's going to make when you're old enough to eat them. Paul built part of a crib last weekend. He put the slats in backwards. Mom laughed so hard she cried. I stood in the doorway and watched them and I thought: this is what I was trying to protect. This moment. This ordinary beautiful moment that doesn't need a hero to save it.

You're already loved. I want you to know that before anything else. Before the world gets to you. Before it puts its hands on you and shows you what it's made of. You're already loved in a way that doesn't need you to earn it.

I want to tell you about the world you're being born into. I want to warn you. I want to prepare you. But every time I try, the words turn to ash in my mouth. How do you tell someone the world is beautiful and terrible and full of things that will love you and things that will hurt you and sometimes you won't be able to tell which is which until it's too late?

I've been trying to help with the problems for a while. The big ones. The ones that keep people awake at night. It doesn't stop. You close one door and something opens a window. You save one person and two more need saving. You fight and you fight and you fight and at the end of it you look at what you've done and you can't tell if you made anything better or if you just rearranged the damage.

I'm scared for you. I'm scared of the world finding you early. I'm scared of the things I've seen, the things I can't unsee, the way they leave marks that don't wash off. I don't want those marks on you. I want you to have the version of the world Mom works so hard to build. Good coffee. Sunday mornings. A crib that takes three tries to put together. The ordinary beautiful days of a life that doesn't need saving.

I'm going to try to be the brother you deserve. I'm going to try to be there for you. To show up. To stay. To be the person who catches you when you fall and doesn't let the world convince you that falling means you're broken.

But I need you to know something. Something I can't say out loud to anyone else. Something I'm putting here because I need it to be somewhere, even if you never read it.

I'm not the hero everyone thinks I am. I'm not even sure I'm a person anymore. Some days I can barely get out of bed. Some days the weight is so heavy I can't breathe. Some days I look in the mirror and I don't recognize what's looking back. Some days I think about giving up. About walking into the ocean and not stopping. About letting the water take me somewhere quiet where I don't have to be anything anymore.

I'm telling you this because I never want you to think you have to be anything other than what you are. I never want you to carry things quietly because you think quiet is the same as strong. I did that. I thought strength meant not needing anyone. I thought strength meant carrying everything alone. I was wrong. Strength isn't carrying things alone. Strength is letting someone help you carry them.

It's okay to not be okay. It's okay to fall. It's okay to need help. It's okay to ask for it. It's okay to be the one who can't hold it together anymore.

I hope you get the fixed version of me. Or no version. The one who figured out how to carry things without disappearing under them. The one who learned how to be okay. The one who can be there for you the way you'll need me to be.

But if you get the broken version, the one who's writing this letter, the one who can't feel anything except the weight, the one who thinks about giving up on the days when the distance is widest, I want you to know that the broken version is trying. Every day. Even on the days when trying doesn't look like anything. Even on the days when all I can do is breathe. I'm trying.

I love you already. I love you in a way I don't have words for. In a way that terrifies me. Because loving you means there's something else I could lose. Something else I could fail. Something else that could be taken away.

But I love you anyway.

Welcome to the family.

I love you,

Percy

Bianca—

I don't know if you can hear this. I don't know if there's anywhere to hear things from where you are. I don't know if the dead listen or if they just rest, finally, after everything.

I need to tell you something. I need to say it somewhere. Even if you can't hear it. Even if it just sits here on the page, the way all my other words sit, unread, unsent, unheard.

I’m sorry, gods, I’m so sorry

Nico is okay.

He's more than okay. He's brave. He's kind. He's found people who see him. Who don't look away. Who sit with him in the dark and don't try to fix it.

He found someone. Will. Will stays. Will doesn't leave. Will makes him laugh in a way I haven't heard since before.

I think you'd be proud of him. I think you'd see the person he's become and you'd know that the kid you gave everything to protect grew up into someone worth protecting.

I'm sorry I couldn't save you. I'm sorry I couldn't be there fast enough, strong enough, good enough to make it right. I've carried that with me every day since. It sits in my chest with all the other not-enoughs. The people I couldn't save. The moments I was too slow. The things I should have done differently.

I'm sorry I couldn't bring you back. I'm sorry I couldn't give Nico the one thing he wanted more than anything. I'm sorry I'm still here when you should be.

I'm sorry.

Zoe Nightshade

You were right about heroes.

I'm trying to be the kind of hero you believed in.

I wear your stars sometimes. When it's dark. When I can't sleep. When the distance is widest and I can't remember why I'm supposed to keep going. I think about you. How you moved. How you faced the end and kept going. How even at the very last you were more sure of yourself than I have ever been.

I think about you and I keep going.

Is that okay? Is that allowed? To take something that was yours and use it to keep myself alive when I couldn't keep you alive?

I'm sorry. I'm sorry you died. I'm sorry you died and I didn't. I'm sorry I wasn't faster, smarter, better. I'm sorry I carry your name in my chest with all the other people I couldn't save.

Dad—

Father—

Poseidon—

I used to stand at the edge of the ocean and talk to you. When I was little. Before I knew what any of this was. When it was just me and Mom and the water and I didn't know I was talking to anyone. I'd tell you things. School things. Kid things. I told you about a fish I saw once. A big silver thing that jumped near the pier. I talked about it for ten minutes. I was six. I didn't know you could hear me. I didn't know you weren't listening.

Did you hear me? Did you ever hear me? Did you stand somewhere in your golden palace under the sea and listen to your mortal son talk about a fish and think: that's mine. That one is mine. I should do something about that.

You didn't. You never did. You let me grow up in a world that wanted to kill me. You let me be twelve years old and fighting for my life against monsters I couldn't name. You let me die. You let me come back. You let me fall into a place so dark I still can't find my way out.

I don't know if you're proud of me. I don't know if you think about me at all. I think about you all the time. The birthdays you missed. The times I almost died. The times I did. The spaces where you could have been there and weren't.

I try not to think about whether that was a choice. I try not to think about what it means that you chose to be a father to nothing. To the waves. To the currents. To the empty spaces between shores. You chose that over me.

I'm tired. I'm so tired. I'm tired of being the son of Poseidon. I'm tired of carrying your name and your power and your absence. I'm tired of looking at the ocean and wondering if you're looking back. I'm tired of knowing the answer.

I don't know how to be the son you want. I don't know how to be anyone's son. I don't know how to be anything except this– this broken thing that keeps moving because it doesn't know how to stop.

I still love the ocean. I don't know how to stop. I don't know if I want to stop. The ocean is the only place I've ever felt like myself. The only place where the distance closes and the weight lifts and I can breathe.

But I don't know if I love you. I don't know if I ever did. I don't know if I was supposed to.

Love

Percy

Luke—

Do you remember when you taught me the disarm? I was twelve. I had no idea what I was doing. I couldn't hold the sword right. I kept dropping it. You stood in the sparring ring with me for hours. You didn't get frustrated. You didn't laugh. You just kept showing me. Keep your wrist straight. Don't grip so tight. Watch my shoulder, not my eyes. You'll know it's coming before it happens.

You were the first person who ever taught me anything. The first person who looked at me and saw someone worth teaching. Not a problem. Not a burden. Not the kid who couldn't sit still, couldn't read the board, couldn't be anything but trouble. Just someone who needed to learn.

You were the brother I'd been looking for. The one who would show me things. Who would stand beside me. Who would catch me when I fell and tell me to get back up and keep going. I looked at you and I thought: this is it. This is what it feels like to have someone.

I need you to understand what it cost me when you left. When I found out who you really were. When I had to stand across from you and fight and know that the person who taught me how to hold a sword was the person trying to destroy everything I loved.

I don't know when it happened. I don't know when the person who helped me and laughed at my footwork became the person who sent a scorpion to kill me. I don't know if it was always both. If you were always the brother and the enemy, and I was just too young to see it.

I spent so long trying to find the thread that connected those two Lukes. I couldn't find it. I still can't. The Luke who caught me when I fell and the Luke who wanted to burn the world down— I don't know how they fit in the same body. I don't know how the same hands that taught me to fight could do what your hands did.

I wanted to save you. That's all. I wanted to be good enough at reaching, at convincing, at being the kind of person whose faith in you was worth having. I wanted to stand in front of you and say: I believe in you. I see who you could be. Come back.

I wasn't good enough. I didn't have what you needed. I couldn't reach the part of you that was still the brother who taught me the disarm.

And you died. And I'm still here. And I carry that with me too. Another name on the list. Another person I couldn't save. Another not-enough sitting in my chest.

There's something I need to tell you. Something I can't tell anyone else. Something I'm putting here because you're the only one who might understand.

I'm scared I'm becoming something I don't recognize.

I think about what I did to Akhlys. In Tartarus. When she was hurting Annabeth. I know she was the goddess of poison and misery. I know she was trying to kill us. I know I did what I had to do.

But I think about the way it felt. The way the poison moved under my hands. The way I could feel it in her throat, in her lungs, in the places where it would hurt most. The way I didn't just want to stop her. The way I wanted to make her hurt the way she hurt Annabeth. The way I wanted to keep going. The way I almost did.

I look at my hands sometimes. These hands. The ones you taught to hold a sword. The ones that have saved people and killed people and done things I can't take back. I look at them and I think about what they wanted to do to Akhlys. What they wanted to keep doing. What they could still do if I let them.

I don't know if that's normal. I don't know if everyone who survives the things I've survived feels that. The hunger. The wanting. The part of you that looks at something that hurt you and thinks: I could destroy that. I could make it never hurt anyone again. I could take everything it is and turn it to nothing.

I think about that part of you. The part that looked at the gods and thought: I could destroy them. I could burn it all down. I could make them pay for what they did to me.

I think about whether it started the same way. A hunger. A wanting. A part of you that looked at the world and saw something that needed to be unmade.

I was twelve and I believed in good guys and bad guys and I knew which one I was. I don't know anymore. I don't know if there's a line. I don't know if it's thinner than anyone wants to admit. I don't know if I'm standing on the same side of it as I was before.

I'm scared, Luke. I'm scared that one day I'm going to wake up and the wrong choice is going to be easy. And I'm going to make it because it's easier than being good every single day. Because being good costs everything I have and the reward is just getting to do it again tomorrow.

I'm scared that you weren't the exception. I'm scared that you were the warning. I'm scared that the thing that happened to you is happening to me and I won't know until it's too late and I'll look at my hands and I won't recognize them and I won't remember who I was before.

I'm scared that I'm already—

I don't want to become you. I don't want to become you. I don't want to become you.Idon’twanttobecomeyou IdontIdontIdontIdont–

Help.

Mom.

I'm sorry.

I've tried to find a better way to start this. I've written it a dozen times. I've thrown them all away. I keep coming back to I'm sorry because that's what I am. That's all I am. Sorry for everything. For the monsters. For the fear. For the nights you didn't sleep. For the year I was gone and you had to grieve me without a body. For every time I came back through the door with new scars and a story I couldn't tell you.

I'm sorry I wasn't a normal son. I'm sorry I was the kind of child who made you afraid. I'm sorry for the gray hairs and the worry lines and the way you look at me sometimes like you're waiting for the other shoe to drop. I'm sorry I made you a mother who had to be brave instead of a mother who got to be safe.

You've told me a thousand times that you'd choose this. That I'm worth it. That you don't regret anything. I've never believed you. I've never been able to believe you because if you knew— if you really knew what it cost, what it cost you, what it cost me, what it's still costing— you wouldn't choose this. No one would choose this. You love me and you're good and you think love is enough to make the math work.

Love isn't enough. Love doesn't stop the weight. Love doesn't close the distance. Love doesn't bring back the person I used to be.

I'm not okay, Mom.

I haven't been okay for a long time.

I think you know. I see you doing the math. The way you look at me when you think I'm not looking. The way your hands pause when you're making dinner and you hear me in the hallway, trying to figure out from the sound of my footsteps which version of me is coming through the door. You've always been able to tell. You've always known when the smile was real and when it was just a shape my face made.

You know. You've known. You've been waiting for me to say something. And I haven't. I've let you wait. I've let you carry the weight of knowing without knowing, of seeing without being able to help, of being my mother and not being able to fix it.

So I'm writing it down.

I have nightmares every night. Not the normal kind. Not the kind that fade when you open your eyes. The kind where I'm back there. In the dark. In the pit. In the places I can't forget no matter how hard I try. I wake up and I don't know where I am. I wake up and I think I'm still there. I wake up and I have to touch something solid, something real, to convince myself that I made it out. Sometimes it takes a minute. Sometimes it takes longer. Sometimes I'm already out of bed, already braced for something that isn't there, before I remember.

I hurt myself. There are moments when being in my own skin is too much. When the weight is so heavy and the distance is so wide and everything is too loud and too close and I can't breathe. In those moments, my hands move without me telling them to. I have scars on my arms that aren't from battles. I have scars on my chest that aren't from monsters. I wear long sleeves. I hide them. No one has asked. No one has seen. I'm grateful and I'm devastated that no one has seen.

I think about dying.

I want to be careful about how I say that. I want you to hear it right. Not a plan. Not a date or a method. Not something I'm going to do. But there are moments. Three in the morning moments. Too-quiet moments. When the weight is so heavy and I'm so tired and I've been tired for so long that I can't remember what it felt like to not be tired. In those moments, I think about how quiet it would be. How I wouldn't have to carry anything anymore. How I wouldn't be in anyone's way. How much easier it would be for everyone.

I know that's not true. Somewhere I know that. But in those moments the lie is very loud and the truth is very far away and I can't always tell which one is which.

I don't know who I am anymore. I used to know. I used to be your son. The kid who made dumb jokes and jumped into things and genuinely believed that wanting to do the right thing was enough. That kid is gone. He died somewhere. In Tartarus maybe. Or before. Or after. Piece by piece, the way things die when no one's watching.

I look in the mirror and I see something wearing his face.

I'm scared, Mom. I'm scared this is permanent. That I've been too broken for too long, that whatever's on the other side of all this damage is just more damage. I'm scared you're going to look at me one day and not see your son. Just this. This sad complicated wreck of a person who used to be something.

I'm sorry I couldn't be the son you deserved. I'm sorry I kept coming back through your door with less and less of myself intact. I'm sorry I've been pretending I was fine for months because you're pregnant and happy and I couldn't bring this into that. I'm sorry I'm still here taking up space when I don't know how to be anything but this.

I love you. I love you the way I love the ocean— completely, without condition, with whatever is left of my whole self. You're the reason I keep getting up most mornings. You're why I don't burn anything down.

I'm trying. Every day I'm trying to find my way back to something that feels like me.

I just don't know if there's a way back from where I've been.

But I'm trying.

I love you.

I’m sorry,

Percy

My love,

Annabeth,

I lie awake and I watch you breathe and I think about all the nights in Tartarus when that was the only way I could get through it. Watching the rise and fall of your chest. Confirming you were still real, still there, still with me. I'd lie completely still in the dark and count your breaths and tell myself: as long as she's breathing we're going to be okay.

I still do it. I know we're safe. I know we're out. I do it anyway.

You smile now. The real one. Not the careful smile you wore for the first few months after, the one that said I'm okay in the voice of someone who absolutely isn't but is too stubborn to say so. The real one. The one that starts in your eyes before your face knows what's happening. The one you get when you're working through a problem or reading something that surprises you or when Piper says something ridiculous and you're trying not to laugh and losing badly.

It's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. It makes my chest hurt in a way I don't have words for.

You found your way back. I watched you do it. I watched you take what Tartarus did to you and you processed it. Or you're processing it. Or you're at least making progress instead of just treading water in the dark. You talk about things. You let people help. You set the weight down and pick it back up and set it down again, and every time you pick it back up you're a little stronger.

I'm so proud of you. I'm so happy for you.

I don't know how to do what you did. I've been trying for a year and I'm getting worse.

I watch you with our friends. With Piper and Hazel and Nico and Will. I watch the way people turn toward you the way plants turn toward the sun. You're warm and you're smart and you're so genuinely alive now in a way I thought we might never be again. I watch all of it from wherever I'm standing, slightly to the side, slightly outside, and I think: she made it. She actually made it back.

And then I think: why didn't I?

I'm holding you back. I know that. I see you make yourself smaller sometimes. Shorten a sentence. Pull back a plan. Decide not to go somewhere because you're not sure I'm up for it. You've made yourself smaller your whole life to fit the people around you, and you promised you'd stop, and you did stop for everyone else. You just kept doing it for me.

Because you love me. Because you take care of me the way you've always taken care of me. Quietly. Without making it a thing. Just doing it.

I let you. I let you because I'm too selfish to ask you to stop. Because the thought of watching you go back to your full size and realize how much you've been holding back— how much you've been carrying that should have been mine to carry— I can't.

I love you more than I've ever loved anything. More than the ocean. More than breathing. More than the idea of myself as someone good, which I used to love quite a bit.

That's why I have to tell you the truth.

You know about the nightmares. You've been there when I wake up. You've figured out what helps and what doesn't. But I don't think you know how bad. Every night. Sometimes I don't sleep at all because I'm scared of what's waiting. I've started reading until I pass out at my desk because unconscious-at-my-desk is different from asleep and my brain doesn't go to the same places.

I have panic attacks. In the grocery store three weeks ago because the fluorescent lights buzzed a certain way. On the subway, twice. Once in the middle of dinner with my mom and Paul. I handled it. No one noticed. I excused myself and sat on the bathroom floor for twelve minutes. But it's happening more. Not less.

I hurt myself. Not badly. Not in a way anyone can see. But sometimes when everything is too much and I feel like a disaster I can't contain, I press my fingers into the scar on my hand the only thing left from Luke until that's the only thing I can feel. I scratch at my arms until the skin breaks. I can't explain and I hide them and I tell myself it's fine because no one sees, because no one knows, because I'm not really hurting anyone except myself and that doesn't count.

Some days, not every day, but some days, I think about walking into the ocean and just not stopping. The water closing over my head. What it would be like to just stop being something. Stop being the problem. Let the current take what's left of me somewhere quiet and leave everyone else to be okay without me.

I know what you'd say. You'd say I'm being an idiot. You'd say the ocean wouldn't take me even if I asked. You'd say you need me here, everyone needs me here, that I'm Percy Jackson and I've survived everything up to now and I can survive this.

You'd be right. Most of the time I believe that.

But you're asleep right now. You're right there and so beautiful it hurts and I'm sitting in the dark writing a letter I will never give you because I don't have the courage for that conversation.

I look at you and I see everything I was supposed to be. And I look at myself and I see everything I've become instead.

You deserve someone whole. I know you'd argue with me about that, so I'm saying it on paper where you can't interrupt. Someone who can stand in your light without burning up. Someone who can be your partner instead of your project. Someone who doesn't make you smaller. Someone who's actually worth the way you love.

You love too well to waste it on someone who can't love himself.

I'm writing this because it's true and I need to say it somewhere, even if it's just paper.

I'm not going to send it. I'm not brave enough for that. I'm not selfless enough to let you go, and I'm not strong enough to tell you the truth to your face and then watch you try to fix me, because if you try, I'll let you. That's the worst thing about me. I know what it would cost you and I would let you pay it anyway.

So I'll keep pretending. I'll keep smiling the real smile, or something close enough to it, until it almost fits. I'll keep saying I'm fine. I'll keep showing up and holding it together for as long as I can hold it, and I'll keep writing letters I'll never send because it's the only way I know how to be honest without destroying something.

I love you, Annabeth. I love you and I'm sorry. I'm sorry I'm not enough. I'm sorry I'll never be enough. I'm sorry you're stuck with someone who's already halfway gone and doesn't know how to come back.

I love you. I love you. I love you.

Please don't leave me. Please don't leave me. Please don't.

Love you,

Percy

I’m tired of pretending.

I’m tired of waking up.

I dont… Idon’t want to die.

I just don’t know how to live anymore..

Please please pleaseplease

Help me