Work Text:
When Percy was five, his friend from his kindergarten class asked what he was most afraid of.
"I really, really hate the dark," the little girl said, hugging herself and shivering dramatically. "'S creepy. Like it's staring at me! Johnny said that it's not, and I'm just being a big baby about it, but Daddy still got me a nightlight because he's the best, and Mommy sleeps with me sometimes, so she can protect me and keep the baddies away."
Percy wondered, then, if it would seem like he was being a copycat if he said the same.
He could relate to his friend. The dark was scary, and he did often feel like it was staring at him, waiting to devour him and take him away from everything he'd ever known, shadowed hands reaching out but never touching. He doesn't want to know what happens when they finally get him.
But to be completely honest, he felt that way even with the lights on.
He looked at the janitor outside the classroom, with his too-sharp teeth and green tinted skin. The man looked up as if feeling his gaze, locking onto him and flashing a yellowed sneer.
He was always a little bit of a bully to him and his classmates, scowling when they stepped on newly mopped halls despite it being dismissal and them having no choice but to step on those floors, but he seemed to like Percy even less than he did the other kids.
"I think m' scared of Mr. Murray," he mumbles, looking away enough to keep the man in the corner of his vision. "He's kinda mean."
His friend looks over at the door, then crinkles her nose, nodding approvingly at his fear. "He's creepy, too!"
He figured that was that. He didn't know how to say he was a little scared of everything the world held, and that he didn't have a daddy to light his path and make the darkness seem less daunting. He didn't know to say that he had a mommy, and he loved her with all the love he could hold in his small body, and she loved him even more in return, but that a part of him thinks that one day she can't protect him anymore.
Percy hums instead.
He doesn't get to tell anyone when Mr. Murray the janitor tries to eat him near Christmas, and that kicking him had been in self defense when the school staff find him standing and a grouchy but elderly janitor groaning on the ground. He had a feeling they wouldn't believe him, like how the daycare staff didn't believe that he just found the snake in his cot, and that he hadn't gone out of his way to find it outside and kill it in the premises. They reprimand him on Mr. Murray's weak knees, and that no matter how grumpy someone is, one should not take revenge.
Percy tells his mommy he was a monster, honest, and she had gone on her knees to kiss the apples of his cheeks and told him no more, I promise.
After New Years, he meets a new monster in the form of his new stepfather.
Percy is seven when he's asked that same question again, this time as an activity question by his homeroom teacher in first grade.
"It's okay to be scared of things," she said, handing each of his classmates the sheet where they were supposed to write or draw their answer, depending on which expression they wanted. "No matter how humiliating you think they might be."
"Humiliating?" Percy asks when it's his turn to get a sheet, in the middle row of the seating arrangement.
Mrs. Colin smiles and explains, "Humiliating is synonymous to 'embarrassing.' It's an uncomfortable feeling, and makes you feel shameful or awkward."
Percy nods, smiling back. They had learned about synonyms and antonyms last week, words that had similar meanings to each other and words that had the opposite respectively, which was easy enough to get the concept of. It was the written work that annoyed him, his Y's going in the wrong place sometimes. Who thought it was a good idea to make them Y's anyway, when the perfectly simple letter 'I' existed?
"I'll give you all ten minutes to draw or write something on your worksheets," Mrs. Colin continued. "Feel free to pass your sheet on my table of you get finished early. Timer starts now!"
Percy was never a good artist, but he thinks he'd have better luck drawing than trying to think of words.
He stared down at his paper.
It's not like he doesn't know what he's afraid of, too many marks in the shape of fingers on his shoulders when he needed to be reminded to keep a 'guy secret,' his allowance less when he goes to school than when his mom gave him money in the morning before hurrying for work. His wrist was still sore from this particular morning, twisted too hard when he tried to approach his mom, to not know.
It would be easy to draw the figure of a big man with balding hair, with a table of cards and beer bottles littered at his side. It would be easy to draw two dots for eyes and two slanted angry lines over them and a big frown in the image of the expression the man always wore when he looked at Percy. He knew his shapes enough.
He thinks of his classmate, Jamie, getting picked up by his aunt instead of his mother last Friday. He thinks of how a few days before during presentation, Jamie had told the class his mommy was his hero, because she always fought his dad when he tried to hurt him, and she taught him how to fight him too. He thinks of how Jamie told them, quietly on Monday, that people came to question both his parents, and how he had to wait before he saw his mom again. He thinks of how he said, even quieter, how they hadn't told him how long he'd have to wait.
Percy thinks of his mom, and thinks of being taken from her or her from him, and thinks about having to wait before he can see her again. He thinks about how her hugs make the bruises along his ribs feel less painful.
He draws a stick figure of a boy all alone, sitting down and sad and with no one to make the ache feel less present. In presentation, he tells everyone that it's supposed to represent how he's scared of being alone forever. It isn't a lie.
Mrs. Colin claps along with the class at his short explanation, taking his sheet. She puts a caring hand on his shoulder still sore from being gripped, and doesn't tell her that it hurts, because she says that his mom really loves him, and wouldn't ever let him be alone forever.
Percy comes homes to the smell of beer and smoke and the bad breath of men playing cards lingering in the air. He grits his teeth and slaps his remaining bills on the expectant palm, and only gets away with it because it's more than he usually brought back.
Better me than her, he thinks later, when his mom comes into his room with her soft smile and open arms.
No one asks him the question when he is twelve, because there's so many things to be afraid of as a demigod that one could fill up around a hundred binders with the list.
He wonders if losing your mortal parent is on that list for most. He wonders if some think they are better off without.
No one asks when he is thirteen, either, because things are starting to fall into ruins, borders that kept their fears away dying down and threatening to consume them all. No one asks because what they are afraid of is already coming true like prophecy always does.
He thinks he might have asked someone from his quest when he is fourteen. He thinks that he got his answers anyway, when despite how Bianca came to be in this position in the first place, the duties she'd been saddled with and given the chance to be free from, she still thought of her brother to her end of her heart. When despite the determination she carried into her final battle, there was still a hidden terror in Zoë Nightshade's eyes when she looked up at her father and knew it would be his final blow that took her life. When despite everything he had done to them, Annabeth cried when Luke fell.
There is no time for questions of what anyone is afraid of when war falls upon them all. Everyone is afraid. It was a fact, like how the sky was held up by the Titan who killed his daughter as is his curse, how the fate of the gods rested on the shoulders of a boy who still drove under law of a learner's permit, or how the gods will always be gods no matter how many times they are saved, and how many lives fall in the name of keeping them in power because they are the lesser of many evils.
Eighteen year old Percy wouldn't know what to say if asked what he was most afraid of. Despite everything, he is still afraid of many things. After everything, he becomes afraid of more.
When Percy is twenty four, little Estelle Blofis asks him what he's most afraid of.
"I don't think you're afraid of anything," the six year old sitting atop his shoulders says after asking, much less heavier than the fate of civilization. She added in a factual tone, "You weren't scared of the spider yesterday, and spiders are scary."
"They are," he agrees. "Very scary."
"You're scared of spiders?" his little sister asks skeptically.
"I'm scared of a lot of things."
"Oh yeah? You don't act like it!"
Percy shrugs, smiling when she giggles as the movement takes her up along with it. "I'm scared of waking up one day and finding out you managed to reach the cookie jar on top of the fridge and ate them all without me."
Estelle giggles again, giving a light tug at his hair like she saw a cartoon rat do to some french chef. "You should be scared. It will happen."
"I know. I'm shivering in fear right now."
Estelle wraps her chubby kid arms around his head, patting his forehead comfortingly. "Don't worry. I'll leave some for you too. Because you're nice."
Percy hums and shuffles to have her more securely on his shoulders. "Thank you very much."
He doesn't think he could tell her that what he's most afraid of is himself, carrying something more fragile than the gods on his back. How sometimes, he wonders if he's the answer to the question, when anyone he loves is asked.
He wonders if the five year old Percy who was afraid of the dark would be just as afraid of him.