𝐖𝐑𝐄𝐀𝐊 𝐇𝐀𝐕𝐎𝐂! percy jackson

xvii. Legacy Means Everything

━━ chapter seventeen
legacy means everything

✿✼:*ﾟ:༅。.。༅:*·ﾟﾟ·⭑

    ━━Once when Fiona was a little girl, she had been chased some older bullies away from her favourite park in New Rome. She wanted to play on the swing set, but this group of girls━at least three years older than her━had taken the swing instead. Even little Fiona Midgrass wasn't going to face loss. She will win that swing set, but she had overestimated her size and abilities. They had wanted to hurt her, and so she started to run away, ducking under their legs and back home. Fiona had run so fast, she didn't know how long they had followed her for because in what seemed like a heartbeat, she had gone from the park to the safety of her room back home.

    Weird moments such as this have only happened very few in Fiona's life. Once, that day, at the park when she was four. At a later date when she was seven, and she was running from those same bullies again. And then, when she was thirteen, and she was on her trip back to Camp Jupiter, she got mixed up with some nasty woodland monster hybrids, and had no choice but to run. And she ran and ran, and in seconds, she was far from them━she was at the highway which she swore had been a lot further away before.

    But those were the only moments in Fiona's life where she thought she had strange powers. She never thought she could whisper to a returned soul and make them do exactly what she wanted. It scared her that she had been able to that. It felt wrong to hold control over those who had come back from the dead, because Fiona herself was one of those people, and so was Hazel. But perhaps that was what Pluto had meant, when he talked to her at the shore of the River Styx. You are my daughter, he had said.

    She was meant to remind those returned to the living that they belong to Pluto, not Gaea, but she thought it was some sort of strange inspirational father-daughter bonding, not literal. Fiona wasn't even sure whether she deserved such powers. She was a coward, after all, her grandmother said that quite clearly.

     "You are a coward," she had told her the day Jason went missing, "And so you shall suffer and lose like one."

     Fiona was scared that the victories she had gained so far on this quest will only build up to be a much larger loss that she won't be able to cope with. What if one of her friends die on this quest? Fiona hates losing, but that loss was something else entirely━something she had never faced. She didn't want to experience it, because she knew it will be different, and far worse.

     As she drifted in her sleep, Fiona cursed her grandmother, which was a first. I saved someone's life, a hero's life, she argued in her mind. I'm sorry, but shouldn't I be proud that Jason's alive? If I didn't do that, he would be dead, and we would have lost.

     Fiona didn't expect her to answer.

    Those are a coward's excuses, said Victoria. Her voice was raspy━as sharp as the point of Fiona's pugio. You'd do well to accept, rather than run away.

    Fiona's breath hitched, and she felt the water she drifted in swaying her side to side. Since when was she in the  water? She didn't open her eyes, particularly liking the slight rocking, which was also new to her. But, this was a dream, right? So, Neptune can't technically drown her in dream water, could he?

     Why are you talking to me? she asked her grandmother. You made it clear you never wanted to see me again last time we spoke.

     To see whether I made the right choice in giving you my blessing through your mother, replied Victoria sharply. So far, I regret it. But the prophecies say you must have it. I wish you would use it to run into battle, not run away from it.