Hero of Olympus

     Percy woke up and felt terrible. No, not the 'I'm sick and my throat feels like a garden that hasn't been watered in a decade' terrible, more the 'My mind is going 100 miles per hour and I can't gather the energy to stand up' kind of terrible.

      He didn't want to get out of bed- but who did? Maybe it was an overreaction. Percy was overthinking things again, trying to put a label to something that wasn't there. Yet something about the morning already felt so bleak. Like his purpose had been drained out of him. He couldn't pull himself together and just roll out of bed. Percy's only thoughts were negative. Annabeth would know what to do. She'd probably shove him out of bed with a laugh that never failed to make Percy grin like a kid (12 years didn't feel so long compared to the torture of knowing) and throw a pillow at her, or maybe she'd just throw herself on the bed, effectively cutting off his air and making his breath sound more like a wheeze than an exhale (the sound made him think of the nauseating air of the pit, the oppressing feeling of holding your breath even though there was air around you-). Annabeth never failed to get him up each day, even when it was only a memory of her. So why was it a struggle just to open his eyes? The idea of doing it was so foreign and so exhausting that he just couldn't. He knew he had to, he knew he couldn't lay here all day but nothing seemed like a justifiable reason to gather up the strength to smile at his family, wave at a friend, throw together a few words to form a feasible conversation. He simply woke up exhausted, and it felt like an insult. Here he was, the hero of Olympus, unable to get out of bed and say hello to someone.

Hero of Olympus be damned.

      His pride (pride? he'd bartered it away a lifetime ago) didn't let him lay here in peace, just doing nothing. No, it ate away at him, screaming so loud into the silence that for a moment he was convinced it was real. And maybe it was. Maybe he had convinced himself so long that he was okay, that he could have a happy ending if he just smiled and did what he was told, that he had forced himself into this excruciating cycle of non-stop exhaustion and living up to expectation. Although he was the expectation, wasn't he? The young demigods looked up to him like he was some kind of god (no, he refused to call himself one, to play at being something greater than he ever wanted to be) and was the point that everyone wanted to reach. Why would anyone want to become what he had drowned himself in? Sometimes he sank so low into the what-ifs and the if-i-only's that he knew the only reason he was still here was because so many people relied on him to be a type of statue- a representation, an ideal only achievable through the efforts of one's own strength (but that was a lie, he had loved and lost so many times that he knew his strength was built off of those around him; the solace he found in people like annabeth and his mom and paul and jason and beckendorf and silena, and pollux's forgotten brother who had deserved better, and the loss of bianca and zoe). So what was he, without those around him? The people who chose to fight beside him though he had nothing to offer in return? Was he still a hero (no please he didn't want to be a hero), or was he only a person? Only a person. A person with a tragedy to their name and a crowd of ghosts who he still couldn't bring himself to understand.
...
     That was a lie. He could understand it perfectly well. The way they haunted his every step like a shadow, and the way his thoughts were plagued by their existence- it was understandable. He knew they weren't real. A figment of his mind created of his own emotion, waiting for him to lash out and cave in, to collapse. Collapsing sounded so simple. Giving up rang out like peace. Surrender felt like the calm and still that he awaited. But he couldn't collapse, couldn't give up, couldn't surrender his living effort to his own demise. Sure- death sounded a thousand times more comforting than life, and he could revel in its security, but few seemed to share his sentiment. They found more excitement, more love and laughter in the joy of life where he found only sorrow and disappointment. So maybe he'd lie in his bed for a few more minutes, enjoy the false feeling of security it granted, before submitting himself to another day.