𝐏𝐀𝐍𝐃𝐎𝐑𝐀'𝐒 𝐁𝐎𝐗! heroes of olympus²

he will find her

prologue!
000. he will find her

percy. 

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     HE DREAMED OF HER.

     Sometimes it would be fragments: just glimpses of blonde hair, or a flicker of a smile. Other times, it would be her laugh▬so bright and happy it made him yearn to hear it again, and again, and again. He saw the glimmer in her eyes whenever she grinned at him, or rolled her gaze at something stupid he said. He felt her arms around him, holding tight and nuzzling her face into his chest, but when he went to hug her back, she wasn't there. She'd disappear like smoke, running away from him like water, getting further and further away until he barely remembered what she felt like, how she sounded, or the beauty of her smile. 

     But he remembered her name. He remembered her name like a sonnet▬like it was rooted into his very being in a way that nothing could separate him from it. 

     Claire. 

    Claire, Claire, Claire. 

     He said it to himself; a mantra to keep himself going, to stop himself from dropping in exhaustion. To keep pushing on, to keep running, to keep fighting, to finally get rid of these gorgons once and for all. 

     They should've died three days ago when he dropped a crate of bowling balls on them at the Napa Bargain Mart. They should have died two days ago when he ran them over with a police car that he borrowed (stole) in Martinez. And they definitely should have died this morning when he cut off their heads in Tilden Park. 

     No matter how many times Percy killed them. No matter how many times they crumbled to dust at his feet, they just kept re-forming and re-forming. Their limbs configured together, their fingers twisted back to claws, and their heads merged up from their severed necks like evil dust bunnies. And while Percy got tired, they didn't waste a beat.

     He reached the top of the hill and caught his breath. Percy swallowed harshly, feeling his tongue parched with a stitch at his side▬even as fit as he was (or he believed he was), running non stop like he had just been, it was enough to make any great athlete ache. How long since he last killed them? He tried to think back ... two hours? Maybe? They never seemed to stay dead longer than that. 

      "Fuck me," Percy breathed, chest heaving and the sun glaring down on his skin making it burn. His forehead was drenched with sweat. "Why can't they just die already?" he asked no one in particular. 

     The past few days, he's hardly slept. He's eaten whatever he could find▬vending machine gummy bears, stale bagels, even a Jack in the Crack burrito (which was a personal low). His clothes were torn, burned, and splattered with monster slime and dust that must make him stink worse than sewage. 

     He had only survived this long because the two gorgons couldn't seem to kill him either. Their claws didn't cut his skin. Their teeth broke whenever they tried to bite him. His skin seemed to be made of iron, but this strange gift he had also seemed to take a horrible tole on his stamina. He knew he couldn't keep going much longer. Soon he'd collapse from exhaustion, and then▬as hard as he seemed to be to kill, he was pretty sure that would be it. 

     Claire.

     Percy forced himself to stand up straight again, wincing at the ache in his knees and right hand from griping his sword so tightly for so long.