To Swear On Styx

Chapter Seventeen: Kronos' Love Language is Gift-Giving

Playlist Part Seventeen:

Evermore - Dan Stevens

Icarus - Bastille

~*~

Kronos stood in front of the fireplace in his and Percy's bedroom, his arms crossed over his chest and his eyes boring into the orangish flames.

It was just past midnight. The world beyond the balcony doors was murky, San Francisco's skyline stretching up below the mountains and casting bright white light into the starless sky. Somewhere, off in the distance, thunder rumbled, the sound echoing faintly against the chamber's stone walls. Closer, Kronos could hear the murmurs of Othrys' many inhabitants floating up from the dining hall, the foyer, the war room- despite how late it was, the fortress buzzed with life, feeling somehow too full and too empty all at once.

Heaving a low sigh, the Titan King sank back down onto the foot of the bed he'd shared with Percy for the past few months, rubbing his hands tiredly over his face. The tiredness was a new development, he mused, as was the regret.

Regret.

It was a terrible thing to feel, really. Something he'd tried to shield himself from for millennia. He'd stomped out any whispers of it over the years, forcing such utterly pointless thoughts from his mind. It was a waste of time to be regretful, to lament things that were in the past, unchangeable as they were.

Regret costed him sleep. It costed him consumed hours he could never get back, hours that he would lay stiffly in bed, staring with an unfocused glare at the stone ceiling above him. Regret left a staggering path behind him as he stalked through Othrys, refusing to meet his siblings' gazes. It left duties forgotten and promises unknotted.

Regret made him weak.

It was with great dejection that Kronos admitted this, the thought alone igniting a fury potent enough to curdle his ichor each time he returned to his room to find it empty, devoid of the warmth Percy'd breathed into it.

Weak.

Percy. The cursed Hero of Olympus had wormed his way into Kronos' cold, black heart like a parasite. Weak. Weak weak weak. When had this happened? Why had this happened?

With a heavy sigh, Kronos dropped back against the bed and buried his face in the younger's pillow, sucking in a deep breath. It had been- how long had it been? Two weeks? Three?

Each night, it grew harder and harder not to send the younger a message, to demand that he return to Othrys so Kronos could peer into those skeptical, grudgingly affectionate green eyes of his.

He'd used to think that only mortals longed for things that couldn't be, because of their own ignorance and unwillingness to accept the world as it was, but Kronos realized as he was falling asleep that, perhaps, immortal beings such as himself were not entirely immune to seemingly mundane stirrings of the heart.

~*~

It was a bit later than when he usually ate breakfast. Percy'd been slow to get out of bed that morning, torn out of another dumb dream sent by Morpheus, one which did nothing more than sour his good mood. It had been the one where he and Kronos were in that field, but now that he knew that that Kronos wasn't an echo, but the actual Titan King, things were... Complicated.

For the entirety of the dream, he'd completely ignored Kronos, getting up and leaving the field, choosing to wander in the direction of that giant castle rising up off the mountain in the distance. He could hear Kronos walking quietly a bit behind him, but he didn't turn to look at him. He didn't want to give the Titan King the satisfaction. So, he walked until he woke up.