Climb (Percy Jackson x Reader)

forty-five

✺ GODS AND MORTALS ✺

It prompts a surge of energy and excitement when the air pushes its power through her skin. The Earth thrums beneath her shoulder blades, the ocean's waves crash in echoes against her ears, the darkness behind her eyes dances with anticipation as her soul stretches for the world.

Her fingers twitch.

Heat rushes through her flesh, tracing its way through her nerves and into her heart. The gentle pulses of her blood grow agitated as the cool breath of shadow sinks into her skin.

"What have you done?" a child wails.

(Y/N) opens her eyes. Amber light shines from her irises.

The sun gazes down at her, its focus chilled and bleak. The sky, void of clouds, drowns in a dull, hazy murk. Her periphery tunnels out, cloaked in a low-lying fog of darkness.

Yet her body tingles with the distant warmth of sunshine, her vision twinkles with fluorescent specks of color, her cheeks embrace the soft caresses of inky grass as its blanket of shadows rejuvenates part of her very being. The ground seems to thud with the rhythm of her heartbeat.

"Why?" Atticus screams at himself, somewhere off to the side. His words waver with sobs. "Why did you do this? What have you done?"

She inhales.

Carried by her breath, shadows stream into her. Darkness spreads, running through her veins and intersecting along her entire body. Her spine warms as power begins to swirl within her, overtaking all sensation in her nerves. Brightness begins to extend in her periphery, her skin flushing with cosmic light.

Atticus's breath hitches. "(Y/N)?" he chokes.

Her body dissolves in darkness, reforming a moment later for her to stand. She looks across the bodies in the clearing, her expression blank. Inky fog rolls over them, pushing her way and seeping into her skin. Energy extends from her, rippling across the air and overtaking the similar waves from the son of Apollo.

He trembles, looking up at her with wide, tearful eyes. "(Y/N)?" he repeats, his words unsteady with disbelief. She looks at him, and the air chills across the space between them.

Atticus gulps. He pushes himself away, scraping his palms against the ground. "What—?" Recoiling from one of the bodies he bumps into, he shakes his head and curls into himself. "What happened to you?"

(Y/N)'s gaze shifts to the ground, landing on Percy.

She kneels beside him, pushing the hair back from his forehead. The warmth of his skin feels a thousand times stronger and the quiet thuds of his heart ricochet against her ears as her senses work in overdrive. But as she pulls her fingers across his face, tracing a path down his cheek, along his jawline, to cup his chin, all she can see is the powerless wan of his being.

"What happened to me?" she echoes, her voice a whisper that ripples with the force of a thunderstrike. She stands, turning to Atticus, who releases a quiet whimper. Her jaw sharpening, she looks down at the boy. "Nothing happened."

He hurt them.

Power awakens within her chest as she looks at the son of Apollo. So foreign and dangerous that her shadowed subconscious begs to disregard it, but so immense that it floods the entirety of her being, the energy begins to bubble under the heat of rage.  

He hurt Percy.

It wasn't under her control. And it was what she wanted, all the same—to make the child suffer for what he'd done.