"Send me! Send an army! Send a thousand ships! I don't care, just bring her home. I hate being without her."
[ PERCY JACKSON x FEMALE OC ]
[ PERCY JACKSON SERIES ]
cover by @humaneity !
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0014. | DESIRE COMES KNOCKING WITH HIS ARROWS
Something in Luke had always been cracked.
Like a mirror with no reflection, Luke saw a crack in the plain image. Though he had never been able to see anything, he understood now that the nothing he had seen in the mirror was still himself. The absence of something is still something. He learned years ago what that absence was. It was a crater, a claw mark on a monster, a footstep in the snow—it was the promise of something else present, something bigger, something more dangerous, something that marked that there was something else in the room with him.
When he was a child, he had fooled himself that the watchful eyes he felt on him was his father. His dear daddy taking care of him in the only way he could, watching over him so that he could be safe in that hellhole. With every glimmer of glowing green eyes, he would hide in the cupboard, sure he could feel the weight of his father closing it shut so he was safe. When the smell of burnt food scarred him so much his clothes stank of it and he was bullied at school for the overriding stench, he was sure his father was the reason that those kids got hurt in gym class or failed their assignments. When he heard his mom warning him about a horrible fate that would befall him, he was sure his father was covering his ears and that was why it sounded like an echo.
As a kid, Luke searched for the meaning in everything because he had nothing. Being that desperate for connection, emotion, even love from the people who were supposed to owe it to him most was humiliating. It was embarrassing and it was devastating. He stopped counting the amount of times he was let down. Somehow, 'always' was kinder to him than a specific number.
The cracked mirror grew. It was still growing.
Running away felt like grout to smear over the crack. It was easier to look at the ghostly absence of a reflection when he was making an effort to fix it. Finding Thalia helped. Finding Annabeth and Octavia helped.
It was satisfying to learn how easy it was to be a brother, to be a father, to be someone of responsibility. It let him know that every resentment he carried for Hermes was justified, that it carried enough weight that he wasn't making things up in his head like the school guidance counsellors told him he was. The glowing green eyes were real, the burnt food, the monsters on the lawn...
It was all real and now, he could take some responsibility. He was needed by the girls.
He would never forget how Annabeth hid behind him when she saw a spider, how she clutched his leg and begged him to save her. He had squashed it beneath his foot with more strength than the arachnid deserved but it didn't matter. Annabeth had hugged him and cried because he had shown her that she wasn't insane either. They could both see the spider. It was real.
He remembered the curse of mixing the two younger girls up. Annabeth and Octavia with their blonde hair and pale skin, both only discernible by the curls on one and the brown eyes on the other. He often messed up their names in the beginning which Thalia was fast to correct him on. He would apologise and they would know he meant it, but secretly enjoyed it; Annabeth for wanting to have a sister, Octavia for wanting to be a sister again.
