Torturous Betrayal

Chapter 20

Third Person's POV

Percy's torments continued in the following days. Gaea treated him as a guinea pig to test her crude experiments on. She wanted to see how far she could push him before he broke completely. He wished for relief that he knew would not come. He was resilient, strong, but he was grappling for something to hang to. Something to hang on for. Often he thought of his mother, who didn't know if he was alive or not. He thought of Grover, who he hadn't seen before he had ended up here. There were certain people he tried not  to think about, because it caused an ache in his chest that wasn't from anything physical. It was for these people that he was hanging on, not for himself. So he endured everything Gaea through at him. All the knifes and words carved into his skin. Into his mind. Into his soul. Words like, "UNWANTED, ABANDONED, FAILURE, BROKEN."

                                                                          Words like, "BETRAYED."

Hope was one of the few things that Percy Jackson had never given up in his life. He gave up his childhood innocence when he lived with Gabe. He gave up adolescents to a cruel world he never wanted to be a part of. He nearly gave up his mother and he saw many of his friends sacrificed in the name of people who didn't really know they existed. But not hope, never hope. Not while he was alive, not while he could still do something to put things back the way they should be. This had been his personal code of conduct since he was 12. But it was much easier to hope when you had something, someone, to hope for. And Percy didn't have that, not anymore, because now he was all alone. He had given up hope for himself long before he had been discarded and thrown out like yesterday's trash. The people he thought about, his symbols of hope, were nothing more than phantoms from a time before. Or maybe they were fine. Maybe they were all finally living the lives they'd fought so hard for and maybe they were happy.

Maybe he was the phantom

That seemed like a more reasonable explanation to his terrible situation. For his new hell that he had entered so soon after escaping the other one. Except he didn't think that this one had an exit route. Go to jail. Do not pass go. Do not collect 200 dollars. Percy knew for a fact that he didn't have a get of jail for free card. And he certainly did not have anyone to bail him out.

Percy wasn't sure how much longer he would last, rotting in his perpetual prison, literally and figuratively. He wasn't sure how much longer he could hold on.

He wasn't sure he wanted to hold on anymore.