Forgot to Say [Percy Jackson and the Olympians Fanfic]

Too Late to Apologize

“Percy! Percy! Percy, please wake up!” she screamed.

Why was she yelling at him? She was always yelling at him. There was no point anyway. If he had a chance, she wouldn’t be yelling at him but trying to heal him enough for Apollo to come and heal him or try to turn him immortal herself.

Percy was dead.

Tears leaked out of her eyes as she gently pulled him out of the car and laid him on the ground. Darkness clouded the edge of her vision, but she couldn’t help but hover over the man that she had grown to love, but had let down and emotionally and verbally abused in the last arc of his life.

He had thought her an angel, when she was nothing but a demon.

Blood soaked the ground under him, spreading everywhere until she could even feel the lifeblood of her love seeping into her skin, drenching her knees as she continued to kneel by him. Even in death, he looked tired and anguished, as if pained and not even death had released him from the stress of her…from the pain he’d been quietly dealing and coping with in the last vestiges of his life. Not just of the car crash, but the pain she’d given him all this time…

He wasn’t even able to look like he had just fallen asleep in death, never in peace.

She heard a choked sound and she dazedly looked up, seeing Hermes staring blankly at the dead body, disbelief and brokenness coloring his face. He slowly looked up and their eyes met, with his gradually starting to fill with a burning fire of utter hatred directed towards her.

Like the coward she knew she was, she only let a sob escape her before she teleported away from there, although she only went a few paces away to hide in the shadows and watch the proceedings.

It was all a blur as they took him, declared him dead on impact, and everything else. She saw Sally Jackson being told her son was dead, the deafening cries of a mother for her lost son, and Paul Blofis comforting and yet clutching onto his wife, tears of grief on his own face. She was suddenly in her room, not even realizing how had she had gotten there or what had happened between finding Percy’s body and finding herself in her room.

But she didn’t further question it and went to her bed, curling into a ball and refusing to come out. She didn’t take part in Percy’s funeral preparations, both mortal and traditional Ancient Greek customs. She didn’t talk to anyone or do much other than lay there. When they were going to hold his mortal funeral, she decided she could attend that. A part of her felt too ashamed to want to go to his funeral pyre burning after.

It was beautiful. Sally truly did all she could for her son. It was a non-traditional setup, held at Montauk Beach in front of the cabin with white lilies gracing the scene, rosemary wrapping around them elegantly, though aloe dotted the places here and there. Sally must’ve been a fan of the language of flowers and was where Percy had gotten it from, for Athena understood the meanings all too well.

Lilies for purity and rosemary for remembrance. Aloe was for the grief.

It was fitting then, that she too chose to bring flowers of significance.

A marigold for the pain and grief that wounds her heart. A mallow for the very love she’d scorned and avoided from her part and his, and now consumed her in his death. A morning glory for their love in vain. A rue for regret.  A yellow chrysanthemum for his love she’d slighted, accompanied by a creeping willow for the love she’d forsook. And a mauve carnation to signify the dreams of fantasy she was left with, of things never to be, of things she’d wanted, of things she could never have again.