Survivor (Percy Jackson Crossover) [#Wattys2014]

Chapter Thirteen

Pollux-Demigod

It's an odd thing, feeling empty. It's an odd thing remembering having once felt emotions. Anger, Sadness, regret, happiness...Love.

It's a totally different thing to stare at a pedant, something you know has meaning, something that use to spark feeling in your heart, and not feel different. Like his last lifeline had been cut and he had floated away from a world of feelings.

A lifeline.

He stared down at the pedant, flashes of his life projected on the backs of his eye lids. He tried so desperately to feel something. Sadness? Hatred? Pain? Nothing. His heart was made of stone; cold, unmoving, incapable of emotions.

He glanced at Nyssa standing in the other corner holding her hands over her ears as if she could hear screaming in her thoughts. Guilt in her eyes. Pain in her words. Her thoughts constantly distracted by something she deemed more important than anything else.

He used to be like that. Used to care, used to feel. What happened?

Was it the death that started it?

Was it Castor's fault he was like this?

They were twins, why'd he go and get himself killed?

He'd cried that day, he remembered. He'd felt like half his heart had gotten ripped out. He'd been so distraught he couldn't talk. Castor had worn the pedant like a Good luck charm, he'd kept it like an undying connection between them. When he looked at it, he felt sad.

He looked at the symbol now and he felt...

Nothing.

He glanced over at the closed door where he could hear people moving, talking, working. He could he could move and act, but it was meaningless. Pointless, without caring for anything.

Like auto pilot.

He acted alright. He was more alive than most survivors who huddled in the empty uncertain houses, replaying the deaths, reliving the nightmares, refusing to leave an emotional punishment, but in a way he was more dead than all of them.

dead to emotions.

They could feel. Even though it hurt. Even though it was scary. They could feel something. Looking around he felt...

Nothing.

He laid his head down on the counter. What could he do to get back to the world of feelings? He didn't like the emptiness that he felt when the others cried and moaned or fell in despair. He didn't feel quite human any more. It wasn't the godly side of demigods that made them heroes, it was the human. That's what Percy Jackson had once told him.

He tried to live by it. But what could he do when his human side stopped feeling?

Did that make him less of a hero? Did that change the way he stood among the survivors here? Did it botch the memory that Percy Jackson left behind?

Thinking of the name of their leader, the one who fought for them, the one who died because in the end his fatal flaw really was fatal and he felt...

Nothing.

It was frustrating, but he didn't feel it. It was depressing, but he wasn't depressed. It was terrible, horrible, miserable, lonely, broken, irritating, annoying, hidden, botched, cruel, awful, horrendous, just plain lousy, thing that made him want to be desperately clinging to anything that could spark feeling in him but he felt...

Nothing.

And it made him slam his head on the wall or table or nearest object. It made him to cry when no one was around to hear anything. It made him silently scream for someone to notice there was something wrong with him. It made him alien. It made him different. It cut him off from the world of his friends, even if it was a world of hate and pain.