AN: Have I been feeling anxious and depressed lately, and is this oneshot just me projecting my feelings onto Jack and adding Jackrine fluff and mentions of my Newsies/Percy Jackson AU into it to make myself happy since I don't have that kind of comfort in my actual life? Maybe. Did it work? Yes, yes it did. Is this adorable and do I love it? Yes it is and yes I do.
Jack hated nighttime. As a child of Apollo, he had a logical reason for it - at least a reason that sounded logical to those he told. It made sense, everyone thought, for a child of the sun god to prefer daylight to overwhelming blanket of night. Truthfully though, Jack had hated the night for his entire life, before he knew there was anything remotely special about him.
To him, the darkness of night felt oppressive. As the sun set, it was as though he could feel night closing in on him, forcibly taking away all light, and all the positive feelings Jack associated with the light. At night, he started to feel lonely, uneasy - scared, even, though he didn't know what he was scared of. All the things that lurked in the dark that he used to think weren't real. Everything and nothing.
So, Jack had made a habit of going to bed early. At home, his brothers didn't think anything of it, just glad that he was actually getting rest. At camp, the others didn't know any different. They didn't ask questions, they didn't try to comfort him, and that was how he liked it.
And then, he met Katherine. Katherine, daughter of Athena, and the strongest woman Jack had ever met, though she was only fifteen. His best friend turned girlfriend, the one person he would do anything for.
It seemed fitting to Jack that Athena's sacred animal would be the owl, because Katherine was the perfect example of a night owl. She could tell that she stayed up until early in the morning, reading, writing, losing herself in whatever creation she was working on. Jack could tell that about her even before she told him about it, he could see it just by looking at her. Frankly, he had no clue how she managed to stay upright and functioning during the day.
The dark was worse during the school year. When dark fell in the cramped New York City apartment, there was nothing. It made it hard to sleep, and knowing that he wouldn't wake up surrounded by the comfort of his cabin-mates at camp made it basically impossible. Jack would lie awake, listening to his brothers soft breathing next to him, and his foster dad's obnoxious snoring from the next room over, and he would like he was suffocating.
On a particularly bad night, Jack slipped out of bed and placed himself at the windowsill, trying to soak up some comfort from the moonlight. He didn't wake Crutchie or Race, not wanting to sound stupid by bothering them when he didn't even know what the problem was. What was he going to say, 'hey Crutchie, sorry to wake you in the middle of the night, but I'm feeling anxious and sad for no apparent reason and wanted to talk to you'? It was dumb. So, he just sat, stuck in his own thoughts.
And then his phone rang. Jack nearly jumped out of his skin at the noise, his body immediately going rigid - if the ringtone woke Snyder, he'd be dead. He looked down to see that it was Katherine calling, of course: he would have smiled if he wasn't so scared. He swiftly turned the volume down on his phone, while simultaneously pushing up the window and slipping out onto the fire escape.
Demigods weren't technically supposed to use phones, since monsters might be able to detect the signal, but Katherine and Jack had decided to ignore that, and periodically call each other anyway. Apparently, Katherine thought that the middle of the night during one of Jack's depressive episodes was the perfect time to call.
"Hey, Kath."
"Jack! I didn't wake you, did I?"
He relaxed slightly at the sound of her voice. "Nah, I was up."
"Oh, good! So I was working on this - wait." Jack could practically hear the frown forming on her face. "Isn't it like, 2 AM? Why were you up?"
He shrugged, before remembering that she couldn't see him, therefore that wasn't a sufficient response. "Thinking. Thought you didn't wanna wake me?"
"Jack, are you okay?"
"Yeah, yeah..."
"I don't believe you."
He let out of soft, slightly exasperated laugh. "I'm fine, Ace. Just -"
"Thinking?" She finished for him. "You don't usually do much of that, how come you're doing so much of it in the middle of the night?"
"I can't... I can't stop it. I don't even know what I'm thinking about, I just feel so... I dunno."
There was a moment of silence on the other end of the phone. "What's going on, Jack?"
"It's stupid." Knowing she wouldn't take that answer, he quickly followed it up with, "Promise you won't laugh?"
"I swear. You know me."
"Yeah." Jack drew in a deep breath. "I just feel trapped and... and scared. I dunno what I'm scared of, just everything I guess, and it makes me tense. Stressed. It's worse at night, everything is."
Another short pause. He could tell she was trying to figure out the best way to respond, and he felt his shoulders tighten. She shouldn't have to feel like she needed to tread carefully around him.
"I told you it was stupid, I'm fine really, just -"
"Jack Kelly, you idiot, it's not stupid. You're not stupid, and neither is this."
He let out a breath, and he could feel tears starting to form, and he hated that they were there and he didn't know why.
"I don't have anyone here Ace, and I just feel... scared. And alone."
"You're not alone, Jack. I'm here, aren't I?"
"Not really."
"You know what I mean." He could picture her rolling her eyes, and the corners of his lips twitched up slightly at the mental image. "I'm always there with you Jack, even if I'm not literally by your side."
"Yeah, but it ain't... it's not the same. I just need to talk to someone, to get this darkness out of my head, and I can't talk to my brothers, and I sure as hell can't talk to Snyder."
"Would it help if I talked to you? I was the one who called you in the first place. I know it's not the same, but I could try... I don't know, maybe it'd take your mind off things?"
Jack finally let himself smile. He didn't deserve this girl. "Yeah I think that'd be good." He responded as he sat down on the fire escape, leaning against the brick outer wall. "Thanks Ace, it means..." It means everything. "It means a lot."
"Of course, Jack." He imagined her smiling, and he knew she was. "So, I was working on this history project, but I got a little sidetracked and I found this really interesting book..."
He leaned his head back and listened to her voice as it took him away from the dark. In his mind, her voice was pure light, everything that he found comforting. Katherine was sunshine.
Katherine continued to talk for about a half hour, until she paused and heard the sound of Jack's soft breathing coming through the other end of the phone. She smiled and waited a moment, listening to the sound of the boy she loved more than anything getting some well-deserved rest, before hanging up the phone, hoping that she had made his night just a little brighter.
