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[ the pamphlet's a little bit of a bore to read, but luke makes do with what he's given. alice's adventures are a few of the tales he had sat through his dyslexia to try and finish when he'd been a kid, the stories read to him by his mother before she became literally and completely lost to him. it's one of the few adventures he'd always prayed to hermes for, wanting to fall down a rabbit hole and into a different life completely. ]

[ who knew dying would get him what he wanted? ]

[ with his nifty technology abilities, luke manipulates his name to read as a curious oyster. he favoured the 1951 film quite a bit as a kid, too. ]

So. Got a question for you, Wonderland.

Let me preface with a little bit of context: Going a little mad here. I know, it's not exactly original, but I can't help it if I'm a guy who likes to repeat things others have done. I've met the greatest puzzle of them all, and maybe a few of you old timers might be able to help A Lost Kid out.

Yeah, I know, that reference doesn't really belong.

What did you have for breakfast this morning?

[ he doesn't really care. he had a nice breakfast of pancakes and bacon and eggs and a little hashbrown on the side. the tea room is going to be his favourite place in this world. ]

Curiouser and curiouser: What were six things you believed in before breakfast? I never knew I'd find myself here, but, hey, guess the impossible is possible.

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so you're feeling a lot more conservative
that's good in a place like this
you never know what's going to come at you next
and being loud always draws in unwanted attention

[ pretty boring if you ask him. not like Luke at all comes to mind, but then, Percy never knew Luke. not really. all he knew was what the guy had wanted him to see at camp. what he knew of him came from stories and dream visions. it was a lot like watching a movie and feeling for a character. but with time came a certain distance, a dullness, that wouldn't have been there if he grew up with Luke knowing these things. it's true he's not as close to him as Annabeth and Thalia were but he likes to think that if things had gone a different way, if May hadn't gotten that vision all of those years ago, maybe they could have been friends.

( but he's still not convinced this is the right guy. )

actually, he feels a lot like Annabeth must have felt standing alone in a cavern, following the Mark of Athena to avenge her mother, battling with her wits against Arachne while standing over a chasm to Tartarus. knowing that if she failed, both of the camps died with her. he feels like he's in a web, a carefully constructed trap, and he's going to have to rely on himself this time to get out of it.

words like destiny and thieves sure do have a lot of power, come to think of it. ]

i wouldn't know
i usually walk around with my foot in my mouth
a name's a name at the end of the day
the same goes for words
actions speak louder
and they tend to get a lot more accomplished

I don't know, man. Some people just like to make the cock work a little harder than normal with it's cock-a-doodle-dooing.

[ luke, conservative? that's the nicest compliment anyone's ever given him, even though he's not trying to wring a compliment out of this particular kid. he just knows he wants to see how far he can take this until the recipient to his messages decides to give up and walk away. it's not very heroic, is it? but even the most heroic of the bunch break character at times. ]

[ pushing people (and pushing them away) is more fun than looking in the mirror — especially when there's gold slathered across it. it's just another reminder he's not a hero. the kid with the foot in mouth syndrome is. ]

[ actions do get a lot more accomplished, but sometimes a word is enough. three words, eight letters, maybe even eleven if a dad's feeling a little proud to tack on a son to the i love you. ]

Do they?

Actions might get a lot accomplished. Hel, actions supposedly close the chapters to wars a lot of the time. But words are pretty powerful weapons. When's the last time you heard an action stopped a war over a mere word?

[ promise, that's the word. the action had merely been remembering it. ]

[ wow. he's not going to touch that one. he leaves that cock joke unloved for reasons. doesn't mean he isn't squinting at his phone on the other side of the connection, wondering if that was strictly necessary or not, or if he's looking too far into it. the world will never know! tossing one teensy joke aside isn't an indicator for his other intentions. Percy thinks there are too many other people that gave up on Luke along the course of his life to add to the pile, not when he remembers calling a shroud for the guy; being the guy that handed him the cursed blade and watched him take his own life. he remembers that moment vividly, no matter how the rest of the war dulls around the edges.

it becomes clearer when a person death took away from you is returned.

he's only getting closer and closer to calling him out about his identity now. ]

depends on the war
and who you're battling
plenty of children born for war would cut their opponents head clean off
before they considered the alternative
but i've seen enough to know that anyone can be reached with the right word
from the right person

[ it's such a cabin eleven thing to do ... ]

[ percy may be a shark, and luke may have cut himself on purpose to see his blood overpower the clear blue of the water, but he's still slow, senses blocked, that brain of his working in overdrive to merely power itself. but it's obvious to him he's caught his scent, perhaps taking on the characteristics of a shark more so than that of a dolphin or a hippocampus. ]

[ luke may not be the son of the sea, but he's still a powerful swimmer. ]

And when does that happen? At the beginning of the book? The middle? The very end?

[ if he doesn't say the end, he's wrong. ]

Still didn't answer me. Something tells me you're bluffing.

Give me a specific answer and I'll give you my #6.

[ this is Annabeth's gut here. her brain. Annabeth who volunteered to go to the Underworld with him, who held up the sky because she thought it would save a friend that was lost to her, whose first quest was navigating the labyrinth. the girl that loved him before either of them could comprehend what real love was. that would have died for him, that still would, in the same way that he would sacrifice everything he had, everything he was for her. they're falling into Tartarus together back home and he doesn't regret a single choice he's made when it comes to her, the one girl he couldn't forget even with all of the strength of Hera meddling with his mind. if he can trust anything left in the world, it's her.

all of his hesitation blows away like dust in the wind.

if she says this is Luke, then it is. Percy's done playing games. it's time to be concrete with his answers, to make everything murky as clear as crystal. ]

like i said, it depends on the story
but if you're asking for the one that comes from personal experience,
then it came at the end
when it was almost too late

[ he squares his shoulders, dedicated to the task. here goes nothing! sink or swim, etc etc. ]

i don't bluff
not when it comes to my friends

want to know my number four?
i never thought i'd get another chance to talk to the son of hermes

[ the not a. they both know he's the most important son that's come around in a good, long time. ]

Martin Luther King's currently unavailable.

[ all the profound political activists have to be hermes' kids. it's the only good damn thing he's contributed to society. all his children, from harriet tubman to even luke himself, are so discontent with the world they feel the incredible need to fix it. but luke will never be on par with those who had touched the world and helped shape it into the creature it is today. he's merely a forgotten kid, a lost boy — percy may include him within his school of friends, but luke can see bullshit when someone tries to hand it out in spades. ]

[ he knows the unravelling of a curious oyster isn't the doing of percy. it has annabeth chase written all over it, the way he's lead her through the garden of hesperides to lure her away from the dangerous dragon nesting beneath the golden tree, fast asleep and unaware of her intrusion at all. but is it really his fault if he tiptoes toward the tree, tempted to steal another apple just to see how far annabeth will dig before she finds she can't thrust her spade into the rock hard earth anymore? ]

[ he keeps the encryption on, but doesn't so much as even try to deter percy at all. he's not wrong. ]

Sounds like a lame #4.

good
history lessons were never my favorite
i'd rather speak with Luke Castellan

[ maybe they were never friends in Luke's eyes. Percy had been an inconvenience at best, but he's holding to his hope. sticking to his guns. if Annabeth ( Annabeth who didn't trust anyone right from the get-go, who put too much thought into the smallest things ) had trusted him, loved him, then Percy had to believe that it meant some day ( if he was the same guy Percy remembered him dying as ) that they could be. he can still see Hermes torn with anguish, feel the weight of guilt at perceiving him as a bad father when he had done the best he could under the circumstances. ]

i try to steer clear of reaching for the sky
what goes up must come down
or something like that
pretty sure i don't have to ask you to sit to tell you why zeus is a jerk

Why?

[ it's easier to answer with yeah, zeus is king of the dicks, but luke glazes over percy's response. it's all fluff around one important statement that not even luke wants to reread. i'd rather speak with luke castellan. despite the rebuttal he could come up with, taking to tearing zeus apart and ignoring it altogether, it's difficult for a child of neglect to even move past it. it's all he's ever really wanted, to hear someone want him for who he is and not what it is he can do for them. hermes had deemed him unworthy of a quest or his time, a father merely giving his son what it is he's been yearning for to simply quieten him. but the boy he had tried to harm for merely being another pawn in a game between titan and gods wants to speak to him, as though they're friends, as though the past history between them doesn't exist at all. ]

[ it's always been incredibly difficult for luke to let anything go. ]

why is zeus the jerkus maximus?
i don't know
someone could write a book and put that guy all the way at the back of it
just to rant about his daddy issues

[ he knows what Luke means and it's a strange day that Luke Castellan stops pulling the strings long enough to cut straight through it and hear him out. he always seems to be putting on a show and while a younger Percy would have outright brandished Anaklusmos and called it a day, he can't go back to being that way. he's seen Luke's life. he hasn't lived it but he knows it as well as any story book that Sally plucked off the shelf in a store with intentions to read to him. Percy sighs and tries to piece it together, what he means, and how to say it. ]

maybe because i get what you were trying to make me see now
and i couldn't have before

[ . . . what else? ]

and because you earned a second chance the last time i saw you
do you remember that?

Too little, too late.

[ perhaps luke's living up to the jerkus maximus title, tossing that particular blade he hopes is sharp enough to slice through the thickest of stone. it'd hurt him for years to know no one understood his own anger. to find out someone understands it now, x number of years since luke castellan became another forgotten alleged hero among thousands of insignificant demigods angers him. did the gods learn nothing from him attempting to raze mount olympus? no one had taken the time to understand the reasons luke's responses or quips about the gods were so short; the gods had taken away his chance of having a normal life, the gods had stolen his mother's happiness by cupid aiming that arrow right at her when hermes had asked him to fetch him a bride, and the gods had stolen and punished thalia for being a hero. what was the point of amaltheia if not to lead thalia to safety? all the goat had done was take her to him, and he wasn't safe at all. ]

[ it's too little, too late for a kid who is still reeling from the fact that his destiny had been to be a hero who hadn't repeated what others had done. it's easier to be the villain in the story, the only archetype he believes he ever properly fitted since he'd run away from home in fright and in a bid to protect a helpless woman from the monsters that shook her bones and moulded her out of shape as the words leaving her lips were not hers at all. it's difficult to properly understand, or even let himself process, that he had been meant for greater things, but no one felt the need to inspire such drive within him. all hermes had done was dampen it by refusing to even hint his fate wasn't as bleak as may's own shrilly fits made it seem. if he's a hero, then why does he feel so unaccomplished? his second chance, if he has one at all, should be righting his wrongs and being a hero to a woman who had been left in the darkness with her bright eyes that reminded luke of the ocean shifting into a hollow and frightening green as they glowed at and through him. ]

[ second chances are bullshit, even though he's convinced he's living his right now, down a rabbit hole, in a world that's fictional and just out of reach like hermes himself. ]

No. Kind of hard to remember anything when you're dead.

[ frustration flares inside of him, reminding him of how effortless it is to be angry at someone that's already signed up to be a target for hatred. he always thought Luke knew how to push his buttons ( like monsters, like Kronos ) because he was easy to read. now he knows better. it's because once upon a time the two of them weren't so unalike. the distance between them looks smaller and smaller every day. he sees now that the world needed to change desperately. he's still not on the line of no matter the cost. that must be a fine line and unchallenging to cross over when you think you've already lost everything worth having. he doesn't think Luke was right to fall under Kronos' spell but considering fate, there's nothing he could have done to prevent it. nothing in the world. sometimes something terrible has to happen to budge a stone that's been wedged in place for centuries. or in this case, some really stubborn ancient gods with stones for brains. ]

which is as close to a yes as i'm going to get

you were able to stop Kronos
that's all i care about
everything else is water under the bridge at this point

and if it counts for anything to you right now or ever,
i made the gods promise to make their childrens' lives better
by claiming them by the time they turned thirteen
i even asked for cabins for the minor gods

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