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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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only six things?

[ interesting number on her mirror, encrypted message on the network. talk about curiouser and curiouser.

because this is something she can face head first. because this is still in the abstract and therefore a challenge. she doesn't want to think about if her theories are right. doesn't want to think about what she'll have to do if this becomes concrete. for now, she knows the two things are related. knows that above all, this is something she has to deal with.

because this isn't emotional. this isn't unrealistic. this is a puzzle on the network and a puzzle on her mirror and through text she can easily save face and push away her problems. ]

Edited (sorry i felt like i needed to tl;dr just a tiny bit) 2014-10-20 14:22 (UTC)

blueberry waffles with a mountain of blue whipped cream.

[ don't you judge him. mister allegedly where's the glory in repeating what others have done? he's not sure he believes Annabeth after reaching out to him and leaving him a text that this ( if this is even the right post ) can be the son of hermes. he trusts her, it's just that she's always grasped at straws when it comes to Luke. he doesn't know what to think. ]

sleeping in, everything was right in the world, i was going to die of hunger. that's all i've got.

[ i was alone, i was alone, i was alone. that isn't it at all. ]

do you have five more?

[ he's found himself a very curious oyster. ]

[ it doesn't surprise him it's annabeth. despite wanting to reveal himself to her, cloaking his own identity works best for what it is he wishes to achieve — complete and total anonymity. it's easier to pretend it's not necessarily her on the other end, just as she's oblivious (perhaps not as ignorant as she could be if she turned that brain of hers off for once in her life) to it being him. ]

[ it's difficult trying to face someone you've disappointed. ]

[ the dead don't have iphone 6's in their grasp. asking the closet for the latest technology seriously was the best test ever to proving the pamphlet accurate. ]

You got a problem with the number six, Alice?

[ six is a really cool number in luke's opinion. if you add two more to it, it's the number to hell. isn't that where he's going when this hallucinatory trip is all over? ]

[ he's judging. ]

[ of course, wherever annabeth is, percy should follow. it's a mix of feelings luke experiences over the duo being tied together, a tether not even falling down a rabbit hole can truly break. percy's just as he remembers him — hopeless at removing himself entirely from a situation. those blue waffles are going to bite him in the ass someday — or give him food poisoning. ]

Thanks for playing.

1. I was a different person yesterday to who I am today. I think I grew taller.

2. Yesterday, I thought I was more like a rooster. Today, I'm a tortoise.

3. Got an iPhone 6 in my hand and I'm loving it. Who knew apples that weren't rotten fell from this particular tree?

4. Pretty sure I'm at my end. Time is linear.

5. ... ??? Going to have to wait and see. :) I sure do like unplanned surprises.

[ are any of those hints blatantly obvious? even so, percy's not the brains. he's more of the snake skin one makes a purse out of. ]

[ so far so good. but let's not talk about the closet full of blue food he summoned forth. Percy spends his time trying to analyze the text, but that's the thing that's so frustrating, they're words. just words with no body language or expressions. he can gleam some context but that only carries him so far. he can't read between all of the lines and he definitely isn't able to read so far into it to believe that every sentence screams Luke Castellan.

they could be obvious.

they could also be really, really misleading. a coincidence. Annabeth ( once again ) hoping for a family that had left her behind. he wants to protect her, but how does he do that when he's not even sure this something is real? ]

i don't know anything about the rooster
but apparently the tortoise wins the race

[ he puzzles over the bit about growing taller. like literally, or growing as a person? he skips over the apple bit ( though he remembers the quest that gave Luke that scar ) but isn't immediately pinged by it; only the part of being at his end, coupled with his line about repeating what others have done that says maybe at all. ]

it's better than fate
that's for sure
much better than knowing something's going to happen somewhere down the line
and you'll be powerless to change it

The rooster makes a lot of noise. The tortoise hides away.

But we're not talking about a race here, buddy.

[ they're talking about something much bigger than that. it's not a race where the hare, now the rooster in this equation, challenges the tortoise to a race. luke knows who would win that one, and it's neither of them. no one wins in the race luke had just crossed the finish line for. does anyone? but apparently the tortoise and the rooster end up the sore — and grieving — losers in the end, anyway. we need a shroud for the son of hermes. ]

[ hey, halcyon green, how you doin'? that gives luke serious pause. had it been destined for him to die? had he been born to be neglected only for his anger to twist him up inside and then see himself shift from a potential hero to the very big bad to the actual hero in the end? ]

[ it makes him sick to think about it. ]

I don't know about that.

Isn't it worse knowing you have a destiny, but everyone decides to keep the facts tight-lipped? Locked away so not even the best thieves could ever hope to break in and steal it.

Power. Kind of comes in the shape of words, doesn't it?

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. ]

[ well- that's an odd one, isn't it? a curious oyster -- which might mean it's a Wonderland native, though he's never seen one address the network like this. but-

if it is a native, it might mean a new event is coming. so playing along is easy enough. ]

Breakfast was buttered toast. [ Nico you're so boring. ]

Did the six things you believe change after breakfast?

seems a bit arbitrary
especially for a place where math is not the same
aren't we always late, anyway?

[ why try and input math into a world that was created for the very purpose of trying to abstract the concrete? but that's more than annabeth is able to argue, really, despite her immediate curiosity attaching her to the post at large. ]

i did have an apple, though
for breakfast.

[ because that was an easy enough question, wasn't it? ]

[And this is someone with whom Luke really doesn't have to worry about revealing himself. Thanks to Percy and Annabeth he knows about the sacrifices he made, the price he paid. He technically knows who he is- but in the abstract way you know people who are basically part of someone else’s story.]

cereals
just like always
and doing that game in this place is cheating anyway since almost anything is possible
if you ask the closet

how did you do that?
changing your name i mean

Hey, if seven impossible things happened to you before you ate your apple, feel free to share with the class.

Honestly, I find I'm always running a little early when it's tea time.

[ he's not the kid who asks questions. annabeth had been born with a great big question mark hovering over her head, it always appearing when she looked at something interesting. luke's merely the kid who writes the script and speaks a little too loudly, running his mouth a little too much, and wasting pages on a story no one cares to re-read. but he knows asking questions to a daughter of athena may corner him against a wall not even the son of hermes could manoeuvre himself away from with his agile footwork and speed. ]

What color?

[ she finds interesting aspects in everything she sees. all you need to do is look deep enough. and then other things you don't have to look deeply at all. like every aspect of everything that's happened today has just been a big blinking sign.

something is going on. ]

you might have gone down the wrong rabbit hole.

[ questions usually lead to more questions when the magic of the place is designed specifically to defy logic. there's a reason she hated reading alice in wonderland, hated the story and the setting and little alice herself. logic is absent in wonderland, and that's the point.

a child of logic trapped in a place that by its very nature defies everything? her skin's been crawling since the first moment she opened her eyes here. ]

does it matter what color?
would that count as one of the seven incredible things?

Wouldn't be the first time I've ended up where I shouldn't be.

[ throne rooms, kronos' palm, elysium. isn't luke the demigod of being in the wrong place at the exact right time? though, he does believe the latter should be the fields of punishment. what kind of demigod gets elysium for trying to destroy all the olympians by teaming up with their father for the take down? ]

[ unlike the questions that have gone unanswered for him, hers have one. whether or not he's willing to give them is a question in itself. ]

Depends on what color the apple was.

end up in a lot of wonderlands?

[ give her clues. something. anything. she's fishing for answers in an unruly ocean and all she needs is bite. a shadow. anything at all. ]

yellow

[ give her more answers. give her an explanation. give her more. ]

[ gods, clarisse hates text. she wouldn't even bother answering if the curious oyster thing didn't get her attention and annabeth weren't already suspicious about the numbers they all happened to find on their mirrors. add this to the mix and clarisse is starting to get a little suspicious herself. it means someone is trying to hide something, and while there are a lot of people in wonderland who have things to hide, this is the first time she's ever seen anyone change their name on the network. she'd say it was impressive, but she doesn't really care how they did it or how hard it was. she's mostly curious as to why. ]

[ then again, she can't really be bothered with questions for too long, because that's really annabeth's thing and she's sure by now wise girl has picked up on all the clues. she wonders if anyone has just asked for a name, not that it would probably do any good. (annabeth has a feeling, just a feeling; no proof, nothing solid enough to really be believed, but something about all of this screams luke, even if clarisse is more willing to believe it's just coincidence.) sometimes it's better to be blunt, though. she's not exactly the type that likes to play games, unless those games involve violence of some kind. ]

yawn is there a point to all of this or do you just like wasting people's time

[ cereal is boring to luke, just as the loophole to his question renders his entire game moot. it'd be fun to tear into it and perhaps try and run circles around someone who is a true stranger to him, but frank zhang has pointed out one thing many have seemed to run right by. ]

You don't think my parents could be big fans of Lewis Carroll?

[ his mother is. his father's just a big fan of firefly and being a deadbeat. ]

You're boring.

[ it needs to be said, son of hades. he's just as boring as his father. kronos had spoken of hades being a predictable chess piece on the board, but luke knows the god of death had surprised even him during the battle of manhattan. hades and nico are cut from the same cloth; they both play dumb, but they're almost as smart as the athenas of their generation. almost. ]

Maybe. I never knew someone could be so boring. Learn to live a little; have an adventure with peanut butter. Don't tell me you sit there with a glass of milk.

[ yawn right back at you, daughter of war. it's a predictable answer, one he knew would come from her. she's never been able to let sleeping dogs lie without so much as giving them a good poke in the backside to ensure that they're not merely feigning sleep. she wants a fight, but luke refuses to give her one by taking her bait and revealing his maps and strategic plans. his desk is actually bare. ]

Doesn't seem like such a waste if you're replying.

As for me? I'll let you in on a little secret. I'm just wasting time. I'm waiting for the clock to strike tea.

[ because it's always tea time. it's the same old shit over and over. isn't that what he'll face if they discover he's here in wonderland — if they care enough? ]

Just two. The second is currently P E N D I N G.

[ elysium. luke doesn't believe he'll get it. it's the fields of punishment for a piece of shit like him. will there be cacti for him to run into? will it be a pit of loneliness? will he be tossed into tartarus to sit beside kronos and be punished by his hand for all eternity? ]

[ it'd been easier to think about it all before he'd reached out and extended his hand toward her. now that she's here, reciprocating the gesture, luke doesn't want to think about his demise. he doesn't want to think about anything. despite wanting to hide himself within a cloak of darkness and never have her see him again, fearful her gaze will be one of disappointment and hatred, luke can't quite help but reach out. it's always been that way between the two of them; despite any inner turmoil that may be twisting his insides like vines on the trunk of a tree, he always unravels himself enough for her. ]

[ he should decline her answer and state it should be green or red, but hadn't he pushed her along this particular road? he knows how to navigate it, she knows how to trust those instincts of his, and all he remembers is trusting hers. ]

Hm. And what did your yellow apple offer you? A crown and lands? Wisdom and skill in battle? The most beautiful wo/man in the world as yours to keep?

[ it's tempting to leave it there. to a point, he hopes she answers it. what had her golden apple of heroism given her? a life? a parent's love? percy jackson? what had she gained by him disappearing from the earth? what does she hope to gain now, if not merely touching the wisps of a ghost before he vanishes once again? ]

[ but luke castellan has always been a sucker for annabeth chase. and, so, he gives just a little bit more. ]

Personally, my apple gave me 'NONE OF THE ABOVE'.

[ well, at least it's not the most boring text conversation she's ever had, but she's still rolling her eyes and wishing he'd just drop the pretense already. she doesn't particularly like being forced into the disadvantage of not knowing who it is she's talking to. ]

yeah have fun with that how about you lose the glass slipper and show me who you really are

[ alright, so they're mixing their fairytales here, even though alice in wonderland isn't exactly a fairytale. whatever, it might as well count under the umbrella of disney fairytales. ]

Or?

[ if she thinks her threats will frighten him into properly answering her, or even giving her what she wants, clarisse la rue does not know luke castellan at all. but that's the whole point — she doesn't know it's him. and even if she did, he threat slips off him like water. clarisse la rue isn't the scariest person he knows. the gold on his mirror represents who is. ]

[ 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. ]

[Back in his room Frank frowns as he tries to place the reference. He vaguely remembers the oysters in the Disney movie. He also vaguely remembers they didn't exactly have a happy ending. He read the book as a kid (like he reads everything that ends in his hands), but not enough to commit it to memory.]

enough to name their child after an oyster who gets eaten?
dont think so
I dont really care about your name i promise
but id like to learn how to do that

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.

Why?

Got something to hide?

[ like luke does, but it should be pretty obvious why he had changed his identifier from luke castellan to a curious oyster. but considering the nature of wonderland and some of the characters he's seen having graced the network a few times before, perhaps an oyster had, as well. ]

not right now
but its an useful skill to have
one never knows

[It's all he's been doing since he landed here. Learning anything there's to learn because there isn't much more to do. He's not Leo, his phone might explode on him if he tries... but he still wants to try.]

It takes certain finesse to do it.

You can say it's a natural talent of mine.

[ hermes kid, holla. ]

[ despite his own impatience, luke's a patient teacher. and this kid seems pretty determined to learn the trade of a hermes kid. will anything he says deter him? ]

What will you give me in return?

[ trading is the name of his game, anyway. luke's the type to simply give out of the goodness of his heart, but since he lacks that particular organ and he's in a new, strange place, it's only fair he give if he receives. ]

that depends
what do you want in return?

[ or... she doesn't really have an answer to that. she hadn't really been intending to follow through on that threat. ]

or this conversation is over you don't really care what i had for breakfast or whatever the fuck else and i don't really care for people bullshitting me

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. ]

I didn't realize my choice of breakfast was meant to entertain.

[ admittedly, though, it is at least a little boring. there's absolutely no creativity to it, and Nico doesn't really mind. it's all an effort of just remembering to do the whole meal-time thing in the first place, so toast? it's a win.

he doesn't answer again, not at first; considers. ]

No, I think that might be too boring, even for me.

What's the most important thing you believed in before breakfast?

Did you miss the entire tone of this post?

[ it's luke; this entire trip is meant to be entertaining. though, as nico doesn't know who he is, merely just a dude typing back to him under the identifier of a character from a book and film, he shouldn't expect the son of hades to understand that it's entertainment he seeks. it's always been, until it had simply been destruction. ]

[ but it's meant to be rhetorical, a distraction from what it is he mulls over. he could take his question and run with it by being a smartass, listing all the important things he had believed in this morning before he'd been dropped into a land where the rules he knew weren't as set in stone as they had been when he'd died. instead, he chooses to take it seriously, following nico's lead by not being entertaining at all. ]

Besides melted peanut butter on toast being the best damn thing?

The dead stayed dead.

a limbo in limbo? does that one even count?

[ because what does it really mean, to not know where you're going but know you're not where you've been? annabeth is deathly aware of her own descent, back home. free-falling down into the darkness that shouldn't even exist, physically. logically. years and years spent falling to finally get down to the one place that no living soul should ever be.

tartarus.

the thought alone has her chest seizing, her throat tightening. she wants to scream and cry and throw a tantrum, like she's twelve years old and standing at the doors to the underworld, but that's not possible because there's no one who will care.

he's taught her that she has to be able to do this. to stand on her own with her family at her side, rather than relying on any blood connection, any abstract promise. she's reaching for a connection that had once been, because she doesn't even know if this is him. doesn't know if there will be a familiar, calloused, tanned hand reaching back for her.

so annabeth tosses out clues, bits and pieces, bait for certain answers. clues. something that she can know for sure. but he's smarter than that, has always been, and she shouldn't be so hopefully. ]

not yet
but i haven't given up hope - i still have plenty of day left

[ she doesn't know if it's him. she doesn't, and yet she still feels that clench of sadness, of despair, at the words she reads. none of the above? it tugs at the corners of her mouth, at the tone she's tried to keep high.

no she wants to say, petulant and upset. you're in elysium. you died a hero. ]

maybe it just hasn't come yet

Scroll up, Curious Texter. The impossible is possible these days.

[ it's that hope she had always clung to so stubbornly that he'd tried to feed off of once. it's shame that luke had felt press harder than the sky for days after he'd tricked her into taking on atlas' burden. he'd broken his promise so many times, but playing to her weakness had been the straw that broke the traitor's back. from thereon in, he'd attempted to exclude annabeth from a good majority of the plays kronos wanted to make — but it'd been near impossible to separate the heroic demigods from kronos' plans, with their fingers always prodding and poking and ripping the maps and sheets and paper work apart with carelessness. he doesn't want to respond to her line about her ruthless and everlasting hope; her hope within him, her faith, had always made him feel unworthy. if he had his way, he'd plead for hades to give him the fields of punishment for his eternal life in death, only for the sole reason of betraying annabeth when he had promised and given her hope to only shatter it with his anger and blindness to the damage he was inflicting until it was all too late. ]

Trust me, Wise Oyster, the only apples I'll be receiving are rotten.

Pity, though. Always wanted the most beautiful woman in the world. Would've been one hell of a war. ;)

[ instead, his had been a waste and a mess, a dethroning of a king who hadn't realised he was one until he'd taken his cursed blade and usurped himself. ]

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.

impossible or not i don't think it means the same under those circumstances
you can't be in a state that depends entirely on a lack of one thing or another
when those two things don't exist there at all

[ it's funny, thinking about her own relationship with hope and that of those around her. in light of percy 'i will jump headfirst into impossible and see how it likes it' jackson, annabeth is considered the realist, the pessimist, the one who has to look at the facts and put that weight of 'what if it doesn't work'. she uses that to propel her towards their ends, their means, her planning shifting and changing because she can see an ending where it doesn't work and is motivated to avoid it.

but still, she holds out. maybe it's percy rubbing off on her, or maybe she's always just been that way.

wise oyster. curious, but annabeth tries not to think too much into it. ]

why are you so convinced?
everyone deserves second chances
and some even third and fourth ones

a war would need another side to fight with. unless you think your most beautiful woman would already be taken.

[ 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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