Flowergirl, Percy Jackson

016. You are Loved

Luke. What have you done, Luke? It echoes in her mind like a litany. He was a hero. He was supposed to save them. He promised. 

"That sucked," Nico says. 

"You saved our lives," Lila hears Percy say, but the words are distant, as if he is miles away. Though, she is the one who is far away - Percy seems rooted to the ground, his horror feeding into pragmatism. Lila wants to follow Annabeth's footsteps and collapse onto the ground. But no - they have to keep going. 

She rifles around in her pack for a moment, before she finally finds a bottle of water. Gulping it down furiously, so fast she almost chokes, the world seems to clear. There is no time to ponder Luke, or to go back for him. They have to find Grover and Tyson, and they have to save the camp. 

But still, she can't stop thinking. Luke, what have you done?

"What . . . what was wrong with Luke?" Annabeth utters, her voice croaky from the sobs. "What did they do to him?"

"I don't think they did anything to him," Lila says. She surprises herself by the hard edge to her voice - not angry, just tired. She sounds defeated already, before the battle has begun. You have to get up. "I think he did it to himself." 

Annabeth jerks away, her grey eyes tense and furious. "How can you say that? That - that can't be true. He couldn't - " 

Percy nods, meeting Lila's eyes. He seems equally angry. Though perhaps he is something else, too; driven. He has moved on already. He feels so cold, so apathetic to Luke's future. Lila feels so far away, so separate from him. "He gave himself over to Kronos. I'm sorry, but Luke is gone."

"No," Annabeth says stubbornly. "You saw when Rachel hit him."

Percy nods. "You hit the Lord of the Titans in the eye with a blue plastic hairbrush."

Rachel's cheeks flush red as her hair. "It was the only thing I had."

Lila catches Nico's eye. He looks confused, mildly. A little scared. Horror fills her again as she remembers how Kronos now knows of his exact parentage. When will something go right? 

"But you saw," Annabeth insists, shakily fiddling with her Yankee cap. It looks so ordinary in her hands, though Lila knows it is a gift from a goddess. Perhaps there is something to be said in that; seeing as everything the gods have ever given them has seemed useless at first, but was better than it looked. That things are not always as dire as they seem. "When it hit him, for a second, he was dazed. He came back to his senses."

"So, what?" Lila questions again. "If we somehow hurt Kronos enough, Luke will come back?" Does Luke even want to be back? He chose this fate for himself; Lila gets the feeling that this future has been decided and written for months, if not years. It's three years in the making, after all; three years since Luke abandoned their cause for Kronos. She doesn't say it aloud; Annabeth looks upset enough as it is. 

"Maybe Kronos wasn't completely settled in the body, or whatever," Percy dismisses all tact. Lila tries to catch his eye and signal that maybe they should have this conversation out of the labyrinth, when Nico isn't listening judgmentally and Annabeth has stopped crying. "It doesn't mean Luke was in control." 

"You want him to be evil, is that it?" Annabeth yells, clenching her fists. "You didn't know him before, Percy, not like Lila and I!" 

Lila does not want to be dragged into this. 

"What is it with you? Why do you keep defending him?" 

"Whoa, you too." Rachel intervenes. "Knock it off."