𝐏𝐀𝐈𝐍𝐓 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐍𝐈𝐆𝐇𝐓 𝐒𝐊𝐘-(ᴘᴇʀᴄʏ ᴊᴀᴄᴋsᴏɴ )¹

𝟎𝟖|𝐖𝐡𝐞𝐧 𝐘𝐨𝐮'𝐫𝐞 𝐆𝐨𝐧𝐞, 𝐎𝐫 𝐏𝐞𝐫𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐬 𝐍𝐨𝐭

《𝐒𝐄𝐓𝐇 𝐘𝐎𝐎𝐍》

𝐄𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭⊰᯽⊱┈──("𝑇𝒉𝑖𝑠 𝒉𝑢𝑟𝑡 𝑡𝒉𝑎𝑡 𝐼'𝑚 𝒉𝑜𝑙𝑑𝑖𝑛𝑔'𝑠 𝑔𝑒𝑡𝑡𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝒉𝑒𝑎𝑣𝑦.")

⊰᯽⊱┈──╌❊ ¤ ❊╌──┈⊰᯽⊱

── ✦ 𝐂𝐇𝐈𝐑𝐎𝐍 𝐇𝐀𝐃 𝐂𝐎𝐍𝐅𝐈𝐍𝐄𝐃 𝐇𝐈𝐌 to the infirmary after his, admittedly, unfortunate break down.

As of now, he'd been there for two days. The first, he had been entirely unconscious, and on the next, he'd been too weak to get up even after he'd opened his eyes.

Conan was by his side when he fully woke up. He smiled sadly at him. "Welcome back."

Seth thought waking up in the infirmary was starting to get old.

The very same day, a distressed Annabeth came back to camp— and that was just it.

The news of Percy's apparent death, Grover and Tyson's disappearance in the Labyrinth washed over the entire camp like a tsunami. It caught up to Seth when he was still in the infirmary.

The shock consumed him like a furious wildfire and he completely froze, wrapping his arms around himself like on the night he fell apart. Conan, the messenger, looked at him with barely concealed concern and Seth ignored it, staring off into the distance disconnectedly.

The sheer absurdity of it all baffled him. From whatever little he knew about Percy Jackson, from the whispers among the campers, from Luke Castellan's infuriated rants, Seth thought of the son of Poseidon as untouchable, more god than mortal.

The thought of him being dead was beyond comprehension.

"I don't believe it either, you know," Conan finally said after a while of silence. Even the normally bustling infirmary, noisy with groans and moans of pain and complaints of stressed healers was abnormally quiet, all noises reduced to a hush. His eyes moved up to meet Conan's soft amber stare. "I don't believe Percy's gone. You don't either, do you?"

Seth's throat was painfully dry, and his lips chapped. There was an uncomfortably tight feeling settling in his chest and it continued to grow the more they talked about it. His tongue darted out to wet his lips.  "I mean, does anyone really?"

Conan swept his gaze around, a pinch in his brow. Seth noticed the slight wetness in his eyes, and how he kept on blinking to force it away. His jaw worked every so often and his hands tightly gripped the armrests of the plastic chair he sat in.

"The way Annie described it, the explosion," his voice nothing more than a whisper in the dreadful quiet. "It doesn't sound like anyone could survive that."

Seth shifted in the cot, now facing the ceiling. The words hit him harder than he expected, which didn't make any sense because he barely knew the guy in question.

"But honestly?" Conan huffed out a wet laugh. "Percy would."

Seth let his eyes fall shut when he felt the stinging being them. He had no right to act like he was mourning, not when Percy's actual friends were the ones more deserving of it than him.

Sleep came to him miraculously a few minutes after Conan left, and he dreamed of a green hillside. He sitting on the ground, and above him, blocking out the light of the sun, stood a woman.