Climb (Percy Jackson x Reader)

eleven

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this chapter contains descriptions of blood, death, violence, and injury that may be perceived as graphic and/or upsetting.
this chapter also contains themes that can potentially be triggering for certain readers (details of su*cidal actions and thoughts). please read with discretion.
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✺ A FOREVER REMINDER ✺

Crimson blossoms in a gradual spread, claiming anything remotely pure as its own. It seeps into the sand and stains it with unforgiving reminders of life, clinging to skin and cloth and the scent of the air.

(Y/N)'s arm grows slick with blood as she carefully sets Luke on his back, one hand cradling his head while the other presses into the warm liquid at his shoulder blade. The crystal dagger juts out from his flesh, barely clear anymore as a sheen of red coats its surface.

Somehow, although marred and brutalized and destroyed, he looks happy.

Eyes fluttering shut, (Y/N) sighs, leaning forward and resting her forehead on his chest. Her fingers clutch his hair, and her body shakes the barest amount as she fights the urge to sob. There was no gentle pulsation beneath her skin, no shifting movement that would indicate life. There was nothing at all—not even a swirl of warmth within her, a hint of power that knew what to do, how to heal him.

She doesn't try to bring him back. She knows she can't.

The Curse of Achilles destroyed him, just as she said it would.

With trembling breaths, she pulls away, her hand moving to brush his mussed hair off of his forehead. She smoothes the gentle creases there that would form during his moments of stress, hoping to return him to the loving boy that he once was. He'd been her best friend, her brother. And while she knew he loved her as more, knew she couldn't give it to him, he'd still been her brother. After everything, even if she would never want him to, he'd always keep that place. That was just how things were. How they forever would be.

(Y/N) pulls herself away, standing up from the sandy ground and glancing to Grover and Annabeth. They hold each other, the daughter of Athena's head turned away from Luke while the satyr rocks her gently as she cries into his shoulder. Clarisse hesitates before walking over to them, pulling them both into her embrace. A moment of uncertainty, and then Tyson does the same.

Breathing a shaky inhale, (Y/N) looks to Percy, finding his eyes fixated on Luke's body with unreadable emotions. She takes a step in his direction, and turns his attention to her, his expression guarded.

No words pass between them as Percy holds out the glass sphere.

(Y/N) takes it, and blood coats the surface upon contact. She grits her teeth, watching the bits of unmarred glass flash orange when she squeezes it in restraint. At last, a trace of power seems to make its way to the surface, warming her chest slightly with its presence.

Less profound than the others, Hecate's blessing enhances the girl's understanding of her responsibility, and she redirects her focus to the sand, where dispersed and inconsistent patches of shimmering mist begin to lose their hue.

She closes her eyes, concentrating on the magic inside of her and willing it to follow through.

Her irises shine with the deep glow of emeralds, and the mist lifts from its places on the ground, the different trails swirling into each other and concentrating into a single group. Luke's wound, barely anything but horrific red, also seems to emit Kronos's essence, and the streams of luminescent mist reach out from his blood, pure and unstained.