[2] 𝐆𝐎𝐋𝐃𝐄𝐍 𝐂𝐑𝐎𝐖𝐍 ― p.jackson

012.

then they'd reportedly found remnants of his duffle bag- washing up at the entrance, burnt and bloodied.

there was no percy jackson there with said bag.

and then, cadie's world just seemed to fall apart.

from sleepless nights filled with composing what must've been her sixth symphony to hacks and slashes against dummies- cadie's whole trajectory had changed.

this wasn't pitiful denial, this was rage and a fiery anger.

the world would move on, it would keep spinning on its twisted and tilted axis- so cadie would move with it, rumbling the ground with cries of fury.

she was just a girl who was hurt, a looming death sentence of whispers sharpened like a scyth whispering 'he's dead. he's gone. he left you first.' hanging over her head in a performance of mockery. shadows were puppeteered by some sadistic thing, stalking her in every waking moment.

her friends didn't help- they didn't help at all.

and so she found herself inclined to snap, to snarl and to shout.

by the weeks end, cadie was clad with a brutal strength and callouses in her hands- the blood of thousands of tarnished battle dummies scarring her hand in harsh jagged lines- crackling like lightning against her theta mark.

the world was not made for brutally soft caricatures like cadie- just as the world had not been fit enough to have percy jackson, it seemed.

she slashed, she cried, she screamed and she repeated it all over again.

slash.

it was stupid- how could she have thought he was alive? it was embarrassing. (another slash). all those people who'd watched her through rain and blistering winds stay by the labyrinth entrance, only to find a burnt and bloodied duffel bag be her only to tie to percy jackson.

slash.

nobody told her how to move on- how to accept the loss of her best friend, how to deal with the disaster that followed, how to... how to be the person on the other side.

to be the person to watch her soulmate go first.

cadencia diaz was a girl with a prophecy. sixteen days past august first (her sixteenth birthday)- she was fated to die just like all the others, another life damned to a cycle that would never end- always the first to go, never the last. the pain of death and guilt was laced into her own fate- that was it. she'd watch her life flash before her eyes just like seconds of a short film that ended too soon with the film now burned and damaged.

she always left them first.

perseus jackson was a guy with a prophecy. come his sixteenth birthday- he'd play a vital role in the mysterious 'great prophecy'- with his being keeping the gods intact or sending them to their dooms. he was the boy-wonder who'd face it all with a grin on his face and friends beside him on august eighteen with all the world to play for.

to win or to lose, he'd be the last to go.

fate was cruel for a number of reasons, but as cadie let herself crumple to the floor with her sword clattering from the dummy in front of her- she thought perhaps this was the worst they'd done.

in the game of chance and all things up to devine probability- perhaps they'd finally won. perhaps she'd finally lost one too many.

she was always the first to leave and to arrive at deaths door- getting zipped into the mind of a fresh set of eyes, naively opening to the world with a newborns cry.