~ { Shadow and Beauty } ~

Rome

After their bout with the pirates, they decided to fly the rest of the way to Rome. Jason insisted he was well enough to take sentry duty, along with Coach Hedge, who was still so charged with adrenaline that every time the ship hit turbulence, he swung his bat and yelled, "Die!"

   They had a couple of hours before daybreak, so Jason suggested Percy try to get a few more hours of sleep.

   "It's fine, man," Jason said. "Give somebody else a chance to save the ship, huh?"

   Percy agreed, though once in his cabin, he had trouble falling asleep.

   He stared at the bronze lantern swaying from the ceiling and thought about how easily Chrysaor had beaten him at swordplay. The golden warrior could've killed him without breaking a sweat. He'd only kept Percy alive because someone else wanted to pay for the privilege of killing him later.

   Percy felt like an arrow had slipped through a chink in his armor—as if he still had the blessing of Achilles, and someone had found his weak spot. The older he got, the longer he survived as a half-blood, the more his friends looked up to him. They depended on him and relied on his powers. Even the Romans had raised him on a shield and made him praetor, and he'd only known them for a couple of weeks.

   But Percy didn't feel powerful. The more heroic stuff he did, the more he realized how limited he was. He felt like a fraud.

   I'm not as great as you think, he wanted to warn his friends. His failures, like tonight, seemed to prove it.

   Maybe that's why he had started to fear suffocation. It wasn't so much drowning in the earth or the sea, but the feeling that he was sinking into too many expectations, literally getting in over his head.

   Wow... when he started having thoughts like that, he knew he'd been spending too much time with Annabeth.

   Athena had once told Percy his fatal flaw: he was supposedly too loyal to his friends. He couldn't see the big picture. He would save a friend even if it meant destroying the world. At the time, Percy had shrugged this off. How could loyalty be a bad thing? Besides, things worked out okay against the Titans. He'd saved his friends and beaten Kronos.

   Now, though, he started to wonder. He would gladly throw himself at any monster, god, or giant to keep his friends from being hurt. But what if he wasn't up to the task? What if someone else had to do it? That was very hard for him to admit. He even had trouble with simple things like letting Jason take a turn at watch. He didn't want to rely on someone else to protect him, someone who could get hurt on his account.

   Percy's mom had done that for him. She'd stayed in a bad relationship with a gross mortal guy because she thought it would save Percy from monsters. Grover, his best friend, had protected Percy for almost a year before Percy even realized he was a demigod, and Grover had almost gotten killed by the Minotaur.

   Percy wasn't a kid anymore. He didn't want anybody he loved taking a risk for him. He had to be strong enough to be the protector himself. But now he was supposed to let Annabeth go off on her own to follow the Mark of Athena, knowing she might die. If it came to a choice—save Annabeth or let the quest succeed—could Percy really choose the quest?

   Exhaustion finally overtook him. He fell asleep, and in his nightmare, the rumble of thunder became the laughter of the earth goddess Gaea.

   Percy dreamed he was standing on the front porch of the Big House at Camp Half-Blood. The sleeping face of Gaea appeared on the side of Half-Blood Hill—her massive features formed from the shadows on the grassy slopes. Her lips didn't move, but her voice echoed across the valley.