///AN I noticed from the views that people like to skip this chapter, Ik it's a little slow but it's important for the plot, especially the end so bear with me 😂 ////
(Percy's POV)
I stumble loose from Aphrodite's spell and almost fall to the ground.
Seeing Aphrodite posing as Annabeth should have hurt me even more than it did at first. But hearing her threaten my family and admit to being the main culprit in my horrible life put me into an anger-induced state of shock, so I could almost ignore the pain of being reminded of Annabeth's death.
But it all hits me like a truck now.
I sink down the filthy brick wall I'm propped against to the floor, unable to support myself any longer.
I bury my head in my knees.
It wasn't her.
I'll never see her in the world of the living again.
I see flashes of the battle when I lost her in my mind.
I hear the yells.
See the bodies.
I feel the blood pour down my face, obscuring my vision.
Blocking my full view of her till it's too late.
There was nothing I could do to save her then and there's nothing I can do to save her now.
My tears make sooty puddles on the concrete beneath me.
I sit in that dirty alleyway for hours, but time doesn't work normally when you're stuck in it.
It feels like years to me.
I see my future flash before my eyes. I grow up alone, the gods use me at their whim.
I am occasionally attacked by monsters. The years pass by in a haze, blurred together by loneliness and hurt.
I watch my friends grow up, get married, have kids. I watch them have lives. But I'm still stuck at eighteen, standing on a bloody battlefield, looking into the eyes of my other half.
When I'm older my mother passes and Paul follows. The child my my mother was pregnant with will be grown, living their own life, happy. I'll still be Percy Jackson, the tragic teen hero whose mind is stuck on a battlefield with his lover.
I'll die, and Hades will tell me the one thing that kept me from coming sooner.
The gods have given Annabeth a gift.
She was reborn, against her will.
I won't see her for at least another lifetime, and even then, she may not even remember me.
And if she does, could she ever love the monster I'm sure to become?
* * *
It's dark when a homeless person yelling nonsense across the street startles me back to reality, shaking and cold.
I slowly lift myself off of the ground and try to gather my bearings. And although I'm shaken, snippets of my conversation with Aphrodite come to me.
"I promised I'd make your love life interesting!"
"Come to Olympus or face Zeus's wrath"
"The gods are always going to be more powerful than you"
She was right.
The gods will always be more powerful than me. They will never respect me.
And what if I was a god?
Could I make them regret what they've done?
Could I make them care?
Could I make them give me Annabeth back?
Could I end them?
And suddenly my frantic mind snaps together in a moment of clarity.
They've offered me godhood before.
Why can't I make them offer it again?
A soft chant works it's way up from the back of mind, slowly growing louder, like it's been waiting for me.
One that feels strangely familiar when I hear it, like it's been there since I was just a little kid with no father and an abusive step-dad.
'Make them pay'
'Make them pay'
'Make them pay...'
And suddenly, I'm ready to visit Olympus after all.
End of chapter four.