goodbyes & waiting | luke castellan
pairing : luke castellan x aphrodite!reader
request: happy holidays! could you write a luke x aphrodite reader? (maybe with angst?) <3
IN WHICH — there are the moments you shared and the sadness that came after.
"trust that you betrayed, confusing that still lingers. you took everything I loved and crushed it in between your fingers" - o.r.
w.c. 1k
warning(s) : lots and lots of angst ゜✭・.
✩ ‧₊˚ author's note this act hurt me so much in the feelings. I've never written something so angst, hope you enjoy it tho, love :)
your heart didn’t hurt, it burned.
you wished you could tear the wretched thing out and never feel anything again but it remained there, silently killing you from the inside out. in your palm lay a small pendant, not the prettiest thing by any means and resembling more like something you’d find at a second-hand store. the chain was thin and dull but at the center lay a small heart of twine and charms. your finger brushed over it, as if attempting to soothe your own heart, a manifestation of your pain literally.
god, you wanted to burn it to the ground. you wanted to scream so loudly and raw that you’d scream your vocal cords out of your throat. you wanted to scream at the gods–fuck them and fuck the fates–and most of all, at him.
had it meant nothing to him? this…whatever it was between you two? how could he have left you so brutally? without a second thought.
the pendant burned in your hand but you’d sooner kill yourself than part with it. it was the last thing you had of luke castellan. the boy who had loved you at your lowest, who once would have rather burned the world than let it hurt you. but he had hurt you and with the blow of godliness that ran in his blood.
you never did see it coming.
✩ ‧₊˚
you had first arrived at camp a year before percy jackson appeared. no sooner than you did, were you claimed by your mother, the goddess aphrodite. and unlike how the poets and half bloods describe it, children of aphrodite were not all inherently blessed with grand beauty. rather you were made to be beautiful in the way extraordinary things are: ingrained into the brain like a itch in a way so profound.
something about you entranced others, maybe the way you spoke or how you approached everyone like they were someone you had known since forever, you were just always a shining light for others to flock too. something so incredibly enchanting, gentle like the breeze of the camp waters.
luke was the first person to approach you after being claimed, the same boyish smile you’d later fall in love with on his face.
“the names luke castellan. yours?” he breathed out, something about the way he looked at you like you were every enchanting thing in the form of a person made your heart sing.
you knew that your heart would belong to him every moment after.
something in the way he looked at you like you were his forever after made you feel complete. like you weren’t so alone in this world made of monsters and man, godless beings of hunger and pain. and it seemed like he knew it too because there was a knowing in his eyes, a connection between you too that would hurt for every lifetime and the next.
you and luke only grew closer after and where you went he followed. where he strayed, you wandered. secrets moments shared beneath candlelights with his hands on your waist and yours bunched in his hair.
“your my forever, you know that right?” he’d whisper against your lips, trying to breathe you in like you’d disappear from his arms.
you’d just kiss him harder like his words could burn themselves to your lips. like he could burn himself into your very being and never leave you. one day you’d tell him he’d already had.
moments by the lakes where he’d hold you against him and you’d rest on his shoulder like it was the only place you’d ever need. trinkets you’d find when you’d go exploring with the littlest campers that you gifted to him and he kept like they were the grandest of treasures. times when he’d cry into your shoulder and you’d just hold him all the more closer like you could take the pain. the pendant he had spent months and late nights learning to craft from hand to give you. you planned out your future together late, late into the night when you couldn’t sleep: maybe someday he’d whisk you away to visit paris or to see the great big apple–only later you’d go without him.
holding you so tightly, he’d ask, “where would you want to go if we ever leave here?”
“anywhere you go.” the late nights near the lakes always made it seem like your cocoon, a safe haven from everything else. nights like these only made you fall in love with him more.
“yes, but if you could pick anywhere, where would you want me to take you, “ he huffed out, chuckling.
you grab his hands and press a kiss to his lips, tasting freedom and fire all in one breath. kissing luke was always electric, every want and lightning burn in one breath, one touch.
you leaned back, before contemplatingly saying, “i’ve always wanted to go to see the city lights in the big apple.”
“i’ll take you one day.” it was a promise. a future for you both.
“i’ll hold you to that.”
✩ ‧₊˚
but it never did happen.
✩ ‧₊˚
you remember the scream you felt bottled in your throat when you found out what had happened. the looks the others had given you when percy told you what luke had done. why he wasn't here with you guys. why he wasn’t here with you.
the betrayal hurt more than anything you had ever felt. parts of the pieces of the future you had made crumbling as quickly as you both had made it. the trinkets you had given him were gone just as he was.
as the months passed, here you stayed as the others left. hoping that by some miracle, your golden boy would return to you. that'd he'd come back ready to make good on his promise. he’d return to the lake where you had once built your future but he never did and the scream in your throat never left.
you promised me, luke.
footsteps approached you and there at the bottom of the hermes cabin stood percy jackson, “y/n, it’s time to go.”
he looked at the pendant in your hands before giving you a sad smile. he knew your history and your pain–once upon a time, luke had been his first real friend.
you wiped the tears that had fallen down your cheeks and slipped the necklace back onto your neck. you couldn’t bear to part with it, not even after all this time, after all these moments.
you looked behind you to the cabin one last time—breathing in the old memories and letting them go one last time—before you turned back around.
“let’s go.”
in the end, your golden boy had been far too much like his father and you were the one to be left waiting.
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Okay, so we all agree that Luke having to marry Mand’alor Din for political reasons is a quality au. What if Luke accidentally gets politically engaged to some other planetary leader instead?
Let’s say that perhaps his connection to Leia automatically made him a candidate for diplomatic marriage, especially after Leia and Han get married. Maybe it was a major clause in the funding for his Jedi school, but Luke didn’t really think they’d ever actually marry him off. For the sake of the au, let’s also disregard bits of TBOBF and Mando S3.
Luke’s been building his school on Ossus, Grogu is enjoying Jedi training, and there are a couple other students. And perhaps, Din actually becomes Mand’alor and retakes Mandalorian space. Maybe he visits the Jedi school pretty often to see his son and get away from politics.
Luke can really sympathize with having the weight of the universe and a glowing sword tossed at you with no warning. So maybe he and Din become friends after a while and maybe that friendship becomes something different. There start being blushes when someone gets pinned in a spar, falling asleep together on the couch after dinner, running around after the younglings constantly. Din visits as often as he can and has about made up his mind to just ask Luke if he would consider moving the Jedi school to Concordia so they’d at least be in the same star system most days, if not on the same planet.
That's when Luke gets an urgent holocall from Leia, informing him that he’s just been engaged to some bigwig princess as part of a treaty with a rich planet the New Republic has been courting. Luke is absolutely panicking to Din, going on about how the terms of the treaty basically forbid him from keeping his school. He’s looked at his funding agreement with the New Republic and he can’t get out of it without losing money unless he’s already married to someone.
And then Din thinks of the most beautiful solution to both of their problems. Everyone else thinks that they’re already a couple, as much as Din has denied it. Bo-Katan has been harassing him for months about spending so much time off-world to go see his little family. Mandalore could really use a trade agreement with the New Republic.
The next logical step is, of course, for Din to propose in the middle of Luke’s kitchen while his Jedi friend is struggling not to go into a dark spiral about losing his school funding. It's simple, really. They just have to get married right that moment, which would fix the school funding issue. Luke moves the school to the Mandalore system so Din can see him and the kids all the time without giving Bo-Katan a new gray streak. And Mandalore probably gets a trade agreement out of it. What’s not to like?
Luke is so stunned he accidentally pours the calming tea he was making directly onto the kitchen floor.
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