#the fact that losing annabeth is a worse fate than being in literal hell for percy | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

jasiper · 5 years

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war is hard. it’s even harder for demigods. it’s hard when the whole world is on the brink of destruction and the fate of humanity is in the hands of teenagers. but even after the victory, there is still fear, fear that will never go away because war always leaves scars.

percy is afraid of losing control. after nearly drowning akhyls in tartarus, and seeing annabeth truly fear him, he’s scared. the gods have told him time and time again that he is a danger, that he can be the reason the world falls. he was such a risk even as a kid that the gods put his life to a vote. he knows that he has proven everyone wrong by saving the world time and time again, but he still is scared. the older he gets, the more he has to lose, which means he has so much more to lose control over. his hands shake and he has nightmares where he loses control and kills people. when he dreams that he accidentally kills annabeth, he can’t sleep for two days straight. he’s scared to be around his family, to be at camp, to hold his baby sister, to be alone with annabeth. he’s scared of himself. he tries to keep his emotions under control because if he were ever to explode, things would go to hell.

annabeth is afraid of being alone. it happened when she was merely seven years old— she felt unloved by her own family, so she ran away. she thought she got it right when she made a new family, but it was ripped apart when thalia died and again when luke betrayed her. she’s alone when she’s fourteen and she’s trapped under the sky, tricked by the person she used to call her family. it happens again when percy disappears. one day he was there, the next he was gone. when she finds him, she vows to herself that he was never leaving her. never again. and in tartarus, with the curse from polyphemus that leaves her blind, thinking that percy had left again, she is awoken to find her boyfriend on the brink of death. even though they make it through hell and they survive the war, annabeth still wakes up sometimes with a feeling in her chest that she is completely and utterly alone.

jason is afraid of dying. sure, most people are, but he keeps having encounters that are too close for comfort. he died once when he saw juno in her divine form; charon asked him for a coin and then he was back in piper’s arms. then he’s drowning, and he hears piper whisper i love you as he’s inhaling water, and he thinks he’s going to die again, but suddenly piper is hugging him and percy is crouched beside them. and then michael varus stabs him, and he’s yanked back and forth between life and death, greek and roman. it takes him so long to recover from that. leo dies right before his eyes, and for a while he’s not sure which is worse— someone else dying for him or dying himself. even the news that leo is alive doesn’t help the tremors and the nightmares. he gets the news that either he or piper will die, and then when caligula stabs him and he’s back in front of charon, who’s asking him for a coin, jason realizes that death is a whole lot scarier than he could ever anticipate because he wasn’t ready to die.

piper is afraid of falling. physically and figuratively. she almost fell to her death at the grand canyon, and she had spent her time falling thinking about how much she messed up her life. she only gets a shot at redemption when jason saves her. and then as the months go on, she’s afraid to fall in love. how could she trust her relationship when it was fabricated by the mist? she takes a chance, lets herself fall, and she tries. she really tries. it’s so much easier to fight a war when there’s someone to support you, to validate you. but when she’s falling out of the sky and she’s screaming leo’s name and everything explodes in golden light and she wakes up to find out that her best friend is gone, she realizes that she needs to stay on solid ground. she can hardly board the plane back to california because she is so afraid she is going to fall. leo’s disappearance makes her question everything, and she realizes that she doesn’t know herself. she breaks up with jason, and for the first time in a long time, she feels like her life is becoming stable again. but when she sees jason’s dead body and this time there is no bringing him back, she’s falling all over again— falling apart.

leo is afraid of missing out. he felt like he was missing out on the whole romance thing for months; first his best friends start dating, which is cool, because they love each other, but then he’s on his way to europe surrounded by happy couples and feels ridiculously alone. he tries to tell himself that he doesn’t need anyone to make him feel whole, but the universe and the gods and everyone else seem to tell him that without a significant other, he’s worthless. and then when he died, he is focused only on ogygia and calypso. he didn’t realize it at the time, that’s when he starts missing out. when he returns, the world is in danger again. he’s too busy trying to help apollo get his god status back and be a good boyfriend to see his best friends, and he doesn’t even know they broke up until piper’s collapsing in his arms, sobbing about how jason’s gone. leo didn’t even get to say goodbye to one of his best friends. he missed out on his last opportunity to see jason and he didn’t even realize it. he begins to overthink how he prioritized things, and he’s haunted by the fact that he was so desperate to find love that he missed out on months of his life.

hazel is afraid of manipulation. before she died, her mother manipulated her into creating a body for a giant, and because it was her mother, she couldn’t say no. this was her family. everyone else hated her, and she was called a witch, so she couldn’t let her mom down. she gave life to a giant, and although she managed to stop him from rising to keep gaea asleep for another seventy years, she lost her life in the process. when hecate introduces her to her ability to control the mist, she doesn’t even realize it’s manipulation until after she arrives back at camp jupiter. she can make people see things that weren’t there just for her own benefit. she can make people do what she wanted them to just because she has the ability to. she’s reminded of the boat and holding onto her mother as she was crushed to death and she vows to never manipulate people the way her mother manipulated her.

frank is afraid of never growing up. from the time he was a baby, juno foreshadowed that he was too powerful to live a long life. while demigods were constantly dying at young ages, he thinks that he could be the exception. he saw people raising their children in new rome, and he had hope for the future. his stick could burn up at any moment, but he thought if he could survive the war, he could handle anything. even while freeing thanatos, he knows he’s going to live to make it back to new rome. leo definitely made him lose hope, but he’s presented with the fireproof material and gods, he could actually survive this thing. but then leo dies and octavian is dead too and frank realizes that even with his fireproof material, he is never truly safe. all he wants is to grow up and retire from the legion and go to college and have children and die peacefully, but now he has nightmares of watching his stick burn up in his own hands, and he’s terrified.

nico is afraid of the darkness. it used to be his friend— it welcomed him when bianca died, and it kept him hidden from percy. the darkness hid his shame, hid the self-hatred. if he could melt into the shadows, nobody would know that he loved the person he should have hated. after the titan war, he’s trying to rebuild his life but it’s hard. he may have the support of his father but he still feels like an outsider. he discovers hazel and he grows to love her, but the darkness still makes him feel more safe than any camp can. but then he’s in tartarus and he’s being told that he’s perfect because he’s suffered so much, and all of the pain is thrown back in his face. he’s still recovering from hell when the athena parthenos becomes his responsibility, and he can feel his literal soul being stripped away from his body, and he can feel the very thing that he trusted so much tearing him apart. he’s about to fade away and he’s yanked back to life, and even when they arrive back at camp he’s told that he’s still on brink of being claimed by the darkness. his boyfriend may be the very opposite of the dark, but he still dreams of entering the shadows and never coming back.

reyna is afraid of losing her home. it happened in puerto rico, when she accidentally vaporized her father’s mania. although it had been an abusive household, it was the only thing she ever knew. and then she found a safe haven with hylla at circe’s spa. she lived there, free from war and from abuse until blackbeard was released. her second home was destroyed, and she had to fight to escape. her sister, her only family, went her own way, leaving reyna to find refuge at camp jupiter. she makes friends and the legion becomes her family, and she’s praetor and life is great until jason disappears. new rome is on the brink of destruction constantly, and reyna finds herself unable to stop the threats. she has worked so hard to create a family for herself, and after nearly losing everything, she finds that she has two homes— camp jupiter and camp half-blood. yet she notices how she’s still extra weary, making sure there are extra guards and that no one loses their edge, because if reyna loses this home, she’ll have nothing left.

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