A Crown of Golden Leaves: A Percy Jackson Fanfiction

Caput LVI: Move Along

"Life moves on and so should we" - Spencer Johnson

Caput LXI: Move Along

When Percy woke up the next morning, he let out a groan and felt tempted to roll over and go back to sleep.

Only to realize that Annabeth wasn't sleeping next to him.

Then he realized that he had practically ran away from his people. Guilt ripped through him as he fell back against the ground.

~...~

Okay.

So maybe he should have planned this a little better.

Percy took a deep breath as he watched the mercenaries look around, trying to find him, and he prepared to stay in the tree for a long time.

~...~

It was odd, but alone, Percy barely attracted any of those monstrous creatures Nox sent after them day after day after week. Sure, he had to keep his head on his shoulders and watch out for mercenaries, but he had only run into one monster, and he was pretty sure that it hadn't been sent after him deliberately.

He set traps for game like Thalia had taught him and created a smokeless fire like how Jason had taught him when there had been assassins in court and his pater had sent him away.

Pater...

He sank back onto his heels and looked up at the full moon.

Look at where we are now, he thought glumly.

~...~

"Lady Annabeth!" the man sounded surprised and Annabeth pulled her sword away from his throat so that it wouldn't draw blood. She narrowed her eyes at him, and he said, "Heir Apparent Perseus—we heard that he was fighting back."

What? She thought blankly, pulling back completely. No he's not. He ran away.

"There's more of us, we've been trying to find you for the last several months. You've been fighting Nox, haven't you? You're going to take Roma back."

He looked so earnestly hopeful. She looked back at Reyna who shrugged one shoulder, looking nervous.

"I suppose it looks that way."

"Wait, you ... weren't?"

Annabeth's first impulse was to say that they weren't, but something held her back. Perhaps it was the hours spent not sleeping at night. Perhaps it was the need to fight back against Nyx; to prove that she wasn't weak.

Perhaps she didn't want her life to go to waste. If she was going to die then she was going to die and there was ... there was nothing she could do about it.

Everyone dies, she thought. I never would have expected Piper to die so young, or Jason. I might live longer than they did.

She just knew that she was dying, but ... there wasn't really any difference between her or anyone else, was there? From the day they were born, they lived on borrowed time and at some point, they would have to return to earth. They just weren't as aware of it as she was.

The only difference between her and everyone else was that she was allowing death to scare her. She was ... she was scared of dying. She didn't want to die. She didn't want to be forgotten.

She didn't want to roll over either, and wait for her death. She didn't want Nyx to walk over her and take her country from her hands.

She wanted to do something with her life, no matter how short it was, and if this was it, then so be it.

"Perseus is gathering intelligence for our forces," she said, and Reyna's gaze was startled. She steeled herself. "We're going to take back Roma."

Author's Note: Hi. So. 

I'm going to post everything that I had written in their unedited, unbeta'ed, unrevised glory. I'll also post the outline that I made for this story when I was writing it so that you can fill in the blanks between the scenes that I didn't flesh out when I was drafting this last section. 

I know that, for those of you who stuck with ACOGL throughout the years, that this is going to be a lackluster finish. Honestly, it'll probably ruin what came before this. But honestly? I can't bring myself to finish this fully revised and edited. When I started writing this story, I was around 14 or 15, give or take. I've changed a lot since then, and I don't think that I can do what I had planned proper justice; I'm just at a completely different stage of my life.  

I enjoyed writing this story, but I don't have the time, mental energy, or investment to polish it when, to be frank, I want to write other things-- and I don't want to have this story hanging over me for another 2 years while I wait for that motivation to come. 

So, y'all are about to get a bunch of updates.