The Hard Way (A Female Percy Jackson/ Young Justice Crossover)

13

A deep blue rose sat on the daughter of Poseidon's hand in a pile snow that held it above her touch. Trickles of cool water ran down her warm hands and sank into her rapidly drying skin. She stared at the royal blue flower as the leaves on the underside of the petals crumbled. Then slowly the petals followed suit as the snow remains of the leaves melted.

The kneeling girl prepared to watch the rose snow melt into her skin as well, but it never happened. A pile of cold white powder sat unmoving on her palms, crumbling only when she moved. So she moved her hands together—chalky and dry, nothing like snow. The powder stuck to her like flour or ash. And it itched and stung her cracking skin as it drained all moisture.

She brushed her hands out in the darkness that shrouded her, painting the night black shadows grey like a fog. It smelled sweet, but it clogged in her throat and eyes, and she could still feel it on her raw flesh. Her skin felt so dry, she wasn't sure she could move more than hunching over and leaning on the ground. Wheezing for breath, she knew it wouldn't be long before she suffocated in the darkness of this damned place...

———

Roy was gone when Percy woke up the next morning. Probably to meet Oliver, as were the plans he had spoken of the night prior. And despite the exciting news of having her first boyfriend, she couldn't help but feel alone and not just in the sense of the empty apartment. She had another nightmare, not unlike the others but different in it's own right. The darkness haunted her, hanging over her head like a dark cloud; it was blacker than Nyx in Tartarus.

Rolling to her side, she thought about Leo for a moment and wondered if he thought about the darkness too. She was still terrified for him, always, and she'd always love him. Sometimes it felt like he was the last one in the world who knew the person she used to be; he was certainly the closest anyone could get to understanding what she had gone through. Within her heart, she knew she never should have split up from him. Perhaps if he were here this part of life wouldn't seem so foreign and unreal now.

She was torn on the inside; restless, as if some piece of her that had broken off in Athens was screaming for her to come back for it. Unless a sliver of the darkness there had attached itself to her instead. And now it was clinging to her everywhere she went, slowly becoming an attached part of her. But it was such a dark piece that she feared it might rot the pieces of herself she still had. If that happened, she would be nothing but a dry husk of her former self. Sometimes when she looked at her past, there was only the hero, standing tall and proud, a shield for more important beings. In the tall shadow of history, she was not a person, not a child, but a soldier, to be used and expended for a cause only hers by inheritance. And just as the heroes before her were, she was beaten into the ground by the Fates and the gods alike. She was no hero anymore. They had cut her down at the knees and now she couldn't even be bothered to wonder if the black smoke had cleared all the way back in Athens. And she would keep calling it that even though it was definitely not smoke. Smoke doesn't trap you or follow you, torment you...

She had to get out of this fucking apartment or she was sure her head would explode.

There was a number in her phone for Orin from when he called her before. They should probably talk, for one about yesterday. But Percy's own intense desire to know about Leo burned under her ribs. Since, she couldn't IM, she dialed her brother. And it went to voicemail after a ring and a half. The girl frowned at her phone and recorded a message requesting a meeting at the mountain some time today. But she didn't specify time because she didn't know when he would get the message, if we would get it.

Percy, in Roy's clothes, house, and city felt significantly different from her usual self. She had never felt particularly uncomfortable in other people's clothes, but since it had become a more common practice for her, she felt a newfound desire to wear her own things.