Teacher, Not Hero (femPercy Jackson X YJ)

Fifty-Five: Something Worth Fighting For

T.W. bc this one is just a tad *violent*

Also, guess who's still alive lmao

Shout out to the person who DMd me yesterday. I didn't respond to you but you encouraged me to write this bc you were so nice so thank you and I hope you are doing better emotionally, you know who you are.

3rd. P.O.V:

Silence.

Silence was something that Percy had always been fascinated with.

And terrified of.

The idea of absolute soundlessness.

It didn't really exist. At least, no where on Earth.

Maybe not anywhere.

To experience silence, you would have to find some place that was filled with absolutely nothing. No trees. No water. No wind. No earth sifting ever so slowly.

No life.

Even then, it would never be possible because your very existence would break the quiet. Your breathing. Your heart beat. The sound of your blood moving through your body.

Silence.

She wondered what it would sound like.

Sometimes she felt like she got close. Close to experiencing complete soundlessness.

Funny enough, she usually felt this way when what was happening around her was so loud.

It happened for the first time when she was 6.

When the cheering jabs of Gabe and his friends echoed in her ears.

When the dim lights in the house seemed so bright and she had to close her eyes so things would stop looking so blurry.

When the t.v. blared in the background and the coffee table fell over, poker chips clattering to the ground and beer bottles shattering on the floor.

When the front door slammed open and her mother came in screaming, her shoes hitting the entry way tile and her purse smashing against the cheep counter top before careening to the floor. Her lip stick falling out, the cap breaking, and the soft red pigment crushing into the fraying carpet.

When everything blurred together and rang in her ears and her mind clouded over with what she now knows was her first concussion.

When the burning pain across her jaw flared up and seemed to seep into her cells, crawling like spiders across her face, down her neck and spine, blooming into a different kind of pain in her chest.

Pain that told her that everything was different now and it wasn't ever going to change back to the way it should have been.

The second time Percy Jackson thought she heard silence was when she was 12.

When her vision was clouded with rain and mud coated her clothes, hair, and skin.

When dread wrapped around her bone marrow and slowly etched itself into her heart and never really left.

When she dragged Grover through the skylight of Gabe's trashed Camaro, thunder blending with her terrified screams as her mother was crushed.

When her face twisted into horror as her body dissolved into powder that mixed with raid, blood, and mud and Percy was left with a bleeding friend, a wrecked car, and a monster different than the ones she was used to.

(But no less horrible.)

It happened again at 14.

When Annabeth lay sprawled out, barely breathing.

When Artemis was locked in combat with a titan.

When her friends and comrades raged around her and the sounds of war echoed across the mountain.

When she kneeled in a basin of fine gravel and blood and felt tears trickle down her face and her hands felt like the were breaking as she held up the sky. 

When she could only watch as Zoë Nightshade fell.

When blood seemed to fill her ears and her vision swam in different shades of black and her body felt like it was being broken in everyway possible as her hair slowly turned grey.

When all she could think was that she was going to die.

When fire surrounded her and thousands of monsters cheered for her death and all she could do was scream as she tore Mount Saint Helens down.

When she sank in the cold water, the heat of an explosion above her, shrapnel falling into the water with her, Beckendorf's last words ringing in her ears.

When the screams of the damned filled her ears and cold water burned all around her and misery seeped into her soul as her skin hardened into something invincible.

When Annabeth lay at her feet, a dagger meant for Percy dripping with poison was thrust into her side and all the daughter of Poseidon could do when hold her sword and pray Annabeth stayed alive.

When she handed her only weapon to Luke. When she watched as he killed himself for Olympus. When she let him.

When the last thing she saw was Annabeth's outstretched hand, pure horror on her face, illuminated by the red glow of the pit as she screamed her name, the words falling from her lips as Percy fell from the edge of the world - with no real intention of coming back.

When all she could do was smile up at the girl she loved, glad to have been able to save her just one more time.

Percy Jackson had had a lot of moments close to silence.

When the world slowed down and everything around her got so loud it blended into a white noise that seemed to cancel itself out.

She looked down to the sword in her stomach.

The blade pushing past her hands as the blade cut through her palms to the bone in her effort to stop it.

The blade ripping a hole at the base of her diaphragm, missing both her ribs and lungs but going straight through her liver.

Blood dripped from her lips.

The screams of her kiddies fizzing in her ears.

Her eye sight blurring as a mask of half orange - half black seemed to mock her; seemed to grin in satisfaction despite its expressionless face.

A deep voice filtered through the mask of the man in front of her, the words muffled, only adding to the cacophony around her.

"I'm not sure what makes you so special, but it doesn't matter anymore..."

The sword pushed further into her torso. She fought back a cough of blood.

Pain fogged her mind and numbness began to crawl through her body, stemming from the wound.

The wound.

Focus, Jackson.

Her bloody lips started to stretch into a smile.

He missed her spine.

He missed her aorta.

He missed her stomach and spleen.

For an assassin;

He was pretty shit at his job.

This moment was far from silence.

"...It's time for you to see the Light."

And then she moved.