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[marred]

( AUDIO | TEXT | VIDEO | ACTION | GEORGE AND MARTHA | ETC )

( identifiers: luke castellan | ophiotaurus | αλεπού (the fox) | george and martha through luke castellan || LOCKET + COMPASS )

Comments

audio.

[marred]

[ luke's quiet for a very long time. if it weren't for the following sound, perhaps percy would think he's hung up. martha gasps. he doesn't even turn to look toward the staff, the home of two of his only close friends in drabwurld. her voice is quiet where his is non-existent, ] Luke?

[ as far as he's concerned, those two girls will think more about how he had betrayed them than his abilities. the last time he'd seen annabeth, she'd been hurt and exhausted at the feast. her shard had been the last part of her he had selfishly kept, refusing to even let percy in on what he had taken from her (what she had left behind). he still doesn't want to tell him he'd thieved that from her room, too. he may be proud of his abilities, but he isn't stupid enough to leave himself too vulnerable to a kid who would take the shard from him if he so much as hinted he had it in his possession. ]

[ and thalia ... ]

[ he's been thinking of her less and less, a contrast to how it'd been at camp where all he could do was think about her being trapped within that tree, alive but barely living. it's a dagger to his chest all over again. still, even to this day, he feels the impulse to give her the world if she were to ask him to. he wants to leave his suite and see to them, falling back into a role he has no right to reclaim, but he stays where he is, stubborn, anchored down by his own anger as he isn't quite sure what to think. ]

[ he doesn't want to face them, that's the problem. ]

I can steal a moon, Percy. [ he sounds angry. ] I'm dead to them. You forget about that, too? I'm old news. Four years kind of makes that whole hero of the prophecy seem a little insignificant in hindsight, doesn't it?

audio.

[quest]

Yeah. You're dead to all of us, Luke. And instead of trying to get a second chance to see the people who called you family, you're making excuses.

[ he finds it all too easy to get irritated about it, to be frustrated, because had their situations been reversed, he's not sure he could have kept his distance from people who had been that important to him at one point or another. if he'd died in the Titan War, if he died at the end of the Giants War -- no matter what, he'd always want to see those people again.

(he knows it isn't that easy, knows that Luke has traitor etched through him from bad choices piled upon bad treatment by people who should have done better by him. but it's still impossible for Percy to consider, to think that Luke would rather avoid them.)

there's a slow exhale, like maybe he realizes he can't push him into this the way he'd hoped. ]

Look, man. We could use your help. I don't think anyone but you could handle doing this, and without you- We're all running right into a fight without someone to count on to bring the moon back. [ a beat. ] If you decide not to come, I'll let you know if we all survive, okay?

disconnect.

[marred]

[ called. it's something so minor to nitpick on, but called is past tense. do they regard him as family now, even years after he's gone? does anyone actually think of him? if anyone were to think back on the boy who had instigated and stopped the titan war, they'd call him a traitor to his own people. what kind of boy takes a blade against his own family? one who is too lost to see the road before him, tripping over uproots and vines and stones peppering the road he takes. but no one will look upon him with a soft expression, retelling his story as if it's a pitiful thing and a lesson to teach other demigods rather than it being something those who recall it learn from themselves. ]

[ of course, it's an excuse. luke's the god of making them, knowing it'll assist him in worming his way out of travelling down roads he doesn't know how to navigate. this particular path is one he can do quite well, but with the anger thrumming beneath his skin, he knows it's a path he has travelled along with his feet stomping into the earth before. a part of him doesn't wish to flank their sides in case they see it to, the way he's unravelling as he had done so quietly years before. he can feel it where they may not be able to see it, consistently blind to the dead boy none of them particularly see as their friends flock to the drabwurld and steer them far from where he happens to be. ]

[ he wants to stomp percy's faith in him out. rather than confirm he's in caer glaem and about to take to searching for the symbol of artemis, he decides against it. he's only useful for the god he's born from, with his tricks of trade and his ability to navigate and run and deliver prized parcels without so much as getting a flat tire or even a broken bone as he travels upon rocky and unfamiliar terrain. ]

[ heroes always survive; it's the villains who perish and are only resurrected when they're required. like now. ]

[ tersely, ] Good luck being a hero.

[ he hangs up. ]