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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 )

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voice

[marred]

[ if percy expects luke to be elated at the news, he's sorely misread the luke castellan wikipedia page. ]

And she'll be gone in the blink of an eye. [ it isn't sarcasm that laces his tone, but dejection. luke rarely gives up; he fights for what he wants and what he believes in, it having ultimately lead to his own death. but when it comes to annabeth chase in the drabwurld, there's only so many times he can lose her and try to rebuild their friendship before he has to throw in the towel. it hurts to see her look upon him as though he's a stranger, as though she expects him to not be the boy she remembers. it's a lot harder for him to retrace his steps when he has made too much progress to only watch it swirl down the drain so fast not even his own agile movements have any hope of stopping it. ]

[ loss and luke are good friends, but it's a friend he wishes to push into the awaiting claws of a three-headed dragon to watch it become maimed. hope is a fickle stranger to him, one he doesn't wish to welcome in again after he has only been met with disappointment and heartache with each step he makes. he knows how to deal with loss all too well, hermes equipping him with such a skill without meaning to, but being optimistic when he only knows pessimism is too hard. ]

[ luke is too afraid to be rejected again, especially given the chance to make it right. third times the charm, but ladon had three heads and all three had zoned in on him to tear him apart. ]

Enjoy your time with your girlfriend.

voice

[quest]

[ and he gets it, he does, because losing Annabeth last month wasn't a first for some of them. Clarisse, Rachel, and Luke had all seen her come and go twice before this, and while Percy couldn't ever fathom giving up and resigning himself to know she'd just disappear before he did, he can understand why the others might. why it gets too hard for them.

especially Luke.

you can only have the conversation of "sorry that a titan lord almost made me kill you and destroy the world" so many times before it wears you down. and Percy can't fault him for that, not really. except- except he knows Annabeth, he knows how this is going to go. ]

She's going to want to see you, man. I get that it sucks watching her come and go, it's really hard, and you've had to do it more than once. But, y'know, you and Thalia are still her family in a lot of ways- [ a quiet huff. ] -so I know it's a lot to ask, but try not to shut her out?

voice

[marred]

[ manipulating locks is his forte. he can easily lock himself away with a flick of his wrist and no one is able to ever locate him again. it's what had happened the first time she had gone, he'd fled to the station for a good two months with no one really bothering to knock upon his door and see if he was okay. shutting people out is what he does best; when he lets them in, everything goes to cow shit. ]

Sure. [ he's not committing to it, it a little too flippant. percy will never understand what it's like. he's dead. gone. kaput. annabeth can come and go as she pleases, in this world or theirs, but for luke, she's intangible to him now. he can never hope to reach out and grasp her ever again. it's a lot harder for him than it is for anyone else, having to relive, over and over, i'm not kronos and apologising until his own throat is raw. it's tiring; he only has so much left to give before he's nothing but the shell kronos had longed for him to be. ]

[ and he's afraid of it happening again, as people always leave to never come back. it's the way luke castellan's life has unfolded, he can be easily surrounded by people, but they'll all eventually leave him. dad, mom, chris, his friends, his family — it's luke who remains by himself, now, never the kid who was loved, just the one that people were saddled with. he has very little faith in things, but annabeth not leaving after a few days or a month is not one of them. good things don't happen to boys like him — after what he's done, he doesn't deserve percy's forgiveness or anyone else's, especially hers when he had broken the one promise he had vowed to uphold until his dying breath. ]

voice

[quest]

[ and Percy knows that he's asking a lot, that he's asking so much of Luke to not close the door, to not shut Annabeth out. because if it's hard for Percy to have her come and go, he knows that it's impossible for Luke. because of the apologies, because of the countless conversations about how he's different, because it's Annabeth and he's sure that she's never reacted the same way twice.

Luke's response is as non-committal as they get, but Percy understands. he does. and maybe he can't empathize, maybe he doesn't understand completely, but he does understand the struggle of having someone important to you come and go like the tide. it's just that this is one that Percy can't control, can't reach for and pull back to him. ]

Thanks. For even trying, y'know. I get that it's not easy.

voice

[marred]

[ and all luke wants to do is run. as he'd been fearful of his mother, and what would befall her as he had come to realise he wasn't just an ordinary boy with a shit load of bad luck, he had taken to his powerful legs as he had understood at the age of seven they were the only reliable companion he had, guiding him to and from good and bad situations. proving such an assumption right, they'd pulled him away from a man he had yearned for for too long, to only see his prayers to gods he hadn't been sure were even real go unheard, as the pounding of his feet along pavement had been muffled to all those who had their ears pressed against the glass of the windows at the front of their houses to hear any sign of a burglar coming to prey upon them. ]

[ he wants to run — far, far away, somewhere off the map — to avoid the heartbreak of having a little girl who had once looked up at him and thought him capable of placing the moon in the sky if she had simply asked for it. it's a promise he had always given her, informing her she could have anything she wanted and he'd get it for her, from a tiffany's ring to a gameboy to even the newest barbie doll the aphrodite girls fawned over. nothing was off-limits for a girl who had to simply look at him and blink, encouraging him to damn the rules to see her smile, as the world had gifted her a father who loved her and a rarity in the form of a mother loving her completely, but had failed in giving her the tools in how to appreciate or even work with it. she'd been given everything she couldn't put her hands to to create, but he'd simply been her thief who had provided her with the tools to build her own castle as she had seen fit. ]

[ but she had built him one, and with her coming and going, it only decimates what she begins to repair, albeit slowly, leaving him homeless and half-complete as she ebbs to and fro like the tide. tickling his toes to pull away when she looks up and realises it's him, the boy who had transformed into an unrecognisable monster. ] Uh huh. [ exasperation lays thickly on the two syllables as he sighs out, ready to drop his locket and bolt out the door. ] There's no need to thank me. I haven't done anything.