Chapter Text
Awareness came to Luke gradually, nebulous and indistinct. Trying to hold onto the slippery rope of his consciousness was like trying to wade through a muddy pond, slow and tedious; nevertheless, with great effort he managed to open his eyes.
This would normally be fine, save for the fact that he’d never expected to wake up at all.
Where am I?
He found himself lying flat on his back, the sky in his eyes. He stared up at it dazedly, transfixed by the wide cloudless expanse of robin’s-egg blue, beautiful and boundless. A slight breeze whistled through the air, cool and sweet; a flock of migrating birds passed by overhead. The sun shone brilliantly, casting gentle golden rays on his face.
The sky. It’s a sight that he’d never thought he’d see again — never thought he'd deserved to see again.
But where was this place? And how did he get here?
Think. What's the last thing you remember? He closed his eyes, focusing, and the memories came flooding in like a tidal wave: he remembered standing in the ruins of Olympus, sword in hand, wresting those precious few seconds of freedom from Kronos’ possession. Pleading with Annabeth and Percy to trust him, just one last time, and the sheer relief that had followed, so great that he could have wept, when they had.
Grasping Annabeth's dagger — and in that moment he'd known, cursed blade shall reap — and plunging it into his side. Closing his eyes with the knowledge that at least, for once in his godsforsaken life, that he'd done the right thing.
Then, nothing.
Which took him to this moment — or rather, the crux of the issue.
I'm supposed to be dead. So why wasn't he? This couldn't possibly be the Fields of Punishment — he'd indulged Annabeth when she told him he'd get Elysium, but Luke knew it would take nothing short of a divine miracle for him to get even Asphodel. And the gods were running a little short on those, these days.
Was he not dead after all? Did Annabeth and Percy manage to save him? He couldn't remember anything after he closed his eyes. But then again, if those two had saved him…why did they dump him here?
And where, he thought, is ‘here’?
Gingerly, he propped himself up into a sitting position, palms levered flat on the ground — the forest ground , he realised, as he took a cursory look at his surroundings. Lush vegetation surrounded him on all sides, bounded by broad, towering trees whose branches reached high into the sky. Luke himself was sitting on a field dotted with flowers, small and bright.
It was beautiful — picturesque, even. And…familiar?
Why would it be familiar?
He looked up at the looming mountain up above, squinting in thought, only to be hit with a sense of déjà vu so strong that it almost knocked him flat on his back again.
I've been here before.
How? Why? Luke was positive that he'd never seen this place in his life — not that that was a great feat, considering that he'd rarely left Camp after…
(Heart pounding in his ears and the dragon roars and that is Ada and Danny dead dead dead his eye hurts so much they sent them all here to die and he thinks he’s going to die too he's so fucking scared and he screams and cries for someone anyone but nobody came nobody came)
Well. After.
He stared up at the mountain in pensive consideration, before realisation slammed into him with the force of an oncoming train.
He didn't recognise this field he was sitting in, but that mountain — he knew that mountain.
Mount Tamalpais. The entrance to not only Mount Orthys, but also…the Garden of Hesperides.
(Blood blood blood so much blood in his eyes on his hands in the crevices of his nails Ada is looking at him with her empty empty empty eyes and Danny's guts are strewn on the ground and he still has the godsdamnned apple in his hand —)
His breath froze in his throat. He tried to pull air into his lungs, but it was like they were filled with liquid cement; his breaths came in short, stuttered gasps as he scrambled backwards, hands clawing at grass and fresh soil.
I have to leave. I can't stay here. I can't stay here —
Black fuzzy spots dotted his vision. He felt strangely lightheaded and dizzy; there was a faint ringing in his ears that grew louder with every minute. His chest felt painfully tight.
He tried taking another breath, but he couldn’t breathe —
Wait. What was that?
Something rectangular and white caught his eye, too smooth and cut to be something that belonged in nature. It was so strange that it caught Luke off guard, but he appreciated the distraction; using the white object as a tether, he slowly focused his breathing until at least he wasn’t on the verge of passing out. That would be an embarrassing way to be found.
A minute passed. Then another, as Luke caught his breath.
Well then, he thought, as soon as he could breathe normally again. Might as well see what it is.
To his surprise, when he turned in the direction of the white object, he saw a gravestone of pure white marble. It was unmarked by any ornate decorations, but the marble looked expensive; whoever had commissioned this gravestone had certainly spared no expense. A sprig of beautiful yellow and pink flowers grew next to the grave. Luke didn’t know much about flowers, but he thought they looked like orchids.
Just as he was about to look away, a glint of something golden amongst the orchids caught his eye. Curious, he brushed aside the orchids —
Is - is that my sword?
It was. Luke took it hesitatingly, disbelief written clearly on his face. It wasn’t Backbiter — that sword was an ugly, cruel thing, a remnant of worse times, and he was glad to be rid of it — but rather his old sword, the one he had used before he’d turned to Kronos. It gleamed brightly in his hands, as well-cared for as the day he’d left it in his cabin room and stepped out from Camp, never to return.
What in the name of Hades was it doing here? And why was it next to this gravestone?
Why on earth was a gravestone here, of all places, anyway?
He looked towards the grave, but a sudden, intense chill crashed over him. He shuddered, immediately wrapping his arms around himself as his teeth chattered furiously. He felt like someone had thrown him into the depths of the icy ocean, rendering his body numb with cold.
Fuck. What was that? He reflexively stumbled away from the grave, hand still clenched tightly around the handle of his sword. Strangely, the further he got away from the grave, the less cold he felt, until finally he felt that he could finally move his limbs without feeling the pinpricks of numbness in his flesh.
…Okay. No investigating the weird gravestone. Luke had no idea what had just happened, but he’d seen too much strange shit to question it. Clearly, that gravestone was bad news — bad juju, as Travis might say (don’t think of him now) — if he felt like he’d taken a dip in the Arctic Sea just by trying to take a look at it, and he wasn’t about to go against his instincts.
Regardless, he had to get out of here first. Everything else could wait.
And then where will you go? Another voice at the back of his head murmured. This time, it sounded like Kronos, sibilant and dark. ‘Hero’ of the prophecy or not, you're still a traitor. The moment someone finds you, god or demigod, you'll be hanged, drawn, and quartered. And they will be right to do so.
Luke didn't have an answer for that. It was true; even if he had somehow been saved, that didn't change the fact that he had turned against Olympus, had killed so many demigods in his pursuit for rebellion. He hadn't wanted to — of course he hadn't —, but even if his hands hadn’t personally wielded the knife that killed them, he was nevertheless guilty. He would never be welcome, no matter where he went.
Not even Thalia —
No. Don’t think of her now.
Suddenly, he thought of his mother. When had he last seen her?
He remembered returning to his childhood home to see her one last time, to ask for her blessing to receive the Curse of Achilles. She had smiled up at him, grey eyes glassy with the prophecies that ruined her life, a platter of burnt cookies in her hand. He could barely stand to look at her when she looked at him like that. When she looked at him like she almost recognised him, he wished she would scream at him instead.
She’d agreed, because of course she did. And when she had, Luke had stood up to leave, not wanting to spend another minute in the empty shell of the house he’d grown up in, with the empty shell of the woman he’d known as his mother.
I love you, she’d said, when he left. And Luke had shut the door behind him, not looking back. He never saw her again.
He wanted to see her, he realised. Maybe it was guilt for never returning to take care of her, as a good son should have. Maybe it was regret. But he wanted to see her face, before he was eventually found. To talk to her, even though he knew she wouldn’t hear him, not really. To eat one of her burnt cookies, and drink one of her overfull cups of Kool-Aid, the way she always served it to him as a child.
Maybe it was a combination of the two. He wasn't sure if he even had the right to, anymore, but he just knew that he wanted to see her again.
And besides, what did he have to lose?
Mount Tamalpais, where he was right now, was in California. His childhood home was in Westport, Connecticut. He took a moment to calculate the distance — just as Percy could pinpoint any location on the seas, an advantage of being a child of Hermes was that he could never lose his way on land —; the trip was roughly 2,970 miles.
A long way away. Even by plane, it would be an 8-hour flight — and Luke, with neither money nor identification documents, had no hope of boarding a plane anywhere. Well, the money wouldn’t be an issue; it was the identification documents that were slightly trickier.
That was fine. Luke was used to travelling rough. If he couldn’t catch a flight, he’d just have to take the long way there.
He might not even make it halfway there before he was caught — but Luke was far past caring now. No matter what he did, he was a dead man walking; he wanted to spend his remaining time in the mortal world doing something he wanted, for once. Not for Kronos, not for the gods. Something purely for himself.
And he wanted to see his mother, one last time.
He took a deep breath, tightened his grip on his sword, and stood up.
First thing's first, he thought, I'll need a ride.
The field of flowers swayed peacefully in the wind, undeterred by the hurried departure of the demigod that had recently occupied it. The birds nesting in the trees chirped happily, and the creatures living in the surrounding forest ran to and fro, carrying on with their lives.
Then —
A hush fell over the field, thick and heavy. The nearby birdsong cut off abruptly, frozen into silence; the forest rustled with sudden motion as its denizens frantically scurried back into their homes. The air was still.
It was as if the entire field was holding its breath in trepidation, as it waited for something to arrive.
A man appeared in the centre of the field. He wore a casual blue shirt unbuttoned at the chest over a pair of pale linen trousers, and his feet were clad in simple strapped sandals. Paired with the wide-brimmed straw hat perched over his dark curls, the angle obscuring the upper half of his face, he almost looked like a tourist who had wandered in by accident.
Then he tilted his hat, revealing his face, and any possibility of that was dispersed by his pupiless eyes: slates of solid, glacial blue set in a youngish face that belied his age. His features were handsome, though strangely flawless in the way that no human could be — no one who laid eyes on him for more than a passing glance could ever mistake him for anything other than a god.
“Someone was here,” he muttered to himself. “A god? No. A mortal.”
The air thrummed with power, thick and oppressive, as perfect white teeth bared into a snarl.
“Who?”
He took a step forward —
And paused.
His gaze snapped to the polished gravestone standing innocuously at the field. His eyes flickered over the bare slab, searching for something by the grave that should have been there.
Realisation passed over his face.
In the next moment, the air, which had buzzed with barely restrained divinity, exploded outwards with the force of a localised detonation. It was fortunate that there were no mortals in the vicinity; for if there had been, they would have been killed instantly by the weight of his unchecked fury.
Not that the god would have cared; he was far too preoccupied to even spare a thought for any mortals nearby.
“They come here,” he said quietly, “and not only intrude, but also steal what belongs to my son?”
He seethed, murderous rage etched in every line of his face. “How DARE they?”
His fingers twitched, like he was physically holding himself back from lashing out, carving swathes of devastation into the earth. The surrounding trees and vegetation bowed under his anger, trembling under its crushing weight; the land shook imperceptibly, as if bracing itself.
But just as he looked at the gravestone again, he noticed something else. The grass and soil near the grave looked as though it had been disturbed, seeming as though someone had raked their fingers through it.
And a distance away from that spot...those were footprints, leading out of the field and away from the mountain.
He stilled.
Slowly, the oppressive weight of his power leached from the air, as he began to draw back his divinity. Like spooling a length of thread, little by little his divinity disappeared back under the skin of his mortal vessel, until eventually his aura once again settled into unassuming normality. The glow in his eyes faded, human pupils returning to his irises. Compared to the state he'd been in when he'd first arrived, now he could almost pass for a mortal.
His eyes glinted, calculating.
The footprints were of a mortal male's approximately 6 feet in height. The indentations left behind from the left footprints were just slightly deeper than the right — a discrepancy so small that no mortal eye would have noticed it, but a discrepancy nonetheless. Was the thief injured on his right side? Or did they have weakened vision in their right eye?
No matter. He would find out eventually.
“It seems I've been too lenient on the mortals lately,” he said slowly, almost consideringly, “for them to have the gall to steal from me.”
He brought his fingers to his lips and whistled. From the sky swept a large hawk, which obediently perched on his outstretched arm. The hawk was average in size, but its talons were sharpened to a razor-point, and its beady eyes gleamed with unusual intelligence.
The god brushed his fingers against the hawk's head.
“Go,” he said, “and find any traces of the thief that you can. Issue a quest on my behalf if you must; Dionysus will know what to do. I will conduct my own search separately.”
"And if you find the thief..." His expression darkened, his lips twisting into a sneer. "Bring them to me. Death will be a kindness, after I'm done with them."
The hawk cawed in acquiescence, and took to the sky. With a few flaps of its wings, it was gone.
The god watched it leave, then turned to the grave in front of him.
His gaze softened. Kneeling down, he reached out to briefly trace the letters carved on the surface of the gravestone; the motion was practised, as if he had done this many times before.
“I'll be back, son,” he murmured.
He stood up again. In the blink of an eye, he disappeared.
He left behind the gravestone, which continued to stand amidst the field of flowers. Carved into the marble, in beautiful, delicate script, read the name Luke Castellan.
And in his golden palace, high in the sky, the Sun God Apollo dreamt.
