pjo: solace in scattered breadcrumbs

solace in scattered breadcrumbs
Nico/Percy with implied Luke/Percy | PG-13 | 3,864 words
If anything, Percy has learned that being looked up to and being looked after are two entirely different things and that they can never co-exist fully.

Notes: Takes place after the fifth book, but possibly not compatible. I haven't finished the fifth book, so I'm not sure. Also, this is something of a character study of Percy, and in a way, it's a bit Percy-centric. 

It takes a while to recover from, well, that, and it’s not as if anyone is blaming Percy, not at all. It’s just that when the camp hero who led them to hell and back is breaking down in the aftermath, it means that there is nobody around to help pick up the pieces.

Percy has his own debris to sweep away after that, and he’s simply too exhausted to even care about dusting the dirt off of himself that he cannot even fathom helping somebody else up from the ground.

But yet, he does.

He takes a few massive steps back from his own body and mind and looks objectively at everything. There are dead bodies, too many of them, so many that could’ve been saved if only...

No. He cannot allow his mind to wander down that road, and though he knows this, he still feels as though it was his job to save Luke along with everybody else. He’s supposed to be the hero after all; he should’ve found a way to save everyone.

It’s a dark and dangerous path to go down, and Percy knows this. Like a steep hill leading down into the depths of the underworld but entirely unlit without a ferryman to steer him in the right direction to get where he’s supposed to be heading. It’s darkness and it’s like he’s stuck wandering around in the black without a visible way out.

As any decent hero worth even half his weight, Percy puts himself last; he puts everyone else ahead of him. Instead of taking inventory on himself—still breathing, heart beating?—he offers his hand to every grounded demi-god, lifting them up again, his biceps pulling against their weight and gravity’s added wrath as the heels of his feet dig into the ground that is littered with wreckage. He continues to ignore the slowing of his own breath and the scattered beating of his heart as he is uneasy on his feet until every single demi-god that was on that battlefield and survived is back on their own two feet...or whatever’s possible.

Percy stares into the eyes of many scared teenagers that day, some of them older than him and some too young to have seen what they did. No matter their age or Olympian parent, they all look up to him with scared and frightened eyes, like sheep looking at the shepherd, and they ask him what to do now.

Although he hasn’t the slightest idea, he doesn’t let on that he’s as shaken as they are. He has to be their hero, and a hero does not break when his soldiers need him most. They start with cleaning up: the sooner the debris is cleared away, the sooner they’ll all be able to walk away from the past.

Percy’s never been much of a fan of the word “aftermath,” but now, now that he’s seen what the aftermath actually entails, he’s not just not a fan. He despises it; it’s a terrible word, and everything that it conveys is something he wouldn’t wish on his worst enemy—not even Luke, but after all of this, Percy’s come to realize that maybe he’s been biased when it came to Luke this entire time.

That’s when he remembers again, crouched on the ground and lifting a brick from some nearby building, that he couldn’t save Luke. They may have won the war, but, to Percy, it feels like the worst failure.

There’s something so bittersweet about being the winner...and the hero. And while he wishes with all his heart that he could give it back, rewind the past few years and make sure that the prophecy wasn’t about him, he knows that it had to be about him. They needed him as much as he needed to have a purpose. He only wishes he could give it back.

However, he thinks that wouldn’t go over too well. Hey, everyone, I’m sorry, but I don’t want to be the hero. You’ll have to find someone else. He can imagine the backlash he’d get for that, and it’s not a pleasant thought. At the same time, it’s infinitely more pleasant than this.

The next few weeks are a blur, just as they are for everyone else. But, possibly, things are more blurred and fragmented for Percy. They wouldn’t suspect that, though, and he does nothing to dispel the idea that he’s handling things okay.

To be honest, he doesn’t know if he could handle things at all because, let’s face it, he isn’t dealing with it. And while some people may think that ignoring something is entirely the same as dealing with it, Percy knows better.

It’s fucking unfortunate. He’s only sixteen, and already, he knows better.

But he’s the hero. And ignoring it is better than dealing with it, if dealing with it means breaking down. Heroes, if Percy has learned anything, do not break down. Heroes keep everyone else from breaking down, so that’s exactly what he does.

Every day is a new obstacle, another challenge for his war-torn and death-wracked soul, but he gets up every morning because he has to. By now, he is only too aware of what is expected from him, and after what the rest of the camp has been through, they cannot face another letdown.

It’s a “one day at a time” thing, and Percy’s okay with that. Each night, he goes to bed in an empty and lonely cabin wondering if he’ll be able to get up the next morning. He falls asleep to the sound of his breathing echoing through the room, and it’s his only indication of if he’s still alive. Every morning, he manages to get up because they need him—of course, they need him—and it’s only when he can feel the hardwood floor, cold beneath his bare feet, and can feel that his chest rises and falls as he walks does he acknowledge again that he’s still holding strong.
It’s a hard place for any hero to be, trapped in that gray area between victory and defeat; such a bittersweet taste in his mouth. He’s still alive, his soldiers are still alive, the rest of the world is, more or less, surviving along okay. Even so, he lost the person he had the strongest desire to save, he lost the right-hand soldier in his heart, he lost what he truly wished to save above all else.

And it fucking hurts, deeper than any cut of Kronos’ soul-reaping scythe, and there’s nothing Percy can do to stop the bleeding when he can’t even bring himself to make sure that he’s okay everyday.

In fact, it’s sort of the last thing on his checklist, so neglected and so overlooked, but Percy doesn’t have the energy to muster up to care about the fact that he’s last on his own list of things to check on.

In the mornings, things are quiet. Some campers go swimming to avoid everyone else, some sulk through breakfast, some don’t even wake up until they’re sure to be a few minutes less to their first lesson of the day.

Percy puts his arms around the shoulders of younger demi-gods more times than he can count. He’s resting a hand on the shoulder of older ones more often than he wants to know. There are tears, and they never seem to slow up, no matter how many times Percy wishes he had the heart to put a stop to the saltwater tears himself by way of his power. He never can manage to stop the tears, unless it’s with a sad smile or a hug or anything.

It’s only after the morning lessons and the sword-fighting lessons that he now leads—dredging up painful memories at the worst times—that he realizes that he’s doing okay. It’s usually at lunch, well after he’s paid his food to the gods, that he remembers that he’s still breathing and fighting through the day as he sits silently by himself, listening to the cool, grieving silence of the rest of the campers.

Meal times are much quieter these days; everything is much quieter now. Aphrodite’s daughters don’t find the same joy in frolicking by the lake and smiling at Percy when he goes for a morning swim. Apollo’s campers don’t play music quite as often, and when they do, it’s softer and more resigned. Campfires seem to burn duller, the crackling embers heard over the silence of the campers.

It’s a slow transiting from grieving to as-okay-as-you’ll-get, but it’s Percy’s responsibility, his duty, to see them all through it.

Even if he loses himself in the process.

Although he’s around the campers more than he ever was, although he’s physically closer to them than ever, he’s never felt so distant. He might hug Annabeth more, but his heart isn’t in it like it should be; when Grover gets to be a blubbering mess, Percy’s hand on his shoulder is steady but it doesn’t hold the same warm comfort.

He’s slowly pulling his way away from everyone, everything, and there’s nothing he can do to stop it. In order to do his job, to be their hero who they can all lean on, he needs to stay strong enough to support them all.

He knows well enough that he cannot support the rest of them when he cannot even stand on his own two feet. Percy’s unsure if he could stand up steady if he were truly dealing with things.

So he doesn’t, and he separates himself from everyone because, ironically enough, it’s the only way he can be there for them in the manner they need him.

If anything, Percy has learned that being looked up to and being looked after are two entirely different things and that they can never co-exist fully. He often wonders if Luke, as the leader of so many other tortured souls, ever felt the same way. Though it hurts to think that way, it’s the only way he can find solace. Because it reminds him that every hero—or villain—okay, every leader—can only be looked up to. It’s impossible for him to be looked after without having that delicate balance that centers on a hero thrown off.

Sometimes, however, there are those moments when people step out of line, moving forward to comfort Percy instead of the other way around. It feels wrong, though, to have another person’s hand on his shoulder or to be pulled tight against an older camper’s side with a strong arm around his shoulder. It feels wrong, and maybe it shouldn’t. Maybe they need to see him suffer too, so they know it’s okay to feel how they do. But it still feels wrong, and Percy thinks that it should: because it’s never okay for a hero to fall.

There are times when he almost wants to. Like every moment of every day. At some point, Percy stops thinking about every one else, having stepped so far back from his own being and stepped even further away from the others because auto-pilot is the only way he can bear the weight of pulling them up to their feet through the grief. It’s like the dead weight of all of the campers tugging down on his heart, threatening to drag him down if he doesn’t shake them off.

As it turns out, there is one time when Percy deems it almost acceptable to even approach the line that marks any one person’s descent into “breakdown” territory. He stays at camp that school year given the sudden influx of full-time campers and their need for Percy’s presence, and by the time the beginning of September rolls around, he’s not alone in his cabin every night.
While it sometimes helps to have someone else to lean your forehead against, it can also become too much. Percy’s had his heart ripped out enough already, thank you very much; he doesn’t quite need to have someone else giving him those heartbroken eyes—for a different reason, albeit—and seeing their eyes glaze over with something dangerously close to pity for him.

When the sun goes down earlier and earlier, it seems like Nico arrives later and later, but he never actually does; he’s always on time for Percy.

His first move is perpetually the same: he toes his sneakers off and leaves them near the foot of the bed. It’s an act that almost seems normal, like this is simple and easy and something not at all complicated, when it is just that. For a moment, Percy finds peace, watching Nico slip off his shoes and his shirt before walking for the bed.

Nico waits, always. He waits for Percy to pull back the sheets and move over enough so that Nico can comfortably lie down; some nights, it takes Percy a few moments, stumbling over his own thoughts, to move aside and other times, it’s instantaneous.

Nico always waits, because he will not stay with Percy unless Percy wants him to. He refuses to be just another burden on Percy’s long list, and by the time night approaches, Nico just knows that Percy is done with duty for the day.

It used to be that Nico had to lean in first, had to tentatively press his fingertips against Percy’s cool cheek and monitor the fleeting feelings that passed through Percy’s eyes. It used to be Nico who would gauge Percy’s state of being from afar whenever Percy didn’t even realize that he was failing to take care of himself. It used to be Nico who was dragging Percy up out of the raging ocean.

And sometimes, it still is Nico who has to save Percy. There are still those nights when Nico looks at Percy with those sad, sunken eyes, wishing that Percy wasn’t suffering. There are still those nights that Nico tries desperately to pull Percy’s soul to the surface of his skin, his lips firmly attached on Percy’s, as if he’s trying to suck the breath out of him.

Percy knows, somewhere in the back of his mind, that Nico isn’t sucking the air out of his lungs—he’s breathing it in. And it’s a relief to feel Nico searching for Percy’s soul, his fingertips reaching out and brushing across every inch of Percy that Percy will allow him to get to.

Still, sometimes, there are those nights when Percy has to make Nico stop. He always does, and though that night Percy locks himself away, only allowing Nico to burrow against his side under the covers, Nico always returns the next night.

It’s a slow boil, but eventually, some time around mid-November, Nico notices Percy’s first move back toward everything, and it’s not like this isn’t the first time and Nico just hasn’t noticed. No, Nico notices Percy’s first steps closer to the world the first time it happens because he’s been waiting, sitting patiently and measuring Percy’s movements—his very thoughts even.

As it turns out, in a quiet cabin, even emotions and thoughts echo loud enough for everyone to hear, louder than Percy wishes they would.

By the time Nico’s in the cabin that night, Percy is already scooted over, the sheets pushed back slightly, not enough to be an open invitation but not too little to be saying no. That night, Nico doesn’t wait patiently, doesn’t cock his head to one side in curiosity about the damaged boy in front of him. He crawls under the blankets and pulls them up, snuggling up while feeling an arm slither across his rib cage at the same time.

Just before Christmas, before Percy will be leaving for the holidays and not returning until after the new year is welcomed in, he makes the next move. It comes as a nice surprise to Nico, who was expected this to be a much longer haul than it might be shaping up to be.
Percy, who has taken to leaving the covers pushed back just enough to let Nico know it’s always okay for him to be there now, has never let much vulnerability show, to anyone since...then.

Though Nico knows what Percy is going through, he rarely lets Nico see it, and when Percy falls asleep that night, his lips ever-so-slightly swollen, he lets his head rest against Nico’s shoulder. Percy falls asleep first, and Nico falls asleep soon after him to the feeling of Percy’s breath ghosting over his arm.

That night, Nico takes note that, when Percy is sleeping, his face isn’t contorted or strained or faking a smile.

Holiday break isn’t good for either of them; Percy has nobody to stay with when the nights are long, and Nico knows there’s nothing he can do so many miles away.

The first week of January is difficult, and it’s obvious that they’ve taken a few steps backward as far as progress goes because Percy has taken however many steps back into himself—locked up in his own bulletproof shell to protect himself. Maybe Nico knows, and maybe he doesn’t, but in that shell, Percy doesn’t have to face Luke’s absence, and it’s easy to be there for the campers that way.

But what Percy misses while he’s stuck in his own world of safety for his own sake is that the campers are beginning to move on; they’re beginning to see life beyond the next day, feel something more than losing Luke and fellow demi-gods to a cruel Titan. He doesn’t realize that he might not have to hide away more, that the others might be strong enough to support themselves, and perhaps even him, as he finally delves into that world of grief.

It’s like starting all over, and Nico is oddly okay with that. He waits for Percy to move aside and push back the covers, he leans in to kiss him first, and he doesn’t push the issue when Percy shies away from Nico’s fingers as they move across his skin, his stomach, his back.

Once again, Nico can see Percy moving closer to something other than what he’s stuck by. When he does, Percy initiates things, he sometimes grabs Nico’s wrist when he gets up out of bed in the morning, insisting that he stay a few more moments. Other times, Percy kisses Nico back with a bit more of himself invested in the kiss than usual, or on occasion, Percy pulls Nico closer or pushes himself closer.

“I want to save you,” Nico whispers one night, his lips pressed against Percy’s temple.

Percy doesn’t move, and his breath doesn’t so much as hitch at those words like Nico had expected—he’d learned to expect the worse so things only go up from there. It’s not something that can be rushed; that would only make the recovery take longer than it would’ve in the first place, and he knows this.

“I’m thinking that I might let you,” Percy says back, his head near Nico’s chest. “You’re, well...I’m gonna need time, you know.”

Nico chuckles softly, his fingers moving through Percy’s hair which has grown out longer than Nico’s surprised he let it. “I figured. If you haven’t noticed, I’m giving you as much time as you need.” He makes sure not to say it harshly. He doesn’t mean it that way.

“I noticed, I just don’t know what to do with that. I don’t know what to do about anything anymore. Haven’t for a long time now.” Percy’s fingers take to drawing circles and patterns across Nico’s stomach, and he can feel the muscles flutter beneath his fingertips.

“You don’t need to know what to do, you just need to do something. Some time or another, you’ll have to face things, Percy. And I know that it’ll take time, but you need to know that nobody is planning on leaving you alone in grief. The other campers noticed too, and it’s alright to be upset. It doesn’t make you weak.”

Percy sighs, almost ready to lift his head and look Nico in the eyes, but he doesn’t. He’s feeling something close to content lying there, and he doesn’t want to give that up. “Heroes have to be strong, Nico. If I let this affect me too much, I won’t be strong.”

“But you’ve already let it affect you, Perce. You’ve let it force you into this curled up ball inside, and you let it push you away from everyone who wants to help you. This might’ve affected you more than if you just would’ve let yourself break with everyone else. And while you’re gonna have it harder now, nobody’s leaving you.” Nico lets his hand stop on Percy’s back, a persistent weight as he whispers, “I’m not leaving you.”

With those words, Percy lifts his head. Staring into Nico’s eyes, he gathers the strength to pull himself up and scoot up the bed slightly. For the first time, Percy’s lips press themselves against Nico’s, and he doesn’t wait for Nico to respond. One hand’s find Nico’s hair, and the other wraps around to touch his back.

Nico’s somewhat surprised, but he tries to be quick to answer Percy in like, but not nearly as strong as Percy. Percy’s not forceful, but it is desperate, as if Percy’s is grasping to find purchase in anything.

It might be that he breaks that night, finally crumbling against the weight of Luke’s death on his heart, but Nico is there to hold him up and put the pieces back in place. Though Percy doesn’t stop kissing Nico and keeping their skin as close as it can be forced together until he’s completely exhausted, he doesn’t immediately shut himself up again like Nico had almost expected. Percy falls asleep, one arm holding Nico close instead of keeping him at bay.

While the next night Percy can’t do much but cry, he doesn’t seem to shut down when Nico sees the tears, and even though Percy’s so heart-wrenchingly upset, it’s still a step in the right direction. Toward acceptance, toward the future, toward the rest of the world patiently waiting for their hero to return...not to save them this time, so that they can save him.

Time will be necessary, but they’ve got plenty of it now, it seems. And for the moment, Percy is content to break down at night, as long as Nico is still there when his tears dry up, and not once, not a single time, does Percy consider stopping the tears through power. He lets it happen, and though it hurts, it’s better than Percy’s felt in months.

Percy searches his way to solace through those scattered breadcrumbs that Nico leaves for him, and by gods, he will find security. And when all is said and done, that trail Nico leaves for him, will lead him back to everything he’s torn himself away from.

When he gets there, Percy will see what he’s been overlooking for so long: Nico, who will still be there waiting for him, a bag of breadcrumbs in one hand, leading him away from that gingerbread house he locked himself in.