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For the life of a hero, Annabeth’s death was very anticlimactic. She was in an architecture conference in Kyoto. There was an earthquake. Windows shattered, trees fell, and before the building collapsed on her, her last thought was: this place is poorly designed for the best architects in the world.
Over 10,000 people died in the earthquake and the tsunami that followed. The Underworld was packed full of confused souls. Annabeth had an interesting conversation with a radical Christian in denial before Nico found her and helped her cut in line.
“Is Percy doing well?” She asked. “Listen— can you watch over him for me? I don’t want him to do anything— stupid, because I’m gone.”
Nico looked confused, then upset.
“Annabeth, Percy killed himself.”
Annabeth was shocked. “Because of me? It’s— it’s not his fault.”
Nico frowned. “Annabeth, he killed himself three days ago. We… we texted you about it, but you didn’t reply. We thought you were grieving him.”
“Oh.” She said.
Consumed with her work, she hadn’t checked her personal phone.
Nico gave her a complicated look. “Why do you think there was an earthquake in the first place?”
-
Elysium is beautiful.
“My death isn’t your fault,” She tells Percy.
“I know.”
“Don’t blame yourself for your father’s actions. He loved you. He was just grieving you.”
“Annabeth, I know.”
“Why did you do it? How long have you wanted to?”
“…”
“You should go to therapy.”
“… Annabeth. I know.”
-
She was the one who suggested rebirth.
Another life. Another chance. No more monsters. No more fight. No more war.
A brand new possibility.
“Sure,” Percy sighed, dragging himself out of their bed. “Nothing to fucking lose, is there?”
She was born as Meredith Collins, grew up in the suburbs of Clayton Missouri, became a world-renowned lawyer and animal rights activist, married a beautiful Hollywood star and adopted three children. She lived a long life. She was eighty-something when she asked for euthanasia — she wanted a death with dignity — and she had a smile on her face when her children and grandchildren left her bedroom for the last time.
When she returned to Elysium, satisfied and ready to spend forever with Percy, Percy was on his fourth life.
-
His first rebirth, he was a surgeon. He was too soft to be one— wanted to save every life— blamed himself when a surgery he asked someone else to take over ended up failing. He overworked himself and collapsed from sudden cardiac arrest at 35.
He was a serial killer in his second rebirth. Annabeth thinks this was when their lives overlapped — she’s heard of him, the vigilante murderer that went after human traffickers. He slaughtered his way through an entire trafficking chain in Cambodia before killing himself in front of the police.
He’s on his third rebirth now. This time, he’s almost happy. He’s born in a line of politicians and his family teaches him to protect himself. He grows up with a blond, blue-eyed neighbour who sings him sweet ballads and writes him bad poetry. They go to the same private school.
Annabeth snorts as she watches them kiss. She wonders vaguely if Poseidon put Apollo up to it.
In the end, it doesn’t work, because Percy loves and smiles and cares and he still dies before forty. He’s shot, Martin Luther King style, while giving a speech to rally support for his father in the upcoming election. The public is outraged. His family wins the election. They cry. They vow to find the assassin. Millions volunteer — for what, Annabeth isn’t sure — but the people mourn and the police hunt.
Later, they find the head of the assassin on a cypress tree. They won’t find the rest of his body — nor the bodies of his family, after Apollo is done with him.
-
“I love you,” Percy whispers in her ear, and for a moment they’re sixteen again, in their first life, hearts flooded with joy and sorrow and everything that makes a child soldier — and they’re in love, so in love with each other, because no one else understands.
“I love you too.”
-
The mortals map out patterns of climate change, of extreme weathers, of frequent earthquakes and heatstrokes and tornadoes and droughts. They’re predicting models based on carbon emissions, green energy, all sorts of things.
Annabeth has a better model. She measures natural disasters by Lifetimes of Percys. Each Percy is about fifty Julian years — counting the time Percy stays in Elysium and the time it takes to rebirth — and the resulting catastrophe varies from death to death. If, in his lifetime, there are pictures of him with a blond — music teacher, archery instructor, literature professor — it’s reasonable to expect a heatstroke. If he falls in love with a blond, expect a plague or pandemic. In all cases, expect some sort of sea storm.
(The myth of Percy Jackson has become a story Chiron tells new campers, but Poseidon still hasn’t let go of his favourite son.)
“You’re going again?” Annabeth frowns.
“Yeah,” Percy shrugs. “Nothing to lose. Wanna come with?”
“No, I’m good.”
-
She doesn’t get it.
The first rebirth she understood. Almost all demigods decided to try again, because all of them had wondered, at some point in their lives, what they would be like if they didn’t have to fight. They craved peace and stability desperately.
The second rebirth, she could also get behind. Three tries— three lives of good— and then the Isle of the Blest. Many demigods went that route, since most of their deceased friends were there. For Annabeth, this path isn’t a necessity. Her friends are comfortable in Elysium (Hazel’s learning jewellery design with Piper, Frank is taking care of the spirits of the deceased animals, Nico and Will being Nico and Will) and in the Isle resided a painful ghost of the past (Luke) she still isn’t ready to face.
She was ready to spend forever in Elysium after her first rebirth. A proper life —a stable, ordinary, peaceful life— she just wanted to try it once, taste the dream she’s always had in those dark nights during the war, the tears and subconscious prayers to not be a demigod, to live any other life. She had that. She learnt what she would be, if she had the time and space to grow old. Most of the seven were satisfied after the first rebirth.
They’re all softer now, more content.
Everyone but Percy.
He jokes and claims its ADHD. He scowls and says the sea doesn’t like to be restrained. He learns to lie eventually, promising Annabeth that there’s no one he missed more than her. They’ll take a peaceful stroll together, tell the old stories of their first life, their fondest memories. They’ll drop by Piper and Jason, who still love like teenagers — they’ll see Frank and Hazel, who barely bicker — they’ll see Nico and Will, scowling and grinning (respectively) — and they’ll argue. Then off he goes again, making a beeline for the River Lethe to be born again, each time more enthusiastic than the last.
-
It takes a few more rebirths until Percy finds himself on the battlefield again. He’s drafted — doesn’t give a shit about the cause — but he’s good, too good, and somehow, he has impeccable aim with a rifle.
(In the background, Jason wins a bet against Piper, who thought Percy would never be a soldier again, not after what happened the first time).
Percy becomes a feared sniper and a pain in the arse.
Ares masquerades as a mortal general, enjoying his time bossing Percy around. Apollo is there as a medic: he never stops trying to save Percy, and he also keeps trying to poison Ares.
Apollo fails at the first task and succeeds in the second.
Percy returns to Elysium and Annabeth wonders if this time, finally, he’ll choose to stay.
-
“Remember what happened in our first life?” Percy asked. They were tired. She was tired. She didn’t know she could be tired in Elysium. “In the first war.”
“They offered you immortality.”
Luke’s body sprawled at his feet, Olympus in ruins, and Percy, in the centre of it all — he didn’t look like a god. He looked like a monster.
But then again, she could barely tell the difference between deity and creature these days.
Percy laughed, a bitter, broken sound. “I should’ve taken it.”
-
Apollo is in Elysium.
He smells like laurels, sunlight and sea salt.
He smells like Delos, like power, like a god — but he smells like Percy.
Annabeth snarls.
“He’s mine, little niece, so you need to start letting him go.” Apollo smiles, leaning too close, eyes too golden. “You’re not right for him.”
Annabeth spits in his face: “You’re the worst thing to happen to him.”
That day, Annabeth learns that souls can bleed.
Apollo disappears before Hades arrives, and Annabeth is left with nothing but a hand-shaped burn mark on her throat. But Percy returns to her, and when he’s there, she forgives him for it all.
-
He’s mine, she thinks vindictively. Because she was there first, and Percy would never value any life — no mater how many he’s spent with Apollo — more than the first one they had, the one he shared with her.
-
He’s lived at least a hundred lives now.
This time, he’s a demigod again.
-
His name is Pericles Adams, from California, son of Jupiter. He’s wild, sharp, more of Jupiter’s regal displeasure than Poseidon’s familiar ruthlessness; he hates his posh, pretentious name with a passion — so of course, he’s Just Percy again.
His birth was a mess. Jupiter recoiled when he realised the soul in his new lover’s baby was the same rascal that he spent ages trying to get rid of. It broke Fiona Adams’s heart, and she fell into alcoholism, the consequences of which Percy suffered the most. He grew up being blamed as the reason for his parents’s “divorce”, mocked for not having a father, bullied for his oddly coloured eyes — one electric blue, one sea green.
When Percy turns nine, Fiona Adams dies of a snake bite, and Rachel Elizabeth Dare makes a prophecy over her corpse.
“They can’t do this to him again,” Sally Jackson whispers, eyes filled to the brim with tears.
They’re all watching. Elysium gossips, wondering how many new souls will join them— more importantly, how soon.
-
Percy is fifteen when he becomes Praetor again — or rather, Caesar.
He’s too Greek for the bureaucracy of the Senate, too Roman to deny the appeal of leadership. He bathes the city in blood and uproots the corrupt system he’s always hated, even in their first life. He gets rid of the families that sunk their claws into the Roman Justice System by killing off every line, every branch. He abandons his last name and becomes Gaius Pericles Caesar, Emperor, Imperator.
Annabeth laughs because she’s bitter, and this is poetic.
Does Percy know the Praetor he stabbed — the last obstacle between him and the throne — is Luke Castellan?
Standing in the ruins of New Rome, with Luke’s body sprawled at his feet, he’s offered immortality again.
“Mars wants you to be God Emperor,” Jupiter booms. “But Phoebus claims you’re destined to be more.”
From his throne, Apollo smiles at Percy, giving him a small wave.
Percy smiles back, a wry quirk of his lips, barely noticeable.
Give him his memories back, Annabeth screams from Elysium. No one hears her. Piper looks at her in pity.
“So the question is: what do you want?”