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Luke never meant for more demigods to be killed. It's actually the reason he started on this journey. No more dead kids. No more neglected kids. No more abused kids. Shouldn't be too hard, right?
Wrong. Turns out when both sides' main fighters are child soldiers, kids die, especially when their parents are deadbeat gods. Maybe that shoulda been obvious, but hey. When a mysterious all powerful voice tells you he can stop the murder of your people, sometimes you listen. Especially when your supposed 'all powerful' parents can't step off their thrones for two seconds to see if their kids are still kicking. Every side has its drawbacks. It just sucks that demigods are always the ones to pay the price.
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It's around this time that Kronos starts taking major control of the mind. Luke has gone through the horrible ordeal of piecing Kronos out of Tartarus, nearly killing Percy (wow, another one), poisoning Thalia's tree, etc., etc., but now that the grisly parts are over, Kronos wants the mind and body all to himself.
It must have been a test. See how far he's willing to go for the cause. Well, apparently pretty damn far, for all the lies Kronos told him. Fatal tests of will just to pass inspection, like a car. Like Agamemnon. Like Odysseus. While he let Kronos hand pick his sacrifices. Like Artemis. Like Zeus. Like-
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Annabeth is kidnapped. Bianca dies. The best of them, being held against her will. One of the newest, body lying broken in the gods' garbage while a 13 year old wonders how to tell her ten year old brother that his sister isn't coming back. The metaphor writes itself.
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(Was Bianca killed by the infamous pettiness and laziness of the gods, or was she killed by a quest she was only on because of choices Luke made?)
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Everyone keeps threatening Annabeth. If he could just get her to see, to see how terrible the gods are, that he is fighting for demigods and only demigods, that Kronos can help them-
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"Is that what you want? To go back to your dad in triumph?"
He gets pushed off a cliff for his efforts, and Annabeth still goes back to Camp with Thalia and Percy.
It hurts.
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Must these be their only two options? Death or losing their identities to a cause that was never about them? Losing their identities as they become soldiers? Gods, he hopes not. This can't have all been for nothing.
(In the back of his mind, he thinks there's another metaphor in there somewhere. He's traded a coffin for white room torture.)
Coffin for white room torture. Coffin for white room torture.
Coffin or white room torture.
Coffin or white room-
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After Annabeth rejects him, there's not many options. He can't go back to Camp. He can't live on the run. He has no home. That's it. He's completely isolated. Kronos is all he has left.
It's a life of threats and ultimatums, impossible tasks and even worse commands. He bathes in the River Styx. It hurts. It always hurts.
Somehow, he knows: this is the beginning of the end.
-
The white walls are nearly constant now, and that's a new torture in and of itself. Every second he spends in here is another second Kronos is out there wreaking havoc with what was once Luke's body. The regret is over flowing now, too, boiling over the sides of the pot that is his mind, scorching the bright white and bringing color into his miserable life. His people are dead. His people are dying and it's the gods' faults. It's his fault. It's Kronos' fault. It's his fault. It's the goddamn system's fault for never changing.
It's his goddamn fault.
-
White walls.
Neon lights.
No shadows. Of all the things about the little room in Kronos' mind that Luke's been granted, he never thought the absence of shadows would be what bothered him most, but of course it's another fucking metaphor.
Nothing's real. Was it ever? This whole path started with a voice in his dreams. Who was he to decide between one dictator and the next? He's a husk of a person carved out to house a monster. His life is a joke. What's next? Will anyone even live to see it?
He's never getting out of the web of his own mistakes. His legacy is nothing. There's no hope, only the harsh white light of marching time.
His goddamn fault.
-
There's a voice in the cell. This hasn't happened in-
He doesn't know. Time isn't real.
It's Annabeth.
Annabeth-
It's Annabeth.
"Luke. I understand now. You have to trust me."
There wasn't a world in which he didn't trust her.
"Your mother. She saw your fate."
His - mother? Who-
May.
There's a brief flash in his mind's eye, blonde hair - no, white - peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, burned cookies. A bitter, bitter feeling. He can't tell if it's Annabeth's voice or the images or the feelings that choke him.
"Not the end, Luke. The prophecy - she saw what you would do. It applies to you!"
Annabeth's voice is so clear - so thick and heavy with tears - that he wishes he could reach out to her and wipe away all the sadness and hurt like he did when she was little.
But nothing can fix what he broke.
"You promised. You're holding Kronos back even now."
Was he? It sure as Hades didn't feel like it - but demigods were survivors.
Maybe this box was his preservation, not his prison.
He could pound on the walls, knock the blinding panels down. He could let the neon lights fall and shatter beneath his feet - he could get out. He could run from the filthy recesses of Kronos' mind and fucking fix something for once in his goddamn miserable, wasted life.
He is in the throne room. His father's chair sits nearby, with its rams' horns and gray rock and goatskin. It's almost enough to send him back to the box.
But beneath him is Annabeth, and she looks terrible. Just awful. Terrified of the sword that Kronos - no, Luke - has raised above her, ready to strike. Her knife is in her non broken hand. And not even as old as Luke was on his quest that started it all.
His goddamn fault.
Then she just has to deliver the exact words that will ruin him, tears and snot on her young, pale face, looking for all the world like that seven year old he found behind that dumpster all those years ago - except, it wasn't even a decade ago. How are they still so young?
"Family, Luke. You promised."
Even though he feels it, he doesn't think he actually shudders, but within moments, he is back in his own body, nearly out of practice, like steering with video game controls. "Promise," he whispers. Family. Someone else - Thalia. Dear gods, don't let her be dead.
He looks forward again, through his own blurry eyes, and sees red. "Annabeth, you're bleeding."
Finally within reach, he stumbles toward her, unsteady on unfamiliar feet. He's grown since he was last in control.
She doesn't shy away, just mumbles, "My knife." Her arm twitches, unable to lift against Kronos' power. "Percy, please."
Vaguely, he's aware of Percy knocking Backbiter out of his hands with Annabeth's dagger. So quickly, Kronos is back in power as just the son of the sea sends anger and panic bolting through him.
Luke's barely gone for any time at all this round, and he understands what he has to do. There is nothing else. "He's changing. Help. He's - he's almost ready. He won't need my body anymore. Please-"
Another flash, and the next thing he knows, he's on the ground, hands burning, smoking, pain pain pain that he doesn't feel. All he cares about now is the knife in Percy's hand and all the demigods he let down. "Please, Percy."
The boy in question staggers over to where Luke lays on the ground, and the blond nearly groans when he hesitates. "You can't...can't do it yourself," he warns, and trips through a couple of sentences that he hopes get his point across.
It doesn't matter; Percy still looks at Annabeth for her nod of approval in the end, and Luke mourns the loss of a life where he gets to tease them for that, his little sister and the other boy she clearly has wrapped around her finger in what is surely becoming a codependent relationship. Finally, he has the knife.
"Percy? Are you..." someone else nearby says. Luke doesn't have time to care about that, or to ruminate on all the ways he's screwed over the owner of that voice. He has to hit his weak spot before Kronos can take over again, and that's exactly what he does.
It hurts. Gods, it hurts so bad. He got to choose between the coffin and the white room and somehow he got both. Somehow, he dragged dozens of others with him just to send them to the coffin. He has so many regrets and only seconds to settle them all.
Annabeth's - Hal's, originally - knife in his hands, and Annabeth, Grover, and Percy surround him, barely able to stand yet still holding on. He coughs. "Good blade." He looks at Annabeth first. "You knew. I almost killed you, but you knew."
"Shh," Annabeth says immediately. "You were a hero at the end, Luke. You'll go to Elysium."
It's got to be a pipe dream, but he's also got to trust her. "Think...rebirth. Try for three times. Isles of the Blest." Maybe with two more tries, he'll finally get it right.
That makes Annabeth smile. "You always pushed yourself too hard." She presses her fingertips to his as he coughs blood.
"Did you love me?" he asks, surprising himself, even though it is a question that he would like answered before he dies.
"There was a time I thought...well I thought..." As she looks at Percy, it hits him that she thinks he means romantically, and he can't bear the idea that he allowed Kronos to twist his mind so far. "You were like a brother to me Luke, but I didn't love you."
That's all he needs to hear.
Just then, a wave of pain hits him, and he coughs more blood.
Grover - wonderful, kind Grover - says, "We can get ambrosia. We can-"
"Grover," Luke chokes out. There's no time for this, and more importantly, Luke can't bear to hear it. "You're the bravest satyr I ever knew. But no. There's no healing-" he coughs again, more blood flooding over his lips. He doesn't have much more time.
He turns to Percy, gripping his sleeve. "Ethan. Me. All the unclaimed. Don't let it happen again." Don't let the gods slip back into their bullshit while their children go dead and ignored. Don't let this vicious cycle start until both sides are destroyed. Give them better choices than the coffin or torture. If this is to be his legacy, he is damn well making it last.
"I won't," Percy agrees. Luke knew he would. He always saw how things should be. "I promise."
It's enough. It's a pact between a dying man and a boy with more power than anyone will ever know what to do with. It's a promise to protect their people. It's a promise to never let things get so bad that a child turns countless ruined childhoods, lost lives, and horrors into a near massacre of all the wrong people. It's enough.
I'm sorry, mom, Annabeth, Thalia, young me. I tried so hard, and I still got the coffin.
He takes one last look around, and he closes his eyes for the last time, no Kronos bubbling beneath his skin or gods watching his failures, just three people that somehow still believe in him. It's enough.