In the Second That Mattered
Part 1: Reach Me
a/n: there is blood and broken hearts in this one, sorry(for you, in both ways)
@risteel I am so sorry for the delay 😭😭 I hope this satisfies you
Ash clings to the air like a second skin.
The sky hangs low and swollen, a storm bleeding across the clouds. Screams ring through the chaos — the battlefield is filled with monsters howling, metal shearing flesh, war drums pounding in every heartbeat.
Your ears ring.
Your lungs burn.
Your sword slips in your grasp, slick not with sweat — but with blood. Yours. Theirs. It doesn’t matter
You're staggering, limping, wounded. Your ribs grind with every breath. Your armor is more ruin than protection now, cracked open like you’ve already been split.
The monster facing you is enormous — some kind of drakon-chimera hybrid, all snapping jaws and sickly green venom dripping from its fangs. You’ve got a gash across your thigh, torn armor, a rib cracked deep. But you stand.
Because you don’t want to scream for help. Because you don’t want to distract them. Because you're trying — like always — to be enough.
But from the corner of your eye, you see Annabeth stumble. A piece of debris — a collapsing tower, flaming and fast — is falling toward her. She’s screaming.
Percy hears her.
Of course he hears her.
And time freezes. Just like it did before.
The battlefield fades.
There’s only you. Her. Him.
You're ten feet apart. She’s on one side. You're on the other. Percy stands between you.
Two hands. Two lives. One instinct.
For a second — just one awful second — his eyes flash toward Annabeth. His arm twitches. And your heart cracks.
Again.
But—
He turns.
To you.
“I’ve got you!” he shouts, eyes locked on yours, hand finally reaching out. Your breath catches.
And in that fragile, stunned second — that beautiful, too-late second — you believe him.
But that’s not what you see.
Your head snaps violently from the impact — pain blooming in your chest like wildfire — and your eyes catch on him.
And he’s looking.
Not at you.
At her.
You think he changed his mind. You think he reached for her — again
That’s the last thought you ever have.
You don’t see the second blow. You don’t see the claws rip up through your back.
But your body feels it.
Your ribs crack like thunder. Your chest splits open — wet, awful — your heart almost visible in the mess.
You collapse.
At first, there’s no pain. Just warmth. A numbing weightlessness. The taste of iron crawling up your throat. Then your body spasms — violently, uncontrollably.
And finally, it all goes still.
You don’t see how he was ready to catch the other monster flying to you. How the only reason he looked at the other side is to protect you from the other attacks.
In another devastating second, the claws rip again. Piercing your heart, sending pieces of it into the air.
You don't get to see that one either.
He falls to his knees beside your broken body.
He doesn’t notice the blood soaking into his jeans, or the jagged edge of your armor pressed to his palms. He only sees your eyes — open, barely focused, glassy with confusion.
And pain.
So much pain.
You are at rest. But you don’t have the promised peace of death.
“No. No—gods, please— I chose you,” he chokes. “I chose you. I SWEAR I—”
But it’s too late.
You never heard him say it. You never got to know.
He sobs there while others finish the monsters.
Later, he sits beside the shroud they wrapped you in — silent and stiff.
He just sits there.
Hands in his lap. Shoulders hunched.
Like he’s waiting for you to come out and laugh, call him dramatic, and pull him back inside.
But you don’t.
You never will.
And he stays anyway.
Because even in death, you waited for him.
And now it’s his turn.
