Percy Jackson sits in a ruined cemetery, his heart shattered in pieces around his feet and his love gone from his soul.

Why?

This is not a story about love. That implies happiness. This is not a story about lust. That implies a lack of love. This is a story about sorrow and suffering and the searing pain of loss. This is a story about humanity.

No, this is not a fairytale. There is no once upon a time, no the end. This is here and now. This will be for all eternity. This is very, very real. This pain is raw and looming and there, and it can't be said otherwise.

This is no fairytale, dear reader, but real life rarely is.

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1.

It started when he failed his quest, but now Percy always watches others from afar – whether it was through a window or doorway or even the corner of her eye – but even though he has tried to stop, it is a habit he indulges slightly too much altogether. Percy always reasons that this distance protects him – it protects him from the outside world filled with loud noises (so loud that they drown him, drown him like he shouldn't be drowned) but he is growing tired of it. He no longer wishes to look at life through a glass, a filter, a screen. He wants to live.

Sometimes – late at night, when there is still too much noise and not enough silence – Percy wonders if it is even possible for him to live since he has watched life run away from him the moment he failed that quest.

Percy doesn't like to dwell on it.

2.

It's late one night when despair overtakes her. She runs into the swirling snow, sobs hitching on her breath. She runs to him, because he's solid and he's understanding and he's Percy. Her tears pour into his jacket. His murmured words of comfort fade into her hair.

They disappear into a tangle of limbs, flesh and lust but, most of all, despair.

3.

Thalia always watches the people with veiled emotion, either covered in hate or fear or some other emotion. She watches the couples at the lake as such— apathetically— and can't help but wonder.

"Why do you reckon they do it?" she asks Percy, amused.

He looks caught off guard. "Do what?"

"Hold hands."

He looks at her silently, attempting to discern. They are silent for a moment. He looks at the grass, and replies.

"I don't know. What do you reckon?"

"I think it's stupid," she says, a sudden fire in her eyes.

"What, holding hands?" he wonders.

"Love." she declares.

4.

Every time they laugh, the gods frown. It is not meant to be, they say to the fates. But when have the fates listened to the gods? They spin their web of destiny over and over, never ceasing through the ages. They sit stoic and spin. Not even a god, dear reader, can discern their weave.

Percy remembers a story his mother read to him once. There was a man— a young man who was quite old— who had a book. He had chose, out of many other kingly gifts, the book. It contained the fate of all men.

Percy wishes he could know his fate often throughout the day.

5.

"Do you think," Thalia murmurs every night, "That this will ever feel right?"

He frowns. "Your mother forbade it."

"My mother is a sodden drunk. She hates me, at any rate."

"Your father did, too. He's the king of the gods, you know."

"Sometimes I wish he wasn't."

It is a recurring conversation, almost routine for them. Percy wishes it wasn't, because it's on those nights he can forget about it all. (it's those nights he can look to the stars.)

6.

Thalia's despair grows. Perhaps it is reasonable, perhaps it is not. She goes to Percy every night now.

"I figured it out," he says.

She gives him a confused look.

"Why couples hold hands. I figured it out."

"Oh?"

"It's because they always need assurance. They need to know they're loved."

She gives him an amused look now. "Constantly?"

He nods in earnest. "All the time."

"I see..." she pauses.

He looks at her silently, willing her to continue.

"Do we need assurance?"

His lips curve ever-so slightly upward. "No. I don't believe we do."

7.

She lies on the top of the hill, dead of night.

Percy runs to her, a cry of consternation on his lips.

It's bleak, cold, dark, and oh so beautiful. Her soul lingers, and so does his heart— but soon enough both are wrenched away from him. Her life slips between his fingers, taking his heart with it. All he can do is watch.

That raw pain, that searing loss that we spoke of...this is it. It fills Perseus Jackson, and he curls up into a ball and screams his. He screams over and over— "I'm so sorry! I'm so sorry!"

8.

The orange haze of the sun's rays rise above the horizon. The field is a desolate sea of waving grains, wind rustling through and giving it an almost ethereal feeling...a feeling of emptiness. Fitting, perhaps.

Thalia Grace lies there, captured by the black snares of fate and, indeed, her own callous mind. She looks almost peaceful, and you could almost forgettable pain that brought her to this mean estate. Her hair whips gently across her face, urged on by the ever-murmuring wind.

Crows call the morning.

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Perhaps you see now why this is not a story of love. There is love in the story, of course, and it will always be there. But love is not the solution. In this story, dear reader, the solution is loss.

Ah, you say, but that is not a solution. That is a problem.

Sometimes, solutions can be bad. They can be twisted.

Solutions do not walk hand-in-hand with good. They only walk hand-in-hand with completion. The problem is fixed. They cannot be together, say the fates, so they will not.

Things are not always fixed to perfection. They are not always molded into a better shape. Sometimes, the problem is merely hidden, a bowl of immaculate porcelain with a crack covered in off-white paint. These problems sit there, ugly and disfigured, and they haunt our souls for the rest of our days.

Percy Jackson sits in a ruined cemetery, his heart in shattered pieces and his love gone, because he is haunted, so haunted. The ghosts of his happiness flit through the cemeteries gate, one by one. It never ceases, it seems, and when it does it simply restarts again, days of joy on a loop in a broken mind.

This haunting is forever.

This haunting will follow him beyond the grave.

It's cold and dark, and the scene is oh, so beautiful. Percy can see that, but the beauty is fragmented and stagnant. His nightmares pepper this cemetery.

"I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry!"

Perseus Jackson screams his winter woes.