A New Life's End (for Aphrodite)

[lightningthief]

This isn’t funny. My dad Hermes and I had so many great tricks planned for the trick-or-treaters that’d be coming for Halloween, but this is not one of them! Why can’t I find the way back to our house? I fell asleep at home, but woke up in this stupid field on this dumb island, and I’ve been walking around for hours.

I call out for about the hundredth time, “Mom? Dad?”

Mom had been getting ready too. She was going to balance out our tricks with her treats. She can bake cookies now without burning them or the house.

Can’t she?

I fall to my knees. This can’t all have been fake? Can it?

Oh gods! I look around. I can’t see any mist at all. No mist.

“No!” I can hear the desperation in my own voice. I need this to not be happening. My mom and my dad are my entire world now! I can’t live without them! I can’t!

No more hikes in the woods with mom. No more sword practice with dad. No more dinners together. I’ll never see them ever again!

“NO!”

It was a lie. I am the son of the god of trickery, and I fell for a massive LIE?!

My parent’s love… is a…. lie. The island knows about me, and I’ve been… been victimized. Oh gods no, oh gods, oh gods, oh gods!

The grief is too much. I fall over onto the ground. Tears begin to fall. I was lied to, and I believed it. Me, a gullible, ignorant fool. I’ve been pouring out my heart to fake images that couldn’t give a crap about me. Of COURSE they don’t love me. Of COURSE. Kronos would laugh so hard. He told me this was my greatest weakness, this pathetic and senseless desire of mine to be loved. I am unlovable. I ought to have known I am unlovable. My heart is a joke to be laughed at and kicked around for fun. This is too much! I can NOT deal with this! I’ll go mad. My gods, I’m going to go mad, just like my mother! Is there a point coming where something just breaks in your head? Will you actually hear some kind of ‘pop’ in your head when it happens?

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[just_hormones]

She's known from the beginning that one day she would come to see Cupid, Ares, and Hercules and wouldn't be able to. Aphrodite's known all along that one day, the island would take this away, but that doesn't stop the knife from piercing her heart when she comes to the place where the mist is supposed to be and doesn't find it.

She can't stop the tears, and she lets them come as she thinks about her son and her brothers, how much she's missed them and how badly she will continue to miss them still. This time she's had with them has been precious, even if it's been totally fake, and she's going to hang onto that, because it's all she has of them now. It's all she may ever have of them again.

Aphrodite swipes at her eyes, about to turn around and head back when she hears a familiar voice yell out. "Oh no," she says softly, rushing to follow that voice. Of course he's out here, trying to find the mist, trying to get back to his parents. She has no doubt he'll be crushed now that it's all over.

When she finally spots him, down on his knees, the pain of her own loss is easily pushed aside. "Luke," she cries, kneeling in front of him. Her tears return as she caresses his face, unsure of what she can even do for him besides stay by his side.

[lightningthief]

I'm aware beyond the agony that there's a figure coming to me. My first reaction is to get away, but I don't know if I could will myself to move if my life depended on it. But.. it's Aphrodite.

"Aphrodite..you might as well just kick me while I'm down here and move on. It's how it'll end up between us. I'm not meant to be loved. Just leave me..."

[just_hormones]

"Never," she says with quiet vehemence, gently swiping at his tears with the pad of her thumb. "Not as long as I can help it. I'm in love with you, and I'm not leaving you." She would never be apart from him, if it was up to her.

[lightningthief]

"Why?" I cry out in disbelief. Right now I don't have faith in anything, least of all myself. "I'm an accursed wreck! Am I just your personal challenge?"

I've had that thought in the back of my mind for a while now, even before this mist thing. How can I really be all that endearing to the Goddess of Love?

[just_hormones]

Her breath hitches at that, her own tears returning as her heart breaks for him. "Of course not," Aphrodite replies gently. "You've always meant more to me than that. I wouldn't go through all of this just to see if I can pull it off. I'm not that ambitious."

Edging closer to him, she keeps his face in her hands, willing him to believe her. "You're not a wreck, Luke. You've been hurt, and you've been abandoned, and you've been let down. But that's not all there is to you. There are so many things I love about you, if I were to list them out. And none of them include you being some kind of challenge for me."

[lightningthief]

It's hard to look at her directly with tears in my eyes. My usual self-confidence has been shattered. She says she loves me. I hope it won't go to Tartarus like most every relationship I've ever had. Ever.

"They lied to me, Aphrodite. They made me think they loved me."

A large tear rolls down my cheek. I'm so stupid.

[just_hormones]

They'd both been seeing what they wanted to see, but the difference between Aphrodite's hallucination in the mist and Luke's is that Luke's was a lie, and now he has to accept it. She hates that he's having to go through this now, after being so hopeful, but she knows there's nothing she could have done to keep him from this. She hates the island right now.

"I'm so sorry, sweet pea," she says tearfully, smoothing one hand back over his temple and into his hair. "I know how much that meant to you."

[lightningthief]

I lean into her. I feel her around me, but I'm still in shock.

"They told me to believe in them so dad could cross over. They were going to live with me. They were going to keep me safe from Kronos."

[just_hormones]

Aphrodite slips her arms around him and presses a kiss to his temple as he leans against her. There's nothing she can say to explain this away, or to make it better, but it doesn't stop her from wishing she could take his pain somehow. She can't stand seeing him hurt like this.

"I wish you could have had that with them," she says. Luke's parents being able to come to the island and be true parents to him would have made all the difference to him. But he's been left, again, and all Aphrodite can do is try to show him he's not alone.

[lightningthief]

The pain! I was with them for so long! This wasn't just days. It was about to be months. The more it went on the more secure I got...

"I would've given them anything! I would've died for them. If they could've just... Oh gods..."

I'm still no sure I even want to go on living.

[just_hormones]

"Oh, Luke," Aphrodite murmurs, holding him tighter to her. "I know you would have, I know. But this being taken away isn't your fault. It's the island. It's not because you're not worthy of having that life."

[lightningthief]

"Why couln't it have been real?! Why?!!"

Why did this place hurt me like this? It's too much! I can still see my mother standing in the doorway, sane, every single day opening her arms to me. I can still feel the comfort of my dad's arms around me. How can I deal with that kind of loss? How?

[just_hormones]

Aphrodite's eyes fall shut as she continues to cry, wholly for Luke's pain now rather than her own, for the childhood he fully deserved but will never have, for the unconditional love of a mother and father he will never receive.

"I wish I knew," she says, opening her eyes after kissing his temple again. "I wish I knew how this place can be so cruel. I wish I knew how to stop it."

[lightningthief]

"I want them back," I plead with a quaver in my voice that doesn't quite make it sound entirely sane. "I'll do anything!"

I clutch her arm. "I can't.. Aphrodite I can't go on without them!"

[just_hormones]

She never would have expected to hear such despair from her Luke, not even in the face of this, not when he's normally so confident and sure. It worries her deeply, and more than that, it scares her.

She takes his face in her hands again, gently, trying to get him to look at her. "If there was anything I could do, anything at all, you know I would do it, if I had any power at all here," she tells him gently. "And I know this is hard, love, so hard. But you can go on. It may not seem like it right now, but you can. You're not alone, and you are loved. You have me."

[lightningthief]

On a certain level, I get that I'm not thinking rationally. That is bad. I don't.. I don't normally lose it.

I just shut up for a moment. That's what I can manage - not ranting like I'm losing it, at least for a moment. I look at her. I try to focus on what she's saying. She says I'm loved.

[just_hormones]

It seems like he's listening, and paying attention, and that's good, Aphrodite hopes. She's not going to let him slip away into hopelessness, not as long as she can still reach him. She reached him when he was in that sarcophagus, she reached him when his memory was gone, and she hopes she can reach him now.

"I'm here," she says, her eyes never leaving his. "I'm not going anywhere. I'm here and I'm real and I love you."

[lightningthief]

One person loves me. It doesn't magically end the grief I'm going through, but at least there's one person that would claim to love me.

I close my eyes and allow myself to cry. I wish I didn't have to wail like some child, but it's worse than losing my parents. Suddenly those two closest people, all those moments I shared with them, have all turned to mockery. It never existed.

I am a total wreck. If she loved me before, maybe by the end of this she'll have lost whatever respect she had for me.

[just_hormones]

As Luke gives in to the tears, Aphrodite doesn't hesitate. She leans forward and wraps her arms around him, holding him close to her. If he needs to cry, she's not going to try to talk him out of it.

Her hand lifts to curl around the back of his neck, her fingers sliding into his hair. She's not about to let him go through this alone.

[lightningthief]

"I need you," I say suddenly. It's a real fine thing to say to someone you've been ignoring and taking for granted way too much for way too long.

"I love you." It scares me worse than ever to say that now.

[just_hormones]

"You have me," Aphrodite says softly, her voice quavering. "No matter what." She's never been willing to wait around for someone else, but for Luke, she did. She loves him more than enough to do that for him.

[lightningthief]

I look at her. It's amazing. She's so serious about her commitment to me. She's a goddess, but yet she really loves me. At least I think so. What just happened makes me doubt everything.

I suddenly realize that I can go on. Even if I ever have anybody but her, it's enough. I'm still deeply pained, and it's going to take me a very long time to get over what just happened, but I will be able to.

[just_hormones]

Her eyes meeting his, Aphrodite takes one arm from around him so she can cup his cheek. "Let's get out of this place," she says, wanting to get him away from this spot in the jungle, away from the memories here. "Come home with me."

[lightningthief]

"Okay."

She's going to take care of me, isn't she? It's what I need. Getting away from here sounds good.

That's about all I've got in me mentally. Now that the initial outburst is over, and now that there's a simple enough plan, my mind starts shutting down a bit. I can get one foot in front of the other. I don't need to think now.

[just_hormones]

"Come on." Aphrodite gets to her feet, tugging on Luke to get him up with her. She slips in against his side, arm around his waist, not because she thinks he can't walk, but because she wants to stay close as they make the walk back to her hut.