Hope & Betrayal // [Percy Jackson OC] // Book 1

{Chapter Nine}

_____

"We were full of life/ we could barely hold it in
We were amateurs at war/ strangers to suffering"
- Mars (Sleeping At Last)

_____

PERCY BARGAINS WITH THE GODS

THE FIRST AND ONLY TIME Arya had been to Mount Olympus was the day after Thalia died. Most people who had been around long enough knew the story. Zeus wanted Arya dead because it was no longer fair for her to be alive. However, past that, no one actually knows what happened between Arya and the gods.

The girl came back traumatized by what happened, and too this day, has only told one person exactly what happened, Luke. All anyone else knew was that she was sent up as an innocent girl to die and came back alive, a changed person with a strict set of rules to follow, but she was alive.

Any innocence the girl had was stripped away from her. Any child-like tenancy seemed to disappear when she arrived back. Had the girl not looked like a child, no one would think she was one by the way she talked of acting upon return.

No one could understand why Arya had changed as much as she did. No matter how much they tried to empathize with her. No one could understand what it was like to stand up to two people you idolized, and get treated like an object, get talked too as if you weren't right in front of them, get referred to as a weapon, a mistake, a revenge plan. To learn you mean nothing to a person who was supposed to love you unconditionally, to understand for the first time how cruel and unfair the world could be, and there was no way to stop the people in charge of it.

Everyone was always shocked by how Arya would openly bad mouth the Gods. But if they knew The truth, No one would be able to blame her.

_______

As Percy rode up in the elevator to Olympus, his irritation and hyperactivity was put to the side for a minute as he thought about his sister. It occurred to him that Arya made this same elevator ride years ago. Except under much different circumstances.

While he was going to stop a war and prove his innocence to the very people that ruled the world. His sister was riding up to what everyone thought was her death and getting betrayed by the people she thought were supposed to be her family.

He couldn't help but try and wonder what it must have been like for her, had she known at the time how unfair the whole situation was for her?

Percy's irritation was slowly rising at the thought of how his sister had been treated by the gods. He  considered them lucky Percy was willing to prove his innocence because he doubted, had Percy not been in the picture, that Arya would have done it.