Chapter Text
Luke Castellan is nine years old and his mother’s eyes are glowing green.
She says things about his future, about tragedy, about him never coming home. He can’t imagine never coming home— his mother is everything he could ever want.
His mother never stops crying when the green goes away.
Luke can’t stay with her mourning him while he sits in front of her. He is still alive, but the green makes him into a ghost. His mother is alternatively doting and empty, making him peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and burnt cookies. There is a room full of beanie babies he has never touched.
He takes the newest sandwiches and tucks them into his bag, along with the first beanie baby, the black bear he actually wanted. He waits until his mother is as clear-headed as she can be, nowadays, and says goodbye.
He promises to come home someday. He pretends that he means to keep it.
Luke Castellan is eleven and his best friend is a lightning storm in the shape of a girl.
Thalia Grace is the daughter of a disgraced starlet and the king of the gods. Her little brother is dead and her mother as good as. They find each other when Luke runs from a cyclops into a thunderstorm and collides with a girl two years younger than him.
It takes them a few days to find equilibrium, neither of them used to being with someone else. It’s nice, though, to be able to sleep without having to worry about something sneaking up on him.
They work their way through Ohio (“Ohio isn’t real,” Thalia murmurs one night, laughing quietly. “I bet it’s gonna disappear on us come morning.”) and Pennsylvania (“I thought the Liberty Bell would be cooler,” Luke complains after they run from a harpy trying to nest in Philadelphia.) and finally end up in New Jersey, wearing stolen clothes and sporting stolen weapons.
Luke Castellan is thirteen and his little sister is the smartest person he knows.
In New Jersey, they find a seven-year-old girl desperately trying to defeat a flock of harpies with a wooden baseball bat.
Annabeth Chase is wickedly smart and attaches herself to Luke’s side after less than ten minutes of suspicion. It takes Luke nearly as long to decide he’ll protect her with his life.
Annabeth is also terrified of spiders and refuses to let Luke or Thalia go off anywhere alone. She convinces them to crash in libraries, and soon they’re dragging nearly as many stolen books as they are pilfered food, clothes, or weapons to each new hiding spot they find.
Luke Castellan is fourteen and his best friend is transformed into a tree to save her life.
Grover Underwood finds them in the woods outside of New York City, and with him comes the knowledge that they are no longer safe on the run.
Grover leads them to Camp Half-blood, but they are waylaid by cyclops, empousai, the Furies. By the time they reach Half-Blood Hill, Luke is carrying Annabeth and Grover is limping. Thalia is flagging, hits coming slower.
Luke leaves Annabeth at the bottom of the hill, tells her to go with Grover and find help, and then turns back to his best friend.
Thalia is alone on the hill, nearly overcome with enemies.
Luke won’t make it in time.
There’s a flash of lightning, a rumble of thunder, and when Luke blinks the spots out of his eyes, there’s a massive pine tree where Thalia was standing and all of the monsters have been scattered to dust.
Thalia is gone.
Luke Castellan is fifteen and he wants things to change .
His father gives him a quest that's already been done, by a hero that got a sh*tty incorrect Disney movie made about him to boot.
Annabeth was upset that he didn't take her, but as he presses his back against a tree and spits out every curse he knows, he's glad he refused.
Rowan (fifteen, daughter of Demeter) is bleeding out, a ragged bite wound on her stomach. Luke is on the wrong side of the clearing, unable to help. Tim (seventeen, unclaimed) is splayed out in front of the dragon, blood still seeping from xer head. Xer neck is bent the wrong direction. There’s a massive gash across Luke’s cheek, blood dripping down his face and onto his orange shirt.
The dragon sends a wave of fire towards where Rowan is hiding. Luke shouts a warning, like he will be able to do anything.
“Luke, run!” Rowan screams, falling rather than dodging to the side. “Get out of here!”
Luke hesitates, long enough for the dragon to notice him. Rowan screams again, trying to hold its attention.
“Luke, go!”
“Maia,” Luke mutters, lifting himself into the air. The dragon looks between him and Rowan and seems to make a decision, turning back to the easy prey.
Luke holds back a sob.
He flies without thinking of direction until he crashes into a pine tree, tumbling to the ground, where he curls around his sword and finally allows himself to cry.
Luke Castellan is sixteen and Kronos is whispering in his dreams.
It starts slowly, a raspy voice asking him what he would change every few nights. Soon, though, Kronos is talking to him every night, telling him how things were better before the gods came to power. The nymphs and dryads could roam without fear of Zeus or Poseidon or Apollo. Mortals didn’t have to fear a slighted god’s wrath.
Demigods didn’t have to die for a conceited god’s whims.
He’s not sure how to fix any of it, but Kronos has a plan, one that Luke can help with. One that has Luke at the center, saving more demigods from Tim’s fate, from Rowan’s fate.
From Thalia’s fate.
Luke Castellan is seventeen and he is ready to burn Olympus to the ground.
He is already one of the oldest campers. He is the greatest swordsman in 300 years, according to Chiron. He can’t do anything to help his fellow demigods because the gods are petty and powerful and don’t understand that they are children .
Kronos’s plan is coming closer to fruition. Luke starts talking to some of the older campers, the ones he knows are as bitter as him. There are a few, especially those in the Hermes cabin, that he knows would be happy to watch Olympus burn.
Luke plays the part of dutiful son in public, though. Kronos needs a spy more than a commander right now, even if it grates a little. He wants to be doing something, anything.
Annabeth, ten years old, is made head counselor of the Athena cabin. Luke wants to scream at every person who made it so that she ended up in charge as a child. At least Clarisse is thirteen when she is put in charge of the Ares cabin.
Luke looks around the dining pavilion and realizes he’s the oldest counselor by at least two years. There’s a few campers his age, but none of them are counselors— two of them are still unclaimed, sleeping on mats on the floor of the Hermes cabin.
Well, Chris still sleeps on a mat. Mia has started sleeping in a hammock on the back porch, sick of the younger kids having to use the bathroom in the middle of the night.
Luke trades capture the flag wins with the Ares cabin, trades cleaning duties with the Aphrodite cabin, trades lake time with the Hephaestus cabin, and trades his own sleep for new kids’ nightmares and conversations with Kronos.
The winter solstice is soon. The downfall of Zeus, and, by extension, the rest of the gods, is at hand.
Luke Castellan is eighteen and he steals the Master Bolt.
He gets precious little time outside of camp anymore— the closest he gets now is the strange dreamland Kronos brings him to for their conversations.
He runs through both checklists for the camp’s special field trip. The first one, the one for the campers, is easy. He only has a few campers year round, and most of the other cabins even less. He tells the Hermes kids to listen to Chiron and Annabeth and slips away.
Hades’s helm is bafflingly easy to lift, the Lord of the Underworld too busy sniping at his brother to notice Luke’s theft. The helm works just as Kronos promised, and Luke is able to slip into Zeus’s armory without anyone the wiser.
As he slips from the armory, however, he’s waylaid by Ares, god of war.
But, Kronos said he had someone waiting for Luke’s theft, a person on the inside. Luke lets Ares take the bolt and the helm. He needs to get back to the rest of the campers before the alarm sounds.
He has a nightmare that night, a screaming one that scares the Stoll brothers and sends Chris into a mild panic trying to calm down the entire cabin while Luke reminds himself where he is.
It's been months since his last nightmare. He doesn't think about what that means.
Luke Castellan is nineteen and his little sister makes a friend.
Percy Jackson is twelve years old and grieving. He manages to piss off Clarisse and intrigue Annabeth in one fell swoop, and Luke takes him under his wing because he can see the disdain he clearly has for the gods.
Then Percy Jackson wins Capture the Flag for them by distracting Clarisse— Annabeth always has a plan. Poseidon claims Percy, gives him the quest to retrieve Zeus’s bolt, because Poseidon needs a champion and clearly his forbidden son is the way to go.
Percy Jackson takes Annabeth and Grover both on his quest, and Luke has nightmares for a week about Annabeth dying in increasingly horrific ways. When Kronos finally pulls him into the barren dreamscape where they have their conversations, Luke is so relieved he almost thanks him.
He carefully doesn’t think about how he has been nightmare free unless Kronos is upset with him.
Kronos tells him about the necessary sacrifices that will need to be made.
Luke hears what Kronos isn’t saying this time. No regime change comes without violence.
Luke refuses to let one of those “necessary sacrifices” be his little sister.
Luke Castellan is nineteen and he knows he is going to die.
He wants to raze Olympus to the ground, but he refuses to let more children die for it. He sits in Thalia’s tree, forehead pressed to the bark. He should be with his cabin, leading them through sword training. He is, after all, the greatest swordsman in 300 years.
He’s also the greatest thief since his father stole Apollo’s cattle, but they don’t mention that. They don’t know that part.
“I f*cked up, Thals,” he says to the pine needles. “And Annabeth is going to end up paying the price, and her new friend, and Grover too.”
Thalia’s tree does not respond, because it is a grave marker as much as a protector.
He should tell Chiron. He should tell Dionysus. He should tell someone besides the imaginary ghost of his best friend.
Kronos is still whispering in his dreams, watching his movements. He can’t tell any of them. They didn’t even notice Kronos slipping awake— how can he expect them to defeat him.
No matter what he does, he is still twice a traitor. He is still going to die. He’d rather it be on his own terms. The gods will drag it out, argue over who gets the honor of killing him, whether or not he deserves a different punishment, if he’s actually a hero for revealing Kronos’s plan. Kronos will make it quick.
Luke will tell Percy. Maybe that way the gods will actually tell him something.
They’ll make Percy fight no matter what— a halfblood of the eldest gods, after all. Maybe Luke can give him an advantage in the fight he started by being a stupid angry kid.
Luke Castellan was nineteen and he is a martyr.
Annabeth tries to say something at Luke’s funeral, but she crumples before she gets more than two words out. Instead an older demigod the Percy recognizes as having hung out with Luke says a short speech, wiping away tears the entire time.
Even Clarisse looks a little sad, though she’s hiding it well with a mask of anger.
Percy stands near the back, not sure if he should say anything. He was the last one to see Luke alive. He should say something.
He doesn’t.
After the funeral, he finds Annabeth crying at the base of Thalia’s Pine, a too-large flannel dwarfing her. Percy hovers a few feet away, unsure if he should offer comfort or leave, but Annabeth sniffs and looks up at him before he can decide
“Come here, seaweed brain,” she says, voice thick. “Tell me exactly what he said before Kronos took him.”
Percy does, best he remembers. Annabeth deserves that much.
Annabeth has fully dried her tears by the time Percy finishes, the only evidence of her breakdown the slight redness of her eyes. She gives him a searching look. “Have you heard the great prophecy?”
