#he already did it once in the books when he forgot Thalia's eye color and changed it to blue

[bright-eyes-strawberry-lies]

Actually I really like that Percy is Thalia's look-alike in the books with their matching black hair and green eyes and the ichor of such powerful gods running through their veins and their mirrored personalities. I like that Annabeth and Luke both looked at Percy and saw Thalia and I love thinking about what a sucker punch Percy must have felt like to the both of them.

[loving-jack-kelly]

Percy Jackson Died

Percy Jackson died.

He was old enough, he supposed, older than so many of his friends he’d watched die, but not really old. Old enough he was tired, and suddenly finding himself in the lobby he recognized from when he was twelve years old was disconcerting but not particularly surprising.

After all, he was a half-blood, and being a half-blood often got you killed in very nasty ways.

But still.

Percy Jackson died.

Charon remembered him.

“Drown in any bathtubs recently?” he asked dryly, but he waved Percy’s apologies for not having a coin to offer him. “You paid me for passage once and it clearly didn’t stick.”

So Percy Jackson died, and he crossed the River Styx on the ferry, and this time, when he arrived in the Underworld, Cerberus was completely visible.

Last time he came to the Underworld to see Hades, he’d entered the fast-moving line and stepped into the fields of Asphodel. This time, he waited in line to see the judges.

He’d saved the world more than once, they’d better give him something better than eternal stasis.

“Percy Jackson.” Daedalus greeted him warmly, arms full of blueprints and a full toolbelt wrapped around his waist. “It’s nice to see you again.”

Before Percy could respond, he was pushed to the front of the line and was standing in front of three men he had a feeling he should recognize but he didn’t. He didn’t have to speak at all, the three judges talked to each other while flipping through papers Percy couldn’t read, and without actually acknowledging him at all, the one in the middle hit a green button and Percy found himself on the inside of the gated community he’d only seen from the outside.

Percy Jackson died and was sent to Elysium. For a little while, it held his attention. Pretty much anything he wanted, he could have. Blue Coke, straight out of the bottle, better than the blue Coke at Camp Half-Blood. Pizza just like the pizza from his favorite place to go with his mom. Infinite activities, everything he’d ever wanted to do but hadn’t been able to when he was alive. Skydiving, cliff jumping, he got to pilot a plane.

He got to see old friends. Beckendorf and Selena Beauregard, who’d found each other and were happy again. Demigods who’d died in the second Titan war who wanted to hear from him how it had ended, to know what really happened. Heroes who died in the second giant war who wanted to know everything about Camp Jupiter and all of their friends who’d outlived them. Hunters who’d died in battles he hadn’t even known about while he was still alive.

But Percy Jackson was the son of Poseidon, lord of the sea. He didn’t like being contained in one place, and even if Elysium was a paradise for heroes, it wasn’t the same as being alive.

So Percy Jackson died, and Percy Jackson was sent to Elysium, and Percy Jackson chose to be reborn.

Zak Mason was born to a single mom.

He was an ordinary baby, almost. He was born with blue eyes, but they turned brown. He laughed and cried and pooped and spat up. He started preschool with a choppy haircut he gave to himself, and loved sitting on his mom’s lap to listen to Dr. Seuss books and watching anything fast-moving and colorful on TV.

When he was six, Zak’s basketball team won against all of the other first grade teams in their town, and a big picture of his gap-toothed smile holding the trophy he’d helped win with his first three-point shot held the place of honor on the fridge for almost a year.

Sometimes, Zak Mason had nightmares he didn’t understand. Of burning pain covering his entire body, of monsters and shifting Earth and bottomless pits, of faces he didn’t recognize twisted in pain or looking down at him as he fell, of flashing swords and screams and bursts of arrows whistling towards an enemy he couldn’t quite make out. He woke up and forgot the nightmares quickly, but they always left him almost wistful for something he couldn’t quite remember, even with how terrifying they were.

As Zak grew up, he noticed things nobody else seemed to. People who were just...different in ways nobody else seemed to understand. He saw a horse with wings, flying high above the clouds while he was on an airplane. A man he swore only had one eye that winked at him when he passed him on the bus. A woman with a forked tongue poking out of her mouth on a corner who’s smile made him shiver and walk faster.

And when he was eleven, almost twelve, a man with goat legs showed up and took him away from his mom. Just for the summer, but it was still the longest he’d been away from home.

“You’re a half-blood,” the man who called himself a satyr said. “You need to learn how to defend yourself and survive.”

His mom hugged him tearfully, but helped him pack his bags and sent him away, all the way to New York from their quiet little town in Wisconsin.

He expected it to be awkward. He didn’t know anything about what this satyr, whose name was Ash, was talking about. Gods and nymphs and a camp where he would learn to swordfight and find out who his dad was? None of it made any sense at all, and so Zak spent the trip to New York dreading whatever this camp was going to be.

He and Ash walked until he saw a tree, and Zak knew, just like that, that he was home. There were plenty of trees around, but this one was tall and proud and straight, and seeing it sent a jolt of some kind of unidentifiable pride down Zak’s spine.

And Zak and Ash passed the tree on top of its hill, and Zak felt like he was home. They looked over a valley full of cabins, a lake, strawberry fields, a big blue house with a wrap-around porch, a climbing wall that seemed to be on fire, and a thick forest.

Everything that didn’t make sense on the trip here clicked in Zak’s head. This was right, this was where he was supposed to be, that was the Big House, and the climbing wall was beatable if you knew the trick, and that was the armory even though it just looked like a shed.

“How do you know all that?” Ash asked, looking confused.

Zak paused.

“I don’t know,” he said.

But this was home.

He met Chiron, the centaur, and it felt like waking up from one of his nightmares. Especially when Chiron looked at him like he already knew everything about Zak and led him around the camp he already felt like he knew backward and forwards.

He was given a space to sleep in Cabin Eleven but told he’d likely be moving soon, as his dad would claim him.

Somehow, it was instinct to head for the lake during free time and climb into a canoe. He was terrible at it, but somehow it just felt right to be out on the lake with the naiads laughing at him.

What he was good at though, was still basketball. Basketball, and archery, and he picked up how to play guitar pretty quickly, too. He loved it at Camp Half-Blood, he told his mom in every letter. He missed her, sure, but they promised he’d be able to come home for the school year.

On his twelfth birthday, a flaming lyre burned above his head.

“Hail Zak Mason, son of Apollo,” Chiron announced in a booming voice, and Zak was welcomed into Cabin Seven with open arms.

So Percy Jackson died, and Percy Jackson made it to Elysium, and Percy Jackson chose to be reborn.

And Zak Mason was born, and Zak Mason was claimed.

Zak Mason still woke up with nightmares that faded from his mind before he blinked all the way awake. Of the same burning pain, but with a face that made him smiled floating through it. Of monsters he knew by name, and names he heard in stories of heroes in the second Titan war and the second giant war.

Annabeth Chase, daughter of Athena and designer of Olympus. Grover Underwood, the satyr who finally found the great god Pan. Nico di Angelo, son of Hades, and Jason Grace, son of Jupiter, and Frank Zhang, son of Mars, and Hazel Levesque, daughter of Pluto, and Piper McLean, daughter of Aphrodite.

Names that whispered “home” to him the same way Thalia’s tree did and the lake did and the entire camp did, and he wasn’t sure why.

Chiron watched Zak Mason carefully, always with an expression of almost-but-not-quite recognition. When he insulted another camper or twisted his face in a particular scowl, Chiron shook his head and turned away.

There was one name that didn’t just whisper home, it screamed it.

Percy Jackson, son of Poseidon, savior of humankind, one of the most powerful demigods of the modern age.

Zak didn’t know him, how could he? He’d died protecting a group of young demigods almost two years before Zak was born.

But somehow, Zak did.

He looked in the window of Cabin Three and saw the always empty bunk bed with a minotaur’s horn hanging above it and a ballpoint pen on the pillow and he knew the stories behind them without having to ask.

He’d dreamed them, he knew it, even if he’d forgotten the dreams. Rain and lightning and a woman who disappeared in a flash of golden light, and a sword that had killed a thousand threats to people Percy Jackson loved.

Zak stared at the pen sitting on the pillow and knew it belonged in his pocket. It didn’t surprise him when he woke up with it on his own pillow the next morning, and it didn’t surprise Chiron when it continued to do so every time Zak tried to return it to the little shrine to the fallen hero called Percy Jackson.

When he practiced with Riptide in the arena, it was like every sword fighting tactic he hadn’t been able to master with any other sword came naturally.

People whispered when they saw him fighting with Riptide. Whispered of Percy Jackson, who had fought the god of war and won when he was twelve years old. Who had defeated monsters Hercules himself couldn’t. Who’d wandered Tartarus with only Annabeth Chase beside him and come out alive. Who’d stopped Kronos and Gaea and was the reason camp was so busy and full of life. Who’d given his life to save people he cared for and who’d been willing to go to the ends of the Earth or further for his friends.

And those stories felt like home in the same way camp did, in the same way all those names did and in the same way his nightmares did.

Because Percy Jackson died, and Percy Jackson made it to Elysium, and Percy Jackson was reborn as Zak Mason, son of Apollo, who would surely prove to be as much of a hero as the first body his spirit had inhabited.

Because a spirit like that of Percy Jackson couldn’t be contained to Elysium, and couldn’t be contained to one life of heroism. Not when there was the choice to be another hero whose name would feel like home in his next life when the River Lethe tried again to wipe away memories that couldn’t be erased completely.

And a spirit like that of Percy Jackson could never be anything less than a Hero of Olympus, even if it started over in a new body with a new name.