paint the sky

language warning here

disclaimer here

crappy story below the line

they've always been oneandtogether – connorandtravis, no more, no less, bonded together by blood and a little more.

he's never been the one with delusions of grandeur – of gold-plated crowns and gleaming silver chariots and hordes of ebullient people clamoring for you and your fame – but travis has, and so he follows, like a dutiful little guard dog, paying the debt he knows travis has already paid ten times over for him.

because that was their life, for the first – what was it now? twelve? fifteen? years. that was their life, wrapped up in a fancy little tortilla, with maybe a little hot sauce drizzled on top for that pizzazz both of them had perfected.

then percy jackson came, savior of the world, best friend to all mankind, inexonerably heroic and inexplicitly stupid. he came, and connorandtravis took him under his – their – wing for the day or two that they could. luke the traitor – the savior – the dead – took him too, trying to grasp at him before he was swirled away under the shadow of his all powerful devoted father, but connorandtravis let him because even traitors and saviors and the dead are better than the tyrannical oblivious despots of a world (un)like our own.

(he – they – bemoan the fact two years later, when the camp is tense and waiting outside of the small door that contains behind it the fury of hell unleashed, the monsters hidden ever changing, ever waiting inside of the long immortal labyrinth. he – they – think that maybe, maybe, everything would have been avoided had the stoll twins saved jackson from the unyielding grasp of the hateful gods. he – they – think that if that happened, maybe they wouldn't be in so much danger.

they wouldn't have fight for their lives, at any rate. and it's so much harder for connor to fight for connorandtravis instead of just connor, because connorandtravis entailed so much more than plain old boring connor. he knew, even then, before the battle really started, that he'd die before he lost travis.

the feeling was mutual.)

but they weren't strong enough, and just as it ever had and ever will, that small trident glowing above the bastard's head pulled everyone around him like moths to a light. and so the hero – all, poor mistaken prophecy – had been given a sword, an immortal sword that connorandtravis could never ever touch because they were mere children of Hermes and not of the big three like the bastard was. connor knew (but never said, except maybe on dark silent nights to his other half) that he was as good as the poseidon bastard – maybe even better – at swordplay (screw the luke fight) and archery and citizenship and brotherhood and modesty and so much other shit that it wasn't even funny.

but he wasn't the one who got hercules' sword. he wasn't the one praises were sung to (although, in all honesty, he feels there're so many other people worthier than him and so much worthier than the lucky bastard who actually deserved to have their praises sung). he wasn't the one who talked to the oracle and got a quest and went on every single fucking important quest from there onwards.

sometimes, he thinks luke had the right idea. maybe the wrong way of carrying it out, but it was still the right idea. after all, no other child of hermes had been able to achieve any type of fame. ever.

he talked to chiron about it one night, when the moon was waxing crescent and the snow glimmered and the bastard and his gang were out fighting a manticore or shit. he asked him about racism, saying it was for some project or shit. asked if there was any at the camp.

chiron paused (connor loved and hated him for that because it meant that he knew someone was wrong but the asshole wouldn't say it), but then he smiled a tight, taut smile that connor could see through easily even though his brother was better at the facial expression reading thing. then the centaur said in a voice that was almost pleasant that of course there wasn't any racism in the camp. it's a free camp, isn't it? and then he chuckled like only a lying centaur could chuckle.

connor responds with the same strained, taut smile of his own, and thanked him for his time.

(he couldn't help but notice that the bastard never has to thank chiron for his time.)

after that first battle (the battle of the labyrinth, everyone calls it, but only in front of the so-called heroes. it's more commonly referred to as the disruption from hell, and dare no one disrupt that image because, shit, he saw the fucking monsters slice apart his fucking friends and he saw the fucking battle the bastard was in and thought was so fucking difficult and he wants to scream at him, yell to the high heavens that his reality was wrong, wrong, wrong, and there wasn't any need to kill kronos because percy was a fucking dictator already without even knowing it and did he even see people get killed because they were fighting maybe ten monsters at the same fucking time and still killed a monster even with their eyes gouged out and ears cut clean off and their mouths distorted and limbs missing and organs spilling out on to the red dyed ground and did he even feel any remorse because they all suffered and died to save his fucking ass? did he even know that?

and did he even feel anything when charlie died? good old resourceful charlie, who built the best weapons and best shields in the entire camp and maybe the fucking world who dies by a fucking explosion by greek fire on a fucking cruise ship. connorandtravis know, they both know, they'd told each other so that night, between tears and bodies scrunched as small as possible in respective bunks and crying themselves to sleep, that charlie could've fought his way out of that ship no problem, that he actually could have lived and percy would still have lived too. but noo, he had to play hero and percy had to act like, well, shit, he brought it on to himself, didn't he?

he's not quite sure when they begin to really, really hate percy, but he thinks it's somewhere around then.

and then the battle on the bridge, the last battle in which absolutely nothing fucking happened except a lot of people died.

and he doesn't even remember what happens, just remembers being dragged out of bed and being pumped up on adrenaline and nectar and talk with being a war leader (you can help now. your cabin needs you. go! and he feels the urge right there to turn around to the fucking pony asshole and saying 'thank you for your time', just like he's supposed to but he doesn't in the end because he knows, maybe rather dimly, that this battle was fucking important. except it wasn't.) and running out of camp and to the battle site.

and then it's blood and guts and talk and pain and hate, red-hot hate that creeps into his vision because what the fuck is percy thinking and why the fuck is it taking so long and his arms were beginning to go past hurting and starting to burn, burn from the constant pressure because the fucking camp never fucking bothered to fucking train their fucking inmates properly because the fucking heroes were all that really fucking mattered.

(he also became pretty incoherent around then.)

but his last straw wasn't till later, when percy and annabeth and all the other bitches they dragged along everywhere went running up the building or whatever to go save their fucking asses or what. because he sees his brother, holding his own against five different fucking monsters and starting to slip really, really slowly.

so he calls out his name (travis! behind you!) and for that one split second, travis looks at him (because they're connorandtravis, aren't they, and they're almost psychic in their connection with each other.)

except maybe they aren't, because the lizard lady dracaena or whatever takes this chance and stabs her spear straight into his fucking chest.

and maybe they are, because connor feels that pain, feels the intangible burn in his heart and he screams, screams in pain and shock and denial and he sees travis' eyes widen just a little and he crumples to the ground, red blossoming around his chest, the spear still sticking out of his body at a ragged angle almost comically. connor forgets to laugh.

he screams again, voice raw and painful and grating against his vocal cords already worn out from hours of fighting and dehydration and orders. his screams are long and keening, the sound a wounded animal makes and he doesn't let it up even though he can almost feel his voice give way. The lizard snake bitch grabs the spear, twisting it, and pulling it out of travis' body before stabbing it again a few times just for good measure.

connor snaps. he jumps off of the ledge he's standing on and hurtles toward the lizard bitch, still screaming his lungs out with ragged, incomprehensible swear words mixed in. He can feel the saliva dripping from his mouth and the tears in his eyes that bleed away in the wind but he doesn't give a shit because there's this big, gaping, empty space in his heart that can't and won't be filled by anything in the entire fucking world. his brother is dead, and there's nothing he can do about it except kills his murderers, all five of them.

then he remembers his call that distracted his brother and killed him, and he makes to stab himself with his dripping sword, but someone who smells of wheat-flowers and the memory of chocolate bunnies stops him and he collapses onto the ground, sobbing incoherently, clawing at his throat with red red fingers in pain and remorse.

they take him back to camp with all the other injured. he can't bring himself to congratulate percy, because in his mind, they're his murderers too. percy was the one who called the battle and was protected by the gods and his ever doting, never present father. travis had no one except his guilty, incompetent brother.

katie brings him an easel one day. she tells him to paint something. 'it helps me sometimes,' she says, cheeks rosy and eyes slightly dim. 'give it a try. paint anything you want. if you can't think of anything, just paint blue and white.' she smiles at him, a strained, tense smile that fools no one but him. 'call it the sky.'

and so he takes the paintbrush from her and dips it into the light blue paint. he smears it over the canvas slowly, relishing the way it spreads, the antithesis of red. his hand shakes, but he doesn't notice (he's too far gone to). he writes in the sky the words he's wanted to say for so long, but couldn't because no one except the dead would give him time to.

he paints the sky, and he paints words into it, long beautiful words that make as much sense as the human mind does. he paints memories and thoughts and hopes and dreams. he paints it all in shades, ohsovarying shades of unified blue.

and on top of it all, he paints a single cloud. the white streaks across the canvas like of peaceful chaos, melding in with the blue in twisted strands. on that cloud, he writes one word.

he gives the canvas back to katie the next day, thanks her for it. he smiles a strained, tense smile at her, and she responds in much the same way. then he tells her that he maybe might have loved her once on a blue moon (or a blue cloud - she smiles again, eyes inadvertently darting to the canvas sky) except he knew his brother did too. he tells her that his brother wanted to ask her out after the battle, when they'd all be safe and cozy and rejoicing.

she blinks once, and he watches as a tiny, clear orb makes its way down to the grass. green to green, he thinks, fascinated.

'thank you,' she says. her voice breaks. he wonders if her throat's sore or something, if she needs a cough drop, because travis has a huge stash of them under his mattress from that one time gordon dared everyone in the cabin to steal as many from the mess hall as they could and travis –

'thank you,' she whispers again, closing her eyes as crystals gather on her eyelashes.

he nods at her, and goes back to his cabin. he sits on his bunk, the top one, where travis had never allowed him to go on because he was afraid connor would destroy it or something. connor takes one of his brother's sheets, feeling the frayed edges, tracing the kermit the frog outline, absorbing whatever he could of travis.

he rips it clean down the middle. kermit's head separates from his body, and connor laughs. he laughs again, ripping the sheet apart into smaller and smaller pieces. travis would have loved this, he thinks, his fingers tearing at the flakes of cloth. travis loved the chaos.

then he takes out a bottle of sleeping pills he'd stolen one day from the infirmary because travis had trouble sleeping that night and was too proud to go ask for them by himself. he takes the bottle, and he pops off the cap, and holds each little white pill in his hand, feeling the smoothness and the roughness and the little marked indentations, so small, so sterile.

(he only catches a glimpse of his brother in elysium before he's whisked off to the fields of asphodel. he calls it poetic justice.)

don't bother flaming about the whole lack of capitalization thing or the sentence fragment thing or the smashing words together thing unless you really, really have to.

hope it wasn't too confusing.

thanks for reading.

also thanks to whoever nominated this for a verita award. i really appreciate it.