Chapter Text
[Round One]
Time loops.
A shitty fucking plot device that Percy had found himself trapped in. Because of course he did. He was Percy Jackson. It’s always going to be him at the centre of shit like this.
The fact that he wasn’t alone was both the only thing keeping him sane and also the only thing keeping him on the edge of abject insanity.
It had started relatively simple. For a demigod. Especially one with his track record.
The final fight with Luke and Kronos. Luke has taken the cursed dagger and driven it into his Achilles Heel. But as he and the Titan Lord drop to the ground dead, the room fills with a low, growling voice that seems to rattle bones and stutter the heart.
“You think this will be enough to stop me, Grandson? HA! Let’s see you do it again! Maybe this time you can save everyone…”
The words “By the River Styx” are never invoked, but it has that same shuddering, cold feeling filling the guts of Percy, Annabeth, and Grover as Luke finally hits the ground, truly dead. Burnt from the inside out on top of stabbing his one and only weak point.
They think it is over, that they will go home and rest before their next big adventure or fight.
They are wrong.
They do go home. They do rest.
And three months later, after they had made the gods change their ways, claim their children, build more cabins, actually protect and acknowledge their fuckign children, all three are found dead of unknown causes, sending both camp and Olympus into a state of chaos and panic.
But the only thing any of them are able to perceive as they die are the sounds of a grandfather clock chiming on the hour, and the distant sound of Kronos’ hoarse, victorious, spiteful laughter.
[Round Two]
They awaken in the forest. It’s raining. Percy looks up and sees a sight he had spent the better part of four years trying to purge from his memories.
His sweet, strong mother, held within the crushing grip of the Minotaur, whose grip was quickly and visibly tightening.
Percy locks eyes with Grover, horrified and confused, but both quickly spring into action.
The second round plays out exactly like the first, save a few prevented deaths - and a few that didn’t happen before - before ending the exact same way.
With them making it past the final battle, before dropping dead a few days later to sounds of faint laughter, crashing waves, screeching owls, and a grandfather clock chiming on the second hour.
[Round Three]
They awake in the forest again. Sally dies again. Percy, Grover, and Annabeth try their best to change fate once again.
They try to save who they can, including a surprising amount of would-be Kronos army demigods and nature spirits and satyrs. So many lives that they manage to save.
But also so many deaths that could have been stopped in some way, they just know it. What they didn’t know was how.
They fail. Again.
And all they had to show for it was that chiming clock - three chimes this time - and the resetting of their lives once again.
The trio of heroes could already tell they would come to fucking despise that sound very fucking quickly.
[Round Four]
This time it’s not just three of them.
Clarisse La Rue and Drew Tanaka join them.
The two girls are naturally confused at first, but it thankfully does not take long or much convincing from the trio of original time loopers to get them on board with the whole scheme. It also helps that the two girls seem to have been given the memories of the previous loops to truly make it obvious the trio isn’t lying.
The two girls quickly form a bond that both weirds out and concerns their cabins and most of camp, bonding over their joining the loop at the same time and their shared issue of what to do about Silena.
They attempt to reason with Silena, attempting to coax her back to their side, before both girls lose their patience and corner her one night, telling her they know of her secret as a spy, and that she is being blackmailed into it, and that there is no other ending for her on this path other than death.
They do not mention the time loop, though whether that is due to planning or inability is never really explained.
It surprisingly works.
Very well, in fact.
For a time.
Silena Beauregard dies once again, this time at the hand of her former traitorous demigods when Kronos’ army launches an attack on camp itself. She dies while fighting alongside and protecting her sisters and pays for her loyalty with her life. She takes her final breaths while being held and cried over by Drew and Clarisse. There is a smile on her face, happy that she could have done something to help.
She will never know that just moments after their final goodbyes, both her friend and younger sister would be killed in a glorious attempt at revenge, both slain by enemy spear and sword.
They fail.
As they lay side by side, dying, Clarisse and Drew clasp hands, trying to not cry out of frustration, and talk.
They talk of hopes that the others have managed to do something to change their fate, that they will be some of the only deaths and they will be able to reunite with all their fallen in the fields of Elysium. And, in the case that they truly failed to beat the Crooked Bastard, that all five of them wake up in the past to try again.
As they both fade away, they are met with the sound of mourning doves and crying boars and the chiming of a grandfather clock, chiming the fourth hour.
[Round Five]
More demigods join them.
Travis and Connor Stoll, along with Katie Gardner.
They are also confused at first, but they too are quickly brought up to speed by the others, alongside their memories of the previous loops, and are swiftly brought into the fold of plans and schemes and attempts to win against a being with dominion over time itself.
The Stolls do not spend much time in or with their cabin, unable to stomach seeing so many children, unclaimed and sleeping on the floor because the gods are unable or unwilling to claim their children. It hurts to see just how few cabins camp has, leaving so many in a space cramped enough to mean sleeping on the floor when there are so many better solutions.
They cannot look at Luke with hatred emanating from them like fog horns. They avoid him as much as possible, hanging out with Katie and the others as much whenever they are able. And when they are forced into proximity with their older brother, they do their best to lie and pretend like they don’t want to skin him alive and display it like a victory flag.
And one large middle finger to both Kronos and their father and grandfather for all of their bullshit. (They don’t say that part out loud, but they’re both thinking it.)
Katie loves her siblings, with her entire heart and soul, but she also truly despises the feeling of camp before the war.
All the rivalries. The cabin loyalty but not really. The nastiness that should be camaraderie and the fights that should be turned towards so many other things, like, oh she doesn’t know, the war on their doorstep or their fuckass useless parents??
Katie loves her siblings, but she spends her nights sneaking out to the Poseidon cabin, saying nothing to the others who have also snuck out as they all pair off and cuddle and try to stave off the nightmares that never seem to really go away.
Annabeth and Percy take his bed, naturally. They curl around one another, speaking quietly in the dark of night. Not of war plans, they never plan when they’re supposed to be sleeping. But of potential futures for when they finally win and are able to just go on with their lives.
Clarisse and Drew take the upper bunk. They don’t speak, but they do hold their hands tightly clasped between them, like a silent vow of protection and bonding that they need no words for.
Katie and Travis take a mattress on the floor, for once okay with being on the floor despite there being an open bunk right there, that being the one they took all the bedding from in the first place.
Connor and Grover take the other bunk in the room. They used to be a pairing born out of being the seventh and eighth wheels, but now the two boys do truly find comfort in one another. Not in the romantic sense like Percy/Annabeth and Travis/Katie, but more in the way of friendship, like Clarisse and Drew. Grover’s apparent ability to purr in his sleep is simply an added bonus.
No one questions why there are so many empty beds in the Poseidon cabin, considering he isn’t supposed to have any demigod children and the cabins are supposed to change form in a way that allows for all the claimed children to have a bed to themselves.
They all work together to try, once again, to shift fate’s script and survive past the end of the year. But even now they still cannot tell exactly what kind of goal post the Titan Lord had even set for them in the first place.
And so they fail yet again.
It’s beginning to feel as though there is no goal post for them to meet, just the idea of one to keep them trapped in this hellish loop.
Travis, Connor, and Katie all manage to survive until the final battle, but are all slain during the Battle of Manhattan.
The three of them all fight and fall in the same way, standing back to back, protecting their fellow demigods.
As they all finally allow themselves to collapse due to a mix of adrenaline and blood both rapidly exiting their bodies at the same time, they realise that this is what the others had described as death.
They feel that floaty, painful-yet-numb feeling take over their bodies as they all lay in the streets of Manhattan, the sounds of battle fading away, taken over by the hissing of snaking and the squeal of a pig, along with the five chimes of a grandfather clock.
They see what Annabeth and Percy said about it being a really annoying, if ominous sound.
[Round Six]
Will Solace, Nico di Angelo, and Thalia Grace are the next to join them.
They manage to get Thalia out of her tree earlier than expected, no poisoning involved, thankfully. Even more thankfully, it was just Katie, Annabeth, Percy, and Grover there when she emerged from her wooden prison because the first thing the daughter of Zeus said once free was “Oh fuck we’re in a time loop.” much to the laughter of her friends, who were quick to give her the details and current plans.
Will and Nico both manage to get to camp at around the same time, having already figured out the whole time loop thing on their own before they even got to camp. Them having their memories definitely helps, but they also seem the most prepared when they get dragged out to the beach by the others for a full bullshit debrief.
They attempt to save Bianca, Lee, Micheal, and all of Will’s siblings.
They do.
They manage to keep Bianca from being killed during her fight with the Talos Prototype.
They manage to save not only Lee and Micheal but many of Will’s other older siblings. There are still a few deaths they don’t manage to prevent, but what they have managed to do was pretty good given their track record.
Nico is no longer an only child and Will is no longer the eldest instead of the youngest. Good. They did good.
They attempt to locate Jason, not knowing if the boy is even alive at this point, but they’re willing to turn all possible stones, just in case it somehow is that last little piece that they need.
They are unable to locate him, but this just leads to Thalia making it her mission to protect as many other demigods as possible, but especially her cousins and fellow Time Loopers.
They manage to complete their ultimate goal. For a short while at least.
They all live to see the final battle reach its end.
Kronos is defeated and scattered, Luke is dead, an honestly record breaking number of demigods were kept from both defecting and death, and they were all together at the end. Bruised and cut up and tired enough to sleep for a week straight, but alive.
The time loopers live to see the next sunrise, sitting in camp with their family and celebrating, before they all fall ill with something that not even Apollo or his children can even diagnose, let alone begin curing.
The teens spend the next week going in and out of awareness, but never hearing that telltale clock chime heralding their failure.
After the first week, the eleven demigods fall into deep comas and are moved to Poseidon so as to be as comfortable as possible. Their siblings attempt to bring them to their separate cabins at first, but they all seem to drastically decline if separated a certain distance.
So into the Poseidon cabin they go, visited daily by their siblings and - although he would rather lose all of his divinity than say it - nightly by Dionysus. The God of Madness does not know why he feels compelled to check on these brats every night, and yet without fail, every night he finds himself in his uncle’s cabin, seeing that they’re all still alive and they’re as comfortable as possible.
The camp director has a sneaking suspicion that he is not the only god making clandestine visits to the children. Though he has never caught his siblings or uncles appearing, likely too busy trying to rebuild Olympus after the battle, their scents fill the cabin and seem to bring some peace to the brats, so he lets it go.
It’s not like he can judge them, he’s spent every night since the battle in his cabin with Pollux, making sure he doesn’t lose both of his boys before their time. He still remembers how his son shut down after the death of his brother. The fact that Castor was one of few casualties of the war is both a comfort and a bone deep pain.
Nearly a month after they all fell into their comas, the demigods are being held by their siblings under the setting sun, getting some ‘fresh air’ as Lee had called it, when it happens.
They all wake up.
It starts slowly, with a shift of the body and a shift in breathing.
And then, to the shocked joy of their fellow campers, the comatose campers begin to wake up, one by one.
First Clarisse, then Travis and Katie, then Drew and Grover, then Connor, then Thalia, then Will and Nico, and finally Percy and Annabeth.
Lee, snapping into medic mode, quickly sends some of the other campers to go alert Chiron and Mr. D of the awakenings. When asked if they should move the group to the infirmary, he says no. They’ll keep the kids here, and try not to move them if at all possible. Not until they could get proper examinations.
Whether that was Lee being a competent medic or an overprotective older brother who didn’t want to let go of Will quite yet, is for him to know.
And if Chiron and Mr. D came running a little faster than necessary at the news… It’s not like anyone was going to call them out on it either way.
Either way, the news quickly spreads through camp and the newly awakened demigods are tackled - very gently - by their very worried friends and family and kept in a cuddle pile for as long as possible.
Even the Ares and Athena kids could be seen getting in on the physical affection, though it was certainly more subdued than the literal piles consisting of the Aphrodite and Demeter cabins, not to mention the way the Apollo cabin were basically just one large mass of sunlight and cooing. If you looked closely enough, you could almost see the way the sunlight bent around them like an embrace.
The Athena cabin had seemingly snatched up Percy, Thalia, and Grover for their own pile, making everyone giggle or side eye them, just a little. Bianca may be completely fine having her little brother all to herself, but seeing both of her cousins get snatched up by the same cabin did make her almost pout. Even if it was completely understandable why they would both go with Annabeth.
Eventually, unfortunately, the cuddle party is eventually broken up by the need for dinner, as announced by a disgruntled sounding Mr. D who is absolutely not doing his best to smile at the sight of these dumbass brats getting to be dumbass brats instead of warriors in the war that shouldn’t have ever been theirs.
And so life goes on. The Time Loopers think they’ve done it.
They’ve finally beat Kronos and his bullshit time loop death curse.
Almost everyone is alive, if a little banged up, but healing nicely and camp is still becoming the family they all remember from before.
They’re all falling back into old routines and forming new ones in this little pocket of peace.
Things are going perfectly.
And then comes a month later.
Their pulses all simply just stop.
There is no warning, no signs, nothing had changed. Their bodies just… give out.
And while their siblings all start crying or running to get Chiron and Mr. D, there are smiles on the demigods faces.
They’re all smiling, happy to see their loved ones illuminated by the soft rays of sunlight, even as they feel their bodies shutting down and their ears slowly filling with the six chimes of that damned clock and the cries of their siblings.
They had been so close.
Yet not close enough, it would seem.
[Round Seven]
The final demigods to join their group of misfits are Castor and Pollux, the surnameless sons of Dionysus.
The twins are some of the more affected by the time loop thing at first, seeing as how one of them has died almost every time previous to now.
It was usually Castor who died, usually in some heroic sacrifice. The one or two times it had been Pollux, it had been in an ambush on camp just before or after the final battle. And of course, there had been the one time they had died together, fighting back to back as monsters stormed the streets of Manhattan.
But this round, they awaken together, remembering all of the previous loops and just about thinking they’ve well and truly lost their minds, before they are swiftly snapped up by the other time loopers and brought up to speed.
Plans for victory start to become both a little tedious with so many moving parts, but also easier due to how many of them are in the know about all of those said moving parts.
So they continue planning, continue changing things, continue trying to give their grandfather and great-grandfather the largest middle finger they possibly can.
They fail. Again.
They come to the final battle, slaying monsters and their fellow demigods and trying to not get slain themselves. Their army is larger, this time aided by both minor gods and many nature spirits and satyrs. There are not nearly as many enemy demigods, thanks to their efforts, but there are still many they did not manage to save due to one reason or another.
They do not manage to keep their side’s death count to a zero, but it is kept as low as they physically could.
The battle is long and bloody and taxing, both mentally and physically.
But this time, both twins survived, and they both will from this point on. Fate - or Kronos, they never think to really ask - will see to that.
They do better than they had in almost any previous loop. But they are all wary, remembering Loop Six and how it had seemed that they made it, only to get the sick whiplash of failure.
But it is clearly still enough that Kronos makes them do it again.
A few days after the Battle of Manhattan, the demigods all seem to get sick, before eventually passing away when nothing, not Apollo’s healing or ambrosia, seemed to do anything against the aliment.
In their final moments, the demigods feel their bodies, burning with fever, once again take on the floaty feeling that so often accompanied death and reset.
And as the world fades away, it’s replaced by darkness and seven chimes from a grandfather clock ringing out. There might have been other sounds, but they were too tired to parse them out at this point.
[Round Eight]
They fail.
Chiron and Dionysus both perish in battle.
The gods do not come to their aid, even now.
[Round Nine]
They fail.
They tell Chiron and Dionysus about the loops and the curse, hoping their mentors might be able to help them. Hoping that their mentors will survive.
They do not even make it to the final battle.
All of the group die in an ambush while attempting to scout out and get the aid of the Romans, under Chiron’s advice that maybe ‘saving everyone’ includes the Romans. This is the first they’ve all ever heard of the Romans outside of the gods, but they’re willing to try just about anything at this point.
It doesn’t work.
In an attempt to keep the Greek and Roman divide as it is, the Roman gods incentivise their legionnaires to attack the Greek camp, before the Greeks could ‘launch an ambush’.
As Thalia lay on the ground, bleeding out and watching the sky change from blue to orange and pink above her, she is shocked to hear soft, hesitant footsteps approach her.
It can’t be one of her fellow time loopers, they’re all dead already, moved on to the next loop while she lies on the ground here and in her tree there. She allows her head to fall to the side, her eyes finding whoever was approaching.
It was a boy, with short blonde hair and bright blue eyes. He’s wearing a purple shirt and there are tattooed lines on his arms, showing his alliance to Rome and its gods.
But she knows who this boy is. She hasn’t seen him in many years, but she recognises him all the same.
How could she ever forget the face of her little brother?
His eyes are wide as they meet hers, and although she can no longer hear anything save for the slow beating of her own dying heart and the rolling of thunder off in the distance and that fucking clock chiming, all signalling her end, she is still able to read his lips as he speaks in shock.
“Thalia?”
Thalia smiles softly as she finally feels herself fading back into the bark of her pine tree, taking with her Jason’s face and the fact that he is alive as she waits for the others to set her free.
[Round Ten]
They fail.
Kronos wins.
His army grows beyond what it was in any previous round, though they have no idea how. They had done all the same things they knew worked before, but it would seem that none of it worked this time.
The worst part was that this time they lived to see it happen.
They live to see the army break through their camp’s protective barrier.
They live to see their friends and siblings be slaughtered by monster maw and claw and sword.
They live to see Chiron and Dionysus do their best to stop the carnage, both having been told of the loops once again.
They live to see their mentors be killed once again, doing their best to protect their herd and ultimately failing.
Castor and Pollux take the death of their father worse than they thought they would. They had reacted the same the first time he died, but he had survived the last loop. They thought he was safe.
The time loopers do not live long afterwards, slaughtered alongside their friends and family at camp and mentors.
The gods still do not attempt to save them, simply locking down Olympus and going about life as always.
There are eight chimes of the clock, accompanied by the spraying of blood and war cries of demigods.
[Round Eleven]
They fail.
Eleven chimes.
[Round Twelve]
They fail.
Twelve chimes.
[Round Thirteen]
They fail.
Thirteen chimes.
[Round Fourteen]
They fail.
Fourteen.
[Round Fifteen]
They fail.
Fifteen.
[Round Sixteen]
They fail.
They’re all really fucking tired of those clock chimes.
[Round Seventeen]
They fail.
Seventeen chimes.
[Round Eighteen]
They fail. They fail. They fail. They fail.They fail.They fail.They fail.They fail.They fail.They fai-
Eighteen chimes.
[Round Nineteen]
They.
Fucking.
Failed.
Again.
Nineteen chimes.
Of that fucking grandfather clock.
[Round Twenty]
They all awaken once again.
They are tired.
They are war weary and scarred, both physically and mentally, from what was nearly a collective century of reliving the same patch of time over and over.
They are approached on the beach, while sitting around their fire one night, taking bets on how they will fail this time and eating food that they will not scrape to make offerings. They have not made true offerings in nearly 50 years, only those they absolutely had to.
But the beach side fires and meals had become a tradition of theirs somewhere around Round Ten, and it was one of their few peaceful hobbies left.
They all glance up as they hear footsteps approaching them.
It is not a being they recognise. And yet there are no warning flags going up in their brains at the sight of an unknown, clearly divine being standing just a few feet away from their fire, looking at them all with an odd smile and too many arms to be mortal.
It is Fate.
Not the Fates. Not the Loom Weaver Sisters with their strings and scissors and all knowing eyes.
But the Fate of another dimension. A dimension where the gods cannot have children due to a separate curse cast by ‘That Old Bastard’, as they had quickly begun to call him. A dimension where their very existence would be worshiped and adored.
It asks if they would like to come with It, to this other world, help this world survive while also escaping this cesspit they’ve been stuck in.
Its voice was soft, and echoing in a way that set all of the children at ease in a way they couldn’t explain out loud. There was an aura to this Fate that seemed to promise a kind of safety, and maybe even freedom from the hell they’d all been trapped in.
This Fate was from a completely different reality, surely It would not be bound by the Old Bastard’s curse, and leaving this reality should realistically release them from it too.
They think about it for a while, having a silent conversation amongst themselves, communicating not with words but simple glances and tilts of the head or eyebrows.
Fate is silent while they decide. It wants, yearns, to take them with It, but it would be so much easier if the children choose to follow, rather than requiring force.
They agree.
The thirteen demigods will go with It to Its home reality and meet Its versions of the Olympians and be taken in as their children instead.
They will leave behind this world and all of its bullshit for a fresh start.
Fate beams at their decision.
With a swift snap of Its finger, a portal opens in the treeline, reality tearing open at the seams, just large enough for them all to slip through one at a time.
They hesitate only a few moments, as if waiting to confirm with Fate that this is actually safe and not some sick trick.
Fate gestures with a slight bow, promising silently that it is truly safe for them all.
And so they do. They step through, one at a time, reaching out a hand to the demigod behind them. As if they’re scared to lose one another.
Fate steps through last, looking back at the world as It leaves.
It had been so easy to persuade these children, It thought. It had not even really needed to persuade, just tell them the facts of the situation, no tricks or riddles involved. And they had not fought, they had simply finished their food, put out their fire, and stood to follow It into an unknown reality. Simply because their birth world is so utterly fucked.
Before It steps through, however, Fate glances towards camp. Its eyes narrow, and Its presence fills the space for a split second.
It would leave one last surprise for the beings of this world.
The portal closes.
The time loop ends, not because they succeeded in Kronos’ game, but because they had been taken off the board by a different Game Master, and placed somewhere else entirely.
Now it was time for their new life, their new game.
A better one, Fate thought bitterly, as It watched the children sleep within Its hold as It made Its way to the throne room of Olympus, ready to show off the children, with their scars and their attitudes, ready to be taken in by new parents.
Loving parents.
Actual parents.