Chapter Text
Seventeen days.
Two and a half weeks.
It didn't feel like long enough. It felt like an eternity.
Seventeen days. He'd spent more days down there than years he'd been alive.
Percy kept his gaze where it'd fallen to the deck, able to feel the eyes of the others—save Lee, who was grappling with the news the same as he was—as they watched him take it in. It rankled him, just a bit, and he felt his hand twitch. He wished, only slightly, that they'd waited longer than a few minutes after Nico and the others had left to tell them, that they'd let them take a year-long shower and then maybe also a year-long nap before springing the news, except Lee had asked and Percy hadn't been able to speak up and say please please I don't want to know that makes it real that makes it—
The blackened and burnt wood under his palm seemed to heat up, the stretch of a wing from Apollo's rage warming his skin. The sun was still high above, only just beginning its arc toward the western horizon, and he could feel the way the rays curved around his shoulders. The best Apollo could do right now, given the state of things between the gods, and it wasn't enough but it had to be. It had to be enough because Apollo couldn't swoop down and take Percy and Lee into his arms, couldn't surround them in light and warmth and burn away all of their problems. He couldn't because Percy and Lee had walked through hell for seventeen days and their fathers had turned the world into a battleground.
Seventeen days.
The siege of Manhattan hadn't even been half of that. Ogygia had been two weeks, the Labyrinth somewhere in the same range combined.
Seventeen days was a lifetime compared to everything else, and yet…
"Doesn't feel like enough," Lee said eventually, and Percy knew he was the only one to catch the waver to his voice.
"No," he said, voice scraping out of his throat. "It really doesn't."
"What…what was it like?" Piper asked, hushed and hesitant. Percy swallowed around the sudden burn of sulfur in his lungs, the churn of liquid fire in his stomach. The air was no longer poisonous, he knew, his lungs long healed, so why could he still feel it every time he breathed? He was no longer being sustained by the fiery blood of Tartarus himself, so why was it still curdling in his gut like sour milk?
Why could he still feel it? Why couldn't he escape it? Would he ever? Did he even—
"Hell," Lee said, raw and aching in a way that had the others dropping their gazes. He traced the burns on his hands with an unreadable look on his face, and Percy wordlessly reached over to twine their fingers together, stopping the movement.
"We're out," he said quietly. "And the Doors are closed. Let's leave it at that."
The others exchanged glances, and Percy bit his tongue to keep from snapping. They were just worried, he knew, but his nerves had been scraped raw by hell itself and he wasn't—he couldn't—
"I think we need, um…" Lee made a gesture back with his head, grip tightening around Percy's hand. Hazel's face softened as she reached over to squeeze their legs.
"You've both earned a long rest. We'll get started heading to—" She paused there, pulling her lip in between her teeth. Percy felt the expectance in the air, so heavy and thick he could've choked on it, as everyone's eyes turned to him. He shouldn't have been surprised by it. Their whole goal so far on this quest had been to close the Doors of Death.
The Doors were closed now—not by any of them, not by any of the so-called heroes but by—
The Doors were closed, but their quest was far from over. Gaea was still moving pieces on the chessboard, still angling for her ultimate checkmate, still dragging herself back into wakefulness with a vengeance.
So Percy shouldn't have been surprised that they were looking to him for the answers, that they expected him to have the answers. But Percy—
"I don't…" He worked his jaw, eyes caught on the blackened wing under his free hand. Lee shifted next to him.
Percy hadn't told him. Couldn't tell him.
"We're only a little west of the Grove of Dodona," he said eventually, and Lee sucked in a breath.
"I hadn't even—the original grove?"
Percy dipped his head, moving to trail his hand over where Tani had draped herself across his legs. "She's waiting."
"She?" Leo asked. "You don't mean…?"
Percy shook his head. "No, that…Mother Earth awaits us somewhere else, I'm sure. Further east. But the Grove—I need to speak with my grandmother."
An odd silence fell, broken a moment later by Jason, who leaned forward slightly. "The grandmother? Like—"
"Rhea, yes," Percy said, feeling the faintest flicker of amusement at the way the others, save Lee, blinked at that. Gods, he could hardly remember the days he got weird about interacting with gods and Titans. "She's also one of my patrons, and I—" His voice broke, and he cleared his throat, ignoring the tilt of Lee's head at the action.
"I just need to speak with her, is all."
Another silence, this one rife with a tension that came with the knowledge that he was holding back, and then Leo blew out a long breath, clapping his hands on his thighs as he started to stand.
"I'll set course for this magical grove, then—"
"The original seat of my grandmother's prophetic powers, you mean," Percy said dryly.
"The only seat not tied in some way to my dad or Delphi," Lee added on and Percy, despite his best efforts, couldn't stop from stiffening like he'd been stuck with a cattle prod. The movement had Lee's head whipping around to face him, eyebrows scrunching down in concern. The others had clearly caught it, too. Leo paused halfway to his feet, locking eyes with Jason, while Piper straightened up, exchanging a glance with Hazel and Frank. Even Tani lifted her head, ears flicking back as she nudged at where his hand had frozen on her spine.
But Percy couldn't help it. The mention of Delphi—
A damp cave with a monster coiled in its depths. A monster that was waiting waiting waiting—I shall take everything, I shall take and take and take until he has nothing left and you shall be among the first to fall, little Oracle. You shall fall where even he cannot follow—poisonous yellow eyes and an open maw and a hissing laugh.
Percy tried to hide the shudder that ran through his body by shooting to his feet, barely giving Tani time to roll off of his legs and dropping Lee's hand as he went. "I'll, um, I'll give you the coordinates for the grove. We're not that far, but we'll have to get in the air for it."
"That might take a bit," Leo said, wrinkling his nose unhappily even as he followed Percy to the controls. "Apparently, we lost half of our flight oars due to a giant turtle."
A monstrous turtle, a vicious snap, narrow stairs and piles of gold and Giles Corey and belief is everything—save my sons save my sons save my—
Percy almost tripped over his feet, pressing a hand on the controls to steady himself. He sucked in a breath, shaking his head roughly to get rid of the lingering feel of the visions.
"Huh," he said, more to himself than anyone else, "I have to admit, not the path I thought you'd take."
And he turned, eyes finding Hazel from where she was holding out a hand to help Lee up.
"Giles Corey," Percy said almost conversationally, and her eyes went wide. Jason, just next to her, made the face of someone who was supremely uncomfortable. "Rather poetic, I'd say, though I did really think you were gonna go the route of flinging him off the cliff to get eaten by his own turtle."
Hazel let out a strangled noise. "That—I…" She paused, clearing her throat and taking a step closer. "You're not—about what I did, you're…okay with it?"
Percy tilted his head. "Why wouldn't I be?"
Hazel swallowed, one of her shoulders lifting in a half-shrug. "I don't know, I guess. Just…" She didn't finish, and Jason, who must've understood, who must've known, leaned over to brush their shoulders together in wordless comfort.
Percy wasn't sure how he felt about the fact that she didn't seem comfortable telling him why she thought he'd be mad about what she'd done, but…well, he wasn't exactly rushing to tell them what he'd done in Tartarus, either.
That was different, though. There was nothing Hazel could've done that would make him turn away from her, nothing she could do that would make him hate her or see her as a monster. Not like he was.
Percy could practically hear Lee's sigh, even though he was reasonably certain his boyfriend had no way of knowing what he was thinking about. He risked a glance over, and found that Lee was, in fact, staring at him with a face that said he had a very good idea of what thoughts were running through his head.
Percy looked away quickly, now very sure that he'd just earned himself another discussion about—about that once they were alone and also very much not looking forward to it. He inputted the coordinates to the grove without even having to think about them and then turned back around, entirely unsurprised to find Lee lingering at his shoulder.
He reached out, brushing a hand over his chest just to feel the warmth underneath, the steady ba-dum ba-dum of his heart. Lee's aura had returned to the same easy light and gentle warmth as always, but still Percy struggled not to reach for it, the memories of when it had flickered and died under his palm driving him to want to keep it at the edge of his awareness with every breath. He wondered, just a little, if Lee was doing the same, and then, because he couldn't help himself, if his aura had—
"Bed?"
"Shower first," Percy responded, forcing the fears about his own aura out of his mind. "Then bed."
A ghost of a smile flickered across Lee's face. "I could get on board with that."
If this were any other situation, Percy thought, they would've just earned themselves some form of teasing for that, for the insinuation of a joint shower followed by sleeping in the same bed, but clearly no one wanted to tease the two people who'd just walked out of hell about not wanting to separate. Pity. It would've made Percy feel just a little more normal, a little more human.
He shook it off, following Lee down the stairs to their cabin and ignoring the way the ceiling above his head made his heart speed up. He knew, logically, that just because he could no longer see the sun or feel its warmth directly on his skin didn't mean they were completely cut off, didn't mean they were out of reach, but he couldn't stop the thrill of fear running up his spine when the door to outside swung shut behind him.
Couldn't stop the urge to reach forward and catch Lee's hand again, focusing on the taste of warmth under his skin, the liquid light and the clink of piano keys and the thrum of a bowstring that reminded him that Lee was alive and breathing and no longer withering away.
Lee shot him a look over his shoulder, and whatever he saw had his face softening. He pulled him to a stop at the base of the stairs, bringing their joined hands to his chest. They breathed in sync for a moment, Percy soaking up the aura he knew better than he knew words and letting the memory of Lee withering away in front of him fade.
They made it into their cabin eventually, Tani and Koda both already waiting for them on the bed, and Percy could see immediately that someone else had been staying there. It was Nico, he knew without question, and he felt a lump rise up in his throat at the thought of his baby brother curling up in their bed just to feel closer to them, at the thought of him coming back here after Rome and finding only what Percy had left behind.
Percy's heart ached for Nico, at the distance between them, at the way Nico had collapsed into his chest and begged not to have to go. If he could've, if the fate the world hadn't hung in the balance, Percy would've curled his arms around Nico's back and never let go, would've let him crawl between his ribs and make a permanent home in his chest. It had shattered his heart into a million tiny pieces to hear the crack in Nico's voice and still tell him he had to go. After everything, after fighting so hard to get back to his brother, to keep his promise, letting him go had been almost impossible. Nico was doing what he had to do, and so was Percy, but that didn't make it any easier to watch his baby brother disappear into the shadows mere hours after getting him back in his arms. There was an emptiness in his chest from it, an ache that wouldn't be sated until Nico had slipped back into his shadow once more.
Lee stopped in the middle of the room, tipping his head back and letting out a long, slow breath. "I feel…" He trailed off, and Percy met him where he stood, slotting into his side like they were two perfectly matched puzzle pieces.
"I know."
"I knew it would be hard," he admitted quietly. "But I didn't—I don't—"
"I know," Percy said again because it was all he could say.
Silently, he began unbuckling the scaled leather armor that covered Lee's body, piling it up on the floor where Lee was putting his own—a move that would definitely annoy them the next time they were trying to put them back on—and he tried to ignore the zing that went up his spine when the last piece fell away, tried to ignore the way he felt raw and exposed and vulnerable. He resisted the urge to put in back on, to look over his shoulder.
Anything that attacked the ship would have to go through all five of their friends first, would then have to face Tani's bared teeth and Koda's sharp claws and Melody's furious hooves, before they got to the two of them, and yet Percy still couldn't push back the feeling of not safe not safe not safe that simmered under his skin. They were too cut off in the room, too trapped. He couldn't feel the heat of the sun on his back and know that Apollo was watching, couldn't taste the fresh air and smell the sea in the distance.
Lee made the first move with their clothes, pulling at Percy's dirtied sweatshirt with infinite softness, not speaking a word about how it was one of his favorites—stolen from Lee's own closet—and it was probably ruined and even if it wasn't he'd never be able to wear it again without thinking of blood red clouds and broken glass and rivers of fire and—
He hung it over the edge of the laundry basket in the corner instead, ignoring the blood and ichor and grime that covered the fabric, and went back for Percy's shirt. Percy let him, his own hands carefully unwinding the shawl from Lee's shoulders and folding it up on the desk.
They'd undressed each other countless times by now, two and a half years into their relationship and sharing a bed for over half of that time, but this time was different.
This time, Percy thought as he knelt to slip off Lee's shoes, wasn't heated or passionate or sexual. It was just…intimate. It was just comfort.
It reminded him, suddenly, of when he'd come back after being trapped on Ogygia, trembling hands removing his shirt to let Lee see the scars he'd returned with, stuttering heartbeat as he let him trail soft fingers over the burns that marked his skin.
There'd been no heat there, either, no want for anything more physical.
The handheld hearth from Hestia found its way back to the desk, the shadowed feather from Thanatos placed right next to it, and then the daggers from Damasen were lined up in a neat row next to Lee's golden ones—returned to him by both Hazel and Nico, adorably—and the bow from Artemis went up against the wall and the quiver from Orion just beside it, until they had nothing left.
Only then did Percy take Lee's hand and draw him into the bathroom, heating the water of the shower instantly with barely a thought.
Percy could've stayed in there for an eternity, he thought, just letting the water wash away the remnants of hell on his skin. Maybe if he did, it would eventually soak through his skin and do the same with the pieces that lingered in his blood, in his bones.
Maybe if he did, the poison simmering alongside the ocean would be burned out, leaving him with nothing but sea and sun and the things he was supposed to—
Maybe if he did, the water would recognize that he was no longer what he should be, would recognize the corruption in his soul, would turn on him.
That part was inevitable, he knew. Maybe not with this filtered fresh water, but with the sea? With the storms and the waves and the tides? It was only a matter of time before they realized his very blood was corrupted with tainted liquid.
It was only a matter of time before his father looked at him and saw—
"You're thinking it again," Lee muttered, tugging Percy's head back by his hair with a touch less gentleness than before and working shampoo into the roots.
Percy stayed silent, letting the water trickle down his face, and he felt the kiss Lee pressed to his temple like a brand.
"Talk to me," Lee said, just a shade off of a plea, and Percy'd never been able to deny Lee anything, least of all when he sounded like that.
"I can still feel it," he admitted slowly. "The poison."
Lee's hands didn't so much as flinch in where they were working the shampoo out of his hair. Percy hadn't thought they would. Lee loved him enough that that wouldn't matter to him, he knew that.
Wished it helped, at all, with the sickness curdling in his gut.
"I couldn't before, even though I…I think it's been there for a long time. Maybe my whole life. But now I know about it and it's like it—like it woke up and I can't stop feeling it. I feel corrupted."
Dirty, filthy, tainted. A hundred different words that he'd all said before. After Ogygia, after the Labyrinth, after Cassandra. After Akhlys, now.
"You're not," Lee said evenly, and Percy felt the harsh laugh drag itself out of his throat.
"I am, though. Poison is tainted liquid, corrupted liquid. And I can control it, I can feel it in my blood the same way I can feel the sea."
"Just because you can feel the corruption doesn't mean you're corrupted," Lee retorted, pushing his head out of the spray and moving to stand under it himself. He shoved the shampoo at Percy, who took it without a beat of hesitation. A flicker of frustration swept through him even as he began the process of washing Lee's hair, working out the braids he'd hidden in the locks in Damasen's home what felt like a lifetime ago.
He loved Lee, more than anything, more than everything, but he just—he wasn't getting it. When Percy talked of the corruption, when he talked of things he should and shouldn't be able to do, Lee didn't quite understand.
Poseidon was the sea, was the salt and the brine and the clear waters and the hidden depths, was the tides and the currents and the lashing winds. He wasn't—this…what Percy could do, it didn't fall under Poseidon's domain.
The oil spills when he was younger had almost devastated his father, he remembered Rhode telling him once, had knocked him and most of their family flat for months while the corruption raged along the coasts. Even now, it took more of their focus than anyone liked to admit to wash the waters clean of the pollution from ships and other oil companies.
That Percy could control that kind of liquid, that he could do it easily and without pain when it had damn near kept his dad bedridden for half a year, it scared him. Terrified him, actually.
"We aren't supposed to be able to do this," he said heavily. "The powers we get come from the ichor in our blood, the ichor we get from our godly parent. To control something outside their domains is…it should be impossible, I think. I've never seen anyone do it. Not even Dionysus or Heracles, when they were ascending."
"You don't get your sight from your dad, though," Lee pointed out, and Percy had to fight every instinct in order not to tense at the words. "At least not that you know of. How is this any different?"
"Aside from the fact that it's a power that's completely antithetical to my dad's domains?" Percy washed Lee's hair clean, unable to resist dropping a kiss to his shoulder as he reached for conditioner. "It just…sight is different. It doesn't come solely from parentage."
It wouldn't make his dad and siblings look at him like he was a monster, either. Not like the poison control would.
Lee let out a loud sigh like he could tell what direction Percy's thoughts had taken and turned around so they were face to face. His expression showed just how unimpressed he was, despite the soft turn of his lips that spoke of unbridled affection.
Wordlessly, Lee tipped himself forward until his face rested against Percy's shoulder, lips pressed to the winding scar left from Chrysaor.
"You don't feel corrupted to me," he said matter-of-factly, and Percy blinked.
"I don't?"
Lee shook his head. "You don't feel any different to me, Hammerhead. Same sweet, summer rain as always. Maybe a little more stormy," he amended with a short huff of amusement. "But I think that's more to do with your emotional turmoil than you being corrupted by poison."
"You don't feel it," Percy repeated, a little numbly.
"I don't feel it."
It would've been embarrassing, Percy thought, how quickly he went boneless in Lee's embrace, had he been with anyone else. But all Lee did was hum, arms curling around his back to draw them even closer.
It wasn't until they were dried and clothed, shuffling under the covers of the bed with Tani and Koda snuggling up on either side of them, that Lee spoke again, voice hushed and hesitant.
"I can still feel it on my skin," he whispered. "The fire in my stomach, the sulfur in my lungs."
Percy kept his eyes on the ceiling, even as his hand crept across the mattress to twine their fingers together. "Me, too."
"Do you think we'll ever…?"
"…I hope so."
Hoped that one day they'd wake up and the liquid fire in their guts would've dissipated, that the burning of their lungs with each breath would've cooled. Hoped that they didn't have to carry the pieces of Tartarus with them for the rest of their lives.
Percy brought his free hand up to his chest, fingers finding the small pendant from Damasen. Maybe just the one piece, he amended with a flicker of grief.
Tani wormed her way under his free arm to lay more firmly against his side with a disgruntled huff, her way of saying that the time for talking was over and they'd best get to sleep now or she'd smother them.
Percy let out a breathless laugh, scooching over obligingly until the four of them were pressed together, Percy and Lee in the center, so tightly they might as well have been one person.
Percy waited until he was sure Lee was asleep to slip out. Tani let out a grumble, pawing at him to come back, and he shushed her with a finger over his lips.
"Come with me, then," he murmured when she kept glaring. "Koda'll stay with Lee, keep him safe." She grunted unhappily but followed him out of the bed with only a flick of the ear. Koda snuffled softly, burrowing deeper into Lee's side, and Percy knew the wolf would wake if anything were to happen to him.
Lee would be safe with the pup.
And yet, it was still overwhelmingly hard for him to shut the door behind him. He and Lee hadn't been separated since the journey through the Night, since—
Please please I don't want—I'm sorry I'm sorry it's gonna—
I wish it didn't have t—can't change—necessa—
Inevitable.
And the time before that had been even worse, had had Percy stumbling around injured and blinded and alone, searching in vain for that flicker of warmth that meant Lee, that meant safe.
Being unable to feel his aura, unable to find his heartbeat, his warmth, his light, left completely and utterly alone wondering where he'd gone and what had happened to him, it had been horrible. Even when he'd been blinded by the arai he'd still been able to feel Lee. And then, between one breath and the next he'd just been…gone.
Percy shivered, reaching out with his senses. He found the thread of liquid light, the soft warmth of the first day of summer, and kept it at the edge of his awareness as he made his way back up to the deck.
The others must've still been working on repairs deeper in the ship because not a single one of them was out on the deck when he stepped out, and he breathed a sigh of relief that he felt only slightly guilty for.
It wasn't that he didn't want to see his friends. He did. It was just…if they were out here, if they saw him, he wouldn't be able to just breathe. He'd be aware, no matter how hard they tried to give him space, that they were watching him, that they were checking on him, making sure he didn't fall to pieces.
And Percy just wanted to be able to sit and breathe without the weight of everyone's expectations resting on his shoulders.
Tani wormed her way into his lap as he settled on the deck, and he felt his lips twitch up as he dropped a hand on her head. Tani's expectations didn't count, he told himself. She just wanted to be near him.
The others would do their best, but he would feel their gazes regardless. And he didn't want that, not right now. Didn't want to be perceived.
So he took the time for what it was worth, leaning back on his hands and soaking up waning warmth of the sun as it dipped closer to the horizon. The waters of the Acheron lapped against the hull, and he tried not to think about the faint tinge of the Underworld to the river, the cold reek of it in his nostrils.
Percy just tipped his head back, closed his eyes, and let the fresh air sweep through his lungs like a balm. He didn't think about the war his dad and Apollo had started, didn't think about the river of fire or homely swamps or good Titans that he'd doomed to a permanent death.
Definitely didn't think about a dark cavern and a waiting monster, about a hissing laugh and Del—
He didn't think about any of that. It could all wait, even if only for the night. At least, he hoped it could.
It wasn't like Percy would know if it couldn't. Not with—not with—
No, nope. Not thinking about it. Definitely not thinking about it.
That was where Lee found him, hours later, when the sky had barely darkened enough to show the stars. He'd tipped himself back even further to rest on his elbows, Tani sprawled across his chest, so that he could trace the constellation of the Huntress with his eyes. The blackened wood left over from Cassandra stretched out beneath his palms, and he knew he wasn't imagining the faint warmth seeping into his skin from the burnt outline.
"You could've at least pretended to try and sleep, you know."
Percy let out a humorless huff of laughter, tilting his head further back to meet Lee's gaze.
He was still wearing the circlet from Day, was the first thing Percy noticed, pure strings of light woven around each other to rest on his crown, and it made him look ethereal, despite the bone-deep exhaustion that permeated every inch of his body.
"We both knew I wasn't going to get any sleep," Percy said, eyes tracking over the tired lines of Lee's face, the ones he knew were matched on his own. "Wanted the fresh air."
Lee's lips pursed, and he settled down on the deck next to him, slow and careful, a wince crossing his face when the movement exacerbated his sore muscles. "You could've woken me."
"You were sleeping," Percy said pointedly, and Lee shot him a flat look.
"I woke up and you weren't there and I…"
Percy wilted immediately, able to imagine all too clearly how he would've felt if he'd woken in the middle of the night and found Lee gone. He'd probably have been halfway to a hurricane by now, in all honesty.
"I left Koda with you," he said after a moment. "Hoped you'd realize that he'd have woken you if anything were wrong."
Lee made an unimpressed noise, shifting until he was pressed up against Percy's spine, taking his weight and wrapping warm arms around him and Tani both. Koda snuffled, wriggling his way under one of Tani's paws to cuddle up in his lap.
"Wake me up next time," was all he said. Percy rested his head on his collarbone, letting his temple brush Lee's jaw.
"Okay."
Lee's presence wasn't a weight on his shoulders, wasn't an expectation he had to carry the way he would if it were one of the others out here, and so Percy did nothing more but sink back into his chest with a low hum.
It took awhile, somewhere close to half an hour, before Lee noticed. Percy felt him stiffen slightly.
"You don't have your sketchbook."
Percy kept his gaze on the stars. Orion wasn't visible this time of year, so the Huntress—visible all year round—was chasing after nothing, glittering bow drawn.
"Left it in the room," he said after waiting what he knew was a second too long. Lee's hair brushed against his cheek as he shifted.
"You don't—you don't need to draw? After…"
It took a great amount of effort to keep his face neutral, to steady his voice. "Not yet. Drew most everything before we even fell."
Percy couldn't see Lee's face, but he knew his boyfriend better than he knew himself, knew that Lee, in turn, understood him like no one else. Knew that Lee would feel…it, even if he wouldn't be able to put words to it.
"Percy—"
Piper's appearance on the deck stopped Lee's question in its tracks, and Percy tried very hard not to show his relief because he knew that would almost certainly lead to it being finished anyway.
"Oh," Piper paused when she saw them. "You're up sooner than I thought you'd be."
Percy could practically feel Lee's eyeroll, and he nudged him with an elbow in retaliation. "Couldn't sleep," he said sheepishly. "Wanted the fresh air. Lee joined me a little bit ago."
"Ah," she said. "So he actually got some sleep?"
"An hour or two," Lee grumbled, and this time Percy was the one rolling his eyes, twisting around to press a soft kiss to his cheek.
"You didn't have to come sit with me," he pointed out. "Once you knew I was alright you could've just gone back to bed."
"Alone," Lee muttered with a put-upon sigh that actually had Percy laughing.
"Poor Honeybee," he teased. "Suffering the woes of an insomniac boyfriend. How ever will you—" Percy cut himself off with a squawk when Lee whacked at him indignantly, the slight tension from their interrupted conversation evaporating like morning mist in the summer sun.
"Glad to see you two—" And it was back.
Lee's chest stiffened against Percy's back, his hands stilling at his sides. Percy pursed his lips, feeling the slight uptick of them trend downward. Piper, for what it was worth, seemed to realize she'd made things worse, stopping cold with a belated wince.
"Sorry," she said, looking away uncomfortably. "I just—it's been…we missed you, is all."
Percy dipped his head. "We missed you, too," he said, voice a touch rougher than it'd been a second before.
"Thinking of you guys kept us going down there," Lee said quietly. "Everytime it got hard, knowing that you were up here working to get us back, it helped."
Piper smiled, her eyes shining with tears that she seemed to be holding back by sheer force of will. After a moment, she cleared her throat, shaking her head as she composed herself.
"Anyway, the, uh, the oars and everything are all fixed. Leo says we're good to take off. According to him, we should make it to the grove in just under an hour."
Lee let out a low whistle. "You weren't kidding earlier when you said we were close to it."
Percy hummed in acknowledgement. "People sought out the Grove of Dodona to try and derive their fates in the music of the wind chimes and the dappling of the sunlight on the leaves. In the Necromanteion, they sought the words of the dead to advise them of their path. Seems only fitting, then, that they'd reside so close to each other. If the wind and the sun didn't give you the answer you wished, perhaps the dead might."
Silence fell, and then—
"I think I just got chills," Leo said from behind them, making them all startle slightly. "Damn, dude, you been working on your crypticism?"
Lee twitched, but Percy felt a small grin flit across his face.
"It's an art," he said with faux solemnity.
"You're certainly an artist," Piper said wryly, and that actually brought a laugh to his lips, fleeting as it might've been.
The others, almost seeming to have sensed the gathering, trailed out onto the deck after Leo, their shoulders slumping at the sight of Percy and Lee, no longer bloodied and grimy and half-dead, relaxing on the deck like they might've done just seventeen days ago. Despite their relief, he could see the way their eyes tracked the changes, cataloguing the new scars—of which he knew the ones stretched across his face were the most obvious, followed only by the burns that crawled up Lee's arms—and the gaunt hollowness to their cheeks and the pale tint to their skin.
As much as the blatant checkovers rankled Percy, though, he was at the very least grateful that not all of their scars were physical, that not everything they'd gone through down there was painted on their skin.
It was bad enough that he could still feel it in his gut, in his blood and his lungs and his bones, but if they could all see it? See the fire churning in their stomachs and the acid in their throats and the stains on their—his, only his, his choice, always his choice—his soul?
Percy didn't think he'd ever be able to face them if they could see all of that, if they could peer past the layers he'd covered himself in to find the scars he'd buried beneath blood and bone.
By the time they landed, settling down with a thud on a grassy hill, he thought they'd mostly managed to reconcile the scars they found. They hadn't asked, of course, even though Percy knew the burns scattered across his face, across Lee's arms, told only one story and it wasn't a happy one. They didn't ask, and maybe that was because they already knew or maybe that was because they could see, just as clearly, that neither he nor Lee were ready to talk about it.
"You're going alone," Lee said when they congregated at the gangplank, not a question, not quite a statement. Percy nodded, leaning into his side for a moment.
"I'll have Tani with me. I just—I need to do this alone, need to speak with her alone."
Lee let out a sigh, tired and affectionate and oh, so, loving, and knocked their temples together lightly. "Go on, then."
Tani rubbed up against his legs as they walked, traipsing down the hill through the grass and wildflowers until they reached a copse of towering oak trees. It was there that Percy hesitated, his heart stuttering in his chest despite his best efforts. The moonlight slipped through the leaves, dappling the ground with soft silver beams.
It looked ethereal, reminding Percy of the few nights he'd spent with Artemis and her Hunters, traveling through the wilds and tracking down elusive monsters, and yet still he hesitated. His grandmother had never been anything but unfailingly warm and kind to him, but he knew the conversation they had to have and he wasn't ready. She would tell him that he needed to tell the others. She would tell him he couldn't just keep ignoring it, that refusing to acknowledge it didn't make it any less real.
Tani nudged at the back of his knee insistently, and when he looked down, he found her giving him an unimpressed glare.
"Sometimes I think you're a little too smart," he muttered, and she lifted a paw to whack at him. "Going, going."
He stepped under the cover of the trees, following the winding path that laid itself out before him. The moonlight slipped over his skin like a balm, doubtlessly turning the strands of white in his hair to a brilliant silver. The soft pad of Tani's footsteps echoed behind him.
A light breeze kicked up, and he smiled despite himself when the distant clinking of wooden wind chimes reached his ears. He stopped for a moment, tilting his head back as he simply listening to the song of the wind.
The music was a message, he was sure, but the time for that would come after Rhea herself had spoken with him.
She was waiting for him in a small clearing in the center of the grove, henna stained hands already outstretched. Percy didn't make her wait a second longer, practically falling into her chest with a choked noise.
"Oh, darling," she murmured, taking them both to the ground and cradling his head on her collarbone. "How you hurt."
Her aura picked up, surrounding him in comfort and warmth, building a shield of safety and protection along his skin until he was sure that nothing could touch him so long as he stayed in her embrace.
"I'm so sorry, child," Rhea said. "You have endured far more than you ever should've."
"My fate is my fate," Percy said with no small tinge of bitterness.
"Fate is cruel," she answered simply. "Just because we are bound to keep to the weavings of the Moirai does not mean we cannot rage at the tapestry they create."
Percy drew back, meeting her eyes—the eyes she gave to his father, the eyes that Triton shared, the eyes that Pallas shared, the eyes that Percy himself carried—and letting his hands fall to his sides.
"I'm too tired for rage, I think. I'm so—I'm so tired, Grandmother. I can't do this, I can't keep going," he admitted into the silence. Rhea's face softened, and she raised a hand to cradle his cheek.
"You can," she told him. "You must."
Percy turned away from her palm. His grandmother's sacred pride of lions lingered at the edge of the trees, keeping an eye on both of them but not approaching, as though they could sense that this conversation wasn't for them to overhear. Tani was among them, he could see, looking more concerned than the others, her paws kneading at the ground anxiously.
Through a gap in the trees, he caught a glimpse of the Scorpius constellation, and he felt his face twist.
"I can't do this," he said again. "I can't—I don't have anything left to give. I lost so much of myself down there, pieces of myself that I can't get back. I left—I killed—"
He cut himself off, burying his face in his hands. "I killed him, Grandmother. He was good and he was kind and he was my friend and I killed him."
"My brother," Rhea paused, a strange grief echoing through her voice. "My brother made his choice."
"Because of me," Percy said, raw, guttural, aching. "I set him on that path years ago when I named him Bob and told him I was his friend. I sealed his fate for good when I called him to me, when I called him my friend and told him I needed help. I doomed him."
"And yet, he chose to sacrifice himself."
Percy scoffed, that same ugly bitterness from before rising up in his chest. "Does the final domino in the line choose to fall when the weight of its predecessors' rests against it, or does it simply accept the inevitable and let itself be pushed? Does the last pawn choose to step into the line of fire to keep the king from checkmate, or does it know that it loses either way and take the way that might prolong the rest of the game?"
It hurt. Gods, did it hurt. It hurt it hurt it hur—
"Is there any choice when the path has been laid out so narrow that you can't even turn around? What sort—what sort of choice is that?"
Percy startled when Rhea gripped his face in both hands, forcing their gazes to lock. Her sea-green eyes were blazing with such intensity that his breath caught in his chest.
"Just because it was the choice that was always going to be made doesn't make it any less of a choice," she said fiercely. "My brother's path was only so set because the Moirai looked into his soul and saw that in every version of the future in which you called to him he chose to sacrifice himself."
"I called to him," Percy whispered. "I didn't have to, but I did. If I hadn't—"
"He would've come to help you anyway. Your brother would've prayed to him."
"But it wouldn't have ended the same. It would've been her."
An oath made on the edge of an abyss, a solemn promise to protect the people she'd once turned her back on.
"I chose her life over his," Percy said hoarsely. "I chose the life of someone who betrayed me and abandoned me and hated me over the life of someone I called my friend. I knew one of them was going to die and I chose to save her."
Rhea's gaze softened, and she swept her thumbs across his cheekbones. "You know as well as I do, child, that Bob would not have survived either way. Had you made the other choice, the pieces of Iapetus would've clawed their way back eventually. Your choice allowed him to die as Bob, as a good and kind Titan, rather than live as Iapetus. You chose to let a young girl get the chance to grow into a better person rather than let an ancient being return to cruelty."
"He might not've," Percy said weakly. "He was happy as Bob. He wouldn't have returned to the same Iapetus as before."
"Perhaps not," she amended. "But eternity is a very long time, and we can never truly escape who we've been. The Apollo you know now cannot be fully separate from the Phoebus Apollon of old, from the flayer of Marsyus and the pursuer of Cassandra. The Poseidon you call your father has mellowed, but he still carries the remnants of the god whose rage brought forth the Minotaur, whose vengeance cost Odysseus over a decade. The longer Bob lived, the more Iapetus he would've become. And Iapetus was…a very cruel being."
"He was your brother."
"So was my husband," Rhea pointed out, and Percy's resulting face drew a short laugh out of her. "Grief and hate are not exclusive to each other. I can mourn those gone and still acknowledge that the world is better without them. I can grieve them and hate them in one breath."
The wind chimes overhead clinked in the breeze, singing a mournful tune of grief and sacrifice and inevitability, and Percy let the noise resonate in his chest.
"I can't change my decision," he said eventually. Not an admittance of her points or an acknowledgement of the truths she'd laid out—he wasn't there yet, wasn't capable of letting go of the aching, festering guilt in his chest, might not ever be capable—but a concession, nonetheless. The only concession he could make right now.
"I can only learn to live with it."
"I hope one day you can forgive yourself of the things for which you carry no fault," Rhea said, a sad smile flitting across her face.
"Maybe," Percy said, though, privately, he didn't think that the day he forgave himself for this would ever come.
And then the time came, he knew, for the conversation he'd been dreading. The conversation he'd known he couldn't avoid and yet had hoped to anyway.
Rhea drew back, settling her henna-stained hands in her lap as she gave him a significant look. "You have not told them," she said evenly.
Ignorance wouldn't help him here. Percy knew. Rhea knew. Both of them knew that the other knew. And yet—
"Told them what?"
Sea-green met sea-green. He couldn't avoid the truth any longer, couldn't push it from his mind in the vain hope that it would make it less real.
"That prophecy has been taken."