Chapter Text
Percy hasn’t texted her in a few days, and she’s worried.
Her therapist would call it codependent, but her therapist has not seen Tartarus either, or any other one of the horrors she and Percy had faced together. This has been the longest she and Percy have spent apart since the end of the war, in over two years.
It hasn’t been the peaceful last year of high school she or Percy wanted. Gaia’s monsters and old abominations continued to wreak havoc across the globe, and they’d insisted on being left out of it— until they started talking about sending the younger kids. So she and Percy have taken the Argo over most of the globe, doing online school while fighting everything from Gegenees in Malaysia to an Odontotyrannos in Glasgow. She’d seen a lot more of the world than she’d ever thought she would have been able to as a demigod, and it’s pretty much the only time she’s gone anywhere without the threat of a world-ending prophecy over her head.
And they’d been relatively safe— once you’ve faced the earth mother and Tarturus itself, some harpies were were as simple as a hand wave for Percy, and she barely needed to look up from her favorite architecture journal to swing a blade through them. Other than the nightmares, they’d been fine, because they had each other.
And now she couldn’t find him.
Gods, why had she suggested this? Both of their therapists had agreed, it may have been good for them, to get space, just for a few days. Annabeth had a week-long architecture conference in Maine, Percy wanted to see his mom, it had been a good plan. He’d been texting her throughout every day— little things, like a blue cupcake or sunlight coming off of buildings, or a dumb pun he came up with, and then Percy said he needed to take care of something and then— nothing.
It reminded her of the first time he had disappeared, and those hellish months that had followed. She waited a day, trying her hardest to not be the crazy, clinging girlfriend. Percy was a frequent phone-breaker, and it could be any number of totally normal things.
And then Sally called her, and told her that Percy hadn’t come home last night.
Thirty-three hours after her last message with him, she was booked on a 4:30 AM flight to New York, calling Thalia and Hazel and Frank as she blew through security. (And thank the gods, that TSA equipment couldn’t detect the armory of weapons she had in her luggage).
It’s strange, to retrace these same patterns of fear, these same movements she made back when Hera had taken him.
The nightmares are going to be very bad tonight. She thinks in the airport lounge, one hand aching to feel Percy’s in hers, the other hand reaching for the security of a dagger she no longer has.
Percy is missing. She texts Nico with the little flip phone Leo hot-wired for her.
The reply arrives quickly. when
Last made contact with me thirty-three hours and three minutes ago. He was in New York, visiting his mom.
He doesn’t try to comfort her, or supply reassurances. It’s something she appreciates. He understands, understands how quickly something can go badly.
do you need me to come pick you up? ST is faster
No. Save your energy. I’m about to board a plane.
ok.
…
He types for a long time. They call her boarding pass number, and it’s only as she settles into her seat that the message goes through.
do you want me to check the UW?
Fuck. Her stomach lurches. She hadn’t even thought of that, hadn’t let herself think it. Fuck. She takes a moment to control her breathing.
“Nervous flier?” A business woman gives her a sympathetic smile. It makes her feel worse, thinking of Percy, about how the few times they’d flown she’d had to hold his hand in a death grip to get him to even sit down. She manages a shaky nod, and turns back to her phone.
checked anyway. i know that i would feel it if it happened… but checked to make sure. he’s not in my father’s domain.
She closes her eyes and shudders. Well, at least there’s that.
By the time Annabeth lands, she has about twenty-six contingency plans, for mortal, demigod, god, monster, scenarios. All of them are garbage. She just doesn’t know. Annabeth hates not knowing.
Whatever expression she’s making succeeds in clearing a path as business people and tourists part before her, consciously and unconsciously. Sally is waiting for her outside security, and Annabeth almost starts crying again, melting into the embrace of the woman who has been more of a mother to her than anyone else.
“Hi, Annabeth.” Sally says, with a little watery chuckle. “It’ll be okay. We’ll find him. Percy’s always okay.”
Sally is comforting, reassuring, even at the end of the world. It’s something Annabeth appreciates. Sally trusts her son more than she fears all of the hell that demigods face, and it’s something Annabeth is going to try to cling to.
“A couple people from Camp are at my apartment, if you’d like to meet with them there?” Sally asks gently, when Annabeth finally pulls away. She manages a shaky nod, and they’re pulling into Percy’s neighborhood before she knows it, Sally keeping up a hum of conversation about Paul’s student’s hijinks or Percy’s childhood to distract her.
Inside, a few demigods are crammed into the Jacksons' small kitchen. Piper tackles her in a hug the second she enters, scanning her face for something before pulling away. Nico is leaning in the darkest corner of the room, as per usual, although it’s difficult to maintain his aura in the cheery bright tones of Sally’s decorating. Connor Stoll, looking strange without his brother by his side, rearranging all of the magnets on the fridge. Thalia punches Annabeth in the shoulder, and damn, it’s good to have her here.
“Most of the counselors are still at camp.” Piper begins briefing her immediately, which was precisely what she needed. Her ability to make small talk left about thirty seven hours ago. “Leo has the Argo ready to fly whenever you give the word, and Frank and Hazel can mobilize the Legion.”
Annabeth feels a lump grow in her throat, grateful for these people who will drop anything to protect each other. She supposes it’s natural, with the lives they’ve lived. The only thing they’ve ever been able to count on is each other.
“Thank you.” She manages to choke out. Thalia just slugs her in the shoulder again— her version of a tender embrace.
“We’ll get Kelp Head back,” Thalia says. “Now, c’mon. Annabeth, is there anyone we haven’t contacted yet about him?”
“I mean, there was that encampment of demigods in Laos and-” Annabeth stops, unsure why she hasn’t thought of it before. “I need a dramaca. And some water, will you-”
She looks over her shoulder; Percy isn’t there.
Oh. She had forgotten— how had she even done this, before Percy?
“Ah, I have a little mister.” Sally breaks into the awkward tension, bringing over a little spray bottle. “This should work.”
Annabeth just nods and tosses the coin through the spray. “Oh Iris, goddess of the rainbow, accept my offering. Triton, in Poseidon’s palace.”
“Annabeth, are you sure Iris messaging a god is the right-” Connor’s hissed words cut off as Triton shimmers into view.
“Lord Triton, sir.” Annabeth begins before any smiting happens. Triton has always scared her a little- he strikes her more as fish than man, more inhuman than a lot of the other minor gods. “Percy has gone missing, we wanted to know if you had any contact with him.”
His face loses some of its annoyance, falling into a more thoughtful expression. “Percy… is not here. Father is angry. He went to Olympus to ask.”
“Thank-” Annabeth begins as Triton irritatedly cuts off the connection. She turns to the others.
“Olympus it is then.”
*
“The 600th floor is not currently accepting visitors.” The guard insists again. Piper purses her lips, and evidently decides to use charmspeak instead of her natural charisma, but before she can continue, Annabeth growls and stalks over to a wood-paneled wall.
“I don’t have time for this.” She wedges a knife in-between one of the cracks, jostling it a bit, speaks the code word in Ancient Greek, and the secret elevator is revealed. Annabeth turns back to her friends, half of whom are still on team charm the security guard. “Let’s go. I redesigned half of Olympus. I knew I’d need an emergency elevator at some point.”
“Are you sure we can-”
“Yes.” They all look nervous, but they come to stand with her anyway.
Stepping out, they survey the area. Everything is quiet and still, no one is on the streets that were bustling just a few months ago when restoration had finally been completed. Annabeth is almost nauseated with how much the silence reminds her of the battle of Manhattan. Another reason why she’d been glad to get out of New York. Too many ghosts. She thinks her heart might be beating so loudly that the rest can hear it.
It’s still silent as they creep through Olympus. Annabeth doesn’t allow herself to think why it would be this quiet. And then they feel the shaking, the weight of godly anger grinding their teeth together, making fear, a desire to flee, slither into their hearts.
Annabeth starts to run. The rest of them are not far behind her.
Suddenly, it cuts out as they approach the pavilion, which is good, because she could actually feel some of the veins in her cornea starting to burst.
Poseidon is leaving the throne room. His face is stormy, unreadable. He sees them and a thousand expressions flash across his face- she catches sorrow, pain, and one she’s never seen before on a god— deep shame.
“I am sorry.” He says, solemn. “I wasn’t there to protect him, again.”
Annabeth’s heart is beating in her throat. He turns to leave, and then looks back at their small group. His eyes are rimmed in red and gold, and it unnerves her more than if he was bleeding.
“I risk my brother cutting out my tongue.” The god murmurs, “But I think my son would have wanted you to know that it was not his choice.”
“What?” She barely has time to say, before Nico is pulling her into the throne room.
The demigod brain is, while ADHD prone, excellent at telling which small details are a threat. It’s certainly contributed to her anxiety, but saved her from a knife in the back more than once.
It’s the details she notices first.
Zeus is not present, but by the ozone in the air, he must have been there just before. Most of the gods, barring Ares and Hera, will not look directly at her.
There are thirteen thrones.
No. No, they already tried it-
“Where is he?” Annabeth is the first to speak, ignoring decorum. Even gods who looked surprised at their entrance do not look surprised at the question. The thirteenth throne is in the corner of her vision.
“Demigods,” Hera says, as infuriating as ever. The spark of… victory in her eyes makes Annabeth want to reach for her dagger. ““How nice of you to invite yourselves in.”
“Where’s Percy.” She says, stubborn. The gods don’t say anything. Apollo won’t look at any of them. “Where is he?”
Ares, looking more gleeful than she has ever seen, says, “I got a new sparring partner,” He says, saying sparring partner with the same vicious energy as one would say fresh meat, “so I’m feeling generous today. I’ll get him for you.”
Athena purses her lips in disapproval. “This is not how I wanted to go about this.”
Ares ignores her, popping out of view for a minute, before reappearing, this time with another body.
And Percy is there. But it’s not Percy.
He’s taller, she thinks. Beautiful, he looks beautiful. The dust spiraling around the throne room glows in the radiance of his smooth face. An elegant toga is artfully draped over his body, scarless and chiseled. His hair has been tamed into rich black waves, a crown of laurels resting upon it.
He’s beautiful. She wants to throw up.
“Percy!” She the word ripped from her throat, echoing off the columns she helped design. She won’t let herself think it she won’t—
“Percy!” She tries again, and it’s only Nico and Thalia, both holding her back, that keeps her from running straight for him. She gets the sense Thalia is holding her to avoid running herself. Not his choice not his choice not his choice. Annabeth figures out why Percy’s expression is so alien, even though she’s seen just about every expression on his face in the years they’ve known each other: there is no recognition in his eyes. “Percy!”
“Percy?” He parrots, the elegant head tilting ever so slightly, like a child learning to speak. His voice is soft and strange. This is somehow harder than if he were dead. He’s farther away from her now, in the same room, then he would be in the deepest recesses of the underworld. “Who are you?”
It feels like a physical blow. She turns back to Hera, shaking with rage. “What- what did you do to him-”
The goddess just raises an eyebrow. “I thought you were supposed to be a smart one.”
Ares laughs once, and puts an arm around Percy’s shoulders, shifting him so that they can see the left side that had been hidden. He is covered in the bronze of old god blood, new rivers of gold sluggishly making their way down his bare chest. As she looks closer, she can see that there are several places he’s injured- metallic hematomas and at least one fractured bone. Percy is bleeding gold, and suddenly, even though she knew, knew the second they had arrived at the Empire State Building, this is what makes it real.
There’s a split second of a terrible scream, and Annabeth doesn’t even realize she’s the one making it until Nico claps a hand over her mouth and Piper orders her to calm down, tears in her eyes, muttering charm-speak over and over again.
“You’re making a scene,” Hera sneers.
“Perhaps I could speak with my daughter.” Athena addresses the council, making it sound more like an order than a question. “Alone.”
“Fine. I certainly don’t want to deal with… that.” Hera rolls her eyes and leaves, simply vanishing from existence. Some of the other Gods trail out, use the physical doors- she knows Apollo looks back guiltily, but Annabeth has no time for them. Her attention is on Percy, her mother, and Hera.
“C’mon Perseus,” Ares draws his name out like a joke. He slaps Percy on the back on his injured side, to which Percy only responds with a pained, involuntary wince, like he's unsure of how to respond to pain. “Time to go. We’ll do some more training.”
Percy follows, obediently, and Annabeth resists the urge to reach out to him, to stop him. “But who is she? Who is she? Why-” She hears him asking, insistent, even as they leave.
It’s quiet, again, for a moment.
“Why.” She says, not even quite sure what she means.
“Perseus accepted immortality.” Athena replies.
“I know he fucking didn’t.” A squeeze of her wrist from Nico. She ignores it.
“Careful, daughter.” Her mother’s tone is as smooth and cold as marble.
“Why would you- he refused you. He did- he didn’t want to be a god!” Annabeth attempts to wrestle herself under control, only because she knows becoming ash on the tile dramatically reduces her options for fixing this.
“We all must do things we do not wish to. That is the nature of war. Compromise.”
“He has done everything you have asked of him.” She hisses. “Haven’t you already done enough?”
“We had no choice. It was the only logical way forward.”
“That’s bullshit! Why would you-”
“His feats, combined with his father’s blood. He had the power of a god already.”
“That’s not it. That’s not. You did it because you were scared. Because you know we’re more loyal to him, and he’s more loyal to us, than we will ever be to you.”
“Annabeth!” One of her friends squeaks in shock. Athena ignores it and continues.
“We know about Akhlys, Annabeth.” She freezes in place. Fuck, fuck, fuck. “A demigod should not, cannot have that much power. He was an abomination that upset the balance.”
“He is a teenager. He’s my best friend, he’s- he’s-” What- her boyfriend? The word isn’t enough to describe everything he is, to her, to their friends, to everyone. He’s the one she went through Tartarus with. Percy is the one she’s building a new future with. He’s the one who holds her through bad dreams and helps the younger kids with their homework even though he hates reading and— He’s the other half of her soul, and everything within her is pulsing in agony like an open wound.
“You should be grateful. Zeus wanted to kill him. This is the deal I proposed, to keep him alive."
“Please, you did it because he makes a nice weapon in your arsenal.” Athena says nothing, shifting her head in calculation. Annabeth is right, then. “Giants rising remind you of how nothing dead is ever gone? Of the younger generations overthrowing their elders?
She can smell the ozone in the air, smell god-power all around her, but she isn’t scared. And this is it, her hubris, her pride, her fatal flaw, but she’s pretty sure she could claw her way out of the underworld.
“Make him one of you,” Annabeth spits out, “and that worry goes away. And you get a powerful young god to do your dirty work. You’re lying.”
The insult rings into empty space.
“You are young,” Athena finally says, half turning away. “You will see that I made the correct choice, when you are finished being blinded by emotion.”
“No, you didn’t make the right choice,” Annabeth begins, her anger rising in response to her mother’s coldness. The gods did not make the right choice. She would do it, she’d led an army into two wars, she would do it a third time, for Percy. “You are short sighted and a-”
A few things happen in quick succession. As Annabeth’s lips curve around the word fool, Athena’s eyes finally blaze with some emotion, her spine straightening in a way her daughter has never seen before. Nico hisses “fix this” to Piper, and grabs Annabeth’s arm with new strength. The world dissolves into shadows, Annabeth still seeing that image of Percy, with a crown of laurels and no expression at all, on the backs of her eyelids.
They reform on the lawn of Camp Halfblood. There’s people in orange shirts already coming closer, asking if they found Percy. Annabeth ignores it all.
“Nico! Why did you-” She’s ready to fight him, even if he’s currently groaning in the grass and muttering about how he’s never shadow traveling through two different sets of wards again.
“You were going to get yourself killed.” He stares at her, and Annabeth takes a step back when she sees the tears in his eyes. “Please, we- we can’t lose both of you.”
Annabeth lets out a broken laugh, burying her face in her hands. She needs to- she needs to do something, or she might explode.
“No, no they can’t kill me. They would have the second they made him a god if they were smart.” Another hysterical laugh. She’s pretty sure she looks insane right now. “They need us. They need me. I’ll prove it to you, right now.”
She snatches a thick broadsword from a beefy Ares kid who is staring at her with his mouth open. Annabeth can feel the blood pumping in her head as she storms across the grass, directly towards Hera’s cabin.
“Annabeth-” Nico says somewhere behind her. He sounds younger than he has in years. She can’t bring herself to care.
She appraises the first statue outside the cabin. It’s an elegant marble recreation of Hera, maybe a bit thinner and a hell of a lot more kind looking. Annabeth has always hated it. She, unlike some of her friends, doesn’t have fire or force or water or shapeshifting to demolish it. But she can see the exact weak point it would topple over at. She’ll need hmm, 56.3 pounds of pressure.
Annabeth yanks the sword back behind her head. There’s an intake of breath at the crowd that has formed around her. To even consider destroying an effigy of an Olympian is unthinkable, demigods have been destroyed for less, but she's going to do a lot more than think. She swings forward, hitting the mark exactly, and the statue crumbles into three pieces, Hera’s head rolling to rest at Annabeth’s feet.
No one says anything. She looks at the sky. Not a single cloud. There should be. There fucking should be. How dare they.
Nico makes a shuddery gasp, but Annabeth is already moving on to the next statue. And the next. And the next.
And then she enters the cabin, flagrantly breaks a rule she’s followed since she was seven, and destroys it. Tears through the tapestries, breaks open the brazier. The inhabitants of Camp Half Blood just watch her.
There’s nothing more in Hera’s cabin to destroy. Panting like she’d torn everything down with her bare hands, Annabeth walks outside on unsteady legs. The campers are staring at her in horrified awe. Piper and the others are here again- Nico, who looks even more like he’s about to fall over, must have grabbed them. Piper reaches out like she wants to give Annabeth a hug, but looks again and thinks better of it, her arms falling to her side. Good.
“Annabeth,” Will speaks first. “What happened? Where’s Percy?”
“They took him. They-” Annabeth feels like Piper has ordered her not to speak again, and she claws at her throat as it threatens to overwhelm her.
“When we went to Olympus, we found out that the gods forced immortality on Percy. And wiped his memory.” Piper says, her voice as stable and clear as she can make it. She doesn’t need charmspeak to make the entire crowd hush, tension blooming like blood from a wound. “He was bleeding, and confused. We don’t know much more, other than it wasn’t his choice.”
What- Percy- they did what? - even after - bleeding- they took Percy -
There’s an uproar of rage and noise that matches the lava searing her insides. They follow her, they respect her, but everyone truly loves Percy.
She raises the sword, dust from the statues still clinging to its blade. They fall silent again.
“Who will fight with me.” Annabeth says, but it’s more of a declaration than anything else. She makes eye contact with some of the campers, and she’s surprised at the amount of rage there. Good.
It is Thalia who raises her spear first. And then all around her, like a great wave, every demigod raises a bow, a sword, a fist.
If Olympus didn’t want a war, they should not have left her alive.