Chapter Text
“I can’t help you unless you tell me what’s wrong,” Annabeth said, sitting next to him at the Poseidon table in the pavilion. She had looked visibly taken aback at the state she found Percy in that morning, with his red-veined eyes and deep bruise-like bags under them. He finally seemed to look as run-down as he felt on the inside.
He’d spent the rest of the morning after he’d woken up torn between having a mental breakdown or sinking to the bottom of the lake and never coming back up again. He’d only even left his Cabin at all because Annabeth practically had to drag him to breakfast.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” Percy said and pushed his food around on his plate. He didn’t even try to convince Annabeth that there was nothing wrong. She sighed and pushed her plate forward, then leaned over and put her head on his shoulder, wrapping her arm around him. Despite his mood, Percy felt himself relax into her.
She was silent for a moment before she said, “I think we should all take a break from questioning monsters.”
Annabeth paused, waiting for him to respond, and when he didn’t she continued, “It’s getting too much for all of us.”
Here, Percy stopped pushing his food around on his plate and looked down at her. “Are Connor and Lou Ellen okay?”
“They will be,” Annabeth said sighing, her entire body sinking into his. “It’s been hard you know. Harder and harder to be in that room. Not just seeing you like…like that. But every time, it seems like I leave a little bit more drained, a bit more sad. The others feel the same way, and it caught up to the two of them yesterday.”
Percy felt himself stiffen at the admission. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
Sighing again, Annabeth sat up and looked at him, tilting his jaw so that he met her eyes. “Because you were clearly going through your own thing. It’s not your fault and we all know what’s at stake here.”
But it was his fault, Percy was beginning to realize. The effect he had on the monsters wasn’t isolated only to them, it applied to everyone, the only difference being that he was actively directing it towards the monsters. The rest of them were just collateral damage.
Sometimes he wondered if he directed it towards himself too.
Annabeth settled back onto his shoulder and he allowed himself to feel relaxed until breakfast was almost over. Then, he couldn’t put it off anymore.
“I captured a monster last night,” Percy confessed and felt Annabeth stiffen against him.
“What?” She asked, and gripped his hand tightly.
“I went out into the woods and found a more powerful monster to capture,” Percy elaborated. “She said…she said that whoever was sending these monsters has a special interest in me.”
“It’s not your fault,” Annabeth said immediately. “Not the monsters attacks at least. But going out on your own Percy?”
“It’s not the first time,” Percy said, laying out more of the truth for her to see and judge. “But last night was the only night I got any other answers.”
Annabeth was silent for a long, long moment before, “And what monster was it?”
“I don’t know,” Percy rushed to get out. “She had the upper half of a woman and the lower half of a snake. And she could use the mist and do magic spells. She even disabled the enchantments on the Hecate Cabin’s rope.”
“Lamia,” Annabeth said, sitting up again, body stiff. “You captured Lamia.”
When Percy looked over, her eyes were wide. “Was that…special?” Percy asked hesitantly.
“She’s one of the most powerful monsters in our pantheon,” Annabeth explained. “She’s a daughter of Hecate who was turned into a monster, and she never once lost an ounce of her skill.”
“She explained that and why she was turned,” Percy said, still looking into Annabeth’s wide, gray eyes.
“Don’t you go feeling sympathy for her,” Annabeth replied sharply. “She may have lost her own children, but she makes it a point to go around killing others. She was the one to make it so monsters could always smell demigods no matter where we were.”
Percy suddenly felt less anguish over killing her the way he did, not that he felt much in the first place.
“And how,” Annabeth asked with narrowed eyes. “Did you capture her when the rope was useless?”
Percy didn’t say anything. She knew exactly how he did.
“Percy…”
“I made a mistake,” Percy admitted. “When I realized the rope wouldn’t work she was already headed towards Camp. I couldn’t let her come here.”
Annabeth said nothing to that, only continued looking at him with a calculation that was only rarely turned on him now.
“I don’t…” Percy paused before continuing, wondering if he should really say it. “I don’t regret it.”
The silence hung heavy for another moment then, “Do you hate me?”
Annabeth sucked in a harsh breath, and then her eyes filled with tears that refused to spill over.
“I could never hate you, Percy,” She said, gripping his hand tighter. “I’m just sad.”
And what else was there to say to that?
They finished breakfast and Annabeth kissed him, before leaving to tell the others they were taking a break from their efforts today.
Percy stared after her, wondering why the ache in his chest felt like a goodbye.
Later that night, Percy laid in bed, knowing he couldn’t avoid what would happen the moment his eyes closed and Morpheus took over.
The day had been a long one, even though he didn’t do much else besides spending time with Annabeth, curling up into her while she played with his hair. But it felt like there was a fog that laid heavy on him, like there was lead weighing down his limbs and heart alike, so when it finally came time to separate from Annabeth, it felt like he was trudging through sludge to even get to his cabin door.
He didn’t want to dream. He didn’t. But something in him knew that avoiding it would do more harm than good at this point.
Slowly, so slowly it was like falling, his eyes shut.
The air was muggy and sweat clung to his body where he sat on the outdated and carpeted seats of a bus. He looked around, not seeing anything that would indicate danger but that was likely soon to change. It seemed familiar somehow, like a distant memory, but one that stuck with him throughout the years all the same.
He heard the engine gutter from the front of the bus and dark smoke spilled out from underneath the hood. The other passengers started grumbling and fanning themselves as the already weak AC stopped working, but Percy just stared, wide-eyed and unseeing, as the realization of where he was hit him.
The bus pulled over on the side of the road, and all the passengers started filing out, the driver already out front and banging on the hood like it would help. Percy sat there until he was the last person on the bus. And then sat there some more.
No matter their efforts, the bus wouldn’t restart and they were stuck there.
Fuck, there’s no getting out of this.
Percy was tense as he stood, as slowly as he could, and shuffled out the front of the bus. He squinted against the bright sun and came to a stop on the sidewalk, looking across the road where he could already see them.
The Fates.
They sat there just as he remembered, three women next to a fruit stand knitting giant socks as if it were for Godzilla. There was one difference, however. When he last saw them they took the form of three old women, but now only one of them was a crone. The other two were a young girl and a middle-aged woman, the same age as his mom.
Percy felt the heavy cage around his heart tighten and he felt his own blood roaring in his ears. He felt simultaneously faint, like he couldn’t stand to look anymore, and entranced, like he would die if he attempted to look away.
The yarn was blue, but it was a different shade than the electric blue that made up the threads of Luke’s life. This blue was the blue of his home, of his mom’s cookies, and the shade of her love. But that was changing before his eyes.
As he watched, the Fates wove golden thread into the strings, slowly, oh so slowly, turning the deep, comforting blue into an arresting gold, inhuman in its perfection and indestructibility alike.
No. No. No, no, no, no.
Percy stood there, hyperventilating until the bus sputtered back to life and the driver startled him with a hand on his shoulder.
“You coming back on, son?”
Son. If Percy were this man’s son he wouldn’t be in this mess.
Percy didn’t reply and took off running in the opposite direction of the bus. He knew if he got on where he would end up. Instead, he ran until his lungs burned and his limbs ached and he ended up in front of a worn, chipped door. He knocked.
“Percy,” His mom said, eyes widening with surprise. “I wasn't expecting you home today?”
Percy ignored her question and just collapsed into her arms. She hugged him in the doorway, then when it seemed like he was less likely to shatter, brought him in to sit on the couch next to her.
This was a dream, Percy knew. But he still drank in the exact shade of his mom’s blue eyes, her brown hair streaked with gray, and small wrinkles on her face.
“What’s wrong?” His mom asked softly, running a soothing hand through his hair.
“I don’t know how I can do this,” Percy sobbed and leaned his head into her hand. She didn’t know what he couldn’t do, she just cooed into his ear and brought him into another embrace, laying his head over her heart.
“You don’t have to know,” His mom said, “I know you’ll get through it.”
“But what if there’s nothing to get through? Nothing on the other side to make it worthwhile?” Percy asked, digging his face into her collar bone, longing for the days he was small enough to be blanketed entirely by her hug.
“Then you endure.”
This wasn’t what he wanted to hear and he began shaking his head.
“You endure,” His mom repeated, grabbing his jaw with her hand and tugging his head up so he could meet her eyes. “If there’s nothing else to be done, you endure until things get better. You’re my son, Percy, before your Poseidon’s. And I know, know, in my bones that you can do this.”
Percy’s lip wobbled. No one, except for Annabeth and Poseidon himself, saw Percy as his mother’s son first. And in his darkest moments, not even he did. But he had forgotten, that it was his mom who had endured Gabe for so long, had endured her own pain and even his own, just so that he might have a chance to live. That it was his mom who had killed Gabe with Medusa’s head and never lost one wink of sleep over it.
No, his mom was no stranger to hard choices.
“Now,” His mom said, moving her hand from his jaw to cup his cheek. “Don’t you have somewhere to be?”
Percy woke up to the gentle heat of the morning light streaming through his window onto his face. Tears streamed from his eyes but while he still felt that hole inside him gnawing at his mind, he felt more steadied, if fragile, then he had in a long, long time.
He sat up, rubbed the tears off of his face, and left the cabin, not even bothering to change out of his pajamas. He walked through the soft grey of the morning mist, felt the dew on the grass clinging to his feet, and finally reached the barrier of Camp at Halfblood Hill.
There were just as many, if not more, monsters congregated there as the day before. And just as before, when Percy stepped out a wide arch parted in front of him where monsters scrambled away from him. He scanned the horizon, noting each and every monster within his point of view.
“Enough,” Percy said softly, though it carried far in the silent morning. “This is enough.”
The monsters shifted on their feet and looked amongst themselves in a remarkably human gesture. Percy saw this, acknowledged this, then pushed it aside, and reached deep within to that well of Misery that was always there, ever-present.
He remembered what it felt like, to feel like Grover, his one friend from Nancy, was leaving him behind to go to his fancy summer camp like all the rest of them. Remembered what it felt like to wake from Medusa’s spell and see all those around them who had not. Remembered what it felt like to sink to the bottom of the Mississippi and never want to come back up again.
And he remembered the Pit. What it felt like to look down at the Abyss and feel it looking back. What it felt like to Fall, to Fall so fully that he could never fully leave.
He remembered. He felt it. Then let it go, let it spread to the crowd of monsters around him.
Percy glared at the monsters, tears welling in his eyes but never falling. “Just go. Just leave. And never come back.”
As one, the crowd of monsters broke down and turned on each other, turned on themselves, until there was only one lone monster, an amphisbaena, looking just like the one Percy had interrogated on the first day. This monster didn’t look any less broken than the others had before they’d killed each other, then themselves, but clearly whoever had sent them wanted to save one last monster to finally give him some answers.
He grabbed the amphisbaena and tugged him into the Camp boundary, not needing a magic rope to keep it docile. He walked past several campers, who looked at him like they had never seen him before. Past Chiron who looked crestfallen but unsurprised, like usual. Past Annabeth, who looked sad but like she had been expecting this. Past Dionysus, whose eyes met his fully in a way that he’d never had before.
Percy sat the monster down in the chair in the basement, not bothering to tie up the sobbing creature, and turned to look at Annabeth, Clarisse, Chiron, and, finally, Dionysus who had all followed him down.
He turned back to the amphisbaena and met its terrified eyes.
“Tell me what I need to know.”
Then, the same answer as before. “I don’t know.”
Anger filled him to the brim.
“I didn’t bring you all the way down here just to tell me the same thing as all the others,” Percy bit out. “Now, tell. Me. What I need to know.”
The amphisbaena just shook its head but resisted, supported by something greater than its own strength in the face of Percy.
Percy reached deeper inside him, found the thin, cracking barrier of the power within him, and carefully, oh so carefully, created another gap in the shell surrounding it. He felt the difference instantly and even without looking he knew that there were cracks of poisonous green light spilling out from his eyes.
“Tell. Me,” Percy repeated. “Now.”
The monster fully succumbed and began shaking uncontrollably in its chair.
“She said you already know!”
What? I already know? The surprise must have shown on his face because the amphisbaena started pleading.
“Please, please, that’s all I know. That’s all she said.”
“No!” Percy yelled, his fragile acceptance reaching its limits. “No, I don’t.”
“You do!”
“Shut. Up!” Percy ground out between gritted teeth.
“Perseus.”
“What?” Percy whirled around to face Dionysus, green light from his eyes casting eerily shadows on the faces before him.
“Let it go Perseus,” Dionysus said, standing upright and staring him down. “Just because it’s not what you want to hear doesn’t mean it’s not the truth.”
“Do you know?” Percy demanded, bitterness finally escaping his tender hold.
“No,” Dionysus said carefully. “But I have my suspicions. Just as you do.”
Percy hissed between his teeth and spun to face the poor, miserable creature caught in his grasp. He waved a hand and instead of inciting it to kill itself from the sheer misery, Percy felt its very blood turn to poison, and it vaporized from within.
He stormed out of the room, leaving the others behind, and went to sit on the dock of the canoe lake, staring into the deep water beneath.
A cloud rolled overhead, blocking the sun, and in the moment the water turned black, his mind was transported elsewhere.
He was in front of the Mansion of Night again, the black, gothic architecture looking at once like it both belonged in Tartarus and like it was too serene to ever find a home in the Pit.
“So, you finally decided to come to me,” The same deep, booming voice from earlier dreams rumbled through the air and into his bones. He looked up, indeed as the amphisbaena said, he had already known, even if he had not let himself realize it.
“Lady Nyx,” Percy said, carefully inclining his head in respect. Here with his increased awareness, he could feel exactly how powerful she was, how wide the gap between his own meager power and her all-encompassing dread truly was.
“Why did you decide to send all those monsters to our borders?” Percy asked, voice neutral in lieu of proper respect.
Nyx scoffed, her derision sending a wave of terror through him. Was this how those monsters had felt before him?
“Please, don’t be so slow, I know you are smarter than that Perseus, despite me having to push things along as far as I did.”
“So, that’s why you did this?” Percy reasoned through slowly. “To push me along? To force me to become…become—”
“To become your true self,” Nyx purred, looking down at him with something like pride in her gaze.
“This isn’t my true self,” Percy denied quickly and resisted the urge to back away at Nyx’s narrowed gaze.
“No?” The primordial questioned almost delicately. “You haven’t spent your short life chased by one miserable thing after the next? Haven’t felt that Misery poison each and every one of your happy moments throughout your life?”
Here her gaze became wrathful.
“You didn’t embody that Misery and Poison so thoroughly that you could overcome my own daughter in her domains? To torture her with them until she became a shell of herself, hiding away in shame in the deep caves of this Pit?”
Percy swallowed at the knowledge of what exactly he had done to Akhlys.
“That explains the monsters,” Percy conceded, pushing past it. “But why the dreams? Other than to torment me.”
“Torment you? I would never.” Her smile said otherwise. “But you needed that reminder, that your Fall was inevitable. That this was inevitable even from your very first step into this world. That you needed to come home.”
“This isn’t my home!” Percy said, letting his anger finally spill over.
“Is this not where you were made?” Nyx said, ignoring his outburst except for the narrowing of her eyes. “Your true self was born here, Perseus. Here in this Pit. Here, just outside of my Mansion. Here, at the expense of my daughter.”
“In fact,” Nyx continued. “I’d say that all of those facts make me as close to a divine mother as you will ever get.”
“You are not my mother,” Percy hissed out, enraged beyond anything he thought possible. “I am the son of Sally Jackson, and her son was not born here.”
“This is who you are,” Nyx said, her own rage spilling out of her mouth in the form of fiery starlight. “Don’t you realize this yet? After what you did, you think you can go back and be happy?”
“Don’t make me laugh,” She said, sneering down at him.
“I guess I should thank you after all,” Percy said quietly, voice laden with adamantine. “I finally know what has been plaguing me, and you know what they say. The first step to solving a problem is realizing you have one in the first place.”
“I,” Percy said taking a step forward. “Am not yours.”
And then, for the first time, he brought himself out of Tartarus under his own power.
When he came to, Percy was still sitting hunched over on the dock and staring into the water.
“Back again from wherever you went, Percy?” Dionysus said, sitting next to him.
Percy sat up, blinking in the overwhelming light of day, and turned to look at the god. He was lounging lazily with one arm behind him, and the other laying on top of a bent knee, looking like he had no care in the world except for the intense burning of his eyes which never left Percy.
“Yeah,” Percy said slowly, still reeling from his conversation with Nyx and that he left Tartarus of his own accord. “I was in Tartarus.”
He didn’t know why he said it to Dionysus of all people, but really if there was anyone who could understand him at this moment it was Dionysus.
“Oh?” Dionysus said, leaning forward in interest.
“You’ve never been have you?” Percy asked, tilting his head. As far as he knew, only the six eldest gods and, most recently Apollo, had ever gone.
“No,” Dionysus said. “That was never a pleasure I’d gotten to experience in my mortal or immortal life.”
“Well, 10/10 would not recommend,” Percy replied, grimacing. He grimaced some more. “Though you do have one thing in common with it.”
“Oh?” This time, Dionysus’ voice sounded much more dangerous.
“You both remind me of my first step-father,” Percy admitted for the first time. “With your, you know—” he waved his hand up and down at Dionysus, “And Tartarus smelled like him.”
Dionysus looked surprised for the first time that he could remember, then his face turned considering. “That…would explain some things.”
What things Percy didn’t know. He didn’t get the chance to ask either before Dionysus transformed before his eyes in a shimmer of purple mist that smelled faintly of wine and freshly harvested grapes.
Percy gaped. This must have been the Dionysus from before his punishment. Young and so painfully beautiful, with perfectly tanned skin, delicate features, and curly black hair so dark it looked purple.
“You don’t think I went around my entire existence looking like that do you?” Dionysus asked, giving him a slow smile that did different things to his gut than Dionysus’ normal one did, which is to say, give him indigestion.
Percy just stared until Dionysus' smile became a little too smug,and he shook himself out of it.
“Well, at least I know your personality is still the same cranky old man,” Percy said, shooting Dionysus a defiant look.
Dionysus glared at him with purple flames in his eyes and the smell of madness in the air, before he visibly relaxed.
“Too bad I can’t turn you into a dolphin anymore,” Dionysus grumbled and took a swig from a Diet Coke can that suddenly appeared in his hand.
Percy sobered up at the reminder.
“So,” he asked. “Was it like this for you when you, you know?”
“What,” Dionysus said dryly. “When I became a god?”
He rolled his eyes at Percy’s wince. “No, it involved fewer monsters and more parties. Though, to be fair, those parties did involve ripping intruders limb from limb.”
Percy grimaced but said nothing. He really had no room to talk.
“I’m turning into a monster,” Percy said, despair falling over him again.
“You’re turning into a god,” Dionysus replied. “Though to you, I’m sure they are the same thing.”
They sat there for a few moments, letting the sound of the waves lapping the shore fill the air before Dionysus spoke again.
“I didn’t want it either, you know,” Dionysus said, and looked sidelong at Percy’s surprised face. “Not the whole turning into a god thing. That I did want because I’m not a martyr like you.”
“But I didn’t want the domains that I had,” Dionysus admitted. “Wine sure, that was my pride and joy. But madness? Why would I want to embody something that killed my mother, killed the family that raised me, and then plagued me for years? I didn’t and I resented it for a long while even as I felt the call to indulge in it.”
“How did you deal with it?” Percy asked desperately, tears pricking his eyes. “How did you come to terms with it?”
“I found meaning in it,” Dionysus said, taking a drink from his Diet Coke and looking directly at Percy. “There is no hiding from your domains, Perseus. You either control it, or it controls you. And like it or not, your very essence is made out of it.”
“But Misery and Poisons?” Percy spat out. “Nyx thinks that it’s because I let misery poison my life long enough to allow me to gain control over them. But it was really because Akhyls was too weak to stop me from taking it from her! It’s all her fault.”
Dionysus stared at him, lips parted and the closest to gaping he’d ever seen a god do, outside of Apollo as Lester.
“Oh right, you guys don’t know what happened there do you?” Percy cried out, unable to stop the words from tumbling from his mouth. “I tortured the Goddess of Misery and Poisons with her own domain and made her beg for her life! And when we encountered Nyx later, she looked at me like my attempts at escape would be in vain. Not because I couldn’t leave, but because I would always come back!”
“But I,” Percy said, with tears falling down his cheeks. “I don’t want to go back, I don’t. You don’t know what it’s like down there.”
He could sense the waves of the lake and the ocean beyond getting agitated, either due to his own turmoil or that of his father’s, who he could sense listening in.
“I doubt that you’ll end up trapped there forever, Percy,” Dionysus said softly, with a kind look on his face. “You’re too much to be only encompassed by Misery and Poisons. At the very least, your father will want to keep you under the sea. You will have other domains. Not like, me. Hah! Can you believe I ever once wielded lightning?”
Percy wiped at his eyes and looked at Dionysus, feeling a small gap form in the clouds that had overtaken his heart.
“Just because Nyx,” Dionysus paused, looking a bit fearfully at the ground before continuing. “Just because she says it doesn’t make it true. She could be trying to get you to believe that though because she wants you trapped there for her own reasons.”
Percy startled, eyes widening at the thought. “That’s true. I didn’t…I didn’t even think about that.”
“We may all be subject to the Fates,” Dionysus said, putting a hand on Percy’s shoulder. Percy looked down on it in grateful disbelief. “But that doesn’t mean your future is set in stone. Your existence is what you make of it.”
That was what his mom was trying to tell him in his dream. That there would be hard times in front of him, but that he would endure. That he could come out on the other side and make something for himself, something that would console him in the cold, dark of eternity.
“But,” Dionysus said, shifting back into his more familiar guise. “If you think I’m giving you my seat on the council you have another thing coming Peter.”
“I wouldn’t want it anyway,” Percy replied glaring at the god, but then broke his glare just as quickly. “Thank you.”
This god had watched him grow up, and would now watch him grow into a god of his own.
“Don’t mention it,” Dionysus said. “Literally, I have a reputation to hold up, you know.”
For the first time in what felt like forever, Percy thought he might be okay.