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Grover blamed Percy completely.
If he’d had a little less wit, kept his mouth shut, and made himself more inconspicuous, then perhaps Hera wouldn’t have picked him.
But nooo. Percy just had to (involuntarily) make a legend of himself by fighting Kronos, along with Annabeth, and now he was the subject of another Great Prophecy; a favorite tool of the Olympians, ready to be used again.
Which was why when his empathy link started to tingle and Grover’s dreams took him to an empty, rubble-filled mansion shouldered by redwoods, he was utterly relieved.
Percy would not survive this war without a little voice telling him to stay sane in his head.
Percy was going insane. He was absolutely sure of it.
There was a little voice in his head.
“Hey, Lupa?” Percy asked softly, and the largest wolf of the pack – an enormous, regal female with silver eyes – looked up. Percy shivered under her gaze, then pointed to his temple. “Is – is there supposed to be someone talking to me? In my mind?”
The strangest thing about memory loss was that Percy couldn’t, for the life of him, remember what was normal. For all he knew, it was perfectly reasonable for a teenager to live with a pack of wolves for weeks. And perfectly normal for voices to scold said teenager from inside his mind.
Lupa snarled and bristled, light falling through the redwood branches and dappling her pelt. Percy’s hand darted to the pocket of his shorts – which were much too thin for the cold, brisk winds that frequented the burnt structure of the Wolf House – and wrapped around his pen.
Push that stupid little faun away, boy, she told him, using the language of the Roman wolves. Every twist of her tail, every expression and growl and blink of the eye was its own word. He is not important. Ignore him, and he will vanish.
Faun? Percy thought. The word seemed important. It clicked into his head, as if he’d heard it before… and yet it felt utterly wrong. What was a faun? He was certain that he used to know.
Percy, nagged the incessant little voice. It was reedy and achingly familiar.
Shut up, he responded. You’re not real.
“Not real!” Grover demanded, horrified. “What does he mean, I’m not real?”
Clarisse frowned and tilted her head. “Well, Jason did say he’d lose his memories, right?”
“Yes, but…” Grover’s heart sank. She was right. It was just that since Annabeth Iris-messaged him in December and explained where Percy had vanished off to, he’d deluded himself into thinking she wasn’t.
Now, Annabeth wasn’t here. It was just Grover, who was staying in Arizona trying to convince cacti spirits to side against Gaea, and Clarisse, who’d come for backup. Grover was still trying to work up the courage to send an IM to camp and say Hey, our friend is alive, and I’ve got contact with him! I think?
“We can’t tell Annabeth,” Clarisse said after awhile, helping Grover’s decision. “If we’re wrong, or something happens to him, then…”
Then it’ll break her to know that we could talk to him all along. Grover started to chew on the reed pipes around his neck. He thought that he’d broken that nervous habit when the Second Titan War ended, but when Percy disappeared, it had started back up again. And it’ll break me, too.
He closed his eyes, and took himself back to Percy. He imagined standing in the Wolf House. The vision solidified around him, and he watched as a huge wolf – undoubtedly the terrifying Lupa, whom he’d only heard about in stories – growled and spoke in the complex dialect of the wild, looming over his friend.
Grover stared, horrified, as Percy responded by sassing her in English: annoyingly in character for him. The other wolves, a pack that surrounded the pair in the center, growled something about recruiting and demigods and new blood. Grover blinked as the events unfolded before him.
Oh, wait, no – PERCY, WHAT ARE YOU DOING? DO NOT JOIN A PACK OF RABID WOLVES, YOU IDIOT! AT LEAST CONFIRM THAT THEY DON’T WANT TO EAT YOU!
Oh, gods… Grover sighed and ran a hand through his curls, accidentally stroking one of his horns as he forced the empathy link to take him back to Clarisse’s side. He opened his eyes in an empty parking lot in Arizona.
They won’t hurt him, he reminded himself. Jason said that they take in Roman demigods.
Yes… Jason had also said that Lupa was much more hostile than Chiron, and that if you failed to benefit the pack, you would be eaten for lunch, but Grover conveniently refused to think about that.
He turned to Clarisse. “When he comes back, I have a lot of yelling to do.”
What the Hades do you think you’re doing. Oh, my – is that Medusa? Are there two Medusas now? Was one not enough?
Percy cringed as the voice infiltrated his head, even louder than it had been in the Wolf House. In fact, he suspected that some sort of magic around Lupa’s lair had been muffling it, beause there was no way it had managed to grow in volume in such a short time.
“It’s not Medusa,” he mumbled. “Her sisters. Euryale and Beano.” Then it hit him that he was talking to himself. Wow. Maybe the stress of the wolves’ trials had been too much for his little half-blood brain to handle.
Beano? I don’t remember a gorgon named Beano, Percy.
“No, I’m dyslexic, I misread her nametag. I meant – ” Percy bit his lip. “Oh, shut up. You’re not real.”
“Percy,” Grover muttered under his breath. “I know what you’re thinking. Don’t you dare – ” he abruptly broke off, groaned, and buried his head in his hands.
Juniper sighed. His outburst had interrupted their date, but fortunately, she was okay with it (gods, he loved Juniper so much.) “What’s he doing now?”
“Sledding,” Grover moaned. “With a cheese platter, of all things. I told him that if he was going to do something stupid, he should at least confirm it with me first, but he didn’t even ask.”
“I’m Nico di Angelo. Nice to meet you.”
OH WHAT THE – exploded the voice in Percy’s head.
Shut up, Percy thought instantly. Get out of my head.
He shook Nico’s hand. A strange sense of déjà vu settled over him, and he grimaced.
No, Percy, protested the voice. You know him, remember?
Percy frowned. “I – I know you?” he said out loud in response to the voice, and then he wanted to thwack himself, because Hazel was now staring at her brother, who looked like he’d been caught in a search light. He hadn’t meant for the two of them to hear that. Gods, his stupid little mind-buddy was going to make him look like a psycho in public.
“Do you?” Nico responded icily, and Percy paused.
Grover folded his arms. “We need to talk. About Nico. Freaking. Di Angelo.”
Annabeth looked up, highly confused. “Huh?”
They’d just woken up from their shared dream. With a little help from Clovis, the son of Hypnos, the two of them had managed to contact Percy in his sleep. Annabeth had gotten to talk to him for a while, according to what she’d told him when they woke. But when Percy had met Grover… all he’d said was, ‘I don’t have any change.’
“Nico di Angelo. He used to have a crush on you, right? Do you think he would respond if you emotionally blackmailed him?”
Percy, Annabeth told you to stay put. Where even are you right now? Is this – Portland?
Percy grit his teeth.
Now is not the time, he thought tiredly he handled the gorgon’s blood. The two vials fit neatly in his palm as he opened his mouth and explained the gamble to Phineas. But yeah, we’re in Portland.
He didn’t say more. He didn’t want to think about Annabeth telling him to stay, or about his old life in general. Not right now. Not when Ella had just told him a prophecy that felt eerily familiar, and when he was going to find out more about it in a few moments.
Find out in a few moments? What do you mean?
After asking, the voice fell silent. Percy presumed that it was listening to his explanation of the deal. Then he remembered that it wasn’t sentient – of course, it wasn’t listening to the explanation. It couldn’t be, right?
The moment he finished telling Phineas the rules, the voice returned, more concerned than Percy had ever heard it. Percy, please don’t. This is a bad idea.
Percy didn’t bother responding. He turned to face the mountains in the distance and ignored the voice as he prayed to Gaea.
Percy, you could die. Please. Please. Please. Gaea won’t listen to you. She won’t –
A tremor ran through the ground, and Phineas picked his vial. Percy grabbed the other. His fingers shook as he uncorked it.
“To the sons of Neptune,” Phineas declared, and they both drank.
Pain exploded in Percy’s gut. He felt like he was burning from the inside, being torn apart. Fire snaked through his lungs. Shards of glass pressed against his stomach. The voice in his head screamed and didn’t stop screaming.
Percy doubled over. He gasped. The voice pleaded with him and cried out as Frank grabbed his shoulder, and Hazel did the same, telling him to hold on.
And then just like that, it was over. The agony receded. Percy didn’t feel cured, but he didn’t hurt anymore.
Across the table, Phineas shrieked. He scrabbled to rip up the paper in his bathrobe pocket. Then he dissolved.
The voice spoke. It sounded spooked, and this time Percy couldn’t help but grin when he heard its incredulity.
Perseus Jackson. There is something deeply, deeply wrong with you, you psycho. You idiot. You absolute buffoon. I am telling your girlfriend. I am telling your mother –
Grover repeatedly banged his head on the wall. Clarisse snickered.
“What did Prissy do this time?” she asked. Leo, Piper, Jason, Annabeth, and Coach Hedge had left on the Argo II two hours ago. Grover had secretly wished he’d been able to go with them, but the Council of Cloven Elders needed him to stay for stupid Lord of the Wild duties. Grover hadn’t cared. He would have given up his place on the Council just to be able to go and see his friend, his best friend in the whole wide world.
Unfortunately, the Council paid no mind to what Grover wanted.
About halfway through the ride on Arion’s back, on the way back to Camp Jupiter, Percy groaned and buried his head in his hands.
“Grover?” he said to himself, and Frank gave him an odd look.
For once, there was no response.
Grover cursed different time zones. Seriously, what had Kronos thought he would get out of creating them? Had he expected to get a kick out of watching Percy and Grover struggle to contact each other when one of them was always three hours ahead?
Actually… yeah, that fit what Grover knew about the Titan Lord.
It was around noon two days after the Argo II arrived at Camp Jupiter when Percy responded to Grover’s calls for the first time in six, almost seven months.
Okay, so before you kill me, it’s not my fault, Hera stole my memories and –
Well, yeah, Grover responded, I know that, you idiot. Jason told us everything. And don’t worry. I’m not going to scold you for disappearing. Annabeth already did that. Did she judo flip you like she was planning to?
That was planned? Percy demanded, sounding indignant. Also… are you really not going to scold me?
Definitely planned. I helped her pick between a karate flip and a judo flip, and everything. Also, I said I wasn’t going to scold you for disappearing, didn’t I?
Oh. Percy sounded relieved. Thanks.
Instead, Grover thought , I’m going to kill you for the stress you've given me since the Wolf House.
Percy choked. The water was filling his lungs. It was his nightmare come true, the realization of the phobia he’d had since the muskeg in Alaska.
No, he thought blindly. Oh, gods, why hadn’t he listened to Piper? She’d said that coming into the nymphaeum was a bad idea.
Now… he’d volunteered to look for an exit. He’d dove into the flooded deeps without considering that he might not come back up.
And worse than that, the water was polluted. So polluted. His insides quailed just thinking about the darkness of the energy in it, the plain unnaturalness of it. Whatever this was… it wasn’t the essence of the sea. It wasn’t natural.
Percy, Grover was saying, but Percy couldn’t focus. He’d never had to worry about drowning in his life. Now, he didn’t know what to do to save himself.
GO UP, PERCY! SWIM UP!
Percy made the mistake of inhaling again on instinct. His vision turned red with pain, then black as he started to faint. With his last reserve of energy, he kicked himself to the surface, gasping and coughing. Piper extended her hand and pulled him to safety.
Piper and Jason and him debated. They studied Piper’s cornucopia. They made a decision and as the water came forward from the horn of plenty, pure and clean and fresh, rising up to Percy’s shoulders, Percy hoped Grover could hear him. Thank you, Grover, he thought as loudly as he could. The water kept rising over his mouth, his nose. Thank you. Thank –
“Percy,” Grover murmured.
He was lying in bed, staring at the ceiling. The last thing he’d heard was Thank you. Now Percy wasn’t responding.
Grover’s heart dropped, as heavy as a bowling ball. For a moment, he wondered if it was possible that Percy was –
Grover?
Grover sank to his knees in relief. Oh my gods. You’re okay. You – you’re okay?
Yeah.
Grover waited for an explanation, but none came. Perhaps the synopsis was too complicated to give via empathy link.
So Grover waited. He tossed and turned, until he fell asleep and forced his dreams to take him to Percy’s side, so he could watch as the nymphs thanked Piper. He winced along with Percy when Hagno mentioned Pan, placed a phantom hand on Percy’s shoulder when he tried to explain that Pan was gone, lowered his head when Percy gave up explaining and just trailed off.
Grover whistled. A white wisp of magic sailed through the dream and wrapped itself around Hagno. He filled it with the essence of the wild. Made it so that Hagno and her sisters would find a safe place stay, a place full of nature.
He prayed, prayed for the loyal followers of Pan. The ones who had never given up. He pretended he didn’t notice when Percy reached out with his thoughts and said sorry.
Percy thought about Grover before he decided to let go of the ledge.
If he died in the Pit, would Grover die, too?
He decided no. After Grover had been blessed by Pan, the two of them had discussed some, and with the help of some of the Hecate kids, they’d figured out that the wild god’s energy kept Grover safe from dying. At least, safe from dying from something as trivial as an empathy link.
His fingers burned from holding onto the shelf of rock, and he let go. The fall took the breath out of his lungs and Annabeth tugged him closer, crying, as they plummeted out of the view of their friends.
Percy?
Percy couldn’t bring himself to focus and respond. It was a little hard to think with the wind whistling in his ears. Hard to think with the darkness of a seemingly endless void below him. Just… hard to…
Percy, NO. No no no –
They’d already fallen.
Grover sat back, overwhelmed. He wasn’t at Camp Half-Blood. He was in Washington, coincidentally at the Mount Saint Helens nature reserve, helping a colony of centaurs who were recovering from an earthquake (probably Gaea’s fault.)
But… he needed to go back to camp. As quickly as he could.
Tears stung his eyes. Had there… had there been nothing anyone could do? He wished he could turn back time, but it wasn’t possible. They were already gone. Both of them. Deep in the Pit, a death sentence no one could quite defeat.
Grover’s friends were as good as dead.
He still had the empathy link with Percy. That was good. Maybe they would make it out. Maybe he could help, somehow, provide moral support, remind them that he was there, that he was always going to be there.
Percy couldn’t talk to Grover. Grover couldn’t talk to Percy.
Percy realized this while walking next to Bob, on their way to the ‘death mist’, whatever that was. He wondered when that particular change to their empathy link had taken place – probably when they’d touched the ground of Tartarus, marking them as officially too far away to contact each other. On the bright side, Percy could still sense Grover’s emotions. Grief, doubt, anger, insistence.
He found it strangely comforting. It was like Grover was right there with him.
Suddenly, Annabeth spoke up, making Bob and Percy stop short. A warning issued from both her words and from the look in her gray eyes. Do you see that? A creepy winged thing landed in front of them, quickly joined by an entire flock.
We are the arai, the curses, they growled. They threatened to kill – to kill a thousand times. Percy sucked in a breath and retorted:
No, thank you. My mother told me not to accept curses from strangers.
He could almost hear Grover groaning. A wave of half-admiration and half-anger echoed through the link.
Then the arai charged.
Grover cried into Tyson’s shoulder.
An hour ago, Percy had presumably bled out on the Tartarus ground. Curses had burned through his veins. Phineas’ stupid gorgon’s blood deal had come back in the worst way possible.
The empathy link had shut off when Percy blacked out, and Grover had run to the only other person in camp who would understand, understand what the Second Titan War had been like and why it was so important that Percy survive two wars instead of one. The only person who would understand that Percy didn’t deserve to die. The only person who would understand how Grover felt.
Tyson didn’t know why Grover was crying – Grover couldn’t make himself brave enough to tell him – but his presence was comforting enough, which just made Grover feel worse.
How was he supposed to break it to Tyson that his brother was dead?
Grover, Percy reached out. He was standing in front of the Doors of Death, behind Krios. He could see Annabeth across from him. Her drakon bone sword was lifted forebodingly over the chains on her side. They were waiting for Bob to approach his menacing Titan brothers, to distract them so Percy and Annabeth could get through to the elevator.
Grover didn’t respond. Not even with emotions. Percy frowned and reached out again, nudging for another presence.
Nope. Grover was gone.
Percy’s head buzzed. Their empathy link had shut off? When? And then it hit him that he hadn’t been able to feel Grover at all since the arai’s attacks. There must have been a curse… or the after-effects of poison, or something… something that had disconnected them…
“Hello, brothers!” Bob cried, and Percy turned his attention to the matter at hand.
Percy?
Grover!
Percy?
Grover’s breath caught. He was dead. He had to be dead. There was no way that he wasn’t –
Oh, my gods. Grover broke down, right in front of the entire war council. Everyone proceeded to look his way.
“Grover?” Clarisse was the first to speak. Of course she was. She was the only one who knew about the link.
“S-sorry,” he blubbered. “Just give me a second.”
He stumbled outside. He was so relieved, he didn’t even care about the Roman eagles flying overhead, preparing for their siege.
Percy stared at the ropes of poison in front of him as Polybotes’ hand swept through the Adriatic waters.
A Greek tragedy, said a little voice inside his head. It didn’t sound like Grover, though. Isn’t that how all the old legends work? A hero does something horrible, and they die in the same way?
Percy agreed. It just… felt right. That was how stories worked. Retribution. Karma. Fairness. You do something bad, and it always comes back around.
Maybe this was what was supposed to happen, all along. This was what he’d done to Akhlys, finally coming full circle. This was his fate. This was the ending he deserved.
Before he could change his mind, he was charging forward, vaguely aware of Jason watching in horror as the poison bound him tightly and made him drop Riptide. He clawed at his throat, suddenly in pain. It was one of the worst things he’d felt in his entire life – the poison suffocating him, making him feel dirty, unclean, dead. Darkness filled his throat and blood and it felt like it was permeating his skin, killing him as slowly as it could.
Grover wasn’t quite sure what to say.
He didn’t think that Percy even knew he was listening to his thoughts. After all, it was around midnight in New York; Grover was supposed to be asleep, but he was awake for night watch, making sure the eagles didn’t try to snatch up campers in their claws. He doubted that they would be able to, but no one in the war council wanted to risk it.
Deserve this? Percy, what in Tartarus do you mean? You don’t deserve this. What you deserve is to live a happy life and –
Percy raced into the poison. Grover paused.
Had he just – had he just tried to –
Grover pushed the foreboding away. He wished he could fall asleep or close his eyes so that he could watch over Percy, but he didn’t want his watch partner, Lou Ellen, to think he was lazing off.
But Percy had just tried to –
Grover’s lip trembled. Turning away from Lou Ellen so she couldn’t see, he shut his eyes. Stared blankly as Percy writhed in his vision, slowly suffocating. Almost fell over crying when Jason trimuphed in his debate with Kymopoleia, and Percy’s sister sent the poison flying away, and Percy stopped struggling, conscious. Alive.
He waited. Waited for Percy and Jason to sit down so Percy could recover for a moment. Then he spoke.
Percy, tell him.
What are you talking about? Percy demanded.
Tell him what you were thinking. Before you got… poisoned. Grover was shaken. Too shaken, and he couldn’t even do anything about it, because he was too far away from Percy to help him. To knock him into his right mind.
So he ordered Percy to tell someone else. Someone who would notice. Hopefully helped. Grover hadn’t made much of an effort to know Jason Grace, especially since it hurt know that Jason was essentially Percy’s replacement, but he could tell that he was a natural leader. A guy who cared about his teammates and would take care of them.
Hopefully.
Percy didn’t even protest, and with a jolt, Grover realized that he didn’t even think his thoughts were abnormal. Percy honestly thought he was right. Honestly thought that he ‘deseved it’, to the point where it wasn’t concerning to him.
How could he not see? How could he not recognize that his thoughts weren’t safe, they weren’t good for him, they weren’t okay, they could freaking get him killed and that wasn’t fair and it wasn’t okay to think that he deserved to –
Grover took a deep breath.
“If that makes any sense,” Percy told Jason, who frowned and responded with:
"I get it."
Grover prayed. To the dead god Pan, to Poseidon, to anyone who he thought might listen and care.
Please don’t die, Percy.
Percy’s mouth dropped open when he saw Festus explode. A giant eagle swooped in to catch Jason and Piper as they fell, but Leo… Leo…
He helped search for hours, trying to find wreckage of the dragon – and of the boy who had died to save them all.
Except… no. No, Percy had hope. Leo was a genius. Hazel and Frank had both claimed that there was no way he could have succeeded in his plan, not without help from the rest of them, but honestly, Percy had seen Hazel and Frank on their quest to Alaska. He’d figured out how they handled relationships, handled grief. They were feeling worried… bu Percy knew that inside, they privately both thought that Leo had pulled it off. Pulled something off, at least.
After they’d all grieved, taken time to think and remember freaking Leo Valdez, Percy walked around camp. He searched as long as he could until –
He bumped into Grover Underwood.
Percy didn't even get a second to think, but since Annabeth's little stunt in the Forum, he was honestly expecting it: Grover flattened him on the ground and beat him with his reed pipes.
“You idiot, you freaking idiot, what the Hades is wrong with you, the freaking one time I let you and Annabeth go on a quest by yourselves you let yourself get dragged into freaking Tartarus – ”
And then Clarisse was there, looking exasperated but at the same time reluctantly relieved, and Thalia was running towards him cursing creatively and threatening to throw him off a cliff for getting himself kidnapped, and Tyson and Mrs. O’Leary were both stumbling in their direction grinning in delight, and Rachel was shouting and coming over the hill menacingly wielding her blue plastic hairbrush (hadn’t she left that on Mount Tam?), and Annabeth was jogging over from the center of the camp green to join in on the tussle, and the warmth, and the memories.
Grover stopped yelling. He hugged Percy and cried and grinned, and for the first time in a long time, Percy felt home.