Chapter Text
The clash of metal reverberates around the arena. Percy's entire mind has shrunk down to the fight - parry, guard, strike, half the movements all instinct he forgets to name. It makes the world around them seem even quieter than normal. Riptide sings in his hands, and Percy finds it hard at times to decipher where he ends and the sword begins. They feel like one singular being. Sweat traces lines down his back and neck, sticking his hair to his skull. Distantly, Percy thinks that Chris was probably right, and he did need a haircut. He'd get around to it. Eventually.
Percy'd kind of had the feeling that Luke liked it when his hair was longer, though, so maybe he wouldn't bother.
His opponent doesn't quite knock Riptide from Percy's hand, but he does send Percy most of the way to the ground, the edge of a blade now under Percy's chin. The boy let himself finally go still, chest rising and falling with heavy breaths. He wasn't sure how long they'd been sparring for.
"Very good," Hades complimented, helping Percy back to his feet. "I think you almost got me, a couple of times."
He did his level best to shove the warm glow of pride back inside his chest. Compliments came fairly regularly in his new home, but Percy wasn't sure he'd ever grow accustomed to the feeling. He was getting better about accepting them - a little better about believing them, too. "It doesn't really feel like it," Percy admitted, tucking his sword away for a well-deserved rest. Hecate had nicked it off of him in the first couple of months. Something about not liking him running around with an ancient curse in his hands. She hadn't been able to remove the curse entirely, supposedly, but the goddess claimed to have "neutralized" some of its effects. The only difference from before that Percy could identify was Riptide's resting form. It now took the shape of a thin ring, the bronze metal twisted to create a wave-like design where it sat against his hand.
"You have a natural talent," his uncle assured him, handing his own sword off to a waiting skeletal soldier. "Every day, you get better. Your focus and footwork have both improved immensely." With a smile, the god reached over, ruffling Percy's sweat-damp hair without hesitation or distaste. "Demeter wants to train with you, soon."
Percy cringed at that. Memories flooded back into his mind of Demeter and Persephone sparring with each other, in essence putting on a show for the half-bloods gathered to watch. He didn't often train with Persephone himself, but he'd also seen her training his friends enough, he knew Hades was the nicer of the teachers. "She's hinted at it a little," he admitted, letting Hades steer him back toward the palace itself. Percy's muscles were slightly sore from the work-out. His mind was going back and forth on what it wanted first - a shower, a nap, or food. "I'm not sure I'm ready to train with her, yet."
Ethan had made the mistake not long before on taking the goddess up on the offer. His friend had sworn he'd learned a lot, and enjoyed the experience, but he'd also crashed and burned for a solid three hours immediately following.
Four months after his near-brush with death, Percy was not convinced he'd built back up enough strength to survive Mother Earth's Boot Camp.
"Fair enough," Hades allowed, chuckling. "But, in warning, she won't let you avoid it forever. Perks of being the grandson."
Percy was still wrapping his mind around that. Most of the time, he thought of her more as an aunt, same as he felt about Hades and Persephone. It had never been easy to think of Poseidon as being his father. The last few months, it had become even more difficult, even if he was still getting used to being adopted. The ghosts and ghouls in many ways treated him the same as they treated the di Angelo siblings. That part of things was easier for Percy. He'd found it much simpler to grow accustomed to having siblings. All of his friends had become like extended family, and they'd come to treat like a brother, in turn. For the ones who'd left their siblings behind, he guessed it made the sting lessen some.
They go their separate ways once inside. Even without the cold war between Erebus and Olympus, Hades's work was rarely done. He means to just slip off to his own room, but Percy catches the crackle of a half-familiar noise, and finds his feet carrying him further. The doorway to the room Clarisse and Chris usually shared was open. When he stopped just outside, he could see them both sat on the over-sized bed, a walkie talkie held between them.
It crackled again, before Silena spoke through the far end. "Thalia's leaving camp tomorrow," the daughter of Aphrodite was relaying. Chris and Clarisse noticed Percy in the doorway, and the latter motioned him in, the boy hesitating a moment before trudging to the bedside. "She's taking some of the others with her. Annabeth's staying - I guess to keep an eye on things for her."
The names made Percy's stomach churn insidiously. Suddenly, he found he no longer had an appetite. He guessed it wasn't that difficult to understand why next to no one at camp seemingly questioned the story they'd been told. They'd all known Thalia longer and better than they had Percy himself. Why wouldn't they believe two girls they'd grown up with and largely looked up to? Silena and Charles both hadn't, even before they'd gotten the full story from their partners long ago. Percy wasn't sure if this counted as the two acting like their spies within camp. It was a risk, he figured, keeping up with the contact, but he couldn't blame them at all for trying. They'd been offered the option of coming to Erebus. For the time, they'd refused, trying to keep watch from within.
He didn't want to consider what Thalia or Annabeth might do if either of them got caught.
They'd relayed the suspicion that Travis and Connor had argued about things, in the aftermath of their impromptu escape. It had apparently smoothed back out some weeks back. Percy figured the arguing had more to do with Chris than anyone else. Still; it was a small relief that, potentially, at least one of them had been questioning things. They'd both been kind to him while he'd been at camp.
"Chiron was calling on other half-bloods," Charles was the one speaking this time. "It's mostly all rumor. Heroes who had already settled into the mortal world."
"Fantastic," Chris mumbled, "Olympus has a National Guard reserve."
It was hard for Percy to imagine there was much of anyone to call upon. He knew there were times demigods just chose not to come back to camp, and Luke had encountered more than a few while on the road. They'd been ... coarse. Hardened by life, even though most of them hadn't been much older than his friend, uninterested in sticking around any longer than it took both parties to identify they were each half-bloods. Percy had never given it much thought, but statistically, he was realizing suddenly, those demigods had very likely known about camp.
With that same clarity of hindsight, Percy realized it was a glaring neon sign that none of them had breathed a word about it. There was good to Camp Half-Blood, he'd seen enough to know that much. But there were a lot of things wrong about it. Over the last few months, he'd come to understand that even more, tension and weight slowly dissolving off the shoulders of those who'd previously called it home.
His sinking stomach told him those reserves might not be very loyal to Olympus. It's past time someone dragged them back down to size, Thalia's voice drifted back to his mind, a shiver running down Percy's spine. Her resentment of the Olympians had been building long before she came to the camp. How many others out there were like her, eager for a chance to get their licks back, but without direction in how to go about it? How many others could Kronos start whispering to, leading down the steep slope with promises of payback?
"What's her story?" Clarisse questions, sharing a long look with Percy. He knows she's thinking the same thing as him.
Whatever story they were selling, Thalia was building an army for someone, and it was not her father.
"Percy," Silena relays, the pause making him think she's addressing him directly for a moment. "I'm not sure how word's gotten around that he's alive - " Percy flinches, knowing automatically how, Clarisse doing similar, Chris's jaw tightening and working off-sides, " - but it has. They're supposed to be tracking him - tracking all of you, down. There's some disagreement in how many of you have even survived this far."
It was laughable honestly. They were leagues safer in Erebus than they'd been at Camp Half-Blood, even discounting Chiron's favorite psychopath.
Percy left them to it, having heard more than enough for his sanity.
He knows where his before his eyes even open inside the dream. For a long moment, Percy just stands there, the wind harsh against his skin, swaying atop the hill. The trees rustled, air whistling all around him. It should have felt good to be back, and he could feel a strangled relief washing over him, but something felt wrong. There was a scent rising above the earth and pine he was used to. Something - acidic, almost, the sickly sweet of rot. When he shifted his feet unconsciously, the dirt broke apart in a way it never had before.
Maybe it was because he'd been gone for almost six months. Luke had said before that it used to be dry, before Percy started appearing.
But the wind had usually been in the tops of the trees, not so low to the ground, and where there was usually a winter-like chill, Percy found this dream land was feverishly hot for once. His heart had begun racing as soon as he registered the world around him. It rushed for a different reason now, disconcertingly aware within the dream. That, at least, he imagined could be blamed on his last visit.
When he let his eyes open, Percy's frown deepened. It was the first time he'd found himself standing on the opposite side of the pine tree. That must've been why Luke hadn't called out to him, yet. His gaze drifted up and down the trunk for a moment. The branches were swaying in the wind, and the color of the needles looked wrong, the whole tree did. Percy let himself start forward - half-tripping on the slightly unsteady ground, too off-kilter himself to walk with grace or care - and tried to convince himself it was just because the angle was different. His overgrown bangs caught on his lashes as his curls blew around his face. The wind felt like it was coming from every direction at once, the same uncomfortable warmth he'd felt when he leaned too close to the fire.
In honesty, Percy was nervous for another reason as well. Their last meeting was playing on a loop in his mind. The feeling of Luke's lips pressed to his, the confession that had slipped so easily past the older boy's lips, overshadowed in the (figurative, recently) light of day by how much he missed Luke, how scared Percy had been that they'd never see each other again. How was Percy meant to greet him, now?
His already dry mouth turned into desert sands as Percy rounded the tree. There was a gash along the trunk, green fluid leaking from it and staining in thick lines as it dripped toward the roots. The bark was starting to crumble there, a sickly, gray tone overtaking it, the needles of the nearest branches an ugly yellow where they drooped toward the earth.
The empty earth.
Where Luke should have been.
Where Luke wasn't.
Percy doesn't really remember waking up. His consciousness is slow to connect back with him, mind still caught up in that horrible sight. He clawed mindlessly at his shirt and chest. In his mind, it was more like he was clawing at the tree, like if he stripped back the layers and rings, he could find what he was looking for inside. It was only when the door to his room opened that Percy started to register the world around him once again. There was no heat or wind fanning over his face, though cold sweat clung to his body and stuck his clothes to his skin. Somewhere in the far distance, barely audible over the heaving of his lungs and stomach, he thought he heard a voice saying something he couldn't make out. Desperate, he tried to kick free of the tangled blankets around his legs.
It was Clarisse who slid onto the bed, grabbing him tight by the shoulders and making him narrowly focus on her past his bone-deep panic. The door had closed again. Tears were spilling freely down Percy's cheeks, their salt striking like thorns against his eyes. By their sensitivity, he guessed he'd been crying for a while, but that wasn't entirely new. It wasn't the first time Percy had woken to the realization he'd cried in his sleep.
"Tell me what's wrong," Clarisse demands, voice clear and calm. She squeezed his shoulders as Percy's hands moved to grip frantically at her forearms. "Tell me what you saw."
The reminder draws another sob from inside his chest, so harsh it makes his ribs ache. The healed wound along his midsection burned faintly. "Luke," Percy managed to force the name out, choking on the sound, on the pain rippling through him. "Something's wrong - wrong with Luke - the tree - " It was as far as he could get. Percy curled in on himself, new sobs tearing through him, flaying him open from the inside out. Clarisse made a noise he couldn't quite identify - maybe words, maybe just a wordless attempt to soothe, he didn't know, and couldn't entirely bring himself to care. She pulled him closer to her, surrounding him protectively as Percy made himself small.
His mind couldn't make sense. Percy had known that, one day, Luke would probably not be there. But he'd imagined a more gradual progress. He tried to blame it on his absence - that he'd missed something, or that, somehow, he'd caused it. The wound on the tree (which felt, dizzying, for a moment like a mirror to his own) flashed back to his mind before he could, though. The scent of rot in the air, the feverish burn of the atmosphere.
Percy was usually an expert at holding himself at fault, but he knew this wasn't him. This wasn't the natural progression of time. Something had happened, and it had burned away the last remaining shred of Luke Castellan that he could find.
The boy wasn't sure when he fell asleep again. When he woke, his head was spinning, and he felt shaky with the weight of grief. His stomach emptied itself when he went to try and wash his face. On autopilot, Percy cleaned himself up from that, forced his way through brushing his teeth. He took brief stock of himself in the mirror. Without doubt, he looked like he'd been run-over by a semi-truck. The usual circles beneath his eyes had darkened to an unpleasant degree, the purple clashing with his bloodshot eyes and their red rims. They'd all, admittedly, lost a little of their color in the Underworld, but he was paler than he remembered himself as having been before.
Percy didn't bother with changing his clothes or slipping into shoes. He stumbled from his room, following the wall on unsteady feet as he wandered to the family room.
Nico, seemingly full of anxious energy, was the one to spot him as Percy made his way numbly inside. The youngest of their rag-tag bunch froze at the sight of his adoptive brother. The others were seemingly all gathered around the magic walkie talkie Chris and Clarisse used to contact Silena and Charles. Most of them had their backs to the entryway, but Percy could more clearly make out Michael and Bianca's faces. The son of Apollo seemed gray-tinged himself, face drawn in something Percy could only identify as fury. Bianca was holding his hand, or the other way around, Percy wasn't really sure, more shock than anger on her.
Their brother didn't get a chance to alert the rest to his presence before Percy tuned in to the sound of Silena's whispered voice. It sounded like the older girl might've been crying recently, and the connection seemed clearer, crisper, than normal. " - must have poisoned it," she said, Percy drifting like a ghost to the back of the nearest couch. "Mr D's twins realized as soon as they got up for the day. A few of the nymphs are already starting to go dormant. Chiron's digging through his records, trying to figure out what kind of poison it is, and most of Cabin 4's helping him." As he reached them, Percy could tell Ethan sensed the presence, going impossibly tenser than he'd been a moment prior. The son of Nemesis tilted his head just enough to check who it was. He froze when he spotted Percy there, traces of anger shifting to something more horrified, trying to shoot a look to his boyfriend beside him. Alabaster had one hand white-knuckled around Ethan's wrist, the other covering his mouth. Oblivious.
"They poisoned the tree," Chris voiced, sharp as a knife, trembling with withheld rage. "They poisoned my brother."
"Maybe they can heal it," Silena tried to reassure, but there was no faith in the sound.
"You won't," Percy disagreed, voice raw, everyone but Nico and Ethan startling at the sound and twisting to spot him. He kept his own eyes locked on the walkie talkie, shaking with a grief transforming faster and faster into something new. "The poison's too strong for anyone to heal with what they already have."
He was going to wrap his hands around Thalia Grace's lying throat and shake her until his arms fell off. That used to be my best friend, she'd told him, made it sound like something she meant. Luke gave his life for her - his very soul for those girls, and this was how Thalia was repaying that sacrifice. She didn't deserve to still be breathing air. She didn't even deserve the Fields of Punishment. If she felt this strongly about helping Kronos, Percy would gladly send her straight to their grandfather himself.
Ethan's hand touches his wrist. Percy jerks away from the touch immediately, but it does jolt him back to reality enough to make him breathe.
Across the way, Clarisse rose to her feet, focus on the distance. "Keep your head down, baby," she directed to Silena. Then, to the others, her eyes sweeping across the whole room, a general staring down her soldiers. "Time to get the bosses. We're either going to save the tree, or we're going to kill Zeus's brat trying."