Chapter Text
Dying is the first peaceful sleep Luke has had in years. But, as he’s learned over the twenty-two years of his life, peace was never meant for him. There’s a strange chill worming its way through his blissful not-unconsciousness, and he grunts in annoyance when he registers it.
The sound rattles his ears.
It’s game over from there—thought and sensation resurface despite Luke’s every attempt at sinking back into nothingness, a boat being painstakingly dredged up from muddy waters by a line of rope.
Cold washes over him, colors spark behind his eyes, and the next thing he knows, a low fiery light fills his vision. Across from him, pale flames dance atop a rectangular stone brazier, making the shade standing guard beside it ever-so-slightly translucent.
Luke slowly blinks, letting the impaired vision in his scarred eye catch up. His guard’s commanding figure is made regal by the forest-green himation fastened at his shoulder and draped over his armor—steel arm bracers, matching greaves, an emerald-beset spear in his fist. Ash blonde ringlets frame a classically handsome face, one that poets would write epics about. One that tightens into a melancholic expression as their gazes meet.
Chiron used to get that exact same look a lot. Like mentor, like student.
“Is this Punishment?” Luke asks.
The hero Achilles shakes his head. “No, lad. You’re in a holding room, of sorts.”
“But the dead have to queue for judgement, don’t they?”
“You’re… a special case, you and your comrades. Lord Hades has decided to pass judgement himself, so we’re simply waiting for him to finish up with everyone else.”
Luke’s heart sinks into his gut. Talk about saving the best for last.
“They were just following me. I’m the only one who should be judged. Please.”
“The Master is fair in all matters concerning death, lad. I wouldn’t worry too much if I were you.”
A derisive laugh tears out of Luke. He looks down at himself; the chiton and armor Kronos had donned prior to the final assault on the Empire State Building still appear on his now-spectral form. Half of it is drenched in blood—his blood.
“Did you figure we’d meet again?” says Luke.
When Luke had gone to the Styx, Achilles sensed it, tethered as he’d been to the river when he was alive all those millennia ago. They met on the riverbank, Achilles warning him against taking on the curse and Luke too tired and hollowed out to listen.
“I thought our paths would cross, one way or another,” Achilles replies. “I tried to not imagine in what manner, and I certainly did not expect that it would happen so soon.”
“Yeah?” Luke bares his teeth. “You can partly thank your Master for that. He might be fair when it comes to death, but when it actually matters, when we insignificant mortals and demigods are alive? Fat chance. He’s just like the rest of his family.”
“Our family, lad,” Achilles corrects him. “Your family.”
And that’s what it all came down to, didn’t it? Luke had tried so hard to rise above the gods, to match their wrath with his own, dreaming of being able to march up to their feasting table and upend all their games and indulgences, to put a stop to all the suffering. And all he’d done was become exactly like them, crushing underfoot those he was supposed to help.
Family, Luke. You promised.
The wound in his side, his former weak spot, twists with an odd phantom pain—literally, because his body is no longer corporeal.
He’d… Fuck, he’d really fucked everything up with Annabeth. Failed her in every way possible.
“Did you… Did you meet Percy? He went to the Styx some time after I did. Dark hair, a little tan.”
“I believe I did.”
“Who knows, maybe he’ll get the happy ending we didn’t.” Luke swallows hard against the lump in his throat. “I hope he does. For all our sakes.”
“That would be nice,” Achilles softly murmurs.
At that, silence falls between them. A short eternity passes, Luke alternating between wishing that his judgement would hurry the hell up (pun intended) and that the much longer eternity of what was probably only pain and suffering would never come.
It comes, regardless, when someone harshly raps their knuckles against the iron door to his room. “Lord Hades is ready for him,” says the person—a woman—outside the door. Her voice is like smoke, hoarse in a sultry way.
“Thank you, Mistress,” Achilles calls back.
She hums in acknowledgement. At her departure, Luke notes not one, but two pairs of footsteps.
“I’ll have to leave you on your own after I escort you. Are you ready?”
“I don’t really have a choice, do I?”
Achilles lets out a rueful chuckle at that. “I suppose not. We mortals are all destined for this place, and there’s no escape once we’re here.” He pauses before the door. “But the afterlife… I’ve found that you can make something of it, if you want to.”
Luke’s lips twist into a bitter grimace. “We’ll see.”
Despite having stolen the Helm of Darkness, Luke had never actually managed to get a good look at Hades. When Camp went on that fateful field trip to Olympus, most demigods couldn’t even turn in the Lord of the Dead’s direction without getting horrible goosebumps; just knowing that he’d be waiting for them in the Underworld when they died scared some of the younger kids so badly that Luke got sidetracked lulling them to sleep before he went off to steal the Bolt and the Helm.
And now Luke sees that the creeps were for a good reason. Luke stands only nearly as tall as Hades’ stately stone desk, and the god still towers when seated behind it. Different adornments pop out—several rings that are each of a different precious jewel as large as Luke’s fists, gold gleaming around his arms and even in the laurels enshrouding his head, a skull pauldron that was the size of a fucking car tire. Hades’ eyes themselves gleam like sharp-edged rubies from behind his bushy eyebrows and forked beard.
Luke wouldn’t be surprised if his eyes turn out to be actual rubies. Maybe Hades’ sentence for Luke is squishing him like a bug under one of his massive thumbs. Then Luke can get a closer look to satisfy his curiosity.
Instead, Hades says something that takes him off guard. “My blasted nephew insisted on a blanket amnesty for everyone who joined your side,” he gruffly says. “Gods, Titans, even you demigods, whether dead or alive. Bound us to it by a vow on the Styx, even. While I wager that my family may not be so faithful, I do not make a habit of undermining my own word.”
Luke’s stunned. “You mean Percy?” he croaks out. “But why would he—”
Hades bangs his colossal fist on the desk. The sound is like thunder within the empty, massive halls.
“Best believe that the reason escapes me as well!” he booms. “But I will not have you of all people question it, when the events you incited killed one daughter of mine and nearly killed my son, too.”
Whatever wind had been taken out of him comes back in full force. “You wanna talk about daughters?” Luke coldly says. “You sent Furies and hellhounds after Thalia for the crime of being Zeus’ daughter. But only one of us is facing judgement. Makes you wonder.”
“I don’t have to explain my actions to you, boy. You mortals live only for a handful of decades; we gods live for eons, and there are scores between us that span beyond your lifespan, much less your scope of understanding.”
“And yet,” Luke snorts, “you and Olympus have been brought to heel by a handful of us. One little uprising making you quake in your sandals. If you want the right to undermine us short-lived demigods, you should try not needing us first.”
“On the contrary, I have no intention of undermining you.” Hades takes a parchment sheet from one of the many piles teetering on his desk and presses one of his rings to its upper left corner. A fizzle, then the scent of something burning wafts into Luke’s nose. “I will fulfill my promise, but make no mistake: neither you nor your allies will be enjoying the pleasures of Elysium anytime soon.”
Luke frowns. “You’re sending us to Asphodel?” He’d rambled about Elysium to Annabeth in hopes of comforting her, even if it was too little too late, but he’d never really counted on it.
“And gamble on the hope that you’ll remain docile for the rest of eternity rather than collude toward another insurrection? No, you’ll be right under my nose. Your war introduced quite a bit of disarray in my realm, and I intend to have you help fix it.”
At those words, the air in front of him bursts into flames, producing the parchment that Hades had just stamped with his bident-like sigil. The black-inked Greek slips through the sieve of Luke’s attention, only short strings of words banding together to stick out at him.
By this Infernal Contract… I, Luke Castellan, hereby acknowledge the commuted nature of my sentence… in lieu for Punishment… the House of Hades… a service ensuring its continued security… indefinite and as needed…
“Indefinite?!” grits out Luke.
“Do you have a better use of your time? The room Achilles held you in is sufficiently serviceable, even without his or anyone else’s company.”
Bound in life, bound in death. Luke knows the quicksand of hopelessness like he used to know where each of the leaky spots in Cabin Eleven’s roof were, down to the square centimeter. Every time his previous renovations inevitably gave in, he thatched them up again and again because…
Well, he had to, didn’t he? Same way he had to leave his mother, his questmates, his loyalties to Camp, the only family he’d ever known, his own body and mind and soul.
And after all that, here he is, being threatened with an eternity of emptiness. Luke tries to imagine himself wizening into simply another mindless shade drifting through the Underworld.
He’d just wrangled his sanity back from Kronos. If he had to tolerate a bit of indentured servitude in hell while he looked for an arrangement that would actually sit well with him, then so be it.
Luke chokes his bile down.
“Where do I sign?”