Chapter Text
“Are you certain you want to do this? There’s no going back once you start.”
“Yes, Nico,” came the whispered reply. Whispered because it was nearing three in the early morning hours just after Percy Jackson’s fifteenth birthday party.
Not that he looked forward to taking a dip in the rushing river in front of him. A river of lost dreams, hopes, and wishes: The Styx. As he glanced down at it’s polluted waters, a silver streak of hair drifted across his vision. A reminder of what felt like forever ago. A time where the heaviest thing on his shoulders was only the weight of the literal world. A part of Percy wished he could carry the sky again. It would definitely be lighter to carry than whatever his life was right now. Tucking back the stray strand, he closed his eyes and breathed in. The streak gave another reminder he did not want to remember right now.
A reminder of his best friend, Annabeth Chase. A reminder which, for lack of a clearer mind, reminded him of the stupid prophecy he had stumbled upon in the camp attic. Not that he had intended to study the mummy of an Oracle. Or even thought to go into the attic. For that his body had moved on autopilot.
His body had moved on autopilot for the entire day after Annabeth dropped the bombshell. There remained a week of camp before he would have to leave. For the entire summer after the catastrophic Battle of the Labyrinth, he and Annabeth circled around each other. They could make the bare minimum small talk without exploding. The longest conversation they’d had was a glorious 10 minute birthday celebration on July 12th, before as always, he screwed things up. One way or another, Luke, or Calypso, or Rachel Elizabeth Dare would be brought into the mix and it felt like burning up in Mount St. Helens all over again.
The day before he went into the attic, had originally started off like any other. And if this were a story written by a professional author capable of developing a best-selling series, that day would be skipped over and left for fanfic authors to fluff the hades out of. However, in this story, that day, Percy pushed just a little more.
On that day, he was tired of this song and dance they played around each other. He was tired of the way he saw her shoulders buckling whenever she thought no one would notice. He was tired of counting down the days till the end of summer and not talking to his best friend when these days were all that he would have. And he was tired of the elephant standing between them, the Rachel of it all. He was about to ask her to the end of Camp Fireworks.
Yet when he came into cabin six, he saw her crossing off lines on a piece of paper. You shall delve into the darkness of the endless maze. The first line of her prophecy.
The first line of six. Percy only knew of five.
While he couldn’t read the last line before she hid it amongst a stack of papers and stood up, whirling around to face him, he knew now that a final line did exist, and that Annabeth, for all intents and purposes, had hid it from him, her best friend. An ugly ache sprouted in his chest. Not right now, Jackson, peace!
“Uh, Hey.” Annabeth tried for a smile. A grimace came through.
“Hey yourself,” Percy tried not to focus on the slightly puffed eyes or on the pupils glistening with liquid. “What, what are you doing?” He shifted his weight. He realized he was just beyond arm’s reach. That seemed too far. Too close? Hang on, how does a person stand when talking to their best friend?
“Just, trying to figure things out. Reflecting.”
“Definitely been a hectic summer. Feels like it gets harder to breathe every summer.” Percy had no idea what he was saying.
“Yeah…” Annabeth trailed off. A thousand-yard stare overtook her gaze.
The ugly ache grew. How do best friends talk again? Definitely not so stiltedly. Definitely not like this.
“Drachma for your thoughts, Wise Girl?” The nickname seemed to reel her in back to the present. Her eyes flitted to the stack of papers she stood in front of, before briefly glancing in his direction. Her eyes caught his. Grey drilled into Sea Green.
Her mouth opened.
Then closed again as quickly as it had opened. She broke eye contact. “It’s nothing important. Forget about it. Just battle strategies and the like. Did you want to ask something?”
Percy’s teeth clenched. The ache grew. Like acid it bubbled up his throat. “Was it something to do with the prophecy?” He pried. The prophecy felt incomplete. Not only that but it clearly was eating away at Annabeth for some reason. He wanted to help. If he was also honest with himself, he was also a bit irritated she was hiding something so important. Did she not trust him to help her?
By the way she flinched, he’d hit the nail on the head.
“Percy, please—” Annabeth began, her eyes looking around, as if trying to find an escape route. “—it’s noth—”
“What was the last line, Annabeth?” This time, he pushed; the ache came out.
This time, Annabeth looked at him and he looked at her and out of the corner of his eye he saw Janus, the god of doorways, and the last time he had seen him was when the God had confronted Annabeth on their quest in the Labyrinth and that even last time, the God had hinted at some choice the Daughter of Wisdom had to make, and somehow, that brought the Son of the Earthshaker’s mind to Luke, and from Luke to Kronos, and from Kronos to the fact that somehow, despite everything he had done, Annabeth still seemingly defended the wayward Castellan. The same Castellan who had almost killed him multiple times in the past few years, who had made her hold the frickin sky on her shoulders, who had somehow lodged a piece of himself in her heart so deep Percy just knew there was no way she would ever go to the fireworks with him.
Annabeth’s shoulders buckled. Something shifted inside of her, and suddenly, her storm grey eyes hollowed out. “And Lose a Love to Worse than Death.” There it was. The final confirmation. Suddenly, despite standing right in-front of him, Annabeth seemed like she was halfway across the world. She also looked ready to collapse. Her head slouched, and when she looked at him, he knew this time that it wasn’t Luke who was the source of her pain. That pain had already washed over her when she lost him to worse than death. To Kronos.
No. This time, her hollowed eyes and slouched shoulders gave up because her best friend had pulled too hard, had forced too hard, and suddenly Percy didn’t know whether she was seeing him or if she was seeing him. “Are you happy now Percy?”
“I—I’m sorry Annabeth, I—”
“Was that the only reason you came here, Percy?” She asked and he noticed how much he hated not hearing Seaweed Brain.
“Ah, don’t—don’t worry about it, it was nothing important—”
The conch horn rang, signalling the start of dinner and never had Percy felt more grateful.
For the rest of the day and the day after, he moved on autopilot, and when he found himself in the attic, all he could think about was the last time he had been here. The last time he had been here, he had asked the Oracle how to save his kidnapped best friend. The Oracle had given no response then.
As he looked around, he saw Aphrodite’s scarf he and Annabeth had taken as a spoil of war from their first quest, back when he’d saved her from a swarm of mechanical spiders. He remembered how soon after, they’d shared Oreos in the back of a truck across from a triage of captive malnourished animals, how, regardless of which side her mother would be on in a war, Annabeth would be by his side because he was her friend. Yet all he could do was bulldoze whatever remained of their friendship with every passing second, every single interaction. When had life grown so complicated?
As he looked at the Oracle, dressed in decaying bandages and threads of hair, his gaze shifted to a small scroll wrapped in a thin cord like a necklace around her neck.
Percy usually couldn’t read clearly, due to his dyslexia. Yet even now on the edge of the underworld, the words of the Great Prophecy haunted him, the prophecy which he had promptly returned back to its original place after shockingly absorbing the words. No one knew about it. Not Chiron, not Argus, not Mr. D. Annabeth might have noticed—had she talked to him at all after their last conversation—or had she arrived on half-blood hill to wave him goodbye. He didn’t know if she did or did not; he had left ahead of the camp bus, opting to take the Gray Sisters’ Taxi back home as early as possible. Even a week after seeing the prophecy he couldn’t wrap his head around it.
Somehow by next summer, the world might sleep or die, his soul would be reaped, and some singular choice of his stupid self might determine whether Olympus was saved or not.
Somewhere along the way, he realized it would also mean if Annabeth was saved or not. He hadn’t talked to her in days. He wouldn’t probably be talking to her in the coming months. However he knew no matter what that the world wouldn’t matter if she ever died.
“Alright, just remember,” Nico’s voice brought him back to the present, by the banks of the River Styx, “You need to concentrate on your mortal point, your mortal anchor, something or someone to tie you to the land of the living.”
As Percy stepped into the river, he thought of a spot to keep vulnerable. Maybe the small of his back? It would be relatively hard for an enemy to hit him there if he was facing them during a duel, right? As he concentrated, he suddenly felt his leg give out, shortly before he fell. The river burned. Percy would have cried out in pain, except for the fact that his vocal chords were utterly drowning in lost dreams. He didn’t know how to speak. Hell, it was getting harder to remember who he was. Why did everything hurt so much? Who was he? Better yet, why was he?
“Hold on, Seaweed Brain.” A voice sliced through the water, like a hot knife through butter.
As he tried to open his eyes, he saw just above the surface, the camp half-blood dock, and kneeling over it’s edge, looking at him, with pearly grey eyes, was Annabeth Chase, her Yankees Cap adorning her head like a tiara to a princess. Her eyes crinkled, and a snort slithered out as she tried to hold back a laugh. She pulled on what must’ve been a rope, drawing Percy up closer to the surface. “You’re not getting away from me that easily.”
Right. He was Percy Jackson. She was Annabeth Chase. He was the Son of Poseidon, an utter Seaweed Brain. She was the Daughter of Athena, his best friend. He was…in love with her. She was…in love with someone else. Someone she lost . Someone who hurt him. Who hurt her. No one should ever hurt her!
Wait.
He had hurt her.
“—Come on.” She was saying something. “Take my hand.” Her hand was outstretched. Her eyes glowed. Yet when he stared at them, all he could see was a hollow disappointment. Tired eyes. Tired of putting up with his dumbass. His eyes watered. He curled back his hand. She shouldn’t be hurt. He couldn’t hurt her. Not anymore.
As he curled his hand away, he sank, drifting further from Annabeth. He couldn’t hear what she said. But her smile turned upside down. She looked like she was yelling.
As her form disappeared above the surface, Percy recognized an increasing agony, starting in his legs. Glancing down, he realized why. Where his legs should be were strips of flesh dissolving into the current, unravelling him like cheese-strings. Before he could try to yell, his face unravelled.
And all that was left, on the surface, was a gaping Nico Di Angelo, shocked in horror as Perseus Jackson, the child of prophecy, dissolved into nothingness.