Chapter Text
California was not what Percy expected it would be. It was cold, rain drizzled half the time, he hadn’t seen anyone famous, it smelled just as stifling Manhattan, and every building felt small in comparison to the towering walls of stone and glass he was used to. And, most of all, it didn’t feel any safer than New York. He still felt tense every night laying in bed in San Francisco, cars rumbling by outside the window of their apartment that was hardly different from the one in Manhattan, and no matter how much he tried to ignore them, shadows seemed to follow him everywhere he went. The only difference was that Gabe wasn’t there, taking with him the constant smell of alcohol, cigarette smoke, and body odor and the loud sounds of drunk yelling and poker.
He started a new school barely a week after they found an apartment, going into an elementary school with a bunch of fourth graders who found him interesting for about a day and then completely ignored him. Another thing that didn’t change: him being an outsider and the class weirdo, not that he’d expected anything else. Nobody wanted to talk to him, nobody wanted to sit by him, nothing. Even the teachers didn’t seem to know what to make of him, not that that was anything new either. He was used to it, it was fine. Everything was great even. Gabe was gone, he didn’t have to go to a private school because of the public schools he’d already been expelled from like in New York, and he actually got to see his mom. He just had to get used to not having friends there either. San Francisco wasn’t different from New York, but maybe it would be. Maybe all he needed to do was listen to his mom when she said it would be better, if he just gave it time. Maybe.
It was hard to believe any of that though, sitting on the small brick wall that stood in front of the school after classes had ended, kicking his feet against the metal letter drilled into it as he waited for his mom to show up. He was one of the last to still be there, and the few others still left refused to come near him, like he had a circle surrounding him, keeping them away. Most of the other kids had scampered off into their already waiting parents’ cars or onto their yellow school buses the second the hall monitors had let them out the front doors , eager to get home and to avoid the storm that seemed to be brewing above. His mom had said she’d be a little bit later than usual; she couldn’t get out of work until school was over. She’d get there any minute, he knew that, but still he couldn’t stop his feet swinging or his fingers fiddling with his fraying backpack strap, winding it around each one before releasing it and doing it again backwards.
Something moved out of the corner of his eyes, a shadow stretching up across the wall next to him from the bushes behind it, distorted and sharp, unnatural. Percy’s hands froze, the backpack strap coiled so tight around his fingers he couldn’t feel the tips of them, and his breath caught in his throat. The shadow turned sharp next to him and he used his feet to push himself sideways, away from it. He didn’t dare look back at the shadow, didn’t dare look away from the school’s parking lot and the street beyond that his mom would pull off of any second now. If he ignored the shadow, it would go away. It always did. If he didn’t look at them, they weren’t real. If he ignored his imagination, everything would be okay.
Something growled right behind his ear and his fingers finally let go of the backpack strap to launch himself off the wall to the pavement below. His feet hit the ground with a smack and he moved away from the wall to the other side of the drop-off/pick-up zone as fast as he could, forcing his eyes to stay on the ground and not look back. If he didn't look, it wasn’t real. If he didn’t look, it wasn’t re-
“Percy!” His mom’s voice cut through the jumbled repetition of his brain and he snapped his gaze up. She was right in front of him, the passenger window of her blue car rolled down so that he could clearly see her, her eyes a bit worried, creases appearing around them like they always did. He didn’t waste a second in grabbing the handle on the back door and hopping into his seat, slamming the door shut behind him and throwing his backpack to the floor. His hands shook as he pulled his seatbelt forward and buckled it without saying a single word to his mom, who closed the window and looked back at him for a second.
“Tough day, sweetheart?”
Percy shrugged, looking down at his hands and pointedly not out the window. If he didn’t look, it wasn’t real. His mom sighed softly, a quiet exhale, and she turned around again, putting the car back in drive and pulling out of the parking lot.
Percy kept his mouth shut as they made their way home, fear still clawing at his throat, keeping any words he wanted to say trapped within. His hands went back to fidgeting, pulling at a loose seam in his coat until it broke free of the sleeve, leaving it free for his fingers to twist up and release, over and over again. Eventually his eyes drifted up again, finding his mom to seem just as anxious as he felt, her own fingers tapping restlessly against the steering wheel. Had he done something wrong again? What happened? Why was she worried too? Was he going to have to change schools again? Did something happen with her job?
Percy shook his head, trying to get the thoughts to disperse, and looked out the window beside him. He froze the second his eyes landed outside, breath catching in the back of his throat. He’d looked.
Red eyes stared back at him from a sea of darkness on the sidewalk next to their car, the giant dog keeping easy pace with their car. Its teeth seemed to snap at him like it could grab him through the metal door of the car and eat him whole. He could swear he could hear its claws scratching against the pavement, its growl echoing deep in its throat. It wasn’t just a dog, it was… Percy couldn’t find a word in his mind to quite encapsulate it. It wasn’t like any of the other things he’d seen before that shouldn’t be real. All of those had been nice, like from a fairytale—a pegasus, a face in a tree, a girl sitting at the bottom of a river. This… this looked like it had sprung straight from the myths his mom had told him about, the stories of gods and heroes and monsters, so many monsters.
A whimper escaped him as the red eyes flared again and the dog seemed to speed up a bit.
“Percy, are you ok-?” his mom’s voice cut off halfway through the end of her sentence, but he couldn’t tear his eyes away from what was just outside his window. It was real, and if he looked away, it would get him. “Shit.”
The car sped up, leaving the dog behind briefly, and swerved around a corner they had never turned on before, the dog disappearing behind a building. Percy was pretty sure it wouldn’t stay too far behind them for long, but still, it being far enough away he couldn’t see it made it easier to look away from the window and at his mom. She was frantically looking between the mirrors of the car, fingers no longer tapping but gripping the steering wheel so tight her knuckles were turning white. Something was wrong. She shouldn’t have been able to see what he’d seen; nobody ever did.
Buildings raced past outside the windows, horns blared when they turned abruptly, and Percy lost track of where they were. The streets around him lost any bit of familiarity he’d gained of San Francisco, street names jumbling themselves beyond understanding until he had no idea where they were and if they were even going home. His mom didn’t say a word as she raced through alleyways and down seemingly random streets, just glanced back at him and around her every few seconds until suddenly they were on the street their apartment was on. She parked quicker than he’d ever seen her, and she looked around frantically before shoving her door open.
His door opened before he could grab the handle to push it open himself and she picked him up out of the car, something she hadn’t done in years. The door slammed back shut before he could grab his backpack and she put him down, grabbing onto his hand instead as she pulled him towards the apartment. Percy wanted to protest, wanted to pull back on her hand and plant his feet so they couldn’t move, but fear still clawed at his throat and even though it seemed like the monster was gone, he didn’t want to stay outside any longer, especially with how eerily quiet his mom was. Something was wrong.
Something about Tartarus seemed to mess with Percy’s brain, twisting his every thought and feeling into something grotesque and wrong, turning his own mind against him as the river whispered in his ear beside him. His vision lost focus as the whispers shifted from Gabe to his mom, to Reyna, to Nico, to Ash, to Lexi, to Annabeth, to Piper, to voices he couldn’t quite place. Each of them brought with them memories he wanted nothing more than to forget, blame that weighed down on his back like Sisyphus’s rock and wouldn’t dissipate no matter how hard he tried to push it away. He was the cause of so much death through his pure insistence that he wasn’t the leader Camp Jupiter wanted him to be, that he didn’t belong there, that they shouldn’t want him there because he was a child of Neptune , the least respected of the main gods in Rome. He’d been callous, he’d ignored most of Camp Jupiter beyond the Fifth Cohort, who had taken him in when he refused the offer of the First Cohort to join. He’d tried too hard to distance himself from the rest of them, had tried too hard to convince himself he wasn’t really part of any of them, had tried too hard to stick with his mortal side and his mom. Maybe if he’d paid more attention to everyone around him, maybe if he hadn’t snuck out of camp to see his mom as much as he had, less people would have died in the war. Maybe Lexi would have made it long enough to give over her role as praetor to Reyna, maybe Ash would’ve been able to have actual good days.
Maybe, maybe, maybe…
The whispers wouldn’t stop, wouldn’t leave him be, crescendoing more and more until they were all he could hear, impossible to push aside. He could barely remember where they were going now, if his feet were even moving him forward, if he was alone or just felt like it. Everything felt wrong. Or maybe he was just wrong.
Something brushed against his arm and he drew in a deep, shuddering breath, vision snapping back into focus so fast he stumbled to a stop. The river roared beside them, whispers and waves crashing over each other just feet away, and Jason stood between him and the water, swaying slightly, hand gripping his shoulder in an iron clasp, knuckles white. His eyes looked dazed, blinking sluggishly, and it took Percy a moment to realize where they were. He inhaled, long and drawn out, hating the burn of the air but happy for the extra distraction from the whispers still echoing out at him. Jason swayed again, his right foot shifting slightly, and Percy stepped closer just as his knees buckled underneath him, bringing him to the glass shore below.
Percy caught his arm before he could crash face first into the shards of sharp glass, kneeling down in front of him, dragging a hand up first to Jason’s right shoulder and then to his cheek, pressing his palm to it briefly before putting it back on his shoulder.
“Hey, Jason!” His words felt garbled in his throat, barely making their way past his lips without cracking. “What’s wrong?”
Jason blinked at him slowly, gaze distant and out of focus, like he couldn’t quite see Percy clearly. Concern swelled within his chest at the sight and he swallowed thickly, teeth digging into his bottom lip. He’d never seen Jason like this before, not even after he’d been knocked to the ground by a brick all the way back in New Rome, not even after he was possessed by the Eidolon. Percy had no idea what to do, had no idea what was the best way to handle this. He wasn’t a child of Apollo, he barely even knew first aid beyond what he’d had to learn during the year and a half that the Titans lived practically on their doorstep, monsters sneaking past the borders and into camp and the city near constantly. Something was wrong with Jason, something beyond just the effects of the river, and he had no idea what it was or how to deal with it.
“Jason!” Percy said again, bringing both of his hands up to press against Jason’s cheeks, using his palms to bring his chin up so his electric eyes would meet his own. A bit of the bleariness seemed to fade from the corners of his eyes, his lips quirking slightly like he was confused, before he squeezed his eyes shut again. His face contorted in what was clearly pain, pushing down against Percy’s hands, and a whimper reached his ears, sharp and pained. Jason slumped forward all of a sudden, forehead pressing against his sternum and hair tickling the bottom of his chin, still slightly damp from their dip in the river earlier. Percy could feel him shaking beneath his hands, back shuddering with every inhale and exhale. His elbow dug painfully into his thigh from how his arm was stretched across his front to hold onto his left shoulder and Percy shifted just a bit so it wasn’t quite as painful.
Percy pulled his hands from Jason’s face, stroking them down his back once, before doing something he had only ever really seen anyone do in movies. He shifted back onto his heels and moved slightly to the side until he could slip his arms under Jason’s legs and back. Standing up felt harder than anything he’d done, his muscles burning as he pushed himself up from the ground, lifting more than he was used to. He stumbled when he finally made it to his feet, nearly losing his grip around Jason’s legs at the sudden shift in balance. He forced himself to straighten up instead and to tighten his grip, pulling Jason closer to himself. His head lolled against his shoulder, right arm somehow still clasped around his left shoulder, and Percy pulled in a deep, shuddering breath. He could do this. They had to keep moving, they couldn't stay there waiting for the monsters doubtlessly surrounding them on all sides to attack them. They had to move , whether that meant Percy carrying Jason for as long as he could or something else. Percy wasn’t going to lose another friend to his recklessness. He couldn’t. He couldn’t add another name to the list; it was already too long when the first name was added all those years ago. Now it was a scroll he could wrap around himself like a shroud.
“I’ve got you, Jace,” he whispered and forced his feet to move, one step in front of the other, his shoes crunching against the glass. His arms ached within seconds, his lungs burned from the effort it took to keep moving and the acrid air around them, and the whispers of the river still threatened to wash him downstream. As much as they needed a path to the Doors of Death, Percy was sure he would rather literally any other river. Surely there were other ones nearby? Weren’t they meant to cross at some point, twining around each other like veins? He was sure he’d heard something like that in a myth at some point. If there was just a way that he could go away from the Acheron without falling over a cliff…
His legs continued to burn as he forced himself forward, glancing down at Jason every once in a while and then all around them, scanning for any signs of monsters. Maybe even they were scared of the effects of the river. Or maybe they were just biding their time until he collapsed. He hoped it was the former. Hope, though, was something he’d struggled with in recent years.
The roar of the river seemed to grow louder the further he went until the currents seemed to wash out the ever-present whispers. He stumbled to a stop when he noticed the reason for it as the edge of a cliff came into sight, the river crashing over the edge in large, swelling waves and currents, throwing thick silvery mist into the air around them and making it feel as if the misery of the whispers was all around, simply part of the atmosphere. A shudder ran up Percy’s spine and he very nearly dropped Jason, who seemed to have properly passed out at some point.
The ground they were walking on dipped down beside the cliff face and the waterfall at a slope, angled away from the water, an odd hill arising between the two as if to separate the river from that direction. Light, dim and orange, flickered further down the slope, blurred in its distance but still there. That way , a voice seemed to urge him, sounding eerily like his mom, who he hadn’t seen in… oh gods, it’d been so long. She was going to kill him when this was all over, just for worrying her so much. Why had he never tried calling her before? Why-?
Percy shook his head to try and dispel his thoughts. He needed to focus .
His legs began taking him towards the slope, the crunch of glass stopping as the ground shifted from glass to what seemed like coarse sand, and Percy forced himself to just keep moving. Just a little further. Just until he couldn’t feel the Acheron’s misery in the back of his throat, until he couldn’t hear its crashing waterfall.
His knees buckled beneath him just after the sound dissipated, sending him nearly crashing into a cluster of large rocks and nearly sending Jason straight to the ground. Percy leaned against the rock closest to him, sliding down it slowly as he placed Jason on his back beside him. Any energy left in his body vanished the second he felt solid ground beneath him and he had to force his eyes not to drop closed. They couldn’t both be unconscious at the same time, that was exactly what any monster would want: two powerful demigods served up nice and neat on a silver platter. He had to stay awake, no matter how completely exhausted he felt. Riptide glowed dimmer than it normally did when he pulled it from his pocket and took the cap off, like it didn’t quite know what to make of Tartarus either. Everything just felt darker down there. Figures, it being one of the deepest pits of the Underworld.
Percy wasn’t sure how long he spent leaning against the rock behind him, grip tight around Riptide, eyes drooping every few seconds as his mind fought his own body. Eventually his limbs grew stiff and he had to stand again for a moment to stretch them, walking a slow and painful circle around the rock that was just barely three feet tall. It was riddled with holes, like a giant version of the lava rocks he’d seen around the flowerbeds of countless people’s houses back in San Francisco, and he found himself dragging his fingers along the ridges of it. It was odd, the pang of homesickness it gave him.
A strangled scream tore him from the trace he’d fallen into staring at the rock and he scrambled back around it to Jason’s side. He’d pushed himself up into a sitting position, but he was hunched forward on himself. His hand was no longer clenched around his shoulder but pressed firmly to the ground, like it was the only thing keeping him from collapsing again. Percy reached for his arm, gripping it tightly as he moved to Jason’s side, leaning over him, the concern from before coming back full force. He could finally see what was wrong, why Jason had been holding onto his shoulder so tightly: his arm hung loose and wrong from his shoulder, limp against his side. Oh gods, how had he not noticed?
Percy gulped, trying to push down his anxiety and guilt, and moved around to Jason’s left side, reaching for his arm but stopping himself before he made contact. He didn’t want to hurt Jason, especially without any sort of permission to touch him in a place he was clearly injured. Jason deserved better than that, even though Percy desperately wanted to help.
“Your shoulder… I think I have to pop it back in. It looks…” The words died in the back of Percy’s throat. He couldn’t say it, even though he knew it was true. He’d seen enough shoulders like that during both the war and just training at Camp Jupiter to know it was dislocated, but somehow seeing Jason as the one with his shoulder wrenched from its socket was worse.
“Do it.” Jason’s voice, quiet and pained, cut through his growing panic, and he took a deep breath. He could do this. He’d done it countless times before when it was easier and safer than trying to find a medic mid-battle. He let muscle memory take over as he grabbed his arm and the back of his shoulder, forcing the joint back together with a sickening pop that sounded horribly wrong even though he knew it was meant to sound that gruesome. Jason let out another strangled scream the second it was back in place, blood dripping from his lip where he bit through it when Percy glanced at him, and he slumped against Percy again. Gods, why did they have to be stuck down here? How had they angered the Fates so much that they deserved this?
Percy forced down a desperate sob. Now was not the time. They couldn’t stay in one place for much longer without the danger they were in increasing tenfold, and the air was starting to feel harder and harder to breathe in, like it was only growing more hazardous the longer they were in the pit. Maybe it was. Percy coughed, his breath rasping in the back of his throat as he tried to stop it, doubling over. They couldn’t move now though. Percy knew he couldn’t carry Jason another foot if he tried, his legs were too exhausted, and Jason was out cold against Percy’s chest again. They needed to at least get more out of plain sight than they were though, in case the monsters he could feel the eyes of were truly nearby. He pulled Jason back around behind the rock they’d been in front of, slumping back against the one just behind it and pulling Jason closer. They’d at least be a bit safer between the rocks, a little more hidden. Hopefully that’d be enough. It would have to be, until Jason woke back up. Percy grabbed Riptide again from where he’d dropped it, pulling it closer to himself on the sand. He wouldn’t let anything happen to them. They were going to make it through this, no matter what it took.