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Beckendorf had been with them for six months. Their newest recruit, he threw himself into battle every time, with no reservation or doubt that he would come back again afterwards. Percy had watched him die, the first time around. Something which had never happened before when they had discovered new immortals. Though given their limited quota, their standard to compare to wasn’t extensive. It had taken them years to find Reyna, dreaming of her every night as they crossed seas and countries to stumble across her in Colombia. But Beckendorf had died by Percy’s side in battle, a loss he felt like a deep wound in his chest as he watched not just his comrade in arms, but his friend, die.
But then he had lived again, gasping back to life right there on the battlefield. Percy hadn’t believed it at first, thinking it too much of a wild coincidence and explaining his friend’s miraculous recovery away as shock and the excessive blood of a battlefield. But then it had happened again, and there was truly no denying it as he watched Beckendorf’s skin stitch itself back together again.
“Everyone still with me?” Percy asked as his breathing levelled out.
They had just raided a stronghold in the South, sneaking in under the cover of darkness and working through the small army like they were made of ash. They split into two groups, as they always did, and Percy had checked first to see that Annabeth was okay. She had a bloody gash on her left arm which was still healing as she wiped the blood from her sword using a torn flag, darkening the red colour further. Reyna and Beckendorf swept in soon after, the former with her musket still raised as she surveyed the area. Reyna was the most cautious of all of them, even after two hundred and fifty years, she barely ever let down her guard. To see it dropped was something of a privilege.
“Todo bien,” she said in her deep, clipped voice, lowering her gun but keeping it tight to her side as she continued to visually sweep the area.
“I’m with you,” Annabeth told him, carefully appraising their comrades.
“Beckendorf?” Percy asked.
The man in question kicked over one of the bodies strewn about them so that the soldier lay face up, irises swollen fat and skin already pale where it wasn’t streaked with blood.
“Still here, boss. Obviously.”
Percy glanced away from him to Annabeth, catching her eye in the dim light. Her face was set in straight lines. She looked away.
“Let’s go then,” he told the group.
They made away from the encampment as quietly as they had come. It took another few hours for them to reach their safe house, by which time the sun was rising. The house was set into the rock of a mountain and facing West, so it would remain sheltered for a while longer.
The group, after a fastidious check by Reyna, disposed of their weapons and bloody clothes. They got as clean as they could and then laid down on the cots that were pushed close together in the back room to try and sleep while they could. Percy ended up spooned behind Annabeth with his back to the wall. Some might say that he took the protective position with his arm tucked around her body, but she was the one who slept with a gun next to her pillow and her body facing the door every night.
He had learned long ago that there was no use arguing this dynamic and had come to accept it millenia ago. She was the shield and he the sword.
It felt like he had only just closed his eyes when they snapped open again at the sound of a distressed shout in their small sleeping space. Both Annabeth and Reyna already had guns raised as Percy stumbled into consciousness, searching for the source of the noise as his hand fell to Annabeth’s waist.
Beckendorf sat up in the cot in the middle of the room, gasping for breath as he clutched at his throat.
“What happened?” Reyna asked.
“It was… it was a dream,” he managed, as he visibly regained control over his breathing and they all slowly relaxed.
Percy dragged himself upright, rubbing his face as he leaned against the wall. Reyna turned on a lamp, casting a soft illumination over the room as they waited for their friend to recover himself.
“Tell us,” Percy said gently.
“I was dying,” he gasped. “I wasn’t healing, I was just…dying.”
Annabeth glanced over her shoulder and Percy held her eye for a moment before they both looked to Reyna who had the same expression on her face as he was sure they both did.
“You’re okay,” Annabeth said. “You’re okay now.”
“Yeah. Just a dream.”
He was visibly more recovered as he pushed himself up to sit with his back to the wall. It was clear they would not be sleeping any more as they all shifted into seated positions around Beckendorf.
They needed to tell him.
Percy didn’t know why this was so hard, nor why they had waited so long. It had been an unspoken, unanimous agreement between the three of them to preserve his innocence in some way for as long as they could. But it was an unfairness, too. The looks they shared with each other now told Percy that Annabeth felt the same way, but Reyna’s face was a mask which he couldn’t decipher in that moment. He had become so much better at reading her micro expressions, but she was a mystery to him in that moment.
“Beckendorf,” Annabeth began. “Charles.”
His head snapped up. They never called him by that name.
“What?” There was sudden urgency to his voice.
“When we’re in battle,” Reyna said. “You must be more cautious.”
Beckendorf’s brow furrowed. “Why?” He looked over at Percy and Annabeth. “What’s the point?”
Percy felt himself sigh heavily and watched his friend’s eyes turn to him for answers. “We still die, Beckendorf.”
“But we’re immortal.”
“Nothing that lives, lives forever,” Reyna said. She offered nothing more at Beckendorf’s confusion.
“There was another one of us,” Annabeth said and her voice was low and serious in a way which made Percy’s chest go tight almost immediately. “Way before we found Reyna. She fought with Percy and I for centuries, dying and healing again like us both until, one day, she just didn’t.”
“I don’t understand.”
Percy leaned forwards. “Her name was Zoe. She was a true warrior, like nothing and nobody I had ever seen before. But one day, her wounds just didn’t heal and when she died, she didn’t come back.”
“We waited for days. Far longer than you should to give a body their burial rights. But we kept hoping. We watched her body decay.”
“We burned her body on the sixth day,” Percy said, swallowing the thickness in his throat.
Zoe had looked to the stars as the light had drained from her eyes. “It’s time,” she had told him, like she already knew the peace that waited for her. As Annabeth clutched at her wounds which refused to close and begged to the gods for help, all the while knowing such help would never come. Time had stolen the shape of her voice from Percy’s mind, the way her eyes looked as the light drained from them, and the feel of her hand in his as life abandoned her body for the final time. It was gone from him.
He remembered what was important though.
They were not as invincible as they seemed. They were not as the gods were. They were in fact, closer to human than they had thought.
“Why…why are you telling me this now?” To his credit, he didn’t sound angry.
“Because you need to know,” Reyna said simply.
Beckendorf leaned forward, with his head in his hands.
“We should have told you in the beginning,” Percy admitted. “I don’t know why we didn’t.”
He looked at Percy with desperation in his eyes. “This- this is why you check with us all, every every mission, every fight.”
Percy nodded slowly.
The room was dead quiet for a few moments as they waited for their friend to process things. They watched as his world tilted on its axis once again.
“You should have told me,” he said lowly.
“We should have,” Annabeth agreed. “I think we wanted to protect you from it, for a little while.”
“I’m not a child. I know I’m an infant in your eyes, but I am not a child. You can’t treat me like I am.”
It was no use to argue that this hadn’t been their intention. The harm was done. It couldn’t be undone.
“I’m sorry, Charles,” Percy said. “You’re right.”
He rubbed his face. “This changes…everything. It changes…”
He couldn’t finish his thought but it didn’t matter, because they all had the same one. This knowledge grounded them. It bound them closer to humanity than anything else could. They were one bullet, one blade away from a death that could be their final death. This was what kept them looking over their shoulders. This was what anchored them to the world.
It kept them humble.
“It’s a lot to understand,” Percy said, feeling like an echo of himself from months ago, when they had first drawn Beckendorf into their ranks.
“I need some space,” he said, suddenly rising from the cot.
The three exchanged looks as Beckendorf picked up a weapon on his way out the door, but they didn’t follow. They had learnt such a statement from him wasn’t an underhand invitation to be followed by somebody whose shoulder he could quietly lean on. He truly needed to be away from them all for a moment. So they respected this as they sat in the quiet of the space he had left them in.
“We should have told him,” Percy said, pushing his hands through his hair.
“He’ll understand,” Reyna said.
She stood and moved into the other room, not to follow Beckendorf, but to open a book and wait by the door. She was on lookout, whether she announced this or not.
Annabeth turned to face Percy on their cot. She looked tired. A kind of tiredness that spoke of the centuries she had lived. The kind of tiredness that clung to her very bones and peered out through her grey eyes like a statue that had watched the world burn over and over again.
“He’ll forgive us,” Percy said.
She nodded. “I don’t know what we were trying to give to him.”
“Maybe we were trying to give something to ourselves by not telling him? Maybe we were trying to remember what it felt like, to feel truly invincible.”
Annabeth nodded again. “I hate the fear. It still burns me every single time, while I wait for you to come back to me.”
He reached for her hand and she gave it willingly. Their palms press together like two comrades in battle might do, with their thumbs crossed over each other’s.
“I’ll always come back to you,” he told her.
“You can’t promise that.”
“I can try.”
She shook her head as the hint of a smile curved her mouth. “I’m glad I have you, Perseus.”
“You always will.”
Their brief moment was interrupted when Beckendorf re-entered the room. From one look at him, they were spurred into action.
“We need to go,” he said in a hushed tone.
The three of them were all already following his lead as they pulled on clothes and gathered supplies and weapons. They could ask questions later. If Beckendorf said they needed to leave, then they needed to leave.
In a handful of minutes later, they were following him out of their hideout with their weapons drawn and ready. Beckendorf followed by Reyna, then Percy, with Annabeth at the rear. This was the proof he needed.
They were still a team, a family.