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Luke leaned back, letting his hair tangle and shred on the Phlegethon shores, where licks of flame lapped at sand until it sharpened — vengeful, violent, villainous — into broken glass.
In the shadow of the river's fire, the ceiling-sky of Tartarus flickers in and out of view. Above him, Thalia skips among stars.
Fitting, she's flitting with the Hunters like she was born to be immortal: Luke, still soft for the girl he fought by and fought for so many years ago, cannot imagine her any other way. The scar she left on his heart is immutable — now she is, too. He wonders what it cost her, to give up her love for her duty, to live knowing she sidestepped her doom as she condemned a child to it instead. He wonders what it would have been like to face off against Thalia, and knows he would have lost the world to her love.
Instead she lost her love to the world and protects it with a band of sisters, and never wonders what happened to the sister she left behind.
Perhaps she doesn't have to.
Luke twists, lets his dripping blood burn and boil into a vaporous steadfast. Annabeth was here — he traces her footsteps and aches to think of the woman she's become.
He still remembers her, young and trusting and furious, cynical and euphoric and just what he and Thalia needed. She is the hero they should've been for her. She hadn't changed an inch from when he'd met her, raised her with the steady cruelty of lessons learned, families burned and broken and built anew, with calloused palms and scratched up knees and a battle stance that came faster than the wit on her tongue. Annabeth burned like river-waves, and planted her feet in the ground as steady as her love, as steady as her loss.
He was a fool to think he could face her and win.
He was a fool to think his actions were any kind of win at all.
Luke considers the river, a gentle warmth now that coaxes him forward. It will wreck him, leave his body wrought and ready — for what, he does not care.
A giant foot covers Annabeth's small footprint, and she is ground to dust. Luke tips his head back further, scratching shards down his neck, and blinks up at Iapetus.
"Come. Get up," he calls. Luke doesn't move. He doesn't speak, or breathe; time is held still in the glassy grip of hellfire and regret. Iapetus bends down, shifting silt and sand and sharpness away from Luke as he moves. He doesn't speak again; Bob is quiet these days, lonelier and shy though his words drip with authority when he deigns to speak.
Luke shakes his head and sighs; the river writhes and shrieks for this fresh blood. Iapetus offers his hand, insistent still.
It is impossible, for a moment, to feel anything but pain — acute and all consuming, like needlepricks in his heart that carry through his veins. Luke gasps, chokes, then is seized by the memory of a boy who was as clever as Annabeth, as powerful as Thalia. As resigned, desperate, forsaken as Luke.
Nico had done better than this. Nico would've wanted better for them.
He'd always done better for them, when he could — and too often when he shouldn't.
Iapetus softens, slouching forward and nudging his hand against Luke's shoulder; he scrapes sideways and huffs an unamused laugh. Neither of them have forgotten, then, the heart — the love — Nico had chosen to carry and to confer even as he stumbled hopeless through hell. Iapetus doesn't move for a long moment, then speaks again. "You are a traitor to them," he soothes, "but you are also a friend."
Luke takes his hand. Iapetus pulls him up, and they walk forward into nothing.