Archive of Our Own

Pain. 

That was all I could feel.

The Styx rushed all around me. I could feel it ripping at my soul, tearing at my very being until there was nothing left. 

Memories flashed in front of me. Grover, Rachel, Mom, camp. All of them faded away. The last ones all centered around Annabeth. Her smile, her laugh, her face. When we’d hang out, when we’d fight, we really fought more than we should’ve. There was so much I wish I’d told her.

It didn’t matter anymore. Those memories also faded.

The last thing I felt was pain as I was torn apart.

Annabeth… I’m sorry

Shit. Shit shit shit.

Percy got torn apart in the Styx. 

Fuck. This wasn’t supposed to happen.

I didn’t know what to do. I’d led him here. To his death. 

What would happen now? How would the war go? Would it just fail? Would it stall until I was sixteen?

Dad showed up. He put a hand on my shoulder but I didn’t feel anything. I was too numb.

I had to tell everyone at camp. They deserved to know. They needed to know.

Gods… how was I going to explain this?

I was numb. So very numb.

Nico just dropped the news that Percy died.

Percy… Seaweed Brain…

I…

He couldn’t be dead. He just couldn’t be. He was supposed to make it at least until his birthday. He couldn’t be dead. He couldn’t be dead .

Nico wouldn’t lie about something like this, so why was he saying Percy was dead ?

This wasn’t real. This couldn’t be real. Percy was going to come in at any moment now. I’d hug him and he’d hug me and everything would be alright.

He can’t be dead. He just can’t be…

Percy…

My mind flashed back to our last conversation

Yes, you. You're a coward, Percy Jackson!

The look on his face. The way he said my name. He said it wasn’t fair, and he was right. It wasn’t fair. I’d wanted to talk to him at dinner but he wasn’t there. I was already scared that he’d left like I said, but that wasn’t Percy.

He never ran from danger. He wasn’t a coward. He never was and he never would be.

I’d wanted to tell him all that at dinner, maybe after it. But now…

No. He’s alive. He has to be…

He has to be…

“Percy!” I was full-on crying now. He was dead. He really was dead. He wasn’t coming back, was he? 

Would I see him in Elysium? Nico said he’d dissolved in the Styx. Did that mean he didn’t get an afterlife? Did he leave because of what I said?

All because I was jealous. Jealous of a mortal he spent more time with than he spent with me. Because I was jealous, I told the boy I loved he was a coward and he died.

Loved…

I love him. It was easy to pretend I didn’t before, to act like he was just my best friend. I was worried I’d lose him to the war. And I ended up losing him anyway…

And lose a love to worse than death

I really did, didn’t I? I thought of Percy when I first heard that line. Then I thought it was Luke. But it really was Percy then.

I cried out at that moment. I wanted to be angry. Angry at Nico for taking Percy there. Angry at Percy for going in the first place. For leaving me. Angry at Rachel for taking Percy away from me. Angry at Luke for starting this in the first place. Angry at myself…

But I couldn’t be. I couldn’t find the ability to be angry. I just kept crying. I think Silena found me in the arena crying my eyes out. We just hugged each other and cried over our lost boys. 

If you don't like our chances, maybe you should go on that vacation with Rachel.

He wouldn’t get that chance now, would he? 

Oh, Percy…

I picked myself up after that. We had a war to win. I wasn’t going to lose this war. Kronos wouldn’t get the better of us. The Titans were going down.

For Percy.

It was harder than I’d thought.

I mean, I didn’t expect leading a war to be easy you know? We were fighting for Olympus, for our lives, for our home. Fighting against an endless army of monsters, Titans, and our own former friends all trying to kill us. It wasn’t going to be easy in general.

But I was doing this alone. Percy wasn’t here. His death had struck a blow that the camp hasn’t recovered from, and I don’t think it will. Beckendorf had just died on the mission right before and now Percy too?

It didn’t help that I wasn’t in any state to lead after that. Percy was dead. He’s gone and he wasn’t coming back. I’d accepted that now. Didn’t mean I liked it.

Even through everything, even with everything we’d gone through, he was still my best friend. He was more than that. And now, he was dead. And I was alone again. And I’d pushed him away right before he died…

Would he have forgiven me? I was an absolute ass to him the whole time. Looking back, sure, he was also an oblivious dummy, but I didn’t act any better. I basically told him to leave us before he…

I didn’t know if he would forgive me.

Except…

I’d have forgiven him if I were in his place. And… he’d forgive me, even though he probably shouldn’t. It’s just how he is…

Or how he was…

Why did you leave me, Seaweed Brain? Was I too much? Oh, why did I ever push you away?

I couldn’t think about that now. I had to focus. We were at war and the campers needed to be rallied. We needed to fight. We couldn’t let Kronos win.

So I called up the campers. They all came. Athena, Hermes, Apollo, Hephaestus, Dionysus (it was only Pollux…), Demeter, Aphrodite, and Ares. That last one surprised me a bit. Clarisse had shut everyone but Silena out by the end of the last meeting, and yet here she was with her cabin. She just gave me a grim nod. She was with us till the end.

We went together to the Empire State Building. Our plan was to go and tell Olympus that Kronos was coming. Typhon was also around, so I wasn’t sure how much that’d change, but we needed something .

We got to the guard who looked like he was about to give his usual spiel about there not being a 600th floor. I grabbed him by the shirt.

“Listen here buddy,” I straight up growled. This was usually more… I mentally shook my head. Focus, Annabeth “You’ve got 60 armed and dangerous half-bloods in your lobby, gearing up to fight the Titan Army, which is coming here any minute by the way. And many of us have been at camp for years now, seeing your dumb fucking face every time we come for a trip to Olympus only for you to give us the same bullshit about there being no 600th floor. So give me the keycard and shut the fuck up!”

He stared at me white as a sheet before handing me the card. I took it and led the campers all through the elevator. It fit all of us, magically adjusting its size so we could fit. 

Everyone was staring at me.

“What?” I snapped. I knew this wasn’t like me, but I wasn’t in the mood.

Everyone but Silena looked away. She just gave me a broken smile and turned to look forward, face setting into her war face.

My throat closed up. She knew exactly how I felt and I hadn’t thought about her the whole time. I decided I’d take her to the side when we got up so we could talk if I could find a moment. She deserved that much.

And maybe we could both help each other through this.

Later though. I’d approach her later. For now, we had to focus. I reached out and squeezed her hand and she looked at me in surprise before giving me a small but genuine smile. For Percy. For Beckendorf. For Olympus. We’d fight until we couldn’t fight anymore, and we’d take every single bastard down with us.

When we made it to the top of Olympus, we found it empty. Between Typhon and the rest of the Titan army, that left pretty much no one to greet us when we went in. 

That didn’t matter right now. We needed to get to the Throne Room and try and get Zeus to listen. I didn’t know how, but we had to try. 

When we made it to the Throne Room, we only found Lady Hestia. She commended us for our bravery and offered condolences for our loss. I refused to cry. Not in front of the others. 

She also showed me a few scenes from Percy’s life. When he’d talk to his mom about me, talk to Grover about me… talk to Rachel about me… 

He talked about me a lot. Even when he’d hang out with Rachel, he’d bring me up every other sentence. It almost looked like he wanted to be with me instead. So why didn’t he?

It was a scene when he was with Grover that really answered it though. 

“Let me get this straight. You want to hang out with Annabeth but you’re avoiding her whenever you can?” Grover looked about ready to smack Percy with his reed pipes. 

“It’s more than that. She’s my best friend, you know? I mean, not that you aren’t,” he was rambling in the way he did when he was nervous. It shouldn’t have been allowed to be that cute “It’s just that-”

“Percy, I get it,” Grover looked like he was trying not to laugh. “Just keep going, man.”

“Right,” he took a deep breath and went on, “I want to hang out with her and all. It’s just… every time we talk it’s like we’re one step away from strangling each other. And… I hate that. I hate not being able to talk to her without it ending in a fight. I hate being so distant from her.”

He looked ahead over the lake. I just noticed they were at the docks at camp. Made sense. He always went there when he needed to think.

“I wanted to tell her that last summer, you know?” He did? When? “Right before I left for home. I wanted to tell her I hated us fighting, how I didn’t want anything that happened that year, Luke and Rachel, to make it so we’d drift apart. I wanted to tell her I wanted us to stay as close as we were. But Argus called for me and she went back to her cabin.” He paused for a moment, looking even more sad than before. “She didn’t even look back once.”

I remember that day all too well. I kept thinking back to that moment. What did Percy want to say? Should I have stuck back? Should I have told him about Luke? I replayed that moment, again and again, thinking what I could’ve done differently. Maybe we would’ve stayed as close as we had been before. 

Grover looked on ahead before talking. “I can’t say I understand what Annabeth is thinking. I read emotions, not thoughts. But I know she cares about you Perce.” Percy side-eyed Grover then. Did he really doubt that? “She does Percy and you know it.” Percy nodded, and I felt like I could breathe again. “It’ll work out between you two. Don’t worry about it, man.”

“I hope you’re right, G-Man. I hope you’re right.”

When I came to, Hermes was there. I didn’t have much time to think before talking. I tried explaining what was going on, but it didn’t matter. Typhon was a big threat and we couldn’t really argue against that. He told me that Mom said to enact Plan 23, which should help. When we were done, Hermes went back to focusing on Typhon. I thought about bringing up Luke, but I didn’t want to talk about him. Considering Percy died trying to match up to Kronos who wouldn’t even be here if it weren’t for Luke… 

We fought so much about Luke. He might’ve been right in the end. I thought about Grover telling Percy it’d work out between us eventually. Maybe it would’ve. It was too late to know now.

I couldn’t let myself think about that now. I’d said that to myself time and time again, but it seemed I kept forgetting that. Percy was gone and I was here. I would fight until I couldn’t anymore. No two ways about it.

We would win.

The war was hell.

We fought as well as we could, but nothing seemed to stop them. Thalia brought the Hunters to help, but there was only so much they could do. She said something about Percy, but I wasn’t really listening. I was mostly glad she made it alright.

Silena revealed that she was the spy around the second day. It was when the two of us were just talking about Beck and Percy. She let slip that she told Kronos all our plans since around when Percy and I went to the Sea of Monsters. I was livid.

“You did what ?” I don’t know how I managed to keep my voice level, but it seemed to make Silena even more scared.

“Anna, just, please listen!” And damn me, I did. Even through everything, she was still one of my best friends. I’d listen to her and then decide what to do. Either way, I wasn’t feeling very forgiving.

“Luke,” she started and I couldn’t hold back my glare. She flinched back but kept going “He was nice to me. You know, before I liked Charlie. He was handsome. Charming.” She sounded far off like she was remembering how Luke used to be. She had a point on that. Luke could be very persuasive.

“He told me I’d be helping people. And I believed him. He said it was the right thing and that we’d be heroes. And I believed him.”

“And when was it too much?” I couldn’t stop myself. “When did you stop listening to him?” I was holding back all the anger I could. Maybe something she’d say could fix this.

“Uh,” she looked away and lowered her voice. “After we learned Percy died…”

What did she just fucking say ?

“You’re telling me,” I couldn’t hold back anymore “That you spent the past two years spying on us? And that even after last year, you didn’t stop? After Beck died because of what you did? You kept on spying for Luke after all that ?”

I don’t know when my voice started rising, but we’d attracted a crowd. I could spot Clarisse in the back, looking like she wanted to step in but was too scared. Drew was also there, looking utterly betrayed. I think I spotted Connor and Travis also watching, not sure what to do. None of that mattered.

All that mattered at that moment was the look of guilt and fear on Silena’s face. She was scared. Good. She’d betrayed us. Beckendorf was dead because of her. Percy went to swim in the Styx because we needed a leg up in this war partly because of her spying. Because we trusted her and she sent all our secrets to the Titans.

All because Luke charmed her? 

I didn’t know what I wanted to do at that moment. Hurt her? That thought crossed my mind. She was a spy. She betrayed us. She’d deserve it.

But that’d be something Luke would do. Get rid of anyone who crossed him. Besides, even if she were a traitor, maybe she could still do something in this war.

“You,” I tried my best to keep my voice level. I had to focus if we wanted to win. “Are incredibly lucky that we need every available demigod fighting right now. Otherwise…” I let that threat hang and she nodded. “Good. Now, here’s what’s going to happen. You won’t be leading the Aphrodite Cabin anymore. Don’t,” I cut her off before she could protest. “You can’t lead them. Not anymore. Drew,” I turned to her and she stood at attention ”You’re in charge of Cabin 10 now. Keep this information as secret as you can for now. We can’t let anyone be distracted.”

She grimaced but nodded. Either she understood or didn’t want to go against me. Whichever it was didn’t really matter at the moment. “As for you,” I turned back to Silena at that point, trying my hardest not to lose it. “You will fight. You will fight with everything you have. And when this war is over, we’ll get back to what we’ll do with you.”

I left her there, passing by Clarisse while giving her a warning glare. She tried to glare back, but she said nothing. She just went over to Silena who was now crying her eyes out. I couldn’t bring myself to really care at that moment. Maybe I would forgive her in the future, but that wasn’t going to be any time soon. It didn’t help that I could’ve easily been in her place if things had gone differently.

I went back to find Malcolm. Maybe discussing strategy might make me feel better. All I knew was I needed someone I could trust by my side right now. And he was the only one here at the moment.

Things went from bad to worse.

Silena being a traitor was bad enough, but it was when Gleeson Hedge showed up that I found out just how bad things were.

“He just keeled over while uniting us.” He was talking about Grover. Grover was gone too. “I think it might’ve been the Empathy Link, but I haven’t told anyone. It’d be bad for morale, you know? I brought whoever would listen. We’re fighting Kronos till the end. For Grover.”

Grover was also gone. He was my oldest friend at camp. Out of the ones that stayed anyway. And now he was also dead.

I thanked Gleeson for bringing everyone and went to plan. Hyperion was coming and we needed to hole up our defenses. Nico had come by earlier saying that he’d been trying to convince Hades to join us. He showed up saying he might have succeeded, but we wouldn’t know until some time passed. 

And to top it all off, Hyperion was coming. He barrelled through our army like it was nothing. No one could last longer than a few seconds. Thalia and Nico worked together to try and give us some time, but even they couldn’t win.

It wasn’t until Lord Hades came that we stood any semblance of a chance. He took care of Hyperion, Sword in hand, while Lady Persephone and Lady Demeter both healed the wounded and kept a barrier up to hold the battle between Titan and Olympian.

It was a marvel to witness. Hades was everywhere and nowhere, disappearing into shadows whenever Hyperion was confident and reappearing somewhere else. He was toying with the Titan.

That probably wouldn’t have been possible had Hyperion been at full strength, but with Kronos still not having retaken true form and the Sword, Hades managed to outclass Hyperion.

Lady Demeter and Lady Persephone were keeping most of the monsters away from the rest of us. They also helped heal some of the wounded.

Nico took me to the side to talk. I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to talk to him, given everything that had happened, but he did bring Hades, Persephone, and Demeter to help and renewed hope in a lot of the campers, so I figured I owed him that much.

“How are you holding up?” I decided to start the conversation with what I hoped wasn’t too much bitterness.

He looked at me for a second before turning away quickly. He looked small all of a sudden. Sad too. It was at that moment that I realized just how young he looked. Just how young he was. 

He was barely twelve at this point and already he was thrown into a war. I was twelve on my first quest, sure, but this…

I put my hand on his shoulder and squeezed it. He looked up at me shocked before taking a deep breath. “I’m…” he shook his head. “I’ve been better.” he snorted at that. “Who am I kidding? It’s been really hard, Annabeth. I… I shouldn’t have taken Percy to the Styx. I should’ve-”

I cut him off there. “Don’t,” I pulled him in for a hug. He tensed a bit before melting into me. I wasn’t exactly sure where this came from. Maybe from remembering how much Percy cared about him. Maybe from seeing in his eyes what I knew was in mine whenever I used to think about Luke. Whatever the reason was, I wasn’t gonna let him beat himself up for this. Percy wouldn’t have wanted him to do that.

“Percy knew what he was doing,” the words sounded hollow to me, but I had to keep going. “He wouldn’t want you to beat yourself up over this. You couldn’t have known this would happen.” He started crying. I just held him tighter. “And besides, you brought Hades, Persephone, and Demeter to the battle. You saved our butts with that.”

He looked like he didn’t believe me, though about which part I wasn’t sure. It didn’t matter too much. What mattered was that I made sure he wasn’t alone.

After all, I knew what it was like to see your hero die without being able to do anything about it.

I took him to our temporary base. Everyone looked surprised he was there, but no one said anything. Thalia came over and nodded towards Nico before turning to me. 

“We can barely hold on. We’ve lost half the campers, a third of the Hunters are dead, and we’ve lost more nature spirits than I can count.” She grimaced before continuing. “The Minotaur’s still on the loose. Hades, Demeter, and Persephone’s arrival did help a bit, but we’re still in a bad way.”

She was right. Sure, Hades, Demeter, and Persephone were here, but that didn’t help as much as I might have hoped. They couldn’t directly interfere unless there was a Titan here, and with Hyperion dealt with, there were none.

I wasn’t sure how we could keep going, but we had to find a way. Olympus could not fall.

As soon as I met with Prometheus, I knew we were screwed.

Hyperion was gone, and morale was at an all-time high. Hades, Persephone, and Demeter were all here, but couldn’t help all that much without breaking every Ancient Law possible. At least, unless there was another Titan to fight.

We were losing more and more campers and nature spirits. And hunters too. Things weren’t looking good.

Then, to make things worse, Prometheus called for a peace talk. It was just more of the same. Surrender, you can’t win, you will be shown mercy, blah blah blah.

He tried to convince me to give up or something, but I refused. There was no way we’d surrender now.

He gave me Pandora’s Pithos, telling me to open the jar when we want to surrender. He didn’t take it back, saying it was a gift. All the while, Ethan Nakamura glared at me like I’d been the reason behind his sorrows. 

I didn’t show it then, but I knew we were done for. Kronos was growing stronger by the second, we were growing weaker in comparison. And to make things worse, Poseidon was under siege and couldn’t help out either. Not that we had anyone who could convince the God of the Sea to abandon Atlantis, not after Percy had already died. 

We didn’t have much of a chance to win. Our only options so far were surrender or death, and only one of those options would be accepted. 

There was also Typhon to consider. Gods, how could we even hope to survive this? He couldn’t be stopped. Olympus wasn’t going to make it out of this one in one piece.

It was Hades who offered a solution. A temporary retreat. Oceanus was sieging Atlantis only to keep Poseidon away from the battlefield. The rest of Olympus was weakened but could recover with time. We just needed to leave for someplace safe.

And so, we gathered all the demigods and Lord Hades let us through a path to the Underworld. The plan was we’d stay there and prepare for an attack down the line. As it stood now, we couldn’t hold the tide back.

It was horrifying to watch.

We were holed up in the Underworld, in the empty space between Asphodel and Hades’s palace, watching what was happening on the surface through an I-Message.

The Gods still loyal to Olympus were all down too. Typhon moved unrestricted to New York, with mortals thinking that a freak storm was coming. They weren’t easy to convince, but it was clear there was no other viable option. Olympus would fall but would rise again someday. 

It didn’t make it any easier to watch. Typhon barreled into the Empire State Building, destroying it entirely. Kronos regained form, destroying Luke’s body which I couldn’t care much about, but it meant that it was over. Kronos won this battle.

Poseidon was still dealing with the aftermath of the Oceanus’s siege which stopped as soon as Kronos won. He would be staying in Atlantis for the time being until the damage was mitigated. He’d come to confer the plans going forward after that.

The biggest surprise was learning of another demigod camp.

Apparently, the Romans persisted just like we did, and they were fighting what was left of the Titan army in San Francisco. 

Their leader was a kid named Jason Grace. Thalia went straight for him when she heard that. Turns out, that was her brother. I won’t lie, it hurt learning she kept that from me, but she said it was because she thought he was dead. Still, it’d take me a bit to get over that.

He said he toppled Kronos’s throne on Othrys and hoped that’d be enough. I couldn’t help it. I laughed.

“You- you really thought-” I was laughing so hard, I couldn’t breathe. He really thought flipping over Kronos’s lawn chair would beat the Titan army? 

He turned red at that. “It- it made sense at the time. We kind of just wanted the war to be over.” He shifted from foot to foot. “I also beat Krios.”

I might’ve felt a little bad about it if I’d been all there, but by that point, I was at my limit.

I stopped laughing and smiled. I had a feeling I might get along with him just fine. “I needed that. Thanks.” 

He blinked and looked at me confused. He nodded cautiously and moved the subject to what they’d been doing. 

Apparently, he had a co-leader called Reyna. She was standing off to the side, glaring a hole through me like I’d insulted her grandmother. 

“Any idea what that’s about?” Jason blinked and turned to her. 

“Uh, no. If it’s to do with her past, well,” Jason couldn’t hide a grimace. “Reyna’s not the most open about that.”

I filed that under problems we might have to address later. We continued discussing strategies for the future. If we were going to work together, we’d need to know how the other operated. I might not normally have been willing to work with the Romans, but we didn’t have much of a choice.

After that was done, I let Jason and Thalia catch up. I still wasn’t too happy that Thalia kept something like that from me, but we had other things to worry about right now.

Getting closer to Reyna didn’t make her glare any less.

If anything, she just ramped up her glare. I glared back, not exactly in the mood to cater to whatever made her angry with me. Not after everything.

“So,” I got close enough so she could hear me without me needing to shout. “You gonna explain why you’re looking at me like I killed your boyfriend? Or are you just gonna keep trying to look intimidating?”

Her snarl was impressive, I’ll give her that much, but Clarisse could pull off a better war face and I’d grown up with her. 

“Don’t play dumb with me, Chase. You know exactly what you did.” She spoke with an easy confidence that made it clear why she was leading beside Jason.

I stared at her for a second. She looked familiar, I’d give her that much. She was younger when we met. A lot younger. Looking at the ring on her finger jogged my memory.

“Circe’s Island.” I decided. “You were one of the handmaidens helping out with my spa treatment.”

That didn’t lessen the severity of her look. If anything, she got even angrier. “So you do remember.” She got closer, looking ready for a fight. “You remember taking our hospitality and casting it aside. You remember how you destroyed our home and left us to fend for ourselves!”

I glared right back at her, pushing her back a bit. “You want to talk hospitality ? Circe turned Percy into a guinea pig. Was I supposed to just let him stay that way? How was I supposed to know those pirates would be in there?”

Her glare turned a bit unsure, but she was still angry. I didn’t really owe her anything, but if we were going to work together, we’d need to get past this.

“Look,” I took a deep breath, calming down a bit. “I get that you’re angry. We came in and destroyed your home for no reason I’m sure it seems like.” I shook my head, gathering my thoughts, trying to find the right words. Mother must have been helping me, because I found them. “We were on a quest. Percy and I,” I managed to not choke up at his name. “We were trying to save our camp.”

Reyna’s glare shifted to a look of curiosity and confusion. “How?” Was her only question.

I looked away in the distance. I could see some of the Romans and campers talking. A little over ahead, I saw Jason sparring with Clarisse. He didn’t seem to be winning, but he was lasting much longer than anyone else could’ve.

“Our protective border was weakened.” I wouldn’t bring up Luke. I wanted to fix things here, but I wasn’t about to tell her my entire life story. “We had to find the Golden Fleece to fix it. We ended up on the island by chance. If we failed, everyone at camp would’ve died or joined the Titans.” 

I turned back to Reyna and she had a look of realization on her face. “Our options were to succeed or everyone dies. I needed to get off that island and I wasn’t going to leave Percy behind. I’m sorry you got in the middle of all of that, but I couldn’t just sit back and do nothing.”

She nodded, accepting my words. I turned and sat next to one of the poplar trees. Reyna sat next to me.

“You know,” she said, not looking at me. “I spent so long hating you two. I wasn’t sure what I’d do when we saw each other, but a lot of my ideas involved revenge.” She shook her head and turned to me. “I won’t pretend I’m okay with everything just yet, but I do understand why you did what you did. I… think I might be able to forgive you someday down the line. But for now, I do hope we can work together to win this war.”

She extended her hand and I shook it. Maybe this would work out after all.

“Although, I do wonder.” She tilted her head a bit. “Where is Percy? I figured you two would be inseparable given how fiercely you fought for his sake.”

I couldn’t answer her. I couldn’t talk about Percy being dead. Not with her. She seemed to get it though, seeing as her face quickly took on a look of shock. “Oh… I see. I’m sorry I brought it up.”

I nodded, not trusting my voice. To her credit, Reyna didn’t say anything else. She just got up and left me alone.

Percy was dead. The Titans won. We were holed up in the Underworld just waiting for the right time to fight back. From the looks of things, it couldn’t get much worse than this.

In some sense, I was right. It didn’t really get much worse.

The hardest part was when Poseidon came by to the Underworld to assess the situation. He was enraged at everything that had happened but hid it well for the most part. 

He looked straight at me and I could feel my life flashing in my eyes. I wasn’t sure what would happen now. Considering my and Percy’s last conversation, I didn’t imagine any talk with Poseidon would go well for me. 

He finally spoke, and it wasn’t what I was expecting. “Children fight. That is a natural thing that happens.” He looked through me as if remembering something from a time I would never have even known. “Had this conversation happened earlier, I might have retaliated for what happened. As it stands, I will stay my hand.”

He said nothing else, and I was grateful. 

I wasn’t sure what we were going to do next. Poseidon explained that Oceanus pulled back, no longer sieging Atlantis. The damages were significant but not annihilating. Poseidon’s realm would recover.

As such, we could focus on a counterattack now. It took a lot of planning, especially with Othrys now fully rebuilt. We’d need to completely level the place if we were going to win.

Getting along with the Romans proved to be a bit easier than expected. Granted, a big part of it was how little of a choice we had in the matter given everything going on around us, but that wasn’t too important.

We learned more about their lives as time went on. We spent years down there, just preparing and trying to survive. Going to the surface was a death sentence.

We were mostly waiting for Nico to hit sixteen. The Prophecy might’ve called for a child of the Big Three to make it to sixteen, but it didn’t seem to apply to the Romans, so Jason was out of the question. 

The years brought us closer together. It wasn’t easy, but well, spend enough time fighting side by side with someone and you’re bound to get closer.

I ended up getting closest to Jason and Reyna, ironically enough. They reminded me a lot of myself and Percy in a lot of ways. I wouldn’t go and say they were the Roman versions of us by any stretch, we were just too different, but in some ways, we were very similar. Made leaders way too young, taking the weight of the world on our shoulders. 

It was easier to get closer to Jason at first, which wasn’t saying much. In some ways, he was Percy’s exact opposite. Dutiful, rule-abiding, and incredibly pragmatic. Where Percy was more concerned with making sure all his friends made it out alive, Jason was focused on getting the mission done successfully. That’s not to say that Jason didn’t care about his friends. He was a lot like Percy in that sense. That was one thing that made it hard to get close to him at first.

Reyna was a bit more difficult given, well, how we first met. It took a bit longer, but after Jason and I became friends, she warmed up to me a bit quicker. Pretty soon, the three of us were inseparable, with only Thalia being as close to us as we were to each other.

I’ll admit I was a bit unfair to Thalia for a bit. Sure, I got why she never mentioned that she had a brother, but after everything that had happened when I learned that, I wasn’t too happy. It took a while, but we ended up talking it out and there were no hard feelings. 

I’d say it was around the end of the second year that it was like we were one big family. I could trust just about any one of them with my life. Even Octavian, who started off being the single most irritating person I’d ever met, was someone I trusted with my life now.

After something like a year, we started sending out scouting parties to assess the situation and find any demigods we could. It wasn’t easy, but we managed a few successful runs.

We managed to find out that some demigods were starting to have second thoughts about the Titan rule around a year after the battle was over. Those were easy to bring to our side. Some were still convinced they did the right thing. Or at least, they didn’t want to admit they were wrong. We didn’t bother too much with them.

Then there were the kids who didn’t know about any of this. We managed to bring in a few others to safety, namely, a son of Hephaestus called Leo, a daughter of Aphrodite called Piper, and a son of Mars called Frank. It took a while to get them up to speed, but we managed. We even got to bring their families down to safety.

Their families…

Sally and Paul were among the mortals who were allowed sanctuary down here. It… wasn’t easy seeing Sally at first. I tried avoiding her as much as I could. But, well, she was about as stubborn as Percy was, so she cornered me one day.

She didn’t say anything. Didn’t yell. Didn’t accuse me. She knew what had happened, but she didn’t blame me. She just hugged me and we both cried. After that, we spent so much time together. Any time I wasn’t with Thalia, Jason, or Reyna I spent with her. 

Well, there was one last person I spent more time with than anyone else. Nico and I became as close as can be over this time. He became the annoying little brother I couldn’t live without. I helped him get ready for his role in the war. He still needed to reach sixteen after all. 

And then there was Silena. It took a while for me to even talk to her. I was so mad for so long, I was starting to forget what it was like to be her friend. One day, I decided to go talk to her. I wasn’t sure what I was planning to say, but I wasn’t going to leave without getting somewhere. 

We sat and talked. It took a lot, but we managed to reach an understanding. I think that was when I started taking the first steps towards forgiving her. 

Then, the day came. It was time for us to take back the surface and take down the Titans. Typhon was asleep, so now was our chance. We’d been training and preparing for this moment for the past four years. If we didn’t make it out of this, then at least we knew we’d done everything we could. 

If you asked me to describe the battle for you, I couldn’t. 

It was even more chaotic than anything I’d ever been in. Bodies flying everywhere, people dying all around me. It was the craziest thing I’d ever seen. And just like last time, all the mortals were put to sleep, but this time it was by our side. We didn’t want them getting involved in this. 

But for every one of us dead, we took out more than sixty of theirs. We were winning, and it was by a wide margin.

I ran to Nico then. “We have to get to Mount Tam!”

He nodded and summoned an entire army of the dead. Every monster that died in the battle was brought back undead, ready to fight for us. 

I saw Reyna and Jason fighting an entire battalion in the distance. Jason brought down the strongest winds I’d ever seen to rip the monsters apart and Reyna was a blender, cutting through everyone without any effort. She and Jason made a formidable team.

I wondered if Percy and I could’ve reached that level of destruction at some point. I missed him so much. If only he were here…

No time for that. I can reminisce later. Right now, we have a war to win.

I took Nico with me to Othrys. The Gods would deal with all the Titans. We just had to handle the demigod leaders.

“Alabaster’s gonna be hiding in the back. He always does that.” Nico told me. He had the most experience with Alabaster out of all of us. The demigod leaders in the army were Alabaster, Ethan, some Roman called Bryce Lawrence, and Alexander, the old Athena Cabin head before me.

Nico and I were sent to deal with Alabaster and Alexander while Jason and Reyna handled Bryce and Ethan. Alexander acted as Alabaster’s bodyguard, so we’d find the two together.

Nico grabbed my hand and shadow traveled us behind the enemy lines. He’d gotten a lot better at it over the years, so he was still in fighting shape when we got out the other side. 

I took a good look at Nico before we went in. He’d grown up in the past four years. No longer a lost twelve-year-old, looking for someone to blame for the death of his sister. He was taller than me now, cutting a leaner form. He really looked a lot like Hades now.

He was hardened by battle. A real warrior few could hope to match. I pulled him into my arms, wanting to hug him one last time. I had a feeling I wouldn’t get the chance after this.

He held me back just as tightly. “I love you, Nico.”

I could feel a spot getting wet on my shirt. “Love you too.” We let go of each other and I saw the look of determination in his eyes. One way or another, this would end today.

When we got to Alabaster and Alexander, we charged at them, not giving them a chance to react. They were a slippery pair, and we’d need to keep them busy if we wanted to make sure they died today.

I took Alabaster while Nico ripped Alexander a new one. I could see him shadow traveling all over the place, striking Alex whenever he came out only to fade back in. He wasn’t supposed to do that, but he could manage it once in a while. 

My fight with Alabaster was much harder. He’d dual-wield magic and a bronze sword, keeping me on the edge of my toes. Looking closely, I found I recognized that sword.

“Riptide,” I said under my breath.

Alabaster gave me a wicked grin. “Figured it was fitting for you to die to this blade.

I snarled and attacked him with double effort. He clearly wasn’t expecting it given how he went completely on the defensive, forgetting to use spells half the time.

I was so mad. How dare he use Percy’s sword. He wasn’t worthy of it. He’d die today no matter what else.

We fought for what could’ve been minutes or hours. It didn’t really matter. In the distance, I could see Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades fighting as one against Kronos. He didn’t seem to be doing too well. 

All we had to do was win here and our armies would win outright. I focused on the fight with all I had.

In the end, it was a double kill. I managed to get my knife into Alabster’s neck and he stabbed me in my abdomen area. I’d die, but it wouldn’t be as quick as his.

“The hero’s soul, cursed blade shall reap,” I laughed to myself a bit. Turns out, it was Percy’s sword, huh?

I fell to my knees as Nico came and held me. He was crying, but he wasn’t fighting it.

“You’ll make it to Elysium, Annabeth.” He choked out. “You’ll see Percy again.”

I smiled at him, but I wasn’t sure I believed him. Percy didn’t die normally, so who knew what happened to his soul? And that was even assuming I’d make it to Elysium in the first place.

Still, I took comfort in the fact that Nico was here with me. My little brother. My best friend.

I was glad he was with me as I died. It made it easier.

“I love you, Neeks,” I told him one last time.

He kissed my forehead. “Love you too.” 

And with that, I saw only darkness.