Work Text:
“Good… blade,” Luke murmured. His eyes were blue again. He wasn’t Kronos now. But he looked so tired, body barely holding together at this point, whether that was from the curse of Achilles undoing everything in him down to a molecular level, or having hosted the Titan king for over a year now.
Percy found himself at his side, guard down, not even holding out Riptide at this point as he babbled out apologies and last words. He wasn’t Percy’s enemy any more. He was just a guy who was bleeding out from a wound next to him. Percy had seen too much of that lately among his own friends and fellow demigods, on both sides of the war, to not feel something for him.
But they had done it. This was it. They had beaten Kronos.
Something flickered in Luke’s eyes, a light maybe. But it was too cold, and familiar to be that.
For a second, one final second, his eyes flashed gold again and the knife that had been lying impotent beside them hit the small of his back and he screamed.
Percy died quicker than Luke had. It was as if in those two seconds one heart stopped, and then another. Annabeth thought hers had too, but when she raised two fingers to her pulsepoint, she could feel it, as much as she didn’t want to.
Rachel had told Percy that he wasn’t the hero, and that had made her complacent. Just a little bit; they had still been at war and there was no place for any of that in there, but she’d thought that there had been a chance. She’d presumed, foolishly, that he would survive. That they’d be able to talk one more time. That he would be there .
After years of thinking that he was doomed, that… day or so when she’d thought that the hero would be someone else, even if it had been someone she cared about too, but someone who wasn’t Percy , it had been the thing that had kept her body moving even though all she wanted to do when the adrenaline wore off was dive in a hole and lie there.
The gods showed up pretty soon after that though. Maybe. Time was weird now. Maybe that was because Kronos was gone again. Hopefully for good. But she’d been pretty sure, when Apollo draped her in a blanket, that he’d said she was in shock. Or maybe that it was a shock .
She hadn’t been listening. She hadn’t been doing anything. Actually, that wasn’t true. she’d been doing a lot, there had been someone’s hands on her shoulders, trying to calm her, and telling her to do something that she hadn’t been able to make out.
She couldn’t hear anything except the scream she could still swear was echoing around the destroyed throne room, and the sight of two things, a pair of bodies lying next to each other, and the identical expressions on Poseidon and Hermes’ faces when they’d come in the room.
Then she’d been taken away to a newly reconstructed infirmary, and just sat as useless as a rag doll while she was given nectar to sip through a straw, and had muttered Greek blessings cast upon her.
She almost wanted to ask Apollo about the Physician’s Cure but she knew that could do no good for anyone now. Fate had demanded a life, and had taken two. Or maybe it had been Kronos alone who’d taken Percy’s. But no one would give him back now.
She would have to get him herself.
Poseidon was stony faced when she re-entered the hall two days later with what survived of Camp Half-Blood and the Hunters, who immediately flocked to Artemis' throne. Thalia looked physically better than she had been when they had been forced to leave her, balancing on crutches, red eyed and guilty looking.
She tried not to feel resentful but a part of her thought about if she hadn’t jumped out of the way of the prophecy instead, that Percy would be standing here, alive past his sixteenth birthday.
Thalia had been unsure if she could have made the right decision, and Olympus stood today because Percy had, a minute or so before he died, made the correct choice.
Thalia hadn’t killed Percy, she reminded herself. But she made him take it on, a part of her whispered.
She looked away from the base of Artemis’ throne.
Hermes looked exhausted, and he hadn’t bothered to disguise his red eyes. But no one here was happy. It had been a pyrrhic victory, and everyone had lost someone. Olympus had only barely avoided crumbling to pieces, and she hoped fiercely that it would be worth it in the end that it hadn’t.
“We have won,” declared Zeus after calling everyone to order. “Typhon is trapped. Kronos’ spirit is scattered beyond any amount that could reform. Mount Othrys lies in pieces.”
A roar rose up from the gods. The demigods cheered weakly. Annabeth opened her mouth to look as if she were joining in, but no sound came out.
A scream echoed through the room but only she could hear it.
“I would like to thank my brother Hades for leading his army against the Titans’ forces in Manhattan,” Zeus looked like he wanted to vomit at the concept but Hades smirked. “And Poseidon, without whom it would have been difficult to defeat Typhon.”
“Impossible,” grumbled Poseidon.
Zeus glared at him, “Was there something you wanted to say?”
In another world, Annabeth thought, one where fewer people had died, one fewer, one particular person fewer, this might have been banter. A playful moment among an otherwise fairly horrific situation.
This was not that world.
“It would have been impossible for you to defeat Typhon without me abandoning defending my kingdom to come to assist you,” he looked around the hall in censure, and she could have sworn he looked at her a little harder than he looked at anyone else.
“It’s not my fault,” she prayed to him. She wasn’t sure this was true, but logically she supposed. It still felt like a lie though. “I would have taken his spot in an instant. I would do it now if it were possible.” He stopped glaring, and moved on.
She would have though. Alcestis had never been a person she had thought about before except when she’d been reading pseudo-Apollodorus, but she would walk down to Hades in a second and pull Percy out of place before the three judges and stand there herself, and take whatever decision they gave her. As long as Percy got to live.
She went through the rest of the ceremony in a daze, appointed architect of Olympus, which would have been an absolute delight in any other universe, or any in which Percy was still breathing.
The Fates had taken his body along with Luke’s. Had they burned him already? She’d wanted to weave his shroud - last time she hadn’t been able to, but some of her siblings had done it for her when she was just trying to eat enough and stay awake while Percy, unknown to her at the time, recovered on Ogygia.
There was no magical island for him to return from this time. No funeral for him to burst into at the last second today.
But she was being given the chance to redesign Olympus. Rebuild it, brick by brick. Make something better of it.
Percy wasn’t here any more. But she could honour his sacrifice. She could make something better. For him.