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Acid burns at his tongue as he takes a deep, rasping breath.
Listen to me, she shouts with tears on her face, the river of fire- take it, Seaweed Brain, drink it- the Doors- I'll meet you there!
It will be weeks before he can see his family again, and he considers if it would be better to die here.
(Thanatos would not be able to take his soul; if he were to die here his soul would be left to rot. He would not be able to reunite with the person that matters more to him.)
(It would be easier to die in this neverending hell, but better? It would not be better, no, so he picks himself up and carries on as he must.)
Percy misses his best friends like another limb. He hasn’t seen Grover in months and Annabeth in weeks and he needs them back, needs to pretend as though it’s still the three of them against the world as it had been when they were younger; it’s just him, now, though. Grover hadn’t come along to find him, and even now the empathy link aches at the back of his soul. He can feel his best friend trying to pull him out of hell; it won’t work. It never works.
He takes another sip and keeps going.
The fire burns down his throat. As the son of Poseidon, he has a certain level of immunity to the flame, but even then he isn’t made for it.
There’s no one there to remind him not to strangle Misery with her own poison, no one there to make him promise not to use his power.
(If anything, the memory of his husband encourages him to take it.)
He watches her beg him for her life with dead eyes; there’s nothing he really wants except to go home.
She gives Percy his Death Mist.
Percy puts her out of her Misery.
And then he walks through Nyx’s House of Night knowing full well that he has already lived his worst nightmare.
And when Tartarus tries to stop him from leaving, Percy laughs in his face. He is already most of the way insane, from nearly burning himself alive and the loss of his ring and the realization that there’s nothing he wants more in this life than to get his husband back when it’s the one thing he can’t have. Percy throws a hand out and watches the flowers of poison overtake Tartarus’ form.
(You cannot kill a Primordial, but you can make him bleed.)
He laughs as he watches the flowers that used to be Akhyls’ and are now his wrap up and around Tartarus’ throat and mouth, strangling and killing everything in their path to serve their new master.
Percy has to get to the Doors of Death on the surface.