Chapter Text
I kicked and pummeled at Percy, desperate for him to release his hold. I thrashed like everything depended on it, because it practically did. I had to get back to Luke and my parents.
He dragged me under and I stopped struggling. I couldn't quite remember why I was resisting at all but when our heads broke the surface I started to fight again, Luke was calling for me to come back, patting the spot beside him, offering me to come sit.
Percy grabbed me around the waist and suddenly the waves were pushing us down into the ocean below.
We shot deep down into the depths and I held my breath until I felt like my lungs were screaming for air and my head was going to burst.
Suddenly there was a flurry of white and a tickling sensation surrounding us, and when my vision cleared I realised Percy and I were enveloped in a huge bubble, with only our legs floating around in the water.
I gasped and coughed. My whole body shuddered, but when I looked at Percy I knew I would be okay.
I began to sob, it felt as though something horrible was tearing me in two and my heart was breaking. I put my head on his shoulder, all the energy leaving my body, and he held me until I stopped shaking.
I noticed a bunch of fish swam up to the bubble, Percy would know what kind.
They swam away in a hurry.
"I'll get us back to the ship," he told me. "It's okay. Just hang on."
I nodded, to let him know I understood, and then murmured a thank you that I realised after he probably couldn't hear.
The current steered our weird little air submarine through the rocks and barbed wire and back toward the hull of the Queen Anne's Revenge, which was maintaining a slow and steady course away from the island.
We stayed underwater, following the ship, until Percy took us up to the surface and the burst with a satisfying pop.
A rope ladder dropped over the side of the ship and we climbed aboard.
Percy kept his earplugs in, and I was glad. I couldn't hear the sirens anymore but I was too scared to tell Percy to take them out until the sand of the island was completely out of sight. I sat and waited on the forward deck, shivering and huddled in a blanket. When I could no longer see the island, I looked up, and mouthed, safe.
He took out the earplugs and I watched him look at the blue sky, glance around for the island of the sirens, but the fog had faded away and the only sounds were the waves lapping against the hull, it was as if all evidence of the island just disappeared, like it had never existed.
“You okay?” He asked. Of course I wasn't okay, but how could I tell him that, after he saved my life.
“I didn't realise,” I murmured instead.
“What?”
I looked into his eyes. His eyes, which were the same green as the seaweed that surrounded the island of the sirens. "How powerful the temptation would be."
"I saw the way you rebuilt Manhattan," He said to me. "And Luke and your parents."
I blushed. "You saw that?"
"What Luke told you back on the Princess Andromeda, about starting the world from scratch
... that really got to you, huh?"
I pulled the blanket tighter around me. "My fatal flaw. That's what the Sirens showed me. My
fatal flaw is hubris."
He blinked. "That brown stuff they spread on veggie sandwiches?"
I rolled my eyes. "No, Seaweed Brain. That's hummus. Hubris is worse."
"What could be worse than hummus?"
"Hubris means deadly pride, Percy. Thinking you can do things better than anyone else ...
even the gods."
"You feel that way?"
I looked down at the wood of the ship. "Don't you ever feel like, what if the world really is messed up? What if we could do it all over again from scratch? No more war. Nobody homeless. No more summer reading homework."
"I'm listening."
"I mean, the West represents a lot of the best things mankind ever did—that's why the fire is still burning. That's why Olympus is still around. But sometimes you just see the bad stuff, you know? And you start thinking the way Luke does: 'If I could tear this all down, I would do it better.' Don't you ever feel that way? Like you could do a better job if you ran the World?"
"Um ... no. Me running the world would kind of be a nightmare."
"Then you're lucky. Hubris isn't your fatal flaw."
"What is?"
"I don't know, Percy, but every hero has one. If you don't find it and learn to control it ... well,
they don't call it 'fatal' for nothing."
I felt bad for dumping all that on him, it wasn't a very cheerful topic, but he had to know. It was a lesson I had learnt long ago.
I knew he would pick up on the fact that I was holding back about Luke and my parents, his brain may have been seaweed but he wasn't stupid. It was just so childish and embarrassing. How many times had I imagined my parents getting back together, my dad leaving my stepmother, being a real family for once. How many times had I fought for Luke, tried and failed to convince the others he’d see another way. I knew he wasn't evil, but it was so hard to convince everyone else, especially Percy.
I pictured the world where we could all be together, my own fantasy which I would entertain in my head, the world the sirens showed me, which no one should have seen, but Percy did.
"So was it worth it?" he asked me. "Do you feel ... wiser?"
I gazed into the distance. "I'm not sure. But we have to save the camp. If we don't stop
Luke ..."
Luke was charismatic, and his ideology was hurting people, and as much as I believed he could change, there was no telling how many other half-bloods might join him first. How many people could die for his cause if we didn't put an end to it?
My eyes widened. "Percy." Up ahead was another blotch of land—a saddle-shaped island with forested hills and white beaches and green meadows—just like I'd seen in my dreams.
He turned to look at the island.
From the look that came upon his face I knew immediately that we had reached the home of the cyclops.