Chapter Text
-
“It isn’t a maintenance tunnel,” the tie-dye dress lady said. “It’s the entrance to camp.”
A jolt went up Percy’s spine. Camp. Yes, that’s where he was from. A camp. Maybe this was his home.
He remembers sandy blond hair and cornflower eyes. He remembers the blinding warmth of a smile, the cold, hard line of a scar.
He remembers a voice:
“Ethan. Me. All the unclaimed… Don’t let it happen again.”
His heart clenches.
The old hippie lady raised her eyebrows: “Not much time, child. You need to make your choice.”
“My choice…” Percy glances nervously toward the hill. The gorgons had taken off their green vests. Wings sprouted from their backs—small bat wings, which glinted like brass.
“If I go to the camp,” he said, “Will I get my memory back?”
“Eventually,” the lady replied. “But be warned, you will sacrifice much! You’ll lose the mark of Achilles. You’ll feel pain, misery, and loss beyond anything you’ve ever known. But you might have a chance to save your old friends and family, to reclaim your old life.”
"Percy," a sad voice had said. “I give you my blessing.”
“Be safe, brother!” A one-eyed cyclops.
“Enchiladas!” A man — a goat? A goat man.
“The cord,” A girl, rolling her grey eyes. “Remember your lifeline, dummy!”
And then:
“Hold on, Percy, let me help you up.”
Percy could see clearly now. It was the boy from his dreams — blond, crooked, amused — what was his name again?
They were in a training field. Percy had been knocked off his feet, his wooden sword skidding about a yard away, and Luke — his name was Luke — was holding out his hand.
“You nearly disarmed me again. Just beginner’s luck, huh?” Luke smiled at him.
“C’mon, let’s try again.”
Percy had grasped onto Luke’s hand, and then he stopped drowning.
“I’ll carry you.” He scoops up the old woman.
Luke.
That was how it began.
-
“So you don’t remember anything?” Frank asked. They’ve grown closer. “Family, friends?”
Percy messes with the clay beads around his neck.
He recalls the green hush of the woods, the scent of damp earth and crushed pine needles. Flickering sunlight, the late afternoon gold, a boy with cropped hair and a mischievous grin. He was saying something to Percy, his hands moving animatedly, his playful smile fading into something more bitter.
Hurt. Grief. Heartache.
The vague feeling of anger, the bone-deep conviction that the boy deserved to remain in a pool of dappled sunlight, forever grinning, away from the shadows he was slinking into.
“Only glimpses. Murky stuff. A boyfriend… I think.” That word felt mostly right. Close enough, but not enough. Not enough to capture the intensity of what Percy felt.
“Oh,” Frank said.
Percy hesitates: “I thought he’d be at camp.”
He looks at Frank carefully, examining his face.
Percy knows he can trust Frank. He just doesn’t know if he can trust himself to handle the answer.
“His name was Luke.” Speaking his name felt like giving away a part of him. “You don’t know him, do you?”
Frank shakes his head.
“I know everybody at camp, but no Luke.”
Percy’s heart falls.
Unsurprising, but disappointing. He had hoped…
“Sorry,” Frank winces.
“Nah, it’s fine.” Percy shrugs, but it doesn’t come off as casually as he had hoped. “C’mon, show me the showers. I’m filthy.”
Frank, thankfully, let it go, managing a smile at Percy.
“Yeah, you kinda are.”
-
Luke sat next to me, pushed his back against the wall. “Tough first day?”
“I don’t belong here,” Percy said. “I don’t even believe in gods.”
“Yeah,” Luke smiled wryly. "That’s how we all started."
-
In his dreams, he saw a curly-haired faun in ragged clothes running to catch up with him.
“I don’t have any spare change,” Percy called.
“What?” the faun said.
“No, Percy. It’s me, Grover! Stay put! We’re on our way to find you. Tyson is close—at least we think he’s the closest. We’re trying to get a lock on your position.”
“What?” Percy called, but the faun disappeared in the fog.
Then a grey-eyed girl was running along beside him, reaching out her hand.
“Thank the gods!” she called. “For months and months we couldn’t see you! Are you all right?”
Percy frowns, jerking his hand back.
He remembered what Juno had said—for months he has been slumbering, but now he is awake. The goddess had intentionally kept him hidden, but why?
“Who are you?” he asked. “Do you know, this guy, tall, athletic, blond hair blue eyes, his name is—
“Stay put!” The girl interrupted. “It’ll be easier for Tyson to find you! Stay where you are!”
Percy’s jaw ticked in irritation, but before he could say anything else, she was gone.
The images accelerated. He saw a huge ship in a dry dock, workers scrambling to finish the hull, a guy with a blowtorch welding a bronze dragon figurehead to the prow. He saw the war god stalking toward him in the surf, a sword in his hands.
The scene shifted. Percy stood on the Field of Mars, looking up at the Berkeley Hills. Golden grass rippled, and a face appeared in the landscape— a sleeping woman, her features formed from shadows and folds in the terrain.
He saw the camp’s headquarters—a principia with walls of ice and freezing mist hanging in the air. The floor, littered with skeletons in Roman armour. A shadowy figure, skin glinting of gold and silver. A collection of ruined emblems, tattered banners, and a large golden eagle on a staff of iron.
Gold gold gold.
Percy woke, shivering, missing the warmth of bright blue eyes. For some odd reason, he felt like he was in mourning.
-
“Get in close,” Luke instructed. "When you’ve got the shorter blade, get in close.”
Percy got in close.
-
He realised that Ella was different, even for a harpy. But after watching her get picked on, he was sure of one thing: whatever else happened, he was going to help her.
“Ella,” Percy said to the harpy, “We want to be your friends. We can get you more food.”
“Friends,” Ella said. “‘Ten seasons. 1994 to 2004.’” She glanced sideways at Percy, then looked in the air and started reciting to the clouds. “‘A half-blood of the eldest gods, shall reach sixteen against all odds.’ Sixteen. You’re sixteen. Page sixteen, Mastering the Art of French Cooking. ‘Ingredients: Bacon, Butter.’”
Percy’s ears were ringing. He felt dizzy, like he’d just plunged a hundred feet underwater and back up again.
“Ella…what was that you said?”
“‘Bacon.’” She caught a raindrop out of the air. “‘Butter.’”
“No, before that. Those lines…I know those lines.”
Next to him, Hazel shivered.
“It does sound familiar, like…I don’t know, like a prophecy.”
Prophecy.
Percy froze in his tracks.
“Percy?” Frank asked. “What’s wrong?”
Percy tried desperately to concentrate. Where had those words come from? It was familiar, too familiar. A dusty attic, green mist, a speaking mummy, back home in—in—The memory faded.
“Percy?” Hazel asked gently.
The Hero's soul, cursed blade shall reap.
No. He was so close.
“You’re not the hero.” A voice said. “It will affect what you do.”
Relief. Then grief.
What was he missing?
“Please." Luke’s voice. "No time.”
"I won't," Percy had said, and it felt like he was dying, his heart ripping itself open in anguish, tearing through his ribcage, his lungs collapsing, his blood turning to acid. "I promise."
He was so angry, so frustrated with his missing memories that he wanted to uncap riptide and take someone’s head off, but his friends’ concerned faces brought him back to the present.
“Percy?” Frank asked.
“I’m—I’m all right,” Percy lied.
-
It was as if he swallowed fire, acid pooling in a toxic lake at the base of his stomach, each ragged breath fanned the flames, the fumes seeping upwards, making eyes water with a bitter, oily slickness.
Percy doubled over, his throat burning. His mouth tasted like gasoline, and he felt stupid— so fucking stupid. He’d been stupid to take such a risk.
“One last time.”
He felt like broken glass was working its way through his stomach, into his intestines—
“Ethan. Me. All the unclaimed… Don’t let it happen again.”
He had Luke — he held Luke in his arms.
“Think…rebirth. Try for three times. Isles of the Blest.”
“I’m sorry,” Percy gasped for breath. “I’m sorry— I couldn’t keep my promise.”
It seems fitting, somehow, that they gave each other their last words.
And as Percy closed his eyes, one last time, he tried to map out Luke’s face.
…
…and suddenly, Percy’s vision cleared.
-
“Oh, this? New toy. This is Backbiter.”
“Backbiter?”
Luke turned the blade in the light so it glinted wickedly.
“One side is celestial bronze. The other is tempered steel. Works on mortals and immortals both.”
“I didn’t know they could make weapons like that.”
“They probably can’t,” Luke agreed. “It’s one of a kind.”
He gave Percy a tiny smile, then slid the sword into its scabbard.
“Listen, I was going to come looking for you. What do you say we go down to the woods one last time, look for something to fight? One last time.”
Percy traces the dimming memory of the sun-drenched boy.
“Sure. Why not?”
And you shall fail to save what matters most, in the end.
-
He dreamed he was carrying Juno across the Little Tiber.
She was disguised as a crazy old bag lady, smiling and singing an Ancient Greek lullaby as her leathery hands gripped Percy's neck.
“Do you still want to slap me, dear?" she asked.
Percy stopped midstream. He let go and dumped the goddess in the river.
The moment she hit the water, she vanished and reappeared on the shore. “Oh, my," she cackled, “that wasn't very heroic, even in a dream!"
“Eight months," Percy said. “You stole eight months of my life for a quest that took a week. Why?”
Juno tutted disapprovingly. “You mortals and your short lives. Eight months is nothing, my dear. I lost eight centuries once, missed most of the Byzantine Empire.”
Percy summoned the power of the river. It swirled around him, spinning into a froth of white water.
“Now, now," Juno said. “Don't get testy. I made sure you had an anchor to your old life, didn’t I?”
Percy tensed. “So it was you who made me see— you made me see him.”
“Oh no, dear, you give me too much credit,” Juno cackled. “Honestly, I thought you’d remember that Chase girl. What a surprise! No need to thank me.”
“Thank you?” Percy repeated, incredulous. “What do I have to thank you for?”
“For helping clear your head, of course! With my help, you can reorganise your priorities. I never liked Annabeth Chase — so much hubris, not marriage material at all, no, she’d make a horrid mother. As much as I loathe to agree with Venus, I have to say she’s right. Luke’s a much better fit for you.”
Percy sent a wave crashing down on the old woman, but Juno simply disappeared and materialised farther down the shore.
“My,” she said, “you are in a bad mood. But you know I’m right.”
“Luke is dead,” Percy snarled. “Luke died because none of you cared.”
“Didn’t you realise how useless it all is?” Luke said, angry and bitter. “All the heroics—being pawns of the gods.”
The old lady shrugged. “Semantics. I’ll tell you this, Percy Jackson, the Doors of Death have let more than just monsters and giants out. You might be pleasantly surprised.”
“Great,” Percy snarked. “Just what I needed, something worse to fight. Love doing your bidding for you.”
The goddess smiled dryly. “We will see, young hero. In the meantime, perhaps I’ll bring you a gift. Yes, as a show of goodwill. It might not aid you on your journey, but…”
“Those served me well when I was on my quest.” Luke smiled. “Gift from Dad. Of course, I don’t use them much these days….” His expression turned sad.
Percy summoned a fist of water and smashed it down at the old lady.
“I don’t need jack shit from you. And stop meddling in my life!”
When the wave receded, she was gone.
The river swirled out of Percy’s control. He sank into the darkness of the whirlpool.
-
In this memory, the woods are brighter, the filtered light gleaming against Luke’s skin, his hair bleached almost white at the tips by a summer of sun. The leaves cast a long shadow backward on the scar across his face.
Percy reconstructs him from the aftermath, peels back the terrible, livid line that gouges from temple to jaw, and imagines the face beneath.
In another life, they could’ve met differently.
-
“You remember now,” Reyna said. “Everything.”
“Yeah,” Percy nodded. Then he added, “Sorry about your spa.”
“No, I should thank you.” Reyna smiled. “If you and Annabeth hadn’t come to the island four years ago, I wouldn’t be where I am. The Fates work in mysterious ways.”
“The Fates don’t like me.”
Reyna gave him an eagle medal and purple cloak, symbols of the praetor. “You earned these, Percy.”
Percy thanked her numbly.
“Who’s Annabeth?” Frank asked, curious.
“Family… Luke… you promised…”
“My girlfriend.” Percy said.
He tunes out Frank’s reaction.
-
He sees a flash in his peripheral.
Annabeth judo-flips him.
“Percy!” Luke’s voice. Percy could picture his brows knitting into a frown. “Don’t move! Let me take a look at your shoulder.”
Percy hears a collective gasp.
“You alright? What the fuck, Annabeth? No— Percy— don’t move! Annabeth! Get the fuck off him!”
Percy laughs, “Okay Annabeth, you can get off me now.”
Annabeth stood frozen, mouth agape in shock.
She was looking past Percy.