Chapter Text
“Finally, I was about to scale the fire escape. You know half your call buttons are broken?”
Almost-sixteen-year-old Percy Jackson was two steps out his front door, staring at a person he definitely wasn’t supposed to see until tomorrow night.
Clarisse La Rue stood tall before him on the building’s front stoop, proud as ever in the waning city sun. It took a beat to see half her shirt was covered in blood.
He reached for her in a rush. “Shit, are you —?”
“It’s not mine,” Clarisse replied, grabbing his wrist. She turned her attention to Grover, who was still up the stoop, mouth hanging open in shock. “Underwood, I need your bag of tricks, we’ve got wounded.”
“Wait a second —“ Percy began.
“Someone’s hurt?!” Grover exclaimed at the same time.
Clarisse gave both of them an exasperated look. Clearly coming here hadn’t been her first choice. She tugged Percy towards her, down the stairs towards the sidewalk while nodding at Grover again. “Grab your shit, we’ve gotta move.”
Grover disappeared back through the door as Percy tried again to ask what the hell was going on.
“Clarisse, how are you here, what hap—“
“Look, don’t freak out, ok?” she interrupted, not unkindly. “We need to move and I need you to not start hyperventilating or whatever.”
Percy was ready to take offense but Grover was back, bounding down the stairs with unnatural grace.
“Ready!” he said. “Take us to them.”
Clarisse turned towards downtown without another word, walking swiftly down side-streets so they wouldn’t have to wait for traffic lights. After almost a dozen blocks, Percy ran a bit to catch up with her.
“Ok, enough mystery,” he said, a little annoyed now. “We’ll help whoever it is, but you need to tell us —“
“Over here,” Clarisse interrupted with an arm in front of him, as Percy groaned in frustration. With a look akin to pity in her eyes she repeated herself. “Don’t freak out.”
Clarisse had brought them to a narrow gap between two newer apartment buildings. Crouched in a mess of torn packaging was a face he knew well. Wild silvery curls stood almost on end as the whole alleyway crackled with static. Percy met Thalia’s kohl-lined eyes, saw the fear there, and felt his heart drop in an instant. Grover skidded to a stop next to him and began to cry the name he already knew was here.
“Annabeth!” Grover was shouting, “Annabeth I’m here, hang on!”
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Later, he really only remembers the blood. His mom tells him that he called her from a Chinese restaurant across the street. That he was able to tell her the exact intersection so she and Tyson could come with the car.
But Percy doesn’t really remember that. He remembers blood staining the stolen mattress Thalia had ripped out of the box; blood under Grover’s fingernails as he tried to clear Annabeth’s clothes away to better see her wounds; blood on his neck from where Annabeth had held him, tried to reassure him, while he pillowed her head in his lap so the others could work. Blood on his knee that remained when Tyson lifted her away to put her in the back of the car, while his mother called from the driver’s seat to get in, ‘get in honey, we have to go before someone sees’.
Who couldn’t see this? It was all he would see in his dreams for weeks, he was sure of it.
Percy raised his head to stare at the bathroom door. From his place on the living room floor, back against the couch, he could feel everything through the empathy link, almost see it as he imagined the worst: Grover’s back rippling with tension as he frantically mashed herbs for a poultice; his mother’s head bent towards Thalia’s as they washed off blood, then terrifying black bile; Annabeth in the tub, crying but trying not to as wave after wave of nausea hit her, doubling the pain of her wounds.
Poison. Clarisse had been forced to explain it twice because his head was buzzing too loudly the first time. Annabeth on an earlier train from DC; Clarisse, too restless at camp, meeting her at the station; Thalia stealing away from the Hunt for a night with her baby sister. Halal and boba and a nice walk through the early summer night to avoid getting trapped on the subway. A band of monsters descending on them anyway, ten blocks from his apartment, armed with barbed blades dipped in manticore poison.
Ten blocks. She’d almost been here to use the key Sally gave her last year, to mock his request for blue cake and a too-early birthday dinner in a way that told him they were finally okay again. To tell him of her travels over pizza, sprawled on his bedroom floor.
Instead she’d been sprawled on the bathroom floor, dousing herself in vomit, for at least an hour now. His mom was trying to keep up, but he could smell it even now, through the door —
No, the door was opening. Grover’s face was gray with worry beneath the warm brown of his skin.
“Clarisse,” he called to her at her spot guarding the front door. “I need you. We think we can get the barbs out, but I…I need you to hold her legs.”
One of those things had gouged her leg before stabbing her in the side. Percy flinches, remembering having to hold Annabeth down in the car when a pothole jostled them and she’d begun to scream.
“I can do it.”
He was in front of Grover now. When had he stood up? Grover was shaking his head while Clarisse shifted her weight behind him. An offensive stance; she was ready to go through him if she had to. Instead Grover pulled him down the hall, away from the bathroom door, which Clarisse rushed through, slamming it behind her.
“Percy,” Grover tried gently, urgently, “she’s really sick. Your mom — your mom and Thalia had to cut her shirt off. She’s exposed. I know you want to help…”
Just tell me, Percy was too terrified to say, just tell me if she’s dying. He would try to handle it, like he knew she had when she though it was him.
Grover suddenly cupped the back of his neck, grounding them both.
“Don’t do that,” he cautioned as if Percy had spoken the words aloud, forcing their gazes to meet. “Don’t just give in. I know it feels awful, but she’s fighting. And we’ll — I’ll keep trying.”
Percy gripped Grover’s wrist, tried to steady himself on the pulse he found there. He squeezed his eyes shut, managed a nod.
“Ok,” he choked out. “Ok, go. I’ll be here.”
The air shifted as Grover passed him to return to the bathroom. Percy fell against the wall. He couldn’t stop staring at the blood on his shoes.
He had almost made it, hadn’t he? He’d made it to the summer he would turn sixteen. Defied prophecy after prophecy saying the opposite.
None had foretold having to be sixteen without her. Maybe if he stayed rooted, right here, he wouldn’t have to find one waiting for him.
“Percy,” his mother was calling to him from down the wall.
How much time had passed? He lifted his head, scrubbed the tears from his face. When he turned, Sally’s face was drawn, like she’d aged three years in the last hour.
“Honey, you need to come now. She’s — she’s looking for you.”
Percy started towards her, ready to rush through the bathroom door, when he felt her hand meet his chest.
“She’s not quite herself right now,” Sally said, trying to prepare him, “she’s lost a lot of blood and —“
“Mom,” he pleaded. All his dread had given way to anticipation. He needed to see her. “I don’t care about that. It’ll be okay.”
The scene that met him mocked his words in an instant. The bathroom reeked of bleach, which still couldn’t mask the lingering scent of sick and sweat from the pile of towels in the corner. Annabeth was wrapped in the last clean one, writhing in Thalia’s lap in the tub. Clarisse and Grover were perched on the edge, trying to wrangle her legs as blood ran down the porcelain.
“Just tell me!” Annabeth was sobbing, twisting to see Thalia’s face. It was a mirror of his own panic from the hallway. “Just tell me where he is, Thalia, what happened? If something happened, we have to help him, I’ll be okay, just help him, Thalia, please…”
Thalia was trying to soothe her, telling her ‘soon, soon’, and ‘it’s ok, Beths’, her silvered eyes glossy with her own tears.
Annabeth was beginning to hyperventilate. “I can’t lose him, not now, not after everything, please…”
She thinks I’m hurt?
Percy couldn’t say how long it had been since the car ride home. What he’d said to her as they’d hauled her up the stairs. His throat closed. While he’d been in the hall, worrying, she’d been here, poison taking every ounce of her hard-won self control, agonizing over him being injured or missing. Because why else wouldn’t I be here?
Well, he was here now. Percy shook his head, clearing the shock away.
“Annabeth,” he called softly from the doorway, “I’m here.”
Thalia gave him a ‘hell no, not now’ look over her sister’s shoulder but he ignored it, moving behind Grover to reach into the tub.
“I’m right here, ‘Beth.”
Hands still sticky with black bile reached back.
“I couldn’t find you,” Annabeth whispered, brown eyes wet and feverish, “they told me you were here, but I couldn’t find you —“
Percy climbed into the tub, disregarding the lukewarm water and traces of blood to settle in beside her as best he could.
“I’m sorry,” he told her, trying not to cry himself. “I’m here now, okay?” He cupped her face in his hands, brought her sweaty forehead to his.
“I’m here. Now c’mon, Wise Girl,” Percy tried to give her a reassuring smile, “let them patch you up.”
Annabeth’s lip trembled. “It hurts,” she confessed in a whisper. “I’m so tired, and it won’t stop hurting…”
Percy swallowed his tears again.
“I know,” he murmured, “just focus on me, okay? Grover’s got this, he’s gonna fix your leg —“ he spared his best friend a glance, a nod of confidence against her temple “— and then you can sleep, okay? Just keep looking at me.”
The fight left her body as her upper half collapsed against him, nodding. He shared a desperate look with Thalia as Annabeth stilled between them. And then the others, finally, got to work.