Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

He is thirteen when he first realizes something is wrong.

Not wrong in the sense that he is sick or injured, but wrong in that something was fundamentally missed in the creation of, well, him. Somewhere, some god or the fates or power of a kind forgot to erase something when putting together the pieces that made Percy Jackson Percy Jackson.

Someone’s memories.

They’re not his memories, because he is Percy Jackson, seventh grader and demigod. But they’re someone’s memories floating around in his brain space, knocking against walls and ringing alarm bells. They aren’t vivid or even particularly discernible, but they’re there and they’re extremely hard to ignore.

It’s the familiarity of C.C.’s island when he steps onto it, and the alarms that sound when the witch herself steps from the shadows. It’s the taste of familiar unfamiliar words on his tongue and the pity with which she—Circe (and how does he know her name?)—looks at him.

It’s the bone-chilling fear upon facing down his half-brother, the blind cyclops Polyphemus. The way his heart races, and he is certain that he will not escape with all his friends intact.

It’s that he knows he has seen this sea before. He has sailed these waters, fought these monsters, lived this adventure. But he hasn’t because he is Percy he is a child and he is not the man in his memories that haunts his nightmares.

Demigod dreams are weird, he tells himself when the aching familiarity of everything whistles sharp like a tea kettle in his mind. He suppresses the feelings and memories, down down, until they’re nothing more than Déjà vu.

And that is how they remain. Nothing more than a guiding sense, prickling at the back of his neck when familiar danger rages at him. They are battle strategies he shouldn’t know but can explain away with a simple excuse and survival skills easily blamed on camp. Because the anxiety deep in his stomach tells him he shouldn’t know these things, and that remembering knowing too much will only lead to ruin.

There is something deeply, terribly wrong with the fundamental structure of his soul.

-0-

She is too familiar.

The girl on the island—Calypso. She swears she means Percy no harm, but he shudders each time she approaches him. It’s not that he doesn’t like her! In fact, he likes her a lot, but not the way she wants him to, and that is what scares him. He knows, deep down, that they will inevitably hurt each other.

There is a name that leaves her lips—Odysseus—and it sends a shock of familiarity through him. He knows this story. The woman of the island, cast away, cursed to love but never be loved in return. A fate that would drive anyone to desperation.

So he tells her he must leave as soon as he can. He can’t risk her trying to keep him here (why would she do that? He isn’t sure, but he knows she’ll try if he isn’t clear). She is saddened, but resigned to her fate, and the pang it sends through him feels like he’s known her for so much longer than the few days he has spent on her island.

“I’ll come back for you,” Percy says as he climbs onto the raft. He doesn’t know how he can promise that, but it feels right. “I’ll make sure you won’t be alone forever.”

“He said that too,” Calypso responds with a sad smile, and sends him on his way.

As he leaves Ogygia, he feels something at the edge of his mind. Something dangerous. Something that he hasn’t opened since Polyphemus.

He slams it closed.

-0-        

Percy Jackson knows two things: his name, and Annabeth’s name.

There is a third name. He doesn’t know that name, but it is there, nestled in the space that his broken memories tell him should not be touched. He doesn’t learn that name.

He also knows that he must get back to Annabeth, no matter the cost. He barely knows who she is, what with his missing memories and general lack of identity at the moment, but he knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that getting back to her is all that matters.

It is the driving force behind his entire quest. Find Annabeth, get back to Annabeth, do not forget the one thing his destroyed mind left him to grasp onto.

It is all so, so achingly familiar that it hurts.

He is on three quests, really. One to free Thanatos, the “main” quest, but also one to reach Annabeth and another to regain his memories. They vie for importance in his brain. He prays that they’ll all connect and lead down the same path. That would be easy.

Of course, it can’t be easy. There are other memories trying to claim space in the holes left behind, memories he knows aren’t his and shouldn’t be there but kick down the door anyway, screaming “hey! I’m here too! Look at me!” Why he has these memories, he has no idea, but there’s no way they belong to him because they aren’t of him. In brief glimpses of his reflection in these memories, he sees a man with shaggy hair and worn eyes, haggard from years at sea. He sees architecture long-since destroyed and fashion that is decidedly not twenty-first century.

Someone’s memories have been implanted in his brain and Percy does not like how it feels. Whoever he was before this, he had done a pretty good job keeping these memories locked up (can’t look at them, can’t remember them, not supposed to remember them), but now that everything that makes Percy himself is gone, these false memories are fighting for purchase. The lock—or whatever it was that kept these chained up—had broken when his memories were wiped. Did Juno even realize what she had done? She’d unleashed something that should never have existed. Fate itself knew this.

But it is on the glacier that he finally understands.

Because he must make a gambit. He has to open the bag light up the torches drop the infant make a calculated sacrifice to win the battle. And he knows he has done this before. Many times before.

And as he stabs his sword into the glacier, surrounded by the power of a god that hates him, he realizes.

Memories are supposed to be erased when a man is reborn.

He hits the water.

And locks the memories far, far away.

-0-

It is in Tartarus that he can deny it no longer.

Because of course it is. Of course the pit of monsters drags ancient, long-buried memories to the surface.

You have failed before, the river whispers in his mind when he hits the water. You killed them all, and you will kill them all again.

Annabeth drags him out of the water and he grits his teeth, ignoring the whispers. That’s all he’s ever been good at, hasn’t it? Pushing everything deep down, ignoring the obvious signs of wrongness within him.

Annabeth gives him a look. Percy attempts to school his features into something less angry. He can ignore it. He can pretend that he is just a normal demigod, and there is nothing wrong with the way fate created him.

Because normal demigods end up in Tartarus. Of course.

He should have known it was a fruitless effort.

Akhlys is his undoing.

It’s so easy to hurt her. Poison is just water, in the end. Tears too. And all the other liquid in the body of the goddess before him. She screams, choking, and it is like music in the wide caverns of hell. A smile of some kind—a sneer, a growl?—grows on his face. He could tear her apart from the inside, watch the ichor in her veins spill on the sands of the pit. This power is like nothing else he has ever held.

Blood dribbles from her mouth. Percy grins.

A hand on his shoulder, yanking.

Percy drops his outstretched hand with a gasp as Annabeth’s gray eyes swim into his vision. They are wide, panicked. Pleading. “Stop,” she chokes.

Percy’s head swims. Something tugs at the edges of his memory. He can’t speak.

“I know you’re angry.” Annabeth’s voice hitches. “I am too. But, Percy, some things aren’t meant to be controlled.”

Percy looks at his hands. He had—oh gods, he had. And he’d enjoyed it.

His eyes drift to the goddess of misery, brought to her knees by his own hands. Ichor spills from her nose, her mouth, her eyes.

“Monster,” she spits.

And that is it.

It’s funny how important little things can be. The butterfly effect, people call it; killing one bug leads down a path no one would have predicted. Saying hi to someone on the bus, which introduces you to the love of your life. Picking up the penny on the sidewalk, which stops you from crossing the street right as a car runs the red light. Little things, inconsequential things, that change you forever.

In this case, a single word.

It will be funny in hindsight. He will chuckle at the memory of how one moment broke all of the hard work he had done to keep himself together. Because of course it would be that, and not the torture or the fall or any other thing he experienced. Just one, inconsequential word.

But today, it is everything.

He falls to his knees. The glass tears through his skin. Images flash in his mind, of people meant to be forgotten and memories that should’ve been washed away. The world turns upside down, inside out, and he doesn’t know who he is.

Vaguely, he is aware of Annabeth calling his name, but it feels foreign and wrong, like the language isn’t right. The name isn’t right. Because that’s not his name, is it? He is—he is—he doesn’t know who he is.

Memories are supposed to be erased when a man is reborn.

He clutches his head. Maybe he screams, he’s not sure. It’s too much. Too many memories, of a life that isn’t his but is.

And then, all at once, it ends.

The images stop. The flood has slowed to a stream, at least temporarily. He gasps, choking on blood. Had he bit his tongue?

Akhlys is gone, and only Annabeth remains, crouched in front of him with wide eyes. Gods, she’s terrified.

“Percy,” she says, and the name still feels so wrong.

He wipes his mouth, spits red. “I’m okay.”

She cradles his cheek in her hand. “I wasn’t scared of you,” she whispers. “If that’s why—” she swallows. “I could never be scared of you.”

He blinks. Something aching opens in his chest. “I wasn’t… no.” The words don’t feel right on his tongue, like English is suddenly a foreign language. His head hurts. “I know.” And he does know, doesn’t he? She’s Annabeth.

“I was scared you’d lose yourself,” she says.

He closes his eyes. She’s so close.

He can’t tell her. He can’t. And not because he doesn’t trust her, but because he doesn’t understand it himself. Maybe it’s just Tartarus. Maybe it will all go away when this is done. But he can’t tell her, not yet. This isn’t how rebirth works. He has no idea how to explain it.

“Thanks for pulling me back,” he manages to choke out, forcing English into his mouth.

“Always,” she whispers, running a thumb over his cheek. “Always.”

-0-

Percy Jackson is a 17-year-old demigod son of Poseidon. He has a girlfriend named Annabeth, the daughter of Athena. They are on a quest to stop the rising of Gaea, along with five other demigods.

But he is also older, wiser, and someone he always remembered deep down. He is a captain without a crew, a husband without a wife, a father without a son.

And as he treks through Tartarus, the love of his short demigod life clinging to him, he knows.

He is Odysseus, king of Ithaca.

And he is so, so fucked.

Chapter Text

He wakes to a hand on his shoulder.

His head spins. His body is on fire. He feels like something grabbed his organs and turned him inside out.

“-cy,” someone says through layers of cotton. He tries to blink open his eyes, but it hurts.

The hand shakes him gently. “-ake up.” The voice is unclear, and hard to decipher. He can’t quite make out consonants.

Something swims into his mind’s eye. A memory? Something… something important. Something he’s supposed to be watching.

“The bag?” He croaks.

“What?” Says the voice, clearer now.

Finally, he manages to open his eyes and, oh right, he’s in the House of Hades. He’s not on a ship in the middle of the ocean, awake for nine days.

Annabeth’s face swims into focus. She looks haggard, blonde curls limp and stringy, eyes ringed with dark circles. She has a cut on the side of her forehead, and blood dribbles from the corner of her mouth.

She deflates when they make eye contact. “You’re okay.”

He nods, coughs, and spits blood.

She presses a square of ambrosia into his hand. “Eat.”

He obliges, shoving the square into his mouth. It still tastes like his mom’s blue chocolate chip cookies, but there’s an undercurrent of something else now. Olive oil, he thinks? It sounds gross, but it’s weirdly comforting.

He tries not to consider the implications of that change.

Annabeth helps him to his feet. They lean on each other for support.

That’s when the others notice them. Leo blinks, then his face splits into a wide grin. “Guys!”

Jason yanks Percy into a hug, earning a surprised grunt from him. Piper does the same to Annabeth, though she’s much gentler.

Jason braces Percy’s shoulder and examines him, eyes flicking up and down. “You look…” He winces.

“You can say like shit,” Percy offers.

Jason barks a laugh and hugs him again. Frank joins in, wrapping his large arms around them both. “Thank the gods,” Frank whispers. “Thank all of the gods.”

Percy pulls back, forcing down the lump in his throat. He has reunited with his friends after walking through hell, a privilege he was not afforded in a previous life. It hits extra sharp now, deep in his chest, as he remembers people long dead. He never even got to say goodbye.

He shakes his head. He is Percy Jackson. He cannot afford to mix up memories.

Piper is crying as she wipes the blood from Annabeth’s chin. “He used your voices,” she explains. “Tore up your throat, I think.”

Annabeth nods, then takes the cloth from Piper’s shaking hands to finish cleaning up.

Before he can say anything, Percy is slammed with a face full of curly hair. He splutters, wrapping his arms around Hazel’s lithe form as she bursts into tears.

“Gods, you’re alive!” She weeps. “Don’t you ever do that again!”

Percy huffs a laugh, but he feels the pinpricks of tears behind his eyes. He blinks them away. “I’ll do my best.” He blames the strange accent in his voice on the creature that used his vocal chords.

Tearful reunions done, they flee the House of Hades, leaving behind the lingering scent of death. And not a moment too soon, as the whole building starts to collapse around them.

Aboard the Argo II, plans move too quickly for anyone to notice something strange about Percy. And if they did, it could easily be blamed on Tartarus.

He reminds himself of that, even as Nico flashes him strange looks, as if he is a particularly difficult puzzle to solve. Percy tries to give him space, and it’s not because he is afraid that the son of Hades will realize what has happened to him. No sir, definitely not.

And if he breathes a little easier once Nico and Reyna have departed with the statue, then who can blame him? It’s a huge task taken care of. It’s not because he’s afraid of them figuring it out.

And if he decides to rest early, it’s because of his exhaustion from Tartarus. Not because he’s trying to avoid the others.

Right?

...

...

Oh, who is he kidding. Odysseus isn’t an idiot, and neither is Percy.

He’s terrified.

-0-

Percy counts himself lucky that trauma gives him the perfect excuse for being quiet.

Granted, it isn’t a made-up one. The burning air of Tartarus still seems to cling to his skin, and he finds himself jumping at shadows like a scared child. Annabeth is much the same, her eyes constantly flicking around, scanning for signs of danger.

He lets out a sigh through his nose and winces. His sinuses still feel like he’d been at high altitude for days. What he’d give for some saline spray.

Two days. They’d been out of the pit for two days. For the last moments of their journey, he had utilized every bit of his 17 years of hiding memories to keep from panicking, and that still lingers, but the lock is dissolving. Fast. His throat burns, his eyes sting, his joints ache like he is so much older than he is.

Percy runs a hand down his face. Next to him, Annabeth is curled up asleep, though fitfully. She occasionally twitches, a look of pain on her face, until Percy runs his fingers through her blonde curls. They haven’t been apart since stepping out of the pit, but he doesn’t know how much longer he can keep himself together around her. After all the things, after what he had done down there, after Bob—

Tell me you did not just sacrifice six men!

Percy squeezes his eyes shut and breathes. In, out, in, out, until the memory forces itself back into the chest in his mind. Bob had chosen his fate, and he wasn’t dead, he would regenerate. It was a noble sacrifice.

He tells himself that until he can breathe evenly again.

Annabeth stirs, a soft whimper escaping her lips. He combs through her curls, making soft soothing noises.

She blinks open her eyes, clouded with sleep. “Percy?”

He smiles. “I’m here love.” And if his voice sounds a bit different, it is easy to blame on the burning air of Tartarus.

She curls into his side and breathes out. With one careful hand, she traces the small of his back, where his mortal spot once was. He leans into her touch, letting the sensitivity of it ground him. “We’re out,” she whispers. “We’re alive.”

He hums. “We’re out and we’re alive.”

But he did not come out the same. Neither of them had, really, but he is… more different. He’d left pieces of himself behind in the pit—morality, for one—and replaced them with other things. With memories. With parts of himself he’d somehow kept locked away for nearly two decades.

Percy huffs a laugh, which comes out more strangled than he intended. Annabeth fixes him with a quizzical look, but already sleep is pulling at her, and after a few moments she closes her eyes again.

The parts of him that are Odysseus—because he feels like two different people trapped in one teenaged body—clang against each other as he leans down to press a kiss to her forehead. That’s his Annabeth, his love, but there is guilt in one half of him, like he is betraying something.

He grits his teeth. There is a reason memories are wiped when someone chooses rebirth.

How he managed to keep himself together all these years, Percy has no idea. If he truly thinks about it, he has known who he was for a long time. Since the Sea of Monsters, really. But denial is a strong force, especially in a stubborn thirteen-year-old. And Od— Percy is nothing if not stubborn.

He scrunches up his face. Gods, he’s mixing up his own name. How long until he slips up out loud?

It’s weird. He still feels like Percy Jackson, with all of his sarcasm and charm (thank you very much). He is still very much a teenager. Granted, a battle-hardened one, but a teenager nonetheless. He still fidgets with the hems of his clothing, ADHD causing his brain to run in every direction. He doesn’t remember having ADHD before.

But he remembers being Odysseus like it was yesterday. And, really, those memories are fresh in his mind like they did happen yesterday, because they only just came rushing back. It’s disconcerting, jarring, he feels off kilter. He’s had his memories wiped before, for the gods' sakes! But last time, the return of his memories was a slow trickle, filling in the holes left behind. Now there is a massive flood pouring into an already-full reservoir.

So, at least for now, he is two people fighting to figure out what the hell is happening. At least he hasn’t had some massive personality shift, and as long as he doesn’t focus too hard on the parts of him that are Odysseus, he can keep up the act. It isn’t helping that he now has a tendency to slip into Ancient Greek, though.

He glances at Annabeth again, and warmth blooms in his chest.

He’s going to tell her, he just has to figure out how. Because if anyone will know how to fix the disconnect in his mind, it’s her. His Wise Girl, the love of his life (this life, part of him snaps. He bats the thought away).

She isn’t scared of him. She said as much in Tartarus. She’s only scared he’ll lose himself.

He just has to hope that this doesn’t qualify as losing himself.

-0-

He makes it a week before anyone notices something is off about him, beyond the trauma of Tartarus.

It’s Piper, of all people.

She fixes him with a quizzical look one day aboard the Argo II, her multi-colored eyes shining. It is sunset, and the sea reflects it, setting the whole ship aglow. Part of him longs to dive into the warm water. Another part recoils.

“You hold yourself different,” she says, blunt but not rude.

He locks up for a moment before allowing a chuckle, forcing his limbs to relax. “I’m on edge.”

She shakes her head. “No.”

He frowns.

“It’s not that. I know you are. Annabeth too.” She shakes her head again. “It’s… the pit changed you.” She frowns. “Sorry, that was rude.”

He huffs a laugh. “It wasn’t rude.”

She manages a breathy laugh, too. “You just aren’t as… young. Your eyes look older.” She nods to his shoulders. “Like a general.”

He raises one brow, forcing himself to remain calm. “Older?”

She shoves his shoulder. “You know what I mean. Time moves different down there.” She purses her lips.

He hums, giving her a moment to collect her thoughts. There’s no way she’s guessed it, but if she has, really, what’s the harm? It’s not like she would reject him over it. Probably. That would be weird. What he’s really worried about is the gods finding out. Many of them are already worried about him being too powerful.

“How long was it, really?”

He shrugs. “We fell for days. The rest, I’m not sure. Too long.”

“Longer than we were up here,” she says.

“Something like that.”

She nods like she understands.

“Just take care of yourself, Percy,” she says after a few moments of silence. “Don’t let Tartarus consume you.”

He closes his eyes. He feels like it already has. He left so much behind and came out with so much changed, but she doesn’t know that. She’s just a good friend, and a hyper-observant daughter of Aphrodite that notices the subtle changes in her friends’ appearances.

“Thank you, really,” he says when she starts to shuffle nervously. “I know you’re worried. We’re doing our best, me and Annabeth.”

She gives him a sad sort of smile and shuffles away, waving at Leo as she does.

Leo flashes him a smile.

Percy does his best to return it. He can fake it. He can look normal.

Easy.

-0-

It does not stay that easy for long.

“Ithaca,” Piper says as she sets her knife on the table.

Percy nearly chokes on a mouthful of sandwich.

Annabeth pats him on the back. “What about Ithaca?”

“Had a vision,” Piper shrugs. She leans over, snatching a piece of fruit off Jason’s plate. He frowns but doesn’t protest. “Lots of angry spirits gathering in the old palace ruins. I’m betting some of them have information.”

Jason nods. “So we go there and gather said information.”

“Information about what, though?” Leo butts in. He has one foot propped up on the table, ankles crossed, as he fiddles with some contraption in his lap.

“They were talking about the Acropolis. Plans and stuff,” Piper answers. She scoots into a chair. “I’m betting they know where all of Ga—the Earth Mother’s guards are posted, and the traps she set for us.”

Percy still hasn’t recovered from his coughing fit. He grapples for his water, nearly managing to knock it over. Annabeth grabs it for him, and he flashes her a grateful look as he chugs it down.

The coughing blissfully subsides.

Hazel purses her lips. She taps two fingers on the table in a rhythmic pattern. “Any idea who the spirits are?”

“Penelope’s suitors.”

Percy promptly begins choking again.

Annabeth thumps him on the back, concern written on her face.

“You okay Percy?” Frank asks, frowning.

Percy can’t respond, too busy trying to breathe past the panic of oh gods, oh gods, the suitors.

“It’s the air I think. From the pit,” Annabeth says. “I feel like I can’t get a full breath in since we got out.”

Percy manages a nod. Good excuse, makes sense. Let them believe that, rather than Percy remembering that he is the reincarnation of Odysseus of fucking Ithaca and now has to see the men he killed. Again.

Wonderful.

Once his coughing quiets, Hazel says, “I say we set up a small team, three of us. I can disguise whoever goes to blend in with the group. Get the information and leave quickly. Hopefully no fighting.” She scowls. “If I remember the myths correctly, the suitors were ruthless.”

Percy matches her scowl.

“I’ll go,” Jason says. “A lot of them were soldiers, right? I feel like I could blend in.”

“Not soldiers,” Percy finds himself saying before he can stop himself. “Most were too young to go to Troy, and Ithaca barely faced attack during those years. Guards in name, at most.”

Jason frowns. “Huh.” He stares at Percy for a moment but recovers himself with a shake of his head. “Well, I’ll still go.”

“Me as well,” Piper chimes in. “Charmspeak would be useful.”

Jason nods. “Perfect, then we just need a strategist.” He smiles toward Annabeth. “Care to join?”

A bolt of white-hot fear shoots through Percy.

“I’m in,” Annabeth says before Percy can say anything. He whips his head toward her, eyes wide.

Hazel says, “alright, that’s three, so I’ll—”

“I’m going,” Percy interrupts.

All heads turn to him. He squares his shoulders.

“Nah man, we need you on the ship to watch for threats from the sea,” Leo says. He is staring at a map. Where he got it, Percy has no idea. He places one finger on the island, tracing around the coast. “The palace is up high, so they’ll see the ship if we stay airborne. We’ll have to dock.”

Percy stands and makes his way around the table to peer at the map. He frowns. “There’s a cove, here. Used to be a shrine to Poseidon. I could probably use it as a barrier, keep the ship hidden from sea threats. There’s an opening above, big enough for the ship to fit through if you have to go up.” He nods to himself, the strategy already slipping into place. “Yes, this will work. I’ll take the group by sea around to the palace. No one will notice.”

The table had gone silent. Percy looks up to find the others staring at him. “What?”

“Nothing, just…” Jason trails off. “I don’t remember any of that from the myth.”

Percy flounders. Right, they wouldn’t know about the cove. He probably sounds like he’s making things up. “I made it a point to learn where my dad’s shrines were.” He shrugs, feigning nonchalance. “He seemed pretty bitter about this one.”

Annabeth, bless her, snorts. “He would be.”

Percy’s shoulders sag with relief.

“It’s a good plan,” Piper says. “But how will the ship see if something goes wrong?”

“I’ll keep an eye on the shrine,” Percy says, tapping his temple. “If something happens, I’ll hit Leo with a wave.”

“Hey!”

“Kidding,” Percy chuckles.

“I’ve got some flares,” Leo says. “I’ve juiced ‘em up. You light one up, even out of sight, it’ll light its counterpart on the ship.”

Piper nods. “That works.”

Jason rattles off the plan one more time, ironing out disguise details with Hazel. Percy keeps one ear on them as he focuses on calming down his racing heartbeat.

The suitors won’t know. Can’t know. He is a different man now, unrecognizable from the one who took their lives. They are angry spirits, but not any worse than other angry spirits he had dealt with. So why does his heart beat erratically, and why do his palms feel sweaty? He isn’t some young kid preparing for his first battle; he has lived two lives as a master swordsman now. He will be fine.

He tells himself that as the plans are finished.

“Alright,” Percy says when the others are done discussing, doing his damndest to keep his voice steady. “Let’s go talk to some suitors.”

Chapter Text

The air is sweltering, but Percy finds he doesn’t mind it.

It beats down, thick and heavy on the back of his neck, wicking away the last of the sea water and replacing it with sweat. He sits perched at the top of a hill, beneath the shade of some kind of broadleaf tree that does little to stop the heat. The hill overlooks the ruins, where Jason, Annabeth, and Piper are currently infiltrating.

His job is simple: watch until something goes wrong, then get involved. If nothing goes wrong, then he just watches. Easy as that.

He swipes a hand across his forehead. As oppressive as the temperature is, it feels familiar. The Mediterranean air, with its salt-spray wind, is home both as a son of Poseidon and a native of the island.

Well, native in a past life, but semantics.

He can’t make out many details from his vantage point, but that’s a good thing. The less he can recognize these ghosts, the less angry he’ll get. At least, that’s his hope. He has to grind his knuckles into the ground to keep himself from launching off the hill and killing the suitors himself.

But that would be a stupid idea. Because if the suitors figure out the whole botched reincarnation thing, then Gaea will know, then the gods will know, and he’ll have a whole different problem on his hands. Some deep-seated part of himself understands that whatever is happening to him, it’s not supposed to be that way, and not one higher power will be pleased with it.

Doesn’t stop him from grinding his teeth together every time Annabeth has to pour a drink for one of those bastards.

He fingers the bow, resting in his right hand, ready to be nocked at a moments’ notice. It is a familiar weight, as is the quiver on his back. In this life, he was never good at archery, but now… well, now is a different story.

Annabeth had fixed him with a quizzical look when he slung the bow across his back. “Since when do you that?”

He had shrugged, feigning nonchalance. “These guys were killed by an archer. Can’t hurt to have one on hand. You know, for luck.”

 “Make sure you don’t shoot one of us instead,” Jason had snorted.

“No promises.”

He knows, of course, that he won’t miss his shot.

He’s not entirely sure why he came on this mission. To protect Annabeth, of course, because the idea of letting her around these monsters fills him with a sick sort of dread. She can handle herself, but he can’t leave her alone. He can’t condemn another love to deal with these monsters.

But he also can’t get too close, out of fear of being recognized. And that’s the crux of the issue, because he wants to protect her, but he has to sit back and watch as she mingles among them.

He pushes Odysseus further down as he watches a suitor try to cop a feel on Annabeth. The other half of him—still not integrated, still feeling like a different person—roars with anger. He wants to tear them apart limb from limb, draw out their deaths, make them bleed all over again.

He cannot afford to let anything slip. He must be Percy Jackson.

Something flickers in the distance, and Percy frowns. Jason is still seated, cloaked in his disguise, but the gathering has grown tense. There is someone there, wearing bright purple, and he is talking, but Percy can’t make out his words.

There is something—no, someone—forming in the center of the room. Another spirit? That wouldn’t be much of an issue, except Jason is standing, and his disguise is flickering, and Piper and Annabeth are sharing alarmed looks.

Percy doesn’t think. He just moves.

Because that ghost in the center is Beryl Grace, and they are about to be in so much trouble.

-0-

Annabeth doesn’t know what to do, which she is loathe to admit, but she truly doesn’t. Jason is transfixed by the ghost of his mother—his mother. Gods above. Why is she here?

“Don’t listen to her!” Piper shouts.

Jason’s voice trembles as he tries to speak to his mother, but she continues talking. Pleading. Michael Varus’s eyes flicker with satisfaction.

Piper does her best to quell the crowd of ghosts with her charmspeak while Annabeth scans the ruins. They’re woefully outnumbered, but if she can get them to a good vantage point, they can last until the Argo II arrives to blast the shit out of the spirits.

“She’s doing something to you, Jason! She isn’t real!” Piper tries again, but there’s no charmspeak in her voice.

There! A ledge, ruins superimposed over with the visage of the old castle, but still stable enough to hold them. Jason could get them up to it. As long as he can snap out of whatever it is the ghost is doing to him.

“You’re a mania,” Jason whispers. “A spirit of insanity.”

Annabeth’s heart shatters. She thinks of May Castellan, driven mad by the Oracle. Her fate was part of what drove Luke to his anger against the gods. Would this do the same to Jason? Was seeing his mother, reduced to this, enough to turn him to Gaea’s side out of desperation to save what remains of her?

Annabeth is about ready to jump in with her sword when an arrow whizzes by, slicing Beryl Grace across the cheek.

She roars, turning toward the source of the arrow, and the spell on Jason breaks. He makes the sign of warding off evil—three fingers thrust out from his heart—and she disappears. Annabeth breaths a sigh of relief; she should have known better than to doubt the son of Jupiter.

Annabeth whirls to face whoever fired and finds Percy, standing atop the ruins, bow in hand. Against the backdrop of the blue sky, the visage of the castle around him, he looks the spitting image of the Greek heroes of long ago.

His eyes glimmer as he nocks another arrow. “Alright, who dies next?”

There is a breath.

Someone moves.

It happens too fast for her to realize.

Michael Varus thrusts a sword through Jason’s midsection.

He pulls it back, a sick glimmer of red following in its wake. Piper screams.

“This one will do,” the ghost says as Jason stares at his stomach. He gives Percy a wicked look. “Who should I kill next, little demigod?”

There is an arrow through his neck before anyone else can move. The ghost has all of one second to react before he disappears back to the Underworld.

Annabeth stares at her boyfriend. She hadn’t even seen him move his hand to fire.

“Get Jason out of here!” Percy roars to Piper.

And then the ghosts are upon them.

-0-

The fight is dirty, a whirlwind of screams and dirt and spirits against the backdrop of a castle that makes his heart want to burst. But he can’t focus on that. Can only focus on the killing, the ghosts, protecting those he loves. He discarded the bow in favor of Riptide, and the sword sings in his hands, a deadly arc of bronze.

He doesn’t know if Jason managed to escape, or if Piper went with him. He didn’t stay up there long enough to see. The suitors had encircled Annabeth, and all he could see was her.

He doesn’t know how long he fights; he just keeps going. He ignores the familiar sights and sounds. He ignores it all except the swing of his sword and his desperate need to get to Annabeth.

He cuts down spirit after spirit. Some are familiar, many are not. They are ghosts of all different times and places, gathered here for their sick revelry. The suitors lead them, but most are not the men he knew.

He keeps moving. Keeps killing.

And then Annabeth is in front of him, holding her own with her sword in hand, blonde hair swinging in tandem with her swipes. She is beautiful. He is almost struck dumb by the sight of her, but he recovers himself just in time to block an attack from another ghost.

He finds himself back to back with her. “How you holding up, Wise Girl?”

“Well enough,” she huffs. A ghost screams as she strikes it down. “You?”

“Well enough,” he echoes.

They fight like that, back-to-back, covering each other like they once did in Manhattan. They are one unit, a deadly whirl of blades. He feels like he could fight better with no one else.

He almost thinks they’re going to get out of here with no problems.

He should have known that was too good to be true.

“Stop,” a voice rings out, clear as day.

Percy’s hand stills. He knows that voice.

The ghosts part, making way for someone Percy had never wanted to see again. Everything narrows to a point. The world freezes, even the air stills. There is no sound beyond the roaring in his ears.

Even with the gray skin, the sunken eyes, he would know this creature anywhere.

“Hello, old king,” the ghoul Antinous says. He flashes a smile full of rotted teeth. “It has been a long, long time.”

Chapter Text

There are a few things a man can do when confronted with a situation he does not want to find himself in. They are as follows:

One: he can deny knowing anything, play dumb, and pray that the other party buys it.

Two: he can run away, often with some sort of witty catchphrase thrown over his shoulder. For emphasis.

Three: he can kill the other party (the bad option).

Four: he can confront it head on, like a noble man who values honor.

Odysseus would have chosen the fourth at some point in his life, the first at others, and the third more than he’d like to admit.

Percy Jackson, of course, is not Odysseus. His option of choice is often the second, with varying degrees of success. However, presently, he has found himself with a castle wall to his back and an army of ghosts surrounding him. This rules out running away.

So, being Percy Jackson, he does not do any of these things.

Instead, he says, “what?”

Smooth one, Jackson. Very smooth.

Antinous frowns. He tilts his head and inhales, long and slow. “I would recognize you anywhere, even across lives.”

Percy keeps Riptide extended, his other hand creeping out to guard Annabeth. She clutches her sword, eyes hard as steel.

Antinous continues, “you look different, old king.” His sunken eyes rove up and down Percy’s form. “Weaker.”

Percy bristles. “Far from it.”

“I recognize that fire, boy.” The ghoul spits the word as an insult. “It will feel good to snuff it out.”

Percy raises Riptide, keeping the tip carefully pointed where Antinous’s heart should be. If he still has one. The bastard. “Boy, man, it does not matter.” His grip tightens. “I will kill you.”

Another voice speaks, “Antinous, I do not recognize him.” Eurymachus. He had crept forward. Percy feels his lips curl back from his teeth.

Antinous laughs, grating and wrong. It sounds as rotten as he looks. “I barely did myself. But look into his eyes, and you will see.”

Eurymachus peers at him, and something akin to fear flashes across his face. Percy, no, Odysseus, cannot help his grin. He wants these men to fear him, like they once were too stupid to do.

“It cannot be,” Eurymachus whispers.

“Percy,” Annabeth finally speaks. She taps once against his mortal spot, and it grounds him. Some of the anger bubbling inside him calms. He hadn’t realized how sharp his grin was.

He flashes her a glance. She looks confused, uncertain even, but she doesn’t show fear. He knows that she’ll know by the end of the day. If it isn’t spoken plainly now, she’s smart enough to figure it out on her own. That’s his Wise Girl. Already, he can see the wheels turning in her head.

There is no use trying to play dumb, and there is no ability to run away.

There really, truly, is only one option left.

Percy wills strength into his body. Finally, after days, weeks, years of hiding, he lets Odysseus through.

Something shifts within him, clicks into place. He remembers these men, this fight, how their blood felt on him. It is not a happy memory, but it is a good one. A smile creeps onto his face. “I will kill you,” he says again. “I will kill you, over and over, in every life, until you come back no more.”

Next to him, he feels Annabeth ready herself.

Antinous laughs. “In that body?”

“You forget, Antinous, that I killed you as a man last time,” he says, no more than a whisper. The sea draws back. The world takes a breath.

Antinous cocks his head.

Percy raises Riptide. “I am no longer just a man.”

The sea explodes.

As one, finally, finally, Percy launches himself at Antinous. The ghoul barely has time to dodge, and Riptide scrapes his side. Antinous howls with pain and whirls, grasping for Percy with clawed fingernails.

Percy is faster. He dodges to the left and pulls the sea to him. Spirits and ghouls scream as they are swept up in the wave. Antinous doesn’t seem to notice, instead choosing to leap for Percy again.

In the split second it took for him to sweep away the other spirits, Antinous managed to take him to the ground. Percy curses as his head smacks against stone. He rolls right, dodging a blow that would have connected with his heart.

He springs up, facing Antinous’s sword. He didn’t have that before. To the right, Eurymachus is also armed, facing off against Annabeth. She swings her drakon-bone sword and nearly chops his legs off.

“You are not so quick to kill this time,” Antinous spits. “Seems you are weaker.”

“Your army is dead,” Percy responds.

Antinous’s eyes widen, and he takes a fraction of a second to check the decimated ruins. Percy uses it, lunging. He clips the ghoul in the arm.

The ghoul is fast though. Much faster than he ever was when he was alive. He backhands Percy, sending him spinning to the ground. Riptide flies from his hands.

Antinous points his sword at Percy’s throat. “You will make a fitting sacrifice for the Earth Mother.”

Percy spits at him. He kicks up, colliding with Antinous’s sword arm. The ghoul is so caught off guard that he stumbles back. Percy leaps into a run, grabbing Riptide just in time to block another strike. Their swords clang together, the harsh sound echoing through the great hall.

“You fight differently,” Antinous observes.

“You fight the same,” Percy spits back. He wills water to wrap around his fist and slams it into Antinous’s gut. The ghoul goes flying. He collides with the wall and his sword flies out of his hand.

Across the hall, Eurymachus howls as Annabeth runs him through. He disappears, leaving her panting but very much alive. She gives him a single nod that he returns.

He faces Antinous again. The ghoul is back on his feet, but his sword is across the hall.

Percy doesn’t give him time to react. He lunges, aiming to kill, but Antinous is faster. He leaps to the left and takes off running. Percy barely has the chance to course-correct before the ghoul has Annabeth in his grasp. Gods, how is he so fast?

“You are not the only one who has powers now, old king,” Antinous snarls. Annabeth struggles in his grasp, kicking and cursing, but he puts a knife to her throat.

Percy’s heart stops. “Let her go.”

“I don’t think I will,” Antinous says. He snakes his dagger up Annabeth’s throat, leaving a thin trail of blood. She squirms. “I quite like this one.” Beneath her feet, the very earth starts to move. It creeps up her legs, encasing her in stone.

Annabeth’s eyes are wild as she tries to pull away. Antinous doesn’t seem to mind as his hand caresses her face. Percy sees red.

“I think I’ll finally get my chance to—”

Antinous freezes.

The knife clatters to the ground.

Percy has one hand outstretched. He twists, and a pained gasp chokes it way from Antinous’s rotten throat.

“Annabeth,” Percy says. “Come here.”

She doesn’t think twice. With Antinous frozen, she manages to clamber out of his grasp, the solidified earth at her feet crumbling away into dust. She sprints to his side.

Percy calls to the sea again, keeping his hold on Antinous. And he knows, he knows, this will draw attention to him. He knows he is using powers he barely understands. A part of him twinges with fear, but the rest of him buries it deep down.

He called himself a monster, long ago. His wife had argued otherwise, but he always knew.

And now, in this cursed life, he is reborn from the father of monsters.

What a poetic twist of fate.

Percy closes his fist, and Antinous collapses to his knees. He calls to the sea, willing it to swirl around the ghoul’s body. He stalks forward, a sneer on his face. “You failed once,” Percy snarls. He clenches his fist again, and Antinous howls in pain. “You have failed again.”

“What are you?” Antinous chokes out.

“What you made me,” Percy—Odysseus—says. And with that, he swings Riptide, severing Antinous’s head from his body.

The palace falls silent. The visage of his old home melts away, leaving only ruins and golden monster dust.

He feels far away. He can’t even hear the sea past the roaring in his ears. He stood here once, long ago, amongst the bodies of disgusting men. There was blood and gore, and screaming, but he felt the same as he does now. Utter silence inside, like his emotions have disappeared.

A hand on his shoulder.

Odysseus whirls. “Τι?”*

Annabeth stares at him, a mixture of sorrow and confusion in her gaze.

He doesn’t—something is wrong. Those eyes, so familiar, like someone he once knew, and he feels so far away. That is Annabeth, part of him says, but the other begs to know where his wife is, why this visage of Athena stands before him, why his home is in ruins.

He stumbles back, hands going to his hair. His body feels wrongwrongwrong, too tall and too lean. There should be blood on his hands, all around the palace, but instead the place is covered in dust and ash.

Odyss—Per—whoever he is shakes like a leaf in the wind. He sinks to his knees, hands still in his hair, eyes squeezed shut.

Then there is a hand on his shoulder, and another, and he doesn’t even have the strength to pull back.

A voice is saying something, and it sounds like nonsense to his ears, but the voice is familiar and safe and he latches onto that because it is all he can do. He leans forward, and the speaker pulls him close, whispering again and again in that nonsense language until his breathing slows and his shaking stops.

He looks up to meet those same grey eyes. “Agápi mou?”**

Annabeth blinks. “Percy?”

Something clicks, and he remembers who and where he is. He lets out a breath. “Oh gods.”

Annabeth’s lip trembles, and she throws herself at him. Percy grabs hold of her, gripping the fabric of her shirt. He doesn’t cry—can’t bring himself too—but he starts shaking again.

Gods, he had nearly lost himself there. Even when Juno took his memories, he didn’t feel that disoriented.

Annabeth pulls back and puts a hand to his cheek, studying him. If possible, her eyes fill with even more sorrow. “You’re him, aren’t you?” Her gaze flicks to the ruins.

Percy closes his eyes. “Yes.”

“Gods,” she breathes. “Gods above.”

“I know,” he whispers.

“You remember your past life,” she says. Her voice trembles.

“All of it,” he replies.

She falls silent. Percy braces himself; he knew this was a possibility if she discovered the truth. He is not the Percy she fell in love with. He is a different man now, with two lifetimes of memories in his brain. And… Odysseus was not a good man.

He takes a breath. “I can—”

Her lips collide with his. He lets out a muffled gasp before sinking into the kiss. Her hands thread through his hair, pulling him as close as possible. He matches her energy, tugging her in with a hand around her waist.

All too soon, she breaks the kiss, staring up at him with those wonderful, fantastic, perfect eyes. “You were thinking I was going to reject you.” It isn’t a question.

He nods.

“Seaweed Brain,” she says, then kisses him again.

Percy could stay like this forever, wrapped up in Annabeth’s embrace, but a cough interrupts him. He breaks away from Annabeth, turning to glare at the newcomer.

Juno, the goddess that started all of this, stands in the ruins of his old home. “Well,” she says with a smile. “Isn’t this touching?”

-0-

When Juno finally departs, leaving them with more information than they expected, Percy braces himself for the inevitable questions from his all-too-curious girlfriend.

Apparently, their love, in proximity to the “marriage bed of Odysseus and Penelope,” had summoned Juno and given her enough wherewithal to actually help them. He hadn’t missed the look Annabeth gave him when Juno brought up the marriage bed.

Annabeth reaches out and squeezes his hand. She fixes him with those stormy eyes, already calculating the best way to approach all of this. He loves that about her.

She opens her mouth, closes it, then opens it again. “Percy?”

He nods. “Yes.”

She bites her lip. “…Odysseus?”

Percy grimaces as he feels the side of him that is Odysseus make a reappearance. “Yes.” It comes out shorter than he means it.

“Is it…” she works her bottom lip. “What does it feel like?”

He contemplates. Truth be told? He has no idea. One minute, he feels no different than he had before Tartarus, and the next he can’t even remember his own name. If only it could be easy.

He sighs when Annabeth starts to look worried. He squeezes her hand for reassurance. “I don’t know how to explain.”

She nods like it makes sense. “I’ll listen to whatever you say.”

He smiles at her. That’s his Annabeth. Gods, how did he end up with amazing women in two different lives? He is incredibly lucky.

“It’s like…” he thinks for a moment. “I feel like two different people. Sometimes Percy, sometimes Odysseus. And other times, they get mixed together, and I can’t tell where one ends and the other begins.” He shakes his head. “The memories don’t… they aren’t integrated.”

“Like the Roman-Greek schism with the gods,” she says.

Percy blinks. He hadn’t even thought of that. “Um, yeah, actually. Exactly like that.”

Annabeth smiles, and it is so beautiful that it takes his breath away. He smiles back, a little dopily, but he doesn’t care.

“So if I talk to you like I always do,” Annabeth begins.

“Then I feel more like Percy.”

She nods. “And if I bring up Odysseus.”

Yep, there it is. He gives a curt nod.

Annabeth reaches up and runs a thumb across his cheekbone. He leans into it, pushing Odysseus much further down, and closes his eyes. “I’ll be your Percy as much as I can. I promise.”

She scoffs. Percy frowns and cracks open an eye.

“I don’t care who you are. I don’t care if you remember nothing at all.” She pokes him in the chest. “You’re mine, no matter what.”

Percy’s heart melts.

“I was prepared for that when Jason showed up without his memories,” she continues. “Didn’t care if you had no memories, or all new ones, or what. I’d love you all the same.”

“Gods,” he breathes. “What did I ever do to deserve you?”

She grins. “You were just you.”

He sweeps her into his arms. They’re both covered in dust and blood and dirt, but he doesn’t care as he presses another kiss to her lips. She tastes like salt and iron, but it is home all the same.

Something inside him seems to mend. The other side of him feels… content.

Percy just holds Annabeth tighter. He never wants to let her go.

Chapter Text

They don’t have a lot of time to discuss the incident in Ithaca in the following days. What with traveling to Olympia, capturing Nike, and fighting for their lives (again), Percy decides that his past life is the least of their worries.

Besides, he feels a little more settled than he did after Tartarus. He has less “memory attacks,” as he’s started calling them, and he is slipping into Ancient Greek less and less. A win for him!

Annabeth, the amazing woman she is, takes everything in stride. She treats him the same, and grounds him whenever he starts to slip. She rarely pushes him to tell the others, either, which he is grateful for. He’ll tell them eventually, but, well…

Percy’s eyes flick across the dining table to one son of Hephaestus, tinkering with another gadget.

Leo will not take it very well.

Percy lets out a sigh. Calypso, still on that damned island. It’s a miracle that he hadn’t remembered his past life the moment he woke up on Ogygia. She even began their meeting the same. You talk in your sleep.

Odysseus shudders.

A hand taps the small of his back. Annabeth, sensing him slipping again somehow. He flashes her a grateful look. Gods, she’s incredible.

Percy apologized to Leo already, in that stupid arena trying to fight Nike. The younger boy took it well enough, and Percy doesn’t blame him for the bit of anger he holds. He knows what it’s like to be kept away from the person you love all too well. Makes your temper short, makes you do stupid things.

Thing is, Leo was fine with Percy’s part of the situation. Not Odysseus’s.

Annabeth leads him away from the table with some excuse about getting rest. The sun set hours ago, and some of the others have trickled off into their cabins. Jason has first watch tonight.

Since Tartarus, Percy and Annabeth have shared a cabin. Before that too, most of the time, but now it’s just a constant thing. She pulls him into bed. He settles onto his back, and she throws a leg over his hips. He smiles.

“You looked like you needed to get away,” she says as she curls into his side.

He runs a hand up and down her arm. “You know me too well.”

“Percy?”

“Mostly.”

She hums. It’s their little routine; she asks his name, and he responds with how much he feels like, well, Percy. It’s inconspicuous enough to not draw attention to them, and if it seems a little weird, the others brush it off as Tartarus trauma. He never thought he’d be grateful for Tartarus (he isn’t, but he has to cope somehow).

Annabeth traces his cheekbone with one finger. He leans into her touch.

Nearly a week since Ithaca and he still doesn’t feel right. Yes, he’s more settled and less likely to lose himself, but he still feels like two different people battling for dominance. There are some things that have become integrated—he no longer fights with himself over Annabeth being a betrayal of Penelope, for instance—but most parts of him are still separate. Percy doesn’t like how angry Odysseus can get, and he doesn’t have the spoons to spend hours pouring over maps and battle strategies. He’d rather just brute force things. Odysseus, on the other hand, despises Percy’s lineage and general demigod status, and wants to spend the hours strategizing. It causes some interesting internal arguments.

He never thought he’d feel sympathetic to the gods’ current plight.

“I feel like running strategies for Sparta by you right now is a bad idea, yeah?” Annabeth asks.

Percy grimaces as Odysseus cheers internally. “Depends on who you want to talk to.”

Annabeth sighs. “Love, it’s still you.” She cups his cheek. “Treating yourself like two different people is what’s making this so difficult for you.”

He pouts (kings don’t pout, boy!) and crosses his arms. “What if I want to treat myself like two different people.”

“Then you’re as stubborn as the gods,” Annabeth supplies, which makes both sides of him scowl.

When Percy doesn’t reply, she sighs again. She rolls over to straddle him, peering down at him with those piercing grey eyes. His heartrate quickens. “You,” she jabs him in the chest, “are treating yourself too harshly.”

“I am not,” Percy says.

She quirks an eyebrow.

“Okay,” Percy looks away. She can’t look at him like that, all smart and calculating. It makes him weak in the knees. “Fine. Maybe I am. What about it?”

“You can’t be ashamed of your past life.”

“I absolutely can,” Percy snaps back.

Annabeth just raises her eyebrow higher.

He can feel Odysseus fighting for dominance within him. Gods, this sucks. Apollo must feel so lucky right now, hiding away wherever he is. Artemis too.

“I—he—killed countless people,” he hisses, trying in vain to shove the increasingly vocal half of him that is trying to break out of the locked chest in his mind. “Brutally. And I enjoyed it. Isn’t that what you were scared of in Tartarus?”

She contemplates, then shakes her head. “I only fear you losing yourself.”

“I did lose myself!” Odysseus snaps. “You aren’t understanding that! I left my morals behind in that ocean. I was a monster.”

Annabeth isn’t fazed. “Is that what your wife believed?”

Odysseus freezes. “What?”

“Penelope. Did she think of you as a monster?”

A flash of memory. His wife, standing in their bedroom, twenty years separated but still just as loyal as the day they wed. Even years later, on her death bed, she still proclaimed her love for him. She never saw him as anything more or less than the man he was.

“No,” he chokes out.

“And I have it on good authority,” Annabeth pokes his chest, “that she was an incredibly smart woman.”

Odysseus squeezes his eyes shut. She was. Intelligent, witty, beautiful. He could never love anyone as much as he loved her.

Except Annabeth, the other half of him says.

Odysseus doesn’t want to agree, but…

Intelligent, witty, beautiful, loyal. A woman Penelope would have adored.

Except Annabeth, he repeats.

She leans down to plant a kiss on his lips, and Odysseus retreats. Percy tries to pull her closer, but she dodges his hands and sits back up. He gives her baby seal eyes.

She laughs. “Thought that would help.”

He sighs. “Right as always, Wise Girl.”

She rolls off him and curls back into his side. He wraps one arm around her. “It’s just…” he trails off.

Annabeth waits patiently for him to get his thoughts together.

“I don’t know who I want to be,” he whispers. The admission is easier than he expected it to be. Both halves of him agree. “I don’t want to lose myself.”

Annabeth peers up at him, her grey eyes intense. “Just be you.”

He snorts. “Easier said than done.”

“I know,” she says. “I can’t decide who you want to be for you. Just know that I’m here, no matter what. You aren’t getting away from me.” She presses a kiss to his cheek. “Never again.”

He smiles. Once again, he thanks the universe for giving him Annabeth.

They fall silent as Percy mulls over her words. He sees the logic in them; constantly forcing his memories to separate, keeping Odysseus locked up until he breaks out, is causing more than a few issues. But also, if he lets the memories integrate, he fears what it will change. How quickly will the gods figure it out? How quickly will his father—

He stops that train of thought right there.

No, he can’t. He may never be able to integrate his two lives. He has to accept that.

Percy lets out a long breath. “For now, at least, I want you to keep treating me—us—like two different people.”

Annabeth opens her mouth to protest.

“For now,” Percy interrupts before she can say anything. “If I let too much integrate, I worry my father will figure it out.”

Annabeth reads something in his tone, and her eyes fill with sympathy. “Oh love.”

No, he will not tear up. Not over that bastard.

Percy shoves Odysseus back into the locked chest.

“Okay,” Annabeth says. “But neither of you can get jealous when I kiss the other.”

Percy barks a laugh. “I don’t think that’s possible.”

She shrugs. “You never know. Now go to sleep. You need it.”

He doesn’t protest, curling around her as he slips into a rare dreamless sleep.

-0-

It takes Annabeth longer to fall asleep. She spends a while staring at the ceiling, mulling over their conversation.

While she isn’t experiencing her own schism like the gods or Percy, she does feel a bit at war with herself. The logical side of her brain argues that Percy needs to stop separating himself into two distinct people, because it will prove a strategic disadvantage in the war if he can’t get control of his emotions. The emotional side of herself (the one her mother prefers she ignore) says that Percy needs time to adjust. It can’t be easy to suddenly have a lifetime’s worth of memories shoved into your brain, and he is clearly terrified that the people he loves will reject him for it.

Annabeth is not her mother, so she respects Percy’s decision. And besides, he said this was only for now. Hopefully she can talk some more sense into him later.

She rolls over to study his face. He looks so peaceful, like years of worry have melted off his shoulders. She’s seen the changes, of course; he holds himself with more tension, and his lopsided grins are much rarer now. But a lot of that can also be attributed to Tartarus. Hades knows that Annabeth isn’t the same person after the pit, either.

She should probably feel jealous. Here is her boyfriend, who she spent months searching for, who now has memories of an entire life spent with another woman. Had she been any younger, or any less battle-hardened, she probably would be jealous. But, after everything they’ve been through… she just can’t bring herself to care.

Yes, he has changed. Yes, a part of his heart will always belong to Penelope. Yes, she will have to get to know him all over again (or, well, half of him). But she doesn’t care.

This is the boy who fell into Tartarus for her. Who never forgot her name, even when a goddess tried to snatch it out of his memory. And if anyone expects her to just forget all of that because something went a little bit wrong when he chose rebirth, then they can go to hell.

She tucks herself into his chest, smiling as he shifts in his sleep to make room. This is her Percy, even if it also means she is dating Odysseus (and isn’t that an insane statement?). And when this war is over, she is going to finish high school, drag him kicking and screaming to college, and marry him.

All of him.

Chapter Text

Percy has only one thought at the moment: storms suck.

The waves do their absolute best to destroy the ship as he stands on the deck. He isn’t even able to concentrate on keeping himself dry; his hair sticks to his face and blocks his vision. He flips his head to the side to get it out of his eyes. Behind him, Annabeth and Piper are fighting a losing battle with the rigging.

Stupid, godsforsaken storms.

Percy yanks the boat to the side to avoid another towering wave, accompanied by a flash of green. Great, so it’s definitely caused by something divine. Just his luck. What is with gods doing their best to destroy his boats? Can’t they give him a break?

At the flash of that memory, Percy grimaces and shoves it down. His distraction causes a wave to hit the deck, nearly throwing the others into the sea. He curses and forces his memories back into the stupid chest that is getting harder and harder to close. He can’t afford distractions.

Someone grabs his shoulder, and he turns to see Jason, his blue eyes bright against the dark sky. Percy blinks, then gives him a nod.

Jason says something. Percy can’t hear him, so he says, “something in the water!”

Jason shakes his head.

Percy points over the side of the ship. There’s no way to stop the storm on the deck; they’ll have to face whatever is causing it below. He hopes Jason gets the memo, because he gives a two fingered salute before diving off the side of the ship.

He shoots toward the bottom of the sea, followed closely by Jason. He looks like his own personal tornado.

Like he predicted, there is someone below the ship causing the storm. A woman he doesn’t recognize stands amongst the ruins at the bottom of the sea. Percy frowns. This place looks familiar.

“Atlantis?” Jason mutters as they approach the woman.

“Atlantis isn’t real,” Percy responds automatically. Why does he feel so uneasy? The sight of the ruins makes his stomach turn.

The woman flashes them an otherworldly smile, and Percy’s stomach does another flip. It isn’t a kind smile, and all of this feels so familiar—

He forces the memory down with a snarl. Jason flashes him a look.

“Who are you?” Percy grounds out.

“I am shocked you do not recognize me, brother,” the goddess says. “I am Kymopoleia!”

An inkling of a memory. “Goddess of the violent sea,” he says.

Her eyes light up. “Yes! You do know me.”

Her smile like the one of a cruel god who knows he has won, staring down at his prey.

“Too well,” Odysseus says. Percy grabs hold of the man in his mind and shoves him down.

Jason is still giving him that odd look.

“This is a first! And you, Percy Jackson. The giants all know of you,” she spits.

He frowns.

She whirls on Jason. “Son of Jupiter! The Romans never knew of me! They never feared me properly!”

Jason blinks. “Sorry?”

“The Romans rarely braved the sea,” Percy interjects before Kym can get angrier. “I wouldn’t take it too personally.”

A flash of anger lights her too-bright eyes. Percy jumps in before she can start yelling. “You’re doing a great job with the storm, but do you think you could let our ship go?”

“NO!”

Percy grimaces. Worth a shot. “So your goal is to kill us, I assume?” He sighs. “You should know I’ve faced many gods. Nyx, Akhlys, Ares, P—” he cuts himself off with a harsh swallow. “It didn’t work out well for them.”

Kym, shockingly, laughs. “No, little brother. Someone else has claim on your life!”

Before either of them can react, the sea swirls, and a figure appears on the roof of a nearby ruined building. Percy knows this giant. He has killed him once before.

“Son of Neptune!”

“Polybotes,” Percy growls.

The giant leaps from the ruins, slamming to the sea floor in a way that defies physics.

He looks the same as Percy remembers, now sporting a large scar where Riptide pierced his flesh at Camp Jupiter. His presence sets Percy’s teeth on edge, like his body is repelled by the giant’s very existence. Which, he supposes, makes sense; Polybotes is the opposite of his father. In another life, maybe they would’ve gotten along.

Even Odysseus grimaces at that thought. Yeah, no.

“Perseus, I have come to—”

Percy doesn’t let him finish. He leaps into action, spearing straight for the scar from his previous fight. He hopes, probably in vain, that striking him in the same spot will defeat him once again like some sort of mortal spot. Maybe some of Terminus’s help still lingers.

Percy grazes the spot as Polybotes dodges. It leaves a trail of blood, but the giant doesn’t die. Damn, worth a shot.

Percy pivots, swiping out to sever two basilisks in half before they can bite him. He lunges for another, but it dodges, joining a swirling mass of snakes. He can almost sense the potent venom inside of them. It sings to his blood. He grimaces. Great, another leftover from Tartarus.

Vaguely, he is aware of Jason taunting the snakes, but Percy ignores him. It’s not like he can do much in the—

All of Percy’s hair stands on end, and with a huge crack that reverberates in the water, the basilisks are lit with a massive strike of lightning. Percy barely manages to rocket back to avoid being electrocuted. The snakes writhe, then all go still, floating, dead in the water.

Percy flashes Jason a huge grin. Now that’s the son of Jupiter he knows and loves.

The smile costs him. One moment, he is breathing fine, and the next, he is choking. Viscous, black poison enters his lungs, and he collapses to the sea floor.

Oh gods.

The agony is like white-hot coals in his chest. His blood is on fire. His entire body fights against the invasion; nerves fire off, his temperature spikes, and he feels the sea attempt to heal him. It can’t. His powers are out of reach. He can’t get air in. In his father’s domain, he is drowning.

Someone is yelling. Two someones. Jason’s voice is there, somewhere. Percy can’t hear him over the pounding of blood in his head. He chokes, spasms, tries to vomit up the poison. It doesn’t work. It’s in his veins.

He digs his hands into the sand. He can’t drown; he is the son of Poseidon. His body argues back, locks up, spasms, grasps weakly at the sand. Fingers twitch. Eyes burn. Is he screaming? He must be, with the way his throat burns.

He has drowned before. Off the coast of an island he once called home.

All at once, Percy cannot think, because he is not Percy.

Odysseus lets out a defiant scream. He is back in that ocean, the god of the sea looming over him, a gleam in his eye.

Get in the water.

He has failed. Utterly, spectacularly. Even after escaping and vowing to never again enter the sea, he has returned to the domain of his enemy. He doesn’t remember why or how, but he is on the bottom of the sea and he is drowning.

Die.

No. No! He will kill the son of a bitch ten times over if he must! He will torture him until Ichor paints the sea gold! He will not die!

But the sea god taunts him. He can see his face, leering, grinning, pressing him down with the weight of the water. He is just a man, and he will drown.

And then it stops.

Odysseus retches. Poison crawls its way up his throat, out his mouth and nose. He chokes, coughing. Iron on his tongue, blood in the water. He spasms, once.

And he can breathe again.

But.

He is still in the water.

Odysseus whirls as a hand grabs his shoulder. He doesn’t think, just reacts. Flip, twist, pin, sword to the throat.

“You’ll have to try harder than that.”

Blue eyes—not green—blink up at him. Blonde hair. “What?”

Odysseus’s arm shakes.

Percy grabs hold of the momentary gap, clawing to the surface. A pain like knives drives into the back of his head. Odysseus shouts, stumbling back from the blonde boy he pinned to the ground. Percy clutches his head.

The water, get out of the water, we have to—

No, we have to heal, get a grip!

Get a grip?! I am

You tried to kill Jason!

Two hands on his shoulders, not a vice but strong enough to hold him still. “Percy!”

His consciousness slams together, and suddenly he can see straight again.

Percy swallows. “I—what?”

Jason stares at him, eyes wide. Behind him, Kym studies them, a frown on her face. She cocks her head to the side. “You are a curious one, younger brother,” she says.

Percy can’t find words to reply.

“It is a shame I cannot see you die, but no matter. Be careful, Perseus. The Earth Mother needs your blood to awaken.” She studies her disk, now coated with giant blood. “It will be easier if you take that girlfriend of yours and flee.”

Percy frowns. “I cannot abandon my friends.” The words feel weird in his mouth. Jason fixes him with a strange look.

Kym just laughs. “There is your flaw, my brother. You have yet to face it, and it may very well spell your doom. You are not prepared to make the sacrifices you must.”

Percy stares at her. The rest of her conversation with Jason becomes background noise to the roaring in his ears.

Have I not sacrificed enough?

Kym straps her disk to her back. “Farewell, son of Jupiter, brother. Remember your promises, do not die, and do not bleed!”

With that cheery note, she disappears into the sea.

-0-

Atop the ruins of Poseidon’s palace, Jason watches Percy, not saying a word.

Percy runs a finger over the flat of Riptide as he takes steady breaths. In, out, in, out, until his lungs no longer burn. He tore his throat raw screaming, but the sea water he breathes is healing it well enough.

I can’t drown, he reminds himself.

A shudder wracks his body.

Jason just watches.

“What?” Percy finally snaps.

Jason holds up two hands. His little tornado swirls around him, keeping him breathing. “Just watching to make sure you don’t keel over.”

Percy blinks, then looks away, ashamed. “Sorry.”

They lapse into another awkward silence.

Jason must think he’s gone insane. If the screaming hadn’t tipped him off, the accent change probably did.

Stupid, stupid, stupid, losing control like that. All the parts of him that are Odysseus are supposed to stay locked up until he calls on them. They’re not supposed to just… take over! He’s Percy Jackson!

“Percy?” Jason places a hand on his shoulder.

Percy takes a breath, and the churning sea calms around them.

Jason opens his mouth, closes it, and opens it again. “I’m not sure what happened back there, but you’re safe, now.”

Percy snorts. Safety is a luxury he will never be afforded.

Jason grimaces. “Bad choice of words. As safe as you can be right now.”

“Not going to accuse me of going crazy?” Percy snaps before he can stop himself.

Jason looks stricken. “What? No!” He puts his other hand on Percy’s shoulder so that he faces him dead-on. “Dude, you walked through hell. I’d be shocked if you weren’t a little traumatized from that. But you aren’t crazy.”

Percy waves his hand at the spot where he had collapsed onto the sea floor. “I totally fell apart back there. I was useless. And then I tried to kill you!”

“You were poisoned,” Jason argues. “By the anti-your-dad, need I remind you. His poison is designed to kill you specifically.” He shrugs. “And I can’t blame you for pinning me. I shouldn’t have grabbed you like that; demigod reflexes are killer. I should know, I am one.” He flashes a lopsided smile that stretches the scar on his upper lip.

Percy huffs, but he can’t argue with that. Damn golden boy and his optimism. Why can’t he let Od—Percy brood in peace?

“Just try not to switch into Ancient Greek on me like that next time, yeah?” Jason laughs. “I speak Latin.”

Percy’s eyes brows draw together. “What?”

“When you were yelling at me in Greek. Can’t tell what pissed you off if I can’t understand you.”

Percy opens and closes his mouth, but no sound comes out.

Jason frowns.

“I didn’t speak Greek,” Percy manages, finally.

Jason nods slowly, like Percy is some kind of confused animal. “Uh, dude, you totally did. To Kym too.”

Percy puts his head in his hands. Oh gods, he’s totally slipping.

Jason braces Percy’s shoulders again. “You were probably disoriented man. It’s okay. I was trying to make a joke, but it clearly didn’t land.” He gives Percy an apologetic smile. “I promise it didn’t freak me out and I don’t think you’re crazy.”

Percy shoves him away. “Stop doing that.”

“What?”

“Being so perfect golden-boy. It’s annoying.”

Jason frowns. “Sorry?”

“Gah!” Percy throws his hands in the air. Er, well, water. “You’re too nice.”

Jason laughs and claps Percy on the back. “I promise to be meaner to you next time, then.”

“Counting on it,” Percy chuckles. Despite his best efforts, he can’t stay sad. Jason is just too good at giving advice. Damn Praetor instincts.

Jason stands, holding a hand out to haul Percy up. “Now come on. I’m sick of breathing Dylan air.”

“Dylan air?”

Jason gestures to his mini tornado. “Yeah, Dylan. He’s the ventus keeping me breathing right now. He tried to kill me at the Grand Canyon last year. Say hi.”

Honestly, that’s one of the less weird things Percy has heard today. He holds up a hand. “Hi Dylan.”

With that, they shoot back to the surface.

Chapter Text

“You have to tell them,” Annabeth says.

She winces as an arrow slams into the training dummy, directly through the neck. Percy nocks another arrow. “No.”

“We need to be prepared in case it happens again,” Annabeth argues.

“I can handle myself,” Percy says. He fires, and the arrow finds its mark in the dummy’s heart.

“This,” she says, pointing to the bow, “is not a healthy coping mechanism.”

“You never saw Clarisse and I beating the shit out of each other,” he says. “There are worse ways to cope.”

“That’s not the point,” Annabeth says.

Percy aims, draws, and fires. The arrow splits the one at the dummy’s neck in half.

Annabeth sighs. “Percy—”

“Not much,” he interrupts.

Annabeth pinches the bridge of her nose. “Odysseus.”

He fires another arrow. “Yes?”

She tries to ignore how short he’s being with her. “You, of all people, know how to weigh strategic advantages.”

“Flattery won’t get you far, love,” he says. At least he added a pet name. It helps with her growing irritation.

She clenches her fist to keep from snapping at him. He’s struggling, fighting a war within himself. At least he’s still standing, unlike the gods, who have been useless sacks of nothing since this whole war started. “I’m not flattering you, I’m speaking the truth. Tell me, honestly, that keeping this to yourself helps us in our efforts to stop the Earth Mother.”

He frowns, thinking for a moment, and Annabeth almost believes she’s gotten through to him.

He shakes his head. “It could easily get back to the gods.”

“Who are the least of our worries right now!” She argues.

“I—Percy told you not to push this,” he grounds out between clenched teeth.

Annabeth sighs. She’s losing him. Time for another approach.

She steps in front of him just as he’s about to loose another arrow. He drops his arm, glaring at her. “Are you crazy? I could’ve shot you.”

“You wouldn’t, but not the point,” she says. “You’re being a stubborn bastard, and I’m tired of it.”

He blinks.

“I’ll treat you like two different people, okay? Like you asked. But if that’s the case, then I can say this.” She takes a breath. “Percy’s fatal flaw might be loyalty, but yours is hubris. It’s what got your men killed in the first place.”

He gives her a withering glare.

She continues before he can start yelling. “I’m right, and you know it. Why? Because it’s mine too!” She stalks up to him, jabbing a finger into his chest. “You and me both, we think of ourselves so highly. It’s why I thought I could listen to the sirens. It’s what got us dragged into Tartarus. And now you’re succumbing to it.”

He opens his mouth to argue.

“Nope!” Annabeth cuts him off. “You’re letting your pride get in the way of our entire mission. You think you can handle this schism in your mind, and you can’t. It’s going to get one of us killed.” She grabs his shirt, pulling him down until he’s eye level with her. “It’s going to get me killed.”

He stares at her, eyes wide. “I wouldn’t let that happen.”

“Hubris,” she says, then kisses him. Because she can, and because he looks way too good with that bow in his hands.

She shoves him back after a few seconds, leaving him dazed. He blinks at her, a little cross-eyed, and she has to stifle a laugh. He might insist on being treated like two different people, but both Percy and Odysseus are love-sick men who have a penchant for self-sacrifice. Gods, she loves him so much, even when he pisses her off.

He drops his bow with a sigh and puts his head in his hands. Annabeth sidles up close, letting her arm brush his in a show of comfort.

“It’s hard, ‘Beth,” he says, sounding a lot more like Percy. “I’m so afraid they’ll think of me differently. Or be scared of me.”

“They’re already scared of you,” Annabeth says.

Percy’s head snaps up, eyes wide.

She chuckles. “Love, you are the most powerful demigod of this age, and don’t try to argue,” she adds when he opens his mouth. “I think everyone is a little scared of you. In the way that you’re scared of me when I get on one of my tangents.”

He frowns. “I wouldn’t call that scared of you. Just a… healthy dose of respect.”

“Then everyone has a healthy dose of respect for you,” Annabeth replies. “It’s not a bad thing that they have respect for your abilities. Didn’t you feel the same about Thalia? Jason? Hell, I know Hazel’s control of the Mist has freaked you out at least a few times.”

Percy shudders. “Gods, you should’ve seen her in that arena.”

Annabeth smiles. Got him. “So you’re afraid they’ll be scared of you because, what, you’re a reincarnation of a Greek hero? And because of that, they’ll throw you aside?” She scoffs. “Percy, the world could end in a week. They’ll see it as an advantage.”

He works his bottom lip between his teeth in a move that is so Percy her heart nearly melts out of her chest. She wonders if Odysseus ever had nervous ticks like that. Did he fidget with his hands? Chew his bottom lip?

She runs a thumb across his lips, coming to rest on his cheek. He sighs and closes his eyes.

“Fate decided that the seven of us need to be here, for one reason or another. Just like Fate decided you need to remember your previous life,” Annabeth whispers. She runs her thumb across his cheekbone, savoring the feeling of him. “Each of us has powers the world hasn’t seen in generations. I don’t think that you being Odysseus in a past life will add any fear—respect—to how they feel about you.” She plants a soft kiss on his lips. “You’ve saved all of our lives many times over. Carried them when they’ve fallen. Let them carry you, this time.”

He closes his eyes, leaning into her touch. “When did you get so wise?”

“I was born this way,” she says.

“Hubris,” he chides.

She laughs and kisses him again.

He pauses, then pulls back, eyebrows scrunched. She frowns. “What?”

“You didn’t cause us to get pulled into Tartarus,” he says.

She huffs. “That isn’t what you should focus on.”

“Focusing on it.” He pulls her to his chest, threading a hand through her hair. “You didn’t cause any of what happened to us. You can’t blame yourself for it.”

She hums, leaning into him. His heartbeat is steady in her ears. Comforting, safe. She could spend forever in his arms.

But she can’t. They have a world to save and a timeline to keep. She pulls back, ignoring his whine of protest. He gives her the baby seal eyes and it takes all her willpower not to kiss him right there.

“You have to tell them,” she repeats.

He scowls. “I thought you’d forgotten about that.”

She shakes her head.

His scowl melts off his face with a sigh. He runs a hand through his hair. “I know I do.” His voice is barely more than a whisper. “Just give me a bit to prepare.”

It’s the least she can do. She plants a chaste kiss on his lips. “End of today.”

“End of today,” he agrees.

-0-

Percy feels much less brave once he is seated at the dining table with the other demigods.

He’d paced the length of his cabin probably 100 times, and then the deck 100 times more, running over every possible scenario. He’d been stressed enough that Leo had to shout at him to stop churning up the sea.

He doesn’t feel any better now, despite all that pacing. He taps his fingers on the table in an erratic rhythm. It does little to soothe him, but at least it’s something. He pointedly avoids the others’ eyes.

He considers just bolting, maybe hide out in the ocean for a while, but he promised Annabeth the end of the day. She looks at him now, a mix of determination and sympathy in her grey eyes. He tries for a smile, but it comes out more like a grimace.

“Alright water boy,” Leo says. “What’s this meeting about?”

“Don’t tell me there’s another sea monster,” Frank groans. “I’ve had enough of them.”

Percy shakes his head. “No sea monsters, thankfully. It’s, uh, something else.”

Annabeth takes his hand and squeezes it.

He swallows. This might be the last time any of them look at him like a friend. He tries to savor it, but the anxiety coiling in his gut makes that impossible.

The others, sensing his nervousness, give him time to collect his thoughts.

“So, um, in Tartarus,” Percy begins, ignoring the wince of sympathy more than one of them give, “There was this goddess. Akhlys.”

“Goddess of misery,” Piper says.

Percy flashes her what he hopes is a smile. “Yeah, her. Thanks Pipes. You’ve done a lot of research, huh?”

She blushes. “Um, yeah, thanks to your girlfriend.”

Annabeth smiles.

Percy continues, “well, we ran into her and… she wasn’t too happy about it. Sent a flood of poison after us, tries to kill us, the works. And I, well…” he swallows. “I took control of it. Shouldn’t have been possible—Poseidon isn’t the god of all liquids—but I did. And I tortured her with it. Tried to drown her with her own poison. Her own tears.”

Leo whistles, low and slow. “Jesus man, that’s ballsy.”

Percy chuckles at his impressed tone, which causes him to laugh a little more out of surprise at his own mirth. “Yeah, I know.”

“If you’re about to tell us you’re dangerous or whatever, and that’s what this whole meeting is about, then you can stop now, because we don’t care,” Hazel says. Next to her, Frank nods vigorously.

Percy laughs, again, in shock. “No, I mean, I guess I am, but that’s not what this is about.” He cocks his head. “You’re really not concerned about the whole torture thing?”

“I’d torture a few goddesses if I could,” Annabeth mutters.

Piper snorts. The others share amused glances.

“Well, okay then.” Percy takes a breath. Alright, that was the easy part. Now for the rest of it. “So, like I said, there’s more to it. When I… confronted Akhlys, it changed something. Within me.”

Jason cocks an eyebrow but says nothing.

Annabeth squeezes his hand a third time.

Percy swallows. “I remembered my previous life.”

A beat of silence.

“Oh shit,” Leo says.

“Yeah,” Percy chokes out.

Hazel leans forward, bracing her elbows on the table. “Well, that’s unusual, but I don’t know if it’s a problem?”

“Bit of a problem,” Percy responds, followed by a high-pitched laugh that borders on hysterical.

Hazel nods slowly. “Okay, bit of a problem.”

“Problem how?” Piper asks, ever the problem solver.

What he’d give for Annabeth to jump in now and explain it all for him, but he knows she won’t. This is Percy’s burden to bear.

But he can’t find the words to answer. He works his mouth, but nothing comes out. He feels like he’s falling through the floor into the sea below, washed away in a swirling mass of waves. Gods, he can’t come back from this. He’d give his life for his friends, but if they reject him after everything… he can’t say it. He isn’t fucking brave enough to just say it.

“Ancient Greece,” Jason says.

Percy’s head snaps up. He feels almost manic, staring into Jason’s piercing blue eyes.

Jason holds his gaze. “That’s why you keep switching languages, isn’t it? Your previous life, you were Greek. Like, an actual one that lived in Greece, not just a demigod.”

Percy manages a nod.

“And you’re… concerned about who you were,” Jason continues. Percy forgets, sometimes, that Jason spent years as a Praetor of New Rome, mediating conflicts and negotiations. He’s hyper-observant and can pick apart someone’s thoughts nearly as well as a child of Athena.

“Yeah,” Percy says. It comes out like a wheeze.

No one seems to want to ask. No one addresses the elephant in the room.

Until Piper says. “Who?”

He closes his eyes. Moment of truth. “Odysseus.”

You could hear a pin drop.

In fact, he does. Leo’s current project clatters to the floor, shattering on impact.

“You—” a chair scraping, someone standing up.

“Leo, hold on—” Hazel. Fabric rustling.

“—We can work with this!” Jason attempts in a calm voice.

“I don’t think this is that crazy—” Frank says.

“Leo—” Piper begins, voice laced with charmspeak.

“Twice!” Leo all but screams. “You left her there twice!”

Percy keeps his eyes shut. His mind feels fractured, separated. He is so, so far away from the dining room.

“I can’t fucking believe this!” Leo shouts. Annabeth shifts next to him, moving closer, but the next thing Percy knows, he’s being shoved back into a wall. His eyes fly open to find himself face to face with Leo. The younger boy’s eyes are alight, nearly on fire, his teeth clenched. “Two thousand years, and nothing!”

Percy can’t breathe, can’t speak. He tries to shove Odysseus to tap in for once, but the other half of him refuses. Neither wants to confront this.

It’s not fair, he thinks.

I didn’t mean to, he reasons.

She held me captive first, he argues.

Please, he begs. I know what it’s like to be apart from the one you love. I understand you.

But no words come out. Instead, he stares, open-mouthed, at his friend.

“Are you going to say anything?!” The hand that doesn’t hold Percy to the wall lights on fire. “Or are you going to be a coward?”

That activates something. Odysseus grabs hold of their fractured mind and says, “I built your gods-damned astrolabe. It’s not my fault I died before I could use it.”

Leo blinks.

Odysseus shoves the boy off him. Leo stumbles back, still seething, but he looks off-kilter.

“Your shot at finding her again is because of me. Or did you forget that?” Odysseus spits. Somewhere deep inside him, Percy recoils at the tone he is using against his friend. Odysseus ignores it.

Leo tries to find his spark of anger, but it fizzles out just as fast. He deflates. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I—” He puts his a hand over his mouth, turns on his heel, and flees the room.

The others are silent. No one dares to move, all staring at the singed spot on the floor where Leo stood moments before.

Annabeth breaks the scene. She takes a careful step towards Odysseus. “Percy?”

“No,” he growls.

She swallows. “Okay, that’s okay. Are you…” she trails off, biting her lip.

“I think,” Piper says, subtle charmspeak lacing her words, “that we should all sit back down.”

Odysseus could fight her on it, but why bother? It’s a logical choice. Put them all back on the same playing field. He shrugs and plops, gracelessly, back into his seat. Annabeth sits next to him, hand creeping toward him. He snatches it, trying not to crush it in a vice grip.

Soon enough, the others are seated, pointedly ignoring Leo’s empty chair.

“Alright,” Piper begins. She gives each of the seated demigods a pointed look that seems to say no more yelling, or I’ll put an end to it. “How much do you remember?”

“All of it,” Odysseus answers. “We’ve got two whole sets of memories up here.” He taps his temple.

“We?” Frank asks.

“Shit, it’s like the gods, huh?” Piper answers for him.

Odysseus nods. “There’s times where it’s more Percy, others where it’s more Odysseus. Not a whole lot has integrated.”

“And right now?” Hazel asks.

Odysseus cocks an eyebrow. “Do you want that answer?”

Hazel sits back, lips pursed. She studies him with her unflinching gold eyes.

Another moment of awkward silence passes, then Frank says, “I appreciate you telling us, but, um, why now?” Why not when it first happened is the unasked question left hanging in the air.

Odysseus sighs, then shrugs. “Fear? Pride? I wish I could give you a better answer.” He runs a finger along the wood grain of the dining table, feeling Percy bubble up inside of him again. “I thought I could handle it.” The admission is painful for him.

“What happened with Kym yesterday,” Jason says. He gives Odysseus a sympathetic look.

He laughs without humor. “Yeah, that kind of fucked me over. Hard to stay on your a-game when two people are freaking out in one brain.”

That response was all Percy, and he feels unbalanced all of a sudden. Odysseus braces one hand on the table, the other creeping up to rub his temple. A headache blooms behind his eyes. “I—sorry, give me a second.”

Annabeth leans closer. “Need help?”

He manages a nod.

Her hand taps his mortal spot once. Twice. Three times.

His head clears, and it’s all Percy again. He sighs and plants a kiss in her hair. “Thanks, Wise Girl.”

“Percy, then?” Hazel asks.

A flash of embarrassment hits him, and he feels his cheeks flush. Great, Odysseus handled that with all the tact of a man lost at sea for a decade, which is to say, none at all. Do you want that answer? Gods, did he have to be so dramatic?

“Sorry,” Percy mutters. He rubs the back of his neck.

Hazel flashes him a genuine smile. “You really don’t need to apologize. Just helps me—us—understand who we’re talking to.”

“Is that healthy?” Piper asks. “Trying to separate yourself out?”

“That’s what I’ve been saying,” Annabeth agrees with a pointed look in Percy’s direction. His blush deepens.

“I… probably not the healthiest, no,” Percy admits. “But tell me, honestly, how you think it would go over with my father if this got back to the gods.”

Everyone at the table grimaces. Piper’s face drains of color. “Oh, Percy…”

“Yeah,” Percy says. He fiddles with the hem of his shirt, trying to avoid their gazes. “At least right now, I can’t focus on trying to integrate things. The world could end in a week, I gotta keep my eyes on the prize.” He frowns. “Er, well, the prize being killing the Earth Mother. Not the end of the world.”

“We got that, Seaweed Brain,” Annabeth teases. He sticks his tongue out at her.

Silence falls around the table again, but it is significantly less awkward this time. He still feels embarrassed about how the Odysseus-half of him handled the whole… everything, but at least they’re not angry.

Well, most of them aren’t. His eyes flick to the door where Leo had fled from the room, and his heart aches. He knows the younger boy didn’t mean most of what he said, but that doesn’t make it hurt any less. Beneath all his experience, even as Odysseus, Percy is still just a teenager who values the opinions of his friends.

“Give him time,” Piper says, following Percy’s gaze. “Then go talk to him.”

Odysseus does not want to do that. Percy can understand why.

“He doesn’t hate you,” Jason adds. “If I know anything about Leo, I know that much. He’s just—”

“Scared, and angry, and feels out of control of the situation,” Percy interrupts. His gaze slides to Jason. “I’ve been there.”

“In this life or the last?” Jason asks.

“Both, actually,” Percy quips, earning him a smile from the others. “I think I’m just cursed.”

“Ditto,” Hazel grumbles, which gets a surprised laugh out of him. She glances up, a sharp smile on her face. Something passes between them—an understanding. Hazel gets it, in a way. She’s also a woman out of time.

“You’ll get through this,” she says. “You’ll find your footing in this life. I promise.”

For a brief moment, Percy and Odysseus are one as they stare into the gold eyes of the daughter of Pluto. Together, they nod.

And then Odysseus retreats.

Chapter Text

Piper knew something was off the moment Percy got out of Tartarus, but she can’t feel any sort of satisfaction about being right, because everyone looks so miserable.

The Argo II is too quiet without Leo’s rambling voice. There isn’t even the tell-tale sound of metal clanking and the occasional curse from the engine room. Just silence. And no one really knows how to fill it.

Percy is normally the next in line to be the talkative one, but he sits at the bow, legs crossed, eyes closed. He’s been there since his confession in the dining room three hours ago. He occasionally speaks to someone if they come up to check on him, but otherwise he’s been totally silent. Still, save for the occasional twitch of his hands. It’s eerie, and very unlike the Percy she remembers.

But, well, Piper doesn’t know how well she really knows him. Like, sure, they travelled together on the Argo II for a bit before his and Annabeth’s trip through Tartarus, but it wasn’t for that long. Maybe this quieter version of him was always there beneath the surface.

She grimaces at her own thought. Fucking duh. He’s spent the last sixteen years with barely contained memories of a past life as a war general. Odysseus has always been there.

(A flash of anxiety from the front of the ship. She tunes it out.)

“You noticed it, didn’t you?”

Piper nearly jumps out of her skin when Annabeth appears at her side. “Fuck!”

Annabeth smiles sheepishly. “Sorry.”

Piper waves her off as she catches her breath. Annabeth has always been sneaky, but ever since Tartarus, it’s like she’s on a whole other level. Her steps are feather light, like she’s afraid any movement will give her position away.

“Noticed what?” Piper finally asks when her heart rate goes back to normal.

“Percy,” Annabeth says. “He said you talked to him when we first got back. You knew something was different.”

Piper opens and closes her mouth, trying to find a good response, then settles on a nod. The others know she’s good at… reading people (she likes to put it that way), but acknowledging it can be uncomfortable.

Annabeth deflates. “You noticed before I did.”

(Disappointment, resignation—)

“You were going through a lot,” Piper says. “Both of you.”

Annabeth waves her hand in Percy’s general direction. “But to not realize that my boyfriend suddenly remembered an entire past life?” She shakes her head.

Piper feels a smile tug at the corner of her lips despite herself. That’s Annabeth, always expecting to be on her A-game even when she had literally just gotten out of hell. “Stop beating yourself up. I’m a daughter of Aphrodite. It’s my entire thing to notice people.”

Annabeth snort-laughs, but her eyes stay fixed on the wooden deck beneath her. “I thought your thing was convincing people.”

Piper bumps her shoulder. “Gotta notice them to convince them.”

Annabeth looks up, her grey eyes so wide and open and afraid that Piper feels a tug in her heart. She aches to reach out and wrap the girl in a hug, but Annabeth doesn’t like to be hugged without warning. As it stands, she brushes her hand against Annabeth’s. The other girl only hesitates a moment before grabbing Piper’s hand and squeezing it.

(Fear, fear, fear—)

“You’re enough, Annabeth,” Piper says, turning to look her square in the eyes. She looks so much like she did beneath Sparta, surrounded by Phobos and Deimos. “Get out of your head. You couldn’t have known what was wrong. You were in survival mode.”

“But I—”

“Shut up,” Piper interrupts. Annabeth blinks at her, surprised.

“Do you expect him to know every single thing that you’re feeling right now?” Piper gestures at Percy, still sitting with his eyes closed.

Annabeth opens and closes her mouth a few times. “Well, no, but he’s not—”

“A child of Athena?” Piper interrupts again, cocking an eyebrow. “Do you hold all of us to our parents’ standards, or just yourself?”

Annabeth gapes at her.

(Shock, but Piper knows that one.)

Annabeth’s grey eyes flick back to Percy, and she deflates. “Gods, you’re right, but it doesn’t make me feel better.”

“You like being in control of situations,” Piper says. “The past few weeks have been so completely out of your control, you don’t know what to do with yourself.”

A rueful smile twists Annabeth’s mouth. “Maybe you should talk to Percy. I think you could help him better than me.”

Piper shakes her head. “Don’t say that. You’re his person for a reason.” She shrugs. “But if he needs another listening ear, I’m happy to help. I won’t force it on him.”

“Wouldn’t expect you to,” Annabeth says, some light finally returning to her eyes. She worries her bottom lip, something Piper has realized she inherited from Percy. Or maybe Percy inherited it from her.

Gods, these two…

“You think Leo is ready to talk?” Annabeth finally asks. “I think that’s what’s got him so quiet.”

Piper nods. “Even if he’s not, he can’t hide forever. Wanna go tell Percy?”

Annabeth starts worrying her bottom lip again, then turns to Piper with wide, pleading eyes. “Can you? I don’t think he’ll do it if I tell him.”

Piper thinks that boy would do anything Annabeth asked, but she agrees anyway. Annabeth is worrying herself into the ground about Percy; she needs to see him manage without her, just enough to realize that he’ll be okay.

She’s gotta take care of herself. If Piper survives this war, she’s going to make sure the daughter of Athena learns basic self-care.

With a final squeeze of Annabeth’s hand, Piper makes her way to kick Percy’s ass into talking to Leo.

-0-

Leo is exactly where Percy expected him to be.

He peers into the engine room, lit by the warm glow of the fires that keep the Argo II moving. The hum of the engines is a soft purr, comforting in a strange way. Odysseus is curious about the way the engines work. He wants to look at the schematics, pepper the son of Hephaestus with countless questions, and perhaps even take one apart himself. But Percy knows that isn’t possible now and is likely a bad idea. Leo is already angry enough; he doesn’t need some outsider messing with his ship.

The boy in question kneels in front of one of the machines. At first, Percy thinks he’s tinkering with it, but he realizes Leo has his head pressed against the metal, eyes closed.

He almost leaves the room right then, content to let this sit a while longer, but Piper insisted it was time to talk. So Percy swallows, then clears his throat.

Leo jumps up, whirling around to face Percy. At the sight of him, his eyes narrow. “What?”

Percy’s eyes dart around, unable to hold Leo’s fiery gaze. “Um, I thought we should talk.”

Leo says nothing, so Percy continues, “I know you’re angry. I get it, really.”

“Do you?” Leo looks unimpressed.

Percy swallows again. “Yes, I do. You’re being kept away from the person you love by forces out of your control, and you’re doing everything in your power to get back to her. You don’t care what risk it puts you in, or what atrocities you must commit, as long as the end result is seeing her again.” He finally manages to meet Leo’s eyes. The boy stares at him, expression guarded. “I get it.”

Leo blinks.

“I killed countless people to get back to Penelope, in another life,” Percy says. It comes out choked, like a breathy laugh caught in his throat. His eyes burn. “I would’ve done it again. I did do it again, to get back to Annabeth.” He risks a step forward, and Leo doesn’t back away. “I understand you.”

“Then why did you leave her there?” Leo’s voice cracks.

“I didn’t love her,” both Percy and Odysseus say. Something clicks into place in his brain, and they both settle. Percy frowns, but decides to investigate that feeling later. “I had someone else to get home to.”

Leo blinks, then scowls. He bares his teeth. “You didn’t love her? You sure did a poor job of convincing her of that!”

It’s Percy’s turn to blink in surprise. “Huh?”

Leo throws his hands in the air, fire replacing his earlier guardedness. Literally—his feet are on fire. “Seven years on her island? Living life with her? Convincing her you were going to stay, until you up and decide you have a wife to get back to?” Leo jabs an on-fire finger toward him. “A wife you didn’t seem to care all that much about in the, let me say this again, seven years you spent on the island!”

Percy takes a step back, both in shock and to avoid catching fire. His mind whirls—both sides of his mind. Odysseus doesn’t remember doing anything that convinced Calypso that he loved her. She knew that. She spent years trying to get him to fall in love with her in vain. Had she told Leo something else?

“Is that what she said?” Odysseus croaks. Percy doesn’t fight him. “That I loved her, then decided I didn’t?”

Leo pauses, then frowns. “Dude, that’s the entire story!”

Odysseus hasn’t read the epic poem, but Percy has (thanks Annabeth). He jumps into the pilot’s seat. “Oh, gods, Leo, no.” He runs a hand through his hair. “I forgot. I forgot someone wrote it all down. No, I didn’t love her. I never tried to convince her I did.” He clutches his hair as his mind begins to splinter again. The constant, dull headache turns piercing behind his left eye. “I—he, sorry, gods.” He hits the heel of his hand to his forehead, and his mind clears just enough for him to say, “the stories aren’t totally accurate.”

Leo says, “…dude?”

Percy presses both heels of his hands to his eyes. The pressure grounds him. “Sorry, my head… hard with the memories.” He grits his teeth. “Pick who you want to talk to.”

“What?”

“A name, just make a decision!” The headache turns blinding.

“Uh, Percy!” Leo shouts. “Water boy!”

His head clears, and Percy lets out a resigned sigh as Odysseus retreats. “Okay, I’m good now.”

“Dude, what was that?” Leo’s fire is gone, leaving just a few smoking spots on the floor. He stares at Percy with a mixture of confusion and shock.

Right, Leo wasn’t in the dining room for the explanation. He taps his temple. “Two sets of memories, two different personalities, like the Greek-Roman schism. They like to fight.”

Leo nods, eyes still wide.

“Leo,” Percy begins when his head finally feels less like it’s trying to explode. “I didn’t love her in my previous life. I never tried to convince her I did. I was trapped on that island until Athena convinced Zeus to let me free.” He’s not afraid to speak the gods’ names, not with the schism keeping them from hearing anything of value. They’re too mind-addled to try. “I never shared her bed. Not once.”

“You…” Leo trails off, like he doesn’t know what to think.

“The only woman I ever loved was my wife. When I thought I could not get off that island, I tried to…” a memory flashes in his mind, a cliffside, crashing waves, a desperate plea to the goddess that abandoned him. Percy shakes his head. “I tried to do something stupid.” He lets out a long breath. “Calypso saved my life, when Zeus killed my men. I never loved her, but I felt like I owed it to her to get her off that island.”

Leo stares at him. Percy can’t read his expression. Shock? Anger? Sadness? Awe? All of the above? At least he isn’t on fire.

Finally, the younger boy breaks. He runs a shaking hand through his hair, leaving streaks of black oil. “I just want her to be okay,” he says, voice barely above a whisper. “She’s been trapped there so long, and I thought… you of all people had a chance to save her. Twice.”

“I tried,” Percy says. “If I hadn’t lost my memories, I would’ve marched up to Olympus myself and made them free her.”

“I know,” Leo whispers. He sounds so small, so much the young sixteen-year-old he is. “I’m sorry.”

Percy shakes his head and finally closes the distance between them to put a hand on Leo’s shoulder. He peers up, eyes huge, like a small child pleading with an older brother. Odysseus feels a spark of protectiveness for the young demigod, and Percy embraces that. That’s something they can agree on. “Don’t be. Love drives us to do crazy things.”

Leo pulls Percy into a hug. He’s warm, too warm for a normal human, and it spreads through Percy’s body. The hug is a bit awkward, all long-limbs and weird height differences, but Percy doesn’t mind. Leo breaks the embrace quickly. He shoves Percy back, pointedly not meeting his eyes. Percy thinks he sees a few tears before Leo furiously blinks them away.

“Will you help me fix the astrolabe?” Leo asks.

“I’ll do my best,” Percy says. “Thought you might have to talk to, uh, other me.”

Leo chuckles, watery and weak. “Great, now you’re even weirder than before.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Leo grins, some of his impishness returning to his eyes. “It means you’ve always been a weird guy, aquaman, and now there’s two of you.” He throws his hands up and turns back to the engines. “Just when we thought you couldn’t get any more divine-like.”

Percy decides to ignore that comment. After double checking that Leo is going to be okay, he turns on his heel to leave the engine room.

Just as he reaches the doorway, Leo says, “hey Perce?”

“Yeah?” He leans around the door frame to glance at Leo.

Percy sees the edge of a grin on Leo’s face, even as he faces the engines. “If anyone asks, I totally kicked your butt down here, right?”

“Not a chance in hell,” Percy says.

“Eh, worth a shot.” He waves him off. “Go do a sea patrol, aquaman.”

Percy gives a two fingered salute and leaves the engine room behind, feeling lighter than he has in days.

Chapter Text

Percy didn’t realize how much easier it would be to just exist once the others knew his secret.

He can tell Annabeth is doing her best not to say “I told you so.” They mill about the ship, hand in hand, enjoying the last few days of peace before the final battle. He feels… not whole, but also not so fragmented. Something about the others knowing and not treating him strangely for it just feels right.

It’s loyalty, he realizes as he watches Leo try to balance two spoons upright on a plate. These heroes, even though they’ve only known each other for a short while, are loyal to each other above all else. Sometime in their journey across the ocean, through the ancient lands and below the earth, the Seven had become a weird sort of family. And Percy’s memories as Odysseus don’t change that.

Something else clicks into place within him. He smiles.

Once Leo finally gives up on stacking the silverware, he pushes away from the table and gives Percy a smirk. “Ready to help?”

“Ready as ever,” Percy answers. Annabeth gives his hand a squeeze.

He follows Leo down to the engine room, letting the lock (looser now, but still there) on his memories free. He blinks, feeling suddenly fuzzy.

“Leo?”

“Yeah man?”

“Can you, uh,” Percy gestures vaguely.

Leo cocks his head, then his eyebrows shoot to his hairline. “Oh, yeah, sure! Paging Odysseus, king of Ithaca, supreme pisser-offer of gods and monsters, the—”

“I think that’s enough,” Odysseus says, but not unkindly. The fuzziness in his head fades.

Leo flashes him a wicked grin. “Nice to meet you.”

“We’re still one person, Leo,” Odysseus says. “And besides, you’ve met me before.”

Leo frowns.

Odysseus points behind him with a thumb. “In the dining room? When you pinned me to a wall?”

Leo’s eyes widen. “Oh shit, that was you?” He rubs the back of his neck. “I thought I’d just pissed off Percy.”

“You did.” Odysseus cocks his head when the other half of him twinges uncomfortably. “Er, or, no, you didn’t. Not really.” He frowns. What a strange feeling, to sense two different emotions inside himself. He doesn’t empathize with the gods—there are few he even tolerates—but he does pity them, in a way. It’s disorienting.

Leo leads him into the engine room, still chattering away. “Sorry about that man. I mean, not entirely, but also I thought you’d just left her there all heartbroken and didn’t even care! Like, the stories say you totally cheated on your wife.” He sucks in a breath through his teeth. “Oh, sorry, that’s probably rude to say isn’t it? I don’t think you cheated on her. Well, not anymore, but—” he cuts off with another hiss. “Should I stop talking? I should stop talking.”

Odysseus lets out a low chuckle. He’s never met someone quite like Leo Valdez before. His enthusiasm could be compared to that of Polites, but Leo has a certain… recklessness to him that Polites lacked. Leo is all fire, all spark, a crackling ball of energy and passion. He could blame it on the blood of Hephaestus that runs in his veins, but Odysseus can tell it’s not all that. Some of it is learned.

His mother is dead, a memory from Percy’s life; they’re getting more integrated, these days. How much of Leo’s passion comes from his mother? How much of that fiery spark is what drew Hephaestus to her, rather than something Leo inherited from his father?

The engine room is warm, almost sweltering. Leo is completely unbothered by it. Odysseus wonders for a second why his body isn’t reacting to the heat, then remembers who exactly his father in this life is. A scowl darkens his face for a moment, but he lets it go. He can be grateful for advantages, even if they come from… him.

He winces as a twinge of anger flares up within him.

Yeah, this is the last thing that’s going to be integrated between his lives.

Leo rummages through a chest before pulling out the astrolabe, affixed with a strange looking crystal in the middle. “So, I got the crystal from her cave, but for some reason it still doesn’t want to click into place and point me in the right direction.”

Odysseus stares at the thing. “You got a crystal,” he states.

Leo blinks at him. “Uh, yeah?”

It should’ve been obvious. Of course Leo would ask for something to guide him back. But it still rattles Odysseus. The last piece of the puzzle, the thing he could never get, and it just… sits there. Right in the damn thing.

And it still doesn’t work.

Right, okay, time to get down to business. He grabs the astrolabe and examines it, worrying his bottom lip. He touches the tiny lever on the side, and the thing begins to spin wildly. “Oh, that’s odd.”

Leo throws his hands up. “See? I hate that! I can’t figure out why it does that. And I figure everything out.” He huffs.

Odysseus lets the corner of his mouth twitch up as he stops the wild spinning. “I had Hermes bless it, all those years ago. I thought, him being the god of travelers and all, it would make it work. Maybe that’s messing it up?” It sounds stupid as soon as it leaves his lips.

Leo shakes his head. “Unless Hermes hates my dad and is rejecting me working on it, which isn’t true, I can’t see why it would do that. Unless he hates you?”

“He’s my grandfather,” Odysseus says absently, then blinks. “Or, was, I guess. Strange.”

He ignores Leo’s stare as he turns the astrolabe over. Think, Odysseus, a familiar voice seems to say to him. Someone he hasn’t heard in a long time. What makes Ogygia so difficult to find?

He frowns. Ogygia, the shrouded island of Calypso. Banished there after the first Titanomachy. Centuries spent on the island. People only find it after being gravely injured, usually in a magical way, and are sent there to heal. He remembers her being so desperate to keep him there, so desperate to not be alone, even though he was always going to go home.

He fixes Leo with a strange look. He’s still just a boy, and she’s… he bites his lip. “Leo?”

Leo’s head snaps up from where he was tinkering with some circular device. “Yeah?”

“How old is Calypso?”

Leo frowns. “Um, I dunno. She’s immortal, right? So pretty old.”

Odysseus nods. “Right, but how did she look?”

Leo cocks his head. “About my age, why?” His eyes narrow. “What are you getting at?”

Time moves differently on Ogygia. Calypso always seemed young to him, but… he shakes his head. Had she somehow aged backwards? De-aged herself? How does maturity work on an island out of time?

“Just wondering,” Odysseus says, trying to keep his voice neutral. Gods, he doesn’t want to imagine what he’s imagining right now, but… Calypso is desperate. She doesn’t want to be alone. What lengths would she go to to be free?

“I know what you’re thinking,” Leo snaps. “But she hated me at first, did everything to get me the hell off her island. If you’re thinking she tricked me, or, or, I dunno, put some sort of spell on me, you’re—”

Odysseus holds up one hand. “I was just being cautious, Leo. You can’t blame me for trying to look out for you. Percy would do—is doing the same. We share the same concern.”

He’s surprised to find the truth in those words. In this life, he met Calypso. And she tried to convince him to stay yet again.

Maybe he’ll talk with the girl once she’s free. Because, honestly, no one deserves to be alone forever. He knew that when he built the astrolabe. Even if he disapproves of her and Leo… no, he can’t leave her there. He’ll talk to them both, once this is all said and done.

Back to Ogygia. No one can get there twice. That’s part of the magic. Though, it’s clearly not bound to the soul, because Odysseus found Ogygia, and so did Percy. Death negates the curse. A soul can find it twice.

Odysseus nearly drops the astrolabe.

He fumbles with it, turning wide eyes to the son of Hephaestus. “You wouldn’t.”

Leo stares at him. He says nothing.

“Leo,” he hisses. “Suicide isn’t the way to get her free. That’s insane!”

Leo crosses his arms. “Not if I have the Physician’s Cure.”

Odysseus presses a shaking hand to his forehead. “Oh gods, that’s your plan? Die, resurrect yourself, and find this island again?”

Leo nods.

“What if it doesn’t work? What if you stay dead. That’s ridiculous! You can’t.”

“I can if I have to,” Leo says.

Odysseus, no, Percy, shakes his head wildly. “Leo, dude, you’re crazy. Death isn’t something you just come back from.”

Leo just fixes him with a flat stare. “Welcome back I guess.”

Percy clenches his teeth. His mind switches back and forth wildly, but both halves of him agree: Leo cannot do this. He can’t give his life on a half-hope that it’ll get him back to Calypso.

Think, that voice says again. There is always another way.

The magic isn’t bound to a soul. Death resets it. Anyone who hasn’t found the island before can find it. The astrolabe doesn’t work, even with a crystal. Calypso is destined to be alone. A person can only—

A person.

Odysseus’s head snaps up. “Blood!”

“What?” Leo says, stumbling back at his sudden outburst.

“A person only finds Ogygia if they’re gravely injured, but only once. If someone were to, I don’t know, bleed onto an enchanted crystal, attached to an enchanted astrolabe meant to guide someone to a secret secluded island…”

Leo catches what he’s saying. “Then it’ll guide them straight there.”

The two share a wide-eyed look, then Leo whoops and pumps his fists in the air. “Leo, you can’t rescue Calypso, but one of the others can.” He puts a hand on the younger boy’s shoulder. “You don’t have to do this alone. Not anymore. We’ve got you.”

The words come from both sides of him. Something else clicks into place in his chest, and a feeling of warmth spreads throughout his body.

“Jason,” Leo gasps. “He can fly! He could have her by tomorrow. Oh my gods.” Leo begins to pace. “But, no, we need him here. It’ll have to be after the battle.” Leo’s head snaps back up. “We have to win. We have to.”

Percy cocks an eyebrow, back in the driver’s seat. “You’re just now realizing that one?”

Leo shoves him playfully. “No, I’ve known that. But oh my gods, I don’t have to die.” Something seems to glisten in his eyes before he whips his head around so Percy can’t see him. “I don’t have to die.”

He says it like a prayer.

“Leo, dude,” Percy begins.

Leo still doesn’t look at him, but he does sniffle a little.

“You can’t do everything yourself.” He takes a cautious step towards the son of Hephaestus. “You should’ve said something. I-I can’t believe you thought you had to sacrifice yourself.”

“But the prophecy—”

“To hell with the prophecy, dude. You don’t get to decide to just die like that.” His voice chokes up, and he swallows down a lump in his throat. “We’re the Seven, man. We don’t just make decisions like that alone. We’re family.”

“Family,” Leo echoes.

“Yeah, a bunch of weirdos on a ship with cabin fever and a bloodthirsty goddess on their asses.” He cracks a grin as Leo turns around to face him, eyes shining. “Family.”

Leo shoves him in the shoulder. “Fuck you, man. Why you always gotta be so inspiring.”

“I like to think that two lifetimes of giving pre-battle speeches gives me some experience,” Percy quips.

Leo lets out a genuine laugh at that. “Alright, King of Ithaca. Let’s fix this astrolabe.”

Odysseus grins. “At your command.”

Chapter Text

Percy refuses to join the group going to find Apollo and Artemis. Partially because Apollo annoys the Hades out of him, but also because he fears what the god of truth will see when he looks at Percy.

It doesn’t stop him from having restless leg syndrome the entire time Leo, Hazel, and Frank are gone.

Will Apollo realize what happened just by interacting with the others? Will he report it back to the other gods? The pretty boy god of the sun is currently in hot water with Zeus; what lengths would he go to to get back into his good graces? Would he sell out the heroes of the prophecy?

He doesn’t have many memories of interacting with Apollo from his previous life. He knows that Athena convinced him to release Odysseus from Ogygia, but he doesn’t know how she did it. Apollo is likely indifferent to Odysseus at best, and it’s not like he’s always been Percy’s biggest fan.

When the group returns to the ship, Percy rockets to his feet from where he had posted guard at the bow. The sea beneath them briefly stirs, then settles.

Leo holds up a small daisy and shakes it gently. “Got the goods.”

Jason claps him on the back.

Percy keeps tapping his foot. “Did they—”

“You’re good,” Hazel interrupts with a small smile. “He was too mopey to do much of anything.”

Percy’s shoulders sag in relief.

“All we have left to do is find Asclepius and we have the cure,” Frank says. He eyes the daisy. “Hope we don’t have to use it.”

Leo elbows him in the ribs. “C’mon man, you just jinxed it!”

Frank, despite being over six feet tall and built like a tank, manages to look like a kicked puppy. Hazel pats his shoulder. “I think you’re fine, honey.” She says honey with that hint of southern Louisiana drawl she still carries. It makes Percy smile.

They iron out plans to get to Asclepius. Percy thinks about volunteering to go, but Asclepius is another god, and that makes a pit of dread pool in his stomach. Neither he nor Odysseus want to interact with any gods right now. It would only cause issues.

Annabeth, ever the saint, places a hand over the small of his back. He shudders and leans into her touch.

“You’re working yourself up,” she observes.

Percy ignores her comment. “Have I ever told you how amazing you are?”

She hums in response, noting his lack of acknowledgement. “Percy?”

“Yeah,” he says.

She nods, running fingernails along his back. He shudders again, this time for entirely different reasons.

“Get a room!” Leo hollers from the helm as he maneuvers the Argo II back into movement.

Percy doesn’t even have the decency to blush. He grins at Annabeth. She smiles back, grey eyes sparkling.

Yeah, okay, he’ll listen to Leo this time.

-0-

Physicians cure assembled, Jason’s near-sightedness cured, the Argo II sails straight to Athens. Gaea is rising, and they’re on crunch time. They can’t afford distractions. But, of course, when they arrive, nothing goes the way they want.

When Kekrops arrives with a welcome party, Percy knows better than to trust the ancient king of Athens.

Beyond the fact that he clearly has ulterior motives for boarding the ship, he just gives off plain bad vibes. His eyes keep darting around as if calculating the ships defenses, and his guards clutch their weapons a little too tightly to be totally relaxed. A memory from Odysseus tickles at the edge of his mind. Something about humans driving Kekrops’s people underground, long before the founding of Ithaca.

He purses his lips as the king talks, warning them of Porphyrion’s armies and the siege weapons ringing the Acropolis. Percy wonders, briefly, how they’re able to keep mortals away during peak tourist season. Framing it as restoration efforts, maybe?

He shakes his head, willing his brain to focus for once.

“The air is filled with storm spirits and gryphons as well,” Kekrops continues. “All roads to the Acropolis are patrolled by the Earthborn.”

“Wonder how they’re explaining that to the mortals,” Leo muses.

“Read my mind,” Percy says, and the two boys share a grin. Annabeth elbows him in the side.

Kekrops gives them a withering look, which Percy returns with a smile.

This king has no idea that he sits with another, the other half of him whispers. Percy’s smile sharpens.

“I offer you an alternative to above ground assault,” Kekrops says after a moment spent staring at Percy. “Underground passage to the Acropolis. For the sake of Athena, for the sake of the gods, I will help you.”

His words do not sound fully truthful.

“What’s the catch?” Percy asks just as Piper opens her mouth, likely to ask the same question. They share a knowing look.

Kekrops’s eyes slide to Percy again, his vertical pupils narrowing, as if he is trying to piece together a puzzle. Percy just looks innocently at him. “There’s always a catch when we’re offered help.”

Kekrops nods slowly. “Yes, well, unfortunately we can only bring three demigods, or you will be detected by the giants. Once there, you can disable the siege weapons and allow the rest of the party through.” He steeples his fingers, nails long and perfectly filed to points. “The ceremony has already begun, the earth trembles as Gaea wakes. This is your chance to stop it.”

At Gaea’s name, Percy tenses. The Seven know better than to invoke her name; one slip up, and she’ll have her half-awake gaze on the ship. Kekrops did that on purpose.

His eyes narrow. “The Earth Mother wants us the reach the Parthenon. She wants our blood to awaken her. Would getting us there in one piece not be her plan?”

Annabeth shifts next to him, and he watches as she locks eyes with Piper. They seem to have a silent conversation. They’ve done that more since their journey to free Phobos and Deimos. They share a new level of understanding. ‘Head and heart,’ Annabeth explained to him a few days ago. Annabeth provides the logic, Piper provides the feeling.

Piper’s eyes widen, then narrow imperceptibly. Oh, she has a plan, and the strategist within him waits with baited breath.

She opens her eyes and begins singing.

Percy has just enough time to clap his hands over his ears before her charmspeak, more powerful than he’s ever heard it, washes over him. The others do the same, and Kekrops is caught by Piper’s magic before he can react. His eyes go glassy and he begins to sway.

Annabeth flashes Piper a wicked grin.

Piper nods at them, and as a group they uncover their ears. She locks eyes with the entranced king of Athens. “What are your real intentions?”

The charmspeak is beyond powerful. It slams into Percy full-force and only doesn’t force him to speak because Piper isn’t directing it at him. Even so, he is tempted to blurt out his intentions to marry Annabeth right then and there.

Judging by Annabeth’s fierce blush and the way her eyes dart to his, she is thinking something along the same lines.

“To deceive you,” Kekrops answers. “We wish to lead you into the tunnels and destroy you.”

“Why?” Piper asks.

“The Earth Mother has promised us great rewards. If we spill your blood under the Parthenon, that will awaken her.”

Percy notes his switch from using Gaea to Earth Mother. So his hunch was correct.

“You serve Athena, though,” Piper states.

Kekrops hisses, eyes narrowing. Some of the fogginess leaves him. “We founded her city, and in return she abandoned me. She replaced me with a human king, drove my daughters mad. They leapt to their deaths. She turned her back on us. The Earth Mother has not.” Kekrops bares his teeth. “We loved her, and in return she cast us below ground, left to rot.”

Something clangs painfully in Percy’s chest. He knows that feeling, to be abandoned by goddess you served with your whole being. He reaches for Annabeth’s hand to squeeze it.

Piper continues grilling the king, occasionally launching into more singing. They have no need to cover their ears now; her attention is focused entirely on the ancient king. He strokes the back of Annabeth’s hand with his thumb.

Finally, the king agrees to help them without betrayal, but still only three of them can go. Piper is the obvious first choice to keep him in line.

“I’ll go too,” Hazel says. “The underground is my domain.”

“Never,” the king spits. “Your presence is revolting to my people. No amount of this girl’s singing would charm them out of killing you.” His glare finds its way back to Piper. “I hate it. Please, sing more.”

Piper sings another verse. Leo grabs two spoons and makes them do high kicks to the song until Hazel slaps his hand.

“Me and Percy,” Annabeth says when Piper finishes singing.

Percy frowns. “We’re who the Earth Mother wants, though. Our blood, on the stones, et cetera.”

“I know,” Annabeth says, “but it’s the most logical choice. The oldest shrines on the Acropolis are dedicated to our parents. It would mask our approach.”

He sees the logic. Extremely well, actually. Two powerful demigods radiate an aura that many monsters can detect, but beneath the shrines of their parents, that aura would be masked. Hopefully enough to cover up Piper’s as well.

He hates it. He hates leading Annabeth into danger. He hates splitting up. He hates all of this. After years and years of torture at the hands of the gods, he thought he’d finally get a break. Why the hell did he choose rebirth? He has no memories of the Underworld, but something must have changed to make him come back. And why did Fate have to give him another life of peril?

Annabeth places two fingers on his mortal spot.

He lets out a shuddering breath.

Plans are made, groups created, and the king is kept subdued by Piper’s singing. Jason will lead one front, Percy another. When every possible contingency is planned out, Percy stands and takes Jason’s forearm in his own “Until next time, brother. See you at the Acropolis. Try not to get yourself killed.”

Jason cocks an eyebrow. “Brother?”

Percy winces. “Sorry, that’s other me.”

Jason laughs, full bodied, and salutes. “I’ll do my best not to die, captain.”

With that, they depart for the Acropolis, ready to defeat the Earth Mother.

-0-

Within the sewers beneath Athens, Percy feels trapped. The stone hangs overhead, pressing in from all sides, and the sour smell seems to emanate from the very ground itself. It feels too close, too cramped, too much like the Pit.

He voices as much to Annabeth, who flashes him a look. “Don’t.”

He nods, swallowing, and tries to push the memory down.

Unfortunately, it gets replaced with another memory, one of a damp cave filled with rotted meat and blood and a monster that kills and kills and kill—

He sucks in a shuddering breath. He reaches blindly, trying to grasp Annabeth’s hand.

Piper grabs his when he can’t find Annabeth’s. She squeezes it, once. “You’re okay.”

The confidence in her voice catches him off guard. He’s used to Annabeth’s reassurance, but Piper’s fills him with a different feeling. His eyes find her other hand, and he realizes she’s holding Annabeth’s as well.

“This isn’t there,” Piper continues, eyes bright. “You’re okay.”

Percy and Annabeth share a look. They’ve been so reliant on one another, what with the trauma of Tartarus and his memories of being Odysseus, they forgot that they could seek comfort in their other friends sometimes, too.

Feeling a little less trapped, they continue along the tunnels. Gaea’s voice echoes, growing stronger the closer they get to the Acropolis. He keeps his hand gripped around Riptide, his bow a comforting weight across his back.

Finally, when they reach just beneath the Parthenon, Annabeth’s fingers brush the small of his back. “Percy,” she whispers. “Look.”

She takes his hand and places it on a marking in the ground, three deep gauges in the stone. Power emanates from them, and it feels like home. Like sea salt in the air, the feeling of wind on his face.

“The contest,” Percy whispers.

“The rivalry started here,” Annabeth says in awe.

His breath stutters. He sucks in a gasp as the power rockets through his fingertips, like the ghost of something he once held. His father, thousands of years ago, struck the stone here in an effort to claim Athens as his own. His trident left these marks. The same trident Percy used in another life to torture him.

He will not let that memory haunt him here. Not now.

Before he can think, he scoops Annabeth to his chest, one hand on her back and the other threaded in her golden hair. He presses a kiss to her lips, desperate, aching, trying to convey all of his feelings for her in this one moment. His love, his devotion; that somehow, two different lifetimes have agreed to loving her with everything they have.

He pulls away, gasping. “It ends here.”

Annabeth blinks up at him, face flushed. They both pretend not to see Piper pointedly looking away from them.

Something clicks into place in his chest.

He’s ready.

Chapter Text

Hazel’s Mist manipulation feels like donning an oversized, stuffy cloak. Percy has to resist the temptation to repeatedly shake his arms out, trying to get rid of the weird feeling. He wonders if Annabeth and Piper feel the same, wherever they are right now.

He stalks up the middle of the Acropolis, doing his best to give off the swagger of an overly-confident teenaged Earthborn. Not too different from his normal self, really. The monsters pay him no mind, content to ignore him. He is reminded of the death mist in Tartarus, sneaking through hordes of monsters, nothing more than another corpse.

Or disguised as a beggar, sneaking in to kill the suitors, part of his mind reminds him.

Yeah, this is familiar territory.

His eyes dart to the side, where Piper is scouting the perimeter. He thinks he catches sight of her near a siege weapon, dropping something into the sling. He keeps his face carefully neutral.

There isn’t much he can do in the center of the Acropolis without being noticed, but he pretends to inspect some weapons anyway. Rows of spears and swords lean against hastily built weapon racks, shields haphazardly stuck near them. Some of the weapons are polished, others look about as modern as clubs with bits of celestial bronze tied to them. He frowns at them. Poorly put together, but still deadly if they make a good hit.

Percy isn’t used to sleight of hand, but Odysseus has done his fair share of strategic trickery. Still pretending to inspect the weapons, he carefully loosens the knots keeping some of the crude weapons together. To anyone looking, it seems like he’s just doing maintenance, but when they grab the weapons, they will be useless as sticks.

He leans back, satisfied, and continues his patrol.

He is in the middle of inspecting a rack of shields when two yells stop him in his tracks. One, triumphant and the other, terrified.

The first is clearly a giant. Boisterous, female, roaring in celebration. The second is the gravelly yell of an Earthborn, but beneath that, he hears Annabeth.

He moves before he can consider the consequences, shoving through crowds of monsters that surge toward the triumphant bellowing of the giant. Some protest his shoving, but he ignores them.

He bursts through a throng of cyclopes that surround Periboia, who holds a squirming Annabeth in her grasp.

Percy sees white.

He knows better than to attack without the help of the gods. He knows he doesn’t stand a chance. But that’s Annabeth, and he’s never been particularly logical when it comes to the people he loves.

With a roar, Percy rips his bow off his back and fires, a single arrow sailing toward Periboia’s fist.

It lands, just as he aimed, right between her thumb and pointer finger, in the sensitive fleshy area where the median nerve rests. The giant roars and lets go. Annabeth falls to the ground and rolls, absorbing the impact.

Percy nocks another arrow and sends it through the eye of a cyclops that tries to grab Annabeth. It dissolves with a yelp. She dodges the swipe of an Earthborn and draws her sword. Thank the gods the giants were too stupid to disarm her first.

Periboia recovers fast, lunging for Annabeth. Percy meets her with another arrow, this one straight to the knee. It slows her, but doesn’t stop her, so Percy shoulders his bow and jumps into the fight. The Mist disguise he wears, though it hung on valiantly, finally dissolves.

He meets Periboia’s strike with Riptide. The force of it reverberates through his arm. He grits his teeth and shoves upward, knocking her off balance. She is massive, three times his size, and will crush him if he isn’t fast enough, so he rolls to the side just as she retaliates. It catches her off guard, and she misses wide.

Percy springs to his feet and whirls, eyes locking on Annabeth, who is meeting the strikes of two cyclopes at once. With barely a thought, he grabs his bow and fires at one, hitting it right in the temple. It stumbles back, dissolving into dust.

The distraction costs him. Periboia slams a fist into him, sending him flying into the ruins. His air leaves him in a rush as he collides. His vision spins, black spots dancing at the corners. Vaguely, he is aware of more shouting, but he can barely process it over the throbbing in his head. He brings a hand to the back of his skull. It comes away red.

Awareness rips through him like a lightning bolt.

He isn’t sure what he does just then, but something tugs painfully in his gut. It’s like the surge of a tidal wave, all of his nerves suddenly on fire, and pulses up through his body to the spot where his head slowly drips blood.

The bleeding stops.

He gasps, choked, and stumbles to his feet. The back of his head is still ripped wide open, but the blood does not gush out. It stays locked in place by his own willpower.

“WHAT IS THIS?” Periboia roars. “DO YOU NOT BLEED?”

Percy can’t manage a response. Everything spins, his entire concentration locked on keeping his blood from hitting the earth. He raises Riptide.

Before Periboia can say anything else, something closes around Percy, and he’s too disoriented to fight it off. The fist lifts him into the air, until he’s face to face with Enceladus, the bane of Athena.

“Curious,” the giant says, calm and unbothered. “I did not predict this power of yours, but no mind. You will be unable to stop your blood when you are dead.”

Percy blinks at him. His vision threatens to go black.

It does not take long for Periboia to grab Annabeth. And with that, the fight is over.

All of his awareness is focused on his head wound. It’s bad, he can tell. The blood threatens his control, wanting desperately to escape. He forces it to stay put, ignoring the pain in his gut. He will not bleed.

Vaguely, he is aware of Porphyrion talking, preaching about his confidence and being so sure the children of Athena and Poseidon would lead the assault. Percy ignores him. He can’t worry about anything except keeping his head from bleeding.

But then the giants are laying Annabeth on a stone slab, and Thoon is above her with a cleaver, and Percy can only see her.

He is suddenly twenty years old again, holding his newborn son, knowing he will soon leave him behind to fight a war in Troy. He is thirty, holding an infant over a city wall as fires rage below. He is thirty-one, watching his men drown beneath the power of a god.

He watches and watches and watches. Helpless, powerless, as he leaves his family behind, as he is forced to kill a child, as his men beg and plead and die. He is forced, over and over again, to bow beneath the power of beings above him. And then he dies, but it is not over.

He is twelve when he is forced on a quest to retrieve an item he did not steal. Thirteen when he must rescue his best friend. Fourteen when he travels across the country to rescue the girl he has not yet realized he loves. Fifteen when Fate decrees that teenagers must die to save the gods. Sixteen when he hands the knife to Luke.

Over and over and over, he watches, he grovels, he bows. Over and over and over, he is a tool for the gods. No matter his begging, his anger, he is nothing more than a sacrificial lamb. Him and every other demigod born into this hellish world.

Percy has had enough.

With a roar, he reaches out with all of his anger, his rage, two lifetimes worth of tragedy. A geyser erupts nearby.

Porphyrion laughs. “You’ll have to do better than that, son of Poseidon. The Earth is too powerful here.”

But he isn’t aiming for the water.

Above Annabeth, Thoon hesitates. His milky white eyes slide to Percy, cleaver suspended in the air, held up by an arm that will not move.

Porphyrion, still gloating, does not notice, but the other giants do. The Parthenon falls silent as their eyes fix on Percy, still gripped in Enceladus’s fist. Thoon’s face does not change, but Percy thinks he sees a spark of apprehension in the giant’s wizened eyes.

Porphyrion’s laughs quiet down, and his eyes dart around to the others before settling on Thoon. “Why do you not strike?”

“I cannot,” Thoon says simply.

The Giant King’s eyes track up the length of Thoon’s arm, which shakes against the hold Percy has on it. His gut screams in pain, but he refuses to let go. His head will not bleed, and Annabeth will not die.

He will not be powerless again.

“If you will not kill her, then I—” Porphyrion begins.

A flash, a scream, the sound of wet flesh hitting the stone. Thoon’s cleaver goes flying as his severed hand hits the ground.

And Piper stands there, Mist disguise burning, eyes alight. She raises her sword. “Surprise.” With a flick of her wrist, her dagger sails to the right and hits Enceladus’s forehead. The giant drops Percy with a howl, and he barely manages to avoid touching the back of his head to the dirt.

Annabeth is already up, rushing to meet him where he fell. She shoves a square of ambrosia into his mouth. “Do not bleed.”

“Way ahead of you, Wise Girl,” he says around the mouthful of ambrosia, head already clearing.

The battle is chaos. Piper sends monsters running, booming charmspeak making them fight their allies. Next to her, Periboia is a giant popsicle, frozen solid on the ground after meeting Piper’s magical blade. Annabeth has already rejoined the fray, sweeping her sword out to catch any monsters that manage to avoid Piper’s charmspeak.

With a roar, Porphyrion charges toward Percy. Thinking quick, he grabs the tip of the giant’s spear and shoves it into the ground, sending him into a pole vault. The giant crashes into the side of the ruins, giving Percy the perfect opening to slice across the back of his legs. The giant howls in pain.

Percy dances back as Porphyrion struggles to his feet. Even with his wounds, he recovers fast and swipes out with his spear, catching Percy in the chest. He flies back and skids across the dirt, head spinning once more. A quick check shows that it’s not bleeding, at least.

“The demigods cannot kill us!” The giant king bellows. “Remember who you are!”

Piper, voice heavy with charmspeak, screams, “I’ll destroy you all myself if I have to!”

Percy staggers to his feet. In the corner of his eye, he sees Annabeth do the same, hand clamped over a bleeding wound on her arm. He takes a breath, ready to make his final stand.

A smell like ozone rips through the air. “Thing is,” Jason Grace says, standing atop the ruins. “You don’t have to.”

With a crack of thunder, Jason leaps off the ruins, body wreathed in lighting as he collides with the giant king.

Percy whoops with joy as Hazel and Frank follow, the Argo II gleaming above them. Porphyrion roars in pain as Jason’s lightning strikes him through the neck, collapsing to his knees.

Percy uses the distraction to race to Annabeth’s side. She breaks off a piece of ambrosia and swallows it. The wound on her arm starts to close. “Can’t have any more,” she pants.

Percy grabs her hand. It’s hot to the touch. “Oh gods.” She’s already eaten so much. She’s bled so much. And yet none of it has touched the ground.

He kisses her feverish lips. “Don’t bleed,” he says, because it’s the only thing going through his mind right now.

They part, and Percy whirls to face Thoon, who has managed to reattach his hand. He meets the giant strike for strike. Despite being old and withered, the bane of the Fates is surprisingly good at sword fighting. He pushes Percy back, his meat cleaver far quicker in the air than it should be.

He spares a glance at the others as he parries another strike from the cleaver. Leo fires on the Earthborn from his ship, bathing the Acropolis in explosions. Hazel zips through the battle on Arion, raising and collapsing pieces of earth on top of monsters. Frank rains arrows on the Gemini, then turns into a rhino and charges a group of cyclops. Jason still fights the king, lightning flashing around them.

His eyes scan wildly for Annabeth and find her back-to-back with Piper, still fighting Periboia, who has managed to unthaw herself, and Enceladus at the same time.

Before he can even react, Enceladus backhands Annabeth, sending her spinning. He feels, rather than sees, her blood fly from her face, and he tries to reach out and stop it in the air.

Thoon keeps him from doing that. With a wrinkled hand, he grabs the back of Percy’s neck and forces him to the ground. “Ah, none of that, little demigod.”

Annabeth’s blood hits the ground. It sizzles and sinks into the earth.

The world begins to tremble.

“Fuck,” Percy whispers.

He bucks upward, throwing Thoon off balance, and races toward Annabeth. She raises her sword in defiance, nose still dripping blood.

The others are doing their best, but the giants are more numerous and stronger. Their wounds heal too fast, their blows are too strong. It doesn’t take long for them to force the demigods into a defensive ring. Leo still screams from the speakers on the Argo II, raining hellfire down on the monsters, but he can’t keep up against the barrage of rocks. The ship begins smoking, and an explosion rocks it from within, sending it spinning.

Jason screams, “Leo!”

Porphyrion swings his spear into Jason’s midsection and sends the son of Jupiter flying.

Percy catches him, white hot pain arcing through him as the two collide. They nearly crash to the ground, but Percy manages to keep them upright. Jason is covered in sweat and dirt, his eyes alight with lightning.

Something flashes gold.

“Percy!” Annabeth screams, but she’s too late.

Really, he should’ve known it would happen like this. Not on some sort of sacrificial table, or by an injury received from a giant, but by simply wanting to help his friend.

Because Jason’s sword, sent flying by Porphyrion’s strike, managed to embed itself in Percy’s stomach.

He collapses to his knees, blood hitting the dirt with a sickening sizzle.

For all his fighting, for all his anger, he is once more the sacrifice led to the slaughter.

A laugh bubbles up from his lips. The earth undulates, the giants cheer, and all Percy can do is laugh. Because it’s sickening, isn’t it? In every life, he is cursed to hurt the people he loves by trying to protect them. Blind the cyclops, his men drown. Catch Jason, and the Earth Mother awakens.

Odysseus curses the gods and the Fates, and Percy agrees. They are not separate people right now, but two hurt men who have been cursed to pain over and over again. So he laughs, because it’s all he can do.

Jason’s face swims into his vision. The giants ignore them now, too busy celebrating the rising of Gaea. The son of Jupiter is saying something, and then there is pain in his abdomen, and he hears “stop it!”

With his splintered mind, he grabs onto his own blood to keep it from spilling further into the dirt. Gold flashes, Jason’s sword is thrown to the side, and then there is ambrosia in his mouth and fire in his veins. He coughs, splutters, blood fighting against his control over it. The wound attempts to close. There is yelling, begging, someone apologizing. Percy ignores it all.

But then, something in the air changes.

Like the heavens themselves split open, the clouds part, revealing a star dotted night sky. The wind picks up, the air seems to shimmer with something more.

With a roar, the gods, healed and whole again, descend from Olympus to join the battle.

Chapter Text

As a young boy, Odysseus had revered the gods.

He was brought up with a healthy dose of fear and respect, his mother always reminding him to make the appropriate sacrifices and say the correct prayers. It would be his job to watch over Ithaca someday, and part of that job included keeping the gods happy.

He did not always respect the gods. His respect turned to friendship when Athena entered his life, and then to betrayal when she left it. It turned to anger and fear when Poseidon and Zeus killed his men, and hatred on the rocky shores of his homeland. He died with that hatred in his heart, even once he mellowed in his elder years. Odysseus did not revere the gods as a good Greek king should, and all knew as much. Even in this second life, he does not respect them.

But in this moment, as the clouds part and the gods ride into battle, all he can feel is joy.

Percy staggers to his feet, hand clutched over his stomach wound, and raises a fist into the air. The other demigods cheer.

The air warps, and the gods are suddenly standing with them, weapons raised against the giants. Poseidon materializes next to Percy, wearing black armor, trident gripped in his hand. Odysseus hates the sight of the god of the sea, but in this moment, he knows that they don’t stand a chance without him. A headache threatens to overwhelm their body as Percy retorts that Poseidon is his father, but both know better than to argue right now. Odysseus puts aside his anger and lets Percy take the battle.

Poseidon lays a hand on Percy’s shoulder. “I am sorry I did not come sooner.” With a single motion, he strikes the ground. Saltwater springs from the crack in the stone and shoots toward Percy’s wound. Immediately upon contact, the pain lessens, then stops. His stomach closes.

If Poseidon notices the lack of gushing blood, he doesn’t comment.

In a motion almost too fast for Percy’s eyes to decipher, Poseidon raises his trident. “To fight alongside my son…” his eyes twinkle, and for a second, he looks like the laid-back father Percy is used to seeing. Then his gaze flashes, and he is again the unrelenting god of the sea. “An honor indeed.”

Percy raises Riptide, pointing it at the twins Otus and Ephialtes stalking toward them. “Bet I can kill both of them before you.”

Poseidon laughs, loud and clear as it rings across the ruins, and together they launch themselves at the giants.

The giants are huge and powerful, but Percy is fast. He rolls underneath Otus’s opening strike and between the giant’s legs before springing up behind him. He slashes up, carving a gash along Otus’s spine. The giant howls in pain, but Percy doesn’t let him get away. He takes a swipe at his ankles as he tries to flee, and Poseidon knocks him to the side with a blast of seawater.

The ground shakes behind him, and Percy whirls just in time to meet the spear of Ephialtes with Riptide. The giant snarls at him, teeth sharp. The coins braided into his hair clink together as he tries to force Percy to the ground.

Percy drops to the ground and dodges left. Ephialtes, expecting Percy to keep pushing back, stumbles and loses his balance. Percy takes the chance to grab his spear yanks it out of the giant’s grasp. Unfortunately, Ephialtes recovers quicker than expected and backhands Percy, sending him spinning. The spear drops from his hand.

“Son!” Poseidon shouts, and the ground splits open with a crack. Percy doesn’t think, just grabs hold and shoves. Water bursts from the ground, hitting Ephialtes in the side. Percy closes his fist, and it wraps around the giant’s legs, dragging him toward the crack.

Otus roars and charges Percy, who is forced to roll to dodge the spear aimed directly for his heart.

Percy catches sight of Annabeth as he dodges. She fights in tandem with her mother, striking Enceladus’s weak spots as Athena keeps him moving, her shield blocking every strike. They are a whirlwind, a fighting machine, and Odysseus has never felt so proud.

He can’t savor the moment, though, because Ephialtes manages to free himself from the water and throws his spear at Percy. He rolls to dodge. The spear collides with the ground, the force of it sending a shock of vibration into Percy’s bones. He grits his teeth and springs to his feet.

Poseidon catches a blow Percy didn’t even see coming, blocking Otus’s spear with the shaft of his trident. It gleams wickedly in the sunlight, and Percy has to suppress a shudder.

With a roar, Poseidon shoves outward and spins the bottom of his trident up, catching the shaft of Otus’s spear and breaking it clean in half. The giant stares, open-mouthed, at him.

Percy doesn’t give him a chance to recover. He rips his bow off his back—somehow not shattered despite all the rolling around—and fires an arrow directly at Otus’s heart. At the same time, Poseidon strikes down with his trident, and they collide with Otus.

He falls, defeated, and the ground swallows him up.

Poseidon stares at Percy, eyes wide, then glances at the bow in his hands. For a split second, Odysseus thinks he’s a dead man.

Then Ephialtes screams, “BROTHER!”

Percy can’t dodge in time.

Ephialtes grabs Percy’s arm and throws him across the Parthenon. He hits the ground, hard, and bounces. Something cracks in his chest. He screams. He tastes copper.

Ephialtes bounds toward him, eyes ablaze with fury. He swings his spear down, and it takes all of Percy’s energy to roll to dodge, his ribs screaming in pain.

Ephialtes strikes again, faster, and clips Percy’s side when he can’t dodge fast enough. With a roar of pain, he staggers to his feet and raises Riptide.

The giant is too quick, too angry. He swings again and again and again, and Percy can only parry and dodge so fast. His ribs scream, his side aches. He spits blood. It no longer sizzles when it hits the ground.

Gaea is awake.

Poseidon tries to get in between them, but Ephialtes quite literally backhands the god to the ground. Percy is forced to dodge again as his spear swings toward his chest, but he is too slow, and the tip slices his sword arm.

This is so stupid, a distant part of him thinks through the haze of pain. These guys are the easy ones!

But Odysseus knows what it’s like to fight with the anger of losing someone you love. Or whatever twisted sort of love the giants feel for one another.

The others, thank the gods, are winning. Piper fences with Periboia, Aphrodite at her side. The goddess of love carries no weapon, instead clawing at the giant’s skin with wicked sharp nails. She has a feral sort of smile on her face, and Percy thinks in his pain-addled mind that that’s what love does to a person.

And gods, does Percy love his friends.

With a scream, he goes on the offensive. Ephialtes is caught off guard by Percy’s renewed vigor and stumbles as Percy strikes him. He swipes with Riptide with the ferocity Ephialtes had struck him with. The two meet blow for blow. He ignores the pain in his chest, the way breathing stings, and focuses on making this son of a bitch hurt.

He doesn’t know how long he fights the giant like this, covered in dirt and blood. Long enough that his limbs ache, his head swims. He can’t keep it up forever. Where the hell is his dad?

As if summoned by the thought, Poseidon reappears. He strikes Ephialtes in the leg. The giant screams. Percy almost thinks they’ve got him now, but then another giant appears. Percy doesn’t even recognize him. Before he can tell his dad to watch out, the giant—twice the size of Ephialtes—grabs Poseidon and shoves him to the ground.

Percy is forced to go on the defensive again as Ephialtes focuses his sights back on him. He does his best to keep pace, but he’s getting tired.

Ephialtes gets a lucky hit. He catches the hilt of Riptide and twists, sending Percy’s sword flying.

Before Percy can draw his bow, Ephialtes grabs his shoulder and slams him into the dirt. Percy’s vision goes white as pain arcs through his cracked ribs, and he can’t stop from crying out in pain. The giant picks him up and throws him before he can even attempt to stumble to his feet. Percy lands on his back, too dazed to even hiss in pain.

Behind Ephialtes, he sees Poseidon still fighting the other giant. Alcyoneus, maybe? Stars swim in his vision, but he thinks he sees Hazel appear from the Mist atop Arion and strike the giant before Ephialtes blocks his vision again.

A giant fist swings toward Percy’s face and collides with his nose. He feels it break. “You killed him!”

Percy can’t speak, can’t even dodge as another fist collides with his jaw. “No one hurts my brother but ME!”

Percy spits blood. “Seems dumb.”

Ephialtes roars in fury. He hauls Percy up by his shirt and slams him back into the ground. Percy sees white.

He wonders, then, if this is how he goes. He’s fought Kronos, he’s killed his father’s bane, but this might be his end. Killed by one of the smallest giants, who is spurred on by anger that Percy and Odysseus both feel a kinship with. He hates the giants, hates what they stand for, but he somehow understands them. Bleeding, surrounded by his friends, body bruised and broken, he gets them.

Time seems to slow. To the left, three elderly ladies beat Thoon with wicked metal bats. Next to them, Leo is a fireball, his father laughing in his wake. Annabeth and Athena back Enceladus into a column, and it collapses on top of him, killing him.

Percy nearly laughs. He may die here, but the demigods will win the battle.

His vision swims as Ephialtes slams him into the ground again. The world seems so far away. Odysseus floats in the darkness threatening to swallow his mind. Maybe now he’ll be at peace. Maybe he’ll get a chance to rest.

Percy closes his eyes.

“Perseus!”

The clang of metal.

Something heavy whistling through the wind.

Energy.

His heart skips a beat.

Power.

And you, Percy, are my favorite son.

Percy reaches up and catches Poseidon’s trident out of the air.

It is overwhelming.

The power rockets through his hand and into his chest. He gasps, eyes flying open, as his bones knit themselves back together. The sea itself seems to course in his veins, and he feels suddenly alive.

He held this trident centuries ago. It had felt powerful then, as he used it to torture Poseidon on the rocky shores of Ithaca. The ichor that painted his hands had felt at home with the trident; godly power out of his grasp. A god’s weapon of power is part of their very being, and only that god can access its full power.

Odysseus, a mortal man, had only scratched the surface.

The sea does not like to be restrained.

With a roar, Percy throws his hands out. Ephialtes is thrown backwards by an unseen force.

Percy doesn’t give him a chance to recover. He jumps to his feet and spins his father’s trident in his hands. The weapon sings to him, like an old friend saying hello after a long time away. It recognizes his hands, made of and from the sea. And if it recognizes the hands of Odysseus, it does not protest. A weapon of power respects power.

Percy stalks forward.

Ephialtes cannot even get to his feet. He tries, (oh, he tries) but Percy does not give him time. On his knees, eyes wide with fear, spear broken at his side, he dies. With a trident through his chest, he dies.

And it is over. With a shudder of the earth itself, the last of the giants are swallowed into the ground.

Chapter Text

Silence hangs over the battleground like a thick, woolen blanket. There is nothing beyond the sound of wind picking up dust and his own heart in his ears. The trident in his hands vibrates with power beyond his comprehension.

Percy wonders what it would be like to wield a weapon like this full time.

Odysseus never wants to know.

He feels like he is watching himself in third person. For a moment, he is two different men reliving two different memories. One is surrounded by castle walls, drenched in the red blood of men, a bow in his hands. The other stands beneath red mist clouds, lungs burning as he laughs, a goddess screaming in agony.

Ephialtes’s blood drips from the tip of the trident.

There is a crunch on the gravel, and he reacts on instinct. There is no thought beyond the hard-earned battle instinct roaring in his blood. Twisting, he grabs the person and points the trident at their neck, ready to knock them to the ground.

His father stares at him, eyes wide with alarm.

Percy’s hand shakes. Odysseus’s blood pounds. For a heartbeat, he is splattered with golden ichor underneath a stormy sky.

The trident clatters from his hand.

He sucks in a breath, then another, but his lungs can’t get enough in. The power from the trident rushes back out of him, leaving him hollow and aching. Blood streams from his wounds. His head pounds. His heart threatens to shatter his ribs.

His knees give out next. With a small sound of alarm, Poseidon catches him and lowers him to the ground. He yells something at someone, but Percy doesn’t really have the mind to pay attention. He’s too busy focusing on breathing, and not bleeding out, and other important things like that.

Percy’s mind threatens to go to war with itself as Poseidon’s sea-green eyes scan his body. He wants to lean into his father’s touch. He wants to run the god through with his own trident. He wants to be far, far away from here.

There is a hand on his head; some of the pain recedes. A golden glow, whispered words, and Percy thinks it could be Apollo, but Odysseus is too busy keeping their eyes firmly trained on the god of the sea. Needle-like pain blooms behind his left eye, digging. It shoves into the nerve endings, beneath the myelin, threatens to tear his memories apart. A nurse that can’t find a vein, an axe that won’t split the wood clean. Will this be the moment his head finally splits open?

“My boy,” Poseidon whispers. It sounds like screams.

I’ll kill you I’ll kill you I’ll kill you—

Percy bites his own tongue so hard it begins to bleed.

Poseidon’s eyes are wide, pleading. He looks like a worried father. Odysseus wants to spit in his face.

A real caring father wouldn’t—

—oh don’t start—

A ringing in his ears. Anger surging in his blood.

--tried to kill me on that rock—

--just saved our LIVES—

--could you for ONCE just—

SHUT THE FUCK UP.

Percy slams his head back against the ground.

Poseidon’s shout of alarm is drowned out by Annabeth’s. She falls to her knees, shoving Poseidon out of the way. The sea god is too distressed to even be offended.

“Percy, focus on my voice, okay?” She whispers, and he tries to latch onto it, but his head wants to split open and pour the contents of his brain onto the stones of the Acropolis. He wonders what it would look like. He wonders if it would be a mercy.

A few more words he can’t make out, and then Piper’s voice is right next to his ear. “Percy, it’s okay, you’re okay.” Charmspeak. His splintered mind latches onto it. “You’re alive. You’re Percy Jackson, and you’re alive.” She can’t say much without arising suspicion from the gods, but it’s enough. His head metaphorically slams itself back together.

He sits up with a choked gasp. Odysseus stutters a breath, then backs off. Annabeth sags in relief. “Thank the gods.” She throws herself at him, and he barely manages to catch her. His ribs protest, but they don’t feel broken anymore, courtesy of Apollo probably. He’ll have to thank the god later.

Behind Annabeth, Poseidon stares at him, bewildered. Whatever just happened probably looked insane to him. Percy has to stifle a laugh. Part of him wants to freak out, but right now he’s too relieved about just being alive and whole that he can’t spare the energy. He’ll have the panic attack after they kill Gaea.

He buries his face into the crook of Annabeth’s neck and drinks in her scent. Blood, dust, old paper and leather-bound books. His Annabeth.

She pulls back. Her eyes flick around to each of the gods, awkwardly surrounding the group of demigods now huddled on the ground. Jason has his head on Piper’s shoulder, sweat beading his brow. Leo is smoking, but Frank doesn’t seem to mind as he wraps an arm around him and Hazel.

Gods, they’re alive.

A laugh bubbles out from his lips. He doesn’t care about the bewildered looks the gods give him. He doesn’t even really care that Gaea is awake. In that moment, all he can feel is relief, because for once in his cursed lives, they somehow survived.

He sweeps Piper into a hug, another laugh bursting from him. Jason gets pulled into it too, and then Annabeth grabs the trio of Leo, Frank, and Hazel and yanks them into the weird group hug, all limbs and awkward angles. It smells a bit like singed hair and iron. Percy doesn’t care. His laugh breaks, and he has to stifle a sob. He feels hot tears on his head. Piper maybe?

Alive.

Someone clears their throat. It takes a moment for the group of demigods to break their crushed huddle. Percy turns to meet Hera’s gaze.

He is proud of himself for how neutral he keeps his expression.

“It seems that, in the end, my plan worked as intended,” the queen of the gods says.

Annabeth opens her mouth, eyes flashing. Piper yanks her back.

“Yes, well, the Earth Mother still rises,” Zeus grounds out. He sends Hera a withering look. She just meets it with a smug expression of her own. “On another continent.”

“Can’t you just flash us there?” Leo asks. He staggers to his feet, hair still smoking. Hephaestus tries to pat it out.

“We are still too weakened,” Athena says. She sounds pained, but Percy can’t look at her. Like, he literally can’t. Odysseus won’t let him. The bolt of anxiety and regret that rockets through him keeps his eyes firmly off the goddess of wisdom.

Which means his wandering, ADHD brain finds itself looking at Poseidon again, and that sends another bolt of fear through him. Poseidon keeps looking at him with a curious expression, like he’s staring down a puzzle. His trident is back in his hands. Odysseus feels sick just looking at it.

There’s that headache again.

You can’t. You’ll get me killed.

I know.

He shudders out a breath of relief. They’re on the same page.

The group disperses. Zeus calls Hades and Poseidon over to discuss a plan to get the demigods to New York in one piece. Apollo flitters around to heal injuries, his eyes occasionally flicking to Zeus as if he is expecting to be smote at any second. Hephaestus and Leo are engaged in some sort of rapid discussion about fixing up the Argo II at blinding speeds (the god of the forge is already stalking over to the ship, hammer in hand). Annabeth hugs Piper.

A hand on his shoulder. Odysseus stiffens.

“Perseus,” Athena says.

He doesn’t turn around. Doesn’t dare. His hands clench and unclench.

The hand tightens, ever so slightly. “Look at me.” There is no anger in her voice.

He debates the cons of just ignoring her and running away. Probably a bad idea. Probably a one-way ticket to getting killed. Still, he considers it.

But someone will know sooner or later. And at least this goddess won’t kill him for it. Probably. Hopefully.

He turns around to meet the eyes of his oldest friend.

Athena’s eyes are exactly as he remembers them. Grey and stormy, just like her daughter, but with a current of power beneath it. If he stares too long, he knows he will see battles flickering across her irises, those both lost and won.

Athena stares back, nearly unmoving. He feels like a specimen. Somewhere inside him, anger surges. She should be talking to Annabeth, not him. She should be apologizing, on her knees begging for forgiveness. Her madness had cursed Annabeth to Tartarus. That goddess is not the one he remembers from his boyhood, but it is the one he remembers abandoning him on an island in the middle of the sea, leaving him to ten years of torture.

He bites his tongue and holds his words. He will not scream and curse like the arrogant man he once was.

The air shimmers, then something is pressed into his hands.

He looks down, and the breath catches in his throat.

His bow. His bow. The one left behind in Ithaca all those years at sea. The one his wife had used to buy her time. The one he’d slaughtered the suitors with.

It has not aged. It looks as it did before he left his home, sturdy and powerful.

He swallows and raises his eyes to meet Athena’s.

“I kept it,” she says simply.

He stares at her.

“I knew you would return someday. Though, I cannot say I predicted this.” She looks him up and down. “A son of his is a strange fate for you, old friend.”

He can’t find words. The bow in his hands is a heavy weight.

“I apologize for how I have treated you these past years. I did not realize who you were,” she says.

The anger flares to life within him again. “You should be saying sorry to Annabeth.”

She blinks. She looks confused. It just angers him further. “You sent her on a suicide mission.”

“I—”

He cuts her off. “You nearly got her killed. Got her sent to Tartarus. I would think you cared more than that, old friend, but it seems you are still the same goddess who left me for dead,” he spits.

She reels back as if struck.

He is shocked to find that both halves of him agree. Yes, she vouched for his freedom from Ogygia and yes, she mentored Telemachus, but it didn’t erase the ten years she abandoned him. It didn’t make up for any of the pain she put him through. Even in his previous life, he had never truly forgiven her.

Something flickers in Athena’s eyes, and if he didn’t know better, he’d think it was regret. But Athena doesn’t feel regret. In fact, the entire time he’s known her this life, he’s only seen arrogance.

He prepares himself for her protests. He prepares himself to throw his bow, this beautiful piece of his old life, at her feet. But then she does something that shocks him.

Her eyes flick to look behind his shoulder. “Annabeth.”

Percy turns to see Annabeth’s head snap up and lock eyes with her mother. Her mouth works, but no sound comes out.

“Come, daughter,” Athena says. “We have much to discuss.”

Like a stop motion character, Annabeth stumbles her way over. Percy reaches out to grasp her hand.

Athena stares at her daughter and Annabeth stares back. Both square their shoulders.

Then Athena deflates. “My daughter, I…” she works her lip. “This is not easy for me to say. I did not intend for—” she cuts herself off with a shake of her head. “No, this is not right. My pride is getting in my way. Annabeth.” She reaches out and takes one of Annabeth’s hands in her own. “I am sorry.”

Annabeth’s mouth drops open.

“In my madness, I sent you on an impossible quest, and yet you succeeded. You defied the odds yet again, my child. And for your reward, you were cast into the pit.” Athena closes her eyes and takes in a shuddering breath. “I believe I need to re-examine my mentality. It seems that I have let much slip away from me in the past millennia.” Her stormy eyes slide to look at Percy. “Does she—”

“Yes,” Percy interrupts. “She knows.”

Annabeth sucks in a breath. She finally seems to notice the bow in his hands. “You knew?”

“Not until I saw him in this battle,” Athena says.

Annabeth yanks her mother forward. Percy shouts in alarm as the goddess of wisdom stumbles. She is forced to meet Annabeth at eye level. “If you tell anyone, I do not care what lengths I have to go to. You will—”

“I have no intention of informing anyone,” Athena breathes. Odysseus gapes at them, in primary control for a moment. He never manhandled Athena like that, and Annabeth has never shown anything but respect (even if begrudging) toward her mother. But now, his girlfriend’s eyes flash with all the rage of the pit.

Tartarus changed both of them for good.

Annabeth releases her mother. A flash of shock crosses her face, like she can’t believe what she just did, but she smooths it over. “Good. Then I accept your apology.”

Athena gives her a resigned smile, an expression that feels achingly familiar to Odysseus. “No, you don’t.”

Annabeth works her jaw. “You don’t believe me?”

Athena shakes her head. “No, it is not that. I am just logical enough to realize that you—we—are having heightened emotions, and you need time to process before you forgive.” At Annabeth’s surprised look, Athena continues, “I may be a strategic goddess, but I am not entirely devoid of emotional maturity.”

Odysseus can’t help himself. He snorts.

Athena gives him a dry look. He shrugs.

Annabeth’s eyes flick between them. “This is going to be weird, isn’t it?”

At that, Athena laughs.

Or, well, laugh isn’t the right word. She lets out a small exhale, like a chuckle, but quieter. Nonetheless, it’s a laugh, and Annabeth nearly jumps out of her skin when she hears it. Percy wraps an arm around her waist and tugs her close. “It’ll be okay, Wise Girl. Promise.”

It isn’t settled, not by a long shot; there’s too much baggage for either of them to forgive Athena now. But a tentative sort of truce settles over them, and Percy is content to set the worst of it aside until the war is won. If Athena is truly determined to do better, then she will have years to make it up to them. And if she isn’t, then they don’t have to forgive her. He’ll follow Annabeth’s lead, no matter what.

His former mentor settles a gentle hand on his shoulder, and for a moment he is flashed back to Ithaca’s hillsides, his chiton rippling in the wind, the goddess of wisdom looking down at him with a smile on her face.

The illusion is broken, and he is once again standing in modern day Athens. The goddess does not look at him with a motherly smile, but instead an ashen determination. “Win this war, old friend. I will be at your side.” With that, she takes Annabeth’s hand and leads her away, leaving Percy alone in the center of the Acropolis.

He takes a shuddering breath, shoulders his bow, and prepares to face Gaea.

Chapter Text

It would be too easy to just avoid Poseidon altogether, but damn it if Percy isn’t going to try. He skirts the edge of the gathering of gods, pointedly not looking at his father.

The gods’ plan is to send them back to camp with an almighty slap, courtesy of the king of the gods, and hope it doesn’t kill them. Odysseus prickles at the implication that a god can just throw a ship back home whenever they want. Not like he needed that or anything.

Percy grabs Odysseus and shoves him down. By the throat.

Poseidon stands a ways away as Leo and Hephaestus make last minute reinforcements on the ship, hopefully to keep it from disintegrating. Percy hasn’t said anything to him besides a thank you for saving his life. Poseidon, for his part, looks like a fish out of water. His gaze keeps flicking to Percy with barely concealed alarm. Percy does his best to ignore it.

His father can kill him after Gaea is dead.

Percy clenches his teeth until his jaw muscle twitches.

He debates the merits of hiding away on the Argo II until go time when a gruff voice behind him says, “Percy.”

He thinks he might shatter his teeth.

“I need to go prepare,” he says automatically, not turning around to face his father.

A beat of awkward silence, then, “rest is an important part of battle preparations.”

“I can rest when the Earth Mother is dead,” Percy bites back. Odysseus’s annoyance threatens to crawl its way up his throat and out of his mouth. He busies his hands by inspecting his bow. Thankfully, Annabeth took his old bow and hid it earlier, so Poseidon has no chance to recognize it.

The roiling of emotions in his stomach threatens to make him sick. He wants, so desperately, to throw himself into his father’s arms and feel just an ounce of safety. He’s been running for so long, cut off from any sort of protection, and now Poseidon is here. This is his chance to take comfort in his dad before their final stand.

But Odysseus won’t let him. Rage churns in his gut like food poisoning, turning what should be comfort into disgust. Memories flash in his mind’s eye, screaming and cursing Poseidon until he spat blood into an empty ocean. There is no comfort to be found in the god standing before him.

So Percy keeps inspecting his bow.

Poseidon either realizes this isn’t going to work or is too oblivious to realize Percy doesn’t want to small talk, because he says, “I didn’t know you were inclined to archery.”

He takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. “I had to learn.” It comes out harsher than he means it to.

“Percy,” Poseidon sighs. “Could you look at me?”

He’d be an idiot to ignore such a direct request, but Odysseus’s fatal flaw is pride, and dammit does he want to shove it in the old sea bastard’s face that he doesn’t have to listen to him. Poseidon doesn’t deserve his respect.

Percy bites back a slew of angry words and slowly turns to face his father.

Poseidon stands there, hands clasped. His eyes are weary, filled with concern. He looks… tired. Old. His trident is nowhere to be seen.

They stare at each other, neither really knowing what to say. Percy forces himself to meet his father’s gaze, swallowing down curses. Anger simmers beneath his skin, red-hot. He hasn’t looked this god in the eyes in millennia, but he hates him as much as he did on the shores of Ithaca.

No, that isn’t right. Percy has seen his father in this life plenty. He doesn’t hate him.

But he does. He hates him so much. He hates his father, and he loves his father, and it all hurts so much. Why can’t Poseidon just let it rest?

His father places a weathered hand on Percy’s shoulder. “You’ve changed, my son. What has happened?”

“I was in Tartarus,” Percy snaps before he can stop himself.

Poseidon goes sheet-white.

His father’s hand suddenly seems oppressive. Percy jerks his shoulder away, stumbling over the loose gravel. He feels as if he’s been burned.

“You—” Poseidon chokes, then cuts himself off.

Did he not know? But, no, that can’t be right. Athena knew; she’d apologized to Annabeth about it. After Percy told her to, sure, but she knew, right?

But her reaction, that analytical part of his brain reminds him. The way she’d flinched as if she’d been struck, the horror in her eyes, quickly smoothed over with confidence.

Tartarus is beyond the gods’ power.

“You didn’t know,” Percy breathes.

Poseidon, thousands of years old and god of the seas, is struck silent.

“You didn’t know,” Percy repeats. Something catches in his throat; it tastes like ash and rot. His skin prickles. “You weren’t watching.”

Poseidon just stares.

“You weren’t watching,” Percy snaps, voice rising. Because Tartarus may be beyond the gods’ sight, but their falling wasn’t.

Poseidon takes a step forward. “Perseus.” He says it like a prayer.

He knows, logically, that the gods were incapacitated for most of their journey. But they were still powerful beings, capable of seeing what was happening. He had enough encounters with various gods to know that much. It wasn’t that they couldn’t watch, it’s that they just didn’t.

His father hadn’t watched over his journey. Athena, who sent Annabeth on that doomed quest, didn’t even see their fall.

Percy finds no empathy for the gods. He’s dealing with his own schism, but he still cares enough to save his family.

Odysseus shoulders his bow. “I’ll see you when the war is won,” he spits.

With that, he turns on his heel and stalks away, leaving his father behind.

-0-

“I think we’re going to lose the ship,” Leo says as he straps himself into the control panel.

Percy checks his own straps. As safe as he’s going to get. “I thought your father helped reinforce it?”

“Can only do so much,” Leo says.

The rest of the demigods finish tying themselves to the most stable portions of the Argo II. The gods wait below the ship, watching. A bolt of anger rips through Percy, then settles again. He can’t afford to get distracted.

Leo’s eyes flick to Percy. “Captain—”

“Not here,” Percy bites. A headache blooms behind his right eye.

Leo swallows and fiddles with something on the control panel. He asked Percy to stand up here with him, to help him navigate as much as possible. Percy isn’t sure how good he’ll be when they’re moving that fast, but whatever.

Leo takes a breath. “We won’t have any more time before the battle.”

Percy closes his eyes. The headache spikes for a moment. “Leo—”

“If I have to die—”

“Don’t you dare,” Odysseus snaps, his eyes flying open.

Leo stares at him. “If I die, you bring me back, okay?”

“You’re not dying,” Odysseus says. Fear races through his bloodstream, memories of a man who trusted too easily, who loved too openly, who died in a cave at the hands of a monster threatening to overwhelm him.

“Storm or fire,” Leo says. “It has to be me or Jason.”

“Or P—me,” Odysseus says. For a split second, his eyes flick to Poseidon in fear, but there’s no way the god noticed his near-mistake.

Leo’s eyes bore into his own, too-bright for a normal human. He’s always had that fire burning in him, but right now Odysseus can see it clearer than ever. Greek fire burns behind his irises, and for a moment the temperature around them spikes. “You’re not dying.”

“And neither are you,” Odysseus retorts. “None of us are dying.” He braces a hand on Leo’s shoulder and squeezes. “We stick to the plan, okay?”

Leo nods, and the temperature drops back to normal.

Odysseus lowers his voice. “Now, help me switch back before Poseidon murders me.”

Leo’s eyes go wide, and he says, “uh, paging aquaman, Percy Jackson.”

Percy punches his shoulder. Not hard enough to hurt, but enough to shove him a little. “That was fucking stupid.”

Leo just grins. “I know.”

Before Percy can say anything else, a thundering voice comes from behind the ship. “Is everyone strapped in?”

Leo’s eyes scan the ship. Each of the demigods is lashed to the ship. Hazel and Frank are holding hands, and Jason and Piper stand shoulder to shoulder. At the bow of the ship, eyes facing outward, stands Annabeth. Percy had tried to talk her down from standing there, but she insisted she needed to see what was coming.

“Ready!” Leo calls to Zeus.

Percy looks around at the others, taking everything in. The Seven, who have risked life and limb to save the world. Who tore through armies of monsters to pull two half-dead demigods out of the depths of hell. He captures this moment in his mind, his friends strapped to the ship, ready to face the greatest battle they’ve ever seen.

He locks eyes with Annabeth. She nods, once.

Then Zeus sends the ship hurtling back to New York.

Chapter Text

Alright my brothers listen closely

-0-

The Argo II disintegrates above Long Island Sound.

As planned, Jason grabs Piper and Annabeth, while Frank catches Percy and Hazel as a dragon. Leo, immune to fire, goes down with his ship and emerges on the back of Festus, rebuilt and roaring.

Frank drops Percy on Half-Blood Hill amidst chaos. The earth undulates, throwing demigods like they’re nothing more than the stuffed animals Octavian sacrifices. Reyna barks orders in Latin, trying to hold the ranks together.

“Ave, Praetor!” Percy calls.

Reyna’s eyes find his, and she grins. “Ave, Perseus Jackson!”

At the sound of her call, a cheer rings from the battered army. From the top of the hill, a louder voice yells, “Percy motherfucking Jackson, about time!”

Percy flashes a grin at Clarisse and holds Riptide aloft in salute.

Then he launches into battle.

It’s chaos. Beyond the screeches of monsters and the sound of the earth itself breaking, Percy can barely make out Reyna’s voice giving orders. He hacks through hordes of earthborn as flaming arrows soar overhead. The earth tugs at his feet, trying to suck him down into it. He marches through it, slicing and sawing at muddy limbs and sneering faces. There are more monsters than he’s ever seen in his life. More than the Battle of Manhattan. Gods, how is the Legion able to stay steady with the earth moving like this?

Reyna screams, “‘Eiaculare flammas!” A wave of flaming arrows slams into a horde of monsters. They scream as they die, but more just take up ranks, grabbing the weapons of their fallen brethren.

“LEGION, CLOSE RANKS!” Frank’s voice shouts from somewhere on his left. The Legion tries to follow, but the earth won’t let them. It bucks and roils with sickening cracks. It’s as if Gaea must claw her way out of the core of the earth to awaken.

A demigod screams as he dies.

Percy’s breaths are ragged as he tries to find the source of the scream. It’s nearby, gods, but there’s so many monsters. Another human voice rings out and Percy hacks down an ogre, trying to get to it, but the earth undulates again and he falls to the ground. His heart slams against his ribs.

A voice echoes in his ears. Prometheus, a jar in front of him. “You are refighting the Trojan War here. Patterns repeat themselves in history. You are defending. You are Troy. And you know what happened to Troy, don’t you?”

“Give up hope, Percy.”

Yeah, well, he was at Troy, and he survived, so Prometheus’s taunting in his memories can suck it.

He shoves back to his feet. The earth tries to buck him off like a raging horse, but he turns his stance and braces against the ground, heels dug firmly into the soft dirt. An earthborn spots him and charges, attempting to tackle him. He meets the strike, heels skidding back, but he doesn’t fall. The monster reels back, but Percy slices him clean through before he can charge again.

Something changes.

He senses it a heartbeat before it happens. A shift of power, something in the air. From across the battlefield, a piercing cry rings out, and for a moment the earth stills.

Percy’s head snaps up and finds Hazel atop Half-Blood Hill, arms outstretched. In front of her stands Nico, guarding her from the approaching monsters, and next to her—

“AVE, JASON GRACE!” Reyna’s yells.

Jason raises his imperial gold sword. “Ciringite frontem!”

Hold position.

Cheers rise from the Legion as they gain their footing. Hazel won’t be able to hold for long, but the brief moment of steadiness is enough to draw the Romans back together. They close ranks behind their leaders, expressions grim but determined.

On the slopes of Half-Blood Hill, Greek demigods look to Percy. Different ages, different stories, all far too traumatized for their young ages. A mixture of fear and determination in their eyes. It hits him that they’re waiting for him to say something. Like the Romans with Reyna, they look to him. Percy Jackson, hero of Olympus. Doesn’t matter who he was in a past life, doesn’t matter what he’s done. They look to him.

Just like they did at Manhattan.

Percy raises Riptide to the sky. “We are going to hold Manhattan!”

It doesn’t matter that this isn’t Manhattan. The Greeks raise their weapons as one chorus and echo the call.

Percy raises his voice. Something tickles at the back of his brain. A speech given once, a failure that he can’t repeat. A second chance. “We must live through this day!”

The roar of the demigods is deafening.

The sunlight catches the bronze of his sword. “WE WILL SEE THE SUNRISE!”

The Greek army charges.

Percy spares one second to watch them charge, pride glowing in his chest, before descending back into the fray.

-0-

Though I never thought that it would come to this
Just know I'll be here, buying you time

-0-

Annabeth wishes she could have planned more.

Two master strategists on board the Argo II, but even they are constrained by the limits of time. And by Poseidon breathing down Percy’s neck.

She can’t let herself dwell on what-ifs, though. She finds herself at the medic tent, which doubles as a command center. There, Will Solace races around wounded demigods, barking orders at his siblings. Dryads and satyrs also flit around, using whatever healing they have to assist, even if just to dull pain with panpipes.

“Beth, thank the gods,” Malcolm says from his post. He pulls her into a fierce embrace.

“Positions, report,” she says as soon as he releases her.

Malcolm traces a finger along a map. “Onagers here, here, and here,” he points at markings on the base of the hill. “Monster barricades set up around. Couldn’t get close enough to take them down.” He swipes a hand along the borders of Camp. “Our barricades are held by Demeter and Apollo cabins. Well, the ones that aren’t healing. We also got Hunter reinforcements just before Gaea woke up.” He sends a sidelong glance her way. “Your doing?”

She gives a single shake of her head. “Reyna or Nico, if I had to guess.”

He nods and marks something on the map. “Stolls put mines here, here, and here. We’ve got Jeanie and Angel running messages to the Legion, hopefully to keep them from blowing themselves up.” He worries his bottom lip. “We put the mines down before the Romans allied with us.”

Annabeth grimaces, about the bombs and the kids. Jeanie and Angel are arguably their quickest runners in Cabin Eleven, but they’re both so young. Angel saw Manhattan, but Jeanie hadn’t come to Camp at that point.

Malcom matches her expression. “I know, but it’s the best we have.”

Annabeth takes one second to let her continued anger at the gods roll through her, then steels herself. “Plan for the catapults?”

“If I’m right, this one will be gone any second now.” He stabs a finger at the middle onager position on his map.

Before Annabeth can respond, Will stumbles up next to them. He’s clearly working himself to the bone, his skin covered in a thin sheen of sweat. But his eyes are bright as he hands her a small piece of ambrosia. “We don’t have to ration this time.”

Malcolm claps him on the back. “Good man.”

Never again, they’d promised themselves after Manhattan. Never again would they run out of healing supplies. No one expected to need them so soon after the Titan War, but their preparation had paid off.

Annabeth pops the ambrosia into her mouth. The thin cuts along her arms, gathered as she raced to the command tent, knit themselves back together.

Will straightens back up and wipes the sweat off his brow. “If you see Nico out there, please tell him not to kill himself shadow traveling, yeah?” With that, he marches back into the medic tent.

She can’t help herself. She chuckles.

Right then, a loud explosion rockets across the battlefield. Malcolm jumps to his feet and peers out the command tent. After a moment, he whoops, punching the air. “Middle onagers are down!”

Annabeth joins him at the entrance and, sure enough, the largest section of onagers is a smoking pile of rubble. From the distance, she can almost make out two sets of curly brown hair racing away from the explosion.

Malcolm turns to face her again, eyes alight. “You Seven have a plan for Gaea?”

Yes. Meticulously worked out, argued about, until it was solid enough. Even against the racing clock.

Get the storm to Gaea. At all costs.

And her job is to buy that storm time.

She nods curtly.

He cracks a grin. “Then get out there and kill that bitch.”

-0-

We are a different beast now
We are the ones who feast now
No more of us deceased,
 We won't take more suffering from you

-0-

The battle rages around Frank, but all he feels is an eerie calm.

He calls orders to the Legion between tearing monsters apart with teeth and claws. Their blood and dust coat the inside of his mouth. He feels more animal than man, even as the Latin leaves his lips. He isn’t entirely sure his orders always come out intelligible, but the Legion follows them anyway. A well-oiled machine, led by the raging beast at the front.

If only his grandmother could see him now. Praetor, leading the Twelfth Legion against the armies of Gaea. Hell, if he could see himself now. Well, the him from two years ago.

Another order, this one from Reyna, and a mass of shields slams into a group of Cyclopes. Frank grabs a straggler between lion’s claws. It rips apart like paper.

He keeps one eye on the sky, waiting for the signal.

A small figure skids to a halt next to him, panting. Frank shifts back to human just in time to stop the girl from falling over. She’s covered in monster dust, her unruly brown curls tied back in a ponytail just barely holding on.

She clutches a paper in her hand, which she shoves into Frank’s grasp. “Report from Greek Command. Avoid minefield on western slope.”

Frank unrolls the paper, finding a map with details of all the traps the Greeks managed to lay, as well as positions of monster barricades. He looks up to thank the runner, but she’s already gone. He didn’t even hear her leave.

Alright, minefield to the West. Cool. He needs to get that to Reyna.

He transforms into an eagle, map clutched between his talons, and sends a prayer to the gods that his allies don’t accidentally blow themselves up.

-0-

I just don't want to see another life end
You're like the brother I could never do without

-0-

Jason has never seen anything like this.

The monsters move like a wave, trusting the earth to carry them to their next objective. Gaea holds them in an almost motherly way as she tosses demigods like sacks of flour.

With a yell, he summons another lightning bolt into a group of earthborn clawing up the hill. They turn to dust before they can even react. Jason stumbles back, his heart stuttering as the electricity courses through his circulatory system. Gods, if this battle doesn’t kill him, cardiac arrest just might.

Nico stands to Hazel’s right, keeping the monsters off her. She’s collapsed to her knees now, hands digging into the soft earth. Beads of sweat roll down her face.

Power sings through the ground, up into his legs, buzzing. The monsters are whipped into a frenzy with each new surge. A voice echoes on the wind.

And yet, still no sign of the Earth Mother.

Jason grits his teeth as he blocks a strike from a cyclops attempting to get to Hazel. The force reverberates through his arm. Nico runs the monster through before it can try again. Unfortunately, more monsters follow in its wake. It’s a never-ending wave, a tidal force they can just barely hold back. Jason itches to join the forces below, to fight alongside his Legion, but he can’t leave Hazel’s side. She’s the only thing keeping the demigod armies on their feet. Their strongest force.

A human scream echoes across the battlefield. Jason mutters a prayer for safe passage to the Underworld. Gods, how many more?

The plan is simple. It’s a good plan. Unfortunately, the plan also involves far too much waiting for Jason. But what else can they do? Gaea is biding her time, waiting for the perfect moment to emerge.

Jason just prays they’ll be ready when she does.

-0-

I see in your face, there is so much guilt inside your heart
So why not replace it and light up the world
Here's how to start

-0-

Leo is on fire.

Figuratively and literally. His hands blaze as he sets explosives alight, dropping them on hordes of monsters from the back of Festus. He swoops low on individual monsters, setting them on fire like his own horrific version of a living bomb. The heat is so intense, they’re engulfed before they even feel it, already running and setting other monsters alight. He laughs as groups go up in flames.

It’s beautiful.

His heart pounds in his ears as Festus carries him in and out of the monster army. They grab the biggest ones in the dragon’s claws, tossing them like dolls.

For so long, this power was something to be feared. A curse, bad luck. The guilt of his mom’s death hung over his head for years. But now, the monsters yield to his inferno. He’s unpredictable, a literal firestorm. He feels alive.

He keeps his eyes peeled for Gaea. She’ll have to take physical form to come into her full power, so it’s only a matter of time. As soon as she does, Leo will take her down.

He just has to get to her first.

-0-

Wouldn't you like a taste of the power?
Wouldn't you like to use more than words?

-0-

Piper hates herself.

In this one moment, she lets herself feel that. Hatred, disgust, rage. As words leave her lips, tasting of copper and ash, she sits in it. Then she takes those feelings and pushes them into her throat, into her commands.

“Put your knife through your throat.”

“Kill your ally.”

“Die.”

The last one becomes her mantra, after the creative ideas run out. A repeated command, over and over, to any monster that gets close. It’s okay, though; the monsters do the creative work for her. They keep finding unique ways to die.

Piper hates herself.

She dares not get near her allies; one wrong move, and she will have their blood on her hands. She watches as cyclopes gargle blood around their knives, as earthborn tear their brethren limb from limb, as dracaena turn their own coercion on each other, and reminds herself that Aphrodite is one of the most ancient gods. It is no wonder her domains are so vast.

Her throat is raw, her body aches, and she lets herself feel hatred.

She will need it all to kill Gaea.

-0-

Somebody tell me
Come and give me a sign
If I fight this monster
Is it you I'll find?

-0-

Hazel kneels at the crest of Half-Blood Hill, her hands buried in the soil. She gave up on standing ages ago. Or maybe it was only minutes. She can’t tell. All of her focus is on the earth, the shuddering ground, and keeping it stable.

It bucks like an unruly horse, gnashing its teeth. The earth screams in her ears. It claws up, pulling at her skin for purchase, slicing and ripping.

She is grateful she’s lost feeling in her hands.

The screams of the dying armies become background noise. All she hears is the earth, its demands and its rage. It is awake, it is angry. She is the usurper, the opposing army, the only thing keeping it from killing everything in its wake. Her father’s domain, the gift given to her decades ago when the Fates spun her thread. She was always predestined to be here, on this hill, holding back the tides of a creature older than death.

And yet, as soon as Gaea appears in her fullness, Hazel will lose control of the earth.

She holds on, because it’s all she can do. Her blood seeps into the ground. Nico and Jason flank her, keeping monsters at bay. She’s too exhausted to send a well-worded prayer of thanks, but maybe it doesn’t matter. Maybe Fate senses her thoughts. Maybe the world is ending, and seven children are the only ones who can stop it, and no one can hear her prayers.

She tries, anyway.

And so the earth shudders, and demigods die, and the world continues to end. All on the slopes of Half-Blood Hill.

The song of the earth coalesces, humming and buzzing, a perfect open fifth. And as one voice, it cries:

AWAKE.

-0-

Six hundred lives I'll take
Six hundred lives I'll break
And when I kill you then my pain is over

Chapter Text

AWAKE.

The word rockets through the earth, up Percy’s legs, and directly into his brain. It isn’t truly spoken but rather created by the perfect tremors of the earth. An earthquake honed into a voice. Where Kronos’s voice had been the sound of honey burning over hot coals, or a scythe dragged along velvet, this is something indescribable. There is no way to explain the feeling of the entire world vibrating at the same frequency. Kronos was powerful, but this is ascendant.

For a brief moment, Percy thinks, we’re doomed.

Then he shakes it off.

He peels himself off the ground, where he’d been knocked when Gaea spoke. Around him, demigods and monsters alike stumble back to their feet among the aftershocks. A few still huddle in the dirt, shaking. Weeping.

There is stillness on the battlefield.

It is an anticipatory stillness, like a held breath. Beyond the quiet cries of the shell-shocked, there is no sound. No birds, no wind, not even the rustle of grass.

Percy finds his gaze pulled to the top of Half-Blood Hill.

Gaea.

She is… well, she looks human, with long brown hair that brushes the dirt at her feet and fair, smooth skin. But there is something more to her presence. Like if Percy were to look at her too long, he’d start seeing double. Her form seems to stretch and warp, growing into planes no mortal can comprehend. He cannot tell how many limbs she has, or the number of eyes on her face. For a moment, her skin is too smooth, too perfect, like sand blasted into glass. She is everything, and the sight of her makes his stomach turn.

She has her hand wrapped in Hazel’s hair. It would be a motherly gesture, if Hazel didn’t have tears in her eyes. She kicks at Gaea, but where her foot collides, the Earth Mother’s body just turns to dirt and reforms.

“My children,” the earth says. Gaea’s mouth does not move.

A sound begins in the center of the monster army, deep and guttural. With a start, Percy realizes it’s a cheer. It spreads, more and more monsters taking up the cry of victory. The demigods stand frozen.

Then, a flash of black. A sword through Gaea’s midsection.

Nico grabs Hazel and pulls her out of the Earth Mother’s grasp. “Get your hands off my sister.”

The spell breaks.

Percy leaps into action, racing toward the top of the hill. Dirt leaks from Gaea’s midsection as she swipes at Nico. Percy sees him shove Hazel into Jason’s arms and raise his sword just before a Laistrygonian giant blocks his view. Percy has the presence of mind to duck the first swing of its massive battle axe before coming up with a kick to the groin. The monster howls in pain but manages to dodge Percy’s swipe with Riptide.

He grits his teeth and feints left. The axe whistles as it slices by Percy’s face, a hair’s width from his skin. He grabs the monster’s arm and yanks, pulling it off balance. It stumbles over its axe, now embedded in the soil. Percy is just about to land the killing blow when a dagger embeds itself in the Laistrygonian’s eye. It dissolves in a blink.

Annabeth stands a few feet away, panting. Her eyes are wild. “Report.”

He blinks. “Um, alive.”

She opens her mouth to say something, probably that that wasn’t what she was asking, when a cyclops takes a swipe at her.

He catches the monster’s sword with Riptide and spins, disarming it. Before it can retaliate, Annabeth puts her drakon-bone sword through its side. It dissolves with a yelp.

“Report,” he echoes.

“Stolls blew up enemy onagers.” She thumbs down the hill, where a smoking pile of rubble is all that remains of three huge catapults. “Gaea is here, but you knew that.”

He ducks a spear. Annabeth grabs it out of the air and hurls it back toward the monster that threw it.

Gods, if they survive this, the things he is going to do to her.

“Can you get to Jason?” Annabeth asks.

Percy scans the battlefield. A flash of light alerts him to Jason’s position, still at the top of the hill.

Percy nods once at Annabeth.

She grabs him and plants a firm kiss on his lips.

He takes a moment to savor it. The feel of her, the taste of her. Sweat and dust and blood, familiar as his own breathing. Too many of their kisses have been like this, snatched on the battlefield, desperate to take just one second with each other. He wishes for a quiet life with her, away from all this war. It makes his heart ache with two lifetimes of the same wish. He just wants to make it home and be at peace.

He pulls back and leans his forehead against hers. His hand finds her pulse point at the base of her throat. It pounds against his fingertips. “If we make it out of this, I swear we will find peace.”

“We will,” she says against his lips. “I love you.”

He could say so much more to her. He could echo the words said in a past life, of love and loss and hope. He could explain that, somehow, his heart aches for her both as Odysseus and Percy. But there is no time, so he wraps everything he could possibly say into, “I love you.”

She pushes him away. “Go make that storm.”

The ground tries to stop him from reaching the top of the hill. He stays light on his feet, dancing around hills and valleys that form out of nowhere. He is nearly thrown more than once. The earth is awake and roiling. It is angry.

There’s a pattern, a part of him whispers. Dodge left.

Percy jumps to the side just as a hole opens. One second longer and he’d be stuck.

Two hills, a hole, sudden wave, then repeat, the strategist within him says.

He decides to trust it. Instructions rumble in his subconscious, instructing him to jump, dodge, go left then right, leap. He lets his instincts do the work, one eye on Jason. Hazel is slumped against Thalia’s tree, still awake but barely able to hold a sword. Jason guards her. Where is Nico? Where is Gaea?

Percy curses under his breath and picks up speed. Hill, hill, hole, wave. He jumps and rolls and weaves, taking down any monsters that get in his way. How did they lose sight of her?

There is someone else on top of the hill. Someone tall and lanky. He hears shouting, sees Jason lift his sword, and Percy sees red.

Octavian holds Nico in his grasp, knife to his throat.

Percy crests the hill and skids to a stop. “Octavian!”

The augur turns to him, eyes wild. Nico struggles in his grip, only serving to cut his skin against the knife. Two rivulets of blood race down his neck.

“Greek traitors,” Octavian spits. His eyes are bloodshot, his hand trembling. Percy can hear his frantic heartbeat. “You woke Gaea. You’ve killed us all.”

“Octavian,” Jason says, hands up in a placating gesture. “We’re on the same side here. Let Nico go.”

“No!” Octavian screams. He shakes his head wildly. “They’ve stolen you too. Turned you into a traitor. Taken the whole Legion.”

Jason meets Percy’s eyes. He looks truly afraid. Octavian has lost it, and he’s one second away from spilling Nico di Angelo over the slopes of Half-Blood Hill.

“Why would traitors fight against Gaea?” Jason tries again. “You’re making no sense, Octavian.”

“It’s a ruse! A farce!” His hand spasms, and Nico yelps as the knife digs in. Percy’s eye twitches as he feels how close it was to the jugular. “I… I will kill Gaea! I will sacrifice the traitors and read the patterns in their blood.” His whole body is shaking now. “The stuffed animals, they were not enough. I must gain my power from… from the—”

Percy makes a decision. He cuts Octavian off with a jerk of his hand. The augur freezes. Percy jerks his hand again, and Octavian’s mirrors it, wrist twisting unnaturally until the knife drops from his fingers.

For a moment, Percy sees a ghoulish smile in the ruins of a castle.

Nico breaks out of Octavian’s grasp. Hazel is on him in a second, handing him ambrosia and inspecting the neck wound.

Octavian stares at him, eyes wide. “You—”

Percy closes his fist. The augur drops to his knees.

Percy doesn’t take his eyes off Octavian as he says, “Jason, can you tie him up?”

Jason stares at Percy with wide eyes.

“Jason,” he repeats, keeping his voice calm. “We have to subdue him.”

The son of Jupiter jerks forward, then, and grabs Octavian’s arms. He yanks his sword strap off his armor and uses it as a makeshift rope to tie Octavian’s hands together. Percy doesn’t dare loosen his grip on the augur, even as Jason’s gaze keeps flicking to him with barely concealed alarm. Percy tries not to let it get to him. Jason hasn’t seen this power before, only Annabeth and Piper. He’s just getting used to it, that’s all.

Percy isn’t entirely sure when he stopped needing Odysseus to use this ability.

When he’s certain that Jason has Octavian thoroughly subdued, Percy turns to the battlefield. He scans the hills, taking in everything. The Legion is still standing strong, fighting against the largest segment of monsters. Pockets of Greek demigods assist, darting in and out to catch stragglers that the Legion misses. Leo and Piper are their own destructive forces, facing off against swarms of monsters on their own, leaving ruin in their wake.

But Gaea is still nowhere to be seen.

She’s still here, that much he can tell. Her presence is everywhere; the earth hums with it. But her physical form is gone. He curses. They need her physically present for their plan to work. His eyes sweep back and forth, trying to catch any sight of the otherworldly primordial.

Something prickles at the back of Percy’s neck.

It happens faster than he can register. Jason shouts, Hazel screams, and a heartbeat gets too close to Percy.

He stabs.

Riptide goes straight through Octavian’s stomach.

The augur stares at him. Percy stares back, heart pounding. Blood runs down Riptide’s blade, onto Percy’s hand. Red blood. Mortal blood.

A small knife clatters to the ground among the cut remains of Jason’s makeshift rope.

Hazel brings a hand to her mouth.

Blood spills from Octavian’s mouth. “Monster.”

Odysseus takes over.

He rips the sword from Octavian’s midsection and watches him fall to the ground. The augur spits blood, but more just replaces it, leaking from him with every choked breath.

Odysseus looks down his nose at him. “It is dishonorable to attack a man from behind.”

Octavian coughs. It is a wet sound. “Dishonorable… to control… blood…”

Odysseus sneers. “It was an attempt to spare your life. One you did not deserve.”

Octavian laughs. Blood flies from his mouth, landing on Odysseus’s legs. He looks like a rabid thing, pupils blown wide with fanaticism. “You will rot in hell.” With that, the augur of Legion Twelve, self-proclaimed Pontifex Maximus, slumps to the ground, dead.

Jason, Hazel, and Nico look at the body with a mix of emotions. Hazel, horror. Jason, rage. Nico, resignation.

Jason looks up at Odysseus. “Captain?”

Odysseus retreats.

Percy vomits.

Hazel is at his side in a second, holding him up. “Percy, Percy, you with us?”

He nods, retching.

You—you—

I did what had to be done.

“Oh gods,” Jason whispers, realization sinking into his voice. “Oh gods.”

His stomach somersaults. The blood, so much blood. Not gold dust, not dirt. He’s seen demigods die before, watched people bleed out, but Di immortales.

A dark room. The screams of 108 men. Red on the castle walls.

“He had to die,” Nico says.

Percy’s head snaps up.

Nico is looking at him with an expression that could be called understanding if it wasn’t coming from the son of Hades. Nico… Nico doesn’t like Percy. He wouldn’t empathize with him.

But gods, that expression.

“He had to die,” Nico repeats, and kicks Octavian’s hand for good measure. “The son of a bitch had it coming.”

Percy sucks in a shuddering breath, then laughs. It comes out choked.

Jason closes his eyes and takes deep, concentrated breaths. When he reopens them, he looks steadier. “Octavian would have sabotaged the war. You tried to keep him alive, and he threw it away. You made the right choice.”

Those words, coming from Jason, spark something in Percy’s chest. It heals something, a wound opened centuries ago. Millenia. A gash left by a brother who didn’t trust him and paid the price in blood.

When he finally feels steady again, he straightens, keeping his eyes off Octavian’s body. “Alright, we have a primordial to find.”

The other three nod, snapping back into soldier mode. They’ll unpack the horror of… everything later.

They split up, just by a few yards, to scan the battlefield. The lingering presence of Gaea ripples across the earth. It tingles at the back of his neck, like someone is watching his every move. He’d thought, when Octavian—

He cuts the thought off. Not now.

Monsters have kept away from the top of the hill, which leads Percy to believe Gaea is still nearby. Why else would they stay away, if not to keep from interfering? The Earth Mother has a plan; he would be an idiot to underestimate her.

That plan comes into action when something grips his foot. Percy twists, trying to break free, but it just yanks him to the ground. His head smacks into the soil, leaving him dazed.

“Hello, demigod,” a female voice says from behind him.

The earth doesn’t speak this time, but he knows it’s her. Even with normal vocal chords, there is something other to her speech. Something vast and nameless. Ancient.

He twists again, ripping his foot out of the earth, and finds himself looking up at the imposing form of Gaea.

She is both so much easier and harder to look at up close. The thin veneer of a human woman is barely holding on. There is no heartbeat to sense, no blood in her veins. Gods, Titans, they at least have ichor, but Gaea? To his powers, she feels like a dead body.

She cocks her head. “My, you are an interesting one, aren’t you?”

Percy jumps to his feet and slashes with Riptide. It cuts her arm clean off. The limb thuds to the ground and dissolves.

She frowns down at her stump, leaking dirt, and tsks. “You should know better of old Greek hospitality, Odysseus.”

Percy bristles.

She laughs. It rumbles the earth and clogs his ears with sand. “You did not think to hide from me, hm? I am the sire of all things. I know your soul, as I know all souls.” Her smile is warm. It makes him want to vomit.

“I can’t say I expected to get away with it long,” he shrugs. The familiar levity settles the anxiety fluttering in his chest. If he can banter with Gaea, he can keep his wits.

“I did not expect you to fight on the side of Olympus,” the Earth Mother says. The guise of a woman melts from her face for a split second, showing an infinite, gaping hole, before returning. “Not after what they did to you. In both lives.”

Percy shakes off the horror at what he just saw and says, “Yeah, well, lesser of two evils.”

She laughs again. “Oh, dear Perseus, you truly think that what I bring would be worse?”

He doesn’t have a chance to respond before Gaea takes hold of his arm, and Camp Half-Blood disappears.

Chapter Text

Tell me, O Muse, of that ingenious hero who traveled far and wide after he had sacked the famous town of Troy.

-0-

He’s in a courtyard. A familiar one, with stone walls and the sound of the lapping waves nearby.

Ithaca.

It is intact. Not in ruins, not a mirage, but intact. Just like in his memories.

He spins around. Where is Gaea? Hell, where is Camp Half-Blood? The battle-torn hillside is completely gone, replaced by these achingly familiar walls. The columns lining the peristyle are the same as he remembers them; the northernmost one even has the chip in the marble from where Telemachus’s arrow went wild during training. The boy was never meant to be an archer, in the end. He was much more suited to the spear.

He takes a cautious step forward and is surprised to see a leather sandal rather than his sneakers. With a start, he realizes he is no longer wearing his armor and camp shirt, but instead a white chiton. His hand slowly creeps up to his shoulder, where his (so, so familiar) chlamys is fastened.

Gods, it’s there. The silver pin, made by Penelope after his return.

It must be an illusion. It has to be. Ithaca is a ruin.

With a sigh, he steps toward the nearest column, expecting it to waver like the Mist does when he observes it too closely. When it doesn’t, he presses a hand to the stone. It’s… warm. Like it’s been baking in the sun for a few hours. He presses harder, but it doesn’t budge.

It’s not an illusion. He runs a hand over his clothing again, taking in the sensation. It’s a perfect replica; it even has the feel of old Greek fabrics. Did Gaea teleport him out of the battle? That has to be cheating.

Okay. He takes stock of his situation. This isn’t a dream or illusion, or if it is, it’s a very good one. His armor is gone, but at least he has his chlamys. His sword is belted at his side; Riptide, not in pen form. Well, this chiton has no pockets, so that makes some amount of sense.

There’s no one else in the courtyard and nothing beyond the sound of the ocean. It’s a perfect, quiet morning. The sun has yet to peak, but its rays have warmed the stone.

Alright. Okay. He needs a plan. Maybe contact his dad.

Something creaks behind him. He whirls to face the large doors, hefting his sword, ready to face whatever monster Gaea throws at him.

Percy freezes.

“Father? Are you alright?” Telemachus asks.

The sword clatters from his hand.

This is a dream. It has to be. An extremely vivid demigod dream. Because Telemachus is dead. Everyone from that life is dead. He is Percy now. He closes his eyes and takes deep breaths, willing himself to wake up, but when he opens his eyes, Telemachus is still there.

Telemachus gives him a cautious smile. “You look upset. Has something happened?”

Has something happened? Gods, has something happened? Only a whole new life! Only the death of the boy standing in front of him! Words catch in his throat like toffee, thick and cloying.

Telemachus’s smile fades. “Father?”

“I think I’m dreaming,” Percy chokes out. Or Odysseus? Gods, he doesn’t know.

At that, Telemachus chuckles. “Well, this is certainly no dream. Have you not been sleeping again? Do I need to get mother?”

Percy’s throat goes dry.

Telemachus continues, “If you’re feeling up to it, she’s at the shore overseeing the new shrine’s construction. I was coming to get you about it.”

“Shrine?” Is what comes out of Percy’s mouth.

“Um, yeah,” Telemachus says. He worries his lower lip. “You don’t look well. Maybe you should sit down.”

Percy’s mind races. This isn’t a memory; he has no memory of construction of a shrine on Ithaca’s shores. He has no recollection of this interaction whatsoever, actually.

Telemachus takes a cautious step forward, reaching a hand out. “Here, let me—” he cuts off, eyes flicking to Percy’s right, and drops to one knee. “Lady Gaea.”

Percy whirls on the sudden presence at his side.

“Go get your mother,” the primordial and current world-destroyer says with a smile. “I think she will help your father feel better.”

Before Percy can say anything, Telemachus gives a quick nod and rushes out of the courtyard.

The door bangs shut, echoing across the peristyle. Percy is frozen for a moment, staring at Gaea, at her soft smile and motherly features.

Then he grabs her by the front of her dress.

Or, well, he tries to. She fuzzes and appears a foot back, causing his hand to swipe through thin air. He growls. “What did you do?”

“Dear Odysseus, take a moment,” she soothes. “You look so upset.”

Percy stalks forward, letting out another frustrated growl when Gaea teleports backward again. “What did you do? What is this?”

She sweeps a hand out. “What is this? It’s Ithaca. Your home.”

Ithaca. Home. The words echo in his head, threatening to tear him apart, but he presses on. “Ithaca, this Ithaca, is gone. Time has taken it. And this isn’t a memory. So, I’ll ask you again, what is this?”

Gaea fixes him with a motherly smile. “A future I can give you,”

That stops him dead.

Odysseus’s heart stutters. A void in his chest opens, raw and bleeding. This… this isn’t an illusion. Or, well, not one made of the Mist. It’s a vision. A possibility.

Percy grits his teeth and shakes his head. No, it’s a trick. “This is my past. Another life. They’re dead.”

“I have chained death before. I can reverse it,” Gaea says. Her voice is a soft caress, rippling in the breeze that blows through the courtyard. Not the earth-shaking one from the battlefield. “You can have your family back, Odysseus.”

His family.

Odysseus lived a good life after his return to Ithaca. It wasn’t particularly long—he was already old and battered when he made it home—but it was good. But he would be lying to himself if he said he had no regrets. Gods, he missed twenty years of his son’s life. He would’ve given anything to get more time with him. It had not been enough when he died.

“Look, Odysseus,” Gaea says. “Look what you can have.” She places a gentle hand on his cheek and turns him to face the door as it opens.

Penelope.

His breath leaves him in a rush. She is just as beautiful as the day he left for Troy, young and spry. Her shoulders are lighter, like the weight of the world has been lifted. It is as if she never had to face those long, lonely years with the suitors.

She gives him a soft smile, and his heart shatters. “Odysseus. Lady Gaea.”

He swallows, mouth suddenly very dry.

“Telemachus said you were feeling unwell?” She fully enters the courtyard, giving a nod of deference to Gaea as she approaches them. “Having nightmares again?”

Her voice. Oh gods, her voice. He could never forget the sound of her, not even across lives. “Something like that,” he chokes out.

She gives him a look filled with so much love, he might just die right then and there. “Oh, my love, I wish I could take your pain from you.”

He lets out a watery laugh. “You’ve already done so much.”

She tsks. “You compliment me too much.”

“Never,” he says.

She takes his hands, running her thumbs over their backs. Her skin is so soft, unmarred by years at sea and war. “Which was it this time? The Titan War?”

He does a double take. “Sorry?”

Gaea laughs. “Oh dear, you wouldn’t expect me to prevent your family from knowing of your second life, hm?” Penelope doesn’t seem to hear her.

Odysseus swallows, hard. “Um, kind of.” He isn’t sure which of the women he is responding to.

Penelope sighs. “I would not have wished two lives of war on anyone, much less you, my love. But they are over now.”

His family, back, and they know him. All of him, both of his lives. It’s too good to be true.

She places a hand on his face, and he leans into it. It is so familiar. So right. “The Titans are gone, love. The gods are gone. They will never hurt you again.”

Something stutters in Odysseus’s chest. “Gone?”

Penelope gives him a quizzical look, but Gaea answers for her. “Dead, Odysseus. You know the world I desire.”

Dead.

Odysseus rejoices for a moment. Finally, the revenge he never thought possible. Poseidon is gone, dead. He can never hurt his family again.

But.

Something flickers within him.

Percy… Percy doesn’t want that. His relationship with his father is complicated, but he doesn’t want him dead. The gods are ridiculous, and cause a lot of problems, but they’re… they’re family. His family.

Odysseus hates Poseidon though. Even though he mellowed over the years, he always wanted the god dead. Or at least in pain.

But he’s… no, he is Percy now. And Percy is nothing if not loyal to his family.

Percy shakes his head. “I—no, I love my father.”

The vision fuzzes for a moment.

“I must have been mistaken on your feelings,” Gaea says, not unkindly. “Then perhaps… they do not have to be dead. Imprisoned?”

Odysseus likes that idea. It’s a good compromise, right? Both he and Percy get what they want.

Percy bristles. Yeah, no. Eternal imprisonment is not what he wants for his father. And what about the other gods, the ones Odysseus likes? Hermes? Athena?

Odysseus frowns. Hermes and Athena do not deserve imprisonment, much less death.

He shakes his head.

Gaea sighs and waves her hand. Something shifts, and Penelope says, “You know the gods won’t hurt you again, my love. Gaea made sure they are better now.” She drops her hand from his face, still smiling.

“You could have this,” Gaea says before Percy can respond to Penelope. “I can make whatever you wish be true, if you just join my side.”

For a moment, it is so tempting, even with the strange vision alteration. Odysseus is nearly ready to give in. He is so tired. So tired of fighting wars on behalf of the gods, so tired of them never recognizing their mistakes. Maybe… maybe Gaea could make it better. She could reform them.

But something twinges in his chest. Something wrong, missing from this world.

He slowly turns to face Gaea. “Where is Annabeth?”

The Earth Mother looks… surprised. Percy didn’t think that expression was possible on her.

“The daughter of Athena?” She asks. Percy nods.

Gaea waves her hand again, and Annabeth appears next to Penelope.

She is dressed in a flowing chiton, belted at the waist by a band of gold. Her grey eyes sparkle in the Ithacan sunlight as she smiles at Percy. She is beautiful, the most beautiful woman he’s ever seen.

Except, no she’s not, because so is Penelope.

Something fuzzes next to him, and he turns, alarmed. Penelope looks suddenly… out of focus. Like he’s put on glasses that don’t belong to him. He blinks rapidly, trying to bring her back into focus.

There. She looks right again. She gives him that same adoring smile, the one Odysseus fell in love with her over. Her long, brown hair ripples in the breeze.

But then it happens again, something fuzzing in the corner of his eye. He whirls, finding Annabeth now out of focus. She is almost dissolving. He can barely make out her face. What is happening?

Gaea makes a sound, something in the back of her throat and not at all like the gentle tone she’s been using. It vibrates in the ground, just enough that Percy feels it.

“Why is this happening?” Percy asks, slowly turning to face the Earth Mother. She wears an expression of frustration, her normally serene face marred by scrunched eyebrows.

Gaea doesn’t respond. The forms of Annabeth and Penelope flicker again. One disappears and then reappears as the other fuzzes away.

Something strikes Percy deep in his soul. “You can’t have them both here.”

Gaea turns fiery eyes on him. It sends a bolt of fear straight to his core, but he pushes past it. “You can’t do it.”

“I can. You are two men in one,” Gaea says. The walls of the castle are starting to blur. “You can have everything you want.”

Percy closes his eyes.

No, he can’t.

He is Percy, son of Poseidon. In another life, he was Odysseus, king of Ithaca. He loved his wife and son and dedicated his life to them. He would give so much to have them back, but not at this cost.

This is a new life. Men are supposed to have their memories erased when they are reborn. Something went wrong with him, but this is still a new life. A life he has built for himself. A life, for all its hardships, that he loves. He has a girlfriend he would give everything for. Who he followed into Tartarus. He has friends who understand him, who back his decisions and challenge him to be better all in one. He has a family.

He is not two men in one. He is one man, with two lifetimes of memories, yes, but one soul.

“No,” Percy Jackson says.

“What?” Gaea rumbles. It shakes the ground.

“I said no,” he repeats. “I will not bow to you. I will not take your deal.” He turns to look her in the eyes. She keeps unfathomable depths in them, enough to drive a man insane, but he holds her gaze anyway. “I am not two men in one. You cannot tempt me with giving me my previous life. That life is gone. I chose to be reborn. You cannot take that from me.”

“You do not know what you are throwing away!” Gaea exclaims. The walls of his castle continue to dissolve as she sweeps a hand out. “Look at the world I can give you!”

The walls of the castle rapidly begin to flicker. For a moment, he is in the throne room, Penelope and Telemachus at his sides. Then, his bedroom, lying in the bed carved from the olive tree. It changes again, this time showing Camp Half-Blood, where demigods relax, unburdened by constant war, free from prophecy.

The temptation strikes again. A chance for demigods to be safe.

But he remembers. He remembers the fifth cohort of old, slain on a doomed mission. He remembers Hazel, who died so young because of Gaea’s manipulation, forced to wander in Asphodel for decades. He remembers the ones he’s lost, the children slain on the battlefield by monsters under Gaea’s employ. He remembers Bob.

“You are a liar,” Percy says. He sees through her, then. Her deception, her play to disrupt the prophecy and Fate itself. “You would destroy this world.”

She screams. A raw, primal scream that shakes the foundation of the earth. The walls around him crumble. The fuzzing forms of Annabeth and Penelope dissolve.

Gaea’s plan has never been to give the demigods a better life. It has never been happiness. She would raze everything to the ground and make the earth anew. She does not want to work within the confines of the current world. This was a ploy to get him to betray the gods, get him to betray his friends.

“You almost got me. It was clever, trying to prevent the storm meant to take you down. But you won’t get me to betray them.” He grins at her, sharp. The sword at his side dissolves, reappearing as that familiar ballpoint pen in his hand.

She screams again. The dissolving vision flickers, a rapid slideshow of scenes. Ithaca, Camp Half-Blood, Troy, Manhattan, Polyphemus’s cave, Tartarus. They flash so quickly he almost can’t take them in.

“The gods may be flawed, but I don’t place my loyalty in them. I place it in my friends, and they’re not too keen on allying with you.”

“You would throw perfection away for friends?” Her voice is everywhere. It rattles the world.

Percy shrugs. “My fatal flaw has always been loyalty.”

He runs Riptide through her chest.

With a final scream, the vision dissolves, sending him falling through darkness.

-0-

Tell me, O Muse, of that ingenious hero—

Look, I didn’t want to be a half-blood.

-0-

He lands back on Half-Blood Hill.

Gaea’s face is contorted with rage, all semblance of motherly love gone. He rips his arm out of her grip.

The earth shakes as she says, “You will die with this world.”

Percy can’t help himself. He snorts.

“Percy!” Jason shouts from behind. Percy whirls to find his friend half buried in the dirt. Nico and Hazel aren’t much better off; they each have at least one limb caught.

Before he can do anything to help, Gaea grabs his shoulder and yanks him backward, throwing him across the hill. He hits the ground and rolls, shoulder burning. He presses his opposite hand to it, finding it slick with blood. Dammit, that’s what he gets for turning his back on a fucking primordial.

Gaea stalks toward him. Her fingers, now elongated into claws, drip with his blood. Her limbs stretch and contort as she moves, going beyond normal human proportions. They bend in too many places. Shattered pieces of rock grow from her skin—if he can even call it that anymore. It looks less like human skin and more like rough-blown glass with each passing second.

He raises Riptide, preparing to meet her next strike, when she’s suddenly no longer there.

Literally. With a noise of surprise that doesn’t fit her horrifying new form, Gaea is swept into the sky by the claws of Festus.

“Gotcha, bitch!” Leo calls before his voice is snatched by the wind.

With Gaea off the ground, the trapped demigods are released. Jason stumbles to his feet and races toward Percy. “Gods, Perce. What was that?”

“She tried to convince me to her side.” He shrugs. “Didn’t work. I think it pissed her off.”

Nico half-carries Hazel to them. Despite her exhaustion, her eyes are bright. “We’ve got the ground from here.”

Percy scans the battlefield and straightens when he sees Frank, in dragon form, grab Piper and Annabeth. He’s at the top of the hill in seconds, shifting back into a human as they land.

Piper stumbles to a stop and spits blood. “We ready?” Her voice is rough, like she’s been screaming. Annabeth proffers a square of ambrosia, which she takes.

The others nod. Percy glances to the sky, where Leo is rapidly turning into a giant fireball. The eldritch form of Gaea thrashes in Festus’s grip to no avail. His imperial-gold claws are buried in her shoulders, which bleed sand. Without the ground, her wounds refuse to close.

One chance.

He nods.

Jason grabs his arm and yanks him into the sky. Frank, as a dragon, follows close behind, Piper on his back.

Leo’s flames are white-hot. Percy’s heat resistance does little to help, and Jason winces when they get within a few meters. The roar of the fireball is nearly as loud as Gaea’s screams.

“Leo!” Percy calls.

For a moment, he fears that Leo will be unable to hear him, but then the son of Hephaestus turns to him. He’s burning so hot, his eyes are the color of Greek fire. His expression turns to shock. “The hell are you doing? You’ll burn alive!”

Jason is forced to carry them back a few feet as the flames grow hotter. He points to a spot on the hillside with his free hand. “We’ll be there! Look for the flash!”

Leo’s expression falters, something that looks like hesitance.

A bolt of fear flashes through Percy’s chest. “Don’t you dare!”

Piper’s booming charmspeak begins then. Jason drops a few feet as her words roll over them. “You’re so tired! Exhausted!”

Percy shouts in alarm. Jason shakes his head and lifts them back up to Leo’s level.

Leo is burning even hotter. He fixes Percy with a wide-eyed gaze. “It’s the best option!”

“The earth calls you into slumber!”

“Blowing yourself up is idiotic!” Jason shouts.

“But—”

“GODS DAMMIT LEO, STICK TO THE PLAN!” Percy screams.

They stare at each other. The sound of Gaea’s screaming, of Piper’s voice, of everything else seems to fade into nothing as they hold each other’s gaze.

Percy sucks in a breath. “I can’t lose anyone else.”

Leo nods. “Okay.”

Both Percy and Jason breathe out a sigh of relief.

The noise comes back in full force as Jason carries them back to the hill. “Look for the flash!” He throws over his shoulder at Leo.

From the ground, Leo’s fire rivals the sun. It flickers and roils, ropes of flames shooting off like solar flares. Beneath the flames, Gaea still thrashes, and next to that, no more than a speck, are Piper and Frank.

Percy takes a breath. Then another. He wills stillness into his hands and unhooks his bow. The plan plays over and over in his head.

One chance.

“There has to be a way that doesn’t involve you dying,” Percy had said, sitting across the table from Leo.

Leo fidgeted with some sort of contraption. He refused to meet anyone’s eyes. “We have to scatter her, like Kronos. The easiest way to do it is an explosion, and I’m the only one who can make a fire hot enough.”

Annabeth shook her head. “No. There’s always another way.”

“There wasn’t with Luke,” Leo whispered.

Annabeth flinched.

“Dude. Low blow,” Percy said.

“It wasn’t meant to be one,” Leo continued. He still didn’t look up. “The prophecy said he had to die, so he did.”

“This one doesn’t say you have to die,” Piper said.

“Not explicitly, but someone has to take Gaea out, and it won’t be survivable. Getting close enough to destroy that much power…” Leo trailed off.

Hazel and Frank shared a look filled with sorrow. “Sometimes,” Hazel began, “we have to sacrifice.”

“You seriously cannot be justifying this!” Piper exclaimed.

The table broke into an argument. Percy tuned it out, letting his strategist brain take over.

The first thought he had was that Leo’s logic was sound; Gaea was a primordial, even more powerful than Kronos. An explosion as powerful as Leo suggested would be enough to take her out, but not without killing anyone nearby.

But both Odysseus and Percy were so tired of losing people. So, Leo would not be dying.

The only solution was to trigger an explosion without anyone besides Gaea in range. But a landmine or some sort of remote bomb wouldn’t work, because Gaea could only be killed off the ground. They had to trigger it while she was still in the sky.

A thought hit him.

He turned to Jason, who had been quiet during the argument. They locked gazes.

“How accurate is your lightning?”

Jason blinked. “What are you suggesting?”

“Can you hit a falling object?” Percy asked.

The table fell quiet.

Jason took a slow, careful breath. “I don’t know. It depends on how close the object is, and if it has any metal in it.” He looked down at his hands. “If you’re suggesting we hit Gaea as she falls, I don’t know if I can do that.”

“Again, the best option—” Leo began.

“What if you had a homing beacon?” Percy interrupted.

Jason frowned. “Like what?”

Percy placed his bow on the table. “I can hit a falling object.”

Percy nocks an arrow. Jason raises his sword.

To storm or fire the world must fall.

No one said it couldn’t be both.

The booming of Piper’s charmspeak. The flash of Leo’s flames. A flicker of lightning at the tip of Jason’s sword.

Festus opens his claws.

Like a meteor rushing to earth, Gaea falls.

Percy looses the arrow.

It arcs through the sky, faster than any arrow he shot in his previous life. If he didn’t know better, he’d say Apollo himself carried it to its target.

Jason’s lightning crackles. The fire roars. Gaea screams.

The arrow hits her chest.

With a sound to rival the inception of the universe, the lightning connects, and the world goes white.

Percy hits the ground, hands behind his head. Vaguely, he is aware of Jason doing the same, but he can’t hear much of anything beyond the explosion of Gaea’s death. The shockwaves ripple across the battlefield, one after another. Electricity races up his arms, making his hair stand on end. He feels the grass whip against his face then tear out of the ground entirely, blasted back by the force of the explosion. With gritted teeth, he slams Riptide into the dirt in a desperate attempt to keep himself from being blasted away.

And all at once, it is over. Silence descends on Half-Blood Hill.

Slowly, so slowly, Percy peels himself off the ground. He looks to the sky, dreading what he will see.

But then Leo whoops, hammer raised high on the back of Festus. Alive.

Percy cheers. It comes out as a laugh. Jason stumbles to his feet and throws an arm around Percy. “Oh my gods, oh my gods.”

Frank and Piper half crash land to the ground. Blood dribbles from Piper’s mouth, and she frantically tries to speak through broken sign language. Jason sweeps her into a hug.

Leo continues to exclaim victory, flying low over the battered demigod armies. They take up the call, weapons raised high. The monsters try to flee, but many find themselves with swords through the back. Hazel rushes toward them, no longer needing Nico for support, and Frank takes her into his arms.

A force barrels into Percy, taking him to the ground. Annabeth, her eyes sparkling. “We did it.”

Around him, the sounds of victory rise to the heavens. Demigods and legacies, cheering, singing praises, kissing and hugging and every manner of celebration.

“Victoriam reportamus!” Reyna calls. Others take up the cry. “Victoria! Victoria!”

Percy presses a fierce kiss to Annabeth’s lips. “We did it.”

-0-

And for once, I didn’t look back.

Chapter Text

The clean-up takes days.

There are traps to dig up, explosives to disarm, weapons to collect. The hillside is stripped of grass in many places, and the area beneath Gaea’s explosion is scoured clean. The top layer of soil is gone, like a tornado touched down and ripped it up.

And, of course, there are bodies to burn.

More than Manhattan, Percy is sure of that. It’s impossible to transport the Roman casualties back to California for a proper funeral, so they organize one at camp. A mixed one, Greeks and Romans together. “No more separation,” Reyna had declared, dark bags under her eyes as she covered yet another Legionnaire with a purple shroud. “We fought together, we died together, we grieve together.”

The funeral pyre is too large. More purple Roman shrouds than anything else, but most cabins had at least one loss. Red, gray, green… every color he can imagine.

Annabeth’s knees nearly give out when a small Hermes shroud is lifted onto the pyre. Angel, who survived Manhattan but fell to Gaea’s forces. Percy holds Annabeth up as she weeps silently.

Eulogies are read, dirges are sung. He whispers the funeral rites of his former life’s youth beneath his breath. And then the pyre is lit, and the fallen burn with it.

Percy’s gaze finds itself on the shroud of Octavian, laid at the edge of the pyre. Reyna hadn’t wanted to give him a Roman funeral, after his betrayal, but Percy felt wrong excluding the boy from the rites. He was still young. Too young, for the path he went down. Gripped by madness as he was, all he wanted was to protect his fellow Romans until he’d gone off the deep end. So, Percy insisted he be given a funeral.

He is, notably, not covered in a purple shroud.

The guilt gnaws at his stomach. What-ifs and questions plague him. Could Octavian have been helped? Reformed?

You must look forward, part of him whispers.

Percy takes a shuddering breath and tears his eyes away from the burning white shroud.

Eventually, the crowd begins to disperse. Those who lost siblings and friends stay the longest. The Seven hold post with them, long after the sun dips below the horizon.

Finally, the fire turns to embers, and the embers to smoke.

Leo takes a slow, quiet breath, and says, “we should sleep.”

There is silence for a bit. Then, Piper says, “I should be with my siblings.”

Percy closes his eyes. This was bound to come, but he’d hoped to put it off a while longer. The Seven have been sleeping in the Big House, sprawled across the floor and couches in the living room. In the days since Gaea’s death, they couldn’t let each other out of their sights.

Frank nods. “I need to see to the Legion.” A blush creeps into his face. “I’ve been neglecting my Praetor duties.”

Hazel elbows him. She tries for a smile, but it doesn’t quite reach her puffy eyes. “Oh, don’t say that. No one can blame you for taking some time.”

Annabeth’s hand finds Percy’s. She squeezes it once.

As the Seven disperse, whispering goodnight and find me if you need me, Annabeth follows Percy, her hand still in his. They find themselves walking toward the shore. The night is quiet; both the Romans and Greeks have seen themselves off to bed. The Legion is mostly staying in tents just inside the border, but some Romans found themselves beds in cabins, invited in by their Greek siblings.

“Do you want me here?” Annabeth whispers, finally breaking the silence.

They both know what’s coming. The inevitable confrontation. He’s been avoiding his cabin for days, because the moment he steps inside, his father will know he’s alone. And he hasn’t dared get near the ocean. But he can’t put it off much longer.

“No,” he says. “I… I think I need to do this alone.”

Annabeth holds his gaze, searching. After a few moments, she seems to find what she’s looking for, because she nods. “Okay.” She smiles, her eyes misty. “Yell if you need me.”

He presses a chaste kiss to her lips. “Always.”

Annabeth leaves him there, heading back to her cabin. He watches her go, ponytail swaying in the nighttime breeze.

He takes his time walking to the shore. It’s a new moon tonight, and the constellations are bright. He finds Zoe and sends up a prayer for her protection, wherever she is.

A few bugs chirp in the tree line, but otherwise, the world is asleep. Nothing beyond the rustling of leaves and the sound of waves lapping against the sand.

The ocean pulls at his heart, urging him to step into the water, but he waits. He stops just at the edge of where the waves end, the tips of his shoes inches from the tide. The horizon seems to stretch endlessly. The ocean reflects the night sky, stars sparkling on the water. It’s peaceful. Perfect, really. He takes a moment to breathe.

“Hello old friend.”

Percy startles, nearly jumping forward into the water. Only the slight familiarity of the voice stops him from taking the newcomer’s head off.

He whirls, finding Hermes with his hands up in mock surrender. “Woah, I didn’t mean to scare you.” He’s dressed in the way Odysseus remembers him, white garments and winged shoes.

“I, uh,” Percy begins, then swallows. “I was expecting someone else.”

Hermes cringes. “Ah, yeah, tough luck that reincarnation thing, huh?”

Percy blinks.

Hermes rubs the back of his neck. “Um, did I get it wrong?”

He looks significantly younger than Percy has ever seen him in this life. Gone are the gray hairs and laugh lines, replaced with that impish look Odysseus remembers. “You look younger,” Percy says. “Than I’ve seen you this time around, I mean. You look like you did back then.”

Hermes’s eyes brighten. “It is you!”

Percy finds himself yanked into a hug. His breath leaves him in a whoosh as his ribs twinge painfully. “Still sore!”

Hermes releases him, managing to look sheepish. “I had no idea, truly. All these years. Odysseus?”

The headache at the mention of his other name is gentler this time, a dull ache he can ignore. It’s getting easier. “Yeah.”

“How could you not tell me?”

Percy sighs. “I didn’t know until recently.”

Hermes nods, eyes sympathetic. “It is unusual, your situation. And what a complicated life you’ve lived this time.”

Percy chuckles dryly. He keeps his eyes down, a sullen feeling in his chest. Dread hangs over him about his dad. And, well, in this younger form, Hermes looks like Luke.

It brings back all the memories he keeps held down. All the people he’s lost in both lives. It hurts. What was a face that brought him comfort in a previous life now brings complicated emotions. Regret, anger, sadness. He wants to give his friend a hug. He also wants to yell at him for all the things he put Percy through in this life. He wants to do a lot of things, but mostly, he wants to cry.

Behind him, the ocean responds to his emotions. He hears and feels the change in the current. It churns like the anxiety in his stomach. He tries to calm it down, but he can’t. He squeezes his eyes shut, willing his heartbeat to calm.

Something in the air shifts, suddenly, and Hermes places a hand on Percy’s shoulder. The touch is… comforting. Fatherly. Or, well, grandfatherly. He lifts his gaze, meeting Hermes’s blue eyes. He looks older again.

“Fate has not given you an easy path, my friend. In either life. But if I know anything, I know journeys, and yours does not end here. This I swear.” He smiles. “It’ll be a little bit dangerous, but you’ll make it.”

A breathy laugh escapes Percy at the familiar words, and a knot loosens in his chest. The sea begins to calm. “Do I have to put it all on the line?”

Hermes chuckles. “Not this time, I don’t think. You did that a few days ago with Gaea. Masterful work, by the way.”

The praise sparks something in him. It spreads warmth through his chest, down to his fingertips. “It wasn’t just me, you know.”

“But it was your plan,” Hermes says. “And that’s the strategist I know and love.”

Percy smiles. “Thank you, Hermes.”

Hermes’s smile turns impish. “Don’t thank me friend. You’ve saved us all.” With a wink, he disappears.

The night falls quiet again as Hermes’s presence fades. Percy takes in a calming breath and lets it out, willing the anxiety in his chest to further loosen. He closes his eyes, listening to the waves.

In his journey home to Ithaca, Hermes always preceded something big. A shift in his life, or some showing of power. This is no different. Percy can feel it in the pull of the waves; the ocean is watching. Waiting. Holding its breath.

It’s funny, really, what the ocean means to him. Both the thing that kept him from home and, well, home. He is born from and of the sea, in this life. He will always belong to it. What Poseidon once weaponized against him is now part of him.

The Fates truly do have a sense of humor.

The waves continue to brush the shore. He sinks into the rhythm, the push and pull. His heart beats in time with it.

Percy Jackson, son of Poseidon, child of the sea.

“Perseus.”

He doesn’t open his eyes. He doesn’t need to. His father’s voice might as well be as familiar to him as the ocean itself.

A weight settles into the sand next to him.

There is silence, for a while. The push and pull of the tide. The beating of his heart.

“My son,” Poseidon tries again.

With a final, calming breath, Percy turns to face his father.

He looks tired. His hair is long, this time, and loose around his shoulders, not unlike how he wore it centuries ago. But he still wears his Hawaiian shirt and Bermuda shorts. It’s a strange juxtaposition of two lives.

They stare at each other for a moment, neither daring to say anything.

“You did well in battle,” Poseidon begins.

“Thank you, father,” Percy says, because he’s not stupid enough to outright invoke his wrath.

They lapse into silence again. Push, pull.

Poseidon takes a deep, shuddering breath, and closes his eyes. “Please tell me that the Fates did not do this to me.”

Something breaks in Percy’s chest. The pain of Poseidon’s words washes over him, deep and aching. Said as if it is the most horrible outcome. As if his father can imagine no worse fate for himself.

“Would it help?” Percy whispers. “If I lied?”

The ocean continues its rhythm. Push, pull. Push, pull.

His father disappears.

Percy sits in the sand and weeps.

Chapter Text

Percy isn’t sure how long he spends at the water’s edge, watching the tide flow in and out. His tears have long since dried. He didn’t cry much after his father left. Some sort of wall resided in his chest, locking his feelings up.

The constellations are just starting to fade into the distant light of the rising sun when someone approaches him. They purposefully make a lot of noise, so not some sneak attack. Annabeth, probably.

His surprise, then, when the newcomer settles on the sand next to him and says, “Hey.”

Percy turns to look at his best friend.

Grover hasn’t changed much in the last year. His hair is a smidge longer, his horns too, but otherwise he’s the same satyr Percy knows and loves. The sight of him sends a pang of nostalgia through his chest.

Percy sniffs. “Hey, G-man.”

Then he breaks down.

Grover startles but quickly recovers and wraps his arms around Percy. He smells like grass and wildflowers and familiarity. His arms are thicker, stronger, and he holds Percy up as he shakes. It all comes out at once; the loss from the war, having to bottle everything up, and now the rejection from his father. He’s had to be strong for so long, be the one who didn’t break in front of the Seven. But Grover isn’t one of the Seven, he’s just Percy’s friend. Percy’s best friend, the one who saw him through his very first quest.

He doesn’t remember the last time he cried this much. It won’t stop. It just hits, over and over, pounding like a wave against that wall in his chest. It’s crumbling now, letting all his emotions out.

And Grover—blessed, wonderful Grover—holds him as he rides the wave. He whispers comforting words, rubs a hand over his back, and stays there.

Eventually, Percy’s crying subsides. He pulls away, grimacing when he sees the wet spot on Grover’s shirt. With a wave of his hand, it dries.

Grover offers him a tentative smile. “Hey,” he says again.

Percy sniffles and wipes his nose. “It’s good to see you. When did you get here?”

“Just this morning. I’m so sorry I wasn’t—”

“Shut up,” Percy interrupts. “Your duties aren’t to camp anymore, they’re to the wild. Don’t apologize for not being here.” He puts a hand on Grover’s shoulder. “If I had to guess, you had some other catastrophe to deal with?”

Grover blows out a breath. “The national parks. The last remnants of the wild, y’know? Gaea had parts of herself at some of them. It was a disaster.”

Percy gently pats his shoulder. “See? You had to be there.”

Grover gives a sheepish smile. Lord of the Wild, yet he’s still insecure about doing enough. That’s Grover.

They lapse into a comfortable silence. Percy takes the time to do breathing exercises, riding out the last of his breakdown. It… hurts. His father’s words. More than he expected it to. There’s no righteousness from Odysseus, no I told you so. Just a weary sort of sadness. Neither of them wanted Percy to experience this.

He focuses on the waves and the way the rising sun sparkles on the tops of them. His father may not want him, but the ocean still does.

“Something happened,” Grover begins quietly. Percy feels his eyes on him.

It’d be easy to dodge what Grover’s asking. Of course something happened, they just fought a war. But Percy knows that’s not what he means.

They still share an empathy link, after all.

“We fell,” Percy says, just as quiet. There’s a reverent atmosphere over the beach. Too loud a voice could shatter it. “Annabeth and I. Into Tartarus.”

He lets the weight of that settle onto Grover. To his credit, he doesn’t react in shock or horror. There’s just a resignation, like Grover already knew. Or suspected.

Percy had IM’d Grover, less than a week before the fall. An explanation of where he’d been all those months, filling in the gaps Annabeth had figured out before their reunion at Camp Jupiter. The memory loss, the shielded empathy link. The call hadn’t lasted long—the Argo II was attacked in the middle of it—so Percy had promised to call back when he could.

He never did.

“I didn’t feel it,” Grover finally says. “One moment, you were there, and the next, nothing. Not even like when Hera shielded it. Just… nothing.” He sucks in a shaky breath. “I thought you were dead.”

Percy draws his knees to his chest.

“And then… poof! Suddenly you were back.” Grover’s fingers skitter across the sand in a nervous rhythm. A tiny crab pokes it’s head out and gives him a little nudge. “But it was different.”

Percy watches the crab burrow itself back into the sand. “Different how?”

“Almost like… mood swings,” Grover says. “Conflicting emotions coming in through the empathy link. Things that didn’t make sense. Like you were two different people.” His brown eyes find Percy’s, wide and curious. Percy doesn’t need an empathy link to know the suspicions running rampant in his brain.

And what use is there to hiding it anymore, really? “There’s always been something wrong with my brain,” he begins.

Grover frowns. “What? Don’t say that.”

“No, no, not like the ADHD or whatever,” Percy chuckles. “I mean, something genuinely not right. Ever since I was a kid, I’ve had these flashes of things that didn’t make sense. Images, thoughts… memories. Ones that didn’t belong to me.”

Percy lets that information settle in Grover’s mind. Watches him shift in the sand, processing.

“Rules are different in the Pit. Things that don’t make sense suddenly do.” Percy shrugs.

“A past life,” Grover finishes. “You remembered.”

He’s always been perceptive. Percy suspects Grover’s known for a while.

“Who?” Grover asks the burning question.

Despite himself, despite everything, a smile creeps onto Percy’s face. “Would you believe me if I said Odysseus?”

Grover laughs. A genuine one. “That would be ironic.” But then it hits him, through the empathy link.

Percy is serious.

Grover’s eyes lock with his, wide. “No.”

Percy nods.

“No!”

He nods again, eyebrows raised.

Grover runs a shaking hand through his curly hair. “Oh gods,” he bleats. “I made you fight Polyphemus twice!”

That is not what Percy expected to hear. It gets a surprised laugh out of him.

Grover braces his hands on Percy’s shoulder. “Dude, I’m so sorry! I made you go through all of it again!”

Percy keeps laughing. It’s just so silly. All of it. He’s just been rejected by his father, and he’s just fought a war, but Grover—incredible, kind Grover—wants to apologize for something that happened when Percy was 13. And it wasn’t even his fault!

“Dude, Grover, it’s fine.” He cracks a lopsided grin. “Besides, it was easier the second time.”

Grover bleats out a laugh, then slaps a hand over his mouth. “Gods, sorry, was that insensitive? Should I not have laughed?”

Percy draws him into a side hug. “You worry too much.”

He mumbles something that sounds suspiciously like would’ve died on your first quest if I didn’t worry so much, but Percy chooses to ignore it. He did a fairly good job of keeping himself alive, thank you very much!

They lapse into another comfortable silence. The sun is above the horizon now, casting its morning rays over the sea. It’s a reminder that Percy still needs to thank Apollo for that shot against Gaea. And Athena for keeping his bow. And probably some others, too.

He lets out a long breath.

Grover leans his head on Percy’s shoulder. “I don’t—well, I can’t say I know what happened right before I got here, but… it’s going to be okay.”

Percy closes his eyes and breathes in the sea salt air.

They sit there for a while. Grover can probably infer what happened, but he doesn’t push it. He just lets Percy be.

It’s a special sort of relationship, the one they share. His only friend from before his life completely changed, before gods and monsters and any of that bullshit. Of course Percy loves all his friends, and every god and monster in existence knows of his love for Annabeth. But every relationship comes from different circumstances, and Grover’s will always be one of peace. Of a reminder of life before war. Sure, Grover was at Yancy to secretly watch over him, but their friendship was never a farce.

It’s one of those things Percy knows instinctively, deep down in the marrow of his bones; in any life, in any universe, Percy and Grover would always be friends.

With a sigh, Percy gets to his feet. He stretches, shaking sand off his legs, and holds a hand out to Grover. “Feel like getting breakfast?”

Grover takes it and hauls himself to his feet. He’s gotten taller in the past year. Percy has, too.

They’ve grown up.

Percy cracks a grin. “Race ya!”

He takes off before Grover can react, leaving him scrambling to catch up, but laughing all the same.

Chapter Text

Life goes on.

It’s the case for everything in existence, and post-war is no different. Eventually, Camp Half-Blood settles back into a routine. Training begins again, cabin inspections are reinstated, and the idea of a capture the flag game is floated around at breakfast. And sure, people still mourn. The Apollo cabin organizes support groups with the help of Pollux (and even Mr. D). It’s not uncommon to find campers crying off on their own. Mealtimes are more subdued. But life returns to normal.

Mostly.

Percy stares at the sacrificial fire. He stares, and he doesn’t move. His plate is a dead weight in his hands.

A sacrifice to Hermes, as a thanks for his friendship. To Apollo, in thanks for his guiding hand. And to Hestia, as always.

But then…

He should keep up appearances. He should keep the line open. He should do a lot of things. But his hands don’t move.

He is Percy Jackson, unwanted son of Poseidon.

He turns away from the fire.

-0-

The Romans depart. They have a home to return to, and people to mourn, and lives to rebuild. Frank and Hazel go with them, of course. Their eyes are filled with tears as they say goodbye. But Frank is Praetor, and his responsibility lies with the Legion.

Percy holds them tight. Or, well, Frank does most of the holding, considering his arms are the longest, but whatever. He clings to them, tears pricking at the backs of his eyes. Saying goodbye hurts more than he expected, even if only temporarily. These two took him in when he had no memories. They offered him friendship and understanding and shoulders to cry on. Even when Odysseus tried to fill the gaps Hera ripped open in his mind, making Percy have very weird personality shifts out of nowhere, they stuck by him.

They promise to visit often. Leo is already talking about plans to make transport between the camps easier.

Jason doesn’t go with them. Not for lack of love or loyalty for the Legion, but because he has stuff to do in New York. Trying to help inter-camp relations, for one. He steps into a sort of ambassador role, representing both Greeks and Romans. Percy was probably meant to do the same in Hera’s grand plan, but unfortunately for her, he is the reincarnation of one of the Greek-est Greek heroes to ever Greek and never really developed a Roman side.

The first night without the Legion, camp is too quiet. Percy can’t sleep, too used to being in the Big House with the rest of the Seven. And he can’t justify remaining in the Big House when he has a perfectly good cabin to stay in.

Problem is, he hasn’t slept in his cabin since returning. He’s been in it to grab clothes and stuff, but nothing else. It feels… tainted. Wrong. He’s afraid that if he spends time in his bed, he’ll be able to sense his father’s rejection. If he’s in there moving and getting stuff done, he can’t focus on the feeling of the cabin. Can’t focus on if it’s lost that all-enveloping home feeling from before.

It terrifies him.

It’s how Percy finds himself on the front step, long after the sun has set, staring at the door. The rough, gray stone, the seashells embedded into the walls, all of it is so familiar.

He should just go in. Stop being a baby. Just because his father hates him doesn’t mean the ocean does.

But he can’t. His body won’t let him. Gods, if Poseidon took away that comfort from the one place he always belonged…

He gathers himself up and heads toward the lake. He’ll just sleep underwater.

-0-

Athena visits. It shouldn’t surprise him, considering his previous life, but he’d expected her to shut herself back up in Olympus with the rest of them. It’s not like they’ve heard from many of the gods since their fight at the Acropolis.

She appears mid-afternoon, two days after the Legion departs. He feels her pop into existence behind him—the fluttering of owl’s wings, landing on the porch—and he’s proud of himself for not flinching.

“You should be with Annabeth,” he says before Athena can speak.

She doesn’t respond right away. Instead, she comes up beside him, where he leans against the railing of the Big House porch. The breeze shifts, carrying with it the scent of old parchment.

He’s found himself here a lot in the past week. From this vantage point, he can see all of camp. The people sparring at the arena to the Demeter cabin tending to the distant strawberry fields all the way to the shoreline. It’s a safe position.

“I do not think she wishes to see me,” Athena finally says.

“Did you ask her?” Percy watches as Clarisse, left arm still in a sling, runs her spear through a training dummy. She should be resting, but no one can keep the daughter of Ares down.

Athena doesn’t respond. It’s answer enough.

“Part of your problem is that you just infer. You don’t ask,” Percy says, keeping his voice carefully neutral.

Athena bristles. It pricks at the back of his neck, like yellow eyes in a dark forest, watching him. Then the feeling settles. “So you believe that the goddess of wisdom is incorrect in her inferences?”

“Yes,” Percy says simply. “Wisdom would be the ability to recognize that.”

A beat of silence, then Athena chuckles. “You are more brazen in this life, Odysseus.”

“It’s Percy,” he corrects without missing a beat.

Her gaze flicks to him, surprised. “You don’t wish to go by your old name?”

He shrugs. Will joins Clarisse at the arena, probably to yell at her about putting strain on her injury. “This is a new life. My name is Percy, simple as that.” He finally lets his gaze slide to look at her. She stands, rigid, ever the prim and pristine goddess he’s gotten used to seeing in this life. “If you really don’t want to talk to me, I can probably bring out more of the Odysseus side of things.” He can’t help the tinge of bitterness that slips into his voice.

She purses her lips. “I see. You’re not… fully integrated?”

He doesn’t answer that. Truth be told, he isn’t sure. He hasn’t had any personality shifts since before Gaea’s defeat. He still gets headaches, but they’re easier to deal with. No one’s really tried to trigger anything, though, and he hasn’t had any reason to let Odysseus do the talking.

Athena sighs. “Would you give me the privilege of talking to my old friend?”

That ticks him off. He frowns, turning to face her fully, arms crossed. “I am your old friend, Athena. You can’t divorce me from him.”

She stares at him, gray eyes wide and almost sorrowful. She has her hair pulled back into a tight ponytail, and all it serves to do is show off her expression with raw clarity.

She doesn’t respond for a moment. Gods, did he actually stun her into silence? Athena?

Finally, she closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. “It’s not that I wish to ignore you, Perseus—”

“Percy,” he corrects, again.

“Percy,” she says. “I… have not allowed myself to feel in so long. Centuries. You have asked me to try again. To try harder.” She lets out a breathy chuckle. “I am not good at admitting that I must learn.”

He stares at her. Athena, his oldest friend and the mother of the love of his life. But she is also the goddess who hurt him, and hurt Annabeth most of all. The emotions that roil in his chest are near impossible to comprehend.

But she’s right. He did ask her to try and be better. And if she’s coming to him with this level of vulnerability… well, it wouldn’t do any good to reject her immediately.

Percy closes his eyes and takes slow, measured breaths. He thinks of a childhood spent on the Ithacan hillside, the laughter of a goddess at his side and the wind in his face. He thinks of home.

Odysseus opens his eyes.

He holds Athena’s gaze for a long moment. Those familiar gray eyes, the sharp angles of her face. Then, he inclines his head. “Athena.”

“Odysseus,” she breathes, and sweeps him into a hug.

The shock doesn’t register right away. It’s like his brain flies away from his body to cope with the utter insanity of what is happening. Athena, hugging him. A goddess who, for all intents and purposes, has wanted him dead for the past decade. A goddess that rarely hugged him even when they were friends.

But then his brain reconnects, and he tentatively brings his arms up to wrap around her. Her robes are soft to the touch, that old Greek fabric that can’t be recreated in the modern age. His heart stutters at the feel of it in his fingers.

“Odysseus,” she whispers again. “I am sorry, my friend. I am so sorry.”

An apology he’s waited millennia to hear. It cracks something in his chest. He doesn’t cry, but he does finally melt into the hug. He buries his head in her shoulder. She’s taller than him—always was, even now that he’s over six feet. She smells like the breeze of his childhood, like a castle library.

“Gods,” Odysseus chuckles. “We are a mess, aren’t we?”

She runs her fingers through his hair. “You smell of the sea.”

“Something you’ll have to get used to,” he says.

“I have mourned you for centuries. You and your family. I was prideful to not make amends while you were still alive,” she swallows. She doesn’t have a heartbeat, but the motion of her swallowing is so utterly human that it almost feels like being wrapped in his mother’s arms. “We gods are not good at changing. But I will continue to try.”

“Start with being better to Annabeth,” Odysseus says. “She needs her mother. All of your children do.”

“I was never as good a parent as you,” she says.

He laughs. It’s watery. “I was gone for the first twenty years of my son’s life. Don’t take inspiration from me.”

Athena pulls back. Her gray eyes are less stormy. They shine, not with tears—Odysseus doesn’t think he’s ever seen her cry—but some other emotion. Hope, maybe? Joy? He’s gotten so used to her utter lack of emotions this life that it takes him by surprise.

“Thank you for protecting her,” she whispers. “For being there for her when I was not.”

Odysseus is about to respond that Annabeth is perfectly capable of protecting herself when someone clears their throat. He springs back from Athena, drawing his sword.

Chiron stares at them from the doorway, Dionysus leaning against the wall next to him. Chiron’s eyes are wide and alarmed, but Mr. D is just smirking.

Chiron’s gaze flicks back and forth between them. He opens his mouth, closes it, and opens it again. Then he seems to recover himself with a shake of his head. “Lady Athena, what brings you here?”

Athena’s eyes meet Odysseus’s. Her lips are pressed into a thin line. She masks her alarm well, but he reads the question in her eyes. Does he know?

Odysseus tries to push Percy back into control. It doesn’t work.

Clearly, Chiron doesn’t really know what to do either, because he’s gone back to staring at them.

“Athena. Peter,” Dionysus says, finally breaking some of the tension. Then his eyes narrow as he stares at Odysseus. “Or not.”

Odysseus swallows. Hard.

Athena tries to recover the situation. She straightens, putting back on her mask of authority. “I was visiting—”

Dionysus cuts her off with a snap of his fingers. He points at Odysseus, appearance shifting from reluctant camp director to the god of wine. “Odysseus!” He grins, teeth sharp and eyes bright. “I would recognize that mental state anywhere.”

Odysseus blinks. Chiron matches him, eyes comically wide. Athena makes a strange sort of noise in the back of her throat.

Then the centaur places a hand over his eyes and sighs, long and drawn out. “Please do not tell me that you have remembered a past life, Percy.”

Odysseus meets Dionysus’s gaze. The god is grinning at him. Odysseus suspects that the Mr. D Percy knows is relishing in the chaos.

Odysseus looks back to Chiron. “Um… then I won’t?”

“Di Immortales,” Chiron mutters.

Odysseus cracks a tentative smile. “It’s good to see you again. In this life, I mean.”

Chiron lets out a long-suffering sigh. Dionysus cackles.

He tries, once more, to let Percy take this, but he’s content to relax for a while. Odysseus can’t blame him. It’s been a tough week for that side of him. He’s happy to give him a break.

So he steps up to Chiron and gently pats his arm. “Let’s go inside and catch up.”

Chiron mutters something else under his breath while Dionysus continues to laugh. But at least they follow him into the Big House, so Odysseus counts that as a win.

-0-

“My mom stopped by,” Annabeth says, her gaze sliding to side eye Percy. “Your doing?”

They’re on the lake dock, feet dangling in the water. It’s just before sunset, and the glow of the summer light makes the lake sparkle.

Percy shrugs. “In a way.”

Annabeth shoves his shoulder. “Don’t say Odysseus did it. That’s a cop out.”

Percy cracks a grin.

She leans her head on his shoulder, feet swishing in the water. “She seemed a little shaken up, but it was… okay. She talked to everyone. I thought Malcolm was going to pass out.” She chuckles. “Did she come see you first?”

Percy doesn’t want to kill her excitement, but he won’t lie to her. “She wanted to talk to Ody—uh, me.”

Annabeth nods. “I figured.”

He laces his fingers with hers, hating the disappointment in her voice. “She thought you wouldn’t want to see her. I think she was scared.”

Annabeth snorts.

“No, seriously,” Percy says. “I had to tell her to stop assuming your feelings.”

That gets a small smile out of Annabeth. “Good for you.”

They lapse into comfortable silence. Percy rubs his thumb over the back of her hand. For a moment, he can ignore the anger and frustration about his father. He feels settled in a way he hasn’t since the beach that night, with Annabeth by his side and the cool water encircling his ankles. And the lingering feeling of Athena’s hug—gods, she really hugged him, didn’t she?—still rests around his shoulders. Comforting.

“How did Chiron take it?” Annabeth breaks the silence.

Percy’s lips quirk up. “I think he was shocked to talk to a man he tangentially trained three thousand years ago.”

“Gods you’re old,” Annabeth says.

Percy shoves her into the lake.

She comes up spluttering, but he’s already joined her in the water, wrapping his arms around her waist. “Does it bother you?” A bolt of anxiety hits him, suddenly. What if Annabeth decides this is all too much?

“What? No,” she shakes her head. “Percy, you’re seventeen.”

“Odysseus isn’t,” he points out.

“I was joking,” she says, then presses a quick kiss to his lips. “I love all of you.”

In the light of the setting sun, her eyes sparkle brilliantly. It lights her up, and her hair becomes a golden halo. It takes his breath away. He kisses her again. “I love you too.”

She smiles against his lips. “Wanna show me how much?”

They don’t make it to the campfire that night.

-0-

Sleeping in the lake isn’t too bad, really.

He ignores the pitying looks from the naiads.

-0-

He wasn’t expecting the nightmare.

It starts in Tartarus. The acrid air burns his throat and blisters his skin. It’s dark and red and hazy, and every step is glass into his broken feet. He’s dragging Annabeth next to him. She’s barely awake. There’s so much blood.

Then the doors appear. There’s no monsters, no one guarding. It’s too easy, but he takes the blessing. They’re so close. It hurts so bad. It burns, everything burns. Gods, he needs the ocean. They’re so close.

And then they’re through the doors. Onto a rocky outcropping in the middle of a stormy sea. Lightning flashes, waves crash. The ocean sings in his blood.

“Get in the water.”

A bolt of fear through his heart. Annabeth is ripped from his arms and tossed into the churning waves. He screams and tries to go after her, but something shoves him backward.

“I never did get your wife, last time.” His father’s voice is everywhere. It’s in his head.

Percy screams again. He tries to dive in after Annabeth again and again. She’s nothing more than a blonde spec in the waves. But he can’t. He can’t get into the water.

Then Poseidon is there, in front of him. First he’s the same as Odysseus remembers, with his scales and long hair and pitch black armor. Then he’s the father from this life, with his laugh lines and Hawaiian shirt. Finally he becomes the man from the beach, the one who rejected him.

“Dad!” Percy begs. “Please!”

He raises his trident and brings it down to Percy’s chest.

Percy wakes just as he rockets to the surface of the lake. It spits him out onto the shore, shaking violently.

He stays there, hands gripped in the mud, trembling. He doesn’t even have the mind to dry himself off. He feels so far away, like he’s above his body, watching himself twitch and cry. His hands rake over his arms, gripping, scratching, trying to get rid of the feeling of being trapped in his own skin, helpless. He still feels the wind against his face, the biting sea spray, the feel of the trident as it pierced his ribs, ripped his—

Odysseus pushes himself off the ground. Percy can’t stay out here. He stumbles through the woods, following the familiar path back to the cabins, all the way to the doorstep of cabin one. He almost detours to cabin six, but Annabeth has too many younger siblings that Odysseus doesn’t want to wake.

Jason answers the door, rubbing sleep from his eyes. “What—woah, Percy, you okay?”

Odysseus shakes his head. “He—I—nightmare,” he finally manages. His head still feels fuzzy, his body far away. “He needs—we need—can we stay here?”

Jason steps aside and holds the door open.

Odysseus stumbles into the cabin, still dripping with lake water. The cold air hits him and he starts shivering.

Jason immediately wraps him in a blanket and guides him to a bed. “You can dry yourself off, you know?”

Right, that’s something he can do. Odysseus focuses on the water and wills it off his body. It takes a second, but then it drops to the floor like it was never there. He’s still cold, though.

His head feels fuzzy. It’s the first time in a while he’s felt so disconnected from his other half, like his brain is trying to shield him from the horrors of what his dream conjured up. Odysseus has had a long time to get used to nightmares, but Percy is just a boy.

Gods, he thought he was getting better. Integrating and all that. But right now, he feels like he did in Tartarus, when English was heavy in his mouth and he could barely remember who he was supposed to be.

“Do you need me to get Annabeth?” Jason asks. His voice is soft, steady; ever the general.

Odysseus shakes his head. “Don’t want to wake her siblings.”

Jason purses his lips but says nothing. Instead, he wraps an arm around Odysseus’s shoulders, just firm enough to be supportive. They stay like that for a while, Jason letting him go through breathing exercises until the shaking subsides.

“I’ve been having them too,” Jason says. His voice is no louder than a whisper in the dark cabin. “Nightmares, I mean.”

“My first since we got back,” Odysseus says.

“Being alone in here…” Jason swallows. “It makes it worse. I got used to being around everyone.”

Odysseus nods. It’s the same for him. The others… they have siblings. Cohorts. But Percy and Jason are alone in their cabins, and nightmares latch onto that. Feed on it.

“Get some rest,” Jason says. He stands, stretching. “I’ll be just across the room if you need me.”

He doesn’t have to say it twice. Sleep pulls at his eyelids. With a final goodnight, Odysseus slumps back against the pillow, blanket clutched around his shoulders.

-0-

He stays with Jason again the next night. If Zeus is angry about it, he doesn’t show it. Percy counts his blessings.

Leo joins them on the third night, hair smoking and face streaked with salt. He says nothing, just climbs into one of the empty beds. His cries are silent, learned from years in foster care, but Percy senses the water flowing down his cheeks. Jason sits next to him, whispering softly. Eventually, the tears stop, and Leo falls asleep.

The next morning, Annabeth isn’t at breakfast. It sends a bolt of fear through his chest. Malcolm must notice his anxiety, because he pulls Percy aside and whispers that Annabeth is sleeping in.

Percy races to cabin six, heart pounding. Is she sick? Did something happen in the middle of the night? Gods, why wasn’t he there?

He finds her awake, curled up in her bed facing the wall. She doesn’t say anything when Percy enters, not bothering to knock. She doesn’t really move at all. He settles onto the bed next to her. “Beth?”

“You weren’t in your cabin last night,” she whispers.

Percy startles. “You were looking for me?”

She nods, eyes still on the wall. “I had a nightmare.”

Guilt seizes in his heart. Of course she did. They were all having nightmares, if the dark bags under Piper’s eyes were anything to go by. He’d thought, what with Annabeth having her siblings around, she’d be okay. But clearly she wasn’t.

He rubs circles on her back. “I’ve been staying with Jason.”

She finally looks away from the wall, gray eyes dull and rimmed with red. She hasn’t been sleeping. “And Zeus hasn’t struck you down?”

“Leo’s there too,” he says. “You can join us.”

Her eyes track down from his face to his arm. They land on his SPQR tattoo. “Not your cabin?”

Percy swallows. His father’s face flashes in his mind’s eye, the one from the dream, contorted with rage. He shakes his head. Annabeth doesn’t push the issue.

That night, she crawls into bed with Percy, surrounded by the soft snores of Leo and Jason next to them.

Chapter Text

Thankfully, beyond Chiron figuring it out, no one else at Camp learns that Percy is Odysseus. It’s not that he wants to keep it a secret out of fear or anything, he just doesn’t want to deal with the questions. Or the headaches.

Well, no one else except for Nico. Who, apparently, figured it out as soon as Percy got back from Tartarus but didn’t say anything.

“Your soul has always felt old,” Nico says from where he sits on the front doorstep of his cabin. “It wasn’t too hard to put the pieces together.”

“My soul?” Percy splutters. “You can sense that?”

“To a degree. It’s easier to detect ones that have been in Elysium for a while.” Nico smirks. “Or the Fields of Punishment.”

Percy thinks back to Prometheus and his taunting at Manhattan. What would he have felt like to Nico? He decides not to ask; the dead man walking had unsettled Percy enough as is.

“Honestly I thought you were Patroculus at first,” Nico says.

Percy frowns. “Really?”

Nico shrugs. “Self-sacrificing. Loyal to the end. It makes sense.”

Patroculus. Percy considers that. It certainly would have been easier; no reason for Poseidon to hate him. But the Fates like their irony.

“But no, you’re Odysseus through and through,” Nico continues. “I’m surprised my father didn’t figure it out.” He picks at his black nail polish. He’s started wearing that lately. It really enhances the goth vibe. “But I guess that’s part of the whole reincarnation thing. None of us are supposed to remember our past lives or know about others. Not even the gods. You’re the weird exception.” He huffs. “Like always.”

“And what does that mean?” Percy says, a smile tugging at his lips.

“Prophecy child. Defied the gods in two different lives and somehow lived.” He smirks. “Starting to think you’re the Fates’ favorite.”

“Favorite punching bag,” Percy corrects.

Nico huffs a laugh. It’s weird, bantering with him like this. It’s not that Percy and Nico didn’t get along, their relationship was just… fragile. Built on a lot of guilt and a lot of anger. Up until recently, Percy was convinced Nico still didn’t like him much. But they’ve grown together, somehow, in the wake of all of this. A child of the underworld and a reincarnated Greek hero.

Something Nico said tickles the back of Percy’s brain, then. Sensing souls that have been in Elysium for a long time, and a suspicion Percy has. His gaze slides back to Nico. The boy looks up at him with his intense, dark eyes, as if he already knows what Percy is going to ask.

“Hey, um,” Percy chews his lower lip. “Is anyone else here an… old soul? Like me?”

Nico’s eyes twinkle. “Not my secret to tell.”

Before Percy can even open his mouth to protest, Nico melts into the shadows and disappears.

Percy throws his hands in the air. “Asshole!”

-0-

“How long is your fall break?”

Percy frowns and rolls over to look at Leo. He lays in the bed across the cabin, hands above his head to fiddle with some contraption. He has something new almost every time Percy sees him.

“Uh, I dunno,” Percy says. “I don’t even know what school I’m going to. Or if I’m going back at all.”

Leo takes his eyes off his makeshift fidget to raise an eyebrow at Percy. “Dude, you’re closer to graduation than any of us. Well, except Annabeth, but we know that. You can’t give up now.”

Percy hums instead of giving a response. Truly, he wants to graduate high school. Maybe even go to college. But with everything that happened, he doesn’t know how viable that is. Maybe he should just get his GED.

“It’s usually a week, though,” Percy says when Leo continues to give him that unimpressed look. “Why?”

Leo turns back to his project. He tosses and catches it as he speaks. “I think I can get the Argo II rebuilt in time if I get my dad’s help.” He turns some sort of dial on the contraption. “We can go get Calypso.”

The jolt that goes through Percy is… complicated, to say the least. Finally fulfilling his promise to get her off that island, but also having to see her again. Odysseus having to see her again. There are a lot of unspoken feelings there, a lot of resentment.

But he owes it to her. He owes it to Leo.

“I figured making Jason go alone would be stupid,” Leo continues. “But, y’know, if we turned it into a quest, took the ship…” He shrugs. “Probably safer.”

“Why not just ask the gods to get her back?” The idea sounds ridiculous as soon as it leaves Percy’s mouth.

Leo’s gaze slides to him. For a split second, that Greek fire perpetually burning within him flashes behind his irises, then cools.

They share an understanding then, but Leo says it anyway. “You trust them to honor that?”

No. No he doesn’t. Percy shakes his head.

“Besides, a bro trip. It’ll be fun!” Leo smirks as he turns back to his project. “And it’ll be your third trip through the Sea of Monsters. You’re basically a master now!”

Percy throws a pillow at him as he cackles.

-0-

The door of the Poseidon cabin taunts him as he walks to Zeus’s. It’s almost like it has eyes, watching him leave it behind.

Come back, it seems to say. Come home.

But Percy knows he can’t. He knows that all it will do is invite pain. He can’t face it, not now.

Please, the ocean says.

Percy enters cabin one and closes the door behind him.

-0-

“You could sleep in my cabin,” Hermes chirps next to Percy.

“Oh, fuck!” Percy flies out of his covers so fast, he smacks his head on the bunk.

“Sorry! Sorry!” Hermes says as Percy orients himself. He brings a hand to his forehead and, yep, that’s going to swell later. He hisses in pain.

A flutter of wings, then a handkerchief shoved in front of Percy’s face. He splutters as Hermes begins dabbing at the now-bleeding head wound. “Fuck, ow, that hurts!”

Hermes keeps apologizing as he tries to clean up some of the blood. Percy finally waves him off and grapples for his bag, patting around for the plastic baggie of ambrosia. Hermes catches on to what he’s doing and procures it with a wave of his hand.

Percy nibbles on the corner. Probably a waste of ambrosia, but Percy thinks he’s earned it at this point. He’s dealt with enough bullshit.

He sighs as the worst of the pain subsides and finally cracks open an eye to glare at Hermes. “What was that?”

Hermes shuffles from foot to foot, even though he’s floating half a foot off the ground. “I didn’t think it would scare you!”

Percy groans and flops back into the bed. His skin itches, like it usually does when he wakes up in cabin one in the mornings. Zeus is finally getting annoyed with him, probably.

“I wanted to open the invitation, and no one else is in here, so I thought it was a good time,” Hermes says with a sheepish smile.

Damn, he overslept. Not like anyone would get mad at him for it—strict schedules aren’t really a thing in the weeks following a war—but he doesn’t like wasting the day. That’s something new he got from Odysseus. He doesn’t like to sleep in anymore.

“Thanks, but your cabin is really crowded,” Percy says. “And besides, I like staying with the others.”

Hermes frowns. “I should go check in on them, shouldn’t I?”

“It’s only what I’ve spent a good chunk of this life trying to get all of you to do.” He should probably watch his tone, but a god just jumpscared him awake, and he’s cranky. Sue him.

Hermes hits him with a pillow. “You’re lucky I like you.”

“None of you cared this much when you thought I was just Percy,” he says and, oops, that was a smidge too much bitterness to express around the gods.

Hermes frowns, then cocks his head. He studies Percy, unblinking. For a split second, his pupils go horizontal, then flash back to normal. Oh gods, he’s really done it now. He’s pissed off one of the few gods that tolerates him.

But then Hermes shakes his head. “Can you blame me for being excited to have my friend back?”

“I’m not any more or less important than I was before I got my memories back,” Percy says. He’s careful to keep his voice neutral.

“No,” Hermes agrees. “But would you not be excited to see someone you never thought you would again? After so much loss?”

That does something to Percy. Twists a knife in his chest. Beckendorf, Damasen, Bob…

“Just… don’t forget the others. Your children come first.” He turns his head to look at Hermes. “Don’t let them slip through the cracks again.”

They hold each other’s gazes for a moment. Then Hermes nods. “I’ll check in with you later.”

He disappears with a flash.

-0-

Piper finally joins them in cabin one. She climbs into bed with Jason, body turned to face Leo just across the room.

The next night, two twin beds are pushed together for three demigods to squeeze into, and it is the first time Leo sleeps without nightmares.

-0-

“Have you called your mom?” Grover asks before immediately taking a bite out of an aluminum can.

Percy doesn’t answer. He purses his lips and keeps his eyes off of Grover, trying not to betray his feelings.

Doesn’t work, of course, because of the empathy link. Grover sighs. “She’s worried sick.”

He knows. Gods, he knows. Sally Jackson has spent her entire life worried sick for him, and it eats him alive.

“I…” Percy chews his bottom lip. “I don’t know what to say to her.”

Grover understands what he means immediately. He scoots closer and puts a hand on Percy’s arm. “You don’t have to tell her everything right away.” His voice is gentle. “You go at your own pace.”

“Isn’t that selfish?” Percy whispers.

Grover chuckles. “No, but even if it was, I think you’ve earned some selfishness.”

Percy snorts.

They lapse into silence. Percy watches some younger Hermes kids run across the grounds while an (affectionately) irritated daughter of Aphrodite chases after them. Their laughter floats up the hill to where Percy and Grover sit. Camp is healing.

He draws his knees to his chest. “How do I tell her that I’m not the same Percy that left.”

“You were never going to be,” Grover says.

The Aphrodite camper catches up to the others, and she tackles one of them, laughing. He should go meet them; so many kids showed up while he was gone.

They had to burn some before he ever got the chance to know their names.

“Go home, Percy,” Grover says.

The kids race off again, hand in hand, their laughter ringing across the fields.

-0-

He goes home.

Back to Manhattan, to the little apartment on the Upper East Side. He doesn’t call his mom first; he isn’t really sure why. Maybe familiarity, maybe fear, maybe both. Regardless, he finds himself at the door, shuffling scuffed sneakers on a welcome mat he doesn’t recognize.

He knocks.

When Sally Jackson-Blofis opens the door, she freezes. She freezes and she stares, and Percy stares back, because what is there to say? How does he wrap up nine months of memory loss and cross-country adventuring and horror and past lives and war into a greeting? How does he say anything at all?

Then she surges forward, a whispered prayer on her lips, and collides into Percy. She’s warm, and smells like cookies, and she’s a whole head shorter than him now. There’s gray in her hair where there wasn’t before. She’s skinnier.

A lifetime ago, Odysseus ventured into the Underworld in a desperate bid to get home. And in that world below the earth, he found his mother. Death had claimed her, as it claims everyone.

He took too long.

Ten years of war. Ten years of bloodshed. And a mother left behind, waiting until she drew her final breath, sent on Charon’s boat with unanswered prayers.

“Thank you,” Sally whispers. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

Perhaps, just this once, the Fates show him a kindness. Just this once, he isn't a Greek tragedy.

Because in this life, a mother’s prayers are answered, and a son comes home.

-0-

And so the story goes like this: Odysseus steps into the Lethe and becomes Percy Jackson, son of Poseidon. He is the forbidden child of a prophecy, never meant to exist, born against all odds. He is a new man, not meant to remember his previous life, just like every other soul. Odysseus has no influence on this tale. Percy Jackson grows up, reaches sixteen, and defeats the titan Kronos. We know this story.

But, he is also the breaking of an oath, the symbol of his father’s false promise. And the Styx claims him as the Lethe takes him away.

The story changes, as stories do, and Percy Jackson remembers things he shouldn’t, like a previous life as a king and captain, as a father and husband. He doesn’t know why Fate got it wrong or why the Lethe didn’t work. He doesn’t remember his time in the Underworld. But he knows that he must survive, as he has always done, and on it goes.

Percy Jackson survives, as the rejected son of Poseidon and the reincarnated hero of old. It is a cruel twist of fate. In a tragedy like this, there is no resolution. No happy ending. He makes it home, but to a father that no longer loves him. And that’s it. The end. Poseidon never comes back and everyone is sad forever.

-0-

Good thing this story isn’t a tragedy.

Chapter Text

Senior year, it turns out, is surprisingly uneventful.

There’s the occasional monster attack, which is to be expected, but otherwise it’s… fine. Good, even. It’s a lot of work catching up, but he manages it. He finds he’s pretty good at college algebra, and he can skate by with a science credit from an aquatic science course offered dual credit by the local community college. He’s still terrible at history, but Annabeth helps with that.

His biggest shock is English lit. Turns out, having a well-read scholar as a past life makes reading and comprehending large, boring books a lot easier. It saves so much time, he’s able to join the swim team. It almost makes up for the fact that he can’t touch the ocean.

Almost.

When he dives into the chlorinated water, it numbs the aching hole in his chest. He can ignore the incessant call of the sea, the tug on his heart. He hasn’t been away from it this long since he was twelve. (Well, not counting the Hera-induced coma, but at least he was unconscious for that). Fresh water is better, but access to it is limited in Manhattan unless he wants to dive into a polluted river. Which he doesn’t. So chlorine it is.

It took him a bit to get used to the strokes. It’s a different kind of swimming, not just propelling himself through the water. He trains religiously, just like he did when he first picked up a sword. It’s a personal challenge; he doesn’t touch his powers. Where’s the fun in that? He’ll always have an advantage in the water, but he wants to see how far he can go without cheating.

Without relying on his father.

The thought sends a shudder through him, causing him to breathe in nice lungful of pool water. He grimaces at the sour taste and comes up for air, coughing. He can breathe in the chlorinated stuff, but that doesn’t mean it’s pleasant.

“Water?” Annabeth asks from the bleachers. She lounges across the bottom row, notebook propped up on her knees, back against her overstuffed backpack.

He nods, wiping his nose.

She tosses him his water bottle, which he catches with ease. It washes away the burn of the chemicals, so he pours some over his head as well.

They’re not the only ones at the pool. Matt is training on the other side, and at least two other team members are in the weight room across the hall. No practice on Fridays, but Percy likes to take advantage of the time off to get some swimming in.

He hauls himself out of the pool, making a conscious effort to keep himself wet. Annabeth shuts her notebook and starts packing up her backpack.

Percy grabs a towel and attempts to dry his hair the normal way. “Still on to drive to camp tomorrow?”

Annabeth hums her agreement.

He smiles as he wraps the towel around his waist. “Dinner tonight?”

Annabeth shakes her head. “I have an appointment at the writing center tonight, remember?”

Right. Her fancy college preparatory school offers essay help a few times a week. She goes almost every time to get her work proofread for spelling mistakes. AHS isn’t fancy enough to have something like that, but at least Percy has full time access to Paul. Odysseus refuses to turn in anything with spelling or grammar errors. He loathes having dyslexia in this life.

Percy pouts at her teasingly. She plants a kiss on his lips in response. “We have all weekend. I have to get this done before we go.”

“I know,” he says, kissing her again. “At least let me walk you home.”

“Duh.” She pushes him away. “Now go change. You smell like a pool.”

The walk home is peaceful. Annabeth’s subway stop is a few blocks from her dorm, so he takes the extra time to enjoy being with her. He just lets her talk, listening to her ramble about the project she’s getting proofed tonight. If he had more brain power he’d probably engage with the topic, or at least Odysseus would, but the school week left him drained. It’s nice to just hear her voice instead.

The sun is just beginning to tinge the sky orange when they reach the front gate. Annabeth goes to open it, but Percy grabs her and pulls her around the corner to press her against the brick. “You sure I can’t sneak in and stay the night?”

She blows a curl out of her face. “You need to pack, and your mom will want to say bye before tomorrow.” She tries for a glare, but the blush creeping up her neck gives her away.

Percy pouts, giving her his best baby seal eyes.

Annabeth kisses him. “Stop being a big baby. It’s less than twelve hours.”

“Twelve hours too many,” Percy whines.

“Hush.” She silences him with another kiss. “I’m going to be late. I love you.”

He reluctantly lets her duck under his arm, but not without a fleeting kiss to the top of her head. “Love you too. See you in the morning.”

Annabeth safely inside her dorm, Percy takes the long way home. The subway isn’t the best idea for a lone demigod; too enclosed, too easy to get surprised. He doesn’t mind. It’s a nice evening, just on the cusp of fall. It’s that weird temperature where he needs a light jacket but can still wear shorts. Good skateboarding weather. Too bad he didn’t bring it to school today.

No monsters bother him on the way home, thankfully. He counts his blessings. Things have been quieter since Gaea’s scattering. Hopefully that keeps up, because he still has a certain island goddess rescue mission to complete, and it would be a whole lot easier without extra monsters in the mix.

He curses and knocks on a lone tree as he passes it. Way to go Percy, definitely jinxed that one.

Sunset is in full swing when he comes up on his apartment complex. Paul and his mom are out for the night on a date, so Percy has the place to himself. He should use it to get ahead on homework, but he’s probably going to play Mario kart or something. Maybe invite Jason over. Leo too. Jason can get them here fast enough. He’d include Grover in the mix, but the satyr is on another super important Lord of the Wild mission and is out of contact for the next two weeks.

He grapples for his keys as he climbs the stairs up to their third floor apartment. It’s amazing how much it feels like home again, now. The welcome mat is no longer unfamiliar, and he knows just how to get the old lock to move. The key sticks, like it normally does. He jiggles it a few times then turns it sharp to the right

He shoulders his way in, slinging his backpack onto the hook by the door, and toes his shoes off. Man, he is hungry. Maybe there’s still some leftover pasta in the fridge. Or he can order pizza if—

“You’re home.”

He freezes.

Poseidon sits at the kitchen table, hands clasped in front of him. He watches Percy with tired, weathered eyes, his hair just brushing his jaw.

Suddenly, the air is very heavy.

Percy doesn’t move. He holds Poseidon’s gaze and calculates his options. The door shut behind him, but if he’s quick he can wrench it open and race down the stairs. His eyes flick to the hallway on his right, leading to his bedroom. The fire escape at his window is also an option, he just has to dodge whatever Poseidon tries.

His hand creeps toward Riptide.

“Will you come sit?” Poseidon asks. The emotion in his eyes is near-unreadable. There’s agony there, the tension of tectonic plates pushing against each other, two unstoppable forces vying for dominance. The coming earthquake is inevitable.

A flash of a headache behind his eyes, piercing and ice cold. Odysseus screams to flee.

Percy doesn’t do that. He does something infinitely stupider.

He asks, “Have you finally come here to kill me?”

The tectonic forces shove—

And snap.

Poseidon shudders and puts his head in his hands. “Oh, gods.”

Percy blinks.

The god of the sea… is crying.

Percy doesn’t react. He’s completely dumbfounded. His father, crying, slumped at the kitchen table. The tears are pure seawater, tugging at the hole in Percy’s heart. He feels them just as acutely as he feels the changing tides, the swell of the ocean.

Poseidon’s shoulders shake. His crying isn’t loud, but it is visible. The last time Percy saw tears in his father’s eyes, he was splattered in Poseidon’s ichor.

Percy sucks in a shuddering breath. It burns, and smells of salty air, and it’s too thick. The pressure in the room compresses in his chest, turns his stomach.

“What have I done?” Comes Poseidon’s choked voice.

Percy doesn’t answer. Mostly because he doesn’t know how. Even Odysseus has nothing to say.

Poseidon looks up, catching Percy’s gaze. “My son.”

Percy stares at him.

“You are my son,” Poseidon says again. “And you are also him.”

He doesn’t have to say the name. It hangs in the air between them, on both of their lips.

“Yes,” Percy says, finally.

Poseidon looks haggard, like he’s spent the past month only sleeping a few hours a night. His eyes are a dark, muddy green rather than their normal bright color, and dark circles underline them. Percy didn’t know that gods could get dark circles.

“When I broke my oath,” Poseidon begins, “I believed the consequence was the prophecy. The knowledge that you would die before you were truly able to live.” He clasps his shaking hands together. “I foolishly thought that, when you lived, we had escaped punishment.”

Percy swallows.

“I was naïve.”

The pressure wavers, then increases. Percy forces himself not to bolt.

Poseidon watches him with those hollow eyes. It’s like staring at the wreckage of a sunken ship, the haunting knowledge of all the death that permeates the rotted wood. He is acutely aware that Poseidon’s domains were once closely intertwined with death.

“I’ll ask again,” Percy whispers. “Are you here to kill me?”

His hand closes around Riptide.

“No,” Poseidon says, no more than a murmur. “No, my boy. Never.”

Like a taught rope snapping, Percy’s knees give out. He hits the ground and his breath leaves him in a rush. His hands shake. It spreads up his arms to his shoulders. It’s like everything in his body just gave out, like he’d been carrying a weight so heavy that its removal made him forget how to stand.

The lights are suddenly too bright, the pressure too much. He gasps for air. His skin is tight. The air is burning cold, like the moment before the pain of the Phlegethon scorched his skin.

Then Poseidon is there, hands on Percy’s shoulders, and he doesn’t even have the mind to flinch away. He can’t get enough air in, can’t do anything other than brace his hands on the vinyl flooring and try to get control of his body. But his father holds him, whispering something Percy can’t comprehend beyond the screaming in his head.

His father isn’t going to kill him.

A choked laugh makes its way out of his throat. It turns into hyperventilating. The trembling spreads to his legs.

Odysseus can hardly comprehend it. He was so sure, so sure, that Poseidon was going to take revenge. It was the perfect opportunity. They are inextricably linked in this life, both as father and son and as products of the ocean. Poseidon’s hatred is infamous. He is not a god to forgive.

But—

But somehow—

“Breathe.”

The single word cuts through the haze, through the choked gasps and trembling limbs. He clings to it, willing his body to remember breathing exercises from group therapy sessions with the Apollo cabin. Remember your surroundings, remember that you are alive.

Slowly, his breathing calms. Slowly, he gets control of his body again.

There is a hand in his hair, and another on his back. He’s pressed up against something.

“Breathe,” Poseidon says again.

Percy jumps back, yanking himself out of his father’s grip.

They stare at each other. Poseidon has joined him on the floor, sitting on his knees. His Hawaiian shirt, horribly out of place in this moment, is rumpled where he held Percy.

Oh gods, he—in front of his father—his worst enemy—like a child—

Poseidon reaches out a hand, stopping just before Percy’s face.

Percy doesn’t dare move.

His father’s hand comes to rest on his cheek. It’s warm. Callused.

A god does not need to express the scars that battle leaves behind. Their skin isn’t like a human’s; it can change with a thought. But the sea never forgets. The sea holds its conquests, its pain, its triumphs, deep in its depths. And Poseidon, he is much the same.

It hits Percy like a tidal wave.

Their calluses are identical.

Two different weapons. Two different trainers. Two different species. And yet they share this memory.

Born of and from the sea.

“I hurt you to take revenge for my son,” Poseidon begins, voice soft. “It was justified, I thought, for the pain you caused him. I would make sure you never saw home again.”

His hand is gentle on Percy’s face. It is so different from a lifetime ago, when his touch meant nothing but destruction.

“But I look at you now, and I think of your mother. Those nights she sat in this room, waiting for you to come home when Hera took you from us.” Poseidon’s voice cracks, so utterly human. “What monster was I, to keep a mother from seeing her son again?”

Percy’s eyes burn.

Poseidon’s thumb brushes his cheekbone. “I have mellowed, these long years I have existed. I think about you often. Odysseus.” He swallows, like the word choked him on the way out. “Sometimes with hatred. Others, sadness. More recently, regret.”

“I see you, on that rock,” Percy blurts. The words tumble from his mouth. “I dream about it. All the time. The—the shore. The blood. Gods, the feeling of drowning. It—I never could get back in the water. Never.” His mouth moves faster than his brain, stuttering over words that taste like salt and rage and fear. His hand shakes as he runs it through his hair. “You—you spend a whole life afraid of the ocean, then you’re born from it. How fucked up is that?” He laughs. “It’s like Fate gave me this—this—this thing I love so much this time around, and then took it all away again. Haven’t they taken enough? Haven’t I suffered enough?”

A flash of familiarity lights Poseidon’s eyes at his words. Percy barely registers it. Something churns in his gut, a storm years in the making.

“I—gods—I’ve fought so much. And I go into the pit and suddenly I don’t know who I am, and I just got my memories back, and my father wants me dead.” He shouldn’t tempt Fate. He should just take his father’s love and go. But he can’t stop himself now; two lifetimes of anger and pain crawl up his throat like bile and spill out through clenched teeth. “You want me dead! I live with that! I fight your gods-damned war and you want me dead! And Gaea wants me dead! And every fucking thing in this life—in every life—wants me dead! And you—gods, you leave me on that beach like I’m not even your son, like it isn’t your fault we’re even in this mess! You’re the one who broke the oath.” He slams a fist into his father’s chest. “You told me my birth was a MISTAKE!”

His breathing comes in gasps. His head spins. Vaguely, he can hear water rushing from every sink in the apartment.

He stares at the hand still fisted above Poseidon’s heart. “You called me a monster.”

Poseidon watches him, mouth ajar. His hand has dropped from Percy’s face into his lap, palms to the sky.

Percy drops his own hands to his lap—gazes at the calluses that match his father’s. “Maybe you were right. Maybe all of this is a punishment. Maybe I’m your greatest regret, and my birth was a mistake, and I’m a monster. I don’t know.” He takes a shaky breath. “I don’t know.”

A beat of silence.

The water suddenly stops running.

Poseidon grabs Percy and pulls him into a hug.

“You, Perseus Jackson, are the greatest gift the Fates ever gave me, and the toughest lesson I ever had to learn.”

Percy’s heart skips a beat, like one of those half-waking dreams where you fall off a stair, like none of this is real at all.

Poseidon hugs him tighter. “My dear son, I am so, so sorry.”

Finally, the dam breaks. The burning in his eyes gives way to tears. They surge up and out in waves, accompanying choked sobs. He grips Poseidon’s shirt and cries into it. He cries for ten years lost at sea, for six hundred men he couldn’t save, for children lost in two wars and rage at the uncaring Fates. His body shakes with the force of it, face pressed up against his father’s collarbone. His father, who he thought was here to kill him just a few minutes before.

Poseidon holds him through it. His own tears hit the top of Percy’s head as they cling to each other on the floor of a little apartment in Manhattan.

Mortal enemies.

Father and son.

Gods, the Fates have a sense of humor.

“What—” Percy chokes on a half-laugh, half-sob. “What happened to ruthlessness?”

“To Tartarus with ruthlessness,” Poseidon says.

“Polyphemus tried to kill me again, this time,” Percy says.

“He does not respect family like he should,” Poseidon replies.

Percy presses his face into Poseidon’s shoulder. “I tortured you.”

“I tortured you.”

“With your own weapon.”

“Which I leant to you freely in Athens.”

Percy snorts. “Stupid idea.”

Poseidon strokes his hair. “You were quite talented with it.”

“I almost used it on you again, when you scared me.”

“I would have deserved it.”

“Would you care this much if I had not been reincarnated as your son?”

Poseidon pulls back, bracing his hands on Percy’s shoulders. He looks him up and down. His mouth works as he thinks. “I always knew you would come back. For the first few centuries after your death, I thought I would exact my revenge upon your rebirth. But time changed all the gods, and myself… I am not so angry now.” His thumb swipes a tear from Percy’s cheek. “I do not think I would have harmed you, were you reincarnated as someone else’s child. But I believe the Fates chose this to teach me a lesson.”

“To not murder people?”

“To forgive,” Poseidon corrects. “I prevented hundreds of men from seeing their families again, all in the name of revenge, and for what? Petty satisfaction? Time taught me to move on, but this taught me to forgive.”

“Could’ve done without the month of complete silence,” Percy mutters.

“I did not say I was perfect.”

Percy huffs a laugh.

Poseidon pulls him into another, gentler hug. His fingers brush the nape of Percy’s neck, just where his hair begins to curl. “You are always welcome in the sea, my son. I am sorry that I ever made you feel otherwise.”

The sea, his birthright and his greatest fear. The graveyard of his morality and his men. And yet, still, his love. The place he has always belonged.

Once, many millennia ago, he sailed those open waters to make it back to his family. He journeyed through the most treacherous seas known to men and gods, killed countless monsters, and lost many friends, all with one goal: make it home alive. No matter the cost. No matter the pain. No matter what got in his way.

Make.

It.

Home.

Poseidon’s breath is warm on his brow. It smells of the sea.

“Come home, Percy.”

And in every life, despite it all, he does.