Chapter Text
When Percy Jackson crawls his way out of Tartarus, there is blood in his teeth, cruelty in his bones and a new world order in his hands.
He was the beginning and he will be the end.
He has long been angry at the gods for their injustice and cruelty, but he has never had the power to do something about it.
Now, he does.
He survived what no one should survive, and when he comes back into Camp Half-Blood's borders, alive and strong if not well, he is different. He is changed. At first, it makes sense - Tartarus changes. It corrupts. It warps. So maybe he just needs time, the campers whisper when they step out of his path. His eyes are colder than the depths of the Sea (some say they don't look like his eyes).
Percy Jackson does not need time.
He needs knowledge.
Knowledge that has been locked away for millennia, knowledge that predates Chiron's existence and the hierarchy of Mount Olympus itself. Knowledge, the kind that cities burned for and gods hid in the wildest parts of their domains in some futile hope that it could not be recovered. Knowledge that did not come in scrolls and books like the ones Annabeth had laying around, but rather that is carved into a God's existence in language only those of the Primordial Waters can read. This knowledge predates written language, so it is not any kind of modern symbols that are carved into the God, but memories. Memories of a darker time, of when humanity coexisted with forces they could not understand until they did and they bound those forces into something more palatable, something anthropomorphized (and it is not that they understood these forces but that they grew ambitious enough to push them away). It takes power to bind forces of nature into something vaguely human, but it takes fear to gain that kind of power. And humanity had every reason to fear the Poseidon that lurked in the dark (not that he went by that name then, and not that names mean much except to force the unknowable into some semblance of being known so mortals can sleep easier at night under the pretense that a name could stop an ocean from drowning them if it pleases).
Scream. Scream until your lungs collapse in your chest and the ground gives way, until the sea reaches for you and you reject her.
Percy Jackson understands fear and pain and worry. He understands the strange looks given to him and the worry piled on when Chiron and Annabeth and Grover speak about what happened. He understands the questions: what happened and why did this happen and perhaps most importantly what were you told? Because they want answers. Clean answers in textbooks and historical experience Chiron lived. They want the simple version, the kind that can be defined and categorized and tucked away for future reference. But the thing inside him, the thing running in his veins, does not allow that. It sees simple answer and bites its throat out - because whatever is living in him, it's dangerous and it's ancient and it scares him. It scares Percy.
He is not sure what he is.
He just knows he is.
Blood stains the inner lining of his lip and his tongue swipes over it and he swallows.
He stands at the door of the Hypos cabin.
They may understand what he does not.