Flowergirl, Percy Jackson

007. Leap of Faith

Tyson drops onto the ground near his pack, but doesn't close his eyes - instead, he is fiddling with some scraps of metal, putting something together, pulling it apart and then reassembling it. Each time he has to pull it apart, his lips curl and he sniffs, wiping his cheeks. If Lila looks hard enough, she can see the faint path of the silver shine of water slipping down his cheek.

She sets her own pack down beside him. They seem to have grown closer after their fight with Kampê, which would be sweet, if it weren't under such excruciating circumstances. Lila never really spoke to Tyson before the quest - not through avoidance, just luck. They never had the chance to bond the way she did with Annabeth when they were younger, or how Grover and Lila did when working with Juniper to search for Pan. But when you face a poison-sword-wielding dragon-lady together, it's quite impossible to remain stoic toward the other. "What are you making?"

He shrugs, turning his face away so she won't see his tears. (He's too late, of course.) "Something helpful. More helpful than Briares." His shoulders slump, and he tears the metal pieces apart again the same way he might rip apart meat.

Never meet your heroes, Lila thinks grimly. They'll always disappoint you. Her heart throbs in sympathy for the one-eyed giant sitting dejectedly beside her - he really didn't deserve this. Reaching out to pat his shoulder, not quite daring to reach for his hand, she musters a weak smile. "Hey, don't worry about it. Briares will come around, I'm sure."

"It's not just that," he sniffs again, turning to face her. Lila is alarmed to find his eye swimming with tears, flooding, about to overflow. "We almost died for him. We risked our lives and he wouldn't even help us."

"I wouldn't say that," Lila corrects gently. "He was being tortured. At least he's not in pain anymore, he's free. That's reason enough, I think." Lila doesn't think she could ever walk away from someone being tortured like that, and neither would Percy and Annabeth. Some things you just can't turn a blind eye to without being just as bad as those monsters. "Even if Briares wasn't your hero, we would have saved him anyway. It was the right thing to do."

His single eye stares back up at her, drinking in every word the way Lila remembers Annabeth used to listen to Luke. (She tries not to dwell on that thought.) Tyson's tears seem to have dried now, mercifully, but he stays silent. refusing to speak almost out of fear that if he tries, he will cry.

Eventually he manages a teary smile. "Okay."

With that, he collapses back onto his makeshift bed, scattering the loose metal pieces on the ground beside him, and beginning to snore noisily. Beside him, Grover jumps uncomfortably, edging away (he's still terrified of Tyson. He had a bad experience with a Cyclops a few years ago.)

Falling back onto her sleeping bag, she stares up the ceiling for a few minutes, watching the abyssal darkness of the ceiling that never seems to end. Her fingers brush over the beads of her necklace; the pine tree and the flaming centaur. Will they ever reach Camp Half-Blood again? It doesn't feel like it. The darkness of the labyrinth is endless, eternal. If they get lost in here, they are lost forever.

Her eyes close, and then she is asleep.

WHEN LILA WAKES, she finds herself clutching at the beads of her necklace tight enough to bruise her palms. Indeed, when she pries her fingers away from the beads, they are aching and bruised, four harsh red circles pressed into her hand. If she looks close enough, she can still see the imprint of the flaming centaur and the pine tree. Gods, those times feel like a thousand years ago.

She huffs out a rough cough, her throat sore. It still hasn't quite recovered from the screams of all the dreams the last few days . . . nevermind. She shouldn't dwell on it; it would do no good to get distracted, caught up in her visions again.