(Y/N)'s POV
Have you ever felt like you were trapped? Not like, my shoes are tied together because the Stoll's think they are hilarious trapped, but truly in a situation where all you can see is the worst option, the worst outcome, with no hope of escaping it. But you had to take it.
(Y/N) thought he knew that feeling, he thought that it was a hard feeling to mistake for another. There were times in his life when he thought he had seen that scenario play out, most recently when he had been buried in rubble, or when he was forced to let Annabeth go on her quest.
The truth was far from that though, in reality, most of the times, if you had been paying attention, you could feel scenarios like that coming long before they arrived. Even before they descended, (Y/N) shuddered.
A chill traced his spine as if an icicle had been trailed down it, he began to feel nausea from the eerie silence before the explosion, the true calm before the storm. He thought it was just nerves at first.
Looking back though, he had only ever felt this true feeling once before. He never truly forgot that feeling, even if he couldn't recognise it at the time. The knot in his stomach was so familiar it hurt, almost pleading with him to remember.
By the time he had, it was too late. Like a fly heading towards a spider's web. He wondered if those little insects realized when they had been caught that there was no escape. Because by the time (Y/N) got caught, it was far too late.
Even as Leo's scans exposed what was below, (Y/N) felt like something was wrong, though he couldn't see it, what was down there made every hair on his body stand on end, and he wasn't just talking about the spider lady.
Before the coach lived the dream and destroyed an entire parking lot, (Y/N) headed below deck, if this were going to go wrong, he would have to make sure that he had a little insurance. So, walking over to his desk, he pulled off a sticky note.
He left behind a message for Annabeth, just in case this was to go wrong, and something was to happen to him, knowing that if it did, someone would still be left behind with what they needed for the battle to come.
It was dramatic and a little morbid of him, but with what he was about to get into, he couldn't help but leave a little safety net for a worst-case scenario. He finished and rushed off to the top deck when an explosion made the ship rock.
Annabeth's POV
Annabeth had seen some strange things before, but she'd never seen it rain cars. As the roof of the cavern collapsed, sunlight blinded her. She got the briefest glimpse of the Argo II hovering above. It must have used its ballistae to blast a hole straight through the ground.
Chunks of asphalt as big as garage doors tumbled down, along with six or seven Italian cars. One would've crushed the Athena Parthenos, but the statue's glowing aura acted like a force field, and the car bounced off. Unfortunately, it fell straight toward Annabeth.
She jumped to one side, twisting her bad foot. A wave of agony almost made her pass out, but she flipped on her back in time to see a bright red Fiat 500 slam into Arachne's silk trap, punching through the cavern floor and disappearing with the Chinese Spidercuffs.
As Arachne fell, she screamed like a freight train on a collision course; but her wailing rapidly faded. All around Annabeth, more chunks of debris slammed through the floor, riddling it with holes.
The Athena Parthenos remained undamaged, though the marble under its pedestal was a starburst of fractures. Annabeth was covered in cobwebs. She trailed strands of leftover spider silk from her arms and legs like the strings of a marionette, but somehow, amazingly, none of the debris had hit her.
She wanted to believe that the statue had protected her, though she suspected it might've been nothing but luck. The army of spiders had disappeared. Either they had fled back into the dark- ness, or they'd fallen into the chasm.
As daylight flooded the cavern, Arachne's tapestries along the walls crumbled to dust, which Annabeth could hardly bear to watch—especially the tapestry depicting her and (Y/N). But none of that mattered when she heard his voice from above: "Annabeth!"
"Here!" she sobbed. All the terror seemed to leave her in one massive yelp. As the Argo II descended, she saw him leaning over the rail. His smile was better than any tapestry she'd ever seen.
The room kept shaking, but Annabeth managed to stand. The floor at her feet seemed stable for the moment. Her backpack was missing, along with Daedalus's laptop. Her bronze knife, which she'd had since she was seven, was also gone—probably fallen into the pit.
But Annabeth didn't care. She was alive. She edged closer to the gaping hole made by the Fiat 500. Jagged rock walls plunged into the darkness as far as Annabeth could see. A few small ledges jutted out here and there, but Annabeth saw nothing on them—just strands of spider silk dripping over the sides like Christmas tinsel.
Annabeth wondered if Arachne had told the truth about the chasm. Had the spider fallen all the way to Tartarus? She tried to feel satisfied with that idea, but it made her sad. Arachne had made some beautiful things.
She'd already suffered for eons. Now her last tapestries had crumbled. After all that, falling into Tartarus seemed like too harsh an end. Annabeth was dimly aware of the Argo II hovering to a stop about forty feet from the floor.
It lowered a rope ladder, but Annabeth stood in a daze, staring into the darkness. Then suddenly (Y/N) was next to her, lacing his fingers in hers. He had been so impatient to see her that he had jumped the rail and flown down to greet her.
He turned her gently away from the pit and wrapped his arms around her. She buried her face in his chest and broke down in tears. "It's okay," he said. "We're together." He didn't say you're okay, or we're alive.
After all they'd been through over the last year, he knew the most important thing was that they were together. She loved him for saying that.
(Y/N)'s POV
Relief didn't do it justice. The sheer amount of stress that had just been lifted from (Y/N) had meant that relief had been left in the rear-view mirror some time ago, the only thing that kept him from sobbing too was the little voice in his mind telling him they weren't out of danger yet.
He held Annabeth close, the fear of losing her still lingering like an old wound, calming himself down slightly as she embraced him, but only because he could feel her heartbeat against his, that was all he needed right now.
A thousand terrible fates had crossed his mind in the short time they had been away, when Nico was nearly killed, (Y/N)'s thoughts had drifted but the fear he had of losing Annabeth never really left him.
In the very short span of time it had taken them to demolish that parking lot, a thousand more scenes of terrible things had flashed through his mind. But all of those fell away, the moment he looked over that rail and saw Annabeth.
As beaten as she was, as tired as she looked. The moment he saw her, part of him knew that everything was going to be fine, no matter what happened. When she was in his arms, he was able to ignore the rest of the world.
The others joined them at some point, but he didn't really see them, his hands were shaking with both excitement and relief and to him right now the loudest sound in the world was the beating of that heartbeat beside his chest. She was alive, she was safe.
Annabeth's POV
Their friends gathered around them. Nico di Angelo was there, but Annabeth's thoughts were so fuzzy, this didn't seem surprising to her. It seemed only right that he would be with them. "Your leg." Piper knelt next to her and examined the Bubble Wrap cast.
"Oh, Annabeth, what happened?" She started to explain. Talking was difficult, but as she went along, her words came more easily. Even as they pulled away (Y/N) didn't let go of her hand, which also made her feel more confident.
When she finished, her friends' faces were slack with amazement. "Gods of Olympus," Jason said. "You did all that alone. With a broken ankle." "Well...some of it with a broken ankle." Percy grinned, (Y/N) glowered at him and bent down.
Still holding her hand, he traced a gentle finger across her ankle. The first second felt as though he were driving a dagger through it, but shortly after, her leg began to feel numb, and the bone began to heal, slowly but surely.
"You made Arachne weave her own trap? I knew you were good, but Holy Hera—Annabeth, you did it. Generations of Athena kids tried and failed. You found the Athena Parthenos!" Everyone gazed at the statue.
"What do we do with her?" Frank asked. "She's huge." "We'll have to take her with us to Greece," Annabeth said. "The statue is powerful. Something about it will help us stop the giants." "The giants' bane stands gold and pale," Hazel quoted. "Won with pain from a woven jail."
She looked at Annabeth with admiration. "It was Arachne's jail. You tricked her into weaving it." With a lot of pain, Annabeth thought. "See this is why you should have kept the super strength, Zoe." (Y/N) said.
Still holding Annabeth's hand, he motioned to the statue and then picking up the statue and throwing it onto the ship as if it were a sack of flour. The huntress frowned at him, "Not every plan must be solved with brute strength." She bickered back.
Leo raised his hands. He made a finger picture frame around the Athena Parthenos like he was taking measurements. "Well, it might take some rearranging, but I think we can fit her through the bay doors in the stable."
"If she sticks out the end, I might have to wrap a flag around her feet or something." Annabeth shuddered. She imagined the Athena Parthenos jutting from their trireme with a sign across her pedestal that read: WIDE LOAD.
Then she thought about the other lines of the prophecy: The twins snuff out the angel's breath, who holds the keys to endless death. "What about you guys?" she asked. "What happened with the giants?"
(Y/N) told her about rescuing Nico, "We kicked their butts. Percy blew one up with a rocket launcher or something, the one wearing a leotard turned into a whirlpool, the usual." He shrugged.
She looked over at Zoe, who was rubbing her eyes and went on to explain in detail what those insane snippets really meant. The appearance of Bacchus, and the fight with the twins in the Colosseum.
Nico didn't say much. The poor guy looked like he'd been wandering through a wasteland for six weeks. Percy explained what Nico had found out about the Doors of Death, and how they had to be closed on both sides.
Even with sunlight streaming in from above, Percy's news made the cavern seem dark again. "So, the mortal side is in Epirus," she said. "At least that's somewhere we can reach." Nico grimaced. "But the other side is the problem. Tartarus."
The word seemed to echo through the chamber. The pit behind them exhaled a cold blast of air. That's when Annabeth knew with certainty. The chasm did go straight to the Underworld. (Y/N) must have felt it too. He guided her a little farther from the edge.
Her arms and legs trailed spider silk like a bridal train. She wished she had her dagger to cut that junk off. She almost asked (Y/N) to cut them off of her, but he seemed distracted by something.
Annabeth followed his eyeline, trying to catch a glimpse of what had him so worried. Besides the hole that led to Tartarus that was, but whatever he saw was lost on her eyes. She gave his hand a firm squeeze, it seemed to snap him back.
"What is it?" She asked him gently, he blinked a few times, "Nothing, I hope. I just thought I saw someone." He said, Annabeth grimaced, that was never a good sign for a demigod, even worse in a place like this.
"Who?" "Whom?" He said, sort of as a question, as it was supposed to be a correction, though it was clear from his expression he didn't know if it was correct anyway. "Nemesis." He said, Annabeth immediately imagined an evil version of (Y/N).
He has a nemesis. Her tired mind thought. Only for them both to then be distracted, a small strand of cobweb floated down from the ceiling above them where the Argo II had smashed through and landed on (Y/N)'s face.
"Pfft" "Pttthh" He spat as he tried to wave the cobweb from his face, Annabeth smiled a little as she watched him do so. Only for her, the person with the biggest fear of spiders imaginable, to reach up and grab the strand, throwing it over his shoulder.
The two of them smiled at each other, and Annabeth wanted nothing more than to kiss him right now, I mean that was as close as she was willing to get to the tired cliché of brushing someone's hair behind their ear before a kiss. Oh gods, what had he done to her?
"Why don't we head to the ship and plan from there?" He offered, "About the Tartarus issue, I've been thinking, does it have to be us? Maybe I can call in a favour. Even if Nyx won't close the gate from that side, Eris might. Geras maybe, we just have to incentivise them."
The others murmured in agreement, heading towards the rope ladder, Zoe and Percy were the first to climb up. As they did, Percy murmured something. "Bacchus mentioned something about my voyage being harder than I expected. Not sure why—"
The chamber groaned. The Athena Parthenos tilted to one side. Its head caught on one of Arachne's support cables, but the marble foundation under the pedestal was crumbling. Nausea swelled in Annabeth's chest. If the statue fell into the chasm, all her work would be for nothing.
Their quest would fail. "Secure it!" Annabeth cried. Her friends understood immediately. (Y/N) let go of her hand for the first time since they had reunited. Annabeth immediately felt a little bit colder; he raised his hands as the shadows seemed to peel off the walls.
They intertwined themselves and wrapped around the Athena Parthenos as if it were a safety blanket. The moment they did though, (Y/N) fell to one knee and coughed a little. "Zhang!" Leo cried. "Get me to the helm, quick! The coach is up there alone."
Frank transformed into a giant eagle, and the two of them soared toward the ship. Jason wrapped his arm around Piper. He turned to Percy. "Back for you guys in a sec." He summoned the wind and shot into the air.
"This floor won't last!" Hazel warned. "The rest of us should get to the ladder." Plumes of dust and cobwebs blasted from holes in the floor. The spider's silk support cables trembled like massive guitar strings and began to snap.
(Y/N) extended his wings, turning to Annabeth, he nodded, "Go on, I'll be fine I can fly." He said calmly, Annabeth's stomach seemed to drop then rise, as if it were throwing a tantrum. "But-" He gripped her hand again.
Hazel lunged for the bottom of the rope ladder and gestured for Nico to follow, but Nico was in no condition to sprint. (Y/N) squeezed Annabeth's hand tighter. "It'll be fine," he muttered before letting go.
Looking up, she saw grappling lines shoot from the Argo II and wrap around the statue. One lassoed Athena's neck like a noose. Leo shouted orders from the helm as Jason and Frank flew frantically from line to line, trying to secure them.
"Finally." (Y/N) said, with a grunt of effort, the blanket of shadow disappeared, he rose from one knee and looked at Annabeth, beginning to walk towards the rope ladder behind Nico. "Might want to tell your mom to cool it on the ambrosia and nectar." He joked.
Nico had just reached the ladder when a sharp pain shot up Annabeth's bad leg. She gasped and stumbled. "What is it?" (Y/N) asked. She tried to stagger toward the ladder. Why was she moving backward instead?
Her legs swept out from under her, and she fell on her face. "Her ankle!" Hazel shouted from the ladder. "Cut it! Cut it!" Annabeth's mind was woolly from the pain. Cut her ankle? Apparently (Y/N) didn't realize what Hazel meant either.
Then something yanked Annabeth backward and dragged her toward the pit. (Y/N) lunged. He grabbed her arm, but the momentum carried him along as well. His wings extended as he caught her, and he tried to pull her up.
Only then did he seem to be caught in the air, as if someone had caught him with a tether, he cursed in pain for some reason. "Help them!" Hazel yelled. Annabeth glimpsed Nico hobbling in their direction, Hazel trying to disentangle her cavalry sword from the rope ladder.
Their other friends were still focused on the statue, and Hazel's cry was lost in the general shouting and the rumbling of the cavern. Annabeth sobbed as she hit the edge of the pit. Her legs went over the side.
Too late, she realized what was happening: she was tangled in the spider silk. She should have cut it away immediately. She had thought it was just loose line, but with the entire floor covered in cobwebs.
She hadn't noticed that one of the strands was wrapped around her foot—and the other end went straight into the pit. It was attached to something heavy down in the darkness, something that was pulling her in.
(Y/N)'s POV
He should have seen this coming, not just from the unsettling feeling he had, or how everything was going far too well to ever end nicely, but because he had been expecting something like this.
It was why he had tried to get Annabeth to leave him and head for the ship, the moment he saw Nemesis in the shadows, staring at him in the eye, he should have flown her straight to the ship. Not just demanded they return.
It was Nemesis that made the foundation crumble under the statue; it was her who had made sure the others had to rush to save the statue so that they wouldn't be in a position to help. It made him sick.
This wasn't balance, this wasn't fair as the goddess once was. It was unjust cruelty as an act of revenge, he thought back to the goddess. The single figure he saw on the other side of the web infested room. Grinning.
He looked up and saw Nemesis staring at him, a smirk on her lips and she flipped something in her hand, a coin. He remembered the words of Tyche/Fortuna, and the warning she once gave.
Only now had it become more than a warning he promptly ignored. Only now was it a fortune that the laws of the world had to act on, as Nemesis flipped the coin, he thought he had destroyed, he remembered the words of lady luck herself.
"Heads you die at the end of all of this, tails and it'll be something so much worse." His hubris had brought this upon him, his insistence that he made his own luck, his reckless treatment of concepts of fate and destiny. But he couldn't figure something out.
He understood punishing him, he understood her hatred for him, and Tartarus's thirst for his death or whatever, but why Annabeth, after everything she had been through, not just on the quest but in general, why her too?
The words of his grandmother came back to him then. "The world doesn't revolve around you child. Not even if you think it should." "(Y/N), she's a demigod, being in danger is her default setting. Thinking that has anything to do with your curse is a little presumptuous of you don't you think dear? And people say I'm selfish."
Then he remembered what Nemesis once said "You're going to come begging. Without words, you'll scream and cry. I am going to ruin it. I will take something worse than your revenge, in return for your selfish desire. We'll see how much you scream and cry then? Won't we?"
He didn't know at the time she said it that the person he wanted revenge on, the person he wished he could smite dead more than anyone in that moment was the goddess herself. "I've always wondered how long it would take to break you."
"By the end of your journey, be it one way or the other, I'm going to find out." She had promised. This was her fulfilling that promise, he realised as he was caught out of the air, the string that had landed on his face earlier had been no coincidence.
Annabeth had pushed it off his face thankfully, stopping him from being bisected, which would have topped off an awful day. In doing that though, she had unknowingly pushed it behind his back, onto his wing.
Now as he tried with all his strength to lift the two of them up, his wing was being wrenched the other way, in the opposite direction to him. It was as if Tartarus itself had a hold on him. He tried to shadow travel, but it was like he was entangled with a black hole. Plus, he was a little distracted.
There are millions upon millions of people upon this earth, perhaps billions, that had broken a bone in their life. A countless number more who had faced a severe injury, and there was not a soul alive who hadn't been in pain.
(Y/N) was certain however, that there were very few people in the world who could have truly fathomed how painful it was to have your wing ripped off, feather by feather, strand by strand, fibre by fibre, nerve by nerve.
(Y/N) prided himself on being able to take heaps of pain, he had fought some of the strongest combatants in the world with dire injuries and succeeded, he had experienced more than his fair share of pain. For the sake of the gods, he had flown through the sun.
Nothing could have prepared him for that pain though. As the web constricted around his appendage like an assassin's garrotte, he wanted nothing more than to furl the wing back into him to relieve himself of that agony.
It wasn't that simple. Even the slightest twitch if the muscles in his back almost caused him to pass out, and he could see naught but white from the moment the wing was wrenched in the wrong direction.
If Ate had felt this pain all those years ago, if she had gone through this, he didn't blame her for trying to destroy Olympus, hell, if he knew she had felt this, he might have joined her. He wouldn't wish the feeling in his back, or any smidgen of the pain he felt on anybody.
Having his wings removed was not a memory he chose to remember very often, nor was growing them back, but neither was like whatever this form of torture was. Chiron removed them the first time around.
It was a medical procedure, he was used to those, a few well-placed incisions and a backache afterwards, he wasn't even conscious for it, he barely remembered it at all, he thought the fates helped maybe? All he really remembered was how happy his relative was once they were grafted to her.
As for growing them back, a few broken bones and a shifted spine, excruciating yes, but he was used to that too by now, and in truth, for the ability to fly, the freedom it gave him, it felt like not much of a trade in the grand scheme of things. This pain, however?
He couldn't even scream the pain was too intense. He truly believed that it must have been a miracle, some mixture of demigod reflexes and fear that kept him from letting go in that moment, though perhaps the pain was so debilitating he was unable to move.
No matter what it was, all he could feel was the pain, slowly, horribly slowly, pulling its way down his back, and the only thing he could hear, was the equally horrible sound that accompanied it, like the tearing of paper, but more meaty and wet.
He was given pause at the horrible 'Ssshhhliiick.' He could have gone his whole life without hearing that sound, he regretted having ears because of that sound, in fact, he was now less of a person, for having heard that sound. Not just because of obvious reasons.
That sound was the last thing he heard before his vision all congealed into one blob of colour and for a single second, his brain shut down and he passed out. Only being saved a moment later by those same demigod reflexes telling him 'HOLD ON YOU IDIOT!'
His fingers drug along the rock, getting caught in the sticky remainders of what little web was left, scratching deep into the surface with just his fingernails, if he had the capacity right now, he would have summoned his claws. He realized something as the pain faded.
Annabeth's POV
"No," (Y/N) muttered in pain as the wing was freed from his back, falling into the abyss beneath them, tears streamed down his face from both effort and clearly pain, but he held onto Annabeth so tightly it hurt.
He only seemed to focus on her the moment his wing was removed. A light dawning in his eyes. "My sword..." But he couldn't reach for the blade without letting go of Annabeth's arm, and Annabeth's strength was gone.
A shadow coiled around them, "If I can just-" She slipped over the edge. (Y/N) fell with her. Her body slammed into something. She must have blacked out briefly from the pain. When she could see again, she realized that she'd fallen partway into the pit and was dangling over the void.
(Y/N) had managed to grab a ledge about fifteen feet below the top of the chasm. He was holding on with one hand, gripping Annabeth's wrist with the other, but the pull on her leg was much too strong.
'No escape,' said a voice in the darkness below. 'I go to Tartarus, and you will come too.' Annabeth wasn't sure if she actually heard Arachne's voice or if it was just in her mind. The pit shook. (Y/N) was the only thing keeping her from falling.
He was barely holding on to a ledge the size of a bookshelf. Nico leaned over the edge of the chasm, thrusting out his hand, but he was much too far away to help. Hazel was yelling for the others, but even if they heard her over all the chaos, they'd never make it in time.
Annabeth's leg felt like it was pulling free of her body. Pain washed everything in red. The force of the Underworld tugged at her like dark gravity. She didn't have the strength to fight. She knew she was too far down to be saved.
"Let me go," she croaked. "You can't pull me up." His face was white with effort. She could see in his eyes that he knew it was hopeless. "Watch me!" He said with false confidence she knew he didn't really have.
"Let me go." She repeated again, softer. "Not on your life blondie. Never," he said. The two of them locked eyes, she was trying to plead with him without words, trying to make him let go, though she knew he never would.
In that moment, without any real words the two of them made a choice, the fear on (Y/N)'s face faded away. He looked up at Nico, fifteen feet above. "The other side, Nico! We'll see you there. Understand?" Nico's eyes widened. "But—"
"Lead them there!" He shouted. "Promise me!" "I—I will." Below them, the voice laughed in the darkness. Sacrifices. Beautiful sacrifices to wake the goddess. (Y/N) tightened his grip on Annabeth's wrist.
His face was gaunt, scraped and bloody, his hair dusted with cobwebs, but when he locked eyes with her, she thought he had never looked more handsome. "We're staying together," he promised. "You're not getting away from me. Never again."
Only then did she understand what would happen. A one-way trip. A very hard fall. "As long as we're together," she said. She heard Nico and Hazel still screaming for help. She saw the sunlight far, far above—maybe the last sunlight she would ever see.
Then (Y/N) let go of his tiny ledge, and together, holding hands, he and Annabeth fell into the endless darkness.
Leo's POV
Leo was still in shock. Everything had happened so quickly. They had secured grappling lines to the Athena Parthenos just as the floor gave way, and the final columns of webbing snapped.
Jason and Frank dove down to save the others, but they'd only found Nico and Hazel hanging from the rope ladder. (Y/N) and Annabeth were gone. The pit to Tartarus had been buried under several tons of debris.
Leo pulled the Argo II out of the cavern seconds before the entire place imploded, taking the rest of the parking lot with it. The Argo II was now parked on a hill overlooking the city. Zoe, Percy, Jason, Hazel, and Frank had returned to the scene of the catastrophe.
They were all hoping to dig through the rubble and find a way to save (Y/N) and Annabeth, but they'd come back demoralized. The cavern was simply gone. The scene was swarming with police and rescue workers.
No mortals had been hurt, but the Italians would be scratching their heads for months, wondering how a massive sinkhole had opened right in the middle of a parking lot and swallowed a dozen perfectly good cars.
Dazed with grief, Leo and the others carefully loaded the Athena Parthenos into the hold, using the ship's hydraulic winches with an assist from Frank Zhang, part-time elephant. The statue just fit, though what they were going to do with it, Leo had no idea.
Coach Hedge was too miserable to help. He kept pacing the deck with tears in his eyes, pulling at his goatee and slapping the side of his head, muttering, "I should have saved them! I should have blown up more stuff!"
Finally, Leo told him to go belowdecks and secure everything for departure. He wasn't doing any good beating himself up. The demigods gathered on the quarterdeck and gazed at the distant column of dust still rising from the site of the implosion.
Leo rested his hand on the Archimedes sphere, which now sat on the helm, ready to be installed. He should have been excited. It was the biggest discovery of his life—even bigger than Bunker 9. If he could decipher Archimedes's scrolls, he could do amazing things.
He hardly dared to hope, but he might even be able to build a new control disk for a certain dragon friend of his. Still, the price had been too high. He could almost hear Nemesis laughing. I told you we could do business, Leo Valdez.
He had opened the fortune cookie. He'd gotten the access code for the sphere and saved Frank and Hazel. But the sacrifice had been (Y/N) and Annabeth. Leo was sure of it. "It's my fault," he said miserably.
The others stared at him. Only Hazel seemed to understand. She'd been with him at the Great Salt Lake. "No," she insisted. "No, this is Gaea's fault. It had nothing to do with you." Leo wanted to believe that, but he couldn't.
They'd started this voyage with Leo messing up, firing on New Rome. They'd ended in old Rome with Leo breaking a cookie and paying a price much worse than an eye. "Leo, listen to me." Hazel gripped his hand. "I won't allow you to take the blame. I couldn't bear that after—after Sammy..."
She choked up, but Leo knew what she meant. His bisabuelo had blamed himself for Hazel's disappearance. Sammy had lived a good life, but he'd gone to his grave believing that he'd spent a cursed diamond and doomed the girl he loved.
Leo didn't want to make Hazel miserable all over again, but this was different. True success requires sacrifice. Leo had chosen to break that cookie. (Y/N) and Annabeth had fallen into Tartarus. That couldn't be a coincidence.
Nico di Angelo shuffled over, leaning on his black sword. "Leo, they're not dead. If they were, I could feel it." "How can you be sure?" Leo asked. "If that pit really led to...you know...how could you sense them so far away?"
Nico and Hazel shared a look, maybe comparing notes on their Hades/Pluto death radar. Leo shivered. Hazel had never seemed like a child of the Underworld to him, but Nico di Angelo—that guy was creepy.
"We can't be one hundred percent sure," Hazel admitted. "But I think Nico is right. (Y/N) and Annabeth are still alive...at least, so far." Jason pounded his fist against the rail. "I should've been paying attention. I could have flown down and saved them."
"Me, too," Frank moaned. The big dude looked on the verge of tears. Piper put her hand on Jason's back. "It's not your fault, either of you. You were trying to save the statue." "She's right," Nico said.
"Even if the pit hadn't been buried, you couldn't have flown into it without being pulled down. I'm the only one who has actually been into Tartarus. It's impossible to describe how powerful that place is. Once you get close, it sucks you in. I never stood a chance."
Frank sniffled. "Then (Y/N) and Annabeth don't stand a chance either?" "No," Zoe said, everyone looked at her and she caught herself. "I mean, not, no. No, they'll be fine. (Y/N) has been to Tartarus before, he has family there."
"He's in his element." Percy said quietly, he had done nothing but stare at the floor since they had left the parking lot. But he lifted his head to say, "They'll make it, Annabeth's the smartest demigod there is, and (Y/N) knows how it works down there."
Nico twisted his silver skull ring. "(Y/N) is the most powerful demigod I've ever met. No offense to you guys, but it's true. If anybody can survive, he will, especially if he's got Annabeth at his side. They're going to find a way through Tartarus."
Jason turned. "To the Doors of Death, you mean. But you told us it's guarded by Gaea's most powerful forces. How could two demigods possibly—?" "I don't know," Nico admitted. "But (Y/N) told me to lead you guys to Epirus, to the mortal side of the doorway."
"He's planning on meeting us there. If we can survive the House of Hades, fight our way through Gaea's forces, then maybe we can work together with him and Annabeth and seal the Doors of Death from both sides."
"And get (Y/N) and Annabeth back safely?" Leo asked. "Maybe." Leo didn't like the way Nico said that, as if he wasn't sharing all his doubts. Besides, Leo knew something about locks and doors. If the Doors of Death needed to be sealed from both sides, how could they do that unless someone stayed in the Underworld, trapped?
Nico took a deep breath. "I don't know how they'll manage it, but they will find a way. They'll journey through Tartarus and find the Doors of Death. When they do, we have to be ready." "It won't be easy," Hazel said.
"Gaea will throw everything she's got at us to keep us from reaching Epirus." "What else is new?" Jason sighed. Piper nodded. "We've got no choice. We have to seal the Doors of Death before we can stop the giants from raising Gaea."
"Otherwise, her armies will never die. And we've got to hurry. The Romans are in New York. Soon, they'll be marching on Camp Half-Blood." "We've got one month at best," Jason added. "Ephialtes said Gaea would awaken in exactly one month."
Leo straightened. "We can do it." Everyone stared at him. "The Archimedes sphere can upgrade the ship," he said, hoping he was right. "I'm going to study those ancient scrolls we got. There's got to be all kinds of new weapons I can make."
"We're going to hit Gaea's armies with a whole new arsenal of hurt." At the prow of the ship, Festus creaked his jaw and blew fire defiantly. Jason managed a smile. He clapped Leo on the shoulder. "Sounds like a plan, Admiral. You want to set the course?"
They kidded him, calling him Admiral, but for once Leo accepted the title. This was his ship. He hadn't come this far to be stopped. They would find this House of Hades. They'd take the Doors of Death.
And by the gods, if Leo had to design a grabber arm long enough to snatch (Y/N) and Annabeth out of Tartarus, then that's what he would do. Nemesis wanted him to wreak vengeance on Gaea? Leo would be happy to oblige.
He was going to make Gaea sorry she had ever messed with Leo Valdez. "Yeah." He took one last look at the cityscape of Rome, turning bloodred in the sunset. "Festus, raise the sails. We've got some friends to save."
(Y/N)'s POV
They hung over the edge of the abyss, and (Y/N) was a kid again, that terrified kid with no idea what he was doing, trying to get his mom back and nearly skateboarding himself into Tartarus, he looked at his hand clinging on the rock as his strength almost failed him and knew he wouldn't be able to escape this.
As that knot rose in his stomach, twisting and churning like a barb, his whole body shook, fear pierced through him like a needle had been pressed into the back of his neck as he remembered when he did have this feeling once before.
It wasn't at any logical moment, it wasn't when he was fighting Nyx, or Kronos, it was simpler than that, it had taken him before any of that happened. He had only experienced the fear of knowing he was going to die once.
The feeling that came to him before he accepted his fate, before he came to terms with it and accepted it. It wasn't the most painful feeling, or the scariest, definitely the most unsettling.
He remembered the day he sealed his fate, he remembered knowing that if he crossed a certain threshold, things would be set into motion that he could no longer undo or fight, he remembered the long ride up the elevator of Olympus and the step that felt like a thousand miles to get to it.
That was the moment it clicked, as his hands and nails dragged along the side of the ledge until they were bloodied, that was the moment he couldn't help but let out a very small and sharp, but very tired chuckle, as he understood.
Even in this scenario, where all he could see was the worst outcome, and try as he might, he knew avoiding it was impossible he had to laugh, it was just his luck, at this point it was comical for him to believe he would ever catch a break.
It was always going to end up like this, every step he had taken on this journey was to reach this point, not by his choice, and this time, not by the will of the fates, but this time, because of something darker, something more sinister.
This was the plan. He realized as his muscles strained and his grip tightened, as his wing was torn down his back, nerves splitting and skin tearing as it was wrenched harshly, pulling him ever closer to the pit.
Tartarus had always been beckoning for him, drawing him in. He had escaped it before, but not this time, even as (Y/N) fought with all his might to avoid plummeting, in the back of his mind he knew that it was futile. Again, he made the mistake of looking down.
This time, when he looked down, he didn't see a dark abyss waiting to swallow him, he didn't see the worst place in creation staring back at him, taunting him, drawing him closer and threatening to consume him.
He looked down and saw those storm grey eyes. That was all he needed, every beat of his thundering heart was drowned out, every taunt and scream or cry from friend of foe alike were a thousand miles away.
With just one glance at her, (Y/N) knew what they'd do. Futility was the last thing on his mind. There was something about them that just stunned him just as easily now as they had when they had first looked at him with interest and annoyance.
In them he felt like he saw everything. As she managed a weak smile up at him, he felt as if the world had fallen away from him, and they were all that mattered in the universe. Just like the moment in which they had reunited.
He remembered what he told himself as he got on that elevator, in that first pivotal moment of fear that made him want to walk away from everything, it was her who had given him that comfort and that strength to persevere.
Back then, that single thought had sparked everything, giving him the strength he needed to fight both Nyx and Kronos, he remembered telling himself he only needed one person to believe in him to do what he did.
That was all he needed back then, and all he needed now. He looked in her eyes and saw one thing, Belief. No words were exchanged between them, they both knew that this was going to happen, fighting it wouldn't help, but they both trusted in one another, believed in one another.
He looked down at Annabeth and knew that nothing would ever stop her from making him feel that way. Nothing that would ever lessen that affect she had on him. She was his port in the storm, she was the one thing that could distract him from the world.
There was an unspoken bond between the two of them, it went further than just their relationship, their friendship, or even their love. It was something deeper, a true unbreakable but indescribable bond.
The moment he looked at her, everything changed, as though the world was given colour again, all starting from those eyes. It was simple really, suddenly he was no longer trapped, all his binds had come loose the moment he looked into her eyes.
He was free of the trap, free of the strings of the puppeteer. She believed in him, and he believed in her, that was everything they needed not only in the moment, but for the pain that would no doubt follow.
Belief is one of the strongest things in the world, for such a vague concept it can take you far, it came in so many different forms it was hard to pin down, belief in yourself, belief in a god, belief in another, all of them could change the world.
It had taken him far, even just on the short journey to save Nico, his beliefs have both guided him and led him astray, choosing not to believe in their innocence of a friend almost lost him that bond, choosing to believe in the survival of another had helped him save Nico.
If he believed in one thing, it was her. That belief in one another had carried them this far, and he knew that no matter what was to come, as long as she was with him, nothing could truly be wrong. Now, just as it had been when he rode that elevator to certain death. He felt nothing but calm.