"Here we are, trapped in the amber of the moment. There is no reason why." – Kurt Vonnegut
Caput XLVII: Moving Forward
"YOU are a failure to me."
There was no blame or fury in his mother's eyes, only disappointment and judgement. His heart was pounding with an irrational amount of fear, even though he kept his gaze fixed on the ground; he could see the grass through her feet, and he looked away from that, too. Percy's mother took a step closer to him, and Percy took a step away—forever trying to put more distance between them.
"I died on that ship. You dreamt it, though. You dreamt that the ship would sink, but you said nothing."
Percy tried to say something, anything, but he couldn't get the words out. It felt like his tongue had shriveled away and his mouth was full of ashes.
Another step forward.
Her face, which had always been so pretty because she had always smiled, twisted into something ugly. Where her eyes should have been were dark, empty chasms. The slightly crooked tooth had decayed, leaving a gaping, empty mouth as she peeled her lips back in a twisted parody of a grin.
A wooden beam had lodged between her ribs and her stomach. Blood welled from the wound, but before his eyes, it clotted, dried, and turned dark with age. Her skin turned gray and rotted away. She pointed at him, skin sagging off her bones, revealing tendons and muscles.
"You let me become this."
Percy opened his mouth—to throw up or to scream, he didn't know—
Rachel shook her head at him. The dagger was buried to the hilt in her chest, just as it had been the day he had found her. Crimson blood dripped out of her eyes and her fingertips, hitting the ground. Splat, splat, splat—it went.
"I tried to warn you, Percy. You had a vision just before I left, but you didn't ask me to stay. Why didn't you ask me to stay?"
I didn't know what would happen to you, he wanted to tell her. He wanted to plea, beg for forgiveness—tell her that he didn't mean for it to happen, that he hadn't realized she was dying until it was too late, the vision had been confusing for him and he hadn't even realized what it meant, but he couldn't get the words out. He didn't know what he wanted to say.
So, he turned around so that he wouldn't have to look at her, only to come face-to-face with Jason. For a moment, all Percy could do was stand still and stare at him, struck completely mute. His toga hung off his shoulders, revealing how thin he had gotten in the last few days of his life as he battled the sickness. His eyes were sunken, a direct contrast against his ashen face, and his skin was sallow.
"Jason?" He could hardly dare to breathe. This isn't real. He reached out to touch him, half expecting to feel solid skin and bones and muscles against his hand—but Jason's body flickered and didn't stop until his hand fell back down to his side. He swallowed back the lump in his throat. Jason wasn't watching him with judgement or pity in his eyes—his face was crumpled and there were tears clinging to his eyelashes instead.
"I'm sorry I failed," he said.
The guilt in Jason's eyes — the way his shoulders were slumped, which was wrong and Jason shouldn't look like that, the way he looked so close to tears, the tone of his voice — almost made Percy sob, but it hitched in the back of his throat and stayed there. He moved forward and tried to hold his shoulder, but Jason was intangible.
"You didn't," he said, shaking his head. "You could never. It was I who failed you. It's not your fault."
Jason's expression didn't change a bit, despite his words. Which he had meant—it was Percy's fault that all of this had happened. No, that was wrong—much of this was the work of cruel beings that wanted to destroy everything he held dear and loved, so that wasn't right. But it still was his fault that Jason was dead, that the Roman people were likely dead. He couldn't completely absolve himself of the blame.
If he did, he wouldn't know what to do. It's still so hard to believe all of this happened... I knew that the gods were real, but it was more in a detached 'you don't really affect me' way... but then...
The stars winked down at him. His hand was extended toward the sky, as if he was reaching for something. Behind him, Annabeth was breathing softly, but her fingers carding through his hair and her legs intertwined with his.
He had run away. Those creatures, monsters, had surrounded him after Luke had told him to go. He'd been blinded by panic and fear, hadn't really thought through how to escape... of course Nox would have brought her kind with her, but he hadn't thought until it was too late and he had been surrounded. If Nico hadn't gotten there when he had, Percy would have been overwhelmed and slaughtered.
"I know you're awake," Annabeth whispered into his ear. "You were having another nightmare."
"Sorry." He didn't mean to wake her with the things that haunted him, not when they all needed to get as much sleep as they possibly could to keep their strength up. Even though they hadn't been attacked by Nox, Percy felt on edge—as if he was waiting for the pendulum to swing. Nox wouldn't have forgotten about him, and he knew that the others were demigods.
Apparently, even he was a demigod. Somewhat. In a removed sort of way that he didn't want to think about yet because there were a dozen more important concerns that he needed to prioritize. Neither of his parents had told him about that he was a grandchild —or something similar— of Neptune; even if they had agreed to wait until he was an adult, he was long pass that age... so maybe they had never meant to tell him.
And that was where he always cut himself off, and tried to keep his hands busy so that his mind couldn't overanalyze anything. If he continued down that train of thought...
At least he finally had an explanation for his affinity with water.
"It's not your fault. I couldn't sleep anyway." He rolled over so that they were lying face-to-face. Her lips twitched up into a half smile, and her hand fell from his hair to the back of his neck. She seemed to be studying his face; reading how he felt. "None of this is your fault."
"I know that in my head. But it doesn't make me stop wondering if I could have done something different, or maybe paid more attention to what was going on, or something."
He knew his guilt was misplaced, that it wasn't rational, that he wasn't the one to blame for any of this. Of course he wasn't; this was the work of a cruel and evil creature. They had likely set the movement for this catastrophe into place years before he had even been born. But he couldn't help but feel responsible for it. For not protecting his people.
"There's nothing you can do to change what is done. We'll just have to find a way to fix all of this."
"How? I've been thinking about this for the last several days... just the idea of seeing that creature again makes me want to drop my sword and run as fast as I possibly can in the opposite direction. We have no resources, no allies, and we're lucky to be alive."
"It's not going to be a hopeless situation forever. Something's going to give at some point." She rubbed his knuckles with her thumb. He wished he could believe her. "We'll figure out how to take them down. We just have to live long enough so that we can fight back."
"How are you so optimistic?" he asked. They had no plan and no safe places to stay. They were all sleep deprived because none of them could slumber easily when the sun went down even though they took turns at guarding each other through the night, and what little food they had wasn't enough, especially for Thalia. And yet Annabeth still hadn't given up.
"I'm not optimistic. I'm furious about all of this and I refuse to roll over and die peacefully. If I'm going to die, then I'm going to fight this injustice until my last breath."
That girl who had cowered away from cyclops and spoke careless words that got other people in trouble was a completely different person compared to the woman who spoke better than him and could fight with a knife or a sword in both hands equally well, as she had grown to become. She had gotten so strong, her will as strong as iron, and he was still the same as he always had been. When did you grow up? he almost asked.
"I love you," he said instead. He barely registered the way her warm breath fanned against his neck before her lips caught his with an almost reckless abandon that was contagious. He pulled her close, breath hitching in the back of his throat and eyes burning, and tried to kiss her like he might never see her again.
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The next few days passed along in a blur for Annabeth where they walked like they knew where they were going even though nobody had a destination in mind. Silence accompanied them the most, none of them feeling like talking much between the exhaustion from lack of sleep and the fear of what tomorrow might bring.
Constantly, her chest ached and it was hard for her to breathe, an unfamiliar problem that was persistent and irritating. She had always been active, and the last time she had this much trouble breathing was when she had first started to train. It worried her slightly—but more than that, she felt agitated. Had she lost the stamina she had painstakingly built up in those few weeks that they had been hunting a cure for the epidemic? Even Thalia seemed to be having less trouble walking with the rest of them than she was, and she was pregnant.
Is something wrong with me? She found herself wondering when she was left alone and they had stopped moving forward for the day. Not even before... was I this weak. I can barely stand some days...
"Are you okay?" Percy asked her, eyebrows furrowed together and worry on his face, and she nearly screamed. Her heart jumped before it settled when she recognized him. His eyes searched her face and he walked over to her, resting his hands on top of her shoulders gently, as if he was afraid she was going to turn away from him and wanted to make sure she stayed. Whatever his reason, the weight of his hands was reassuring. "You seem tired."
"I'm fine, Percy, really." She smiled at him and reached up, touching his elbows. "Please stop worrying over me."
"You know I can't stop that."
He had a point there. She had noticed the nights he couldn't sleep were the nights he was worried over everybody. She hadn't really expected him to be so much of a mother hen, but then again, she was still learning about his hidden depths.
Dropping to the ground so that his hands slid off her shoulders, she said, "No, I suppose not." She swept the last of the edible foliage into her arms and dumped it into the makeshift basket Piper had weaved out of the reeds from the rivers that they walked along. Percy lifted the firewood they had found and squeezed her hand. She pressed her lips against his briefly before stepping away—she didn't want to get side tracked like they had earlier, even though that had been rather enjoyable.
"I think I have an idea..." He tied the bundle of wood with a rope he had braided together with twine he had found earlier. She hadn't even realized he knew how to braid anything until he had shown it to her when she had laughed about it. She had stopped laughing after that, especially when she saw the smug smile on his lips that she hadn't seen in months.
"Should I be worried?" She turned her head to the side and coughed into her elbow.
Percy rolled his eyes. "We've been walking around without a destination in our minds, and I don't think that's a good thing. At the rate we're going, we'll end up walking into a trap or just doubling back and restarting all of this over again."
"No, it's not." If he was just stating the obvious again... "Is that your idea? Because everybody already knows that."
He pressed his pointer finger against her lips and tapped it gently, the smile almost gone from his face. "You didn't let me finish. I recognize these paths— I used to come up and down here a lot when I was younger. There's a small village about a day south of here, and Tarentum is about three days south. We might even be able to walk along the via appia to Brudisium."
"But that is exactly what Nox would be expecting you to do." Annabeth frowned. She wanted nothing more than to agree with his idea, but there were so many variables. "Surely it's better to stay off the main paths so that she can't follow us as easily."
"That's the thing, she's a god or a protogenos or however you want to call her. If she wanted to, I'm sure she would have found us long before now." He tapped his fingers against his thigh, quickly, but silently. "Besides, we've been following this river. If somebody has been following us, it wouldn't take much to catch up."
She licked her dry lips. "We should probably see if anybody has suggestions. It's a good idea..." She hesitated. "Is there a reason why you want to go to Tarentum?" The last time he had been there, he had nearly died. She wasn't very eager to repeat the experience.
Percy was watching where he placed his feet, but she wasn't sure if that was because he was avoiding looking at her in her eyes. "I'm hoping that the it was only the inner city that she affected, but I have my suspicions that what we were investigating was connected to everything else." He avoided saying Jason's name again. "And there was this blind girl there that reminds me of myself when I was her age—she saved my life. I want to make sure she and her father are still alive."
She reminded he had mentioned her once, when he had just gotten back and before everything had happened. "Okay." She hefted the basket higher up her arm and nodded. "That makes sense. But I still say you should see if anybody else has any ideas for getting there."
"Of course." He tilted his head to the side. The trees started thinning out. "I was planning on doing that anyway, I just wanted to get your opinion first to make sure it was something that makes sense."
She almost laughed. All of his ideas made sense, compared to everybody else's, even though he rarely talked—he had been surprisingly rational about all of this. Almost too much so at times to her, as it seemed like he had lost the will to fight back.
"Go to the camp and drop those—I know they're heavy. I'll catch up to you in a moment. I'm going to see if there are any late-season berries over there."
He nodded slowly. "Will you be okay on your own?"
"I'm not defenseless." She tapped her sword that she had strapped to her waist to emphasize her point. He had the knife she had managed to grab before Nico had gotten her out of Rome, since he had lost his sword in the chaos. "I'll be all right, I promise. If something happens, I'll scream."
"That doesn't reassure me."
"Send Nico. He can get from one destination to another in the blink of an eye." She tugged on the sleeve of his toga and kissed his cheek before she pushed him away. He shook his head, but walked out into the open, and she moved toward the bushes, deeper into the forest.
As she walked, her chest felt unusually tight, and she took a few deep breaths to ease it away. As she split the branches apart, she noticed that her hands were trembling.
That's strange...
There was no other warning for what happened next. Her head started to spin, and she pressed her hand against the trunk of a tree to keep herself standing upright. Squeezing her eyes shut tight, she kept trying to focus on keeping her breathing even.
What's wrong with me? She clutched at her chest, trying to physically get that feeling to loosen. It feels like there's a chain slowly being tightened around my chest... I can't breathe! Something's wrong!
She bent over sharply, as if she'd been punched in the stomach, and drops of blood spattered her lap and knees and the dust at her feet. Tears burned in her eyes, and she wanted to shout for Percy to come back, that she needed help, but she couldn't.
Please—!
By slow, torturous degrees, the coughs eased in intensity and then slowly, slowly passed.
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Author's Note: I won't be able to update next Monday because I will not have access to the internet at all from 6/18 to 6/23. Sorry!
Please note that we're in the rising action of the story, so we're finally starting to head toward the home stretch... though that home stretch is still quite far off, ahah. I'd really appreciate it if you all told me what you liked about this (or, you know, you can yell at me for the cliffhanger... again...); at this point, I really need all the encouragement I can get to continue updating weekly!
This chapter isn't really filler, but it's definitely slower compared to the last 10 chapters. (Plus, I marathoned Annabeth's POV in one sitting today, which I haven't done for a while...) The pace will start picking up again within the next couple of chapters, since I'm definitely going to throw in the last two curveballs that I have planned for Percy and Annabeth's respective character arcs, which will set them into the rising action of their arcs...
Aaaaaaah, I'm so nervous about the upcoming 10 chapters. There's some things coming up that really makes me feel sick to my stomach, and this is coming from the person who laughed while killing off her favorite fictional character...