Chapter Text
Tell me the truth and I’ll tell you a story.
Percy Jackson has been running as long as he could remember. There’s always a fight to get away from, a fight to get to, always moving, moving, rocketing from one crisis to the next. One invasion to the next.
Tartarus was hard because he forgot sometimes that Annabeth was there with him. He forgets the feather-light touch of the hand on his arm, the death-clench as the monsters close in and the slip away as Alkhys begins to choke-
Percy wins and runs but he can’t get away, not really. He’s fighting on all fronts every day and it would be so much easier to just reach out and yank-
But it scares Annabeth, it scares his precious person- his light, the little piece of the surface, the bit that was supposed to keep him from truly becoming his father’s child because Posiedon fathers monsters-
They leave Tartarus and the wounds throb, the too-thick air rattling in his chest. The ache of the acrid stench is gone but it weighs on him when he least expects it, when the clean air drags over the scarred, torn walls of his throat and his voice turns to a dry rasp.
Back on the ship, everyone is so afraid. They try to hide it but Percy sees it in their glances and the flinches, the note of incredulous disbelief in their eyes as they see him turn a corner because nobody’s supposed to survive that place no demigods no gods that’s a place for monsters-
He trains with Riptide, but Jason doesn’t like to play-fight with him anymore. Just once just once Percy had screwed up and his blade had whipped too close to Jason’s throat.
Little close for comfort, Perce, the blond had laughed but Percy heard the manic edge of his casual throwaway. Percy heard it. Percy knows- he hears everything now. He’s been thinking far too much about walking on eggshells around these people, around his friends the people he trusts-
But do you really trust them? One quest does not an ally make. Annabeth should be your top priority-
And she is, she always is. What else would he try, who else would he look to? Who else can remind him of how people are supposed to move, twitch but not too much neck straight eyes forward hands still but not too still remember to breathe-
He has trouble remembering, a lot. It’s hard to do this. It’s hard to be human.
He doesn’t think he struggled with it so much before the Pit. No, Percy is distinctly certain this had been easier before the black glass of the Phlegethon’s banks had dug into the pads of his fingers, before the fire water had flashed over him, before that acrid air had first stuck in his throat and he had known this was a place where you never had to stop running-
The rest of the quest is a blur. Gaea? Why should he care- why should he- the campers will be alright, they’ll learn like he did, they can get strong the hard way-
But Annabeth asks him to fight and so he fights. Annabeth asks him to kill and his sword arcs down, lips twitching as he tries to contain his grin.
Annabeth had sat him down and explained that good humans didn’t smile when they killed things. Annabeth had always been sympathetic to his oddities- to his little quirks. Child of the Big Three, right? Punk skater kids who could raze the earth and salt the ashes if allowed to live long enough. But he was worse. Everything had tried to kill him-
Everything-
But it had backfired and now he was just very good at killing everything else. Was that how this was supposed to go?
He distantly remembers being scared of this. Of reading a book with a flashlight under the covers, of watching the words twist before his eyes and catching his lip between his teeth because his dad made him this way. But he met Tyson- he met Tyson and maybe it was okay.
Maybe it was okay his blood flecked with something else.
Is it okay that he’s not afraid of it anymore? It feels like destiny. Fate. It feels inevitable.
Tartarus gave him this and now he has to try so hard not to use it. He shouldn’t kill things with a wave of his hand, a narrowing of his eyes- he shouldn’t. It makes people afraid. He can only do it, Annabeth had patiently explained, if she told him it was okay. Is it okay, Annabeth? Is it okay to do it the easy way just this once?
Polybotes looms above him as his father smiles over at him and he wonders if Posiedon can see it, can see the way his teeth have sharpened and his pupils narrowed, the way his eyes glimmer just so when they catch the light.
“Dad?” he asks, his scratchy Tartarus-scarred throat blurring and striking at the words. “Is- is this what I was supposed to be?”
Poseidon smiles softly at him. “It’s okay, Perseus,” he replies. “It’s in your blood. It would have happened eventually. It always does.”
Percy nods. He thought as much because in every story in every story the sons of Posiedon, not just the sea but Posiedon the Father of Monsters in every story they either slip away or go out with a bang or have claws-
“I met Kymopoleia,” Percy adds absently. “She seemed nice.”
Poseidon smiles again. “She’s a good daughter. Loves her storms. Don’t forget that mortals are important, Percy. We only hurt the things that hurt us.”
“Okay, dad,” he nods. “I’ll remember. Annabeth will help me.”
His father looks amused. “Okay, son. You can ask me anything you still want to know later. We have to kill things now.”
“That’s okay. I’m good at killing things.” Percy turns to Polybotes. “Can I do it the easy way, dad?”
“Sure, Perseus.”
Polybotes dissolves with a roar of rage as Percy yanks.
Poseidon smiles. “Good boy. Let’s go clean up the leftovers.”
“Waste not, want not,” Percy agrees. “Hey, dad?”
Poseidon turns.
“You still love me, right?"
The god smiles. “I do,” he replies calmly. “I love all my children, Perseus.”
Percy smiles shakily. “Okay.”
Everything goes up in fire and smoke as the gods and their children finish up. Percy waves goodbye to his dad as Zeus slaps the Argo II back to camp, and his dad waves back.
The ride over is rough-and-tumble but Percy holds Annabeth tight as they rocket across the Atlantic.
“Annabeth?”
“Yes, seaweed brain,” Annabeth shifts a bit to smile up at him. “What’s up?”
“Dad says it’s normal for this to happen,” Percy says quietly. “So I don’t think it’s going to change. I’m not going to go back to the way I was before the Pit,” before the chrysalis, “and I just wanted to let you know. Is that okay?”
Annabeth lets out a resigned sigh, but smiles again anyways. “I did my research before getting into this, Perce. I always knew what would happen, just not when. But,” her lip quirks. “I’m prepared. Just remember your vows, okay?”
Percy nods. “I’ll visit a lot. And I’ll obey if you tell me I’m being a bad monster.”
There. He said it.
Monster.
“Good,” Annabeth reaches up to scratch him behind the ear, and he leans into the motion with a raspy purr of satisfaction, eyes lolling. “It’s okay, seaweed brain. Just don’t forget about us, okay?”
Percy is too deep in the way her had feels to do anything but nod.
They’re back at camp and the Athena Parthenos suddenly looks so much smaller than it did when it loomed in Arachne’s cave. Gaea’s army rises and the campers flinch back, afraid afraid always so afraid-
It’s okay. Those are bad monsters. It’s right for them to be afraid, because the campers can’t protect themselves against bad monsters. It’s okay. Percy isn’t a bad monster.
He looks at Annabeth and the girl nods, her gray eyes flashing. Percy smiles as the army crumbles to golden dust.
It’s too easy, up here. In the Pit he had to work for it.
Oh well.
At least the campers don’t need to be afraid anymore.
The confused shouts are already rising but it’s okay, Chiron will take care of it. The centaur knew Percy’s fate from the moment the trident flashed over his head back when he was knee-deep in the creek.
Chiron would tell them it had been taken care of. That no mortals had to die today.
Poor little demigods. They couldn’t get strong like he had. They didn’t stand a chance- that was okay, though. He could help them.
For as long as the gods would let him, he would help them.
Gaea’s dirt face rises out of the ground and looses a vengeful scream. The earth begins to buck beneath them and Percy nearly falls before Annabeth reaches out and steadies him, her thin fingers on his arm like hot brands.
He leans into it.
He loves her.
Gaea’s scream goes on and on until Festus sweeps in out of the sky, Leo astride the metal dragon’s back as the creation snags Gaea’s dirt face in its claws and pulls upward, yanking her from her roots.
Percy blinks. That wasn’t supposed to-
The world explodes.
When the dust clears, the earth is still. Dirt-face is gone.
Leo is gone.
Percy sways on his feet because a camper is gone a camper died he failed he failed he-
He’s supposed to be a good monster-
He drops to the ground with a broken whimper, and Annabeth is by his side in an instant, asking frantically what’s wrong, what’s wrong-
But she doesn’t understand that everything’s wrong, everything is broken and he’s never going to see his mom again, never going to play catch-the-greek with Mrs. O’Leary or drink blue Coke summoned out of camp goblets, never going to get to see Estelle grow up, never going to watch Paul with narrowed eyes and his fellow quester is dead, a camper is dead like all the kids who died in Manhattan, burning an empty shroud like so many others who had no bodies to bury-
Percy didn’t want to be a halfblood.
Percy didn’t- Percy doesn’t want to be a monster, doesn’t want to reform and writhe in that endless cycle, doesn’t want to watch Annabeth age and wither and go to Elysium, the place he can never go because his soul doesn’t belong there, his soul belongs to the Pit, to the fighting and the acid and the black shards on the banks of the fire river. He loves it but he loves the sun and the ocean and her-
He is not okay.
They take him up by the arms, Annabeth’s hand in his the whole way, and he doesn’t fight. He hears her tell them to take him to Cabin Three, he smells the faint coat of dust on everything inside, the faint trickle of the fountain in the corner.
He doesn’t want to open his eyes just yet. He doesn’t-
The gentle hands set him down on the bottom bunk, a few voices grumbling about how heavy he is. He smiles faintly. His bones are more solid than they ought to be. Harder to break. Harder to move.
All that substance will crumble to nothing when someone gets in the right hit-
Percy’s face darkens. He goes quiet. He is still.
He doesn’t like to think about how easily this could all be gone.
The others shuffle out, uncomfortable tension hurrying their steps.
That’s fair. He did just vaporize an army.
But-
“Percy?”
He knows it’s her. His one, his only- his tether. Don’t forget about us, she told him. He wouldn’t. He wouldn’t.
“Leo is dead,” he whispers to her. “I failed.”
Annabeth is silent. She strokes his hair and he doesn’t bother to shove back his tears.
“They’re going to send me away. I couldn’t do my job- couldn’t protect them,” his lip quivers as the tears fall faster. “They’re going to send me away, wise girl.”
Her fingers dig in. “Seaweed brain,” she says fondly, and Percy sniffs. “It’s okay. We planned for this, remember?”
He nods faintly. “I’ll come home when I can. I won’t forget.”
“That’s right,” Annabeth soothes. “What we have isn’t normal, Percy. We aren’t going to have a normal relationship, and that’s okay. We’re going to make it work.”
“What if I want to be normal?” his voice cracks and Annabeth lets out a wounded little noise. He can practically hear her squeezing her eyes shut to keep the tears back. Keeping the sobs from clogging her throat and climbing up into the real world where they have to deal with them.
“We don’t have a choice, Perce. I can’t-” she stops. Swallows. “It’ll be hard. For us to do this. I’m a demigod and you’re a-”
“Monster,” Percy finishes miserably, curling in on himself. “I know. Monsters and humans don’t go together well. I know.”
“But we can, Perce,” she clutches her hand in his hair and he whimpers involuntarily as a few strands are yanked from his scalp. She opens her hand and the hairs fall to the floor, disintegrating to little flecks of gold as they go.
Percy swallows.
“We can,” she repeats, and suddenly her hands are on his shoulders and she’s yanking him upward into a tight embrace. “We will.”
“Okay,” Percy rasps, He blinks the tears away. “Okay.”
She climbs up beside him on the bed and he holds her, her body nestling perfectly into his monstrous embrace.
He doesn’t remember laying down, only the spawl of her golden hair over his old pillow as he pulls her tight against him, her head tucked into the crook of his neck.
They sleep on top of the covers, dirty and bloody and unnatural.
Percy holds her tighter.
He loves her.
In the weeks following, the rebuilding begins. Gaea had been hammering on Camp Half-Blood with her siege before Percy had shown up to snap his fingers and make them go away-
Leo was gone Leo had died Leo had taken the last blow he failed he failed he failed-
Even though the final standoff had been bloodless, there were still bodies to burn.
With the two camps in contact now, working together, new abilities began to emerge. One Roman demigod, child of a Hecate spinoff, demonstrated an ability to ink magical tattoos.
Business was immediately booming.
People wanted to commemorate. They wanted to remember.
The bead that year only showed them meeting the Romans. Head Councilors left engraving the grief up to individuals.
Percy consulted Annabeth on the designs before visiting the needle. He wanted to remember- he wanted to make sure he remembered everything.
His right arm is enveloped in a sleeve. His forearm glimmers with intricate waves, the names of every demigod lost to them gliding through the waves like fish. Rising out of the waves is Half-Blood Hill, Thalia’s tree standing tall and strong with the Golden Fleece draped over its branches. The names of those at Camp shine in the leaves, and if any of the campers they represent were to pass, the name would slip down and join those in the sea.
The tattoo is a self-updating ledger, the demigod casting it had explained. As demigods joined camp, their names would appear in the tree.
As his friends died, he would know to come home.
He would never miss another shroud-burning.
For the second, he’d asked Annabeth to lift a few papers and found places his mortal family had written their names. Inked proudly on his ribs read Paul Blofis, Estelle Blofis, Sally Jackson.
He had already said goodbye to them. It was sad, but his mom had known. She’d always known. Poseidon was the Father of Monsters, and Percy was his father’s son. She’d always known. There was crying and hugging and promises, promises, always promises-
Another ledger, the demigod said. Over the years, Estelle’s wide child-scribble would morph into her new signature. If Estelle had children, their names would be added. If they had children, theirs.
He would come home. He wouldn’t forget his mortal family.
On his hip, the schematics of a certain metal dragon glow as if lit from within. A signature scrawled on the corner of every page in the Hephaestus bunker gleams with sharp curves. Leo Valdez.
He will be there, next time. He will do the fighting. He will take the blows. He won’t forget his mission.
He won’t forget his failure-
On his back, the Empire State Building rose along his spinal column, inked in perfect detail. A map of Manhattan spanned his back behind it, street corners and bridges crisp and clear. If anyone attacked Olympus, he would know. He would see the rubble go flying. He would see the tower crumble, the buildings demolished.
In remembrance, the tip of the Empire’s spire is inked in a soft blue glow. The way he had asked Zeus to light it up for his mother after Luke killed himself. Theseus’ sails.
He wouldn’t forget where he came from. And if they needed him to be a good monster- their monster- he would be there.
Annabeth had written on the inside of his forearm with an ordinary black pen before asking the demigod caster to sink it into Percy’s skin, his soul- for all these tattoos were inked on his soul, so they wouldn’t be lost if he was dusted, if he reformed in the pus-filled blisters on Tartarus’ surface, if he was ripped and torn and cut apart, the marks would return. Remain. His body would remember.
The ink, once Percy had looked down, read Remember your vows. Then, beneath it, in smaller letters, I love you, Percy Jackson. Annabeth Chase.
Simple and concise. Everything that needed to be said. Everything he needed to remember.
He loves her.
“Thank you,” he whispers, and she presses a kiss to the reddened skin. It burns like fire. “I’ll remember.”
He pays the demigod with a wad of cash drawn from his college fund account. He won’t be using the money.
He wonders how long he has before Olympus calls him.
He only has a few moments to wonder before he turns a corner and Hermes is standing before him, looking grim.
“Perseus,” the god intones. “You’ve been summoned.”
Percy sighs. He kisses Annabeth, trying not to look in her eyes. He doesn’t think he’d be able to leave if he saw her looking at him with those beautiful gray eyes.
He turns to Hermes. “Okay.”
The gods’ chamber is the same as he remembers. The thrones still tower, but as he stands before them he doesn’t cower.
“Perseus Jackson,” Zeus booms. “You still lack respect, I see.”
“Hi, Uncle,” Percy offers, a thin smile quirking his lip. “Long time no see.”
His irreverence displeases them, but they know better than to expect any different.
“So the transformation has finally finished,” Athena notes, looking down at Percy. The demigod stiffens, instinctually glaring up at her. “Poseidon, your spawn have always been an interesting puzzle. Is he loyal?"
“It’s his fatal flaw,” Demeter shrugs. “I say we let the boy go. He’ll be no harm to us.”
“The boy killed Polybotes alone! He’s too powerful-”
“I helped,” Posiedon grins.
“That’s not-”
“This is a useless discussion,” Hades rolls his eyes. “The boy’s soul is not tied to my realm. He’s a monster, his true home will always be Tartarus. Casting him down would only make for a future problem to deal with.”
Zeus glares. “What do you propose?”
“I say we let him run,” Hades shrugs, “keep an eye on him, sure, but he’s not our concern anymore.”
“Seconded,” Posiedon added. “My children have always been left to their own devices following their transformations, notable demigods or not. I’m sure Percy would prefer to follow his siblings away from the eyes of history.”
“In effect, then,” Artemis muses, “Perseus Jackson would be dead to us.”
“Yes.”
“As he is no longer a demigod,” Hermes tilts his head, “he is technically no longer directly subject to Olympus. With a strong vow to never bear arms against Olympus, he would be irrelevant.”
Ares’ teeth flash. “I like the sound of that.”
“All for?”
Hands go up. Percy smiles.
He’s free.