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The Temple of Fear had shaken Annabeth far more than she wanted to admit. To favor emotion over logic went against all her hardwiring. It made her want to pull her hair out – how could logic ever have a basis when emotion existed so strongly? But that was the point. There could be a balance between the two, and certain situations required one over the other. The Temple of Fear required emotion to be felt and embraced in order to survive, and she was realizing that wasn’t the only time fear had taken a precedent recently, and not just for her.
Annabeth had been thinking about Tartarus more and more after that experience in the Temple. One thing Piper had said underground had stuck with her – that you couldn’t think your way out of emotion. Annabeth chewed over that in her mind for the next couple days as they continued sailing towards Athens, but she wasn’t really thinking about it regarding herself.
She was thinking about Percy and Akhyls. Annabeth knew they had both been terrified in Tartarus, but something finally clicked when she thought back to that fight. Percy had controlled that creeping, green poison, and turned it on its master – and that reaction had been born from fear. Fear of death, fear of pain, fear of her dying. Then, that fear had turned into something more sinister and twisted. Annabeth wasn’t sure what to call what had come over Percy in that moment. Hatred was definitely present, as was fear and some sort of triumph. But she didn’t know what had been going through his head, and she likely would never get the full scope.
He hadn’t been acting rationally, and neither had she, when she had begged him never to do it again. Annabeth knew her words had hurt him, even though he buried that reaction. She wanted to tell him she was sorry, and that she finally understood what had happened there and wasn’t upset with him or afraid of him. He had been reacting like a trapped animal, starving and beaten and backed into a corner. She just didn’t know how to say it to him.
She took one look at him after he emerged from the ocean after his and Jason’s fight with Kymopoleia and knew that she needed to talk to him about it as soon as possible. Something had happened down there. She could tell by how Percy avoided her gaze – sure, most of that was because he was continuously puking, but he still ducked his head when he wasn’t upchucking, like he didn’t want to look at her. It stung, but she pushed the hurt away.
Finally, after spending the rest of the day in the sick bay, Annabeth helped Percy into their cabin. Really, it was supposed to be just her cabin, but they’d started sharing it after Tartarus. Neither one of them seemed to be able to sleep without the other at least close by, and Coach Hedge wasn’t around to ban it. Even if he had been, Annabeth was pretty sure he would have let them get away with it, considering Tartarus and all that. She’d heard the old goat had been pretty inconsolable when they fell.
Percy laid down in bed and she curled up next to him, tossing an arm over his torso. Percy scooted closer to her, pressing his body against hers as he wrapped an arm around her, too, her face smooshing into his chest. She could hear his heart beating steadily in his chest. For a few minutes, they laid together in silence, sharing breaths and feeling heartbeats. When they seemed to sync, Annabeth decided it was time to talk.
“Percy…what happened down there?”
He was quiet for a minute, and she knew he was trying to decide what, if anything, to tell her. He knew that she knew that the story he and Jason gave wasn’t told in its entirety. It made her a little angry, even as she recognized that she often did the same thing herself. Demigods dealt with traumatic events throughout their lives, sprinkled casually into their day-to-days; not everything was always shared, sometimes for the person telling the story’s sake, and sometimes for the sake of anyone listening. She kept her mouth shut, though, and waited.
Finally, in a quiet, toneless voice, Percy told her. He recounted everything she already knew and added in new details. That Polybotes had poisoned him effortlessly and trapped him in the net, stuck on the ocean floor. That he just…let it happen and didn’t try to save himself. That Jason had saved him, in the end, by promising to finish the work that Percy had started. The conversation (or lack thereof) he’d had with Jason afterwards. Hearing Jason’s response to Percy’s clear emotional and mental turmoil made her see red, but that would have to wait for later.
Annabeth was crying when he finished. She suspected she already knew the answer before she even asked, but she needed to ask the question anyway. She needed to hear his answer even if it broke her heart. “Percy…why didn’t you try to move the poison away from you?”
He pulled away a tiny bit, enough to shift onto his back and stare up at the ceiling, cradling his head with his hands. His body still pressed against hers, but he didn’t hold her anymore – he held himself, instead. His jaw was clenched, and when she looked, she could see his fingers wrapped in his hair, tugging at the strands. His skin had a green pallor to it, like the poison was still inside of him, surging underneath his tanned skin. For all she knew, it actually was.
The silence lasted longer than the previous one, but she waited him out. Annabeth knew Percy was hoping she would tell him to forget it, but she wouldn’t. Not this. It was too important. It couldn’t be bottled up like all their other garbage trauma.
“I didn’t move the poison away because I didn’t feel like I deserved to.” Percy said quietly. His eyes were closed now, like he couldn’t bear to look at her while he spoke. “It felt like…like the Fates were punishing me, for what I did to Akhyls. I did something so unnatural in Tartarus, and so they had decided that I needed to…to die in the same way I almost killed Akhyls. And to me, it felt…that I deserved to die like that, right then and there, poisoned and at the hands of my father’s opposite. I deserved it, to be put down like the monster I am. It was a fitting way to die.”
Annabeth pressed a hand over her lips and bit down fiercely to prevent the sob building in her throat from escaping. Something warm leaked into her mouth and she tasted copper. She’d bitten through her lip.
“Percy,” she said, and it came out as a sob, which made Percy’s eyes fly open. He sat up immediately and folded her into his arms, hugging her close.
She wanted to kick him. Here he was, comforting her, after admitting he almost let himself die down in the ocean depths because he felt he deserved it. He’d almost…she wanted to grab him and shake him. Of course he never would have said anything unless it was brought up. He would have let himself drown under these feelings without a second thought, just to avoid being even an inconvenience to the ones he loved. It was so very Percy, and she hated that. She wanted him to realize his worth, even if she had to drill it into his head every single gods-damned day for the rest of their lives.
“Percy,” she tried again, her voice wobbling. “Percy, stop, stop. Look at me.”
He was trembling, Annabeth noticed. His arms loosened around her, and she could see that they were shaking. Any part of her heart that was still whole cracked and fragmented further once she realized. She gripped his wan, green cheeks in her hands and waited until he looked her in the eyes. She saw it, then – that hopelessness, the dead light in his eyes. Percy hadn’t died, but he still felt like he should have. There was a part of him, a large part she thought, that wished he were dead.
It was almost too much to bear. What made it worse was that she knew that she was responsible for it, too, even if only partially (but she doubted it was a mere partial responsibility. Her words had cemented this guilt, this wrongness he felt about himself; it was her fault he didn’t try to move the poison away, her fault her fault herfaultherfault).
“Percy,” she said his name again, almost chanting it, hoping he would see through his bleakness to how desperately she needed him to stay here with her. “I was wrong in Tartarus. So wrong. I-I was so scared, and I let what you did be the root of that fear, when you weren’t. Percy, baby, you did what you did because you were scared. And I forgot that, lost in my own fear, and took it out on you. You did what you had to do. If you hadn’t…if you hadn’t, we wouldn’t have made it. We would be dead down there in that pit, and it’s because you took control of the poison that we aren’t. You kept us alive. I’m so sorry, Percy, that I made you feel that way. I’m so, so sorry.”
Percy brushed her hair behind her ears, his fingers gentle. She could feel the ridges of scars on his left hand, on his ring finger and pinky specifically. They trembled slightly, nerve damage he couldn’t get rid of. A remnant from his near-death in Mount St. Helens. Even the ambrosia and nectar of the gods couldn’t fully heal such bad burn damage.
One of her worst nightmares about Tartarus was a memory. Percy, his face shocked and confused and scrunched in pain as the burn scars on his body began to open and bleed, tripping over the broken glass ground in his shock. Sticking his hand in the Phlegethon had been horrible – a sensation so like the lava he had nearly died in years earlier that he had passed out and she’d had to stop him from rolling in. Relying on the fire river to keep himself from dying and his scars from bleeding had taken a toll, one that only relented when Damasen had presented them a salve to help with instructions to remake it as needed. It was still in their cabin, on top of their dresser. Another, lasting kindness from the giant of peace born to oppose the god of war.
“Annabeth,” he murmured quietly, his voice oddly choked. When she dared to look up, his sea-green eyes were filled with tears. “Baby, I…I know. It’s not your fault.”
She shook her head. “Percy, I know what I did. I know what I said. It wasn’t right, and I don’t want you to carry that burden any longer. We survived, baby, we survived literal hell. Don’t hate yourself for doing what you needed to. Don’t…don’t try to pay for surviving with your life. Please don’t. You don’t deserve to die. You deserve to live and be happy. You deserve a life. After all you’ve done, it is the least you are owed.”
Annabeth wanted him to get that, to understand it. Very few people had sacrificed so much at such a young age – even amongst other demigods, Percy had gone through so much. Everyone deserved a good life, but Percy did especially. He had suffered enough, and to think that he thought he deserved that suffering…it killed her.
Percy kissed her head gently, the warm brush of his lips settling gently on her skin. “Okay. Okay, Annabeth. I’ll…I’ll try.”
She leaned back to look at his face, studied it intently. She rubbed her thumbs against his cheeks as she tried to read him, but his face was carefully blank.
Annabeth sighed. This battle, it wasn’t over. She knew that. If depression and suicidal ideations could be fixed with one conversation, the world would be a vastly different place. But she decided to let it go for right now. There was only so much she could push her boyfriend, and he’d had a rough day as it was.
“Come on,” she said. “Let’s lay back down.”
Percy gave her a sheepish grin, breaking the last bit of tension in the air between them. “Actually, I need to go puke. Then I’ll be back.”
He slid from the bed and rushed into the bathroom with barely a moment to spare. Annabeth sat up and padded over, placed a comforting hand on his back while he retched. When he was finished and he had brushed his teeth, they went back to bed hand-in-hand. She curled into his chest, wrapped her arms around him, and listened to his heartbeat once more just to reassure herself that he was still with her.
Her grip tightened and he squeezed her in return.
Annabeth wondered, then, if he could even control poison at all anymore. If it was a power he could only access in Tartarus, when he was so broken and torn open inside, facing a death so horrible even he couldn’t have imagined it beforehand.
She wondered if it even mattered that Percy hadn’t tried to move Polybotes’ poison away from himself.
Annabeth decided, ultimately, that it didn’t matter. She didn’t voice her thoughts. It didn’t have to become a question mark, a what-if, for Percy. It would always be a little like Schrodinger’s cat for her, but Percy did not need that additional burden on him.
Besides, they would adapt regardless of the answer. They always did.
She fell asleep with him as the stars above shined on, determined more than ever not to let him go.