Who's ready for another headcanon about what's going to happen to Hazel after Blood of Olympus? YAY! Originally this story had a super awesome climax involving Nico lying about organising a slumber party, but I really don't know how to approach that and so I just made the mechanics of this entire story more complicated and I hope that you'll like it anyways. Enjoy!
Disclaimer: I don't own the characters portrayed below.
PS- Also I feel like I have to apologise for, you know, not writing ship weeks anymore and generally dissapearing from the site. Most stories are ready to go, I just need to finish one and then publish them in order. Pinky promise. As for my general dissapearance, well, a girl's got to pass even when her french teacher sucks and she sucks at math. Also I work. Also I have other stuff going on. My bad.
Maximum Security
Hazel switched sitting spots though she didn't have many options. The bed, the tiny plastic chair in front of her tiny desk, or maybe the tiny tin toilet if she was desperate. Her cell was small and plain as could be. The only variations of colour were the black of the window frame (a window that Hazel didn't get a view from), the blue of the sheets on her bed tray and the silver of the toilet bowl. The rest of her world was creamy walls, creamy floors and a tiny cream coloured flap on the shut door through which her meals were passed to her.
The fact that her window had no view had baffled Hazel at first, especially since she'd so admired the windows on the Argo II that could show images from anywhere the Seven wanted to see. But she'd gotten used to it. There weren't many things to observe and be puzzled about, but she'd gotten over the window. She'd figured that it was the quickest way to get over the fact that she was locked up.
She didn't know how long she'd been sitting in the room for. She knew that she'd been stripped of her weapons and put into the shrub-like prison uniform that she'd lived in ever since on August 13th, the day after the War with Gaia had ended. When Pluto had started cleaning the world free of ghosts and had turned to Hazel, who had escaped for nearly a year and hadn't been brought back to the Underworld despite her multiple encounters with Underworld gods.
Most ghosts were shoved back into Asphodel, Elysium or the Fields of Punishment, or wherever they were from. Hazel was an exception. She'd been put in a Maximum Security holding facility, somewhere under Pluto's imposing castle. Just to make sure that she wouldn't use her powers as a child of Pluto to get out again.
So far, so good. Hazel hadn't figured out a way to get out of the room, and she didn't think she ever would. Even her door was never opened- her meals were passed to her through a tiny trap in the door. The one time that Hazel hadn't returned her plate and cutlery to the door –when she'd hid her fork under her bed- she'd been gassed while they came in, sacked her tiny cell, and found it. She hadn't caused trouble since then.
The Doors of Death had been an embarrassing moment for Pluto, just after he finally got his throne on the Olympian council. Of course, it wasn't his fault. But though nobody had said it out loud, but some gods blamed him for not resisting to Gaia more. To add to the problem, Hazel had broken a pretty big rule by escaping- and Nico had broken an even bigger one, as a claimed son of Hades, by helping her out. Now she was paying.
But it was okay.
It was good to pay for what you took.
A platter was jutted out towards Hazel and she looked up.
"Lunch," a cranky sounding guard said.
The bowl was full of alphabet soup, framed by a freshly pressed sandwich. A tall glass of water and a sliced apple completed Hazel's meal.
She sat on her bed tray, propped herself against the wall and put the tray on her knees.
She went in for her first slurp of soup when she saw what the noodles were spelling out for her.
ESCAPE.
She frowned and realised that another strand of noodles were writing out the same word.
ESCAPE.
Twice?
It was strange, but it shouldn't have spooked Hazel as much as it did.
She hesitated before dipping her spoon in the bowl and swirling it around, mixing the broth and the letters and the noodles. Three seconds later, the letters were back in order.
She should have been able to eat her soup anyways without feeling sick to her stomach and moving on to her sandwich.
Maximum security prisons in the Underworld were probably different from maximum security in the real world.
Down here, she had no contact with other inmates. Didn't know any other inmates- or even if there were other inmates around. Who else was so bad that they were too much of a handful for the fields of punishment, but not bad enough for Tartarus?
She didn't have any kind of exercise room or yard here. No radio, no nothing. The window on her cell wasn't even a proper window. She was isolated and alone.
Which was her punishment for having tried too hard to meet new people up above.
That, and the horrible pang and guilt and longing that tore through Hazel every night when she dreamed of the war with Gaia, her adventures on the Argo II, her training with Lupa, her quest to Alaska, and even the good old days when she and Frank had nothing but their centurions and spare push-ups to worry about in the Legion.
Yeah, Hazel smiled sadly. The good old days.
"You get a special treat today, Levesque," a guard in a hallway said.
She hadn't been called Hazel since August 13th. Only Levesque, and occasionally they only deigned to call her by her prisoner number- 5193.
The guard shoved a newspaper through the trap door. Hazel uncurled herself from her bed and went to pick it up, hoping for a crossword. The first paper she'd gotten had had a cartoons and games page in it, but the last one hadn't, so the jury was still up for how this would go on.
She didn't even have time to look, the first page caught her eye. Well, the headline did.
For starters, it wasn't what usually made the headlines. Secondly, it was a weird headline for the guards to let her read.
CULT ACCUSED OF HUMAN TRAFFICKING ESCAPES FROM JUSTICE BY FLEEING TO GUATEMALA.
Lunch was late.
Hazel noticed these things since there was nothing else to notice, and though she was dead her stomach was growling. She was pretty sure that it'd been exactly a week since she'd last had chicken, so today was chicken nugget day. That was the best day. Hopefully there would be plum sauce too, but as long as she had her chicken nuggets she could improvise.
She heard footsteps in the hall and her stomach growled. And then she frowned because the steps broke off into… two sets? Three? And there was shouting involved.
Her door burst open and Hazel shrieked and backed up onto her bed.
She knew that this day would come. She'd given Pluto a few more years before the novelty of having a daughter wore off and he cast her into Tartarus like most prisoners, but whatever. She had to fight it. How could she? Actually, why would she? It would be futile in the end.
Luckily she didn't have to work all those questions out at once because between the two guards that had been thrown into her cell, there was a girl wearing a sharp white blouse tucked into a pencil skirt, her feet squashed into high heels and her hair tucked into a sleek ponytail.
She smiled when she saw Hazel.
"Gods, I'm glad we found you," Annabeth said.
Hazel was too shocked to reply, but eventually happiness and pure glee took over. She just about screamed as she leapt across the room and threw her arms around Annabeth's shoulders. Her shampoo was still lemon judging by the smell of her hair, she looked sharp and clean and curated and professional, carried a huge portfolio bag across her shoulder, her eyes were just as alert as ever…
She hugged Hazel back.
"Oh, if you're happy to see me…" Annabeth said softly.
The guard to her right pushed up the facemask of his helmet and smiled. The scar above his lip curved. Jason.
She hopped from Annabeth's arms to his and Jason basically lifted her from the ground squeezed her tightly, as if he wouldn't let her go. Like a protective big brother.
She let go and started asking a flood of questions.
"Why are you here- where did the uniforms come from- how did you- Annabeth the skirt…"
Someone cleared his throat. The second guard.
Frank.
Hazel froze and just looked at him. She could believe seeing Jason or Annabeth. She could buy that. But Frank? That was just too crazy of a dream. If Annabeth and Jason disappeared and they ended up being one of the furies' pranks, fine. But if she lost Frank again…
Screw it she didn't care. She wanted his arms, his hugs, his kiss actually to be 100% perfectly honest. She took a step towards him but that second, Annabeth clutched her ear and grabbed Hazel's shoulder.
"Sorry loverbirds," she said. "We have to get going. You guys can make up for lost time later."
"Going?" Hazel asked. "Going where?"
Annabeth pulled her Yankee cap out of her bag and flattened it over Hazel's curls. She looked down at her own hands but saw nothing.
"Isn't it obvious?" Frank said. "We've come to break you out of prison."
Leo could finally take a breather. Thank gods.
A lot of this plan was actually riding on him.
For starters if the telepathic headpieces that the seven of them were wearing failed, all communications would be down and there was a high chance that the plan would go to a deeper part of Hades (since the plan was all about going to Hades anyways). Secondly, if he messed up while trying to mess up the Underworld's security systems, alarms would blare and every single god and soldier in Hades would drop whatever they were doing, forget the distractions they'd set-up, and zone in on their little rescue mission. Thus making it fail.
He tried not to be nervous. They'd been planning this operation for nearly a year.
Hazel had been taken into Underworld Custody on August 13th of last year, the day after the Giant Wars had been won. The day after that Frank, who hadn't said a word to anyone since, had gathered Nico and the Seven and said 'we have to do something. But for us, not for the world this time'.
Today was June 15th of the following year. They'd worked so much on it, worked out so many kinks… it had to go right.
Leo couldn't wait to see Hazel. Losing her again would be heartbreaking.
He hacked into the Underworld's security cameras to calm himself down. He'd blowtorched the two skeletons who'd been guarding the control room to get in, which Leo didn't feel too bad about since they were already, you know, dead. They'd just been spinning themselves around on their wheeled office chairs, here in this room full of cameras and radios.
Leo checked up on all the gods and monsters of the Underworld.
Each of Cerberus' heads was chewing on its own red rubber ball. The second that they'd determined that all Underworld gods had to be neutralised for the course of their rescue mission, Annabeth had said that she knew how to take care of Cerberus. From a daughter of Athena Leo had hoped for something a little more elaborated than the kind of solution you could buy at Target, but it did the trick.
The one thing that Leo couldn't see –and this made Leo kind of nervous- were the river nymphs. The Underworld rivers had nymphs, who'd have thunk, right? Well, thankfully, Nico and Percy did. The latter was actually taking care of it right now, but Leo didn't know how well he was doing. Besides; Percy had a pretty big profile in the Underworld. He couldn't be seen anywhere lest they wanted their entire plan to fail. Also he was in charge of their getaway van (which wasn't really a van but the Argo II, that they'd sailed into the Underworld with through the River Acheron- which was in the most unpleasant place to sail on earth, the Arctic Ocean. Now Percy had to stay close to the ship in case things blew up and they had to make a run for it.
Melinoe, the goddess of ghosts, wasn't in her cave. That they knew, because they may have 'accidentally' asked Lou Ellen to sabotage Camp's security borders from the inside. Not a lot, but only a little- so that ghosts could come into camp. Nico had found them some old campers in Elysium who would cause a distraction at camp –nothing big, nothing to make them visible- but enough poltergeist-like activity to draw Melinoe out to a magical hotspot that she usually didn't get to visit. Nico had mentioned that one Luke Castellan had been more than happy to help the cause, which had made Percy and Annabeth smile and shift uncomfortable at once. If anything, they were doing the goddess of ghosts a favour. This was quite the field day for her.
Charon, the ferry man, was having a nap in his boat. For months and months the members of their little party had been saving up their drachmas and denarii and dollars (Canadian and American) to buy his silence. They'd also been passing a hat around both camps, claiming that it was for booze money for Cabin 11's rad parties when they got caught. Chiron had been so happy to hear that the two camps were getting along well enough to have a party together that he didn't mind the underage drinking- or maybe he knew what it was for deep down and decided to play dumb, whatever worked. Reyna had pulled some strings for Amazon to grant a nice little donation (supposedly Hylla had been more than happy to cough up the cash once she found out that it was for the sake of a little girl who'd stolen Arion and helped her get rich of some old queen with a name like Orthritis).
The judges of the Underworld were a trickier bunch to distract, but they had timed their rescue mission with a major demigod death. In this case, Clarisse La Rue. She'd been mugged in New York City and had beaten the guy up so badly, that two monsters had sensed the adrenaline and power she oozed. They'd gotten their way in the end. This was Very Bad News and they were all rather shaken up from the loss and upset that they'd miss the funeral, but they knew that they had to do it. This was their best chance. To top it off, Clarisse was the kind of demigod who'd appreciate this attempt at rebellion and general disrespect.
Hecate, the magic goddess, was Persephone's doing. See, it was summer. The goddess was in the surface world, skipping across flower meadows or whatever it was she did. Hecate, as her companion, was with her today. Nico had forged two separate sets of immortal handwriting and had invited the goddesses to lunch dates with each other in a pretentious French café of some sort.
Thanatos was interesting. Piper had been supposed to handle him, charmspeak him into letting her lock him up in a cage or something like that because apparently that's what Thanatos did in myths. But it didn't seem to have worked. He was lounging around his quarters in the palace, reading something on his iPad. But the ring of keys on his belt loop was gone, so Leo assumed that Piper had gotten around to stealing it. Piper was never one to leave a job undone, so Leo assumed she had figured things out.
She must have, because she was talking to Hades right now. See, while Nico talked his father into hearing Piper about some request about blah blah blah, Piper had stolen Thanatos' master keys (he was historically an easy god to pick on). Frank, who had been sitting on her shoulder as a fly, then took the keys while Piper talked (and distracted) the afterlife's head honcho, and brought them back to Jason and Annabeth, who were dispatching guards around Hazel's prison.
Their plan was exhausting, but it seemed to be working. Hades was listening to Piper attentively, the guards were playing with their weapons pensively. Even Nico was looking at Piper dumbstruck, as if she was explaining the meaning of life to him.
They just had to keep it together for 20 more minutes (20 minutes being the delay they had agreed on before Percy turned the ship around and head back to the surface).
"How did you get rid of so many guards this fast?" Hazel asked.
"Light," Frank said. "The light here is specially designed, most other bulbs would scare away the undead guards."
Flashlights littered the floor. Annabeth, Frank and Jason all picked one up before going.
"This way," Annabeth said.
"How do you know all of this?" Hazel asked as they navigated the series of catacombs that she'd been told were under the palace. She hadn't even known where she'd been held, they'd led her to her prisoner blindfolded. However it made sense. If anyone tried to escape, they'd have to get out through Pluto's palace.
"I'm the official architect of Olympus," Annabeth smiled. "Maybe I convinced Hades to let me touch up some of the infrastructure out here, help out my brother Daedalus with his ramps, access building plans, come down here regularly to check the progress of my projects… what do you think this getup is for?"
She'd taken her heels off to run. The feet of her pantyhose were getting torn.
"Annabeth's the only reason we found you," Frank said. He was holding her hand as they ran. "She found an inconsistency in the amount of columns per wall that ended up being a secret passage."
Though she was invisible, he squeezed her hand and looked at her as if she was a miracle and a treasure and a masterpiece in a museum all at once. She wanted to tell him that she was sure he'd have found her himself too.
"Besides," Jason said. "Nico sent up some ghosts to help us out."
"Ghosts?" Hazel asked.
"Can't you see them?" Annabeth said. "No, never mind. Nico mentioned that you may have been one for too long to see them. Look properly, as if the mist's in the way. They're just in front of us."
Hazel did as she was told, and saw what Annabeth and Jason meant. A tall, slender figure and a small ratty one were running up in front of them. They turned around and Hazel gasped. It was Marie Levesque and Sammy Valdez, age 14.
"My, my, my," Hazel said.
"I know it's a lot to take in," Frank said. "But you have to trust us on this. We want to get you out. We want to help."
"Of course I trust you," Hazel cut him off as they took a sharp left and raced up some stone staircases, slippery with puddles. It wasn't that she didn't trust him. She was mostly baffled that Sammy had accepted to help her out at this point. She'd seen his future in bits and bobs. She'd seen him miss her. She'd seen the pain that came with being abandoned. And Marie? She didn't even smile at Hazel. Go figure, she was doing this to make herself feel better- not for Hazel's sake.
She ignored that. Seven people had come down to hell to fish her out. What more love did Hazel need?
The plan got even more complicated as they kept running and .
The two palace guard uniforms had been picked up by Nico during Christmas dinner last year. They'd helped Jason and Frank sneak around the palace earlier, and would provide an excuse if they got caught (the official line was that they were 'escorting Annabeth' who 'got lost'). Percy was hidden from sight at the Argo II, which was shrouded with mist. (Yeah, everyone was down here, apparently...) Leo was in the security control room, the place in the Underworld where they were least likely to look for intruders. Really, the only person who was risking her skin was Piper, currently entertaining Hades. Jason looked nervous when he told her. Hazel gathered that they were still a couple. Score.
"So what happens once we get out?" Hazel asked.
"You stay invisible," Frank said. "Annabeth brings you back to the Argo II. Jason and I go pick up Leo and cover him in retreat. Then we leave, and none of us come back for a long, long time."
Hazel smiled.
That sounded like a plan to her.
Frank had survived some pretty unnatural occurrences and ploughed through some pretty messed up monsters. But he couldn't believe his luck now.
He was holding Hazel's hand again. Though he couldn't see her, he could feel her, hear her footsteps, smell her fruity shampoo… And they were heading into a place where he could keep holding her hand for as long as she would let him.
The last ten months had been hell, Frank wasn't going to the Giant War, Dakota had also taken his retirement (Frank had known that he wouldn't last long without Gwen, that he'd want to follow her into the city like Jason and Reyna or Percy and Annabeth would follow each other in and out of power). He'd been improvising on how to be a centurion all on his own with an equally brand new centurion who was super nice, but a little too cheerful. He'd found out that Grandmother had escaped from the fire in Vancouver and she was now slowly deteriorating in a retirement home in New Rome, so Frank had been rushing through mandarin textbooks to try and pick up a few words and characters before she passed. Mom's one-year death-a-versary had passed. Politics in New Rome gave him incredible headaches. He missed the rest of the seven, the people he'd come to trust with his life and who he knew he could talk weird dreams and trauma with, all of which were in New York. And he'd missed Hazel so much it'd hurt to blink and breathe and move. Once they started working on this crazy, feverishly insane and daring plan to get her back, things had gotten better. But things were never perfect. Even now.
For example once they realised that Hazel had escaped, how obvious would it be that it was the Seven who had rescued her? The Seven and Nico, to be exact... And what would Pluto do then, just come back for Hazel, right? They'd have to hide her. In Camp Half-Blood or Alaska or Europe or some other place where gods had limited reach… but then again, was that the kind of life that Hazel would want once they brought her back? Gods, she was so happy and loving and caring and strong and feisty and beautiful and sweet… he wanted the world for her. He'd give his world for her.
But was worlds a currency that Death used?
The earpiece at Frank's ear buzzed and all three of the ones wearing them swore at the same time.
"What's wrong?" Hazel asked.
"Distress call from Nico. Piper's quoting Shakespeare and pulling metaphors out of her ass to buy us more time, but she's running out of things to say," Annabeth said.
"It's been thirteen minutes," Jason said. "We agreed that she'd give us fifteen, max. Annabeth, are we nearly out of this place?"
"I know a shortcut," Sammy said. Frank had never heard anything like his New Orleans and Spanish accent, how they mumbled together and made him shape his words so differently from Hazel, whose accent and slang he'd taken forever to get fully adjusted to anyways. Like, in Orleans, a cold drink was 'pop'. Frank didn't know what you said when you just wanted a not-hot drink, but whatever.
Frank hesitated, but Hazel tugged him forwards. Ghost or not, this was Sammy. She trusted him. And Frank should too, because when had Hazel's judgement not squashed his like a bug?
"Remember the last phase," Jason told the others on the rescue operation. "Hazel, Annabeth will bring you back to the ship. I'll go pick up Leo at the control rooms. Frank, you turn into a bug and sneak into the room and land on Nico's shoulder to let him know that the coast is clear."
Frank hadn't thought that that part of the plan caused any problems until he realised that he'd have to let go of Hazel's hand.
Maybe he was a little sensitive and overprotective right now…
They all nodded and then Annabeth froze in front of a door.
"Hazel?" Annabeth asked.
"Yes?" she squeaked. Frank squeezed her hand.
"Get ready for some real light."
Jason was highly stressed out.
He'd cut down considerably on the amount of responsibility he accepted to be loaded with, and he'd pretty much dropped his role as leader (Capture-the-Flag being his one exception). And he was okay with it. He was okay with being Jason instead of Superman now, and he'd learned to make himself comfortable in the backseat as long as he could roll down the window and live the way he wanted to.
But somehow he'd ended up as the leader again.
It was pretty much a process of elimination. Percy was at school about 50% of the time, and 25% of his free time was spent doing homework and catching up at school to make up for all the time that Hera had blown. Annabeth was in New York as well. Leo was completely uninterested, Nico was a self-declared "uncharmatic dipshit" and Piper had shaken her head and laughed at the idea of leadership in a mission like this. Frank had sparked the idea and he coordinated their meetings at first, but nerves had gotten the best of him. The idea of getting Hazel back thrilled him to no end, but the thought of losing her again scared him to the bone. The fact of possibly being head of the flaw that made them lose her scared him to death. So that left Jason.
Now, as they marched through the Underworld and impersonated Pluto's servants, he looked cool and steady. It was all about being under pressure.
"Remember Nico's instructions," Jason said.
Frank nodded and they turned at various vases, opened all the right doors and seemed to be taking the right staircases to make it back up to Leo's perch as guide of the Underworld.
"About time you showed up," Leo said, spinning around in the office chair.
"Nice," Jason said. "Anything interesting happen?"
"Piper is bullshitting like there's no tomorrow and I've never been more proud," Leo said. "I'm assuming that Annabeth has what she wants."
"Yes," Frank said, smiling despite himself. Jason would be smiling too. He couldn't imagine what the poor guy had gone through. If he'd had to go through that crap with Piper... he'd never had to fight for Piper before. He'd kill for her, there wasn't a doubt in his mind, but she'd been a blessing to him. And to lose her so suddenly, so quickly, so violently as Frank had in the Giant Wars... It would have destroyed him.
"Right on," Leo grinned. "Alright. From what I can tell, Percy hasn't been dragged out to the dungeons or Hades' feet to grovel, so I think our Getaway Boat's good to go."
"Perfect," Jason said. "Let's go before something changes that."
Leo plucked the armour off one of the skeletons he'd incinerated, Frank transformed into a dragonfly and perched himself on Jason's shoulder, and they slipped away into the night.
Piper couldn't handle the sound of her own voice anymore. Seriously, she was about to strangle herself. Especially since half of what she said was repetitive nonsense with paraphrased philosophy quotes and similar droning. But Hades was still interested, so Piper kept digging and brainstorming. She'd have liked to hope that Nico would have had some ideas that he could tell her with the ear pieces, but so far her charmspeak seemed to overwhelm him too. What could Piper say- kill before asking questions, get nil exposure to magic and sudden overdoses of the stuff was what you'd get.
Besides, she was nervous enough from her run-in with Thanatos. Leaving the god free had been a risky move, but Piper hadn't had time to waste on him longer than what she had done. And the damage was done, right? She had his keys...
When she'd walked into his chambers, Piper had been wielding a spare sword that they'd fished out of Nico's bedroom.
"Surrender your keys," Piper had said. "Show me your wrists, smile when Nico ties them together, and then I want you to sit down."
"That seems silly," Thanatos had said, which shocked Piper. "Seriously, didn't you think that after Sisyphus that once and Gaia again I wouldn't learn to form a shell against this kind of magic?"
No, they really, really hadn't. And now they had a god that was probably very, very insulted to deal with.
"What is it that you'd want me to get captured for?" Thanatos asked. "You were one of those demigods who'd worked so hard to close the doors of death. Why the long face? Why now?"
Piper remembered a legend Grandfather Tom had told her, one about two wolves -a good one, and a bad one. Everyone had two wolves inside them and the strongest one, the one that made you good or made you bad, was the one that you fed. Piper figured that she may as well try feeding the god's good wolf.
"It's not for immortality," Piper had said. "I wouldn't come to this much trouble just for that."
"Just for that?" Thanatos smiled. "My, you're an interesting demigoddess. I think I recognise you now. Piper McLean. Heroin of Olympus."
"Only one of them," Piper said. "Officially there are three of us."
"Two," Thanatos said. "The third is dead."
Piper and Nico said nothing, only looked at each other, and the god smiled.
"Of course. We've been waiting for a rescue operation such as this one," Thanatos said.
"Oh, you've got a code in place and everything have you?" Piper asked.
"Nothing that elaborated, I'm afraid," he said.
"So what are you going to do with us?" Piper said.
"I don't know," Thanatos said. "What would you do?"
"I'd let us go," Piper said.
"A very biased opinion," he acknowledged.
"It's because I'm human," Piper continued. "And I understand the value of life. I understand how random it is that humans ever get formed, that we end up being born after that, that we don't get randomly struck down by illness or accidents or psycopaths until we grow up, and I understand that once the world's open to you then your life can have as much value as you put in it. I understand that some of us start living young because of the way the world is, and I understand how much value Hazel Levesque put in hers. Yes, you're right. We want Hazel Levesque back. But only because of the kindness and the love and the jazz music and the innocence and the power and the bravery that she left behind."
Thanatos considered this for a second.
"You bring human souls to the Underworld," Piper said. "Don't tell me that there are some that you wished you could have left behind."
"There are," Thanatos said. "But never has a soul stayed behind while I was tasked to bring it down."
Piper bit her lip.
"Fortunately for you, Lord Hades brought his daughter to the Underworld on his own. And also fortunately for you, my belt is loose and my key ring slipped."
He'd kicked it across the floor until it bumped into the toe of Nico's shoe.
"Fortunately for her, Hazel Levesque made quite an impression on me when I met her in Alaska."
"It's fortunate for all of us, sir," Piper said bowing shortly, picking up the keys and running back to the throne room.
Annabeth didn't like her plans going wrong, and so she always included a 'unexpected occurrence' clause in her plans.
Today, that one was filled by a guard -a real one, not one of her boys- passing by her cradling a spear and pausing to check her out.
"The Underworld is not awaiting any living visitors today," he said.
"I know," she said, willing Hazel to be still and be quiet next to her. "I'm sorry, I mixed up my next audience with Lord Hades about the arches on the sanctuary with my next shift at work. My manager's going to kill me, so you mustn't worry about me really."
"Living visitors in the Underworld must never leave," he said, droning on like a robot.
"Yes, well, I'm an employee rather," Annabeth said.
"An employee?"
"Yes, an architect to be precise, would you like to see my papers? Zeus himself signed them," Annabeth said.
"Lord Zeus holds no authority now."
"Of course not," Annabeth said, "I just wanted to show you some identification. You're doing such an excellent job here, I don't doubt for a second that that's the next thing you were going to ask me."
"Identification," the guard said holding out his hand.
Annabeth rummaged in her portfolio, stifling back a scream. She had no ID unless a library card counted. The best she could do was find a piece of paper and hope that the mist agreed with her.
"Too long," the guard said. The tip of his spear pushed against her portfolio bag and Annabeth stumbled back, uneasy in her heels.
"I'm sorry, there are a ton of blueprints in here," she tried. Usually Annabeth could talk her way out of things. Figure out what it would take, what people would want to hear, how she could say it... But this wasn't a person. He didn't want to hear anything. This was an undead guard with no ambition but to serve Hades according to the god's protocol, an ambition that would have to go face to face with Annabeth's unwillingness to let Hazel go now.
Then the guard was wiped out from below, as if someone tripped him. He rolled to the floor and his face was smashed into the dirt before his head bounced as if he'd been hit there.
"What?" Annabeth heard Hazel ask quietly. "You wanted me to let you get caught is that it? I don't think another plan like this could happen in a hundred years."
Annabeth grinned.
"It's nice to know that you didn't lose any pieces over the last year."
"My voice feels scratchy now that I'm actually talking to people," Hazel said. "But it's exciting."
"It's exciting to hear you again," Annabeth said. She knew they shouldn't talk in public, but Annabeth couldn't help it. She was happy to have Hazel back. The girls in the Argo II had originally all clenched together to form a knot of solidarity against the waves of masculinity (or attempt thereof) that crashed against them. Seriously, the bragging that the boys got on to was legendarily stupid. But they'd learned to like each other. Hazel was the kind of feisty that Annabeth appreciated, but she'd learned to balance it with a kindness and a sweetness and an innocence that Annabeth had forbidden herself long ago. The balance was admirable. Hazel's honesty, her integrity to herself, the way she literally couldn't care less about people, was so funny without ever being mean... all were things that Annabeth had missed after a boat ride and a quest with them.
At that moment, she spotted Nico and Piper exiting the palace.
"How'd it go?" Piper asked breathlessly when she saw them.
"I think I got the bulk of the work done," Annabeth said.
"Oh good," Piper said.
"And you?"
"Don't make me talk," she said.
"She was good," Nico asked. His powers over life and death let him sense exactly where Hazel was.
"Can I keep his spear?" Hazel asked quietly, kicking the guard's weapon.
"No," Annabeth said. "We actually have to get out of here as quickly as possible or else Percy leaves without us."
"Bullshit, he wouldn't," Piper said. "But I can't wait to see the surface again. I've missed her."
"We all have," Nico said. "Let's go home."
Percy'd had the most boring day of his life.
For starters, driving a boat was mindless to him. His limbs just did whatever they wanted to out of their own accord, and usually that ended up creating exactly the right bend of pulling and tugging and knotting that resulted in a successful boat ride. Plus the fact that he'd sailed on the Argo II for most of last summer, not to mention all the sick parties that cabins 11 and 12 hosted on the boat every weekend as it bobbed in the harbour, made it familiar too.
Secondly, nymphs were boring in the Underworld. The driads at camp were nice, if not a little ditzy. The ones in the ocean were awesome and they alternated between kicking his ass, kicking some sea god's ass, and then launching into awesome conversations about rocket launchers and military SONAR operations. These ones? Gloomy as heck. Didn't like anything, didn't want anything... Percy couldn't believe that Nico had thought that these guys seriously had enough dedication to anything to tell Lord Hades about an escape plan if Percy had started singing a song about it.
Thirdly, stress bored him. It'd become too typical of his lifestyle. The twenty minute cap that his friends were all strictly enforced under was literally meaningless to him. The fact that the rest of the seven were in danger was such a routine thing, and Percy tended to be bad with deadlines and realising that things could go badly so, there went that. The only real stress was how badly he wanted to see Hazel again. That girl was like the little sister he'd never had. Besides, if Percy had to see Frank so torn and upset and quiet about it again, he was going to burst.
But all his friends made it back on the Argo II in one piece and nobody was crying, so Percy assumed that somewhere among their ranks, Hazel was invisible. She'd show herself when they sailed down the River Acheron and were back at the surface world, he assumed.
Great, more waiting. All Percy wanted was a hug.
Everyone was quiet and standing on the edge of the ship. Jason had gotten people ready on the ballistas, and Leo was cranking the ship's engine with some kind of son-of-Hephaestus magic that Percy was appreciating.
That's when a whisper of excitement rushed over the Argo II and Percy realised that they were invisible. Not only to the other authorities in the Underworld, but also to themselves- which was trippy, but it proved one solid point.
Hazel was with them not only in person, but in feist.
Which pretty much meant that they could do anything.
Go figure; it was cold in the arctic ocean. Jason, who had yet to experience a real winter outside of California and Camp's winter borders was absolutely dying. The tip of his nose was red and he was just traumatised by the cold. Percy made a few Canadian jokes about how well Frank was handling the crappy weather, but without sounding egocentric- Hazel was pretty sure that Frank was down for just about any kind of ecological disaster that moment.
Since Hazel had pulled Annabeth's cap off her head and the Seven had basically tripped over themselves to hug her, Frank had been the one person never to leave her side to go drive the ship or crank up the heating or tell Leo to crank up the heating more quickly or get blankets and hot cocoa or go swim with orcas. Right now, Hazel was resting against him in a nest of blankets that the overprotective prophecy children had built around her. The strong armour over his chest made Hazel think of home, of Camp Jupiter. She didn't know if that's where she was going. She didn't really care right then, because she was pretty sure that Frank and the rest of the Seven were going to be with her there.
Frank kissed the top of her head.
"Thank you," he said.
"What are you thanking me for? You broke me out of hell!" Hazel said.
"For staying you until we got you out," Frank said. "I don't know what's going to happen now, how we're going to hide you and all, but you're here now, so I think everything's possible."
"About that," Hazel said, "I don't think I need to hide much."
This drew in exterior interest to the conversation. Annabeth and Nico frowned deeply. Hazel told them about her soup and the newspaper and a few things here and there that had made her start thinking that maybe, just maybe, her jailors didn't like their jobs.
"I think that that prison was like the death penalty," Hazel said. "If you survive the jolt of electricity or whatnot, you get to go free."
"That's a myth," Annabeth said.
"Okay but so is the afterlife," Hazel said.
"Hey, if it means that everyone gets to be happily ever after, I'm down with it being real," Percy said.
"Amen to that," Jason said raising his cup of hot chocolate.
More mugs were raised as people echoed; "Amen."