A/N: So. It's been more than three years since this was touched, and coming back to read it is frankly quite painful. I haven't been active with Percy Jackson ever since Heroes of Olympus came out and I'm pretty sure everyone thought that this was abandoned for good but…call it nostalgia but I want to give this one more try (and hopefully not get burned!)
In Enemy Hands
Prelude: The Butterfly Effect
There is a well-known theory in popular science, constantly featured in various sci-fi novels, called The Multiverse Theory. Just a small change of fate, a slip of the hand for the Moiroi, and like branches of a tree, whole universes spring from this tiny change of circumstances.
This is the story of one of the universes, unreachable and distant from the one you know.
It begins on a blisteringly cold winter night outside of Westover Hall, in the midst of a heated battle between our tired and true heroes and a monster straight from the pits of Tartarus.
"Annabeth, behind-"
"A little bit late, Seaweed Brain!" Annabeth shouted after dodging what would have been a devastating blow to the shoulder.
Percy was not so lucky, in this moment of distraction to warn Annabeth, Dr. Thorn had launched himself towards this direction, pinning the unfortunate half-blood to the snowed-over ground.
"Gotcha," simpered the Manticore, eyes glowing in the waning moonlight as little drops of spittle landed on Percy's face.
He was trapped and pinned with Riptide just inches away from his outreached hand. This was it. Another death in the perpetual war against the monsters that haunted the Earth. Death wasn't a new concept or even a particularly shocking one to Percy as a half-blood, but the sheer randomness almost makes him want to laugh. He was about to die in such a routine battle after facing dangers that would have killed most men. And Annabeth. Annabeth and Mom and Grover and even Poseidon. Never again.
But the Manticore did not kill him. In fact, other than the fact that his ribs were probably bruised, Dr. Thorn had done nothing worse than sit of him.
"Oh Percy, Percy, there are so many things, so many glorious, bloody things worse than death. And I won't deprive you of them." And with that simple statement, he grabbed the collar of Percy's shirt with his teeth and made a mad dive for the edge of the cliff such ten feet away from where Percy had laid.
"PERCY!" With a renewed sense of despair, the blond girl leaped over the bodies of the downed mercenaries in a futile attempt to attack the Manticore but to no avail. Her blade had missed his thick skins by mere inches. The boy and the beast were gone with nothing but a Percy-sized imprint on the thick snow on the ground marking they were ever there.
Annabeth crumpled onto the ground, her bloody hands clutching her face, not a sound other than her initial outburst of pure grief. Her body trembled but she was too shocked to cry as her usually rather rational brain slowly began to fray with loss. Captured. Lost. And in enemy's hands. Because like Luke, like Thalia, he wasn't dead but the distance, both physical and metaphorical, meant that he might as well be.
She stayed like that for a long time with the shocked siblings clinging to each other in the back, giving what comfort they could as the snow slowly drifted down, cleansing the land with white like nothing had ever happened at all.
The minutes might as well counted for hours before the arrival of the girls clothed and bathed with silver appeared to break the unnatural, grief stained silence.
Nico and Bianca were huddled away for the warmth of a fire but Annabeth?
Well, she stayed in the snow, frozen in all the ways a heart and body could be frozen, until the small, rosy slivers of Dawn began to pierce the dark Winter sky.