A/N: God this took me a long damned time to write. And it also hurt quite a bit. Because MARK OF ATHENA. Again, major spoilers for MoA in this fic. Like massive. Like if you can't figure that out from the topic I'm going to be upset but yeah. Also it hurts.

I luff you all, my readers!

We were falling

And falling.

And falling.

And screaming.

But mostly falling.

Eventually it got to the point where we kind of stopped being scared and just stared at each other.

"Can you hear me?" I called over to Percy. He turned to me, giving me the strangest look.

"Huh?" he said. "Can't hear you, what'd you say?"

In spite of the situation, I found myself laughing. "We're falling into Tartarus!" I screamed, halfway to hysterical laughter. "Percy, you – you let go of the ledge."

Percy was staring at me, looking concerned. "A-Annabeth? What's – you're crying?"

"No!" I exclaimed. "I'm laughing!"

And that's when I realized I wasn't actually just laughing. It was half a laugh and half a sob, and then I snorted.

"I seriously don't know what's wrong with you," said Percy. He snorted a bit. "I –" That's when he started half laughing, half sobbing.

There was no other option. After years and years of being serious and adult and dealing with real, adult things, we had to lose it for once. For four years our lives were definite by a prophecy that killed Luke. And for this past year our lives have been defined by a prophecy that tore us apart and then sent us into Tartarus.

Forgive us for losing our minds momentarily.

After what felt like a million years– still falling – the two of us realized how absolutely crazy we must have looked to each other and stopped.

Percy pulled me tightly to his chest, and I rested my head on his shoulders. "So what the Hades are we supposed to do for nine days?" I said

"What?"

I twisted so my lips were right near his ear. Trying to talk loud enough that he would hear but not so loud I would blow his eardrums was not an easy task as one fell through a void. "According to Hesiod, Tartarus takes nine days to fall into."

Percy looked terrified. "We're going to be falling for nine days?!" He exclaimed, looking as if I had just told him his mother was going to boil him in a pot of soup.

I nodded. "At least we can hear each other – if we had the air rushing against us we'd probably be half deaf, but we've got the advantage of, you know," I shrugged as we fell, "falling into literally nothing."

Percy nodded. "What the Hades are we going to do for the next nine days?"

I shrugged. "My best bet is rock-paper-scissors. Or nap."

"Or this," said Percy, a strange little smile on his face. Before I really know what was happening, he pulled me close to him and kissed me gently.

"Hi," I said, feeling a little silly. Of course the two of us would kiss when we were falling into the deepest deaths of terror. Of course. "Is this me getting a kiss for luck?"

"It's a tradition," he said, kissing me on the nose, "isn't it?"

I laughed, a little too loud in the terrible silence, and he began kissing me on top of the nose repeatedly.

From what we could gather of time, day one of falling was mostly spent kissing, talking, telling each other how much we missed the other in the days passed.

Day two, or something, was spent with the two of us just sleeping. It was a strange sensation, but since neither of us thought it was possible for us to sleep through eight days, we figured we would be safe. We held onto each other as well fell, and we shouldn't have, but we fell asleep quickly. The strain of the quests after five straight years finally hit us, and we slept for ages. By the time we woke up, we were both well rested, but we had no idea what had passed.

"What time do you think it is?" Percy asked conversationally. "Because I can't tell if it's night or day or the middle of lunch. All I know is that I'm really hungry and I have basically no idea how we're going to take this."

"Yeah," I said, "food's going to be a problem."

Percy looked confused for a moment. "Wait, can we survive nine days without eating? Drinking? Are we even technically alive?"

I nodded. "We should survive. If we're living. It might won't even be a little bit pleasant, but technically we won't die of starvation yet. More likely we'll just – WAIT!" I fumbled around the pocked of my jeans and pulled out a little flask of nectar and a little plastic bag of ambrosia I had shoved back there when I'd broken my ankle. "And here we have the reason why I am a genius." I opened the bag and handed a square to Percy. "Now, only have one little bite. We're going to have to last more than a week on only three squares of ambrosia and a few sips of nectar."

Percy pouted. "And to think, this is the first time you got me dinner."

I smiled. "You're such a weirdo."

He grinned at me, looking like a goofball, and took an acceptably large bite out of the ambrosia. "Open up!" he said through a mouthful.

"What are you – MMPH!" Percy squished a piece of ambrosia into my mouth without actually warning me, and I took what was almost a too-large bite of the nectar. However, it made me feel better in just that my ankle stopped feeling like agony and I no longer felt as hungry.

Percy was grinning at me broadly. "So I've got that down."

"Got what down?"

His smile softened and he put a hand on my cheek. "The stuffing the cake in your face for when we get married."

"Perseus Jackson," I said, unable to hide my smile, "are you insinuating we're going to get married some day?"

"I figured falling into Tartarus together was more binding than proposing, so it seems like we're stuck together no matter what."

"How romantic," I said, trying to fight back as smile as I rolled my eyes.

It was strange, but falling into Tartarus, a void, really didn't feel as scary as it should have. The falling wasn't the intimidating part. When we landed, I was prepared to fight for my life, but landing was so far away we weren't sure if it was worth worrying about. Honestly, the fall was the most down time either of us had gotten in ages.

We talked and napped and talked and napped, and every once in a while when the hunger was getting near unbearable we would have a bite of ambrosia or a sip of nectar. The only reason I had any idea of how much time passed is by the fact that the moment I hit the ground it would have been nine days. While falling, the two of us couldn't judge anything.

I should probably start wearing a watch

At some points, Percy would be still sleeping when I was awake, and I would just sort of look at him. It had been so much time, and I thought I would have forgotten the little details of this stupid son of Poseidon, but everything still resonated as clear as day. Six months passed and I still remembered every detail. He looked a lot younger when he slept, the anger and weariness that usually weighed him down smoothed into the face of a child, a sixteen year old kid, whose dreams were probably about cupcakes and pizza. And, if I was lucky, maybe I made a cameo. I heard my name dropped at least once.

Eventually, I knew, we would hit the ground, and we'd have to go back into warrior mode. And hopefully my ankle would be healed by then so the defense would be 100% on Percy.

It felt significantly less sore as the days went on. Eventually the little bag of ambrosia was gone, and we hoped it had been close to nine days. The whole falling and starving thing had begun to get seriously old when I felt a hideous pull on it from the webbing that hadn't released yet. Percy and I couldn't seem to get ourselves are the right ankle to slice the web without slicing a part of one of our bodies.

I gasped in pain as the pull reinjured my ankle, a painful echo of days beforehand. "Mother of – OW!" I exclaimed.

"What is it?" Percy asked.

"My ankle hurts," I observed, looking down at it. I screwed my eyes shut. "Oh, gods, I shouldn't have looked. Arachne must have pulled on the thread again. Gods above, why can't we land?"

The second the thought appeared in my mind, it was as if we had been on the ground for years in the same spot. I couldn't pinpoint the moment when there was something beneath me, but when it happened, I knew it had been there for at least some time.

"We're standing," said Percy, doing a strange little stomp. "Well. I'm standing. You're on the ground," he stepped on the ground again, testing out the strange, spongy feel of the surface. "This is odd."

Attempting to get up, I gingerly tested my ankle and felt pain shoot up again. It must have done some horrible cracking and bruising and pulling as Arachne yanked me down into Tartarus, and at this point I was worried the entire thing would be without hope. I wouldn't even look at it.

"Hey," said Percy quietly. "Your ankle."

"I'm not looking at it again," I said firmly. "You can look at it, but if I look at it I might scream. I've already dealt with this once, but that evil demon spider just completely reversed the recovery those nine days of ambrosia caused." I muttered a good list of curses against Arachne as the pain just kept getting worse.

Percy kneeled down in front of me and smiled. "I'm going to cut the spider web off of it, and see what's wrong, okay? I'm sorry if this hurts." I shifted so that I was facing him and avoided looking at my battered leg. Percy smiled, and spoke as he worked on my leg, detaching the spider web attached to my body . "I love you," he said quietly. "I really love you. You're so brave, and strong. I – you're beautiful and smart and that greatest warrior I've ever seen. I want you to know that I would never have survived this quest without you."

"Why are you saying all this, Seaweed Brain?" I asked, frowning. "What are – oh my god." My ankle was millions of shades of purple under the half shredded bubble wrap. It was bad enough to have seen it that hideously before, but for a second time in less than two weeks? There is literally no way I have ever done something bad enough to deserve this. I was half sure that the bone was pressing against the skin of my foot in a place where ankle bones are not supposed to me. It was as if half of my foot had relocated.

It wasn't pretty.

"Oh gods, you were sweet talking me because I'm dying?!" I exclaimed. "Come on!"

Percy dropped his head to his palm. "First of all, I was saying all of that because it's true. And second of all –"

"Secondly."

Percy gave me a bizarre look, as if he were shocked that I would correct his grammar in a situation like this. It was me. He should know that I will correct his grammar on my death bed. Probably a bad way to put it now that we were in Tartarus.

"Secondly," he said, his expression half exasperated and half something I only saw when he was looking at me, "I was hoping if I was talking to you there'd be less chance that you'd look at your leg."

"You were making it sound as if the entire foot had been ripped off or that I'd be dying in the next five minutes," I said. "I wasn't sure if you were saying goodbye to me."

Percy crawled toward me, brushing a lock of horribly messy hair out of my eyes. "Annabeth Chase," he said carefully, "I'm in Tartarus with you. How many times can I tell you – I'm never letting you go. And I'm never going to say goodbye to you."

He leaned in to kiss me lightly, but I figured we weren't doing anything better with our time so I pulled him in closer. I had one hand fisted into the front of his now-tattered tee shirt, just reveling in the fact that the two of us were together.

There was never a moment in my life that I didn't trust Percy. Don't get me wrong, I never wanted to admit it. My first impression of him was a twelve year old calling for his mother while drooling on the front porch of the Big House. Not the best foundation for romance.

But even then I had faith in him. And that faith had only been strengthened as the years went by.

The two of us spent what I would consider to be an irrationally long time kissing, until I leaned away from him with a last kiss on the tip of his nose.

"Apparently cheesy lines work on you," said Percy. "I should keep up with the whole romance. If I could figure it out, you know." I could feel him smile against my lips, and it startled me to remember that we were in Tartarus. And Percy was still smiling.

"Alright, don't be so cocky, Mr. Drop-Us-Like-It's-Hot. We should probably figure out where Arachne's gone."

Percy pressed another kiss to my lips and then sat back down next to me. "What am I –!" With a confused expression on his face, he pulled out a half-murdered square of ambrosia and handed it to me. "Oh. You should have that. With your ankle and all."

"You…You had that in your pocket the whole time?!" I exclaimed. "And…Percy, you're kind of an idiot."

Percy smiled apologetically. "I didn't realize something had been in my pocket until I sat down on it. At least we have extra Olympian food. Granted I can't believe we haven't eaten mortal food in this long. We can't die from this can we?"

I shrugged. "No idea. But our darling friends up in the living world could have thrown us down a sandwich," I muttered, biting into the ambrosia. Oddly enough, my foot began to blare with pain the second I took a bite.

"Sweet boiling Hades!" I screamed. "What in the…?"

Percy had shifted my foot back into position as I took a bite. "You could have warned me, you idiot!"

"You wouldn't have let me set it if you had known what I was about to do," he said calmly. "Now, we've got nothing but the rest of this bubble wrap and a have snapped piece of wood to splint it. Now that you've got more ambrosia, you should probably –"

"Excuse me, I'm not the one who accidentally stabbed the dummy in the eye with a stick when learning first aid," I grumbled, "I think perhaps I should be setting it."

"Shut up and eat your ambrosia," said Percy with a grin. "Hmm. I'm telling you to shut up for once. I'm seeing the appeal."

"Shut up, Percy."

"Yeah, see, the appeal isn't the same from this end." He inspected my ankle again. "Just let me set it."

"Why can't I set it?"

"Because you're literally looking at it as if you're about to die. Lay down so you can't see."

I rolled my eyes, but I figured I would give him this. It seemed like I always tended to take care of Percy with the little things, like he took care of killing off the Titan king every once in a while and I would carry him in from nearly dying post-Minotaur and would judo flip him after he disappears. You know. The little stuff.

In this instance, I figured I'd let him take care of the ankle. And I really did feel like I was going to keel over and die within the next few moments from the pain, just to escape it, so perhaps Percy's idea was the best of the options.

I leaned backwards, and exhaled deeply as Percy gently adjusted the splint, cutting it with Riptide. "It really sucks that you lost your knife," Percy muttered.

"And the laptop," I added, closing my eyes as my ankle shifted painfully, "and my backpack with quite a myriad of useful objects. But hey, I've got you and Riptide. That combination could kick ass in any situation."

Percy laughed. "Well, I wouldn't bet against you, Annabeth."

As Percy finished up working on my ankle, I babbled on about some of the goings on at Camp Halfblood since he'd been gone. "And Rachel had to turn down this really confused son of Hypnos who was hitting on her before he realized she was the Oracle. And seventeen. And totally not into him." "Oh! And Travis once decided it would be a good idea to pretend that he saw you in the water, just as a prank, but before he even got the words out I tackled him to the ground and hit him over the head with my pillow wrapped in my bathrobe." "Piper tried straightening my hair once and I looked like I was electrocuted."

Percy laughed throughout my stories, and then finally sighed. "Well then. I think your ankle is stable now. Don't stand on it, but…I don't think you should worry."

"We're in Tartarus," I said, deadpan, "why would I be worried?"

"Speaking of which, what should we expect?" He pulled me up with one hand, and for the first time, the two of us looked around. "All I know about Tartarus is that it takes a damned lot to break a kid like Nico, and it broke Nico."

I looked around, leaning on Percy for support, and saw pretty much nothing…but a little bronze glow.

"I don't believe it," I muttered, stumbling forward. "It's all here."

"What's all here?" asked Percy. "Oh – look at that!" He leaned down and grabbed my backpack filled with supplies, my knife, and the laptop. But immediately something felt wrong.

"If this stuff fell right here," I muttered. "Then she's –"

Focusing more on the darkness, I saw something moving not too far away from me and Percy, and I gasped. "I – there she is," I murmured in Percy's ear. "Arachne. She – she must not have taken the fall too well if she hasn't gotten over here yet.

"Maybe she just hasn't figured out where we are yet."

I frowned. That would require more luck than I had. "What do we do?"

Percy handed me my supplies and I threw the backpack over my shoulder, shoving the knife into a belt loop. "Well it's not like we can send her to Tartarus," Percy replied. "Maybe if we just…?"

"Dissolve her into little bits of evil and fluff?"

Percy shrugged. "She is technically mortal, right?"

I nodded. "Yeah…"

"So you have those matches, still, right?"

Suddenly I understood. "Percy, you're a genius!" I paused. "Wow, you're a genius."

"Such skepticism," he said, rolling his eyes. "And yet you still date me."

I leaned toward him and kissed him. "Let's burn this spider." He reached into my backpack and grabbed the pack of matches, handing one to me and holding the rest in his hand.

"You have no idea how to use those, do you?"

Percy frowned. "I'm from the city. I don't camp. Fire is either lit by a lighter, Hestia, or clapping. Like at Rachel's. With that nifty automatic fireplace."

I laughed. "You're an idiot."

For a few moments the two of us prepared for battle. It took a few minutes before we realized Arachne wasn't moving anywhere near us.

"What's wrong with her?" Percy said. "How do we – where is she?"

I froze. Something felt…Wrong. "We've been talking too loud. She might have –"

"Hello, daughter of wisdom."

I turned around to see Arachne looming over the two of us, big black and red belly looking like a beacon of death.

"Bring it on, Lady Bug!" yelled Percy, tossing me the matches and drawing Riptide. I decided not to be a jerk and comment on his positively embarrassing battle cry.

Gritting my teeth and dealing with the pain in my ankle, I dropped to the ground as Percy engaged Arachne with his sword. I rolled underneath the massive spider, bracing myself just in case Arachne dropped, and struck match after match underneath her giant torso. It took a few minutes, but eventually one of her legs caught flame.

"What is this?!" exclaimed Arachne.

I didn't respond – it was too late. In the moment, I turned to Percy and he nodded. At the exact same moment, I struck a match and rolled backward, throwing the little flame into her face as Percy swung his sword to distract her.

"Stop this – NO!" shrieked Arachne.

I scrambled away from the blaze as the giant spider began to writhe in pain. "How could you?!" she squealed. "How could you?"

I ignored the spider, took Percy's hand, and began running as fast as I could in the opposite direction. It was as if all the screams of my mother's enemy echoed across everywhere we ran, and it was as if we could run for years and never arrive to our destination.

We had no destination.

"Where are we?" gasped Percy as the two of us continued to sprint. "I have no idea where – what the Hades are we supposed to be running to?!"

"The gates of Tartarus. I'd bet you that we're going to have to defeat something in there, around there, before we get there, while we're in there, and once we're out."

"So a cake walk."

Eventually, the two of us halfway to losing it and my ankle screaming in agony, began to see something in front of us.

"What is that?" asked Percy, still running.

"Slow down," I said, "can you see those guards?"

"Guards?" he asked. I pulled on his hand so that he would slow down.

"Well other than that," I pointed forward to where the Hydra stood, "we've got about a thousand other things to get to before we get into the gates to Tartarus," I said quietly. "We're there."

"Shouldn't the gates of Tartarus keep people in rather than out?"

"I think," I began, drawing a shaky breath, "as long as you can see the gates, you're trapped. It doesn't matter which side you're on."

"We've been trapped since the beginning." I nodded, and the two of us stared at the maddening commotion in front of us. "So," Percy began, "all we have to do is – not get killed"

I took Percy's hand and pressed a firm kiss to his lips. "If we get out of here," I began, looking him dead in the eye, "I'm buying you that ridiculous videogame that you've been asking about. And maybe I'll even get your mom to stop mocking you about the trapped-in-your-pants incident."

"When we get out of here," he replied, emphasizing the when and pressing his forehead up against mine, "I'm buying you that writing program that makes it so you can type with your voice." He leaned away and turned toward the Hydra. "And a ring."

"A ring?" I asked, a little incredulous.

"Well, really, if we're doing the whole commitment to fall into Tartarus thing thing," he said, shrugging, "might as well make the damned thing official." He grinned at me. "What, you expected a normal proposal from me?"

"You're serious!"

"Course I am, Wise Girl. Always am when it comes to you."

I probably should have cried or lost my mind, or giggled like some other girl would do, but I gripped his hand even tighter. "Shall we go kick some serious monster ass, Seaweed Brain?"

"You bet your bottom, Wise Girl."

I laughed. "That's not the –" I rolled my eyes. Correcting him really wasn't important right then. "Never mind."

I never thought I'd be the kind of girl who would run into battle smiling. But with what was supposed to happen after the battle? That's all that was keeping me going. And that was worth a smile any day.