Authors Note: I don't own this series or these characters. Also, first fanfiction, so input is appreciated. I just went back and revised this chapter/ added to it, so hopefully it is better now. I know there are a lot of "House of Hades" fanfic's out there but I love to write, I got really bored and decided I wanted to write my own. Let me know what you think, and if I should keep going! R&R.
Percy I.
As far as Percy could tell, several days might have passed since he and Annabeth began their trip into the depths of Tartarus. It's hard to tell time in the darkness – Percy would almost be bored, if he wasn't so utterly terrified of what would happen when the falling stopped.
Percy tightened his grip on Annabeth, pulling her closer to his body.
After they had first started falling into darkness, he and Annabeth had been separated when they both slammed into a pretty big chunk of rock that was flying through the dark void with them.
Percy shuddered, remembering the wave of panic that crashed against his chest like a tidal wave. It had only lasted for a brief moment after impact when he had lost her again... But he didn't like feeling. When he finally found her in the darkness with a little help from Riptide's glowing blade, Percy's heart had nearly stopped.
Annabeth's blonde hair was stringy and matted with dry blood from the wound on her temple. She must have hit her head pretty hard on the rock. Oh Gods –Help us. Percy prayed silently, before remembering gloomily that there were no Gods in Tartarus.
Despair gripped Percy, filling his body with an unwelcome chill. Percy's mind felt like it was stretched in as many directions as the sea. In a brief moment of wisdom, he decided to tie Annabeth's wrist to his with his Camp Half-Blood necklace - he didn't think that he could handle another tsunami of panic that would crash into him if he lost her again on the fall down to Tartarus.
He gently pulled Annabeth's floating figure to tightly to his chest, sheltering her body from the ocasional rocks and debris they encountered while falling.
She was definitely breathing which was a good sign...But Percy was pretty worried - her head looked terrible, and her ankle had been in bad shape before they even started to fall. She had injured it while following Athena's crazy schizophrenic demand for vengeance on Rome. Percy had hated when Annabeth was alone on her quest, he felt so helpless not being able to help her. After Annabeth got kidnapped to lure Artemis, and then Percy went missing for eight months after the Titan War ended thanks to Juno, he wouldn't be separated from her again.
Annabeth shuddered slightly in Percy's arms, her breathing faltering ever so slightly. Panic started to rock Percy's body from deep within like a tumultuous earthquake. In desperation, and partly just to make himself not feel so utterly hopeless, Percy felt around in his pockets. Deep down in the very bottom of his left pocket were two very 2 lumpy, lent-covered squares of ambrosia that had definitely been sat on a few too many times. After quite a bit of effort, since he refused to let go of Annabeth for even a second, he managed to wiggle one hand into his pocket and retrieve the God's food. His injured arm screamed in protest when he flexed his strong bicep, but what was a little pain compared with keeping the agony of fear and trepidation at bay for a little while longer?
Eventually, and with quite a lot of effort, Percy pulled the first square of mushy Ambrosia out of his pocket. Normally, Ambrosia was a golden honey colored food - it looked like the sun made solid, and somehow it always tasted like home, if such a thing were possible. The color of this Ambrosia however, was as dirty and grey as the Styx itself.
After a one handed struggle with Annabeth's unconscious body, he managed to feed it to Annabeth - something that was no easy feat considering she was unconscious. He grimaced thinking about what she might say if she knew he had fed her weeks old fuzzy-pocket Ambrosia, but the fact was she needed it, and what Percy needed was to take care of her. In a strange way, he felt like feeding her the revitalizing substance and sheltering her from further harm gave him a sense of purpose in the dark abyss and endless falling, it kept him in the present and alert.
A tiny voice in his head - the voice that usually spoke in Annabeth's wise voice, told him that he should save the second square in case something terrible happened later in Tartarus - which it probably would knowing Percy's luck. Percy knew Annabeth would have a fit if she found out that he fed her the last of the Ambrosia. She would have demanded that he eat some too and he probably should have – Percy had a deep gash in the side of his arm that had bled quite a bit, and he was pretty sure he was concussed, but his wounds seemed superficial compared to Annabeth's broken ankle and gaping head gash. And after all, she wouldn't really know that I had fed her the last of the Ambrosia, he reasoned to himself with a smirk. He fed her the second square of ambrosia, and her breathing steadied as her skin warmed under his touch.
Percy glanced down at her and pulled her head more securely against his chest. Percy's final oath to Annabeth before they started their fall came to his mind again. "We're staying together," he promised. "You're not getting away from me. Never again."
Percy kissed Annabeth gently on the forehead, desperately wishing that she would open her eyes and kiss him back. Despite the terror and gloom that had consumed him during his journey - the result of being alone with his own thoughts on the way to Tartarus - Percy closed his eyes for the briefest of moments and just held her, letting himself feel her warmth against him. His heart flooded with a tiny glimmer of satisfaction that he and Annabeth were together, even if it was in the worst place ever and under the worst circumstances ever.
He would never have let her fight Tartarus by herself - no one should have to face that terror alone, especially not after she had struggled through her greatest fears on her quest to avenge Athena...Arachne had fallen into Tartarus, he knew it. Percy could never leave Annabeth to face her fear twice in a row, especially not after how furious Arachne would be at the daughter of Athena for sending her back to Tartarus and retrieving the Athena Parthenon.
"Annabeth…stay with me okay? Just don't leave me. Please wake-up. Please." Percy's voice cracked, thick with a swirl of emotions as he begged for her to wake up. He was terrified of being alone when they reached the bottom of Tartarus, being alone on the fall had been torture.
Hours passed, and Percy felt his strength draining. He had been fighting against the exhaust and need to sleep, enduring countless blows by rocks and debris. He had to stay alert, he had to make sure they would be alright...he had to stay awake. Percy couldn't fight off his exhaustion any longer. He had been awake the entire time they were falling, and best he could tell – they had been falling for days. His throat was dry and cracked, and his eyes burned with sleepiness.
Against his will, Percy's eyes drooped. The harder he tried to stay awake, the faster it seemed he fell into slumber. With one last conscious thought, Percy squeezed Annabeth closer to him, before his eyes fluttered shut and he drifted into the realm of dreams.
He was in a limo. Aphrodite, the Goddess of Love sat in front of him. Her hair seemed to glow like the light from a star, subtly twinkling and changing. Her hair was enough to be mesmerizing in itself, but the Goddess's eyes captivated Percy like a child of Ares playing with a new weapon.
To Percy, her eyes appeared to shift like a quickly fading sunset over the ripple of waves in a tropical lagoon. They never seemed the same color for more than the briefest of minutes - By the time he thought he had figured out the color of the Goddess's eyes, they transformed into a new and even more enigmatic color. Sometimes though, he thought they looked a little like Annabeth's stormy grey eyes, always shifting, but before he could be sure that they looked like Annabeth's eyes, they shifted again. Aphrodite's dulcet voice floated out across the air towards him, making him feel warm and hazy.
"And don't worry," Aphrodite said. "I'm not going to let this be easy and boring for you. No, I have some wonderful surprises in store. Anguish. Indecision. Oh, you just wait." That definitely snapped him out of his spellbound gaze towards the Goddess.
"That's really okay," I told her. "Don't go to any trouble."
The scene faded back to darkness. For a brief moment in the deep subconscious of Percy's mind, he wondered if this would was going to be the tragic ending to his love with Annabeth. After all, he had been warned that Aphrodite loved tragic love stories, and hadn't Ares, the God of War even told Percy that he was some sort of Demi-God soap opera star?
Percy's dreams drifted in and out of old memories. Suddenly, the old memories faded, and Grover's face appeared in his mind:
"Percy? Percy! What's happening? I've been getting some really bad vibes from you lately - so bad I can't even play Eye of The Tiger on my reed pipes anymore, and now all of the strawberries at Camp Half-Blood are wilting! Dionysus won't be happy when he sees the state of the back fields..." Grover's voice trailed off as he shoved the corner of a memory foam pillow into his mouth and tore a chunk off. He looked at Percy confused as their connection broke in and out.
"Grover! Listen, you've got to-Nico-the others-meet us" Percy said, his choppy connection breaking up his thoughts..he wasn't sure how much Grover had understood. He didn't know for sure but Percy had the feeling this might be the last time he talked to Grover for awhile, maybe even forever.
"What? Per- what in Styx-Nico-where?" Grover's message made no sense to Percy.
"Grover, listen, you've got to break the connection!" Percy shouted back in the darkness. He heard a muted bleat of disagreement from his friend before he knew his connection with Grover had gone. He had hoped that it was because Grover was smart and broke the link between them, but dread filled his heart when he was engulfed by a sensation around his throat that was so icy cold, it felt like he was being burned. His eyes peeled open in horror and shock, but Annabeth was still resting gently against Percy's chest, her blood crusted hair swirling around her face. Percy glanced wildly around - there were no visible monsters in the darkness. Percy shivered violently - the temperature instantly felt like it had dropped twenty degrees in a matter of seconds. He spluttered to breathe against the the invisible vice-grip around his throat, trying to force air into his lungs with little luck. Oh Gods. He was suffocating. The feeling of absolute dread rose within him as he remembered the burn that comes from desperately needing air. Percy had never admitted it openly, but ever since had nearly suffocated after falling in muskeg during a quest with Hazel and Frank in Alaska, he had developed a pretty substantial phobia of suffocating. His eyes burned in their sockets as panic started to seep deep inside his mind.
"Yes, little Hero. You exceeded my expectations – You and Annabeth are coming right to me. Such sweet sacrifices your blood will make - the God's favorite hero and his love graced by destiny. Come to me, Perseus Jackson. Come and water my sacred stones, raise me and feed my wrath with your hero's blood," Gaea's voice filled the void. He wasn't dreaming anymore. This was definitely real.
Stars began to erupt behind Percy's eyes, his head swimming with the lack of oxygen.
Percy pulled the cap off Riptide and swung it through the thin air around his body. The grip loosened on his throat and Percy gasped for a breath of air before Gaea's hold on his neck intensified. With a terrified realization, Percy saw crusty yellowed eyes in the stone as they fell. The eyes were mostly closed, but were starting to open a crack at the bottom.
"Get out of my head!" Percy roared with his little remaining air as Gaea gripped his through once more. Gaea let out a deep, throaty chuckle that seemed to vibrate the very air around him as he and Annabeth swirled deeper and deeper into hell.
"Very well. But we will be seeing each other soon, Perseus Jackson, much sooner than you think." Gaea's voice boomed in voice that sounded like Hannibal, the Roman war elephant's shriek.
Sooner than he thought? That didn't sound too good to Percy. Percy looked down again, and to his utter horror, he saw a light moving closer and closer towards him. The icy choke-hold Gaea had around his neck faded. In the last few seconds before he and Annabeth crashed to the bottom of Tartarus, several things seemed to happen at once. He felt a pull around his navel and found himself roughly tugged up by an invisible, icy force – Gaea's force. Percy's body slowed momentarily, but not enough to keep his landing from seriously hurting.
In desperation, Percy pulled Annabeth to him one last time.
"I love you Annabeth," Percy whispered as he wrapped his one arm protectively around her head and the other tightly around her back.
He had just enough time to twist in the air, pulling Annabeth on top of him, his back facing directly towards the ground like a human air bag. Percy squeezed his eyes shut and braced himself. For a fleeting moment percy thought of his family - Poseidon, his baby cyclops brother Tyson, and most of all, his mom and her blue colored food. I'm sorry, Mom, he thought hopelessly, wondering if he would see her again and thinking to himself he probably wouldn't.
When Percy finally hit the ground, it felt like the pain of 1000 bolts of lightening ripping through every muscle and bone in his body. He collided with a sickening crunch against the hard rock ground. The air was forced out of his lungs, but he couldn't seem to find more.
White-hot pain surged through Percy's body. So much pain. Percy couldn't move. He couldn't breath. Surely, this was the end. His red-tinted vision swam in and out of focus for the briefest of moments before black spots appeared in the middle of his already blurry vision, growing larger and larger. He tried to call out Annabeth's name, but he had no air in his lungs to utter a single word. Rapidly, the darkness overpowered the Hero of Olympus. It called to him, promising peace and reprieve from the pain. Please Gods, no more pain. Please. Before he knew what was happening, the blackness in his mind washed over him and he saw no more.
So what did everyone think? Review and let me know if you would like to read more!
Also - about falling for days into Tartarus, there were some different Greek mythologies regarding Tartarus, one such being that it took 9 days to fall from earth to Tartarus, so thats the one I went with. Things will be a little drama filled for the next few chapters but its needed to get the story in the direction I want to take it for their journey to the doors of death so don't worry too much, this story will definitely involve both Percy and Annabeth and others as well.