author's note: a darker take on post-Tartarus Percabeth.
i.
Her body burns, every molecule suffused with the acid air of Tartarus, but her eyes are still clear and she can see the Doors.
Monolithic and ancient, towering over them, even bigger than she'd imagined. Her heart stutters in her chest. Percy grips her arm and his fingers dig in, tight enough to hurt, and it makes her squeeze her eyes closed. Close. Close. So close.
She tries to think of daylight; she sees only smoke.
They collapse into it the way they always have, together, clutching at each other, foreheads touching, breath mingling in staccato bursts. Even here it is not quiet, or maybe it's all in her head, the screams of battle raging below them, inside them, in each other.
When the Doors slide open again, she still hears Tartarus ringing sharp in her ears.
ii.
He was never any good at standing still, but this is something else. He can't stop moving. Frank watches him worriedly as he paces on the deck of the Argo II, back and forth, back and forth, strides long and forceful like he's got something to prove. Itching to uncap Riptide.
The inside of his chest must be blackened, like something charred and dead. When Annabeth emerges from below deck with Piper trailing behind her, he doesn't even slow down. "Don't do that," he says in a hollow tone. "Don't leave my sight."
Annabeth's face is pale and drawn as he approaches. Piper speaks for her, arms crossed over her chest: "Percy, we were just going over the maps." There's pity in her voice, disapproval too, and she clearly wants to talk about this – whatever it is. Instead, he pulls Annabeth close to him. The gesture is more desperate than romantic, more claiming than comforting.
He couldn't handle fifteen minutes away from her, and from the looks of Annabeth's shaking hands, she couldn't either. "'S okay," she whispers. "I'm here. I'm not leaving." She rests a cold hand on his arm and squeezes. Instantly the vice grip in his chest loosens its hold.
Piper's eyes bore a hole into the back of his head, and he practically hear her words. They echo the ones already in his mind. This is wrong.
iii.
The screams come at night and they don't stop.
The others pretend not to hear. The lot of them, Piper and Jason and Frank and Leo. Hazel isn't quite there. She doesn't look at them in the mornings.
iv.
She's unprepared. Her hand flies to her side but grasps only air, and the hellhound rakes its heavy paw across her shoulder. The pain springs the gears in her mind into action – roll to the left, fast, get behind it while it's pouncing, away from the railing…
Her thoughts are interrupted by a loud, sudden whimper as the hound is jerked violently backward. She must be hallucinating now, because there's nothing behind it, nothing at all, except –
Except Percy.
His face is twisted in a brutal snarl, eyes glassy and jade-hard. One arm is extended in a fist. The hellhound whimpers again, a pathetic, pleading noise, as he rotates his fist. It slams into ground hard, and she hears a cra-aack!
She doesn't scream. Afterwards, she wishes she'd screamed. The hellhound, pinned to the ground by invisible force, paws at the air in desperation. It starts squirming, its massive limbs kicking out in every direction. Pained howls fill the air. It's begging, she realizes with horror. Percy holds his position, feet rooted to the ground. His muscles are corded and taut as he wrenches his fist a final time. She can hear the pop of the hellhound's veins. She watches as the whites of its eyes turns dark with broken vessels, watches as its saliva runs red with blood.
When it's over, Percy stands over the broken body of the hound, chest heaving with exertion.
v.
Her arms with lined with mottled bruises, a whole palette of them, purple-yellow-brown-blue. Rachel could turn them into art, if she painted them.
He bears his own scars where she's raked her fingernails across his skin. A red welt at the base of his neck where she bit him – he'd tasted like salt and skin and iron. Punches thrown in the dead of night, embraces where close wasn't close enough. These are the weights that keep them from falling.
It feels good to hurt each other. At least some facsimile of good, since she can't remember what it's really like, the way it was before the pit. Before was when they'd fit into each other, like two hands in a delicate grip, instead of how it is now – a hook into flesh, tugging, twisting.
vi.
After they win, Percy trains. He trains and he trains and he trains in the small arena with the stuffed innards of dummies spilling at his feet. At first, Jason comes to spar with him. He pushes Jason, sword clanging against sword, pushes him until something in those blue eyes snaps and a jolt of electricity arcs through Percy's chest. The son of the sea god is thrown to the ground, dust wafting up around him, and he laughs at the tang of blood on his tongue. Jason walks out then, and Percy's almost disappointed.
Annabeth shuts herself in dark rooms and holds her hands clasped together like a prayer. Mom, if you can hear me. Please. It's not enough.
vii.
She can't look at him anymore. His eyes are not the eyes of the boy she fell in love with. She is not the girl he fell in love with.
viii.
On good days, she can put pencil to paper and lose herself in the secret machinations of ceilings and arches and Doric columns. It's not the same, not quite; did she expect it to be? What once flowed as naturally as a river current is stilted now, held back by a chatter of voices. They are gleeful, arachnoid, all the dark things of the pit come out to play. They yell at her and drown out her thoughts.
Not so clever anymore, girl.
ix.
In some lost reserve she finds the last semblance of strength and she draws it up. One last try. This is the old Annabeth, the one who was nothing if not brave, the one who could conquer the world, and she will not let her Seaweed Brain slip away so easily.
She finds him in the arena. "Tonight," she says. "The woods by Cabin Seven. We need this." In Percy's eyes, she can see tiniest flare of hope, a flicker of something from that elusive before.
He agrees, and she doesn't know if she expected him to or not. At dusk, they meet at the brink of the woods, both fully armed. They slip into the trees and rove off the path, searching for a hunt. This is what they know best – how to fight, how to survive. One last try, she tells herself again, a mantra in the fading light. Perhaps old patterns never truly die. Perhaps all lost things can be found again.
Eleven felled monsters later, she thumbs away the streak of dust at her cheek and lets the dagger fall to her side. The emptiness inside her chest flares like radio static. Nothing has changed. She walks away from Percy, and he doesn't try to stop her.
x.
Two months since they've spoken a word to each other, and he's the one to break the silence. It happens on a rainy day. They sit on the beach together, side by side, and feel the tide lap at their feet. He doesn't look at her, and she doesn't look at him.
"I would give anything," he says, "to go back to the way it was."
"I know."