Her fingers were so close. So infinitely close.
He surged forward, praying that he would catch her, the girl who had rescued him from imminent death time and time again. He could see the desperation in her gray eyes as she stretched her bloodied fingers toward his, grasping for life, death already caked into her fingernails.
It was his turn. He had to save her this time. She had done it too many times for him. As a thickheaded twelve-year old boy and a pompous twelve-year old girl. As an oblivious sixteen-year old boy and a calculating sixteen-year old girl. As friends. As lovers.
Annabeth. Her name churned in his mind, slathering his thoughts with memory after memory, until suddenly he couldn't remember a life without her. His life began not as an infant, but an exhausted boy heaving himself up Half-Blood Hill, only to collapse at the feet of an angelic blonde-haired girl. Annabeth.
He had lost her once. A terrifying quest filled with nightmares of her funeral, nightmares of her blood, nightmares of her screams. The sticky moisture of her blood trickling down his hands, the metallic smell overloading his senses.
"Why didn't you save me?" she had screamed in her last, dying breaths, gripping his arms with twisted fingernails. He had watched as her gray eyes had lost the breath of life, felt as her fingers had gotten colder and colder around his arms.
"End it, Percy. Please. End my torture," she had begged, her tears mingling with his. Her body had kept bleeding and bleeding, never stopping. The blood pooled at his feet, snaked sinuously up his legs, and suffocated his lungs. He couldn't breathe for the first time in his life. His brain threatened to explode. He was drowning in her blood.
Only fourteen, and he had been plagued by the darkness of death. Percy had awoken to scratch marks on his arms. He had tried to claw off her fingers in his sleep.
She had been rescued soon after, but the nightmares had never stopped. On days that Percy had felt especially bitter, this dream had reoccurred. The nightmare was so frequent that he could recite it in his head. It was almost like a faux memory, one that he kept locked in the deepest corners of his mind. Somewhere dark. But nowadays, those corners had grown larger, slinking slowly towards his happier thoughts. He thought more about how he was just a pawn of the gods. They were using him as a chess piece. He was expendable. No more than an errand boy.
Perhaps the world wouldn't be so bad if Gaea took over.
Blood pounded in his ears, devoid of hearing the shouts of terror from Nico or Hazel. He poured all of his concentration into catching Annabeth. He would not miss. He would not fail. He was sure of that. His fingers enclosed around her slender ones. Percy's body hit the stone above the chasm, skidding to a stop right before the pitfall. His fingers were still interlocked with Annabeth's. Percy let out a shaky exhale. If he had lost her…
His thoughts were interrupted by a scream. Hazel had detangled her cavalry sword from the ladder and was now racing towards the edge of the chasm. Her hand was clamped against her mouth, her expression pained. Nico slowed his pace, eyes wide with alarm.
Percy was confused. He had just saved Annabeth. Shouldn't they have been sighing in relief?
He looked down at Annabeth.
His vision shook red.
No.
A voice slithered into his ears, buzzing with a thousand different tones. Female, but not human.
If I go, she goes.
He could no longer clearly see. His eyes were trained on that one speck of sunlight reflecting off of the never-ending darkness of Tartarus. Her hair, her beautiful golden hair. Her princess curls, her lemon shampoo. That was the very last glimpse he got of Annabeth Chase before she was swallowed into the gaping maw of hell.
Seven days later, when the world lay in flaming hell around him, Percy Jackson came to a conclusion.
The gods and titans had possessed no humanity. He had done good in ending them both.