Did falling count as flying, if you did it for long enough?
It wouldn't surprise Percy if Zeus took the opportunity, to be honest. He wasn't exactly on friendly terms with the King of the Gods, who had always been better at saying sorry than asking permission anyway.
And he sucked at saying sorry. It was a sign of how dire things were, that he was half-hoping for a smiting. Or, more specifically, a pre-smiting trial. One that involved Percy and Annabeth being whisked out of this literal hell-hole before they hit the ground. Percy had never been a big fan of Olympus, but he'd take it over whatever was waiting for them at the bottom.
Annabeth's lips brushed his ear; he clutched her reflexively tighter before he even heard what she was saying. I love you. The taste of guilt in the back of his throat was almost enough to choke him, but he shifted anyway, pressing his forehead to hers.
"I love you," he whispered back, and an ocean of regret threatened to swallow him whole. He should have told her before now. He should have said it the second he saw her again, or at least in the moments after she'd laid him on the ground. "I love you, I love you-"
"Shh." Her cheeks were wet as she kissed him, clutching his face in both hands, trusting him to hold onto her. "Shh, shh, Percy, it's okay."
It wasn't okay, but explaining that when they were falling to their certain deaths seemed a little redundant. He expected Annabeth knew that, anyway. The whistling in his ears grew louder and louder as gravity increased on them, rushing into a scream and a roar of hot air and sound as the hole spat them into a giant cavern.
Oh, Percy thought dizzily. So this is hell.
In the split second before Annabeth started screaming, he took it all in. The heat, the stench, the strange, rusty colour of it all. The air hurt, which was a new one, but not exactly surprising. Something pulled at the bottom of his stomach, sluggish and familiar and awful in some new way.
"Percy!" Annabeth yelled. "Water!"
It didn't seem to follow that there would be water in a place like Tartarus, but as Percy had recently learned, there was such a thing as good and bad water. The water here was, without a doubt, the bad kind, but what was he supposed to do? Let them splatter like eggs in the frying pan of hell? A dim wailing curled in his ears, beating through his skull. He looked at Annabeth, and nodded, and wasn't sure if he was more terrified of the water, or what awaited them beyond it.
Yelling helped. So did slamming into the water like the fist of an angry god, except for the part where the water hit back. Weak, the voices whispered. Pathetic. What son of a sea god is afraid of drowning?
The water closed over his head. Give up, it crooned. You'll never save her. She's going to die here because you weren't enough.
Annabeth's hand was tight around his. The voices were right, or they would be if Percy didn't get his act together. He rose above the tide of panic in his chest, enough to grasp at the weight of the river, enough to push them towards the air.
Such an easy thing, to drown. The water pulled at his limbs even as he swirled it around them, draining his energy, making it hard to breathe, let alone think. Let go. Let go. All you have to do is nothing.
"Land," Annabeth croaked. "Go sideways."
His grip on the water slipped, although he never once thought of letting her go. Apparently she had the same idea, hooking her arm around his waist. Why bother trying? What are you going to do if you reach land? You're in Tartarus now. It's pointless.
"Pointless," he mumbled. It was so cold, and he was so useless. The water encroached on him, welcoming him home.
The punch to his arm was unexpected. "Percy Jackson!" Annabeth yelled, or at least it sounded like yelling when her face was that close to him. "I did not spend months of my life tearing the world apart looking for you, only to lose you to some emo river. Swim, you big lump!"
That was going a bit far, in Percy's personal opinion. Percynal. He snorted, got a nose full of icy water for his trouble as he thrashed to keep his head above water. There's nothing left for you but pain and misery. You are already one of us.
"Tell me about your plans," Annabeth demanded. "You had a whole future planned for us, don't you dare give up on me before I can figure out how to improve it. Don't think I won't haunt you all the way to Elysium, Seaweed Brain."
You aren't going to Elysium. But the voices seemed weaker now, somehow, distant. The force of Annabeth's voice, even choked with water, overwhelmed them. Only...heroes...go…
"New Rome," he spluttered. "Architecture. Houses."
"You're going to plunk me down in the middle of a bunch of Romans?"
Stupid! the voices crowed triumphantly, but Percy knew Annabeth, knew that for all of their bickering and insults, she had never thought he was stupid. Or at least, not since he was twelve. Or at least, not since he had figured out that she liked him liked him.
Loved him. Annabeth had said she loved him.
"What're you gonna do?" Another lungful of water. He choked it up. "Build a whole new town in the middle of Camp Halfblood?"
She laughed, the sound wild and desperate and enough. The wailing dimmed again, like her laughter had pressed the flush on a toilet. "Why not? I'll put our house on the beach."
"Safe," he agreed, as his limbs started to work again. They swam for the shore together. "We can make it safe, for Greeks as well as Romans."
"Better taste in statues, though."
"Way better taste."
Over the course of his short (by human standards; he was running about average for demigods) life, Percy had had a lot of crappy experiences. It sort of came with the territory, which was a thought that made him so bleakly angry, he had to stuff it somewhere deep in his chest in order to focus properly. Rage at the gods might have felt satisfying, but it would get them killed if he wasn't careful.
Drinking liquid fire didn't exactly seem to fit the definition of careful, but it definitely rated up there on the 'crappy experience' meter. The single point of sanity in the world right now was Annabeth, and he clung to her like a lifeline as the Phlegethon seared its way through his body. As bad as it was, watching her do it had been worse. The voices from the river clung to him like cobwebs, no matter how hard he tried to brush their memory away.
She's going to die here because you weren't enough.
It wasn't the most cheerful thought in the world to keep him going, but it worked now in a way it hadn't in the river. She wasn't going to die. He was going to get her out of this place if it killed him.
Looking around at the blighted environment, it just might. But he was trying for positivity here, sort of.
"We'll find a way out," he said, memory stirring. Now that the immediate issues of survival had been addressed, he found he could think past the next two seconds. "The Doors of Death."
He had made Nico promise. Which, now that he could do that thinking thing, seemed a little unfair. The kid was fourteen, and had literally just been pulled out a jar. How was he supposed to lead anyone anywhere? In Percy's defense, there hadn't been a lot of time for planning when they were dangling over the side of a cliff, but-
That roiling sense of unfairness surged up his throat again, bitter and foul. While the gods were off dealing with their Issues, a bunch of teenagers was thrashing about the world, trying to save it from inevitable annihilation. It was all Percy could do to force himself to continue the conversation about what they were going to do, as Annabeth gave him that look of vague panic that happened every time she had to voice a plan she hadn't fully thought out yet.
"Well." She took a deep breath, and Percy breathed with her. It seemed like a good idea, in the face of the riot of emotion in his gut. "If we stay close to the river, we'll have a way to heal ourselves. If we go downstream-"
"Spider!" Percy yelped, because - well. Giant spider. He reacted without thinking, shoving Annabeth out of the way as a massive collection of legs and ugly hurtled out of the darkness at her.
"You have to be kidding me!" Whatever fingers of panic had been scrabbling at Annabeth before, they were replaced with a spitting anger now. They both scrambled to their feet as the monster - Arachne, he guessed - slammed on the breaks and skittered around for another shot. "First you drag us to Tartarus, and now you don't even have the courtesy to be dead. You - you-!"
Percy was paralysed. He had his sword, but Annabeth hadn't pulled out her dagger yet, and while he definitely understood the urge to start screaming at the world, he wanted to live to scream at the world from a more tropical vantage point. He uncapped Riptide and hesitated for a split second too long, torn between going on the offense against Arachne, or being on the defense to be sure Annabeth was safe.
The split-second past, and his girlfriend quite literally ripped the choice from his hand. A horrible wail echoed through the canyon as she sliced through the monster with the ease of a master swordsperson. She stood, panting and covered in yellow dust, looking like some goddess of vengeance as Riptide hissed in the poisoned air of Tartarus.
"Uh," he said, after a beat or two had passed. "Wow."
Annabeth stared at her hands for a second, before straightening abruptly, handing Riptide back to him. "Sorry," she said. "I really hate spiders."
He made to recap his sword, and thought better about it. As Arachne had just proved, every second down here counted. A tiny nugget of dissatisfaction burrowed into his gut, adding to all the others. "She deserved worst."
Annabeth glanced over at him, expression startled and...something else. Something he didn't recognise. But he was too focused on that sense of dissatisfaction to investigate the feeling more closely.
"Well," she said slowly. "She's dead, and that's one less thing to worry about."
It didn't seem like enough. Arachne had hurt Annabeth - tortured her, because of something her mother had done centuries ago. Honestly, Percy didn't doubt that whatever Athena had done had been shitty, that was how the gods worked. But Annabeth hadn't had anything to do with it. Like the rest of the immortal things that crossed over into their world, Arachne had taken a grudge to extreme measures and ruined everyone else's life because of it.
"Right," Percy said, dragging his thoughts back to the present. "What were you saying before? Something about downstream?"
"Yeah," she managed. "If the river comes from the upper levels of the Underworld, it should flow deeper into Tartarus."
"So it leads into more dangerous territory." Great. Except, Percy wasn't sure he meant that thought all that sarcastically. His fingers itched to kill something. "Which is probably where the Doors are. Lucky us."
"We're demigods." Annabeth gave his shoulder a tired nudge. "We're made of luck. Bad luck counts, right?"
It tugged the requisite laugh from him. He tried not to let it sound too pathetic, as they laced their fingers together and started to make their way downstream. He keeps his other hand firmly on Riptide's hilt.
"Hey," he said, thinking about the way she'd pulled it from his grasp. "What happened to your dagger?"
The spasm of pain that sliced across her face made him wish he hadn't asked. She tipped it up to the surging clouds overhead, trying to hide her expression from him.
"I dropped it."
For all that they'd only gone a few hundred yards, the sound of voices didn't really surprise Annabeth. The chances of the voices belonging to anyone - or any thing - friendly were slim to none, and it wasn't in the nature or purpose of Tartarus to give anyone a break. Honestly, she was surprised they hadn't immediately been beset by monsters from all sides, instead of just Arachne.
Just Arachne. Annabeth tried to summon up whatever terrible feeling she had seen written on Percy's face after she'd killed the monster. All she could manage was relief. Maybe a little bit of satisfaction, but certainly not displeasure. Her enemy was dead. She doubted her fear of spiders was going anywhere soon, but the root cause - the source of the thing that had haunted her for years and years - was gone. And she had defeated it in every conceivable way.
She deserved worse. Maybe she had. But Annabeth's fatal flaw was hubris, the same as Arachne. She couldn't help but wonder what she might have turned into, after all those long centuries.
The voices - female, multiple - dragged her thoughts back to reality, made her even more achingly aware of her lack of weapon. She still had her brain, of course, and she wasn't beaten down enough to discount that. But she would have felt better with a dagger. And something to drink. Maybe some pizza. Gods, she was turning into Percy.
"Empousai," she muttered, as the voices argued on. Her boyfriend nodded grimly - he had almost as much of a reason to remember Kelli and the rest of them as Annabeth did. Logically, Annabeth knew she couldn't blame the monster for Luke's downfall, that her old friend had made his own choices all the way to the end.
But she did anyway. Just a little bit. She wished for her dagger even harder, like that might somehow make it fall out of the sky - or what passed for it here in Tartarus. She'd stabbed Kelli once before, but really? It would be nice to do it again.
Eavesdropping on the monsters, it wasn't all that hard to put two and two together. Was that hope or anticipation stirring in her gut as Percy pointed out that they were heading for the Doors of Death? Maybe it was just hunger. The human body could survive days, weeks without food, but most human bodies weren't in Tartarus. They probably wouldn't starve to death, if it was possible. Dehydration would get them first.
Tracking the empousai was an exercise in masochism, between the fear that they would get caught, and dealing with the greater Tartarus environment. Annabeth thought that if there was anything left in her stomach, it would have long ago come up.
"I can't tell," she said when they reached the top of the cliff, because of course there was another cliff, "whether we should be pleased right now, or dismayed."
Percy squeezed her hand, looking out at the grim landscape before them. A primordial sort of fear shivered through her at the sight of all those monsters funneling towards the same place - the place they themselves were trying to get to. At least they were headed in the right direction.
"Both," he said, nodding as firmly as his tired head would allow him. "I'm thinking both."
They started to pick their way down the cliff, one aching movement at a time.
"Do you think it counts as flying if you're in Tartarus?" Percy panted.
Staring at him was difficult, in the middle of hell, but Annabeth managed it. "What?"
"We're underground, right? Zeus' big deal is with the sky. So, say we could fly right over this mess to the Doors - you think he'd count it?"
Annabeth didn't really have the breath to spare on laughing, but it happened anyway. "The question's sort of academic," she pointed out. "Seeing as neither of us can fly."
"Yeah, but if we could." He dropped down onto a ledge first, turned around to help her. She didn't really need it - or at least, she didn't need it any more than he did - but she understood Percy's need to feel useful. For now, at least, she was willing to indulge it. "Do you think he'd care?"
"Oh, I know he'd care. But the Underworld, even Tartarus, is all under Hades' domain. Hades'd protest any smiting attempts as encroaching on his domain, whether or not it counts. Between that and the fact that you're Poseidon's favourite son, I think we'd probably be okay. If we could fly."
For a second, Percy's face was overtaken by the same sort of blackness they were currently working their way towards. It was enough to make her breath catch in her throat, and she couldn't pick what she'd said that had caused it. And then it was gone, like it had never existed.
He laughed. "Trust you to logic us out of a problem we don't even have."
"Hey, you asked."
They drag themselves down another few feet. It feels like a mile.
"Maybe we'll find the shoes."
Annabeth found herself repeating her staring trick from before. "Percy, what?"
"The ones Luke gave me, back in the day." He didn't look at her now, forging his way ahead. "With wings."
The ones that had tried to drag him to...here. She tried to banish the memory, failed miserably. Tartarus was exactly the sort of place to start dredging up memories of Luke. "I think," she said slowly, letting go of Percy's hand to navigate a particularly difficult descent, "that if we did find them, they'd already be flapping. Just out of reach."
After what seemed like an age (plus a couple of breaks), they reached the bottom. Their success didn't really bring Annabeth any relief; they'd overcome one hurdle, but that only meant they were that much closer to the next. About the only advantage the flat ground brought was the fact that she could tangle her hand with Percy's again. She wasn't sure which one of them was clinging harder, but that was a comfort. No matter what else happened, they were here together. They were going to get through this together.
She probably should have focussed a little less on the hand holding. Not that it wasn't a small piece of wonderful in the face of this hellscape, but combined with their joint misery, it had been sort of distracting.
That probably had something to do with why they were now surrounded.
"Percy Jackson," Kelli the cheerleader cooed. "How awesome! I don't even have to return to the mortal world to destroy you!"
"Hey!" Annabeth protested. "I'm the one who stabbed you."
Not her brightest moment, but in Annabeth's defense, she was very tired.
"Oh, yes," Kelli hissed, touching her sternum. "I remember you, Annabeth Chase."
In Annabeth's personal opinion, the shit-talking that followed was truly inspired stuff. Judging from the looks Percy kept giving her, he was impressed as well. Which was nice. She'd take all the good feelings she could get, right now. Bringing up Luke was like a little prick of pain, sharper now than it had been in months, but she ignored it.
This was Tartarus. Everything had to be a weapon here.
Unfortunately, she misjudged. Not much - her words are enough to get the monsters fighting amongst themselves. But Kelli was exactly as powerful as her cheerleader uniform implied - you didn't get to be head of a squad without some serious hold over the other girls, and apparently the same rule applied to empousai. Annabeth thought something about a cheerocracy a little giddily, as the monsters moved in to the attack.
There was no stealing the sword from Percy this time, and she'd never been one for weapons with a long reach anyway. She left him to his thing, rolling on the ground and picking up a rock as she went. Convenient, she thought, slamming it into Kelli's face. The monster screamed, and Annabeth took advantage of her distraction to scoop up a handful of gravel, throwing it in her face as Percy took on the others. When this was over, they were going to have a conversation about the fair division of labour.
Except Kelli, jealous and enraged as she was, was still a monster. And Annabeth, resourceful and intelligent, was still an exhausted mortal with a rock. The lunge didn't take her by surprise, exactly, but there wasn't anything she could do about it. The heft of Kelli's body sent her crashing to the ground, the empousa snarling with triumph. Annabeth's fingers, already wrecked and trembling from so, so much climbing, drop the rock.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Percy. Monsters hanging off him, still striving to get to her. It can't end like this, she thought, reaching for him, the rock, anything. It can't.
"You know what your problem is, Kelli?" The voice came from overhead, tugging something deep and primal in the pit of Annabeth's gut. She knew that confidence, that arrogance. She knew it. "You've always been just a little bit too eager."
And Luke Castellan fell out of the sky in flying chucks, wielding a celestial bronze dagger.