One Simple Request

Chapter 4

...

-Three years ago-

Percy stood outside the entrance of a familiar, tacky lobby. He looked through the glass doors and saw hundreds of people milling around; a tall, dark-skinned man with bleach-blonde hair stood above them. Percy pushed open the double doors. The smell of stale cigarette smoke and mildew washed over him. He stepped over the threshold. Charon's head snapped up and his feverish eyes bored into Percy's. Charon flared his nostrils and shook his head once. Percy was flung backward through the doors and tugged harshly into blackness.

Pain.

Darkness.

Unrelenting pain.

Percy had no concept of time or place. Just an acute awareness of searing pain in every part of his body. He could feel cool, damp sheets under and over his body. Sometimes, he felt a something in his hand. He tried to move his fingers. His eyelids fluttered open once and he caught a glimpse of hundreds of sparkling lights.

Vivid nightmares plagued him the few times he actually slept. He felt like he couldn't breathe, like his lungs were full of water, and no matter how long the dream or how long he panicked, he could never just die. He preferred losing consciousness over sleeping. He prayed for death.

Over and over, he fought a losing battle against the fathomless shadow of unconsciousness, trying to wake up. It felt like years were passing. He began to think he was in the Fields of Punishment; his mind was fuzzy, but he thought he saw Charon a couple of times.

He began to smell things. Spices and flowers mixed together. Sometimes he was overwhelmed by pungent aromas and passed out again.

He could hear running water, and singing. Beautiful singing. Every time he heard the voice, his pain lessened. Sometimes he heard talking, but he could only make out his own name, Perseus. He was never aware enough to process any other words that were spoken.

Pain was his only constant.

At some point, he woke up as though he had only just been sleeping, which he suspected he had been. He was still in a good deal of pain, but he could open his eyes. Above him he saw a glittering crystal ceiling of purple, white, and green. His sheets were soft and they weren't damp anymore. Gauzy, white curtains rose to the ceiling around him. He didn't dare move for fear of causing more pain. He couldn't see or hear anyone near him. Out of the corner of his eye he could see long, full shelves and a tall harp. He had no idea where he was, but it felt safe, and good.

While he was trying to curl and uncurl each of his fingers with limited success, he heard some rustling to his left. He tried to turn his head, but inhaled sharply instead as the pain and stiffness prevented him from turning it much. The piercing sound of pottery shattering against the stone floor flooded his eardrums.

Someone ran to the side of his bed and knelt down. "Perseus! Oh, by the gods, you're awake," a woman's voice sobbed.

All he could see was the top of her head, covered in wavy, caramel-colored hair. The woman grabbed his left hand and pressed it to her wet cheek. "There were so many times I thought you wouldn't make it." Even though she was still crying, her familiar voice was calming.

Percy was growing tired, but he encouraged her to lift her chin with a nudge from his hand. She responded to his gesture and moved into his limited line of sight. A few more tears cascaded from her warm, brown eyes, tracing her delicate jawline and dripping onto his bare chest.

Percy closed his eyes and smiled softly. "Calypso," he breathed, as he fell back into a deep, restful sleep.

...

Percy awoke again, and this time he actually felt coherent. He could see Calypso stirring a pot over the fire on the other side of the bright, fragrant cave.

"Hey," he croaked out.

She whipped around and hurried to his side with a big smile on her face. "Someone's awake." She brushed the dark hair off of his forehead and smiled again.

"Water?" he inquired, hoarsely.

She lifted a bronze dipper from a bucket on the floor beside the bed. He savored the scent of cinnamon as she put an arm under his neck and slowly propped him up to drink. She held the dipper to his lips. "Better?" she asked as he drank.

"Much. Thank you." His smile turned into a slight grimace as she lowered him back onto the bed. Percy distracted himself with the white and silver ribbons that were woven into a braid across her head like a crown; the ribbons continued down into the thick braid that hung over her shoulder. Her cheeks tinged pink as she noticed his gaze and she engrossed herself in retying the plaited hair she held between her nervous fingers.

Percy rotated his stiff neck and looked at her; just looking at her face eased the pain some. "How long have I been out?" he asked.

Calypso looked down at him sadly as she perched on the edge of his bed. She took a deep breath and exhaled slowly before responding, "About two months."

"What?!" Percy shouted, "I've got to call my—" He bolted upright, or tried to, and groaned immediately as pain shot across his entire rib cage, front and back. "Ooh, ow. Okay, no sudden movements."

The sheets slipped off of Percy's bare chest and his eyes grew to the size of saucers as he looked down at his torso. His whole upper body was covered in dark green, almost black, tattoos. Percy thought they looked like vines with no leaves, or dozens of serpentine roads. From the way they roamed across his arms and chest and down his stomach, he had a feeling they covered his entire body, from head to toe. But before he could dwell on the unplanned body modification, he was distracted by the huge, jagged scars across his forearms. There were similar scars in a broken arc across his chest, stomach, and hip. The way they were sutured with crude zigzags made him feel like Frankenstein's monster.

Calypso trailed a finger gently across his palm, and then took his hand. She looked into Percy's confused, green eyes for a moment before apologizing, "I'm so sorry about the rough stitches. The skin was so torn up, it was all we could do to even close the wounds."

Percy mumbled, half to himself, "What in the Hades happened?" He looked at the goddess, his face a mixture of shock, confusion, and anger. "Can you tell me what happened?" he pleaded.

Calypso shifted on the edge of the bed to face Percy directly. She furrowed her eyebrows, pursed her lips for a moment and then began. "Well, I'll tell you as much as I know, which isn't much. You washed up here in pretty horrific shape." Calypso kept a hold of his hand as she continued. "You were practically dead; we even lost you a couple of times." She hesitated. A look of guilt flashed across her face so briefly that Percy wasn't sure he'd actually seen it. Percy squeezed her hand in reassurance.

"When you washed up on shore, I actually thought you were dead. You were covered in wounds that were bleeding heavily, many some from some sort of weapon, but the worst were from a massive shark bite across your torso and both arms. The shark's teeth cut deeply into your abdomen, but your forearms helped reduce the internal damage. You lost some big chunks of skin and muscle and some of your vital organs got nicked. But that wasn't the worst damage." Calypso bit her lower lip and her eyes darted around nervously, landing everywhere, except Percy's face. She hesitated, then finally spoke, her eyes glued to her hands, "I don't know how to say this Perseus, but...y-you drowned."

The color drained from Percy's face as the memories came flooding back to him in a maelstrom of fear and panic. Atlantis. The mermen. The water in his lungs suffocating him over and over, just like his nightmares. His breathing grew more and more rapid as he replayed the event in his head.

Calypso put a soft hand on the side of Percy's face and alternately kissed his hair and shushed him to stop his hyperventilating. She lowered her head onto his shoulder and whispered into his neck, "It's okay, my hero, you're safe now. You're with me." She rubbed circles on the back of the hand she was holding until he took a long, deep breath.

Percy couldn't process anything besides one overwhelming emotion. Betrayal.

...

...

-Present day-

Annabeth hadn't moved from her position, but she eventually found her voice. "It was him," she repeated, "I saw him."

Chiron, Nico, and Thalia exchanged worried glances. The centaur put both of his hands gently on Annabeth's shoulders again. "Come. Let's head back to the Big House, we have much to discuss."

Annabeth shook herself free from his grasp and looked each of them in the eye. "Damn right we do. I'm calling Rachel."

...

Chiron walked slowly behind the arguing demigods as they trooped back into camp.

"Annabeth. You've tried so many times in the last three years to get a quest to find Percy, and the Oracle has said nothing. Nada. Okay? Just because you think you saw Percy doesn't mean you're going to get one now."

"What the Hades, Thals? Five minutes ago you were ranting and raving about losing him and not finding him again! Now you're doubting whether I even saw him? I know what I saw."

They reached the worn, wooden steps of the Big House; Nico stopped beside Thalia. "Annabeth, just because we just found Riptide nearby, doesn't necessarily mean he was here."

"Really Nico? Now you agree with her? The one person in the world you can't not bicker with?"

"Well, it's just that none of us saw him...I definitely smelled a creature from the Underworld, and it could have been Mrs. O'Leary, but she hangs around camp all the time."

"I know what I saw," Annabeth repeated. "I'm not crazy and I'm not seeing things. I had already made peace with his disappearance. I concluded he must have died and chosen rebirth, and we just missed it." She looked pointedly at the son of Hades. Nico pushed his dark hair behind his ears as he looked at the ground.

Chiron straightened the sleeves of his tweed jacket and stepped in between the arguing demigods. "Children. Enough. I know you are trying not to get your hopes up, but I believe Annabeth. She may have been a bit stunned for a moment, but she is not easily fooled or prone to imagining things. Now, I must insist that we finish this discussion in my office before the others start stirring."

All four of them piled into Chiron's office. As always, Annabeth tried to avoid the photos tacked all over the walls. Plenty of new photos had been added in the last three years, but without fail, as much as she tried to focus on counting the cassette tapes beside the ancient boom-box, she couldn't help but stare at her favorite photo: the one from three years ago, of her standing arm in arm with Percy at camp, both smiling at the camera.

Chiron folded himself into his wheelchair behind the desk while Annabeth absentmindedly perched on the edge of a cushioned chair. Thalia and Nico both aimed for the matching soft chair, but she boxed out him out and plopped into the seat. Nico crossed his arms and landed with a huff in a hard, wooden chair between the girls.

The centaur uncapped the bronze pen and laid the fully formed Riptide across his desk. He steepled his hands in front of his bearded chin and looked warily at Annabeth. She met his gaze with steely grey determination.

"Nico. Thalia. Can you tell us how you came across Percy's sword?" Chiron asked, unfazed by the daughter of Athena's expression.

Nico and Thalia looked at each other, silently asking who should tell the story. Nico gave Thalia a slight nod. "Go ahead, Sap Fingers."

Thalia flared her nostrils and ignored the jibe. "As I was saying when we first got here, Skeletor—I mean Nico—and I decided that we would look for any clues relating to Percy on the anniversary of his disappearance this year, since no one else was going to officially keep looking for him."

Annabeth directed her icy gaze at Thalia. "Why didn't you tell me? I would have been happy to come along."

"Well, like you said, you had made peace with his disappearance, or death, or whatever, and we didn't want to mess that up—"

"And he's more of a brother to us than he ever was a cousin," Nico blurted out, "and we couldn't not try to find some answers. Even if it was completely hopeless."

"It was more of a rite of remembrance than anything else," Thalia continued, "we had no hopes of actually finding anything useful."

"Yet here we are." Chiron gestured to Riptide.

"Yes. Riptide." Thalia exhaled slowly. "Nico and I were lurking around some of the nearby places that had a connection to Percy. His old apartment, the site of the last battle, the Empire State Building...you get the idea. Anyway, somewhere near his apartment, a couple of dracanae caught up to us. They chased us for two or three blocks before we reached a dead end alley and had to turn and fight."

Nico jumped in again. "We took care of them quickly, and took a shortcut through another alley to get back to where we'd been before the chase began. That's when something bronze caught my eye, wedged into the crevice of a sewer grate, like it had been there forever."

"What Nico means to say is that I saw it first and kindly pointed it out to him."

Nico rolled his eyes. "And you filched it from my pocket before running off towards camp like a crazy person."

"And you had the audacity to appear from a shadow right in the path of where I was running."

"Excuse me, your Highn—"

Annabeth held up her hands. "Guys. Enough. We get it. You both found it, and it was by pure happenstance. Right place, right time."

Chiron looked at all three demigods. "You three should know, more than most, that very little happens in our world by coincidence. Perhaps fate is a more appropriate word."

Annabeth folded her arms. "Fate or not, what I want to know is why Riptide is still here and not returning to him."

"Because he really did die? How else could it stop working?"

It was Thalia's turn to roll her eyes. "Nico! We just talked about how Annabeth really did see him."

Nico looked at Annabeth apologetically. "Right. Sorry, I forgot."

"Perhaps we should start with finding Percy, not puzzling over questions to which we don't know the answer," Chiron chimed in.

Annabeth stood up. "Like I already said, we have to get in touch with Rachel. First, we see him just outside of camp with Mrs. O'Leary, and then we find Riptide all in the same morning? I know I haven't gotten a quest out of the Oracle in three years, but I can feel it. The time is now. We're going to find him."

Chiron remained thoughtful but nodded his approval, so Annabeth marched resolutely out the door, followed closely by Nico and Thalia.

Annabeth headed toward the cabins since they had started using the fountain in Percy's old cabin for all Iris Messaging. She paused at the door to the Poseidon cabin with one hand on the knob. Thalia and Nico stood behind her and gave smiles of encouragement. She pulled a drachma out of her pocket and took a deep breath as she walked into her boyfriend's cabin.

She had come in here dozens of times since he disappeared, but she had always made a beeline for the fountain and blocked out her surroundings. She couldn't ignore it this time though as she stepped over the threshold. Everything was the same; the minotaur horn hung around the post of his bunk; the fountain bubbled in the corner. The lingering scent of the ocean breeze, which smelled just like him, wafted over her. Her heart lurched as she realized what the thick layer of dust gathered on top of his bed spread meant. It showed how long he had truly been gone. Several cobwebs stretched between the top bunks and the low ceiling. She could close her eyes and pretend he had just walked out the door, on his way to teach sword fighting, or sneak in breakfast at the last possible minute. She thought back to how he looked standing at the top of Half Blood Hill. His beautiful green eyes were so tortured, not to mention his body. Where on earth had those horrific scars come from? Let alone the tattoos. Had he lost the Curse of Achilles? How? Why wouldn't Riptide return to him? Why didn't he come to camp if he was so close? Why hadn't he come back before now?

The questions bubbled up in Annabeth's mind like the water in the fountain as she held the golden coin over the misty water. She would have to dwell on her questions later though. Right now, she had a call to make.

...

...

Percy looked across the small, dirt clearing at his tent and watched as the tent flap was thrown back. The corner of his mouth lifted as a familiar figure emerged from the tent, bronze knife in hand, gaping at the huge, sleeping creature.

"You're early."

...

Percy raised his eyebrow. "Since when is that a problem?"

She sheathed her knife in the holster slung low across her hip. "It's not a problem, I'm just wondering why. But my guess is that your Underworldly friend here was a faster way to travel than a pickup truck?" She put one hand on her hip and gestured towards the sleeping hellhound with her knife.

"Come on Cal, you know you're happy to see me." Percy smirked.

Calypso rolled her eyes and smiled at Percy as she walked across the clearing to give him a hug. "Fine. Yes, I am. But Perce, you just left the truck in Manhattan. What if we need it again?"

Percy squeezed her tight, taking care not to crush the fletching on the arrows in her quiver. He pulled out of the embrace and looked at Calypso, keeping his hands on her shoulders. Her wavy, caramel hair was braided, like always, but these days she wore well-fitted olive pants and a white cotton shirt under a brown leather jacket. Her soft, leather boots helped her move silently over any terrain. He gave her his infamous lopsided grin. "Ever the practical one, aren't you?"

She smiled back at Percy. "One of us has to be. Plus, if you take care of business first, it leaves more time for the things you actually enjoy." She gave Percy a sidelong glance.

Percy walked around Calypso and sat on a stump around the cold fire pit. "We can always get another truck, and that one was on it's last legs anyway."

She turned around to face him and crossed her arms with a huff. "True," she conceded. "We received new orders while you were gone. How did everything go?"

Percy looked at his hands as he spoke, "It was fine. I saw the tree, everything was normal."

She knelt in front of him and lifted his chin to so she could look into his intense green gaze. He could tell she saw something in his eyes. "What happened Percy? You know you can't lie to me, you're awful at it."

"Really Cal, nothing happened. I just saw my parents old building, that's all." His eyes darkened, and then shifted nervously; he couldn't look into her honest face and lie, but he could try to omit some things.

She put her hands on her hips. "Spill it. The whole truth."

Percy sighed deeply. So much for that plan. He looked down at his hands and hesitated before speaking, "Well...I might have, kind of, gone near Camp Half Blood."

"What?!" she screeched as her eyes grew wide, "Are you joking? Do you have any idea how dangerous that was? What if you had been seen? Please tell me you weren't seen. He would kill you."

"It wasn't my fault." He glared at Mrs. O'Leary. "Someone took me there without my permission." He sighed and met her eyes again. "I don't think I was seen, but I can't be sure. Also, one other little thing..."

"Spit it out, Percy."

"I lost Riptide."

"Again? Gods, Percy. We have got to find a way to keep you from losing that sword." Calypso's eyes widened and she quickly looked at the ground.

Percy's nostrils flared as watched her realize exactly what she had said, what she had carelessly pointed out. He clenched his fists until his knuckles turned white.

"Percy. Calm down."

"Why? Why should I calm down?" Percy exploded to his feet, almost knocking Calypso off of hers. He began pacing rapidly between the tent and the fire pit. "It's not like I can make a godsdamned thing happen," he yelled at the top of his lungs and threw his hands in the air. "Will the earth start shaking? Will waves crash and water spouts erupt? NO! You know exactly why I can't hang on to that damn sword. I'm just a human. No, I'm not even that." He held his arms out and glared up at the heavens. "Well, Dad? Admit it! What am I to you now?" He looked back at Calypso and spoke with a deadly calm, like the eye of a storm passing over, "I'll tell you what I am. I'm nothing."

He dared Calypso to challenge his statement. All the facts were there. He was abandoned, completely, by the only family he had left. Stripped of everything that made him who he was before.

The goddess silently turned away from him and walked to the entrance of her half of the olive green tent. She looked back at the young man seated by the fire pit who had nothing but rage and pain in his eyes.

A twig snapped just outside of the clearing. Percy and Calypso both sprang into practiced action. She reached in and grabbed Percy's backup sword from his side of the tent and tossed it to him. He threw on the shoulder belt and unsheathed the celestial bronze kopis, smirking sardonically at the now familiar feel of the curved, single-edged blade. Screw Riptide, he thought, this sword was made for bloody battles.

Calypso had an arrow nocked and bowstring pulled taut. She moved closer to Percy, ready to pounce on whoever tried to enter their campsite.

Another twig snapped and Percy spotted two shadowy figures hovering near the edge of the clearing.

Percy jumped internally as Calypso suddenly called out, "I can see you both, thieves, come out now or I'll shoot you where you stand."

"Fine! We're coming out! Don't shoot us, daughter of Atlas."

...

Hello to my faithful and *very* patient readers! I know it's been so long and I apologize profusely for the wait. I just started a new job a few weeks ago, and it's been a busy time for me. I'm back on the wagon now though and rolling with the story! A prophecy awaits in the next chapter, so keep an eye out for that! I hope you all had a great holiday! : D As always, reviews and PMs are deeply appreciated!

much, much love,

imawordbender