Chapter 8: I Might be Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs but I Still Don't Speak Farsi
Percy
I could hear voices. The words were impossible to make out, garbled and mushed together as my ears perceived them, but they were definitely voices. Familiar ones. First there was Annabeth's. At least I'm pretty sure it was Annabeth's. I couldn't think of any other voice with that exact pitch that might have a reason to be there. Not that I expected any of this to make sense – hallucinations didn't have to make sense in general. Then I could feel a soft face with curly hair press into the crook of my neck, holding me. I just sort of… relaxed. At first I didn't quite know what to make of it, just because I hadn't relaxed in – what had it been, a day and a half? Two days? Something. It was a foreign concept to me at that point, but I just melted in the presence of totally-hallucinated-Annabeth. It was okay. I mean, I was probably going to die, anyway. Better to go with good thoughts in my head. Thoughts of Annabeth and not thoughts of… him. I mentally stomped on the brakes and swung the steering wheel around. I didn't want to think about it. I didn't want to think about it. I wasn't going to think about it. I was going to calm down and go with a smile on my face or something. It was going to be one of those deaths where everybody goes on and on at my funeral about how brave and awesome I was. I wanted the phrase "kicked ass and took names" engraved on my headstone. Nobody'd know if I cuddled a hallucinated girlfriend in my final hours. I was dying; I could do whatever the hell I wanted and nobody could tell me otherwise.
Not-Annabeth was crying into my neck. I wished dearly that she wouldn't. It reminded me too much of… no, I'd decided I wasn't going to think about him. My body remembered, even if my mind didn't want to, and it wanted to wriggle away from the sensation. I was a little ashamed. This was Annabeth, not him. I knew the difference. I knew she wasn't going to hurt me – couldn't hurt me, given that whole part where she couldn't be real. Wasn't I supposed to have some kind of control over these things? It's not like I'd been doing LSD and was having a bad trip or anything, nor was I schizo. Actually, I had no idea. I could be schizo. If we had a family history, I didn't know about it, but then again, I knew very little about the medical histories from either side of my family. Hera seemed pretty 'round the bend to me. I'm sure a lot of the other gods were poster children for mental illness.
My mind had been going in that direction, and I really shouldn't have been surprised when my hallucination veered in that direction, too. I could smell him. Dad. He smelled like the ocean, as always. Briny and yet somehow fresh, like newly fallen snow. Like home. Strong arms were picking me up and cradling me like I was something precious. Fake Dad's skin was so cool to the touch, and I was so overheated. It felt like heaven. I didn't have the strength to make a bad pun about that one. I tried to get as close to him as I could, but I just… I didn't have the strength to do much of anything.
Dad and Annabeth, huh? The only people whose love I'd ever needed… and then doubted. Years of thinking Annabeth didn't love me back. Near-constant fear that I wasn't good enough for Dad, that I was a disappointment or something. As much as my memories were still trying to slip away from me, I could still remember that when I needed Dad most, no help had come. I was still dying out here in gods-knew-where. Hallucinating. Great. Why did I still need his approval like I needed air?
I mean, I guess everybody intrinsically needs to know that they are loved. That's pretty fundamental. I just wish love were a little easier to come by in the real world.
He was whispering to me, words I couldn't make sense of. Fingers carded through my hair and pushed the sweat-slicked locks out of my eyes and face. It was pretty useless, because my stupid hair would fall right back down anyway, but his fingers were cooling me down and I wasn't complaining. That temperature felt amazing. If I could dunk my head in the Arctic right about now, I wouldn't think twice.
No matter how gentle he was with me, stuff still hurt. My ribs still pounded with a dull, throbbing ache. My throat had been scraped raw. My head might have been in pain, but it was swimming so much, I couldn't tell. My wrists and ankles stung. One of my wrists still felt like I'd dislocated a bone. My stomach needed some frickin' food in it, but I couldn't think of anything that might get down my throat without irritating it further. Oh, yeah. I also probably had pneumonia.
Wait, a…
Hey.
Hold up just a damn minute.
From just staying still, lying down on the bed, I shouldn't be aggravating any of my injuries. Yeah, they'd still ache a little, but so long as I hadn't moved, I shouldn't have felt any new pains. So why did I? I didn't have the strength to move on my own, and even if I did, I'd still be tied down. Except I clearly wasn't because my arms were hanging straight down. I was definitely free. My bonds were cut and somebody had me.
Dad.
Annabeth.
They were real.
They came for me. They loved me. It was all going to be okay. If Dad was interfering, it meant he was throwing caution to the wind and was going to help me however much he felt like helping. The rule book had been burned. He came after all. Relief came first. I wasn't going to die. Probably. I didn't think they were keen on letting me die, at least, and nobody ever tells Annabeth what she can and cannot do. Dad had basically invented the category of badass, so three cheers for that. Plus, Apollo was the god of healing, and he liked me okay. If he couldn't patch me up, I was nine kinds of screwed. At least I'd go out knowing that nothing could be done.
I'd go out being loved and cared for. Wasn't that all that mattered?
Poseidon
Apollo had gotten my Iris message and had been awaiting our arrival. He immediately took charge and whisked Percy away to what we had left of an infirmary. The raging of Kronos had decimated half the building, and the repair teams hadn't felt any urgency to fix the place up right away, given that gods were almost never injured for long and were never ill, Zeus's freak asexual reproductive migraines aside. Moreso than anything, it existed in Olympus as a temple to the medical aspect of Apollo.
"Do you have what you need?" I asked. "This place seems… understocked."
Apollo's mouth tightened. "We'll figure out something. I'm not gonna let the little dude kick it just because we're low on bacitracin."
"What is-"
"Antibiotic. Widespread access to it causes a whole grunch of antibiotic-resistant epidemics, so… yeah. We're not friends and I can't say I wanted it in my infirmary, anyway. Criminey." He rolled his eyes. "What's a guy gotta do to get a hot nurse who gets all his technical talk?"
Percy groaned in Apollo's arms. I agreed.
"That bed over there'll work just dandy. Can you move the – yeah, the covers. Thanks." As irresponsible and bizarre as I'd always thought my nephew to be, he laid Percy down with the greatest of care, gentle and soft in every movement. He carefully pulled the sheets back over Percy's still form, then went rooting around for something in the room. He hooted upon finding it.
I raised an eyebrow. "An oxygen tank? He needs one of those?"
Apollo shot me a grin and yanked the mask and hose off of the tank. The damn thing all but exploded. "Are you insane?" I hissed. The rapidly decompressing oxygen hissed louder, the tank jerking in Apollo's hand.
"First things first, uncle. There's blood on his lower lip and chin. A little's on his shoulder too, where he turned his head and coughed. Kid's been coughing up some blood. My fantastic and awesome sense of… stuff… says that's the result of a lacerated lung. Problem: kid's got that Achilles issue. Normally, you just go in and patch up the lung if it's not too bad off and you catch it early. That, or if the damage is too bad, you remove the part of the lung that's wrecked and sew the healthy parts back together and boom – lung is fixed. Both require that you not be immune to scalpels and surgical scissors and suture needles. Catching my drift?"
"What's that got to do with an oxygen mask?" I said.
Apollo giggled. Flat-out giggled. I should just call the poor boy's mother right now. "Point is, my good cousin here needs a kind of healing he can't get from me – but he can get it from you."
My heart leapt. "F-from me? I am no healer, Apollo."
"And yet getting into a fight with pesahr here in the water is not unlike fighting a land war in Asia."
"You are not Mithra. Keep going."
"One little identity crisis and you never let me hear the end of it," Apollo grumbled. "Still. Water can heal his wounds is my point. We're not gonna hook him up to oxygen –" He grabbed the hose and offered it to me "-we're gonna hook him up to water. Basically, you. Tally ho and away we go."
"And you think that'll work?"
"I know that'll work. He can breathe water just like he can breathe air, except it'll heal his internal injuries without me having to cut him open, which, reminder, I can't do. It's not going to hurt him at all, so long as you keep the water pressure nice and low. Let it circulate and all. The pressure's what caused the damage in the first place."
Annabeth – how had I somehow forgotten that she was right behind us? – raised her hand timidly. "Uh – Apollo? Sir? What about the… well, the…" she gestured helplessly to the bruising all over Percy's side. "I'm pretty sure there's at least one broken rib in there. If that's what punctured his lung, what's to stop it from happening again? Will the water heal that, too?"
Apollo frowned. "The water's not going to be able to reach the rib. Once the lung heals right up, which shouldn't take long at all, access is blocked. He's gonna have to rough it on that one. Wait for it to heal like regular mortals do. It won't re-mess-up his lung, though, 'cause it didn't do it in the first place."
"Huh?"
"Nah. Lacerated lungs are from blunt trauma, not punctures from bone fragment. That, like, never happens. Okay, here and there, but not enough to mean anything. Basically, whoever whumped on our boy here hit him so hard, his lung gave out. Like a balloon when you squeeze it too hard." Apollo's eyes were dark, his energetic body suddenly still and full of anger.
"This being said, who did it?" he asked, his voice low. "Who thought it might be cute to beat the ever-loving shit out of my cousin and please-oh-please tell me there's something left of him that I can fry."
Annabeth shook her head. She smiled a little, dull eyes momentarily lighting up with pride. "Percy took care of the bastard himself. I'm afraid there's nothing left for anyone but Hades."
Apollo openly sulked. "Man, Uncle Hades gets all the fun. Y'think he'd let me slip into the Underworld? Just this once? It's for a good cause."
"Not on your life," I said. "So I just… what? Send water through here?" I pointed to the open end of the tube where it was supposed to be attached to the oxygen tank.
Apollo situated the oxygen mask onto Percy's face, gently lifting his head to get the straps on properly. "Give it a go. Go as slow as you can for… I'm gonna say five minutes." He breathed deeply. "If it works, it works, and if it doesn't… well, we'll try for something different. It's the only thing I can think of right now, and if we don't patch up his internal injuries soon, he's going to be beyond any kind of help."
I felt chills down my spine. My son's life rested quite literally in my hands. A little water and a little plastic tube. The whole thing felt surreal and impossible. I'd never done anything like it before.
My powers summoned a small trickle of seawater, directing it down the hose to Percy's mask. I could see it filling the corners. Soon, it would more closely resemble a water tank than an oxygen mask. Percy's small breaths continued fogging up the plastic.
"That's it. Keep going."
Annabeth took hold of Percy's hand. She caught my look and blushed. "Just in case he panics or something," she said.
I hated to admit it, but she was right. My son had been the victim of too many abuses to count. I hadn't been there to save him from any of them. I'd done what I could, but none of it was enough, and I knew that. Annabeth knew it. Percy probably knew it, too. Why should he trust me to protect and heal him? He had no reason to. He'd trusted me once, maybe, a little. I'd broken that trust, and there was no guarantee I'd get it back.
But then I heard something that stopped my heart.
Percy. A groan. A shift. Fevered eyes flicking open, closing again. Eyelids beating like hummingbird wings. Hazy recognition of the three figures surrounding his bed.
And the words, whispered soft on a breath of air and almost as transient.
"You came for me."
(A/N): Friendly reminder that right now, Percy's delusional and a little crazy. There is no filter on his internal dialogue, and it's not supposed to make a lot of sense when you look more closely at it. Loosely grasped, it has meaning, but it's all kind of weird, repeating concepts because they're all his brain can really process. He's out of his mind a wee bit right now, and I meant for that to show up in his internal monologue.
"Pesahr" is Persian/Farsi for "boy". Mithra is the Zoroastrian sun god. Zoroastrianism was the Persian religion at the same time the Greek and Roman empires were happening. Well, more like when the Roman nation was first getting up on its hind legs and thinking about becoming an empire. Basically, that whole thing is a mythology joke that no-one but me is ever going to get. My headcanon is that all of the old god pantheons kind of knew each other and interacted a bit. Pre-Islamic Persian and Greek cultures are very similar if you look. They also had significant dealings with one another, sort of like how the Romans and Egypt were cozy. Anyway, Apollo strikes me as the sort of guy who would try to look super-cultured and spout foreign languages at random, particularly little snippets that he's learned from hearing his friends speak it.
