A/N: From now on, I'm trying to stick to one POV per chapter. This chapter is set a couple of weeks after the last one. REMEMBER: Percy has never before fallen into Tartarus. The Prophecy of the Seven has not happened!

POVs: Percy

Disclaimer: You know already that I'm not Riordan or Rowling, and I'm certainly not both.

Chapter 25

Everything was dark; so dark I feared I was in Tartarus. And in my dream, I indeed was.

It was a fiery hell. Burning, no water to save me in this desolate pit, no relief from the eternal fire that licked at my skin.

I was tied to a post. One moment, I had been falling out of the sky, and the last thing I had seen was a flash of light that could have singed my eyes out of their sockets. I had fallen, fallen while the flames burned to my core, and even when I knew I had hit the ground, I was still falling.

Into Tartarus. Just my luck.

At the beginning, I'd known it was a dream, that I wasn't really in Tartarus, but then things changed. Days passed in the pit; weeks passed. Not that I knew, of course, because there was only eternal night in Tartarus. And as the months of me being tied to an inescapable post that eternally crackled like a pyre passed by, my reassurance that I was only in a dream faded.

I didn't sleep at all in this state. All I knew was the fire singing my back as the hours passed away. There was no one else; just a horizon of faint red light and blackness everywhere. No one else until the snake slithered along and spit venom into my wounds.

It was the same evil venomous constrictor from before, and this time it slithered right up to me, whispering "Murderer" over and over again. It coiled itself around me tightly, enough for me to lose my breath but not pass out, and then leaned into my back before digging its fangs into my freshly burned skin. The poison hurt like nothing else had before; the snake dragged its fangs down my back, ripping through skin and flesh and leaving scars everywhere. But even long after the snake slithered off again, the scars did not heal. The fire burned on.

I didn't know how much time had passed when the fire finally began to burn itself out. And when it did, I began to long for its presence; because the absence of the fire caused a stinging pain in my back.

After weeks of a dying fire, it was finally all gone, and my hands were freed while I was submerged in an icy, ink black ocean.

I drifted around in the ocean, savoring its coolness on my back and its healing powers on the snake's venom, for a long time, breathing in the inky water. Until, finally, finally, I drifted my way slowly back up to the surface of the ocean, my back burning once again as I was lifted towards the light.

I broke through the surface, and the bliss ignorance of the world that I'd maintained for the past few days was gone. Now, the light of the sun hit me full in the face, my back and shoulders burned with agony, and my legs shook as if made of jelly. My entire body groaned, and I let out a small moan of pain when I lifted my hand to shield my face from the light.

And then, I realized that my eyes weren't even open. There were people bustling around me, but I could barely hear anything; it was like someone had stuffed my ears with cotton.

Careful to not let the sun's brightness blind me, I slowly opened my eyes.

There were, indeed, people bustling around me, but there were far more than I had originally thought. And they were all screaming at me, though the only thing I could hear were muffled sounds.

I reached into my ears to see if there was any cotton there. There wasn't; there was nothing in my ears but a faint ringing noise that was getting louder and more painful by the second.

My eyesight was blurry, and I could barely see the people's faces. However, I could tell that they were all wearing distinctly red-and-gold clothes. And the one nearest my face was the one I first saw properly.

When my eyes had really focused, I could make out her blond curls pulled in a messy braid over her right shoulder, her pale skin and stormy grey eyes. She had tears streaming down her face but was smiling nevertheless.

I tried to use my voice, but all that came out was a very faint croak that I couldn't even hear, and so I reached for her with my hand. Very, very slowly. And she grabbed it gently, as if she knew that it hurt like hell.

Gods, I did not feel like looking in a mirror right now. I must've seemed to have been blasted out of Mt. Helens a hundred times.

Slowly but surely, the ringing in my ears subsided and my eyesight unfogged. I began to hear what all my classmates were yelling at me.

"PERCY!"

"You're alive, mate!"

"You've been out for a while now."

"Seaweed Brain, don't you dare scare me that bad again!"

"Don't worry, Jackson, you're officially off the Quidditch team. No more of getting hit by lightning for you."

A squat old witch who I immediately recognized as Madam Pomfrey rushed over to my bed. She shooed away absolutely everyone except for two people; Harry Potter and Wise Girl.

"Oh my gods, Percy. Swear to me that you will never again get on a broom." She said it indignantly, but her eyes betrayed the worry and relief.

"Trust me, Annabeth," I managed, "It wasn't too much fun for me either. What time is it?"

"Well, you've missed about three weeks of school," stated Harry. "So today is December 13th and it is around 10 in the morning."

I tried to sit up, surprised I'd been out for that long. But when I did so, not only did all my bones ache, but my back stung aggressively, as if I'd actually been bitten by the snake in my dream of Tartarus.

Harry was white as a ghost, and Annabeth didn't look much better as I fell back down onto the pillows. "What?" I croaked, sounding like a toad that had been stepped on.

"Um… Perce —"

"Madam Pomfrey!" Harry called.

The squat old witch hobbled over again. "Mr. Potter, I insist you leave if you're going to be yelli—"

"No, really, Madam. This is really not good. Percy, could you turn onto your side?"

"What are you talking about, Ms. Chase? The boy needs to rest." But I was turning over already, trying to see what Annabeth was talking about.

Madam Pomfrey covered her mouth, her eyes glistening with tears when I'd turned. Annabeth let out a small yell and started crying.

Harry's reaction was the worst of all. He had a look of utter horror on his face, as if he himself had committed a crime.

I turned my head very, very slowly, trying not to disturb the ache there, and realized what was so bad.

The back of my mattress was soaked — not simply stained, but soaked — with my own blood. And it was still seeping out of two very large, prominent puncture marks on my back, surrounded by scars that I knew had been made by the snake in my dream.

Madam Pomfrey whisked Harry and Annabeth away, both of them shell-shocked from what they had seen, then drew the curtains around my bed and told me to strip to my underwear.

I did so, and she came back in. The nurse inspected the wounds for two long minutes before sighing in resignation and terror. "Mr. Jackson, I'm afraid that these are magical wounds, severed into your skin with deep Dark Magic. The only way for them to heal is slowly and without the use of any magic. All I could do was to stop the bleeding."

I looked at her, barely surprised. "Madam Pomfrey, what is written there?"

"Sorry?"

"I want to know what the scars that were carved into my back say. What is written on my back?"

She said nothing, but only proceeded to hand me a mirror to hold and then held a mirror up to my back.

There was only one word there, along with the two puncture marks. I looked up and down the painfully perfect jagged lines running down my lower back before putting the mirror down.

Madam Pomfrey said nothing as she grabbed rolls of bandages and wrapped them around my entire torso, covering the nasty word that was there and the other faint scars there from my battles of years past. She quietly remarked that the bandages could stay as long as was necessary, because they magically clotted blood and always stayed clean.

She told me, quietly, that I was to stay in the hospital wing for three more days, and that I could catch up on everything I'd missed. I sat in bed, unmoving, and thinking only about that one word, the word that screwed my whole life up.

Once news had reached the entire school that I had woken up from a coma, people came to visit me. One by one, sometimes in groups of two or three. Some of them I hadn't known before, and some of them were my best friends.

Annabeth came around every hour to give me my homework and talk with me. I loved her for it.

I told no one about the scars wrapped up in clean bandages. I wasn't ready for that.

Draco Malfoy came to sit with me and stayed for over an hour, talking about utter nonsense and pureblood crap. At the very least he cheered me up. Harry came over a couple of times too, to make sure I was fine and to update me on D.A. business. He said the group was coming along fine, now moving to more complex curses, but that they'd be very glad to have me teaching physical defense.

Ron came too, with Fred and George and Ginny. The twins told me how they'd gotten kicked off the Quidditch team by the evil toad, and how Ginny was now replacing Harry as Seeker, and two idiots who could barely stay on their brooms were now Gryffindor's Beaters.

Hermione came too, with Rachel. It was strange to see the two of them as friends, together, but both were cheery and gave me lots of gifts. Hermione mentioned to me that a friend of theirs' (a half-giant called Hagrid) had returned, though I wasn't too sure what she meant by that. Neville and Angelina, the Creevey brothers, even McGonagall came to see me, remarking that she was glad to see me awake and that I'd better get caught up on all my schoolwork ("Yes, ma'am.").

I spent the three days of bedrest eating Chocolate Frogs, holding Riptide under my pillow, and feeling a lot better. And most importantly, not thinking too much about the word forever engraved in my back.

Finally, on December 16th, Madam Pomfrey let me go early. It was snowing outside; it had been lightly falling for the past two days. I walked into the Great Hall and found it already full of life. When I made my way to the Gryffindor table, I was greeted with a very enthusiastic crowd. People, thankfully, respected the fact I was still aching and wounded and touched me only very lightly. Perhaps the best of these light touches was the kiss Annabeth welcomed me with. Several people wolf-whistled, and my ears turned hot.

She wound her arm around my waist gently, and I was thankful for that. Had she put on too much pressure, the scar would start to sting venomously again.

McGonagall came around with the sign-up sheet for staying over the holidays. I didn't hesitate before signing up, though Annabeth did. "I miss camp," she whispered to me.

"So do I," I whispered back, pushing a loose strand of hair out of her face and cupping her chin. "But we'll be back this summer."

Thinking about the godly world took me back once again to that scar on my back. And I began to think that had I not dipped for a swim in the Styx, I would never have woken up.

But the thing that unsettled me was that the snake's fangs, so unreal and in a dream, had literally carved a word into my skin, a word that was there when I woke up.

A word that proved to me that someone out there — and someone who was not my friend — knew about my indestructibility and possibly the one spot that could end me.

I had promised myself I wouldn't think about the word under the bandages, but the image in Madam Pomfrey's mirror came up anyway.

Immortal.

A/N: Well, that just happened...