Disclaimer: I am not, and will never be, Rick Riordan. Sadly, this means I don't own Percy Jackson.
Warnings: Swearing, PTSD symptoms.
"I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo.
"So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us."
-J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring
By the time they had made it back to the car—and where Percy could ease himself into a seat with a wince, most of his battered body shrieking in protest—Annabeth looked like she had settled on ruthlessly inquisitive instead of freaked the hell out.
Which was fair. It wasn't like he had handed her many options, and Percy could count on one hand the number of times he had seen Annabeth Chase genuinely, properly scared. But he had a sinking feeling that by the time she wormed everything out of him, the revelation of time travel being an actual thing that happened was going to make the list.
He was still scared, and Percy hadn't spent months trying to figure out why he'd been running around acting like a lunatic.
He thought of when he had first woken up—convinced that he was dying on the Acropolis and everything was a hallucination—and winced. Gods, he hoped she didn't remember that.
"Percy?" Grover asked in concern as he took off his fake feet, dumping them in the back of the car. "You okay?"
"Huh? Yeah." Percy shook himself. "Just a bit achy all over. Don't recommend kidnapping, Grover; it's not good for the blood pressure."
Nearly two hours removed from his conversation with Triton in the water, the fatigue had long since settled in, and he was starting to feel like he'd been hit repeatedly with a Celestial Bronze baseball bat.
Grover clenched his jaw. "Don't—don't do that. Please don't pretend everything's alright, Perce."
Percy suddenly found his seat buckle fascinating.
His mom pulled out a small baggie of ambrosia from somewhere, pressing a piece into Percy's hands before handing the rest to Hazel. After a moment of deliberation, Percy shrugged and took a bite, savoring the taste of his mom's cookies as the bone-deep aches and darkness pressing in on his vision disappeared; Hazel sighed in relief as the ragged ugly cut along her hairline healed and bruises faded.
As Percy chewed, he stared warily at Annabeth, who gazed back at him evenly.
"So, Hazel." She turned her attention to the demigod sitting next to him, and the ambrosia soured in Percy's stomach. He could see the gears shifting beneath that blonde ponytail. "You both know each other from. . .before. You know his birthday. There's nearly a five year difference between you guys—but demigods don't start to attract attention until they hit prepubescence, and you two still move around each other like old friends and equals. You fought in the war—the second war, with Gaea—together."
Percy and Hazel shared startled looks, both shifting in their seats like they were being scolded by a teacher; Percy felt a small amount of guilty relief that he wasn't the only one who had forgotten what it was like to have Annabeth try, and succeed, at intellectually pantsing you.
"You think you were sent back after you lost on the actual Acropolis to prevent whatever caused Gaea to win and overthrow the gods—"
"We know we were sent back to fix things," Percy interrupted, the correction about Hazel and Kronos halfway out his mouth before he realized that right then was maybe not exactly the best moment for that particular nuclear bomb. "Or, well. . .erm. Carry on."
It was Hazel's turn to find her seat buckle very fascinating. Annabeth's eyes narrowed, but she was too much of a roll as she built to whatever conclusion she'd gotten on their short walk back. Percy knew she would let it go. For now.
"You don't know who sent you back," Annabeth said matter-of-factly. "Thus, it's still a possibility that whoever sent you back—or gifted you memories for the future, not there would be too many differences—may have simply been waiting for your deaths, and may not want you to do what you think. Unlikely, considering what you've told us, but worth bearing in mind."
Hazel stiffened, while Percy let out a frustrated huff of air, annoyed with himself. He hadn't thought of that possibility. Another reason to not sleep at night, then. Just peachy keen.
Annabeth, on her part, gave them a sympathetic grimace. "I'm sorry, Percy, but we need to keep our minds open until we get a better idea of just what we're dealing with here. Especially with Luke. . .with Kronos back. But that's not what I'm thinking."
"Annabeth, sweetheart, not to stop you, but what is the point?" Mom asked, her voice that strange mix of gentle and unforgiving all mothers seemed to learn somewhere; Percy's fatigued mind wondered wildly if there was some sort of top-secret college class for it no one had ever told him about. "We need to go home, and they've just escaped from a kidnapping. Any inductions can wait until they've had some time to recover."
"I know, I'm almost there, just thinking out loud to make sure I have this right—and if I am right, which I probably am, we should probably know before we go anywhere near Olympus," Annabeth answered with a professionalism out of place on someone too young to drive. At this point, Percy wasn't sure how much of it was her own caution and curiosity, and how much it was her repressing emotionally.
"Annabeth—" Grover began uncomfortably.
"Let her do it, G-Man," Percy said, tired. Honesty. Answers. Not lying to his friends and mom so much like it was going out of style faster than one of Apollo's haikus. He could do it.
The surprised, grateful half-smile that flitted across Annabeth's face made it more than worth it. "Thanks, Percy."
Percy gave a half-shrug, and ignored the sensation of Hazel's knowing stare directed at the back of his head.
"What I'm very poorly trying to say is if you fought in that second war, and if Percy was half the trouble magnet he is now in that war, you must have figured it out at some point, Hazel," Annabeth explained, leaving only half a second for dread to hit Percy in the chest. "And I doubt that you were a daughter of Hebe. Who was your godly parent, if you don't mind my asking?"
Percy froze, before reflexively grumbling something involving multiple uses of fuck in Greek under his breath that had Grover choking on air. Children of Athena and their intelligence and stratagems and, and. . .blond hair. ("I told you. Athena always, always has a plan.")
He really was not at the top of his game right now.
"Oh," Hazel said, an uneasy glint in her eyes. "That. Okay."
"Her godly parent? That's something—" Percy began, scrambling for some sort of cover, but Hazel cut him off before he could get anywhere.
"Percy, it's fine. You don't have to lie for me." Hazel brushed her hair back, and despite the ashy quality of her skin, projected courage and competence that would have made Reyna proud. "Normally, you and Percy and Grover would call my father Hades. But when my mother had me, he was called Pluto."
Grover made a garbled baaing noise that Percy would've usually found hilarious, while his mom groaned Percy's name under her breath. Annabeth looked at Percy, equally baffled and disbelieving. "How do you find these people? You've only had three months!"
"Time travel." Okay, there were some upsides to 'fessing up. "I remember them. And, in Hazel's case, she remembered me."
("So you don't remember anything?" " —Her name was Annabeth. You don't know her, do you?" )
"Sure, in your reality," Annabeth muttered. Percy. . .didn't have a reaction to what was probably true. "But what difference would the name Pluto make, considering a Roman name would—No. Oh, no."
The drachma finally dropped. Percy reflexively checked to make sure he was out of immediate stabbing range.
"No way. We would know. Chiron would have to know. Someone would've told us. The gods can't keep this kind of secret for this long. Absolutely not, it's impossible."
Percy wondered just how horrible a person it made him to ever-so-slightly enjoy watching Annabeth processing this.
By the time Annabeth had found him again in the first timeline, both of them had known about the existence of two camps for months. It was kind of fun watching Annabeth work out the idea of Roman demigods this time. And perhaps he hadn't forgotten this version of her threatening him with a knife right after his first meeting with Triton from what seemed like a whole age ago.
This was, he considered, rather appropriate payback—payback, between rocky, sort-of, Percy-hoped-someday, friends. With this Annabeth. Not as a miniature clone of his dead girlfriend, not someone who had so far threatened to stab him multiple times, not a stranger.
As Annabeth Chase, the girl who was deciding to trust him after Percy had gotten her mentor and longtime crush as good as killed.
Percy swallowed roughly; he wasn't quite sure if he liked that yet. If he felt comfortable with it yet—but he didn't have that much of a choice in the matter, did he? She was never going to be his girlfriend, and she was never coming back. ("You are such an idiot sometimes. Come on. Take my hand.")
The world was ending, and Percy's soap opera problems could wait.
Grover, thankfully, tore him out of his very depressing thoughts, exclaiming, "That would explain your scent! I've smelled Bianca and Nico; there's a superficial similarity from parentage, but other than that. . .you smell nothing like them. Like cobblestone and magical gold and—other things. How would the gods hide everyone from each other for thousands of years?"
And that dispelled Percy's long-running cheese theory.
Meanwhile, Annabeth, acting as the serious one, pointed in Grover's direction as she began to think out loud. "Unless they didn't. World War Two was more or less led by children of the Big Three, leading to the Great Prophecy. The American Revolution was lead by demigods rebelling against factions of each other, creating the first republic since Rome right as Camp Half-Blood was founded in Long Island. And maybe, a Roman equivalent?"
Percy's eyebrows raised. He hadn't known any of that. Annabeth, fully in Professor Mode, began to pace, and her tone took on a familiar matter-of-fact quality.
"Mortal history mirrors ours. The Trojan War was the original beginning of the feud between the Greeks and Romans in ancient times, and they certainly didn't hide from each other then. So something must have happened. Something big, to make them make us forget."
"The American Civil War," Hazel supplied, her eyes alight with something wary. "We largely sided with the Confederacy, or were neutral—the Twelfth Legion, that is. There were problems around then, I think; last time, there weren't many documents that survived from the time period. A small council originally handled matters, but around then, they kept having each other assassinated, and—I think shifted to a more democratic structure later."
"A legion?" Annabeth repeated. Despite the clear interest, there was also scorn in her voice for it that she couldn't quite keep out. Percy remembered having the same kneejerk reaction; he guessed it came with being Greek. "Makes sense, I suppose. Did any other legions survive?"
Hazel shook her head, pursing her lips before answering. "The gods saved the Twelfth from destruction after the fall of the empire, and Lord Jupiter gave us instructions in return: Go underground, keep recruiting demigods, keep Rome's spirit alive."
("Yes, back in Caesar's day—that's Julius Caesar, mind you—")
"And now there's another camp of demigods in America," Annabeth said wonderingly. "Or, I suppose, an entire legion. I can't believe it. Where is it?"
". . .On the opposite side of the country," Hazel said after a pause.
Percy frowned slightly, confused at her reticence, until he remembered: Hazel was Roman.
The two of them knew each other well enough and trusted each other with their lives, so it had never come up often, but Hazel was Roman.
What Annabeth was asking about was information that she, Percy, hell, Clarisse wouldn't have thought too much about giving up to another demigod they were convinced that they could trust. They were Greek, and while they weren't stupid—despite, Percy thought with something curdling in his stomach, what erased history events would suggest—they weren't about to block out a potential friend for the sake of an ancestral enmity.
It wasn't to say that the Romans were too paranoid for their good. Again, Percy thought, feeling much older than he had any right to be, while there were historical events to back that up, they didn't have the direct line to Olympus that Camp Half-Blood did. They hadn't even had the Great Prophecy to at least warn them something was coming, and Lupa was about as clear as New York traffic. They'd been born out of the fall of Troy.
He remembered the way the entire legion, from the lares to Octavian to the centurions had been so suspicious of him and what he was, when even he hadn't known what he was. ("And you, boy—you smell like a Greek sewer.")
Old habits died hard. Hazel had thousands of centuries of old habits in her blood that said that the Graeci were the enemies of the legion.
True, she wasn't always great at being Roman—Percy liked her for it, in fact—but a couple dozen generations of hatred was a bit hard to erase overnight. Percy had no idea what would've happened if they had survived the battle on the Acropolis.
And what, Percy thought, his blood running cold, would happen when they met some good Romans?
("The graecus! How interesting.")
Percy's head spun as he sat in the back of the car and tried to make sense of everything, while Grover and Annabeth had an ominously quiet whispering conversation up front.
It was definitely, Percy thought worriedly, about what to do if the conversation with Chiron went badly—a conversation that had been the condition for Annabeth and Grover's immediate silence regarding both of their memories, and Hazel's status as a Roman demigod.
It didn't seem to have consciously occurred to either one of them yet that Hazel was theoretically eligible for the Great Prophecy—and Percy wasn't a complete idiot to go ahead and disabuse them of that notion before it came to mind. He knew better than to just take the word of a Titan who had wanted to kill him at face value.
The explanation had made sense at the time, and neither Reyna nor Jason had asked after the Great Prophecy when trading notes on their respective wars with the Titans last time, but. . .there were four of them now. Percy had learned his lessons about making assumptions. ("My patience, and your time, has run out.")
There would soon be five of them running around and driving up Zeus's blood pressure if the Golden Fleece was retrieved and used, and if Percy valued not being murdered in his sleep by Thalia, there would be even be six of them.
Percy valued not being murdered in his sleep by Thalia.
Though considering how Hazel was very obviously barely a year older than Percy, he imagined that Annabeth had simply categorized it as a secondary concern in the wake of more. . .pressing things. Like time travel. And Luke taking on Kronos's spirit—and Di Immortales, Percy shuddered to think of what camp was like—along with the existence of Roman demigods. And any other ideas she got after re-examining the past couple months.
Percy really, really was not looking forward to returning to camp.
He looked over at Hazel, who was staring expressionlessly ahead at nothing and silent—neither of them had said a word in the back ever since starting the long ride home to New York. The rather impressive knot his stomach had tied itself into hardened.
When finally, finally they got home, everything was a blur for a bit.
Percy distinctly recalled Annabeth's "good night and see you at camp sometime in the next forty-eight hours" sounding as much as like a threat as anything else, and Grover's tight hug and parting words before leaving for camp.
"Whatever else happens, it's good to have you back alive, Percy," Grover had reassured him. "Nothing's going to change that."
Percy didn't even bother to think too deeply about how ominous that second part sounded or how he had pretty much just grunted with a fake smile in response, not trusting his absolutely wrecked brain-to-mouth translator in the least.
He didn't remember how he managed to change into pajamas that hung loosely on his frame, or how his mom was probably giving Hazel an abbreviated tour of the apartment and guiding her to the small unused bedroom that could be hers until they figured out what came next.
The absolute blur of a return all led to him currently lying on his back, in bed, staring at the ceiling, and wondering why the hell he wasn't already asleep.
He sighed, and rolled over to punch his pillow again in the hope a minutely different position would be the thing that let him finally pass out somewhere quiet and safe, where he wouldn't be at risk of being woken up by a pair of psychopaths. ("Good morning, Jackson.")
When his fist hitting the pillow resulted in a quiet knocking noise, he nearly jumped out of his skin, scrabbling for Riptide from his bedside table.
A moment passed, and another quiet knock sounded from the general direction of his door. Percy let his head drop on the pillow with a quiet thwump to muffle his exasperated groan.
He was an idiot. A tired one.
Percy got up and let Hazel in, who was dressed in what looked like some of his mom's old flannels—faded from being washed so many times, sleeves rolled up multiple times, and almost comically big on her.
"Hi," she said quietly.
Her eyes glimmered faintly in the dark—from some random bit of light finding its way into the hallway or something else, Percy couldn't tell—and he let her in without another word.
He didn't want to be alone either.
The two of them padded over to his bed, sitting on the edge of the mattress side by side. The telltale honk of a pissed off taxi driver echoed up from the traffic below the apartment, and both of them stared down at their laps.
They'd made it. Percy almost didn't believe it, but they had made it.
They were home—well, Percy's home—mostly alive and in one piece. They had people who knew who they were—who could help. Hazel and Percy were free of the hell that had been Othrys.
It didn't feel real, Percy decided. Not now.
The traffic noise floating up from the street suddenly seemed too quiet and painfully loud to his ears all at once, and Percy began to feel like he couldn't get quite enough air to breathe.
"Did I told you about Clytius?" Hazel asked abruptly to break the silence between the two of them, and Percy could've cried with relief. "About what he. . .did to me. Before we were brought back."
Percy shook his head—a gesture she definitely couldn't see with the lights turned off. She'd barely alluded to it when they had swapped stories while trapped in the dungeons of Othrys; Percy was ashamed to admit he hadn't thought too much of it at the time, preoccupied as he was with everything else.
He then shifted close enough for their shoulder to almost touch, carefully leaving enough room for her to run, and that seemed to do it for Hazel.
"When he trapped me, and k-killed Frank, it wasn't just my last day alive."
Percy inhaled, a sharp, quick thing that seemed as loud as the traffic to his ears. But Hazel didn't notice. She began to talk, words tumbling over and away from each other.
"It started as that, with my and Mother's deaths. But after a while, he got bored; he would place me in these nightmare worlds," she just about spat out, "Still mostly of that night with my mother. Sometimes she'd sacrifice herself, again and again, but sometimes she wouldn't, a-a-and then he would change it. It would be A-Alaska the second time, but y-you would drown for real, or Frank would be killed in fucking Canada, then you and A-Annabeth never made it out of Tartarus, or I was trapped, still trapped, and—"
Her eyes snapped up to lock with Percy's, wide and young and scared as her lower lip trembled. "Do you know what it feels like, to be dead? Not dying, to be dead? The numbness is awful."
Percy's face crumpled, and his forehead fell onto Hazel's shoulder, words failing to communicate him grieving for her. She raised a hand to his shoulder, her grip feeling tight and brittle as she held him there. For a long moment, the two demigods held that position, drowning in their memories. ("—trust in the justice of the Underworld, such as it is. That is all we can do, isn't it?")
Hazel finally spoke again, her voice far too even for the girl Percy knew. "Do you know how I knew it was real, in Othrys?"
Percy raised his eyes to look at her, feeling frozen as she looked at him with the same emotionless mask from the car.
"Because I didn't think so. At first I thought he had decided to be more creative, to torture me with the idea of being before Nico had ever brought me back. Where no one knew where I was, when no one cared. There was nothing to do—I was at the hands of them, trying to make me something I had already rather died than become."
Percy finally found it in him to respond, the words slipping out of him in a soft horrified voice. "Gods, Hazel. . .I'm sorry. So, so sorry. That's just—Schist."
—And Percy then mentally kicked himself in the gonads for the insensitivity, feeling something in his chest twisting and knotting at the stupid, stupid line.
Instead of I'm sorry, or Hazel, are you alright?—worthless question, neither of them had been alright in a long while—or some actual vengeful swearing on Hazel's behalf, or anything else, he'd gone with the stupid tone-deaf joke between them.
But Hazel let out a watery chuckle, and she let her shoulder bump against his and stay there. "Yeah. Schist."
And Percy figured that just maybe it had been the right thing to say after all.
"But that was it. There was no hope," she repeated, choked, as she looked at him like he was a lighthouse by a stormy sea, "And then there was you, Percy. That's how I knew it was real."
"Me? Preteen me, being dragged out of those cells by Tuxedo Man?" he asked incredulously. He hadn't exactly painted a heroic picture at the time.
"You were there, Percy. I was alone, and then you were there, looking at me like I was a ghost of better days gone by," she said wistfully, before adding, like it was a shameful secret, "I never had any hope before."
Percy practically flung his arms around her, holding her tight as he accidentally wound up with his face smushed into her shoulder. She, in turn, tightly wrapped her arms around his waist, her breathing sharp and hot against his left ear, and they clung to each other like the world had collapsed around them.
And maybe it had, just a little.
Hazel's first dry sob came what felt like a few seconds later, at first small and polite. She tried to draw back, but Percy stayed there, stubborn, and she immediately collapsed back into him, and they came hard and fast until she sounded like she was nearly hiccuping.
"Oh gods," she gasped, "They're gone. . .they're really gone."
Percy nodded silently, letting out a small whimper of his own as he curled more tightly into their hug.
Her dry heaves and sobs came faster and faster, her gasping twisting a knife into Percy's chest, until they finally became long, ragged and wet. Hazel muffled them against Percy, her grip almost painful as she began to hiccup as well.
Percy just let himself tremble and shake apart as he got his mom's flannels wet with his own tears, and he held onto Hazel just a little bit tighter.
Sally Jackson had only meant to look in briefly.
Just to make sure her son was there, alive and well and safe. And he was, too—he was her son, the gods and the games they were already playing with her child be damned.
But she lingered anyway.
Seeing him and Hazel Levesque practically on top of each other on Percy's bed hadn't given her much pause. From what Grover had told her, and what she'd seen herself, they had been through hell. From when he was little, Percy had sought out company when he was afraid, and he was clearly close with Hazel.
It was their faces that made her stay and watch, soaking in the sight of their brows unfurrowed by sleep, while Percy drooled into his pillow and Hazel's dark hair fell in a tangle over her face.
Any lingering doubts she had possessed about the time travel business, about having unknowingly lived with her seventeen-year-old son for months, were wiped away clean.
She had no idea what could age them so much that she hadn't fully realized how young Hazel was, or could make her forget what her own twelve-year-old son looked like when he didn't have the weight of the world on his shoulders.
But it made her yearn to fight the Fates on their behalf.
Hazel Levesque woke up when she could not move her left hand.
Old nightmares, ones of stern nuns named Sr. Leer and hands taped down and whispers of witchcraft, crowded her head.
They had seemed laughable when trapped in the palace of the Titans, but now seemed far more grounded in the mundane darkness of a bedroom. In that split second between sleep and waking she felt trapped, trapped again, after—everything.
There was no real label for it she could use in the privacy of her own head, not yet. Oh, she could manage well enough with the outlandish terms that had peppered any and all conversations these days. Time travel, rebirth, the final battle, Saturn. Easy. She was adaptable.
But what felt like her heart constantly collapsing in her chest seemed to defy any description which didn't consist of the screaming and sobbing she just now recalled muffling with Percy Jackson's pajamas and oh gods—
(She turned around just in time to watch Frank be murdered in battle.
Hazel screamed. For help, for the Seven, for Hecate, her father, Nico, anyone to save her.
The giant laughed.)
—and in that moment, she felt the ragged gasps return, her eyes kept stinging, and Hazel opened her mouth in a silent scream, her lungs betraying her as she jerked awake, failing to breathe, as—
Hazel froze. She escaped the last tendrils of sleep, saw what had so effectively trapped her left hand, and let out a small, quiet huh.
She felt her heartbeat slow down as she slowly eased her hand out from beneath a snoring Percy Jackson, his head turned towards her like a sunflower towards the sun.
Hazel thought of the first time she had seen him, and almost wanted to laugh at the idea of ever believing Percy was a god. He was. . .himself, Hazel decided. A mess, like the rest of them. But he let them know who he was constantly.
And gods above, was she grateful for that, when she had spent so long doubting her own eyes. She studied him for a moment, letting the warm, fond feeling from watching him settle on her like a fuzzy blanket.
It wasn't what she imagined maternal love to be like, but Hazel figured it wasn't that far off.
She laid back down on the bed, shoving the covers tangled about her ankles towards the edge at the same time. Hazel lacked words in English or French to describe their strange situation. It was bewildering, scary—Vulcan and Venus, it was terrifying.
But they could make some things—important things, what Hazel doubted had ever stood a chance before—right. Maybe not exactly important to whoever had sent them back, but world-defining to her and Percy.
Her last thought, before Somnus claimed her in sleep once more, was that there was something very wonderful in that.
("Nico di Angelo? He's your brother?")
A/N: Hi, darlings. It's been a while, hasn't it?
Firstly, because I've gotten many concerned messages over the past weeks: I am not abandoning this fic in any way. I am restructuring how I post and organize the narrative. I'm finishing Hold Tight and Pretend It's a Plan, and will complete the series through four eventual sequels, plus some one-offs similar to the Luke-centric one-shot along the way. Let me know what you think if you want, as always.
Good? Good.
Okay, so. It's been a very long, very scary couple of months. It doesn't look like that's ending any time soon. That has affected my life. I live in the USA.I have protested. I have had family get sick from COVID-19. I have had to finish college finals. It's been a lot, to put it mildly.
But what about my fic? Well, I've cobbled together what I hope is a brief respite from however this is all affecting you right now. This is the first of a three-part chapter wrapping up this story arc. Hold Tight and Pretend It's a Plan is finished!
For those of you who care, I have also finished the last two installments to the PJO/TKC cross-over, The Question of the Exploding Toilet. I will alternate posting for the next couple days until both are finished, and then sometime next week, the first chapter of the first sequel in the HTPP 'verse, titled Stick Together and Navigate the Storm, will go up. Hence, the slightly shorter chapter than usual, among other writing-related reasons.
Last of all, LOL at a couple of the guest reviewers. You know who you are, you lunatics, and I love you.