Hello! Here's the next update.
I got a request a few chapters ago for Percy/Annabeth to tell the kids about Tartarus. This started off as that, but kind of took on a mind of its own as I went. I'm happy with it though. Enjoy!
"What was the scariest thing you ever did on a quest?"
The question came out of nowhere. I looked up from my task of arranging various tools in their places on the wall atop the workbench—the actual workspace rarely got used, but the collection of screwdrivers, a hammer, pliers, a drill, a few wrenches, and various other tools that had accumulated over the years saw surprisingly regular use with the knack my kids had for breaking things. I found Nicky, the source of the question, in the middle of sorting through their considerable amount of sporting equipment, waiting. Across from him, Logan had looked up from sorting through a bin of old weapons, determining what was worth keeping and what wasn't, and now looked between us, apparently wanting to know my answer as well.
Annabeth had tasked us with cleaning out the garage today. We'd been at it for about an hour now and we were making progress, slow as it seemed. Ollie had followed us outside and lay in the driveway, enjoying the late spring sun on his fur and watching us all work.
I looked between my waiting sons now and took a deep breath, thinking about the question. I didn't need to consider it long. "You know about the quest your mom had to go on in Rome to find the Athena Parthenos?" I asked. The boys shared a look and then nodded as one. I went on, "No one was allowed to help her and everyone, Mom included, thought she would die trying to find it."
"But she went anyway," Nicky said. It wasn't a question.
"Yeah, she did," I confirmed, "I went with her as far as I could, and then I had to watch her ride away with two gods on a Vespa to start her death quest. I couldn't do anything about it." I paused, and then told them, "That was the scariest thing I ever had to do on a quest."
There was a short silence, during which I returned a screwdriver to its home on the wall. Nicky's voice was oddly hesitant when he spoke again. "More scary than where you went after that?" I turned in time to see the warning look Logan gave his brother across the garage—it was not unlike the ones Annabeth had given me so many times growing up and still occasionally did.
I turned to face them now. "No," I said simply, "Tartarus was the scariest place I've ever been, but it was a different kind of—"
"Wait, so it's true?" Logan broke in, wide-eyed.
"What's true?" I asked.
"That you and Mom, you went to—there."
I blinked, surprised myself. "Yes." Admittedly, we'd never spoken outright to the kids—any of them—about our unexpected detour in Rome, nor had we told many people outside of the Seven where we'd been or what had happened there. But there were more than enough rumors that had circulated over the years. Word had gotten out and I'd always just assumed everyone, the boys included, knew.
Apparently not. Both were wide-eyed now as they stared at me. "I thought it was just a story," Logan breathed, "like the one about Zeus asking you and Mom to become gods after the first war."
I didn't bother informing him that that story was true—at least partially—as well. I shook my head. "We were there. Uncle Nico was too, before we were. He was alone, though, and got captured before he could make it all the way through. We managed to rescue him from some of Gaea's giants in Rome."
"But you and Mom… you found the Doors of Death?" Logan pressed, "You made it through? That really happened?"
"It really happened."
"Why didn't you ever tell us?" Nicky asked now.
"We didn't tell anybody," I explained simply, lifting a box off the end of the workbench. It was labeled Christmas Ornaments: FRAGILE. It should have been in the attic with the rest of the decorations. I wasn't sure what it was doing out here. I set it on the floor by the door. "A lot of bad stuff happened down there. Worse than bad. And it took us a long time to get over it, to learn how to live with the memories and the stuff that we had to do…" I turned around and met their eyes again, "We did what we had to, but we had to live with those decisions afterward and it wasn't easy."
"And leaving Mom for her quest was still scarier than all that?" Nicky asked now, sounding slightly dubious.
I nodded. "I fell into that pit with her. On purpose. She wanted me to let her go and pull myself back up—we were hanging from a ledge and I physically could have, but I didn't."
"Why?" Logan breathed, not asking so much as simply wanting to understand. He was far more logical than I ever was, even now, and I knew it was warring with him. Nicky, though, looked like he understood a little, and I understood that under the right circumstances—or the wrong ones, really, he'd probably do something similar. I had a feeling his fatal flaw wasn't all that different from my own and that terrified me.
"Because I loved her," I answered now, "And also because she was my best friend and we'd been through too much. I couldn't leave her again. And we had a better chance of surviving together."
"Did you ever regret it?"
"No."
Another minute of silence passed and I assumed the conversation was over. I turned back around and finished putting tools away before moving to the corner where our bikes were all haphazardly stood. I began wheeling them outside. Logan, finished with his task, moved to help me. He winced slightly at the lone spider that scuttled out from the now empty corner—Annabeth's genes at work and exactly the reason she was not out helping us. I put my son out of his misery and killed the thing. I was grabbing a broom to sweep the dirt and dried leaves from the corner when he finally spoke up again. "How do you make a decision like that?"
I glanced over. "A decision like what?"
"Like you did with Mom, and I guess like she did a lot with you too, but… like, sacrificing your life for someone else. How do you just do that? Or at least be willing to. Without a second thought."
I thought about his words, sweeping the debris into a neat pile. "Well," I told him, "A lot of the time, in those situations, there isn't time for second thoughts or even first ones. It's usually more instinct than anything. You just do it." I shrugged. "I guess I don't really have an answer beyond that." I looked at him. "Why?"
He shrugged. "I dunno. I guess I'm just not sure if I'd be able to do that. When it came down to it. I've never really thought about it."
"I think you could," I said. His eyes met mine. "I hope you never have to, but I think you could, for the right person. And you'll know." Logan considered this, and then shrugged thoughtfully before going back to work, sliding the box of weapons onto a shelf beside a couple of tents. Those that had not passed his inspection would be brought to Camp Half-Blood for the Hephaestus campers to melt down and reuse.
"Hey, Ollie, look what I found!" Nicky piped up, holding up the worn tennis ball that had at one point been used for fetch before it went missing. Ollie's ears had stuck up at his name and he trotted over now, tail wagging. Nicky tossed the ball in an arc toward him and he jumped up and grabbed it out of the air. Nicky smiled and pet the dog's head as he pranced over and deposited the ball once more at his feet. He obliged him in throwing it again, further this time. Ollie shot after it. Then Nicky looked to me. "I'm done over here, Dad."
"Looks good," I replied, righting the rakes and snow shovels that had fallen over at some point and lay sprawled messily behind the door. "Help Logan put the bikes back." I held up a skateboard that had rolled behind the water heater. "Logan, do you still want this?" He'd asked for it a few years ago and had gotten to be pretty good with it. I didn't know how much he really used it anymore though. Judging from where I'd found it, I was willing to bet it had been a while.
He looked over and nodded. "Yeah, sure."
I didn't argue or try to convince him otherwise—that was Annabeth's job. Holding it out to him, I directed, "Put it over there."
After another few minutes of work, we were nearly finished when Nicky asked, "So, if the stories about…. you know where are true, is the one about the River Styx true too?"
"What about it?" I asked, sweeping the rest of the floor we'd cleared.
"How you went in it and got the Blessing of Achilles."
I smirked. "Yeah, that's true."
"No way," he said.
"I might have known that," Logan put in thoughtfully, looking at me, "I think you told me once."
"Why not me?" Nicky demanded.
"Hey, you all found out the truth at different times and ages," I defended, "There was a lot to tell. It's hard to remember who knows what sometimes." I shrugged. "It was a long time ago and I lost the blessing when I went to Camp Jupiter after Hera swapped me and Uncle Jason." Before either could ask, I added, "I couldn't keep a Greek blessing at the Roman camp."
"That's stupid," Nicky decided. I chuckled.
"So Aunt Thalia was really a tree once?" Logan asked.
I laughed again. "She sure was. You should ask her about that sometime. Make sure I'm around."
He grinned. "Are all the stories true then?"
"Probably," I answered, "It was only me Zeus offered immortality to, not your Mom, but that happened too."
"And you said no?" Nicky cut in.
"I said no," I confirmed.
"For Mom," Logan guessed.
"For a lot of reasons."
He hesitated for a second and then asked, "What about the weekend getaway you went on with Aphrodite?"
"The what?" I asked, nearly cutting him off.
"Some kind of weekend trip you went on after the Giant War. To, like, Paris or something."
I narrowed my eyes, cleaning forgotten. "After the Titan war, Hermes interrupted your mom and me on a date so we could find his missing staff. He sent us to Paris as a reward. Are you talking about that?" I wasn't aware that was public knowledge, but I wouldn't have been surprised.
Logan shook his head. "No, it was definitely after the Giant War and with Aphrodite, not Mom."
"Really," I intoned, making a mental note to schedule a meeting with a certain goddess of love to tell her off, "No, that definitely never happened."
"Thank gods," he said.
"Are there a lot of rumors like that?" I asked, wary now.
"Not really," he replied, "Not like that, anyway. Most of them are about you and Mom going on crazy dangerous quests and saving the world. I guess those are all true. I kind of figured that one wasn't though."
I just shook my head, trying to shake that newfound information from it, and eventually resumed sweeping. "Is there any part of the Underworld you haven't been to?" Nicky asked, coming over with a dustpan he'd procured from somewhere for me to sweep the pile of dirt and debris I'd collected in the center of the floor into.
"I haven't been to Elysium," I told him, "Or the Isles of the Blest. I've seen them from a distance, but I've never been there."
"Do you think either of us will ever go on a quest?" he asked after a nod and a thoughtful pause.
"I don't know," I told him, sweeping the last of the pile into the dustpan for him to dump in the trash, "Maybe. I hope you don't have to though."
"Because you think we couldn't do it?" he asked easily.
"What? No, of course not. Both of you could do it, no problem. But quests are usually hard and dangerous, and sometimes they don't end well, even if you do survive. And then you have to live with those consequences. If I had a choice, I'd keep you all as far away from that stuff as I could. Your mom too. But since we can't, we just make sure you're the best heroes you can be. And you are."
"Do you think we'll have to go on one someday?" Logan asked curiously, "Will the gods make us?"
"I don't know," I told him honestly, "Given that they've never had any issues asking us over and over and that they know who you are, it's possible. We'll just have to see."
"Would they expect us to be as good as you?"
"I still have no idea what the gods expect," I told them, "And even if you did everything perfectly, some of them would still find reasons to complain. But you're both heroes regardless of what you do or don't do. You've learned to fight and you've killed monsters when you had to. That's all either of us and Chiron expect from you. Any other expectations you have should be your own." I finished, pretty proud of how I'd handled that. The boys were quiet. I looked around, assessing the now clean garage. "Alright," I said after a few seconds, "I think we're done."
"Yes!" Nicky said, "Can I go see if Hannah's home?"
"Are they back yet?" I asked. The Lawrences had left town a few days ago for a death in the family. We'd taken care of their mail as they had ours two weeks ago for our trip to California.
He nodded. "They got home last night. Mom talked to Ms. Sue."
"You can go see," I told him, "But don't invite yourself over. If she wants to come here, she can, but if she was close to her aunt—"
"She wasn't."
"Okay, well still ask."
"I will. Thanks, Dad!" he said, already running down the driveway, Ollie keeping pace beside him.
Logan opened the door, shaking his head, and held it while I grabbed the box of Christmas ornaments I'd left on the floor earlier. I almost bumped into Annabeth on the other side. She held the phone in her hand and surprise shone in her gray eyes. Her mouth turned up in a smile as she said, "You aren't going to believe this."
Since it was discussed in this chapter, I thought I'd touch on the subject of Nico really quick. Throughout my stories, not just this one, I've described Percy and Annabeth as the only people to make it through Tartarus alive, and I always get comments about how Nico survived too. When I say they made it through, I mean all the way to the Doors of Death and out again. Nico survived Tartarus, yes, but he got captured before he could make it all the way through. I explain Nico a bit better in this chapter than I have in the past, but for the record, that is what I mean when I say what I do. Nothing against Nico, of course! It's just semantics.
Thanks for reading! Next update coming soon!
