Chapter 1: Unreliable
When Percy woke up, his mind was clear and confused. He felt his body lying on a hard, uncomfortable surface that was cool against his burning skin. And his body ached everywhere.
Every breath he took hurt his chest, as if lungs were so weak, they could hardly work properly. Now, with a clear mind, he was able to fully pinpoint exactly where hard stabs and pinpricks of pain pulsated from. Stings of needles covered his ribcage, with every little breath his body received, the movement of his weak chest rising up and down caused Percy to feel like a pincushion for all those pins and needles. His muscles were sore too, as if he decided to randomly become a decathlon athlete during a midlife crisis without knowing what his body would feel like the next morning.
The worst was his head, though. Annabeth would probably laugh at him if he told her that every time he tried to dig deep into his head to figure how he got himself into this sucky situation, a headache would follow bad enough to make him want to pass out. She would tease him on how he was overusing the capacity of his brain by trying to think so hard. Another thing that made it hard to look back into his memories was how somewhere on the backside of his head, lying on the harsh surface of the ground, was the pulsating thum, thum that made Percy feel like someone was slamming a hammer against his skull every time his heartbeat.
Against the screaming aches of his body calling out in protest, he brought up his arm slowly to the back of his skull to instinctively cup his hand over the stabbing pain. His hair was wet and sticky in the spot, clumping together as it dried. A noticeable bump was in the same area when he tentatively combed his fingers along his skull. He stopped when he reached the part that seemed to throb the most. It dipped down from the goose egg into a canyon of a gash– the source of the sticky liquid he was now sure was blood.
In a daze, he brought his hand to hover over his face as his head laid across the ground. At the same time, he blinked open his heavy eyelids carefully to look at it. Wherever he was, it didn't have a whole lot of light, but just enough for Percy to study the dark, crimson liquid while it dried to his hand.
His stomach twisted. Sure, he'd seen blood before– his and others– but this was different. Something really, really bad had happened. If it weren't for how empty and hollow his stomach felt, he likely would have thrown up.
What had happened to get him here? He tilted his head both ways, treading carefully as he reached the gash, to study his surroundings. Gray cement blocks on his right. On his left, his eyes dimly made out the rusty silver bars stretching out to reach each of the cemented walls horizontal to him. Now, he wasn't a genius by any means, but even to him it was obvious that Percy was lying half-dead and with a concussion in a prison cell.
Alright, he thought, stubbornly ignoring his pounding headache as he racked his brains. He tried to think of a plan. Or something. An escape route, a reason to how he got here, or really any thought that was actually coherent. The only thing he could come up with was, this is bad.
Great, so apparently Percy can't think right now. If Annabeth were here with him, she'd be having a field day. Seaweed brain, she'd say fondly before coming up with a kick butt plan that would make his jaw come loose a few hinges.
The thought of her made his heart ache more than he cared to admit. It was situations as confusing as this one where the two have come to rely on one another with. The two of them were impeccably stronger as one, but it wasn't the only reason he wished she was here. Percy wasn't sure why, and he certainly wasn't going to try to think about his feelings too hard with his headache how it was, but something about even imagining her presence with him now comforted and calmed him slightly.
Come on, she'd tell him, leaning over him with her golden princess curls brushing against his skin and a smirk on her face. Let's get you up and healed, she'd say. The tone of her voice would be lighter and carefree, but he knows that if she was with him, she'd be secretly concerned for him.
Listening to his imaginary Annabeth's advice, Percy turned over from his back to his stomach. He was careful to not place pressure on particular parts of his body that stung the most, but the whole 180 degree turn itself seemed to take so much excursion that he was heaving by the time he was on his stomach.
It was frustrating to feel as incapitated as Percy was. He was supposed to be the one helping others, not feeling like an invalid himself while hoping someone would help him. Don't get him wrong, of course, Percy's pride wasn't to fault so much that he was above others' help, but the idea of anyone risking their own neck just to help him was completely out of the question. He would solve his own problems, not for his sake, but for others.
He moved both arms across the dirty cell ground, elbows bent and hands in line with his shoulders. Then he took a long breath of air while trying not to wince at how badly his lungs dealt with it. It felt like he was about something amazing like jumping out of a plane, but in reality, Percy only pushed his hands off from the ground and brought up his knees in a position that made it look like he was about to kick out his feet and start pumping out some push-ups. But Percy was already shaking from muscle strain just holding himself up, gods know what would happen if he even attempted a push-up.
Knowing it would be a mistake to try to stand up, he pathetically crawled across the floor to the left back corner of the cell on hands and knees like a toddler still learning how to walk. Each movement felt like a walk through hell as his muscles shook and pins and needles stabbed at his ribs. He began to quietly moan and groan with every knee he shifted forwards.
If Percy could barely cross the cell he was being held in, how in the world was he supposed to escape?
Once he got to the corner, he pulled out all the stops with every bit of energy he had in him to turn around and collapse against the cement wall, making sure he was facing whatever lurked in the darkness outside his cell bars. He was so tired from those simple movements of moving across the cell that it took at least over ten minutes for him to control his pants and stop his lungs from making him cough.
Ok, he thought against the raging headache, now what? He had no idea where he was, no clue how he got to be there, and his head was currently very painfully bleeding out. Percy didn't know any better, but he was fairly sure that if he left the wound go, it would continue to bleed till he died. Annabeth would likely be very annoyed if he died because he stupidly let a wound open.
He looked down at himself, using his clothing as bandage resources. His eyes could barely make out any color or contrast through the dark, but even still, the charred holes covering his orange camp shirt and jeans were noticeable. At least the small part of his mind at work could match the cause of the holes to fire.
Though his right hand shook even at the excursion of lifting it, Percy brought it to the left sleeve of his shirt. He planned to rip off the fabric from it and tie it around his head to cover the gash, but he couldn't. His fingers wouldn't stay still as he tried to grip the sleeve, it was like his muscles were too weak to even clench the fabric, let alone rip it.
In defeat, he dropped his hand on his lap, too tired to fight a lost cause. He knew he was too weak to take off his entire shirt and that going shirtless would probably just cause him to freeze to death in this miserable cell anyways.
His gaze dropped to his pants. Nope, not taking those off. Only when he looked towards his feet did the nerves in his brain seem to connect with an actual lightbulb idea that only made his headache cloud his mind even more from overuse.
Slowly, he inched his legs upward, pulling his knees closer to his chest while ignoring every skewer of pain that shot through him. It was torturous as he leaned of the wall and poked at shoes, struggling to untie the dingy laces and pull them off. Every nerve in his body screamed in protest as he pushed his ankle-high socks bit by bit off his feet, rubbing against his sensitive, burned skin. He wanted all of it to stop. He just wanted to lie down and sleep and for all the pain to go away when he wakes. But Percy refused to die this way. If he was going to go, it wasn't going to be quiet.
As soon as both of his ashen socks were off, his trembling hands worked as efficiently as they could manage to tie both ends of the socks together into a loop. Then, he raised his arms with his masterpiece in his hands, weighing almost fifty pounds to him as he lifted it, and hooped it around his head like a headband, covering the gash.
Once positive he couldn't feel any more blood openly running down the back of his head, Percy relaxed– well, as much as someone feeling like death could, anyways. Now he didn't have to worry about an open wound bleeding out. Only the infection he would get from it later and about a thousand other problems including the fact that he was locked up in a bloody cell.
Knowing he could do nothing else in the state he was in, he finally gave into the fading consciousness rimming his vision. All the simple tasks he achieved felt more like running a marathon to his body. Percy was just so tired. And lonely.
When his mind finally gave into an uncomfortable sleep, Percy was thinking of his friends and family. Thalia, Tyson, Grover, his mom, and Annabeth. Especially Annabeth.
He woke to the sound of footsteps. A single pair, he managed through the fuzziness of his mind recovering from a sleep state and his nonstop headache. They echoed through the darkness beyond his cell door, and he blinked through the haziness of his vision to see a yellow light, slowly coming closer to him.
A figure appeared in front of the cell, the light of the lighter he held silhouetting the bars while Percy squinted his eyes beyond them to see who the man was. And as if to help, the man stepped forwards, to the bars, raising the lighter to his face.
Percy stared. Luke Castellan stared back. It made shivers go down his spine.
Luke studied him, blue eyes roving his appearance as he hid in the left corner of the cell. Percy could've sworn his eyebrows even raised the slightest at the sight of his socks crowning his head. It probably looked pretty stupid.
The traitor demigod had assumed a casual stance, side leaning against the bars of the cell easily, the open hand laxly tracing the rusty metal. Even the simple white t-shirt and 90's style baggy jeans he wore seemed a bit too casual for someone with such a twisted mind. He looked like a proud cat watching as a mouse struggled to get free from a mouse trap. Even with a headache, it didn't take Percy much brainpower to figure out who the mouse was.
He remembered now, of course. The hazy vision of relief when he woke up to Luke giving him nectar before falling back into unconsciousness. Considering he was still incapitated, Percy wanted to argue that he should've gotten more nectar, but that was probably the point. Alive, but just enough.
Still, Percy's mind wrestled against itself, only coming up with a blank when he tried to remember when exactly he was captured by the titans. He had a few images: lava, Annabeth, and falling, but the rest came up short. He knew he was on a quest through the Labyrinth to find Daedalus, so what went wrong? Were his friends safe? Percy must've hit his head really hard.
Finally, Luke spoke with a smug tint to his voice, "Welcome back to the land of the living, Percy." Personally, death sounded better at the moment.
"Jus go 'way," Percy slurred, barely recognizing his own raspy voice. He was too tired to deal with this.
Instead, the disgraced son of Hermes did the opposite. From the pocket of his jeans, Luke retrieved a silver key and slid it hole opening on the cell door. After the sound of a clean click and the creaking of the door swinging open, Luke stepped inside. He didn't bother to close the door. Both of them knew Percy couldn't escape.
When he was done, he slipped the key back in his pocket. He patted it slightly, giving Percy a knowing look that only made the son of Poseidon repress an eyeroll. He wasn't the one that was a son of Hermes. Besides that, he could barely stand properly, let alone pickpocket someone as an amateur.
Luke sat down, legs crisscrossed, on the dirty floor only feet in front of him. The light from the flame made his eyes hurt, but Percy stubbornly refused to look away from the other boy's face. "You know what your problem is, Percy?" Luke asked, not waiting for him to respond with a snarky remark, however, since he continued, "You're too unpredictable. Too impulsive. You're a loose cannon to both the gods and titans. An unreliability to us all."
"I would neva botray 'em." Percy glared hard thinking of Annabeth's tears only the year before. Luke had caused them. Luke, the person who had come to mean so much to her, had betrayed her, yet she still cared about him. Percy found it hard to care after the first few times Luke had tried to kill them all.
"Oh," Luke cocked his head to the side, "is that why the gods decided to take a vote on whether or not to kill you last winter?" He played with the flame on the lighter with his hand, "Don't worry, though, I'm sure you're right, Percy. The gods believe in you to make the right choice. Just like how Zeus believed in you when his bolt was stolen, and Dionysus believed in you every time he threatened to turn you into a dolphin."
He was on a roll now, tossing out the same old "join me or die" villain speech everyone has probably heard before. "Kronos doesn't want to kill you, Percy; he now sees you as a powerful asset. We want you to believe in our cause and side with us! What you did at Mount Saint Helens would only be the start of what you will destroy."
Mount Saint Helens. Oh. Like a puzzle piece found in between the cushions of a couch, it all seemed to connect in his mind so fast it felt like slamming full force into concrete. Percy shook his head, Annabeth's kiss, lava on him, calling the ocean, an explosion; it all made sense now. Kronos could've ordered him killed immediately upon finding him unconscious, but Percy changed the game by causing the volcano to erupt. Now he wasn't just an unreliable demigod with a dangerous prophecy on his shoulders, he was a powerful unreliable demigod with a dangerous prophecy on his shoulders.
He refused to ever join the titans, though. Sure, the gods might be really, really bad parents with attitude problems big enough to destroy continents, but at least they weren't constantly trying to kill… oh, wait. At least they didn't corrupt demigods into just– not that either. Well, at least Percy had seen some mercy in them on occasion. Artemis didn't seem so bad despite her slight disgust for the male gender and Hera wasn't all that bad earlier when she fed them sandwiches. The only thing the titans have done upon meeting him was try and kill him.
There was another thing too: his friends at Camp Half-Blood. Annabeth, Grover, Clarisse, Beckendorf, Chiron… he couldn't leave them for Kronos. Not to say the titans were currently active in a plan to use the Labyrinth to attack camp. If not for the gods, then for the people he cared about. Percy refused to be a part of a group set to destroy everything, no matter if he was good at it or not.
He spat at Luke, calling him by a few choice words that would cause his mother to box his ears, "Tell Kromos to 'ave ay fum time rottin' in Tartourus." He would probably sound a bit more impressive if his throat wasn't so dry and his tongue didn't feel stuck to the bottom of his mouth.
Percy had expected him to be mad, but instead Luke threw his head back and began to laugh. It was a sound without emotion, just another example of the empty shell the son of Hermes had come to be.
Then, without any warning, he stopped and used his open hand to swing a fist right at Percy's open jaw. Maybe if his mind had been working faster and wasn't filled with fog, he would've had time to duck, but instead there was just a quick shoosh of air, a sharp sting at his jaw, and a crack! as the back of his head collided with the hard concrete wall.
Black spots clouded his vision, and he buckled over. With all his luck against him, Percy's head hit the wall right where his gash was with only a sock headband for cushioning. He cupped both hands to pressure the poor wound, groaning as he did so.
"–don't even have a choice in the matter, Percy." Luke's voice cut in between the pain, "Kronos is having you serve him whether you like it or not."
He looked up, staring at the other demigod as black spots danced in his vision. He had just been told he was a loose cannon and now Luke was saying Kronos thought he could actually control Percy. He hoped his face conveyed enough confusion for Luke to see because his jaw hurt way too much for talking.
Luke continued, either because he got Percy's memo or because he wasn't done, "At first… my lord wanted me to do it, but now he sees an opportunity with you. He thinks a demigod like you would cause far more destruction and chaos amongst the gods."
What? Percy was confused. Why did Kronos think he would ever help him with whatever part he wanted him to play in? And why did Luke look so relieved?
"You, Percy Jackson," Luke said, smiling in the warm glow of the flame, "will have the honor of hosting the titan Lord Kronos in your body."
Author's Note: What do you think so far? Got to admit, all of Percy's monologue in the beginning of the chapter took a while to write; I hope it was worth it. Next chapter will be with Annabeth.