Prized Possession

8: Out of Nowhere

"A hero is someone who understands the responsibility that comes with his freedom." - Bob Dylan

Percy staggered through the bushes, thorns and branches tearing at his hair and clothes. He ripped his shirt in several spots wrenching himself free, knowing that the thorns would simply bounce off his iron skin whether he was careful or not. They were small annoyances, easy to ignore – the real pain was the one twisting in his gut.

He didn't know how far he'd run, only that it wasn't far enough. His mind, fogged over with the haze of confusion from the shooting, screamed at him to run faster and further, that he had done something from which he would never be able to separate himself again.

He could hear his friends' shouts in the distance, calling for him to come back, but he ignored them, ploughing on into the unknown wilderness.

He only had one identity now: that of a murderer. And before long, the voices faded away into the distance.

A small, rational part of his mind pointed out that Morris had been about to shoot Annabeth, that it was her life or his, that Percy had had little choice in his actions.

The rest of his brain drowned it out with an unceasing chorus of shoulds, coulds and woulds.

I should have aimed for the leg.

I could have saved her without using the gun.

She's a demigod; she would have moved in time.

He might not even have been about to shoot.

He lost balance as his foot slammed into a root, and in another moment his hands plunged into the earth beneath him, but he dug his feet into the ground and stumbled on through the undergrowth.

The undergrowth in question, though, was not as extensive as it had looked from the outside, and before long, he found himself in the open, on the sloping shores of a large lake. The other shore looked like it was maybe half a mile away, while it stretched all the way to a large dam in the far distance to his left, and even further out of his sight to the right. The breeze ruffled his hair as he stood there, still disorientated, searching desperately for a new escape route, before he followed the path of least resistance, the way that seemed most comforting to him: the way down to the water.

He felt the cool rush of peace and rejuvenation as his hands broke the surface, followed swiftly by his face and the rest of his body as he submerged himself fully, trying to calm and slow his racing heart and frantic mind. The dirt he had picked up was lifted from his skin, and he saw it float away above him. He vaguely registered fish and naiads scattering away from him, apparently having sensed the raging emotions inside him and choosing not to put themselves in harm's way.

It only took seconds for the floor of the lake to flatten out, and there he curled up into a ball, shielding himself from the outside world, as he tried to make sense of the mess he'd made.

He had killed a man.

His friends had looked horrified after he had done so, and as he'd panicked, he had fled.

But however hard he wrestled with the idea, he couldn't work out how he himself felt about it. Had Morris deserved to die? Was the threat he had made to Percy and his friends worth his life?

Percy would have given anything to know what would have happened if he hadn't shot. But that path was closed to him, and for lack of a better option he stayed there, motionless at the bottom of the lake, confident that none of his friends would find him there.

And without a phone, without a clock, without any trace of civilisation nearby, who was to say he shouldn't just stay there forever, as though time was standing still and nothing ever changed?

As though he'd never touched a weapon in his life…

He didn't know how long he'd been floating there when his arms bumped against the ground, startling him out of his miserable daydream and prompting him to sit up and look around himself.

He'd drifted into the shallows, to the point where the water would no longer cover him completely. Otherwise, though, the lake and its surroundings looked no differently from when he had entered them.

"Perseus," came a woman's voice.

It didn't give him the same kind of feeling he normally got when someone spoke his full name, the feeling of breached privacy and vulnerability. Instead, it was a warm and inviting sensation, aided by the rich smoothness in which the word was spoken. He didn't resist as a pair of hands reached gently into the water and lifted him to his feet, supporting him and guiding him to the shore and up the hill.

He looked around in a daze, to see that his new companion was a beautiful dark-haired woman, perhaps a handful of years older than himself. Her eyes were a startling black that stood out against the paleness of her skin in the same way the hair did, but all were overshadowed by the bright red, moist lips that his eyes were instinctively drawn to.

She smiled as she saw him looking at her. "Come with me, Perseus," she said, "you have been drifting for far too long."

Words failed him for some reason, so he gave her a dopey smile to show some gratitude to her for taking him out of the water. Now he thought about it, there wasn't really any reason for him to be in there, was there? "Mmmm," he said to agree with himself that there wasn't.

He was rewarded with the white flash of the woman's teeth as she laughed, a joyous sound that filled him with hope. He couldn't even remember why he'd been hiding in the lake like a coward when there was beauty such as this in the world above.

She led him to the treeline, some distance from the water, where she sat him resting against the trunk of the largest tree in the area. He looked up at her expectantly, not sure if she had brought him here for any reason other than relaxation, but certain that if something new were to happen, then he should be ready to follow the path she laid out for him. She bared her teeth again in a soft smile as she knelt by his side and rested her hands on his sides, and he smiled back. Then his world dissolved into soft-focus and glowing lights as she leant forwards and kissed him.

It took his lips a couple of moments to figure out the best way to respond, and by the time his brain instructed them to push back and mould themselves around the woman's, she had moved to his right, kissing along his cheek before reaching and whispering into his ear: "So, you were supposed to be the Hero of Olympus, hmm?"

Her hands shifted then, slender fingers seeking purchase on his shirt, and, finding it, began to ease the fabric up his body, revealing the muscles on his stomach and chest before it slipped over his head. He whimpered at the loss of contact, but was quieted in an instant as she put a finger to his lips and her mouth to his neck.

"Hush, Perseus," she said between nips and kisses. "I would hate for you not to enjoy our time together, brief as it must be."

Brief? he tried to ask, but there seemed to be a disconnect between his mind and his mouth, and it came out more like "Bruh?"

Her reply was to giggle softly and sketch a shape only she could see on his belly.

"Just relax," she told him, her fangs poking cutely out of the corners of her mouth as she moved her hands to wrestle with his belt. "It will all go much more smoothly if you co-operate."

He had a vague sensation that there was something he wasn't quite getting. He knew the water would sober him up, but it was an awfully long way away, and while he could sense it over there, it didn't seem to react to his call. Not to worry though: whatever it was could certainly wait. After all, they were just going to have a good time, weren't they?

"You look delicious," she said as the belt came off and the jeans were dragged down his legs, where they, along with his shoes and socks, were tossed aside, as though she was undressing a patient incapable of looking after themselves. She gave another giggle as she squeezed the hard shape visible through his boxer-briefs, and he spent a moment considering whether he should be offended or not by that response. Such thoughts, however, were relegated to the back of his mind when she leaned forwards again to drop further priceless words into his ear. "Just think," she whispered. "What an honour it will be for you to be eaten by Lamia. I am the queen of the monsters who roam this world – and I have not feasted for so very very long. I starve for your blood."

The name Lamia seemed familiar to Percy, and he tried to stop her by standing – just for a moment, so he could get his thoughts straight. The woman seemed much heavier than he had expected, though, and seemed to take his movement – pushing up towards her – as a sign of eagerness.

"Patience, Perseus, I must find your Achilles point. This will only take a moment," she told him, tilting his head to the side for better access. He let her manoeuvre him, figuring that whatever it was could, like everything else, wait until after.

She bared her fangs and placed and open-mouthed kiss against his neck again, grazing her teeth roughly against the skin. He realised it was a good thing he had the curse if she was going to get rough. That thought was replaced by new expectation as she shifted her position and began running her hands up and down his body, as though she was searching for something. Her touches covered his whole chest, stomach and legs, before slipping round to his sides and back, edging ever closer to his mortal point, and though he still wore his underwear, he felt that this was the climax of their engagement, that this was why she had brought him out of the water. He closed his eyes in readiness, waiting for her to make her move. He felt her breath on his cheeks, her weight on his midriff, and then…

Nothing.

The weight disappeared. The breath ceased. His mind, still fuzzy, began to order itself at least a little more coherently. He opened his eyes to see Annabeth looking at him in a mixture of what was probably disgust, concern and confusion. Her knife was drawn and dust was settling in the ground around her.

"Er… Lamia?" he said, articulate as ever.

"So it seems, Seaweed Brain," she said, depositing a pile of his clothes on top of him. "Go and get changed in the lake. Then we have some talking to do."

He could see her shoulders rise and fall in a heavy sigh as he emerged from the lake, even at that distance. His body had thankfully calmed down in the cool water, and his mind had recovered enough that he was unable to leave the water without blushing from head to fortunately-now-covered-toe, but that sigh almost made him turn tail and dive back into the depths, never to return to the surface world.

He didn't, of course. She was waiting for him.

"Do you want to go first, or shall I?" she asked as he sat next to her. "Or would you rather wait until meeting up with the others so you don't have to go through it all twice?"

He shrugged. "I'll go now, I guess. I'd like a rehearsal for facing Clarisse, at least."

She gave a tired smile. "Whenever you're ready then."

He took a deep breath, wondering how to explain his actions with the kind of reasoning that wouldn't leave him seeming totally insane. "I guess I panicked," he began, noticing instantly a twitch in her jaw like she was struggling to hold back a comment. "Yeah, I know," he admitted. "That's an understatement. But anyway, I, er…" He trailed off again, unsure how to explain the frenzied horde of thoughts that had tied themselves to his mind and pulled in four different directions.

Her hand rested on his shoulder. "You can trust me, you know that?"

He looked up into her eyes, and, as always seemed to be the case, found in them exactly the answer he needed in that moment. Right now, they were calmer than usual, the kind of surface on which you could float without fear of storms or shifting seas.

"I know plans for the future aren't worth a whole lot, but I can promise you that this is just between us," she told him. "Without judgement, okay? A life isn't something it's easy to take."

He wasn't sure if it was deliberate or not, but her hand slipped from his shoulder and now hovered perilously close to his Achilles spot, the small of his back: a symbol of the ultimate trust he had placed in her, and which she had not betrayed. "I don't know how Lamia found me," he said. "I don't really even know what happened once she did: the memory's all fuzzy, like it wasn't really me doing those things. But she asked me to go along with her, and it just… I guess it just didn't occur to me that saying no was an option."

"Sounds like it could be charmspeak," she said. "Aphrodite kids get it occasionally. There's one at camp – Drew – where you have to be careful of what she says to you."

"It didn't help that I didn't know what you'd all think of me," he continued. "I mean, when I pulled the trigger, it was because it seemed like the only option, but I kept thinking after that I could have done something else, or at least not aimed for his head. But I had, and now I'm a killer, and it's tough to square that with the idea that I'm supposed to be a hero.

"You know, I didn't kill any of the demigods working for Kronos. I wouldn't kill them. In the battle, I always wounded them, or knocked them unconscious, because with the protection of the curse, I was the one person who was safe enough to do that. I even put the mission on the Princess Andromeda at risk because I told one of them to get off the boat as soon as he could if he wanted to live, and that might have been what got Beckendorf killed, or maybe Silena had told them so much already that it would still have happened if I hadn't. But it's probably best that I don't know the truth, because it might not be a truth I liked if I heard it."

She didn't speak when he paused, as if she knew that there was more to say, that he was only waiting for the strength to force the words out. Her hand stayed steady on his back, apart from her thumb, which rubbed his shoulder reassuringly.

"I did all that because none of them believed they were on the wrong side. They all thought they were brave freedom fighters in the war for a better world, and none of them knew half of the things Kronos has done. I worked so hard to protect them from the fact that they'd picked the wrong side in a war they knew nothing about that I was willing to put my own friends' lives in danger, but Morris was just an unlucky mortal who was trying to look threatening so that he could save his wife, and I killed him for it."

Annabeth was silent for a moment, like she was making a decision, and then: "I killed one of Kronos' demigods in the battle."

He looked up in shock, but she carried on speaking.

"Like you, I was trying to injure them instead of outright killing, but everything was moving too fast, and I couldn't get a safe non-lethal hit in. So I gambled, and it turned out bad. He moved, just enough to the side, that it hit him full on, and… that was that."

"Why didn't you tell me?" he asked, feeling stupid once he'd said it: if it had been him, he wouldn't have wanted anyone to know he was a killer. Even so, her response surprised him.

"We had more important things to deal with," she said, which made him feel like he'd over-reacted to Morris' death, though he knew the effect wasn't on purpose. "And I rationalised it: this is a war, and people die; it was his life or mine; it was an accident. That doesn't make it right or anything, it doesn't make it somehow okay, but whatever motivated Morris, you can't pretend he was some kind of saint. He was pointing that gun straight at me, Percy. You saved my life."

He searched her face and strained his ears for any trace of doubt or falsehood in her words, but found none. "What about the others?" he asked.

"They understand," she said. "Apart from Clarisse, who's probably still complaining about you running away and abandoning us. But don't worry, I won't give her any more ammunition by telling her about the, um… little problem Lamia gave you."

He blushed and grimaced at that, which Annabeth took as a cue to invite him back into the fold. "Come on, they'll be happy to see you back safe and sound," she said. "We care for you, Percy. Sometimes, I think, more than you know."

No, this chapter is not nearly long enough to justify how long I made you wait for it. Most of the last few months have actually just been me trying to figure out ways to stretch it out, before I eventually realised that it just wasn't happening. They were actually going to unexpectedly bump into Prometheus at one point, which would've been fun, but I couldn't figure out an excuse for him to be in a random bit of Washington, so oh well, that went on the scrapheap too, along with some mediocre attempts at humour and a 17,000 word hallucination sequence in which Percy discovers his whole life up to this point has taken place inside the imagination of a snail in Djibouti.

Now, to all my wonderful reviewers, who'll probably all have to go back and check what they wrote to warrant the response I'm giving:

DeanJackson1411, surpriiiise, neither did Percy! To be honest, this chapter was supposed to be the only vaguely sexual one, so it kinda took me by surprise when I wrote it, too. As for Atlas - well, depends what you mean by friendship. I hope I'm managing to convey in the story that they've both got a certain respect and even liking for one another, but at the end of the day, they're on opposite sides of the war. It's basically like Romeo and Juliet... XD

ShadowsClaw, sorry to keep you waiting so long! I'd like to say the next one will be faster, but we both know there's a strong 99% chance that's not true :D.

ShadowKing042, well, I'm glad you have your priorities about how good Trix are and how bad rape is sorted? Glad you're enjoying it too!

Last but not least (because how could I pick a favourite and least favourite reviewer?), to Unnamed the guest, I agree, life in Othrys is pretty nasty at times - but one step forward is better than none!

Until next time, thank you all for continuing to read, and please feel very welcome to leave a review of your thoughts.

-Jeff.