A/N: Hi Sparks! Sorry for not updating sooner, but the past few days I've had a killer headache, and looking at any screen for too long hurt my eyes. Well, I'm updating now! Yay! Please enjoy!
Disclaimer: Rick Riordan owns these characters...boo T_T
For once in the past three days (or was it four? He had lost track), Nico wanted to wake up on his own accord, and without pain. His headache was still as persistent as ever, feeling like his skull was slowly being compressed by a vice, but at least his blindfold was removed.
He was surprised to feel velvety sheets covering his body instead of waking up on a cold, stone floor like most dungeons would be. Yes, his hands and feet were still bound, but he had a greater range of motion than he had had over the past few hours. He found that he could walk in about an eight-foot radius of the bed he woke up in. It was far enough for him to reach the bathroom, but not long enough for him to even touch the door.
Nico sat on the edge of the bed, the iron shackles clanking together noisily, which did nothing to help his headache. And speaking of the bathroom, the door opened, letting a cloud of steam escape, veiling a shadowy figure. Nico grimaced and lowered his gaze. He really didn't want to be greeted with someone nude after waking up.
The smoke dissipated some, and Nico hesitantly glanced up. Thankfully he was in a guy's room, and said guy already had camo training pants on and was in the process of buttoning his shirt. Nico felt heat rising to his cheeks when he saw the man's washboard stomach, complete with a six-pack and surfer tan that one couldn't achieve without being in the sun nearly every day.
The soldier turned to him, and Nico's heart jackknifed in his chest. Those piercing sea-green eyes were looking at him with wonder and curiosity, and his finger paused from buttoning the black dress shirt he was wearing. The same lopsided smile that made his heart race was looking down at him with the same amount of warmth he remembered.
Nico didn't hesitate to spring up, hugging Percy into a fiercely protective embrace. Percy stiffened under the touch, and instead of hugging back, he just awkwardly patted Nico on the back.
"Um, I'm glad to see you're awake," Percy said awkwardly, slowly prying Nico off of him, setting him back down on the bed. The bright red in his cheeks wasn't missed by Nico, but it was obvious something was wrong.
The Percy he started dating wouldn't hesitate to hug him back and maybe even kiss him if there wasn't too many people around, but this Percy standing in front of him seemed slightly aloof, as if not knowing to hug him back or just not remembering Nico in general. He hoped the latter wasn't true. He had already dealt with Percy losing his memories before; he didn't want to go through that again.
"Why am I here?" Nico asked, taking in his surroundings fully for the first time since he had woken up.
The room itself was about the size of a cabin's main area back at camp, so about six-hundred square-feet. The walls weren't painted-instead they were pure obsidian, but little rivers of lava ran through the black stone like veins, providing a dull, yet comforting orange glow. There was one window in the room as far as Nico could see, but it was covered by light blue drapes. From the lack of light peeking through, he guessed it was nighttime.
Percy's bed was a canopy kind, with the blue curtains and everything billowing out like a princess's bed. It was obviously king-sized, with satin navy blue sheets, contrasting against the light blue of the canopy and the blackness of the walls. The drawers were made of a dark brown wood, and Percy had a lamp in the shape of a conch shell. A silver dog tag hung around the lamp, and Percy reached to put it around his neck.
"You're here because I asked for you to be," explained Percy, finally finishing buttoning his shirt, and leaving his silver dog tags rest right above his sternum. There was another piece of jewelry around his neck-a gold chain with a teardrop charm hanging in the middle. It was the same insignia engraved into the armor of the soldiers that had viciously assaulted Camp Half-Blood.
Nico scrambled back into the bed, fear beginning to grip his heart like ice. "Percy, please tell me that you didn't…" He couldn't finish the sentence. Percy hurting the people that were his family in all but blood? The thought was unfathomable.
"Didn't do what? If you're wondering about the others, then no, I haven't done anything to them. They're in the dungeons, but they're all very much alive." Percy walked across the room, grabbing a black coat hanging over the back of a chair. He threw it on over his shirt, and the gold epaulettes and medals hanging over his pectorals suddenly made the situation all the more real.
Percy had been brainwashed. And he believed he hadn't done anything wrong.
Oh, what had they done to him?
"Not exactly what I meant." Nico laughed nervously, putting his hands in his face.
"Then what exactly do you mean, amore?" Percy sat next to Nico, placing a hand on his knee. It was then that he realized Percy had put on white gloves. What was he exactly? A soldier? Lieutenant? General? For the love of the gods, he better have not been a general.
Nico was surprised that Percy had said something to him in Italian, but he brushed the affection off. It didn't matter if this version of his boyfriend fell in love with him-it wasn't the same boy. And it might never be the same boy again. The thought saddened him.
"I mean, was it you that attacked Camp Half-Blood?"
Percy visibly winced, causing for Nico's mouth to drop in shock, before quickly morphing into a scowl. If he had any doubts before, they were just confirmed. Whoever had kidnapped Percy turned him into a warrior, a cold, ruthless warrior.
"Orders are orders, Nico. Surely you must be able to appreciate that as you sold me off to these people." The coldness in his voice was impossible to miss, as was the fury adorning his features. "Yet you intrigue me. As much as I want to hate you for sending me here, I can't."
"What?!" Nico exclaimed, hopping to his feet. "I never wanted you here! I wanted you to be at my side, with our friends in camp!"
"Oh, please." Percy brushed off his protests with a simple wave of his hand. "I've learned to not trust anything that comes out of an enemy's mouth. You're still a prisoner, di Angelo, just a better treated one." He stood up from the bed, straightening out his jacket one more time.
"Don't forget your place, because I promise you I'm the only one with any leniency in this place. The others wouldn't hesitate to beat the seven shades of schist out of you for being even the slightest disrespectful. I have a meeting I need to get to, but I'll make sure a servant brings you food and a change of clothes. Feel free to use anything, but don't think about sifting through my drawers. I'll see you later."
Percy pressed a button on the side of his dresser, and a flat screen TV rose from a flat surface. He tossed the remote to Nico, before opening his door and leaving, the only sound being the fading clicks of his shoes.
Nico groaned once more, before flopping into Percy's bed. A flash of pain coursed through his injured arms and his already throbbing head. He reached for the remote, turned it onto the first channel, and Nico spent gods-know-how-long watching the different pictures, not really paying attention as he was lost in his own thoughts.
Annabeth squirmed in her prison cell as something small and furry ran over her leg. Was that a rat? Gross, but seeing as she was a New Yorker, and the fact that she had faced worse, it didn't really disgust her that much. At least the thing didn't bite her.
The prison cells were pretty much the stereotypical prison cells you'd see in the movies: cinderblock walls, a mattress that had so many stains that you couldn't tell where one started and ended with only a thin sheet covering the germ trap, a small toilet and sink in the corner (without the mirror, of course), and the classic iron bars separating Annabeth and all the others from the rest of the world.
The lights in this area were purposely made to flicker on and off. Maybe to inspire some kind of paranoia? Annabeth wasn't scared by it, but it did irritate her, and she could already imagine the headache she would get sooner or later.
Not that she had many things to be thankful for in this situation, but at least their captors let them keep their clothes. Yes, they were shredded and matted with blood, but it was better than the orange or black-and-white jumpsuits they so obviously would have to wear.
"Is everyone okay?" Piper's voice called out through the bars.
There were some sounds of groaning, but Leo replied, "Define 'okay', Beauty Queen. We're all alive, if that's what you mean."
"Rollcall!" Annabeth decided, just to make sure Leo's statement was true. Plus, she wanted to know if anyone was in interrogation or if they were honestly dead. Not like she was one to talk; she had died before, and Poseidon was the only reason she had a second chance at life.
"Jason?"
"I'm here, Annie."
Annabeth narrowed her eyes in the direction of Jason's cell, but continued anyway.
"I know Piper and Leo are here, so Will?"
"Yeah, I'm here."
"Chiron?"
"He's still coming off that sleeping medication," Will called out. "He's in a groggy kind of state. I'd give him another thirty minutes before Chiron will be fully coherent."
"Okay. Nico?"
There was no reply. Annabeth looked to her left and right through the iron bars, but she couldn't see the black-haired, olive-skinned son of Hades anywhere. She knew he wasn't on the same side of the dungeons as she was. The girls were on one side, while the guys were on the others. Chiron, for some inexplicable reason, was on the girl's side, but that was a minor detail.
"Do you think he's on the girl's side?" Leo asked, snickering softly.
Annabeth glared at the Latino, as did Will and Jason, well, to the best of their abilities. Piper then said, "If I could, I would punch you for that comment."
"Jeez, it was a joke!"
"A mean one," Annabeth said. "He's gay, not a girl, Leo. Never let Nico know you said that, or you'll be back in the Underworld before you could even start to apologize."
Will nodded his head adamantly, still giving the son of Hephaestus a wary look. He cleared his throat. "Okay, so if Nico isn't here, where is he?"
All eyes turned to Annabeth, to which she just sighed and rolled her eyes. It wasn't surprising they turned to her for answers, daughter of Athena after all, but it would be nice if someone else had the answers other than her for once.
"Guys, I honestly don't know. Hades, I don't even know where we are! We were unconscious and blindfolded when we were brought here, so I can't even begin to think of an escape plan!" Annabeth said, frustration taking the center stage for her emotions. She internally sighed, pressing her forehead against the cool metal bars. "I'm sorry. It's just, I hate not knowing something."
"It's okay, Annabeth," Jason said in what she liked to call his "Praetor-voice." She stifled a giggle at the thought of Percy trying to imitate Jason's tone.
Her thoughts darkened instantly. When she had died in Delphi, her last thoughts had been on how this was going to affect Percy. She knew she wanted him to move on, to not always be stuck on her, but when she learned of his relationship with Nico, it was a hard pill to swallow.
Nico had come out to the both of them at the end of the Giant War, explicitly saying that Percy "wasn't his type." How convenient that his boyfriend died at the same time she had, leaving Percy ready for the taking.
Then back in those torture chambers of glass, where Leto had kept her and Will captive for a week in their worst fears, when she saw Nico free Percy and hug and kiss him like he used to do for her, it felt like Percy had stabbed her in the heart with Riptide. Yes, she knew she was being a hypocrite for wanting him to move on, but the second she saw him, she had wanted to jump into his arms, and hold him close, and for him to be hers for all of eternity.
When she had been brought back, Percy had already been kidnapped. She shared tips with Nico on how to cope, because she knew better than anyone else what it felt like to have Percy abducted for long periods of times. But that seed of jealousy she harbored never fully died out, instead, at times, it seemed to fester.
She was trying to find it in her heart to accept the fact that Percy had moved on, like she had wanted, but her pride wouldn't let her. Percy had been hers first, and it was too painful to see him happy with someone other than her. It was times like these she really hated having hubris as her fatal flaw.
"Annabeth? Hello-o-o-o? Anyone home in La-la land?" Leo's voice asked.
"Leo!" Jason and Piper chided together, causing for Leo to smile at the attention.
"I was lost in thought, sorry," Annabeth said.
"Don't be. You're facial expression made it appear like you had an escape plan in mind," Will said nonchalantly, sitting on his mattress.
"Huh? Oh, no, that wasn't what I was thinking about. But don't worry, I'm fine," she insisted.
"If you say so."
Annabeth flopped onto her thinly veiled, stained mattress, the springs groaning under her body as she stared at the lava creeks that flowed through the walls, her thoughts spinning at a million miles an hour. She probably would've spent the entire day like that, when she heard a door open on its rusty hinges extremely loudly.
A soldier walked in, with what appeared to be training clothes, but a helmet with a visor covered their face completely. In the same robotic voice from the plane they had been kidnapped on, the soldier said, "Which one of you mind sharing your cells?"
"Depends," Jason said stoically. "Who do we need to share with?"
"Bring in the prisoners!" the soldier called out over their shoulder. Six more guards came in, two of them holding a single person up. Annabeth's heart clenched when she recognized who the unconscious people were.
"I'll take Reyna!" Annabeth exclaimed. "I don't mind to share."
"And I'll room with Hazel," Piper said.
The soldier made a gesture with their fingers, one which Annabeth didn't understand in the slightest, and instantly Reyna and Hazel were in their cells. Reyna was wearing an ace-bandage around her left ankle, bruises and scratches covered her exposed skin, she had a split lip, and a thick white bandage was wrapped around her chest and forehead. Her purple cape was in tatters, and the gold armor she usually wore had been confiscated.
"Who'll take the boy?" the soldier asked gruffly, pulling Annabeth out of her train of thought.
"I will," volunteered Jason.
Again, the soldier made the same weird gesture, and Frank appeared inside of Jason's cell. With such a big dungeon, Annabeth thought, shouldn't everyone be able to have their own cell? She didn't voice her question, though, because as they had already learned from when Leo bad-mouthed one of the soldiers earlier, they would be whipped ten times with a protogenoi's symbol of power.
"Food will be in fifteen." The soldier turned to the other six guards that had followed in. "Leave us."
"Yes, sir!"
The soldier took off their visor, but if Annabeth tried to focus on their face for too long, it would blur, making her feel slightly dizzy. From what she could make out, the soldier was a male with black hair, and she couldn't tell if his eyes were green or blue. His skin was extremely tanned, surprising for the limited amount of natural sunlight they got here. Annabeth hadn't seen any light other than from torches and lightbulbs the entire time she was here, but there was a chance it was night. Not like she would know; there was no window down here.
"So you're Nico's friends," he said with contempt, walking up and down between the cells.
"What have you done?" Jason hissed out, his tone promising to bring pain if he was allowed to.
"Do?" the soldier asked innocently. "I haven't done anything, Jason Grace, son of Jupiter, former Praetor of the Twelfth Legion."
Jason blanched, but peppered the soldier with questions anyway. "Where's Nico? Is he okay? He better not be hurt…"
The soldier gave a hearty laugh, before abruptly cutting off, standing right in front of Jason's cell with a powerful glower. "Learn your place, Sparky. We already whipped Repair Boy over there," he said, gesturing to Leo, who looked like he was shivering in fear. "What's preventing us from issuing you the same fate? Not your father, or your rank, or your accomplishments. No, take full comfort in knowing that you are all completely helpless and at our mercy."
"I'm not afraid if you whip me," Jason said, continuing to poke the bear.
Annabeth and Piper had been making the stop-talking motion with the hands, but clearly Jason's pride was going to get the better of him. Honestly, boys needed to learn when to let go of their egos to protect themselves.
"Oh? Really?" The soldier sounded completely amused. "Even if it's by my hand?"
"Especially if it's by your hand!"
He laughed once more. "So be it. But first, a present." The blurry image of the man's face finally dropped, only to reveal the face of the man she had been thinking about earlier.
Her mouth opened and closed without her permission. "Percy?"
Percy shut the door behind him gently, wiping the blood off the curl of the whip with his gloved hand, leaving a streak of red across his palm. He could still hear the screams of Jason Grace through the heavy metal, and the scared and frantic tones his friends used.
He had been lenient with the punishment-only ten lashes. Other generals would've done at the least twenty, but Percy knew they would do it until their victim fell unconscious. He used the shadows like a portal, sending Nyx's whip back in her direction. He had been getting better with all his new powers, especially with shadow traveling. Percy still preferred vapor traveling as it didn't consume as much energy, but while there could be no moisture in the air, shadows were everywhere.
He walked down the hallway, prepared to head to the arena to train, when he felt an arm get swung around his neck. Immediately, he whirled around, kicking the person square in the chest, before straddling their fallen body while holding a fistful of shirt in one hand, and his other hand brought back, ready to break the person's nose.
"Hmm, you've gotten better about that, I see," Triton said, giving a meek chuckle. A little glimmer of fear was in his eyes, but other than that the god looked more surprised than anything else.
"Oh, it's just you." Percy got off his brother, before helping him up onto his tails-err, feet. It was still strange to see the messenger of the sea in human form. Whenever Pontus wasn't around, he'd be in merman form, which was strange to see, but Percy had gotten used to it by now.
"Yup! Where you heading off to now, little bro? You're always running around like a chicken with their head cut off."
Percy gave him an amused look. "And how would you know what that looks like? You're a god of the sea, and there's no chickens in the ocean as far as I know."
"Hey!" Triton complained. "I do go to the mortal world occasionally."
He scoffed. "Yeah, to sire kids."
The god didn't deny it, instead blushing a bright green. Yes, his skin still held that greenish tint from being a merman, so his blush was green. "Just answer my question, Perce."
"Training, if you must know."
Percy laughed as his brother rubbed his face where the nasty bruise had been a few days ago. Triton walked a few steps away from him, giving him an extremely wary look. Percy drummed his fingers against his thigh as Triton continued following him towards the arena.
When they got there, Percy heard sounds of screaming, and shot his brother a confused look.
"What's going on in there, Triton?"
Triton rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly, and he wouldn't meet Percy's eyes, instead finding the carpet extremely interesting. "I-It's nothing, Percy, don't worry about it."
Percy narrowed his eyes. "Did Pontus order another torture session with all the generals?"
"No! No, it's just him, Thalassa, and everyone else except you." Triton mumbled that last part under his breath so that Percy couldn't understand what he had said.
"Repeat that again."
"It's everyone except you, Perseus! You're not permitted to be in there right now!"
A lump of anger started to burn in the pit of his stomach as Percy looked at Triton. Ever since he had been here so many secrets had been withheld from him, including the truth behind his past, and who was and wasn't his enemy. And he was a general for Hades' sake! He should know everything the others are supposed to know, so that the army can work in perfect tandem! Why would Pontus be withholding information from him now, when it seemed like Olympus was ready for the taking?
"You know what?" Percy spat, viciously glaring at Triton. "Go to that stupid meeting! Leave me in the dark like always!"
Triton visibly winced at the accusation. "Percy, that's not true-"
"Oh, it isn't? Triton, I know virtually nothing about the nature of this army other than we oppose Olympus! How am I supposed to fight in a war that I have no experience with? What ill will do I have with the Olympians, enough of reason to have me here, in this army, rather than in the mortal world, waiting to see two armies rip the world to shreds?"
"If you would just let me explain-"
"I'm sick and tired of being used like a pawn on a chess board, Triton! I don't want to be here anymore!" Percy lowered his head in defeat. "I just wanna go home."
"This is your home, Percy," Triton said in a soothing voice, placing a comforting hand on Percy's shoulder.
Percy grit his teeth, brushing Triton's hand off. "Don't touch me. Go. I'll be filled in later, anyways."
He left his brother in the hallway with his mouth opening and closing like a koi, with a feeling of depression looming heavily on his shoulders as he quietly retreated back to his room. He was done with this.
And Percy hated to be restrained.
A/N: Okay, confession time. I've already said this before, but I pretty much only know the big details of this story, not the small ones. I'm not going on hiatus, don't worry, but I would really appreciate if any of you guys leave suggestions. I'll give credit where it's due if I like your idea. And just a question, do you guys want to see other POV's? Like up on Olympus or Sally or someone else in particular? Let me know by leaving a review! See ya Sparks later! ~RainbowSpark18 (::) (::) (::)
