"But the fearful and unbelieving, and the abominable and murderers,

And whoremongers and sorcerers, and idolaters and all liars,

Shall have part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone:

Which is the second death."

-Revelation 21:8

-Ω-

Frank didn't talk to Percy for three days. It wasn't intentional…okay, maybe it was a little intentional, but he was too preoccupied with trying to figure out who he was than with trying to figure out his companion. He found it incredibly hard to believe that he was one of the Horsemen, especially War; he considered himself a nice person. It wasn't like the death of his parents made him bitter; it was quite the opposite, actually. He considered himself much nicer than he'd been before he'd lost his mother and father, and he didn't know if he was worthy of the title 'War'.

Percy had said it was just because Fate was cruel, that the one who hated war the most was destined to cause it, but Frank didn't think he considered himself a hater of war. Sure, it was bad and should stop, but it wasn't like his parents had died for a lost cause; they'd gone down while fighting for their country, and sometimes war was necessary if it meant giving one's life to protect people. Frank was pretty sure that there were candidates, hippies, mostly, that would be much more devastated to spread war than Frank.

But he'd been Chosen or whatever, and now he was stuck with it.

One thing that he couldn't wrap his head around was the whole Apocalypse/Armageddon/End of the World thing. Frank's family had never been the religious type, not counting Frank's grandmother, so as a result, Frank wasn't raised religious. For his entire life, he was pretty iffy on whether or not there was a God, and once the city had crumbled and Beelzebub's Print had killed everyone within a one hundred sixty mile radius, he'd been pretty sure there wasn't a God; how could God let something like that happen? How could anyone let something like that happen? Then Percy had come along and told him that he was one of the Horsemen, which really threw him into a loop. If he was a Horseman, than God had to have been the one who had Chosen him and was commanding, and perhaps communicating with, all the others. Percy had even mentioned the guy by name a few times when breaking the news, and Frank was having a serious crisis- he'd spent his entire life being on the fence about God and suddenly poof! Guess what? There was one!

It gave him a headache whenever he thought about it, so he decided that the best way to handle it was to not think. He went completely numb, his mind going blank, and just concentrated on surviving and getting south. They'd handle the problem of finding his horse when the time came. In the meantime, Frank gave Percy and Blackjack a wide berth, only stooping in to snag the occasional snack from the supply bags, but otherwise he wouldn't dare go near them. Percy had said that, as a Horseman, he couldn't get sick, but Frank was still wary after the incident with Annabeth; what if Percy decided that he was tired of Frank's bitching and whining? Would Frank keel over and die from Beelzebub's Print once Percy caught him off-guard and grabbed his wrist?

They walked and walked, and despite the progress they were making, the streets still remained abandoned. There was no sign of life anywhere, and Frank supposed that they still hadn't crossed the one hundred sixty mile radius yet, considering they sill saw victims of the Print sprawled in the street. Sometimes when they took breaks, Frank would make the rats that scuttled too close tear each other to pieces, and pretty soon whole colonies were either dead or dying from their wounds, the smell so rancid they were forced to keep moving. Percy never commented, but sometimes if one of Frank's red-eyed rats chased another rat close enough, he would reach out and touch it. It would die instantly.

Finally, after politely tolerating the Silent Treatment for days on end, Percy snapped.

"What the fuck, dude?"

Frank looked away from the small fire they'd made and met Percy's intense green gaze, which burned like the flames in front of them. Frank felt hollow, like someone had taken an ice cream scooper and scraped out all of his insides, and he sized up Percy for a few moments before returning his gaze to the fire and the can of beans that was being cooked on it, fiddling with the ring of stones they'd placed around the flames so that the grass wouldn't catch fire.

"Talk to me, Frank," Percy pleaded, scooting closer. Blackjack, seeming to sense his master's distress, walked over and began to butt his head against Percy's, nuzzling him in an attempt to comfort. The green-eyed boy gently pushed his head away. "Please, Frank, please talk to me."

Frank didn't. He just stared into the fire, uncaring of the fact that the light and the smoke burned his eyes. At least he was feeling something, anything.

"Listen, I can't handle silence anymore, not after the hospital." Percy sounded desperate, and Frank hated himself for taking delight in the way that the green-eyed boy was begging.

He still didn't say anything.

"Why the fuck aren't you talking? Are you mad at me?" Percy demanded, and out of the corner of his eye, Frank could see him digging ferocious furrows into the ground with the thick nub of a stick. They stood out like claw marks against the grass, and Frank looked down at his own hands, wondering if his fingernails would eventually fall off, replaced by long, serrated black claws meant to tear and slice. He wouldn't be surprised if it happened.

Frank still refused to reply, and he could see Percy growing more and more frustrated by the minute.

The green-eyed boy made a strangled sound in the back of his throat and stabbed the stick he'd been fiddling with into the dirt, which was a feat, considering the fact that the ground was rock-hard this time of year. He stared at it for a few moments with a look like it had personally offended him, and after a while he yanked it out and tossed it into the fire, his eyes reflecting the way that the flames leapt as they were given a new food source.

After a long period where silence reigned, Percy whispered, "I miss my mom." His voice was so quiet that Frank nearly missed it, but he felt numb, not deaf.

He looked up sharply after he was finally able to process the words, only to find Percy staring at his hands, which were clasped limply in his lap. Frank's heart sank as a tear trickled down the boy's face.

"I miss my mom," he repeated, tears falling in earnest now, and he wiped furiously at his cheeks as if it would somehow make it better. "And my step-dad Paul and my little sister. I…" his voice broke. "I killed them. It was my fault. I shouldn't've taken the deal, I should've just died."

Frank contemplated what to do for a few moments before saying, "I agree." His voice was hoarse and croaky from misuse, and Percy let out a choked sob and buried his face in his hands. "But this is how it is now. So we have to deal with it."

"I act like I'm not sorry, but I am. Every day I grow less and less human. I'm deteriorating and I can feel it," Percy let out another strangled sob. "I'm human, I can prove it, I promise. I'm human."

Frank didn't want to extend his sympathy. Percy had a hand in wrecking the world, and it was his own fault that his family died, but, as mentioned before, Frank's hardships only made him kinder. The survivor shuffled over a bit and wrapped his arm around Percy's shoulders, and the boy immediately turned to cry into Frank's hoodie, the material dampening with his tears, though Frank could barely notice it, considering the fact that it was his fourth layer. The survivor wanted to say something soothing, to tell Percy that it would all turn out okay, but that would be a lie. They sat like that for a while, and it took a few moments for Frank to realize that one of Percy's hands was fisted in his coat and the other was clutching his wrist.

He didn't get sick.

-Ω-

The tension eased up between them after that fateful night, and Frank found his life grow increasingly more carefree since then. The lighthearted chitchat that they shared lifted his spirits and warded off the heavy silence that had more often than not settled on his shoulders, and it kept the loneliness at bay, reminding Frank that he had a companion, a friend, by his side that was there for him. For the umpteenth time since meeting Percy, Frank wondered how he'd managed to survive alone for so long.

Their conversations were about ordinary, everyday things, almost like they were ignoring the carnage around them, but Frank was totally fine with that; the less he had to discuss the state of shit that the world was in, the more he felt at ease. He and Percy enthused about the Yankees and other things as if they were just two teens that had met at school, and Frank told Percy about how he'd moved from Canada to California and then to New York, and how his family was originally from China.

"Never in my life had I met a Chinese-Canadian," Percy mused, and then proceeded to tell Frank about his Greek heritage, and how his family was bat-shit crazy. "They're all named after Greek gods and goddesses on my dad's side. You have no idea how hard it is to pronounce their names, and they were all horrible, horrible people. My dad died when I was young, so my mom and I lost touch with them thank God, and I had two step-dads."

Frank tried not to dwell on the word 'had', and he quickly filled up the awkward silence by telling Percy about the time that his mom had convinced him he could shapeshift when he was six. "Of course, she told me the truth when I jumped out of a second story window thinking I could turn into a bird," Frank chuckled. "I broke my leg."

Percy laughed for a good long time at that, tears streaming down his face to the point where he almost fell off of Blackjack. The normalcy was much-needed, in Frank's opinion.

There was one issue, though, and that was the fact that they weren't south enough for it to be warm yet. In the mornings, the wind nipped at their cheeks and noses, their hoods doing little to help their ears, and at night they all curled together in the living rooms of drafty and crumbling houses, trying not to freeze to death. Even the blankets that they stole off of beds did little to help, and if Frank hadn't been so exhausted, he probably would've gotten mad, which he was trying to avoid doing for obvious reasons.

They always brought Blackjack, who was still as cheerful and alive as ever- despite the fact that Frank was pretty sure he shouldn't be, inside, and even though Frank knew that Blackjack was intelligent enough to know what was going on, the horse acted like he was blissfully ignorant; prancing about with goods, and occasionally Percy or Frank, on his back like he had no cares in the world.

Frank wondered if his horse would be like Blackjack, but he decided that he'd cross that bridge when he came to it.

They'd fallen into a comfortable quiet, and had been walking for most of the morning, which was as bitterly cold as it had been yesterday. Frank had been deep in thought, thinking and worrying about all of the things that he'd pledged not to think and worrying about, but was jolted out of his reveries by Percy's excited cry, "Frank, look!"

There, in the middle of the road, was a jackpot in the form of two dead guys that were sprawled side-by-side next to an obnoxiously yellow Prius. Immediately, Percy kicked Blackjack into a short-lived canter, leaving Frank struggling to catch up; despite the fact that they had assault weapons, Frank still liked to have his bat, which had stuck with him since the beginning. Needless to say, it weighed him down considerably, and made it even harder to catch up with a horse than it was without anything in hand.

Frank thanked whoever was listening that, despite the fact that the dead guys' organs painted the sidewalk and their faces were partially chewed up by the teeth of dogs and rats, their coats were still blissfully intact, made to withstand the harsh Northeastern winters. One of the guys had dark skin and was wearing a very fashionable trench coat, and his blood-caked beard and hair had to have been combed neatly at one point or another. He was shorter than Frank was, about 5'5", but he was stockier, and he looked to be about the Frank's size, so the survivor began the tedious process of removing it from his person. Had this event been any point earlier in his life, Frank would've thrown up three times over the course of the extraction, but now he was only a bit squeamish as he moved aside some of the dude's small intestines in order to wrestle the trench coat off of him. He was pretty sure he heard a few bones snap in the process, but eventually Frank was holding up a warm-looking, and noticeably bloodstained, piece of clothing.

Percy had better luck with the skinnier dude, who looked kind of like an anime character who'd been ripped to shreds, and had managed to get his black leather jacket off of him with minimal contact with his insides that had gotten outside. He'd also taken his red-and-white striped scarf, though the odd angle that the guy's head was bent at suggested that that had taken a little more effort.

"Whoa, dude, nice trench coat," Percy said, sounding impressed. His expression clearly stated: Not bad.

"I'll trade it for the leather jacket," Frank deadpanned, and Percy's face lit up like a kid's on Christmas.

"Deal."

They traded coats and shook hands, and just like that they were on the road again. Frank had been wearing the same hoodies and clothes for a while now, the days and nights too cold to dare and change out of them, but now he felt felt incredibly stylish in his leather jacket, which, to his surprise and delight, was lined on the inside with fur. The anime dude must've been leaded if he was able to get his hands on it.

Percy sat regally upon Blackjack, the garish and, in Frank's opinion, quite disgusting scarf dangling nearly down to his toes, which was saying something since Percy had wrapped it three times around his neck and was a pretty tall guy. Even though his trench coat was ill-fitting, he still looked quite warm, which Frank was glad for. The survivor couldn't help but think that his companion's wardrobe looked like a combination of the fourth and tenth doctors' from Doctor Who, if the fourth and tenth doctors had been the offspring of Satan himself.

"You're staring," Percy noted, his lips quirking as he played with Blackjack's mane, which the white horse seemed to be enjoying immensely.

"What can I say?" Frank asked, hefting his baseball bat. The weight of it was comforting. "You look stylish."

"You look like a discount Chinese-Canadian version of Negan from The Walking Dead."

"Well, since you're on the horse that would make you Rick Grimes."

"True, true, but I'm pretty sure Blackjack here would eat all of the Walkers before they could get to him. He'll eat fucking anything."

"Including rotting corpses?"

"Including rotting corpses."

The two of them laughed.

-Ω-

(A/N) I was thinking, should I start answering reviews in the AN?

THANK YOU ALL SO MUCH FOR YOUR SUPPORT ILY PLZ REVIEW. This chapter was lighthearted to make up for the major fucked-up-ness of the last few chapters. There were also other references to other books/characters from the Riordanverse in this chapter, if you were able to pick up on it.

The chapter title is by a cover of the Sound of Silence by the band Disturbed