Disclaimer: Still don't own anything and definitely don't make any money.

Tempting the Fates

Chapter Twenty Three

Conceding Curses

Percy

It wasn't that Percy hadn't heard the child of Hades— he had, but he hadn't listened.

Bob cowered with Small Bob in his hands (the tiny hellion of a cat they'd discovered along the way who was mewling and nesting within the top of his coveralls). Bob and his cat were a sight in and of themselves, but to see him shrinking at the sight of the demonic librarians with their gnarly bronze talons when he easily could have sat on at least seven of them at the same time was pretty bizarre. Not to say that bizarre wasn't exactly the theme of this whole misbegotten quest in the first place, because it most certainly was.

But it was the shrinking, the way he clutched the tiny cat with fear in his silver eyes, that boiled the fury bottled deep inside of him until it came erupting forth, a geyser of furor. So he had sliced, slit, gashed and carved through the arai before them. The sea prince heard Nico's warning but he was beyond hearing and the words would not sink to the centre of the tempest in time.

Maybe he deserved the curses, that's what he kept thinking.

Maybe he deserved each and every one: for forgetting about his friends and camp, for all the people he'd left behind, for the ones he hadn't paid close enough attention to, for the ones he had failed, the ones he had lost, and the ones he had yet to lose.

There had been blood on his hands since the age of eleven and at sixteen he couldn't recall all the casualties. There would be more in his lifetime. There would always be more. Heroes were forged in trial and fire but demigods survived in blood (of monsters or fallen kin, it was one or the other).

So maybe Percy Jackson deserved this one thing.

Their masses had pressed forward and he had screamed louder and longer than he ever could remember, the sound rending from his throat like a riptide— it drew them closer. But there was one, the way her red eyes glowed smirking and smiling and giggling. Yes, giggling. She was actually giggling at him amused at the way that he moved and her fallen sisters. Or maybe it was the way blood was dripping from his ears and his eye was twitching— or the spasming in his thigh muscle (equally as obnoxious).

"Please, Percy! Don't!"

But he was beyond hearing.

Oh what a great honour. The mighty son of the sea chooses me over my sisters! I was born of a very special malison. A gift from the living.

"You have no power over me! If you want to stop us from reaching our goal, you won't. We've gone through greater than you." He growled, moving forward with riptide an extension of his arm. But she ignored him, smirking her mostly toothless (and was actually drooling, which was sick in and of itself but made worse by the fact her breath absolutely reeked).

Mmm… yes, I know many feel strongly for you. We have heard about the great cur of the bottom feeder. Leeching the lives and the victories from those around you.

"Don't you dare talk about my father or my friends that way!" Percy forced the limping leg to move that fraction of a second faster though the pain blazed up his leg and he nearly missed a few steps, but she continued.

But how many have you crushed enough to plague your existence while breath still leaves their lips? That is a special karma not coming to many.

The tide broke then and the arai pressed around them. From far off— or was it just to the side of him?— he heard the other boy shout to him to stop but he couldn't. Riptide crested, bringing itself down on the monster and not stopping until he'd laid to waste the one nearest her as well who was attempting to get a sneaky gouge at his eyes when he wasn't paying attention. A few others disappeared, bursting into a rain of monster ash as they swirled in the air before settling back to the ground.

Even as they settled, he couldn't get the image burned from the back of his lids: she'd smiled even as the sword came. She had laughed and smiled joyful in her intention.

And then her intention hit him like a forty foot wave.

The son of the sea god fell to his knees, clutching at his chest as numbness spread down the left side of his body, tightness spreading across his ribcage, becoming the youngest demigod in history to nearly die of a heart attack.

—

It wasn't screaming inside of his chest, not really, but a vice that grew tighter and tighter squeezing the centre of his chest. Pressure build and his veins sang a dizzying melody that cried up along his neck and into his brain weakening his knees and fighting his resolve. Sweat dotted his forehead as his shins kissed the ground— his stomach cramped and his arm turned to stone, an impossible weight to transport. As the vice clamped his breaths came shorter and everything swam, not the pleasant strokes of the sea but the erratic exertion of the drowning.

The veil was lifted from his eyes as he pitched forward, temple colliding with the ground. But it wasn't the ground, not really, but a membrane. Living, thriving membrane. It pulsed with life beneath him and the sky churned, the atmosphere wasn't the atmosphere at all.

Deep inside him, something tugged and pulled and worked its way out. He felt close to the water but there was no ocean for ages but this… they were travelling on cells. Blood cells. In the veins of Tartarus and part of his mind broke.

No wonder Nico went a little weird. That's completely normal. He thought.

That was pushed from his head as the weight of fatigue smothered him like a warm blanket and his brain was filled with unseeable visions.

Nico, all dark curls and big brown eyes thrusting a Poseidon action figure up and inquiring if that was really what his dad looked like and had he ever met him? Did he take him on trips? What was he like and did he really have an attack worth…? They were so wide and trusting, soaking the other boy in and when the son of the sea had promised the child of Hades he would protect his sister and bring her back he's responded with an I know. No one had ever had unwavering faith in him before.

It was so simple. So instant. So complete. Looking back on it now, it rattled him to his core. The boy had lived silent and isolated in a cabin filled with mischievous children and teens, easily picked on for being pint sized. His enthusiasm made him quick to target, as did his lack of any kind of anything children his age found interesting besides Pokemon and Mythomagic— the latter only really interesting to an older sect who couldn't be bothered with such a young follower.

Percy and Bianca traveled out and Bianca joined the Hunters and he sat alone in the corner of a cabin confined to a mat on the floor alone. Just like in Maine and yet he went to sleep each night looking out the window at the stars certain that a child of Poseidon was as noble as the sea and would bring back his family.

The day he had returned, Percy had brought his entire world crashing down around him, a maelstrom devouring and devastating all that he loved. For a brief moment there was a flicker in his eyes of disbelief, a stirring and a waiting and a glance over his shoulder looking to see if his raven haired sister was not far behind. But he found her absent.

Percy's words were the cataclysm and Nico's eyes were landslides, fast and unforgiving burying any who came too close. The ground trembled beneath their feet and as his tears dotted the ground it ripped apart like his heart. The dead crawled forth disturbed from their sleep determined to bury the bringer of so much suffering.

There had never been a noise like the avalanche from the child of Hades throat and he had known then that he was made of earth and shadows, just like he knew that he himself was made of sand and sea. Nico clawed at his hair and with tears burning his eyes had entombed the dead before they could rip the skin from the sea prince's body. But even as he fled he cried— not just for Bianca.

There was something more. His heart was broken with a love that ran deeper.

And that was when everything truly went black.

—

Floating, not like when he was suspended in the sea, but wrapped in the comfort of a cloud.

Comfort.

That was ultimately what started the gunky gears in his mind turning once more— even his body couldn't recall the last time he'd felt something so simple as comfort. It was wholly foreign and suspect.

As he ascended towards the surface his senses returned to him slowly at first and then faster. A dull aching in his shoulder pierced the fog of his mind, pulsing with each beat of his heart (hadn't there been Gorgon's blood and poison?). But then with each beat of his heart the muscle felt exhausted and there was a remaining tightness in chest that was alleviating slowly…

"Shh, don't move."

A green eye opened attempting to fix a gaze somewhere. The only sound that left him came out as an unintelligible 'mrrr—nnnng?'

"Come on, just one more sip. You'll feel better if you keep drinking, okay?" Fingertips rubbed at his scalp, lazily combing through his hair and while Percy's eyes wouldn't yet focus, he parted his lips and his mouth was soon filled with broth. It trickled down his throat spreading warmth into the corners frosted by the darkness of Tartarus. "Good," was crooned not far from his ear.

"Almost too late. But not quite." The voice was soft but thunderous without trying.

Bob, the thought formed. Bob's here. And for some reason that was surprising. Why shouldn't he be? Because I cursed him and he knows it… Iapetus… he knows who he is now. But he's here… not hurting me. Or is he why I'm like this?

But then the nectar hit his lips and the thoughts dissipated. If he were a prisoner somewhere waiting for someone to dole out payback they would hardly be taking care of him.

Nectar always tasted cool to parched lips but it was similar— it tasted like his mom's fresh baked cookies with a subtle hint of herbs and an afterthought of s'mores and campfire. Swallowing, he finished the spoonful given to him and his vision steadied, coming into focus. Above him, wooden beams crisscrossed on the ceiling but spirals the colour of night obscured half of his vision, cascading down over… it was the white collarbone poking out from the bomber jacket that did it. Reality snapped back into place and the sea prince felt firmly rooted in his body once more.

Reacquainted with his body and with consciousness meant the throbbing of his shoulder hit him like a ton of bricks and the tightness in his chest resurfaced. His back was pressed against Nico's chest and the boy had clearly been feeding him some sort of remedy— whatever Tartarus could consider a countermeasure to curses.

Curses. The word woke something within him and he was soon turning his head, craning his neck in an attempt to see Nico. The body behind him went rigid, clouds of tension contrasting the softness of the bed beneath him.

"Am I dead?"

A chuckle disturbed the quiet. Somewhere in the background a fire crackled and a kitten snored.

"Almost. I wouldn't let that happen to you."

Nico. Bob. Tartarus. The Doors of Death. The arai and the curses. One of the curses came from Nico.

Without thinking, his hand slid up over his chest.

"I'm sorry," he croaked, the words hardly carrying past his chapped lips.

"Me, too."

"The arai…?"

"Bob took care of them all. He's pretty handy with a broom, not sure if you've noticed. Swept them all right back to dust."

"And now we're—"

"Somewhere safe. For now, anyway. That's all that matters."

"Nico, listen. About the last curse—"

"I'm not surprised you don't remember it. That's not important. The whole thing with the arai—" Nico waived his hand in the air like he was swiping through an Iris Message and finishing a conversation. "How are you feeling?" Just like that the other half blood terminated any chance Percy had to question about that last curse and the pain in his heart.

He had felt it shatter and Percy couldn't be confident that it would ever be pieced back together. Tilting his head, he was searching but ochre irises were veiled. The shroud may be thinner than it was previously but Percy was too depleted to pull the curtains aside and see what lingered there.

"Like an oil tanker just dumped its contents into a sea cove."

"That good, huh?"

"Oh yeah. Definitely that good."

Shifting a bit, he winced as the pain in his shoulder radiated outward when he moved. As rested as he might have been (that in and of itself was a hilarious thought given their current predicament), he needed to sit up and get his bearings again. When he was sat up, Nico slid out from under the blanket now that his companion no longer required vigilant care and instead sat an arm's length away at the end of the bed. Really, he was practically hanging off the end of the bed with most of his weight more than likely held by the toes of his worn shoes (how Tartarus hadn't completely dissolved all their clothing given the toxicity was another complete anomaly).

A chill ran up his spine as something somewhere was severed within the son of the sea.

Nico, now to his left, fiddled with the blanket on the bed pulling at a a threadbare section removing from it further stitches and fraying the ends a bit more. His shoulders were hunched and nervous tension rolled off of him in dark waves. Studying him, he remained silent and took a few more sips of the soup he assumed was responsible for making him feel the slightest bit human again and honestly, that was saying a lot given the last few days.

"I'm really sorry, okay? About everything. I know you didn't mean the curse, the silence and the solitude but I'm sorry. I-i… I was just young, you know? And my heart was in a bad way and I just wanted someone to care about me. I thought m-maybe it would be my dad if I could just do that one thing for him. If I could prove my worth to him and I'd have something again." Dark eyes blazed as they fixed on Percy. "You don't know what it's like. I was just a kid, Percy. And I was completely alone. I wandered through the Underworld and slums in cities not even meaning to shadow travel at first. I saw things and the things that happened to me— I couldn't be alone any more. I thought if I just did that one thing then maybe everything could be okay again. I never meant to hurt you or betray you— I mean, I did. I meant to. I wanted to hurt you the way that you hurt me! I was ten! I was ten and I know you weren't much older but you had people. There's nothing noble about being alone, Perseus. Not when you're ten years old, not ever. And I didn't have anyone but I continued to have no one because I helped you because it was the right thing to do. And I will keep on helping you until my last breath because I know it's the right thing to do, no matter what."

One of the patches on the blanket came undone from Nico's incessant tugging and twisting but his hands were like knots and the longer her spoke the faster his words came, a mudslide down a mountain after too much rain. He was blazing, intense and his cheeks were flushed red as he attempted to hide behind a curtain of his hair when he finished.

Reaching over, Percy closed his hand over Nico's and gave it a squeeze.

"I haven't always been a good friend to you, so please, don't apologise. We were just children. No one can expect so much from children— and look at our parents. Not exactly the best examples."

Both demigods chuckled letting silence settle between them for a few seconds more.

"You won't have to be alone. When we get out of this, I'll make sure of it."

Something glimmered in Nico's eyes and the younger boy smiled. It might just have been a trick of the light but there may have even been tears.