AN: What did you feel upon reading the title?
Time: One week later
Artemis rapped sharply on the wooden frame of the door, fearing what she was going to see.
The noise reverberated through the mostly empty door.
Hestia wrung her hands in worry, her lush brown hair dishevelled as she stared at the closed wooden door. Beside her, Thalia tapped her foot impatiently, looking outside the window with a blank expression on her face.
The three were the only ones sent to collect Percy, as Calypso feared that too large crowds might have frightened him. A deduction which Piper and Atalanta agreed to, though reluctantly.
Artemis was wearing a casual silver t-shirt. Her silver eyes danced with unshed tears, her auburn hair frizzy, and thrown into a hasty ponytail. Her stomach growled with hunger, and there were dark circles around her eyes, caused by sleepless nights as she stayed awake, worrying for Percy. Her shorts ended mid-thigh, showing her creamy pale skin and toned legs. If she had been slim and lithe before, she was even thinner now. The only metals she had had was when the Hunters forced her to eat something.
Her heart broke remembering how Percy had flinched away from her during their last interaction.
He had not emerged from his room yet, and most girls on Ogygia found themselves staring blankly at the wooden door for long periods of time.
The only time he had come out since his shocking revelation was at the dead of midnight, when no one had seen not heard him go out. The only proof he had come out during the night was the fact that the bar in the dining room was almost entirely empty the next day.
Most of them had suffered.
Athena had not backed down from her position yet, and had become more and more irritable as the days went by, snapping at anyone who visited her self-imposed imprisonment in the library. Now, they had adopted a policy of leaving her alone, and she was not bothered in the slightest by the fact that everyone else was ignoring her.
Hestia was not faring any better than Artemis. The normally cheerful hearth goddess' lips were perpetually in a frown, despite her best efforts to erect a false smile for them. Her beautiful had taken a hit, her sun-kissed skin paling a tad bit, something which should not have occurred at all. Her eighteen-year-old curvy body, which could have given Aphrodite a run for her money, had thinned slightly. Her warm brown eyes had dulled, it was clear to anybody that she was not taking care of herself.
With Hestia's hope almost dead, the rest of the island was thrown into despair.
The meals did not have the flavour they usually had. The numerous rooms, usually bustling with activity, were very silent. Whenever any two girls met in the corridors, they tried their best to ignore the other, and go on their merry way. The tension in the air was so palpable, it could be cut with Artemis' now dull hunting knife.
The gym and dojo were silent, despite Reyna and a few of the Hunters engaging in strenuous physical activity am day to drain their worries. They were no laughs, no taunts shout out loud.
Percy's weapons, Anaklusmos and the Imperial Gold battleaxe which he had yet to name, had become the only visible sign that he even existed, apart from the perennially closed door to the master bedroom.
Most of the girls had retreated to their own rooms, hardly talking to one another. Even Percy's normally cheerful twin sisters were listless as they moped about uselessly. Rachel had adopted a strategy similar to Athena, locking herself in her studio and working relentlessly on her artwork.
One week should have been enough for him to cool off and wallow in self-pity. Now, everyone (except Athena) was getting worried about him, and last night at dinner, they had decided to visit him the next day.
"I say we break down his door!" Thalia shouted angrily, gritting her teeth as a vein popped on her forehead when Percy did not answer even after ten minutes of waiting. "Fuck you, Jackson! Open this door and let me in! I'm warning you, one week has been enough, you will get only five seconds more!"
Thalia had been the one to arguably take the worst hit, and Neo and the twins were the only things she was living for these days. She had already seen enough loss, now if Percy died...
Her silky black hair had not lost any of its lustre, though her shocking blue eyes were always tinged with red. Her eyes were puffy, and nose slightly red, her cheeks always with a feverish red hue as she brought herself down with worry. It was clear she had tried her best not to care, but the dark circles around her eyes and dried tear tracks on her face spoke otherwise. For once, she was dressed in regular clothes, with a black off-shoulder t-shirt, and white shorts that showed off her long, smooth legs. The black choker around her neck, however, was still there.
It had been a gift from the demigod, now god, whom she was gifted to.
For whom she dragged herself through the long hours everyday.
The person she cared most for.
The person separated from her by a single wooden door.
"Five!" Her voice trembled, and she mentally cursed herself for showing weakness.
"Four!" Hestia rubbed the tears away from her eyes, taking a deep, albeit shaky breath to settle her nerves.
"Three!" Artemis looked out of the large French window sadly. It was all her fault. She was destined to never feel love, to never love, if she had not fallen so hard for this stupid demigod, none of this would have happened.
"Two!" Her goofy demigod, whose stupidity and childish nature, she found strangely endearing. No, it was their goofy god now.
"One!" The day was cloudy and stormy, one of those damp, dark days when everyone felt like dropping everything and staying inside. Dark, angry clouds that rolled with the occasional thunder, blocked out the sun, setting the lonely tropical island into shadows that danced along the edges of the choppy sea. The briny breeze was in everyone's nostrils, stronger than ever, buffeting the palm trees and making their clothes rustle. The world outside was devoid of any life, all the birds having returned to their nests already. The harsh, hazy sound of the mighty waves of the sea crashing into the beach was the only sound that interrupted the silence, that stretched through the day.
"I'm breaking the door down, Jackson!" Thalia shouted, before turning to the other two. "Give me a hand here."
Artemis nodded, and the two sisters put their shoulders to the wooden door, bumping slightly to test its strength.
Luckily, it was not so strong. It was stronger than most mortal bedroom doors, but not the impenetrable fortresses that were most of the master bedrooms in the gods' palaces.
They stepped back, preparing for a short run-up, their complete concentration in the door before them. Hestia hovered in the background, her eyes swimming with worry.
With a mighty roar, the daughters of Zeus slammed into the door, their shoulders screaming in protest, pushing a bit of their godly strength into the charge. Artemis glowed a bright silver for a brief second, and Thalia let off bright sparks, before the door was blasted off its hinges.
The three women entered the room, searching around wildly for the god. The battered door lay forgotten on the ground, a large part of the floor covered with small wooden splinters.
The small pieces crunched under their slippers as they searched for any sign of the missing god.
The room lay in absolute chaos. It was clear Percy had been there, but not in a right state of mind. The bed, one of the softest beds in existence, lay shredded, it's soft cotton spilling onto the floor. It had been ripped with teeth, and there had been only one inhabitant. Scratch marks and splashes of ichor marred the beauty of the otherwise intricately patterned wall, the dry gold blood matching perfectly with the dark crimson of the wall. It made Thalia feel sick to the pit of her stomach.
Several shattered pictures and flower vases lay on the ground, scattering glass and ceramic all over the cool marble. More broken glass, tinted green and black and blue, pooled around alcohol stains on the marble, telling the three where all the alcohol bottles went. Several spots of ichor and bloody footprints told them how mutilated Percy's bare feet would be. The worst of all was a rope tied to a hole in the ceiling. The hole had been clearly made by a bare fist, if the ragged edges and ichor that marked the smooth white paint was anything to go by. The rope was also bloody, caked with the dry fluid that seemed to be everywhere in the room. Its end was frayed and tattered, telling the shocked observers that Percy's suicide attempt had failed. The air inside the room was stale, carrying with it the unmistakable copper scent of ichor.
Artemis heaved. She had seen worse during war, but to know that someone had done this to themselves... it hurt much more when she knew that the person was the one that occupied most of her heart.
All the gold was sickening, much more obnoxious than her brother's temple.
Artemis stumbled her way to the window beside a broken desk, holding her breath to block out the overwhelming stench of ichor, ignoring the shattered picture on the wooden table. She drew back the blinds, throwing the glass window open, and allowing the fresh, invigorating sea breeze to flood into the room.
Thalia followed a pair of golden footprints to another door, which most probably led to an attached bathroom, gently opening the door to check if Percy was inside.
She stopped dead in her tracks at the horrifying vision that greeted her eyes.
The marble walls of the bathroom were mostly clean, except occasional splashes of golden ichor here and there. Fortunately, it was much less than in his bedroom. But that was not remotely the worse part.
The large bathtub was filled to the brim with a pale yellow mixture of water and Percy's immortal blood. The god was nowhere to be seen. There were no windows in the bathroom, so he could not have escaped that way. An empty bottle of gin sat on the shattered counter, which Thalia guessed had been broken with several punches. The mirror had been shattered, some pieces of glass missing, the others riddled with cracks that formed a web like a spider's. There were several golden handprints on the wall behind the mirror and the glass itself. Thalia walked out of the room, swallowing the bile rising up her throat when she saw a piece of bone stuck in the basin, in a small puddle of ichor.
Meanwhile, Hestia had thrown up, her weak mind not being able to comprehend the sight behind her. She stood in the corridor, not having the courage to look or enter back into the room. She was on her hands and knees, heaving her breakfast onto the cool marble floor of the corridor leading to his room.
She faintly felt someone kneel beside her. "Hestia, are you okay?" Angela's voice wafted to her, despite her ringing ears. Hestia could mutely nod, yes she was fine physically, it was Percy that needed all the help he could get. She ignored her filthy chin and looked up at her, her eyes wide and frightened.
"The others have called for help. They will be coming soon." The daughter of Athena soothed her, rubbing her back gently. "Come with me." She helped her to her feet, and the two stumbled and trudged back to a nearby room for a long shower, with the goddess leaning heavily into the slightly battle-hardened Huntress, seeking her comfort.
Hestia noticed Reyna, Phoebe, Rachel, Atalanta, Piper and Calypso sprinting towards the bedroom, the latter two carrying a stretcher, while Atalanta clutched bags of first aid and medical equipment.
Artemis searched the room frantically, aided by her sister. Her heart was racing. Every second that passed was a second lost.
She flung the sheets off the bed, pressing down on the mattress with her fingers to see if he had hidden there. She had seen what PTSD did to a man. It was horrifying.
Thalia crouched down, sweeping the darkness beneath the bed with her sharp eyesight once, but except for a few more broken bottles, she found nothing. She could see the wall on the other side of the room.
She stood back up, opening the large walk-in closet, which was thankfully empty. Nobody was there, though she walked into the closet to make sure that Percy wasn't hiding in some dark corner.
Suddenly a chilling thought occurred to her.
She ran her hands along the wooden walls of the closet, making sure that there were no hidden levers or switches. The daughter of Zeus knocked all along the walls for hollows, but came up with nothing.
She walked out of the closet, feeling her hope dying slowly. "Artemis!" She called, "Check for any hollows in the walls!"
Apparently, it was not needed, for Artemis we much more thorough in her search than she was, the millennia of being the feared man-hating moon goddess kicking in.
In the small time that Thalia had been checking the bathroom and closet, Artemis had turned the room inside out. All the drawers and closets and cupboards were turned out, their contents, mostly empty, deposited on the shredded bed. They were mostly more empty bottles of alcohol, with only two almost empty bottles of antidepressants and sleeping pills.
"Oh, God." The exclamation brought the two sisters out of their thorough searching.
At the doorway, stood a few girls, with medical equipment. Rachel's hand clapped over her mouth as tears streamed down her face, her lush red hair messy and dishevelled.
She moved aside, probably to empty her stomach in the corridor, allowing the others to enter the room. No one bothered to notice that she had said 'God', instead of something... Greek.
Reyna entered the room, sweeping it with a cold examining eye, her face expressionless, giving nothing away.
Phoebe and Piper laid down the stretcher on the floor, silently taking in the sights around them. Their expressions were stone, giving nothing away about the storm raging in their hearts.
Atalanta had dropped her bags gently beside the stretcher, inside examining the dry splashes of ichor with an emotionless face, to determine the time of injury.
Calypso gasped, tears running down her face. The sight was... horrifying. Despite being a healer for the Titans during the first Titanomachy, she had seen nothing like this. She stood outside the room, beside Rachel, who was on her hands and knees. The Titaness swallowed the lump in her throat, and spoke in a shaky voice. "I'm barefoot. I'll get the infirmary ready," referring to her inability to enter the room due to her lack of footwear and the glass and wood that littered the floor of Percy's bedroom.
She was gone before anyone could say anything.
Atalanta stood up. "The ichor is a few days old." She spoke, not giving any firm conclusions.
But her unspoken reference remained clear for everyone. Percy could have been dead, turned to dust and gone to Tartarus, if they could not find him there.
"These are done with teeth," Reyna observed, running her finger along the jagged tears in the bedsheets.
It was an odd sight, to say the least. An odd bunch of girls, all around the same age of eighteen to twenty-three, wearing casual clothes like t-shirts, shorts and slippers, in a bloody bedroom that looked more like a torture chamber, investigating a possible death. The things PTSD could do were horrifying.
When they had heard the crash, it was all they could do to keep the youngest on the island- Neo, Rose and Violet, away from the bedroom. Finally, the rest of the Hunters, Cynthia, Cathy and Sydney had stayed back to take care of the inconsolable teenagers.
Ruby had sprinted to head off her mother from coming to the room. None of them thought that the love goddess could stomach what awaited her in the room.
If they had known what happened there, even Hestia would have been forbidden from going there.
Piper pointed a shaky finger at some teeth that Artemis had unearthed earlier, in a glass petri dish covered with ichor. "The teeth are still intact. Percy is still alive somewhere." He had ripped out his own teeth, she added mentally.
There was a sound, almost unnoticeable, like the thud of something against wood.
Atalanta was immediately on high alert. "Thalia, did you check the bathroom closet?"
Thalia gulped. "There is no way Percy could..."
Before she could finish her sentence, Phoebe and Reyna were flying to the bathroom, Artemis and Piper close on their heels.
Thalia stood still for a moment, not believing that it was her stupid mistake that would be the cause of Percy's death.
Cramped in the closet, was Percy's six foot five frame, somehow forcibly fit in there. If they had not known better, anyone would have said that he was murdered and stuffed there. His normally tanned bronze skin was pale as paper, his eyes sunken with dark bags around his sea-green orbs, which fluttered at them, before dropping close. His hands were limp on the floor, a sharp broken piece of glass held in his hands. Long scabs of golden blood covered his forearms, from organized cuts that made his arms nigh unrecognizable. One eye was swollen shut, his lips split and bloody. A dry, thin trail of saliva mixed with ichor trailed down his sharp jaw, emerging from his slightly parted golden lips.
The gold on the glass told them what had caused the long slit on Percy's throat, almost unrecognizable against the dark bruise caused by his previous unsuccessful suicide attempt. His orange Camp Half-Blood t-shirt, ripped in many places, had turned gold with ichor.
Piper fainted at the sight.
AN: ...Is it okay? I'll try to write another chapter today, and publish these two together. So you are not left hanging so far as the suicide is concerned.Hmm... I guess this AN is pointless, since I'll be publishing the two chapters together anyway.Keep calm and CR7!! Keep calm and LM10!! (Messi)