"Is it okay if I get right into Tartarus?" Percy asked hesitantly, hovering by the open trauma box. "I know that's kind of a lot right away."
"It's alright, I thought you might want to," Raine reassured him. "As long as you feel ready for it, you can. This is a safe place for you to process what happened."
Percy tried to relax, bouncing a little to try and psych himself up for it. "Okay. Okay." He took out a drawing, grabbed Fang off the floor, and sat down, bracing his heels on the edge of his seat. Then he chuckled nervously, not quite looking at Raine. "Ahh, I've been thinking about how to say this stuff, but now I can't remember what I decided on."
"Relax," Raine said. "This isn't a performance, and there isn't a wrong way to talk about it. Tell me what happened, and I'll guide you through the feelings part."
Percy nodded jerkily, hugged himself, let go, and bounced again, feeling skittish. Then he took a deep breath, ran the tension exercise he'd half-forgotten, and forced himself to relax.
"I debated a little bit on what to use for this part," Percy admitted, tilting the picture up for Raine to see. "I, um, I kind of chopped Tartarus into really, really tiny pieces, because I really definitely can't handle going through it all at once."
"I'm glad that you were able to realize that on your own," Raine told him, "and it's impressive that you've managed to divide it into parts that feel right to you. Can you tell me what the picture is?"
Percy tried to smile. "It's the Phlegethon," he said quietly. "Uh, one of the Underworld rivers." He worried at the edge of the paper, then put it down and picked Fang up instead. "Um, a lot of the Tartarus stuff is probably gonna be out of order, 'cause I figure I'll just be going with what feels right. But I wanted to start at the beginning, 'cause the landscape of Tartarus is like... really important to how horrible everything else was."
"The air was acid, you said," Raine recalled quietly.
Percy smiled bitterly. "The acid air. Yeah. That's the biggest part of it, but not the whole story." Raine nodded, so Percy took another deep breath and started. "When Annabeth and I fell into Tartarus, we were in Rome, because we needed to retrieve the Athena Parthenos. Which, um, is a really complicated story, can I please explain it later?"
Raine nodded again, making a note. "Of course, by all means."
Percy exhaled. "Cool. Annabeth had kind of been tasked with finding it, so we met up where she found it. But, uh, where she found it was in Arachne's lair, and the floor was collapsing." He played with Fang's tail. "Arachne was still alive, and Annabeth was injured, so I went to help her. We knocked Arachne into Tartarus and started rigging up the Athena Parthenos to take it on the Argo, but then..." He grimaced, staring at the floor. "Um, it all happened pretty fast, but basically Arachne had gotten a thread around Annabeth's ankle, and she was getting dragged in. I caught her hand, but I wasn't gonna be able to hold us both for long."
"So what did you do?"
"I let go," Percy said. "Um, earlier that day we'd rescued Nico, and he had some intel for us. He said that we needed to close the Doors of Death from both sides simultaneously – up in the mortal world, and down in Tartarus." He smiled dryly. "So I figured, hey, in some awful, fucked-up way, this works out. I told him to meet us there, let go, and Annabeth and I fell into Tartarus."
Note. "And then?"
"It's a really, really long way from Earth to the bottom of Tartarus," Percy said ruefully. "Felt like we were falling for an hour, but Annabeth thought it took about ten minutes. Anyway, we didn't want to go splat, so Annabeth found a river for me to catch us with, and we did." He grimaced.
"I take it that it was not an ordinary river."
"No," Percy said. "Underworld rivers fucking suck. Um, this is where I'm gonna start getting into the technical stuff, sorry." Raine waved him on. "There are five Underworld rivers. I'd come across two of them, the Styx and the Lethe, before, but the other three were new: the Cocytus, the Phlegethon, and the Acheron. The rivers of lamentation, fire, and pain." Raine winced. "I know, right? They suck. Anyway, we fell into the Cocytus, the river of lamentation."
"And what does that river do?"
"It's liquid misery," Percy said bitterly. "You can imagine how well I did with that. Annabeth had to basically drag me out, or I would've just sunk to the bottom and found out if I could breathe in the Cocytus."
"But you did get out," Raine prompted.
"Yeah," he said. "Me and Annabeth crawled out of the river onto a bed of broken glass. We had maybe five minutes to deal with the fact that we were in Tartarus before Annabeth realized that we were dying pretty fast – I mean, by the time we'd gotten out of the river, we were already covered in rashes from the stupid sulfur." Percy fidgeted with Fang's tail some more, then picked him up to hug for comfort. "Annabeth's basically an expert on obscure legends, so she figured our only chance was the Phlegethon, the river of fire, which she thought might heal us. And it worked."
"And then?"
"No 'and then' right now," Percy said quietly. "That... most of our time in Tartarus was just that. It was me and Annabeth, walking along the Phlegethon, breathing sulfur and drinking from it whenever it got too hard to breathe." Fidget, fidget. "I just... I started here because I wanted you to understand. Every single other awful thing that happened in Tartarus, this was part of it. We were getting rashes, getting blisters, seeing how many breaths of sulfur we could take before it hurt too much to handle. Coming out of it, I drank more nectar than I've ever had at once before, trying to heal those burns. Me and Annabeth nearly finished a whole flask between us."
"Isn't that dangerous?" Raine asked, brow furrowed.
"It hurt to breathe," Percy explained. Raine's expression closed off.
"Alright," she said quietly, and glanced at her notebook. "How did you feel while you were going to meet Annabeth?"
"Kind of frantic," Percy said. "Bacchus had hinted that she was in trouble, and I hadn't really wanted to let her go alone in the first place. But it, uh, it was a child of Athena thing, this quest. Annabeth had to go alone. I was really worried, though."
"And when you found her?" Raine prompted.
"Relieved," he said. "I mean, she was hurt and in trouble and everything, but I could help with that. The important thing is..." He hesitated, blushed, and decided against explaining the promise he and Annabeth had made to each other. "The important thing was that she was where I could help her." Raine's brow furrowed. "Um, me and Annabeth said sappy stuff, but I don't want to get into it."
Raine relaxed and chuckled softly. "Understood. What were you thinking as you started to fall?"
"Just that," Percy said, quieter now. "I wasn't going to let us get separated. Not for anything." He squirmed, adjusting Fang's position, and tucked one leg under him to sit. "I... at this point, Annabeth and I had been back together for like, a week. I'd missed her like my right arm while I was with the Romans, especially with Lupa, when there wasn't much to worry about. I couldn't let her fall alone."
"So you let go," Raine said, serious again. Percy shivered.
"If I'd known what was waiting for us, I don't know if I could've done it," he confessed. "I mean, w-we had to, to close the Doors of Death and stuff. But..." He squeezed, buried his face in his stuffed toy, and took a couple of breaths before he looked up again. "Letting go should've been the scariest thing I've ever done. But it wasn't – I was more scared going into the Styx. I... I wasn't scared enough."
"Why does that matter?" Raine asked gently. "Would something have changed if you had been more scared going in?"
"...Nothing," Percy conceded. "But... I dunno. I keep thinking about that. I, I had no idea how bad it was gonna be. I knew it would be bad, but Tartarus was- shit. Even I couldn't have dreamed up something that awful. I could've heard every story there was to hear about Tartarus and I still wouldn't have known how bad it was."
"One of the most frightening things about severe trauma is that it rarely comes with warning," Raine agreed solemnly. "You truly had no way to know what was coming – and that's not your fault. Sometimes, bad things simply happen."
Percy laughed, shaky and rough. "This was a really, really bad thing to just happen."
"It was," Raine agreed softly. When she didn't elaborate, Percy looked away. His shoulders slumped a little as he turned the conversation over, and then he sighed.
"I wasn't thinking much on the way down," Percy said at last. "Believe it or not, it's pretty hard to think coherently when you're falling from unimaginable heights. I don't know how Annabeth managed it." He closed his eyes and pressed his cheek to the soft toy. "Controlling water is usually pretty easy for me. These days I hardly ever notice the effort. But the Cocytus... it was heavier than the Lethe, and I was already ridiculously tired. It felt like I was controlling a river of lead."
"And you landed safely," Raine said. Percy snorted.
"I don't know if I'd call landing in the Cocytus a safe landing," he said. He looked away again. "It was, uh, it was bad for me. I can admit that. It whispers to you, you know? And it's so cold. It felt like ice was forming on my bones. You can hear a million people sobbing their hearts out, and they tell you why you should too. As soon as I hit the water, I... I forgot that I had any reason to want to live. That anyone did. I stopped swimming because, because I was tired, and homesick, and sad and there wasn't any point anymore. Why would I bother?"
"Percy."
Percy stopped talking, but he didn't respond either, eyes fixed on the carpet.
"Tell me five things you can see," Raine said. Percy blinked sleepily at the floor, then lifted his head and looked around. Oh. He felt...
"Um," he said.
"You're in my office," Raine said calmly. "You're telling me a story, but you're not there anymore. Can you tell me what you see in my office?"
"In your..." Percy trailed off and looked around, and after a few more moments, his vision snapped into focus. "Your bookshelf, your notebooks. Um. Your new little plant in the corner. The toys on your desk. And... y-your computer?" He blinked again, then shifted his gaze back to Raine. "Sorry. I should've been watching for that."
"It's alright," she said gently. "It's my job to keep an eye out for it. Can you tell me four things you can feel?"
She walked him through until he felt more settled, and then Percy took a deep breath. He hugged Fang tightly and watched Raine's desk.
"Annabeth definitely saved me there," he said belatedly. "I, I guess she remembered how excited I'd been about New Rome, so she asked me about it. Like, what I wanted to do there and stuff." He smiled a little. "It helped a lot. Got me going, at least, and Annabeth was able to pull us both out." He tapped Fang's belly, and then added, "I made Annabeth laugh while we were in there. That made me happy."
"That's good," Raine said. "How do you feel about it now? The experience, not the memory of the river."
Percy frowned, trying to shift his perspective enough to examine it from the angle offered. "Um... Mostly just frightened. I- man. We almost died a lot down there, but that- that was one of the really close calls. Thank the gods for Annabeth."
"And you talked?"
"That's a generous word for it," he said wryly. "Annabeth said we needed to move or we'd catch hypothermia, and I pointed out that the car we'd crashed into Arachne wasn't far off." He fiddled with Fang's tail again, stroking the material between his fingers. "I was... gearing up for another hard battle, I guess. You know when you have a really long day ahead of you, and you know it? Like that." He shrugged. "But I haven't run into anything that me and Annabeth can't survive if we're together."
"These woods are lovely, dark and deep, but I have promises to keep. And miles to go before I sleep, and miles to go before I sleep," Raine murmured. Percy cocked his head, and Raine smiled at him. "Robert Frost – it's a very old poem."
"And miles to go before I sleep," Percy echoed, leaning against the chair back. He made a mental note to mention it to Annabeth. She'd probably know more about it.
Warmth flashed across Raine's face before she pushed forward. "And then Annabeth realized the area was harming you."
"No," Percy said firmly. "We were dying. I'm not just being pessimistic this time. Every breath was harder than the last. Our cuts bled more instead of less. I was freezing cold and not getting any warmer even though the air was so hot it hurt. Tartarus doesn't want anything except to kill you as painfully as possible."
"Tartarus is a place, Percy," Raine said gently. "It's not acting maliciously against you, even if it feels like it is."
...Well, of course she would say that. Any sane person would.
Percy ducked his head, feeling his eyes burn and tears well up, and muffled a whimper against his fist. His next breath hitched, and a few tears escaped before he got the wave of emotion under control.
"Tartarus is a primordial," he said at last, distant and hoarse. "He's so old that most things weren't really distinct from each other yet. It's- it's not like Dad, where he's the lord of the ocean. The pit is Tartarus and Tartarus is the pit. The air down there is his breath. The heart of Tartarus beats when you walk on it. The Underworld rivers run into his veins. Monsters grow under his skin and crawl out fully formed. Every horror in that place is one of his dreams. The, the ground is, it feels like-"
His stomach lurched, and he gagged, clapping a hand over his mouth. Raine kept her trash can beside her desk, and he knocked his chair over in his haste to reach it. Raine shoved it toward him, and Percy hit the floor with a thump, leaned on the rim, and vomited. He hadn't eaten much that morning, and his stomach twisted and clenched in protest.
After a minute of trying to catch his breath, he realized Raine was kneeling beside him, shushing him and rubbing his back. "Shh, it's okay, I'm sorry, I understand now. It's okay, you're going to be okay."
Percy caught his breath and tried to smile at her. His mouth tasted like bile. "You get why I can't take biology this year," he joked weakly. He felt shaky. "Sorry, I- this is really intense stuff to start with, huh?"
"It's alright," Raine said. "I can tell it's been troubling you, and you needed to get it out. It's fortunate that you trust me enough to do so as soon as possible."
Percy shuddered, listing heavily against the plastic wastebin, and then stood up to return to his chair and put Fang in his lap. For a moment, he just crossed his arms on the back of the chair and put his head down, breathing heavily.
"Do you want to call it for the morning?" Raine asked softly. "It's been very stressful for you."
"No, I- no. I'm almost done." He took another breath. "Thought I wasn't supposed to be doing that anymore."
"The medication will take a while to settle fully into your system," Raine said apologetically. "If it's still happening in another week, we'll try something else."
Percy nodded absently, and then took a deep breath and straightened up. "So. Annabeth realized we were dying. I was freaked out – more than I was letting her see, honestly – but I wasn't gonna give up until Annabeth was, because I was pretty sure she'd figure something out." He smiled faintly, though exhaustion still weighed down his shoulders. "And she did. She remembered that the Phlegethon, uh, it's used to make sure people can live through the punishments in the Fields. You know, the wheel of fire and being boiled in oil and all that. So she thought it might heal us like nectar and ambrosia does." He tapped the back of the chair. "We kind of had to race there, which really sucked, since that involved getting down a cliff. By the time we got there, Annabeth was limping again, and both of us were starting to blister. I could barely breathe 'cause my throat and lungs hurt so bad."
"And then you drank from the river," Raine said. Percy huffed a laugh.
"Yeah. I mean, at first I was just staring at it like 'how the hell are we supposed to drink that,' because the river of fire isn't just a name – it flows with actual liquid fire. But Annabeth just... sticks her hands in there and scoops it up." He fell quiet for a minute. "I, um, I really thought that was it, at first. She choked and shrieked and thrashed around for a minute, and I thought it had hurt her. I was terrified. But then she calmed down, and the blisters started going away."
"How did you feel then?"
"I didn't," Percy admitted, watching the desk again. His stomach was still churning, and he gritted his teeth against it for a minute before continuing. "By that point, I was starting to see black spots, and my head was pounding, never mind how much my whole body burned." He shrugged. "I didn't get a chance for second thoughts. I passed out, and when I woke up, Annabeth was pouring firewater down my throat."
"What did you think of that?"
"It was gross," Percy said without looking at her. "All spice, no flavor." He smiled bitterly, then laughed a little, picked Fang up again, and hugged the soft toy just to remind himself it was there. "But that river... have you ever imagined what it would feel like for your head to do that thing, where you drop water on a hot stove and it boils instantly?"
"Well, now I have," Raine said, and Percy snorted and grinned a little.
"Yeah," he said softly. "That was what drinking the firewater felt like. And Raine, it didn't get better. Every twenty, thirty minutes, it would get so hard to breathe that the firewater sounded okay, and we'd sit down and drink and remember how fucking horrible it was. I couldn't tell if my throat was sore from the sulfur or the screaming. And then we'd have to get back up and keep walking."
"How do you feel about that now?"
Percy tucked his head into the crook of his elbow. "You mean besides the frequent urge to wallow in self-pity?"
"Especially that, actually," Raine said, giving him a rueful smile. Percy managed to return it and pushed himself up again.
"We shouldn't have had to do that," he said quietly. "It's, it's practically comical that we had to do that. Annabeth and I are seventeen. We're mortal, we have to eat and drink, our bodies break and bleed. Why were we in Tartarus? Why- how did this become our responsibility?"
His voice broke, and he shifted Fang up into a more comfortable position to squeeze him tightly. Raine stayed quiet and solemn.
"The Greek/Roman fight knocked out a lot of the gods, but not all of them," Percy continued recklessly, his voice starting to strain and warp around the words as tears welled up and spilled over. "Bacchus was basically fine. Nemesis, too. Nike probably could've pulled herself together enough to do something. There was Thanatos, there was Cupid, there was Janus, there was fucking Hercules- it didn't even have to be an Olympian, it could've been any minor god. Any god. Why couldn't they close the Doors?" A sob broke free, probably the first of a whole lot of them. "Why are they so fucking awful?"
He put his head down and cried. It had been a long time coming, to be honest, and it felt good to vent the anger and fear and hurt that had built to a boil inside him. Raine stayed quiet while he did, letting the hysteria drain out of him, and eventually he caught his breath.
"Tartarus is a horrible place for anyone," he said to Raine, his voice still hoarse and throaty. "But a god wouldn't have had to worry about monsters. A god wouldn't have had to drink firewater so the air wouldn't kill them. A god would have had more than one way out of that stupid pit." He hid his face in Fang, shaking. "It's not fair. It's not fair."
"You resent that your suffering wasn't necessary," Raine said quietly. Percy sniffled.
"They could have stopped it," he croaked. "They could have helped us, they could have- could have saved us from this. But they don't care about us. They don't care that we helped them. They, they're going to use us until we die and then they'll forget about us."
Raine was quiet for a moment. Percy didn't look up until he heard a soft rustle, and then she was kneeling down beside him. He accepted the offered hug with relief, and hugged her back tightly until he stopped trembling.
"You can't force people to love you, Percy," Raine said quietly, when she pulled away. She stayed close, kneeling next to him, mouth pulled into a serious line. "You can be the kindest, or the bravest, or the most noble person in the world, and it won't be enough to make them care. Some people just don't have it in them." She took one of his hands and squeezed it. "That's not your fault. You can't control their feelings."
"But then what am I supposed to do?" Percy asked. "I- we've done so much for them. All of this... all of this was to stop their stupid butts from getting eaten by Gaea. And they don't care."
"It doesn't have to be about that, if you don't want it to be," Raine said. Despite himself, Percy gave her a dirty, sullen look. "Really. How many people did you save with this quest?"
Everyone. They had saved the world with this quest, again.
Raine read his answer in his expression.
"So maybe you didn't do it for the gods," she said gently. "Maybe you did it for your mother. For Paul. All the children you help at your summer camp, the friends you made last time you were here, the little sibling you're hoping for. The gods benefited, but it doesn't have to be about them if that hurts you."
There was the feeling Percy had been searching for – a swell of relief that bloomed inside him, like he'd dropped a weight from around his heart. It brought tears to his eyes, but he didn't cry this time, just wiped them away.
"They still should have done better," he muttered.
"Yes," Raine agreed. "But you can take that pain and move it to somewhere it doesn't hurt so much."
Some notes about Catholicism and how it's discussed in this story: here's where much, much larger issues are creeping in. There's nothing wrong or shameful about being Catholic, and I don't mean to imply as much as I discuss the damage done to both Amethyst and Lucy. Catholicism is a faith and a system of values, and the way you apply those things in your own life is what defines who you are. However, it's also true that Catholicism has long been a powerful tool of abuse, because shame and thoughtcrime are such deeply embedded aspects of the religion. Because this story focuses on abuse survivors, this is the side of Catholicism that we see here. Amethyst and Lucy represent two diametrically opposed outcomes of this kind of upbringing. Amethyst is a rebel, deeply resentful of the systems that were used to hurt her, and as a teenager she's fighting to define an identity outside of the one she was raised in. Lucy has held on to her faith, and tries to reconcile that faith with the harm that came from the conflict between her religious background and her sexual orientation. I hope that Lucy's continuing faith will ease the sting for anyone uncomfortable with these conversations.
