So, I'm currently working on what's basically an AU of the Apollo kids, a very dark AU, because I have a theory that they're a lot darker than we were shown.
But that got me thinking . . .
What if Percy remembered what it was like to be insane . . . and he liked it? What if trying to deny it was too much for him, and he caved?
I took inspiration from my Cabin 7 stories for this, only this one doesn't center around Will, but rather more of the main characters. I don't know if I'll update this one as often as I will the others, but rest assured I will update.
Also, this story doesn't exist in the same universe as my other stories. I thought about it, but as I'm not done with WUS and OTOC, and I didn't want to wait to start working on this, it's a different universe. More explanation on what shit went down with Cabin 7 in this one might come later, we'll have to see.
Please fav, follow, and review. It means a lot to me.
Inspiration for the title comes from the song "Control," by Halsey.
— Prologue —
The metallic taste of blood fills my mouth as I slowly rise to my feet. My legs tremble beneath me, and all I can hear is the relentless pounding of blood in my ears.
My blood roars, and my vision goes fuzzy as I struggle to control my breathing.
I don't want to feel like this. I don't want it to take me over again. I don't want any of this shit.
She's facing me down again, she with her sunken, rotting face, stringy gray hair, emaciated body, and her cheeks dripping blood from the furrows she's clawed in them.
I end up here every night. Well, maybe not every night. That's a bit of an exaggeration. But most nights, definitely.
It's never the same, either.
We're back in Tartarus, as we always are. That's all I know of her — the pain and the fear and the desolation. That's all she knows. But, unlike me, she rejoices in it. She takes a fierce, wild pride in the fact that she has never felt anything other than fury or misery, that she's constantly choking in sadness. Of course she wouldn't leave Tartarus. Why should she?
But this part is different. It's a part I've never seen before, and if I have, I don't recognize it.
We're in some sort of half-collapsed cave system, huge columns and spires of rock rising around us and crossing over our heads. The ground is covered with boulders and rubble, smeared with blood. A few bones are scattered around, while a few are still part of entire skeletons. Some rotten, festering flesh still clings like a virus to a few of them.
Outside of the rocks, everything is a mix of glowing, acidic green, dark, ruby red, and a deep, unfathomable black. All the colors twist and swirl above and around us, and I know that through all of it, Akhlys's poison twists and torgues through it as though the goddess of misery has taken a needle and sewn it through, weaving it in and out until it was so integrated that everyone gave up trying to tell colors from poison.
The poison also flows throughout around and under the rocks below our feet, although down here, it is all the neon, violently glowing green which now twists my stomach and triggers my gag reflex.
The dream may change, but this part, this poison, never does.
She faces me now, the goddess of misery herself. She's so horribly thin and skeletal that she's more emaciated than some of the actual skeletons I see lying on the ground, half dissolved by the poison. Her stringy gray hair is partly torn out, leaving sections or her scalp bleeding. Her sunken, rheumy eyes drip cloudy gray tears that seem to cut trails of acid down her cheeks, leaving them streaked with rotted flesh. She's clawed at them, and I can see the furrows, dripping blood to mingle with her shredded skin and festering muscle.
As always, I'm shaking with disgust and fear and most of all anger.
I know exactly where this dream goes, because it always goes there. I never get a break. I remember it exactly because it's impossible to forget this feeling, this confusing, desolating mix of terror and self-hatred and guilt and a complete and utter sense of relief that I have never, not once in my life felt. Not awake.
This dream offers me a way out, and I can't take it. Because I'm terrified of what I'll do if I give up. I can't. Not for anything. . . . I can't abandon them like this.
There's one upside to the dream, and that's that Annabeth isn't here for these. She saw it the first time, the real time, and was terrified. Of me. Her boyfriend who she loves and trusts.
I don't think either of us like to remember that day.
Which is why I always end up right back here, left with no choice.
"PLEASE!" I scream, clenching my fists. "Not again! I'll — I'll do anything!" I always promise myself that I won't break, won't be reduced to a screaming, sobbing mess, but I always am. I wish I could tell myself that it's the dream that forces me to beg, but I know it's not.
"Oh, you poor, innocent child," Akhlys whispers in her guttural, hacking voice. It rattles through the destroyed cavern, snaking through my head, wrapping its cold, clammy fingers around my brain. A senseless scream bursts from my throat as I clench my hands over my ears, desperate to wake up before I'm forced into what I really fear.
I shouldn't be this terrified. I've fought in, survived, and won two wars. I've battled countless monsters, gods, giants, and titans. I've saved Olympus more times than those assholes that call themselves "gods" appreciate. I should be reduced to a screaming, sobbing mess.
"Yes, you don't deserve this," Akhlys murmurs, curling her bony mottled fingers into fists, ancient gray fingernails cracking. "You don't. . . . But you want it, don't you, stupid boy? You don't know how to live without it. . . . A pity, considering it's what you fear most."
I back farther away from her, shaking, clenching my hands so tight it feels like I might crush my skull. "NO, PLEASE!" I scream again. I'm sobbing now, almost too hard to talk, desperately sucking in gulps of the toxic air. Tears, hot and heave, pour down my face, effectively blocking my vision and rendering me blind.
It's this feeling I hate more than anything, the feeling of suffocation. I can't breathe, I can't see, I can't speak other than to scream, and this, I now know, is what drowning feels like.
The poison is creeping closer to me now, acid green, creeping around boulders and swirling around filthy, forgotten ribcages and femur bones. A few others, too, but those are really the only bones I remember.
I back even further, rocks crumbling under my feet. I can feel the fury setting in deeper, but not so deep yet.
That is reserved for the poison.
There are hardly any variations on the dream — it's usually always the same. Not exactly, the details vary, but the same essential plot points. Same boxes for my terrifying subconscious to check off.
It's going to continue like this, I know. Until I give in.
But that is never, never going to happen.
"Give it up, little hero."
I can't see Akhlys anymore, not through the haze of tears and the violent glow of the poison, now only a few feet away from me. I can't see her, which I know is a mercy, but I can hear her.
"NO!" I scream. "LET ME GO! I WON'T!" It's not exactly begging; it's a bit more defiant. But that doesn't matter. I know what it is, and I know exactly how much good it does me — none. The goddess doesn't give a shit if I scream, cry, beg, threaten, or just quietly hang out and wait for the rage to control me. She knows that, as much as I pretend to be fearless or indifferent, I'm fucking terrified.
She knows that now, because I let my guard down the first time. I shouldn't have done it. It was stupid. Annabeth wouldn't have. Any of the others wouldn't have, really.
I never seem to think of these things in the heat of the moment.
The poison is only inches away from my battered Reeboks now. My back is against a boulder. No where to go. No way I can outrun it.
"Please," I sob, warm tears slipping down my cheeks. They're not acid, but I know it's only a matter of time before they begin to sting . . . and burn . . . and scorch.
And I'll be just like her.
"Please," I beg one more time, but it's nothing more than a broken whisper, and I know she can't hear me.
A single tear rolls out of my eye and slides down my cheek.
It burns, and I know I've already lost.
I feel my arms rise, my fingers curl like I'm a conductor about to signal the musicians to begin the symphony.
The poison answers.
PLEASE STOP! I beg. PERCY, YOU'RE SCARING ME!
But Percy — me — is already gone.