XVI

AN: Okay, here we go again, good luck!

Disclaimer: The rights to the fictional characters and settings belong to Rick Riordan and Suzanne Collins.

Chapter XVI: Mandibles and poison

Finnick's P.O.V.

Under different circumstances, this should have been a nice walk. The sun was shining brightly, no clouds in sight; the forest was looking lush after last night's rainfall (if you don't look at the charred bits); and I was walking side by side with my newly acquired boyfriend. Whom I've known for about a week, which means that everything's still peachy between us. Yes. No awkward silence at all.

Of course, we were also still stuck competing in the hunger games, struggling to survive, so taking it slow isn't really an option I guess. Those different circumstances would have been nice.

I looked at Percy. He was sweating a little under the blazing sun. His hair was a bit of a mess like always, it was just in a permanent stage of "just woke up". His expression was unusually clouded. His feet dragging. I wish I had known him for longer so I could've known what he was feeling. Or thinking.

'Percy?' I gently probed at his mind, still watching him carefully.

He startled, just the smallest of flinches, but I caught it. He must have been really deeply lost in thought. He looked up at last, a big smile on his face as he turned to me. 'Present!'

I didn't smile back. 'Is everything okay? You've been quiet. I'm not used to you being quiet.'

He sighed, his smile dropping. I sensed trouble. 'I'm sorry, I'm just a bit tired still.'

'We've both been tired for days now, with all the sleeping in shifts. You've been consistently chatty despite it all, until today. I know when something is up. We're not actively running from anyone right now, so this could be a rare opportunity to tell me what's wrong.'

It was true, it had been a strangely peaceful morning after last night's events. Too peaceful, lacking Percy's awful jokes. Maybe Percy would feel better once we finally found some water.

'Do you ever think about how the gods impact our lives?' Percy began.

'Not really, to be honest. I'm still fairly new to this, but the past few days at least I've found it easier to not think about it too much. Kill the weird monsters that are being sent after us, by the gods or the capitol. Take the blessings we receive along the way.' I looked up at the sky as I said this. 'The Capitol has been controlling everyone's lives for ages now, so maybe that's why it doesn't feel new to me.'

'Doesn't it bother you more? That they have the power to tell you how to live, and to pluck you out of your normal life just like that?' He snapped his fingers, impressively loud. The only sounds we'd actually made during this mental conversation.

'Of course it bothers me, but I did train my whole life just in case this happened.'

We walked on in silence for a little while.

'I had a dream last night.' Percy ultimately confessed.

'I know, you were flailing around as I woke you.' Is this what he was really upset about? 'Do you want to tell me what happened?'

'Well, in my dream, Aphrodite confessed to my dad that she has changed something in my life and I'm unsure what.' Percy kicked a small rock on the path. 'She said she did it to bring the two of us together.'

'Oh? That's, nice of her?' Percy had been a great help after all, throughout the games and even before that.

'Nice? She meddled with our lives, Finnick!' Percy gestured messily in front of him, eyes boring into mine.

'Yes, but we might not have met if not for that!'

Percy shook his head passionately. 'No, I know the gods. It's usually bad news when they take an interest. And Aphrodite was interested in the two of us. Not in you winning this stupid thing. She is a fan of us, romantically. She ships us!'

I pushed a branch aside, trying to divert my attention between searching for water and this conversation. 'Hestia saved our lives. Aphrodite brought us together. Poseidon and Triton gave us the power to control, and sense, water! In my experience they've been fairly kind. I don't know the extent of what they've done to you in the past, but maybe they've changed?'

I don't think Percy was still using his own powers to search for water. He only seemed to get more agitated by what I said.

After a pause, he said out loud, "How would we even know that our feelings are our own?"

I stopped walking. "Percy?"

He also stopped. His weary expression made him look more tired than before. "What if Aphrodite is playing with our feelings? Making us want to, you know, kiss and all that. What if it's not real?"

"Percy, I know what I'm feeling, and it feels real." I reached for his hand. He took a step back. It felt as if the forest had suddenly gone quiet. "Does it not feel real to you anymore?"

He went to shake his head, then quickly stepped forward to grab my hand. "Of course it feels real, but for all we know Aphrodite is just pulling our strings and stabbing us with her love arrows!" He squeezed my hand. "But let's forget about it. It's too hot to talk about this. Let's just focus on finding something to drink."

He dropped my hand again and we continued walking, the silence even heavier than before. The frustration was building inside of me though. The fruitless search wasn't making it any better. And Percy had clearly also not forgotten about Aphrodite, as he seemed upset still.

"If the gods are really in charge of all that they claim to be," I said after a while of mulling the sentences over in my head. "Then doesn't that mean that all love is just the result of a god? Is anything real if you start thinking about it like that?"

Percy turned to look at me. "Maybe, I don't know. This just feels different somehow. I feel like there's something wrong with me."

"Just because you like me?" I scoffed.

"That's not what I mean!" Percy sounded earnest, but it did not relax me.

"Then, what is the problem? Is it… because I'm a guy?" I didn't think that would hit the mark, but after an agonising silence I had to conclude that it might have. "Really, Percy? It's been days, isn't that a bit late to-" I turned back to look at him as he'd stopped walking.

Tears welled up in his eyes as he looked at me. "Shit, this is messed up. Oh gods, Annabeth. I'm so sorry. It's just because, because, well fuck. Finnick, I have a girlfriend, Annabeth."

The world stopped for a few seconds. "What the fuck Percy, how can you only tell me this now?" I screamed at him.

"I only just remembered!" He shouted back, his hands tearing at his hair. "Oh this is messed up. I have to find her, and beg for forgiveness. She's been looking for me!" he started walking with renewed vigour. "That's what my other dream was about, she said I'd been missing for weeks!"

I chased after him, grabbing him by the shoulder to make him stop and face me. "What about us? Percy, we're stuck here together! You can't just leave like that! Besides, has everything between us been faked by Aphrodite? Cause I still feel the same as before this revelation!"

"I'm sorry, Finnick. I'm sorry you're caught up in this mess. I will always care for you and I will keep helping you to get out of here alive. But you have to agree that we can't be together anymore. Not like that. It wouldn't be fair to anyone."

I quickly wiped away the tears rolling down my face. "I don't need your help anyway. I've been raised to survive this." I pushed Percy away, turned and ran in the other direction, just trying to put some distance between us.

"Finnick, wait!" I heard Percy shouting behind me but I ignored him. "Please, Finnick! We should stick together in this!"

"Guys, is that you?" a new voice shouted out, sounding haggard.

I stopped in my tracks. "Tracey?" I shouted, turning about me. "Is that you?"

Percy caught up to me, panting, and joined me in looking around.

"Help, over here!" Tracey sounded closer this time, and we headed towards the sound of her voice. "Get ready to fight!"

Tracey bolted out of the bushes to my right. The bushes rustled again, and a black dog-sized creature with too many legs burst out after her. Followed by three more. They were giant ants, and they looked much scarier than their small counterparts.

We sprung into action, blocking the ants from getting to Tracey, to let her recover before joining in as well. "Look out for their poison," she said urgently. "I've seen what it does to someone."

Just as she said that, I noticed a pungent smell, unlike any I had come across before. There were four ants in total. One of the ants had wiggled itself from a standing position into an almost sit. As I was observing this, the three others started lunging forward with renewed vigour, their mandibles clicking open and shut threateningly. I pushed an antenna aside, just to have another one reach out from a completely different direction.

"It's going to shoot, watch out!" Tracey once again warned. I looked up just in time to see the sitting ant shoot out a neon purple liquid - decidedly not water - out of its ass. Percy jumped aside lightning quick, shielding his head as he went. A few splashes landed on his backpack, leaving black marks wherever the purple liquid touched.

I didn't have time to check if any of the stuff had hit Percy anywhere else, as one of the frontlining ants managed to grab a hold of my right arm. It was trying to pull it down, and my trident with it. I gave the ant a kick against its abdomen, which momentarily shook it but it kept a tight hold, almost pulling me down with it. I could hear Tracey was also struggling, and a quick glance told me that an ant had grabbed hold of her leg.

I manoeuvred my trident to stab at her ant, as it really was more of a long ranged weapon. Percy decided to join the fight again at this moment, attempting to cut off its mandibles, but failing to do so. "Their armour is too strong to be cut!"

"Try their legs, or their tiny waists!" Tracey grunted out, then gave out a short cry as she was pulled to the ground. One of the ants that had been trying to get at me now swiftly moved over to her, sensing an opening. It gave me the opportunity to see that the sitting ant's butt was starting to swell up again, as it turned in Tracey's direction.

"It's going to shoot again!" I warned everyone, before finally managing to break free if only for a few seconds. I wouldn't be able to get to Tracery in time though, and even then what was I going to do about the poison?

"Not if I can do something about it!" Percy shouted as he jumped towards the sitting ant and slashed at its waist. The ant was sliced in half, but it was too late. The purple poison shot out of its ass, less forcefully than before, but it was enough to hit Percy on his right side, immediately burning a way through his clothes. Percy made a noise of pain, and worry crept into my mind.

"Finnick, give me a hand over here!" Tracey shouted, oblivious to what had just happened. She held a dagger in her hand, but one of the ants had gotten a hold of her wrist with a mandible. But I was still intertwined with my own ant, so the only way I saw of reaching her was by throwing the both of us on top of one of her ant assaillants.

It shrieked a vaguely metallic noise. Its mandibles taking a firmer hold on my arm, and I could feel the warmth of blood running down my arm. It gave Tracey the opening she needed to sink her dagger firmly into the neck of her ant. Two down.

The one chewing on my arm suddenly gave away, falling to the ground with a thud. I looked up and saw Percy standing over me, a deadly look in his eyes as he pulled his blade out of the ant. He moved to the final one, still on top of Tracey, making quick work of it now that there were no friends to help it. Yellow-green gunk covered his sword, which he wiped against a tree before returning to his pocket. His movements were slow but deliberate.

Using only my left arm, I propped myself up again, taking stock of the situation. Four ants, dead, three of their corpses lying grotesquely close to us on the forest bed. Tracey was studying a small gash on her wrists, and her clothes were torn in multiple places. From running away from the ants, or from before that possibly. I myself only had my right upper arm, which did sting and should probably get cleaned if given the chance. Percy stood where he had been before, studying something on the floor.

"Myrmekes," Tracey was the one who broke the silence.

"Ants." Percy nodded. "Big ants." He seemed to have snapped out of whatever he was doing before, and hurried over to me, dropping down in a squat. "How is your arm?"

"I think it will be okay. Hurts, but I think I can still use it." I gave him a weak smile, communicating not just reassurance but also a temporary truce to our arguments from before.

He returned the smile, offering his hand to pull me up. We both went over to Tracey, to check on her next. "I would say that I had hoped to meet you again under better circumstances, but let's be real here. This is about as good as you might expect a reunion to be in the hunger games," Tracey said all this in that frank way of hers. "No need to help me up, I've got it."

"Is your wrist okay?" Percy asked her in turn.

"Meh, I'll live. For now." Tracey shrugged. "Sorry about the Myrmekes just now. On the bright side, I think I might have brought the end of this thing a little closer."

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"I heard Lissa, Glammor and Tyrone, the careers crew arguing loudly about their water supply and decided to hide in a cave. It seemed Cowly and Dimetri had the same idea, but went on the offensive and started raining arrows down from a tree. They unfortunately only hit one, the boy I think. Lissa got Cowley with her throwing skills and he landed in front of me, bleeding. I think that must have been what drew out the Myrmekes." She shook her head. "I should have chosen a different cave. Turns out it wasn't a cave as much as an opening to an ants hill. One of them was already snapping at my pants, when I discovered I wasn't alone. I bolted right out of there. But I heard two cannon shots behind me."

"Cowley and Dimetry?" I guessed.

"Maybe. Almost certainly Cowley. Could also have been Tyrone, he had been hit by an arrow so he might have been a popular target as well. Anyway, that means that there's only six of us left. Five of which are actually meant to be here." She gave Percy a pointed look.

Percy ignored it. "You mentioned they were fighting about water. Did they also run low?"

She narrowed her eyes at him, but did answer his question. "Yes. I assume you also have no water left."

It wasn't a question but we both shook our heads anyway. "I think they drained it all," Percy said. "I can't sense any more water in the arena."

"Seems like the gamemakers are getting impatient." I smiled, a tight lipped smile devoid of humour.

I heard a rumbling sound toward my right as something moved in the corner of my eye. Intuitively I turned toward it to find a tree, its branches swinging side to side. There was no breeze however, and the tree stood where previously one of the dead ants was lying. More rumbling that I could feel throughout my whole body, and another tree sprung up dangerously close to me, its branches making me step back to avoid getting hit.

Then they became more frequent. Trees popping up on one side of the forest, like a wooden wall, coming towards us. Very impatient.

AN: can you believe, we actually have a vague idea for how this story will end! Too bad we probably won't write that for another while. It's me, bobsayshellofromnl writing this author's note. Co-author-whose-username-could-change-again-at-some-point-idk had to leave to get to work on time. We managed to finish the chapter together, but not our legendary author's notes :(. Legendary between the two of us and one or two friends. I don't know if anyone else actually reads these, but even if not, they're still fun to write and read back in the future. (fun in a cringe way, but we will laugh about it all the same).

Keep the comments coming though! They're fun to go through.

Hi! Co-author-who-doesn't-even-know-her-current-name-on-here here also giving you guys an update on when the last chapter of this story will probably be published, which is: the fifteenth of january in 2025, exactly 10 years after we first published this story on fanfiction. I just want to add some additional notes that we found when writing this story and trying to keep it as close to our fanon as possible.

Percy jackson: gifts: Water control, making earthquakes, talking to horses and sea animals, STEERING A BOAT?!

Where is poseidon? HELP YOUR KID!

Maybe they'll still go into the forest cause they're dummy thick

*Enter Tracey*

*Anniebeth*

We'll see you guys again for the last chapter!