Awkward.
That's all the dinner party was. Just a bunch of powerful people shoved into each other's presence and forced to play nice for several hours. Things would have been even worse if their clothes weren't unnaturally comfortable - Percy couldn't even imagine sitting for this long in a normal suit. It was painfully obvious that not many of them wanted to be here, and those that did were only excited to have the opportunity to work their own respective angles.
Unfortunately for Percy Jackson, he was the angle in question.
Usually, divine family meetings like this had a natural flow. Conversation was circular, giving every attendee a chance to speak and be heard. It was ingrained, easy. Percy's presence threw that whole equation off balance, so instead the atmosphere had been nothing but quiet and stunted.
The gods were good at faking comfort, that was certain. Had Percy not had Aphrodite's memories in his head he probably wouldn't have felt quite so stiff. Still, the whispered voice of his betrothed was quick to point out how Apollo was glowing brighter than usual and Hermes kept putting down and picking his knife back up again unconsciously. There were so many tiny ticks that would have gone completely over his head in any other circumstance.
The biggest hint that something was amiss was the seating arrangement. It was pretty obvious that the goal had been to separate the sky bearer from both Artemis and Ares. Aphrodite, Hestia, Demeter, Apollo were spaced between the son of Poseidon and the goddess of the hunt, while Hephaestus, Dionysus, and Hermes between him and the god of war. The space was welcome, but having most of the Olympians sitting in a straight line across one side of the table made conversation even more difficult.
Artemis was doing an admiral job of acting like Percy didn't exist. There was a sullen tilt to her expression and the goddess hadn't even pretended to touch her food. The sky bearer suspected that the only reason she had changed into a modest black and silver dress was because Zeus had insisted. The one time Artemis had decided to make eye contact, her mouth had been set so straight you could have used it as a ruler.
For the moment, there was a sort of uneasy truce between them. Percy knew he wasn't prepared enough to talk with her yet, and the goddess of the hunt was still licking her wounds from her dismissal at the last council meeting. The whole situation was like a slowly heating pressure cooker. Percy certainly felt the tension in his chest tightening by the minute.
Ares, on the other hand, made no attempt to hide his emotions. Every time the chiseled god of war stabbed at his plate, those burning eyes were boring into the newest Olympian's cheek. It wasn't hard to picture what he was imagining. Ares' tailored suit was the same color as his aura, while the black undershirt beneath had the top three buttons undone.
Percy almost wanted the god to snap and do something. His logical brain told him he probably couldn't win in a straight-up fight, but there was a niggling sensation under his fog of memories that told him he might have a better shot than he suspected. It was the second time the young god had felt that particular itch, but what exactly that meant was anyone's guess.
When the engagement progressed to marriage, these were going to be his siblings. Not just for pretend anymore - for real. Percy wished his mom was there.
From the moment he had entered the room, violent urges had been whipping around in Percy's stomach. Not even his marginally improved control over his domains could stop a thin fog from crawling out from beneath his chair. A stirring wind fluttered the sky bearer's ashy curls and the edges of the tablecloths, beaming the sensation of all of it directly into his brain. Thankfully, it had yet to be mentioned out loud.
The dining room inside the god's palace was truly impressive. The space was almost the size of a soccer field and plated with more precious metals and murals than the mortal brain could process. It was so beautiful and artisan you almost couldn't call it tacky.
A white and gold dressed butler swooped in to take away Percy's plate, but the thing was so full you couldn't even see the painted china beneath. The young Olympian's hands were better occupied clenching the fabric of his pants or gripping the pocketed Riptide than holding a golden fork that would have cost more than a house.
"Not hungry, love?" From the seat to his direct right, Aphrodite set her own utensil down so gently the tablecloth didn't even crease. "Eating is no longer a necessity, but it still remains a luxury to be enjoyed." He could see her peering at him.
"Not really." Percy couldn't even muster a smile, not when he could feel all the eyes in the room on his form. "Sorry." His soul was torn between the urges to fight and flee.
Under the table, Percy felt a couple of fingers alight on the end of his teal coat sleeves. It was a touching gesture that still failed to calm his nerves. Aphrodite's ghostly counterparts had yet to leave his shoulders since they had flashed to the palace. At precisely 5 p.m. they had entered, side by side with the goddess' palm in the crook of Percy's elbow. It was both a show of old-fashioned solidarity and the only way the sky bearer could bring himself to walk through the doors.
Despite her polite words and calm appearance, Aphrodite withdrew her fingers and reached out to snag her almost empty stemmed crystal glass. Instead of wine, there was some sort of sparkling clear drink inside when she raised it to her lips. A tired exasperation had settled behind the goddess' mask.
The love deity's outfit was a pleasing compliment to Percy's, a deep magenta cocktail dress that somehow paired effortlessly with her aura and shining jewelry. A silver clip shaped like a heart glimmered on one side of her hair, and there was a familiar set of diamond clouds dangling from her earlobes. By contrast, the gold locket around Percy's neck felt heavy as stone under his white collared shirt. The pink rose clipped to his suit jacket fluttered as his nervousness stirred the surrounding air.
To be honest, this was a rather fitting culmination to the last couple of days the sky bearer had experienced. Right after his 'personification practice' - his mother had giggled when Aphrodite had termed it such - Percy had been dragged by his betrothed to the dedicated fitting room just a hallway down from the guest wing of the building. It wasn't that he especially minded, what with the smile the love goddess had bestowed upon him. The mere existence of such a room certainly showcased the sort of lavish lifestyle the son of Poseidon was settling into.
For the next three hours Percy had been exposed to the absolute depths of both Aphrodite's fashion sense and her ability to tease him senseless. It hadn't taken much for the goddess to convince Sally to return to her previous activities. Her and Peitho had only made eye contact for a single millisecond before the Housekeeper was sweeping out of the room. Percy hadn't been sure whether to cheer or scream once the door closed and Aphrodite had turned to face him.
That was to be a familiar cocktail of emotions the love goddess inspired. Percy didn't want to think about what it said about him that he liked it so much. Nothing good, certainly.
The only thing more impressive than the sheer number of clothing combinations Aphrodite had him try on was the endless ways her hands and aura managed to rile him up. A new shirt? Aphrodite was feeling up his abs and pecs. New pants? Watch out for the spectral fingers on his quads and calves. Once upon a time Percy might have found a way to return the favor. Instead, his stomach was storming with so many butterflies it left him completely helpless.
Every single stretch of fabric needed some sort of adjustment that required Aphrodite to get as up close and personal as possible. Whether it was redoing a tie or adjusting the lay of a jacket, the fitting session turned into something wholly physical and not entirely innocent. It seemed to both crawl and fly by until the goddess was shooing him away with his new outfit, intending her own to be a surprise for the party.
The parting kiss she laid upon his cheek had Percy smiling like a loon. The rest of it had saddled him with a completely unfair level of blue balls that it was impossible the goddess didn't know about. He had taken a shower right afterwards, despite his divine biology making it mostly pointless from a cleanliness standpoint.
When Percy found his thoughts and right hand straying into dangerous territory, the sky bearer had cranked the knob to as cold as it could go. It had taken him another half hour under the spray and two more hours in the training building to feel remotely in control again.
Still, Aphrodite had done a good job. Percy's signature colors seemed to be the theme of his suit, which had foregone a white undershirt in lieu of a silvery-gray the same sheen as his curly hair. The bottom hem of the suit jacket never stopped flapping about, which had at first tempted Percy to tuck it into his belt before deciding better of it. With pants the same green-blue color as the coat and a shined pair of dress shoes, the personification of the clouds was ready for a night out. His mother had certainly thought he looked good when seeing them off for dinner.
"Is the food not to your liking?" Directly across the table, Hera quirked a thin eyebrow at Percy. The goddess of marriage was draped in a high-class gown that accentuated her already shapely features. "I'll have to have a word with the help." The absolute perfection of her smooth face had Percy on edge. He had caught her watching him at least twice in the last half-hour.
"No, no." Percy rushed to protest, so quick his voice came out higher pitched than normal. He cleared his throat stiffly. "It's delicious. I'm just . . ." He scrambled for words. "Nervous." That was the understatement of the century. No amount of fancy suits or the more than thirty seconds Percy had been speechless at his fiancé's stunning dress could have solved that issue.
Aside from the two main causes of his anxiety, the fact that Zues, Poseidon, and Hades were also sitting across from him certainly didn't help. Each god was dressed to the nines in their respective colors, all so muscular their suit jackets looked fit to bursting. Zeus ate every bite with calculated slowness, while Hades did so with relaxed apathy. Not a single dirty glance the sky bearer had shot his way had any sort of effect. Poseidon was doing what was probably his best attempt at a welcoming smile, but it looked so out of place above his trimmed beard that Percy almost felt bad for his father.
"You're getting married." Percy was extremely grateful that it was Hestia who spoke up next instead of any other option. The diminutive Olympian was draped in a brown stretch of fabric that was basically just her normal robe but in silk instead of cloth. "It's perfectly alright to feel a bit of anxiety, Percy." Her tiny smile was a sight for sore eyes.
"Try the wine." That was Dionysus. "It'll help. Scouts honor." The gleam in the wine deity's puffy blue eyes had Percy tempted to reach out and push the glass even further away.
The first time the sky bearer had tried to go for a sip, a gentle tug from Aphrodite's aura had him thinking better of the move. The question of why the goddess could partake but he couldn't ate at him a bit, but Percy trusted her enough to take her word for it. Besides, he had never really drank alcohol before, certainly not anything as strong as whatever the god of wine had served. Who knew what it would do to Percy's already fragile mental state.
The fact that there were probably a hundred people waiting outside for the dinner to end still made the prospect extremely tempting. If things were bad now, Percy wasn't sure how he'd handle the doors opening to the public. The man quickly shook himself from his spiraling thoughts, the band around his left ring finger twisting harshly against his knuckle. No one else decided to speak, which meant it was back to awkward again.
Joy.
Percy glanced up at a fancy clock on the wall that wouldn't have looked out of place in a portrait of Napoleon or Queen Victoria. The thing's face was as tall as his mother, which made reading the unfortunate position of the decorative hands all the easier. The dinner still had at least twenty minutes left.
Thud.
Percy blinked as an unexpected noise tickled the edges of his heightened senses. Aphrodite's stemmed glass paused halfway through its journey back to the table. The rest of the other Olympians suddenly sat up a bit straighter, sensing something Percy couldn't in his divine inexperience.
Clank.
That was decidedly metallic, like two metal bars striking with force. Percy glanced around - all of the white and gold dressed staff previously lining the room had disappeared. The whispers at the base of his skull picked up in volume. Clouds were rolling off the man's knuckles under the table.
Crash!
It was closer the third time, accompanied by a few muffled voices from the hallway outside. Percy didn't even realize he had taken Riptide out of his pocket, though it was still in pen form on his lap. Aphrodite's glass finally impacted the tablecloth with a quiet tap, but the sudden sensation of hot breathing on the back of Percy's neck made it obvious that her smoothed expression was a façade.
Strangely, both Zeus' and Athena's faces had shifted into semblances of frustration so identical that their familial connection was glaringly obvious. The goddess of wisdom had hardly spoken two words all evening, a twist to her sharp lips and aura that was unexpectedly contemplative. That was gone, now.
Thud. Screech!
The noises came ever closer and the dining room air grew ever heavier. Artemis looked like she had swallowed a lemon. There was scuffling of shoes on the floor, some intense shouting. Finally, the crescendo arrived.
Bang!
One of the side entrances to the dining room had its door nearly blown off the hinges. The thing hit the wall so hard the floor rattled. Percy watched as a dark leather boot was the only thing to emerge at first, sparking with static and surrounded by a strange silver-gold combination of energy. Then, through the newly opened portal, a strange trio of beings appeared.
The whispers were a distant roar, an earthquake beneath Percy's skin.
It was the strangest party-crashing group the sky bearer could even imagine. Two teenagers, a boy and a girl that looked no more than sixteen. An older woman, perhaps Percy's age. All three with different hair and eye colors, as if there wasn't a single shred of common blood between them. The outfits were eclectic, and that was saying something coming from a man with a not-so-impressive fashion sense.
"Sorry to interrupt everyone!" The words came from the mouth of the lone male of the group, a scruffy satyr with curly brown hair the same color as his widened eyes. A pair of horns poked from the wispy curls. "We, uh- um." He clearly hadn't prepared for more than the first sentence, his next few attempts fumbling under the stares of the fifteen Olympians. "Don't smite us? Please?" His voice was like a strange cross between a hiker and a relaxed coffee-shop barista.
While the other two of his accomplices were geared to the gills in armor and weaponry, the lone male of the trio was anything but. He was wearing a faded orange button-down, only one side of which was tucked in. A loose black tie swung above a pair of tan slacks, the latter of which failed to hide his hooves. The nervous smile he gave to the room revealed teeth just a bit too wide to be human.
Looking at the satyr was hard. Percy wasn't sure why.
"We're just here for the dumbass. Percy." That was the black-haired huntress, the youngest looking. Her gaze searched the table, as if she wasn't quite sure who she was looking for. "Just . . . let us talk with him and we won't cause any more trouble." Her alto tone was sharp as a whip-crack. Eventually she landed on the sky bearer, but not after a visible double-take.
The teen's blue eyes were sparking dangerously, as was the grip around her pair of silver knives. She was garbed in leather hunting gear, but Percy caught sight of chainmail poking out the top of her collar. Despite the demigod's young features, there was a sharp and grizzled edge to her expression that the satyr didn't share. The girl's boots were a very specific color of silvery-brown, the same ones that had kicked in the dining room door.
Looking at her was also difficult. It wasn't just because of the slight uncomfortable feeling of the moon that hung around her frame, a sort of smothering blanket to the hint of gold beneath. At first, the sky bearer thought there was a red stain on the girl's hair but it was gone when he blinked.
"We apologize for the intrusion." That was the third and last member of the ragtag group. "But we need to see him." The woman's carefully picked words were pleading, both hands tight around a celestial bronze sword. The tip was hanging so low it was basically scraping the tile.
A few years noticeably older than the others, the striking demigod was practically a shorter clone of Athena. Beneath her long, honey-blond hair sat a pair of stormy gray eyes that had locked onto Percy immediately. Beneath, there was a great depth of emotion. Rays from the high open windows painted her tense expression. Clad with not just a breastplate but also an armored skirt and greaves, the last of the trio looked ready to storm a fortress more than interrupt a horribly tense dinner party.
The ghosts around her face were so thick Percy could barely see through them. Even a single glance had a spear of pain striking the back of his eyes.
Percy didn't like the fact that they were here for him, but from the first moment they had entered the young god knew it was the case. He could just feel it. Could he not go one day without something emotionally shattering? The son of Poseidon took a deep inhale just to make sure his lungs were still functioning.
"Daughter . . ." The first answering growl came from the god of thunder. Zeus was working his forehead with a hand, looking almost as stressed as he had during the last meeting on Olympus. His gold aura was heavy, a physical pressure inside the room. The huntress flinched openly but stood her ground.
Percy's eyes locked back onto the girl's frame. The voices in his skull were louder than ever before. Every plate on the table rattled for a moment, tendrils of fog reaching across the floor to curl around the new arrivals.
"Thalia!" Surprisingly to Percy, it was Artemis who actually stood from her chair. An angry silver light flared from her eyes, and this time the raven-haired teen bent her neck meekly. "I understand your emotions are running high, but I instructed you to wait outside with the others." The goddess' bright red hair rose a bit in the air. "I'll not tolerate such insubordination from my huntresses. No matter the circumstance."
"Forgive her, Lady Artemis." The blond was quick to cut in, directing the room's ire onto herself. "This whole operation was my idea." The other two intruders jumped, faces set to protest until the woman shot them each a stern glare. Her gaze turned back to Percy. He couldn't meet it, blinking rapidly to keep his vision clear.
"Annabeth," Athena's clipped tone was heavily disapproving. "I thought you more logical than this." Coming from her, that was about as scathing of a rebuke as you could get. The whispers behind Percy's eyes echoed the name 'Annabeth' a few times before fading back into the sea of endless white-noise.
"Count yourself lucky to still be alive." Poseidon was second to rise, the floor under his feet rumbling darkly. "I'll not have my son's party ruined in such a manner." What humanity Percy had spotted lying beneath his eyes had disappeared. The god's deep-blue suit coat had condensation dripping off the hem. "Leave. Your goodwill as veterans of the war and loyal soldiers of Olympus is all that stays my hand." That threat had the satyr looking like he was near to passing out.
"Wait." Hestia quelled the tension in the room with just one word. The hearth deity had stood onto the cushion of her chain to be seen over the tabletop, fiery irises flickering. "Let's not resort to violence just yet. Percy?" The ashen-haired god jumped in his seat, finally able to wrench his gaze away towards his aunt. "They are here for you, nephew. What would you have us do?" Every head at the table swiveled back in his direction.
Percy's body felt like jello as he slowly stood from his seat. His hands were so tight around Riptide he could feel his fingernails digging into his skin. Something deep in Percy's brain wanted to ask the other Olympians to get the trio as far from the room as possible. It was cruel, but he couldn't help it.
These people were significant. The sort of significant that was really, truly scary. The red ghost on the ravenette's hair, the swirling specters around the blond, the sincere and hopeful smile of the satyr. It basically screamed 'people from your past' loud enough that all he could think to do was run away.
Instead, though, Percy swallowed his fears. If he was truly committed to facing his past then it was time to put his money where his mouth was. Gods, he didn't want to have to tell the group that he didn't know who they were. Especially not with the way the three were looking at him with faces so sincere they were practically half-crying already.
"I'll speak with them." It was a physical effort to get the words out of his throat. Percy fought off the creeping darkness in his vision with a mental steel bat. "Just for a few minutes." The urge to uncap his sword was immense, but instead the sky bearer shoved it back into his pocket with shaking hands. Percy was able to muster a nod for Poseidon, who grudgingly settled back into his seat at the same time as Artemis.
The wide eyes of the intruders followed him as he stood. The yet unnamed satyr in particular appeared as if he was watching either a ghost or a stranger, or perhaps a combination of both. It was a look Percy imagined he shared at the moment. The huntress, Thalia, had her jaw working for words. Her black eyebrows were pinched together so hard they created a deep canyon on the teen's forehead. Percy's mist curled around her static-charged boots, the sensation as if he had poprocks under his tongue.
Annabeth, by contrast, had a flicking gaze that seemed to catch every detail all at once. The green exuding from his pores, the ashy color of his hair. When her stormy eyes landed on the ring on Percy's left hand, she almost stumbled in place. The whispers were a haunting choir, so loud and arresting the sky bearer was shocked they weren't drowning out every other sound in the room.
"Are you certain, love?" The tremors in Percy's right hand stilled as Aphrodite reached up to gently entwine her pointer and middle finger around his own. When he looked down the goddess was actually watching the trio by the destroyed entrance. "This is . . . well. Je ne sais pas." The goddess' face was simultaneously frustrated and empathetic. "It's not quite the circumstances I was envisioning for this meeting, but I suppose I'm the last one to criticize a lack of patience."
Percy's expression pinched at her words. They basically confirmed what he had suspected, but it wasn't his place to be upset by the withheld information. The man had told his mother not to tell him. He would have probably given Aphrodite the same answer. So much for waiting until after the party.
Percy wanted to scream.
"Yeah." He said instead, running his thumb over her knuckles. The smooth warmth of her flawless skin was a physical tether to reality. "I'll be okay." He ignored the way the void creeped at the corners of the room.
It was a lie, and he could see in her eyes that she knew and still wouldn't fight him about it. It made Percy feel slimy, taking advantage of the goddess' respect for him like that. The sky bearer tried to apologize through his gaze as best he could. Aphrodite's expression softened and she inclined her head, which helped him breathe a bit easier. Percy was so caught up with the love deity that he didn't see the way Annabeth's cloudy eyes painstakingly tracked the motion of their entwined fingers.
The trip around the massive table felt like a walk to the gallows. The air in the chamber followed Percy's form with every step, pulling the Olympians' hair and the edges of their fancy clothes in his direction as he passed. Through it all, he kept his gaze somewhere just above and to the right of the group of intruders, unable to look directly at them without his heart constricting in his chest.
"Grover!" Percy's superhuman ears heard the huntress hiss at her male companion out the side of her mouth. As Percy approached the boy had started chewing on his own tie. The satyr let it drop out of his mouth with a grimace. His posture was skittish, relieved, nervous, and excited all at once.
Percy stepped up in front of the trio, now fully armed with their names. Annabeth. Thalia. Grover. The sky bearer still had to tilt his head down significantly to avoid gazing too far over their heads. The young god had forgotten just how tall the Olympians all were in comparison to more normal folk.
Percy couldn't believe he ever thought the dinner would be the most awkward thing he had ever experienced. This trumped it by sheer orders of magnitude.
"Five minutes, Perseus." Zeus' words bounced off the sky bearers back. He barely paid it enough mind to wave a hand over his shoulder. Percy was hardly in a mood to let the ex-king of gods dictate this interaction.
"Outside. In the hallway." Keeping each sentence as short as possible made them almost manageable. Percy's green glow tinted the skin on each of the group's faces. "Please." He tacked the last word on after a moment.
"Okay." The word barely made it past Grover's lips, as if there were a million other things the satyr wanted to say instead. He was still staring up at Percy with wide eyes. "Sure, dude." With robotic stiffness he turned around and shuffled back through the portal, chewed tie swaying from side to side.
That left two.
"This better be a good fucking five minute chat." Neither Thalia's voice nor her stricken face had anywhere near enough bravado to back up those words. Percy had seen it from his seat, but now that he was this close the sky bearer could practically feel how hard the girl's hands were shaking around the grips of her knives. She chose to step backwards through the broken door, blue eyes never leaving Percy's frame.
And then there was one.
"Percy, I-"
There was a war beneath the daughter of Athena's features. The specters in Percy's vision had dispersed enough to where he could see it all, every twitch an internal battle. Annabeth couldn't seem to stop glancing at the cool fog that was streaming from the tips of Percy's fingers. Her form was wound up so tense he was shocked she still had the strength to hold up her sword.
"Outside, Annabeth." Percy's next action was out of his control. The man watched one arm reach out and nudge the woman's shoulder with the back of one hand. As soon as Percy regained control he dropped the offending appendage, skin and brain burning at the strangely informal contact.
"Yeah." Annabeth parroted, her face equally surprised. "Outside." When the demigod decided to move she did it with force, streaking from the dining room so fast the clouds around her shoes swirled to waist-height.
Percy wanted to spare one last glance over his shoulder. Just one last look to Aphrodite, his anchor, before plunging into the depths of what was about to occur. He didn't, though. Instead he took another few moments to make sure his body was still breathing before following after the strange and emotionally terrifying trio. The sheer change in air pressure of his departure was enough to pull the half-broken door off the wall, slamming the thing closed ominously behind his back.
It was that same corridor from his last trip to the palace. The same never-ending brightness, the same smooth walls, the same oppressive atmosphere. Hades, Percy needed to stop having life-altering conversations in gods-damned hallways.
The sky bearer barely made it a single step before a set of arms was attempting to squeeze the divine life from his chest. They were attached to a fuzzy head of hair with two small horns. It was only the fact that Percy was so shocked that kept Riptide in his pocket instead of cleaving through Grover's neck.
"Percy!" The teenaged-looking satyr was doing his best impression of an octopus with how hard he was hugging Percy's immobile form. "Man, you have no idea how glad we are to see you, bro." With how bright Grover's tear-filled eyes were he was apparently rendered blind to the growing horror beneath the sky bearer's frozen expression. "Jeez, dude, it's not fair you hit puberty a second time!" Apparently the increased gravity inside the hallway was lost on him as well.
Annabeth seemed to be the only one to notice. Her face was as pale as a ghost, like she had found something in Percy's gaze that scared the life out of her. The demigod's weapon hit the floor, grip finally giving out with the clang of dropping bronze.
"Fuck off." Grover let out a grunt as the hands of the huntress gripped his shirt and pulled him away. "My turn, tin-for-brains." Thalia had sheathed her knives into their waist-scabbards, but not even her tough façade could hide how her bottom lip was trembling. "Come here, you big lug."
Percy watched the black-haired teen coming in slow motion, arms opening to either side. The closer she got, the more the thin silver shroud around the girl's form bled into his aura. It was that same nightly sensation of the sun giving way to the moon, but amplified a hundred times over. He could feel it, sense Artemis so close it was like they were standing an inch away from each other. It made his skin roil in fear and anger and disgust and Percy couldn't handle it anymore.
"Don't touch me."
Instead of physical hands, it was the gripping claws of the air itself that stopped Thalia in place for a split second. She hung, motionless with a shocked expression, before being shoved backward hard enough to have her nearly tumbling into the opposite wall. The floor of the corridor shuddered, thick streams of cloud creeping over the ceiling above Percy's head.
The hallway was silent for a moment.
"What the fuck?!" The girl recovered astonishingly quickly, her body moving more nimbly than was possible for any mortal. "What was that?!" She had fallen into a practiced crouch, as if fearing another attack at any moment.
Thalia's divine blood was more than evident with the way sparks danced between the girl's clawed fingers. Her electric eyes bored deep into Percy's own, but he gave no ground. It was all he could do to keep himself upright, to keep blinking, to keep breathing instead of bringing the whole building down around their heads. His engagement band was nearly stripping the skin from the young god's finger as his hands endlessly twisted it back and forth. Back and forth.
"Um, Percy?" Grover, it seemed, had finally clued into the atmosphere. He was standing stiff. "You okay, dude?" The shine in his brown eyes was growing increasingly frantic. Percy couldn't muster a response. All his willpower was put into keeping the seams on his sanity that he had welded shut over the past few days from collapsing.
"Something's wrong." Annabeth sounded as sure of the statement as terrified by it. The blond took a step towards the sky bearer, before thinking better of the motion and hesitating back. "Kelp-head, what's wrong?" The nickname hit like a haymaker to the jaw.
"I-" Percy stopped himself, feeling a veritable slew of word vomit crawling up his throat. "I'm sorry." He wasn't sure why he was apologizing, but the offended glint in the huntress' eyes hurt far more than he expected it to. "Just, don't come any closer." The young Olympian was sure he wouldn't handle any more physical contact very well. "Please." The ring kept twisting. Back and forth.
"Okay, man." Grover seemed overly eager to keep things from escalating. "We'll just stay right here." The sky bearer was surprised at the amount of steel in the gaze he shot the two women by his sides. "See? No problem." He awkwardly chuckled. For a moment he and Percy simply stared at each other.
Back and forth. Back and-
A sharp sensation of not-quite-pain was the only warning Percy got before Thalia's eyes blew wide open. The prick from his left hand was enough to knock him out of his mental death spiral. The son of Poseidon found the huntress' gaze directed no longer at his face, but instead down near his stomach. When he dimly glanced down, his left ring finger was coated in shining golden ichor. Percy released his right hand's death grip. Divine blood dripped off the tips of his fingernails.
"Oh." Percy blinked. He watched as his sparkling flesh knit itself back together, noting that the jewel band remained perfectly unblemished. The young god looked back up, not quite sure why the trio opposite looked like they had been hit by a truck.
"Fuck." Thalia was the first to speak. "I don't think the whole engagement thing was fake, guys," she breathed out. Her dark hair dropped, like all the static contained within fled in a single instant.
"No." Annabeth's tan features were still as plastic. "It wasn't."
"Okay, so, Percy's a god now. Sure." Grover was on the verge of becoming unhinged. Percy had to admit it was admirable, the way the young satyr was physically holding himself together by gripping his ill-fitted slacks with both hands. "That doesn't mean the plan has to change. That much." The wispy-haired teen winced at his own words. "We can still get back to camp and talk this out an-"
"I'm not going anywhere." Percy hadn't quite meant for his voice to come out so deep, but the rumbling of the tiles beneath his feet quieted the hallway well enough. Grover went to interrupt again but Percy held up a hand and the satyr's jaw snapped shut.
Well, nothing for it. This was going to suck.
"I'm sorry." There he went apologizing again. "But I . . ." The sky bearer almost couldn't force it out. His green aura was thick, hazy. "I don't know who you are."
Silence.
The hallway was deadly still. Percy thought that putting the truth into the air would make him feel lighter. It didn't. He wasn't running from it anymore, wasn't that good? Wasn't that the point? Instead he only felt like the biggest piece of shit on Olympus, and that was a bar so high you would have needed to pole vault.
"That's, uh." Grover laughed again. The sound had no humor in it. "That's not a very funny joke, Percy." The satyr looked like he was about to shove his tie back into his mouth with the way his jaw was grinding.
"It's not a joke." Repeating himself only made the number of knives in Percy's gut double. The clouds underfoot were dark, sad things.
"You're kidding me. You're fucking lying. We-" Thalia swallowed thickly, her throat working for a few moments. "We traveled together, asshole. Fought together. We're your friends." Her voice broke on the last word.
"I'm sorry." Percy meant it. It didn't make it sound any less lame coming out of his mouth.
"Percy . . ." The daughter of Athena looked lost for words. Her gray eyes were cold as a lump of steel, expression blanketed in a veil of poorly hidden grief. "You really don't remember, do you?" He shook his head and watched the person behind her gaze shatter into tiny pieces.
Grover nearly fell to his knees. Thalia viciously shook her head several times. "What happened to you, Percy?" The huntress had fisted her hands but even then they restarted their shaking. She met his gaze with panicked blue eyes. "Where were you?" In Percy's already fragile mental state, the question pushed a very specific set of Othry's shaped buttons that had a scornful reply shooting from between his teeth before he could snap them closed.
"You should know." The sky bearer could feel one of his lips curling, the teal blaze in his chest flaring up. "I was right where your patron left me."
A burst of agitated air had the hair of every occupant of the hallway whipped around viciously. The desire to say more almost overwhelmed Percy, but Annabeth stumbling into the closest wall and the way Thalia's face crumbled with guilt had him biting down on his tongue.
Now he felt even worse.
"Six years?" Annabeth sounded like she didn't believe the words coming out of her own mouth. "You held that thing for six years?" The demigod suddenly didn't look anything close to Percy's age, but far younger. Before his eyes a scared teenager had replaced a grown woman. Annabeth's expression was ashy. Haunted. Grover had both hands buried in his hair, as if the satyr was watching his world fall apart right in front of his face.
"That doesn't explain anythin-" Thalia's retort was brutally cut off.
"It does." The daughter of Athena clutched either shoulder, hunching into the wall. It was a posture Percy was intimately acquainted with.
"The Burden." He breathed its name out into the air. Tearful gray eyes flashed up to the young god's face. "You held it too." In a single instant, the anger in Percy's chest was drowned in a tidal wave of empathy.
Annabeth let out a choked sound that might have been a laugh and might have been a sob. "Yes. I did. For a few hours. Maybe a day or something, I don't know." Annabeth shook her head, like there were ghosts clinging to her golden bangs. It was like Percy was looking in a mirror. "That thing, it- it does things to you. Makes you hear sounds that aren't real, see stuff that isn't really there."
"I'm sorry." Percy couldn't seem to stop saying the phrase. He had to resist the urge to step forward, but he feared his presence would only make things worse. "You shouldn't have had to go through that."
He could see them behind the blond woman's eyes. Those same cracks, the same fractures inside him but just on a micro scale. Percy wanted to help but he didn't know how. Was this how his mother felt?
It was horrible.
"Don't say that! Don't apologize!" For the first time, tears finally broke through Annabeth's walls. It started as a single drop from either eye, each stream sparkling in the light. "I barely touched it and I still have nightmares about it sometimes. Gods, Percy. Six years!" The sky bearer could only watch as the demigod came apart before his very eyes, Annabeth unraveling at the seams like a doll when you pulled at the stitching.
Helpless. That's all he was. Completely, utterly, hopelessly helpless.
"It's my fault." Grover had begun to mumble to himself, fingers still grasping at either horn. It was clear from his cloudy gaze that he wasn't actually seeing anything in front of him anymore. "I should've been there. I left."
"Oi!" Grover winced back to reality as a gloved hand smacked him upside the head. It seemed to Percy that Thalia was mightily ignoring the wetness on her cheeks. "Don't start with that shit again. Someone needed to secure the cow-thing and it had to be you. It's not your fault." When electric blue eyes turned the sky bearer's way, there was something else inside that he was also horribly familiar with - all-consuming guilt. "It's mine."
Annabeth was trying and failing to stifle her sobs with the back of one hand. The skin beneath her teeth was pale from the pressure. The demigod's choked gasping echoed through the corridor, tears dripping from her chin to the flawless marble tiles below.
"No."
Percy didn't know why he spoke, but the fire in his chest was raging and his skin was practically glowing green and he simply couldn't take it anymore. Another hurricane gale spawned in the corridor for only a single moment, the air forcefully dragging their faces and attention onto the sky bearer.
Percy wasn't sure if his next actions were going to be good ones. But Olympus be damned, he couldn't just stand around and do nothing anymore.
The young god watched as Thalia's eyes widened when he took a step forward. That first step turned into a second, and with a grimace Percy was pushing through the feeling of Artemis and wrapping the much smaller girl in his best approximation of a 'Sally Jackson hug'. The kind that lifted your feet off the floor a bit and warmed you up so much you could feel it on the inside.
"It's not your fault, Thalia." The words came from somewhere deep inside of him, that newly opened place near his heart that still seemed half-alien. The huntress was standing stiff, and Percy could acutely feel tiny arcs of electricity skittering across his skin. He ignored it.
Thalia took a heaving breath. Then another. On her third she fell to pieces in his arms.
The daughter of Zeus grieved much differently than Percy had expected. There were tears, certainly, but they came with repeated punches to his chest and shoulders that would certainly have hurt if he was mortal. The huntress' mouth was stuck in a loop of endless apologies and scathing insults, but each time her tone became sharp it was clear she wasn't talking about Percy anymore but about herself instead.
It wasn't pretty. It wasn't quiet. It wasn't even all about what had happened to Percy, he didn't think.
But it was good.
When the sky bearer stepped back the daughter of Zeus looked a million times better. More put together, almost the smart-mouth teen she had been when kicking in the dining room door. The high would be temporary, as Percy knew all too well. Still, it was an essential first step. The young Olympian turned, and with one motion Percy had drawn a shell-shocked satyr into an identical embrace.
"It's not your fault, Grover." Percy felt his own tears building. Perhaps the words came so easily because he had been hoping, praying, to be told the same thing for so long. Perhaps they came because they were the truth.
Where the huntress was combative, the satyr was desperate. He clung to Percy like a man lost in a storm, a person drowning when they found the floating life preserver. It was as if Grover couldn't get physically close enough. Multiple times hooves stepped harshly on Percy's toes, but it's not like it really hurt anyway so he just shrugged off the discomfort. The sky bearer knew his suit would be shining with trails of snot and tears but at that moment he honestly did not give a single shit.
Percy had to pry himself away after a few quiet moments. He didn't want to cut things short, but he had to. That fire in his core, what he recently learned was the call of his domains, was strong enough to be almost tangible. There was another set of eyes watching, and this last encounter was the one that was needed most of all.
If Thalia was aggressive and Grover was frantic, then Annabeth was avoidant. At first it was like trying to get a grip on a ghost - the daughter of Athena skated back, shoes skittering across the tile as Percy approached. There was fear in her eyes, but the sky bearer didn't let him affect him. It only took slightly more effort than the others but after he had snagged one shoulder it was over.
"It's not your fault, Annabeth." Those words were her undoing.
Annabeth wailed.
It was the sound of someone who had lost more than a friend, but rather some piece of themself that they knew they would never get back. It was the sound Percy had made when he reunited with his mother on Aphrodite's beach, when the reality of his situation was made clear and he could feel just how broken he truly was. It came with uncontrollable heaving of the shoulders, the gasping of lungs that couldn't get enough air. It was more than sadness, more than grief.
Percy didn't try to resist the wetness that spilled over onto his cheeks. The woman's emotions were hitting so close to home they might as well have been sitting in the young god's living room. Instead of speaking, Percy simply did what Sally had done to him. He stood, and he held her in his arms until the daughter of Athena began to put herself back together.
When Percy eventually stepped back, his eyes were greeted by three broken people. Despite having just 'met' them, they looked achingly familiar. Heavy eyes just like his own. The same hunched shoulders, the same pained expression.
"Listen." Percy's voice came out a bit choked, so he swallowed once before continuing. The daughter of Athena bent over to pick up her sword, almost on autopilot, using the motion to wipe her face with one arm. "We don't have a lot of time." They were probably over the limit already. "But I have an idea."
"Sure, man." Grover was working at his own eyes with a few fingers. His tone was scratchy like sandpaper.
"Lay it on us." Thalia's hands were habitually checking her various pieces of hunting gear, an obvious nervous tick that Percy decided not to call out.
"You have to leave." The flash of anger and hurt across the trio's expressions had him hurrying to continue. "Just for now! Doors should be opening to the public soon. After that, you can come back in." Percy could feel his fingers start to play with his ring again, in lieu pulling Riptide from his pocket.
"Right." Annabeth was showing a brave face. "We'll do that."
"I . . . I don't have many friends." Percy said. The admission wasn't pleasant. "But if we were friends once we can be friends again, I think." I hope.
"Of course, Percy." It was the softest Thalia had spoken all evening. There was genuine relief under her rough tone and tough expression. Grover couldn't have nodded faster or more emphatically than he did in that moment.
"Okay." Percy breathed. "Okay." He didn't know exactly what he was committing to, but something deep in his soul told him it was the right move. "I guess we'll talk more at the party?" Hopefully that would give him a few minutes to recover before facing what was certain to be another personally destroying evening on Olympus.
"You'll still be here, right? When the doors open?" From the abashed look on Grover's face it was clear he had been trying to hold the words in. The satyr was nervously wringing his hands together.
"Yeah." Percy gave his best smile. It wasn't great. "I'll be here."
"We'll hold you to that." Thalia punctuated her threat by jabbing a silver knife in Percy's direction. He had barely seen her pull the thing. "We've got a lot of catching up to do that you aren't getting out of. Got it?" Percy nodded.
"Okay. Good plan." Annabeth took another breath before once again assuming the lead role of the trio. "Thanks for talking to us, Percy." She gripped Thalia's arm with a hand, ensuring that the huntress put away her blade. Grover naturally fell into step in the rear. "We'll uh, see you? Later?"
Percy nodded once again, and with that last stunted interaction the daughter of Athena was practically pulling her two companions down the corridor. A few times he thought that they would look back to where he was standing, still just a foot or two away from the dining room entrance.
They never did.
After they disappeared out the far exit, Percy let his eyes linger on the once immaculate hallway. Just like the last time the sky bearer had gotten too emotional, his surroundings had suffered for it. Paintings pulled off walls, decorative tables pushed askew. Had he destroyed the floor beneath his feet or anything of the sort? No, not this time at least. Percy would take that as progress.
His shoes were like cement blocks as the ashen-haired Olympian turned back to face the door to the dining room. He could feel the divine power still contained within. The odds of the deities inside not hearing and feeling everything was literally zero.
Great.
Percy allowed himself a moment of respite by leaning his hands against the cool stone wall. His forehead met the marble with a 'thunk' while he closed his eyes. After a few seconds of mental effort, his senses of the surroundings dulled enough to start to soothe his raging headache. The sky bearer felt drained, and the night was not even half over. For another minute the son of Poseidon just stood and breathed.
"Percy?" A gentle hand alighted on his shoulder. It was accompanied by that familiar scent of roses and chocolate. "How do you feel, mon coeur?"
"Awful." Percy groaned the words into the wall. "The worst."
Aphrodite's silence was of an empathetic sort. A set of ghostly fingers started combing across the back of his scalp before dragging through the curls on the top of his head. Percy couldn't help the sigh of relief the action inspired. For a while both immortals were content with the simple contact, but eventually Aphrodite broke the stillness.
"She loved you, you know." Her words were barely a whisper. "As much as a girl that young could love anybody." The next logical question was so glaringly obvious, so horribly frightening that Percy couldn't even dare to think it.
"Yeah." Instead, the personification of clouds forcibly swallowed down the shame roiling in his stomach. In hindsight it felt like he had used that fact to manipulate the whole interaction. "I could tell." Percy didn't open his eyes. "Does it make me a bad person?"
"Does what, dearest?" Aphrodite's real hand was rubbing circles on his jacket.
"That I forgot her." He felt sick. "That I forgot all of them."
"No." She sounded so sure that Percy was struck with the burning urge to ask how she knew. "It does not." Percy wanted so bad to believe her. Wanted it almost more than anything else.
He just didn't know if he could.