Juliette has no weapons on her, and she can't scratch a ghost's eyes out with her fingernails. So, instead, she starts chucking flaming, razor sharp words.

"What the fuck are you doing here?" She hisses.

Luke huffs an uncomfortable laugh. The corner of his lip quirks up into a half smile. He says nothing in response.

Julie shakes her head in horror. Jason backs up a step until she's firmly tucked against him, his arm wrapped backwards around her waist like a seatbelt made of ice.

"Rosa?" He mutters, tense.

Julie can't spare him a glance. She's too preoccupied tracking every twitch of Luke's face, arms, legs, and fingers.

"You're dead," She hears her own voice marvel.

Luke nods, still smiling humorlessly. "Well, we are in the Underworld."

He just looks at her, mouth downturned, hands in his pockets. His eyes scan her through Jason like the son of Jupiter isn't even standing there. It terrifies her.

She's ten years old again. Ten years old and fighting to come up for air.

"You're grown up," He notes.

She clenches her fists. Julie can feel her knees quaking.

What is she supposed to say to that? No thanks to you?

'Teach her.'

The lump in her throat keeps her from saying anything. She just keeps staring at him and pleading with Hypnos to let her wake up.

At Julie's silence, Luke flicks his attention from her to Jason where he's standing like a guardian in front of her. He straightens slightly in interest, squinting at them both. Luke nods in recognition. "Jason Grace."

Jason's arm tightens around the small of Julie's back. She shivers as his skin saps every bit of heat out of her body. "Do I know you?"

It's less a question than the bite of a wolf. Luke shakes his head, smiling thinly, tiredly.

"No, you don't. I know you, though. Your legion pretty much devastated my western forces during the war."

"Your forces..." Jason is facing away from Juliette, but she can picture the realization dawning in his eyes. "You're Luke Castellan, aren't you?"

Luke opens his arms in showcase, looking down on himself. "That'd be me. Good to finally meet the great Son of Jupiter in the flesh. Or, well...I guess not so much flesh is on either of us anymore, huh?" He nods at Jason's ghostly form. "Sorry for your loss."

Casually rocking back on his heels, he raises his eyebrows at whatever strange expression Jason must be giving him.

The two dead men study each other in silence. Julie feels herself unconsciously shrink back behind Jason, avoiding the sting of Luke's eyes on her.

Then, finally, Jason scoffs. Julie almost whines in protest when he takes a step out from in front of her, instead coming to stand shoulder-to-shoulder, hand laced with hers.

"I expected you to be bigger," He says drily.

Juliette gives Jason a bewildered look, but Luke actually laughs. When he nods again, a real smile tugging at the scar down his cheek, there's respect gleaming in his eyes.

"Sorry to disappoint," Luke chuckles.

He looks again to Juliette, and she nearly stumbles backwards. Jason's hand tightens on hers, almost painfully tight. It roots her in place, preventing her from retreating Luke's gaze. She shoots him a panicked, frustrated glare. Jason pretends not to notice. He holds her right in place, staring down Luke in challenge.

The dead son of Hermes sighs and runs a hand through his messy blonde hair. Unlike Jason and the other ghosts, his form has some color to it. He's dressed the same way he was the day that he died. Gold armor and a too big blue button down.

"You know, when I took this job over for Achilles, I wasn't expecting my first intervention to be so early," notes Luke. He tilts his head at Julie, considering. "You look, like...what, sixteen? Seventeen? So it's been how long?"

Julie's vocal chords are frozen in place. Jason's pointed tug of her hand is all that manages to get them thrumming again.

"Two years," She stammers. "Or-Two and a half, really. It's-um-May, I-I think."

Thanks for the context, Julie. It's really important that he knows what month it is before he drowns you in the River Styx.

Luke nods thoughtfully. "I see. Well, I haven't had the rehearsal time I was expecting but let's see if I can wing this." He clears his throat and gestures at the river rushing down at the base of the cliff. "If you take a swim here, you'll end up impervious to physical harm, but it comes with a curse. You remember the curse bit? You came here with Percy, right?"

His tone is condescending. It irritates Juliette enough that her temper thaws out her voice box the rest of the way. "I remember the curse bit," She snaps.

Jason's mouth quirks upwards. He lets go of her hand, allowing her to take the lead.

Luke shrugs. "Okay, well...I assume you're not going to listen to my speech on morality and painful deaths and such-"

"I would rather peel my own skin off."

"-So, I won't keep you standing up here all day. I am required to let you know, though, that even love can be a fatal flaw."

She nearly laughs at him. Like he has any place lecturing her on love. "Right. Anything else?"

He raises his arm, showing off the bloody stab wound just below his armpit. "Make sure you pick an anchor spot. Keep it secret. You know how it is." He leans to the side, peers over the edge, and grimaces at the black rapids down below. "Cowabunga? I guess?"

Julie rolls her eyes and steps towards the precipice. She looks down at the water below. This close to it, she feels cool little dewdrops of desolation blooming on her skin. For most, they'd likely feel foreboding. Not her, though. They seep in through her pores, soothing her aches and pains. She sighs in relief.

If she squints down at the places that the rapids form bubbles, Julie can see the echoes of what fills Lady Styx's domain.

She sees the visage of a man who wanted to be an artist bent over his desk at a law firm.

She sees a greying woman tossing yet another negative pregnancy test into her bathroom trash.

She sees a child holding a framed family photo and watching his father's moving van pull out of their narrow driveway.

She sees disappointment. She sees longing. She sees hopelessness and the curse of an unfulfilled future.

She sees the irony of this stupid cliff jump. She's diving into a pool of someone else's grief in order to fix her own. Gods, that's really on brand for Juliette's entire life thus far.

She's about to take a deep breath and make the plunge when Jason's hand darts out and snags her elbow.

"Wait!" He cries.

Julie rolls her eyes and sighs at him. "Dude, I was so close! Now, I have to amp up my nerve again."

"Sorry, sorry." He doesn't sound sorry. "I just..."

He tugs her closer, and Julie raises an eyebrow at him impatiently. Jason cringes, blue face tinging purple at the cheeks. He stammers and darts his eyes around, and Juliette smirks at him.

"You just panicked, didn't you?"

Jason huffs and lets go of her arm.

Shaking her head fondly, she turns to Luke. After months perpetrating child abuse, the least he could do is answer some questions for her wussy boyfriend.

"You said this won't kill me?"

Luke gives her an awkward smile and shakes his head. "No, you should be fine."

"Should be?" Jason echoes, teeth gritted.

Luke shrugs.

"I don't have my mother's blessing," Juliette reminds the guardian of the Styx. "Isn't that, like, a big no-no?"

Something strange glimmers behind Luke's eyes. He glances at Jason. Then he glances down at the Styx. Then back at Juliette.

"Don't you, though?"

He winks.

What?

"What the Hades does that mean?" Julie scowls. "You haven't gotten any less cryptic."

Luke grins. "Well, that's what makes me such a good villain."

"Yeah, that and hurting little girls," snaps Julie, voice raising.

He winces. His gaze drifts down to his shoes in the black sand.

The angry comment tore out of her before she could stop it. It left a trail of fire in its wake. She's breathing heavily, trying not to cry. Trying to blink away the images of Chris's closed eyes all those times she was dragged through the Andromeda by monsters, kicking and screaming.

Jason's hand finds her back. Julie waits impatiently for Luke to come up with a godsdamn response.

He seems to be fighting with his inner demons (poor, poor thing). Luke tugs at his hair, glaring down at the sandy cliffside, self-hatred on his stupid, pointed features.

She waits until he thinks of what to say. She braces herself to hear all kinds of excuses and explanations.

"Is she doing okay?"

Julie frowns.

She?

It takes her a moment. It takes feeling the flash of frigid anger from Jason's fingertips for her to catch up with Luke's question.

She.

Juliette grits her teeth. "Who, Annabeth?"

Luke's eyes are pained. He nods. Pleadingly.

He has got to be fucking joking.

Juliette doesn't know what exactly she was hoping to hear. An apology, she guesses? Maybe even just an acknowledgement of what he put her through? Was she totally crazy to think that maybe dying would make Luke think back on everything he did to her and go 'Hmm...Maybe it was cruel of me to kidnap and manipulate and torture and weaponize that little girl.'

What was he meant to say to her now, though?

'I'm sorry for traumatizing you. Oh, and for burning your home down. And crippling your childhood friend. And getting your older sister killed. My bad.'

No. She guesses that makes no sense. Words won't undo what happened back then. Reconciliation has never been possible here.

There is nothing that Luke could ever say or do that would take away from what he put her through. Maybe he knows that, and that's why he doesn't even bother trying.

Or maybe he just doesn't care. Does it matter to her which one it is?

She feels her wounded pride bubble like hot acid beneath her skin.

...Yeah. She wishes that he didn't matter, but he does.

Julie scoffs at him. She shakes her head, turns around to face Jason, and lifts up onto her toes to brush a kiss against the hollow of his ice cold cheek. Then she steps back to the precipice and glares over at Luke.

"That's none of your business." She snips. "Also, I hope that knife wound really hurt."

Then she teeters sideways off of the cliff.


She was really expecting the water to be cold. Nope. Julie may as well have taken a running leap into a boiling vat of oil.

Is this how french fries feel?

The second that Juliette crashes through the surface of the Styx, she feels her body get carried away by the rapids. She's tossing and tumbling, doing flips and uncontrolled summersaults, slamming into rocks and trying to rake her hands through the gravel of the riverbed for a handhold. All the while, the water cuts like a million tiny knives into her skin. Julie releases a muffled scream, her eyes snapping open underwater.

Oh. Well, that explains some of her struggle. Apparently, what she's trying to hold onto isn't gravel. Julie's gut flips when her fist finally manages to wedge into the center of a human ribcage.

Gross.

Disturbed or not, she uses the skeleton it belongs to like a safety line, clinging to it as the current threatens to steal what's left of the breath she sucked in during her descent. It's stuck in the mud well enough to keep her in one place. She tries collecting her thoughts, glancing around in the nearly pitch black waters.

Her breath is already running out. Julie's lungs are starting to clench in warning. It sends fear scuttling across her brain like the pitter patter of rat feet. It also jumpstarts her focus.

Julie needs to do this quickly. Finding what she's looking for will be totally useless if she drowns to death on her way back up.

Man.

Drowning. Luke Castellan. How many blasts from the past are in store for Juliette before this stupid curse kicks in?

Here's another nostalgia point. The skeleton that Julie is clinging on to gets dislodged by the rapids. Before she has time to think 'Well, that's unfortunate,' Juliette's being swept back down the river, and her head is slamming into a rock.

Ah. Concussion, her old friend.

Black fireworks explode in her eyes. Julie's stomach lurches. The remainder of her breath bubbles out from between her lips.

She panics, as one does when they're being thrown about, drowning in a boiling river of lost dreams. Julie needs a breath. She'll go up and take a breath, and then she'll come back down and search for what she needs to find.

But the current is strong. She's dizzy. Disoriented. She doesn't remember which way is up.

The current is pinning her down, forcing her head back into the piles of bones on the bottom of the river.

Juliette is no child of Poseidon.

She has no mother holding on to her ankle to keep her from being swept away.

No, Julie is on her own down here, tumbling and turning, fighting for breath beneath these black tides. She's alone.

Her mother never blessed this.

Her mother never blessed her.

Aphrodite has never wanted anything more than for Juliette to cease to exist.

Maybe she's about to get her wish.

Her arms start going numb. Julie's feet no longer kick. There's a clenching pain in her chest. Her throat is expanding and contracting, begging with her to breathe in.

In a moment, she will.

She knows how this goes.

Nothing feels like childhood to her more than the sensation of her lungs filling up with water.

Juliette's lips go fuzzy. Tingly. She can feel her eyes starting to shut on their own, all of her muscle control focusing on keeping her airways closed.

These waters are so dark.

The water

is

dark.

Water. Darkness.

"If you drown to death, I'm going to scream at you, Jules," Percy says drily. He's swimming right beside her. Juliette feels his hand in hers, guiding her up towards the surface. "I did not spend my whole summer before high school teaching you to swim for you to go out like this."

"Seriously," Nico scoffs. His cold hand soothes her burning wrist, guiding her other arm to reach for the air above her. "And dying in the Underworld is pathetic. Figure this out before you embarrass yourself."

They tug her upwards. They pull her upwards. She feels how strongly they're calling out to her.

But Julie's body is so tired.

She needs to breathe.

Her eyes slide all the way shut.

"You can do better than this."

Back open they go.

Luke is before her. He doesn't acknowledge Nico or Percy. Only her. His blue eyes are intent. Determined.

Expectant.

He stares into Juliette like he knows her to her core. Like he knows what strengths she has locked up within her.

"Go on, squirt," He urges, arms crossed, scar dark in the shadows like a crack through porcelain. "Show me what you've learned."

What she's learned?

She's learned that she'd like to rip that smarmy grin off his face with her bare fucking hands.

That flash of purpose blooms something. It wakes something up. A feeling stirs in her chest. A feeling like...

Power.

Juliette's mind falls down out of her head. It sinks down deep into her heart. Down, down, down in the left side of her chest where everything is golden and strong and stormy skied. Where every fall that she takes leads to a gentle hand on her wound. Where every tear that she cries is kissed away. Where every jacket she owns has a name across the back and every purple prom dress has a matching silk tie.

Juliette focuses on her heart.

Where he lives.

Where he breathes even now. Even gone.

Where he would be even if they were dimensions apart. Even if one of them ceased to exist. Even if every god in every pantheon tried to keep them apart.

He's right there, as cheesy as it sounds. There might literally be a mini version of him pumping blood through her veins with his ridiculously strong biceps. She stopped owning a real heart the night that they met in that forest. She handed it right over to him there and then.

Suddenly, the water isn't so dark anymore.

Julie feels a tug at her chest. A yank. Like the hook in her heart is being reeled up by a fishing pole. She drops her gaze down from Luke's to the source of the sensation.

There's a cord. There's a glowing, golden string. A fishing line. Just like there was that day with Cupid.

And it leads right back up to shore.

Right back up to Jason.

Juliette has never been waterskiing, but she's watched Percy and Rachel do it. She imagines that it's a similar sensation to being towed behind a speedboat when that cord starts dragging her up through the depths of the Styx like a 170lb tunafish.

Before she knows it, her head is breaking the surface of the suddenly calm-flowing river.

Julie gasps in air. She coughs out the metallic tasting water that ended up shooting down her nose. She starts kicking again, treading water in place as she regains her bearings, blinking away the fuzziness that her near-drowning colored into her vision.

Holy shit, that sucked.

0/10. Styx, you're getting an angry Yelp review.

Pushing her wet hair out of her face, Juliette frowns at a soggy piece of brown paper stuck to her forearm. She starts to wipe it off, grimacing in disgust, until she recognizes the elegant scrawl that the words upon it are written in.

Eyes wide, Julie plucks the paper from her skin and holds it up to read.

'Dionysus,

Even the most Ancient of Laws may be bent to the power of Love. It is, after all, the oldest of Olympian domains.

The endeavors of any who calls his or herself a Lover shall hold my eternal blessing.

-Aphrodite'

Holy shit.

"JULIETTE?!"

Said girl looks up from the note, head spinning. She almost laughs to see Jason's ghost frantically sprinting side to side up on the cliffs lining the river, searching for her. He looks like he's about to come cannonballing in after her.

Seeing as she doesn't know if the Styx likes eating the souls of the innocent, and Julie's pretty sure somebody's finger bone is tangled into her hair, she figures she'd better stop him.

"Over here!" She calls out.

Her voice sounds croaky and choked, but relief completely crumbles Jason's expression. He drops down to sit on the edge of the cliff, hands over his face. "Gods, you nearly killed me all over again," He groans.

Julie laughs. Then she looks at the figure beside him.

Luke is standing next to Jason, hands still in his pockets, looking like he never took a single step away from his side. The sight makes Juliette frown to herself.

Was she hallucinating?

Percy and Nico obviously weren't down there swimming with her, but Luke...Was that him? Or was that just Juliette's brain trying to motivate her into saving her own life?

She stares at the man up above her on the cliff. Luke raises his eyebrows knowingly, the side of his mouth quirking upwards.

And he nods.

Juliette looks down at the black waters.

A nod. Well, what does that mean?

Did he just...help her?

Or is he just glad that she made it out alive?

Once again, she has to ask herself: Does it matter to her which one it is?

This time, as she brings her arms up into her field of vision and is greeted by only smooth, tanned, freckled skin rather than dark purple burn scarring, Julie decides that no...

No, it doesn't.


It's a good thing that magical artifacts usually glow, because Juliette had no idea what a weaving shuttle looks like.

Even now, holding up the strange piece of black painted wood, she has no clue how exactly this thing is supposed to help make a tapestry. The object is about the length of Julie's palm and is emanating a deep purple glow. It's clearly the left edge of whatever the three pieces make when put together. It's shaped sort of like the end of a canoe.

Julie holds the item between her and Jason as they sit on their knees in the sand.

"Is this it?" She frets, turning it from side to side, viewing it from different angles.

Jason reaches forward to poke at it. One pad of one finger brushes the wooden surface, and a blue spark of electricity pops. Julie yelps, dropping the shuttle piece into her lap, and Jason laughs.

"Yeah, I think that's it," He confirms.

Julie looks up at him.

He's smiling. His pale blue face is light with humor. He looks strangely happy for a guy who just died early this morning. Juliette smiles too, rests a hand up on his shoulder, and presses her lips to his in a gentle, soft kiss.

Jason doesn't have to breathe, so it's Juliette who pulls back. When she does, her lips are ice cold, and his hand is brushing her matted hair behind her ear, leaving goosebumps in its path. "What was that for?" He asks.

She shrugs. "You looked pretty."

Jason chuckles at the familiar phrasing, shaking his head fondly, and drops another kiss onto her forehead. "So, what now?"

Julie glances at the River Styx. Luke is skipping rocks on its surface, far enough away that he's out of hearing distance but close enough to keep an eye on them. Juliette ignores his presence and looks down over herself, inspecting her strangely clear skin.

Her scars haven't disappeared, but they're lighter. They've faded like they've been around for years and are now fully healed. The Tiberii donum are still superglued to Julie's biceps, but they feel calmer. Dormant. And the boiling, acidic burning that was filling her veins before her dip in the river has gone away. Juliette's blood still feels heavier, but it's not hurting her anymore.

Honestly, she feels better than she has in over a decade. Dead boyfriend aside.

"I guess, we'd better get to Santa Monica?" She suggests. "Poseidon likes to hang out there, right?"

"Do you know how to get to Atlantis?" asks Jason, wincing when Juliette's scowl returns. "Percy never said?"

"It never really came up," She huffs. Percy doesn't like talking about his dad. Like most demigods. She taps her fingernails on the weaving shuttle in thought. "I know he would help us, but I don't want to get him involved in this if I don't have to."

Jason nods. "Me either."

She stares down at the artifact she's holding, feeling desolate again. She's only talked to Poseidon once, and it was just to ask him how big a slice of birthday cake he wanted. It's kind of a big step to go from birthday cake to 'Hey, can I have that powerful magical item?'

She needs to figure out how to approach this. And she needs to figure it out fast.

"Hey, um," Jason says suddenly.

Julie looks up at him again, eyebrow quirked at his now hesitant tone. She blinks, dread stirring in her belly when she sees the slight fearfulness of his new expression.

He looks at her. She looks back at him. And then he asks a question.

"Do you know where my body is right now? Because, if we pull this off, I'm probably going to need it again soon."

His body.

Juliette's stomach swoops.

Uh oh.