It should've been me.
The chasm yawned beneath him, its depths swallowing even the memory of light. There were many entrances to Tartarus, but the gods had given Percy the autonomy to choose his own path.
This entrance to Tartarus was not like the others, cracked open by gods or monsters. This one was a scar, left where Athena's Parthenos had once pierced the earth like a defiant spear. Now, the statue was gone, and the pit it had sealed stood exposed, a wound that refused to close.
He had fallen here with her.
The winds screamed up from the void, and for a cruel, perfect moment, they sounded like her. Not Annabeth's battle cries or her laughter, but the raw, wet gasp she'd made as the earth tore her apart. The sound shredded his eardrums, his lungs, the last frayed thread of his resolve.
It should've been me, he thought again. It was not the first time. It would not be the last.
The thought wasn't his own. It was the rasp of Thalia's voice, raw from shouting orders as her left arm hung useless, flesh stripped to bone by a drakon's venom. It was Jason's last breath, half a laugh, half a sob, as he plunged his gladius into Gaea's throat and let her collapsing earth bury him.
It was Annabeth, her gray eyes not wide with fear but soft with a sadness he'd never seen before. A resignation. Her ribs cracked like kindling under Gaea's grip, yet her voice stayed steady, a commander to the end.
He wondered if his mother had worn that same look the night he left for Camp Half-Blood, the quiet terror of loving someone too mortal to keep safe. Sally Jackson's hands had trembled as she packed his bag, her smile a fraying rope holding them both above the abyss. "You'll come home," she'd said, and for years, he'd believed her.
"Go, Seaweed Brain," she'd said. "You can't win the war if you stay here with my corpse."
He'd left. He'd won.
At the war's end, the Olympians had been hounded, not by Titans or giants, but by gods draped in foreign skins. A delegation arrived at Camp Half-Blood: Sobek's scaled jaw dripping Nile water, a one-eyed wanderer leaning on a spear that hummed with runes. They did not say his name. They didn't need to.
"Too powerful," the crocodile-god had hissed.
"Unbound by fate," the wanderer echoed.
The words were all the same to him. Dangerous.
Percy would give the gods their credit where it was due, they had tried to protect him. Some had hoped that killing him, sending him to Elysium would satisfy the pantheons desires, but the Fates themselves had stepped in.
Apparently, his story was not yet fit to end.
Despite its hopes, Olympus could not handle a war, not again. So before that could happen, Percy made a choice.
Annabeth had loved this world, had wanted to change it for the better. So he would protect it.
He had told few people. The Olympians had been relieved, though some were sadder than others. His mother had not been among them.
He'd found Sally Jackson in their empty apartment, scrubbing blue batter from a mixing bowl long after the cookies had burned. She didn't turn when he entered. "You're leaving," she'd said, not a question. Her voice was steady, but the bowl slipped from her hands, shattering in the sink. When she finally faced him, her eyes were dry. Heroes' mothers, he realized, learned to grieve in advance. He'd hugged her, too tight, as if he could press the smell of her sea-salt hair into his skin and left before he could hear her cry.
Chiron had looked at him with admiration Percy didn't deserve. But he took his parting words with gratitude all the same.
He feared Thalia would jump into the pit after him. When he told her, she'd grabbed his wrist, her remaining hand trembling, the ghost of a Huntress's strength. Up close, he could see the drakon's venom still etching its way through her veins, spiderwebbing black beneath her collar. She'd survived worse, but survival wasn't the same as living.
"You don't get to quit either, Pinecone Face," she'd said, but her voice broke on the old nickname. For a heartbeat, he saw the girl she'd been before the Hunt, all lightning and recklessness, before loss sanded her edges smooth. Her grip loosened. "But if you're gonna do this… make it mean something. Annabeth would've."
They hugged, not for long enough. A fleeting pressure that said goodbye better than words. Mercy, they'd learned, wasn't kind. It was the silence between the clashing of swords.
As he looked into the void, three threads of gold, silver, and black snagged in his peripheral vision, plucked from the tapestry of his life. He ignored them. Let the Fates spin their lies elsewhere.
He leaned forward
The darkness didn't swallow him.
It unfolded. It was a lover's embrace, a mother's lullaby, a riptide pulling him home. The air turned thick, then thin, then gone. His lungs burned, not with sulfur, but saltwater. For the first time since her death, he smiled.
It should've been me.
This time, the thought was a prayer.