Disclaimer: I don't own Percy Jackson and the Olympians

This fic would not have existed without the encouragement of Stereden, who has also done a podfic of it, which can be found in its AO3 crosspost /works/57201739 or on my tumblr tsarisfanfiction!

It was less a waking dream and more a living nightmare. Lee figured he was in part of the Labyrinth, and that was its own problem because the Labyrinth was deep underground, its own realm that was neither the Overworld nor the Underworld – and a long way from Apollo.

That didn't stop him begging his father to hear him, both in his mind and with his tongue. There was no way Lee could get himself out, not with the chains holding him in place – and if he did, he was still weaponless against a titan and whatever his forces were made up of. Maybe an Ares kid or an Athena kid could fight their way out of those odds. Maybe a Hermes kid could sneak out unnoticed, sticking to the shadows the way it always worked in fiction.

Lee was none of those. All he had were the clothes on his back – which weren't even his – and his voice.

He kept most of his prayers mental; it never seemed to make a difference to Apollo, and the less attention he brought on himself, the better. Surely Kronos knew he was loyal to the gods – to Apollo. Lee had never made a secret of his trust in his father, none of his cabin did. They were fortunate, to have a godly parent who made it clear that he loved them, and they tried not to rub it in the faces of the other campers, but they didn't hide their faith. Luke had known more, had known how it was thanks to Apollo that Lee hadn't spent years in foster homes, being tossed around like unwanted trash until he finally found a way to escape and make it to a camp he didn't know about. Apollo had intervened, via satyrs, when his Mom had died, and it had made him the youngest kid in camp, but at least he'd been a safe kid.

Apparently, everything Luke knew, Kronos now knew, too, and it made Lee feel sick. Kronos wasn't just wearing Luke's face, the way gods could change their appearance. Kronos was a titan, not a god, and Lee didn't know what the difference was, exactly, but there seemed to be enough of one to matter. That was Luke's body, Luke's face, Luke's scar. Lee remembered when he got it, the older boy stumbling back into camp with a face as dark as thunder and streaked with blood where he'd barely even tried to clean it.

He'd been lucky not to lose his eye. Lee hadn't been head healer back then, but he was still a healer. He'd helped patch Luke up after the quest from hell, and that meant he knew Luke's body.

Kronos was wearing Luke's body, like he was some sort of meat jacket, or like Kronos was an insidious parasite that had grown inside him until the host had been overcome. He didn't know if that meant Luke was alive or dead, and he wasn't sure what he wanted the answer to be, either. Luke had betrayed them and set in motion a war that wasn't going to end any way except horrifically, but did anyone deserve to die like that?

Lee choked on tears.

Dad, if you can hear me, he begged for far from the first time, and far from the last time, either. Please, help me.

He didn't expect an immediate response; Lee knew the gods better than that. Apollo wouldn't appear in front of him in a burst of cascading lights and snap him back to camp with a single gesture; that wasn't how the gods worked, not even Apollo. His father responded to prayers with dream visits, or with small things, like a miraculously straightened rod when his flute got damaged one day.

Even a dream visit would be fine. Something to tell him that Apollo could hear him, that he wasn't going to leave him trapped in Kronos' clutches forever.

Maybe Lee could beg him to take away his truth-sensing, or turn it off for a while, so that Kronos couldn't use him.

But that was only if Apollo could hear him, and Apollo had been busy for months. Not so busy that he was completely ignoring them, but they all knew that he and Artemis were on a war-related mission from Zeus, and that meant he couldn't pay as much attention to them as he usually did. Occasionally, small prayers had gone unanswered since Lee and his siblings came back to camp after the Winter Solstice to see a massive scar through the middle of the pavilion and hear that their father was on a godly hunting trip.

This wasn't a small prayer, though, but there was another problem.

Kronos.

The gods didn't know what Kronos was up to, exactly. Apollo had never told Lee that in so many words, but Lee could read the gaps where Apollo didn't say things. Given the gods' clear distaste at the titan rising again, if they hadn't already blasted Kronos to pieces, there was a reason for it. Lee was pretty sure that one of those reasons was that they didn't know where he was, or what he was doing – and if that was hidden from the gods, then there was a high chance that Kronos' base was, too.

He still tried, though, because he couldn't just give up and do nothing, even if his body was too restrained for him to be able to do much more than roll his head from side to side. As long as Lee could pray, he wasn't completely helpless.

Or so he tried to convince himself.

Footsteps, loud and too many to be only one person, echoed from outside his stone room, and he warily turned his head to see three demigods stalking into view. One of them held a water bottle and a chunk of bread that looked several days old.

Lee didn't recognise any of them, and that scared him, because that meant they weren't campers, and if they weren't campers, then Kronos had picked them up before they got to camp, and his army was full of many more demigods than they'd expected.

The one at the front had a jagged scar across his face that looked like it hadn't healed properly, tugging his skin in awkward directions. He also had a black, black look on his face as he glowered at Lee.

"You'd better be worth it," he spat, squatting next to Lee's outstretched legs and grabbing his throat, fingers pressing into the delicate skin beneath his jaw. There was a tattoo on the inside of his arm, the letters SPQR and a dove above a single black line. "If you're not…" With his other hand, he drew a dagger made of gold and drew a thin line in blood across Lee's restrained hand.

"Reuben," the second of the trio said, the one holding the food and drink. "Lord Saturn knows what he's doing." They pushed the boy to one side and with a scowl he went, leaving Lee's palm warm and itching. There was hardly any reprieve before they took his place, though, kneeling by his thighs and scowling at him. "Eat."

The bread was held against his mouth, and Lee could tell it was going stale from the feel of it.

"Your choice is to eat it willingly or have it forced down your throat," the third one, this one a girl, told him, crossing her arms. "Filthy graecus."

Filthy Greek?

She wasn't lying, though – they would force him to eat it if he didn't of his own accord, and Lee didn't fancy his chances at stopping them, so he took a reluctant bite. It was hard, and tough to chew once he got a mouthful torn away, but his food deliverer wasn't patient and had the bread smushed against his mouth again before he'd even swallowed the first mouthful.

"Hurry up," they said. "We don't have all day."

Lee didn't think he wanted them with him all day, either. The scratch along his palm wasn't much more than an itching nuisance, but the boy responsible – Reuben – still had the knife out, and was fiddling with it in a very Ares-kid fashion, complete with the black scowl on his face. He did his best to speed up, choking down the bread and hoping that at some point Kronos planned on giving him a more balanced diet – or at least food that wasn't going stale. He had to know that malnutrition would kill him eventually, right?

At least the water didn't taste too badly off. It wasn't the clear-tasting water they had at camp, but it didn't taste like sewage, either. Drinking it was still difficult, because he wasn't in control of the bottle, and they didn't seem to care too much if he choked on some of it instead of swallowing as they poured it steadily down his throat.

He coughed up more than a little water when he was finally given a reprieve, splattering the purple t-shirt he wore, as well as the teen holding the bottle, and they slapped him.

"You're pathetic," they told him, gripping his hair and holding his head as far back as the stone wall behind him allowed. He coughed again weakly. "Marcus died for you. Lord Saturn promised you would be worth it."

Lee froze. "Died for me?" he rasped. That didn't make sense, why would one of Kronos' men – he was going to unpack the Latin and Lord Saturn much, much later – have died for him?

The girl snorted. "So the graecus scum had a body to burn, of course," she said, as though he was an idiot. She prowled closer. "Blond, tall, scrawny," she scrunched up her nose. "Face smashed in. Your clothes and weapons. Never made it out of probation…" She waved a hand carelessly, except the movement looked ten different kinds of lethal. "Body double."

Lee couldn't breathe.

Kronos had killed someone, this trio's friend. A guy that looked enough like him that…

Oh gods.

He retched, and as quickly as a striking viper, hands were locking his jaw together.

"Don't you dare," the one still kneeling closest to him snarled. "You will not defile him any more than you already have by existing here in his place."

Lee didn't have the strength to fight them off, which meant the only way for the bile to go was back down again. His entire body shuddered at the revulsion.

"Lord Saturn considers you valuable," they said, their face pressed entirely too close to his. "If he changes his mind, we'll be delighted to take out the trash." Behind them, Reuben flipped his knife in the air carelessly, and the girl cracked her knuckles. "Do we have an understanding?"

Lee nodded as best he could. What else could he do?

Finally, they pulled themselves to their feet and stormed out of the room, followed by Reuben and the girl. Lee sincerely hoped he didn't see them again, but somehow doubted he would be that lucky.

Gods. Kronos had killed one of his own followers just to make a body double for Lee. The thought still made him feel ill.

He rested his head back against the stone and closed his eyes. His hands had started to tingle, which he knew wasn't a good sign, and his palm still itched from Reuben's knife.

"Dad," he rasped quietly, not wanting to be overheard by any of Kronos' followers but feeling the need to talk out loud. "If there's any way to get me out of here, I'd really appreciate it." He couldn't do anything about the boy that had presumably been burned in an Apollo shroud, in his clothes and certainly with his camp necklace, too, but he couldn't do what his grieving friends demanded and be worth it.

Working for Kronos would mean betraying not just his father, but all of his siblings, and Lee couldn't do that, no matter what happened. He couldn't be the reason any of his siblings died, or gods forbid Apollo somehow being taken down by the titan's army. The mere thought made him feel ill, which wasn't a good combination when he already felt sick to his stomach about the guy called Marcus.

Lee really hoped Apollo could hear his prayers and would find a way to get him out, however obscure and distantly-orchestrated it had to be. Right then, he wasn't seeing many other options.

He tugged half-heartedly at his wrists again, trying to slip free of the cuffs, but he already knew it was futile. The metal was too embedded in the stone to have any give, and the metal itself wasn't going to cave to the whims of flesh and blood. The tingling in his hand – so far contained to his fingertips but Lee wasn't going to kid himself into thinking it would stay that mild – was a pretty big clue.

Would Kronos care if he lost the use of his hands? Somehow, Lee doubted it. The only thing Kronos wanted from him was his truth-sensing, and as long as he was conscious, he had that. Lee hadn't lost it when he'd been semi-delirious with a fever as a young kid, he didn't think it would vanish as easily as losing a limb.

He wished it would, especially when more footsteps echoed down the corridor, getting slowly louder. It wasn't the hurried overlapping of the trio that had only just left – had they only just left, Lee didn't think it had been long but also Kronos was the titan of time – but a more measured pace. Adagio to their affrettando.

It was disturbing, and worrying. Logically, Lee knew it could be anyone walking by, and could have nothing to do with him at all, but that didn't stop him feeling like cornered prey as a predator slowly took its time approaching.

Cornered prey could usually fight back, even if it was a losing battle. The most Lee could do was spit in someone's face, and he didn't have enough of a temper to consider that a viable course of action (he wasn't Michael, and oh gods, Michael was probably in charge of the cabin now, and Lee had barely started training him up. It wasn't like he didn't think Michael could do it – he had faith in his younger brother – but when he thought about the circumstances… Michael had always been volatile, and Lee couldn't see how grief would do anything except make that worse.)

He was completely helpless.

Despite the door being left wide open – another reminder of his helplessness, that both Kronos and the trio knew that Lee was so stuck that the door didn't make a difference – from where he was trapped against the wall, he couldn't see much of the corridor at all, only a small sliver of floor and the flickering of more torchlight.

The footsteps kept coming, getting louder and louder and Lee's heartbeat got louder in his ears at the same pace, blood rushing through his ears at the deep-seated knowledge that whoever it was, they could say anything, do anything, and he wouldn't be able to stop them.

His throat ached slightly from being forced to eat and drink so quickly. He could feel fingerprint-shaped bruises forming on the soft underside of his jaw. The palm of his hand still itched.

He was terrified, he realised dimly, and it was so obvious it shouldn't have surprised him, but it did. He was a prisoner of Kronos, who had made no secret of the fact he planned to use him, and while that told Lee he wasn't going to be killed, it didn't give him any other security.

There were fates worse than death, after all. His failure to help Chris at all sat heavily in the back of his mind, even if logic attempted to remind him that he wouldn't be any good to Kronos if his mind was broken. Counter-logic pointed out that Chris had been loyal to Kronos, to Luke, and they'd still done that to him. Lee was not, and had no intentions of ever being, loyal to the titan's cause.

Each step was a loud echo now, but barely audible over the roaring in his ears and the heaving of his chest, not quite hyperventilating but closer to that than calm. Lee desperately tried to get his body under control again; panicking wouldn't help and he knew that, but conflicting logics warred inside his head and just made everything worse.

There was a shadow now, covering the corridor floor and flickering slightly with the torchlight. Lee watched it grow, getting larger as its owner advanced on his room, closer, closer, closer-

For a moment he could see them, a tall human wearing armour, with cropped sandy hair so familiar it hurt-

And then Kronos was gone, walking past his room with no acknowledgement of his presence at all.

The tension all drained from Lee at once, leaving him a limp, shuddering mess. Tears leaked from his eyes and his breathing turned into gasps, wracking his body and scraping his wrists against their unforgiving restraints.

Kronos hadn't acknowledged him but there was no way he hadn't noticed Lee's panic at his approach, and Lee had no idea what he was going to do with that knowledge, but whatever he did, there was no way it was going to be good for him.

He was so, so, screwed.

Thanks for reading!
Tsari