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 a while before Lee saw Kronos again. Food was brought to him by various demigods, some familiar, some new faces. Reuben delighted in spitting lies in his face the whole time as he forced the food into Lee's mouth, whether he was ready for it or not. He was the worst, but the betrayal cut deep whenever it was a former camper, whose logic Lee still couldn't fathom.

He started to think that, maybe, he'd convinced Kronos that he wasn't useable. He hadn't been broken, the way the titan had been promising he would be. Even after an intense period of sensory overload, which had left him a sobbing, gasping mess that could hardly breathe and had all but torn up the skin of his wrists on the cuffs, he hadn't given Kronos an answer, and if he could endure that, then maybe Kronos was starting to consider if he was worth the effort.

Lee hoped he decided he wasn't, and tried not to think what that would mean for him.

Then Kronos came back.

"Good morning, Lee," he said, breezing into the room as though he hadn't been absent for who knew how long. Lee thought it might have been a month or so since he'd first woken in the cave, and his body was slowly atrophying at a rate that might match that, although Lee's sporadic healing was stymying the decay somewhat, but there really wasn't much to prove it one way or the other. Meal times still weren't regular, and the titan of time probably had an interest in keeping him in the dark – both metaphorically and literally.

He hadn't seen the sun since the battle at camp. The only light he had were the torches in the room, sometimes burning brightly, other times so dim they were all but out, depending on their age.

Being cut off from the sun felt fundamentally wrong, and Lee could feel himself starting to flag. His healing sessions were less potent, taking away less pain and only slightly aging bruises. It had always been a joke that Apollo kids were solar powered – they all rose with the sun, and the infirmary roof retracted for open air and a direct line of sight from the sun, and younger kids slept with the sun, too. Lee had never really thought about what that would translate to if they were cut off from the sun.

His sleep schedule was sporadic at best; with no idea of when the sun rose and set, it was instead dictated by the onset of bone deep exhaustion, often on the heels of a mass sensory overload, when his mind shut itself down to stop things getting even worse. With his healing also flagging, Lee wasn't so sure that solar powered Apollo kids was just a joke. He could feel the bags sagging under his eyes.

Kronos dangled a bracelet in front of his face, and he blinked. It was silver, with the scythe charm, and he felt sick, because that was what he'd used to talk to the Camp Jupiter spy.

So much for Kronos giving up on him.

"It's time for another check-in," the titan told him, tossing the bracelet up in the air before catching it one-handed and clamping his fingers around it. "Are you ready to see a familiar face, Lee?"

Lee felt the blood drain from his face. He didn't remember which wrist the bracelet for Michael had been on, but he was willing to bet that even without that, he could confidently propose which spy the bracelet in Kronos' hand linked to.

Kronos was about to show him the spy in Camp Half-Blood. The one Lee had lived with, trusted, for months, maybe years. Gods, he hoped it was a newer camper, one that could have been a plant by Kronos from the start.

He couldn't take another Luke.

Unlike with Michael, Kronos didn't sit on the stoney outcrop and treat it like his throne. Instead, he sat down next to Lee. In his periphery, it looked like it was Luke hanging out with him, the way they used to, sitting against the side of a building, or in the amphitheatre, or just leaning against trees on the edge of the forest.

But it wasn't Luke. Luke was gone.

Lee was also still tied to the wall, his fingertips buzzing faintly because it had been a particularly long time since he'd last had his wrists released, and his body was reporting issues. That helped break the illusion fast, because Luke would never let that happen. Not the Luke from back then, anyway.

Lee hoped.

Out of the pendant, now held out on Kronos' palm, came the same washed out and bland version of an Iris Message, a figure hazing into view.

"No," Lee whimpered, staring at the apparition in abject horror. "No."

The beautiful face of Silena Beauregard winced. "Hello, Lee," she said softly, before flicking her eyes over to meet Kronos'. "My Lord."

"Good morning, my dear," Kronos purred. "How are things in camp?"

"Why?" Lee burst out. "Silena, why?" His eyes prickled and he knew he was starting to cry again. He yanked on his cuffs, suddenly needing to be free, but all that got him was a sharp pain shooting along his arm from his wrist, as though he'd just caused some damage.

"Silence, Lee," Kronos ordered, snapping his fingers in front of his face, and to Lee's shock and horror his jaw just stopped moving. "Silena reports to me, not you. Calm yourself."

Lee was not in the mood to calm down, especially when his mouth wasn't even responding to his brain's incessant demands that it open, make noises, do anything. The rest of his body still moved, as best it could while it was chained up, but whatever Kronos had done…

It made no sense, and terrified him.

"Continue, Silena," Kronos said calmly, putting his hand back on his raised knee casually, as though he hadn't just frozen Lee's jaw shut with a single gesture.

"Is there anything in particular you'd like to hear about, my lord?" she asked, and even though Lee was looking at her, she was pointedly looking at the titan, not even a glance his way in her periphery.

"Let's start with Perseus," the titan suggested. "What is our son of Poseidon doing now?"

"He's returning to his mother," Silena said, "the same way he has after every summer."

"It's that time already?" Kronos sounded surprised, but even though the question wasn't a lie, his tone was clearly sarcastic. "Well, how time does fly." He laughed, and Silena hurried to put a small smile on her face. Lee was too busy trying to get his jaw to somehow respond to attempt to acknowledge the titan's little joke – not that he could smile right then. "So he will once again spend most of the year pretending demigods do not exist, will he? Arrogant of him, to think he will be the champion the gods need without even training."

He didn't sound too cut up about it, and when it was put like that, Lee could see the biggest problem with their resident big three kid going home for most of the year – never mind that he drew more monsters than probably the rest of them put together, he also missed out on so many lessons, especially training.

Against the titans, Percy really needed all the training he could get.

"If that is how he wishes to damn the gods, then who am I to stop him?" Kronos mused. "Very well. How about, what's his name? Nico di Angelo. Do you have any reports on his movements, Silena?"

Lee remembered that name from last winter. He hadn't been in camp at the time – the whole cabin had gone on a great week long trip to Broadway, arranged by Dawn's mom, who had a show on and wrangled tickets for her daughter and said daughter's half-siblings, the same way they almost always went on a winter trip – but he'd come back to a cracked pavilion and campers desperately searching for a lost camper in the woods. They'd never found him.

Why did Kronos care about him so much?

Silena shook her head. "No, my lord," she said. "He left camp after the funerals, and hasn't been seen again since. I believe Percy may be trying to contact him, but if he had any success, I haven't heard."

Kronos actually frowned at that one. "No doubt he has scurried back into the Underworld like the little rat he is," he said, piquing Lee's curiosity more. From what he'd heard, Nico was a young kid, not even a teenager – why did Kronos care about him?

Also – Underworld?

"I expect any information on collaboration between Perseus and Nico to take highest priority," Kronos ordered. "If they are able to work together despite their innate rivalry, that may cause complications."

He still didn't sound worried about whatever complications might somehow arise from Percy working with a single, mysterious pre-teen, but that he was making special mention of it at all seemed unusual. Out of place.

"I understand," Silena said. "Camp life has otherwise gone on as normal, after the battle. Campers will not go near Zeus' Fist, but otherwise it has been uneventful. There have been no quests or missions."

Kronos smiled, and with a jolt Lee realised that one was almost genuine. "Good," he said. "Staying out of the war will be their best chance at surviving it."

That got a proper smile out of Silena. "I agree, my lord," she said.

"I have a couple more questions for you before we're finished here," Kronos said, and Silena's smile shrank again. "Firstly, who has replaced Lee as his cabin's counsellor?"

Horror curled up in Lee's gut. Why did Kronos want to know that, specifically? Was it to collaborate what Lee had told him that one time, however long ago, when he'd asked and Lee had lied? He'd promised not to hurt Lawrence as long as Lawrence stayed out of the war, but Lawrence would be out by now, if the summer campers had left – gods, that meant Lee had been here for two months, give or take a week or so. Michael would be in charge and Kronos hadn't made any promises about him.

Silena's eyes finally flickered in his direction, just for a brief moment. Lee tried to communicate to her to not tell him, but she didn't seem to get the message. "Michael," she said. "Michael Yew, my lord."

Lee's sob was muffled by his immobile jaw.

"I see," Kronos said. "And, remind me, my dear. How many died this summer? Whose bodies did you burn?"

This time, Silena's glance over at Lee lasted longer, and Lee ached to know whilst fearing the answer. He knew Michael was still alive, now, but the others, people had died-

"We burned five bodies, my lord," she said. "Harry, from cabin five. Ronald, from cabin six. Pip, from cabin eleven. Castor, from cabin twelve." Gods, Lee knew all of those names, they were dead? She looked over and Lee again, hesitating, and his heart dropped. "And… Lee Fletcher, from cabin seven."

The relief that none of his siblings was dead made a bizarre concoction with the confirmation that his siblings believed him dead, and the grief for the other campers, the ones that had genuinely died. Gods, but Pollux would have been destroyed by the death of his twin; they'd always been inseparable.

He felt more tears spill from his eyes, trailing down his cheeks before coming to a strange, unnatural stop just above the corners of his mouth.

Next to him, Kronos nodded, as though it was information he already knew.

He probably did. Lee doubted this was the first time Silena – gods, Silena, why – had reported in since he'd been captured, even if it was the first time she'd seen him, or he'd seen her. This was information that Kronos was deliberately feeding him, the stillness of truths from the mouth of someone he'd thought was a friend.

Hades, but Silena had been his friend. A close friend, and the longest camper after him. They'd bonded over being the youngest kids in camp, and there had been a trauma bond in there, too, with the disastrous chariot race from the year of the millennium overshadowing several of their interactions, her first summer.

Silena, like Luke, had always known about his ability. Hardly anyone else did, out of the campers still left at camp. Michael would be the only other one, now, but if a betrayal from Luke and Silena was like losing limbs, Michael was so unthinkable it would be the same as losing his head. Lee could trust Michael, at least, even if his trust in his long time friends was crumbling away to ash in front of his eyes.

No wonder he hadn't realised there was a spy in camp. Whatever trick Luke had used to get around Lee's ability, Silena clearly knew it, too. One of them likely taught the other.

Medically, hearts didn't break. They stopped, they got damaged, but they didn't simply crack down the middle and fall apart. There was still a pain in Lee's chest, tight and constricting like a constrictor snake, crushing his insides until there was nothing left intact.

It was getting difficult to breathe – more difficult, because a jaw forced shut by titanic powers, the tears all but stopping and forming a damp line along the crease of his cheeks were a clue, already didn't make for easy breathing, the same way crying came with hitched breath and gasping lungs.

He was shaking, too, and his buzzing fingertips were going cold; so were his toes, forever pressed against the stone floor with no fabric to act as a buffer.

Shaking and crying, muffled sobs that couldn't get out past his closed, stuck mouth while more and more tears made a watery curtain down his face that always stopped in the same place, building up a thick layer of saline liquid that stung at his cheeks, making them ache and sting.

"That will be all for now," Kronos said after a few heavy, stretching moments of silence. There were eyes on him; Lee could feel them, even if he closed his eyes to try and concentrate on finding a way to move his jaw again. Then there was the sound of rustling fabric, sharp and sudden.

Kronos snapped his fingers again, close enough to Lee's face to make him flinch as his eyes snapped open, and his jaw fell open as though it had never been closed. The line of tears broke, water cascading into the corner of his mouth and gathering at the base of his jaw. Lee instantly started working his jaw around to try and relieve the persistent ache that threatened to settle into the bone, stretching his mouth and feeling the hinge of his jaw crack back into place.

The titan watched him with a detached look, as though he was impatient for Lee to get his voice back again – as though he wasn't the reason in the first place. "Silena is a good spy," he said. "Loyal, popular, experienced."

It was those words that got Lee looking up to see that the faded colours of the Aphrodite head counsellor had vanished; the silver bracelet was once again around Kronos' wrist.

Kronos sent him a satisfied look. "And above suspicion," he finished. "If not even you, her oldest friend and a human lie detector to match, didn't notice… Well, what chance do the rest of them have?"

He chuckled.

"Of course, I'll let the two of you reconnect at some point, once you've rediscovered your composure. It fled remarkably quickly just then." Kronos pushed himself back to his feet without using his hands, movement fluid and familiar. "I'll leave you to it."

He strode out of the doorway, forever leaving the thing open in a mockery of a cell, the exact same swagger in his hips that Luke sometimes threw around for the sake of it, and fresh on the heels of Silena's awful, awful betrayal, it made something else in Lee's chest break.

He hadn't realised there was anything left to break. Part of him hoped there wasn't.

Thanks for reading!
Tsari