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!
Life did not get better.
Kronos came by, seemingly at random times, to drop one or other of the silver bracelets on the floor and check in with his spies. Silena and Michael were the core two, one for each camp, but there were others, too, non-humans that kept a wary eye on the gods.
Lee learnt a lot.
He would have liked to learn it under other circumstances – pretty much any other circumstances, really. Camp Jupiter was fascinating; the fact that there was another entire camp for demigods, and specifically ones for the children of the Roman gods, which he'd known nothing about was nothing short of amazing.
Under other circumstances, it might have been nice to meet the Roman demigods. Their way of doing things was completely different to what Lee was used to, with no parental segregation and legacies, children of adult demigods. There was only so much he could glean from Michael's spy reports and things mentioned by the few Roman demigods that sometimes brought his food, so he was clearly missing a lot of context that he would've liked to have.
But Lee wasn't going to ask. The Roman demigods he did meet were harsh to him, clearly only holding themselves back from physically torturing him because Kronos was terrifying enough that they weren't going to cross him – and Kronos wanted Lee in what could dubiously be considered one piece.
Lee's wrists would like to debate that point. It was getting harder and harder to heal himself, to the point that if he wanted to stop hairline fractures from turning into something serious, he had to live with the bruises and welts on his skin instead, and even then his bones were taking longer and longer to knit back together again. Barring a miracle, he didn't think he'd ever have fully functioning wrists again.
Still, at some point Kronos had clearly made it known that he didn't want Lee's body to be touched, presumably because medical attention was in short supply, with constant reports that not a single Apollo kid – from either camp – appeared to have defected, and it was obvious that Lee couldn't patch himself up if he was too wounded. Lee didn't know exactly when, but Reuben had stopped getting in his space with a knife drawn, and given how much the other boy clearly hated him, he wouldn't have pulled back on his own accord. Now, no-one got close enough to touch him. Not unless they were force-feeding him or releasing his hands.
Most demigods preferred to release him, which Lee was thankful for, because he preferred that, too. It would have been even better if they'd released his ankles, too, and not forced him back into the restraints once he was done eating, or visiting the bathroom. Unfortunately, the same fear that had them not hurting Lee had them determined to make sure Lee ended up secured before they left him.
Physical torture being off the table didn't stop the words. Clearly, the Roman demigods had some deep-seated hatred for Greek demigods, and while there were plenty of the latter roaming free in Kronos' forces, given that one of their own had been killed specifically with Lee in mind, he was the one they lashed out at the most, in his admittedly biased experience.
The fact that they'd all learnt that if they lied to him enough he'd react seemed to give them plenty of ammunition, and Kronos didn't stop them.
In fact, he seemed to be encouraging it, which Lee was not a fan of.
After each and every spy meeting, it was Lee's turn to be interrogated. Had they lied? What had the lie been?
Lee never answered, not letting Kronos know about that time Michael had lied about where Centurion Grace had gone on a mission, or Silena's wrong answer to how many demigods were currently in camp.
Sometimes, the interrogation was short, and Kronos barely pushed before leaving, apparently taking Lee's silence to mean that there hadn't been any lies at all. Other times, it was extensive, encompassing an army of demigods lying to his face until he dissolved into a wrecked puddle of tears and choked sobs.
If there was a pattern, Lee couldn't spot it. It felt like it was on Kronos' whim, which left Lee on edge every time the interrogation started, because it meant he didn't know until Kronos either left or called in his reinforcements which one it was going to be, that time.
More than once, various demigods had tried to persuade him to cooperate. To work with them, to turn his back on the gods – on Apollo. The story about Hal had been parroted multiple times, about why even Apollo kids couldn't actually trust their father not to turn on them and leave them in some horrific situation where the only way out was death.
Lee was sick to death of that story, and the way everyone recited it as though it was a truth, even though none of them had been the first one to tell it. That had been Luke, and Luke wasn't telling any stories any more.
It was when he met Alabaster that he discovered that some of the gods had turned, too.
There had been rumours, back at camp. Whispered fears that some of the minor gods had decided it was better to throw their lot in with Kronos than continue to support the Olympians. Hecate was one of the more major of those gods, and neatly explained how Kronos' spy-bracelets worked. Between enchantments and Mist manipulation, the fake-IMs had been created.
Alabaster had been very proud when he'd described it to Lee. There were several Hecate kids in Kronos' army, apparently, and Lee hated that he understood that.
His siblings would follow Apollo, whichever side Apollo ended up on. Lee would follow Apollo, regardless. Seeing that loyalty in other demigods, when camp had always been full of tiptoeing around just how much they trusted their father when it came down to it, was jarring. Cabin six were always devoted, but Lee had never heard any of them complain once about Athena, only parrot rehearsed-sounding words about her intelligence, and how she was always right.
Granted, most complaints about Apollo's terrible poetry invading their dreams – often from Michael, who made no secret that he hated them – were aired in the privacy of cabin seven so perhaps cabin six just did the same thing. Listening to Alabaster wax about Hecate and how much faith he placed on her was like looking into a broken mirror.
It seemed to be a broken mirror that went both ways, because Alabaster was the only demigod, aside from the trio of Romans who clearly didn't think he had been worth Marcus' murder, who never tried to convince Lee to switch sides.
He made it clear that he believed Lee was loyal to the losing side, and that it was only a matter of time before the Olympians were defeated and cast down into Tartarus for eternity, the way they'd once done to the titans. In fact, Lee would go as far as to call Alabaster fanatic, as he described the defeat of the gods in intense detail, complete with occasional magic shows, because Alabaster had a formidable grasp on Mist manipulation.
If he'd used it to make illusions of more pleasant things than his father's inherent light being extinguished before he was thrown into the jaws of a beast that was clearly Python, Lee probably would have enjoyed the show. It was the sort of skill that would have been incredible to watch during campfire, backlit by the flames burning high and in a kaleidoscope of colours as everyone oohed and aahed over it.
Alabaster had never been to camp, though. Nor had several other of the Hecate demigods whose names were dropped every so often. Some, Lee recognised, but not many. Alabaster told him that camp had never been welcoming for them, so Hecate had found other ways to train them and keep them alive during their dangerous pubescent years.
Lee hated that he had a point, about how there were only cabins for the Olympians, and that the children of non-Olympian gods were forced to bunk in with the children of Hermes, rather than having their own space.
He also hated that he could remember Luke saying the same thing, years ago before the war and the betrayal. Being a Hermes camper, he was closer to the chaos and seething resentment than most of them. In hindsight, it had been a massive hint to Luke's shifting loyalties, one of the most obvious ones that Lee wondered if, maybe, he might have noticed if he'd paid more attention.
Alabaster and the old memory of Luke weren't the only ones to mention it. Ethan brought it up, too, when he was on feed Lee duty. Nemesis had never bothered to claim him at camp because it wouldn't have meant anything. Nothing would have changed; he would still have been just as much of an outcast, a demigod with no cabin to call home, instead forced to cram in like sardines with all the other demigods that weren't deemed worthy of their own space, and the Hermes kids who were friendly enough but clearly resented the encroachment on their space.
Cabin eleven had always been the most populated cabin, but in terms of claimed campers, it had always been cabin seven. There were several Hermes campers, but no more than there were Ares or Athena or even Aphrodite campers. The cabin's population was artificially swelled multiple times by the unclaimed and the children of minor gods.
Given that if Kronos won, there wouldn't be any more Olympian children, only children of the defected gods – and the titans, if they decided to have demititan children – Lee could see how they thought it would solve that problem. He could not see how it was a good solution, though.
He couldn't see anything as a good solution, if it involved mass murder.
Silena swore that the demigods still loyal to the gods wouldn't be killed if Kronos won, the few times Kronos left the connection open for them to supposedly talk. Lee didn't often have anything to say to her, even if he ached to ask after his siblings.
He couldn't do that, though. Couldn't put them on the ever-eavesdropping Kronos' radar any more than they already were. Silena mentioned Michael a lot, because he was head counsellor now and it was the head counsellor meetings that Kronos was interested in, outside of Percy and Nico.
It had taken Lee far too long to work out what was so special about Nico. Eventually, he'd caved and asked Silena, one of the few times he willingly said anything to her instead of being simply forced to listen to her try to explain herself more, her voice increasingly more desperate every time.
There were three Big Three Kids active. Percy, everyone knew about. Centurion Grace, whose first name Lee thought was Jason, but he'd barely heard it so he wasn't certain, who was clearly common knowledge amongst the Romans, but by nature of being Roman was a complete unknown to the Greek demigods. Nico, the youngest but the one that Kronos seemed to care the most about tracking, now known to the Greek campers after apparently doing something impressive and obviously Hades-y. Lee wasn't sure if he wanted to experience the son of Hades' powers first hand.
Skeletons were supposed to stay inside bodies. Or the ground, if they were decomposed bodies.
Lee remembered the big deal that Thalia had been, when they'd heard there was a daughter of Zeus on her way to camp. Back when no-one had even heard of a Big Three Kid except in the stories. He remembered Annabeth, screaming and crying as she crossed the camp border, and a Luke that had to be physically held back from charging straight back into the fray once he'd got Annabeth to safety.
Percy had been simultaneously less and more chaotic. Lee had been the one to patch the kid up after his arrival, before they'd known that he was a son of Poseidon. There had been whispers from the start about how he'd taken down the Minotaur, but it had been attributed to sheer dumb luck – which, from what Lee had later heard, it had been. But then there was the theft of the master bolt and the brewing civil war between the gods, and…
Well. This.
Lee didn't know Nico, or Centurion Grace. There was that crack in the pavilion that had suddenly made a lot more sense, but most of the stories about Nico had centred around his dead sister – had they been full-blooded? Had the girl also been a child of Hades? – and his subsequent disappearance.
All Lee really knew about those two was that Kronos was keeping an eye on them, that he was fine with the son of Jupiter because he was staying in one place and easy to track, but not happy with the way Nico was evading all of their attempts to find him.
He hoped Nico managed to stay hidden, and out of the war.
Other revelations were more terrifying. He'd yet to meet any of them, and was more than happy to keep it that way, but the other titans had seemingly been finding their way out of Tartarus, one by one. Kronos would mention them, offhand, how his brothers were getting on, about how Mount Othrys was rebuilding, stone by stone.
Worst was when the murmurs about Typhon started up. Firstly in hushed, wary whispers from the demigods – it was clear that while they followed Kronos, they still feared him and his monstrous allies, and quite frankly, Lee would have been more surprised if they hadn't. He remembered his mythology enough to know that Typhon was bad news. Bad, bad, news.
Chiron had been worried when the volcano had erupted… before. Back while Lee was still in camp, albeit waiting on tenterhooks for Annabeth, Percy, Tyson and Grover to come back from their exploration of the Labyrinth. Spending time with Chris hadn't helped, but he'd refused to give up on the other demigod, a fact that Clarisse had clearly appreciated, when she wasn't getting more and more snippy about how his mind wasn't getting better, even if his body had. It had also been a stark reminder of what the Labyrinth could do.
Typhon wasn't free yet, from the whispers, but it was clear that Kronos expected him to break out from his prison soon enough.
The gods were scattered.
Apollo and Artemis were mentioned frequently, and Lee felt a spark of pride every time because Kronos did not seem to be happy with them. Their monster hunting was going well, as it inevitably would do, given Artemis was the goddess of the hunt, and while Kronos was generally dismissive of the losses because he could always draw more up from Tartarus to replace them, it remained a battle of attrition that distracted him slightly.
Hades was another name muttered, especially when reports came in of Persephone and Demeter choosing to join him in the Underworld rather than contribute to the war, but for the most part Kronos seemed certain that the god of the dead wouldn't cause any problems. Clearly, he wasn't going to ally himself with Kronos, but he seemed to be making no move to ally with his godly brethren either, and the titans found that good enough.
Lee was pretty sure they planned on going after Hades later, once they'd crushed Olympus.
Dionysus seemed to be on a recruitment rampage amongst the minor gods, but from the rumours it didn't sound like he was too successful about it. Alabaster proudly told him how Hecate had turned the Olympian away when he'd come too close to her, a reminder that at least one of the gods was in frequent contact with their children.
Gods, Lee missed Apollo. It was an ache, the way he couldn't feel his father's warmth anymore. The gaping absence of his father in his dreams, but then, Lee didn't often dream with his current sleep schedule. Too light, too snatched and broken for dreams to kick in. At least it kept away the nightmares, too, but Lee would've given a lot for the familiar figure in his dreams, strumming a lyre and singing a short little ditty.
Lee knew it had been months, now, since he'd last heard his father. Months of Apollo out of reach, and he had found himself wondering more than once if the deception had fooled more than just the campers. If even his father believed him dead. Lee didn't know which would be worse – Apollo believing him dead, or Apollo aware that he wasn't dead, but unable to contact him.
When he was a young kid, Apollo had dropped by his dreams once a week or so, bright and seemingly an invention of his subconsciousness. Then his mom had died, and Apollo had been there more often, saying things that made it seem like he was more. Giving him hugs, letting him cry into his chest as he processed through grief that was far, far too big for someone so young.
Gods but Lee really wanted one of his dad's hugs again. To be that young boy, wrapped in his father's arms and free to grieve and heal with no judgement, just support. Even if it was just in a dream, never actual, real, physical contact, it was a powerful, powerful feeling.
As Kronos entered the room yet again, silver bracelet dangling from his palm threateningly, Lee thought, not for the first time, that he really, really, wanted his dad.
Sorry for the gap in posting last week; life got hectic! I'm catching up now, so here's a double update!
Thanks for reading!
Tsari