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!

Kronos had acquired another hostage.

Lee threw himself towards the door, wrists and ankles screaming against the restraining metal. In one wrist, something gave, sending shooting agony up his arm. He barely registered it over the sheer horror blossoming inside him.

Alabaster's captive was young, not even a preteen, although he was tall for his age. Slender, because he was both athletic and many years away from the filling out stage of growth that Lee hadn't hit until he was sixteen.

He was also, most crucially, Lee's little brother.

"I'll leave the two of you to get reacquainted," Kronos said. "There is no escape, Lee. I suggest you rethink your defiance, otherwise it might not be you who suffers the consequences."

His brother jerked at his name, eyes widening as he stopped fighting Alabaster's grip in exchange for staring at Lee as though he'd seen a ghost.

Given that Tris had no doubt attended his funeral last summer – gods, Lee was not over how that was apparently a whole year ago, how had he survived this hell for a year – that was probably exactly what he thought he was seeing.

Alabaster laughed and threw Tris into the room. With his hands cuffed, he couldn't catch himself and landed painfully on his shoulder, eyes welling up with tears of pain.

Gods, he was only, what, eleven? Twelve? He'd been ten, the last time Lee had seen him, his birthday only a few short weeks away. Even in the half-light of flickering torches, it was obvious that Tris had had a growth spurt since then but everything else about him seemed to be more or less the same. His hair was still short and dark, plastered to his scalp as though it was constantly wet, and the ever-present diving watch was still on his wrist, if crammed against a metal cuff.

The door slammed shut, an unexpected action that made Lee jump, agitating his wrists even more. Kronos had only ever shut it a few times, and always while he was inside, too – a way of keeping some of the spy reports secret, Lee had always suspected. The sliding of something heavy and metal outside, followed by a clunk, suggested that the door was locked.

"Lee?" Tris asked, staggering up onto his knees. The flames of the torches danced in his eyes, making the grey look artificially amber. Lee was pretty certain Tris' eyes weren't that close to brown, normally. "Lee… is that… is that you?"

His voice was thin, young and scared, but also with the faintest veneer of hope, and Lee couldn't crush that, not while he could help it.

"It's me," he said hoarsely.

There was a scrabbling sound and then a body collided with Lee, sobbing into his chest. Tris was tall, easily heading to catch Lee up one day – already much, much taller than Michael – but in the ways of little brothers managed to fold himself up into something tiny and fragile in Lee's lap as two hands, too close together because his cuffs were like actual handcuffs, balled in the fabric of his worn and faded purple t-shirt.

Lee hated it. He hated that he couldn't move his hands to hold Tris. He hated that Tris, the little brother that was always so bright and bubbly, was crying so much, hurt emotionally if not physically.

Lee hoped he wasn't hurt physically. He hadn't been able to see too clearly and Tris had taken a hard fall when Alabaster had thrown him in.

All he could do was sit in silence, listening as Tris's sobs echoed around his – their, now, apparently – room, unable to do even the simplest things to comfort him. His thighs ached from the weight but he wasn't throwing Tris off, not now, not ever.

Eventually, the sobs faded into sniffles, although Tris' body became wracked with hiccups in the process, and there was probably snot as well as tears staining Lee's top now. When Tris looked up at him, his eyes were rimmed with red.

Lee had to know. "What happened?" he asked softly. "Why are you here?" He knew Tris hadn't turned his back on Apollo – he wouldn't, and he wasn't being treated like he had, either, unless it was all a massive double-bluff. But Tris wasn't a subtle kid.

A new round of waterworks started, which Lee had suspected would happen, even though he'd hoped Tris was out of tears for at least the moment.

"They killed Mom," he wailed, burying his head back in Lee's chest. "She didn't want me to come back this summer but I kept insisting and then the monsters attacked the car and Mom- "

His wail turned voiceless, and Lee hated the cuffs stopping him from hugging his little brother even more. It had been more than ten years since his own mom had died in a car crash, and while it hadn't been murder and Lee had been at school at the time, he still remembered how much it hurt.

It still hurt, when he thought about her. His memories of her were all fading, now impressions of warmth and laughter and music, but he could never hear a violin without thinking about her and every so often he remembered that his mom was gone.

He didn't wish that on anyone.

"I'm sorry, Tris," he whispered. He'd met Tris' mom when she'd picked him up from camp at the end of Tris' first summer; Tris had clearly loved her and she'd clearly loved him. "I'm so sorry."

Tris had been targeted. Demigods were often attacked on their way to and from camp, it was why some chose to stay all year, and also why despite not having year-round training, summer campers tended to be if not technically better fighters, dirtier and more effective. It came with spending most of the year on edge, prepared for monster attacks.

Generally, kids only went home at the end of summer if they thought their mortal family and friends were worth the potential monster attacks.

For Tris' mom to be killed and Tris not suggested a targeted attack, though, and Kronos had made that threat, after Silena had lied. The timing wasn't a coincidence – Kronos had sent out a kidnapping hit on one of Lee's own summer camper siblings to force Lee to cooperate, and by either accident or design, he'd also caught the youngest.

The worst thing was that Lee knew it was going to work. The moment Tris got threatened, he was going to cave, because it was one thing when it was him, but Tris was both a child and also his little brother. Lee couldn't, wouldn't let him get hurt.

Luke had known him well enough to know that, but even if he somehow hadn't, Lee's own actions over the past year – gods, he was not over the timeframe – had no doubt betrayed him somehow.

"Why?" Tris sobbed, and Lee swallowed. He owed Tris the truth, but the idea of telling Tris that he'd been kidnapped and his mother killed for leverage was a horrible one.

Tris didn't help when he continued. "Why are you here? You were dead."

Lee swallowed. "They took me, too," he said. "I don't know why they faked my death to do it but they did. I've been here ever since." He took a deep, shaking breath that he knew Tris had to feel from where he was still pressed against his chest. "As for why… Tris, can you… " He hesitated, then steeled himself, because even though he hadn't told anyone in years, not since he told Luke, back when Luke was his friend and not a traitor, Tris needed to know. Tris was going to find out, because Kronos was not going to be subtle about it. "Please don't lie to me."

Tris twitched, and Lee got red-rimmed eyes looking up at him in confusion. "About what?" he asked.

Lee had started, he was going to finish. "Anything," he said. "You don't… if you don't want to answer something just tell me that, I won't be mad, I promise. Just, don't lie, please." He could see his brother gearing up for more questions, or maybe he was working it out, like Michael had done, and barrelled on, tearing it off like a band-aid. "I can tell," he confessed. "Whenever someone lies in earshot. I can tell."

Tris was young but he also wasn't stupid.

"You're a lie detector," he said, "like Dad. Because he's the god of truth." Lee nodded. "And… Kronos knows?"

Lee did not want to break down in front of his little brother, Tris didn't deserve his big brother breaking down on him, but the tears didn't wait for permission to start falling as his breath hitched.

"Yeah," he admitted. "He knows."

"Oh." Tris' voice was small. Then. "Is he hurting you?"

No, Lee wanted to say, because Kronos kept the physical abuse to a minimum, but the manacles that had been a more or less constant feature in his life for the past year weren't conducive to physical health. No, he wanted to say, because he didn't want to admit to Tris that he was hurt, that his big brother was suffering.

"Not really," was what he actually said, hesitating over each word. "He's not trying to injure me."

"But you're hurt," Tris said, and it wasn't a question. Lee squeezed his eyes shut, feeling more tears escape and roll down his cheeks.

"Yeah," he admitted, barely above a whisper. "I'm hurt."

Tris wriggled around on his lap, and Lee almost opened his eyes to see what his little brother was doing, but he didn't trust himself not to burst into sobs instead of crying silently if he did, and he really, really didn't want to do that to Tris. In the poor light, there was a chance that Tris wouldn't realise he was crying, and that was by far the best case scenario.

Small hands with long, skinny fingers probed at one of his wrists. It was the one where something had given the last time Lee had pulled, and he instinctively inhaled sharply, the pained hiss echoing through the cave.

"You're bleeding," Tris said, his own voice thick and shaking. Lee hadn't even noticed the slightly sticky sensation of blood on his skin until his brother mentioned it. Now that it had been brought to his attention, though, it was obvious and uncomfortable.

Tris probed a bit more, his fingers at an awkward angle thanks to his own cuffs. "Can't you heal yourself?"

Lee sighed. "You know the joke at camp that we're solar-powered?"

Tris snorted, a sound that might have been a laugh in other circumstances. "Yeah." To be fair it was hard not to know that, when Tris had been young enough, his first summer, to get drowsy and sometimes fall asleep with the sunset.

"I haven't seen the sun in a year."

"You… haven't?" Tris asked, sounding horrified. Lee's eyes cracked open a fraction against his will, just enough to see the shape of his brother reaching up to his wrists.

"I could heal myself to start with," Lee told him, not sure if that was as reassuring as he meant it to be. "I can still ease the bruises but not much else, now."

"This is broken," Tris said, prying a little further. Lee let out another hiss as his wrist protested at the investigation. "Let me see if I…" he trailed off, pulling his fingers away from the tender wrist before two hands awkwardly cupped it between them.

Tris was a decent enough healer. He wasn't as naturally gifted as Will – who was, really? – or even Lee himself, but he was far better than the likes of Michael, and like all Apollo kids had a degree of stubbornness.

Or maybe that was demigods in general, but Lee's bias as head counsellor of cabin seven for four years said that Apollo kids were particularly stubborn when they put their minds to it. Wrangling them had not been his easiest duty.

Only living at camp during the summer, Tris wasn't as well trained in healing as some of their siblings, but stubbornness and desperation counted for a lot, and the words weren't all right in the healing hymn, but they were close enough, and the tune was spot on.

It took a healer of Will's calibre to get close to completely healing a broken wrist in one go, but Lee felt the warmth seeping through his bones and knew that the healing was accelerating as Tris poured in as much determination that it would heal as possible.

Even Will probably wouldn't be able to completely restore Lee's wrists at this point, but Tris was helping. Not just with the physical wound, but with the warmth.

It was only the barest fraction of their dad's warmth, but it was more than Lee had felt in a whole, Tartarus-damned year, and no amount of self-restraint could hold back the sobbing. Even if it was only a fraction of Apollo's warmth, it was something, and the long-missed familiarity felt enough like home and comfort that Lee crumbled.

Tris kept going, moving to his other wrist and treating the hairline fractures in that one, before even shuffling off of Lee's legs to probe at his ankles, which Lee had mostly neglected in favour of his worse-off wrists. If he was bothered by Lee sobbing and hiccupping in much the same way Tris had been earlier, his brother didn't show it, and Lee was thankful for that.

When the familiar healing hymn faded back to silence, Tris' hands leaving Lee's injured wrists and ankles, his brother moved again. Lee had the faint thought that he was glad that the only restraints Tris seemed to have were the ones cuffing his wrists together. Other than that, he seemed to have full freedom of movement.

Any further thoughts were cut off by a body on his lap and light weights on his shoulders. His eyes flew open to see Tris giving him a watery smile, before the arms looped around his head tugged him forwards slightly, so that Lee's forehead rested against fabric.

It took a painfully long time to realise that it was a hug.

Or at least, the closest thing that Tris could get to a hug when Lee was tied to the wall and Tris' wrists were secured together.

Lee couldn't hold his brother back, not with his wrists still firmly secured to the wall even if they felt much better than they had in a long time, and there was an awkwardness in Tris' arms as he clung to Lee's head, but it was a hug. He was already sobbing but even with the knowledge that this was his little brother, someone that he was supposed to be reassuring rather than the other way around, he instinctively burrowed further into the warmth.

He wasn't safe. He knew that. Neither of them were safe, and someone could unbolt the door and walk in at any moment. But right then, even though it was the youngest sibling that he knew, with skinny arms and a beanpole for a torso, sobbing into Tris' chest felt safe.

He wasn't safe, but he wasn't alone any more. Maybe he was going to have to cooperate with Kronos to stop Tris from being hurt, and gods Lee was not looking forwards to that in the slightest, but he wasn't alone.

Thanks for reading!
Tsari