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!
Blood splattered Lee's feet. He threw up, barely twisting his torso far enough to the side to not hit his own legs. They were still in the splash zone.
Screams rang in his ears, but Silena was gone and Kronos was putting the bracelet back around his wrist. Blood dripped from that, too.
The first time Lee had seen so much blood, it had been The Chariot Race. That was the first time he'd seen a dead body, too.
He'd seen serious injuries and dead bodies since, unavoidable when he was the first port of call for seriously injured new arrivals, who didn't always make it, but there was something always so much worse when it was someone he knew, first. A friend.
Kronos took the body with him when he left, Alabaster and Ethan trailing after him with plenty of blood covering them, too. Lee didn't know what they were going to do with the body, but he was secretly, painfully, relieved that they hadn't left Beckendorf with him, even if he felt guilty for it, because at least he was Beckendorf's friend. Beckendorf didn't deserve for his body to be disposed of by his killer.
But Lee couldn't do it.
It was Alana who slipped in later, muted horror in her eyes – she'd known Beckendorf, too – as she unchained Lee's wrists and pushed him towards the small bathroom. The water facilities in there had never been great but they'd been enough to keep him reasonably clean for the past year, and they were enough to wipe away the blood splatter on his bare skin.
He couldn't do much to get the stain out of the pants, though, even when he all but soaked them to try and get rid of vomit splatters and dark crimson spots.
The floor was wet when he collapsed back into his usual spot, Alana resecuring his wrists and ankle chains to the wall. Wet, but free of vomit and blood, at least in his immediate vicinity. The coppery tang still floated in the air. Alana was damp, too. He didn't know where she'd got the water from in the first place, and he didn't have the will to ask.
It was an act of kindness, though, he thought. Hoped. Her eyes had softened, closer to the girl he remembered from camp than the demigod that had helped torment him since his capture, and Lee let himself think that maybe she had been affected just a little by Beckendorf's death, too.
She left in the same silence she'd arrived in, leaving Lee alone to wait for the shock to fade and the grief to settle in.
And to panic about Tris' continued absence, because the door had been shut behind Alana, but Tris hadn't come back, and Lee didn't know why but he couldn't think of a good reason.
Gods, what if Tris had been killed? What if Kronos had decided he didn't need Tris to keep Lee in line anymore? The thought was sickening and the fear that settled in was very, very real.
Meals came, bathroom breaks happened. No visits from Kronos.
Tris didn't come back.
"Get up," Alabaster ordered as he pushed the door open and marched in.
"Where's Tris?" Lee asked him, not for the first time. Like every other time, he was ignored.
The son of Hecate opened the cuffs. All of them, even the ones around his ankles that had remained sealed shut since Lee had first woken in the cave. "Up!" he barked again, with a yank on Lee's arm, and he didn't have much choice except to clamber to his feet.
Walking without the weight of metal around his ankles for the first time in a year was awkward, and Lee hated that he now found it harder to walk without restraints than with them. He staggered a little, his balance not helped by Alabaster's harsh grip on his arm. The son of Hecate didn't give him any chance to adjust before pulling him forwards, away from the bathroom and towards the door.
Caught off guard by the unexpected direction, Lee staggered again, almost falling.
Stepping out of the room felt surreal. For a moment he almost felt free, with no metal around him and out of the same rocky walls that had made up all of his scenery for the past year.
The vice-like grip around his arm didn't let him feel that way for long, nor did the way Alabaster kept dragging him, not even giving him a moment to adjust to the sudden change. There was the vague thought that he might, finally, be able to escape – certainly it was the clearest opportunity he'd had since his capture – but for two factors. One – Lee's muscles had been atrophying slightly and he definitely wasn't as fit as he used to be, while Alabaster was clearly still in shape to fight, and formidable at that. He wouldn't be one of Kronos' de facto leaders if he wasn't.
Two, Tris.
Lee still didn't know where his little brother was, or what state he was in. For all he knew, Tris was already dead, but he equally might not be, and if he wasn't, Lee wasn't going to be the reason that changed.
The tunnels he was led through were made of the same sorts of rock as the cavern, to Lee's amateur knowledge. They looked the same, anyway. It felt like it should be brighter, outside of the cave, but in reality the lighting remained a similar level, brighter or dimmer depending on the freshness of the torches.
Eventually, as Lee's feet started to ache because he hadn't walked so far in a year, they entered another, much larger, cavern, with a dais and throne at the far end. The figure lounging on it was unmistakably Luke's body, and Luke's posture.
It had been a year and yet still sometimes Lee got slammed with the reminder that it was Luke's body Kronos was inhabiting, his former friend long gone.
In front of Kronos, the cavern was filled. Demigods stood in two factions, with a sea of monsters of all types in the middle, separating the two. He couldn't see them well enough to be certain, but he suspected that the two were more or less Romans and Greeks, with little if any mixing between the two.
The sound was also deafening. Kronos seemed like he had just finished talking, because everyone in front of him seemed to be cheering rabidly, like subjects of a king that had just told them victory in war was within their grasp.
That was probably what Kronos had said.
"You're coming with us," Alabaster shouted in Lee's ear, just loud enough to be heard over the cacophony. "Lord Kronos isn't done with you yet."
Those words did not help Lee feel any better. Unarmed and weak in a cavern full of fully armed and armoured warriors drove home how vulnerable he was, especially when Alabaster forged a path through the left hand group of demigods, still dragging Lee behind him. The demigods parted for them without issue, and a few familiar faces appeared in the sea of unfamiliarity. Some of them, like Ethan and Alana, he'd seen during his captivity. Others were former campers, who had steadily trickled away from camp across the last few years. Some of them, Lee had thought were still loyal to the gods – or had been, while Lee had still been a camper himself.
But of Tris, there was no sign at all.
Alabaster hauled Lee up to the foot of Kronos' dais, where what Lee could only assume were the faction leaders were gathered. Reuben was glowering at him from the other side, and a creature that could only be the same Minotaur that Percy had vanquished on his very first day at camp hovered in the middle, alongside several other monsters.
Behind him, he could feel the eyes of the rest of Kronos' army on his back.
Kronos smiled when he saw him, his dark smile, where he was pleased, but that pleasure didn't bode well for anyone else. "Ah, Lee," he said. "Just in time."
He stood from his throne, stepping off the dais until he was only a scant few paces in front of Lee, and flexed his hand.
Immediately, his scythe erupted into existence. It was clean, no sign that it had been used for murder. Lee recoiled instinctively, or as much as he could while Alabaster lived up to his namesake beside him. Had Kronos decided that actually he didn't need Lee anymore? Was this it?
Alabaster wasn't letting go of him, and it was only one person instead of the two that had held the larger Beckendorf in place, but Lee could see the parallels and-
The scythe flashed, but not towards him. Instead, Kronos had turned to the side at the last moment, rending a gap in the air. Looking through it, Lee could see vague shapes in the darkness.
"Time to go," Kronos said, and without any more fanfare stepped right through the gap. Before Lee could really comprehend what was happening, he was pushed through from behind, stumbling after the titan.
He emerged under the stars.
Immediately, he felt the sun.
It was faint, the barest hint of a reflection from the moon. Lee had never really noticed it before – after dark, once the moon was up and the sun chariot had passed back into its stables, it had always felt like the sun had gone to bed, disappeared until dawn broke the next morning and the chariot once again surged through the sky. Now, after a year stuck so far underground that not even a barest trickle of the sun's warmth could reach him, even without the sun even being in the sky, he could feel his father.
The sensation was liberating, and he staggered forwards with a gasp, and then another one as Alabaster shoved him firmly. Catching a glimpse of movement behind him in his periphery, Lee glanced back to see a swathe of Kronos' army forcing their way through the portal. Absently, Lee realised that was how Kronos had had multiple bases, and how he'd deceived the campers into thinking the Princess Andromeda was his base of operations.
The idea that Kronos could slice open the world and slip through to wherever he wanted to be was concerning and Lee really, really, didn't like it.
Cool fingers wrapped around his bicep, the grip crushing, and Alabaster's fingers fell away. Lee looked up to see Kronos holding onto him, Luke's face once again twisted into a cruel, cruel smile.
"This way," the titan ordered. "I still have use for you." He dangled a silver pendant in front of Lee's face, the scythe mocking him as it glinted in the faint light of the moon and the stars. "It's report time."
His hand slid up Lee's arm and across his shoulders until Lee was wrapped under his right arm, in a mockery of a side hug. The titan's grip was still unyielding, despite the softer nature of the hold, and Lee could do nothing but be hauled along to wherever Kronos wanted him to be.
He didn't want to attend another report. He didn't want to see Silena's face again.
"Where's Tris?" he demanded, his attempts at digging his heels in futile and reminding him that he didn't have shoes on his feet, and that the coolness of the cavern floor was hardly the worst environment to be shoeless in.
"You don't need to know," Kronos replied as they left the rest of the army behind them, the leaders of the factions shouting orders – or grunting unintelligibly – at their followers. They ended up in a derelict looking building that Lee couldn't recognise in the dark. He wasn't sure he'd be able to recognise it in the daytime, either.
Kronos didn't let go of Lee even when they reached their apparent location, simply chanting the activation spell before tossing the pendant onto the ground in front of them.
Silena looked awful. Lee wasn't entirely certain how long it had been since Beckendorf's death – execution, murder – but it was clearly still affecting her badly. Her make-up was smudged and a little messy, and not in an artful way, either. Her eyes were red in the way that screamed near-constant crying, and her hair was as unkempt as Lee had ever seen it.
He'd hoped that Beckendorf's death would've been enough to stop her answering Kronos' summons. It felt like a betrayal to his memory that she hadn't.
"Their battle plans," Kronos demanded of her, skipping the exchange of pleasantries that Lee had become accustomed to between the titan and his spies. "What are they?"
Silena took a deep breath, forcing herself to stand up straight. Aside from the clear signs of grief in her unkempt appearance, she looked the part of a warrior princess – beautiful and deadly with her armour and her sword.
Some people made the mistake of thinking that the Aphrodite campers were pretty faces obsessed with romance and fashion and not much else. It was an oversight that was usually corrected within a round or two of Capture the Flag. Lee knew the occupants of cabin ten well enough to know that their danger looking different didn't mean the scale of danger didn't stay the same.
Silena was dressed for war and she looked amazing in it. Beautiful and deadly, everything the head counsellor of cabin ten should be. Lee had no idea which side she would actually be fighting on.
"They plan to hold the bridges and tunnels," she reported, all stiff and formal and uncomfortable. Her voice quivered with the threat of tears. "Cabins Four and Twelve are holding the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel. Cabin Six is holding the 59th Street Bridge, and Cabin Seven has the Williamsburg Bridge. Cabin Nine is on the Holland Tunnel, and Cabin Ten has the Queens-Midtown Tunnel. Cabin Eleven have split in two, with half on Manhattan Bridge under Travis and half on Brooklyn Bridge under Connor. The Hunters have taken over Lincoln Tunnel, and Percy has promised he has a plan to prevent your boats crossing."
All true. Silena didn't even look at him, her vision firmly focused on Kronos. The titan squeezed Lee briefly, and Lee refused to let himself search for a reason why, distracting himself instead with the apparent lack of the Ares cabin. What were they doing?
"I see," Kronos said after a moment. "Well done, Silena." He didn't ask about the Ares cabin, which made Lee wonder if he already knew something, which was not a comforting thought. Instead, he slashed away the projection, and his face twisted into another of those too-horrid, not-Luke-like smirks. "Asterius!" he called.
It didn't take the Minotaur long to arrive, grunting and snorting through his nose. Lee had seen his broken-off horn in person, clutched in the hands of an unconscious Percy Jackson on his first arrival to camp, but that didn't have anything on the sheer size of the monster in total. The Minotaur was huge, and his battle axe both razor sharp and intricately decorated with motifs of torment and death.
He didn't say anything as he came to a halt in front of Kronos, and by extension Lee, but his small, dark eyes were sharp.
"Take your troops to Williamsburg Bridge," Kronos ordered. "You will be in charge of the first wave of offence there. I will be the second."
Cabin Seven has the Williamsburg Bridge.
Lee felt sick. "No!" he cried, trying and failing to wriggle free from Kronos' grasp. "No." Archers would be helpless against the strength and speed of a Minotaur. They could pick a lot off, but not something of that calibre. And Kronos himself-
Michael would try, though. Michael would fight until the bitter end if it came to it, and get killed because the Minotaur was big and strong and Kronos was worse and Michael wasn't. Lee couldn't let that happen.
Kronos snapped his fingers, freezing Lee's jaw shut. "There is no need for that," he scolded mildly. "Alabaster." As if by magic, the boy appeared. "Find Lee some suitable quarters and ensure he remains there."
"Yes, my Lord," Alabaster replied, and Lee was helpless to fight as he was dragged away.
The room they ended up in was much the same, visually, as the one Lee had just left, where Kronos and the Minotaur were plotting how best to get rid of the demigods on Williamsburg Bridge.
How best to kill Lee's siblings.
Lee needed to get out.
Alabaster was not gentle as he slammed Lee against a pole, and Lee's back arched awkwardly at the sensation of being hit right between his scapulae. To his astonishment, there was no clink of metal, no handcuffs withdrawn from some magical storage space the son of Hecate no doubt had, somewhere. Instead, it was rope that wound tightly around Lee's wrists, so tight that Lee could feel every individual strand of fibre against his skin. His fingertips immediately began to swell, feeling red and hot and starting to tingle at the tips.
Even though it was rope instead of metal, Lee's experimental tugs proved that it was just as difficult to escape.
His attempts at testing his bonds seemed to amuse Alabaster. "You're not getting out of that knot," he gloated. "I will see you later, Lee."
He disappeared into the darkness, leaving Lee alone with his thoughts and not much else.
Then there was a touch on his shoulder.
Thanks for reading!
Tsari