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!

Lee startled, not used to having nothing at his back – in the cave, the one good thing had been that no-one could ever sneak up on him – and suddenly feeling a whole lot more exposed. He whipped his head around, needing to see who-

"Shhhh!" Tris hissed at him, one finger in front of his mouth in the universal sign for be quiet.

"Tris?" Lee somehow managed to keep his voice down, his brother's name coming out its own strangled hiss rather than the exclamation he dearly wanted it to be. "What- How- Are you alright?"

He didn't look fantastic. There was a black eye forming over his left eye, and some other bruises and small cuts visible on his skin, but the biggest amazement was that he was free. His wrists were rubbed raw, but there were no cuffs around them.

"I'm fine, Lee," his brother told him. "They changed to rope."

It was said in the tone of voice that meant Tris thought they were absolute idiots, and it was familiar – and reassuring – enough that Lee almost laughed.

Idiots, indeed. Or at least, no-one had bothered to do their research.

Tris' hand left his shoulder and nimble fingers immediately started picking at the rope around Lee's wrists. The knot was tight, a complex one that Lee hadn't had a chance in Tartarus of getting off. He probably would've needed to use a knife to cut it if he'd come across it for reasons that didn't involve it being used on him, because complicated knots were hell to undo if you didn't know the trick.

Tris, on the other hand, had no such problems. Tying and untying complex knots was one of his favourite hobbies. In less than a minute, he had the knot undone, and the rope carefully eased away from where it had bitten into Lee's skin. It hurt, a little, but the feeling of freedom soothed the pain away in short order.

Lee stayed sitting for a few more heartbeats, adjusting to the new change, before pulling himself to his feet. Tris helped, wrapping his arms around him and pulling, and the moment Lee was on his feet he pulled his little brother into a proper hug, feeling Tris adjust his grip to return it.

Free. He was free. They were free.

Now they just had to get out.

Lee didn't know where they were, but getting away was the first priority. Alabaster leaving him in an otherwise empty room helped, and clearly Tris had managed to sneak in somehow.

Tris tugged at his arm as the hug reluctantly ended. "This way," he insisted. "Most of the army has gone – all the monsters have gone. It's just demigods and they're all being briefed at the moment." The thought of Tris sneaking around enough to overhear all of that, and what could have happened if he'd been caught, terrified Lee.

But he wasn't going to borrow trouble and make a fuss about it. Tris was a demigod, too, and a brave one at that. Instead of letting himself dwell on what-ifs and other darker thoughts, Lee obediently followed after his younger brother, out of the room and down the doorway until they came across an ajar window that was large enough for them both to clamber out.

He forced Tris to go first, helping the smaller demigod wriggle through the opening before squeezing through himself. His wrists did not appreciate having to support a chunk of his weight, and Tris ended up bracing him as he tumbled through, not really strong enough to deal with Lee's size and weight compared to his own – not that Lee had ever been bulky or unduly heavy, but even after a year of restricted diet and lack of movement, he was still taller and broader than a freshly-twelve year old boy.

If Tris was twelve, if this was the final battle of the war on the eve of Percy's sixteenth birthday, then that meant Lee was eighteen.

The thought hadn't even crossed his mind until then. That at some point, stuck in the cave with restraints around his limbs, he'd turned eighteen.

That was a thought Lee promptly shoved aside, because it was not helpful. Not right then. They were outside, cool asphalt beneath his feet, but they weren't away from Kronos yet. They also, crucially, weren't near Williamsburg Bridge.

Gods, he hadn't told Tris that yet. He didn't want to bring Tris into the battle, either, but the idea of separating again, of leaving his little brother alone when there was no safe place available was worse.

They crept further along the road, breaking into a light run as they got further away, until the building Kronos had kept him in was out of sight behind them.

It felt too easy, but Lee wasn't going to look a gift horse in the mouth. He needed to get away, he needed to warn his siblings, he needed to not let Kronos win.

It took them the best part of an hour, from the movement of the moon and the stars – and gods how Lee loved being able to keep track of time again, to stay tethered to it rather than keep drifting along at the whims of Kronos and his manipulation – before they reached the suburbs of a city, and the skyline was unmistakable.

The Empire State Building, Olympus, towered upwards, barely lit but creating a void in the starlight behind it. He stopped, and Tris followed suit.

"Now what?" Tris asked him. "Do we go back to camp? Where is the war?"

Lee took a deep breath. "They're attacking Manhattan," he said, "and the campers are defending it." He gestured broadly towards the city. "Our siblings are at Williamsburg Bridge."

"So that's where we're going," Tris understood, and Lee hated the we because that meant Tris was coming to war with him, but he was right.

"Yeah," Lee agreed. "That's where we're going. We have to warn them – Kronos is after them."

Tris paled. "What is it with him and us?" he demanded. "Is it because none of us want to join his stupid crusade to kill our dad?"

Lee shrugged. "I don't know," he admitted. "He never explained why, just that he is."

"So how do we get there first?" Tris asked. "Manhattan's all the way over there, and we're stuck back over here."

Lee looked around, noticing for the first time how silent everything was. Car engines idled, but no-one moved, no-one spoke. It was eerie, and Lee doubted it was unrelated to the war.

He picked his way carefully down the street, Tris on his heels, until he found an idling motorbike.

It was stupid. It was dangerous. A car would be much better protection and Lee was more familiar with driving a car. He could actually do that. He'd never learnt to drive a motorbike.

But a car was bulky. Too bulky, if everything was stuck and non-moving and Lee had to get around them.

He pulled the rider off, checking the guy's pulse as he did so. Alive, and steady. Sleeping, really.

Well, Morpheus and Hypnos had both sided with Kronos, so that explained that.

A couple of tugs later, and he had the guy's helmet in his hands, putting it over Tris' head before his little brother could protest. Then he righted the bike, poked at the controls to work out what did what, and in a fit of desperation, prayed again.

"Apollo, I could really, really do with knowing how to drive this thing," he begged, and it was a big ask, and Apollo hadn't heard any of his prayers for the last year but he wasn't underground, wasn't with Kronos any more and maybe, just maybe-

That lever was acceleration. That one was the brake. Realisation after realisation sparked in Lee's mind as he brushed his hands over the controls again, and the overriding realisation behind all of them had him sobbing.

"Lee?" Tris asked him cautiously, wrapping his arms around him. "What happened?"

Lee hugged him back, kicking out the stand on the bike so it stayed upright while he clutched his little brother to him tightly.

"He heard me," he sobbed, burying his face in motorbike helmet. "Dad heard me."

"Oh." It was a small noise, an acknowledgement without understanding, until a few seconds later, when Tris' grip tightened, and Lee knew he got it. "Dad heard you!"

Lee wondered how many times Tris had prayed to Apollo since being captured. He doubted the answer was none.

"Yeah," he hiccupped. "Yeah, he did." He allowed himself a few more moments of celebratory relief before carefully peeling Tris off of him and wiping his face with the hem of the battered t-shirt. "We've got to get moving."

"To Williamsburg Bridge," Tris agreed, and Lee nodded.

"To Williamsburg Bridge."

He threw his leg over the saddle before turning around to help Tris up behind him. Sadly, his little brother was a little too tall to be squashed safely in front of him, not if Lee was going to have a clear view of the road ahead of them. Still, unlike him, Tris had a helmet and shoes, and his clothes were considerably less worn. He also had a stronger grip, and the arms that locked around Lee's waist promised that they were not going to let go.

There was probably a reason people wore boots and a helmet on a motorbike, but Lee had neither and no time to scavenge for some that would fit well enough to not be more of a hindrance than protection. He kicked the stand away, gunning the throttle at the same time, and they accelerated away.

Part of Lee felt a little guilty about the theft – he was never going to remember the way back to return it to the guy they'd stolen it from – but with his siblings' lives on the line… Some sacrifices had to be made.

Maybe he could ask Apollo to make sure it ended back where it belonged, afterwards.

If he was by himself, he would probably have gone faster, pushing the bike to its limits and hoping his reaction times were good enough to dodge hurdles as he got closer and closer to the city itself. They were on a time limit, and Kronos certainly had enough of a head start – if he'd used his scythe to cut a portal through space again, they could already be there and Lee and Tris would be too late, but Lee refused to entertain that thought.

But he wasn't by himself. He had Tris, clinging to him like a lifeline, and also tethering him to reality and reminding him that there would be consequences if he crashed. Tris might have a helmet but that wouldn't save him from serious injury, and helmets only reduced the risk of head injuries or death, not eliminated it. He couldn't kill one sibling on his way to help the rest of them.

So he drove slower. Not slowly, but slower, where the buildings and idling cars and sleeping pedestrians he passed still had a shape, rather than being a blur of something in the light of the bike's headlight. Slow enough that he had plenty of time to react to blockages in the road and swing around past them without needing to swerve and risk losing his balance.

His wrists ached, not wanting to be used so much, but Lee wasn't going to stop to try and heal them up a little bit more. Maybe some of his healing strength was returning, now that he was under the reflected light of the moon, and hopefully Tris' was, too, but they were headed into a war and wars always meant injuries at best, and casualties at worst. Lee could cope with disgruntled wrists as he flexed the tendons to make the bike slow slightly around corners and accelerate away again, if it meant not running out of healing later.

Admittedly, Apollo kids didn't normally run out of healing, but too much healing in quick succession could make them tired, or even drain them of all their energy, and when there were lives on the line, it amounted to the same thing. They needed to save their healing for anyone who needed it in a life or death situation, not just to ease some discomfort.

Behind him, Tris stayed quiet. His body pressed against Lee's back, head resting sideways against his scapula, and his arms still firmly locked around Lee's waist promised Lee that he was still there, that he hadn't fallen off.

Realistically, Lee was the one more likely to fall. He was weaker, but also Tris' balance was better than most – he wasn't like Michael, who danced along narrow branches like he was an acrobat in a circus, but any unsteady movement beneath his feet was met with laughter and his body adjusting with ease.

Lee didn't have to worry about Tris falling off, although he still did, a little. It was difficult not to worry about somehow losing his brother again, not after however long it had been between Beckendorf's death and now where he hadn't had a clue what had happened to Tris, if Tris was even still alive.

It probably took them about twice as long to start hearing the sounds of battle than it would've done if Lee had forced the bike at full speed the whole way there, but it meant they both arrived there intact and without any falls, so it was probably worth it.

Despite having lived at camp for a decade, Lee didn't have the geography of New York memorised. He knew the major landmarks, but he hadn't grown up in the city before moving to camp. Tris knew even less than he did, being a summer camper – or at least, had been a summer camper, although with his mom dead Lee suspected that was going to change – who spent the rest of the year across the border in Ontario, merrily splashing away on the edge of Lake Erie.

All that drove him on was instincts, a voiceless murmur in the back of his mind that guided him around the edge of the fighting, far enough away that the roar of the motorbike wouldn't be heard and draw unwelcome attention, until he and Tris tiredly pulled into a scrapyard on the bank of the East River. The building closest to them was a locked-down, decrepit old warehouse, but beyond that rose fancy mansions made of more money than Lee knew he would ever see in his lifetime.

Downriver was the Williamsburg Bridge. With the silence of the city, it was easy to hear the cacophony of battle being carried along the water, even if it was too far away to make out any real movement on the bridge, especially in the dark.

Gods, his siblings were fighting at night, and Lee knew that the solar powered jokes had enough truth in them to make it something to worry about. The feeling of the sun seemed to be a little stronger, so it was probably early hours rather than midnight, especially given the amount of time he and Tris had been travelling in the dark, but it still hadn't risen yet, and likely wouldn't for a little while longer.

They couldn't get closer on the bike without risking being heard, and Lee couldn't tell if Kronos was there or not. He kicked the stand back out again, wincing at the hard metal on his bare feet, which hadn't particularly enjoyed the footrest they'd been forced to grip to while he rode, and clambered off of the machine, helping Tris follow suit before picking his way gingerly to the water's edge.

"You should have something on your feet," Tris pointed out, but Lee shrugged.

"There wasn't anything that fit," he defended himself, peering at the water.

Percy has promised he has a plan to prevent your boats crossing, Silena had warned. The water looked different, and Lee really, really hoped that they weren't enough to trigger a defensive mechanism, because the estuary was going to be the only hope they had of getting to his siblings without having to fight through the entirety of Kronos' army.

He stepped forward tentatively, poking a toe in the water.

It surged, and only Tris yanking him sharply backwards with a cry saved him from either a soaking or, perhaps more likely, a drowning.

NO, a voice boomed.

So you're all aware, I can't think of this chapter without thinking of a small omake whereby Artemis yanks Apollo out of the way of one of Typhon's attacks when he freezes because he just got Lee's prayer and realised he (and Tris) are still alive. So you guys can have that mental image, too!

Thanks for reading!
Tsari