PJO: The Ties That Bind | Chapter 12: Change
Aaaand I bring you ACTION! KIND OF! AT THE END OF THE CHAPTER! :D;
Seriously, though~ I'm so relieved I have finally gotten to the beginning of the major part of the story. (I know, I know, please don't hate me; this is going to be so long. ;_;)
I actually had the last part of this chapter written for quite some time... only to get the brilliant idea as I was falling asleep last night to change it up quite a bit so that I ended up rewriting most of it just now. Ah, well. The best laid plans, right?
Also, I love the song I was finally able to use for this chapter. I actually have a PJO FST in the works that features it. It's just so perfect~
The Ties That Bind:
Chapter 12: Change
Because these things will change, can you feel it now?
These walls that they put up to hold us back will fall down,
It's a revolution, the time will come for us to finally win.
- Change (Taylor Swift)
“Percy, you do realize that this...” Thalia bit her lip, looking like she really didn’t want to tell me what she had to say. “You do realize that maybe he hasn’t gone there to fight Kronos.”
I stared at Thalia, for a minute honestly not comprehending what she was saying. Not going to fight Kronos? Then why else -
Then it clicked. “No,” I said, shaking my head as the unease in the pit of my stomach only grew. “He’s not - he wouldn’t - ”
But I had to admit, in the back of my mind, that there was the tiniest possibility that he would. Nico had told me he’d been tempted, just for a minute, back in Boston. He’d told me he’d actually thought about it - but then he’d turned Kronos down and refused to be a part of his plan. Nico had said no once, why would he say yes now? Despite everything that had happened, it was nearly impossible for me to actually believe that Nico would join the Titan’s cause.
But part of me whispered that Nico wasn’t himself right now, that something was definitely wrong with him. Part of me wondered if the stress really had gotten to him - if he just wanted to make it all go away, and if he might think that the easier way to do that would be to join Kronos, rather than to fight him. Together they might be able to take on Olympus - together, Kronos had said, they might be able to beat even death. Together...
I swallowed, the action sounding loud in the suddenly silent room. “Thalia...?” I croaked, licking my lips and trying again. My throat felt very dry all of a sudden. There was no easy way to ask this, but I had to do it right. This was something that I’d never been able to ask Annabeth, because she closed up or got angry whenever I approached the subject. But right now there were questions that I desperately needed the answers to.
Honestly, I’d figured out why Annabeth shut down every time I tried to talk about Luke. Before, I’d always just thought Annabeth was touchy about Luke because she’d looked up to him so much, because he’d protected her when she was little. Anybody’d get mad at someone badmouthing their protector - their hero - like that. But maybe it had always been something more. It had taken me a long time to realize it, but maybe falling in love for myself had changed the way I saw things - well, some things. Apparently I could still be a jerk and not realize it, and I felt bad about treating Annabeth the way I had. I felt my stomach sink as I realized that, in a way, Annabeth had always been betrayed by the people she loved most. That really made me feel worse than mud on the bottom of Ares’ boots.
And I was pretty sure that Thalia felt the same way about Luke, but we hadn’t exactly gotten along like best buddies for a while and I’d never thought to ask her about it. But now, standing here, she seemed like the only other person who might understand just what I was feeling.
It wasn’t that I thought Nico had gone over to the Titan’s side. I didn’t. But I just... I wanted to know if the way I’d felt back at the funeral pyre was, you know, okay. Normal. Or if maybe it was really not okay for me to feel the way I did. I mean, not that knowing what Thalia thought was going to change the way I felt - of course it wouldn’t. But I did know that I’d feel better knowing that I wasn’t the only person who’d thought about following someone over a line they’d never thought they’d cross.
“What did you... I mean, how did you feel when you found out about Luke? I mean, about the whole Kronos thing...”
Well, that was totally not tactful, I thought miserably. Way to go, self. Thalia was staring at me, looking strange in the early morning sunlight filtering in through the window. One hand was still on the curtains and if I looked carefully, I could see that the knuckles had gone white. Her lips were pressed into a thin line. For a minute I was pretty sure I’d blown it - she was going to yell at me like Annabeth always did, asking me how I could say anything about Luke at a time like this, and that would be the end of it.
But she didn’t. She let go of the curtain, cutting off most of the sunlight as it swung shut so that all that was left was a sliver shining from between the break where the two sides met. She was quiet for a long moment - well, at least she wasn’t yelling - until she said, “I... I didn’t know what to think. I didn’t want to believe it at first. Sometimes I still can’t believe it. Luke was... Percy, you have to understand. Luke was - he was my world. He was everything I wanted to be for a really long time - ”
“You love him,” I said quietly, and I could tell it caught her off guard. “I mean... I just... I need to know what you felt like, because I don’t know...”
I don’t know what to do if Nico turns on us, too.
I knew what my head said I should do, and I knew what my gut said I would do. And I was still torn between them, even though if I was ever faced with the choice, I knew it would be no contest.
Thalia had gone silent and for a minute, despite my inexplicable surety, I wondered if maybe I’d been really wrong. But, “Yeah,” she finally said, so quietly that it was hard to hear her. “Yeah, I did.”
Did. It was hard to miss that word, and harder to miss what it meant, even for a stupid thick-headed guy like me. “But you let him go,” I said hollowly, not meaning to be insulting or anything, but just stating the simple truth. “You accepted that he was your enemy and decided to stand against him. Right?”
Thalia’s eyes were wide now, as she stared right into mine. “Percy, I know what you’re thinking. I’ve thought it myself. You think that you can save him - that he’s been tricked, or that he couldn’t possibly be what everyone else says he is. You think you can make it all better, but you can’t - ”
But I’d heard more than enough. “Look, we don’t even really know why Nico’s gone to Mount Tam,” I said quickly, not letting her continue because I knew where she was going. And I knew that I couldn’t tell her what I really wanted to say - but we were both better off if she never realized that fact. “Either way it’s really bad news, okay? We need to get there, like, yesterday.”
Now, like it or not, I had my answer. Part of me wondered how Thalia could do it when I couldn’t - how she could see Luke as her enemy when I knew that there was no way I could ever look Nico in the eyes and tell him I wouldn’t follow him, wherever he went. Whatever it meant I had to give up. And I realized now that no, it really wasn’t okay to feel that way. But I did, and it wasn’t going to change. Whatever happened when we found Nico, I was going to stand by him. And I would deal with the consequences when they came.
But for now, I could hope that Nico had gone to confront the Titan, not to join him. I had to have faith that he wanted to save Olympus as much as the rest of us. I prayed that we would find him in one piece when we caught up with him. Then we could face Kronos together, stronger than either of us was alone, and I knew there was no way that even a Titan could withstand both of us, if only we could work together to stop him.
*
We found Annabeth sitting in the breakfast area of the lobby with her laptop on the small table in front of her, typing furiously and frowning. The Hunters were scattered at various other tables, talking quietly amongst themselves in twos and fours and picking at plates of toast and fruit or disinterestedly stirring bowls of instant oatmeal.
When Annabeth looked up and saw me, her eyes narrowed and she huffed a sigh that could have been exasperation or relief (but was probably exasperation). “You need to tell someone before you disappear, you know,” was all she said, as Thalia and I approached the table. I shrugged, feeling like once she found out what I had, she wouldn’t be so mad about me going to take a morning walk.
Next to me, I saw Thalia open her mouth to speak. But then her brow furrowed and I followed her gaze to the TV mounted on the wall in the corner, which was on mute but had subtitles scrolling by in white-on-black text (which was not really helpful when you’re dyslexic). It was showing the national news, and there were images flashing by of crumbled buildings and collapsed highways. I managed to make out the headline sitting static on the side of the screen. It read, “California Quake Measures 8.5 on Richter Scale”.
I blinked. “Whoa. That’s pretty bad, isn’t it?”
Annabeth rolled her eyes. “‘Pretty bad’ doesn’t begin to describe it, Seaweed Brain. California’s never had one that big in recorded history.” When I glanced around the back of the laptop to see her screen, I saw more pictures of the same sort that were on the TV - she was reading the news online.
“Oh,” was pretty much all I could say to that.
Something niggled at the back of my mind, uncomfortable and sharp, just as Thalia nudged me and said, “Do you think it has anything to do with...?”
My stomach dropped. Earthquake. California. Which was where Mount Tam was - where Nico was headed. “Uh.” Oh gods, I really hoped not. I really, really hoped that had nothing to do with Nico. Really, how could it? I’d seen him create cracks in the earth or raise sheets of stone, but an 8.5-magnitude earthquake? Nico?
But then, the back of my mind whispered, what were the chances that it was random? What were the chances that anything big was random these days, when the clock ticking down to the standoff between Kronos and the Olympians was running a lot faster than it had used to.
Annabeth cocked her head, narrowing her eyes at us. “What’s up?” she asked suspiciously, realizing there was something we knew that she didn’t.
Thalia just chucked at thumb back towards the elevators. “Meeting in our room, five minutes.” Her eyes flicked over to the guy at the front desk and the woman in a business suit who’d just come in the automatic glass sliding doors, as if to say that this wasn’t something we could discuss out in the open. Then she left to go tell the rest of the Hunters, which left me standing there with a wary Annabeth, who shut the sleek black lid of the laptop with an audible click.
“What’s this about?” she demanded, standing up and tucking the computer under one arm. “Tell me now.”
I pointed in the direction of the elevators, and we started walking. “Nico,” I said quietly. “I found out where he’s headed.” We reached the elevators and I hit the button impatiently.
The elevator ding!ed and we stepped inside, Annabeth hitting Door Close before she punched the button for the seventh floor. “And?” she asked, her voice just as quiet, but in a tone that said she wasn’t going to wait for Thalia to explain it all when I could tell her right now.
“And I’m pretty sure it’s Mount Tam.”
The look in Annabeth’s eyes was caught somewhere between horror and pity, and I didn’t like it at all. I had to look away, staring at the row of buttons next to the elevator doors, which opened as we came to a stop on the correct floor. “Look,” I said quickly, as we stepped out and Annabeth fumbled for her keycard in her pocket, “I know this is really, really bad.”
Annabeth slipped the card into the slot of her door, and the light on the handle turned green and the two of us slipped inside. She dumped the laptop on the nearer of the two beds and turned around to face me. “It is really bad,” she said. “Percy, if he’s gone to fight Kronos on his own...”
I nodded. “We can’t let him do that,” I said firmly, and I meant it. I didn’t care what it took - I would stay and listen to Thalia’s plan, but if it wasn’t something that I thought would help Nico...
Well, I wasn’t above breaking my word. Not when it mattered like this.
Annabeth took a step closer. “You know that’s not the only possibility,” she said quietly, her eyes flicking to the door like she knew we wouldn’t be alone much longer, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to get into this conversation before the Hunters showed up.
She didn’t - and neither did I. I’d already had it. “I know. But I know Nico,” I said quickly, before she could say any more. “You do, too. And I know that he hasn’t been himself, but that doesn’t mean he’d...”
But Annabeth just looked grim. “I know,” she said quietly, going over to the window where the curtains were still closed and pulling them open, securing them this time so the sunlight could flood in unhindered. Then she turned to look at me, and now there was no horror in her eyes - only pity. “But Percy, you saw what happened with - with Silena. And everyone knows what happened with Clarisse. I’m not making any judgments before I have the facts,” she said, before I could get a word in, “but...” She blinked rapidly a couple times, glancing out the window and into the morning sun. “Percy, I didn’t think Luke would ever do anything like what he did, either.”
It was the first time I’d ever heard her say something like that about Luke, and I was totally dumbstruck. I’d just talked to Thalia about him not ten minutes ago, but here was Annabeth, finally opening up to me about the one thing we’d never been able to talk about. I’d been able to tell Annabeth that I loved Nico - more than once, even if it had taken her yelling at me to get me to admit it the first time. But she’d never been able to tell me how she felt about Luke.
I found myself following her over to the window, standing just behind her. “Annabeth, look. I - ” I wasn’t even sure what I could say to her - nothing I said would make it any better, and I already knew how much both Luke and I had hurt her.
But as it turns out, I never got the chance to go on. The electronic lock on the door whirred, and Annabeth and I whipped around to see Thalia enter the room, the entirety of the Hunters following after. I sprung back from Annabeth, feeling stupid even though it wasn’t like I had been about to do anything - maybe hug her, but we were friends and it was okay to do stuff like that. But I didn’t want the Hunters to see it, because they were so anti-boy-crazy that they’d have probably shot my head off right then and there for even hugging another girl or something. Seriously, you never knew with them.
Annabeth just swallowed thickly and took a seat on the bed as I ended up standing awkwardly by the window. The Hunters weren’t an overly large group, but the room was small enough that with all of them crammed in there it was a bit crowded. Thalia stayed by the door in the small entryway as the rest of the girls filled up the room in front of her. Most of them didn’t even spare me a second look; they were all focused on Thalia.
“Okay, this is the deal,” Thalia said, addressing the Hunters like she’d been born to be their leader. She really had taken well to it, I thought, even if she’d only been with them for a year. Thalia had made a hard decision, in passing the prophecy on to me (and, well, Nico), but maybe she really had made the right decision in the end. “We need to get to Mount Tam, and we need to get there now.”
She paused, glancing at me like she wanted to make sure it was okay to go on. I just nodded. It was better that she explain things to the Hunters - they’d listen to her. I still didn’t know quite what she was planning, but I would hear her out, too.
“Nico is on his way there, and he might be trying to take on Kronos by himself.” To her credit - and my profound relief - she didn’t even mention the second option. Good, I thought. Because it’s really not an option. Nico’s on our side. He’s not going to join the Titan. I know it.
“Percy, Annabeth, and I are going on alone,” Thalia continued. “We’ll take Mrs. O’Leary. The rest of you can follow us, but a small party will be much faster than a big one.” She glanced at me. “I know Mrs. O’Leary probably can’t shadow travel with three passengers, but I think that with Artemis’ help she’ll be able to get us there a lot faster than we’ve been moving so far. Maybe even by the end of the day.”
I found myself nodding. It wasn’t perfect, but it wasn’t the worst option, either. Getting across most of the US in a day was pretty impressive - I just didn’t know if it would be impressive enough.
What I really wanted to do was just take Mrs. O’Leary and go - I could be there in a lot less time, and sure she’d be too tired to move by the time we got there, but I could worry about that later. I wanted to be by Nico’s side now. But taking Annabeth and Thalia really wasn’t a bad idea - especially if it came down to standing by Nico’s side as he tried to take down Kronos then and there.
If not... well, then I would have to get them out of the way. I didn’t want them involved in any of this, not if I could help it. I was willing to stand by Nico’s side, no matter what that meant. But I wasn’t willing to sacrifice my friends’ lives to do it.
That’s when it hit me - the realization that if I did really mean what I’d told myself, that I would go to Kronos’ side for Nico, then it could mean that a lot of horrible things would happen. Maybe the Titan really did just want a new regime, a new balance of power and he would leave everything else alone. But maybe, my mind whispered, he wouldn’t. Maybe he would want every half-blood and mortal dead. What would I do then? What if he asked me to kill my friends? What if Nico asked me to kill my friends?
That was a choice I didn’t know if I could make. Love and friendship were different, sure - but they were also not so different, when you thought about it. Maybe Annabeth was right, and I’d been walking around in a Nico-worshipping bubble for the past two months, but that didn’t mean I thought that I could live without my friends. Nico was pretty much my whole world, but what about Annabeth? What about Grover and Tyson, and Chiron and Thalia? What about my mom?
I shook my head, trying to clear it of all the thoughts that I really didn’t want to hear. If Nico really had gone to Kronos’ side, it couldn’t possibly be final. Thalia was wrong - I knew that I could reason with Nico. I knew that if I only had the chance to talk to him, I’d be able to get him to see reason. He’d listen to me. He had to.
I realized that I’d missed the rest of Thalia’s speech, but no one else seemed to have noticed. The Hunters were all nodding, looking around at me and Annabeth somewhat grudgingly but no one said anything. Thalia stepped out of the entryway and the Hunters began filing out, presumably going back to their own rooms. Thalia glanced at me, tilting her head across the hallway to my door.
“Go pack your things,” she said, holding the door open. “Come back here when you’re ready, and we’ll wake Mrs. O’Leary and get going.”
I nodded, glancing at Annabeth one last time before I headed out of the room and across the hall, sliding my key into the slot and pushing the door open when the lock clicked.
The room was dark as I stepped inside - I didn’t remember the curtains being shut all the way. The door clicked shut behind me, and that was when a hand shot out of the darkness, grabbing me by the collar of my shirt and pulling me farther into the room.
“Agh!” I cried wordlessly, but then a second hand slapped itself over my mouth. It smelled like rust.
A voice hissed right in my ear. “Shhh! It’s just me. Geez, I though you’d never come back.”
That voice - I knew that voice. I knew it better than I knew my own.
I twisted my neck to get my mouth free of the hand. “Nico?”
His face appeared before mine, dark eyes almost glowing as they looked into mine. “Yeah?”
“Fuck.” I didn’t have time to think or say anything else - I just got my hands under control and fisted in his shirt, and then I slammed him up against the wall and kissed him for all I was worth.
Nico went slack after about half a second and he started kissing back, his hands roaming up and down my back and over the pockets of my jeans.
I eventually managed to pull myself away, my brain starting to catch on to what was really going on here. “Where did you go?” I demanded, staring at the outline of his face in the dark. “I tried sending you Iris messages and you didn’t answer! Nico, I didn’t mean to - ” Then I stopped, frowning.
“What’s that on your face?” I reached out, touching the dark smudge on his cheek. It was hard to see with the room so dark, so I fumbled behind me in the entryway for the light switch.
We both flinched as the fluorescent bulb popped on, and then I blinked and tried to focus on Nico’s face. There were rusty brown smudges on his cheek and nose, like he’d wiped his hand over them. I looked down and realized that his hands and shirt had smudges on them as well. I swallowed, remembering the way his hand had smelled - metallic and rusty, like...
“Nico, is that blood?”
Nico glanced down at himself, then back up at me and shrugged. “Yeah, I guess so. I can explain, though. That’s why I’m here. Come on.” One hand wrapped around my wrist, pulling me back towards the corner between the bathroom wall and the bed, where it was darkest.
Just then I heard someone knocking on the door and Annabeth’s voice, muffled, calling, “Hey, Percy! Are you ready yet?”
I glanced at Nico, my eyes going wide, before looking back at the door. “Wait, Nico! Anna- ”
“- beth!” I finished, as we tumbled out of the shadows and into the cool black marble of Kronos’ fortress on top of Mount Tam. It was exactly the same as I remembered it - floor and statues made of reflective black marble, two bronze braziers on either side of a dais. On the dais, just where it had been before, was the golden sarcophagus of Kronos.
I felt like my eyes were bugging out of my head, as I whipped my face in every direction trying to determine if we’d been seen. “Nico!” I hissed, tugging at the arm he was still holding. “What are you doing? I know you think you can take on Kronos alone but - ”
“Whoa, slow down,” Nico said, his voice loud and echoing in the empty chamber. “There’s no one here - at least, not anymore.”
I stared at him, straightening. He was right - or, at least, it sure seemed that way. The place looked deserted. “How do you know?” I asked, my free hand already reaching into my pocket for my pen. “And why were you headed here in the first place?”
Nico finally let me go, shoving his hands nonchalantly into his pockets instead. I noticed that he didn’t even have his sword with him. “I know because I just came from here,” he said. “And if you give me a second to show you, I’m sure you’ll get the answer to your other question.”
He turned, beckoning me towards the sarcophagus. I won’t lie - I really didn’t want to get near that thing ever again. It was covered with carvings depicting elaborate scenes of death and destruction, and the last time I’d seen it, it had held the new form of the Titan lord Kronos - Luke Castellan’s body. So you can understand why I was a bit wary now, but Nico walked right up to it - and then past it.
He turned, beckoning to me almost impatiently. “Over here,” he said, pointing to the floor. “See?”
As I came around the side of the dais to stand next to Nico, I caught sight of what was lying on the ground where he was pointing. And then for a solid minute I couldn’t think anything at all. I just stared. And blinked. And stared some more.
Nico’s face swam into view as he leaned over to look at me. Now he was frowning just a little - actually, if you’d asked me how I would’ve described it just then, I would’ve said he was pouting. “Well, aren’t you gonna tell me how awesome I am?” he asked, in that joking-but-totally-serious-sounding way that only he could manage.
But I could say nothing of the sort. I was still totally dumbstruck, trying to process what I was seeing. In the end, all I could say was, “Is that…”
Nico sighed and shifted to the side again, sweeping his hand dramatically toward the body on the floor. “Yeah. Kronos. Well, Kronos in Luke’s body. Either way, he’s dead. Totally, completely dead. Believe me, I know.” He turned back to me. “So. Mission accomplished. Go me.”
The part of my brain that had finally started to process things again had to admit that he was right. The body was still there on the black marble floor when I looked a second time. Luke’s body - sandy blonde hair and the horrible white scar down his face and Nico’s Stygian iron sword through his heart.
I swallowed. It suddenly felt like I had a lump in my throat the size of Texas. I wasn’t sure if I was feeling ecstatic or terrified. Maybe both. I couldn’t even tell you why. “You... you killed him?” I choked out.
“Yes,” Nico said, starting to sound a little bit exasperated. “We’ve established that.” He stepped back in front of me, blocking my view of the body so that it was filled with Nico’s face insead. “So now the war’s over, right? Stuff can go back to normal and we can be together and no one will care because I saved the world and all that stuff.” He reached out, wrapping his arms around my waist.
I just blinked at him. Well sure, that was the uber-oversimplified version, if you wanted to look at it that way. Kronos was dead, the prophecy was fulfilled, Nico was the savior of Olympus and the gods would be pleased and it was okay that he’d killed Silena because she had been trying to sell us out.
But was it really all so simple? I mean, okay. Let’s say for a minute that this was exactly what it looked like - that Nico had somehow succeeded in taking on Kronos and winning. I could almost give him that, because maybe that really did make the earthquake I’d seen on the news this morning make sense. So the Titan was dead, and the threat to Olympus was gone. He’d fulfilled the prophecy. We could all go back to being normal kids - well, normal half-blood kids, at least.
But there was still the fact that Nico had left camp in the first place. And there were still the blackouts and right here and now he sounded… well, just a little crazy. Maybe he was still pumped up with adrenaline from the fight, but he sounded off, somehow. Exasperation with my brain’s inability to comprehend things aside, he sounded way too happy.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I have no problem with Nico being happy. Especially not after the past couple of weeks, and not after the way he’d looked and sounded the last time I had seen him. But I’d never heard him sound like this before - he honestly sounded like he was high or something - like nothing could touch him ever again. Like the best thing in the world had just happened to him and he wanted to share.
But maybe, I realized, it had. I mean, he’d killed Kronos. I was standing here right next to him and there was Luke’s body on the floor, and even if I hadn’t been willing to take Nico’s word for it (which I was), I had enough of Nico’s sense for death to tell that yes, he was dead. There was no soul in that body, Luke’s or otherwise. It had passed on - hopefully, I thought, back to Tartarus where it belonged.
“And you’re okay?” I heard myself asking, even though I realized it was probably the stupidest question ever. “Nico, the last time I saw you, you’d just... you ran off without giving me a chance to help. I’ve been really worried.”
Nico shrugged. “Look, it was complicated. There was stuff I couldn’t tell you. But,” he said, the lilt in his voice coming back as his expression brightened, “now I can tell you everything. Now it’ll all make sense.”
Of course I was willing to hear him out. Part of me started to relax, despite the utter shock of the situation. Maybe things really would make sense now. I’d been willing to follow Nico to the enemy’s side, after all. Certainly I could follow him when he’d just pretty much saved the world.
There was still that sense of things being off, but maybe I was just worried that this was too good to be true. I admit that I was almost afraid to let myself believe that maybe, just maybe, this entire nightmare was over.
The last of my worry must have shown on my face, because Nico just sighed affectionately and shook his head a little. “Come on, Percy,” he said, shifting his fingers from my hips to my hands. “Don’t you see?” He was grinning from ear to ear, and I still wasn’t sure if the feeling in my gut was elation or fear. “Now that Luke is dead, everything will change.”
Seriously, though~ I'm so relieved I have finally gotten to the beginning of the major part of the story. (I know, I know, please don't hate me; this is going to be so long. ;_;)
I actually had the last part of this chapter written for quite some time... only to get the brilliant idea as I was falling asleep last night to change it up quite a bit so that I ended up rewriting most of it just now. Ah, well. The best laid plans, right?
Also, I love the song I was finally able to use for this chapter. I actually have a PJO FST in the works that features it. It's just so perfect~
The Ties That Bind:
Chapter 12: Change
Because these things will change, can you feel it now?
These walls that they put up to hold us back will fall down,
It's a revolution, the time will come for us to finally win.
- Change (Taylor Swift)
“Percy, you do realize that this...” Thalia bit her lip, looking like she really didn’t want to tell me what she had to say. “You do realize that maybe he hasn’t gone there to fight Kronos.”
I stared at Thalia, for a minute honestly not comprehending what she was saying. Not going to fight Kronos? Then why else -
Then it clicked. “No,” I said, shaking my head as the unease in the pit of my stomach only grew. “He’s not - he wouldn’t - ”
But I had to admit, in the back of my mind, that there was the tiniest possibility that he would. Nico had told me he’d been tempted, just for a minute, back in Boston. He’d told me he’d actually thought about it - but then he’d turned Kronos down and refused to be a part of his plan. Nico had said no once, why would he say yes now? Despite everything that had happened, it was nearly impossible for me to actually believe that Nico would join the Titan’s cause.
But part of me whispered that Nico wasn’t himself right now, that something was definitely wrong with him. Part of me wondered if the stress really had gotten to him - if he just wanted to make it all go away, and if he might think that the easier way to do that would be to join Kronos, rather than to fight him. Together they might be able to take on Olympus - together, Kronos had said, they might be able to beat even death. Together...
I swallowed, the action sounding loud in the suddenly silent room. “Thalia...?” I croaked, licking my lips and trying again. My throat felt very dry all of a sudden. There was no easy way to ask this, but I had to do it right. This was something that I’d never been able to ask Annabeth, because she closed up or got angry whenever I approached the subject. But right now there were questions that I desperately needed the answers to.
Honestly, I’d figured out why Annabeth shut down every time I tried to talk about Luke. Before, I’d always just thought Annabeth was touchy about Luke because she’d looked up to him so much, because he’d protected her when she was little. Anybody’d get mad at someone badmouthing their protector - their hero - like that. But maybe it had always been something more. It had taken me a long time to realize it, but maybe falling in love for myself had changed the way I saw things - well, some things. Apparently I could still be a jerk and not realize it, and I felt bad about treating Annabeth the way I had. I felt my stomach sink as I realized that, in a way, Annabeth had always been betrayed by the people she loved most. That really made me feel worse than mud on the bottom of Ares’ boots.
And I was pretty sure that Thalia felt the same way about Luke, but we hadn’t exactly gotten along like best buddies for a while and I’d never thought to ask her about it. But now, standing here, she seemed like the only other person who might understand just what I was feeling.
It wasn’t that I thought Nico had gone over to the Titan’s side. I didn’t. But I just... I wanted to know if the way I’d felt back at the funeral pyre was, you know, okay. Normal. Or if maybe it was really not okay for me to feel the way I did. I mean, not that knowing what Thalia thought was going to change the way I felt - of course it wouldn’t. But I did know that I’d feel better knowing that I wasn’t the only person who’d thought about following someone over a line they’d never thought they’d cross.
“What did you... I mean, how did you feel when you found out about Luke? I mean, about the whole Kronos thing...”
Well, that was totally not tactful, I thought miserably. Way to go, self. Thalia was staring at me, looking strange in the early morning sunlight filtering in through the window. One hand was still on the curtains and if I looked carefully, I could see that the knuckles had gone white. Her lips were pressed into a thin line. For a minute I was pretty sure I’d blown it - she was going to yell at me like Annabeth always did, asking me how I could say anything about Luke at a time like this, and that would be the end of it.
But she didn’t. She let go of the curtain, cutting off most of the sunlight as it swung shut so that all that was left was a sliver shining from between the break where the two sides met. She was quiet for a long moment - well, at least she wasn’t yelling - until she said, “I... I didn’t know what to think. I didn’t want to believe it at first. Sometimes I still can’t believe it. Luke was... Percy, you have to understand. Luke was - he was my world. He was everything I wanted to be for a really long time - ”
“You love him,” I said quietly, and I could tell it caught her off guard. “I mean... I just... I need to know what you felt like, because I don’t know...”
I don’t know what to do if Nico turns on us, too.
I knew what my head said I should do, and I knew what my gut said I would do. And I was still torn between them, even though if I was ever faced with the choice, I knew it would be no contest.
Thalia had gone silent and for a minute, despite my inexplicable surety, I wondered if maybe I’d been really wrong. But, “Yeah,” she finally said, so quietly that it was hard to hear her. “Yeah, I did.”
Did. It was hard to miss that word, and harder to miss what it meant, even for a stupid thick-headed guy like me. “But you let him go,” I said hollowly, not meaning to be insulting or anything, but just stating the simple truth. “You accepted that he was your enemy and decided to stand against him. Right?”
Thalia’s eyes were wide now, as she stared right into mine. “Percy, I know what you’re thinking. I’ve thought it myself. You think that you can save him - that he’s been tricked, or that he couldn’t possibly be what everyone else says he is. You think you can make it all better, but you can’t - ”
But I’d heard more than enough. “Look, we don’t even really know why Nico’s gone to Mount Tam,” I said quickly, not letting her continue because I knew where she was going. And I knew that I couldn’t tell her what I really wanted to say - but we were both better off if she never realized that fact. “Either way it’s really bad news, okay? We need to get there, like, yesterday.”
Now, like it or not, I had my answer. Part of me wondered how Thalia could do it when I couldn’t - how she could see Luke as her enemy when I knew that there was no way I could ever look Nico in the eyes and tell him I wouldn’t follow him, wherever he went. Whatever it meant I had to give up. And I realized now that no, it really wasn’t okay to feel that way. But I did, and it wasn’t going to change. Whatever happened when we found Nico, I was going to stand by him. And I would deal with the consequences when they came.
But for now, I could hope that Nico had gone to confront the Titan, not to join him. I had to have faith that he wanted to save Olympus as much as the rest of us. I prayed that we would find him in one piece when we caught up with him. Then we could face Kronos together, stronger than either of us was alone, and I knew there was no way that even a Titan could withstand both of us, if only we could work together to stop him.
*
We found Annabeth sitting in the breakfast area of the lobby with her laptop on the small table in front of her, typing furiously and frowning. The Hunters were scattered at various other tables, talking quietly amongst themselves in twos and fours and picking at plates of toast and fruit or disinterestedly stirring bowls of instant oatmeal.
When Annabeth looked up and saw me, her eyes narrowed and she huffed a sigh that could have been exasperation or relief (but was probably exasperation). “You need to tell someone before you disappear, you know,” was all she said, as Thalia and I approached the table. I shrugged, feeling like once she found out what I had, she wouldn’t be so mad about me going to take a morning walk.
Next to me, I saw Thalia open her mouth to speak. But then her brow furrowed and I followed her gaze to the TV mounted on the wall in the corner, which was on mute but had subtitles scrolling by in white-on-black text (which was not really helpful when you’re dyslexic). It was showing the national news, and there were images flashing by of crumbled buildings and collapsed highways. I managed to make out the headline sitting static on the side of the screen. It read, “California Quake Measures 8.5 on Richter Scale”.
I blinked. “Whoa. That’s pretty bad, isn’t it?”
Annabeth rolled her eyes. “‘Pretty bad’ doesn’t begin to describe it, Seaweed Brain. California’s never had one that big in recorded history.” When I glanced around the back of the laptop to see her screen, I saw more pictures of the same sort that were on the TV - she was reading the news online.
“Oh,” was pretty much all I could say to that.
Something niggled at the back of my mind, uncomfortable and sharp, just as Thalia nudged me and said, “Do you think it has anything to do with...?”
My stomach dropped. Earthquake. California. Which was where Mount Tam was - where Nico was headed. “Uh.” Oh gods, I really hoped not. I really, really hoped that had nothing to do with Nico. Really, how could it? I’d seen him create cracks in the earth or raise sheets of stone, but an 8.5-magnitude earthquake? Nico?
But then, the back of my mind whispered, what were the chances that it was random? What were the chances that anything big was random these days, when the clock ticking down to the standoff between Kronos and the Olympians was running a lot faster than it had used to.
Annabeth cocked her head, narrowing her eyes at us. “What’s up?” she asked suspiciously, realizing there was something we knew that she didn’t.
Thalia just chucked at thumb back towards the elevators. “Meeting in our room, five minutes.” Her eyes flicked over to the guy at the front desk and the woman in a business suit who’d just come in the automatic glass sliding doors, as if to say that this wasn’t something we could discuss out in the open. Then she left to go tell the rest of the Hunters, which left me standing there with a wary Annabeth, who shut the sleek black lid of the laptop with an audible click.
“What’s this about?” she demanded, standing up and tucking the computer under one arm. “Tell me now.”
I pointed in the direction of the elevators, and we started walking. “Nico,” I said quietly. “I found out where he’s headed.” We reached the elevators and I hit the button impatiently.
The elevator ding!ed and we stepped inside, Annabeth hitting Door Close before she punched the button for the seventh floor. “And?” she asked, her voice just as quiet, but in a tone that said she wasn’t going to wait for Thalia to explain it all when I could tell her right now.
“And I’m pretty sure it’s Mount Tam.”
The look in Annabeth’s eyes was caught somewhere between horror and pity, and I didn’t like it at all. I had to look away, staring at the row of buttons next to the elevator doors, which opened as we came to a stop on the correct floor. “Look,” I said quickly, as we stepped out and Annabeth fumbled for her keycard in her pocket, “I know this is really, really bad.”
Annabeth slipped the card into the slot of her door, and the light on the handle turned green and the two of us slipped inside. She dumped the laptop on the nearer of the two beds and turned around to face me. “It is really bad,” she said. “Percy, if he’s gone to fight Kronos on his own...”
I nodded. “We can’t let him do that,” I said firmly, and I meant it. I didn’t care what it took - I would stay and listen to Thalia’s plan, but if it wasn’t something that I thought would help Nico...
Well, I wasn’t above breaking my word. Not when it mattered like this.
Annabeth took a step closer. “You know that’s not the only possibility,” she said quietly, her eyes flicking to the door like she knew we wouldn’t be alone much longer, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to get into this conversation before the Hunters showed up.
She didn’t - and neither did I. I’d already had it. “I know. But I know Nico,” I said quickly, before she could say any more. “You do, too. And I know that he hasn’t been himself, but that doesn’t mean he’d...”
But Annabeth just looked grim. “I know,” she said quietly, going over to the window where the curtains were still closed and pulling them open, securing them this time so the sunlight could flood in unhindered. Then she turned to look at me, and now there was no horror in her eyes - only pity. “But Percy, you saw what happened with - with Silena. And everyone knows what happened with Clarisse. I’m not making any judgments before I have the facts,” she said, before I could get a word in, “but...” She blinked rapidly a couple times, glancing out the window and into the morning sun. “Percy, I didn’t think Luke would ever do anything like what he did, either.”
It was the first time I’d ever heard her say something like that about Luke, and I was totally dumbstruck. I’d just talked to Thalia about him not ten minutes ago, but here was Annabeth, finally opening up to me about the one thing we’d never been able to talk about. I’d been able to tell Annabeth that I loved Nico - more than once, even if it had taken her yelling at me to get me to admit it the first time. But she’d never been able to tell me how she felt about Luke.
I found myself following her over to the window, standing just behind her. “Annabeth, look. I - ” I wasn’t even sure what I could say to her - nothing I said would make it any better, and I already knew how much both Luke and I had hurt her.
But as it turns out, I never got the chance to go on. The electronic lock on the door whirred, and Annabeth and I whipped around to see Thalia enter the room, the entirety of the Hunters following after. I sprung back from Annabeth, feeling stupid even though it wasn’t like I had been about to do anything - maybe hug her, but we were friends and it was okay to do stuff like that. But I didn’t want the Hunters to see it, because they were so anti-boy-crazy that they’d have probably shot my head off right then and there for even hugging another girl or something. Seriously, you never knew with them.
Annabeth just swallowed thickly and took a seat on the bed as I ended up standing awkwardly by the window. The Hunters weren’t an overly large group, but the room was small enough that with all of them crammed in there it was a bit crowded. Thalia stayed by the door in the small entryway as the rest of the girls filled up the room in front of her. Most of them didn’t even spare me a second look; they were all focused on Thalia.
“Okay, this is the deal,” Thalia said, addressing the Hunters like she’d been born to be their leader. She really had taken well to it, I thought, even if she’d only been with them for a year. Thalia had made a hard decision, in passing the prophecy on to me (and, well, Nico), but maybe she really had made the right decision in the end. “We need to get to Mount Tam, and we need to get there now.”
She paused, glancing at me like she wanted to make sure it was okay to go on. I just nodded. It was better that she explain things to the Hunters - they’d listen to her. I still didn’t know quite what she was planning, but I would hear her out, too.
“Nico is on his way there, and he might be trying to take on Kronos by himself.” To her credit - and my profound relief - she didn’t even mention the second option. Good, I thought. Because it’s really not an option. Nico’s on our side. He’s not going to join the Titan. I know it.
“Percy, Annabeth, and I are going on alone,” Thalia continued. “We’ll take Mrs. O’Leary. The rest of you can follow us, but a small party will be much faster than a big one.” She glanced at me. “I know Mrs. O’Leary probably can’t shadow travel with three passengers, but I think that with Artemis’ help she’ll be able to get us there a lot faster than we’ve been moving so far. Maybe even by the end of the day.”
I found myself nodding. It wasn’t perfect, but it wasn’t the worst option, either. Getting across most of the US in a day was pretty impressive - I just didn’t know if it would be impressive enough.
What I really wanted to do was just take Mrs. O’Leary and go - I could be there in a lot less time, and sure she’d be too tired to move by the time we got there, but I could worry about that later. I wanted to be by Nico’s side now. But taking Annabeth and Thalia really wasn’t a bad idea - especially if it came down to standing by Nico’s side as he tried to take down Kronos then and there.
If not... well, then I would have to get them out of the way. I didn’t want them involved in any of this, not if I could help it. I was willing to stand by Nico’s side, no matter what that meant. But I wasn’t willing to sacrifice my friends’ lives to do it.
That’s when it hit me - the realization that if I did really mean what I’d told myself, that I would go to Kronos’ side for Nico, then it could mean that a lot of horrible things would happen. Maybe the Titan really did just want a new regime, a new balance of power and he would leave everything else alone. But maybe, my mind whispered, he wouldn’t. Maybe he would want every half-blood and mortal dead. What would I do then? What if he asked me to kill my friends? What if Nico asked me to kill my friends?
That was a choice I didn’t know if I could make. Love and friendship were different, sure - but they were also not so different, when you thought about it. Maybe Annabeth was right, and I’d been walking around in a Nico-worshipping bubble for the past two months, but that didn’t mean I thought that I could live without my friends. Nico was pretty much my whole world, but what about Annabeth? What about Grover and Tyson, and Chiron and Thalia? What about my mom?
I shook my head, trying to clear it of all the thoughts that I really didn’t want to hear. If Nico really had gone to Kronos’ side, it couldn’t possibly be final. Thalia was wrong - I knew that I could reason with Nico. I knew that if I only had the chance to talk to him, I’d be able to get him to see reason. He’d listen to me. He had to.
I realized that I’d missed the rest of Thalia’s speech, but no one else seemed to have noticed. The Hunters were all nodding, looking around at me and Annabeth somewhat grudgingly but no one said anything. Thalia stepped out of the entryway and the Hunters began filing out, presumably going back to their own rooms. Thalia glanced at me, tilting her head across the hallway to my door.
“Go pack your things,” she said, holding the door open. “Come back here when you’re ready, and we’ll wake Mrs. O’Leary and get going.”
I nodded, glancing at Annabeth one last time before I headed out of the room and across the hall, sliding my key into the slot and pushing the door open when the lock clicked.
The room was dark as I stepped inside - I didn’t remember the curtains being shut all the way. The door clicked shut behind me, and that was when a hand shot out of the darkness, grabbing me by the collar of my shirt and pulling me farther into the room.
“Agh!” I cried wordlessly, but then a second hand slapped itself over my mouth. It smelled like rust.
A voice hissed right in my ear. “Shhh! It’s just me. Geez, I though you’d never come back.”
That voice - I knew that voice. I knew it better than I knew my own.
I twisted my neck to get my mouth free of the hand. “Nico?”
His face appeared before mine, dark eyes almost glowing as they looked into mine. “Yeah?”
“Fuck.” I didn’t have time to think or say anything else - I just got my hands under control and fisted in his shirt, and then I slammed him up against the wall and kissed him for all I was worth.
Nico went slack after about half a second and he started kissing back, his hands roaming up and down my back and over the pockets of my jeans.
I eventually managed to pull myself away, my brain starting to catch on to what was really going on here. “Where did you go?” I demanded, staring at the outline of his face in the dark. “I tried sending you Iris messages and you didn’t answer! Nico, I didn’t mean to - ” Then I stopped, frowning.
“What’s that on your face?” I reached out, touching the dark smudge on his cheek. It was hard to see with the room so dark, so I fumbled behind me in the entryway for the light switch.
We both flinched as the fluorescent bulb popped on, and then I blinked and tried to focus on Nico’s face. There were rusty brown smudges on his cheek and nose, like he’d wiped his hand over them. I looked down and realized that his hands and shirt had smudges on them as well. I swallowed, remembering the way his hand had smelled - metallic and rusty, like...
“Nico, is that blood?”
Nico glanced down at himself, then back up at me and shrugged. “Yeah, I guess so. I can explain, though. That’s why I’m here. Come on.” One hand wrapped around my wrist, pulling me back towards the corner between the bathroom wall and the bed, where it was darkest.
Just then I heard someone knocking on the door and Annabeth’s voice, muffled, calling, “Hey, Percy! Are you ready yet?”
I glanced at Nico, my eyes going wide, before looking back at the door. “Wait, Nico! Anna- ”
“- beth!” I finished, as we tumbled out of the shadows and into the cool black marble of Kronos’ fortress on top of Mount Tam. It was exactly the same as I remembered it - floor and statues made of reflective black marble, two bronze braziers on either side of a dais. On the dais, just where it had been before, was the golden sarcophagus of Kronos.
I felt like my eyes were bugging out of my head, as I whipped my face in every direction trying to determine if we’d been seen. “Nico!” I hissed, tugging at the arm he was still holding. “What are you doing? I know you think you can take on Kronos alone but - ”
“Whoa, slow down,” Nico said, his voice loud and echoing in the empty chamber. “There’s no one here - at least, not anymore.”
I stared at him, straightening. He was right - or, at least, it sure seemed that way. The place looked deserted. “How do you know?” I asked, my free hand already reaching into my pocket for my pen. “And why were you headed here in the first place?”
Nico finally let me go, shoving his hands nonchalantly into his pockets instead. I noticed that he didn’t even have his sword with him. “I know because I just came from here,” he said. “And if you give me a second to show you, I’m sure you’ll get the answer to your other question.”
He turned, beckoning me towards the sarcophagus. I won’t lie - I really didn’t want to get near that thing ever again. It was covered with carvings depicting elaborate scenes of death and destruction, and the last time I’d seen it, it had held the new form of the Titan lord Kronos - Luke Castellan’s body. So you can understand why I was a bit wary now, but Nico walked right up to it - and then past it.
He turned, beckoning to me almost impatiently. “Over here,” he said, pointing to the floor. “See?”
As I came around the side of the dais to stand next to Nico, I caught sight of what was lying on the ground where he was pointing. And then for a solid minute I couldn’t think anything at all. I just stared. And blinked. And stared some more.
Nico’s face swam into view as he leaned over to look at me. Now he was frowning just a little - actually, if you’d asked me how I would’ve described it just then, I would’ve said he was pouting. “Well, aren’t you gonna tell me how awesome I am?” he asked, in that joking-but-totally-serious-sounding way that only he could manage.
But I could say nothing of the sort. I was still totally dumbstruck, trying to process what I was seeing. In the end, all I could say was, “Is that…”
Nico sighed and shifted to the side again, sweeping his hand dramatically toward the body on the floor. “Yeah. Kronos. Well, Kronos in Luke’s body. Either way, he’s dead. Totally, completely dead. Believe me, I know.” He turned back to me. “So. Mission accomplished. Go me.”
The part of my brain that had finally started to process things again had to admit that he was right. The body was still there on the black marble floor when I looked a second time. Luke’s body - sandy blonde hair and the horrible white scar down his face and Nico’s Stygian iron sword through his heart.
I swallowed. It suddenly felt like I had a lump in my throat the size of Texas. I wasn’t sure if I was feeling ecstatic or terrified. Maybe both. I couldn’t even tell you why. “You... you killed him?” I choked out.
“Yes,” Nico said, starting to sound a little bit exasperated. “We’ve established that.” He stepped back in front of me, blocking my view of the body so that it was filled with Nico’s face insead. “So now the war’s over, right? Stuff can go back to normal and we can be together and no one will care because I saved the world and all that stuff.” He reached out, wrapping his arms around my waist.
I just blinked at him. Well sure, that was the uber-oversimplified version, if you wanted to look at it that way. Kronos was dead, the prophecy was fulfilled, Nico was the savior of Olympus and the gods would be pleased and it was okay that he’d killed Silena because she had been trying to sell us out.
But was it really all so simple? I mean, okay. Let’s say for a minute that this was exactly what it looked like - that Nico had somehow succeeded in taking on Kronos and winning. I could almost give him that, because maybe that really did make the earthquake I’d seen on the news this morning make sense. So the Titan was dead, and the threat to Olympus was gone. He’d fulfilled the prophecy. We could all go back to being normal kids - well, normal half-blood kids, at least.
But there was still the fact that Nico had left camp in the first place. And there were still the blackouts and right here and now he sounded… well, just a little crazy. Maybe he was still pumped up with adrenaline from the fight, but he sounded off, somehow. Exasperation with my brain’s inability to comprehend things aside, he sounded way too happy.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I have no problem with Nico being happy. Especially not after the past couple of weeks, and not after the way he’d looked and sounded the last time I had seen him. But I’d never heard him sound like this before - he honestly sounded like he was high or something - like nothing could touch him ever again. Like the best thing in the world had just happened to him and he wanted to share.
But maybe, I realized, it had. I mean, he’d killed Kronos. I was standing here right next to him and there was Luke’s body on the floor, and even if I hadn’t been willing to take Nico’s word for it (which I was), I had enough of Nico’s sense for death to tell that yes, he was dead. There was no soul in that body, Luke’s or otherwise. It had passed on - hopefully, I thought, back to Tartarus where it belonged.
“And you’re okay?” I heard myself asking, even though I realized it was probably the stupidest question ever. “Nico, the last time I saw you, you’d just... you ran off without giving me a chance to help. I’ve been really worried.”
Nico shrugged. “Look, it was complicated. There was stuff I couldn’t tell you. But,” he said, the lilt in his voice coming back as his expression brightened, “now I can tell you everything. Now it’ll all make sense.”
Of course I was willing to hear him out. Part of me started to relax, despite the utter shock of the situation. Maybe things really would make sense now. I’d been willing to follow Nico to the enemy’s side, after all. Certainly I could follow him when he’d just pretty much saved the world.
There was still that sense of things being off, but maybe I was just worried that this was too good to be true. I admit that I was almost afraid to let myself believe that maybe, just maybe, this entire nightmare was over.
The last of my worry must have shown on my face, because Nico just sighed affectionately and shook his head a little. “Come on, Percy,” he said, shifting his fingers from my hips to my hands. “Don’t you see?” He was grinning from ear to ear, and I still wasn’t sure if the feeling in my gut was elation or fear. “Now that Luke is dead, everything will change.”