Chapter Text
Nico was irritated, so he didn’t bother knocking. He also, however, hadn’t heard Annabeth out yet—he couldn’t be angry at her until he knew the full story. So he didn’t shadow travel, either. He just silently opened the door and slipped in the room, closing the door just as silently behind him.
Something heavy in his gut told him this would be a closed door type of conversation.
Annabeth was curled in a ball on her bed, facing the wall with her arms wrapped around a grey pillow and one foot under her blanket. Her breathing, while even, was shallow, and Nico had to focus on his own to keep from matching hers; it was all too easy to remember how hard even just that had been after Tartarus.
He stood for a moment and looked her over; her hair was dull and matted, and her sallow skin was covered in dirt and golden dust and dried blood. She was putting off a much-needed shower. Nico thought he might know why.
“He’s not dead.” Annabeth damn near jumped out of her skin as he spoke. He had to dodge her pillow, and when he turned back to her, she had a sword out and pointed at him. A sword made of bone. Nico stared at it, and behind the aura of death earned from the things it had killed, he could see the bone’s origins.
It was drakon bone—part of a leg bone, carved very carefully, and tempered in the Phlegethon.
Annabeth said nothing, but lowered her sword. She wouldn’t meet Nico’s eyes. “Percy isn’t dead,” he repeated, louder and more forcefully. “So why isn’t he here?”
“I—“ Her voice broke. “I left him,” she whispered, voice hoarse and raspy and Nico couldn’t tell if it was because she’d been crying or if it was because of Tartarus. “He…he was—torture…”
Fury grew in Nico’s stomach. “He was getting tortured and you left him?“ He snarled.
Annabeth’s eyes widened. “No—no, Nico, no. He was the one doing the torturing.” Nico stopped. His fury paused, confused, because Annabeth just left Percy in Tartarus, but…Percy was torturing someone? It didn’t—that didn’t sound like him.
(Did it?)
Then again, it was Tartarus. Nico had learned more about himself and his powers than he ever wanted to know, and maybe Percy was, too. “Tell me,” Nico demanded, because Percy wasn’t dead, and if—when he got out, Nico needed to know what to expect.
Percy, just as he was, with heavier eyes and worse trauma? Or Percy, grin on his face, blood on his sword, and murder in his heart.
Nico knew which one he’d prefer.
He also knew which one he’d likely be getting. His nightmares told him as much.
His nightmares showed him Percy, surrounded by demons in Tartarus, something sadistic and twisted and happy gleaming in his eye as they screamed and cried and begged for death. Percy, fighting a giant in the harsh sun, throwing a hand out and something exploding before Nico woke in a cold sweat. Bob the good Titan, half his face a putrid, decayed, fleshy mess, a sword sticking out of his throat, and when he disintegrated into golden dust, Percy watched, wrathful and satisfied and terrifying.
Thank the gods Annabeth started talking when she did; it wouldn’t be the first time Nico had gotten lost in waking nightmares.
“He—Akhlys wanted…us dead,” she started haltingly. “She—she summoned poison…gods, Nico, an ocean of poison—and he, he was dying, and then he wasn’t.” Her typically sharp eyes stared fearfully into nothing, her typically steady hands trembling as she recalled, “He stood back up, and he smiled, and then she was the one that was dying.
“He turned that poison on her so fast, and…he wouldn’t s-stop. It was—it was like he couldn’t hear me. No matter how much I begged, how much I pleaded—he just pushed harder. Gods, she screamed. She was in so much pain…”
Nico wasn’t sure he’d ever find it in him to forgive her, not for leaving Percy behind, but that didn’t mean he didn’t understand, now. “Annabeth…”
“And the look on his face—he loved it, Nico. The power and the pain and the hurt he was causing. And if I had stayed, if I had tried to hold him back, he—“ Annabeth choked out a sob, “—he would’ve left me, instead.
“And I can’t take that. Not him.” Annabeth’s wild eyes met Nico’s, and he could feel how it killed her to leave, how it ached down to her very soul. “My whole life, everyone I’ve ever loved—all of them have left me: my mom, my dad, Thalia, Luke…if Percy had left me behind, I finally would have broken.”