Chapter Text
The development of transport is something Percy should feel more grateful for than he actually is. Trains are pretty great, in his opinion, buses are under appreciated, he misses horses more than he can say though not as much as Reyna does, and he will admit that seeing Annabeth drive a motorcycle for the first time was one of the best days of his very long life. But he just can’t get behind planes. He cannot wrap his head around how they work and why people are so willing to load themselves into a metal box and be flung into the air.
“Need I point out, again, that you can’t die?” Reyna says in contention to this point, for perhaps the hundredth time.
Percy points a finger at her. “I actually can. Death just doesn’t want to stick around.”
His friend, leaning sideways over the back of her short seat, shakes her head at him. “Why must you make everything sound so dramatic? Are you performing a play?”
He leans back into the rough upholstery of the bus seat and kicks her foot under her seat rather than bothering with a retort. It’s a conversation they’ve had too many times to count since the first primitive invention of the flying contraptions over a century ago. One which feels like retracing the worn steps of a place you visit often, rather than anything impassioned, as it had been the first several times.
Reyna returns her gaze to the scenery passing them by at great speed. She keeps her elbow hooked over the back of her seat, her back to the window as she looks out across the aisle through the window on the other side of the bus. They are en route to Medellín and the old train system which Percy had so loved has regrettably fallen out of favour, so they are taking a bus which they caught in Barranquilla. It’s a long journey but miniscule compared to the lengths they have all travelled in their long lives.
Percy turns to his other companion at his left. Annabeth sits with her back straight, her hands neatly folded in her lap. Anybody might think her asleep, but he knows better and is pleased when she confirms this by speaking to him without prompting.
“She’s right, you know.”
“You never take my side.”
Annabeth opens one eye to squint it at him. “You know that’s not true, γλυκά μου.”
“Only a little. Besides, the bus is much nicer.”
“It’s far longer,” Reyna points out, unmoving.
“Another great point,” Annabeth says, closing her eyes again. “You really need to up your game.”
He doesn’t mind being gently bullied by them both. In fact, it is one of the things which makes him enjoy their company so much. But he is glad that their fourth member will be joining them again when they reach their destination; it will be good not to be outnumbered for a little while.
“Is Beckendorf meeting us at the station?” he wonders aloud.
“At the hotel,” Reyna corrects. “He’s already there. He took a plane.”
The smirk she sends his way is fond and Percy returns it with a roll of his eyes. But truthfully, his attention is drawn to Annabeth who, to all others, appears not to have moved. Percy has known her for millennia long enough to notice a small change in her breathing, the tick of her jaw, and the tightened grip of her own fingers around themselves.
If she wants to talk then she would make that known, so Percy just slides one of his hands across her lap to press his knuckles to hers. An offer which can be quietly and harmlessly rejected if she wants to. Slowly though, she untangles her own hands and takes his, letting their fingers cross over and between each other, settling into place like a puzzle which has been designed to fit such a way. Percy sometimes wonders whether the years they have spent together has worn them both smooth in such ways that they would fit against each other in this way, like water to a riverbed, smoothing boulders into pebbles. He doesn’t feel smaller for it though. His body feels as it did on the first day he died, on a muddy battlefield fighting a war now written into myths and stories, next to the woman he would come to love above anything in this world. Annabeth only ever makes him feel strong.
In front of him, Reyna watches this small interaction silently and they exchange a wordless communication before she looks out the window again. Their family is more important to Percy than anything. But, like all others, it is not without its complications.
Complicated or not, their reunion is full of warm hugs which Beckendorf never fails to deliver. Reyna, first at the door and not fond of physical affection if she can help it, lets out a very rare high pitched laugh when their friend picks her up in a hug and swings her around. Annabeth is next and Beckendorf hesitates, letting her move to him, which she does, wrapping her arms around his shoulders and cradling the back of his neck in her hand even as they pull away.
Percy shuts the door behind him and drops his bag before he is drawn into his own hug with his old friend. Hands on shoulders as they part and observe each other.
“You look good,” Percy comments. “Well rested.”
Beckendorf raises an eyebrow. “Better than you do.”
He laughs. “Thanks, buddy.”
“That’s what taking two days to travel by boat and bus instead of a three hour flight does to you,” Reyna comments as she helps herself to the coffee Beckendorf had made.
“Still hate planes, huh?”
Percy pats his friend’s shoulder. “It’s only been six months. My opinion on those death traps isn’t gonna change that soon.”
They join the other two on the couches and chairs which have been pushed around a table in the small living area of the hotel room. It’s a smaller hotel than most in the city, with two CCTV cameras on the front and back entrances respectively, peeling paint on most of the walls, and mismatched furniture in all of the rooms. They are all of them adaptable creatures, but none of them have taken a liking to the skyrise hotels yet. Give them another century, when it has all changed again, and they might be more comfortable with the monotone, sleek styles.
“How was Puerto Rico?” Beckendorf asks the room and then to Reyna specifically, “Was it good to be home?”
Reyna lets out a little snort before sipping her coffee. “It was a nice holiday. I barely recognise it as home anymore, but it’s always nice to show these blanquitos around.”
Beckendorf laughs as Percy and Annabeth smile good-naturedly. Reyna reaches into her bag to retrieve a brown paper bag touched with darkened spots of grease.
“Here,” she says, handing it to Beckendorf who unwraps the gift with a smile.
His eyes light up and the rest of them follow, catching his joy infectiously. “Empanadillas,” he says delightedly and unceremoniously takes a bite. “Mmm, how I love you.”
“I must do what I can to keep you with us for as long as I can,” Reyna teases.
“Silena owns a chocolate shop so I’m afraid you’re in stiff competition.”
Percy glances at Annabeth to catch her covering her slipped smile with a hand. She meets his eye and gives an almost imperceivable shake of her head.
“So,” she says. “The job, you guys?”
Beckendorf nods, overcoming his love affair with the pastry to produce a tablet and hand it to Annabeth.
“It’s a simple extraction, three hours north of here. I’ve secured a chopper to take us out tonight.”
Percy takes the tablet from Annabeth, swiping through a series of aerial photos showing a cluster of heat spots in the corner of whatever abandoned ruin had been picked to hold these hostages.
“Who are they?” he asked.
“Children. The oldest is thirteen, the youngest, six. They’ll be moved soon, we think.”
“We?” Annabeth asks. “How did you source this job?”
Beckendorf takes a breath. “Grace, the ex-CIA guy who found a job for us eight years ago in Sierra Leone.”
“Beck, we don’t do repeats,” Percy reminds him.
“I know. But he’s not with the CIA anymore. He checked out. And so did those.” He nodded to the tablet in Percy’s hands.
Percy swipes to a picture taken of the children and hands the tablet wordlessly to Reyna.
“It’s a job, you guys,” Beckendorf says.
Resolved, Annabeth nods. “We can do some good.”
The matter is settled then.
Reyna hands the tablet back to Beckendorf and nods too at Annabeth and then Percy.
“Let’s do it.”
Beckendorf often forgets what it feels like to be with them. To move as one beast without the need for words. It was hard earned and fought for, to become in sync with this unit a century and a half ago. They each have their roles, but can cover and switch at the drop of a hat if they need to.
Peering through the binoculars, he breathes in and then out with Reyna as her finger squeezes the trigger of her sniper rifle and watches the two guards drop simultaneously. He sweeps the rudimentary guard tower once more as Reyna catches the bullet casing without taking her eye away from the scope. Then he lowers his binoculars and nods the all clear to Percy and Annabeth who lay on Reyna’s other side.
He had replaced Annabeth as Reyna’s spotter and knows that she still does this job when he is not with them. He knows Annabeth is thinking this too as she returns his nod and stands to lead them towards the camp.
They fall into step, keeping a clean line as they approach the wire fence. The others keep watch with their chosen firearms drawn as Beckendorf cuts through the wire. Then they’re splitting off into their usual pairs - Percy and Annabeth, Reyna and Beckendorf - as they methodically take out the rest of the guards scattered around the compound with precise and silent efficiency.
The building is a three story one, looks disused with its boarded up windows and graffiti tattooing its cracked walls. The door, though, stands firm and barred, so Beckendorf sets up the dynamite to blast their way in, nodding to Annabeth when it is done so they can all shield themselves away from the explosion. It’s fast and efficient, just as they are, and they follow inside with Annabeth leading, then Reyna, Beckendorf, and Percy following. They clear the first floor in seconds, exchanging curious looks at the absence of any obstacles.
There’s a staircase on each side of the building so they split, this time Beckendorf following Percy up the concrete steps, their boots echoing in the dead space even as they tread lightly. They reach the next floor and exchange a look before Percy opens the door to sweep inside, Beckendorf tight on his heels. Another empty room, cast in greyscale by the lights from their weapons and caked in dust from years of abandonment. The floorboards above them creak with what Beckendorf has to assume is the girls sweeping that floor.
“Something’s not right,” Percy mutters to his left.
Beckendorf glances over, catches the tight expression on his friend’s face. Eyebrows drawn together and jaw strung tight.
“Should we bail out?” he asks.
Percy is about to answer when his attention is caught by something in the other room. An empty doorway lies between them and the room and they move to it quickly, flanking either side and exchanging another look before Percy nods.
They don’t get to move though, before the world explodes around them and everything turns black.
Death does not become easier. Sure, it’s less of a shock when it’s the two hundredth or so time waking up to find his body stitching itself back together, but it doesn’t hurt any less than it did the first time. Beckendorf’s whole body aches but there’s a particularly sharp pain in the back of his skull, which he realises is piecing back together even as he drifts into consciousness. He can’t withhold a groan as he lifts his face from the floor, feeling sticky with blood and dirty with the dust of this place now coating him like a second skin. He manages to get on all fours as the ringing in his ears continues and he lifts his head to find Percy.
There’s a swift kick to his ribs, which focuses the pain there for a moment. He’s thrown onto his side with the movement and inhales sharply as the boot comes in for a second round. It’s Annabeth’s voice in his head, telling him to breathe deep and slow, stop the panic, focus, fight back.
So fight back he does.
He grabs the boot before it can make contact again, twisting and hearing the crack of a bone. He thinks it might be the knee but doesn’t have time to dwell as he hauls himself upright and grabs for his gun. The black armour clad body who had kicked him is still on the floor so he focuses on the other body moving towards him. He only has enough time to swing his gun up high enough to shoot this guy in the thigh. He uses the rest of his momentum to swing the barrel into this guy’s face as his injury drags his whole body downwards. Beckendorf’s strike flips him back but he doesn’t watch the guy fall onto his back because there’s someone else now pointing a gun at his head from his left.
Where is Percy?
He ducks, lurches back up and throws his body at this guy, using his body weight as he was taught to. The gun is thrown out of the soldier’s grasp and instead he grabs a knife from his belt, but Beckendorf is quicker, ramming his gun into the guy’s face before pulling the trigger and turning away again before he hits the ground.
Percy is nowhere.
Panic seizes his chest as he realises he is alone with these attackers. Noises thump above him as he realises his comrades are under a similar assault and he wonders if Percy had already run to their aid. But that thought is batted from his mind as quickly as it comes. Percy would not abandon him before he had even come back into consciousness. He has been fighting alongside Reyna and Annabeth for centuries long enough to know how well they can handle themselves. It’s not within Percy’s nature to willingly leave somebody behind.
The soldier with the fucked knee is getting back up so Beckendorf spares him a glance as he puts a bullet in his head before he makes a run for the stairwell. Gunfire pulls him upwards and storming into the room where Reyna and Annabeth are wreaking destruction upon an army of soldiers. Beckendorf had only had three to contend with but there must be ten of them fighting the two women, not counting the bodies already sprawled across the floor.
He ducks around a swing of Annabeth’s sword and kicks out the legs of a guy who had been coming for Reyna, catching her nod before moving onto the next and the next and the next. Annabeth shouts behind him as she buries her sword into the chest of one guy and then he falls to the floor with a thud along with the rest of his comrades. There’s a silent moment filled only with their panting breaths and the uncomfortably familiar drip of blood from the women’s swords onto the floorboards beneath them.
Reyna turns to him. Her face is splattered with blood and he briefly wonders how much of it is her own.
“Where’s Percy?” she demands, sending any small semblance of hope that he might have had up in flames.
“He was gone. When I came back.”
He can’t look at Annabeth, even as Reyna tears her gaze away from him to do so. She sheathes her longsword and picks up one of the semi-automatic rifles the soldiers had been carrying.
“We’ll sweep the building,” she says as Annabeth stays uncharacteristically silent.
Beckendorf hates it. He feels off kilter. Even as he sweeps a gun from one of the bodies and follows Reyna out of the room, thundering down the stairs behind her and skidding to a stop next to her on the dusty earth of the small courtyard outside the building. He knows without looking any further that Percy is gone. There is no retreating vehicle in sight, no sound of helicopter blades or plane engines. Whatever has taken him is long gone.
“Fuck,” he says.
They both turn as Annabeth walks out of the building behind them. Her expression tells them she already knows. Perhaps she knew before even they did.
“Boss-” he stops. Doesn’t know what to say.
“The children?” Reyna asks, though she must know what they have all realised.
“There were never any children,” Annabeth says. Her voice low and blunt, like the swing of an axe splitting wood. “They had cameras.”
“What?” Beckendorf reels.
“We were set up.”
Dread settles through his veins as the full weight of her words hit him. Not only had Percy been taken from them, but they had been seen, recorded, captured. They had been trapped. Perhaps the intention had been to take all of them.
“Grace,” Reyna hissed, turning to Beckendorf with fury in her eyes.
“I…fuck. I checked him, the job. I did everything I normally do.” He turns to Annabeth, desperate. “I’m sorry. I…”
Annabeth doesn’t move. She isn’t looking at him, or at Reyna. She doesn’t seem to be looking at anything. Fingers squeeze his elbow and he realises Reyna has moved up next to him. Then he realises the fury in her eyes had not been directed at him, and feels foolish for thinking it had been.
“We’ll find him,” she says, with steely determination which he envies.
He’s never been so grateful for Reyna’s strength than in that moment. She loves Percy as they all do, but she recognises the need to push forward now, to prioritise and regroup and provide comfort, in small ways. She holds his gaze until he nods back at her and then she is moving over to Annabeth, holding her shoulders and pressing their foreheads together and Beckendorf cannot look away from the sight of these ancient women comforting each other like young children might do. He hears Reyna repeat her promise to Annabeth and watches as Annabeth bodily draws herself back together, pulling her shoulders back and setting her jaw.
She is released by Reyna and looks over at Beckendorf and he knows there is a conversation to be picked up between them later. Later, when they are safer than they are now, standing in the ruins of what can only be described as a trap. For one hundred and fifty years, Beckendorf has managed to evade capture. His life, he knows, is only half of how long Reyna has been living. But compared to Percy and Annabeth, it has been but a moment to their incomprehensible timeline. And he knows, as Annabeth drags her gaze away from him, with clipped orders to clean up and move out, that she knows the price of capture through the pain of living it.
He watches her strap Percy’s sword to her belt alongside her own and follows her out of this wretched place.
The last time Annabeth had been unwillingly parted from Percy had been during the Great War, named for its enormity and only renamed to the first of its kind when the same children went to battle only twenty years later. After millenia of fighting in bloody, useless battles, even she and Percy had despaired at the waste of this war, at the slew of bodies which piled up in cold trenches which were transformed bloodily into mass graves.
And then they were separated.
Reyna had not been with them at the time, instead making use of her skills piloting one of the death traps that patrolled the skies far above them. She came though, when Annabeth got word to her, but it took her the better part of a year and Annabeth spent those cold months trying not to be shaken apart by her grief and her rage. It was three full years before she and Percy found each other once again. Three years of fighting what felt like a never ending war until she could return to Greece, sending Reyna to their safehouse in London in case he returned there.
She went back to the place they had first come together, after they had escaped the war they had both been reborn in. The temple which had witnessed their love for the first time now barely stood in ruins, but still acted as a waypoint, as a beacon, drawing her home. She had climbed the cliff with aching bones, feeling withered and old. And there he had been, like an apparition from her addled mind. He had fallen to his knees as she approached, and when she had reached him his arms had come around her waist as he pressed his forehead to her belly and sent murmured prayers to gods long lost in history.
“ Ποτέ ξανά. Μην με αφήσεις ξανά. ”
They are in a cargo train, heading north and Annabeth’s hands are empty, not full of Percy’s hair, pressing against the heated skin at the back of his neck, as he holds her like he will never let go again. She watches the other two sleeping, pressed up against the metal walls of the carriage, safe with her between them and the door. She could not keep Percy safe, but she will do everything in her power to keep them from harm.
Her mind is full of the conversations they have not yet had. She wants to question Beckendorf but needs to be calmer before she does. She doesn’t blame him for this. She knows he is already brimming with guilt for what happened to Percy and doesn’t mean to add to it. As much as she knows Beckendorf will forgive her for any misdirected feelings thrown his way, it is the thought of Percy’s scolding which reminds her to keep her temper in line. She wonders how he might be behaving should their roles have been reversed and mentally snarks back at his beratement.
So accustomed to his voice and his presence, she is now imagining it inside her head.
Never again. Do not leave me again.
Exhaustion sweeps through her and she finds that preferable to the worry and the grief, so she lets it drag her under its depths, powerless to the heavy drop of her chin to her chest. She clutches her gun in her lap and allows sleep to take her.
It must only be a few moments later when she is gasping awake again, jolting into consciousness in unison with her comrades in a way which has not happened in over a century. She feels as if she just died but knows it is a phantom pain, a shock that does not belong to her but to somebody else entirely.
She looks immediately to Beckendorf, who is clutching his throat as he scrambles to sit upright. He had been the last one. She remembers the burn of the bullet which had impaled his side, remembers the chaos of war around him as he had woken again. She knows this is what he is remembering now as he meets her eyes.
“What the fuck?” Reyna says, sounding winded.
“Was that-” Beckendorf coughs, gasps in a breath. “Was that another…”
“Why now?” Reyna dispairs. “Why now?”
Annabeth grasps her head in her hands, pressing her thumbs into her temples and pushing wisps of hair from her face.
“What did you see? Details.”
“She’s a black woman,” Beckendorf says. “Young. She can’t be older than - fuck - twenty five?”
He wasn’t much older when he first died, but Annabeth agrees with the sentiment anyway. She looks to Reyna who is already sketching details into a small notebook.
“They cut her throat,” she mumbles.
“Is she a soldier?” Beckendorf asks.
Annabeth is shaking her head. “No. No uniform. She’s a medic.”
“Did you see her ID?” Reyna asks as she tilts her page to sketch another detail.
“W.H.O.,” Annabeth answers.
Beckendorf blows out a breath. “That narrows it down.” He says wryly.
Annabeth squeezes her eyes shut to try and reimagine the images. “Did you see that cross behind her? Up on the hill.” She turns to her left, where Percy should be, to wait for him to translate her disjointed memories into something more tangible. His absence snatches her breath from her chest.
“Nicaragua,” Reyna answers instead.
Annabeth nods. “The city in the North. J- something. We were there in the sixties - no, seventies. Civil war.”
“ Jinotega,” Beckendorf answers.
She nods, slumping against the metal as the others exchange some more details about the ID around the young woman’s neck. Reyna saw a surname: Levesque.
And so they have a new one.
Beckendorf had, strangely enough, been with Percy when he had died the first time. They had been fighting alongside one another, deep in the mud of the American Civil War, while Reyna and Annabeth had been separated from them in some other muddy field, fighting the same monsters. They had been grateful for a path back to Percy, but also grateful for a new comrade. It had been just the three of them for so long. And, other than the required transition to English as their lingua franca , Beckendorf has brought nothing but kindness to their family, a hearth to their home with his warm smiles and warmer hugs. He has softened their hardened edges with his youth and his wonder at the magic tricks of their lives. What she does not tell him is that it is because she misses him so much when he is gone from them that this only serves to fuel her resentment towards him when he returns.
It is not fair and she knows it. Whoever said with age comes wisdom was a young fool.
Annabeth stands, grabbing her bag and slinging it over her shoulder.
“I’ll make the retrieval.”
Reyna is already offering the sheet of paper torn from her notebook. Annabeth looks at the page where the face of a young woman is drawn. It is exactly as she saw in her dream, but seeing the rounded lines of her nose and her cheeks and the tight knit of her braids drawn onto paper makes her seem more real, somehow. She is so young.
“Boss,” Beckendorf says. “Is it a good idea to split up? Maybe we should all go?”
She shakes her head. “I need you to get to the States. We know that’s where those soldiers were from.”
He looks pained but nods. Annabeth pushes Percy’s sword into his hands, handing it over like a promise made over shaken hands.
“Get to Phoenix. The Delta warehouse.”
She reaches the door of the train car and drags it open when Reyna calls her name. She looks back towards them both.
Reyna doesn’t say anything for a moment, then she nods and says, “ Que nos volvamos a encontrar.”
Annabeth nods. “Pronto.”
Then she hops out of the train carriage like she is stepping onto a platform and not dropping ten feet to rugged earth.