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Percy didn’t know where Annabeth had gone. They’d been trekking across Tartarus for probably weeks, and hadn’t been split up once. The place was doing it’s damndest to kill them, and they both knew they were on their last legs- one unlucky hit, and neither of them were ever getting out.
Despite the pain and exhaustion that threatened to break them every goddamn second, they fought like hell.
Somehow, though, they’d gotten separated. The dust he and a million monsters stirred up under their feet choked him, his eyes could barely see in the dim light, and every last one of them had an advantage against him- home court. And that wasn’t even counting fangs and claws and venom.
He had to trust that his girlfriend knew what she was doing-
The alternative simply wasn’t possible. They had to fight and they had to make it out. For everyone’s sake, not just their own.
So he pushed through it all, matched every blow and every strike and every goddamn thing Tartarus itself could throw at him with all the strength he had. A telkhine tried to tackle him. Percy slit it’s throat and it’s blood spluttered and shot all over him. He pushed it away and turned to the next enemy.
A gorgon- he wasn’t sure which of the sisters it was, just that it wasn’t Medusa herself. If it was, he’d be stone by now.
It shrieked and wailed at him, he could see it’s mouth moving, but all the words were lost in the din surrounding him. He kicked her legs out from underneath her, swung Riptide, and sent her head sailing off into the dirt. Good.
Still no sign of Annabeth- why had she left him?
For a moment, it seemed as though the monsters backed off- he was sorely mistaken. The next enemy to try to kill him was an empousa, but not one he recognised.
Definitely not Kelly, though they had the same hair. It charged him, and it, more than any other monster in the crowd surrounding the Doors Of Death, seemed to hate him in particular. It yelled and swore at him, swiped at him, tried to push him back and when that failed, physically threw herself at him.
None of that mattered, in the end. Percy needed to go home and if he had to personally slaughter every single monster that stood between him and the Doors, he’d do it.
Before he stabbed it in the gut, it screamed at him.
‘Percy, please!’
Then he dealt the blow.
The moment he did, the moment the empousa gargled and gasped and fell to the ground, his vision blurred. The monsters around him crumbled like sand. Everything became weightless, insubstantial, except for the sword in his hand and the blood dripping off him.
Blood?
Monsters didn’t have blood. They had ichor.
Telkhines couldn’t run. Gorgons didn’t have legs. A random empousa wouldn’t call him Percy.
He spun around, and the scene dissolved further. The colour changed, the lighting changed, and the entire realm changed. He wasn’t in Tartarus. He’d gotten out of Tartarus more than four years ago. He was in his mom’s apartment.
Annabeth had proposed to him a while ago- they’d gone to visit his parents to tell them the happy news- they wanted Estelle to be the flower girl-
He was covered in blood. The whole apartment was.
Feeling like he was in a particularly surreal nightmare, he stepped around the bodies on the floor. The carpet was turning red. The air tasted metallic, there wasn’t a single sound to be heard, and his skin felt tacky where blood was cooling against his skin. Something was building in him- a tsunami being held back by a glass wall- and he knew it would crack at any moment.
It just hadn’t hit him.
Dazed, he stepped into the tiny kitchen. Under the dining table, just visible underneath the long tablecloth, was a tiny bloodstained shoe. Percy pulled the cloth up to reveal his baby sister.
Estelle stared at him in complete and utter horror. He didn’t approach her. He didn’t touch her. He didn’t say a word. She still flinched away from him.
He let the tablecloth fall as he straightened up. The least he could do was allow her the false safety of her little fort. Shaking like a leaf and with his ears ringing louder than a volcanic eruption, he headed back to the living room.
It said something about how completely out of it he was that he wasn’t startled by the teleportation.
Across the room from him was Mr. D, wild-eyed and looking like he’d ran a marathon. Percy just stood and watched his expression change from panic to shock to dawning horror to despair. His own face remained blank.
Mr D raised his hands in something akin to placation, which was weird since he hated Percy’s guts most of the time.
‘Percy.’ He said, surprisingly steadily. ‘I heard what Hera was planning about ten seconds ago- I got here as fast as I could, but… she got here quicker. I- I’m the god of madness, so I thought maybe I could reserve it- stop it from happening again, like it happened to Heracles.’
The god looked well and truly disturbed. Disturbed and upset.
That was unusual for gods- maybe it had something to do with him starting off as a mortal, or his wife starting off as a mortal- and something about the strange site of Mr D looking so miserable put a tiny crack in the dam Percy had subconsciously put up in his mind. He looked at the floor, and for the first time, he took it in.
Paul’s slit throat was dripping onto the carpet. His mom’s head stared at him from under a table. Annabeth lay curled on her side, protecting her vital organs even with the sword that killed her still embedded.
He thought he’d taken the sword out. He was wrong.
Dionysus gave him a pitying look. ‘That wasn’t you- it was madness. Hera killed them, not you, kid.’
Dead. His family was dead. Except Estelle- probably because the three adults had put themselves between a warped and twisted demigod and her. And they’d paid the price for it.
Percy screamed.
He didn’t stop for a very long time.