𝐂œ𝐮𝐫𝐬 𝐛𝐫𝐢𝐬é𝐬 [Percy Jackson]

62

It was about two in the morning. The weather was miserable. The fog was so thick, Hadrian couldn't see Festus at the end of the prow, and warm drizzle hung in the air like a bead curtain. As they sailed into twenty-foot swells, the sea heaving underneath them, Hadrian could hear poor Hazel down in her cabin... also heaving.

He'd woken Annabeth up, as much as he didn't want to. Things were... complicated to say the least.

When he woke up, Jason had been passed out next to him. Leo was on deck already. Hadrian's eyes hurt, too dry from all the crying. He felt as pathetic as he had before. But his heart warmed seeing the two boys.

Percy, as far as he knew, hadn't told anyone. He was also nowhere Hadrian saw, not in his own bed, not on deck, not in the mess hall.

He had given up searching after a while.

He grabbed Jason's shirt from the floor of his room and put it on because it was the first thing he saw, he'd have to talk it out with Jason later.

Gods, he had so many things to worry about. None of this would have happened if he told Gaea to fuck off and not accepted her offer. And now here he was- in too deep.

Fuck Gaea. He decided. He'd find a way to get Kira back himself, if he had to drag her up from the underworld he'd do that. But he had started to care about these people, about every single one.

He thought about Leo who hadn't mentioned anything, about Jason who held him while he cried, Annabeth whom he had inside jokes with, Hazel who always laughed with him, Frank who's small comments he had come to love. And even Coach Hedge with his violent tendencies.

Annabeth joined him at the forward rail while he told her about his dream.

Hadrian wasn't sure how she'd take the news. Her reaction was even more troubling than he anticipated: she didn't seem surprised.

She peered into the fog. "Hadrian, you have to promise me something. Don't tell the others about this dream."

"Don't what? Annabeth—"

"What you saw was about the Mark of Athena," she said. "It won't help the others to know. It'll only make them worry, and it'll make it harder for me to go off on my own."

"Annabeth, you can't be serious. That thing in the dark, the big chamber with the crumbling floor—"

"I know." Her face looked unnaturally pale, and Hadrian suspected it wasn't just the fog. "But I have to do this alone."

Hadrian swallowed back his anger. He wasn't sure if he was mad at Annabeth, or Percy or his dream, or the entire Greek/Roman world that had endured and shaped human history for five thousand years with one goal in mind: to make Hadrian Allaire's life suck as much as possible.

"You know what's in that cavern," he guessed. "Does it have to do with spiders?"

"Yes," she said in a small voice.

He really was sorry about the Spider-Man joke.

"Then how can you even...?" He made himself stop.

She looked determined, like nothing could changer her mind.

"Does Percy know?" Hadrian forced the words out.

"He knows a little"

"He's your best friend, you should tell him"

"He'll just get worried, you know what he's like"

Hadrian did in fact know what Percy could be like when he cared about people. Only yesterday that had been him. He had been one of the people Percy cared about. And now?