The Eyes are the Mirror of the Soul

Chapter 2 - Warm Eyes

A huge THANK YOU to @Avanse , who did a seriously amazing job translating this chapter, and left me almost nothing to beta. You're an absolute godsend.

Flood it, let the water hit the floor, run it

Open up your soul a little more, flood it

- Tidal Wave, Chase Atlantic

Percy didn't dream.

He couldn't. Even though he wanted to; his sleep was dreamless.

He hated it. He wanted to know how things are outside, the state of Annabeth and the others, and the dreams were his only way – but they were blocked from him when everything changed. He would've thought it was because of the cells or the Chains, but he knew it was deeper. He was different now, and it included his abilities.

He wondered if he was even capable of sleeping. Up until now, if he wasn't straight-up unconscious, he was able to bring himself only to the verge, to the twilight zone between wakefulness and sleep. It was hard to tell if he really had slept.

He also wanted to dream about the boy outside the cell. About Harry. He wanted that very much, even, and he knew that if everything was as-usual, he would have. But normalcy was as far away from reality as possible, long since thrown to the wind, and of the two of them only Harry got to dream about the other. Percy was stuck in his cell, with no way out, not even a temporary one.

And yet, he knew it was better than nothing. It was better than many other things, really. He was scared it wouldn't work when he tried it, but Harry passed out. Percy knew he was dreaming about him. His two friends glared daggers at him, and McGregor, the pale-eyed guy who interrogated him first, pinned him with a piercing gaze that was supposed to seem threatening. Percy couldn't feel threatened. He's been through things much more threatening than that.

That was exactly the reason he executed his plan on Harry, and not McGregor or someone else. Of course, he didn't have a chance to get to anyone else, but Harry was the only one he really wanted to create a link with. He didn't regard him as an immediate enemy, like McGregor did. He didn't keep a safe distance, like Hermione and the other one – Percy didn't catch his name yet – did. He got close. He got into his cell. And when Percy looked him in the eyes – green and full of stories – he looked back.

Percy picked up on something in those eyes that was different. Something that was... somehow, more long-suffering than McGregor. The other two's eyes had that too. It was a feeling of something... familiar, closer to Percy himself. He wasn't sure, but he had the feeling that they had already experienced a few battles in their lives. More so than McGregor, or more intensely than McGregor.

And most importantly, Harry knew how to read. He knew how to look in Percy's eyes and tell he's broken. He was the first to identify the massive fracture behind the external appearance.

And it won Percy over entirely.

He created the link between them. He knew it was dangerous, that it could work in a dozen different unexpected ways due to their differences – a half-blood compared to a wizard, for one. It could easily turn out to be the opposite of what he wanted. It could reveal to Harry all the important details all at once instead of relaying the information slowly, in a drizzle, without breaking the dam. But he hoped it would work. Harry passed out, so it didn't completely fail. Now he just had to wait.

It's not like he had anything else to do in this cell anyway. No one came, besides a house-elf that brought him a tray of dried food every few hours. Or at least Percy thought they were a few hours.