The Darkness Is Coming

Use Your Words Please

Percy POV

I quietly sat back and watched things fly across the room, arms crossed.

Acrisius hurled another chair against the wall, screaming wordlessly.

"Y'know, I'd appreciate it if you were a little less destructive. This is my mind, after all, I don't even want to know what kind of mental damage it's gonna do if you're raging around in here."

The next chair sailed in my direction. It went right through me.

"Use your words, Ris."

"Shut up!"

I sighed and left him to his temper tantrum. He'd calm down eventually.

This was a nightly thing. In my dreams I would visit Acrisius, I assumed by courtesy of Morpheus. We would talk, sometimes. Other times we would just sit and stare at each other.

It took another twenty minutes before he came into the little room I was in.

"Feel better?" I asked, looking up.

He dropped onto the floor across from me. "He is stalling."

"What?"

Acrisius rolled his eyes. "Come on, Jackson. You cannot play dumb with me, we are the same person. I know you are smarter than that."

"That doesn't mean I automatically know who you're talking about." I pointed out, crossing my arms.

"Alabaster Torrington." He sighed, sounding out the name like I was four.

"You think he's stalling on something?"

"Yeah. It has been how many weeks and he has not made a move. Nothing from Camp Jupiter to say he has been there, no one has gone missing from here. The spell he uses is not advanced enough to remove someone's darkness completely from their body in one go."

I nodded. "Makes sense... the question then becomes, what is he stalling for?"

"I have a fair idea." Acrisius leaned back on his hands.

"Are you going to share, or just be irritatingly smug about it?"

He shrugged.

I rolled my eyes and stood up. "If you aren't going to be helpful, I'm going to try and recover some memories from when Percie was in here instead of you."

"Should you not call her Alessa?"

"Do you call the Wicked Witch of the West Elphaba in the Wizard of Oz?"

"I am both upset that you made that reference and disappointed that I understood it."

I snorted. "Hey, that's all Piper. Don't blame me."

"I cannot shame Piper for it." Acrisius pointed out.

"Fair point." I shrugged. "Talk to you tomorrow, Ris."

"Until tomorrow." He tipped his head at me, then closed his eyes and dissolved off to where he usually went while I was conscious. I wasn't going pretend I knew where that was.

I sat back down in the middle of the room, trying to think back. There was an irritating four week gap in my memory, from when Percie was in charge.

"Percy. Percy!" Someone was shaking me suddenly.

I opened my eyes and started to sit up quickly, then groaned in pain when my head crashed into something solid.

"Oooooow." The voice whined.

I opened my eyes slowly, rubbing my forehead. Piper glared at me, mimicking the motion. "Why do you sit up so fast when someone wakes you up?" She complained.

I shrugged. "Habit... any particular reason you're in here in the middle of the night?"

"I had a question."

"And it couldn't wait until morning?"

Piper shook her head. "I can't sleep because of it."

I sighed and nodded, patting the bed next to her. "Fair enough. What's up?"

Piper sat down next to me. "When your new darkness was growing... did you feel it?"

I shook my head. "No. Alessa felt her light though, when she was Percie."

Piper nodded slowly.

"Are you worried about it?" I asked her softly.

She nodded again.

"Pipes...." I put my arm around her shoulders and hugged her close. "Its all gonna be okay."

"You're not allowed to tell me that if you don't know for sure." Piper muttered.

I sighed. "Fair enough... but think about this for me for a second."

She looked up at me.

"You had your darkness in control for what, six hours? Maybe?"

Piper nodded.

"And you fought her off easily, completely destroyed her. It took me over a week to fight Percie off and even then I couldn't kill her."

"What are you getting at?"

"Well, that was when she caught you off guard. Imagine how easy it's gonna be for you when you know it's coming. You'll come out on top easily."

"You really think so?" Piper asked quietly.

I smiled. "Absolutely. You're extremely powerful. I have faith in you."

Piper smiled softly. "Thanks, Percy."

"No problem, Braids."

[A/N PIPERCY IS NOT THE ENDGAME. JUST SAYIN']