~Darkness~

Piper woke up to quiet and darkness.

Heavy breathing told her that she wasn’t alone, but also that she was the only one awake. She didn’t sit up, but lay still.

She could feel the dirt ground beneath her, and the hard rock of Zeus’ Fist behind her head. Her skull throbbed terribly and every muscle in her body felt fused together.

‘Jason.’

The word was out of her mouth before she had even thought it. The natural instinct to say his name overriding any and all other survival protocol.

Someone grunted and shifted awake. A shape moved at her feet, slowly sitting upright.

‘Jason?’ she said again, more hopefully.

‘Not unless I’ve suddenly become an egotistic, blonde superman,’ Percy’s voice, clearer now, came back to her. ‘Sorry, that was mean.’

‘We’ve all become pretty mean recently, Percy,’ Piper muttered sadly. ‘I wouldn’t worry about it.’

She could hear the hesitation in him, even without seeing his face, ‘It’s a strange feeling to be mean.’

She nodded before remembering he couldn’t see her through the darkness, ‘I know. But, you haven’t really said anything that bad.’

Piper heard him sigh, ‘It’s my fatal flaw; personal loyalty. It’s-I don’t know-preventing me from being mean. I just can’t be mean. It doesn’t come naturally to me.’

‘It shouldn’t come naturally to anyone,’ Piper pointed out.

‘Except Clarisse,’ Piper heard the laughter in Percy’s words. ‘She could be mean without trying.’

Not bothering to contain it, Piper laughed, ‘Sure could!’

They lapsed into silence as if finally realizing something.

‘Where are we?’ Piper asked.

Percy took a while to respond and when he did, he did so honestly.

‘I don’t know. Hang on, I’ll see if I can get some light.’

Shadows suddenly danced darkness around them as the light from Riptide glowed faintly in the black nothingness. What Piper had originally assumed was Zeus’ Fist was actually a great solid stone impasse. Gazing up, their eyes locked on a ceiling that shouldn’t be there, so low it would be impossible for Hazel, the shortest, to stand up straight.

The others lay passed out in various positions around what seemed to be a cave with a long skinny passage down the opposite end. Annabeth was curled in a tight ball, and Frank seemed to be hugging the stone wall. Though something was out of place.

‘Piper,’ Percy said in a small voice. ‘Look.’

He cast Riptide’s glow onto the wall behind Piper. She sat up, blinking spots from her eyes and tipping her aching head back to stare at the inky red words oozing on the wall just above eye height from where she was sitting. The scent of tree sap still stung the air.

‘I’ve had enough,’ Percy read. ‘I’m done.’

‘Oh Juniper,’ Piper whispered. ‘What’s happening to us all?’

‘I don’t know,’ Percy admitted softly. ‘But we have to find that bow, before something awful happens.’

‘What do we do with the others?’

‘Wake them up,’ Percy said with a smile, looking ghostly and surreal and the dull luminosity of the bronze blade.

‘Of course,’ Piper muttered, crawling over to Hazel and shaking her arm. ‘Hazel! Wake up!’

Hazel and Annabeth woke up quickly. Grover constantly groaned about food and Frank thought Percy was his grandmother, come to wake him up for another boring day at school.

‘Five more minutes?’ Frank pleaded sleepily.

‘No time for that, Fai,’ Hazel barked.

Frank shot up like a bullet out of a gun, ‘Yes, Grandmother!’

Piper and Annabeth snickered before glaring daggers into each other.

Grover groaned, ‘Where’s Juniper?’

‘Uh, G-man,’ Percy muttered. ‘You may wanna turn around.’

He did so as best he could and fell back onto his furry hindquarters as he lay eyes on the message from his girlfriend.

I’ve had enough. I’m done. I can’t take it anymore. Juniper.

‘Jason now Juniper,’ Annabeth mumbled. ‘We’re falling apart.’

‘What’s that it’s written in?’ Grover whimpered. ‘Percy?’

Percy but his lip, not wanting to rain on Grover’s parade. He glanced at his pant leg and ensured it was rolled down well over his thigh.

‘I dunno, G-man,’ he lied smoothly. ‘But Juniper’s a tree nymph. She’s all green.’

Grover took deep breaths, trying to calm his racing mind and heart. Piper was murmuring comforting words in charmspeak, calming him down.

Annabeth glanced at Percy, perhaps subconsciously. She was usually able to tell in the blink of an eye whether he was lying. But now she was uncertain. Was the magic of the bow tearing away those connections with her Seaweed Brain?

She made a silent vow to stick by his side until they saw this out. If they saw this out.

Percy grabbed Annabeth’s hand and pulled her along where they had a vague measure of privacy. They sat on their back legs to give them room to sit up straight.

‘Percy, what’s going on?’ she whispered quietly.

‘I don’t know,’ he replied, running his hand over the back of his neck in that nervous way she found completely endearing. ‘But we have to stick together.’

‘I know that, Seaweed Brain,’ she rolled her eyes. ‘But how long before everyone walks out?’

‘We’re in a cave,’ he pointed out. ‘There isn’t many ways we can “walk out,” you know?’

She chuckled, ‘Touché.’

He leant down to kiss her but she put her finger in the way between their lips.

‘Shouldn’t this be a thing for later?’ she asked softly.

He shook his head, ‘There may not be a later for us.’

‘Fair enough,’ Annabeth smiled, removing her finger.’

Their lips met in a rush of what might be their last emotions of affection if they didn’t find Cupid’s bow in time. In that one fresh, passionate kiss was all the love and beauty within them bursting free as their hearts beat in sync. Their contrasting features ended their wars and just melded perfectly together; blonde VS black, green VS grey.

Neither wanted it to end, yet both knew it had to.

They pulled back, their foreheads resting lightly together and their breaths coming in a rhythm; in, in, out, out, in, in, out, out.

‘You know we have to keep moving,’ Annabeth murmured as Percy brushed his lips against her temple.

‘Do we have to?’ he whined like a small child.

Annabeth smiled, ‘Yes. Come on.’

Taking his large, warm hand in her much smaller once, Annabeth led him back to the others. Piper had calmed Grover down while Hazel and Frank sat silently, side by side.

‘We ready?’ Hazel asked as they approached, hunched over uncomfortably.

‘Yeah,’ Percy replied. ‘Strange spooky tunnel, here we come. What could possibly be bad about a strange spooky tunnel?’

Frank headed into the tunnel, then Piper, then Grover. Percy sighed for a moment before following, reflecting how bad this situation could turn out to be.

‘We’re hell bound,’ he whispered to himself, his voice rebounding off the walls, echoing back to him.

‘Don’t jinx it, Seaweed Brain,’ Hazel muttered, squeezing past him to delve into the passage.