"I did warn you." His words were clipped, stone cold. And he stared at Luke with those dead eyes. They didn't seem to be alive; it seemed that the years as an eternal had stripped away any spark. Sure, those dark pupils did glow occasionally, not with vigour, but rather with the machiavellian gleam of somebody who loved to torment others, and manipulate fate.

Luke felt his blood run cold, but grit his teeth, forcing himself to hold that stare. A shiver ran through his body and he rolled his shoulders, as if readjusting his stance, trying his best to disguise that tremor.

"Your little demigod friends on the surface are playing a very dangerous game. Death and destiny are so closely intertwined. It seems they think that they are puppeteers fucking around with the strings that bind their lives."

An absurd vision crept into his brain and Luke chortled, the sound bursting out of him in a choked garble. Percy, per se, had once told him, an eternity ago, that he had seen the Fates, knitting 'socks of death' by the side of a road. Luke couldn't help the laugh that bubbled out of him, but instantly wished he could take it back. The murderous gleam in Thanatos' eyes showed that the god was not amused in the slightest.

"Well. It seems that you are enjoying this little puppet show then, are you?" He took a step closer to the demigod and Luke suppressed the swallow building in his throat. He had to tilt his neck to look up at the god before him. "I do not think it fair that you demigods get to play your games in the land of the living, hmm? What about me? What about my fun, huh? It is alright, though. I will have my cake, and eat it too."

The darkness around them seemed to grow heavier as Thanatos' heavily-lidded eyes blinked to reveal a murderous gleam. "It is not my place to punish those who roam the mortal realm, but down here, you are all subject to my little whims and fancies."

"You can't do that." Luke couldn't help the break in his voice but he continued on, nevertheless. "This is Elysium. You can't hurt us," he said, knowing full well that Percy would be subject to even more barbary. An ache twinged in his heart. He had done all this -consorted with Thalia and the other demigods who hated him, and rightfully so, for his own betrayal of the entire world when he had tried to raise Kronos- to make amends, to try to attain some degree of peace. It wasn't fair. Every cell of his screamed of the injustice that he was being subject too. He lunged forward, blinded with anger and shoved at Thanatos.

The god stumbled backwards, surprised, before he regained his footing and swept his arm in front of him, propelling Luke through the air. His eyes seemed to glow molten red and he exuded immense dark power. The boy hit the floor, certain that his ribs had snapped and punctured his lungs. The pain exploded in him, consuming him as his vision flickered and started to cloud with static like a broken television. The unnatural colour drained from Thanatos' eyes as he realised what he had done. He swept his arm again, this time in a circular motion. The air lifted Luke to his feet, repairing his damaged bones and organs.

"The only remnant of that little incident remains in your mind, boy." Luke raised a defiant eyebrow at that word. He wasn't a kid anymore. He had literally just attacked a god and survived. Thanatos was not powerful enough to hurt him, to force the hand of Elysium and go against the natural order of paradise. Luke smirked, and raised his palms to Thanatos as if to say what can you do? He knew he was being cocky, but that was the point? If Thanatos went far enough then who's to say he wouldn't try to kill Luke, in a more finite, wholly dead way. And surely, that was unutterably against the rules of Elysium? Luke would risk it. He would let himself die if it meant atonement for all the misdeeds of his life.

Thanatos restrained himself. He took a shuddering breath and shook his head slightly, almost amused at the boy's audacity. "Don't make no roads, Luke. You are not immortal, nor untouchable. You and your friends had better stop playing god. Or some people will get hurt."

The fear coursed through Luke again. In his arrogance, he had forgotten that although Thanatos wasn't meant to hurt him literally (never mind that he had literally just snapped the bones and lungs of the demigod), he could still damage him emotionally.

The god gave a wicked smile, poisonous and full of spite before he vanished, leaving darkness trailing in his wake.

Luke was already running up the stairs toward Annabeth's room before the screaming started. The wooden slats of wood groaned beneath his footsteps as he darted to the girl he loved. Her screams. Had the furies gotten ahold of her? No, no no. Luke cursed, as every horrific scenario his mind offered ran through his head. She cried again, shouting. She called his name, her voice snapping the single syllable of his name into disjointed fragments.

His reflection stared back at him from the glass of the framed drawings hung up in the corridor that led to her room. His eyes wide, manic, scared. "Annabeth!" His voice tore through the house, and those portraits rattled, the architectural sketches the daughter of Athena had made shuddered, as if each of those imaginary houses were experiencing a minute earthquake.

She cried out again, whimpering, and Luke heard the tears that clouded each fragile sound that fell from her lips. He reached the room, braced his shoulder against the door, forcing it open. Annabeth lay on her bed, convulsing and screaming. Asleep.

He cradled her, shaking her slightly. Her eyes didn't open. "Luke," she said again, and the word fell out of her heaving chest so many times that the boy lost count. Nothing he did could wake her. And so she continued her screaming and crying and Luke screamed and cried too, hunched in a corner of her room with his hand over his ears, trying to block out the pain. But her voice sliced through him, each cry of his name a slice at his body, peeling away at his skin, blaming him, for Percy, for the pain, for everything and Luke wished that she could take a literal knife -perhaps that knife the he had given her all those years ago'; that would be ironic and probably well-deserved- and plunge it into his heart, to end it. And Luke knew. He knew that this was another strike against his name, another audit that could get him thrown out of paradise. But how was this pain, this eternal torment any kind of heaven at all?

Annabeth remained, stuck in her nightmare as Luke remained awake, the insomnia and fear eating away at him. For hours. Elsewhere, Percy was living through every one of the scenes that flashed through Annabeth's head. And although Luke didn't literally feel each lash of a lava-tipped whip, or the excruciating numbness that came with each crack of one's bones, he cried, his heart breaking again and again and again.

*

She awoke 24 hours later. And Luke remained wide-eyed and awake for those 24 hours, petrified with the fear that maybe Annabeth would awake as nothing more than a shell of her former self, a husk of her memory remaining. She blinked at her boyfriend, at the way he pulled her to his chest. Rested his tear soaked face in her citrusy hair. She put a hand to her own cheek, swiping away at the dampness that was there. She had been asleep. Why had she been crying? The confusing thoughts drifted away and she was left with nothing more than the heavy feeling that accompanied a hangover. Groggy and lethargic, and unsure of what exactly had happened.

"Luke?"

He breathed a sigh of relief at the word - she remembered his name, at least - and Annabeth felt the rise and fall of his chest against her heart. He put his hands atop her shoulders and leaned back to study her, his eyes examining each of her own eyes in turn. He ran a finger along her jawline and brushed those tears away as the sadness that Annabeth had woken up with started to ease and gradually disappear into nothing more than befuddled confusion. His heart grappled with the verdict of Thanatos. Would it be better for Annabeth to wake up with the heart-wrenching knowledge of Percy's fate, or to wake up as she had now, ignorant and safe, but falling into what felt like the cruel cold hands of Alzheimer's?

"What's going on?"

Luke smoothed her hair and kissed one of curls. He knew what was coming next. A minute or two of confusion and an interrogation. He had tried, time and again, to explain everything to her, and had almost sobbed at the expression of her face as she tried to understand that she was very much in love with a boy whom she had no memory of, and that he was being tortured for eternity while she lived on in paradise.

But the moment would pass, and Annabeth would sink back into that meandering phase where she looked at the world with fearful eyes, doubting everything she saw. Until eventually, she would settle back into that calm disposition; she would forget all past anxieties and live in the moment, enjoying every god-blessed drop of Elysium, oblivious to the torment of the love of her life, while Luke tried to fill a boyfriend-shaped void that he was not - and never - meant for.

And so he held her, the tautness in his arms, and the drip of tears against her forehead an attempt to wordlessly convey everything he needed to say. He ignored the babble of words that poured out of her mouth as she tried to make sense of why he looked like he hadn't slept for days, why he was crying, why she had been crying, why her head hurt, and why she felt so so broken. Held her, in his arms, safe from the harsh truth, until eventually she stopped trying to seek out the bitter reality of the world and let herself fall back into wilful ignorance.

Hours later, when Luke had finally left her alone to cook pasta for dinner, convinced that she was okay and safe in the sunroom, nestled beneath the dying light of the sunset and surrounded by succulents and unfinished architectural drawings, Annabeth let the sobs wrack her body. She curled up in that yellow glow that fell from the skylight and let her body expel all the hurt through her tears and quiet whimpers that she muffled so as to prevent Luke from hearing.

She didn't know what was wrong with her. But she felt as if the world was on fire, and all the hurt was being projected through her. Vivid snatches of some vision flashed through her head, horrific scenes of torture and pain that darted about in her mind so quickly that they were almost immediately forgotten, but the sense of them remained, the feeling.

At least it explained why Luke looked at her like she was broken. She caught his glances sometimes, those pitiful eyes that studied her as if she might shatter into a million brittle shards of glass at any moment. When they sat together at the table for dinner that night, she felt Luke's gaze cross to her, study her tear-stained eyelashes, wordlessly. And when Luke twirled his spaghetti in a spoon, distracted by his food, she cut her mind trying to understand why those bags beneath her boyfriend's eyes were so much darker than usual, why his typical Elysium glow had been dampened.

But Luke was scared, so scared, of what Thanatos would do if he rocked the boat. And Annabeth silently told herself that she was in Elysium, what she was feeling was just some aberration that would soon pass, and then she would be able to truly enjoy paradise for all eternity. She just needed to rest and wait it out, like it was merely some headache. And even when she woke up at odd hours in the night, breathless and afraid, flexing her back as if she could feel the skin being ripped off by the furies, she still didn't say anything, not to Luke nor any of her other dead friends.

The only time Annabeth opened her mouth to question the thoughts that plagued her, the metaphysical pain that devoured her, was when a sound snaked its way into her mind.

Percy.

But by the time she opened her mouth to say the name, it had left the tip of her tongue and faded away back into nothingness, and so she settled back into her daily mental torture, and hollow state of confusion and melancholy, unable to understand why she felt that way.

*

"Something is... wrong." The word hung in the air and Nico glanced at his father, before his eyes flickered back to his phone. The blue glow of the screen illuminated a patch of the antique Chesterfield couch that he had flung himself into.

"What is it, my darling?" Persephone brushed past her husband, laying a hand on Hades' shoulder before she sat back down at the oak dining table, pencils in hand. She continued to sketch at a blank piece of paper, detailing the faintest rendition of Van Gogh's almond blossoms; she said it reminded her of springtime. Nico saw his father's eyes mist over as the man watched his wife. It was nearly spring and she'd be leaving again.

"There is angst stirring in Elysium." Nico kept his eyes glued to his phone screen, trying to act as nonchalant as possible. Hades continued, oblivious to his son's internal distress.

"Ever since that Jackson boy died, the Underworld has been in turmoil." Nico swiped absently at his phone screen, trying to ignore the way Hades stared at him.

"Nico." He couldn't ignore his father when he was speaking directly to him.

"Yeah," he said. Then turned the expression over in his mind. Did that sound nonchalant enough? Was that the right amount of slouch for a teenager? Was he sitting suspiciously?

"You wouldn't happen to know anything about this, would you?" Nico suppressed the swallow he felt building in his throat.

"What do you mean?" The question was shot through with tension.

"I mean," Hades impatiently gestured, "that you are friends with some of the newest residents, are you not? Athena's girl, being one of them. Do you know why she and the boy she lives with are unhappy?"

"No."

"Well, I mean, I know Thanatos visits them often and I've heard he's not a very, y'know, welcoming host."

Persephone's ears pricked up at that. "Absolutely right! That man you have working for you is a menace! I've been saying this for decades. He gives me the creeps." She shuddered and Hades chuckled at his wife's theatrics.

"No, darling, I'm serious. You know I dislike him. And if it isn't enough that he's wreaking havoc in Elysium, he's also destroyed my favourite satyr statue! Remember dear Ferdinand?"

"Remember?"

"That's right. We're gonna be using past tense from here on out because your thug of an employee destroyed my satyr statue." Persephone huffed and flicked her pencil across the table before crossing her arms melodramatically.

"Right," said Hades, getting up, "Thanatos and I are going to have a little talk."

Nico hid his smirk behind his phone screen as he tapped out a message to his friends in the land of the living.

*

Author's note:

The constant corona news actually has me really terrified right now; I'm constantly trying to distract myself so that I don't keep thinking about it non stop. Scary. So I have been writing and editing heaps.

My other book has, like, four chapters left to publish!! Very exciting! So if you feel like checking out how seventeen year old high school me wrote, then read that hehe

ALSO!!! THIS IS IMPORTANT. I have decided I want to write a fic about Sally Jackson and her lil Medusa head going about Manhattan and pretty much murdering criminals with the gorgon head??? Kinda random but I had a totally odd daydream about it and I kinda feel like bringing that to life. It'd have a totally vintage old school noir detective vibe. So yeah, let me know how you feel about that.

I'm also writing a Dramione fic that I feel like I've been planning for forever!! So if that's your thing, stay tuned hehe.

(Not really important news but interesting anyways, I think.)

Hope you're all staying safe and taking care of yourselves x

Love, Angelica