Just when Annabeth becomes used to maneuvering the body of a clumsy glow-in-the-dark gay man, she raises her phone flashlight only to see her own hands instead of Will's. She never realized it before, but he has really nice hands. Like, there are literally no callouses. Does he get manicures when Annabeth goes to work? If she finds out that's why he canceled their Hulu subscription, she is going to strangle that guy.

Annabeth blows some dust off a painting on the wall, which is of—surprise—Jesus. She thought there would be more dead people in the catacombs of Vatican City, but that's not the case. It's mostly broken relics and icons and Catholic stuff that Annabeth doesn't get because she is not Catholic.

She's still holding out for dead people though, but not in an Oh, I'd sure love to see dead people today kind of way, but more like Well, I'm going to be bummed out if I have the fight the ghost of Saint Peter, but at least I anticipated that.

"And on your left, you'll see the..." The tour guide's chirpy voice fades, letting Annabeth know that it's safe to come out from behind her hiding spot.

She stands up from her crouch, wiping the dust off her knees. Briefly, she's distracted by the imprint of the ground on her bare skin. It looks like... Well, she isn't exactly sure what that looks like, but it's kind of funny-looking.

She shines her phone's flashlight on the dusty ground in front of her.

There's a spider. Shit, there's a spider.

In her state of surprise, she lurches backward and stops a shriek from escaping her throat. She cannot have anyone finding out she's here because of a fucking spider.

Where'd the light go?

She picks her phone up off the ground. "Well, fuck me in the ass." The screen is shattered, the glass creating a pattern like spiderwebs. There goes her flashlight.

It's fine. Everything's fine. Everything is so so good. Annabeth is going to figure out where Pothos has his army and then she's going to save Will and then she'll kick Marty McFly's ass.

The important thing is that Annabeth is mostly okay. Mentally? Not at all, but that's nothing new. Physically? A couple of cuts on her legs and hands, her vision is kind of spotty, and the massive gash on her cheek still taunts her when she looks in the mirror as if to say YOU'LL NEVER SEE THE LAST OF ME!

Everything is kind of spotty, like static on a television show, incoming like curtains at the top and bottom of her vision, until they'll meet in the center when her signal is-

Shit.

She falls back into a crouch and rests her head between her knees, feeling hot and cold all at once. She's in catacombs filled with possibly dead people and artifacts from someone else's religion while her best friend is imprisoned, maybe even suffering. Meanwhile, Annabeth's about to faint because she hasn't eaten today.

That's... that's not the smartest thing she's ever done. She just forgot. This happens sometimes. Well, it hasn't happened for a while. She used to do this when she'd get excited about an architecture design for Olympus, and she'd spend hours in her cabin before Percy finally showed up and made fun of the rumbling in her tummy.

And then Percy went missing and between searches, she'd do nothing but plan and sleep because the exhaustion would get to be too much.

Or there was that time on the Argo II when she was planning for every possible scenario that could become of their interaction with the Romans, and how exactly she'd respond. Piper showed up with a plate of Bagel Bites. Annabeth asked her what time it was. It was around two in the afternoon, maybe closer to two-thirty, and Annabeth hadn't eaten since dinner the night before. She'd had no idea.

That's just the ADHD experience though, isn't it?

She takes a couple of deep breaths and then coughs when the dust goes down her throat. Fresh air would be nice right about now. There was no indication that the catacombs would be where Pothos's lair is. Annabeth just decided this is where it would be because this is the spookiest place in the Vatican so of course someone as devious as Pothos would choose it.

"For a daughter of Athena, you sure do some stupid things," he says.

Fuck off. She doesn't even know what's out loud and what's in her head.

"You've grown up so much, kiddo." He smiles at her. She should know better; his cheek is scarred with a cut identical to hers. It's a scar that he wouldn't earn for another year or so after this encounter. His sandy hair has some grey in it from holding the sky, and his eyes are gold, the color draining from them ever so slightly.

He holds his hand out. She tries to stay still. She knows that at the end of the day, she'll take his hand.

But that doesn't mean she won't try to hold back. She'll sit on her hands. She'll bite his fingers clean off with her ten-year-old teeth.

"Don't worry about your big brother," he says. "He fusses over you too much. He doesn't see how tough you are. I do. Come with Lukie."

That stupid nickname he gave himself for her. Things always get worse when he calls himself that.

Annabeth coughs again, trying to expel herself from the vision. It isn't real. It isn't real. It's never real.

But shit, it's so real because it happened. It happened to her so long ago, yet she feels like it's still happening.

She's on some sort of time-sensitive mission right now. Someone is in danger. She really hurt someone, and it's all her fault he's going to die.

"It's all my fault," she hears herself mutter.

"It's not your fault." She looks up at a new voice. It's Percy. A him whose name she'll say aloud.

It's not Percy in the flesh, per se; at this point, it is quite clear to Annabeth that this whole thing is a figment of her subconscious.

It's the Percy from the dream she had on the train. He's tying his kiss the cook apron around his waist, and only around his waist because he doesn't like the way it feels tied around his neck. He has just a little bit of stubble because Annabeth likes the way it tickles her neck.

The can of whipped cream lies on the nightstand, unused.

"It's really okay," he says. "I'll make some hot chocolate. Are you okay if I go to the kitchen?"

She does not want him to go to the kitchen. She shouldn't be alone with these thoughts.

"Of course, I'll stay. Anything you want, Wise Girl. I think the water bottle I take to work is in my backpack... Here it is. There you go."

Drinking from Percy's sticker-filled water bottle does feel better.

"Don't be sorry," he says. "Don't ever be sorry about that."

Annabeth is so tired.

"Yeah," he says, turning down the blankets. "We can just cuddle. Anything you want."

He climbs under the blankets and pulls her close. Her eyes are heavy with sleep.

"I love you too," Percy says.

***

"Psst," a voice hisses.

Annabeth opens her eyes. She's on the ground, but it's not the bathroom tiling she's used to. Everything smells kind of dusty, but not like an antique store. It's more like the set of an Indiana Jones movie. At least, it's what she thinks the set of an Indiana Jones movie would smell like. It's not a particularly good smell.

"Annabeth," the voice hisses again.

Where the actual hell is she?

"Bestie, you need to get it together real soon because these guys are fucking crazy."

"Will?" Will was gone a couple of minutes ago, wasn't he? And Annabeth ditched Percy and Nico at like, a hotel in France to go and save him.

"How did you even get here?" he asks.

It's coming back. It's all coming back to her now. "I... Percy's starfish, Zebediah. He used his water powers to get me to Rome because I threatened to yank his arms off."

"That's completely sick."

"Well, I didn't do it, and if I had, his arms would have grown back," she explains. "We came out of the Trevi Fountain; I got hit in the face with a couple of coins. Is that a thing?"

"You are so uncultured," Will responds.

Where is his voice even coming from? Annabeth looks around, up, and down, and-

"I'm below you," he says. "Over here; there are two little peepholes I'm looking at you through."

Annabeth finds the source of her best friend's voice: Jesus. Or rather, it's the dusty Jesus portrait on the wall.

"Will?" she asks. "Who turned you into Jesus?"

His sky-blue eyes roll where Jesus's eyes should be. "I'm trapped down here."

"Where's down here?"

"I don't know. I was blindfolded or something. I thought I was about to get shocked and then this pink arrow started spewing pink smoke, and all I remember is 'Rain on Me' by Ariana Grande and Lady Gaga," he says.

Annabeth knows a thing or two about that.

"You need to catch me up right now," she says. "Everything."

Will starts from the beginning. He tells her about how he stormed out of the room and then yelled at Percy for no good reason, and how Percy seemed really upset about that-

"I'm so sorry, Annabeth," he says. "I really shouldn't have meddled in your love life. That was stupid."

"It's really not the time for that," she says. "Besides, that ship has sailed."

"In a good way, right?" Will asks. "Because he's the son of Poseidon?"

Annabeth groans. "As my romantic endeavors aren't important right now, I need you to skip to the kidnapping part." She's having trouble keeping a straight face speaking to the fresco.

"Okay, so I got snatched and dragged through a sewer. I remember that part. I totally ruined the cute outfit I picked out for you!"

So that's why the sleeves on Annabeth's shirt are torn.

"It's not me they want; it's you."

"I figured. Who kidnapped you?"

Will sighs. "This guy with brownish hair. He really looks like a Landon to me."

"Aggressively straight?"

"Yeah."

Fuck. Marty McFly. "Yeah, so that would be the douche I slept with a couple of months ago."

"I can trust you to pick out a woman, but you're going to have to run every guy you sleep with by me from now on."

"Funny hearing that from Jesus. That a new commandment or something?" Annabeth quips.

"Listen though!" Will whines from behind the portrait.

"What do you think I've been doing?"

Will rolls his eyes again. The image of Jesus so blatantly judging Annabeth's taste in men is so hysterical that she can't even be mad at Will.

"But I overheard them talking; they need a powerful demigod sacrifice. They'll be so mad when they come back and find out I'm not you!" he says.

"Why?" Annabeth asks, ignoring Will's mild self-deprecation. "Why do they need a demigod sacrifice?"

Will sighs again. Annabeth wants to hope it's the prison blues getting to him, but his general spirit is a little too strong to be crushed by only a couple of hours in prison. Besides, he's known for his embellishments.

"I'm getting there!" he shouts. "So that asshole you slept with-"

"Marty McFly?"

"He's neither Landon nor Marty McFly," Will says. "You're not going to believe this, but he's actually Eros."

"No he isn't," Annabeth says.

And then she thinks a little more about that dream she had, the one back on the train where Thalia and... and they weren't exactly themselves when they were talking.

"I could also look for a human sacrifice so you can be whole again..."

And Poseidon said something about the Erotes. That's a whole bunch of gods depending on what stories you read, the most notable of those deities being Eros, the Greek form of Cupid, and his brother Pothos, the god of unfulfilled desire, and—oh, yeah—the guy who's borderline ruined Annabeth's summer.

"You're making that face," Will says. "I'm right and you don't like it because of that whole pride thing you've got going on."

"I don't like it, but not because of the pride thing," she says.

"Well, I do like it," Will says. "You remember when Apollo was punished a while back because he low-key high-key enabled Octavian?"

"Okay?"

"Aphrodite punished Eros for outing Nico."

"No fucking way," Annabeth says. For a minute, everything feels normal. She just feels like she's gossiping with her best friend, who somehow took the form of Jesus Christ. Maybe he's just trying to be funny while she vents about a rough day at work?

Yeah, no, there is no reasonable explanation for why Will might be posing behind a portrait of Jesus on a normal day of their lives. So besides that anomaly, this situation feels mundane.

"Yes fucking way," Will continues.

"Holy shit," Annabeth says. "I..."

"Let it out, sweetie."

"I slept with a god? Fuck me in the ass. I slept with a god."

"Well, sort of," Will explains. "He's technically trapped in a mortal form."

Annabeth might have to get in with Percy's therapist after today. "Okay, but I slept with a god and I'm not pregnant?"

"That's what you're focused on right now?"

"I'm focused on a lot of things right now, Will!" Annabeth shouts. "We can't just let Eros become a god again; that asshole deserves to rot here on Earth like the rest of us for what he's put me through."

"And Nico."

"And Nico!"

Will's eyes brighten, hopefully with some ounce of satisfaction. "I sure hope your plan involves busting me out of here."

"What plan?" Annabeth asks. "Where has planning ever gotten me?" She takes her chopsticks from her hair and then...

Well, first she apologizes to Jesus for what she's about to do because it isn't a very nice thing.

And then she clumsily starts hacking at the layer between her and Will's prison cell.