The Nature of a Demigod

Fire and Fear

[Percy's POV]

After I caught Rachel, we fell like a rock, straight toward the pavement three hundred feet below. At the last moment Guido extended his wings. I saw the faces of centaurs gaping up at us. Then we pulled out of our dive, sailed fifty feet, and tumbled onto the pavement, pegasus over demigod.

'Ow!' Guido moaned. 'My legs. My head. My wings. My other legs.'

Chiron galloped over with his medical pouch and began working on the pegasus. I got to my feet. When I looked up, my heart crawled into my throat. The helicopter was only a few seconds away from slamming into the side of the building.

I saw Annabeth get tossed out of the helicopter before Cap caught her and skidded to a halt, his wing busted up and his feathers sprawled all over the place. 'I hate this job' he whined.

We turned to watch the helicopter keep spiraling. I thought Y/N would be able to pull it off. He always did. He always managed to pull off the impossible.

A cold chill ran up my spine as Annabeth screeched, "Y/N!" The helicopter slammed right through the glass and metal beams of the building, before a giant ball of fire erupted.

I had to fight to catch my breath as debris and chunks of burning wreckage slipped from the impact point. I'd remembered what Hestia told Annabeth. Y/N needed to stay alive for us to win. We were doomed.

That was when someone emerged from a dark alley nearby, coughing violently. Y/N was smoking like a chimney and his skin was charred badly in some places. His clothes and his hair were covered in soot, and the very second we saw him, he collapsed to the ground.

Annabeth ran towards him, Chiron right behind her. They started attending to him once Annabeth had rolled him over. His eyes were closed and she was tapping him on the face, calling his name.

There were chunks of his face ripped off, and a scar already forming from right below his left eye to just above his lip. Blood had already dried on his face. I could only wonder what had done this to him. Because there's no way the crash did.

Chiron began medical work as fast as I'd ever seen him do. He fed Y/N some nectar, and slowly but surely his burns started to cover up and be replaced with a new layer of skin.

Annabeth was kneeling over him, tears falling from her face. Y/N wasn't breathing, and he wasn't responding to her.

[Annabeth's POV]

Gods damn it, we just talked about this. He threw me out of a helicopter and then crashed into a building. But it wasn't just that. He was coated in his own blood and wounds that he couldn't have gotten from the wreck.

Physically there was no way. Something had clawed these wounds into him. He was fighting something, and if I had to bet on it, I'd say it has something to do with his prophecy.

"Come on, Y/N, talk to me. Hear my voice. Just wake up!" I cried. He wasn't moving. He wasn't even breathing. I leaned down, and pressed my ear against his chest. There was nothing for a moment, and my stomach dropped.

I had to stop myself from having a visceral reaction, because there was no way this could be real. He wasn't dead. He couldn't be.

Then his chest rose. I wasn't sure if I saw right at first, but then it happened again. And again, and again, and it kept going until his breathing was normal again. It wasn't in rhythm, but he was breathing either way.

"Come on, Y/N. Come on." I whispered, squeezing his hand tightly. I wasn't sure if it were my hands shaking or his, but he finally woke up, gasping deeply.