Who We Used to Be

Chapter 1

Percy had never been so tired in all his life, and that was saying something. He felt like his body could give out underneath him at any second; his muscles trembled and shook, the blood from various scratches and injuries had dried and now stuck to him like another layer of skin, and his lungs burned from the poisonous air, despite the water of the fiery river of healing that he was drinking.

He wasn't just physically tired either. He was mentally drained, completely just... done. He wanted to just curl up there on the ground in the deepest pits of hell and never wake up again, but he couldn't, that wasn't an option. His emotions had been all over the place for this entire trip, since he had been kidnapped and wiped of his memories by Hera actually. But right now, they were lasered in and focused on one thing and one thing only, his determination to get out alive, to get both of them out alive.

He had to admit, Annabeth, his Wise Girl, wasn't looking too good right now. She limped horribly from her broken ankle, the homemade cast she had had on it now reduced to tatters. He could only imagine how much it hurt. They had discovered pretty early on that you didn't heal in Tartarus. Like, at all. Even ambrosia and nectar did next to nothing for any injuries you might have. He supposed that was to be expected, though. After all, now they were really in the land beyond the gods.

She looked pale, too pale. Her usually perfect tan that gave her skin such a healthy glow was nowhere to be found, and by this point in what felt like an eternity's trek through the depths of hell, she was basically reduced to nothing more than skin stretched tight over bones. Neither of them had eaten in what felt like years, and just thinking about food made Percy's stomach growl so loudly he was sure every monster within a five mile radius could hear it. Like their concentrated scent in this giant cavern wasn't already like a glowing neon beacon saying 'Yummy demigod for the eating right over here!'. Of course, it didn't help that down here the monsters didn't even really die. It reminded him of his time on the run from the gorgon sisters, except faster. He would kill the monsters, they would crumble into dust, and not five minutes later that dust would start the vibrate and shake and come back together again forming the monster that he had just killed, perfectly fine, just even more pissed off than it already was. That left him with only one tactic, slash and kill, and then run like Hades and hope you get far enough away before the monster fully reforms and decides to chase you.

They had been walking with no interruptions for a while now, and it was making Percy feel uneasy. There was a tingling on the back of his neck and metaphorical alarm bells ringing in his head that told him that something bad was going to happen soon.

He just brushed them away, he didn't have the time or the energy to fall into a pit of self-pity, they had to get out of here.

They had finally crested the rather large hill of sharp glass rock that they had been carefully climbing for a while now, and just as he was about to turn to Annabeth and ask if she wanted to rest here, the thing that his brain had been trying to warn him about happened.

Annabeth, with her eyes half open and her sense practically non-existent, tripped on a larger-than-usual rock. No big deal right? Wrong.

She tripped, her eyes widened in fear and realisation, and she went tumbling roughly and blindly down a hill that was as sharp and deadly as some of the fancier failed prototypes in Hephaestus' junkyard.

"Annabeth!", he yelled, probably attracting the attention of every monster in Tartarus, but he didn't care. One wrong twist or turn was all it would take to leave him alone here. He wouldn't be able to stand that.

There was a sickening crack and Annabeth screamed out in pain before another loud crunch followed it and she crumpled to the ground like an abandoned rag doll at the bottom of the hill they had worked so hard to climb.