Teacher, Not Hero (femPercy Jackson X YJ)

One: "I'm sorry, I love you."

Percy P.O.V.

To say I was surprised, was an understatement. To say I was mad, was beyond an understatement. I was livid. Raging. My blood might have been boiling. I could literally feel the ground shaking around me. I was too0 angry to care.

She. Broke. The. Promise.

One thing. A simple deal. A fair trade. My life, in exchange for the safety of my friends. Gaea could still attempt to wake. She could stay evil and horrible. All she had to do, was leave them alive. Leave my friends alive.

When we had come to the agreement, I had listed off as many names as I could. They only gave me so long to write. Let me backtrack, just a little.

When Annabeth was being dragged toward oblivion, I caught her, my feet squished between two rocks, holding her as best I could as her own feet were dangling off the edge of the world. I pulled. I pulled with so much force, that as she flung forward, away from the pit, I managed to launch myself toward it. I caught the ledge. I told Nico to carry on. And then I fell.

I dragged my sorry ass through Tartarus, (we don't really need to discuss the painful details at the moment) was captured, tortured, etc. You know, the stuff you would expect to happen when one falls into Hell.

But Tartarus did more than just hurt me physically, he plagued my thoughts and my very soul with his knowledge of the future. How the battle would fail without me. How he had removed Hera's most important pawn from play. He showed me the reality I had brought to light by not letting Annabeth fall with me. All of them would die. The world would be destroyed because no one would close the Doors of Death. So we cut a deal. Tartarus would get what he wanted, his own personal plaything, while I received what I wanted. The Doors would be closed, and all the people I could list in 2 minutes wouldn't be killed.

So I took it. I made my list. The Doors were sealed. And I was trapped in Hell. Permanently. Forever a sick version of a playmate. All they had to do, was leave everyone on my list alive. So you can understand why I was so devastated, livid, and horrified when I was ripped from Tartarus' grasp, pushed up through the Earth onto a bloody battlefield, watching as the sky burned with the blood of Leo Valdez.

Jason P.O.V:

I watched helplessly as Leo pushed Festus harder, driving him and Gaea further and further from help. I fell, holding Piper in my arms, trying to slow our fall. It didn't help that Piper was screaming and kicking, calling for Leo, begging me to take her back up. She had the cure. She needed to save him. She was the only one who could. I almost brought her back up there. I was so tempted to go back. But I had no strength. No more reserves. I was at the end of my rope and I couldn't save him, even if I wanted to. All I could do was get Piper to the ground, away from the explosion that Leo was no doubt building up to. It was probably why he was still dragging Gaea into the sky. She was already detached from the ground; the only reason he was still climbing was that he wanted to distance himself from Camp as much as possible. I managed to touch down and throw myself over Piper just as the sky exploded.

As high as Leo was, I could still feel the heat of the explosion overhead bearing down on my back. I shielded Piper as best I could as rubble rained down around us. Just then, the ground began shaking, as if something was trying to breakthrough. The earth seemed to bubble just a few feet from where I was clutching Piper, who had passed out from the quick descent. I rolled out of the way and popped up, pushing Piper behind me, ready to fight off whatever was coming out of the ground.

The dirt began to shiver, coming loose. I stood ready to fight for my life, but my head was spinning and my vision was dim. I silently prayed that just this once, it wasn't a horrible monster intent on not only my death but more importantly, Piper's. I had to keep her alive. No matter what. I focused on the earth and swallowed hard. Something began to poke through the dirt. It started out as just a few, pale nubs, but eventually took the form of a very pale, dirty hand. The hand reached out to the earth around it, clawing at the surface, no doubt to pull the rest of its body out of the ground. I had half a mind to kick it back into the ground, but I had a feeling that if I even took one step forward, I would collapse.

The hand continued to claw its way out of the ground. The hand revealed an arm, naturally, and the thing crawling from the earth looked almost human. Of course, I learned long ago that just because something looks human, doesn't necessarily mean that it is. But then, something about the arm caught my eye. There, just peeking out from the dirt, on the forearm was a thin, black tattoo. The arm managed to pull itself a little further, and the whole tattoo, no, branding, came into view. The letters SPQR followed by a trident and a single dash mark. The arm belonged to Percy.

I dropped my sword, lunged forward and started digging. Could Percy really be alive? The last time anyone had seen her, she was hanging on the edge of oblivion. We were supposed to meet up, at the Doors but Percy wasn't there, no one ever came through. We pushed the button, expecting to find the daughter of Poseidon, and instead found a single sheet of paper, filled with the names of 234 demigods and mortals (we counted) all scratched out in Percy's handwriting along with a small note at the end; "I'm sorry, I love you." And that had been the last we heard of Perseus Jackson. Annabeth had screamed and cried and kicked and fought but there had been nothing we could do. The Doors had been closed.

We suspected that Percy had made some sort of deal, most likely to do with the people on the list safe. All of us had cried when we saw that we were the first six names. But for Percy to still be alive? After 5 weeks in Tartarus? And that was in Earth time. Nico had said that time passed differently down there. For all we knew, Percy could have been down there 5 minutes or 500 years.

I grabbed Percy's elbow, yanking her to the surface. Her head breached the fine layer of dirt and she gasped. I pulled again, falling down in the process. Percy, her legs still mostly submerged in the dirt, rolled over in the dirt and sat coughing on her side. Out of her mouth spilled dirt, blood, and gravel. She looked awful. Her onyx hair had been shaved, and the little hair she had was caked in blood. Her clothes were hardly that, more rags and ribbons. She turned on her back and looked at the sky, which was still burning which was still on fire from Leo's explosion. Her eyes widened and she scrambled to her feet, never taking her eyes off the sky. She turned to me, anger in her eyes. She searched my face, her eyes trailed back to the sky.

"Leo."