ੈ｡ﾟ ･ׂׂ ✩ RED ⌇˚ɞ act iii . . .
the dying breaths of hope

· 。ﾟ *.  𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐏𝐓𝐄𝐑 THIRTY-THREE
───── ❛ no thanks, rather die ❜

         LAURIE DIDN'T remember the Underworld ever being so cold. The chill hit her lungs and spread across her skin before her eyes ever even opened, but when they did, she didn't find what she had expected.

Instead of the drab darkness of Hades's domain, she found herself sprawled out on a bed of wild flowers. A meadow stretched out for miles to her left, right, and behind, interrupted only by the extraordinary garden that resided squarely in front of her.

It held everything imaginable as far as vegetation went. Beds of flowers from every season and in every color, trees and vines overfilled with precious fruits and veggies. In the centre stood a tall and proud tree with glorious branches that seemed to extend over almost the entire garden, hanging over it like a canopy of lush protection.

Its roots were encircled with a semicircle of pomegranate shrubs, sharing the soil and nutrients effectively, as the fruits were shiny and glowing a ruby red.

The sky seemed to be frozen in an endless sunset, a colorful array of soft pinks and purples without a cloud in sight. Or the sun, for that matter.

Laurie was sure that she'd been so horrible in her life that instead of going to the Underworld, she was now stuck in a permanent state of comatose insanity.

The scent wafting through the air smelt of home, though she was unsure of exactly where that was.

Wobbly, Laurie pulled her hands from the soft grass beneath her and stood to her feet, relinquishing the comforting sensation of the earth.

Wandering blindly, she stumbled her way towards the garden, given no better idea and still feeling disoriented.

When she got closer, she could see them. Breath pulling from her lungs, she felt the brief shock residing in her stomach before it slowly dissolved.

Tending to the flowers and fruit were a handful of young garden hands with delicate touches and timeless clothing, hair sleek and faces peaceful. And more prominently— they were luminous, opaque, and unmistakably, dead. 

Everything fell into place when she saw the woman that rounded the corner, appearing out of a swath of hydrangeas. Curls the color of honey and amber were tucked delicately behind her ears and beneath a golden circlet that seemed to be made out of every aspect of nature. Her skin was caramel in shade and radiating with life, matching perfectly with her brilliant eyes that seemed to reflect the same colors as her daughter's. The one thing they had in common.

"Oh finally, you're awake, my darling," Persephone spoke, taking slow and leisure steps, pressing flower petals between her fingertips as she passed them by to check on their health. "Say hello to the prodigy, everyone."

"Oh, what the fuck," Laurie sighed, as a chorus of incoherent voices greeted her.

Persephone snapped sharply in her direction. "I did not save you to have profanities spat in my garden. Watch your mouth."

"Save me?" Laurie questioned, nose crinkled in confusion.

Of course. Persephone was the goddess of ghosts and reincarnation, she could do whatever she wanted. if Laurie had died, her mother had decided that she, in fact, had not.

Then, everything seemed to come rushing back and Laurie's eyes shot wide. "Oh my gods! Where's Percy?"

"Wherever his father wants him, I suppose." Persephone shrugged helplessly. "You prophetic children are so much work, truly. But we have something to discuss, so that boy will have to wait."

At the mere mention of postponing Percy, the girl was already put off. He could be dead for all she knew and she couldn't even escape her mother's unwanted clutches long enough to find out.

"Oh, so now we can talk?" Laurie hissed, crossing her arms with a deep frown. "Because last time I tried that, you almost got me killed."

"Oh, please," Persephone groaned at the sky, throwing her head back like a temperamental teenager. "Don't be so dramatic. He was never going to kill you. You have to live as long as that prophecy exists, we all know it."

Fred up with the whimsical vocabulary, Laurie demanded, "What prophecy do you keep talking about?"

"Listen, when children such as yourself are never supposed to exist, and then you do just that, things go haywire. I have tried myself to rid us of the problem, but you always dodge it, somehow." The goddess explained.

Laurie's head spun with just how much intimation two sentences had given her. Children such as yourself. Never supposed to exist.

"What do you mean children such as me?" She asked. "I'm— I'm not a forbidden kid. Not like Percy or Thalia."

Persephone blew out an exasperated sigh and touched a delicate hand to her forehead as if her child's questioning was the most difficult thing she'd ever dealt with.

"No, not like Percy or Thalia. But forbidden nonetheless," she sighed. Laurie's eyes crinkled in confusion, and she explained further. "Your mere existence is forbade not by oath, but by virtue and ancient law. The breaching of my marriage is not as inconsequential as it is for other members of my family."

Already, Laurie could feel her head swimming as she thought long and hard. She tried to wrack her brain with all the knowledge she had stored up about the gods and still found herself drawing a blank for anything regarding her situation.

"So— so what?" She asked. "I'm already here now, what good does it do for you to realize this now? After everything that's happened?"

"Because I need you to stop being so rash, child! If I didn't know any better, I'd think you're trying to get yourself killed!" Persephone exclaimed.

"Who are you to preach to me about rashness?" Laurie fired back, a foolish thing to do towards both a goddess and her mother. "You just said how you were never supposed to love someone other than your husband enough to have a child outside of your marriage, yet here I am!"

"Do not speak to me that way, little girl! Not when I tried to correct my wrongdoings,"

"What, by shipping me off to grow up in an insane asylum? Leaving me with a father to strand me the minute he could do so?" Laurie asked.

"That wasn't my fault!" Persephone exclaimed, pointing an accusatory finger. "Hermes lied to me about his lover's condition when I agreed to the whole arrangement. How was I to know she was so far gone?"

Her daughter once again found herself at a crossroads of confusion. What did Hermes have to do with her father leaving?

"What are you talking about?" She asked, an irritated frown on her face.

The goddess sighed, her regret protruding through her forehead in the form of three lines. She pinched the bridge of her nose and decided it was as good a time as ever to explain the tragic jigsaw puzzle that was her family.

"When you were born, I knew that I couldn't just leave you alone with your father. He'd expect things from me... things that I couldn't give him because I was never supposed to be in love with him in the first place. Fortunately for me, Hermes was in a similar predicament.

May Castellan had just had her failed run-in with the spirit of Delphi. James, your father, had just had a forbidden child bestowed upon him. So, Hermes and myself took the situation to Aphrodite. Of course, she always has her prices, but she successfully brought May and James together. We were all under the impression that it would be a permanent thing."

Persephone looked at the ground as she muttered the final bit of her confession, unable to bear the heartbroken look adorning her daughter any longer.

"Nobody knew how bad May was. The visions weren't supposed to return. You children were supposed to be safe."

Laurie stared at her mother, jaw clenched. A film of tears brought a sheen to her eyes, but she blinked so rapidly as to not let them fall.

Her voice thick with emotion, she asked, "You are the reason our parents met? Luke and I's?"

The goddess nodded. For a moment, Laurie might've mistaken the look upon her face as something resembling remorse, maybe even sympathy.

And then she remembered the gods had no such thing.

Their children were mere splatters of watercolor across a grand canvas that they painted, manipulating and molding everything as they wished. Demigods had no say. All they could do was cling to the rough edges of the canvas and hope to be seen.

It was all futile play anyways. The role of half-bloods in the world had been the same for eons, they'd never change.

Monsters attacked because they knew demigods could kill them. The gods attacked because they knew demigods couldn't.

"I had no childhood, no security, my entire life. I have no family. I hardly have a life worth living, and now you're telling me that it's all because of you, my own mother?" She asked, her voice slowly growing louder as anger seeped into her vocal cords. "And even still, you're going to complain that I have yet to die?"

Persephone glared down at her child, irises sparking with a jade hue. She was clearly unimpressed with her child raising her voice at her, again.

"I understand that it is not ideal," The goddess said, her voice even and detached. "but it is what we— you and I— must do to lighten the weight of this burden."

Laurie's brows furrowed and she asked, "What burden?"

"You."

Oh. Right. Of course. What else could it be?

She wasn't supposed to exist. Her mother was never supposed to fall in love with her father. Her family was formulated by some sham among the gods to try and fix their mistakes. Her mother's mistake. Her.

The silence was sickening.

Persephone looked towards her daughter patiently, awaiting her response. But what was she supposed to say to that?

The quiet was so palpable that it was a wonder none of the ghosts around tried to reach out and grab ahold of it. Laurie too wished she could grab onto it if it meant that only for a moment, she'd have something to focus on other than this torment.

"I..." she began quietly, swallowing down the emotions that swam around in her throat. "I'd quite like to leave now."

"And you may," the goddess spoke. "as soon as you promise to do better. Your reckless nature is your most fatal of flaws, but you must try and suppress it. I cannot have it tarnishing me any longer."

"Why does it matter?" Laurie blurted out, brows raised. "So that you can continue trying to kill me yourself? It is no secret that you're ashamed of me, mother, I hardly believe anyone associates my actions with your own."

Persephone pressed her lips together tightly, exhaling with irritation simmering beneath the surface. "You would be surprised."

The slight jump of her thin brows just provoked her daughter even more.

"Well, then save your breath. I don't want to hear it. It doesn't matter what anyone else thinks because at the end of the day, when I inevitably die just as you say I will, it will be as your daughter and nothing more. Decades will go by, and the memories of me will go with them. I will be reduced down to one thing: a name on the short list of your bastardly children."

Persephone blinked once, twice. The wilted maternal nature deep within her bones lurched with guilt, stretching towards the surface but not quite reaching. The goddess frowned. Her eyes hardened.

"You are right; you know you are. But I have told you what is expected of you once and I will not do it again. So when the time comes that you again try to kill yourself, which I know it will, do not expect me to make any haste in rescuing you."

Laurie clenched her jaw, swallowing down her words. She squeezed her fists together and dug her nails into her palms, a mountain range of skin protruding on one side and half-moons engraving themselves into the other.

"I don't need your saving, Mom." She bit, spitting out the name like it was venomous, a weapon forged against her own flesh and blood.

Goddesses didn't even knew what the term mom meant. It was just another word to them.

They'll preach to you about the importance of family, but it was only applicable to those who were powerful enough to qualify as useful, but not so much that they were a threat.

The gods hated anything that could be labeled as a threat. Monsters. Titans. Demigods.

They went after things inferior to them because they knew that this way, they would never lose. It's easy to win a rigged game, isn't it?

"I think it's time for you to be going now," Persephone stated after the silence that followed her daughter's jibe, jaw ticking with restraint.

Laurie opened her mouth to agree, but before even a word could escape, Persephone laid a soft hand against her daughter's forehead. Her eyes closed, and just like that, she was back in the cold, fuzzy state of oblivion.

ೄྀ࿐ ˊˎ-

WHEN SHE came to, Laurie was in a much less welcoming place than her mother's land of ghosts and gardens. She was slumped against a hard, stony corner, shivering from the cold.

The world was dim all around her, illuminated only by flickers from the faraway tongues of fire produced by the torches on the wall. The Labyrinth.

By some goddess miracle, she was back in the great maze. Cold, dark, and alone, but alive.

Disoriented, she pushed herself forward with her hands, feeling the grime and dirt from years of ancient buildup underneath her palms. Her whole body was stiff and achy, like it hadn't been moved in weeks. Which it very well couldn't have.

The thought swept over her hard and fast, bringing back a vague sense of awareness. Her friends. Percy. Mount St. Helens.

Oh no. Oh no no no.

Where was everyone? Where was she? Were they okay? Was he?

With a million questions raging through her head, she almost missed the approaching sound of footsteps.

They were slow and clunky, crunching the gritty ground with what sounded like heavy shoes.

Swallowing down fear, Laurie scrambled with her hands until she retracted her hairclip sword from her pocket. Gripping it tightly against her chest and shuffling further into the dark corner, she prepared herself for whoever or whatever might round that corner.

Her breaths came out short and slow, panicked and sporadic.

Then, they were followed by a deep sigh of relief as a demigod came into view, his face cast in a shadow and indecipherable. But a human, nonetheless.

He wore cargo pants and a fitted black shirt, a dagger held loosely in his hand and swaying just above his combat boot-fitted feet.

Laurie squinted as he came closer, his head swiveling around in search of something. Then the sharp features of his face came into view, cast in an orangy glow.

"Sloan?"

Hayden Sloan. One of the oldest and most persistent members of Cabin Five. The Ares boy that Laurie had to dodge flirty comments from every cabin inspection and campfire.

A boy with stringy brown hair and stormy eyes, always looking either ready for a fight or a pickup line. He was eighteen and on his way to college, fitting in with the same crowd as Lee Fletcher back at camp.

Hayden Sloan, her saving grace.

"Laurie?" His voice called, eyes sweeping around the area frantically until they landed on her. "Oh, I knew I'd find you!"

She stood and walked into the light, her sword retaking its hair clip form. A smile broke out onto her face out of pure relief as she placed a hand on her chest and sighed, "Thank the gods, it's you and not a monster."

"Happy to see me, eh?" He winked, bringing back the persona that Laurie had momentarily forgotten in her relief.

"Not exactly," she shot him the most sarcastic smile she could muster onto her busted lip. She didn't even remember cutting it. "What are you doing here? Where— where are Annabeth and Percy?"

"They're back at camp. Chiron sent me and Lee in here to search for you, wouldn't let them back in." He explained briefly. He'd shot a hand over his shoulder at the mention of camp, like it was just a little stroll down the hallway.

"Where's Lee? And how'd you navigate this place? It's impossible." She asked once more, a rapid fire of inquiry.

"I dunno, luck?" Hayden responded, seeming unsure of himself. He never answered about Lee.

"We've gotta get you back to camp, though. Everyone's worried half to death. And no offense, sunshine, but you look terrible." He said.

Laurie scowled at him, and then immediately regretted it when her lip stung.

She tried, for a moment, to remember the last time her lip had been unwounded, but it only brought her back to the time when someone else's were pressed against them.

She shoved the image of Annabeth out of her head and focused back on reality. Back on the dark, stormy eyes of Hayden that were nowhere near as pretty as the daughter of Athena's.

"Do you even know the way back?"

"Can't be that hard to find a way out. I found you, didn't I?" He pointed out.

"I suppose..." she murmured, head still foggy from her previously comatose state and unwilling to argue.

Without another word, Hayden began leading and Laurie trudged behind. The silence was thick and would've been unsettling if either of them had it in themselves to care. 

The walls turned from stone to wood and back to stone. Then to glass, then to sandstone.

Laurie eyed the walls and the floors, picking back in her memory to recall both the things Annabeth had told her and how the Labyrinth had looked closer to the heart of Camp Half-Blood.

In short, it looked nothing like this.

"Sloan, stop," she said, letting out a deep breath as if she was tired. "Are you sure we're going the right way? According to Annabeth's logic, the tunnels should be getting more modern, not the other way around."

"Yeah. They are," he nodded, looking at the sandstone of the walls like it was fine marble or something else stupid like that.

"No, it's really not," she persisted, brows furrowing as she watched irritation flash across his face. His knee bounced impatiently; his dagger was still in his hand.

"Would you just shut your pretty mouth and c'mon? It took a while to find you, it's gonna take a while to get back," he sighed.

Flattery hadn't gotten him anywhere back at camp, why was he so sure it'd get him somewhere now?

"No, I don't think I will. Think I'll just stay here for a bit." She told him, leaning against a dusty wall. "You go on though, please."

"Laurie, don't be difficult," he warned, taking two steps closer. "Just come with me."

Come with him where, exactly? He said it was back to camp but this wasn't the way. They still hadn't come across Lee— one of Hayden's best friends— and the son of Ares hadn't so much as mentioned him again.

"I'm not going anywhere with you, Sloan," she decided firmly, shaking her head.

"Always so hard to get," Sloan sighed.

It all happened so fast, in a blur of bronze and brunette and red, all seen through watery eyes.

She heard the tearing of her shirt before she felt the cold bronze against her skin, followed by the blinding pain in her abdomen.

Laurie's hands shot to clutch her side, flinching when they touched something wet and sticky. Blood. Her blood. And lots of it.

Eyes bugged, she stared at Hayden, who held his now bloody dagger with one hand and the side of her neck with the other.

The pain in her stab wound was blinding. It felt like all the life in her body was focused on that single point and had drained out the second Sloan had driven his blade into her skin.

"This is how this is gonna work, okay? You listening?" He asked, supporting her head that was already growing heavy and pushing back a piece of hair that stuck to the side of her paling face.

She tried to nod and it was enough for him. Small beads of sweat gathered at her brow. They didn't have much time.

"If you be a good girl and cooperate, you'll get some ambrosia and bandages to fix you right up. No biting, kicking, or trying to fight back in any way." He said. "You decide not to cooperate, then you get the sewing kit in my backpack and better hope your needlework has improved since arts and crafts."

Like she could do any of those things in the state she was in. Already, she was hardly standing up straight.

"Where ... where are we going?" She slurred, struggling to look at his face.

"Don't worry about it, okay? You'll see," he said. "You gonna cooperate?"

Seeing no other choice, she nodded.

"Good," Hayden smiled, before dropping his shoulder and heaving her over it like a sack of flower.

She screeched in pain, the sound bouncing off the walls and hitting her back twice as loud. Hayden didn't care. He just forged ahead as her blood soaked into the fabric covering his shoulder.

ೄྀ࿐ ˊˎ-

    ANNABETH DIDN'T know how she was expected to do this. Two weeks ago, she had three best friends. Now, she had none.

Two weeks. Fourteen days. Laurie and Percy had been missing for that long, assumed dead for half of that. All because of her.

Annabeth had barely eaten in days, and she hadn't slept in longer. The events back at Hephaestus's forge played on loop in her head, eating away at her from the inside out, filling her to the brim with guilt.

So far, she's come up with eighty-nine ways they could've handled it differently. Eighty-nine different ways that would've resulted in either all of them alive, or her dead instead of them.

She knew a funeral was coming, but standing there now, with their shrouds in front of her and the hundreds of eyes of campers, she didn't know if she could do it.

She stood before a burning sea green piece of silk with a trident on it for Percy, vision impaired by the fourth round of tears of the day.

Beside her stood Alec, standing solemn and emotionless in front of the floral pink burial cloth that was in memory of Laurie, now ablaze as they burned the shrouds. That was how he was when he lost something, someone. He shut down.

Annabeth turned to face the audience, looking terrible and feeling even worse, if possible. Bloodshot and puffy eyes, face slick with tears.

Somehow, she managed to address the crowd, "These two were probably...no, they were the bravest friends I ever had. Percy..."

Then she saw him. By some miracle from Olympus, she saw him standing there at the back of the amphitheater, alive and well.

"He..." Annabeth's face turned blood red. "He's right there!"

Heads turned. People gasped. Percy's face turned the same color as Annabeth's, just out of embarrassment.

"Percy!" Beckendorf grinned. A bunch of other kids crowded around and clapped him on the back. Chiron cantered over, but before he could get a word out, Annabeth and Alec were in Percy's face.

"WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?" Annabeth shouted, shoving past campers. "I thought you guys were dead!"

"Where is she?" Alec demanded, staring Percy dead in the eyes in expectancy of a quick answer.

"I'm sorry, I— I got lost," he answered. And then to Alec, "Where's who?"

"Laurie," Annabeth answered for him. "She's with you, isn't she?"

Percy felt his heart beat in his throat. That was supposed to be his question.

"N-no... I haven't seen her since the volcano," Percy admitted, his eyes darting frantically between the two demigods.

He'd been stranded on the island of Ogygia for two weeks, all of which he'd been thinking about her. And to have her so close within his reach only to find out that she was further away than ever... he didn't know how much more he could take.

"Well, she's not here!" Annabeth fumed, her mourning turning instantly into anger. She'd left Laurie with Percy with the impression that she'd be safe. Now here he was, perfectly fine while she was gone. Again. "How do you lose a girl, Percy?"

"I didn't lose her!" He quickly scowled. As if he'd just turned around and abandoned her when the volcano they were inside of exploded.

"She's still in the Labyrinth." He said, suddenly sure of it. Just as easy as breathing, or as knowing up from down, he knew she was alive.

No matter how revolutionary Percy might've found his own assurance, there was someone else that saw it differently. Laurie was alive, yeah, but she was also in the dark, monster-infested Labyrinth alone.

Alec had put up with a lot from Percy, no matter how much he got on his nerves, for Laurie's sake. But now, Laurie wasn't here. And it was all his fault.

In one swift motion, Alec lunged forward and took a fistful of Percy's shirt, pulling him close enough to hear every last syllable.

"Listen here, Jackson," he snarled. "All of us here trusted you to go into that maze with her. I trusted you. And now you've literally blown it. It's been two weeks with no sight of her, and we all remember what happened last time we couldn't find her. She's not going through that again. So you better have a better explanation than 'she's still in the Labyrinth.'"

"You think I wanted any of this?" Percy asked in response, a disturbed look on his face as he spoke. "I've spent the last two weeks trying to figure out my way back so I could find her again. I get that you care about her, but you need to get it in your head that you're not the only one!"

Alec's expression hardened, his teeth clenched. "I was the only one for a long time. You care about her so much, Jackson? Get your ass in gear and prove it."

With a strong shove, Alec released Percy, both still simmering with anger. The son of Poseidon begrudgingly adjusted his shirt, highly aware that the entire camp had their eyes on him.

Why were they all looking at him like he'd just told them that he kicked puppies for a living? Especially the two daughters of Athena on either side of Alec.

"Um, don't you guys think this is a matter we should handle more privately?" Marjorie suggested, emphasizing her words to show them that she wasn't asking, she was telling.

That, mixed with Annabeth's angry-and-disappointed-at-the-same-time look, didn't bode well with Percy's temper, so he bit, "Couldn't have said that before I got manhandled?"

Alec raised a brow, daring him to say something a toe out of line to Marjorie. In response, she placed a hand on his shoulder and pushed him away from the crowd, mumbling, "C'mon."

"Mars is right," Annabeth told Percy. "We're taking this to the Big House."

Percy poked the inside of his cheek with his tongue to keep anymore spiteful comments to himself and followed.

He already knew what needed to be done, so when they got there, he'd just lay the plan out and begin executing it whether they agreed or not. He'd learned plenty from his encounter with the daughter of a titan, Calyspo, and he was done waiting.

He already knew they'd hate the plan. But to get back to Red, there was only one person who could help: R.E.D.

everyone say thank you to abi (-sunnflowerss- )  for giving me the motivation to finish this chapter with her AMAZING fanart of laurie!!

go check it out on tumblr @ sunnflowerss-art

so much love for you all, my lovies!!! MWAH💋