All Heroes Fall

"But where do we even start?" Hazel asked frantically. That, I did not know. But we had to think of something. Hades had said that keeping the knob would prevent the doors from being opened again. Even then, I couldn't help thinking that he was sending us on a suicide mission. It couldn't possibly be that difficult to get someone else to do it.

"I guess we start with heading to the Doors of Death. Not much we can do if we want the doors closed." A solemn air of fear hung over all our shoulders. We had escaped death many times. Heck, we'd even saved death. Looking into each and every person's eyes I thought to myself, could I really potentially kill, each and every person on this deck? It would be all my fault. I was their leader. I was the one they all trusted. Was it even worth it to close them? At least Zeus would make it quick. The monsters would drag it out, and make it worse than it had to be.

But could I really unleash hell on the rest of the world? Why put them through, what we had created. It wasn't their fault somebody decided to give a crap about what happened to us. If not for people like Annabeth and my mother, I would have lost my mind. So why extinguish the rest of the population that was just like them? I'd made up my mind. If I was going to go out, I'd go out kicking and screaming.

"We caused this mess." I said. All eyes turned to me. "We can't just leave it for someone else to deal with. We may be stupid, but we're not selfish." Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Jason nodding his head.

"Well I don't know about you guys, but if I'm going to do something heroic, and brave, and completely insane, I'm going to give it all I got. And if I die trying," I paused, my voice beginning to crack. "Then at least I lived a good, honest life." Tears neck were welling in Annabeth's eyes. She blinked them away and ran up to me. Throwing her arms around my neck, she sobbed into my shoulder letting herself slowly fall apart in my arms. And I let her. She looked up into my eyes and I wiped her tears away. As weird as it sounded, she looked really beautiful when she cried. She was vulnerable. After she finished falling apart, it was my job to slowly put her back together with whispered comfort. After she had wiped her face and pecked my cheek, she turned in my arms to face the group.

"I'm in," she said in a voice barely more than a whisper.

"So am I." Jason said.

"Might as well go out with a bang." Leo said.

"I trust you, Percy. So I'm in too." Piper chimed in. Hazel and Frank looked to each other and shrugged their shoulders. Turning to us Hazel smiled.

"Us too." I smiled. These guys, my family. Had just been asked to die for something. And they had said yes. At least if we were going to die, we would die as a family.

The only thing left to do was get the knob.

Notes