The Wrong Side of Heaven and the Righteous Side of Hell

It had been a week since we went to the beach. Since then, we had gotten closer as a group. We still had some tensions, which was to be expected, but it wasn’t anything major.

I had been trying to spend as much time with Annabeth as I could. After my mom lectured me a second time right before we left the beach, I decided that I shouldn’t hide my feelings. Especially when Will had dropped some hints that she might’ve been feeling the same way.

She didn’t explicitly say that she liked me, but I caught her lingering glances. I also saw the way she blushed and looked at the ground when I’d walk around without a shirt. No one else got that kind of a response from her. It was kind of funny making her squirm, so I found any excuse to take my shirt off.

The only problem, was that she got her revenge. When we would spar, she would flash a smile, or wink at me, which would cause my brain to short circuit. When that happened, she would always pin me and give me a smug look. Followed by a, “Shouldn’t get so distracted Seaweed Brain.”

Which I’d counter with, “If my opponent wasn’t so stunning, I wouldn’t be,” followed by a wink.

That would always make her turn scarlet and let me up.

That wasn’t the only friendship I was making though. Piper and I started hanging out more. She was actually pretty cool, for a holy girl. We both liked the same punk rock music and she had almost as much sass as I did. Almost.

Plus we enjoyed teaming up to pick on Jason. But it didn’t last long, because Annabeth would come to his rescue. It got to be pretty comical during some points.

I hung out with Frank more as well. We would spar every day and I got to the point where I could hold my own against him. Then we’d watch Jason and Leo square off. They were good together and became easy friends.

I also started working with Hazel on a daily basis. She and Annabeth decided that I needed to develop my magical abilities more. Since I rarely used them, they needed more work.

“You have astounding potential lying dormant inside of you,” Hazel told me one day. “We just need to unlock it. I believe your magical ability is tied to your emotions, same as your fighting skill.”

So we had been practicing daily on tapping into my magic reserves. We made some success but not much. It was hard to tap into my emotions, mostly due to the fact that I was scared of hurting my friends. The one time I used magic with Victoria I demolished an entire building. I wasn’t ready to repeat that.

My life seemed to be getting better, except for my dreams. Usually my dreams were pretty normal, but after we went to the beach. I kept having nightmares.

At least I thought they were nightmares, but they were too vivid. Scenes where my mom was hit by short, fat man. Then he would turn on me. It really freaked me out.

I would wake with an image of his beady brown eyes and his laughter ringing in my ears.

Hazel told me that my memory was coming back. Since I was reunited with my mom, a huge part of my past, it wasn’t all that surprising.

Luckily, not all of the memories were bad. I’d started remembering little things like how my mom used to work at a candy store and would sneak me some samples whenever she could.

I remembered more about our trips to the beach cabin in Montauk. I also remembered her marrying Paul, I was the best man. I also gave her away, I remembered walking her down the aisle.

I didn’t have many good memories, but I clung to the ones that I did.

≈

One night, Annabeth and I had been on our nightly dusk run. We both had decided last week we needed to go out and run each night to get fresh air.

We would stay within a couple miles of Hazels, but sometimes the route would change. Tonight we were going through a rough part of town.

We passed by an alley when I came to a dead stop. I smelled something that I woke up to so many times lately. I was sure that the smell would be forever burned into my brain. Beer and cheap cigars. I knew that it could have been anyone who smelled like that, but I knew it was him.

“Percy?” Annabeth asked, walking back toward me with a puzzled look on her face. “What is it? Why did you stop?”

I turned to look down the alley. “There is something down this alley, we need to go down here.” I started to walk, but was quickly grabbed by my shirt and pulled back toward the sidewalk. Annabeth looked shocked.

“Percy, no. I feel something bad down that way. Something that we aren’t equipped to handle right now. We can come back when we are ready.”

I knew she was right, but I didn’t care. “Then go back without me, I’ll go alone,” I said coldly. “I don’t know if this thing will still be here later, and I need to see what it is.”

I started walking forward again when this time she grabbed my hand instead of my shirt. I turned to face her and I saw how scared she was. “Just wait, at least let me call the others so they know where we are. That way if they don’t hear from us, they know where to look for us.”

I conceded and she looked slightly relieved. She called Frank and told him that if they didn’t heard from us in thirty minutes to come looking for us. She gave our location and hung up.

We started walking down the damp, dark alley slowly. The further down we went, the worse the smell got. My nightmares started playing back in my mind. If I hadn’t been holding Annabeth’s hand, I would have thought I was back in them. She was the only thing anchoring me to reality.

Halfway between the blocks, there was a rundown building entrance. All the windows were broken, there was graffiti everywhere and the scent that we had been following seemed to pour out of the building in a fog.

“In there,” I said quietly.

Annabeth looked like she wanted to argue, but she only nodded.

I let go of her hand and went up to the door and kicked it in. it flew off the hinges and disappeared in to the dark room. I went in first and looked around the room. I reached my hand out toward Annabeth, grabbing her hand.

We slowly walked into the next room, following the trail of the scent. As it grew stronger, I felt more anxious. I kept telling myself that I needed to keep it together for Annabeth, I had to keep my head. I wanted to break down and curl into a little ball from all the memories that were flooding back.

When we got into the middle of the room, I stopped dead in my tracks, causing Annabeth to run into me. I heard a low laugh. An evil laugh that I knew well from my nightmares.

“Well, well, if it isn’t the punk.”

I knew that voice, and my insides were crawling. My skin felt like it was covered in bugs, my brain told me to run, but my body wouldn’t respond.

“Gabe,” I whispered. I wasn’t sure where his name came from, nut I knew it was him.

“You remembered me! Such a good son!” said the short, fat, balding man sauntering into the room. His voice dripping with sarcasm.

“You are not my father,” I said defiantly through clenched teeth.

He started walking in a circle around us. “You sure about that kid? If memory serves me correctly, I made you and that pretty little mother of your my bitches.”

My anger flared, “Don’t you dare talk about my mother!” I roared. “I will kill you!” I dropped Annabeth’s hand and charged the short, smelly man. Just as I was about to grab him, he snapped and disappeared.

I stumbled through the air where he stood a second before. I spun around to see if Annabeth had an eye on him, but she was gone. My heart dropped to my stomach. Where did she go?

“Annabeth?” I asked softly, hoping to hide my fear. After a few seconds I couldn’t take it anymore. I cried out desperately, “Annabeth!”

“Oh, she is over here with me punk.”

I looked up to a landing on the second floor. Gabe was standing behind Annabeth, a knife to her throat.

“How did you teleport like that?” I yelled at him.

“Isn’t it obvious? Although, you never were very bright,” he said with a smirk.

I couldn’t think straight with his disgusting scent swimming around me. Then I realized that wasn’t his scent, it was an aura of power. The power of a devil, which lets off a feeling like one’s soul. Gabe was rotten to the core, so his aura would reflect that.

“You’re a devil,” I said quietly.

“Ding! Ding! Ding! We have a winner! You aren’t as dumb as they say you are kid.”

“How long have you been a devil?” I asked.

He looked up and away, like he was trying to retrieve a memory. “Long before you and your mommy came around. Kronos made sure that I got the darkness in you at a young age.” He winked at me and my world seemed to collapse.

“Kronos? How did he even know about me?” I fell to my knees.

“Oh he’s had his eye on you for a while punk. This prophecy that you are a part of, have they told you the whole thing?”

“Percy don’t listen-“

“Quiet Blondie!” Gabe pressed the blade tighter against her throat. “Young Percy here should know the truth. I’d hate to have to hurt you before it’s the right time.”

His stare got even colder. “What truth?” I asked. “They said that they have seen me standing over Kronos in victory. What more could there be?”

“Ah, I can see how they say it like that. You see, the part that they left out is the victory could be that you destroy Kronos, or you host his spirit and rule the world.”

As soon as I heard that, I didn’t even feel like I was in my body any more. The rational part of my brain told me that he was lying. It told me that he was only trying to rile me up. But as soon as I looked at Annabeth, I knew that he was telling the truth. She looked ashamed, she couldn’t look me in the eye.

“Is this true?” I asked her.

“Percy, you have to understand,” she started to say. But I didn’t want to hear any more lies. I needed the truth.

“Is this true?!” I shouted.

She looked to the ground, “Yes. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner. I’d only hope that you would make the right choice. I knew that there is good in you and I only hoped that you would choose to help us. It needs to be your choice.”

I felt my anger rise, partially at Annabeth for lying. But more at Kronos, because he had been manipulating my life since I was tiny. He sent this monster to hurt me; to hurt my mother. That was unforgivable; I could never side with Kronos after that. Yes, I was upset with Annabeth for lying, but that wasn’t the same as hurting my family.

“That doesn’t matter right now. Gabe, release her, or else you’ll regret it,” I could hear the edge in my voice.

He looked slightly confused, “What do you mean? Don’t you want to kill her for lying? She manipulated you to turn against your master and your kind.”

“Oh, don’t worry, I am pissed about that, but what you’ve done is far worse. You manipulated me way before she ever did. But you used my mother to hurt me, and that is something she would never do. Now, I say again, release her”

He didn’t move. His expression was starting to change, from confusion to fear.

“I said release her!” I yelled. I was starting to see red.



*POSSIBLE TRIGGER WARNING WILL PUT A.N. WHEN SCENE IS DONE WITH SUMMARY IN AUTHOR’S NOTES*

“Oh, but blondie here wants to stay with me. We are getting to know each other.” He sniffed her hair, loudly. “Oh, she smells lovely. You do know how to pick ‘em. You don’t mind if I keep you here do ya sweetie?”

She squirmed a bit, but she couldn’t do much with a blade at her throat. Her expression started to change from anger to fear. I could see some blood coming from her neck. My anger flared. Hurting my mom is unforgivable, but hurting Annabeth as well, this man was going to regret he ever heard the name Percy Jackson.

Suddenly, his evil grin changed to fear. I could hear a scary laugh from somewhere. Then I realized, the scary laugh was coming from me.

Gabe wasn’t the only one who was scared. Annabeth looked absolutely terrified.
“You are going to regret challenging me punk,” he growled.

Suddenly I felt a crushing presence on my mind. Everything around me went pitch black. That’s when I started to hear the screaming. It was my mother, I could hear her screaming in the other room. But I wasn’t in the run down building anymore, I was in a trashed apartment. All over the floor was beer cans and dirty dishes.

I ran room to room looking for her, but I couldn’t find her anywhere.

Do you remember how I used to hit you two? Gabe’s voice echoed inside my head. She never knew how bad I hit you though.

The scene around me changed. My mom opened the door to see a young me with a black eye and a bloody lip.

Until this day. She came home early from work when I was teaching you a lesson for being a mouthy little shit.

My mom screamed again, the same blood curdling scream from earlier. She grabbed Gabe and stopped him from hitting me again. She really shouldn’t have stopped me from punishing you. It only made my angrier. In the vision, Gabe grabbed hold of my mother’s arm and threw her into another room and followed behind her. The next thing that I heard from the room was hitting and my mom begging him to stop.

I felt like my mind was going to implode on itself. I couldn’t take it, my anger was about to boil over. You should have seen what I did to her when you weren’t around. How about I show you?

“No! I won’t let you mess with me anymore!” I couldn’t contain my rage. I lashed out with all the anger that I had. I tried to pull from my core to lash out with any magic that I could to hurt Gabe. My anger seemed to ignite fire in my vision, lighting everything around me.

*SCENE DONE LOOK IN AUTHOR’S NOTES FOR SUMMARY IF NEEDED*

What are you doing? Stop that! Gabe yelled in my head.

His panic was all the motivation I needed. I turned up the rage and turned up the heat on the fire around me. I wasn’t sure what it was doing to him, but I didn’t really care.

Slowly the darkness faded and I started seeing my actual surroundings, I was still kneeling in the room of the run down building. I looked up to the landing where Gabe had been holding Annabeth hostage. Annabeth had been freed from Gabe’s clutches and she was backing away. Gabe was on the floor yelling in pain. He was grabbing his head, like he was trying to hold it together.

“How’d you do this? What have you done to me you punk?” His flesh seemed to be glowing. But it was more than that, it was burning away. Almost like the fire I was unleashing in the nightmare he pulled me in had ignited something inside of him.

I felt more confident, laughing even a little bit and poured even more of my magic into the flames. I wanted to make an inferno inside of him. He needed to pay for every time he struck my mother, for the cut he put on Annabeth’s neck, every time he even had a thought about hurting someone. He deserved to feel every lick of the flame, every flare up.

His body started swelling like it was swelling from all the fire. I knew that his body couldn’t take much more and it would unleash the flames. Annabeth was standing too close to him.

“Annabeth get out of there!” I yelled.

I didn’t have to tell her twice. No sooner had I said something she shook out of her shock and jumped down from the landing to the ground floor with me. She started walking backwards away from me, still looking terrified.

When I looked back up to Gabe, he was slowly starting to burn to ashes. “Curse you Percy Jackson! You punk!” then he crumpled into a pile of gray ash.

I felt relief that he had been beaten. But when I looked toward Annabeth, she was looking at me like I was Gabe.

“Annabeth, what’s wrong? I had to destroy him, he deserved worse for hurting you and my mother.”

She rubbed her throat where it was cut. “Percy, Gabe took over your mind and was going to crush you. Make you insane, but when you lashed out, you basically set off a nuclear bomb off inside his body.”

I felt kind of like a bad ass. “Isn’t that good though? I used my magic to destroy someone.”

She shook her head, “Percy, simply destroying someone with magic isn’t necessarily bad, but you look like you were enjoying the power the anger brought to you that Gabe was provoking. That is what Kronos wants from you.”

I could see some tears coming from her eyes. Not tears of joy, or even sadness; they were tears of fear. Gabe had scared her, but she never looked terrified. All of the sheer terror she felt was from me. That broke my heart a little bit.
I stood up, and looked Annabeth in the eye, “Annabeth, I am so sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you like that. I only wanted to protect you, and all the things he showed me, it took me to a dark place. Then when he hurt you, I just… I felt like I had this monster inside of me that I just couldn’t control.”

She slowly started walking toward me. “Percy, I understand why you did it, and I appreciate your concern, but you looked like you had already accepted Kronos.”

I started getting angry again at the mention of him. “I will never help him.” I was talking through my clenched teeth. “He has caused me so much pain that I could never support him.” I was getting so mad that I could see some of my fiery aura actually show around me.

I was looking at the floor, thinking about the pain. But all of a sudden my view was filled with two stormy gray eyes right in front of me. I felt strong hands on both sides of my face. Annabeth was inches from my face and she was looking into my eyes so deep that it felt like she was looking into my soul.

“Percy Jackson, stop right now. Look into my eyes and concentrate on me here right now. I am not hurt and I won’t let anyone else hurt you. Listen to my voice, feel my hands, concentrate on the now; not on the past.”

Slowly I relaxed, I felt my hands relax; I hadn’t even known they were clenched in the first place. Annabeth was acting as my anchor again, keeping me here in reality. My vision was clearing, no longer tinted red.

I could see her eyes with more detail than I had ever before. There were little blue flecks inside her iris. But I also saw tears welling up behind her eyes. I didn’t want her to cry, I reached up and wiped the tears away. I wrapped my arms around her and we fell down to our knees.

“I’m sorry Annabeth. He just showed me the way he treated me and my mom. I heard her scream, I remember everything. I just… He needed to pay for his crimes, but I don’t want to lose control like that.”

“Shh, just relax for now. We will talk about it when we get back home. What do ya say that we head back?”

I nodded, I was thankful that we would have a few blocks to just walk without needing to do much. I had a lot to think about; I just discovered this terribly dark side of myself, and I didn’t know what to do with it.

We stood up after a few minutes and started walking back home. Annabeth called Frank and told her that we were on the way. I heard him ask what we had been checking out, and Annabeth brushed it off saying we would discuss it later. I was relieved when she said that, I wasn’t quite ready to hear a recount of everything quite yet.

As we walked down the street, Annabeth’s arms around me holding me close, I felt truly thankful for her. I was so thankful that I looked directly up to the sky and thanked God for sending me this guardian angel. Even though I probably wasn’t supposed to be thanking God for anything, being a devil and all. But I’d never been good about following rules.

Notes

Summary: Gabe was being super creepy while holding Annabeth. He then projects his memories of abusing Percy and his mother. He hints that there is a very bad type of abuse to his mother.