Work Text:
Tell the king the fair wrought house has fallen.
No shelter has Apollo, nor sacred laurel leaves;
the fountains are dry, the voice is stilled.
It is finished.
i.
Rachel's hand shakes when she tries to light the lighter, and she mutters a curse as she places the word search book in the empty fireplace and tries again. On her third try, the lighter's end flames to life, and she sighs when she puts the flame to the edges of the book.
She casts a look over her shoulder across the suit and nibbles at her lip. She tucks the lighter underneath the couch and paces across the room, glancing at the book sometimes to make sure its edges blacken and curl and burn.
The snowstorm howls like a demon outside, and, not for the first time, Rachel becomes aware of how alone she is. Yes, she has Octavian, but she has no delusions about their relationship. He would go straight to Gaea if necessary; his life is more important to him than anything or anyone else.
She gnaws on her lip until it bleeds, and then she moves on to her fingernails. She only stops when the fire dies out and the book is gone, leaving warm ashes in its wake. When she's sure she's safe again, she breathes a sigh of relief and moves to pacing outside the window.
She's lived in this hotel room for almost two years with nothing happening. Gaea only kept her here for potential prophecies, and she thought that luxury would be the best way to coax the Oracle of Delphi out of Rachel and tell the Ancient what she already knew.
Rachel walks to the kitchen and fumbles to open a pack of gum, but the wintry taste of peppermint isn't enough to clear her mind. She returns to the living room and collapses on the couch, chewing her gum and pressing her hands between her legs in an effort to get them to stop shaking. She looks back at the fireplace, but she sees her friends drowning and the Argo II in the Mediterranean instead of ashes, and her throat tightens at the memory of the vision.
What were you doing in Brooklyn, Rachel Elizabeth Dare?
Rachel turns the lamp on and looks at the snowstorm again. Two years since her capture, four years since Gaea won. They're dead, she tells herself, but the memory of the wordsearches make doubts burrow inside her chest. It's a sick feeling, doubt; she'd much rather be certain than not.
Octavian pads into the main suite as Rachel's deliberating, a towel in his hands. "Khione must be pretty pissed," he supplies, as if that would help her. Rachel raises an eyebrow and appraises his shirtless form. Octavian stops drying his hair and stares at her, his eyes blue and prying. "What's wrong?"
"Nothing," she says, surprising herself when her voice is even and level. She tucks her hands between her legs again and avoids looking at the fireplace. "You're up early."
"I smelled smoke in my dream. Good thing it was just a dream." His tone is careful rather than joking, and she can feel his gaze on her face. He's studying her. He's always studying her.
She forces a smile at that, her eyes following his back when he goes into the kitchenette. He comes back with heated leftover spaghetti and sits on the opposite couch, his eyes less prying than before. He's good at manipulation, Octavian; he knows when to put his masks on and when to take them off.
"Do you regret it?" she asks. Octavian looks up from his spaghetti, and there's guilt in his eyes—he already knows what she's going to say. He rests his plate on the coffee table and doesn't respond. "Do you regret betraying them?"
Octavian's eyes fixate on the snowstorm behind her, and his voice is soft and distant. "Every day."
It's funny, she thinks, how the last of the camps are their seers. Rachel thinks of the wordsearches and the letters circled in purple and looks at Octavian. "Are you still an augur? Can you still see things?"
Octavian nods, his eyes now completely innocent. She doesn't trust those eyes, but there are nights when she tells herself the affection in them is real. "You don't, though," he replies, and Rachel feels a flush creeping up her neck. "I have a feeling you haven't hosted the Oracle for a long time."
"I think she died when Apollo faded," Rachel admits, and the almost-lie tastes like copper on her tongue. She did believe that, once upon a time, but the page of a wordsearch book had changed all that when she'd seen circled letters that spelt out Ogygia. She looks at Octavian and her voice sharpens. "You know that Gaea will kill me if she finds out, right?"
Octavian's eyes narrow. "You think I'd do that to you, still? Two years not enough to convince you that people change?"
"Once a traitor, always a traitor," she quotes, pushing away the guilt. Octavian flushes at his own words, two years old and two years too late to save the Romans. He pushes the cooling spaghetti that he never touched towards her and stands up.
"You should eat. I have other places to be."
Rachel looks back at the snowstorm as he leaves the suite. The moment he's gone, she tries to smile. Ogygia, she thinks. Calypso's been taking care of them all this time.
A laugh bubbles past her lips, and she presses her fingertips to her mouth to keep it quiet. She waits until sunrise to stand up and walk to the windows that give her an excellent view of the cityscape—and of Brooklyn.
She can't see the abandoned warehouse, but she knows it's there.
What were you doing in Brooklyn, Rachel Elizabeth Dare?
ii.
When she wakes up, the sunlight is streaming through the large windows of her bedroom, and she's laying on several wrinkled papers. Rachel's still blinking sleep out of her eyes as she sits up and holds up a paper she doesn't remember drawing on. What she sees is enough to wake her up fully. Oh, shit.
Percy Jackson's face is drawn on the paper, his eyes wide open and staring right at her. Rachel feels something like panic twist in her chest, but she takes a deep breath as she picks up more eerily detailed sketches. She hadn't had the Oracle in so long,
Each paper has one of the Seven's faces on it, all of them wide-eyed and most of them bearing murderous expressions. Rachel mutters curses under her breath as she leaves her bedroom clutching a stack of looseleaf and stops short. "No," she whispers. "No, no, nononono—"
Broken pencils and a hundred sheets of looseleaf litter the entire suite. Rachel tears a third Annabeth into fourths, crumples a tenth Jason into a tight wad; no matter how much she hurries, she can't seem to pick them all up in time.
She's just started burning the papers she's collected when she hears the door creak open. She shoves the drawings into the fireplace and stumbles to her feet, heading for the kitchenette. There are still sketches in the kitchen, and if anyone ses them… Rachel turns the corner and stops dead, her heart slamming in her throat.
A goddess—Eos, Rachel realizes with an increasing sense of dread—stands in the doorway, her head bowed. Rachel stands next to a lamp, her heart hammering below her ribs and her lungs constricting in her chest. Shit, shit, shit…
Eos bends down to pick up a stray drawing; Rachel's eyes don't follow her movement. They go to the man standing behind the Titaness, noting his crossed arms and his clenched jaw and his eyes that look everywhere but her.
Once a traitor, always a traitor, she thinks, and Octavian meets her eyes and shakes his head minutely as if he knows her thoughts. Rachel fights to keep the scowl off her face and focuses her attention on Eos.
"I was sent with Octavian to bring you to Gaea," Eos murmurs, her soft voice somehow filling the entirety of the suite. She looks up from the drawing in her white-knuckled hand, and she smiles as she crushes it into a ball. "She was worried about your lack of prophecies. But I have a feeling we won't have to concern ourselves with that."
Rachel smiles and grabs the lamp when Eos takes a step forward. Eos stops, her eyes burning blue as the sky and as blinding as the sun. They remind her of Apollo's preferred eyes, but Apollo was never the harsher parts of the sun. "I'm not going to hurt you, Oracle Rachel," Eos says.
"The Oracle's dead," Rachel replies, wrenching the lamp's cord from its electrical socket. She backs up until the windows that overlook the city are directly behind her.
"Then you have nothing to fear." Eos's voice is calm and certain, but her eyes burn into Rachel's. If Rachel had any strength to be scared, she would be.
"No. Then I'm dead, because I'm not useful to Gaea anymore." Rachel can't help the sneer that's directed towards Octavian. "Guess people don't really change after all, huh?"
Eos pauses to send an appraising look at Octavian, and Rachel seizes her chance. She whirls around and hurls the lamp at the windows, ignoring the tinkling glass as it shatters. She steps forward, bare feet slicing across broken glass, and puts two pinkies in her mouth.
Rachel Elizabeth Dare is not one for prayers, not anymore, but she makes an exception this time. Hear me, she begs, and whistles as loud as she can.
"Enough!" Eos has to yell to be heard over the freezing wind. Rachel turns around, knowing she shouldn't, and stiffens when she sees the goddess's fingers wrapping around the hilt of a sharp kitchen knife.
Instinct tells her to move as the goddess aims, but she can only stand in place as the goddess's arm reaches back—and Octavian steps forward, grabbing Eos's hand and bending it backwards until she relinquishes the knife. He wraps an arm behind Eos's head and presses the knife to her throat, unmoving even as Eos thrashes in his arms. "Go," he half-snarls, and somehow she can hear him despite the wind whistling in her ears. He looks up, and his eyes are blue and—tired.
A spark of fear she's unused to erupts in her chest, and a lump tightens in her throat. "Come with me," she shouts, but Octavian doesn't hear her. Eos's eyes are shut and her skin's beginning to glow—it's a matter of moments before they're both reduced to ashes. Rachel casts a desperate look over her shoulder, to the city hovering below her, and she swallows hard when she sees a black shape hurtling towards her. But then she turns back to Octavian—she needs to help him, they promised to help each other—
"Go, Rachel!" Octavian screams. Rachel turns her back and jumps just as a blinding light erupts within her suite. Her ears ring from the silent blast and the wind scratches at her face as the cement and people below grow larger and larger.
And then a black shape blurs underneath her, and she hits it hard enough she feels something in her chest crack. Suddenly, she can't breathe, and her fingers are tangling in rough black horsehair as she scrambles to find a hold—
Her bleeding toes touch the ground like they're feathers, and Blackjack nickers in her ear. Rachel hisses at the pain in her feet and jumps up, swinging one foot over his side and kicking his flank as hard as she can. "To Brooklyn, you know where," she tells him, threading her fingers through his hair and holding on as tightly as she can.
Blackjack takes off, and Rachel looks over her shoulder to see the Minotaur and a pack of hellhounds burst out of the hotel entrance. She rests her forehead on Blackjack's neck when they're darting above the buildings—too high for arrows but not high enough for sky spirits—but can't bring herself to smile.
Octavian's eyes still haunt her memory, and her abandoning him haunts her more. Once a traitor, always a traitor.
Blackjack lands on the balcony of a mansion masquerading as a warehouse in Brooklyn, and when Rachel sits down and tries to pull the glass out of her feet she almost blacks out from the pain. Her chest rattles with every breath she takes, and for a moment Rachel Elizabeth Dare has never been surer of the fact that she's about to die.
But then, before she can curl up and let fate have at her, she feels a pair of arms wind underneath her back and her knees, hears a familiar voice urging her to hold on—she looks up to see Carter Kane's panicked, familiar face, and for the first time in two years she feels truly safe again.
"They're alive, Carter," she tells him, half-dizzy from the pain and half-dizzy from the knowledge that she's finally escaped. She looks up at Carter and gives him a hollow smile, because she can't get Octavian's eyes out of her thoughts. "Carter, they're alive."
What were you doing in Brooklyn, Rachel Elizabeth Dare?
(Saving my friends, that's what.)