To See The Human Soul Take Wing

Charon takes her drachma, takes her across the Styx without complaint, and Cerberus wags his tail violently at her. He sniffs her excitably, and generally acts like a big, three-headed, poison-saliva-ed puppy.

When Annabeth reaches the court where her life will judged, though, her heart is in her mouth. She's spent so long striving for success, to make something lasting, something for which she'll be remembered, that she forgot to ask herself the most important question of all: was it good?

All the things she fought so long and so hard for; did they make the world a better place?

She stands, fidgeting, beneath the judges' bench. She recognises Minos – the little turd – as well as Shakespeare. She guesses that the other might be King Rhadamanthus, the original judge of the dead, but it could be Aeacus. She hopes that she hasn't accidentally offended either of them, because there's a pretty decent chance Minos bears a minotaur-sized grudge against her.

The feeling of animosity, needless to say, is mutual, and the king and the half-blood glare daggers at each other across the room.

Fortunately, Annabeth's been an expert in knives ever since she was seven.

When Minos shifts in discomfort, she knows she's won, and in the next moment, he looks away, and announces the beginning of the court proceedings.

It comes as a surprise when Nico appears beside her.

"What are you doing here?" she hisses at him. "Shouldn't you be, I don't know, chilling with Will in Elysium or something?"

He shrugs. Even grown up, he's still a little shorter than she is, and so when he meets her gaze, he's looking up to her. She's glad to see it's with a friendly smirk on his face.

"You should be glad I'm here. I'm representing you."

"That's not how this works," she says, confused. "The judges decide for themselves. There aren't any lawyers in the Underworld. I thought Hades hates lawyers?"

"Normally. But when a big name comes through, Father likes to make a show of it. Good PR. People like to see he takes his job seriously."

"And lawyers are… showy?"

"Apparently. Means you get big arguments. The trial could go on a while, I'm afraid, but we should be done by the end of the day, at least. You don't need toilet breaks when you're dead, which is a blessing."

Nico does look dressed for a big occasion, she has to admit. His hair's slicked back – a look that doesn't sit particularly well with the wrinkles on his forehead, but nevertheless gives him an official appearance – and he's in some kind of suit. Possibly Armani? Piper would know. So would Charon, though she shudders at the thought of Nico taking fashion tips from the grim ferryman.

If it's Armani, she wonders if he knows the brand went bust a decade back. She won't be the one to tell him, anyway.

"So, why are you my lawyer?"

"Aren't you happy to see me?"

"Of course I am, Nico, but – you know – do you get to pick?"

"Oh, I only take the cases I'm interested in. Perks of nepotism, I guess. I haven't done anything in months. But then you come along, and, well, I can't really resist, can I?"

"So there's a good chance I've got a rusty lawyer?"

"Hey!" Nico looks hurt. "I've been prepping for this for months! I've not lost a case yet either, and anyway, you're probably the easiest – well, second easiest – person I've ever had to rep for."

"Who's the easiest then?"

Nico raises an eyebrow, as if to say, really? She changes tack.

"So you've just been sitting down here looking forward to my death?"

"That's not what I said - "

"Oh? That's what it sounded like."

"I - "

She shakes her head. "Forget it, Nico. Being dead, it makes everything seem, I don't know. Angrier. I don't feel like I was properly finished."

"Most people don't."

She looks at him. "He did."

Nico nods. "He did. He was special."

That, at least, they can agree on.

"Anyway, who are we up against?" she asks. If she has a defense – or its equivalent – then there must be some kind of prosecution, too.

"She's a nasty piece of work. British, her name's Katie. Got famous from a reality TV show, and spent the rest of her life stirring up fear and anger in tabloid newspapers."

"Oh."

"She's in punishment now, thankfully, but they dig her out whenever they need someone to defend the indefensible, or to attack what anyone with half a brain can see is pure and good and right."

Nico thinks she's pure and good and right? That's sweet. She can only hope the judges agree.

"Order in the court!" calls Minos, and proceedings begin.

Everything's over shockingly quickly. Katie accuses her of never valuing the best things in her life – gods, but that rings too true – but it quickly becomes clear that Nico's done his homework. Somehow, and she doesn't know how, because gods know she's not done that much, but he seems to have an answer to everything.

When Katie says that Annabeth was dismissive of those she deemed less intelligent, or less worthy, Nico points out that on both her first and second quests, she worked well in a team where she was less than keen on at least one of the accompanying members. That she saved lives doing so.

When Katie says she cut off those who needed her most, Nico brings up Luke. Annabeth feels odd watching her life get dissected before her eyes, but as the court are shown images of her taking the burden of the sky and bringing the son of Hermes back from Kronos' possession, that charge is also dropped.

She's accused of being weak, but Nico (gods bless him) gets angry at that. There's a long stream of images from all her life, from when she was seven all the way to when she was eighty. They make her seem impossibly perfect, an Amazonian warrior the likes of which had never been seen before.

Katie throws out her last obstacle to Annabeth's route to a peaceful afterlife. "Your honours," says the other woman. "You see, standing before you, a woman who is proud. Fatally proud, perhaps. She believes that she is better not only than we mere humans, not only than other demigods, but greater even that the gods themselves. This is a sin which can only be met with the severest repercussions."

And Nico practically explodes. "PROUD!?" he yells, kicking his desk over for good measure. "PROUD!?" he demands, striding up and down before the judges' bench. "Your honours, you see before you Annabeth Chase. She is one of the greatest heroes of her time, and of any time. She is half a goddess, could have been a goddess, deserved to be a goddess, and defeated gods, goddesses and titans through the course of her life. If anyone has the right to be proud, then it is her.

"But she is not proud. Not at all. I present my evidence:" and another set of images appear:

Annabeth gaping in surprise whenever she received a compliment, shrugging off praise with the assumption that it was hollow, striving for the next step because she'd never done quite enough. Flinching internally at every insult that cut deeper than she let show. Weeping in bed from the nightmares that challenged everything she thought she knew about herself. Finally accepting that she couldn't control the world. The sneaking suspicion that she couldn't even control herself. By the end of the montage before the judges, she could feel tears pricking at the corners of her eyes. She didn't let any of them fall.

Nico is still standing front and centre, giving an impassioned defence.

"How dare you come here and accuse her of hubris?" he asks Katie. "Where do you find the temerity, the nerve? You see before you a demigod with more reason to be proud than any other, who has even so overcome her pride, pride which we know to be her fatal flaw, and you accuse her of failure in her greatest triumph? Shame on you. Shame on you." He spits on the floor, and stalks back, through the scattered papers on the floor, to his seat next to Annabeth.

The verdict is delivered swiftly. Shakespeare is the first to reach a judgement. "Elysium," he says. Annabeth is disappointed that he couldn't give a speech – how often does Shakespeare create new work? but then, even just a mark of approval is pretty good.

Moments later, the old Greek – she still isn't certain of his exact identity – also declares her for Elysium, and she's through, no matter what Minos says. The Cretan king takes the longest on his decision by far, and she's certain he'll say punishment just to be cruel and spiteful and prolong her trial. She can sense Nico's impatience growing beside her.

"Elysium." It comes out in a quiet mutter, and she almost misses it, but when she realises what Minos has said, and said against all the odds, she's relieved beyond words.

"Come on," says Nico, and she allows herself to be dragged through the room, out of the door marked for Elysium.

"How did you do it?" she asks.

"Do what?"

"Get me Elysium. It was incredible. You had an answer for everything."

Nico looks at her, confused. "You gave me an answer for everything," he says. "Like I said, you were an easy case."

"But – all those things she was saying – there was so much against me..."

"Weren't you paying attention?" he asks incredulously. "There was nothing against you. Gods, you've got worse self-esteem problems than – no, that's an exaggeration. Look, she stood there spewing vile lies with no substance and you – not me, you, through the life you lived – proved her wrong on every count. She's finished now, thanks to you. I've been trying to get her thrown off the team ever since she got Bill Gates sent to punishment. I mean, you might not like Bill Gates, but eternal torture seems excessive. The guy spent most of his life trying to cure malaria, for Zeus' sake! We should be able to get him a review now, too. Bump him up to Asphodel at the very least."

"Thank you," she says.

He looks at her, again a little strangely. "You're my friend, Annabeth. There's nothing to thank. If anything, I'm sorry we had to get so personal. No-one likes having their life pried into like that, but Katie's persistent, which is about the only decent quality she has. Anyway," he says, moving briskly on. "Let's get you to Elysium. Home's calling."

They ride together on the zombie-manned skiff up to Elysium, and talk. It feels like such a long time since Annabeth has had a proper conversation with someone her own age, she gets swept up in it. She almost doesn't notice her wrinkles disappearing, and wouldn't have done if it wasn't for Nico's doing the same. She feels stronger, abler, and notices that the son of Hades is standing up straighter. She points it out to him, and he laughs.

"It's Elysium. Makes you – well, not younger exactly. It puts you in your prime. If you died at a hundred years old, you lose seventy or eighty years, if you shuffled off the mortal coil at ten, you gain another ten or so. Handy, until you have to leave. Turns you into the age you were at death again, so a bag of old bones in my case."

It's Annabeth's turn to laugh now. "You don't have a clue what a bag of old bones is. Whipper-snapper."

Her optimism and conviviality only grow for the rest of the journey, until she sees something odd.

"We're going to the Isles of the Blest."

Nico smiles. "It was decided that, due to your unprecedented services to the gods, but your refusal of godhood, that you'd be fast-tracked here. A lucky few of the rest of us got bumped up by association, too. And of course we can visit all the others whenever we feel like it. No need for reincarnation at all."

And then they land. There are people there, faces she'd almost forgotten in the dimness of age. She sees Clarisse, without a scar from the bar-fight that saw her stabbed in the back at only thirty-three, and Chris, free of the marks of the cancer that had taken him at fifty-five. Leo's there, hyperactive as ever, and Piper shows no trace of the car crash that killed her. Jason has lost half the years that sent him here, and Reyna finally – finally – after such a tortured life, looks peaceful. Frank and Hazel are there, in each other's arms, and though her flame burned out forty years after his did, they're about the same age again here. They all seem so peaceful.

But someone's missing.

Nico greets Will with a kiss, and comes over to speak to her for a moment. "I, er, don't think he wanted to do it all in public. Take a walk along the beach. I'm sure you'll find him sooner or later."

So she does.

The sand's soft and malleable between her toes, shifting beneath her steps. It moves as uncertainly as she feels. Her heart, useless now in this deathless state, still thumps against her ribcage.

She takes her shoes and socks off and steps into the surf before continuing her journey, leaving the excitable welcoming party behind her. She hasn't been near the water for four years. Although most of the Underworld is underground, the Isles are under open sky, a secluded refuge for the very greatest heroes in history. She is one of the few in the Underworld who can see the brilliant sunny day it is at the moment.

She sees him before he sees her, and stops dead in her tracks, afraid to go any closer lest he should vanish into thin air.

He's sitting on the beach, watching the waves wash against the shore and recede, over and over again. He looks twelve, when she first met him.

He looks fourteen, when she first realised she liked him.

He looks sixteen, when she first realised she loved him.

He looks twenty-one, when they married for fear of an early death.

He looks twenty-four, when they became parents.

He looks twenty-eight, when he butchered the Minotaur in a murderous rage for threatening his family.

He also looks twenty-eight, when he spent a whole year trying to rebuild the trust that broke when he scared his wife and daughter, the only blessing being that their son was too young to understand what was happening.

He looks thirty-one, when Frank's stick burned away, and they realised that they weren't going to live forever.

He looks forty, when he almost died from malaria contracted on a short-notice quest to Uganda.

He looks forty-nine, when he checked himself into a psychiatric hospital for the nightmares that wouldn't get better.

He looks fifty, when he came back to her, uncured, sacrificing his own chance at peaceful nights to stop the nightmares that had come back to her.

He looks seventy-six, when nightmares and dreams alike stopped forever, both having lasted longer than anyone expected them to.

Most importantly of all, though, he looks like Percy Jackson. Even more so when he turns to face her, calls her name, leaps to his feet, runs towards her, and kisses her as though they were in love for the first time again.

The tears which she had held back before return, and flow down her face, unstoppable by even the greatest dam in human history. He'd visited the Hoover Dam on the quest to rescue her from Atlas, she remembers him telling her. That makes her cry more. He doesn't tell her that it's alright though. He doesn't need to. They both know it.

She's the first to initiate conversation. "You know," she sniffles, through the tears. "All the times when you wondered if I still loved you, I thought you were being stupid. You had the greatest love in human history, and you were sitting there, wondering if it was really happening."

She sniffles again, but carries on speaking before he can interject. "But I think I understand now. It's not that it's happening that you don't get. It's that it's still happening. You keep expecting someone to jump out and say 'Surprise! Time's up! Playtime's over! That's as good as it's ever gonna get!' but they never did, and you can't quite believe your luck, because the best person in the world, the person you love most of all in the world, loves you back. And that does feel too good to be true. But you've been dead four years, and we haven't spoken in that time, but you're still here. All I have to do is walk along a beach, and there you are, waiting. And it doesn't make sense, because I don't deserve you, even a little bit."

She remembers his voice as it was in his later years, weak, high-pitched, and prone to giving out mid-sentence. When he speaks though, it's with the voice of a man, as Nico told her, in his prime. She hates thinking in clichés, but around Percy, she can't muster up much else: his voice is like melted chocolate: warm and soft and strong at the same time, and just the right amount of husky to make her go weak in his arms.

"We both made it here, didn't we?" he asks. "I know they don't actually have a section for people who're quite as perfect as you are, but this is the next best thing, and somehow I managed to scrape in here, so we can't be that badly matched, can we? Two halves of a whole. Like the stories."

"Like the stories," she agrees. "What's it like here?"

He shrugs easily, and tells her. "Nice. Always sunny, never rains. People are always happy, never sad. I've been living with Mom and Paul in a house just along the beach from here, which is pretty great. In fact, I'd say I've only had one problem since I arrived."

"What's that?"

"You weren't here," he tells her matter-of-factly, and kisses her again. "So I was thinking we could get our own place, together. Forever."

At that, it's her turn to kiss him. It lasts a long time, and she treasures it, drinking in the moment. She's not sure she needs to. They have all the time in the world, after all. But then, she'd spend it all in this kiss, if she could.

When she pulls away, it's only to utter a single word: "Always."

Then she kisses him again, because even if you have eternity, you can't afford to waste a second of it.

If you're wondering, the title's from a Byron poem called 'The Prisoner of Chillon'. The bit the line's from is actually all about how terrible death is:

"Oh God! it is a fearful thing

To see the human soul take wing"

but I thought it was a fairly romantic way of putting it, so I stole the line anyway. Plus, I'm a big Byron fan. He's in my top three English language poets, with Shakespeare and Ted Hughes. Sorry Keats, Whitman, you almost made it. Tennyson would have done too if he wasn't so damn miserable all the time. Anyway, I digress.

If you're wondering who Katie is - well, she's been in the news after suggesting that because of the actions of one person in the Manchester attack last night, every Muslim in the world should be killed. So I think it's fair to say she's in my bottom three English language people, with - well, let's not go there right now.

One last thing is to apologise if I've gone over-the-top with italicising. I've been reading graphic novels recently ('Watchmen' is insanely good. Go read. Also, if you're any kind of Batman fan, read 'The Dark Knight Returns', because that too is fantastic) so it's possible that has influenced me a bit, seeing how much they tend to use italics. I had to go on a cull of the thingsin the edit.

And finally, if you do have a spare moment, a review would be abso-frikkin'-lutely wonderful.

Until next time, I am certainly, undeniably, 100% guaranteed, Jeff Bridges.