Chapter Text
Percy had never really watched the sunrise before Tartarus. It's not that he didn't think it was pretty. He just liked being able to sleep in when he wasn't fighting a war or running from the monster of the day. Sleeping in during the roughly 4 months between the first war and his goddess-given long nap made him feel like a normal 16-year-old. Or at least as normal as he could be.
But that all changed after the second war and Tartarus. He and Annabeth regularly watched Apollo bring the new day's sun over the canoe lake now. They both tried to sleep at night, but it was more nightmares than sleep. One of them would be awoken by the other thrashing or screaming, or both, if it was a bad night. They would wake the other and soothe as best they could. Once their breathing returned to the new painful post-Tartarus normal, they would get up and walk around camp. The harpies had stopped trying to keep them in their cabins long ago. Their wandering would take a different path every night, but it always ended on the banks of the lake. They would settle onto the damp sand, say hello to the stars above, and wait for dawn.
Today had been the same thing. Annabeth had been up late working on another new design for Olympus. Even though she was still recovering after the second war, her mother had demanded she continue her restoration. She said it would be 'healing' to continue her work, to give her mind something to focus on. The Architect of Olympus had pushed back, but at some point she had just accepted that the only way to get her mother to leave her alone was to finish a job. So, she pushed herself harder than anyone wanted. She designed temples and shrines and fountains and pillars till she fell asleep at her desk with her pencil in hand. Will had expressed concern after the 4th time he found her hunched over the desk, asleep with tear tracks dried on her face. She brushed his concern off. She was a Daughter of Athena. She was the great strategist who won 2 wars. She held the sky on her shoulders and braved the fires of Tartarus. She was a survivor. She was fine.
Percy, the ever-loyal and loving boyfriend, carried her to Cabin 3 and lay down next to her. He fell asleep at some point but woke to her thrashing roughly within his arms.
"No! Don't!" Percy quickly released her from his grip and knelt on the bed next to her. Outside of his grip, she stopped fighting but was still grimacing. He slowly rubbed his hands along her arm and whispered.
"I'm here, wise girl, right here. We're in my cabin at camp. The stars are out tonight. I can see them through the window. We're not there. We're together." Percy continued to speak softly to her as she slowly came out of the nightmare. Her storm-grey eyes were clouded by a sleepy haze before sharpening. She took in the room and reached out to the left bedside to feel her drakon bone sword. "Morning," Percy said with a slight smirk as he lay back down next to her. It might be 3 am, but that was their normal morning.
"Hey." Annabeth leaned into his warmth. Her head lay across his chest, listening to his heartbeat. Listening to the proof that he was alive and with her. Ignoring the cracking sound that both their lungs made now after their time down below. Her hands absentmindedly playing with the hem of his worn camp shirt.
"Do you wanna talk about it?" She felt the words rumble around his chest more than she heard them.
"Not really. It wasn't anything special. Just the giants killing you… again and again. All while my mom stands watching." She took a shaky breath and leaned into him farther. "So better than the dreams about…" She didn't need to finish the sentence for him to know where she meant.
"I'm right here. They can't get rid of me that easily." Percy tightened his grip around her as he spoke. He knew this was a common theme of nightmares for her. They didn't hide anything from each other.
He knew about her nightmares of him dying, of them down below, of her mother, and every other messed-up thing they had gone through.
She knew of his darkest dreams about her being scared of him after Akhlys, of something happening to his friends and family, and of them being separated for the last time. "You tell me when you're ready to get up. We've got all day."
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Will rose with the sun. He always had, even before he knew who his father was. Now it just made more sense. He would rise as dawn broke the horizon and start his day in the infirmary. Nowadays he had an extra step between those. First, he had to untangle his limbs from his boyfriend's and escape his iron-clad grip. Today he woke to Nico holding on for dear life around his midsection and nuzzling into his neck for warmth. He allowed himself the moment before he started his escape.
Nico slept like the dead, a fact that made everyone chuckle. Will was able to carefully pry his hands apart and started the slow process of sitting up. He knew from experience that if he sat up too quickly, then Nico would grumble and start to wake from the loss of warmth. Once he was fully upright, he grabbed the extra pillow that had one of his old camp shirts on it. The pillow was then placed within Nico's grip. He spared one last glance before starting towards the infirmary.
Will did not inherit many of his dad's numerous skills. He could shoot an arrow, but he wasn't as good as some of his siblings. His poetry was nice but not groundbreaking. He could carry a tune but was always just slightly off-key. However, he could care for those around him. Chiron said he was the most talented healer Camp Half-Blood had seen in centuries.
His skills were constantly used during the war. He was always stationed at the back of the fight. Forced to wait for his family to be carried in on litters, bleeding before him and gasping for help. He did everything he could for each and every one of them. And sometimes it was enough. Sometimes he could mend the broken and sew the torn. Other times he was too late. All he could offer was a way to ease their trip to Elysium. It felt like he did more of that than saving his family.
As he entered the infirmary, he nodded to his sibling, Jerry, on watch. "Anything major?" he asked as his eyes swept over the 3 filled beds.
"Nah. Jake finally fell asleep around 2 am. He said it wasn't pain but the itchiness that kept him up. Dylan tried to leave after you left for the night, but I was able to stop him. Said he didn't really need to be here…" Jerry handed over their charts as he spoke. Jake had gotten an arrow through the leg during capture the flag the night before and then fell into poison ivy. Dylan had broken his hand after trying to punch one of the Hunters and hitting a tree instead. The pair moved past the desk and deeper into the infirmary. "And Jason was fine at each wake-up. I had to replace the gauze at like 3, I think. The bleeding finally stopped after that. He had a little bit of confusion at the first wake-up. He thought I was Piper for a second, but once he opened his eyes, he quickly realized I was not." The pair stopped at the end of the bed where the Son of Jupiter was asleep. He had taken on his sister during the game.
The Grace siblings went hard against each other, but Jason got distracted by a camper crying out in pain. He looked left and saw Dylan, son of Ares, punch a tree, but Thalia was not distracted. She brought her aegis out towards him, but he turned back towards her. It cracked his temple, and Jason crumbled to the ground. Will had admitted Jason for the night since this was not his first serious head injury. Thalia had been beside herself until Jason woke up. He grumbled about being confined to the infirmary overnight but was quickly silenced by a look from Piper and Thalia. Will checked over the night's notes and went back to the main desk.
"Have Percy and Annabeth stopped by yet?" Will asked even though he knew the answer. The pair were supposed to come to the infirmary once they left Cabin 3 before they went about their routine. Will did not like, nor approve of, their normal nightmare wake-up time, but certain fights were not worth it. He would prefer if the pair took something that let them sleep more than the 4 hours they said they got (Will knew that it was less). The compromise was that the pair would get some nectar and ambrosia after waking if they weren't going to go back to sleep. The godly food was the only thing that eased some of their pain. The pain that came from the scars that lined their lungs made each breath feel like a sharp sting. Will had looked through every known mortal lung disease for something similar and even consulted with his father. There was nothing that affected the lungs like Tartarus had.
"Not yet. Maybe they're still asleep." Jerry tried to believe the statement as he said it, but it fell flat. Will simply raised his eyebrows, grabbed a small baggie of ambrosia, and started towards the lake.
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Piper woke to the sound of her siblings arguing in the bathroom. She didn’t typically sleep in Cabin 10 when Jason was at camp, but since he was in the infirmary overnight, it didn’t feel right to sleep in their tent out in the Roman encampment near the strawberry fields (Jason had stopped sleeping in Cabin 1 after the end of the war). She had tried to stay in the infirmary overnight, but Will had nearly dragged her out of the chair she intended to sleep in when he left for the night. She thought that he had mumbled something about the 7 never giving him a night off, but he swore it off when she asked.
The argument in the bathroom had reached its peak as she flopped over, trying to ignore it. It was about the shower or something that was not worth the time it would take to quell. The movement sent a deep ache through her shoulder. The dark magic wound had healed, but it would still ache. She and Leo joked that she could predict when it would rain, but in reality it always ached. She swung her feet out of bed and let them rest on the ground for a moment before standing. The aching carried down to her ankle. She had eaten (too much) ambrosia during her first quest to heal it, but the phantom pains still lingered.
As always, she was the first camper to leave Cabin 10. A quick change into whatever clothes were the cleanest and brushing her teeth was a lot less than her siblings did every morning. Piper took a deep breath as she stepped outside to the dew-covered camp and saw Leo waiting patiently for her. Or at least as patiently as Leo could wait. His hands fiddled with braided wire. As he looked up and saw her, an impish grin spread across his face.
“Mornin’, Beauty Queen.” He quickly shoved the wires into his tool belt and turned towards the infirmary. “Let’s see how Sparky is doin this morning.”
Jason was sitting up in bed cleaning his glasses when the pair walked in. His eyes brightened as his girlfriend and best friend walked in. “Good morning.” Piper leaned in and gave him a quick peck on the forehead before sitting on the edge of his bed.
“Ready to blow this popsicle stand? I’ve got something planned for tonight that I need your help with.” The smirk Leo had as he told them made Jason sigh. It was going to be a long day.
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Clarisse was tired. She stood in the middle of the arena waiting for young campers to arrive for their basic sword training. The heat of the day had arrived, and Apollo seemed to be roasting the camp beneath his rays. She had been in the arena since after breakfast and skipped lunch to train. Her soul was buzzing beneath her skin today, and she could do nothing to stop it. Numerous dummies lay destroyed by her spear around the ground, but the feeling had not lessened. She and Percy had fought for nearly an hour, but the edge did not recede. She hadn’t felt like this since she first received her father's blessing.
If she thought about it too long, she would think about how the newest Daughter of Aphrodite had Silena’s eyes. She would see her best friend in the 13-year-old who was trying to hold a sword but would let it dip too much each time. She would hear Silena’s laugh in the 15-year-old Daughter of Aphrodite. The girl was too old for the class but had never fought with a sword before. She preferred daggers but had stood in the middle of the last battle with no weapon after a monster yanked her dagger away. She had to lift a sword from the hands of a slain demigod and fight on. Now she was at every class offered. Silena hadn’t known how to use her spear. She had died- Clarisse shook her head and desperately tried to clear the thoughts.
“You good?” Thalia walked into the arena and stood next to her.
“Of course.” Clarisse gave her head one last shake before standing taller. There were a few campers lingering about, but not everyone was present for class yet. Frank and Hazel came into the arena with their hands laced together. Clarisse had grown closer to Frank since the end of the war. The pair bonded over all the things their father had never done.
“Mind if we join you today?” Frank’s voice was deeper than it had been at the end of the war. After returning to New Rome and spending time as Praetor, he seemed to age twice as fast. The Twelfth Legion Fulminata had been fractured under Octavian’s control. He and Hazel had to work twice as hard to correct it and heal the Legion from the war.
“Of course not.” Ever since the end of the first war, more senior campers started teaching. They realized how quickly a camper needed to go from untrained to a warrior. And the second war had only cemented that view. Before the first war, a single senior camper would teach lessons. Between the first and second war, there could be 3 to 4 present to teach. And now more campers came to instruct than those who needed to learn.
As the lesson started, Nico appeared from the shadows and corrected a few campers' forms. Once the dueling started, Percy and Annabeth walked in. The pair separated by a few feet and offered advice to those who had finished their duels. Annabeth showed a young Daughter of Demeter a way to use her small size to get inside a larger opponent's striking distance. Percy took a Son of Ares to the side and tried to get him to loosen up his form. Thalia had a small group of Apollo’s children on the side and was offering tips for using a bow as a melee weapon.
As the class ended and the young campers left to go to their next activity, the senior campers took to the arena floor. Clarisse and Frank quickly started a scrap. The pair grappled since their preferred weapons did not lend themselves to a fight. Annabeth left her drakon bone sword to the side and picked up a camp-issued standard dagger. It felt off balance in her hand, but no dagger ever felt right after she lost hers. She and Hazel worked through a series of dagger drills. Hazel had started training more seriously with a dagger after hearing one too many jokes about the size of her Spatha.
Percy, Nico, and Thalia were off to the side dueling. Riptide sparked against Stygian Iron as Thalia’s spear jabbed out. Around Nico, the shadows started to gather. The air was thick with static that centered on Thalia. The ground rumbled as Percy pushed back against his cousins.
“What the fuck do y’all think you’re doing!” Everyone stopped as Will’s shout echoed through the arena. “I know you ain't pushing yourselves past the very clear limits that we’ve all agreed upon.” He took in the heavy breathing coming from Percy and Annabeth. “You two are already on thin ice after this morning, and if ya keep going like this, you’re gonna spend the night with Jerry in the infirmary.” Percy had the decency to look slightly reprimanded while Annabeth lifted her chin in defiance. He looked to Frank and then Hazel. “Have you two checked in with the New Rome Medic team since arriving?” He waited for a moment, giving them time to answer. “That’s what I thought when I got an Iris message from them this afternoon asking if you had continued the nectar regimen since arriving. Would you care to explain that… No?” Clarisse chuckled at the attention her brother was getting. Will’s glare snapped to her. “Something funny, Clarisse? As funny as the fact that you are NOT cleared to be fighting cause of that puncture wound on your back.”
“Babe, it’s oka-“ Nico cut himself off as Will took in the sweat on his brow and the shadows that hung heavy off of him.
“Oh, not one word out of you. We will talk about this later.” Will took a breath and let his tense shoulders release. “Guys… I need you to take all of this seriously. If I have not cleared you to fight, then don’t. We’ve lost enough demigods. I can’t stand by as you all push yourselves past the point of no return.” The desperation in his voice seemed to shake everyone out of their haze. Nico stepped up next to Will and took his hand.
“I’m sorry, Will.” Percy, ever the camp leader, stepped forward. “We’re not trying to stretch the limits.”
“I know. I just... I can’t lose anyone else in my care.” Will’s words hung heavy in the air. Everyone knew the war was brutal, but no one other than Nico truly knew how much Will saw. How much he carried from the demigods he lost.
“Yo! What’s crack-a-lackin fam…” Leo’s voice fizzled out as he took in the sights before him. “Okay, well this vibe is depressing. What’s goin on?”
“Nothing now, Leo. We’re good.” Hazel gave a light laugh as she responded.
“Good, good.” Leo looked over his shoulder at Piper and Jason behind him. He wiggled his eyebrows and faced the rest again. “Tonight you are all going to the beach after sunset. Beauty Queen, Sparky, and I have spent the day prepping something.”
“Should we be concerned…?” Frank asked, directing his question more towards Jason and Piper than Leo.
“No. It’s actually really sweet.” Jason quickly reassured the group. He knew how concerning some of Leo’s plans can be.
“Bro! No more hints. It’s a surprise. Now let’s head to dinner. All that work left me hangry.”
The survivors of too many things started towards the dining pavilion. Weapons transformed, and dust shaken off. Small conversations happened between groups as they headed out.
“Anyone want to do anything between dinner and whatever this non-concerning sweet surprise is?” Percy asked as the smells of dinner reached the group.
“How about a check-in at the infirmary?” The group chuckled at Will’s suggestion. “I wasn’t joking.” The chuckles turned into resigned grumbles.
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Jason, Piper, and Leo were the first to the beach. The group made quick work of setting up the items they pre-staged. Leo quickly got the large bonfire roaring with Jason’s help. Piper pulled out the drinks and snacks that were stashed behind some trees. They laid out blankets around the fire and waited for their friends to arrive.
Will and Nico were the next to arrive. They settled on a blanket closest to the fire. Nico kicked his cold feet as close to the fire as he could without worrying Will and leaned back onto him to steal more warmth. Clarisse and Thalia arrived while arguing about spears. Thalia flopped onto a blanket near Jason. Clarisse took the spot that offered a view of anyone, or anything, that could approach her family. Hazel and Frank arrived next. The pair was discussing some new legislation that had been introduced to the Senate floor before they left New Rome. Percy and Annabeth were the last to arrive. Percy had a content and slightly dopey grin on his face as he listened to Annabeth discuss the plans she had worked on earlier in the day. She had finally solved some problem with her latest design for camp. The pair settled on the blanket closest to the water. Any tension that had been left in Percy's shoulders seemed to melt away as the sound of the water reached him.
“Alright, guys. I’m sure you’re all wondering why you’re here.” Leo stated as he rose to his feet. His friends stopped their conversations as Leo continued. “I know there are 2 weeks left till the end of the summer, but Frank and Hazel won’t be here for that. And maybe Jason too, depending on what god he has to grovel to next.” A low rumble sounded from the heavens, but no one cared. They had been through too much to worry about possibly being smited. Some would welcome it but would never admit that out loud. “So tonight we celebrate us. We remember those we lost last year and be thankful for those still around.” Leo sat back down and opened up a drink.
“That is the most serious and sentimental I’ve ever heard you.” Piper nudged him with her shoulder.
“I know.” Leo’s eyes shone with unshed tears as he remembered the past year. “So let’s move on to something more fun.”
The group stayed on the beach laughing (and crying) till the fire burned out and the ashes went cold. Most were asleep when Percy met Jason’s eyes from across the cooled fire. Both had given so much. Jason nodded once before closing his eyes and holding Piper closer. Percy lay there on the banks of the lake, listening to the sounds of the woods around him.
The deep love he felt for all those around him only grew stronger. The gods did not care for them. They were the errand boys and girls. The child soldiers sent off to fight the demons of their parents' past. They were left alone and expected to grovel at their parents’ feet as if they were lesser. Percy swore on the Styx to himself. He would protect all of his fellow survivors till the end of his days.
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High above the sleeping demigods, a crack started in the sky. It was razor-thin and the darkest black.