Chapter Text
Rachel hid the paintings under her bed.
She always used to hide everything under her bed (it was a big bed).
She’d shown them to no one but Percy, thinking the girl had to do with the Titan war – everything had to do with the war back then. Rachel’s head was always swimming with gruesome images and confusing prophecies. In fact, in the midst of it all, the girl who’d kept appearing in her dreams and weaving her way into Rachel’s crazed artwork had seemed like a beacon of light – a break from the relentless pessimism of Greek tragedies come to life.
But the war had come and gone, and the girl hadn’t shown up.
Rachel couldn’t help but feel disappointed, but so much was going on, she just brushed it off. Percy said she shouldn’t worry about it. They’d been through hell on earth and survived. They were lucky not to be a part of those lost – they owed it to them to move on.
But Percy was lying, and Rachel couldn’t let the image go.
A Roman nose. Full lips. Sharp dark eyes. Battle scars.
Always in powerful purple. Always wearing too serious an expression on her young face.
She made Rachel’s senses come alive – her chest tighten, her pulse quicken – but Rachel never thought it might mean something about her instead of the rest of the world.
***
Rachel left the paintings under her bed. She tried to ignore them. She went to school, and to the local art center, and headed charity events. She went to Camp Half-Blood for oracle business, and visited Percy nearly every week that summer. They managed to stay friends through everything – wars could have that effect.
They were sitting on his bed, Percy leaning against the wall with a bag of chips and Rachel doodling absentmindedly, when Percy leaned over, concerned.
“What?” she demanded.
He rubbed his thumb over his lip worriedly. “You’re still hung up on that girl?”
Rachel whipped her head up, her eyes bulging out of her head. How did he know? Her mouth went dry.
He nudged his chin towards her sketchbook. “The girl you’re drawing – does it mean something? Is it a prophecy after all?”
Rachel breathed a sigh of relief, feeling her shoulders relax again. She hadn’t realized what she’d been doing. She looked down at her pencil, which was outlining poise shoulders.
“Oh. That. I don’t know what it means.”
His eyebrows knit together. “Is she a demigod?” he asked. “Or a goddess, maybe?”
“Maybe.” She shrugged. Then blushed, though she didn’t know why. She wondered why Percy asking about the girl made her so nervous.
“Should we tell Chiron?”
Rachel’s eyes widened. “No!” She caught herself. Why was she so worked up? “I mean, I don’t think it’s relevant. There’s no point worrying him.” The girl wasn’t a threat, Rachel was sure. And the visions felt personal, somehow. She didn’t think they were meant to be shared.
Percy was eyeing her suspiciously, so Rachel stole a fistful of Cheetos.
“Hey!”
Rachel smiled disgustingly around her mouthful.
Percy shoved her, nearly pushing her off the bed. Rachel leaped to her feet enthusiastically and called across the hall, “Sally, your son’s using some colorful language!”
Sally answered back a distracted “Uh huh”, and Percy and Rachel both burst into laughter.
They spent the rest of the afternoon teasing each other in circles, avoiding discussing hard themes. They’d had enough of those for a lifetime. For the moment, they were just teenagers, just friends hanging out, and the end of the world was a thing of the past.
Rachel was having such a good time, she almost forgot something was horribly wrong.
***
Percy recognized the girl. He didn’t know where he knew her from, or when. But he had the strange feeling he had seen her before, in a distant memory.
Maybe he was wrong. He had to be wrong.
***
He wasn’t.
When they first came face to face, he didn’t know it was her. He didn’t know anything at all. Not even himself.
But slowly, he remembered. Everything. A proud golden-haired girl. A brave satyr. His camp. His mom.
The island. Circe. The pirates.
The paintings.
Rachel saw Reyna, Praetor of Camp Jupiter, figurehead of a stranger demigod camp the likes of which he’d never known, in her visions. What kind of role would Reyna play? Could he even trust her and the romans?
What did it mean?
***
Rachel had a dream that night. A dream the likes of which she hadn’t had in months.
The girl was there, smiling, reaching out to Rachel with tender eyes. A small laugh escaped her lips, and everything felt right, real.
But then the dream turned nasty. The girl’s hand melted away. Her form blurred, falling apart, dissipating into mist. Through the girl’s disappearing shape, Rachel saw Annabeth, gripping a cliff’s ledge. Her knuckles were bloodied, and her ankle was enclosed in a bubble-wrap cast. Something wet and slimy was stuck to her leg, and it was pulling, dragging her into the abyss. Annabeth screamed. She kept screaming, crying out, the sound reverberating in Rachel’s eardrums.
Percy’s terrified face appeared over the edge. He reached over, straining until he could just graze the ends of Annabeth’s fingers. Over his head loomed a statue, its face mirroring Percy’s fear.
A second later Percy and Annabeth were falling into Tartarus.
Then the vision switched again, and she saw the dream girl once more, now flying through dark clouds on a caramel-colored Pegasus. Both of them looked ragged. The girl’s toga was ripped, her braid a greasy rope of matted hair along her back. She wore a determined expression, but she looked desperate, scared. Rachel thought there were tears trailing down her cheeks, but she wasn’t close enough to tell for sure.
Rachel woke up in a sweaty heap, a name reverberating in her head, over and over. She leapt out of bed and ran out of her cave’s entrance. Something terrible was happening.
***
That evening, a note appeared in the dining hall’s sacrificial flames.
Connor didn’t know what to make of it, but he brought it to Rachel like it requested. It asked her to meet with Reyna, praetor of a place called Camp Jupiter, and convince her to cross the Mare Nostrum to retrieve the Athena Parthenos and bring it back to Camp Half-Blood. The note, written on a crumpled napkin, was signed Love, Annabeth.
It was time for Rachel to meet the girl who couldn’t escape her visions.
It was time for Rachel to meet the girl of her paintings and dreams.