Chapter Text
The light's too bright.
Estelle winces and moves her head to the side. Literally, fuck Will. He's not supposed to be training the kids this early. Or this close to the barracks.
She tries to blink open her eyes, but screaming hot sunlight burns her retinas. She closes them again, too blind to describe anything she saw.
"Will Solace," she mutters, "You gods damned asshole."
Why does her voice hurt?
Scratch that, why does everything hurt?
Something's wrong.
"You're ok," a voice says from above her. Will Solace, though something sounds off in his voice. "We've got you. Everything's fine."
Estelle's getting the feeling that there's something very important going on, something that she should be looking at, something that she should remember. A question nags at her, something she can't quite articulate.
"Why..." She manages. Ow. She tries to open her eyes again, but that light...
"Tell Tony to lay off the glowlights," she says. It feels like she's slicing her throat into ribbons, but communicating is the only thing that's going to get her out of this current fuckery. "Or Tanya. Or whoever's doing it."
A beat. Someone, Will presumably, squeezes her hand. "Who?"
Estelle frowns. "Tony. Tanya. Your sibs?"
Someone shifts beside her; Estelle can catch the sound with practiced hearing. It sounds like she's on...ground? "I...I'm sorry, I think you have me confused with someone else..."
That's when it hits her.
Tony and Tanya don't have blue behind them.
And the sky...
Estelle's eyes fly open, adrenaline helping her keep them there. Her eyes are still marginally useless, though, so she tries to pick her left arm up and...
It feels like I've been blown apart and put back together. Badly.
She stiffens. She's felt this way before. Been through this wake-up call before.
Things are starting to come back in fragments.
She blinks, but the light is still blinding. Figures; the first time she's seen a clear sky in two years and she can't see well enough to enjoy it. "Brys...Abby..."
"Who..."
Gods damn it. "You're not my Will," she manages.
Because he isn't. She left him behind; ripped apart the timeline so he didn't exist anymore. Well, she didn't, but...
Brys. Abby.
"There should have been a man," she says, quickly. "A man and a woman, who landed near me. Are they..."
Don't let go, Brys had warned. Estelle had tried. But the vortex had ripped her away from him with the strength of a thousand gods and...
Holy Tartarus. The fact that she's still alive right now is a gift from time itself.
She catches the flicker of movement out of the corner of her eye, but her vision, much like everything else, is returning in patches. She can barely see out of flashes of color and glare.
"I'm time-blind," she says. "You have to..."
"Chiron's coming."
Annabeth. Estelle chokes.
They made it. They fucking did it.
"What's wrong?" Will asks. "Are you hurt?"
Actually, yes, she hurts everywhere. Her sense of touch is coming back with the jolt of thousands of needles under her skin. A pervasive sense of wrongness fills her as if all of her nerves connected at the wrong junctions. As if she were never meant to be lying in this location, time-blind, not entirely mobile, talking to a dead woman and a man who might as well be some days.
(Probably because she's not.)
But that's not why tears are leaking out of her eyes. That's not why she's suddenly tense. "Annabeth..."
She's three years old and perched on Annabeth's shoulders, Percy's hand steadying her back. She's seven and Annabeth is teaching her the alphabet, greek and English. She's nine and learning how to knife fight. She's fifteen and telling Annabeth that she wants to be a Protector.
She's twenty-two, and she's watching a house burn to ashes.
Everything feels hazy, suddenly, and her sense of touch recedes. She can't feel Will's hand in hers, anymore, even as she's certain it's there.
When she tries to open her eyes, they crack open only a hair, and everything is so blurred she can't even watch it move.
"Mortal," she says through numb, bloated lips. "You can't let.."
Gods, she's so tired, isn't she? Continuing to talk is just astronomical amounts of effort. She can finish her sentence later, she's sure. Just a second, she's out of breath. Just a second.
"Annabeth!"
Nothing.
When she wakes, her sight is fuzzy, but mostly returned.
Estelle wakes alone in an infirmary untouched by war. Well, no-- she corrects herself. She knows the stories. It's just so bad where she comes that she sometimes forgets how many apocalypses her brother and everyone else averted before hell came for them all.
Estelle props herself up on her forearms, still feeling her muscles pull. Gods, how long has it been? The last time she traveled, she'd only been time-blind for twenty minutes. Twenty terrifying minutes, but twenty minutes. And she'd only passed out for two.
Based on the way light is casting through the tent, she'll wager it's been more than twenty minutes. But that might be the time-blindness talking.
Weapons. Estelle checks her arm, cursing mildly as she does so. They took her knife.
They did not, however, take Riptide out of her pocket. Probably because they didn't think there could be two.
Of course, this isn't a war zone. At least if they made it back as far as Estelle thinks. So why the hell does she care that they took her knife?
"You look lost, child."
Estelle sighs in relief. "Chiron." Chiron she can handle. Percy or Annabeth probably would have broken her, though Will would have been fine if bizarre. Rachel...
actually, Rachel might have been worse than Percy or Annabeth, but Estelle doesn't realistically believe they would send Rachel.
When she looks to Chiron, he cocks his head to the side. Or at least, she thinks he does. Maybe the time-blindness isn't as gone as she thought. "We seem to have met," he says. "But I don't quite..."
"remember?" Estelle finishes. She sighs. "What year is it?"
"Did you injure your head?"
Estelle shakes her head. It was a hard fall (probably; she actually doesn't remember anything beyond Brys's hand slipping out of her own, and even that's fuzzy), but any concussion she may or may not have is going to hide itself in the time realignment symptoms. Probably. But that's beside the point. "Chiron," she says quietly. "Please."
She imagines the look he gives her -- brows furrowed in confusion, but full of understanding. "It's 2012," he tells her.
Estelle's heart stops. "I'm sorry, what?"
They were aiming for the past. They were.
But, 2030. 2025 at most. Just before the worst of it.
In 2012...
"Oh gods. Oh styx. Di immortales. I..." Estelle swallows several more curses her mother would be less than pleased to hear about and looks at her hands. She places them into fist, her eyes focused on the fuzzy brown line on her forearm that she knows to be her sixteen-year-old scar. The one she got protecting Abby. It helps.
"I...there was supposed to be a girl and a boy with me. The girl, she's short, she's white and blonde and she has the most ridiculous rainbow glasses and the guy is tall, he's black with short curly hair and a scar up his neck and..."
Chiron stops her. "You were found alone," he says. "I'm so sorry."
Estelle swallows. Oh.
She's lived through a thousand FUBARed plans, but this one kind of takes the cake.
"I can't believe I let go," she says, not realizing she spoke aloud.
"Let go of what?" Chiron asks.
Estelle closes her eyes. Takes a deep breath.
"What's your name?" Chiron asks.
Estelle knows what she wants to answer.
"Lane," she says instead.
Elaine is the first name that comes to mind, so yeah, that'll do.
She tries to walk to the council meeting, but two steps from the bed she collapses in a heap. Her legs are responding to her fine, but just don't hold and shake when she falls.
So some enterprising camper from only the gods know which cabin (probably Apollo) grabs her a wheelchair that hasn't been modified for Chiron's escapades and takes her over instead.
Estelle clasps shaking hands in her lap and fervently wishes for Abby. She's comfortable in front of groups of children, but Abby's the charismatic one.
(What Estelle fails to realize, until she's rolled into the war council, is that this is entirely a group of children).
The last war council meeting she'd been to before camp fell, it had been about Ayla's quest. There had still been the jokes and the laughing (if subdued, because Ayla's quest had honestly been their Last Fucking Shot), but the youngest head counselor in there had been the 17-year-old son of Thanos who'd proven himself in battle two months prior. She thinks the youngest here is probably fourteen if that. Which wouldn't sound like a huge difference, except Estelle taught middle school for two years and did half of her teacher training at New Rome High.
And, admittedly, Estelle knows this is an improvement from before the Titan war, a fact that she Does Not Want to think about.
She inclines her head at the war council, avoiding several sets of eyes. "It's an honor," she says, but her voice sounds like sandpaper hit it. She winces.
There are several beats. Finally, Annabeth asks, "Who are you? What are you doing here?"
Oh.
This is an interrogation.
That's...expected.
"This wasn't supposed to happen," Estelle says, and then she winces, because she wasn't supposed to say that out loud.
"What wasn't?"
This time it's Piper, and it's surprisingly gentle.
Estelle's heart starts to race. She can't be too discrete, because Piper would probably charmspeak it out of her. She can't say too much, because they won't believe her and it would probably be a hot mess of a disaster anyway.
She needs Abby. Or gods, Brys, who's been on the council since he literally came to fucking camp. Or Percy or Annabeth or...
She starts to mutter the Protector's Oath in Ancient Greek, then Latin, trying to calm herself.
I am a Protector. I dedicate my life to the safety of others. I serve as the first port of the journey and the final safeguard. I believe that to protect my charge is not only to protect the sanctity of their life, but all the good they will do in the future. I accept the privilege and duty of the trust placed in me by my charges, fellow protectors, the gods, and the Fates. To that end, I take this vow. I will not falter in the face of fear; when threats come, I will place myself in the line of fire. I will use both my courage to fight and my wisdom to know when the fight is necessary. I will never allow any hero or protector to fight alone, unless such is the will of the Fates. I will use every resource I have at my disposal to protect the safety of my charges, up to and including my life. I am a Protector. May I always do my duty.
When she looks up, every counselor is the room is staring at her.
I will not falter in the face of fear.
"I wasn't supposed to come here," she admits, rolling her shoulders back. "We wanted to go to a place where you would recognize me. A time when you would know why we came. This is too early."
Annabeth shifts, like something in Estelle's language is making her think. Probably because Annabeth is brilliant and Estelle isn't actually trying to hide the most important bits.
"What do you mean by too early?" Leo asks. "I mean, it's not like you time traveled or something..."
Estelle's face says more than Estelle could actually say.
"That's not possible."
It's Chiron who speaks now, an accepted expert on mythological lore seeing as he's lived through most of it. Estelle shakes her head.
"It wasn't possible," she says. "Right now the person who will do it is, like, a year old. But there is someone who has that power."
"Not you," Annabeth says. "You told us you were mortal."
Did she? Estelle's kind of glad they caught that, although it explains her not being dead right about now. Estelle shakes her head. "No. Not me. It's my friend, Brys."
"That's not a demigod power," a teenager on her left answers. It's someone she doesn't recognize.
Estelle winces. "He's not...exactly a demigod. But that's kind of beside the point. He's not evil, if that's what you're worried about." She takes a deep breath. I will not falter in the face of fear. "Look, let's just...get this out of the way, ok? I'm from the year 2038. I came back in time to prevent an apocalyptic event that starts building in about 2030 and becomes an actual end-of-the-world threat in 2036. But, like I said, we meant to go back to when everything started happening. This is way too early to prevent anything."
She pointedly doesn't look at Percy and Annabeth. Can't, really. Instead, she stares at a point on the table and keeps talking.
"Most of you are dead. Some of you I don't recognize, so I don't know for sure. But a lot of the most powerful demigods in my time are sitting in this room, and a lot of you died in the first waves."
Unbidden, the image of a burning house comes to mind. Estelle shoves it away, hard.
When threats come, I will place myself in the line of fire.
"How...time travel shouldn't be possible," Annabeth says.
Estelle doesn't look up. "It isn't, exactly. It's more like ripping fate apart and starting over."
Chiron stiffens in his corner of the room. "How could you ever...?"
Estelle snaps. "The mist failed us, Chiron! The gods failed us."
She stands, her legs surprisingly steady. She doesn't notice. All she can do is glare at the centaur, the man who advocated for her to come to camp, the man who was just as much a mentor to her as he was Percy's. She can't breathe, but she barely notices that too. "Have you ever wondered what would happen if monsters started attacking mortals? If mortals started truly seeing, even those with fuzzy vision? Have you? Have you thought about what they would do if they found out demigods exist, that demigods live among them? Do you know what it's like to lose the protection of being considered a myth?"
Chiron opens his mouth to speak, but things just come pouring out of Estelle. "Do you know what it's like to watch nearly everyone you love die, killed by the people they were trying to protect? Or watch Camp fall knowing that all you can do is try to get as many people out as you can? Do you know what it's like to have maybe thirty, forty demigods left of hundreds? Huh? Do you know how fucking desperate you have to be to come up with a plan like ripping the timeline apart and starting over?"
"My world is over. Gone. It was over before Brys even used his power. It wasn't even Western Civilization fading, it was everything fading. My world died."
She stares at Chiron. "I am a Protector," she says, this time in English, and he flinches. "I did my duty. And don't you dare judge me until you understand what we lived through."
Estelle tilts to the side. Catches herself on the table, heaving breaths.
Silence.
Estelle twists herself over, sits back in the chair, and puts her head in her hands.
Oh yeah. She needs Abby.
"Any more questions?" She asks instead.
It turns out they do not, in fact, have any more questions.
Which is probably a good thing, because when Estelle asks to leave, they let her.
The time-realignment is going, if slower than Estelle would like. She can walk on her own by using the chair as a walker and taking a break every several paces, which is how she manages to get to the lake.
This lake...
Gods, this world is so pure. The sky...she'd forgotten how blue it was, especially at camp. How the sun reflected in the water. How the greenery smelled.
Her eyes are back to 20/20 vision, so everything is sharp and real. For a moment, she forgets that she's separated from her friends, that no one she loves knows who she is, that she's going to have to prevent an apocalypse. She focuses on drinking it all in.
There's no stink of death, no haze in a sunless sky. She barely wants to blink because it would force her to stop staring at the world.
Gods. Abby would love this.
Suddenly, the world isn't so consuming.
There's a lot of people who should be here, instead of Estelle. It's not like Estelle has a negative self-image, or something, but...
I will use every resource I have at my disposal to protect the safety of my charges, up to and including my life.
For the first time in a long time, Estelle leans her head against her hands and sobs.
On her left hand, a golden ring glints in the sunlight.