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Chapter Text

He awoke to the shattering of glass.

His skull throbbed. A wire of razor-sharp pain traced the bumps and folds of his brain tissue, snaking down into his brainstem, as if a hand had thread a sewing needle down a delicate, singular path. The sensation presented itself in all its incredible, awful detail. He should not be able to feel it this intensely, this precisely. The cord’s hum of energy was fading quickly. He imagined circuitry: a simple lightbulb being fed more and more electricity from a generator, glowing brighter and brighter with dangerous heat until it bursts, and the wire cools. This is how he felt now. Something had broken inside his head, along this serpentine course from cortex to hippocampus, and all he had left was an unclosed circuit.

He blinked stars out of his vision and his surroundings came into focus. He lay on his side in a courtyard of stone tile. A U-shaped mansion loomed around him, a foreboding structure of timber and red bricks burnt to a husk of its former glory. In front of him was an empty reflecting pool, and beyond that, a towering redwood forest that made the chateau seem a minuscule fossil buried within.

He heard the crunch of glass underfoot and his body shocked itself into action almost automatically. On his toes, crouched, ready to fight...or flight. On the mansion’s wraparound porch, eyeing him from the debris of a freshly-destroyed window pane, was a wolf taller than any human being. She stood proudly, wind glancing off her tawny fur, eyes shining like quicksilver. He did not know how he knew the wolf was a she. He just did.

She spoke to him, her voice radiating directly into his mind. It made his head ache again, the soundwaves reverberating off his sensitive nerve connections.

“What is your name, child?”

The she-wolf stalked around the mansion walls, sizing him up. A simple question. The easiest question, actually. And yet he struggled to recall. At last, he pinpointed the word hovering around the edges of the memories singed from his brain.

“Percy.”

“Percy,” the she-wolf repeated. She smiled, or at least, what he thought was a smile, the way her lips pulled back to reveal her monstrous incisors.

“I have never met a demigod so old at the time of our first encounter.” The wolf prowled around him and inhaled his scent. “And you reek of power yet untapped. I can smell it in your blood. It is woven into the sinews of your musculature. Divine meat from the gods to feed my pack. How have you managed to survive this long, young godling?”

Percy kept his eyes on her canines. He reminded himself wolves are carnivorous.

“I don’t know,” Percy replied. And he did not. He did not know anything. She called him godling. He did not know enough about his life, or the world, to confirm or deny that statement.

“The Roman gods live above us, among us. Rome faded but its ideas flourished, its patron deities immortalized. Their children carry on their legacies. Mortal and immortal blood fused to create you. Half-man, half-god.”

Percy blinked. Half-god? Roman? This did not seem plausible, but he believed it deep in his chest. After all, the only pieces of information he had about his life were that his name was Percy and he was currently talking to a wolf.

“Why am I here?” he asked. “Where am I?”

“This place is sacred to us, the start of a hero’s journey. For you, it is only temporary,” the wolf began. “The Romans, and my pack, only accept the strong.”

Percy heard shuffling all around him. Wolves, smaller than the one in front of him, emerged from the wreckage of the house. Others crept in from the edge of the forest, cracking twigs under their paws. He wondered if they could smell fear. The she-wolf paced away from him.

“As a godling, your destiny is to serve the legion. I will train you on your pilgrimage, much as I did with Romulus and Remus. But first, you must prove that you are worthy of my time, and of the empire Romulus built.”

A growl emanated from deep within the she-wolf’s throat, which came out as a furious snarl. Her pack barked and howled, breaking the stillness of the forest. Percy sensed danger. The hairs on the back of his neck stood upright. He slowly backed away, towards the empty reflecting pool.

The she-wolf turned to him and narrowed her eyes. She launched herself on her hind legs directly towards him. Percy scrambled back, tripping over the edge of the reflecting pool and falling on his behind. His right hand instinctively patted the pocket of his jeans, but there was nothing there. His head throbbed in retaliation.

He let his body go on autopilot. The wolf pounced and Percy dove to the side. She barely missed him with her claws as she skidded across the dilapidated tiles. Percy stood up and ran the other direction, back towards the old relic of a house. He could hear the she-wolf in hot pursuit.

The other wolves did not bother him as he ran onto the porch. He needed to buy himself time. How was he supposed to fight a wolf bare-handed? He had no weapon. His hand drifted towards his right pocket again, but he thought better of it. Percy glanced behind him. The she-wolf was bounding up the other side of the porch, closing in quickly. He jumped through the broken window and into the mansion.

From what he saw of it, the interior was shoddy after years of decay. Old-looking furniture slept under layers of dust, ash, and fallen floorboards from the stories above. Percy hoped the second floor was stable. At least for him and not a seven-foot-tall wolf. He took the grand staircase three steps at a time.

Up the stairs, he rounded a corner as the she-wolf came crashing through the downstairs parlor wall. Her voice in his head drowned out his pulsing heartbeat and shallow breaths.

“I expect more than running from you, young one. Who is your parentage? Lovelorn Apollo was a mighty sprinter, chaser of Daphne.” The wolf was up the stairs in two leaps. Her lip curled. “Perhaps you’re our replacement Jupiter spawn, the way you take to the winds.”

She spotted Percy, standing on the precipice of an open window. She laughed and charged. Percy inhumanly launched off the second story. There was nowhere to go but the cold, hard ground.

Time seemed to slow down. He felt a claw graze his back, gently tearing at his t-shirt. His trajectory barreled towards the dry reflecting pool. Percy felt a familiar tug in the pit of his stomach. His abdomen tightened.

Percy had a sixth sense. The plumbing underneath the pool was old, but intact. It formed a lattice underneath the tile that led to a single hole in the middle, probably intended to be a fountain, and a drain in each corner of the rectangle. The residual water, trapped inside the pipes for decades, erupted out of the drains. The pressurized blast knocked the she-wolf out of the air in a perfect arc over Percy’s head. Percy tumbled to the ground, breathing hard.

The pack got restless, some inching forward towards where Percy lay on the ground. The she-wolf hobbled up, nursing a paw. She growled, though not at Percy, but for her pack members to stand down. The other wolves whined and sat on their tails. She crept towards him, but he sensed she was finished with the fight.

“A son of Neptune,” the she-wolf grimaced. “An omen, but an omen that has earned his training. We leave immediately.”

The wolf stomped past him. The pack howled and darted into the forest. Percy clambered to his feet. The she-wolf’s voice spoke in his head one more time.

“Come along, demigod. You will be a great warrior. You will restore the legion’s honor.”

Lupa, the she-wolf’s name was. Percy was her curiosity and understandably so. A sixteen-year-old demigod. Amnesiac. Athleticism and fighting prowess of a trained fighter, but no training to speak of. Impressive control over water for a boy who discovered his father was the sea god a few days prior. She watched Percy as he bathed in the creek.

Percy spent most of his bath playing with the water. Testing his limits. He raised a sphere of water a foot off the surface, just with his mind and the molding motions of his hands. He hurled it with deadly accuracy at a pinecone perched on a boulder. He stood up, his feet sunk in the silt. He lifted a foot up and placed it on the surface of the creek. The water molecules coalesced, creating a surface tension that he could walk on like a messiah. He jumped up and down on it, seeing how much force he could apply. The creek held him up.

He stepped onto the earth and shook himself dry like a wet dog. His long, black hair matted his forehead. He noticed Lupa watching him.

“You are taking this all in stride, young one,” Lupa said. “Your fate does not scare you?”

“I can’t explain it,” Percy said. “I feel like I’ve looked in a mirror, then suddenly become my reflection.”

Lupa cocked her head, puzzled.

“Explain.”

Percy’s head short-circuited again.

“My powers. These feelings. They’re familiar to me, like I’m learning to process them all for a second time.”

“You believe you have been taught before?”

“I—” he winced. “I don’t know.”

“If so, their teachings are not satisfactory. You are undisciplined. You do not know how to operate as part of a pack. There will be many times when you will not be in charge and you will need to listen to your alpha. A good legionnaire accepts their lot and does their duty. No one appreciates a lone wolf.”

This did not sit well with Percy. Again, he could not explain it. For all he knew, he had always been alone. He wanted to do things his way, or not at all.

“Come,” Lupa stated. “You will join the hunting party.”

Deep in the woods, the pack silently crept to a small clearing, the center of which held an imposing rock formation. The creek ran through here, bubbling over the pebbled soil. Lupa and Percy carefully approached through a break in the trees. Lupa had taught him to avoid twig snaps as if they were landmines.

“Do you see our prey?”

Percy scanned the area. It was empty save for the rock formation and the stream. He craned his neck and saw them. A small family of mountain lions dozed upon the boulders, sunning themselves in light beams broken by tree branches.

“Wolves eat mountain lions?” Percy asked.

“We eat whatever meat comes our way. Mountain lion is bitter, but it will do.” Lupa nudged Percy forward. “Go paralyze our dinner.”

“Paralyze our—” Percy stopped. “What?”

Percy knew better than to argue, thus he crept his way towards the idle mountain lions. He held his hand out towards the creek. Its flow stopped, waiting for Percy’s command.

“Do not use the water,” Lupa spoke in his mind. “Rely on your spirit.”

Percy rolled his eyes and let the stream resume its course. As he took another step, the pack howled. He whirled on Lupa, who smirked. So much for the element of surprise, Percy thought. He looked back to the rocks and, sure enough, the mountain lions were awake and on high alert. Unfortunately for Percy, that meant they spotted him as well.

The largest cat hopped down first, followed by the other three, prowling towards Percy as if he were a succulent deer. He probably smelled like one, given his time exclusively in the wilderness. He took a fearful glance at Lupa. She was stone-faced. Paralyze them? With what?

The mountain lions quickly surrounded him, growling and sharpening their claws on the rock, splitting Percy’s eardrums as would scraping a chalkboard. Percy tried to look intimidating. He picked up a stone and threw it at the nearest cougar. The animal flinched, but advanced unfazed. The lead lion lept.

Percy was not fast enough. The mountain lion pounced on Percy and swiped at his chest. He could feel the impact. It hurt, but oddly, not enough as it should have. Percy rolled and threw the cougar off of him as the others joined in on the assault. Percy kicked one off his right leg, but by then the first lion was back in the scrap. Claws scratched his face, his eyes, his arms. He cried out. He could barely hear Lupa over the snarls and noises of combat.

“Sad,” she said. “I thought he showed promise.”

Percy roared in anger. His gut tightened and a battering ram of water washed the mountain lions off of him. Breathing hard, he stood up. There was not a scratch on his body. His shirt was torn to shreds, but his skin was completely intact. He looked to Lupa. She glared at him, calculating equations underneath her stern exterior. He did not have time to process this, as the mountain lions were closing in again, and angrier. Paralyze them. Those were Lupa’s instructions.

Percy got down on his hands and knees. He felt silly, but it was the first idea to pop into his head. With his best impression of a feral wolf, he growled. The mountain lions paused, then kept advancing. Percy growled again. They advanced. As the largest cougar came within an arm’s reach of him, Percy let out a snarl so vicious, with a glare so full of malice, the mountain lions stopped. Their pupils dilated and they each took a step back. Percy did it again. And again. The lions cowered before him. Paralyze them with fear.

Lupa barked and a few members of her pack went in for the kill. The mountain lions disappeared under a cyclone of claws and wolf teeth. Percy turned to the she-wolf.

“You failed.”

“What?” Percy yelled.

“You utilized the water. You did not follow orders...and I do not know yet what to make of your iron skin.”

Percy looked at his feet, mud-caked and gnarly from walking miles in the redwood forest. The she-wolf was right. He did not do what was expected. A heaviness fell over him.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered.

Lupa pursed her lips.

“A real Roman never apologizes,” she stated. “Come. You will be in the legion’s hands soon.”

Percy and the wolves stood on the golden hills overlooking the encampment of the Roman legion. To one side, an authentic Roman military camp was set up. Small figures in clunky Roman armor patrolled the dirt paths of the barracks. On the other, a near-exact replica of the city of Rome stood tall on the horizon, complete with a Colosseum and aqueducts criss-crossing the urban center. Beyond that, stone temples perched on the highest hill in the valley. Even further, Percy could see the fog of San Francisco obscuring the Golden Gate Bridge.

“This is the home of the Twelfth Legion Fulminata. They call it Camp Jupiter, after the king of the gods. It is in every respect a military operation, though I suppose the children enjoy branding it as a summer camp.” Lupa paused and looked fondly at Percy. “You will find a home here. Monsters cannot breach the magic borders.”

“Monsters? You didn’t say anything about monsters,” Percy said.

Lupa smirked.

“You didn’t think Neptune gave you powers just to harass the wildlife, did you? No, great gods require great threats.”

Percy paled at that.

“And heroes to stop them. That is my eternal purpose. Bring the best of the best to defend Rome. Now go on. Prove yourself an omen. Prove yourself a good one.”

The wolf nudged Percy forward with her snout. He took a look back at the pack that kept him company for the past week, taught him how to survive in the wilderness and in battle on sheer grit. He awkwardly waved goodbye and descended towards the river circumscribing the camp.

Chapter Text

The water boiled around his big toe.

On the banks of the Little Tiber, barefooted Percy made to cross the river. The second his left foot submerged, he recoiled from the searing heat blistering his skin. He examined his foot, pink with inflammation. Iron skin, Lupa had called it when the cougars’ claws glanced off of him without even so much as a scratch. His foot felt different after its contact with the Tiber. Vulnerable, like a newborn’s. He knelt down and selected a sharp, pointed stone from the embankment.

Percy swiped the arrowhead across the flat of his foot. Inklings of blood spread from the shallow cut. He flexed his toes and the gash opened a bit wider. Red spilled from the wound. Percy dipped his foot in the water again and the current whisked away the mess. The water did not burn him anymore. Actually, it felt nice.

“Child,” a woman’s voice whistled in the wind. A sprinkling of sand blew onto his anchored foot. He turned. Not a soul breathed on the hillside, not a wolf in sight.

“Lupa?” he asked no one.

A horn sounded. He looked over to the camp. A small group of Roman soldiers were headed his way. Percy sensed they were not unfriendly, given the casual gaits in which they walked, even in their clunky armor. They were likely sentries, used to picking up the demigods Lupa deposited at the boundary line.

Percy knew he had to cross the river to meet them, but he chafed at having to douse the rest of his body in the burning river. This must be another trial. Another test. He planted his left foot in the shallow water. Painless. He noticed the self-inflicted cut on his foot had disappeared, leaving behind a stark white scar, as he warily dipped the toes of his right. The water sizzled at his touch. There, balancing on one leg, Percy knew he couldn’t take it inch by inch. It had to be all or nothing. Without another thought, Percy dove into the blue.

It never occurred to him to close his eyes. That did not seem like something he usually did. The water, his safe haven, betrayed him. It scorched nearly every inch of his body, save for his left foot and a spot on his lower back. Something tugged at that spot, just above his pelvis, like a bungee cord jerking him towards the surface. In his writhing, he swatted the water behind him, as if he expected to snap an invisible string there connecting him to something, someone on the river’s edge.

He kicked forwards, willed the water to propel him, and spluttered to the surface on the opposite bank. Percy crawled onto the shore, expelling shaky breaths like vomit. The Roman soldiers were there, grabbing his steaming forearms and helping him to his feet. He could only imagine how bloodshot his eyes were. There were five of them, all around or below his age. They were strapped into golden breastplates and chainmail armor, worn over purple t-shirts. He felt self-conscious about his own orange one. The sensation was fleeting.

“What happened to you?” the soldier clutching his forearm asked, examining his skin.

“What happened to me?” Percy retorted. “Your magic boiling river happened.”

The sentries glanced at each other.

“What are you talking about?” he asked. Percy looked between them.

“The river. It just cooked me al dente.”

One of the soldiers grunted.

“The river’s magic all right,” she said, then kicked her foot in the water for good measure. “But it shouldn’t burn you.”

Maybe the river wasn’t a trial at all, but a line of defense. Maybe someone like him, whatever that meant — son of Neptune, something else — wasn’t supposed to be there.

“Maybe he’s a fire tamer. Pyrokinetic,” another suggested. “Some sons of Vulcan are known to have that power, but it’s almost never good news.”

Another omen, Percy thought. Apparently some demigod arrivals were only harbingers of worse events to unfold.

“What’s wrong with fire?” Percy asked, grasping at straws of Roman history he held. “Didn’t someone fiddle while Rome burned?”

“We don’t like to talk about it.”

The one holding his arm looked him in the eye.

“Did the she-wolf clue you into your godly parentage?” he asked. Percy had a sudden urge to conceal himself.

“No,” Percy said convincingly. “She didn’t.”

“Should we take him to Reyna?” one of the other soldiers spoke up. The others shuffled nervously.

“It’s rare a new recruit gets a private audience with the praetor, but a situation like this...” he looked him up and down. “What’s your name?”

“Percy.”

“Last name?”

He struggled to connect his first name to any other words in his vocabulary.

“Just Percy.”

The legionnaires laughed.

“Okay, Just Percy,” the one for some reason still holding his arm said. “Welcome to Camp Jupiter. It’s time for you to meet our leadership.”

Reyna, the legion’s first-in-command, sat across from him in a spacious private office. The air was drafty and sound slightly echoed off of the marble floors. Translucent mosaics painted the ceiling, sunlight glittering through the miniature forms of Romulus and Remus, Aeneas, gladiators in battle. Two metallic hound dogs flanked her on either side, one silver and one gold. Their ruby eyes glittered with mischief.

The praetor was at ease in her high-backed chair, twiddling with her lengthy black braid and the fabric of her purple cloak. She was around his age. Percy thought she was beautiful. She had a Carribean look to her, probably Puerto Rican or Cuban. Considering the stress lines carved into her cheekbones, Percy thought she deserved a vacation to whichever island her family called home.

“Percy.” His name curled off her tongue with a hint of suspicion and distaste. “You are sixteen years old?”

A pleasurable feeling buzzed behind his forehead. It felt good to remember something.

“Yes.”

“That is very old for a new recruit. Impossibly old,” she said. “And for someone who practically emanates power and...strength. It’s odd.”

“That’s what the she-wolf told me.”

“How have you managed to survive all this time? Until you met Lupa?”

“I don’t know,” he shrugged, despondent.

“Where were you before the Wolf House?”

“I don’t know.”

She looked at her dogs, like she was expecting a reaction out of them.

“How did you get to the Wolf House?”

“I don’t know.”

Percy was getting exasperated with this line of questioning. More precisely, he was exasperated with not knowing the answer to any question someone asked. Reyna continued, a slight inquisitive edge to her voice.

“How do you not know?”

“I woke up there.”

“You woke up there? In a bedroom?”

“No.”

“Would it kill you to include unprompted detail in any of your responses?” Her jaw clenched. “My sentries tell me you’ve hallucinated the Little Tiber boiling. I’d think that would be noteworthy enough for you to bring up with me.”

“That wasn’t a hallucination,” he grumbled.

“The Tiber is a benevolent river. You look fine to me,” she said, and Percy noticed the skin on his arms showed no signs of recent damage. “Are you...well?”

Percy looked left to right.

“What kind of question is that?”

“You have a bit of a flat affect. Evidence of possible delusion. Alogia—”

“Alogia?”

“Poverty of speech,” Reyna explained, which actually did not help Percy understand.

“Look, I get it. I speak poorly. I didn’t go to Eloquency School like you apparently did—”

“Eloquence,” she corrected.

“Eloquency,” Percy doubled down on his neologism. It was the way she addressed him, like she had a decade’s worth of education on him despite being around the same age. He had to admit she was as sharp as a tack, and honestly he did not expect any less from a Rome-trained military commander. Her demeanor caused two competing urges to flare up: one to subserve and the other to subvert her obvious superiority in intelligence and rank. “Anyway. Less big words, please.”

Reyna smiled apologetically.

“I spent a portion of my life stranded on the open sea, Percy. Men go mad on water.” She couldn’t have possibly known he was the son of the ocean god, but her last statement bruised like an indictment. “I’m more familiar with mental illness than most. Have you been hearing voices?”

Percy squirmed in his seat. How did she know about the voice on the riverbank? Then Reyna barked out a laugh.

“I’m just messing with you. I know Lupa communicates telepathically,” she said, startling him. “I don’t think you’re schizophrenic, but I can certainly diagnose you with retrograde amnesia. And a bit of an attitude.”

She smirked, in a way that suggested — maybe? — she wanted to be his friend in spite of the formalities of their first meeting. Percy nervously laughed.

“I’m sorry. My nerves are fried. This week has just been...” He trailed off and glanced at the silver hound. It licked its lips with an aluminum tongue. “A lot to take in.”

Reyna’s eyes softened.

“I understand. It can be difficult adjusting to life as a demigod. I had a difficult time as well, discovering my mother was a war goddess.”

“Athena?” he asked.

“No, no,” she shook her head. “Bellona. The Greeks faded with Greece. Rome subsumed its power when it fell, back in the days of the empire.” She flashed her forearm. Etched into her skin: a large tattoo of the letters SPQR, a crossed sword and torch, and four parallel lines.

“Oh.”

“You really don’t remember anything?” Reyna studied him as she scratched her dogs behind the ears.

“No,” Percy said, with a purposeful finality. Reyna sat back.

“Hm, well, you tell the truth. My dogs see to that,” she said. “You look so familiar to me, too. I can’t explain it. You’d think I’d remember a face like yours.”

Reyna moistened her lips. Percy felt his face heat up. He had not really thought much of himself — it was hard to take the compliment. The two sat there in an awkward silence. The power dynamic between them made him uncomfortable. The praetor broke the quiet.

“How about I give you a tour?”

Reyna walked him out of the principia, a large bank-like building of white marble, onto a crowded pedestrian intersection. The via principalis ran left to right, bordered with authentic Roman buildings in pristine condition, military barracks, and various kiosks, shops, and stands. Ahead of him, the via praetoria ran all the way across an open field to New Rome, the city he saw earlier. Legionnaires milled about, interacting with purple ghost-like entities and fauns: half-men, half-goats. Reyna pressed her hand into his lower back and guided him down the dirt path.

“This is the hub of the Twelfth Legion, as you can tell. Over there are the barracks. We have five cohorts, one of which will claim you at dinner. We care nothing for godly heritage, though you could argue the First and Second care more than they let on about prestige.” She paused, overseeing a group of teenage girls learning archery. “Speaking of which...the river burning you. Is this true?”

Percy felt grateful her metal dogs did not accompany her outside. She must trust him.

“The water nearly evaporated at my touch. It was painful. I assumed it was my final task to enter the camp, to prove my worth.”

Reyna knit her eyebrows.

“No, no one has experienced this at the river before, to my knowledge,” she pondered. “Lupa made no mention of your godly parent?”

“No,” he lied through his teeth. “Though your sentries seemed to have some theories. Vulcan, they said?”

Reyna turned and searched Percy’s eyes.

“God of fire. Potentially. You could have heated up the water. But that doesn’t explain why you were burned. A child of Vulcan with that ability would be immune to high temperatures.”

“Maybe I’m just really hot,” Percy suggested. Reyna rolled her eyes. Percy meant for the joke to be self-deprecating, but she did not seem to disagree. She took his arm again and continued down the path. She looked down at her feet.

“The memory you have left. No faces? No names?”

“I don’t even know my last name. Why?”

Reyna huffed.

“There are supposed to be two praetors. I have been leading by myself for weeks. My partner, he, uh...went missing. His name was Jason.”

She felt Percy’s forehead with the back of her hand.

“I suspect a god’s magic is interfering with your memory. Someone doesn’t want Rome to know where you’ve been. I thought...” she exhaled. “I think you are connected to Jason’s disappearance, somehow. Like you’ve crossed paths. You can’t recall a blonde male, scar on his face?”

A sharp electrical pulse ran through his skull, causing him to wince. Something told him the memory he was trying to access was not what Reyna was looking for, the way it burned white-hot behind his eyes. She spoke of Jason too fondly, too wistfully. Reyna must be lonely, leading the legion by herself.

“No, I’m sorry,” he said. And he was truly sorry. Reyna grimaced and Percy felt guilty he had nothing to offer her except his companionship. She gave him another once-over.

“I suppose you need to bathe, being out in the wilderness all this time. And a new set of clothes.”

Percy wholeheartedly agreed. She smiled wide, the happiest he had seen her since they met.

“Let me show you my favorite spot,” she said.

She nodded her head towards the other end of the via principalis and directed Percy to easily the most ornate, architecturally-magnificent structure on this side of the via praetoria: the Roman bathhouse.

Chapter Text

The bathhouse, practically a monument to water, made his heart swell.

Percy, mouth agape, wondered at the marvel of architecture surrounding him, from its limestone walls to its stone pillars embalmed with liquid gold. The antechamber, the apodyterium Reyna called it, circulated air saturated with a cold humidity. A drip-drip of water cascaded down the marble tiles lining the walls and columns. The praetor and him stood in a short line. Ahead of them, misty female attendants — cloud nymphs — took piles of clothing through a doorway.

“This is where we drop off our clothes,” Reyna stated. Percy freezed.

“We’re not, this isn’t—” he stammered, face beet red. “I get a swimsuit, right?”

Reyna smirked.

“You’re already wearing one.”

“Wha—?”

Percy pulled at the waistband of his jeans. Sure enough, a sapphire-blue swimsuit had replaced his underwear, and he had not even noticed.

“Enchantments,” Reyna explained. She nodded ahead at a pair of girls near the front of the line, flanking either side. They held clipboards and were in deep conversation with the legionnaires just ahead. “There’s a petition going around to reinstate nudity in the bathhouse, to do as the Romans do, so to speak. It’s become...quite a movement.”

Reyna seemed perturbed, for reasons bigger than a divisive dress code rule change. The two of them reached the petitioners. The girl on his right smiled up at Percy.

“Sign here to restore Rome to its former glory,” she said.

You will restore the legion’s honor, Lupa had told him the day she took him under her wing. Percy gathered that this did not mean advocacy for public nudity. He glanced at Reyna for direction.

“I’m praetor. I’m sworn to impartiality until a senate vote. Do whatever you want, probatio,” she said.

Percy looked down at the girl holding the clipboard, skimming the long list of names. This campaign issue seemed so trivial to him. Why had so many vouched for this? Put their pens to paper? She held out a pencil for Percy, and for a split second, gave Reyna side-eye. Ah, he thought, there is a greater dissatisfaction.

“I think I’m gonna have to pass.”

The girl rolled her eyes and moved to bug the person behind him in line.

“The petitioner didn’t seem to like you,” Percy noted. Reyna pursed her lips, creasing them into a thin line.

“I can’t say I’m much of a traditionalist. Neither was Jason.”

At the front of the line, Reyna stripped. She had a deep-violet bikini under her armor. Reyna glanced at him as she pulled her hair out of her braid and shook her tangles out.

“Get a move on,” she motioned.

Percy took off his shirt and kicked off his jeans. His fingers drifted to the base of his neck. Something had been there, a necklace perhaps. He could not remember. The thought escaped him. It didn’t matter. He handed his clothes, which were practically shredded, to the cloud nymphs. They rushed off along with Reyna’s. The praetor led him through a lengthy corridor lit with natural sunlight from the glass panes criss-crossing the ceiling. Passersby amiably greeted, or at its most extreme, saluted, Reyna as they made their way down the hall.

“The Romans took bathing very seriously. They would spend hours here,” she explained. “The tepidarium is for warm water to open your pores. The frigidarium, meaning frigid, as you can imagine, is for closing them. Also good for icing sore muscles.”

She pointed through a foggy glass doorway. This room was darker than the others he had been in, bathed in a blue light. The air allowed to escape was chilly. Mist curled around a large circular pool about fifteen feet across. Four teenagers sat on one end of the pool, chatting. One of them, a boy about a year older than Percy, half-heartedly waved at Reyna, apparently uninterested in the conversation happening around him. He was (predictably) built and tanned a brown as coppery as one of his father’s automaton wires. Thick, dark eyebrows matched the field of black hair that fell flat to the tops of his ears, choppy like he had simply tied it back one day and shorn it off with a quick swipe of a knife. Underneath, his irises glittered like mahogany obsidian.

“Vulcan kids,” Reyna said, catching him staring. “They practically inhabit the frigidarium. All that time in the forge.”

Reyna led him to an archway at the end of the corridor.

“You’re about to see why the baths were the social focal point of Rome.”

Percy appreciated the Romans’ appreciation of a good bath. The main communal bath was gorgeous — a Mediterranean blue shimmering with rainbows and surely some magic. The rectangular portico was constructed of gleaming grey marble. The area itself was open-air. Dozens of Roman demigods splashed and talked in the central pool, as well as more private smaller pools dotted around the edges. Percy could, and wanted to, spend all day here.

Reyna took him to a private pool on the far edge, one much more secluded than the others. He suspected it was for praetor use only. They got some stares as they passed. As soon as Percy sat down in the water, he felt caffeinated. The water brought him back to life, rejuvenating him with energy. It made him restless. He washed his hair, combing through his hair with his fingertips and splashing his face, as Reyna relaxed on the opposite end.

“Does the legion like you?” Percy asked, honestly kind of harshly. Reyna seemed to expect the question.

“Yes, they do,” she smiled softly. “They wouldn’t have elected me praetor if they didn’t. But more recently, there’s been a growing opposition to my leadership — led by Octavian, who I pray you don’t have to meet. He thinks I’m straying too far from Rome’s principles. He didn’t like Jason either, before he disappeared. We were on the same wavelength.”

Reyna scrunched the length of her hair like it was a wet towel.

“He’s been openly campaigning for the open praetor position. I’ve been trying to hold him off for as long as possible, hoping for Jason’s return, but it’s been weeks with no word. I’m beginning to fear he’s—” Reyna stopped herself, but Percy understood. She cared for Jason. They had similar mindsets, similar visions for the legion’s future.

“Sorry, am I making you uncomfortable?” she asked. “I don’t often vent all of my frustrations to a stranger. I guess there’s comfort in talking at an amnesiac. You have nothing to judge me against.”

“No, it’s okay. I understand where you’re coming from,” Percy told her. “You seem competent enough.”

“That’s reassuring.” Reyna rolled her eyes and smiled.

“Though I suspect I’m not just a confidant. You’re grooming me, aren’t you? To be the next praetor.”

“Was I that obvious?” Reyna looked him in the eye.

“I am very good at reading people, Percy,” she said. “It’s a blessing from my mother. I know you don’t remember anything about your life, but I can tell when someone has a good heart. You’re a good listener. And I can tell just by looking at you that you’ve fought in battles before. You’ve seen things.”

“This is my first day, Reyna. How do you expect me to rise to the top of the heap? You’ve been here for years,” Percy said. “And don’t get me wrong, I do want to help.”

“It’s a long shot, I know,” she huffed. “And Octavian is mounting support. But I have more sway than him, I hope. I can vouch for you.”

Percy reluctantly nodded.

“Try to get the Fifth Cohort tonight.”

“I thought the First and Second were the most prestigious?”

“The Fifth is Jason’s,” Reyna said. “If a son of Jupiter can thrive there, so can you.”

In the evening, the cohorts assembled along the via praetoria in their rigid structures and locked shields, each about three to four dozen demigods strong. The Fifth seemed like an afterthought, tucked away towards the back. Percy stood front and center in a new pair of blue jeans and a purple t-shirt. Reyna cantered along the length of the path on a peanut-pigmented pegasus, examining the alignments and taking a mental note of attendance. Her pegasus, oddly, kept craning its neck towards Percy and looking at him bug-eyed, as Reyna fought to keep it under control.

“Soldiers of Rome!” Reyna yelled. “The she-wolf has brought forth a new recruit!”

Percy awkwardly waved. He slipped his hands into his back pockets.

“A late bloomer, by the looks of it,” someone said.

“Scent must have been so weak,” another muttered. “That monsters didn’t notice.”

The crowd snickered. Scent? Percy suddenly felt uncomfortable with the amount of eyes on him. The senior officer of the First Cohort stepped forward and took off his helmet. He was a thin, blonde boy — intimidating through his countenance, not his physicality.

“Welcome, recruit,” he said. “Do you carry letters of reference?”

“Um...no?” Percy replied. He had no idea what those were. The boy’s plastic smile melted.

“Hm,” he thought. “Has your parentage been revealed to you? Whether through the wolf, or perhaps a dream?”

“No,” Percy lied. They already did not like him. He was not about to give them any more ammunition.

“You haven’t drawn up a good case for yourself to be accepted into the First, Percy,” the boy said. His cohort laughed behind him. Percy vehemently disliked him. He knew in a heartbeat that this was Octavian.

“Even if I knew I needed a letter of recommendation to hang out with you, I would’ve saved a tree,” Percy retorted. He glanced at Reyna and she bit her tongue. Octavian scowled.

“Well,” he said coldly. “Rest assured we won’t be offering you an invitation.”

He stepped back into formation, mildly embarrassed. The other cohorts whispered amongst themselves. Reyna shouted to the ranks.

“Centurions! Vouch for the recruit!”

In sequence, the centurions of the Third and Fourth looked to those of the Fifth, like it was the Fifth’s turn to take pity on an abysmal recruit prospect. A taller officer, with dark hair under his helmet and red stains around his lips, reluctantly stepped forward from the Fifth.

“We’ll take him,” he announced. “To stick it to Octavian.”

The officer said it with a meager amount of confidence, knowing full well that recruiting Percy would bring his cohort unwanted attention from the centurion of the First.

“And you second the motion, Gwendolyn?” Reyna asked a girl to the Fifth Cohort officer’s left, wearing a similar amount of medals on her breastplate.

“We accept the new recruit,” she said. Reyna turned her pegasus towards Percy. She had a gleam in her eye.

“The Fifth Cohort is yours. You will become a full member of the Twelfth Legion Fulminata upon completion of one year of devoted service or after performing an act of valor. Serve Rome well,” Reyna said, then broadcast her voice to the entirety of the legion. “Senatus Populusque Romanus!”

The legion repeated her chant with equal fervor and dispersed. The officers from the Fifth Cohort approached him. The girl shook his hand.

“Welcome, Percy,” she said. “My name’s Gwen.”

The boy patted his shoulder.

“Dakota, son of Bacchus.”

Percy closed his eyes and concentrated, trying to dredge up the name. He pointed at Dakota.

“Wine,” he said, pride filling his chest. Dakota grinned meekly.

“Yes, wine. Come on, let’s get you settled in.”

Dakota and Gwen steered him towards the barracks. Inside was nothing special, rows of wooden bunk beds with plain white sheets. Another legionnaire, a tall, bigger Asian guy with the demeanor of a young child, was pulling his sheets off the bed.

“Frank, you’re supposed to be at dinner,” Dakota said. Frank had a nervous energy about him, despite his imposing size.

“Sorry, I forgot to do laundry.”

“You changed your sheets three days ago.”

“...I’m a night-sweater.”

Dakota shook his head and patted a middle bunk.

“Percy, this is yours. Possessions go in the trunks on the floor next to the ladder. Dinner’s at mess hall. Frank will show you. He’s also probatio. Frank, while you’re at it, make sure Percy’s ready for the War Games tomorrow.”

“But—”

“That wasn’t a suggestion,” Dakota said, clearly not wanting to take on the additional responsibility of coddling Percy during his first few days. Him and Gwen made their way out of the barracks, leaving an imperfect silence in their wake. Frank cocked his head as he wadded up a tangle of bedsheets and pillowcases and gave him a weak smile.

“War Games?” Percy asked. Frank looked at him with the cowardice of a lion.

“I hope you’re ready to die,” he choked out.

Chapter Text

The evening of the War Games, layers of grey clouds loomed beyond the valley, interlocking like reptilian scales over the pale orange sky. As Frank led him to the armory to prepare for the night’s activities, Percy could not shake an ominous feeling.

“It’s going to storm later,” he told Frank, keeping in step with Frank’s slightly longer legs.

“Nah,” Frank said. “Rain skirts around the Little Tiber. At least, that’s what Dakota told me. And now that I think about it, I don’t think it’s ever rained here. We are in California.”

They passed the Field of Mars, an open plain renovated each week to host revolving editions of the War Games. At the moment, elephants helped excavate a ditch, bronze plows tied to their rumps. Thunder rumbled in the distance.

“Are you sure?” Percy asked, eyeing the sky.

“Positive. Well, I suppose it could rain,” Frank admitted. “If the gods wanted it to.”

For all of Frank’s nervous energy, he seemed relatively calm when he was alone with Percy. He also knew the armory inside and out, which was surprising. Frank did not seem like one itching to scrap.

The armory was a long brick building off the via praetoria, punctuated with squat arches and a set of metal double doors. The walls overflowed with all sorts of weaponry, meaning the floor space was also a minefield of swords, daggers, and shields. Larger, more brutal weapons hung from the ceiling by chains, like a mace and what looked like a third-century scorpion. The place smelled of rust and dust.

“Let’s get you some armor first, then we can focus on a weapon,” Frank said. He rummaged through a chainlink cage on the far side of the room filled to the brim with golden armored breastplates and feather-plumed helmets. Frank turned back to him.

“Medium?”

Percy shrugged. Frank tossed him some armor as he started explaining how to wear it properly.

“So, you’re going to want to adjust the—” he stopped. “How did you do that?”

“What?” Percy asked, shouldering a strap.

“You put it on perfectly.”

Percy looked down at his chest.

“Oh, uh. Lucky guess?”

Frank looked at him strangely, but decided to let the matter slide. He led him back over to the weapons storage.

“These are all free to take, so, whatever your heart desires.”

Percy cocked an inquisitive brow.

“What do you use?”

“Ah, I’m more of a bow-and-arrow type of guy.”

“Your father’s Apollo?”

“No...Mars, actually,” Frank blushed. His new friend blanched at the mention of his father. For a child of the war god, Frank was shockingly not abrasive or aggressive like Percy would expect. He was sweet. Perhaps this was why Frank felt a rush of embarrassment, the two were nothing alike. Percy decided to drop the matter. He went back to examining his options. Percy uncoiled a whip off a wall hook and cracked it. The tongue of the whip burst into flames, startling him. He looked at Frank uncertainly.

“That’s a spoil-of-war. Monsters carry nasty weapons sometimes.”

Percy gently put it back. He hefted a few swords, but none of them felt right in his grip. Too heavy. Too light. Too curved. Too long. He placed another back onto the rack.

“I don’t like any of these.”

“Well you can’t fight hand-to-hand.”

“Come on, give me something fun.”

Frank chuckled and pointed to a rod on the top shelf, about the length of a javelin. That’s all it was, a rod. A thin, iron cylinder. Percy stood on his tiptoes and batted it onto the floor with a clang. Upon closer inspection, the rod was engraved with intertwining snakes, their mouths open at either end prepared to bite. When he picked it up, the staff shook in his hand and from each viper’s mouth emerged a thick, double-edged blade. Percy looked at Frank and spun it in his hands. It sliced through air with a crisp, whooshing sound. He pondered what it could do to an army...in the right hands.

“I’m on your team, right?” Percy asked.

The Field of Mars had been dug up for trench warfare. The opposing sides each had a trench system dug out in the shape of a capital E, separated by an acre of no-man’s-land so that the letter appeared reflected on itself across the y-axis.

The flags to be captured were placed in plain sight at the rear of each E where the trench branches met, billowing on the high ground behind the back trench. Reyna, on her pegasus, refereed from the skies. Percy convened with the senior officers of the Third, Fourth, and Fifth Cohorts — the de facto worst of the legion — along with Frank and the other legionnaires. A buff, short girl from the Third was speaking.

“The Third will hold the center, as its the shortest, most direct route to the flag,” she said. “Fourth will take the top, Fifth the bottom. Archers — that means you Frank — you all can be on high ground at a safe distance back to pick off people crossing no-man’s-land.”

Dakota, Gwen, and the other centurions shrugged in agreement. Percy spoke up.

“Why isn’t there an attack plan?”

Everyone looked at him. Percy felt hot under the collar.

“This is just defense,” he said.

“I know you’re new here so I’m going to cut you some slack,” the Third Cohort officer said, very seriously. “But you don’t speak when people of higher rank are speaking.”

“How else are we supposed to win?” Percy dared to ask.

The officer ignored him and went back to her discussion, arguing the intricacies of securing the trench. The group broke and Percy got dragged off with the rest of the Fifth towards one end of the E. Frank walked up beside him.

“We’re going to lose,” Percy mumbled.

“We’ve never won,” Frank replied. “The First and Second are a match made in Elysium. The centurions don’t even bother with strategy anymore.”

Percy looked back at the officers still debating defensive measures.

“Well maybe there should be new leadership,” Percy said. Frank nervously glanced around, hoping no one had heard Percy’s comment. He guided Percy by the shoulder.

“Don’t let them hear you say that,” he whispered.

The Fifth Cohort set up along the northernmost trench, digging and burying traps and vials of explosives along the dirt path. Frank and the other archers army-crawled up the banks of the trench and lodged their quivers in the soil. Frank squatted just below the top of the incline so that he could see the beginnings of enemy territory. Percy and some swordsmen set up camp at the back corner, ready to strike if the attackers exhausted the traps ahead.

Thunder clapped. The entirety of the legion looked up. Dark clouds coalesced overhead. An uncomfortable mumbling passed through the soldiers, but the conch horn still blew. The Games had begun.

A slew of arrows rose from the enemy trench directly opposite the Fifth’s. Percy’s team scattered, except for him. He knew they would fall short — he could see their trajectory. Percy stood at the ready, when he realized the archers weren’t aiming for them. The arrows landed almost-too-precisely on the checkerboard of traps they had laid. Explosions shot Percy back.

His vision was fuzzy. The ground vibrated with aftershocks and an incessant ringing rocked Percy’s ears. He steadied and sat up.

Members of the First and Second Cohort were launching an all-out assault on their branch of the trench. They must have known the strongest cohort would take the middle. Percy wanted to strangle the strategists. Percy leaped up and readied his longstaff. He could see Frank in his peripheral vision, picking off Roman soldiers with blunt arrows and collapsing them to the gravel. Percy darted forward at the nearest legionnaire and swung. The flat of his blade clunked on the soldier’s shield, as Percy whirled the other end and connected with his helmet, sending him to the ground unconscious.

He took out the next five front-line footsoldiers. His staff had a wide reach, he could defend more than half the width by himself. Still, they were going to be overrun. He turned to the nearest legionnaire.

“Hold this trench,” he growled. “Or I swear to the gods.”

Percy sprinted back towards the center of the E. He ran into Dakota.

“Get them to send us reinforcements,” he demanded, looking at the Third Cohort, which was not working nearly as hard as the Fifth.

Dakota scoffed at him.

“You’re not a centurion, probatio. If we lose, we lose. Frankly, the sooner this is over, the better.”

“Don’t you want to win?” Percy shouted. Dakota looked taken aback, clearly not used to being accosted by the newest recruit. Percy decided to take matters into his own hands. He ran to the Fourth Cohort and approached some lower-ranking legionnaires.

“We need help over here, it’s the brunt of their force,” he told them. The legionnaires glanced behind them, genuinely concerned, but shrugged him off.

“We can’t disobey orders, sorry.”

Percy huffed in frustration and tried again, but no one was willing to follow him. It was not even his competitive spirit that was driving him. It was the pure, unadulterated lack of effort on his side that drove him up the wall. The sky got significantly darker, now that the sun had gone down. Lightning flashed, thunder crashed, and the first drops of rain fell over Camp Jupiter. There was a momentary lapse, where the fighting stopped and eyes were pulled magnetically towards the sky, but it was fleeting. The fighting continued.

The raindrops on his skin imbibed him with energy, dilated his blood vessels, provided a shock to his muscles. Percy shook his head and charged straight down the center of the E, through the Third Cohort, and towards no-man’s-land.

He fought like a madman, swiping away Romans with the length of his staff, sending them into comas with a furious whack to the head. He could hear the Third Cohort centurion who did not like him yelling over the sounds of combat, but he did not care. He clawed his way out of the trench and into no-man’s-land.

It had really started to pour then. The ground — torn up from footprints and carnage — was a muddy, slippery mess. Rainwater was collecting in craters formed from gunpowder bombs.

No-man’s-land was aptly named, as Percy definitely should not have been there. He was surrounded by two dozen opponents within seconds. Percy turned and tried to appear threatening, like Lupa had taught him, but there were too many. They hesitated for a heartbeat before one got the courage to attack. He disarmed the soldier with a flick of his staff. Hearing a squishy step behind him, Percy reflexively turned and blocked a strike at his rear flank. He beat the legionnaire back.

The other team realized they had strength in numbers. Six or seven converged at once and it was too many to block. Percy was hit hard in the back with the flat of a sword and he fell. He could hear some of the soldiers run off into his territory to fight the Third Cohort, the threat having been neutralized. Someone kicked him to the mud. An anger, red-hot and violent, seized him. His stomach clenched and he could just barely see through his askew helmet: standing rainwater firing up from the ground and knocking his assailant down. The officer screamed. From the attached voice’s shrillness alone, he knew it was Octavian. Percy smiled.

With undivided concentration, he swept the rainwater under everyone’s feet and they fell like bowling pins, like a rug had been pulled from underneath. Some slid back down into their trench, yelling, grasping at nothing. Percy stood, using his staff as a support. His opponents were standing back up. He took a second to check in on Frank. Their trench seemed to be holding its own. This was not over.

A sickening clunk to his right temple knocked Percy out cold.

Percy drifted in and out of consciousness. He could feel his spirit oscillating between the ethereal and the physical, the void and his body. His eyes were half-open staring at two figures above him. It was still raining. He could hear shouting and explosions. He could not have been out long, the battle was still going.

Lightning backlit the two men standing over him. Octavian on the left, a bulkier figure on the right. Frank? No. It was the boy he had seen at the bathhouse with Reyna. The Vulcan child from the frigidarium. His body and armor were caked in dirt. Up close, his features were predominantly Filipino, from his mother, with little to no trace of his godly-half’s Mediterranean characteristics. His arms were folded across his chest. In his right fist was a sledgehammer with a short handle — the weapon that very likely connected with Percy’s helmet.

“He’s a good fighter, Octavian,” he said. “You should appeal his recruitment. Transfer him to the First.”

“Reyna would never,” Octavian spat. “You saw her with him. A personal tour. She’s trying to mold another Jason Grace.”

Octavian flicked a stray piece of mud off of one of his centurion medals right onto Percy’s face. Barely conscious, Percy clenched his fist. The world stopped spinning and he felt tied back down to his body.

“I couldn’t care less about your praetorship campaign,” he replied. “He controlled that water. Can’t you sense his potential? His fullest capabilities...his only path is the First.”

“That’s why he’s staying in the Fifth. Take him in the Second if you’re so passionate about it.”

“I would have space if you would quit sending me all of your First Cohort rejects,” the Vulcan boy said. “Octavian...the rain stopped.”

The rain did stop. But only because Percy wanted it to. Raindrops hovered in midair, frozen in time. One by one, they started reversing course, levitating towards a point in the air just above the battlefield. Octavian looked from the sky to Percy. Percy played dead (which was not hard).

The rain condensed into larger and larger droplets as they combined, finally forming a gigantic floating halo. Gallons of water flowed and slushed in a self-contained orbit, rotating like one of Saturn’s rings in a hurricane. Percy exhaled and the circle was released. The water crashed down on Octavian, the son of Vulcan, and the entirety of the opponent’s central trench, wiping away everyone in a tsunami. Percy rolled over, coughed, and staggered away.

He slid down the enemy trench, away from no-man’s-land, and ran towards the flag, which was now snapped off its pole and floating gracelessly in the muck. Percy could not exactly move in a straight line, but the staff he still clung to provided him much-needed balance. He faced no enemies, thank the gods, because he was in no condition to fight.

At the end of the trench, Percy snatched up the flag. He was hyper-aware of his surroundings, but for once everything was still. The opponents lay unconscious or too buried in mud to move under their heavy armor. He lumbered back the way he came. Just fifty more feet, up the incline and out of the trench, then victory was his.

Someone stood up a ways in front of him, clutching the trench bank. Gods forbid. It was the Vulcan boy. He had lost his hammer. His body was Percy’s only obstacle. Fortunately, Percy was the only one armed, but he couldn’t fight one-handed with the staff, since he carried the heavy flag in the other. They eyed each other.

“The weapon,” the boy said. “Or the flag. Earn it.”

He held out his hand. Percy looked back and forth, between his palm and his eyes.

Percy threw down the staff. With electric reflexes, the Vulcan boy picked up the staff and swung. Percy swerved just in time and jumped when he swiped at his feet. The boy immediately swung at his head, but Percy had the sense to duck. His fighting style was erratic at close range.

Percy side-stepped and pulled up his fists like a boxer. Water drew up from the ground and morphed into fists, levitating in front of him. Percy punched the air and the hands copied his movements. The right watery fist made contact with Vulcan boy’s shoulder, knocking him back.

“And Frank said I couldn’t fight hand-to-hand,” Percy mumbled. The Vulcan boy swung the staff and tried to swat the fist away, but the blade just cut clean through the water. He hesitated. Percy glared at him, the same glare that warded off the mountain lions during the she-wolf’s training. The Vulcan boy knew he had lost. Percy could see it in his eyes, but he stood proud and ready. He admired that about him.

In a last-ditch attempt, the Vulcan boy launched the staff at Percy in a crazed spiral. The water under Percy’s control caught its momentum as the water moved and changed, forming a semicircle around Percy’s back. The staff, still spinning, wrapped around Percy’s backside and redirected the weapon into the guy’s chest, slamming him into the bank. Dazed and pinned to the wall, he gave Percy a nod of respect. Percy nodded back.

He reached the center of no-man’s-land, exhausted and sapped of all his strength. He lifted the flag up high, then collapsed down the muddied trench of his home team.

Chapter Text

“You lied to me,” Reyna growled, her fist wrenching his hair and dagger pressing uncomfortably against his throat. “How did you conceal the truth from me? What are you?”

Percy was back inside the principia, though the building — and Reyna — were considerably less beautiful under the imminent threat of violence.

“Well, I mean, technically we didn’t talk about that in front of your dogs...”

She shoved her knife closer to Percy’s chin and lifted his gaze up to match hers. Her dark eyes searched him for answers. She analyzed every square inch of his face, studying his worry lines, the diameter of his pupils, the number of times he blinked, the quiver of his bottom lip. This close, Percy could tell she did not need her canines to tell if he was untruthful.

“I meant no harm. The she-wolf, she—” he choked. “She said sons of Neptune were a curse. I didn’t want to scare anybody. It was self-preservation, I swear.”

She shoved him back into his chair.

“Well you certainly scared them yesterday,” she stated coldly. “Fifty-seven broken bones, a handful of sprains. The medics are livid. You should have seen me — forced to grant the Mural Crown to a blacked-out war machine.”

The Mural Crown — a golden circlet he understood was a glorified most-valuable-player award — Percy found on his chest when he woke up in his bunk. His body was still sore. He counted his bruises when he washed up that morning: twenty-two, not to mention the throbbing welt from where he took a hammer to the forehead.

“How did you learn to fight like that?” Reyna asked him.

“I keep telling you I don’t know!” Percy shouted, his voice echoing off the marble walls.

“You’ve had training.”

Reyna stalked back to her desk, her finger wagging with a strike of inspiration. She shoved her chair away to access a bookshelf, from which she slid out an ancient book, crumbling and frail down the spine. She gently set it on the desk and leafed through its worn pages. The paper looked centuries old — one poor page-turn and it would turn to dust.

“Do you think I’m a bad omen?” Percy asked.

“Yes,” she said plainly. That brought Percy’s spirits up.

“Given the circumstances of your arrival. The legion has never been an avid fan of Lord Neptune, what with the earthquakes in this region. In ancient times as well, Romans feared the sea god,” she added, without looking up from her book. “Are you familiar with prophecies, Percy?”

“I know the definition of a prophecy…?”

“Prophecies are poetry. Back in the days of the oracles in Greece, prophecies were uttered from the priestesses of Delphi, under the watchful eye of Apollo. Demigods would often consult the oracle before undertaking a quest. On occasion, the Oracle would speak of a prophecy destined to occur far in the future. For some time, they were all written down.”

She found the page she was looking for.

“This is a Sibylline Book, one of the last of its kind,” she said. “This might interest you.”

She flipped the book towards him and pointed at a verse. He read from the faded Latin filling the page, a language Percy could somehow read with perfect fluidity:

The next line was too faded for Percy to read, but Percy breathed and continued.

“It says I’m victorious,” Percy shrugged. Reyna shook her head.

“Did you miss the ‘terror to Rome,’ betrayal, ‘giants’ rise,’ and ‘gods will die’ part?”

“Well, to be honest, that doesn’t sound great,” Percy said. “But there’s room for optimism here.”

Percy put on a show of nonchalance for Reyna, but on the inside, he was terrified. He got to Camp two days ago. No wonder the Romans were terrified at the prospect of a son of Neptune. Their thousand-year-old prophecies indicated a wave of death and destruction at his hand. Rome would be terrorized and their deities — the immortal Roman pantheon — would somehow die if he did not win a fated battle. Not to mention a line of the prophecy is completely lost to time.

“It could be somebody else,” Percy suggested. “You said prophecies don’t fit a timetable.”

“Don’t be silly,” Reyna said. “I’ve never been so sure of anything in my life. There’s a reason Neptune, and Lord Jupiter for that matter, aren’t supposed to have children. It’s like bottling lightning. I thought Jason was an anomaly...”

Reyna’s eyebrows creased as she trailed off into a deeper line of thought. He felt a swell of, well, he didn’t know what to call it. Responsibility? He hated seeing her have to shoulder the entire mantle of leadership by herself, to have to decide what to do with a loose cannon that fell into her lap.

“Okay, suppose it is me,” Percy said. “‘Victory’s weapon forged by own hand.’ I don’t know how to do that.”

“Forgive me for thinking that when you say you don’t know how to do something, you actually do know how to do it.”

“Yesterday was a happy accident,” Percy insisted. He shook his head hopelessly. “I can make a sword out of markers? You know, if you connect them by their caps...”

Reyna sighed. She leaned back against her desk.

“We’ll have to talk to someone at the forges,” she said, transfixing on the welt disfiguring his temple. “Though I’m not sure he’ll like it.”

The forge announced itself before Percy’s arrival, what with the incessant clattering of metal and pounding of hammers. Odorous smoke curled out of rows of chimneys on a rectangular building of dark-grey brick. Percy could not tell if that was the actual color of the walls or just ages of soot that clung to the sides like moss.

Reyna led him through a pair of wrought-iron double doors into an impressively less chaotic space than the armory. The open floor plan was sectioned off by workbenches and sawhorses topped with scrap metal, works-in-progress, and toolboxes. It almost resembled an office space, the way each child of Vulcan had their own cubicle, plus anvil, fireplace, and supplies.

A shower of sparks caught on Reyna’s praetor cape as she passed two teenagers fixing a Roman shield. Percy stomped the small fire out with his foot. None of the campers paid them any attention. Most of them probably did not even notice their presence, the way the noise masked their footsteps.

The main work floor bottlenecked at the end and narrowed into a dead-end hallway. On the right, an archway led into an expansive storage space. Percy poked his head in. Any tool a child of Vulcan could possibly need was in here, hung on screws on the wall under its appropriate label. Tubs of nuts, bolts, and wrenches populated steel shelves.

Reyna strolled into the archway opposite the storage room. This was a sizable private workspace, less cluttered than the main floor. A nicer, larger hearth fit for weapons of any size burned bright on the back wall. Percy could see a huge, slanted drawing board on one table built into the corner. A half-finished sketch of what looked like a scimitar rested on the easel. The paper itself was so big, the sketch artist probably drew it to its proper dimensions.

“Theodore,” Reyna announced herself. Obscured by Reyna’s head, Percy noticed the room’s sole inhabitant. He was shuffling through a filing cabinet opposite the drawing board, fingering through clear plastic cylinders — right arm resting in a sling. The guy assessed Percy, standing submissively behind Reyna like a child and his mother at a checkout line, and quickly came to his own conclusions.

“No,” he said, motioning us away with the wave of a hand. Percy internally panicked. It was the boy he fought last night. Theodore grabbed a tube and pushed the cabinet shut. He walked to his drawing board and uncapped the cylinder.

“Absolutely not,” he repeated. “My backlog stretches weeks, Reyna. You can’t ask me to restore a cohort’s worth of helmets then keep piling on a to-do list. I’m not a machine. I have to sleep.”

He pulled a blueprint out of the tube, unraveled it, and placed it over the scimitar drawing. He secured it with metal pins to keep the curled edges from rolling in on themselves. This one detailed a cavalry sword. Theodore muttered to himself.

“Now Hazel’s a horse girl, asking me to—”

“Theodore—”

“Reyna, I am busy,” he snapped.

“Percy, this is Theodore, son of Vulcan. Centurion and Senior Officer of the Second Cohort,” she tilted her head towards Percy in introduction. “Theodore, this is Percy Last-Name-Redacted.”

“Son of Neptune. Yeah, yeah. We’ve met. Faceful of water and a dislocated shoulder,” Theodore grumbled. Percy bit his lip.

“Sorry about that,” Percy said.

“I have an important favor to ask of you,” Reyna began.

“Can’t you find someone else to do it?” Theodore retorted, taking a ruler to his sketch and marking a point with a pencil. He shoved the writing implement between his molars and spoke through gritted teeth. “I have a handful of siblings and apprentices who would love the challenge.”

“It’s for a prophecy.”

Theodore exhaled in exasperation and his pencil pathetically clattered onto the wooden tabletop. He turned to Percy and Reyna. His eyebrows furrowed.

“What do you want me to do? I’m not teaching a probatio Advanced Metalworking. And I won’t be bringing a bad luck charm into this forge. Or my life. Call me superstitious, see where it gets you.”

“Help him with it,” Reyna begged. There was an odd tension between the two of them that Percy picked up on. Like Theodore was in her good graces but not the other way around. “His quest, whenever it may come, cannot succeed without a weapon he made for himself. It is in the text. I will show you...Theodore, you’re the only one I trust to do this.”

He looked from Reyna to Percy and back again. Percy could tell in Reyna’s eyes she meant business. Lupa taught her well. He could see Theodore’s desire to argue with the praetor, but he folded.

“Fine.” He turned back to his work. Reyna strained a grin.

“Well, I have pegasus-flying lessons to teach,” she turned to walk out. “Thank you, Theodore. I mean it.”

“Uh-huh.” And she disappeared. Silence except the crackling of the fire and the scratching of Theodore’s pencil on paper.

“Uh, sorry again about yesterday,” Percy said.

“You won fair and square,” Theodore stated bluntly.

“I’ve still got a headache from that hammer throw,” Percy said, as if he were an athlete congratulating the losing team. Theodore did not reply. He simply adjusted his ruler and continued his editing. Percy pursed his lips.

“Were you expecting an apology for that?” Theodore asked.

“What? Uh, no, um,” Percy stammered. “I was just making conversation.”

“Apologizing isn’t very Roman.”

“So I’ve heard,” Percy rolled his eyes. “So, when can we get started on this project?”

“Not today.”

“Reyna thinks this is kind of urgent, so…”

Theodore slammed his ruler on the table. His face got visibly redder with the flare of his temper.

“Do you expect me to drop everything I’m doing to help you? Is this a Big Three ego thing? You want special treatment because your daddy’s the sea god?”

“What? No—” Percy stuttered.

“If you haven’t noticed, Percy, you’re in the Fifth Cohort. The lowest of the low. We don’t care about parentage here.”

Percy’s anger came to a boil.

“That’s not what you thought yesterday,” Percy pressed.

“What are you talking about?”

“I heard you and Octavian talking. You thought I was unconscious. You wanted me to be in one of the prestigious cohorts.”

Theodore’s eyes flashed darkly. Percy continued.

“You know, I had thought you seemed reasonable, unlike him. But it turns out you’re just his muscle. I can’t imagine why Reyna trusts you.”

“I’m nobody’s muscle,” Theodore scoffed. “Octavian cares about being praetor. I care about the Second Cohort and the Twelfth Legion Fulminata. Sometimes those interests align. Now I suggest you get out of my workshop before I change my mind about helping you.”

He went back to his work. Percy shook his head in disbelief, then left without another word.

Chapter Text

Under the California sun, New Rome bloomed a verdant green, adding to the air a pungent aroma of sweet cherry blossoms and lilies. Percy sat at a picnic table of polished birch, surrounded by a garden of hyacinths, honeysuckle, and willow trees. Ducklings bathed in a nearby pond, fed by young children and their demigod parents tossing pieces of a fresh loaf of pumpernickel bread from a nearby bakery. A dirt pathway wound through the trees to the main urban square, a gorgeous reincarnation of the ancient city complete with bumpy cobblestone roads, precise architecture, and the bustle of a magical, wealthy empire.

He turned at the crunch of boots on gravel. Theodore came marching up the trail, rolls of cumbersome sketch paper and drawing implements stuffed under his arms. His shoulder had healed. He wore his purple Camp Jupiter t-shirt and a pair of black jeans, supplemented by a pair of leather Rowans on his feet. Percy waved and Theodore scowled. He felt nervous, all of a sudden.

Theodore dumped his supplies on the picnic table and quickly reorganized as his things scattered haphazardly, one of which was a piece of cowhide, once unrolled, that contained rows of drawing instruments.

“Hi,” Percy said. Theodore glanced up at him, raising his eyebrows.

“Hi,” he breathed.

“How has your day been so far?” Percy inquired, tapping his finger on the bench.

“I’ve been up since four in the morning. I’m tired.”

“Oh,” Percy frowned. “Why so early?”

Theodore gave him an insincere smile.

“Work,” he said. “Gotta fit you into my schedule, don’t I?”

A ball of nerves clung to Percy’s stomach and throat. The way Theodore openly disliked him bothered him. He hated feeling like an annoyance.

“You don’t need to do that…” Percy began, but Theodore cut him off.

“You wanted my help, didn’t you? Well, I’m helping.” He spread out a blank blueprint across the table and smoothed out the creases. The edges flapped in the light breeze.

“Can you grab a couple of rocks from behind you?” Theodore asked. Percy bent over and scavenged for some heavy stones sitting in the grass. He placed them on the corners of the paper. Theodore gracefully sat down, reluctantly entering a new level of focus. Elbows on the table, he laced his fingers and exhaled into his fists. Percy took a look at Theodore’s bulky forearm. He had a tattoo like Reyna’s, and like everyone else he had met: the letters SPQR, a symbol for godly parent, and lines for number of years of service. Theodore’s was a hammer and anvil — the symbol of Vulcan — and had two lines for two years. He looked up at Percy. His eyes were big and brown, like a bull’s.

“Draw me what you want,” Theodore said and pushed his supplies towards him expectantly. Percy bit his lip and hesitantly grabbed one of Theodore’s graphite pencils out of its sheath. He looked at the blueprint, its grid of squares suddenly intimidated him. He was never much of an artist. Percy doodled on the bottom of the page.

“What in the name of Pluto is that?”

“It’s a trident,” Percy scoffed, offended, self-consciously sheltering his drawing like he would a puppy from the cold. “Because of, like, my dad you know.”

“That looks like a tuning fork. Or something I’d use to bale hay. Why does it have two teeth? It is literally spelled out for you. Tri dent. Three teeth.”

Percy bit the tip of his index finger.

“Shoot, is this a dident?”

“Di- is the Greek root for two. In Latin, it’s bi-. Like bicycle.”

“So I can name my weapon Joe?”

Theodore squinted, searching Percy for a brain cell.

“What?” Theodore asked.

“Joe Bident.”

Theodore looked like he wanted to throttle him. Percy lost it. He put his forehead in his hands, cackling to himself. Theodore’s cold demeanor cracked and he suppressed a laugh.

“Oh gods,” Theodore groaned. “Give me the pencil.”

Percy handed it to Theodore, hearing the smile in his voice even if he refused to show it. Theodore tilted his head, thinking for a moment, then drew a line against a metal straight-edge. He grabbed a compass and protractor, took some measurements, then, over the span of thirty minutes, sketched out the shaft of the weapon with an ultra-realistic sense of detail. Percy, a boy of often too-many-words, remained speechless and bug-eyed as he finished the non-pointed end.

“Wow,” Percy awed. “You’re an incredible artist.”

“Thanks,” Theodore replied, nonplussed.

“How did you learn to draw like that?”

Theodore was now up to the top of the trident, sketching out the first of its three teeth.

“My mom was an artist.”

“That doesn’t sound like Vulcan’s type.”

Theodore shrugged and moved onto the second tooth. His work sped up, his graphite strokes moving at insane speed with no loss of quality or detail.

“She did sculptures. Glassblowing mostly. Avant-garde chandeliers. Her work required a very precise, delicate hand. That’s what my father said he admired most about her, the one time we had an actual conversation.”

Percy propped his elbow on the table and rested his chin on his palm. Theodore talked about his parents with a bittersweet aftertaste. He sensed it was a sensitive subject, but Percy’s curiosity got the better of his social niceties.

“What was her artwork like? Was she successful?”

Theodore glanced disdainfully up at Percy, surely wondering why he was probing or even cared.

“She was very successful. She would have me collect broken glass from the dump: beer bottles, trashed television sets, you know,” Theodore said. Behind the recognizable conflict he had with his mother, Percy could tell Theodore really admired her. “She could reform and repurpose junk into works of art. That’s what caught my father’s attention. Actually, Venus’ attention. The love goddess, my father’s wife. Venus wanted one of my mom’s pieces and...that’s how my parents met. A classic case of Olympian infidelity.”

“You speak really fondly of her.”

“She taught me everything I know,” he said, finishing up the drawing. “Like we shouldn’t need to sacrifice beauty for function. I mean, look at New Rome. Those aqueducts don’t need to look like that to carry water, but they do, just for us to admire. I think that’s why my dad fell for her.”

Theodore sat up straight, assessing his work. Percy’s jaw dropped. His drawing was, to scale, an exact replica of a trident, like it had been stripped from the hands of the Neptune Fountain at Versailles. Percy wondered if the paper or pencil was magic, the way it appeared three-dimensional from any angle. He thought of those paintings where the eyes seem to follow the viewer from every vantage point.

“Holy Hephaestus,” Percy exclaimed.

“Vulcan,” Theodore corrected.

“This is...wow.” Percy hesitantly reached out and touched the sheet, like he was afraid it might bite or disappear.

“Cool, huh?”

Theodore seemed especially pleased with himself.

“I can’t even form words,” Percy said.

“Thank the gods,” Theodore exhaled. Percy gave him a look.

“We have to make this. Where do I start? Where do I begin?”

Theodore started to collect his supplies and reinsert them into his leather case. Percy rounded up the stray implements and knocked the paperweights back onto the ground. Theodore sighed.

“Well, first we need to worry about the issue of metal. Imperial Gold is the best element for a weapon of this design.”

“Imperial Gold?”

“It’s lethal to monsters. We consecrate it in Jupiter’s temple, up there on the hill” he paused, deep in thought as he pointed out the temple in the distance to Percy. “We’ve been running low for quite some time though. I’m not even sure we have enough.”

“Is there something else we can use?” Percy asked. Theodore pondered the question.

“I know someone who can help,” Theodore said.

Theodore led Percy out of New Rome and towards the highest hill he had seen when he first arrived at Camp Jupiter with a pack of wolves. Four ancient buildings rested on top. The largest, Theodore had needlessly explained, was for Jupiter, the king of the gods.

“What’s your mom like?” Theodore asked him quietly, like reciprocity was unfamiliar on his tongue. A pleasant thrum of energy tickled the inside of his brain where his memories had been. His mouth started watering for chocolate chip cookies. He felt like Pavlov’s dog.

“I forgot to tell you,” Percy said. “I have amnesia.”

Theodore looked at him with concern.

“You had amnesia about your amnesia?”

“Shut up,” Percy smiled, swatting Theodore on the bicep.

“Wait, you’re serious?” Theodore stopped.

“Yes,” Percy said. “Reyna knows, of course.”

Something clicked for Theodore.

“That’s how you won the War Games. You’ve trained somewhere else, haven’t you?” Theodore exclaimed, relief flowing over him. “And I thought I got my butt kicked by a noob. So like, you don’t remember anything?”

“I’ll explain later, let’s meet this friend of yours.”

They stood at the base of the smallest temple, though still quite large in absolute terms, an obsidian crypt built into the side of Temple Hill. Grass and weeds encroached on the roof, essentially creating a lawn where the roof should be. Human and animal bones littered the ground, permeating the air with the smell of deceased mice. Percy was afraid of stepping on one.

“Hazel!” Theodore shouted. A head of hair popped up from the edge of the roof. Shadows obscured the person’s face.

“Theodore!” a girl yelled back, and the head disappeared from whence it came.

Percy heard movement, then a young black girl, about thirteen years old, slid down the side of the hill and raced up to them. Her eyes were golden and her hair fell in ringlets around her face. She was followed by a pale, olive-skinned boy about the same age, who trailed her like a hearse. His hair framed his face like blackout curtains. He made fleeting eye contact with Percy, but just as quickly looked away.

“What’s up?” Hazel looked from Theodore to Percy. “How’s my sword coming along?”

“Percy, this is Hazel. She is a daughter of Pluto,” Theodore said. “And this is Nico, her half-brother. And the sword’s on the backburner, sorry.”

Percy shook Hazel’s hand. He held out his hand for Nico. The boy hesitated, but shook his hand as well. Nico winced when he withdrew. Percy hoped he didn’t hurt him. It was strange to see Theodore interact so pleasantly with this pair of misfits. He wondered if Theodore had other friends.

“Don’t worry about it, take your time,” Hazel said cheerfully. “What brings you to our neck of the woods?”

“Reyna’s business. Important business,” Theodore said. “We were hoping you could find some precious metals for us.”

Hazel seemed to pull into herself. Her happy-go-lucky personality closed like a flower bud. She unsubtly looked to Nico for help.

“I— I don’t think that’s a good idea. For me. Right now.”

“It’s fine,” Nico interrupted. “Just don’t touch the ore until it’s consecrated.”

Theodore gave her a sincere smile that bordered on pleading. Hazel grimaced and steeled herself. Percy knew enough not to question this sudden awkwardness in what would supposedly be a normal transaction.

“Right this way,” Hazel said. She led them down the slope towards the far outskirts of New Rome, by the Oakland hills. The land flattened, and Nico, Percy, and Theodore waited as Hazel paced the open field.

“What’s she doing?” Percy asked.

“Hazel can sense riches under the earth. And control them to some degree. A blessing from our father,” Nico explained. A football field away, Hazel stopped. She turned and shouted.

“Over here!”

By the time the three of them had gotten over to Hazel, she was sitting on the ground, out of breath. She gestured around her.

“Sorry,” she breathed. “That took a lot out of me.”

Hazel was surrounded by an array of jewels, gemstones, and ores that glittered under the midday sun. Nico knelt down next to her.

“No gold, again,” she said. “Apologies, Theodore. But there’s enough of whatever that is.”

Hazel pointed at a clump of metal next to her foot, shimmering like a silver mirror. There were similar ores, of different shapes and sizes from golf to baseball, dotting the field.

“Platinum,” Theodore noted. “It’ll do.”

“How are we gonna get all this back?” Percy asked. He looked to his right and Theodore was pulling his shirt over his head. The guy was burly, Percy had to admit — strong as an ox, upper body sculpted from long days operating heavy equipment and lugging metal. He took his shirt in two hands and ripped it down the back, fiber by fiber, until it was a somewhat rectangular piece of fabric. Theodore started picking up platinum with the shirt as a layer of protection.

“Percy, come on,” Theodore glanced at Percy’s torso. “This is for you.”

“I just got this one,” Percy complained, clasping the hem of his Camp Jupiter t-shirt sentimentally. Theodore looked back at him expectantly. Percy pulled off his shirt and ripped it like Theodore had. He picked up clumps of the metal, making sure it did not make direct contact with his skin.

“I think I’m gonna go,” he heard Nico say to Hazel.

“Nice to meet you,” Percy waved. Nico didn’t wave back. After Percy and Theodore scoured the plain for any more platinum, they laid out their finds on their t-shirts and tied them off at the top. Theodore tossed his sack to Percy and he caught it in the crook of his arm. The load was heavier than he thought.

“I have to grab my things,” he said. As Percy waited for him, Theodore chatted with Hazel and waved her goodbye. Theodore jogged back with the blueprints and supplies under his arms.

“You ready?” Theodore asked. Percy grinned.

“Let’s go.”

With Theodore unexpectedly being called away on urgent senatorial matters, further work was postponed, leaving Percy without an excuse to miss the daily Fifth Cohort drilling on the Field of Mars. He had lucked out up until this point, with his Camp Jupiter orientations and meetings with Reyna and Theodore taking up his schedule. Alas, he knew there would come a time when he settled enough into a routine that he couldn’t avoid the more mundane aspects of being a Roman soldier.

When Frank met him to join the cohort assembling on the Field, he couldn’t be less thrilled. He didn’t want to stand out there in the heat in heavy armor hashing out predictable battle formations under incompetent officers. The she-wolf had sniffed out his indifference to the top brass like insubordination was its own pheromone, though being an alpha wolf, she undoubtedly knew disobedience when she saw it.

Percy hated feeling like a number, like he was a disposable, replaceable body for his superiors to move this way and that. His officers did not have a personal attachment to him, if anything they actively disliked him since his stunt at the War Games. Percy wanted to be inspired. He wanted to care about the people he was fighting for — for Rome — but if the rest of his teenage life was going to be toting a gargantuan shield and sweating under a plumed helmet, all for people he was at best ambivalent about...he wasn’t sure if New Rome was the home destined for him that it was touted to be.

His own peers, the basic legionnaires with no titles or medals, didn’t like him either. He wrongfully assumed that winning the War Games for them would bring some measure of joy or morale, but they skirted around him as if having Neptune as a father was its own form of leprosy. His bunkmates, he heard through the grapevine (Frank), requested to be moved elsewhere in the barracks. Even then, in Percy’s phalanx, shield in his left hand and gladius in his right, the soldiers to his sides stood just out of correct formation to avoid being any closer to the legion’s resident bad luck charm.

“Hey! Fourth row!” Dakota shouted. “What is going on? Why are your shields out of alignment? These are fundamentals.”

Percy oriented himself. He was directly behind the person in front of him, as he should be. He glanced at his neighbors, who stared straight ahead and pretended they weren’t purposefully keeping their distance and messing up the entire geometry of the phalanx. He eyed the boy to his right.

“Get closer to me,” Percy whispered. The boy didn’t show any sign that he heard him.

“I don’t see anyone moving, fourth row!” Dakota warned.

“What is your problem?” Percy hissed. His neighbor set his jaw.

“Open ranks!” Dakota commanded and the rows in front of him unfolded like a zipper to let the senior officer through. Percy scoffed and shook his head, knowing what was coming. The centurion stopped six feet from him, flanked by Gwen and the legionnaires dispersed on either side. He raised a limp, exasperated fist.

“Percy,” he said. “What is so difficult about this to understand? We haven’t even started marching yet.”

“I was in the right spot. They...” Percy gestured to the soldiers to his left and right, “were not.”

“They...” he coldly mimicked, “have been legionnaires for three-plus years. I would think they know how to run a basic formation by now.”

“Well maybe you should tell them to step three inches closer to me or get their eyes checked because they clearly don’t know how to make parallel lines.”

“I don’t know if spending time with the praetor has gone to your head, probatio, but befriending power does not make you immune to it. You will not speak to your superiors that way.”

“They’re doing it on purpose,” Percy complained futilely. “No one wants to stand next to me!”

Percy’s fists clenched and he clamped down on his bottom lip. A wire uncoiled — running up through the ground through the soles of his feet, up his legs and abdomen, and down the length of his arms to the pads of his thumbs. It pulsed with the pounding of his heartbeat, anger solidifying and feeding this new connection from earth to palm. One squeeze of his fingers, he feared, would trigger the tripwire threading his sides. He felt like a landmine.

“Enough,” Dakota demanded.

“Do it.” A disembodied voice, one he had heard before, caressed his ear like silk.

Dakota and Percy traded Lupa-honed glares. With his lanky, awkward height, Dakota himself was not much of an intimidation — nothing compared to Reyna or Theodore. Percy could very likely beat him in one-to-one combat. But gods, the guy could transmit daggers through his pupils when he wanted to. He didn’t become a centurion for nothing. Percy’s gaze fell and his rigid posture released and the wire coiled away from its dangerous tension — a bomb defusing.

“Yes, sir,” Percy mumbled, readjusting his cumbersome shield and gladius in his sweaty fingers.

“Good,” Dakota stood erect and shouted to the mass. “Now close ranks! Lockstep!”

Chapter Text

He yawned with the force to lift a thousand skies, or at least to dislocate his jaw.

Percy rubbed the tender spot just in front of his ear as his eyes glazed over again with fatigue. It bugged him to no end the day before: Theodore adding to his already-long day, which included mandatory training and his duties as centurion and senator and master of weapons, in order to accommodate Percy’s project. So, here Percy was, bright and early just before the crack of dawn, dipping his toes in the Little Tiber’s meandering current for a much-needed jolt to the senses. Next to him in the sand sat the makeshift sacks the two had made the day before out of Camp Jupiter t-shirts, enwrapping a plentiful stash of platinum ore Theodore’s friend Hazel had pulled from the earth. He was warned not to touch the metal. He had not the slightest clue why, but he figured he would leave well enough alone as far as the god of the dead was concerned.

Percy recognized the heavy footsteps before he turned around. Sure enough, he spotted Theodore trudging up the riverbank with his hands in the pockets of black cargo pants. His shoulders were drawn in, like he was cold. He must spend so much time in the heat, Percy thought, a dewy Oakland morning would be chilly. Theodore grinned with one side of his mouth.

“I’m so glad you could be here for the birth of our son,” Percy gestured to the t-shirt sacks like a showcase model on a gameshow. “Joe.”

Theodore’s barely-there half-smile melted.

“I will not let you make a farce out of the sacred practice of bestowing a name to your chosen weapon. Imagine Joe in the annals of history with Excalibur—”

“My second choice is Big Pokey.”

“Please stop.”

“Mother Forker,” Percy suggested, then noticed Theodore roll his eyes. “Come on, it’s funny. Have you heard of that?”

“Definition, please?”

“Funny: adjective,” Percy said, consulting an imaginary dictionary on the palm of his hand. “Causing laughter or amusement.”

“Funny. N-O-T,” Theodore took a pause for a melodramatic wracking of his brains. “Y-O-U. Funny.”

“Sorry, that is incorrect,” Percy sighed and shook his head. “There’s a P in there somewhere. It’s not silent, I’m not sure how you missed it. It’s not like we’re spelling Ptolemy.”

“I will kill you,” Theodore pinched the bridge of his nose.

“You’ve had your chance.”

“And I was nearly successful,” Theodore said, nudging Percy’s forehead where the hammer welt had all but disappeared. “Shame, truly.”

“Oh, admit it, you like having me around.”

Theodore knelt down and unraveled the loose knot on the sack. He clicked his tongue.

“Boy do you overestimate the importance you hold in my life,” Theodore grunted. “I’ll cut you some slack because you’re an amnesiac and you discovered the concept of friendship like four days ago, but to be honest, you’re getting a little clingy.”

“Clingy?” Percy gasped. “I’ve known you for less than seventy-two hours.”

“You’re the one who got up this early just to wash some rocks in a river with me.”

Percy squinted.

“Point taken,” he admitted. “How do we consecrate these bad boys?”

Theodore flattened out the ripped t-shirt into its somewhat rectangular flat form. He lifted the edges and jiggled the ends to let the ores tumble towards the middle of the fabric.

“Consecration washes away the impurities of your metal, so that magic can be imbibed into whatever you’re creating. Sort of like how wires are made of pure copper so that electricity can be conducted,” Theodore explained. “Normally, we’d do this in the Jupiter Optimus Maximus, but this isn’t Imperial Gold.”

He glanced up at Percy.

“Tiberian Platinum has a nice ring to it though, don’t you think?”

Percy meant to respond, but he was too entranced by what was happening in front of him. Theodore gently submerged the fabric in the river, bathing the hunks of platinum in the Little Tiber. The water wiped away the platinum’s imperfections and grime, becoming mirror-like. They caught the light and refracted it in unexpected ways, making rainbows that would double back on themselves under the water’s surface. Percy looked at Theodore, and he noticed that Theodore had been looking at him.

Theodore pulled the fabric back out. The platinum, now purified, faded back to a duller — but still shiny — reflective grey, now that the Little Tiber’s magic ran its course. Percy stood up and grabbed the other sack by the knot, squatted and lifted—
“Percy, what are you—”

—then cannonballed himself into the river.

Percy opened his eyes. He was not taking any chances, given the last time he was down here, but the Tiber’s magic did not burn him anymore. The pain had shed with his second skin. He breathed through his nose. It felt like he was breathing on land, the way his nostrils filled and collapsed around the water. His bottom settled into the silt. Sunlight flickered through in billowing sheets of bronzed beams. The river was clean.

He looked up, he could see Theodore on the bank waving his arms like a madman. Theodore always liked things done his way, didn’t he?

Percy reached his hand towards the surface, clenched his fist, and pulled — then Theodore came crashing into the surf. He drifted down towards Percy, struggling towards the surface against the force of Percy’s hydrokinesis. For all of Theodore’s strength, Percy could tell he was not much of a swimmer. Theodore plopped down across from him. The guy was puffing his cheeks with air, clenching his eyes shut tight. His short hair bobbed off his scalp like a bed of seagrass.

Percy reached out with his foot and touched Theodore’s calf. Percy could feel his thin pocket of air spreading and enveloping his new friend. Theodore must have sensed it too, because he inhaled and opened his eyes. His eyes, Percy noticed, were wary of him. Percy uncinched the t-shirt bag he held in his lap.

The cotton fell to the wayside and the platinum ore glowed like dragon scales. Beams of unadulterated color — red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet — escaped in their purest forms as the magic of centuries of Roman power cleansed the ore and made it susceptible to a new purpose and a new beauty. Percy raised one in his fist and met Theodore’s gaze across his palm, before the mirrorball blinded them.

Percy crawled onto dry land, sack of sanctified platinum in his fist, hysterically laughing. He heard someone coughing and spluttering to his left. His vision was white.

“Theodore,” he gasped between laughs. “Theodore.”

Theodore was cackling like a hyena. His laughter suited him like music, like sticks banging on steel drums.

“Percy,” he snorted. “I can’t see.”

Percy rolled onto his back and stared at the sky. Well, the “sky” was a blinding white light percolating all the way to the edges of his peripheral vision.

“Why did you do that?” Theodore said. “What was that?”

“Because I thought it would be—” Percy had tears welling at the corners of his eyes. “I thought it would be cool.”

Their sides split into fits like they were on laughing gas.

“Percy, it— it was really cool,” Theodore gasped through laughter, then shouted at the top of his lungs. “It was so cool!”

“I feel like I’m falling upwards. And when I land, I’ll be in Elysium,” Percy stated dreamily at the stratosphere.

“I feel like I looked at Venus in her true form,” Theodore said.

“Well I feel like someone launched me out of a cannon, straight into the sun...but the sun, instead of incinerating my atoms and severing my soul from existence, gave me a giant hug.”

Their hysteria died down after a little while, leaving a pleasant static around his eyes and down his neck. Color started to creep back into Percy’s vision. Soon, he was admiring the clouds. His trip was interrupted by the clearing of a throat. Theodore flashed a dopey grin at the person behind them.

“Oh hey, Octavian,” Theodore said. Percy craned his head, bending his neck at an uncomfortable angle to see Octavian scowling above him.

“I need to speak with you,” Octavian said, taking a glance at Percy. Octavian looked beyond perturbed. “Centurion business.”

“I’m doing homework,” Theodore slurred.

“Go away, Officer. We’re tanning,” Percy said, fully clothed. Octavian looked between them like they were the last two patrons at the bar. Theodore, probably his closest ally, was practically drunk off of sunshine.

“Bathhouse. Twenty minutes,” Octavian said, then left. Theodore rolled his eyes and choked up river water.

“You,” Percy said, pointing between Frank and Hazel. “You two are dating?”

They sat alone at a table in the mess hall for lunch. Frank had his arm around Hazel’s shoulder as she chewed on a salad. They nodded.

“Huh,” Percy shrugged. “What are the odds?”

He picked up his mug of coffee, which automatically refilled to the brim with blue, steaming liquid. Yes, the coffee was blue. Percy enjoyed that for some reason.

“What is that? Hot chocolate?” Frank asked.

“Coffee. I was up early,” Percy replied. “Hazel, is your brother joining us? What’s his name? Nico?”

Hazel sat forward.

“He comes and goes. He’s more of a free spirit.”

“Wait, what?” Percy exclaimed. “People can leave this place?”

“I mean, you can,” Hazel said. “But you really shouldn’t. The world’s rough out there for a demigod, outside of the camp’s protections. Usually Reyna would make a big deal about it, but honestly I think he scares her.”

“Reyna?” Percy asked. “Reyna is scared of him?”

“She’s scared of you,” Frank noted.

“And attracted to you,” Hazel added.

“What?”

Percy was incredulous. Hazel hid her face in her hands.

“Oh my gods. Boys.”

Gears whirred in Percy’s head. Sure, Reyna was beautiful, he took a mental note of that when they first met, and the second time they met, and the third. But their trip to the bathhouse was more literally than figuratively steamy. She wanted him to replace her absent partner, who navigated New Rome politics with her same style of leadership and verve. Did Percy really miss that she was looking for something more? Did the whole legion know something he did not?

“I guess—” Percy said. “I guess I never really thought about it.”

Percy’s fist made a hollow echo on the door to Theodore’s workshop. Theodore, wearing heavy black gloves, turned to greet his visitor from the fireplace.

“Hey,” Theodore said, then turned away. There was a palpable awkwardness hanging there, residual effects of sharing an addled brain earlier that day.

“Did you want to start work?” Percy asked, rocking on his heels. Theodore pointed at the fireplace. Its flames licked an iron blast furnace, which glowed an infernal orange at its base.

“I have to smelt the platinum. It’s going to take a while.”

“Oh,” Percy said, disappointed. The son of Vulcan loudly rummaged through a drawer. “Did Octavian chew you out?”

“Meh,” Theodore grimaced.

“Is he still trying to run for praetor?”

“Very soon,” Theodore nodded.

“Are you supporting him?” Percy asked, a bit harshly.

“Why not?” Theodore shrugged.

“Because he’s awful.”

“There’s been a single praetor for nearly a month. The legion needs two. Reyna can’t keep doing it by herself. Rome has a history of tyranny, you know that,” he said. “Octavian has been a capable centurion for the First. He’s been here longer than me. He’ll balance her out.”

Percy fumed.

“You’re not happy with that answer,” Theodore guessed.

“I just don’t like him. Shouldn’t people like their leaders?”

“Why should I care if I like the guy? Or girl,” Theodore added. “If they’re doing a good job, then I don’t need to worry about it.”

He paused, pondering him.

“You know, Percy, I don’t see a Roman bone in your body. It’s like you break every rule someone has the audacity to put in your way. Like today: no swimming in the Tiber. Recreation only permitted at the lake.”

“To be fair, I didn’t know that was a rule. Second, you also went swimming.”

“Against my will,” Theodore noted. “Octavian threatened to report me to Reyna, by the way, for that and whatever that platinum did to us. I was forced to explain that the son of Neptune dragged me in.”

“Why would you throw me under the bus like that?” Percy scoffed.

“Because it’s the truth,” Theodore said plainly.

“Aren’t friends supposed to have each other’s backs?”

Theodore blinked, startled.

“Are you under the impression that we are more than acquaintances?”

The fire started to die down. Theodore grabbed a stray log from a grate and tossed it into the blaze. Percy bit his lip. He didn’t know how to answer that question. He had thought, perhaps against his better judgment, that Theodore would want to be his friend if he chiseled away hard enough at the surly front he put up.

“Do you even have friends?” Percy asked.

“What kind of question is that?” Theodore scoffed, yet also seemed to search for an answer. “Hazel’s my friend.”

“Really? Because she seems to be an acquaintance that you make swords for in exchange for access to her magnetism. So you can spend all day in here by yourself.”

Theodore’s tan blotched with red. He sucked on his teeth.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” he grumbled. Theodore pointedly inspected the melting platinum and Percy, with nothing else to say, went to catch an early bedtime in the Fifth Cohort barracks.

Chapter Text

Percy’s muscles, specifically his quads and shoulders, burned like a medic was slicing him with a cauterizing knife.

For someone with a divine connection to water, it did not make the liquid any lighter. Theodore had tasked him with lugging two industrial barrel-fulls to the forge. Yes, he had tried levitating it, but he could not hold it for very long. He strained to keep it aloft. Maybe he was just tired, or his mind was still foggy from his river-induced euphoria. Either way, this resulted in Percy lugging gallons of the Tiber to Theodore’s workshop, using a bit of Olympian power to keep his inertia. A gallon of water, Percy pulled from his encyclopedic knowledge of water he apparently had, weighs 8.34 pounds. Halfway there with the second barrel, Percy collapsed to the dirt and panted like a dog. He read the stenciled lettering on its base: 55 gallons. Percy cursed. Theodore was making him drag over four hundred pounds, all by himself. Maybe a son of the sea god was the person for this job.

Upon reaching Theodore’s workshop with some overdramatic moaning and groaning, he fell to the floor and lost himself in the ceiling. His slick skin stuck to the concrete floor.

“Should I imbibe my trident with my sweat?” Percy wheezed. “Or my tears?”

“Your blood, actually,” Theodore said, brandishing a pointed screwdriver.

“Wha—?”

Before Percy could react, Theodore grabbed his limp wrist and punctured the end of his index finger, collecting a droplet of blood on the tip. He carefully walked it over to the open furnace and tapped the screwdriver on the lip. From his position, Percy could hear the droplet plop and sizzle in the molten platinum.

“What was that for?” Percy complained, nursing his hand.

“The trident needs to know you’re its owner,” Theodore explained. “So that it will always return to you.”

Percy gave him an exhausted thumbs-up. Theodore was in brighter spirits today, though Percy still felt like there was a score to settle. That Theodore was punishing him for their argument yesterday, which would explain the exorbitant amount of water he retrieved.

“I’m sorry about yesterday,” Percy told him.

“How many times have I told you to stop apologizing?”

“Will you just let me for once? Please?” Percy saw Theodore’s face scrunch up. “I shouldn’t expect you to defend my actions that get you in trouble. I’m sorry.”

“Apology accepted.”

Percy raised his eyebrows.

“That was easier than expected.”

“Well, I only needed ten gallons of water,” Theodore said, with more than a hint of cheek. “You do the math.”

Percy groaned and rolled onto his stomach.

“Hey, chin up,” Theodore said, sliding his boot under Percy’s chin and forcing him to meet his gaze. “We’re even now.”

“I would argue the punishment was worse than the crime.”

Theodore squatted down next to one of the barrels and wrapped his arms around the circumference.

“Oh no, your stunt at the War Games also demanded vengeance.”

“Okay fine—” Percy shouted as Theodore heaved and lifted the barrel. “Are you superhuman?”

“Percy,” Theodore said flatly. “We all are.”

He set the barrel down on a workbench.

“You sure you’re not a son of Jupiter with those thunder thighs?”

Theodore choked on a laugh. He stepped towards the furnace and his cheeks pinked with heat.

“So you can draw, you can deadlift...what else are you hiding from me?” Percy asked. Theodore bit his lip.

“If we get started, you’ll find out.”

Percy was outfitted in a heavy apron and gloves to match Theodore’s. He was handed one of those galvanized steel helmets engineers use to weld, which he strapped onto his head. Percy could barely see out of it, but he could make out Theodore making last minute adjustments to the blueprints he had pinned to the drawing board.

“Why aren’t you wearing one?” Percy shouted, his voice muffled and tinny. Theodore turned and went up to the furnace in the hearth, which glowed red as hellfire. The liquid platinum bubbled in its cauldron.

“I just want you to be careful! Now,” Theodore yelled back, gesturing to a bucket of water he had set out next to Percy. “When I say so, you’re going to douse the trident in water to cool it down!”

Percy nodded in understanding, which painfully rammed the bottom lip of the welding mask into his collarbone. Theodore held his hand out towards the fireplace. He glowered, forehead wrinkling with intense focus. Percy looked to the furnace. Out of the top slithered a rope of boiling platinum, bobbing into the air in front of Theodore’s fingers. Theodore beckoned with his hands and the platinum kept oozing out like a strand of taffy. He severed it at a certain length, then began to mold the metal, miming invisible pottery.

“How are you doing that?” Percy breathed. Theodore did not break his concentration.

“I can control molten substances. Metal is the most natural. Lava’s a close second, if it’s available,” Theodore replied. The molten platinum was taking shape, forming the shaft of the trident. Percy watched Theodore’s fingers, subtly and precisely tapping or sliding or rotating in their own little dance like the tentacles of a sea anemone. The metal responded, creating the delicate detailing that was present in the picture Theodore had drawn. The beauty his parents cherished — what Theodore cherished — intimately channeled itself through his fingertips. Percy thought if he could get close enough, he would be able to see Theodore’s fingerprints all over a platinum weapon he never even physically touched.

“Can you do chocolate fountains?” Percy asked.

“Huh?”

“Like melted chocolate—”

“Water! Now!”

Percy, panicked and without hesitation, hurled water onto the metal. It clattered to the floor, metallic pangs reverberating around the room, as the metal cooled to its original silvery sheen. Theodore tried not to smile.

“Don’t ask me stupid questions while I’m working!”

“They may be stupid, but don’t say they’re not important,” Percy said, pointing an intellectual finger. Theodore shook his head and rolled his eyes.

“No, I have not tried to control melted chocolate.”

“What about water? We could totally have the same powers.”

“Water?” Theodore scoffed.

“Isn’t water just molten ice?” Percy asked, looking at him like he just made a paradigm-shifting scientific breakthrough.

“Shut up, Percy.”

“Nacho cheese? Fondue?” he asked excitedly.

“Shut up, Percy,” he repeated, firmer this time.

“I’m just saying,” Percy crooned. “Molten substances is a broad category. I don’t think you’re realizing your full potential here.”

Percy ripped off his welding mask.

“Promise me. At dinner, we try it out on the buffet table.”

Theodore was taken aback.

“We’re getting meals together now, are we?”

“Why,” Percy groaned and stomped his foot, “do you keep pretending that we’re not friends?”

Theodore scowled and scratched the back of his head. The corner of his mouth pulled into a one-sided grin.

“Fine. I promise,” he said, pretending not to be happy about it. “Now can we get back to work?”

As Theodore could not control the shaft of the trident after it solidified, they had to wheel out a vice that could hold the completed end in place. Percy watched Theodore work for hours, lengthening the shaft inch by inch with molten platinum, as Percy was directed to cool the metal with water every few minutes. Theodore did not like it when Percy talked while he was crafting, so he stood there in silence, admiring the tender ministrations the son of Vulcan would do with his fingers. It mesmerized him, how Theodore’s thick fingers could probably tie a knot around the leg of a housefly.

He thought of Theodore’s mother, the artist. Theodore never explicitly said what happened to her, but Percy noticed he talked about her in the past tense. Whether she was dead, or just not in his life anymore, he did not know. Percy was suddenly interested in meeting her, or perhaps to just see a picture. He imagined Theodore as a culmination of his parents’ strengths: Vulcan’s literal strength and brawn, and his mother’s touch for complex construction. Both of their creativity.

“Cool,” Theodore exhaled. Percy coated the final addition with water and the metal sizzled. Steam rose off of the end of the shaft. The handle was complete — a cylinder-like rod whose circumference was more hexagonal than circular. The non-dent end was an intricately-designed knob, sort of like the petals of a rose. Theodore dropped to the floor and propped himself up on his elbows, steadying his breathing.

“It takes a lot out of me,” he said. “Working that long.”

Percy sat down across from him. He realized he had been standing for hours as well.

“How do you do this without a son of Neptune here?”

“Lots of dipping,” Theodore told him. He waved at a pair of heavy-duty gloves hanging from a hook. “You’ll get more to do when we get to the pointy end. It’s shorter but a lot more detail work.”

Percy found himself staring at Theodore’s forearm: the SPQR tattoo and its two lines.

“How did you get to camp?” Percy asked. Theodore shifted his arm, covering his tattoo against his side. Percy could not tell if it was intentional. He looked at Percy warily.

“The wolves, like everyone else.”

“No, like,” Percy began. “I woke up with the wolves. With no memory. How is it supposed to happen?”

Theodore absently picked dirt out of his thumbnail.

“They came to my house.”

“How did they know where to find you?”

Theodore shrugged. A sadness lingered in his eyes.

“Demigod scent,” he said. “I’ve been told it gets stronger the older you get. And when you first begin to realize who you really are, like when you channel power for the first time. Which would make sense, uh...for me.”

Percy could see the calcification of Theodore’s shell happening right before his eyes. Percy did not want to pry, but he knew in his heart that if he did not at least attempt a conversation, his friend would be impossible to ever open up again.

“What happened that day?” Percy asked, looking at the ground. “When the wolves came.”

Theodore analyzed him, low firelight bouncing off his proud jaw. Percy guessed he had never talked about this before, letting it crystallize into a prison in his chest. Theodore sighed.

“My mom immigrated to San Francisco from the Philippines a few years before I was born because, and I quote, ‘Americans have so much trash,’” Theodore chuckled. “You know already she was big into the art scene, I was born, yada yada.”

He looked away, choosing instead to fix his gaze on the embers flickering in the ash of the hearth.

“My dad left, as gods do,” he paused. “And we...lived on our own for over a decade. At some point, when I was twelve or thirteen, my dad came back. And they fell in love again.”

Theodore stuck his tongue in his cheek.

“Vulcan wanted my mom to move away from San Francisco, said there was a big war coming, and he didn’t want us to get hurt. He wanted her to move to Washington, away from the action. He liked to set up shop underneath volcanoes, a great place for a godly forge. He did it with Mount Etna, in Sicily, back in the day. The plan was he could visit her often, if she lived up there in the mountains...so we did.”

Theodore took a deep breath.

“I lived there up until two years ago and...” Theodore looked back at Percy, pain etched into his features. “Long story short, it wasn’t safe for us there either. So the wolves picked me up.”

A dark wave of energy pulsed down the base of Percy’s skull and an uncomfortably warm feeling spread through his limbs. Percy knew Theodore was holding back information, but he knew better than to test his boundaries. He wished he had something to divulge to Theodore, so that this exchange did not feel so one-sided, and he told him that.

“Does it bother you?” Theodore asked. “Not having any memories?”

“I— I don’t know,” Percy said. “It’s like, I don’t feel a yearning for another life, when the past couple weeks has been all I have ever known. How do I ache for something else when I don’t even know what that something else is? I’m comparing Camp Jupiter with the void.”

He rubbed his forehead with the base of his palm.

“Sometimes, I get these...feelings. In my brain. When I feel like I should remember something. I can tell exactly where the synapses are fried, charred to a crisp. I had one just now, when you told your story.”

Theodore frowned.

“And I can’t even sort out what that feeling means, you know? Was I a part of the memory you were describing? Or did something similar happen to me and my brain is trying to empathize?” Percy wondered aloud. “Like where’s my mom? Is she worried about me?”

He choked out the last few words. Percy suddenly felt himself becoming overwhelmed with emotion. He had been so go-with-the-flow for so long, he had not even stopped to process what he was going through, and now the tsunami was crashing down on him. His bottom lip trembled. He bit down hard to stop his fraying emotional state from completely unraveling. Theodore noticed.

“What— What is happening?” Theodore monotoned fearfully. “I don’t like this.”

“I’m sorry,” Percy mumbled through a couple stray tears. “It’s stupid. Don’t worry about it.”

Theodore rubbed his teeth together, uncomfortable and completely inept when it came to displays of emotional vulnerability. Percy wasn’t sure what he wanted or expected. Condolences? Reassurance? He knew for a fact he wasn’t going to receive that from Theodore, an “acquaintance.” Embarrassed, he got up to leave. Theodore sprang to his knees and shuffled over to him.

“Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey,” Theodore whispered. “It’s okay.”

He pulled Percy down into a stiff hug that felt more like a strangulation than an embrace, trapping him listlessly against his chest. Percy put his chin on his shoulder. Theodore smelled like smoke.

“I’m sorry,” Percy mumbled. “Wasn’t really expecting that.”

“Stop apologizing, you Roman.”

Percy laughed and wiped his watery eyes. Theodore squeezed the rest of the waterworks out of him as if he were a sopping sponge, then pulled away.

“Come on,” Theodore told him, giving in. “I’ll try to detonate the chocolate fountain.”

Chapter Text

Percy listened, eyes shut tight, as warm honey drizzled over his forehead and cheeks.

Cloud nymphs swirled around him, combing his unruly hair, trimming his fingernails and cuticles, and exfoliating his skin. The incessant drip of water off stalactites was surprisingly relaxing, the way it echoed off the cave walls. Reyna, in the adjacent chair, had taken him to the underground spa in the bowels of the bathhouse for some sorely-needed stress relief, as Octavian had announced his intention to run for the open praetor seat — an election he was virtually guaranteed to win, given he was running unopposed.

“You ever been to a spa, Percy?” Reyna asked him. Percy’s scalp tingled with pins and needles when a cloud nymph ran her hands through his hair. Reyna raised an eyebrow.

“I don’t recall,” Percy replied.

“Oh, right. Too soon?” She held up her fingernails to the light. “I used to work at a spa, believe it or not.”

“Really?” he asked. “That doesn’t seem like you.”

Reyna rolled her eyes.

“Please, everyone says that. I love the spa, reminds me of better days. They act like I can’t look good and kick ass at the same time,” she said as she took a pointed look at Percy. “Of course, no one ever says that about the boys, but I respect a guy who’s not afraid to get pampered.”

Percy and Reyna shared a glance. She appreciated him. Percy quickly examined his fingernails and chuckled.

“I should get Theodore down here. I think he has two years of soot caked under here,” he said as he held up his thumbnail.

“Ha, good luck with that one,” Reyna laughed. “That boy’s stiff as a board.”

Percy felt the sudden urge to defend him.

“Hey, he’s not that bad. We’re friends now,” Percy said. “I think.”

Reyna looked at him strangely.

“What?” Percy asked, concerned.

“It’s nothing, I—” She pondered her next words. “You are just the last person I would expect Theodore to get along with.”

“Oh, we don’t get along,” Percy laughed. “But we’re totally friends.”

Percy readjusted himself in his lounge chair.

“I’m sure,” Reyna said, wringing out tension in her neck. “You know he made my dogs, Aurum and Argentum? I told him I wanted some truth-smelling, metal canine companions and I swear to the gods I’ve never seen him more excited in my life. We spent weeks on them.”

Something ugly and serpentine curled up in Percy’s stomach. A green-eyed dragon ready to blow fire.

“He was back to his placid self after he finished though,” she said plaintively. “He has the tendency to worship the work he does over the people he’s with. A lot of Vulcan children are like that.”

Percy’s gut uneasily calmed down. The monster dissolved in acid.

“Is that why you trust him so much?” Percy began. “Despite him working so closely with Octavian?”

Reyna hardened at the intrusion of Octavian into her safe space.

“Percy, to me, Theodore’s not a complicated guy. Rome is his home, literally, and he will serve it to his dying breath. He has no mortal family. He’s kind of like Jason, in that way,” she said. “From what I’ve seen from him, his judgments have always followed a compass that upholds this legion. He has been an outstanding centurion and senator. The fact that both myself and Octavian would trust him with our lives is proof of that.”

A lightbulb went off in Percy’s head.

“Then why don’t you ask him to run for praetor?”

“Do you really think I hadn’t thought of that?” Reyna smirked. “A praetor needs direction. An itch for change. To move forward. I see that in you, not him. Admittedly, that may be because you have no memory and there is no back to look back to, but from your display at the War Games, it’s obvious you have a certain disrespect for authority. At least, the current authority.”

Percy’s recollection of the centurions of the Third, Fourth, and Fifth Cohorts made his blood boil. Maybe she was right, he should take this opportunity for himself. Reyna played with the end of her towel.

“No, he’s good where he is,” she smiled. “He is stubbornly content where he is.”

Percy was settled.

“How do I become praetor before the election?” Percy asked, finding a steely resolve. Reyna grinned.

“You’re going to need a quest.”

Theodore, it turned out, could in fact blow up a chocolate fountain with his mind. Who knew?

The pair spent their entire days together at this point. At first, it was coincidental. Percy would wake up to go on a run then swim at the bathhouse and, lo and behold, would cross paths with Theodore as he took his morning ice bath in the frigidarium. This happened three consecutive times, at which point Percy suggested that Theodore join him on his run, then they could head to the bathhouse together. Afterwards, they realized they were both heading off to breakfast. And so it became run-swim-breakfast. Then run-swim-breakfast-forge. Then run-swim-breakfast-forge-lunch. Then run-swim-breakfast-forge-lunch-forge. Then run-swim-breakfast-forge-lunch-forge-dinner.

On nights of the War Games, they got a kick out of playing on opposite teams. Percy enjoyed how much his unpredictable nature and tendency to disobey whatever his cohort’s senior officers told him to do infuriated Theodore. Theodore devised entire strategies involving the First and Second Cohorts solely to make Percy’s life harder, no matter how much it affected the outcome of the Games. They often managed to find each other on the battlefield anyway and duke it out, ignoring the ongoing warfare. Their scorecard was kept by bruises, and was always even. The valley had no rainfall since Percy’s first War Games, so no unfair advantages, just hammer versus whichever weapon Percy chose from the armory that day. They kept mental notes of each other’s injuries, which evolved into a game of who could jab each other’s boo-boos in a round of ninja. Due to Theodore’s slightly longer reach, this usually ended in Percy on the ground laughing, cursing, and howling in pain, after his best friend stabbed two fingers into a sensitive spot.

The trident was coming along nicely. The teeth took significantly longer than Percy anticipated. Theodore was a perfectionist and he was adamant about getting curvature and angles exactly correct. Percy also had to learn how to control the water with almost as minute precision as Theodore did the molten platinum. Percy learned through repeatedly misshaping the first tooth that Theodore closes off when he gets frustrated and has entire mumbling conversations with himself. He didn’t like when Theodore got like this, so Percy worked on his fine motor control, and soon they were almost done with the second. They worked together seamlessly.

Percy watched as Theodore put the finishing touches on the second tooth, shaping the end into a deadly point. Theodore sticks the tip of his tongue through his teeth when he concentrates, Percy noticed.

“Water,” Theodore commanded. Percy traced his finger from the water bucket, pulling a single drop of water into the air. He moved it to where the platinum glowed and enclosed the end in the water. The metal cooled and solidified into the rest of the weapon.

“Perfect,” Percy smiled.

Theodore inspected the end. He shook his head.

“It’s misshapen.”

Percy took a closer look. It looked similar in construction to the first tooth.

“It looks fine to me,” he said.

“It’s misshapen. It needs to be fixed,” Theodore replied, looking him dead in the eye, and that was the end of that matter. Theodore melted the end of the tooth down and the two of them spent another two hours repairing it. At the time of its second completion, Theodore simply looked at it and dunked the tooth back into the furnace of molten platinum.

“Wha—” Percy protested, out of breath. Theodore was right, spending so much time moving precise amounts of water to precise locations drained him more than he thought. Percy plopped to the ground.

“It needs to be flawless,” Theodore said, his back to him.

“You don’t have to try so hard! I thought the first two looked great.”

“You don’t make weapons all day,” he said. “They weren’t good enough.”

Percy could feel the cold shoulder from there. Theodore had not been this flustered or distant in weeks.

“Is it me? I think it’s me,” Percy said. If there was one thing Percy could not stand, it was being the weakest link. Theodore turned to him and he softened.

“No,” he sighed. “It’s not you.”

“Then what’s up?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing? It doesn’t sound like nothing.”

“Can we just get back to work please?” he snapped. The words rolled off of Theodore’s tongue like punches. Percy blinked.

“I think we should just call it a day...” Percy said, crawling up onto his feet.

“No, Percy, don’t go,” Theodore exhaled, his anger deflating as Percy walked to the door.

“No, it’s okay,” Percy reassured him. “We all have rough days. Whatever’s going on, I’d be happy to talk about it. Otherwise, I’ll...see you in the morning. Get a good night’s sleep.”

Percy rocked on the balls of his feet, then rounded the corner.

“Percy, I’m sorry.”

He froze.

“What was that?” Percy asked. He re-entered the room to see Theodore, lips sealed, shoulders drawn in.

“That sounded like an apology,” Percy said. Theodore glared at him. He shoved his hands in his pockets.

“Could you repeat that?”

“Shut up, Percy,” Theodore grumbled, kicking dust.

“Did the sun just freeze over?”

“Shut up, Percy.”

“Aww, he’s back.”

“So can we get back to work?” Theodore asked, straightening his spine. Percy shrugged.

“Nah, I’m still leaving. You need to sleep off...” Percy's smile faded, gesticulating at Theodore. “Whatever this is.”

He turned on his heel and disappeared down the dark hallway.

Hours after curfew, in the dead of night, the engine that was Percy’s body never quieted to less than an idle purr. Tossing and turning in his bunk, he first pleaded with the god of sleep for mercy, then, after unsuccessfully contacting Somnus, telepathically tried to get Frank’s slumbering form to wake up and hit him over the head with a shovel. His fingers had a mind of their own, tapping and clenching and gripping the sheets. The worst part was that he wasn’t even tired. His eyelids didn’t droop. His heartbeat impatiently tapped its toes against his ribs like it was waiting in line at the DMV. And by the gods...he had to use the bathroom. His body was acting like it was the middle of the afternoon and he should be doing anything other than laying in bed.

What was he supposed to do? Inflict watching-paint-dry level torture on himself by cycling through supine positions until sunrise? He glanced around at the Fifth Cohort legionnaires, all in some peaceful state of rest (he liked them better this way). Dakota let out a porcine snore, then rolled onto his stomach. The senior officer, along with Gwen, slept on either side of the barrack door, for good reason. Curfew was strict… but it couldn’t hurt to take a walk, right? Get some fresh air?

Percy, with all the time in the world, slithered into a pair of jeans centimeter by centimeter. With a final tug, he yanked the waistline past his butt. He snatched a camp t-shirt from the floor and made a barefooted attempt at pointe technique in his silent ballet across the room. Without a creak, without a stir, soon his toes were blessing the moon-cooled grass.

Camp Jupiter was foreign to him in the dark. He had never seen it so still, activity ground to a halt. No orders being shouted. No metal clashing on metal. No bustle of Roman civilization. For a moment, Percy pretended he was at a regular old summer camp, that he wasn’t a product of Olympian blood. There was something so darkly funny about it all, being conscripted into an adolescent army to fight battles more powerful beings than him did not want to fight. If he could tear this place to the ground and build it from scratch, he would at least make it more fun. He’s here for a good time, not a long time.

Percy found himself meandering the length of the Little Tiber, letting the invisible burbling of the river’s flow guide him down its banks with the little light he had to see. Here, his breathing evened out, his blood pressure normalized. The proximity of the water calmed him. He kind of wanted to fall asleep right then and there, curl up in the silt and let the ripples tuck him in, but he knew the Roman penal system by then. The son of Neptune plopped himself onto the sand and sat criss-cross facing the current. His index finger dipped under the surface, tracing spirals in the downstream.

He knew, deep down, that he was the reason Theodore was brimming with frustration that day. Percy had elevated himself to friend status (or so he thought), which is perhaps why Theodore wouldn’t say it to his face, but he knew. Percy was trying — really, really trying — but he did not have the technical skill Theodore had. He did not have the concentration, the capacity for art, perception of three-dimensional models. Most damning of all, he did not have the focus. His brain and body rarely sat still as it was. Exhibit A: the present.

So Percy found resolve. He straightened his back, pulled his shoulders taut, rested his hands on his knees, and closed his eyes. Deep breath in through the nose, controlled exhale through the mouth. Focus...

Focus...

Focus...

Focus...

The Tiber in front of him revealed itself in his mind’s eye, became tangible — a faint blue aura just in front of him, crawling across the insides of his eyelids. He could feel the precise contours of its flow in a synesthetic sense — where it bumped rocks and swirled in eddies, where it caressed scales of the fish, where it leaked through the riverbed into the bedrock below. Percy cleaved current off the top and lifted it from the river. The blue phosphorescence molded to his thoughts. He held back a smile.

First, he attempted a sphere. It came out nearly perfectly round. He manifested two hands into his brainscape. He cupped the ball of water and squeezed, like molding Play-Doh. It was more oblong than the first. Percy bit his lip. His palms adjusted and rolled the water between them. He contoured it like pottery, envisioning how Theodore sculpts his weaponry. Still egg-like. He growled in frustration.

His connection with the water began to shake, the light bleeding out of his periphery like aurora borealis. Percy frantically tried to hold his existence on this plane, but he was practically scooping water out of a sinking ship. Focus, he repeated to himself. Focus. Focus on the flow. The flow of the water. Yes. I can feel it. The flow of the water. The water’s aura began to sharpen, pooling back into the frame. He could see the Tiber, see the sphere taking hold.

The flow of the water. Flow of the water. Sweat dribbled down his forehead. The sphere was taking hold. Flow of the water. Yes, it’s working. I can do it. I can do it. I can see it. The flow of the water. He could sense it everywhere — the grass blades, the air. The water in his own body…it was responding to him. A peculiar feeling nested below his navel. A pressure building up, needing release. Power flooded his veins. The flow of the water. The flow of the water. The flow of the water. The flow of the—

Percy gasped, breathing heavily, and the entire illusion fell apart. His eyes shot open. Blush crept up his neck and reached for his cheeks. A wet sensation was pooling down the inside of his thigh, seeping through his jeans at an alarming rate — and it wasn’t the Little Tiberian sphere he had been molding. He jumped to his feet, absolutely mortified. He tried to stop, but the seal, so to speak, was broken.

“Oh my gods, oh, you’ve got to be kidding—” Percy hyperventilated, forcefully pressing his bladder through his abdomen as if that would get it under control. “Wrong flow of water. Wrong flow of water. Wrong flow. Wrong flow. Oh, oh my gods.”

He let out a slew of curses and duck-walked towards the Tiber. Before stepping in, he hesitated. There was a rule about swimming in the Tiber. He had no reason to believe there wouldn’t be a rule about washing off urine, but he also didn’t want to be the reason one was created, you know? It also didn’t feel right to defile the river like that. The bathhouse. Yes, the bathhouse. I can do it there.

“That is the last time I do that. Ugh, I’m so stupid...Theodore better reimburse me for this. Urgh,” Percy complained through his teeth the entire speed-waddle down the via praetoria into the camp. “He still owes me a shirt.”

He tore his t-shirt over his head and tied it around his waist to cover up the stain as he peeled out onto the via principalis, homing in on the bathhouse. His bare feet tread uncomfortably over the gravel, stones digging into his soles. He did not even want to fathom what would happen if his superiors found him out of bed, like this.

With a final shred of hope, Percy hobbled up the few marble stairs and heaved against the heavy bathhouse doors. They didn’t budge. Locked for the night. Percy balled his fists, trembling with righteous anger, and drove a punch into the oak with a dull thud.

“Ow,” Percy seethed, then nursed his fragile hand. “Di immortales.”

He then sent an ill-thought-out retaliatory kick that fired pain missiles through his toes and up his shin.

“What are you doing?”

Percy whirled around. There, in the walkway, was the person he least wanted to see: Theodore, holding a fresh, steaming cup of coffee.

“I thought I told you to go to bed,” Percy said matter-of-factly.

“You don’t seem to be following your own advice,” Theodore replied, eyeing him curiously. “Why are you out past curfew?”

“Why are you out past curfew?” Percy shot back.

“I’m a centurion, I don’t have a curfew. And I like to work to distract myself from the other work I’m supposed to be doing. Now may I ask why you are battering down the bathhouse doors, looking...” Theodore drolled, analyzing the queer combination of jeans and a shirt tucked into the front like an apron. “Like that?”

Percy, as always, opted for the most chaotic of his options: tell Theodore exactly what happened, and hope he thinks it was a joke because no one in their right mind would admit at this age that they just had...an accident. Reverse psychology.

“I pissed myself,” Percy stated as nonchalantly as possible.

Theodore blinked. Blinked again. Then blinked a third time. He chuckled for a hot minute, then his eyebrows scrunched together. He frowned.

“You— you really pissed yourself, didn’t you?” Theodore squinted, stifling a laugh. He wagged a finger. “I know you, Percy. I know how your mind games work.”

Percy cursed.

“Don’t. Laugh,” he warned. “It is not funny.”

“You did!” Theodore guffawed. “You totally did!”

“Theodore, I’m serious.”

Theodore’s laugh cut through the air like a sonic boom. Percy ran him down.

“Shut up. Do you want the entirety of New Rome to hear you?”

Theodore lost it. Percy shoved his hand over Theodore’s mouth.

“I want ancient Rome to hear me,” Theodore muffled.

“Help me, or I swear to the gods,” Percy growled. Theodore escaped his muzzle.

“Give me a minute. Phew. Oh gods, oh, this is—” Theodore wiped a tear and wheezed. “Don’t get your diaper in a twist.”

Percy slapped him across the bicep. Hard.

Back in the forge, Percy draped his jeans over his forearms like it was a funeral shroud, holding it over the furnace like a sacrifice. An extra pair of Theodore’s black cargo pants hung low on his hips. The pants’ original owner stood back, clutching an ice pack to his left arm where a pink, inflamed handprint imprinted on his skin. Percy sighed. Standing so close to the heat was searing off his eyebrows.

“I think that’s the hardest anyone’s ever slapped me,” Theodore said.

Percy was, uncharacteristically, silent for a while.

“Should I just burn them?” Percy asked. “I’m tired of waiting for the stain to evaporate.”

“Burn them,” Theodore replied. “They’re piss pants.”

Percy unceremoniously dropped the jeans into the fire. The denim immediately caught and smoked. He swatted the air and coughed. Theodore pulled him backwards by the elbow. He glanced at Percy with concern. The lack of sleep, the situation — it seemed to age Percy by a few years. The bags under his eyes weighed his cheeks down like melted wax. Besides the cry that lasted him all but a few minutes the other day, he had never seen Percy this...blue. It jarred him — Percy losing his sense of humor.

“You don’t have to be embarrassed about it,” Theodore reassured him. “I’m the only one who knows. I won’t tell anyone.”

“I know,” Percy exhaled. He cringed. “But it’s still really embarrassing.”

“Would it be rude of me to ask what happened?”

“I’m flattered you don’t think I just wet the bed like a child and that there must be some crazy story to go along with this.”

“Percy, if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that you’re the physical manifestation of Murphy’s Law. It wouldn’t be Percy-worthy if you had just been using a urinal in a dream.”

Percy crossed his arms across his chest.

“I knew you were frustrated with me about messing up the trident—”

“I wasn’t frustrated with y—”

Percy held up his hand.

“Stop. I know you were, so just cut it, okay?” Percy said. Theodore licked his lips and backed down. “I went down to the river to practice and I felt this...I don’t know...connection? With water that I’d never felt before. Like it was all mine, if I wanted it. All of it...then long story short I accidentally gave myself incontinence.”

Theodore pulled his ice pack off and gently placed it on a workbench. He looked Percy in the eyes.

“I wasn’t frustrated with you,” he repeated.

Percy ran a hand through his hair and kicked at the floor. He pinched the bridge of his nose.

“Can you just, um, I don’t know, work on something? I don’t really wanna talk about it anymore.”

Theodore nodded his head.

“Yeah. Yeah, no problem.”

Theodore walked to his filing cabinet and fumbled around the array of cylindrical tubes arranged like arrows in a quiver. He pursed his lips, fingering indecisively between two adjacent tubes. Percy took a seat on a metal stool next to the drawing board, swiveling idly to and fro. Extracting a blueprint from his chosen tube, Theodore pinned the paper to the drawing board. It detailed the stirrups of a saddle.

Then, Theodore slid a blank blueprint across the table in Percy’s direction. He clattered a couple graphite pencils onto the hardwood. Percy looked up at him.

“Here,” Theodore grinned. “Practice your art. Gods know you need it.”

So, tongues between their teeth, the son of Vulcan got to work on putting the finishing touches on an iron stirrup and Percy drew cottony clouds across the pale blue of the parchment. A half hour passed in comfortable silence.

“What do you think of these?” Theodore turned and asked Percy, showing off the rectangular rings in his fists.

But the son of Neptune was clunked out, drooling over the blueprint, arms splayed over a horrendous rendition of a dark pegasus.

Chapter Text

Perspiration hung off Percy’s eyelash like dew on a grass blade — scores of droplets poised to make Percy falter.

They had been at it for hours — Theodore pushing Percy to his limits to get the final tooth of his trident just right. It had taken them days to get the second tooth to Theodore’s standards, which really tested Percy’s patience, but he knew Theodore’s pride was tied to this project. Finishing it and melting it and finishing it and melting it. Theodore could not physically bear the thought of letting Percy run free with a shoddy weapon, especially one so intertwined with his name and reputation. So Percy bore Theodore’s frustrations and tics and neuroses, and helped the best he could, all to make sure his friend was satisfied with the final product.

Percy willed the water from his bucket towards the point of the third tooth, morphing it into a hollow cone, like a party hat. He carefully slid it over the molten platinum Theodore held in place using his own power, sharp as an arrow’s head. The platinum and water fit like lock and key, substrate and enzyme. The heat of the metal petered out, escaping in wisps of water vapor, and the platinum seamlessly merged with the rest of the trident. Percy blinked away the sweat dripping down his brow, hoping it did not break his concentration enough to mess up the tooth for the umpteenth time.

Theodore tugged the hem of his camp t-shirt out of his belt and wiped his forehead. Percy could see he was just as sweaty. He walked up to inspect the trident. Percy prayed that this would be it. Vulcan, Neptune — whoever can hear my internal monologues — please let Theodore be satisfied.

Theodore touched the end of the new tooth and bit back a curse. He pricked his index finger. He shook it out and sucked on it. Theodore bent down, looking at the tooth from every angle. Percy held his breath. With a gleam in his eye, Theodore looked up at him.

“It’s done.”

Relief released Percy from so much inner tension, his knees almost gave out. He smiled a big, broad smile and it made Theodore light up. He gave him a high-five that lingered at the top. Theodore nearly crushed Percy’s fingers, he squeezed them so tightly, but Percy did not mind. He could not stop smiling, he was so happy. He clapped Theodore on the back.

“It was lovely working with you, Theodore,” Percy poorly imitated a proper British accent. “Positively splendid. Absolutely gorgeous craftsmanship.”

“I think she looks simply ravishing, if I do say so myself,” Theodore replied, with an even more egregious attempt at Cockney. They separated. Percy put his hands on his hips.

“Take it,” Theodore told him. “It’s yours.”

Percy held his hands under the trident’s shaft as Theodore arm-cranked the vice supporting it. The metal fell gently into his grip. His body tingled, running up his arms and coursing through his skin. His arm hair stood on end. He felt immeasurable power emanating from the weapon in his grasp. Theodore noticed his awe.

“What did you put in this?” Percy asked. Theodore shrugged.

“The Tiber. A little extra magic courtesy of some Hecate kids.”

“I—” Percy stammered. “I don’t even know what to say.”

They assessed each other. An unspoken understanding passed between them. It was bittersweet. Theodore pulled something out of his pocket.

“Here, I uh—” Theodore said, rubbing the back of his neck. “It goes on this. So you never lose it.”

He held it up to the light. It was a silvery chain with a small clasp on either end. A studded ring loosely hung in the middle. Theodore tapped the bottom of the trident to the ring and the trident was wrenched from Percy’s hands. It had shrunk to the size of a charm, now dangling on a platinum necklace. Percy took it from him.

“This is so cool,” Percy whispered. He attempted to tie it around his neck, but his fingers were too hyperactive for the clasps. The effort must have shown on Percy’s face, because Theodore laughed.

“Let me do it,” Theodore scoffed as he walked around to Percy’s back.

Theodore had such nimble fingers, Percy was never not amazed by how he could handle the tiniest of contraptions with such delicacy. The necklace dangled over Percy’s chest, right where his sternum met his collarbone. Theodore walked back around to his front and smiled, admiring his handiwork. Percy gave him a devilish grin.

“Wanna go try it out?”

It was a clear day — not a cloud in the sky, no barrier to protect him from the dry heat. Percy had changed into royal blue swim trunks. He waved as he strolled the length of the Little Tiber, greeting Theodore (also swimwear-clad), who was propped up on a walking stick. The river’s mouth widened into the recreational swimming lake on the southern border of New Rome. A sparse group of demigods enjoyed the water.

As Percy got closer, he noticed Theodore was not using a walking stick, but the staff he had used in the first War Games they played together. Theodore rubbed the fangs of the snake head with his fingertip.

“You know I made this, right?”

“Why am I not surprised?” Percy replied. “Are we sparring today?”

Theodore grimaced.

“I want you to teach me how to fight with it.”

Percy raised his eyebrows.

“Don’t give up on the hammer! I love the hammer.”

“A good warrior is always versatile,” Theodore said. “Please?”

“I don’t know how...” Percy began.

“Don’t give me that.”

“Okay, last time I was in a water-fueled psychotic rampage,” Percy whined.

“Oh, come on,” Theodore scoffed. “You pick up a new weapon every week and wipe out half my cohort. You just couldn’t lose your muscle memory, could you?”

Percy sighed and yanked his trident charm off his necklace. It grew to full length in his hand. Its cold surface responded to the warmth of Percy’s hand, pulsating with a quiet level of energy that only the son of Neptune could evoke. The trident felt like an extension of himself, as if his arteries and veins vascularized into the weapon’s core, pumping an aqueous, salty bloodstream through the teeth to the base. He twirled it in his hand. It balanced itself as it rotated, its center of gravity shifting to suit his preferences. And by the gods, it was beautiful. The platinum was almost blinding, the way it caught the sunlight and reflected stray beams. The teeth were deadly, but Percy personally would be honored to be killed by such a weapon. Despite Percy’s joking, it really did feel like their child. A brainchild, at least.

Across from him, Theodore readied the staff and the dual blades emerged from the twin vipers’ maws. Percy smirked, then charged. Percy swung his trident overhead. Their weapons clanged together, iron on platinum. Theodore strained against Percy’s show of force, but shoved him off like he would a bench press. Percy twirled, reset himself, then jabbed, catching the staff in the teeth of his trident. He twisted and the staff clattered on the ground.

“Defend from the side,” Percy said. “Or you’re gonna get it knocked out of your hands.”

Quick as lightning, Theodore dropped to the dirt, grabbed the staff, and swung it at Percy’s feet. Percy jumped and slammed his trident’s teeth between the staff again. He lifted and twisted, then the staff spun away down the beach.

“Isn’t the definition of insanity doing something over and over again and expecting a diff—”

Percy was cut off as Theodore grabbed his ankle and brought him the hard way to the ground. Theodore took off running towards his staff. Percy sat up and pointed his trident at the lake. He felt his aura flow through the platinum. The teeth became the tips of his fingers. A wave of water erupted from the lake and pummeled Theodore to the sand. He spluttered and coughed up the lake.

“Seriously?” he yelled.

“Don’t question my lesson plan!”

Percy bumped the trident back to his chain and it downsized to its lightweight charm, magically clinging to his necklace. He splayed out on his back, then willed the water level to rise and greet him. The surf caressed his back as he floated out into the lake. He closed his eyes and breathed in the air. Percy could feel Theodore close by, joining him in his reverie. The water’s surface connected to Percy like nerves under a second skin.

“Percy!” someone shouted.

He must have fallen asleep at some point. The brightness hurt his eyes when he opened them. He had apparently drifted to the far side of the lake. On the shore, he could make out a small figure waving him down. It was not Theodore — he tread water next to him. Percy squinted.

It was Nico.

This was the third time he had been in Reyna’s private office space and each time he had wished he hadn’t. This time was no different, after Nico had deposited Percy at the doorway. Frank and Hazel sat to his left. The praetor herself studied the Sibylline book open on her desk.

“You say your father appeared to you today. Here. In this camp?” Reyna asked.

“Yes,” Frank said earnestly. “He ordered a quest. I’m not lying, ask your dogs.”

Aurum and Argentum, gold and silver, wagged their tails and sniffed the air.

“What did he say exactly?” Reyna said, rubbing her temples. “The prophecies we have, they’re not even remotely related to what you’re relaying to me.”

Hazel slipped her hand into his.

“I don’t know, Reyna,” Frank replied. “Mars isn’t exactly the poetic type. He just told me he finds it deeply important that the legion’s missing stockpile be returned to camp.”

“And he wants you to do it?” Reyna asked harshly. Frank got red in the face.

“No offense,” Reyna scoffed. “But you’re not exactly my first choice. Being a probatio and all.”

Percy raised his hand.

“Sorry, why am I here?”

Reyna scowled.

“Because you’re going with them.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa,” Percy said, leaning forward in his seat. “Who said that?”

He felt a stabbing pain right in his chest cavity, a torch being pressed into his lung. Percy could not explain it. Just a few weeks prior, he had been willing to help Reyna with her politicking, maybe even rise to praetor after he completed a quest...so why now did it hurt him just to think about it? His brain tickled along his memory lapses.

“I invited you, and Hazel, of course,” Frank said meekly. “You’re kind of my only other friend. And Reyna said you’d want to go.”

Percy liked Frank. He really did. He was one of the only people in the Fifth Cohort, and camp in general, that he got along with. Percy could not help but feel bad for him, having to lead a hero’s quest with so little experience. Frank did not seem to care that Percy had even less experience, but he supposed his preternatural skill on the battlefield amounted to something.

“Oh, uh, of course, man,” Percy said, though not entirely happy about it. “What is this going to involve?”

“Without a prophecy, there is no way to know for sure,” Reyna admitted. “But we do know where the stockpile of weapons Mars referred to is located. That’s enough to get you started.”

“And that would be?”

“Alaska. The land beyond the gods.”

Percy met Theodore on the via praetoria. He was kicking pebbles with the toes of his boots. He looked funny, wearing a swimsuit with his work boots and nothing else, their afternoon at the lake having been interrupted.

“What was that about?” he asked Percy when he approached. Percy’s shoulders sank.

“I’m going on a quest,” Percy sulked. Theodore hid his thick lips in a thin line. “I sort of told Reyna a while back I was interested in one. And I guess opportunity knocked.”

“Why do you want to go on a quest?” Theodore asked, then realization struck. Disappointment contaminated his next question. “Is this about the election?”

Percy pursed his lips. An understanding passed between them that they wouldn’t talk about it further, for the sake of avoiding an argument. Octavian wasn’t worth it.

“When do you leave?” Theodore buried his hands in his pockets.

“The morning after next.”

Theodore was silent. Percy dug his elbow into Theodore’s stomach.

“Come on, isn’t this what we were preparing for? You knew Joe was gonna grow up and leave the nest eventually.”

“Yeah,” Theodore mumbled. “Yeah, you’re right.”

Percy could see the life sap out of his friend within the minute. Percy understood. Who wouldn’t miss their best friend? Worry about them on a trip that carried a high risk of death or injury?

“Hey, I’ll be fine,” Percy said. “I have the trident. My prophecy says I’ll be victorious. I’ll be back in no time.”

“Let’s...let’s just go get something to eat.”

And they ate a muted meal fit for a funeral.

Chapter Text

The wind was always chilly just before daybreak, a perfect time for a run before the camp basks inescapably under the sun. Percy dynamically stretched outside the Fifth Cohort barracks, cycling through high-knees, calf raises, and lunges. Jumping jacks ruffled his purple windbreaker. His platinum trident charm bounced off of his chest like a metronome in allegro. His heart pumped warm blood. At the break of sweat, Percy stopped, rested his hands on his head, and let his breathing even out. This was odd. Theodore was never this late.

He waited a few more minutes, passing the time with tricep dips on a wooden bench, untying and retying his running shoes. Eventually, he jogged over to the Second Cohort’s barracks. Just his luck, Octavian was on his way out. Percy thought about turning around, but he had already been seen. He slowed to a walk.

“Heard you got a quest,” Octavian said as he unlatched the front gate. Percy could feel his displeasure. Discontentment tended to cling to Octavian like a rolling fog, but today it felt particularly heavy. Dangerous. Octavian was surely smart enough to know Reyna had a hand in convincing Frank to add Percy to the roster, an integral part of her long-term plan to give Octavian serious contention for the open praetor seat.

“Though all three heroes are from the Fifth Cohort, of all places,” Octavian said. “We might as well have sent the kitchen help.”

“You and I both know that we are more than capable,” Percy replied. “Where has your untarnished War Games record gone again?”

“Ah, yes, our little playdates,” Octavian sneered. “I sure hope beating up some prepubescents has adequately prepared you for fighting monsters, which, may I remind you, you haven’t even seen before.”

Percy paled. Octavian wasn’t wrong. What awaited him in the real world, lurking in the shadows, licensed to kill without mercy?

“You are more than welcome to replace me, Octavian. After all, you are the senior officer. I’m sure Frank and Hazel would really benefit from your years of experience.”

Octavian scowled.

“You drive a tough bargain, but I’m afraid I can restore the legion’s honor without having to run errands for a war god. Now if you excuse me, I have a campaign to run.”

As Octavian brushed past him, Percy grabbed his elbow.

“Is Theodore in there?” Percy blurted.

Octavian wrenched his arm away in disgust.

“Don’t touch me,” he said. “And no. I came to make a house call, since I haven’t had the pleasure of his presence recently. His attention has been...divided.”

The centurion gave him a pointed look.

“If you don’t believe me, try to see for yourself. The Second Cohort tends to be...belligerent, before they’ve had their coffee.”

Octavian stalked away down the via praetoria. Percy watched the dark windows of the low barracks, checking for any signs of movement, any shadow of Theodore changing into his running clothes. But he knew Octavian wasn’t lying.

Percy went on his run alone.

He hoped that he would run into Theodore if he went on with his normal routine. He was not at the bathhouse, soaking in the frigidarium. Percy, without much hope, even checked the subterranean spa. He was not in the places him and Percy usually frequented, nor was he at breakfast. Percy, despite sharing a meal with Hazel and Frank, felt strangely unmoored without Theodore there. They spent almost every waking moment exercising, or training, or working together, it left Percy with a hollow feeling when his companion was absent. For gods’ sakes, Percy, he told himself, it’s been three hours.

He took a trip to the forge, which Percy chided himself for not checking first thing in the morning. Theodore probably had work to finish up. But when Percy popped his head into Theodore’s workshop, the place was cold and drafty. No fire burned in the hearth. His blueprints, typically omnipresent on the drawing board and cast aside on the workbenches, were for once organized and packed away in their tubes. Where was he?

Something Reyna had told him nagged at the back of his brain. Theodore has the tendency to worship the work he does over the people he’s with. He made Reyna’s mechanical dogs for her. She made it sound like they had become friends while they worked on Reyna’s project, maybe even more, then Theodore moved onto the next one at the drop of a hat. Was Percy’s friendship just a fad for him? Did Theodore get bored, now that the trident was all said and done? Now that there was nothing to stimulate him, or force him to see Percy everyday, did their friendship just crumble to dust? He remembered Theodore enforcing a distance at dinner the previous night. I should have seen this coming. The red flag was there. Reyna warned me.

Between his cohort’s training exercises and his quest preparations all afternoon with Hazel, Frank, and Reyna, Percy constantly searched his surroundings for any sign of his friend. He hallucinated a tall silhouette in the crowd several times, resulting in a few minor injuries during sword-fighting lessons. What was becoming of him? Why did this obsession grip him so tightly?

Percy credited it to his amnesia. As far as he knew, his life could be measured in weeks, months, from the Wolf House until now. Theodore was his closest friend, his best friend. When his entire past dissipated into wisps of smoke, Theodore was his present. And he wasn’t in New Rome. He wasn’t at the lake. He wasn’t organizing the armory. He wasn’t offering sacrifices on Temple Hill. He missed all three meals.

The sun set with no word on Theodore’s whereabouts. He even cracked and asked Octavian again, a new low for him. Percy was scheduled to leave at dawn, on a boat the legion still had in commission despite not being a seafaring empire. He mournfully took an early bedtime with Frank, knowing if he did not he would be exhausted the next morning.

The rest of his cohort filtered in after dark and Percy could not fall asleep. It was nearing midnight, but his thoughts ran wild. Anger seethed under his ribcage. Theodore did not even say goodbye. He spent weeks investing in a productive, workable partnership to forge his trident, sometimes having to chip away at whatever wall Theodore decided to put up. Something else huddled under the anger, too: melancholy.

Percy could hear it like a pin drop. He could not explain how his ears picked up on it, so far away. Maybe it was the stillness of the camp after hours. But he knew he distinctly heard the closing of the forge door, its heavy hinges thudding to a halt and a click. Percy swung his legs over the bunk, pulled on a camp t-shirt and sneakers over his bare feet, and tiptoed out in his boxers.

The night was cool. Percy did think to bring his windbreaker, but the breathable nylon would make too much noise trying to sneak out past curfew. As expected, the door to the forge was unlocked. Percy opened and closed it so slowly, it barely uttered so much as a creak. He could see, across the main workspace, a dim orange flicker on the wall emitting from Theodore’s workshop. When Percy reached the archway, Theodore was prodding the logs of a freshly-sparked fire, his back to him. Percy was used to this view.

“I thought you would be in bed,” Theodore muttered, without turning around.

“Where were you today?” Percy asked.

“I took a walk.”

“You took a walk?”

“San Francisco.”

The little beast that had nested in his gut over the past few weeks was sniffing the air, trying to decide how the winds fared. Seeing Theodore brought him peace of mind, but it also pinched that ball of nerves growing inside him all day that leeched off of his rage. He felt caught in a hurricane, one foot buffeted by the torrent and the other planted firmly in the stillness of the eye.

“I leave in the morning,” Percy told him.

“I know.”

“You didn’t say goodbye.”

“Goodbye.”

The word punched him in the jugular. Percy spent over a month with Theodore in his workshop. So why did this feel like the first time they met here in this room? How had they regressed so far? Sisyphus pushed his boulder to the top of the hill, just for it to roll back down again.

“Why are you treating this like an end of an era?” Percy asked. “I’m going to come back. We can— we can make more weapons together, if... if that’s what you want.”

Theodore rested his hand above his head on the brick wall.

“What if you don’t come back, Percy?” he asked and turned to him, his big brown eyes wide. He looked like a young cow, begging Percy not to drag him to the slaughterhouse. “What then?”

Theodore partially registered that Percy was in his underwear. He blinked.

“I—” Percy searched for words. “I don’t know. But I’m not going to let you treat me like everyone else.”

“Everyone else?”

“Yes, you— you inject all of your passion into the projects you’re working on, then just...spirit away,” Percy spat. “You leave nothing left for the people in your life.”

“Is that what people say about me?” Theodore faltered, then wiped his face free of emotion. His next words came out hurt, embittered. “Is that what you believe?”

“Well I could very well die in the coming days and your plan was to avoid me until I left!” Percy shouted. “You didn’t even say a word!”

The dragon scorched his insides with blue, cosmic fire. Percy was burning from within.

“Imagine that,” Percy sneered. “Your best friend...not even—”

“I never wanted to be friends with you, Percy,” Theodore snapped.

“What are you talking about?”

“I told you on day one! In this room!” Theodore yelled, throwing his hands in the air. “Your father’s children are horsemen of the apocalypse!”

“You don’t have to be afraid of me, Theod—”

“I read your prophecy, Percy! I tried to keep my distance, but you wouldn’t listen!” Theodore screamed. “You— you kept telling me jokes, and you kept asking me questions, and you— you wouldn’t shut up! You wouldn’t leave me alone. You’re infuriating.”

“Well if you dislike me so much, you could have done a much better job at showing it!”

Theodore pounded his forehead with his fists, then tore at the roots of his bangs.

“I don’t dislike you, you—” Theodore’s cheeks reddened. An exasperated growl broke free from its shackles and ripped from his throat the exact moment his boot connected with a metal waste bin, sending it clattering and clanging off the ceiling, wall, and finally, the floor. He fixed on a point somewhere in the corner of the room — anywhere but Percy. His jaw set, resolutely shaking his head.

“I never wanted to be friends,” Theodore spat.

Percy bit his tongue. His brain was short-circuiting. Whatever emotions it was trying to process were snatched up and chewed out.

“Theodore, I…”

He couldn’t finish. He feared if he opened his mouth one more time, an inferno would stampede up his throat and he would never be able to speak again. Inexplicable saltwater welled in his lower lashline. He studied the floor.

“I don’t know what you—”

And suddenly Theodore’s lips were crashing into his — heat and force and friction. Theodore’s hands wrapped behind Percy’s ears. Then just as suddenly, he pulled away, his fingers still threaded through Percy’s hair. His breath tickled Percy’s nose. Theodore searched his eyes, now wild with the terror of a deer caught in a freight train’s path.

“I— I’m sorry,” Theodore stuttered, pulling away. Percy’s eyes glistened, indecipherable in the dim, as cryptic as a deep tide pool. “I shouldn’t’ve—”

In the instant Theodore thought he made his gravest mistake, Percy kissed him back, with equal fervor. Yet it was Theodore who, again, withdrew.

“I didn’t want to hurt you,” Theodore whispered, swift and breathless. “I didn’t want to hurt myself. I thought it would be easier, if I...if I...”

Percy’s dumbstruck gaze never left Theodore’s lips, trained on them like they were alien, entirely new. Then he closed the distance once more.

They did not take time to breathe. Percy tangled his fingers in Theodore’s mane as one of Theodore’s hands drifted down Percy’s back. At the small, he pulled him in closer. An electric shock sparked in his memory void — a fuse blowing. But even that couldn’t distract him from the sensations he was experiencing. Theodore’s lips were plump and soft and tasted like coffee, at glorious odds with the scarce stubble that grazed Percy’s cheeks. Theodore’s hands held him so forcefully, so possessively. The hand on his lower back slammed their bodies together. The son of fire radiated warmth.

Theodore pulled away to catch his breath, but only for a moment. He took the front of Percy’s shirt in his hands and ripped it down the middle, like he had the day they harvested platinum ore. Percy gasped as Theodore grabbed him by the waist, slipped his hands over bare skin, and shoved him against the workbench. Percy grunted and his breath caught. Theodore pecked from his ear down his jawline, then pulled him back in for another kiss.

Percy became marionette with Theodore’s hair, and the two discovered each other.

They laid on the floor — Percy gazing into the dying fire, the top of his head resting under Theodore’s chin. He could see their murky reflections in the bottom of the furnace: Percy, cuddled into the contours of Theodore’s muscles. He snuggled into the crook of Theodore’s arm draped over him. With Theodore so close, he didn’t feel cold, in spite of the concrete floor and destroyed t-shirt.

“I’ve never done that before,” Percy whispered.

“What? Kiss a boy?” Theodore asked.

“Yeah, and...kiss anyone. Like that,” Percy added.

“How do you know?”

Theodore’s hand traced Percy’s scalp. He pushed stray hair out of Percy’s eyes. It felt good.

“I just do,” Percy said. “I don’t think I could forget.”

“There’s no way I was your first kiss.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Have you seen yourself?” Theodore asked. Percy’s eyebrows knit.

“What do you mean?”

Theodore sighed.

“Neptune didn’t sacrifice beauty for function when he made you, did he?” he whispered. Percy sat with that compliment for a long time.

“You know, I don’t even know your last name.”

Theodore chuckled. Percy could feel his chest rumble.

“My full name is Theodore Aquino Oso.”

Percy awkwardly turned his head, attempting eye contact in their position.

“Your name is...Teddy Bear?”

“She did that on purpose,” Theodore grumbled.

“What?”

Theodore laughed — a big, full-chested laugh.

“The convention is to take my mom’s last name as my middle, then my dad’s as my last. My dad doesn’t have a last name, obviously, so she got a bit of creative freedom.”

“Teddy Bearrrrrrr,” Percy teased, rolling his R with a Spanish trill.

“It was originally supposed to be Burro for Vulcan’s sacred animal, but she shot that down. Could you imagine? Theodore Aquino Ass,” Theodore shook his head. “No, my mom negotiated for something better, stronger.”

“The teddy bear.”

“Shut up, Percy.”

“Only if you make me, Teddy.”

“Don’t call me that.”

“No, no, it’s Theodorable.”

“I will Percycute you if you ever say that again.”

“Oh, that was a good one. Calling me cute and threatening me at the same time.”

“I’m nothing if not a multitasker,” Theodore smirked. “But really, don’t call me that. You make me sound like a school boy.”

“Whatever you say...Teddy,” Percy said, testing the waters and expecting a reaction, but it seemed Theodore resigned himself to his new nickname. “I like Ass, though. It suits you.”

“I know you like ass. You grabbed it many times.”

Percy laughed. He groggily reached his arm around and played with the hair on the back of Teddy’s head.

“What’s your last name?” Teddy asked. For once, Percy felt the circuitry in the core of his brain light up and thrum with life, like power restoring itself to an abandoned carnival — a revival of nostalgia and neon.

“Jackson,” he whispered.

“Percy Jackson.”

“Teddy Bear.”

“Shut up.”

Percy did shut up, because he fell asleep, nose nestled into Teddy’s throat with a piece of his prophecy unmistakably clear.

Chapter Text

His circadian rhythm chiseled into his slumber like a nail into glass, cracks spiraling away from the spike until the pane shattered with a crackle and crunch. Percy’s eyes shot open, vision clouded with black splotches. He blinked them away and found himself buried in Teddy’s neck, Teddy’s arm still wrapped tightly around his torso. Percy tried to extract himself from Teddy’s clutches, but the more he fought, the tighter he was constricted. He planted a kiss on Teddy’s lips. That woke him up.

Teddy’s eyelashes fluttered. He gave him a groggy, silly grin and reached up to place his hand on Percy’s cheek.

“Good morning.”

Percy painfully clenched Teddy’s wrist and got to his knees. The workshop had no windows, no sunlight to gauge the day.

“The quest!” Percy exclaimed. “What time is it?”

Realization dawned on Teddy and he propped himself up on his elbows. Percy stood up and looked down at himself, at his boxers, sockless sneakers, camp t-shirt cleaved down the center. Ash and grime splattered his abdomen from where bare skin met the workshop floor while he slept. He could not even fathom what his hair looked like.

“Oh gods,” Percy said. He caught Teddy raking his eyes over him. How Teddy — the rugged, handsome blacksmith that he was — could find Percy attractive right now, he had no clue. Teddy’s thick eyebrows knit together and scrunched up his forehead, the way it did when he was worried. Percy fought the urge to drown himself in Teddy’s lips.

“I have to go, Teddy.”

Teddy nodded solemnly. He pulled Percy by the hand and his body went limp. Percy fell to his knees and let Teddy pull him into an embrace. The timing was not fair. Before yesterday, Percy did not even register that his feelings for Teddy were deeper, more intense than a close friendship. Gods forbid, he did not even recognize his attraction until Teddy’s teeth grazed his ear, his hands kneaded his skin. Every second they were not touching was a second wasted.

Percy deflated and pouted. He kissed Teddy on the cheek. Teddy chuckled and sat up, lifting Percy up off of him. He flopped like a ragdoll.

“Up you go,” Teddy groaned. “Come on. There’s a walk of shame with your name on it.”

Teddy got them standing up, Percy clutching his forearms.

“Are you coming to see us off?” Percy asked.

“Percy, you’re already late.”

Percy gave him one last kiss, trying to transmit a spectrum of feelings that Percy himself couldn’t even name. Teddy toyed with the trident dangling around his neck.

“This will return to your neck if you lose it, got it?” Teddy said. “Right where my hands will be if you’re gone more than a week.”

Teddy pretended to strangle him, shaking Percy back and forth, pressing his thumbs into the crux of his collarbone. Percy rolled his eyes. He was still reluctant to leave.

“Now go,” Teddy commanded. “Before the whole legion sees you in your underwear.”

A sun-kissed haze coated the valley when Percy emerged from the forge. The daylight blinded him until his eyes adjusted. A slew of curses dove off Percy’s tongue as he speed-walked down the via praetoria, already populated by a handful of early-risers. It must have been two, maybe three hours past daybreak. He caught a few stares as he sped to the Fifth Cohort barracks. The way his shirt was shredded plus his general disheveled appearance — gods, he hoped people thought he was in a nasty midnight scrap with a monster.

Fifty feet from the Fifth Cohort bunks, thinking he was home-free, a hand wrapped around his wrist like a vice.

“Where in the name of Pluto have you been?” Reyna growled, dragging him away from the barracks and towards the principia. Her fingernails dug painfully into his skin. She would not even look at him. Percy decided to run with the monster attack alibi.

“I got in a fight,” Percy said.

“I can see that,” Reyna said. “You were supposed to leave hours ago. What were you even doing outside the camp?”

Percy did not have the bandwidth to come up with a good lie, which ended up turning out fine. Reyna was more interested in venting her frustration than seeking out actual answers to her questions. On any other occasion, Percy showing up like this would warrant an interrogation, but Reyna’s tunnel vision kept her focus on the quest that should already be underway.

“Poor Frank’s out of his mind. He thought you bailed.”

“I would never do that to him—”

“I had him pack for you. Thank the gods he grabbed you an extra set of clothes.”

She towed him behind her like a child guilty of misbehavior. Her purple praetor’s cloak whipped in the wind. He caught a few wolf whistles coming from passersby. Frank and Hazel sat on the steps of the principia. Their faces lit up when they saw him, relief washing over the two. Reyna released her chokehold on Percy’s forearm and deposited him at the base of the marble facade. Percy tried to paint an apology on his face.

“You’ll find the boat docked at Alameda. It’s not much, but it will get you up the coast.”

“Thank you, Reyna,” Percy said. She rolled her eyes.

“Put some clothes on.”

The boat Reyna spoke of was a sad excuse for one. The trio had to squeeze into a dinghy the size of a rowboat, coated in barnacles and worn down from years wasting away in the brine.

“The Romans didn’t have much of a navy,” Hazel explained. Percy discovered he could self-propel the vessel without the use of oars. The currents of the Pacific Ocean bent to his will and shot them up the California coast. The Golden Gate Bridge was behind them in minutes. As he let the salt spray tickle his face, Hazel and Frank caught him up to speed on the details of their quest.

Back in the 1980s, a quest to the tundra went awry, resulting in an entire cohort’s worth of Imperial gold military equipment to be lost in the frigid waters of the gulf. It was a bloodbath, neither the bodies nor the weapons were recovered. The memory was a stain on the Twelfth Legion Fulminata, an embarrassment. Rectifying the mistakes of legionnaires’ past would certainly bring honor back to Camp Jupiter. Percy wished it did not have to involve him. He missed Teddy already.

They spent the day on the water, travelling faster than the speedboats in their unmotored dinghy. At sunset, Hazel complained of seasickness so Percy directed the boat into calmer waters, up the mouth of the Columbia River. He found he had perfect bearings, coordinates and gridded maps lacing his vision.

“Portland, Oregon,” Percy told his companions, as their boat veered into the shadow of the cityscape. As soon as they docked, Hazel clambered up the boardwalk and hurled over the side. Frank climbed up after her and rubbed her back. He glanced at Percy apologetically and motioned with his head towards the port. Percy took the hint and headed towards the city.

The area was busy in the evening, bustling with mortals hopping from bar to bar to seafood restaurant. It was lively and homey, people living their lives without certain death hanging over their heads, which only served to make Percy angry. His life, of which he could remember, consisted of him adapting to new territory then immediately being uprooted. He grappled with life in the wilderness for over a week, then was ushered into the rigid structures of a Roman legion. He forged a meaningful relationship with someone, and right when a new normal was in his grasp, it was snatched away. He had started to feel like himself, whoever that person was, before his memory was stolen from him.

Being aggravated with Teddy, then being enamored with Teddy, was a welcome distraction to the turmoil Percy did not want to face. Now that he was alone for the first time in months, standing solitary on the edge of the West Coast, it weighed on him. He knew his first and last name. He knew his father’s name, but not his father. Did he have a family? Did he have friends? If so, were they demigods too? They had to be, Percy decided. How else could he have fared so well in combat? But where were they, if not Camp Jupiter?

Most importantly, were they searching for him? A knot of nausea formed in his stomach. What if his friends found him and he didn’t remember a single thing about them?

At least he would have Teddy. He would always have Teddy.

Percy observed the surrounding city. He paced the sidewalk, looking for a convenience store or somewhere he could pick up some food and extra supplies. Behind the skyscrapers, a snow-capped mountain loomed in the distance. Percy felt a buzzing in his ears, looking at it. It entranced him. It was so beautiful, standing tall, proud, and evergreen over Portland. Its effect was hypnotic.

Percy elbowed a pedestrian, not taking his eyes off the summit. The buzzing in his ears got louder, drowning the sounds of nightlife out as if a plane were flying overhead. He started to feel dizzy.

“What mountain is that?” he heard himself say. The person he stopped looked to where Percy’s gaze was fixed.

“Oh, that one?” they said, pointing at the peak. “That’s Mount Saint Helens.”

Then Percy blacked out.

Percy woke up on a mountainside. The soil was warm beneath his cheek. He would have liked to lay there, have restful dreams for eternity under the blissful fog that permeated his brain. He was shaken out of his reverie by the distinctive clunk of axe on wood. Percy rolled into a sitting position and steadied himself on a pine trunk. Gods, he was dizzy.

He meandered down the incline, steadying himself on trees. Sometimes he tripped and stumbled sideways. His inner ears were sore, throwing off his natural sense of balance and awareness of his body in space. He picked his way down the hill, praying for the return of his proprioception, until he reached a lone cabin.

The wood that composed its walls looked relatively fresh, either dark with its last semblances of life or perhaps it had rained recently. Its roof, made of interlocking leaflets of sheet metal, had not yet been eaten alive by rust. In the property’s meager yard, piles upon piles of broken glass, liquor bottles, mosaics, lightbulbs, and window panes dotted the grass like molehills. Closer to the forest’s edge, a tall young man wielded an axe, ready to split another log over a tree stump.

“Teddy!” Percy shouted, smiling wide. Teddy chopped the log in half with a thump. He wiped his sweaty brow with the back of his forearm. He did not pay Percy any attention. A little stung, Percy walked up to him. So we’re ignoring each other again?

Teddy set another log on the stump, heaved, and swung. Two even pieces fell off either side into the dirt.

“Teddy,” Percy repeated. He did not react to his presence, which was when Percy noticed his face. Teddy did not look freshly-shaven. No, he did not have facial hair in the first place — meager though it was as Percy knew him. He wiped his forehead again and Percy got a second viewing of his forearm. His characteristic SPQR tattoo was nowhere to be found. This was Teddy when he was younger, before coming to camp, Percy realized. This was a dream, or a mirage. Or a memory. A time capsule.

“Anak!” a female voice shouted, from inside the cottage.

A middle-aged Filipino woman, dressed in flame-charred coveralls with a pair of gigantic spectacles too big for her head, stepped out from the back door. She could not have been much more than five feet tall, a stunning contrast to Teddy. He was already taller than Percy, at fifteen. Her short hair, haphazardly chopped like her son’s as if both members of the family couldn’t afford to waste time on a visit to the barber, nearly disappeared under a plaid bandana. Teddy turned to her. No one noticed Percy’s presence.

“I need you to head to town,” she said. Her words sluiced through a distinct Filipino accent. “I’m out of propane. I can’t lose what’s in the kiln.”

She beckoned with a nod of her head and disappeared. Teddy huffed and threw down his axe. Percy followed him into the cabin. The place was delightfully chaotic. Teddy’s mother used every square inch of the place for her art. Countertops shelved unfinished pieces of sculptures, fragments of extraordinary chandeliers hung from the ceiling rigged on hooks and wires, and furnaces and glass-blowing equipment were its centerpiece. Stacks on stacks of chopped logs — Teddy’s work — precariously took up an entire wall. Percy was cautious around the glasswork, even though he could not physically interact with the environment. The floor was uneven concrete, which could not have been comfortable for its inhabitants, but this place was not designed for living. Two blow-up mattresses had been hastily pushed into the corner.

Teddy’s mother dropped an empty propane tank and a wad of dollar bills into her son’s hands.

“Hurry please, Teddy,” she said, distractedly adjusting the position of a hyper-realistic glass donkey on an out-of-place side table. There was an odd, tangible coldness between them. “No street lights up here.”

“Yes, Nanay,” Teddy nodded obediently.

Teddy nodded and kicked open the front door. He picked his way down a dirt path that wound down the mountain, a well-trodden ribbon unspooling through the forest floor. Percy could see the lights of a small town peeking through the tree branches, about a mile away, twinkling like fireflies. The climb was steep. No wonder Teddy’s mom made him run the errands. With legs like his, he probably cut travel time in half. Percy trailed him for a quarter-mile.

As he walked, his right thigh began to feel uncomfortably warm, not unlike a muscle during a tough workout. The sensation wasn’t foreign. Then a fire ripped through his quad.

“Ah!” Percy yelled, clutching his leg.

Nothing was visibly bothering him. His pant leg looked as normal as denim ever did. But his leg, oh gods his leg, felt like someone was driving a branding iron into his flesh. Teddy went on ahead and Percy limped after him. A similar warmth spread across his chest. He braced himself in anticipation, but that was not nearly enough to prepare him for the pain he felt.

Percy collapsed on the road, screaming until his vocal chords went hoarse. The phantom inferno spread down his legs, across his torso. This, Percy decided, was what it felt like to be burned at the stake. His fragile mind searched for answers. Was he not supposed to be here, in this timeline? Did his soul have a visceral reaction to being in the past? Was this hellfire bent on incinerating him from two existences, the past and the present?

He was flat on the ground now, his entire body being licked by invisible flames. Percy resigned himself to the fact that he was going to die here. This is how he would die. There would be nothing after this. His spirit would rest in the same place his memories went: the abyss.

He felt his mortal molecules being ripped apart bond by bond, releasing atomic firecrackers of energy amplified by the power encoded in his godly DNA. His godly DNA, Percy thought. His last hope. Percy yelled so loudly, across time and space the birds flew from their perches. He felt cement in his gut, and the earth shook. An explosion rocked the mountaintop.

The tectonic plates underneath him convulsed and downed trees. His chin pounded against the quaking ground, gravel angrily digging into his chin, abrading the skin of his neck. He heard Teddy’s voice down below, out of sight.

“Mom?” his voice carried, as scared as a child in the dark.

Teddy sprinted back up the path, stumbling over the aftershocks. He had dropped the propane tank and cash. Percy wanted to say something to him, but he could not speak. It’s not like he could have heard him anyway.

The burning sensation was dying down, dulling into a still-unpleasant heat. Percy found he could move, somewhat. He stretched his fingers out. His body looked physically fine, but why did he hurt so much? What was that?

He heaved, rolled onto his back, and watched the sky. Great clouds of black smoke curled from the mouth of the volcano. Lava poured from its maw like a giant tongue, saliva dripping off in rivulets that coursed through the forest, setting it alight. It moved quicker than Percy thought lava would travel, or maybe Percy had lost all sense of time as he laid there, unable to gather enough strength to move more than an inch.

Percy watched Teddy’s house wash away in the flood of molten earth. He heard shouting, crying, but he couldn’t attach it to a specific person. The entire forest in front of him was an ocean of red-hot waves. Soon, it would drown him and Percy would actually die this time. He tried to muster a morsel of stoic acceptance. He wanted to cry. Maybe he was crying and the heat immediately evaporated his tears.

Someone came running down the mountain and stopped just in front of him. It was Teddy. Good old Teddy. He had a shirt tied around his mouth and nose, his eyes puffy and bloodshot. Teddy turned to the wreckage behind him. He could see, in Teddy’s posture alone, that he knew he was not going to make it out alive. The lava was advancing too quickly. His makeshift home was up in flames. His mother was nowhere to be seen.

The molten river was upon them. It slithered towards them like a python, like a venomous serpent that had already stunned its prey, ready to swallow them whole in one vicious gulp. Teddy stood above Percy, almost defensively, even though he could not have known that Percy was there. Percy coughed. The smoke was unbearable. As the lava came within Teddy’s reach, clawing towards him with viscous fingers, he screamed at the top of his lungs.

“I HATE YOU!”

The lava erupted around them, spraying cleanly to either side. Not a drop touched either of them. Percy could still only see Teddy’s back. He watched his heavy breathing. He could sense the dam breaking inside of him, not just of his anger, his despair, but of raw Vulcanic power being released into his bloodstream. The son of the fire god turned his hand once over, his fingertips suddenly foreign to him. However, the lava in front of them kept its dangerous, lethal pace.

Teddy roared and swatted the air like he was slapping someone. The advancing lava flew to their left and set a pine tree ablaze. He scratched the air in the other direction and the molten earth shot to their right. He shouted obscenities until his voice was hoarse, devolving into tortured wails, curses at his father, then a simple repetition of the same three words: I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. Teddy did this for gods knew how long. Percy could never have known. Their entire surroundings were on fire, awash in boiling lava, save for the sliver where Teddy stood and Percy lay. Teddy was parting the red sea.

When the lava cooled into the first semblances of black igneous rock, Teddy collapsed. His body splayed out ahead of Percy’s feet. Heat still radiated off of the newly-formed ground, but it had crept to a halt. The mountainside was barren, wiped into a blank slate.

How long did they lie there? Days? It was difficult to tell with smog blocking the sun, though every few hours Percy could see a glint of sunlight breaking through the volcanic mushroom cloud.

Percy was able to sit up at some point. He watched over Teddy, who had not moved a muscle in a very long time. His fingertips, to his surprise, pressed warmly against the skin of Teddy’s neck, when he wanted to check his pulse. The flow was silent, nearly invisible, but he could feel it, sense it there, dribbling down the artery like the last, pathetic vestiges of water from a hose being turned off. Suddenly, the hairs stood up on the back of Percy’s neck. Someone, or something, else was here. He craned his neck behind him.

The village was razed. There was not a tree in sight, just solidified black earth, the beginnings of basalt, and wisps of smoke. Bounding up the mountain was a pack of wolves.

They surrounded Percy and Teddy. Bringing up the rear and closing the circle was the she-wolf, Lupa. She was not looking at Teddy, though. She was looking at him. She did not speak, but he got the message: Leave.

Percy stood up, his legs stiff. This was the first time he had used them in a long time. He took one last look at Teddy, who he was sure was okay. One of her betas trod forward and sniffed his friend, turning his unconscious body over with its snout. Under Percy’s foot, a patch of grass grew. A pine sapling stood petite and proud. That made him happy. The mountain would live again someday. He limped away.

Out of the wolves’ sight, Percy hiked over the mess he made. The landscape confused him. This was Teddy’s past. How could he relive someone else’s memory? More importantly, how could he change the course of Teddy’s life? No, he didn’t change the course of Teddy’s memory. He had always been a part of it. But that’s impossible, I’m not here.

“Yes, you are,” said someone behind him, a familiar voice. “You sacrificed a life today for your own. Many lives.”

Percy turned. There, emerging from a crack in the scorched earth, was a woman. She wore an earthen veil that concealed most of her face. Beneath, Percy could see her eyes were closed. Her voice sounded distant, ancient, like it was emanating from somewhere far, far away. It was her: the woman who whispered in his ear on the Tiber river bank, and on the Field of Mars, so many months ago. Yet he remembered the textures of her voice so clearly, like the contours of a dune.

“I didn’t mean to,” Percy croaked. His voice box had also been obsolete. “I never wanted to hurt anybody.”

The lady had a thin smile.

“That's never a hero’s intention, is it? Hurting people...” She trailed off. “You are a powerful young man. Incredible you have been able to avert your own demise in two timelines. Perhaps an echo of your time spent with my son, the time lord.”

“What are you talking about?” Percy asked.

“Ah, yes, my granddaughter has played with your memories,” she said. “You were both here...and there.”

She nodded towards the jagged crater at the top of the volcano.

“I was...in the volcano?”

“Yes,” she said. “Another you. Surely you could feel it, no?”

Percy thought to when his body felt like it was being ignited from the inside.

“I was dying,” Percy said.

“You almost died here as well. Your body has such resilience,” she pondered. “I am surprised the rift in time did not kill you altogether. You are strong. The strongest I have sensed in many generations. I hope that we can work together. You have created new life for this place.”

Percy felt a familiar buzzing in his ears and he started feeling light-headed. The earth woman smirked.

“Don’t fret, we will have many more opportunities to talk. Your friends are worried about you.”

She disintegrated into clods of dirt, then Percy’s eyes rolled into the back of his head.

Chapter Text

A police siren’s wail welcomed Percy into consciousness.

His wrists were strapped at his sides to a metal railing — that was the first thing he noticed without even needing to open his eyes. He was in a moving vehicle, he was sure of that, the way his body jostled with the bumps and ridges in the asphalt. He could hear metal stirring when the vehicle turned, like the rattling of a drawer of silverware or a toolbox. On the bright side, he was comfortable. His back rested on a foam pad. A mechanical beep-beep synced to his heartbeat. Percy forced his eyelids open.

Gods forbid. He was in the back of an ambulance. Medical equipment stored in organized drawers clattered around with the flow of traffic. The foam mat he was on: a stretcher. The mortals must have requested medical attention after he fainted. Where were Hazel and Frank? Weren’t they supposed to be looking out for him?

A face blocked his view of the metallic interior. When his sight came into focus, a young nurse smiled down on him. She was cute — ginger hair, dimples. Her teeth glinted. She took a quick glance up at whoever was driving the ambulance.

“It’s gonna be okay,” she said, brushing his hair out of his eyes. “You took quite a spill.”

Percy already did not like her, despite her congenial appearance. Maybe it was because only Teddy was allowed to groom him like that. Something about her just felt forced, like a bully who only halfway-reformed themselves after high school. Did Percy ever go to high school? He did not let himself linger on the question. His facial expression must have given his dislike away immediately, because the EMT’s smile inverted.

“He knows,” she said to the driver, and she grabbed a nasty-looking syringe from a drawer and raised it above him, primed to strike.

Percy, thinking on his feet, threw his restrained body weight to the side, successfully tipping over the stretcher he was strapped into. The nurse shrieked as the gurney crashed into her. Percy’s knee hit her leg and the impact reverberated like hollow metal. Huh?

He took another look at her and her appearance flickered holographically, switching between wholesome nurse and she-demon. One of her legs looked almost normal, save for the fact it was crafted out of some sort of bronze metal. Her other was like a faun’s, goat-like and hooved. Her red hair morphed between auburn and literal fire rooted to her scalp. She hissed and her incisors sharpened, her irises pigmented red.

She had not let go of the syringe, which honestly made Percy more squeamish than her fangs. The she-demon jabbed downward as Percy kicked it out of her hand with the sole of his shoe. The glass shattered on the wall. The liquid inside sizzled and bore a hole in the floor. He struggled against his restraints. Great, his first monster fight would have to be no-handed. That’s fair.

The she-demon lunged, talons growing out of her fingernails. Percy lurched onto his stomach, swinging the stretcher on his back with him. Her body slammed into the steel drawers and the ambulance veered, throwing equipment off the wall.

The stretcher was cumbersome and nearly his bodyweight. It crushed his nose into the floor, but at least for the moment, it pinned her against the drawers. Percy jerked his wrists against their straps, hoping to at least loosen them, but his squirming only seemed to make them constrict. There was no way he could grab his trident off his neck, much less wield it. He would have to improvise.

His assailant growled, forced the stretcher away from her legs, and lumbered out of her temporary prison. How did she do that? She pulled herself up and her bronze leg clunked against the floor. Her other leg, the goat one, Percy thought. Its strength comes from its range of motion. That gave him an idea.

“This one’s feisty,” she hissed. “No wonder the Earth Mother likes you, boy.”

She stood directly behind him, in front of the ambulance’s rear double doors. Percy decided to test his flexibility. He rolled his head forward into a neck-breaking contortion. The ambulance was upside down, goat hoof and bronze ankle at the top of his vision. He started walking his legs forward. With his arms trapped at his sides, with every inch his feet moved closer to his head brought a new level of discomfort. He groaned. His knees were to his chest, toes on the floor, then Percy launched himself backwards with every muscle fiber available in his lower legs.

The she-demon, the stretcher, and its captive, Percy, shot from the back doors of the speeding ambulance onto a freeway overpass. Cars swerved and honked as Percy, luckily landing on the stretcher’s wheels, careened into the median. The she-demon was not so fortunate. She tumbled into the middle lane, gave Percy one last snarl, then exploded into pale golden dust as a semi-truck hit her head-on. The monster’s essence was whisked away in the wind.

Laying there on his side amongst the unkempt grass and cigarette butts, his adrenaline refused to die down. He thought he could hear beeping, as if he was still connected to that machine in the ambulance. He was a bit roughened up from the collision, a few scrapes from the gravel burned and itched, but overall he was in one piece. An exhale escaped him that he did not realize he was holding.

Percy registered birds chirping. It was morning. How long had he been out? How long had they been driving? A few mortals that had pulled to the side of the road rushed over and unlatched him from his binds. He stumbled up and rubbed his wrists. They were chafed raw and faintly bleeding. The nice people asked if he was okay, if he needed anything, if they should call another ambulance. They were suffocating him.

“I just need a minute, thank you.”

He hobbled up the shoulder of the freeway. Traffic was slowly starting to move again, skirting around the fifteen-car pileup Percy had caused. The semi-truck that killed the she-demon had a deer-sized dent in its hood. He thought about how the monster shimmered between her human appearance and her true form, shrouded in thick mist. He wondered if the truck driver knew he hit a demon from the Underworld or if he was wracked with guilt over the involuntary manslaughter of a health care worker. This dredged up Percy’s memory of unintentionally destroying the mountain town, Teddy’s home, his…

No.

Percy pushed that thought down so far, so forcefully, that he hoped it would fall into the abyss in his brain along with everything else he ever knew. A Tartarus for his worst thoughts. He wondered if a god had not taken his memories at all and instead he himself created a void where he could put everything he did not want to remember. What if he had wanted to repress his entire life and… start over? How traumatic were his first sixteen years that he would want to forget them? How many people had died? How many had he hurt, using gifts from his father that were equally blessings and forces of destruction? That thought was depressing. He pushed that one to the void.

All he wanted to do was think about Teddy, be with Teddy. Percy had been gone, what? A little more than day? The prospect of returning to Camp Jupiter was the only motive he had to complete this quest, plus his sense of duty to Frank. He felt guilty for not having a strong desire to do this on behalf of Rome and the legion and the gods, like everyone else seemed to have. Truth be told, it never felt like home to him. At one point, he tried to convince himself otherwise. He liked competing in the War Games (with Teddy). He liked going swimming in the lake (with Teddy). He liked walking through New Rome and getting street food (with Teddy). The common denominator was not Camp Jupiter.

A ways ahead of him, the runaway ambulance sunk sideways into a muddy ditch. The tires squelched and spun as the driver floored the gas, but the vehicle was stuck. The door opened and a she-demon tumbled out. He could see her throwing her claws up, airing her frustration. She looked bald from afar, when her hair appeared as translucent flames. Percy pulled his trident off of his necklace and it grew to full size in his hand. The platinum, consecrated in the water of the Little Tiber, burned cold in his hand. From fifty yards, Percy aimed, and threw his trident like a javelin. It sailed with the accuracy of a laser, the teeth caught her in the neck, and she melted into shimmering powder. He held his hand out. The weapon, just as Teddy said it would, flew back to his hand. He put it back on his necklace.

After a close inspection, Percy determined the ambulance was not damaged. It had a full tank of gas. The she-demons must have been planning for a long trip. The engine sputtered to life as he turned the key. Did he know how to drive? He was sixteen after all. Percy felt natural, there in the driver’s seat, so he didn’t overthink it. After a few unsuccessful maneuvers with the drowned tires, he closed his eyes, concentrated, and pushed the ambulance out utilizing the water in the mud. In no time at all, he was cruising down the interstate.

I-84 followed the Columbia River eastwards from Portland towards Idaho, snaking through the alpine forests. Percy’s driving was adequate, but he wasn’t worried about getting pulled over. What police officer would pull over an ambulance? He figured out how to turn on the siren, and soon, every driver on the road would just get out of his way.

He wanted to get back on the freeway in the other direction, back to Portland and Frank and Hazel, wherever they were. He took a winding exit, turns so tight that he could barely see around the curve. The asphalt needed replacing, the way Percy had to continuously swerve to avoid potholes. He took a glance in the rearview mirror, then back to the road, and Percy was suddenly slamming on his brakes.

There, in the middle of the right lane, emerging from the gravel of a pothole, was the earth woman he met in his vision. Her features were the same, regal and still, eyelids fluttering with R.E.M. The ambulance screeched to a halt, inches from her waist. Percy caught his breath. She did not move a muscle.

“Can you take a walk with me?” she calmly asked.

His legs moved without even thinking about it, then he was out on the pavement. The earth woman sunk back into the pothole from which she came, then materialized on the side of the road. Her skin adapted the weeds and litter from the roadside. She appeared as the earth appeared.

They walked side by side down a slope. The landscape got more wild, more natural as they descended, heading away from the interstate. Sap and pine needles stuck to Percy’s shoes, making the soil feel tacky under his feet. Soon, they arrived back at the banks of the Columbia. In the distance, on a bridge he must have crossed, Percy could see faint exhaust trails streaming from the cars creeping along like ants in a line. The woman spoke to him.

“Look what they’ve done to me. Waste. Contamination. I give them the gift of life and they poison me. They try taming me with asphalt and concrete. You humans are like mosquitos, sucking lifeblood for nothing in return, just an itch where I feel your drills and your jackhammers and bulldozers.”

“I’m sorry.”

Percy did not know how to apologize on behalf of all humankind. She pointed at the bridge and its traffic.

“Do you not feel it too? Your father is the earthshaker. Just as well, they pollute your waters.”

Percy looked down. Floating along in the current: glass bottles, styrofoam cups, plastic wrappers. He knelt down and dipped a finger in the water. Nausea came over him. His energy was sapped through his fingerprint. He withdrew and the feeling went away.

“This region used to be under the care of an indigenous tribe, the Nez Perce. In French, the Nez Percé,” she pronounced it in impeccable French, almost like his first name. “Meaning ‘pierced nose.’ They respected me. They did not take the earth for granted.”

She smirked.

“I think this is why I have taken a liking to you. Your name reminds me of a better time. Better people.”

Percy frowned.

“You tried to kidnap me,” he said bitterly. “The monsters who attacked me mentioned you.”

“Is that better or worse than erasing your past, which the goddess Hera has done?”

Percy did not know the answer to that question. Something tickled at the word Hera.

“I only wanted to talk with you, away from your friends. My apologies for the needless violence, my empousai can get overzealous,” she said.

“Hera did this to me?” he asked. “As in Juno, Queen of the Gods?”

The earth woman smiled.

“Yes, the Greek and Roman can be confusing. Different aspects, same deity. The Romans plagiarized everything from the Greeks. Made their mythos more war-like, disciplined.”

The roots of his dysphoria illuminated themselves to him and understanding finally clicked into place, for why he did not feel a sense of belonging at Camp Jupiter.

“I’m not a Roman demigod, am I?” Percy asked.

“You catch on quickly, son of Poseidon.”

“Poseidon…” Percy lost himself in the way the Columbia trailed past him in dark blue rivulets. The earth woman stood over him like a guardian.

“Why would the queen of the gods want my memory?” he whispered.

As if on cue, the frayed edges of where his memories were torn out from their cerebral fabric flickered with an unpleasant heat, like book pages catching on fire. Percy gripped his forehead.

“My son, the titan Kronos, went to war with the gods last summer. He was defeated…by you.”

“By me?”

“The margin was slim. A true Pyrrhic victory. Hera decided it was in the gods’ best interest to unite their Greek and Roman children, to prevent another win so narrow.”

“But why have we been separated?” Percy asked. “And what does this have to do with me?”

“Because you hate each other,” she said matter-of-factly. “And, to put it one way, you are the Greeks’ peace offering. An exchange of leadership.”

“I was with the Greeks? When? For how long?” he spewed. “Are they looking for me?”

Percy vomited questions. He did not know where to start, where to end. The earth woman held the key to a vault of information about his life. He could finally find out who he is, or at least, who he was. Nausea came over him again, but out of fear, not the water quality. What if he did not like who he was before? What if information about his old life changed the way he saw Teddy? His friends? She said that the Greeks and Romans despised each other. What if the puzzle piece he gets from her was simply prejudice and hatred?

Her earthen form began to tremble. She smiled sadly.

“In due time. I am receding into slumber once again, I cannot hold this form for much longer,” she said.

“How do I get back to my friends?” Percy asked.

“Your paths have diverged,” she said with finality. “You must continue on your separate ways. I offer you my protection and my patronage, though I cannot do the same for them. You must be trained properly if you are to save me.”

“Save you? From what?”

“Humanity,” she gestured at the bridge and its telltale clouds of exhaust. “They cannot kill me, but they force me to sleep. And see my own destruction in my dreams, lucid to my own demise.”

He remembered the drain he felt when he touched the polluted water. This goddess must feel that way all the time.

“I want to help you,” Percy said. The earth woman grinned.

“Seek out my son, Polybotes,” she said, crumbling into dirt. “He will teach you.”

And the goddess was gone.

Chapter Text

The Mist was thick in Mist, the only locale in the Pacific Northwest shrouded in enough of the cloaking magic to hide a giant.

Percy met Polybotes on the outskirts of the town of Mist, Oregon eight days prior. He recognized the landscape, its towering conifers and fog that grazed the countryside like cattle. The shadow of a mountain poked up in the distance that made his hairs stand on end every time he looked at it: Mount Saint Helens. He hated being nearby. His skin would tingle and his muscles would twitch, relaying what it was like to combust from the inside. He believed the earth goddess when she said he had been in two places at once, with Teddy on the mountainside and within the volcano itself. Is that why his body incinerated from the inside out? Was the other Percy, the one who lived a life he could not recollect, burned alive at the same moment, imparting a phantom pain to his mirror? If so, how was he even alive? The earthquake, he thought, it saved me somehow. The other me.

It came at a high price. His intrusion into Teddy’s memory weighed on him. Vulcan had wanted Teddy and his mother safe, away from a titanic war Percy was fighting in until his son was ready to join the legion. But the Fates are cruel and Percy had a hand in cutting their string. If Percy had not caused the volcano to erupt, Teddy would still have family. A home to go back to. His chest tightened. Teddy thought that it was his own father’s doing, but no, it was all Percy’s fault. He murdered an entire ecosystem. He swept away an entire town in a sea of fire. Why did the only story he could grasp onto from his past have to involve carnage? What worried him most was that, when the time came to restore his memories, this would not be an isolated incident. How many souls had he sent to the Underworld? Were the Fields of Asphodel sprawling with faceless ghosts of his unintended victims who still had life yet to live, collateral damage in his war to save the world from the earth goddess’ son?

He longed for Teddy when his mind got dark like this. From the beginning, at the Wolf House, his life was in perpetual movement. There were so many stimulations, environmental pressures that diverted his attention. Teddy was the biggest part of that. He kept him occupied, distracted from the growing emptiness he was feeling caused by having nothing other than a first and last name. Percy noticed that, on occasion, he would even forget about all of that. Like when Teddy’s lips were on his. When Percy would shiver when he left the bathhouse at night and Teddy would intentionally get a little handsy, just to feel Percy’s skin heat up a fraction of a degree where he touched him. He had their thermal equilibrium memorized. Lava, meet seawater. And when Percy would doodle on the edges of his blueprints, and Teddy would erase it and draw a better version so at least they were “good doodles.” Then a day came when Teddy did not erase Percy’s drawings at all, but draw next to them — an excuse to brush knuckles.

The proximity of Mount Saint Helens meant he was relatively near Portland. It did not matter though. Frank and Hazel were long gone, off in Alaska recovering the Imperial gold weapons Frank’s father, the war god Mars, wanted them to. He wondered if they thought he was dead, having been dragged off by monsters-in-disguise into a mortal ambulance and driven across the state.

The monsters Percy faced in getting here, including the hound from hell that melted into black tar when Percy stabbed it with his trident, were nowhere near as terrifying as his new mentor. Polybotes was easily five times Percy’s height. His legs were scaly, thick, and reptilian, while his upper half belonged to a blue-skinned humanoid. His hair was wet, green as kelp, and swarming with live snakes that nested at the follicle. He lived in the woods. If any mortals had ever spotted him lumbering around, the Mist obscured him. It hung around him like a personal atmosphere, low-hanging clouds pulled to his gravity. It made it hard to see his face sometimes, which Percy did not mind. The giant’s voice rumbled with the fluid cacophony of a waterfall.

“Your first task is today,” Polybotes said and stomped off down a forest path.

Up until then, for those first seven days, Percy was awakened to the control he had over his father’s domain. Water, Polybotes pointed out, is everywhere. He condensed fog into liquid. He stole it from the pores of fern fronds. He learned to sense and draw water from the depths of the earth below, up through cracks in bedrock and mole tunnels and ant farms and tree roots into the vasculature of an oak leaf, and quench his thirst. He could extract sweat from its salt and let drinkable water dribble down his forehead onto his tongue.

The effort did not strain him anymore. He thought of how spent his body would be after molding water into precise shapes and contours in order to make his trident. Teddy, too. Percy almost laughed to himself. That was child’s play compared to his stamina now. He relished in his newfound strength, his ability to harness his fear and anger and make it productive.

His senses heightened. Water molecules pulled themselves to him like flowers to the sun. Grass blades bent, weeds bowed down, trees shook hands with the son of the sea god. There was a new infrared layer to his vision — stronger and sharper than when he had meditated on the Tiber — the presence of water glowing electric blue underneath bark and chlorophyll. Up here, training with an immortal being that provided him individualized attention, he could be the best. He desperately wanted to show Teddy his progress. He wanted to show Teddy how strong he had become. How he could protect himself, protect others. Percy, more than anything, wanted to teach Teddy how to tap into his reserve of Vulcan’s power, using the techniques Polybotes taught him. They could both be absolved of what happened on Mount Saint Helens, if they both gained the control and capability to ensure history never repeated itself. No one either of them cared about would ever be hurt again, if they had enough brute power to quell any threat.

Teddy and him could leave the safety of Camp Jupiter behind whenever they wanted, go wherever they wanted without fear. Monsters would avoid them ー word would get around Tartarus never to mess with the sons of Vulcan and Poseidon. The world was at Percy’s fingertips, which only served to remind him that, at the moment, Teddy was not. Polybotes shook him out of his reverie.

“Halt,” he said.

Percy had followed him to the edge of a field torn up by tire tracks. The thin vegetation died out the closer it got to the field’s centerpiece: an assortment of metal drilling rigs one might see in a Texas oil field, semi trucks, warehouses that stretched as far as Percy could see. A ten-foot-tall chain-link, barbed-wire fence stretched around its perimeter. It was noisy here, in contrast to the stillness of the forest he had gotten used to. The shouts of men and roaring engines and the whir of hydraulics permeated the evening.

“What is this place?” Percy asked.

“This is the Mist Gas Field,” Polybotes said. “It holds the most plentiful deposits of natural gas in the state of Oregon. Unfortunately, they are not easy to reach.”

Polybotes pointed at one of the towering drill rigs.

“The gas is trapped inside bedrock, impenetrable to a normal drill. So, the mortals shoot high-pressure fluid into the earth to fracture it and allow the gas to be extracted, to be burned for their electricity and fuel. The process is called fracking.” He nodded to a cylindrical truck driving towards the compound, kicking up dirt behind its wheels. “The fluid they use.”

“What’s in it?” Percy asked.

“Mostly water. Millions of gallons of it, gone to waste for human comfort,” Polybotes shook his head. “Not to mention the chemicals. They seep into the earth, poisoning Her and her water supply.”

“Then why do they keep doing it?”

Polybotes gave a dry smile.

“The humans care not. They rather be parasites than symbiotes. The people of this country, especially, would rather live in comfort now, save their money, than protect the earth for their descendants. Even though they have the means to take action, and have had for a long time. The earth will die with them.”

This struck a nerve in Percy. The whole point of his training with Polybotes, under the tutelage of the earth goddess, was to amass the power necessary to protect and save her, the planet. And to find out the mortals have had the ability to do it themselves for generations and have done nothing but lay waste to an earth that asks for nothing in return? This was not a world Percy wanted to live in.

“Why don’t the gods do anything?” Percy asked. “They can’t rule over a planet with no one on it.”

“You ask a great question. They let the great god Pan die, the Lord of the Wild. He faded into nonexistence, knowing nature could not save itself. Even now, they hold a grudge against Gaea, the earth mother who sent you to me, because of a war fought millenia ago.”

“The gods fought the earth?”

Polybotes smirked.

“Yes, with help. I was there as well, with my brothers. We fought to protect our mother, but we lost. And now we are here.”

Polybotes surveyed the Mist Gas Field, taking in the positions of the drills and the fluid storage units. Percy caught on.

“We’re destroying this place, aren’t we?”

Polybetes stayed behind. The giant, he was told, had the power to control poison, and that he would separate it from the water when Percy destroyed the hydraulic pressure systems. Percy, the impeccable strategist that he was, walked right up the dirt road to a control booth manned by a heavyset worker in a yellow vest. The security guard operated a gate in the fence, a heavy set of iron bars that retracted at the turn of a key. Percy fiddled with his trident charm. The man shouted at him as he approached.

“You’re not supposed to be here, kid. This is private property.”

Percy stood next to the plexiglass window.

“My dad works here. I need to talk to him.”

“Last name?”

“Jackson.” Percy hoped that was a common enough surname.

Percy turned at the honk of a truck. One of the long fracking fluid trucks was driving up the stretch, needing to enter the compound.

“He’s a driver,” Percy added.

“Nobody here with the last name Jackson, kid,” the man said. “Now get out of here, or we’re gonna have problems.”

Percy stepped out of the path of the oncoming vehicle. The security guard pressed some buttons and the gate rattled and buzzed. It began to withdraw, parallel to the fence. He saw his window of opportunity as the truck wheeled towards the gates. Percy shot the security guard a glare that would make his first mentor, Lupa the she-wolf, consider him for pack beta.

“If you know what’s best for you, you’re going to leave right now,” Percy growled. The security guard was flabbergasted.

“What are you on about?”

The truck’s back half, the cylinder of water and chemicals, was halfway through the gate.

“Leave!” Percy shouted.

The guard pounded his fist on a red button and the gate shuddered, then reversed course. The truck was safely on the other side. Percy rolled his eyes and sprinted towards the rapidly-closing gate.

“Hey!” the security guard burst out of his booth in an already-out-of-breath pursuit.

But Percy was fast. After all, he ran with wolves. He slipped through the entryway a split-second before it locked behind him. He took a second to take in his surroundings, as the security guard paged for backup over a walkie talkie. Rows of warehouses to his right. A garage for the fluid trucks to refuel. To his left were the drills, shooting pressurized water down into the earth’s crust to release trapped natural gas.

Percy pulled his trident off his necklace and it expanded to its full length in his hand. He loved to hold it, to feel Teddy’s craftsmanship. He could not use it on the mortals, as it was made of Tiberian platinum. Not that he wanted to. Percy had prepared to fight mythological monsters, not the human monsters complicit in destroying the planet. He would have to use other means, if it came to it.

“He’s got a shotgun!” he heard the security guard yell. Is that what they saw?

Pointing the trident at the garage of fluid trucks, he channeled his power through the tips of the teeth and beyond. The nearest truck exploded at the seams in a shower of sheet metal and water pellets. The chassis and tractor unit — the front portion where the driver seat and engine sits — crash-landed in the gravel like a felled spaceship, leaving a smoking ditch in its wake. He heard men shouting. A small group of workers were running towards him from a far-off warehouse. Percy had no desire to hurt anyone here. He bore no ill will towards the people just trying to earn a paycheck. It was the infrastructure he was after.

After the first explosion, the truck that drove in before Percy stopped and the driver jumped out and hit the ground running. Perfect. Percy pointed his trident at the tank and raised it to the sky. The truck flew upwards in a graceful arc, Percy’s stomach cramped, and the fluid tank burst in a supernova of whitewater.

He made it to the hydraulic rigs. Ugly vampire contraptions, attached to silo-esque fluid storage tanks, that sucked the earth of its natural resources and irreversibly injured it in the process. Percy hated that millions of gallons of water were wasted here. This was a stain on his father’s domain.

Percy could feel the water beneath him, being blasted through a narrow pipe deep down below. He had to be careful here. The internal pressure of the contraption was astronomically high in order to fire the liquid at such high velocity, unlike the tanks on the trucks. Who knows how much damage he could cause if he simply willed it to explode?

The men were upon him now.

“Clear the area!” Percy shouted.

He brandished his trident like a shotgun, since that is what the Mist was apparently leading the mortals to see. The workers shook, putting their hands up. Percy registered that they were terrified of him. The feeling sunk like a stone into the pit of his stomach. He was not trying to hurt them. Actually, he was actively avoiding it. But they didn’t see that. They saw a sixteen-year-old boy with a gun and explosives. He heard police sirens screeching over the treetops, coming up the highway.

Percy dropped his trident. He put his hands up as well.

“I’m sorry, I’m not trying to—”

Percy was tackled from behind and he hit the dirt. Another body piled onto the first one. Percy flailed, but his assailant grabbed his wrists and pinned him to the ground. A knee was pinned to the back of his neck. He shook, but someone latched onto his ankles.

Percy wriggled his head and the man on top of him ground his cheek in the dirt, wrenching on Percy’s hair. He heard tires squelch on pebbles and police cars inched closer in one eye’s peripheral vision.

“You need to stop your work here,” Percy grunted.

“Shut up,” the man pinning him down said.

“It’s killing—”

Percy’s head was shoved down. From this painful perspective, Percy zeroed in on his captor’s wrist, the one that clenched Percy’s forearm. He could see his veins and capillaries pumping hot with adrenaline...and something else. Translucent under the skin, Percy could make out lines of thin, icy blue coursing through his circulatory system. Water.

He concentrated. The man’s index finger slowly uncurled off Percy’s arm. Its motion was arthritic. Percy’s will over the water in plasma fought against the man’s finger muscles. The man on top of him groaned and cursed.

“What the—”

“Get. Off of me,” Percy growled into the ground.

Percy picked the men up by their water weight and threw them off of his body. They coughed and threw up. Whatever he had momentarily done to their blood vessels, it did not agree with them. Power surged through Percy’s body, but for the first time, he hated it. It sludged through his system like mucus. He was hurting people again. Anguish choked him and clogged up his throat.

“Please leave,” Percy cried. “That’s all I want.”

Police officers stormed the scene, backing up the crew with their pistols all trained on Percy. He put his hands up.

In a heartbeat, a colossal reptilian claw squashed the two men who had held Percy down underfoot. Percy heard bones crack and disintegrate. In front of him, Polybotes swung a giant trident of his own at the gathering of men. Several of them went flying. Policemen fired at the swirling mass of Mist that covered the giant. Who knows what they thought they were shooting at? Their faces dripped with horror either way.

The men were either stabbed, launched, or stomped on, all within the minute. Polybotes showed no mercy.

“You’re weak!” the giant shouted at him, when the massacre was over and Percy had still not moved. “These men mean nothing to you!”

“Those people had lives. Families,” Percy whispered, shell-shocked. “I don’t want to be a terrorist.”

“How will anyone take the problem seriously if not for terror?” Polybotes snarled. “Change does not come without fear.”

“I—”

“Think of the earth mother, boy. She will die, the earth will die without revolution. We need to start over.”

“There has to be another way! Not just kill everyone harming the environment!” Percy shouted. “And revolution? Are you preparing for another war?”

Polybotes laughed and poked his way through the field of hydraulic rigs, tipping over storage vats of fracking fluid with his giant fingers.

“The gods don’t care, demigod. Haven’t you figured that out? Your own father let Hera wipe your memory. Even now, he does not contact you as you talk to the very giant who was born to destroy him.”

Percy’s mind reeled. The giant was right. Poseidon never spoke to him. The only reason he had any context to his life was because of the earth goddess, who up until this point he unwaveringly wanted to help. But what if she was lying to him? What if, all this time, she was shaping him into a weapon to use against the Olympians, and feeding him falsehoods that would play into the worldview she constructed? Was she manipulating him? He had every reason to believe he was back to square one: My name is Percy Jackson, I am a demigod. But still, he could not shake the feeling that everything she told him was true. He believed her. He believed in her. Percy wanted her to win. To thrive again.

But not like this.

Without a moment’s hesitation, the field of hydraulic, pressurized rigs detonated at the clenching of Percy’s fist. Polybotes’ massive frame disappeared in the nuclear geysers erupting from the ground. The earth trembled underneath. Percy turned and sprinted, as the giant bellowed in rage.

A tidal wave of water crashed into him as he neared the entry gate, knocking him over. He scrambled up and hopped onto a whitecap, willing the surface tension to support him. He skated on the current undulating under his feet. The motion felt natural for him. He must have ridden a skateboard before. Percy kept the water from absorbing into the soil, letting it spirit him away. Polybotes did not pursue him, but he heard his parting words.

“The earth and the oceans, the eternal balancing act! Gaea will do anything to tip the scale in her favor. Beware, Perseus Jackson, your legion cannot hide you. We will meet again!”

The water took him to a riverbank slimmer and more winding than the Columbia. With one dip of his toes, Percy could tell it was the Nehalem, and that it would take him all the way out to the Pacific.

He jumped in, wrapped himself in a hydrodynamic current, and torpedoed himself home.

Chapter Text

The strength the Pacific lent him drained through his heels the second he touched sand.

It was one thing to propel a boat, it was another to hitch a ride on the dorsal fin of a killer whale for the entirety of the western coastline. One who really, really enjoyed breaching, at that. Percy’s arms and legs felt like rubber, stretched to a new permanent elasticity from hours of clinging to the slippery blubber of an orca. Which is why he did not put up much of a fight when he was dragged from the Twelfth Legion’s measly dock all the way back to camp, and plopped into his familiar seat directly across from the praetor. He just wanted something to eat — it was early evening by then.

“Repeat it one more time,” Reyna fumed, eyes shut tight in a silent prayer. “Just to make sure I heard you correctly.”

“I think the giant Polybotes is on his way to kill me,” Percy replied apologetically.

Reyna shook her head in disbelief. She was livid, understandably. The recruit she handpicked behind closed doors to accompany Frank on his quest, which would give him standing to contend for praetor, returned alone (after being presumed dead) with the news that a mythical super-soldier was on his way to rain terror over the camp. He had been light on the details about his relationship with the giant, as well as his personal connection with Gaea. Something told him it was not smart to enlighten her now, especially since he was still figuring out the whole Greek-Roman situation. He figured dropping that bomb on her would be catastrophic.

“I’m tired of having meetings with you, Percy.”

“How do you think I feel?” Percy said. “I don’t see how he could track me here.”

“You better hope he didn’t. This is the last thing I need right now,” Reyna said, wiping insomnia off her cheek. “I’m going to have to mobilize the troops. Tonight.”

“Did Frank and Hazel make it back okay?” Percy asked.

“A little banged up, but fine. Frank was distraught after what happened in Portland. He hasn’t slept in days. He thought he killed you.”

“I’ll talk to him. And the quest?”

Reyna’s lips folded into a grim crease.

“The weapons were recovered, thank the gods. A similar giant sighting up there as well: Alcyoneus, the bane of Pluto. They had a run-in with Death. The god, Death. I fear something’s stirring. Just my luck the legion is shouldering this burden with only one praetor, it would be nice if you could—”

“Reyna,” Percy interrupted. “With all due respect, I don’t want to talk about being praetor. I want to go to sleep.”

“Oh, right, of course,” Reyna fidgeted nervously and twisted the end of her braid, atypical of her. “I’ll walk you out.”

Reyna’s shoulders were square and tense as she led him out onto the principia’s steps. She looked apprehensive. Percy was concerned. Was the prospect of commandeering a major battle against a giant wedging a crack in her armor?

“Percy.” She was looking at him, but he was looking at a boy bounding up the marble steps, face lit up like a golden retriever’s. “I was wondering if you and me, we could, um—”

“Teddy!” he shouted.

“Teddy?” Reyna asked.

Teddy squeezed Percy in a bear hug that could crack a rib, his momentum ramming a Percy-sized dent into a Roman column. Percy laughed and hugged him back with his one free arm. Teddy planted wet kisses from his cheek up to his temple. He had not pegged Teddy as one for public displays of affection, but Percy enjoyed it nonetheless. Their separation must have triggered the same cord that ran from his heart to his navel — a harp string Apollo could play a ballad on.

“I knew you weren’t dead,” Teddy said.

“You’re the only one allowed to kill me,” Percy choked out. Teddy grabbed the back of Percy’s head like an NBA player would palm a basketball, then pulled him into a kiss. His lips tasted just as Percy had remembered them — vanilla-tinged coffee and cinnamon. Percy ruffled Teddy’s hair.

“I missed you too,” Percy said. Teddy eased his grip on Percy without fully letting him go and allowed him to regain his balance. He left another lingering kiss on his cheek. Percy realized Reyna was still there. Her face was unreadable, as stony and emotionless as Roman statuary.

“Sorry, what were you saying, Reyna?”

“It was nothing. Nice to see you in such a good mood, Theodore,” she clipped, and the doors of the principia sealed behind her.

Ankle deep in seawater lapping at his heels, Percy felt the sun at his back, setting over an empty horizon. The island on which he stood was the only land for as far as the eye could see, just rolling waves at a lethargic gallop across the water line. Behind him, a pebbled beach met a short bluff, up which a meadow sprawled and a juniper forest swayed in the breeze. The air smelled sweet, a combination of flower blooms and herbs. He heard laughter.

Percy scaled the low cliff face and pulled himself up onto the grass, soft and spongy beneath his heels. Ahead of him, a girl in a dress of white linen, ran down the hill towards him wielding a broken tree branch the length of her arm. Her light brown hair, tied back in a sinewy braid, bounced around her shoulders. The way she laughed — the way her smile activated all of the muscles in her face — lent itself to her beauty. Her spirit was beautiful, which manifested on the outside. Seeing her sent a static shock through the core of Percy’s brain, that came to rest and sizzle at the tip of his spinal cord.

Chasing her, carrying a larger stick and in clothes made out of the same billowy cotton, was Teddy. His tongue poked out of the corner of his grin. Percy recognized this look, from their endless days sparring and battling each other during War Games. It meant Teddy had found a worthy challenger. He caught up to her and swung.

The girl was nimble. She pivoted and parried Teddy’s swing. He whirled and lunged on the high ground. She jumped and blocked. Their swordplay, or stickplay he supposed, was accomplished. He wondered what this joust would look like with real swords, with her agility and acrobatics, his strength and brawn.

Teddy stabbed. Percy could see his mistake before it happened. His body weight went too far forward, pulling his center of gravity off-balance. She stepped back, he stumbled, and she yanked the end of his stick with her non-dominant hand. Teddy flopped face first into the dirt, hands outstretched like he was sliding into home plate. The girl shrieked in delight.

“I win!” she shouted. Teddy popped his head up, his cheeks grass-stained.

“You can’t grab someone’s sword in the middle of a battle,” he grumbled. “It’s sharp. You’ll cut your hand open.”

She leaned down to mock him.

“Admit I’m getting better.”

Teddy snatched her ankle and pulled. She came crashing down next to him. The girl was too stunned, and mildly angry for a hot second, then she lit up the island with laughter. Songbirds, somewhere in the distance, joined her chorus. Teddy had a silly grin on his face, the one Percy adored. He pulled himself up onto his forearms. Percy noticed only one line underneath his SPQR tattoo. Another of Teddy’s memories.

Percy approached them, knowing his presence could not be felt by either. Paces away, a frigid claw tore into his heart. The girl bent forward and pulled Teddy into a kiss.

He ran the rest of the way. What was he going to do? Separate them? This was a vision of the past. All he knew was that razor wire wrapped his aorta, pumping his blood at a cutting, excruciating pressure, seeing another put their lips to Teddy’s like this. She pulled away, her hand still gripping the hair behind his ear. Her eyes, the color of almonds, searched Teddy for a reaction. Teddy, to Percy’s secret pleasure, looked apologetic.

“Calypso...” he whispered, brushing back her braid. Calypso seemed to realize what was happening immediately. Tears welled. He reached out a hand, but she slapped him away.

“I knew this would happen again,” she cried, a few stray tears escaping down her cheek. “Who is she this time? Who are you leaving me for?”

“Calypso, there’s no one else. I—” Teddy said softly.

“Then what is it?” she demanded.

“I—” Teddy blanched. “I’m just not interested in you.”

“Not interested in me?” she scowled.

“I—” Teddy stuttered. “Girls.”

“Girls,” Calypso pursed her lips. The color returned to her face. Her eyes sparkled with mirth. She giggled.

“What—” Teddy scoffed. “Why are you laughing?”

Calypso howled with laughter. She doubled over, nearly-maniacal fits shaking her body with spasms. Teddy’s eyebrows furrowed. He was hurt.

“I’m serious...” he told her.

“No, no,” Calypso wiped her eyes. “I’m not laughing at you. This is just the funniest trick the gods have pulled on me in millenia. Whew, they must be working overtime.”

She looked up at the sky.

“You got me!”

The sky did not respond. Relief spread across Teddy’s face.

“You’re— you’re okay with that?” Teddy asked.

“Why wouldn’t I be? No one cared where I come from, or should I say, when. Please, Achilles and Patroclus were an open secret,” she said. “What? Do people care now?”

“Uh, yeah. Some do,” he whispered. “A lot do.”

“I hear the mortals lose the road sometimes. But they always return to their roots, the ancient ways. ‘All roads lead to Rome,’ is that the phrase?”

“Yeah,” Teddy mumbled. He took interest in a blade of grass between his fingers, tying it in knots. Calypso tilted her head to one side.

“But I suppose what matters is if the people closest to you are okay with that,” Calypso said. “Is there anyone...?”

“My mother, um,” Teddy interrupted, closing his eyes and shaking his head. “She wasn’t particularly...yeah.”

“I’m sorry—”

“She’s dead. It doesn’t matter.”

Percy watched Teddy close himself off. He saw him do this too many times, at the beginning of their friendship.

“I’m sorry about that too,” Calypso said. “Is there anyone else in your life?”

“I don’t keep friends.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t do intimacy,” Teddy said. “I mean look at you. For centuries you’ve opened your heart to every man who gets stranded here just to have it crushed into tiny pieces. It’s happening as we speak.”

“You’re not breaking my heart, Theodore. You’re my friend.”

Theodore met her eyes, prying for answers.

“How do you do it?”

“Do what?”

“Keep investing in relationships that are doomed to fail.”

Calypso looked off towards the trees. Her face was gaunt in the fading twilight.

“I suppose it’s why I plant my garden even though it always dies in the winter,” she said. “Because it’s nice while I have it.”

She sat back and took a deep breath through her nose.

“The hero who was here before you,” Calypso began, closing her eyes. “I knew he was in love with another, from the moment he arrived. He would say her name in his sleep. But I fell anyway. Sometimes the harder you fight Love, the tighter his grip.”

“What was he like?” Teddy asked. “The boy before me.”

She smirked.

“Dark hair. Eyes that turned with the morning tides. Oh, he was beautiful. And he didn’t even know it. Those are the best kind.”

“He sounds cute.”

“Is that your type? Tall, dark, and handsome?” Calypso teased.

“I don’t know,” Teddy admitted.

It was his type now, Percy gloated internally. Calypso’s finger traced figure-eights in the grass.

“Would you love me if I was a boy?” she asked.

“I love you now, Calypso.”

“Then stay with me,” she pleaded. “You can keep teaching me how to fight! I can teach you how to cook, and— and to garden, like I’ve done before. We can live here forever, as friends. We can, we can—”

Percy could see the temptation cross Teddy’s mind, crawling into his most insecure spaces, as Calypso rambled on excitedly. Teddy could live here and never die. He would have an eternal companion, never have to experience abandonment. He could leave his life behind for paradise.

“I—”

Just then, an ember lit up the night. The three of them turned towards the sea. A column of flame charged through the sea, plowing through the waves that evaporated in its wake. It headed straight for the beach from whence Percy came.

“Your father is here,” Calypso said, expressionless.

Percy had followed Teddy down to the rocks. Whether Vulcan knew of Percy’s presence, like Lupa and Gaea had in his first vision, he did not know. Vulcan did not show it. The god was stern, serious with his dark beard and furrowed brow. Little fires burned in his hair, or what was left of it on his balding scalp. He wore a mechanical brace on one leg, from when Juno pitched him off Mount Olympus for being ugly. Percy figured even gods could not get over some injuries. Teddy did not seem to know what to do in front of his father, other than kneel.

“Stand up, my son,” Vulcan said. “It is not often I make house calls to my children.”

Teddy stood tall and proud. He was nearly his father’s height, in this godly form. At Camp Jupiter, meeting a god or goddess was mostly unheard of. A great honor. It was hard to read Teddy, right then, face to face with the god who said he would keep their family safe. Vulcan must have picked up on this.

“Tell me how you are feeling,” the god said. “I cannot read humans like my machines. And your countenance is as illegible as your mother’s. She had a habit of letting her art speak for her.”

Teddy shifted uncomfortably. Not talking about emotions runs in the family.

“I am angry with you.”

“I suppose I can understand that,” Vulcan nodded.

“You uprooted my life and made me live in the middle of nowhere. Then your forge exploded and you let Nanay die.”

Vulcan seemed to age when Teddy’s mother was mentioned, his wrinkled forehead drooping. Sorrow clouded his eyes.

“Marisol was an extraordinary woman. I have never seen such delicate hands on a mortal. I’m afraid her work occasionally surpassed my own,” Vulcan said.

“And you let her die.”

Vulcan huffed.

“Some things are out of my control. The Fates, they tied your string to the end of your mother’s. My son, your life could not begin until hers ended. No matter how much pain it caused me.”

“Why are you here?” Teddy asked, tinged with more than a hint of bitterness. “You’ve never talked to me before. Not even when you spent time with Mom. You treated me like a pest. A new toy that lost its sheen.”

“I am here to persuade you to leave Ogygia,” Vulcan sighed. “I know you intend to stay with her.”

Vulcan nodded towards the meadow. Calypso was nowhere to be seen.

“And why should I leave?” Teddy scoffed. “There’s nothing for me out there.”

“Because I refuse to see a child born with the greatest of gifts go to waste.”

“Go find another woman and give your gifts to another baby.”

“I’m not talking about my own,” Vulcan said. “I’m talking about Marisol’s.”

Teddy scowled.

“Please,” Vulcan said. “You can stay here to spite me. But I hope you know that if you do, you will always be my greatest disappointment. The world needs her talent. Your talent. I foresee it.”

Teddy looked on the verge of tears. Percy, invisible, tried to wrap his arms around him, but they just passed transparently through his body. Teddy’s voice shook. He was trying so hard not to cry.

“Do you want me to be happy?” Teddy choked. “Or do you just want my mother to live again?”

Percy looked to the god for his response, but Vulcan had disappeared. Too much emotion for him to deal with, Percy guessed. A toxic trait of children of the fire god: flight at the first sign of feeling. Teddy was deep breathing, pulling in exorbitant amounts of air to steady the rage that boiled underneath. His cheeks burned an infernal red.

Percy heard footsteps. Calypso appeared by their side. She laced her fingers into Teddy’s hand and rubbed his forearm. Percy would have done the same, if he were there to comfort him. The fire in his face receded.

“Your ride’s here, my hero,” Calypso said.

A wooden raft buoyed onto the shore, ten logs roped together with a white cloth sail. The waves buffeted it into a rut in the sand.

“I thought you said the raft doesn’t appear unless you’re in love,” Teddy said, wiping the remnants of his breakdown from his cheeks.

“Platonic love works just as well it seems,” Calypso replied. “Your father’s convinced you to leave me, hasn’t he?”

“I am leaving, but not because of him,” he said, turning to her. “Neither of us are going to find the love we deserve here.”

Calypso sighed.

“Promise me,” Calypso held Teddy’s gaze. “When you find a boy who is just like me, and loves you like I do, hold onto him and never let him go.”

Teddy patted her hand, still wrapped up in his.

“When you find a boy whose ass you can kick, know that I sent him.”

“You can’t do that. You’re not a god.”

“Yeah? My dad owes me for getting off this island,” Teddy pondered. “A boy who sees your worth will be the one you fall in love with for the last time. He will be the one to set you free. I swear on the River Styx.”

Calypso swatted him on the arm.

“Don’t swear on that! That’s serious!” she shouted, then her tone shifted, more wistful. “I hope you’re right.”

“I know I’m right.”

Calypso got on her tippy toes and kissed him on the cheek. They held hands for a few minutes, delaying the inevitable. Then Teddy got on the raft, with Percy aboard, and they drifted out to sea until the goddess was a dot on the coastline of Ogygia. Percy’s vision faded to black and he returned to the world of the conscious.

Chapter Text

Percy emerged from his dreamscape to the gentle stroke of a thumb on his chin. He pried his eyelids open a crack, mind still foggy, and his extremities buzzed with warmth as he took in the sight of Teddy squatting in front of him, wiping spittle off his cheek. Teddy’s chosen attire were his black, heavy-duty overalls and his usual ash-caked work boots...and nothing else.

“You’re not wearing a shirt,” Percy noted. Teddy blushed. The wardrobe choice was clearly intentional, but it was cute how embarrassed Teddy was by his own boldness. It wasn’t like Percy had never seen Teddy shirtless before. They go swimming plenty. It was the deliberateness of how he wanted him to see his skin, even when the situation did not explicitly call for it. Teddy rubbed the back of his neck.

“It was getting hot in here.”

Here was Teddy’s workshop. When Percy told Reyna he wanted to go to sleep, he meant it. He just preferred to sleep on the dirty floor while Teddy worked on emergency pegasus armor. The fire kept him toasty. He was comfortable knowing Teddy was nearby. This was so much better than his lumpy mattress.

“Well you’re not following legion safety protocol. This isn’t like you, not following the rules?” Percy gave him puppy dog eyes. “Am I a bad influence?”

“Do you want to look at my pecs or not, Percy? Because if not, I’m happy to—”

“I’ll shut up,” Percy decided. Teddy grinned. Percy yawned and rolled onto his back, then went limp. Such an easy, relaxed energy flowed between them since they reunited. Teddy’s occasional grumpiness and inner tension all but dissipated the night his feelings were requited. Upon Percy’s safe return from the quest, his rough edges disappeared entirely. The guy was simply happy to be with the boy he liked. His mother had foresight, naming him the way she did. Underneath the grizzly, the son of Vulcan was a teddy bear.

“What were you dreaming about? You were all smiley,” Teddy pushed hair out of Percy’s eyes, which only succeeded in staining his forehead with grease. Remorse spread its tentacles over the languid calm he woke up in, snuffing out the warmth he derived from the other boy in the room. His dreams. It made him feel dirty, invading the privacy of Teddy’s most delicate memories. Percy wanted him to divulge his heartaches on his own time, his own terms, but instead Percy was an unwitting audience to tragedy.

“What’s wrong?” Teddy asked, suddenly concerned.

“I dreamed about you,” Percy began. He suddenly took interest in the muck on Teddy’s boots.

“You dreamed about me?” Teddy smiled.

“About you and Calypso,” Percy bit his lip. “And your dad.”

“Oh,” Teddy’s grin faded. Fear twitched in Teddy’s jaw. He had trespassed into personal territory.

“I’m sorry. We don’t have to talk about it.”

“No,” Teddy exhaled. “No, it’s okay. I should be able to talk about this stuff with my— with my boyfriend.”

Teddy stumbled on the last words, as he gave Percy a nervous sideways glance. Percy almost laughed, seeing the pulse in his neck quicken. His heart must have been testing the strength of his rib cage. It was amazing, really, and adorable, how Percy had reduced the most intimidating man in the legion to a bundle of nerves.

“Boyfriend?” Percy repeated. Teddy clenched his eyes shut and shook his head.

“F— Forget I said anything. Can we just, um—?”

“Don’t be stupid.”

Teddy’s arms were wracked with apprehension and tremors. Percy was acutely aware of how much effort that took him — announcing his commitment to someone — knowing what he knew now about Teddy. He put his hand on Teddy’s tattoo, steadying him. He projected serene seas, peaceful oases, still lakes. A flow of tranquilizing, authentic calm soothed Teddy through his bloodstream, Percy his hormone. He pulled Teddy in for a kiss and he could feel the anxiety unravel from where their lips connected, down to the vascular waystation in his chest, percolating to his extremities.

“Boyfriend,” Percy nodded.

The pair rolled in the forge’s ash and dust, what became a second skin to them both, as their limbs fought war and lips made peace. Teddy was stronger, the only man who could control the raging ocean below him, but Percy controlled the kisses, themselves waves that pounded and broke against the seawall. He supposed this is what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object. A destined, dangerous obsession. An eternal, cyclic violence, in pursuit of a victor that will never be crowned. But the two of them, no, they did not seek dominance. They recognized they were equals, complements. The inevitable collisions, crashing into each other again and again and again? That was euphoria.

Sweat mingled with industrial grime, painting Percy’s forearms, their necks, Teddy’s shoulders, wherever hands reached with oily grease and liquid rust. They kept their faces clean, that was what mattered. Percy’s hair glued to itself where Teddy’s fingers sifted through it, sticking up at even more extreme angles than usual. At some point, the straps of Teddy’s overalls were pushed down to his wrists, allowing for two filthy handprints to be smeared down the curvature of his pectorals.

Teddy collapsed to his side, entangled in a breathless heap. His lips were touched with scarlet and a tinge of swelling. It was his fault though; he liked that Percy would bite. His bliss was sobering, however. Percy watched his silly grin contract into his trademark scowl.

“How much did you see?” Teddy asked, eyes trained on the ceiling. “Of Calypso and me?”

Percy shifted, resting his elbows and chin on Teddy’s prone chest.

“From about when she kissed you, until you left.”

Teddy sighed.

“Don’t take this the wrong way, but sometimes I wish I’d stayed,” Teddy said. “Like what was I thinking? I had paradise and a friend, what more could I need?”

“I think you made the right decision.”

“You’re just saying that because I wouldn’t be here with you otherwise.”

“No, it’s not just that,” Percy said. “I think your heart would have ached. Yours and Calypso’s, for something more than what you two had together. You only would’ve replaced one type of pain with another.”

Theodore pondered that for a while.

“Can you promise me something?”

“Yeah?”

“Don’t ever let me push you away.”

“Teddy, we wouldn’t be here if I hadn’t stubbornly done the opposite.”

Teddy chuckled.

“I just worry. It’s so much easier to do it my father’s way, become an empty vessel. Vulcan is nothing if not efficient. Feelings are a useless foreign language, an impediment to labor. Sometimes I wonder if he ever truly loved my mom, or if he just wanted her talent to survive another generation,” Teddy said. “Is it stupid that no matter how much I despise him and say I don’t care...I still want his approval?”

Percy thought of his own father, Poseidon, a Greek god he had never met (to his knowledge). A deity that never challenged Hera when she plotted to steal Percy’s memory and transplant him among the Romans, never offered aid or guidance when Percy was lost. But Percy did not hate his father. He felt his presence elsewhere, every time he controlled water, every time he felt a burst of energy on the battlefield. He was somewhere, urging him forward, even if he would not, or could not, display his affirmation. But Teddy, unlike him, had gifts that came with strings attached and a set of expectations.

“I hated it here...for a long time,” Teddy said. “The legion made me do grunt work. I didn’t use to have this room all to myself and the freedom to do what I want. I had a nook in the corner that I could barely stand to work in. Day in and day out, smelting swords and hammering shields. I was miserable, all to spite my dad with my mediocrity. Then after Ogygia, I guess I realized I’d rather be happy on my own terms, and if my dad being pleased was the byproduct of that, so be it. I worked my ass off. I could crank out a basic gladius in maybe half an hour. Reyna and Jason were so impressed they let me work on more complex projects, my own blueprints. The War Games were my playground for prototypes.”

Teddy shrugged.

“Reyna promoted me to centurion, even though the rule is a minimum five years of service. She had me craft her dogs. Now I have this,” he took in the private forge he had made his own, then gave Percy a squeeze. “And I have you.”

Percy smoothed out one of Teddy’s eyebrows with his fingertip.

“I’m really happy,” Teddy smiled. “My dad’s proud of me, for the wrong reasons. Even so, I’m… I’m still happy I make him happy. I don’t know why I still care what he thinks.”

“At the end of the day, he’s still your father. It’s natural for you to want his approval,” Percy said. Teddy toyed with the trident dangling around Percy’s neck and tickling his sternum.

“The quest— I never asked you!” Teddy exclaimed, pivoting the conversation away from himself. “What happened? Why were you gone so long?”

Percy cringed. The gravity of his quest detour haunted him, beat relentlessly against his conscience like a telltale heart. I am an accessory to murder. The images of Mount Saint Helens drilled their way to the forefront. I’m not an accessory to murder, I am a murderer. I’ve killed people. People are dead. People are dead because of me. I’m a murderer. Teddy’s palm drifted up to his back, pulling him closer.

“What is it?” Teddy asked. At his touch, the storm brewing in his skull dissipated. His heart rate steadied.

“What I am going to tell you is in strict confidence, alright? I didn’t tell Reyna the full story,” Percy whispered. “I wasn’t sure how she’d react.”

“You shouldn’t keep information from your superiors, Percy. I’m your superior.”

“Teddy.”

He saw how serious Percy was, then softened.

“I’ll try. But I can’t make promises.”

Percy grimaced.

“I was training, with a…” Percy sunk into himself. “With a giant.”

“What?” Teddy abruptly shoved Percy off of himself and sat up. “You— You sought training from a— a monster?”

Hurt and confusion struck Teddy’s face like an open-palmed slap.

“The one who Reyna alerted the whole legion about? You led him here?”

“Yes, please let me explain,” Percy begged. His body and mind grieved at the loss of Teddy’s warmth, his proximity. Their distance, and Teddy’s anger, sent his molecules spinning in microscopic typhoons. “A goddess needed my help...and she wanted me to learn from him. He was good to me...for a while.”

Percy explained everything to him. Well, mostly everything. How the earth goddess requested his aid in purging the earth of its pollution and waste. How the earth and water working together could move the world forward and restore it to its former glory. How her son, the giant, would be able to help him hone his powers for good. The way Teddy took this news, Percy was not optimistic about revealing he is a Greek demigod. He did not have the heart to tell him about Mount Saint Helens either, not yet. Percy promised himself he would come forward, when the time was right. Teddy sat cross-legged, locked in a stony silence.

“Percy, your heart was in the right place...but a giant? You’ve put the entire legion in danger. I—” Teddy said, clearly dismayed. “You know I can’t keep quiet about this.”

“Teddy!” Percy complained.

“There are going to be repercussions, and I don’t just mean punishment from Reyna and your centurions. Do you know how much an attack on that scale will cost this place?”

“There are magic boundaries. The Little Tiber—”

“That can only do so much,” Teddy interrupted. “There are families in New Rome, Percy. There are hundreds of lives in this valley.”

Percy’s bottom lip quivered at the way Teddy was looking at him, like he couldn’t even recognize the face he so passionately worshipped just before. The back of his throat throbbed painfully, a harbinger of tearfall. Again, all he had wanted to do was follow his own moral compass, but the needle is magnetized to virtue, not consequence. Is this what it was like, being a child of one of the most powerful gods in the pantheon? Every meaningful decision he would ever make intricately tied to a tripwire that, at the slightest disturbance, would ring doom for scores of people who did nothing except be in the wrong place at the wrong time? That is, be near Percy. He had learned of a similar torment in Hazel’s life: the precious metals she raises from the earth cursed to bring misfortune upon all those who touch it with bare skin, why Teddy had him pick up the platinum ore with his t-shirt. He thought back to Lupa, who announced his arrival as an omen. The she-wolf was never wrong.

“Teddy, I’m stronger now. I can defeat him.”

“And what if you don’t?”

“I will.”

“And what if you don’t?”

“I will.”

“You’re fighting your own mentor, Percy. The giant knows what you’re capable of. He knows your weaknesses, his own,” Teddy shook his head. “This isn’t going to go as well as you think.”

Teddy stood up and pulled the straps of his overalls back over his shoulders, partially hiding the evidence of Percy’s greasy hands splayed across his chest.

“Do you have any confidence in me at all?” Percy spat.

“This is not about a lack of confidence, Percy!” Theodore snapped, the brown skin of his cheeks reddening with each scalding-hot word, seeping into and replacing the recent kiss-induced flush. The temperature of the room elevated, making the two sweat. “You’re overflowing with it! You wear it like a laurel, which is why I love you so godsdamn much! But this is a reality check.”

Percy blinked, startled temporarily out of his ire.

“You love—?”

Teddy’s words steamrolled over his.

“Rome is built on honor, and honesty, and accountability, and you— you cannot— I cannot—” Teddy squeezed his eyes and his fists. “Oh my gods, Percy. What were you thinking?”

“I really…” Percy’s breath caught up to him. “I really just wanted to do something good.”

Teddy pursed his lips.

“What did he teach you?” Teddy asked. “Show me.”

Teddy crossed his arms, waiting. A deep shame released in Percy’s chest, a leaking vat of nauseating ooze. Percy felt so small, sitting on the ground as Teddy towered above him — a mix of righteous anger and frustration tumbling off of him in an avalanche. This was the first time he had ever truly been terrified of him — and not of physical harm.

“I don’t like it,” Percy breathed.

“Show me.”

Percy looked up at him, his lower eyelids brimming with saltwater he did not have the heart to control. He blinked and Teddy’s left arm, against his boyfriend’s will, flung across his body with the integrity of a fish in rigor mortis, then flopped back to his side. Teddy clutched his bicep.

“What the—”

Realization dawned on Teddy and whatever semblance of calm he had washed away with the tears that now bled down his cheeks.

“Percy,” Teddy sniffled. “Did you do that to anyone?”

Percy clamped down hard on his lower lip and fought his reluctant neck muscles to nod.

“Once,” Percy’s voice quivered. “And I hated it, Teddy. I swear to the gods I hated it.”

“Percy…” Sobs wracked Teddy’s shoulders with jerks and shivers. He looked at his own trembling hands as if he could not even recognize them. Percy suspected Teddy had never cried like this before, not even when his mother died. All of the anger ballooning inside of him popped and grief was the only emotion through which it could deflate. “...I— I’m worried.”

Percy held his arms out and Teddy knelt down and embraced him. Teddy blubbered out his fears into his boyfriend’s shoulder.

“If this goes south, Octavian might have you expelled for disloyalty, or have you put to death, a-and I can’t bear to see you get hurt and this place has only started to feel like home because you’re here. I know you’re just trying to do your best a-and I know it’s so hard for you with no memory but I’m so afraid that if— when you get it back you won’t — you won’t love me anymore—”

Teddy squeezed him so tightly, he wished he still had his iron skin. Percy planted a lingering kiss on the top of his shoulder.

“I didn’t mean to say that,” Teddy muttered. “The L-word, both times. I understand if you—”

“I— I love you, too,” Percy said. “Nothing will ever change that. And I won’t let him destroy the camp. I swear on the River Styx.”

Teddy physically relaxed in Percy’s arms, the tension fading from the muscles Percy stroked in his back.

“Your power scares me.”

“I’m not using it anymore.”

“You may use it on Polybotes and no one else. You have my permission.”

“No,” Percy said. “Never again. We defeat him on our own merit.”

The pair’s knees gave out and they sunk to the floor, Percy ensconced posessively in Teddy’s arms. The residuals of their respective tears ran races down their cheekbones like raindrops down car windows — even in sorrow, competitive.

“Thank you for understanding,” Percy murmured. The corners of Teddy’s mouth perked up.

“People make mistakes,” Teddy replied. “I don’t, because I’m perfect. But I’m sure other people do.”

“Shut up.”

Percy joked, but he couldn’t bring himself to the level of peace that Teddy was evidently at.

“Are you going to tell anyone?” Percy asked him.

Teddy’s smile faded.

“I don’t know the answer to that question,” Teddy replied. “I know that’s not what you want to hear. You— you make things really hard for me.”

Percy huffed through his nose. A flare of disappointment, but not surprise. An ugly part of him wanted to prod Teddy into compromising his own morals, have more allegiance to him than the institution Percy knew wouldn’t be as sympathetic to his plight — but then, he wouldn’t be Teddy, would he? Teddy attempted to compensate by running his hands through the dried grease in Percy’s hair.

“Mahal kita,” Teddy whispered into his ear. Percy knit his eyebrows. That wasn’t English or Spanish or Latin.

“Hm?”

“Mahal kita. ‘I love you.’ In Tagalog.”

Tagalog. A language spoken in the Philippines, a beautiful amalgamation of English, Spanish, and the native languages of the island before colonization.

“Mahal kita to you, too,” Percy laughed quietly.

And even in Teddy’s forge, with its intensely sound-proofed walls, they heard it. The distinct call of a war horn breaking the day.

Percy, one hand clasped around his trident pendant, the other pulling a woefully-unprepared Teddy by the hand, careened out of the forge entrance and down the via principalis. Teddy, adjusting a hastily thrown on breastplate while clinging to a sledgehammer, stumbled after his boyfriend.

“Percy, you need to get your armor!” Teddy complained.

“There’s no time.”

And in reality, there wasn’t. The giant’s army — an evolving mass of rabid centaurs, she-demons, eight-armed men with flesh of mud — ebbed and flowed at the base of the Oakland hills, overwhelming the meager Roman patrol forces stationed at the Little Tiber. The rest of the legion hastened to form up into its cohorts, lines even and shields locked. The war horn sounded again. Percy looked up. High above, Reyna zipped through the sky on her pegasus, commanding orders and directing troops. And beyond, the upper half of Polybotes marched over the crest of the nearest hill, his minions swarming around his reptilian legs.

“Are you crazy?” Teddy shouted.

“I’ve done it before!”

“Before when?”

The memory was gone before Percy could even register its presence. It stunned him, a bright white flash grenade that disappeared as quickly as it had blinded him. He blinked spots out of his eyes. Ahead of him, Polybotes undercut the front line of the Third Cohort with a reaching sweep of a limestone trident.

“I like to flirt with death.”

“Don’t joke about that,” Teddy grumbled. “Hazel told me Death was hot.”

“Teddy, you know I’m only attracted to those who can defeat me in hand-to-hand combat.”

“And that’s—?”

Teddy tugged on Percy’s arm, whipping him around to face him. They were chest to chest.

“Just you, you idiot,” Percy said. “I don’t let just anybody be my big spoon.”

“Don’t start catching feelings for Polybotes.”

“Is that your way of telling me not to lose?”

“He’d be a bigger spoon. I’d get jealous.”

“I want a spoon, not a ladle.”

Teddy laughed. His tongue prodded the inside of his cheek. Percy recognized the look in Teddy’s eyes and it wasn’t innocent. The cacophony of monster cries and sword-on-shield broke him from his reverie.

“Oh my gods, what are we even talking about? There’s a battle going on! I have a cohort to command. Please wear my armor. We could’ve gotten yours by now,” Teddy complained, as he fiddled with a strap on his breastplate. “What have you done to me? Your stupid, cute, stupid sense of humor…”

Percy clutched Teddy’s fingers, keeping them from unhooking the latch.

“I order you,” Teddy growled. “As a senior officer.”

“You need it more than me,” Percy replied. “I don’t like it. It’s restraining. Plus, I— I have a few tricks up my sleeve.”

“Are you ever going to follow orders?”

“When it suits me.”

“That’s not how being a Roman works.”

Percy kissed him.

“Good thing I’m not Roman.”

He charged into battle, leaving a flabbergasted Teddy on the gravel street, thumb hooked under his armor strap.

The giant smelled him, a distinctive breeze of tropical air at low tide that permeated the stench of monster guts and legionnaire sweat and the musk of war. He diverted his attention from the puny Roman soldiers firing arrows that barely cracked the surface of his coarse skin, an armor in its own right. He saw Percy, approaching alone, carrying the platinum trident he had taught him to wield. His confidence made him predictable. The son of Neptune called to him over the skirmishes happening between them, of Tartarus versus demigod.

“Polybotes! Call off your army!” Percy belted. “It’s me you want.”

Percy had stood before the giant before, but it was in this moment that he truly felt miniscule. Ahead of him, the Twelfth Legion Fulminata cut down hellhound after hellhound, Cyclops after Cyclops, but given time, the monsters would reform from the sticky dust they combusted into when Imperial gold breached their skin. Legionnaires met an afterlife. The enemy’s life cycle was indeed a circle, but for mortals: a line. Teddy was somewhere among the bodies, defending Rome, calling on every fiber of his being to make sure his home was safe. So were Frank and Hazel. Even Reyna, who had dismounted her pegasus when she saw how dire the situation was on the ground. He could not let them down.

Polybotes grinned, showing off yellowing incisors.

“I am obligated to offer you one last chance, son of Neptune, on behalf of the Earth Mother. She made you who you are. I made you who you are. You can’t defeat your own master.”

“You’re not the only one who’s trained me,” Percy said. He had not the slightest idea by who, but he reveled in how the simple truth of this statement flooded his bones.

“Yeah?” the giant chuckled. “I’ve run through scores of Lupa’s men over the ages. You Romans fall into old habits and die hard.”

The platinum in Percy’s grip pulsed with heat. His eyes narrowed. Behind the giant, the Little Tiber leisurely ran its course. Power teemed from his body, pouring into the trident’s interior, pushing from the weapon’s teeth searching for an escape. Percy planted on the ball of his foot, spun in a circle, felt secure connection between Tiber, trident, and his core — and swung for the fences.

The river slammed Polybotes from the back, the force great enough to make the giant stumble, crushing several hellish minions underfoot. The water — so clean it had purified cursed metal — steamed and turned sickly chartreuse as it ran through the giant’s hair and grazed his skin. Where it hit the ground, the grass fizzled and browned, unnaturally shriveling into a state of decay. The giant seethed through his teeth.

“I turn water into toxin, boy,” he flung a ball of contaminated Tiber in Percy’s direction, which Percy deflected with his trident. “I’m not sure you want to play that game with your friends around.”

Polybotes knelt back on his heels and slapped the surface of the Little Tiber with the palm of his gigantic hand. Green oozed into the water and frothed out of the banks in a tidal wave that galloped towards the legion, too preoccupied in a sea of monsters to coordinate a retreat. He heard screams, smelled burning flesh. Percy dashed forward, feeling his trident hum, and swung with all his might. The poison waves broke and crawled upward, as if hitting an invisible wall. Most of the legion was spared. He prayed Teddy was okay.

He had to move the fight away.

Percy called the river to him, the water making a wide arc around the front lines and out of Polybotes’ reach. It undulated and bounced, unused to being weaved through the air like this. This skill, modeled after Teddy’s own control over molten elements and affectionately called snake-charming, he had perfected during their time in the forge, and could now apply to an entire body of water with the power vested within. It whirled around him in a cyclonic ring, misting him in high-velocity spray.

He swung his trident like a nine iron, his gut wrenched, and a spurt of the torrent launched out of the ring as if a ballistic missile. Percy watched as the projectile sailed over the ensuing battle and collided directly with the giant’s left eyeball. Polybotes bellowed.

Polybotes wiped his now-bloodshot eye and spat on the ground. Toxic saliva singed a rotting puddle in the grass. Past all pretense of a respectful one-on-one fight, the giant stomped directly towards Percy, straight through the legionnaires between them on the right flank. Percy saw bodies crushed, spears snapped, shields crunched like the splitting of a graham cracker. The cohorts scrambled, simultaneously dodging the giant’s path and avoiding certain death from his army. His stomach dropped. The ring faltered.

Percy steadied himself and launched more water, one after another after another. Polybotes blocked and parried with his own trident, primarily unfazed as he got closer and closer. But Percy’s new plan was working. He one-two punched with water aimed directly at the giant’s chest, easy to deflect, and struck him with a third from the side, which pushed Polybotes hit by hit away from the Little Tiber and a safer distance from the legion. Unfortunately, this still meant the gap between him and Percy was closing, and rapidly. And Percy was running out of water.

With the rest of his supply, he wrapped himself in whitewater. Gallons of the Tiber congealed around him and lifted him off the ground, lengthening his legs, buffing his arms — until he was the centerpiece of an aqueous avatar that matched the giant in height and strength. A literal body of water. To his amazement, his trident grew and grew with him, platinum expanding to fit the fist of this form. Gods, Teddy. You think of everything.

The son of Poseidon’s muscles thrummed with energy. He stomped forward and the giant’s trident met his own in a clash of stone and metal. Bits and pieces of limestone debris flew from where their hilts met. Polybotes scowled. Percy grinned.

He slashed at the giant relentlessly, his only intention to break the trident that proved to be less durable than originally thought. Anger — anger about everything, burning bright as a comet — tunneled his vision, primed his joints like a machine. His water encasement boiled around him. His swings gained in ferocity as Polybotes’ grunts increased with each defensive blow to his increasingly fragile trident. But Percy, blinded by hatred, got in too close.

Polybotes foot kicked out and sunk into the swirling water of his avatar. From where it made contact, blue turned green at the giant’s poisonous touch and bled through Percy’s protection like food coloring. It crept towards his body with a languorous menace, emanating from his reptilian claw. He panicked and the avatar wavered.

Tired of games, Polybotes lunged, driving his barely-intact trident towards his chest. Percy, thinking on his feet, broke his concentration on maintaining his gigantic form, avoiding the stab by a narrow hair, thanks to gravity. He fell as the water fell and landed in the mud borne from its splash, prone on his back. He deflected another swipe with his now-shrunken trident, which kept him from being impaled but also sent painful distress signals trembling up his arms.

“You’ve got spunk, hero. You fight different. But Gaea was wrong about you, you’ll die as pathetically as the others.”

Then the giant spit.

Percy had just enough time to leech a protective layer of water from the mud underneath him to shield his face, before the poison broke the thin surface and doused him. The liquid did not instantly burn and disfigure him as he expected. It tingled and spread a forest of pins and needles prickling across his cheeks and down his neck. Had he diluted it enough?

Then he violently seized.

Tremors wracked his body from his ankles to the top of his spinal column. He threw up in his mouth. Tears stung the corners of his eyes. His broken, labored breathing shuttered through his nostrils, his throat too full of vomit to pass air through his mouth. Polybotes just watched him convulse, either sadistically enjoying the show or wondering why he had not been chemically eaten alive like the other victims of the legion. Probably both.

Somebody, please help me.

Control was wrested from his body as the thoughts he had subdued since he had arrived at camp broke free from their restraints and wreaked havoc in his brain, skirting the edges of his memory void but trampling the sensitive tissue nonetheless. He deserved this. The she-wolf announced his arrival with foreboding and for good reason. He did not belong here. Death and destruction ravaged this place, and it was all his fault. People he knew...Reyna, Hazel, Frank, Teddy, even Octavian. They could be dead by the end of the day, if they weren’t already. It occurred to him that this was what loss felt like. He hadn’t known it before, when he woke up at the Wolf House. He would give anything to be back there, a clean slate on which to chart a new life. One that didn’t end like this, writhing in agony, choking on his own puke.

But then I wouldn’t have Teddy.

A fresh stream of tears coursed down Percy’s cheeks to collect in his sideburns. He repeated the same phrase over and over in his head. It was the only thing keeping him from letting his suffering pull him to the pit of despair.

I love Teddy so much and Teddy loves me.

I love Teddy so much and Teddy loves me.

I love Teddy so much and Teddy loves me.

I love Teddy so much and Teddy loves me.

Then, as if a mirage, Teddy was above him through the streaks of white in his vision, protecting him like he had when he was being burned from the inside out on Mount Saint Helens. He could make him out through the fuzz: Teddy’s strong shoulders, the gleam of his breastplate, the sheen of his black hair. Was he hallucinating?

Percy heard deep laughter. It wasn’t Teddy’s. Gods no, it wasn’t Teddy’s. Teddy’s lilted between his deep register and his soft breath. It was music, a sweet-and-sour addiction to his ear drums. It tickled him like the licks of a flame. He was sure he laughed like his mother. This laughter was harsh. This voice had the elegance of a landslide.

Percy could hear Teddy shouting, shouting at the figure above them both. The giant. That was who was cackling with the joy of an avalanche. Teddy was here to help him. He loved him so much.

But Teddy couldn’t fight a giant alone. Percy wanted to help. Percy had to help.

He engaged every muscle in his body, and by sheer force of will, he calmed his body down to the occasional twitch. The effort almost made him pass out. Streams of sweat replaced the evidence of his crying, whether that was through the strain or his body trying to expel whatever had gotten inside of him, he didn’t know. Percy tried to sit up, but even lifting his head brought on another round of nausea. He dreaded if Teddy were to turn around. He would think he was dead.

Percy saved him the only way he could: the way he saved himself two years prior, on the cusp of a volcano. His arms and legs were quivering, trying to escape the stranglehold Percy’s will held on them, to cease the tremble of Polybotes’ liquid fear. Inside his mind, Percy screamed a prayer to his father at the top of his figurative lungs.

He had no other experience to compare it to. If he were to describe it, he would say that the giant held him by the ankles and by the wrists, then tore him in half. He suddenly had sympathy for those in medieval times who were drawn and quartered.

I think I broke the Richter scale.

An earthquake ripped through the valley along twin fault lines that emanated from where he lay. The giant tripped, legionnaires tumbled, and buildings, somewhere far off, toppled in on themselves. Marble burying marble. And in the fissures that Percy had pried open with the last of his energy, red-hot lava spewed forth, rich and plentiful directly from the earth’s mantle. The heat of it bent the air. It forged its own infernal riverbanks.

There must be a gaping hole in my abdomen, and if not, internal bleeding that will kill me. At least I can spare Teddy the gore.

The world shook, but above him, Teddy stood firm. The boy he loved turned and looked down at him. His eyes sparkled.

He loves me so much.

Teddy dropped to his knees and lifted him under the armpit. Percy was listless. If the poison was even still inside of him, it did not have muscle tone to sabotage. He could muster enough energy to keep his head on straight, instead of lolling uselessly into Teddy’s shoulder. Teddy dragged him to his feet, fully supporting his bodyweight with one arm. He spoke into Percy’s ear.

“Just like the forge. Heat and cool.”

It sounded distant, like his voice was echoing from the other end of a tunnel, but he understood.

“Can you stand?”

Percy nodded and Teddy let go. While he was fully expecting to collapse, his feet gained their bearings. He spit leftover bile out of his mouth. How was he even doing this?

Then he noticed, along his forearm, between each of his fingers, and along the entirety of his body, a faint blue aura glowed. A voice, deep as the Mariana Trench, graced his ears.

“Go, my son.”

Power, unlike anything he had ever felt before, pounded against his blood vessels, pushing them to the brink of bursting. This was not like in Oregon, when Polybotes helped him tap into a source that should never have been tapped. This was a hot spring, a gift from his father that was meant to be drawn from, when he was ready. This resource was natural. He scooped up his trident from the mud.

To his right, Teddy launched a wave of lava at Polybotes, who had recovered from his fall and stomped towards the two of them with only one goal on his mind: murder. The giant futilely fought his own inertia, then the lava wrapped his reptilian foot in a scalding embrace. He bellowed.

“Cool!” Teddy shouted.

Percy, despite the Little Tiber’s distance, summoned a barrage of water onto the lava, cooling the lava into a stone trap that anchored Polybotes’ foot onto the ground. The giant tried to step forward, bash the stone with his fists, but to no avail.

“What is this?” Polybotes yelled.

Teddy sent another volley of molten earth at the giant’s other foot. Percy doused it and the giant couldn’t walk.

They worked seamlessly, bound by a complete understanding of the other earned from hours spent at the forge, creating the weapon that would bring them victory. No, Percy thought, the weapon forged was more than physical, not solely the trident. It was them. Them together. All of that work, all of the hours they put into working as one. That was the giant’s death knell. They encased the giant in blistering rock, molten earth mummifying the son of the Earth Mother, progress marked by guttural howls of pain and the stench of cauterized ichor. Soon, it was only his face that remained, shouting ancient obscenities.

“You can’t kill me,” Polybotes choked, managing a smirk. “Not without a god.”

Percy limped towards him. The blessing kept him upright, but his father could not promise mobility.

“Then I suppose we’ll just hold you here until we have one,” Percy said.

Then him and Teddy slammed the final burning puzzle piece into place, the blue faded from his arms, and Percy blacked out.

Chapter Text

Air dwindled over his bottom lip, arid and chapped from mouth-breathing, in ungraceful puffs and quiet wheezes. It was the discomfort in his chest that woke him. Not pain exactly, but like if someone held his lungs between their fingers and squeezed, restraining him from a proper inhale and choking his exhalations into pathetic submission. An attempt was made at opening his eyes, but even the required strength to lift his eyelids was too much for him to muster. He settled for listening. That demanded no effort.

The noise in the room, wherever he was, was not loud by any means, but even the slightest disturbance pounded unkindly upon his ear drums. There were occasional footsteps, the light clattering of metal, shuffling of paper, coughing, groaning, hushed conversations. There was someone near him, breathing almost silently through their nose, watching him lay back in what he deduced was a bed in the infirmary.

“Teddy,” Percy moaned. His tongue felt fat in his mouth. The two syllables of his boyfriend’s name were nearly indecipherable to the human ear.

“Teddy,” Percy repeated. The person sitting next to Percy stood at his side.

“Shh, shh,” they whispered. “He’s not here.”

“What?” Percy breathed.

“Look at me.”

“I can’t.”

He felt soft thumbs on his eyelids, then brightness swarmed his vision as the person peeled them up like shades.

“Medic!” they shouted. He heard a pattering of footsteps and a pair of bodies jostled the sides of his bed. The faces in his vision swam. In the middle, prying his eyes open, Reyna observed him with the curiosity of a doctor discovering a rare medical condition. A healer to his left had two fingers pressed to his wrist and his carotid, sensing his faint pulse. She was blonde, an Apollo child, gifted in medicine. The other healer, an Indian boy he might have recognized from his cohort, bobbed the bulb of a flashlight in and out of his vision. These were not unfriendly faces, and he should be grateful for that, but they were not who he wanted to see.

“Teddy,” Percy said.

“Just wait, Percy.”

“Where is he?”

“Open up. Nectar,” one of the healers said. His chin was tipped back and a flask met his lips. Divine liquid dribbled down his tongue and he recoiled at the taste. His mouth hosted a welcome party for the substance; his taste buds lit up with flavor, his dry mouth flooded with saliva to dissolve the essence of warm chocolate chip cookies, cinnamon, and sugar. It was so good, the saccharine sensation nearly revolted him. But the nectar restored life to his body, at least by a fraction, so when Reyna took her thumbs away, he could keep his eyes open.

The infirmary was a long brick building, almost as large and expansive as the forges, but with an abundance of natural sunlight for its patients. Percy’s bed was curtained off by white sheets, one of the many dozens that populated the trauma floor. It was a wonder Percy had never been here before, considering all of the sparring and roughhousing he got into with Teddy. Reyna sat back down and looked up at the medics.

“Could you leave us for now?” she asked politely, and the healers stopped their poking and prodding, then left as they scribbled notes on a clipboard. “Thank you.”

The praetor leaned back, crossing a chainmailed leg over the other. She hadn’t taken off her armor — faint blood stains and taloned scratches marred her breastplate. Otherwise, she looked okay. Weary, but okay. Reyna was always on the job. Percy looked down at himself. Someone, he didn’t want to think about who, had put him in a lavender hospital gown. He smelled almost clean. His lower half was covered in a white sheet. His eyes widened at the sight of his left forearm: etched into his skin, still red around the edges with inflammation, was a black ink tattoo of the stenciled letters SPQR, the top half of a trident, and a single line.

“It’s painful,” Reyna said, nodding. “I thought we could spare you while you were out cold.”

He was still addled from his slumber.

“How long was I out?” he asked.

“Four days, fifteen hours, and twenty-two minutes. At least that’s what Theodore, er—” Reyna sighed, “Teddy, told me last time he checked in.”

His heart fluttered at the sound of his name. He was okay. Percy thanked the gods he was not hooked up to a heart rate monitor. His medics would be alarmed.

“Don’t call him that,” Percy said. “Only I can call him that.”

Reyna cracked a grin, but it failed to hide her melancholy.

“Where is he? I want to see him,” Percy demanded.

“He wanted to stay by your bedside, but I wouldn’t allow it. The healers had their work cut out for them. You were very close to death, and I mean close. I called for Nico, the Pluto boy — I think you’ve met — to help with triage. He was very distraught, nearly as much as Theodore,” Reyna said. “Plus, I thought it best for us to chat...privately, before you have visitors.”

Percy deflated into the bed, eyeing her warily.

“Okay.”

“Do you want the good news?” Reyna asked. “Or the bad news?”

“Good.”

“After the giant’s defeat, the legion raised Theodore on a shield. Elected him praetor.”

Percy did not even know how to feel about this turn of events. The words washed over him with a plain neutrality. Was he supposed to care about who the elected leaders of New Rome were, after all that had happened? His grievances with Octavian and his praetor campaign seemed so irrelevant now. He was just glad him and Teddy were alive and the camp was, for the time being, standing on two feet.

“That’s good for you,” Percy replied, indifferent. “You got what you wanted. No Octavian. Congratulations.”

“He gave the title to you,” Reyna told him.

“What?”

“Don’t look at me like that. I didn’t do anything,” she shrugged. “He thinks you deserve it.”

“I don’t deserve it.”

“I agree.”

Percy looked at her, puzzled.

“I thought you wanted me to be praetor?”

“You led a giant directly to us, resulting in casualties totaling nearly an entire cohort. You’ve proven yourself a true son of the sea god: a destructive, catastrophic force through and through. I gave you the benefit of the doubt. I hoped you wouldn’t become the ‘terror to Rome’ the Sibylline book spoke of. I was wrong,” she said bluntly. “I think you’ll find you’re quite unpopular, at the time you leave these halls. Theodore, too. He’s staked a lot on you, I hope you know that. I hope you’re worth it.”

“Is that the bad news?”

“I’ll let Theodore show you the rest.”

“When can I see him?”

“After you tell me everything. No more lying by omission. And if you don’t, I will kill you in this hospital bed,” she popped a foot up on the sheet. “And I will make it look like an accident.”

He believed her.

“I want Teddy to be here too. Please,” Percy said. “I promise. No secrets.”

She acquiesced. The healers were brought back to check Percy’s vitals, while another was instructed to collect Teddy, wherever he was. He secretly hoped he was waiting right outside, but if he knew his boyfriend at all, Teddy would be halfway through a cohort’s worth of swords by now. Vulcan children understood nothing could cure an ailment of the heart like a day of good, honest work. As Percy was sat up and tugged through range-of-motion examinations, a curious hand and a familiar face appeared in the gap in the curtains.

He first noticed the worry lines, folded in thin creases between his eyes and across his forehead. His face was flushed, noticeably lighter than his normal creamy brown skin. It aged him ten years. Teddy’s cheekbones perked up at the sight of him, pulling with them a touch of rosy color. He glanced at the medics, then to Reyna, for permission to come in. The praetor simply nodded.

Time curled up for a nap. The healers removing themselves, Percy slipping into Teddy’s embrace like fingers to a glove — it all seemed to happen with one startling fluidity. Then the present was suspended on a string, a ball of yarn to be pawed that would set Kronos’ wheel back in motion. It was him and Teddy’s chin on his shoulder and his chest to his chest and his hand on his lower back that made him feel grounded to another plane of existence and that was all that would ever matter.

He was released, and time was unstoppered, flowing freely from its bottleneck. Percy became acutely aware of Reyna, unmoving in her visitor’s chair. He jerked at the stroking of Teddy’s thumb across his new tattoo. It was still sensitive.

“Sorry,” Teddy whispered, and pulled up a chair to Percy’s bedside and let Percy’s index finger circumnavigate his hand in an ice-dance. Percy took a deep breath.

“I’m not a son of Neptune,” he said.

“What are you talking about?” Reyna asked flatly. “We’ve all seen you control water.”

“I am not a son of Neptune, I am a son of Posiedon. I am a demigod of his Greek form.”

Reyna sat back, her shoulders unfurling. Her body language, Percy realized, was much like a lioness — poised, powerful, calculated.

“How do you know?”

“A goddess told me.”

She turned to Teddy.

“Were you aware of this?”

Teddy frowned.

“Not long. He said he wasn’t Roman, right before we went into battle,” he looked up at Percy. “I always knew you were different, but I couldn’t pin down why.”

“So you have had training,” Reyna pressed. “The Greeks, they have their own military.”

He aggressively shook his head. His forehead pounded.

“I don’t know,” he gripped his hairline, trying to shake off his dizziness. “I still don’t remember anything.”

“That’s real convenient for you, considering you’ve nearly single-handedly razed this place. Are you their suicide bomber? I mean, what’s one amnesiac life for the destruction of Rome?” she scoffed. “The Greeks are known for their tricks though, aren’t they?”

“What?”

“Reyna, are you serious?” Teddy interrupted.

“He can’t be trusted, Theodore!”

“You sound like Octavian!”

“I sound like a leader,” she growled. “What would you think if you weren’t wrapped around his finger?”

Teddy steeled his resolve. He squeezed Percy’s hand.

“He makes mistakes, like the rest of us,” Teddy told her. “But I have never questioned his commitment to the legion. Not once. Both of us defeated the giant, not just me. We would be dead if it weren’t for him.”

Reyna looked between them. She zeroed in on Percy and squinted.

“Which goddess came to you?” she asked. “No god has appeared to a Roman in nearly a decade. You show up and we’ve got Mars doling out quests, a blessing on the battlefield, and you’re telling me a goddess sat you down for a cup of tea?”

Percy swallowed.

“Gaea.”

“The earth goddess? What did she want with you?”

“She wanted me to save her,” Percy said. “The planet’s dying, because of us — humans — and she’s not awake enough to do anything about it. That’s why the giant followed me here. He is her son. I trained with him for a while, because he has some dominion over water as I do. To build my strength, to help out of the goodness of my heart. I swear. I abandoned their cause when I realized their intent wasn’t to make mortals better stewards of her domain, but to exterminate us, at any price. She’s planning on destroying civilization and starting over.”

Percy let Reyna take this in. She pursed her lips.

“She also gave me information, in return for my service,” Percy added.

“Go on.”

“That I’m a Greek demigod, as I said. And um,” he closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Something about how I’m the Greeks’ peace offering. An exchange of leadership. Hera, er, Juno, she’s the one who took my memory. She brought me here, to reintroduce our camps.”

“Jason,” Teddy whispered, wide-eyed.

“Why would Juno do that?” Reyna asked coldly.

“Unity. Strength in numbers to face an enemy like Gaea,” Percy said. “I’m told the gods almost lost a war recently.”

Teddy and Reyna met each other’s eyes. Reyna’s face brightened with a hope that she was barely allowing herself to have. She shut it down quickly.

“He could be lying,” she told Teddy.

“I’m not lying,” Percy interrupted. “Fetch your dogs.”

“She could be lying,” Reyna said. “To manipulate you into doing her dirty work.”

“What other explanation do we have, Reyna?” Percy asked, “Whether her intentions were pure is another story, but I think she was telling the truth. She wanted me to discover who I am.”

Reyna scoured his face for any telltale signs of untruth, the way his jaw was set, the way his facial muscles could possibly twitch with an inner guilt. She abruptly stood.

“I need time to think,” she said plainly. “Regardless of if what you’re telling me is true, you don’t need to convince me. You need to convince the ten senators who will surely be voting to strip you of your title if Octavian has his way. And as soon as they’re briefed on what led to the events that have just transpired, I think it’s safe to assume they will probably be voting on punishments for you far worse than losing praetorship.”

She clenched the back of her chair.

“I wish you a speedy recovery,” she bowed her head, then left the room.

Teddy only ever left to use the bathroom, not even to get food.

That was Hazel’s job. For six days, per Teddy’s request, her and Frank brought leftovers from the dining pavilion to the infirmary after every meal, sparing him from having to leave Percy’s bedside. For six nights, after lights out, Teddy would crawl into the hospital bed only made to fit one person, ensconce himself in Percy’s arms, and inhale the aroma of ocean spray that hung around the son of Poseidon like perfume, nuzzling into the base of his neck. Teddy, for once, kept his hands to himself, after a bit of blushing awkwardness when he cupped Percy’s behind, only to realize it was completely bare under the hospital gown.

The healers never said anything, even when they came in for their morning rounds to monitor Percy taking his godly medicines and assess his progress, just to find their patient sitting up and wide awake with Teddy hibernating on the thin, lumpy mattress.

On the final night, under the windows that cast fractal moonbeams across Teddy’s sleepy complexion, they kissed, soft and supple. Teddy’s lips eventually stopped responding to Percy’s gentle tugs, then his breathing evened out and shoulders relaxed. Percy liked to watch him sleep, to watch the worry seep from his face with the onset of his dreams. He nuzzled into his boyfriend’s ear.

“Sometimes I’m grateful I have amnesia,” Percy whispered.

“Hm?” Teddy sounded from deep in his throat.

“All I’ve ever known is love,” he breathed.

Upon his discharge, Percy had regained enough strength to walk, albeit with Teddy’s arm wrapped firmly around his ribcage and his own draped over the son of Vulcan’s neck. Sweat saturated in his mop of hair from the effort and the California heat dripped ceaselessly on Teddy’s shoulder, to which Percy offered many apologies.

“I need to cut it,” Percy mumbled.

“If you ever consider cutting that beautiful head of hair of yours, I will physically restrain you,” Teddy replied.

“I’m gonna look like Nico.”

“That wouldn’t be a bad thing if Nico used product.”

Percy laughed, then broke into a fit of coughs. Teddy reached around and placed his free hand on Percy’s chest, stymieing the wheezy breaths he took to recover. His eyebrows scrunched together.

“Sorry,” Percy choked.

“Stop, you’re lucky that poison only made you sick. I’d rather this than the alternative.”

Percy had tried — all week in fact — to block the battle out of his head, but reminders of the simple fact that he was alive, like his own heartbeat, triggered the gruesome images to replay across his retinas. Pure toxin eating away at human flesh, sizzling through musculature like corrosive acid. Percy knew Teddy had it worse though. After all, he had been in the middle of the action, watching people he had known far longer than Percy succumb to the forces of Polybotes’ army. Teddy had confided in him, their first night together in the infirmary, that that moment when Percy was doused in the giant’s saliva, contained the most despair he had ever felt. The days Percy lay unconscious, the most pain he had ever been in. Teddy did not sleep.

He had lost friends before in the heat of battle, even in War Games, but that was the nature of service in the Twelfth Legion Fulminata. He had lost his mother just over two years ago, suddenly and violently, and Teddy had had no time to grieve. But Percy was different. Teddy’s words buzzed in the back of his mind: “If I could cover you in armor so that I’ll never have to burn your burial shroud, I’d make you pajamas out of silver.”

“You know I wouldn’t wear them.”

“That’s why it hurts to love you so much.”

Teddy’s protective nature reared its head. It had a ferocity of its own, as wild as his namesake oso. Teddy’s fatal flaw, Percy came to realize, was not his inability to open up to people, as many children of Vulcan are known for, but for what comes after. He loves rarely, but when he does, deeply. He feels it with his whole being. It keeps a stranglehold on his heart. And if those fingers are ever pried off from the organ in his chest…

This is why he makes armor. This is why he makes weapons. This is why he is a perfectionist. Any mistake, any error caused by the slip of his hand...the failure would crush him. And right now, standing on the dirt path midway between Camp Jupiter and New Rome, the visible scars of the attack upon the legion’s hallowed ground ate away at them both.

The fissures that Percy had splintered through the valley, diverging like two adjoining zippers, severed the place in two. The summoned magma had cooled into unsightly, earthen scabs in the grass. The wooden barracks collapsed in on themselves, now a pile of lumber and bed frames that the surviving campers picked through with cowhide gloves. The infirmary and the principia — both squat, sturdy marble-and-brick buildings — were largely unharmed, save for a fault line that ran underneath their back ends and severed the west walls. The forge, by industrial design, withstood the quake with its steel and modern architecture. The bathhouse wasn’t so lucky. Its ancient, columned porticoes folded under the stress and brought nearly the entire structure down into its pristine pools.

New Rome, to Percy’s chagrin, mirrored the state of the Roman baths. The buildings there were much more grand, more ornate, and hundreds of years old. The aqueducts that carried clean water to the city’s families, on their thin marble stilts lifting them above the valley, snapped like femurs and unwittingly quenched the grass. Red roof tiles littered the streets, successfully maneuvered only by alley cats’ nimble paws. The forum’s pedestals, upon which artisan pottery sat, lay supine in the brick walkways. Perhaps most blasphemous, hairline cracks stretched up New Rome’s most treasured marvels: the Senate House, the Coliseum, the Jupiter Optimus Maximus. The foundations likely wouldn’t last the year. And it was all his fault.

Percy leaned into Teddy, smudging his nose against Teddy’s collarbone. The humanoid stone monument, the solid prison that held Polybotes in a grotesque contortion, looked almost like it belonged there — an abstract sculpture worthy of Olympus. His boyfriend did have a knack for artwork.

Over Teddy’s shoulder, Percy eyed passersby. The legionnaires were a people used to minding their own business and maintaining a sense of decorum, but today they rubbernecked them like an automobile accident. It was true, Percy had helped save the camp from certain destruction, but he couldn’t draw praise for solving a problem of his own creation. Teddy would have escaped this ire — they raised him on a shield after all — if he hadn’t immediately transferred power to the one at the root of the legion’s misfortune. He suspected the only reason they were not being accosted was that together they made a praetor and a centurion.

“You smell,” Percy muttered into Teddy’s shirt.

“I’m still getting hints of…” Teddy inhaled sharply through his nose. “Ah, putrid monster vomit coming off you. And is that a hint of jasmine?”

“It’s eau de Percy.”

“You should patent it. It’d make good insect repellent.”

“Guess that’s why I haven’t seen Octavian in a week.”

Teddy snorted. He pulled Percy’s chin up until their eyes met.

“Can you stop insulting my colleague?” he chastised. “I have to see him all week and all I can ever think about is the time you told him if his head got any bigger he would permanently lose sphincter control.”

“The next one I have lined up is ‘Octavian, if you fit any more sticks up your ass, a beaver’s gonna build a dam.’”

Teddy lost it. He attempted to sound serious.

“Stop. It. I mean it.”

“He should stop making it so easy,” Percy replied. “He looks like a praying mantis, like he’d eat his partner after mating for nutrients.”

“I can’t even argue with that assessment. He would one hundred percent do that.”

“Has he spoken to you? Octavian?” Percy asked. “I can’t imagine he was thrilled you didn’t give praetor to him.”

“He hasn’t, actually. Which is scarier than if he had chewed me out, if you ask me.”

“We can take him. Blindfolded.”

“He doesn’t need physical prowess to be powerful, Percy. You know, when I was raised on that shield after the battle, there was a brief moment when I considered giving it to him.”

“What?”

“Hush. I thought, ‘Why not? He’s qualified. I don’t want it,’” Teddy said. “Then I realized that I was genuinely terrified of what he might do if he didn’t get it. To you. To us. I would rather face those consequences than transfer power to someone governed by their own ego and vindictiveness. On the other hand, your moral compass points a solid north northeast and you would look cute in a toga.”

“I am rubbing off on you. Look at you, turning a serious discussion about our future at this camp into an opportunity to flirt with me.”

“Sue me for preferring to think about how your body will look tangled in sheets.”

Crimson dispersed in puddles under Percy’s cheeks, spreading like the ink of a Rorschach blot for Teddy to interpret.

“Do you want to wash up tonight?” Percy asked.

Under starlight, the pair met in the ruined antechamber of the bathhouse, closed off on Reyna’s orders until debris could be cleared and restoration could begin. The textured walls and domed ceiling had practically disintegrated into the rubble on which they stood, letting the midnight breeze, crisp and warm, take the edge off the muggy evening. Pointed spires of former columns rounded the rectangle, like stalagmite teeth holding them on its tongue. Percy gingerly picked his way across the piles of chewed-up marble.

“We’re not supposed to be in here,” Teddy mumbled quietly. He stumbled and slid, unbalanced, down the stone fragments under his feet.

“Shh,” Percy whispered. “I’m praetor. I’m allowed.”

“If you’re allowed, then why are you whispering?” Teddy whispered back. Percy didn’t have an answer to that.

“Am I gonna have to file a motion for abuse of power on your first day?” Teddy asked.

“You’re the one who gave me the job, Teddy. What did you expect?”

“That you’d mature into the role and carry yourself with dignity and gravitas?” Teddy said, full of false hope.

“I would break up with myself if I ever lived up to that statement.”

The corridor Reyna had led him through on one of his first days — the glass-covered hall towards the communal bath — lay utterly in shambles. Glass shards poked dangerously between empty spaces in the rock and fallen torch sconces that poked up like flowers, sprinkled across the floor like shrapnel weeds. The tepidarium to Percy’s left was more boulder than bath. To their right, was the room Percy knew would be intact.

The frigidarium, with its thick, insulated walls to keep in the cold, stood the test of time. It looked the same as it had when Percy first saw Teddy, its heavy mist slinking around a circular cyan pool — a fox of vapor.

“Be careful, there’s glass,” Percy said, and he pulled Teddy into the room by the hand.

The cool air sent a shiver down his spine. The air tasted as fresh as a mountain’s, as pure as a glacier. It burned his nostrils with a minty fire. Next to him, Teddy was already stripping, tossing aside his t-shirt and kicking off his pants. Did Teddy ever get cold? The Vulcan boy was a heat source of his own. Percy was relieved to see that the bathhouse’s magic still worked even without being completely intact, as Teddy had on a purplish-crimson swimsuit that reached his mid-thigh and Percy felt his own blue swimming trunks appear cinched at his waist under his denim.

“Come on,” Teddy smiled, then peeled Percy’s shirt impatiently over his head.

Percy hobbled out of his jeans as Teddy dragged him toward the pool, and he got one last look at his boyfriend’s

butt before plunging with a frigid splash, locked in a tight embrace. The water was milder than the chamber’s air, vibrating with Teddy’s warmth. An incisor grazed his outer ear, then he was corkscrewed like a sea lion and they broke the surface.

Percy was hoisted from underneath — his legs hugging Teddy’s waist, his hands buffeted by the rippling waves where he gripped biceps. At the center of the basin, the water line reached just below Teddy’s shoulders. They were face to face, breath to hazy breath. He wanted to capture this moment in his mind’s eye, contort it and shove it into the spot where Hera drank his memories like blood and scarred his hindbrain with the angular marks of a leech’s teeth. The fullness of his lips. The slight, round upturn of his nose. Brown eyes that swam under delicate eyelashes and strong brows. Charcoal hair plastered to the edge of his regal features that, if they had not belonged to a blacksmith, could have lived a handsome life on a prince. He thought it impossible to forget a face he loved this much.

The two kissed, two magnets striking poles. Percy bit, dragged his love’s lower lip down until it slipped from his grasp, flushed with red, then planted a trail of damp kisses up the sharpness of his jawline. One of Teddy’s knees buckled and he stumbled back, shifting a palm to Percy’s lower back to keep their heads from going under. His cheeks pinked.

“Do I really have that effect on you?” Percy laughed.

“I don’t think you realize how intimidating it is to kiss you,” Teddy breathed into his ear.

“Says the one who can asphyxiate me with the flex of a bicep.”

“You’d like that, though, wouldn’t you?”

Percy cut his forearm across the surface, blasting Teddy with a faceful of water, and kicked away. The son of Vulcan coughed and spluttered, while Percy willed the pool water to congeal beneath him, levitating on his back. He tilted his chin into his neck, peering at Teddy through the mist.

“I’d have thought you’d have learned to control me by now,” Percy said, fluttering his eyelashes. “The way I positively melt in your arms.”

“My gods, you’re corny,” Teddy said, reeling Percy in by the ankle.

“But you wanna kiss me so bad,” Percy crooned.

“Being a lovesick boy doesn’t qualify as a molten substance,” Teddy said, picking Percy up by the waist and hoisting him backwards over his shoulder. He pressed his lips to Percy’s obliques, then threw him the length of the pool. The resulting whitewater eruption scratched the ceiling, before raining down in pellets of brine. The water settled, and was still. Concern flashed across Teddy’s face.

“Percy?”

A wave swelled, and a captured Teddy yelped and rode the crest to Percy’s side of the pool, where the current placed him nose to nose with his boyfriend nonchalantly leaning against the tiled edge of the basin. Percy smirked and released him, gently depositing his body — still extraordinarily warm — into his waiting arms. He looked up at Teddy with the devilish grin of an infant puppy, born to create mischief.

“Should we sign the petition?” Percy asked, and underscored his teeth with a sweep of a coquettish tongue.

Chapter Text

Pellets of gravel grazed his skin like the unfettered rage of wasps disturbed from their nest. Unblunted pebbles bit him with the glancing stings of horseflies, nipping his exposed skin and spiriting away in the tempest, leaving in their wake the ghosts of needle pricks up and down the lengths of his limbs. The sandstorm had erupted suddenly and violently. One moment he was aware of the desert in which he stood, all rolling dunes and ochre as a sphinx, then the next the sun was blotted out by furious earth, disappearing as newspaper text under a spilled cup of coffee. Then the wind ran at the crack of a whip, the sand followed, and Percy was caught in a black blizzard.

He braced himself against the unceasing gust, sealed his lips, protected his eyes with the cover of a hand. The sand undulated in waves underneath, burying and unburying his feet, buffeting his knees to make him stumble, make him kneel. It ran through his hair, threaded its way around follicles like a forceful caress of fingers. It felt nearly, inexplicably human, like a hand pressed to his scalp. She patted him firmly like a dog, a puppy undeserving of praise, who not yet knew how to obediently and properly sit.

“Gaea!” he shouted to the storm.

The goddess’ voice chafed like sandpaper, smoothing his edges, molding him to the charm in her speech.

“Perseus…” she chided. “I came to you with the sincerest of intentions, and you took advantage...”

Percy tried to locate the source of her voice, but it seemed to come from all around him, riding on the earthen particles in the wind. He peeked through a crack in his fingers — nothing but the torrent of sand, bending like the silt of a riverbed.

“I know how out of place you feel,” the earth goddess crooned. “I felt the loneliness in your footsteps. I felt the anger at your situation that you couldn’t guide, power that you couldn’t direct. I gave you what you wanted, something more than what the Romans, or even the Olympians, could give you. I gave you an opportunity.”

The pull of undertow tugged at Percy’s ankles, sucking his shins into the earth. He yanked and he yanked, but the harder he struggled, the more the sand solidified around his calves like cement.

“But your...individualism. Your misplaced sense of personal loyalty,” Gaea continued. “What I thought was your greatest strength turned out to be your most glaring flaw. You, Percy Jackson, are selfish.”

Grains of sand lodged in his ears, pounding on his drums with the timbre of the goddess’ words.

“You take and you take and you take, and watch others suffer at your hand, as long as it doesn’t inconvenience you. I offered you a chance to do the right thing, to do something bigger than yourself. But you’re as abominable as the rest.”

“You’re killing people for the crime of standing in your way! For existing!” Percy shouted. “How does that make you better than me?”

“You forget that everything that walks this planet are my guests, and I their host,” Gaea replied. “For a Greek, I would expect you to know the ancient customs of hospitality.”

“Killing everyone, everywhere… it’s not right.”

The goddess cackled, amused by an irony only she could understand.

“You, of all demigods...and this criticism.” Percy could hear the smile in her voice. “You think yourself better than the means to my end. If you knew a fraction of what you’ve done in the past to get what you want…”

He could feel her, demanding access to his brain. It hurt, an increasing pressure on his skull, like a hand pressing into a balloon refusing to pop. Like she was breaking through a security system. Then, particular sets of cut wires reconnected. Sparks flew, and for a split second, images flashed across the black of his vision. A cruise ship exploding and cracking in two, swallowed by the sea. The telltale skyline of New York City, traffic at a standstill — people unconscious, or dead, on the streets. A bridge’s concrete tumbling into the river, severed in half, semi-truck dangling its chassis over the precipice. A hurricane wiping its way through Central Park.

Percy gasped as Gaea abandoned her brief access to his mind, and the wires recoiled, leaving him reeling and breathless after the invasion. That...that couldn’t have been him, could it? No. No, he wouldn’t...he wouldn’t do anything like that. Never. He couldn’t. Not on that scale. It… it wasn’t possible. That wasn’t him.

She’s lying.

“You’re lying to me,” Percy growled, his eyes starting to burn, his throat sore.

“Ah, but Perseus, I haven’t lied to you once,” the goddess said. And he knew, he begrudgingly, stubbornly knew… that she was telling the truth. It was his brain she picked. Those were his memories she rewired. The ones that Hera was hiding… from him. New York, and Mount Saint Helens, and...

He took a shaky breath, receiving a mouthful of dust. He coughed and trembled, shaking his head desperately. Was this only a glimpse of the damage he’s wrought? To wake up with no memory, no story whatsoever, meant there was only more tragedy than what he had been allowed to see.

“I realize we’re not so different, you and I,” Gaea whispered coldly. “We don’t calculate risk when it comes to protecting someone or something we care about. It makes a mortal like you dangerous, when you act on impulse and emotion. Now that Vulcan boy...was a development even I wasn’t expecting. It made me blind to the possibility Polybotes would fail in his quest to collect you for me.”

A deluge of sand pummeled him to the ground, a tsunami of gravelly earth. It stuck to him like quicksand, slowly sucking his hands and feet and chin underneath.

“But now I know the cards in your hand, Perseus. You’re of no use to me anymore,” she said. “I have no utility for a godling, who at his core, is utterly and irrevocably broken.”

The earth tunneled into his mouth, clogged his windpipe, and Percy woke with a start — overheating on cold frigidarium tile, bare against bear.

In the shadow of the great Polybotes the giant, the son of Poseidon toiled on the riverbank. The Little Tiber’s waters, although magic and self-cleaning, did not have a simple time ridding itself of the contaminants wrought by the giant’s poisonous touch. Mucus green slithered through the currents like watersnakes, unfazed and unaffected by the river’s supernatural sparkle. The hero walked to and fro along its edge, manipulating the toxin into the center of aqueous orbs he could control and deposit into heavy, stainless steel vats he had wheeled into the field from the forge. He couldn’t just leave it there to kill the fish and the flora, and he couldn’t just hurl it into the crevices either, no matter how much he wanted to punish Gaea for what she had ordered. He figured someone at camp might want it — an Apollo child perhaps, for poison-tipped arrows and such.

It was mundane, but that’s what he needed. His proximity to Polybotes unnerved him. The chill in his shadow seeped into Percy’s bones and wrapped them in a coat of frost. The giant’s stone preservation exceeded its purpose as prison and took on a meaning of its own: a monument to Percy’s failures. He could see it everywhere he went. The statue loomed over the shorter buildings of Camp Jupiter, broadcasting the giant’s imprinted face contorted in pain, rage, and hellfury over the ruins of the legion. He could barely go outside without feeling its gaze following him, communicating through its stone eyeballs that, for Percy, the worst was yet to come.

Footsteps crunching on fragile, dead-or-dying grass approached from the direction of camp. Percy continued his sluicing of the Tiber. The person stopped, as Percy funneled more toxin into the vat with the swish of his wrist.

“What are you doing?” Teddy asked, voice deep and scratchy from his recent slumber.

“Cleaning the river,” Percy responded bluntly.

“I missed you this morning,” Teddy said, fists buried in his pockets. “I got worried when you weren’t there when I woke up.”

Percy pulled another stream of water from the river, encapsulating a thin green stripe of poison in its interior. He willed it a little too forcefully into the vat. A hollow pang sounded from the barrel. He wanted to remember the night before forever in all of its immaculate glory, but inside of him, somewhere, a dam had burst and he could not access the sensations of their time together — pleasure, euphoria, solace — without wading through murk and muck. Without even turning, Percy could tell Teddy knew he was stuck.

“What’s wrong? Is this about last night?” Teddy asked, hurt tinging the bookends of his sentences. “I thought you’d be happy.”

“I am happy. That’s the problem.”

“What’s the matter?”

“Our relationship, it—” Percy snapped, then bit his tongue. “Nearly a hundred people died, right here on this spot, because of me and I don’t even have the space to mourn because you consume my every waking thought. I think about you constantly. When we’re together, it’s like I’m never close enough. And when we’re apart I’m aching for you to come back. For a while I thought ‘hey, this is young love,’ but I… I can’t escape the feeling that I’m drowning myself in you to bury what I don’t want to feel.”

Percy turned to him with watery eyes and quivering lip. Even as he said this, the words rang hollow in his throat.

“I’m a bad person, Teddy.”

Teddy’s face fell and he paced forward. He meant to pull Percy into a bear hug, constrict the angst out of him like acid from a lemon, but he was pushed away.

“No you’re not, Percy. No you’re not.”

“I’m supposed to conduct a funeral later and their murderer is delivering the eulogy.”

“You did not murder your fellow legionnaires, Percy. A giant did and you tried to stop it. You did stop it.”

“Not soon enough.”

“You did everything in your power.”

“My power is useless!” Percy screeched, and the dirt underneath them trembled. “You were born to create! Your life has meaning! I’m a natural disaster. I’m the son of the earthshaker, of waves eroding the shore, of storms ravaging the coast. On a molecular level, I am hellbent on destroying everything mankind has built from the ground up. Even when I want to do the opposite, I leave massacres in my wake. The blood on my hands runs thick, Teddy, and I can’t wash it away!”

Percy’s cheeks burned a fiery red, matching the bloodshot of his eyes. His irises, sea green, jumped out startlingly against his skin. His arms trembled with hyperactivity, almost out of nervousness and anticipation for a fight. Like he craved release, or a tough brick to crack between his fists. Teddy steadied himself on the aftershock-ridden earth, eyes wide.

“Please,” Teddy begged. “Please calm down. Let’s just talk, okay? Let’s talk.”

The earth under Percy’s feet heaved and cracked in a spiral, with the son of Poseidon at the epicenter, splintering off into branches of lightning that tore through the valley. Tectonic plates fractured and the earth’s crust crumpled under the stress, sending linear mounds of rubble outward from where he stood like the stitches of a baseball. The horizon itself moved, bobbing to and fro, teasing the morning sun as if it were a wooden pencil held twixt two fingers and bounced to appear rubber. Screams and shouts echoed from the distance, as structures that barely survived the initial seismic shocks fell prey to another round of magnitudes.

“Percy, stop!” Teddy yelled, struggling to stay upright.

But his boyfriend was in a pale stupor. Percy’s eyes were unfocused, listless in their gaze upon the destruction that emanated from the soles of his feet. His mouth hung slightly open, sucking in shallow breaths. The call of a war horn pierced the air.

“I shouldn’t be alive, Teddy,” Percy said, in utterly funereal monotone.

In an instant, a body slammed into him and he was brutally tackled to the ground. His head struck dirt and his vision swam. A faint ringing of the highest pitch tickled behind his ears. The images on his retinas swarmed like hornets, then congealed back into a singular frame. Teddy was on top of him, pinning him down by the wrists, a tempestuous scowl brewing over his temples.

“Don’t ever say that again!” he shouted. The tenor of his voice pounded his senses, as if it could beat Percy’s depressive thoughts into submission, as if it could extend a hand into the void Percy would speak of and pull out his sense of self-worth.

“I’m doing it again, Teddy. I can’t control it...” Percy murmured. “I can’t be here anymore...”

Teddy leaned in close, anxious sweat dripping onto Percy’s forehead.

“What about me, Percy?” Teddy asked. “What about us?”

“It’s best for everyone if...if I’m gone, Teddy.”

A smack, a sting, and Percy’s neck ratcheted to the side. With his now free hand, Percy caressed the bright, throbbing trauma on his cheek. He met Teddy’s eyes with a child-like shock.

“You slapped me,” Percy whispered. Teddy’s entire body shook. The hand gripping his other wrist tightened, digging his fingernails into Percy’s skin. He gasped in pain and Teddy’s lips slipped into the opening.

This kiss was different than any of the other times Teddy met him tongue to tongue. Somewhere deep inside Theodore Aquino Oso, son of Vulcan, son of fire, an oil lamp burned within ribbed walls. A final art piece from his mother: woven of glass, ventricles voluptuously curved, atria intricately crafted — atop a thick-lunged tank of pulmonary fuel of his father’s design. A vascular wick connected the two, drawing kerosene and oxygen up through capillaries for the flame to rest on its charred top. With every inhale, the ember grew. With every exhale, a feeble fade.

Teddy breathed and the fire was fed. At first shaky, and the flame weak and smoky, clogging up his windpipe, then his nostrils flared and he gasped through his nose. The boy underneath needed him. He pressed his lips against him harder and breathed. The flame burst in size, licking the sides of the glass, heating the vacant walls of his chest. His diaphragm constricted painfully. He caught a cough in his throat but did not release his lover’s lips from this strange, divine mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Teddy shook, moaned in pain, and drew in another breath.

It seared his insides. It boiled his blood, escaped through steaming sweat from his pores. Smoke poured out of his collar and his shirt sleeves, the inferno tasting polyester fabric. It was agony, but Percy needed to be warm. He needed to feel like Teddy was a homefire. That he was a hearth. That he could be his Hestia. Teddy pressed his forehead into Percy’s. He communicated everything through his lips and his body heat.

Percy, we are life, not death. Fire, light, and heat — and water, sustenance, and energy.

The son of Poseidon gasped and broke free from Teddy’s liplock. Teddy sighed in relief, as the flame retracted back into its lamp at a dull roar. Percy looked him over, at the holes singed in their t-shirts, the black burns that peppered their skin where their torsos met, at Teddy’s irises that nested a phoenix. He coughed, and a plume of smoke billowed from his ash-dusted teeth. Color had returned to his cheeks and lips. Teddy had returned to him a mournful peace.

“What was that?” Percy choked.

“I guess I’m a dragon,” Teddy said, surprised himself.

“How can you still love me after everything I’ve done?”

“Because you’re going to save everyone, one day. I’m supposed to be there for you when you do.”

“Teddy,” Percy breathed. “I killed your mother.”

Teddy blinked.

“What?”

Percy could feel, like the Roman civilization around him, everything they had built together crumbling down into nothing. Teddy’s eyes desperately searched him for answers, scoured him for a sign that this was all a joke, one of Percy’s tasteless pranks.

“In Mount Saint Helens, two years ago. I was burning alive, Teddy. Just like you, just now,” Percy said, dry tears welling up at the corners of his eyes. “I blew the top off that place, and I incinerated hundreds of people and buried them in ash, because I… I didn’t want to die.”

“Wha—?” Teddy scrambled for words. “Percy, what are you—”

Teddy was ashen. His features were indecipherable, his jaw set. The look of a boy whose trauma scars were torn open at the seams.

“Theodore, off!” a voice shouted. “By order of the praetor!”

The two of them turned towards the sound. In their own personal chaos, they had not heard the approach of the praetor and a squadron of legionnaires, now surrounding them in a wide circle. Octavian stood to her right.

“Enough,” she gestured at two armed guards, who walked forward and each put a hand on one of Teddy’s shoulders. Teddy met his gaze and Percy saw the world fall apart.

Reyna, as cold as stone, nodded to the legionnaires. They braced themselves, then pulled Teddy off of Percy’s prone body. He didn’t fight back. Another pair of soldiers hoisted Percy up by the underarms, who did not put up much of a struggle. He allowed them to touch him.

“Take Jackson where he can’t do any more damage,” she said. This shook Teddy from his daze.

“Reyna—” Teddy started.

“Have I given you permission to speak?” Reyna scolded in return. “Have you forgotten your place?”

Teddy seethed through tight lips. Reyna shot a glare his way, the one that earned her the honor of being Lupa’s most prized student, and Teddy cowered like a cub.

“I want Oso in my office,” she said. “Or what’s left of it.”

Chapter Text

Rough cowhide rubbed the skin of his wrists and his neck raw, the tight leather constricting uncomfortably against his Adam’s apple. The hypogeum, the underground room underneath the Colosseum — or what structurally remained of the old arena — had been repurposed from its original sin of holding tigers and lions in captivity for sport to restraining the son of Poseidon while he awaited his trial. Percy was chained to the arched wall like an animal, links rattling from his binds to the hooks in the compressed concrete and limestone. His throat was parched — his keepers allowed him enough pure water to survive. Otherwise, he was sober and suffering from withdrawal.

No sunlight reached the cramped room. Percy lived among shadows and flickering torch light, sand, irreparable armor, and decomposing rat bones. A centurion brought him a small meal three times a day that was a punishment in itself. It was most often a crusty loaf of bread, or a stack of stale saltine crackers, that dehydrated him even more than he already was. A part of him wanted to complain about cruel and unusual punishment, but the other half knew that he deserved this. He was far too weak to do anything. Even if he wanted to, he doubted an earthquake he summoned would disturb a grain of sand. The guards had confiscated his trident charm. He missed its inborn cool against his chest, like the flip side of a pillow.

No one came to visit him, not even Teddy, whether that was because he was forbidden to or because he didn’t want to. Percy suspected it was the latter. How long had he been down there? Ten days? More? He had counted thirty meals, but he was not sure how to factor in the time he spent asleep or otherwise unconscious. Frequent headaches plagued him early in his imprisonment, painful enough that it would incapacitate him until he blacked out. It started as tension at the base of his skull, then it wrapped around his forehead like a rubber band. Eventually every inch of his scalp was subject to severe poking and prodding, as if someone with a steel rod was pressing into his skull, trying to find the optimum point of entry for a lobotomy. It got progressively worse as the week passed, pushing deeper and more urgently until his entire head throbbed under the pressure of a constellation imploding.

The next time the centurion let him take a sip from a meager water cup, he begged.

“Please,” he sobbed. “My head is killing me.”

She lifted his chin and doused his tongue with water. Gods, it tasted like Elysium.

“I need to see a medic,” he croaked. “Please.”

The officer tipped the rest of the water down his throat. In the firelight, she looked menacing.

“Am I supposed to pity you?” she asked. “If I had it my way, I’d let you die down here and see how carnivorous the rats can get. But Rome’s always been about law, hasn’t it?”

“It— it was all an accident,” he explained futilely.

“Yeah?” she replied, standing and letting Percy drop listlessly in the dust with a thud. “My twin sister took an arrowhead to the throat two weeks ago, thrown by an Earthborn. Tell her it was an accident.”

Percy painted an apology in his eyes. She kicked dirt in them.

“Of course, you can’t anymore,” she spat.

In spite of the centurion’s anger, healers did come to attend to him. He had never been more grateful that Romans practically swear an oath to ethics. They combed through his hair with gloved hands looking for signs of trauma, pressed and palpated at the sensitive spots on his skull. Water and electrolytes were begrudgingly relinquished to him, but it did little to quell the agonizing vice closing in on his head. Having a headache was not surprising to the medics, given the condition he was being kept in. It was the severity that worried them.

It was at this point that Percy spent most of his time in a vacuum. Neither asleep nor awake, he drifted aimlessly through the darkness in front of his eyes. Percy wondered if he had gone blind. He could hear voices, hear the crackle of a torch. He simply had no cognitive awareness of whether his eyelids were closed or ajar collecting cobwebs.

“Untie him,” a voice said. “We will start his trial early, with proper medical attention. Fetch him unicorn draught and alert the other senators. I won’t be having a prisoner die in my custody before a vote. After that, I don’t care.”

The abrupt transition from dungeon to daylight constricted his pupils to needlepoints. The California sun in the irritatingly clear sky taunted him with its energy, playing flamethrower with his retinas. His eyelids refused to open more than a squint, and even then his vision clouded with a red, pulsating film that thrummed like a blood vessel about to burst. This only inflamed the high-octane pain coursing through his head, the pain that had barely subsided from the nectar and unicorn draught he was allowed and had now metastasized down his optic nerves and behind his eyeballs.

His walk to the Senate House was less a walk than it was an extended trip-and-fall, with Percy’s ankles giving way if he put any semblance of body weight on his heels. A guard on either side locked his arms in their elbows, as they still felt it pertinent to keep his hands tied behind his back, and hoisted him down the streets of New Rome while he tried to keep balance.

All around him lay the cadavres of an ancient civilization. Entire buildings, gilded porticoes either had collapsed into rubble or stood fragilely erect, laced with hairline cracks. Percy craned his neck behind him: the Colosseum, the architectural pride of New Rome, had been split in quarters and demolished along the fault lines that ran through its foundation. On the roadside, broken furniture poked out of chunks of marble — wooden chair legs, ornate bed frames, clawed porcelain baths. Displaced families, middle-aged demigods and their children, poked through the ruins for personal belongings and anything they could salvage. Or, gods forbid, for bodies. A young girl, who could not be more than six years old, tugged up the corner of a quilt from the marble’s clutches. His throat clogged up and his tear ducts burned at the sight.

Now more than ever Percy wanted to be dead. The warmth and feeling Teddy had injected into him just before his imprisonment had long since faded, leaving behind a husk of a boy who had just wanted to do the right thing with the immense power of land and sea he could never hope to fully master. He no longer wanted to be a conduit for the divine, a pawn for the gods to play with in their heavenly chess. He bore no ill will towards the deities that brought his mind to this brink: Gaea, Hera, Poseidon. He was grateful, actually. The events that had transpired under their watchful eyes and machinations made him realize that he should not be alive, and in that realization, he found a queer sense of peace. If the Senate decided he should die, he would be okay with that.

The Senate, one of the only buildings that survived the second wave of earthquakes due to its thick walls and sturdy dome, had the appearance of a lecture hall. A semicircle of tiered seats ringed a central dais, on which the praetors would recline on their thrones during debate. This is where Reyna sat and Percy would sit, if he were not bound to a wooden chair in the center of the room, facing the array of centurions and purple-hued shades — Lares, ghosts of the legion’s past — assembled on the benches in their formal wear. Each pair of centurions from the cohorts was present — Octavian from the First, the officer he despised from his first War Games representing the Third, Gwen and Dakota from Percy’s Fifth. Nine toga-clad senators filled nine seats. One was empty, and it was next to Octavian.

His assigned healers released a steady drip of nectar into the corner of his mouth through a feeding tube, providing a steady stream of syrupy chocolate-flavored medicine into his system. His muscles received thermal blood, brought back to life by the godly drink. A figure behind Percy — Reyna, he knew from the clinks of medals and military decorations on her toga — gripped the back of his chair.

“He recused himself,” she said, for his ears only.

This simple statement ruptured a dam Percy had been willfully ignoring since his first days in the hypogeum. Teddy wasn’t here and he wasn’t coming back and now silent tears leaked down his cheeks and pitter-pattered onto the marble floor. It was unbecoming, wordlessly crying for the audience that would decide his fate. A well of emotions and memories surged through him that he could not fully articulate. He only saw glimpses — elation from winning the War Games, standing exhausted and proud with a banner held aloft; unbridled joy of being in the ocean, riding shotgun on the back of a whale; heat that overwhelmed his senses when Teddy’s body was close to his. This was the incomparable sensation of being alive. And Percy, suddenly and desperately, no longer wanted to die.

“Cute,” Octavian drawled, crossing a dignified, pasty leg. “He’s sad.”

The other senators chuckled.

“Octavian,” Reyna warned, as she stepped out from behind Percy and addressed the Senate. She chanced a glance back at Percy, with his tears and his snot that he periodically sniffed back up into his nostril. The anger the praetor held seemed to dissipate with one look. He could not begin to comprehend why, after the hell he put her through — he must have looked pathetic. Her tongue clicked against the roof of her mouth, then she turned back to the benches.

“Senators,” she began. “Percy Jackson stands for crimes against Rome and the Twelfth Legion Fulminata. These charges are the most serious and carry the most severe consequences within our laws, and I ask that in your questioning and your decision today, you consider the implications of your choice. The legion has seen more tragedy in the past few months than it has in decades, and the gods have shown to have an investment in him.”

“Reyna, I don’t have time for an impassioned speech. You already messed up my schedule so Jackson could quote-unquote not die in prison,” Octavian interrupted, feigning annoyance but clearly relishing in the moment. “We all hate him. His body count’s in the hundreds. Let’s quit it with the formalities.”

“We do not all hate him,” Reyna replied sternly.

“Now that’s an interesting question, Miss Praetor,” Octavian grinned. “Why don’t you hate him? This case is textbook. Even Theodore won’t show his face around here, and he was publicly sucking face with the accused for the past few months. My co-officer was the human personification of a hickey. We got zero work done.”

Octavian sat forward to address Percy directly.

“And no, I’m not homophobic,” Octavian reassured him. “You two together just generally disgusts me.”

“As a matter of fact, I do,” Reyna said coldly. “I despise everything he has done to our beautiful home, and to the lives of the people that live here. But I am not so short-sighted that I can’t see there is something bigger looming on the horizon, and whether we like it or not, Percy Jackson is a part of it.”

“Yeah, yeah, can we start?” Octavian asked, consulting a notepad, tracing a sequence of events with his golden pen. “May I remind you perjury is also a crime that does not go unpunished.”

Reyna nodded to Percy.

“No lies,” she said as she went to take her seat.

Her automaton dogs, Aurum and Argentum, came to heel and positioned themselves on either side of Percy. Their ruby eyes glittered with malice. It hurt to see them, knowing they were Teddy’s creations and they wouldn’t hesitate to tear him limb from limb if he so much as uttered an untruth.

“Percy Jackson…” Octavian tisked, scouring his notes. “You arrived at Camp Jupiter with no memory or any recollection of your life up until that point, is that correct?”

It was clear that Octavian, with his oratory prowess and passion for knowing other people’s business, would be handling the interrogation. The other senators did not even bother bringing writing utensils.

“Yes.”

The dogs made no movements.

“Hm,” Octavian shrugged. “But you demonstrated an astounding amount of skill on the battlefield within your first week. I’m sure we all remember that.”

The Senate nodded and analyzed Percy under a microscope.

“To your knowledge, had you been in battle before at that point in time?”

“No.”

Octavian tapped his pen against the pad.

“But you arrived at Camp Jupiter in an orange t-shirt?”

Percy blinked.

“Sorry?”

“I said you arrived at Camp Jupiter in an orange t-shirt.”

“I—” Percy said warily. “I guess? I wasn’t too focused on what I was wearing. That was a long time ago.”

“The sentries. That day they told me a new recruit arrived wearing a bright orange t-shirt.”

“Okay?”

“Octavian, what is the point of this?” Reyna spoke up.

He smiled.

“Oh, when I was data-gathering out of natural curiosity, I recalled a story you told me, actually, a few years back,” Octavian said. “About a daughter of Bellona who was living on a mythical island in the Caribbean with her sister when she was a young girl, but was eventually forced to flee due to what she called an uncharacteristic assault. And the only detail this daughter of Bellona could remember, was that she saw two teenagers escaping on a ship, and they were both wearing bright orange t-shirts.”

Percy looked between Octavian and Reyna. The praetor herself was expressionless. If the story meant anything to her, she did not show it.

“Reyna, what is he talking about?” Percy asked. Reyna, tight-lipped, looked Percy up and down. The silence was palpable.

“You don’t get to ask questions, Jackson. You’re on trial,” Octavian said, not-so-subtly gloating. “Anyways, I’m just postulating. You know me and this big ol’ brain of mine. I’ve got lots of memories stored up here… apologies if that’s triggering or insensitive.”

Percy rolled his eyes and took a sip of the nectar collecting at the corner of his mouth. Octavian continued on.

“I want to fast-forward a bit, bear with me,” Octavian squinted. “You usually have a little trident hanging around your throat. Where did that come from?”

“Ted—” Percy started. “Theodore and I made it together.”

“Theodore’s a busy man, what with being head smith, a centurion, and a senator. What made him take on such a complicated, time-consuming project for a probatio? Because he thinks you’re pretty?”

“Reyna asked him to.”

“And why was that?”

“She thought—” he corrected himself. “Thinks I am the subject of a prophecy. From the Sibylline books.”

“So she wanted to prepare you for a quest?”

“Yes.”

“When she was, er, preparing you for this quest, were you aware that the successful completion of a quest makes one qualified to be elected praetor if that person has less than five years of service in the Twelfth Legion Fulminata?”

Percy awkwardly glanced towards Reyna, who looked at the floor.

“At a certain point, yes.”

“Who told you that?”

“Reyna did.”

“Reyna?” Octavian feigned shock. “Why would she bring that up with you?”

“You know why, you miserable shart.”

Octavian’s cockiness smeared off his face as his co-senators laughed through bitten tongues.

“Silence,” he snapped. “I wouldn’t get too testy, Jackson. Five votes and you’re on the chopping block.”

“What are you trying to accomplish here, Octavian? Get me to admit Reyna wanted me praetor instead of you? That’s not an exposé — you are utterly intolerable to be around.”

“Ah, but it is, so thank you for that gracious admission,” Octavian said. “It speaks volumes that Reyna has spent months trying to install a treasonous—”

Octavian, he realized, was trying to kill two birds with one stone. If Percy was the sinking ship, he was going to make sure Reyna drowned with him.

“I have been nothing but an upstanding member of this legion!” Percy shouted.

“Then why are you here today?” Octavian asked plainly, arms wide. “You led that giant here, didn’t you?”

“I didn’t mean to—”

“Then what did you mean to do?” Octavian asked. “How did he find you in the first place? You were supposed to be on a boat up to Alaska with the other Fifth Cohort plebeians. What happened?”

Percy remained silent. If Octavian knew how to do one thing, it was how to get under his skin.

“Don’t tell me you’re shy now.”

“G-Gaea is rising,” Percy stammered. “She wanted me to help her, free her from mankind’s grubby hands or whatever. The planet’s dying. She said I could train with her son, to save her.”

“Oh, her son, the giant? Mark that in the treason column,” Octavian scoffed, shooting a look at his co-senators. “It never occurred to you not to seek help from a gargantuan monster?”

“Some monsters are good,” Percy said, and a stab like a blunt nail hammered into his cranium. “Ow. I didn’t question it. He treated me like an ally. He was civilized.”

Octavian cocked an eyebrow.

“The point is I left Polybotes when I found out their true intentions. The earth goddess won’t stop until she wipes out the human race. And she won’t leave any stones unturned,” Percy said.

“That sounds gripping.”

“You know I’m not lying,” Percy growled. “The dogs haven’t budged.”

“Well of course you’re not lying if you truly believe that,” Octavian droned. “You’re angry that the gods have shown so little care for your life in the grand scheme of Olympian affairs. Your memory was wiped — a goddess’ doing, according to the entrails I’ve read. To me this reeks of an insecure demigod intent on amassing power wherever he can find it.”

“Pot and kettle, Octavian.”

“Seducing the centurion of the Second Cohort. Learning unspeakably evil deeds from the enemies of the gods, I’m sure,” Octavian sneered. “What did that training entail, exactly? Clearly the ability to decimate cities.”

Percy shifted uncomfortably in his seat.

“The earthquakes were unintentional,” Percy muttered. “I can’t harness a seismic wave.”

“You’re avoiding the question.”

“Hydrokinesis,” Percy spat.

“You already knew how to do that.”

"Advanced,” he said through gritted teeth.

“How so?”

Percy felt Octavian’s glare scraping against his visage, prying out answers with a vulture’s talons. Percy suddenly found the floor interesting.

“You don’t want to tell me?” Octavian laughed. “Does anyone else know?”

“No,” Percy muttered, heart rate quickening. Aurum and Argentum growled, exposing their titanium incisors. Percy refused to look at Octavian. He could not bear to see the look on his face.

“You there,” Octavian commanded a snoozing Lar. “Can you retrieve Senator Oso for me?”

Senator Oso, escorted in by a pair of Roman phantoms, took a timid route to the central dais. Unsurprisingly, he had been caught in the middle of metalworking. Grease pock-marked his forehead and neck and smeared down the edges of the toga he had hastily thrown on over his overalls. Oily thumbprints dotted the hem, where he periodically squeezed his knuckles as white as the sheet and readjusted the waistline from where his nervous tic left it undone. A tiny cinder glowed like a forest fire in his locks. He slicked his thumb and index finger with his tongue, and snuffed the ember out with a pinch.

As his heavy footsteps reverberated off of the marble walls, Percy realized how small he had felt in this grand hall. Percy expected to feel some measure of relief with Teddy’s return, some fraction of the safety he had always felt when they were together, but now, a prickling coat of anger lodged itself on the underside of Percy’s lungs. Teddy had had real, tangible power to influence the outcome of this trial. He was a tenth of the jury. He had a vote. He had a voice. And he gave it up.

Percy wanted Teddy here. This was Senator Oso. Senator Oso was here by court order.

He stood erect, facing the bench, back to him. He did not grant Percy one look, despite Percy’s eyes trailing him for the entirety of his trek. Teddy meekly bowed his head to Reyna, then addressed Octavian.

“I thought I made myself clear when I said that I wouldn’t be presiding over this trial, Octavian. It wouldn’t be ethical for me to do so.”

“I’m glad your moral fiber is intact, Theodore,” Octavian said. “But I’ve called you here on count of being a witness, not a juror.”

The muscles across Teddy’s back tensed.

“Oh,” Teddy said.

“I was just hoping you could answer a few questions for me that the defendant here was reluctant to answer.”

“Teddy,” Percy whispered. Teddy cocked his head in Percy’s direction, but thought the better of it. He truly does not want to see me again. Percy’s eyes stung, so he sucked nectar out of the feeding tube. It provided an artificial comfort, as potent as a morphine drip.

“O-Of course,” Teddy announced. Octavian licked his lips.

“Could you please tell the senators what your relationship is to the accused?” Octavian said. Teddy was at a loss for words. Octavian noticed his struggling, and took a perverted joy in it.

“You know what? I don’t want to make a judgment call on the status of your relationship,” he continued, applying a fabricated mercy to his voice. “Would you consider yourself a confidant of Percy Jackson?”

“I believe so,” Teddy replied.

“During his time with Polybotes — the giant born to destroy Percy’s own father, I might add — Percy has confessed to receiving unconventional training in relation to his hydrokinetic powers. Has the accused ever shown these to you?”

Teddy sealed his lips.

“Do you need a reminder of our rules, Theodore?” Octavian asked.

“He has, yes,” Teddy told the floor.

“Could you please inform the Senate what those might be?”

The entirety of the Senate watched Teddy expectantly. Though he could only see his backside, Percy saw a boy divided by conflict.

“This information is vital to our understanding of the risks Percy poses to our legion, Theodore,” Octavian pressed.

Percy could feel it — the magnets. He saw Teddy’s neck muscles straining, fighting an inner urge to look back — Percy as Eurydice. His arm needed to play defense: Teddy’s left hand crawled up to his hair and clenched around his cowlick.

“Percy learned how to manipulate the water in people’s bodies. Blood,” Teddy said, and the air left the room as if the entryways had gasped along with its occupants.

Suddenly, it was just him and Teddy, like Percy had always wanted. The Senate Hall around them faded to nothing, just a white expanse as far as the eye could see. The Senators were gone. The Lares faded into wisps of violet perfume and dissipated in the air. Percy felt light, as healthy as he had ever felt. He was looking at Teddy and Teddy was looking back.

Teddy wore shame like an albatross. It hunched his strong back, it muddied his features. It took a palm to paint and smeared a priceless portrait.

But Percy was not angry with him. He had no reason to be. Teddy was simply being the boy he had fallen in love with.

An understanding passed between them. The brown glimmer in Teddy’s eyes communicated lifetimes. Every scenario played out between them, film reels flitting across their eyelashes and burying them in cinematic possibilities. They searched for every scenario in which they both lived to see the end of the day, in which they could forgive each other, in which they end up together. Percy counted one. And they both knew what it entailed.

“Mahal kita,” Percy choked, smiling from ear to ear. Water welled up at the brim of Teddy’s eyelids. Teddy couldn’t find the composure to speak, but he nodded. He nodded emphatically on top of a crinkly, watery smile.

Sound snapped back into place with reality close behind and the Lares were shouting, spitting obscenities. The Senators were suspended in animation, rigid in a meek fear. Reyna, perched on the edge of her seat apart from her colleagues, emoted a quiet resignation. Octavian abruptly stood.

“I think we’ve heard enough,” he said, and slapped his notebook shut. “All in favor?”

“No!” Teddy barked with the fullness of his chest.

The sheer voltage at which Teddy shouted made Octavian stumble over his own gaunt frame. A terror nestled into his pupils, one Percy had never seen before in the centurion. A handful of the senators, mid-hand raise, let their forearms drift back down to their sides. Teddy seethed, inhaling great volumes as if he were struggling for breath. From his perspective, he could see the faintest smoke, spewing like exhaust from Teddy’s orifices. Octavian regained a sliver of superiority.

“Now Theodore…”

“His fate is not in your hands. Don’t move another inch,” Teddy glowered.

“Reyna, he is threatening a sitting member of the Senate,” Octavian shouted, glancing frantically in the praetor’s direction.

“You’ve wanted him dead the second he set foot here, haven’t you?” he replied.

“What has become of you, Oso? I thought you believed in Rome. You’re going to throw all of this away, for a boy?”

“I believed in Rome because I believed in justice,” Teddy shook his head. “And that’s not what this is.”

Reyna leaped down from her seat and made for Teddy. Her gait conveyed a hint of gentleness under her steely brow. She wanted to defuse, not escalate — though not for the sake of Percy, but for the civility and integrity of her institutions. The soot puffed out of him in inky clouds that shrouded his face in a smokescreen.

“You— you’re a fire tamer,” Octavian stuttered, flashing wildly between Percy and Teddy. “Theodore, stand down!”

The skin of Teddy’s exposed forearms sparked red, his veins pulsed, and he clamped down on the collar of his shirt with his teeth. His face scrunched into an ugly contortion, biting back the agony of holding in a conflagrant release. Droplets of blood hit the floor at his feet — his fingernails dug trenches into his palms.

“Guards!” Octavian shouted. “The Senate has decided.”

A trifecta of armed soldiers rushed from the entryways, flanking Percy and removing him from his rope binds. They tore the nectar drip from his mouth. He was manhandled, wrenched off of his seat as his wrists were retied behind his back.

“Ted—” Percy choked out, before a knee was placed on his neck.

From Teddy’s mouth erupted a column of white fire that swept through the center of the amphitheater and scorched the hall with the sound and precision of a blowtorch. The senators dove to the side, flames crawling up the hems of their tunics. Hair singed off of Percy’s arms and heat bit at his exposed skin. Reyna stumbled backwards, the loose ends of her braid curling with smoke. The flame, like a comet’s tail stretching towards the apex of the dome, reflected in her wide-eyed, terrified awe.

Teddy’s back bent as a flower towards the sun, grief in full bloom. Somewhere in the benches, Octavian shrieked orders at legionnaires that refused to step closer. The ones charged with removing Percy had long since fled towards the exits. Teddy reeled towards the sound of his voice and a wave of flames cascaded over the tiers of seats, now empty after the senators had scattered. Banners and tapestries that adorned the walls disintegrated upon impact. Percy and Reyna hacked up lungs — smoke permeated the room.

“Teddy,” he coughed.

The sound of Percy’s distress cut through the roar and offed Teddy’s flame as if a valve sealed the gas to a Bunsen burner. He rushed to Percy’s side, expelling the last remnants of blue fire from his system through coughs that set him off-balance. Teddy trembled with a delayed-onset fear, as he rolled Percy onto his back and slid his arms underneath his torso.

“Percy...what— what have I done?”

Teddy’s eyes sparkled a volcanic orange and dilated with panic. Reyna’s chainmail rattled with desperate respiration.

“Help Reyna, I’ll be fine,” Percy said, rolling up onto his knees and tugging his wrists out of his loose binds. “You didn’t kill anyone.”

“Are you sure?” he asked timidly.

“Teddy, go!” Percy shouted through a fit of coughs that scratched his dried trachea. Teddy crawled towards the sound of the praetor’s wheezing, disappearing into the haze. Percy unsteadily rose on to two feet. He whirled around, his sense of direction addled by the low oxygen and the decreased field of vision. He took twenty steps towards a vague light source, thinking it was an open door to fresh air. He squinted — residual fire.

“Percy?” Teddy yelled from somewhere.

It was difficult to pinpoint, his voice echoing off of the walls.

“Ah!” Percy mouthed, as his hand flew to his forehead.

His headache — so well-controlled by the constant stream of nectar he had been receiving — returned in full, agonizing force. Percy faltered. Ribbons of oscillating frigidity and blistering heat mummified his head and neck, wrapping him in a pain that drilled from his scalp down to the center of his skull. He collapsed and screamed the ash out of his lungs.

The entirety of his body writhed, reflexively trying to escape a pain that weighed his head down as if it were full of cement. Sparks danced across the insides of his eyelids.

Teddy, where are you?

Teddy, where are you?

I’m dying, Teddy.

Where are you, Teddy?

Napalm continued its stomp through his brain in a wicked game of incendiary hopscotch. He wailed until his voice was fried.

“Percy? Percy!” a voice yelled.

At a certain point, the intensity subdued him and he gazed unblinkingly at the ceiling. The smoke really was pretty from down there. It rested on the air as the seeds of dandelions, swinging in the atmosphere like pendulums when a door far off opened and closed. Percy thought someone was performing a craniotomy, opening up his skull to perform brain surgery. The area felt flushed with lidocaine, numb to everything but pressure as someone separated his frontal lobes like the halves of an orange. He giggled, eyes glazed over, as an Olympian sedative kicked in.

“Percy? Make noise, I can’t see you.”

Eyes peered inside, felt where his memories were ripped out with brute force and palpated the new growths, the new memories that flourished in their place. Expert hands weaved a new Frankenstein fabric, a tapestry in the hippocampus — a hideous but functioning amalgam of the old and the new. He knew these fingers. Her fingernails. They touched him eight months ago.

The final stitch was tied as something — a knee maybe, or knuckles? — collided with the side of his rib cage. It didn’t hurt. He couldn’t feel much, but he laughed hysterically. The hands sutured his bone back together, sealed his skull. A voice — a soothing voice he liked — shouted into his ear, but they seemed so far away.

“Why are you laughing? I thought you were in pain.”

His arm was shaken. A handsome face centered itself over his pupils. Percy found the roundness of his nose unbearably hilarious.

“Percy? I need to get you out of here.”

His legs left the ground, supported by a strong arm, and his back was lifted. Percy’s head, so lightweight and helium-inflated, bobbed against the crook of someone’s shoulder. Wind picked up in the Senate Hall and glass shattered. The smokescreen dispersed in a mighty gust, directed into a cyclonic funnel. On the way out the door, he passed a head of cropped blonde hair, a boy with a serious countenance and blue eyes that crackled with electricity.

Sunlight kissed him when he was laid down in the square, bricks poking into his shoulder blades as he inhaled crisp air to fuel his laughter. The handsome face knelt down and examined him again. Percy liked how his breath smelled, like s’mores.

“What is so funny?”

“There’s a boat in the sky.”

Chapter Text

As the high wore off, Percy became less and less entertained by the billows of the white flag waving from the trireme’s mast high above. The banner’s fluid movement in the light breeze reminded him of white chocolate bubbling down a chocolate fountain, which reminded him of the day Teddy discovered he could make bonbons and truffles with a clever application of his father’s power, which made him laugh until tears cleared trails down his ash-beat cheeks, which made Teddy kick him with the back of his boot and tell him to shut up. After all, they were circumscribed by a three-way standoff and a mass of curious Romans.

The guy Percy had glimpsed on his way out of the Senate Hall — the blonde one with the stormy eyes — positioned himself directly underneath the floating boat. Reyna and Octavian occupied the two other corners of the triangle, the praetor’s flinty gaze switching between the new blonde and the senator beet red up to his neck. Octavian, for once, was strangely silent, rapidly calculating his next move within a drastic, unexpected turn of events. His aspirations for power were crumbling before his very eyes.

“Jason,” Reyna stated flatly, crossing her arms across her chest. “It’s nice to see you again. Thank you for aerating our beloved Senate Hall.”

Jason, the former praetor, or current he supposed, licked his lips and surveyed the extensive damage to the place he had called home for the entirety of his life. Rogue fires burning indiscriminately in crevices of the Senate Hall, the demolition of residential New Rome, the hardened monument encasing Polybotes on an open field marred by fissures. His face fell.

“Reyna...” Jason said, dismayed. “What happened here?”

“The gods are getting a little too trigger-happy when it comes to bestowing divine power to their children. Ask those two,” she gestured at Percy and Teddy, who stood over Percy in case anyone attempted to try anything while he was incapacitated. “More importantly, where have you been?”

Jason eyed Teddy, then nodded appreciatively.

“Theodore,” Jason said.

“Jason,” Teddy nodded back.

“I come with a message. Forgive me. I, uh, drafted this, for clarity,” Jason announced to the assembled crowd, and unfurled a scroll from which he read. “Many of you may have noticed that I have been absent without leave for the past eight months. I did not run away, I did not desert the Twelfth Legion, and I did not intentionally abdicate my duties as praetor. My memory was stolen from me by the goddess Juno and I was transplanted into a camp a lot like ours, but for demigods of Greek origin.”

Murmurs and whispers ran through the legion like a swarm of locusts.

“A war is coming, in the fallout of the Titan War we fought last summer. On a quest of my own, myself and my Greek allies discovered that the earth goddess, Gaea — and her children, the giants — want to destroy the world, the gods, and the human race. Lady Juno saw strength in numbers and plotted to reunite our long-separate camps by an exchange of leaders. I would spend time with the Greeks and their de facto leader, Percy Jackson, would spend time here.”

At the sound of his name, his circuitry rewired itself. Tidbits of names and information and experiences started to click into place as the subliminal buzz in his head quieted down. Grover, that’s a friend of his. A centaur patting him on the shoulder. Paul, who was that? Percy rolled into a sitting position, clutching the residual throb above his brow.

“This is a trick,” Octavian said, voice carrying over the hills.

“I thought so too, Octavian,” Reyna said.

“You knew about this?” Octavian cried. “This is why you’ve been protecting Jackson?”

“I had limited information and I thought it prudent not to interfere with a process out of my control.”

“Reyna, are you blind? They’re extorting him, having him read from a statement,” Octavian glanced at Jason. “They arrived in a warship. Jackson alone has decimated our civilization.”

Reyna and Jason made eye contact. Her tongue nested in the side of her cheek.

“His story lines up. Percy’s been here for the same amount of time, and with a similar case of amnesia,” Reyna said, then turned to Jason. “But your memories came back.”

“Mine returned slowly, piece by piece so that I could find my way back here,” Jason’s brow furrowed and he looked to Percy. “Yours haven’t come back yet?”

“I’m working on it. Ow,” Percy replied, rubbing his temple. “Hera decided all at once was good enough, apparently, just as you arrived. I’m still...discombobulated.”

Teddy craned his neck and silently questioned him with the upturn of an eyebrow. Octavian scoffed.

“And you expect me to believe that people willingly put Percy Jackson in a leadership position? He deserves to be institutionalized.”

“I’m still praetor, Octavian. So I suggest you stop talking about me that way,” Percy said.

“An unelected praetor convicted of war crimes.”

“I didn’t mean to do any of this!” Percy gesticulated.

“Does that matter?” Octavian yelled back.

“Enough!” Reyna shouted. “I am suspending everything related to Percy and Theodore until this situation is resolved.”

“Have you already forgotten that Theodore tried to light us up not even twenty minutes ago?” Octavian shrieked.

“I didn’t know what was happening to me, you—” Teddy started, sincere innocence threaded in his brow.

“Silence,” Reyna scolded.

“But—” Octavian butted in.

“Octavian, go play with your stuffed animals,” she cut him off and turned back to Jason. “What is your, er, landing party requesting so bluntly with this warship?”

“The Argo II is intended for our upcoming quest, which we wanted to discuss at length with the current leadership,” Jason said. “The Greeks will carry no weapons. We want this done diplomatically.”

“How many are aboard?”

“Three demigods and a satyr. A faun,” Jason corrected.

Percy’s heart skipped a beat. Grover? The crowd waited with bated breath, as Reyna calculated her options and ran numbers.

“The demigods may land. Direct them to the Field of Mars. A single hint of funny business and they will be met with the full force of the Twelfth Legion Fulminata, understood? That includes you, Jason,” Reyna said. “We will meet at the forge.”

Jason smirked and saluted, then rose up on a gust of wind and flew back towards the ship docked in the clouds. Teddy caught him staring.

“Son of Jupiter,” he explained.

“I know.”

“Then quit ogling.”

“You don’t have to be so insecure. We can appreciate butts together.”

“It’s cute in a small way. He could do some more squats. Probably all that flying, doesn’t have to use his legs.”

“Is that why you made me lug that barrel around when we were birthing Joe?” Percy gasped. Teddy held his hands up in surrender. Behind the fingers of his right hand, the Argo II made a U-turn and floated towards the Field of Mars.

“Okay, I was dropping hints,” he admitted. “You just looked a tad bony back then.”

“I literally have a swimmer’s body. What is there to complain about?”

“See, now you’re getting a little narcissistic,” Teddy wagged a finger. “I’ve been gassing you up too much. I’ve gotta knock you down a peg.”

Reyna cleared her throat. They both turned to her.

“Theodore, I’d like to use your workspace, as it’s the only building we have at the moment. Is that okay?”

Teddy nodded.

“Let’s go, Percy.”

The trio took a few paces, then Reyna stopped in her tracks.

“Just Percy, for now,” Reyna told Teddy. He frowned.

“I’ll catch up with you later,” Percy reassured him and gave him a hug.

“Mahal kita,” Teddy whispered in his ear.

“Mahal kita.”

As the praetors made their way down the dirt path to Camp Jupiter, Percy could not take his eyes off of the Greek trireme hovering over the valley. A rope ladder was slung down to the earth from the portside and a blurry figure in an orange t-shirt placed their foot on the first rung. Jason floated supportively off to the side, in case they lost their balance or their grip.

Percy’s heart rate quickened at the sight of campers. Camp Half-Blood. Yes, that was its name. Located on Long Island Sound. Percy was from New York City. He wanted so desperately to remember people — the fullness of them, not just a name attached to a neural network of buzzwords related to camp. Clarisse. That was someone he knew. She had brown hair, he thought. Did she like him? Thalia. Who was she?

He squinted. A boy with a full head of dark hair was descending — skinny, not quite heavy enough to keep from being buffeted by the occasional swings of the ladder. Did Percy know him? No one came to mind. He ran through names in his catalog: Travis. Will. Tyson. Charles. Michael. Ethan. Luke. No. None of those matched the boy’s profile. Surely someone who knew him would come to pick up, right?

Then there she was, standing at the prow, blonde curls whipping in the wind. Her eyes, so piercingly pale and grey even from this distance, petrified him as Medusa had almost done five years prior. An entirety of memories snapped into him like the recoil of a bowstring and all bodily functions ceased. His jaw fell open dumbly and his eyelids froze mid-blink. Reyna, a few steps ahead, noticed his conversion to statuary.

“Hey, you okay?”

Her words released him from his suspended animation.

“Di immortales,” he whispered, and shoved the trident that recently reappeared around his neck into his shirt.

The instant her sneakers connected with gravel she was at a breakneck sprint. A broad smile stretched across her cheeks and cleared the storm clouds from her irises, lighting up her eyes like big silvery pearls. Gods, she had gotten exponentially more beautiful since the last time he had seen her, giving her a kiss goodnight outside his cabin in what was supposed to be a blissful winter break. Her hair had been cropped to just below the top of her shoulder — he was used to it longer, but it looked great. What he loved the most was that she looked healthy. Her skin glowed with that easy tan she could achieve with less than a week in the sun. She looked strong.

With arms outstretched, Percy caught her in a leaping hug that sent them spiraling, nearly toppling him over as his feet adjusted to his girlfriend’s weight. His hands moved to support her thighs and hers intertwined behind his neck. Her forehead came to rest upon his and they each grinned from ear to ear.

“Hi,” Annabeth said.

“Hi,” Percy replied, tongue between his teeth. They both giggled in earnest. Annabeth’s bottom lip rolled underneath the front of her smile.

“I planned something witty and flirty to say to you right now but honestly I completely forgot what it was.”

“You? Forgetting a plan? Get off me before your mother smites you.”

“She’s going to smite us either way for having your hands where they are, Percy Jackson.”

Percy reached up with one arm and twiddled a lock of her hair between his fingers. She smelled of coconut and vanilla.

“You cut your hair.”

Annabeth blushed scarlet.

“Yeah, I’m...kind of friends with some Aphrodite campers now. They talked me into it. Something about it matching my bone structure,” she said. “The best part is that it decreased the air resistance of my head by a degree, so now I can beat you by a few more milliseconds in a footrace.”

“Well hold onto your pride because I’ve been training.”

“Oh, you’ve been training? I have too.”

“I’ve been going on runs…”

“Runs? Wow,” Annabeth said with mock amazement.

“Yeah, you wouldn’t believe. My legs just always want to run. It’s like I can’t stop running. They feel this intrinsic higher purpose in life to be faster than Annabeth Chase.”

“Well I ran the Boston Marathon in April.”

“Are you kidding me?” Percy asked, almost dropping her. “Our one upmanship is only fun until you inevitably show me up.”

“I had a lot of time to focus on myself while you were gone. Will Solace refuses to play ping pong with me anymore.”

“Did you finally stop holding the paddle with two hands?”

“Gods no, I merely adapted it into a strategic playing style centered on ruthless aggression, perfect for a game that relies on quick reflexes.” She puckered her lips. “I almost made him infertile.”

“Annabeth!” the dark-haired boy Percy had seen earlier shouted from the direction of the forge.

Percy and Annabeth turned to the noise. The silhouette of a brunette girl — another person he had never seen before — elbowed the boy in the side. Percy set her back down on the ground.

“We’re sucked into apocalyptic Olympian business,” Annabeth sighed. “As per usual.”

“As per usual.”

Annabeth slid her fingers into Percy’s, until he broke free and sprinted for the forge, kicking dirt up with his heels.

“Hey!” she complained, flying after him. “You got a head start!”

She still won.

“The Prophecy of the Seven,” Reyna repeated. “I’ve read it. The question is how have you? Our legion has the only surviving copy of the Sibylline books.”

The six of them had piled into Teddy’s workshop and made an awkward arrangement of metal-legged stools, since no one knew quite where to sit. Annabeth introduced him to Piper McLean, an aforementioned daughter of Aphrodite, who graciously shook his hand and told him Annabeth talked about him all the time. She certainly lived up to her mother’s allure: her beauty had an unpolished and organic quality to it, like Annabeth, plus her eyes shined like geodes. He could tell from her features that her ancestry connected to an indigenous people, but it was impossible for him to narrow down which one.

“Where’s your Camp Half-Blood necklace? It’s not here,” Annabeth asked, pressing her fingers against his collarbone. “Oh, what’s this?”

She tugged his collar down to reveal the silver chain he wore. Percy unconsciously tensed, but allowed her to pull the trident out from his shirt.

“That’s beautiful,” Piper awed.

“Where did you get this?” Annabeth asked.

“It’s a fully functioning trident,” he said. “If you tug it off. My, uh, friend made it for me. My bead necklace disappeared. Riptide, too.”

“You’re kidding,” Annabeth breathed in disbelief.

Percy was briefly re-acquainted with Jason Grace, Thalia’s apparently-long-lost younger brother, before he went off to have a hushed, private conversation with Reyna. Lastly he met Leo Valdez, an antsy son of Hephaestus, the runty Latino boy who had called Annabeth’s name — this was technically Teddy’s half-brother, on the Greek side. Leo had none of Teddy’s physical strength, commanding presence, quiet fortitude — it was hard to believe they were related. The boy couldn’t sit still, always tinkering with wires he pulled out of his toolbelt and mindlessly tapping his foot in precise patterns.

Now that he thought about it, Percy had never meaningfully met any of Teddy’s siblings, despite all of the time he spent here in the forge. Familial bond was less of a principle here, given the organization into cohorts. The only close siblings here he knew were Hazel and Nico, who Percy made a mental note to strangle next time he saw him.

“We have an Oracle, blessed by Apollo himself. She delivers our prophecies,” Annabeth said. “Yours are written down?”

“Every prophecy that will come to pass for Roman civilization is bound within its pages. The praetors have studied them for centuries. I know that one well,” Reyna said. “You believe it has been set in motion?”

“We wouldn’t be sitting here if it hasn’t,” Jason cut in. “Foes bear arms to the Doors of Death. This was Juno’s game plan. Historical enemies working together.”

“I actually think the prophecy is quite literal. Gaea is…‘the world.’ She’s been a thorn in our side for nearly a year. Monsters not dying, satyrs getting attacked by Earthborn,” Annabeth said, then pointed towards Jason, Piper, and Leo. “She sent those three on a fool’s errand last winter and discovered the giants were reborn.”

“It’s true,” Leo chimed in, looking up from a Jacob's ladder he fashioned out of copper. “She appeared to me in fecal matter. It was gross, but I appreciated the commitment to the aesthetic.”

“Anyway,” Annabeth said. “We’ve had a solid eight months to figure this out, at least for the interim. The Doors of Death are being held open. There’s a son of Hades, Nico di Ang—”

“I know him, go on,” Reyna interrupted.

Annabeth blinked, and her jaw set, then continued.

“He believes he’s found the entrance. In Greece.”

Reyna scowled, trading eye contact between Jason and Annabeth.

“Travelling to the Ancient Lands is forbidden, not to mention a suicide mission.”

“Reyna—” Jason began, but she cut him off.

“Who are you expecting to go on this quest?” she asked point blank. “Were you intending on recruiting my legionnaires? I find your optimism inspiring that you think a handful of Roman soldiers are going to willingly board a Greek ship and sail off to die.”

“We only need two—” Jason said.

“Only two?” Reyna laughed, doing the math in her head. “I know for a fact that Percy does not want to go, if that’s what you think.”

Annabeth shot a quizzical look at him over her shoulder. Suddenly all eyes were on him. He squirmed in his seat and shot Reyna a split-second glare.

“What— what are you talking about? I’ll go,” Percy feigned enthusiasm as his stomach sank. “Gaea’s had it out for me, too. I’m already a part of it.”

Reyna eyed him with a glint of curiosity. She crossed her legs.

“Here’s the deal. My legion is rebuilding. I have been leading New Rome, essentially by myself, through a very traumatic few weeks.” Her words laid on top of each other like bricks. “If you can find two people within twenty-four hours and be on your way, I will support you in whatever way I can. I recognize the importance of this quest, truly, but I will not be letting our healing be interrupted by the presence of Greek demigods any longer than that. And Percy...if you stay, I will personally make sure you work to reconstruct this city stone by stone. You may go if you so choose, and only then would I consider your debt to us paid.”

Percy nodded solemnly. Reyna sighed and hopped off of her chair.

“Thank you, Reyna,” Jason said. “I’m sorry.”

The corner of her mouth curled, as if remembering a better time. She nodded towards Percy.

“Notify me of who my new praetor is before you leave,” and she left the room.

The remaining five lingered and kicked away their stools. Jason took Piper’s hand and offered to show her and Leo around. Percy apologized for there not being much to show. And then it was Percy and Annabeth, and her hands slipped into his back pockets and her toes were on their tippy and her lips were brushing his and her boyfriend forgot how to kiss. He stood stiff, eyes closed, fingers traipsing through her hair like wind between reeds. Being in Teddy’s workshop, with her and her alone — a knot of nausea nestled into his gut. She leaned back on her heels, and studied him as an art piece. Percy cracked open his eyes, knowing full well the consequences of her seeing him as he was.

“It’s Theodore, isn’t it?” she asked, the kitten grey of her eyes fading to a cool pewter. “Jason told me his name.”

Percy toyed with his bottom lip with his pinky, turning his attention to the ground, where he didn’t have to face her any longer. He nodded.

“How did you know?” he muttered.

“I was watching from the boat, earlier in the square. The way he stood over you. Carried you out of the Senate Hall. I could just tell you...meant a lot to him,” she said, shaking her head. “He didn’t protect you like a brother, or a friend.”

“I’m sorry, Anna—”

“You know, I worried for eight months that you would find someone else here. With Jason dating Piper right in front of my face,” she scoffed. “I just wasn’t expecting, well…”

“A guy?” he asked.

She nodded.

“Why didn’t you tell me you’re bisexual, Percy?” she breathed. The deeper and more cutting betrayal, he realized, was the perception that he had kept a secret from her.

“I didn’t know. You were all I could think about since I was twelve,” Percy admitted.

“Don’t forget Rachel.”

“Oh, shut up. This is not the time.”

“Might as well throw Beckendorf in there too,” she quipped.

“You’re taking this surprisingly well,” Percy’s eyebrows knit in concern.

“Oh, I am certainly not,” Annabeth said through nervous laughter, then the capillaries in her cheeks welled with blood and a rush of tears flooded her eyes. She combed her fingers through her bangs, mussing her hair and wiping saltwater across her skin. His eyes consequently stung, and he took her hand.

“I love you, Annabeth,” he reassured her. She nodded aggressively.

“I know,” she sniffed.

“I’m sorry. I was a clean slate.”

“It’s not your fault,” she choked through a watery smile. “I’m happy for you. I’m happy you found a part of yourself here.”

Her hand escaped his and inched its way up to his forearm, pressing on his SPQR tattoo. Seconds passed and she clenched harder and harder, wrist uncontrollably shaking with a surplus of electric grief finding its way to ground. They were both crying now, trading bloodshot glances. Fingernails dug into his skin, though she wasn’t trying to hurt him — he was her crutch. She released her grip and embraced him in one fluid motion, dampening the violet of his t-shirt. Percy rested his chin on her scalp.

She muffled into his chest, so low he could barely hear it.

“Do you like this part better?”

This was the question that plagued him since his adolescence was rewired into his current paradigm — his headlong fall into love with Annabeth fighting for dominance with the intense, addictive rush of his time with Teddy. He wanted so badly to feel for Annabeth as he had at their relationship’s most vivid highs — his holding the sky for her, their legendary underwater kiss, her being his lifeline to the mortal world when he took on the Curse of Achilles. But that cord had severed when he had crossed the Little Tiber.

He floated like he was in the River Styx again, losing consciousness, floundering for a tie to earth. The rapids shimmered above him, and there she was, kneeling over the canoe lake pier, a hand outstretched. He had fallen out of his canoe.

“You are such an idiot sometimes,” she smiled. “Come on. Take my hand.”

Percy reached for her, but the surface congealed and his fist rebounded as if it were plexiglass. Her mirage fogged up and her face became less discernible. He punched until his knuckles hurt. The water refused to free him. He tried and he tried to access the feelings he had for her before his amnesia, before his intimacy with a boy eclipsed a relationship he didn’t even know about.

She wasn’t better or worse than Teddy. It was just...Annabeth was Annabeth. And Teddy was Teddy.

“I don’t know,” Percy breathed.

“We were supposed to build something permanent. Something that would last forever.”

“I’ve had a real knack for destroying things like that recently. It’s in my DNA.”

This was Percy’s curse: gifted with great power, balanced by tragedy. Even the brightest spot in his life — the sacred bond he held with Teddy — inevitably resulted in collateral damage. Annabeth extracted herself and wiped tear stains with the backs of her hands.

“Gods,” she said flatly. “You’re a real pain, you know that? Add in that puberty hit you like a truck.”

Percy mustered the sense of humor for a smirk.

“I know it doesn’t make much difference but...” he said, “I wish I could have missed you.”

Annabeth took a deep breath, and the tension in her shoulders escaped with her exhalation. She grabbed his hand and pulled him down to the floor, sitting criss-cross and absently fiddling with his fingers.

“Tell me about him,” she said.

“What?”

“Tell me about him,” she shrugged. The way her eyes sparkled, the way she looked at him...a euphoria rushed into him that reminded him of why he loved her so much. Percy’s teeth clamped down on his goofy grin.

“He’s a son of Vulcan,” Percy said. “He’s a blacksmith.”

“That’s sexy.”

“Tell me about it,” Percy rolled his eyes, rubbing a sweaty palm across the back of his neck. “This is Teddy’s workshop, actually. I spend a lot of time in here.”

Annabeth reoriented herself to the room, now filtered through a new facet of information about Percy’s life in New Rome.

“He’s a perfectionist, like you,” Percy added. “He’s good with his hands. He can read me like a book. He runs with whatever dumb idea I have at the time...I like how I’m the only one who can make him laugh.”

“He sounds lovely,” Annabeth said, a trace of mourning on her tongue. Her fingertip traced the outline of his knee through his jeans. “Percy, can I ask you a question?”

“Yeah?”

“Are you asking him to come with us?” she asked, looking him directly in the eye. “Or is he staying?”

Chapter Text

At sunset, Percy found Teddy on a birchwood bench facing the old Senate Hall, fingers wedged into the slats, surely picking up splinters between the unvarnished beams. The wood whined under the stress of Teddy’s grip, regretting its own pliability. The Senate, with its broken, whistling windows and fire-wicked marble, haunted the square with its imposing anatomy. New Rome was in rigor mortis. The son of Vulcan did not so much as budge when Percy blocked out the sun with his back, draping a shadow over the boy.

“You didn’t tell me you could play with fire,” Percy said.

“It was news to me, too,” Teddy said, fixated on the architectural husk in front of him. He withdrew his hands from the bench and twiddled with his thumbs. “My body clogged up with, desperation I guess, and it felt like...what I imagine heartburn feels like. Then I was breathing fire.”

Teddy offered his hand and Percy took it.

“I had so much pent-up anger, and anxiety, and grief, that my body expelled it the only way it knew how. A simple exothermic reaction,” Teddy said plaintively. “I think I fully understand you now. Before, I couldn’t imagine how much you were hurting, when you...you know.”

Teddy awkwardly waved his hand, both calling attention to and dismissing the devastation that surrounded them.

“I also can’t really blame you for, um, the volcano,” he said, attaining the nerve to look Percy in the eye. “Your memory is back? Is it true?”

Percy absentmindedly rubbed the pad of Teddy’s ring finger between his thumb and index.

“Your father, well, the Greek version, tasked me with liberating his workshop during the Titan War. Telekhines were killing me with lava, so I...blew it up.”

“It was self-defense, Percy. A last resort. You can’t blame yourself for the aftermath. I can’t blame you either,” Teddy told him. “The gods wouldn’t have won the war without you.”

“It doesn’t change that it happened.”

“No… I suppose it doesn’t,” Teddy said, finding sudden interest in his cuticles. “I still don’t understand why you didn’t tell me when you knew.”

“Because I knew you would never look at me the same way again,” Percy said. “Because I was selfish, and I wanted you to love me, and I knew if you weren’t there I would be swallowed by the misery eating away at me for months on end.”

“It’s not selfish to want love, Percy,” Teddy replied. “But I want you to know that you’re not entitled to mine.”

“I know. I’m sorry,” he said. “For everything. I don’t think I ever got the chance to apologize.”

Teddy grimaced. It was an acceptance, albeit a hard pill to swallow.

“I’m sorry, too,” Teddy muttered.

“About the trial?” Percy asked. “That was my own mess, Teddy, you can’t blame yourself for that—”

“For hitting you.”

Percy’s breath caught. Suddenly he was twelve years old again, hiding behind the thin wood of his bedroom door, as Gabe Ugliano bore down on the woman who would give her life for her son a thousand times over.

“It is… hard for me to handle strong emotion. My body rejects it like an allergy. My mom, she… wanted me to be the spitting image of my father, because for most of my life, he wasn’t there. She only ever taught me to shut down. I thought she was brilliant, and I loved her, but she wouldn’t let me show it. How messed up is that?” Teddy shook his head in disbelief. “Feelings have always made me sick to my stomach, like I’m going to explode. Now I know why.”

Teddy let out a quick, sardonic laugh.

“Percy, I— I know I have a lot of anger, or it just comes out as anger, and I—” Teddy rubbed his eye with a knuckle, “I know that’s no excuse, I just...didn’t know how to get through to you. I didn’t know how to make you see yourself the way I see you. I was terrified of what my world would look like without you in it. And it’s just— I am sorry that I hit you, and I will never do it again. I swear on the River Styx.”

“I...recognize we have a level of violence built into our relationship. Which I love, don’t get me wrong. But I know what abuse is, and I’m glad that, to both of us that slap that day felt...different. Thank you for apologizing,” Percy replied. “And I believe you, when you say you won’t hit me like that again. You don’t need to swear on the River Styx.”

Teddy grimaced.

“You know, in a twisted way, I think what happened two years ago was supposed to happen,” Teddy said. “So that we could meet. For better or for worse.”

“It’s been prophesied. We’ve been centuries in the making.” Percy clutched for the trident around his neck, but of course it had been confiscated at the city’s edge. “Joe will do great things one day. He’s grown up so fast.”

“Can you stop personifying a weapon of war? I already have an unhealthy attachment to it.”

“He’s the closest thing we’re getting to a child. Live with it.”

“Gods,” Teddy sighed, leaning back. “You’ve thought about children?”

The peaceful bubble they had enshrined themselves in with their rapport popped, and an encroaching sadness begged to dull the mirth from Percy’s eyes. He squeezed Teddy’s hand.

“Do you wanna take a walk?”

Percy adored the romance of shadows. At golden hour, the sun stretches bodies and the bushes, reflecting the Daedalean intricacies of the world into a simple, slender two dimensions. Life did not seem so complicated when he transfixed on the gentle swing of his arm, gangly in the silhouette, pinky in pinky with Theodore Aquino Oso. He wanted to cut them out of the ground with a pair of scissors like chains of paper dolls linked fist-to-fist, like his mother Sally used to do when she spoiled him with arts and crafts. He would hang them atop his Manhattan windowsill above his moonlace bloom, so the sun could make shadows of their shadows and the glow of the moonflower could send them back, back, back and forth like love letters.

As they traipsed through the park, he swallowed down envy. The tricks of the light rippled over the grass with ease, not disturbing a single blade. Not a pebble out of place, not a baby dew drop stirred from its slumber. In that realm, they could intertwine their penumbras without consequence. They would harm nothing but the leaves that needed sun. He could stand in Teddy’s shade and let it devour him and he would never have to leave. They could be one.

But sunlight trickled away as water down a drain when the horizon dipped below the hills, voiding the world of color when the pair took a seat on the rim of a malfunctioning fountain, criss-cross so their knees kissed. The fountain, home to many a marble Cupid firing waterjets from their notches, sprayed inelegantly from busted underground pipes with a serpentine hiss. Inadvertently, it dusted them in a cool mist, slicking their skin in condensation. Teddy leaned forward and their foreheads connected like the closing of a drawbridge. Percy watched his eyelids flutter shut, almost prayerlike.

“Spare me the worst, Percy,” he breathed.

“You know I can’t,” Percy said, throat obstructed by a landslide of sobs held back by sheer force. Teddy broke before Percy did, shoulders convulsing with the heartbreak spreading in spirals from his bone marrow.

“I was the boy with Calypso, Teddy, right before you. I couldn’t love her because I loved somebody else,” Percy said. “I’ve loved Annabeth for five years. She’s here to pick me up. We have a quest to the Ancient Lands.”

Teddy let out a strangled laugh. The mockery of fate.

“My life’s a work of art, isn’t it?” Teddy choked. “You’re a Greek tragedy.”

“My mother named me Perseus because he’s the only hero who got a happy ending.”

“And where do I fit into that?”

“I don’t know, Teddy. I don’t know,” Percy shook his head. “My heart hurts.”

Teddy laced his fingers through the roots of Percy’s hair.

“I’m coming with you,” Teddy whispered.

“No you’re not, Teddy...”

“I’m coming with you—” he insisted.

“Teddy, please,” Percy begged, pulling away from Teddy’s reach. “I need this time for myself.”

“Yourself and your girlfriend?” Teddy scoffed.

“I broke up with her!” Percy snapped, jumping off the ledge. A flock of mourning doves shot from the trees, startled by the outburst. “I won’t be able to be with either of you until the world isn’t on the edge of destruction and I figure out what’s going on in this stupid head of mine. In case you haven’t noticed, I just found out I’m in love with two different people.”

Teddy kicked his feet down and tapped the cobblestone with his toes.

“Are you breaking up with me?” Teddy asked, staring fixedly at the ground. “In the Senate Hall, I thought we had come to some unspoken agreement…”

“That was before I had my life back, Teddy.”

“Your life,” Teddy repeated, clicking his tongue.

“Yes, Teddy. My life.”

The air between them was sour.

“So what’s this...quest, you’re going on?”

“It’s called the Prophecy of the Seven,” Percy said. “Seven half-bloods shall answer the call. There’s five of us, plus Frank and Hazel.”

“Frank and Hazel,” Teddy muttered. “Figures.”

“I asked them to come.”

“You didn’t ask me?”

“You’re safer here.”

“I am fully capable of taking care of myself. It sounds like you just don’t want to see me again.”

“Teddy…” Percy sighed. “You know that’s not true.”

“Am I just a stepping stone to you, Percy?” Teddy’s words struck like gavels. “Oh, cool, you got your prophesied weapon from me and you came into your sexuality, congratulations. Now you can go and live happily ever after with the girl you’ve been in love with since you were a preteen.”

“You don’t mean that...” Percy exhaled. Poison seeped into his voice. “To think you’d think I’d ever treat you like that—”

“Then why are you abandoning me?” Teddy cried.

The question took a bear claw to the remainder of Percy’s heart, shredding it chamber by chamber. His tear ducts were fried. Teddy was unrecognizable — no, deep down in his hippocampus, buried under months of undying devotion and love, was the contours of Theodore’s face one of the first times they met. Upper lip curled in distaste. Gaze steely, eyebrows turned in. This was the Theodore rumors had painted in his ears. Rumors breathe like fires, but a flame holds with even a molecule of oxygenous truth.

“Teddy!”

“I can’t go back to before you, Percy!” Teddy shouted. “I can’t!”

Like everything they got up to, it somehow turned into a competition. It was a damn game of tug of war. The harder Percy pulled, the harder Teddy would pull back. Neither of them even wanted to play.

“I’m doing this for you.” Percy’s tongue slowed, putting close emphasis on every word. “I am transferring praetorship back to you, with Reyna’s approval, and Jason’s. A Greek and Roman peace will never see the light of day if Octavian is praetor. Your role is here. You can rebuild New Rome, Teddy. Beauty and function. That’s what you wanted, remember?”

Teddy’s jaw set, then his hand flew to his mouth. He held in a cough. He appeared to swallow it down, then another followed in quick succession.

“I can’t see you again until—” Percy stopped. A puff of smoke billowed from Teddy’s lips between the slits in his fingers. He fought a bout of nausea.

“Teddy,” Percy pleaded. “Not here.”

Teddy whipped around and bent over the side of the fountain, and vomited fire as if it were stomach acid. The bottom of the pool cracked with the ricochet of a shotgun blast and spray erupted like a geyser, raining brine down onto Teddy’s back. His breathing slowed and bore labor, smoke trailing from where his head bowed over the fountain’s rim.

“You’ve got everything in neat little boxes, don’t you?” Teddy choked.

“I promised to never let you push me away, Teddy.”

Teddy pointedly kept his head in the fountain basin.

“I’m not the one doing the pushing,” he spat.

Percy sniffed. He clamped down on his lip to keep it from trembling, enough to draw a trace of blood.

“We’re leaving in the morning from the Field of Mars. Nine o’clock sharp,” Percy said, and turned on his heel.

Percy could not remember the last time he had slept in his Fifth Cohort bunk. It oddly felt awkward on his spine to be on a mattress again, given he spent most of his nights on the concrete floor of Teddy’s workshop using a bicep as a pillow. Neither of them complained. It was either sharing a twin bed in a barrack full of legionnaires or the hardened grime of an industrial forge. The choice had been obvious, and as a result, he was suffering from his current state of insomnia.

He wrapped himself in blankets and marched out the door to the melodious silence of crickets.

The furnace heated Teddy’s workshop with a purr. In truth, Percy was baking underneath his sheets he tore from his bed, but there was a wrongness to being there in just his boxers without Teddy there. The door had been unlocked despite its emptiness and he did not know what to make of it.

He spent the wee hours of the night with a blank blueprint and a graphite pencil and a trident-as-paperweight, sketching and erasing, straightening lines and curving curves, tossing screw-ups into an overflowing pile of crumpled paper anywhere but the waste bin. Percy couldn’t draw to save his life, but now...he had to. If Teddy couldn’t work from this design, he couldn’t fathom the alternative.

“Leo designed this whole thing himself,” Annabeth said, surveying the craftsmanship of the Argo II as a team of Fourth Cohort grunts lugged crates of supplies up the boarding ramp. Her hair was tied back in a short ponytail, the sun illuminating every fine detail of her face. “I helped with the schematics and such, but the guy’s a genius behind that elven exterior.”

The trireme really was an engineering marvel. Its supple lumber curved gracefully under the hull that apparently hosted an expansive living space. Holes drilled in the sides supported rows upon rows of self-maneuvering oars. The ship’s figurehead on the bow, the disembodied head of a bronze automaton dragon he recognized from Camp Half-Blood, glinted menacingly in the sunlight peeking through the cloud cover. Leo sat astride its neck, tinkering with wires and hardware protruding from a hatch in its skull. Percy’s own head hurt when he looked at it, imagining Hera doing the same to him with a pair of wire cutters. He wished he could peer inside Teddy’s like that. At least I will have one dragon with me, he thought.

Percy walked into the figurehead’s massive shadow. The shade was warmer than the sunlight, proximity to the dragon’s machinery being its own toasty heat source.

“Hey!” he yelled up at its master, cupping his hands around his mouth.

Leo’s helmet of hair poked out from the side.

“Does the dragon have a name?”

“Festus!” Leo shouted back. “It’s Latin for happy. That’s what Jason calls him.”

Festus creaked and its metal mandible ratcheted upwards in what Percy perceived was a reptilian grin. Leo scratched behind its ear and its neck twitched in ecstasy — if it had had legs, Percy would have expected it to kick frantically like a dog’s.

“He’s a good boy. He won’t bite,” Leo said, prying open the dragon’s jaw to point out razor-sharp drill bit teeth. “Though he does eat nails for breakfast. I’m in the market for a dental assistant if you’re interested.”

“Sure.”

“Whoa! Ow!”

Festus had craned his neck down to get a better look at Percy, its ruby eyes shining like signal fires in their sockets, sliding Leo forward and ramming his groin into the skull plate. Leo let out a string of curses and readjusted himself. A series of clicks emitted from Festus’ mouth.

“Seriously?” Leo noted with surprise, then his smile lit up. “Awesome, thanks! Everyone refuses to help me with his weekly oral care. Festus says he likes you, by the way.”

“I like him, too.”

A tranquilizing feeling of hope spread outward from his chest. The son of Hephaestus had repurposed a creature gone haywire and made him useful again. Art from debris.

“Wanna see him breathe fire?” Leo asked excitedly. “He also doubles as a smoke machine for karaoke nights.”

“I’m good for now, thanks,” Percy laughed. “We’ve gotta get going.”

Percy strolled back over to the portside, as Leo shouted behind him.

“Annabeth, you were right! He is cool!”

His eyes rolled as he caught up with Annabeth and Reyna, who were making polite small talk as the last of the legionnaires exited the ship. Everyone else was already aboard.

“Thank you for everything, Reyna,” Percy said, announcing himself. The girls turned to him.

“No need to thank me. The sooner you’re out of my hair, the better,” Reyna replied, then nodding toward Annabeth. “Annabeth is a very competent strategist. You are lucky to have her around. I almost wish she could stay here, with all the help we need. Did you know she completely re-designed Mount Olympus last year? ‘The Architect of Olympus,’ they called her. Very impressive.”

“Yes, I was there.”

“Ah,” Reyna frowned. “I guess you were.”

An awkward silence ensued, broken by Percy pulling Reyna into a hug. She grunted in surprise, growing uncomfortable with the intimate contact. It was uncomfortable for him too, the way her badges and armor poked into his ribcage.

“Thank you. I mean it,” Percy whispered. “For giving me more chances than I’ve earned.”

Reyna placed her hand on his back and squeezed. He could tell she nodded, from the way the stray hairs not in her trademark braid brushed against his ear.

“He’s not coming, is he?” Percy breathed. She pulled away, then shook her head.

“He’s adjusting to his new role,” she said, in what felt like an official press statement. Percy kicked at the grass and his fingers brushed against Annabeth’s.

“Meet you on the boat?” he asked.

Annabeth nodded. Percy retreated as she went back to solidifying a diplomatic relationship with the praetor of New Rome. He was, bizarrely, in a joyful mood for a joyless time. Annabeth always had the gall to psychoanalyze him. She would probably pull out one of her Freud books and tell him he was employing a defense mechanism — his brain running his misery through a converter and outputting his current cheer. Was that such a bad thing, if he was getting serotonin and dopamine? If it was sucking the sting out of the Teddy-sized wound?

Percy leaned over the railing and rubbed his wrists. His trident charm glittered, swinging back and forth with the gale. The entirety of New Rome and Camp Jupiter sprawled out before him. The Little Tiber, where he consecrated platinum ore. The Field of Mars, where he became a warrior. The bathhouse, where he...

Annabeth was walking back to the gangway now, hands in her pockets. Leo, at the stern, revved the engine and unfurled the sails as the wind picked up. And as Annabeth took one step onto the plank, Percy saw him. Teddy, the praetor himself, was sprinting at full force towards the Argo II. Percy stood erect.

“Wait!” Teddy shouted. His voice sounded miniscule from the distance, quieted by the wind and the hum of the engine. “Wait!”

Annabeth turned, one foot on the ground and one on the gangway. Teddy came to a stop just in front of her, taking deep, heaving breaths.

“Are you Annabeth?” Teddy asked.

Percy clamped down on the railing, grinding his teeth. A flutter of annoyance passed through him. Why did Teddy have to make this so difficult? The grating of wood on steel whirred the ship to life as Leo engaged the oars, which began to pump in perfect synchrony. Teddy and Annabeth were in deep, rushed conversation. Annabeth had her hands in her back pockets. She nodded a lot, while Percy strained to hear over the cacophony that drowned them out.

Percy was struck by a full-body paralysis, the peace he had felt on that sleepless morning deteriorating into venom. Pins and needles ran up and down his neck like television static. Why wasn’t he moving? Teddy was here to say goodbye. Why aren’t I moving?

“Annabeth!” Leo shouted from an upper deck. She whirled to the sound of Leo’s voice. “We need to go!”

The ship shuddered as the gangway started to lift inch by inch off of Roman soil. Percy’s feet unfroze and he lurched forward, towards the boarding ramp. His hand drifted to the back pocket of his jeans. He slashed a microscopic cut into his knuckle, punctured by a crinkly piece of paper folded into a rectangle the size of a brochure. The hull left the soil. Now it was his turn to panic.

“Wait!” he commanded Leo, as he sped to the rapidly-reclining gangway. “Leo, wait!”

“You can’t stop an airplane on the runway,” Leo said apologetically as he switched between multiple control systems at the blink of an eye.

He couldn’t take his eyes off Teddy, in violet shirt and violet cape, rocking on his heels near the fissure Percy had lacerated in the earth to siphon magma. Percy collided into a body as the gangway fully retracted, then him and Annabeth were sprawled on the deck.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Percy scrambled up and flew to the railing. Even then, so soon after taking off, Teddy was becoming a purple-hued speck in the field of green. Percy dove to the hardwood floor and snatched the blueprint out of his pants, unfolding it as quickly as he could without it tearing. His ears popped from the rising altitude.

“Leo!” he shouted. “Do you know how to make a paper airplane?”

“Do I?” Leo scoffed. “Piper, take the controls.”

Leo rushed to Percy’s side and knelt down. The son of Hephaestus barely took a glance at Percy’s scrawled writing before he started to fold, creasing and licking his thumb and creasing again. Annabeth sat up, kneading the crook of her neck. She looked over Percy’s shoulder.

“Percy, what is that?”

“Don’t look at it,” he snapped, partially shielding its contents with his hunched back, then softened at the look she gave him. “Please.”

In no time at all, the blueprint had been origamied into a sleek, blue futuristic jet, complete with fins on its wings and an aerodynamic nose. Percy noticed Leo had even included a tiny paper pilot that was somehow contiguous with the whole, who sat it in a tiny cockpit in the center of the plane.

“Leo, you wasted time,” Percy complained and picked it up from the bottom.

“It needed some Valdez flare.”

The Argo II broke the clouds and Percy launched the paper airplane with all his might, then watched it ride wind currents down to earth.

When nightfall came after a relatively uneventful rest of the day, Percy should have been able to give in to his exhaustion. His eyelids weighed on him as if sandbags were attached to his lashes, but even so, closing his eyes only meant staring at a darkness slightly different from the one in his empty bedroom. Annabeth had told him she wanted to decorate it with some of his personal belongings, but decided against it in the event something happens to the Argo II. He kind of liked it better this way. No mementos meant no memories, and he could start fresh again. This time by choice. At hour four, he gave up on counting sheep and, as silently as he could, tiptoed into the hallway and closed his door without a creak.

She was waiting because she’s smarter than him. Annabeth rested on the staircase leading from the living quarters to the upper deck, in her silk pajama bottoms plus one of his t-shirts that dwarfed her, and sipped a mug of hot chocolate. A stray strand of hair caught on her lip. She unstuck it from her tongue and pushed it behind her ear.

“He’s handsome,” Annabeth said sleepily.

Percy sidled up to her and leaned against the stairwell. Annabeth stirred her cocoa, scooped up an amount that overflowed back into her cup, then lifted the spoon up to Percy’s height. He took it in his mouth and savored the flavor — the dissolved whipped cream, the faint hints of cinnamon and brown sugar. She swore to never tell her hot chocolate recipe. Family secret.

She retracted the spoon carefully, dragging over his bottom lip, so much so it could have been read as seductive if she wasn’t so obviously solemn.

“I didn’t expect anything less,” she added.

“Really?”

She looked at him in exasperated disbelief.

“Please,” she uttered, rolling her eyes.

“What did you two talk about?” Percy asked, a sick feeling collecting in his stomach.

“Wanted me to make sure you were okay, blah, blah, blah. Wanted me to protect you. That kind of stuff,” she said. “He apologized to me for being in love with you. That one was new.”

“What did you say?”

She shrugged her shoulders.

“I said I would, and I always will. And I said Percy is going to be Percy, so he’ll do...what he does. Even if he’s a danger to himself.”

“I’m not sure if I’m supposed to be offended.”

“I’m paraphrasing,” she said. “You’re just...you. And that’s who you’re gonna be. And may the gods forgive whoever has the dumb luck of falling in love with you, Seaweed Brain.”

Annabeth rubbed her eye with the base of her thumb. Percy leaned down and kissed her on the cheek. She smelled as delectable as the confection in her hands.

“Can you sit with me for a while?” she sniffed.

He had carried Annabeth to her bed when she fell asleep in his lap, tucking her into her many quilts. He considered snuggling in with her and inhaling the heavenly perfume she always spritzed on the base of her collarbone, but he ultimately stuffed a pillow into her arms that were themselves yearning for cuddles. Percy found himself resting atop the figurehead, listening to the wind spill secrets in his ear. The night was cool and clear. Below him, the Rocky Mountains rose from the earth’s crust like the spines of an ancient dinosaur. The stars speckled the sky, dusting the atmosphere with glitter from horizon to horizon. He was convinced the planet was the yolk of a giant primordial bird’s egg, and the expanse was the inside of its artful shell.

Festus the dragon was dangerously warm beneath his back, his bronze sheet metal scales prodding into his shoulder blades and spinal column. But Percy Jackson liked it here, and he fell asleep to the gentle rocking of a ship unmoored, Ursa Major incinerating stardust to provide but a twinkle in his vision.

The god of fire had given him two gifts — or perhaps they were the same.

Chapter Text

Dear Teddy,

I’m writing this from your workshop. I guess I expected you to be here because this is where you come to not think, but a part of me is happy that you’re not because that means you’re thinking. About me, hopefully. About us.

Frankly, I don’t know where I am going to be tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow, or the day after that. Quests are like that sometimes, me of all people would be able to tell you. All I know is that I want to see you again. I don’t know in what way, shape, or form; if we’re going to be boyfriends or boy friends…

It’s going to be a long road for both of us — you know, me with my suicide mission, you with your urban planning. Annabeth’s a brilliant architect. I’m sure she’d love to help. Maybe when we reach some sort of equilibrium you two could be friends. And we can Iris message or something. I know that sounds weird.

I’ve been thinking a lot about Calypso lately, and the promises you made to each other. I don’t know if I am the boy Calypso wants you to be with — the Fates are still deciding on that one apparently — but at least I can help you fulfill your end of the deal. We owe her one, you and me both. One of my new crewmates fits the bill. His name is Leo Valdez and he’s nothing like you save for the undeniable talent. The Argo II is a Leo original — if anyone can get to Ogygia and back, it’s him. He’s also your half-brother...so go ahead, pull your strings.

On the back you’ll find a surprisingly lifelike drawing of me (to scale!), if you decide you miss me too much. I know you have an affinity for glassblowing. Consider this my last laugh. Actually, no, scratch that. Consider this a laugh.

Mahal kita,

For legal reasons I cannot attach my name to this document.

Teddy flipped the blueprint over and choked on his coffee.