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Home. He was home.
Percy Jackson takes a deep breath of pine and distant sea air and tries to ignore the way the air is tinged slightly with the scent of copper. He closes his eyes for a moment tries to focus on the things that are familiar. The chatter of campers in the distance. The birds chirping overhead. The rustle of leaves from the light breeze that plays in the branches.
Standing on top of Half-Blood Hill, Percy feels something relax in his shoulders. The tightness in his chest stays, but he’s home and that’s not for nothing, right?
He feels Annabeth’s arm brush his own as a quiet reminder that she’s there beside him, and Percy opens his eyes. He reaches for her hand. Lots of things—lots of people—had been lost. He’s grateful beyond words that despite the odds, he is still standing here at Camp Half-Blood with her. He laces their fingers together, and out of the corner of his eye he swears he sees Annabeth release a breath of something like relief. She grips his hand a little harder.
Percy opens his mouth to say something about how he should go see his mom soon when he’s cut off by a familiar voice tearing through camp.
“PERCY!”
Percy’s head snaps instinctively towards the sound. He sees a blur of orange t-shirt and a flop of curly brown hair before the wind is knocked out of him. Percy staggers back a step before he returns Grover’s hug. The satyr is babbling something too fast for Percy to keep up with or follow.
“Whoa,” Percy says, a grin tugging at the corner of his mouth. “Hey, man.”
Grover pulls back a little, but he doesn’t fully let go. His fingers slide down Percy’s short sleeve before digging into Percy’s arms as if he half-expects that the son of the sea god is some kind of illusion. His best friend’s dark eyes flit over Percy several times over, like he’s looking for injuries or something. Grover had always been a worrier, Percy thinks.
The satyr looks older than Percy remembers, and he’s not sure if that’s because it’s been a year since he’s seen him or because of the weary look that lingers in his dark eyes. There’s a crease appearing between Grover’s brows.
“Long time no see, huh?” Percy offers by way of greeting.
Grover’s eyes snap back up to meet Percy’s but there’s something like doubt that lingers in his gaze that brings Percy up short. The satyr looks like he’s about to say something, but then his jaw clicks shut. He glances over at Annabeth, giving her the same several glances over that he’d given Percy.
“You’re back,” Grover says, but his voice sounds strangely high and tight. “I…”
“Grover?” Percy asks, feeling concern knot in his stomach. All the times he and Annabeth had gone off on dangerous quests and come back, Grover had never had this strong of a reaction to their return.
“I thought…” Grover trails off again, then suddenly yanks Percy and Annabeth both into a hug again.
Percy’s mouth twitches with a hint of a smile, but he can’t shake the feeling that something is wrong. When Grover releases them, Percy shoots a lightning-fast glance to Annabeth. She hides it well, but there’s the small crease between her brows that betrays that she is just as puzzled and worried as Percy feels.
“Miss us?” Percy says at a flimsy attempt at levity. Grover’s eyes look misty when they meet Percy’s, but he gives him a grin in response.
“You could say that.” He brushes the back of his hand across his eyes. He looks between Percy and Annabeth like he half-expects them to dissolve into smoke. “I didn’t… I mean I…”
Percy’s frown deepens as he cocks an eyebrow at his friend, but Grover averts his gaze and shakes his head quickly. Percy glances at Annabeth, but her eyes grow slightly wide as she looks at Grover, then pained.
“It was my fault,” she says suddenly. “I’m sorry.” Strands of her blonde hair stick to her face from sweat and smears of blood. There’s something earnest in her expression that Percy can’t explain.
Grover’s brow furrows. “Your…? Annabeth, I have a hard time believing that.”
Annabeth shakes her head, adamant. “It was. Arachne’s web got twisted around my ankle and… and it pulled me in, and Percy grabbed me, but—”
Tartarus. There’s a sudden sense of vertigo, and he reaches instinctively for Annabeth’s hand. He grips it, and the contact with her is enough to keep him from feeling like he’s falling into Tartarus again.
“Annabeth,” Grover is saying, but he sounds far away. “Annabeth, that doesn’t mean it’s your fault. I mean, gods, after what you two went through…”
Percy jolts, realization hitting him sharper than Jason’s lightning. His eyes snap to focus on Grover, his stomach twisting with sudden nausea. “The empathy link.”
Grover him a wan smile, and Percy is grateful for the way Annabeth gives his hand a small squeeze.
A faun had mentioned it when he was at Camp Jupiter, but he hadn’t known at the time what he’d been talking about. And once he got is memories back, it’d set off a chain reaction of events that had kept him from thinking too long about it since. But the empathy link… in Tartarus…
Percy swallows. “Shit, Grover. I—” His voice cuts out and he coughs to clear it, shaking his head quickly. “I didn’t even… are you okay?”
Grover stares at him, his eyes starting to get misty again. “You went to Tartarus and you’re asking me if I’m okay?”
“Yes.”
Grover opens his mouth, then shuts it. He blinks hard and tries again. “I’m just glad to see both of you in one piece.”
It’s not an answer. Percy knows that. It’s avoidance, and gods forgive him but he can’t bring himself to press Grover on the issue. Maybe it’s selfish of him. But he’s finally home—home, gods, it’s been so long—and the last thing he wants to do right now is talk about Tartarus. In the back of his mind, he wonders just how much of Tartarus Grover knows about. If he knows the things Percy’s done…
He doesn’t want to think about it. In fact, the last thing he wants is to deal with the memories of Tartarus that seem to cling to him like they’re in lockstep with his shadow.
“I’d ask you guys if you’re okay but… I think I know that answer,” Grover says when neither Percy nor Annabeth says anything.
He doesn’t want to talk about it. “Hey, we’re here, aren’t we?” Percy offers, and if his hand is shaking just a little, well. He hopes Annabeth doesn’t notice. “Nice to be breathing that fresh camp air.”
Doubt flickers across Grover’s eyes. “Percy—”
“Is Chiron around?”
Grover’s mouth presses into a thin line. Then he sighs, and nods towards the Big House. “Yeah. I think he’s helping Will round up the injured.”
Percy leans over and quickly kisses Annabeth’s cheek. “I’ll go find him. I’ll be back, okay? Promise.”
--
Annabeth watches Percy run towards the Big House, only to be intercepted by Connor Stoll. A part of her wants to follow him, and her fingers twitch with his abrupt absence. She folds her arms across her chest instead.
“You both seem… different,” Grover says quietly. Annabeth glances at him, but he’s also watching Percy at the bottom of the slope. His eyes flicker briefly to Annabeth before returning to Percy. “Not in a bad way,” he adds. “Just… different.”
Annabeth sighs. “Yeah,” she says. “I feel… different.”
She couldn’t explain exactly why or how. Rome clung to her like cobwebs cling to corners. The things she’d seen and done to get to and through the Doors had sharpened her edges in ways that were hard for her to explain, which was extra frustrating as a daughter of Athena. She didn’t feel like the same person who’d left camp on the Argo II, and she wasn’t sure that was a good thing.
They’d made it through the Doors, defeated the giants, defeated Gaia… but it didn’t feel, exactly, like the victory she’d imagined. Annabeth was beginning to think that victory was a hard weight to bear.
“Getting that message to Connor was genius, by the way,” Grover offers. “It saved camp, you know. Both camps, really.”
The corner of Annabeth’s mouth twitches at the compliment. It hadn’t felt like a genius move; it’d felt like a shot in the dark.
Annabeth can feel the stale adrenaline from the battle bleeding out of her, replaced instead by an ache in her bones that makes even standing upright exhausting. She can’t remember the last time she got a decent night’s rest, and it felt like she’d fought her way through a marathon sprint of monsters and giants. She takes a deep breath and sits down on the patch of grass where they’re standing, pulling her knees up.
Grover sits beside her without another word. For a while, neither of them says anything. Annabeth drums her fingers on her elbows as she folds her arms on top of her knees. For the first time in what feels like months, Annabeth pauses.
Campers intermingle with one another while they clean up from the battle. Birds chirp overhead and wind rustles through the leaves in the nearby trees. The Athena Parthenos casts a long shadow that Annabeth must admit, she finds comforting. She watches Percy wave a farewell to Connor, and offers her boyfriend a faint smile when he looks back at her before he disappears around a corner.
Distantly, she can hear the voice of Will Solace bickering with Nico di Angelo and a second later finds both them helping a pair of injured campers limp back to their cabins. She watches the breeze create ripples in the grass around her. For a moment, her eyes flicker skyward as if she might see Leo streaking like a comet through the sky back to camp.
Wishful thinking. Her chest twinges.
Annabeth was tired of missing people. A lifetime ago, she would have given nearly anything to be given a prophecy. Now, she hoped to never hear another prophecy in her life, and especially not one that involved anyone she knew. Annabeth was no stranger to loss, but she was tired of it. She’s… tired in a way that a nap won’t fix. Maybe she should feel grateful that she didn’t lose anyone else, but it seems like an awfully shitty consolation prize.
At least she didn’t lose Percy in Tartarus. Her chest clenches and she shoves the thought into the back corner of her mind.
“I know you guys don’t want to talk about it,” Grover says quietly and Annabeth startles. She’d almost forgotten he was there, and she wonders briefly if he somehow read her mind. “And that’s okay. I can’t say I blame either one of you for that.”
Annabeth averts her gaze when Grover’s own rises to meet hers.
Grover continues anyway. “But Annabeth… you should know that nobody expects you to just be okay after something like that. I only got a vague sense of it secondhand, and it…” His voice wavers, then trails off. He tries again. “Anyway. If you do decide you want to talk about it… either one of you? I’m around.”
“I think Percy is mad at me,” Annabeth blurts out suddenly. It’s stupid, she tells herself. Of all the things they faced… the lingering sense that Percy still hadn’t fully forgiven her for making them leave Bob behind presses at her mind. Maybe Percy’s anger is easier to deal with than everything else that happened there. Maybe it’s harder. Annabeth doesn’t know.
Out of the corner of her eye, Annabeth sees Grover’s brows shoot up towards his hairline. “You… why?”
Annabeth tells him. Not about everything—there’s far too much she’s still trying not to think about—but she tells him about Bob, and his sacrifice, and Annabeth’s forcing of Percy’s hand. About abandoning him down there, about how her chest feels tight every time she looks at the stars for too long.
“Percy doesn’t hold that against you,” Grover says, with so much conviction and certainty that it catches Annabeth off guard.
She blinks. “What?”
Grover shakes his head a little. “I… Look, I’m not trying to use the empathy link to like, tell you how Percy feels. I kind of feel like that’s an invasion of Percy’s privacy? But… he’s not angry with you.” Grover sighs, then adds more quietly, “If anything, I think he’s angry with himself.”
Annabeth is quiet. She wants to tell Grover that Percy shouldn’t be angry with himself, but she’d be speaking to the choir. Besides, there’d be a certain hypocrisy in that, wouldn’t there?
She glances at Grover, who watches a group of Greek campers load a Roman camper onto a makeshift stretcher. Grover seems different too, now that Annabeth is looking at him. He seems… older. A little bigger, sure, but… there’s something aged and weary in his eyes that goes past his years. It’s a look that Annabeth knows all too well, when kids too young are forced to shoulder too much.
She understands. Most of the people at camp hadn’t even graduated high school yet and fought in two wars now. Annabeth had only narrowly escaped with her life both times, and she knew she wasn’t alone in that. She’d long ago lost count of how many times she came close to death, of how many times she thought Percy or other friends were dead. She’d lost count of how often her hands shook when she was alone, of how many nightmares had jolted her from sleep.
The regular life of a still-living demigod. She thought of all the people who didn’t make it through. Those who weren’t as lucky as she was.
“I’m glad you’re here, Grover,” she says suddenly.
Grover looks at her in surprise, but offers her a tired smile. “Back at ya, Annabeth.”
“Everything feels different now.”
“Yeah,” Grover agrees with a nod. “But not everything is. You’ll be okay. So will Percy.” Annabeth looks at him, but he just gives her a knowing look.
Annabeth swallows thickly. “How can you be so sure?”
Grover is quiet for a moment, his gaze trailing back out to the hustle and bustle around camp. “Well… Look around, Annabeth. What do you see?”
She looks. She sees Jason with his arm slung around Piper’s shoulder. Connor Stoll wrapping a young camper’s ankle with a bandage. Reyna, Hazel, and Nico cleaning up debris and broken weaponry left behind by the injured and fallen. Jake Mason showing a Roman camper how to use crutches.
“I see my friends and allies,” she says, surprised by the sudden lump in her throat.
Grover nods with a small smile. “Helping each other. Because that’s what we do, and that’s how I know. You and Percy will be okay because you have one another, and you’ve got us.” He knocks his shoulder into Annabeth’s. “You’re not alone.”
Annabeth’s voice fails her, her eyes stinging slightly. She blinks quickly and nods.
Grover smiles more and pushes himself to his feet. He dusts his hands off on just shirt and then offers a hand to Annabeth. “Let’s get to helping, yeah?”