Chapter Text
Luke
The weather is weird ever since the Winter Solstice of 2005. Storm brewing, and the waves are hitting the shore harsher than they normally does.
What the Hades? Sitting outside of the Big House, Luke thinks. Who stole it this time?
Annabeth lumped down beside him, eyeing him suspiciously. He raised an eyebrow, protests in defense. “I swear to River Styx it’s not me this time.”
The thunder rumbles, but nothing happened. Annabeth, who shots him one last glare, sighed. “I know, I’ve kept an eye on you.”
They sit side by side in silence. The blond girl is now sketching in her notebook, and Luke starts fidgeting with his Rubik’s Cube. The weather is not yet affecting the camp, but Luke knows that the weather protection will very likely fail as soon as the kid arrived. The god of the sky is always so moody, no matter it’s in the past, the future, or the future-ish past.
Yeah, future-ish past is probably the best description for his situation. And Annabeth’s, of course. He had been getting weird dreams the night Thalia died—well not technically dead, just treed, he knows that now—five years ago. The first one was just as weird as seeing his dad acting mature, which means extremely unbelievably weird: He saw that Thalia literally popped out of the pine tree roots, and, most importantly, opened her eyes. A black hair boy is kneeling beside her. Luke seems to be observing the scene from a fairly far distance with something like a telescope.
He was stuck in the body of he-don’t-know-who, going through a different event every night. He realized that the dreams are probably someone’s memory, but he doesn’t know how he’s able to see them. There are familiar faces that keep appearing in the dreams: Annabeth, sometimes Thalia and Grover, a boy with an eyepatch, and the same black hair boy he saw kneeling beside Thalia the day she woke up. He was unable to catch the boy’s name, even though he often found his body fighting with the boy—both verbally and physically.
Maybe they were rivals? He thinks. The dreams had kept most of his thinking time occupied, so he rarely have time to be lost in his bitter thoughts toward the gods. But why the actual heck can I see these?
He kept wondering about the identity of the owner of the memories and the rival boy. Until two years later, the same day his very godly-busy dad Hermes came to him to give him the quest of the golden apple. That night, he found himself in a half destroyed room, fighting Annabeth. Absolute horror filled his chest when his body shove her out of his way, raising a sword to kill her.
He heard her voice, hurt and broken. “…Family, Luke, you promised.”
And then everything starts coming back to him.
The gone-wrong quest, stealing the lightning bolt, poisoning both the boy and Thalia, carrying the sky, luring Annabeth to carry the sky, fighting Thalia, recruiting angry demigods, attacking the camp, being possessed by Kronos, fighting the boy, fighting Annabeth, fighting the boy, fighting the boy, and fighting the boy.
And death, and the underworld. His years in Elysium.
He startled awake, chest heaving heavily. His mind overwhelmed with the memories of his past, or more precisely, his yet-to-happen future.
Great, he thought bitterly. The story of my life: working for evil great grandpa for vengeance.
Luke went on the quest the next day, his thoughts still messy like a bunch of tangled yarns. He, however, managed to finish the quest successfully—absolutely no reason to fail twice on the same quest. And gods know what might happen this time if he’s not careful; he barely came out alive the last time.
His dad decided to grant him a wish as a reward of the quest. Luke, finally able to have his brain function properly after days of quest, made his request without much thinking: to have the gods to either always remember to claim their kids, or allow the campers to build extra cabins for unclaimed and minor gods’ kids.
Apparently the gods think that always claiming their kids is too much of work for them, so they reluctantly agreed to let them build more cabins. There’s not actually that much of kids of minor gods, so after weeks of discussion and bickering and chaos and asking for permission, they built a cabin of Hestia, said goddess happily agreed to let the unclaimed and no-cabin children to live in it.
It’s only a small start. But a small start is better than no start.
Annabeth also gets her memory back. She remembered when she turns eleven. Luke learned that by getting a punch in his face from a tearful Annabeth. She is smart—daughter of Athena, duh—, so Luke’s action leads to her suspicion that he is not actually Luke Luke. And it turns out that she’s right, the both of them are from the yet-to-happen future.
Even though they both get some steps ahead of their future enemy by having their memory, the lightning bolt was still stolen during the Winter Solstice meeting.
Luke: This doesn’t make any sense.
Annabeth: Yes it does. The Fates never make it easy on us.
Not knowing what exactly happened before Percy, the boy whose name now finally remembered by Luke, arrived at camp, the two of them just have to wait till the day he shows up to discuss future plans. Annabeth vetoed the idea of Percy also remembering the past-future, saying that he would’ve already comes to camp if he had his memory. It makes sense.
So that’s the reason the two of them are sitting in front of the Big House every night after the campfire, watching the camp entrance with cautious eyes. They want to be able to reach Percy as fast as possible when he arrives.
That night, about a month before the Summer Solstice, they heard a roar coming from outside of camp. The two of them jumped up in unison and rushed toward Thalia’s Pine.
A small figure dashed through the dark and stumbled through the border. The boy froze as soon as he stepped into the border. Then he face planted.
The next thing Luke knows, is that he and Annabeth is kneeling down beside the boy who’s trying to push himself up. But the boy is no Percy Jackson. He have eyes that are still very blue even in the dark. And blonde hair. Annabeth gasped, eyes wide with disbelief. The boy looked up, and froze again when his gaze falls on Annabeth.
“What the fuck, Grace?” She squeaks in shock. Luke’s head snapped toward her direction, clearly confused by the situation.
“Annabeth?! Where am I? Oh shit…” The boy trailed off, seems to be lost in his thoughts.
“Uhm,” Luke cleared his throat, bringing their attention to him. “So… any of you mind telling me what’s happening now?”