Chapter Text
The Losers Club starts with Richie Tozier.
Correction: The Losers Club has, quite infamously amongst The Fates, managed to pull itself together through lifetimes and reincarnations and different universes (if that's the kind of thing you believe in); the Losers Club itself has started time and time again in countless different ways. Though, they don’t exactly know that.
But this time the Losers Club starts with Richie Tozier.
Or, well, technically- a second correction: The Losers Club begins when Margaret Tozier accidentally cuts off a white Jeep Wrangler full of pissed off empousa in a mall parking lot on her way out from buying Richie new sneakers for her first day of second grade, so they rip her throat out.
The group of questing demigods who had been chasing the monsters find her crying in the backseat with her brand new light up Sketchers covered in her mom’s blood, rambling over her words about donkey legs and robots and vampires in cheer skirts, and take her back to camp.
And she’s still at camp three years later when Stan Uris, camp shirt tucked neatly (but reluctantly, that's important to note) into a pair of knee length khaki shorts stomps angrily into the Hermes cabin the first day of summer, sits criss cross applesauce on her recently laid out sleeping bag, and glares at the caduceus above the door.
Something else important to note about Stan Uris’ arrival to Camp Half-Blood is that she does not want to be there. Not even a little bit. This will continue to be a running theme up until halfway through August; but Donald Uris, tired of waiting for the monster attacks he’d been promised were bound to happen when the strange woman he’d been seeing on and off left a baby on his porch and tired of his daughter begging him to let her go to Girl Scout camp decided to kill two birds with one stone.
Stan, however, was pretty certain this wasn’t Girl Scout camp. Girl Scout camp has chances to win new badges for her vest and a two person bird watching club she had planned with another girl in her troop and good old fashioned raisins and peanuts trail mix that Stan gets the most of because she’s the only one who actually uses the raisins and peanuts while everyone else hogs the popcorn. She got dropped off at this camp and asked whether she preferred range weapons, long swords, or daggers.
“Hey.” Richie hangs almost all the way off her bunk, feet hooked behind the back bar and knees bent over the edge to look down at her, and for a long second Stan takes her in, how her hair hangs above her head in a weird little bunches around the two big, brightly colored clips holding it back, the way her glasses are slipping above her eyes, the way her badly bleach tie-dyed orange shirt is only half tucked into a pair of overalls that have both knees torn up, before she huffs and going back to glare at the wall, “Heeeeey.”
Stan very pointedly does not look back again, yanking the cuffs of her shorts straight as though she’s worried messy might catch.
“You’re new, right? What's your name?”
She shakes her head, clearly hoping a physical dismissal will work better in clarifying that she would like to pout in private, please. Unfortunately for her, anyone at camp would tell you that getting rid of Richie Tozier is like trying to stop a stampede of angry pegasi all by yourself; that is to say impossible and at it’s best way more fucking annoying than if you’d just let it happen on it’s own.
“Want me to make you a friendship bracelet?” That manages to grab her attention, whether it’s the elementary school allure of a friendship bracelet or the pure confusion at the topic change, but Richie grins like she won something.
“What?”
“Friendship bracelet!” She bends back up and grabs her water bottle, waving it so Stan has a semi-blurry view of the three half finished, colorful string bracelets braided off the handle, “Want one?”
“Why would I want a friendship bracelet when we aren’t friends?” Stan asks, flat in a way that's clearly not trying to hurt her feelings so Richie takes it in stride.
“Well if I give you a friendship bracelet then we are friends.” Richie offers; words set with the type of unfailable logic only a ten year old girl could find in between braided together strands of embroidery floss, and Stan snorts.
“I don’t know you.”
Richie’s mouth draws up in an understanding oh, and she lets herself freefall to the bunk below her. What Stan does not know is she’s trying to emulate one of the older campers who, each morning without fail, does a cool little half-flip off her bunk, with whom Richie is hopelessly in love with; and Stan will never know this because Richie has not quite mastered the move yet and instead half belly-flops to the floor, bracelet lined water bottle in hand. She shakes herself out like a dog, seemingly undeterred (she’s played capture the flag before, she’s had worse) and shoves her hand forward.
“Richie Tozier, at your service!”
“Samantha Uris.” Stan takes her hand very carefully and shakes it with the seriousness of a soon to be fifth grader who has been trained how to give a good handshake. And then, after a moment of careful consideration she tacks on, “My friends call me Stan.”
“Can I call you Stan?”
“Make me a bracelet first and we’ll talk.”
Richie grins so wide it looks like it hurts, and it doesn’t fade until long after she teaches Stan how to climb up the side of the beds (half of them don't have ladders).
“I’m supposed to be at Girl Scout camp right now.” Stan pouts, eventually, propped with her knees to her chest on Richie’s unmade bunk and sorting through different colored thread for Richie to make her bracelet. She’s already got a neat little gradient of blues and purples lined up in front of her equally neat little knee high socks and is sorting through the greens to find one that fits in.
“Lame.” Richie sing-songs, digging through her backpack to procure her full portfolio of bracelet styles she’s equipped to make, and Stan’s face twists into something unbearably offended.
“It is not! They have a perfect bird watching field-”
“Lame! And anyway, you could definitely find some Demeter kid or something to go bird watching with you, they’re the nature freaks.” She recites, copying what she’s heard her older bunkmates say more than she means it.
“Well, fine. But at Girl Scout camp you get to go canoeing-”
“We have that here.” Stan scrunches her nose up, grabbing one of the premade bracelets from the pile, considering it so she doesn’t need to accept the loss. She sorts four into their own little ‘yes’, ‘no’, and ‘maybe’ piles before snapping her head up, jaw set and prematurely victorious, like she’s finally thought of a sure fire way to win this debate Richie certainly wasn’t aware was a debate.
“At Girl Scout camp you learn archery.”
“Oh, we like… super have that here.”
Stan’s buries her head into her knees with a groan, like she’s suddenly remembering walking past the archery fields on her stormy-stompy way to Cabin 11 but doesn’t want Richie to read it on her face.
“Yeah, but at Girl Scout camp the other campers aren’t trying to shoot you.” Two more bracelets get thrown, huffily, into the ‘no’ pile without her looking up.
“So… it’s boring?”
“It’s safe!”
“Safe is another word for boring.” Stan looks up from the horizontally striped bracelet in her hand, glaring, “What? It’s true. Come on, I’ll show you around, and then you’ll see.”
“I’m supposed to wait until your head camper comes back,” Stan says primly, staring down at the bracelet for a long moment, before jamming it into the previously empty ‘yes’ pile and looking expectantly up at Richie, who scoops it up to study the pattern, “it’s in the orientation film.”
Richie snorts, grabbing Stan’s color selections off her comforter in the order they’ve been laid out, which Stan appreciates, in a quiet sort of way.
“You watched that?”
“Of course.”
“Well, I know way more than a stupid video so I can show you all the things you aren’t supposed to know about yet.”
“Really?” Stan asks, skeptical, “How?”
“Third year camper!” She drops the water bottle, letting the threads she’s started to tie off the top dangle sort of sadly, digging under the collar of her t-shirt and unearthing her camp necklace. It’s battered, and she needed to bribe a Hephaestus kid to make her a new chain for it out of celestial bronze so she doesn’t keep breaking it, but it’s also her pride and joy in a way she thinks new mother’s might consider their babies, just even cooler. There is nothing she derives more delight from than counting out her three whole beads for campers significantly older than her who only have one or two; if Stan’s not quick she’ll have to listen to a too-in-detail story of what each of their pattern’s mean.
“Woah!” Stan lurches forward on her knees, looking a little less like a tiny adult and more like a ten year old, twisting the first bead, patterned like a woven tapestry of a lizard, with reverent fascination, “How have you been here for three years already? I thought you were, like, my age.”
“Oh, probably, I just started early.”
Stan hums, seeming sated with the explanation for now, before lurching forward a little, more excited than she clearly wants to show: “So, I'll get to meet my mom?”
“It’s your mom?” Richie brightens, glancing her over like a new puzzle to solve, “That's cool! My godly parent is my dad-
“I figured.” Stan informs her flatly, leaning back on her bunk to watch as Richie twists the pattern into her bracelet.
“What?” Richie looks back up at her, head tilted and tongue pinned between her teeth, poking through the side of her lips. Stan raises an eyebrow and gestures around the cabin, “Oh! No, I’m just here because I’m unclaimed.”
“I don’t know what that means.” Stan’s other eyebrow raises expectantly to meet the other and Richie looks incredibly pleased to let her in on something she knows and Stan doesn’t.
“It means my godly parent hasn’t said I’m theirs yet. They forget sometimes, or make you wait it out. The Hermes kids say my dad hasn’t claimed me yet because I’m too little for it, they usually wait until you’re twelve.”
“Oh.” Stan looks desperately put out.
“Yeah, so I wouldn’t worry that you don't know yet, or don’t figure it out this summer.”
“Oh.” She repeats, totally wilting against the back footboard of Richie’s bunk.
“But!” Richie pushes her ankle with her foot, semi frantic not to lose her new friend yet, “You can share my bunk until you find it out or they give you your own one! I had to sleep in a sleeping bag for a year-”
“You stay year round?” Richie just blinks, and then, nods, “Why?”
“Better than foster care.” She says, simply, in the same ‘reciting without really understanding’ way she talked about the Demeter kids.
“Oh. I’m sorry.”
“S’okay.” She offers, not because it is but because she doesn’t want to be talking about it any more, “You’re not staying year round?”
(Richie doesn’t explain that her assumption started with the fact that upset kids storming into the cabin usually means dead parents or foster kids or given up by parents, hopeless case demigods. It doesn’t feel necessary.)
“No. My dads coming to pick me up at the end of the summer.” She explains, awkwardly, sort of like an apology, but Richie takes it in stride.
“Well, then you can share my bunk until you get claimed. They don't normally give summer kids a bunk if they’re not a Hermes kid.”
“Thanks.”
Richie braids another strand into the bracelet, sizing it up at a distance for Stan’s wrist before huffing and dropping the water bottle into the dip of her knees.
“I’m bored. Wanna go look around? I can finish this later.”
“You can go do whatever you want. I’m staying here.” Stan huffs, closing herself off again, all crossed arms and crossed legs. She knows she’s being stubborn, but she knows it in the same way she knows it’s Richie’s fault she’s not nearly as grumpy about it as before, which feels annoying for some reason she can’t place. Which is even more annoying.
“Come on, I’ll teach you how to kill someone.”
Stan’s remaining grumpiness colors slightly sick, “Even more no.”
“You’re so boring.”
“Am not.”
Richie scoffs, refocusing back on the bracelet the best she can, which isn’t very well. Stan watches the patterns slowly come together, with the rapt focus of a child whose best focus is quite good, feeling less and less tense, angry in a way that's sort of fun and not very real.
Until Richie lurches forward with a gasp. Then she’s extraordinarily tense again.
“Do you like strawberries?”
“I guess?”
“Cool!” Richie grins like she’s won something, holstering her water bottle to a carabiner hanging off her belt loop, Stan’s unfinished bracelet still secured to the handle, dangling, as she hooks her knees over the edge of the bunk and looks back at Stan expectantly, “Let's go!”
“No! What part of no are you not getting!”
Richie beams at her and drops to the floor, “All of it!”
She glares hard at her, stubborn in her high ground on the bunk “Richie-”
Richie’s grin doesn’t falter, “Stan-”
Something deeply amused in the back of Stan’s mind tells her she’s not winning this staring contest, that this camper is a force to be reckoned with and she has finally met her match.
So she groans, longsufferingly, and carefully climbs down, keeping her arms crossed tightly across her chest so Richie can’t drag her out as they leave the cabin. Richie grabs the arm of her camp shirt instead and pulls her, half running, half bouncing, to what is, hopefully self explanatorily, named the strawberry fields.
Apparently, she tricked one of the Demeter kids into telling her where the ripest bushes were a couple days ago at breakfast and she's more than willing to share. Strawberries taste better crouched behind bushes hiding from the people gardening them with a friend than they do crouched and hiding all alone, anyway, she tells her, fingers already sticky.
And somehow, without meaning to, Stan almost agrees.
-
That night at the campfire a little owl, feathers set above its eyes like angry eyebrows, lands directly on Stan’s head. Stan, with the fervor of a middle schooler who has bird watching binoculars in their own hand-embossed leather carrying case, gets too wrapped up in the excitement of it. It takes her a second to realize that the uproar around her isn’t just because of the improbility.
She’s gotten claimed.
It’s pretty goddamn groundbreaking for several reasons no one had bothered to tell her when she came to camp. Athena doesn’t claim her kids post birth. She just doesn’t do it. They spawn forth from her thoughts, they’re there, they know, and if anyone is stupid enough not to connect those dots she doesn’t want anything to do with them.
But Stan didn’t know, she keeps saying, over and over to her new half siblings (which is odd, and she isn’t sure she likes it, she’d enjoyed being an only child). She gets the feeling her dad just never told her, he likes things to be logical and a baby appearing from someones brain isn’t one of those logical things, and, for some reason, instead of ignoring her like she had for the handful of obviously Athena kids who have been stuck in the Hermes cabin with Richie because their fathers didn’t tell them either, Stan got fucking claimed and people are losing their minds about it.
And the thrill of a new bird and a new mom gets overshadowed by the anger-fear-confusion-maybe-its-a-new-prophecy muddling together in a wall of sound. Richie finds her eventually, the very center of a crowd of people yelling, smoothing back the feathers on her new owl friend’s head and looking more than overwhelmed.
“Wanna go back to my cabin?” She whispers, “I can finish your bracelet.”
Despite the uproar and the clashing together of angry Athena kids with superiority complexes and excited Athena kids who liked new discoveries and Chiron yelling for order and the confused Athena kids who really didn’t know this was even an option, all of which centered on one kid, no one seems to notice when two tiny ten year olds and an owl sneak off into the rundown cabin in the farthest corner from the campfire.
Stan spends the night in Richie’s bunk anyway, she’s got to learn how to make Richie a bracelet too, now that she has her own, and if any of her new siblings want to try and fight her on it ‘the owl won’t move’. It had been Richie’s suggestion, no one is fighting the made-up-wiles of the Goddess-sent sacred bird unless they want their eyes pecked out.
(And that's how it starts.
A newly claimed child of Athena and Richie Tozier swapping friendship bracelets on the unclaimed one’s top bunk and accidentally falling asleep propped up together with their shoes on, smelling like a campfire and feathers.
There’s just a lot that happens after.)