Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Annabeth is three-and-a-half years old when she first realizes that she is different.

She’s heard her father use that word about her before— different . He says it like it’s something bad, and for a few months she looks in the mirror and considers believing him. He’s her father, after all, and the other kids on the street usually listen to their fathers after the conciliatory bout of rebellion that occurs in most, if not all, children her age. This blind faith doesn’t last long; Annabeth sneaks into his study and pulls the dictionary from its place on the bookshelf, seeking out the ‘D’ section.

‘Different’, she discovers, is an adjective defined as ‘not the same as another or each other; unlike in nature, form, or quantity’ or ‘distinct; separate’. There is no definition that connects it to a negative quality, so she ceases to believe that her father is technically correct. He’s wrong about plenty of things—she simply adds this to the list.

Annabeth is different. Her father is right about that. Her words are clear where her peers’ are slurred, and she is perfectly capable of understanding the subject matter and vocabulary of the conversations that adults think are private as long as they aren’t making eye contact with anyone under the age of twelve. Her father teaches her to play chess, and after a week of losing to his toddler, he never plays her again. She enjoys running outside with the other kids on the street, but their creativity is lacking on a good day and Annabeth just wants to be challenged by someone, but children stare at her blankly and adults look marginally terrified when she opens her mouth. She has her own thoughts, and she can read .

(This is the strangest thing, she discovers. One day, when she has just turned three, she asks Mrs. Adams down the street if she can borrow her copy of To Kill a Mockingbird . The woman gives her a strange look before laughing airily and sending Annabeth back to her own house with a battered copy of The Rainbow Fish and a pat on the head. It’s both colorful and boring and she tosses it in the trash as soon as she gets home, deciding to re-read Pride and Prejudice until her father gets home from work.)

Annabeth knows she is different, but she doesn’t understand why, and she decides to solve that very question during the days spent alone in the house. It’s not exactly legal, but the daycares keep asking her father not to send her back. Apparently they don’t know what to do with her—in a too-loud whisper, they call her a ‘prodigy’, and although she’s not supposed to hear it, she commits the word to memory.

(Noun; ‘a person, especially a young one, endowed with exceptional qualities or abilities’; apparently her ability to color inside the lines and manipulate the other children into fighting each other for her own personal entertainment is exceptional .)

She doesn’t find much explanation for her differences on her own. She thinks she gets close one day at dinner, though. She asks her father why she doesn’t have a mother, and it is amazing how angry he gets in such a short expanse of time. She itches to record every detail of the outburst, but she doesn’t have a pen or paper. She resigns herself to memorizing the contours of his face, the changing size of his pupils, and the discoloration of his cheeks. He is angry, but also nervous, and Annabeth draws a bright red line in her head between this erratic behavior and the question mark holding the place of her mother’s identity.

She checks her birth certificate, kept in a drawer that is just barely in her reach, but the name of her mother is frustratingly blank. She asks Mrs. Green, her next door neighbor, if she remembers anything, but the old woman simply scowls and begins to mutter about Annabeth’s illegitimacy. She rolls her eyes and goes back home. She already knows that she was not born of a legal marriage. There’s no need for the reiteration of information, and she refuses to accept vague non-answers to preserve pointless social niceties.

It’s frustrating, because although she doesn’t need her mother (she’s perfectly fine without her father , so she doesn’t see how a maternal figure would be any different), Annabeth thinks she needs to know about her mother to better understand herself. (Introspection; a noun meaning ‘the examination or observation of one's own mental and emotional processes’.) Her father is normal—of average intelligence (compared to Annabeth, although she knows his degree at Harvard sets him above the majority of the population in this regard) and entirely too boring—so Annabeth knows that his genes aren’t the reason her brain feels so loud , like it moves faster than she can handle and overflows until she just bursts, and she suddenly can’t stop talking about the emotional development of Emma Woodhouse or the technical history of toasters. He cannot be the reason that her brain sees something she doesn’t understand as a challenge, or the reason that she has the ability to both read and write clearly from the age when most children are just beginning to develop the parts of their brain that store memory.

He cannot  be the reason that her mind is its own glittering universe stuck inside the physical capabilities of a creature that, by all intents and purposes, should still be finger painting and coloring on walls.

When Helen comes over for dinner the first time, Annabeth has just turned four and she asks what the woman thinks of the Soujourner landing on Mars. The woman is young, and she laughs at the question like adults do (falsely and confused, like they’re hoping she’s just playing a joke on them), but when Frederick (Annabeth has been trying this out—she thinks it’s more appropriate for their relationship than ‘Dad’) turns away from them for a moment, Helen’s thin eyes narrow even further, and she turns on Annabeth, her voice barely audible.

“Don’t try to make me look stupid, you little brat,” the woman hisses, before turning to Frederick with a saccharine smile. Annabeth is marginally shocked by the hostile response. She remembers Frederick telling her that the woman he’s been dating is intelligent, so she’d tried to find common ground, but apparently he’d meant the same kind of intelligence as his own; sharp but unpolished, with an eternal chip-on-the-shoulder outlook that couldn’t handle being challenged by another mind. It’s disappointing, surely, but she has come to expect it from the circle of ‘friends’ that Frederick associates himself with. Annabeth sets the table in silence and is content to play nice with this woman until she disappears with time.

The dinners become a weekly thing, and soon, Annabeth is forced into a ridiculously poofy flower girl dress as Helen races down the aisle to hide a bulging stomach from ‘polite company’. The twins are born seven months later, and Annabeth smiles, because although their screaming and crying in the middle of the night is a menace, Mrs. Green no longer talks about Annabeth’s illegitimacy. She makes cookies for the polite little blonde girl next door and complains about the fact that ‘those boys are just a bit too big to fit the timeline’.

She is six when she begins kindergarten, and she plays by herself and frowns at the man just outside the fence that stares at her with a single eye. It defies logic (humans have two eyes…even if they lose one, the hole is still there) and makes her spine itch with a familiar nervous feeling (Dr. Gold says this is most likely a product of Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder, but Annabeth doesn’t think the growing panic in her chest is caused by ADHD—she might have believed anxiety, but it seems like the medical professionals are grasping at straws rather than face up to the daunting task of picking her brain) and for the rest of the afternoon she can’t sit still in class, her eyes drifting to the window and wondering if the one-eyed man is still there. Her teacher snaps at her with a smug expression and asks Annabeth if she thinks she’s too good for the lesson. Annabeth replies in the affirmative, because she’s taken a look at the syllabus for this year, and she’s leaps and bounds ahead of the material, but this is apparently not the answer Mrs. Blake wanted, because she asks Annabeth to recite the entire alphabet (because apparently that is a challenge for five year olds).

Annabeth does exactly that, listing out the long and short phonetic sounds for each letter as she goes. It’s probably the best lesson her class will get all year. She is sent to the principal’s office, and Frederick comes to pick her up, and Annabeth hears the word ‘prodigy’ again, but this time, it’s accompanied by something new.

Annabeth, apparently, is a ‘smartass’. She stores that in the back of her brain, because she adores that word, and tells Frederick about something of actual importance as she clambers into the uncomfortably small space between Bobby and Matthew’s empty car seats.

“How did he have only one eye? And why was he looking at me?” she asks him as they pull from the school parking lot, spurred on by his ongoing silence. “Should I have told a teacher? They don’t really like me, though, so I figured they would think I was making it up. I was going to talk to him and see what I could figure out, you know, try to analyze the severity of the situation, but it just felt wrong , I guess.”

She’s rambling, but Frederick has yet to say a word, and she thinks that a creepy man staring at her on the playground should elicit some kind of response, singular eye notwithstanding. He drives in silence until they come up on a McDonalds. He swings the car into the parking lot and gets into the drive-thru line before meeting her eyes in the rear view mirror.

“There are some things I need to tell you.” Frederick swallows heavily. “About your mom.”

Annabeth hates that she has to get a stepmother before she learns about her actual mother, but the timelines are irrelevant, all things considered. She has bigger problems to worry about now.

Now she knows why she’s different, but all she has are more questions. For example, if she isn’t the product of sexual intercourse and a natural vaginal birth (she learns these terms from an anatomy textbook in the library one Saturday—she’s apparently not physically normal, either, so she wants to identify the differences), then why does she have a belly button? Does she have any of her father’s DNA since she is technically the product of asexual reproduction? Can she even be explained by science, or is she going to have to re-analyze her outlook of the world and its rules to include the intricacies and loopholes of magic?

But gods (she’s trying this out, too, because apparently she can now confirm the existence of multiple immortal deities, and it’s much more fun than its singular counterpart), she is excited to finally understand who and what she is. Annabeth is still different, but now she makes sense, and logic has always seemed to calm her racing mind to a tolerable level.

Each time she feels the words and the world moving too fast through her head, she reminds herself that she’s a demigod , and her brain works just fine without the little white pills she flushes down the toilet every morning.

The man outside the playground—a cyclops, Annabeth decides, as she pours over the descriptions in her college-level mythology textbook—is just the first in a series of incidents. From the moment she discovers the truth of her godly parentage, it’s like Annabeth becomes a homing beacon for trouble. A massive black dog (hellhound; typically occupying the Underworld and the upper levels of Tartarus) runs after her in the street before getting hit by Mr. Johnson’s car and disappearing. The one-eyed man shows up again, and this time, Annabeth gets as far away from the playground fence as she possibly can, deigning to play with the other kids for once if only to blend in. At least once a week, Annabeth is convinced that something is growling behind her as she walks herself to the bus stop, but when she turns around, there’s nothing there.

Some days she considers taking the little white pills (Concerta, she learns it’s called, because the typical Adderall that people associate with ADHD is actually a medication for ADD, and although the two disorders are similar, they are not identical, and neither are their medicinal treatments), if only to quiet the threatening sounds that constantly buzz in her head. They mix dangerously with the steady flow of string theory is a theoretical framework in which the point-like particles of particle physics are replaced by one-dimensional objects called strings…that’s a sciurus carolinensis , better known as an eastern gray squirrel…do myths exist for the origin of squirrels? until Annabeth thinks she might scream.

Then she thinks of the suffocating silence those pills would bring to her, and she continues to flush them away. She can handle the growling, but her mind, for whatever reason, is supposed to work this way. She thinks and thinks wildly and with abandon and tries to ignore the monsters in the corner of her eye.

Things reach a bit of a peak when she is almost seven. School is out for summer and Bobby and Matthew are now starting to look like tiny humans rather than wriggling larvae, so Annabeth is entertained by having her endless conversation met with their mindless rambling.

She goes two weeks without hearing noises or seeing shadows move unnaturally, and it pulls her into a bit of a lull. She’s reading Of Mice and Men out loud to the boys, sending them peacefully into their afternoon naps with the dry writing of John Steinbeck, when there’s a knock at the door. She sets down the book, wondering if Frederick and Helen would want her to open the door when they aren’t home, and there’s another knock.

This time, lightning shoots up her spine when she realizes the knock is on the wrong side of the house. No one should be pounding on their back door.

Her heart beats fast. She’s in the boys’ room right now, but Frederick’s study is the next door over, and she knows he keeps a strange looking knife in the bottom drawer of his desk (she’d found it while snooping around last year). She hasn’t needed to use it yet, but there are monsters out to get her now, and there’s something about the knife that draws her in. Annabeth races into the study and hopes she imagined the creaking noise of a door opening downstairs. She hopes it’s just her brain filling in holes to rationalize the unnatural terror she feels, but she grabs the knife anyways and sits at the top of the stairs, tucked behind the wall to regain a sense of secrecy. She knows the monsters probably rely on smell, but the whole house undoubtedly smells like her, so she might just be able to gain the upper hand if she stays out of sight.

Each inhale gets longer and each exhale shorter (hyperventilation; ‘the act of breathing at an abnormally rapid rate, so increasing the rate of loss of carbon dioxide’) and she forcefully holds her breath, because she will not have a panic attack over something as simple as an external threat. Her mind is too precious to be defeated by groundless anxiety. She holds her breath and stays in the shadows and stabs her knife into the creature’s side before she even sees what it is. She expects it to tumble down the stairs, but it gasps a dying breath (Annabeth doesn’t like death, she decides—it feels overly large and slightly terrifying, and she’s got galaxies in the space behind her eyes, but there is no supernova or black hole in her mind that can truly comprehend dying) and explodes into a sticky, yellow dust.

Annabeth sneezes once, then curls into a ball in that spot on the floor, clutching the knife until Frederick pries it from her hands.

Helen, she discovers, had not been privy to the truth about Annabeth’s heritage. Her screams are loud enough to wake the boys, and now there are words flying in Annabeth’s head ( death, death, murderer, monster, death, death ) and words flying around her ( A freak, Frederick! She’s putting us all in danger! ) and babies crying and she thinks the growling might be back too and  Frederick’s sighing sounds like the loudest sound of all.

She wants the knife back, but he’s already tucked it into the desk again.

There are no more attacks, at least for a little while. Annabeth’s new hypothesis is that they become more frequent during the summer, so she happily goes back to school. Helen has been staying home to guard the twins since the incident, so Annabeth gratefully takes several hours out of the day to read years beyond her expected level and not interact with a woman whose sole purpose in life seems to be redirected to hating a seven year old child.

She likes her first grade teacher. The man is patient and realizes Annabeth is far too intelligent to be dogged down by the streamline curriculum, so he doesn’t try to pester her into doing basic spelling and phonetic exercises when she’s trying to get through the final paragraphs of Fahrenheit 451 . He leaves her to her own corner of the world and she alternates between classic fiction and mythological research each day, testing the limits of both her intelligence and her capacity for knowledge.

The nightmares come early in the fall.

She’s never been fond of spiders (it makes sense now that she knows who her mother is—lots of things do—but even before that, the mention of the spindly, eight-legged arachnids left her with an odd sense of terror), so she thinks it’s reasonable that her worst dreams revolve around them.

What is not reasonable, however, is the first time she wakes in the middle of the night, her heart pounding, and the spiders don’t disappear . They are still crawling over every inch of her body, biting angrily and wrapping her in their suffocating webs and Annabeth wants to scream , louder than she has ever screamed in her life, but she doesn’t even breathe, because she knows if she opens her mouth, they will crawl into her throat until she dies choking on their fuzzy legs and violent eyes.

Their own personal revenge on Athena.

She sits, paralyzed, with wide eyes and a closed mouth and lets the spiders crawl across her skin, because she cannot even move.

(Phobia; noun; an extreme or irrational fear of or aversion to something.

Arachnophobia; noun; extreme or irrational fear of spiders.

She knows this is a phobia, and most likely a hallucinatory symptom of sleep paralysis, but paralysis and the resulting night terrors aren’t supposed to last hours, and this doesn’t feel irrational.)

The spiders disappear as the sun comes up, crawling back to their shadowy hideaways, but the cobwebs still cover her eyes, her mouth, her hands—she’s still aching with a thousand bite marks. Once the last horror disappears into the dark, she runs to Frederick’s room, screaming and crying with cobwebs trailing behind her.

“ Daddy! ” she screeches, waking up not only her father but also Helen and the boys, who match her volume and then some.

Frederick meets her in the hall, his tired eyes followed by Helen’s vengeful scowl. Annabeth can’t be bothered to pay attention. For once in her life, she needs her father. For once in her life, she doesn’t feel powerful enough to rule over worlds. For once in her life, Annabeth is terrified .

She explains the situation, keeping her tears at bay and slowing her breathing with each moment until, at the end of the story, the only remnant of her fear is her rapidly beating heart and ghostly cobwebs along her arms.

Frederick doesn’t believe her. Helen washes her mouth out with soap for ‘lying’. The cobwebs are still there, but the bites have disappeared.

Annabeth doesn’t sleep the next night, but the spiders come back, and this time, she screams when they start to bite. They don’t crawl in her mouth, almost like they enjoy hearing the auditory evidence of their victory.

Frederick is gone for work, so when she screams for her father this time, Helen is the one to sweep into her room just as the last spider disappears. She refuses to call Annabeth’s father for ‘childish fits’. In the morning, Helen places her stepdaughter’s hand against a hot curling iron.

The cobwebs are still there, but the bites have disappeared.

On the third night, the spiders come again, and Annabeth doesn’t scream. She cries silently as they wrap her eyes, mouth, and nose in sticky white webs and in the morning, like always, the cobwebs remain where the bites do not.

Helen refuses to give her breakfast because of her ‘practical joke’.

Annabeth sees a spider at school and screams, screams, screams until the principal asks Helen to speak with Frederick about possibly finding Annabeth some medical help.

And a new school.

She decides to run away a week later. She’s a demigod with power and dignity and she will not subject herself and her mind to a ‘family’ who hates her.

She puts her mind to use.

Annabeth has been expelled. It’s a shameful stain on the family (she learns this from the shouting matches that Frederick and Helen have over dinner), but it gives her plenty of time to solidify her plan.

She needs clothes, money, a method of transportation, and a form of protection. Her father keeps the knife under lock and key now, so protection may need to be a last minute addition to the plan. Helen likes to collect cash in her wallet (apparently it makes her feel as wealthy as the women she luncheons with once a week), so Annabeth should have no problem snatching that just before she leaves. She’ll need to bring her coat and a warm pair of shoes, and she thinks a couple of extra pairs of socks will come in handy. As for food, packing a bag of non-perishables will be the safer option, but it will slow her down, and she needs to get as far away from Virginia as quickly as possible.

Actually, the food may not endanger her plans too much. It’s not like anyone will come looking for her.

Annabeth bides her time. She stays silent and lets Helen scream at her and reads when she’s supposed to be at school.

Thanksgiving is an interesting holiday. Helen wants to take the boys to her mother’s, but she refuses to bring Annabeth ( the freak stays Frederick ), and Frederick has mysterious ‘family business’ to take care of, so Annabeth is whisked off to Boston for a weekend stay at the Chase Mansion.

Uncle Randolph is a bit eccentric, but Annabeth likes to pick through his mind (much stronger than his brother’s). Aunt Natalie is goodness personified, Annabeth thinks, and her gentle smile as she looks at her son, Magnus, leads Annabeth to think she’s making the right decision. This is how parents are supposed to treat their children.

Magnus is the only person she tells about her plan. He feels like a kindred spirit, and maybe his mind isn’t a universe, but it’s a galaxy in its own right, and he seems to understand her decision.

It snows on Christmas Eve.

It’s not optimal (hypothermia is a major concern when traveling in these conditions, but Annabeth knows the signs to look out for; confusion, slurred speech, shallow breathing, unnaturally pale skin), but Annabeth has planned to be out of this awful neighborhood (content with its terrible, malicious normalcy and far too happy to harbor the monsters that lord over Annabeth’s house) by Christmas Morning, and a bit of snow will not dissuade her from her goal.

She pulls the Powerpuff Girls backpack from under the bed and checks its contents—a pair of striped gloves that have a hole in the pinky finger, two pairs of socks, a protein bar, and a bag of goldfish. She tiptoes to her closet and pulls down the hot pink scarf that she hates (it draws attention, but it is the warmest thing she owns) and slips on a pair of boots that will hopefully protect her from frostbite. Her coat hangs on the hook downstairs, so it will be the last thing she grabs.

She heads down the hall to Frederick’s room. They leave the door open at night, so she slides through the crack and rummages blindly through Helen’s purse. She’s tempted to take the credit card (easier to conceal and easier to use), but she can’t risk being tracked by her purchases. She stuffs the cash into her back pocket and hurries from the room.

She stands in front of Frederick’s study for a long time (too long) and contemplates stealing the knife. In the end, it’s too big of a risk; she’s ninety-five percent sure he’s moved it, and she knows he’s got it hidden behind a lock now—a lock to which she does not have a key. She doesn’t have time for a treasure hunt, especially when the twins could wake up at any second and derail her carefully-laid plans with their screaming.

Coat. Money. Food. (She grabs a hammer from Frederick’s tool box on a whim—it’s better than nothing.) Annabeth is ready to leave.

Against her better judgement, she inches the door of the twins’ room open a few minutes before she sneaks out. They are sleeping peacefully, and she hopes the ache in her chest is not what she thinks it is, (nostalgia; noun; a sentimental longing or wistful affection for the past, typically for a period or place with happy personal associations) because she knows what lies ahead will be difficult—impossible, even. There can be no second-guessing her next move. There can be no affection for figures of the past, only clear sight for the future.

The clock reads two-forty-three when Annabeth shuts the front door of her home behind her for the last time.

Richmond Ironworks becomes Annabeth’s home. It’s shielded from the elements but recently abandoned, so she isn’t bothered by anyone when she stumbles back there each night, burrowing miserably into a foul-smelling sleeping bag (she steals this on her second night away from home and doesn’t feel bad; she needs a bed more than another kid needs a camping accessory) and getting little to no sleep.

During the day, she sits in the corner of the public library and reads anything she can get her hands on. It starts with the classic fiction that her father hadn’t owned copies of, but she branches out quickly. She pours over massive books on world architecture and decides that she likes how these structures have long-survived the empires that created them—even crumbling and weather-worn, they are the final tangible memory of a different world.

Their permanence is what makes them beautiful. Annabeth thinks that one day she might grow into someone beautiful (she’s got the blood of the Greek gods, and the little kids in her school had gawked at her like she was something ethereal; she may not be exactly delicate , but her hair is blonde like a Disney Princess and her gray eyes are close enough to blue), but cultural standards of beauty are historically fleeting, and Annabeth wants to withstand more than a few decades. She wants to be remembered for millennia , and she thinks it will require more than physical attractiveness. Beauty is an entirely subjective construct—it’s not lasting.

But one day Annabeth will remake the world with the image she has in mind. One day, she will build something permanent. One day, she will be more than a freak, a prodigy, a smartass, a demigod.

She will be remembered.

(Legacy; noun; a thing handed down by a predecessor.

Annabeth thinks she wants to create a legacy.)

A week after Annabeth leaves Frederick’s house, she meets her mother.

The gray eyes catch Annabeth’s attention first. She’s waiting to cross the street just after five (she sits in the Richmond Public Library until it closes everyday because she has nowhere else to go—no destination or goal aside from something more permanent than a sleeping bag and cold fingers) when she sees a dark-haired woman staring straight at her with irises that are the same particular shade of thunderstorm that Annabeth always sees in the mirror. The intelligence is there too, and maybe something sharper (honed by the years of immortality, no doubt), but there’s an aura of power around the woman that is both intimidating and comforting to her.

She knows instantly that it is Athena.

Instead of taking a left on the corner, she takes a right and steps in front of the goddess with her shoulders pulled back confidently. 

“Mom.” It’s not a question, but Athena’s quick smirk is an answer all the same. She looks comfortable in her expensive white sweater and jeans, and Annabeth is suddenly, unnervingly aware of the way her dirty skin itches and her damp socks make her whole body ache in the cold. She doesn’t know quite what to say now (Annabeth has never been at a loss for words in her life, but what do you say to a goddess who gave birth to you from her head?), so she settles for not saying anything at all. She folds her arms stubbornly across her chest and stares.

“You thought it was a good idea to run away?” Athena asks her, but the question isn’t condescending or scornful, like Annabeth would expect from a goddess (or a parent). Her words are bursting with interest, and maybe a little bit of pride, and Annabeth feels like flying because this is what she’s been looking for—someone to see her with respect and understanding.

“Yes,” Annabeth answers. There’s nothing else to it.

(Annabeth knows there is more to it. She has a mind beyond the mortal world, but her heart ached every time she saw enemies in the people who were supposed to be her family. Her heart is still seven years old and in pain and scared and gods , she didn’t want to run away but she had to. Humans were the worst kind of monsters, and she needed to learn to protect herself from them as well.)

“You’ll need to buy yourself enough time to get to Long Island,” Athena informs her.

“What’s in Long Island?”

Her mother’s lips twitch upwards. “A safe place. You need to stay alive to get there, though.”

Annabeth learns to admire Athena.

She doesn’t quite like her mother (the goddess is prideful and impatient and quick-tempered and every other one of Annabeth’s worst qualities, and as she trains her daughter to kill the monsters that come after her, Athena refuses to accept anything but total perfection), but she respects her and flourishes under her guidance and by the time a month has gone by, Annabeth can use a mortal hammer to take down any manner of creature in seconds.

She discovers quickly that her blonde hair is too-easily recognized when the police officers that frequent the area start fitting her with suspicious glares. It’s reasonable—a dirty seven-year-old girl that’s consistently walking the streets of Richmond is bound to raise a few eyebrows. And if eyebrows raise, that’s one step closer to Annabeth being returned to Frederick’s care.

It’s on a Monday that she finds an old Yankees (Frederick hates the Yankees, so it gives her an absurd amount of pleasure to see the logo) hat on the top of a trash can, like someone has just decided to throw it out. Annabeth picks it up, gives it a quick once-over to ensure there are no bugs or food residue on it, and places it atop her head, shielding both her face and eye-catching curls from view.

Athena finds her in the alley later that afternoon, and doesn’t give the hat more attention than a quirk of her lips. She’s wearing a blue coat today, buttoned all the way to her neck, and Annabeth thinks it would be nice if her mother would ever offer to supply her with even a single article of clothing from the goddess’s seemingly never-ending closet. She won’t ever ask, because her limbs can stand a bit of chill, but her pride cannot stand the insult.

(Pride; noun; consciousness of one’s own dignity; Annabeth has heard the word pride used before, but never before has she realized how close it sits to her own heart. She thinks she inherits it from her mother, but she sees pride in her father, too—the twisted, warped kind that resembles vanity more than anything. She doesn’t want to be like Frederick, and she doesn’t really want to be like Athena, either. She can be better .

Maybe that’s the pride in her, rearing its ugly head.)

“Mom,” Annabeth greets like always.

“This will be the last time I meet with you,” Athena explains, wasting no time with niceties. Annabeth nods, although she feels her chest collapse with disappointment. ( You don’t need a mother. You don’t need a mother. You don’t need a mother. Maybe if she reminds herself enough, it will become true. She might not need a father, but she has become desperately dependent on Athena in the past months.)

“I still don’t know how to get to Long Island,” she reminds the goddess. Athena’s eyes twinkle with a poorly-concealed secret.

“The answer to that is closer than you think,” the goddess of wisdom smirks. “Besides, you don’t need my help anymore.”

Annabeth wants to say she never needed help, but it would be childish to spout a denial that is so obviously a lie, and if she wants to continue having Athena’s respect (as much as a goddess can respect a mortal), she cannot remind her mother of her immaturity. She nods instead. “Will I see you again?”

“Perhaps. Meetings like these are…frowned upon by our laws. I’ve tempted fate long enough to keep you safe.” Athena’s eyes finally drift back to the baseball hat. “That’s new.”

Annabeth touches the bill self-consciously. “I was getting too noticeable. I need a way to stay invisible until I can find a way out,” she explains to her mother.

Athena’s eyes light up. She holds her hand out. “Let me see it.”

Annabeth isn’t sure how she feels about something that so obviously defies the laws of science, but she’s decided that she won’t complain. She slips through the city unnoticed because of her mother’s gift, and it reassures her that she hasn’t hallucinated her mother’s visits.

She doesn’t see Athena again for a very long time.

Annabeth wonders if having the power to turn invisible is useful in being remembered. On the surface level, it seems somewhat counterproductive.

Impatience, she reminds herself, is also counterproductive to being remembered. To leave behind a legacy—something permanent—Annabeth will need to lay solid groundwork for her success. Perhaps remaining invisible for a while will keep prying eyes away from her plans. If the world can’t see the ugly beginnings, they’ll never know they exist, and Annabeth will have both permanence and perfection where they matter.

There’s a week in early spring (maybe around February or March; Annabeth has only caught the date in passing, and it certainly hasn’t been her main concern) when she endures a five-day torrential downpour with little more than a tin lean-to and a fraying winter coat. She has a bag of sliced bread that she rations during the constant storm, but it dwindles quickly as she remains curled in the shadows.

It’s the first time she considers going back.

After the rain, there’s a warm front that passes through Richmond, and Annabeth takes off her coat for the first time in months, basking in the long-awaited sunshine. She lays out her sleeping bag in a patch of light (it had gotten drenched in the storm) and dons the Yankees hat before sneaking out into the streets. There’s a convenience store around the corner, and Annabeth has learned that invisibility caps make stealing food a much easier task. She follows behind a doddering old lady as she shops and stuffs her pockets with protein bars, and Annabeth relishes the taste of something other than processed bread.

The public library is nearly empty (people are eager to enjoy the good weather after so many days of gray skies), but Annabeth still keeps the hat on as she settles in the corner and flicks through a college-level text on Advanced Astrophysics. It’s a topic into which she’s just started branching out, and her mind enters a daze of relative silence as it’s challenged to learn.

The longer Annabeth sits there, though, the more her bones seem to itch with anticipation. The words and letters fly off the page and scramble around more than usual, and she slams the book shut in frustration, startling the young librarian at the desk. Annabeth curses under her breath but stays deathly still, and eventually the guy returns to his book with no more than a curious final glance in her direction. After a few seconds, she lets herself exhale in relief and scurries out of the building.

In the past few hours, clouds have rolled into the sky to partially cover the sun, but they are peaceful and pale, and their cottony appearance does nothing to deter from the comforting heat the sun provides. Annabeth stays at the edge of the sidewalk and checks over her shoulder constantly, because the itch is getting worse, like there’s something she needs to be doing.

She reaches for her pocket on instinct (she keeps the hammer from Frederick’s tools in the left pocket of her coat), and is dismayed to find herself coatless, and therefore hammerless. She curses under her breath (she learned these expletives from Frederick and her stepmother, but also the group of teenagers that study near her in the library; they sound different off Annabeth’s tongue, but they give her a euphoric sense of satisfaction regardless) and takes off in the opposite direction, bolting through the crowd and back to the alley of Richmond Ironworks.

The hammer is there, but so is something else.

There’s a scuffling noise just around the corner (a pair of footsteps, one heavy and clumsy, the other light and sure; a clang of metal, maybe, but she’s got the element of surprise and she’s faster than most monsters, not to mention a smaller target) and she ducks under her tin cover on autopilot, wincing when it makes a small ringing noise behind her.

Annabeth considers her options. She can run, but if a monster has found her here, it means they are tracking her scent, and they likely won’t stop until they’ve located her. Her best chance is to fight and take down the monster now, something she’s perfectly capable of doing...one-on-one. She’s never fought off two creatures at once, hasn’t even thought about it, and she clutches the hammer to her chest like it might calm her rampaging heartbeat.

(She’s got the advantage early-on, but surprise evaporates quickly and her muscles still ache from the past few days of atrophy; noun; the process of gradually declining in effectiveness or vigor due to underuse or neglect; she hardly stands a chance against two monsters—she knows that—but she’s going to try, dammit, because a goddess trained her to protect herself and she isn’t going to spit on that gift.)

She waits, and waits, and waits, and waits.

When the tin comes flying off, she barrels ahead screaming, and she only realizes that she’s looking at a very blonde, very human , teenage boy when she’s got her hammer raised over his scared blue eyes and is moments away from battering out his brains.

She freezes, mimicking the boy’s shocked stare, before sensing the slow movement of another presence a few feet away. She scrambles off the kid’s torso and backs herself up against the wall, holding her hammer in front of her with a shaky hand.

The blonde kid gets up slowly, watching Annabeth with wary eyes like one would a wild animal (she likes that she can strike fear into the hearts of others, even as a child). He backs up toward a girl with long, board-straight black hair and violently blue eyes that might be a bit younger than him, and they wait for Annabeth to make the first move.

“Who are you?” Annabeth asks, her high-pitched voice steely and unwavering despite the way her hands continue to shake.

The boy speaks first. “I’m Luke,” he gestures to his own chest, then jerks a thumb towards the girl next to him. “That’s Thalia.” His eyes flicker towards the hammer, their pale blue depths swimming with concern. “We’re not going to hurt you.”

Annabeth blinks, but doesn’t lower the hammer. “Are you like me?”

Luke tilts his head in confusion, but Thalia’s eyes light up in recognition, and Annabeth swears it looks like a flash of lightning erupting in her irises. The dark-haired girl steps in front of her companion, risking a step closer to Annabeth, who brandishes the hammer pointedly and inches closer to the wall. Thalia holds her hands up in surrender.

“By ‘like you’…do you mean a half-blood?”

Annabeth’s eyes widen as she nods slowly. Thalia’s face stretches in a grin, and she turns back to Luke in excitement, her hair whipping dangerously as she moves. Luke doesn’t exactly smile, but his shoulders drop in what looks like relief.

“Yes, we’re like you,” he tells Annabeth, and she finally drops her hammer. She could be wrong—maybe these are a pair of monsters that are very committed to getting Annabeth’s guard down—but the buzzing in her bones has stopped, like her internal compass had been leading her to this meeting all along. She takes a hesitant step towards the other kids, who look as worn and dirty as Annabeth feels.

“What’s your name, kid?” Thalia asks her with an easy smile.

Annabeth straightens her shoulders, projecting confidence she doesn’t necessarily feel. She’d seen Athena do that a lot—assume a haughty posture to gain control of a conversation—and it was a move that Frederick had tried and failed at often. “Annabeth,” she answers, meeting both pairs of blue eyes with her own stare.

The left corner of Luke’s mouth quirks up. “How long have you been on the streets?” he asks her, and she almost tells him that she’s not (instinct from her constant evasion of authorities), but she recognizes a hardened edge to his face—a certain level of determination that comes from sleeping under the stars night after night, never knowing when your next meal might be—and assumes he can read it all over her body, too.

“A few months. I’ve been getting ready to leave.”

“Where are you going?” Thalia asks her. The girl is far more excitable than her friend, who has maintained what Annabeth thinks is a mask of calm through the entire conversation.

“Long Island. I don’t know why…” she nearly tells them about Athena, but despite her decision to not beat them with a hammer, she doesn’t know if she trusts them yet, “…but that’s where I’m headed.”

“We’re going there too!” Thalia exclaims.

Luke must read Annabeth’s confusion, because he risks placing a comforting hand on her shoulder. “You’re welcome to come with us. It’s a place called Camp Half-Blood.”

Chapter Text

They remain in Richmond for one more night, and with three people to keep watch, they can actually risk building a small fire in the alleyway. Luke offers to take the first watch, but Annabeth is still wired from the day’s events and she doesn’t trust these two enough to sleep around them just yet. Maybe it will come in time, but demigods or not, they are still strangers.

(Annabeth has learned not to trust someone just because they look human. Sometimes humans are capable of the worst evils.)

She sits cross-legged next to him and stares into the flickering flames (fire; noun; the rapid oxidation of a material in the exothermic chemical process of combustion, releasing heat, light, and various reaction products; she repeats these words in her head, louder than the growling and the voices and the spiraling feeling of losing control of her own mind).

“Why’d you run away?” Luke asks after about an hour. Annabeth stiffens and doesn’t answer, because she will not show that weakness. He waits a few more seconds and sighs, like he’s come to the realization that she won’t be disclosing that particular information. He pokes at their fire with a thin metal pole that they’d found behind a stack of wooden crates earlier. Sparks fly into the air before fizzling out and falling back to the ground. “I ran away from my mom when I was nine.”

Annabeth turns to look at him, but all she can see is his profile. There’s a sharp, upturned nose and pronounced cheekbones, like he’s just starting to grow into his face, and Annabeth is sure he isn’t anywhere close to nine years old now. “How long has it been?”

“Five years, give or take a few months,” he says quietly. Annabeth tries to hide her sharp inhale of surprise.

“And Thalia?”

“We found each other at the beginning of fall, I think,” he tells Annabeth, his cheeks lighting up in a rosy blush. “She’s saved my life a lot since then.”

Annabeth looks over at Thalia, who snores peacefully in the sleeping bag that Annabeth had offered her after they got the fire going. She doesn’t look all that tough, especially not in her sleep, but appearances can be deceiving. Annabeth’s mind was disregarded in her own home for years just because she was young and blonde and someone Helen saw as competition. Maybe this girl is the same way—a secret weapon hidden under pretty hair and bright eyes.

“You save each other?” It seems nice but unrealistic—a distant dream of harmony. People don’t save others, though. They look away and let you run, run, run.

“We do.” Luke finally looks at Annabeth, his face weighted down by something sad. “We watch each other’s backs. We’re gonna watch yours, too.”

Annabeth’s brow furrows. “I don’t need you to keep me safe.”

Luke’s face breaks into a youthful grin. “Yeah, I know, kid.” He turns and rummages through his backpack, and Annabeth watches him warily. He emerges with a bronze knife, not unlike the one her father had kept in his office. He holds out the handle in her direction. “That’s why I’m giving you this.” She reaches out reverently (adverb; with deep and solemn respect; she can feel the power radiating off this blade, and she thinks it’s like the songs of war in the old history texts in the library) and takes it from him, catching sight of her gray eyes reflected in the shiny metal. “We watch your back, and now you can watch ours.”

“Where did you get this?” She means for her words to sound suspicious, but she’s in awe as she skates her tiny fingers over the finely-wrapped hilt and sharp edges, and the sentence is dripping with childish glee. “It’s beautiful.”

Luke’s smile falters, but he’s quick to cover it up and Annabeth is perfectly fine with leaving him behind his mask. People have their secrets, and one of the things she hates the most about the ‘social niceties’ Helen tried to beat into her is the complete disregard for the sanctity of privacy. It is not her place to pull apart what he carefully assembled before her eyes.

(She keeps note of it in her brain, though. It’s a quiet list she’s assembling on the first half-bloods she’s ever met.)

“It was a gift, and a warning, I think.”

“What was the warning?” Annabeth asks, because he has offered up the question on a silver platter, and that means he wants her to take the bait, even if he doesn’t consciously realize it.

“To learn from the previous owner’s mistakes.” Luke shrugs. “I didn’t know him all that well, though.”

“Then maybe we can learn from our own mistakes,” Annabeth reasons. Luke gives her a half-smile.

“That seems pretty smart.”

“That’s because I am,” Annabeth says simply, reaching for her own metal poker and prodding at the flames. Luke huffs out a bit of laughter.

“You’re pretty sure of yourself for someone so young,” he comments with a smirk. “Beware the pride before the fall.”

Annabeth bristles. “I’m seven, I’m not a baby.” She stabs angrily at the fire. “And besides, I know  I’m smarter than anyone I’ve ever met. The fall only happens when your pride exceeds reality.” Luke’s eyebrows shoot up, and Annabeth is pleased to see shock painted across his face. “That won’t ever happen to me.”

(Legends never fall. Legacies never fall. Permanence is, by definition, incapable of falling, so Annabeth will not let herself tip over.)

“You know,” Luke begins with grudging respect, “I’m actually inclined to believe you.”

Annabeth nods sharply at his answer and they settle back into silence. At one point during the night, Luke slips from his sitting position and curls up near Thalia, close enough to the fire that his peaceful face flickers between light and shadow every few seconds.

Annabeth watches the two of them sleep for a few minutes at a time, but she stares at her dagger for long hours and considers taking the weapon and running far, far away from these people like her. She’s been alone (different) for as long as she can remember, and she doesn’t know if she can function outside of those parameters now. How is it even possible for Annabeth to trust someone to watch her back (her blind spot; a definitive vulnerability), or to watch theirs in turn? How does she go from living for seven years as an individual against the rest of the world, only to turn around and become part of a team, a unit, and a support system?

It seems like a daunting prospect.

She thinks about Frederick in the dark, early morning hours. She thinks about what he would do in a situation like this—undoubtedly he’d run, convinced that his best chance was himself, simply because he was scared to show anything but a shiny exterior to the world. Annabeth doesn’t want to be like that—she wants this knife to remind her to learn from her mistakes, but also her father’s.

She’s still staring at the way the fire catches on the blade when Thalia and Luke wake with the sun.

Being on the run with two impulsive teenagers doesn’t afford Annabeth much time to read (not like she’s used to—long days immersed in fictional worlds or stories of lands she can hardly imagine), but her mind still aches to be pushed to the limits of the universe, so she runs numbers through the Collatz Conjecture and observes her two companions like they might hold the secrets of the human race.

Thalia is easy to like. She’s got a wide, infectious smile and is always moving (twitching fingers, flared nostrils, tapping foot). She teaches Annabeth how to braid her own hair so the curls don’t get tangled, but until Annabeth learns how to manipulate her fingers in the right way, she volunteers to do it for her.  She likes punk rock and hums the songs to herself when she thinks no one is paying attention, but Annabeth always does (and eventually she knows all the words, too). Thalia is brutally honest with Luke, but it never comes across as cruel, and she pretends like she doesn’t notice the way he is constantly blushing around her (she does notice, because Annabeth sees her turn around when it happens, a secretive smile on her face like she enjoys the older boy’s stumbling, even though she never encourages it).

Thalia also has a problem with her mother and doesn’t like the smell of alcohol or cigarette smoke, and when Annabeth laughs at something Luke says, she seems to fade away from the present, disappearing into her own dark memories. After a few moments of silence, she comes back, and Annabeth wants to ask where she goes (sometimes Annabeth goes back to her room in Frederick’s house with the spiders crawling over her eyes and mouth, but she doesn’t think Thalia is scared of spiders—there’s something else, something mournful in her mind), but the first time she tries, Luke has his hand on her forearm before she can get a single word out, shaking his head minutely in warning. She doesn’t try again.

Luke isn’t likable in the same way that Thalia is likable. His smiles don’t reach his eyes (they are always some shade of bitter, but Annabeth might be bitter too if she’d been on the run for five years, so she doesn’t question it) and he’s very good at hiding his emotions, which makes it difficult for her to piece him together, but she’s never been one to run from a challenge. He’s a natural leader when he doesn’t let himself get too impulsive, and he is fiercely loyal to both Thalia and Annabeth (who he’s taken to calling his ‘family’; Annabeth thinks she finally understands what family is supposed to be). His presence is nothing short of magnetic—Annabeth feels like she’s a moth drawn to its bright death every time she’s around him, and yet she can’t look away. He’s passionate and fun and has a dry sense of humor and it’s all remarkably new to her.

(Sometimes he can be ragged around the edges, too. He’s angry with his father and, although he won’t admit it, he’s absolutely terrified of his mother—his pupils dilate and his skin pales the one time he mentions her to Annabeth. He’s not as smart as Annabeth, and she can tell that it bothers him sometimes, but she reminds him that he understands emotions better than she does, and that seems to ease his pride.

She’s not sure if his emotional intelligence is a good thing or not. She feels like she’s being blinded to his lingering darkness by her admiration of him.

He’s fourteen,  Annabeth reminds herself. There’s no darkness in a kid that young. )

Luke steals a disposable camera from the Walgreens in whatever city they’re in that week, and even though Thalia frowns at him for stealing things they ‘don’t need’, Annabeth—for once—has to disagree; the camera makes them all smile and it’s easy to lose hope when your only shelter is a tiny hut that a seven-year-old wove out of plants (granted, it’s a very impressive  shelter; Thalia had accidentally woken up Annabeth’s aptitude for weaving with all the lessons in braiding).  They all spend days snapping dumb pictures of each other until the roll of film is full.

Annabeth tucks it into the corner of her backpack (it’s the same Powerpuff Girls one that she brought from Frederick’s house; she doesn’t tell Thalia and Luke this, but it feels like it would be too permanent to get rid of it; she can move forward, but there are some things she’s just not strong enough to do yet) and makes a promise to herself. One day, when they’ve found a home together, and the three of them are still a family standing tall against the rest of the world, she’ll get these photos developed and frame each and every one.

(In the end, she decides to save three of the pictures. One is of Luke on the day he finds an old junkpile of demigod armor and piecemeals a set for himself. It fits poorly, but he gets Annabeth to snap a picture of him pointing excitedly at the darkened alley where they’d found everything.

Another is of Luke and Annabeth laughing wildly at a joke Thalia has made—Annabeth can’t remember what it was, but she remembers that she’s never found something so funny in her entire life. Thalia had snapped the picture of the two of them, illuminated by a campfire, and although the blue-eyed girl doesn’t feature in the picture, Annabeth knows she was wearing that soft, adoring smile that she only dons when she’s looking at her family.

Annabeth’s favorite picture is one that Luke takes. They have a rare night with no bad weather, no monsters, and no human law enforcement issues, and Thalia lets Annabeth use a rusty pair of scissors they find to chop her mass of dark hair off, leaving it spiky and uneven around her shoulders. Luke finds it so entertaining that he feels the need to commemorate it with a picture of the three of them. He turns the camera around quickly and catches the girls off-guard—Annabeth has a half-smirk painted on her face and Thalia isn’t smiling, but she looks happy anyways. It makes Annabeth’s heart ache.)

Thalia, Annabeth discovers, is one big study in high-risk, high-reward scenarios.

As a daughter of Zeus, she’s practically a beacon for monster attacks in a way that Luke and Annabeth never have to worry about. She’s got Aegis, sure, but that only goes so far in making up for a group of kids with no fighting experience who are almost always either dehydrated or malnourished while fighting for their lives. She’s unproductively uncomfortable with stealing things, unlike Annabeth (who reasons that breaking a couple of laws don’t really matter as long as no one gets hurt or caught) and Luke (who’s eyes practically glimmer when he hears about the possibility to pickpocket someone), and she’s absolutely terrible  at being stealthy.

What she lacks in finesse, however, she makes up for in pure strength. She’s the most powerful out of the three of them, hands down, and she’s their best fighter to boot. Aegis has gotten them out of plenty of shitty (Thalia loves that word, so Annabeth learns it, too) situations, and she trusts Annabeth’s plans implicitly, even when Luke gets indignant about taking orders from a seven-year-old.

Simply put, they are constantly endangered because of Thalia, but they also owe their continued survival to the girl.

Annabeth presents this conclusion to Luke while they push ashes anxiously around the firepit of their most recent hideout. Thalia sleeps next to them in the parody of their first night together, except for the huge gash in her leg and the uncomfortably warm night sky. The empousa  had caught them all off-guard today, and Thalia hadn’t been able to get the shield up in time to keep herself out of range of the monster’s claws. To make things worse, they’d used the last of their nectar and ambrosia on last week’s hellhound attack, so they had no way of speeding up Thalia’s recovery process.

“We need more medical supplies,” Luke says, his voice shaky. “We can’t lose her.”

“Where are we going to get the food of the gods?” Annabeth asks, genuinely curious. Luke and Thalia had already been carrying some when they found Annabeth, but she’d never asked where it came from—she was far more interested in how it worked until now.

“I know a place. It’s probably an hour or two from here if we can steal some bus tickets.” Luke sends a worried glance over to Thalia. “She’ll be mad.”

Annabeth rolls her eyes (this is another one of Thalia’s things she’s picked up—the daughter of Zeus is so different from all the other girls that Annabeth ever met and she loves  it) and shrugs indifferently. “Who cares? She’ll get over it. She won’t get over an infected wound near a major artery.” She stands quickly, checking her overly-large utility belt to make sure her knife is still strapped in properly. “Keep watch. I’ll be back with those passes.”

As she sneaks from the alley, she spares one last glance over her shoulder to look at the rest of her family. Luke is staring at Thalia like she might just disappear if he blinks, and Annabeth feels a strange pang in her chest. She’s never put much stock in emotion or dependency before (her decision to join a rag-tag group of runaways is still a mystery to her), but in that moment, she desperately hopes that she’ll be loved like that someday—all-encompassing, awe-inspiring, and absolutely devoted.

To inspire that kind of loyalty, though...Annabeth knows who she is. She will build something permanent with her life, yes, but in the end, she will have to do it alone. Her father taught her that lesson first, and even a group of friends won’t make her forget it so easily.

She won’t be the Thalia to someone’s Luke, but Annabeth can learn to be okay with that.

The bus ride to Connecticut is quiet.

As expected, Thalia isn’t happy with them, but her anger is softened by the gray pallor and pained expression on her face until it looks something like gratitude. Luke is a nervous-wreck—he wrings his hands roughly and stares out the window, and Annabeth thinks she catches him muttering reassurances to himself at the end of the trip. She plays solitaire on the fold-out table in front of her bus seat and challenges herself to come up with the craziest explanation for where Luke is bringing them.

(At the moment, the choices range from the mysterious demigod safe place, which is actually in Connecticut, not Long Island, to a secret monster den where he plans to offer the girls as demigod sacrifices. That one doesn’t seem realistic, but it makes Annabeth laugh during the miserable bus ride, so she leaves it on the list.)

From the bus stop, it's a twenty minute walk down the residential roads and quaint, empty highways of Westport until they finally stop in front of a perfectly normal-ish looking house.

It’s a lovely two-story Colonial with a beautiful apple tree stretching towards the sky in the corner of the front yard. Hanging from the branches is a well-worn rope swing that sways gently in the wind. Strangely enough, there are at least a dozen tiny stuffed animals (the ones that Lina-from-down-the-street always played with) lined up along the front walkway, as if beckoning a child back inside. Their eccentricity is joined by the wall of windchimes dangling at the edge of the porch, creating a soft melody in the breeze.

And Annabeth suddenly realizes where Luke has taken them. Even without the golden label of Luke’s last name on the cheerful turquoise-colored front door (in two different languages, Greek and English), she recognizes the panicked expression from the rare occasions when he speaks about his mom. The mom he’d run away from.

“Luke, you don’t have to do this,” Thalia says weakly. She’s been leaning heavily against the older boy, desperately searching for ways to take weight off of her bad leg, and it doesn’t do a great job at strengthening her argument.

“I won’t be long, Thals,” he promises. “But you need medical supplies, and this is the only place I can think of to get them.”

“Regardless, you shouldn’t have come back here.”

The new voice startles all three of them. Annabeth is the first to see the man standing on the porch—he’s wearing a crisp suit that reminds Annabeth of the way Frederick dressed for work, although this man undoubtedly looks more comfortable in the expensive clothing than Annabeth’s father ever had. His curly black hair is peppered with gray spots around his hairline but his blue eyes are lively, even filled with disappointment and frustration as they are. He’s got the same natural athletic build that Annabeth sees in Luke, and if that hadn’t made the family resemblance obvious, the matching upturned nose and mischievous eyes are enough to cement the connection in her mind.

Besides, she recognizes the aura of power emanating from the man. It’s the same presence that Annabeth had noticed about Athena.

“Lord Hermes,” Annabeth greets respectfully, bowing her head as her two companions stutter their way through the shock of seeing Luke’s father.

Hermes smiles kindly at her, but doesn’t say anything. His attention seems primarily focused on his son, which works just fine for Annabeth. She’s comfortable speaking with her own mother, sure, but the less face-to-face time she has with immortal deities, the less chance there is that she will anger one.

“Father,” Luke grumbles. “We need supplies.”

Hermes’s brow furrows deeply. “You’ve already abandoned her once, son. Don’t force her to endure the loss of her child once again.”

Luke’s eyes are wild now—not with fear, but with anger. Annabeth shuffles away from him, because she’s learned from experience that unbridled emotions like these always end up hurting those that get too close, and Luke doesn’t look interested in discriminating between targets for his outburst. “You abandoned us first!”

Hermes sighs, like he’s had this conversation before. “I am bound by the Fates—”

“ Bullshit! ” Luke yells. Tears are beginning to flow freely, and Annabeth sneaks a quick look towards Thalia, hoping she’s not alone in her discomfort with this conversation. The daughter of Zeus has her eyes glued to the side of Luke’s face, though, like she couldn’t look away if she tried. “Do you know what it was like  being raised by her? You could have visited, could have given the bare minimum of support!”

Hermes doesn’t react for a moment, choosing instead to watch Luke struggle to catch his breath. There’s a heavy tug in Annabeth’s chest, and she swallows it down, because she doesn’t like the way it makes her whole body ache with grief.

(It’s amazing the things that Annabeth learns about family every day she spends with Thalia and Luke. They make her want to mourn the troubles of others and celebrate the victories, and Annabeth wonders if maybe she wouldn’t have such a hard time accepting these kinds of emotions if she’d had somebody to help her understand them earlier.)

“Why don’t we go inside?” Hermes finally suggests, and Luke looks positively livid, but Thalia is already hobbling over to the porch with a gracious nod of her head. Annabeth scrambles to help her up the stairs while Luke continues his strange staring contest with his father. The wind chimes stir softly when they pass, and the sound seems to catch someone’s attention inside.

The door swings open and Annabeth almost screams. A woman stands in the entry, her cloudy gray eyes focused beyond Annabeth and Thalia, as if she has missed them completely. She’s got thin, fraying white hair that shows a few noticeable bald spots, and her expression looks so unhinged that Annabeth worries she might be another monster trying to kill them. Her hand naturally comes to hover over her knife, but Thalia notices the movement and squeezes her shoulder in reassurance. Annabeth looks at her friend—a short shake of her head. Not a monster, then.

Something quite possibly worse.

“Luke?” the woman whispers hoarsely, like she can’t quite believe what she’s seeing. The stairs creak behind the girls, and Luke comes to stand in between them, his face pale and nervous.

“Hi, Mom.”

Hermes takes Luke into another room to talk, leaving Thalia and Annabeth under the strange care of May Castellan.

She rambles on and on about Luke’s childhood, and it’s pleasant enough for Annabeth to be confused, and she hates feeling confused, so she hates being here. She doesn’t like the smell of burnt cookies and Kool-Aid and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. She doesn’t like the way that May seems to be rambling to herself, or the way her eyes flicker with a smoky green whenever the conversation hits a lull.

She doesn’t like imagining what Luke went through in these walls to make him run away. For the first time in a while, Annabeth doesn’t feel sure of herself, and it is, simply put, terrifying .

It’s been almost an hour when Luke finally storms his way into the kitchen, his face bright red and his eyes ablaze with anger. May startles and drops the roll of gauze she’d been applying to Thalia’s hand.

“Luke, dear, is everything okay? I’ve got your cookies,” she tells him with a kind, toothy, and utterly confusing smile.

Luke doesn’t look his mom in the eye. Instead, he helps Thalia off her chair and ushers Annabeth in the direction of the door. “We’re leaving,” he growls.

May let’s out a choked sound behind them, and the sound of glass shattering to the floor scares Annabeth more than it should. She checks over her shoulder, and May is hurrying after them, not even bothering to step over the pitcher of Kool-Aid she’s spilled as she scrambles towards the door with the panic of a caged animal.

They are out of the house quickly, and Annabeth squints in the sunshine as Luke urges them to walk faster. Thalia seems to be just fine with listening, but Annabeth hears crying behind her and gods dammit , she’s just so confused . She takes one last peek over her shoulder when Luke isn’t paying attention.

Lord Hermes is still there, his sad eyes trained on the group of retreating half-bloods and his arms wrapped around a hysterical May, holding her back as she sobs and cries out for her son to please, please come back to her, she’ll make him whatever he wants, she won’t burn the cookies again, she promises, just don’t leave, please don’t leave .

She kicks one time and Annabeth sees the bottom of the woman’s glass-covered feet, stained with a mix of blood and Kool-Aid. She feels the sudden urge to both vomit and join the woman in her hysterics, so she turns back to her companions and hides her face in Thalia’s side.

It’s all just unfair and confusing, and Annabeth can’t get the color red  out of her mind.

(He’s different now.

There’s a part of him that is desperate to prove  something , and Annabeth knows that mixing that mindset with a hothead like Luke is a dangerous combination. But he also seems older and more sure of himself, and Annabeth is seven years old and she finally trusts someone.

She won’t throw that away. Who cares if he’s got something to prove? So does she, and this is a family she doesn’t have to run away from. She can’t turn her back on them.

She’ll never  do that.)

The Hunters of Artemis show up in early summer and try to take Thalia away from her.

They occupy the same patch of woods in upstate New York on the same night, and Zoë Nightshade makes the offer after a five minute conversation with Thalia. She gives Luke a sneer of disgust, passes over Annabeth entirely, and informs the daughter of Zeus that she’ll be anticipating her answer in the morning. Then the Lieutenant disappears into the Hunt’s ring of extravagant tents and leaves the three half-bloods to a night huddled around a small campfire in their sleeping bags.

Annabeth can see the confusion in Thalia’s eyes, and it hurts. 

“Are you going to go with them?” she whispers, trying to keep her voice low enough that she won’t rouse Luke from sleep.

“I don’t know.”

Annabeth doesn’t know how to feel about that. She hadn’t been asked, but if she had, Annabeth thinks she might consider it, too. Thalia would never want for anything—she would be clothed and fed, and it wouldn’t be because she’d picked it out of the dumpster or stolen it from a store. It was a great opportunity for someone living on the streets and looking for safety. 

Annabeth should encourage Thalia to do the right thing for herself. But in the absence of dictionaries and fantasy novels and college textbooks, Annabeth’s universe has narrowed down to two people. She’s scared to find out what might happen to it if she rips one of them away.

(In the universe where Earth exists, a massive destruction of half the celestial bodies in the infinite void would, hypothetically speaking, probably create a black hole so large that the entire remaining universe would be sucked inside, destroyed down to the atomic level.

Annabeth’s mind is balancing on the edge of total atomic destruction, and it’s going to be all Zoë fucking Nightshade’s fault.)

“Please don’t.”

Annabeth probably shouldn’t be listening to a private conversation, but it’s really the Huntresses’ fault for not noticing her sneaking into their campsite (she’s invisible, of course, but they’re immortal and she definitely made some noise, so shame on them).

“I’m sorry, Zoë.”

“You are a fool to turn this down, Thalia Grace. You could have had a real family.”

Fucking bitch. (She learns this one from Thalia, too.)

“I already have one of those, and I’m not turning my back on them to join your little girl gang. I appreciate the offer, but my answer is no.”

“Very well. You won’t get another opportunity.”

“I won’t need one.”

Thalia storms out seconds later. Annabeth follows behind her as quietly as possible, but once they make it beyond the ring, Thalia stops suddenly and turns, looking dead at Annabeth with a smirk.

Annabeth takes the hat off sheepishly. “How’d you know?”

Thalia snorts. “You make a shit ton of noise.” Before Annabeth can defend herself, Thalia is dragging her into a hug that she returns with full force. “And it’s exactly what I would have done.”

“I’m glad you’re not a traitor.” Thalia laughs, but Annabeth means it quite literally. (Or maybe she’s learning to be funny…who really knows?)

“You heard me. I’m with you dumbasses for life.”

“Even Luke when he’s being stubborn?”

“ Especially  Luke when he’s being stubborn.”

“Oh, you’re serious then.”

They’re still smiling when they tell Luke the good news.

Grover Underwood is an interesting addition to their strange little group.

It’s fun, if nothing else, to observe someone new, and after a week of traveling with the satyr, she has memorized every frizzy auburn curl on his head and every inch of his pale skin. She’s memorized the way he walks with a limp to hide the fact that he doesn’t have human legs, and she’s memorized the way he chews on tin cans and stutters when he’s nervous. She’s memorized the way he jumps at shadows around them, but is still excited every time they survive the many  monster attacks.

(Someone is angry with them, Annabeth realizes. Someone wants to see Thalia die and whoever it is plans to send every monster imaginable after their group until that happens. Thalia thrives off the challenge and Luke is constantly itching for a fight, but Annabeth can’t help but be worried.

One of these days, their luck is going to run out. She doesn’t voice her concerns but she feels a bone-deep certainty about their inevitable doom.

Youthful confidence and a couple of swords will only take them so far.)

Grover’s not a half-blood and he’s a bit skittish, but he always has the answers to the questions that Annabeth has never quite figured out before. And now, with these questions answered, they’ve got a goal in sight.

They’re going to make it to Camp Half-Blood by the end of the summer.

“What’s it like?” Annabeth asks the satyr one night while Thalia and Luke are busy playing Go Fish on the other side of the campfire. (Luke had snatched the deck of cards from a lady’s bag on their bus ride from Connecticut.)

“Camp?” Grover clarifies. She nods and tries to envision a safe place—the place her mother had hinted at all those months ago. She thinks it will be green and relaxing and challenging and everything she’s been searching for. “It’s incredible, Annabeth.” He smiles down at her. “You’re going to be happy there, I promise.”

“ If  we get there.”

“We will,” he assures her, young and full of (probably naïve) hope. “I’m here to protect you now.”

Annabeth doesn’t answer him. She’s still worried.

There’s one night that Annabeth decides she will cherish for the rest of her life.

On one of the rare nights they are actually allowed to stop and sleep, Annabeth dreams that the spiders have returned, crawling into her mouth and choking her this time. She wakes up before the sun, screaming her lungs out, and Thalia is the first one at her side, murmuring soft words of reassurance and brushing Annabeth’s sweaty curls away from her forehead. 

She burrows into the comfort of Thalia’s side and sends a guilty look at Grover and Luke, who are looking over at her with groggy confusion.

They don’t talk about the nightmares. Instead, Thalia teaches Annabeth the lyrics to a Green Day song called Basket Case, and the four of them watch the sunrise over the trees, singing together in a broken cacophony that leaves them in stitches.

“I’ve got you.” Thalia whispers to her while Luke distracts Grover with an obnoxious high note. “I’m not gonna let you get hurt.”

Annabeth nods with a watery smile and giggles as Grover tries (and fails) to carry the same melody as Luke.

By July, Annabeth gets the feeling that they’re close. The monster attacks get more frequent and the restless buzzing under her skin is a constant now. Even Grover has gotten nervous, looking doubtful with each turn they make through the woods. Thalia and Luke don’t seem overly concerned (maybe they don’t feel the anxious energy rippling like an undercurrent through their environment), but Annabeth is just waiting for something bad to happen. It feels unavoidable.

Then the monsters start coming in waves, and Annabeth isn’t the only one who’s worried anymore.

Luke nearly gets his arm bitten off by a hellhound, and an honest-to-gods Fury  is inches away from clawing Thalia’s face off. Grover hits multiple dead ends and they barely manage to hold off the monsters long enough to sleep at night. Their nights of rest become less and less common until they eventually just turn into an hour nap stolen here and there. Annabeth can practically feel the shadows hanging off her eyes.

It’s dangerous. She knows it won’t end well. She knows they probably won’t make it to camp.

The mansion they stumble upon is just beyond the woods they’ve walked for the past week, and they’re all so tired that the building’s crumbling structure does nothing to dissuade them from hurrying inside. In the safety of the dark building, they take a deep breath for the first time in days, and Annabeth tries to convince herself that the sudden panic she feels isn’t anything to worry about.

“We should look around,” Thalia announces after flicking the light switch in the foyer to no avail. “This place is…weird.”

“It’s just old,” Luke assures her. “At least we’ll have a place to sleep tonight.”

“We should still look around,” Annabeth cuts in. She doesn’t often disagree with Luke, but something feels off and she won’t be able to sleep if she doesn’t check every room of this house for potential dangers. “We can’t afford to be caught off guard.”

Luke looks torn (and tired) but he eventually nods, his jaw tightened like it always is when Annabeth or Thalia disagrees with him. The expression has become more common since Connecticut, but he never says anything, so Annabeth doesn’t question it.

“Which way should we go?” Grover asks, his voice shaky as he looks down a shadowy hallway to the left of them.

“Let’s head to the East side of the house,” Thalia suggests, nodding her head in the opposite direction from where Grover is still staring, wide-eyed. “We can circle back around if we don’t find anything there.”

Thalia is the first one to get separated. She hears a little boy’s voice calling her name, and it makes her face go as pale as a sheet. She promises to meet back up with them soon.

Luke hears his mother a few minutes later. He stumbles off in a daze, making some garbled excuses about how he’ll find them in a little bit once he figures out what’s going on.

Grover is next and Annabeth almost stops him from walking off at the sound of his father’s voice, but he begs her to just let him investigate (his father had gone missing years before and he’s got to be sure  that it’s not him), and Annabeth reluctantly lets him disappear into the shadows of the house.

(Looking back now, she’s not sure why they didn’t question hearing their respective family members’ voices in a strange abandoned building, thousands of miles away from any of their hometowns.

There’s a daze that settles over a person when the past they ran away from comes to haunt their present. In the dark, ghosts of living people left behind seem to shadow every step.

Hate clears the mind. Fear, grief, and longing settle with a fog that can fool even the sharpest of minds. Annabeth wishes her mind had been quicker— sharper— that night.)

She finally understands something is wrong however, when she hears Frederick’s voice.

“Annabeth, please come find me.” It’s calm and even, spoken from nowhere and everywhere all at the same time. The tone and emotion are exactly the same as she remembers, but she still pulls her knife from her belt. Something is very, very  wrong.

(She’s been missing since Christmas. Since she’s not dead and she was in the same city for a few months, it’s highly unlikely that Frederick wouldn’t have found her if he’d been looking. Her face wasn’t plastered on T.V. screens or newspaper headlines, which meant he hadn’t told the police.

Her father didn’t try to stop her when she ran away. There was no way he was here now, calling out her name in the darkness of an abandoned mansion in New York.)

She stays close to the wall, remembering what Athena had taught her earlier in the year.

Use surprise to your advantage. You’re small, so you can hide before you attack. Analyze before acting. Be aware of everything.

After what feels like hours of walking, Annabeth finally reaches a large, well-lit room that looks like the sight of recent construction. Scaffolding stretches up towards the vaulted ceilings, and translucent white tarps hang along what appears to be the remnants of old walls. Stacks of plywood are periodically abandoned throughout the room, although it is the massive, bubbling cauldron in the middle of the room that really manages to catch Annabeth’s attention.

And her three friends, badly bruised and bleary-eyed as they dangle over the pot, suspended from an exposed beam on the ceiling, don’t do much to alleviate the severity of the scene.

Annabeth almost rushes out to help them, but lumbering footsteps from behind one of the white tarps stop her in her tracks. She ducks behind one of the larger stacks of plywood and considers a plan.

She could fish her Yankees hat out of her backpack, but the zipper makes too much noise, and whatever monsters have captured her friends most likely have good hearing and are itching to find her. She could rely on her speed to get her to the pot, but there’s no telling if she’s outmatched in speed or strength, so that’s basically suicide.

In summary, she’s alone and left with little to no options, and she can hear Frederick’s voice again, ringing out from the same direction as the footsteps.

So the monster mimics voices. Great.

(She sifts through the catalogue in her mind. Every mythological creature she’s read about or fought is listed here, along with their strange abilities or traits.

Vocal imitation: Cyclopes.)

The footsteps and her father’s voice get closer, like it knows exactly where Annabeth is and is planning to draw out an easy target. She stays hidden until the last possible moment and clutches her knife to her chest. It digs against her sternum, but she can hardly feel it when compared with her frantically beating heart.

Gods, she’s scared. She despises the feeling, but there’s no other way to describe it. There’s a very high chance that Annabeth Chase is going to die today—eaten along with her friends—and that terrifies her. She’s seven years old and she’s got a mind that stretches on for infinity, and she doesn’t want to die trapped inside this shell of a child. She’s supposed to be so much more than this.

When the footsteps stop just beyond the stack of wood, Annabeth finally lunges, barreling out with a violent scream of pure fury and stabs the creature in its slimy foot, nearly slicing off the toe. As it cries out in pain, thankfully distracted, Annabeth bolts towards the pot and pulls herself onto the edge, ignoring the way her hands burn at the touch.

(Helen’s ‘lessons’ with the curling iron finally come in handy. Annabeth is used to this type of pain.)

She helps Thalia down first, then leaves the other girl to get the boys untied. She hops back to the ground and checks to make sure the cyclops is still occupied with his injury. It’s still hunched over, but quickly coming-to, so she pulls her backpack off and hurriedly searches through its contents until she emerges with the invisibility cap.

She disappears into thin air just as Thalia cuts the boys down. The one-eyed monster roars in anger, barreling towards the escaped prisoners, but Annabeth sprints to block its path and cuts at the back of its knees. It buckles to the ground, growling and giving Thalia enough time to get Aegis out. The monster whimpers and tries to scamper away once he sees the indentation on the shield, but Luke is waiting behind him with his sword drawn, and within moments, the creature vaporizes into a cloud of yellow dust.

Annabeth has been running for what feels like ages.

The cyclops lair slowed them down considerably and has given the horde of monsters time to catch up with them. The growls of hellhounds sprinting along the forest floor is deafening, only trumped by the screech of the three furies flying high above them, threatening to swoop down and tear them to shreds at any moment.

She slows down for just a moment, her chest aching, but Luke’s rapid footsteps gain on her quickly. “Come on, Annabeth!”

He gives her a motivational shove and then they’re back to sprinting.

“We can’t keep this up much longer!” Thalia shouts at them.

“We’re close!” Grover yells back. “It’s just past that hill!”

Annabeth looks towards the break in the tree line, where an empty highway separates them from a large hill and a field of strawberries. “Are you sure?” she breathlessly asks Grover.

“Positive! We just need to get there!”

“We’ll never make it!” Even as he speaks, Luke looks back over his shoulder at glowing red eyes. “They’re too close!”

“Then I’ll hold them off!” Thalia decides as they break onto the road. One of the furies  dives down, but Thalia flashes Aegis towards the sky, and the monster screeches before soaring back up. They jump the ditch on the other side of the street and begin the trek up the side of the hill. “I can use my shield to hold them off long enough.”

“Thalia, no! ” Annabeth screams. “You can’t!”

(There’s a part of Annabeth that knows it’s their only hope. The monsters are after Thalia, and they’ll be too preoccupied with a solitary target to notice the other three slipping to safety. It’s their best chance.

But, if Thalia stops now, she’s going to die. There’s no child in the world that could take on that many monsters, alone, and live. This will be her final stand.

This will be the last time Annabeth ever sees her sister.)

No one listens. Luke’s eyes shine in the darkness, but he nods at Thalia (an understanding of the worst kind) and drags Annabeth away, kicking and fucking screaming because she will not  leave her family to die.

“Let me go!” she screeches, her words watery and hard to understand around her desperate cries. She scratches and bites at Luke but he doesn’t stop. He wraps his hand around her mouth so that her screams are muffled (it’s smart—the less noise they make, the less attention they draw—but for the first time in her life, Annabeth doesn’t want  to be smart) and pretends like he’s not crying, too, even though Annabeth can feel his silent tears splattering against the top of her head. 

The last time she sees Thalia, the daughter of Zeus is dry-eyed and determined. She holds Aegis out in front of her and faces down a dozen deadly creatures with a single sword.

The clang of a fight comes once Annabeth can no longer see Thalia, and she’s still inconsolable, and Luke is trying everything possible to keep her from sprinting back up the hill.

Thalia screams, and Annabeth swears her heart stops.

Another scream, and the universe in her mind starts to collapse in on itself.

A final scream, and she knows what it’s like to have a black hole in her thoughts, sucking every hope from existence.

There’s a flash of lightning from the clear skies above, striking down right where they’d left Thalia (to die), and within moments, the once-barren hill is crowned with a beautiful pine tree, stretching up towards the stars and marking the shimmering line that the monsters can no longer cross.

Luke finally lets her go.

(Heartbreak; noun; overwhelming distress; synonyms include grief, suffering, unhappiness, misery, sorrow, sadness, anguish, and trauma; the noun ‘heartbreak’ does not actually refer to the break of the heart, nor does it have anything to do with the actual organ that pumps blood throughout the body; it is, simply put, a sharp decrease in the amount of serotonin in the brain; nothing more, nothing less.)

Chapter Text

Annabeth blinks, and suddenly she is in front of a large farmhouse. Somewhere in her brain, there are flashes of the walk between the hill that marks the borders of Camp Half-Blood and here, but that’s all they are—flashes. In a few minutes, standing here with Luke and Grover latched onto her sides will also be a flash of memory in the sea of darkness that will always cloud this night.

“Grover, what happened?”

“Where’s the other kid, Mr. Underwood?”

“What was that lightning?”

Annabeth stops listening. She knows that Grover, who is shaking in fright and grief next to her, will have to explain the situation, but living it will forever be enough.

Instead, she studies the two men who are speaking to them. Well, man and centaur , if Annabeth is cataloging the half-man, half-horse correctly.

The man is plump and red-faced, with scraggly dark hair and a purplish-blue gaze. He’s got a tropical button-down shirt covering his protruding stomach, and it’s dyed in different shades of purple that complement the man’s beady, bloodshot eyes. The scowl on his face makes Annabeth want to dismiss him outright, but she has a feeling that it would be a bad idea.

He’s old and grumpy-looking, sure, but there’s a power and dominance radiating from him—the same aura she’s seen from Athena and Hermes.

He’s a god.

It seems strange. Athena had been so regal, and Hermes, although softer than Annabeth’s mother, had still given off that same air of dignity. The god in the purple shirt is almost… pathetic .

As if he can read her thoughts, he redirects his attention away from Grover for a moment to glare at her. She doesn’t cower (her own mother was far more intimidating), but she does avert her gaze. God or not, he’s an angry-looking drunk, and she’s not interested enough to provoke him anymore than she already has. The centaur is a much more fascinating subject to study.

He is the polar opposite of the god at his side, with a distinctly non-threatening posture and a gentle smile. He’s got kind eyes over a bushy brown beard, and although the bottom half of his torso merges into the body of a massive white horse, his tweed jacket (leather elbow patches and all, Annabeth notes fondly) gives him the perfectly normal appearance of a history professor (or something of the like). He nods sagely along with Grover’s rambling and doesn’t once look angry or disappointed with the satyr.

Annabeth thinks she might hear Thalia’s name, and the centaur’s face is clouded with sadness for just a moment, before it shifts quickly back to understanding.

(Understand; verb; perceive the significance, explanation, or cause of something; Annabeth doesn’t understand; she doesn’t think she ever will.)

Luke nudges her.

“Chiron asked you a question,” he whispers, gesturing at the centaur—Chiron—who waits patiently before the three of them, his attention narrowed on Annabeth’s face.

He seems to realize Annabeth’s lack of focus. He smiles softly (sadly) and shifts from one hoof to the next. “What’s your name, child?”

“Annabeth Chase,” she answers clearly, because stating facts is easier than feeling emotions.

Chiron nods. “Well, Annabeth and Luke, we’re glad you’ve made it here safely.” (The unspoken declaration that there is one in their ranks who did not meet these requirements is gut-wrenching.) “I would show you the orientation film tonight, but I’m sure you want to get some rest.”

Annabeth is about to reassure him that she would actually love  to watch an orientation film filled with facts—the kinds of things that she’s been begging to understand her entire life—because anything sounds better than laying in the dark and going through a list of definitions in her head so that she doesn’t think of eyes filled with lightning and hair the color of the night sky. So she won’t think of a girl with a presence so powerful that there had never been a doubt as to who had fathered her. Facts will help. Information will help. Annabeth just knows it.

Luke foils her plans. “Yes, we would.”

She glares at him, and she’s still glaring at him when they settle into the corner of the Hermes Cabin that night, their bedrolls pushed up against each other.

“I wanted to watch the video.”

“I’m tired, Annabeth.”

“Then you could have gone to sleep. You don’t get to speak for me,” she growls. Anger is much easier to process than the snarling, deadly grief that threatens to engulf her at any moment.

There’s a ruffling noise, and she sees the outline of Luke’s figure roll over to face her. His eyes catch a bit of moonlight coming in from outside, illuminating the reflective, watery stare.

“I’m just trying to keep us together, Annabeth.” His voice breaks, and he reaches out to grab her hand. There’s a vindictive, vengeful part of her that wants to snatch her fingers away, but she dutifully ignores it and squeezes his fingers in response.

Sure, there’s an empty void in her soul that has been created with a single lightning strike, but she still has a soul—still has a universe  in her mind, and the galaxies that will always orbit around Luke are still alive and well, and she will not  throw that away.

(Stars always die. Like people, they have an expiration date, and like people, they remain a light over the Earth for some time after their demise—a byproduct of the emission of light by those stars taking years to actually reach the Milky Way. Eventually, however, the light fades. Constellations change, new stars emerge, and the names of the long-dead stars are nothing more than memories, recorded by white dots on a chart.)

They will never be complete without Thalia, of course, but they’ll find a way to be enough for each other. They’ll find a way to make new constellations.

It only takes a day for Annabeth to be claimed by her mother.

The glowing silver owl pulses above Annabeth’s head just as she disarms her third opponent of the day during sword fighting lessons. She doesn’t need them—she’s been trained by a goddess and not a single half-blood here will ever be as good with a weapon as Thalia or Luke—but they take her mind off things, and she doesn’t have to try too hard to keep a corner of her focus on Luke. He fights on the other side of the arena, taking down a couple of Ares kids with ease, and Annabeth thinks she catches him glancing her way a few times.

So, she’s focused on Luke and focused on fighting and focused on not  thinking about lightning and pine trees, and she doesn’t actually notice her mother’s blessing until someone gasps at the edge of the arena. The girl at the end of her blade (a daughter of Demeter, maybe sixteen or seventeen years old, and terrible with a sword) looks at her with wide, startled eyes, and this is enough for Annabeth to tilt her gaze upward.

It is, undoubtedly, a sign from the goddess of wisdom. The same symbol hangs above the door of cabin six, and there isn’t a single soul present who doesn’t make the connection. The crowd in the arena, one by one, takes a knee, and Annabeth lets her sword up enough so that the daughter of Demeter can do the same.

It’s a strange feeling.

Her eyes find Luke. He’s still standing, but when he notices that her attention has fallen on him, he sinks to the ground as well.

(Annabeth hopes  that she has imagined the dangerous glint in his eyes. She’s used to the bitterness—they’ve been sharp and unforgiving for weeks now—but the angry jealousy that clouds his irises is new, and it makes her skin crawl. They are partners, not competitors.

She wonders, deep inside her mind, if Luke knows the difference anymore. She knows that he sees this as an insult from his father. Annabeth has known the identity of her mother, sure, but as far as Luke knows, she’s never met Athena—she’s kept the visits in Richmond to herself, even though keeping secrets from her family makes her chest ache—and he’s met Hermes multiple times. Luke knows  his father and yet he still remains unclaimed.

He still remains in a position of dishonor in what should be his own cabin. In this situation, Annabeth is his competition.)

Chiron gallops in just as the owl begins to flicker, and his eyes catch on the shape and widen just before it disappears altogether. He gives Annabeth a shrewd look.

“Athena!” the centaur booms. “Patron of Heroic Endeavor, Goddess of Strategy, Warfare, and Reason. Hail Annabeth Chase, daughter of the Wise One.”

Luke avoids her for a few days. She lets him—she’s been busy getting to know the few half-siblings that are at camp with her (there are five in total; Amanda, Hannah, Caleb, Sam, and Kelsey), and she skips most of her scheduled activities during the day to soak up the sheer amount of knowledge that is practically flooding from the Athena Cabin.

She reads over every blueprint, every book, and every aging manuscript that she can possibly find and she doesn’t think about Luke and his strange, turbulent emotions.

(They are not the kind of emotions that Annabeth understands.

She knows anger. She knows sorrow. She has even learned to know happiness. But jealousy is a foreign idea to her—she’s never felt the need to covet the accomplishments or belongings of others. Annabeth is the smartest person in every room she enters and that’s all that matters in the end.

Luke isn’t like that. She’s always known that, so she’s not sure why it feels all that surprising now.)

Amanda Brighton is the head counselor of the Athena Cabin when Annabeth is placed there. She’s sixteen and looks eerily similar to Annabeth, and the only person who’s allowed to call her ‘Mandy’ is her girlfriend, which is a rule strongly enforced by the business end of Amanda’s sword.

Annabeth adores  her. She’s sharp and brutally honest and speaks with purpose, but beyond all that, she’s a gods-damned genius . Amanda is the first person that can keep up with Annabeth’s mind—and the first person that has ever immediately expected Annabeth to do the same—and it feels like she’s waking up to a whole new set of possibilities.

(Her siblings throw a small ‘party’ of sorts on her birthday. Hannah—the wildest of their relatively calm cabin—gets the Hermes kids to sneak a cookie cake into camp and they sing ‘Happy Birthday’ to Annabeth after everyone leaves the bonfire.

It’s the first time she can remember hearing—maybe the first time she’s ever  heard—that song sung to her.

Amanda pulls her aside just before bed and shoves something into her hands. It’s an expensive set of drafting pencils—gorgeous and precise and exactly  what Annabeth didn’t know she wanted—and before Annabeth can say ‘thank you’, Amanda is already walking off, a secretive smile on her face.

Annabeth thinks that maybe Amanda could be a part of one of the new constellations in her universe. Maybe one day she’ll have enough room in her heart for two sisters.)

Of course, Annabeth has only been staying in Cabin Six for a week when Amanda is assigned a quest (there’s a coin that Amanda doesn’t want anyone to see, and it’s always in her pocket, and if Annabeth hadn’t spent so much of her time with Luke Castellan, she might have never noticed the way the girl’s hand drifts toward it when no one is looking—how she stares at it with a strangely solemn look on her face, like she’s staring at her own death sentence). She promptly disappears, never to be seen or heard from again. By the end of July, she’s declared dead.

They burn a silver funeral shroud, and Kelsey is appointed as the new Head Counselor of the Athena Cabin, and everyone mourns the loss of the girl that had been there long enough to watch each and every camper grow up. She’d been family—the kind that you choose—and Annabeth knows what it feels like to have that wrenched away by premature death.

So she cries with her siblings and hopes that Thalia and Amanda find each other in Elysium—all things considered, Annabeth is sure they would be friends.

The head counselors unanimously agree that creation of Thalia’s Pine Tree is the biggest event of the summer session. The symbol of her sacrifice is painted on a black bead and given to each camper.

Annabeth wears the mark of her first summer proudly. 

Luke is claimed a couple of days before his birthday. The caduceus pulses brightly above his head, bathing the Dining Pavilion in an ethereal, ghostly light as the camp huddles over their breakfast in a last ditch attempt to wake up before the day starts.

Annabeth is one of the first people to notice. (She always notices him.) Her eyes fix on the sign in fascination and then Sam notices the direction of her eyes, and suddenly, the whole camp takes in a collective gasp and Luke finally looks up.

(There is something intimate about seeing Luke’s face bathed in cold light, his youthful mouth parted in shock and excitement as he stares at the proof of his father’s blessing. His eyes glitter and begin to moisten, and Annabeth wonders if she had looked like this, too—wholly unaware of the rest of the world in the presence of godly acceptance. It feels wrong that anyone should see Luke in such a vulnerable state, but there is a beauty in such innocent joy that Annabeth can’t bear to imagine remaining in the shadows.

Luke Castellan, in every state, should be admired.)

Chiron rises from the head table with a small, pleased smile. Then, he takes a knee, and the rest of the camp follows with bowed heads and excited chatter.

Annabeth’s knee rests against the cold marble floor and she can’t keep herself from grinning.

She also can’t keep herself from sneaking a glance at Luke as Chiron makes his announcement. She means to listen to the words, but her attention is completely enraptured by the new expression on Luke’s face.

There’s a determination in the lines of his face where she once saw bitterness, as if his frustration and anger has finally been honed into something positive. It’s as if the years of living on the streets have faded into the background with this glowing hologram above his head. Luke looks like he believes that he could conquer the world, and if Annabeth is being completely honest, she’s hard-pressed not to believe it, too.

(One day, Annabeth will realize how that confidence and ego can be twisted, burned, and corrupted into something cruel and unrecognizable, but today she smiles across the Dining Pavilion at the first human being who called her his family and meant it. Today she smiles at the boy who hung the stars in her universe.)

“You’re unfairly good at this,” Caleb admits after Annabeth pins him on the ground with a knife to his throat for the third time in a row.

She shrugs. “You could just be abnormally bad.” He raises an unamused eyebrow at her and she can’t help but smirk. “But you’re probably right.”

Annabeth scrambles to her feet and extends a hand to her half-brother, who waves her away good-naturedly and pushes himself back into his feet, brushing off dirt and specks of what looks like dried blood off his clothes. “Go again?” he asks, flipping his blonde curls out of his face.

Annabeth almost says ‘yes’, because Caleb is competitive without being a bad sport, and fighting allows her to distance herself from racing thoughts and definitions and anxiety and all the rest, but then she feels the weight of a blue-eyed stare on her from behind Caleb and she’s shaking her head ‘no’ before she even realizes that it’s Luke who’s watching from the shadows of the arena.

“Sorry. Head’s not in the right space.” It’s a bad excuse, and Caleb follows her stare to the far side of the arena with a little smirk. He says his goodbyes and suddenly, Annabeth could be living on the streets again, with Luke by her side and a knife in her hand.

Except Luke isn’t by her side—he’s watching her from a distance with that strange look again, the kind that screams his jealousy into the space between them—and the weapon in Annabeth’s hand is always lighter when she’s not at immediate risk of dying. She isn’t cold and she isn’t hungry and she isn’t filthy and the empty space where Thalia should be leaves them reeling and lopsided.

They will never be the  Luke and Annabeth from the streets again. Annabeth is okay with that.

Sometimes she wonders if Luke is, though. Sometimes she wonders if he misses the days when he was the one with experience. The one who called the shots. The one who led their group.

There’s no group to lead anymore. It’s just the two of them, trying to find their place at camp.

(Sometimes Annabeth thinks she’s doing better at this particular task. She thinks Luke might know that, too.)

“Your disarm was a bit sloppy,” Luke calls out to her.

Annabeth shrugs. “It worked well enough.” (Her disarm wasn’t sloppy. Annabeth has come to realize that Luke is at a very specific age of puberty when young teenage boys have been conditioned by cultural standards to think it’s impressive to be mean to others. Simply put, he’s trying to be a dick.) “What have you been up to? I haven’t seen you in a while.” She asks the question with an air of nonchalance but she’s kept count of the six days, twelve hours, ten minutes, and seventeen seconds that he’s been avoiding her.

Luke’s face pales, but from this distance, Annabeth can’t see much else.

“Just been getting settled in.”

“Have you talked to your siblings much?” Annabeth asks, still standing in the same spot on the arena floor, yelling over to Luke like it’s impossible for them to take the twenty or so steps to bridge the divide.

“Not really.”

Annabeth doesn’t know what to say to him anymore. She finally feels like she’s found a place where she can escape the confines of her own isolating mind—she can explore other universes than her own, so to speak—if even for a few moments at a time, and yet, it feels like she’s lost Luke in the translation.

She’s tired of it.

“Are we okay?”

Luke turns positively green and begins to inch towards the wall. “We’re fine.”

“Then why are you here?” Annabeth asks him with no emotion in her voice. She’s just curious, plain and simple, and she’s tired of him running away. Camp was supposed to mean an end to all the running, but instead, it feels like Luke has done nothing  but run, run, run (usually from her). “What’s so special about right now?”

Luke shrugs. “Nothing, really.”

Annabeth stays silent. There’s more there—she knows it like she knows her own mind—and if she’s learned one thing in her eight years of life, it’s that people will always talk if you just let them.

He shifts from his left foot to his right and then back again, like he can’t quite find a comfortable position. “Look…I know I’ve been kinda distant. I don’t mean it, I just—” he sighs heavily. “I don’t know how to not  be alone, Annabeth.”

There it is.

She makes the walk towards him as he stares solemnly at the dusty floor. When she finally comes to a stop in front of him, he’s using the bottom of his sneakers to scuff a pattern in the dirt—a sweeping, repetitive thing that reminds Annabeth of the back-and-forth they’ve been doing. She clears her throat, and he finally looks up at her.

“You were never alone, Luke.” Annabeth keeps her eyes locked on his, because she needs  him to understand this. She’s no child of Apollo, but she has enough sense of the future to know that a dark future awaits Luke if he can’t learn this one, simple lesson. She doesn’t want that for him. “And as long as I’m alive, you’re never  going to be alone, okay?”

Luke nods, and Annabeth pretends she can’t see the moisture in his eyes as they walk out of the arena together.

They might be broken, bloody, bruised, and incomplete, but they’re going to piece themselves back together if it takes their whole lives. Annabeth is going to build something eternal, and if she has to start by building her family back up again, then that’s what she’ll do.

“I got a quest.”

Annabeth sits straight up on her bunk, blinking rapidly at Hannah, who stares at her siblings from the cabin doorway with an excited smile and terrified eyes.

“…Really?”

Personally, Annabeth is very glad that Sam decided to talk first. She doesn’t quite have the words to describe the heavy sense of dread that Hannah’s announcement has raised in her. Kelsey and Caleb are just as quiet, waiting for Hannah to either elaborate or maybe (hopefully) just chalk this all up to some kind of joke.

Cabin Six remains silent for an endless moment.

“Yes, really,” Hannah finally says. To her credit, her voice doesn’t even waver as she heads towards her bunk. She begins gathering up the stray clothes littering the mattress and shoving them into a backpack she pulls from underneath the bed.

Annabeth looks at Caleb. Caleb looks at Sam. Sam looks at Kelsey. No one says a word.

(Amanda’s name, Amanda’s smile, Amanda’s voice, Amanda’s death. The memory of these things plays on an endless loop in Annabeth’s head, and she has a feeling her siblings are experiencing something similar.

They’ve only just lost their Head Counselor and now Hannah wants to go on a quest.

Sweet Hannah, who brings joy and laughter to every single day and will likely not come back alive. Annabeth knows that she is not supposed to grieve an event that has not yet happened, but she allows herself a moment to mourn the inevitable.)

After a few minutes, Hannah huffs and steps away from her bag. “Just say it.”

“Are you sure you want to do this?” Kelsey is the one brave enough to speak this time. Her tone reminds Annabeth of someone speaking to a wild animal—low, gentle words so as not to spook the volatile creature. As is expected, it only serves to irritate Hannah.

“What, because of Amanda?” She throws her hands up in frustration. “Yes, she died. Demigods die every fucking day , Kelse!” Her blonde curls bob as she speaks, weaving away from the spot where she gathered her ponytail like they have a mind of their own. Her dark skin seems to glow under the afternoon light, and Annabeth can suddenly see the godly part of Hannah’s heritage—illuminated by sunlight and twisted in furious indignance. She is powerful and far more dangerous than any mortal, and some of the fear in Annabeth’s chest releases its death grip on her heart.

“We don’t want that to happen to you, too, Han,” Caleb pipes up from where he’d been curled into one of the oversized reading chairs.

Hannah’s face softens (the human side comes rushing forth—an endlessly confusing dichotomy that Annabeth can hardly believe applies to her, too). “I know, Caleb. But I’m not going to be scared of dying for the rest of my life. We’re children of Athena , for gods’ sakes! She’s the gods-damned patron of heroic endeavor! We’re not exactly honoring her by running scared from quests.” Hannah looks back at Kelsey, who seems close to tears. “I don’t want any of us to die, but I also don’t want to live and be known as a coward. That’s a fate worse than death, and Amanda knew it.” She takes in a deep breath.

“So, yes. Maybe I’m scared. But I’m not going to let that stop me. I want  this quest. I want to make Cabin Six proud.”

Pride is something they all understand. It’s been lost in their grief until now, but Annabeth can see that Hannah is right. She’s a daughter of Athena, and she’s going to live up to that honor.

“You’re right,” Annabeth finally speaks up. Everyone looks at her in surprise. “We’re braver than our fear.”

Hannah grins at her.

(Hannah makes it back from her quest in the middle of November, along with her two companions. Elated and perfectly healthy, the daughter of Athena decides to enroll back home at Louisiana State University—dual-major in mathematics and physics—for the spring semester.

Her mother contacts camp a few weeks after the term begins to inform Chiron that her daughter has gone missing. They burn a shroud, and just like that, the Athena Cabin’s numbers drop to four.

Four children that refuse to be scared of death, no matter how many of their siblings are lost to its cruel greed.)

Outside of the summer session, camp is quiet. The Athena Cabin all stays, but a lot of the demigods go home for the school year, a luxury that neither Annabeth nor Luke have. So, like they’ve been doing since the alley in Richmond, they stick together.

(Together; adverb; with or in proximity to another person or people; into companionship or close association; Annabeth thinks that she and Luke are getting better at being together  without Thalia.

The observation is both encouraging and heartbreaking.)

The two of them discover that no one really visits the Canoe Lake during the fall, so they take up the dock as their own personal hideaway—Annabeth with her endless blueprints and books, and Luke with whatever thoughts swirl behind his eyes as he stares out over still water all day. Some days he’ll go through training drills, if he can convince Annabeth to join him, but usually it’s just that strange contemplation that makes a fifteen year old boy look positively ancient.

One day, she decides to ask. The sun has reached its peak in the sky, and even Annabeth has laid down her books to tilt her face up towards the warm, peaceful light, but Luke is still staring at the dark waters of the lake like they might hold the secrets of time.

(How strange.

Just as Annabeth discovers the joy of the universe around her rather than just the endless system within her mind, Luke retreats from the world like it’s his enemy.

She knows that glazed look in his eye. It's all she ever saw in the mirror when she lived in Virginia. It meant definitions and thoughts and anxiety and stars of her own making. It meant that she missed the real stars in the sky.)

“What are you thinking about?”

Luke doesn’t skip a beat. He doesn’t even turn to look at her. “The gods.” He pauses, then adds, “Thalia.”

Annabeth sits up straighter, getting comfortable with her back against one of the wooden posts. “Why?”

“Why do they get to sit on their thrones unharmed while we do all their dirty work—fight all t heir  battles? Why did Thalia have to die  for them, when some of them can’t even be bothered to claim their children?” He’s getting angrier now, his voice filled with frustration. “How is it fair that we’re sent out like animals for slaughter while they live these happy, immortal lives on Olympus?”

Annabeth takes a deep breath. Then another one. And finally a third. “Because they’re gods and we’re mortals.” She thinks about why it’s fair (it’s not , it never will be, and she doesn’t disagree  with that) and can’t come up with much of an explanation. “But we get to die some day and escape the hell of living. They have to endure it and themselves for all eternity.” She shrugs. “I mean, can you imagine having to live with Mr. D’s personality forever ?”

Something about her words must amuse Luke because he snorts uncontrollably and finally looks in her direction. It only takes a few seconds for their small giggles to turn into peals of wild laughter. (Even the naiads poke their heads out of the water eventually, curious about what’s brought two human children to tears with glee and sent the sky rumbling dangerously overhead.)

Chiron finds Annabeth on a Saturday in early October. She’s pummeling a training dummy (as well as she can, at least, considering they aren’t meant for an opponent who’s 4’6”—but then, neither are most monsters) when he gallops in, his hooves beating heavily against the floor and sending the noise echoing around the cavernous space.

“Good morning, Annabeth,” Chiron greets pleasantly.

Annabeth sends him a smile over her shoulder in greeting and turns to slash the mannequin across his upper leg before driving her knife into the center of his groin. She can practically hear Chiron wince from here, but he only clears his throat and pushes forward.

(She gains some respect for the centaur then and there. Many lesser men would have already fled, or at least have made a comment about Annabeth’s brutality. It’s refreshing that Chiron considers this relatively normal behavior for her.)

“I see your training is going well.”

Annabeth smiles happily at him. She likes his calming demeanor—she imagines that it resembles how a father should  act, not that Annabeth would have much experience in that field. Today, he’s sporting a pale button-down and looks as if he’s just trimmed his beard, and she wonders if this is another one of Chiron’s many social calls (he’s made it a point to visit her every once in a while—he’ll drop off interesting books or even just inquire about her day; it’s nice, and Annabeth could always do with the company) or if he needs something. She can’t quite place the look on his face. It’s an odd mix of determined and encouraging that could reasonably mean anything.

“It is. I only wish I had more competition,” she confides. Chiron smirks, a little huff of laughter escaping him.

“I’m sure your opponents wish they had a bit less  competition,” Chiron responds, his voice inexplicably fond. His eyes drift over to the training dummy and Annabeth’s follow, just in time to watch the arm that she’d been hacking at earlier drop pitifully to the ground. “They look thoroughly beaten.”

“I can probably fix that.”

This time, Chiron doesn’t try to hide his delighted laughter. “Don’t worry about it, child. How about you take a break from your drills and I can teach you Pinochle?”

“I already know how to play Pinochle.” She watched Frederick and Helen play once—the rules were relatively simple.

Chiron clapped his hands together, obviously pleased with the news. “Even better! Maybe I’ll prove to be some competition for you, then.”

Annabeth discovers quickly that this wasn’t a social call. They are in the middle of their game when Chiron clears his throat, like he’s giving himself more time to prepare his next words.

(Adults do this often—they second-guess their words and worry over the outcomes instead of just speaking. It’s a tiring trait that Annabeth hopes she never picks up.

Clearing the throat, stumbling over sentences, averting the eyes. They are all a sign that the other participant of the conversation will most likely find the change in topic to be unpleasant. Annabeth prepares herself for the worst.)

“I’ve been training heroes for millennia, and I’ve been sorry to see so many of them pass away long before their time. The life of a demigod is short and often filled with sadness,” he begins soberly. Annabeth shifts in her seat and thinks of Hannah, who still hasn’t returned from her quest, but who wasn’t scared to take it. “What I’ve found, however, is that those heroes who maintain good relationships with their family usually live happier lives, however short they might be.” He pauses and finally looks over at Annabeth, like he’s checking to make sure she’s still paying attention. “Do you understand?”

Of course she does. “I’ve got a great relationship with my family,” she answers, thinking of Luke and Hannah and Kelsey and Sam and Caleb and even Chiron, now. 

(She’s aware that’s not what he means, but she will never  think of Frederick as her family. Ever. )

“I mean your father, Annabeth.”

“I ran away from Frederick’s house. He didn’t try to stop me.” She stares down at the red patterned cards on the table, because there’s a heavy emotion welling up in her that she doesn’t want Chiron to see. “I won’t beg him to call me family when he didn’t even want me to begin with.”

“To be the parent of a half-blood child is a hard task. Yes, Frederick wasn’t perfect, but the best thing you can do is forgive him—if not for his sake, then for your own.”

(Annabeth thinks of the days she was left alone in the house reading the dictionaries.

Solitude; noun; the state or situation of being alone; a lonely or uninhabited place.

Lonely days staring at dust and cobwebs, left with her own universe and a silent home.

Depression; noun; feelings of severe despondency and dejection.

The feeling that maybe if Annabeth didn’t get out of bed, she didn’t have to stare at Frederick and Helen’s hostile faces.

Neglect; noun; fail to care for properly.

The days when the pantry was empty and Frederick didn’t come home until the afternoon and Annabeth’s stomach felt like it curled in on itself.

Indifference; noun; lack of interest, concern, or sympathy; unimportant.

The days when Annabeth would almost rather be near Helen, because although Helen’s eyes looked at her with hate, Frederick’s eyes stared straight through her, like she had been wearing the invisibility cap for her whole life.

She wonders if Chiron would be saying the same things if he knew in what ways Frederick wasn’t perfect.)

“I won’t go home.” She puts her foot down there. She may be a child in Chiron’s eyes, but she knows what’s best for herself in this aspect. She will not  return to Frederick and Helen’s residence, with all the spiders and curling irons and dark walls and nightmares.

“I’m not asking you to. Start simple. Write him a letter.” Chiron’s eyes are soft and full of sympathy. “It won’t be easy, but it will make you better.”

Annabeth takes a deep breath and nods.

(If she wants to be the best, she’s got to get better.)

Frederick, the letter begins.

I’m alive. I found a safe haven for people like me. I plan to stay here. I hope the twins are doing well.

She pauses over the closing. She doesn’t want to give him regards, or close it with well wishes. There’s a cruel part of her (maybe she learned it from Luke) that wants him to feel the way he always made her feel.

Then she thinks of that bitterness in Luke’s blue eyes. She thinks of the tiny bit of fear it seems to inspire in her and thinks that isn’t who she wants to become. She thinks of Frederick and the way he made her feel small, and she decides that she’s better than being small and cowed and vengeful. Frederick hurt her, but per Chiron’s wishes, this letter is about forgiveness, not retaliation.

Sincerely,  she finally writes out, Annabeth.

Hannah returns in the middle of November and Annabeth decides that she wants a quest of her own.

After all, she’s a daughter of Athena just like Hannah, and if her half-sister can do it and be successful, then so can Annabeth.

(Planning for a possible quest helps her keep her mind off the letter that still hasn’t arrived, and probably never will.)

Right after the new year, the first new demigod since Luke and Annabeth arrives at the camp border, looking rather worse for wear. He’s a tall, scrawny kid, no older than ten, with a nervous twist to his mouth and skittish eyes, and he introduces himself as Charlie Beckendorf once the Apollo Cabin finally lets him freely roam the camp (apparently there were concerns about malnutrition and severe exhaustion). Annabeth immediately takes a liking to him—he’s constantly anxious, but when he does decide to smile (it’s rare, and only reserved for the Hermes Cabin’s funniest jokes), it’s a sweet and infectious grin that leaves everyone around him happier. It’s exactly the kind of person that Annabeth likes to be around, and exactly the kind of person Luke needs  to be around, and she finds herself hoping that Charlie really is a child of Hermes.

He isn’t. He’s claimed by Hephaestus while they’re all gathered around the campfire one night. The hammer glows a bright scarlet above his head and the song splutters out as everyone stares at the sign in amazement.

Annabeth looks at Charlie. He’s smiling up at the hologram, and he looks like a kid (they’re all kids, but he looks like the type of innocent kid that has never trained with weapons or seen a monster), and Annabeth can’t help but feel ridiculously happy for her new friend. She only wishes they could get him to smile like that all the time.

(Annabeth will wonder later what might have happened if Charlie had been claimed by the Hermes cabin instead. Would Luke have been tempered by Charlie’s easygoing look on life, or would he have dragged the boy down with him?

Was there anyone or anything that could have saved Luke from the future he chose?)

Through the spring, they celebrate a couple of birthdays (Charlie turns eleven in February, Sam turns sixteen in March, and Kelsey turns eighteen in April) and none of them die during these months, thank the gods. A few new faces come in and stay with the Hermes Cabin for a few weeks before being claimed—Michael Yew and Lee Fletcher both go to the Apollo Cabin, and although they’re shoddy with a sword, they are some of the best marksmen that Annabeth has ever seen.

Even more come through and stay with the Hermes Cabin indefinitely. Sadie and Paige are unclaimed, like so many others, and Mark and Melanie (twins around Luke’s age) are claimed by Iris, only to be told that there’s no place to go.

“It’s disrespectful to them,” Luke growls in frustration one day, while he and Annabeth are holed up in the back of the arts and crafts pavilion. “They should have a place to go that isn’t just a sleeping bag in the corner of some other god’s cabin.”

Annabeth sticks her tongue out as she carefully glues down a sequin onto her shiny, stuffed Minotaur. “Then let’s change it.” It would be simple—first, they’d need to petition Chiron, and if he was amenable, they could hopefully present their case to Mr. D. From there, they could possibly get the Olympians’ attentions. After all, regardless of the positive or negative attributes of Luke’s relationship with Hermes, he has  a relationship with his father, in the same way that Annabeth has a relationship with Athena. That’s more than could be said for the majority of half-bloods. If anyone could change things, it would be them.

Maybe it wouldn’t work, but he didn’t have to make things so complicated.

Luke glares at her like she’s being sarcastic (she’s not), and crosses his arms stubbornly over his chest. “We can’t just change  it. They won’t let us.”

He seems rather dead set on that idea, and Annabeth isn’t much in the mood to humor him with an argument today. She sighs,  just slightly, and stands from the table, taking her newly-finished stuffed animal with her. “I’ve got to meet Grover. I’ll see you later?”

Luke nods, lost in his own mind as he waves goodbye. She only looks back at him once, but he’s still staring at that damned stuffed animal (broken and unfinished, because Luke has never had much skill when it comes to crafts) like it might hold the key to overthrowing the gods.

She has to laugh as she approaches the Canoe Lake—like any demigod would try to topple Olympus over a few cabins.

May trickles in with cheerful sunshine and the occasional thunderstorm that doesn’t quite reach the camp, stopped at the borders formed by Thalia’s Pine Tree. (Annabeth has a hard time looking at it some days, but it’s getting easier with each week that passes. She thinks that Thalia would be happy to see her moving on. The daughter of Zeus had never been one for obvious sentimentality, after all). She trains with Luke, spends long afternoons picking strawberries with Grover, looks over blueprints and designs with her siblings, and plays an endless amount of card games with Chiron, who seems grateful for her company (grateful enough not to mention Frederick’s failure to respond to Annabeth’s letter).

The end of the month sees the arrival of the first few summer campers, filling all the cabins to the brim—especially the Hermes cabin, who would be housing anyone that didn’t fit inside the other seven (it should be nine, but Annabeth has heard whispers about an oath; Thalia wasn’t supposed to be born, and it has something to do with the reason why Cabins One and Three stay woefully empty, so now the number is bumped down to seven, not counting Hermes). It makes meals and campfires more fun, although Annabeth is loath to discover that the dock of the Canoe Lake does not just belong to her and Luke anymore—after she brings a book out to the dock and narrowly escapes being splashed by swimmers, she permanently relocates to the steps of Cabin Six during the summer session.

The Athena Cabin doesn’t escape the sudden influx of people. Michael from Dover, Delaware and Emily from Santa Clara, California are claimed early into the summer session, and Kelsey quietly ensures that they don’t take the bunks that used to belong to Amanda and Hannah. (No one in their cabin is quite ready to accept the loss of their sisters—maybe they never will be). Both of the newcomers are wickedly smart and Annabeth has fun picking their brains for a few weeks until the novelty wears off and they are just as much a part of her life as the three still left from last summer. 

Chris Rodriguez arrives in June and is immediately claimed by Hermes.

Luke is ecstatic. They are fast friends and nearly inseparable, and Annabeth doesn’t quite know how to feel about that. She’s aware that she and Luke are separated by a sizable age gap and an ever-increasing maturity gap that can’t be overcome by intelligence alone. It’s normal for him to have friends his own age—besides, he’s more family  than friend.

But she doesn’t like Chris.

She doesn’t like the glint in his eyes that she’s only ever seen in Luke. She doesn’t like the way that he looks at her as if she’s just an eight-year-old girl that follows his new half-brother around and not Luke’s oldest friend. She doesn’t like the way he starts to work his way into the spot that only Annabeth used to fill. She doesn’t like that he thinks the same way that Luke does; with a chip-on-the-shoulder, steal-first-ask-questions-later approach to life.

She doesn’t like the fact that Chris’s friendship with Luke should make her happy—it’s exactly what she’s wanted for him since they both arrived at camp, after all—and it only makes her feel twisted with disappointment. (Jealousy; noun; the state or feeling of being jealous; jealous; adjective; feeling or showing envy of someone or their achievements and advantages; fiercely protective or vigilant of one’s rights or possessions; she’s never been jealous before, has never even understood the emotion; she gets it now, though.)

She simply doesn’t like Chris. (It doesn’t make him go away).

July ushers in a wave of overly-warm weather and a series of ridiculous bets.

It starts with the Apollo Cabin. Michael Yew (apparently—Annabeth can’t be sure though, considering she heard the whole story from a second hand source) bet Lee Fletcher twenty drachmas that he could shoot a perfect bullseye twenty times in a row. Lee took the bet and lost twenty drachmas before the end of the day. Later that week, the Aphrodite Cabin gets involved (again, Annabeth can’t be sure of her facts, but she hears the bet was between Madeline and Lauren and had to do with who could give the best makeover; Lauren was victorious in the end), which leads to the Demeter Cabin joining in (Robin thinks she can grow the best strawberries and John bets her that she’s wrong; John loses that particular challenge). The Hermes Cabin does some obnoxious variation of the trend that is really just an excuse to prank each other (of course Luke is involved), and when Chris Rodriguez accidentally sets off a firework inside the Ares Cabin during the glorified prank war (an ‘accident’ seems like a questionable description), the children of Ares, for once in their lives, do not respond with violence.

They respond with a bet. The Hermes Cabin versus the Ares Cabin in a game of Capture the Flag. Whoever loses has last showers until the following summer. (The Ares Cabin wins and Annabeth makes sure to tease Luke every time he walks out of the showers shivering.)

Somehow, the era of betting does not end with the campers.

Mr. D bets Chiron that he can go without drinking Diet Coke for a week. Like the rest of the camp, Chiron assumes that he’s safe to take that bet. When asked what the consequences of the bet will be, Chiron just laughs and says he’s promised Mr. D that he would wear an outfit of the wine God’s choice for an entire day if he could stop drinking Diet Coke for a week.

On Sunday of that week, not a single Diet Coke can has entered the Big House, and Chiron is forced to trop around camp wearing a bright pink prom dress (Annabeth snaps a picture of the centaur with the disposable camera she stole last year, planning to cherish the memory forever). On Monday, betting is officially banned from camp, and the year’s camp bead is decided.

Annabeth’s ninth birthday is a bit bigger than last year’s celebration. She’s got more friends now and her siblings are desperate for a celebration that hasn’t come since Hannah’s shroud was burned. They smuggle in cupcakes this time, decorated with bright blue icing and little star sprinkles that taste like a mix between pure sugar and cardboard. The Athena Cabin pools its money to purchase her a new set of drafting pencils, and later that night, after ‘Happy Birthday’ has been sung and she’s staring at her new gift under weak lamplight, Annabeth can’t bring herself to get rid of the last remnant she has of Amanda. She adds the new pencils to the pouch that holds her old set and tells herself that sometimes holding onto the past is okay.

The day after her birthday, she finds a pristine, white envelope at the edge of her bunk. Before she even looks at the return address, she recognizes Frederick’s spiky handwriting and tears into the letter like it might disappear at any moment.

Annabeth , the letter starts.

I apologize for my delayed response. I was unsure if you wanted a reply from me, as your original letter wasn’t exactly conversational. I don’t mean that as any type of judgement, of course. I didn’t expect much more from you, considering you felt the need to leave.

I’m sorry that we never came looking for you, but in the end, Helen convinced me not to report you as missing. She said you obviously didn’t want to come back if you’d run away. I’m unsure if I made the right decision, but if you’re happy and safe, then as your father, I have to be happy.

The twins are doing fantastic. Bobby is headstrong and smart (he reminds me a lot of you, actually). Matthew is a charmer—quick-witted, too. They mention you sometimes. They’re curious, like all children are, and I don’t always know what to say. You are their sister, but there is a world of divide between you and them, and I’m glad they don’t have to endure what you do.

When your mother told me about you, I was young and arrogant and focused on my career more than anything else. I respected her—fell in love with her mind even more than her beauty—but I respected her as a mortal and not as a goddess. I didn’t want a child and she gave me one anyways, and I know now that I wasn’t prepared to be a father, especially not to a little girl who was so much more than mortal.

Annabeth, you were always too much for this world. You’ve always had too much of your mother to blend in, and it will make your life difficult. It already has made your life difficult, and I have contributed to that in a manner that warrants every moment you have likely spent hating me. I would apologize, but you deserve better than apologies that fix nothing of the past. You deserved more than me treating you as a burden from your mother rather than my own child.

You are my child. I’m sorry if I made you feel like you’re not. I will spend the rest of my life trying to correct my mistakes, and if you ever want to come home, know that there is a place for you. It may not be easy, but family isn’t easy—it’s worth every difficult conversation and apology and fight and reunion. You are worth it, to me.

Sincerely,

Frederick

P.S. Happy Birthday. You have likely accomplished more in your nine years than I will ever dream. You have always been and always will be a force to be reckoned with. Continue to use your mind to change the world.

Annabeth cries more that night than she ever has in her life. Caleb sits with her for a few hours, then Kelsey, but finally someone tells Luke what’s happened, and she sobs into his shoulder like he can make the whole world and all of its sadness just disappear.

She doesn’t know what to say. She doesn’t even know how she feels. 

Hating Frederick is easy. Understanding her father hurts.

Chapter Text

When the summer finally ends, Annabeth is almost glad. She finds a certain type of peace in the quiet fall season, and there’s nothing better than getting her dock back.

Fall comes and goes quickly. Luke turns sixteen and Will Solace arrives at camp just before the end of October, approaching demigods and monsters and olympians with the appropriate enthusiasm for a tiny, nine-year-old ball of energy with blonde curls and bright blue eyes. Everyone immediately assumes that the boy is a son of Apollo—he’s a poster child for Cabin Seven—until he tries his hand at archery for the first time and doesn’t come within three feet of his target. Not to mention the one time he attempts to sing at the campfire leaves Annabeth thoroughly underwhelmed. He’s just not very good at the usual Apollo kid things, so everyone just comes to the conclusion that maybe they were wrong this time, and Will Solace is not an Apollo kid.

(They are wrong. In early November, Will is working on his sword fighting skills with Annabeth when her shoe comes untied and she loses her footing, stumbling over and scraping the top layer of skin off her knee. She resigns herself to making the trek over to the Infirmary for some ambrosia when Will stops her with a gentle hand to her shoulder.

She doesn’t know why she decides to listen, but she sits down on the ground and watches as Will’s small, freckled hands gently cover the top of her wound. He stares at the spot until Annabeth feels a tingling sensation in her skin, and once he removes his hands, it’s like nothing has ever happened in the first place.

Annabeth looks at Will in amazement. The boy only shrugs.

He’s claimed by Apollo later that evening.)

Two days before New Year’s Eve, the Athena Cabin begins to plan. The final Capture the Flag game of 2002 has arrived.

“We need the Hermes Cabin,” Kelsey argues, her face illuminated by the lamplight as she stares down at a map of the forest. “If we get their numbers, we’d be able to cover this entire border.” She gestures to the line of trees along the stream, bolstered by the nods she gets from Caleb and Michael.

Emily looks unconvinced. “The Hermes Cabin is hard to corral and not all of them are sneaky. They may be more of a detriment than an asset.” Sam shrugs, like he can see her point, and Annabeth decides that she’s sat long enough in the silence.

“We’re up against the Apollo Cabin, guys.” She turns the map towards herself, ignoring the noise of protest from Caleb. “They’re going to bring numbers, and they’re going to try to ambush us, considering they aren’t the best at close-quarter fighting. If we try to look for quality over quantity, we’re going to be overpowered.” She squints at the line Kelsey had pointed out. “If we can get the Hermes Cabin, that gets us numbers and a variety of skills—all of which can distract the Apollo Cabin long enough for us to take a small team into their territory.”

“We can’t only be worried about the Apollo Cabin. What about the cabins they recruit?” Michael asks.

Annabeth tilts her head in consideration. “They’ll go for Aphrodite and Demeter—always do. I saw Lee Fletcher talking with Charlie Beckendorf the other day, which means they’ll probably have Hephaestus on their side this time.”

“Shit. That leaves us with Ares,” Kelsey grumbles.

“Look,” Annabeth starts, before her siblings’ complaints can reach an astronomical level of volume. “Obviously no one likes to work with the Ares Cabin, but if we use Hermes as the distraction on the border and split Ares between defense and the first wave of offense, we can practically walk to Apollo’s flag.” Annabeth looks over at Emily, whose face is still frustratingly unreadable. “We pick up the Dionysus Cabin just to keep them out of Apollo’s hands, and I think we’re set.”

“This is our best chance of winning, isn’t it?” Emily asks, her eyes scanning the room at large. It’s two in the morning, but the six of them are wide awake and excited.

Annabeth huffs in amusement. “This isn’t about chance. This   is how we’re going  to win.”

Kelsey clears her throat and rolls up the map in front of them. “It seems like everyone’s in agreement. We’ve got two days to recruit the Hermes, Ares, and Dionysus Cabins so we can win this shit.”

Annabeth, of course, takes Hermes.

“Who is your cabin siding with for the game?” Annabeth asks over her and Luke’s crossed blades. He rolls his eyes and pulls away, getting enough space between them that Annabeth’s knife is ineffective. (An annoying tactic that forces her to use the sword in her other hand.)

“We haven’t decided yet.”

“Not much time left. You should probably consider your offers.” She swings experimentally in his direction, and he blocks her easily. He takes a shot of his own, leaving himself open long enough for Annabeth to block with her sword and duck under his arms, swiping a shallow cut along his ribs with her knife and coming up safely at his back.

With a hiss, he turns to face her, his blade closer to his body than usual. “Well, what’s Athena’s offer?”

“A win,” Annabeth tells him with a smirk. “And Kelsey will skip the Hermes Cabin the next three times she does inspections.”

Luke’s eyes light up in interest. The Hermes Cabin houses so many people that it’s rare for them to get a good grade on cabin cleanliness. Skipping over them in inspections would set them in a much more advantageous spot in the shower rotation.

“I’ll have to talk to everyone else,” he tells her, but she can already see that she’s victorious.

They get Hermes and Dionysus easily, and even Ares comes around eventually, although according to Kelsey, she had to really work for that particular alliance.

New Year’s Eve comes and goes, and when 2003 arrives, the Athena Cabin is declared the victor of one of the shortest games of Capture the Flag that Camp Half-Blood has ever seen.

(Luke smiles at Annabeth like he knows it was all her doing. She smiles back and wonders what about him makes her stomach feel like it’s filled with butterflies.)

Annabeth decides to write Frederick back in February, when camp is quiet again and her mind is allowed to spiral in solitude.

Frederick , she begins, because she can’t call him her father. (Not yet.)/

I’m glad to hear about the twins.

I don’t blame you for letting me run. I wanted to leave and I would have resented you even more if you had dragged me back to Virginia. I needed to go—I needed to explore the world outside of that house. I needed to be more than what society expected of a seven-year-old girl.

I understand that you made mistakes, and I’m trying to forgive you for that. I’m growing, and I hope you’re doing the same.

I can’t come back, but I’d be happy to continue writing.

Sincerely,

Annabeth

“This is ridiculous,” Annabeth grumbles as Grover lays out the equipment for the ‘Wilderness Survival Course’ he’d decided to workshop with her. “I’ve survived on the streets before. I don’t see why this is necessary.”

The satyr gives her an unimpressed look. “You’ve survived on the streets of a big city or on the outskirts of a suburb,” he responds. “What happens when you aren’t able to steal a sleeping bag or hide in an abandoned building? Can you make your own food? Can you make a net?”

“I can build a shelter,” Annabeth grumbles, reaching for the rope in front of her. (She doesn’t have the skills that Grover has mentioned, but she’s managed to figure everything else out in her life. What’s so different about this?)

Grover smiles. “That’s good. We can skip that portion of the course.”

Annabeth groans.

(She may have complained, but she’s thankful that Grover took the time to teach her these skills. When she inevitably gets her own quest, they will come in handy in keeping her alive.

And much later on, she will look back at the endless week of weaving knots and, in a crumbling cavern underneath Rome, she will thank Grover for saving her life.)

April arrives with sunshine, warm weather, and new campers.

Silena Beauregard is the most noteworthy of the new additions, in Annabeth’s opinion. The girl (roughly Charlie Beckendorf’s age, she’s heard) is one of the few demigods to be claimed within days of coming to camp, although Aphrodite’s blessing of magical makeup and effortlessly windswept hair only serves to reinforce what the entire camp knows the moment Silena crosses over Half-Blood Hill. Everything about the girl is as close to perfection as her mortal blood will allow—Annabeth has seen pictures of supermodels who can’t even hold a candle to this eleven-year-old child and yet, she is kind and joyful and nothing like most of her siblings, who spend more time smiling into the mirror than smiling at others.

So yes, Annabeth respects Silena because she is good, but she also respects Silena because the daughter of Aphrodite is powerful—more so than any resident of Cabin Ten that Annabeth has ever met. She understands emotions in the infinite, clinical way that Annabeth understands everything else about life, and her ability to charmspeak (discovered when she jokingly tells Annabeth to stop beating her in sparring matches and suddenly, the daughter of Athena can’t even lift her knife) is something that hasn’t been seen from a child of Aphrodite since Marilyn Monroe’s death.

(Annabeth likes Silena, but she doesn’t exactly trust her—and not for any actions she's yet taken. She is good now, but she’s also young, and beautiful young people are far too often used as weapons by those with pretty words and ambition. If Silena was to put her faith in the wrong person, well…beauty is not everything, but beauty and power is a combination that can kill without hesitation.

Silena by herself is not dangerous, Annabeth concludes. Silena manipulated by others could be as fatal as any bow or blade.)

After what feels like years and years of begging, Chiron finally  lets the campers have a chariot race. Annabeth is elated and the first person she looks for is Luke, because they’re a team and they always win and it’s Luke, and it’s always been the two of them against the world (they’re making new constellations, sure, but they’ll always be the stars in the center, right?).

Luke is already bent over chariot design plans with Chris Rodriguez, and Annabeth slowly backs out of the Hermes Cabin before they can notice her arrival.

She’s not hurt. She’s not. She’s better than hurting over something like this.

(She feels the rejection-but-not-rejection like a stab in the chest. It’s supposed to be Luke and Annabeth until the end. Chris is not a part of the plan. Annabeth is supposed to build the world into something great, and Luke is supposed to be right there next to her.

And he’s not. If she’s being honest, it’s been a long time since Annabeth has felt like a team with the son of Hermes.

If she’s being honest, it’s been a long time since she’s felt anything but lonely.)

Annabeth teams up with Charlie Beckendorf and wins, and for the first time in her life, a victory feels hollow.

Connor and Travis Stoll arrive at the start of the summer session, dropped off in an old Ford Escape by a woman that Annabeth assumes is their mother. They trudge up Half-Blood Hill, jostling each other and laughing about some joke the taller one makes.

Annabeth has never been more sure of the godly parentage of two kids. Their mop of messy, curly brown hair hangs low over sharp blue eyes (the kind that glitter as if they could be planning a grand theft auto or just a simple prank), and each of their noses tilt upward in the same way that makes Luke’s features so defined. Even their ears have a certain elvish point to the ends, and the tilt of their lips forms a perfect sarcastic smirk that has Annabeth wondering just how long it will be before they inevitably try to cause havoc amongst the camp.

Without a doubt, Annabeth knows that these are Luke’s siblings.

(She’s proven right when, a few weeks later, Travis and Connor get caught trying to hotwire the camp van—not because of their inability to be discreet, which is known to be one of their primary performance issues, but because the hologram of the caduceus floating over their heads is bright enough to draw the attention of Chiron, who scolds them both furiously before giving the same announcement of honor that he gives to all demigods upon being claimed.)

(They’re different from Luke.

Where Luke is sharp and determined, the Stoll brothers are mischievous and playful. Luke has charm, and it makes him dangerously good at conning others. Travis and Connor are humorous and easygoing, more concerned about playing a ‘harmless’ prank than they are with being deceitful.

The true severity of their differences doesn’t become apparent to Annabeth until much, much later.)

June is hot.

It’s one of the only things Annabeth can say about the brutal month at camp, when it feels like maybe the magical weather moderation has completely failed. Everything moves just a bit slower during the day, but even the nights are miserable—the humidity gets so bad that Annabeth begins to sleep on top of her blankets just to get some relief.

The rest of her cabin mates don’t fare much better. Olivia, the newest and youngest of the Athena kids, spends all night tossing and turning, which doesn’t exactly help Annabeth find any sort of rest.

There’s just too much of everything in the air—too much humidity, too much noise. Her mind races through the constant stimulation, and after just one week of the restless nights, the dark circles under her eyes have gotten so bad that Silena kindly offers to lend her concealer to Annabeth as they lead a pair of Pegasi out from the stables.

Annabeth awkwardly denies and vows to actually get some sleep tonight, regardless of what she has to do.

Surprisingly enough, her decision seems to have actually made a difference. By ten o’clock that evening, she’s so exhausted that even Olivia’s creaking mattress isn’t enough to keep her awake.

Which is why it’s strange to be ripped so suddenly from her deep sleep to a feeling she knows all too well.

(Eight legs; cobwebs; curling irons; crying; spiders; bites; Virginia; night terrors; screams.)

She doesn’t even really see the tarantula before her body locks up and all she can do is scream. She screams and screams and screams until her throat is raw from effort and her siblings have run from the cabin in terror and someone’s arms have wrapped around her in comfort and she still screams and screams and screams because she ran away from Virginia and the spiders weren’t supposed to follow her here, too. She screams until she feels nauseous and only then does she see Connor Stoll in the corner of the cabin, looking so very small and so very fucking guilty.

Annabeth doesn’t even think. She snatches her knife from under her pillow, ignoring the protests of whoever has been trying to comfort her (Luke, she realizes later, because regardless of where they are now, he’s always come running when she’s in trouble), and charges at Connor with red in her eyes.

Luke manages to stop her before she can stab Connor’s eye out, but it’s a near miss, and he scrambles from the room like he knows it.

Annabeth is sobbing and Luke is trying to calm her down, and she doesn’t *really* want to kill Connor, but she wants to feel like she can protect herself, because she feels so, so  weak right now.

(Annabeth privately wonders what she was more scared of that night.

Was it the spider, or was it that brief moment when she thought she might be back in Virginia, screaming about spiders and being hatefully ignored? Was it the fact that for a second, Annabeth thought that Camp Half-Blood, which had always felt a bit too good to be true, was nothing more than a dream to break up the living nightmare?)

She doesn’t forgive Connor Stoll for a long time, but she reasons that he got off easy. She’ll never forgive herself for that night—that kind of weakness does not belong in a mind that creates universes and builds worlds.

It’s the weakness of the nine-year-old girl that she tries so hard to pretend she’s not.

(But Annabeth is that girl, and she will always scream at spiders, because spiders remind her of Virginia and her worst nightmares, and one day she will learn that her fear does not make her weak.)

Since Connor and Travis Stoll arrived at camp, many things have gone haywire. One thing Annabeth does not expect them to royally fuck up is the Fourth of July fireworks display.

Beckendorf (who had grown into his height in the past year at camp and had recently stopped going by his first name) and the rest of the Hephaestus Cabin spend most of June building a massive Greek trireme that would launch the fireworks without any of the campers needing to miss the actual show to light them. (Annabeth would need to get with Beckendorf soon about how it was done.)

They’re incredible—huge bursts in every color imaginable that curl into different mythological figures and even tell some of the old myths through a series of brilliant images that dance across the night sky.

And because everyone is so focused on the show, no one seems to notice the Stoll Brothers cackling to themselves at the very back of the beach.

The last firework to go off is a bright burst of red, white, and blue sparks, which is completely missed due to the sudden bright green explosion of the ship’s deck. Before the colors have even vanished from the sky, the ship is engulfed in emerald flames, and the entire camp turns around to look at the Stoll Brothers, who are practically falling over each other in laughter, not an ounce of guilt shown for blowing up the Hephaestus’s Cabin’s hard work.

Annabeth expects somebody to kill them. Even Caleb, who sits at her side, is wired with tension and staring at the pod of Hephaestus kids like they might declare war.

Instead, Beckendorf just starts laughing. It’s strange to see his usually somber facial features lit up in a smile, and it shocks everyone so much that even the Stoll Brothers stop for a moment to look at the boy in amazement.

“How…” he gasps, when his laughter finally subsides enough for words. “Did you even manage  that?”

Connor, who looks surprised that someone is asking them how rather than why they did something, launches into a detailed explanation of how they’d burrowed what was basically a shit ton of Greek fire underneath the deck of the trireme that would explode once the last firework went off. It was perfectly timed and perfectly executed and Annabeth realizes that night just how intelligent the sons of Hermes actually are.

(It’s also the start to an incredible friendship between Travis Stoll, Connor Stoll, and Charlie Beckendorf that no one quite understands—and never will.)

Frederick’s letter arrives on her tenth birthday. Again, it sits on the edge of her bunk in a pristine white envelope, and Annabeth feels like she can’t breathe.

With shaky hands, she picks it up, breaks the seal, and opens the carefully folded paper.

Annabeth,

As you probably know, Bobby and Matthew just turned four. They get bigger every day, it seems, and yet, I expect them to be more than what they are. Maybe it’s because you were more at that age. Either way, I am trying to be more present for them—to learn from the mistakes I made with you. I am trying to grow, because it is the one thing you’ve asked of me since Athena dropped you at my doorstep, and one thing is simple enough.

I understand that you have many bad memories here, but if you come back, even for a few weeks, I promise I will try to repair what I have broken. It is your choice, of course, but I want you to know that there are people here who love you. There is always a place for you in this home, because no matter how far you go, you can always call my home your home.

I love you. I’m sorry if I never told you that, but it’s true. Regardless of my stupid, immature actions, I love you because you are a part of me. You were a gift from your mother (the best gift she ever gave me, and Athena gave me so much), and all I regret in this world is that I didn’t realize your value sooner. I wish things could have happened differently.

Maybe in a different world things would have been better. However, that is not the world we live in, and so I will strive to fix my mistakes and continue to ask for your forgiveness. I will continue to ask you to come home, because Virginia has lost something precious now that you are no longer here. You are so special—special to me and special to this world.

Happy birthday, dear. I hope that you’re celebrating wherever you are.

Love,

Frederick

Annabeth writes back immediately. She can’t explain why, but there seem to be words in her mind that might disappear if she leaves them for too long.

Frederick,

It seems like it’s been so long. I can’t believe the boys are already four—it feels like they should still be sleeping quietly in their cradles.

I appreciate your apology, but you know I can’t come back. Whether or not you want me there is inconsequential. You are not the only person in that house, and I cannot put you all in danger. Regardless of everything that has happened, you mean too much to me to willingly subject you to monster attacks—and they will happen.

Maybe one day. Maybe when I’m a bit older and a bit better at protecting myself. I need to grow here for a while. This has been my home for too long and it was a safe haven in a time that I felt abandoned. I understand that you want me to come back to Virginia, but it’s just too soon.

Thank you for wishing me Happy Birthday. It means a lot.

Best,

Annabeth

Voted as the most noteworthy event of the summer, Annabeth receives her bead of a trireme engulfed in Greek fire and marks her third summer at camp.

Sam decides he’s going to visit home for a while. His mortal sister is about to graduate from preschool, and he decides that he’s tired of missing life. He promises to be back for the winter session.

Annabeth watches him go and hopes to the gods that he keeps his word.

Annabeth is ten years old when she realizes that, as a demigod, she’s never safe. Even at camp, where Thalia’s sacrifice is supposed to mark the borders of a haven for half-bloods, there is never a place where she can escape death.

It’s not supposed to happen the way it does. Their challenge is simple—a few monsters have been released into the woods. Team up and try to kill as many as possible. Whoever manages to kill the most monsters wins the game. They’ve played games like this so many times before, and so no one thinks anything of them.

(Annabeth forgets that monsters are still monsters, whether they are inside the camp or in the real world. They are still deadly and they can still hurt people. They are monsters.)

It happens so quickly. She’s teamed up with Will for this particular game, and they are carefully tracking a hellhound down when a blood curdling scream travels from the other edge of the woods.

Before Annabeth can even think, Will is already chasing the sound down, disappearing into the shrubbery and leaving the daughter of Athena to follow in his wake.

They break into the clearing just as Caleb slashes his sword through the hellhound’s neck, covering him in a layer of fine, yellow dust. He’s got an ugly gash down his right arm and when he staggers around, eyes wild and searching, he walks with a profound limp. His head looks cut up and bruised, and Annabeth tries to remember who his partner was…

Kelsey.

Annabeth understands now why his eyes were wild. She understands that overpowering need to find her sister because something feels wrong.

The quiet sounds of tears help Annabeth locate the head counselor, tucked behind a thick bush and gasping for air.

There are claw marks across her throat—three angry, bleeding lines that stain her curls and leave her eyes the hazy color of the sky before a snow storm. She’s hyperventilating, but Annabeth knows there’s no way she can be taking any air in. Her throat has been gouged out by a monster and they were supposed to be safe and they’re not and Kelsey is dying and this was supposed to be a game, gods-dammit.

Will rushes over and places sure hands around the edge of her wound, his face twisted in concentration. She can see the skin trying to knit itself back together, but just as soon as it heals, a deep breath from Kelsey rips the cut further and further, and the blood just keeps coming. This goes on for long minutes, and Annabeth doesn’t even breathe, because how can she? She stands at Caleb’s side and sees the moment where Will realizes that it’s impossible to save the girl.

He cries, and Annabeth cries, and Caleb cries, and Kelsey is crying, her tears mixed with blood, and this nineteen-year-old girl who woke up this morning and prepared to play a fucking game gasps for air until finally there is nothing left in her eyes but darkness.

Kelsey dies before Annabeth’s eyes. Kelsey dies playing a game. Kelsey dies at camp.

None of it is supposed to happen.

They burn a gray funeral shroud. Caleb cries the entire time, but Annabeth is dry-eyed. At some point, she must resign herself to the fact that this is the life of a demigod. This is what she can expect.

(Nineteen years is a lot, for a half-blood. It doesn’t make her feel any better, but she repeats it in her head.)

She doesn’t stand by Luke at the service. She stands with her siblings and holds Caleb’s hand and wishes Sam was here because he’s supposed to take over now and he’s still in Memphis and now it’s just the two of them left and they weren’t supposed to lose everyone like this.

Luke turns seventeen and it’s…difficult. The entire camp is still reeling from Kelsey’s death, and whether the campers want to admit it or not, every year that a demigod gets older increases their chances of dying tenfold. Every year of life that a demigod gets is just time stolen from the Fates.

(Every time September 25th rolls around, Annabeth gets one year closer to losing Luke. It gets harder and harder to celebrate birthdays.)

Instead of throwing a party, Luke and Annabeth curl up on the dock and talk. She doesn’t see him as often anymore (their world is growing beyond the intense bond they’d formed while on the run), but on these rare days when she knows he’s thinking about Thalia and loss and death, he looks for Annabeth. She’s come to cherish these days, because she is strong and she will build something great, but she thinks there will always be a part of her that will drop everything on Luke Castellan’s word.

“I want a quest.” Luke tosses a rock onto the lake as he speaks—it skids across the water a few times before disappearing beneath the surface.

Annabeth throws her own rock. “Why?”

Luke shrugs. “I’m tired of sitting at camp, waiting to die.” He pulls his knees towards his chest, and suddenly, Annabeth doesn’t see a teenager who’s getting closer and closer to death. She sees the fourteen-year-old boy she met in Virginia—a sad, traumatized, and bitter kid who just wanted to run away from a suffocating life. She places a hand on his shoulder, and he glances over at her with glassy eyes. “If I’m going to die, I want to do something with the time I have left.”

She can’t even reassure him. There’s a part of her that knows (there are so many things she wants to know about the world, but this is not one of those things) she will not sit next to Luke when (if) she turns seventeen. He will be long gone, because their years are numbered more than most.

They’ve both got something to prove, and that’s a dangerous game to play.

“Before we die,” Annabeth says, with an odd sort of peace. “We’re both going to get our quests.” She blinks, then leans her head on Luke’s shoulder, her feet dangling from the edge of the dock.

“You really believe that?”

“I do.”

On the last day of October, Annabeth makes the trek over to the Big House for her weekly card game with Chiron—a tradition to which they’d stuck without fail for two years now. Sometimes they play Pinochle, but recently, their games of choice have also begun to include Go-Fish and Egyptian Rat Screw (just to keep things interesting). In the same way that she cherishes the times that she and Luke hide away on the dock and ignore the rest of the world like they did before camp, she also cherishes these afternoon card games with the centaur because, as almost everything else around her changes, these days never do.

Strangely enough, though, he’s not waiting on the porch like usual, with his legs tucked into a magically-extended wheelchair and covered by an old quilt. The deck of cards sits in a lonely pile at the center of the porch table, making Annabeth wonder if Chiron had simply forgotten.

It seems unlike him, but it’s a reasonable conclusion to draw. She doesn’t think anything of walking inside the Big House and calling his name.

No one answers. The quiet farmhouse is almost ominous, and Annabeth tiptoes through the shadowy living room like the darkness might reach out and grab her if she makes too much noise. Once she reaches the first step of the staircase, she calls his name again.

Silence.

Annabeth’s eyebrows furrow and she carefully makes her way to the second floor. The same overwhelming quiet and darkness from the entrance bleeds into this space as well, the monotonous shadows only broken up by thin bands of light that creep in through the windows.

There should be someone here. If not Chiron, then at least Mr. D or Argus. There shouldn’t be this kind of suffocating nothingness.

Annabeth.

The hissing, overlapping voice comes from everywhere and nowhere. The words originate inside Annabeth’s own head, echoing around her mind and joining the erratic, heavy pound of her heart as it attempts to escape from her chest, but there’s a part of her that just…knows where to look.

She turns around, and there’s a pull down string for the attic door, gently swaying in the A/C. She can almost see green smoke pouring out of the ceiling, but she blinks and it’s gone.

This feels wrong, but it’s magnetic and she can’t help herself from walking towards the string, hypnotized by its repetitive oscillation.

Seek me out, child.

Annabeth stands underneath the string, staring up with wide eyes.

A half-blood of the eldest gods…

(She sees the green smoke seeping through the cracks in the door, and this time, she’s sure she’s not imagining things.)

Shall reach sixteen against all odds…

Her hand reaches up for the string.

“Annabeth.”

She nearly jumps from her own skin. She’s got her knife pulled out and trained on the newcomer before she can even process that it’s only Chiron, his hands held out placatingly before him. He doesn’t look surprised to see her here—there’s a sort of resignation in his eyes, like he knew this interaction would happen eventually.

Annabeth looks over her shoulder at the string, but the smoke and the voice’s magnetic pull are both gone.

“There was a voice.” She stares up at the ceiling in confusion. “It called my name.”

“What else did it say?” Chiron sounds tired, and although Annabeth isn’t looking at the centaur, she can imagine the way his shoulders droop as he speaks.

“It told me to seek it out. Then it talked about a half-blood turning sixteen.” Chiron’s sharp breath is enough to make Annabeth turn back around. Now, he’s glancing up at the attic door in mild horror as one of his hooves anxiously scuffs at the ground. “What does it mean?”

Chiron looks unsure about what to say. He opens his mouth to speak a few times, only to close it back and think for a few more long seconds. It drives Annabeth mad.

“Chiron, please. Just tell me.”

“I have a feeling you’ll figure this out whether I tell you or not,” he says, partially to himself and partially to Annabeth. She smirks, because he knows the answer to that particular question. “Very well. Let’s go outside, though.” He takes one last look at the attic door string, still swaying in a slightly unnatural breeze. “This is no place for the living.”

Chapter Text

“The words you heard were from a prophecy given long ago—one with immeasurable repercussions. Those who know of it call it the Great Prophecy.”

Annabeth nods along as Chiron deals out the cards. “There’s more to it than what I heard, right?”

“Correct.” He finishes splitting up the deck and leans back in his wheelchair. “ A half-blood of the eldest gods; shall reach sixteen against all odds; and see the world in endless sleep; the hero’s soul, cursed blade shall reap; a single choice shall end his days; Olympus to preserve or raze. ”

Annabeth has the strange sensation that spiders are running along her spine—as if the word ‘shiver’ can’t properly cover the level of dread those words bring over her. She sits up straighter and stares at Chiron with wary eyes.

“Why did it want me to hear that?”

Chiron clears his throat and looks away briefly. “The Oracle of Delphi is a mystery to even myself.”

Annabeth studies the twitch of jaw, the blink of his eye, the tap of his fingers. “But you know more than you’re telling me.”

Chiron doesn’t even attempt to deny it. He focuses his eyes on the horizon line, where the figures of each of the year-round campers can be seen going about their daily lives. “I believe you have a role to play in this prophecy, child, and I fear it isn’t going to be a role you’d like to play.” 

Annabeth thinks of the words—thinks of their meaning. The excitement is expected. The overwhelming wave of nausea is not. “I’ve always wanted a prophecy, though. I’ve always wanted my own quest.”

Chiron turns sad eyes in her direction. “This isn’t the kind of prophecy that will send you on a quest, dear girl. This is a warning for a future that may very well destroy the world as we know it.”

“And I’m meant to…help with this?”

“I can’t be sure. Prophecies are not always certain.” He plays with the corner of one of his cards. “But when you first arrived, I was sent a vision—a glimpse of the future, truly—that showed you on the precipice of disaster. Your life and your purpose as a hero is deeply intertwined with the lines of this prophecy, Annabeth.” She tries to ignore the frantic drumbeat of her heart. “I don’t know why, or how, but I can tell you that your time at camp is preparing you to meet whoever this prophecy is about.”

Annabeth knows about responsibility. She knows about fate, and she knows about purpose. She’s spent her ten years of life trying to prove herself to everyone —she’s spent ten years asking for the kind of importance that warrants the Oracle’s attention.

Now that she has it, she wonders if purpose is supposed to feel like being inside a cage and watching the bars slowly close in around her until they squeeze every bit of life from her broken body.

She can see the bars closing in around her even now, each one a different damning line of the Great Prophecy. The prophecy that killed Thalia. The prophecy that would eventually bring someone to camp whose life had been woven together with Annabeth’s long before her birth. 

(She thinks of reaping souls, cursed blades, and tearing down Olympus, and she wonders if burdens like these are the trade-off for building a legacy.)

The letter from Frederick arrives in November.

Dear Annabeth,

Please come home. I’m begging you. I don’t care about dangers. I don’t care what other people have to say. All I want is to see my daughter. Even if it’s only for a few days.

Love,

Frederick

(Annabeth thinks about danger. She thinks about the house, with its spiders. She thinks about the streets of Virginia, where she felt her fingers burn in the cold. She thinks about the woods of Eastern America, where monsters were desperate to kill her at every turn.

She thinks about camp, where Kelsey died.

Danger follows her into places that are supposed to be safe. Regardless of where Annabeth goes, death and destruction will follow. She cannot escape that. She cannot run away to grow.)

Frederick,

December 2nd. I don’t know how long I’m going to stay. 

I’ll see you soon.

Best,

Annabeth

Chiron is surprised when she tells him she’s returning home. Luke is pissed off.

“They hurt you, Annabeth. Or have you suddenly forgotten that?” he growls at her as she packs her things into a duffel bag, carefully avoiding the Powerpuff Backpack that’s collecting dust underneath her bunk.

“Oddly enough, I hadn’t forgotten it.”

“Then what the fuck are you doing? Why would you go back?”

Annabeth pauses her packing and glares at him. “Why does it matter, Luke?” she asks him calmly. “It’s not your family to reconcile with.”

His mouth contorts in a frown. “ You’re my family, Annabeth. I’m trying to look out for you.”

“I’m perfectly capable of looking out for myself,” she tells him, tossing a pair of socks into the bag like the motion can punctuate her sentence. “Besides, I’m trying to forgive my father.”

She hopes he doesn’t say anything else. She’s calm, but she’s so close to the edge of fury, and one slight wind might topple her into the abyss. (She’s spent the last month replaying the words of prophecies and letters in her mind, and her universe feels like it’s shrinking around these two things, and she can’t fucking take it anymore.)

“You don’t want to forgive—”

“ Shut the fuck up. ”

They both pause. Annabeth, because she has never heard her voice sound so cold and angry, and Luke, because there is a healthy layer of fear coating his eyes.

She speaks quietly. “You are my family, Luke. I love you beyond words, and you know that. But we are not the same.” She takes a deep breath through her nose, and grinds her teeth down to keep the next words from coming out in a scream. “You can choose to feel the way you do about your mother. I will not begrudge you that, because you have every right to be angry. But quit projecting your life and your decisions onto mine. I am choosing to reconcile with my father.” She stops for a moment, because she wants to see if he will try to cut in and get the last word like usual.

He’s uncharacteristically silent.

She continues. “I get to make that choice, Luke.”

They are silent for a long moment. Then, Luke’s eyes settle into something complex and he nods.

He watches her pack. He watches her go.

The house in Virginia, like everything else connected to the Chase family, has not changed. Its endless, dark hallways still remind Annabeth of loneliness and spiders and abandonment, and Frederick still has to work and Helen still hates her, and monsters just keep coming , and Bobby and Matthew still cry (except now they know what they’re crying about; now they cry about the hideous beasts that vanish into thin air before their eyes when their strange big sister saves the day).

In the end, it takes her two weeks to Iris Message camp, asking Argus to come pick her up from Virginia. In the end, she lasts longer than she thought she would.

Helen smiles as she leaves the house, stomping back inside to attend to Bobby and Matthew, who will likely be waking up from their naps at any time now. Frederick stands outside to wait with her, shivering in the freezing cold and looking ashamed.

“I know you tried.”

“I should’ve tried harder,” he sighs. He pulls his hands from his pocket and fiddles with the clunky piece of jewelry that adorns his right ring finger.

“What’s that?” Annabeth nods at the ring.

“My Harvard college ring,” he says, his smile fond as he thumbs at the metal. “You know, your mother was the one who helped me get into Harvard. Without her, I would have been nobody.”

“I don’t think so,” Annabeth muses. “She wouldn’t have helped you if you were nobody.”

(There’s a reason Annabeth is the only one of her siblings who has met Athena. She is special and powerful—her mother’s chosen favorite, and she has earned that, just as Frederick earned the goddess’s esteem so long ago.)

Frederick smiles down at her, and she isn’t sure whether the tears in his eyes are from any sort of emotion or just a byproduct of the brutal wind. He sniffles and glances down at the ring again before working it off his finger.

“Here.” He holds out the ring to her, and Annabeth takes it carefully, curling it between her tiny fingers like it’s a precious diamond.

“Why?”

“Because I used to think that Harvard was the thing that made me special. That’s why I wore it.” He looks up just as the camp van turns the corner, and Annabeth wishes she had more time. “Now I realize that you’re the only reason I’m special. Not some stupid ring or college degree—you.” He gives her a watery smile as Argus parks in front of the house. “I love you.”

Annabeth wants to say it back, she really does. But the first time that she tells her father that she loves him, she wants to mean it.

“I promise to write.”

Frederick nods and helps her into the van, and before she can even think, Argus is pulling off and she’s waving back to her father through the window.

(Before she reaches camp, she unties her camp necklace and drags Frederick’s ring along the string until it rests snugly against the bead depicting Thalia’s Tree.)

Sam never comes back. Annabeth tells herself that he simply decided to stay in the mortal world.

They burn a shroud at the end of the winter session and Caleb becomes the official head counselor.

(Annabeth thinks of everything she has seen and learned in the past year and she prays that she’ll never have to accept that burden, too.)

On the second night of January, Long Island is hit with the kind of storm that could reasonably be the manifestation of a child’s worst nightmare—heavy rains beat against the invisible barrier of camp, and streaks of lightning rip along the midnight sky, illuminating the whole world in an eerie, white glow.

Annabeth can’t sleep. Even without touching down on camp grounds, the weather is unimaginably loud, and she can’t shake the ominous feeling that creeps through her bones.

She’s lucky that she’s awake, really. If she’d been asleep, she would have missed the way lightning erupts across the top of the trees and shines just enough light to illuminate two figures limping their way onto the top of Half-Blood Hill.

A half-blood of the eldest gods…

The storm. The strange feeling in Annabeth’s bones. It could make sense.

Without any sense of preparation or caution, she runs from the Athena Cabin, her feet taking her towards the edge of camp with a speed she hadn’t realized that she was capable of (purpose, destiny, prophecies; they run through her head like a mantra, and she just has to know if this is the one). She skids to a stop at the bottom of the hill, her eyes stuck on the scene above.

A short, stumpy looking satyr with a nasty scowl and a brightly-colored baseball hat leads the way, his hooves picking a careful line down the slope. Following (limping, really, considering the obvious sprain in her right ankle) behind him is a girl—a foot taller than Annabeth, at the very least—with a mousy brown braid tossed over one shoulder, and narrowed dark brown eyes. She isn’t pretty in the most traditional sense, but there’s an aura about her that Annabeth sees in all demigods. It’s the energy that practically radiates their godly heritage to others, and although her small eyes and twisted sneer aren’t considered conventionally attractive qualities, the sharp slope of her nose and jawline and the proud way she carries herself is almost regal.

Before Annabeth can even make a sound (she wants to ask if this girl is it—if she’s the one in the prophecy, maybe), Chiron is galloping up behind her.

“Gleeson!” he calls out to the satyr, who looks up in relief. “You found her!”

“Of course,” the satyr—Gleeson, Annabeth assumes—grumbles. He reaches up to help his companion down the last few feet of the hill, and although she doesn’t look particularly happy about it, the girl takes his hand and sighs in relief once she’s able to take some weight off her bad leg. “Hell of a trip, though.”

“So it seems,” Chiron muses, his eyes drifting to the newcomer. “And your name, child?”

The girl tightens her jaw and tries to discreetly shift her weight; it doesn’t work. She puts too much pressure on the wrong spot, drawing a wince from the girl’s haughty features. The intimidating scowl she’d been sporting disappears as quickly as it had arrived. “Clarisse La Rue,” she grunts, her voice strained.

Clarisse La Rue. Annabeth runs the name through her head, wondering if this is the name that will eventually carry the weight of a once-in-a-millennia prophecy. It seems so…normal when held against the words of the Oracle, that for a moment, Annabeth feels in her bones that this girl couldn’t possibly be the one.

(Annabeth wonders if anyone could possibly live up to the expectations she has in her head. After all, the person that has been intertwined in her destiny by the Fates should be special , right?)

Clarisse finally seems to take note of Annabeth’s stare. She glowers down at her. “What’re you looking at, punk?”

Annabeth blinks in the face of the hostility. “You.”

Clarisse seems taken aback by Annabeth’s response. Her face goes blank for a moment before it settles back on a sneer. “Well, cut it out. It’s fucking weird.” Clarisse looks over at Chiron like she expects the centaur to say something about her language, but all he does is raise a fond eyebrow in her direction. “What is this place?”

“I already told you, kid—” Gleeson starts, but he’s cut off by Clarisse’s impatient look and a gentle raise of Chiron’s hand. He grumbles but goes silent, and Clarisse settles her eyes back on Chiron, who still looks over Annabeth’s side, his face lit up by the storm above (the storm that will never reach them, because camp might not be safe from monsters and death, but it’s certainly safe from rain ).

“You’re… special , Miss LaRue. This place is a safe haven for people like you.”

Clarisse’s eyes furrow. “People like me?”

“People like us ,” Annabeth cuts in. “Demigods, half-bloods—whatever you want to call us. Half Greek god, half mortal.” She can tell Chiron isn’t too thrilled with her takeover of his introduction speech, but she’s tired of hearing the long, drawn-out explanation of something that is quite simple. She can tell that Clarisse feels the same way.

Clarisse, who looks at her with something between caution and suspicion. “You’re a demigod? Like me?”

Annabeth nods. (She thinks Clarisse could be the one, but something doesn’t feel quite right. There isn’t a sense of understanding—the ‘ aha ’ moment Annabeth has been hoping for is infuriatingly absent. She resolves to investigate further at a later date, when it’s not the middle of the night and she can actually hear her thoughts over the sound of thunder.)

Clarisse nods back. There isn’t a truce between them—Annabeth can see the pride in this new demigod like she can see it in herself, and she knows that Clarisse has decided she won’t be liking the daughter of Athena, at least for the foreseeable future—but there’s an…understanding, of sorts.

( Is destiny an understanding?  

Annabeth runs the question over in her mind, as if the words might reveal some hidden truth if she repeats them often enough.)

The next morning at breakfast, Annabeth doesn’t bother to hide the way she stares at the new girl from the Athena table. Clarisse is sitting, isolated, at the edge of the Hermes table with the kind of glare that would make anyone think twice about looking at her, let alone talk to her.

(It seems lonely.)

Annabeth looks. If she was closer, she would talk to the new girl, too, because this is the first camper to arrive since Annabeth discovered the Great Prophecy and that feels really fucking significant, all things considered. So she looks—she looks at the girl’s mousy hair and narrowed eyes and mean countenance and wonders if Clarisse might be a child of Hades. (It would have to be a child of the ‘Big Three’—the eldest male Olympians, according to Chiron’s interpretation.)

Eventually, Caleb nudges an elbow into her side. Annabeth looks over in indignation, but he only raises an eyebrow. “You’re gonna freak the poor girl out, Annabeth. Let her eat breakfast in peace.” He gestures with his spoon back to Annabeth’s own plate.

She scowls but tries to listen to her brother, huddling back over her now-cold food and giving the new girl a reprieve from her intense scrutiny. She doesn’t tell Caleb that she’s pretty sure Clarisse doesn’t get freaked out all that easily, because if she says that, he’ll want to know why she thinks that, and then he’ll want to know how Annabeth knows Clarisse’s name, and then Annabeth will have to explain to him how she snuck out of the cabin last night to go investigate the new arrival, which doesn’t seem like a fun conversation to have with her Head Counselor.

(Annabeth sneaks one last look at Clarisse before Caleb can stop her. The new girl has gotten her wish—the rest of camp has given her a wide berth, and they try to avoid speaking in her direction at all costs—but Annabeth thinks Clarisse looks more sad than pleased about the turn of events.)

Clarisse stops her later that week, when, for once, Annabeth is not actually following the new girl around and hoping some kind of hologram will pop up above her head. She’s minding her own business and heading to meet Silena for Pegasi riding when Clarisse practically hops from the tree line and into her path.

“Hello.”

“Quit following me.”

Annabeth blinks. “You were the one following me, though.”

Clarisse blushes, like she hadn’t thought about that. To her credit, she recovers quickly, only stumbling on her first word. “W-well you did it first ! And I want you to stop, are we clear?”

Annabeth shrugs. “Sure.”

It’s Clarisse’s turn to look confused. “Wait, really?”

“I’m very clear that you want me to stop. I’m also very clear on the fact that I’m not going to stop until I get the answers I want.”

Clarisse growls. “What fucking answers?”

I need to know if you’re the one the prophecy is talking about , Annabeth almost says, but she stops herself because she’s not exactly sure she wants to tell Clarisse about the prophecy. If she is the hero mentioned in its lines, that’s much too heavy a burden to bear at her age, and if she isn’t the one Annabeth is waiting for, then there’s no need to drag her into this whole situation and make things unnecessarily complicated. The less people that know about this apocalyptic prophecy, the better.

“I’ll know when I get them,” she tells the girl instead. “Until then, I have places to be.” She shrugs and weaves around Clarisse.

Well, she attempts to.

Clarisse grabs her by the shoulder, yanking on her sleeve with a particularly rough grip.

(Annabeth doesn’t like this. It’s violent and it reminds her of Helen’s bruising fingers and she locks eyes with the other demigod and pretends like she isn’t scared out of her mind.

She’s the daughter of Athena. She doesn’t get scared. She can’t get scared. One day she will be an important part of fulfilling the Great Prophecy and it won't work if she’s afraid of every rough and thoughtless bully that crosses her path.)

She glares at Clarisse, a challenge in all but words.

“Let. Me. Go. ” This is the first time she’s been anything but courteous towards Clarisse (aside from the shameless intrusion of her privacy, but Annabeth is starting to believe that privacy in the face of the greater good is really more of a social construct than any real concern) and her sudden coldness is noted by the other girl, who doesn’t budge from her spot but does soften her grip, her eyes going wide for a moment like Annabeth has surprised her.

“Look, I don’t know what your deal is,” Clarisse whispers softly, dangerously. “But either tell me what you want or leave me the hell alone.”

Annabeth stares into dark brown eyes and considers revealing every shred of information she’s been pouring over since discovering what the Big House’s Attic hides away. She hasn’t told Luke, or Grover, or Caleb, or even Will, and she’s dying to tell someone, and maybe if she tells Clarisse, she can figure out once and for all if this girl, the one who showed up with the lightning, is actually the person with whom her destiny is intertwined.

(In the end she is afraid.

She is afraid that she’s wrong. She’s afraid that this is just Clarisse LaRue, and the object of the Great Prophecy is still out there. It might take years before they get to camp, and then what does that leave Annabeth? Years of useless waiting, never given a quest or any responsibility until someone arrives and makes her relevant to the story? Annabeth can’t fathom a world where her tale only begins with someone else’s, but the longer she waits—every second she waits, really—she feels her legacy slipping farther and farther away as the Great Prophecy looms over every decision she makes.

And what if she’s right? What if it is Clarisse? In that case, the person she’s looking for hates her, and Annabeth can’t say she feels any different. Is this what her future might look like?

She’s scared to know the truth.)

Annabeth rips her arm away, her eyes sharply narrowed in Clarisse’s direction. “ You’re the one who stopped me, remember?”

She storms off (and away from the Pegasi stable, because her mind is racing , and so are her emotions, and Annabeth just needs to be for a moment—just needs to sit in her own universe instead of being wrapped up in the universe of the real world, where she can’t carefully control and understand each tiny detail) and tries to comprehend the overwhelming anger that swells in her throat.

For once, the emotion doesn’t feel rooted in her wells of pride. It’s something much deeper—a primal, knee-jerk reaction fueled by her fear (of being wrong about Clarisse, of being right about Clarisse, of her stepmother, of her past).

This anger isn’t her usual fiery external burst, with hardened and ice-cold indignation at its core. It feels very much the opposite—the inside of her emotions is turbulent at best, but it’s as if she’s frozen over to the world, numb as her brain tries to comprehend the surge of panic.

(It had to happen eventually. A ten-year-old can’t be told that she’s a part of a world-ending, murderous, apocalyptic prophecy and continue on with her life as usual. 

There had to be a breaking point.)

She makes it to Cabin Six just before her lungs stop working properly. Her chest squeezes together and it’s like her ribs break every time she tries to drag in a breath, only to fail on the following exhale.

Her skin goes cold, but her blood is still boiling, and there’s a strange rushing sensation in her head that leaves the room spinning in circles around her.

She barely hears Caleb’s voice calling out in worry before her legs stop working, and as off-balanced as she is, she crumbles to the ground.

(She hits her head on something hard on the way down, and the world goes dark.)

(Before she truly re-enters the world of the living, Annabeth’s harsh unconsciousness fades into something like a dream.

Like a dream, because the edges are fuzzy and Annabeth can’t control what’s happening, but not a dream because she can’t quite find evidence of scrambled letters or extra fingers or even absurd additions to the storyline.

She sees a boy.

He’s roughly Annabeth’s age, and even with the dream obscuring the details, she can tell there’s something… special about his eyes. The color or the shape or maybe the content—she’s not sure. Every time she begins to catch a color or a figure from the corner of her eye, it fades with her growing focus, until the dream-world is one big blur of movement and confusion again.

So she stops focusing on his eyes. Instead, she watches his hands.

He’s drawing a picture of something (of what, she can’t tell, as with most of the details of this dream-vision), but concentrating mostly on the blue and green crayons scattered on the surface of what looks like a kitchen table. She can clearly see his smile directed down at the paper as he makes a final mark with the coloring utensil and jumps up from the table in joy.

She sees a man—possibly near her father’s age, although she can’t be for certain. He’s unhealthy and mean-tempered, no doubt attributed to the beer staining his breath.

She’s not sure how she knows that. It seems to be inherited knowledge, as if she’s absorbing the boy’s thoughts about his surroundings.

He doesn’t like the man. And rightfully so.

He’s annoyed that the boy interrupted… whatever he was doing, although Annabeth just knows it wasn’t important. He raises a hand and before it can come down, the scene before Annabeth vanishes, and she’s left in darkness once more, the boy’s identity still a mystery.

She stays in that limbo for a while, hearing muffled sounds and seeing brief flashes of light in her peripheral vision…well, not peripheral, since her eyes aren’t open—maybe somewhere in her subconscious awareness. She lets the memories of the boy wash over her, but they get farther and farther away as time passes.

She thinks of his eyes, obscured from her view by some strange film of misdirection, and thinks of how the only word that comes to mind is still special .

She entertains the idea that maybe it’s not the eyes that are special, but the boy behind them.)

(It is the first time she dreams of Percy Jackson. It will not be the last.

It is also not the last time she will forget the dream when she wakes up.)

The Infirmary is too bright.

Annabeth comes to this conclusion the first time she opens her eyes and has to immediately shut them, for fear of permanently blinding herself.

“You’re awake.”

She risks losing her vision and opens her eyes again, tilting her head towards Will’s voice at her side. He’s in his usual child-sized scrub shirt and jean shorts, paused in the middle of scribbling some kind of note on the back of his hand with a sharpie; he’s too busy staring at her in concern to write anymore.

“I’m awake.” Annabeth answers. “How long have I been out?”

“Little less than a day.” Will shrugs. “Nothing too serious, considering the situation. The edge of that drafting table certainly did a number on your head.”

Will’s words seem to wake up the injury, and an irritating flare of pain surges on the back of Annabeth’s skull, sharp and angry. She winces.

Will caps the marker and gives her a soft, apologetic smile. “Sorry. I was trying not to overdo it with the nectar until you were awake and I could measure your reaction to the dosage.” He reaches over to the bedside table and retrieves an electric blue cup, complete with a neon yellow bendy straw. “This should help.”

She takes a sip—it tastes like hot chocolate.

(A certain type of hot chocolate. It’s the slightly bitter but unmistakably real taste of the drink Thalia had concocted one night while they were on the run, just a few days before they met up with Grover. It brings her back to better times, when Luke wasn’t becoming a stranger and Thalia’s soul wasn’t eternally trapped in a magical tree, dead in all but name.

It brings her back to a time when prophecies weren’t looming over her head, always ready to remind her that her future is not her own. That her destiny is not her own. That her life is not her own.

The drink reminds her of a time when she wasn’t a pawn in a game played by the Fates. It reminds her of freedom.)

She drinks quickly, then sets the cup back on the nightstand. The aching in her head has already dropped down to a tolerable level, and she’s not anxious to risk spontaneous combustion by overdoing it with the godly beverage. Besides, Will looks like he’s got something on his mind, and Annabeth has a sinking feeling that she’ll need all her focus just to make it through this next conversation.

It takes him a few seconds, but eventually he starts talking. “Do you remember what happened?” Will asks.

Annabeth nods. “I got into a fight with Clarisse. I passed out. I ended up here.” It’s a simplified version of things, sure, but not a lie.

Will winces. “That’s not exactly it. Clarisse told me it was more of a confrontation than a fight.” He twists the marker in his hands. “Apparently you ended it pretty quick.”

“She was pissing me off.”

“Caleb told me you were hyperventilating when you got to the cabin. You wouldn’t answer him. Then you collapsed and hit your head.”

“I already told you that.”

“You told me that you passed out,” Will tells her, his freckled face twisted in disappointment. “Lying by omission is still lying, Annabeth.”

She huffs, a little sign of her irritation that thankfully doesn’t make her head pound. “It’s not that big of a deal, Will.”

“I disagree.” He leans forward in his chair, his eyes searching her for a moment before he opens his mouth to speak again. “Is this the first time you’ve had a panic attack?”

(Panic attack.

For the first time in her life, a definition doesn’t come to mind. At least, not a definition of words.

The acute and misplaced terror that she knows all to well are quick to flood her brain, providing an excellent and realistic way of defining a panic attack.

She shoves it down and away.)

“It wasn’t a panic attack.”

Will raises an eyebrow. “That doesn’t answer my question. What you experienced was undoubtedly a panic attack, whether you admit it or not.” He leans back in his seat. “I’m asking you if this is the first time it’s happened.”

“Does it matter?” Annabeth asks quietly.

Will tilts his head. “You think it doesn’t?”

“No, I’m asking you .”

“Well now I’m asking you.”

Annabeth glares at him. “You’re an asshole.”

Will smiles softly. “Just answer my first question.”

“No, I haven’t. This is the first.”

He didn’t say she had to answer truthfully. He seems to realize his mistake—seems to realize that she doesn’t plan on revealing the truth. He sighs heavily and stands from his chair, tucking his sharpie behind his ear and smiling sadly.

“In that case, I don’t think there’s any reason to worry.” He looks out the window, where the sun has started to set over the strawberry fields. “I’m going to keep you here tonight for observation, but you’ll be free to go in the morning.”

“Thanks,” Annabeth answers, her own half-hearted smile painting her face in return. He turns to go, but pauses at the edge of the curtain, like he can’t make himself leave just yet.

His head turns until she can see the side of his eye over the shoulder. “Please let me know if anything like this happens again.” He turns a bit more, and she can see most of his face now. “I just want to help.”

Annabeth smiles, but it’s a melancholy thing. “I know.”

She knows she is alone. Will slips around the curtain.

(Thankfully, Caleb doesn’t ask questions. Neither does Clarisse. The three of them remain in a blissful truce of silence that is understood more than agreed upon.

Annabeth doesn’t tell Will about how curling irons bring her back to Virginia, or how spiders seem to flatten her lungs in fear.

She certainly doesn’t tell him about how living in anticipation of the Great Prophecy’s completion makes her feel like the proverbial walls of the universe are slowly closing in around her until she suffocates on her own destiny.

Or more appropriately, she corrects herself, someone else ’s destiny that she’s apparently been born to supplicate.

She won’t tell Will about why she has panic attacks. It’s bad enough that he even knows she has them.)

January 25, 2004. The Athena Cabin begins to plan.

“We’re up against Apollo,” Annabeth announces with a grand flourish, her words punctuated by the giant map of camp unrolling onto the drafting table. “Which means that we’ve got to get Hermes if we want to have any chance of matching their numbers.” Not to mention, Annabeth’s been watching Clarisse in the arena—she demolishes every opponent she meets, and even gave Annabeth a bit of trouble last week). With Luke and the new girl on their side, they’ll be unstoppable. 

Emily snorts. “That’ll be easy. You just have to ask Luke.”

Annabeth feels her cheeks darken in a blush (an obnoxious response to an objectively stated fact, but gods , is it hard to be logical about Luke Castellan sometimes—he’s her family, after all). “We’ll still need an incentive for the rest of the cabin,” she says, moving neatly past the insinuation that Luke would do anything she asked. “Any ideas?”

“Skip them on inspection?” Michael offers.

Before Annabeth can speak, Caleb is shaking his head in frustration. “Mr. D got onto us for that last time—said it wasn’t ‘fair’, or some bullshit like that.” The head counselor rolls his eyes. “We could trade shower spots with them, but I’m pretty sure nobody here wants that.”

All five of them shudder at the thought of getting (if Annabeth knows anything of the Hermes Cabin’s cleanliness) the last showers, when the hot water is little more than a dream. It’s a silent but well-understood answer—they’ll head back to the drawing board before they give up warm showers.

“What if we set them up to get the other flag?” Olivia suggests. “It’s been a while since they led a team, and everyone knows we’ll win if we have Hermes on our side. We’re basically guaranteeing them a leadership position for the next game.”

Emily makes a doubtful noise, even as the rest of them nod along in interest. “Are we sure we want to do that, though?” she asks them. “Hermes is never an easy opponent.”

“Neither are we,” Caleb throws in. “This might be our best bet at securing them on our side.”

“And besides,” Annabeth speaks up again, “Athena’s never been scared of a little competition.”

Emily is convinced eventually, and by the next day, they each have their marks.

Ares has already been lost to Apollo (a stupid move, in Annabeth’s opinion, because it almost ensures that Ares won’t be able to actually control a team for the next game, but she won’t lower herself to trying to understand the thoughts of a cabin full of overly-aggressive meatheads), so Caleb is sent to Hephaestus, Emily to Demeter, Michael to Dionysus, and of course, Annabeth to Hermes.

She stops Luke after breakfast, pulling him away from Chris Rodriguez and towards the Canoe Lake with an air of business about her. Luke seems to realize that she won’t back down—he tells his half-brother to go on ahead and follows her without much resistance.

They assume their normal seats on the edge of the dock before Annabeth launches into the proposal.

“We’ll make sure you have the flag for the next game.”

Luke's lips twitch towards a smirk. “You can’t guarantee that.”

Annabeth scoffs. “Please. If you’re on our side, Apollo’s team doesn’t stand a chance.” She studies his face for any sign of his thoughts, and thinks she might see some agreement there. “You know I’m right.”

“You’re very sure of yourself.”

“With good reason. Athena hasn’t lost a game of Capture the Flag in years.” She raises an eyebrow in his direction. “I don’t plan to stop now.”

He’s smiling, but it fades slowly, like something has crossed his mind and taken away the joy of their interaction. She nudges his shoulder, a gesture that she hopes comes across as concerned rather than nosy.

(She’s a little bit inquisitive, sure, but mostly worried.)

His head snaps toward hers. With such a small distance between their faces, Annabeth thinks she could see straight into his soul if she just looks long enough. He swallows, but doesn’t look away.

“Do you ever feel like this stuff—Capture the Flag and all that—is just to distract us from what we really are?”

Annabeth grows somber. Luke’s voice is quiet and edged with something…new. Something beyond his years. She’s not sure how to define it. “And what are we?”

His mouth goes tight. “Pawns.” He takes a deep breath and looks away, directing his eyes back onto the water. “We make a game of war, like it doesn’t matter—like we can do it all again next month if we fail.” He drags a hand through his hair, his frustration written across every line of his face. “But that’s not how it works. When we walk outside of camp, the world is practically designed to kill us. If we mess up, we die and the gods just move on to the next one. We’re expendable to them. It doesn’t matter, and everyone here seems just fine with accepting that.”

He’s near tears, and Annabeth’s heart is beating fast, because he’s right and wrong and too emotional but also thinking too objectively. It doesn’t make sense—Annabeth likes things that make sense, she always has and she always will—but Luke and his ideas and thoughts have always been just a step outside the bounds of Annabeth’s logic.

“But you’re not,” she fills in softly.

“Of course I’m not!” he shouts, his voice breaking. “What’s the point of training and playing games and even staying at this stupid camp if I’m just gonna die anyways?”

“Everyone dies eventually, Luke.”

“ Gods , Annabeth! Do you even hear yourself?” He stares at her like he’s seeing her for the first time (and it drags on Annabeth’s heart more than she thinks she can bear). “You’re ten years old and you’ve made some kind of weird peace with dying ! Don’t you see how fucked up that is?”

(She doesn’t like when he shouts. She won’t admit it to him, but Luke is terrifying when he’s yelling at her. His face goes pale and cold and hateful, and even though she knows his rage isn’t directed at her, her heart pounds like he’s one word away from attacking her in lieu of his desired target.)

She doesn’t speak. She doesn’t think Luke wants an answer, even though she can practically see his nerves vibrating with the anticipation of a fight. It’s silent for a very long time, but she welcomes it—lets it wash over the both of them like a balm to his anger and her fear.

It’s been nearly ten minutes when she hears his voice again, hoarse and broken. “We’re kids , Annabeth. Why do we have to die?”

She doesn’t have an answer for him. They’d sat in these same spots less than a year ago and had talked about doing something with whatever life they got. They’d accepted the presence of death, but they hadn’t feared it. They’d vowed to make something of themselves—a legacy, with the little time they had.

But she can’t honestly say she doesn’t understand his change of heart. What if she dies before she gets to see her father again—if she is ripped from this world before she can learn to say I love you, too ? What if this Prophecy kills her in the end, and she never gets to build something permanent? What if her life is only useful when it ends? What if she is expendable? (What if, what if, what if…the questions threaten to drown her and she thinks of Will and panic attacks and shoves the terror down.)

It’s not fair.

None of it will ever be fair .

But from the moment Annabeth was born, she was never playing a fair game. Since she was capable of knowing , she’s known that eternal and indisputable fact.

Life isn’t fair. (But that's all that she’s got. Unfair is a useless adjective, in the end. She can either waste away and die—forgotten—or she can fight, and she can live on in the only way she knows how.)

She struggles for the right words.

“What burns bright burns out quick.”

It seems too simple, too bland to really describe the life and death and purpose of a demigod, but Annabeth thinks the simplicity is what makes it true.

Luke has a strange look on his face. “Why do we have to burn bright, then?”

They both know the answer. Annabeth's next words are, for once, unnecessary.

“It’s all we know how to do.”

Chapter Text

“Hermes is secured,” Annabeth tells Caleb later that afternoon. She doesn’t tell him about the rest of the conversation. The words spoken between herself and Luke feel private—intimate, even—and she won’t disgrace them by admitting their existence to someone so wholly on the outside.

Caleb is family, but he is not family .

(One day, Annabeth will learn that family is more than Luke, but for now, he is the other half of the universe—the only thing keeping the black hole that is Thalia’s death at bay.

One day, Annabeth will see beyond Luke, but that day is not today. She keeps his words to herself—close to her heart, where no one else can find them.)

The final day of January rolls around, and Annabeth just knows they’re going to win. Their plan is foolproof—the majority of the Hermes Cabin will stay back to guard the flag, while the Demeter and Hephaestus cabins guard the border. The Athena Cabin will act as a decoy strike team, while a small force from Hermes steals the flag unnoticed. If everyone plays their parts correctly, there’s no way this can go wrong. Hermes will get the flag, Athena will win another game of Capture the Flag, and everyone will be happy (on her team, of course).

The game begins at twelve o’clock on the dot.

With Annabeth at the helm, the Athena Cabin creeps through the Eastern edges of the woods, passing by a couple of the Hephaestus guys, who simply nod gruffly at their teammates before returning to their position with somber, focused faces. Annabeth nods back and waves her siblings forward.

They aren’t two minutes past the border when she sees a flash of movement in the trees, followed by a faint rustling that would have been imperceptible if Annabeth hadn’t known she was walking right into the Apollo Cabin’s very predictable ambush.

(It was their oldest and only tactic. They were a cabin of archers with poor close-combat skills. She just had to guess which side of the woods they’d be on.)

“We’re here,” Annabeth mutters, barely loud enough for her cabin mates to hear. “Three, two, one—”

The first arrow comes whistling out of the trees, and Annabeth barely has enough time to roll out of the way. Her teammates follow her lead, ducking away from their close formation and finding cover from the archers overhead. Different arrows rain down on them—none are potentially fatal, although even the blunted ones can hurt like a bitch if they hit the right spot. Better to avoid the volley altogether, if possible.

“We need to get them out of the trees,” she whispers to Caleb when he rolls next to her, their bodies shielded by a tiny, rocky alcove. “They’ll never bring their reinforcements to us if we’re easy pickings.”

“How do you suggest we do that?” Caleb whispers back, his voice strained. He rubs at his shoulder with a wince—he must have gotten hit in the initial attack. “We can hardly walk without getting pelted by their stupid arrows.”

Annabeth smirks and fishes her Yankees cap from her pocket. “I’ve got an idea.”

She scales the nearest tree and knocks Lee Fletcher from his post (he’s the closest to the ground, so she feels the least guilt at tossing him from a tree without warning). Dazed from the fall, Fletcher can’t find the energy to stop an invisible hand from stealing his bow right out of his hand. The only resistance Annabeth meets is a pained groan.

She hurries back to the alcove, where Caleb is waiting with wide eyes.

“Holy shit, it worked.”

Annabeth removes the cap so he can see her face. “Of course it worked. It was my idea.”

She hands him the bow and the quiver of arrows before turning back to the grove. The other archers are moving more than usual, their concern about Lee’s fall making them skittish.

Skittish enough to be seen through the branches.

“Check your three o’clock, maybe twenty feet up,” Annabeth whispers back to Caleb. She hears the stretch of the bowstring and then the arrow is whistling through the air. It hits its mark well enough—the archer shouts in pain but doesn’t lose his position. Caleb fires another into a tree maybe ten feet to the left. Once again, it hits its mark. A girl yelps loudly and stumbles, very nearly falling from her branch.

The response is immediate. Arrows rain down in their direction, but with the protection of the alcove, none hit their mark. The archers are now in an impossible situation—they’ve given up their location and they can’t do any damage to their opponents. They’re sitting ducks.

“We’ve got them,” Annabeth grins. “They’ll have to call backup now.”

The heavy footfalls of reinforcements thunder into the clearing soon after—ground reinforcements, so most likely from the Ares Cabin. They’ve got at least twenty people in the clearing now, meaning that the guard on their own flag is severely weakened.

In short, Annabeth’s plan has worked perfectly. Now, they wait for the signal to retreat.

But until then…

Caleb looks over at Annabeth like he can read her mind—which seems possible, if the devilish smirk on his face is anything to go by. “Let’s have some fun.”

The Athena Cabin charges into the fray.

The whistle pierces the air before Annabeth can even disarm her third opponent. She looks over at Caleb to see if he’s beaten her count—he’s got two lying unconscious at his feet, but his third opponent is still fresh-faced and in fighting shape.

Well, she doesn’t want to leave the margin so slim. She quickly drives the hilt of her sword into the son of Ares’s head, and he crumples to the ground.

“Retreat!” she shouts to her siblings, who quickly finish their fights before darting in the opposite direction, seeking the safety of their own territory. A confused and half-hearted cry of celebration rises up from the other team, but Annabeth pays it no mind. She wants to get back to the border in time to watch her master plan unfold.

Sure enough, they break the tree line between the territories just as the Hermes crew is coming into view, chased by a measly few archers that didn’t know quite what to do with the fleet-footed thieves that were carting the yellow flag high above their heads in triumph. Clarisse leads the way, her face twisted in determination as she leaps over the creek and into their home territory.

A cheer goes up from Athena’s team. Once again, they’ve won Capture the Flag.

(Annabeth looks at Luke and wonders if it all matters. He’s smiling, but she thinks it looks empty.)

It’s all very normal. In Clarisse’s hands, the golden flag fades to a slate gray, complete with a caduceus that shines under the midday light. The Hermes cabin is celebrating loudly, hoisting Clarisse onto their shoulders in celebration when…well, when something happens .

Annabeth nearly misses it. The gray flashes crimson for just a moment, but then the color disappears and she convinces herself it was nothing more than a trick of the light.

(It’s not.)

A few seconds later, the corner of the flag ripples. The caduceus fades. Clarisse slips from Travis and Connor’s shoulders just in time for the entire clearing to watch the flag bleed .

A vibrant scarlet slowly stains the fabric until the entire square is a bright red color that Annabeth has only ever seen boasted on the side of the Ares Cabin. The boar’s head melts into the spot the caduceus left behind, and Clarisse is left holding the standard of Cabin Five over her head.

(And it all makes sense. The incredible battle skills. The aggressive personality. The height and build and overall angry demeanor.

How had Annabeth not seen it before? Had she really been so caught up in the prophecy that she failed to miss what was right in front of her?)

Clarisse is not the child of the Great Prophecy. She is a daughter of Ares.

Annabeth doesn’t get a quest. Annabeth’s story doesn’t start. Annabeth is still unimportant.

It’s a sad realization.

(She tries to look on the bright side. At least the person who shares her destiny is not a raging asshole.)

It’s been a while since someone’s been claimed at camp. The Hermes Cabin has been filling up at an alarming rate since the end of the summer session, but Clarisse’s movement to the Ares Cabin means the sleeping bags on the floor aren’t quite so cramped anymore. It means that they can get another demigod to safety, and there will actually be enough room for them when they arrive. It’s a good thing.

Luke’s got that look, though.

It’s not enough for him. He doesn’t see Clarisse. He sees who’s left behind.

(There’s too many of them left behind.)

Annabeth knows that. She won’t begrudge him his frustration. It’s hard to watch your friends sleep on the floor because no one cares enough about them to move them somewhere else. It’s hard to be happy for the one who makes it out when you’re still knee deep in the same shit. It’s hard for Luke to see anything good when it’s just not good enough , and that’s completely understandable.

But he’s got that look. His eyes are ablaze with indignation and frustration and anger and Annabeth knows him. She knows the son of Hermes like he is a part of her own soul, and she knows that that look doesn’t mean anything good.

(It’s been more and more common in the past few months. It worries her every time, because he’s only seventeen, and seventeen-year-olds shouldn’t have so much hate in them, right? They shouldn’t look at the world around them with some sort of twisted, bitter fury, because they’re just kids.

Then again, they’re kids who are too young to die, and that’s never stopped the Fates from fucking them over before, has it? What’s a little bit of hatred in the face of inevitable death?

It still worries her.)

But it’s Luke , so maybe his eyes aren’t good right now, but Luke is good, and that’s just that.

Luke is good .

(She repeats that in the safety of her own mind until the doubt disappears.)

February comes and goes quickly. Ares doesn’t beat Athena at Capture the Flag, although Annabeth will admit it’s more of a challenge now that they’ve got Clarisse to contend with. Beckendorf turns thirteen, Clarisse turns twelve, and Silena thinks she might have a crush on Travis for a couple of days (she reports this to Annabeth during archery lessons with the same dramatic and sorrowful flair that one might adopt when informing a friend that their most beloved pet has died), which quickly evaporates when she watches him snort milk out of his nose at breakfast. Will also thinks he might like Travis (ruined by the same unfortunate snorting event), which is somehow less surprising that Silena’s crush on the son of Hermes. Annabeth is the only person he tells, and he seems nervous, but she just shrugs and tells him to get better taste. It’s twenty-nine days of laughter and maybe a bit of worry and some cold weather and nothing that can prepare her for what comes next.

March is…

It’s a difficult time. 

(Annabeth doesn’t like to think about that month.

She looks back now and realizes it was the beginning of the end.)

March begins on a Monday, and because Mondays are always terribly boring , Annabeth drags Will into the Big House just after breakfast to look for something (anything) interesting in the dozens of uninspected, clutter-filled closets that are tucked into different hallways of the large farm house.

“Are we allowed to be doing this?” Will asks doubtfully as he watches her pick the lock of one of the second-floor doors with a neon pink bobby-pin.

“We’re not not allowed to be doing this,” Annabeth reasons, her tongue poking just barely out of her mouth in concentration as she listens for the telltale sound of the lock turning. “So that’s basically permission.”

“I think your reasoning is faulty.”

There’s a soft click in the doorknob. Annabeth smiles proudly, then turns around to look at her disapproving friend. “My reasoning is never faulty.” She tucks the pin back into the front of her hair, where it had previously been holding back the shorter curls that always spill from her braid and make their way in front of her eyes. “ Now , do you want to help me look for cool shit or not?”

Will scoffs, like this is an unreasonable question. “Of course I do.”

Annabeth can’t help but grin. This is why she’s friends with the son of Apollo.

Ten minutes later, they’re knee deep in old records, discarded jackets, and (for some odd reason that Annabeth can’t really understand) almost fifty pairs of unmatched socks collecting dust in a laundry basket. The closet goes back almost six feet, but it’s narrow, so they’ve each agreed to take one end of the tiny storage room and eventually work their way to the middle.

There’s an old bookshelf along the back wall, sagging under the weight of fraying boxes and dusty books, and once she’s done a conciliatory once-over of the rest of her little area, she pulls the first box she can reach from the shelf, wincing when it drags her towards the floor with a surprising amount of force. It blows up a small cloud of dust, and Annabeth sneezes loudly, startling Will by the door.

She sends him an apologetic smile before focusing back on the box at her feet. It’s been folded shut rather than taped, so it doesn’t take much effort to undo the cardboard flaps and peer inside.

From what she can see, it’s just a bunch of paper—everything from personal letters to college acceptance notifications. In the middle of the box, there’s a sheet of loose leaf paper that’s covered from edge to edge in completed tic-tac-toe games, and not far beneath it, Annabeth finds a collection of hangman puzzles that all feature Greek curse words.

She’s still laughing to herself when she sees the word Castellan written in pretty, loopy cursive on the top-left corner of a discolored envelope. 

It’s above the return address—Westport, Connecticut.

She glances over her shoulder. Will isn’t paying her much attention, too busy fawning over the album sleeves that someone at camp must have spent years collecting. She bites her lip and turns back to the box, where her hands are cradling the letter like it’s some kind of explosive device, primed to go off and kill her at any moment.

Well, she’s not not allowed to read this.

With shaky hands, she opens the torn flap of the envelope and pulls out the folded sheet of paper, carefully opening it and smoothing out the edges.

Chiron, the letter begins.

In response to your last letter, I would like to reiterate that I am aware of the dangers that this may pose. But I have always known danger. I have seen monsters since I was a little girl and I have seen glimpses of the future since I can remember. Danger has always walked with me. I’d like to do something about it now.

I know you’re worried. Hermes is too. But if I don’t do this, what example am I setting for my son? Should I tell him to run away when things are dangerous or frightening? Should I teach him to not follow his destiny—a destiny he knows —just for the sake of safety?

I cannot do that in good conscience. I am ready for this. I have had my time with my love, and I have my child, my sweet, sweet Luke, and now I have my future ahead of me. I want to do this.

I look forward to seeing you soon.

Sincerely,

May Castellan

Annabeth blinks.

Luke’s mother wrote this. That means there was a time before she was…well, what she was now . Something happened, at it seems like it happened here at camp.

Something happened, and Chiron knows about it.

“Annabeth!” Will yells, his voice bursting with excitement. (Shit, she’s been caught, hasn’t she? She’s fucked up and shit .) She hastily folds the paper back up and stuffs it into the envelope before whipping back around, but he’s still at the other end of the storage closet holding up an old Star Wars Edition Monopoly box. 

Her heart is hammering out of her chest. The letter feels like a hundred-pound weight in her hand. (She doesn’t think she was supposed to read it.)

When Annabeth keeps staring at him with wide eyes, he shakes it for emphasis with a grin. “It’s fucking Star Wars !”

She tries for a smile, but she knows it’s half-assed. (All she can think about is May Castellan writing a letter about not being scared and then turning into the monster Annabeth had seen before they’d made it to camp, and her brain just can’t comprehend what the hell happened.) “It’s cool.”

Will’s face falls. “You’re not a Star Wars fan, are you?” He lets the box fall to his side, and he looks like Annabeth has just confirmed the worst news of his life. “But it’s a classic—”

“Will,” Annabeth stops him, because she can’t really think right now, and he’s talking very fast. “I like Star Wars,” she reassures him, and he looks so relieved that she might have laughed had it been any other day. “You just…surprised me, is all. It’s really cool, though.”

Will has relaxed again. “Isn’t it? Why would anyone leave this behind?” he muses, staring down at the box in wonder. Annabeth takes advantage of his momentary distraction to stuff the letter into her back pocket.

She’ll deal with it later.

She smiles at her friend, and this time she thinks it looks genuine. “No clue.”

Annabeth doesn’t find any more mysterious letters from May Castellan in their search, but between herself and Will, they certainly don’t leave empty handed. Will’s carefully balancing a tower of board games in his arms as Annabeth lugs an old record player (which she’s hoping can be salvaged by the Hephaestus Cabin) out of the Big House.

The letter still burns a hole in her back pocket, but she needs to look at it later, when she can be far from prying eyes and just think .

After lunch, Annabeth goes to the dock.

It’s strange to sit on the edge of the splintering wood by herself, but it’s exactly what she needs, because by the fifth time she’s read through May’s letter, she still has no idea what to do with the information she’s been given.

Because really, it’s not information. The letter raises more questions than anything.

In the end, they all come back to this: what had May Castellan wanted to do so badly that she ignored the warnings of, not one, but two different immortal beings?

Annabeth avoids Luke for the rest of the day—he notices and he doesn’t seem happy about it, which is rich coming from him, considering all the times that he’s avoided Annabeth while he’s in a mood.

But she’s not upset with him. If anything, she’s worried. All she can think about is his mother’s letter and she’s worried that she won’t be able to stop herself from asking if she sees him.

Because, gods , does she want to ask. She’s dying to know what he knows about all this—whether he remembers his mother before she changed, or if he knows that she once wrote to Chiron. Annabeth wants to know if Luke knows what in the hell this letter is talking about , because curiosity is eating away at her from the inside, and if she doesn’t get some answers soon, there’s a very real chance that Annabeth might just spontaneously combust out of frustration.

Unfortunately, for all her effort spent avoiding the son of Hermes, he still manages to corner her after the campfire.

(It’s her fault, really. She’d left her jacket at the Amphitheatre and told Caleb to go on ahead to the cabin without her. She’d forgotten just how sneaky Luke Castellan could be.)

He falls into step with her the moment she exits the terraced pit, and he throws a casual arm around her shoulders so she can’t just run away.

Damn it, she thinks to herself.

“Something’s wrong with you.”

“I’m fine.”

Luke raises an unimpressed eyebrow at her but lets her keep walking. “I didn’t ask whether something was wrong or not. I already know you’re not ‘fine’.” He smirks—that stupid, troublemaker, slightly-condescending smirk that only Luke can turn into something devilishly charming—and tilts his heads contemplatively. “What’s wrong?”

Annabeth scowls at him. She fucking hates that he understands her.

(She’s never been able to lie to Luke. Even when they were on the streets and they’d only known each other for a couple of weeks, he’d always seen right through her. It’s one of the things that makes him a good leader. It’s also what makes him so gods-damned terrifying.)

“It’s none of your business,” she huffs. It’s a lie, because it’s actually more Luke’s business than her own, and she’s just slightly convinced that she’s not supposed to know anything about this, and maybe there’s a part of her that is scared to tell Luke that she’d been snooping around in his personal life. “I just wanted to be alone today.”

Luke snorts. “Bullshit. You were with Will all morning, and I saw you with Silena and Beckendorf this afternoon.” He stops them now, maybe twenty yards out from the cabins. Annabeth casts a furtive glance and considers making a run for it. (Luke must pick up on this, because his grip on her shoulders tightens.) “You weren’t worried about being alone.”

“You sound a little stalkerish, you know,” she grumbles, glaring down at her shoes. When she looks back up, Luke’s smirk has softened into a fond smile, his blue eyes warmer than usual. They make the little ball of defensive rage in her chest melt away, and suddenly she’s exhausted and left with nothing else but the desire to tell her best friend the truth. She takes a deep breath and pulls the letter from her pocket. “If I give you something, will you promise me that you won’t be mad?”

His eyes flicker down to the folded envelope nervously. “I’ll try.”

She nods because she can’t expect much more than that. It’s Luke, after all, and he’s always been one dose of bad news away from letting his anger take control, and she’s aware that this could very well be the final straw that breaks the metaphoric camel’s back. So if he can try, that’s good enough for her.

She holds out the envelope. He takes it with careful hands.

She sees the moment he reads the return address. She sees the raw panic in his eyes as he rushes to pull out the letter inside. She sees his eyes scanning the page hungrily. She sees his anger, his sadness, his grief . She sees the way his shoulders fall when the letter ends.

She sees something shatter in his eyes—loudly and without hope for repair—when he looks back up at her.

He opens his mouth, then closes it again, like he can’t decide what to say. He opens it again, closes it again, and then the tears reach his eyes, and Annabeth wishes she’d never found that damn box of papers, because Luke is never supposed to look like this.

Luke is never supposed to be broken.

When he finally finds the right words, they come out soft and young and sad. “I don’t remember her before—when she was like this.” He holds up the letter. “I guess I always thought…” He stops speaking for a long moment, and his eyes tilt back down to the paper. “She wasn’t always a monster,” he says, and it’s quiet and full of disbelief.

There’s a part of Annabeth that wants to be indignant on behalf of May Castellan. Obviously, something had happened to her to make her like she was, and she was terrifying, yes, but Annabeth knew there was a difference between scary and monstrous.

Helen wasn’t scary, but that bitch was the worst monster Annabeth had ever met. Cyclopes were monsters. Hellhounds were monsters. Stepmothers were monsters.

Broken moms were just trying to do the right thing. May, if Annabeth is to believe the letter, was just trying to do the right thing.

But then she thinks about a young Luke, locked up in that house with a woman who had lost her mind, not knowing if there was something beyond the madness and believing that his father had abandoned him. He was scared, and she can’t blame him for that.

(If Annabeth has learned anything in ten years of life, it is that everyone has their own monsters. Annabeth’s are the things that make her feel unimportant—the things that abandon her. It is her worst nightmare and the only thing strong enough to overshadow her pride.

For Luke, they are the things that scare him. When he is scared, he feels weak. When he feels weak, he feels angry.

In Luke’s mind, his mother is the worst kind of monster. She is the one terrifying beast that he can’t kill.)

“No, she wasn’t.”

Luke doesn’t respond to her, because he doesn’t need to. He sucks in a deep breath, but the corners of his eyes go glassy, and within seconds, tears are rolling down his face in silent tracks. One of the drops slips down and hits the letter, and the noise of the contact is almost deafening between the two of them.

Annabeth doesn’t know what to do.

(Strangely enough, in this moment, as she watches her hero and best friend cry about the woman his mother once was and would never be again, Annabeth thinks about Thalia.

She would know what to do, Annabeth thinks. She would say something or do something and Luke would stop crying and everything would be fine.

But Thalia isn’t here. Annabeth is alone with Luke and he’s crying and it’s her fault because she found the letter, and she just wants him to be okay.

So she does what Thalia would do.)

Hesitantly, because she’s only guessing, and there’s a very large chance that this might make everything so much worse, she holds open her arms, and Luke only takes a second to stare at her incredulously before he’s pulling her into his own embrace, squeezing her tightly and letting tears fall into her hair.

Her thoughts still drift to Thalia. She hopes the daughter of Zeus is proud of them. They aren’t perfect (not without her), but they are trying. They’re surviving and taking care of each other and doing good things in a bad world.

(Annabeth has to believe that it will mean something someday.)

Four days pass before Hermes shows up at camp.

Annabeth is the first one to see him. Saturday evenings (between her sword-fighting work with Luke and dinner) outside of the summer session are usually spent down by the dock with one of her many books on ancient architecture, but she’d traded a border shift with Will in order to get the Apollo Cabin on their team for the next Capture the Flag, so she’s leaned up against the base of Thalia’s Tree as the sun dips below the horizon, and in the span of time it takes Annabeth to blink, the god of messengers appears in front of her.

He’s in a sharp suit, and there’s something charming about the way his dark hair is peppered through with flecks of gray. It’s an odd look to be mixed with his mischievous eyes and elvish features, but it reminds her so much of Luke that she can’t help but smile.

“Hello, Lord Hermes,” she greets the god, pushing herself to her feet and dipping her head respectfully.

The god looks amused by her greeting, as if he hadn’t expected the ten-year-old child at the border to do much more than gawk at his arrival. “Annabeth Chase. It’s lovely to see you you under more pleasant circumstances.” (Her mind drifts, just momentarily, to the house in Westport, with its Kool Aid and broken glass and burnt cookies and yelling voices. More pleasant circumstances, indeed.) “I wonder if you could help me find Chiron?”

“Of course,” she responds slowly, curiously, wondering why a god would need her help walking from the border of camp when it would be so easy for him to just appear in front of Chiron. It’s not like he can’t figure out where the centaur is at. But alas, he’s a god, so she can’t exactly say no . She shrugs one of her shoulders nonchalantly. “He’s probably in the Big House.”

She leads the way down Half-Blood Hill without looking back at Hermes. She wants to ask why he’s here (if it had been Athena, should would), but she has a feeling that her curiosity won’t be appreciated if she chooses to voice it. Not all the gods are like her mother, and if Hermes wants her to know why he’s here, he’ll certainly say so.

People turn to gawk at her as she passes with Lord Hermes following closely behind. He may be dressed like a mortal, but there’s something otherworldly about him (the same edge of ethereal beauty and magic that separates the demigods from the mortal world, as well). The campers may not know who exactly he is, but they know the man with Annabeth is important and powerful. 

(Jess from Demeter very nearly runs into a tree, but her sister, Gwen, stops her just in time. Annabeth has to try not to laugh at the girls’ astonished faces.)

Chiron must know they’re coming—he’s waiting on the porch with a strange expression on his face, as if he can’t decide whether he wants to look somber or nervous. “Hermes. This is an unexpected pleasure.” His smile is tight as he dips into a bow.

(Annabeth can’t help but think of the letter—of May Castellan.

Do the two immortals see each other and remember how they failed to save May? Do they blame each other? They’d tried to help her, but guilt likes to stick around, doesn’t it?)

Hermes looks relaxed, but Annabeth has a feeling that’s more for show than anything. He clears his throat. “I was hoping to speak to my son.”

A look passes between the two, and Chiron doesn’t ask which son. He tilts his head towards Annabeth, just slightly, but his eyes never leave the god. “Annabeth, dear. Would you mind finding Luke?” Chiron takes a deep breath. “There are some things we need to discuss.”

Annabeth nods, although neither one of the men—centaurs and gods aren’t really men, though, are they?—are looking at her.

(She thinks it bothers her.

Annabeth’s not sure , of course, because why should she be mad that two immortal, powerful beings don’t make eye contact with her while they give instructions about what is obviously a very important issue?

But the indignation that wells up in her throat, even as she leaves to go find the son of Hermes, is violently thick.

She isn’t good enough for a quest without the fated child of the prophecy, and she isn’t worthy of attention when people are focused on Luke .

She’s never good enough on her own. She’ll always be the sidekick, the helper, the second-thought.

She’s not jealous, but it bothers her.)

Finding Luke when he doesn’t want to be found has become something of a game to Annabeth.

They’ve been at camp long enough that each nook and cranny within the border has become attached to different moods and needs and seasons for the both of them. Fall is the dock together, but spring is Annabeth reading at the dock alone. Anger is Luke lying in the middle of the strawberry fields where no one can see him. Wounded pride is Annabeth hacking away at training dummies before breakfast. Focus is Luke at the border, his eyes always avoiding Thalia’s Tree.

Grief is Annabeth at the beach, her toes dug into wet sand as the waves drown out the deafening noise in her mind.

Grief is Luke sitting at the edge of the North Woods just before dark—always has been, always will be.

She doesn’t waste her time looking anywhere else. She finds him in minutes, his knees curled up to his chest and his chin resting there, eyes looking into the distance without really seeing anything.

“Your dad is here to see you.”

It gets his attention quickly, his eyes focusing sharply in just an instant. Shock, then anger, then fear, then shock again.

“Why?”

Annabeth shrugs. “Didn’t ask. He and Chiron are at the Big House.”

When Luke doesn’t move, she makes her way over next to him and drops down roughly, pulling her knees toward her to mimic his seated position. They’ve got their back to the woods, and that should be a terrifying thought, but instead it just makes Annabeth feel alive.

“I don’t want to talk to him,” Luke tells her, petulantly. His jaw has tightened furiously, like it’s taking all of his willpower to keep from blowing up.

Annabeth snorts lightly, because she really can’t help herself. “I don’t think you can tell a god ‘no’.”

“I want to, though,” he grumbles, although it sounds a bit lighter now, like Annabeth’s humor is pulling him towards the edge of mirth, as well. “Why can’t we just have normal parents who won’t smite us when we talk back?”

Annabeth smirks. “Eh, that’d be a pretty boring life. What’s the point of all this if there’s no constant threat of mortal danger?”

Luke finally laughs, his face wrinkling into smile lines for the first time in a while. It makes something skip in Annabeth’s stomach—pride and happiness all rolled into one. 

“Now, please hurry up before I get smited for not doing my job,” she tells him, and with a fond roll of his eyes, he pushes himself to his feet and turns back to look at her curiously.

“You coming?” he asks, holding out a hand to the daughter of Athena.

She smiles brightly at him, but doesn’t take his hand. “No, I think I’ll stay for a bit,” she says, then turns back to look at the quickly-darkening woods. “It’s kind of peaceful out here.”

Luke looks skeptical, but he smiles regardless. “Okay, then. I’ll see you at dinner!” He heads off with a cheerful goodbye and a spring to his step. 

Annabeth watches him go.

(It’s the first time she doesn’t take Luke’s hand when it’s offered.

Many years from now, he will come to her—changed—and offer his hand again. They’ll be on the other side of the country and he will beg her to come with him, and she will be dying to say yes. She will be one breath away from running away with him again, because wasn’t that always supposed to be their destiny?

She will think about this moment. She will think about the boy he could have been—the one he should have been—and her decision won’t be easy , but it will be clear.

She will say no, and it will be the last time he ever offers his hand to her again. Truly, it will be the last time she ever sees Luke again.

But that time is not now.

Right now, Annabeth is happy and Luke is wavering between happiness and rage like all teenagers do. Right now, they have no idea that things are about to change.)

Luke isn’t at dinner.

He doesn’t show up at the campfire, either.

Annabeth waits outside the Hermes Cabin until even her Invisibility Cap isn’t enough to throw off the suspicions of the cleaning harpies, and she returns to Cabin Six, restless and worried.

Annabeth doesn’t sleep that night.

The next morning, Annabeth is expecting Luke to show up to breakfast pale-faced and exhausted (a bit like how she felt, actually). Maybe he’ll be quiet, reserved—he usually is when someone even mentions his father, and Annabeth remembers the way he’d changed after meeting Hermes on the road. She’s preparing herself to drag the details of Luke’s meeting out of him, because that’s just how it’s always been.

She isn’t prepared to see him holding court at the Hermes Table at seven-thirty in the morning, his face cracked into a permanent grin and his shoulders relaxed.

Before Annabeth can even bring herself to question what the hell is going on, Olivia—who always gets to breakfast earlier than the rest of them—bounds up to her and Caleb, a vibrant grin on her face. “Castellan got a quest !” she squeals.

Annabeth freezes. Every bit of her. Her lungs flatten in a moment, her heart stutters to a stop, and every inch of her body turns cold.

(Will has taken it upon himself to make her a Star Wars fan in the past couple of days—ever since he found the Monopoly board. She thinks about Han Solo getting frozen in carbonite. She thinks that, aside from the general impracticality of it all, this might be what it feels like.

And it hurts.)

Before she can utter a word, Luke’s eyes flicker away from whoever he’s been focused on and he finds Annabeth, like he’s been waiting for the moment she would walk up to the dining pavilion. 

(For a second, she can see past the smile and she sees something unexplainable—unnameable, even—but so, so real. It’s vulnerable and it drifts away before she can blink.)

Still smiling, he excuses himself from the riveted crowd around him, his eyes never breaking their damn staring contest, and stumbles carefully over to Annabeth.

“Can I talk to you?” he asks softly. He doesn’t acknowledge Caleb, or any of her siblings for that matter, and as far as Annabeth knows, there’s only two of them in the camp—just she and Luke in her little universe that threatens to implode at any moment.

She thinks of Thalia. She thinks about the girl who had died to protect them.

(What had she even been protecting them from? They’re demigods—it’s their job to die eventually. Just like Thalia. Some last stand that will make people remember them for all eternity.

Annabeth wants to be remembered.

She doesn’t want to remember Luke. She wants him standing there next to her. She wants his sharp humor and his sky-blue eyes and his odd emotions and she doesn’t want him to die for glory.

That has always been Annabeth’s future—whether she lives or dies, she will have her legacy.

Luke doesn’t need a legacy. He is an entire half of Annabeth’s universe and that has to be enough.

She doesn’t know if she can survive remembering Luke Castellan.)

She nods.

It’s always the dock.

Annabeth is calmed by the water and she thinks Luke can see something in the ripples of the lake—maybe his future or his past, but whatever it is, it focuses him. It gives him enough clarity to think straight. To speak calmly.

“That’s what my dad was here for. To give me my quest.” He’s fiddling with the hem of his orange t-shirt, and she thinks that’s an odd tick for him to have picked up. She hasn’t noticed it before. “I’m supposed to steal a Golden Apple from the Garden of Hesperides.”

He looks over at Annabeth, and she belatedly realizes she hasn’t said anything since they sat down.

“It’s an honor.”

Luke frowns. “It’s already been done.”

Annabeth frowns right back at him. “By Hercules, like, a millennia ago.” She taps her fingers in an uneven rhythm against the splintered wood. “A god personally gave you a quest, Luke. That’s an honor.”

“Yeah, but—” he trails off, like he doesn’t have any more words.

Annabeth bumps her shoulder into his. “Don’t be mad just because that’s what you’ve always been, Luke,” she says, quietly, because she’s not sure if he wants to hear these words, but she thinks he needs to hear them, and maybe they will be easier to swallow if they aren’t screamed. “It’s okay if things get better. Things can get better.”

She thinks of her father—thinks of the heavy weight of his college ring against her collarbone. She thinks about the wounds in her soul that have been left behind by the deaths of those she loved (those that she loves , because it doesn’t ever truly go away), and she thinks about how the edges of those deep, deep cuts have softened and healed over time. She thinks of life at Camp Half-Blood and thinks about how hopeless things had seemed in Virginia so long ago. She thinks about panic attacks and how they seem all-encompassing until they simply aren’t anymore.

Things do get better. And even if she loses Luke, she wants him to know that things don’t just stay the same.

“You think?”

“I know.”

“I’m kind of scared.”

“So am I.” She won’t lie to him. She’s terrified. She doesn’t want to lose him the way she’d lost Thalia and Amanda. She doesn’t want to see his funeral shroud. “But you can be scared and brave, Luke. If anyone can do that, it’s you.”

They don’t speak and Annabeth doesn’t look at him, but she can feel his eyes drilling into the side of her head—thankful and happy.

And if Luke is happy, Annabeth will gladly shove every fear about his death back where it came from. She won’t mess this up for him.

Annabeth knows that she can’t leave camp—at least, not yet . She knows Chiron is right. She knows, in her bones, that she’s waiting on someone, and until that someone is here, Annabeth’s life is within the borders of Camp Half-Blood.

But Luke…

Luke doesn’t know that. She hasn’t told a single soul about the green smoke and the suffocating destiny and the conversation she’d had over a card game. No one else knows why Annabeth has to remain at camp, training and training and training and wishing until someone makes her fucking relevant.

(She’s not angry. She’s just frustrated .)

He doesn’t know a damn thing about Fate trapping Annabeth in Long Island, and still, when faced with the decision of who to bring with him on his quest, he asks Chris Rodriguez first. Chris, who hasn’t done anything more physically strenuous outside of camp than changing his mom’s flat tire. Chris, who has never killed an empousa with just a dagger and a fierce recklessness, the only thoughts on his mind to protect Luke from danger. Chris, who has never met Thalia. Chris, who can’t possibly understand sacrifice and protecting those you love in the way that Luke does.

Chris, who is not Annabeth.

Of course, the other son of Hermes readily agrees. Annabeth smiles and claps with everyone else, and carefully ignores the curious glances being sent her way during meals and campfires.

(Everyone had thought Luke would ask her. She’d thought so, too.

Apparently, Annabeth can be wrong.)

“You’re upset with me.”

Luke jabs his sword in her direction experimentally, but she meets it with an angry onslaught of strikes—they aren’t very clean, but they come quickly, and Luke’s blade moves in a blur to block her.

“A keen observation,” she hisses, putting emphasis on a wide upward slash that is woefully sloppy and should end with her ass on the dirt floor of the arena. Instead, Luke moves out of the way and lets her stumble forward, patiently twirling his sword until she spins back around to face him. He’s toying with her—the absolute ass —like she’s not worth the focus or energy he usually puts forth into sparring. She narrows her eyes and feels everything sharpen—her brain, her sight, her muscles. This time, her quick volley of strikes is tighter and cleaner, forcing Luke back towards the opposite side of the arena and into a more defensive position. “Congratulations. I know those are rare for you.”

Luke rolls his eyes, but she hasn’t pissed him off yet. “What’s wrong?”

Annabeth scoffs, and gives the sword in her left hand a break for just a moment as she swipes at his ribs with her dagger. He jumps out of the way just in time, and looks at her with a startled expression. “You’re leaving in two days.”

He raises an eyebrow and swipes low, forcing a retreat that gives him enough time to pull away from the wall. They go through a quick pattern of steps that bring them to the center of the arena before he speaks.

“Yeah…I know,” he says, slowly, like he’s not following her logic. It makes her want to swing for his head—he’s obviously not using the brain up there, so what’s the point of him having one? She takes a deep breath, willing her irritation to subside, before carefully jabbing her sword towards his exposed arm. She’s hunting for weaknesses—like Luke had taught her to do when he first gave her the dagger—but he seems to expect it. He uses the movement to his advantage, twisting his own blade until her sword topples from her hand with a sharp burst of pain in her wrist.

She winces and pulls away, glaring angrily at the smirk that’s crossed his face.

( Gods , he’s so fucking annoying. So fucking cocky. So fucking proud of himself.

So fucking prepared to leave Annabeth behind.

So fucking ready to do the one thing he promised he’d never do.)

Fine. She can fight with just her dagger. She’s killed hundreds of monsters with just this blade. Disarming this asshole will be no different.

With just the dagger in her hand, she stops trying to fight like Luke. His sword is a crutch—he can’t fight in close quarters without leaving parts of himself vulnerable, and the weight of it makes him slow to react (slower than Annabeth, at least). She pauses for a moment and thinks of her mother.

Use your speed. You’re small and you work well with close combat—that’s rare and deadly. Be faster than your opponent. Don’t let the fight go on for longer than it needs to.

She pauses and considers Luke’s stance. He’s still open and relaxed—he thinks he’s beat Annabeth with the loss of her sword. It’s another miscalculation on his part. He thinks everyone wins like he does.

Block the strike. Elbow to the kidney. Swipe across the ribs. Heel to his toe. Swipe across the back of the knee. Kick to the back.

She can see the movements play out just seconds before they happen.

(Annabeth is right. She’s always right, even if Luke fucking Castellan doesn’t see that.)

She stands over his collapsed form and can’t even bring herself to smile. He groans and rolls over to face her.

“Do you yield?” she asks gruffly.

Luke looks shocked for just a moment before a breathy chuckle escapes him, followed by a wince. He clutches at his knee on instinct, and Annabeth has to ignore the twinge of guilt she feels. He deserved it , she reminds herself.

“Yeah, I yield,” he sighs. “Gods-damn, Annabeth. I forgot how brutal you can be,” he says softly, laughter and discomfort in equal measures tracing the edge of his words.

Her jaw tightens. “I’m a lot better in a fight than Rodriguez, that’s for sure.”

Luke’s brow furrows for a short moment, and Annabeth worries that she might have to spell it out for him. Then, his mouth opens in a small ‘o’, and his eyes light up in recognition.

“Annabeth…” he starts, his voice soft and pitying, and if he doesn’t shut up right fucking now , she might just finish the job she started when she put him on the ground.

“ No. You don’t get to explain it away Luke.” She sheathes her dagger and crosses her arms over her chest. “You leave in two fucking days for your quest, and the only person you’ve asked to go with you is Chris Rodriguez!” She studies his face for any hint of emotion, but he’s carefully schooled his features into a blank slate. “Beyond the fact that you’re a fucking dumbass for picking someone like him when I am right here , I really didn’t think you were stupid enough to just ignore the rule of three!”

Because, truly, she thinks she could have swallowed the indignation of not being asked on his quest if he wasn’t already planning a blatant disregard for sacred tradition.

(Didn’t he see what happened to him and Annabeth when they lost Thalia? Doesn’t he realize that bad things happen when two people try to do a three-person job?)

Luke takes a deep breath. “I haven’t asked anyone else because I can’t think of anyone else I trust to go with me.”

Never mind, Annabeth thinks. It still hurts.

“No one you trust —”

“I can’t ask you, Annabeth!” he cuts her off. “Chris…he’s my brother, yes, but he’s not you . If I lost him on this quest, I could deal with it. It would hurt, but it wouldn’t break me.” He pauses and meets her eyes with purpose, blue locking onto gray and refusing to let go. “If you died on my quest because I asked you to go…” his voice breaks. “I already lost Thals. I can’t lose you too.”

Annabeth’s heart lurches to the side. “Demigods die every day, Luke…”

“Yeah, but I’m not all that interested in speeding up the process.” His head tilts to the side. “I know you would die to protect me. I’d do the same thing for you. I just don’t want to give you the chance.”

Annabeth’s shoulders droop, because she can’t find it in herself to stay mad at him. She’s never been able to stay mad at him.

“It’s going to happen one day. You can’t always protect me.”

He smiles softly. “But I can right now. So I will.”

(She’ll wonder later if he actually meant that. It seems hard to reconcile the boy who had begged her not to risk her life with the man who would eventually betray her.)

Friday arrives too soon.

Annabeth sees it begin from her bunk in cabin six—she sees the neon green numbers of Olivia’s alarm clock flashing into the room. She watches as eleven-fifty-nine turns to twelve, and suddenly, it’s the day Luke leaves camp.

Suddenly, it’s the day that she’ll have to let go of the last person she can truly call her family and accept that she might never see him again.

Twelve o’clock shatters Annabeth’s heart into a thousand pieces, and she picks each of them up and painstakingly glues them back together until the clock reads five-thirty and Annabeth darts from her bed, racing to Half-Blood Hill with bleary eyes and a pounding heart.

(There’s a chill in the early-March air. If Annabeth’s brain had been able to focus on anything other than Luke, she might have wrapped her arms around herself to provide some modicum of warmth. Instead, she runs with bare feet and a thin t-shirt and doesn’t even notice the cold.)

She makes it to the edge of camp before anyone else arrives. For a moment, she worries that she’s missed him—worries that she hadn’t got to say her goodbyes.

(She doesn’t know how she’s going to say goodbye to someone like Luke. She doesn’t know if her heart can stand it.)

Then Annabeth thinks about the schedule that she’s so carefully memorized. Luke Castellan is leaving camp at five-forty-five on Friday morning, and will head south before turning his sights to the western reaches of the continental United States. It is not yet five-forty-five. She hasn’t missed him.

Instead, she climbs her way to the top of the hill and takes a seat between two of the gnarled roots protruding from the ground beneath Thalia’s tree. She sits and leans back against the rough bark and thinks about how she’d been sitting in this exact spot when Lord Hermes had arrived last week.

When everything had changed.

She can see the entirety of camp from her position, and even though the grounds are still covered in a thick blanket of darkness, there’s a gray light coming from the blurry horizon line that reveals the barren shadows of different buildings in camp—the ring of cabins, the dining pavilion, the amphitheater, the Big House. It’s quiet and still and it soothes the racing in Annabeth’s mind for a moment.

For a moment, she thinks she hears Thalia’s voice, seeping from the tree in comforting whispers.

He needs this, the voice reminds her. We need to be strong for him.

“You’re not really here. I have to be strong for him, not you.” Annabeth doesn’t know why she’s entertaining the voices in her head by responding out loud, but she thinks it’s because it makes it a bit easier—being lonely, that is. If she speaks out loud, she can convince herself that Thalia isn’t actually dead. Under the cover of darkness, no one has to know that Annabeth has always been, and will always be, alone with her cruel, cruel thoughts.

You don’t think I was strong?

“I think you were strong,” Annabeth corrects Thalia (herself). “You’re dead now, though.”

I can still be strong. I can still know what’s best for my family. Thalia’s tree-voice is oh so soft as she continues.

“Thals. You’ve already left. Now he’s leaving.” Annabeth swallows painfully. “What if he doesn’t come back?”

He will, Thalia says, except Annabeth knows that’s not Thalia anymore—knows it’s just wishful thinking. For all of her bravery and brashness, the daughter of Zeus had never been an optimist. If Thalia was still alive, she’d be the one sitting against this tree, worried out of her mind as Annabeth attempted to assuage each and every fear.

She knows this is just her own mind speaking to her, and her own mind convincing her that speaking back is a good idea.

But damn does it hurt to hear these reassurances and be expected to believe them.

“I’m not talking to you anymore,” Annabeth grumbles under her breath. She crosses her arms over her chest like a petulant child, but no one can see her, so she doesn’t feel too terribly about it.

She can almost see her imagination-Thalia’s smirk. You just did.

If Thalia had been alive she would have laughed—the full-bodied, joyful sound that Annabeth couldn’t help but join in on. If Thalia had been alive, Annabeth would have been happy in this moment, even though Thalia used stupid fucking jokes like that way too often.

But Thalia isn’t alive, and Annabeth does not laugh. Annabeth sits alone, in the dark, and waits for Luke to leave.

He arrives a few minutes later, and there’s just enough light in the sky for Annabeth to see the outline of him as he makes it to the top of the hill, Chris close behind him.

“Are you ready?” Annabeth asks into the space between them—too much space, she thinks. The words startle Chris, who nearly slips as he takes the last few steps up the steep incline of Half-Blood Hill, but Luke doesn’t even flinch at her words. As if he’d known she was there.

“Yes.” The answer is simple, confident.

She’s not sure whether she mourns that single syllable or rejoices with the certainty of it.

“Gods- damn Chase, warn a guy next time,” Chris grumbles his response. Annabeth barely catches herself before she can remind him that there might not be a next time.

Words like that don’t have any place here. It’s too soon. It’s too late.

They’re leaving. That’s the only thing Annabeth knows anymore.

Luke might never come back.

“Go wait outside the border,” Luke orders his brother roughly, like he can sense the path that Annabeth’s thoughts have taken. “I’ll be there in a minute.”

“But—”

Luke cuts him off with an irritated look that Annabeth can see, even with the limited visibility. “Stay on guard. Keep your sword up. You’ll be fine.”

Chris looks like he’s about to argue again, before seemingly thinking better of it and stomping off instead, his growling and whining following him until he disappears over the crest of the hill.

“He’s pleasant this morning,” Annabeth drawls coldly. She may have forgiven Luke for not inviting her on the quest, but she thinks there will always be a part of her that is…well, irked by Chris Rodriguez.

Luke snorts. “He’s tired.”

Silence falls again.

With every passing second, the sky lightens, and maybe Annabeth doesn’t speak because if this is the last time she ever sees Luke Castellan’s face, she wants to see it in all its prideful, sharp, emotional glory. She wants to see it under the light of day so she can memorize it in its finality—so she can keep an image of it in her mind.

She never got to do that with Thalia.

“I shouldn’t be gone long.” Luke’s words are whispered, like he’s trying to hide them from the rest of the world, like he’s trying to keep them safe from prying eyes and listening ears. The right side of his face is ensconced in shadows, but she’s just able to see the planes and edges of the left side of his head, and her eyes fixate on the way the corner of his mouth twitches as he speaks, like he can’t decide whether he wants to smile or frown. His eyes are swimming with emotion, a mix of bravery and fear that is so evident yet so confusing for Annabeth.

Maybe it’s Luke. Maybe he’s the confusing part.

“Come back.” It’s not a request. It’s not a plea. It’s a fucking order because if Luke doesn’t come back to Camp Half-Blood…

Annabeth can’t put words to that possibility. She won’t put words to it. She won’t even give the Fates the idea.

Luke smiles gently. “I’ll try.”

Maybe it should make her feel better that he won’t lie to her. He can’t promise anything about his survival—they’re demigods, after all. And it’s always been a source of comfort to Annabeth that Luke is one of the last people left in this world who has never, who will never, lie to her.

But right now, she doesn’t want him to tell the truth. She just wants a promise from him.

She’s on her feet before Luke can even blink, and in the next moment, she’s got him wrapped in a fierce hug, her bony arms digging into his ribs like that might keep him from dying. He latches onto her just as desperately, and she wishes she never had to leave this spot, because they’re safe here, and they’re missing someone, but they’re finally safe.

She’s not ashamed of the tears running down her face, because it’s Luke, and she’s not sure that she can feel anything like shame around someone so intrinsically woven into her own being. So she buries her face in his bright orange shirt and says, “That’s bullshit. You are coming back here.”

To me, she almost adds, but that seems like she’s asking too much. The Fates are barely fair—she doesn’t expect them to be kind, as well.

Luke clears his throat heavily, and Annabeth wonders if she’s not the only one being overwhelmed by her emotions. But then his words slip out, quiet and rumbled against the top of Annabeth’s head.

“Do or do not. There is no try.”

And, as much as Annabeth’s fear is threatening to suffocate her from the inside out, she laughs , clear and bright because—

“Did you just quote Star Wars?”

Luke’s chest flutters in an answering giggle. “Maybe.”

“You’re such a nerd,” she snickers, pulling back and wiping her eyes, pretending like she doesn’t notice him doing the exact same thing.

Then the laughter stops, but the smiles are still there, and gray meets blue, and the rest of the world comes to a halt around them.

Annabeth looks into Luke’s eyes and wonders what if? What if Thalia hadn’t died? What if Annabeth wasn’t all knotted up with this Great Prophecy? What if she and Luke hadn’t been forced to bear the weight of seven years between them, shoving them into entirely different life experiences while trying to remain a family? What if things had been easier?

But Annabeth thinks of a spring in Virginia. She thinks of the knife sheathed at her hip and remembers the promise that came with it.

They didn’t need easy. She and Luke were a family—two people that had found each other because and in spite of all the bad, and Annabeth can’t bring herself to wish for anything else.

“Be careful.”

Luke nods, and Annabeth watches as he slips over the hill.

She watches until two figures slip into the woods, their shadows eaten up by the dark tree line and the radiant sunrise.

She watches until the tears are done spilling down her face.

Chapter Text

For the first week, Annabeth doesn’t leave the cabin.

Caleb brings her food once he realizes that she plans to hole herself up indefinitely, but she doesn’t remember taking more than a few bites of anything as she painstakingly pores over every book and blueprint on the shelves.

She starts with the dictionary.

(Zenith; noun; the time at which something is most powerful or successful; the highest point reached by a celestial or other object; opposite of nadir; Annabeth wonders if Luke will stay alive long enough to reach his zenith. Maybe he already did—living wild and free and feral on the streets with Thalia and Annabeth, fighting monsters and stealing little moments of joy from a cruel world. Maybe the world around him now is just dragging him closer and closer to the end.

Vermillion; noun; a brilliant red pigment made from mercury sulfide; they don’t have the blood of the gods—golden and infinite. Luke’s blood is red—vermillion—and mortal and precious, and Annabeth can’t breathe when she thinks about that blood ever seeing the light of day.

Quixotic; adjective; exceedingly idealistic; unrealistic and impractical; was hoping for Luke’s return just some sort of quixotic dream? Was Annabeth destined to be heartbroken when glory and legacy just turned out to be the bait for murderous monsters that promised death for the gods’ entertainment?

Jejune; adjective; naive, simplistic, and superficial; dry and uninteresting; Annabeth won’t admit it, but as much as losing Luke terrifies her, she thinks she would rather carry on every day, lost and grieving his death, than she would bearing his return to camp if he became someone new along the way—someone who saw her as a jejune fixture of his past. She doesn’t know what would be worse. To lose him or to be forgotten by him. Both feel too real.

Oxymoron; noun; a figure of speech in which apparently contradictory terms appear in conjunction; maybe she and Luke are a real-life oxymoron, of a sort. Maybe that’s why they can never truly find peace or happiness. Maybe they were never meant to be next to each other in the first place. Maybe they’re both stars and they both burn too bright, and one day, they’ll destroy each other from trying to do the impossible. Maybe staying together, maybe being a family, was never in the cards.

Capricious; adjective; given to sudden and unaccountable changes of mood or behavior; survival for a half-blood while on a quest was capricious at best. Annabeth knows with bone-deep certainty. It hurts, but it’s real, and the pain is better than not knowing, she thinks.

Esoteric; adjective; intended for or likely to be understood by only a small number of people with a specialized knowledge or interest; Annabeth knows her mind, her words, her personality, her very soul are beyond mortality. Her body might be able to die, but the things inside of her are beyond death. An esoteric existence that Annabeth has only truly shared with a few people. Thalia had been one. She was dead. Luke is the other. He’s well on his way to following the daughter of Zeus to a place that Annabeth cannot follow. Maybe their deaths are her fault. Maybe she’s a curse—a promise of death for anyone who gets too close.

The words swim in her head. She doesn’t eat. She tries not to think about Luke.)

She makes it through an entire textbook on Advanced Differential Equations before Caleb comes to sit next to her.

(He’s worried. His eyes are crinkled in the corner, his eyebrows furrowed, his mouth tucked down, and yet Annabeth can’t feel that worry, that emotion, beyond the knowledge that it’s there.

It feels like the house in Virginia. It feels like seeing Helen’s rage, seeing Frederick’s indifference, and being wholly unable to understand it. Wholly unable to connect to another mind.

Is this to be her life without Luke, without her bridge to emotion and empathy and humanity? This numb, clinical approach to the world?

She would be scared if her chest felt like anything but an empty shell, ribs curled right around gray, lifeless organs.)

“Are you okay?”

She blinks at him, at the question.

(How to respond? Does he already know that she’s not, not, okay? Can she lie? Or is she supposed to tell the truth?

How to explain losing a part of yourself without ever losing anything at all? How to put into words something that Annabeth cannot connect to?

Words fail her.)

“I—I’m—It’s…” she starts. Then she stops. There are no words for what she feels because Annabeth feels nothing .

Whispers of emotion flicker then disappear, leaving her hollow and indifferent.

She wonders if this is how Frederick felt about her. Well, he should be proud. Annabeth learned and perfected his game. He didn’t care about his daughter. Annabeth couldn’t give a shit about the world. Not because of its failures, but because she’s lost the last tether to mortality that she had left.

(She tries to remember that she hasn’t lost him yet. She tries not to remember that there’s a 1 in 4 chance that a demigod will make it back from a quest alive.)

When Annabeth doesn’t speak, doesn’t even allow her eyes to refocus as they drift, Caleb leaves, sighing heavily as he goes.

She doesn’t watch him leave.

She finally ventures from Cabin Six on the following Sunday.

Camp is…bright. There’s color and sunshine and noise and it feels like a riptide, pulling Annabeth’s head under wave after wave of anxiety until she’s drowning in her own overstimulation. The orange shirts are garish after all this time spent looking at black and white pages, but when she looks down at her own clothes—an overly-large camp shirt that Luke had passed down to her when he grew out of it and black gym shorts—they seem monotone and dull, like the small bubble around Annabeth has turned into a shadowy grayscale.

She almost walks back inside.

“Nope!” Will chirps happily, appearing out of fucking nowhere and latching onto Annabeth’s elbow before she can fully turn back around. She feels the weight of his small fingers digging into her skin, careful but unrelenting, and she doesn’t flinch away. Even though she wants to. “You’re going to join us here, in the world of the living.”

The world of the living. The world without Luke. Annabeth doesn’t like that world.

But she doesn’t really have the energy to protest. Her brain is moving lightning fast as always, but her mouth is moving at the speed of the rest of her malnourished body, which has spent the last several days either hunched over a book or curled up in her bunk. She’s groggy and slow and Will has no trouble dragging her away from the circle of cabins, steadfastly ignoring the rest of the campers (who watch them, who watch Annabeth , with poorly-concealed curiosity) as he makes his way to the Big House.

There’s no one on the shady porch this morning, but even if there had been, Annabeth doesn’t think Will would have given them the time of day as he leads her straight inside and to the Infirmary.

“Sit,” he orders, pushing her towards one of the cots with nothing more than a stern look and a disappointed frown. She follows the instruction and watches quietly as he putters around the room, grabbing things from shelves and boxes until he stumbles back over, his arms full. He drops down onto the foot of the bed rather unceremoniously before letting the load of medical supplies spill into the space between them. Annabeth raises her eyebrows.

“What’s this?” Her voice comes out in a rasp, dragging and painful as she stretches her vocal cords for what is essentially the first time in a week.

Will takes notice, and he doesn’t look too thrilled about it. His lips thin as he takes a deep breath. “You’ve been holed up in that cabin for days. We haven’t seen you. You haven’t been eating.” He fits her with an unimpressed look. “The only conclusion I can come to is that you’re gravely injured and in need of dire medical assistance.”

Annabeth feels a flicker of something in her chest. A spark of annoyance, at the obvious sarcasm, but even the negative emotion has her heart rattling. It’s the closest she’s come to actually interacting with the world around her in days—the closest she’s come to being more than an outside observer of her own existence. 

Maybe Will can read that on her face. The corner of his lips flick up.

“I’m fine,” she answers in response. “No patching-up needed, I promise.”

Will is not convinced by her flimsy argument. “Bullshit. You’re spiraling, Annabeth.”

There it is again. A spark, like a flint skipping and sputtering out, but so, so close to lighting a flame. Usually, she’d be pissed at Will for daring to comment on her emotional state, and she can feel the ghost of that tapping on her shoulder, like it’s daring her to just turn around and acknowledge it.

But she can’t find it in herself to move. She lets it come and lets it go and blinks at the son of Apollo with wide eyes.

“He’s gone.”

The words slip out of her, and she can’t take them back. Will’s annoyance flickers and disappears, nothing left behind but some quiet sorrow.

And the emotion in Annabeth builds. It builds, and it builds, and it builds, and it waits because she doesn’t understand it, but it’s there —

“He’s going to be okay.”

“ You don’t know that! ” Annabeth screams, and the flood of fear, anger, annoyance, rage, is infinite, overwhelming. Everything that has been barred from her since Luke walked away from her last week. It washes over her now, merciless, and Annabeth just tries to keep herself from getting swept away. “You don’t know that,” she repeats, and it’s a quieter thing this time.

Infinitely more broken.

Annabeth knows, feels it , in this very moment, that she would give anything, everything , to save Luke. She wouldn’t even question it. But how can she be anything but lost when she simply can’t save him?

There’s nothing Annabeth can do at camp. She doesn’t know where Luke is. She doesn’t even know if he’s dead or alive. She knows nothing . She knows nothing, and yet there is still this overwhelming burning inside of Annabeth—a torture of the cruelest kind—as she just thinks about losing someone so precious to her.

One more thing she’s not good enough to fix. One more thing she’s not good enough to save. She’d saved herself from that house and had gone nowhere until Luke and Thalia found her. Without them…without them she would have been left to a fate worse than death. Isolated, homeless, and unaware of what she’d been missing. Unsure of how to love, how to feel.

How does she comprehend a world where those two people—her fucking heroes —are dead?

“He’s gone,” Annabeth says again, and this time, Will doesn’t try to correct her. He just leans over the bandages and pain medications and wraps his arms around her.

It’s not like the embrace she and Luke had shared before he left. No, there’s not enough history between Annabeth and Will, who are good friends, but not family . This hug is not a lifeline. It’s just a hug, because Will always wants to help, and sometimes words can’t help. Sometimes medicine doesn’t heal.

Sometimes, all he can do is wrap his arms around someone and remind them that the hell they are walking through is not a solitary path. (Even if it is.)

Annabeth doesn’t shy away from the hug. She wraps her arms around his shoulders and tries not to cry.

After that Sunday, it’s as if her friends have developed an Annabeth Schedule. Caleb makes sure she’s up and dressed every morning for breakfast, his watchful eyes piercing into her every time she feels herself shying away from the outside world.

Grover latches onto her after that, dragging her to different spots around camp as he works on a miscellaneous collection of skills—everything from learning to play the reed pipes to keeping up his basket-weaving  abilities, something that Annabeth can’t see the practicality behind, despite the fact that her hands fly over the strips of pliable wood, looping them into intricate patterns like she’d been born to do such things. She voices these thoughts to the satyr, who just smiles and tells her that sometimes something can be valued for its beauty and practicality. She’s not sure she agrees, but Grover is so… happy to be doing all of these little projects that Annabeth finds herself smiling anyways.

At lunch, she’s surrounded by her siblings. Once the meal is over, she finds herself in the company of either Silena or Beckendorf, who are both peaceful in their own remarkably different ways. The daughter of Aphrodite spends hours braiding Annabeth’s curls, finishing some intricate style only to immediately undo it and start again. She talks to Annabeth about camp drama and boys and her odd friendship with Clarisse, who she claims is not actually as awful as everyone makes her out to be. If she’s with Beckendorf, they’re down at the forge, and Annabeth learns to make weapons that are both beautiful and deadly. She listens to him tell the stories of his childhood—his stepfather was a good man who’d passed away from cancer a few years back, leaving a steep hospital debt and a broken-hearted widow. Beckendorf’s mom was a teacher, but her dream was to be an artist, and he got this sad look in his eye whenever he talked about her, like he was guilty about the way things turned out. It’s soothing to Annabeth to hear someone be so honest about their past.

Before dinner, Will always finds her, and he’s the one who always tries to make her talk. He asks her question after question, patiently enduring either clipped answers or simple silence until, after a couple of weeks, she tries to give some kind of meaningful response to his many questions about Star Wars, history, and architecture. The sparks of feelings turn into candlelight, which turn into a vulnerable and vibrant open flame. The jagged edges of the bridge between her mind and the rest of the world—the bridge snapped in half by Luke’s departure—starts to rebuild itself, and it’s not easy, but she can make it from one side to the other without plummeting into the chasm below.

She’s not whole, but she’s no longer hollow , and even if Luke doesn’t come back, (she’s trying not to think like that, but sometimes the thoughts just slip away from her) she thinks she might be able to make it. Might be able to come out alive.

Dinner is her siblings, the campfire the rest of the demigods, and then she goes to sleep, listening to Caleb’s soft breath in the bunk on top of hers.

She lives with these people around her, these people who care for her, and she doesn’t think it’s the love and loyalty and dedication that had cemented Thalia and Luke into the very fabric of her soul, but these people are hers , and she lets herself reach out to them. She lets them hold onto her and keep her here, and she thinks that maybe it’s what Luke has been teaching her since she stopped herself from driving a hammer into the center of his forehead.

And Annabeth knows the hard part wasn’t learning to let herself love others. The hard part was letting herself be vulnerable enough to let others love her, even knowing that their mortality and humanity put an expiration date on that love. That quests and games and monsters could steal it all away before Annabeth even blinks.

But now she knows. She knows what it is to be loved. And it is as simple and thoughtless and necessary as every breath she has ever dragged through her gods-damned lungs.

So she reaches out and she heals.

March passes. Slowly, painfully, it passes, and Annabeth sees the other side.

“All I’m saying is that it would be nice to be allied with Ares for once, instead of making ourselves miserable for some stupid feud,” Caleb gripes as he waits for Annabeth to finish tying her shoes.

“You just hate facing Clarisse,” Annabeth snorts as she finishes the last loop. She sits up straight with a smile, her shoulders light. It’s a good day—she can already tell. Her emotions are clear and connected and positive. She feels practically unstoppable.

Caleb notices it—she sees the way his thunderstorm eyes brighten in relief for a moment before he’s smirking back at her. “Of course I do. No one likes facing Clarisse. That’s why I want her on our team.”

Annabeth rolls her eyes. “You should talk to her about that,” she says, and chuckles when she watches a very real wave of fear pass over his face.

“I was hoping you would do that.”

“You’re the head counselor,” she points out.

Caleb looks contemplative for a moment. “You’re right. Let’s switch.”

She’s still giggling as she follows Caleb from the cabin, and she’s so caught up in this rare burst of joy that she nearly misses the soft snapping sound in front of her.

But gods , does her blood run cold when Caleb yelps in pain, collapsing onto the grass just as he steps off the last stairs leading up to the cabin. Annabeth’s smile falters in an instant, and as she comes around her half-brother’s side, she gags at the sight of his skin poking up sharply, unnaturally, at the center of the shin, protruding at a foreign angle. Caleb is gasping in with jagged breaths, and when his head finally tilts down to look at the spot that Annabeth now realizes is bone pushing against his skin, Caleb turns his head and vomits all over the grass.

“It’s a broken leg,” Will announces to the two of them later, once he’s done his initial inspection of the injury, his notes, as always, scribbled down messily on the back of his hand.

“No shit,” Caleb gripes, shifting in the uncomfortable infirmary cot, then crying out when it jars his leg.

“How did it happen?” Will asks calmly, as if he hadn’t heard Caleb cursing at him. Annabeth takes over, because she thinks her brother is a bit too preoccupied with feeling the injury to actually talk about it.

“We were heading to breakfast and when he stepped onto the grass off the stairs, I heard a snap, and then he just collapsed.”

Will’s eyebrows furrow. “That’s it?” he asks suspiciously.

“That’s it,” Annabeth reiterates.

“Have you had any leg pain recently?” the son of Apollo asks, his question directed at Caleb this time.

He shrugs. “A bit. I thought it was just shin splints. Nothing that really worried me.”

Will doesn’t look reassured. If anything, the story told by the two children of Athena is deeply troubling to him. “I’ll need to set the bone,” Will says, rather than elaborate on his obvious uncertainty. “This is going to hurt,” he adds, voice apologetic.

Caleb nods with a tight jaw. “Just get it over with.”

Will looks to Annabeth. “You’re not going to want to see this.”

Because she trusts him, she leaves the room. Because it’s her brother in there with a broken leg, Annabeth sits outside the door.

It takes all her effort not to be sick when Caleb screams.

“We’re fucking screwed,” Emily mourns that night as the residents of Cabin Six all gather around the drafting table to discuss their plans for Capture the Flag tomorrow now that Caleb is crippled indefinitely.

Annabeth can’t say she disagrees. She might be their best fighter, but she’ll admit that Caleb might have her beat in terms of strategy—at least when it comes to adjusting plans when needed. Annabeth likes certainty too much, craves it, but Caleb has always been able to think on his feet when shit inevitably hits the fan. It’s what makes them so dangerous together. Annabeth has the best damn Plan A in existence, but Caleb has Plans B-through-Z mapped out and memorized just in case.

Thinking about working without him feels like working without one of her hands.

But, with Caleb sidelined, Annabeth is the undisputed leader, and she knows it won’t do anyone any good to panic. “We’re not screwed. We just have to play this…differently.”

Of course, that sets off another round of shouting and arguing and headache-inducing noise that doesn’t actually solve anything. Annabeth levels a rather vicious glare in Caleb’s direction, as if to say You could have picked a better time to break your damn leg, you know. He takes it in stride, grinning devilishly at her from his bunk (he and Annabeth decided to trade bunks after the first night he tried to climb onto the top bunk with his mangled leg and nearly broke the other three limbs in the process; neither one of them acknowledge the fact that he could have simply occupied one of the other empty bottom bunks across the cabin; they switch their pillows without much fanfare and move on with their lives like it’s always been this way) where his leg is propped up on a pillow. In a streak of childish irritation, Annabeth deigns to stick her tongue out at the head counselor, who responds in kind.

Typical.

“Everybody—” she starts, getting ready for the daunting task of corralling her siblings, only to pause when there’s a strange tug in her stomach.

Then shouting outside.

Annabeth doesn’t even think before she’s bolting out the door, her feet carrying her through crowds until she’s standing at the base of Half-Blood Hill, staring up at the sight of two teenage boys hobbling past Thalia’s Tree, leaning into each other like they might fall over if they stop.

Her breath catches in her throat.

Luke .

He’s alive. He’s walking. He’s fucking breathing .

Annabeth cannot help the grin that splits across her face, carrying with it a joy that touches every part of her body and seems to radiate outwards. She wonders if this is what people mean when they say ‘glowing with happiness’. She certainly feels like she’s glowing right now.

The heavy hoofbeats of Chiron galloping up behind her are the only sound she can derive from the general buzz of conversation at her back. The centaur steps carefully around her to meet the two sons of Hermes at the foot of the hill.

“Luke—”

Annabeth thinks she will remember that next moment for the rest of her life. She thinks she’ll remember the chill that creeps up her spine, the utter wrongness of it all. She thinks she’ll remember the ache of her cheeks as her smile fades away.

Because Luke steps further into the light of camp, and every single camper gasps.

A deep gash has been opened along the planes of his once-perfect face, bleeding and angry as it cuts a jagged line from the underside of his right eye to the edge of his jawline. It’s a bit bruised around the edges, and Annabeth wouldn’t hesitate to say it’s not far off from infection, if the strange discoloration and swelling are anything to go by.

And somehow, that isn’t what scares Annabeth the most.

His eyes, which are usually filled to the brim with emotion, are hollow. They stare at Chiron as if he can see right through him. As if they can see right through everything . It’s horrifyingly similar to the disconnect that Annabeth runs from every day.

It’s not her Luke. Those aren’t his eyes.

“I failed.” But that’s his voice. Broken and hoarse and embarrassed but undoubtedly the son of Hermes. Annabeth sucks in a sharp breath. “I wasn’t able to retrieve it.”

Chiron’s shoulders sag. “My boy—”

Luke cuts him off. “I injured Ladon. Got one of his claws.” He reaches into his pocket, and the gathering crowd lets out another small gasp at the vicious, white curve of the monster’s talon that he holds up. “But that’s all.”

Chris comes up behind him and rests a reassuring hand on his half-brother’s shoulder. The younger boy looks rather worse for wear—he’s sporting a nasty limp, and the top of his right pant leg is coated in a bright red stain. There’s a bruise ringing his left eye, and a dried bit of blood underneath his swollen nose. Even Annabeth feels a bit of pity for him as she sees the extent of his injuries.

“That’s okay. We need to get you both to the Infirmary,” Chiron says, not unkindly. “Will—”

“Already on it,” the son of Apollo chirps, sliding between Annabeth and Chiron like he’d been waiting for the all-clear from the camp director. “Can you both walk?” Will asks, looking doubtful at Chris’s leg. The boys both nod, though, and Will gestures them towards the Big House, leading them straight back through the crowd, which parts as if the sons of Hermes have some terrifying disease.

Annabeth tries to catch Luke’s eyes as he passes, desperate to know what had happened to make everything go so, so badly.

But he stares at her with those unseeing eyes—looks straight past her—and keeps walking, like he hadn’t even noticed her presence in the first place.

To Annabeth’s growing dismay, the dazed and haunted look in Luke’s eyes lingers, drifting from day to day until it’s May and she hasn’t spoken more than five words to her best friend in the past month.

She tries getting information out of Chris—as miserable as it is to have a conversation with him—but he’s tight-lipped about the whole quest. Apparently, it’s ‘Luke’s story to share’, which is bullshit if Luke doesn’t plan to share the story and never speaks to anyone for the rest of his life. Absolute, utter bullshit.

It also makes Annabeth wonder what could be so bad—what could rattle the two unflappable sons of Hermes to the point of silence. Luke Castellan and Chris Rodriguez have never been quiet in each others’ presence a day in their lives. Now, when they aren’t training, the two boys sit near each other and stare out into the distance, like their bodies have made it back to Long Island, but their minds are still somewhere far away.

Caleb’s leg still isn’t better.

Annabeth can tell that it worries Will. Honestly, it worries her, too. She’s broken a leg at camp before, and she’d been out of the cast within days. Caleb, on the other hand, has been hobbling around on crutches for a month with little progress.

“Maybe I set it wrong,” Will mumbles to himself, his bottom lip tucked between blinding white teeth. It’s an odd trait—the bright teeth—but it’s one that Annabeth has noted across the whole Apollo Cabin, regardless of their other physical differences. What is even more odd, however, is the terrifying amount of self-doubt in the healer’s voice as he peers down at the son of Athena’s injured leg.

Because Will is the best gods-damned healer that Annabeth has ever known. He doesn’t set broken bones incorrectly. Ever .

“Bullshit,” Caleb mutters, half to Will and half to himself. “You did everything fine. Something’s fucked up with me .”

“Caleb,” Annabeth sighs, because he’s been talking like this for the past few days, a mix of the constant pain and endless frustration at the slow healing process finally catching up to him. Hearing her brother talk that way, though…it’s a hard thing to stomach.

He glares at her half-heartedly. “It’s true.”

Will cuts in this time. “You’re not fucked up, Caleb,” he reassures the son of Athena. “You’re still healing faster than an average mortal would, it’s just not the timeline we expected.” He narrows his eyes at Caleb’s leg again like it might hold all the secrets. “I just wish I knew why .”

Caleb’s face shutters. “Yeah, me too.”

Annabeth can’t watch anymore. She quickly excuses herself and stands outside the Infirmary while Caleb finishes his appointment with Will.

She understands why her brother is upset—she does. He’s thirteen years old and he’s preparing himself for a whole summer session spent on the sidelines because of some dumb injury that doesn’t even come accompanied by a cool story. It makes sense.

But there’s this layer of dread beneath every wince of pain that crosses his face. Beneath every tense talk at the Infirmary when Will looks out of his depth. Beneath every nightmare Annabeth has of Caleb’s leg snapping as he steps off the porch. And she doesn’t know why . She has no fucking idea why it terrifies her so badly, and the part of Annabeth that longs to learn every damn secret of the universe is at war with a bone-deep fear of discovering what she doesn’t really want to know.

(She had a dream the other night that Caleb died from the injury in his leg. Which is completely laughable, because people don’t die from broken legs.

It doesn’t matter. The nauseating horror of Caleb’s ashen, empty face has plagued her for days, with no escape in sight.)

So she sits in the hallway and lets the muffled voices wash over her from the other room. Caleb’s leg is going to get better, eventually, and then this will all be some distant dream. Some ridiculous paranoia.

The middle of May is warm, but not uncomfortably so, and Annabeth spends every second she can soaking up the gentle sunshine. She makes a point to drag Caleb with her, whose leg has been healing far quicker over the past few weeks and can now hobble around with just a boot rather than bringing his crutches everywhere. He complains, of course—some dumbass excuse about hating sunlight—but Annabeth catches the small, boyish smile he tips up at the sky every morning, when he thinks his sister isn’t looking.

It’s so different from the dark eyes and frustration of the Infirmary, so she continues to bring him with her each day, patiently enduring his token protests as she corrals him out of bed.

Their siblings have picked up on this game of who-can-get-Caleb-to-do-fun-shit and have wholeheartedly thrown themselves into it. Emily takes him to the Pegasi stables, where they somehow learn to adapt to Caleb’s boot and spend all morning sweeping across the skies. Michael brings him to the arena to spar and manages the perfect ratio of going-easy-on-him (a recipe for hurting a child of Athena’s very fragile pride) and not-going-easy-on-him (also a recipe for hurting a child of Athena’s pride if he realizes he can’t win). Caleb comes back for dinner looking positively ecstatic, and he talks more than he has in weeks. Olivia badgers him with a slew of questions each day—on one Monday they discuss the morality of different characters in classical literature for nearly five hours, and on the following Friday, they are holed up at the drafting table from dawn to dusk, Caleb’s steady hand detailing the more complex lines that go into designing architectural blueprints.

Annabeth brings him around their friends.

(It’s strange. In those weeks that Luke was away, Annabeth hadn’t quite realized that she wasn’t just getting to know each of these people individually—she was developing this vital group of friends who genuinely enjoyed being around each other.

Her universe had grown exponentially without her even realizing the change. She’d been so focused on patching up the Luke-shaped black hole in her mind that she’d almost missed the formulation, creation, and expansion of a side of her universe that looked like the gentle curl of Silena’s dark hair, the star-like twinkle in Will’s blue eyes, the steady peace of Beckendorf as he worked at the forge, the bone-deep intent of every one of Caleb’s actions to help her, the bright joy of Grover as he figured out a new project.)

They have a board game night twice a week, spread out across the floor of the Athena Cabin to play the Star Wars Monopoly that Will had found in the Big House back in March. Beckendorf is the only one out of the six of them who has yet to watch any of the Star Wars movies—and he tells them all that he doesn’t plan to, but Annabeth and Will think that’s an utter load of bullshit—but it’s become a sort of running joke amongst their group to make as many obscure and out-of-context references while playing the board game until Beckendorf eventually is worn down enough by curiosity and confusion to sit and indulge them with a movie marathon.

But until then, they play Monopoly.

(Everyone else changes their little figurines each game—everyone except for Annabeth and Silena.

Silena claims she likes Leia the best because of her hair. Annabeth thinks it’s because the daughter of Aphrodite sees a bit of herself in Leia, in the way the Princess found power and strength and bravery without losing her beauty and love and kindness. Annabeth knows this but doesn’t say a word, because she’s got her own reasons for always choosing to play as the same character.

Han Solo is a bad-ass motherfucker, to put it simply. But he also was a kid on the run who found family when he least expected it, and something about that story made her latch her claws in and refuse to let go.

She’s always found family when she least expected it. Now she’s just waiting for the part where she actually gets a happy ending.)

The seasonal campers finally return for the summer session, bringing with them joy and excitement, but also a disruption to Annabeth’s carefully-crafted schedule. With so many people taking up time at the different activities, Annabeth can’t manipulate her way out of seeing Luke.

On the first day of June, he’s already checking the strings of his bow by the time she makes it toward the Archery range. From the moment she sees his blonde head, she debates running in the opposite direction, but before she can move, his head snaps violently up, like he’d felt her eyes on him, and holds her in place with a wide-eyed stare.

The white scar tearing down his face is enough to take Annabeth’s breath away.

(She hasn’t seen him, truly, in nearly a month. They’ve floated around each other like ships in the night, and although Annabeth has done a damn good job of avoiding him like the plague, he has also put a shit-ton of effort into escaping Annabeth’s careful scrutiny.

They’ve been actively avoiding the fact that Luke is different, now. Harsher. More traumatized by what he’s seen. They both know that—they both feel that. What Luke hasn’t figured out, she thinks, is that Annabeth is different, too. Faced with the possibility of getting lost in his death, she’d flung her arms out to the nearest person and had slowly, painstakingly, been dragged back to the light of day. She isn’t isolated anymore.

Maybe they’re scared that these new versions of themselves don’t know how to co-exist any longer.)

They stare at each other for too long before Annabeth gathers the courage to keep walking towards him.

“Hi,” she says, when they’re close enough to hear each other. His face hasn’t changed—still a portrait of fear and surprise—but it’s softened a bit. He looks more unsure than anything now, like he’s forgotten what he’s supposed to say. “You look better,” she adds, because he’s still not talking, and she hasn’t realized it before now, but she wants him to speak so badly that it physically hurts.

He swallows once. “Thanks,” he replies, voice hoarse. He touches a finger to his scar gently, like he’d forgotten about it for a moment. “Will did a good job patching it up.”

Annabeth’s heart warms with pride for her friend. “He always does,” she says, her smile twitching at the corners of her lips.

“You spend a lot of time with him,” Luke replies quietly, his tone a bit unreadable. “You’re friends?”

Annabeth searches his eyes and can find nothing but a sort of innocent curiosity, though, so she lets the smile grow and nods. She’d always been friends with Will, and Luke knows that, but what he’s asked is a different question—one that isn’t so simple—and Annabeth understands. She’s always been friends with Will, but for so long, Luke was her only friend . He was the only one who knew every ugly part of her—and every fiercely joyful one, too. She hadn’t trusted anyone else with that except for Thalia and Luke, but now…

She thinks of Monopoly nights. She thinks of friends who picked her up from her lowest. She thinks of friends who helped her realize she wasn’t alone. She thinks of friends who made the thought of life without Luke just a bit more bearable.

The six of them, Will included, are not just friends anymore. They are friends , and they are a part of Annabeth’s universe, and she thinks she sees some sort of relief in Luke’s eyes as he comes to this conclusion.

“He helped me,” Annabeth says. “They all did.” While you were gone , is the unspoken but clearly understood addition to that sentence. She doesn’t want to say it out loud, because she doesn’t think Luke is ready to remember what happened. At least not in so many words.

But he understands what she means. His eyes flicker with darkness for a moment before they clear, and when he smiles, Annabeth thinks that even the twisting, snake-like scar tissue cannot change who Annabeth has always known.

It’s still Luke.

“I’m glad,” he tells her, and Annabeth thinks he’s telling the truth, because the tension between them evaporates into a thin mist, and she wonders how it was ever more difficult than this.

It’s Luke . That, she knows, will never change.

(She will look back on the early days of June and remember the first—and only—time that Luke came to join their game of Monopoly. Grover had been aghast when he discovered that the son of Hermes had never actually played the classic board game, and took it upon himself to personally invite him to game night.

It turned out that Luke was absolutely terrible at Monopoly—laughable, even—and after the game was over that night, he gracefully bowed out and promised he wouldn’t subject them to another night of watching him ‘royally suck ass’, as Silena had lovingly declared not thirty minutes into the game. They’d laughed about it, reassured Luke that he was always welcome, but hadn’t stopped to question his absence when he didn’t come around the next game night.

Because they were kind and inclusive people, but they were also six , and Luke was other , and it wasn’t cruel or intended to be taken harshly. It was just the truth. This circle of people had been brought together to keep Annabeth from spiraling without the son of Hermes. It didn’t mind a world where he wasn’t always necessary.

But still, she looks back on that night of laughter and remembers it fondly. Luke had spent the majority of the night smiling , and it felt like a huge fucking deal.

He’d also chosen to play as Darth Vader.

Annabeth wondered, much later, if it had some sort of significance at that moment, or if it had just been a cruel sleight of hand by the Fates, taking one opportunity after the next to screw them all over and then laugh about it.

He’d chosen Darth Vader. He who fell to the Dark Side in search of a twisted justice and vengeance. He who killed blindly, only to realize his mistakes and do the right thing when it was too late. Too late for Anakin Skywalker, at least.

He chose Darth Vader, and when Annabeth brings that memory to light, the smiles of that evening will always be tainted by a running undercurrent of was that a sign? Should Annabeth have known?

She didn’t know.)

Chapter Text

The end of June is strange.

One morning, Annabeth walks outside of Cabin Six and feels the foreign impact of a raindrop hitting her head.

In the next five seconds, heavy sheets of gray are pouring from the sky, drenching everything in sight and sending Annabeth scurrying back inside with a thundering heart.

“I didn’t know it rained here,” Emily yawns from her bunk. Michael mumbles what sounds like his agreement from the twin bed below, although he just pulls the comforter higher over his ears and goes right back to sleep.

Annabeth keeps her eyes on the windows, her brow furrowed at the thundering skies. “It doesn’t,” she responds quietly.

“It sure as hell looks like it does,” Olivia quips from the drafting table, where she’s been huddled over a blueprint all night, a kerosene lamp and a cold cup of coffee her only companions. Annabeth directs a quick glare at her little sister and regrets teaching her how to properly curse, because Olivia’s acerbic sarcasm doesn’t need any additional ammunition. Regardless, she lets it slide this once, because Annabeth has had her own sleepless nights, and she knows how that makes having a filter between your brain and your mouth just a little bit harder.

Caleb groans from his bed. “Will y’all quit fucking talking so loud?” he grumbles, then jerks up right when he registers the sound of rain hitting the cabin’s tin roof. He scrapes his head on the top bunk and winces, but it doesn’t stop his astounded attention from going straight to the window. “What the fuck is this?”

“Rain,” Olivia comments.

Caleb has no qualms with practically growling at their youngest half-sibling. “No shit.” He pushes himself up, taking a moment to strap on his boot before he’s hobbling over towards Annabeth. “What’s going on?” he asks, and this time the question is directed at Annabeth only.

“No clue.” She takes a deep breath. “Has this ever happened?”

Caleb shakes his head, sending the sleep-mussed curls flying in every direction. His eyes are wide but still filled by exhaustion, and Annabeth briefly wonders if he’s been sleeping poorly again.

Thunder shakes the cabin, and Annabeth forgets all about her concerns.

(She thinks about the storm in Virginia and realizes that had been the last time she ever felt a drop of rain hit her hair, her face. Their summer spent traipsing across the East Coast was thankfully dry, and she’d seen snow but not rain on her brief trip back home. The rest of her time has been spent at camp, where the borders are supposed to protect them from any bad weather.

She thinks of that girl, huddled under a couple of scraps of cardboard, shivering and wishing that the rain would stop because she wasn’t, wasn’t , going back to that house, even if it killed her.

She thinks of that girl, dying from exposure rather than forsaking her pride, and it seems so far away. Then she feels the ghostly track of water dripping from her hairline and time folds in on itself. After one blink, she’s in the alleyway, stuffed into a sleeping bag that quickly succumbs to decay and mildew. In the next blink, she’s back in the cabin, staring at the impossible.)

“I guess we just wait it out,” Annabeth says, even though her empty stomach rumbles in protest. “It should stop soon.”

There’s a groan of disapproval from the other side of the cabin, where Emily has been watching them patiently for information. “I’m going back to bed,” she mumbles grumpily. The sound of springs creaking as she flips back down comes just moments later.

Caleb just shrugs and heads back to his bunk, content to wait out the storm from a position that’s more comfortable for his leg than standing up.

Annabeth stays by the window and lets herself drift between Virginia and reality. 

The rain doesn’t stop.

For the next two days, a glorified monsoon floods the camp non-stop. Chiron Iris-messages all the cabins to ensure each of them that he and Mr. D are working tirelessly on a solution to the malfunctioning weather borders. The campers bolt from their cabins at every meal, racing to get under the Dining Pavilion before they can be soaked to the bone and failing miserably each time.

When it finally stops, Annabeth almost shouts in joy.

Almost , however, is the key word there. Because as soon as the rain stops, a brutal heat wave sweeps across camp and forces them to stay locked in their cabins for another three days. Annabeth isn’t sure about the other campers and their siblings, but she is very, very close to murdering one of the other children of Athena.

Because on top of the endless, miserable heat seeping in to the building and making everyone’s mood a bit foul (as people are inclined to be when they are constantly drenched with sweat), no one will shut up long enough for Annabeth to distract herself from said heat.

“I had it first!”

“Bullshit, you stole it from me!”

“You haven’t used it in a week! You put it back up on the shelf, so now I’m using it. That’s how the fucking bookshelf works, dipshit!”

Annabeth sucks in a deep breath through her nose, willing herself not to absolutely lose it on Olivia and Michael. They’ve been fighting for nearly an hour about the dumbest shit, and she’s trying to read on her bunk, and her ADHD really doesn’t appreciate the constant fucking distraction.

“Gods, will you two shut up?” Emily yells down at them. She’s sprawled out on her front, a wide array of drafting pencils and paper scattered on the bed around her, and her hair has frizzed up around her forehead like the genuine stress of listening to the other two argue has driven her to near-madness. “It’s just a fucking book!”

Olivia glares up at Emily. “Yeah, a book that belongs to me right now!”

“I’m older!”

“I’m smarter!”

“Oh, fuck y —”

Caleb’s gasp of disbelief finally manages to break up the argument, and every blonde head in sight, Annabeth’s included, snaps over to their head counselor, who’s staring out the window with rapt interest, his copy of Harry Potter forgotten next to him. “It’s snowing.”

Annabeth’s immediate thought is that Caleb is joking and just trying to distract Olivia and Michael for a moment before they literally engage in a physical altercation, and she opens her mouth to tell Caleb that he’s not as funny as he thinks he is, but she sees Olivia’s face light up with joy, her thundercloud eyes brightening in seconds. She bolts toward the door, and only then does Annabeth let herself look out of the window and catch the gentle downward drift of snowflakes fluttering and sticking to the grass.

“No fucking way,” Michael comments, breathless, before he’s taking off after Olivia, their fight finally forgotten in the face of this June miracle.

The rest of them aren’t far behind. Clad only in orange t-shirts and shorts, the children of Athena are woefully underdressed for the sudden rush of cold air and ice that sweeps over camp, but Annabeth’s excitement is its own infinite internal warmth as she tilts her head toward the sky and lets the snow gather on her face, sticking to her eyelashes and washing the world in a haze of white. A burst of laughter bubbles out of her, and she’s fucking freezing , but she’s also never been so happy in her whole life.

No one’s fighting. After a week at each other’s throats, they are able to leave the cabin and sit under a snowfall and forget that it’s supposed to be summer. It feels like Annabeth can finally breathe, and the cold air is refreshing as she lets the sounds of her siblings' joy wash over her. Wave after wave of laughter rings out in the air, joined quickly by the same sounds from the other campers as they emerge from their cabins.

Snow, Annabeth realizes, has no negative memories in her vast universe. She remembers leaving the house in Virginia, scared and determined in equal measures. The first time she’d gotten a full glimpse at freedom. She remembers standing in the driveway of her father’s house and feeling the stark warmth of his college ring pressed into her hand. Snow feels like a fresh start and forgiveness. It feels like childish glee.

She can’t help herself. Her eyes drift towards the other end of the cabins, where the mass of Hermes children have started up a snowball fight now that the snow is thick enough to provide actual icy weaponry. She finds Luke in the fray, his eyes tipped toward the sky as he laughs at something Chris has said to him. The expression fades into shock when a wad of snow slams into the side of his head, straight from Travis’s hand, only to drift into a mischievous smirk as he runs towards his younger brother, tackling the wide-eyed Stoll to the ground with a peal of laughter.

She looks farther up the line, where Will is equal parts shivering and smiling as he helps one of his sisters construct a tiny snowman. Beckendorf has coaxed his newest cabin mate, a small kid named Jake Mason, away from the covered porch of the Hephaestus Cabin and out into the rapidly-falling snow. The boy’s bright red hair is covered in a dust of white within moments, and his green eyes stare at the sky in awe, like he’s never seen a winter sky before. She sees Grover at the edge of the woods, smiling brightly at the pretty, green-skinned tree nymph next to him who keeps reaching her hand out from under the canopy of foliage, only to snatch it back in surprise when a snowflake hits her skin. A few cabins down, Silena is watching two of her siblings make snow angels on the ground, striking an interesting appearance in her tennis shoes, gym shorts, and hot pink parka.

Annabeth can’t help herself—she smiles, wide and bright and warm.

(Snow has a new memory in her mind. The camp, the family she has found here, basking in a simple, beautiful happiness.

Snow is happy.

One day, snow will be a dark fortress, bright eyes that make her love the sea, and a long fall.

But until then, snow will be happy because of this very moment—this infinite second of joy that stretches beyond Annabeth to find the people she loves before traipsing its way to Annabeth’s heart and curling up there to rest.)

The snow continues for another four weeks, and eventually, the blizzard gets so bad that they’re snowed into the cabins, their doors jammed shut by walls of ice, but they get their fun in, and for some reason, being snowed-in with her siblings is a much nicer situation than being trapped inside because of monsoons and dangerous heat.

Eventually (sadly) the weather finally abates into something normal—Chiron doesn’t explicitly say so, but Annabeth and Beckendorf are both pretty sure the Stoll Brothers were behind the weather malfunction, if only from the strange smirk they share when Chiron finally announces that everything is fixed, and camp will be back to its normal, sunny schedule.

Annabeth turns eleven and lets her friends sing ‘Happy Birthday’ and experiences an insane amount of excitement when she unwraps their gift—a life-sized, super-realistic lightsaber that Beckendorf made for her once he finally succumbed to his curiosity and watched Star Wars during their extended, weather-related house arrest. Annabeth is torn between elation that he’s finally seen Star Wars, and crushing disappointment because he didn’t wait to watch it with them.

Will thinks very similarly and voices that sentiment loudly and colorfully. Beckendorf smiles and promises he’ll watch it with them again.

Her siblings gift her a new set of drafting pencils—a running joke between them now, but one that still means so much to Annabeth, because it reminds her of Amanda, who’d taken a little girl in with kindness and had been nothing short of amazing in the brief time that Annabeth knew her. Caleb seems to realize that, because while the others just grin when she opens the present, he looks at Annabeth with shining eyes and a genuine smile.

The drafting pencils are a joke, in their own way, but they’re also one of the last memories of that original group—the first siblings Annabeth ever had that weren’t corrupted by the influence of her stepmother. She thanks them and makes sure to hug Caleb the hardest, because she’s eleven years old, and surrounded by people like him, it’s not so scary to get old.

The summer session eventually comes to a close, and the camp bead for the summer is unanimously decided—a beautiful white snowflake surrounded by a sea of dark blue. They’re handed out around the final campfire of the summer, and Annabeth joins the rest of the camp in sliding it onto her fraying necklace with pride.

She looks down at the four painted beads and the silver-and-maroon ring and thinks it’s a fitting testament to her fourth summer at camp.

Fall comes around with changing colors and fresh air, and when Luke turns eighteen, the Hermes Cabin throws him a raging party that even Chiron gives up on corralling. The probably-stolen boombox that blares music through the tiny cabin has one of its speakers blown out, and Annabeth is ninety-five percent sure that she can smell alcohol somewhere in the room, and maybe it shouldn’t make her feel relaxed, but it does, because this feels like they’re actual teenagers and kids, not soldiers of the gods waiting to die for glory and honor or some bullshit like that.

She enjoys herself and ends up stumbling upon Luke when he’s considerably shit-faced, his crystal blue eyes foggy as he smiles down at her.

“Annabeth!” he gasps in delight, before his face falls rapidly in horror. “You’re not… drunk , are you?” he whispers, hiccuping over the last few words.

Annabeth laughs and shakes her head. “That’d be you, Luke.”

His eyes go wide like she’s sharing some sort of life-changing secret. “How’d you know?” he huffs, blowing the smell of hard liquor right back into her face. She wrinkles her nose and laughs gently.

“Your breath reeks,” she chuckles.

Luke gasps, his scar folding over itself. “Well, I can’t go brush my teeth now . We’re having a party.” He gestures around him like he thinks she hasn’t noticed.

“I guess we are,” she smirks. “Happy birthday, by the way.”

Luke grins at her. “Thanks! I didn’t think I’d make it this far, honestly,” he snorts self-deprecatingly, before his face falls again, something far-away and sad cutting across his eyes. “A lot of people aren’t so lucky.”

She knows he’s thinking about a pine tree that crests a hill. He’s thinking about a girl they both loved who gave her life so they could be here. So they could get older and celebrate birthdays and go on quests and live , and Annabeth knows that’s a gift that Luke can’t quite understand. If she’s being honest, she’s never really understood it, either.

“She would have loved camp,” he mumbles, his voice toeing the line of sobriety and intoxication now. “She would have loved this .”

Annabeth swallows. “I know.”

They don’t speak after that. They stay in the corner for a long time while everyone gets drunk and passes them by and they think about Thalia and how unfair it all is.

(Annabeth has this feeling, though. She has this feeling that one day, the Fates might be kind enough to let Thalia walk through camp just once , even if it’s as a hazy wisp of a ghost, haunting the living world in search of some unfinished business.

Maybe that’s wishful thinking. But Annabeth can’t be wrong to hope.)

Eventually they fade away from each other, and when Annabeth sees Luke again, he’s considerably drunker, but he’s laughing finally, and the broken shards in his eyes aren’t quite so pronounced anymore.

She tells herself that’s enough.

(It wasn’t enough.

Nothing was ever enough for Luke Castellan.)

It’s three in the morning when Annabeth finally bangs on the bottom of the bunk above hers (they’ve switched back now that his leg is healed), where Caleb has spent the past four hours practically hacking up a lung.

“Are you alright?” she whispers into the quiet darkness, hoping that her voice doesn’t come out as annoyed as she feels. She’s tired, yes, but she’s also aware that Caleb can’t control coughing .

There’s a soft sniffle from above her. “Fine,” he calls back. “My throat’s just hurting.” He sniffs again. “Sorry for waking you up.”

Annabeth shrugs, then remembers Caleb can’t see her. “It’s not a big deal. Do you want me to Iris-message Will and see if he has anything to help?”

She can practically hear Caleb shaking his head. “No, don’t wake him up. It feels a little better after talking, I think.”

It seems like a poor excuse, but Annabeth is tired, so she lets him make it. “Okay. Let me know if you change your mind.”

“I will,” he says softly. A few seconds later, she hears his hoarse voice pipe up again. “Thanks, Annabeth.”

Annabeth blinks and swallows down the surge of emotion. “Of course.”

She turns over, tucking her head under the comforter and pretending not to hear the stray cough from Caleb every now and then. If he wants his throat to be better, she’ll let him pretend—at least right now—that it is.

Her dreams that night are a turmoil of…well, she doesn’t have a name for it, exactly.

It’s dark at first, but not the dark of a normal dream—not that comfortable, infinite nothingness that makes up the mind at rest. No, this is a cavern, cold and watery, like the dark has formed itself into a maw around Annabeth, waiting until the perfect time to strike and trap her underneath its grasp forever.

A rumbling laughter, sick and overlapping and grating, rains down on Annabeth, and she gasps, reaching up with the ghostly shadows of her hands to cover her ears.

“You’ve grown into something special, hm? A hero in your own right,” the voice rumbles, sarcastic and condescending and gravelly. There’s a laugh, and it sounds like the screech of claws dragging against steel. “You won’t entertain me with a reply?”

Annabeth goes to speak, if only to tell the voice to stop , because it makes her mind ache to hear it, but before she can let a single word slip free, she has an overwhelming feeling of isolation. As if she’s wrapped in shadows that belong to her, shielding her from the voice as much as they can.

The voice isn’t speaking to her.

“Don’t ignore me—”

Before it can finish, Annabeth is yanked from the scene, pulled away roughly by some phantom string woven through her midsection. She’s dragged far away, and she blinks and then she’s staring at a small apartment’s living room, a bit messy and well-worn, with a poker table shoved into the corner.

She hears a woman’s gentle, lilting voice from the next room. It’s muffled, and Annabeth can’t quite hear what she’s saying, but the unmistakable smell of baked chocolate drifts into her vicinity, and she desperately longs to follow her nose to its source. But she’s rooted in the spot, a passive audience member to whatever scene the Fates have decided to put on display.

A child’s voice chirps up from the other direction, and suddenly, a little dark-haired boy sprints past, his back to her as he darts in the direction of the woman’s voice, his shoulders practically buzzing with excitement. He’s wearing a faded red t-shirt, but when she concentrates on him, Annabeth can’t see anything but green.

The pale, vibrant green of sea foam crashing against sand.

Annabeth is waking up before she can see anything else. She remembers the voice in the cave. She doesn’t remember the boy in the apartment.

On the final day of September, Caleb’s cough has gotten so terrible that Will practically drags him into the infirmary. Annabeth, as always, sits patiently in the chair next to the bed while Will listens to Caleb’s lungs with a furrowed brow. After a few minutes of moving the stethoscope to different spots along Caleb’s chest, Will sits back, his lips twisted with frustration.

“It’s bronchitis,” he announces, looking slightly confused by his own diagnosis. “I’m not sure how it snuck past with all the nectar and ambrosia we’ve been giving you, but…” he shrugs helplessly. “I can try to prescribe you some mortal medicine to help with the symptoms, but I can’t give you any more godly stuff without creating more issues.”

“That’s fine,” Caleb responds quietly. “Whatever works,” he finishes, his words punctuated by a hacking cough.

Will’s eyes shutter, and they shift to Annabeth quickly, like he’s trying to read her face for any sort of reaction.

“Annabeth, can you help me grab some things from the cabinet?” Will asks smoothly, his words calm enough to avoid raising Caleb’s suspicions, but intentional enough that Annabeth follows him without a second thought, trailing after her friend silently until they’re safely across the room.

“What’s wrong?” Annabeth asks.

Will’s face twists with discomfort. “I don’t know. This shouldn’t be happening—none of it.” He lets out a heavy sigh, like he’s trying to pick his next words very carefully. “I need you to keep an eye on him. Make a list of anything that’s…well, weird .”

Annabeth raises an eyebrow. “Like…?”

“Well, for starters, the fact that he developed a severe case of bronchitis while he’s on the maximum dosage of ambrosia,” Will huffs. He rubs at his dark-rimmed eyes, and Annabeth is suddenly struck with the reminder that for all Will is their friend and a damn-good healer, he’s also younger than Annabeth, and the job he does takes a toll on him every now and again.

She lays a comforting hand on his shoulder and tries for a smile. “I can do that, Will,” she says. And because she thinks she might need to hear it as well, she adds, “everything is going to be fine.”

Will shoots her a grin that doesn’t quite meet his eyes. “You’re right,” he says, glancing back over his shoulder to where Caleb has taken it upon himself to start a conversation with the only other person in the Infirmary—a daughter of Hephaestus named Nyssa, who’s been laid out on her own cot with a thick white bandage wrapped around her head. Will turns back to Annabeth like the healer has seen everything he needs to. “Everything is gonna be just fine.”

(The problem is, Annabeth didn’t believe herself when she said it, and she certainly doesn’t believe the stilted and shattered words from Will that sound less like a reassurance and more like a warning.)

With their plan in place, Will and Annabeth grab the mortal antibiotics off the shelf and head back over to Caleb, who smiles at them as they approach. “It took you two long enough,” he says, a bit of laughter in his voice, his face happy and relaxed. He coughs lightly, but even that doesn’t seem to kill his mood. “I’ve decided that Nyssa is a better friend than both of you and I would like to switch.”

Will gasps in fake affront, but Annabeth just looks over at Nyssa, who seems mere moments away from bursting into uncontrollable giggles, and Annabeth truly can’t help it—she laughs, bright and clear, and manages to forget the worry.

Everything is going to be fine , she tells herself, and almost believes it this time.

Annabeth glares at the smiling centaur over her cards.

“Would you happen to have a two, Annabeth?” Chiron asks. Annabeth narrows her eyes at him, then scans the cards in her hand. Three, four, queen, ace, jack, seven, ten…

“Go fish,” she tells him. He nods kindly and reaches out to select a new card from the line. He tucks it back into his fan and smiles at her expectantly. She raises an eyebrow and stares at the back of his cards, desperately wishing her mother’s blood had given her more powers besides intelligence.

X-ray vision, Annabeth thinks, would be particularly nice at this very moment.

She huffs. “Do you have an ace?”

Chiron’s smile drops. “I do,” he says, handing over the card with a slight frown. Annabeth grins proudly.

“Do you have a three?”

His smile grows again. “Go fish.”

“Shit,” Annabeth grumbles as she pulls a card from the middle. The five is tucked carefully at the end of her hand. Chiron doesn’t correct her language, just chuckles to himself a bit.

“How have things been going for you, Annabeth?” the centaur asks, his voice light and casual as he surveys his cards. “Do you have a six?”

“Go fish,” Annabeth responds, considering whether the question about her life is a ploy to distract her or a genuine curiosity. After a few seconds, she comes to the conclusion that Chiron is not devious enough to ask about her well-being with the intent to win a card game—at least, she doesn’t think he is. She clears her throat. “They’ve been good, I suppose. Do you have a Jack?”

He hands the card over. “I’ve noticed you and Luke have drifted apart some.”

Annabeth shrugs. “It’s nothing bad. He’s still…” she tries to find the right word to describe what Luke means to her, the role he plays in her life, and finds that she can’t. She’s read every word in every dictionary that she can get her hands on, but what single word is strong enough to describe that infinite bond with the first person she ever trusted? The one who gave her a knife to protect herself, a family to love, a home to care about? “He’s still Luke ,” she says, and hopes Chiron understands what that means. How that won’t change, even if they have new friends and slightly more separate lives. He nods like he understands. “Do you have a seven?”

“Go fish.” She selects a new card, a king this time. “And how has he fared since returning from his quest?”

Annabeth shrugs. “It was rough at first, but he’s happier now, I think.” She pulls her lip between her teeth for a moment, chewing absentmindedly. “He has bad days and good days, but he’s doing better.”

Chiron nods. “Good. Do you have a two?”

“Go fish,” she answers. Chiron clicks his tongue as he tries for a new card. “Do you know what happened?”

Chiron eyes immediately leave his hands, and there’s an unexpected layer of sorrow clouding the centaur’s normally-bright gaze. “I don’t know many of the details, my dear, but I can assume what the two of them faced was not pleasant. I believe it left him scarred beyond the physical marks we can see.”

Annabeth swallows and nods. That was what she’d thought. “Do you have a four?”

“Go fish,” he says, then sets down his cards completely, the fancy red-and-white design catching the afternoon light drifting onto the porch. “I would have thought you’d already asked Luke that.”

She follows suit and lays her cards down. “It never felt right.” It never felt right to make him re-live something that had brought him back home little more than a shell of what he once was. Honestly, Annabeth had been scared that if she forced him to talk about it again, the laughing and smiling Luke would disappear and the quiet, broken kid who’d walked over the camp borders in April would return and refuse to leave.

Chiron nods slowly, like he’s trying to process the information she’s just given him. “I see.” He drums his fingers against the patio table. “And how have you handled everything?”

“I wasn’t the one who went on the quest.”

“That doesn’t mean worrying about a loved one doesn’t take its toll, Annabeth,” Chiron says, not unkindly. “I’m well aware that you struggled when he first left.”

Annabeth's cheeks heat up. She thinks about that week she’d spent, locked up in her cabin, and wonders what she would have become if her friends hadn’t stepped in. Maybe she would have been an empty shell like Luke—reeling and trying to come to terms with a world that was cruel and selfish and harsh. She takes a deep breath and keeps her eyes on the table.

“I did. But my friends helped. They…” she stops suddenly, because she can feel herself getting close to tears and she really doesn’t want to cry right now, because for once in their gods-damned lives, everything is actually good, and she doesn’t want to ruin that with sad, unnecessary emotions. “They made me realize I wasn’t alone.”

She risks a glance up and finds Chiron smiling softly at her, his eyes a bit watery, too. “I’m glad,” he tells her, then sniffles and turns his head towards the porch railing, where the campgrounds spill out before them, washed in a golden afternoon glow. “I’ve trained many demigods, Annabeth. Many die young, some live to see old age, but too many of them die alone. Too many are isolated.” He turns back to Annabeth. “No matter what happens, don’t make the mistake of thinking that you have to do this life on your own, my dear. There are bad people in this world, but I’ve found that most will be loyal if you give them the chance. You just have to be brave enough to give them that chance.”

Annabeth nods, strangely enough, and thinks she might agree with him.

(There will be a time in the near future when Annabeth will be huddled next to a bony body in a foul-smelling, poorly-lit truck, and she will think about Chiron’s words.

She will think about his words and she will listen, and she will promise a boy that he won’t be alone in this fight that he never chose. She thinks in her head that she won’t let him die alone.

And years later, that boy will look into the depths of hell, and he will promise Annabeth that she will not die alone.)

November arrives at Camp Half-Blood with a rush of cold weather and clear skies. Annabeth makes a point to check on Luke often—he looks tired, the dark rings under his eyes more pronounced than usual, but he’s alive and he smiles often, even when it’s tainted with a bit of exhaustion. They have days where they sit out on their dock for hours and he indulges her endless rants about literature and scientific discoveries and different achritectural practices that she’s reading about at the moment and she listens when he finally tells her about his quest. She listens to the tales of Ladon and how he’d been inches away from stabbing Luke’s eye out and how utterly terrified he’d been in the face of danger without Annabeth and Thalia at his side. She listens and tries to stop the tether in her heart that longs to reach back out to the son of Hermes, locking itself onto this soul that is so intricately woven into her own. It had been torture to untangle herself from that bond during the month he was gone, and all she wants to do is let it snap back into place, because she’s got him back and he’s not going anywhere anymore, so would it really kill her to bring Luke back into the center of her universe?

But she doesn’t let herself do that. Because she remembers the pain of losing him, remembers the sharp spiral downwards and the jarring loneliness, and she’d gotten lucky . He came back this time.

But she looks at Luke’s scarred face, young and emotional, and she can’t bring herself to believe that he’s going to come back again. The next time he leaves, she just knows she’ll lose him, and some day, he will leave. Everyone leaves camp at some point. This is their home, but only temporarily. They’ll have to fight every damn day for something permanent.

The fucking curse of being a demigod. You’ve got to be willing to sacrifice yourself to be happy, but you’re destined to die before you can ever live to see the rewards. Another cruel irony spun by the Fates, Annabeth thinks.

So she won’t let herself get that close again. Not with Luke, not with anyone . Annabeth cannot build a legacy—something that might survive her tragic death—if she lets herself be torn apart by dependency.

So she listens to Luke, and she continues to check on him, but most days they just pass each other in camp with superficial smiles before turning back to their other friends and continuing on with their lives.

Because during November, Luke is not her priority.

Caleb is.

“We’ve got an issue,” Annabeth says by way of greeting, bursting into the Infirmary and startling the two new daughters of Demeter—Katie and Miranda—who look as though they’ve taken a particularly nasty tumble from the climbing wall. Will is in the middle of applying some sort of burn salve to the younger girl’s leg, but at the sound of Annabeth’s voice, his head snaps up, eyes wide.

“What’s wrong?”

“The swelling in his leg is back.”

“The cough?”

“Worse than last week.”

Will goes as pale as a sheet. He turns back to his patients with a wobbly, forced smile. “The ambrosia is on the table. Don’t eat too much or you’ll explode. Apply the salve wherever the burns are the worst. Come back tomorrow so I can check on you,” he rattles out, then he’s racing from the room, Annabeth close on his heels.

Caleb is still sitting on his bunk where Annabeth left him, looking confused and a bit pissed-off to be left out of the loop, which only multiplies once he realizes who Annabeth has brought back with her. She tries for an apologetic smile, but her nerves are a bit rattled, so she’s pretty sure it’s not all that effective.

“Why didn’t you tell me the swelling had gotten worse?” Will asks as he crouches down into front of Caleb’s leg with a furrowed brow.

Caleb glares at Annabeth pointedly. “Because I didn’t even notice until just now. Then Annabeth ran out of here like a crazy person.”

“Your cough has been worse than usual!” Annabeth says in defense.

“And?” Caleb counters, which is a stark reminder to Annabeth that although she and Will have been watching Caleb for any signs of strange illness or injury, her brother is under the assumption that he’s just enduring a particularly rough cold this year.

“And that’s not good,” Will interrupts them. “In fact, it’s really bad, and I think I may have missed something the first time.” His voice is quiet now, barely above a whisper, and Annabeth stumbles closer to the boys so she won’t have to struggle to hear so badly.

Caleb is, again, confused. “The bone was set right, you checked that—”

“Not that,” Will tells him, and the room goes silent as the son of Apollo closes his eyes and settles his hand over the angry, red lump on Caleb’s shin. In the silence of the cabin, watching Will’s powers at work is so much more unnerving than usual. His skin doesn’t…glow, exactly, but it’s a very near thing. It’s like he’s drawing all the light in the room towards himself, pushing it towards Caleb’s injury like it might help him see something buried deep below. He sways from side to side, serene and distant as if he’s thrown himself into a sort of trance, and it feels like ages before he opens his eyes and sends the light back to its origin, drawing the shadows into their usual spots.

Will swallows, his eyes wide.

Caleb’s breath stutters. “What did you find?”

(And in that moment, Annabeth thinks she knows what’s wrong. She thinks maybe she’s always known and she’s convinced herself that it can’t be, because they are so much more than mortal, and the danger to their lives is supposed to be something they can fight—something they can see.

But deep down inside, she thinks she’s known how this story ends since the beginning. She had all the pieces of the puzzle and had refused to put them together because she knew she wasn’t going to be able to stand the final picture.)

“It’s…” Will starts, then takes a deep breath. “It’s a tumor.”

Silence has never felt so agonizing.

Caleb goes pale.

Annabeth cries.

It’s osteosarcoma. It’s most likely been developing in his leg since last year, and something about the ambrosia and nectar that Will had used to treat the broken bone had accelerated the growth of the tumor, mistaking the mutated cells as something that was supposed to be there and allowing it to rapidly metastasize into the lungs—which caused the severe bronchitis—upper leg and pelvis.

Cancer.

A mortal disease that can’t be cured with godly medicine.

For the first time in her life, Annabeth thinks she understands Luke. She thinks she understands how it feels to hate the gods. How it feels to, more than anything, want to scream and curse at the skies because what the fuck was the point of those stupid, lazy immortals if Caleb could get fucking cancer ?

What was the point of living when the Fates were out to kill them anyways?

She stares at the stars and finally understands the bitterness in Luke’s heart. It doesn’t seem so strange to be angry anymore.

The rest of November is bleak—a cloudy, dreary month of silent cabins and postponed board game nights and empty gray eyes. Silena drops off a case of chocolate from her dad’s shop and personally hands Annabeth the ‘get well soon’ card from the rest of their friends, a watery smile on her face as she pulls Annabeth into a hug. Luke brings them food when Annabeth can’t coax Caleb from his bed, and Will comes by each day to check on Caleb’s leg and administer a series of mortal medicines.

No one knows what to do except sit and wait and cry. Annabeth does all three and prays to her mother—begs her to make a miracle happen, just this once.

Caleb’s mother Iris-messages at the beginning of December. There’s an experimental treatment for kids with stage four bone cancer at one of the pediatric hospitals in Texas. It’s their last hope.

She takes it.

Caleb is sent back home in days. Grover accompanies him as a protector, and Annabeth’s brother looks more hopeful than he has in a very long time, so she puts on a smile and tells him she’ll see him soon.

She tries not to remember each one of her siblings who crossed the camp borders and never came back.

Cabin Six feels like a prison, the wooden walls somehow more suffocating since they’ve lost one of their own. Annabeth can hardly sleep at night because the constant buzz of restlessness and coughing that she usually hears from above is swallowed by an oppressive silence.

Caleb is still alive , she chants to herself, when the quiet gets too massive for Annabeth to handle. This is just temporary.

She thinks of Amanda.

She thinks of Hannah.

She thinks of Sam.

Annabeth knows how statistics work. Even the Fates follow a pattern of misery, and history has a tendency to repeat itself.

When a child of Athena leaves camp, they don’t come back.

Her thoughts are silent, after that.

On the twenty-second day of December, Annabeth spends every second tucked under Thalia’s tree, burrowing into the spot between roots to watch snow drift down on the other side of the border, a shimmering white dust that covers Farm Road as far as the eye can see.

Sometimes, it’s easy for Annabeth to forget that she only knew Thalia for a few months; it had been an endless summer on the run, playing Kings and Queens so they didn’t have to face the reality of a world hell-bent on destroying them. They’d protected each other, fought for each other, loved each other. Thalia and Luke had come along at the exact time that Annabeth needed companionship the most; they came along at a time when she was ready to throw the towel in.

And now Annabeth is here, but Thalia is not, and it feels like Annabeth is missing a part of herself that has always been there, and not just the friendship she shared with a girl for an inconsequential amount of time.

She never even celebrated Thalia’s birthday with her—she never got the chance. Did that really matter in the end, though? She’s celebrated birthdays with Luke and Caleb, and her brother is dying and Annabeth can’t save him and Luke is fading away into the dark circles under his eyes that are evidence enough that his nightmares are still haunting him, and Annabeth can’t save him. She couldn’t save Kelsey while she bled out on the forest floor. She couldn’t save her relationship with her family because she wasn’t what they wanted; she would never be the normal, stupid daughter that her stepmother craved, and it made her lose her father and brothers, too.

Annabeth can’t save anything, anyone . Her love, toxic and tainted as it is, does nothing but kill and harm and damn. Thalia had died to protect her, and Annabeth wishes they could have traded spots that night, because she realizes now, more than ever, that she is so wholly unworthy of that selfless sacrifice. Thalia was a protector; Annabeth was a coward who couldn’t save what mattered most.

Thalia would have turned seventeen years old today, and all Annabeth can do is sing ‘Happy Birthday’ to a tree and watch cars pass by, blissfully ignorant of the eleven-year-old girl who watches them and cries and cries and cries.

(And maybe loving another person will never make any sense. Maybe those strings that stretch to foreign souls and grow roots in your own heart cannot be explained.

Because Annabeth cannot explain, cannot rationalize, cannot gain enough knowledge to make sense of what she feels for the people in her life.

If she was smarter, she would follow her mother’s footsteps and swear off those intimate attachments to others in all their many forms, focusing instead on detached intellectual pursuits and personal pride. Those things could be controlled.

But Annabeth is not smarter. Annabeth is, for all the galaxies swirling just behind her eyes, a child . A human child who has let herself know the beauty and despair of love. And because she is not smarter and can never change the design of her very being, Annabeth knows that she must endure what it is to love and still lose.)

After that day on the hill, things get…easier, for lack of a better word. There’s still this shadow of grief and trepidation hanging over Annabeth, watching and following every step she takes, but it’s softer now—more like a flash in the corner of her eye rather than the roaring monster it had been before, spitting and hissing at her feet.

Caleb and Grover Iris-message her (Annabeth and the rest of Cabin Six, to be more specific) just before the New Year, their faces bright and full of hope, and it breaks something wide open in Annabeth’s chest—something that washes her in a flood of relief.

The treatment is going well. There’s not much detail given, but for the first time in her life, Annabeth doesn’t need specifics. There’s no burning curiosity for the step-by-step explanation. If it saves Caleb, she doesn’t need to know.

They keep the call going for a long time, and at some point, Olivia goes to find Will and Silena and Beckendorf because even the youngest of them knows that Caleb’s friends are as much a part of his family as those in the Athena Cabin. They come immediately, piling onto Annabeth’s bunk with her and fitting seamlessly into the fervent discussion being held about whether the children of Athena’s natural talents in weaving extend to braiding hair.

It turns out that they do, and Silena leaves the Athena Cabin later that night with a smile splitting her face and her hair braided in a near-exact replica of Leia’s swooping, double-braid-bun from the end of The Empire Strikes Back . Annabeth hadn’t even been aware that her hands were capable of creating something so intricate—basket-making was a much different beast than the hair that Silena so lovingly cared for—but she’d simply let her hands work on their own and had stepped back after twenty minutes to a room full of wide eyes.

After that remarkable success, Emily and Michael decide to try, too, and they team up to tackle Will’s curls with admirable patience. Beckendorf is spared from Olivia’s critical glance by a plea of his hair being too short, which works, although Annabeth has a sneaking suspicion that the buzz cut wouldn’t have deterred her youngest sister’s attempts if she'd been given permission.

It all sends Caleb to tears from laughing so hard, and in that moment, Annabeth can’t help but believe things will get better.

The shadows around her recede that night, slinking away as she watches Caleb laugh. Slinking away as she does everything she can to save him.

Chapter Text

December 2004 gives way to January 2005, and Annabeth almost misses the way Luke changes. 

It’s subtle. His loving grins stop reaching beyond a flash of teeth; they’re more a smirk than a true smile, charming and disarming and deceptive, like he’s always playing some kind of game, and he’s the only one with the rule book. His eyes, as always, flit from place to place, cataloging everything around him like he’s prepared to fight at any moment. Now, they are edged with a glint of amusement, like he’s trying to decide who around him would be the least pathetic opponent. It sends chills up Annabeth’s arms, because this isn’t Luke, is it? Because she would have noticed the change, and she didn’t, and she would have noticed if he was always like this, and he wasn’t. It’s all wrong.

But then he turns to her and that cold, calculating facade fades away, and she’s left with the Luke she's always known; a bright and emotional force of goodness . There’s no game, just the two of them, and because she’s trying to be hopeful for a change, she pretends that the rest of what she’s seen is just her imagination. After all, Annabeth's world has always managed to narrow down to just the two of them, intertwined yet pulling farther and farther away, and she genuinely couldn’t care less how he views the rest of the world. If he still smiles at her, he’s still good. He can change, they can drift apart, but he will still be the boy who handed her a knife mere hours after she tried to bash his head in. He will still be the boy who promised her a family.

(Annabeth pieces the timeline together much, much later. The nightmares in September. The mood swings and tiny changes in personality during the winter.

She puts the puzzle together and wonders if his smiles had been a lie even then, or if she’d maybe been the last one who kept Kronos’s wicked claws from burrowing into Luke’s mind and turning him against them all.

It feels like wishful thinking, but she lets herself believe that he was still good then. She lets that memory of his smile remain untainted, a marker of the last months before the betrayal.)

Caleb’s return brings every single year-round camper to the foot of Half-Blood Hill, their joyful cheering a fitting victory march for the son of Athena’s slow, careful walk into camp. Grover is by his side, holding out his arms like he’s prepared to steady his friend if he falls, but Caleb doesn’t need it. He may be walking slow, but each step is confident, sure (there’s a bit of a limp, but it’s so minor that Annabeth disregards the information as soon as she notices), and he grins at Annabeth when their eyes meet through the crowd. She waves happily and patiently waits as their friends—and not just the four of them in their group, but every single person Caleb has grown up with at camp—hug him and bestow their well-wishes before drifting off to the day’s activities, lighter and happier than the camp has been in ages.

Finally, the children of Athena are the last ones left—Grover off to give his report to Mr. D—and they all stare at each other for a long moment before Olivia is darting from behind Annabeth and barreling into Caleb, wrapping him in a hug that might genuinely crack some ribs. The remaining three of them join the embrace quickly, and when the emotional weight of everyone’s tears of pure joy become too much for Annabeth to swallow, she growls at Caleb that he’s never allowed to leave her in charge of the hooligans ever again, which prompts a bright peal of laughter from their head-counselor, even as the rest of her siblings protest in cheerful indignation.

Because it’s hard to be truly upset when they’re finally back together again.

(When no one else is looking, Annabeth turns her head to the skies and thanks her mother for answering her prayers.)

Their Monopoly nights are back in full swing, although they begin to rotate where they host each game after Michael makes it very clear that they’re being too loud while he’s trying to read. Either way, it still feels like old times—declaring war on each other over property and watching the guys fight over the remaining character pieces before they start.

Game nights get longer, and suddenly, it’s not just Monopoly anymore. They mix in some other board games—mostly Sorry and Operation—just to keep things interesting (and because Will is tired of losing every time they play Monopoly, and he knows he can sweep the floor in Operation). They finally get around to watching the Star Wars movies together, and Annabeth cries when Leia tells Han she loves him for the first time.

(Silena thinks it’s in poor taste that Han doesn’t say it back, but Annabeth quietly disagrees with her. After all, Leia already knew that Han loved her; it was in every line of his body, every word he spoke. But she’d been terrified that Han would die without knowing that she loved him . She’d told him, and instead of wasting what could have been his last breaths on reminding her of what she already knew, of what everyone else thought was romance, he made sure that she knew that it hadn’t been for nothing.

However much time they got, they loved each other, and they both knew it.)

Annabeth hopes she will have that someday. Didn’t she deserve it, after everything?

Except, maybe ‘someday’ isn’t so far off. Sitting here in the Aphrodite Cabin, curled inside a blanket with Will and Silena, Caleb’s back resting against her legs as they watch the Ewoks come onto the screen for the first time, Annabeth feels pretty damn close to love.

Pretty damn close to happiness.

Things never stay happy.

That would be too easy, too kind.

And there’s no one the Fates hate more than a demigod.

“Getting slow down there!” Annabeth calls over her shoulder, a laugh following her words down to Caleb. He glares up at her, but speeds his climb, and Annabeth follows suit, picking her way up the climbing wall with an unmatched focus.

(She knows everyone else is going easy on Caleb since he got back. She also knows it’s eating away at him, because all he wants, all he’s ever wanted since this shit started, is for everything to go back to normal.

So Annabeth pushes him. She pushes him with everything she’s got.)

The wall rumbles under her hands, and without thinking, she scrambles to the right. “Lava!” she calls out, and hears Caleb follow her movements, the rough shifting of gravel echoing behind her just seconds before the molten rock pours from the top of the wall, missing them by mere inches and still singeing the hairs of Annabeth’s arms.

She checks over her shoulder. Caleb is readjusting his hold on the wall, like he’d slipped when he moved. But he gets his balance quickly, and Annabeth continues her climb upwards, stopping only once to readjust her stance when she slips on a looser stone. Once she clears it a bit, she calls over her shoulder, “Watch that—”

Time moves slowly.

Annabeth’s eyes catch sight of Caleb just as words fail. He’s responded to her teasing and is close behind her—closer than she thought. Before she can warn him, he’s wrapping his hand around the loose step and it shifts.

Just enough to dislodge his fingers. He fumbles, but he can’t find a place to hold on again, and then one of his feet slip, and Annabeth can’t stop her horrified scream when he falls backwards and down to the ground, landing with a sickening crack.

He falls, and Annabeth can’t save him this time.

(For many years, Annabeth will wonder what went through Caleb’s mind when he fell.

She will wonder if he was terrified or if he came to peace with the sudden drop in his stomach—the terrifying descent into uncertainty.

Many years later, she will fall, and the descent will be much, much longer. And with her arms wrapped desperately around her lifeline, her fucking soulmate that she’s damned with her pride and ignorance , she will understand that there is no peace in death when your body is crushed into a thousands shards of bone against the ground. There is no peace in that long fall into darkness that can only end with a shattering of everything you once were.

There is fear and despair and a deep-seated knowledge that there wasn’t enough time.

There is never enough time.)

Foreboding; noun; a fearful apprehension; a feeling that something bad will happen; synonyms include anxiety, apprehension, perturbation, dread, and trepidation; Annabeth wonders if there’s a word to describe a feeling that something bad has happened, because she’s fucking watched it and now she’s standing at the bottom of the climbing wall and someone is screaming, Annabeth is screaming, and Caleb is groaning in pain and he’s breathing , thank the gods, but his arm and leg are both twisted and bent at unnatural angles and Annabeth doesn’t know what to do because things were supposed to be better.

They’re kids. Shouldn’t things be better?

“ What happened? ” Will’s voice calls behind her, and it narrows down her focus, her mind, to one thing and it feels hard to breathe but she makes herself stare at the son of Apollo’s ashen face.

“He—we—the wall. He slipped and…” she cuts herself off with a gasp of breath. “He’s breathing, but—”

He sprints around her, eyes only for Caleb, and Annabeth watches that awful glow pulse around Will—a sign that things aren’t good and Will has to draw on something supernatural and immortal just to save his patient and, oh gods .

Suddenly, Will’s hands are on her shoulders. “Annabeth!” he yells, although she knows he’s doing it because they’re all scared and she can’t break down when Caleb is the one who needs help—she can’t fucking lose it and maybe him yelling will make her fucking focus , gods-dammit. “I need you to help me get him to the Infirmary.” She still can’t breathe, though. Still can’t focus because her lungs won’t fucking move . “Annabeth!” he tries again, tears freely spilling now. “There is every chance he might die if we don’t move him now! I need your help!”

Will needs her help. She couldn’t save Caleb from falling, but she can try to save him now. Her head, her throat, her soul burn and ache but she forces a breath into her lungs, ripping them open with her own willpower because none of it’s fair, but she can control this. The fate of her brother is in her hands.

She nods.

Will cradles his upper body, leaving Annabeth to support her brother’s misshapen legs as they hurry through camp, moving as quickly as they can without causing Caleb any more pain. People flock towards them, curiosity and concern a beacon of attention, but Will screams at them to clear a path, and thankfully, every single person does, and it takes too long to get to the Infirmary because Annabeth is eleven and Will is still ten and they truly aren’t strong enough to be carrying a fourteen year old boy across the camp, but Annabeth ignores the burning in her arms and gets him there , because weakness is not an option.

You are my child, she can hear her mother’s voice now, harsh and demanding, like she’s back in Virginia, tiny and feral and prideful and she wonders if she ever really changed; most days it feels like she’s still that little girl, fighting and kicking and screaming and training and searching for some gods-damned purpose (or maybe just goodness) in the world. You are more. You must be more, Annabeth. It is the only way.

The only way.

Annabeth gets him to the Infirmary. She doesn’t leave his side as Will carefully covers his hands over the many injuries—the broken limbs are just the ones that Annabeth immediately noted. There are cracked ribs and bruises forming along his back. A nasty bump behind his right ear. The swelling goes down in each, the sickening snap of bones shifting back into place like a saw scraping against a chalkboard, but with each injury Will heals, his face drains of color, until even the pulsing light drawn towards him looks sickly and weak.

“Will, stop,” Annabeth hears herself say. She doesn’t know when, exactly, she learned to breathe again, but she attributes the change to her mother’s voice and moves forward. “ Will, ” she says again, sharper this time, because he’s not listening to her, and he’s going to kill himself, dammit.

“I can’t,” he drags out, eyes watery as he finally pauses to look at Annabeth. “If he was a mortal, these injuries would have killed him and I can’t give him nectar to speed the healing process along, so I’ve got to do this .”

Annabeth's eyebrows furrow. “The cancer’s gone, though. You should be able to treat him normally.”

Will is already shaking his head, his curls jumping vehemently as tears flow freely now. (Annabeth sees him for a moment, on the forest floor, cupping Kelsey’s bleeding neck and crying because he can’t save her, and Annabeth thinks Will might be seeing that, too. Another child of Athena. Another life about to be lost.)

“The cancer isn’t gone, Annabeth,” he mourns softly, and that can’t be right, because things are better , aren’t they? “They just bought him some more time.”

“No… no . They stopped it, Will. They got rid of it,” Annabeth informs him, because the son of Apollo may be a healer, but he’s got it wrong this time. “You’re wrong.”

He shakes his head gently and holds out his hand to her, still sitting on the edge of Caleb’s bed, still looking like he’s one stiff wind away from collapsing. But he holds out his hand and doesn’t break eye contact, so Annabeth shuffles closer and lets him guide her hand towards the swollen skin on Caleb’s leg. He closes his eyes, draws the light towards him, towards them ; she does the same, but it’s not the shadowy nothingness that usually rests behind her eyes. There’s a brilliant light stretched out before her, loosely shaped like a human—Caleb, she realizes—and she can feel the gentle, powerful presence of Will next to her, his power pulsing and flowing toward where their hands are connected.

There’s a soft push, guiding and patient, and it nudges her attention toward where Caleb’s leg would be.

Where light should be, but isn’t.

An inky-substance starts in the middle of his shin, pulsing and alive as it spreads in a slow, malicious crawl. The light pushes it back valiantly, but with every passing second, the poisonous dark seeps outwards, wrapping its tendrils through the pulsing light and suffocating it, like it never existed in the first place.

Annabeth opens her eyes and stumbles away, nausea crawling up her throat as she readjusts to a world that is color and sharp edges rather than pure, beautiful light and that terrible darkness.

Will’s eyes, now open, drift back to Caleb’s unconscious form. “He was stage four, Annabeth. There was only so much they could do.”

No.

No . She was so fucking tired of hearing that. There was only so much they could do for Thalia. Only so much they could do for Amanda, for Hannah, for Kelsey, for Sam, for Luke , gods-dammit. It was never enough, but it was all they could do .

It was bullshit.

“How long?” Annabeth asks, her voice strained and low.

“Before this, six months. With the fall…” Will sighs heavily. “I’m not sure anymore.”

“But not long?”

“No.”

Annabeth nods and swallows down the swirling, acidic lump of dread that climbs up her throat. “Does he know?”

Will nods. “He wanted to spend the time he had left at camp. He asked me not to tell anyone.”

Annabeth wants to scream. At who, she doesn’t know. Caleb, for hiding this from everyone; Will for listening to her brother’s stupid request; herself, for being blind enough to miss it.

When did Annabeth become incapable, unwilling, even, to take the pieces of a puzzle before her and put them together? It was all there. It had been right in front of her, and she’d chosen not to look. When had she become so focused on hope that she forgot how cruel the curse of ignorance could be?

But she knows now. She knows, and she sits in the chair by Caleb’s bed and she watches Will give every part of himself to heal the son of Athena, only stopping when Annabeth pulls him away, his face almost green with exertion.

They do this dance for hours until Annabeth is too tired to stop him and Will is too tired to keep going, and the son of Apollo agrees to take a nap in the bed next to Caleb’s if Annabeth will do the same, so she curls up and tucks her head into her shoulder and lets herself fall asleep once she hears Will’s soft, deep breaths fill the room.

Annabeth doesn’t remember her dreams. She wakes from an empty, quiet darkness and finds Caleb staring at her, pensive eyes trained on her every movement as she blinks slowly and stretches, attempting to keep quiet so as not to wake Will, who’s still in a deep sleep a few feet away.

“He told you,” Caleb says, simply, and he doesn’t sound mad, or resigned, or emotional at all, really. It’s more a simple fact, like ‘the sky is blue’ and ‘humans need oxygen to live’.

Annabeth nods. “He had to.”

“It was that bad?”

“A mortal would have died. He had to heal you using his powers,” Annabeth explains, and Caleb’s face contorts in a wince. He glances over at Will, who looks drained even as he sleeps.

“Is he okay?”

“He will be.”

A thick silence settles over them, and they don’t speak for what feels like hours. The sun sets outside the Big House, and Will sleeps, and the children of Athena cannot find the right words to put between them; there are no words that can solve this riddle of death and loss. No intelligence or strategy or craftiness in the world can save them now.

They are human, in this moment, the closest demigods to mortality, and maybe that’s why the Fates chose to curse a child of Athena with something like cancer. A reminder that although they share the same burdens as the other half-bloods and hold desperately to the pride of an immortal, they are, in all essence, powerless . Aware of the possibility for more and yet wholly unable to grasp it.

To be a child of Athena is to die for pride and yet live the most humbling existence of all.

Those words aren’t spoken, but they are understood. The quiet continues.

The spring goes by in a blur.

Caleb still refuses to tell anyone about his sickness, so Annabeth puts on a happy, engaging face when her friends come by, and she dies, little by little, on the inside, crumbling and decaying like the darkness in Caleb’s leg. She laughs, and it’s empty, and no one seems to notice, so she doesn’t try to feel anything beyond the mask of peace.

There’s nothing worth feeling. Caleb is here, but he’s also already gone, and she adds him to the list of people that she loved, people that she would do anything in this world for, who she’s lost, because that darkness that she saw isn’t going anywhere.

However long it takes, it will kill him.

(Selfishly, she wishes he would have died quicker. Because there is no coming to terms with this. It is the worst kind of torture to watch a slow death occur and be completely powerless to stop it.

Selfishly, horribly , she wishes that her brother would have weeks to live, rather than months, because every day she sees Caleb live like he doesn’t have this poison inside, like he doesn’t have a fucking expiration date, like he isn’t lying to everyone around them who thinks that they’ll know the son of Athena for years to come, like Annabeth hasn’t seen the truth, she dies inside. A tiny piece of her crumbles into dust every day, and she’s going to lose him anyways, so that evil, awful part of her just wants to get it over with.

The first time she feels that way, she runs to the bathroom and retches up every meal she’s had in the past twenty four hours. Once she’s done, she sobs until her head aches so badly that she is sick again, and her tiny body, frail and mortal, shudders with the aftershocks.)

Caleb can’t hide it forever, though. In May, when his bones still haven’t healed from the fall, people start to ask questions.

This time he answers truthfully.

Annabeth lets the smiles go. She lets the world watch her shatter into a million pieces, jagged and dreadful and ruined.

She watches her brother die with the rest of camp, and she can do nothing.

There’s a new kid at camp.

His name is Malcolm Pace and he looks and acts like an Athena kid—thunderstorm eyes and dirty blonde hair and a quick mind and this obsession with random, obscure facts—but he stays in the Hermes Cabin for days, then weeks.

“It’s fucking ridiculous,” Luke grumbles, tossing little pebbles he’s collected from the sand, barely waiting to hear the quiet thump of one sinking beneath the waves before he’s hurling the next one behind it. “Everyone knows where he’s going, and the gods are just too lazy to do anything about. Your fucking mom is too lazy to do anything about it.”

The sky rumbles dangerously overhead, and Luke’s mood darkens with it. Annabeth has to swallow down her immediate inclination to defend her mother, because honestly, she doesn’t have the energy to fight Luke on this right now (she’d been kept awake by Caleb’s rasping attempts at breathing last night) and she can’t completely disagree with him. 

Does it really take that long to send a hologram down so the kid could sleep on an actual bed instead of being designated to a sleeping bag in the corner of the Hermes Cabin?

She keeps her mouth shut, though. Luke, when he gets like this, wants to talk more than he wants to listen, and she lets him, because his voice chases away some of the emptiness flooding her brain these days.

“I’m telling you, Annabeth, they hate us. They always have.” It’s more of an extreme stance than usual, from him, but Luke’s always jumped to extremes. It doesn’t necessarily bother her, because it’s a part of him.

Annabeth makes a small noise of agreement and scoops up a handful of sand; she watches it pour out of the sides and back to the ground, mixing in effortlessly with the buzz of waves crashing onto the shoreline. The Fireworks Beach is quiet today—a rare occasion, but it’s never silent . There’s always some tune of nature, and that soothes Annabeth more than it ever has before.

(Silence feels like the Infirmary. Silence feels like that world of infinite light and crippling darkness. Silence feels like Annabeth’s nightmares.

She’s terrified of silence, now.)

“And what makes them better than the Titans, hm?” They didn’t eat their children , Annabeth almost says, but holds her tongue. Luke needs to talk. He doesn’t need to be questioned. She can swallow her pride to help Luke, because he’s about the only one of her friends, her family, that she can actually help anymore. “They’re just another set of dictators,” he growls.

Annabeth doesn’t say a word, which Luke must interpret as an agreement, because he continues to rant about the unfairness of it all until he’s exhausted the topic and moves onto something else.

But, privately, she thinks he’s wrong about it all. The gods don’t hate their children; Annabeth is pretty confident in this fact, at least. Hate would imply that they cared enough to feel emotion for their children, and she genuinely doesn’t think their immortal parents are capable of anything but indifference towards them.

They let their half-blood children become the scapegoats of the Fates and never say a word, and it is cruel, but it is not hateful.

And maybe the Titans would have been better; maybe they wouldn’t have. But the Titans are gone and not coming back, and they live in a world where they must fight for a destiny and endure their parents’ disregard. It is the world they are given, and complaining won’t change that.

(Annabeth doesn’t disagree with him because he’s just talking. It’s not like he can do anything about it, anyways.)

Caleb is moved to the Infirmary on a permanent basis when his lungs start to fail on their own.

Malcolm is finally claimed and no one lets him near Caleb’s bunk.

Annabeth decides she’s fucking tired of dying at camp, of watching her friends die at camp.

“I want a quest,” she informs Chiron without any introduction, sitting down at the porch table across from him and completely disregarding Mr. D, who sits in one of the other chairs and sips his Diet Coke with a thinly-veiled smirk of amusement.

Chiron’s face contorts in confusion.

“Annabeth, we’ve discussed this. Your destiny—”

“I don’t give a shit about my destiny,” she growls, startling both Chiron and herself with the uncharacteristic anger, but making the god of wine snort into his canned drink. She resists the urge to glare at him, then continues. “I’ve been training for almost four years, Chiron. I’ve won every game you’ve thrown at me. I am the best .” She pauses; waits for one of the two camp directors to disagree with her. They don’t, so she carries on. “I earned this.”

Chiron takes a deep breath. “I agree, Annabeth. But I also cannot change the laws of the Fates,” he tells her delicately.

Annabeth knows she’s playing a dangerous game. She knows , and still she can’t help but spit out, “Screw the motherfucking Fates —”

“Listen, Annabelle,” the god of wine cuts in finally, the mirth slowly leaving his face as he stares down the daughter of Athena. “Even the gods don’t get to decide your destiny. We’ve got our own prophecies that bind us and the one that you’re a part of is not something you can ignore. Chiron is right. Your destiny is tied to someone else, and until we know who that person is, we can’t risk losing you. We won’t risk losing you. Not when this prophecy hints at the possibility of the very world as we know it being turned to ashes and dust.” He looks at her with hard eyes. “I’m pretty sure you’re smart enough to realize how fucking foolish it would be to risk our existence to let you prove yourself to your friends.”

Chiron levels a disapproving stare at Mr. D, but neither god nor mortal deign to notice him. The words hit sharp inside Annabeth, driving a dagger into her pride and leaving it there. Because he’s right. It would be foolish. So monumentally stupid, in fact, that Annabeth feels more shame in this moment than she ever has in her life, she thinks.

(But there is a part of her, beyond the logic, that will always rage at being a pawn in some masochistic chess game to entertain immortals who grow closer to apathetic madness with every endless year they see.)

“You’re right,” she mumbles. “I’m sorry.”

Chiron makes a noise of sympathy. “You don’t have to be sorry, child. I understand the desire to prove yourself.” He smiles at Annabeth gently. “You’ll get your time soon, I promise.”

That night, Annabeth dreams of a storm beating against the borders of camp. She dreams of watching lightning flash across the sky. She dreams of watching a small figure reach the crest of Half-Blood Hill in darkness, supporting the limp weight of another body, before lightning strikes again and the world is washed in eerie white light, illuminating the razor sharp weapon in the first figure’s hand before the scene goes dark again.

Soon , a voice seems to say to her. Soon.

Annabeth’s days begin to develop a pattern.

She visits Caleb before breakfast every morning, and some days are good, but others are worse, but he always smiles when he sees her, and that makes it worth it. Will tells her it’s a matter of weeks now, because Caleb is struggling to eat, and it’s not easier to bear, but it’s getting easier to tuck everyone one of his smiles and coughs and words into a box in the corner of her mind labeled Do Not Touch .

After breakfast, she forces Will to leave the Infirmary for a little while, and then she flies with Silena, because the skies are loud around Annabeth, and they keep her brain from going too quiet. Grover has been eating lunch with her, and she’s thankful for the soothing presence of him, a remnant of her past that has drifted into her future without turmoil.

Luke…

Annabeth wants her quest. She knows she can’t leave without whoever the fucking prophecy is about but she feels it in her very bones that it won’t be long now, so she can be ready.

So she trains with Luke, because he’s never once expected her to be anything less than her potential. He pushes her in the same way Athena pushed her in Richmond—cutting words and ruthless opposition until Annabeth was a lethal weapon as sharp as her blade.

But…he’s different.

(Maybe he’s always been different. Maybe this is one of those puzzles she’s left unsolved in favor of blind hope. Maybe there’s nothing different about Luke. Maybe Annabeth has finally learned to open her eyes.)

He’s kind to her, as always. He still has his charming smiles and open demeanor and  unwavering concern for Annabeth’s life and well-being. They are family, and that promise holds true through years and miles, but the patience that once accompanied his determination and cunning has run out, leaving behind a dry, cutting wit that seems more set on causing hurt than amusement. Gone is the teenage boy who ranted and raved with whatever words made the anger feel like less of a cage in the moment—every syllable that falls from his mouth is calculated and intentional.

Sometimes, when they’re fighting, his eyes go dark, and it’s like he drifts somewhere that Annabeth can’t follow. His moves get rougher, more deadly, and Annabeth doesn’t falter; she blocks every single one with perfect form, but she has this awful feeling, this little voice in the back of her head telling her that even if she did stumble, he wouldn’t stop.

When he looks like that, his face hardened with fury and determination, Annabeth knows that he would kill her in a second, if she only gave him the chance.

So she doesn’t give him the chance. She is faster and she tells herself that he’s only acting like this to push her. He’s only teaching her how it’s going to be beyond the borders of Camp Half-Blood, where losing a fight means losing a life. She’s lived and survived like that before, but four years at camp have softened her reflexes and blurred her vicious edges. So she trains until she can’t be beat. She trains until she can’t be killed.

She pretends that she doesn’t have nightmares about Luke’s face in the sparring arena, his sword moving in a blur that this dream-Annabeth can’t keep track of. She slows, and it’s her death warrant. His sword comes down on her chest—

But she always wakes up before he can kill her. Because as terrified as she is of Luke’s sudden edge, her mind knows (her soul knows) that Luke Castellan would never ( could never) betray Annabeth Chase.

Even the Fates themselves couldn’t orchestrate something so wretched.

June 17, 2005.

4:52 in the afternoon.

It’s cloudy overhead, a storm brewing outside the camp, and thunder can be heard in the distance.

By Will’s request, the Athena Cabin files into the Infirmary. Silena comes next, clutching Beckendorf’s hand with red eyes. Grover is close behind them.

Caleb Iris-messaged his mortal mother yesterday. It was the last time he was lucid enough to do so.

There is silence as Annabeth sits in the bedside chair, her left hand wrapped around Caleb’s, her right tucked into Will’s.

There is silence as Olivia sobs from the foot of the bed, her body bowed over Caleb’s feet.

There is silence as Malcolm looks down at the brother he would never get to know.

There is silence as Emily prays under her breath.

There is silence as Michael stares at his brother with broken eyes and quiet tears.

There is silence as Annabeth holds her brother’s hand and thinks of drafting pencils and Capture the Flag planning and Monopoly games and yelling at him to stop snoring above her and reminding each other to be brave because they had to be and having a best friend who looked like her but was so, so different in the best fucking way.

There is silence as Caleb takes his last breath.

There is silence when Annabeth says goodbye.

5:27 in the afternoon.

Lightning strikes on Farm Road.

Annabeth is the head counselor of Cabin Six now. When they burn Caleb’s funeral shroud (a beautifully woven tapestry of silver and purple that all five of them worked tirelessly on), Annabeth steps into the center of the amphitheater and stares up at every mourning demigod that knew Caleb, and she speaks.

“Caleb was one of the bravest demigods I’ve ever known,” she begins, and her voice doesn’t break once , because Caleb deserves a hero’s speech; he deserves to have every damn person in this crowd hear it, so her voice does not waver . “He died in battle. One of the longest and hardest battles I’ve ever witnessed, and through it all, he never changed. He was still good, still kind, still willing to take the burden of this war he was fighting onto his own shoulders so that no one here would have to feel the grief that he felt every hour, every minute, and every second of the day.” She swallows heavily. “Caleb was not just my family because we had the same mother. Caleb was my family because when I desperately needed it, he was my friend . He stood by me at my best and at my worst, and one of the only things I regret is that I didn’t get a chance to thank him enough.” Annabeth blinks at the campers. At her friends. At her family. “He had so much love in his heart. Until the very last breath he took.”

With that, Annabeth finishes. With that, Annabeth shuffles toward the pyre, where the flames are leaping up to the sky.

This time her voice is quiet. This time, she lets herself cry, because this is for her ears only.

“Until I see you again, Caleb,” she says, her soft sobs making the syllables rough and uneven. “Elysium is lucky to have you.”

(Many years later, those that remain in the Monopoly group wonder where their board game ever went.

Since they’d started to rotate locations, the blame, of course, begins to be shifted around, pointing fingers and promises being traded as Annabeth sits quietly in the background, content to let them fight.

What they don’t know, what they’ll never know, is that Annabeth was the last one to have the Monopoly board.

On June 18th, Annabeth had taken one look at the board game, sitting innocently on the old drafting table, and all she could see was Caleb’s face.

On June 18th, Annabeth brought the Monopoly board back to the Big House, back into the storage closet, back into the shadows where maybe another group of demigods who needed a way to become friends could find it in twenty years. Whatever happened, Annabeth didn’t care.

That game was not made for five people. It was made for six.)

Annabeth turns twelve, and she thinks it might be the first time she smiles in a month.

Honestly, it might be the first time anyone smiles in a month.

Luke (who has softened over the past few weeks and is back to his usual self) and Silena (who still cries at odd intervals, but seems a bit better, all things considered) team up to bake a cake, although they fail at that particular challenge and smuggle in cupcakes from a local grocery store instead—courtesy of Argus’s van.

Beckendorf and Grover present her with her birthday present from her friends—a new sheath for her knife that has personal touches from each of them carved into the leather; a tiny heart for Silena, a crudely drawn sun for Will, a lopsided pan-flute for Grover, a small hammer for Beckendorf, and a winged foot that she can only imagine is Luke’s addition to the mix. When she looks up, he’s grinning at her like he knows what she’s just seen, and she smiles back at him, bright and free.

“Turn it over,” Beckendorf says gently.

Annabeth listens. She flips the sheath over in her hands, her fingers skimming the engraving on the other side.

It’s an owl.

And she knows it’s not for her.

“Caleb,” is all she has to say, and Silena nods.

“It didn’t seem right without the whole crew,” the daughter of Aphrodite explains, her voice watery.

Annabeth lets her fingers skim reverently over the intricate carving. It’s a work of art, yes, but its beauty is in the person it represents.

She has no other words, so she hugs each of her friends, each of her siblings, and hopes they understand just how much they all mean to her, even if she can’t quite explain.

(She thinks of Leia.

“I love you.”

She thinks of Han.

“I know.”)

Her siblings don’t give her their gift until everyone has cleared out of the cabin, and it’s just the five of them left.

Michael is the one to hand it over—a messily wrapped, cylindrical parcel.

Annabeth unwraps it carefully.

A new set of drafting pencils.

A sob echoes through her, sending tears falling onto the gift like a rainstorm. They are not happy, but they are not entirely sad, either. They are just tears, spilled in grief and relief and frustration and joy, because Caleb might be gone, but she’s still got these people that she loves, who look up to her, who pay attention enough to pick up on the inside jokes and traditions that she’d thought would die with Caleb.

She’s still got these people with eyes like a storm, who cry with her, who loved Caleb with her, and they aren’t going anywhere.

Annabeth clutches those drafting pencils to her chest and drags them all in for a hug, and she doesn’t let go for a very, very long time.

At the end of the summer session, everyone gathers together to get their camp bead.

At the end of the summer session, everyone gets a black bead with a yellow ribbon, for the boy who lost the bravest battle of all.

At the end of the summer of 2005, Chiron and Grover have to leave camp. They don’t say why. One day they are there, Grover nervously chewing on a soda can while he sits with Annabeth in the strawberry fields, and the next day they are gone, off to handle important business for the gods, apparently.

Annabeth’s curiosity burns within her, and she asks around (aggressively) for the first few weeks, but eventually she comes to terms with the fact that no one has an answer.

So Annabeth keeps training. She keeps waiting for her chance.

Luke turns nineteen and becomes the oldest person at Camp Half-Blood.

Luke turns nineteen, and everyone waits for the other shoe to drop. 

Luke turns nineteen, and Annabeth wonders if he’ll get to see twenty.

New people come and go with the Fall. Pollux and Castor arrive at camp in October and are claimed by Mr. D at dinner. Austin makes it to Long Island in November, and he stays in the Hermes Cabin for a while, young and unclaimed and another sleeping bag to clutter the floor. Mitchell and Lacy go to Aphrodite at the beginning of December, and Kayla is claimed by Apollo a few hours after her mom drops her off.

Winter comes with cold air and on December 15th, six days before the Winter Solstice, Mr. D informs the year-round campers that they will be accompanying him to Olympus for the solstice, since Chiron is still gone and he’s not allowed to leave them all alone to kill each other.

He seems sad about that particular fact, but Annabeth doesn’t mind. It will be the first time she’s stepped outside of the camp borders in two years.

She’s fucking ecstatic.

New York is loud.

Busy, vibrant, and everything Annabeth’s has been expecting. The van carries them through the traffic, and although Silena is chattering happily next to her, Annabeth can hardly tear her eyes away from the cityscape.

They come to a stop at the Empire State Building, and Mr. D glumly ushers them all inside, and Annabeth happily complies, her face surely lighting up as she surveys such breathtaking architecture. Their whole group is abuzz with noise, and the mortal front desk operator stares at them strangely, likely unnerved by the undercurrent of other that radiates from their crowd.

Annabeth is the first one to the elevator, because if this is New York City—if this is the Empire State Building—then she needs to see Mount Olympus more than she’s ever needed anything in her life.

Luke, Silena, Will, and the rest of the Athena Cabin go up with her, and when those doors slide open for the first time, she forgets anyone else is there.

Clouds circle the glittering city before her. The streets of gold and silver spill out in every direction and meet them at the elevator, and Annabeth swears she can feel the ancient history beneath her feet when she steps out. Beautiful marble temples line the road, decorated in mosaics of impossibly vibrant color, and fountains and ponds are littered throughout, their clear waters shining under the waning sunlight. Nymphs and other minor gods laze about, chatting merrily as they stroll between the awe-inspiring buildings like they are simple suburban homes. The sunset sits over the city in a wave of fiery color, rising upward until Annabeth’s eyes find the largest of all the temples, built onto the very peak of the mountain.

Zeus’s palace.

Annabeth takes her first step into Olympus, her first step toward the home of the king of the gods.

Later that evening, after they’ve been dismissed to the vast room of sleeping bags where they’ll be staying the night, Annabeth is still in awe of what she had seen.

The gods were so much more than what she’d expected. They’d been dressed in their ancient Grecian finery—white togas and polished crowns and sweeping, colorful capes. The symbols of power for each of the Olympians were brandished proudly for all to see, and Annabeth could only dream of holding the kind of power those deities had, if the sheer forceful energy radiating from each of their symbolic items was no more than a drop in a bucket of what they could do.

She is a universe trapped in a body that is too small, and yet even her endless mind feels dwarfed by the enormity of the immortals in council.

They try to stay up talking—Will and Silena have situated their sleeping bags next to hers and Beckendorf spends a few minutes with them before heading back to his siblings—but all three of them are yawning quickly, and Annabeth turns over to the sounds of her friends’ slow, tired words until they, too, succumb to their exhaustion.

Annabeth has a strange dream.

She wakes in the darkness and a tall figure is slipping back into the room, his footsteps quiet on the tile.

There’s a flash of electricity at his hand, a spark of light. It’s quickly swallowed by shadows, and sleep reclaims Annabeth soon after.

They arrive back at camp around noon the next day, all loud and excited and sharing stories of what they’d seen at the home of the gods. Annabeth has the lines and curves of roofs and columns ingrained in her mind, and she is itching to get back to the cabin so she can finally put them onto paper.

She walks with Beckendorf and Emily back to the cabins, Will and Silena a few feet ahead. They split off at the hearth, and Annabeth has one foot through the threshold of the cabin when the heavens split open with a crash of thunder that shakes the whole Earth.

Annabeth reaches out a hand to the doorway to steady herself and turns back towards the common ground. She’s not the only one—campers are sprinting out of the cabins in waves to watch as lightning arcs across the sky, snapping out from the dark (nearly black) clouds that are quickly closing ranks. Rain follows seconds later, beating relentlessly against the camp’s borders, and Annabeth has the feeling that their magical weather moderator is the only thing saving them from a monsoon-level downpour.

Thunder rumbles again, and this time, Annabeth swears it sounds like the angry bellow of a man.

Everyone is horrified. She finds her friends’ faces in the chaos—

Luke’s expression stops her inspection in its tracks. He doesn’t look scared; he looks resigned, expectant. Each sickening boom of thunder rolls right off of him like he can’t even hear it.

Then Annabeth blinks, and he looks nervous, and she tells herself she’s just seeing things. She shoves down the chill creeping up her spine and looks back to the skies.

(She wasn’t seeing things.)

The weather gets worse. Annabeth hears news of freak natural disasters tearing through the United States, and they see their fair share of the chaos sweeping just past their borders.

They get a few new demigods. Annabeth keeps waiting for the lightning to streak across the sky at night, illuminating their form on the hill, but most of them arrive during the day, and those who arrive at night appear on the rare evenings when no storms rage outside.

She hears Mr. D mumbling to himself one day when the weather is particularly bad, and it almost sounds like he’s griping about something being stolen.

But no one knows anything. And Mr. D won’t tell her what’s going on, or why the weather has been weird, or why Chiron and Grover are still gone.

So Annabeth keeps training, keeps waiting, as the months pass by.

“This is a bad idea,” Annabeth grumbles when Silena brings the mascara wand closer to her eye.

The daughter of Aphrodite purses her lips. “This was our agreement,” she reminds Annabeth, shrugging her shoulders gently. “I’ll tell Charlie that I like him if you let me do a full face of makeup on you.” She smirks. “Simple.”

Annabeth narrows her eyes. “I still feel like you’re getting the better end of the deal,” she says.

Silena shrugs again. “Maybe. You won’t know until I’m done, though,” she says, her grin practically evil.

Annabeth considers backing out in that moment, because letting that black stick of torture anywhere near her eyes feels like a nightmare waiting to happen. But then she thinks about watching her two friends dance around each other with nervous smiles and blushing cheeks and she steels herself, sitting up straighter in the vanity chair. She takes a deep breath and says with utmost confidence, “Do your worst.”

Silena shrugs and leans in closer, only to be stopped by frantic knocking on the cabin door. The daughter of Aphrodite stands up straight, looking curiously over her shoulder, and Annabeth watches as she recaps the mascara and walks quickly to the door, flinging it open to reveal a grinning Will Solace.

“Yes?” Silena drawls.

“Chiron’s back!” he tells them, and in seconds, Annabeth is rushing to the door.

She’s halfway out of the Aphrodite Cabin when Silena’s bell-like laughter finds her ears, forcing her to turn back around. “So much for our agreement, huh?” she asks slyly, like she’s just won the game rather than hit a streak of luck.

Annabeth groans. “I’ll be back here!” she decides, before sprinting off towards the Big House, because it’s Chiron , and even Silena and Beckendorf can wait for him. “You’re not getting out of it!” she calls over her shoulder, for good measure.

“Whatever helps you sleep at night!” Silena calls back, her laughter bubbling over as she slips back inside.

May has settled into Camp Half-Blood with a wave of warm weather, and Annabeth feels sweat starting to bead on her hairline by the time she makes it to the Big House. Chiron is speaking with Mr. D on the porch, and she slows to a near stop as she takes in Mr. D’s furrowed brow and the nervous set of Chiron’s mouth.

“—stole it?” Chiron asks incredulously.

Mr. D nods at whatever the question had been. “We have until the solstice—”

He finally notices the daughter of Athena’s presence, and his sudden halt has Chiron looking up as well, both pairs of eyes settling on Annabeth. The god of wine’s face has morphed into one of bland irritation while the centaur’s splits into an easy grin.

She barrels straight past Mr. D and wraps Chiron in a hug.

“You’re not allowed to leave again,” she says, very seriously, although Chiron’s responding laughter makes it hard to stay somber.

“I’ll try my very best, dear,” he tells her kindly. When they pull back, he stares down at her with a gentle twinkle in his eye. “Have you gotten taller since I left?”

Annabeth grins. “Two inches.”

Chiron looks surprised. “Impressive,” he chuckles. “If you’d like to start a game of cards, Mr. D and I are almost done—”

“We can talk later,” the god drawls, sipping on a can of Diet Coke that hadn’t been in his hand a few seconds ago. “I’ll let you catch up with Ashleybeth.”

He strolls back into the Big House with a heavy sigh, and Chiron shrugs at Annabeth. “Pinochle?”

They play until late in the night, and as much as Annabeth tries to get him to crack, the centaur refuses to tell her where he's been, or what he’s been doing. Even the subject of Grover’s whereabouts has him relying on vague misdirections until she gets tired enough to stop asking.

Instead, he asks her to recount every detail of what happened at camp while he was gone. She indulges him, and he laughs despite himself when she tells him about the Stoll brothers’ latest prank.

They’re on their eighth straight game when the rain starts up again.

“Did you being gone have anything to do with the Great Prophecy?” Annabeth asks, the storm, as always, making her eyes drift towards Half-Blood Hill—waiting for that shadowy figure to appear.

Chiron sighs. “I’m not sure yet,” he admits. “It was…” he stops as a particularly loud burst of thunder shakes the porch. “Things are tense right now, on Olympus.”

It’s the most information he’s given Annabeth in hours. She pounces on it.

“Why? What happened?”

Chiron stares at her with discerning eyes, like he’s trying to determine whether it’s a good idea to tell her; she tries to look particularly trustworthy. Finally he sighs. “Something was stolen.”

Another boom of thunder.

“And it has something to do with the Great Prophecy?” Annabeth asks. She knows she’s talking fast now, but there’s this buzzing in her veins and she feels so, so close to the truth, like she could reach out and touch it. “Do—do you know who the Prophecy is about?”

If he knew—

This was Annabeth’s destiny. The person she’d been waiting for these last five years. The only person who could get her out of this gods-forsaken camp.

Chiron’s face tightens.

Then a few things happen at once.

There’s an angry bellow that almost sounds like thunder in the storm, but Chiron’s head snaps up towards the boundary line, and Annabeth knows it’s not the storm.

They stare at the hill for a long time, Annabeth’s heart pounding because the dream felt just like this. Just like this.

Lightning jumps across the sky. The hill is still empty.

Annabeth takes another breath and waits.

Another streak of lightning and there’s a shadow under Thalia’s tree.

A curved, pointed weapon at the edge of the figure.

A shadowy form slumped on one side.

Annabeth feels her lungs go flat.

They are silent as he limps toward the Big House, and Annabeth only stops herself from running to meet the boy because Chiron hasn’t yet moved.

He steps into the light of the porch—small, scrawny, and drenched in rainwater. He’s supporting Grover, who is worryingly bloody, but he looks a few seconds from collapsing himself. He’s probably around her age, and covered in tell-tale yellow dust and blood.

His eyes, a sea green that Annabeth knows (that she’s always known, she thinks), are wide and unseeing.

He makes it up the stairs of the porch before he collapses at their feet, knees buckling under the combined weight of himself and Grover.

“He’s the one,” Annabeth says, staring down at him and feeling completely helpless when faced with her destiny. “He must be.”

“Silence, Annabeth,” Chiron tells her, his voice stern and worried. He looks down at the boy with recognition—not the overwhelming ‘aha’ moment that Annabeth had felt, but the genuine care that only comes from having met someone before. “He’s still conscious. Bring him inside.”

Annabeth helps lay Grover over Chiron’s back, then she pulls the dark-haired boy up, draping one of his arms over her shoulder and wrapping her own arms around his midsection so that she can pull him to the Infirmary with her.

“What’s his name?” Annabeth asks when they are a few steps inside and Chiron is walking slowly next to her to ensure that Grover doesn’t fall. He looks startled by the question, like he hadn’t expected her to piece the dots together when some random kid dropped at their feet and Chiron never raised an eyebrow. She looks over at him curiously. “You obviously know him.”

Chiron doesn’t answer her question immediately. He stays quiet when they finally make it to the Infirmary and Annabeth dumps the boy onto the nearest bed. She immediately moves for Grover, sliding him off the camp director’s back and depositing him on the bed next to the other boy. Will is already asleep, but she doesn’t bother to wake him up for this—she’s bothered him in the Infirmary enough times to know the ins and outs of basic first aid, and unless there’s are some serious internal issues she can’t see from the two boys, their injuries are mostly limited to some scrapes, cuts, and bruises. She busies herself with pulling down some nectar and ambrosia from the cabinets, and grabs some gauze and rubbing alcohol while she’s there, just so she can take a look at some of the nastier cuts.

She makes it back to the two beds when Chiron finally deigns to speak.

“His name,” the centaur says quietly, “is Percy Jackson.”

“And?” Annabeth asks, because there’s something more to that, something he’s unwilling to say. But gods-dammit, if she’s going to patch up this boy—Percy—then she wants to know what the fuck is going on.

“And I fear he is more important to our world than we yet know.”

Annabeth looks down at Percy Jackson and thinks Chiron might be right.

Percy doesn’t wake up at all the first day. 

Will finally gets in the next morning, and he’s furious that no one called him, but once he realizes that Annabeth’s initial evaluation is correct (no major injuries, just severe exhaustion and a minor concussion on Percy’s part), he relaxes just a bit. He doesn’t let Annabeth stay though, winning their little standoff with the very reasonable argument that Annabeth hasn’t slept in twenty-four hours, and he will call her if either one of the boys wakes up.

She slinks out of the Big House (reluctantly) and returns to her cabin, and maybe Will had been right about her needing sleep, because Annabeth doesn’t remember much after her head hits the pillow.

Annabeth doesn’t wake up again until the sun is low in the sky.

She, of course, goes straight to the Big House, making a beeline for the Infirmary.

Will is there, and so is Percy Jackson, but Grover is nowhere to be seen, and Annabeth levels a vicious glare at the son of Apollo once she takes in that particular scene.

“You said you would call if either one of them woke up,” she growls. She hasn’t seen Grover while he’s conscious in months— months . “One of them woke up.”

Will shrugs. “You were still sleeping and you needed the rest.” He sets a bowl of ambrosia down on the side table by Percy’s bed before returning back to the medicine cabinet to find a roll of bandages. “But now that you’re back, I told Beckendorf that I’d try taping his wrist for him, so could you feed the new kid for me?” he asks, his voice desperate. “The dosage is right and everything, you just need to make sure he eats it all.”

Annabeth sighs heavily. “Sure.”

Will’s grin is blinding. “Perfect! I’ll be back soon!”

He darts out of the room, closing the door swiftly behind him. Annabeth settles down on the edge of Percy’s bed.

He’s so normal . A normal kid with normal black hair and normal thin arms and a normal peaceful expression while he’s sleeping. He doesn’t look like he’s the subject of some ominous Prophecy.

But Annabeth doesn’t look like she could take down a grown man in seconds and she certainly can, so she ignores his looks and focuses on that overwhelming connection she feels to the boy. The ebb and flow of a shared destiny that she’s been aware of since she first saw him on that hill. 

She grabs the bowl of ambrosia.

He wakes up a few times, mumbling incoherently about farm animals, of all fucking things, and it makes Annabeth smile despite herself.

By the time he opens his eyes, Annabeth has nearly finished feeding him the ambrosia, and it’s a good thing, too. She’s so startled by the sudden and vibrant color that she almost drops the bowl.

(She wonders, then, how anyone ever thought Percy Jackson was mortal. If her eyes look like thunderstorms, his eyes are the ocean; always shifting, ruthlessly colorful, and emotionally turbulent.

Half-blood child of the eldest gods . If Percy Jackson is truly the child of the Great Prophecy, Annabeth doesn’t think she needs a hologram to recognize which of the Big Three was to blame.

There is nothing natural about his eyes, and yet, she cannot imagine the lines of his face without them.)

She struggles for something to say, because he’s staring at her expectantly. “What will happen at the summer solstice?”

He blinks once, like he hasn’t processed the question. “What?”

Great. He probably doesn’t know jack shit because Chiron probably did that stupid thing where he’s vague and unwilling to convey any important information, and not everyone is like Annabeth, who will push and push and push a topic until she gets what she wants.

She thinks about how much time has passed—Will should be back soon. And if she wants answers, from whatever random scraps of information this kid might have overheard, she needs to get them now. With one last furtive glance over her shoulder, she tries again. “What’s going on? What was stolen?” she asks, and Percy’s eyes remain glazed over. She groans in frustration. “We’ve only got a few weeks!”

He blinks again. “I’m sorry. I don’t…”

There’s a knock at the door. Annabeth panics and shoves a large spoonful of ambrosia in his mouth and turns to the door just in time to watch it open up.

Thankfully it’s Grover on the other side, not Will, who would surely have chastised her for waking up and bothering his patient.

She turns back to check on Percy, but he’s already passed out again, so she hurries over to the satyr who’s still patiently perched in the doorway. When he gets in arms’ reach, Annabeth pulls him into a bone-crushing hug that she hopes will make up for the months she hasn’t seen him.

“I was so worried,” she admits. “You were both gone so long.”

“I’m sorry,” he tells her. “I was assigned to protect Percy and then…” he pauses and stares over at the bed with a fondness Annabeth has only seen around herself and their closest friends. “Then I realized he was something different. More powerful than we expected. That’s why Chiron came. He taught at the school to observe Percy at first but then…”

“Then what?” Annabeth asks.

Grover looks back up at her, his lips worried between his teeth. “Percy’s in trouble,” he tells her quietly. “I’m not sure what happened, but it’s bad.” He looks around furtively, like he’s making sure no one will overhear. “There was an honest-to-gods Kindly One after him, Annabeth.”

She gapes at him then stares down at the bed—at this kid who has apparently survived both a Minotaur and a Fury and lived to tell the tale. He’s accomplished things with pure dumb luck that other demigods train nearly their whole lives for. Percy doesn’t realize it yet, but he’s going to become a legend amongst demigods before he’s even learned to defend himself.

She studies his face closely. She looks for anything that might make this story make sense—anything that might make this damn Prophecy, or even the theft and summer solstice issue, make sense. She looks for something .

He sleeps peacefully, like he’s slipped back into a series of pleasant dreams.

You are ordinary, a voice that sounds like her mother’s reminds her. And yet you are more .

Ordinary and yet more. As she stares down at Percy Jackson, she thinks that’s a rather fitting description of the Minotaur-killer with drool pooled in the corner of his mouth.

Forty-eight hours go by, and Annabeth is getting very fucking tired of waiting for Percy Jackson to wake up.

“He went through a lot,” Chiron says sadly when she brings it up to him. “Give him some time.”

He’s in the middle of playing Go-Fish with Mr. D, and Annabeth would join the game, but she can hardly sit still—her anticipation a living, breathing thing at this point.

“He’s had time,” Annabeth grumbles back, but she relents because she remembers arriving without Thalia and she desperately wishes that she’d thought to sleep for two whole days so she could shut out the world.

Not moments later, she hears the soft buzz of voices coming from the other end of the porch, and her head snaps around to where Grover and Percy Jackson are walking towards them.

Percy looks rough. Even the two days of sleep haven’t helped the soreness, and he shuffles with slow, careful steps. His hair is sticking up in every direction, and he’s got rings of purple underneath his eyes that speak to just how little his rest actually did for him.

But his eyes…

His eyes are alive . There is no exhaustion there; nothing but some unreal depth that Annabeth can’t understand.

(And Annabeth hates to not understand something.)

Grover whispers something to him, and his eyes light up, settling on Chiron’s turned head. “Mr. Brunner!” he cries.

Chiron turns with a grin. “Ah, good, Percy. Now we have four for Pinochle,” he tells the boy with a twinkle in his eye. He holds a hand to one of the chairs between himself and Mr. D, which Percy takes with some trepidation.

Smart kid.

Mr. D glowers at him, and with a heavy sigh, says, “Oh, I suppose I must say it. Welcome to Camp Half-Blood. There. Now don’t expect me to be glad to see you.”

Percy eyes the god with a wary frown, then scoots farther away in his chair, his butt practically halfway off the seat. Annabeth resists the urge to smirk. A very smart kid, then. “Uh, thanks.”

Before Mr. D can traumatize the new kid anymore, Chiron clears his throat and turns to her. “Annabeth?” She pushes off the railing and steps closer to the table. “This young lady nursed you back to health, Percy. Annabeth, my dear, why don’t you go check on Percy’s bunk? We’ll be putting him in cabin eleven for now.”

Annabeth resists the urge to glare at Chiron, because she knows why he’s making her leave—knows he’s trying to keep her from bombarding Percy with questions. And as much as it pisses her off…she knows why.

He’s just lost his mom. He doesn’t need her asking about some prophecy before he’s even properly adjusted to being a demigod. It’s not the time.

(Yet.)

“Sure, Chiron,” she agrees. And because she can’t help herself, she takes one last look at Percy.

Having his eyes focused on her is unnerving to say the very least—he’s intense, but not in the way that Luke or even Annabeth is. If she didn’t know any better, Annabeth would say Percy doesn’t even mean to look so intimidating. He just…is. Power radiates off of him, like waves crashing against the shore—loud and untameable.

But he’s still just a kid. Smaller than Will, even, although his size isn’t helped by the perpetual bad posture he sports.

The Minotaur’s horn is curled in his hand, a white knuckled grip keeping it from slipping away. This kid killed a Minotaur. One of the most ancient monsters of their world.

She doesn’t mean to say it out loud. It’s more her own thoughts spiraling and trying to understand this conundrum that is Percy Jackson, but it slips out before she can take it back.

Because he’s the Minotaur-killer, and probably the child of the Great Prophecy, if Chiron is to be believed, but he’s still got those damn eyes, and even if a prophecy hadn’t been weighing over the two of them, Annabeth thinks the twin oceans staring back at her would have left her speechless.

But she needs words.

(And maybe they aren’t her best words, but even years aren’t enough to come face-to-face with the other end of her invisible string of fate with any sense of clarity.

And he’s just a kid. Like her. He’s done so much, gone through so much, and Annabeth understands that down to her bones.

But there’s a part of her, too, that wants to wring his neck because he took so fucking long to get here and now he’s looking at her with so many expectations, and Annabeth is just a little bit pissed, because she gets to have the expectations for this meeting—not him.

She’s been waiting for this for years, and it’s like she ran out of time to prepare.

So, you know, fuck him for that. Just a little bit. She won’t be held accountable for her racing thoughts that slip through her filter and make their way into the light of day.)

“You drool when you sleep,” she says, and races down the steps of the Big House, everything big and bright and possible in a way that Camp Half-Blood hasn’t been in years.