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Annabeth was ten when she noticed the change. She’d gotten a particularly nasty cut during sword fighting practice- one that ambrosia had barely touched (it tasted like instant ramen from a paper cup- as she gulped it down Annabeth swore she could hear the flipping pages of a university library, smell the waxiness of crayons, feel a hand ruffling her hair). She had been super grown up about it, holding in her tears as the pretty daughter of Apollo patched her up and even refusing the cherry flavoured lolly-pop as she left the infirmary. After the door had shut and she was left in the quiet of an empty off season camp, Annabeth felt a sob build in her throat. Her leg hurt.
The bandage was tight and clean, the ambrosia was knitting the skin of her shin back together, but all she wanted was a hug. At first she craved the presence of a tweed coat and wrinkled dress shirt, then a leather jacket and monster dust- but then her hysterical brain caught up, and the fact neither of those places were available anymore hit like a punch in the gut. There was someone else she could go to- but Luke had been acting strange lately. He’d been blowing her off to hang out with the older kids, always batting her away and saying they didn’t want any little kids harshing their vibe.
It wasn’t fair. All the kids her age had gone home for the summer- even the dorky kid Connor and his older brother Travis that she’d gotten to know this year. She had been hanging out by the Hermes cabin in hopes Luke might actually want to spend time with her and in the process she had gotten to know the brothers. Connor was about a foot shorter than her and burnt a packet of m&m’s for his father every mealtime which she thought was weird (Annabeth always saved a little salmon for her mother- brain food, duh), but he was better than no one (he even made her laugh sometimes).
She thought that since everyone had gone home, Luke would have more time for her- but if anything she had seen even less of him. It was so boring when camp was empty, online school was a breeze that could barely keep her entertained and there was no one in her ability set left to spar with. In all honesty, sword-fighting practice had actually just been her stabbing a training dummy whilst Silena pretended to watch- the accident a result of Annabeth’s own sloppy manoeuvres. She had been losing control a lot lately- her feelings were so big and illogical that her still growing body just couldn’t keep up with them. It sort of felt like that right now.
Luke had started smoking just after his fifteenth birthday- his first without Thalia. She had watched it happen from way down the beach where his party bonfire was, a gorgeous son of Demeter and his equally stunning sister had hand rolled their own special blend of tobacco that tasted of strawberries and had the smoke curl into mythical creatures (the nice kind- the non demigod killing kind). She knew this because her nosy older cabin mate (she still didn’t feel ready to call Cabin Six her siblings just yet) had been eavesdropping (‘collecting data!’) on them during their arts and craft slot and had delighted in telling his fellow Athena kids with the snootiest tone Annabeth had ever heard. She was eight at the time and prayed to all the gods she could that she wouldn’t grow up to be that much of a loser.The habit had stuck, although he was less choosey about brands, and he was also a creature of habit.
Thalia’s tree was abnormally strong and tall for its age, probably Zeus’ attempt at making up for the lousy parenting he’d delivered in her short twelve years. Her roots were deep and strong, perfect to curl up in whenever the day’s got too heavy. There was this one curving branch, low and around sitting height if you were a six foot tall teenager packing on muscle after living most of his life underweight. He had always been handsome, tall and blonde like a movie star; He spoke like JFK on account of his Connecticut hometown, something Thalia made fun of him for but reminded Annabeth of all the books on American history her father had littered around his dorm room. If you had asked her about Luke a year ago, Annabeth would have called him home- recently she wasn’t so sure.
He was there, perched on the familiar branch, cigarette in hand. She was quiet as a mouse as she watched his inhale deeply. She noted a hollowness in his cheeks, the thin skin beneath his eyes dark and tired. To anyone who was friends with Luke, nothing would have looked too out of sorts. The gold sheen to his eye might have been played off as a trick of the light, the hollowness in his cheek a mere fluctuation in weight; all children of Hermes had that gaunt look- something about their trickster nature had their features shift in the low light. As she was on the verge of announcing herself, his head twisted to look at her. He was always doing stuff like that, or knowing what someone was going to say a second before they said it- whenever he did she got a flash of a thin woman sitting at a dining table, her misty grey eyes flashing an acidic green.
‘What’re you doing skulking around there, pipsqueak?’ he called out, his words warbled as he spoke around the filter.
‘M’not skulking,’ she replied, suddenly more interested with the dirt on her sneakers than looking at him.
‘Whatever you say Beth,’ he sounded amused- that was good. He had always been a bit moody, now even more so than usual. He patted the spot beside him, resisting the urge to curl up next to him like she had done when they’d fought the harsh New Jersey winter together in their safe house.
She sat next to him, the branch barely moving from her weight but requiring a small hop to reach. Thalia seemed to always have a seat for the two of them.
‘She looks pretty today,’ Annabeth remarked, noting for the first time how the leaves of the great pine tree were bleeding into stark reds and attractive oranges. Idly she started to pick at the bandage around her knee. It was getting a little too cold to wear shorts, but the frayed denim cutoffs were the last reminder of the bygone summer.
‘She’s looked better,’ Luke said without humour, ashing out his cigarette on the sole of his combat boots. The scar across his cheek rippled as he frowned, ‘You hurt yourself?’
‘Nothing bad, just a scratch,’ she replied shyly. She hated looking weak in front of Luke. It was just another way he’d see her as an annoyance. He hummed, running a finger obsessively over a knot in their seat. He looked tired. ‘You still not sleeping?’
In all the time she had known him, Luke had never looked like he’d had a good night’s rest. All demigods had a troubled relationship with dreams- but Luke more so than anyone. When they slept rough on the run, it was his nightly visions that guided them the most.
‘Actually, yes,’ he replied, tone suddenly strange but smile blinding. It sort of creeped her out.
‘That’s good,’ was all she could think to say, the autumn sun reflecting a swirl of gold into his blue eyes.
‘Haven’t seen much of you lately,’ she was looking at her shoe again. Silena had thread beads onto the laces to ‘beautify’ them, which was a nice idea until she sank ankle deep into a ditch during capture the flag.
‘I suppose I’ve been busy,’ he replied, voice still odd.
‘Busy?’ she scoffed- the Hermes cabin was practically empty and online school had always been a breeze for him, ‘With what?’
‘You know if you practiced your footwork more, then you’d leave your legs less open to attack,’ he replied instead, ignoring her question completely. She was about to call him out on it when he swung her legs to rest on his lap. His long fingers smoothed over the weeping bandage on her knee, before settling on the long jagged scar on her calf. It was an ugly thing, warped by her growing body and puckered from an unfinished healing hymn. She had earned it in the Cyclops den: Thalia and Luke both seduced by the mimicking voice, she had been left to fight her way through the abandoned mansion, her leg slipping through rotten floor boards and leaving her with a nasty cut running up the length of her calf.
‘Luke, you don’t look so good,’ she whispered. When she had first seen him, back in that alley in Richmond, she had thought he was a monster. They had chased her all the way from her family home, and invaded her dreams until all the world felt like a little hell built just for Annabeth. There had been a moment in that ally, when she had seen a glint of golden hair and was reminded of a dream. It was one of the more abstract ones, where all the images were fairly innocuous- but the feeling of panic and dread were more real than anything in the world. She had almost brained him with her clumsy hammer strike before his Hermes quickness restrained her.
Their time at camp had bronzed his skin and given him strange tan lines due to his hours spent in the arena under the beating sun. Only, now his skin seemed that sallow colour of gone off milk, in this light his face appeared skeletal- stretched too thinly across his skull and bones. This was not the Luke she loved.
‘I’m just fine Annie,’ he assured her, voice light in the way Luke never was. His hand had curled tightly around her leg, nails digging into her old scar. It hurt, she wanted to cry out- but it was the first scrap of proper attention she had received in weeks, ‘In fact, I feel better than ever.’
She felt the tissue break, weeping blood onto his hand and wrist.
‘Luke- you’re hurting me,’ she cried, tears springing back to her eyes.
He seemed to snap out of it, nails pulled back instantly, sticky with her blood. The colour returned to his face, although he still looked too thin.
‘Oh,’ his voice was distant (the woman in Connecticut, her acid eyes, her sad voice, oh Luke). He looked down at his body warily, like it was someone else's.
Quietly, Annabeth grabbed his hand, the one with nails coated in dry blood and more spilling down the wrist, and guided him gently back to camp.
‘I’m sorry,’ he muttered, hand squeezing her own.
‘I know,’ was all she could say.