Chapter Text
Annabeth had seen many terrifying things in her life: monsters of every kind, Tartarus, death (from very, very close up), and Percy attempting Latin dancing.
But nothing, absolutely nothing, compared to the dark circles dominating the faces of the two girls sitting across from her.
Christmas was just around the corner, and the crisp air of the Big House was already filled with flickering lights and hanging decorations. The only ones showing not the slightest hint of holiday spirit were those two. Even the Grinch would have bowed in respect before that level of enthusiasm deprivation.
And paradoxically, that wasn’t even the biggest problem.
Everyone knew that Jade and Reyna had had a fight recently, but no one, absolutely no one, knew why. An invisible veil of tension seemed to cling to them at all times, and after a week it had become clear that the situation was far more serious than initially assumed.
They stayed close.
They talked.
They sought each other out.
And yet, something was missing.
Anyone who didn’t know them well wouldn’t have noticed anything strange. But their friends did. And it worried them.
“Okay,” Annabeth said at last, lacing her fingers together on the table, “you two need a vacation. Or a therapist. Actually, probably both.”
A snort was the only response she got. Not even synchronized: first Reyna, then, half a second later, as if she were waiting for the right moment to react: Jade.
“Seriously,” Nico added, frowning. He clearly shared Annabeth’s opinion, though his expression was that of someone who would have preferred being run over by a war chariot rather than getting involved in this conversation.
It had taken him and Annabeth two full days just to arrange this meeting at the Big House, away from prying eyes, so they could yell in peace at the two most stubborn demigods of both camps.
“Wasn’t this supposed to be our vacation?” Reyna snapped, crossing her arms. “You practically kidnapped us to get us here, and we’ve been doing absolutely nothing for seven days.”
“You were in bad shape. You were half dead, idiot,” Annabeth shot back. “And it’s almost Christmas. Everyone slows down this time of year.”
“And since when am I supposed to do that too?”
Jade, seated beside her, didn’t say a word.
But silence, for Jade, was practically its own language.
Her fingers toyed with the zipper of her hoodie, then stopped, then started again. Every so often she glanced at Reyna, as if she were looking for a signal, some invisible cue.
Annabeth bit the inside of her cheek. If she hadn’t been genuinely worried, she would have observed the dynamic with almost academic interest: the way Reyna stiffened every time Jade lowered her gaze, as if afraid she might vanish right in front of her.
Sleep deprivation was getting to them. Literally. Both of them.
Reyna, usually precise, calculating, sparing with words and more inclined toward action than confrontation now responded sharply to anyone who dared address her. That cutting sarcasm might have amused those who knew her well, but Annabeth saw no irony in it. She saw tension. A constant, underlying anxiety disguised as control.
Every sentence felt like a way to keep everything and everyone in its place.
On the other side, there was Jade.
Daughter of Athena. Brilliant. Sharp. Capable of humiliating you with a single remark. At Camp Jupiter she had been outspoken, independent, always ready to contradict Reyna just for the sake of it.
Now, though, she was…. She didn’t seem bored. Or angry.
Just lost.
As if she were waiting for someone to tell her what to do. Or where to look.
Annabeth had insisted that she spend time with her and the other children of Athena, to rebuild a bond that seemed to have loosened. She had been ready for late-night debates, logic games, needlessly complicated strategies.
But the Jade she had known at Camp Jupiter seemed to have vanished.
Everyone had noticed.
And Annabeth couldn’t understand why.
Every now and then, fragments of her old personality resurfaced. But they didn’t last long. And Jade almost seemed to regret them.
Annabeth studied her more closely.
For at least five minutes now, Jade had been staring at an ant struggling to drag along a crumb fallen from one of Leo’s cookies. Occasionally, she turned toward Reyna, as if to make sure she was still there. That the world around them still made sense.
“I usually eat here because it’s quiet…” Leo commented, oblivious to the silent drama.
No one believed him.
Annabeth looked back at the two girls. She had tried being kind, understanding. But it seemed that only an outburst would get their attention.
“We brought you here to keep you away from work!” she snapped, exasperated, turning to Reyna. “And instead you keep getting assignments as if you’d just… moved your office. Actually, that’s exactly what you did.”
“Then let me go back to my damn office!” Reyna growled, with the tone of someone who hadn’t just lost her patience, but had deliberately destroyed it.
“You’re not well. Neither of you is,” Annabeth replied. “And I’ve already talked to the others. You’re not going back to work until you get yourself together.”
“I must’ve missed the part where you were hired as my boss.”
“Reyna, we both know that Frank, Hazel, Jason, and I have more than enough leverage to force you into rest for a year.”
The daughter of Bellona looked genuinely on the verge of lunging at her.
Nico sighed, clearly making an effort not to respond in kind.
“You need to rest. You both have to rest,” he insisted more calmly, stepping between them. “Before you collapse during a mission. Or worse… during a normal walk.”
Reyna met his gaze, tense. “The Praetor doesn’t usually collapse.”
Annabeth noticed how Jade’s tapping fingers stilled for a moment. Then resumed.
She was listening. She always listened.
She stared at the table, her gaze empty, as if waiting for someone to tell her what the next move was. Still, yet present. Receptive.
Enough.
Annabeth made a decision.
They were stubborn. Exhausted. And bound together in a dangerous way: one lived to protect, the other to orient herself. A symbiosis that had once kept them standing, but now threatened to suffocate them.
She nodded to Nico.
It was time to try reverse logic.
“Jade,” she said, standing abruptly. “I’d like to speak with you in private.”
No reaction.
Perfect. Or terrible. Depending on the point of view.
Reyna turned to her immediately. The irritation vanished in an instant, replaced by something subtler. More fragile. Almost panic.
Jade noticed and reacted at once. “Why?” she asked, hesitant.
“Five minutes,” Annabeth replied calmly.
Jade looked at Annabeth, then at Reyna.
She left the room in silence, followed by Annabeth, leaving Nico alone with Reyna.
Outside, the Christmas lights flickered beyond the windows. The heavy silence that had wedged itself between Jade and Reyna seemed to amplify with every step, as if a single wrong breath could bring down an already unstable tower.
The game had begun.
And for the first time, Annabeth wondered whether they truly had control of the board.
*
Jade followed Annabeth down the hallway without saying a word.
The Christmas lights strung along the wooden beams cast golden reflections on the walls, but to her they felt like nothing more than pointless distractions. Every step carried the unpleasant sensation of moving toward something final. Like those times in the past when someone had called her aside “to talk,” and she had already known how it would end.
Annabeth stopped near a window, far enough from the common room to guarantee at least a bit of privacy. Outside, the cold bit at the glass. Inside, the air was tense.
“You’re not in trouble,” Annabeth said almost immediately.
Jade blinked.
That sentence alone was enough to make her shoulders tense.
“I didn’t ask,” she replied, too quickly.
Annabeth studied her for a moment, with that sharp, focused look she used when she was solving a puzzle. Jade felt observed, assessed. She fought the instinct to cross her arms. She didn’t want to look defensive. Not yet.
“Listen,” Annabeth said, changing her tone. Softer. “Nico and I were thinking about something. And before you say no—”
“I haven’t said anything yet.”
“—I’m telling you anyway.” A hint of a smile. “We’d like you and Reyna to go away for a few days. A real vacation.”
Jade felt something tighten in her stomach.
Away.
Her mind turned against her, fast and precise as ever. Away from camp. Away from the Big House. Away from everything that, just a week earlier, had seemed… stable.
A vacation, she repeated to herself. It’s just a vacation.
“No,” she said anyway. Automatic.
Annabeth sighed, as if she’d expected it. “Jade.”
“No,” Jade repeated, more quietly. “It’s not a good idea.”
“Why?”
Jade opened her mouth. Closed it.
Answers crowded her mind, logistical, strategic, practical but none of them felt solid enough to be spoken out loud. Every word seemed like the wrong move.
“It’s not necessary,” she said at last. “We’re fine.”
Annabeth raised an eyebrow, but didn’t contradict her right away. She waited. As if giving her space to correct herself.
“And besides,” Jade went on, feeling the need to fill the silence, “with everything that’s going on… I don’t think this is the right time to disappear.”
Disappear.
The word clung to her longer than she expected.
Annabeth crossed her arms. “I’m not asking you to disappear. I’m asking you to trust me.”
Trust.
Jade swallowed. She’d always had a complicated relationship with that word. Trust meant lowering your guard. It meant believing that, when you came back, the place would still be there. That someone hadn’t decided you were no longer needed.
“And if it’s not a good idea?” she asked. “If—”
She stopped herself in time.
Annabeth watched her carefully, but without pressure. “If what?”
“Nothing.” Jade shook her head. “Forget it.”
Silence stretched between them. From the hallway came distant voices, a laugh, the sound of footsteps. Life went on, indifferent to the knot tightening in Jade’s chest.
“Reyna needs to rest,” Annabeth said finally.
The sentence landed the wrong way.
Jade lowered her gaze, staring at the wooden floor. Reyna. Of course Reyna. Every conversation, every decision, always ended there.
She needs to rest.
Because she can’t.
Because I—
The thought slipped into her mind uninvited.
Annabeth said it calmly, almost like a statement of fact. “She’s tired. More than she wants to admit. And you’re the only person who can make her let her guard down.”
Jade felt a weight settle on her shoulders.
Only.
Responsible.
If Reyna was unwell, then…
Was it her fault? Because of the fight. The silence. Everything she hadn’t managed to fix.
“I don’t—” she started, then stopped. She didn’t know how to finish the sentence without sounding like she was making excuses.
Annabeth took a step closer. Not invasive. Just close enough to be present. “I’m not asking you to fix anything. Or to fix her. Just… to be there. Away from everything else.”
Jade clenched her jaw.
If this were a test, she thought, it was one of the cruel ones.
If I refuse, I’m uncooperative.
If I agree, I’m leaving.
Either way, there was something to lose.
“Okay.”
*
As soon as the door closed behind Annabeth and Jade, silence fell over the room like a curtain.
Reyna stared at the door longer than necessary. She didn’t move, but her body stiffened, as if she were waiting for Jade to come back or for the moment to somehow undo itself.
Her fingers began tapping against the armrest of the chair, a barely perceptible tic.
Nico noticed immediately.
Leo, still holding half a cookie, looked up. “Uh… I could—”
“Leo.”
Nico’s voice was flat. Final.
“Yeah. Okay. Got it.” He stood quickly. “Serious moment.”
He disappeared into the hallway, leaving behind only the sound of his slippers.
Finally, they were alone.
Nico didn’t speak right away. Reyna kept staring at the door, as if the real conversation were happening on the other side.
“You’re not sleeping,” he said at last.
Reyna didn’t reply.
The tapping stopped.
“And neither is Jade,” he added. “It’s just that—”
“She’s fine,” Reyna interrupted. Too fast.
Nico studied her. “It doesn’t look like it.”
Reyna clenched her jaw. “She’s tired. It’ll pass.”
“On its own?”
The silence that followed was tight.
“What do you want me to do?” Reyna asked finally, without looking at him.
“Talk to her. Stop. Sleep.”
He held her gaze. “Stop pretending everything’s fine.”
“If I push, I make it worse.”
Nico raised an eyebrow. “Or you’re afraid to.”
Reyna tightened her hands on her knees. “Every time I try to get close, she shuts down. Sleeps. Goes quiet.”
She inhaled sharply. “And I lose my patience. And we fight.”
She lowered her gaze.
“After the last time…”
She didn’t finish the sentence.
Nico understood that that was the heart of it.
“You think that if you mess up again—”
“—she’ll leave,” Reyna finished, without lifting her head.
She didn’t say it angrily. She said it like a fact.
“Every night,” she went on, “I wake up convinced she’s dead. I have to send Aurum to check that she’s in her cabin.”
She ran a hand through her hair. “And when she seems distant, when she won’t look at me…”
When she already seems elsewhere.
“…I think it’s my fault.”
Nico sat beside her, leaving space between them. “Reyna, Jade isn’t running away.”
“Then why did Annabeth take her away from me?”
The question came out sharp, sudden.
Nico hesitated. “Because she’s worried.”
Reyna laughed softly, without humor. “Of course. First you separate people, then you say it’s for their own good.”
She turned her gaze back to the closed door.
“If she decides to leave,” she murmured, “I won’t stop her.”
Because stopping someone was the surest way to lose them.
“That’s not what Annabeth wants,” Nico said. “She’s thinking of a solution.”
Reyna finally looked at him. “What kind of solution?”
“A trip. For Christmas.”
She stiffened. “Jade and me?”
“In a group. No pressure. Outside the camp.”
Nico paused. “Away from everything that’s crushing you.”
Reyna lowered her gaze. Outside the camp. Away.
Jade away.
“She hates Camp Half-Blood.”
“I know. And it won’t be here.”
Silence.
“If she agrees,” Reyna said quietly, “it means she wants to leave.”
It wasn’t an accusation. It was naked fear.
Nico shook his head. “Or that she wants to try to stay.”
Reyna didn’t answer right away.
She thought of Jade following Annabeth down the hallway without looking back.
She thought of all the times people had done that, saying it would only be for a little while.
“And if she doesn’t come back the same?” she asked.
“Then at least you won’t have kept hurting each other by standing still.”
Reyna inhaled slowly.
“I don’t want a vacation,” she said. “I just want to stop feeling like I’m about to lose her.”
Nico placed a hand on her arm. “Then this might be the one thing that doesn’t push her away.”
Reyna looked back at the door.
Jade still hadn’t returned.
And for the first time, Reyna realized that the fear wasn’t that Jade might leave.
It was that she might already be deciding to and that Reyna could do nothing but stand there and watch.
*
The horrified looks on the two girls’ faces were enough for Nico to understand just how terrible an idea this was.
Unfortunately, no one else seemed to realize it. Or worse, no one considered it a problem.
And on top of that, Christmas.
Perfect.
They had been up at dawn, practically dragged out of their respective cabins with a vague promise of a relaxing vacation. Nico drove them out of Camp in silence, like someone who knew he was committing a crime but preferred not to think about it too much.
“So where exactly are we going?” Reyna asked. Her voice was flat, but her look was hostile enough to discourage vague answers.
Nico shrugged, as if he hadn’t just orchestrated a semi-consensual kidnapping. “Here. Our ride is supposed to arrive.”
Reyna stiffened. “Our ride? From who?”
He simply stared at the horizon, hoping whatever was coming would speak for itself.
Unfortunately, it did.
A battered minivan emerged from the snow, bouncing down the road like an epileptic reindeer. It was questionably decorated with a string of Christmas lights taped into place and kicked up so much powder it looked like the vanguard of an invading army.
Behind the wheel was Percy with sunglasses in December, movie-star grin firmly in place. Beside him, Annabeth clutched a crumpled map with the expression of someone who wasn’t lost… technically.
In the back seat, the rest of the group was crammed in among backpacks, Christmas snacks, and at least three very visible weapons.
The only ones missing were Hazel and Frank, who had already warned them: they’d arrive around the 25th, after taking care of some business at Camp Jupiter.
“YEEEES! CHRISTMAS VACATIOOOON!” Leo yelled, leaning out the window with a crooked elf hat.
Jade studied the vehicle as if she were calculating the odds of it spontaneously exploding. Then she turned to the group, icy.
“Absolutely fucking not.”
Will placed a hand on her arm, gentle but firm. “Jade, you promised you’d at least try.”
She whirled on him, furious. “And you promised me a vacation! This—” she gestured at the minivan with pure desperation “—is not a vacation. It’s a school trip organized by people who hate dignity.”
Annabeth coughed. An innocent sound. The look that came with it was anything but.
“Get your ass in the seat.”
It wasn’t shouted. Which somehow made it worse.
Jade opened her mouth to argue then her gaze slid to Reyna. She was looking for an anchor. A "tell me you’re not going along with this". But Reyna was already climbing into the minivan.
Not enthusiastic, she looked like someone mentally preparing for an interrogation in the Underworld but there was something unexpected in her eyes. A tiny spark of trust.
“Let’s go,” she said simply.
For Jade, it felt like an emotional sucker punch.
“You’ve got to be kidding me?!” she exploded.
“Jade, get in or I’m tying you up with a seatbelt,” Reyna and Annabeth snapped in unison, two commanders perfectly synchronized by desperation.
Jade stared at them, torn between pride and inevitable surrender. Then she huffed and climbed in, dragging her feet like a condemned prisoner.
Leo leaned toward her. “So now we know who really controls the tiger.”
A sharp smack to the back of his head made him groan.
“HEY!”
Piper raised an eyebrow with elegant satisfaction. “You’re welcome.”
“Thanks, Piper,” Jade muttered from the back, now fully resigned to her fate.
“Someone has to preserve sanity in here,” Piper added, adjusting her hair as if immune to the surrounding chaos.
Percy turned on the radio.
Will settled into his seat with a sigh.
Reyna rolled her eyes.
And the minivan lurched into motion, wobbling toward Paul’s vacation house, where Sally, Estelle, and maybe a Christmas awaited them, one none of them was truly ready to celebrate.
A Christmas that, from the very first miles, promised far more unsolicited therapy than actual relaxation.