Chapter Text
It was without a doubt the worst day of Percy’s life. His mom was dead, Mr. Brunner had been lying to him for almost a full year, and outside of Luke, nobody seemed particularly happy to see him. That girl from the Ares cabin, Clarisse, and her siblings, all seemed angry at the very least, especially after the bathroom. The boy Malcolm was still watching Percy with calm gray eyes, as if he were a particularly interesting puzzle that the boy who said he was a son of Athena wanted to figure out. That look had only increased after he’d been soaked by Percy’s toilet efforts in the crossfire with Clarisse. It wasn’t a mean look, but it didn’t feel particularly friendly, either.
As they were walking back to the 11th cabin, where Percy was supposed to be staying, Malcolm’s hand abruptly shot out as they were passing Cabin 6, causing Percy to almost jump as he felt the hand on his shoulder. As he did, he noticed the small building right next to the cabin, smoke coming out of a chimney similar to Cabin 9, and the loud sound of glass breaking coming through the door Percy had been about to walk past. As Malcolm had stopped him, a log came sailing through the doorway, followed up by two more still smoking pieces of wood, as a girl about his age stomped out, goggles covering her eyes with frizzy blonde hair going every which way.
As she turned, the goggles and smoke making her face look like an owl’s, she stomped over, and Percy prepared for having to deal with another fight. Stopping short, she glared, not at him, but at his ever-calm guide. “MALCOLM! The wood is wet!”
“Yes, hello, Annabeth. I see you’re still in the same clothes you were wearing two days ago.”
“Why are you talking about my clothes? The wood. Is. Wet! That’s three projects I have to scrap because of contamination! THREE!”
Malcolm seemed to sigh, looking at Percy with the most emotion he’d seen out of the other boy, some mix of ‘See what I have to put up with’ and ‘She’s lucky I love her’. Come to think of it, he had a very expressive face. “You’ve already gone through your allotment for the week, Annabeth. You know you’re not supposed to deviate from your schedule this much.”
“Schedules are for when I don’t have new mixtures to test!” And with that declaration, the girl stomped back into the little hut, which from what Percy could see, looked like a workshop of some kind.
As he gestured for them to start walking again, Malcolm explained, with all the emotion as if this was a normal thing, “Annabeth is the only one at camp interested in making glass. However, that’s all she’s interested in, so if we let her, she’s liable to stay in her glassmaking workshop all the time, save to use the bathroom.”
“She… has her own glassmaking workshop?”
It was the only question Percy could think to ask. Everything else just seemed too wild for him to get. Malcolm either ignored or didn’t notice Percy’s complete confusion, the way he’d done with all of Percy’s questions. He’d answer what Percy directly asked, and if Percy didn’t ask anything to follow up with, he’d just move on. “She kept breaking into the forges to work on her projects, and eventually Cabin 9 worked with us and built her own little workshop, so she would only mess things up for her own projects with her ideas. Plus this means we don’t have to outrun the harpies when she tries to ignore curfew anymore.”
It sounded like that Annabeth girl was a lot. And what was that about harpies? Mr. Brunn- Chiron hadn’t said anything about that. Or curfew. But, at least it sounded like Percy wouldn’t really be dealing with her.
It was his fourth day here, and Percy wasn’t feeling any better about it. About the only ones who didn’t seem completely confused or disappointed by Percy were Luke and Grover. The children of Athena, who ran Ancient Greek lessons, didn’t seem all that interested in talking, for all that he was the only basic student right now. They gave him his instructions, answered his questions, and that was about it. So he was surprised to see that girl Annabeth at the little pavilion where they ran the lessons, looking a lot cleaner than she had that first day, her goggles pushed up on her forehead, and pretty clearly pouting. She had gray eyes too, like Malcolm. They looked a lot like rain.
The lesson proceeded mostly as normal, except for her quiet complaining about “being forced out” and “the injustice of it, skipping 2 meals is completely normal”. As the hour went up, and he got ready to leave, he thanked her for the lesson, as he did with every camp instructor who didn’t seem to hate him so far. He didn’t particularly want more people angry at him, especially those in teaching positions.
Suddenly, she was far too close, staring into his eyes, almost touching his nose with hers. “Your eyes… are green.”
“Uh… yes?”
After that statement, Annabeth seemed to look him up and down, before turning and running off. Percy wasn’t sure what he’d said or done wrong, and didn’t really want to know. When he asked Luke about it later, after finding out that the head of Cabin 11 had known her for a long time, Luke had just shrugged and laughed fondly. “She has jumps of logic all the time. Probably randomly had an idea about glass at that moment.”
Capture the Flag had started off badly, with Percy finding his armor and weapons unwieldy. Now, facing down the 5 Ares campers he’d encountered on his first day, it was clearly even worse. Then, with a loud screeching sound, Annabeth seemed to pop up out of nowhere, swinging a blunted spear and taking out one Ares kid with her strike. As the Ares campers adjusted their formation to meet both Percy and Annabeth, Percy stumbled back, feeling his foot enter the creek he was supposed to be patrolling.
It was like nothing he’d ever felt. Awake, revitalized, and as if he’d chugged a whole energy drink, Percy felt as if the sword and shield were just plastic toys in his arms now. Feeling like he could do anything, he lunged, his abrupt aggression taking his opponents off guard.
“Are you in love with me yet?”
The question had been the only thing Annabeth had said, before that hellhound attacked and Percy’s week had gotten even worse. Staring up at the ceiling of Cabin 3, he finally sat up, admitting to himself that he wasn’t going to be getting any more sleep, so he might as well get up early.
Walking outside, he was surprised to see Annabeth slumped against the door frame. He couldn’t see her eyes under her goggles, but he was pretty sure as she jumped and scrambled to her feet that she’d been asleep.
“Well?!”
“Uh- what?” was Percy’s eloquent answer, as he blinked at her staring at him, hands on her hips.
“Are you in love with me yet? That’s how it goes, the hero saves the damsel, the damsel falls in love with the hero.”
Percy felt his jaw work for a couple moments before he croaked out. “I’m… a damsel?”
“You were in distress, you were a damsel. Are you in love with me yet?”
Feeling himself flush at the wild question from a girl he’d only recently met, Percy tried to distract or get back onto an even keel. “Why?”
“I need sand.”
It was probably the last thing he’d expected her to say. Blinking at her, Percy found himself feeling even more off-keel than he had before. “Sand?”
“Glass needs sand.”
“I know that, but I… don’t have any?”
“It’s not your sand I want, it’s your dad’s.”
Blinking even more, Percy tried to follow her logic. “My… dad’s?”
“Of course!” Now Annabeth was pressed up to him, grabbing the front of his shirt as she shook him. “He’s the king of the oceans, which has the most sand in the world! That means he has to have mountains of glass-quality sands down there, and he’s hoarding it! But he’d share it with his mortal kid and his spouse, so are. You. In. Love. With. Me. Yet?!”
“How- you attacked those campers before I got claimed, how did you know?”
Annabeth stopped now, looking at him with a gaze that he had a feeling meant she thought he was stupid. “You have green eyes.”
Staring at the overcast day, Percy tried to wrack his brain for who his third questmate could be. He… didn’t really know a lot of people. He could ask Luke, but everything had been awkward since Capture the Flag. He could ask Malcolm, but he wasn’t sure the other boy liked him. Past that the only real people he knew were Clarisse, who he supposed would make him feel better about the “You shall be betrayed by one who calls you a friend” line, and that one Apollo camper he thought he remembered seeing when he’d woken up while recovering one time. Except…
She hadn’t really treated him differently after his claiming. Sure, Annabeth was weird, and had tried talking to him about the sand a second time after yesterday morning, but both times, one of her siblings had found her and gotten her, with the second time having her explain that she’d read in a book that damsels fell in love with heroes who saved them. Past that, and the idea of getting special sand for her glass, she was the same weird girl she had been the couple of times he’d seen her before.
Her response when he asked her was… well, it was concerning and also relieving. After she’d asked if there would be monsters, and he’d said “Yeah, probably”, she had cackled gleefully, before grabbing a small but bulging bag from her workshop.
“Glass bombs! Finally I can test them without people complaining about maybe getting hurt!”
If nothing else, at least he knew she would help in a fight. Maybe.
Ducking as he ran between the statues, Percy heard a booming CRASH, before Medusa howled with rage. “That was one of my favorites, you brat!”
Appearing from out of nowhere with her baseball cap coming askew from her head, Annabeth clicked her tongue, holding what looked like a small glass ball. “I think that one under-proofed the mixture. Not enough Celestial Bronze.” Shrugging, she tossed the ball, and as another explosion went off, distracting the monster from swiping at Grover in the air, she pulled out a different glass orb. “Her glass is s**t, and the reflectiveness is awful, but it’s good enough, I only have one mirror.”
As he took it and split up from Annabeth, holding the glass orb in one hand and Riptide in the other, Percy had to admit. Those bombs were pretty useful.
As much as getting chased through the streets of St. Louis by a monster wasn’t fun, Percy figured it was a lot better than getting chased on the train. He’d managed to lose it when he’d jumped into the river and that water lady had given the message to him, but it and Echidna had found him again. Which, he had to admit, he preferred to them finding Annabeth and Grover.
“Perrcyyyyyy!”
The bleating yell caught his attention. Grover was waving his arms at the end of an alleyway, gesticulating for Percy to run towards him. Percy really hoped that meant that Annabeth had a plan. Plans were Athena’s thing, right? So her kids should have a lot of good plans, too.
As the Chimera drew closer, Grover yanked him around the corner, as he saw an entire bag go flying from where Annabeth threw it before ducking to cover.
The roaring sound caused people all around to start screaming and running, and it took a minute before Percy was able to hear anything. In that time, Grover had pulled him and Annabeth back to the train station, navigating them back on board the train just in time before it departed.
As he looked at the girl who had just saved his life, he saw tears starting to slip down her cheeks. “Percy…”
As he shifted around in his seat to try and reach her back so she could pat it, she dove into him. “I threw them all at once! I have no idea which bomb mixture got it just riiiiiiiight!”
It took several minutes and an eventual promise that Percy would help her find more monsters to test her future bombs on before she finally calmed down. What was his life?
“I’M OUT OF BOMBS! KILL THEM KILL THEM SPIDERS!!!!”
Annabeth’s panicked screams didn’t really help Percy focus on pulling water out of the pipes. Especially when he listened to what she was actually saying. He was going to have to make sure he took care of all spiders before she could grab any explosives in the future, wasn’t he?
The Lotus Hotel having a glassblowing workshop, somehow, didn’t surprise Percy, as terrifying as it felt while he ran through the hypnotic place. The fact that it was almost impossible to pull Annabeth away from it, with her looking even dirtier than they had when they’d arrived, and multiple sculptures piled around them, was also not surprising.
“You’ll never get any sand from my dad if you stay here!” Probably wasn’t the best thing for him to yell, especially since she grabbed onto him with an unhinged gleam in her eye and a grip that could shame an octopus, but it worked, so he’d take it.
Percy wasn’t sure when his duties at camp had shifted to include “Annabeth wrangling”, but considering Malcolm had cheerfully altered schedules to remove most chores from Cabin 3’s, he had a feeling that it was as soon as it was clear that Annabeth was somewhat fond of him. Learning that the only reasons Annabeth was officially head counselor of Cabin 6 was because she technically had seniority and that counselor meetings were the only time she consistently slept, he had to admit that that made sense. It wasn’t as if she was in a rush to take over any other duties.
All of which was to say that when he found out she hadn’t slept in over a day and probably hadn’t eaten, either, Percy probably should have expected what was currently happening.
“Annabeth, that’s my hand.”
Blinking up from where her eyes had been fixed on the materials she was measuring out, the 13 year old looked back down to see a good chunk of Percy’s hand in her mouth, where she had bitten while eating the last bite of the gyro Percy had been feeding her.
After looking back at him for a long moment, she spat it out. “That explains why the last bite tasted funny. You should use better tasting soap.”
Percy stared at her from where he was grabbing another gyro to feed to her. “I don’t want you to bite my hand more.”
He was sure her eyes were blinking behind her goggles in confusion, but all he could notice, as ever, was her lack of eyebrows, which he was pretty sure she had burned off. “But then your gyros wouldn’t taste so funny.”
He wasn’t sure how much she was listening to what he said. Or paying attention.
Finding Annabeth after Luke had left was easy. Seeing her wasn’t. She was in her workshop as always, but unlike most times, she was just sitting there, quietly staring at nothing. She sat there, not moving at all as Percy approached. When he stood next to her, she remained sitting on her stool in silence for a long minute.
Then, her arm lashed out, her hand grabbing his, squeezing it so tightly it hurt. Percy almost yanked it free on instinct, but then he saw her face, and how she was shaking. Awkwardly, feeling embarrassed, he hugged her. For a long moment, they stayed like that, before she hugged him back.
“Glass isn’t supposed to be cloudy. He wasn’t supposed to lie to me. He wasn’t!”