Work Text:
I couldn’t get over how badly I’d messed up on Circe’s Island. If it hadn’t been for Annabeth, I’d still be a rodent, hiding in a hutch with a bunch of cute furry pirates. I thought about what Circe had said: See, Percy? You’ve unlocked your true self!
I still felt changed. Not just because I had a sudden desire to eat lettuce. I felt jumpy, like the instinct to be a scared little animal was now a part of me. Or maybe it had always been there. That’s what really worried me.
—The Sea of Monsters, Rick Riordan, Chapter 13
I watched Thalia pacing in the snow at the edge of camp, walking among the wolves without fear. She stopped and looked back at Westover Hall, which was now completely dark, looming on the hillside beyond the woods. I wondered what she was thinking.
Seven years ago, Thalia had been turned into a pine tree by her father, to prevent her from dying. She’d stood her ground against an army of monsters on top of Half-Blood Hill in order to give her friends Luke and Annabeth time to escape. She’d only been back as a human for a few months now, and once in a while she would stand so motionless you’d think she was still a tree.
—The Titan’s Curse, Rick Riordan, Chapter 3
Nico squashed a pomegranate under his boot. “Welcome? After last time, you’ve got the nerve to welcome me?”
I shifted uneasily, because talking that way to a god can get you blasted into dust bunnies. “Um, Nico—”
“It’s all right,” Persephone said coldly. “We had a little family spat.”
“Family spat?” Nico cried. “You turned me into a dandelion!”
—The Sword of Hades, Rick Riordan
“Are you sure you want to stay here?” Percy asked. “Persephone will make your life miserable.”
“I have to,” Nico insisted. “I have to get close to my dad. He needs a better adviser.”
Percy couldn’t argue with that. But… “You can come back,” he said. “Come on. Thalia and I are getting cheeseburgers. We can go to McDonald’s, then you can come right back here.” Surely only eating Underworld food couldn’t be good for a kid.
Thalia raised an eyebrow at his blatant bribery, mouthy something like okay, Mom. But Nico looked swayed. “Alright.”
They crushed the roses Persephone had given them underfoot, and the Underworld dissolved around them. They were back in the clearing where they’d first been sucked into the Underworld. It was still cold, the snow thicker on the ground and the East River flowing in grey fits and starts below them. Percy shivered.
Oh yeah. He’d left his coat at school when he ran off after Mrs O’Leary. At least he didn’t have to go back to the test…
“McDonald’s,” he said before his cousins could comment on how cold he looked.
Nico glanced around. “There’s one not too far from here.”
Of course he knew that. The kid probably had a McDonald’s radar in his head.
Once they were settled with their burgers, they ate in awkward silence. Percy was still pretty cold, but at least it was warm indoors. If some of the staff members were giving him weird looks for the fact that a) he was wearing a school uniform at Christmas and b) said school uniform looked like a raccoon had chewed on the shoulder of it, he just glared back. Clearly these guys weren’t real New Yorkers. They needed to learn to stay in their lane.
“Scary,” Thalia teased. “You look like grumpy little kitten when you glare.”
“I’m basically the same age as you,” he grumbled back. “And you’re calling me a grumpy kitten when Nico’s sitting right there?”
Mouth full of burger, Nico could only glare—which proved Percy’s point. Thalia didn’t laugh, though. She didn’t really know Nico. An awkward silence fell.
Maybe Percy should’ve let Nico stay behind in the Underworld. No, he decided. He did need to get non-Underworld food into him at some point. But he also needed to talk about something soon, or Nico would finish his burger and start talking to him about that idea he’d broached with him back on his fifteenth birthday. The insane, terrifying idea that Percy could hardly think of as necessary.
Not yet, at least.
Nico was considering it. He was eyeing Percy thoughtfully, with the same tactical look that Bianca had got on their quest to save Artemis whenever she was trying to figure something out. And if Percy pursued that line of thought any further, they were going to have a very different, infinitely more painful conversation than the one he was trying to avoid.
Thalia said nothing. Of course she didn’t. Why would Thalia be any help to him? She just sat and stewed in the awkwardness as well. Great.
“So,” Percy said. “You two haven’t really talked much, have you?”
Thalia and Nico glanced at each other and didn’t deign to answer him.
“You can start talking now,” Percy prompted. “I’m sure you have a lot in common.”
They looked at him. He couldn’t blame Thalia. The last time she’d pseudo-adopted a young demigod, she’d sacrificed her life for her. And Nico’s opinion of the Hunters was pretty obvious every time he looked at her silver parka. But hey, they did have at least one thing in common: sceptical glares.
Nico glared like Hades did, with a sort of mad light behind his eyes that told of rage that would fester for much longer than you could ever imagine. It was unsettling to see in someone so young, but Nico carried it with more grace than he had when Percy had last seen him. Thalia, meanwhile, was the queen of just shutting down. She liked to be in control of things, and her face was no exception. Sometimes, she’d just sit or stand stock still and stare, as inanimate and impervious as the tree she’d once been.
There was a thought. “You’ve both been turned into plants,” he offered, before his brain could catch up with whatever the hell his mouth thought it was doing.
Unfortunately, his brain caught up pretty quickly, and he winced. Really? Wow. He was going to drive Nico right back to the Underworld like this.
“It was nothing,” Nico said. “She was just being a…” He trailed off. Huh. Maybe they didn’t learn swear words in the Lotus Casino and he didn’t have anything strong enough to call Persephone.
“Dandelions are cool,” Percy said. “Tough. Grow anywhere, right?” There was also some myth about them making people piss themselves, but he decided not to bring that up. Unless there was a better way to spin it? Striking fear into your enemies? Maybe—
“It was nothing.”
Thalia was still doing her best impression of a pine tree. Sometimes Percy wondered if she was listening to the wind.
“Thalia?” he prompted desperately. “Any insight on what being a tree was like?”
Her jaw twitched. At least that was a reaction. “Slow,” she said. “Peaceful.” She paused, then admitted: “Connected.”
He tried to imagine it. His roots in the earth. The leaves at the tips of his twigs. Wind in his limbs, hard, scaled bark protecting him from the world, and the rustling of a thousand woodland creatures who felt at home in the shelter of his body.
“Is that why you joined the Hunters?” he prompted. “You said you hadn’t known peace since Half-Blood Hill.” At first, he’d interpreted that to mean since she’d died, but he supposed it could equally mean since she’d come back, too.
She flashed him a mirthless grin. “I don’t age the same way, I’m at one with nature, I have no control over who uses me or how—yeah, it’s exactly the same!”
“I’m getting the feeling I shouldn’t have pushed.”
Her sharpness dulled. “You always see too much,” Thalia said. “You and your mom.”
“Sorry.”
“You think being in the Hunters reminds me of being a tree?”
Percy got the sense that opening his mouth would only make this worse, so he gave a helpless little shrug.
At least Thalia was smiling a little, now. “Maybe. On the quiet days, when I’m listening to the wind. I like being close to nature now. I didn’t before. My mom…” She trailed off. “It makes being in the Hunters bearable.”
“Bearable?”
“I didn’t really have a choice about joining, did I?”
“You can leave,” he pointed out. “One day, that is. Once the prophecy’s passed. If we all live that long.” If Kronos didn’t win. If the world wasn’t destroyed.
“Glad to know the prophecy child himself is so confident about our odds.”
Percy pressed: “Do you think there’s something of the tree still inside you?”
She blinked. “Maybe? I dunno. Maybe I just like the memories of not having something trying to kill me for once.” She narrowed her eyes right back at him. “You’re weirdly obsessed with this transformation thing.”
He tapped out a rhythm on the table. “I don’t know what you mean.” Before she could interrogate him further, he took another bite of his cheeseburger and chewed loudly.
Nico broke his silence to say, “Your mom would be disappointed in your manners.”
Percy chewed more quietly.
Thalia was still watching him closely. “When did you get turned into a plant?”
He nearly choked on his burger. “I have never been turned into a plant!” he protested thickly, swallowing as quickly as he could. “I just thought—y’know—it was something you two had in common!”
“You were turned into something else, then,” Nico surmised. Great. He’d been quiet all conversation, dodging all the questions, and now he and Thalia found common ground just to interrogate Percy. “What was it? When was it?”
“I’ve never—”
Thalia snapped her fingers. They sparked like a lighter; both Percy and Nico jumped back. “I remember. Annabeth told me when she was filling me in on everything you guys had to do to get the Fleece.”
“We should’ve left it on that island,” Percy grumbled. “Wouldn’t have to deal with you, then.”
“Annabeth and Percy washed up on Circe’s island—you know, the evil sorceress from the Odyssey? She tried to make Annabeth stay and learn magic. And she turned Kelp Head into a guinea pig.”
Whatever Nico had been expecting, it wasn’t that. He choked on his milkshake. “A guinea pig?”
“It was for like, five minutes,” Percy protested.
“Annabeth had to save him with these drugged vitamin tablets that Hermes gave them.”
“They weren’t drugged—”
“And it turned out that the other guinea pigs in the cage were Blackbeard and his crew from like, hundreds of years ago. They started rampaging around, and Annabeth and Percy stole their pirate ship to sail away.”
At least that got him some cred with Nico. His eyes widened. “You pirated a pirate ship? Just the two of you?”
Percy waggled his fingers. “Poseidon powers. I can control most ships.”
Nico looked like he wanted to say awesome. A little over a year ago, he would have. Instead, just before his excitement could reach critical levels and come spilling out, he took a breath and sank back in his seat. “Huh. Cool.”
Percy frowned. “Pretty cool,” he prodded.
“I guess.”
“I should run away and become a pirate,” Percy mused. “The only two things I’m really good at are swordplay and sailing. I’d kill it.”
“Would you, Mr My-Mom-Says-Stealing-Is-Bad?”
“…I forgot about that bit.”
“So, what part of being a guinea pig really messed with your head?” Thalia pushed. “C’mon, if you’re gonna pry into me, I’m gonna pry into you. Is this why Grover is dead set on turning you vegetarian? You got obsessed with lettuce for five minutes?”
“No! I will not be turning vegetarian.” He paused. “No matter how many times I’ve made comments like that.” To prove his point, he took a big bite of his burger and chewed again.
Thalia didn’t interrogate him further. She just sat back and watched him with her tree-like stillness until he broke.
He swallowed. “Fine. I felt like a jumpy little rodent for days after. Still do, sometimes. I just wondered if you guys had felt anything like that after being turned back. Something that becomes a part of you.”
Nico was looking down at his empty plate, avoiding his eyes. Thalia frowned. Great.
“It might not have even been the guinea pig,” Percy forged on. “I thought… hey, I’ve always been scared. Felt small. I wondered if those feelings were just already a part of me. Circe said she’d turned me into my true self.”
“And you believed her?” Thalia’s voice was deadly quiet. “You held up the sky, Percy.”
He shrugged, not looking her in the eye. “I was scared.”
“We’re demigods. We’re all scared, all the time. We’re all terrified little animals waiting to be eaten.”
“Maybe.”
Thalia’s electric blue gaze pinned him in place. “Well,” she said at last. “You’re the bravest rodent I’ve ever met. Aren’t guinea pigs known to fight back against their attackers when cornered?”
“I think that’s mice.”
“Have you ever bitten someone? I bet you’ve bitten someone before.”
Percy snorted. “I was five, but yeah.” It wasn’t just mythological nonsense that got him expelled over and over.
“Thanks, Thalia,” he said. “And you’re the tallest tree I’ve ever met.” He sat up straighter, just to demonstrate how much he’d grown in the year since he’d seen her, and the fact that he was now slightly taller than her.
She punched his arm.
“I didn’t like being a dandelion.”
Nico spoke so quietly, it took both Percy and Thalia a moment to process it before they turned to him. He stayed looking down at the table. “I just felt weak. Limp. I couldn’t do anything to stop her.”
The silence between them was fragile as spun glass.
“Yeah,” Percy said. “I get that feeling.”
He wracked his brain for something else to say. All he could do was repeat himself: “I meant it about dandelions, though. They’re tough, right? They can grow anywhere.”
“They’re weeds, Percy. No one wants them in their gardens.” Nico seemed to realise what he’d said. “I mean… that’s what she told me. When she turned me back.”
Percy wished he had got Bob to drop Persephone in the Lethe, after all.
Thalia scowled. “Grover would say there’s no such thing as a weed. They’re still part of nature.”
“My mom too,” Percy added. “You’ve seen the planters on the fire escape, right? Every year we get a bunch of dandelions colonising them. My mom loves them. Says they make her happy. They’re bright, cheerful…”
“Bright,” Nico drawled. “Cheerful.”
“Survivors,” Thalia reiterated, thank the gods.
“If she turns you back into a dandelion,” Percy promised, “I will plant you next to the moonlace at my apartment, and we will look after you until she turns you back.”
Nico looked startled—vulnerable. To ease the blow, Percy turned to Thalia. “And if you get turned back into a tree,” he said, “I’ll pull off a heist of Camp Half-Blood to get the Fleece to turn you back.”
Thalia’s mouth twitched. “You’d fight Peleus for me?”
He shuddered. “I never said that.”
She laughed. It was a good sound.
“If you get turned back into a guinea pig, I’m giving you to the kids in Cabin 11,” she said. “They probably need a cute furry friend to make them feel better.”
His offended look made her laugh all over again.
“I’d smuggle you into the Underworld,” Nico provided, his mouth twitching. “Watch my father go insane trying to track down the living thing he can sense that keeps running all over the place.”
They looked at each other, then cracked up. It was the first time he’d heard Nico laugh in a long time.
In comfortable silence, they finished their burgers. It was just when Thalia was draining the last of her milkshake that Percy said, “Black.”
They gave him joint quizzical looks. “What?”
“I was trying to find things you two have in common,” Percy said. “I could’ve just started with fashion taste. You both wear so much black.”
Thalia threw her straw at him.