Chapter Text
She’s not sure why she’s doing it. She’d arrived at that camp about a month after his crazy “quest” thing. Supposedly the gods had almost been at war. She would believe it when someone who was actually there told her something useful. Put simply, Drew Tanaka doesn’t know Percy Jackson, so she has no reason to seek him out. And it isn’t as if the world is helping her.
As she glared at the phone book that was singularly unhelpful to her, she thought about how the other cabins mocked them. How Cabin 10 was “weak”, and “dainty”. The resent that most children of Aphrodite could actually go home during the school year. As she felt the bottle of “perfume” on her desk, Drew wanted to roll her eyes. Idiots. Something looked or smelled pretty, therefore it was useless. She’d seen that horse dude, Chiron, ignore most campers asking for advice, only to turn around and speak with that girl Annabeth. Her siblings had had a lot to say about Annabeth. If one of those things had been good, Drew’s forgotten it under the mountain of bad.
Thinking of Chiron reminded Drew of part of why she couldn’t get the idea of trying to find Percy out of her head. After that girl Thalia had been spat out by the tree, he’d seemed to just completely ignore Percy. Same with Annabeth. And look. Drew’s only 14, but she knows she’s a bitch. She’s good at it, too. She got kicked out of two schools because nobody else was going to stop those rich brats from bullying people, and nobody believed Drew when she said they’d started it. The second time it’d happened, her mom had sat her down, and explained stuff to her. How Americans would judge a little Japanese girl, how they judged a Japanese-American woman. How she couldn’t charge in fists flailing to right every wrong. Then she started teaching her how to do it right.
Ann Tanaka was a fashion designer who, in Drew’s opinion, deserved a lot more credit than she gets. Her designs are gorgeous, never too gaudy or overly drab. A perfect middleground, and the height of fashionable. And since Drew is not only the daughter of a fashion designer, but the daughter of the goddess of Love and Beauty, she clearly has an expert’s eye. And every day, when Ann prepared to fight for her designs against designers and companies that never wanted to hear dissenting opinions, or for a single mother to speak up, she wore her armor. Drew’s earliest memories were of Ann, adjusting her hair perfectly, picking out the perfect outfit that commanded respect, and putting on her makeup in such a way that everyone knew she was to be listened to. And when it became clear that Drew wasn’t going to be some quiet good little girl that just let things be, Ann taught her the same. Taught her how to wield her words the same way her siblings taught her how to wield a sword or a bow. Taught her how to dress and present herself in a way to assert authority. Taught her how to judge people, and how much subtlety she needed to speak with in order to have plausible deniability, while reducing jerks and bullies to tears.
The magic voice that her sister Silena called “charmspeak” was the other piece. The weapon that has kept her out of trouble more than anything else. All Drew needs to do is speak with confidence, sound reasonable enough, and ooze charm, and her teacher forgot to give her detention for tearing the bitch who stole another kid’s lunch a new one, and the principal changed his mind about suspending her for revealing how a “promising young man” had been bringing drugs to school.
All that was to say that Drew knows what it looks like when somebody’s being bullied and pushed to the outside. And the stories and Valentina’s scars had kept her from actually going after Annabeth the way she deserved, but she could still make sure that Percy Jackson had someone in his corner. That was the most important thing, mom had told her. Have allies. Friends were even better, but allies were good. Percy could use an ally, and he seemed to have decency, with how he stood up for his monster brother.
… And no, Drew isn’t doing this because there’s never been a boy her age (or a girl for that matter, Ann had been thorough in her talk to her daughter about attraction) as gorgeous as Percy, who only seems to be getting prettier as he’s growing up. And it also has nothing to do with the fact that he’s the only other demigod she knows lives in New York City, and if she has to Iris Message every time she wants to talk to someone who knows about her world for another year, she’s going to lose her mind. She’s not made out of money. And she’s not lonely. She’ll probably kick him if he suggests she’s doing this because she’s lonely.
It is very difficult to tell the difference between a dove and a pigeon just by glancing at one. So most people of Manhattan paid no attention to the “pigeon” that seemed smaller and more perfectly plumed than the rest, flying around the city like the others. Aphrodite watched as her little girl made her way to the subway, checking a paper of notes she seemed to have made. Oh, little Drew. Aphrodite adored all her children, but she would be honest, her little piriĝ had stirred up sides of her that she had long forgotten. Ann Tanaka was a driven, fearsome woman, who had drawn out the fire Aphrodite didn’t usually engage with. As she watched her darling enter the subway station, old memories and old mindsets briefly slipped to the front. Inanna smiled as she watched her daughter.