Chapter Text
Percy already hadn’t been in the best of moods when they reached the war room in Atlantis.
He was already grieving Beckendorf. And not being able to do more to save the older boy from the explosion. About the fact that they apparently had a spy in their midst.
(Which sounded so obvious now. Of course they would have a spy. Why hadn’t it occurred to him before that this might be a problem? Why hadn’t they been planning around it?
Why had it cost Beckendorf’s life for them to see the obvious?)
So when Triton starts going off about not being around enough to help with the war? The war he had just found out about when he woke up? That war?
The war he definitely would have helped fight. Considering how much effort he had put into the war on the surface. If someone had just told him from the beginning how much fighting there actually was.
(Because as much as he loved Tyson. This did not match up with the description he had gotten last summer when they had talked about the unrest.
He doesn’t know if the fight just reached the city recently, so Tyson hadn’t been holding back information intentionally. Or if he had been told not to tell him.
Tyson isn’t really the type to not tell him things. But also Percy is more than used to people keeping them in the dark. It's been part of his life for the last several years.
So he wants to believe Tyson wouldn’t hold something back. But he does have some trust issues on this.)
Percy is fairly sure Triton’s just using him as his verbal punching bag here. Since some of the claims he’s making are ridiculous and would require things he definitely didn't have.
But for the most part, he just rolls his eyes internally and ignores them. Because again, he can’t fight in a war that he was never told the extent of.
There’s a difference between what sounds like a skirmish trying to keep his Dad busy. And a full-on siege on his Dad’s capital city.
He doesn’t know where Triton got the idea he should know about the city siege. Who was telling him those kinds of lies? But he definitely had not been given that impression that was what was happening.
So for the most part, he finds the commentary stupid. And just ignorant since it was obvious he wasn’t the only oblivious party here. And he probably would have just kept ignoring Triton’s commentary.
If Triton hadn’t decided to make one comment. That would end up changing everything. “You are a coward who only shows up when it is convenient for you to be in a fight. And now when it is needed for others.”
And something just snaps at being called a coward.
He can take a lot from the God. He’s arguably been called worse things by other people. But in the moment, he won’t just let the accusation of being a coward slide by.
Not after the last year of fighting.
Not after just having lost Beckendorf.
He knows he probably should keep his mouth shut. That it’s dangerous to make a God angry in their own home domain. But this is just one lie he won’t let the God spin about him.
“You don’t know close to half of what I’ve been through.”
“Oh yeah, try me.”
Okay, if Triton wanted to know what he had been doing for the last year. Why he wasn’t just some coward that was hiding from the fight. Then he would hear as much as Percy could think of.
Maybe it's a stupid idea to argue back with the God after he nearly got blown up for a second time. Actually, scratch that; it definitely was a stupid idea. But he’s just really not in the mood at the moment. He just lost one of his closest people, and he hadn’t been able to do anything to save him, and it hurts.
So, no, he is not going to take some commentary from a God who had never stepped foot in Camp Half-Blood.
Because yeah, he had never been to Atlantis before today. So yeah, he had never been involved in the fighting here in the ocean.
(Partly because it was readily apparent someone had not been telling him what the fighting was actually like. Now he was starting to understand his Dad’s decision to send Tyson away last summer.
It hadn’t been just to keep the other company.
It had been to protect Tyson from the worst of the fighting for as long as he could. Even if as long as he could apparently was only a couple of months.)
But he had never stayed away because he didn’t want to fight. Because he didn’t want to help people.
If he could help someone. He would help someone to the best he could. It’s only when they were truly lost, like Luke was. That he didn’t really try.
And even then he still had tried because Hermes had asked him to do so. Even if it hadn’t actually made that much of a difference. He still had tried, for Hermes, for Ananbeth, for anyone that had actually still cared for Luke. Even after everything Luke had done to all of them.
Even if facing the man over and over again that had hurt him. Was still one of the hardest things he had to do.
He had still tried. Even if he had failed every single time, he hadn’t just sat around.
So to hear Triton going off about not doing enough in the war had been triggering. Because he knew how much he had done, how much he was still going to do to help save the world.
He had only taken that last break before the mission on the Andromeda. Because he didn’t know if he was even going to survive the war. And that was not something he took lightly.
It’s only when he’s fully run out of steam. That he starts coming back into himself. And remembering just how upset he was because of what was said.
There was also just where he was.
In Atlantis. In the War Room. Surrounded by multiple Gods, only one of which might even remotely care about him. And the rest had never met him before today.
And going by the comments from Triton that had kick-started all of this and the way the God was now staring at him. Definitely didn’t know enough about him to respond well to him going off.
And now he’s regretting snapping back at the God. As much as it felt like he had a death wish at times. Dying in Atlantis because he was stupid and had told Triton how much of an idiot he was (though not in those words) for accusing him of being a coward probably wasn’t going to go well.
Which meant he ne needed to get out of there.
Fast.
Before someone apparently snapped out of their shock, since apparently Triton wasn’t the only one who knew what was going on, going by the reactions (or lack thereof). And decided to actually smite him for his actions and words. Because as much as he might not act like it at times.
He very much liked living.
Even if he wasn’t sure how much longer he had left to do that.
No way was he sticking around to find out what the latest rendition of ‘against all odds’ is. Because he had been stupid enough to stick his foot into his mouth and say something to his brother he never should have.
So he’s out of the room and down the corridor before someone could try to ask a question. But that doesn’t get him out of the palace or necessarily out of danger. That won’t come until he’s back on land.
And he finally has time to actually think and process what just happened.
It’s only after Percy’s been gone from the war room for a solid few minutes. Before Amphitrite turns to her husband, asking in a way too sweet voice. “What was that?”
Poseidon holds up his hands in a defensive posture. He was not happy about this either, but he did want her thinking that somehow he had known this whole time and let them believe a lie. “I swear I do not know what that was about. He was supposed to be receiving reports, at least giving him some information on the war from us.”
He was supposed to be kept appraised of what was happening in the ocean. Since what was happening could affect his children. Especially his stronger demigod children.
It wasn’t meant to make them join the war. Though Triton had his own opinions on that. But simply to make sure they knew it existed. And what to expect. And yet it was quite apparent from the way Perseus had chosen to respond to Triton. That someone had not told him the truth of the ocean war.
“If he was not, I do not know what happened. Triton?”
“I always made sure they were left where they were supposed to be. If he never received them…I am unsure what happened.”
Triton’s tails flick in agitation. His anger at his brother just now showed up. Now being replaced by confusion and now possible anger at whoever was responsible for this. He thought they had a clear grasp on where his brother stood, but now…he wasn’t so sure.
“Could one of the spies in camp possibly have taken it?”
“That seems unlikely considering where I was leaving it.”
Not unless the spy issue in camp was much bigger than any of them realized. Which, considering how busy they had been, wasn’t entirely impossible.
“Unfortunately, we don’t have time to investigate this. Not with the Encircling River on our doorstep.”
“And by the time we do possibly find out what is going on, it might be too late.”
The demigod was a child of the prophecy. Meant even if he wasn’t the cursed hero, which who knew at this point. He was more likely to die in the fighting anyway.
All they could do now was have possible regrets. So, so many regrets.
It’s only after they’ve had time to put distance between himself and Atlantis, having hitched a ride on a hippocampi outside the city limits. And that Percy feels actually like he might be safe again. That Percy takes a deep breath, and he actually starts thinking about what was said and why he even really reacted that way.
It wouldn’t normally have gotten under his skin so much. Not with so much else going on. He had arguably been called worse by people throughout the years.
But truth be told, Triton’s comment had hit home. Because he had been struggling with what had happened on the Princess Andromeda from the minute he had woken up in Atlantis.
He knew they had been in an impossible situation. That there had been no choice in how to go forward. He had to flee the ship. But at the same time…he feels so guilty for not being able to save Beckendorf.
It makes him feel like he’s the coward that Triton accused him of being.
Even though he knows he didn’t have a choice in having to leave behind Beckendorf. In order for at least one of them to survive, he had to get off the ship. But he still feels like he should have been able to save him.
Maybe if he hadn’t gotten in that fight with Luke. Maybe if he had been paying attention to the other campers and caught the spy. Maybe Beckendorf would be coming back to camp with him. Instead of him being alone.
Though that being said...He can already feel a pit of regret starting to form in his stomach.
Not over what he said to Triton. No, he can’t bring himself to regret that. Not after everything he had been through. Not after being told, essentially, that none of that happened.
No, it was about the way he left.
That hadn’t been the way he had wanted things to end. That wasn't the way he wanted to possibly see his Dad for the last time.
But Triton had just been so infuriating. He could regret the fact that he hadn’t gotten to say goodbye to his Dad and Tyson properly. Since who knew if any of them would survive the upcoming battle. And even though Iris Messages were a thing (even if they were getting harder to use).
There was no way he was going to make a call while they were in the middle of a war. He had already seen how the war was taxing his Dad. He didn’t want to make it worse somehow.
But he didn’t regret saying to Triton what he had. He didn’t know where the God got off thinking he did nothing in the war. But that was so far laughably from the truth he couldn’t let it stand. But there’s no time to fix things now.
His Dad’s tangled up in a messy war. Even if he wanted to say something else to fix things, Percy wouldn’t.
Though...Percy had about a dozen different questions about what was mentioned in Triton’s rant. Starting with things that definitely felt like Chiron should have told him about.
In the end, he doesn’t get a chance to really think too much more about Triton’s rant. Or look at what he might be able to find that were sending up mental red flags that didn’t make any sense based on what he had been told by Chiron.
Things snowball from the minute he arrives in the dinner pavilion and only progressively get worse when he finds out about the full wording of the prophecy.
(Does he even need that armor if he’s just going to die anyway?)
And then everything with Triton gets shoved entirely to the back of his mind. When a conversation with Annabeth over the weird dreams he had been having goes south.
He knows, in hindsight, that asking her anything about Rachel is stupid. Conversations around his one mortal friend always tended to be complicated. But he hadn’t been sure who else to turn to about the dreams.
And it wasn’t like the conversation was about their friendship. He had just wanted help figuring something out. He just wants answers. And instead he’s being met with more slammed doors and accusations.
It feels like he’s back in Atlantis being accused of not doing anything. Except now the accusation is coming from one of his best friends. Which just makes the whole thing so much worse.
Part of him wants to go after her and yell at Annabeth for the comment. It was bad enough when Triton had made the comment in Atlantis. Triton, who apparently didn’t know what he was actually doing in the war.
But at least he and Triton were strangers who had never met before then.
But Annabeth knew what he had been doing. Sure, she hadn’t been around the entire time. But she had been around enough to know what he had been doing.
Part of him suspects it's not even about not doing enough. But the tension that had existed between them since the volcano exploded. And her probably wanting more since there was a good chance they might die in a few days.
And maybe other guys would have tried to break this by a kiss or something. But his brain is a thousand places at once. And maybe he will regret not making a move on his 16th birthday.
But he’s not in the headspace for that.
He just metaphorically blew up at his Dad’s family over a similar comment. Leaving the last time he might see Tyson and his Dad on a sour note. Lost Beckendorf, and nearly died in a mission that had gone so fucked up he can’t really tell anyone truly.
And found out he was probably going to die in a few days.
It was just too much.
He can’t deal with Annabeth’s unclear signals. Not now.
It takes a minute for him to realize that, as much as he hates it, Triton might have a point in part of that rant. Not about his lack of action. He was plenty involved. To the point that vacation had been pretty much forced.
No, about the way they might be doing things was the problem. Which admittedly wasn’t exactly what he had ever said during that rant; he is pretty sure. But he is fairly sure that point was in the rant nonetheless.
Because he had been criticizing his choices or apparent lack of them. And while it had been misinformed, obviously. It still got him thinking.
He had always been one to take Chiron’s advice. He was the trainer of heroes, so he would have wisdom beyond what they could understand. And yet part of him wonders if Chiron’s advice now and a couple of times in the past might have hurt them more than it helped him.
Even if he sometimes wondered how good the advice was when it came to mortals. He knows the dangers mortals can present to him. He lived with a dangerous one through his childhood.
Chiron, on the other hand…he isn’t as entirely sure where the attitude had come from.
Chiron sure had spent almost a year at Yancy. So he should know what mortals could be like with the right weapons. Since he wasn’t the worst kid at school. (There had definitely been some kids who had reputations. And not of the good variety.)
And yet Chiron had been willing to go with the ‘All mortals are innocent’ attitude towards the kids. Despite the fact that, in hindsight, they should have realized he should have known better. And if he was preaching this attitude, then something was wrong.
Right now really isn’t the time to be questioning why Chiron has that idea. Since they were about to be going into a battle for their lives. Or maybe it was since if they ended up in Manhattan…
There was no way mortals wouldn’t be caught in the crosshairs. How can they be the good guys if heroes can’t hurt mortals? But at the same time, probably they weren’t going to be able to hurt mortals.
It feels like a catch-22 that Chiron had set up. They needed to be heroes to save the world. But they can’t be heroes if they hurt mortals. So either Chiron was wrong about what made a hero. Or they were never really heroes.
It’s not really a thought he can dwell on much longer, unfortunately. That mental crisis will have to wait until post-war.
(In hindsight, when it’s all said and done. And all the truths about everyone are out. Chiron’s attitude will make a lot more sense. But for now he can’t make any sense of it. Not realizing until the damage is already done that it was the first sign something wasn’t quite right with Chiron.)
And his mentality/advice wasn’t the only problem Chiron was actively causing. It would become a much bigger problem later. But at the moment they had a problem being caused by Chiron’s leadership in camp.
Or rather, in this case, lack of it.
Chiron sitting back and letting things play out wasn’t exactly new. He had watched the centaur do it multiple times before. And while it had been annoying in the past. It had always worked out.
But they also always had time for it to work out. Right now with war on the horizon…Percy isn’t sure if they have time for Chiron’s usual wait-and-see approach. Especially not when one of the cabins involved was the Ares cabin.
Ares currently had the most claimed campers out of any of the cabins. And if Clarisse actually went through with her threat, then they would take out a not small number of fighters.
And he wasn’t going to try and force anyone into a fight. But he also wasn’t going to let Chiron’s questionable choices interfere with yet another thing in the war.
Because if they just ‘waited and saw’ what happened. Most likely they would lose a third of their fighting force. That was something they could not afford.
Since he wasn’t sure what Clarisse was thinking when she complained that the rest of the camp treated them like bullies. But, well, there was a reason behind that.
He’s not sure how she’s not seen it. Since he’s not even in camp constantly and still noticed it. Maybe she just thought they changed things around enough. Or maybe she’s not aware at all.
But he knows he had to at least stop one of her siblings from destroying another kid's belongings. Which, considering how some of the campers came from abusive homes and didn’t have much to them. Especially a seven-year-old.
That was more than a bit much.
And Clarisse should know all of this because she is the Head Counselor of Cabin 5. But they had all been busy with the war and running their own missions. So slipped information can and did happen.
And he can see no one bringing the bullying situation to someone who also had been a bully. Especially when Chiron didn’t want to back them up.
So somehow he was the one having the conversation.
“Clarisse, we need to talk.” He said, walking up to where she was sitting in front of the cabin.
“Look, if this is about whether we are going to fight. I told everyone already unless we resolve the chariot issue and the comments around it. We are out.”
In Percy’s personal opinion, considering they were about to fight in a war that might save or destroy their lives. Fighting over the status of a chariot right now felt like something that should wait until after the war.
But that was a whole other thing.
“Out of a whole war over a chariot, really?” He can’t help but let the skepticism through. She was the daughter of a war god and was making decisions supposedly around a chariot.
There’s definite hesitation when Clarisse replies to him. “It’s not just about the chariot. It’s the accusations and name-calling. I can deal with it. I know I’m not the best person at times. But the whole cabin is a bit extreme.”
There we go, the actual truth that he had suspected from before. But he needed her to actually name it for him to work with it.
And yeah, it was a bit extreme if it weren’t for the fact that he had caught multiple cabin members engaging in it. It wasn’t a one-person issue. It was cabin-wide from what he could tell. Which she should know. But he guessed this was a result of being so caught up in running missions that she had to delegate stuff.
“Look, I’m not going to force you into a fight if you don’t want to.” That could make things go ugly fast. “But have you thought about maybe talking to the other campers about why they are saying this before taking a full third of our fighting force away? About maybe having a conversation with someone other than the Apollo cabin about what’s been going on?”
Clarisse had earned her laurels first in the Sea of Monsters. And then after by traversing the labyrinth. She had a reason to be upset about the treatment of the other campers towards her.
He couldn’t say the rest about her siblings.
“They are still my siblings.”
“Yeah, and I saw one of them trying to throw Gracie’s shoes in the toilet. The seven-year-old Apollo kid who just got rescued from a bad home. And I know I’m not the only one.”
Thankfully, he had been able to stop that. But it made him wonder then and now just what was going through the Ares kids' heads.
And it made his point. The rest of camp viewed Ares camp as a bunch of bullies. Because they kept acting like a bunch of bullies. And going by the look on Clarisse’s face. She definitely wasn’t fully aware of what her siblings had been doing behind her back.
“Did you ever stop to think the argument might be about more than just the chariot?”
He would bet a good amount of drachma if he asked Michael if he actually cared about the chariot. He would say probably, but he cared more about what had been going on between the Ares cabin and the rest of camp.
And how Chiron never seemed to do anything. He only ever got involved if you were a favorite. And even then probably not to the extent he actually should.
“Look, I have something else to do before the fight reaches the city. So I can’t help with an argument since Chiron obviously isn’t doing anything again. But like I said, maybe talk to some of the other campers instead of just taking in information from your siblings.”
Since he’s pretty sure that’s how they ended up in this situation to begin with.
He can’t stay to see what decision she’ll end up making. It’s too important for him to meet up with Nico about their plan. He just hopes that maybe their talk might get her to see sense.