One (or two) of Each - PinesLens_06, Viribus_05 - Percy Jackson and the Olympians (2024)

Chapter 1

Chapter Text

Connor Stoll woke up in the cabin, which isn’t the problem. The problem is that he could feel a warm body next to him. Slowly, as not to wake the other person up, Connor rolled over and came face to face with his brother. Travis was still asleep, but something was wrong. Travis was supposed to be in California with Katie, going to college in New Rome. The last time they shared a bed was before the Titan War when there was no room in the cabin. Now that Connor was looking at his brother though, something else was off, Travis looked younger than the last time Connor had seen him. Travis looked like he was 12 again.

As Connor lay there confused, Travis opened his eyes and yelped. He lurched backward, which in the cramped bed, led him to bang his head into the wall. The bang echoed through the cabin and both of them froze. The bed below the two of them groaned and someone shifted around on it. Travis was looking around in shock and then his eyes finally came to rest on Connor. “What the hell is happening?” Travis whispered, “Why do you look 11? Why am I back in the cabin? Where’s Katie?”

“I have no idea,” Connor whispered back, “But you also look younger, like you’re 12 all over again.”

The two of them turned around to look at the rest of cabin, but the bed creaked. Connor grimaced and felt Travis did the same. The bed below them groaned again and they saw a head peek up and look at them from below, “What are you two doing? Go back to sleep,” said a voice Connor hadn’t heard in years.

“Luke?” Travis choked out in a harsh whisper.

“What?” asked the person, now Luke.

“Nothing,” Connor quickly whispered.

Connor felt Luke shift again and then he was standing up looking at them in the dark. “Are you sure?” his voice was laced with worry, and Connor couldn’t help but feel a stab of bitterness. How long had Luke been pretending to care about them and everyone in camp before he joined Kronos and killed half of them.

“Yeah,” Travis said, “I just had a nightmare.” Thank the gods for Travis and his quick lies.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Luke asked.

“I was talking to Connor about it, but then you woke up.” Travis pointed out.

Connor nodded along and put on his guilty face, “Sorry, we woke you up.”

“It’s ok,” Luke assured, “How about you guys go back to sleep, and talk in the morning so you don’t wake anyone else up?”

Connor and Travis quickly nodded and rolled back into the too small bed. Connor heard Luke get back into his own bunk and then looked at Travis. He was staring at the ceiling and looked lost in thought. Connor laid down next to him, but didn’t go to sleep. Even has he heard Luke’s breathing even out, Connor and Travis stayed awake wondering what was going on and what they were going to do about it.

***

Pollux Atropos didn’t know what woke him up. He looked around the cabin and almost had a heart attack when he saw a lump in the bunk next to his. He was alone in his cabin, had been for years, but there was someone sleeping in Castor’s old bed. Pollux slowly sat up and looked closer at the lump. It was a boy who looked about 10 or 11 and had blond hair flopping all over the pillow. When Pollux got closer he saw a mirror of himself when he was 11. Pollux looked down at the boy who shared his face and his soul, he felt a sob building up in his chest and there was nothing he could do to keep it in.

The cry ripped his throat on its way out and his eyes started leaking. It was Castor, there was no other explanation, at least not one he wanted to think about. Castor woke up at the sound of his sobs and looked up at Pollux. That was it, there was no way this could be anything but real, Castor’s eyes were exactly the right shade of violet and his nose had exactly the right scrunch when he was woken up by anything except his own accord. Pollux flung himself on top of his dead twin brother and held him so tightly he heard Castor wheeze for breath.

“Pol-” he gasped. Pollux slowly let go a little just so his twin could breathe, but did not detach himself. “Pol, what’s wrong?”

Pollux just shook his head, still sobbing, but now muffled sobbing into his brother’s shirt. He didn’t trust himself to speak without shattering the illusion of hope flooding him.

***

Drew Tanaka was supposed to be in college. Not sitting in the Aphrodite cabin staring at all her dead siblings and the younger versions of all her alive siblings, minus Piper. She stared at Mitchell who was barely 9, at Lacy who was barely 8. At Selina, breathing softly in her dream. At the mirror across from her bed that showed Drew herself, barely 12. Impossible, she thought. The wars were over, Selina was dead and everyone else in the cabin hated her, there was no way she had a second chance. She wasn’t that lucky.

***

Jake Mason woke up to a cough, which was a little weird, last he checked no one in his cabin was sick. He knew that Sherman from Ares was sick, but no one in Cabin 9 had gotten the cold that spread around camp. There was another cough and he looked to his left, where it was coming from. There lay Joey, who looked as though he was 15. Jake did a double take, Joey left camp to go to college right before the Battle of the Labyrinth. Why did he look 14?

Apparently, the coughing woke someone else up because there was a shift in a bed nearby and then a body sat up. Jake caught his breath. Beckendorf looked at Joey and sighed, his eyes ran around the rest of the cabin and caught Jake’s eyes staring up at him. He smiled and slowly stood up to make his way over to Jake’s bed.

“Hey, Jake,” he said with his warm voice. Joey was still here, so Beckendorf wasn’t head counselor just yet, but was already a fantastic older brother.

“Hey,” Jake forced out. Joey was still here, that meant no Nyssa, or Leo, or Harley.

“Did Joey’s coughing wake you up too?” Beckendorf asked, sitting on the edge of Jake’s bunk. Jake could do nothing but nod. “Yeah, Dale said he would for the night but would be fine by lunch tomorrow.” It took Jake a second to remember who Dale was, then he remembered, the old head of the Apollo cabin, he left the summer Percy got to camp.

Jake felt his eyes start to water, and then he felt his body start to shake with the force of unshed tears. Beckendorf noticed, because he was best and he always noticed whenever there was something wrong, and asked, “Jake? You alright?”

Jake shook his head, there was only one answer to this situation. Only one he wanted to believe. Time travel.

***

Will Solace woke up to a loud snore. He rolled over to tell Austin to shut up so he could sleep before his early infirmary shift in the morning, but paused when he saw Austin’s bunk was empty. That made him pause, Austin was the only one who snored. Where was he? There was another snore and Will looked toward the direction it was coming from. He felt tears well up in his eyes and his breath caught in his chest. Michael was gone. He died on the bridge.

Will tried to regain his breathing when the person on the bed above Michael leaned over and dropped a shoe on his head, “Shut up!”

“What the f*ck, Lee?” Michael woke up with a start, “Did you drop a shoe on me?”

Will’s breath came faster and he didn’t feel like he was getting enough air into his lungs. His chest started to burn.

“We are all trying to sleep and your snores are gonna wake the whole camp!” Lee shot back as he rolled over to sleep again.

Will felt hot tears rolling down his cheeks, the last time he had seen Lee was before the Battle of the Labyrinth when Lee had promised to come back. Will felt a cry break through his chest and then he was sobbing. His eyes were wet and everything was blurry and he couldn’t breathe. He heard voices laced with concern and felt his bed dip as someone came to sit beside him.

A hand reached for his shoulder and he flinched away violently, hitting his head on the wall. The hand stopped and then there were more voices, everything was too loud and Lee’s voice was too close. He was dead, he couldn't be here and Will still couldn’t breathe. It wasn’t much longer before his chest was on fire and his vision was going spotty. Lee’s voice was gaining urgency now and Will distantly heard Michael curse before everything faded away.

***

Annabeth Chase stared at the ceiling of the Athena cabin and ran through her options. This could be a nightmare but the pain in her knee said otherwise, when she banged it on the wall as she jerked awake. This could be some god’s idea of a joke. This could be a hallucination, but again, the pain said that wasn’t true. The last, most ridiculous idea she had was time travel. Even though that would be impossible, it was what her gut was telling her. And after years of war and quests and the whims of the gods. She had learned to trust her gut.

***

Clarisse LaRue was angry. What kind of sick joke was this? There was Alec and Tish and Kathy. They were dead, killed by Luke in his stupid quest for power. Why was she in the Ares Cabin? Not in college with Chris. Clarisse looked around once again and her eyes landed on the clock, 3:17 a.m. She was done. She was done with the stupid gods and the stupid world. She rolled onto her back and stared at the empty bunk above, where Sherman should be.

She was going to pulverize whichever god though it would be funny to mess with Clarisse LaRue. She willed herself back to sleep, but nothing happened. She lay awake until there were soft beams of sunlight coming in from the window and glinting off the swords and spears lined up in the back of the cabin. Clarisse lay awake until the bell for breakfast rang and wondered if Annabeth knew what was going on.

***

Katie Gardener wished she were an Athena kid, then at least she could probably figure out why she was back at camp and why she looked 12. And why Miranda was 10. And why Travis was nowhere to be seen. This might’ve been a prank, but not even Travis or Connor could make it look this realistic. Katie looked at Nate, the head counselor before her, and saw him asleep on his bunk. Blond hair tangled in the vines at the head of his bed. He was in college, he went to Georgia for college. Nate was 26 years old. Here he looked around 19. Katie wished she were an Athena kid, maybe then she would know what she was supposed to do.

***

Percy Jackson stared at Grover. Grover stared back. Percy was confused as all hell. One second he was going to sleep in his dorm in New Rome. Now he was waking up at Yancy Academy with a young Grover freaking out. “What happened?” Percy asked.Where's Annabeth?

“No idea,” said Grover, “I went to sleep in a park in Colorado, and woke up at school!”

Percy was just glad he wasn’t alone. He wouldn’t be able to handle this situation without his best friend. Grover jumped when his alarm went off and Percy looked at the clock, 6:30, time to get ready for class. Percy would honestly rather not, even if it was Mr. Bruner. Grover’s eyes lit up with an idea, “What if we tell Chiron? Maybe he has an idea and could help us go back!”

Percy nodded in agreement, but inside he thought, What if we didn’t go back?

Chapter 2

Chapter Text

Dad, can I talk to you after breakfast? Castor asked his dad when he burnt part of his toast for his father.

About what? Came his father’s immediate reply.

Pollux, Castor thought back while walking to table 12, as Pol clung to his shirt. He hadn’t let go since he had that breakdown in the middle of the night, he had a weird night.

Nightmare, maybe? His dad thought.

I’m not so sure, Castor thought as he sat down and Pol sat down next to him, not even two inches away. Pol had nightmares before, but this was different.

It wasn’t much longer until the Apollo cabin walked up, Dale was leading them and kept glancing behind him at Lee, who was carrying Will. Will didn’t seem very happy with this arrangement judging by the scowl that rested on his face. Come to think of it, Beckendorf was also giving concerned glances at Jake, who was stabbing at his waffle. Castor looked around again and noticed that the talking in the Dining Pavilion had dropped off into murmurs. Suddenly, Travis Stoll slammed his hand on the table and shouted, “almost as stupid as when you put the landmines on the wrong hill!”

“Yeah?” Connor retorted, “at least I didn’t offer to steal drugs from an unconscious New Yorker laying on the street!”

Luke looked up from his cereal in concern as Pollox, Jake, Drew, Annabeth, Katie, Will, and Clarisse’s heads whipped around to stare at the Stolls and the rest of the camp continued eating like nothing was wrong, things like that happened on the daily.

Annabeth and Clarisse shared a look and did that weird thing girls did all the time where they raised their eyebrows and somehow managed to have a full blown conversation. Castor didn’t understand girls in the slightest.

***

Percy followed Grover down the halls and to Chiron’s office, second guessing the whole thing. What if they didn’t go back? What if they could save people? What if they didn’t tell anyone and they could prevent things?

But there was a traitorous thought that wouldn’t shut up, You can’t save everyone. You couldn’t save Jason.

But maybe I can save everyone else. Percy thought back. Then he reached out to Grover’s arm and held him back.

“Percy?” he asked.

“Grover,” he started, “What if we don’t tell Chiron?”

“What?” Grover gasped, “Out of anybody in the world he would know how to get us back, he can help us!”

“First off, that’s a major ‘what if’ he can help us, and second, what if I don’t want to go back?”

“You-” Grover paused, “You don’t want to go home?”

“Grover, I-”

“You’re in college, Percy! You have a great girlfriend and a wonderful family! You have a sister and friends and you’ve overcome so much and you deserve to be done! Why wouldn’t you want to go back?” Grover exclaimed, “And what about me? I have Juniper and the Council. I have a job to do, Percy! I can’t just not try!”

Grover had a point, how could he just throw all of that away? But- “What if I could save them? What if we could save Beckendorf and Selina and everyone else who didn’t make it? What if-” Percy choked, “What if I could save Jason?”

Grover sighed, “Percy, I’m sorry about Jason. I really am. But is all this worth the risk of losing everything you earned? Everything I earned?”

Percy thought about it. Was it worth it to save Beckendorf at the risk of losing Estelle? He didn’t know, but what he did know was that he wouldn’t be able to live with himself if he had this chance and didn’t take it. “How about we do the same thing we did until we get to camp. Then we see if anyone else remembers, like Annabeth, and then talk about it?”

Grover looked at him for a while, before nodding, “So we pretend nothing is wrong until camp. We put up with Nancy, until you shove her in a fountain.”

“I didn’t touch her,” Percy smiled.

***

After the most nostalgic breakfast of her life, Katie tracked down Travis and Connor. At breakfast she heard them arguing like usual and it had hurt a little because she knew how much Travis had missed Connor when they went to college, but then they had talked about the landmines and the sleeping New Yorker and she was filled with hope. Maybe she wasn’t the only one to have come back.

She found them sitting behind the armory, whispering to each other. “Whatcha doing?” she asked.

They jumped and whipped around to face her, Travis looked at her with wide eyes and then looked closer. Connor stepped in front of him and said, “None of your bee’s wax.”

“Did you really volunteer to steal from a sleeping citizen?” she asked Travis, completely ignoring Connor.

Travis looked at her again and said, with a growing smile, “Weren’t you there?”

Katie felt herself smile back, “As a matter of fact, I was.”

Travis beamed and jumped around his brother to give her a hug, “Hiya Katie-Kat!”

She laughed, “Hi Travis.” She let go and stood back looking at him, “You look younger.”

“So does everybody,” he replied.

“What am I? Chopped liver?” Connor complained from where he stood to the side.

“Hi Connor,” Katie said.

Before she could do anything else though a voice cut through their trio, “What a relief!” She turned to see Jake Mason standing against the shed of weapons, “I thought for a second that I was only one.”

“Jake!” Connor cried, “Save me from their gross affection!”

Jake laughed and then Clarisse and Annabeth rounded the corner and looked at them all. “I can assume we are all in the same boat here then?” Annabeth said, looking at them all.

“Annabeth!” Katie smiled, “I’m glad we've got some brains in this operation.”

“Hey!” Travis complained.

Then Pollux came around the corner behind Clarisse and waved, “Hi.” Connor launched himself at Pollux and latched around his torso like a koala. “Hi, Connor.”

“Since when are you two close?” Travis asked in shock.

“Since you left me to go to college with your girlfriend,” Connor pouted.

“You are all horribly loud,” a new voice cut in. They all turned to look at the source which was none other than Drew Tanaka, “If you want to stop the whole camp coming over here to see what the commotion is, you might want to talk a little quieter.”

“Drew?” Jake asked in shock. “You’re here too?”

“If you mean back in time,” she drawled, “Then, yes. I’m here too.”

“What she said is true though,” Annabeth said, “We should probably be quieter.”

“Oh for sure,” said Will Solace as he came into sight, “The only reason I’m back here is because Michael almost missed the bullseye when Connor yelled.”

Clarisse’s face dropped when he mentioned Michael.

“Is Dale being protective again?” Katie asked.

“Everyone is,” Will sighed, “When I woke up, it was a little rough.”

“Mental breakdown?” Jake asked.

“You know it,” Will winked.

“Amen,” Jake said.

There was a pause in conversation as they all basked in the fact they were not alone and they were all stuck in the past together, when Clarisse brought up, “What about Prissy?”

“What about him?” Conner said.

“Don’t you think he’s in the same situation as we are? I mean it seems likely, doesn’t it?” Clarisse asked. Katie saw Annabeth nod.

“I mean, I guess so?” Conner still looked confused.

“And regardless of if he’s in the same situation as us, if everything goes the same as it did last time, he’s gonna show up at camp later tonight.”

Murmurs spread through the group.

“So. What do we do?” Will asked the question on everyone’s mind. “I mean, I’ve watched enough movies and read enough books to know that if he doesn’t have his memories, we could really f*ck it all up if we say anything to him.”

“That’s true, but I think we can assume he has his memories,” Annabeth said, a glimmer of hope in her eyes.

“Ok, so assuming he does have his memories, who should be at the hill with him?” Pollux asked.

“I think Will for sure. Remember how jacked up Percy was the first time? Will needs to be there to make sure he’s ok. And Connor and I should be there too,” Travis didn’t give a reason for that, but everyone could hear it in his voice. He wanted to be there to give him a hug.

“I’ll go too.” At that, everyone turned to look at Drew.

“Dude, you are the last person out of everyone who should be there. Doesn’t he hate you?” Clarisse asked.

“No!” Drew said defensively.

“Yes he does.” Clarisse rolled her eyes.

And with that everyone began yelling at each other. The debate dissolved into fighting as Katie looked at their group of time travelers. She had always been a peacemaker, being a daughter of Demeter, so she took a step back, mainly to ensure Clarisse wouldn’t take someone’s head off.

It was impossible to tell who was arguing for what, but she could see Annabeth beginning to get overwhelmed. Katie hadn’t gotten the chance to really sit down and enjoy a cup of tea with Annabeth- like they used to- since the war against Gaea ended, but from short conversations she knew Annabeth’s fear of losing Percy had only grown since he disappeared for months.

As much as Katie wanted to go give Grover and Percy a massive hug because she hadn’t seen them since she left for college, she knew Annabeth wanted to be the first to see Percy. And she knew Annabeth was worried anyone else might scare him away if he truly didn’t remember anything. Mom, I’ve never asked you for much, but if you have any control, please let Percy remember. Annabeth doesn’t deserve to lose Percy in any way, but especially through him forgetting all the time they’ve spent together while she is forced to remember.

At that moment, Clarisse pulled a knife on Jake, and Katie decided to step in. She let out a loud whistle, like the one she always used to call her siblings to dinner when they were in the strawberry fields.

“Guys, I know we all want to see Percy, but Annabeth should be the only one to go greet them. Percy's her boyfriend, first of all, and second of all, if he really doesn’t remember anything, she knows him the best out of all of us- yes even you Clarisse-” she said as Clarisse opened her mouth to argue “and she can make sure he doesn’t get scared away. The first time we were in this situation, he was the key, and we can’t lose him if we have to go through all of this again.”

Annabeth gave her a grateful smile as everyone else murmured their frustrations, but no one complained, which Katie counted as a win.

“What are you guys yelling about?” Luke asked as he came around the corner. Katie saw Annabeth go pale and Clarisse reach for her spear. Katie herself caught her breath as all the time travelers turned to stare at the man who murdered their siblings.

Chapter 3

Chapter Text

There was a beat of silence as everyone stared at Luke. He fidgeted, clearly uncomfortable with the death glares everyone was giving him. For the first time since she got to Camp, Annabeth didn’t know what to say, what to think, or what to do.

“Just arguing about who’s gonna win capture the flag tonight,” Travis said. Annabeth breathed a sigh of relief, grateful for his quick thinking.

“Well, you know we are, right Trav?” Annabeth saw Travis visibly flinch at Luke calling him Trav, the nickname saved solely for Connor. Luke noticed as well, and glanced at him. For a beat, he looked hurt, but he pulled himself together. “Well, I came looking for you because we need to talk about what you and Connor said at breakfast this morning. What do you mean ‘landmines on the wrong hill’ and ‘stealing drugs from an unconscious New Yorker?’” Luke genuinely looked worried, and for a moment all Annabeth could see was the person she once considered an older brother, a protector, a mentor, a friend. Snap out of it, Wise Girl. He manipulated you and used the love you had for him to try and convince you to turn on the Gods.

“Oh uh–” Connor looked at Travis as he tried to figure out how to respond. “Just talking about a video game we played together?” Annabeth heard the question in his voice, like he was waiting to see if Luke would accept that response.

“You guys know doing that stuff at Camp attracts monsters. You have until the end of the day to get rid of that game. I’m doing an impromptu cabin inspection after dinner.” He gave them a wink like he was in on a joke with them. It made Annabeth sick.

“Yes sir!” Connor snapped to a joking salute, and smiled until Luke turned and walked around the corner.

“I wanna cut that man up into little pieces and feed them to Blackjack one by one,” Clarisse said.

“Oh come on, don’t be that cruel.” Drew chided, “Blackjack deserves better.”

Everyone tried to hang around and chat, seeing as a lot of them hadn’t see each other in while, but no one felt like talking after seeing Luke, and, like Annabeth pointed out, if someone overheard them talking about Octavian launching himself with his own cannon, or Leo rescuing Calypso, or Hylla and her massive Amazon warehouse run by enslaved men, using the video game excuse again might not cut it.

“Okay, if Percy is coming tonight, I wanna see him and I know you all do too. You guys wanna meet up at Bunker Nine after lights-out? And Annabeth you can just bring him after he gets here.” Jake said. Annabeth nodded, her heart pounding. Please let him remember. “Everyone knows how to avoid the harpies, right?” Jake asked.

“Throw cinnamon rolls on the ground because they love cinnamon and when they’re busy run into the woods and through a stream so they can’t smell you,” they all said. Percy was actually the one who realized that worked after talking with Ella. He told Annabeth and word got around. That was sacred information, and only when older campers felt someone would use that info responsibly would they share it. And so far, there hadn’t been any issues, so Annabeth didn’t feel too bad for being the reason that info spread.

“I’ll bring a lighter. Drew, can you bring some hairspray? Before Leo adjusted the door, the only way to get it open was to blast it with fire,” Jake said.

“Why do you need hairspray?” Drew asked a little defensively. Annabeth could tell she didn’t want to waste any.

“So I can make a makeshift flamethrower. Don’t worry, I don’t need your fancy stuff. Any old hairspray will do,” Jake responded.

“Okay, fine. I’ll bring some.” Drew rolled her eyes.

“Cool. I have to go, Lee wants to ‘talk to me about what happened last night.’” Will rolled his eyes. “I’ll see y’all tonight.”

“I have to go too,” Clarisse said. And with that, everyone said their goodbyes, promising to meet up at Bunker Nine at eleven.

***

Grover didn’t say anything as he watched Percy wring his hands, but he could practically hear his thoughts. What if Annabeth doesn’t remember?

“You boys getting off soon?” The bus driver asked.

“Uh, yes ma’am, last stop,” Grover responded.

The driver turned back around, mumbling her annoyance. Percy put his hand in his pocket and grabbed Riptide, but Grover grabbed his arm and shook his head. The driver was mortal, not a monster.

Both Percy and Grover were relieved when Percy found Riptide in the top drawer of his dresser at Yancy. At the very least they wouldn’t be unarmed like last time.

Grover yawned. It had been a long day. First, when Mr. Nicolls asked Percy if he had bothered to study for a spelling test Percy snapped and called him an old sot, which landed him in the principal’s office again , and caused him to get expelled again . Grover was honestly kinda impressed with Percy’s abilities to constantly be in some sort of trouble at school. Then the school threw him in a room to wait for a car to drive him home.

Grover found him and they made one of their more impressive escapes, jumping out the second story window, sliding down a drain pipe, and scaling the wrought-iron fence surrounding the school, all while avoiding the teachers frantically trying to stop them. They hitchhiked into the city, got lunch, rode a bus, then a subway, got dinner, rode another bus, and finally got on this one around eight. It was now close to eleven.

The bus finally lurched to a halt and the driver turned around expectantly, waiting for them to get off. They murmured their apologies as they left. Suddenly, the driver noticed just how young they were.

“Why are you by yourselves? Where are your parents?” Grover and Percy took one look at each other and broke into a sprint, leaving the driver to wonder, and probably call the cops.

Suddenly, a roar echoed down the road, and Grover’s heart stopped.

***

Percy spun around just in time to watch as the minotaur heaved the bus up and threw it into the same ditch his mom’s car had rolled into when he first got to Camp. He and Grover stared in shock for a full second. This is our fault. That driver would have been safe and would have made it home if we hadn’t been on that bus with her.

The minotaur roared again as it focused in on Grover, which snapped Percy out of it. Not again. I’m not losing someone else to this nasty, tight-whitey wearing hunk of fur and meat ever again.

Percy pulled out Riptide and dropped into his fighting stance on instinct. As the minotaur charged him, Percy took a breath and allowed himself a smile. He’s too confident. A simple side roll into an upward slice was all it took for the monster to dissolve into a pile of yellow powder that slowly melted into the ground.

Percy stood up, brushed himself off, and smiled at Grover. “Light work.”

Grover chuckled and they began their trek back towards Camp. Percy smiled to himself. He was almost home. He hadn’t seen Camp Half-Blood since he left for college, and as much as the thought of seeing all his dead friends scared him, he was also excited to have more time with them, and possibly change their fates. He glanced up at stars, and purely out of habit, looked for the constellation of Zoe Nightshade. It was then he realized that it wouldn’t be there. Zoe was still alive, still faithfully serving Artemis in the hunt. Percy promised himself that this time, there would be no new constellations.

But, his smile faded as he remembered everything that happened that day. The school had called home, which meant his mom knew to expect him, and when he and Grover made their escape, the school undoubtedly called home again. That meant all Sally knew was Percy had run away after getting expelled yet again, and the last anyone saw of him was him and Grover sprinting into the woods surrounding Yancy. The guilt was eating Percy alive when suddenly the white picket fence appeared out of the fog, which put his stress on hold. I’ll call her the second I get the chance to.

They walked- well, Grover trotted- up to the fence, where Grover gracefully scaled it and Percy ungracefully and unsuccessfully tried to hurdle the fence. His toe clipped it, and he went tumbling to the ground. Like a true best friend, Grover laughed as Percy laid in the dirt, letting out a string of cuss words. Finally, Grover stuck his hand out and helped Percy up, but he continued chuckling as they began walking up the hill.

Percy had his eyes on the ground, determined to not fall again, when Grover’s laughter and mocking stopped. Startled, Percy looked up and saw a figure appear at the top of the hill. Her hair danced in the breeze, and she held a baseball cap. Percy felt his breath catch in his throat, and he broke into a run. But, doubt crept in and halfway up the hill he paused. Why isn’t she running? Does she not remember? His heart seized. But, he saw her smile at him- the smile that he clung to after a nightmare, the smile that reminded him there were still many more good things in the world than bad, the smile that kept him tethered to reality while he was in the River Styx. And he broke into a run again.

She jogged down to meet him, and he threw his arms open. He heard her intoxicating laugh and saw her toss her cap to the side. They collided with each other and Percy teetered, nearly falling again, but Annabeth’s reaction time had been honed by battle. She steadied him, grabbed his face, and unspoken words passed between them, which ended with her kissing him passionately, a promise to never be separated again, even though they both knew that wasn’t really a promise they could keep.

He paused in shock for a second before wrapping his arms around her waist, lifting her up, spinning her around, and kissing her back, allowing all his stress and worry about when they would finally reunite to melt away.

They would have continued to kiss for gods knows how long, but Grover cleared his throat, breaking them out of their trance. “Guys, we should get in the boundaries of Camp. The minotaur smelled Percy, who knows what else did.”

“Good point,” Annabeth said. “Hi Grover.” Grover smiled as they quickly embraced before all three of them started making their way up the hill and into Camp. Percy smiled as he looked over the valley. He felt lucky to have a lot of different places to call home, but Camp Half-Blood would always hold a special place in his heart.

Annabeth explained to them that Connor, Travis, Katie, Drew, Jake, Clarisse, Will, and Pollox all had their memories, and were waiting in Bunker Nine.

“It’s been a crazy day, huh?” Annabeth said as they wandered down into the valley, keeping an eye out for the harpies.

“Crazy day?” Percy asked in confusion. How did she know about everything that happened to them before they arrived?

“Yeah.” Annbeth responded. “I woke up in my bunk at Camp last night, and ever since then everything has been giving me deja-vu.”

“You what?” Grover responded. “Annabeth, we’ve been back for weeks.”

“What?!” Annabeth exclaimed.

“Yeah,” Percy said, silently cursing. Why is it always me? “You mean everyone else who has their memories just got back?”

“Yeah…” Annabeth pondered. “Wait, I don’t believe that. You and I just went on a date to Pasta La Vista in New Rome two nights ago.”

“Annabeth, we know the gods can manipulate memories. Remember Jason, Piper, and Leo?” Percy softly reminded her.

“So I never ate that delicious shrimp scampi?” Annabeth joked.

Everyone chuckled.

“It’s hard for me to wrap my head around the fact that this is happening. I would be inclined to think it’s all a dream if it weren’t for the fact that we just had one of the best kisses of our relationship,” Percy said, smiling at Annabeth, but inside he was on the verge of tears. It’s hard for me to wrap my head around the fact that I have to go through all of this again.

“I know,” Annabeth said, shaking her head.

“I can’t wait to see everyone again.” Percy grabbed Annabeth’s hand.

“They can’t wait to see you. Clarisse even pulled a knife on Jake during an argument on who should be at the hill to greet you.”

“Of course she did,” Percy laughed.

They heard whispers as they walked through the North Woods, and saw many nymphs appear to bow to Grover before melting back into the forest.

“Dude it’s so weird to see them bow to me,” Grover remarked as he watched the nymphs in wonder. Percy knew him well enough to know Grover was definitely weirded out, but that he also secretly enjoyed it a bit.

Percy gasped when he saw Bunker Nine. It looked the same as when Leo had first showed him, save for a few missing vines. There was no sign of the polishing the Hephestus kids had done to the door after the war with Gaea, or the sign Nyssa had welded that read Only Cool f*ckers Allowed. Everyone Else, Beware!

“I still can’t believe I had no idea this existed.” Grover said in wonder. “I mean it's so obvious.”

“I know. I’d explored every inch of these woods, or I thought I had, before Leo found this place. It’s truly an architectural wonder,” Annabeth said as she sauntered up to the door and banged her fist on it.

Percy's heart began to pound as the door to Bunker Nine swung open.

Chapter 4

Chapter Text

Drew looked around Bunker 9, where Jake had decided everyone was going to meet to talk about anything futuristic so there would be no more Luke incidents. She had never been inside the Bunker, even when Leo, Piper, Jason, and Jake’s entire cabin were working on the giant ship, she had never had a reason to be there. Drew had never had a reason to be in any little secret club before. At camp she was always ‘Selina’s replacement’ or ‘the one in between Selina and Piper.’ Even at school, Drew was ‘Lacey's sister’ or ‘Sadie’s arch-nemesis.’ Even at that stupid school dance Lacey wanted to go to so badly to meet Sadie’s stupidly hot brother, Drew had been in the background.

They were all in the Bunker because they were meeting up with Annabeth (and hopefully Percy, if he remembered), but right now they were arguing again.

“It was funny!” Connor protested for the sixth time.

“No, it really wasn’t!” Jake said again.

“I thought it was funny…” Pollux muttered.

Before Jake could say anything else, the door opened and Annabeth walked in with Percy behind her and Grover behind him. Drew knew who Grover was, most people did, the new Lord of the Wild. However, Drew had never met him personally.

“Percy!” three different people yelled, and ran over to hug him and say hi.

Annabeth stood with him and explained their reunion with each other, it was beautiful. Drew wanted a love like that, but she knew she would never get one, not as long as she was the daughter of Aphrodite, which wasn’t gonna change anytime soon. She stood up and left her hairspray on the crate she’d been sitting on, making a mental note not to forget it or Mitchell would kill her. Drew made her way over to the mob of people talking to Percy and she stood next to Grover. “Hey,” she said.

Grover looked at her in shock, “Hi,” he said.

“Wanna catch me up on what happened to you guys while Percy hogs all the attention for the foreseeable future?” Drew asked.

“Oh,” Grover muttered, “sure.” He then explained the fury, being back for weeks, and the bus driver that killed because they had gotten careless. “I mean,” Grover said, “We knew the Minotaur was going to be there, we knew when he was going to be there, and then we couldn’t save her.”

“Yeah,” Drew agreed, “That sounds pretty rough.”

“It just makes me think that maybe this is all a mistake and that maybe we can’t save all the people we want to, and even if we do, what if we doom someone else in the process?” Grover explained.

Drew, who had been having some second thoughts of her own, said, “And who are we to decide who gets to live and who doesn’t? I mean, yeah, Beckendorf didn’t deserve to die and neither did Castor, but what about Luke? The wars were his fault. And Selina, I know she’s my sister and I should be the first to defend her, but she was a spy and she was the reason Beckendorf died.”

Grover nodded along like her line of reasoning made sense, and Drew felt a wave of gratitude wash through her. Here was someone who was best friends with Percy and Annabeth, agreeing with Drew. Agreeing with her. A satyr who she had never met before, actually listening to what she said without her having to use charmspeak.

“I think you bring up a good point,” Grover said, turning away from watching Percy catch everyone else up and looking her in the eye, “but, in the end, I think that we would make good choices. I mean, the fates control everything right? They control who we meet and when, they control who we spend more time with and even when we die. I like to think that they must’ve sent us here for a reason, they must’ve sent us here knowing that we were the people who were going to make the best decisions.”

Drew looked at Grover then, really looked at him, and asked the question that had been on her mind since she woke up in cabin ten, “Why me? I’m the most selfish person I know. Why not Piper? Piper could actually go on a quest and fix this. She’s one of the seven, and I’m… I’m just Drew.”

“Well, maybe it’s because you’ve been here from the start. Piper only came after the Titan War, you’ve been through both wars. You’re more a veteran than she is. You’re not just Drew, you’re Drew Tanaka the daughter of Aphrodite. You could actually prevent Selina from being a spy in the first place right? Piper couldn’t do that.”

Drew nodded, “Yeah. This time ‘round Selina will know what a giant piece of bird sh*t Luke really is.”

Grover nodded and turned to everyone else, “So what’s the plan?”

“We shake things up,” Annabeth grinned.

***

Chiron looked out at the pavilion and all the campers eating breakfast. He was trying to hide his concern for the younger ones, like Will, but judging from the looks Mr. D was giving him, he wasn’t doing a very good job.

“Alright,” Mr. D said, turning to face him, “Spit it out. What’s got you all bothered?”

“It’s just that some of the campers are acting weird and it all started the night before Percy made it here,” Chiron sighed.

“So?” Mr. D asked.

“So, I’m worried that there is something much bigger and much more dangerous that is causing them to act differently.”

“Who cares?” Mr. D shrugged and sipped from his diet co*ke, “Kids are weird. It’ll probably blow over in a few days.” Chiron wasn’t so sure.

His concern only increased as the day went on. Percy was still in the Hermes cabin having not been claimed yet, and had attached himself to Connor and Travis. That made sense because they were very close in age, but as a group it seemed they were doing their best to avoid Luke.

Katie also seemed to be attached to Travis whenever they could pair up for anything which was weird, usually Travis was with Connor. Chiron was overlooking some of the canoe races and Travis and Katie were together, Connor was with Pollux, and Percy was with Annabeth. As the pairs were getting the canoes ready he overheard something that made him pause:

“Listen Kit-Kat, I’m just saying that a sword is the best weapon.” Travis said.

“No way,” Katie responded, “Daggers all the way.” Annabeth nodded her agreement.

“Sword,” Percy interrupted, “Specifically Riptide.”

“Of course you pick Riptide,” Pollux smiled. Percy just shrugged.

“Guys! Guys!” Connor said, “I raise you, blue plastic hairbrush.”

“That’s the one,” they all laughed. Then they seemed to notice Chiron listening and quickly went back to canoeing.

Chiron frowned but continued his rounds of the camp, next up was the infirmary.

As he walked in, Beckendorf shouted behind him. “Watch out Chiron! Coming through!”

Beckendorf and Jake pushed passed him and into the infirmary, where Will and Lee were sitting side by side on a cot, appearing to be in the middle of a very intense conversation.

“Gods, Jake, what happened?!” Lee exclaimed as he stood up and saw Jake’s hand, which was covered in first degree burns.

“Accident in the forges,” Jake said, relatively calm considering there were massive boils on his hand.

“Okay, sit down here,” Lee said, patting the cot him and Will were sitting on. “Will, grab some nectar and ambrosia. Beckendorf, stop pacing, he’s gonna be fine.”

Lee put his hands on Jake’s arm and began preforming a healing hymn. Once the boils on Jake’s hands went down and the burns were mostly gone, Lee stepped away to grab some pain killers and hand wraps.

“Here, Jake,” Will said, handing him a square of ambrosia.

“I don’t need anything else? I just put this in my mouth?” Jake asked.

Will paused as a smirk spread across his face, “That’s what she said.”

Will and Jake burst into laughter as Lee, Beckendorf, and Chiron looked at them in concern. Will was ten, he should not be making those kind of jokes, and he definitely should not understand what that meant.

Their concern only grew as Jake said, “No, that’s what the Ghost King said.”

Will’s face turned bright red, his mouth slightly agape as he looked at Jake in complete and utter shock. Then he narrowed his eyes at Jake and did something that nobody thought Will Solace, the embodiment of sunshine and the baby of the Apollo cabin would ever do. He smacked Jake right on the injured hand and laughed. Jake shrieked and fell off the cot, cursing up a storm. Will held out his hand in a peace offering, which Jake begrudgingly took, with his non damaged hand, mind you.

Chiron looked at Lee and Beckendorf; they were staring in shock at their younger siblings; Lee looked like if he were any more concerned about Will he would implode. Chiron turned fully toward them and said, “Tonight I will call all the head counselors together and we will talk about the concerning behavior of our younger campers. I would like you two to be there.”

“Of course,” Lee said, finally looking away from Will.

Beckendorf just nodded and said, “Jake, we should get back to the forges.”

“Oh,” Jake said, standing up, “Let’s go! Thanks Will!”

“No problem, Jake! Stay away from giant metal dragons in the future!” Will smiled.

Jake laughed and grinned back, “No promises!”

***

Mr. D didn’t know what the big deal was. Some kids were being weird, so what? Who cares? Yeah, his own kid was one of the weird ones, but Pollux was the son of the god of madness, he was bound to be a little weird. Mr. D didn’t think there was some big event or prophecy happening with them because Apollo hadn’t mentioned anything wild, just a foggy future. Apollo was also an attention whor*, so no reason to worry there.

Chiron walked into the council room, which was really just an empty room with a ping pong table, where all the head counselors along with Beckendorf and Lee were already seated. Mr. D surveyed everyone in the room. There was Castor and Pollux from his own cabin, then Luke from Hermes, Selina from Aphrodite, Joey and Beckendorf from Hephaestus, Dale and Lee from Apollo, Annabeth from Athena, Alec from Ares, and Nate from Demeter.

“Evening demigods,” Chiron started, “I’m sure you’re wondering why you are all here?”

“Only a little,” said Nate.

“Most of you must’ve noticed that some of the campers have been acting weird lately, like concerning jokes, interactions with different people, and changing how they interact with other campers,” Chiron explained. Mr. D noticed how Pollux and Annabeth looked at eachother, and he sat up a little straighter.

“Yeah,” Luke agreed, “Connor and Travis are avoiding me every way they can, and they got the new kid Percy in on it.”

“With them it could easily be a prank, though,” Alec brought up. Mr. D sighed, Connor and Travis looked and acted so much like Hermes sometimes he had to do a double take.

“I don’t think so,” Nate muttered while watering the plants in the window, “Katie is spending more time with Travis, when last I checked, she hated him.”

“Enemies to lovers!” Selina squealed.

“No,” Nate breathed, “No, no, no, no. Please Fates, no. I can’t end up related to that cabin.”

“Ouch,” Luke deadpanned.

Thankfully, Chiron intervened before things could spiral more and said, “Might I suggest we make a list of everyone acting strange, so we can maybe draw connections.”

Annabeth nodded and said, “I’ll start writing.” Once Athena’s brat came back with paper she said, “Ok, so Connor, Travis, and Katie. Anyone else?”

“Will,” Lee and Dale said at the same time. Annabeth wrote that.

“Jake,” Joey and Beckendorf added. She wrote him down as well.

“Jake?” Dale asked, “What’s wrong with Jake?”

“He woke up one night and started crying,” Beckendorf explained.

Mr. D and Castor both turned to look at Pollux, who was clearly doing his best to ignore them. Pollux, Mr. D asked inside his son’s head.

Yeah, dad?

Castor told me you had a nightmare, then clung to him all day. Would that happen to be connected to any of this at all?

Nope. Pollux thought back, completely focused on Annabeth as she wrote down another name Selina mentioned, Drew.

Then Castor opened his mouth and threw his twin under the bus, “Pollux.”

Pollux whirled toward his brother and said, “What in the f*ck?”

Castor winced at his twin’s anger, “You woke up that one night an absolute wreck and since then you haven’t left me alone except when you are talking to Connor and I know you snuck out the night Percy got here. I’m just worried about you.”

“For your information,” Pollux started, “Connor is my friend, it’s not weird to hang out with him. Second, I snuck out because I heard Connor leaving his cabin with Travis and I wanted in, but clearly I’m not trusted by my own twin brother.”

With that, Pollux turned on his heel and left. Castor was clearly in shock, but quickly stood to go after him. “Wait,” Mr. D said, looking at his son, “Give him a minute to cool off and then I’ll talk to him.”

There was an awkward pause for a while, before Annabeth said, “So… Pollux.”

“Yeah,” Castor muttered, and slumped in his seat.

“Anyone else?” Selina asked.

“Well,” Luke started, “I can’t think of anyone else, maybe we could go off of who the ones we wrote down hang out with and ask them what’s up?”

“That could work,” Alec nodded.

“I don’t think it will,” Annabeth said. Mr. D rolled his eyes, of course Athena’s kid had to make this more complicated. “I mean,” she continued, “When we were suspecting Pollux, he got super defensive and stormed out. The others will probably do the same.”

“So what do we do then, smart-ass,” Alec growled at her.

“Sometimes you have to wait for more evidence,” Annabeth said, lifting her chin up, “Sometimes there are too many unknowns to do something without making it worse.”

Eventually, everyone agreed to wait for the younger kids to spit up more information. After all, who would really argue with Wisdom’s daughter?

Chapter 5

Chapter Text

Pollux paced around outside the big house, trying to calm his rage. I mean, sure, he was acting weird, but did Castor really have to throw him under the bus like that? If he knew why Pollux was acting the way he was, Pollux doubted Castor would have opened his fat mouth.

He spun around and kicked a rock on the ground with his foot.

“Umfgh,” he heard his dad grunt in pain as the rock smacked into his stomach.

“Oh sh*t!” Pollux exclaimed. “Sorry, Dad.”

Dionysus sighed in frustration, but simply shrugged. “Whatever.”

“What do you want?” Pollux asked, still ticked off at Castor.

“What’s going on with you?”

Oh, so we’re moving right into an interrogation. Wonderful. Pollux sarcastically thought to himself.

“Yes we are, mister,” Mr. D said.

“What the Hades? You heard that?!” Pollux exclaimed.

“It wasn’t too hard, you were staring directly at me when you thought it. It’s the same as you screaming it in my ear,” His dad rolled his eyes, “So, what’s going on with you. You’ve been acting weird.”

Dammit Castor. “Had some bad Kool-Aid at dinner this evening. It’s been messing up my stomach,” Pollux said, hoping his dad would buy his lie.

“Nice try. You had water. Only Hermes can lie to my face and get away with it. Besides, you’ve been acting up since before then. I mean, since when do you sneak out of the cabin at night?”

“Well–” Pollux began.

“Nevermind,” his dad cut him off, “I don’t wanna know. But seriously, what’s up?”

Pollux looked at his dad, and to his shock, he saw genuine worry reflected in the violet eyes. “I’ve been having a hard time getting the strawberry plants to grow.” He tried to look miserable, Connor hadn’t taught hadn’t taught him how to lie for nothing.

“Oh,” Mr. D said, looking a little less concerned. “Maybe listen to some music so you’re more focused?” He suggested, looking like he felt a little out of place giving advice to his son.

“Good idea, dad. I hadn’t even considered that,” Pollux said, desperate to get out of this incredibly awkward situation with Dionysis. “In fact, I’m gonna go try it right now.” And thank Connor for those lessons.

His dad looked at him in complete confusion. “It’s dark out. Do it tomorrow. I have some great song recommendations actually–”

Luckily for Pollux, at that moment, Annabeth came rushing out of the Big House. “Oh, thank the gods. There you are Pollux! We need to talk.” Then she paused as if she had just noticed Mr. D. “Oh– uh. Hi Mr. D,” Annabeth said, awkwardly bowing.

“Anniebelle, since when do you bow to me?” Mr. D asked. Pollux quickly pulled her back up.

“She must be really tired. Come on, Annabeth, I’ll walk you to your cabin,” Pollux said, speed walking away from his father. Once they were out of earshot he furiously whispered, “What the f*ck Annabeth?! Get your wits about you.”

“I’m sorry. I have no clue what that was. We’re not going back to my cabin, right?” She asked.

“No, we need to talk to everyone else. They’re onto us,” Pollux replied, breaking into a run as they rounded a corner and moved out of sight from Mr. D.

“Agreed. You get Will, Jake, Connor, and Travis. I’ll get Clarisse, Drew, Katie, and Percy. I don’t know where Grover is, if you see him, grab him, but don’t worry too much. No one’s gonna suspect him. Make sure no one sees you guys, we can’t have them getting more suspicious. And make sure Jake has a lighter with him. We’ll meet up at Bunker Nine in ten minutes,” Annabeth ordered.

“Yes ma’am,” Pollux jokingly said. “Ow!” He said as Annabeth slapped him on the shoulder.

“Let’s go Pollux, before anyone else throws more suspicion onto themselves, or the rest of us,” Annabeth said, already running away from him.

***

Annabeth’s heart was pounding. After Pollux ran out she had to sit through all the head counslers debating the best way to figure out what was going on with their younger siblings, and the entire time she was stuck there, trying to not talk too much or too little. Plenty of the people in there had known her for a long time. They would know if she was acting strange. And the last thing the time travelers needed was for their inside woman to be compromised.

She knew it was risky to gather all of them right after the head counslers decided they were acting strange, but this was a calculated risk. And part of her just wanted an excuse to beat up Travis, Conner, Jake, and Will. For the Hades’ sake, how hard was it to just be normal ? She was doing just fine, even though her boyfriend was here. It was all she could do to not be with him all the time, and kiss him anytime he said something remotely smart or funny. But, she was Annabeth Chase, the daughter of Athena, and she could stay focused on the more important task at hand. And currently, keeping suspicion off of them was the most important thing if they wanted any chance at stopping Kronos and preventing their friends from dying again.

Her shoes pounded on the hardwood floor of the Ares Cabin. Clarisse looked up in surprise from the knife she was sharpening, but when she saw Annabeth’s worried look she got up without saying anything else. Gathering Percy and Drew was nearly that easy, but unfortunately, there were two other campers in Katie’s cabin.

Luckily, Annabeth was a good liar, and one mention of a dryad emergency in the woods had Katie rushing out of the cabin without a second thought from her siblings. Nate had tried to follow, buut Katie had claimed she had it handled. Then Nate turned to Annabeth and gave her a look that said, Please make sure she’s ok. From head counselor to head counselor. Annabeth nodded and winked at Nate, telling him she had a plan.

As they tromped through the woods, Annabeth explained what was going on, and by the time they met up with everyone else at Bunker Nine, Clarisse was just about as ready to pummel Travis and Connor as Annabeth was.

Annabeth used the lighter and hairspray to blast the door with fire, and everyone filed inside, grabbing boxes and stools to sit on around the little fire Jake lit.

“What’s going on Annabeth? Pollux refused to tell us,” Will said, glaring at Pollux.

“You’re all being f*cking idiots, that’s what’s going on!” Annabeth exclaimed.

“Wow, ok,” Travis said, “Harsh. How, exactly are we being idiots?”

“You can’t act normal , that’s what!” Pollux exclaimed.

“I mean, you’re one to talk Pol,” Annabeth said, “but he’s right. The second we got back we all started hanging out, even if we hadn’t before. I mean, Travis and Katie, as far as everyone else in camp knows, you guys hate each other. And yet you spend every waking moment together.”

“Hey,” Travis said, throwing his arm around Katie’s shoulders. “Don’t trash the love man.”

“You can be in love but don’t be so godsdamn obvious about it. I mean, Percy and I have been acting like friends who just met. It sucks, but we’ve been able to do it.”

“You’re just aching for another night in the stables, aren’t ya Annabeth?” Clarisse said with a teasing smile on her face. Annabeth just rolled her eyes. If only Leo could keep his stupid mouth shut about the one night her and Percy accidentally spent the night together in the stables onboard the Argo II. Nothing had even happened, they kissed and then fell asleep.

“And Jake, Will! Multiple dick jokes in front of Lee, Beckendorf, and Chiron?! Are you kidding?” She kept going, she needed them to understand how much of an issue this really was.

“Those jokes were hilarious, thank you very much,” Jake said defensively and Will, while he was slightly red, nodded in agreement.

“You’re supposed to be ten Will!” Annabeth exclaimed. Will looked down at his feet. “Listen, I’m just saying that we need to be cautious about how we act around other campers, especially the counslers. I managed to convince them to leave you guys alone for the moment, but we need to be more careful.”

“Careful as in having all of us meet in a secret location no one knows about when people are still awake and could come looking for us any second now?” Drew asked snarkily.

“Listen, I know it was a risky move, but it was worth it. Leave in groups of two or three with about four minutes between each group, and take separate routes so people don’t get suspicious of us,” Annabeth said, standing up to declare their meeting officially over.

***

Hestia sat at her hearth in the middle of the cabins watching the campers run around getting ready for bed. The head counslers, Chiron, and Dionysus were no where to be seen, but luckily the harpies were doing a pretty good job of keep the kids focused. Hestia respected that, seeing as most of the kids had ADHD or ADD. To make their job easier she was in the middle of preforming a spell that would give the smoke a slight calming effect. She had long debated the ethics with herself, feeling torn between the obvious wrongness of drugging kids and the importance of helping keep everyone safe, but after a particularly-- um-- wild night back on August 15, 1945 when the emperor of Japan officially announced Japanese surrender, she decided it was worth it.

After she was done, she sat back to watch, and immediately noticed nine campers were missing. Percy Jackson, Annabeth Chase, Connor and Travis Stoll, Clarisse La Rue, Drew Tanka, Will Solace, Jake Mason, Katie Gardener, and Pollux Atropos. Those children had been acting strange ever since Percy’s arrival, and while Hestia hadn’t brought it up, she was pretty positive she was the only god who paid enough attention to know something was up.

Suddenly, Travis, Katie, and Clarisse strolled out from behind the Apollo Cabin. Hestia knew Travis and Katie sort of hated each other, and Clarisse was unliked by everyone in the camp who wasn’t related to her, so it was very unlikely they would have chosen to wander into the woods together, and neither Katie nor Travis showed signs of being beat up, so Clarisse obviously hadn’t hurt them.

As glad as Hestia was that no one got beat up, this was the final straw. Something was amiss, and it was time for the rest of her family to realize it too. She closed her eyes, imagined the massive throne room on top of the Empire State building, and when she opened her eyes, blinding gold and white greeted her, so bright she had to squint her eyes for a moment.

As her eyes adjusted, she saw three of the eleven gods she needed to gather. She sighed inwardly as she sent out a simple message to her family that said, all of you bastards get here in three minutes before I start breaking things off your thrones . That was enough to make Hepustus stop tweaking the latest addition to his throne-- an infinite wine dispenser-- for a moment and chuckle at his aunt. But the two other gods in the room, Apollo and Zeus, were so engrossed in their argument that they hadn’t even noticed her.

“No, absolutly not Apollo. I will not, as you say ‘blast the Space X rocket into all sh*t’. You know we can’t get involved in mortal dealings that much.” Zeus said, small thunder clouds circling his head as he got more and more annoyed.

“Please? They’re being really annoying.”

“No. That’s final. Leave me alone.”

“I agree with Apollo,” Athena said, appearing on her throne. “Mortals need to learn boundaries. Besides, I’m bored and I want to watch people tear Elon Musk apart on Twitter.” Athena looked over at Hestia, who had settled down by her hearth in the center of the hall. “What do you need Hestia?”

“What I need is for the rest of our family to get here soon.” And even though Athena raised her eyebrows at her, prompting her to elaborate, Hestia left it at that.

Athena rolled her eyes and turned back to her father and brother. “Stop your arguing old men. Go sit on you thrones so Hestia can get this over with and I can go back to my lecture at Harvard.”

“You work at Harvard? Since when?” Poseidon asked, appearing on his throne.

“Since they asked me to teach speech and deabte, dumbass,” Athena said. Poseidon didn’t respond, he just flipped her the bird and turned to talk to Ares, who had meandered into the room sometime between Athena and Poseidon arguing.

Hestia groaned to herself. It’s always something with the gods. I honestly prefer two hundred of their children. Hera and Demeter appeared moments later, followed by Aprodite and Hermes. As everyone settled down on their thrones, they looked around and realized one was missing.

“What is that sister of yours doing now?” Hera coldly asked Apollo.

“Damned if I know. She answers to no one,” he responded just as coldly.

Just then, Artemis flipped down from the roof, where Hestia had seen her teleport to the second she called for the gods to assemble.

“Great, now that we’re all here, we need to talk about your children,” Hestia said.

“Oh Hades,” Athena mumbled. “Listen, I know Annabeth’s last Capture The Flag strategy wasn’t great. Frankly, I was mortified, but her team still won, Ares ,” she said, turning to look at her brother.

“Don’t give me that! It isn’t my fault Sherman can’t wield a sword for the life of him,” Ares complained.

“Both of you shut up. Annabeth’s strategy was brilliant, Sherman is one of the most talented swordsman at Camp Half-Blood, and you would both do well to remember that,” Hestia said.

Everyone looked at her in shock but kept their mouths shut. And that was wise, because Hestia felt like blowing up her sacred hearth.

“Great, now that we got that out of the way, what I actually wanted to talk to you about is how Percy Jackson, Annabeth Chase, Connor and Travis Stoll, Clarisse La Rue, Drew Tanka, Will Solace, Jake Mason, Katie Gardener, and Pollux Atropos have been acting lately. They seem much older than they are and they don’t seem like themselves. I’ve known most of them for a while, if not personally then through my observation at Camp, and they aren’t acting anything like they did just a week ago. Something has changed, and I fear if we ignore this it could bubble up into a much more catastrophic event,” Hestia said, watching her family members to see their reactions.

Zeus and Hera looked completely bored, which wasn’t surprising seeing as neither of them had kids at Camp. Aprodite, Ares, and Athena looked like they couldn’t care less, Hermes seemed to be mildly interested, Artemis and Hepustus looked slightly worried, Demeter appeared to be contemplative, and Poseidon looked slightly pale. But, it was Apollo’s reaction that surprised Hestia the most and made her feel like she wasn’t going crazy.

He opened his mouth like he was going to say something, closed it like he thought better of it, made eye contact with her, immediately looked away, and began fidgeting with a tacky little mood ring he had on his finger, which was all the possible colors because it couldn’t understand a god’s emotions.

What is it nephew? She asked in his head.

Don’t worry about it, t he sun god responded before cutting their connection. Apollo was also the god of truth, and therefore was unable to lie in the Hall of Gods, but he could skirt around the truth all he wanted. Hestia felt her blood boil. If he wasn’t going to help her against these vultures, then he could go to Tarturus for all she cared.

“Frankly Hestia, I think you’ve been spending too much time around Chiron. You both worry too much. You forget that humans are odd, and to push the thought of their inevitable demise out of their minds they often change the way they act, if only to feel like they have control over something in their lives,” Hera said, picking at her nails nonchalantly.

“The last time we ignored demigods acting weird the American Civil War broke out. We all know how that ended,” Hestia said sharply. Perhaps she should show her sister more respect, seeing as Hera had no problem throwing gods off Mount Olympus, but she was too angry to care.

“Go back to tending to you hearth down on Earth sister,” Zeus said dissmissevly. “We have more pressing concerns.”

At this, Artemis slammed her hand on her throne. “Show her some respect father or so help me Hades I will make you respect her.”

Hestia smiled at her gratefully. She was used to the constant insults hurled at her by her family, but it was still nice when someone backed her up.

The rest of the gods looked around at each other, appearing to have their own silent conversations, but after a minute or so of deliberation, Zeus raised his hand.

“This is not an immediate issue, and as such we have all agreed to monitor the situation, but not do anything yet.” Artemis opened her mouth to argue, but one look from her father and she stopped. “You may go back to Camp. Do not return here until you have very clear, decisive evidence that something is amiss at Camp Half-Blood.”

Hestia raised her eyebrows. Her brother had effectively banished her. But, she knew the gods all had their heads too far up their asses to listen to common sense, so she accepted their ruling with appearent grace, bowing her head and thanking them for their time. But, she sent a message to Apollo and Artemis. Inform me if they gather and neglet to tell me. They both subtly nodded their heads. And Apollo-- at this Apollo looked over at her from where he was making a point to avoid eye contact with her. You are a bald-faced coward. Artemis snorted, reciving some odd looks from the gods, but they brushed her off.

As each of them began disapearing, going back to whatever they were doing before Hestia summoned them, she made eye contact with Zeus, who waved his hand, dismissing her in the most disrespectful way. But, Hestia took the hint, closed her eyes, imagined her hearth at Camp, and when she opened her eyes she was back at her temporary home.

Chapter 6

Chapter by Viribus_05

Chapter Text

Clarisse strapped on her armor after dinner. Her siblings were wise enough to stay quiet around her, knowing she preferred silence to get into her signature killing calm. But her mind was elsewhere. She knew her siblings expected her to go after Percy. After all, he did slay the Minotaur, and no true Ares kid would let someone stealing a moment of glory go unpunished. But there was nothing in her that wanted to go after him. They had kinda made up in her time, and the last time this happened, he kicked her and her siblings’s asses with zero training. It was mortifying.

This time around, they would stand even less of a chance, seeing as Percy was now a two time war veteran. Her siblings would know immediately that something was up, something was different about this Percy kid. She was willing to look weak and cowardly if it meant keeping suspicion off of Percy. Annabeth had already reassured everyone that she had adjusted her strategy to keep him away from any action, so now it was up to Clarisse to make sure her siblings stayed away too.

As they filed out of the Cabin, Sherman was blabbing her ear off about how excited he was to give Percy a reality check. Gods, this is gonna be a nightmare .

“Shut up Sherman!” Clarisse exclaimed. “We’re not veering from my strategy.”

“I don’t care about your godsdamn strategy Clarisse! We need to make sure this Percy kid doesn’t challenge our– your authority.” Sherman was the only one in camp who could talk to her like that, but she was not in the mood.

“Listen here you little sh*t,” Clarisse said, slamming Sherman’s back into the wall of their cabin. “You listen to me. You do what I say. You follow my orders, or so help me Ares I will f*ck you up. Do you understand me?” Sherman looked at her in shock. The rest of their siblings had stopped to watch, but one glare from Clarisse sent them scrambling away. “I said, ‘do you understand me?’” Clarisse repeated, her arm on his neck.

“Yes,” Sherman choked out, completely frozen in fear.

“Good,” Clarisse growled, shoving him to the ground. “Get up. We have a job to do.”

As they trekked through the woods to the creek Clarisse was steaming. Our authority?! Who does he think he is? As she marched with her cabin she noticed Annabeth and Percy walking side by side, making a point to keep multiple people between them and Luke. But like the asshole he was, he pushed them all to the side until he was next to Annabeth. Clarisse felt her blood boil, and she knew if it was her Luke would be missing a few teeth before the conversation even started. But, Annabeth just squared her shoulders and turned to talk to Luke, pushing Percy further behind her.

“What is the Hermes Cabin going to be doing this game, captain?” Luke asked jokingly.

“I’m splitting you guys up,” Annabeth said coolly, providing no more information.

“Well…” Luke stalled, clearing unaware of what to do. “What am I doing?”

“Decoy attack team,” Annabeth turned back towards Percy, rolling her eyes, “seeing as you’re so good at being the problem,” she murmured.

“What was that Annie?” Luke asked, his face red. Annabeth looked up, realizing she had f*cked up. “I’m so good at what?” Luckily, it sounded like he was genuinely confused, like he hadn’t heard her. Annabeth made eye contact with Clarisse, begging her for help.

“So good at losing the game for your team every time you’re on the actual attack team, nerd.” Clarisse smirked at him as she brushed by. Definitely not her best work, but it did the job.

“Oh yeah?! How many times has our cabin beaten yours?” Luke called after her, smirking at the banter, thinking he was still the camp hero.

“I would tell you, but seeing as you can’t count above ten with your shoes on I feel like you wouldn’t truly grasp the scope of your endless embarrassment, so I’ll save us both the struggle,” she yelled back, melting into the crowd.

She didn’t hear his response as Chiron’s voice rang above the crowd, repeating the rules for Capture the Flag before releasing the teams to hide their flags and get into position.

“So, what is the Demeter Cabin doing Clarisse?” Katie asked, walking up behind Clarisse. As much as she wanted to, Clarisse knew she couldn’t be nice to Katie. She had to put up the face of a strong daughter of Ares, the pride of her father’s offspring, the ruthless camper that won her position as head counselor.

“Ugh. Just pick some flowers. Join the border patrol. It’s up to you. Ares Cabin ends up doing all the work anyways,” Clarisse felt bad, and tried to portray her sorry in her eyes. Katie just gave her subtle wink, showing Clarisse she understood why she was acting this way, before calling her cabin to set up the southern border patrol. Nate looked a little peeved that Katie was ordering around the cabin but went along with it.

After assigning all the other cabins to their roles and splitting up her own cabin to ensure those roles actually got done, Clarisse moved to lead the real attack team, made of only five of the best campers, into battle. But, Sherman had other plans. Before she could react, he grabbed her arm and pulled her aside.

“Sherman, you better fix yourself before I fix you–” Clarisse began as Sherman cut her off.

“Shut up.” Clarisse raised an eyebrow at him. “Sorry,” Sherman amended. Clarisse made a mental note to beat his ass into the ground later. “It’s just– well I overheard Annabeth telling Percy to guard the stream. She obviously wants him out of the action, this is the perfect time to beat him up, build up some healthy fear of the Ares Cabin in him,” Sherman said excitedly.

“No.”

“No?” Sherman looked like a little confused dog.

“No. We’re sticking to my plan. And if you don’t–” Clarisse took a breath. “If you don’t, you’re kicked out of the cabin for the rest of the summer.”

Everyone around them went silent. Sherman looked at her in shock before nodding his head, a model of a perfectly obedient soldier, even though Clarisse knew him well enough to tell that he was pissed. Like, really pissed. But she brushed her concerns aside for the moment. We have a battle to win. And if we don’t– Clarisse didn’t even let herself consider the possibility of what her father might say to her if she passed up the opportunity to beat up Percy and lost Capture the Flag. She shuddered before ordering the attack team forward.

As they made their way across the creek and further into the woods they encountered little resistance, and the few campers they fought were unskilled campers Annabeth stationed there mostly to slow down Clarisse’s team. As much as Clarisse had grown to respect and care about Annabeth, there was still a part of her that hated how good her battle strategies were. Sure, she was the child of the goddess of battle strategy, but only so much was genetics.

Clarisse felt an inkling of suspicion as they got closer and closer to where the flag should be and the skill of the people they were fighting didn’t really increase, but she brushed it aside, confident that she knew where Annabeth would order their flag to be hidden.

Suddenly, a happy shout rang through the woods. Clarisse and Sherman shared a look of dread as they turned around and ran towards the shout. Just as she had feared, Annabeth’s team had captured the red team’s flag. And much to her dismay and anger, it was Luke Castellean who held the flag. She made eye contact with Percy as Luke celebrated with the rest of the blue team. Percy made a face of disgust, which Clarisse mirrored. Chiron announced blue as the winner, and she could feel Sherman’s eyes on her, glaring at her, telling her this was somehow her fault. She slammed the bottom of her spear on the ground in anger.

But, that suddenly wasn’t important anymore. Clarisse opened her mouth to warn Percy about the hellhound that was bounding out of the woods on a direct path to kill him, but it turned out she didn’t need to. As shouts rang up from the group, Percy, like he sensed what the hellhound was going to do, rolled into the river, barely dodging the hellhound’s leap, pulled out Riptide, and stood to face the hellhound. As it charged again, a few campers, including Luke, moved to help Percy, but he was having none of it. He threw out his hand, using a spray of water to throw them onto the bank before attacking the hellhound. Within seconds, it was a pile of yellow dust floating down the river, and Percy only had a few minor cuts, all of which immediately healed.

And, just like Clarisse, Annabeth, Jake, Pollux, Travis, Conner, Katie, Will, and Drew expected, Poseidon’s green trident glowed above Percy’s head. Gasps rose from the campers as they dropped to one knee.

“Posiden,” Chiron announced in wonder, a twinge of fear in his voice. “Earthshaker, Stormbringer, Father of Horses. Hail, Perseus Jackson, Son of the Sea God.”

Most campers just stared at Percy with wide eyed wonder, but Clarisse noticed Luke glaring at Percy. Whether it was because he had so easily defeated the hellhound or because he was claimed so quickly, Clarisse didn’t know. But, she wasn’t happy about that look. Suddenly, Sherman grabbed her spear.

“We should’ve beaten him up before we found out he was the son of Poseidon. You’re a coward Clarisse.” Clarisse glared at him, daring him to say more. “You don’t deserve to wield this spear. It should belong to the strongest in the family, which is definitely not you. Not anymore.” He tugged, pulling the bottom of the spear toward him. “Dad’s gonna be so disappointed.” Everything around her went silent.

“Give me my spear back,” she said calmly, tightening her grip.

“No.” Sherman turned away from her, swinging the spear into her shield. Snap . Clarisse looked down in shock at her spear, which was now in two. And that was the final straw.

Shouts arose as Clarisse swung her fist into Sherman’s f*cking face. Even though she knew she shouldn’t, she relished the crunch of bone as she broke his nose. Sherman was helpless against the onslaught of her fists, all of her pent up anger at this horrible situation her and all the other time travelers had been forced to endure spilling out as she relentlessly beat him up.

Suddenly, there were hands on her shoulders, pulling her off of him and spinning her around to face Chiron, who’s look of anger and disappointment shook Clarisse up more than she would care to admit.

“Escort her to the big house,” Chiron ordered two of the harpies, not an ounce of the fatherly affection Clarisse had grown to rely on present on his face. For once in her life, Clarisse didn’t argue. She knew anything– anything– she said would just dig her into a deeper hole.
She didn’t try to fight as the harpies dragged her through the woods, or when they practically threw her onto the porch before flying around twenty meters away, their message clear. She wasn’t gonna leave, but she wasn’t gonna have company either. As she watched the campers make their way in from the woods, including Percy, who went into the infirmary, supposedly to get checked up after his fight, she watched for Sherman. And a moment later she saw him clutching his hand to his nose, blood leaking through his fingers, also heading for the infirmary. She felt like she should regret beating him up, but there was no emotion in her. That seemed like something that should have been worrying, but Clarisse honestly didn’t give a centaur’s ass.

And speak of the devil, there was Chiron, trotting along behind Sherman, talking to Lee and Luke. The gestures he made led Clarisse to believe they were talking about Percy, and she wanted to shout at Chiron to stop talking about him with the traitorous trash that was Luke Castellean, but she knew better. Knew no one would believe her and they would stand a better chance if no one else knew about Luke until– and Clarisse hated to admit this– Annabeth deemed it the right time.

Lee and Luke moved away from Chiron to head to the infirmary and Clarisse felt her heart sink to her stomach as she watched Chiron walk up to her. She fully expected him to call up her dad and let him do the emotional abuse.

But, he surprised her.

“So,” he said, trotting up the stairs to stand next to her. “I think you might have to be added to the list of younger campers who are acting weird.”

Clarisse stamered, unsure of what to say to that. I really messed up. She refused to make eye contact with him.

Chiron chuckled, staring out across camp. “I’ve trained a lot of young heroes in my time. Some as calm and collected as Annabeth, others more like– well frankly, more like you.” Clarisse tried to take offense to that, but she knew he was right. “Clarisse, I think you’re incredibly smart and brave.” Clarisse could feel his eyes turn to her, but she refused to look at him.

“You have all the swagger and skills with any type of weapon like a true daughter of Ares. But, you also have his temper. He and his children have been blinded time and time again by their anger, their need for revenge. Some outgrow it or learn to harness it. Others let it consume them until they do something rash, make a mistake they can’t undo. I don’t want that for you. I want you to harness your anger and turn it into something to be proud of. I don’t want you to lose your temper, it’s what makes you who you are, a child of Ares or not. I simply want you to take it out on bad things, not annoying younger brothers, no matter how much they may deserve it,” At this, Clarisse laughed to herself.

“Oh and Clarisse,” Clarisse turned to look at Chiron as he put his hand on her shoulder, looking her in the eyes. “I’m proud of you. And even if your father doesn’t show it, or say it, I think he is too. And if he isn’t, well, then I have to question his wisdom.”

Clarisse smiled, a lump building in her throat, and she had to look away bashfully, a single tear running down her face.

***

Alec watched Clarisse and Chiron from a distance, very confused and more than slightly concerned about his sister’s recent behavior. She had always been a leader, but she was always a good soldier and had never tried to take control from him. He was frustrated with her because his cabin lost again , but he was even more frustrated with the rest of his siblings for just going along with her and not even trying to follow their real head counselor.

But, it wasn’t frustration that kept him watching her and Chiron. It was disappointment. He had seen Sherman break her spear, and she had every right to be pissed off. But, she should have left him to deal with Sherman. As the true head counsler of the Ares Cabin, he would have punished Sherman sufficiently. Now, it fell on him to punish Clarisse, who was secretly his favorite sibling.

Gods, this is gonna suck.

Clarisse and Chiron finished talking and the latter wandered into the Big House as the former made her way down the steps and over to him.

“I’m sorry Alec,” Clarisse began. Alec simply raised his hand and Clarisse stopped talking.

“You’re on stable duty for the rest of the summer. And, if you pull sh*t like that again things will get a lot worse for you,” he warned.

Clarisse just nodded in acceptance.

“I’ll see you back at the Cabin,” Alec said, dismissing her. As he watched her walk away, her shoulders slightly bent inward, he became increasingly concerned. Clarisse never walked with her head down, her shoulders were always thrown back in pride.

Something was going on with her, just like with some of the other younger campers. And Alec worried if the head counselors didn’t figure out what was going on, things would get a lot worse.

Alec noticed Annabeth standing to the side with some of her siblings and whispering in a huddle, probably about Percy being the son of Poseidon and what that meant, the nerds. He walked over to them and said, “Annabeth, can I talk to you?”

She looked over at him and nodded while walking with him to the side of the Ares Cabin, then she asked, “What?”

Alec took a breath and tried to control his anger at this twelve year old acting like she knew everything, typical Athena kid. He opened his mouth and said, “Can you add Clarisse to the list of younger campers being weird?”

He watched as her expression went from curious to annoyed and angry, she muttered something he didn’t quite catch but it sounded like “talk about being f*cking normal” before she spoke up and said, “Yeah, I’ll write her up.”

“Great, thanks,” Alec said and turned to walk away before Annabeth called him back.

“But how weird is it really for Clarisse to beat up one of her siblings?” she asked.

That was a fair point. “But she also took control of the cabin for this game when she is well aware that I am head counselor.”

“But don’t you leave at the end of this summer, and isn’t she the one you want to take over after you’re gone? Maybe she was just getting ready for the responsibility,” Annabeth said mildly.

“Yeah,” Alec agreed, “I guess that’s fair.” And she is the age where she’s gonna have mood swings, Alec thought. “Maybe hold off on writing her down and I’ll keep an eye out.”

“Sounds good,” Annabeth agreed and walked back toward her siblings.

Chapter 7

Chapter by Viribus_05

Chapter Text

Will sat in the infirmary and watched Lee patch up Sherman after he got beat into the ground by Clarisse. Lee was wrapping Sherman’s head with a bandage when the Ares head counselor walked over to Sherman and said, “Clarisse is being punished and will apologize to you later.”

Sherman nodded and said, “I’m sorry I broke her spear, but she was being weird.”

“I know,” Alec said.

Lee looked at Alec and he just shook his head. If Will had to guess, Lee was asking if Clarisse was weird enough to be on the list of young campers they were concerned about. Thankfully, it didn’t look like she was on the suspect list.

Lee finished bandaging Sherman and said, “Alright, you should be good now. Check back in tomorrow to take the bandages off and make sure you’re really good to go.”

Sherman nodded and stood up to follow Alec out of the infirmary. Lee turned toward Will and looked at him with poorly hidden concern. “What?” Will asked.

“Nothing,” Lee lied. Will looked at him until Lee relented, “Are you sure you’re ok?”

Will rolled his eyes. Ever since his mental breakdown when he first got back, his whole cabin had been treating him like he was glass. “Yes, Lee. I’m fine. I told you it was just a nightmare.”

“Do you wanna talk about it?” Lee asked, sitting down next to him.

“No,” Will said, looking down. It was hard to look Lee in the eyes when every time he did all Will saw was blue orbs unseeing and his blond hair matted with blood. Out of habit, he reached to finger the second button on his flannel so he could calm down, but stalled when he realized he wasn’t wearing the flannel. Lee was.

Then the memory came crashing into him.

Will, walking through the battle field after the Battle of the Labyrinth, trying to find survivors he could heal even though he was practically falling over from exhaustion. Will, his heart pounding after every body he saw wasn’t Lee’s. Will, his stomach churning as he saw wound after bloody wound marking the bodies of his friends. Will, tears streaming down his face as he saw the green flannel. Will, sobbing as he rolled the body of his brother over to look into Lee’s unseeing eyes. Will, his hands shaking as he slowly took the dirty flannel off of Lee and wrapped it around himself, trying to reclaim the feeling of his brother hugging him after a nightmare. Selina, a single tear running down her face as Will held the flannel in front of her and choked out between sobs, “can you clean it please?” Selina, nodding and crying.

“Will! Will!” Lee was shaking him. “Will, what the heck? You okay?”

Will shook his head. “Yeah, yeah I’m fine. Sorry.” sh*t.

“You sure?” Lee asked, staring at him with creased eyebrows, “Cause you’ve been acting weird for a few days and then every time someone brings it up you zone out.”

Will panicked for a second, he couldn’t just keep brushing it off. And Annabeth said he was already on the suspicious list, so Will opened his mouth and lied, “It wasn’t just a nightmare. It felt real and it felt like, I don’t know more ,”

That made Lee pause and say, “Like a prophetic dream?”

“I think so,” Will looked down and shrugged, “But I don’t know. I’ve never had one before.”

Lee nodded and said, “We could ask Dale. He’s had a few recently.”

Will was suddenly reminded that Dale wasn’t just a healer, he also had dreams similar to an oracle. Every Apollo kid had two skills at least. Will was a healer and he had his supersonic whistle. Lee could heal and shoot a bow with scary accuracy. Austin could play any instrument he picked up and could write some amazing poetry. Kayla could make ninety-nine out of hundred shots and had a voice like a siren. And Michael, well Michael couldn’t miss and he could rhyme his ass off, especially with curse words.

Will agreed to talk to Dale about his dream next time he saw him and Lee, clearly happy with the progress, laid off a little. Will swung his legs as he sat on the cot, which was too tall for his little ten year old legs to reach the ground, and watched as Lee made his way around the infirmary, going through the closing procedures like cataloging medicine, nectar, and ambrosia, deep cleaning the equipment they used that day, and replacing the sheets from the used cots with fresh ones.

Eventually, after his brother jokingly glared at him enough times, Will jumped down and started sweeping the floor, which he saw as pointless because Lee and the rest of his cabin ran this place like an actual hospital and as such everything was always spotless. But, Will admitted to himself, he often found himself taking extra time every day to clean the infirmary just like he knew his older brother would want him to.

As they were walking back to the cabin, they passed the archery range, where they saw Michael. He loved doing crazy stunts with his bow, so he could usually be found out here right before curfew, practicing the more dangerous stuff. For example, tonight he was in a handstand, using one hand to support his weight and his other hand to hold his bow, which he was drawing back with his teeth, aiming at the target twenty yards away.

“Godsdammit Michael, did you learn nothing three days ago when Dale had to reattach your tooth because the string broke it?!” Lee exclaimed, running to grab the bow from his brother.

But, before he could reach him, Michael released the string from his teeth, sending the arrow flying right at the bullseye. Much to Lee and Will’s surprise, it wasn’t Michael’s tooth that snapped, it was the string.

“f*cking sh*t biscuit, now I have to restring it!” Michael exclaimed, coming down from the handstand and looking down at his bow. Noticing his brothers’ looks of shock and somewhat terror, Michael chuckled. “Dale used some special magic to make my teeth strong enough to take the force of the string releasing. But, apparently he made them too strong.”

“Language!” Lee scolded, as if by habit, before shaking his head and mumbling more to himself than anyone else, “f*ck me, now I need to yell at Dale for encouraging this bullsh*t.”

Will chuckled to himself. His older siblings, especially Lee, always tried to keep the language around him clean, but they weren’t very good at it. Besides, his father was Apollo for the gods’ sake. Curse words ran in his veins. And growing up on the road around a bunch of musicians definitely didn’t do any good at keeping his vocabulary PG.

Michael sighed to himself as he pulled a new string out of his pocket and began walking back towards the cabins.

Will zeroed in on that string, and another memory came flooding back to him.

Will, stumbling back into his cabin after the Battle of Manhattan. Will, his hands shaking as he remembered all the horrible wounds he healed and all the ones he couldn’t. Will, his thoughts running, mostly about the battle, but, much to his frustration, also about that son of Hades, Nico, who saved all their asses. Will, slamming his fist into the wall in anger with himself for thinking about a very hot man instead of all the campers they had lost. Will, noticing the sting of his tears as they ran through a cut on his face. Will, not trying to heal it because he needed the pain to remember he was still alive. Will, desperately wanting to collapse onto his bed and sob his eyes out for days, even though he knew he had to help prepare the bodies for the funeral pyres. Will, pausing as he saw a bow lying on his pillow. Will, yelling in anger as he realized it was Michael’s. Will, numb as he cut the blue string off the bow, took off his camp necklace, removed the beads, restrung them on the bowstring, and tied that around his neck. Kayla, coming into the cabin and screaming as she saw the bow. Kayla, holding him as they cried together over the loss of another one of their brothers.

“---I don’t know why it’s blue, it just appeared on my pillow one morning with a note from dad.” Michael’s voice snapped Will out of the memory. “I’m glad I finally get to use it. I hope it has some special power.”

Will’s heart dropped. Unlike Michael or Lee, Will knew there was nothing special about the string besides the fact it was blue instead of brown.

“What do you think Willy-Boy? Does my string have power?” Michael asked.

“I don’t know,” Will said meekly.

“It’s definitely a nice bow string,” Lee mused, a true son of Apollo.

In a desperate attempt to force himself to forget about the fate of his brothers, and in an incredibly stupid move, Will muttered, “It’s a nice bow string. I just hope it won’t end up around my neck.”

Silence.

Annabeth is actually gonna kill me. Slap me, set Clarisse on me, crucify me, then kill me.

“Will?” Micheal asked softly.

Will panicked, but was luckily able to think on his feet. “When you inevitably break that string I want to use it for my camp necklace!” He said lightly with a laugh, choosing to ignore that the string would never break, not until he cut it from his brother’s bow four years later. Maybe that was its special power. It could never be broken accidentally, allowing Micheal to do whatever the hell he wanted.

Micheal and Lee shared a look like, let’s discuss this with Chiron later .

“Fine buddy, it’s all yours,” Micheal said, wrapping the string around his finger then unwrapping it as the blood flow slowed.

And that would appear to be the end of it, except either Micheal or Lee were always within a foot of Will for the rest of the night.

***

“And then he said he he hoped it didn’t end up around his neck.” Lee’s words played in Chiron’s head as he watched over the campers at lunch the next day. Clarisse and Sherman completely ignored each other as they sat on complete opposite ends of the table from one another, a rarity as they always seemed to be eager to sit next to each other and talk poorly about the other cabins. Percy, sitting alone at the Poseidon table, staring wistfully at– and this confused Chiron– the Athena table, not the Hermes table. Maybe Percy had desperately wanted to be a son of Athena. Annabeth, glaring daggers at the Hermes table, specifically Luke. That was another thing that confused Chiron. He figured she’d be happy with him for winning her team yet another game of capture the flag.

But, he pulled his attention away from them to look at Will. That child had been acting odd, just like a few of the other younger campers, but he was becoming increasingly more concerned about Will specifically. However, as he watched Will talking intensely to Dale about something, some of his concern disappeared.

That was until Lee screeched, “You absolute donut! What are you doing?!!” Apparently Micheal had spilled blue Gatorade on Lee’s beloved green flannel.

“Micheal you idiot, you’re gonna stain my favorite flannel!” Will yelled, throwing the bottle of Gatorade at Micheal.

The Apollo table went silent for a beat, staring at Will. “Excuse me, it’s my flannel William,” Lee said.

Will’s eyes went really big for a moment before he frantically said, “We’re brothers. What’s yours is mine. Communism bitch.”

Lee opened his mouth and closed it again in shock. Chiron was inclined to agree. Will was ten, he shouldn’t know what communism was.

Chiron sighed and shook his head. Just another thing to worry about. Speaking of which, he really had to talk to Percy Jackson about the stolen lightning bolt and the quest he would have to go on. But, Chiron couldn’t see a case in which Percy would choose to go on this quest. His father had been absent for the first twelve years of his life, Chiron doubted Percy would want to help him out after years of abandonment.

Chiron stood up and raised his hand. As the dining pavilion quieted down, he lowered his hand. “Hermes and Aphrodite cabins, you are on cleanup duty. Afterwards, you have Monster Assault Techniques with Luke. Demeter cabin, you will be leading the Apollo cabin in Winged Horseback Riding—” And on and on he went, reminding each cabin of their afternoon activities.

As everyone began moving out of the Dining Pavilion, Chiron noticed Percy sitting at his table in confusion. Chiron sighed inwardly as he trotted over.

“Chiron, you didn’t tell me where to go,” Percy remarked, fiddling with his pen/sword.

“That’s because I need to speak with you son,” Chiron responded, his tone much more melancholy than he meant.

Percy’s face hardened for a quick moment before he schooled his face back into confusion. Chiron brushed it off as Percy just being frustrated he wouldn’t get to spend the afternoon doing demigod stuff with his new friends. They made their way to the Big House patio, where Mr. D was already sitting, his feet propped up on the table and his hand clenched around a Diet co*ke, which he took a deep swig from as Chiron and Percy made their way up the stairs.

Percy gave Mr. D a passing, dismissive glance before turning his attention back to Chiron. “What’s going on sir?”

Chiron sighed. “There’s no easy way to tell you this, Percy, but Zeus’s Master Lightning Bolt has been stolen and your father is the prime suspect.”

“But gods can’t steal from one another,” Percy said, still fiddling with his pen/sword.

“But their children can,” Chiron said, waiting for a change in Percy’s demeanor that never happened. “The way Zeus sees it, it’s no coincidence that his Bolt was stolen almost six months before a forbidden child was claimed by his brother.”

Percy nodded once. “And Zeus thinks I stole the Bolt.”

“Yes,” Chiron confirmed.

At the same time Mr. D mumbled, “Are we sure we have completely ruled this kid out?”

Chiron gave Mr. D a withering glare, but the god of wine just raised his eyebrows as if to say, have we?

“So what do I have to do?” Percy asked as if he already knew the answer.

“You-- you want to help your father?” Chiron exclaimed as Mr. D actually looked at Percy for the first time in the whole meeting.

“I mean, yeah. Sure, he abandoned me for twelve years, but he’s still my father,” Percy remarked. Chiron raised an eyebrow at this. Percy wanted to help his deadbeat father? “And I mean, he’s a god so I don’t want to be on his bad side,” Percy added quickly, noticing Chrion’s suspicion.

Chiron took a moment to gather his thoughts before explaining that he would issue a quest once Percy visited the Oracle. After that, Percy and two other questing companions would set out to find the most powerful weapon in the world and see it safely returned to Zeus by the Summer Solstice, which happened to be a week away.

Chiron expected Percy to yell, or cry, or throw up-- all of which were common reactions when a camper got their first quest-- but Percy’s eyes simply darkened and he nodded his head once.

“When do we start?”

***

Here we go again. Percy groaned to himself as he followed Chiron through the Big House to the ladder leading to the attic. Chiron gave him a slightly confused look as he began climbing the ladder, which didn’t make sense to Percy at all. Wouldn’t Chiron pity him, or be scared for him?

It was as he was climbing the ladder that he realized he accepted the quest too quickly, and without any of the fear or frustration that would be expected from a new demigod. Well f*ck. Percy felt bad. Annabeth had done so much work to make sure no one suspected any of the time travelers and Percy had thrown that all away. I’m going to have to apologize to Annabeth. That thought had him smiling, because he knew after he apologized, Annabeth would forgive him and maybe he’d get a kiss.

As Percy pulled himself into the attic he looked around, and was immediately taken aback. Not only did it look the exact same as the first time he did this, he saw so many different weapons, magical items, and armor that had been pulled out of storage throughout his years at Camp Half-Blood. Buried under a box of what appeared to be scarves he saw a box of daggers, one of which was Piper’s, that was moved from the attic to the armory during preparations for the Battle of the Labyrinth. And laying on a table were dozens of helmets, one of them being Paolo’s favorite.

He made his way to the back of the attic, where the Oracle was sitting on her rocking chair. Percy suddenly became very grateful Rachel had been able to take the Spirit of Delphi, because Holy Hades, this Oracle was creepy.

“Hey Oracle lady. Can you give me a prophecy please?” He asked, putting his hands in his pockets and leaning against a bookshelf full of Camp Half-Blood t-shirts.

Green smoke began pouring out of her mouth, eyes, and ears, and morphed into his disgusting step-father, Smelly Gabe. Percy felt a sharp stab of guilt as he realized he never called his mother when he arrived at Camp. Hopefully Chiron had contacted her, but he still needed to call her as soon as he got out of here.

You shall go west and face the God who has turned.

You shall find what was stolen and see it safely returned.

You shall be betrayed by one who calls you a friend

And you shall fail to save what--

“What matters most in the end,” Percy finished along with the Oracle, rolling his eyes. “Always the optimist, huh?” Well, at least it’s not different so we already know what to do.

Chapter 8

Chapter Text

Grover stood next to him as Percy and Annabeth prepared to go on this quest once again. Percy looked over at him and smiled, he had missed Grover on the quest of the seven. Percy would forever be kinda sad that Grover hadn’t been their satyr chaperone. Grover noticed him looking and smiled back, although it seemed subdued. Chiron was bidding them farewell and making sure they all what they needed to leave. “You have the sword Percy?” he asked.

Percy looked up and pulled Riptide out of his pocket. Thankfully, Grover had convinced Chiron to give Percy the sword while he was still at Yancy. Grover had said that if a monster were to show up and neither of them could get there in time, Percy should have some defense.

“Good,” Chiron smiled, “I wish you three the best of luck and I hope to see you soon.”

The three of them turned to face the road and started to walk down the hill when a voice called out, “Wait!”

Percy turned around to see Luke running over to them with a shoebox under his arm. sh*t. Percy thought they did a pretty good job avoiding him. Annabeth put on a fake smile and said, “Hi, Luke!”

Luke grinned back and held out the box, “I wanted to give you this, just another extra magical object for help. I know how dangerous quests can be.” He grimaced, clearly remembering his scar.

How dangerous quests can be, huh? Well tell me, did you ever go to Rome and fight two giants at the same time while also trying to save your friends? Didn’t think so. Percy thought. Fortunately, before he could open his mouth, Annabeth reached out and grabbed the box and said, “Thanks.” Luke smiled at them as they made their way down the hill and toward the van, where Argus was waiting to drive them to the bus stop.

Once they reached the stop and Argus drove away, Annabeth made to throw the shoes into the nearest garbage can. “Hold on!” Grover yelled.

“What?” Percy asked, “We’re not gonna use those and let them drag us into Tar…drag us down there again.” Sometimes it was hard to say the name of the place or being that had caused him enough trauma to last seven lifetimes.

“I know,” Grover said, “But you won’t wear them. I will.”

“What? Why?” Annabeth asked.

“Because, the only way we’re gonna get the bolt is if we get close to The Pit. Remember, it shows up in Percy’s bag once we get close to Kronos.” Grover explained, “We need those shoes.”

“But if you put them on, you’ll be dragged toward it.” Annabeth pointed out.

Grover swallowed, “Yeah if either of you do, you will go in. Last time they fell off my hooves so I was alright.”

There was a moment of silence before Precy asked, “What if that doesn’t happen this time? What if this time they don’t fall off?”

“They will.” Grover said, “I promise.”

“No.” Percy said, voice hard. There was no way Percy could let Grover take this risk.

“Percy-”

“No. I’m not gonna let you risk your life just so we can get the stupid bolt. I won’t let you.”

“How else would we get it?” Grover asked.

“I don’t know,” Percy admitted, “Maybe I just fight Ares for it.”

“That won’t work.” Grover said.

“Why not? I beat once when I was actually twelve. I could do it again.” Perccy pointed out.

“Because!” Grover yelled, “Because we need to keep a low profile and a twelve year old challenging Ares to a fight without even having met him before and with no good proof or reason to think that he’s the thief will look suspicious. And if that happens then the gods will keep a closer eye on us and we will have changed too much. At that point it will be impossible to know what will come next and we won’t be able to save anyone at all!”

Percy was shaken, Grover hadn’t yelled at him or gotten this mad at Percy in years. “Grover…”

“I didn’t want to be back here to start. But now that I am, I am not gonna let people die if they don’t have to. It’s my job as Lord of the Wild to save the innocent and to protect the natural world! I am going to wear those shoes because I have the best chance at not being dragged into Tartarus and neither of you will be able to stop me.” He looked at Percy, then at Annabeth, who was staring at him in shock.

She opened her mouth and said, “I don’t like this.”

“I know,” Grover nodded.

“Fine.” Annabeth spit out, “But that is plan B. I will think of another way to do this without risking anyone.”

Grover nodded and took the shoes from Annabeth, he shucked off his other shoes and tied the red converse onto his hooves.

Percy felt horrible. What Grover had said made sense and he hated that it did. It shouldn’t make sense. I shouldn’t make sense to let your best friend risk their life without much of a fight. Just like how it didn’t make sense that Leo had been the one to sacrifice his life to defeat Gaea. Why wasn’t it Percy? It didn’t make sense that Jason had to be the one to go with Apollo. If Percy hadn’t turned Apollo down, it would’ve been him. Percy wished it was.

***

Drew watched the van drive away with a familiar feeling of resentment. Hell, she didn’t want to be the one going on this quest, but at the same time she hated that Percy, Annabeth, and Grover would get all the praise yet again. She sighed as she turned away, heading back down the hill to her cabin. Drew was brooding all the way back down the hill until she heard Luke call out, “Hey, Drew!”

She turned to glare at him, “What?”

“What’s with the hostility?” he grinned, “Are you going to talk to Selina? I can’t find her, I was gonna ask if she would meet up with me, Ethan, Chris, and Clary in the woods.”

Drew stopped short. Luke was already trying to recruit Silena, and from the looks of it he was also already bothering Ethan, who Drew knew was a lost cause. Chris, she supposed he wasn’t horrid, him and Clarisse were cute. But, Clary too? Clary was a daughter of Apollo who hadn’t left camp until Clarisse had gone to get the golden fleece. “No I haven’t seen her.” Drew snapped, “And if I do I’ll be sure to tell her that you died.”

Luke laughed a little and said, “What’s up with you? You’re not usually angry.”

“You don’t know anything about me,” she said as she walked toward her cabin, “If you did you would know that I am always angry. I’m just very good at pretending to like people.”

“Are you?” Luke asked, still smiling.

She whirled around to look him in his still blue eyes. “Yes,” she hissed out, then she turned on the charmspeak, “You don’t really want to Selina, anyway. I’ll go to your little meeting in the woods.”

Luke’s eyes glazed for a second before he said, “Cool! I’ll see you there!” Then he turned and walked toward the swordfighting arena. Drew couldn’t help her smirk. Luke would not get his claws into Selina this time. Drew wouldn’t let him. She would go to this meeting, and listen to what Luke had to say, then she would tell everyone in their little time travel group what the plan was. And maybe this time around, people would know that Drew Tanaka was more than a pretty bitch.

She watched Luke walk away before continuing toward her cabin. Drew made it to the door and was about to open it when Selina yanked it open from the inside. Selina almost ran into Drew as she was calling back into the cabin, “Whatever you do Lacy, don’t touch that handcream. It’s mine! I know you have your own so don’t even think about it.”

When Selina turned to the front she jumped and said, “Oh, hi! Drew, I was just looking for you. Do you think I can leave you in charge for a few hours while I go visit the forges about my sword?”

In her past life, Drew would’ve jumped at the chance to be in charge of the cabin. This time she smiled and said, “Oh no thanks. I think Mitchell should be in charge.”

Selina frowned and her eyebrows creased in concern, “Oh! Um…sure. Mitchell!”

“Yeah?” he yelled from inside.

“You’re in charge!” Selina yelled before closing the door behind her. Drew could faintly hear Mitchell inside telling Lacy to leave the vanity alone. “Yeah,” Selina sighed, hearing the same thing, “They’ll be fine. Since you’re not doing anything, do you want to come with me to the forges?”

Drew thought about it and decided she could go see Jake and tell him about her plan to go see Luke. Once she nodded, Selina smiled and grasped her arm and squealed. Selina dragged her to the forges talking the whole time, “Do you think Annabeth and the others will be okay on their quest?”

“Yeah,” Drew said, “I mean it’s Annabeth.”

“True,” then Selina sobered, “But we also thought that about Luke. And look what happened to him.” Drew couldn’t help but roll her eyes.

Once they reached the forges and walked in, Drew was overwhelmed with the heat. How could people stand to be in here all day? The heat would make her all sweaty and ruin all her makeup. “Charlie!” Selina called waving down Beckendorf.

He looked up from talking to his sister about something. Bekendorf smiled at Selina and made his way over, “Hey.”

“Hey,” Selina said, beaming, “I was wondering if you could fix my sword, I was in the arena and Alec bent it.”

Beckendorf nodded, took the sword from her, and walked over toward an empty area to the right. Selina followed him smiling and talking his ear off about how she thought Travis was in love with Katie. Drew sighed and looked around, her eyes landing Jake in the back head bent over a blueprint. She knew that they were both the list of campers being suspicious, but she needed to talk to someone about her plan.

***

Selina followed Charlie over toward his workbench and was talking about Travis and Katie. He just nodded along and started to work on her sword. “I really think Travis loves her. I mean when boys his age like girls they just annoy them because they don’t know any other way to get them to pay attention, which is stupid in my opinion.”

Charlie smiled along and asked, “Is Drew still being weird?”

Selina’s smile slipped off her face and she nodded, “I asked her if she wanted to be in charge earlier and she said ‘no’.”

Charlie paused his work and looked at her, “She refused? Even I know that’s weird for her.”

“Right?” Selina sighed, “I’m worried about all the little ones, Charlie. And now there’s a quest… there’s no way it’s all a coincidence.”

“Yeah,” Charlie agreed. They lapsed into silence as they both thought about the situation. It only lasted a few minutes before Charlie said, “Selina, look.” He nodded toward where Drew was standing with Jake.

“I didn’t think they were close.” Selina said looking over, her mind already trying to find everytime they had interacted in the past and only coming up with co-cabin events Drew was forced to go to.

“They’re not,” Charlie said, “Before Jake went weird I heard him complaining to Joey that she had told him he was as ugly as Dad.”

“She did not!” Selina gasped. How could Drew say something like that? Jake was one of the nicest boys in camp. She looked back over toward her sister and saw her say something else to Jake. He looked at her with his eyebrows pulled together and his brown eyes lit with concern. As a daughter of Aphrodite, Selina would say she was very good at reading people. But Jake’s reaction to whatever Drew said was unusual.

Drew had her back to Selina and she could only see about three fourths of Jake’s face. Selina assumed Drew said something else because then Jake’s mouth moved and Selina could read his lips: Do you think it’s a good idea?

Selina watched Drew nod and Jake look down at his project, then he looked back up and Selins watched him say: When are you gonna tell everyone else?

Drew shrugged and there was a pause as she spoke. Then Jake smiled and went back to work as Drew turned to sit on the bench next to him. She caught Selina’s eye and raised an eyebrow. Selina just smiled and winked at her. Drew stuck her tongue out back.

Selina smiled again and faced Charlie, who in her time reading lips and finished her sword. “I think Drew and Jake might be more than friends.”

“What?” he asked, “How do you figure that?”

When Selina told him what she saw, he looked over at Jake and Drew. Selina followed his gaze to see Drew pointing at something and talking. Only for Jake to interrupt her with wild hand motions and a grin. Drew beamed back at him and snatched a pen from a nearby table, wrote something on Jake’s blueprint, and handed him the pen.

Then Drew seemed to realize that she was being watched. She looked up at Selina and hopped off the bench to walk over. Charlie handed Selina her sword and said, “If you ever need it fixed again, feel free to stop by anytime.”

“I will,” Selina promised.

“Done?” Drew asked.

Selina nodded, led the way out of the forge and back to cabin, and asked, “So… Jake?”

“What?” Drew yelped, “Ew! No way!”

“Are you sure? You seemed pretty content talking with him in there.” Selina teased.

Drew made a face and said, “We’re just friends, acquaintances really. And besides, he already has a crush.”

Selina stopped walking, “Really?”

“Yes,” Drew said, stopping as well, “I’m about to be the best wingwoman you’ve ever seen.”

“Who is it?” Selina continued walking.

She shrugged and said, “You’re a daughter of Aphrodite, too. Why don’t you figure it out for yourself?”

Selina smiled and said, “Ok. I will. And I’ll be a better wingwoman than you!”

“As if,” Drew snorted.

***

Once she made it to the cabin Drew took a moment to smell her favorite perfume, the one she got as a gift from Selina after her first year at camp. She never used it, just smelled it because it smelled like lilacs and pine trees, which reminded her of home. Her father was terrible to her, so she would spend hours at a time in the forest by her house picking lilacs and climbing the tall pine trees.

After gathering her thoughts she left the cabin and made for the woods, determined to gather as much information as possible. Drew Tanaka may have been pretty, but gods help her, she could be useful when she wanted to be.

Following the low sounds of talking mixed in with the occasional laugh, she found a small, well hidden clearing where Luke, Ethan, Chris, and Clary were already gathered. Luke was the first to notice her, and gave her a small smile that was welcoming but had an air of confusion, as if he wasn’t quite sure why he invited her. But, Luke was a gentleman, or a very good fake one that is, so he just gestured for her to sit down on a tree trunk.

“Alright, welcome everyone. I’m glad you all could make it to this meeting I’m calling the ‘Emotionally Reprssed Demigods’,” Luke said, smiling at his joke. Ethan, Chris, and Clary seemed as annoyed as Drew felt, but every one of them seemed interested in what Luke was going to say.

Gods help her, this was going to be a long meeting.

Chapter 9

Chapter Text

Luke wasn’t exactly sure what Drew was doing at his meeting. Sure, he vaguely remembered inviting her, but he couldn’t for the life of him figure out why he felt inclined to extend an invite. But there she was, sitting on a tree trunk, looking like she would rather be doing anything else.

Part of him wanted to kick her out, but he knew charmspeak abilities would prove invaluable when it was finally time to start growing the army with half-bloods. Selina had been his first choice and he couldn’t remember why he chose Drew over her. An annoying voice in his head told him it wasn’t right to charmspeak people into leaving their entire lives behind, but he knew once he got them in the door, they would see that what he was doing was right. Maybe that was why he picked Drew. She would have less moral issues about charmspeaking people to do things than Selina would.

“Alright, welcome everyone. I’m glad you all could make it to this meeting I’m calling the ‘Emotionally Repressed Demigods’,” Luke said smiling. Everyone but Drew laughed; she just rolled her eyes. “I think we can all agree that our parents are sh*t.”

“Amen,” Clary, a daughter of Apollo, muttered.

“My father only visited a few times,” Luke began, “But each time he only made my life worse than it already was as a demigod. He drove my mother mad and he sent me on a quest that held no real purpose.”

Drew was listening to him now.

“But now I have a purpose.” Luke kept going, “I can’t give you all the details yet, but I promise if you stay loyal to me you will reap the benefits.” Luke felt a swell of pride. It was true, if these demigods stayed loyal to the end, Kronos would reward them significantly. Just like he would reward Luke.

“Oh come on, you gotta tell us more than just that,” Drew called out. Luke glared at her, one more snarky comment away from kicking her out. “You say ‘stay loyal to you’ as if it would be hard. Like we would have to be loyal to you at the expense of our friendships with others.” She raised an eyebrow at him and he felt his blood boil, followed by a moment of doubt. Did she know what Kronos would ask them to do? How could she know that? There’s no way she knows that, she’s just a bitch.

Luke heard Clary mutter to Chris, “You won’t have to give up your friendships if your friends are on your side.”

Drew heard this too, “What about your siblings Clary?”

Clary looked up at Drew, “What?”

“Would you stay loyal to Luke over Lee? Or Michael? Or Will?” Drew pressed.

“Would I— Drew, that's what Luke needs help with! We need to get as many people as possible to be loyal so we don’t have to choose. I know for a fact that I’m going to try my absolute best to make sure I’ll never have to make that choice. How about you?” Clary leveled a glare at Drew, but Drew, to her credit, didn’t flinch even though she was considerably younger than Clary.

“Would Will choose it?” Drew asked.

Clary opened her mouth, but Drew turned to Chris, “Would Travis? Connor?”

Chris looked down and Luke could feel his audience becoming Drew’s. Why the hell did he decide to bring her here?

Drew turned toward him, “Do you think Travis and Connor would be on your side?”

“They would want to be on the winning side,” Luke was certain in that regard, Travis and Connor were some of the most competitive people he knew. That’s why they were so upset whenever they lost capture the flag and pushed him to team up with Annabeth every time. Travis and Connor made everything a competition, and with the right words, Luke was sure he could sway them to his side. They were his brothers after all.

“What about Annabeth?” Drew asked, “Do you think she would stand with you?”

Luke was starting to get angry. Drew had showed up to this meeting and had turned all of his words against him. “Annabeth will stand with her family! Travis and Connor will stand with their family! So will Lee and Michael and Will. Family isn’t the gods or who you’re born with. Family is about who would die for you. For me, family isn’t Hermes. Hermes is who ruined my life. Family was Thalia.”

Ethan looked at him, “What if you don’t have a family? Don’t have a cabin or siblings?”

“Then we make a family,” Luke said, “We take the fight to the gods and make one.”

Before he could say anything else, the conch for dinner sounded. Drew stood up and turned toward the pavilion, before she ran toward it she said, “Family isn’t just who would die for you, family is also about who you would die for.”

Once eveyone had made their way to dinner and Luke had sat down at the Hermes table with Chris, he looked over at Connor and Travis. Luke had tried to sit next to them, but when they saw him coming they had gotten up and moved. Luke didn’t know what he had done to make them hate him. At the meeting, Luke had talked about family and he had meant Annabeth and Thalia, yes, but had also meant his siblings, had meant Travis and Connor. Luke considered them his family, he just wasn’t sure they felt the same anymore and he didn’t know why.

***

When Connor saw Luke coming toward him and Travis for dinner, he stood up and moved to the other side of the table. He could sense Travis behind him. They sat down on the end of the table next to Mary, an unclaimed kid who was the same age as Will. She looked up as they sat down and her eyes flicked over to where Luke was talking with Alice. Mary looked back at them and asked, “What’s been up with you guys and Luke?” Connor was impressed with her perception, especially considering her age, but, he knew she was a child of two nasty divorces so her ability to sense unrest was probably more developed than most kids. It was certainly more developed than it should have been.

“What’s wrong with us and Luke?” Connor played dumb.

“You guys are activly avoiding him. And it’s so random too, I mean just last week you guys were planning the most epic prank on the Athena Cabin. Now, you don’t even talk.” Connor grimmaced, hating that there was a time when he, Travis, and Luke were inseparable. Hating that part of him missed that time.

“Yeah,” Sarah, a Hermes kid and Mary’s best friend, said. “I don’t know what he did, but it couldn’t have been bad enough for you to completely cut him out of your life.” Travis choked on his sandwich and Connor had to pound his fist on his brother’s back to get him to breath again.

Gods, I wish this was us just being petty because he reported us to Chiron for sneaking out of Camp, or something like that, he thought.

Connor didn’t know how to respond to Sarah, but luckily Travis gathered himself, “Guys, you’re reading way into it,” he claimed. “He’s just been busy and we don’t want to get in his way.” That was f*cking hilarious. They were actually doing their very best to be in his way. “It’s not that deep, I promise.”

“Honestly, its selfish. You’re throwing off the vibe of the whole cabin.” Mary glared at them. “Jackasses.”

Damn.

Connor felt his face heat as his siblings glared at him and his brother, but he didn’t say anything, no matter how much he wanted to. Saying that he had already lived through all this and that their beloved older brother, the camp golden boy, would betray all of them in an attempt to take down the gods probably wouldn’t go over well.

And Annabeth would murder him.

Yeah, definitely not a good move to expose his brother this soon.

So, as much as it killed him, Connor resigned himself to allowing his siblings to hate him and Travis.

It was better than watching them die.

***

A few days after Percy, Annabeth, and Grover, left for the quest, Dale gave the cashier at the gas station a smile as she rang up his purchases. He knew he wasn’t supposed to sneak out of Camp, but sometimes his younger siblings got to be too much and he needed to take a break. Honestly, taking some time off from dealing with them made him a better older brother.

He glanced at the newspaper stand. Then he took another glance. Was that picture of Annabeth, Grover, and Percy? And what the hell happened to the Saint Louis Arch?

“Can you add a newspaper to my purchase please?” He asked the cashier.

She rolled her eyes and handed him a paper. “Just take it. No one buys these things anymore.”

“Oh,” Dale said, startled. “Okay. Thank you.”

“Did the picture of the person falling from the Arch catch your eye?” The cashier asked, handing him his co*ke and Cheetos.

“Picture of what?!” Dale exclaimed, his snacks completly forgotten. He looked at the paper closer, and sure enough, there was a person tumbling from the flaming Arch. “Holy Hera!” he yelled, completely forgetting to switch to normal people exclamations. “f*ck, I gotta go.”

Dale sprinted out of the store, leaving his food on the counter.

“Hey kid! Your junk food is still here!” The cashier yelled after him.

He didn’t stop running. “Keep it!”

His eyes frantically scanned the page as he made for the woods.

Three kids, each around twelve years old, were seen heading to the top of the Arch this morning. Ten minutes later, the fire alarm was triggered. Everyone was accounted for besides one boy from New York, Percy Jackson, who is-- in a word-- troubled (to read more about Percy’s history, go to section E6). Minutes later, the floor of the Arch was blown out, and shortly after that, Percy Jackson fell from the Arch. Eye witnesses report he disappeared midair, but the FBI isn’t so sure. More information to come.

In the meantime, any information about Percy’s accomplices, Annabeth Chase and Grover Underwood, pictured above, is greatly appreciated. Until more information is gathered, this is considered a terrorist attack, and anyone caught withholding information will be punished accordingly. Please send reports to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Dale skidded to a stop, nearly running into a tree in shock. When he first saw the newspaper he was terrified they’d have to burn a funeral cloth, but now he knew Percy wasn’t dead. The Arch was realitivly close to the Mississippi River. If Dale had to put money down, he’d bet Posiden used some water power to pull Percy into the river and the Mist hid that from the mortals.

No one in Camp was going to believe him when he came running in claiming Annabeth, Percy, and Grover were wanted by the FBI. He had to admit that it was really f*cking hilarious. Only a demigod could be wanted for a terrorist attack during their first week of actually being a demigod.

Clarisse was standing at the boarder of Camp when he came running up. She was looking at the woods; was that a look of wistfulness on her face?

“Clarisse!” he called, and she jumped, reaching for the sword that was strapped to her back. Dale had to feel bad for her, even though she could be a bitch. Having your brother break the only thing you have from your dad could not have been fun.

“sh*t! Dale you f*cking asshole,” she exclaimed. “Wait, why were you out of Camp?”

“Doesn’t matter, where’s Chiron? Percy, Annabeth, and Grover are wanted by the FBI!” he said, running past her.

“They’re what?!” She called to him, her voice not sounding shocked, if anything she sounded sarcastic. That’s weird .

But Dale didn’t have time to consider what that meant, because suddenly Connor was swinging down from a tree and landing right in front of him. “Percy, Annabeth, and Grover are wanted by the FBI?! That’s so cool!” He paused for a second. “My mom is wanted by the FBI.”

“Yeah--” Dale said in response to Connor’s question. “Wait your mom is wanted by the FBI?!” Dale slowed to a quick walk.

“Yeah.” Connor jogged to catch up with him. “That’s why my dad fell in love with her twice. She leads a group of skilled thieves who steal from the uber-rich and use the money to set up food banks, homeless shelters, the works. But, the government wasn’t a fan of her stealing from the people that bribed them, so she was put on a list or two. She’s good at her job though, and they haven’t been able to catch her, even though she’s been wanted for years. My dad probably has something to do with that, not gonna lie, cause she’s come close to getting busted quite a few times,” he explained nonchalantly like it wasn’t a big deal that his mom was the head of the Robin Hood Guild, as named by the media.

“That’s-- ya know what, we’ll talk about that later. Someone get Chiron,” Dale said, breaking into a jog again, Connor keeping up with him and Clarisse right on his heels.

As they ran through Camp, they definitely got some weird looks. To be fair, Dale, Connor, and Clarisse wasn’t really a common group to see around Camp. Chiron came out of the Big House at a shout from Connor.

“Mr. Adlao, why do you have a newspaper?” Chiron asked.

“I was at the gas station killing time and getting snacks-” Dale started.

“Why were you out of camp without permission?” Chiron asked.

“It’s alright Chiron,” Connor stepped up, “Dale owed me a favor. He was just delivering.”

Dale looked at Connor in shock. Since when did Connor cover for people? Connor was known to throw everyone under the bus, not even Travis was safe. Dale realized he was staring at Connor while Chiron raised an eyebrow at him. “Oh-” Dale stuttered, “Right, yeah. I was doing him a favor…” Dale could feel his face turning red, he was a horrible liar.

Chiron looked at him and said, “Forgive me if I don’t believe you.”

Dale winced as he heard Connor face-palm and mutter, “Stupid Apollo kids, can’t lie to save their lives. Why did I bother?”

“That’s not the point!” Clarisse snapped at them.

“Right!” Dale shoved the newspaper into Chiron’s hands, “I found this.”

The three of them watched Chiron’s face as he read the article. When he was done, Chiron looked up at them and said, “This is troubling news. Getting across the country will be harder with not only the Greek world after them but also the mortal world.”

“What are we gonna do about it?” Dale asked.

“There is nothing to be done,” Chiron said, “This is their quest, they must complete it without assistance from us.”

“That’s stupid,” Dale snapped, “They are three twelve-year-olds! One of them hasn’t left camp in years, one of them has only known they’re a demigod for a week, and the other is a protector who doesn’t have the best track record.”

“Hey!” Clarisse objected. Dale turned to look at them.

“Annabeth is the smartest demigod ever. And Percy is a big three kid, he can take care of himself!” Connor yelled at him.

Dale noticed they were attracting the attention of the camp.

“Grover is the best satyr ever,” Connor continued, “If there is any trio out there who can do anything the Fates throw at them, it’s Annabeth, Percy, and Grover!”

“Your faith in your fellow demigods is inspiring,” Chiron said to Connor, then he turned to Dale, “I suggest you follow his example.”

Dale looked down, he hadn’t meant to seem rude, he was just hangry. He’d left his snacks at the gas station after all.

“Go to your siblings, all three of you, and enjoy the afternoon activities.” Chiron directed. Dale, Connor, and Clarisse walked away from the big house and toward the crowd that had gathered when Connor started yelling.

When Dale made it to his family, Clary was looking at them all weirdly. He was about to ask her what the problem was when Michael walked up to him and said, “What the f*ck was Connor pissed about?”

“Language,” Dale and Lee said at the same time. Michael just rolled his eyes. Dale filled them in on what he had discovered and everyone was shocked. Except Will. Will looked like this was common and just went back to wrapping a bandage around his wrist.

Will noticed Dale staring. “What?” he sounded defensive.

“Why aren’t you shocked?” Dale asked.

Will puased and looked around, like he was looking for help. “Because,” he said, “I knew it was going to happen.”

“How?” Clary asked.

“Did you have another prophetic dream?” Lee crouched down to look Will in the eyes.

"Another?” Michael’s voice said.

But Dale was looking at his little brother. His little brother who was wildly different from a week ago. His little brother who was clearly suffering and who Dale didn’t know how to help. Dale was examining his little brother when Will answered with barely restrained pain in his eyes, “Yes, another. This time I saw war.”

Chapter 10: Chapter 10

Chapter Text

Annabeth Chase was never good with failure.

That much should make sense, being the child of Athena and a world-renouned professor at Stanford.

But what didn’t make sense to her is why, after multiple sleepless nights disecting the problem of Grover needing to wear the shoes so they could get the bolt and praying to her mother for a solution, she hadn’t come up with a single idea.

Annabeth Chase had never been this stuck on a problem.

And she f*cking hated it.

She’d be able to swallow this failure if it was her putting on the shoes, risking a one wat trip back to Tarturus, but it wasn’t her. It was Grover, who was the second to last person she would chose to take this risk (the last person she’d choose would be Percy, obviously). Sure, it was probably bad that she wanted to be the one to risk falling into Tarturus. But she had been there before and had some sense of what to do to survive, so as much as she would rather do anything else, she would go back there in an instant if it meant saving Grover.

Annabeth wasn’t quite sure why she thought of Grover as her younger brother, seeing as he was fourteen years older than her, but she did, and it was why she was currently laying awake in the sleeper car they rented, on the way Los Angeles.

Going to Tarturus wasn’t a fate Annabeth would wish on anyone besides the worst of the worst. And for a while after they got out of Tarturus Annabeth struggled to even send those types to Tarturus. After the war with Gaea she didn’t kill a monster for six months. It always had to be someone else who made the killing blow because she knew if she did, it would break her. The memories of her and Percy’s time down there held her hostage, and for a long time it made her violently ill to even think about condeming a living thing to that poisonous wasteland.

She got over that by telling herself the system was just, and only those who deserved it would go there. But there was always a voice in her head, remaining her of when the system wasn’t just. Reminding her that Percy hadn’t done anything to deserve falling into hell, but still did.

Just to be with her.

Annabeth nearly threw up, just like she did every time she remembered that Percy fell into Tarturus with her because of her stupidity, her need to gloat over killing Arachne rather than doing the logical thing and freeing herself from the web. Her mother’s voice from when she visited Annabeth after the end of the war echoed in her head.

You deserved your fate because you gloated while still vulnerable. Perhaps the fall into hell did you some good. Perhaps it served as a reminder that there is always someone better than you, even if you appeared to have beaten them.

That was the worst day of Annabeth’s life. She had always worshipped her mother, and always believed that she would be rewarded for it. But that tongue-lashing she received in the woods by Camp Half-Blood that day was a brutal reminder that she was a mere speck of dust in her mother’s life, an insect to be remembered for a year or two after her death, then forgotten like a leaf blowing away in the wind.

It was punishment enough to have to go through hell and suffer the nightmares; Annabeth would never celebrate too early again. Her mother didn’t need to come down to Earth solely to remind Annabeth who was responsible for her and Percy’s ever-lasting trauma.

Before she could spiral any further, Percy rolled over to look at her. “Are you awake?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Annabeth replied, “Just thinking.”

“About how to save Grover?” Percy guessed.

“Yeah.” There was a pause before Annabeth brokenly whispered, “I don’t know if I can. I don’t know if there’s another option.” He voice cracked in despair.

“There has to be,” Percy whispered back, “There is always more than one option, right? Hecate’s crossroads has three, we just don’t know them all yet.” His voice was strong, but it didn’t reassure her.

Annabeth looked over to where Grover was sleeping. She didn’t have the heart to tell Percy that she did know all the options. One: Grover put the shoes on and hopefully everything played out like last time. Two: She put the shoes on and sacrificed herself for the quest. Or three: Percy put them on and he relived hell, this time without Bob’s help because he was still Iepatus.

“I know you can think of something,” Percy grinned at her.

Annabeth smiled back and changed the subject, “You said the prophecy was the same again.” When Percy nodded, she said, “Are you sure? Not even one word difference.”

“Nope. It was the exact same thing.” That was worrisome, the chances of having the exact same prophecy that meant the chances of the exact same thing happening again were slim to none. But maybe if the prophecy was the same, the same events leading to it’s completion would occur. Like Grover putting on the damn shoes and then getting them off before the pit. Maybe they still had a shot.

“Hey,” Percy said, touching her cheek, “I know you’re overthinking. It’ll be okay, we know what to do. And even if it has a different meaning we can figure it out. We’ve survived so much worse than this.”

Annabeth nodded, looked at Grover, and felt the determination well up inside her. Maybe Grover did have to risk Tartarus, but they were back in time to save people. Grover knew the risks and last time it worked out. She said, “We’re Heroes of Olympus. We’ve bested giants and titans and the literal Earth.”

“Exactly,” Percy agreed, “What’s the worst that could happen?”

***

Apollo sighed as he looked down at Camp Half-Blood while driving the sun chariot over it. Hestia had brought up the weird demigods in the meeting and ever since Apollo had been having unusual dreams. They were similar to when he has visions of the future but with visions of the future he had no context. These dreams felt like the context was on the tip of his tongue.

He hadn’t told anyone, but Apollo was pretty sure Hestia and Artemis were on to him. He saw Hestia’s hearth burning in the middle and he watched he saw his son Will walked over toward the Dionysus Cabin and knock. The door was opened by one of the blond twins and they waved him inside. Weird.

Apollo turned back to the stereo and changed the radio to Hepheatus TV; maybe Ares was making another poor decision that was being reported on. As soon as the chanel changed, Apollo was caught in a vision.

Falling. Falling through the sky and through a city. Landing hard, smells of a trash dump. Pain and hopelessness. Repulsion. A girl with a rotton apple and a bright green dress. Acne and a name. Lester.

Apollo shook the vision away in disgust. Who would name their child Lester? Also, he could never understand why humans didn’t just go to the nearest drugstore and buy Aprodite’s patented Acne-Be-Gone Cream when they started to break out. It was a wonderful combination of nectar, ambrosia, and a tiny bit of water from Phlegethon. Apollo never left home without his mini tin of it. He took it out and dabbed a bit on his face, just to calm himself down and remind himself he would never have acne.

Apollo wasn’t quite sure why these visions kept coming to him, but he didn’t like it. As the god of prophecy, he should have been able to stop these visions, or at least control them, but he couldn’t even do that. If these visions were being caused by someone, they were all royally f*cked. But Apollo couldn’t think of anyone who was more powerful than him, at least in terms of prophecies and visions, so he brushed it off and continued driving his chariot across the sky.

***

Chiron was always in a state of worry, but he hadn’t been this concerned since World War II, when some— in a word, intense— arguments happened. The younger campers were becoming more and more erratic, their behavior becoming harder and harder to predict. Chiron always loved training the next generation of heroes, no matter how difficult it was, but gods damn, he had never come this close to seriously considering and early retirment.

Mr. D found the whole “Arch Deal” hilarious, but the near death of a brand new camper and adding three more campers to the FBI watch list didn’t really tickle Chiron’s funny bone.

Gods he needed a holiday.

His final straw happened when Lee informed him that Will was having visons of the future, and his latest vison was of a war. Chiron was grateful that Dale was making him talk to Cabin Twelve for his mental health. Prophetic dreams could be very straining, just ask Cassandra. He knew that the list they had crafted had done nothing, and he was worried if they didn’t act soon a young camper would get hurt. So, he called a counselor meeting.

Once all the counselors gathered around the ping pong table, Chiron said, “I know the list we compiled of the younger campers acting strangely has done nothing and now there are some Apollo campers who have been having worrisome visions of war.” There were nervous looks cast around, “Any ideas to figure out what is going on with them?”

There was a beat of silence before Pollux spoke up from the back of the room. “What if we get Clarisse and Katie to hang out?”

Everyone gave him weird looks. “Why those two Pollux?” Chiron asked gently.

Pollux took a breath. “During Capture the Flag they were both acting like head counslers even though neither of them are,” he explained. “And Clarrise was bossing Katie around but Katie didn’t defend herself. I mean, Katie is a peace keeper but she also doesn’t take sh*t from anyone. I want to know why they were acting like that around each other, don’t you guys?” Pollux challenged.

Chiron considered that for a moment. “I think that’s a good idea. How do we get those two together?”

“Set up a challenge where two campers have to work together and pair them up?” Nate suggested.

“I like that,” Castor mused.

“What if they have to climb the lava wall?” Alec said, arms crossed as he leaned against the wall.

“Yeah!” Dale exclaimed. “And we could have a counlser at the top, a counsler at the bottom, and I can also be nearby as a medic, and us three can listen to Clarisse and Katie’s conversation to see what they say.”

Chiron felt like a proud father watching all his kids work together. “That sounds good children. We will do that tomorrow after breakfast. For now you’re all dismissed. And please keep an eye on your younger siblings to make sure they don’t do anything dangerous.” Everyone’s heads whipped around to stare at Luke.

“Touche, but fair,” Luke conceded, laughter in his voice. Then he sobered up and said, “Connor and Travis are still avoiding me like the plague, so can’t do anything there.”

Joey, head of Hephaestus groaned, “But those are the ones that need the most watching.”

Luke glared Joey down, who turned red and sheepishly mumblmed an apology. Travis and Connor may be avoiding Luke, but Chiron was glad Luke wasn’t letting it get to him. Chiron considered having a chat with Travis and Connor about the way they had been treating Luke. From what he could see, Luke hadn’t done anything even mildly wrong. Luke had suffered enough from his traumatic arrival at camp to his disaster of a quest.

That poor boy didn’t deserve his brothers’ disdain.