A/N: Wow, this turned very angst-y. Possibly triggering. Over 10,000 words in two days! It's probably awful but I'm rather proud.
Even though the prompt was Clarisse and Chris they were only mentioned once.
Written for round five of the 'Capture the Flag' competition at Percy Jackson Fanfiction Challenges. Check it out.
Piper scrambled down from her handmade fort on Camp Half-Blood hill. "We're under attack!" she screamed, unsheathing her dagger.
But people continued to mill around her, gossiping about the latest fashion or new camper. No one paid attention to the old war torn Aphrodite camper.
Emily Deilds, the new (and younger) Aphrodite cabin leader made her way over to Piper. Taking the twenty year-old by the arm, Emily tried to calm her down.
"Look at me Piper, there's no attack." From kelidoscope eyes to another identical pair, Emily's burned holes into Piper's head.
Piper was immune to Charmspeaking but with Emily she let her guard down. Maybe it was because she trusted Emily or because some little bit of Piper wanted to believe her. "C'mon, lets let you back to the Big House. I'll make you a cup of coco. Extra chocolete." Emily promised.
Other campers behind Emily snickered. Poor Emily was on Crazy duty, they whispered and Piper tried to block them out. Emily pretended not to hear them. Instead she took Piper's hand and began to drag her, forcing her to walk tward the Big House.
But Piper's mind flickered back on. Twisting her arm out of Emily's grip and backflipping out of her reach, Piper hit the ground turning and rinning. It was all done in one fluid movement, a tribute to Piper's old 'World Saving' days.
Camp Halfblood hadn't had a single threat in years. They still learned battle skills for the wayward monster but overall there was no need to fight. Piper and the seven had made sure of that in ther teenage years.
Emily stood watching Piper for another moment, pity evident, before she turned too, and rejoined her friends.
Climbing up the hill was so much harder than running down. But Piper was strong; she was an acrobat. Leaping from one point to another, she made it up the hill within seconds.
That was about two hundred yards that were just gone, poof.
And so Piper retuned to her post.
Two floors. On the bottom floor of Piper's watch tower was a mini unused kitchen and sittingroom. Both combined equeled the size of a small supply closet. Battle maps covered every surface. It was to say in the best way possible, a train wreck.
Upstairs was a small bathroom, twin bed and a large window. Paneling the wall under the window was a mini armory. Bronze arrows, swords, explosive, and other supplies, lined the wall.
On the roof was where Piper spent most of her time. A nymph would bring Piper a meal three times every day, because besides warning the camp or immennent defense breaches, Piper never left the tower.
Piper was a hero.
She was a role model.
But Piper was paranoid.
Perhaps if Piper, herself, were aware she would have sought help, but Piper wasn't aware, she was just doing her civic duty to the camp that had taken her in and nourished her.
Piper had bloomed at Camp Half-Blood. She had made lifetime friends but she also had to be careful. There was the very real possibility that Piper would also wilt at Camp Half-Blood.
There was a memory seared into Piper's mind that she couldn't shake. It replayed over and over and she couldn't stand it.
A new recruit was brash. He didn't know who she was but when he saw he running down like Paul Revere, he laughed. He said four simple words that Piper knew weren't true. "The War is over."
The War wasn't over.
Piper had experienced the calm before the storm. There was always peace before the war. The war was not over.
The war, in all honesty, was never over.
All they, mere mortals, could do, was prepare.
The gods above, too, were swept by the tide of war, no one was safe.
The boy just didn't understand that. Piper tried to make him understand. She really did but he kept laughing and Piper kept remembering.
It was that lax mentality that had urged her to set up camp atop the hill.
Once upon a time, someone might have checked her into a mortal asylum but that wasn't what Camp Half-Blood did.
There was peace and Camp Juipiter and Camp Half-Blood were on (politically) good terms. Sure, treachery simmered under the surface but so far, there was peace.
Despite that so said 'peace' there were still the unsaid competition. During the monthy meets, each side would tell their accomplishments. How many quests completed, new campers or really anything. The one thing that Camp Half-Blood had perpetually over Camp Jupiter was the majority of the seven.
That was the glory that Camp Half-Blood held in the hearts. The one way they would always beat Camp Jupiter.
It simply wouldn't do to say that the fourth member of the seven was insane. Not to say that Piper was insane. She really wasn't. She was just prepared.
One day a blond head appeared and Piper was immediately struck with the thought of putting an arrow through his brain.
He could have been an intruder. He could have been a trator. But he wasn't.
The man walking up the hill was Jason Grace.
She begrudgingly let him join her on the roof because even though she despised his guts she needed another fighter dedeicated to the cause. The cause being the protection of the lackadaisical camp. She needed someone else who understood that there was no peace.
So they sat, Piper with her paranoia and Jason with his never-ending demons.
Jason stayed for the night, and the next night, and the next. He watched with her from this hill, in silence. He didn't try to talk to her or even to touch her. He didn't even sleep on the same level with her. While she retreated to her bed on the second floor, still watching from the large window as she fell asleep, he watched from above on the roof.
One day, she walked up onto the roof at night.
She pulled her hair back in a braid like how she used to, and sat next to him, watching.
They were a foot apart. The stars shining above them, they kept vigil of the sleeping campers who would never thank them.
Piper eventally spent every night on the roof and they took shifts watching.
Sometimes their hands would brush each other's but Piper pretended not to notice. She pretended not to feel a spark. She kept watch with Jason, she couldn't love him.
Piper didn't want to love Jason Grace. Somehow, loving Jason Grace always hurt, leaving a bitter taste. Eventually, Jason would leave.
However, Jason never left.
But but while Piper never doubted that Jason would protect her as she slept, as she would him, and do his part, watching, she also never doubted that Jason would one day simply pick up his stuff and leave.
Jason was like the wind. Here one moment and there the next. Gone.
poof.
Piper was a girl who didn't have the time or the energy to have her heart broken (again) by her teenage sweetheart.
Piper had a purpose.
Piper was a girl who wanted to protect.
And protect she did.
Because the war, despite whatever was said, wasn't over.
Frank wasn't sixteen anymore. No, now he was a seventeen year old war hero. For life he was set. Although he had been kicked out- or as the senate said, honorably given break, of the Preator position. Now he had a mansion of his own in New Rome, completely all to himself, and people who would come up to him in the middle of the street to thank him.
Younger Frank Zhang might have been astounded and greatful for everything that Rome has compensated him with, but Frank wasn't that boy.
It would have been all the same to Frank if he was simply left off to the streets Like the Iraq and Afganistan vets.
Staggering out of his house to the back forest, a bottle held loosely in his hand, he walked erratically. Despite his meandering and limp, Frank knew where he was going. He had gone everyday and in the morning as well.
He leaned against an onyx gravestone in the middle of the woods. Officially, Hazel Levesque was buried in the center of New Rome. Her name was carved into the base of the statue of her, right above her grave.
New and old recruits would pass by and gather by the other war tributes. Bodies were sent home to parents who wept and cried. Some bodies were to mutated to identify so they were simply buried in bulk in unmarked graves. There was a whole grove of marble plaques simply titled 'died 2015' and their gender if it was discernible.
The field of the unnamed dead alone was around a sixth square miles large. Added on to the mile of the unclaimed were the bodies of those who had an identity but not family or home
Frank personally had overseen the returning of boddies. Then, Frank hadn't even tried liquor. He just greved quietly and stood at attention as he awarded the parents of the fallen, a medal.
Some parents had diseinharented their child, slamming the door on their own flesh and blood. Those people would have once chaffed in Frank's nerves but now they were just ignorent humans. As they walked away from those ignorent homes, Frank could almost always feel the eyes of the parent of the diseased on his back, watching them as they pulled out of the house's driveway.
Those children was buried with their real family, Camp Jupiter. They made up a third of the growing field of the dead.
On their head stones were their cohort, name, death, and birth. Octavian had wanted to organize by cohort but Frank had vetoed that idea.
Why segragate by cohort? No cohort made any of the diseased any more brave or honorable for dying. When Frank had argued this to Octavian it should have felt nice to see Octavion's mouth clamp shut.
Old Frank could have never done that.
New Frank was a Pretator on both the battlefield and senate. Since the war, Frank had discovered his own eloquence but there was nothing for him to enjoy.
Sure Frank was the figure head of all Romans should aspire to be, but he wasn't happy. There was no reason to be happy. He demolished others on the debate floor and could kill monsters and people in too many ways for him to be 'good' or 'innocent'.
So going around telling parents about their fallen children was Frank's pet project. He did the research of where the fallen had grown up. In the end he could name them all by name. He remembered their addresses, and there were thousands of them.
Before, Camp Jupiter never told the parents of the diseased about their dead children But Frank was working to change that. It took seven months to track down all the dead's families and tell the news.
Seven months that Frank would never forget.
He did this all himself, accompanied by a posse of other surviving Romans. He had watched as parents broke down, crursed, and swore. They slandered him the the legion but Frank didn't contradict their accusations. A young Frank would have swelled with indignation but not anymore.
The worst reactions where the ones that reminded Frank of his own.
The memory was so clear, a young boy, imeadeatly introducing himself as Danny, answering the door. A young boy that could have been himself.
Frank kept up the professional army general personal. He was the leader of Camp Juipter then, he couldn't show weakness. From the boy's eyes, he probably saw a tall teenager with too much grief and responsibility, seconds from breaking.
The boy would stand absolutely still when his mother joined him and he told them what happened to his sister that hadn't visited in years. The boy's memories of his sister were most likely foggy but Frank knew he treasured those moments just as Frank had treasured his mother.
Frank's mom had been away for years on her second tour but everyday Frank still thought about her. He never forgot about her even as the months passed. When the officers came to tell the news he stood tall and still like the boy who stood in front of him did. Stoic in the face of a monster he didn't dare turn away from.
Frank could have broken down at fifteen but he didn't.
Frank could have run away at sixteen like Reyna but he didn't.
Frank could have tried to kill himself like Percy but he didn't.
Frank wasn't broken yet. Just very, very, dammaged.
In fact, Frank didn't mind being damaged. It was better than deranged or dead.
Or perhaps, Being dammaged wasn't better than being dead. If Frank was dead then he would at least be with Hazel and not spending every waking morning doing an endless project of dead telling.
Hazel was dead and Frank might have well as been as well, donning his uniform every weekend when he had finally tracked down another family.
Two years passed and Frank had only gotten to the 1960s. Brilliant work, others would say but for Frank it was an obsessio. It was his calling now that he had nothing else. He told the families what they needed to know because that was his own way of honoring the dead.
He honored them by remembering them.
All of them.
Every single one, down to a simple armory accident, munder, or war to a failed quest.
Whenever he went with his medal for the family he was always sober. What was the point of honoring someone if you couldn't remember their family. What was the point if you couldn't remember that somewhere the the world that some one always cared.
Perhaps that was why Frank did it. He wanted to know and remind himself that people cared. Lately, it seemed as if no one did. Frank knew that when he died that no one would continue his work; he had to get as far as he could.
Or perhaps there was another side to it. Perhaps Frank wanted to be remembered like he remembered every little detail on the officers that visited him as a kid. Perhaps he just wanted proof that he had lived.
Frank knew he was going to die young, it was foretold long befor his birth. The boy who could morph into any animal of his dreams. A fantasy, yeah. A fantasic power bout fantastic power came with a price.
Everyone was going to die. Frank was just going to die early.
That was why he flew all across the earth to forgin countries, learning languages, and telling people of their great great grandfather's death.
Frank Zhang died in India, saving Penelope Decase, an orphan, and giving her his own letter of recomendarion, the last he would ever give. She flew on a plane to California as he burnt his small stubb of a lifetime he had left to kill the monster.
The monster that he had killed was never specified but New Rome historians would geuss it was a new strand of Hellhound, specifically made to be Frank's doom, only ably to be slayed by the fire of life.
Frank burned bright and short but people did remember him. In the end, one hundred thousand five deaths were relayed.
Frank Zhang, Romans would learn, died 2017, known for his post war effort work, partially edatic memory, and political eloquence.
That was it. They didn't learn that he was the legion loser or how he had rose to power. No, instead they learned of the fantasy boy who could turn into anything, be anything and decimate giants.
They learned about Frank the Hero not Old Frank or New Frank.
The school children of New Rome learned and memoriezed his war stratages and techniques but all Frank was to them was a fantasy.
To the little boy, Danny, and everyone else on the other side of the doorway, with the dead sister, the dead brother or girlfriend, Frank was real.
Percy owned a small cottage in Rhode Island. Annabeth came to visit every weekend but Percy remained the same. She was progressing the the regular world, training and working non stop for her degrees. Annabeth buried herself in work but Peryc wasn't annabeth.
He sat in a chair ajacent to the window.
Bellow his window was a public beach. He watched mothers and fathers chase their children across the sand. Whether for not putting on sun screen or just to give them a hug, they would tackle the boy to the ground, covering him in love.
Sally Jackson and Paul Blofis were dead.
Percy had so many close shaves with death that he wondered why he wasn't dead too.
Percy used to climb skyscrapers and bungy-jump from buildings. He couldn't go on quests anymore. There was simply nothing to quest for.
The gods were quiet, spurning up children like a giant baby-making-hurricane but there weren't any new upcoming weather annomalya that were whipping out coral and the cost, so Percy had nothing to do.
His whole life from age twelve revolved around saving something or someone. It almost always involving danger.
In his first quest he had to venture into the underworld, face Medusa, bargin for his mother and then locate the master bolt. His second quest wasn't much better. Percy practically retraced Odysseus' steps in the spand of a couple weeks Instead of ten years. In that quest he had to rescue Clarisse and Grover.
There was so much rescuing. Someone always needs to be helped. Though now, it seemed to Percy that he was no longer needed.
Percy didn't always realize but all his life he had been saving someone else. Hades, just about a year ago he had saved the world. Now, there was no more wars, no more saving.
Now, perhaps Percy had to save himself.
Percy still did flips, he still did risky jumps, but he also didn't save anyone.
Currently he held the highest unofficially recorded fall from heights into a body of water.
Some might even call him an adrenaline addict.
But Percy wasn't. He really wasnt. He was just a boy with no one to save but himself.
Annabeth came around to his house every week. Every week she stayed for exactly two hours.
She'd come and for one hundred twenty minuets everything was normal. For two hours every week everything was okay. They were still Annabeth and Percy under everything else.
For two hours every seven days, Percy was Percy Jackson again.
They would laugh simply over memories and funny things that had happened in their weeks and life.
Then when it was all over, Annabeth would kiss Percy in the corner of his mouth and leave. It was systematic. Every Saturday she would take the five o'clock train from New York and arrive at his house at nine. She would leave at eleven, dragging her bulky bag of school work behind her to do on the train back.
Percy can still manage a smile fore the funny, silly things that happen to the happy beach goers. Percy Jackson isn't fully gone. He's just hibernating.
His neighbors called him lazy. He was the boy to run around jumping off cliffs into the ocean. It was alright because he knew he would be safe.
Then it all stopped. Percy didn't get the thrill anymore. There was something missing. It was all because he knew he was going to be safe. Percy had the safe blanket of water and once he eliminated that 'blanket' he thought it would be all right.
He was lucky it was a relatively small cliff. Just a couple more feet and he would have died.
Percy was fine. He wasn't good, but he was fine.
It was a fresh spring day, Annabeth was at school and Percy was alone at his regular skate park. He did his old tricks from when he was twelve and then riskier ones that Percy Jackson would have never attempted. Then he got the idea of testing out his magnificent theory.
The theory was simple. Armed with a liter water bottle, Percy took a running start. A hundred yards from the ground, he threw himself off the edge.
It was wonderful for a second and in that second Percy felt like Percy Jackson, kid wonder. It was beautiful before the world and gravity closed in and popped Percy's bubble.
The initial plan was to pop open the water bottle and in an almost Spider-Man-esque skill, rescue himself. However, that didn't happen.
Instead he just hit the ground. Hard.
The water bottle broke under him, slowly healing him. It would been better if it was salt water but it wasn't. In the end, a surfer found him and called an ambulance. Percy was lying on his side with two fractured bones and compound fracture in his leg. He was luck it wasn't worse.
Percy had heard of people surfing falls from higher without being a demigod. The boy who had fell after being twisted around like a rag doll in Kansas had survived with less than a fractured collar bone.
So what was different about him?
Percy was hospitalized for weeks. The camp footed the bill and Annabeth had rushed over, for once, breaking their carefully crafted routine. She yelled and screamed. She called him stupid and Seaweed Brain as if he was still Percy Jackson not his older look a like.
Percy just looked to the cealing, avoiding her eyes.
To be honest, he was happy she was there. She had disheveled hair and coffee stains on her jeans but she was there, next to him. She was there, for him.
Of course she left as soon as she had arrived but it was the idea that counted. She had come, just like that, when he was hurt, just for him. She came just as fast as Annabeth Chase would have come for Percy Jackson.
Percy wasn't Percy Jackson anymore, and it had been a while since Annabeth was the great Annabeth Chase. But perhaps, if only for a moment, Percy could pretend that he still was the optimistic boy who drooled in his sleep. Maybe then Annabeth could also be the girl who had called him out and completely awed him with her smarts.
Maybe they could just be Percy and Annabeth, the legendary deuo.
Maybe they could leave Percy Jackson and Annabeth Chase in the past.
Unlikely though.
Somewhere inside, Percy still wanted to be Seaweed Brain.
Percy spent days in rehabilitation with a full-on cast. He couldn't walk so instead a nurse toted him around in a wheel chair.
Annabeth didn't visit him again out side of their routine again. The only diffrence from their life a week ago and then was that Annabeth also had to take a taxi to the hospital than just walking to Percy's house.
When Percy's eyes opened on a Wednesday morning, it wasn't Annabeth in front of him but his father.
Poseidon had the saddest glaze as he gently stood from the hard plastic chair.
It was then that Percy knew it wasn't just gravity that had impossibly fractured his femur but the power of one particular god.
"Stop." He whispered.
His normal black beard seemed gray and his hair dull.
Toughing Percy's leg lightly, Percy could almost feel his bones re-commenting and all the fractures and hairlines re-sealing themselves.
Like Annabeth's first visit, Percy focused on the ceiling. A soft breeze of sea salt drifted up to Percy. It reminded him of home and Montok. It reminded him of his mother.
When Percy opened his eyes again he was alone in an empy room that smelt like seaweed.
The doctors gushed about his quick recovery but Percy had nothing to say.
Percy's friends head of his fall and misinterpreted his fall. They though he was suiciadal. They probably lost sleep over him, worrying.
Percy didn't want them worrying, they already had enough to worry about.
Though the word kept echoing in his head. stop.
Stop. Stop. Stop.
It was such a common word. Percy'so mom used to tell him to stop. She'd say, "Stop eating your birthday cake, I haven't taken a picture yet." Annabeth also told him to stop. She told him to stop doing so many things he had forgotten how many time or what. The first stop she had ever told him he still remembered though.
She was referring to his tendicy to change water into shapes. Percy remembered doing that a lot as a kid and tween.
Now, Poseidon was telling him to stop. As the first and one of the only commands he had ever gotten from him, Percy listened.
The heartbroken voice repeating in his mind.
So Percy listened for once in his life.
He stopped.
He stopped doing anything. Annabeth still visited but Percy just sat on his couch and took walks on the beach.
He stopped everything.
Untill there was someone to save.
A boy cried out from the middle of the ocean. Percy wouldn't have herd him but walking on the beach he felt the frantic ripples in the water.
He felt more alive than he had years ago. He felt like a Percy Jackson again.
Diving in to the water, Percy jump started his life. He swam harder than ever before, miles out into the ocean. He grabbed that little boy, who had long sice passed out, back to shore.
Percy saved someone.
And then, he saved more. For hours on end, every day, Percy patrolled the beaches of Rhode Island. He had to. If he didn't he'd just to back to stopping and Percy couldn't deal without the motion of doing something.
Somewhere within the train wreck of Percy lingered a fragment of Percy Jackson.
Perhaps acting cost gaurd wasn't what Poseidon had had in mind when he had said stop but for Percy it was close enough.
Annabeth still visited on weekends, everything was fine.
Annabeth was a planner.
Once, she had her life planned out to the last detail. At age nine, Annabeth was to go on a fantastic quest and suddenly Luke would see just how impressive she was and magically fall in love with her.
That hadn't happened though. Instead she had to wait another two years for her quest and Luke never did fall in love.
Jotting down notes in a black spiral notebook, Annabeth quoted the speaker at the front of the classroom.
Boys flirted with girls at the back of the classroom. Their whispers and laughs carried over to Annabeth, who grit her teeth. It was hard enough for her to pay attention without the added distraction.
Annabeth didn't need that distraction. Before, when Annabeth had attended a girls school in New York with Thalia, she had welcomed those kids who whispered. Those kids made Annabeth feel productive.
All those girls and boys made Annabeth feel like she was working, progressing, unlike them.
They even made Annabeth feel stronger that she could resist turning around and telling them off, but now it was annoying.
Why couldn't those people understand that she had come to learn?
It was lucky enough that the University accepted her.
Annabeth had left school at seven in the middle of the school year and then the patchy absences in middle school. Annabeth didn't even want to remember her Highschool years. Going on constart missions for the camp, she had to call in her father to talk to her school dean.
It was horrible, Annabeth had hard her father for so long. To see her father watching her with a sad, worried glaze that he should have only reserved for his step-sons, hurt her.
She knew he cared.
He only wanted to help, but Annabeth had done everything in her life alone or roughly without adult supervision. Why would she start then to accept his pity?
That pity could have led anywhere and Annabeth didn't like surprizes.
She could usually deal with all and any that came their way, but once in a while, there would be those curve balls that set her world on it's ends.
Annabeth was sure that the gods had somehow interfered in ther acceptance. Sure the University she was applying for was nothing special but it was a University and she, Annabeth with her low SAT score and lacking attendance.
Either way she got in and she made the best of it.
Taking almost every call humanely available to her, Annabeth wanted to carve out her life. Annabeth wanted to make her world and life something livable. She didn't want to worry about the next monster around the next cornner-she wanted to live.
The only way to do that was simple.
Annabeth had to be normal.
Normal was relative.
Was it normal that she rode a train and went ften ours out of her day every Saturday to visit a boy who probably didn't love her anymore? Most people would just dump that 'baggage' as Delilah, Annabeth's roommate, said.
But Percy wasn't baggage. Or even if he was, he was the only bagage she didn't mind lughing aroung, unlike her book bag.
Percy was the light at the end of the tunnel.
Percy was her lifeline,
Percy, as lost as he was, was her driving force. Annabeth had to get through University with flying colors so she could go on to law school. Law school was only a means to an end. After law school she would join a firm, and suffer through that.
All cost expenses would be covered by the camp or the gods because they owed her that much didn't they? What was a couple million to them?
Sure, they were also paying for her housing, and her car, and her classes but they owed her that too.
The gods owed her the world because without her, the world wouldn't exist.
Without the gods, she would probably still be in the same place as she was at the moment except she would love her father and he would be paying her tuition fee.
Wothout the gods the world would be safe because that would mean that the giants would have never been created and eventually the Titans would have faded.
Without the gods, Annabeth would be happy.
Without the gods, Annabeth would be innocent and carefree.
Without the gods Annabeth would have been properly stressed about assignments and tests.
It didn't strike Annabeth that without the gods she would never know Percy.
Yes, everything would be better without those gods.
It also didn't occure to Annabeth that without the gods that she, daughter of Athena, wouldn't exist.
Regardless, Annabeth was on an agenda.
She was perpetually moving-always moving.
If she were to look in a mirror, she would see herself.
A brave solider that had weathered everything that the world had to give And was ready to take anything more. She saw the heroine in herself, the one who had saved everyone. The survivor was possibly more blatant, though Annabeth chose to think her other qualities shined brighter.
Her clothes were pristine and her hair was perfectly done up in a pony tail.
Annabeth would even think that she looked like Reyna. Perfect. But cracks began to edge her facade like they did Reynas.
Annabeth saw what she wanted to see. Annabeth wanted to see that she was okay.
Annabeth also saw the schemer. The planner. The nobody from the Sea of Monsters.
There, under the surface of the skin was one thing she couldn't control. It was simply, herself.
It was the seven year old girl rebelling against her parents. It was the misunderstood child running away. It was the surge of adrenalin that had brought Her to the beach when she was twelve years old to join Percy on an impossible quest.
It was the part of Annabeth clinging to the school work because that part of Annabeth knew the fracture lines would shatter and break once it let go.
The schemer was trying to say alive the only way it knew how. She planned and planned just to make sure that she had charged out a path and the Planner took it from there. The planner achieved those goals, trying to get to the end of the forever going trail.
The survivor was the one that drove Annabeth on.
Annabeth thought it was Percy that kept her going but it wasn't. Percy never made Annabeth do anything, it was always Annabeth who called the shots, so why and how could Percy force her to stay alive?
That was it. Percy wasn't forcing her to stay living. Sure, the thought of Percy got Annabeth up in the morning, a colossal achievement, but that was all. He didn't keep her up at night studying for tests and exams. He didn't have her rewriting her notes at free period.
No, the survivor in Annabeth did that.
The survivor kept Annabeth alive.
Now, if anyone else were to take a look at Annabeth, what they was by far, much different than what she saw.
They saw the lopsided ponytail and the awkward clothes that were too big for her thin body. They didn't see the inner strength. The only premonition of strenght in the paper thin girl were the small bumps of muscle on her arms.
The girl didn't eat, she only read her books and studied her texts.
All the whispers in the back of the class weren't just whispers.
They were whispers about her and how whenever she heard their voices that she would clutch her pencil and rattle her desk.
It wasn't Annabeth's ingenuity that attracted people to her but her odditys.
According to Annabeth's room mate, Annabeth spent all her time with her head stuck in work. Normally this would be when Delilah complained to her friends of how Annabeth's notorious nightlight had kept her up.
Everyone else saw the fracture lines that were all to obvious. In reality, they were just waiting for Annabeth to fall and never get back up.
Annabeth was running on stolen time.
But she kept going.
The schemer kept scheming.
The planner kept planning
The survivor kept surviving.
And Annabeth was okay.
Reyna's name meant Queen but she felt like anything but. Waiting on tables at a crowded cafe in Ohio was not where she had seen herself four years ago.
Four years ago she had been young with a blonde superboy at her side. She and Superboy had plants to change the world. They were happy and young and nieve. They thought that they could do anything.
Reyna knew better now.
Three years ago, Reyna had still wanted to save the world but she was preoccupied with running a mini-civilization.
Reyna was stronger now.
Two years ago, Reyna had saved he world, but not in the way she had imagined. She wanted to be the bringer or equality, rights, and to end the suffering of others. Instead she only reaped more suffrage for herself and the world wasn't even changed.
The world went back to how it always was. Loud, dangerous, and evil.
Reyna was different now.
A year ago, after all the ceremonials had been done, the last of the troops had been buried, Reyna retired.
Leaving in the middle of the night, her resignation papers on Frank's desk, she was done.
She was sick of the world, she was sick of her own view of the world.
Camp Juipiter reminded her of that view.
People had told her she was a mature child. Reyna, at fifteen, had believed them. But maturity came in only one way. Age.
Reyna thought she was 'war hardened' and 'worldly experienced' when really, She had never left or gone past North and South America.
But Reyna was good. Reyna was safe. Safe automatically equaled okay. Reyna was okay.
With an apartment in only a couple blocks away, Reyna had an easy commute. She worked five days a week with Monday's and tuesdays off.
After the war she had cut all ties. Funny enough, she had gone to Hylla asking her sister -more like begging- to come with her. The funny bit was that Reyna was acting exactly as her sister had severl years ago.
Tears welling in her eyes, Hylla had grabbed Reyna's arm. Sure Hylla used more force than Reyna had but the eventual effect was the same.
Catching the next flight out of California, Reyna left Camp Juipiter in her past. She had successfully lead the camp through a war, what else could she do?
Reyna was tired. Reyna had two years of sleep to catch up on. Her sleep deprived teenage sleep situation hadn't done her justice.
With dark circles forever imprinted under her eyes, the barista constantly bugged Reyna to get more sleep.
Reyna couldn't sleep though, she just stayed up all night. Looking to the stars that were mostly gone from light pollution, she wondered when anything would happen. And then, something did happen.
With his easy smile and eyes, Jack Howard caught her eye.
At first she tried to ignore him but that didn't last long.
They were good together. Not just okay but good.
Soon, he'd walk into the cafe not for just a coffee but also for her. He'd stay at the founder an extra moment and tip and an extra bit more.
With Jack she wasn't Reyna, she was Wren Crestmer, who laughed and smiled like Reyna Avila RamerÃrez Arnello never could.
Wren did everything that Reyna, as amazing as she was, never could.
Wren was the one who walked content along the streets of her city without looking over her shoulder. Wren didn't need a knife where ever she went (although she carried one anyway).
Or most of all, Reyna didn't have Jack.
Red tinted hair that belonged to a Scottish voice wasn't Reyna's ttpe. Wren, very simply, didn't have a type. Wren only had Jack.
Jack, who Wren very possibly, maybe, loved.
It was good. Maybe even great.
Reyna still remembered the first time Jack had slept over at her house. Taking his hand, as Reyna had once done to Hylla, Wren led Jack up the stairs and onto the balcony.
Wren didn't focus on his concerned eyes but more on the dark blue sky that was completely devoid of stars.
The sky was different from seven year old Reyna's constellations on Circe's Island Spa and almost unrecognizable from the starry nights of Reyna's old home (who's name shall not be mentioned) with her father.
It was much different from Camp Jupiter's sky constellations which were a constant show of moving old legends from anchient times.
The sky of Ohio with Jack was just the sky polluted by humans. Somehow, the starless Sky was much more natural.
Jack kissed her eyes and lips and somehow, impossibly, Reyna and Wren fell asleep. That morning, however, only Wren woke up.
Wren was the one who made pancakes with Jack. She was the one who giggled and laughed as she smeared batter on his face. She was also the one who squealed as he picked her up by the waist and spun her around before getting her back with his own batter revenge.
Reyna didn't want to be Reyna, she wanted to be Wren.
And so she was.
Cutting her hair short and changing her style to accompany her new persona, Reyna officially became Wren.
Wren moved in with Jack six months after they met. Sure, Wren still starglazed but she rarely did anymore.
Wren slept a full eight hours before comming to work.
Wren was happy and smiled more than Reyna was even capable of.
Wren had friends and an adoptive family.
Then he came. Time had fogged her memory but she recognized him instantly. Jason Grace wasn't a face one would forget easily.
Not even twenty five months could wipe the blonde supeboy from her mind.
She still remembered walking around Camp Jupiter with him and telling each other their plans for the rest of their life.
Jason Grace awoke the Reyna within her. Reyna clawed to the surface, roughly pushing Wren back. Jason couldn't know about Wren, he couldn't know about Jack.
Why?
Because Jason Grace can only destroy.
Jason Grace would take Wren and shatter her on the floor, trying to pull Reyna up from the shadows and rubble. Jason would try to bring Reyna back and Reyna had to stop that from happening.
Reyna like being Wren.
Jason had to go away.
"Can I take your order?" Reyna asked him.
Scraching the back of his neck, Jason seemed lost for words. "Uh, what would you suggest?" He asked lamely.
"Our coffee's good." Reyna supplied, just as lame.
"Okay, coffee then." Jason said, but then her caught her arm as she turned around to punch in his order. "Reyna, I know that's you-"
Before he got to finish Reyna grabbed his arm and signaled her friend to take over the counter.
Pushing him to the back of the store she looked him in the eye for the first time in years. "Jason Grace. Hello. You will never come here again. Do you hear me? You will never tell anyone you were here and where I am."
Of course Jason could have excaped her grip but ther intensity in her voice kept him rooted. "Reyna-" He tried again but she was gone.
Wren reappeared at the counter, talking jovially to the cost omers when Jason slipped out the door. He left a slip of yellow paper on a near by table.
Later, as Wren was closing up and Joe, the custodian, took all the trash into the bin under the bar, the yellow slip of paper attracted Wren's eye.
She took it home to Jack's apartment.
Somewhere she was tempted to read the mysterious writing of Jason Grace. But Jason was a face from the past.
Reyna wasn't Reyna anymore.
She was Wren.
Wren shredded the paper and went to take a shower, later joining Jack to watch a movie.
Like she said, Wren wasn't Reyna and Reyna wasn't Wren.
Reyna didn't exist out side of Camp Jupiter, where she had faded into a mere history lesson.
In Ohio and the rest of the world, it was just Wren.
Wren and Jack
Jason left Camp Half-Blood four years ago.
Camp Jupiter was in ruins and he had a duty to uphold. Sure, he was no longer part of a cohort but he was still a legionare once.
Jason had a job.
When he arrived though, nothing was as it was. Reyna was somehow gone. Frank was Preator (and somehow speaking to the senate). Nothing made sense. Nobody wanted his help. Dakota wouldnt even look at him.
This was not the home that Jason had grown up in.
There was a day, the day right before Reyna's house was going to be demolished to build another modernized Pretator house, that Jason took his first step into and through Reyna's abandoned threshold.
It was funny. He had spent most of his short lived Preatorship in her house. Pouring over maps and plans, but now, as he stood amongst the unrecognizable mess, Jason felt out of place.
Once, Jason was used to Reyna's mess. He even understood it. Jason used to understand the stratagesrt and means behind her methods of 'organization'.
Before everything, Jason could find a pair of socks just as well in Reyna's home as in his own.
As he looked around the small sitting room, he couldn't even find the floor.
He spent that day, reorganizing her house, starting with her room so it was identical to how he had last seen it, two years ago.
Jason hadn't made itast the couch side table. He worked all through the night but there was just too much new stuff.
There was too much stuff that he didn't understand or know what to do with.
He didn't understand the system.
Jason spent the night, just looking at Reyna's new stuff. He hadn't finished when the lares came to disassemble the house with their ghostly cranes and pick axes.
They had some members of Jason's old cohort drag him out of the house.
Jason didn't reconize the two legionaries that had manhandled him. He didn't even know their names.
They dumped him several yards away from the destruction and Jason watched it all go down.
Jason was stuck in the past.
It was a nightmare that would never end.
That was why Jason got out. Packed up and ready, Jason faced the world, backpacking across Europe.
It was nice for a bit. He stayed in teen hostles and lived the nomad ramen life.
But then it got not-so-nice and Jason found his calling.
He hadn't talked to his sister, Reyna, Nico, or any of the seven in years, so he returned to America.
He had a mission now.
With a backpack, toiletries, and a good sum of cash, Jason was off on his adventure.
In all the counties he had visited Jason had always met some guiltridden soul. Jason didn't want that to become him so he came up with a solution.
Yellow cards from the Amazon. He came up with each message carefully. There were nine in total. Each card shared one thing in common. They each held a date and time ten years in the future.
The cards were a promise to meet again. The past wasn't over, it was a good thing to remember the past, not a bad. So many of those guiltridden souls were afraid of themselves or haunted by their history.
Jason wanted to embrace his own history, not shy away.
Jason spent the next three years tracking them all down. Jason already knew where Frank was, so he left Frank off the list of 'Need to Locates'. Maybe Jason sould have talked to Frank first because he was the easiest to find.
Frank died before he got his yellow paper.
Infact, Jason realized that he was the only one out of the seven to actually attend Frank's funeral. There were the hordes of retitred legionaries and adores on top of the serving legionaries but there was no Percy or Annabeth. No Piper or Leo. It was just him.
The yellow paper, with the dates and the secret message were unopened and buried with Frank's body.
The yellow paper were supposed to symbolize forever, but the truth was, nothing lasts forever.
Hazel would never get her's either.
Percy was the first stop on Jason's agenda.
After all, Percy had been the co-leader of the seven quest.
He was one of the easiest to find. Jason left Percy's paper on the side of his hospital bed. According to the nurse, Percy had broken his thigh bone. Jason didn't stay to hear more. He had others to locate.
What Jason didn't know was that the nurse threw away his paper the moment he left. He didn't know any better.
The nurse was simply doing his job as Jason did his.
Second was Annabeth but when he gave the paper to him, she pushed it away, handing it back.
"I don't have the time." She said, walking away from him.
Either way, he convinced her roommate to put it in Annabeth's binder. She would hopefully see it them.
Jason had a couple thousand dollars left on him when he arrived in Ohio from train.
It had been the hardest to find Reyna. Showing her picture around on the streetm a guy finally said he had seen someone 'like that' at a cafe.
However, if Jason were to have a dollar for how many people had directed him astray by saying 'I saw a girl like that,' he would be rich enough to hire someone else to find the seven.
The Reyna Jason knew didn't hang out as a waitress in a little known cafe. Sure, Reyna brought hot chocolete every so often but she wouldn't be the waitress. It just wasn't like her.
Though Jason was wrong.
Reyna worked at a cafe.
Reyna seemed to have a flash of reconition for him even though her voice seemed to suggest otherwise. She tried to treat him like a regular customer but he wouldn't let her. Perhaps it was becuase it was he he needed to apologize to most.
The response he got wasn't one he was expecting. He expected anger but the way she spin in his face, dug her nails into his skin, as she ordered him to stay away, it just wasn't Reyna-like.
Reyna was calm and collected. The woman was rash and volitile.
The woman wasn't Reyna.
Walking out of the cafe, leaving the yellow card on an empty table, Jason couldn't help but notice that Reyna's name was spelt wrong on her name plate.
Instead of R-E-Y-N-A, her name tag read: W-R-E-N.
Jason left notes for all his other friends. The last stop was Piper.
She looked so broken, so sad, and Jason knew that she looked exactly like he did.
She didn't strust him and for good reason. He had gotten up and left her too many times, but still, he wanted her to trust him.
He wanted to make her see that he was there to stay. So he sat next to her. Now, as he anded over her yellow card and her thin fibers took it, Jason realized just how exasted and bony his own hands were.
Piper set the card on the desk beside her bed. She didn't read it and Jason didn't push her to.
They sat side by side, forever protecting, forever watching.
Leo was the newly appointed leader of Camp Half-Blood. Calypso was by his side as he helped organize camp activites.
Their life was almost perfect if everyone else' sw ho mattered wasn't. Jason and Piper were trapped in their own little asylum upon the hill.
The one time Leo visited them and met them, Piper slammed the door in his face. Jason had however, re-opened the door and wordlessly handed Leo a peice of paper, before closing the door Once again. For two years following, Leo spent his lunch time on Half-Blood Hill, just like when they were younger, Leo was the third wheel.
Then, the third year he had to stop. Responsibilities kicked in and he was piled up with work. Calypso was a godsend. She took over his shifts and knew everything that was going on without him having to explain.
At night, they went back into their personal cabin and they slept side by side
Turned to face each other, Leo wondered constantly why his life was going so well unlike his friends.
The saddest Part was that he spoke to Frank the most (before he had died) and even then, all they talked about were the inter-camp relations.
Out of all the seven, Frank had to have been the least close to Leo.
And even worse, when Leo and Frank spoke they weren't even friendly with each other. They didn't acknowledge heir past relationship at all besides a short, brief, possibly fictional conversation.
Those couple words that made up the small, seemingly insignificant exchange of thoughts, were everything to Leo. They were etched into his his brain, because they were the only proof that he wasn't the only one.
The conversation told Leo had he hadn't made up their friendship in his head.
It had been a relatively normal day. Clarisse was yelling at Chris, Chiron was teaching campers, and Leo was yelling at Frank.
Frank stood tall and calm even though he was on the other end of a flaming crazed-kid's iris message. He waited till the end of Leo's rant before sighing. With his hands on his face, Leo was relieved to see Frank show a sign that he was just as exasuted as Leo was.
The Roman in front of him wasn't the awkward boy that Leo had poked fun at. In all honesty, Leo missed that Frank. The Roman Frank was cold and too Reyna-like for Leo's taste. He wasn't human.
Perhaps that was a side effect of being Preator. Maybe, if Jason had been Preator any longer he would have ended up the same like Reyna and Frank.
This was a second that Leo would treasure. Proof that Frank was human because the past two years, Frank hadn't seemed human.
"Do you ever wish that the war never happened?" Frank asked, and suddenly, Leo's mouth was too dry to respond. "Do you miss them at all?"
Frank asked these questions with a morose voice and Leo had no way to answer.
Leo wanted to agree and possibly strike up another conversation but he didn't. Instead he measly nodded and Frank straightened out.
Hands at his sides, Frank nodded stiffly at Leo, concluding their buisness.
The next time that Frank iris messaged Leo was the day after the conversation. Leo had pondered over night, ready to converse further but they didn't. Frank continued as if the day before had never happened. He cut off Leo from any attempts to speak further on the subject.
He kept doing so-only speaking to Leo about work, and eventually, Leo complied. Giving in, Leo never mentioned it again.
Though for the rest of Leo's life, he always regretted never telling Frank a couple words that might have changed the way they treated each other.
being human is not a weakness.
Although, Leo kept living on unlike Piper and Jason.
Leo was possibly the only one to read Jason's yellow slip of paper at the right time.
It was possibly the most heartbreaking thing to witness as Jason cried at the top of the Half-Blood hill. They both waited all night before they accepted that no one else was comming and they broke out the bourbon.
Two best friends, loyal through war and strife, standing on a long since blood soaked hill, together till the end.
Thalia kept on moving. Not staying in one place to long, she kept hunting, eliminating monsters, saving half-bloods and recruiting.
She was doing good.
She was helping.
With over forty hunters at her command, the years blurred together. They spend many a nights on magnificent hunts for unfathmable beasts.
She hadn't seen her friends in years but that was fine. Personally, she didn't want to see them all that much.
So she kept hunting, kept busy, trying to move on.
Suddenly it was 3001 and Thalia was an old woman stuck in a twelve year old's body. All Thalia wanted to do was to see her friends but she couldn't. They were all gone, leaving her behind.
She hadn't even said goodbye.
But Thalia had gotten that far so she kept walking, kept moving on, kept hunting.
Thalia led a band of immortal girls, all running from their own demons. She had to set an example.
It was another century before Thalia visited their graves. She never found Reyna's grave but Leo, Piper, and Jason's were all easy enough to find. Located in the center or Camp Half-Blood. The same could be said for Frank and Hazel who each had their own monuments in Camp Juipiter.
Annabeth and Percy were buried together and that is where Thalia spent more of her time At than the other graves. At the two headstones, she laid flowers and sat for an hours simply thinking about everything that had done as kids. She recounted Luke and her Mother, both of whom she hadn't thought of in litteral ages.
And then, when the hour was up, she dusted off her white cargo pants and walked away.
In the breast pocket of her jacket was a yellow slip of paper that Thalia had opened, twenty years too late, to meet her brother on the date enscribed.
Most girls under Thalia never knew she had a brother. They werent even able to fathom that she had a family. Thalia was the lutement, she didn't have a family. Thalia was Artimis' second in charge, she couldn't be so normal or common to have a sibling (a male no less) or a mother with such a generic problem as drinking.
But it was true.
Thalia was once normal, not that anyone would believe it.
The yellow slip was proof.
A constant reminder, as Thalia hunted with her new adopted family, that she had once had a brother, many, many years ago.
Hazel was dead. What more was there to it?
She was possibly one of the later and unavoidable deaths of the war.
She had known she was going to die. In fact, Hazel already was dead. The three judges scrutinized her harder because she had excaped Hades. They picked at her second chance at they. Tearing appart all her decisions and choices Untill finally they opened the golden gate of Elyseum for her.
All of Hazel's afterlife previously, she had seen the Feilds of Punishment and pitied it's inhabitants. Then she would look over the other way to the golden gates of Elyeum and wondered what it was like to pass through them.
Now, Hazel didn't have to wonder.
Lupa and Chiron watched it all go down.
They were older then all the heroes and they knew better then anyone that it only ended one way.
Anchient or modern times, heroes never had happy endings.
Heroes were made, not created, and they were responsible for the fates of millions.
There was only one way for a hero's story to end. Tragically. But the world needed heroes so Chiron and Lupa trained and supplied them.
They knew how it was going to end. The ending never changed but with every death, every quest, or any change,mono matter how small, a little part of the trainers' hearts' broke with them.
All there was left in the end, were the gods, humans, demigods, and the graves of those before.
poof.