Ch. 1. Watching Like A Hawk

How did I let this happen? He thought miserably as he shuffled gently down the gravel path. Every step was a challenge; just dragging one foot after the other. How could Frank do this to us?

"Percy, it wasn't your fault," Piper consoled soothingly. She put everything into her charm-speak, yet her voice was still strained. Tears welled up in her eyes as she put a hand on Percy's shoulder, but he shrugged it off. He wasn't hearing any of it. He was deep in his memories. The sound of glass breaking as water rushed in, of Reyna screaming, of her body thudding sickeningly against the wall. I screamed, but no sound came out. A horrible feeling rose in my gut as I tried in vain to stop it. Too late. Too little. Weak.

He shivered, but he couldn't stop reliving the most horrible day of his life.

Briskly, he picked up the pace, trying to outrun his thoughts. Piper struggled to catch up to him, a backpack slung over her shoulder. It bounced idly along with every hurried step she took, trying desperately to reach her beloved friend.

Water. So much water.

"Percy!" Piper shouted, but to him, she might as well have been a million miles away.

Reyna. I'm so sorry.

"Percy, you have to listen," She begged, sobbing now. She carelessly tucked a wet strand of her hair behind her ear and shook him by the shoulders. "Please! Listen to me!" She cried yet again, and again.

"Piper," Nico said. His voice was barely higher than a whisper, and yet it was like a knife searing into her soul. She whirled around, her eyes blazing with pain and fury even as tears flowed freely. He calmly held her gaze for just a second before she collapsed into his arms, crying into his shoulder.

"How could he do this to us?" She cried, twisting around to look at Percy. He'd stopped in the middle of the path and just stared blankly into the forest, his hand paused in midair. She took one look at his ashen face and fell back into Nico.

Mildly startled, he stayed still, not moving even an inch. His face went carefully blank, but his eyes were brimming with fury. Cold, quiet, calculating fury.

Coldness emanated off of him in waves, and the shadows skewed up into terrifying beasts, yet he still never moved, gently cradling the back of Piper's head.

He'd never known Frank to be this cold, to be this heartless when it came to the friends who saved his life multiple times, and vice versa; or to be this pitiless to his girlfriend, who he once promised to cross Tartarus for.

Even without looking, he knew. That he was standing back at camp, arms crossed, those intense eyes blazing at their footsteps even as new ones are being made.

Watching them like a hawk. He takes that expression to a whole new level.

Piper sniffed once more and finally stopped crying, snapping Nico out of his haze of red. "Come on," She rasped, "We should get Percy and find somewhere to stop for the night."

Nico didn't say anything, just walked past her and stood in front of Percy. His blank eyes betrayed his pain and disbelief, still denying it happened at all.

Sighing unhappily, he drew a line of shadow in the air and led Percy gently along on the leach of darkness. Piper looked on with wide, unsettled eyes, but didn't utter a word. Slowly, Camp Jupiter receded along the horizon, fading in with the setting sun.

Not one of them looked back. Not even once.