Reyna meets Annabeth Chase purely by chance if chance is a half-mad goddess almost as old as time dressed in a goatskin cloak. At the time Reyna tries to rationalize Juno's actions, assuming that the gods had come to some sort of a consensus, that they had a reason for uprooting two girls from their lives for half a year. Annabeth disagrees vehemently, using a string of words that Reyna probably wouldn't have used but doesn't object to because of how accurately they capture the situation. (Hera, Annabeth insists later, when Reyna tries to correct her, is a bitch. Now, with Annabeth on the other side of the country and Jason pining for a girl that isn't her, she can't help but agree.)

She walks through the gates of Camp Jupiter on a Tuesday, strides across the grass like she owns the place, her gaze flickering over the arches and aqueducts before she inevitably collapses of hunger (or exhaustion or dehydration) and it makes Reyna feel...something.

Annabeth wakes up after almost nine days of walking and two days of unconsciousness. She can't remember sleeping but she knows she must have at some point; if she hadn't she'd be dead by now. (she's been walking for nine days-)

"Can you tell me who you are?" A girl asks. She sounds...strong. Annabeth blinks against the glare of what may be a headlamp and turns away from the noise (too loud too bright too much-). Someone grabs her arm. Annabeth thinks it might be the girl. "I need you to tell me your name," she says, speaking softer.

"Water," Annabeth croaks. Someone presses a glass into her hand. She peels open an eyelid to see it, takes a long sip and then sighs and lets her head fall back onto whatever it is she's laying down on, wincing. "Annabeth. My name is Annabeth."

She hears a chair being pulled. "That's a start. Can you tell me where you're from?"

"No."

"Do you know how old you are?"

"No"

"Can you-"

"No."

"Okay." The girls stands up, murmurs something to the other person in the room, then leaves.

"Where am I?" Annabeth whispers, trying to move. She doesn't get an answer, which is just as well because she falls asleep as soon she finishes asking the question.

Reyna visits Annabeth twice over the next two weeks. (Correction: she visits seven times over the next two weeks. Annabeth is only conscious for two of those visits.) Octavian, being the pompous prick that he is begins spreading rumors: Reyna knows the girl, Reyna's been taking an interest in the girl, Reyna's hiding the girl.

The second isn't necessarily false. There is something about Annabeth that makes Reyna feel as though she's known her, or did know her. Or something. She feels things around Annabeth, things she's too exhausted to define.

One day, when she's feeling particularly tired, she runs a hand through Annabeth's gold locks absentmindedly, not thinking about what she's doing or caring that there are people watching. Something about this strikes her as familiar, and not for the first time, she tries to shake the feeling that she's done this before. As she's mulling over this she keeps carding through Annabeth's hair acting on something that can only be described as instinct, and she realizes she has done this before.

Her hand stops moving, her brain freezes and all she can see is Circe, regal and powerful, Hylla standing behind her, turning to look at Reyna with a warning in her eyes, Annabeth in a long dress, hair pinned up, eyes wide, looking nothing short of heavenly.

And then Annabeth wakes up to wide eyes and a hand in her hair. To Annabeth's credit, she doesn't react very much, just waits for Reyna to take her hand out of hers and sits up. Reyna starts, more awkward than she usually is around incoming demigods. "I think I knew you before," she says quietly, which is also new- she learned long go that being shy wasn't going to get her anywhere near where she wanted to be in New Rome.

Annabeth crosses her ankles and laughs surprisedly, tilting her head. "Do you use that on all the girls? Or is it just me?"

Reyna tamps down on a burst of unexpected laughter. "I'm being serious."

Annabeth snorts. "Sure," she says, laughing even harder, and that is how Reyna realizes that she is screwed.

(Reyna never mentions Circe again, and even after Amnabeth's regained her memories, she doesn't ask.)

Reyna's pretty. It's kind of the first thing Annabeth really notices about her, and honestly she can't be blamed. Anyone with eyes can see how...well endowed she is. This isn't the problem- she seen hundreds of pretty girls and it takes only a second glance and a fleeting fantasy for her to move on from them. But Reyna...Reyna's different because Annabeth's actually talked to her outside of asking for the time. Reyna is kind and patient and intelligent, and basically everything she's ever wanted in either gender.

She's never been with a girl that way before (well really she's never been with anyone outside of Percy and even that can't be called a proper relationship considering they both realized rather quickly that they wanted wach other as nothing more than friends, she remembers this much). So when one day Annabeth looks over at Reyna and suddenly wants, she panics...more than a little bit. It's not the fact that it's a girl that shocks her (she figured she was bisexual almost as soon as she saw Rachel Dare) but more so the fact that it's Reyna Avila Ramírez-Arellano, praetor of the Roman demigod training camp 3000 miles away from where she thinks she lives. She'd always thought of herself as a practical person, but liking Reyna is the exact opposite.

They're at Reyna's favourite hot chocolate stand when it happens. Annabeth looks over at the other girl, watches the locks of hair that have escaped her strangely extravagant braided crown dance in the wind, watches the careful way Reyna smiles as she watches the little girls laughing and the sun shining and the birds singing and something just...hits her.

Reyna notices almost as soon as Annabeth does that something is different and turns to study her in that uncanny way of hers. "Something wrong?" she asks softly. The furrow in her brow has returned, Annabeth notices sadly.

Annabeth smiles softly. "No."

Reyna relaxes, sensing her sincerity and smiles back. She feels better than she has since she lost her memory.

(Reyna always takes her places. At first she thinks it's a part of some strange recruitment campaign and then she realises that she is the only person that ever goes out with Reyna on casual outings like this. Annabeth asks her as soon as she notices. "Do you take all of your girls on outings like this?" she asks, unsure what to expect as a response.

Reyna blushes a little bit in reponse, and Annabeth is fucking gone, just like that. "I don't...I've never had other girls," Reyna says carefully.

"So I'm special then," Annabeth says, smirking just a little bit.

Reyna regains a little bit of her composure and gives Annabeth a nonplussed little frown. "Don't flatter yourself."

Annabeth grins. "This is special then," she continues, stealing a few jelly beans off the bowl on Reyna's desk. "All the long walks and cafes."

Now Reyna smirks. "Be careful," she says in a smug tone that implies she means the complete opposite. "You're beginning to make these sound like dates." Annabeth chokes on her jellybean. She pulls another out of the bowl in an effort to ignore Reyna. Blue, she notices.

And somehow, in the next month that's exactly what their trips and long walks turn into, even if they refuse to talk about it or put labels on it. Everyone else sees it too- every time they walk into mess together Frank and Hazel exchange a look and whisper to each in a strange blend of Creole and Canadian-French, Octavian narrows his eyes at the pair, Gwen smirks around her fork, and Dakota waggles his eyebrows at them over his fourth glass of Kool-Aid, bright red lips tilting upwards ever so slightly.)

"Annabeth!" she hears, muffled and distant and strange. She frowns, turning and seeing bright green hills and large trees. It feels familiar but no matter how much she tries, she just can't place it. "Annabeth!" someone calls again, sounding margainally clearer. The hills melt away into cabins and children, and Annabeth realizes that this is a dream.

Someone calls her name for a third time and she turns around in her dreamscape annoyedly. "What?" she asks. Her own voice is remarkably clear.

"Oh thank Poseidon!" the same boy exclaims. "Annabeth it's me!"

For a moment, she can't tell who he is but the name pops into her head without her having to try and remember. "Percy," she says absentmindedly. It fits in a way nothing has for months.

"You remember!" he says, relieved. "Thank the gods."

She rolls her eyes. "You said that already, Seaweed Brain." The endearment slips off her tongue unintentionally.

Percy jerks back surprisedly. "Don't go anywhere," he says, sounding a little dazed. He seems to come back to himself a moment later. "Stay where you are," he says more confidently. "We're coming for you I-"

He fades away and the cabins dissolve into black and then she wakes up.

Annabeth walks into her room the week after her weird spell at the café. "I'm not staying much longer."

Reyna blinks at her, her hand pausing in midair above a sheaf of papers. "Pardon?"

"They're coming for me," is all she says as she takes an apple off Reyna's desk and swings herself onto one of the cabinets in her study like she's been here for years.

"Who is?" Reyna asks, sitting up a little straighter.

Annabeth has a moment of clarity before the something disappears and she's left staring at the floor absentmindedly. "I-" she starts, still frowning at the her wallpaper. "I can't remember," she says dejectedly, slumping.

The bronze scroll comes a week later. She stares as the elfin man-boy makes a hand gesture, then grins as the message cuts off, and when she turns to look at Annabeth, there is a look of purposefulness, of clarity, that, until now, she's never seen on Annabeth's face.

"They're coming for me?" Annabeth repeats.

And this time when Reyna asks "Who is?" Annabeth smiles brightly.

"Camp Half-Blood," she replies. "My people." And try as she might to feel happy for Annabeth, she cannot ignore the sinking feeling in her gut or the voice in her head that says you will never see her again.

Annabeth gets a week with Reyna before the Argo II arrives, and she plans to make the most of it by finally working up the courage to define whatever it is that Reyna has while somehow dealing with her steadily re-emerging memories.

She does, near the end. It happens, ironically, at the café Annabeth has come to think of as Reyna's, as theirs because they go there so often. Reyna finishes her hot chocolate and then raises an eyebrow at Annabeth as she fidgets in the seat across from her.

"Annabeth?" she asks, narrowing her eyes. Annabeth doesn't respond or make eye contact. Reyna repeats her name again and when Annabeth doesn't answer this time either, Reyna leads her down the street and into her office as gently as she can while somehow still conveying her annoyance and shuts the door. "So," she saying, turning to Annabeth.

"So," Annabeth echoes.

Reyna sighs. "You've been acting weird this whole week and I'd like to know why."

"It's nothing," Annabeth says, accompanying her generic response with an equally generic half-shrug. "Just the usual pre-quest jitters."

Reyna frowns some more. "You never get nervous." Annabeth answers with a full shrug, and Reyna puts it together from there. "You're scared," she says, triumphantly. "Of what though? Of leaving Camp?" Annabeth finally makes eye contact to give her a disbelieving look. Reyna blinks. "You're scared of leaving me?" she asks, incredulously, as if she cam't believe anyone would want to be with her. Annabeth looks away again, which Reyna takes as a yes. She sighs. "Oh Annabeth."

"Stop," Annabeth says, surprised to find that her voice is thick with tears and flopping down one of the dark-wood chairs.

Reyna sits down in front of her. "We'll still see each other sometimes," she says encouragingly. "That's what friends do isn't it?"

Annabeth goes still at the word friends. "Is that all you want to be?" she asks carefully. "Friends?" She looks up at Reyna from underneath her lashes, and then all she can she is Reyna as the other girl pulls her into her space and proceeds to kiss the living daylights out of her.

"I think I'd like a little bit more than than that," Reyna answers after she's pulled away, leaving them both breathless.

Annabeth laughs. "Me too." Reyna beams, brighter than Annabeth's ever seen her and Annabeth's confidence frays at the seams as she thinks of how this could go wrong, how they'd probably end up hurting each other trying to do long distance. "Do you think ee could do it? Do long distance."

Reyna smiles and laces their fingers together. "I think we'll make it work."

(When the ship arrives three days later, Percy and Annabeth share a long hug after Reyna makes a small welcoming speech, Annabeth introduces Percy to Reyna as her best friend, and Reyna to Percy as her girlfriend as Percy grins and squeezes her hand proudly. Annabeth is the last to board the Argo II after a brief meeting between leaders of both camps and before she climbs the ladder, she turns to wink at the Praetor who has to work very hard not to laugh in response.)

Reyna still sees her sometimes after the war, when she visits Camp Half-Blood. Sometimes is a bit of an understatement because Annabeth is everywhere. Once, as she watches Annabeth take newcomers through a sparring lesson, she thinks that Annabeth should be been in New Rome, with her.

Somedays she scolds herself being for being selfish almost immediately (you are a praetor, her predecessor had said, you will simply not have time for mundane things like this) and then Annabeth walks by and she can't help but think what if what if what if.

And other days, Annabeth catches her eye in the middle of a particularly long meeting, grinning in that way she only does for Reyna, subdued, yet brighter than anything Reyna has ever seen and something in her chest feels lighter, and this is enough. They are enough.

notes: there are a ton of plot holes in this but i really want to be done with this one bc i've had it in my drafts for a long time.

as always please comment because i live for those!