How Percy, Reyna, and Jason Were All BFFs, But Not at the Same Time; or, Fanon at its Finest

(Because I feel too bad for a) Annabeth and b) Piper, because they have gone through enough crap, you know? So, all three were all BFFs in their amnesiac glory. Yes. Fannish blatant speculation is fannish. And blatant.)

I own not the Lost Hero, Roman proverbs, or San Francisco.

is a virtue

While there's life, there's hope. (Roman Proverb)

Reyna waits.

She knows she is not supposed to long or wallow, because longing and wallowing will only lead her into ignoring her duties as a leader of the legion. That's why she keeps the worry and fear off of her face while she is still in front of everyone, telling them that Jason is fine will be fine isn't dead. Still, every spare moment away from drill and meals, she focuses on the hilt of her gladius, letting her vision blur until Elysium is before her. After that, Asphodel; then (though she doubts he could ever be there), Tartarus.

She never finds him there.

Three days after he disappeared, she was training, hacking away at some dummy, when Michael son of Vulcan started shouting that someone had collapsed in the redwoods. They brought in the new boy, with his orange t-shirt and torn-up shoes, and laid him on a cot until Lupa declared he would live. At one point someone said they should try to get him to let go of his ballpoint pen, but every attempt failed.

The day the boy woke up, he had sat down at the same mess table, right next to her. She had been alone, as usual for the last three days. There were no other children of Pluto; there were no sons of Jupiter or daughters of Neptune to share her status as a child of the most powerful gods. Normally, someone else was sitting with her, but now there was nothing but this intruder, who was still in his garish orange shirt and holding a pen like it was the key to explaining the world.

When this interloper asked her about her family, her life, it was all she could do not to punch him. Instead, she thrust out her forearm, watching his face look over the lines and tattoos.

"There", she remembers spitting out. "Why don't you look at that? It should keep you occupied until we send you back to wherever in Tartarus you came from."

After that, she went back to her bunk and, ignoring all protocol, cried her eyes out.

The next day, the new boy was still wearing his ridiculous shirt. However, as soon as she went to drill, he followed her. When she began to go through the motions, he uncapped his pen, and she almost stopped because suddenly his stupid ballpoint wasn't a pen, it was a sword out of a metal she had never seen (and she was the expert on that sort of thing, what with Pluto being the god of wealth and minerals). However, she managed to keep going, her sword arcing around her, and he followed.

Afterwards, while she took a brief look at the Styngian iron as she was cooling off (which told her nothing, as usual), she asked why he was following her around.

He had shrugged, and said, "You remind me of someone I knew."

By dinner, he had told her his name was Perseus. After she laughed a little – really, a Greek name? How wimpy was that – she told him hers.

Over the next week, Perseus (he preferred Percy, though he didn't know why, but she always called him Perseus) slowly insinuated himself with the rest of the demigods. His skills with his stupid ballpoint – Anaklusmos, he told her over and over, rapping out each foreign syllable, its name is Anaklusmos – got him the respect of Minerva's campers, and his sheer charisma brought around the rest. Even Mars' cabin began to like him when he disarmed Thomas in front of the whole camp after the orange t-shirt was once again insulted, staring in shocked admiration as somehow, every weapon Tom could throw bounced off of his skin. However, at dinner he always sat next to Reyna, making points with his fork and carefully insisting that his Diet Coke was blue (why, she had asked him, and all he could say back was I don't know).

It was after a particularly nasty session that they learned who his godly parent was. The camp had been practicing on forested ground, when suddenly Reyna had seen Perseus by himself, surrounded by some of Vulcan's kids and with his back to a huge stream. When she tried to go to his aid, she was pushed back by Alexa from Minerva (and she probably saw the whole thing as an experiment, didn't she), and watched as Perseus slowly backed into the creek, was going to slip on a rock –

Only he hadn't slipped, but he was riding the stream somehow, the water curling underneath him until it blasted out in all directions, knocking the entire cabin off their feet, and he was sitting in the streambed, completely dry.

That evening, she had searched her sword desperately – first Elysium, then Asphodel, finally Tartarus – only to look up and find him there, standing awkwardly in his stupid orange shirt.

"I guess I'm with you, officially," he said, and while she hadn't really smiled, she maybe scooted over to let him sit next to her and poured him blue Diet Coke.

He started to tell her things – that he likes blue foods, and is afraid of flying, and that something about the eyes on one girl in the Minerva cabin reminds him of someone incredibly important, but he doesn't know why. In return, she tells him camp history, about Lupa and Romulus and Remus, about how she didn't know who her father was until she informed the whole camp at age five that Jonas Ellensby from Mercury had a fatal disease and would die in a week.

They don't – she wouldn't say they get along, exactly, but he sits at her table in mess and does sword drills with her and doesn't ask why she keeps staring at her gladius, and in return she asks him questions constantly, so that maybe he'll know the answer. Together, they deal with the fact that they are supposed to be leaders, even though she never had the temperament and he never starts wearing purple.

There are quite a few near misses – she sees a boy with honest-to-Jupiter blue eyes and almost runs after him in the Haight-Ashbury while searching for Cyclops; he thinks he recognizes a faun and chases him down only to realize that he doesn't know him at all. There was one incident – he had been tall and blond, with the shirt and the eyes and everything and still it wasn't him – and afterwards she had started crying again in a moment of weakness on the pier by the shore, and even though Perseus is incredibly stupid around girls, he was there, listening, and it was as if she didn't even control her own mouth. She told him about how she had always had this boy and how he would lead because even though neither of them wanted to be in charge, he could think beyond how people would die like she never could, and how he was her friend, her best friend, and how she just misses him, she just – she's just so alone, now.

He doesn't laugh at her, once she's done. Nor does he question her instinctive response, when she pulls out her gladius and lets it blur – Elysium, Asphodel, Tartarus – only to find nothing.

Instead, he hugs her – awkwardly, one arm around her shoulder and his head crashing into her own in a way that is neither cute nor pleasant, but friendly, at least – and says that she reminds him of someone he knew, he thinks.

She thought about kissing him, then. It would have taken her mind off of her missing boy, would have distracted him from half-faded memories and orange t-shirts. It could have been nice, pleasant, become something. It could have been.

Instead, she shoved him a little before getting up to go to sleep. When she went to bed, he was still sitting there, watching the waves hit the dock.

Three days later, a flying ship – they have magical defenses for everything known to man or giant or god, and yet somehow a flying ship gets through – landed at the pier. Reyna and Perseus (still sticking out in his orange shirt) were there first, behind Lupa but before everyone, ready to greet the intruders in whatever way necessary.

A centaur greets Lupa, a redheaded girl walks forwards and begins to babble something half-recognizable, a smaller boy pats the masthead of the ship and begins to mutter under his breath – all of it fades in comparison when she sees him up on deck, his hair blonde and his eyes that deep sky blue, and the hope wells up inside her. She can feel Perseus moving beside her – there is a girl, up on deck, a girl with blond ringlets and Minerva-grey eyes whose hands are shaking as they clench into fists – but it doesn't matter, none of that matters.

Reyna isn't waiting anymore.