Hello all.

Probably not the update many were hoping for... sorry about that. Basically, although I have a lot of PJO stories posted, what actually makes it to this website is just the very tip of a gargantuan iceberg. I have a notebook full of oneshots and so many files of unfinished ideas on my computer which... are mostly terrible but this marks me trying to fix that.

This fic, Everything In Between, is going to be a collection of oneshots which generally occur after serious events in demigod life because that's where most of my 'archive' seem to be set when I read it back. People focus on the main events in demigod life, the battles lost and won, friendships made and broken, news that breaks hearts and causes them to soar, but these oneshots will be just kind of what happens after all of that. After the cameras have stopped rolling, almost.

Some events will be focusing on what happens after 'real' (i.e. canonical) events while some (probably most) will be what goes on after events of my own choosing. Most are sad, because I have a penchant for angst (if you don't know that then, well, you'll soon find out) but I'm going to start on a happy note and intersperse this with happy oneshots.

The oneshots will not be related and they will not happen chronologically; nor will they necessarily happen in the same timeline. They will be self-contained — if I kill a character in one chapter and they turn up in the next, that's why.

I'm working on these to ease myself back into writing again, to keep my hand in, in the hope that it inspires another chapter of IOGU to kind of organically flow. I'm trying to cure writer's block (by which I mean I've been fleeing from IOGU screaming because I've launched myself into a void without any sense of direction — there are those who may be reading this who will be dying to tell me they told me so). I have a lot of these written (or nearly written) so expect at least the first four to six chapter to come semi-regularly.

No point in letting all of these clutter up the PJO folder on my hard drive is my reasoning (yes, I'm that anal with my digital housekeeping) so, once I'm done laughing at how terrible I am at this and trying to fix what a mess I've written, I'm hoping to have a reasonable collection here.

So, here we are. My crazy ramblings open to the world. May the gods help us all.

Marzipan.

Chapter One: Making Fragments Whole

Characters:

Percy

Annabeth

Rachel

Nico

"Design a sunroom," Annabeth muttered bitterly to herself, giving a savage jerk of the broom in her hands. "It will be a wonderful addition to the house. Think how much light it will let into the dining room…"

Sighing, she looked down at the mess of stained glass shards at her feet. She swept stuff like this up all the freaking time and she was getting sick of it. It was almost as if monsters didn't want them to have nice things.

There was a headache building behind her eyes and she paused in her sweeping, leaning on the broom and pinching the bridge of her nose. Why, when she had designed her and Percy's marital home, had she thought that a sunroom would be a good idea? Sure, the room looked wonderful, filled as it was with wicker furniture and plants yes, it did allow light to spill into the rest of the house beyond but really? All of this stained glass? What had she been thinking?

Her dad, after taking a sabbatical from West Point to write a book about America's involvement in World War I, had somewhat inadvertently written a historical fiction novel at the same time which had netted more sales than his non-fiction work could have hoped for. He had received a fairly large advance for a series of books on the same topic, enough to purchase Annabeth and Percy a dilapidated cottage just outside Stamford, Connecticut as a wedding gift. The cottage had previously belonged to one of the large houses on the beach but had since been separated into a sizeable plot of its own, overlooking Stamford Harbour right on the shore of the Long Island Sound.

The location couldn't be better; Annabeth had to wonder how much of the location was down to Poseidon wanting Percy to have somewhere by the sea because she wasn't sure that her father's book advance could have covered buying real estate in a relatively exclusive area, not even a 5-years-away-from-tumbledown cottage.

They were only just over 30 miles from Manhattan by road or less than an hour by train for her commute into the city. Being on the Long Island Sound meant that Percy could dive in and swim the length of Long Island to the easternmost tip and Camp when he needed to, or even sometimes when he just wanted the exercise (needless to say, Annabeth preferred to take the ferry from Bridgeport or New London).

Annabeth, bewitched by visions of sunrooms and gables and all manner of other architectural delights, had set about sending in the demolition crew for the cottage as soon as the ink was dry on the contract and had built a home on the plot. It was built long and low like the Poseidon cabin and the concrete that could be seen around the huge slabs of plate glass was white like the Athena cabin. The upper storey had wraparound windows that gave a panoramic view over the Sound and a balcony that ran the breadth of the front of the building.

After spending much of her life in San Francisco or New York City, Annabeth had found it a little weird at first to be removed from the hustle and bustle of city living, but you couldn't exactly build your dream home in Manhattan, what with the slight lack of vacant lots available for that purpose. She could cope with being a little out of the way just for the view she'd had to work with when designing the house and all the space.

The sunroom was at the rear of the house; almost the entire back of the building opened up into a pitched roof of glass and steel. The kitchen was the only room at the back of the house that didn't open onto the sunroom: Annabeth had been keen to make sure that company, should she have it, wouldn't be able to see her burning food and hurriedly thrusting microwave meals in at the last second. The sunroom was shaped like half an octagon, with each of the sides featuring panes of clear glass surrounded by a mosaic of smaller, coloured panes. Many of them had been shattered by telekhines and their freaking harpoon guns in the battle that was still ringing in her ears.

The coloured shards tinkled as she swept them into a pile. She was already on first-name terms with half the glaziers in the area and she thought that they were all getting suspicious of the number of times that they had been called to the house.

There were only so many callouts Annabeth could attribute to her or Percy's clumsiness, especially given that by the time either of them was in any fit state to call a glazier all of the cuts had been healed by nectar and ambrosia, which really ruined the alibi.

She crouched, mechanically looping hair which had escaped from her bun behind her ear as she did so. As she reached for the dustpan, the fragments of glass glimmered up at her from the white tile; the overhead light sparkled on her wedding and engagement rings. At twenty-six, she had swept up far too many windows (and been thrown through far too many as well). It just felt like it should be someone else's go, that was all, to have to deal with all of this stuff. Was it selfish to expect the next generation to take over from her and Percy so they could get five minutes of peace?

Wasn't it Nico or Thalia or Jason's turn to jump in and kill the Minotaur when he resurfaced on Half-Blood Hill, especially given that she'd just opened a bottle of champagne for her and Percy's anniversary and was wearing some damn expensive underwear?

When Percy had come back covered in blood and mud Annabeth had drunk half the champagne and the rest was flat. Percy was no longer in the mood to say the least and Annabeth had discovered that there was a reason underwear of the type she had bought was made so people would want to rip it off — loafing around in it was just too damn uncomfortable (who knew that underwiring doubled as a torture device?) If Percy's mood wasn't already killed, coming home to her dressed in holey sweats would have done it anyway. She should have gone with Percy, but he had said he could handle it and wouldn't be long and so…

They hadn't even been able to get through their wedding without having to kill something. The demigod guests all congregated together had proved a magnet for monsters but Annabeth had at least got to justify the tearaway skirts she had insisted the seamstress put into her wedding dress, much to the bemused woman's chagrin.

"What do you want me to do with this?" Percy asked, coming into the sunroom with several pieces of blue vase in his hand.

Annabeth turned robotically, blinking at her husband. Percy was bleary and out of focus; clearly, her eyes were as tired as the rest of her. She looked at the fragments and the weight of the sky slammed down onto her all over again.

"Toss it," she said shortly, pointing vaguely at the metal trashcan in the centre of the room. "I don't know why I don't just buy plastic ones."

"Are you sure?" Percy said. "Because I think maybe I could glue it…"

"What did the nurse in the ER say the last time you broke out the glue and stuck your fingers together?" Annabeth asked pointedly.

Percy winced at the memory, crossed the room and dumped the pieces of vase in the trash.

"Maybe Rachel could make us a new one?" Percy said helpfully. "I mean, she's been dying to use that kiln she just had installed for a reason I'm sure made sense to her at the time."

Annabeth grunted. "I'll just stick with plastic from now on," she said. "Safer."

"Hey, are you okay?" Percy asked, concern creasing his features. "You've been… quiet."

"I'm just peachy," Annabeth bit out, rattling her dustpan full of glass exaggeratedly at him as she lurched to her feet and stormed over to the bin to dump out the shards with the cacophony of a glass landslide. The metal of the can rang with the noise long after the shards had finished falling. "I mean, who wouldn't look forward to vacuuming forty times a day for the next six months and still finding little tiny splinters of glass to stand on in bare feet? You're telling me that's not your idea of fun?"

Percy bit his lip. "Is this about the vase?"

Annabeth softened guiltily, her body sagging. She let the dustpan fall to the floor uncaringly, closing her eyes and using the forearm she was still clutching the brush with to shove back her bangs. "No, it's not about the vase," she said quietly. "It's just a stupid vase. I'm sorry, Percy. This isn't about you at all. I don't mean to take it out on you. None of this is your fault, period. I love you and I don't know what I would do without you. I'm just so sick of…" She opened her eyes; they darted around the sunroom and rested on a wicker chair impaled by a spear. "This," she said savagely, seizing the back of the chair. She gave it a gentle wiggle and watched it lurch drunkenly to separate from the base.

Percy sighed. "We made it like a month this time," he said.

"Twenty-four days," Annabeth corrected automatically.

Percy rolled his eyes at her ability to be so precise when she was so upset and wrested the brush from her grasp despite her reluctance and muttered curses. He tossed it to the side and snatched her towards him. She resisted at first but by the time he'd got his chin on the top of her head she was hugging him back.

"Fine. Almost a month," Percy conceded, planting a soft kiss on the top of her hair.

"I suck as a person," Annabeth grumbled into his (torn) shirt. "I shouldn't let this get to me. Having to buy plastic vases isn't a big deal. We're okay, alive — that's all the matters. It's just…" She broke off and scooted back a little so she could look Percy in the face without breaking the hug. "How many more windows? How many more vases? Sometimes, I just get tired. I can't be the only one, right?"

"Hey, you think I welcome monsters dropping in at all hours?" Percy said. "I'm as over this as you are. Especially with the mess all the glue made of my fingers. But we'll get through it, you know that, right? We always do. Together."

Annabeth nodded. "I know," she said. "I'm just frustrated more than anything else. Plus… well I had to run away from home the last time monster attacks got this bad, this intrusive. I don't want to run away from this, Percy. From everything we have here, from this house… I don't want the monsters to evict us but every time this happens I start thinking maybe we should just buy an RV and live out life on the road."

Percy grinned lopsidedly, stepping back so she could get the full effect. "I've never had sex in an RV," he told her.

Annabeth rolled her eyes. "Dream. On," she said, poking him in the chest. "You're never going to. We're staying put."

"Fine," Percy said, extracting a laugh from Annabeth at his overly-petulant reaction to that assertion. "Fine. We just need to get the Hecate kids out here again to toss some more of their mumbo-jumbo around the place to renew their cloaking spell. I can send the IM now, if you want. It will be done before you know it," Percy said.

"Leave it," Annabeth wearily, sliding forwards towards Percy again and wrapping her arms around his waist. "It's not permanent, anyway. I wish they'd figure out some kind of lasting cloaking spell, but... IM them tomorrow. We've had marauding telekhines blow through here already. I'm not sure I'm up to anymore visitors."

"Knock knock," echoed a voice through the house.

"Fuck," Annabeth said, her forehead connecting with Percy's sternum. When she had the composure to re-emerge she was staring at Nico, who was sitting on top of the (askew) dining table kicking his legs merrily.

"Is that any way to greet an old friend?" Nico asked with a grin.

"Well, it's you," Annabeth said. "So yes. And I've told you before: saying 'knock knock' after shadow travelling in doesn't count as actually knocking. You have to be outside for that."

"You want me to appear on the porch?" Nico asked, blinking at her. "What if the neighbours saw?"

"We're not overlooked," Annabeth said, cocking an eyebrow at him.

"What if it's cold?"

"Bring a sweater," Annabeth suggested stonily through gritted teeth, her voice edged in steel.

Nico wrinkled his noise. "Pass," he said decisively.

The sound of drawers opening and closing and cutlery being rattled around inside them clamoured out of the kitchen and a shout echoed out, interrupting Annabeth's reply.

"Where do you guys keep your bottle opener?"

"You brought Rachel?" Annabeth said to Nico, her voice rising an octave.

"Use this!" Nico called, fishing a Swiss army knife out of his pocket and turning to toss it to his left, towards the kitchen and out of Annabeth and Percy's sight.

There was a thud.

"Ow!"

Nico winced. "She's the Oracle and yet she needs a heads up," he said to Percy and Annabeth. "I'm not the only one who finds that weird, right? And of course I brought her. She's the one who saw what went down here."

"I wasn't ready," Rachel protested, coming out of the kitchen with four open bottles of beer clutched in her hands.

"Again, Oracle," Nico said, jerking his thumb at her and giving Percy and Annabeth a sceptical look before relieving Rachel of a beer and taking a swig.

Annabeth rolled her eyes. "I suppose it's too much to hope you came to help with the clean up?"

"This is Nico," Rachel said, crossing the dining room and stepping over the threshold between that room and the sunroom. "Of course that's too much to hope. Have you seen his room?"

In what had to be an all-time winner of the most bizarre roommates award, Rachel and Nico actually managed to share an (albeit cavernous) apartment without killing each other. Annabeth had sneaking suspicions that there might be a little bit more going on than them simply being roommates, but she didn't think that either of them would be that stupid and besides, if she didn't know that kept her firmly out of the blast zone if Apollo chose to rain down fire upon the two of them.

Selfish, maybe. Practical? Oh gods yes.

"Have you looked at your studio lately?" Nico shot back. "The one time I tried to organise your canvases to look a little bit less like a game of art Jenga you freaked."

"I had a system!" Rachel snorted, retracing what was obviously a familiar argument. "I couldn't find anything after you were done with it."

"You can't find anything now!" Nico sputtered indignantly. "All I did was try to impose just a little bit of order on your chaos but if you think you have a system then you believe that all you want." He paused to take another drink. "And besides, we are helping," he added, nodding to Annabeth. "We bought beer, didn't we?"

"Beer helps less than brooms," Annabeth said, narrowing her eyes at him.

"Whoa, hey, wait a minute there," Percy said quickly, moving towards Rachel and liberating the Oracle of two of the beers. "Let's not be too hasty. Beer helps plenty."

"And we ordered pizza for delivery," Rachel said. "I know how hungry monster fighting makes you guys and we thought it would probably be best to pick something that didn't need plates…"

Annabeth rounded on Percy. "What happened to my plates?" she demanded.

Percy pressed one of the beers into Annabeth's hand. "Telekhines," he said shortly. "But drink now," he advised, "bitch about crockery later."

"Fine," Annabeth said, her eyes narrowing still further. She looked down at her beer and took a thoughtful swig, closing her eyes as it went down. She hadn't realised how thirsty she was; maybe Percy was right and beer helped more than she thought. Not that she'd be telling anyone that.

"Told you," Nico crowed triumphantly, grinning lopsidedly at her.

Crap. Obviously, she needed to work on her poker face.

"Is totally environmentally irresponsible to just replace all of our crockery with paper versions?" Annabeth mused, choosing to ignore Nico (one generally had to, just to maintain some semblance of sanity). "I mean, the Amazon might bite it but we'd use the dishwasher less. That's got to save the icecaps and the polar bears, right? Does it balance out?"

"Don't let Juniper hear you talk about destroying the rainforest," Percy said darkly into his beer. "Not unless you want her to twist your ear off."

"What about sustainable paper plates?" Annabeth said. "You know, the ones made from bamboo fibre and stuff?"

"That would probably work," Percy said. "She really doesn't like bamboo. Like, not at all." He paused, his brows furrowing. "Do you think for her that's, like... racist?"

"Tree racism?" Annabeth asked sceptically.

"Sure, because that's the weirdest thing that's happened to you today," Nico muttered. "Attacked by half dog, half baby, half sea lion things—"

"Three halves do not make a whole," Annabeth interrupted.

"Eat me," Nico returned smoothly. "My point is that you were attacked by dog, baby, sea lion things and you think tree racism is weird? In perspective, not so much, right?"

Annabeth opened her mouth to argue but then realised she'd be doing so just to be contrary and what Nico had said was pretty much true, so closed it again. "Fine," she said. "I take your point. So... how did you know we were getting attacked?"

Nico put his beer down on the table next to him (no coaster, Annabeth noted, with a flare of her nostrils) so he could throw up his hands. "Don't look at me; I'm not the one with a crystal ball for a skull."

"Do you want me to take this one or have you got it?" Annabeth asked Rachel.

Rachel blew air out through her lips. "I'm struggling," she said. "So many comebacks, so little time. I mean, do I go for the traditional, 'At least my skull isn't hollow'? Or something relating to the thickness of his skull? And that's not even going into the jokes I could make about his mental capacity. And on the knowing about you being attacked front, I didn't see it in time to stop it. I'm sorry. I just saw… this, pretty much. The aftermath."

"You know, I could just go down to the Underworld and drag back up the four telekhines I killed on our way in," Nico said with a nonchalant one-shouldered shrug, examining his nails. "I mean, if I'm that dumb then I'm probably too stupid to have noticed them lurking and killed them, right?"

Rachel rolled her eyes. "We stopped on the way in to kill four telekhines," she said to Annabeth and Percy. "Mr Modest over there went a whole five minutes without mentioning that."

"There are more of them?" Annabeth said exasperatedly, throwing her head back. "Seriously?"

Riptide ballooned in Percy's hand. "Where?" he said tersely.

Nico waved a hand. "They're dust," he said. "Literally. Hopefully it's good mulch for the plants because otherwise I think I killed your bushes."

The relief was palpable on Annabeth's face and she said down hard on the broken chair, putting her beer between her knees so she could massage her closed eyes.

Rachel's face contracted into a small frown. "Are you okay? Do you want us to leave?" she asked uncertainly. "I... we… We just thought that you guys could use some company after how much this evening has sucked."

"Leave? But… the pizza is coming?" Nico reminded her, bafflement encroaching onto his face when he was temporarily silenced by a pointed look from Rachel. "What?"

Rachel didn't answer. Instead, she crossed the sunroom to crouch in front of Annabeth, opening her bag as she did so. "Hey, Annabeth… talk to me here."

"I'm fine," Annabeth said, looking up at Rachel with bleary grey eyes and managing a small smile. "It's nothing. I'm fine. Today has just worn me out, you know? Worn me down, too."

Rachel grimaced sympathetically. "I get it," she said. "I'm sorry I didn't see it in time."

Annabeth waved a hand. "Not your fault," she said. "We should keep the cloaking spell more updated."

Rachel pulled a vase from her bag and presented it to Annabeth. "Absolutely," she said. "You need a new vase, right? I've been testing my kiln and when I saw the vase I thought you could use this."

The vase was sea green and white, with owls flying around the rim and a seascape painted on the side.

Annabeth smiled. "It's beautiful. Thank you."

"I just hope you have a really uneven surface to put it down on," Nico said brightly, shrugging when Rachel turned to scowl at him. "What?" he asked. "Put it down. Show her."

Rachel gave Nico one more moment of scorching glare — which would have blistered the paint off a battleship in ordinary circumstances but she could practically see it running off him without effect like water off a duck's back, the bastard — before turning back to Annabeth.

"It's… a little wonky," she admitted. "Nico thinks it's funny, because he's a dick, but I'm still ironing out the kinks in this whole ceramics thing." She placed the vase down on the floor and immediately it rocked back towards her and she had to catch it. "But I bought putty rubber which you can stick under it," she added enthusiastically. "I use it as an eraser but if you just stick it under the bottom…" She broke a piece of eraser off and demonstrated; the vase stuck to the floor without falling over. "There!"

"Thank you," Annabeth said genuinely. "Thank you, Rachel. Seriously."

"Oh, and there was this crew of guys I worked with when I was restoring the artwork in this old church," Rachel said. "They were doing the stained glass at the same time I was working on the murals. They're coming in the morning to take a look at the windows, no questions asked."

Annabeth tried to speak a few times and couldn't, so instead she just hugged Rachel. "Percy, find a pen," she said when she broke the hug. "You'll need it to sign the divorce papers. I'm going to marry Rachel instead."

Percy cocked his head to one side, taking a contemplative swig of beer.

"Wow, okay, or I might just divorce you for apparently not caring that I'm thinking about divorcing you," Annabeth said pointedly arching an eyebrow at him.

"Hey, I'm just trying to figure out how I feel about this," Percy said. "I mean yeah, I'd be divorced but my ex-wife would be embroiled in a hot lesbian affair, which—"

He was forced to raise an arm to shield himself; Annabeth had thrown a cushion from beneath her and Rachel launched the remains of her putty.

"That was a compliment!" he protested as the cushion bounced off his arm. "I said it would be hot!"

The doorbell rang. "Pizza!" Nico said gleefully, jumping off the dining table. "Percy, you have cash, right?"

Percy rolled his eyes. "Seriously?" he asked, fishing his wallet out of his back pocket and winging it at Nico (sadly, Nico caught it with one hand before it could bean him on the head). "Your dad is the god of wealth. Why are you always broke?"

"Hey, talk to Hazel if you want that incarnation of him," Nico returned, turning and moving towards the front of the house. "With me you get what you get."

"We know," Annabeth, Rachel and Percy said at exactly the same time, breaking out into laughter as Nico's arm temporarily reappeared around the doorjamb to flip them all the bird.

"I'm gonna use the bathroom real quick before we eat," Rachel said, getting up off the floor and brushing dirt, which had spewed from a fallen ficus, from her knees. "Do you mind?"

"Knock yourself out," Annabeth said.

Percy moved towards Annabeth once Rachel had gone, dragging her up from the chair despite her reluctance to get up and into another hug. "Are you sure you're okay?" he asked.

Annabeth smiled, spotting Nico coming back into the dining room carrying pizza boxes with one hand and ramming a slice into his mouth with the other.

"Yeah," she said. "I will be."