AN: I can't have been the first person to have this idea! I would love recs to other fics that are similar. :)
Thanks to lanna_kitty and shadadukal for the beta, and to azarsuerte for not letting me take any short cuts.
Dedicated to those people on my f-list who have made me better at loving everyone for who they are. You know who you are. ;)
Spoilers: This takes place after "The Last Olympian" in the timeline, but there aren't really any spoilers.
Rating: Kid friendly. Brief discussion of where babies come from (or don't, as the case may be).
Disclaimer: HA! I should be so lucky.
Characters: Annabeth Chase, Athena, a couple of OCs.
Summary: When Romy finally gets to Camp Half-Blood, getting claimed into a cabin raises more questions than it answers.
Anceps
Because being raised by a single parent who worked all the time on Very Important Projects That You Wouldn't Understand (even though I totally would) wasn't bad enough. Because it was not sufficient for the universe to give me ADD and dyslexia. Because apparently I needed more in my life to deal with than being constantly surrounded by weird goings-on that I couldn't ever adequately explain. Nope, it just wasn't enough.
It turned out that I was also descended from the Gods of Olympus. And I found out from a dude with hooves who couldn't stop eating the tin foil his quickly devoured burrito had been wrapped in.
I was sitting in the cafeteria (by myself) when he found me. He looked like a totally normal kid, except he was wearing a hat inside the school, which was against the rules, and he walked a bit strangely. No one seemed to notice him, though. He walked right past Mr. Haberdasher, the geography teacher whose procured hat collection was rumoured to number more than the students who attended the school. And then, as if that wasn't weird enough, he sat down beside me.
No one ever, ever, sat with me. Real estate was at a premium in the cafeteria, so you'd think my fellow students would be willing to overlook the exploding gym showers, the attack of the scroll-saw in grade nine shop, and that time I somehow shorted out every single computer in the entire school. But they never did. They crammed eight people at six person tables, I had a small European country to myself in the corner.
"Hey Romy," said the satyr, like we were good friends who spoke every day, and maybe even texted on occasion, if I didn't have this unnatural way of destroying cell phones (I didn't realize he was a satyr of first, of course, I just thought he was weird. And he was weird, but that didn't mean he wasn't also a satyr). "How's lunch?"
"It's fine," I said. I moved away from him a little bit, but if he noticed, it didn't bother him. "Who are you?"
"Name's Ronald," he said. He was fiddling with the wrapping of his burrito, trying to get the tinfoil off without ruining the tortilla. "Um, I don't mean to rush you or anything and I do want to eat this excellent example of Mexican cuisine, but you're about to be attacked by a Calydonian Boar, and this probably isn't a good place for it."
"What?" I said. "What the heck are you talking about? Who are you?"
"Ronald," he said again, as though that explained anything. "I'm a satyr, you're a demi-god. Can we go now?"
He swallowed the last of the burrito and started eating the tinfoil. I stared at him.
"Are you high?" I said. I had stopped eating and was looking around to see if there was anyone I could call for help, but no one was looking in my direction. It was like I didn't exist.
"You have one parent," Ronald said. "You don't know anything about the other one. Weird things happen to you all the time. You have ADD and you have trouble reading. I am telling you: we have to go now."
There was a loud crash outside the window, and I looked out. Standing there in the parking lot was an enormous and very angry looking boar. It didn't have any trouble at all looking at me straight back, and I knew that, somehow, Ronald was right. This thing was after me.
"Can we run to my house?" I said.
"Yeah," Ronald replied, and off we went as fast as we could. The breaking glass and screaming indicated that our decision to leave was just in time.
It explained a lot. The weirdness was monster related. They attacked me at will and the only place that was safe for me was a summer camp in New York State. So I packed up as much as I could conveniently carry, and followed the satyr (the satyr) out on to the porch.
"Did you call your mom?"
"I left a note," I said. She was busy and might not even notice I was gone for a while. I loved my mother, and I know she loved me, but at the same time, we weren't very close.
"How far is the train station?"
"About ten minutes," I said. "I don't know the schedule, though. What if there's no train and the boar finds us again?"
"There'll be a train."
I had my doubts, but it turned out Ronald was right. I followed him into the train car, glad that I could finally dump my suitcase on the ground and not have to pick it up again. I hoped that wherever we were going, they would teach me how to pack appropriately for life-threatening chase scenarios. I held the tickets. I didn't want them to become a snack before they were punched.
"You know," said Ronald. "I have traveled across country before."
"Well I haven't," I said. "And I don't plan on getting arrested for not having my ticket because you decided to eat it."
"Suit yourself," he said, and pulled out a magazine called Nymph that I quickly decided not to examine too closely.
I did notice that I could read the writing without effort. Apparently it was all Greek to me.
I settled for looking out the window, wondering who my godly parent was. Mum hadn't been any help. I'd shown up on her doorstep while she was in the middle of defending her doctorate, and she always claimed to have been fuzzy on the details of everything in the month leading up to finally getting her PhD, or at least that's what she always said when I asked her why she had elected to saddle me with a name like Andromeda. Frankly, I was surprised I survived at all. My mother had tunnel vision like no other when it came to her work.
I thought about all the Greek Gods I'd ever heard of, turning them over in my mind and seeing if I had any traits in common with them. I kept coming up empty. The satyr had told me that, what with all the minor Gods' children getting claimed, it was possible that I was the child of a lesser known deity. In any case, the Gods had to claim their kids now, so once I arrived at camp it would all be settled. That didn't make me feel any better though.
We made it to the borders of Camp Half-Blood without incident, which was apparently something of an accomplishment, and after I met the centaur in charge (centaur in charge!), I went into the dining hall for dinner and my incipient claiming.
I sized up the tables. The boy at the Poseidon table seemed nice enough. A couple of the tables were ominously empty. The Apollo campers were all really shiny, if that made sense, and the Hephaestus kids were all smeared with soot. They all looked like they'd be fun, but none of them looked like home.
I took my tray and followed the line towards the Hermes table, where I would sit until I was claimed. I passed the fire, and very carefully poured a portion of my meal on to it, like the other kids did. All at once, there was a silver light above the fire, and the sound of an owl hooting, like it was asking me who I was.
Over my head, just out of vision until I turned, but clearly in everyone else's line of sight from how they were staring, there appeared an owl.
Tumultuous cheering erupted from the Athena table, but I didn't smile. Someone had made a mistake. I had a mother already.
"Welcome!" said a girl in an orange t-shirt. "I'm Annabeth. Welcome to the Athena cabin!"
I was pulled in, one of the boys grabbing my tray and setting it down so I didn't spill it, and people shook my hand or hugged me, and pulled me to a chair. By the time I sat down, the shock had worn off, but I was still confused. What if I wasn't Athena's daughter? What would happen to me then?
Dinner was so raucous - not to mention punctuated with explosions - that I was pretty sure no one noticed my discomfort. Afterward, though, Annabeth fell in beside me as we walked towards our palatial looking cabin.
"I know it's hard the first little while," she said. "But you'll get used to it."
"It's not that," I said. "Well, it's not entirely that."
"What's up then?" Annabeth asked.
"I have a mother," I told her. I said the words as fast as I could, and looked her her, preparing for the worst.
"I have a step-mom too," Annabeth said. ""I was never all that close to her, but I get that you don't want to turn your back on her."
"That's not what I meant," I said. "I mean I have a mother. She found me on her doorstep and raised me as her own. She always said that I was hers and no one else's. And I checked, actually. Last year. I have half her DNA, even though she says she didn't actually give birth to me."
Annabeth looked troubled, a crease forming between her brows. She stopped walking and I stopped beside her. The other campers walked around us, like we were an island, and then there was that mist again, and instead of an island of two, we were an island of three. The noise of the other campers faded away like a radio going out of range, until there was just a quiet buzz around us.
"Mom!" said Annabeth with a surprised smile. "It's so good to see you!"
"It's good to see you too, Annabeth," the goddess said. "But I've come to talk to your sister."
I gaped at her, and then managed to choke out, "Annabeth can stay." I didn't want to face a goddess on my own.
"As you wish," said Athena (Athena!).
"So, uh, why did you want to talk to her?" Annabeth asked when it became apparent that, left to our own devices, Athena and I were just going to stare at one another.
"I owe Andromeda an explanation," Athena said. "About her parentage."
I straightened. Here it came. I was a mistake, and no god would claim me, new rules or not.
"You are my daughter," Athena said. "I met your mother when she was in the final months of her PhD. She was brilliant, and her mind was a thing of beauty. How could I not fall in love with her?"
"You…fell in love with her mind?" I said. My mother never dated anyone, ever, and while I could believe that the Goddess of Wisdom would fall in love with her, it was something of a stretch to believe that mum had been in love too.
"That's how children of Athena are born," Annabeth said. "Just like Athena was herself."
That much I remembered, though I still wasn't sold on the mechanics.
"So you and my mother had a kid?" I said. "And that kid was me?"
"Yes, my dear," she said. "You are, most assuredly, mine."
"I have two mothers," I said. I was a bit shell-shocked, but the more I thought about it, the more right it seemed. If my mother were to fall in love, who better than Athena? "Are there others?"
"There haven't been for a long time," Athena said. "Society changes and the gods must follow, even if the change is for ill. But the winds of change are blowing again, and I can once again love all mortals at my own call."
"Um, congratulations," I said, not entirely sure what else was appropriate under the circumstances. "And thank you. For having me. Or...whatever."
"It's best not to focus too much on the details," she said. "I loved your mother and I love you. Welcome to the family."
She took my hand in hers, and the light around us turned golden. My hand burned a little where she touched me, and at the same time was strangely cold, and then she was gone, and the noise of Camp Half-Blood surrounded Annabeth and me once more.
"Can I call my mother?" I asked her. I didn't know if my mum would be home, but I wanted to talk to her, to tell her I knew who I was now, that I'd met my other mother, and that I loved them both.
"Phones don't do so well here," Annabeth said apologetically. "But tomorrow I'll teach you how to make an Iris call."
"Thanks," I said. I looked at the cabin, which looked more like home than it had before I talked to Athena.
"Look!" said Annabeth, pointing at my hand, and I looked down.
Athena was gone, but she had left me a godly present. I held a brass monocular in the hand she had grasped, and it looked ten kinds of intriguing. I looked up at Annabeth and smiled.
"Come on," she said, and grabbed my free hand. She pulled me towards the cabin. "Let's see what it does."
finis
Note: Okay, so this isn't my usual fic. It's kind of soap-box related. But Rick Riordan is so good when it comes to tackling kids with disabilities, kids with mixed heritages, kids with identity issues, kids with family problems and other stuff like that with SUCH GRACE AND AWESOMENESS, and as I was shelving 400 copies of "The Lost Hero", I found myself thinking "You know what would be AWESOME?" and here we are. It had to be Athena, obviously, but that turned out well for me anyway because Athena has always been the one I love the best anyway. :) I hope it felt as natural to you as it did to me.
The title, btw, comes from a style of poetry used by the Greek poet Sappho. Basically, it's the syllable she would stick in every now and then that didn't fit the established pattern, but which made sense given the rest of the poem.
Gravity_Not_Included, November 16, 2011