Rachel didn't know which had come first: the prophecy or the intuition.

To rephrase that, she didn't know if she'd been born with the gift of reading people and subtext because she was always fated to become the Oracle of Delphi, or whether she was just naturally clearsighted and intuitive and the Oracle had been drawn to her because of it.

But one thing she did know was that she didn't need either of these to know that she had to find Annabeth.

After waking up and regaining her strength from her prophecy – it was annoying that the spirit of Delphi drained her so much – she'd listened to the whispers going around and from there it had been pretty easy to piece together what was going on. Jason, Piper, and Leo – the three newcomers – were heading off on the quest. The camp was in chaos.

And where did that leave Annabeth? Knowing her, somewhere off by herself, brooding. And Rachel was pretty sure she knew where.

She found her on the beach, of course. Her knees were drawn up to her chest, her hands tucked around them, and she was staring aimlessly off into the waves.

"Hey." Rachel approached her, her feet crunching the frozen sand, and sat beside her. "Aren't you cold?"

Despite the fact that she was only wearing a Camp Half-Blood T-shirt and ripped jeans (not even a coat!), Annabeth wasn't even shivering. She stared resolutely forward. "No."

Rachel shuffled around until she was facing Annabeth. "I'm surprised to see you here," she remarked, hoping to get a rise out of her. "I'd expected you to be off driving yourself to exhaustion."

"I'm heading out again tomorrow morning," Annabeth responded tonelessly. "Chiron" –here her voice took on a bitter edge – "convinced me to wait and see the questers off before I leave."

"You're mad because he's not telling you something," Rachel guessed.

The flash in Annabeth's eyes confirmed her suspicions. "He doesn't keep things from me, ever," she said. "And to start now, while Percy's off gods-know-where" –

"That's the question, though, isn't it?" Rachel interrupted. Glorying in the lack of manners instructors telling her to "sit like a lady," she eased herself into a cross-legged position. "Do the gods know where?"

Annabeth opened and closed her mouth a couple of times. Then she shrugged. "I would think so," she said, "considering that this all coincides so well with the gods' decision to shut Olympus. Not to mention that vision – and the whole Hera thing – it all seems a little too connected to me."

Rachel shrugged. "You're probably right. I just wish Apollo would send me a sign."

"Have you heard from him? Since the shut-down?" Annabeth sat up straighter, her eyes flaring with that manic energy that was more familiar to Rachel than this exhausted despair.

"He leaves me random presents, sometimes," she offered. "Nothing useful – a drachma under my pillow, a sun drawn in the corner of a painting – ruined some of my best work, too. I think it's just to show that he can subvert Zeus's orders. You know him." Apollo was basically a teenage rebel – a very powerful, very attractive teenage rebel with his own sports car and a penchant for bad poetry.

Annabeth's hands tightened into fists. One of her eyes was twitching. "I wish I could do something!" she raged, her voice suddenly loud. "If there were some better – some sign that isn't totally misleading – I just feel so helpless! I hate not being able to do anything." Her head sank down so that her chin was resting on her knees. "I wish I could just leave now, to look for him. But . . . I don't know where to look."

"Do you want me to come with you, when you go?" Rachel offered spontaneously. "I'm pretty good at finding things." She winked, a reminder of that summer in the Labyrinth, when they had first gotten to know – and immediately dislike – one another.

Annabeth smiled at the memory, but Rachel couldn't help but notice how exhausted it looked. The corners of her mouth barely turned up; dark bags shadowed her eyes. "I – won't Chiron want you here, in case something happens?" she hedged, probably trying not to let her hopes get up again.

Rachel lifted one shoulder. "Considering that we just sent out a quest . . . I doubt anything important will happen anytime soon. Besides, they can get word to us if they need us." The truth was that she wanted to find Percy, too. She hadn't gone crazy about it like Annabeth – but he'd been her gateway into the mythological world, and he'd wormed his way into her heart and established himself pretty firmly there. The romantic desires may have winked out as quickly as the Oracle spirit had set in, but Rachel loved Percy, too.

Annabeth hesitated for only another fraction of a second. "Then . . . then yes. Please come with me." The corner of her mouth started to tremble, but then her jaw clenched and she held her face firm.

Rachel's heart broke a little. She leaned forward and put her hands on her friend's shoulders. "It's not shameful to be sad, you know."

"Yes it is," Annabeth insisted. "Because that would imply that I've given up on him. And I'm not giving up."

Rachel snorted. "Does that apply to sleep? Have you slept at all in the last three days?"

"Yeeeees . . ." Annabeth tugged on a curl. "I had to, to get that dream vision I told you about."

Rachel rolled her eyes. "You can't fool me, Annabeth. That was not you sleeping. That was you literally passing out from exhaustion."

"How do you know that?"

"I'm the Oracle of Delphi. I know stuff."

Annabeth raised an eyebrow.

"Fine, so I talked to Will. But it doesn't change the fact that you haven't let yourself sleep since Percy disappeared. How about food? Have you eaten?"

"Does coffee count?" Annabeth had the grace to look a little abashed.

Rachel sighed and stood. "Okay," she said, "this is what we're going to do. Dinner's over, but we're going to go to the Hermes cabin and bribe – or threaten – them into giving us some food. Once you've eaten, we're going to go to my cave and sleep, so I can keep an eye on you. I will make sure you get a good night's sleep – and if we have to, I'll get something from Clovis. Tomorrow morning, we will see the questers off, tell Chiron I'm going with you, and head out to look for Percy." She reached out, taking Annabeth's hands, and drew her to her feet. "And then we're going to find him and poke him with sharp things for disappearing on us."

Annabeth let out a reluctant laugh. "Okay," she said, "fine." She put up no resistance as Rachel tugged her around and led her back towards the cabins. "And Rachel?"

Rachel looked over, to see the gray eyes softer than usual. "Yeah?"

"Thanks."

"What are friends for?" She bumped Annabeth affectionately with her shoulder.

Annabeth bumped back, and Rachel knew they would be okay.

...

Okay, so I know they just talked about a boy. I know I didn't pass the test. But I hope it makes it slightly better that it's more about a mutual friend of theirs, camp policies, and stuff. I don't know. I just love Annabeth's and Rachel's friendship, and it's another that's criminally underrated.