A/N: It's late, but I know you're going to forgive me because it's a lot longer, right? Thanks for the interest so far. Just to be clear, I don't really know where this is going myself. Hopefully, it's going somewhere, because I have proven pretty terrible at planning. Also, I don't have the actual PJO books with me at college, which is causing a bit of a problem. The only one I have access to is BotL, and that's only because I've been secretly stealing it off my roommate's shelf when she's not here. Shhh, don't tell...
Chapter 4
Percy decided there was nothing quite like flying through the sky in the middle of the night with your almost ex-wife behind you and the whole thing done in complete, awkward silence for nearly an hour. He was sure she hadn't flown on a pegasus in years, but thankfully, she had no complaints. She mounted and held on with her knees as if all the battles and adventures had just happened yesterday. She was still good at everything.
But he didn't tell her that. He looked straight ahead at the gray horizon, slowly lightening to morning colors. Eos, goddess of the dawn would be sweeping aside the curtains for Apollo to fly his chariot (or sports car, rather) into the smooth track of the blue sky. He wondered how long it would take for the cops to find out he and Annabeth had crept off in the middle of the night. He imagined it would feel none to great in a few days time when he would get to see Nancy Grace chewing him out on national TV for being a scummy parent.
They had discussed before Blackjack arrived to not tell him the entire story about Cassie's disappearance. Percy wanted to, but Annabeth said it would be best to keep everything quiet as possible, for Cassie's safety, wherever she was. There was no argument against that.
"You two are awfully quiet," said Blackjack. "Haven't seen you in a while, Annabeth. How are things?"
"Oh, everything is fine."
He turned fully around. "Everything is fine?" he said in disbelief. "You filed for divorce two weeks ago. Remember?"
She met him with her eyes that seemed to glow in the early morning fog. "Drop it."
"Whatever," he muttered, facing forward again. He wouldn't quite call their situation fine in any kind of definition.
"Are you guys okay?" Blackjack piped up.
"Yep," said Percy. "We're just fine."
…o…
They landed on the hill at the crack of dawn. The pine tree had grown since they left. Percy felt safer the minute he stepped across the boundary line. Everything looked the same at Camp Half-Blood. In a sense, it made him calmer. With everything outside going horribly wrong in every which way, the stability that Camp Half-Blood always had gave him the reassurance that all the wrongs could somehow be righted.
Beside him, Annabeth inhaled the morning. "What a blast from the past, huh?"
The campers were emerging from their cabins for the start of their day, which had drastically increased in numbers since Percy and Annabeth had attended the place. "Come on," he said, leading the way down the hill toward the Big House. What he didn't expect, was the excited whispers and pointing, and then in a rush, an onslaught of campers crowding around them, eyes wide with adoration as if they were rock stars. They were swamped way before they could get halfway down the hill. "Whoa. Um, what's going on?"
Annabeth exchanged a look with him. "I have no clue, but it's kind of freaking me out."
One of the campers waved, a grin wider than an orange slice pasted on her face. "Hey, Percy!"
He had to blink a couple of times and dig back into his memory. Oh! Some Hermes girl? That was it. She was one of the children Hermes had told him about after the battle and made him promise to retrieve. Except, she was seven when Hermes told him. So he he waited until she turned eleven, by which point, he was already twenty. It was kind of weird, but he had promised. He couldn't remember her name. It started with an "m." Mandy? Marissa? Gods help him, he would feel like a total douche if he failed to figure it out. Her eyes were practically bugging out in happiness. Maria. "Hey, Maria," he said.
One of her friends poked her in the side. "He knows your name?"
"What in the world," Annabeth murmured.
"And you're Annabeth Chase!" someone else said, clearly another child of Athena. They looked a lot alike. The younger girl had darker hair, but the gray eyes were a reoccurring feature.
"Jackson, actually," she corrected automatically.
The girls giggled madly. Percy wanted to sink into the ground and die. No, wait, then he'd have to explain himself to Nico. Maybe sink into the ocean and live in a coral reef for the rest of his life. Basically, be anywhere but here in the middle of their gaggle of fawning admirers. It was flattering; really, it was. He had forgotten that a lot of these kids had only been told the story of the Rebellion, never actually seen he or Annabeth in person. It was different when you were around your friends and people who knew you. Battles were won; awards were given. People would clap you on the back, congratulate you, joke around for a bit, and then everything would go back to normal. Nobody treated you different or special. But some of these kids wouldn't be here or wouldn't have a cabin if it weren't for the two of them. So that was something. It was still weird.
Annabeth clearly thought so too, or maybe she was made uncomfortable by the fact that in a few days time, she would go back to being a Chase.
The campers were all talking at the same time, asking questions, and a few held up scraps of paper (or their arms) for autographs. Percy didn't quite know what to do. He felt bad bailing on them, but he had more important things to do. Carefully, he and Annabeth made their way—steered the entire crowd—down to the Big House. She tried to tell them they were there on important business, but the campers didn't really seem to be listening. Desperate, she looked over at him. "You go in first," she said. "I'll be right behind you. Eventually. Just tell Chiron, will you?"
…o…
The Big House was empty. There was no sign of Chiron, who was always at the Big House at this time in the morning. Mr. D. wasn't there either—he should've been. He still had thirty-some years left to go on his sentence.
Percy realized the house had undergone some renovation in the years since they left. The parlor, for instance, had a fresh coat of blue paint on the walls. Everything looked nicer. They'd replaced the carpet with lacquered wood floor—a nice warm honey color. It looked like hickory. The thought brought him back to the nightmarish time five years ago, when Annabeth had wanted to put hardwood flooring into their house. He practically considered himself a personal hardwood catalogue at this point, able to classify nearly any type of wood. It was not an accomplishment he was proud of. Nor unfortunately, was it one he could forget easily. He found himself classifying wood every time he ran across it, rather like the way he spouted off coordinates when at sea. It made him wonder whether Poseidon secretly had some sort of affinity with wood that he had previously been unaware of.
He pushed open the door in the back. He had been in there before, but it used to be a library that held Ancient Greek texts and other mismatched books. It wasn't anymore. The room was bigger, or so it looked. Now, it held all kinds of strange artifacts on pedestals, some behind glass boxes, each with a little bronze plaque beside it. The room had been transformed into some kind of squished museum exhibit. Some of the displays in the back were still empty. He spotted something familiar out of the corner of his eye. Fascinated, he got closer.
It was. He was sure of it; he had just never seen it before in person: the dragon claw that had scarred Luke's face so many years ago. It had been carefully polished. It was black, but underneath the light, pockets of red and green glimmered. The date had it listed as 2001. Luke. It had been so long since he had crossed Percy's mind. Had he been reborn yet?
And the display right next to the dragon claw was something he hadn't seen in a long time. But he remembered it. Something like that, you couldn't forget. This one was under glass too.
Scarf of the Goddess Aphrodite
Recovered at Waterland, Denver, CO
By Annabeth Chase and Percy Jackson
The label was raised neatly in bronze cast on the little plaque. He ran his fingers over it. They had been twelve. Wasn't that something? All this time…and now it had been made into a museum exhibit, as if it were an archaic thing, years ago, that no one today had any memory for anymore. It was a little bit depressing. He tried not to think in metaphors.
"Well, well. Hasn't it been a long time? Finally thought you'd drop by for a visit, huh?"
Startled by the voice, he turned around. "You?"
Rachel Elizabeth Dare, dressed in a t-shirt and running shorts with her curly red hair tied up stared back. "Yeah. I live here, re-mem-ber?" she said, stretching out the syllables slowly.
"You were gone," he said. "Out of the country or something?" He couldn't quite believe it. She always had a girlish face; her freckles made her look younger than she was.
She came closer, teasing a loose curl behind her ear. "So you kept up, kind of. Yeah, I was in Florence for the last couple of years, doing some extra studies on the Medici-commissioned art of the Renaissance. My Italian is almost passable now." She grinned. Up close, she still had a sheen of sweat on her forehead. He remembered that she liked jogging in the morning.
She glanced up at him—she was a head shorter—and followed his line of vision. "Oh yeah, they changed this place up. In the back, they built some sleeping quarters and a private kitchen for me. I didn't want something separate—too fancy, see. We had a hard time convincing Apollo, because he wanted a massive temple with a chasm and colored smoke. The works. He's got a bit of the melodramatic going on. But he's not the greatest interior designer, so we went with this. And we changed the attic into a studio for me. It's pretty spacious once you take out the molding artifacts and the mummy."
He grinned. "I guess that would be you now."
"That is not funny. I'm turning thirty in a month. Age is not even something to joke about anymore. I mean, Apollo is starting to look visibly younger than me, and that's—well, that's just unfortunate. The gods. Dammit, them and their immortality."
That was one thing he'd always liked about Rachel. Whether they'd seen each other yesterday or had nearly lived separate lives for a decade, sinking back into conversation was easy. Like he'd once thought a long time ago, it was a lot easier than talking to some girls—women—he knew. Something about not having to trod carefully all the time. Funnily enough, though, Annabeth and her had become great friends. Rachel had even been one of her bridesmaids. They used to really run up the phone bill talking for hours—international calls, no less. That was before Annabeth had gotten pregnant and all semblance of normality and time had gone out the window. Falling out of touch seemed like such a thoroughly, mundanely adult thing to do, but he had to keep reminding himself that they were adults now, as weird as it sounded still.
"So what're you up to now?" he asked. "Still reciting your messages of gloom and doom to the world?"
"Well, there's not exactly an age of retirement for this gig, you know? And I don't even remember the crap that comes out of my mouth until someone tells me, so my life is a bundle of sunshine. It's not my fault the spirit of Delphi is such a soppy, depressed thing. Anyway, in real life, I travel to art institutes across the country, giving lectures sometimes. For fun, not like I need the money. And I sell some paintings and sculptures too."
He was impressed.
"So where's Annabeth? She has to be around here somewhere, right?" Rachel asked with a hair tie between her teeth as she re-secured her bun.
"She's outside. She'll be here in a minute." He wondered what was taking her so long. Had the campers mauled her? Maybe he should have stayed out there instead.
"Yeah, how's that going? The married life, and all."
Oh, crap. He kept forgetting that they hadn't broken the news to anyone. Well, was he going to do it? He really, really didn't want to get into the details. And he knew for sure, Annabeth was going to be mighty pissed that he told Rachel without her there. Really, though, since they were officially filing papers and everything, he could do whatever the hell he wanted, right? That was the point of separation, right? They couldn't keep this secret until the next time they met up with friends and then casually dropped into conversation, "Oh, by the way, we're not on speaking terms anymore. Hope that doesn't make things completely awkward." She couldn't tell him what to do anymore. He didn't care. Really, he didn't.
"We're getting a divorce, actually." He tried to sound nonchalant about it, but that really wasn't something you could succeed at sounding nonchalant about. It still hurt to say it, like tiny needles prickling. He ignored it.
Rachel, who had been reading a plaque with her back turned, did a complete turn on her heel and stared at him as if he had just announced that he was going to become a priest. He shifted in his spot uncomfortably, speared by her gaze. "What?"
"Are you really going to make me repeat myself?" he said, insulted.
She waved her hands distractedly. "No, no. I mean, what?"
"Yeah, you said that already." He was quickly discovering why it was a bad idea to break this news by himself.
"But you never said anything. Wow, I never thought this would happen."
"Me neither," he said, wishing they could move onto anything else. Really. Anything. Let's talk about the weather. Let's talk about how it is being the virginal host of Delphi. Well, actually not. Let's not talk about that. But anything else. Unfortunately, she was still going. Why did I bring this up again?
"This is not supposed to happen."
Why did she keep repeating it? "The general idea when you get married is to not have divorce happen," he told her.
"But—but—you guys like are The Couple. The only couple I know that has been wallowing in marital bliss since the wedding. For crying out loud, you're practically the couple from The Notebook! Minus the Alzheimer's and flocks of artistically flying geese, of course."
"Of course." He was, as any human being who possessed the Y-chromosome, mildly embarrassed to admit that he had watched The Notebook in the first place. In his defense, it had been on TV once on a night where he had been clearly desperate out of his thinking wits (gods knew, Annabeth wasn't into mushy-romance crap either, so thankfully, he had never been dragged along to suffer through horrible chick flicks where everyone in the audience knew exactly what was going to happen at the end, but sat through two hours of angst and an overabundance of estrogen anyway), and he couldn't stifle his curiosity as to why millions of girls across the country swooned to the mere mention of the title. He still didn't understand after watching it and feeling mildly pissed that he had wasted his time, but he was never going to bring up that tidbit to Annabeth or any female in life or death.
The thing that came to mind was, you've watched The Notebook too? It seemed like such a thoroughly un-Rachel thing to do. Although, since he didn't want to steer the conversation into the realms of The Notebook, he didn't bring it up. Instead, he said, "You didn't see the divorce coming? You, being the Oracle and all?"
She narrowed her eyes. "I'm not your personal horoscope reading, Percy."
"Oh. Right," he said sheepishly.
The door opened.
"Annabeth!" Rachel exclaimed.
Annabeth went straight to her friend, and they hugged. Percy watched on, thinking this was some kind of weird reality show life was putting him through at the moment. What a thoroughly odd way to reconnect with old friends. For a second, with all the hugging, he could almost think about the good old times, when everything was simple, and nothing had gotten screwed up yet. Then, Annabeth turned to him and asked, "Have you talked to Chiron yet? Where is he?" And his heart sank.
But before he could answer, they heard bickering outside the door. One voice was raised loud and clear, a blustery tone that none of them would ever not be able to recognize. The door blew open and swung out against the wall. Chiron, without his wheelchair, ducked through the door and his flanks brushed against the frame. Behind him, Mr. D in a purple pinstriped suit swept into the room. "I told you," Mr. D said, glaring single-mindedly at his companion, "This is what happens when we let those minor nuisances take on airs. I knew it was a bad idea from the beginning, but we had to listen to the stupid brat all those years—" He stopped dead in his tirade when he finally took the time to catch his breath and look at who was in the room.
Chiron offered a weak smile. "Welcome back," he said. He looked frazzled.
Mr. D positively glowered. "Well, well. And so it begins, I suppose."
A/N: And feedback is great to make sure I'm going vaguely in the right direction. :-)
