Early Christmas present, guys! OR, happy late Winter Solstice! Did anyone stay up to watch that moon thing? I couldn't-sleeping and all that.
Anyway, this chapter was written listening to 30 Seconds to Mars on repeat, so some sadness ensues. It was due time, I think. Okay, enough rambling. Warning for cursing and teenager-ness.
Percy Jackson was not one for melodrama; at least, he thought he wasn't. Crap happens; that was his motto, and it sure rang true a lot of the time. The thing was, crap was not supposed to re-happen. The arrival of a person—Adam, Percy thought, his name is Adam—whom just happened to look like Luke couldn't be just happenstance. Things just don't occur randomly, not in his experience.
He was affected by the guy. And it sucked again, because that happened the first time. Luke was admirable and likable and attractive, and then all of a sudden, he wasn't. (Well, he was still attractive, but when someone's hot and also out to get you and everyone you know, the survival thing takes precedence.) Adam was curious and intelligent and had the same face as his worst enemy.
There was one exception, though, that Percy had noticed with a guilty thrill upon the first time Lu—Adam opened his eyes: they were clear sky blue, not a fleck of gold to be seen. And for some inexplicable reason, that made Percy falter like some lovestruck chick instead of getting the job done. Not that he was in love or anything.
Imagine—Percy overthinking something, he could practically hear Annabeth teasing. Percy smiled a bit to himself, but quickly remembered that Annabeth probably wasn't even in the condition to talk to anyone, much less make fun of him. The smile slid off his face. It had been a few hours since the initial shock; maybe after his first weapons class he'd go check on her.
Percy didn't even make it through one lesson. The boy got distracted notching a younger Apollo girl's arrow and nearly took out Chiron's eye, fumbled with his sword, and tripped over his feet attempting to demonstrate a proper javelin throw. The sharp end of the javelin jammed itself into one of the arena's thick wooden benches before Chiron gave Percy a sympathetic look and a not-so-kind shove out of the stadium.
The demigod wandered without direction towards the one thing that always made him feel better—the water. Even from half a mile away, Percy felt the waves pummeling the shore as if despising it for existing, the earth standing impenetrable against it. He could feel the sand meekly floating away, not wanting to get involved in the furious clash between land and sea, and was half-disgusted about how well that fit as a metaphor for his life, while the other half of him was disgusted for thinking in metaphors.
The North Atlantic is dependable only in its temperament, especially in the winter. That part of the sea was typically cold as a bitch from October to April, and at least as mean. Percy got to the beach to see the water and sky around the same color, a portentous gray, and looking as restless and angry as he was starting to feel. It was bizarrely comforting.
Percy toed his shoes off and dug his bare feet into the cool sand. He was starting to get a migraine from all this shit, and Percy cursed to himself. So much for near-invincibility. He wondered whether Achilles got headaches, too, or if it was just Percy. Or if Luke had them.
Percy sat by the water's edge, suddenly exhausted. He flopped backwards like a particularly awkward fish and felt sand burrow into his hair. The kid didn't really care much—he was more focused on letting his eyes slide shut.
The waves were loud, but not loud enough to mask the sound of feet smothering sea grass. Percy shot straight up and whipped his head around from the water, taking in a guilty-looking carbon copy of his old enemy.
Adam shifted his eyes down, scratched the back of his neck. "I'm sorry, I'll just…go."
Percy opened his mouth as if to stop him, but no words came out. Adam just nodded, bright blue eyes full of understanding he hadn't possessed before. He took a last glance at the ocean he'd been staring intently at, then turned away, back towards camp.
Percy tried to talk. "Hey," he said, but it came out more like a hoarse whisper. The young man cleared his throat. "Hey, wait."
Adam looked back over his shoulder at Percy, the tips of his ears red with embarrassment though his face showed not a hint of it. He looked surprised that Percy would even want to acknowledge his existence, and Percy kind of had to agree. But it wasn't as if Adam had done any of this on purpose, right?
Percy remembered something about the Midwest—Adam was from where? Wisconsin? "You ever seen the ocean before?"
Adam's cheeks lit up now, shame coloring his face a shade of dark pink Percy had never seen on Luke, or anyone else for that matter. "Nah. It's kinda sad," he chuckled. "Been all around the country, but never close enough to see the Atlantic."
"Well, don't let me stop you from changing that." The dark-haired youth stood, hooking his fingers in the heels of his shoes.
"Percy."
Hearing Adam say his name made the demigod's breath shudder in his chest. He dragged his eyes to the blonde with dread.
Adam appeared downright miserable. "I really am sorry. About Luke, I mean. He—he was a big deal, wasn't he? You can't want me here." He swallowed.
The younger spoke. "You want the truth?"
A dark expression was in Adam's eyes when he responded. "I always do."
Percy nodded. "Okay."
Thalia Grace was menacing for an eternal fifteen-year-old girl. Percy had gotten used to her prickly ways and dark makeup years before, but watching her reaction to Adam's appearance jump-started all of that fear all over again. The girl was downright terrifying.
"Thalia," Percy said, trying hopelessly to calm down his angrily pacing friend before she zapped him into oblivion. "Please, just chill out."
She shoved the tip of her spear into Percy's face with a disgusted glare. "You're kidding, right? I mean, Percy," Thalia said, rolling her eyes and keeping the sarcasm stingingly thick, "we all knew you were an idiot, but here I was hoping that you would actually grow out of it." The girl yanked the spear out of her now-older friend's face and turned her back on him, facing toward the Artemis cabin door. Her shoulders were shaking in the silvery jacket that seemed to permanently be draped over them, and the glowing air around her half-scared Percy into thinking that she'd explode into a goddess at any second.
Percy could tell that Thalia was gazing across the grass that split the cabins at Cabin Three. He knew that she was looking at Adam, who sat on Percy's cabin stoop rubbing his hands together in the cold, and contemplating whether or not to kill Percy and then kill Adam and bring Percy back to life to kill him again for being stupid.
She spun back on Percy, staring at him from across the empty cabin. The rest of the Huntresses were across the Atlantic in the Forest of Dean, hunting a rare species of stag, but Thalia had crashed at Camp after a particularly difficult Zeus kid retrieval involving giants and one huge trashcan. The bunks were cold and regal, the only signs of any presence of adolescence being the poster of Jared Leto over Thalia's bed and her various clothing articles strewn around. "Perce," she said, the nickname cutting a little. Only Luke had ever called him that. "This is…" Thalia searched. "This is so fucked up."
Percy almost laughed. "Understatement," he responded, standing up from the unoccupied bunk he'd thrown himself into a few minutes ago, fatigued. "But I think we need to hear his side. And he needs to know what Luke meant to us."
Thalia bit her lip, teeth toying with the lip ring she got a year ago. She looked ready to cry, but her posture showed so much tiredness that Percy could guarantee she didn't have the energy to do so. "Maybe you're right, Seaweed."
The son of Poseidon smiled weakly. "Hate it when that happens."
The girl rolled her eyes. "Shut up and come on."
Percy remembered something vital. His hand shot out, fingers grasping Thalia's wrist. "Wait." Percy gulped with guilt. "Gods, Thalia, what about Annabeth?"
Thalia's electric blue eyes opened wide. "Oh, crap."
Annabeth's cabin was a wreck. There were bits of scrolls all over the place, broken chair legs, dents in the walls, looking like a scene out of a disaster film. Lying lonely in the middle of the cabin, in a circle clear of debris, was Daedalus's laptop, smashed to Hades.
Percy froze in shock at the sight of the laptop, broken and limp. It looked as if someone had put it there to keep it safe, but in the end, it became just as wrecked as everything else in the cabin. He had the instinct to pinch himself, but, looking around at the wreckage, Percy realized that not even one of his nightmares could be this bad.
Annabeth was nowhere to be seen. Percy felt his lungs filling up in panic, getting ready to scream out her name, but a hand slipped over his mouth. He looked over to see Thalia with a finger to her lips. "Listen," she mouthed.
He heard it. A soft, pitiful whimpering strained through the air, and Percy's heart dropped when he recognized the sound. The lump in his throat grew to an unbearable size. "Annabeth?"
There was a shift on Annabeth's bunk, the bed sheets melting into a new shape without anyone shifting them. Thalia moved through the fragments of Cabin Six, coming to a quiet stop at the last bunk in the row. Percy watched as Thalia sat gingerly by the pillow on the bottom bed, unsure whether or not he wanted to see what the invisible Annabeth was trying to hide.
Thalia spoke quietly. "Oh, Annabeth." She rested her left hand on thin air, pulled her fingers through unseen blonde hair. Her right hand pulled up on the brim of the Yankees cap they knew was there.
The girl appeared with her back to Percy and Thalia. She trembled like she'd been kicked, and Percy could feel his eyes burning. Thalia hunched over her, and in one movement had the older demigod cradled in her arms. Annabeth tried to resist, just for a moment, before hiding her face again in her friend's shoulder. "I know," Thalia said, much like Percy's mother would when he was a child, coming to her blubbering with a scraped knee, low and compassionate. "I know, I know."
Percy was finding it harder and harder to breathe in there, the girls weeping into each other's shoulders with a sadness he hadn't ever had the displeasure to see before. He treads silence towards the irrevocably broken computer, swearing to himself that he'd find a way to fix it. Percy swore that he would fix all of this.
"So you're him."
Adam looked up from his hands, the tips of his fingers red from the cold, to see a boy of maybe eighteen looking down at him with mild interest. The kid was dressed in almost all black; save for the orange Camp Half-Blood counselor t-shirt, and he had a cigarette between the pointer and middle fingers of his right hand.
Adam supposed that he should get used to this reaction. "Yeah. I'm the guy."
The kid's black eyes showed the most humor he'd seen all day. "That sucks ass, dude."
Adam just looked at him for a second, uncertain whether to laugh or go all Winchester-defensive. He ended up chuckling. "Who are you, kid?"
His companion put the cigarette between his lips in order to offer his pale hand to shake. "Nico diAngelo, son of Hades."
Adam took it. "Adam Winchester, son of John Winchester."
Nico's half-smirk nearly dropped off of his face. The little color that was in his cheeks drained to be replaced with shock. "You're a Winchester?"
The blonde knew something was fucked up if a kid he just met already knew about his family. The Winchester defense was sure kicking in now. "How do you know—"
"Save the suspicious game, my friend. Being a son of the lord of the dead means that you know when people manage to dodge the bullet." Nico laughed, cynical. "And I don't know how much your brothers have told you, but Winchesters are turning out to be extremely good at that."
Adam sighed. The kid was definitely right about that. He watched Nico inhale more smoke from the cigarette, the vapor floating cloudlike out from his lips. "You know, smoking is really bad for you."
Nico shrugged. "I know. Want one?"
The youngest Winchester smiled. "Hell yes, I do."
Tell me what you thiiiiink. Hopefully I will be able to fit in another chapter by Christmas Day. :D