Everything held their breath when they set foot on camp half blood for the first time in over a year. It had been a tough year for everyone, battles and monsters and godly wars; not dissimilar to previous years but somehow harsher. Grumbles and grouses were common ground within the camp and almost everyone fell into the easy routine of complaining about something.
But when they walked past everyone fell silent. Physically, they looked fine. Rougher and more worn around the edges, scars littered in places they hadn't been before and just a little on the boney side to be considered healthy. Still, all things considered for two people that had literally gone through hell together Percy and Annabeth looked practically radiant.
Of course, no one looked them in the eyes (the shadows there were too dark, the irises too wild) and movements were slowed down around them (they didn't talk about the way Percy nearly impaled for someone for moving too fast on the edge of his vision, or how Annabeth's eyes tracked every move in an almost anamalistic fashion). They were fine. Really.
No one was really suprised when on the first night back Annabeth didn't look at the Athena cabin. Not even a glance was spared. Instead she walked straight past to the low curved walls of Poseidon. She moved differently now. She'd always moved like a warrior, sure footed and steady but now she rose on her toes and lilted, looking as of at any moment she might topple and fall. It looked similatinously perilous and dangerous, like the walk of a wounded predator.
Before people had stopped and talked with her, even if only briefly, but now they tried to give her space. Not out of any thought against her but out of the worry of what she how she might react. Both her and Percy were unpredictable and erratic now.
Percy used to smile so easily but no one had seen him do so since they'd both got back. Occasionally he might have grimaced as though he were trying to remember how to appear less haunted but the effect was worse than the blank look. Eventually people decided to give him a wide berth alongside Annabeth. It wasn't like he'd mind, they reasoned, he never spoke anymore.
He'd been silent since they'd finished coughing and hacking up ash and smoke and trying to extinguish the hellfire in their minds. He might've spoken to Annabeth but no one really knew for sure. They were never without the other but it seemed like they'd grown so attuned to each other that words had become clumsy and damaging. So they simply didn't use them.
Annabeth was slightly better. She spoke monosyllables when spoken to and had even nodded at her siblings when she saw them. They always nodded back but they were the only ones.
It didn't take long for the other campers to become wary, even afraid, of them. Between the vacant stares, jerky movements and silence they became outsiders in their own homes. New campers heard stories about the boy and girl who saved the city and the world when they stopped Kronos but when they asked which one of the older campers they were troubled glances were exchanged. Soon, the fresh faced and wide eyed younger ones scampered off in the opposite direction if they saw Percy and Annabeth and averted their eyes should they be stuck where they were. Of course, there was always one or two of the older ones, the ones who could remember the smiling faces and quick laughs, keeping a surreptitious eye in them. It was almost a camp tradition of keeping an eye on the more unstable members of the group but no one was willing to actually call it what it was; a suicide watch.
They didn't mean anything by it but even the old campers who'd known the goofball Percy and exasperated Annabeth were guilty of such actions sometimes. The only person who refused to treat them any differently was Nico. They thought it was because he understood.
When he sat with them, it was just that. They three sat in silence all staring into the distance an odd distance set between them. Out of all of them Nico was the only camper who could understand. He'd gone through tartaus, seen the evil, corruption and vile condition of human nature with his own eyes. He'd been caught and kept in his father's kingdom to face the coming end of days. And he'd been alone.
On the outside things didn't get any worse. They didn't get any better but the other campers counted themselves lucky.
It wasn't until night had fallen on that first night that they truely realised.
The lazy summer sun had only just dipped behind the hill of the camp, taking its long and hazy shadows with it when the last light was turned off, leaving the camp warmed only by the glowing hearth. Eyes closed and murmers of goodnight were all that were on anybody's mind.
A scream ripped through the air.
The fragile peace that had fell gently like a summer's dusk was torn away. Half-bloods sprang from their beds, grabbing whatever was to hand. It was the head councillor from both Ares and Hermes that reached the scene first.
They flung open the door to the Poseidon cabin, uncaring of etiquette or decorum. Swords high and muscles tensed they sank into a crouch to greet their enemy.
There was none and yet the screams didn't stop.
Percy and Annabeth laid together on a single bunk so tightly entangled that it looked like that they were all that anchored each other.
Another scream ripped the air and with it Clarisse of Ares rushed forward. The sound was more chilling than she'd ever heard. Fear and terror and painpainpainpainpain-
She did the only thing she could think of to do. She reached out with a hand and hit. Hard.
Percy woke chest heaving and eyes frantic. She could see it as the dream (memory?) retreated from his eyes. A fumbling hand searched until it found Annabeth. It encircled her arm like a soft shackle; pleading for her to stay but not allowing her to go.
Then he began crying.
Clarisse wasn't sure what was worse, the fact that possibly the strongest demigod she'd ever known had been reduced to this or the fact that throughout the whole ordeal Annabeth hadn't once stirred.