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Disclaimer: Oh, to own Percy Jackson and the Olympians. Sadly, I don't.

A Good Old-Fashioned Brotherly Intervention

"That's not how you make a sandcastle."

I looked up from my half-formed structure to find a boy, about my age, gazing at me. He was holding an ice cream, though he was in serious danger of losing half of it if he didn't eat it soon.

I might have told him – if he hadn't just insulted my work.

"What?" I scowled. "I know how to make a sandcastle."

The boy shrugged. "That's gonna get wrecked by a wave if you build it so close to the ocean. And your towers seriously suck."

I got to my feet, hands on my hips, and glared at him. "As if you'd know anything! I didn't even ask for your help. And I'm building it close to the sea so that I can get the wet sand. It clumps together better than the dry one. Not that YOU would know."

The boy wrinkled his nose. "Would too. I'm just not stupid enough to choose sand so close to the water."

The nerve of this rude boy!

"I'm not stupid!" I said crossly, folding my arms across my chest. "I'm top of my class at school. I bet you're not top of anything."

Irritatingly, this didn't seem to bother him at all. "I'm not," he grinned. "I don't care about classes anyway. I like to swim. Especially in the sea."

He cast a fond look out at the ocean, and I noticed that it was the exact green of his eyes. They were very pretty eyes. I'd never seen a bright green like that, not even in my whole school. But of course, this annoying boy had to have the nicest eyes.

"That explains everything," I said haughtily. "Your head's probably full of water and seaweed. Seaweed brain!"

To my utter surprise, he laughed at this, long and loud, like I was the funniest person he'd ever met. I stared at him, baffled. I'd just been making fun of him. Didn't he know that? Why was he laughing?

"Seaweed brain," he said finally, still laughing softly. His ice cream had completely fallen off the cone and splattered on the sand, but he didn't seem to notice. "You're funny. I like you – oh yeah, I don't know your name."

I stood dumbstruck as he looked me up and down, his green eyes thoughtful.

"So you're like smart, right?" he asked. "I bet you know a lot of things. Like a wise old woman."

Finally, I found my voice.

"No, I'm not!" I said angrily. "I'm not old and I'm not a woman! I'm a girl!

I expected him to argue, to fight back as boys always did, so insistent in their own rightness, preparing my response already and then –

"Okay," he shrugged. "Wise girl, then."

I paused, taken aback, but I didn't have time to say anything before a familiar voice called out from behind me.

"Annabeth!" my brother called, jogging up to me. He was holding two ice creams and panted as he reached us. "I was just gonna bring you to meet – "

He stopped then as he noticed the strange boy, and his eyes lit up. "You met him already?"

"Met who?" I asked. Surely, Malcolm couldn't be talking about the weird kid who laughed at my insults and told me I couldn't build a sandcastle?

The boy was smiling.

"Annabeth," Malcolm said with a grin, "this is Percy Jackson."

I was tired.

My backpack felt unbearably heavy as I burst into the girl's bathroom, a sack of stone weighing me down. I shucked it aside as I strode to the sinks, vigorously splashing water on my face as though I could wipe away the day's events by doing so.

Finally, dripping and soaked, I looked up at myself in the mirror.

The water had drenched into my sweater, spreading large damp patches on my shoulder and stomach, dampening my curls so that they looked flat and limp. I looked exhausted and defeated even to myself, nothing like the cool confidence I projected to the rest of the world. I had to be confident, had to pretend like I knew what I was doing, because if I didn't – they would know, all of them, my friends, my teachers, the school, that I was falling apart.

I was falling apart.

I sagged against the sink, bracing my arms on the cool porcelain to keep myself up.

I didn't even have my anger now, my sword and shield against the monsters waiting for me. Anger was good. Anger was power, fierce and furious, to be wielded against those who hurt me. Anger welded together the broken and cracked parts of me, keeping me whole and sane.

And yet it had deserted me now, slipping out of my hands so absolutely that I couldn't find even a shred of it to drag up from the dark, lonely depths.

Calypso and Piper were probably waiting for me, I knew, but suddenly it felt as though I didn't even have an iota of strength to go face them. My best friends would know instantly that something was wrong, and if I saw their kind, loving faces, I would break down entirely.

I couldn't afford to do that.

I was holding myself together by a thread, patching together every single bruised, torn part of me with a single strip of scotch tape, and I didn't know how much longer it was going to last. How long could I endure the fact that my mother had abandoned me? That my father didn't love me? How many times would I be left, again and again and again, not even allowed the courtesy of keeping my ghosts in the past where they belonged? How was any of this fair? What had I done to deserve this?

The anger I'd thought gone welled up then, a volcano laid dormant too long, and I was powerless to stop the deluge as it rushed up and overpowered me entirely. I was at the mercy of the wave, washed away with my logic and reason, which was the only explanation for how I could have ever brought myself to do what happened next.

I swung at the mirror with my bag.

It shattered instantly.

Pieces of glass flew in all directions, showering the sinks and the damp tiled floor, shattering further upon impact with the walls and ground. My bag had protected me from the brunt of the impact, taking most of the broken shards. I dusted myself off on autopilot, picking off anything that had landed on my clothes, and then looked back at the empty space where the mirror had been.

What did you just do?

I stared blankly at the sight before me, my mind struggling to comprehend what my eyes had already registered.

I had broken a mirror.

Not just any mirror, but a mirror in the school bathroom. School property.

I, Annabeth Chase, honour student, perfect role model, all-around good girl – had just damaged school property.

I was just about to start panicking when the door swung open with a bang.

I turned to find possibly the very last person I wanted to see in that moment.

Athena stood stock-still in the doorway, sharp grey eyes sweeping from me to the gaping hole where the mirror had been, taking it all in with one quick look. She was gripping her briefcase, clearly on her way home.

"Annabeth?" she asked, half-questioning, half-disbelieving. "What on earth happened in here?"

I gestured futilely at the mess around me. "The mirror broke."

"I realized that," my mother said, carefully picking her way through shards of broken glass until she was standing right next to me. "How?"

"I smashed it," I said dully. "With my bag."

Athena paused, clearly unsure of how to proceed. I didn't blame her. She'd probably been looking forward to a nice, quiet evening at home, and now she was stuck in a dingy school bathroom with the daughter she barely knew, and whom she most certainly now thought deserved to be certified and locked up in an asylum.

"Are you okay?" she finally ventured to ask.

"Oh please," I laughed, not even bothering to conceal the bitterness in my voice. "Don't pretend to care. You aren't fooling either of us."

Athena said nothing to that, only pursed her lips and turned back towards the shattered mirror. Small fragments of glass remained in the pane, and I caught sight of us side by side as she moved, distorted reflections in a cracked kaleidoscope. I'd seen mothers and daughters who were twins, carbon copies of one another, so alike that the family resemblance jumped out at a brief glance.

Athena and I were the opposite – dissimilar from the shades of our hair to the shapes of our faces.

My mother inspected the damage, moving shards with her foot, and then said, "Go."

"What?"

"Go," she repeated impatiently. "This is considered vandalism and I assume you don't want it on your record. Go and I'll take care of it."

"Take care of it?" I asked dazedly.

For the first time, Athena turned fully to look me in the eyes. I'd thought us dissimilar before, with nothing to give away the fact that she was my mother, but I'd been wrong. My eyes looked back at me, clear as a crescent moon on a silver lake, cool and unemotional. Not obvious on first glance, but identical in every which way – if you bothered to look.

My father had told me once, in a rare moment of openness, that I hadn't been born with grey eyes – that they had darkened over time, as newborn babies were wont to do, till they took on the shade of slate they were now. I wondered if Athena had ever seen them, if she had stayed until they darkened, or if she'd been long gone by then. Had she even known what I looked like, how I'd grown up to be? Had my father sent her pictures, or had she remembered me forever as the child she'd left behind, if she remembered me at all?

The questions surfaced on the tip of my tongue, but I couldn't give them voice. Answers were definite, impossible to take back.

Ignorance was easier. You didn't have to believe what you didn't know.

"Annabeth," Athena said clearly, the sound of my name rolling off her tongue as if she'd said it all her life. "Leave. Now. I'll handle the situation."

I could have stayed. I could have demanded answers, just as I had of my father, just as I had of Percy. I could have hammered at the door forever shut to me, screaming out my time, my hurt, my anger, to someone who would never bother to hear. I could have fought.

I obeyed my mother.

I'd just picked my way through the glass scattered over the bathroom floor, my hand on the door handle, when I hesitated and looked back.

Athena was hunched over the sink, her head bent forward before the damaged mirror as though in prayer. A single strand of her dark hair had come loose from her neat bun, dangling down by her cheek in a perfect spiral. As I watched, she lifted her eyes to her fragmented reflection.

I wondered if that was what I had looked like just moments before, if this was what Athena had seen when she'd come to investigate and found herself trapped in a messy situation she'd never intended to handle. Strangely, the thought made me want to laugh.

She'd left me once to clean up her mess, to fix the broken pieces she'd left behind.

It was probably fitting that I did the same in return.

My phone rang just as I reached the front of the school.

"Hello?" I answered, slipping the phone into the crook of my neck so that I could push open the large double doors that led out to the parking lot. They creaked as they moved, heavy and cumbersome.

"Hey," my brother said in response. "Calypso and Piper filled me in on what happened. Kind of a rough day, huh?"

I laughed dryly. "Kind of."

"Well, I know what this calls for," Malcolm said cheerfully. "Olympus."

I groaned. "Malcolm, this is nice of you and all, but honestly I'm just ready to sleep."

"Sleep can wait. All you ever do is sleep, anyway."

"Excuse me!" I said indignantly. "You know well and good – "

"Oh shut it, Annie." My brother was the only one who could ever get away with calling me Annie, a habit he'd picked up at the age of eight and terrorized me with ever since. "This is a brotherly intervention. Get your ass over to Olympus right now. I'm already here, and I will come and drag you out if you keep me waiting."

Then the son of a bitch hung up.

Okay, Sara didn't deserve that. Sara was nothing short of an angel in human form. It was a pity she'd ended up with a son like that. Maybe it was time for me to get one of those DNA test kits and see if he was really adopted.

I, for one, definitely wouldn't be surprised.

For a second, as I unlocked my car, I toyed with the idea of just ditching Malcolm and driving home to sleep. If I locked my door and told Sara I'd had a bad day, that would probably earn me a few hours of reprieve, and –

Oh, who was I kidding? I was talking about Malcolm, the kid who'd once rigged up an extensive snare outside my bedroom door and laid in wait for me for a whole day. As good-natured as my brother could be, I'd pay for it dearly if I blew him off.

Cursing my life, and domineering older brothers who thought they knew everything, I got into the car and set course for Olympus.

Olympus was a small café situated just a short walk away from Goode, a firm favourite with students and teachers alike, and which had been there as long as I could remember. Malcolm and I had made it a tradition to go there every time one of us had a bad day – if he'd had a bad day at practice or I'd gotten a B on a test, when I'd embarrassed myself by misspelling unequivocal in the school spelling bee (the godforsaken word had haunted me since) or the time he'd fallen off the monkey bars at recess and knocked out his two front teeth.

We should probably have headed to the dentist for that one, but we'd firmly believed that the hot chocolate and strudel at Olympus could singlehandedly cure any ails. I didn't know what Hestia, the owner, did to make them so mouth-wateringly delicious, but I'd been ready to marry the woman for about ten years.

Olympus was packed to the brim as always, the clamor of chattering students, clinking cutlery and shouted orders assaulting me as I walked in. It was just a little bit too hot, but I welcomed the heat, grateful for it after the bracing chill of the November evening outside. I loosened my scarf as I looked around for Malcolm, feeling much more at ease than I had all day. I'd been so busy that I hadn't found the time to come in a while, and I realized just how much I'd missed the familiar warmth of my childhood haunt.

It took me a little while to locate Malcolm in the crowd, but I eventually spied him near the back of the café, ensconced in a corner booth with two huge mugs of hot chocolate before him. I slid into the worn plush seat opposite him with relief and grabbed one, wrapping my hands around the scorching mug and letting the heat sink into my skin.

Malcolm didn't say a word while I drank, gulping down the sweet beverage as fast as I could without causing myself third-degree burns to the mouth and throat. It was perfect, rich and sweet and hearty in all the right proportions, warming me up from the inside out. As much as I'd hated Malcolm for forcing my hand, he'd been right – I had needed this.

Not, of course, that I would ever tell him that.

The scent of butter and cinnamon wafted over the table as I set the mug down and a smiling waitress deposited a plate piled high with Olympus' signature butter-apple strudel. I snatched up my knife and fork and was just about to dig in when my lovely meal disappeared from under my eyes.

Malcolm gently pulled the plate aside, drawing it to his edge of the table where I couldn't reach, and then fixed me with a stern look.

"Talk, and then you get the strudel."

I gaped at my brother. "Are you blackmailing me?"

"I'm incentivizing you," Malcolm said calmly, though a wicked grin was spreading over his face. He transferred a piece of strudel over to his own plate, biting into it and closing his eyes in bliss. "I suggest you talk fast, or there won't be any left."

I momentarily pondered the pros and cons of claiming my bounty by force, but then decided that starting a brawl in the café would probably get me banned forever, and a punishment like that would kill me instantly. Besides, I'd done my fair share of property damage for the day.

So, I gave my villainous sibling what he desired.

The words spilled from my mouth as though they'd just been waiting for the chance, flowing so quick and furious that I nearly stumbled over the sentences. I told him everything – Athena's arrival, my fight with Dad, the argument with Percy, shattering the mirror in the bathroom. I told him about my confusion, my anger, the questions no one would answer.

Of course, I omitted the strange moment I'd had with Percy outside the read room. Malcolm didn't need to know everything.

Unfortunately, I was also sure he would hear the gossip before long, and I intended to be far, far away when that happened.

Maybe I could try my hand at designing igloos in Antarctica.

Malcolm listened quietly while I talked, silent save for a clarifying question or two at parts of the tale. His hot chocolate sat untouched, growing colder and colder, but he didn't seem to notice. When I was finally done, he simply pushed the plate of strudel toward me and sat back.

I didn't need further invitation.

The pastry was still warm when I bit into it, exploding with the sweet flavour of apple cinnamon and butter as it dissolved in my mouth. I polished off three before my grumbling stomach was satisfied, then looked back at my brother.

Malcolm was gazing out the window, frowning as though the sight of a wintry parking lot was a complicated math problem that needed solving. He looked unusually serious, not at all like the carefree, teasing brother I knew.

"What's up?" I asked, slightly surprised.

He startled, looking at me as though he'd forgotten I was there. "Just thinking, that's all."

"Thinking about what?"

"About the first time you, Percy and I met," he said with a small laugh. "Do you remember?"

I rolled my eyes. "How could I forget? He insulted my sandcastle and then called me an old woman. I should have thrown him into the ocean."

"He would've probably liked it," Malcolm snorted. "But I was just thinking it was funny that you still call each other by your nicknames from that day."

I shrugged. "I never really thought about it."

"Maybe you should."

"Malcolm, what's this about?" I asked in confusion. "You're not usually so…cryptic."

"Annabeth," Malcolm said, his voice urgent and earnest in a way I had never heard before. "You're my little sister. Maybe not by blood, but you are, in all the ways that count. And it's my job as your older brother to make sure you're not unhappy or hurt. I can't fix your problems with Athena, and I can't fix your problems with Dad, as much as I wish I could. But maybe I can fix whatever went wrong with you and Percy."

"Malcolm," I said wearily. "I appreciate what you're trying to do. Really. But this isn't something you or I can fix. Percy cut me off. He still won't tell me why. There's nothing I can do about that. And until I get an explanation, I'm not about to try and go all buddy-buddy again."

"Do you have an option?" he pointed out. "Look at what happened at the table read today. It's only November. There's still four months of rehearsals to go. Do you think it's fair to spoil the experience for everyone else just because you have a row with Percy?"

Malcolm sounded perfectly reasonable – and I hated it.

"What do you want me to do then?"

"Be civil. It can't hurt."

Yeah, where exactly had being civil got me? I hadn't wanted to pick a row with Percy Jackson. If I had my way, I wouldn't even have anything to do with him. I'd tried to stay away, to be professional. He was the one who insisted on bothering me, and then glaring at me as though I'd personally caused all of his life problems.

But before I could say any of this, a loud, booming voice rang out over the din. "Well! I haven't seen you two in a while!"

Hestia stopped by our table, her round face jolly and cheerful as she beamed around at us. She set her hands on her hips and arranged her face into a frown, though the twinkle in her warm brown eyes gave her away. "What do you have to say for yourself?"

"Hestia, I would have come long ago, but this one over here…" Malcolm jerked his head at me. "Well, you know what she's like."

"Still working yourself to death?" Hestia clucked disapprovingly. "You're too thin child. Pale too. You need some sun and sugar in you."

Then she caught sight of my face and her voice gentled. "You okay, honey?"

I didn't even want to imagine what I must have looked like, drawn and tired from lack of sleep, still carrying the weight of all the day's events. If it was anything close to the mess I felt on the inside, I probably made a fine sight.

I tried for a weak smile. "Just fine, Hestia."

Hestia studied me for a while and then gestured to a nearby server. "Don't you worry. I know just what you need."

Before Malcolm or I could form a response, another plate of strudel, piping hot from the oven, arrived at our table. "On the house," Hestia announced with a smile, dismissing our feeble protestations with a wave of her flour-dusted hand. "Don't even try to pay, or I'll ban you both from coming back here."

"You're a goddess, Hestia," Malcolm proclaimed, already tucking into the strudel. "I will begin a religion in your honour."

Hestia shook her head at him, then turned to me and laid a comforting hand on my shoulder. "You'll be alright, my dear," she said softly. "Nothing can knock you down if you don't let it. Don't you ever forget that."

I smiled at her, a real one this time. "I won't."

She winked at me. "Keep that chin up, sweetheart."

Then she was gone, plunged into the hustle and bustle of the busy café, but the reassuring warmth that had enveloped me in her presence remained – like a loving hug on a cold winter's night.

I'd spent the past week lamenting everything that had been taken from me, cursing every betrayal, every lie, every loss I had been forced to suffer. But I'd been so wrapped up in my misery that I'd failed to see what I did have – my friends, my brother, my stepmother. People who did care about me, who loved and supported me.

I couldn't throw all that away for the people who didn't.

I was done being pushed around at anyone's will, always forced to react, to work with the scraps doled out to me. I was done with being too much. Too much for my mother to handle, too much for my father to deal with, too much for Percy to keep around.

Fine.

I would give them exactly what they wanted.

Malcolm had been right. Being civil to Percy, to Athena, to my father, was the only way I had to move forward.

But I didn't have to be civil. Not really.

After all, I had been told by a rather reputable source that I was a pretty good actress.

In case anyone couldn't tell, I'm seriously craving some butter apple strudel.

If you've never tried it – oh my god. Go and get yourself some right now because I swear it is actual ambrosia.

Anyway, my apologies for the wait, but January ended up being a pretty hard month for me. I was constantly falling sick, feeling tired and dealing with frequent colds, and I couldn't muster up the energy to do anything, let alone write. I had to be tested for Covid-19 (not fun, let me tell you) and though it thankfully turned out negative, I was having a pretty rough time. Compound that with some personal problems at home and in friendships…yeah, let's just say 2021 didn't start out great.

Sorry about the mini pity party, but this is not meant to be an excuse, just an explanation. Quite a few people PMed to ask me for the next update, and although I'm absolutely thrilled you're so invested, unfortunately life just gets in the way of writing sometimes. Rest assured that no matter how long it takes, I will ALWAYS come back here. This is my happy place.

As always, please review and let me know your thoughts on this chapter, life, anything really. It makes me so happy to hear from you all.

Till next time, take care!