Woohoo I'm done Archie's chapter! I enjoyed writing this, even though I feel it reads a little awkwardly and he's not described exactly as I intended. That's okay, I'm pretty proud since Archie's a tricky character, and I got this written faster than I'd aniticipated. As always I don't know Class of the Titans.

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The Seven Keys

Archie

The rain was coming hard. He could see it sliding across his window and hear its persistent hammering against the roof, fluctuating every time the wind blew.

Archie was at his desk, watching the dancing symphony that was playing against the glass. He turned back to the paper on the table and wrote a line in a scrawling hand:

Against my window battles savage rain

He read it again and crossed out the words, adding a seventh to the group of inky rejects.

Archie looked out the window again and let out a self-deprecating laugh which sounded more like a hmph. His poetry was becoming so angstily cliché but he couldn't seem to get out of it.

He leaned back on his chair, teetering on the two hind legs, and stared blankly at the ceiling, letting the hammering for the water fill his murky room. From downstairs the drone of a vacuum challenged the rain for Archie's subconscious. His mother, a thin, obsessive-compulsive woman, always took dreary days as a sign to clean the house, and would only stop once the weather changed. During the loudest storms she vacuumed, which irked Archie because he reveled in the uncontested growls of the sky and the lashing of the rain.

He let his chair fall forward with a thump and rested his elbows on his desk, staring again at the piece of paper there, though his mind was caught up in the steady pounding on his roof.

He had once been described as fearless by one of his classmates, although a more appropriate word would have been gutsy, and Archie couldn't understand it: despite his love of rain, it was only when he was indoors. Even a moderate rain falling on Archie made him antsy. Thunderstorms meant feigned illness just to avoid going outside in the water. It was his only fear and he'd had it since he could remember.

No matter how many "face your fear" courses his mother signed him up for, they were always unsuccessful, probably because the first step of overcoming a phobia is to know its origin, and for the life of him Archie could not remember when this fear of water had begun. His parents couldn't help either, because before he could even talk Archie would cry during every bath and never, ever swim when the chance arose. Archie made it a point to tell only his closest friends about this fear, and made up excuses to avoid swimming in PE.

Archie stood and started pacing absentmindedly, trying to shake the feeling of foreboding he got if he thought too long about water. Every second step came down heavier, though Archie had learned to control it for the most part and paid no heed as he wandered his dim room.

Another inexplicable disability from before he could remember, Archie had a golden brace on his right leg covering from his ankle to just below his knee. Every time he grew, his worried mother, ignoring the cost, got him fashioned a new one.

When Archie first began to walk, later than most children, he could barely move his right leg due to the weight of the brace. His mother insisted, against the urge of Archie's father, to keep the brace on him and make Archie learn to walk with it on, because the tendon weakness in that heel would otherwise render him virtually immobile.

His mother's worry for Archie's safety led her to incessantly dote upon him, even once he was well past the age of exceptional motherly care. When Archie was old enough to realize his mother was obsessively babying him, he became defiant. He could look after himself, and it infuriated him that his mother didn't think so.

The premature rebellion brought on by this treatment, added with the tough, brooding face Archie adopted later to avert ridicule from any classmates, gradually embedded itself into his personality and by age 12 he was a stand-offish, reclusive young man who was avoided, despised or idolized for his sharp attitude.

Aside from younger, awe-struck taggers-on, Archie was thus a loner in his class. He made no effort to get along, however, giving quick, final answers to possible conversation starters. People began to assume he just liked being alone, and kept their distance.

A few years later the rebellion did not only diffuse itself further into his personality but into his appearance as well. Archie had bought bright purple hair dye from a drugstore and one night, after another meek pleading his mother to "be more like a normal boy, and be careful for your ankle" that finally pushed him over the edge of frustration, he cut his hair into a rudimentary faux-hawk and soaked it in the offensive liquid without a moment's hesitation. Archie knew his mother would be devastated – she primped and adored his wavy copper hair almost as much as she worried over his ankle and attitude. The next day at school he could feel people's intrigued stares that never met his eyes, and he hid his smug expression at the back of the room with crossed arms and an unnoticing air. Later, whenever the dye began to fade, he re-coloured his hair until people forgot he was ever an original auburn.

That time was when Archie had started to get into poetry and classical literature. He had a lot of time alone, and chose to spend it in the muffled, secluded library reading the tragedies of Hamlet and Romeo.

Despite his rude demeanor, somehow Archie was tamed by the melancholy prose of the lovelorn Othello or the deranged Macbeth, and his attitude was softened slightly for it. Inspired, he began to write poetry of his own, to vent any feelings he had onto paper, intended for no one but his lamplight.

Once he discovered classical Greek epics, he was even more irreversibly hooked. Archie felt a strange connection to the heroes of the stories, and had snuck out of the house to buy his own copies of the books that now lived hidden in the lowest realms of his bookshelf. He would never have borrowed them from the library because he knew he would read them to ruin, not return them, or be found out.

Above all he could not have been found out, so to save his reputation and not please his mother with the knowledge that he was interested in something "above himself" he kept his reading hidden. Thus the darkest corners of his shelves were piled high with the broken spines of his favourite books, hidden from the hopeful glances of his mother for some sign of docility.

Archie stopped his pacing and knelt beside his bed, searching the shadows of a large wooden unit for a recent though already tattered purchase. He had seen this book in a small bookstore and bought it without hesitation, knowing it would help inspire him in writing, which it had.

He pulled out The Book of Greek Verse carefully and was about to open it to a random page when a heavy object fell out and onto the floor with a clink. In the dim light of his room he could see a few yellow gleams off what he determined to be a gold disc on a thick chain.

Archie scooped up the item and brought it to his desk along with the book. Laying the book under the light, Archie placed the token atop that and peered at it through the yellow glow of the lamp smudged with the blue from the rain-spattered window.

It was a golden medallion on a linked chain, flat on one side and raised on the other. The raised side, glinting at Archie now, was almost pyramidal, with the point sprouting a golden arrow that aligned with what he recognized as rho, the greek r that looked like a P. The whole pendant was encircled with letters from the Greek alphabet, and the cover of his book was framed the same way.

Archie did a double take and looked again at the border that traced the edge of the book's cover. In each of the corners was a picture of a golden circle with an arrow budding from its midpoint, pointing towards the title. His eyes darted between the strange relic he had just found and its miniscule clones nestled in the corners of his tome. Why had he never noticed either of these before?

He lifted up the pendant by its chain, the flat side twisting its elegant A into view. Archie squinted his eyes in skepticism before decidedly slipping the medallion into a large purple duffel bag filled with extra clothes and a notebook. Going for a jog would help clear his head, and by now the rain had settled to a gentle patter.

Slinging the bag over his shoulder, Archie headed down the stairs swiftly into the sickening smell of pine sol. The buzz of his mother's vacuum echoed in his ears, now at full amplitude without opposition from the rain. Archie paused at the door and knocked his right heel inattentively on the floor as he usually did when thinking something over. Twisting the knob, he turned and yelled "Mom I'm going for a run" over his shoulder, and stepped out the door without waiting for a reply.

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Okay so it's twelve at night and this is my second version because I stupidly deleted the first document, so any little mistakes I'm sorry for, I'd already read it over about five times before I lost it. Gah. But Odie's next, getting close to finishing! Although I also want to continue my fic "Song Stories" so I may not update Odie for a while. A little endnote about Archie tapping his heel: I know he doesn't do it in the show, but I also know that when I have a bracelet or something on I always fiddle with it or tap it against thigs, so I figured Archie'd develop a similar habit with his brace. Like biting the end of a pencil. Anways to reiterate what I say every chapter: review please, because it makes me warm and fuzzy inside :D (...even if it's concrit). Yay