Author's Notes: So, this is my first fanfic ever. I have no idea how this site works or if anyone will read this, but if you do, let me know in a review or whatever it's called. Would be much appreciated. I'll also be trying to figure out how the communities work so I can maybe submit them there once the story is substantial enough.

This story idea came to me after finishing Blood of Olympus for the first time, and is a combination of a bunch of different ideas I liked from both HoO and PJO. It will have some action, excitement, and adventure, but mostly I think it will be a story about the characters learning about themselves and each other, developing their relationship(s), and overcoming their weaknesses and self-doubts.

Each chapter will indicate whose point-of-view we're reading from, similarly to how it's done in the Heroes of Olympus books, and will switch between Reyna and one other character (maybe one more if I deem it appropriate). This story takes place not too long after the end of Blood of Olympus. Everything up to that point is canon, and everything afterwards (Trials of Apollo, etc.) is not, as far as this story goes. I plan on trying to write and publish one chapter a week, but I can't make any promises. Also, I'm starting out by publishing the first two chapters immediately.

Also, I will occasionally include song titles in bolded parentheses. This will be meant as a sort of optional soundtrack for the story, so listen along if you want to for the full experience!

I do not own Percy Jackson or Heroes of Olympus. This is a fan-made work my myself purely for my own and others' entertainment.

So without further ado, I present the beginning of Finding Home.

Finding Home

1

Reyna

Running from bloodthirsty harpies through a high-end neighborhood in west Michigan wasn't exactly part of Reyna's plan for the day. Though, to be fair, being a demigod meant that this wasn't quite as much of a surprise as it would be to any other normal person. Some people get stuck in traffic on their way to work. After everything she'd been through, Reyna felt as though a harpy attack on her way to find a cure for a mystical disease was probably the demigod equivalent of a congested highway during a commute.

Of course, the throbbing pain of the claw wound on her shoulder begged to differ.

Reyna winced as she ran down the smoothly-paved street. The yellow light from the street lights and nearby houses illuminated her path well enough to see where she was going, but as she occasionally glanced behind her, she couldn't see more than brief shadows of wings above. There were only two of the monsters, at least that she had seen.

A shrill screech filled the night air, diving down towards her. Reyna leaped to her side without looking back, feeling the rush of air above her as she slammed into the ground.

"Dinner must stop running from hungry harpies!" hissed a voice from above.

Reyna cursed under her breath as she pried herself from the ground and kept running. Any other day, she would have been able to dispatch these creatures easily. But between her exhaustion, her shoulder wound, and the lack of light, she knew she probably couldn't fight back. Of course, there was also the issue of the other voices she had been hearing, which didn't help, either.

Regardless, she knew that she couldn't keep running all through the night. She needed to lose them and find somewhere to hide. Preferably overnight, although that seemed unlikely given the harpies' sense of smell.

She glanced up and down the street at the houses lined up around her. The neighborhood seemed to be a fairly nice one, with modern two-story houses and large, grassy yards surrounding them. There were a good number of tall trees as well, their canopies entirely covering many of the yards. Of course, none of the houses showed any light through the windows, and Reyna wasn't about to try to break in to one only to frighten some poor family who wouldn't even be able to see the creatures chasing her. Convincing the residents that she was on the run from hungry half-bird, half-human monsters from Greek legend that were invisible except to her and that she needed to hide from them seemed like a recipe for a panicked 911 call, something she definitely didn't have time for.

As she continued down the dimly lit path, Reyna saw that the street ahead of her met another in a T intersection, with houses along the far end of the road. She couldn't see any houses or trees beyond them, and in a moment, she figured that this was the edge of the neighborhood, with Lake Michigan directly in front. The house in front of her at the intersection was unlit from the inside like the rest, but as she drew closer, she saw what looked like a figure get out of the car parked in the driveway. The person casually walked around the car to the back, opening the trunk and reaching inside.

Another terrible shriek pierced through the night air, and as Reyna began to sprint faster, she saw the person by the car swivel to glance back down the street towards her. She couldn't make out their facial expression from a distance, but she knew they saw her.

"Hey, you okay?" she heard the person call out, noticeably concerned and not quite at a full yell, probably so as not to disturb the sleeping neighborhood.

Possibilities flashed through Reyna's mind as she quickly tried to determine what to do. She couldn't exactly stop and turn around, lest she want one injury to turn into many more. But she also wasn't sure how a mortal would react to her situation, especially given that they shouldn't be able to see what was really happening. Maybe they would think she was being hounded by a flock of angry birds.

However, in that moment, she saw a flash of realization on the person's face as their eyes trained on something behind her, which quickly turned into a look of shock. They swiftly turned to put something down and close the trunk, before turning back to face her direction as she neared.

"C'mon, inside!" They gestured towards the house, standing and watching her approach. Reyna hesitated, but as another wail sounded from behind her, she decided she didn't have much of a choice. She stepped onto the stone path in front of the house, passing by the stranger, who was standing and waiting for her. They followed close behind, and they bounded up the few stone steps to the front door. The stranger quickly pulled out a key and unlocked the door, stepping in and waiting for just a moment for her to enter, before closing and locking it behind her.

The stranger stood at the door, peeking through the blinds of the small window beside it. Reyna stood a few feet back from the door, eyes trained on it unswervingly. The muffled cries of an annoyed pair of harpies echoed through the front hall as the two strangers waited with baited breath in the dark. A minute that felt like an hour passed, with occasional shrieks from outside. Finally, one last screech was heard a good distance away from them, and when another minute had passed with no follow-up, Reyna let go of a long-held breath, which the stranger echoed soon after.

As they did so, the stranger leaned against the front door, reaching over to the wall to press a light switch. The hanging overhead entrance light blinked on, and Reyna caught her first good look at the helpful stranger.

He seemed to be a young man, maybe around her own age of seventeen. As he took another deep breath, he ruffled his short, red-brown hair, leaving it rather messy, with a few strands leaping at odd angles. He stood at around her own height, though it was hard to tell with him leant over slightly. He turned towards her, his golden-brown eyes trained on her own with a mix of concern and interest. As she glanced over his face to try and read his expression, she found an odd lack of panic; he was clearly alert, probably shaken out of any possible sleepiness by the urgency of the moment, but there wasn't really any trace of fear, at least from what she could tell. In fact, there was the tiniest hint of a strange spark in his eyes. She couldn't tell what it was exactly, but there was a trace of some underlying unexpected emotion, and she didn't know whether to be worried or relieved by it.

"Are you alright?" His voice gently shook her from her blank staring. Reyna refocused her eyes on his.

"Yes," she said simply.

The stranger raised an eyebrow, titling his head as he glanced her over. "You sure? That looks like it hurts."

As he pointed, she realized she was still clutching her shoulder with the opposite hand. She put her hand down, pain still throbbing in her shoulder. "Yes," she said again.

The stranger huffed, softly chuckling to himself. "Well, if you don't mind, I can grab some things to help with that."

The two of them stood awkwardly for a moment before Reyna realized his statement wasn't rhetorical, and that he was actually asking if she minded or not. She nodded.

"Well," he said, glancing back at the front door. "Hopefully we won't have to worry about those things coming back. Maybe I do need to install a security system…" he trailed off as he began to walk further into the shadowed house.

Reyna turned to follow, but stopped for just a moment. Being a demigod meant being hyper-aware in dangerous situations, something that had been sharpened in her over years of training and leadership. So, as she paid attention to every detail, she noted a few things.

One, that the house apparently didn't have a security system. Which seemed odd, given the size and apparent price of the house. In any case, that was useful information, whether it meant that they weren't as safe as she hoped and would need to be on high alert, or that she could escape if this stranger turned out to be a creep.

Two, that this teenager was apparently the owner of the house. Another strange notion. She figured that maybe he wasn't, and in fact just oversaw some of the logistics around the house that would involve him being the one to install a security system. That seemed similarly strange, but in either case, he appeared to have some amount of responsibility to this place than most other people would at his age. Though, she was around the same age and was currently a Praetor of the Twelfth Roman Legion. So she supposed it wouldn't be too odd for someone her age to own a place like this.

And thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, this person apparently saw the monsters that had been chasing her. As a demigod, it was sometimes difficult to tell what mortals actually saw when monsters and magic were let loose into the modern world. The Mist - the magic that hid the true nature of Greek and Roman monsters and gods - was a powerful thing, and it wasn't every day you stumbled across someone able to see through it, especially if they were really just a mortal. It was possible, Reyna knew, as she knew or had heard of such people. Rachel Elizabeth Dare and Sally Jackson, just to name a couple. But it was rare. She couldn't tell yet from his reaction what exactly it was that he saw, so it was possible he didn't see much more than a flock of rabid geese, or something similarly worrying to a mortal mind. But still, it was possible.

Everything considered, Reyna decided she needed to trust this person, if only to figure him out and take care of her wound. Maybe get some rest and food. So, she followed him into the house after her short moment of thought.

The stranger first walked to the wall on the far side of the room, opposite the front door, flipping a switch. An overhead light fixture flickered on, illuminating the room. Reyna squinted as her eyes adjusted and she glanced around. The front door opened directly into a large living room with a raised ceiling, with a pair of couches and end tables facing each other. Aside from that, there wasn't much in the way of furniture, nor any smaller items aside from a couple lamps here and there. Tall windows lined the front wall of the house, currently covered by a set of huge crimson curtains. The walls were a warm and textured wood, with a handful of wooden support beams angled at the corners of the ceiling. In the far wall, which was made up of brown cobblestone, there was a massive fireplace. That feature in particular caused Reyna to wince instinctively, as she recalled her time in her father's house in San Juan hiding in the fireplace with her sister Hylla.

In fact, she couldn't help but even at first glance compare this place to her father's house in Puerto Rico. She remembered how much effort he had gone to in order to turn the old Spanish hacienda into his vision of what a home should look like: white, windowed, and wretched. Ugly furniture, blinding walls, and filled with an emptiness that made her uncomfortable standing anywhere. It was the definition of hollow, dressed up with nothing good inside.

This place was different. It was hard to put a finger on, because on the surface, it shared some similarities. It was big and spacious, with lots of natural lighting and empty space. But even with these shared qualities and her trepidation about this stranger, something about the house felt… welcoming. Warm. Maybe it was due to the literally warmer colors of the walls and furniture. In any case, it seemed to lack the foreboding nature of her father's house. There was an emptiness here as well, but a different kind of emptiness. Whereas her father's house had been a carefully adorned corpse, lifeless and mocking, this place was more like an empty vase: elegant but unfulfilled. There was an air of anticipation in the room, like the house had been waiting for her. An equally comforting and terrifying thought.

Reyna blinked. Where were these thoughts even coming from? They seemed especially contemplative, especially for her. She remembered the many times she had entered a seemingly normal shop or house only to find to be some twisted haven of monsters from Roman or Greek legend.

She resolved herself to stay on guard.

As she walked through the hallway to the other section of the floor, she saw the stranger in the kitchen, reaching up into a cabinet. The room was similar in appearance to the other, but with a lower ceiling. The grey marble counters were mostly clear of objects, with some various appliances and small containers here and there. The island had a white plastic container about the size of a small lunch box laid out, probably just retrieved by the stranger. As he set another item down, what looked to be a roll of bandages, he glanced back and saw her standing in the hallway. He smiled softly.

"You can sit at the table; I'll be right over."

Reyna quietly took one of the eight chairs around the table, which was a large and bulky carving of wood, all the while keeping her narrowed eyes trained on the stranger. She wasn't about to turn her back on him for a second. She did take off her Imperial gold breastplate, though, laying it against the chair leg.

The stranger took a moment to wash his hands thoroughly, then walked over and set the supplies on the table, sitting down in the chair next to her on the side of her wound. He reached over to grab a bottle of water.

"We're going to clean it off a bit first, alright?"

She nodded, using her finger to pull back the shoulder of her purple Camp Jupiter t-shirt. Without another word, the stranger went to work, dribbling a bit of water onto a cloth and carefully dabbing at the wound. Reyna winced once or twice, but she had dealt with much worse than this, so she was able to mostly keep her composure and stay keen on watching him out of the corner of her eye. His golden eyes never strayed from his work, focused on her injury the entire time. He breathed through his nose steadily, eyes narrowed in focus and concern. The quietness combined with the shadows of night at the less-lit corners of the room made her somewhat uneasy. Finally, as she knew he was nearing being done, she spoke.

"You aren't going to ask me anything?"

He glanced up at her face in surprise, slightly jolted. "What?"

She raised an eyebrow. "You obviously have questions. Spit them out."

His lips curled into a small, one-sided grin as he looked back to her shoulder. "I've learned to save those until later."

Her eyes narrowed again.

"Though, there is one I like to ask first," he said softly.

"Which is?"

He paused again and titled his head to get a better look at her face. "Your name?"

Her eyes un-narrowed slightly. "Reyna."

His eyes smiled as much as his mouth, and he nodded once. "Mason."

Back to narrowed eyes.

She could see him falter slightly at her reaction, and his lips twitched as he went back to work on her shoulder. Finally, after another silent minute, he placed a strip of cloth on her shoulder and stood up, taking the supplies back to the cabinet. "You can use some of that cloth to keep on it for a bit, should help with any remaining blood," he said as he closed the cabinet.

He turned and casually placed his palms on the island counter. "Sorry, one more question. Do you need to stay here tonight?"

Reyna pushed away from the table with her free hand, the other on her shoulder, and stood up from the chair. "I probably shouldn't. I need to get moving before those harpies find me again."

"So that's what that was."

Reyna flinched and cursed under her breath, realizing what she had said. Then she looked up to Mason, confused. "You seem rather… calm about it."

He shrugged. "Probably not as calm as you think," he said, laughing nervously. "But I had my suspicions. You said they were harpies. Like the ones from the myths."

She sighed. "Yes, the ones from the myths."

"But they're real."

"Yes."

"So… not myths."

"No."

She watched him closely, but his face was blank and unreadable. After a moment, he lifted his hands from the counter and leaned back.

"Well then, we can't have you going back out there. Not now, not like this."

A part of Reyna knew this was coming. She sighed. "Look, I know you want to try and help somehow, but you don't know anything about… well, any of this. I have a mission to accomplish, and I can't spend any time idling. Besides, I've been in much worse situations than this, so I will be fine, thank you." She said the last part through gritted teeth.

Frustration flashed across his face as he looked like he was about to say something but stopped himself. After a moment rubbing his nose, he looked back up towards her. "I don't. I don't know anything about what it is you're doing, or what you're running from. But I once… I once had another person here in pretty much the same situation, and I let them go."

He hesitated. "And I regret that more than anything," he said breathily.

She watched him intently as he sighed and ran his hand through his hair again. When he looked back once more, his face was relaxed, and there was a hint of sadness in his eyes. When he spoke again, it was hushed and gentle. Almost fragile. "I know you have no reason to trust me. Not really. And that's fine. But I do know that if you don't rest, whatever it is you need to do out there? It won't happen. Not if you're spent."

He straightened his posture and looked directly at her. "I can't tell you what to do. I won't. But I will tell you that my home is open to you for as long as you need it."

Reyna was frozen, staring towards him, trying to catch any hint of deception or malice.

"Why?"

Mason blinked. "Why what?"

"Why offer?"

He averted his gaze towards the ceiling in thought for a moment, then looked back to her and shrugged. "Because I can."

"That's not an answer."

"Well, it's the only one I can give."

She thought to herself for a long minute. Long enough for her to notice him shift uncomfortably. That helped her decide.

"Fine. I'll stay. Until the sun comes up, and then I'll be gone."

His eyes narrowed at her, but they soon softened as he smiled.

"Alright."

He turned to begin walking towards the stairs.

"I'll need to go change the sheets on my bed, then. You can wait down here for a minute."

Reyna shook her head slightly, registering what he had just said. "Wait, why your bed?"

He turned towards her, an awkward and somewhat apologetic smile on his face. "Well, I assume you want the bed. I need to grab some things so I can sleep down here on the couch."

She gave him an incredulous look. "Surely you have multiple bedrooms in a house of this size."

"Well yes, I do," he said, tilting his head in a combination of a smile and a wince. "But only one bed."

She watched as he turned to walk up the stairs, a look of confusion still on her face.

Very strange.