A/N: Hello friends! I apologize for the long wait for an update, but I hope this helps you forgive me!

Trying to figure out what his fatal flaw is taking up almost all her time. Her natural inquisitiveness occupies so much space in the forefront of her brain that she even tosses and turns at the thought when she's supposed to be sleeping.

Before their initial departure, Reyna pulled her aside, face frozen in contempt.

"Annabeth," the tall brunette said curtly, "do you want to be dropped off at camp, or go back to the Greeks with us?"

Biting the insides of her cheeks, Annabeth was stunned at her own silence.

If Reyna and Jason were both on the other side of the country, honestly, what was waiting at camp for her?

She felt as if she was in tune with the earth spinning. Everything felt flimsy to her, like a swirly and spirally surrealism. Even after all this time building their lives at Camp Jupiter and New Rome, nothing was permanently set in place.

Suddenly aware of everyone's eyes glossing over her, she feels the breath Percy is holding in as he looks on from a few feet away. Sighing, she hangs her head to the side and her mouth folds into a straight line.

"Let's just go." And the world continues to spin round, leaving her standing still.

Again, she doesn't sleep at all that night. She's grateful for the chariot Reyna provided for the journey, but she had absolutely not intended to go all the way back to her least favorite place on the planet so soon—or at all, for that matter.

Percy stays awake holding the reins to the pegasi, and Grover's gurgling snores break the quiet of the night in the clouds. She feels like Percy's eyes keep finding her figure in the dark, making her even more agitated.

She's concluded that he has a really bad sense of boundaries. He already overshared with her in the desert, kept one arm slung over Grover's shoulder far longer than necessary, and couldn't shut his chatty little mouth with Reyna. Clearly, he had no bearing of how to conduct himself in any semblance of a civilized manner. But honest to gods, what in Pluto could his fatal flaw actually be?

She was sure it wasn't pride, no matter how far up his face that stupid little smirk slithered. But that was about all she could gather.

Jason's was so impossibly easy to deduce; in fact, his love for deliberation and resistance to actually making a decision currently froze him in place at Camp Half Blood. She scoffed internally as she mulled this over, not a single centimeter of her feeling sympathetic. Fatal flaw or not, how could he not want to go home? How did he not want to go home with her?

She gazed idly out over the silhouette of a sleeping Reyna, every feeling within her draining out like an unplugged sink. Then, her head involuntarily turned forwards, taking in the shadow of Percy.

Hunched forward, his desire to get home so powerful she could sense him urging the pegasi to fly faster, go further, unyielding with anxious energy. Here in front of her face was the exact opposite of Jason, a boy whose bones ached with loss and absence of his people, his family.

The thought alone made her want to spit on his back.

But she bit her tongue instead, feeling the envy tie a tourniquet around her heart.

She never wound up closing her eyes for the night, not even realizing the time that had passed until a light orange hue cleaved the sky in two, Luna's silver chariot passing over the horizon. Grover and Reyna still did not stir, and she felt it best to keep it that way. But she knew it had been at least ten straight hours of flying, and the pegasi deserved a break.

Leaning forward, she pressed a hand onto Percy's shoulder, pulling him round to face her. His hair was matted and stuck up in other places, eyes still luminescent but with deep purple rings circling round them. Being only a foot away from his face brought a lump to her throat, but she swallowed it back before she could process it.

"We should stop for a while. They need rest. You need rest," she said in a short tone.

"Mmf," he burned out, eyes blank as they turned back to the distant skyline. "We're about an hour away."

"Oh," is all she can manage. She really doesn't know what to say about anything anymore. She feels about as useful as a lampshade.

Turning back by a fraction, out of the corner of his eye she sees him etch over her face.

"You look like Hades," he says, "take a nap. I'll wake you when we're home."

He turns back again before she can sneer, but her heart pangs. Where the fuck even is home for her at this point?

…

Chiron's warm smile wraps around his cheeks when they arrive back, and with his full stature as half horse and half man, he opens his arms widely to embrace Percy. Her head tilts curiously, bewildered at the notion of a warm and fuzzy mentor, much less the hero trainer behind some of history's most lethal killers.

They are at the juncture between the pine tree and the big house, grass still dewy and the sun tickling over the edges of the water in the distance. No one seemed to be stirring quite yet; Camp Jupiter would have already had their first round of PT, usually with her and Jason competing for the fastest morning pace. They had no discipline here. So Greek.

Chiron bowed as he introduced himself to Reyna and she gaped around blankly in response, much like how Annabeth first felt when she took in the new and impossible scenery. He then turned to greet Grover and Annabeth with a familiar fondness, and she turned away, refusing to give anyone even an inch of kindness this time.

Nevertheless, Chiron extended an arm out gesturing behind him.

"We'll be eating soon; I hope you'll join us. We'll convene again at noon. But I imagine you'll have your hands full until then," he said making eye contact with Percy, a special gleam ringing his eyes.

Reyna stayed alongside Chiron as he walked over the hill, no doubt outlining everything she would like to discuss and accomplish during her stay here. Grover dapped up Percy before scuttling off as well, muttering wildly about how someone named Juniper was going to "get his goat" if he didn't go see her.

And so she stood devoid of all feeling or thinking, deja vu encasing her entire body. Where does she go now? What does she even do? There's nothing here for her.

Except Jason, her brain shot back, thinking of ruffling his perfectly spiked blond hair. Maybe this time she would swallow down some of her pride and sit with him and those vapid Venus girls by the lake. A weird part of her also hoped his sister, Thalia, would be around.

Before she walks away, she notices Percy's frame leaning against the tree, overlooking all the edges of his camp. His expression was unreadable, and she rolled her eyes at his vacancy. So much for caring about his people.

"What?" She snaps, impatient with his silence.

His head flicks to the side to give her a glare, but then he sighs and softens.

"I just… it's been nine months. Everything's gonna be different now."

The skin on the back of her neck prickles, and she feels all of her muscles harden.

She wishes he was wrong.

She walks away first, never responding to him. When she looks back, he's a tiny dot in the distance.

The camp doesn't stay quiet for long. Unsure of where to go or what to do, she wound up plopping down by the hearth, wondering at how the flame kept flickering. Campers poured out of cabins lazily, some even wearing fuzzy slippers and pajamas still. Thankfully, none bothered to stop and talk to her.

The news of Percy being back somehow buzzed throughout the camp without anyone even seeing him first, but when she saw him trotting down the hill in the distance, the soft buzz turned into an echoing roar.

Even the sound of their rapid running footsteps was akin to a full on animal stampede. Anyone who wasn't up suddenly was, cheering and thrusting Percy above them onto shoulders. Some were even crying.

Standing and crossing her arms, she scoffs aloud without meaning to.

"Makes you sick, doesn't it?" A bulkier girl already clad in red armor spoke behind her.

Finally, someone with an ounce of sense. And a formidable looking warrior at that.

She narrows her eyes back at the black haired boy, seeing his smirk a literal mile away.

"Yeah. Yeah, he does."

…

"...and I said, they're mostly lyres!"

Even tables away, Leo's jokes still make her roll her eyes.

Percy's arrival had delayed breakfast, and now the only people still at the dining hall are those who are attending the council in the big house.

She elected to sit at the table at the farthest edge, near a large crack running through the marble. At least ten demigods were sitting with Percy a few tables over, their laughter bouncing off the columns and echoing like a screech owl.

"Hey there."

Snapping back from her murderous daydream, Jason smiles with teeth in front of her.

"I just saw Reyna. Thanks for coming back with her."

Fighting off the heat rising to her cheeks, she quickly shoves a forkful of fruit into her mouth. "Erm, yeah. No problem."

He raises an eyebrow. "No problem? Reyna made it sound like you weren't happy to make a trip back so soon."

She swallows audibly.

"Well, yeah. I mean, no, I wasn't. But you were still here, so…" Now she knows she's blushing. "I just wanted the three of us to be together again."

His face softens, tilting his head slightly to the side. "You always have us, Annie."

Biting her cheek, she turned back to her soggy bowl of oatmeal and fruit.

"You know, I think your food's getting cold over there." She spits out more bitterly than she meant, but she still refuses to make eye contact.

"Oh," the corners of his lips turn down. "Yeah. I guess."

Her heart flutters and guilt turns her stomach inside out.

Placing her hand over his—this is friendly, friends can hold hands, she reasons internally—she gives him a tight lipped smile.

"But yeah. Thanks."

He smiles widely again. "C'mon. Come sit with everyone." He gestures back to the band of Greeks and their buffoonery. In the middle of it all, Jackson's smile was crooked and easy going, just like she hated.

She can't help it—her scowl sinks again. But she sees how pleading he is, the hope in his eyes and her heart just about bursts.

"Um, I should probably go find Chiron," she lies halfheartedly. At least it was better than cursing at him in Latin.

He shrinks only slightly, but nods in understanding. "Okay. See you in a few?"

"Yeah, of course."

Taking another spoonful of oatmeal, she stares angrily at all the happy people.

The meeting doesn't really go any better. She already had an extraordinary amount of bitter bottled up inside, but sitting at that infernal ping pong table again had her reeling.

She had arrived before everyone else and sat next to the head of the table, few people trickling in behind her.

Percy and Jason both enter the room at the same time and place a hand on the chair at the head of the table. With a little shock and embarrassment, they both look at each other in a silent standoff.

Never mind how jaded she was, this gave her a sick sense of pleasure. Tall, sturdy and without a hair out of place, Jason has an overwhelming sense of leadership and strength. Static shock running through his veins, sparks seemed to prickle in between his fingers. Her lips tugged up at one corner as she prepared to see Jackson deflate and step aside.

But he, yet again, seemed to slip back into some amount of ease.

"I think I'll let Reyna sit here," he says with an edge to his voice, but without the coldness of a threat. "Thank gods she didn't bring her dogs or we'd both be Scooby snacks by now."

Jason huffs a small laugh out of the corner of his mouth, and soundlessly moves to the opposite side of the table, seat pressing close against her own.

She gawks at him, trying to telepathically scold him for backing off so quickly and painlessly, but his leg presses flush against her own and suddenly her throat is very, very tight.

He nudges her with a light and playful shove. "Bet you're missing the Senate House right now."

"Bet you're right," she says evenly.

Not much more is said throughout the meeting, if she's honest. Reyna prattles for a little while about the unification of both camps blah blah blah, about how Juno must have had a reason, about how the gods have been distant… Chiron adds his insight into the conversation regularly, but she feels a hesitation in the underlying edges of his voice, something more to say staying solidly put on the tip of his tongue.

Most of the time when she doesn't want to voice her thoughts, it's because she's praying she's wrong.

"…but for now, I think it's best if the three of us Romans remain here for the summer indefinitely, and begin planning an integration initiative," Reyna finishes after a long winded speech, Annabeth sitting up straighter at the end of her seat.

"Indefinitely?" An eyebrow perks incredulously, but her tone feels even as she speaks. She felt as if she was only addressing Reyna, ignoring the startled looks from others as she uttered her first words of the entire meeting.

"Yes, I think that would be best." The finality in her tone told Annabeth that it wasn't up for discussion.

"Great. So meeting adjourned then, right?" And she stands, tucking her chair in neatly behind her and walking unrushed out the door, not looking back.

...

The problem with constantly storming out—or peacefully, as she had just accomplished for the first time—is that she never knows where to go afterward. She doesn't even have a bed of her own to go lie down in, not a single corner of this camp that felt familiar.

She winds up in their dinky little combat arena and wound up being pleasantly surprised by the array of weaponry and practice dummies. Not quite the colosseum, but more than adequate.

She avoids the swords and settles on a knife set, practicing her throwing against a strung up dummy a few dozen yards away. Her aim is almost perfect, sand pouring out of rips and tears in the middle of bright red circles on the bags.

"How'd you do that?" A voice makes her jump, but the voice is familiar and still as bone chilling as the first time he spoke.

She turns with a jut out of her hip, tucking a loose curl from her ponytail behind her ear. Looking plainly at him, she gestures as she speaks.

"I pick up a knife," bending down to scoop the next one, "I choose where I want it to go," closing one eye and mimicking a flick of her wrist, "and I throw."

The point shreds through the thin rope tethering the target bags up, three sacks falling to the ground with a puff of dust.

"Oh, duh. Why didn't I think of that?"

He takes a few steps closer toward her, shoving his hands deep into his pockets without breaking his eye contact with her previous shots.

"A bed has been made up for you in cabin six—we figured you would want something better than a cot in the big house for the next few…. well, for while you're here."

Her face is blank as she blinks back at him, but he gulps in response and can only imagine how badly her stormy eyes give her away. She doesn't say a thing, a tangible beat passing them both.

He picks up a knife and copies her steps melodramatically, only able to sink his into the far edges of a bullseye.

"I've always been a terrible shot," he said simply, moving in front of her to remove their blades. Aware of how vulnerable he is walking in front of her with a handful of knives still at her disposal, her mouth creases into a tight line. Maybe being too trustworthy for his fatal flaw?

"Yeah, no kidding," she says a little gruffly, sending a single blade soaring right past his ear as his back is still turned, yanking out her past marks from the dummy bags.

"What the fuck?" He says loudly as he twists back to look at her sharply.

The flat line of her mouth curved a little back, a prideful snarl playing on her lips as she crossed her arms. "What?" She asks harmlessly.

He pulls out another one of her knives and stalks right up to her, yanking her hand up and forcing the weapon's handle into it.

His eyes are too close for her comfort and her mouth falls open in a small o, but her brows furrow pointedly. She stays silent, partly because his aura is so intense she feels like she should be doing a backbend to create some space between them.

"What the fuck is your problem?" The rumble in his voice sounded like the crash of riptides, and before she could blink he had stalked past her, back out of the arena.

She wanted to antagonize him further, wanted to call him all kinds of names that came to her mind, wanted to challenge him to a real fight.

"Ugh," she mutters out with a slight stomp of her foot as she realigns her aim, picturing a mop of black hair over her next target's fake face.

…...

Cabin six is comfortable enough, and her supposed half siblings are thoughtful enough to give her the bed in the furthest corner, tucked behind two desks propped up on piles of books.

Even with a faint smell of parchment and eraser shavings in the air, her night is full of turning over time and time again. The cabin's roof curves black, a skylight keeping the stars in and the night out. She tries counting the individual points on Capricornus and Andromeda but their light catches her right in the eye even when she closes them.

With nothing to lose, she squeaks past the people in the surrounding beds and out the door. Her feet work automatically, carrying her past the canoe lake and down till her toes stuck out of the sand, a soft lapping lulling in the background.

It takes a few moments, but a distant haze of voices jars her from her focus on the horizon's waves, ending the swelling in her chest.

"Dude, I remember a time when Piper hated to admit that she was an Aphrodite kid," Percy's voice chuckles out, hunched over a small fire yards away behind a dune.

She crouches instinctively, tucking herself into the sand and feeling her hair tangle in it. She didn't want them to see her, whoever was over there, but also felt a pull to stay.

"She's… unbelievable," Jason said with a tight tone, and Annabeth's heart cracks a little.

"That's Reyna, dude. I've never met someone like her. Definition of a baddie. She's a keeper for sure," Percy says smoothly, and Annabeth feels like she can feel the heat from Jason's face.

"Thanks, man."

A few moments pass in quiet.

"It's good to have her back, ya know. I'm glad she came all the way over here. A little weird having both of my, erm, groups together, but good."

"I know what you mean," Percy picks right off of, "I thought worlds were imploding when I saw Reyna and Grover sitting next to each other at the dining pavilion today."

"For me, I think it was watching Annabeth stroll into camp with Grover in the first place."

Grover's laugh rings out and her heart warms from the fondness in it.

"Talk about unbelievable," Percy grumbles lowly.

"Oh cut it out. You're just mad someone might actually beat your capture the flag team," Grover jests.

"She's a freaking hazard dude," Percy pushes on, "she's done nothing but complain since I first said two words to her."

This time, Jason joins in Grover's laughs.

"Annie is just headstrong. Like Reyna. But with more, I don't know…"

"Anger? Bitterness?" Percy offers up.

"With more fire, that's all. She cares more."

Now a red glow crossed across her own face and she put a hand over her mouth, trying to hold in any risk of noise as her chest contracted.

"Fire sounds right. What's her deal, dude? She seems like she hates everyone here. And she's not overly friendly with you two either." Percy still sounds like he's on the offensive.

She rolls her eyes and scoffs. That's what a head full of seawater and barnacles will get you.

"Hey," Jason says pointedly, "she's just going through it right now. It's been a long year.

"It's been a long life for her, honestly."

She leans back against the dune, trying to quell the internal unease.

"We're demigods, dude. We've all had a long life."

"Hers is just… different. Do you know anything about Minerva?"

"I know children of Athena usually critique my past battles, and that's about it."

Jason sighs.

"Minerva never had a child before Annabeth."

She folds her arms around her knees as she pulls them into the chest, suddenly freezing in place at the sound of Jason's soft tone.

"She's the only one, ever, even in the ancient times… Athena's Roman side was kind of watered down, and she was so upset with the Roman's after the whole transition that she vowed never to give them a hero.

"But a long time back, this spunky little seven-year-old crashes into camp with nothing in her hands but a hammer. And then Minerva claimed her and everyone started whispering and didn't really trust her, given the circumstances. I mean, she's not supposed to exist."

The only audible noise is the waves.

"I know she can be abrasive, but this is just a lot for her. Me and Reyna, we're all she's got." Jason sighs.

"She's always been alone."

A/N: thank you for reading :) pls let me know your thoughts about this chapter! reviewing definitely helps motivate me to post faster :))

p.s. roman or greek mythology?