I opened my eyes blearily with blueprints stuck to my cheek. Sitting up straight, I peeled them off carefully to avoid further smudging (Had I been drooling? Gross.) and stretched out in my desk chair. I started many mornings like this; hunched over Olympus or camp blueprints, drafting tools strewn about and digging into my awkwardly splayed arms. My best architectural inspiration seemed to strike in the quiet hours of the night after most of the camp had gone to sleep, and it was hardly uncommon for my midnight catnap to turn into a full night's sleep. Thankfully, my immortal DNA seemed to prevent a lot of back pain that one might expect from sleeping at a right angle.

I drowsily made my way to the bathroom, stumbling over the multitude of books and ancient scrolls strewn across the white marbled floor of the Athena cabin. While children of Athena were very orderly people, projects always took precedence, leading to a cabin that could vary from neat and tidy to positively trashed. The place was deserted; the clock read 8:04, meaning that breakfast had just ended, and everyone was off to their first activity of the day. I let out a groan as my stomach rumbled. Clearly it would have been too much to ask that someone wake me up in time for breakfast, I thought irritably as I brushed my teeth, silently cursing my unhelpful half-siblings, though realistically I knew I did not have a reputation as a morning person and felt that few campers would voluntarily face my wake-up wrath if it were not a true emergency.

After attempting to tame my curls in the mirror (no use), putting on some sunscreen and a swipe of lip gloss to appear more rested (not working), and trying to dig up something to eat amongst my cabinmate's personal affects (unsuccessful, starve Annabeth!), I remembered that I was due to instruct introduction to archery later that morning with the newest demigods. This was akin to signing up to be shish kabobed, as the newest recruits could hardly find their way around camp, much less wield a weapon yet. It's going to be a long morning, I thought to myself.

Just as I completed my thought, Percy came swooping in armed with a cup of tea, toast, and a fried egg.

"Hey there, sleepy head," he said with a wink. "Thought you might wake up hungry!"

"Oh Gods, my hero!"

"That's Percy Jackson, hero of Olympus, to you," he said jokingly, setting the food down on top of a scrapped blueprint with a flourish. "Your table, mademoiselle."

"You're certainly the hero of my stomach," I replied quickly, and my stomach growled in agreement. Sensing that his use of the word mademoiselle would lead to an off-key round of Be Our Guest if I didn't act quickly, I gave Percy a long kiss on the mouth before I attacked my egg, leaving him with a goofy grin plastered to his face.

"Uh...Percy? Did you by chance grab a fork?"

Percy's smile faltered ever so slightly. I'll take that as a no. "Erm..."

"It's okay, Seaweed Brain," I said, laughing. With very little grace but excellent marksmanship, I speared the egg with my dagger, lifted it to my mouth and took a bite, and gulped down half of my mug of tea. He remembered I drink it with lemon, I noted happily, thrilled with my unexpected breakfast. As I chewed merrily on another bite of speared egg, I caught Percy staring at me.

"What?" I asked.

Percy shook himself out of his trance. "Nothing," he said, smiling at me. "You're just cute when you eat like a barbarian."

"A barbarian?!" I asked with mock incredulity. "I'll have you know that it's believed that very few Ancient Greeks used forks, and they were-"

"Yeah, they were one of the finest ancient civilizations, not to mention technologically advanced and innovative yada yada yada," Percy finished for me.

"Yeah- yada yada yada indeed, Seaweed Brain. Hey, no sharing!" I said as he reached for a slice of my toast."

"Only kidding!" he said with a grin. "All for you, Wise Girl." As I devoured, he poked around in my discarded blueprint pile, occasionally asking "now what was wrong with this one?" and "does Aries really need this big of a shrine?" Suddenly, Percy said, "we sure were young."

"What?" I asked, looking over to see what he was talking about.

"There." Percy gestured to one of hundreds of pictures plastered onto my wall. It was the picture that was taken when Percy and I had involuntarily ridden on "The Tunnel of Love" ride, thanks to Hephaestus. As 18th birthday present for me, Percy had hacked into Olympus's data base and retrieved the photo. At the time it had been a humiliating near death experience, but now we merely appreciated the irony.

"We sure were," I agreed, popping the last bit of toast in my mouth mournfully.

A quick goodbye kiss later, and Percy had departed for a sword fighting lesson he was giving that morning. I took the time to inspect the sprawling collage of photographs that adorned the wall above my bed. Layers upon layers of memories compiled here; if I peeled them back, they revealed older and older snapshots. The very final layer was of Luke, Thalia, Grover, and myself, long before Seaweed Brain had come into my life. I realized that I had literally and metaphorically covered up Luke with Percy. Not in a "I'm replacing Luke with Percy" kind of way, more of "It never worked out with Luke because it was always meant to be Percy" way. And I looked happy, really truly happy in the pictures with Percy. And I was.

Gods forbid I ever have to break up with Percy Jackson, I silently pleaded.

Because if I did, I would have a lot of pictures to burn. Burn, burn, burn, baby, burn.