Disclaimer: I do not own Rick Riordan, the Percy Jackson books, characters, series, movies, or anything else you may recognize.
Chapter Eighteen
Titan Knowledge
"I know, I know, I know we can't pretend
That we were never lovers in the end
I try to tell myself this pain would…
Go away…just go away."
"Forget Forever" by Selena Gomez
When I opened my eyes, Annabeth, Lee, Jason and Leo were all rushing into my bathroom with a drowsy (but much more alert-looking than I had ever seen) Clovis trailing behind them.
"What's going on?" I asked as Lee offered me a hand. I looked around and saw that I was lying on the ground, so I let my brother help me to my feet. Everyone else was staring in…horror, maybe?...at any empty vial lying on the floor.
I happened to catch a glance of myself in the mirror and saw my eyes were ringed with red and puffy as if I'd been crying. What had I been crying? I didn't feel sad…maybe something really great and life-changing happened? But wouldn't I remember that?
"Damn, I look terrible," I said, laughing it off as I fixed my hair in the mirror.
"Oh, Andee," Annabeth said quietly, rushing over to hug me.
I returned the hug but was starting to feel pretty confused. "What's going on, you guys? Why are we all in my bathroom?"
"What did you do?" Annabeth asked quietly, her hands near her mouth in shock.
"What do you mean?" I asked, my confusion getting stronger and stronger. "Guys, what's going on?"
"Did you drink something?" Clovis suggested. "A potion, maybe?"
"A potion?" I asked, looking at him in disbelief. "I don't think so…I honestly can't really remember much of the past few hours. Oh…did I die? That might explain it. Doesn't feel like I died, though."
"What do you remember?" Jason asked.
"Well, I remember arriving at Camp Jupiter, kicking some Roman ass and meeting Reyna…and that's about it," I said with a shrug.
"Don't you think that's weird?" Annabeth asked.
"We are hovering above a camp of Roman half-bloods, literally trying to stop the Earth from taking over the Earth," I said. "Weird things happen to us a lot. This really isn't all that weird in my books."
Everyone started questioning me, asking me all sorts of questions about my past. Who did I go to my prom with? No one – I went solo with a bunch of friends and their dates. Who all went on the quest two years ago to find the key to stopping Kronos? Annabeth, Grover and me – well, and Nico made a guest appearance. Who helped stopped Kronos? That was a bit blurry. Why has getting to Camp Jupiter been so important to me? Because we needed to defeat Gaea – I kind of preferred living, and I had quite a few people I wanted to stay alive as well.
"You don't remember Percy at all?"
"Who the Hades is Percy?" I asked, looking at Annabeth. "And besides, knowing what you know about me, why would I want to know anything about someone named Percy?" Everyone was looking at each other strangely. "Can you all stop making those faces and stop looking at me like that?"
"Are you sure you're okay?" Lee asked in a sympathetic tone. Why? "You're…happy?"
"As happy as someone in our situation can be," I said. They all exchanged worried looks. "Seriously guys, I'm fine. I honestly probably just died and took a while coming back, okay?" More looks exchanged. "You know what? Whatever. You guys are really pissing me off so I'm going to go talk to Reyna. As the two female leaders, I want to make sure we're on the same page."
I climbed down the ladder out of the Argo II and wandered around a little bit before finally spotting Reyna lounging in front of the entrance to New Rome with two metal dogs – one gold and one silver. I hated dogs. Hated them. "I've been waiting for a chance to speak with you one-on-one."
"Me too," I said, walking up to her.
"You don't mind if Aurum and Argentum join us?" I looked at the two dogs with their steel teeth. At least they weren't hellhounds. "So, sole daughter of Apollo and granddaughter of Jupiter himself." She sounded mildly impressed.
"Zeus, actually, but yeah," I answered. "And your mom is Bellona, the Roman goddess of war."
"I'm impressed with your knowledge of the Roman way of life," Reyna said. "As far as I was concerned, we're supposed to hate each other."
"You can't hate someone you don't know," I said.
"And now that you 'know' us, do you still hate us?" Reyna asked, giving me a serious look.
"No. I don't agree with the things your ancestors did in the past, but from what I've seen so far, everyone seems to be pretty decent."
"I feel the same. Although I'm still not quite sure what to think of you. You're much stronger than the others from your camp…much more powerful," Reyna said. "You're definitely a threat if things do go south."
"Yes, I most definitely am," I said and I was going to leave it at that, but decided that I needed her to understand where I was coming from. Besides, as two of the leaders and women, we needed to be a combined force. "These bracelets," I started, holding up my wrists to show her, "I don't wear them for fashion purposes."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, to start from the beginning, I was born with no real control over my abilities. I caused a lot of forest fires and power outages before I even knew what I was, which I found out when I was six years old. The gods decided that I needed to learn how to control my abilities or I would be killed because I could destroy everything.
"So I trained with my godmother and when I was ten I underwent a test to see if I would get to live, and I passed. But, I have always had troubles controlling myself since then – it's my fatal flaw. Because of that, in the last war, I didn't exactly fight on the side of the Olympians."
Reyna's dogs growled a little.
"It wasn't by choice. Kronos had been stalking me for years in my dreams, trying to gain control over me and make me his…well, make me his wife and at the same time, control me so he could use my abilities to his advantage. On a quest to stop him, he was able to gain control over me. He used me to fight against my friends and family because he knew I could destroy them. I was snapped out of it somehow, but I was then kept in a coma because I couldn't control my abilities anymore. Annabeth, the Hephaestus kids and the Athena kids made these bracelets and right now, they're the only things keeping me from destroying everything and everyone, and act as part of my punishment for my part in the war," I told her honestly. "So yeah, as Kronos' parting gift, he stole years of intense training. I don't tell a lot of people about this and I'm hesitant to tell you because of our kind's history, but I think it's important for us to establish some sort of trust."
Reyna was silent for awhile before saying, "Thank you, for trusting me with that – I appreciate your candor. I do think this is something we should keep between us for the time being. There are people at my camp that would spin this in a much more malicious way to start the fight we're trying to avoid."
"And what do you think?"
"I think you were born into a terrible situation and have done what you've had to do to make up for it," Reyna said. "I don't tell people this either, but as you've opened up to me, I'm going to do the same. My sister and I had a hard life growing up and we were then trapped on Circe's island, forced to work for her. There were pirates living there too, trapped as guinea pigs and when they were transformed back to their human forms, we had to learn how to fight or die. We were eventually able to get off the island, but I've seen and done things since then that I wish I had never had to. But I survived, much like you."
It was like there was an immediate bond between Reyna and I. We were from completely different places but we had both been in terrible places and done horrible things, but we had survived. Now we had both risen above and become who we were supposed to be.
"I think this whole camp unity thing is going to work," I said, smiling at her. "With two bad-ass women like us leading the way, I don't think it can go wrong."
Reyna smiled too. "I agree, although there are a couple of key players we are going to need to get on board –"
We were interrupted by a loud bang, both of us immediately ducking. I looked to see that one of the ballistae on our ship had been fired…at New Rome.
"What was that?" Reyna asked in a deadly tone.
"A mistake, I'm sure of it," I told her. "Fests acts a little screwy when he gets bored."
"Festus?"
"The dragon mast-head. He used to be a full mechanical dragon, but there was an accident so now he runs our ship," I explained quickly, watching the ship.
Another shot was fired, but then I was someone racing down the ladder back into the Roman camp. It was too far to be sure if what I was seeing was right, let alone identify who it was, but I had a very good hunch. Next thing I knew, there were shouts and grunts from all directions. Reyna and I looked at each other before sprinting towards the nearest sounding fight and saw that it was a lot of Romans against only a few Greeks.
"Andee!" someone shouted and Lee was running towards me, dodging punches and kicks from all directions. His right eye was bruised but was already starting to heal. "Someone snuck onto the Argo and heard what happened. They knocked Leo out, fired the ballistae and have told everyone about you and Kronos. They think we're here to wipe them out because that specific someone is saying you used Titan knowledge."
"And by someone, you mean that creep Octavian," I said and Lee nodded. "But Titan knowledge? What does that…oh." Suddenly a lot of things made sense.
My memories of my time with Kronos were few and far between but one of my more recent memories was the magic that he and some of the other Titans used. There was a memory spell/potion – all it required was a few drops from the River Lethe, a symbol of the thing you wanted to forget, and a symbol of the feeling you associated with it. Kronos had used it on a lot of demigods he had recruited to make sure they had no hesitation or guilt when it came to killing their own people.
I had to have used that memory potion on myself, but to forget what?
Reyna suddenly had a blade at my throat and her dogs were growling at me. "You lied to me."
"Why would I lie to you, Reyna? Especially about something as terrible as working for that absolute piece of garbage," I said fiercely. "I'm the sole daughter of the god of truth. I will explain all of this to you, but you need to tell your people to stand down."
Her knife lowered but she looked unsure of what to do. I took that moment to grab Lee and bolt. We had to get out of this camp. Both sides were unknowingly itching for war and this could be the thing that started it. We may never get out if we didn't retreat now.
A few foolish Romans were trying to fight me and I easily knocked them out. A few of the other campers joined me and I immediately started giving out orders. "Lee, Clarisse, you get the other counselors out of her and back to Camp immediately." I put two fingers to my mouth and whistled as loudly as possible. A few pegasi came diving out of the sky, ready to help. "These guys should help. When you get to Camp, tell Chiron what happened and tell him that I say to prepare to be attacked. Iris-message me once you get there to let me know you're safe. Now go."
Lee gave me a quick hug and told me to be safe too before sprinting off behind Clarisse, the two veering off from each other. I saw Jason fighting for a moment before he was hit in the head with a brick. Who fights with a brick? Piper was standing in front of him protectively, desperately trying to charmspeak her way out of it, but she wasn't nearly confident enough in her abilities yet.
"Piper!" I shouted and she looked up. I ran towards her. "Get back to the ship!"
"But Jason –"
A weird gray dragon-thing swooped down and picked Jason up, flying over to the ship and dropping Jason on the deck. "Uh…" Piper and I were both looking at each other in shock right before someone attacked me. "Go!" I shouted back to Piper, punching my attacker in the chin, right on the nerve so he dropped like…well, like a brick. I saw the others scrambling up the rope ladder and I raced over, making sure I was the last of the Greeks to leave the camp before the ship sailed away. I took one last look at the Roman camp and at the chaos below me before climbing up the last rungs of the ladder.
