Author's Note: There was some confusion about Leo or Piper being able to understand Latin. I didn't mean it as that they was Roman or anything, just that he had been around enough with Jason to pick up a few phrases. Since Leo always struck as a pranking/getting in trouble kind of guy I put him as the one to understand the whole trouble maker line. Sorry for the unclarity.
Piper wasn't going to lie, she was just as curious about the misplaced demigod as Leo was, but she knew better than to bother Annabeth about it. Anyone knew better than to bother Annabeth about it besides Leo but Piper figured her sporadic friend was a category all of himself. Still, she had been just as disappointed as Leo was when Apollo stopped and, as they were gathered in to read the next part of the chapter, she was just as excited as him.
"Excited much?" Jason whispered in her ear, sending shivers down her back that she hoped to the gods no one had noticed. She nodded.
"That obvious?" she whispered back as they sat down and watched, with mid interest, Thalia thwack Leo across the head with her bow. He smiled, either at her or at Leo and Thalia, she hoped for the latter.
"Not as much as Leo," They paused, both simultaneously rolling their eyes as Leo jumped back up and practically skipped (he'd never admit it but he so did) over to them. He took one look at the two, close but definitely not over-friendly close, and turned around, yelling for the entire camp to hear.
"Can't sit over here! Pipes and Jas are having a moment!" The way he said 'moment' had Piper blushing slightly and several campers snickering, her siblings giving her knowing looks. She grabbed Leo by his tool belt, yanking him down between her and Jason roughly.
"Shut up! Me and Jason are friends! Nothing more!" She didn't add the fact that, with how Jason had distanced himself, just slightly, since he got the majority of his memories back, had her thinking he had a girlfriend back home. That was for her to deal with and Leo didn't need to know about it.
"Sure you are princess," Leo rolled his eyes and flipped from between her and Jason, landing on his feet (surprisingly) and instead sitting to the right of Jason, far enough that Piper couldn't hit him without causing a scene. She settled for glaring at him and went about thinking of how many people she would need to convince to keep Leo from hearing the story. Probably just Chiron which would take a little bit more time than a camper, but definitely less than the effort for a god.
"Don't do it," Jason told her, giving her that look that he generally reserved for Leo. The one that said he knew exactly what they were planning and not to do it. Piper played innocent.
"Do what?" She traced her voice with just enough charm to confuse him, maybe doubt his self-assuredness. Jason blinked for a second, before glaring half-heartedly at Piper who merely smiled innocently.
"Nice try Pipes. Don't do whatever revenge on Leo you are planning in that pretty head of yours," Piper did the mature thing. That is, if she was Leo, and stuck her tongue out at the blond boy, before turning to the pavilion where Chiron and Apollo now stood.
Apollo grinned at them all, "Welcome back, we shall now continue on with the first Percy Jackson story," All the campers grinned expectantly, "I hope you all enjoy it." He smiled brightly again and Piper realized with a flush that he was quite attractive. She snuck a glance towards Jason and noticed they had the same golden hair. She was broken from her trance by Apollo flicking open the book and reading again.
"Mr. Brunner led the museum tour."
"Of course he did, wasn't it for the Latin class?" Leo looked confused and Piper rolled her eyes.
"Shut up, thinking's not your strong suit." Thalia advised him and Leo blushed slightly. Piper was torn between amusement at her friend and embarrassment. She would need to talk to her mother about not making Leo fall for the girls he couldn't get. It was getting sad.
"He rode up front in his wheelchair, guiding us through the big echoey galleries, past marble statues and glass cases full of really old black-and-orange pottery. It blew my mind that this stuff had survived for two thousand, three thousand years."
"Longer than that," Annabeth smiled sadly, knowing that she was speaking to someone that simply wasn't there. Piper felt sorry for her girl, losing someone she loved without any warning and not even knowing what's happened to him must have been terrible. Then, she mentally slapped herself and cursed her mother and siblings for making her so in-tuned to everyone's love life.
She could stand not noticing all the gooey sappy things at camp like the fact that right at this moment, the scary counselor of Ares, Clarisse, was holding hands with Hermes's Chris under their table or that Katie Gardener was blushing profusely at something one of the Stoll brothers said, Travis or Connor she couldn't tell. Or that her sister was staring at Leo – damn it! Stupid mother, stupid sisters!
"You okay?" Leo asked, concern flashing through his hazel eyes, "You've been looking weird since Owl-Face over there –"he cocked a finger towards Annabeth and Piper momentarily thanked the gods she hadn't heard. She blushed at the fact that she was losing concentration over such trivial things, and told Leo she was fine. He shot her a weird look but returned to Apollo.
He gathered us around a thirteen-foot-tall stone column with a big sphinx on the top, and started telling us how it was a grave marker, a stele, for a girl about our age.
"Because that's what everyone wants to go to a field trip for," Thalia rolled her eyes, "here's a wonderful example of Ancient Grecian architecture and – oh! – look at that, it's for a girl about your age! How completely coincidental!" Laughter followed her words and Apollo himself shot her an amused look.
"Well, Chiron does have his ways of keeping even the mortals under control," Apollo winked and Piper looked at Chiron, shocked. He wouldn't have really brought them to a stele as an indirect threat, would he? Chiron, having caught her and a few other campers staring at him in the same shocked, slightly scared way, and tried to ease their worries.
"Of course I didn't do it that way, none of those students would have gotten the subtle art of indirect threats," He smiled serenely and Piper noticed for the first time that Chiron was really, really bad at reassuring people, despite being a teacher for over three thousand years.
"He told us about the carvings on the sides. I was trying to listen to what he had to say, because it was kind of interesting,"
"Wait, Percy found something informative interesting?" Annabeth shot the Stoll brother, Piper would have to ask Leo to see if he could tell them apart, they spent so much time together, and he had to know which was which, a dark glare.
"Percy actually isn't that bad, we talk about architecture and stuff a lot and he's always seemed interested in it." She glared at the campers at large as if daring anyone of them to contradict her. Piper watched as the Stoll brothers invariably sealed their fate.
"Yeah," one of them stage-whispered to the other, smirking in the direction of Annabeth who was watching them through eagle-sharp eyesight, "but isn't that so he can get some action with her?" Piper's eyes widened and even Leo muttered a quiet 'idiot' under his breath. Annabeth, however, merely smiled sweetly at the brothers.
"Whatever Percy's intention is, it still stands to fact that he's gotten more 'action' then you two will probably ever get," sniggers followed that and the Stolls took their turn looking outraged.
"Ah but Annabeth, we have great game. We could get any of these lovely ladies," some of the girls, Piper included, snorted at that one. None of the girls sans Katie, who was still blushing (dammit mother!) would touch the brothers with a ten foot pole, unless it had a spearhead at the end.
Annabeth smiled again, taking her dagger casually out of her hidden sheath. "Not if certain parts are missing," she told them sweetly, tossing the dagger loftily from one hand to the other. Both boys paled and immediately turned their attention back to Apollo. Piper would have to learn her methods.
"-but everybody around me was talking, and every time I told them to shut up, the other teacher chaperone, Mrs. Dodds, would give me the evil eye."
"Mrs. Dodds?" Nico, who had appeared sleeping or at least not paying attention, immediately straightened up, shooting a look to Grover. "Does he mean -?" Grover nodded before Nico could finish the sentence and Nico smiled expectantly. "Wonderful, action." He clapped his hands together and turned his attention back to Apollo, leaving everyone else at camp, Piper included, extremely confused.
"Mrs. Dodds was this little math teacher from Georgia who always wore a black leather jacket, even though she was fifty years old. She looked mean enough to ride a Harley right into your locker."
"She's a monster isn't she?" Katie spoke up for the first time, and Piper chanced a glance at her, happy to see that she was no longer physically vocalizing her attractions. Grover nodded and several of the people started muttering confusedly. If this book started out with a major monster attack, like it was shaping to be, shouldn't it be the Minotaur like everyone always talked about Percy defeating? Annabeth, seeing their looks, took pity and explained, somewhat.
"Percy was attacked beforehand, but Chiron decided to keep in the dark a little longer, try to keep him from the danger and more importantly, out of everyone's hair," a few people chuckled appreciatedly at that but Piper looked confused.
"But you guys …. like him?" she phrased it as a question and several of the campers nodded, "then why would he not being here be 'keeping him out of your hair'?" Several of the campers laughed at her. Piper knew the laugh well, the kind that was given to new people when they should know something and didn't. It wasn't particularly pleasant even if it were the campers.
"Sure we like him, doesn't stop him from being an idiot does it?" Nico told her, flicking his hair from his eyes. "Or from attracting a thousand monsters to the camp every year," Leo paled at that and Piper voiced the question they both were thinking.
"That bad?" Her tone made it rather obvious that she was hesitant to want him back, if he was going to endanger the camp again. She really just wanted a break from something wanting to kill, torture, and eat or all three of those together. Nico shot her an amused, pitying look.
"Yeah, he's attracted hellhounds, fire-breathing bull automatons – you can blame your father for those," he added as an afterthought, making Leo blush as if he were the one that had caused giant metal bulls to rampage through the camp, "Murder happy skeletons once, we had a whole battle here right after he got back from the labyrinth, and of course Battle of Olympus but we don't really count that because we brought the fight to the enemy that time, am I missing anything?" He addressed the rest of the camp at large.
"The Stymphalian birds!" One of them cried out, followed closely by the others.
"The harpy incident!" One of the Stolls snickered and several of the people joined them. Piper was too afraid to ask about the incident and so Jason did. The Stolls smirked in response. "Oh Percy's a huge procrastinator, especially when it comes to leaving at the end of summer. Last time he waited too long and Mr. D sent the cleaning harpies after him. Chased him all throughout camp, they did." Piper stared at them.
"How is that funny?" she asked in a rather weak voice. They just shrugged and turned back to Apollo.
"She had come to Yancy halfway through the year, when our last math teacher had a nervous breakdown."
Nico chuckled darkly. "Sure," Piper wasn't close to him but she still shied away somewhat. The son of Hades was a creepy one indeed.
"From her first day, Mrs. Dodds loved Nancy Bobofit and figured I was devil spawn."
"No, she likes the devil's spawn." Thalia pointed towards Nico who glared at her.
"My father is a respectable, powerful god of the dead and of riches, he is not some red-skinned horned demon from the Christian faith, thank you very much!" Several kids laughed at Nico's reaction, Piper included. She was so used to him being the creepy quiet kid, she forgot that he had other emotions as well.
" She would point her crooked finger at me and say, "Now, honey," real sweet, and I knew I was going to get after-school detention for a month."
"Isn't that a bit harsh?" Leo asked and Piper rolled her eyes.
"She's a monster Valdez, she's not going to be nice anytime soon."
"I knew that…"
"One time, after she'd made me erase answers out of old math workbooks until midnight, I told Grover I didn't think Mrs. Dodds was human. He looked at me, real serious, and said, "You're absolutely right."
Several of the campers laughed as they thought of the loveable satyr. Said satyr blushed furiously at Annabeth's and Thalia's incredulous looks.
"You said that? To Percy? Are you insane? No wonder he caught on so fast!" Annabeth ranted and Piper had to admit, she was quite glad that she wasn't the furry goat-boy. The glare from Annabeth alone would have her cowering.
"Mr. Brunner kept talking about Greek funeral art. Finally, Nancy Bobofit snickered something about the naked guy on the stele, and I turned around and said, "Will you shut up?"
"Leave it Percy," Thalia rolled her eyes. "He probably spoke really loud and now someone's going to hear it and he's going to get in trouble. Then he'll get even by somehow dousing that Bobofit girl in water and then he will get discovered by the monster and will have to fight for his life, and such will began the hatred of Percy Jackson by the kindly ones" Piper stared.
"No one's that unlucky," she said, and the campers all laughed. "Are they?" she asked in lieu of Jason and Leo's own questions. Annabeth smiled sadly.
"Percy is. He probably would have his picture besides the word if the mortals had any idea. He puts black cats to shame. He's simply the most unluckiest person in the history of the world. Add that to the mix of recklessness and out right stubbornness, we are lucky he's still alive," her eyes held a certain fondness that Piper saw in few people around the camp.
"It came out louder than I meant it to."
"And here it goes," Nico stated, half amused, half exasperated. Leo opened his mouth to say something but Piper glared at him, and he got the message. She wanted to hear the damn story and if he interrupted for something stupid she would charm-speak him into doing something either horribly painful or excruciatingly painful, maybe both.
"The whole group laughed. Mr. Brunner stopped his story."
"At least it was Chiron," Thalia tried to comfort the suddenly tense Annabeth. From Annabeth's glare at anyone who dared laugh at Percy's slip-up, including a now gulping Leo beside her, Piper doubted its success.
"Mr. Jackson," he said, "did you have a comment?"
My face was totally red. I said, "No, sir."
Mr. Brunner pointed to one of the pictures on the stele. "Perhaps you'll tell us what this picture represents?"
"He's really expecting Percy to know the answer," Clarisse scoffed, rolling her ideas as if the very thought of Percy knowing anything was preposterous. Piper couldn't help herself.
"Could you be nice for like, five minutes?" She shot over to the Ares girl, gulping inwardly at the angry glare the girl sent her.
"Excuse me?" Clarisse thundered at her, brown eyes flashing dangerously as she stood up. Without even thinking about it Piper mirrored the movement. She didn't know what had come over her, but she felt like she needed to defend Percy Jackson, even against someone who could easily beat her into the ground. The girl stepped up to her and a fight might have actually escalated had Jason not intervened.
"Hey now, it's alright. Just go sit back down Clarisse," he smiled amicably and his blue eyes were warm but both Piper and Clarisse got the threat. If Clarisse touched Piper, she would have to deal with her sudden protector. It annoyed Piper that she apparently couldn't solve her own arguments and so when Clarisse sat back down with but a backwards glare thrown for their benefit, Piper sat back down without a glance at Jason, arms folded over her chest as she stared resolutely at Apollo.
She ignored Leo's low whistle and pseudo-whispered sing-song comment of 'You're in trouble…' aimed at Jason. She bit back a smile when she heard Leo's quiet yelp of pain when Jason promptly thumped him on the back of the head.
"I looked at the carving, and felt a flush of relief, because I actually recognized it. "That's Kronos eating his kids, right?""
"Trust Percy to remember that one," one of the campers grumbled, a little green at the thought of their parents getting eaten, whilst another asked why Chiron had to mention that one. Piper didn't know it was possible for a centaur to blush but Chiron turned a magnificent shade of spruce and refused to answer.
"Yes," Mr. Brunner said, obviously not satisfied. "And he did this because ..."
"Well..." I racked my brain to remember. "Kronos was the king god, and—"
"He's finally done it," Thalia whistled lowly, eyes fixated on her godly older brother.
"Done what?" Leo asked, apparently over being hit by Jason. Piper was curious as well but her current irritation at Jason prevented her from turning towards Thalia to hear the answer.
"Pissed off Apollo, we thought it was impossible to do it, but Percy's done it. I don't know to be proud or irritated," Thalia gestured towards Apollo who looked quite offended at being compared to the evil-titan overlord that was in all accounts his grandfather. Irritation colored his reading and his eyes were narrowed as if he were imagining skewering Percy for even thinking such a thing. Piper praised the gods that she was not Percy.
She liked being a completely untransformed human as well as having all of her limbs fully intact.
"God?" Mr. Brunner asked.
"Titan," I corrected myself. "And ... he didn't trust his kids, who were the gods. So, um, Kronos ate them, right? But his wife hid baby Zeus, and gave Kronos a rock to eat instead. And later, when Zeus grew up, he tricked his dad, Kronos, into barfing up his brothers and sisters—"
"Eeew!" said one of the girls behind me."
"Oh grow up," Piper muttered with a roll of her eyes and Jason laughed lightly. Piper glanced up at him and he smiled warmly, blue eyes asking for forgiveness for whatever he'd done wrong. Piper huffed and looked away. She was being immature, but she was also sick of Jason (or Leo on occasion) settling her fights for her. Since they had come back, he'd been treating her fragile and the only fight she'd solved herself was with Drew and even that was because he hadn't known about it.
That's why she was irritated at him and also why she wasn't looking at him now. Stupid bright blue eyes would get her to forgive him like that, and she just didn't want to. That and she'd blush like a catholic school girl on her first date and Leo would never let her off it when he saw.
"—and so there was this big fight between the gods and the Titans," I continued, "and the gods won." Some snickers from the group."
"Leave it to Percy," Grover started, amazement in his eyes, "to summarize years and years of ruthless fighting into a simple paragraph," several of the campers nodded and everyone laughed at it. Very Percy Jackson indeed.
"Behind me, Nancy Bobofit mumbled to a friend, "Like we're going to use this in real life. Like it's going to say on our job applications, 'Please explain why Kronos ate his kids.'"
"It would be an awesome job if it did," One of the Stolls said, grinning at each other in the way that had Piper gulping and checking her pockets one more than one occasion. She made a mental note to never, ever, accept a job offer from the brothers. She didn't even want to think about what kind of job they could come up with that had that as a central question.
"And why, Mr. Jackson," Brunner said, "to paraphrase Miss Bobofit's excellent question, does this matter in real life?"
"Busted," Leo snorted, "Chiron's got magic horse hearing," Piper stared incredulously at her friend. Magic horse hearing? Had her friend finally gone off the deep end? Had he eaten something odd from one of the Hermes children? Either way she feared for his sanity. Or what was left of it anyway.
"Busted," Grover muttered.
"Shut up," Nancy hissed, her face even brighter red than her hair."
"She gives a bad name to gingers everywhere," Rachel Elizabeth Dare, the camp's oracle, stated, tugging at one of her own bright locks. The other two red-heads at camp, Piper's twin sisters, nodded in agreement.
"At least Nancy got packed, too. Mr. Brunner was the only one who ever caught her saying anything wrong. He had radar ears."
"Percy agrees with me!" Piper stared at Leo and shook her head. Sometimes she worried.
"I thought about his question, and shrugged. "I don't know, sir."
"I see." Mr. Brunner looked disappointed. "Well, half credit, Mr. Jackson. Zeus did indeed feed Kronos a mixture of mustard and wine, which made him disgorge his other five children, who, of course, being immortal gods, had been living and growing up completely undigested in the Titan's stomach. "
"Disgorged is just a nice way to say he puked them up right?" Travis asked, smirking in Apollo's direction. Piper noticed that although Apollo had ignored this and promptly read on, his cheeks were stained pink. Piper felt a little sick at the thought, and so listened intently to Apollo to drown out the thoughts.
"The gods defeated their father, sliced him to pieces with his own scythe, and scattered his remains in Tartarus, the darkest part of the Underworld. On that happy note, it's time for lunch. Mrs. Dodds, would you lead us back outside?"
"Wow, Chiron, wow. Great subject change," the campers snickered at the once again blushing centaur before turning back towards Apollo to continue the story. However, said god was currently placing the book back into the box. "What are you doing?" the same camper who had made the comment about Chiron asked. Apollo smiled brightly at him and Piper got the feeling that he was getting his revenge on Travis.
"Well, past Chiron was quite correct, now is the perfect time for lunch, so we shall patiently wait for the harpies to have finished cooking it, come back into the pavilion and partake in the undoubtedly wonderful meal, and then continue on with the story, okay?" Judging from the amount of complaining he got for stopping the story (Again) in the middle of the first chapter, no one was okay with it, but Apollo simply ushered them all out to 'go practice being heros for a bit' and left them no choice but to go.
Piper was already half-way across the courtyard when Jason finally caught up with her. She was still irritated with him, and maybe, just maybe it had a little bit more with Jason's gradual withdrawal from her than it did his grating habit of protecting her, but it didn't matter. Either way, she didn't want to have this conversation now, because she knew that if she talked to Jason now, he would find some way to comfort her as he always did and her anger would dissipate.
She knew it was immature but she wanted to stay angry at the blond boy a little bit longer and so she glared at him before turning again to walk away. She was maybe two strides away before she felt his gentle but firm hand placed on her shoulder. She counted to three before slowly facing him, kaleidoscope eyes meeting electric blue. He wasn't smiling his crooked apologetic smile now, but staring intently, as if he had tried to find out what he'd done and was now irritated because he didn't find anything. That was probably an accurate assessment, considering the circumstance.
"Can we at least talk?" He was irritated, that was obvious in his question and Piper felt her own rarely used anger spike up.
"What do you want to know?" she demanded, stepping just out of Jason's reach and folding her arms over her chest. She had never fought with Jason before and it was odd, the feeling of crushing fear that it could ruin their friendship that surrounded her. She was rather known for admitting things during her anger, and she had quite a lot of bottled feelings between her and Jason.
"Why you are mad at me! All I did was step in between you and Clarisse so you two didn't get into it and suddenly I'm getting the cold shoulder!" Piper could admit, from Jason's point of view the whole thing did seem quite ludicrous, but she was irritated with her whole situation with Jason and she wasn't about to back down now just for it to blow up later, in a possibly more public place.
"I'm sick of you acting like I can't defend myself!" she shot back, "Ever since we got back from our quest, you've been acting like I'm made of glass or something! You always step in when I'm arguing with someone and it's annoying!" Jason was silent for a moment and Piper caught her breath at her little outburst. Jason's face was rather stoic but she swore she could see a flash of hurt go through them. Most of her anger had disappeared and she was about to apologize when Jason spoke again.
"I only do it because I care and I don't want to see you hurt," he told her quietly and Piper suddenly felt a mixture of anger and guilt. She was horrified to feel the tears begin to fall but she pulled further away from Jason before letting her irritation flow and shooting back another retort, all thoughts of apologizing flying out the window.
"If you cared you wouldn't be pulling away." Her words were quiet, not very angry, but she could see the impact they had on Jason. He was shocked for a moment, as if he truly thought the fight was simply about jumping in when he shouldn't have, and by the time he went to speak, to deny the action, Piper was already ahead.
"Don't say you don't know what I'm talking about. We both know good and well that as soon as your memories started coming back, you began to distance yourself from me. If you have a girlfriend back home, I understand." Her voice was slightly shaky at the end and the tears were actually falling now. She could tell from the slightly guilty look on Jason's face, that she had hit a ringer.
"Piper…." Jason spoke softly, eyes pleading for to let him explain. Piper knew that Jason shouldn't feel guilty and knew that deep down she wasn't angry at Jason for the whole situation, but Hera for taking Jason's memories and then making her fall in love with a boy she didn't actually know, but she still turned away from him in that moment, tears drying as she went to her sisters and brothers and away from her friend.
They could talk later, but for now she would eat, and then listen to the rest of the chapter. She refused to dwell on the whole incident, and maybe Jason would agree to letting the whole thing just bury beneath the two. She tried to make it seem like that's what she wanted as she smiled brightly against her siblings' questioning concern. She would deal with it all later.
Kind of an odd end considering this is just a 'so and so reads such and such' but I wanted my story to have a bit more of an underlying plot to it and when I sat down and (finally) got this down, that's what came out. Also, I apologize for the blatant tardiness for the chapter and for the fact that it's still going to be on chapter one but on the slight upside: this chapter is longer than the last! (although not by much) I hoped you enjoyed it and if you don't like the idea of the underlying plot thingy just tell me and I'll revise my future plans. Until Next Time!