Chapter One: He Must Be
She had prayed and prayed for a sign, a chance. She'd prayed to every God and Goddess and spirit she could think of, from the muses to Zeus. She sat with the decrepit oracle, trying to will her into speech. She'd cajoled, begged and pestered Chiron and even tried reasoning with Mr. D. (she had to stop, lest she be turned into a dolphin). She prayed to her mother with every step she ran: Give me a chance. Give me a chance. Give me a chance. Eventually the prayer devolved into Gvmechance, gvmechance, as her pace increased slowly, until she was sprinting around the camp, mumbling under her breath. It was how she had started running.
Annabeth was running out of options fast- almost literally. Her brothers and sisters were content to solve complex equations, study military history and play risk. Annabeth was not. They went to trainings and came back to the cabin to play. Annabeth drilled her knife throwing, ran laps around the camp, did pushups.
She was ready for a quest. She wanted to see the world. There were monsters and monuments to be seen! She couldn't live the rest of her life strategizing new ways to beat the Ares cabin at capture the flag. She wanted to tackle challenges scarier than the climbing wall, navigate water wider than the canoe lake. Annabeth was 12 and she was ready. In ancient Greece she would have been engaged by now. Not that that was what she wanted, but she would be considered close to an adult! She was smarter and better trained than anyone else at camp- except maybe Luke, and he got a quest! She deserved a quest. She needed a quest. Why else would her mother have given her a birthday gift this year?
But no, Chiron told her she had to wait. She had to wait for someone special. Well, she had been waiting 5 years already! Wasn't she special enough on her own? Annabeth was not some princess in a tower waiting to be rescued! (Percy would tell her years later that on that first night, stricken with fear, exhaustion and grief, that was exactly what he had thought she was- a princess).
She knew she was powerful. She might not be like some of the other demigods, her heart twisted as she thought about Thalia, who could call down lightning. Or Luke, who could pick any lock in the world, or even the way the Demeter campers could control plants. But sure enough, when she left the boundaries, monsters found her almost immediately. The more powerful demigods had it the hardest out in the world- and if that was true (and at the very least they were highly correlated), Annabeth had to have some kind of special power she wasn't aware of, didn't she?
She had been having a discussion along those lines with Chiron. The centaur continued to insist that an eidetic memory and being the only 12 year old to be able to use the term "flying buttresses" correctly and without giggling were her special powers. Furthermore, he insisted, those powers did not qualify her to strike out on a random quest. Looking back on it, he had been incredibly patient with her. At the time, she was prepared rebut him with a witty retort ("Yes it does!") when they heard the thump-thunk-thunk, and a faint groan from outside the big house. She raced out to see what it was. Sure enough, there was a boy on the porch.
He couldn't have been older than she was. His right hand reached desperately toward the door,, in his left he clutched a horn covered in gore. Annabeth didn't think he looked like anything special. Grover the satyr lay prone in the grass about 10 feet behind him, moaning about enchiladas. If Grover had brought him- this must be the one Chiron had been keeping an eye on this year... that might mean...
She turned her attention back to the boy. As she scrutinized him in that moment, she found him wanting. The boy was wiry but not strong-looking. He was not especially handsome or tall. His hair was a mess and he was missing a shoe. With a groan, he managed to lift his head and look at them for just a moment. His face had tear tracks and the same expression nearly every demigod who managed to stumble over the camp border shared: just a little bit of relief mixed with a whole lot of terror. She was ready to write him off entirely when the light caught his eyes, and she suddenly felt very short of breath.
His eyes were the color of the sound in a storm, with all of the fury and intensity of the vast, rocking ocean. So familiar, but she couldn't place how or why. Looking back on it now, Annabeth knew exactly who Percy looked like. Many demigods didn't resemble their parents, but Percy did. He blinked once at her. At the time, she'd told herself that the double-skip of her heart was because of the quest- the fact that the hero had gorgeous eyes had nothing to do with it. Ragged, messy, unconscious, and potentially dimwitted, he was the most beautiful thing ever to crawl over the border. Whoever he was, he was her ticket out. The hero with whom she would quest.
"He's the one," she'd breathed. "He must be."
That, it turned out, was an incredible understatement.