Author's Note: This fic was written for the PJO Big Bang on Tumblr, and therefore has art attatched to it, please see the official pjobigbang tumblr for more information. I do not own Percy Jackson and the Olympians or the Heroes of Olympus.

For the Love of a Triangle

A small story set in the winter between The Battle of the Labyrinth and The Last Olympian

Part I: The Rise

"Be careful of love. It'll twist your brain around and leave you thinking up is down and right is wrong."

-Aphrodite, The Titan's Curse

"The worst part about falling for your best friend is the fact that you can't tell them, not wanting to ruin the friendship. So you're basically forced to keep your biggest secret from the one person you can tell any secret to, and that breaks you."

-Unknown

Annabeth II

Annabeth came to a conclusion the next morning as she was doing cabin inspection in the mostly-empty camp. A cup of coffee in one hand and a clipboard in the other, she tried to balance a pen behind her ear as she creaked open the infamous ochre-tinted wooden door of the Aphrodite Cabin.

Silena sat on the top of her bunk eating chocolates and listening to her iPod. The cabin, of course, was spotless, yet somehow Silena seemed messy. Her hair and clothes were spotless and nice as usual, her makeup was perfect, but she had not been standing by the door wide awake and doe-eyed as usual.

"Um, hey…" Annabeth said. Silena looked over at her with a nod, but not her usual happy attitude.

Annabeth cringed inwardly with awkwardness. She was never one for girl talks. Even her school friends knew that. If they did talk to Annabeth about a break up or something along those lines, she was more likely to punch their exes in the face than to give them a consolation talk. Annabeth was a mess with feelings, especially when it came to her own, but Silena had always been one for a kind word or meaningful smile, and she knew that her conscious would bother her indefinitely if she didn't at least attempt to try and find out what was wrong.

"Are you… okay?" The other girl looked over at her with big blue eyes, and Annabeth noticed an unusual clump of mascara on her eyelash. It was like Silena's usual talent at makeup had failed her slightly today.

"Drew was right." Silena said, her voice cracking halfway. "You lose mom's trust when you fail the right of passage. It's just… I couldn't… Charlie…" Tears started streaming down her face, not even smudging the most-likely waterproof mascara. Annabeth felt herself stiffen up, but resolved to hold her ground.

"Um…Drew's a skýla." She felt herself slip into Greek, not wanting to actually use English to insult the other daughter of Aphrodite. Even so, it almost felt like she was asking a question. Gods, she was bad at this. "I'm sure whatever's going on with Beckendorf is just some big misunderstanding… right?"

"Drew's actually not that bad." Silena replied, being the better person even in her despair, "She really has a lot going on at home. Besides, I mean I thought we were official since we went to the fireworks together last summer and stuff but… well… I don't know. I hadn't heard from him since the end of summer, and I decided to come here because I wanted to see him but he's just always out in the woods with that bronze dragon or working on something and I just never get to see him. Also, I guess the fireworks didn't mean anything, because you and Percy went together and that did absolutely nothing… I just. I clumped my mascara, Annabeth. I clumped it."

"It's only one clump…" Although she knew Silena had not meant it offensively, the comment about the fireworks stung a place deep inside her heart where she didn't like to spend a lot of time. Still, the situation itself was starting to get almost unbearable, as Annabeth had zero to no experience comforting crying girls about boy problems, probably why she tried to avoid crying about them herself.

"I might as well have been disowned!" Silena cried, sobbing into her pillow. Her pale legs, which were currently covered by tribal-pattern leggings, flailed up and down from the knees as she cried, as if she was trying to backstroke the pain away.

Annabeth didn't have anything much to add to the conversation, so she just marked down on her clipboard the score for the cabin, perfect as usual, before moving on to the next ones.

Silena's problems kept bugging her as she tried to go along with her day, though. Well, not exactly Silena's problem, but more so the problem that they both shared: What did going to the fireworks with someone actually mean? For years and years she'd looked at the Fourth of July at camp as a time for excitement and dates, and other things along those lines. For years and years she'd watched older campers get together at the fireworks. They sealed the deal. Once you went with someone, that was it; you were a couple. Now though, looking back, Annabeth realized her view of the situation might've been a bit more than a little warped.

If a daughter of Aphrodite, of all people, had not sealed the deal by going to the fireworks with someone, what made Annabeth think it would have been different for her? She had thought that summer that maybe, just maybe, Percy would forget about Rachel so that things would work out for her for once in her life. And he almost had; they would get so close, it would seem like the weeks of fighting hadn't even happened, and then one of them would bring up Luke, or Rachel and everything would just collapse around them. She was walking on fractured glass, and any second the floor would go through and she would fall through that awful, horrible void that was missing him while simultaneously wondering whether or not she was even good enough for someone as wonderful as he was.

It had gotten worse since Percy went back to school. He saw Rachel every single day. Annabeth only saw him on the occasional weekend that they were not fighting monsters and/or each other, and even then, the conversation felt forced and almost always ended in another fight.

All this was running through her mind as she checked the remaining cabins. Most of them were empty, or at least almost empty, seeing as most kids only came to camp during the summer. She kept up a calm and collected disposition as she tried to get through the cabin inspection, but as soon as it was over, Annabeth gave the clipboard back to Chiron and quickly ran to the arena, her boots crushing the light layer of snow that Mr. D had allowed to fall. She shed her black winter jacket, revealing the orange Camp Half Blood tanks that the gift shop sold, and felt the slight sting of cold on her arms, but she knew it would go away as soon as she started fighting.

Annabeth normally fought with a knife, but when she got fuming, she liked to try other weapons to keep her mind off of a subject that was slowly encasing it in a layer of poisonous gas. She grabbed a spear from the bin of training weapons off to the side of the arena. She ran at the dummy, the spear not feeling quite right in her hands, and tried to spear it in a chink of its armor, but her anger distracted her.

This was not how she was supposed to be feeling. She was Annabeth Chase. She walked all over most of the boys at her school, and the boys at camp knew that she would barely tolerate their flirting. Why was she letting sea-green eyes and a sense of humor get the best of her? Anger flared behind her eyes ,but she wasn't sure if it was from missing the target, or hating herself, or if it was just about the fact that she regretted waving a hand through every single Iris Message that Percy had tried to send her after one of their big fights. That boy had probably gone through more drachmas than he even owned trying to apologize to her for something he didn't even do, or at least something he didn't even know he did to her.

She ran at the dummy once again, aiming for the neck, but her spear bounced off of the top of the dummy's bronze breastplate. She cursed, and then spun around quickly as she saw a pair of eyes watching her.

"What are you looking at?" She almost yelled in frustration as the form of Clarisse La Rue stared down at her from the wall surrounding the arena.

"Well, someone's in a bad mood." Clarisse picked at her nails, covered in peeling red polish that Annabeth presumed Silena had painted on her at one point or another.

"Really? How could you possibly tell?"

"For starters, you're holding the spear all wrong. While I get the idea of using rage to fight, it obviously isn't working for you."

Annabeth threw the spear on the ground in frustration. She was not used to fighting with one. She had been trying out a sword for the past few months, but she had gotten bored with it quickly. "How are you supposed to hold it then?"

Clarisse jumped down the 4-foot wall into the arena, her electric spear crackling in her hand, and came over to Annabeth. She showed her the fingerless leather gloves she was wearing. "First of all, Princess, spear fighting involves a ton of decisive movement. You cannot afford to get a blister or let the spear slip out of your hands. I usually use these to keep my grip. Your problem, though, is that you're trying to hold the spear way too high up." Clarisse flipped Maimer around to showcase her grip. "You need to keep it balanced."

Following Clarisse's advice, Annabeth quickly changed her grip and aimed at the dummy again. Once again, she did not even make a mark. "It's not helping," she growled, sure she sounded whiny.

"Now, I'm probably not an expert on… whatever it is you're going through," Clarisse started, her tone becoming only slightly less rough, "but seeing as our resident expert is locked up in her cabin listening to depressing 8tracks playlists, I'm guessing that it's not your lack of ability to fight with a spear that's bothering you."

"You're right, you're not an expert," the blonde retorted, getting into a close-contact position with the dummy and making sure that the spear actually was sharp enough to work. "And since when do you have an interest in the social aspects of my life?"

"I don't," Clarisse admitted, "but Silena needs help solving the mess she's in, and it is up to me, her best friend, to make sure that you, our best strategist, is not in one of her moods, because when you're in a mood, you get everyone else in camp in a mood."

Annabeth rolled her eyes at that notion, but made a mental note to check how her moods affected the other campers next time she found herself in one. "And why exactly do I not need to be in a mood?"

"Because my best friend is already in a mood, you're not helping her, and, in consequence, you're going to help me fix Silena, that's why. That girl hasn't been right in the head since her prissy cabin mate Iris Messaged her last night before dinner, and I'm positive there's something going on deeper than her mooning over some boy. You're good at getting clues when you're not moody or distracted, and I'm good at beating up punks who mess with Silena, so we're working together on this case." The daughter of Athena wasn't sure when she'd ever heard Clarisse utter the words in consequence, but she assumed the daughter of Ares might have started watching some law and crime show, and that just might be the reason that her vocabulary had suddenly improved.

"Clarisse, you're making it sound like we're detectives in some 40's crime drama," Annabeth said. "I haven't even agreed to do anything yet. Maybe I want to stay here and practice with the spear. Maybe I don't want to get involved with some silly camp drama that will pass over in a few days."

At this, Clarisse's eyes turned a more violent shade of brown than usual. "Listen here, princess, and listen good, because you may think you can do whatever in Hades you want because you're Chiron's favorite and your boyfriend is probably the child of the prophecy, but you are not allowed to talk about Silena's pain like it's some sort of soap opera. You're going to help me with this, or I'm going to pulverize you right here on the straw floor of this arena. You got that?"

"I—what makes you think that I'm… what makes you think you can…" Annabeth was too flushed by the boyfriend comment and too tired from almost a full night of searching through Daedalus' laptop for battle strategies to even consider getting into a fight with Clarisse. They were pretty evenly matched when they were both at the peak of both mental and physical health, but Annabeth knew the burly brunette would follow through with her threat, and she probably wouldn't be able to hold up against her on the limited sleep she'd gotten. "Fine," Annabeth sighed. "But don't expect me to be happy about this."

Clarisse let out a contented grunt and proceeded to drag the other girl by the arm from the arena to the circle of cabins and to the door of the only cabin in the entire camp that perpetually smelled of Chanel No. 5 and was painted the color of Pepto Bismol.

"Why exactly are we stopping here?" Annabeth asked, almost choking on the excessive amount of perfume that covered the cabin like a layer of icing on a cake. She usually went through the doorway quickly during cabin inspection, so as not to have to smell too much of it, but just standing outside it with Clarisse, examining it, made her want to puke.

"We need to get a testimony from the victim herself. She may not admit all that we need to know, but that's why we'll look for clues inside afterwards." Both girls stepped back for a moment to take huge breaths of fresh air before plunging headfirst into the unfamiliar world of the Aphrodite cabin.

Silena was still lying in the top bunk with her head buried into a mauve pillow and her long black locks spilling out over it. A half-empty box of chocolates lay next to her, as did her pink-cased iPod, which had volume on high enough for Annabeth to hear just hints of the music Silena was listening to. It did nothing for her already bad mood. Whoever wrote songs that were supposed to make people sad probably didn't have an empathetic bone in their body. What compelled Silena to listen to something like this if it was certain to only make her more upset?

Clarisse walked over to the bunk, gentler than Annabeth had ever seen her be with anything else, and whispered a greeting to the sobbing girl. Silena looked up, the clump of mascara from that morning still there, surrounding her pale blue eyes. A too-big pink sweater was falling off of one of her pale shoulders, and once again, she looked like an absolutely fashionable mess. "You okay?" Clarisse asked.

The daughter of Aphrodite shrugged her pale shoulders, "The clump's still there." She wiped at her tears with the sleeve of her fluffy sweater. She was still sobbing, although Annabeth was utterly astounded that instead of the heaving sobs that most normal people experienced when crying, Silena Beauregard gave out soft, could-like sighs that almost forced you to pity her.

"Look," Clarisse started, "I know you talked with Drew last night. Would you mind sharing the details of that conversation with us?"

"Us?" Silena asked, and then looked over at the doorway to see an uncomfortable Annabeth leaning cautiously against the doorframe of the cabin. "Oh." She knew she wasn't totally welcome, and honestly, she didn't even want to be there, but Clarisse had dragged her along, and Silena would probably piece that together eventually, still, it probably didn't help that Annabeth had a reputation of not helping people when they were in pain.

"We're trying to help you here. We just need to know what Drew told you last night."

"Oh." Silena's voice was quieter than usual, with no squeals or other sounds of joy. "Well, we didn't really talk about much. I just asked her how that fancy school in Brooklyn was working out for her and she bragged about her Christmas presents and her boyfriend."

Annabeth knew she had to be patient with the seemingly helpless girl on top of the bunk, but she knew that none of that stuff would help this 'investigation' be done any faster. "Was there anything else she said? Maybe about Beckendorf, or…"

As soon as his name left her mouth, Silena started sobbing again, and Clarisse shot her a dirty look. This was exactly why Annabeth usually never got involved with these sorts of things; she had always end up somehow not recognizing which words could trigger yet another set of tears.

Silena managed to get a hold of herself for a moment, however, and mumbled, "Well, she did mention something about a quest that Mom wanted me to go on, but that maybe I should stay at camp because Mom didn't know I'd failed my right of passage. That doesn't matter anyway, because mom already knows, hence the clump." And with that, Silena fell on her pillow in sobs again, and no amount of prodding from Clarisse would get her to say any more.

"Thanks a lot," the daughter of Ares grunted as she and Annabeth made their way around the cabin, looking for the pile of Drew's things that she had left at camp at the end of summer. In the middle back of the cabin sat a bed with silk sheets with the initials D.T. embroidered on them, which was definitely not camp-standard, but there was nothing worth helping their case.

She turned back to her companion. "Clarisse," she started, "what exactly are we doing? Even if we knew that Drew had said something to Beckendorf, what does that have anything to do with making Silena feel better? If anything, it'll probably make her feel worse."

"I just need to know what exactly she said to him. If that skýla told him anything about him being Silena's rite of passage, I'm going to chop her up to shish-kabob size pieces, skewer her with Maimer, and roast her—"

"Well, why don't we ask Nyssa, or one of the other Hephaestus cabin members? Maybe they've heard something."

"It's worth a shot." Clarisse responded, dropping a bottle of East Indian Mermaid Tears Perfume back down onto the dresser where it had sat with disgust.

They quietly walked back out of Cabin 10, not wanting to disturb Silena in her misery, and made their way across the circle of cabins over to the forges, where the Hephaestus cabin was most likely hanging out.

Nyssa greeted them at the door. A short, curvy girl, she had grease stains covering her Camp Half Blood t-shirt, and really, the rest of her too. An olive green bandana held back her dark, oily hair, and she waved at the two girls, a wrench in hand, as they came through the door.

Annabeth noticed Beckendorf was forging something by himself in the corner. He looked secluded and sad. Certainly not as sad as Silena currently was, of course, but still more closed off than usual.

"What's up with him?" Clarisse asked Nyssa with a grunt. Annabeth knew her partner already knew what was up with Beckendorf, but still opened her mouth, about to protest Clarisse's rudeness when Nyssa responded. The daughter of Hephaestus was from the New Jersey area, with Italian blood, and it shone obviously in the way that she talked. Even as she answered Clarisse, Annabeth could only picture what the rest of Nyssa's family might be like. She guessed they were probably also slightly short and tough, people probably didn't want to mess with them. Even as Nyssa was helping them ever so sweetly, Annabeth never forgot how tough the brunette could be when she wanted to.

"In all honesty, I'm not sure. Drew stopped by camp a few days ago with an order for a magical item or something. She was discussing some of the plans with Beckendorf and then when she'd left, he stopped smiling and joking with all of us and just kind of sat there working on Drew's order. We sent Drew the order by the Hermes Cabin's delivery service last night, and I thought that would make him feel better, but he's just as bad as he has been. All I could get out of him was that Drew wanted a magical lipstick taser, and nothing else." Nyssa bit her lip. Annabeth could tell she really was concerned about the well-being of her brother.

"If you want we can talk to him," she coaxed.

"You can try…" The daughter of Hephaestus trailed off. "Anyway, what did you guys come in for?"

"It can wait," Clarisse said, making her way over to the bench in the back corner of the forge where Charles Beckendorf was working. "Okay, listen up punk," Clarisse started, her fist coming close to Beckendorf's face, "Silena's been sobbing in her cabin for two days. I wanna know what in Tartarus you did to her."

Annabeth opened her mouth in shock. Most campers were terrified of Beckendorf, even though he'd barely hurt a fly without a valid reason. She assumed it was mostly because of his giant muscles from countless hours in the forges. "Clarisse, I really don't think that's any way to…"

The brunette cut her off, "If I hear you touched a hair on her beautiful little head, you're going to wish Kronos had gotten into camp last summer when I'm done with you…" Clarisse continued listing the may possible ways that she would kill Beckendorf if he had hurt Silena in any way when the burly older guy whispered out a response.

"I didn't do anything to her." He whispered, his head hanging low over his workbench. Beckendorf's hands were still fiddling with whatever he was working on, and his discomfort was obvious.

Clarisse snorted, "Now I find that hard to believe, pretty boy. I'm going to ask you again: WHAT DID YOU DO TO SILENA."

This time, Annabeth did feel the need to interject a response. "Clarisse! This is not why we are here!" Then slightly softer to Beckendorf, "What did Drew talk to you about last week? Does it have anything to do with why Silena is crying?"

The other workers of the forge were staring at the three of them now, and Clarisse noticed them, and then proceeded to start shouting at the rest of them. "WHAT ARE YOU PUNKS LOOKING AT?" They quickly went back to work on whatever they had been working on earlier.

"She said ….." Beckendorf grumbled a few things, but they were inaudible.

"What did she say?"

"She said that Silena was only using me for her rite of passage… that she didn't…that she didn't even love me at all… that it was all just an act, and at first I didn't believe her, because she's Drew and all, but I asked around. Will Solace, Connor Stoll, Katie from Apollo, they've all been used like that and… and I kind of blew up at her. I didn't realize she would take it so hard. Okay?" Beckendorf slammed his wrench down on the workbench in frustration.

"I knew it!" This time Annabeth was the one yelling. "That little bit…" She regained her composure, realizing that once again the entire forge was staring at them. "Look, Beckendorf, the rite of passage is a very, very, very old Aphrodite tradition that Drew's trying to re-instate, but seeing as Silena is head counselor, believe me, if it was re-instated, and if on the rare chance Silena was actually going along with it, believe me, Chiron would be having an intervention like he does with Cabin 11 when a camper disappears…"

"So… she's not just playing me?" Beckendorf asked, his voice suddenly quiet.

"NO, SHE WASN'T YOU, LITTLE—"

"Clarisse!"

"Oh gods… I can't believe… she's been crying for two days? I have to go fix this somehow."

"You'd better, or so help me, I'll—"

"Clarisse!"

Later, Annabeth assumed that Beckendorf had run to Silena and explained the whole thing to her. They had both probably ignored the no-two-campers-of-different-godly-parents-allowed-in-a-cabin-alone rule. She liked to picture Silena's liked playlists on 8tracks turning from sad songs to stupidly in love songs. Because, if Annabeth wasn't allowed to get a cheesy contemporary novel-esque happily ever after, then someone should, at least in her imagination. Either way, she got no more of Clarisse discussing her love life as they sparred together, and no more cloud-like sobbing as she performed cabin inspection.

Annabeth came to a conclusion that day after Silena and Beckendorf made up and Clarisse described (in gory detail) exactly what she was going to do to Drew when she saw her again: If she was going to deal with every single problem the camp had to offer (including her own), she was going to need more coffee. Exhausted from the day, she stumbled into her cabin to get another cup of coffee, only to find as she was adding the sugar that she was stirring her coffee with the spoon she'd stomped out of Percy's apartment with only the previous week.

She decided to talk to Chiron about yet another visit into the city. Maybe if she could fix everyone else's problems, she could fix her own too.