It was a long night, and an early morning for Lara. There was a tremendous amount of preparations that needed to be made, even before she knew where she was going. More importantly, Lara needed to bring herself up to speed on Sappho and her poetry in general. What she found, surprised her. It wasn't necessarily the content itself that was surprising, but rather what wasn't common in her poetry.
While Percy had been correct, and the bulk of her work related heavily to matters of love and the heart, what he had most certainly been lying about was the Garden. Sappho's poems referenced parts of the ancient Greek mythos, but the bulk of her focus in ancient mythology had been on Aphrodite. It was fitting, considering that Sappho typically wrote poems about longing and love, and Aphrodite was the Goddess of Love.
However in Lara's research into the Garden of Hesperides provided only more confusion and frustration. There was little in the way of romance with respect to the Garden of myth. It was as Percy had described it, the location of the Golden Apples and the Golden Fleece. Little if nothing could be found to be romantic about such a place in the strictly sexual definition of the word.
It was an important distinction in Lara's opinion as well, given that most scholarly work about Sappho was on the inherently sexual nature of her poetry. Why would a poet, renowned for her works about love and her love for women, be writing about the Garden of Hesperides? More importantly, was why Percy had been so dismissive about that aspect of the work. Perhaps it could simply be written off as a disinterest in poetry. Percy did not strike her as the type to enjoy sitting down and analyzing a poem line for line, even if he was a classical historian.
Her gut instincts, which were usually right, told her that Percy had been lying. But why? And to what end? Why lie about the purpose of the Garden in the poem? And why did he have such a strange and peculiar reaction to touching the paper?
There was too much to unpack there for one night, so Lara instead opted to keep a close eye on the man moving forward.
The sun was barely starting to shine over the treetops surrounding the Manor when the doorbell rang. Less of a doorbell perhaps, and more of a gonging chime that reverberated around the large halls of the Manor. Checking the nearby clock in the kitchen, she realized that she had lost herself in thought and Percy was in fact due to be there.
Sighing, as she glanced down at her apparel, she decided that if Percy couldn't hand'e working around her in slight state of undress, then he wasn't worth working with to begin with. Not like she had anything to be ashamed of anyways.
The doorbell chimed once more and she marched out of the kitchen and through the manor. She threw the door open as Percy was raising his hand to ring the bell one last time. He met her eyes, and blinked in blank surprise. He was dressed much more modestly and comfortably than what he'd worn at work. A simple and faded sweatshirt for some New York sports team that Lara didn't recognize, and a pair of well worn blue jeans over some casual sneakers. A large leather shoulder-bag was slung over his shoulder.
"Am I early?" He asked in confusion, as he checked his watch,
"No," said Lara tiredly, gesturing for him to follow her inside, "I just lost track of time this morning. Would you care for tea?"
"I'll take some coffee if you have any," said Percy, following her inside and staring awestruck up at the enormous ceiling. Though if he had any thoughts or discomforts about working inside the large manor, he kept them to himself.
"I'm sure there's something in the pantry," said Lara dismissively, leading him into the kitchen.
"Please, help yourself to anything you need. If you haven't had breakfast yet, help yourself. We're in for a long day. I'll be down in a few minutes,"
Percy nodded mutely, staring in unabashed awe at the size and scale of her kitchen.
"Size of my whole fucking apartment," she heard him mutter to himself, as he put his shoulder-bag on the marble island in the middle of the kitchen.
Unwittingly smiling to herself, Lara excused herself up to her room in order to change into something more work-appropriate. When she reemerged in the kitchen ten minutes later, Percy had managed to find himself a bag of El Salvadorian coffee beans and was busy trying to figure out how to make a rather ancient-looking coffee pot work.
"You know," said Percy as he closed the lid to the grinder and placed the filter into the pot, "For such a nice house, there are some truly ancient appliances in here. Don't think I've seen a real coffee pot since I was an undergrad,"
"One of the few issues with always being on the road, I'm afraid," said Lara as she rummaged through the refrigerator for a moment, before grabbing a spare apple. "Don't really have the time or need for some of the newest appliances." She took a bite of her apple and arched an eyebrow,
"Besides, I don't drink coffee."
Percy grunted as the grinder of the pot roared to life, filling the room with the electronic whirring and crunching sound of the blades crushing the beans in the pot.
"I tried quitting after college," said Percy with a shrug, turning around to lean against the counter as he rolled his sleeves up to his elbows, "Even tried the whole tea thing for a minute, but I could never get into it."
"Well I suppose it's all right," shrugged Lara, "Not everyone can be cultured. And I don't expect much in the way of class from an American," she teased, brow arched. If they were going to be working in close proximity with one another, even if Lara was leery about his motivations, Lara needed to know if there were going to be any problems or personality clashes. The grinding came to a halt as the steady drip of the coffee began to percolate through the kitchen.
Percy rolled his eyes, and smiled good-naturedly, "I've lived here for two years already Ms. Croft," he said, "I can assure you, if you're trying to get a rise out of me, you're going to get bored very quickly."
The pot beeped as the coffee finished, and Percy turned around and began pouring the coffee into a very large cup. He doctored the cup with a healthy dose of creamer and even more sugar, until the coffee was so light in color that it nearly looked like discolored milk.
"At that point, you might have a better time just hooking an IV into your arm and trying to drip-feed yourself the caffeine," snorted Lara, "Or better yet, just circumvent the entire process and just start drinking the sugar itself,"
"I tried it once, back in college," shrugged Percy nonchalantly, "As it turns out, the human body isn't made to accept caffeine directly through the bloodstream."
Lara paused midway through her bite of the apple,
"You're joking, right?" Said Lara, but Percy shook his,
"Dead serious. Managed to gerry-rig up an IV drip for myself and filled the entire thing up with coffee. I needed it because I had back to back exams in statistics and physics, the subjects that nearly caused me to fail out of undergrad. I wanted to stay up longer to study and thought it was a brilliant idea." Percy shrugged and took a pull of coffee,
"As it turns out, the human body isn't meant to have coffee injected directly into the bloodstream like that. I ended up spending a night in the ER, and I was pretty sure that the nurse looking after me would have beaten me to death if she thought she could get away with it."
Percy smirked over the rim of his mug, "But I got an extension on the exams and passed the class, so was it really stupid in the end?" He paused for dramatic effect, and then nodded,
"Big time. Might have been one of the dumbest things I've ever done, which is actually really impressive, because I'm pretty sure that if there was a kingdom of stupid shit, I'd be the king."
Lara snorted around her apple, and tried to cover her mouth as she was quickly overcome a very powerful fit of the giggles. There was just something very amusing about the mental image of a twenty-year-old Percy trying to explain his line of thinking to a very irate nurse at one in the morning.
"I'm glad you find my suffering amusing," said Percy, though he was smiling at her, and Lara rolled her eyes,
"You brought it up smart-arse," she shot back, as she polished off her apple and tossed the core into a rubbish-bin by the island.
"Come along then," said Lara, walking away from the kitchen and leading the way into the bowels of the Manor. She led Percy in silence until they reached what had once been her father's office, and had since taken over as her own.
It was a large study. About as large as a studio apartment she'd once had in her younger years, with plush and comfortable black carpet and deep maroon colored walls. Decorating the walls were various photographs from her father's and Lara's own adventures over the years. A large oak desk sat along the far end of the room, and held a pair of large computer monitors along with a smattering of large stacks of files, papers, and other sorts of loose-leaf materials.
The study was the defintion of organized chaos. Scattered across the floor were the various boxes and journals that Lara had managed to find relating to her father's work in Greece. Some of the materials were related to the page he'd found, and some more than likely were not. Regardless, Lara had decided that she would err on the side of caution and had gathered anything and everything that she could think of that might have been related. It was better to have too much information than not enough in her opinion.
"There are a couple of matters we should discuss," said Lara quickly, striding behind the desk to collapse into the large black desk-chair.. Percy nodded, and seated himself in one of the old and uncomfortable arm chairs across from the desk. He dumped his shoulder bag into the unoccupied chair, and folded one leg over the other, as he leaned back and sipped on his mug.
"We're going to want to find the ship," said Percy, "I want to know if the ship's manifest was taken out of the hold. If it was, and if it was held intact then we can figure out exactly where that page was coming from. We figure out where the page was coming from, we might be able to figure out where the other pages were going. At the very least, we might be able to figure out if there were others being sent out." Percy reached over to his bag and pulled out a stack of papers and slid them across to Lara,
"I've already taken the liberty of having a look at the surrounding museums in the area. None of the other museums in the area or even in Greece report having found any of Sappho's poems in a shipwreck, let alone having found one off the coast of Ois." Percy leaned over the table, and lifted one of the pages and pointed at a series of notes,
"So I took a look and found that the shipwreck was only investigated by Rance International back in the seventies, who I assume is who your father was working for," Percy pulled up another piece of paper that had a picture of a shipwreck, taken underwater, clipped to the corner of the page,
"Well, it turns out, that the ship's manifest was never found. Either it's not there, or everyone was so enamored by the weird page they'd found that none of them bothered to look much further." Percy shrugged and pulled yet another page out from the pile, and slid it over. The new page, was an official looking document, and Lara recognized the official seal of the Greek government stamped at the bottom.
"I knew we'd want to take another look at the ship, so I made some phone calls and got us a license to perform a dive on the site. Got the go ahead from the Greek government so there shouldn't be too many issues. As far as boats are concerned, I figured we could do something relatively simple, and there are plenty of charters we can rent out. I don't think we're going to need much in the way of cranes or lifting equipment so honestly just something that can cut through open ocean is desirable."
Lara blinked owlishly, her mind reeling from the rapid-fire way Percy was speaking. She had so much information coming at her so quickly that she was beginning to have difficulty comprehending all of it. She would only just get accustomed to looking at piece of paper, before Percy was shoving a new one under her nose that he expected her to read.
"And here I thought you didn't see the point in this little adventure," Lara mumbled. She hadn't meant to speak the words aloud, but Percy heard them nonetheless, and his face colored slightly. His cheeks and ears flushing crimson,
"Friend of mine used to tell me that just because I don't believe something might exist doesn't mean that it doesn't.," Percy shrugged, "It's important to keep an open mind, and if there's a chance that these pages are still in tact somewhere, I feel like we have a duty as historians to find them and preserve them."
Lara's eyes narrowed. There he went again. Another lie, she was sure of it. It was in the way he tensed his shoulders, the way his eyes darted downward and refused to meet her gaze when he spoke. He was nervous and uncomfortable. Hiding something certainly, but what and for what reason?
Lara brushed it aside for the moment. She would figure it out in due course, and for the time being at least her goals clearly aligned with his. He had even taken the initiative and begun doing the kinds of research she would have had them doing. It was certainly going to be saving them considerable time moving forward.
"There's something else," said Percy, looking uncomfortable again, "I'm…not strictly comfortable flying to Greece."
Lara arched a brow, "May I ask why?"
"Just don't like flying," said Percy, "It makes me wildly uncomfortable. You could call it some past bad experiences."
There seemed like there was a story behind that, but Lara wasn't going to press him about it.
"Well, I suppose that means that we wither drive or take a train," said Lara simply,
"We?" Asked Percy,
Lara rolled her eyes and crossed her arms, "We are working together, aren't we?"
Percy shuffled uncomfortably, rubbing at a spot behind his ear,
"I just…I don't know, I figured that you would fly or something and we would meet in Greece."
"We're working together. I believe in partnerships, and if we're going to be partners in this, then that means we stick by one another." Lara shrugged, "You don't like to fly? That's fine, then we'll get there another way. This works out anyways I suppose, it will give us time to review more of my father's work."
"Just like that?" Asked Percy,
"Just like that." Said Lara, walking over to a nearby laptop and she began looking up trains that left from Kings Cross that would begin taking them over to Greece. It would be a bit of a mess of different trains and multiple stops, but as far as timelines were concerned, there was nothing pressing about when they got to the shipwreck. As far as anybody else was concerned, it was just another ancient shipwreck with nothing of value. So they could take their time getting there.
She could feel Percy staring a hole in the back of her head, but she paid him no mind. The rest of the morning and well into the early afternoon proceeded in a quiet and efficient pattern. There was always a mess of preparations that needed to be made whenever she embarked on a new adventure. This was no different. They needed to prepare hotel reservations, furnish diving and scavenging equipment. They needed to begin making preparations for anywhere that their adventure might take them. Additionally, she needed to begin divesting funds out of her trust account and into her checking account to make this entire thing work.
Lara had never been one for idle silence, and neither was Percy apparently, and so it came as no surprise that soon the silence had been broken.
"So," said Lara, "Where are you from,"
"What," said Percy, "Don't think I was raised in Lancaster?"
"Cheeky," chuckled Lara, "No you smart-arse,"
Percy's own deep chuckle matched hers,
"I was born in New York, New York. Spent almost my whole life there before moving out to California for college when I was eighteen."
"What university?" Asked Lara mildly, she was busy working on reserving trains for their journey and wasn't fully paying attention, but when Percy spoke, the manner in which he spoke drew her attention.
"Ah…um, it-it was just a small, uh, small liberal-liberal arts college in northern California."
Lara turned away from her laptop and stared at him, her brow furrowed. Percy was determinately not looking at her. His face was oddly flushed and he was making quite the show of looking intently at his own computer.
"You'd think I just asked you what you have under your trousers," said Lara in amusement, but her suspicion was once more piqued. It was a very strange response to a rather mundane question. Still, she didn't think it was prudent to press him on the subject. For whatever reason he was defensive about his education, and she simply added it to the small file she was building in her mind.
"So what drove you to come to England?" She asked, changing the subject. Percy seemed to perk up a little at that.
"Just wanted get out of New York," shrugged Percy, "I lived my whole life there, well and I guess one summer in northern California, but I don't really count that." His face scrunched up in concentration as he focused on something on his computer, "Anyways, I graduated from college and wanted to see more than the three square blocks around my old apartment in the Upper East Side. One of my old professors was friends with Richard, and recommended me for the job. Richard and I had an interview, he liked me, and he offered me a job." Percy chuckled,
"It was kind of a spur of the moment thing, but that's how I've always lived my life so I figured it, 'why not,' right?"
"So you just upped and left the country on a whim?" Asked Lara, amused. "And your parents were okay with that?"
Percy winced, and rubbed at a spot behind his ear,
"Mom took some convincing," he admitted, "She wasn't super happy about it, but she's always been supportive so she warmed up to the idea eventually. Plus it keeps me out of trouble, which she's always in favor of."
"Bit of a trouble-maker?" Asked Lara, a teasing lilt to her voice,
"I had my share of troubles," chuckled Percy, "Managed to get kicked out of at least six schools before I was even in high school."
"How the hell did you manage that?" Said Lara, incredulously. "Moreover, how the hell did you get into university?" It wasn't meant to be scathing, but more of a curious observation,
"Got a couple of real good recommendations," laughed Percy, "That and I managed to get something of a life together and I might have made some friends with some folks who managed to pull some strings for me in order for me to get in."
Lara eyed him warily for a moment, but nodded. He was certainly a curious sort, and she decided that after he'd retired for the evening, she would spend a bit more time trying to find out more about him.
"Well are you enjoying your time in England then?" Asked Lara, "Our lovely weather been treating you nicely,"
"It's certainly a bit more dreary than I was expecting," said Percy, "But all in all I've been enjoying it. It's a good thing that I can't drive though, because I'm pretty sure I'd be dead or in jail right about now."
"Never learned how to drive?" Asked Lara, and Percy shrugged,
"Grew up in New York, not much reason to learn in. Anywhere I needed to go I could take the subway, walk, or hail a cab."
"I suppose that makes sense," said Lara,
"But apart from that, haven't really had a chance to explore much." Continued Percy, "Richard put me to work the day after I moved in so I've seen a grand total of one city block."
"Well that's hardly any fun," said Lara, "You've moved across the world and haven't even had a chance to see the country you've moved to,"
"It's not that bad," laughed Percy, looking up from behind his computer and winking at Lara, "I did find the greatest curry place I've ever been to a block from my apartment,"
"Flat," corrected Lara absentmindedly,
"Pardon?" Said Percy,
"They're not 'apartments,' they're flats,"
Percy frowned, "Why is it called a flat?"
"It derives from an old Scottish word, 'flet' which means a floor or story of a house." Said Lara, "Since apartments typically have rooms all on one floor, they are flat. It makes sense,"
"That's…no," said Percy petulantly, "I'm going to keep calling it an apartment because it's an apartment,"
"You live in England now Jackson," said Lara, "Adapt and survive. Wouldn't want to draw attention to the fact that you're American now would we?" She shot him a teasing smirk,
"Gods forbid that someone discover I'm American, not because of my very distinctive New York accent and my white teeth, but because I don't use the correct slang," Percy rolled his eyes, but he was smiling,
"How original," mocked Lara good-naturedly, "All British people have terrible teeth, do I look like I practice improper dental hygiene to you?"
"You have a really charming smile actually," said Percy absently without looking up, and Lara felt a warmth spread across her cheeks and a pleasant fluttering in her stomach. She didn't know quite how to respond to that, so she stammered out a soft "Thank you," before falling silent and focusing more on her work.
"So what about you?" Asked Percy after a couple of minutes of work,
"Pardon?" Asked Lara,
"You know my story, so what's yours?" Said Percy,
"I would hardly call the abridged tosh you gave me, your story." Said Lara,
"I don't know what that means," said Percy dryly, "But seriously, what's your story?"
"You didn't look me up when you got home last night?" Deflected Lara,
"I did," nodded Percy, "Just like I'm sure you looked me up too. Doesn't mean that I don't want to hear it from the horses mouth." He stopped typing and leaned on his desk, meeting her eyes, "C'mon, we're having a good old-fashioned uncomfortable and forced bonding moment here."
Lara giggled, in spite of herself.
"All right, I'll humor you." She said, "I grew up here with my father, my mother passed when I was young and so it was just the two of us. Dad grew ill a few years ago before passing." She paused, waiting for the inevitable false platitudes that always came up whenever she mentioned her father. But to her pleasant surprise, there was none. Her chest unconstricted as the warmth of gratitude at the moment of genuine honesty passed over her, and she continued.
"Well father had always been an archeologist, and a damned good one at that. I suppose you could say that his passions passes on to me. I don't really know what drew me to following in his footsteps other than the fact that it just felt right, you know?"
"Don't need to explain yourself any more to me," said Percy honestly, "Sometimes that's all you need, the feeling that what you're doing is what is right." Percy shrugged, "It's why I started doing what I'm doing."
"Staring at ancient documents for hours on end and hiding away in a basement of a musty old museum?" Teased Lara,
"It's not glamorous, I'll give you that," laughed Percy, "But it feels like home. Though truth be told, if you had told me five years ago that this is where I'd be, I'd laugh at you."
"Richard did mention that you had some…difficulties with learning," said Lara tentatively,
"No need to be careful around me," said Percy, "You're not going to offend me. But yeah, I have some trouble with the ADHD and dyslexia. Made my childhood utter hell let me tell you, but thankfully higher education, for all of its faults, does tend to be a bit more accommodating to people with learning disabilities." He frowned in thought before adding, "That is if you bug them enough to actually give you those accommodations."
He shrugged, "But anyways, after I got into school, and I had people who were actually willing to give a damn about me, I found that there were certain things I liked about learning. There's a peacefulness and a normality to it that just doesn't exist in other facets of life, and that's all I've ever really wanted."
"Boring?" Asked Lara,
"Normal," corrected Percy, "I've just wanted a normal, quiet, peaceful life. This job gives me that." He paused for a moment before frowning, "Though I suppose that isn't quite true anymore, is it?"
"Not too late to back out you know," said Lara casually, watching him carefully to gauge his reaction, and she wasn't disappointed. Percy's shoulders stiffened, and his nostrils flared for a moment before he managed to compose himself,
"I don't suspect that there will be much excitement here," said Percy, doing his best to appear unbothered, "Besides, a touch of excitement isn't the worst thing in the world." Lara didn't think that the words matched the rather pinched expression on his face, but she didn't press the subject much.
The two continued working until well after the sun went down, and it was late into the evening before Percy decided to call it a day. They had made a good head start on their work, and since the shipwreck wasn't likely to be going anywhere any time soon, Lara wasn't feeling particularly pressed for time. After all, any potential degradation to the materials in the ship would have already occurred, so if the documents had already been damaged beyond belief, a few more days of preparations wouldn't do them any greater harm.
It was well past midnight when Lara slipped into bed, her laptop perched carefully on her knees as she sipped at a soothing, peppermint tea. She was meandering through her search-engine in a vein attempt to try and discover a bit more about the enigma that was Percy Jackson. There was just something about the man that seemed off to her. He was an open book with respect to almost everything, and seemed to be the type of man to wear his heart on his sleeve. However if she dug a little too deep into his past, or pressed him on his motivations for forcing his way onto her adventure, he became stilted and closed off.
Clearly, he wasn't much of an accomplished liar, but it made him all the more curious. For all intents and purposes, he was a rather boring man. A historian of Ancient Greece and Mesopotamia. He spent most of his life in a basement pouring over books, what on earth kind of skeletons could a man like that have in his closet? What was he so afraid of?
She found her answer, buried on the seventh page of the search engine.
"12-YEAR-OLD WANTED IN CONNECTION WITH ST. LOUIS BOMBINGS"
She nearly spilled her tea as she glanced over the headline of the article. Clicking on the link, she blazed through the article. Her eyes darting from one line to another, her brilliant memory cataloguing every word. At the bottom of the page, was another link to a seemingly related article.
"UPPER EAST-SIDE MAN DISAPPEARS, WIFE AND STEP-SON WANTED FOR QUESTIONING"
It appeared innocuous at first, but as she skimmed through it, pieces of the puzzle began to click into place.
She hurriedly printed off the article, and got out of bed and strode to her bedroom's adjoining study. She pulled the articles from the printer and gazed at them for a moment, before grabbing a nearby manilla envelope and slipping the documents inside. Her task done, she leaned against her desk, her mind racing.
Who the hell was Percy Jackson? What kind of twelve-year-old is wanted by the FBI in connection with a bombing of a national monument. And then that same twelve-year is wanted for grand theft of his step-father's car, the very same step-father who a couple of m months later, disappears off the face of the planet entirely.
It was all too coincidental, too suspicious. Something was wrong with Percy Jackson, something very, very wrong. How the hell had he conned poor Richard into hiring him, and what kind of trouble was he planning on causing in England?
And why did he want those documents so badly?
Lara didn't know, but she would be damned if she didn't find out.