Notes:
Warnings - Demigod levels of violence injury and trauma (for the whole fic)
—
Summary:
"It's a good thing we found a forest swimming in the Mist and were smart enough to wait for backup!" Annabeth and Percy are coming to pick them up so they could have waited and used Mrs O'Leary to shadow travel out of here. They should have waited.
They did not.
—
"Stop that!" Rachel hisses as Grover scuffs his hoof against the ground for the fifth time since they were dropped off here by Mrs O'Leary (thanks Percy). He looks up at her in surprise - Rachel is usually pretty easygoing.
"Sorry." he mutters then says nothing for a bit before coming out with a quiet, "It's cold.".
"We're in Scotland." she replies, more gently this time. Grover is clearly nervous: becoming Lord of the Wild has improved his confidence but that doesn't mean he's stopped worrying.
Grover scuffs his hoof against the ground again. "Why is your dad's…"
"Gala." she provides, "Corporate event, I wasn't really listening.". Rachel made a deal with her father a while ago so her presence is necessary but that does not mean she is going to pretend to care.
"… meeting in Scotland?"
Rachel shrugs. "Ben Nevis, remember?"
"Yeah." he mutters. It's not the thing that made him come but it's the thing that stopped him from backing out. Ben Nevis is the tallest mountain in Great Britain apparently. "Domesticated wilderness is better than nothing."
"Billionaires go crazy for 'wellness retreats'." Rachel sagely adds like she isn't one. Technically she isn't but she will be for as long as it takes to properly share her family's hoarded wealth when she inherits it. "And they'll at least pretend to care about the environment while you're talking to them about it."
Grover, well-versed in the deceit of mankind and gods and anyone in between, nods. He is sure to hear plenty of empty promises but he has got to try, got to keep hoping. "I hate speaking to people like that."
"I know."
"When's your dad getting here?"
"No idea." Her dad hadn't cared to ask how they were going to get here, just as long as Rachel came. He hadn't been too pleased by her plus one being another environmental campaigner but as he is one of those billionaires who pretends to care, she'd gotten her way. Her mom isn't coming, of course, too busy with her job to come with her husband or even think about her daughter. It's part of the reason Rachel keeps trying with her dad.
Grover scuffs his hoof against the ground for the seventh time. She gives up on saying anything after that.
The event goes well enough which really should have made them suspicious. Percy's luck is contagious. Grover manages to get chatting to several people, six of which seem to be taking him seriously. Three of them actually swear to do something, even though that something is vague.
(The most insulting thing is that after everything that happens next, none of the six do a single thing. Clearly, caring is nothing in the face of greed.)
Grover thought it was going to go a lot worse, particularly when Rachel's dad arrived, looked him up and down, clucked his tongue and completely ignoring him, turned to Rachel.
"The pants." is all he said, disapprovingly.
"Shag pants are back in fashion." Rachel batted back smoothly, like a liar. Grover's not that good at lying yet but he's gotten a bit better according to the Hermes cabin who have taken it upon themselves to 'educate him in such matters'.
Mr. Dare inclined his head regally and then swept forward without as much as a backward glance to check that they were following. Somewhat resentfully, Grover hurried after him.
Both Rachel and Grover steered well clear of the alcohol when they arrived and that is partly how he met two of the six - they were talking about going sober in that obnoxious way that made him wonder if it was more for themselves or more for the papers.
Turns out, they were going to treat the issue of climate change exactly the same way.
At the time, however, he had still been hopeful so he did his pitch and answered some questions and asked some so when Mr Dare finally came to bail him and Rachel out for the day, he was feeling tentatively happy.
Like an oblivious idiot.
"It's a good thing Annabeth isn't here!" Rachel shouts as they race through the woods, narrowly missing roots and branches and shrubs and rocks. Is the entire forest out to get them?
Grover, ahead of her, seeing as he has got the advantage of hooves, doesn't turn his head even the slightest. She doesn't blame him, could have happily lived out her days without being chased through a forest by a massive man eating spider. Rachel has never been more grateful for her sessions with the dryads. No one can keep up with them but now the man eating spiders cannot keep up with her.
"It's a good thing the Oracle's a snake!" Grover absolutely means that both ways because while he appreciates the spider's initial wariness for that reason, he would have appreciated it more if the Oracle could have given them an advanced warning. Just a little sign to get out of there, you know.
"It's a good thing we found a forest swimming in the Mist and were smart enough to wait for backup!" Annabeth and Percy are coming to pick them up so they could have waited and used Mrs O'Leary to shadow travel out of here. They should have waited.
They did not.
"It's a good thing we didn't get lost and accidentally find a forest with loads of Mist!"
Rachel doesn't answer for a while, too busy running for her life and once again thanking her lucky stars that despite not being as fast as a demigod (she is a mortal after all), she is fast enough to avoid the spider.
"It's a good thing the spider recognises the Lord of the Wild!" she eventually fires back. It does not recognise him as such, too trapped between domesticated and wild, not fully reconciled with its own nature.
"It's a good thing-" he starts then cuts himself off as he bodily crashes into a centaur. Grover doesn't know if the centaur's friendly or not but he hasn't really got many options so he spins around and screws his eyes shut and opens his mouth.
Rachel claps her hands over her ears and fights to make her make over as the spider and oh look there's another one and another one turn tail and flee at the pure sound of panic.
"You couldn't have done that earlier?"
Grover ignores her, turning back to the centaur to apologise and gets an arrow point against his throat for his trouble. 'Hey man, sorry for crashing into you' immediately morphs into "Oi!" which doesn't help his case but does answer the friendly or unfriendly question.
Rachel out of things to throw after stunning a couple of spiders with well-aimed shots to the eyes, creeps forward a little, freezing when the centaur leans in towards Grover, sniffing ever so slightly. The centaur presses the arrow harder and then unexpectedly relents. She waits.
"Why do you smell of the wild humans?" The last word is spit out like a curse and honestly, they both get it. However. Grover is not human, he is a satyr and proud of that and so that's insulting.
"Hey!" he indignantly bleats.
"Excuse you!" Rachel mutters under her breath, forgetting that they can both hear. "Grover is Lord of the Wild."
The centaur snorts. "Am I to take it that your are Grover? A human as Lord of the Wild?" Grover very deliberately presses his lips shut. "I should take your tongue for that girl. Your kind are not welcome here."
He is still evaluating if this centaur fits in the friendly or unfriendly column. They might be a complete jerk but it doesn't seem like they're going to kill the two of them so friendly. Probably.
"Come, I'll escort you out."
For this centaur, escorting people out means having an arrow trained on them as you give them instructions to follow. It's not enough to warrant moving them back to the unfriendly column unless it turns out to be a trap.
Actually it is because that is the way their luck works. There will be a trap somehow, somewhere so the real question is: knowingly or unknowingly?
They'll probably get out of it. "Alive but very scathed." he quips to Rachel then reaches for his reed pipes.
"Very." she agrees and picks up a broken branch, pounding it again the floor. "If it flakes off, there's no point." It's an obvious weapon.
That doesn't mean Grover will stop being impressed. "How do you manage to turn everything into a weapon?"
"Not everything."
He tugs her hair in response. She'd once plaited it just so that she could turn and smack a guy in the face with it and pretend it was an accident.
"Man, Juniper was so proud-" How long have they been gone? "She's going to kill me." Percy's supposed to come get them and he is going to panic which will make Annabeth panic and Annabeth's going to gut him.
Great.
"She is." Rachel confirms and is that a smile on her face? The traitor.
Is it worth trying to get away from the centaur? He is more scared of his girlfriend and Annabeth than this guy because they're not actually doing anything that bad, just potentially leading them to their deaths and trying to shoot them with their eyes.
Standard stuff really. A day in the life and all that. This kind of stuff happens on a regular basis which should be more concerning than it is.
He must look really terrified because Rachel offers him her hand, making no mention of his clammy palms when he takes it. He can pretend all he wants that this isn't scary anymore but it still is.
At long, long last, they finally make it out of the forest. "Ooh." Rachel whistles. There's a castle in front of them, covered in even more Mist than the forest which shouldn't be possible, given how he was wondering if he could choke on it in the forest. It's blurring in and out of focus for him, a satyr.
"Here is where I leave you, humans." The centaur snarls. "Do not come back."
Despite the man eating spiders and the unfriendly centaur, Grover is already missing the forest. Here they are stranded, far, far away from where they're supposed to be and very, very late. To top it all off, they are out in the open. Totally exposed.
Grover gulps.
"Let's go." Rachel prompts, thumb pointed towards the white castle. With little else to do, he acquiesces.
"I wish I had a camera." Grover bemoans at one point during their trek because Annabeth might be less likely to murder him then. A picture of an ancient castle in exchange for mercy is the best shot he can think of.
Rachel snickers and Grover is precisely 100% sure he is not going to like whatever she comes up with.
"She might not put you 'under wood' then." she can barely get it out, too busy laughing and once again, Grover wishes he could curse whoever came up with that pun on his name. (He won't risk it. The arai might make a reappearance.) "Annabeth won't kill us."
Easy enough for her to say. They both know that it is Grover Annabeth will be after, not her. Rachel is safe.
"A picture of the castle-"
Look when you're a demigod or involved in demigod lives or say a Satyr and a mortal who hosts the spirit of the Oracle of Delphi, you attack first, ask questions later. Or you defend first and ask questions later. Either.
So when a loud chuckle cuts Grover off and he jumps about five feet in the air, his first instinct is to seize his bagpipes. Having fought in one or two battles and plenty of skirmishes, he sees Rachel stealthily draw a dagger out of the corner of his eye.
And, when you are a demigod or demigod adjacent, you learn how to step in it by accidentally blurting something out.
"Why didn't you use that earlier?" he hisses at Rachel. It is partly in panic - it's looking like all of the women in his life apart from Juniper have a fondness for blades and that is terrifying and he is sure that sooner or later Annabeth's going to bring her around and partly in annoyance because that probably could have done a lot more damage to the spiders.
"It's a short range weapon!" Rachel complains. "I'm sorry but I didn't want to be that close to the giant man eating spiders!"
"Short-range?" the old man questions, his neon orange robes shifting as he strokes his beard. "I know that you use foci instead of wands but I hadn't realised that they had different ranges. May I, my dear?"
She may be mortal but Rachel is no fool when it comes to battle. Handing over her dagger is not an option. You do not give away your only weapon. You also carry more than one. Rachel hands him the branch.
"A staff!" he declares, delighted. "Why, they haven't been in fashion since my mother was young!"
So far, this is going well. The guy is crazy but he isn't attacking yet. The old and senile act is nothing new, however, so Grover is not going to lower his guard. The man swishes the staff as though it is a skirt.
Nothing happens.
Grover knows that he cannot look at Rachel else they will both start laughing. As a distraction technique, it is clever. The man in the robes spins away from them.
Nothing happens.
He hands Rachel the branch. "A very loyal focus you have there, my dear. It doesn't seem to react to my magic at all."
"Magic?" Rachel questions, low enough that no mortal ears hear, head tilted down to disguise the movement of her lips.
"Trivia?" Grover returns, loud enough for human ears. The man has no way of knowing that they are referring to the goddess after all. Rachel's face scrunches up in concentration a tiny wisp of green emerges from her mouth.
"Shielded." she mutters then catches his eyes and look up at the sky. "Interference."
"Welcome, of course, to Hogwarts." The man greets.
"Of course." Rachel replies. When she reaches out with her branch like she is going to poke him, Grover dutifully nods. If he speaks, he is sure to give something away.
"As you know, I am Headmaster Albus Dumbledore."
They do not in fact know that. "Of course." Rachel politely repeats and so Grover nods again, a little more naturally this time.
Albus Dumbledore smiles and swings open the heavy-looking door. Heart in his throat, they step through, instincts screaming that this is a trap.
This is a trap.
You would think that by now, Grover would have learnt to listen to his instincts. Well he did but he has also brought in four big three children and a son of Hermes and Annabeth and the only way he knows to deal with a trap is to spring it.
He keeps silent as Rachel does the lying - yes we are the exchange students that you are expecting, oh I know those are two girls names but one of us is somewhere between male and non-binary and really, you should know better than to judge gender like that, the culture where we come from is in fact completely different so we'll need some guidance - maybe act as though we don't know anything.
Grover might have broken a rib from holding in that wheeze.
The silence isn't a productive sort so as the back and forth goes on, Grover tries to think. Tries.
There is a knot in his stomach and fingers pressing in- on- through his rib cage and it hurts and he feels quite lightheaded. Trying to regulate his breathing doesn't work. It doesn't work and Grover is seized by panic.
Neither Rachel nor the Headmaster notice. He doesn't trust the Headmaster anyway so that might be for the better.
Rachel needs backup but he doesn't- can't- a hand clamps around his lungs and squeezes and suddenly he is nearly wheezing for a completely different reason than earlier.
He needs to get a grip.
In a move that would be foolish if not born out of desperation and possibly still is, he screws his eyes shut, plunging into darkness. Sometimes the only way to get down from the edge is to suppress some stimuli. Vision is an easier sense than the others, both because it can be more overwhelming and because all he has to do is close his eyes.
Five seconds. Opening his eyes only to have to slam them shut again is annoying but at least it is starting to work.
Ten seconds. Nope, not a chance.
Fifteen. Doable.
"Can we…" Rachel makes a vague gesture. "I'm a bit tired."
"Ah yes. You must be worn after your day. I'll get Minerva to- actually, I'll show you to your quarters myself. It's always good to go for a walk at this time."
This is a trap. The beds they get are out of a magazine - four poster marvels with soft drapes and a mattress that gives Crusty's a serious run for their money. Dumbledore leaves them there to settle in, having accepted Grover's status as not quite a boy since the stairs didn't turn into a slide. The Headmaster wasn't even kidding.
This is a trap.
All the hairs raise on the back of his neck and the atmosphere changes once the Headmaster leaves. There is something charged around them now and Grover blinks.
There is a woman in the centre of the room that they think they recognise, given that they are going off secondhand descriptions. The Mist is wrapped around her like a cocoon and in her hands she bears twin torches, both blazing with fire. Her face is the most worrying: set in incandescent rage.
—
Notes:
Trope 1 - Grover does not exist except to be a quaternary character or doesn't exist at all: x