Disclaimer: I only own the plot and my OCs. Anything you recognize as not mine belongs to Rick Riordan, Greco-Roman mythology, and/or their otherwise respective owners.

Author's Notes: Hi, everyone! Sorry of the late update. I guess this summer just hasn't been great for my chronic illness. Whoopee, right?

Anyways, not much to say about this chapter, even though it's a long one. As always, I hope you enjoy,

~TGWSI/Selene Borealis

~The Finding Home Saga~

~Finding Home~

~Chapter 98: We Go Back To The Drawing Board~

Travis, at least, waited to absolutely lose his mind until only after we'd gotten most of the way back to Hephaestus.

"Hold up!" he said. When I turned around, I saw that he had slapped his hands on his knees, and he was panting. We hadn't exactly been running to get away from the telekhines, as we'd defeated most of them besides the younger ones, who didn't have much experience in fighting, but we hadn't taken any breaks since escaping Mount St. Helen's, either. I was surprised he was more winded than I was, but that kind of made sense, because – "Are we seriously not going to talk about what happened back there?"

Yep, he was panicking. All that extra adrenaline was rushing through his veins.

"Travis..." Katie began.

His posture straightened, and his face twisted. "You knew, didn't you?" he demanded. "Didn't you?"

"Yes, but – "

"There's no 'but's!'" he roared. He waved a hand at me. "Percy's a legacy of the King of the Titans, the Head Honcho, who wants to overthrow our parents and kill every single demigod who – "

"First of all, I'm not the legacy," I said, holding up my right index finger. "My unborn daughter is. I just have access to her powers because she's currently in my body. Second – " up went my right middle finger " – just because he had a child with a mortal, though it did lead to me, doesn't mean anything. I didn't even know about it until earlier this summer, when I had an accident that caused my daughter's powers to be revealed. I'm not on Kronos' side just because he's my great-great-grandfather or whatever."

"But are you on his side for another reason?"

I whirled around. "Excuse me?"

Annabeth's face abruptly became as white as a sheet. Clearly, she hadn't meant to say that out loud. She looked from me to Travis and back, before she shook her head.

"Oh, no, that's not gonna cut it," Katie said, laying a hand on her shoulder. "What are you insinuating, Chase?"

"It's nothing, I promise!" she said. "I – "

"Annabeth," I interrupted her. "What are you so unwilling to share with the class?"

She opened her mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.

"Anna – "

"I know about you and Luke, okay?" she yelled. "There, you happy?"

There was an eerie quiet.

"You and – what?" Travis asked faintly. I think he had to have known what she'd meant, but it was like he was convinced the metaphorical jigsaw pieces of the statement didn't go together when they actually did.

"Luke and Percy – they've been in a relationship ever since Percy's first summer at camp," Annabeth spoke. She started to gain confidence the longer she went on. "He's the father of Percy's unborn kids."

"What?"

It felt like the last of my life's air had vanished from my lungs. The blood rushed away from my face.

Oh gods, this was bad.

This was very, very bad.

"How long have you known?" I croaked out.

"Wait, she's telling the truth?"

Annabeth fidgeted with her hands. "I didn't know for sure...until you revealed to us that you're pregnant. Bianca said before that she thought...this wasn't yours and Luke's first lives together. After, I started paying attention to how you would act when he was brought up, what you would say and how you would say it...but I didn't know. I only suspected. But who else would you – "

"You're the real spy," Travis breathed, looking at me. "It's not somebody else at camp. It's – "

"Percy is not a spy," Katie growled. "Don't be stupid, Travis."

"He's fucking – !"

"Look," I said, pinching the bridge of my nose. "If this was any other time, I'd probably make an oath on the River Styx to confirm my allegiance to you, that I am fighting for the gods and fully intend on keeping it that way." There was no boom of thunder at the mention of the river. Or maybe there was, and we were just so far underground here in our current room of the Labyrinth, we couldn't hear it. "I mean, I'm the champion of Demeter, for crying out loud! But I'm also pregnant now. I'm not putting the lives of my kids at risk any more than I apparently fucking have to. If you want me to do it after I give birth, fine, but I'm not doing it until then."

"And what about Rhea?" Travis said. "You mentioned her earlier. She's a Titaness!"

I sneered. "Did you forget that she was basically the start of the whole Titan War, the first one to go against Kronos, because she fed him the rock instead of baby Zeus?"

At least he had the decency to become sheepish there. "Oh...right. But that doesn't answer – "

"We need to get back to Hephaestus," Annabeth pitched in there. "Anything else we do can wait until after we talk to him. But we need to figure out how to get through the Labyrinth first."

She was the quest leader, so Travis wouldn't have been able to argue with her too much, if he had tried.

Still, as we went back to walking, I could practically feel his anger returning, if only because of how he was glaring daggers into the back of my skull.

Hephaestus wasn't all that helpful, to be honest.

When we got back to his main forge, he listened to us describe what we had seen. "Telekhines, I should've known," he said as he scratched at his beard again. "They're the ones who would be the most likely to take over my forges without me noticing."

"What are you going to do about them, sir?" Annabeth asked.

"Simple," he grunted. He snapped his fingers.

Almost instantaneously, from the window/TV-thing, which the shutters to opened once more, I saw...something happen to Mount St. Helen's. A faint glow fell over the entire volcano. My eyes bulged. "You're going to cause the volcano to erupt?"

"It'll clear them out," he said. "And it'll be good for the environment once it's over. Volcanic ash is good for the soil."

There aren't words for how badly I wanted to refute his claim, to point out that who knew how many mortals were going to die, and that it could potentially take years for the environment to get back on track, seeing as how what had happened after the last eruption. Only a warning look from Katie, who I knew had to be as upset with this as I was, stopped me.

Man, like his brother, Ares, I was liking Hephaestus less and less.

"I suppose I did promise you an answer to your quest, a way to find Daedalus, didn't I?" Hephaestus said with a sigh. Annabeth nodded; she also seemed to be taken aback by his decision. "Alright. Here is what you must know: it has nothing to do with Ariadne's string, not really. Sure, the string works. That is what the Titan army will be after. But the best way through the maze...Theseus had the princess' help, Ariadne. And, despite being a granddaughter of both Helios and my father, she was a regular mortal. Not a drop of godly blood in her. But she was clever, and she could see. She could see very clearly. So, what I'm saying is – I think at least one of you knows how to navigate the maze." He looked at me as he said the last part.

It finally sank in. Why hadn't I seen it before? Hera had been right. The answer had been in front of me all this time.

"There's a clear-sighted mortal I met, during my last quest at the Hoover Dam," I said. "Rachel Elizabeth Dare. She's going to be going to my high school in the fall. She and Callie had a...run-in with some monsters earlier this summer." I wasn't going to bring up how my mom and Annabeth's dad were clear-sighted mortals, too; my mom didn't know I was on this quest yet, and I wanted to keep it that way for the time being.

"There you have it," Hephaestus said.

Annabeth's lips thinned. "If we have to go back all the way to New York City, we're going to have to go back to camp. I don't know if we could find an entrance in the city in quick enough time."

"We need to recuperate, anyways," Katie said. "We've been through a lot on this quest, and the option is there when it wasn't on any of our other ones. Why not take it?"

Travis looked like he wanted to say something along with them, but a quick, not-so-subtle elbow to the ribs by Katie stopped him in his tracks. "Ow!"

"Aye," Hephaestus said. His posture straightened as best as it could. "There is one more favor I would like you to do for me, if you can. I will not make it binding. It isn't easy, being a brilliant inventor. Always alone. Always misunderstood. Easy to turn bitter, make horrible mistakes. People are more difficult to work with than machines. And when you break a person, they can't be fixed.

"Daedalus started out well enough. He helped Princess Ariadne and Theseus because he felt sorry for them. He tried to do a good deed. And everything in his life went bad because of it. Was that fair?" The god shrugged. "I have told you how to find Daedalus; I don't know if he will help you. But don't judge someone until you've stood at his forge and worked with his hammer, eh?"

"We'll – we'll try," Annabeth said.

He inclined his head. "That's all I ask."

That was all he did. He didn't transport us back to camp, or even tell us a way to get back there quicker through the maze, like he could've in return for his second favor. I guess, since he said this one wasn't binding, he didn't think he had to give us anything in return for it. Or maybe, because he's a god and all that, he didn't think he had to give us anything back at all; I don't know.

Perhaps I sound a little too ungrateful. There was one boon to him not making things easier on us: if we'd been sent back to camp right away, I have no doubts that Travis would've told everybody about me being with Luke and him being the father of my kids, as well as Travis thinking that I was a spy. As long as we were in the Labyrinth, and away from any sunlight strong enough to produce a rainbow, he couldn't do that.

He and Katie got into a few fights over it. Travis didn't really say anything to me or Annabeth on the way back, including after we did get out of the Labyrinth. He mostly kept silent when we were awake. But I heard one of his fights with Katie when she decided to take first shift for one of our resting periods, and Travis must've decided enough time had passed for me to fall asleep; Annabeth had been out like a light from the start.

"You know, I can't believe you," he hissed.

"Travis, I don't want to talk about it," she said.

Déjà vu, i thought.

"You can't believe Percy's really siding with the gods! Sure, you're his friend, but unless – "

"One of his best friends," Katie corrected him, "and keep your voice down. And no, I haven't betrayed the gods, either. You've known me for as long as we've both been at camp. I'm your girlfriend. You should know better than that."

Silence.

She sighed. "Look, it's complicated, okay? They kept their relationship a secret even that summer they shared at camp. They didn't want anyone to know about it. I've always been kind of surprised you and Connor didn't figure it out."

"...We knew Percy had a crush on him, like most people," Travis divulged reluctantly. "But after he stabbed him – "

"They didn't get back together, not until after the next summer. Percy wasn't lying to you. I didn't know until he told me on our last quest, but I believe him. I don't expect you to understand it; I don't really understand it, either. But – "

"Let me guess, you're going to ask me to keep it a secret?" he asked bitterly.

"Just for the remainder of the quest."

"Katie – "

"Please, Travis."

"And what if you're wrong? What if he really is a spy? What if he and Luke have been planning on him betraying us all along, right when it'll hurt us the most?"

Katie had no response to that, though I knew it wasn't because she doubted me.

After almost a minute, Travis let out a loud exhale of his own. "I won't tell anyone for the remainder of the quest," he said. "But I'm not doing it for him. I'm doing it for you."

"Thank you."

I fell asleep not long afterwards, but in our "morning," so to speak, as Travis was walking in front of us for a change, right behind Annabeth, I told Katie, "I'm sorry."

She blew a piece of hair out of her face. "For what?"

I scratched the back of my neck. "Well, you know – "

"He'll get over it," Katie said. In a lower voice: "Eventually."

I wasn't so sure. Although he and Connor had become my friends rather quickly my first summer at camp, we hadn't really gotten close since then; something-something to do with them ditching me because of my parentage (and look at what he was doing now, not too much different) and our friend group basically falling apart after Luke, Ethan, Alabaster, and Chris had left. Sure, Alabaster had come back the next summer, but things hadn't been the same since.

And I'd never seen Travis like this, or his brother.

Even if he decided I was on the side of the gods and would remain that way, it didn't mean he was going to forgive me or not decide to have nothing to do with me ever again.

It took us what felt like a few days, but was really a week, to find a room that had an exit out of the Labyrinth. It kind of seemed like the maze was deliberately toying with us there. We'd come across a lot of rooms that looked like they had potential exits, only to find out that they either led to yet another room of the maze, or the exit had been sealed off with no way this time for us to unseal it.

We came out in Chicago, of all places, and we decided that was as close to camp as we were going to get with the maze. We took a train from there to New York City, and we did think about just picking up Rachel Elizabeth Dare and going back into the maze. But we'd come up with a plan, and we were going to stick to it.

When we reached camp the next day, courtesy of a car Travis had decided to "borrow" (he'd promised that Chiron would tell Argus to take it back), Iskander, the son of Enyo, was guarding Peleus, who was guarding the tree that had formerly been Thalia. Peleus was a dragon, much smaller than Ladon because he was still basically a youngling, with bright blue scales and yellow eyes. He lifted his head when we arrived, and his tail began to thump, like a dog's. He loved us campers.

"You guys are back!" Iskander, meanwhile, crowed, getting to his feet. "Did you find – ?"

"Iskander, we need to talk to Chiron," Annabeth cut him off there, not unkindly. "It's important."

We didn't tell Chiron the whole story.

Of course, Lee had to check me out first, and he cussed me out several times when I gave him the gist of what I'd done so far on the quest. "You're lucky I'm not tying you down in this bed and forcing you on bedrest, because that's what your cramps are indicating you need to do!" he snapped. "Stupid children of Poseidon, always getting into – !"

"Wait, what's Callie been up to?"

"Never mind that!"

His ire was saved only for me, even as he checked the others over, too. Once he declared us as healthy as we could be – said with emphasis with a glare my way – Chiron got his hands metaphorically on us at last.

Annabeth didn't say anything about me being in a relationship with Luke, nor did Travis, true to his word. Chiron heard about almost everything else.

He sat back in his wheelchair and stroked his beard. "It was a wise choice for you to come back here. As Katie said, it is a rare opportunity not afforded to most demigods on quests, and that is precisely why you could not let it pass you by. When it comes to the other matter...there is precedent for it. Theseus did have the help of Ariadne. But Harriet Tubman, a daughter of Athena, also used many mortals on her Underground Railroad for just this reason."

"So it's decided, then," Annabeth said. She made a face. "I don't like it. It feels wrong to be using mortals on a quest."

"There's a song about that," I said.

She rolled her eyes. Travis glared at me.

Chiron stared at us for a moment, then pressed on. "In the morning, I will have Argus take you four back into Manhattan, and return the car. If you would like, I think he would be able to take you to Queens first – you might want to stop by your mother's, Percy. She has been worried about you."

Fear stabbed at my heart. "Wait, does she know – ?"

"That you've gone on a quest? Yes, I had to tell her. She deserved to know."

Ah, shit.

So much for that.

"And there is something else that I must tell you four," Chiron said. "Actually, two unpleasant things."

"Great," Travis said sarcastically.

"Chris Rodriguez, our guest..."

I remembered what I'd seen in the basement, Clarisse trying to talk to him while he'd babbled about the Labyrinth. "Is he dead?"

Travis stiffened.

"Not yet," Chiron said grimly. "But he's much worse. He's in the infirmary now, too weak to move." That explained the bed I'd seen sectioned off while I'd been in there; I'd wondered what it was about. "I had to order Clarisse back to her regular schedule, because she was at his beside constantly. He doesn't respond to anything. He won't take food or drink. None of my medicines help. He has simply lost the will to live. If you would like to say your goodbyes, Travis, I would suggest on doing it tonight. Connor has been waiting for you before he does the same."

"I will," he replied weakly.

To myself, I reflected on how bad I felt for Clarisse. She'd tried so hard to help Chris. Now that I'd been in the Labyrinth, I could understand why it had been so easy for him to be driven mad, even if we didn't know the exact cause for it. If I'd been wandering around down there, alone, without my friends to help, two of them currently having problems with me or not, I'd never have made it out.

And I felt bad for Travis, Connor, Luke, and Mia, as his half-siblings.

"I'm sorry to say," Chiron continued, "the other news is less pleasant still. Quintus has disappeared."

Annabeth sat up in her seat. "Disappeared? How?"

"Three nights ago, he slipped into the Labyrinth. Lou Ellen saw him go while she was on patrol; it appears you may have been right about him being the spy from Percy's dream, Katie. It is a shame; I had hoped that Quintus would be a friend. He seems to have betrayed us."

Travis glanced over at me, obviously thinking: He's not the only one.

I ignored him. "What about Mrs. O'Leary?"

"The hellhound is still in the arena. It won't let anyone approach it, not even Bianca or Nico. I did not have the heart to force it into a cage...or destroy it."

"Quintus loves that thing," I said. "He wouldn't just leave her."

"Again, we seem to have been wrong about him. Now, you should prepare yourselves for the morning. You still have much to do on your quest."

Travis was the first to leave the room; he got up quickly, his long legs carrying him away. Katie and Annabeth followed after him. I was last, and I noticed how we left Chiron in his wheelchair, staring sadly into the fireplace of the Big House's living room. I wondered how many times he'd sat here or someplace like it, waiting for the heroes that had never come back.

Callie tore me a new one, as was her right.

"I can't believe you didn't wake me up when you went off on your quest!" she exclaimed, hitting me on the arm – not too hard. "I'm your half-sister! Doesn't that mean anything to you?"

"It does!" I said. "It really does. It's just – "

"'It's just,' what?"

"I didn't want to go on this quest," I reminded her. "It's been really dangerous. And I guess, I thought..." I didn't finish my train of thought, but I didn't need to. She knew me like the back of her hand.

Callie gaped at me like a fish for a moment, before she sighed. "It's really hard to stay mad at you sometimes, you know that?"

"Sorry."

"Don't apologize!"

"Okay," I agreed. "But can you tell me what you've been up to over the past few weeks? Like, why is Lee mad at you?"

She told me the reason: apparently, she'd been getting into a couple fights over people trying to suggest the camp was utterly doomed, and she'd over-strained herself when it came to using her powers once. She'd had to stay in the infirmary for the entire day afterwards, and even the mortals had picked up on the (relatively minor) earthquake she'd caused. There'd been some reports about it.

"Callie..."

"If their mentality is that we're going to lose, then we've already lost," she said. "We've got to practice, and that includes using our powers. We can't just turn over on our bellies or run like cowards. Luke might try to hold back when he attacks camp, because of, well, you, but that doesn't mean anything about the monsters who'll be with him."

Silena and Alabaster came into our cabin at one point to talk about this and that. "Percy!" she squealed, before she rushed over and pulled me into a hug that felt like it was going to crack my ribs.

"Eurgh!" I said.

"Oh, sorry," she said, pulling away. Her kaleidoscope eyes were wide. "Your mom's been really worried, Percy. My dad, too."

"I know. Chiron already told me."

"You'll be going to visit them tomorrow morning, won't you?"

She sniffed. "Good."

"Don't let her fool you, she's been worried, too."

Silena whirled around, her hands on her hips. "Ally!"

I laughed.

It was good, to feel like a not-really-normal kid again.

By the time it was about an hour before dinner, though, I'd had enough of the human interactions. Maybe the Labyrinth had messed with my brain more than I'd thought. So I told my friends what was I going to do, and they naturally didn't think it was the best of ideas but didn't try to stop me, and I stopped by the sword arena. Mrs. O'Leary was curled up in an enormous black furry mound, chewing halfheartedly on the head of a warrior dummy.

When she saw me, she barked and came bounding over to me. I didn't necessarily think I was dead meat, but a wave of slight dread overcame me. I had just enough time to say, "Whoa!" before she bowled me over, miraculously not jostling my stomach too much, and started licking my face. And since I'm a son of Poseidon and all, I usually only get wet if I want to, but not this time. My powers apparently did not extend to dog saliva, because I got a pretty good bath.

"Whoa, girl!" I said. "I guess you really like me, but – can't breathe. Lemme up!"

Eventually, I managed to get her off of me. I scratched her ears and found a box of extra-gigantic dog biscuits among some of the things Quintus had left behind in the arena. I gave her one.

"Where's your master?" I asked. "How could he just leave you, huh?"

She whimpered like she wanted to know that, too. I was ready to believe that Quintus was an enemy, but I still couldn't understand why he'd leave Mrs. O'Leary behind. If there was one thing I was sure of, it was that he really cared for his megadog.

I was thinking about that and toweling the dog spit off my face when somebody said from behind me, "You're lucky she didn't bite your head off."

Clarisse was standing at the other end of the arena with her sword and shield. "Came here to practice yesterday," she grumbled. "Dog tried to chew me up."

"She's an intelligent dog," I said.

"Funny."

She walked towards us. Mrs. O'Leary growled, but I patted her on the head and calmed her down.

"Stupid hellhound," Clarisse said. "Not going to keep me from practicing."

"I heard about Chris," I said. "I'm sorry."

Clarisse paced a circle around the arena. When she came to the nearest dummy, she attacked viciously, chopping its head off with a single blow and driving her sword through its guts. She pulled the sword out and kept walking.

"Yeah, well. Sometimes things go wrong." Her voice was shaky. "Heroes get hurt. They...they die, and the monsters just keep coming back."

She picked up a javelin and threw it across the arena. It nailed a dummy straight between the eyeholes of its helmet.

"Chris was brave," I said. "I hope he gets better."

"Do me a favor," Clarisse told me.

"Yeah, sure."

"If you find Daedalus, don't trust him. Don't ask him for help. Just kill him."

"Clarisse – "

"Because anybody who can make something like the Labyrinth, Percy? That person is evil. Plain evil."

For a second, she reminded me of Eurytion the cowherd, her much older half-brother. She had the same hard look in her eyes, as if she'd been used for the past two thousand years and was getting tired of it. She sheathed her sword. "I know how you feel about Luke, that you two were in a relationship. I know at least a part of you is hoping that he comes back to the side of the gods in the end," she gruffed, reminding me of that bit of info. Though I was also reminded of how I'd thought before that she knew more than she was letting on, and I had that feeling all over again; if she did know that Luke and I had gotten back together, the only reason why she wasn't saying it was because of potential listeners. "But your sister has the right idea: practice time is over. From now on, it's all for real."

Word Count: 4,545

Next Chapter Title: The Clear-Sighted Rachel Elizabeth Dare