A/N: First Percy POV today! Annabeth POV will be standard here because she's my comfort character but we'll get a few Percy sprinkles here and there. Enjoy!

Percy

I felt a bead of sweat trickle down the back of my neck. Summer had officially crept into the valley. A flash of bronze swung straight over my head as I ducked, making a whooshing sound and then a sharp clang when it connected with my own sword.

I dropped to the ground, realizing I might have given up my advantage when the sword lodged itself into the dirt between my torso and arm. The sword was stuck in the dirt, giving me just enough time to roll away. I jumped up, regained my footing, and thrust Riptide. I heard yelling off the side, but I couldn't make out what was being said. Phillip heard it too, and he looked away for only a moment. That was enough.

I tackled him and we landed on the ground with a thud, my sword at his throat.

"You're going to have to do better than that. If this was real combat, you'd be dead." I offered my hand and helped Phillip to his feet.

"Man, this isn't fair. I'm cursed, remember?" he retorted.

Phillip looked good today. He had looked pretty bad last night, and I'd been worried when I saw him in the Big House. Whatever was happening to him seemed to be getting worse. "Are you sure you should even be fighting?" I asked.

"Yep, the Apollo cabin cleared me this morning," he said, sheathing his sword. I knew that he was getting treatments from the Apollo cabin as a way to slow things down, and it seemed to be helping for the time being. We walked over towards Grover, who was sitting on the sidelines.

"What were you yelling about?" Phillip asked him.

"Oh, nothing. I was just trying to distract you. And it worked, Percy won," Grover explained. I smiled, and Phillip muttered something about us "picking on the cursed kid" and we all laughed.

We drank our water hastily and the three of us stood in silence. They had both been kind enough not to bring up the elephant in the room, but I think Grover must have sensed my emotions through our empathy link.

"I'm sorry, but Percy, can we please talk about last night?" Grover asked.

"Yeah, what's going on there, anyway?" Phillip asked.

I sighed, and we sat down on the bleachers. There were campers on the other end of the arena sparring, and I probably needed to make my way over there after we cooled off.

"Annabeth is just an old friend from when I was a camper here. She was the head counselor of the Athena cabin for like seven years or something, and the last time she was here was ten years ago. She fits the line, and since we're kind of at a loss figuring out what happened to you, I thought bringing her in was worth a shot. When we were campers, she could solve any problem."

"You're leaving out the best part," Grover chided me.

"And she's my ex-girlfriend," I admitted.

"They dated for six years," Grover added.

Phillip looked stunned. "Dude! You went to talk to your ex-girlfriend just to keep me from dying? That means so much."

I threw my empty water bottle at him which he promptly dodged.

"We don't know that you're dying," I said.

"It sure feels like it, My head feels like it's about to split open" he mumbled, and I frowned.

From what he'd shared, Phillip genuinely had no idea how he received the curse mark. He'd been in the city before camp started for the summer, and showed up with it. He said he remembered talking to an old woman in an alley, thinking she was just selling something (why a sixteen year old boy would be interested in counterfeit alley products I didn't know), and suddenly they were shaking hands and she vanished. He described the whole thing as fragmented, which was a telltale sign the Mist was involved.

"So what happened between you two? She looked awfully mad last night." Phillip asked.

"We broke up, that's about it. I was moving back to New York after college and she was already living there with a friend. She was supposed to fly back out to California to help me move the rest of my things, but she never showed. I got a letter from her in the mail a couple days later explaining that she didn't feel like she could come back, and that we were done."

Phillip and Grover were both quiet. I didn't like talking about it; I usually got a headache when I thought about it too much. Grover was with me in New York after our breakup, so he knew how hard it had been on me. Of course, when she didn't show up I assumed something bad had happened. I was calling her 24/7 and got back to New York as soon as I could. When I received the letter, I wasn't sure what to do. It was her handwriting, but I still needed to talk to her. Before I could, I talked to Rachel Dare. I guess Annabeth had been at camp the day before, upset and yelling about not wanting to do "this" anymore.

I went back and forth about going to her apartment or her job to try and talk to her. Part of me knew that I should fight for us, but a surprisingly vocal part of my brain was really angry. At that point I had confirmation that she was alive and acting on her own, and I felt like she had betrayed everything we had. Every day that went by the betrayal sank in a little deeper, and eventually I was so bitter that I couldn't bring myself to chase after her. Grover talked to her too, eventually, and he also told me it sounded like something had changed. He tried to get more details out of her, but he said she was dodgy.

What was bothering me now, though, was our conversation on the hill last night.

You never even gave me an explanation as to why you left.

She had never given me an explanation as to why she left.

My stomach had dropped when she looked at me in shock after I clarified that she had indeed broken up with me. She genuinely didn't seem to know what I was talking about. As much as I had wanted answers all these years, I had a feeling something bad was brewing.

But seeing her last night had been… something else. Obviously when we dated, she was beautiful, but seeing her in that dress after ten years had been like a first sip of water in the desert.

I'd been fighting the urge to reach out all day today. I just wanted to talk to her, and it had been harder than I wanted to admit watching her leave yesterday. Especially since she had a guy waiting for her, I'm assuming her boyfriend, based on the photos in her office.

My thoughts were bouncing around between Annabeth, Phillip's curse, and back to Annabeth. I must have been silent for too long because Grover cleared his throat.

"You definitely seemed a little eager at the idea of going to find her," he said with a smirk. I considered uncapping Riptide and skewing him right there.

"I understand that," Phillip added, "I feel like every guy has that person who's the one that got away."

"First of all, I've gotten over Annabeth," I said, throwing a look at Grover. He raised his hands in appeasement. "Second, you're too young to be talking like that," I said to Phillip. He was only sixteen. I didn't know anything when I was sixteen, not to mention about relationships.

"She's an excellent strategist and used to be one of the strongest demigods at camp. I figured we could use a little bit of that right now, since your life might be on the line. Plus I think she has a boyfriend," I added the last part quietly.

"She doesn't look like any daughter of the war goddess I've ever seen. I was guessing Aphrodite until you said otherwise. I mean, the makeup and outfit. She looked good though, although she seemed a little intimidated." Phillip stood up and started practicing sparring drills again. He was a skilled swordsman, one of the best I had seen in a long time. He sometimes lacked discipline, and he was a little clumsy, but his instincts were sharp. He could easily take me down if he focused.

"She was probably just a little nervous, or shocked," Grover defended her. "I would be too. Percy should have eased her into it a bit."

"I really don't think she would have taken my call."

"She didn't take mine," Grover said, followed by a sharp "what!?" from me. Apparently, Grover had been nervous about me just showing up last night, so he used the camp phone to try and give her a heads up.

"That might have worked if I hadn't taken her phone yesterday," I said. Grover shrugged.

That happened to Grover and me sometimes. We had similar ideas, but we had execution issues. That was why we needed Annabeth back.

A group of campers passed by the sparring session on the other end of the arena and heckled them playfully as they passed. It was Cara and her siblings from the Hephaestus cabin.

Phillip's head whipped around and he fumbled his sword before turning to me and Grover and giving us a mock bow. "Excuse me, gentlemen," he said before running off to join Cara and her group.

"She's going to be his 'one that got away' if he doesn't make a move soon," Grover commented.

"I really thought they were going to get together after their quest last summer," I said, reluctantly thinking back to all my summers spent with Annabeth. Gossiping about the campers was fun once you were no longer involved, and Chiron was the worst culprit of all. He often had updates on quests that had nothing to do with the actual mission, and more to do with camper dynamics. That's how I knew that Phillip and Cara had shared a moment on a quest last summer, after fighting a Laestrygonian giant in Minnesota and being stranded near the Canadian border for a few days. When I asked Chiron how they got back to safety, he realized he forgot to ask.

Grover changed the subject. "In all seriousness though, Percy, I want you to be careful about this Annabeth thing. I'd be happy to have her back too, but she disappeared for a reason."

I didn't have a good response for him, just like I couldn't tell him he was wrong earlier when he said I seemed eager to go after her. I couldn't truthfully say that she wasn't a soft spot for me and that she wasn't always going to be.

"I'll be fine, G-man, I honestly just think she'll make a good addition to the team."

/|\

Annabeth

I spent my Saturday setting up the new phone Grayson had picked up for me from the waiting room of the closest urgent care. My ankle was not sprained, just really angry, and the doctor instructed me to rest for a few days. She obviously hadn't seen my calendar.

I kept looking down at my phone, expecting Percy to call, even though I had just activated the new number that day. So, maybe it was more like hoping than expecting, which wasn't something I was ready to examine.

After the urgent care, Grayson and I shared a quick lunch at a cafe down the street, and then he dropped me back off at my house. I'd been looking forward to spending the evening together as a way of resetting after yesterday, but he said he needed to go back to the office to start prepping materials for his job transition. I'd worked on Saturdays more times than I could count, so I understood, but I wasn't looking forward to spending the evening alone.

I thought about calling Kennedy, but I figured she would be recovering after her party yesterday. Grayson filled me in on what happened after I left, and apparently it devolved in debauchery pretty quickly. Truthfully, I was glad I missed that. I felt like I was getting too old for that scene, even though everyone else I knew still enjoyed it.

I resigned myself to an evening with a glass of wine and the latest issue of Architectural Digest, and maybe catching up on some work emails, too. I'd just gotten settled on the couch when the doorbell rang.

The peephole revealed a delivery person with a midsized package. Likely the handbag I'd been waiting for. After signing, I hauled the box into the kitchen and tore it open.

The bag was beautiful, a rich brown leather with a small gold logo at the mouth. Very simple yet elegant. It was supposed to have pockets and dividers inside, so I unclamped it to inspect the interior.

I almost dropped the bag when I saw what was inside, and I had to clutch the countertop to keep myself upright. Bile rose in the back of my throat. I slowly opened the mouth again to check if it was still there. Yes, definitely not going away.

A small white card was nestled at the bottom of the bag, and I stuck my hand in to retrieve it, trying not to touch the other item if I could avoid it.

"Call me," the note said, with a name and number scribbled below. I grabbed my phone immediately but then wondered if I should even be using it anymore or if I was making myself a target.

There was an answer on the first ring.

"Are you trying to get me killed?" I hissed.

"It's good to hear from you too, Annabeth. Can I visit your office on Monday?"