Disclaimer: I don't own Percy Jackson and the Olympians

This fic would not have existed without the encouragement of Stereden, who has also done a podfic of it, which can be found in its AO3 crosspost /works/57201739 or on my tumblr tsarisfanfiction!

The bridge towered ahead of Lee, out across the East River, when he made it to the end, and it looked like chaos. Vehicles were overturned, careened sideways and providing ample cover for his siblings to crouch behind with their ranged weapons, although how those vehicles had got in that position, Lee didn't want to think about. There was a pile of sleeping mortals just off the edge of the bridge, with road burn and other injuries that made it blatantly obvious that his siblings had dragged them out of the line of fire, and Lee had to be proud that they'd put aside the time to do that, when they presumably hadn't had much time at all to do anything before the attack started.

Most of the action was further down the bridge, fire and sound bursting into little explosions that rattled car windows. Lee didn't know how they were managing that but anything that helped them against the Minotaur and his forces was a good thing, in his books. In the dark, interspersed with bursts of fire and then the flickering of flames that caught hold of something and stayed – more than one was a car on fire, Lee realised, and hoped that his siblings had managed to evacuate all of the mortals – he couldn't count how many siblings were there.

They kept moving, darting from shelter to shelter, and his night vision wasn't good enough to make out much more than the reflection of fire on armour, of movement as they flickered around. He couldn't even pick out Michael's distinctive height, and squashed the fear that brought with it – Michael wouldn't be out in the open, anyway. He never fought like that if he could help it, preferring to use his size to his advantage to hide even while he rained a hail of arrows down on his target.

What Lee could see were two smaller figures, one possibly small enough to be Michael, at the very edge of the bridge, crouching down and working on something that wasn't actively fighting. The smaller of the two, the Michael-sized one, had a bow on their back, too, but it wasn't Michael's bow, and Michael would never be so far from the front line, anyway.

No-one else had been quite that small last summer. Even Tris had been a bit taller than that, even if he was now much taller than that thanks to a clear growth spurt.

That meant these were new kids. New little siblings who could have been around for anything from a year to barely a week and thrown into the climax of a war that had been raging for the last few years. Lee hated the thought.

Michael clearly did, too, because they were so far back from the fighting that whatever they were doing was probably all but useless, unless the cabin had to beat a panicked retreat all the way back to the shore of Manhattan – which, Lee had to admit with a grimace, was probably more likely than his brother was planning on, with Kronos' approach. So perhaps whatever the pair were up to was going to be useful, in the end.

He stumbled closer and the smaller figure whipped around, grabbing their bow and nocking an arrow in a lightning-fast movement that had Lee's eyes widening, because the last Apollo kid he'd seen that young with archery reflexes that good was Michael.

But this definitely wasn't Michael. This was a young girl with hair dyed bright green and eyes large enough in a small enough face to be younger than Tris. There was fear in her eyes, but her grip on her bow was steady.

Her companion, a taller, dark-skinned boy with intricately weaved cornrows, was barely slower to turn, but he didn't have a bow at all. Instead, he held a saxophone, and Lee wasn't one to dismiss the power of music but he did wonder how that was supposed to keep the kid safe – although it did seem to have several additions that he hadn't seen on a saxophone before.

"Who are you?" the boy asked, lips a hair away from the mouthpiece of his instrument. His voice shook with fear, and unlike the girl, his grip on his apparent weapon wasn't completely stable either.

Lee stumbled to a halt and raised his hands, needing to not be killed by friendly fire. "A son of Apollo," he said. "My name's Lee Fletcher."

He wasn't sure what sort of reaction his name would get. Would they have heard of him at all? The newer they were to camp, the less likely that was. If they had heard of him, would they even believe him? His truth-sensing was rare enough that there hadn't been another one in camp for a long time, according to Chiron; he couldn't even begin to hope that either of them had it.

The girl gasped, and the boy glanced at her in confusion.

"Never heard of him," he said, but there was a question in his voice, and the girl – younger, but maybe a longer camper? – tilted her head slightly to one side. It was a small movement, but one that told Lee she wasn't about to immediately shoot him where he stood.

"Michael mentioned him," she said, her voice small, but full of enough adoration when she said Michael that Lee had to smile a little. "But… he died. Last summer."

"Kronos wanted me," Lee told them, and if his own voice shook a little at the confession, then that was between him and the two kids, his two new siblings, in front of him. "He faked my death so no-one knew to look."

"And you finally escaped?" The boy sounded sceptical, and Lee swallowed.

"Tris got me out," he said. "Tris Barnes. They took him, too, on his way back to camp this year, but they underestimated his skills."

That was a name that got the boy's reaction. "Everyone thought Tris was dead," he said, and there was no personal recognition in it, just a parroting of what someone else – their siblings, Lee expected – had said. "Michael was furious."

Lee couldn't help the little chuckle. "That sounds like Michael," he agreed. "Tris is back there," he gestured with his head back, behind him. "With Nathan."

That got a proper reaction from both of them, tears welling up and overflowing.

"Nathan got eaten," the girl sobbed, and Lee took an instinctive step forwards. The bow flashed back up to face him again from where it had been sagging, forcing him to stop.

"He's still alive," Lee promised. "It's… He's badly hurt. But Tris and I got him stable."

Despite their clear wariness, there was hope in their eyes.

"He's still alive? " the boy asked, the girl almost but not quite in sync with her own demand. They glanced at each other, and the boy made a gesture. "I've got this, Kayla," he said. "Go and check."

The girl – Kayla – didn't need much persuading, although she still eyed Lee suspiciously and edged around him, not showing him her back until she was past him and clearly trusted her brother to stop Lee if he did suddenly attack her.

Lee had no intentions of doing anything of the sort, of course, and instead of watching her go – as much as he wanted to – kept his eyes on the boy instead. There hadn't been any monsters between him and Tris, there shouldn't be any while the line of defensive demigods still held. Kayla was probably much safer behind him, heading for Tris, than she was at the edge of the bridge.

If nothing else, Lee wasn't going to let anything get past him and closer to his vulnerable younger siblings.

The boy said nothing else, watching him warily, when he wasn't glancing past him to track where Kayla had gone, and Lee didn't dare break the silence. He wanted to know the boy's name, get to know him the same way he had always done in the past with new younger siblings, but now was a terrible time for that. He would make time for that later, once Kronos was somehow defeated and they were safe.

For the moment, he would wait. Not quite patiently, because he could still hear the sounds of battle further down the bridge, but wait nonetheless.

It didn't take Kayla long to return, and when she did her cheeks were streaked with tears but there was a thin smile on her face that had her dark-skinned brother relaxing slightly.

"Nathan's alive," she confirmed, all but sobbing the words. "And the guy with him said his name is Tris. He's from Ontario, like me!"

Lee had noticed the similar accents – not the same, clearly Kayla wasn't from Kingston, but similar.

The tension drained from the boy's face, replaced with relief, and Lee took the risk of stepping up, pulling on years of head counsellor experience. "You two go and wait with Tris and Nathan," he said. "Tris is barely armed and injured; he needs your help."

Kayla bit her lip, suddenly looking uncertain. "Michael said-"

"If I know Michael at all, he sent you two here to be as far from the fighting as he could manage," Lee said, keeping his tone light and a little bemused, remembering how to be Michael's big brother even though Michael wasn't in earshot. "He'd be delighted if you got even further away from the battle."

For a moment, he worried he'd pushed too far as the pair of them looked at each other, clearly considering. But the boy – the older of the two, Lee suspected – seemed to come to some sort of agreement, because he nudged Kayla.

"We'll go," he said. "But if Michael gets mad, I'm blaming you."

Lee gave him another small smile. "I expect nothing less," he promised, deciding it wasn't the time to remind them that he'd been Michael's head counsellor for years and big brother for even longer – he was very familiar with dealing with a disgruntled Michael.

Besides, he was certain that Michael wouldn't get mad at his siblings for getting further away from the battle. His brother was more likely to thank him for getting them to go. If he believed Lee was Lee.

That was a problem for future-Lee, when he actually reached wherever Michael was in that chaos of battle up ahead.

The two kids gave him one last glance before Kayla tugged her brother away, towards where Tris was waiting with Nathan, and Lee let himself watch them go this time, unsurprised to see the boy glancing back at him to presumably make sure that he wasn't about to stab them in the back.

Lee would never, but he appreciated the paranoia, even if he hated that the kids had already developed it.

He didn't quite wait until they were out of sight before moving forwards, onto the bridge. As much as he would've loved to see them all the way to Tris and Nathan, he still had siblings fighting, and the longer it took him to reach Michael, the less advance warning he'd be able to give of Kronos' approach – and Lee needed to make sure his siblings were safe, or as close as they could be in a war.

The next sibling he came across was Will, sheltering behind a large overturned coach and clutching his bow in a white-knuckled grip. Will's archery skills had never been as good as a lot of theirs – he was so much a healer before he was a fighter, or anything else, really – but he was too stubborn to try and find a better ranged weapon and being good with a scalpel didn't really help in a large fight.

Lee was certain that Michael had banished Will as far back as he could get away with, the stubborn healer's streak in their younger brother not letting himself be put all the way back with the youngest, even if Michael had almost certainly wanted him as far away as possible.

If it was down to Michael, Lee was pretty sure their entire cabin except him would've still been bundled up at camp, away from the fighting entirely, but not even Michael would've been a match for the combined stubbornness of their siblings. Better to keep them where he could keep an eye on them – Lee would know.

It was tough, sometimes, being the head counsellor for the second biggest cabin.

Lee dearly wanted to approach Will, to send him back to join the youngest kids – and help Nathan – but he couldn't afford the time it would take to individually greet all of his siblings when he knew Michael was going to be at the furthest point, at the front line of the battle because if he was then that meant their siblings weren't. Instead, he kept his distance, looping around the overturned bus the opposite end to where Will crouched, white-faced but determined despite his fear, and carried on forwards.

There were less of his siblings than he expected on the bridge, and his heart tightened. Where was Pheobe? Morton? He couldn't see Nye or Xavier, either. Admittedly, it was difficult to tell in the still pre-dawn darkness, but there were far less bodies in camper orange and glinting armour than Lee would've liked to see – for a given definition of like. He didn't like that there were so many of his siblings in a battle at all, but if they were all supposed to be in the war, then he didn't like how few were there.

Where were the rest? He couldn't see anyone on the ground, not in camp colours and armour, at least. There were some mortals, still laid on the ground, but no demigods.

He stumbled further along the bridge, forced to watch his feet so he didn't step on broken arrow shafts and other debris, and skirted past more siblings, mostly trying to pass by unnoticed so that he wasn't attacked – he wasn't in camper orange, he didn't look like one of them and he knew it – but also so he didn't cause a distraction for his siblings.

Up ahead, much further, he could see the Minotaur slashing with his humungous axe at a dark haired figure, who was dancing around him effortlessly with a sword in his hand.

That wasn't an Apollo kid. None of Lee's siblings were quite that proficient with a sword, and the figure was too tall, too old, to be a younger camper. It also wasn't Michael, and there was no way Michael would let any of them duel a minotaur one-on-one.

Because that was what it was. A duel. A lull had opened up in the fighting, with his siblings regrouping into a loose cluster, while one figure battled the Minotaur alone. There was only one person it could be, and Kronos' strategy started to make a disconcerting amount of sense. Send in a monster that Percy had a personal history with, force Percy to join the Apollo cabin to battle said monster, and then swoop in, targeting Percy entirely.

Then, it would look like Kronos had turned up all because of Percy, and not because he had for some reason decided to target the Apollo cabin. Lee hadn't worked that reason out, unless it had been to upset him, but he wasn't intending on letting it happen, anyway.

The lack of fighting meant that he could approach the mass of demigods without fearing that he'd cause a distraction that resulted in death. He crept closer, and finally caught sight of an unusually short yet unmistakable figure a little way ahead of the rest of the demigods, talking to a girl with long blonde curls.

Well, if Percy was around, then Annabeth did tend to be in the vicinity. That was probably good news, too – Michael was smart, but Annabeth had a reputation for battle intelligence for a reason. Between the two of them, and Lee, they should be able to work out something to stop Kronos from killing them all.

As long as Michael and Annabeth believed it was him.

Startling Michael would be a terrible idea – Annabeth, too, but Annabeth didn't tend to throw her dagger so startling her from a distance was relatively safe. Startling Michael from a distance usually resulted in becoming target practice. Still, there wasn't really any way to show himself that wasn't going to startle demigods in the middle of a battle, so Lee took a deep breath and crossed the rest of the distance, hearing the rest of his siblings first fall silent, then start making worried noises as they noticed him.

None of them shot him, by some miracle or other. Lee really hoped that was Apollo's influence; if he could, Apollo would certainly be keeping an eye on all of them throughout the war. Not letting them shoot their brother was very much appreciated.

The change in noise caught Michael's attention, and he didn't shoot either, but he did raise his bow, an arrow pointed at Lee in much the same way Kayla had done barely minutes earlier. She'd clearly learnt that from him. Annabeth raised her knife in warning, but Lee kept most of his attention on his brother.

He stopped out of Annabeth's range – maybe Apollo had somehow convinced his siblings not to attack him first and ask questions later, but Lee didn't think that extended to Annabeth. He wasn't willing to risk it, either.

There were many things he could've said. Platitudes, introductions, any various ways of attempting to convince them that he was him, alive and back with them.

He gave Michael a thin smile.

"Sorry I took so long."

Life got really hectic and FFN stopped letting me upload docs for a while, for some reason, so sorry about the gap - but I'm uploading three chapters all together to get back in line with the posting schedule now.

Thanks for reading!
Tsari