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!

It didn't take long for Joy to return with their siblings, sans Will. Lee ached at the absence, but he didn't even know where Percy and Will had gone, so until they got news on that, they didn't know where to go – but once they did know, Lee was going to work out how to transport all of them wherever there was, as long as it was away from the front line.

If it wasn't away from the front line, he was going to have words with Percy about dragging Will into more danger.

It was a subdued procession of siblings that approached him. They'd rigged up some sort of stretcher out of a blanket or two – no doubt requisitioned from some unguarded cars – and between them, Joy, Robyn, Sally and Elias were carefully bearing a still-unconscious Nathan. He'd been patched up more since Lee had left him with Tris, clean bandages wrapping the worst of the exposed wounds. It didn't do anything to hide the missing arm – if anything, the sudden mass of bandaging around the mauled shoulder highlighted it, instead.

Alice had Kayla under one arm, the youngest's eyes rimmed red with tears still spilling down her cheek. Sam was similarly holding onto Austin, and Tris alternated between hovering next to Nathan and darting forwards, leading the way instead.

And that was all of them. Ten siblings, not including Michael or Will, for a total of twelve. Thirteen, including Lee.

Lee had never seen the Apollo cabin number so few in all his years at camp, and feared the reason why.

"Lee!" Tris was the first one to reach him, darting forwards ahead of the rest and slamming straight into Lee's chest, wrapping his arms around him tightly. Lee gripped him back, burying his face in his brother's dark, damp hair, and taking a moment to breathe before he had to face everyone else, and the realities that went along with them.

A young voice shrieked "Michael!" and frantic feet started to run, before stopping sharply.

"He's hurt," Alice said, almost a snap but gentle enough that it wasn't, quite. "Be careful, Kayla." Lee raised his head from Tris' hair to see the young girl tugging away from Alice's restraining hand and racing towards him, skidding to a stop on her knees next to Michael in a move that made Lee wince slightly.

"Michael?" she tried, her fingers lacing between Michael's cautiously. "Michael, wake up." He didn't stir and she dissolved into tears, gripping his arm more firmly and starting to shake it, only for Alice to swoop in and grab her.

The older girl didn't look much better. She'd forgone the make-up she'd refused to leave the cabin without for the whole of the previous summer, but Lee thought that if she hadn't, the mascara would've long since smudged, so it was probably a good thing, even if it made her look younger, more like the barely-teenager that she was than the older teenager she'd been trying to emulate back when she'd only been twelve.

But Alice was sending him looks, like she couldn't believe he was real, and while he knew she liked Michael, he also knew that for most of their siblings, he had been their first head counsellor, and their longest head counsellor. Alice wasn't the only one looking at him like he was a minor miracle.

Lee didn't feel like a miracle of any degree.

"Is this everyone?" he asked, belatedly tacking on, "aside from Will."

"Yeah," Robyn threw over her shoulder, one of the few not looking at him. She was kneeling beside Nathan, still fussing over his bandages. The pair of them had been thick as thieves ever since Nathan's arrival, two years ago, and Lee wasn't surprised at all to find her sticking to his side like glue now. "Everyone else left."

"They didn't come back," Elias corrected, sitting himself down on Nathan's other side, cross-legged on the asphalt and hands flopping lazily in his lap. However he'd tied his long locs up before the battle had started to fail, and some of them were escaping confines to pool on the ground next to him. "After… you… Phoebe and Morton decided that was it. They didn't want to spend their last summer fighting again, so they said goodbye last summer."

Joy gestured sharply, catching Lee's attention before her hands started to flicker. "Nye and Xavier got pulled out by their moms," she signed. "Last we heard they were all still alive. I think Xavier went back to Spain."

It was those two signs, the hands with three fingers curled and thumb and little finger extended, pulsing and rotating into mirrored thumbs' ups that settled Lee's heart.

Still alive.

The absences weren't because they were dead, it was because they had fled the war while they could, and Lee could never be upset about that. He'd have loved it if all his siblings had been able to flee and get away from it, but that wasn't really an option for those of them with nowhere else to go, and some of them were too loyal to stay away even if they did have the choice.

It was a choice that had almost killed Tris. Robyn making the same choice would probably save lives even though it risked hers. Alice was young but too stubborn not to come back, and Sally was quieter but still got her own way most of the time.

He didn't even know if Sam had gone home at the end of last summer. He'd barely known the younger boy at all; he hadn't even arrived at camp a whole month before the battle that tore Lee away for so long.

The rest of them, the year rounders like Michael, Will and Joy, the new kids Austin and Kayla – none of them had really had a choice. Lee wouldn't have done, either – but he knew he would've chosen to fight even if he had. Michael and Will would have been the same, and so would Nathan. But the others, Joy and Elias… Given the choice, they might have preferred to stay away – they were musicians, and not fighters.

They were fighting anyway.

Lee hated it.

"So what happened to you?" Alice asked, and she was trying to sound sharper, like Robyn would have done if she had been the one to ask the question, but it came out as less a demand and more a plea. "Who did we burn, if it wasn't you?"

It didn't feel like the right time for a story, but they were stuck waiting, anyway – even if most of his siblings didn't know that – and with so many pairs of eyes on him, Lee knew he couldn't just brush them off. His siblings, at least, he owed the truth to.

He'd tell Michael and Nathan later, and hope that the two of them could stop sniping at each other long enough to listen, because they weren't anywhere near as bad as Michael with Clarisse, but Nathan loved to push Michael's buttons and Michael never failed to push right back. Lee was pretty sure he was at least partially doing it on purpose, because he knew Michael did actually like Nathan, or at least accepted him as family – and for Michael, that was a big thing. He still needed to tell Will, too, and maybe Will would be enough of a buffer to stop the sniping.

He tapped Tris on the shoulder, asking him to let go long enough so that he could sit down. He wasn't telling the story on his feet, with his siblings gathered around on the asphalt like it was story time in elementary school.

Tris grumbled but obliged, giving Lee just enough range of movement to sit himself down, next to Michael, before curling back up in his lap again, the same way he had done back in Kronos' stone cavern, except this time Lee had the use of his arms and legs, and used the former liberally to pin his little brother in place, almost like an oversized plush. He rested his head on Tris' shoulder, trying not to feel like Tris was a human shield against the judgement of his siblings and hating himself for the idea even worming itself into his head, because they were his siblings.

The few that hadn't yet sat followed suit, settling into a loose and sloppy horseshoe that somehow also encompassed the unconscious Michael and Nathan.

"I was told the guy's name was Marcus," he started, latching onto Alice's question as a way to start because it was as good as anywhere else, he supposed. "I don't know anything else about him. He was never a camper."

No-one looked particularly surprised at that – if he had been a camper, he'd have been recognised, and not mistaken for Lee. At least, Lee liked to think that his siblings would've recognised it wasn't him if it had been someone else they knew.

"Why go through that effort?" Robyn asked. "Don't get me wrong, Lee, you're awesome and I know it, but why did Kronos go that far?"

Lee felt Tris burrow deeper against his chest, a silent support that Lee appreciated more than he could ever say, even though the movement caught the attention of most of his siblings, whose eyes sharpened, clearly knowing they were about to hear something different. Interesting, perhaps, if it was in another context and didn't directly involve Lee. Apollo kids generally liked interesting – they weren't often as obvious as Athena kids, but most of them were veritable sponges for new information, too.

He really, really didn't want to tell them. Didn't want them to start looking at him differently, using him as a lie detector even if it wasn't malicious, or even on purpose. Didn't want to have to deal with the guilt of knowing their lies, of them knowing he knew when they'd lied, and feeling bad for it, or conflicted, or even betrayed. Because he'd never told them, let them lie to his face when he asked them if they'd cleaned their bunk properly or just shoved everything haphazardly under the bed (it was almost, almost always the latter) and smiled and pretended to believe them.

But they deserved to know, and they deserved to know first, before he had to repeat it to Clarisse, and probably most of the rest of camp, too, before they even started to consider believing he hadn't gone of his own free will – because Lee wasn't a fool. He could see where some of the other campers, the ones that didn't understand cabin seven's mutual adoration for their father, might draw those conclusions.

That didn't make it easy.

"I…" he started, but a lump formed in his throat and forced him to stop, trying to swallow it back down again.

"I can tell them," Tris volunteered, his too kind little brother, and Lee choked up again.

"No, no," he said weakly, clearing his throat a little and swallowing painfully. "No, it's okay, Tris. I can do it."

"If you're sure," Tris assured him, and Lee hated that his little brother felt the need to try and reassure him, to try and help him with this. It wasn't on Tris, it should never be on Tris. Tris should never have been involved in this at all.

"I'm sure," he said, and his voice was thin but it was still true. Still, he kept his eyes on the top of Tris' head, where his hair was plastered to his scalp and still dripping wet – if Tris had his way, that would be his natural state. Looking at Tris' parting was much easier than facing his siblings, right then. He wished Michael was still conscious, the one that had known for years and never judged him for it.

None of his siblings pushed him, not even Robyn, who alongside Nathan and Michael could be the pushiest of the lot. Lee appreciated that.

"Not many people know… knew," he corrected, because thanks to Kronos the number of people that knew was far, far too high, much more so than Lee would ever be comfortable with. "But I inherited… something rare from Dad." He took a deep breath, then faltered and dived down a sideways tangent. "Luke knew. He was… when I was younger, when Luke was nice and didn't show any signs of wanting to raise Kronos and kill us all… I told him about it."

"And he told Kronos," Alice guessed, but from her tone it was less a guess and more a foregone conclusion.

Strictly speaking, Kronos had somehow dragged it out of Luke's brain after taking over his body, rather than Luke telling him of his own accord, but it was close enough that the difference didn't really matter. It mattered a little bit, that Luke hadn't thrown Lee's secret straight to the titan as an offering, but also if Luke hadn't raised Kronos in the first place, it would never have been an issue at all.

"Yeah," Lee confirmed, figuring the simple answer was best. They didn't need to hear about the rest of it. That bit wasn't important. "Kronos decided it was useful."

"But Lee wouldn't use it for him," Tris piped up, and he sounded so proud that it almost broke Lee's heart. "He held out, even when Kronos hurt him." Then his voice faltered, and Lee had the horrific feeling that his little brother was crying. "That's why Kronos grabbed me," he sobbed, and the entire gathering of their siblings took a single, indignant intake of breath.

Clearly, neither Lee nor Tris needed to say anything more on that subject. Lee glanced up at them to see a ring of furious faces. Even Austin and Kayla seemed to understand enough, and they'd never met Lee before now.

"That bastard," Robyn growled, one hand balling into a fist. "I'm going to punch that bastard in his smug face." There were various murmurs of agreement from the rest of Lee's siblings, and Lee couldn't take that, couldn't have any more of his siblings in Kronos' vicinity.

"Stay away from him," he begged, and it felt like a low blow to gesture at Michael in a reminder of how easily Kronos could take any of them out, but he did it anyway, because he needed them to stay safe.

The silence that followed was a heavy, awkward one, until Sally broke it, her voice small but steady, asking the one question Lee had been dancing around answering even though he knew he had to.

"What is it you can do?" she asked. "It must be powerful, if Kronos wanted it."

Lee made a disagreeing sound, one hand letting go of Tris to see-saw.

Tris, his amazing little traitor of a brother, nodded vigorously. "It is," he said, and he didn't sound like he'd stopped crying, but he did sound proud of Lee, like he didn't find it somewhat unsettling and potentially terrifying.

There was no way he was going to escape answering now. He also knew that if he didn't answer it now, he wasn't going to at all.

"I'm a truth sensor," he said, tempted to murmur it into Tris' hair but forcing himself to say it clearly, just so he didn't have to repeat himself. "Or more accurately, I can tell whenever anyone says a lie."

The silence that fell felt damning. Lee didn't risk looking at them, burying his face back into Tris' hair, aware he was definitely using his youngest brother as a human shield and hating himself for it but unable to pull away. Tris gripped hold of his arms, not letting him move even if he tried.

It was Austin that eventually broke that silence, the little brother that Lee didn't know, had no idea what to expect from.

Also the only little brother that had never lied to him, if only because he'd never had the chance.

"That sounds pretty cool," he said. "No-one gets to lie to you and get away with it, right?"

Lee winced, but before he could say anything, Alice let out a horrified gasp.

"That means you knew I was lying that time you asked me what I'd been doing with Tiana behind the Hephaestus cabin that one time!" she exclaimed, sounding almost mortified, and Lee winced again.

"I try not to call out lies," he admitted. "Lying is normal, it's natural. I don't police them. And just because I know you lied doesn't mean I know what the truth is, either," he added, glancing at Alice with her horrified face. Given Tiana was an unclaimed kid with a fondness for making things out of metal, he imagined it was probably something innocent enough – he seemed to recall there had been some incident or other shortly afterwards with fire and mechanical creatures whirring around.

"So why did Kronos want a human lie detector?" Robyn asked. "Did he not trust his own followers?"

"No," Lee said bluntly. "He didn't."

"Was he right not to?" Austin leaned in, looking eager. Lee comforted himself with the knowledge that Austin was too young to put things together, and that he didn't know Lee. Some of the older ones, the ones that had known him longer, were starting to give him considering looks that he didn't think he liked.

"Michael knows," Joy said, her quiet, rasping voice cutting across the silence before Lee had to answer. "Doesn't he?"

Lee glanced at their brother and nodded. "He figured me out a few years ago," he admitted.

Robyn snorted. "Of course he did."

He risked looking back at his siblings again. None of them seemed to be looking at him like they suddenly hated him, so that was a good start.

Then Tris twisted in his arms, and gave Lee a tight, tight hug. "He hurt him," he said, turning his head back to everyone else, and there was intent in the movement. An expectation, and Lee wasn't sure what for, but then there was a sea of movement and he once again found himself in the middle of a pile of Apollo kids, all of them clinging to him somehow.

It was acceptance, sincere and warm, and Lee didn't mean to break down, had hoped that his siblings wouldn't hate him, but with the proof and the love and everything…

Tris' hair was already wet with saltwater. It wouldn't notice if it got any wetter.

Thanks for reading!
Tsari