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Annabeth trudged silently up the hill at Camp Half Blood. She hadn’t meant to be gone so long, just her weekly tea and cookies at Sally’s but she had had more of an emotional time than usual. It was to be Annabeth’s last visit before the Argo II finally set sail. Leo had promised the group that by the solstice they would be off, and so she had wanted to say goodbye to Mrs. Blofis-Jackson before she had left.
There had been tears, hugs, promises… and afterwards there had been the argument with her own mother. Wiping away one last tear, Annabeth finally made it the last few steps up the top of the hill and breathed out a sigh. Part relief to be back in the magical valley that had been her home, her happy place for so long. Part despair. Summer was quickly approaching, the camp getting ready to welcome all of the part-timers in the next few weeks. What should have been a time full of joyful anticipation was like a rock in her stomach. Percy should be here , she thought to herself.
Stopping only to scratch Peleus underneath the chin, she made her way down the hill to the Big House to announce her return to Chiron. Despite the fact that it was just after dinner, the farmhouse tucked at the mouth of valley seemed busy, with more campers than she had originally expected to see away from the night’s festivities. Will Solace was sitting on the steps with a deck of cards playing solitaire, and she could see the shapes of several other people inside Chiron’s office.
“What’s up Will?” Annabeth ventured. Will looked up suddenly, as if she had surprised him. “Oh, hey Annabeth. How was the city?” Then noticing the faint bloodshot to her eyes, he blushed and looked back down to his deck. “Sorry,” he mumbled. “I seem to have a severe case of “foot-in-mouth disease” today.”
Annabeth managed a slight chuckle and mussed his hair as she passed him. “No worries kid, I was just going to see Chiron. Who is he in with?”
As the search for Percy was technically still on-going, Chiron’s office had become the de-facto triage center. All questors stopped by before their departures and after their returns to give any details, clues, or even whispers that they had heard on their travels. Annabeth and Jason usually sat in as well. The former to try to piece together the trail of the disappearance, and the latter in the hopes that something might jog his memory. So far, they had gotten nowhere.
“Leo came by with Jason and Piper to give a status report on the ship. Some kind of problem about the solstice deadline-” Will had started, but Annabeth had pivoted immediately and was about to storm inside. “Also,” he managed, with some annoyance in his tone, “Nico is here. But don’t bother asking, because he is not staying.”
Annabeth stilled when she heard the faint strain in Will’s voice, and turned back as she began to re-assess the scene. Will sitting here, instead of the bonfire where his cabin would be leading the sing-along, subtly placing himself in front of the exit, as if he were waiting for someone inside…
Although she was dying to hear what they were speaking of inside, Annabeth forced herself to retreat and sit next to Will on the steps. He had been at camp for forever, and had been head counselor for almost a year, but sometimes she forgot how young he was. “Hey,” she ventured, nudging his sandal with the tip of her sneaker, “you’re a good friend. You know that, right? When Nico decides to take you up on that he will be lucky.”
Will, having inherited his father’s godly tan, somehow turned darker, his cheekbones dusted with a rosy pink. “Thanks Annabeth.” He murmured, kicking her gently as she had just done to him. “I don’t want to keep you any longer, I know that you have to go in to give Chiron his reports.”
Annabeth stood again, placing her hand on his shoulder and giving it a gentle squeeze. “I’ll see you later Will.” And passed him on the steps to head inside.
Chiron was a fan of some truly terrible music, but the four overlapping voices that she heard as she got closer to the office sounded almost worse. She walked in to see Jason, Leo and Piper standing at the desk and all talking to Chiron at the same time as he tried to get them to “Slow down” and “Speak one at a time, please heroes!”
Virtually undetected, she sat down next to Nico in the empty seat and waited to either make sense of the situation, or for someone to notice her. Nico started slightly as she sat down, looking the same as always. Messy black hair hanging in curtains around his face, ripped black skinny jeans, skull t-shirt, aviator jacket, and skull ring on his pointer finger. And the blush that always seemed to creep across his face whenever she was around. “Annabeth,” he muttered by way of greeting, dipping his head to her and then steadfastly turning once more to face the scene.
“Annabeth!” Chiron echoed, having finally noticed that she was in the room, let alone back at camp. “Thank the GODS, Annabeth,” Leo started, right as Piper began asking about her trip, “How are you doing sweetie?”
There was nothing more that she had wanted to do on her way back but to crawl into her bunk and cry herself to sleep, the excitement of the day, between her fight with her mother and Sally’s tearful goodbye, weighing her down. But, she was a leader of this camp for a reason.
“It was fine, but what’s going on? What is this I’ve heard about the ship?”
Jason, Leo, and Piper started again. After a few minutes of trying to unravel their overlapping sentences like twirled spaghetti the realization was grim.
“Two more weeks?” She asked, with a now-familiar lurch in her stomach. It was the feeling of missing a step, of feeling like you were falling in a dream, of waking up to realize that the queen of the heavens had kidnapped her boyfriend.
“Gaea has been sabotaging us,” Jason confirmed, as he looked at her with her own impatience reflected in his eyes. Besides Annabeth, he was probably the person who wanted to get going the most. His home lay across the country, accessible only by this ship, and here was yet another delay.
Trying to shake off her nerves Annabeth did the math in her head. “That will put us there…” “On the Feast of Fortuna.” Nico finished, quietly. Everyone turned to him, having momentarily forgetting that he was there. The kid could be deadly silent when he wanted to be.
Chiron steepled his fingers on his desk, bringing his fingers to his lips - thinking. “Although this would prove to be another unwanted delay, I feel as if the new date of arrival could be most auspicious for the group. The Feast of Fortuna is an important date in the Roman calendar.”
The group pondered that for a minute, with Annabeth silently weighing the news. The painful sensation of having her best friend ripped from her continued to grow every day. There wasn’t anything in this life that she wouldn’t have given to just have Percy back NOW, although… A holiday dedicated to good luck, it seemed as if this was the call to the universe that she had been begging for. She made a mental note to continue to read up on other Roman holidays later, maybe there was a specific date for solving each of her problems.
“Nice call, Nico.” She mused as she glanced over to him with a slight smile. His pale cheeks turned absolutely vivid pink as he muttered something intelligible and shifted not only his gaze but his entire body away from her. Annabeth was used to this behavior from him by now, had known him since he was 10, but had forgotten that they weren’t alone in the room.
Leo - and it had to have been Leo, of course Annabeth thought - let out a low wolf whistle at the sight of Nico’s cheeks causing both Jason and Piper to swat his arms immediately. Not a request to be chill. A warning.
Suddenly, Nico was on his feet, hand on the hilt of his sword tucked into his jacket and thumb angrily wrenching his skull ring around his finger. “Enough,” he growled, and Leo had the decency to look ashamed. It seemed that he was about to open his mouth, and offer some kind of apology when Nico continued, speaking only to Chiron.
“Like I have been trying to say all night,” he started, voice clipped with anger, the strain of his control showing on his body like someone under serious physical stress, knuckles white and veins bulging on his wrists. “I have one last place to check for the search, and then I am starting my own quest.”
No one spoke. Nico had been out since the news had broken, he was one of the more dedicated searchers that they had scouring the country looking for Percy. If he was giving up, focusing on another quest… Did he think that the hunt was now pointless?
As the silence stretched on, Annabeth felt the color draining from her face, but she waited until she thought that she had managed some control over her voice before she finally spoke up, “Thank you Nico. For everything that you have done.”
For the third time that night, Nico’s cheeks colored, but Leo knew better than to say anything. Without even as much of an acknowledgment, Nico shoved his chair back and was stormed out of the room.
“I didn’t…” Leo started, but Annabeth didn’t hang around to hear it. She turned and sprinted after Nico.
Thankfully for Will’s already bruised feelings, there was no sign of him on the steps. She knew that Nico could have a temper, and wasn’t sure if Will could handle another outburst. After pausing for a second at the top of the stairs she combed the valley for a sign of Nico’s messy black hair, praying to every god she could think of that he hadn’t already vanished, shadow traveling away.
Thankfully, after a moment she spotted him making a beeline towards the woods. With a shiver of deja vu, Annabeth thought briefly of the last time she, Percy and Grover had tried to chase him down in the same manner, all those years ago, and took off.
She didn’t want to draw any attention, so she didn’t call out after him, though she knew that he could sense her presence. Her gentle footfalls were answered with a subtle shift of his shoulders, up towards his ears, and he took off quicker away from the camp and her.
Once they had made it nearly to the creek, he finally spun around to face her. “What do you want?” She was sure that he had meant it with more malice, but the tone fell flat. Sad.
“I’m sorry about Leo,” she started in a huff, and had mind to continue before he spun again and began his stalking away once more. “Nico!” She cried and grabbed his arm. This time when he whirled back towards her, there was no hesitation, no soft edge to his anger. His dark eyes seemed to grow darker, the shadows around them felt colder, no longer incorporeal but heavy, pulling the dark closer to her.
“Annabeth…” He warned, “Let go of me.” She shivered, involuntarily, as she dropped his sleeve noticing that her her unsteady exhale puffed out in a cloud in the rapidly cooling night. She seemed to always forget what powers of his lay beneath the surface. She would always see Nico as a young boy, frightened and afraid, but he was otherworldly in a way that only the children of the Big Three could be. Even now, with the distance that he hastily made between the two, she could feel his anger as physical as electricity sparking against the unnaturally frozen late spring air.
“You don’t think I know,” He started, under his breath as if he wasn’t even speaking to her, “What they say about me here?”
“Nico,” she tried to interject, but he wasn’t finished.
“Poor loner Nico, on his crusade to banish himself from the one place where he might truly belong,” he practically spat at her. This time, she made no effort to interject.
“Imagine my surprise when I heard their supposed reasoning as to why” he began again, stepping closer to her, still speaking as if his words were sharp daggers, each poised to cut. “It seems that you’ve been telling people that I have a huge crush on you.”
Annabeth’s head snapped up finally and made eye contact with him, she hadn’t realized that she had been avoiding his gaze before. “What?” She blurted out. For someone with the quickest analytical brain in the camp she had not seen this one coming.
“Isn’t that what you think? Huh? I can’t bear to be around you, and that’s why I stay away. You do nothing for my case when you chase after me constantly either, you know. It serves to further my embarrassment.”
“Okay, ouch Nico,” Annabeth tried to cut in. “I am sorry, I never meant to start any rumors about you, I swear.” Nico rose to his full height (when had he gotten taller than her?) and stepped closer. “What,” he breathed, “were you trying to do then?”
She gulped. And in a whisper, “I thought it would be easier.”
“Easier?”
“I know it’s not me you like.”
Silence.
“Choose your next words carefully.”
She took a deep breath, steadying herself. “Nico, my mother,” her earlier confrontation turned the words sour against her tongue, “is the goddess of battle strategy and wisdom. I have no powers. I stay alive by understanding, reading situations. I know people. I know you… and I know that it’s not me that you like.”
For a moment they stared at each other, Nico with an expression unreadable, even to her before he crumpled. He put his head in his hands and sank to the ground. Carefully, without trying to startle him, she sat down too, and nudged him with her sneaker the same way that she had Will’s foot earlier.
“I really am sorry,” she began again. “I thought it was easier to explain it, not that anyone has a right to know, of course.” She continued quickly, nearly tripping on her words to get them out. “People started asking questions so I just said the first thing that came to my mind. I never meant to hurt or embarrass you, I promise.”
He still was not saying anything, not even looking up at her.
“There are people at this camp who care about you, Nico. I care about you.” She thought she heard him scoff through his hands, but she still wanted to finish. “Telling people would not change the way we see you, but I wanted to make sure that you were the one who chose how to tell.”
“Does he know?” Annabeth had never heard Nico sound so small.
She huffed a quiet laugh, but the amusement died from her face the moment that she saw his hands drop from his face and his eyes dart to hers, hurt flashed there for a moment.
“No Nico,” she amended quickly. “He is many things, but trust me when I say that ‘observant’ is not one of them.”
A hint of a smile tugged at the corners of his mouth before he sighed and leaned back to look up at the stars. She followed suit and together the two of them sat for a moment in almost contented silence.
“I miss him,” he said suddenly.
“Me too,” she replied.
Shortly after, she looked over to say something else, but noticed he had already left, slipping into the shadows. She wondered the next time she would see the son of Hades again, and finally with a sigh, Annabeth got up and headed back to her cabin to turn in for the night.