Chapter Text
[Grover’s POV, sometime after the events of The Last Olympian]
He found her sitting at the top of Half-Blood Hill, under Thalia’s tree (though Thalia hadn’t been part of the tree for quite a while now). Her eyes were closed, but it was clear that she was awake. She took a deep breath and sighed.
He walked up the hill towards her. “Hey.”
“Hey.”
“Mind if I sit here?”
She nodded. They sat next to each other under the tree for a few minutes, a brisk breeze blowing over camp, just taking in each other’s presence.
“Percy’s looking for you. Want me to go get him?”
She shook her head. “Not yet.”
“Okay,” he paused. “Are you doing okay?”
She laughed without humor. “Are you okay?”
“No,” he took a shaky breath and tried to compose himself. “I guess none of us are totally okay. But I’m asking you, so…”
She blinked at tears in her eyes. Her face crumpled as she broke down crying, and Grover was suddenly transported back nearly ten years. He couldn’t believe it had been that long.
He wrapped his arms around her, hugging her tightly as though he could become a blanket. A cold wind blew over the hill, making them both shiver.
“I could have saved him,” she whispered.
The words sent chills down his spine; he remembered thinking the very same thing about Thalia, years ago.
“Maybe if I had just talked to him, or– or I don’t know, tried to reason with him he wouldn’t have fallen to Kronos. Maybe if I’d noticed the signs sooner I could have convinced him to take a different path, but I was too stubborn and blind and a dumbass–”
“Annabeth. Annabeth, please.”
“-- some ‘wisdom’s daughter’ I am–”
“Annie. Shut up.”
Her mouth snapped shut and she stared up at him in surprise. He backtracked a bit. “Sorry, didn’t mean to snap at you. But Annabeth… all those ‘maybes’ won’t fix anything. Believe me, I know.”
She took a breath, her eyes seemingly far away, and Grover knew that she was in the same headspace that he was now. Remembering similar feelings and conversations from years ago. He remembered the soul-crushing guilt he went through when he couldn’t save Thalia. Annabeth shouldn’t have to go through that– it wasn't her fault.
“And they don’t mean that you were dumb. You were just a little girl. You still kinda are,” he said. “If Thalia wasn't my fault, then Luke isn't yours.”
She shook with sobs again. He held on tight, rocking her back and forth a little, whispering comforting words as he thought about everything. How two out of his first three demigods had died (even if one had come back). How Annabeth and Thalia and Luke had been children when their lives had been uprooted. Annabeth was still technically a child, just one that had been forced to grow up too fast. Thalia would never get to not be a child. And Luke… Luke had been the oldest of them, but evidently not the wisest. The eldest child had been the angriest, like a primordial god waking up to find out he’d been overthrown. Grover himself had been physically around longer than any of them, but inside he still felt too young for all this.
“He promised we’d be a family.”
Those words hurt more than anything else. Because they could have been, if things hadn’t gone so terribly wrong. If the Fates had been kinder. He hoped that they would be kinder in the coming years, because his messy, broken family deserved it.
Damn the prophecy. Damn the gods. Damn this cursed hill.
“I know. But we can still be one. You, me, Percy. Chiron. Maybe Mr. D. The whole Athena cabin, except for Adam because he’s a prick.”
Her sobs slowed down to small, hiccupy laughs. He reached over her into his side bag and pulled out a familiar fluffy bear. “I brought someone for you.”
She half laughed and half hiccuped in his arms, taking the bear and pressing its forehead against her own. “Sheldon. Are we ever gonna once have it easy?”
“Nope!” Grover replied in a silly voice, as though Sheldon were answering. “But we have to try.”
“Yeah. I guess we do,” she sighed, stiffly standing up and looking over the strawberry fields in the distance. “So, what did Percy want me for?”
He stood up with her. “Well, he noticed you were sad and wanted to find a way to cheer you up. Last I knew, he was in the dining hall asking if there was any way to make hot chocolate cold.”
That got a laugh out of her. A genuine laugh, this time. “Should we inform him that he’s thinking of chocolate milk?”
“Nah, I want to see him order it.”
They laughed and started walking back together, before Annabeth suddenly turned around and enveloped him in a hug, squishing Sheldon between them.
“Grover? Thank you. For everything. I don’t know if I’ve told you that enough.”
He returned the hug, blinking back more tears. “Thank you , Annabeth. Love you.”
“Love you, too.”