#riordanverse fanfic

[toasecretsanta]

(2 of 2 fics)

MERRY CHRISTMAS PART 2! :D

Another fic [by @firealder2005] based off of the prompt list by @literallyjusttoa :3 This one is Apollo/Admetus, be it in older times or the modern day!

I will have this posted on Ao3 once the submission is up! :D

Warnings: I have this rated Teen & Up. Only warning is Apollo being rather depressed.

Also fluff alert! :3 This is Admetus/Apollo we’re talking about haha

ENJOY!

Nothing Else To Give But Love…

A soft nose grazed his hand. He shifted and absently began stroking the poofy wool on top of the sheep’s head.

Apollo hummed as the sheep’s baa echoed through the sleepy, spring-green field. Despite the mild warmth, he shivered, one hand nearly strangling the cords wrapped around his hand, the rest of the twine cinched about his waist.

The field was quiet. Simple. Nothing like Olympus had been during, or even before…before…

Before it had happened…

His son’s young face, blue eyes wide and startled as a clap of thunder rolled through the sky and electricity shattered the world around them leaving —

Apollo took in a shuddering breath and squeezed his eyes shut, fighting back the tears welling in them.

Oh, Asclepius… He inwardly whispered. I’m so, so sorry, my sweet, sweet son.

He hadn’t deserved such a wonderful child — frankly, all of his children were marvelous and he couldn’t fathom what he’d done to deserve such bright kids. Apollo didn’t deserve them. He didn’t deserve Asclepius — hadn’t deserved him…

Apollo’s grasp on the cord loosened, letting the rough cords fall from his fingers. He raked a hand through his hair, the locks empty without the laurel wreath usually nestled in them. He hadn’t been casted down to Earth with it the first time, and it was no different now.

He shamefully missed the weight of the crown in his hair. The guilt he made himself carry day in and out. Never letting himself forget her.

Her. Another person he hadn’t deserved…

Did he deserve anything? He, the most glorious of gods…but now nothing more than a mere servant. A shepherd. 

(Not that there was anything wrong with shepherds, mind you. He was the god of them, and had dated a few. Branchus had been a beloved lover, and the person who made Miletus one of Apollo’s favorite cities.)

And what made it worse…he was here because of his own actions. His father’s enraged expression was still fresh in his mind, though the memories were tinted red by his own fiery, destructive fury.

Actions have consequences, my son, Zeus’s voice winded its way through his head. Even you are not above the law.

So here Apollo was. Laying in a field, dressed like a servant. Deprived of even more divinity than he’d had the first time he’d been casted down to Earth to work for Laomedon (the name made him shudder). He thought he felt mortal during his time in Ilion — or Troy, as it was now called. For the first time, his hands had ached. He experienced fatigue and thirst.

Last time was nothing compared to now. By the end of the day, he was exhausted. It was harder to access his divine power to keep himself awake at night, even if dear Admetus attempted to get him to go to sleep, insisting it was natural to need rest after a long day.

But he couldn’t — Apollo didn’t need to rest. He was a god, he could go centuries without rest.

It was only temporary, after all.

(He ignored the yawn that tugged at his lips. The heaviness of his eyes.)

(Temporary. All temporary.)

Footsteps made his head turn. Apollo subconsciously brought a hand up to his hair and played with a strand as he caught sight of Admetus coming closer. Handsome face, dark, soulful eyes and equally dark hair. Stubble grew on his perfect jaw.

Apollo felt his heart flutter when the king softly smiled at him.

He straightened when Admetus slid down beside him, patting the sheep lazing on his other side on the head as he looped an arm around Apollo. The god leaned against him and rested his head on his shoulder, humming happily when Admetus placed a kiss on his hair.

“Slow day?” the king murmured against his hair.

Apollo shrugged, fighting back a yawn. “Pretty much. I think the wolves and bears have decided to go elsewhere.”

“They bow before their lord,” Admetus grinned. Apollo giggled into his shoulder. “As they should.”

The god chuckled again, though a slight sigh shivered through his body. “Not now, though,” he murmured. “I’m not their lord now.”

Admetus stroked his hair. Apollo could almost imagine the concerned tilt of his head, the slightly raised right eyebrow as he looked at him.

The king hummed, resting his head on Apollo’s. “They seem to think so,” he softly observed. “They still listen and obey you.”

Apollo shuffled his legs and buried his face further into Admetus’s robes. A hand ran through his hair again, gently working at small knots, before it was removed and Admetus shuffled around himself.

Peering up, Apollo blinked as the king slid off his light cloak, shook it out, then swung it around Apollo’s shoulders and gently fastened the clasp. Apollo raised his hands to Admetus’s, protesting; “You don’t have too—”

“I insist.”

“Really, I’m fine.”

Admetus kissed his forehead and pulled Apollo into a warm, firm hug. The god gratefully sank into it, eyelids fluttering as sleep tugged on his consciousness. He squeezed his eyes shut and mentally shook himself awake. No sleeping, he ordered himself. Especially not when a handsome king is hugging you!

“You have a lot on your mind,” Admetus murmured. “Don’t you?”

Apollo sighed. “Yes,” he admitted. “I do.”

Admetus stroked the back of his neck, which felt really nice. “Anything I can do to help lighten your load?”

The god softly laughed and rubbed at his heavy eyes. “I don’t know,” he said, pulling away slightly and looping his arms around the king’s neck. Their noses brushed against each other. “Not now, anyway.”

The king cupped his cheek and rested his forehead against Apollo’s. Apollo hummed with contentment at the gesture.

“I have something for you,” Admetus bashfully whispered. Apollo stroked the stubble on the king’s chin and blinked slowly at him, a small smile pulling on his lips at Admetus’s flustered expression.

Admetus reached into his exposed robes and withdrew a circlet.

The first thing that caught Apollo’s attention was the color. A thick, lush green. Shining in the soft, sleepy sunlight.

Bay laurels.

A laurel wreath.

Hesitantly, Apollo allowed his fingers to brush over the delicate leaves before withdrawing. “I…I can’t. I’m not —”

“A prince?” Admetus quietly supplied. He used his free hand to gently pull Apollo to his feet, adjusting the cloak around him, before placing the wreath in his long, unfurled hair, fingers tracing the skin of his cheek.

“Admetus —”

“Keep them on, my prince,” Admetus whispered, placing a light, loving kiss to Apollo’s forehead. “You’re just as royal as I am.”

Apollo gazed up at him, blinking rapidly as his blue eyes got suspiciously wet. He didn’t deserve this gift, especially from Admetus. He wasn’t worthy of it, of a crown made from the leaves of a woman as great as she had been.

But…Admetus seemed to think he did. A corner of his lips curved into a shy smile. Oh, Admetus… he wistfully thought. You somehow see something good in me.

Before he could stop himself, Apollo surged up and kissed Admetus on the lips. His hands trailed up into the king’s dark hair as Admetus drew him close. Apollo felt his heavy eyes flutter shut, relying on his other senses to navigate the wonderful kiss —

Before he blinked back into awareness, staring bewilderedly into Admetus’s perplexed eyes.

“Um. Hi,” he squeaked. Admetus had caught him in a dip, holding him over the ground below them. Apollo had to admit, it felt quite nice. Though how did he end up in this lovely position?

“Hi,” Admetus chuckled. “You…passed out there, for a moment.”

Apollo felt his face burn. Oh dear, sweet Ouranos…how embarrassing. Did he really just pass out while kissing? His breath stuttered as he avoided meeting the king’s mirthful eyes.

“Did I steal too much air?” Admetus grinned. “Or did you just fall for me?”

Apollo slapped his chest and burst into laughter. “That was so bad,” he snorted, smiling brightly from ear to ear.

“I know,” Admetus’s grin was still beaming. “But it’s worth it to see you smile.”

Apollo bashfully ducked his head, laughing once more when Admetus scooped him into his arms and grin brightly.

“Now, however,” Admetus began. “You should rest. You’ve barely been sleeping.”

Apollo looped his hands around his neck and laid his head on Admetus’s shoulder. “I’m fine,” he murmured, eyes fluttering. He snapped himself awake. “I’m a god, Admetus. I don’t need sleep.”

Admetus hummed in disagreement, beginning to walk back to Pherae’s palace with Apollo still nestled comfortably in his arms. “But you’re deprived of much more divinity this time,” he wisely pointed out. “And that means, you do need sleep.” The king paused and rested his forehead against Apollo’s, adding quietly; “I would never make you do something you don’t want to, but please,” he implored. “Go to sleep. You need it.”

The god huffed before sheepishly smiling. “What about the flocks?”

“I have a feeling they’ll be fine,” Admetus assured him with a grin. “The message that the god of flocks is protecting this place should have gotten around by now.”

They both shared a light chuckle before Admetus softly kissed Apollo. He leaned into the feeling, feeling a soft thrill of contentment ripple through his being, before murmuring; “Alright. But only if you join me.”

Admetus softly laughed. “If that is what you wish, my prince.”

----------

Admetus glanced at where Apollo laid sprawled beside him beneath the covers. The blanket had slipped off him, and Admetus carefully pulled it back up, brushing Apollo’s golden hair out of his face as he did.

Finally, he was getting some rest.

Apollo was a stubborn god, and seemed convinced he didn’t need the necessities mortals did — food, water, sleep — and Admetus had used every trick in the book to get him to pay attention to the very human needs he now had.

Well. Almost every trick.

He absolutely refused to use the control Zeus gave him over Apollo. Absolutely not. It horrified him that the wise and just king of the gods he’d spent his life honoring would just give a complete stranger the ability to manipulate his own son any way they liked.

Admetus had always carefully crafted his words to leave Apollo the opportunity to refuse an order if he so chose — a loophole, if you will. Ironically, he never did except for when Admetus wanted him to listen, like actually sleeping instead of making cheese in the dead of the night.

Sighing fondly, he gently ran his fingers through Apollo’s hair, mindful of the laurels now nestled in them. It felt like the soft silk that came from the East.

It scared him, sometimes. This temporary bond between them. Admetus found himself second-guessing his words before speaking, fretting over the possibility of accidentally using it against Apollo…

He had no desire to force this beautiful being into anything — especially since they became lovers.

Admetus wasn’t a fool. He was very well-aware of the power dynamic between them, and did his damndest to even the field as much as possible. He had never used the control he had against Apollo, and he never would.

And for that matter, why should he? Yes, Apollo was technically in his service and therefore legally and divinely bound to obey him, but he was his own person too. He had his own personality and quirks.

Like making cheese in the dead of the night, Admetus bit back a chuff at the memory, a smile stretching across his face as he tucked his chin over Apollo’s hair. He remembered that moment well. Apollo with jugs of fresh sheep milk, carefully taking the curdled bits and brining them, letting the cheese soak in the liquid.

His face had been pinched, a slight frown on his lips, but his movements had been precise and smooth, as if he’d been making cheese his whole life.

And well. Considering Apollo was the father of Aristaeus, Admetus could believe that.

Apollo had sheepishly admitted to not being able to sleep that night, smile strained as thunder rolled outside, lightning and a simple beeswax candle their only source of light in the darkness. Instead of urging his beloved back to bed, Admetus had dropped down beside him and gently unpinned his hair, letting the frayed, golden locks free and began to braid them.

They had sat there the rest of the night, in quiet, comfortable silence, though it was occasionally interrupted by a thunderclap or flash of lightning. Apollo flinched a few times at these, prompting Admetus to twine their hands together once he finished the Athenian hairstyle.

In response, the divine herdsman glanced at him, a soft smile lighting up his beautiful features, before it curved into a mischievous look.

“What are you—?”

Apollo looped his arms around his neck and slid onto his lap, eyes sparkling with mirth. “Care for a bite?” He impishly asked, freeing one hand to scoop up a platter of freshly-made cheese.

Admetus raised a brow, lips twitching, as he asked; “Did you slip something in it?”

Apollo scoffed. “Of course not,” he placed his unoccupied hand to his chest, as if offended. “Only the finest of cheese for my favorite king.”

“And only the finest of the gods could ever make it,” Admetus teased, accepting the offered cheese platter, only to pause when Apollo clucked his tongue and nimbly plucked a piece up himself.

“Allow me,” his smile softened from teasing to genuine. “Least I can do for your kindness.”

Admetus chuckled awkwardly. “It’s nothing,” he shook his head. “I do think this world could use a little more kindness.”

Apollo hummed. “I suppose you’re right,” he softly said, offering his hand with the cheese out. “Taste?”

Admetus didn’t break eye contact as he ate the cheese from Apollo’s fingers, cupping the god’s hand as he did. The tangy, rich flavor bathed his tongue and he licked his lips.

“Delicious,” the king proclaimed, snagging another off the platter. “You truly make the best cheese I’ve ever tasted.”

Apollo laughed as he ate a bite of cheese himself. “Ah, then you truly have yet to live,” his eyes danced in the darkness. “Remind me to get you some of Aristaeus’s — he is the true master of cheese-making.”

Admetus smiled and kissed Apollo’s cheek, comfortably wrapping his arms around his waist. “I shall await this marvelous cheese,” he whispered against his beloved’s ear. “But for now, I’m very much content with yours.”

Apollo’s bashful duck of the head sent flutters of warmth through him.

Sighing fondly at the memory, Admetus nosed into Apollo’s warm body beside him, breathing in the scent of laurels, glancing momentarily at the wreath still laying in Apollo’s hair. It sat crookedly, the leaves unused to being crushed under the head of a human.

Delicately, Admetus adjusted the wreath until it sat mostly straight, though there wasn’t much he could do about the crumpled leaves. Some golden strands had fallen back into Apollo’s closed eyes.

Even without a crown, he silently thought to himself as he brushed those strands away. He’ll always be royal to me.

 —

My ramblings on ancient greek CHEESE can be found on Ao3 :3

#submission #toasecretsanta #firealder2005 #literallyjusttoa #trials of apollo #toa #trials of apollo fanfiction #riordanverse #riordanverse fanfic #pjo apollo #pjo admetus

[tsarisfanfiction]

Laurels and Labyrinths

Fandom: Percy Jackson and the Olympians Rating: Teen Genre: Friendship Characters: Lee Fletcher, Clarisse La Rue, Annabeth Chase, Michael Yew Being paired with Clarisse for Quintus' war game? Not a problem. Annabeth and Percy going missing? A problem. Otherwise known as: the war games in chapter 3 of BOTL from Lee's pov. Once again, I attempt something short and it ends up being rather longer than planned. There is a whole pile of headcanons snuck in here, from Apollo kids getting tired at sundown, to the harpies not attacking Apollo kids because they're the healers and have potential reasons to be out after curfew, and various other things in between. Also the logic that Lee knows about the Labyrinth from being the healer brought in to try and help Chris. Reminder that there’s now a discord server for all my fics, including this one!  If you wanna chat with me or with other readers about stuff I write (or just be social in general), hop on over and say hi!

“Your armour’s crooked, Will.”

“Tha- hey!”

Lee turned around to see Will tilted awkwardly as Michael tugged on the straps, straightening out his breastplate – or what would be straight, once Michael let go and Will could straighten up again.  Will wasn’t much taller than Michael – yet – but it was already enough to be noticeable.  Confident that despite appearances Michael would get Will’s armour sorted out, Lee just allowed himself a small grin at the sight before he turned back to securing his own straps tightly and checking over the rest of his siblings.

Quintus hadn’t said what, exactly, these war games he wanted all the campers armoured up for were, but if it didn’t involve the suspicious crates that had disappeared from the arena during the day, Lee would be very, very surprised.  He knew he wasn’t the only one to think that; most of the confused mutterings he’d overhead since the breakfast announcement had mentioned them at one point or another, until every camper had at least heard about the crates, even the ones that hadn’t seen them.

Lee just hoped that there wasn’t another drakon involved.  He was still tired from chasing off the Aethiopean drakon at three in the morning – it had not wanted to be chased off, either, and if it wasn’t for the protection of the camp borders, Lee was well aware it would’ve tried much harder to kill him and his siblings, rather than just being stubborn to chase off.  He was also aware that Michael was also grumpy from the lack of sleep as well as not being able to kill the creature, and the knowledge that it was almost certainly sent by Luke to scout out their weaknesses.

Well, at least they’d proven that they could still defend their camp, although Lee had his own concerns he hadn’t dared share with any of his siblings.

Clarisse hadn’t wanted to bring him into the know, but she wasn’t a healer, and both she and Chris had needed one.  Will’s aptitude for healing was constantly improving, but this wasn’t something to put on the shoulders of a then-eleven year old, so it had fallen to Lee, instead.

Knowing that the Labyrinth still existed, and seeing the damage it could cause to demigods, was one thing.  Add in the creeping feeling that if it connected to everywhere important as well as several seemingly-random locations, there was almost certainly an entrance within camp borders, somewhere, and if the scouting monsters outside of camp were any indication, Lee bet Luke was looking for it?  Well, Lee was not looking forwards to Quintus’ war game.

Glancing over towards where cabin five were pulling on their own armour and arming themselves to the teeth, he could see Clarisse tensely checking her straps.  He clearly wasn’t the only one – and a brief look towards Annabeth straightening Malcolm’s helmet in a fidget she didn’t usually indulge in told him that all three of the in-the-know campers were in agreement.

Still, Lee couldn’t just pull his cabin out of the war game, even though Quintus wasn’t as terrifying as Tantalus had been and might even let him.  Doing that would signal to the rest of the camp that there was something very wrong, and they couldn’t afford the panic.  Instead, he had to give his siblings one more check – Will’s armour was now straight, as Lee had known it would be, and Sam, who had been in camp for all of a few weeks and still painfully new to anything combat-related, now had his helmet on as an extra precaution – before herding them to where the adult demigod was waiting for them.

The campers gathered in a loose crowd, more-or-less grouped by cabin, although there were a few strays mingling – notably Beckendorf and Silena, and Lee wasn’t an Aphrodite kid but even he was getting fed up of waiting for those two to stop dancing around the subject and get together already – and waited for Quintus to explain what he wanted them to do.

“Gather round,” the assistant activities director instructed.  None of them got too close to where he was standing on the head table, because Mrs O’Leary was scavenging around and no-one was interested in getting bowled over by an enthusiastic hellhound, even if she wasn’t trying to eat them, but the crowd shuffled a little in response anyway.  “You will be in teams of two-”

Immediately, everyone started talking.  Michael grabbed onto Will and glared daggers at anyone else that even looked their brother’s way, and Lee sought out Miri with his eyes, ignoring the arguments breaking out as multiple people wanted the same partner and would fight for them-

“-Which have already been chosen!” Quintus shouted about the clamour.  Everyone silenced for a moment before letting out a chorus of complaint which went ignored as he kept talking.  “Your goal is simple: collect the gold laurels without dying. The wreath is wrapped in a silk package, tied to the back of one of the monsters. There are six monsters. Each has a silk package. Only one holds the laurels.”  No prizes for what was in the crates, then, although Lee would’ve liked to know what monsters Quintus had lined up for them.  He hoped none of them were drakons.  “You must find the wreath before the other teams.  And, of course… you will have to slay the monster to get it, and stay alive.”

Around him, campers started talking again, excitement tinging the air.  Lee had to admit it did sound like fun, even if they couldn’t choose their own partners.  Quintus had never shown any signs of wanting the demigods he was partly responsible for dead, so the monsters he’d brought in wouldn’t be beyond their abilities to deal with, Lee was pretty sure – especially if they were going to be working in pairs, and he doubted they’d all been matched with their perfect fighting partner.  If it wasn’t for the ever-present background Labyrinth worry that had been plaguing him since Clarisse and Chris’ return to camp in the winter, he’d probably be just as excited as Michael, who had bared his teeth in a grin at the concept even though he was clearly still annoyed about not being able to choose his own partner.

This sort of game was right up Michael’s alley, after all.

“I will now announce your partners,” Quintus said, bringing the murmuring back into silence. “There will be no trading. No switching. No complaining.”  From the way Michael was bristling from where he was stood so close to Will that their arms were pressed together, Lee suspected the last order was a lost cause.  Hopefully, Quintus had a good enough idea of camper dynamics to know who not to put together.

If Michael ended up with Clarisse, the monsters were going to be the least of anyone’s worries.

Quintus cleared his throat and unrolled a scroll – a long scroll, because it was far enough into summer that all the expected returning campers had shown up again – and began to read.

“Charles Beckendorf and Silena Beauregarde.”  Both of them looked delighted, and around Lee, campers started perking up again, because if Quintus was paying enough attention to put those two together, maybe the rest of them were also paired with friends or partners.  “Travis Stoll and Connor Stoll,” made it seem even more likely, and the brothers high fived each other as campers started drifting towards their preferred partners again, in anticipation of the trend continuing.

“Clarisse La Rue and Lee Fletcher.”

It didn’t.  Lee grimaced at Miri, ignoring Michael starting to grumble unsavoury things about the daughter of Ares.  At least Quintus had known better than to pair them together.  Clarisse stepped away from her siblings, and made eye contact with Lee, jerking her head in a clear get over here message.  Michael’s grumbling got louder, only to be cut off by his own name.

“Michael Yew and Drew Tanaka.”

The daughter of Aphrodite screwed her face up in disgust, and Lee’s brother glowered at her in return.  It wasn’t a bad match-up, Lee mused as he finally made his way over to join Clarisse.  Drew’s charmspeak wouldn’t affect Michael, and she was a decent enough melee fighter to go with his ranged attacks.  As long as they actually co-operated.

He saw Michael leave Will’s side to join her with bad grace.  Their matching scowls almost made Lee chuckle.

“They’re going to get each other killed,” Clarisse huffed next to him.  She didn’t sound particularly cut up about it.

“They’d better not,” he muttered back as Quintus continued calling out pairings, which were met with a variety of reactions.  Will got partnered with Malcolm, which was not the worst possibility, even if Lee would really have preferred for Will to not be involved in the war game at all.  At least Malcolm was smart enough to not throw the pair of them straight at the monsters – or really competitive enough to care.  Maybe that pair would just linger at the forest edge like sensible pre-teens.

Lee could hope.

The pairing finally finished with the curious duo of Tyson and Grover – the only satyr to be included, presumably for his friendship with Percy – and Quintus reminded them all that they weren’t allowed to complain before letting them head towards the woods.

It wasn’t dusk yet, but the sun was far enough across the sky that Lee suspected it would be after dark by the time they were done, and wasn’t particularly pleased about it.  They didn’t currently have any Apollo campers young enough that the setting sun was an automatic sleep signal, but none of them liked being active after sundown, let alone in combat – and definitely not two nights in a row.

“I’ll take point,” Clarisse said gruffly, as they arrived at the edge of the wood.  Lee nodded.

“I’ve got your back,” he promised her.  “Let’s get this over with.”

She made a noise of agreement, surveying the shadowed woods in front of them intently, and Lee remembered that he wasn’t the only one that feared a Labyrinth entrance somewhere within the camp’s borders.  Clarisse had no more reason to feel comfortable with the war game than he did.

Working with Clarisse wasn’t difficult, in combat.  Lee had done it several times over the years in Capture the Flag, both as head counsellors and also when they were younger, to say nothing of when they’d had to organise the camp defences the previous summer.  If there was something Clarisse knew, it was combat, and she stalked through the woods on high alert, electric spear silent in her hand.  Lee shadowed her on light feet, not letting himself focus on any one thing, but spreading his attention around them in case they were flanked or approached from behind.

In the gradually fading light of dusk, the woods began to take on an ominous feel.  Branches rustled in faint breezes, in conversation between the dryads that tended not to leave their trees, with the movement of almost a hundred demigods trying to move quietly, and in some cases failing.

Knowing that the noises could mean allies – or in this case, campers and not monsters – Lee forced himself not to shoot at any movement until he knew what it was.  Unlike Capture the Flag, and other games where their opponents were each other, none of the Apollo kids had blunted arrows tonight.  He couldn’t afford stray shots.

Ahead came the sound of skittering on fallen twigs, and Clarisse threw her hand up silently in a clear command to halt.  Lee stopped where he was immediately, nocking the arrow he’d held loosely in his hand onto the string but not drawing, not yet.  That hadn’t been a demigod or a dryad noise, and probably wasn’t the wind either, which meant monster but until he could see it, he wasn’t risking full draw.

Clarisse made another sharp hand signal, exaggerated in the dusk.  Cover me.  Then she crept forwards, fingers flexing around the shaft of her spear, poised to ignite the crackling electricity the moment she needed it.  Lee stayed a little way behind her, padding forwards silently with his bow ready to draw and fire in an instant in his hands.

The skitter came again, closer, louder, faster-

Clarisse let out a shout of victory, silence shattering as her spear surged to life and she abandoned stealth to leap into action, fluid experience ducking her underneath a flailing scorpion tail – pit scorpion venom flashed through Lee’s mind, the discolouration of Percy’s hand, the revelation that Luke betrayed them, but he pushed it aside to deal with later, when Clarisse wasn’t dodging the giant scorpion (not a pit scorpion) and its attacks.

Scorpions were armoured, which was a pain in the half-light when Lee couldn’t see its weak spots so clearly, but they were in pairs for a reason and he wasn’t leaving Clarisse to take the creature on alone.  He waited until she was down low, out of his line of sight, before letting fly with the first arrow, catching it in a chink between head and body armour.

Just like the drakon the previous night, armoured and needing to be shot at in the dark, that wasn’t enough to bring it down, and with stealth abandoned, Lee didn’t hesitate to yank more arrows from his quiver, the shafts whispering against the leather before nocks clicked into place on the string and he fired again.  In front of him, Clarisse threw herself inside the scorpion’s guard, thrusting the spear forwards with enough strength that it impaled the tail and rendered it useless, before drawing her knife and stabbing at one of the gaps in its carapace.

Lee let more arrows fly into more gaps, too, and with one last grunt from Clarisse as she drove the knife in deep, the scorpion burst into dust, covering Clarisse.

Its silk-wrapped parcel likewise disappeared with a small explosion, leaving nothing behind.

“Not that one, then,” Lee commented as Clarisse spat out monster dust from her mouth and drank a swig of water from her water bottle.

“One down, five to go,” she replied, bending down to retrieve her spear and looking it over with a critical eye.  Seemingly satisfied that it hadn’t been damaged by the scorpion’s tough exterior, she slammed the butt down onto the ground.  “Laurel leaves or not, we’re killing them all.”

Lee didn’t disagree.  While he knew the two of them were unlikely to be the ones finding and killing all six of the monsters – Percy Jackson was somewhere in the woods, along with Annabeth, and Michael, and the rest of the Ares and Athena cabins, and really all the demigods were trained for killing monsters – they couldn’t leave until they knew their woods were safe again.

Well, for a certain degree of safe.

“These things aren’t quiet,” he said, kneeling down to retrieve his arrows and check if any of them were bent.  Some were, but not to the point of being unusable, so he put them all back in his quiver.  “Not when they’re fighting.”

Clarisse nodded, looking around.  “This one was alone,” she said.  “The noise hasn’t drawn any more to us.”  She started walking, changing direction and striking out further away from the setting sun, into the darker, deeper parts of the wood.  “So we’re going to them.”

Lee followed without complaint.

They’d started off at the edge of the forest, tracking around the camp’s forest boundary, but now Clarisse was leading them further into the heart of the demigod-claimed territory.  Quintus had probably released them from somewhere in there, near the creek they always used as the territory divider in Capture the Flag.  Lee hoped he had, because that was familiar territory for all but the newest campers, and familiar terrain in combat helped, especially for the younger and less confident fighters.

As they headed further into regular demigod territory, they began to pass other pairs.  Most of the younger kids hadn’t gone far into the forest, unnerved by the dense trees in the creeping darkness, and Lee was glad for that.  Having now faced one of Quintus’ monsters, while it hadn’t been much of a challenge for him and Clarisse, the less experienced demigods would struggle.

At one point, they passed Michael and Drew.  The daughter of Aphrodite had the tell-tale dust in her hair and was furious about it, shouting at Michael about something or other.  From the brief snatches he caught, Lee surmised she didn’t like that she was the front line fighter in their duo, and that Michael was not covered in monster-dust because he’d been shooting from up a tree.

Neither of them were wearing golden laurels, and bringing Clarisse close to Michael while Michael was tired and grumpy and already dealing with Drew’s temper was a recipe for a disaster that Lee wanted no part in, so he forged past them without acknowledging their existence.  To his relief, Clarisse likewise ignored the pair, holding her head up and deliberately not even glancing their way as she continued on her path towards what was hopefully more monsters to kill.

They ended up at Zeus’ Fist, and found three more of the scorpions at once.  They were skittering around the rock pile agitatedly, as though there was something there that they wanted, and all Lee could think of was cornered demigods, even though he couldn’t see any sign of any.

Clarisse growled.  “Shoot them, Lee!” she ordered as her spear crackled into life and she threw herself at the trio of eight-legged, skittering monsters.  Lee didn’t need to be told twice, nocking arrows and drawing his bow back.  With more scorpion than Clarisse in his sights, it was easier to let fly and trust that he wouldn’t hit her, although the steadily-darkening sky made it harder to spot the cracks in the scorpions’ armour.  Clarisse’s spear gave off a faint red glow as Ares’ power coursed through it, enough to throw deeper shadows into the gaps, and Lee used that as a guidance as he steadily emptied his quiver into the three monsters, targeting joints to try and restrict their movement as Clarisse stabbed and slashed with her spear in one hand and her knife in the other.

Not for the first time, Lee suspected that Clarisse was the best melee fighter in the camp, potentially barring Percy when he got wet.  It was hardly a surprise, but that didn’t make it any less awe inspiring to watch as she slowly but surely wore down the three scorpions.  It wasn’t an easy battle for her – even with Lee’s supporting fire and the arrows wedging themselves in limb joints, she was still taking hits, although her armour deflected the worst of them – but there was no doubt that she was going to win, eventually.

Lee’s quiver emptied, the downside of dealing with three scorpions at once when each of them could get turned into a pincushion and still stay standing, and he set his bow to the side, drawing his knife and stepping closer to the fray.  He wasn’t a melee fighter, really, but if he could even play distraction for a few seconds, that would help Clarisse.

“I’ve got this!” she snapped as he ducked under a flailing tail, and promptly proved her words by stabbing the scorpion closest to him through the head with her spear.  A surge of electricity and Lee found himself covered by dust, a small, silk-wrapped parcel dropping down neatly into his hands.  Remembering the previous one, he went to drop it before it went boom, only for the silk to shift and expose gold.  Instead of dropping it, he stuffed it into his quiver and dropped to his knees in the middle of the dust pile, scooping up his arrows and frowning when he realised most of them were damaged in some way or another.  Only two were still useable, and he scrambled back to his bow, nocking both arrows at once as he ran back into the fray.

A few years ago, on one of his trips out of camp, he and some of the other campers had found themselves at the movies, on edge for monsters trying to kill them but likewise fascinated by the movie they’d ended up watching.  Lee was pretty certain he’d technically been too young for the rating, but some of the older demigods had snuck him in anyway.

The elf – Lee did not remember the character’s name – jumping on top of an elephant’s head and firing two arrows point-blank into the top of its skull had stuck with him.  Typically that was far closer to a monster than archers were supposed to get, and the laws of physics dictated that by dividing the force between two arrows, both would’ve been fired weaker than usual, but Lee was a son of Apollo, and while he wasn’t as much of an archer as Michael, his father was still the god of archery, and that came with a few perks – like occasionally ignoring the laws of archery physics.

Lee sprung onto the back of one of the scorpions, the one behind Clarisse as she attacked the other with a fresh degree of ferocity, and ran forwards, ducking the tail that lashed towards him as he made his way to its head and aimed down.

The explosion of dust in his face also made him lose his footing as nothing substantial was beneath him anymore.  He stumbled to the ground as Clarisse vanquished the other one with a cry, breathing heavily but seemingly unbothered by the dust covering her skin.

“One left,” the daughter of Ares said, proving that she had noticed Michael and Drew earlier.

Lee, too, wanted to keep going, but, “I’m out of arrows,” he admitted, picking up the other arrows from where they’d been dropped after the scorpions had dissolved.  All of them were bent or even broken; the two he’d killed one of the scorpions with had shattered entirely.

Clarisse scoffed.  “That’s the problem with you archers,” she said.  It was something Lee had heard her say many times to Michael, who had always taken it as a personal insult and reacted accordingly, usually with arrows.  Lee was not quite so temperamental as his younger brother, and simply drew his knife again.

“I still have this,” he said.  She didn’t look impressed, even though her own knife had already been liberally used to kill giant scorpions.  “Oh, and this.”

He rummaged through his quiver and stepped up next to Clarisse, plucking out the silk-wrapped parcel and wrestling the golden laurels out.

The younger girl gave him a nonplussed look as he deposited it on her head.

“Your kill, your laurels,” he said, and she rolled her eyes, but reached up and positioned the laurels more firmly in her hair.

“Whatever,” she said.  “We have one more scorpion to hunt-”

Rustling in the nearby trees had both of them slamming back-to-back, Lee’s bow abandoned on the ground and his knife clenched in his fist as Clarisse’s spear crackled to life behind him.

Another scorpion?  It was already weird that three of them had been together like that – surely there shouldn’t be a fourth one in their vicinity.

It wasn’t another scorpion, and Lee felt the tension drain from Clarisse’s body as her spear stopped crackling.  Other demigods, then.  He moved around until he could see them; it was Sherman, with his Quintus-mandated partner Jake following on behind him.

Clarisse’s younger brother immediately noticed the golden laurels gleaming in the rapidly-fading light and his shoulders slumped.

“Of course you got it,” he said.  “Pairing you two up was just unfair.”

“How many have you killed?” Jake asked them, looking at Lee’s strewn and broken arrows.

“Four,” Clarisse said shortly, and the younger boys both whistled through their teeth.  “Drew and the short bastard-”

“Clarisse,” Lee sighed, and her jaw tightened.

“-Michael got another one, which makes five.”

“We got one, too,” Sherman said, and now Lee was looking he could see the silvery dusting in his dark hair, “so that’s all of them.”

Lee’s shoulders slumped in relief; he hadn’t been looking forwards to hunting a giant scorpion with a knife as his only weapon.  “That means this game is over,” he said.  “We should get back so Quintus can recall everyone else.”  He glanced up at the sky, where the sun chariot had all but disappeared and the first of the stars were starting to make their presence known.  “It’ll be curfew soon, anyway.”

All four of them were old enough to understand that even with the camp’s defences still active, they didn’t really want any campers left in the woods after curfew, when night had fully set in and there were no more traces of Apollo’s light.

Lee set about gathering up the remains of his arrows; just because the shafts were broken didn’t mean the heads weren’t reusable, and maybe some of the less severely bent shafts could be straightened again.  Jake and Sherman joined him; a glance towards Clarisse showed her scanning the deepening shadows of the trees, standing as still as a sentinel and no doubt keeping watch in case there was something that shouldn’t be in their area of the woods.

With three of them on the case, it didn’t take long to retrieve all the visible arrows.  Lee’s quiver looked a sorry sight as he slid in the last handful of damaged arrows and straightened up again.

“Let’s-” he started, only to be cut off by a familiar horn.  It wasn’t the dinner conch, but it was the summoning sound Chiron used to call all the stragglers in after Capture the Flag was over.  Either they’d hit a time limit, or Quintus had somehow determined that the laurel had been claimed.

Lee wasn’t sure which option he preferred, but it didn’t really matter when it got all four of them jogging back towards camp, away from Zeus’ fist and the dust of slaughtered scorpion-like monsters.

There were several unsurprised eyerolls as the other campers caught sight of the laurels in Clarisse’s choppy and messy hair – the new, shorter hair suited her a lot better, Lee thought, although after so many years it was still strange to see Clarisse with short hair.  The general consensus seemed to match Sherman’s initial assessment – of course Clarisse was the one to win.

Michael was eyeing the laurel with a scowl as he ditched Drew and slunk up next to Lee.  “Why’s she wearing it?” he huffed, thankfully quiet enough that Clarisse, who had gone to round up her cabin as they reappeared, didn’t hear.

Lee shrugged at his younger brother.  “She killed that one.”

“That one?” Michael demanded, eyebrows shooting up.  “How many did you fight?”

“Four.”

“Fucking Hades,” Michael swore, shaking his head.  “Could’ve left some for the rest of us.”

“One was plenty, you bastard,” Drew muttered, passing them on the way to reconvening with her siblings.  “Do you even care how long it takes to get monster dust out of your hair?”

“No.”

Lee couldn’t help a fond chuckle as the daughter of Aphrodite rolled her eyes and stalked off, muttering “of course he doesn’t.  If he’d just let us at his hair…”

Michael’s step to the side, subtly putting Lee between him and the gathering of Aphrodite kids, almost made him smile again.  They’d both heard, several times, that Michael had nice hair if only he’d treat it right, according to the Aphrodite cabin.  Neither of them were quite sure what they meant by that, and Michael was in no hurry to find out, either, even if Lee was secretly curious.

One by one, the rest of Lee’s siblings started reappearing from the woods.  Sam looked pale, and Tris’ eyes were half-lidded with exhaustion, and the rest of the cabin were in varying stages of tiredness.  Two late nights in a row was not fun, and while Lee hadn’t seen any nasty injuries from the returning campers, he was sure there would be a few people with scratches that they’d be expected to deal with before bed.  Will yawned as he separated from Malcolm, the older boy gripping his shoulder briefly, and more or less walked into Michael, resting his forehead on his shoulder.

“Can we go to bed now?” he mumbled as Michael patted his head.

“Once Quintus and Chiron say so,” Lee promised him, scanning all of his siblings for signs of injury.  “Everyone okay?” he asked, raising his voice enough to be heard over the mutters and grumbles of his tired siblings.  Aside from him and Michael, he knew none of them had actually fought the scorpions, so they’d spent the past hour or so of fading dusk wandering around the forest on edge with nothing exciting to show for it.  No wonder they were all crashing now the game was over.

Camp was now fully lit with torches, and the ever-present glow of the hearth.  Their dad’s chariot had long since returned to its temple, and Artemis’ was only giving a sliver of light tonight.  Apollo kids were not night owls and it was getting late by their standards, especially the younger ones.

Even Michael was looking a rather tired, the drakon messing up his sleep last night combined with another late night tugging at him, too.  Lee wasn’t quite fighting yawns, but he couldn’t deny he was also thinking fondly of his waiting bed.

Tyson and Grover were the last pair to stumble out of the forest, both immediately separating and circling around opposite sides of the gathering of demigods.  Grover headed for where the Athena kids had clumped together, while Tyson looked around before saying, “where’s Percy?”

Everyone silenced, and the entire focus of the camp landed on the Athena cabin, because if anyone would know the answer to that, it would be Annabeth, but Annabeth wasn’t there, either.  Grover stopped still, and frowned.

“I can’t feel Percy,” he admitted, four words that sent the whole of camp reeling.  Not everyone knew about the empathy bond he had with the son of Poseidon, but everyone except the very newest campers knew he and Percy were close.

Even the newest campers knew the disappearance of their resident Big Three Kid didn’t bode well.  Lee couldn’t help but remember the first time it happened, Percy and Luke nowhere to be found until suddenly Percy was in his infirmary with pit scorpion venom and Luke was gone.

Why did he keep remembering that, tonight?  He shook his head and stepped forwards, the same time Clarisse did.

“We’d better find those idiots before they go off on another stupid quest without leave,” she grumbled, and Lee remembered the second time Percy disappeared – this time with Annabeth.  No-one had ever got the full story out of that incident out of them, but it was a common theory that they’d overlapped with Clarisse’s quest to get the golden fleece, even if none of them had ever said as much.

Clarisse’s voice was just a little too annoyed for Lee to think there wasn’t something personal in the accusation, though.

“Not all of us,” he cut in, to say his own piece.  “It’s way past curfew and the younger campers need to go to bed.”

“Annabeth’s missing!” one of the Athena kids yelled.  Lee couldn’t see which one, but the voice was young.

“Now, now,” Chiron said, trotting forwards into the centre of attention, Quintus walking beside him.  “They may have just gone deeper than everyone else and are taking longer to return.”  After Grover’s declaration, Lee didn’t think anyone believed that.  “And if there is a problem, it is not your jobs to sort it out.”

“You can’t expect us to stay back and not look for them,” Travis called from the throng of cabin eleven, echoed by Connor.

Chiron raised a hand as more demigods began to clamour, but it was Quintus who spoke.

“A compromise,” he suggested.  “Chiron, how about enlisting the help of our head counsellors?”  His gaze landed on Lee and Clarisse, their weight old and heavy, before he looked up at the centaur.  “Some experienced help.”

More protests exploded from the younger campers, and the Athena cabin, whose head counsellor was the one missing, and Chiron sighed.

“Very well,” he said.  “Head counsellors, select one of your siblings to help you, and another one to take charge of getting the rest of your cabins to bed and staying there.  Quickly, now.”

Lee glanced at Clarisse, and caught her glancing back at him, his suspicions reflected in her eyes.  Disappearing mirrored appearing, after all.

It was barely a moment, before they turned back to their respective cabins.  The choice of who was coming with him was obvious, and Michael stepped up before he could even say anything.  Really, Lee should make him the one in charge of the cabin – they all knew he would be the one to succeed Lee once he went to college in a year’s time, after all, and needed the practice – but he was their best archer and spent more time in the woods than most.  He’d be best suited to the search party, even if it meant having to work with Clarisse.

“Lawrence, I’m leaving the cabin to you.  Make sure everyone goes to bed,” Lee said.  Lawrence was one of the oldest campers, older than him, and due to go to college in the fall.  He’d also arrived at camp the same year as Michael and lived there ever since, making him one of the more experienced demigods, too – and everyone loved him.  “I’m also out of arrows, so if anyone’s got any..?”

“I got it,” his brother agreed, scooping Sam and Tris under his arms.  “Right then, sleepyheads.  Bed time for you guys.  Will, Alice, that includes you two.  Grab them, Morton, and give Lee your spare arrows.  Anyone else with arrows, do that, too.”

Lee accepted the various arrows from his siblings, passing the ones that were a bit shorter than he could comfortably use to Michael, whose quiver could always do with more, it seemed.  Once both of them were once again armed to the teeth – and relieved of their broken and bent arrows – they left Lawrence to wrangling the tired cabin and went to join Chiron.

Most of the other head counsellors were already there.  Clarisse had Sherman by her side, both of them looking impatient at the wait, while Drew sneered at Michael from beside Silena.  Lee glanced over at the rest of the Aphrodite kids to see Miri corralling them back towards their cabin.  She sent him a short wave when she caught sight of him looking, and he grinned back.

Michael, like any self-respecting little sibling, made disgusted noises under his breath, which Lee ignored with years of practice.

Unsurprisingly, Malcolm had elected himself as the head counsellor for the Athena cabin in Annabeth’s absence.  He wasn’t the oldest, or even the most experienced, but he was the one that everyone already knew would inherit the position when Annabeth inevitably went to college one day.  He had, at least, had the good sense to pick one of his older and more experienced siblings as his partner, though.  Beckendorf was accompanied by Jake, Katie had picked Miranda, and Travis and Connor and Pollux and Castor had obviously picked each other.  Lee hadn’t expected anything different from cabins eleven and twelve.

Grover and Tyson finished off the official search party, still keeping their distance from each other but adamant that they were going to be involved, anyway.  No-one was going to tell them no.

“We’ll split into two groups to cover more ground but keep safety in numbers,” Chiron told them.  “Clarisse and Sherman, Lee and Michael, Silena and Drew, Pollux and Castor, and Tyson – you’ll be with me.”

“And the rest of you are with me,” Quintus said.  “And Mrs O’Leary, of course.”  The hellhound let out a massive whoof that made them all jump.

Quintus’ search party looked a little discomforted at the reminder they were going into the woods accompanied by a hellhound, even if she was a friendly one.  Lee was privately glad that he wasn’t in that group.

Chiron gave all of them torches and whistles, “in case anyone gets separated, or to let the other group know if we find them.”  Lee looped his whistle around his neck, while Michael tangled the string around his quiver strap.

Going back into the woods late at night, when there was only the light of their torches and the faint strains of moon- and starlight to show the way, was disconcerting.  Lee didn’t like it, and from the tenseness of everyone else’s shoulders, nor did anyone else.  Stealth was no longer a priority, so Clarisse’s spear was constantly crackling, lighting up with red sparks that made her still-worn laurels glisten as though they were on fire.

“Percy!” Tyson bellowed suddenly, almost deafening them.  Lee had to grip Michael’s arm to stop him firing an arrow at the cyclops, trying to pretend his other hand wasn’t halfway to raising his bow on instinct, either.  “Annabeth!”

“Oi, Jackson!  Wise girl!” Clarisse echoed after a moment, and one by one they all took up the call as they wove their way through the trees, hooves and feet alike making noise on the undergrowth.  Regular animals scattered, and in the distance they heard answering echoes of the same names from the other search party, who had entered the woods at the other edge of the barrier.

It was a similar pattern to the one Lee and Clarisse had taken whilst hunting the scorpions, although they hadn’t had anyone the other side to complete the pincer movement.

Despite being a single search party, as they moved they started to spread out, never losing sight of each other’s torches, but covering a greater area as they combed the undergrowth, in case the missing demigods weren’t-

Weren’t capable of calling back.

Lee refused to think of why, didn’t let himself think of pit scorpions and half dead sons of Poseidon limp in the infirmary, but made sure to check every darker pocket of shadows with his torch, just to be sure.  Above him, he could hear Michael slipping along tree branches, his torch providing far more light from the skies than the distant moon and stars and his voice joining the calls.  He was the only one of their party that could really navigate the trees so easily – not just for his size, but because Lee had known for years that despite his brusqueness with the other demigods, Michael had long since got on the good side of the dryads and was allowed to clamber through them like a monkey, so long as he didn’t damage their trees – and Chiron had swiftly agreed that the additional viewing angle would only help.

For once, Clarisse hadn’t made any snide or antagonising remarks about Michael’s tendency to hide in trees and sneak around, which had only proven how concerned she actually was about Annabeth and Percy’s disappearance.  Lee couldn’t quite kid himself into thinking it was just because Clarisse was worried it meant there was a Labyrinth entrance, and that they’d found it – ever since the fleece quest last summer, she’d been a little less outrightly hostile to Percy, and she and Annabeth had always been more of a butting heads rather than hating each other’s guts relationship.  Lee had known the younger girls long enough to know that they respected each other, when it came down to it.

Lee’s torch picked up a scattering of dust, recent enough to have not been blown away by what wind made it through the trees, and the beam from Clarisse’s torch, next to him in their line, crossed it.  They both paused, and looked at each other.

“The scorpions,” Clarisse said, her voice a little hoarse from the shouting.  It was almost drowned out by the yells of their companions, but she was looking at Lee.

“They wouldn’t be killed by those,” he protested, and she grunted, slashing her spear through the air.

“I’m not an idiot,” she snapped.  “Think, Lee.”

Lee blinked at her, glancing back at the scattered dust.  Around and above them, the rest of the search party kept marching forwards.

“I’m not following,” he admitted.  “What about them?”

She rolled her eyes before stomping forwards again, breaking their search pattern.  Lee hurried to follow, because none of them were going alone.  Behind him, he heard Drew curse as she spotted their torches headed in a different direction.  “Oi, wrong way!”

Clarisse ignored her.  “The first one was by itself,” she said.  “So was the one Drew and Michael killed, and Sherman and Jake.”

Lee suddenly realised where she was going, and where they were headed.  “But the other three were together.”

“Took you long enough,” she huffed.

“They weren’t facing us,” Lee continued to recall, hearing their names also being called, and the frustrated grunts of Michael in the trees above them as he caught up with them.  “They’d been following something else.  But there was nothing there, was there?”

“Enough of the damn universe revolves around Jackson,” Clarisse snorted.  “Why wouldn’t half the damn monsters?”

“What are you two going on about?” Michael shouted down at them.

“Fuck off,” Clarisse snapped at him.

“Clarisse,” Lee scolded immediately, before glancing up at the torch dimly illuminating his younger brother in the trees.  “We’re going to check Zeus’ Fist,” he told him.  “Tell Chiron.”  He didn’t leave it a question, because if he did, Michael would say no, and then he’d be stuck mediating between Clarisse and Michael whilst trying to find missing demigods, and at what had to be well past ten at night by now, Lee was far too tired to be dealing with their arguments.

“Tell him yourself,” Michael groused, because Lee wasn’t the only overtired Apollo kid on the search, and Michael got irritable even with him sometimes, and Lee was not dealing with this.

“Michael!” he snapped.  “Go tell Chiron, now.”

Above him, the torchlight stuttered, and Lee felt a flash of guilt because he never snapped at Michael, but then it turned around and the dark silhouette of his younger brother headed back towards the bulk of the search party.

Clarisse whistled.  “I didn’t know you had it in you, Lee.”

Lee groaned.  “Clarisse.  It is stupid o’clock at night.  We spent a good hour earlier chasing and killing giant scorpions.  Now there are missing demigods.  Michael and I were up last night chasing off drakons at stupid o’clock in the morning.  I am past tired, and we’re both worrying that the Labyrinth is involved even though neither of us can say it in front of the other campers.”  She stiffened.  “Do not push me right now.”

That was the wrong thing to say to an Ares kid – the default response to do not push me with them was always what are you going to do about it, and Clarisse had never been the exception to that rule.  Lee braced himself for the inevitable jibe.

It didn’t come.

“You too?” she asked instead, her voice quiet in a way that Clarisse wasn’t, except when the Labyrinth came up.  Lee didn’t know what, exactly, she’d been through when she’d explored it, but he remembered the injuries she’d come back to camp with.  The scar on her chin was the only one visible in polite company, but there had been several, worse, wounds that were now knotted and ugly scars under her clothes.  The thing with being the camp’s head healer was that Lee saw these things.

“I hope it isn’t,” he admitted, keeping a careful eye on the torches now following them from behind, because even if it was only senior campers, he didn’t want them overhearing this.  Clarisse wouldn’t, either.  “But…”

“Grover could reach Percy from the fucking Sea of Monsters,” Clarisse said, roughly, and adding more weight to the theory that their paths had crossed on the fleece quest.  “If he can’t reach him now, it’s something worse than that.”

And it’s in our camp, she didn’t say, but Lee heard it loud and clear, anyway, and there wasn’t anything he could say to that, because he didn’t think she was wrong, but admitting out loud that she was right…

Well, there was a reason she didn’t say it.

Hooves pounded the ground behind them, and Lee turned around as Chiron caught them up.  “You shouldn’t be wandering off without telling us,” the centaur said, disapprovingly.

“Lee sent Michael to tell you,” Clarisse muttered.  The tree leaves above them rustled, but Michael didn’t say anything else.  The guilt at snapping at his younger brother gnawed a little bit deeper.

“I know,” Chiron said, but he still didn’t sound happy.  Then again, Lee had sent Michael with a message and no company, although he trusted the trees to keep Michael safe better than anyone would’ve been on the ground.  “Why Zeus’ Fist?”

“There were three scorpions clustered together there,” Lee said, before Clarisse could.  “They looked like they’d been chasing something, but there wasn’t anything there.  We didn’t pay attention to that at the time, but…”

“But you now think that might have been Annabeth and Percy,” Chiron sighed.  “I see.  I can’t say I would be surprised; Percy does attract more monsters than the rest of you.”

Not for the first time, Lee was glad to not be a Big Three kid.  He’d seen Thalia’s death when he’d been ten – and subsequent resurrection last summer – and all the chaos Percy had been falling into since his arrival two years ago, and was quite content with not being at the heart of all of that.  It was bad enough getting involved on the periphery.

Percy and his pit scorpion-stung hand in the infirmary while nothing Lee could do helped continued to haunt him.

The rest of the search party kept calling the missing demigods’ names, but Lee and Clarisse kept forging forwards, waiting until they were in earshot of Zeus’ Fist before readding their voices to the now-hoarse calls of the others.

They almost ran straight into Grover, who was also shouting for Percy and Annabeth, completely separated from the rest of his search party.  Chiron didn’t say anything about it, but Lee could feel his disapproval at the satyr striking off alone, especially as with his empathy bond he probably had a better chance at guessing where Percy had last been.

His presence did at least support his and Clarisse’s theory, though.

“Annabeth!” he shouted, as his torchlight picked up more scattered monster dust, the edge of Zeus’ Fist casting a sharp shadow through it.  “Percy!”

Somewhere ahead of him, Tyson roared the names again.

Lee called again, walking closer to the pile of rocks and ending up next to Clarisse once more.

Annabeth and Percy almost collided with them, looking completely unharmed – to Lee’s relief – and confused.

“Where have you two been?” Clarisse immediately pounced, her agitation and frustration finally reaching boiling point.

“We’ve been looking forever,” Lee added, mostly to stall Clarisse’s momentum before she really let loose.  They did not need Clarisse exploding in the middle of the night.  Lee did not need Clarisse exploding in the middle of the night.

“But we were only gone a few minutes,” Percy protested, which was categorically wrong, because Lee was pretty certain they’d been gone for at least two hours at that point.  Thankfully, Chiron appeared behind him, and Lee gladly stepped back to let someone else deal with the younger demigods now they were found and not hurt.

They’d better not be hurt.

Tyson seemed happy to jump in and confirm it; Percy liked Tyson too much to lie to him, or so Lee hoped.

“We’re fine,” the son of Poseidon promised.  “We fell in a hole.”

Lee had been playing Capture the Flag around Zeus’ Fist since he was ten and finally deemed old enough.  There was no hole there big enough to hide two demigods so completely for so long.  The rest of Percy’s explanation made sense – Lee could attest to the three scorpions together, given the laurel one of them had been carrying was now perched on Clarisse’s head, all but forgotten by everyone in the chaos of Annabeth and Percy’s disappearance – but his idea of the timeline was so far out it was…

Concerning, if Lee was honest.  Missing time usually suggested some form of amnesia, but neither demigod were showing any signs of injury at all, let alone amnesia-inducing injury, and, well.  Luke worked for Kronos, now, and Kronos wasn’t just the titan of eating his children.

“You’ve been missing for almost an hour,” Chiron said, which Lee couldn’t believe.  It had felt like so much longer, but maybe the centaur was only counting how long they’d been actively searching for?  Lee was still certain it was at least twice that.  “The game is over.”

Grover muttered something about Tyson sitting on him, which stopped them winning.  Lee hadn’t even noticed them nearby, so he wasn’t quite sure what the satyr was talking about.

Clarisse, unsurprisingly for Lee, given he already knew her concerns, but more surprisingly to his fellow demigods judging by the confused noises he could hear from the others behind them, focused in on the other concerning bit, the one that wasn’t time-related.

Or maybe it was.

“A hole?” she asked, sounding to Lee like she didn’t really want to know the answer, but also needed to.

Annabeth’s deep inhale told Lee all he needed to know.  Her glance around at the gathered audience of demigods all staring at her cemented it.

“Chiron… maybe we should talk about this at the Big House.”

Clarisse’s gasp cut through the silence, the daughter of Ares not able to not react to the confirmation she (and Lee) had been dreading.  “You found it, didn’t you?”

Annabeth’s verbal confirmation was enough to get the other campers demanding to know what was going on, and Lee was both glad that it was only half the head counsellors, and some other experienced campers, and frustrated that they were either going to need to explain it to everyone, or find a way to diffuse the curiosity – which was not going to be easy.

Lee got the distinct feeling that Michael was burning a hole in the back of his head for not joining in the confused questions, and was not looking forwards to dealing with that, especially as he also had to apologise for snapping at him, and both of them were too tired for serious, sensible, conversations this side of sleep.

Chiron raised his hand and slowly, the rest of the present campers faded into disgruntled silence.  “Tonight is not the right time, and this is not the right place,” he said.  Lee fully agreed with that, suddenly very disconcerted by the fact that he had spent the past seven years playing Capture the Flag right by a Labyrinth entrance.  Having seen Chris, and Clarisse, he had no desire at all to fall into it, even if it was apparently possible to escape quickly enough you didn’t even realise you were there.

Except, no, Annabeth had realised where she’d been, and she’d been researching it thoroughly, so of course she’d known how to escape.  Most demigods, especially those caught unaware, probably wouldn’t have done.

Lee had the sudden urge to get away from the pile of rocks and never, ever come back.  Chiron, thankfully, seemed to be in agreement, as he told them all to go back to their cabins and go to sleep.

Sleep sounded amazing, but as one of the very few demigods already in the know, Lee couldn’t just leave, especially if Annabeth and Clarisse were going to start discussing it once everyone else had gone.

“Lee?” Michael asked him, clearly suspicious, but Lee could not deal with talking to Michael about it right then.

“Listen to Chiron,” he told him, keeping half an eye on Clarisse and Annabeth, who had drawn closer together and were muttering between themselves.  He needed to be involved in that.  “We’ll talk in the morning, Michael.”

“But-”

“Please, Michael,” he all but begged.  “We’re both exhausted and it’s going to be a long talk, which I can’t have right now.”

Michael’s eyes burned into him, but eventually he caved, to Lee’s immense relief.  “You’re telling me in the morning,” he said, and it wasn’t a question.  Lee smiled gratefully.

“Everything I can,” he promised, knowing that Michael probably still wasn’t exhausted enough to miss the massive loophole he was leaving himself, but hoping he would trust him just a little more.  “Go on ahead and get some sleep.”

Michael scowled at him, but after a moment obeyed, turning away and joining the exodus of the other demigods back towards the cabins and their welcoming beds.  Lee watched him go, hearing Chiron blow the whistle to dismiss the other search party, before joining the muttering, concerned huddle that was Annabeth, Clarisse, Percy, Grover and Tyson in time to hear Annabeth filling Percy in on the Labyrinth.

He shouldn’t have been surprised that Grover and Tyson had already been drawn into the loop.

Chiron came up behind him.  “We will discuss this in the morning,” he said, firmly but not unkindly.  “Off you go.”

Lee was more than happy to leave the clearing, and the woods, but when they reached the open area of camp, he hung back as Percy and Tyson retreated into cabin three and Grover disappeared off as well.

Chiron escorted the rest of them to their cabins, one at a time, but Lee knew that the girls were going to reappear as soon as the centaur was gone.  He obediently ducked inside the door of cabin seven, pleased to see that all of the younger kids were asleep, although the older campers were having a quiet conference – centred around Michael, who was presumably telling them that Annabeth and Percy had been found, and hopefully not telling them anything else.  They caught sight of him and waved him over, but he shook his head.

“They’re safe,” he said quietly, glancing back out the window near the door to see Chiron’s shadow slowly traipsing away from the cabins and back up the hill, “but I’ve got to go out again before I can go to bed.  Don’t wait up for me.”

“Lee, you’re exhausted,” Lawrence protested.  “You barely got any sleep last night, and you’re not getting much tonight, either.”

“I’ll survive,” Lee promised.  “And I won’t be long.”  He and the girls could only dodge the harpies for so long.

Chiron’s shadow disappeared, and immediately he saw the door to cabin six crack open again.  He couldn’t see the door to cabin five from the window, but Annabeth headed straight for the Ares cabin, so he knew Clarisse was making her own reappearance.

He slipped back out the door himself, darting across the short distance between the two cabins, and rejoined the girls.

“Go to bed, Lee,” Clarisse ordered, but she couldn’t raise her voice, and Lee was not letting the younger demigods cut him out of the loop now.

“What happened?” he asked Annabeth.  Her face scrunched up.

“Percy summed it up,” she said.  “When the scorpions cornered us, we fell into the rocks.  It was pitch black, no light at all, and I had to grab him to stop him wandering off.  Then I found the Daedalus symbol and pressed it, and the entrance re-opened so we could climb out.  It really didn’t take any time at all.”

“Time moves differently in there,” Clarisse confirmed.  Lee hadn’t known that, but if anyone was going to know that, it was the one that had spent time exploring it.  “That… shit.  That was definitely it.  And if Luke doesn’t already know about it, it’s only a matter of time before he does.”

Lee remembered, again, the day Percy came to him with pit scorpion venom and Luke vanished into the woods, and his stomach curled unpleasantly.

“He already knows where it is, from this side,” he said.  “That’s how he left.”

In the faint moonlight, Annabeth looked completely washed out, but it was Clarisse that finished the thought.

“He’s trying to find the entrance from the inside,” she growled.  “Chris-”

Her voice broke off, and neither Lee nor Annabeth finished her sentence out loud.  None of them needed to.

That was what Chris had been sent in to look for – if not the string, at least the route back to camp from wherever Luke and Kronos’ army were waiting.

“That drakon was a distraction,” Lee sighed, but Annabeth shook her head.

“Two-pronged attack,” she said.  “If they can find a weakness in the barrier now Thalia’s not-  Or a backup plan, if they can’t navigate the Labyrinth.”

Lee still couldn’t reconcile the Luke he remembered with the Luke that was actively trying to attack their camp.  It just didn’t make sense.  But Chris had proven that something was coming, and Luke and Chris had been good friends, for all that Chris was unclaimed.  For him to throw Chris away like that…

The Luke Lee knew clearly didn’t exist anymore.

“We have to tell Chiron, in the morning,” he said.  “This is…”

“Tomorrow will be a full war council,” Annabeth said, confidently.  She looked at Clarisse, and Lee did the same.  The daughter of Ares’ lips were thin where they pressed together tightly.  “After this, Chiron can’t keep it from the other head counsellors.”

And that meant that everyone was going to find out about Chris.

Clarisse growled.  “I know,” she said.

“Patient confidentiality still holds,” Lee promised her.  “They don’t need to know any details.”  He hoped he didn’t imagine her relaxing slightly, but it could easily have been a trick of the moonlight.

“Just the threat of the Labyrinth,” Annabeth agreed.  The words, said out loud, made Lee shiver.

They were out of their depth, now.  This was more than three demigods could handle.

“We can’t do anything about it right now,” he said.  “And the harpies will be along soon.  Try and get some sleep, girls.  We’ll need both of you sharp in the morning, for this.”  He looked over at Clarisse.  “I’ll drop by Chris before breakfast,” he told her.

“Have you worked out how to cure insanity?” she snapped back, and he sighed.

“No,” he admitted, “but that doesn’t mean I’m giving up on him.”  Even if all he could do was make sure Chris wasn’t in physical pain, wasn’t hurting himself in his insanity, he’d keep doing it.

Clarisse looked at him, for once looking like the fifteen year old she was, young and scared.  It was a vulnerability Lee only knew he was seeing because she was tired, too.  Not just physically, but emotionally, too.  Ever since Chris had appeared in Arizona, she’d been struggling, and this seemed like the final straw for her.

Lee was impressed she’d held it together for so long.  He was older, and only tangentially involved – brought in because they needed a healer, and now the only one of their trio that had never been in the Labyrinth – and he already felt like he was about to break under the stress, knew he’d started cracking if he was snapping at Michael and constantly cycling back around to Luke’s betrayal again.  How Clarisse had held herself together for so long, he had no idea.

“Get some sleep,” he said, not gently because even now, Clarisse would not take well to gentle.  “I’ll see you in the morning.”  He glanced up at the moon, now high in the sky, and realised with a sinking feeling that tomorrow had arrived.  “Later in the morning,” he corrected.

“Whatever,” Clarisse mumbled.  Her hand travelled up to her head, gripping the laurels that still sat there, forgotten and ignored.  Their victory hadn’t even been mentioned, with everything else, and Lee suspected it never would be.  She pulled them off, and caught Lee out when she reached up and dropped them on his head, instead.  “I’ll be there.”

She disappeared back inside her cabin before Lee or Annabeth could say anything else.  The boar’s head above the door glowered down at them, and without an Ares kid, it suddenly felt wrong to be standing there.

“Bed, Annabeth,” Lee prodded.  She was looking up at the laurels now in his hair, no doubt wonky – they felt like they were about to fall – but Lee was too tired to bother fixing them.  “Your brain needs to be in working order at the meeting.”  When she didn’t immediately move, her thoughts seemingly taking her elsewhere, he gripped her elbow lightly and began to steer her across the green, towards her own cabin.  She moved without resistance, but didn’t jerk away until they were almost there, coming back from wherever her mind had gone.

“Thanks, Lee,” she said.  “We don’t say that enough.”  Lee gave her a quick, one-armed hug.

“You’re not in this alone,” he reminded her.  “Now, go get some sleep.”

She scrutinised him with eyes that were somehow still sharp, despite the late hour.  “You need to sleep,” she retorted.  “Weren’t you up at three o’clock last night?”

Lee sighed.  “Yes, yes I was,” he said.  “So if you could get inside your cabin so I can be reassured that you, too, are in bed and safe so I can do the same, that would be great, thanks.”

“You’re not my big brother,” she pointed out.

“No,” Lee agreed.  “But I’m the head of the infirmary and do not want to be dealing with a sleep deprived Annabeth in the morning.  So, shoo.”

He wasn’t sure what part of that finally got through to her, but she did, finally, slip back in through her cabin door, leaving him alone outside – and not a moment too soon, as the tell-tale sound of wings filled the air.

“I’m going, Calaeno,” he promised as one of the harpies landed in front of him.  She glared at him, eyes piercing even in the dark.

“Bed,” she ordered, one of her wings coming to loop around him.  “Past curfew.  No infirmary.”

“I know, I know.”  Lee let her walk him back across the green and towards his cabin door.  Being an Apollo kid had advantages, like blanket permission to be out after curfew, for reasonable reasons.  The harpies wouldn’t attack him, although they’d force him back to his cabin more peacefully – like now.

“Stay until dawn,” Calaeno told him firmly.  “Camp safe.”

She and her sisters had not taken kindly to the drakon the previous night, either.  If it had come inside the barriers, Lee had no doubt that they’d have attacked it with the same ferociousness the campers were always threatened with.

He stumbled across the threshold, pushed over by the harpy’s wing, and the door was shut firmly behind her.  Blindly, he groped his way to his own bunk, not even bothering to change and barely remembering to kick off his shoes before he face-planted his bunk.

The mattress gave way weirdly, as though there was already something on it, and more grasping found a small figure curled up asleep on his bed already.  Lee couldn’t see in the dark, and wasn’t going to turn on a light, but he was pretty certain it was Michael.  No doubt, his younger brother had tried to wait up for him, but he hadn’t so much as stirred at Lee’s ungainly arrival.

Good.  He needed the sleep.

So did Lee, and it was hardly the first time he’d ended up sharing his bunk with a sibling – not even the first time said sibling had been Michael – so he didn’t bother to try and get his younger brother back to his own bunk.  Instead, he just nudged him over slightly, so that he could get his own head on the pillow – ow, golden laurel leaves were not comfortable – and closed his eyes.

Tomorrow – today, after the sun rose – was going to be full of awkward conversations and more emotional stress, Lee knew.

Right now, he needed sleep.  Thankfully, it came quickly.

#percy jackson and the olympians #percy jackson fanfiction #riordanverse #riordanverse fanfic #lee fletcher #clarisse la rue #annabeth chase #michael yew #drew tanaka #pjo chiron #pjo daedalus #percy jackson #grover underwood #pjo tyson #camp half blood #apollo cabin #will solace #malcolm pace #sherman yang #jake mason #charles beckendorf #silena beauregard #travis stoll #connor stoll #tsari writes fanfiction #laurels and labyrinths

[rewrittenwrongs]

Vaguely dead (I kept you alive)

Rating: general

Warnings: offscreen gun violence, blood and injury, (probably) medical in accuracies

Wordcount: 3875

Characters: Nico di Angelo, Jason Todd

Summary: He tries to listen, reaching out with his powers and trying to catch the feeling of a dying soul. His instincts make him bank sharply back to the mouth of an alley he just passed—why does this city have so many alleys—and he rounds the corner just in time to see a body slam into a pile of wooden crates.

Nico flinches at the crash of wood splintering—the feeling of death just got a whole lot stronger. It takes him a second to realise the stranger just fell off a roof. It takes him another to remember a group of people are yelling and chasing after them, both on the ground and across rooftops. What with all the gunshots and threats their intentions aren’t hard to guess.

Dammit. He was going to have to actually do something, rather than just point whoever it was to the nearest hospital (not that he knew where that was). Ugh.

Or: The first thing Nico does in the morning is find some guy bleeding out in an alley. The first thing Red Hood does is get shot.

Ao3 link (registered users only): https://archiveofourown.org/works/54802189

I might write more of this in the future, but for now it’s a oneshot. I did try to write another scene from Jason’s POV but the words weren’t wording, and after almost a month of it sitting untouched I decided to just post it like this.

The first thing Nico does in the morning is find some guy bleeding out in an alley.

You might expect the first thing he does to be something reasonable, like wake up or get out of bed, have a shower or brush his teeth. The reason it isn’t any of those is because Nico didn’t go to bed or to sleep in the first place. He’s been too busy wandering around this city he’s found himself in—‘Gotham’ if his memory serves him—and acquainting himself with the local shades. There’s a worrying amount of them, to the point that he’s claimed a more or less abandoned graveyard as a temporary home, just so he had somewhere to sleep between dismissing countless souls to the underworld.

He was about to go back to that graveyard now that he’s realised how late—early—it is when he hears gunshots. Worryingly enough, that alone is quite normal for Gotham, but what truly concerns him is how close they sound. Well, that and the state of his eardrums. He didn’t realise firearms were so loud.

Nico watches the sky as he ducks into the shadows, curling them around him. He’s seen numerous figures jumping across the rooftops during his time in this city, vigilantes and heroes chasing burglars and drug dealers across the skyline. He’s about to make a guess as to the cause of the gunshots when something tugs on his powers.

Ten minutes ago this wouldn’t have been concerning. He would’ve dismissed the otherworldly tug in his gut as a distressed ghost. But the gunshots… concerned him, let’s say. One side effect of his ability to sense the dead is that he also sensed people who were dying.

So. Closing his eyes he focused on the feeling, ignoring the shadows trying to leach into his limbs, and tried to map it out. It was a few streets down and moving fast, vaguely in Nico’s direction. It didn’t feel like a shade or a lemure, even a revenant, or a ker, or an animated skeleton or corpse. It wasn’t as strong as a demon or devil but there was a similar sense of… not quite evil, maybe chaos? The soul felt corrupted somehow. It wasn’t vague and shadowy and intangible the way a monster was, but beneath the haze of not-quite-death Nico could just barely pin-point a wrongness clinging to it like a second skin. It felt like it was almost dead, not a creature of the dead, but like it’s spent more than its fair share of time dealing with the underworld.

It was probably someone dying. A cursed someone dying.

Nico wasn’t one to busy himself with the affairs of strangers if he could avoid it, especially when he’s already exhausted from dismissing shades. But the tug on his powers unnerved him. It felt real and dangerous, like it was important he help whoever this was. There was also a certain feeling of curiosity as to why a human’s soul could feel so out of place, maybe helping whoever they were would give him answers.

(Part of him was very aware that most people at Camp Half-blood would expect him to ignore whoever was dying. There was a bit of satisfaction in proving them wrong, even if they’d never know.)

Nico breaks into a sprint, flying down alleys and trying to follow the sensation like a deadly game of hot and cold. It’s moving fast, slippery and faint, and seemed to be coming from above him? Not directly above him, it was still a street or two out, but the soul was definitely on or around the rooftops.

The gunshots were getting louder. His ears were ringing, but he’s still able to parse out people shouting insults and threats. After a few more turns he also hears faint footsteps rapidly approaching. He tries to listen, reaching out with his powers and trying to catch the feeling of a dying soul. His instincts make him bank sharply back to the mouth of an alley he just passed—why does this city have so many alleys—and he rounds the corner just in time to see a body slam into a pile of wooden crates.

Nico flinches at the crash of wood splintering—the feeling of death just got a whole lot stronger. It takes him a second to realise the stranger just fell off a roof. It takes him another to remember a group of people are yelling and chasing after them, both on the ground and across rooftops. What with all the gunshots and threats their intentions aren’t hard to guess.

Dammit. He was going to have to actually do something, rather than just point whoever it was to the nearest hospital (not that he knew where that was). Ugh.

Nico ducked closer to the person, further annoyed to find them unconscious. They—he?—were wearing a black and grey body suit and a brown jacket, several knives and guns strapped to their—his person. He wore a vaguely familiar red mask that covered his head and had suffered significant damage. A pool of blood was slowly soaking through the clothes around his stomach.

The cloying feeling of death covered the person like a weighted blanket slowly suffocating him. The inherent wrongness simmering underneath was making it so much worse. It felt like an actual presence in the air, catching in Nico’s throat and making it a little difficult to breathe. He tried to ignore it, grabbing the strangers arm and taking hold of the shadows around them, until the darkness picked them up and deposited them inside the mausoleum Nico had taken residence in.

Nico feels the darkness sinking into him, laying a weight over his shoulders and giving his limbs pins and needles. When he tries to stand up a wave of lightheadedness pulls him back down. He takes a moment to breathe and look around, absently finding a bullet hole in the stranger’s bodysuit and applying pressure as best he can with a shadowy hand. They’re in the communal space Nico repurposed into a living room with a couch, coffee table and armchair from yard sales. There’s still a coffee mug on the table that he forgot yesterday. A book he borrowed from a library in Barcelona is abandoned on the floor.

The stranger is also lying on the floor, which Nico guessed wasn’t good for the floorboards if he was bleeding out. Speaking of which: Nico fumbled for a moment with the man’s jacket before managing to pull it off, dragged himself to his feet, then did his best to pick up the unconscious body. He feels like he might pass out, but he manages to get a good enough view of the stranger’s back. There’s no blood.

Great. The bullet is probably still inside. That’s likely better for the stranger’s overall health, and actually makes Nico’s job way easier, but he really doesn’t want to go rooting around in this person’s guts looking for a bullet.

He shoves the unconscious body onto the couch then leaves to search through his medicine cabinet. He returns a moment later with a suture kit, gauze pads, saline solution, bandages, tweezers and a celestial bronze dagger. He leaves his sword leaning against the armchair and washes his hands before getting to work.

He’s just started cutting away the material over the stranger’s torso when he catches sight of the bat silhouette splayed across his chest.

Nico is vaguely aware of the Justice League’s existence, but he barely knows anything about them. He knows one or two of them are aliens, and he’d probably recognise most of the names thanks to gossip around the camps, and he’s pretty sure Hades has mentioned a few of them once or twice. But still, it takes a long moment to recognise the red bat symbol across the stranger’s chest.

So he’s a vigilante. Good, Nico would prefer not to be helping some crime lord that was caught in the middle of setting an orphanage on fire or something. The guns are still off-putting. A few people at Camp Half-blood are obsessed with Batman, and they’ve made numerous jokes about how many vigilantes he works with and how he picks them up like strays and adopts them on the spot. He must not be picky about his children(?) running around with guns.

Concerning, maybe, but no worse than Hades, so Nico doesn’t feel qualified to judge.

It’s surprisingly hard to cut through Stranger’s suit. The material is thick and fights back against his dagger as if he’s trying to cut through metal. Nico’s pretty sure he nicks Stranger once or twice, but he sees no blood, so either he’s mortal or Nico’s knives are a lot duller than they should be.

Eventually he manages to hack away the fabric, and he realises he’s going to need more than just gauze to soak up all this blood. It’s dark enough that Nico’s pretty confident there aren’t any cut arteries. He fetches a towel to soak up the excess crimson, a black one, because he’s learned that lesson too many times to forget. He also grabs a battery lamp so he can actually see what he’s doing—this place doesn’t have electricity, and even if Gotham knew what the sun looked like the curtains are too thick to let light in, especially after midnight.

Now that Nico can see what he’s doing, he hesitates holding the tweezers over the wound. There’s too much flesh and blood in the way, he’ll have to hold the wound open with something to get a clear shot at the bullet, and he doesn’t own anything to do that with. Technically he could leave the bullet in and Stranger would be fine as long as he sewed it up, unless the bullet was lead or laced with poison, but having a bullet in your stomach sounds really inconvenient and it was best to remove it if he could.

A voice in the back of his mind wonders when he got used to seeing life threatening injuries.

Maybe he could use his powers? Even the thought makes bed sound so much more enticing, but if Nico is doing it at all he has to remove this bullet ASAP. It’s the best option at the moment, or at least the best one he can think of. So Nico breaths slow, deep breaths and reaches out in the way that doesn’t command skeletons but rather something else, searching thoroughly and slowly for a chunk of metal.

Every second makes his headache ten times worse. Every tug on his powers sets off another twinge of pain. Every forced exhale becomes shallower the way it only does when he’s concentrating. His fingers twitch and start to cramp, but he can feel the lump of metal lodged in Stranger’s abdomen, and begins tugging it back.

Stranger’s body gives a little jerk. His head turns against the couch cushions and his breath stutters. Nico pays him no mind, wrapping the godly parts of his soul around the bullet like a gentle whisper, and guides it ever so slowly out the way it came.

Nico’s nose starts dripping blood. He uses a clean corner of the towel to wipe it off, then stiffens as he becomes distinctly aware of eyes on him.

For a second he braces himself to jump up, to wrench his sword back to his side, to resign himself to what has to be the millionth fight for his life this past year—when he remembers he’s operating on a person who isn’t under anaesthesia and thus can wake up any time.

Nico glances at the unsettling whites of the broken and battered red mask, feels the distinct expression he’s being stared at either in confusion or wariness, and says “Don’t worry. Just a flesh wound.”

He doesn’t know why the first thing to come to mind is a movie he saw once in a hotel beyond the boundaries of time, but at this point he’s pretty sure the strain of his powers is making him a little loopy. It wouldn’t be the first time something similar happened. That was a waste of perfectly good Lucky Charms…

A tiny clink startles Nico, and he looks down the see the bullet resting neatly against his tweezers as if waiting to be picked up. He does so, and places the bullet and tweezers on the coffee table, trying not to vomit as even just turning around causes a wave of lightheadedness and nausea.

“Dick,” a quiet voice mutters, hoarse and slurred and with a distinctly mechanical edge.

Nico huffs at the stranger. “Rude.” His hands are made of shadow now, he can’t do anything but stare at them and will them to become tangible faster. As if that’s ever helped.

“Why’re you in’m saf’house?” Stranger slurs.

“I’m not, you’re in mine,” Nico tells him calmly. Safe house is an accurate description as any.

“…Blüdhaven?”

“Uh, sure.”

“…Mmkay. Don’t tell B I got shot.”

“I won’t.”

“Hm.”

Nico’s hands are a bit more tangible now, but not enough to have the precision required to clean or stitch such a deep wound. Actually, it’s not that deep, probably less than an inch. The clothes definitely slowed the bullet. He might have to get some of it for himself.

Stranger’s breath hitches painfully as he tries to say something else, and the sentence tapers off into a groan. His hand twitches like he means to gesture obnoxiously but can’t make the effort.

It’s bleeding too much. Nico’s current shadow levels will have to do.

He grabs a gauze pad and the saline solution, fingers shaking as they fight to stay intangible. He manages to soak the pad without dropping either items. He starts dabbing it against the wound before immediately abandoning it and grabbing the tweezers again. Using them to hold it proves much easier, and he starts cleaning the wound as quickly as he can, ignoring Strange’s pained groan.

“Hurts,” Stranger gasps, turning his head and tightening his hands into fists.

“I’m sorry. I don’t have painkillers”

“Thas dumb.”

“It is.”

Stranger huffs, then winces audibly. “…Can, can I sleep?”

“Go ahead.” Nico doubts he could stop him if he tried. He must be having a crazy adrenaline crash after the chase, not to mention a possible concussion from falling off a roof.

…He’ll have to check his head soon.

For now, Nico lets the stranger sleep, and focuses on the repetitive but nerve wracking task he’s forced upon himself.

By the time he finishes cleaning the wound his hands are much more solid. He manages to hold the needle forceps dextrously enough to begin sewing flesh back together. The needle shakes where his hands still fight against the material plane, but it’s a halfhearted fight at best, and he manages to weave the thread in and out without dropping or snapping it.

A while later—could be an hour, could be hour minutes—he tugs one last stitch into place, and swiftly slices the excess thread before his hands start cramping. His entire body droops from exhaustion, but now that he remembers concussions are a thing he has to check.

Ughhh. This sucks. Why does he have to get invested in the business of strangers so often? Stranger barely radiates ‘I’m about to die’ anymore. Can he just leave him like this?

Nico’s conscious, apparently, decides that no he cannot.

It takes an annoyingly long time to figure out how to take off the red mask, mostly due to how dented and cracked the frame is. In addition to cracking when he fell it looks like it’s been shot. He suspects Stranger might also have a cracked rib or three because of how much breathing seemed to hurt him when he was awake, but there isn’t much Nico can do about that. He focusses on the much more simple and realistic, but no less time consuming, task of taking off Stranger’s helmet.

Eventually, Nico succeeds, and he feels kind of bad. Stranger’s sure to fear for his secret identity once he wakes up, but Nico really needs to make sure the fall didn’t give him a concussion or fracture his skull. If it did he’ll need to bring him to a hospital, or at very least shadowtravel him to Will.

Much to Nico’s surprise, sliding off the cracked frame of his helmet reveals another mask. A cloth one around his eyes that doesn’t actually do much in the way of obscuring his features, especially since it leaves a startling streak of white hair visible above his forehead. Nico can count on one hand the number of people he knows with white hair streaks. Especially people so young, he only seems to be in his early twenties or late teens. What’s the point of wearing two masks at all if one of them leaves your most defining trait out in the open?

Whatever. It’s not his problem.

What is his problem is the mess of congealing blood coating both the helmet and Stranger’s forehead. There’s a sickening amount, enough to stick his hair in matted clumps to his scalp, some of it having dried and left red flakes sticking to his skin. There’s enough of it that it drips off the helmet onto the floor.

Nico carefully adjusts Stranger’s head to catch sight of the wound, annoyed to see it still bleeding sluggishly. Thankfully it’s blunt force trauma and not another bullet wound. He quickly presses the already soaked towel to the injury, a mostly feeble attempt to soak up the mess of crimson that’s going to be impossible to clean tomorrow—he’ll probably have to burn the couch cushions. The floorboards will never recover.

Combining the head trauma with the bullet wound Stranger’s lost at least a litre of blood. Will has said before that head wounds always look worse than they really are and bleed way more than you’d expect, so he still doesn’t know if Stranger has a concussion. Either way Nico’s going to have to close this injury fast if he doesn’t want to bring him to the hospital for a blood transfusion—which he really doesn’t.

He ends up flipping Stranger onto his stomach to get better access to the wound. He cleans it quickly, not bothering to tangle with the mess his hair has become. He’s both thankful and a little concerned when Stranger doesn’t show any reaction. Does that lessen or increase the probability of a concussion? He doesn’t know. Whatever, either way he needs to stop the bleeding.

Thankfully it is already quite slow. It probably stopped on its own and was jostled when Nico took off the helmet. He gets a little sloppy disinfecting the wound because of all the hair in the way, and he briefly considers shaving some of it before remembering he doesn’t own clippers.

Sewing the wound is even more tedious. It’s quite shallow to have spouted that much blood, but also larger than he would’ve liked. He has to wipe hair out of the way every other minute. Nico’s exhausted by the time he finally leans back and cuts the suture thread. He feels like a wire stretched too far.

He grabs another towel to clean up the blood. Some of it has dripped down Stranger’s face and neck and dried into his skin, which Nico wipes away with a wet wash cloth. He throws the suture kit back together halfhazardly and shoves it under the coffee table. He shifts Stranger onto his back again. He throws a blanket over him and leaves him a glass of water on the table. He makes a halfhearted attempt at cleaning the helmet, then gives up when he sees the mess of circuitry and sensors that line the inside.

The haze of death around Nico’s kidnappee has lessened considerably, it’s barely even noticeable unless he focuses, but he still finds himself hovering the same way Will did during those three days of torture, checking Stranger’s pulse and pressing the back of his hand to his forehead. There’s still something not-quite-alive-but-not-quite-dead about the stranger. Something otherworldly and strange and inherently wrong in a way that blares alarms in Nico’s head. His powers don’t seem to know quite what to do with him. It’s unnerving.

It almost scares him, if Nico’s honest. He shouldn’t be able to feel Stranger’s presence at all, which either means he’s indebted himself to a demon or devil, sold his soul to an underwordly entity, cracked his skull, or there’s some sort of poison lacing his bullet wound. Nico doesn’t know what to do if it’s either of the last options. He only knows basic first aid, he was mostly copying things he’s seen Will do, and without absolute certainty that this guy is a demigod he doesn’t want to risk ambrosia or nectar.

It’s actually quite dumb of him, in retrospect, to keep his medical knowledge limited to basic splints and crooked sutures. He certainly can’t rely on godly food every time he gets injured, and this is obvious proof of that. Though, he can’t be blamed for not expecting to come across some guy playing dress up bleeding out in an alley.

Whatever. He can do research tomorrow, maybe borrow some textbooks from that library. Actually, he probably won’t be able to shadow travel that far. Now that he’s stopped he can feel the exhaustion dragging him down like mud. It’s the kind of draining ache that tells him he’s overused his powers. Still, he doesn’t want this stranger to die.

There’s a trick Nico learned after the second Titan war, a sort of trigger he could set with his powers that would wake him up if his patient’s condition worsens. He first started doing it unconsciously, actually, back when everyone was dying or dead and he was in charge of organising their funeral rites. It’s pretty simple and doesn’t take a lot of energy, but it’s quite time consuming.

It takes an annoying amount of time and power to wrap his godly presence around the stranger, gently settling it around his injuries until he can feel his immortal side resting over him like a guardian Angel. He keeps his powers poised until they get the memo, sharpening his awareness and tuning him in to the slightest disturbance in Stranger’s soul.

Nico becomes all the more aware of the strangeness in it, and it almost reminds him of a zombie.

His arms are shadow past the wrists by the time he’s done. His feet are intangible almost to his ankles. He sits against the coffee table for at least five minutes waiting for them to go back to normal, fighting to keep his eyes open. When his limbs finally remember how to exist he retrieves a blanket and a protein bar, which he starts dejectedly gnawing on more for the sake of future-him than any actual hunger. It isn’t long before the shadows at the edges of his vision become too much to ignore.

He slumps into the armchair, still with flakes of blood clinging to his hands, and is unconscious before even tucking the blanket over himself.

#my writing #fan fiction #riordanverse fanfic #dc fanfic #batman fanfiction #oneshot #no art #Batman fanfic #nico di angelo #jason todd #red hood

[trashno0dle]

look at the stars (look how they shine for you)

summary: will and nico share a quiet night under the stars

[snippet below the cut]

“Hey, no peeking, keep them closed.”

Nico groaned, but a smile pulled at his lips as Will led him forwards, their hands clasped together. Will’s touch was comforting, his hands ever warm as his fingers intertwined around Nico’s own. He wasn’t sure where he was being dragged off too, but he didn’t protest, he could practically feel Will’s glee as they seemed to get closer to their destination. He kept his eyes closed and fought the urge to peek, knowing that this surprise, whatever it may be meant a lot to Will.

“Are you at least going to give me a hint?” Nico grumbled, feigning annoyance. Will laughed, the sound made warmth blossom in his chest, as  it always did - a feeling that had once been completely foreign to him, he’d never met anyone as bright as Will, who made him feel things he’d once thought he would never feel, or didn’t deserve to. Nico stumbled as the ground beneath his feet raised slightly, but he caught himself and kept on following, not that he had much choice in the matter with how he was being led along the unsteady path. But he knew Will wouldn’t let him fall, he trusted him completely.

Will hummed. “We’re almost there, Death Boy, just a little further.” Nico could hear the smile in his voice, he could picture it clearly in his mind too - a blinding, brilliant smile, the kind that made his heart skip a beat, that made skeletal butterflies flap around frantically in his stomach. It was strange to think that little time had passed since then, yet they had still been through so much together. But despite the many hardships they’d endured, especially in Tartarus, they’d made it through.

The sound of a rippling current of water soon filled Nico’s ears as Will slowed his pace, Nico listened to the sounds of the occasional birds chirping in the woods. It was mostly silent, a tender breeze passed through the trees. Nico inhaled the crisp, autumn air. Despite it being a particularly chilly night, it didn’t feel so cold, or perhaps that was because the faint glow Will often emitted in the dark made his body temperature hotter than average. Nico had once commented that he was like his own personal heater, as well as a night light - Will had pretended he wasn’t amused, but the gleam in his eyes had proved otherwise.

They came to a stop, Will released his hand. Nico almost started blindly reaching for it again, already missing the touch.

“You can open your eyes now.”

Nico did, he blinked, looking at Will who was standing about a foot away from him. He was glowing, quite literally, as he usually did when he was happy or content. He smiled so brightly Nico could barely look away, it was almost as entrancing as looking at the sun itself. When in direct sunlight, Will glowed brighter than ever, so much in fact that it really was like staring into the sun that sometimes you had to look away. Even though it was night and the sun had long since set, Will - inexplicably, continued to shine. Nico figured it was a sort of blessing from Apollo, that Will had inherited more than his godly parents' gift of healing. Still, it was unique to him, because none of Will’s siblings in Cabin 7 could match his light.

Or, Nico was biased. Which he was, most definitely.

#pjo #percy jackson #riordanverse #will solace #nico di angelo #solangelo #riordanverse fanfic #pjo fanfic #solangelo fanfiction #noodlesfics

[blondeforyou]

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard - Rick Riordan, The Trials of Apollo - Rick Riordan Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Alex Fierro & Jason Grace Characters: Alex Fierro, Jason Grace Additional Tags: Post-The Burning Maze (Trials of Apollo), Mid-Canon, Post-The Ship of the Dead (Magnus Chase), Hotel Valhalla (Magnus Chase), Dead Jason Grace, Ambiguous/Open Ending Summary:

Jason Grace and Alex Fierro meet by chance, but is anything in their world ever really up to chance? Set after The Burning Maze and The Ship of the Dead, and before The Tyrant's Tomb

#magnus chase and the gods of asgard #magnus chase #alex fierro #trials of apollo #heroes of olympus #riordanverse #riordanverse fanfic #riordanverse fic #yes you read all that right lol #going back to my roots #my writing #jason grace

[toacollabevent]

Burning Shrouds

Fandom: Trials of Apollo Rating: Gen Genre: Hurt/Comfort/Family Characters: Chiron, Apollo, Will, Hyacinthus

It’s the first time in mortal memory that Apollo’s attended a shroud burning ceremony at Camp Half-Blood.

My (@tsarinatorment​‘s) contribution for TOA Collab Event 2022!  My match was @nyaningthroughlife and I chose the second piece of art in this post as my inspiration!  It’s definitely not my usual topic, and this is my first time writing Chiron pov (or much of Chiron at all, honestly), so I hope it all worked okay.

It’s a small surprise when Apollo arrives at camp that evening.  Not because Apollo doesn’t like dropping by camp, because Chiron is well aware that the god in question adores camp and everyone in it (even Dionysus, as much as the two gods present a stilted, separated front to the world).  The surprise is that he chose to come tonight, of all nights.

As much as Apollo flits around on the edges of camp, peering down from his chariot if he can’t be there in person, he always, always, keeps his distance when it’s time to burn shrouds.  The closest he’s come in mortal memory was in the aftermath of the Battle of Manhattan, but even then he remained near the Big House and his new oracle rather than near the pyres.

Apollo respects death and the mortal inevitability but there are some wounds that are a little too open, a little too raw, and burning shrouds – regardless of whether or not they’re empty – are a wound Chiron has noticed Apollo does his best not to poke at.  Funerals, eulogies and acts of mourning are all a familiarity to the god, but the shroud in particular, he evades.

Not that he’d ever admit as such out loud.  Apollo keeps certain things close to his chest; closer, often, than even Chiron with his millennia-long relationship with him, can catch even a glimpse of, but this is one that’s spilled over just enough, over the thousands of years, for Chiron to put two and two together and be reasonably sure he’s getting four, or something near enough to count.

It doesn’t help that most shroud-burnings happen at the same time of year.  Not the same, exact date, but then the calendar has changed a few times in Camp Half-Blood’s lifetime and only the immortals recall the passage of time prior to the Gregorian within this Western dominated sphere of influence.  Even Chiron doesn’t know, precisely, the date within this span of time that particularly stings at Apollo, but he knows it’s there somewhere, and really, that’s all he needs to know.

Hyacinthus was not Apollo’s first, last or only love – far from any of them – but he was an intense one, whose passing left unusually deep marks of grief on the god.  Apollo has a reasonable handle on grief – he feels it, but he endures it and keeps going, keeps living for all those whose time came to an end – but there are a few mortals who get around his guard.

That might, Chiron suspects as he watches Apollo slip quietly into the throng of demigods around the fire, have some relevance to his unusual appearance now.  The shrouds they’re burning tonight are empty – marks of a successful quest, where the number of questers that came back alive was no less than the number that left – but one of them was sewn for one of Apollo’s own children.

This is the first time in years that a golden shroud has been burned at camp without a dead child to go with it.  It could so, so easily have gone differently.  By all rights, it should have done.  The Pit is not a place for mortals to venture, let alone survive and escape again, and the Primordial in question is no doubt furious beyond belief at yet another duo of demigods escaping his clutches, narrow though that escape had been.

Will is still a bundle of bandages and barely strong enough to get anywhere under his own power.  Nico is not quite as terribly off, physically, and he’s been scaring off anyone except the most stubborn of Apollo’s children whenever anyone else tries to assist Will even though he’s hardly in the state to act as a living walking stick either, but Chiron knows the mental wounds run deep.

Apollo has been floating around camp more often than not during their recovery, and they still have a long way to go but the shrouds need to be burned as soon as possible and they’re finally fit enough for the ceremony.  It doesn’t escape Chiron’s notice that Apollo has wormed his way into the heart of the throng of Cabin Seven Plus Nico and is sitting with his arm wrapped tightly around Will’s shoulders.  It’s a human need, Chiron thinks, to face the what-if of losing someone and cling to them all the tighter in reassurance that they’re still there.

Most gods would be incredibly offended at the word “human” being used to describe anything that they do, but Apollo’s not one of them.  Chiron still refrains from vocalising the thought, because other listening ears might have objections to it.

Other gods having issues with who and how Apollo loves has created tragedies.  Chiron is not eager to invite another.

He does not know all the details of the loss of Hyacinthus.  Likely, he never will.  Whether Apollo attended his funeral, if he was burned in a shroud and if so how it was decorated… those are details Chiron has not been made privy to.

He suspects, of course.  That Apollo was there, that the shroud was as beautiful as the man it embraced, that it stole a part of the god forever when it burned away to ashes.  It’s harder to believe that those suspicions might not be true, knowing Apollo as he does.

But Chiron doesn’t ask.

He celebrates with the campers as the golden and black shrouds go up in flames, devoid of any accompanying tragedy, and watches as Apollo tries to hand the floor to his children for the traditional songs only for Will to look at his father until he caves and sings for them.

Properly sings, which clearly surprises the campers who have heard tales of Apollo’s modern interest in less traditionally beautiful pieces and were preparing to grin and bear whatever he chose to come out with.

Another night, he might have done, but tonight, with the echoes of lost love and the reminder that more loss will come in time, as it always does, Apollo’s mind is clearly in one place, and one place only.  The song is not a sad one; on the surface, it sounds triumphant and jubilant.  There’s melancholy in the words, however, and a underlying reminder of what it means to be mortal.

It’s grief and celebration and life and death all mixed in together, and Chiron suspects he’s not the only one to hear that and more, but no-one acknowledges it out loud, not even when Apollo finishes his impromptu set and insists that it’s his children’s turn to shine, now.

Austin and Alice in particular need no more prompting, and soon Jerry is the only Apollo child left at Will’s side while the others pile onto the stage to continue leading the celebrations.

No longer the centre of attention, save for Chiron’s own musings, Apollo falls silent and unobtrusive.  More than once, his eyes drift to where the embers still cling to the ashes of the shroud, and the weight of four thousand and some years don’t quite stay hidden.

There is nothing Chiron can or should do for the god and his millennia-old scars, so he turns his attention elsewhere and lets Apollo have his privacy.

#submission #toacollabevent2022 #trials of apollo #trials of apollo fanfiction #riordanverse #riordanverse fanfic #pjo chiron #pjo apollo #will solace #toa hyacinthus #tsarinatorment #nyaningthroughlife

[labaguetteisdabest]

i've done it

delia has a blog now!

@sunshineymusicalmoron

posts on there will start tomorrow

in the meantime, if you want to learn abt her quest, go on my wattpad account (@9098meoww) and look for the story Hyacinths and Halcyons

@iam1withthepeggy and @queenpiranhadon are writing with me so yeah!

#sunshineymusicalmoron #delia argyros #pjo oc #oc #riordanverse oc #pjo fanfic #riordanverse fanfic

[hotpotrandomfics]

PJO Fic: Ciel Capture the Flag

Disclaimer: Hello, everyone! This is my attempt at writing fan fics again, over the past year I had quite a lot of stuff going on and it has had an effect on my writing. That said I will take any constructive criticism and feedback to improve and get to a more confident space to post more frequently. Additionally, the following characters are property of @mastrmiscellaneous: Justin Colby Peters, Lucille Peters, and Clara Osta.

Summary: Ciel and his friends are attempting to devise a strategy to beat the reigning capture the flag MVPs: Percy and Annabeth. What will it take to surprise and trick the Camp’s veterans?

Word Count: 1,856

The night began like any other night at the end of the week at Camp Half Blood, a nice dinner with cabin mates, toast to the gods, and the occasional Ares or Hermes kid throwing a random chicken leg. Ciel was discussing the plans for capturing the flag after dinner was finished. He along with the members of Hephaestus, Apollo, Hades, Nemesis, Dioynasis, Hebe, Hecate, and Hestia cabin had made an allegiance in the hopes of beating the camp's strongest fighters. Granted, numbers were not on their side wouldn't give them any advantage but rather relying on their expertise and the power within their parent's domains was their ace. Ciel in the past two summers has become the head of the Hecate cabin but was still not used to his leadership role nor believe he was capable of the position. Though his siblings and cabin mates would argue otherwise, to them, their brother was a superior sorcerer and a capable fighter but it was his compassion that shattered the stigma of the children of Hecate. They couldn't do many of the things he could do but they never stop striving to be better, to them he was their paragon of what a hero could be. Now if they could win capture the flag then they'd get bragging rites for the next week and wouldn't have to clean stables. "So," Ciel began, "we know many of the big hitters are for this battle. Jackson, Chase, McClain, Stoles, and La Rue. Any suggestions?" Ciel glanced at the heads of his alliance. "We could distract Annabeth with a spider." Leo Valdez piped up with a smirk, pulling from his famous toolbelt an automaton of a spider. "I got enough for at least a dozen of Athena cabin. "That's lame," Lucille Peters chimed. "You didn't make them into grenades?" "Chiron checked me since last time my design burnt at least three campers from Aphrodite cabin eyebrows off!" Leo wasn't big on his younger half-sister giving him grief about his work. "Lucy, did you make them into grenades?" Ciel questioned as Lucille gave a cheeky grin. "Who the hell do you think I am?" "Language." Justin Peters, son of Apollo and older brother to Lucille reprimanded his sister but received an unkind gesture of her middle finger. "I'm telling Mom." "Can you focus? Grenades are fine but we have a big thing to worry about. Percy and Annabeth on the same team?" Clara Osta, daughter of Hades and member of the Guardians mentioned drawing everyone's focus back to the planning. "We hold them off or we overpower them." "Clara, you're more strategic than most of us. I'd defer to you on what the plan would be," Ciel spoke. He always felt that if he didn't have an answer he could rely on his friend's judgment and capacity to plan at the moment. "I'm the only one among us with superior enough skills to fight at least one of them." Clara began unveiling her plan for the plan of attack against the coalition that was shouting in the distance. The horn that Chiron held had yet to be blown so they had enough time to at least get into position. The war cry of campers began echoing through the forest as many campers charged from their starting locations on the battlefield that many of them have fought dozens upon dozens of times. Lucille and Leo took the southeast location of the creek between the mainline of the battlefield, both holding war hammers of varied sizes as they took on the first wave of cabin 6 campers. They along with their members of cabin 9 and assistance from cabin 7 pushed them into a tight fatal funnel with arrows and stink bombs. Those who were able to get through their funnel however were met with surprise attacks by cabin 20, stalling the vanguard from breaking through further into their territory by magical nets with a mix of cabin 12 using plants to grab members of cabins 4, 5, 10, 11, 14, 17, 19. With this advantage for the moment, the combined forces of members of Hephaestus, Apollo, Hades, Nemesis, Dioynasis, Hebe, Hecate, and Hestia were able to disarm and knock out a number of their opponents. With a mixed collection of cries from a number of these campers of surprise and frustration escaped some of these campers. Many even shouted in curses like Clarisse La Rue, daughter of Ares, who was able to escape her binds and began cutting the vines and nets of her comrades. "Oh, you think this is cute?!" Clarisse called out into the forest. "You think a cowardly trick like this will keep us from victory?!" "Well, yeah." Justin from the top of a tree about a few yards away said as he knocked an arrow toward the feared daughter of Ares. "Your group isn't all that smart if you're leading the charge, La Rue." The blond boy grinned as he kept shooting several arrows at many of his adversaries. "Plus, you got something behind you!" "What?!" Clarisse turned around expecting to be attacked from behind her but was shocked no one was there and the fact that all the nets and binds holding her comrades, and seemed to disappear except for a few. "How- fucking cabin 20!" Cabin 20 as a collective had set a large illusion up to a certain point past their defensive position so that the majority of their forces could protect their flag. All the opponents that their enemies believed they fought were each other while twisted, was a valuable trick for a one-time use. As Clarisse rallied her companions, a separate party of campers made to sneak past the enemy's line to meet against two of the Seven. Percy and Annabeth were mere feet away from crossing their coalition territory into the opposing campers' territory but were blocked off by two campers. Ciel and Clara both with their weapons drawn and ready to engage the legendary Percy Jackson and Annabeth Chase. "Just you two?" Percy questioned in a curious tone. "Yep, just us," Ciel said as he spun his butterfly swords. "Granted, this was really the only thing I could think of." "You two are pretty cocky if you think you can handle us. Brave, but cocky," Annabeth said as she readied her fighting stance. "Óla eínai díkaia ston érota kai ston pólemo," Clara exclaimed before rushing in towards Percy while Ciel covered her flank by running towards Annabeth. The battle began and the cries of their mettle and blades rang along the creek shore. Ciel made to get in close with his butterfly swords by sliding and parrying Annabeth's counter-assault. The pair block each other strikes in a dance of close quarters that seemed to be its own tornado that no one foolish enough would jump into the current fray. Ciel reversed his grip on his butterfly swords in a reverse grip, crossing his arms in a parallel manner after briefly disengaging Annabeth. "You've gotten good," Annabeth commented, "though I think you're weaker than me." "Maybe, though I know my strengths and know not to bark, unlike a certain Daughter of Athena." Ciel remembered his brief with his fellow team captains on how to use the know failures of his betters like Annabeth. Ciel returned to his melee while goading Annabeth on how her skill wasn't all that. Her skills with a dagger and her bone sword were not as great as she believed. While he wasn't good at this, Ciel needed to cause Annabeth to lose focus enough for the next part of his battle plan. Annabeth kept pushing on Ciel, despite their height difference the young child of Hecate was superior and his movements were not weighed by his mass but he was swift. Annabeth notices his footwork and means of countering her, all close and considerate of his vital points, never overreaching but keeping his timing mixed enough to not seem impractical. She had to admit he had grown from the shy boy who joined them at the worse point in the history of the camp. "You've gotten better," Annabeth commented as slipped under Ciel's guard swinging in an uppercut motion to his helmet and the tip of her knife missing his left eye. "You aren't quick like me, Silverstein." "You talk too much," Ciel said as he dropped into a leg sweep before causing the Daughter of Aphrodite to fall on her back. "Here's a gift." Ciel snapped his finger as a large tarantula landed on top of Annabeth's breastplate causing the girl to wail louder than any monster in the nearest hundred miles around the camp. Annabeth began to swipe at the furry eight-legged devil that her siblings have been infamous for having a large disdain. Though the eight-legged demon just kept climbing around her and hissing a storm to her greater surprise and fear a second tarantula appeared by her feet circling her. As cruel as it seemed, overstimulating a demigod and applying their innate fears from their godly parents was a means to dominate the battlefield because; if one of your greatest leaders is indisposed then you can keep pulling the threads of their plans and destroy their seams. Though the chaos, Ciel created was about to be thwarted by the Hero of Olympus: Percy Jackson. "Dude, not cool!" Percy shouted as he pushed past Clara feinting hitting her with his sword in order to charge at Ciel like a minotaur fresh out of Tartarus. "That was dirty!" Shouting, Percy came within Ciel's guard, too close for Percy to properly use Riptide but enough room for Ciel who wasn't just some magician because of his mother's blood but skilled at close-quarters, especially with his Baat Jaam Do (butterfly swords) called Proángelos (or Harbinger). Ciel used the quillon, his sword guard hook in order to trap Percy's sword hand before twisting the son of Poseidon's wrist in an unorthodox manner in order to cause discomfort. The brief pain was an opening one couldn't get so easily on the Hero of Olympus, not unless you were willing to play dirty. "Ow ow ow, OW! Fuck!" Percy barked out before slamming his head into Ciel's own causing him to lessen the pressure on his wrist. "Dude, what gives?! First, spiders on Annabeth, and now you try to break my wrist?" "I plan on winning this time, HA!" Ciel reversed the grips of Harbinger so their knuckle-bow covered the son of Hecate's hand like a set of knuckledusters before bellowing a mighty as he threw a fist at Percy who attempted to dodge only to be surprised by the brief indigo holographic of a giant hand with a set of similar knuckledusters coating the hand as well slamming into Percy at a high velocity that sent him tumbling into the river. "Y-you clever, little, son of a...." before Jackson could think of finishing that sentence the sound of Chiron's conch shell blew signaling the end of the game of capture the flag. In the far distance, Chiron had announced that Ciel's team had just one-up them and won. "Bitch."

#Percy Jackon and the Olympians #Heroes of Olympus #Trials of Apollo #The Sun and the Star #PJO HOO TOA TSATS #riordanverse #riordanverse oc #riordan universe #riordanverse fanfic #pjo fanfic #hoo fanfic #toa fanfic #tsats fanfic #Ciel Ambrose Silverstein #Percy Jackson #Annabeth Chase #Clarisse La Rue #Justin Colby Peters #Lucille Peters #Clara Atalanta Osta #Leo Valdez #chiron

[waitingonher]

ELECTRIC TOUCH — [jason grace dating headcanons]

author's note: i need 2024 to be THE year. 2023 did me soooo dirty. im praying

dating JASON GRACE would be like dating someone from a regency era romance novel…he’s just SUCH a hopeless romantic but he would rather die than admit it.

in the initial first few weeks of dating, jason was sosososooooo shy about pda/physical touch. it’s not that he was uncomfortable, he LOVES physical touch, but he had just gone so long without it that he wasn’t used to it. but eventually, he warms up to it…and now he can’t go without having at least one part of him touching you 😭 

when it came to things like hugs, kisses, handholding, etc. jason would always wait for you to initiate it because he was so anxious about making you uncomfortable ?? fjsldfjs 

but when you communicated that he didn’t need to ask/wait for you all the time, jason started initiating things more. even still, he occasionally gets nervous to even hold your hand? like wdym you’ve been dating for over six months and you still get nervous doing simple couple things 😭 it’s very endearing though 

chivalry is NOT dead,, and it’s because of jason LMAO. he’s the type to swap shoes with you even though you’re wearing heels that are 3x too small for him, but hey, at least your feet don’t hurt anymore!

jason’s also hellbent on carrying things for you, opening doors for you, pulling out/pushing in chairs for you, etc… GOD HE’S SO CUTE. 

since dating him, you don’t think you’ve ever touched a single door or car handle when he’s with you. 

jason is NOT afraid to advocate or stand up for you, especially if you’re more on the quiet & non-confrontational side. if you’re in a group setting and someone interrupts you, he’s making sure you get your chance to say what you wanted to say. and he doesn’t do it in a way that leaves you embarrassed, he’s very very classy with it! 

if you’re a big music person, jason will literally learn your favorite artist’s entire discography so you guys have another thing to talk about. 

you guys also have a shared playlist of “your songs” and he’s so serious about it 😭 if jason hears a song that even remotely reminds him of you, he’s going to the ends of the earth to figure out what it’s called. 

rip to anyone around him if shazam doesn’t work! he’s gonna send voice messages to your big group chat humming the tune, but he’s so tone deaf that no one knows the song…and his search history is just variations of “song that goes du du ooh du ooh du du ooh” a for effort though babes…

jason’s love languages are definitely acts of service and quality time. over the years and throughout the many battles he’s fought, he’s come to realize that all he wants to do when he comes home is just spend time with his loved ones. 

after a busy day, you’ll come home to find your laundry folded, bed sheets washed & freshly made, along with a sweet little note from jason <3 

your guys’ thing are writing notes to each other. considering his and your busy schedule, you’ll write and leave tiny notes around the house for each other to find. it’s one of the many reasons why jason gets up in the morning. 

he loves coming home to you after a long day to simply melt in your arms. there’s just something so soothing about cuddling with you after a busy day. 

it does not matter where you are, you guys could literally be cleaning the camp toilets and he’d still be able to find the fun in it. you’re his home, and he’d follow you wherever you go. 

if you play sports, you already know he’s showing up to ALL your games. it doesn’t matter if it’s pouring rain or if it’s hours away, he’s absolutely determined to show his support. jason even makes posters with your jersey number and when you have big tournaments he’ll show up with posters of your face 😭 the refs are SO tired of jason help

i feel like if he really tried, jason would be a good cook. 

one day you sent him a recipe you saw online saying you wanted to make it with him, but then he decided to make it himself to surprise you. and it was actually so good??? 

JASON IN A “KISS THE COOK” APRON OMFG. that’s what you got him for his birthday and every single time without fail, he’ll wear it when he’s cooking. 

one of his hidden talents is that he’s super good at origami. he originally picked it up because he heard it was a good stress reliever, but now he also does it for you <3 

he loves your reaction when he gives you little paper rings or an origami version of your favorite animal! 

this guy DREAMS of domesticity. he’s always been the type to date to marry, and that’s just what he intends to do with you! even though you guys are still young, he’s been planning your proposal sfjfls

tell me why he already knows what kind of ring he wants to get you… omg. 

he really wants to just settle down with you in new rome. but honestly, he’s willing to do anything as long as you’re at his side. 

expect flowers from jason at least once a month! he even keeps one flower so he knows when it’s time to get you a new bouquet. and if he’s away, he’ll get one of his friends to deliver it! 

i have this headcanon that the aphrodite cabin teams up with the hephaestus cabin to throw a really elaborate party, essentially like prom. anyways, jason would go all out for your promposal jfdsls i feel like he would either do a super funny poster/proposal like y’know that one guy who did that medieval promposal 😭 yeah well jason would do something like that but like...more roman... LMFAO him pulling up to your place in a chariot 

or he would do something super super intricate and planned out…like a fancy picnic and then he’d have the fauns arrange fireflies to spell out “prom?” when it’s dark out. 

ugh! jason grace the man that you are… <3 best bf ever,, i can confirm btw

#jason grace #jason grace x reader #jason grace x y/n #jason grace x you #jason grace fanfiction #jason grace fanfic #jason grace fluff #jason grace fic #percy jackson #percy jackson x reader #heroes of olympus #heroes of olympus x reader #rick riordan #riordanverse #percy jackson fandom #percy jackson headcanon #percy jackson fic #percy jackson fanfiction

[gr-book-worm-1818]

local fic reader finds absolutely perfect sent-from-above goldmine of an ao3 fic and discovers the author has not written anything else since 2021. 3 wounded 4 dead

#fanfic #archive of our own #ao3fic #ao3feed #ao3 stuff #WHY DOES THIS ALWAYS HAPPEN TO ME #dead poets society #riordanverse #voltron #tma #and a lot more #aaaahhhh #AAAAAHHHHH #fanfic meme #like why

[maglorslostsilmaril]

favorite genre of percy jackson/heroes of olympus fanfic is when they are just ambiguously on the Argo II. the author doesn’t specify where on the journey they are, and they don’t need to. they are just On The Boat.

#percy jackson #percy jackon and the olympians #the heroes of olympus #annabeth chase #hazel levesque #frank zhang #leo valdez #jason grace #piper mclean #argo ii #pjo fanfic #pjo fandom #hoo fandom #hoo fanfic #hoo memes #riordanverse

[toasecretsanta]

(1 of 2 fics)

Merry Christmas ToA fandom!!!

I [@firealder2005] was given @literallyjusttoa this year, and this fic is based off her prompt of Poseidon and Apollo bonding time!!!

I will have the fic up on my Ao3 once the submission is posted :3

Warnings: Just to be safe, I have the fic rated M for implied noncon because. well. Ancient times be ancient times, you know?

This was meant to be combined with the other fic I have but uh. I got carried away lmao

Let us begin!

Save Me, ‘Cuz I’m Fallin’

A soft curse left his lips as he adjusted his grip on the stack of bricks in his arms. Apollo blew a puff of air towards a curl of hair that had fallen into his eyes, warily scanning the people around him as he set his bricks down. He tucked that free strand back behind his ear, wiping his dusty, achy hands on his tunic as the slowly-growing wall before him casted a long shadow over him, the sunset looming from behind.

“Hey!” Apollo slightly jumped as a hand clamped down on his shoulder, roughly spinning him around. One of the guards stationed around the wall glared at him, eyes partially obscured by the helmet on his head. Apollo wondered why people wore those if they obstructed their view. It was terribly constricting.

The guard shook him again. “The king demands your presence. He’s not happy with you.”

Apollo swallowed and began surreptitiously looking for his one and only ally within these ever-growing, ever-entrapping walls — Poseidon. In the years he’d been quite literally slaving away in Ilios, he always felt a lot more comfortable dealing with its king without the older, formidable god at his side. Even if at times there wasn’t much Poseidon could do…

Apollo was thankful to catch sight of his uncle. Poseidon’s hair had grown unruly during their punishment, yet he was still able to cut an imposing figure through the polis as the slaves of Ilios were finally able to pause their back-breaking work and rest.

“Come on!” The guard grabbed his arm and yanked him forward. Apollo stumbled, the sandals on his feet slipping over the pebbles beneath them, and the guard snorted as he fell onto his knees. “Get up!” he barked, the fold of his cape snapping as the former god staggered back to his feet. “We don’t have all night!”

Apollo ducked his head and mutely nodded, wincing a bit as the scrapes on his knees stung. A quick look told Apollo they would heal within seconds, but it did little to reassure the nervousness growing in his throat. Gods, he hated it when Laomedon called for him…

He attempted to swallow the lump. No luck.

Glancing almost desperately over his shoulder, Apollo managed to catch Poseidon’s eye and gave him his best HELP! LAOMEDON WANTS TO TALK TO ME! look. It must have translated quite well, for Poseidon began shoving his way through the dwindling crowd and stormed after Apollo and the guard, who still had not removed his adamantine-grip from his arm. Rude.

“You! Guard!” His uncle’s voice boomed through the air. A slave he may be now, but nothing could ever take away the blood-freezing depths of his words. “Where are you taking my nephew?”

The guard’s head had snapped around to face Poseidon, who loomed a good foot taller than the Dardanian. Despite the angry behemoth before him, the guard clearly had a nice stash of bravery somewhere within him — or he was stupid, depending on your point of view.

Personally, if Apollo had been on the receiving end of the furious stare Poseidon was giving this Dardanian, he would have scampered out of the way faster than Arion could run.

“Your indolent nephew,” the guard sneered. “Is to come to the king. He has some words to share with him.”

“Very well,” Poseidon tersely replied, eyes storming like the Adriatic Sea on a bad day. “Lead the way.”

The guard hesitated, his grip on Apollo’s arm loosening a bit, much to his relief. He pulled it out of his grasp and hid a wince at the twinge that shot up to his shoulder. Thanks a lot, he grumbled, rubbing at the blossoming bruise. Not like that’s gonna make carrying bricks even more of a pain or anything…

Then again, he healed fast. Maybe he wouldn’t have to deal with a stinging arm in the morning.

Though…Apollo nervously folded his hands together as the Dardanian guard jerkily motioned for him and Poseidon to follow. By the attitude of the guard, he clearly didn’t think Apollo would exist when Eos decided to paint the sky pink with her fingers.

Apollo kept his eyes fixed on the dirt below, ignoring the sleepy city around him. He stifled a yawn that pulled at his throat, and jumped when Poseidon nudged his shoulder with his own.

“You good?” he murmured under his breath, eyeing the guard marching before them with an intense look of dislike.

The younger god nodded, shakily inhaling as he muttered a “yes” in response.

“Tired?”

“As always.”

A ghost of the jovial grin Apollo remembered appeared on his uncle’s face. “Just remember — once that stupid wall is done, we’re out of here.”

Apollo felt his own lips curl into a smile just as the guard quickened his pace and entered the throne room. Yeah, he couldn’t wait for this stupid punishment to be over. Apollo swatted at the sheer curtains hanging from the doorways, tensing as he spotted the king of Ilios seated on his throne, fingers tapping the armrest ominously.

“The slave you ordered, sir,” the guard bowed.

Laomedon barely gave Apollo a glance. “Why is he here?” He idly lifted a finger to point at Poseidon, who crossed his arms and glared at the king.

The guard cleared his throat, mouth opening as he clearly scrambled to explain how he was cowed into letting Poseidon in, when the king sighed and waved him away.

“Nevermind,” he inspected his nails. “Just go.” The guard quickly bowed once more before shuffling off.

Apollo clasped his hands before him and kept his gaze on the three steps leading up to the throne as Laomedon’s stare finally declared him entertaining enough for attention.

“So,” the king idly leaned forward, eyes fixed on Apollo. It made him distinctively uncomfortable. “I read the recent report on my wall’s construction.” A beat passed. “And I saw something…rather disappointing.” Laomedon rose from his throne and stood at the top of the stairs. “You do remember why your father made me your master, correct?”

Apollo silently nodded as Poseidon’s glare darkened.

“Good,” Laomedon took a step down. His voice darkened. “Then why,” Another step. “Are you failing,” His robes swished as he took the final step. “To meet your assigned quota?” The king’s scowl was harsh, burning into Apollo’s skin as he bit his lip.

“I–I,” Apollo stammered. Damn, he knew this was going to come back to bite him! “I know, I was supposed to get it done by today but I had to cover Aeacus’s quota too—”

“Quiet,” Laomedon’s eyes were still dark as Apollo’s jaw snapped shut against his will. “I don’t want excuses, Apollo. Zeus said to make sure you and Poseidon learned your places in the presence of a king, and that is exactly what I shall do.”

Apollo gulped and tried to hold back a tremor as Laomedon’s ruthless gaze pinned him down. “And this isn’t the first time you’ve been late,” Apollo dropped his gaze from Laomedon’s. “I let those be then, because I thought perhaps you still needed a little extra time to learn. Apparently I was wrong.”

Laomedon’s face split into a smirk. “Come here,” he snapped to the empty space in front of him. “Now.”

In less than a second, Apollo moved to obey. He gritted his teeth, once again attempting to fight against the compulsion, but like every single time before, it was no use.

A hand flashed out and grabbed his shoulder, pulling him to a stop. Poseidon’s gaze was as sharp as a shark’s as he stared Laomedon down. “No. He can stay right here to listen to what you have to say.”

Laomedon tutted. “Poseidon, let him go and stay put. Apollo — come here.”

Jerkily, Poseidon’s hand released Apollo and the younger god attempted to shoot his uncle with an assuring smile. He feared he only managed a grimace.

Taking a steadying breath, Apollo rolled his shoulders back and approached Laomedon, who was still smirking at his fuming uncle before snapping his dark eyes to him. The way the king steepled his fingers gave him an eerie resemblance to Zeus.

Of course, Apollo reflected as he steadily met Laomedon’s self-satisfied stare. He doesn’t quite have the intimidation factor down nearly as well. Though he had to admit, the way the king’s eyes flashed at Apollo’s nerve to meet him eye-to-eye was also very reminiscent of Zeus.

Apollo didn’t know if he meant it as a compliment or not.

Laomedon sighed, as if Apollo had caused him immense stress and disappointment. He tipped his head and clucked his tongue. “Now all that’s left is to find a proper punishment for you.”

The god recoiled at that, but Laomedon didn’t let him get far. He snatched the front of Apollo’s tunic and yanked him back toward him and grabbed his chin. “Since the wall isn’t tough enough work for you, perhaps a few months tending my lovely fields? By yourself?”

The ichor in his veins turned to ice. “That’ll take forever!” he protested.

“The winter months are almost upon us,” Poseidon added. Apollo couldn’t see his face, but he knew his uncle must be thunderous by the dark rumble of his words. “Not only would it be impossible for Apollo to accomplish alone, even with his lyre, but it would deprive your people of much-needed food the next year. Surely you’d know this.”

Laomedon’s eyes glanced behind Apollo, where Poseidon presumably was, hands still tight on Apollo’s tunic and face. He hummed. “I suppose,” he shrugged. “I would hate to have to punish my people because of you, Apollo.” The king’s brow furrowed, as if contemplating his choices. Personally, Apollo didn’t think it was a very good look on him.

Then the king got a wicked gleam in his eyes that also wasn’t a good look on him and set Apollo on edge.

“Of course…” Laomedon nearly purred and wow, his grandmother Rhea’s lions would be offended by how bad he made it sound. The king’s lips curved, a cruel tilt to his head, as he bared his teeth in a grin. “I could just sell you. Though I’d hate to be deprived of your company…”

A sharp inhale was sucked into Apollo’s lungs just as Poseidon let out a snarl.

Laomedon tilted Apollo’s head from side to side. His brows furrowed once more, though in a way that was like a lazy housecat able to play with an exhausted mouse at its paws. “You would fetch a fine price with that pretty face…”

The heart in his chest cavity thumped like a lone, rabid wolf ready to lash out to defend itself from a band of hunters. Apollo swallowed and shook his head.

“Believe me, I wouldn’t,” he nervously laughed. Under any other circumstances, he actually would have been quite offended at the idea that he wouldn’t be worth a lot of drachma, he was a gorgeous, talented god after all thank you very much, but he didn’t fancy getting tossed in the amphora and haggled over like livestock either. “Like you said, I’m awful at work — who’d want a slave who can’t work?”

“They would if they were a god,” much to Apollo’s growing horror, Laomedon seemed to actually be considering the idea, like actually thinking about it. “I’m sure Zeus would understand that you needed a harsher hand.”

“Absolutely not,” Poseidon interjected, his own scowl as harsh as the suggestion Laomedon had put forth. “First of all, my brother assigned us to you — he would not approve of you selling Apollo off. Secondly…” the older sea god drew himself to his full height and pinned the king with a raging stare. “I will not let you. You try it, and I swear I will kill you myself.”

Apollo hardly dared to breathe as slave and master — or god and mortal, he reminded himself — stared each other down. Poseidon’s face was simultaneously as stony as the walls of Ilios itself, and as wrathful as the seas he ruled. He was a true contradiction, and one not to cross.

Laomedon seemed to have realized that himself. His jaw ticked, eyes narrowing with a hint of…unease, perhaps? Wariness?

A cruel master Laomedon may be, but at least he wasn’t a stupid one. Poseidon would have killed him long ago if he had been.

“Then tell me, Poseidon,” Laomedon sounded equally irritated and irate. “What should Apollo’s punishment be?” The unease in his dark eyes was replaced with a brief flash that instinctively made Apollo wary. “Perhaps serving me more…directly in my palace?”

Apollo scowled. “I’d rather fight Python again.”

“Not to mention,” Poseidon called. “We’ll be down a worker for the walls — you said you want them built within a year, yes? Taking Apollo away from it would slow production.”

Laomedon gave a long sigh, absently brushing his thumb over Apollo’s cheek as he gave Poseidon a look.

“Well, since you’re so interested…” Laomedon released Apollo’s jaw — much to the god’s relief — but kept his grip on his tunic. The younger god attempted to subtly rub at his chin as Poseidon drew forth, the salty scent he carried with him drifting around Apollo. He inwardly breathed a sigh of relief at his uncle’s closeness.

“You can decide,” the king triumphantly declared. The relief Apollo felt was instantly squashed, and he stared with wide eyes first at Laomedon, then at Poseidon. His uncle had tensed, jaw clenched as he glared at Laomedon with nothing but pure dislike. “But of course,” Laomedon added slyly, finally relinquishing his hold on Apollo’s tunic with a lazy shrug, flicking at a strand of golden hair. “I retain the right to deny it and proceed with my idea.”

A wail of despair welled in Apollo’s throat, though he thankfully managed to swallow it back down. Though maybe a whimper escaped in the process.

This was it. Laomedon wasn’t going to be deterred by threats of what Zeus would do to him. There was no way he was going to accept whatever idea Poseidon came up with, not if he could humiliate a god of Apollo’s caliber.

Apollo silently cursed his father for taking off with Laomedon’s uncle. Why, oh why did Laomedon have to take his anger out on the most gorgeous god on Olympus? Was it because Ganymede had been snatched for his beauty and he was trying to make himself feel better by demeaning Apollo in such a way?

If so, he was so petty. Apollo hadn’t even been involved in that whole fiasco!

Poseidon had yet to say anything, his silence brewing a dangerous hurricane of potent emotions.

Laomedon, on the other hand, seemed to almost be enjoying himself. “We don’t have all night,” he tutted. “And I have a dowry to begin preparing for Proclia’s future marriage, so please do not waste my time.”

Apollo vaguely remembered Proclia. She was about thirteen, with long red hair and kind brown eyes. She had kindly given him some water one day when he’d been exhausted from brick-laying — much nicer than her pig of a father.

He hoped she was married to someone good. Though Laomedon didn’t seem to have an eye for such suitors. Maybe he could nudge Hymenaeus into helping…hmm…

Poseidon crossed his arms, face still shadowed with his storm, before he tersely nodded. “Very well. I suggest Apollo protect your cattle in the fields of Mount Ida. It’s been attacked lately by wild dogs, wolves, and other various beasts, am I correct?”

Laomedon frowned and tipped his head. “You are,” he agreed. “I have been losing the young cattle lately…ever since my father was king, anyway,” he added with a curl of his lips. Apollo winced and inwardly thought, Ganymede. The youth had used to protect Ilios’s herd of cattle…up until he caught Zeus’s fancy.

Apollo then arched a brow. Was it possible Poseidon was trying to appease Laomedon’s resentment of his uncle’s apotheosis with Apollo’s services in the very fields Ganymede had been taken from? He supposed it would be best to temper that anger…

…though did it have to come at the cost of him?

Laomedon, however, didn’t seem convinced. “Difficult that service may be,” he mused, fingers steepled once again. “I’m afraid I’m not quite satisfied with it. Any amendments to make? If not, I’ll be all too happy to get your nephew started on his new assignment.”

Assignment! Apollo scoffed, yet his hands shook at the possibility. He clenched them tightly as a  low growl left Poseidon’s throat. “An amendment it is, then,” he clenched his own fists and sarcastically muttered; “Do you have any suggestions?”

The king thoughtfully hummed. “You know, perhaps I do.”

Poseidon blinked. Apollo tensed. Clearly, his uncle had meant the comment in jest, but Laomedon had not taken it that way.

“How about this…” Laomedon crossed his arms and studied the two of them. “Apollo works in the fields, protecting my prized cattle, while you, Poseidon, take on his work on the walls. I’m sure you can handle a double workload better than Apollo.” Apollo quietly huffed at the slight. “Aeacus is almost recovered from his bout of sickness anyway,” Laomedon continued. “So he can continue his third of the wall soon enough.” The king then raised a finger. “But the condition is that Apollo will also get the mortar and bricks you will build with…from my palace.”

Apollo glanced at Poseidon out of the corner of his eye. His uncle caught it. Despite his unease, Apollo knew this was the best deal they were going to get. He gave a slight nod — I can do this. 

Poseidon inclined his head. “We accept the terms.” He announced.

Laomedon slyly smiled. “Good. Now go,” he pointed at the curtain-covered door behind them. “Best get some rest. You have work tomorrow.”

Work they had, indeed. 

Over the months, as Eurus’s autumn winds turned away and allowed Boreas’s chilly breath to descend over Ilios, Apollo spent his mornings quickly gathering as much mortar and bricks as he could, thanking his godly strength that he was able to carry so much, dodging running into Laomedon in the process, and delivering it to Poseidon before rushing to Mount Ida and perching on an outcrop, keeping a careful eye on the cattle and the wintry woods around him. A few times he had to fend off a particularly hungry wolf before communicating to it about a much better place to hunt, with deer roaming despite these barren months. The little guy had given him a thankful nuzzle before darting away in the direction Apollo had pointed.

“Never seen a wolf do that, before,” a feminine voice made Apollo jolt and he spun around, still half-kneeling from where he’d been speaking with the wolf. A girl around his age — that is to say, his human age of eighteen — stood before him. Her pale hair was braided, like bundles of flax woven into a fine basket. Pearls sat in her braids. Her dark skin was clean. Her eyes were like pools of fresh, spring water. Her peplos a rosy pink, like Eos’s lovely dawn. “They usually growl when they see humans.”

Apollo self-consciously adjusted his straw hat, thankful the only thing marring his own visage was the occasional smudge of dirt, though that itself was minorly annoying when faced with a pretty girl.

“Well,” he modestly shrugged and rose to his feet, casually leaning against his shepherd’s staff. “I suppose that’s because most humans don’t have anything good to say.”

The girl considered him. “I suppose,” she nodded. “I wouldn’t know the first thing to say to a wolf anyway. I’d probably communicate something along the lines of ‘I want to eat your young’ instead of ‘Hello, my name is Ourea. What’s yours?’.”

Apollo cracked a grin. “Was that an indirect way of introducing yourself? And to get my name?”

The girl — Ourea, Apollo noted, a name meaning ‘mountains’, as well as the name of some of Gaea’s offspring — smiled and gave a modest shrug of her own. “Perhaps. Not everyday you meet a man who can speak wolf.”

“It’s sadly a lost art,” Apollo mock-sighed. “Very few are able to master such a skill.”

“Oh?” Ourea drifted closer and intently stared at him. Her eyes were very distracting. Apollo had never really paid attention to the beauty of water before, but wow. It definitely deserved a few odes, perhaps even a sonnet. The way the sunlight shone off her eyes…it was like marveling at a sunset over the sea.

“Care to teach me?”

Apollo smiled. “Wouldn’t hurt to try.”

Ourea was rather good company. She was in the field waiting for him when he came to watch the herd, and he would impart to her the language of wolves — their code, their way of life, and how they communicated. She had trouble with it at first, which was a given. Mortals weren’t usually interested in learning about each other, let alone an animal, but he was fascinated with Ourea’s determination to push through his lessons.

They met everyday. Winter began to wane. Poseidon would give him a sly look every morning he came to drop off the day’s delivery of mortar and bricks, and shot a shit-eating grin his way at night when he returned a bit more flushed than usual and his tunic ajar.

Some people would think it weird that Poseidon wasn’t objecting to Apollo dating his daughter — after all, fathers were supposed to want their daughters to actually be able to marry the man they were seeing.

Poseidon though wasn’t a mortal father. He rarely interacted with his children, though he lent a hand if they asked for it. When Apollo had inquired about his opinion, his uncle had merely shrugged and said; “If Ourea wants you, I see no reason why she can’t.”

Apollo had to admit. Ourea’s presence was becoming a particular bright spot in Ilios. Not only would she meet him in the meadow, but also at the walls in the mornings and watch as he passed the materials to her father, waving cheekily at him whenever he playfully wrinkled his nose at her.

One particular bright spot was a nice night between them the day the walls were finished. The formidable stones rose high into the air, fortifying the main city even better than the outer city’s walls did — because they were built by two gods, of course.

And maybe Apollo had helped speed the process up a bit by playing his lyre as the construction came close to the end. His godly power had been greatly reduced thanks to his punishment, but he’d been able to manipulate the bricks into their proper places, creating a strong barrier to protect Ilios’s people — people who included Ourea…and his own child now.

He still remembered the day she told him, breath lingering around his ear, eyes shining as she whispered; “I’m expecting!”

Poseidon had clapped him on the shoulder and congratulated both of them. And nine months later, Ourea failed to arrive in the meadow. Apollo spent the rest of the day anxiously pacing the field, his restlessness no doubt warding off would-be attackers, though few they were as Notus’s summer sighs began.

Apollo practically ran back to Ilios in his haste to find Ourea, and find her he did. Her mother was busy attending to her, while his lover sat up in bed, a bundle in her arms. Her hair was down and pearlless, but her smile was as bright as the sea’s gems.

“Ileus,” she said. “After our city.”

The god bent down and placed a gentle kiss first on Ourea, then on Ileus. “Perfect,” he murmured. “He’s perfect.”

He and Poseidon were still technically in Laomedon’s service, even with the walls complete. Thanks to their godly intervention, the walls were finished earlier than planned — which was good, for Apollo could pop in and visit Ourea and Ileus more often, but also irksome. He missed having his full godly power at his disposal. He could’ve properly helped Ourea’s birthing pains. He could’ve — would show Laomedon what happens when you treat not one, but two gods cruelly.

Though despite the disgruntlement and unease Laomedon put in him, Apollo made a silent promise to protect this city. Not all of its inhabitants were as demeaning as their king — most treated him and Poseidon with the respect gods of their caliber deserved, and very few had dared to belittle Ourea for having a child out of wedlock, not with the knowledge that Apollo had fathered him.

All in all, Apollo was in high spirits. The walls were done. He and Poseidon were about to get paid for their work once autumn came about. Ourea swore Ileus was trying to imitate a wolf’s howl the night before — bless his little soul, already taking after his parents!

The snakes put a bit of a damper on his mood, three months later.

It happened fast. The guards along the walls raised the alarm as three massive drakons rushed the walls. Apollo had been transfixed to the spot, unable to tear his eyes away as the first drakon rammed into Poseidon’s wall. It screeched when it failed to topple it.

The second attempted the same with Apollo’s wall. It too fell prey to its invulnerability.

Meanwhile the third…Apollo remained rooted to the ground as it crashed through Aeacus’s third of the wall. Stone crumbled. Mortar cracked. Ash was flung into the air as the drakon stomped through, roared triumphantly, before turning tail and charging away, its brethren on its heels, screaming like a battalion of armed warriors.

Faintly, Apollo heard Poseidon swear and sensed Ourea clutch Ileus to her chest, as if afraid the drakons would return and snatch him away. The baby’s bright blue eyes stared at the drakons in awe, his pale hair askew.

Equally as faintly, Apollo could hear the rumbles of stone falling, though the walls around him remained intact, except for Aeacus’s third. He could feel the tremors echoing through the ground, the clanging of bronze-on-bronze.

A war would be fought here. A great one.

Apollo’s smokey green eyes rolled back into his head and his breaths turned harsh;

“Unyielding walls, made of stone,

Heed my words and be known.

None shall shake your roots of steel,

But beware the tenth year.

Red-haired Pyrrus to pluck you down,

And Ilion will fall by Aeacus’s crown.”

Hands grasped his shoulders and shook. Apollo dazedly jerked his head, blinking with bewildered pale gold eyes at the creased face of Poseidon.

“Apollo,” his uncle’s dark green eyes were fixed on him with a serious, intent expression. “Apollo, was that…”

The younger god swallowed and nodded. “I believe so.” He breathed through his nose. “It was a prophecy.”

“A prophecy?” Ourea breathed, blue eyes as wide as the pools of water in Ilios’s forests. “But what…what could it mean?”

Apollo frowned, biting his lip for a moment as he considered the prophecy, absently snapping his fingers for a papyrus scroll and reed pen. He quickly scrawled the prophecy down, studying the words.

Prophecies were tricky things. They liked to make you think you figured them out, or successfully averted them, before pulling the rug out from under you. (Just ask Acrisius)

However…he squinted suspiciously at the words before him.

Unyielding walls, made of stone, heed my words and be known.

Apollo eyed the walls of Troy as citizens and slaves alike clustered around the broken wall, clamoring over each other about how to fix it.

None shall shake your roots of steel, but beware the tenth year.

Unease filled his stomach. Beware the tenth year…tenth year the walls were built? Or perhaps…

The sound of bronze weapons clashing and the ground cracking apart from an earthquake ripped through his ears once more.

No. Beware the tenth year of war.

Red-haired Pyrrus to pluck you down, and Ilion will fall by Aeacus’s crown.

The wall. The wall that fell…it was built by Aeacus, not a god. That made it the weakest point, the prime place for attack…

Or it meant —

Apollo shoved the thought away. No. No. Ilion couldn’t…

“Apollo?” Poseidon asked. “Do you know what it means?”

The younger god glanced between the intense eyes of his uncle and the anxious ones of his lover.

“I have…a suspicion,” he admitted. He met Ourea’s worried face and softly said; “I think it says the walls will fall…and so will Ilion.”

Ourea pressed a hand to her mouth, eyes widening as she held Ileus tighter, making him whine as he attempted to wiggle out of her hold, making grabby hand at Apollo. He held out his fingers and allowed Ileus to snatch them, lips curving slightly as the boy attempted to stick them in his mouth.

Poseidon had turned and stared consideringly at the walls. Apollo stiffened as he heard him mumble “Good riddance” with a slight vindictive gleam in his storming eyes as people darted around, beginning to hastily repair the damage done to the wall.

Apollo couldn’t find it within himself to agree. He knew Poseidon only said it because of how harshly Laomedon had treated them, but personally, Apollo didn’t believe Ilion deserved to crumble to the ground because of the actions of one lousy king.

Plus…Apollo fervently looked into Ourea’s concerned eyes. Placing a kiss on her lips before ruffling Ileus’s hair, making the child babble, he knew one thing about himself.

Ilion was his city. And he would do his damndest to circumvent its fate — or at the very least, delay the inevitable for as long as possible.

They were his people, just like he was their god. And nothing would ever change that.

He eyed the palace with wariness. Steeling himself, he tapped Poseidon’s shoulder and said; “We should talk to Laomedon. He needs to know.”

Poseidon hummed and shrugged. “Very well. He’s also due to pay us back for our work.”

With that, his uncle marched towards the palace, leaving the commotion of the crumbled walls behind. Apollo took Ourea’s hand and gently squeezed it, smiling lightly as he clutched the papyrus with Ilion’s fatal fate written upon it.

“We’ll be back,” he whispered. He hesitated, then drew both her and Ileus into a hug. Ourea’s free hand rested on his arm as she laid her head on his shoulder. “And don’t worry,” he added quietly. “I’ll keep Ilion safe.”

“How?” Ourea’s words were muffled slightly. “If it’s prophesied…”

Apollo rubbed her back and kissed her hair. “I’m the god of prophecy,” he grinned. “I’ll find a way.”

I hope, he left unsaid.

----------

“No.”

Apollo blinked, mouth slightly open as he stared incredulously at Laomedon. The king sat on his throne, as relaxed as a lazy lion, the side of his face leaning on his hand as he coyly smirked at the two gods.

“No?” Poseidon spat. “That was the deal, you ungrateful, impious bdelyròs!”

Laomedon clucked his tongue, shaking his head. “No need for that kind of language, Poseidon. Especially around your nephew.”

Apollo glared at him. “I’ve heard worse, thanks.”

The king shrugged. “I suppose you have,” he agreed, raking his gaze over the younger god. “You have had some…choice words, at times. But I digress,” Apollo scowled at how relaxed Laomedon looked, like he wasn’t insulting them — oh, he knew very well how demeaning this was! It wasn’t enough that ordered them about and yanked them around for his own amusement, abusing the control he had over them, but now he denied them their deserved pay!

“You have made a very unwise decision,” Poseidon softly stated, mouth curving slightly into a snarl. “When we regain our places on Olympus, we are no longer in your service, nor under your command. We are free to do as we please…” he narrowed his eyes and gave the bored king a mocking smile. “I can promise you my wrath will be felt quite soon.”

“Ah…” Laomedon clutched his chest, as if suddenly struck with a heart-attack. Apollo secretly wished for it to happen, for the terrible man to bite the dust. “The thing is, Poseidon…neither of you are allowed to harm me, even after your punishment is finished.” He bared his crooked teeth in a grin. “I’m untouchable, while I can still very much touch you.”

Apollo clenched his fists, the papyrus in one of them crumpling, before crossing his arms. “Says who?” He demanded.

“Says your father,” Laomedon’s grin was sharp as he sat up straight in his throne. “After all, the lesson was all about not challenging a king, was it not? Taking vengeance on me would mean you haven’t learnt your lesson.”

Apollo was furious. He wasn’t allowed to give Laomedon a piece of his mind? To throttle him for everything he put him through? Completely unfair! How could father let him do this?

Angry, Apollo stalked up the stairs and slapped the papyrus onto the throne’s arm. “Maybe this will get you to rethink,” he hissed as Laomedon’s dark stare first roamed over him before idly glancing at the papyrus. “Or do you not care about Ilion’s destruction?”

Laomedon’s face twisted and he seized Apollo by the strap of his chiton, yanking him close enough for him to murmur darkly; “Careful there,” His hot breath made Apollo flinch away. “I still own you.”

He ripped himself out of Laomedon’s grip and gave him a vehement stare. “You own nothing,” he muttered contemptuously. Apollo glanced over his shoulder to Poseidon, who had his arms crossed and face twisted into a mean scowl.

Apollo turned back to Laomedon. He pointed to the papyrus. “The future of your kingdom is on that scroll,” he darkly warned. “I really think you should reconsider this choice — it may lead to Ilion’s ruin.”

Laomedon gave a disbelieving snort. “Ilion is the crown jewel of Anatolia,” his nose scrunched up as he gave the younger god a condescending look. “Our warriors are of the highest caliber. My children married to powerful allies. Very few would dare to challenge us — let alone be able to destroy us, dear Apollo.” 

He then leaned forward, finger tapping idly on the papyrus as he hummed. “Not to mention you are our patron god, duty-bound to come to our aid.” He glanced at the scroll and lightly snorted. “Barely half of this makes sense! Garbled nonsense.”

Apollo’s jaw clenched. “Smart men can decipher a mystery,” he growled. “Wise men learn from it.”

His stomach twisted as Laomedon pretended to not hear him. Apollo glanced at his uncle, whose stormy expression made him shiver.

He had warned Laomedon. He warned him of the present and future danger to Ilion. But he refused to listen.

And that arrogance will cost him. Dearly.

It is, after all, part of the duty of a god, Apollo reflected as he and Poseidon silently exited the throne room, stalking through the grand halls with glowers. Hubris is so commonly a mortal’s fatal flaw…and Laomedon will be no different.

 —

I refrained from my usual rambles so if you want my rambles see my Ao3 for the fic upload there! :3

#submission #toasecretsanta #firealder2005 #literallyjusttoa #trials of apollo #toa #trials of apollo fanfiction #riordanverse #riordanverse fanfic #pjo apollo #pjo poseidon #pjo laomedon

[tsarisfanfiction]

The Midnight Healer

Fandom: Heroes of Olympus/Trials of Apollo Rating: Gen Genre: Hurt/Comfort, Angst Characters: Will Solace, Nico di Angelo Not all new campers arrived in the daylight, and it was usually the ones that arrived in the dead of night that needed the most help. Day one of @solangeloweek "Night Light (Will Solace)". This was my second attempt at writing something for this prompt because the first one just didn't want to co-operate, but I really like what I ended up with! This is set somewhen post-Trials of Apollo but could be anywhen afterwards! Reminder that there’s now a discord server for all my fics, including this one!  If you wanna chat with me or with other readers about stuff I write (or just be social in general), hop on over and say hi!

It was dark.  Over the years, Will had got used to the dark – once upon a time it had been unfamiliar to him, a son of Apollo who slept with the sun and then rose with it again the next morning, even before he’d known who his father was, who he was, but then he’d got better and better and better at healing and not all new campers arrived in the daylight.

It was usually the ones that arrived in the dead of night that needed the most help, lingered closest to death and Thanatos’ waiting wings, and Will had long since lost count of the number of times he’d been pulled from his bed at some point during Artemis’ shift, when the sun wasn’t even a glimmer teasing the horizon, because someone was dying and he was their best chance at surviving until the morning.

Sometimes, he wasn’t enough.

Chiron had chivvied him out of the infirmary when Thanatos had come, a god Will had never seen face to face but knew the feel of better than almost any other.  It wasn’t an encouragement to go back to bed and sleep – there would be nightmares, now, if Will even tried – but the old centaur’s token effort to shield him from the loss.  Too little, too late, after Lee, after Joy and Robyn bleeding out beneath his hands, after Elias and Sally battered and clammy and dripping wet with water instead of life in their lungs, after Nathan’s torn off arm and Michael’s abandoned bow.

Being left alone to think after another life lost was no better than preparing the body for a funeral – and Will had done both enough times to know.

A hand caught his as he stumbled aimlessly across the camp, uncaring about the harpies circling – they wouldn’t attack him, never attacked Apollo kids for being out after-hours – and without even looking, Will sank bonelessly into waiting arms.  He couldn’t see in the dark, anyway, never had been able to.  Some Apollo kids could see as well in the dark as they could in the day, but others never got night vision no matter how long they were trapped in the dark – Will had always been the latter.

He didn’t need to see.

Nico’s arms wrapped around him tightly and they fell down into solid earth, through shadows that fought to get at Will but could never touch him, and he let his boyfriend take him wherever he was planning with no complaint.

They reappeared by the Sound, where the crescent of a waning moon reflected in the water, a reflection of a reflection of his father’s light, distorted so much that it was barely the same thing anymore.  Nico guided him to the water’s edge, half-carrying him before setting him down where the waves lapped near-soundlessly against the shore.

When Will slumped sideways, physically drained and mentally exhausted, Nico caught him again, settling him against his shoulder in a comforting hold.  A hand ran through his hair, just once, before lips pressed against his temple and fingers tangled with his own in his lap.

Neither of them spoke.  They didn’t need to.  Nico hadn’t been in the infirmary, hadn’t been summoned to save the life of a camper whose string the Fates had chosen to cut regardless, but the way he’d appeared, caught Will and whisked him away told him that Nico knew, had felt a soul pass from the living to the Underworld, and had come looking for him, because of course Will would be the healer on duty in the middle of the night.

It was always Will.  He was the best healer in the cabin – Jerry showed promise but he was still new, Raphael and Emma had gone home for the fall, and the rest of his siblings were better at inflicting wounds than healing them – but even if he hadn’t been, he was the head counsellor, the big brother.

Lee had never let Will be the one summoned in the middle of the night, always going himself despite Will surpassing him in healing ability after a year or two at camp, and at the time Will had never understood why.  Michael wasn’t a good enough healer to take the midnight shifts but Robyn had stepped up instead, and Will hadn’t understood why then, either – he was the better healer, he’d seen people die, had lost people he’d tried to save, why wasn’t it him?

He understood, now.

It was different, at night, when they had no evidence of their father in the sky and everyone else was sleeping.  When the darkness closed in, fought against the light of healing, dragged souls into Thanatos’ embrace.  When they were the light, not their father in the sky, and sometimes they weren’t enough.

Will would never let his siblings take the burden instead, not as long as he was around to shoulder it himself, the same way Lee, the same way Robyn, and all the other midnight healers before him had.

He wondered if they’d had someone to catch them, too.  If Lee had snuck into cabin ten to cry on Miri’s shoulder, sneaking back out at the first rays of dawn before her siblings awoke, if Robyn had kicked Nathan awake while the rest of them slept to rage silently at the injustice while Michael cursed along with her.

He hoped so.

He’d spent a year suffering the midnight healings alone, the ones where they made it but also the ones that didn’t, whose injuries were too much even for him, on top of the grief from the first war that still threatened to consume him when it struck, and now he had Nico he didn’t know how he’d managed without.

Nico didn’t say anything, just held him as grief and exhaustion crashed down and the tears fell.  Will burrowed his face in the junction of Nico’s throat and shoulder, into soft and worn fabric and cool skin, and sobbed.

#solangeloweek #heroes of olympus #trials of apollo #riordanverse #heroes of olympus fanfiction #trials of apollo fanfiction #riordanverse fanfic #solangelo #will solace #nico di angelo

[rewrittenwrongs]

Title: Blue birthday cake

Rating: general

Warnings: referenced homelessness

Prompt: alternative ending / missing scene

Word count: 1318

Relationships: Nico di Angelo & Percy Jackson

Characters: Nico di Angelo, Percy Jackson, mentioned Sally Jackson

Summary: “Come inside for some cake and ice cream,” Percy said. “It sounds like we’ve got a lot to talk about.”

Nico hesitated. He wanted to, he really did, but he didn’t want to intrude. If there was birthday cake it was probably someone’s birthday. He didn’t want to interrupt a party - gods know he’d bring down the mood. “Um, I don’t need to stay,” he told Percy. “I just want to tell you something real quick.”

Percy smiled sadly. “Nonsense, come inside.”

Ao3 link (registered users only): https://archiveofourown.org/works/52656898

!Percy Jackson and the Olympians spoilers!

“Come inside for some cake and ice cream,” Percy said. “It sounds like we’ve got a lot to talk about.”

Nico hesitated. He wanted to, he really did, but he didn’t want to intrude. If there was birthday cake it was probably someone’s birthday. He didn’t want to interrupt a party - gods know he’d bring down the mood. “Um, I don’t need to stay,” he told Percy. “I just want to tell you something real quick.”

Percy smiled sadly. “Nonsense, come inside. There’s plenty of cake to go around.” He climbed back inside through the window, abandoning the strange silver flower he’d left in the plant bed.

Nico hesitated, then slowly followed.

Percy’s room looked like a generic teens bedroom. A single sized bed with blue and grey sheets, a wardrobe with several photos taped to it, a poster of some movie star he didn’t recognise, and the dresser with the slice of cake on top. There was a skateboard propped up in one corner, and a book written in Ancient Greek lay abandoned on the bed.

Percy handed him the plate of cake with a - somewhat strained - grin. “Come on, there’s cards in the lounge room.”

“Cards?” Nico repeated to himself. He awkwardly followed as Percy led the way out, entering a kitchen connected to the lounge room.

Percy pointed at the fridge. “There’s ice cream and more cake in there, help yourself.” He grabbed a mostly empty packet of chips off the counter, and went over to the dining table and sat down, clicking on the light on the way. He picked up an abandoned deck of cards and began shuffling them as Nico hovered in the middle of the kitchen.

“Um.” Nico stared at Percy blankly, then at the slice of cake that’d been forced into his hands. “What?”

Percy grinned at him. “D’you know how to play blackjack?”

“Yes.” Nico’s frown deepened. “You didn’t answer my question.”

Percy gestured vaguely. “You seem hungry. We have food. And if you don’t have somewhere to spend the night, the couch is a futon so you’re welcome to sleep here.”

Nico blinked. “Uhh… and the cards?”

Percy grinned. “Cards are fun.”

Nico furrowed his brow. “…Right.” He slowly walked over to the table and sat down opposite Percy. He set down the plate and picked up the two cards he dealt him. A ten of hearts and a two of clubs.

“What did you want to talk about?” Percy asked, drawing a card and adding it to his hand.

Nico hesitated. He drew a card. An eight of spades. “Um, it’s about the Titan war.”

“Oh.” Percy drew a second card. When Nico didn’t do the same, he asked, “Ready?” Nico nodded, and they set down their cards face up at the same time. “Eighteen.”

Nico’s lips twitched, not quite a smile. “Twenty.”

Percy smiled. “Nice.” He collected his cards and began shuffling the deck. “Did you think of a battle strategy or something?”

Nico chewed his lip. “Um, kind of.”

Percy raised his eyebrows. “Kind of?” He dealt Nico and him two cards each then set down the deck.

“Yeah,” Nico said. “It’s not… it’s just an idea right now, but I think it will work.” His cards were the ace of spades and the queen of hearts.

Percy drew a card. “What’s your idea?”

Nico avoided Percy’s gaze. “You’ve heard of Achilles, yeah?”

Percy frowned. “Yeah?” He eyed Nicos hand. “You’re not picking up any cards?”

“Nope.”

Percy set down his cards. “Nineteen.”

Nico placed down his. “Twenty-one.”

Percy shook his head with a grin, then scooped up the cards and began to shuffle. “What does your idea have to do with Achilles?”

Nico hesitated. “I… I know how to give you his invulnerability.”

Percy froze, staring at him.

Nico avoided eye contact at all costs. “It, um. You just need to get your mother’s blessing, and-and to bathe in the River Styx. We could do it today if you wanted, but I think… this is the only way I know for sure that would let us fight against Kronos.”

Percy exhaled shakily. “You… Achilles’ invulnerability?”

Nico nodded. “It wouldn’t be total invulnerability. You need a spot to anchor your soul, an Achilles heel, that can still be wounded. But it-it would make fighting Luke a whole lot easier.”

Percy leaned back in his seat and sighed. “So I… how would I do that?”

Nico shrunk in on himself. “In all honesty I don’t know for sure, but I’m ninety-nine percent certain you just need your mother’s blessing. Then I take you to the Underworld, and you swim in River Styx. Theres, uh. There’s a chance that it could kill you.”

“Fuck.” Percy closed his eyes. “This is one hell of a bombshell to drop on me at -“ he glanced at a clock on the wall -“half past midnight.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No, don’t…” Percy sighed. “I’m just surprised. And a little confused. And this… is there a time frame for this?”

Nico shook his head. “Not really. But Kronos is getting stronger everyday, so… the sooner the better.”

Percy frowned, then picked back up the card deck. He dealt Nico and him a new hand.

Nico frowned. “You still want to play?”

“Why not.” Percy picked up a card. “And the offer to stay the night still stands. So does the cake.”

Nico looked at his cards. Eight and six of hearts. He picked up another: the two of spades. “Whose birthday is it anyway?”

Percy grinned. “Mine. I turned fifteen.”

“Oh. Happy birthday.”

Percy smiled. “Thanks. Gonna pick up another?”

“Hmph.” Nico drew another card, then grimaced and set down his hand. “Over.”

“I win!” Percy cheered quietly. He collected the cards and started shuffling. “Want to watch a movie after this round? Paul brought his dvd collection.”

Nico hesitated. Then, “Sure.”

Percy smirked that blinding smile of his. “Great.” He dealt the cards. “Have you ever seen Princess Bride?”

“Hmm, I’ve read the book.” Ace and nine of spades.

Percy fiddled with his cards. “Annabeth’s been trying to make me read it. You wouldn’t happen to have an Ancient Greek translation, would you?”

Nico snorted. “No.”

They set down their cards. Nico won by one point.

“Are you staying the night?” Percy asked. He got up from the table and headed over to the couch, which was in front of a small TV. He began fiddling with the dvd player. “I have spare blankets and pillows in my room.”

Nico winced. He shouldn’t stay the night, but also he really did not want to spend another night sleeping in the streets. “Are you sure your mother wouldn’t mind?”

“Nah, she loves when I have friends over.” Percy finished with the TV and began unfolding the futon. “Can you turn off the light?”

Nico did as he was asked, then retrieved his cake slice and laid down on the couch which was now a bed. Guilt swam in his stomach but he tried to ignore it. Percy started the movie and immediately turned down the volume a bunch so he wouldn’t wake anyone up. He then disappeared for a minute to retrieve two blankets and an armful of pillows. A fluffy blanket was thrown over Nico and fell in front of his face, almost making him laugh. He pushed it out of his eyes and turned his attention to the movie, taking a bite out of his cake slice just as the grandpa was introduced. It was soft and sweet, one of those melt-in-your mouth foods that was so delicious your tastebud almost couldn’t comprehend it. It was the best thing he’d eaten in… as long as he could remember, actually.

Percy tucked a pillow under his chest with a soft smile. “Hey, Nico?”

“Hmph?”

“If you ever need a place to stay the night in the future, swing by here, okay?”

“…Okay, Percy.”

#riordanverse fic #riordanverse #Percy Jackson and the Olympians #rewrittenwrongs fic #dual post #oneshot #percy jackson fanfiction #fan fiction #my writing #no romance #riordanverse fanfic #percy jackson #nico di angelo #no art

[yonemurishiroku]

I know we all love the god/deity Nico. But just consider. Nico mistaken as a god.

Why? Because srsly, just imagine it.

You’re a new camper. You’re 8,9,10,11—idk, and your siblings are giving you a tour around Camp. You guys reach the Big House, and there’s Chiron, Mr.D, and then him.

This kid - not so much older than you’re - who wears all back, a sword by his hip, a distinctly powerful around him, sitting at the same table with Dionysus and Chiron. They have been talking when you arrived. He greets you with a silent nod.

Later that day, you see him again at lunch/ dinner. Still sitting with Dionysus. His plate is empty. They talk through out the meal. Perhaps he doesn’t need to eat.

You notice he has a private house all for himself, not so close to other cabins. Maybe he doesn’t like others trespassing in his place.

He’s also the quiet and reserved type, you figure.

He doesn’t talk much. But when he speaks, everyone listens. Whatever he has to say is usually impactful.

He usually sits with the goddess Hestia during the campfire. Rarely someone joins them. Will Solace does sometimes, probably bc the guy’s friendly with just everyone.

You see him in the Arena. His power is absolutely terrifying. Like. God-tier.

You take note of the fact he sometimes leaves Camp for days on a mission or an errand. Something about ghosts and Underworld. As far as you know, no one else in camp does that kind of task. And you absolutely didn’t expect the Underworld to be so easily in and out of. Not for a demigod, at least, because even the mighty Percy Jackson dislikes going there.

He talks about Cerberus and the Furies and Charon and calls Hades “dad”. He must be a chthonic deity. That explains his attire.

And the name di Angelo. It certainly sounds someone to take souls to the afterlife. The name Nico should be the equivalent of Apollo’s Lester.

When another god, Apollo - or Lester, comes visit. You see how the Olympian playfully jokes around and laughs with the Kid. In response, the Kid acts completely relaxed around him, despite not being one of Apollo’s children, whereas you’re there being like Omg it’s a God!. You figure that’s how fellow gods treat each other.

Nico di Angelo must be a God, right?

#nico di angelo #fanfic talk again bc what’s new anw? #yone rambling #yone prompt #powerful nico #god nico au #prince of the underworld #ghost king nico #nico and hades #deity nico #god nico #pjo #nico and apollo #nico and dionysus #dionysus (pjo) #lester papadopoulos #percy jackson and the olympians #riordanverse #trials of apollo #yone headcanon #nico healing #nico headcanon

[caramelmacchiato07]

i absolutely hate the pjo fanfictions where annabeth betrays percy or whatever or if she sides with olympus and not him, bc it’s so inaccurate and would never ever happen. like even in the lightning thief she straight up says she’ll side with percy and not her mom bc he’s her friend, and they spent pretty much the whole book arguing and were just friends at that point. and like how many times did she say she loves him in mark of athena and house of hades? like a lot a lot. so those fanfictions (as much as i love a good dark percy fanfic), are just so incredibly incorrect bc annabeth and percy are loyal to each other and love each other way too much to even think about betraying the other or siding with the GODS ESPECIALLY. like she annabeth may take pride in her work as olympus’ architect, but if it came down to it she would never side with the gods over percy. sorry needed to say that, what are y’all’s thoughts on it?

#percy jackson #percy jackson and the olympians #percy pjo #pjo #rick riordan #riordanverse #heroes of olympus #annabeth chase #percy and annabeth #percabeth #percabeth is the best ship ever #percabeth fanfic #percabeth au