The first time they see Luke after everything went down in the forest, it’s in a kitschy stateroom aboard the Princess Andromeda.
And Percy wants to kill him.
Percy recognizes this feeling for what it is right away. It’s not entirely based in reality or logic. It’s the kind of thing his mom lovingly refers to as his pre-adolescent angst with a watery smile (usually before calling him her little man).
Knowing that, Percy still really, really wants to kill him.
Luke’s henchmen, two large half-bear, half human creatures, lead them into the room. Percy feels a javelin pressing against his back, prodding him into the ornate hall. The creature behind Annabeth growls as he shoves her forward, and Percy feels a hot flash of anger.
“Hey!” he exclaims. “Watch it, Ugly.”
Annabeth turns back to look at him with warning in her eyes, quietly asking him to reign his temper in.
Her shoulders are tense when she faces ahead again. They both pointedly ignore the man in the room, his arms outstretched as if in greeting.
“Welcome, guys,” Luke says.
He looks different. He’s traded in his orange Camp Half-Blood shirt for a navy blue quarter-zip, khakis and loafers. His curly hair is slicked down. He looks like every finance-bro asshole Percy sees smarming around back in New York.
Luke takes his time sauntering over to the group. He pauses by Tyson, regarding him with an inscrutable expression.
“Well that’s interesting,” he mutters to himself before moving onto Percy.
Luke stands close enough for Percy to reach out and punch him in that square jaw, if he really wanted to.
Percy’s grown since their last interaction, they stand nearly nose to nose. He can clearly see the dragon-fight scar on Luke’s face, tracing down from the corner of his eye to his jaw in a jagged line, like the path of a teardrop falling down his cheek.
“Percy,” Luke says conversationally, “Congrats on surviving another year, thanks to us. How’s mom?”
Percy bites down his desire to tell Luke to go to Hades.
Luke nods knowingly when Percy says nothing, as if he expected this frosty reception.
He hesitates before his next step. His entire demeanor changes, the confident rebel-with-a-cause melts away. His shoulders tighten. His chin tilts down.
“Annabeth?” he says softly. She ignores him. “What, you’re not even going to look at me? After everything we’ve been through?”
Percy tenses, he watches Annabeth’s back straighten. She’s looking directly over Luke’s shoulders, like he’s not even there. Her shaking hands curl into fists at her sides.
A storm passes across her face, her eyebrows tighten in frustration before she meets his eyes.
“There,” she says, glaring at him in that scathing way only Annabeth knows how to pull off. “Happy?”
“Thrilled,” Luke replies, the small smile across his face almost seems genuine. “I missed you, little sister.”
Percy watches the interaction with his heartbeat pounding in his ears. He had seen first hand how Luke’s betrayal had devastated Annabeth, the way she had completely shut down in the forest. It terrified him, he never wanted to see her like that again.
She had made so much progress since then, and here Luke was ready to undo all of that hard work with a deceptively soft voice.
Percy really wants to kill him. Screw pre-adolescent angst. This is real.
“What do you want Luke?” he demands, desperate to draw the attention away from Annabeth before she comes apart at the seams.
It works. Luke’s eyes slide towards Percy, his expression darkening.
“I just want to talk,” he says, his smile twisting into something ugly. “Is that a crime?”
“You had a chance to talk already,” Percy reminds him. “You ran away.”
Luke raises his hands in surrender.
“Look, emotions were running high that night, I admit,” he says carefully. He walks over to a table where his weapon, that long double edged sword that cut Percy last summer, rests. “But we’re all here now. We can be mature about this, right?”
“Was it you?” Annabeth asks hollowly. “Did you poison Thalia’s tree?”
Her voice breaks on Thalia’s name.
“Yes.”
Luke averts his gaze, staring at the table intently, as if he realizes the gravity of what he’s done for the first time.
“I don’t understand, Luke,” she pleads. “How could you do it? Thalia saved your life—she saved our lives.”
“And how was she rewarded?!” Luke explodes, slamming his fists down.
Annabeth recoils, shrinking back. Percy sees real fear flash in her eyes. He puts his hand on his pocket, feeling for his pen.
“The gods dishonored her, Annabeth! You know it! And if she were here, she’d know it too.”
Annabeth’s chin trembles as she shakes her head.
“You’re wrong,” she whispers. “Thalia would be embarrassed of you right now. She’d be ashamed.”
Luke grabs his double-edged sword and makes his way around the table again, stalking towards Annabeth. His eyes are darkened, his brows creased in determination.
Percy steps forward. He doesn't think Luke would ever hurt her, but he swears up and down that if he did, Percy won’t be responsible for what comes next.
The other man ignores him. He holds out his weapon to Annabeth slowly, like an offering.
“Just look. Look at this,” he says in a quiet, thoughtful voice. His tone changes and changes so much over the course of this conversation, Percy is going to get whiplash. But he has Annabeth’s attention again.
“It’s called Backbiter,” he tells her. He stands so close it’s like everyone else in the room has disappeared. He takes one of her hands and traces it along the hilt. “Tempered steel and Celestial bronze. Do you feel that? That’s power.”
“And violence,” Annabeth whispers. He stands so close to her that she’s looking up at him through her lashes “Danger.”
“Possibility,” Luke retorts. “Just think about it, Annabeth. The gods blinded you—and that’s okay, I thought the same, when I was young like you. But we’re going to start the world anew, wash away how rotten everything is. And we need you, you’re my best girl. No one else is as clever.”
“Yeah,” Annabeth glances around the room, where his two demi-bear henchmen appear to be sniffing their own weapons. “That, I gathered.”
Percy, who had been watching this interaction with an increasingly sick feeling growing in the pit of his stomach, fights a smile. He wants to take credit for some of the snark rubbing off on her, but he knows that’s all Annabeth.
Luke’s nostrils flare in barely concealed annoyance.
“I just think you deserve better than this,” he waves a hand around. “Being on the run, doing favors for gods who don’t even bother saying thank you. Keeping company with a Cyclops, talking about what Thalia would think.”
“Stop it,” Annabeth’s voice breaks. “Just stop that, Luke. You have no idea what you’re talking about. You had your chance already, and you ran away.”
And Percy knows that’s what it boils down to, in a lot of ways. They’ve re-lived that night in the forest individually and together a few times. He knows that what really cut Annabeth to the core is how fast Luke disappeared after she revealed herself. He didn’t even dignify her with an explanation. With a goodbye.
But Luke ignores what she says. He pushes on.
“We have anything you could want, we have money, endless resources,” his voice is wistful, filled with promise. “You could build our new world from the ground up, just like you’ve always dreamed. Can you honestly tell me you’re living your full potential at camp?”
Percy recognizes this version of Luke, the one that had him fooled his first time at camp. The one who could inspire you with his words, the one who seemed so cool.
The one Annabeth had looked up to.
For one brief, terrifying moment, he sees a future where Annabeth says yes. Where his promises work on her, where his scorn for the gods bleeds onto her and she follows his misguided cause. It makes the hairs on the back of his neck stand up.
Luke’s eyes turn to Percy, as if his thoughts were so loud he heard them.
“And you,” he says, his expression turning into a sneer. “I know all about your plan, I have associates at the camp, still, and they’ve kept me posted. You could forget all of that. You could join us. Whatever you want—money, fame. A comfortable life. It’s yours.”
“Is that what you think of him?” Annabeth’s voice finds itself again, before Percy can tell him where to shove his sword. “You know we’ll never say yes, Luke.”
Luke looks between Percy and Annabeth. His scowl deepens at Percy, like he’s seeing something in him for the first time.
”So is that it, then?” Luke asks, hurt coloring his expression. “You’d really choose him over me?”
Annabeth’s mouth opens once. She closes it. Hesitates before she speaks again.
“It’s not about that, and you know it.”
Luke lets out a long, drawn out sigh. Percy is briefly reminded of every principal in every school he’s been kicked out of, making a big show of their disappointment to make him feel worse.
“Too bad,” Luke says, “We could have really done some damage together. But if you’re of no use to me, I can’t have you on this ship any longer.”
He reaches for a remote resting in his pocket, pressing a labeled red button. Two glassy-eyed humans, presumably being controlled by Luke, enter the room.
“Take them away,” Luke turns his back to them. “Don’t say I never gave you a chance, Annabeth.”
They get pulled into the hallway of the ship—Percy has a moment to regroup before he yells at Annabeth to run.
As they make their escape onto a lifeboat, Percy feels Luke’s mocking laughter ringing in his ears, and Annabeth’s hesitant expression flickering behind his eyelids.
Every day, Percy feels he uncovers a different layer of Annabeth.
Usually it’s exciting, like he’s finally starting to get her in the way she seems to get him without even trying. And he wants to know anything he can about Annabeth, her past, whatever she’s willing to share.
But less so now. Right now it feels like they’re on different pages, like he’s just one step behind at all times and she’s not waiting up. Like they fell out of rhythm somewhere on the Princess Andromeda and he’s not able to catch up.
He pushes their life raft through the open sea, guiding them until they end up near Virginia. She instructs him to pull up near Chesapeake Bay. She seems to know exactly where to go. The gears are turning in her mind as a plan forms.
She leads them to the hidden shelter, tucked away under braided branches and hanging vines. She takes a fortifying breath before opening the door. There’s hesitation as she gestures inside, almost sheepishly, to the supplies of blankets and sleeping bags, weaponry, water and ambrosia, a layer of dust coating every surface.
“It’s a safe house,” she explains quietly.
“You made this?” Percy asks as he enters, looking at her in awe—where does she find the time?
“Thalia and I,” she corrects him, traces her hands along the walls, “Luke, too.”
Percy feels as though he’s been doused in ice water at the name. And he knows that’s not fair, he knows that they had a life together before he came along. But it fills him with an uneasiness he doesn’t know how to name.
Annabeth walks around the small space. She takes in the sparse belongings with a fond smile playing at the corners of her lips.
A rust coloured rock rests atop a blanket. She picks it up and turns it over in her palm a few times with an unreadable expression.
“What’s that?” Percy asks.
She shakes her head and puts it down quickly.
“It’s stupid,” she says. “Luke found it on a beach when we were on the run. Told me to hold onto it every time I felt nervous or homesick or scared. When he’d go on to get food or do a patrol, I used to turn it over in my hand until he came back safe.”
She shrugs, her gaze averted. Her throat sounds tight when she speaks.
“I left it here because I thought I wouldn’t need to worry about that kind of thing anymore. Like I said, stupid.”
The sight makes Percy’s heart clench. He recognizes the gesture for what it is, he recognizes that fond way she held onto that rock.
He recognizes it because he did the same thing. All year long, staring at a photo of Annabeth in front of the Washington Monument that he carefully tucked between the pages of his crumpled notebook. The comparison makes him feel embarrassed.
He feels uneasy in this space now, a shelter built for a different world, and its memories are suffocating him. He feels like an unwanted visitor, an intruder into a life she wishes she was still living.
And what’s worse, there’s a roaring monster that has now settled down on his chest, like a minotaur and chimera had a baby, and it has sunk its protruding claws into Percy’s heart, it grows two sizes every time Luke comes up, and he can’t breathe.
Suddenly he really needs to be alone with her.
“Tyson,” Percy looks at his brother. “Why don’t you do some recon outside, huh? See if there’s any food nearby or something.”
Tyson exclaims his desire to find donuts and sets off— but the air inside the small hut doesn’t feel any clearer with just two of them there.
Annabeth busies herself with counting the supplies left behind from her last expedition here— the nostalgia is gone, she’s all business as she notes the expiration dates on the cans of food.
“You’re not worried that Luke might try to find us here?”
“No,” Annabeth says shortly, her eyes focused on her task. “I doubt he remembers. Or even cares.”
“Oh, I think he cares,” Percy retorts. “It worries me how much he does, actually.”
She looks up. Her wide brown eyes are shining in a dangerous way.
“What are you saying, Percy?”
He grits his jaw.
“What he was saying back there, to try to get you to join,” he pauses. “You didn’t, for a moment…”
She recoils. Hurt colors her face—and right away he wishes he never said anything.
“I would never,” she says. “You know that.”
“I know. I know.” Percy’s hands run over his face in frustration. “It’s just… You hesitated.”
She crosses her arms against her chest, pulled tight over her body as if protecting herself. He thinks for a moment she’s gearing up for an argument, an explanation as to why Luke’s plan to recruit her was futile from the start.
Instead she says the last thing he wants to hear.
“What do you want me to say, Percy?” she sounds helpless. “It’s Luke.”
That’s what it always comes back to.
It’s Luke.
And here is Percy, standing in the house built of their memories, staring at that stupid rock Luke once gave her, feeling like he’s playing catch up.
A sinking feeling settles into his stomach.
He looks at Annabeth. One of the few people in this world he can call his friend, his best friend. He looks at her and a pathetic, juvenile part of him wonders if she would say the same.
No. That role has been filled, long filled, by Luke. And despite everything, it’s still him.
The realization makes Percy’s ears ring.
“Fine,” he says hollowly. His eyes burn in humiliation.
“Percy—”
They probably could have gone back and forth for hours, but the fight gets put on hold. Tyson bursts back into the space with the promise of Monster Donuts, and everything is briefly forgotten.
For a beat, Percy can push every thought of Luke Castellan from his mind.
They lose Tyson on the CSS Birmingham. He nearly loses his head on Circe’s island.
Then they encounter the Sirens.
When he had turned back and saw Annabeth missing, there was only one thought crossing Percy’s mind.
Save her. Save Annabeth.
Now that they’ve made it back onto the ship and Percy steers them away from Sirens’ island, there’s far too many thoughts swimming in his mind. He tries to respect Annabeth’s privacy and not think of the vision, of the newly imagined New York City, of her parents’ outstretched hands, of Luke.
Luke, reverted back to how she must remember him, before he left camp. Smiling, happy Luke, saved by her. Proud of her. There for her. Percy can’t shake the image from his mind’s eye.
He tries not to think of her horrible, wracking sobs as he had pulled her away. She had never come apart like that before. And all he could do was protect her and get her to safety.
Annabeth sits on the deck, a blanket wrapped around her trembling shoulders. Her eyes seem vacant. She nods to him once, indicating they’ve made it far away enough from the Siren’s song.
Percy takes the wax out of his ears and sits down on the deck next to her hesitantly.
For a moment, they sit in a comfortable silence, staring up at the cloudy sky. Percy focuses on the sound of waves splashing against the boat until he manages to untangle his thoughts.
“Hi,” he says eventually.
Her tired eyes slide to him, flashing in amusem*nt.
“Hi,” she says dryly.
“Are you okay?”
She nods wearily. He suspects she’s lying.
“Did you see?” her voice is small. Embarrassed.
He wants to lie, to make that pain in her expression go away, but that won’t help her. So he tells her the truth.
“I did. I saw the world you built, and your parents, and… and Luke.”
He doesn’t want to start another argument, he swears he doesn’t, but it feels like if he doesn't ask it might kill him.
“Listen, about Luke’s offer, on the Princess Andromeda…”
“It’s not just about him,” she explains, picking at a loose thread in her blanket. “It isn’t. The Sirens have shown me my fatal flaw, hubris. I think I can make the world better, fix all my broken relationships, if I just tried. If I had a chance.”
“So you do still think you can save him, despite everything?”
They might go on like this forever, pushing and pulling over Luke Castellan. Maybe it’s not fair to her, after what she’s just gone through, to bring it up again. But he has to know. It’s like a siren song of his own doing.
She wraps herself tighter in the blanket, making herself impossibly small.
“I know that I probably can’t,” she admits, a self loathing smile on her face.
She traces the scars along her fingers. The long worn lines glint silver against her skin. He wonders where they came from—their quest last year, or from camp? Maybe they’re from her years on the run. He’s never thought to ask her, he’s been too preoccupied being jealous.
“Some things take a while to heal,” she continues. “Some days, I wake up and for a moment I’ve forgotten everything that happened, and reminding myself hurts. Like, I keep expecting to wake up in a world where everything has gone back to normal. And I go through that process again, and again.”
Her voice is hoarse. The practiced air with which she speaks tells Percy she’s thought this over several times, like she’s thought about how to explain it to him before and now she finally has a chance.
“It’s hard to reconcile who I knew and who he is now. I just keep thinking of all the promises we made,” she pushes ahead, blinking back water in her eyes. “All the milestones I’ll never get to experience with him.”
“Like what?”
“Stupid things,” she shrugs. “He was going to teach me how to drive a car. He said he would be front and center at my high school graduation. You know, things big brothers are supposed to do.”
Percy purses his lips, considering what she says. The monster that had found its way onto his chest back in that safe house is back, this time clawing its way up his throat and wrapping its hands around his neck, suffocating him.
“You still think of him as your brother,” he notes.
And as soon as he says it, he wants to throw himself off the boat. Her face crumples for one horrible, long moment before she regains her practiced composure.
“Yeah,” she whispers, her voice thick. “I do. We don’t choose our family, you would know more than anyone. And even if we chose each other, in a way, I can’t just break those bonds without trying first. He saved my life in so many ways. Don’t I owe it to him? Don’t I owe him that much?”
She sounds broken at this confession, like it’s taken more out of her than fighting against the siren’s song did. It’s months and months of pent up anxiety, finally put to words.
He feels the monster that had taken residence on his neck start to deflate. It shrinks and shrinks until there's nothing left there but hollow shame, and a vicious desire to make Annabeth’s pain go away by any means necessary.
What he’s been incorrectly identifying as nostalgia all this time, as a desire to go back to her old life rather than the current one with Percy, is actually grief. She’s mourning the life she’ll never have.
She’s mourning someone who’s still alive, which might make it all the more difficult.
“I understand,” he says quietly, and he means it. At least, he’s finally starting to.
The gray clouds overhead begin to let up. A stripe of blue paints the sky. The corner of the boat gets washed in golden sunlight.
They lapse into a comfortable silence again.
Annabeth reaches for her blue Yankees cap resting on the ground. She picks at the frayed edges, flips the underside out, and traces the stitching thoughtfully. That’s when he notices it for the first time, symbols marked in what appears to be gold sharpie.
”What’s that?” he asks, pointing to the markings.
A faint smile crosses her exhausted face. She turns the cap so that he can get a better look.
“I made this last year, after we left camp,” she admits. “After everything happened, I needed a reminder of… Of us. That everything we went through was real. Every time I felt upset about Luke I came back to it.”
He looks at the etchings, really looks at them. Two horns around a smiley face. A long, not crudely drawn trident. Large round eyes connected to a beak—an owl.
His heart clenches when he realizes what it means.
Grover. Percy. Annabeth. Marked along the underside of her most prized possession, literally keeping them on the back of her mind at all times. Her new talisman.
The words get lost between his brain and his throat. His cheeks heat up. His eyes feel misty, he can’t blame the salt water air for it.
Annabeth’s smile turns sheepish when he meets her gaze, their eyes equally glassy.
He reaches out to squeeze her hand once, her skin is icy from the water against his own. His eyebrows furrow in concern.
“Annabeth, you’re freezing,” he says, drawing his arms around her. “Come here.”
He tucks her head under his chin, rubbing circles against her back. Her shaking arms snake around his torso. Her heartbeat drums against his own until they fall into the same rhythm.
In this embrace, he tries to say everything he struggles to put words to. How sorry he is. How he wishes he could take her grief away. How much he wants to heal those scars. By the way her shivering frame curls into his chest, he thinks she might hear him.
“Better?” he whispers into her hair. She nods slowly.
“Will be,” she mumbles.
“Let’s go save our friend,” he says. “Then we’ll figure out the rest.”
