Percy Jackson

By the time I was awake and conscious again, I was in the Big House— laying on the couch across from the fireplace as Grover sat next to me. To my right, Chiron sat in his wheelchair, Mr. D to my left in the chair. They were having a conversation with somebody behind me, but I wasn't positioned to see who it was.

"—even know what could've brought this on." Chiron insisted. "the questers have only been back for a handful of hours now, but surely enough, right around the start of dinner, Grover and Jason Grace brought Percy in, completely besides himself. Perhaps it was something that during the quest— we haven't been able to gather as a council to hear the story yet. I know I'd love to hear what possessed your son to go on this quest."

"Wh..." I started to sit up, looking at Chiron, then behind me, seeing my parents. Neither of which looked all that happy— but my dad looked a lot more mad than my mom did. Mr. D was making a point of not looking at him. "You're joking, right? You sent an inexperienced, untrained demigod on a quest where one of my friends and one of the pillars of camp was missing— and you didn't think I was going to go?"

"Go and do what, boy? Protect her?" The trainer questioned. "Because I can't help but notice that she hasn't returned with you. So what were you trying to accomplish? I mean, really, Perseus?"

"Oh, don't act like you don't know exactly what happened to her," I snapped, noticing my boyfriend tense a little since I usually don't argue this directly with Chiron. That was Luke's job, and he proved it didn't work.

But I didn't care about it working— I cared about telling him and my parents how it was, because knowing the centaur, he's been downplaying everything for the last 15 minutes so my parents don't worry.

"Excuse me?" Chiron challenged, leaning forward as I heard the door to the Big House open and close. "Would you like to reconsider your tone, young man?"

"You refused to tell an 10 year old boy that his sister was dead," I ignored his warning. "Bianca has been dead for days and you knew that and yet you still subjected another child— a teenager, whatever, into telling this kid that he had no family left. And I know that you knew, because when he asked me where his sister was, I looked at you, and you refused to look at me."

"I would never—"

"You have and you did." I cut him off. "I don't care what you would do, Chiron— what you did is what matters. A 10 year old child is missing. He's gone! I searched the woods with Grover and Annnabeth for hours before I couldn't do it anymore. A child is missing because you couldn't do your fucking job. With his scent, he is as good as dead out there unless you send searchers out, and you know that. But you won't send searchers out, right? Because he chose to leave?"

Chiron gave me a smug smile.

"I'm afraid family affairs and campers status' are Mr. D's responsibility, last I checked," he insisted, as if it wasn't the morale of the point. "your anger is misdirected, child."

"Don't get me involved in this— you were the one that decided he wouldn't get told, not me." Mr. D quicklly defended himself. "You took over my meeting with Nico so I couldn't tell him. Your anger is perfectly placed, kid."

I scoffed, a little surprised that Mr. D even cared to defend himself with my dad here, but I suppose it wasn't a matter that directly involved me.

"Oh, I know my anger is perfectly placed," I reassured the god of wine. "I know it because I'm talking to person who would rather let demigods kill themselves, run off on suicide missions, or just plain run away— instead of take any recommendations from a god or demigod on how to make those things not happen anymore."

I paused, standing as I leaned in towards the centaur.

"We now know for certain it's possible to have a life after camp," I reminded Chiron, who seemed almost intrigued by the notion. "Did you know— one of the most common causes of death for Romans is old age?"

Chiron sealed his lips.

"Funny, isn't it?" I concluded, standing straight up again and walking back to where my parents stood. "You better have a plan set in place for what happens if Hades doesn't know his son's whereabouts on the solstice."

Chiron chuckled.

"Perseus, you are but a young demigod." My former Latin teacher tried to level with me, even though he refused to let go of any of the power. "What will you try and do if I don't have a plan devised?"

I looked at my boyfriend, then back to the centaur.

"I won't return to Camp Half-Blood." I threatened, knowing that he has to know about the Titan stirring in Tartarus by now. "Until you can put together a search team and prove to me that you put in proper effort to find a child that is supposed to be under your care for the next eight years, I will not consider stepping foot inside Camp."

"Perseus, the Great Prophecy—"

"Will become your problem." I finished his sentence, grabbing my backpack from next to the couch and throwing it on. "I may be the one that dies, but whatever tries to raze Olympus will be your problem. After all, I'm just a young demigod, right? What do I know about helping save the world?"

With that, I left the Big House, set on keeping my promise to Chiron, not looking back for the entirety of the walk to our car.

We have plenty of spies within camp now. I'm no longer needed here.

It's not like I ever wanted to be here in the first place, right?

•••
Luke Castellan

I don't know how I was more nervous now than I was when I met with Kronos for the first time and we devised the plan to steal the Bolt.

But yet here Thalia and I were, standing outside the Chase residence with a pan of brownies in hand (that probably aren't very good— Thalia and I aren't great bakers or cooks), waiting for Mr. Chase to answer the door.

For Annabeth's dad to answer the door.

"Hello!" Said a tall, blonde man as the door swung open. "Sorry for the wait, I'm so glad you guys could make it tonight! Please, come in."

"Thank you for having us," I said in return as we stepped inside a house that was much nicer than the one I grew up in— though maybe not as nice as Beryl Grace's estate. "I'm sure it was a difficult, deciding if you wanted to invite two strangers over for dinner, more or less. I'm Luke. I presume you're Annabeth's father, Mr. Chase?"

He smiled, shaking my hand.

"Please, just call me Frederick," the blonde insisted, his resemblance to Annabeth somewhat shocking— the only large difference I could spot between the two would be Annabeth's eye color being gray, whereas her fathers' was a dull blue. "And I got the chance to meet Thalia earlier today, and Annabeth has told me so much about you that you're hardly a stranger, Luke. I'm sure she told you plenty about us?"

"Well..." Hesitantly, I nodded as Mr. Chase said a quick hello to Thalia again and led us up the stairs towards their dining room. "Yes. But not after she went home for the last time. That's due to me no longer being at camp, though, so we haven't been able to talk like we used to. She mentioned to me that she was staying at home for most of the year now the last time I saw her, but when I asked how it was going, she just shrugged and said that it was fine. She was going back, after all."

Frederick sighed.

"Yeah, that's a... Good word for how things have been." But oddly enough, Annabeth's dad didn't seem confused or concerned by my report. "Things have been, I think, good between Annabeth and I. We have moments here and there, but they're getting smaller and more spread out. But with my wife..."

There was a pause, the mortal man losing his voice before asking us if we'd like anything to drink, telling us we could sit wherever at the table.

"She just doesn't seem to want to connect with Annabeth, and it's super frustrating— as I'm sure you noticed earlier, Thalia." Frederick Chase went on, sounding troubled as he sat across from us. "and a part of me understands why, when Annabeth was young, she didn't want to connect with her— Annabeth appeared on our doorstep 18 months after Athena and I had separated. Elizabeth, my wife, and I were already together by then and had been for a for almost a year by then. Just under. So she... Assumed, initially, that I had cheated on her."

He took a breath as we shared to dish the food.

"And, although to this day she doesn't believe who Annabeth's mother is, I was able to convince her that I never cheated. Once I did, she warmed up to Annabeth and tried to act like her mother, and did for a while. But after she got pregnant with the boys..."

Frederick shrugged.

"To this day, I don't really know why Elizabeth changed her attitude around and about Annabeth." Athena's ex-lover concluded. "at first, we all chalked it up to pregnancy hormones or nerves about giving birth and being worried that it would be a mixed family, but... It never got better, and so much of it I never saw because I still had to work while she was pregnant and on maternity leave. Annnabeth left not long after the boys were born, once she realized it wasn't going to magically get better, I'm sure, and the rest is history. Now at home Elizabeth hardly acknowledges Annnabeth and misgender and dead names her, which has caused tension with the whole family now, but...'

He let out one last breath.

"I'm just happy she chooses to come home at all," Mr. Chase finished his story. "Family is a messy thing. But I'm glad to finally meet the people that raised her after she left us, and kept her safe and alive for six years— it couldn't have been busy, even within the camp. You guys are what? 18? You aren't that much older than Annnabeth, correct?"

"I'm 19, Thalia turns 18 in a couple days," I confirmed his assumption. "And it was hard in the beginning, being on the streets and constantly worrying about monsters and also a seven year old, but we... I figured it out. We didn't really have it down at all before Thalia was turned into a tree. It took me a while after that, and once I figured it out, it was easy since we were at camp— it's the safest place in the world for demigods, after all. But... Mentally, it was a lot. Emotionally."

I paused, realizing how awful that could potentially sound.

"Not that I wouldn't do it again— I love Annabeth like a little sister and if she ever needs a place to crash, my— our apartment is always open." I immediately back tracked, seeing Mr. Chase smile. "Annabeth herself honestly made things easier at times, but I myself was just going through a lot so it made being there for her her at times. I think growing up at camp was perfect for her— she loves it there more than anyone else I know. Not that that's a hard marker to beat anymore, but..."

"I do occasionally wonder if she thinks of Chiron as more of a father to her than me," Frederick commented, which didn't surprise me. "did you not like camp? Or, are there a lot of kids who don't?"

Thalia chuckled.

"Sorry." My date mate apologized.

"I... Liked it. Initially." I explained, trying to be careful about how I sounded to a god's former lover. "Um, there was some initial tension with my siblings because I had met our dad before I ever got to camp and let's just say I never want to see him again. But I liked it as a camper, until I became a councilor and learned just how badly Chiron sucks at his job."

"Oh?"

Nodding my head, I put my fork down.

"I spent years arguing and bantering and bickering with the old horse." Telling an almost complete outsider about my frustrations with camp was weird, I'll admit, but refreshing. "I can't count the number or solstice meetings where I, as the like, defacto camp leader, begged our parents for anything to help. More workers or more facilities or anything— to claim their kids. They'd just point me back to Chiron, and he wouldn't listen to me. Over the years, I got fed up, so I left to work and go to college, among other things."

Frederick raised an eyebrow.

"Something to do with political differences, as you said, Thalia?"

My partner nodded their head.

"When asking nicely doesn't work, you have to try other options to get things done." Thalia confirmed what they must've said when she was here with the quest party earlier. He put a hand on my thigh. "Our parents suck. The goal isn't to kill them or anything— immortality sounds fucking awful. But how they treat their children and how Chiron treats demigods is awful. Something needed to be done about it, so that's what we're doing."

"And this upsets Annnabeth because...?"

"She idolizes Chiron and the gods," I knew that answer. "Or, most of them, at least. Which, it's not completely her fault— she was raised at camp, Chiron is like a dad to her, and she's never... Actually interacted with her mom. She has no negative experience to criticize, and while I think she agrees with the things that Thalia and I want, she doesn't agree with the route that we... Well, okay, I chose to take."

"I see— can't say I'm surprised." Frederick said, thinking through what I just told him. "I can't speak much on the gods— I'd love it if I had received child support from Athena, but we managed. Once I got tenure, it was a lot easier, but... We don't talk about Annabeth's mom around the house. I think I've talked to my sister about it more than I have with Annabeth— though that's because my sister also has a demigod child. From a different pantheon, though. So we used to help each other out, but it's been a few years since we've seen each other now. Like I said, family is messy."

Agreeing with his last statement, I wondered what kind of blood the Chase family has in order to attract two different gods to the same generation of people to have kids.

And from different pantheons, too.

"You can say that again," Thalia agreed, raising her glass and taking a sip. "What—"

"We're home!" Two boys yelled from the front door, who I assumed to be Annabeth's younger brothers. "Mom is going to the store, we're starving. Is there any food?"

Mr. Chase sighed.

"Sorry, they both just got back from their sports," he apologized before calling out to his sons. "Come on in, boys, you might need to warm up your plates. We have guests, so be polite."

The two boys came in and immediately shot Thalia and I to the past.

Of course, they're twins, so the two boys looks similar, but...

"It's crazy, right?" Mr. Chase seemed to know what we were thinking. "how similar they look to Annabeth, even with a different mom? Obviously that'll change as they get older, but..."

The two of us nodded our heads.

"Or who knows, maybe it won't," their dad speculated. "Maybe all three of my kids will end up being trans and then when I'm old and senile I'll barely be able to tell them apart because Annabeth's gray eyes aren't very different from the boys' blue eyes."

I laughed at the idea as the twins sat down at the table with their warmed up plates.

"Boys," Frederick began, earning their attention as he motioned to us. "this is Luke and Thalia— they're the people who took care of Annabeth when she wasn't staying at home. Thalia, Luke, this is Bobby and Matthew, my two son's."

Bobby squinted.

"But you're not old enough to be parents." The younger Chase said, which was true. "Well, maybe now you are, I don't know how old you are, but there's no way you were old enough to have kids when we were babies."

I smiled.

"You're right Bobby, neither Thalia or I were or really are old enough to have kids." I agreed with him. "Think of us more like Annabeth's older siblings rather than her parents."

"Oh, okay." He said, taking a bite of his food. "Why are you guys here? I thought you lived all the way in New York."

"I'm originally from California," Thalia answered the curious boy. "I had some things to do at my childhood home before we gave to go back home, to New York. Your dad invited us over for dinner tonight when he heard he would be around so we could get to know each other and fill each other in on what we've each missed out on with Annabeth."

"They're only here for dinner— they fly back tonight." Mr. Chase reiterated for the twins. "Do you have any questions for them about themselves or about New York or about your sister?"

The two of them remained silent for a second, focusing very hard as they tried to think of a question.

"Oh!" Matthew piped up. "I know you might not know because she's not here, but why does Mom call Annabeth a different name? Did something happen when she was gone? Did she used to have a different name?"

Frederick and I shared a look, me silently asking him how much the boys know about Annabeth's identity.

"She did, but I won't say what it was because it makes her feel really bad when people use it," I explained to them. "That name is called a deadname because you're not supposed to use it. When we met Annabeth, she still went by her deadname. I believe she was around your age, 6 or 7. It wasn't until... A couple years later that she started to insist that we call her a new name. It wasn't Annabeth at first— it took a year or so of trying out different names before Annabeth really stuck. The people in New York were, for the most part, really nice about it, so she was worried about coming home and having everyone call her the wrong name and calling her him."

"And everyone in New York calls her Annabeth?" Bobby followed up.

We both nodded our heads.

"So why doesn't Mom?" Matthew repeated his question. "do you think she just thinks we're talking to somebody else when we say Annabeth? Because it's been a super long time since Annabeth came back from New York."

"Your mom..." We let their dad answer that question. "your mother doesn't think that Annabeth is old enough to know or understand her identity—who she is as a person. And even when Annabeth is older, and that can no longer be an argument she makes, your mother doesn't believe that you can feel differently from what was written on your birth certificate. Your mom knows that Annabeth's name is Annabeth, Matthew— she chooses not to use it."

And, at this, the two of them seemed troubled. Frustrated by what they were learning about their mom— the person who is supposed to love them unconditionally.

"But... That's like, really mean, because the other name makes Annabeth feel bad." And it's almost like it's a miracle that an 8 or 9 year old can understand this concept very simply, and yet a 30 year old woman refused to even consider it. "And like, parents aren't supposed to make their kids feel bad. They're supposed to help them and be nice to them. What if I said that I was still a boy but I wanted my make to be Billy instead of Bobby? That's different than my birth certificate."

Mr. Chase put his hand on his son's shoulder.

"I'm not sure what your mom would think of that, Billy-Bobby," he admitted with a sad smile. "it's more about Annabeth transitioning into becoming a girl, a female would be a better term, physically, rather than just the name. Using the wrong name is just your mom's way to try and convince Annabeth that she's wrong. Which is not something that I enjoy your mother doing— we've argued about it in the past, and we talk about it at therapy."

"Oh, okay." Bobby said, then looked at the two of us to ask us the most important question of the night. "does Annabeth have a secret boyfriend or girlfriend that she hasn't told us about?"

I smiled.

"If it's a secret from you, it's a secret from us," I answered. "I'll get my spies to look into it, okay?"

•••
Hiiiiiiii sorry I've also been writing another fic (Leo moment) in the background bc I needed to take a breather from this one but now I'm back!!!!