A few nights after the fight with Gaea, Percy lies awake in bed. He feels so lonely in Cabin 3. He thought that after spending so much time on that ship he’d be glad to be alone and on solid ground, but he misses being near the rest of the crew. After what feels like hours of staring at the ceiling, Percy can’t stand the silence anymore, so he climbs out of bed and out the door. He doesn’t have a clue where he’s going, since it’s 1 a.m. and he’s sure everyone’s asleep, but he needs to be outside. Luckily he wasn’t the only one with that idea, since he runs into Annabeth almost immediately. “I can’t be in there anymore,” she said, “they don’t get it, they don’t know what it feels like. Everyone just goes to sleep like everything’s okay and it’s not and I just... I just couldn’t be in there.” Percy gives her a sad smile, and laces his fingers through hers. He leads her to the beach, where they sit down, leaning on each other, and look at the stars. “Which constellation is that one?” he asks, both of them knowing he knows the answer. She tells him anyway, appreciating the distraction. They sit like that for a while, staring at the stars, until they hear the crunch of sand behind them and turn around. “All of the kids keep looking at me weird, like I’m gonna snap or something,” Piper shrugs, sitting down besides them, “I needed to get away for a little.” Hazel, Frank, and Reyna walk up behind her. “Couldn’t sleep,” Hazel said, sitting cross-legged in between Piper and Annabeth, leaning back onto Frank’s chest as he sits down behind her. Nico and Jason weren’t far behind them. “I didn’t know it would be hard to sleep when I wasn’t in danger of being brutally murdered while I was doing it” Nico complained as he sat next to Reyna. The group sits quietly together, content that they were surrounded by other people who knew what they had gone through, simultaneously comforted and offended by the peace and indifference of the scenery around them. Piper finally breaks the silence: “what was it like here, Percy, before... all this?” Startled, Percy starts talking. He and Annabeth talk about before the Titan War, they talk about Charlie and Silena and Lee, they talk about doing camp chores and the Stoll brothers’ pranks and Percy talks about Zoe. Piper talks about the time she, Leo, and Jason stopped some Maenads and Jason talks about the first time he won a sword fight. Frank tells a story about his mom and Reyna talks about her and Hylla defeating the pirates. Nico remembers running around the Lotus hotel with Bianca and Hazel describes her first time riding a horse. They talk until the sun rises about before. Before they knew what would happen to their friends. Before they spent months fighting for their lives. Before Percy and Annabeth fell into Tartarus and before they watched Leo climb into the sky and not come down. They talk about the before, and hope that it helps them feel okay in the after. Chiron finds them there in the morning, fast asleep on top of each other, and tells the other campers to avoid the beach area until they wake up.
gummygunk
andulkaphoto
janainaart
turnnoffyourmind
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