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Percy stirred when the truck ran through a pothole. Kindness International Transport was carrying them west through the country and he'd been sleeping on a pile of hay, leaning against Grover's side while the truck's engine hummed steadily with an almost soothing sound. (He had helped Annabeth pull together the hay to sleep at least a little bit comfortably. She'd seemed to be doing it in orderly manner though, like she had some kind of hay-construction plan in mind, and kept shooting Percy deathly glares because apparently she hadn't appreciated the way he was just piling it up. The only thing that saved them from getting into an argument about it was Grover trotting back to them and dropping down on the hay, clearly upset about how these animals were faring.)
But after everything, Percy found it hard to sleep. The hay was warm, even if prickly, but he slept fitfully and dreamed of his mom and the rain and of Furies and a pine tree.
When he woke, it was like he hadn't slept at all. And it looked like he wasn't the only one.
"You awake?" he whispered to Annabeth.
"Someone's gotta be keeping watch, Seaweed Brain," she said and sat up a bit straighter on Grover's other side, leaning her back against the wall. "Might as well do it. I'm not looking forward to seeing more spiders when I go to sleep."
Percy nodded like that made sense, like their conversation about Thalia had nothing to do with Annabeth not sleeping, and sank further into the hay, trying to make himself comfortable. Well, as comfortable as you can be in a truck transporting animals on a cross-country road trip, and on top of a pile of dried grass. At least Grover's shoulder made a fairly good pillow.
"What's up with the spiders anyway?" he asked, trying not to fall back asleep just yet.
"Arachne." Annabeth said. "My mother once cursed her, so now all her children are out to get all children of Athena."
"So what happens when a spider gets in your cabin?"
Annabeth didn't get the chance to answer, because Grover stirred too, groaned softly and would have probably rolled over to his side if Percy hadn't occupied his shoulder. This way he kind of just snuggled closer to him.
"Did we wake you up?" Percy asked.
"Yeah," came the half-hearted and still half-asleep answer.
"Sorry."
"'S'okay," Grover muttered. "One time she woke me up and dragged me to the Athena cabin at night to convince a spider to leave..."
"And could you?" Percy asked, because that sounded kinda impressive.
"Mhm, I'm not fluent in spider, but I think I did okay..."
"Gods, Grover, I was eight," Annabeth grumbled. "It's not like it happened last week."
"No, actually you asked Luke last week to take one out under a-"
"Grover!"
Percy laughed but it almost turned into a yawn.
"You know, he kept this rescued bird in our dorm for weeks," he started telling Annabeth, who glanced at Grover questioningly. He just hid his face in Percy's hair in embarassment, so naturally, he continued. "And there was this one time with the cleaning ladies coming when he just sat there with a bird under his cap, and I had to whistle the whole time they were there so they didn't hear the chirping."
Now Annabeth chuckled too, and she was shaking her head slowly like she could picture the scene and how exactly it went down.
"Now we're even," she said with a smile and nudged Grover's side with her elbow.
"Okay, okay," he sighed, still into Percy's hair.
It was only fair, Percy thought.
"Go back to sleep, you two," ordered Annabeth then. "Who do I wake for second watch?"
"Me," Percy offered, but this time he didn't manage quite as well to hold back a yawn. "Leave Grover to his beauty sleep."
"Dude... "
"He's right. You're a growing satyr, you need your eight hours," Annabeth agreed.
"I'm older than both of you?"
"Shush."
-
Percy was dreaming. (He knew this because he was in that cave, with Grover. He was rolling up a frayed string of yarn back into a ball, his movements skittish and nervous as if he was almost close to unraveling too.)
"Hey," Percy said softly, not wanting to spook him.
Grover looked up at him and Percy saw alarmingly dark circles under his eyes. His lip quievered.
"Hi Percy," he said and then swallowed something down that could probably have been the start of a sob. Percy wanted to hug him so bad.
"We're coming," he reassured him instead. "With like ten knots, we're almost there."
Grover furrowed his brows.
"How do you-"
"Poseidon stuff." Percy shrugged. He didn't have much more of an explanation.
He looked around to survey the cave like he'd done every time he dreamt of it, did his best to commit it to memory in case he'll need that when they get here. He glanced here and there at Grover working on the ball of yarn, until he noticed something off about him.
"You're picking at your horns again," he said. "The left one's shorter, a bit."
It wasn't much of a difference, not really. But Percy knew his best friend.
"Oh no..." Grover reached for his horns as if he could physically assess how noticeable it was. "Annabeth will never let me hear the end of this."
Percy chuckled. He could almost hear the inevitable lecture - and not directed at him, for once. Grover let himself smile, even if weakly. It's like just remembering Annabeth was enough for that and honestly, Percy kind of got it.
"You're sleeping, right?" Grover asked then, contemplating something. "You see me in your dreams."
"Yeah," Percy nodded. "You didn't quite pick the best place for a sleepover, you know."
That made Grover chuckle and Percy felt an immense sense of victory.
"'Guess not."
Percy considered that.
"You should come over," he said eventually. "Sometime during the school year. I mean I never did a sleepover before but I'll ask my mom."
"Percy, we used to be roommates at Yancy."
"That's not a sleepover," Percy insisted. He really wanted this now. After all this was over and they were all safe. "We'll make it a proper one, with movies and videogames. And snacks."
He won, with that.
"The best snacks," Grover said wistfully.
"The best snacks," Percy agreed.
-
The fire crackled merrily in the almost never used fireplace of the Poseidon cabin. Percy pulled out the bag of candies his mom sent over for Christmas and in lack of a nice candy-bowl, poured them on his bed in a big pile.
Annabeth hummed. When Percy turned, he saw her hold a braid in her hand, running her fingers along the mismatched colors.
"At least we match now, Wise Girl," he told her and twirled the gray strand of his own hair around his finger, flashing her a grin. "Absolutely no one could tell us apart."
Annabeth rolled her eyes at him, which to Percy meant everything was right with the world. Or at least that most things were.
"You missed out on the fun, Grover." She poked him as she climbed on the bed, taking a candy from Percy's stash.
"Oh with you two pulling stunts like this, I can still go gray well before my time." Grover also sat, took a bite out of a candy bar and started twisting and folding the wrapper. Then, mouth still full, he continued, "Besides, I sort of felt what it was like..."
He went silent, chewing, but Percy froze. His hand hovered over the stash of candies.
"You felt it?"
"Uhh, I mean..."
"Grover," Annabeth called.
"Some of it." Grover blurted out and immediately popped the rest of the candy and the wrapper in his mouth to prevent further questions.
Percy dropped down onto his bedside table - as there was no more space on his bed.
"I'm sorry," he said. A lot of thoughts were rushing through his head, but he knew that was the first he should say. "I shouldn't have... Maybe we should... I don't know, break the link? I mean I just chose to be the demigod the prophecy talks about and I know that's not for another three years but if something happens to one of us-"
"Percy?"
"Yeah?" he asked, remembering how to breathe. Grover glanced at Annabeth. She held his gaze for a moment and nodded, so Grover turned back to Percy with a deep breath.
"That's okay," he said.
Percy sighed. He leaned back until the back of his head hit the wall with a small knock, and stayed there, deflated. Maybe it was okay. Maybe, even if it wasn't, it was worth at least some of the risks. They couldn't have found Grover if it weren't for the empathy link, and Percy wasn't sure he wouldn't have crumbled under the weight of the sky if he hadn't been there with him.
Either way, they had three more years to figure something out.
Annabeth shook her head. She fished out the Yankees cap from her back pocket and meticulously gathered the candies piled on the bedsheets into it. Then she gestured for Grover to scoot over, making room on the bed. She set the baseball-cap-turned-candy-bowl in her lap, Grover on her one side, an empty space on the other, and patted the mattress, telling Percy to climb over.
So he did.
The fire crackled, painting the room in a warm glow and Percy squeezed into his own bed with his two best friends, squashed together like sardines in a can. (His dad would have probably appreciated that metaphor.)
"Better?" Annabeth asked.
And actually, it was.
They had three more years to figure something out.
"Yeah," he sighed.
Annabeth let out a little victorious hum and dug into the candy.
"This is really good," she said after stuffing two different flavours in her mouth and Percy had to agree with her.
"Yeah, Percy's mom gets the best candy," said Grover, who only had one leg up on the bed because they didn't really fit otherwise, and reached lazily for another piece, this time eating it at once, wrapper and all.
They proceeded to finish Percy's entire stash together. By the time Annabeth's cap was empty, the sun had went down and Percy was close to falling asleep, right there, next to her.
"Grover?" Annabeth whispered, fidgeting with her baseball cap.
"Hmm?" came the sound from her other side. Percy could swear Grover was already half-asleep.
"You think you'll go on another searching quest soon?"
Grover was silent for a moment.
"I want to. I have to," he muttered eventually and leaned his head against Annabeth. "He's waiting for me."
Annabeth closed her eyes and sighed. Grover would leave again and she didn't even have the empathy link like Percy to keep them connected.
Percy stared at the ceiling. Its storm gray color looked almost black in the warm light of the fireplace and it stubbornly refused to answer any of his unasked question. Couldn't they just stay like this forever? Couldn't they go for a while with no quests, no searching and absolutely no Great Prophecy?
Probably not. That would have been too good to be true.
"Hey, we'll be waiting for you too," he told Grover. He wanted him to know. "When you get back."
"Yes," Annabeth agreed softly. "Don't stay out there too long."
"I won't. I'll find Pan," Grover promised. Then he repeated, sleepier than the first time. "I'll find him."
Soon he was snoring softly, the only sound in the room other than the fireplace. Percy listened, to him, to Annabeth's breathing, to the sound of her fingers running along the edge of her cap.
"You're thinking about how he'll leave again?" he asked, keeping his voice low.
"Yeah."
Like Thalia.
"I thought you would too," Percy told her. "Leave, you know."
"With the Hunters?"
"Yeah."
He didn't know what he would have done. He didn't know what he would do, if he didn't have this, now.
"I... considered it," Annabeth admitted. "I think I liked... the idea of it. But it's not me."
Percy found her hand, in the darkness. She took it, maybe just to stop messing with her cap.
"You know," he whispered, "I'm glad it's not you."
They could have lost her. In so many different ways, they could have lost her.
"I'm glad youre back."
Annabeth squeezed his hand.
"I'm glad to be back, Seaweed Brain."
-
"You guys are up?" Annabeth asked and dragged her blanket to the sofa. Percy and Grover scooted closer to give her some space. "Are we having a sleepover?"
"Percy had a nightmare," Grover explained.
"Grover's deadline from the Council is today," Percy added.
Annabeth climbed on the sofa.
"So... it is a sleepover," she decided. "What are we watching?"
"Nature Channel," they said at the same time.
"Oh."
The light of the TV screen bathed the whole room in a faint glow. Tyson was still sleeping, snoring on the other sofa, as did Nico, who was curled up in the expensive-looking leather armchair.
"Did you know that squirrels plant thousands of trees every year by forgetting where they left their acorns?" Grover asked.
"No, I didn't know that."
"We just learned it too," Percy said. "Why are you up?"
Annabeth stayed silent. Sweeping shots of forests from all over the world followed each other on the documentary, painting a shifting green light on her face.
"This is the first quest that's mine."
"And you're doing a good job," Grover gave Annabeth a supportive smile.
"Yeah! We found Nico, we haven't died yet, we haven't blown up any buses or national monuments-" Percy counted on his fingers.
"And we're running out of time."
Annabeth leaned her head back and sighed. She seemed weary, tired, like she was still holding up the weight of the sky. "We haven't found Daedalus. Or Pan, for that matter. We just found Nico."
"Better than nothing," shrugged Percy. He shuddered when he remembered the Daedalus in his dream and the fact that they were supposed to just march up to him and ask him for help.
"It's a good start. We just... just have to keep looking," Grover said. The narrator on TV was presenting the effects of global warming like he was reading the obituaries in a paper. "We'll find them."
He was trying to look confident, maybe to convince himself more than to fool Percy or Annabeth.
"Right? We're off to a good start." Percy wrapped an arm around him and Grover leaned his head on his shoulder, sniffling a bit. Percy looked at Annabeth, daring her to question his assessment of the situation.
"Right," said Annabeth and adjusted her big crocheted blanket to cover all three of them. Or well, mostly just their legs, but Percy took what he could get. "Though it's a little alarming that you count we haven't died yet as an accomplishment."
"Hey, it is an accomplishment. I could have been eaten by bloodthirsty horses today. And horses are supposed to be my friends!"
"Were you nice to them when you asked?" Grover looked up, nearly poking Percy's eye out with one of his horns.
"When I asked if they would please consider not eating me? Sure. I didn't say anything you wouldn't have."
"Well at least you tried, Seaweed Brain," Annabeth huffed a laugh.
"Not getting killed by human-eating horses," Percy shook his head. "This so not what normal kids talk about on sleepovers..."
Annabeth considered that.
"What do they talk about?" she asked eventually and now it was Percy's time to think it over.
"I have no idea."
To this, Grover burst out in one of his laughs that honestly sounded more close to a bleat.
"Sssh!" hurried Annabeth to shush him the same time Percy whisper-shouted, "Dude!"
Then from outside of the house, somewhere in the ranch, a cow mooed in response and then it was Percy who couldn't hold back a laugh. And then Grover also couldn't.
"Bahahaha-"
"Quiet, you guys!" Annabeth whispered. She at least had the sense to cover her mouth to keep quiet. Or more like quieter, because she was very audibly giggling behind her hand, which just added to how funny Percy's tired mind found this whole situation.
He was holding onto Annabeth's arm and laughing, loudly now, when a pillow hit him square in the face.
"It's not even three a.m., you weirdos," grumbled Nico di Angelo from the armchair and pulled his aviator jacket over his face.
Percy, Grover and Annabeth laughed so hard their shared blanket somehow ended up on the floor in an ungraceful pile of crocheted squares and really, he couldn't even tell which one of them kicked it off.
-
Annabeth slept on and off. Percy stayed, partly because he feared she might get the idea to walk around and join the preparations of the next battle when Will had explicitly told her to rest while she still could, and partly because he couldn't imagine leaving her side.
When she stirred one time, he was just turning back from the door. Annabeth frowned at him and pushed herself up on her elbow.
"We're still here," she said. Still fighting, still not overrun, still alive, she probably meant. The point all the same: it wasn't over yet.
"Yeah," Percy nodded and climbed on the bed to check on her shoulder. "Grover was here, you just missed him."
Annabeth squinted at the door, sinking into her thoughts.
"I think I heard him," she said eventually, unsure.
"You could have. His footsteps are hard to miss."
"They are," she agreed with a sigh.
Her wound was looking better, or at least to Percy it was. He wished Will could look at it but he was busy, with so many injured in the battle.
"How is he?"
"Worried," Percy told her and set to re-wrapping the bandage, working as neatly as he could. He might have even stuck his tongue out in concentration. "You scared him. You... scared all of us."
Him and Grover, they both had faith in Annabeth. If in anything, then her. Still, Percy could feel how terrified he was. And he was sure that even though he tried his best to hide it, Grover could feel he was too.
They lost so many. And there was Annabeth, injured, lying on that bed. Grover had cried, but Percy wasn't about to tell her that.
"You know him. He's holding up," he said instead.
(Juniper was safe, at least, unable to stray far from her tree at camp. She couldn't run to battle and take a poisoned knife for anyone.)
Annabeth nodded. She closed her eyes. She looked tired and it wasn't over yet.
"And how are you, Seaweed Brain?" she asked.
"Wait, aren't you the one who got stabbed? I should be asking you."
"Percy..."
She said his name as an exasperated sigh and as a plea. Percy took her hand.
"I'm holding up too."
He smiled. He was tired and scared but he smiled for her, and Annabeth pulled him close so he was almost lying down now next to her and he only kind of hit the headboard with his shoulder. It didn't hurt.
He hugged Annabeth back. She smelled like nectar and rubbing alcohol and she buried her face in his shirt.
It wasn't over yet.
"We're still here, Wise Girl," Percy whispered, partly to reassure her, partly to himself. Partly to the gods and to the titans and to the whole world. "We're still here."
-
Percy startled awake from a nightmare and for a solid five seconds, couldn't decide if it was his own erratic breathing that woke him or Grover rolling over.
"Dude," Grover groaned, sleep sitting heavy in his voice, and pulled a pillow over his head. "You kicked me."
Percy blinked, the familiar ceiling of his room, the faint noises of the city, the warmth encompassing him drawing him back to reality.
"Sorry," he mumbled.
On his other side, Annabeth raised her head from his shoulder. She blinked sleepily too, but she surveyed both of them expertly and broke out in a soft smile.
"At least it wasn't the other way around," she said, teasing. Percy honestly found it impressive that even woken up from her sleep, her first thought went to fondly making fun of them. "Grover kicking you would have hurt more."
"It was one time, Annabeth," huffed Grover, muffled by the pillow.
Annabeth chuckled and gave Percy her best can you believe this guy? look. Her eyes glinted in the half-light of Percy's bedroom. Percy sighed, closed his eyes and pulled her closer with one arm.
"Don't make me break out the consesus song, guys," he whispered, half into Annabeth's hair.
Grover threw aside his pillow.
"Don't you dare," he mumbled and rolled back to gently head-butt Percy's shoulder. He responded by reaching an arm around him like he did with Annabeth. It was only on quests they slept like this. Or sometimes sleepovers.
Nightmares, common occurance as they were in their line of work, sucked. Still, looking back now on the one he just had, it didn't feel so bad. He couldn't even recall what it'd been about, as if he'd completely forgotten that he'd felt scared, just moments ago. Now he just felt warm. And safe.
He thought maybe he should organize more sleepovers.
"Nightmare?" Grover asked quietly, as if he just read his thoughts. And come to think of it-
"Tell me you didn't feel that through the empathy link."
"Nah, don't need to. I know demigod dreams aren't fun."
"Plus you talk in your sleep," Annabeth's voice added from the direction of his shoulder. "And you-"
"Drool, I know." Percy sighed and tried to hide a smile. "So I've been told."
They both laughed, softly, Annabeth into his shoulder, Grover into the pillow right by his side. It was warm here and Percy felt happy. So happy he was sure Grover could feel it, the other side of the empathy link buzzing in his mind like ringing laughter, so tangible he wouldn't have been surprised if Annabeth sensed it too.
(She must have, because she moved again, slightly adjusting her position to give Percy a soft kiss on the cheek. If it wasn't an indication of that then Percy didn't know what else.)
Yeah, more sleepovers sounded good. Staying like this forever sounded good.
"Guys," Grover started and call Percy the newest Oracle the way he knew what he was going to say before he even finished. "We should get some snacks."
Annabeth hummed, deep in thought, probably weighing the pros and cons of staying warm and cozy versus getting oreos.
"I could eat," she decided.
"Yeah," Percy agreed and kissed her forehead before getting out from under the covers. "Snacks sound good."