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The sun was sinking in the sky, turning the surface of the lake to gentle waves of silver and gold. Soon it would be sundown, and the cleaning harpies would be out for blood. Percy knew his mom would be waiting at the bottom of the hill.
As a place alone to sit and collect his thoughts, the lake was assuredly not the best place - Luke had put paid to that idea. But with his friends around, it wasn’t a half bad hangout spot. The strawberry fields stretched on, seemingly endlessly, painting the landscape with rows of red and green. Best of all, the sounds of the waves managed to soothe something in Percy’s heart that never seemed to stop pounding.
He reached for his wrist in a reflex that had become ingrained after only a summer, and still found himself flinching when his fingers didn’t land on polished shell. He lifted the fraying sleeve of his zip-up hoodie to his mouth instead, gnawing on the loose thread.
His back ached.
It was a good thing that his t-shirt - ratty and well-worn, but comfortable and familiar for all that - was darkly coloured, so the blood didn’t show up too much. Despite that, it was tacky on his skin, sticking the fabric to his back. Percy was more mad about the slash cutting open his jacket than anything else - he should have been furious at Luke, should have been raising the lake in his anger and rage, but somehow he couldn’t bring himself to feel anything at all. His body felt distant and alien, like he was just a mind piloting a meat suit, and without any conscious thought his foot began to scrape back and forth against the grassy earth.
“Seaweed brain,” came Annabeth’s voice, cutting through his reverie. “Quit daydreaming, tough guy, you’re making yourself look dumber than you really are.”
He blinked, and she was standing above him, knife held towards him. She had the same self-confident look on her face, the same high ponytail, the same battle stance as she had had all summer. There was something soothing to see that she had changed so little, when he felt like he was someone completely new.
Percy got to his feet and drew his sword, striking against Annabeth’s knife as the sound of metal on metal rang out across the lake. The wild grin on her face as she parried and whirled around to slash at him again buoyed his spirits more than the ambrosia he’d consumed, and as the two of them fell into sparring, play-acting the realities of combat they’d already faced, he began to feel that he really was occupying his body again.
“Coming from you, I think that’s a compliment,” he said, gripping his sword in his right hand so he could scrub through his hair with his left. “I’m not as dumb as I could be, huh?”
Annabeth laughed, the sound clear as a bell, and had him pinned in a moment. “You tell me, idiot, which of the two of us was it who thought that Auntie Em’s Garden Emporium was a good place to dodge the storm?”
He kept his grip on his sword, but only barely. Unbidden, his left hand flew to the zipper of his jacket, fiddling away even as he dodged another strike. Percy’s eyes were fixed on the helmet on Annabeth’s t-shirt as he answered her. “You were the one who told me to be decisive!”
“And you doubled down - remind me, was it a good idea to send Medusa’s head to Mount Olympus?”
She finally managed to knock his sword from his hand, and Percy let the fight leave his body, leaning his head on her shoulder. “I keep telling you, we are impertinent.”
Annabeth offered him a hand to hold as they sank to the ground together. He was feeling ten times more present in his own body, but with that feeling came the reminder that he had nearly died. His back was aching again.
“You promise you’ll be back next summer?” Annabeth whispered. She had turned her head to face him, but Percy stared up at the sky, gilded with the colours of the sunset. His wrist felt bare without the seashell bracelet, and one hand drifted up to dig into his temple while the other clutched at his zipper.
“I said I would,” Percy said. “Shouldn’t be too hard to survive ‘til then. No Gabe means no more cover from monster attacks, but it also means I won’t die from the smell.” A large part of Percy was over the moon that it would finally be just him and his mom. No more smacking him around, no more chip dust sprayed everywhere, no more wasting his mom’s meagre salary on Febreze.
“Not what I meant, Percy,” Annabeth said, shoving his shoulder lightly. “You promise you’ll come back?”
Percy looked out over the lake. He could see in the distance Grover’s shaggy figure as he lumbered towards them. “How could I leave my favourite people behind?”
When Grover reached them, it was clear that he’d been beset by nymphs on the way. There was a sunflower blooming behind his ear, trapped under the arm of his glasses, and a necklace of juniper blossoms was already beginning to fall apart and shower flowers as he advanced.
“Hey guys!” Grover flopped down with no hesitation on Percy’s right, tucking his head into the crook between Percy’s neck and shoulder. “Percy, I thought you were leaving? Shouldn’t you have been gone by now? I’m sure your mom’s waiting.”
It occurred to Percy that Grover was much more comfortable here, at Camp Half-Blood, than he ever had been in the real world. He was built for strawberry fields and cloud gazing by the lake, more than he’d ever been for Latin class and Nancy Bobofit’s arson attempts. Grover could let his furry legs breathe at Camp Half-Blood, without any fear of shame or harassment. What could Percy offer in comparison to the safety and idyll of a place like camp?
“I’ll be on my way in a minute,” Percy said. The rhythmic tapping of the zipper itself against the metal teeth sounded overly loud to him, and he began to scrape his foot back and forth instead.
Grover took Percy’s hand, lacing their fingers together. “You’re just taking a breather before you have to face the real world again, huh? And I guess you’re still worried about Luke.”
The thought of him fell heavily between the three of them. Percy kicked his feet, suddenly feeling trapped in his tattered Nikes, and managed to toe off his sneakers without having to give up the comfort of Grover’s hand in his.
“He won’t try anything,” Annabeth said. The quaver in her voice was hardly noticeable, and Percy couldn’t put a finger on what it meant. “He’s done enough.”
“And I’ve got the squirrels on the case,” Grover said, in what was presumably meant to be an encouraging tone. It fell a little flat considering all that squirrels had managed to do for them previously was confirm that they were lost - in New Jersey - but the sentiment was obvious.
Percy knocked his head against Grover’s, then Annabeth’s. “Thanks, guys.” Betrayed by a friend. Being stabbed in the back - quite literally - was the worst possible way Percy could have thought of for that particular aspect of the prophecy to come true. He would almost have preferred Annabeth to have known where the bolt was because she planted it, because part of him was certain that he could forgive Annabeth for anything. Then again, something told him that betrayal would have hurt worse if it had come from Annabeth or Grover.
That wasn’t the only line of the prophecy giving him trouble. Fail to save what matters most. In a way, it could have meant that he’d failed to directly save his mother from the Underworld - or that he’d failed to stop Luke, since Annabeth had been the one to save his life - but something in Percy’s pounding heart was terrified that it meant something else entirely. That the prophecy wasn’t over yet. His destiny, awful as it was, could still be coming true - and any decision he made now could be the one that led to his failure.
“We made it home,” Grover said. Percy turned his head to see that Grover was staring out across the lake and the fields, a look of wonder in his eyes. “We really did it. And now you’re really going home, buddy.”
“Yeah.”
Annabeth took his left hand and squeezed it. “Grover’s just jealous, ‘cause he wants to go home with Mrs Percy’s Mom too.”
Grover’s cheeks lit up bright red. “Annabeth, you didn’t have to mention that again!”
“We made it home,” Percy repeated. He ran one socked foot up Grover’s furry leg, smiling faintly as Grover began to giggle. It was easy as anything to bring a smile to Grover’s face, ticklish as he was. “And it was the three of us that stopped a war between the gods. I think people will remember that forever.”
“And you did save what matters most,” Annabeth finished. “Your mom’s waiting to take you home, Percy.”
“Yeah, dude, I think you really gotta go.” Grover’s face was a bouquet of emotion, impenetrable varieties flashing across in ways Percy’s face never seemed to manage. “I don’t think Mr D was kidding about the cleaning harpies.”
Percy fixed his gaze firmly on the wisps of purple and gold clouds above them, wishing for some conductor in the sky to tell him what to do. “If I go.”
He couldn’t manage more than that, swallowing hard. Annabeth and Grover tightened their grips on his hands in perfect tandem, shoring him up from both sides.
“If I go, promise you’ll still be here when I get back?”
Annabeth leaned over and pressed a kiss to his forehead, gentle strands of her dark hair tickling his face. “I promise I’ll remember you.”
When she had settled back down, Grover leaned over to kiss the crown of his head, the boxy frames of his glasses pressing awkwardly against his skin. “I promise we’ll still be your home.”
“‘Cause it’s you guys that matter,” Percy let himself admit in a whisper. “And I can’t lose you too.”
“I’m not leaving your side,” Annabeth said firmly, “no matter how physically far away we are.”
Grover nodded, kissing Percy again, this time on his cheek. “I’m not leaving your side. You can stay with me any time, buddy, so long as you think I’m good enough for you.”
“I’m not leaving your side,” Percy whispered, letting his eyes drift shut as he savoured the moment with the two of them. “And I’ll be back next summer.”
In a few moments, the sun would dip below the horizon, and he would need to shoulder his bags and leave camp. He would need to leave his friends to go back home, which felt a lot like leaving his home to go to his family. But for the moment, Percy was good enough for someone, and there was no way he was leaving their side.