PJO: The Age of Heroes | Chapter 15 - The Second Letter
All right, a tiny bit on the shorter side but I figured I would split the last bit up into two chapters instead of having one big giant OMG massive chapter. XD But at least you can look forward to the end of the fic in the next day or so, because it's already mostly written!
So here we are, chapter second-to-the-last. PG-13 for boys being dumb and showering together, even if nothing happens because they are tired. XD Extremely minor spoiler for The Last Olympian, though I'm really only correcting what I didn't know when I started this fic because the book wasn't out yet. So yeah. :D;
I wasn’t sure why I was suddenly getting so much mail (okay, two letters isn’t really a lot, but when they’re the only two you’ve ever gotten in your life, suddenly maybe they are), but I wasn’t sure I wanted to open this one. We just stood there for a minute on the doorstep, the envelope in Percy’s hands and both of us staring at it, until Percy suddenly started moving again. He pushed open the door and lugged me in through it before closing it and crossing the room with its two rows of neatly-made unclaimed beds to the back corner where his bed sat, the last on the end near the saltwater fountain.
He stopped next to the empty bed beside his and glanced at me. Then he handed me the envelope. The paper crackled in my hands, partly with age, but also partly with power. I could feel it running through the paper, into my fingertips and from there into my veins. I almost dropped the thing right there.
It was from Hades. It was a letter from my father - I knew it in my gut just like I knew that I was alive and that Percy was standing beside me. I knew it because of the cold feeling of death that rolled off the envelope, slithering onto the floor and curling around my wrists. For a brief instant I wanted to toss it into the fountain, not interested in anything he could possibly have to say to me. But the look in Percy’s eyes told me that even if I did that, he’d fish it out and read it to me. Somehow, this was important.
Inside was a piece of parchment that matched the envelope, yellowed and curling at the edges as though someone had held it too close to a flame. There was one line written in the middle in ink so black that it seemed to swallow up the light, the words almost sinking into the paper. I had to read the sprawling script a few times to make it make sense. And then I had to read it a few more.
It said, simply, Anna di Angelo was not your mother.
I blinked, my vision swimming and for a minute I didn’t know why. It could have been vertigo or it could have been the unshed tears I could feel prickling at the back of my eyes, because I felt like I’d been hit in the stomach (and I already had, once today). I felt like I was losing my mother all over again, even if I’d never really found her in the first place. For a brief moment I stood there with the parchment freezing in my fingers, and I felt utterly alone.
But then Percy’s solid form shifted beside me, warm as his fingers curled around the hand holding the parchment, and I felt his hair brush against my temple as he leaned into me. And then I wondered, how could I ever feel alone, when he was always going to be right there beside me?
Suddenly I didn’t want to stand anymore. I sat down on the bed behind us, hard. Percy followed me down, sitting next to me as he took the paper gently from my fingers and set it beside us on the bed. Neither of us said anything at first, the air in the cabin muggy and thick - as thick as the thoughts running in circles around my head.
Then, “Hey,” Percy said quietly, after a minute, “at least you know the truth.”
I looked at him for a minute, his words echoing back and forth inside my mind, which suddenly felt very empty. And then I started laughing, feeling almost giddy. I couldn’t stop. Suddenly the whole thing seemed ridiculous.
“Nico?” Percy asked, sounding like he was worried I’d cracked or something. For a minute I felt like maybe I had.
I eventually managed to stop laughing and said, “He finally talks to me - goes though all the trouble of sending me a letter - and it says what? ‘Anna di Angelo was not your mother.’ Thanks, Dad,” I said, sarcastically, wrinkling my nose at the paper. “You couldn’t actually be bothered to tell me who was my mother, then.”
Percy was quiet for a moment, almost stunned, and then he started chuckling despite himself. I glanced over at him to see that he was watching me with a wry sort of expression in his eyes. “I guess you have a point,” he admitted, placing one hand on my knee and squeezing. “It does seem pretty unfair.”
I just sighed in frustration, all the laughter gone out of me. Okay. So Anna di Angelo hadn’t been my mother. Had she even been related to my mother? Was her life and death completely coincidental, just something that Medea had been able to fabricate and use to draw me out? I didn’t know - I didn’t know anything, except that there was one woman out there (or, well, had been) who shared my last name and who hadn’t been my mother. It was like looking for a needle in a haystack, only someone had conveniently picked up one of the pieces of hay and told you, very helpfully, This one isn’t a needle.
Sitting there, with the parchment from my father next to us and the letters from it somehow burned onto my eyes, I realized just how exhausted I was - drained past any of my reserves, and my head was spinning and the mattress felt like it might topple me to the ground if I didn’t lie down. As Percy watched I slid down onto the blankets, my head missing the pillow by a few inches but I didn’t even care. I was just so, so tired. I just needed to sleep. Maybe for a week. That might have almost been enough. Then I could deal with everything again.
I head Percy chuckling again as I felt myself starting to drift off to sleep and didn’t have the strength to try to fight it. I felt the mattress shift as he got up and then he started tugging at my boots.
“No shoes on the bed,” he said lightly, and that was the last thing I heard before I fell deeply, utterly asleep.
*
Of course, I didn’t get to sleep for a week - I didn’t even get to sleep for twenty-four hours. I did sleep until nightfall, though; when I woke up the cabin was dark, with the sounds of late-summer crickets filtering in through the cracks under the door and around the windows. I was sprawled out on the bed almost in the same position in which I’d fallen asleep, but there was something warm and solid by my side that had an arm slung over my chest.
I smiled to myself in the dark and glanced over at Percy’s sleeping form. His bangs, which had grown awfully long and probably needed a haircut, were covering his right eye and his mouth hung open slightly. His chest moved rhythmically, slowly, and he looked utterly content. I realized that I couldn’t blame him. Right now, lying here with him in his cabin, I could almost forget the world outside. It felt right, and it felt safe. Even if I knew it couldn’t last.
I didn’t know what time it was, but it had to be past curfew. The moon hung large and low in the windows, casting a silver light over everything that was almost bright enough to see by in and of itself. I tried to go back to sleep, but although my head was still spinning and aching, I couldn’t do it. So I just lay there in the dark for a while, staring at the ceiling of Percy’s cabin and feeling his comforting weight next to me and trying to think about absolutely nothing at all.
Maybe half an hour later, Percy took a deep breath and started to stir beside me. He yawned, blinking as he lifted his head enough to glance up at my face. When he realized I was awake, he gave me a sort of lopsided grin and asked, “What’re you doing up?”
I shrugged against the blankets. “I dunno. I just couldn’t fall back asleep.” I tried to stretch a little, now that I didn’t have to worry about waking him up, and every bit of me still felt stiff and sore - and sticky. I realized I was filthy, still dressed in the same clothes that I’d been wearing since I’d woken up in Medea’s lab - clothes that had been to the bottom of the Charles River and back, that had been through a whole battle earlier today, and were ripped and caked with sweat, dirt, and blood.
Percy must have noticed the way I was wrinkling my nose, because he chuckled and asked, “What?”
“I really want a shower,” I said, plucking at the material of my black t-shirt. “I’m disgusting.”
“Hm.” Percy propped himself up on his elbows and looked me over once. “Yeah... you are, a little.” He laughed and ducked as I tried to get one arm to move enough to smack him upside the head, but I didn’t really mean it.
“Well, you’re not the picture of cleanliness yourself, you know,” I told him, which made him glance down at himself and he made a face, too. He’d taken off his t-shirt, which was probably lying in a dirty, crumpled pile on the floor, but his chest and arms were streaked with dirt and dried blood as well, though thankfully most of it didn’t seem to be his. He hadn’t been hurt badly enough, I remembered with relief, to need any real medical attention.
“Well, what do you say to a shower now?” I asked, struggling up onto my elbows and hoping that the worst of the dizziness seemed to have subsided. “I could shadow t -”
But Percy was shaking his head. “Oh, no. You do that and you’ll probably pass out as soon as we get there.” He pushed himself up off the bed with a quiet groan. “We do this the old-fashioned way.”
I sat up, watching him as he hunted for towels and soap among the various things strewn about his corner of the cabin. “It’s got to be after curfew. I’m not really excited about the idea of the harpies catching us.”
Percy just shrugged, tossing a grin back at me as he came up with two (hopefully) clean towels and a bar of soap. “I’ve snuck out before. I’m not really worried about it.”
So not five minutes later, he and I (with me still leaning on him more than a little for support) made our way cautiously through the moonlight towards the building that housed the toilets and showers. The building was dark and echoing, empty like you’d expect it to be in the middle of the night. With the moonlight filtering in through the high-set windows we didn’t need to turn on the lights, which was good because that would have attracted attention for sure. Not that I was really sure Chiron would begrudge us a shower... but there was no guaranteeing it would be Chiron who found us.
We undressed stiffly and piled into a single shower stall; Percy spun the tap and we both hissed as the water came out freezing for a few seconds before it started to warm up. There wasn’t a whole lot of room in there (well, nobody built summer camp shower stalls for two), but I wasn’t about to complain. Besides, if I had tried to shower by myself I was pretty sure it wouldn’t have worked so well. I was still pretty unsteady on my feet, and while balancing with my back against the cool tiles of the shower stall worked pretty well, I was glad Percy was in there with me to catch me if I lost my footing.
Honestly, Percy did most of the work - again, not that I was complaining, though there’s nothing to make you feel like an invalid like someone else soaping you up in the shower. But it was also actually really nice - his hands were warm through the suds, and more than once I leaned down to interrupt him and steal a kiss as the water plastered our hair to our heads and ran into our eyes and mouths. It tasted a bit like rust, but that was okay because Percy tasted good despite it.
And despite everything else, I was starting to feel better. I didn’t know if it was just being clean or that the water was maybe helping to recharge me like I knew it did for Percy, but by the time we were both passably clean and thoroughly-kissed, I was feeling like I was only down to half my reserves and not rock-bottom. The water was starting to run cold again by the time Percy shut it off, and we toweled dry in the muggy air before we realized the one glaring flaw in our plan: we hadn’t brought any clean clothes with us.
“Well... that was great planning ahead,” I said sarcastically, wrapping my towel around my waist and gathering up my dirty clothes in my arms. I really didn’t want to put them back on if I could manage it. It felt like they were getting my hands grimy just holding them.
“I don’t recall you mentioning bringing clean clothes either,” Percy shot back, looking pretty chagrined as he did the same.
There was only one thing for it, I figured, stepping closer to him. “Now I think I’d better get us back my way.”
“What? No!”
“You’d rather be caught streaking through camp?” I asked, raising an eyebrow and trying to imagine how we’d explain that one if we got caught. I really didn’t want to think about it. Especially if we got caught by harpies.
“Well, we have towels,” Percy pointed out, but even he seemed to realized that towels really weren’t good substitutes for pants.
“And I feel a lot better now,” I pointed out. So before he could complain, I grabbed Percy’s hand and concentrated on getting us back to his cabin.
It worked, but not really as well as I’d have liked. “... Okay, maybe not,” I mumbled, stumbling a little as we materialized out of the shadows in the corner of the Poseidon cabin. Percy immediately dropped his clothes on the floor and braced me with both hands under my arms.
“I told you it was a bad idea! Come on, lie back down,” he said, steering me over to the bed we’d left rumpled and pulling the crisp, clean sheets back this time before levering me down onto it. He pulled my wet towel off, stepping out of his as well before he climbed into the bed after me and pulled the covers up over us. There was a bit of shifting around until we got comfortable, but we ended up in pretty much the same position we had before, with me on my back and Percy pressed against my side.
It was weird, I thought - usually Percy was the one on his back and I was the one curled up against his chest, but that had been when he was bigger than me. Now that I was bigger...
I wasn’t bigger by much, but that didn’t matter - it was a lot bigger than I was really used to being, and while I hadn’t had a lot of time to think about it for the past day or so, the implications of everything that had happened suddenly seemed to come crashing down on me all over again.
“... Percy?”
“Hm?” He raised his head a little, damp hair leaving droplets on the bare skin of my arm.
“This is... this is really okay, right?” I knew we’d talked about it, but that didn’t mean I was suddenly a hundred percent okay with this. And it didn’t mean I expected him to be, either.
He frowned. “What’s okay?”
I bit my lip. “Me. I mean... I’m still... fuck, Percy, I’m still twelve.” I shifted a little, uncomfortably. “I mean, I feel twelve. On the inside. But on the outside... I’m really stuck this way, aren’t I?” I’d thought that a hundred times before, but it still never seemed real. But by now, it was starting to sink in.
Percy shifted next to me, propping his chin on his arms, folding them over my chest. “I think so,” he said quietly, his eyes hard to read in the dark. “But you’re still you, like I said before.” He shrugged a little, more an expression than a gesture. “I’m okay with you, however you are. You know that.” He reached up, running fingers through my hair. “The question is, are you gonna be okay with it?”
I watched him for a minute, my mind running in circles. Was I? Honestly, I was still scared. Really scared. But I tried to think about it a little more objectively. After everything I’d been through... was this really so bad? I’d always wanted people to treat me like less of a kid. I’d always hated it when Percy would look at me and I just knew that even if he hadn’t meant to, he’d seen a kid. I might still be exactly the same inside, but maybe it was more that my outside matched my inside a little better, instead of the opposite being true.
After all, I hadn’t really felt like a kid since Bianca had died. Since before then, really - since that night at Westover, when we’d first found out how and why we were different. Something had changed, that night, and it had only kept changing. After Bianca had died it was like there was no going back. I could never be the same... but then, I didn’t really want to be who I’d been. For better or worse, this was who I was now. And I was just going to have to live with it.
Percy could. So why shouldn’t I?
“Yeah,” I said finally, finding my mouth stretching into a small smile, “I guess so. I mean, sometimes I really didn’t feel like I was twelve, anyway.”
“You didn’t really act twelve,” Percy pointed out with a snicker, then stopped. “Well, okay, you did... but it was a very mature twelve. Mostly.”
“Riiight. Because you’re so much older and wiser and you’d know.”
“Well, technically you’re, what? Seventy-something, I think.” He started counting on his fingers.
“That doesn’t count.”
“Sure it does, old man.”
“I don’t even - ” I stopped, the words catching in my throat. The smile died on Percy’s lips, and he watched me in the dark, just waiting for me to go on; it was a minute before I could say the whole of it out loud: “I don’t even know when I was born,” I said quietly. “I still don’t know who my mom was.” I sighed, wondering if I would ever know the truth - wondering how much longer it was going to matter so much to me, how much longer I would feel that empty place in my soul when I wondered about who I’d been and where I’d really come from. About why I was even here. “I’m right back at the beginning.”
“Well... it’s as good a place as any to start over from,” Percy said, and he levered himself up on his arms to kiss me, his lips warm against mine. “And this time I know you’ll get it right.”
So here we are, chapter second-to-the-last. PG-13 for boys being dumb and showering together, even if nothing happens because they are tired. XD Extremely minor spoiler for The Last Olympian, though I'm really only correcting what I didn't know when I started this fic because the book wasn't out yet. So yeah. :D;
I wasn’t sure why I was suddenly getting so much mail (okay, two letters isn’t really a lot, but when they’re the only two you’ve ever gotten in your life, suddenly maybe they are), but I wasn’t sure I wanted to open this one. We just stood there for a minute on the doorstep, the envelope in Percy’s hands and both of us staring at it, until Percy suddenly started moving again. He pushed open the door and lugged me in through it before closing it and crossing the room with its two rows of neatly-made unclaimed beds to the back corner where his bed sat, the last on the end near the saltwater fountain.
He stopped next to the empty bed beside his and glanced at me. Then he handed me the envelope. The paper crackled in my hands, partly with age, but also partly with power. I could feel it running through the paper, into my fingertips and from there into my veins. I almost dropped the thing right there.
It was from Hades. It was a letter from my father - I knew it in my gut just like I knew that I was alive and that Percy was standing beside me. I knew it because of the cold feeling of death that rolled off the envelope, slithering onto the floor and curling around my wrists. For a brief instant I wanted to toss it into the fountain, not interested in anything he could possibly have to say to me. But the look in Percy’s eyes told me that even if I did that, he’d fish it out and read it to me. Somehow, this was important.
Inside was a piece of parchment that matched the envelope, yellowed and curling at the edges as though someone had held it too close to a flame. There was one line written in the middle in ink so black that it seemed to swallow up the light, the words almost sinking into the paper. I had to read the sprawling script a few times to make it make sense. And then I had to read it a few more.
It said, simply, Anna di Angelo was not your mother.
I blinked, my vision swimming and for a minute I didn’t know why. It could have been vertigo or it could have been the unshed tears I could feel prickling at the back of my eyes, because I felt like I’d been hit in the stomach (and I already had, once today). I felt like I was losing my mother all over again, even if I’d never really found her in the first place. For a brief moment I stood there with the parchment freezing in my fingers, and I felt utterly alone.
But then Percy’s solid form shifted beside me, warm as his fingers curled around the hand holding the parchment, and I felt his hair brush against my temple as he leaned into me. And then I wondered, how could I ever feel alone, when he was always going to be right there beside me?
Suddenly I didn’t want to stand anymore. I sat down on the bed behind us, hard. Percy followed me down, sitting next to me as he took the paper gently from my fingers and set it beside us on the bed. Neither of us said anything at first, the air in the cabin muggy and thick - as thick as the thoughts running in circles around my head.
Then, “Hey,” Percy said quietly, after a minute, “at least you know the truth.”
I looked at him for a minute, his words echoing back and forth inside my mind, which suddenly felt very empty. And then I started laughing, feeling almost giddy. I couldn’t stop. Suddenly the whole thing seemed ridiculous.
“Nico?” Percy asked, sounding like he was worried I’d cracked or something. For a minute I felt like maybe I had.
I eventually managed to stop laughing and said, “He finally talks to me - goes though all the trouble of sending me a letter - and it says what? ‘Anna di Angelo was not your mother.’ Thanks, Dad,” I said, sarcastically, wrinkling my nose at the paper. “You couldn’t actually be bothered to tell me who was my mother, then.”
Percy was quiet for a moment, almost stunned, and then he started chuckling despite himself. I glanced over at him to see that he was watching me with a wry sort of expression in his eyes. “I guess you have a point,” he admitted, placing one hand on my knee and squeezing. “It does seem pretty unfair.”
I just sighed in frustration, all the laughter gone out of me. Okay. So Anna di Angelo hadn’t been my mother. Had she even been related to my mother? Was her life and death completely coincidental, just something that Medea had been able to fabricate and use to draw me out? I didn’t know - I didn’t know anything, except that there was one woman out there (or, well, had been) who shared my last name and who hadn’t been my mother. It was like looking for a needle in a haystack, only someone had conveniently picked up one of the pieces of hay and told you, very helpfully, This one isn’t a needle.
Sitting there, with the parchment from my father next to us and the letters from it somehow burned onto my eyes, I realized just how exhausted I was - drained past any of my reserves, and my head was spinning and the mattress felt like it might topple me to the ground if I didn’t lie down. As Percy watched I slid down onto the blankets, my head missing the pillow by a few inches but I didn’t even care. I was just so, so tired. I just needed to sleep. Maybe for a week. That might have almost been enough. Then I could deal with everything again.
I head Percy chuckling again as I felt myself starting to drift off to sleep and didn’t have the strength to try to fight it. I felt the mattress shift as he got up and then he started tugging at my boots.
“No shoes on the bed,” he said lightly, and that was the last thing I heard before I fell deeply, utterly asleep.
*
Of course, I didn’t get to sleep for a week - I didn’t even get to sleep for twenty-four hours. I did sleep until nightfall, though; when I woke up the cabin was dark, with the sounds of late-summer crickets filtering in through the cracks under the door and around the windows. I was sprawled out on the bed almost in the same position in which I’d fallen asleep, but there was something warm and solid by my side that had an arm slung over my chest.
I smiled to myself in the dark and glanced over at Percy’s sleeping form. His bangs, which had grown awfully long and probably needed a haircut, were covering his right eye and his mouth hung open slightly. His chest moved rhythmically, slowly, and he looked utterly content. I realized that I couldn’t blame him. Right now, lying here with him in his cabin, I could almost forget the world outside. It felt right, and it felt safe. Even if I knew it couldn’t last.
I didn’t know what time it was, but it had to be past curfew. The moon hung large and low in the windows, casting a silver light over everything that was almost bright enough to see by in and of itself. I tried to go back to sleep, but although my head was still spinning and aching, I couldn’t do it. So I just lay there in the dark for a while, staring at the ceiling of Percy’s cabin and feeling his comforting weight next to me and trying to think about absolutely nothing at all.
Maybe half an hour later, Percy took a deep breath and started to stir beside me. He yawned, blinking as he lifted his head enough to glance up at my face. When he realized I was awake, he gave me a sort of lopsided grin and asked, “What’re you doing up?”
I shrugged against the blankets. “I dunno. I just couldn’t fall back asleep.” I tried to stretch a little, now that I didn’t have to worry about waking him up, and every bit of me still felt stiff and sore - and sticky. I realized I was filthy, still dressed in the same clothes that I’d been wearing since I’d woken up in Medea’s lab - clothes that had been to the bottom of the Charles River and back, that had been through a whole battle earlier today, and were ripped and caked with sweat, dirt, and blood.
Percy must have noticed the way I was wrinkling my nose, because he chuckled and asked, “What?”
“I really want a shower,” I said, plucking at the material of my black t-shirt. “I’m disgusting.”
“Hm.” Percy propped himself up on his elbows and looked me over once. “Yeah... you are, a little.” He laughed and ducked as I tried to get one arm to move enough to smack him upside the head, but I didn’t really mean it.
“Well, you’re not the picture of cleanliness yourself, you know,” I told him, which made him glance down at himself and he made a face, too. He’d taken off his t-shirt, which was probably lying in a dirty, crumpled pile on the floor, but his chest and arms were streaked with dirt and dried blood as well, though thankfully most of it didn’t seem to be his. He hadn’t been hurt badly enough, I remembered with relief, to need any real medical attention.
“Well, what do you say to a shower now?” I asked, struggling up onto my elbows and hoping that the worst of the dizziness seemed to have subsided. “I could shadow t -”
But Percy was shaking his head. “Oh, no. You do that and you’ll probably pass out as soon as we get there.” He pushed himself up off the bed with a quiet groan. “We do this the old-fashioned way.”
I sat up, watching him as he hunted for towels and soap among the various things strewn about his corner of the cabin. “It’s got to be after curfew. I’m not really excited about the idea of the harpies catching us.”
Percy just shrugged, tossing a grin back at me as he came up with two (hopefully) clean towels and a bar of soap. “I’ve snuck out before. I’m not really worried about it.”
So not five minutes later, he and I (with me still leaning on him more than a little for support) made our way cautiously through the moonlight towards the building that housed the toilets and showers. The building was dark and echoing, empty like you’d expect it to be in the middle of the night. With the moonlight filtering in through the high-set windows we didn’t need to turn on the lights, which was good because that would have attracted attention for sure. Not that I was really sure Chiron would begrudge us a shower... but there was no guaranteeing it would be Chiron who found us.
We undressed stiffly and piled into a single shower stall; Percy spun the tap and we both hissed as the water came out freezing for a few seconds before it started to warm up. There wasn’t a whole lot of room in there (well, nobody built summer camp shower stalls for two), but I wasn’t about to complain. Besides, if I had tried to shower by myself I was pretty sure it wouldn’t have worked so well. I was still pretty unsteady on my feet, and while balancing with my back against the cool tiles of the shower stall worked pretty well, I was glad Percy was in there with me to catch me if I lost my footing.
Honestly, Percy did most of the work - again, not that I was complaining, though there’s nothing to make you feel like an invalid like someone else soaping you up in the shower. But it was also actually really nice - his hands were warm through the suds, and more than once I leaned down to interrupt him and steal a kiss as the water plastered our hair to our heads and ran into our eyes and mouths. It tasted a bit like rust, but that was okay because Percy tasted good despite it.
And despite everything else, I was starting to feel better. I didn’t know if it was just being clean or that the water was maybe helping to recharge me like I knew it did for Percy, but by the time we were both passably clean and thoroughly-kissed, I was feeling like I was only down to half my reserves and not rock-bottom. The water was starting to run cold again by the time Percy shut it off, and we toweled dry in the muggy air before we realized the one glaring flaw in our plan: we hadn’t brought any clean clothes with us.
“Well... that was great planning ahead,” I said sarcastically, wrapping my towel around my waist and gathering up my dirty clothes in my arms. I really didn’t want to put them back on if I could manage it. It felt like they were getting my hands grimy just holding them.
“I don’t recall you mentioning bringing clean clothes either,” Percy shot back, looking pretty chagrined as he did the same.
There was only one thing for it, I figured, stepping closer to him. “Now I think I’d better get us back my way.”
“What? No!”
“You’d rather be caught streaking through camp?” I asked, raising an eyebrow and trying to imagine how we’d explain that one if we got caught. I really didn’t want to think about it. Especially if we got caught by harpies.
“Well, we have towels,” Percy pointed out, but even he seemed to realized that towels really weren’t good substitutes for pants.
“And I feel a lot better now,” I pointed out. So before he could complain, I grabbed Percy’s hand and concentrated on getting us back to his cabin.
It worked, but not really as well as I’d have liked. “... Okay, maybe not,” I mumbled, stumbling a little as we materialized out of the shadows in the corner of the Poseidon cabin. Percy immediately dropped his clothes on the floor and braced me with both hands under my arms.
“I told you it was a bad idea! Come on, lie back down,” he said, steering me over to the bed we’d left rumpled and pulling the crisp, clean sheets back this time before levering me down onto it. He pulled my wet towel off, stepping out of his as well before he climbed into the bed after me and pulled the covers up over us. There was a bit of shifting around until we got comfortable, but we ended up in pretty much the same position we had before, with me on my back and Percy pressed against my side.
It was weird, I thought - usually Percy was the one on his back and I was the one curled up against his chest, but that had been when he was bigger than me. Now that I was bigger...
I wasn’t bigger by much, but that didn’t matter - it was a lot bigger than I was really used to being, and while I hadn’t had a lot of time to think about it for the past day or so, the implications of everything that had happened suddenly seemed to come crashing down on me all over again.
“... Percy?”
“Hm?” He raised his head a little, damp hair leaving droplets on the bare skin of my arm.
“This is... this is really okay, right?” I knew we’d talked about it, but that didn’t mean I was suddenly a hundred percent okay with this. And it didn’t mean I expected him to be, either.
He frowned. “What’s okay?”
I bit my lip. “Me. I mean... I’m still... fuck, Percy, I’m still twelve.” I shifted a little, uncomfortably. “I mean, I feel twelve. On the inside. But on the outside... I’m really stuck this way, aren’t I?” I’d thought that a hundred times before, but it still never seemed real. But by now, it was starting to sink in.
Percy shifted next to me, propping his chin on his arms, folding them over my chest. “I think so,” he said quietly, his eyes hard to read in the dark. “But you’re still you, like I said before.” He shrugged a little, more an expression than a gesture. “I’m okay with you, however you are. You know that.” He reached up, running fingers through my hair. “The question is, are you gonna be okay with it?”
I watched him for a minute, my mind running in circles. Was I? Honestly, I was still scared. Really scared. But I tried to think about it a little more objectively. After everything I’d been through... was this really so bad? I’d always wanted people to treat me like less of a kid. I’d always hated it when Percy would look at me and I just knew that even if he hadn’t meant to, he’d seen a kid. I might still be exactly the same inside, but maybe it was more that my outside matched my inside a little better, instead of the opposite being true.
After all, I hadn’t really felt like a kid since Bianca had died. Since before then, really - since that night at Westover, when we’d first found out how and why we were different. Something had changed, that night, and it had only kept changing. After Bianca had died it was like there was no going back. I could never be the same... but then, I didn’t really want to be who I’d been. For better or worse, this was who I was now. And I was just going to have to live with it.
Percy could. So why shouldn’t I?
“Yeah,” I said finally, finding my mouth stretching into a small smile, “I guess so. I mean, sometimes I really didn’t feel like I was twelve, anyway.”
“You didn’t really act twelve,” Percy pointed out with a snicker, then stopped. “Well, okay, you did... but it was a very mature twelve. Mostly.”
“Riiight. Because you’re so much older and wiser and you’d know.”
“Well, technically you’re, what? Seventy-something, I think.” He started counting on his fingers.
“That doesn’t count.”
“Sure it does, old man.”
“I don’t even - ” I stopped, the words catching in my throat. The smile died on Percy’s lips, and he watched me in the dark, just waiting for me to go on; it was a minute before I could say the whole of it out loud: “I don’t even know when I was born,” I said quietly. “I still don’t know who my mom was.” I sighed, wondering if I would ever know the truth - wondering how much longer it was going to matter so much to me, how much longer I would feel that empty place in my soul when I wondered about who I’d been and where I’d really come from. About why I was even here. “I’m right back at the beginning.”
“Well... it’s as good a place as any to start over from,” Percy said, and he levered himself up on his arms to kiss me, his lips warm against mine. “And this time I know you’ll get it right.”