Heroes of Olympus Series. Annabeth Chase X Male Reader Story

Sleeping Ourselves To Death

Leo's POV

Leo spent his night wrestling with a forty-foot-tall Athena. Ever since they'd brought the statue aboard, Leo had been obsessed with figuring out how it worked. He was sure it had primo powers.

There had to be a secret switch or a pressure plate or something. He was supposed to be sleeping, but he just couldn't. He spent hours crawling over the statue, which took up most of the lower deck.

Athena's feet stuck into sick bay, so you had to squeeze past her ivory toes if you wanted some Advil. Her body ran the length of the port corridor, her outstretched hand jutting into the engine room, offering the life-sized figure of Nike that stood in her palm, like, Here, have some Victory!

Athena's serene face took up most of the aft Pegasus stables, which were fortunately unoccupied. If Leo were a magic horse, he wouldn't have wanted to live in a stall with an oversized goddess of wisdom staring at him.

The statue was wedged tight in the corridor, so Leo had to climb over the top and wriggle under her limbs, searching for levers and buttons. As usual, he found nothing. He'd done some research on the statue.

He knew it was made from a hollow wooden frame covered in ivory and gold, which explained why it was so light. It was in pretty good shape, considering it was more than two thousand years old, had been pillaged from Athens, toted to Rome, and secretly stored in a spider's cavern for most of the past two millennia.

Magic must've kept it intact, Leo figured, combined with really good craftsmanship. Annabeth had said...well, he tried not to think about Annabeth. He still felt guilty about her and (Y/N) falling into Tartarus.

Leo knew it was his fault. He should have gotten everyone safely on board the Argo II before he started securing the statue. He should have realized the cavern floor was unstable.

Still, moping around wasn't going to get them back. He had to concentrate on fixing the problems he could fix. Anyway, Annabeth had said the statue was the key to defeating Gaea. It could heal the rift between Greek and Roman demigods.

Leo figured there had to be more to it than just symbolism. Maybe Athena's eyes shot lasers, or the snake behind her shield could spit poison. Or maybe the smaller figure of Nike came to life and busted out some ninja moves.

Leo could think of all kinds of fun things the statue might do if he had designed it, but the more he examined it, the more frustrated he got. The Athena Parthenos radiated magic. Even he could feel that. But it didn't seem to do anything except look impressive.

The ship careened to one side, taking evasive manoeuvres. Leo resisted the urge to run to the helm. Jason, Piper, and Frank were on duty with Hazel now. They could handle whatever was going on.

Besides, Hazel had insisted on taking the wheel to guide them through the secret pass that the magic goddess had told her about. Leo hoped Hazel was right about the long detour north.

He didn't trust this Hecate lady. He didn't see why such a creepy goddess would suddenly decide to be helpful. Of course, he didn't trust magic in general. That's why he was having so much trouble with the Athena Parthenos.

It had no moving parts. Whatever it did, it apparently operated on pure sorcery... and Leo didn't appreciate that. He wanted it to make sense, like a machine. Finally he got too exhausted to think straight.

He curled up with a blanket in the engine room and listened to the soothing hum of the generators. Buford the mechanical table sat in the corner on sleep mode, making little steamy snores: Shhh, pfft, shh, pfft.

Leo liked his quarters okay, but he felt safest here in the heart of the ship—in a room filled with mechanisms he knew how to control. Besides, maybe if he spent more time close to the Athena Parthenos, he would eventually soak in its secrets.