ℐ 𝒯𝒽𝒾𝓃𝓀 ℋℯ 𝒦𝓃ℴ𝓌𝓈 // Percy Jackson fic

i. vi

"And my words shoot to kill when I'm mad..."
~~

So there they were, Annabeth, Grover, Aurora, and Percy, walking through the woods along the New Jersey riverbank, the glow of New York City making the night sky yellow behind them, and the smell of the Hudson reeking in their noses.

Grover was shivering and braying, his big goat eyes turned slit-pupils and full of terror. "Three Kindly Ones. All three at once."

But Annabeth continued to pull everyone along: "Come on! The farther away we get, the better."

"All our money was back there," Percy reminded her. "Our food and clothes. Everything."

"That's not really our fault, now is it?" Aurora rolled her eyes. "Maybe if you hadn't decided to jump into the fight-"

"What did you want me to do? Let you get killed?"

"You didn't need to protect me, Percy. I would've been fine."

"Sliced like sandwich bread," Grover put in, "but fine."

"Shut up, goat boy," said Annabeth.

"Hey, don't be rude Grover, Annie, just because you're annoyed," Aurora defended.

Grover brayed mournfully. "Tin cans...a perfectly good bag of tin cans."

"It's okay, hun, we'll find more."

They sloshed across mushy ground, through nasty twisted trees that smelled like sour laundry.

After a few minutes, Annabeth fell into line with Percy behind Aurora and Grover.

Aurora grimaced as she listened to them.

"Look, I..." Annabeth's voice faltered. "I appreciate you coming back for us, okay? That was really brave."

"We're a team, right?" Percy said.

She was silent for a few more steps. "It's just that if you died...aside from the fact that it would really suck for you, it would mean the quest was over. This may be my only chance to see the real world. I've always wanted to prove myself and 'Rora doesn't really mention it but I know that she would do anything to prove herself too. I think as a child of Aphrodite she always feel like people look down on her, you know? She feels as if to get any recognition at all, she has to do the absolute best at all times."

The thunderstorm had finally let up. The city glow faded behind the group, leaving them in almost darkness. Aurora didn't care enough to listen to the rest of the conversation. Annabeth was right, sure, but she didn't have the right to tell Percy all of that. But it didn't matter. She needed to breathe, her anger was taking over her thoughts.

Then a shrill noise, like the sound of an owl being tortured, brought her out of her thoughts.

"Hey, my reed pipes still work!" Grover cried. "If I could just remember a 'find path' song, we could get out of these woods!"

He puffed out a few notes, but the tune still sounded suspiciously like Hilary Duff.

Instead of finding a path, Percy immediately slammed into a tree and got a nice-size knot on my head.