Falling Down (Percy Jackson)

Chapter One

Leo

"What do you mean," Frank asked the son of Poseidon as he had a small backpack on him, saying goodbye, "goodbye? We just got back, Percy. Where are you going to go? I don't think you really want to go to Camp Jupiter."

Because it's not like he just walk out like that. Once you're in camp, you're camp. You don't leave. That's what Jason told us on the Argo. Reyna said the same thing. Once you're there, you don't leave.

"Yeah," Jason added on, "what are you doing?"

"I'm going home," he told us as if it had been obvious. "Is that a crime now?"

"It's against the rules," Jason confirmed for Percy, nodding his head, "you're here. You're staying here. As somebody who once was a praetor, you should know that."

"Oh..."

"What?" I jumped into the conversation. "It's the rules."

"You guys haven't looked at your packages yet, okay," Percy said to himself, and explained what he was doing, "that's a rule, yes. But not here. Camp Jupiter and Camp Half-Blood, as I'm sure you've noticed, Jason, are very different. We are a camp. Not a place for somebody to live their entire live."

"What does that mean?" Jason questioned, thinking he was bashing on the Romans and how they ran Camp Jupiter.

"I'm not ripping on you guys," Percy clarified. "You guys have kids born there. Legacies. And you take them in and you train them and have people live there for their entire lives. But we don't. We have kids come here, escorted by a satyr most of the time. Or at least another demigod. Once they're here, they have the choice of living here or only being here in the summer. For people like you, Leo, or Hazel, where your parents are dead and you don't have a place to live, it's perfect for you to stay here all year around and train. But for me and Annabeth and Clarisse and other kids here, we have our parents and we have a life outside of this place that we like. So we're here 3 months out of the year. Unless, of course, there's an emergency. Annabeth already left. I'm going home."

"So like..." It was confusing, yeah. I kind of got it, but also didn't. "This is it?"

Percy rolled his eyes.

"No, it's not," he assured us, which was a relief, "I'll be back next summer. Probably visit around the holidays or something. I like in Manhattan, you guys can visit if you miss me that much. But I haven't seen my mom in like... 10 months? Like I said, I'll be back next summer. There's still other people here."

After three days without Piper, Frank, Hazel, or Percy, Jason and I got lonely. So we figured we could suck it up and look past what Nico comes off as. He might be a nice guy. He just creeps me out.

We found him at the stream, sitting with Grover. And of course, we heard part of the conversation. We were walking towards them.

"Oh, bullshit," Grover called out, punching Nico's arm, "you totally liked him. You even asked if he was dating Annabeth."

"That wasn't why I asked," Nico insisted, sounding slightly embarrassed, "I asked because I thought they were dating. Bianca did, too. Why else would he sneak out of camp to go on a quest he wasn't issued on to save her?"

"Okay, fair enough," Grover agreed, and sighed after a minute, "and they're together now. But that doesn't mean that you shouldn't tell him."

"Grover."

"What?"

"If I tell Percy anything remote to the fact that I'm gay," that was the last thing I expected to come out of his mouth, "much less that, I don't know, I like him, it's not ending well and you know that. It's going to be really awkward and we'll probably never be able to talk to each other again because it's Percy. Plus, he has Annabeth. I'm not a homewrecker."