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He's been in New Rome for two weeks before Percy starts to feel like he really, really can't do this.
The two weeks have been nice, he supposes, filled with moving his stuff into his dorm, showing Annabeth his favourite cafes around the city, listening to her talk about the architecture in a way that makes him see the city in a new light, falling asleep in her dorm and sneaking out at three in the morning when he wakes up, neck stiff and heart full.
It was nice , he thinks, perhaps a touch too violently, because people didn't stop and stare. Anyone on the street who recognised them would give him, at most, a little bow or a nod of the head, and then they were on their way. Most of them, though, had been teenagers who'd fought beside him and already knew him, or adults who had too many things to do in their day to stop and chatter. Now, though, it's all the young adults back from visiting their families or ready, like Percy, for their first year of uni, and it's so much worse.
Percy grits his teeth and shoves his way through the third corridor that's gone silent on him as he entered. He'd known it would be bad, but he hadn't thought it would be this bad.
His first class of the day is English. It's so much better than English had been in high school, and for good reason - most of the people in the room have either ADHD or dyslexia or both, and their entire first unit is on finding resources to help them manage that. English, to New Rome Uni, is more of a functional skill to help them write readable papers and be able to understand assignments. It's not an artform, not like high school had tried to make it.
It should be good. Percy should be able to enjoy being around people who think like him, who work like him, for one of the very first times in his life.
But he can't.
Periodically, someone will whisper something to a classmate, and then two heads will swivel indiscreetly to look directly at him. Percy started class by flashing them smiles, trying to be friendly, but now those smiles have degraded into something closer to baring his teeth. Even the professor had stumbled when he'd reached Percy's name on the roll.
Whatever. They'll get over it. They have to get over it.
It's at lunch time, in the cafeteria, that Percy realises that most of them wouldn't recognise him by sight alone. They're picking him out because they can see the beaded necklace around his neck and the trident tattoo on his arm and they, in the way of demigods, are patching it all together in record speed and clocking him immediately. He groans, dropping his head onto Annabeth's shoulder
She pats his hair. "It'll be okay, seaweed brain," she says. He groans again. "You can do this."
Yeah. He can do this.
In History, the people behind him are too loud for his battle-sharpened ears to dismiss, so he spends the entire class laser-focussed to their whispered "did you hear? Tartarus -" and misses every single thing about the syllabus. He looks at the print-out in front of him, thankfully in English and Latin, and wills the words to focus into shape.
He can't do this.
In the early evening, in the library, Annabeth talks him through his syllabi. They have hardly anything in common, due to her taking the advanced version of most courses, but she has enough time and the high school experience to comprehend it.
"Thanks," he says, after they finish going through his Biology syllabus. "I don't know where I'd be without you."
Even without looking at her, he knows she's rolling her eyes. "Dead, probably."
"A million times over," he agrees, laughing. It's not a joke, but they're the only two who know that.
Annabeth closes the booklet in front of them. "That's all of it," she says, holding up his nicely itemised, colour-coded planner of assessment.
Percy squints at it. "Really? That's all?"
She nods. "Yeah. You just gotta remember to look at this occasionally. Your professors should keep reminding you all of the assessment - they know as well as us that no demigod will notice a deadline until it's a dead line."
He laughs, again, letting the stress of the day wash away. It's so good, to be able to relax with his favourite person. No matter how hard it gets, they can get through it.
Just as he thinks that, there's a whisper from behind the bookstacks. "Holy shit, is that-"
Percy slams his head into the desk. There's silence, and then scattering footsteps.
"They're gone," Annabeth says, and Percy lifts his head. "That bad, huh?" she says, sympathetic, and when he nods pitifully she only laughs at him a little bit.
She taps her hand on the folder of his coursework again, then, back on the mission. "This isn't like high school, Percy. If the professors can do anything to help you focus or get your work done, let them know. This is a uni designed for people like us."
"Reckon they could get the other kids to shut up?"
She snorts. "I don't think anything less than an active battle with a minor god would do that, but it can't help to ask."
"Nah," Percy decides. "It's not worth it. Besides, they'll forget eventually."
"They will," Annabeth agrees. "I don't even find you impressive anymore."
Percy fakes a dramatic gasp. "Hey!"
Annabeth just laughs at him, then shoves all their assembled papers into her satchel. "Come on. I don't have anything to do tonight, and we don't have a curfew."
"Date night?" Percy asks.
"Date night," Annabeth confirms, and they hold hands as they walk out into the library, towards where the sun sets golden over the terracotta rooves of New Rome.
Percy meets his roommate the day after - the guy had been delayed by a battle with a rogue karpoi on his drive. He knocks on the door at the ungodly hour of eight in the morning, and Percy's just lucky enough that he is awake and properly clothed for their first meeting.
It goes well enough.
"Keith, legacy of Mercury," he says, offering a hand. His teeth are incredibly white. "Comp sci major. The internet is the biggest highway of information, after all!"
"Cool," Percy says, shaking his hand. He tries too hard to make sure he doesn't crush it, which of course means he inadvertently shakes it for too long. "My name's Percy, and I have no idea what my major is yet. Where'd you drive from again?"
"SoCal," he says, "my parents run a business out that way. It's pretty epic. Who'd you say your godly parents were again?"
Percy manages a half shrug. He doesn't like to lie, so, well - "It's complicated. Neptune, I guess."
"Epic, dude," Keith says, and then strains to lift his suitcase onto his bed. Percy can almost see him dismissing Percy as a legacy. "Did you hear they had a battle almost on campus, like, two years ago?"
"Whoa!" Percy says. He means it sarcastically, but Keith takes it genuinely.
"Yeah! The entirety of the legions got involved, apparently."
"Did you ever go to Camp Jupiter?" Percy asks. He thinks he knows, but it can't hurt to confirm it.
"Nah," Keith says. Bingo. "Ma said it wasn't necessary for me to learn how to fight. I came here for uni because they'll teach me how to use my demigod gifts in coding as well as my other natural talents. You don't get that anywhere else! You?"
Percy shrugs. "I went for a few months. Wasn't for me, honestly."
"So fair," Keith says, then starts unpacking his suitcase. "Do ya know where I can get my timetable?"
"Uhhhhh…"
"No problem, man, I'll just go have a look around. I think I remember going past a reception on my way in."
"I have class soon," Percy says. "I'll see you around, I guess."
"See ya, roomie," Keith says, and then he's out of the door again, a whiff of his strong cologne following him out.
Percy scrunches his nose, then looks down at his arms. The trident emblazoned there is too obvious, as is the necklace he wears around his throat. He's proud of them, obviously, but -
Well.
He goes and finds a hoodie. He doesn't remember packing it, or even where he bought it, but it's there, soft and blue and smelling like the detergent his mom uses.
Percy slips it on, tucking his Camp Half-Blood necklace under the neckline. He gives himself a glance in the mirror, nods in satisfaction that everything is covered, then glances at the clock and realises that he's five minutes late to English already, swears, and runs out the door.
It works surprisingly well. None of the students give him a second glance, and although his professors are constantly losing their eyebrows to their hairlines whenever they read out his name, his peers are always too distracted to notice.
A win for the ADHD crowd today, Percy thinks to himself, then sticks his hand up to answer a question in his Latin class. It's the first time in a long time that he's been able to do that.
It feels good.
He gets the answer right. The professor nods. "Well done, Percy," she says, then pushes her glasses up the ridge of her nose. "Rose, can you tell me where this inscription featured? It was in your readings."
Percy knows that, too. It probably helps that he's seen the Latin inscription in question in the flesh, written on the blade of one of the dead soldiers he'd fought in Alaska. It was perhaps a strange thing to remember, but that was often how it worked for him - he'd remember strange flashes, imprints of the battle, things that could help him in future fights, but not much more. It had probably also helped that he'd fished about a dozen swords with that inscription out of the water following the battle.
"Uh," Rose says. She scrunches up her entire face in concentration, long braids swinging with the movement. "Swords?"
"Good," the professor says. Percy can't, for the life of him, remember her name. "This is engraved on the swords of the Twelfth Legion's Fifth Cohort, which was considered cursed after their standard vanished in the 1980s, returned to us only recently."
She looked Percy straight in the eye, then, and he felt far more terrified that she was going to ask him to give an eyewitness' testament than he'd been during that entire battle.
"However," she continued, mercifully, and gave Percy what he could have sworn was a wink, "we're not here to talk about that today. I'll let your history professors cover it if they so choose. Can anyone tell me the difference between a tense and a mood?"
Percy lingers after Latin to talk to the professor. "Thanks," he says, awkwardly, hoping she knows what he means.
She just nods. "You saved my daughter's life," she says, plainly. "If there's anything I can do to make your university experience smoother, just let me know."
He nods, uncomfortable, mutters his thanks again, and slips out the door.
He doesn't have any classes after his lunch break, but Annabeth has classes both during his lunch break and after, which just feels unfair, so Percy's kind of left to his own devices. He ends up heading to the uni's gym.
It's incredibly odd to be faced with the ordered rows of weights and machines. Sure, being part of swim squads in high school means he's seen gyms before, but he normally got kicked out before he was taught how to use any equipment, and now he's way too used to the Camp Half-Blood method of strength training via climbing lava walls.
Percy shrugs the thoughts off. Physical exercise has always been a guaranteed way to get him feeling better, get him out of his own head, and he hopes that this time won't be an exception. He reckons he can remember how to do one exercise - a deadlift, he thinks it's called, which is funny because he's carried dead teenagers to medic tents before, and this is nothing close to that.
He loads 50 pounds onto either side of the bar, figuring that roughly 150 pounds (listen, math is not his strong point, okay, but the bar says it weighs 45 pounds so that's basically three lots of 50 pounds) total mass can't do that much damage to him if he does majorly screw this up, and starts copying some buff girl across the gym.
It's fun, actually, taking the weight in his arms and feeling it leave the ground, then the satisfying jolt as it hits the ground again. He goes through the motions a few times, then the girl he's copying sits down on the ground, panting, and he decides he may as well follow.
He takes a swig of water and feels his strength surge through him, renewed. The bruised patches on his shins no longer hurt when he presses his thumbs to them. He's about to stand up to go again when a guy taps him on the shoulder.
Percy jumps. It takes everything in him to not go for the pen in his pocket.
"Sorry," the guy says. He's wearing a singlet, and more buff than Percy has ever seen a demigod. "I just wanted to say that you're not quite positioned right, and that can really get you hurt! It's important to do these slowly and carefully, with your core tensed. You'll really get the gains if you do that!"
Percy just blinks at him. He's so used to training for non-optimal conditions, so used to being strong in ways that meant he could swing a sword with control but still looked like a stick, so used to training for speed and strength not muscle volume, that it just doesn't compute for a second. "Oh! Thanks, man."
"Not a problem, dude," the gym guy says. "Just wanted to make sure that you're being safe. We wouldn't want anyone getting hurt!"
When Percy was twelve his favourite part of training had been climbing the rock wall when the lava was turned on. "Yeah!" he agrees, and hopes he doesn't sound confused.
"Good luck," the gym guy says, and turns to go to one of the weird contraptions Percy has been assuming are weight machines. "Keep it up!"
"You too," Percy mutters, then looks back down at the weights. They had been fun, but… he doesn't want to keep doing this if it means people will keep trying to make him do it in a more efficient way. And, he reasons with himself, it'll only draw attention if he does hurt himself and then tips water on himself to heal it. Mostly, though, he knows it's because the well-intentioned guy told him to keep it up, and his brain has decided that he's not going to do that, actually. Oops.
Percy returns the weights to their spots, and the bar too. He does try to be nice to other people, he swears.
Then, he's out of the gym. Nothing for him there, he doesn't think, not unless he can find someone who can make it fun. Maybe Annabeth will be down, but he's pretty sure she'll see it as a waste of time when they could just be sparring, as that'll be more practical.
He takes a left in the corridor, and finds heaven.
Okay. Well. Sure, he's exaggerating. It's not even a nice pool, too overly chlorinated and indoors and away from any source water, but it's a pool.
He forgets to consider the damage the chlorine is sure to do to his clothes before he jumps in, but he can't find it in himself to regret it. He'll deal with that… later. Probably.
It's nice, to be surrounded entirely by water again. It's been a good few weeks, since before he and Annabeth left for New Rome, and he takes a few minutes just to revel in it. There's no one else in the pool, probably because it's 1pm and there are classes on, so he doesn't have to worry about anyone being concerned by him just floating along the floor, listening to the way the pool filters into the pipes and then back through to a pump and then out again. Far below, there are almost-empty damp drains that run down to join the rest of the sewerage and water system that runs beneath New Rome.
Percy sighs, content, and when he breathes in it's water and he doesn't drown. He hasn't been afraid of that in a while, and he's glad to note that he's not now.
He gives himself… he wants to say ten minutes, but he really has no idea. It could have been three minutes or three hours. Anyway. Eventually, he picks himself up off the pool floor and shoots himself out of the pool.
Now the tricky part - he tries to take as much of the chlorine out of his clothes as he can when he pulls the water out. His hoodie still feels a little stiff, so he's not successful, but. Well. What could he have done, really?
He can picture Annabeth punching him in the shoulder, saying "not jumped in the pool, seaweed brain?" and he laughs, quiet, to himself.
On the way back to the dorms, he passes a noticeboard. "SPARRING CLUB" it reads in comic sans. "COME FIGHT WITH US."
Percy scribbles the info down on a piece of paper. If he's lucky, he'll remember to tell Annabeth about it over dinner.
He does.
She looks at the crumpled piece of paper. "Do you want to go?"
Percy shrugs. "Only if you come." It doesn't come out flirtatious, not like he'd hoped.
Annabeth frowns. "You're worried," she notes. It's not a question. She knows him too well for that.
Percy shrugs, again. He can't even put words to what's made him so antsy. There's just something, right under his skin.
"What's so wrong with being recognised?" Annabeth asks him, and when he jumps she's right there, hand in his hand, eyes on his eyes. The grey strip of her hair has entirely grown out now, he notices, not for the first time.
"We should dye those bits of our hair white again," Percy says, mindlessly. He's avoiding the question.
"Okay," Annabeth says. "Tomorrow."
Percy knows that she's making a good decision. He still wants it, desperately, to know that they are tied together intrinsically, her jumping in front of knives aiming for his sole weakness, two scared kids fighting their way through tartarus, hiding from every sound and movement, like how it's always been.
Ah.
"You still have that Yankee cap, don't you?" he asks.
Annabeth nods, slowly. He thinks she'd say no if he asked for it. He thinks that she's always been just that touch better than him. He thinks that them wanting to be better people, for each other, is what got them through Tartarus, step by agonising step.
"Do you ever want to put it on?" he asks her.
Annabeth nods. "I don't, though. It would be too much like it was back then."
"Hiding," Percy says.
"Hiding," Annabeth echos.
They sit in silence with that, Percy's hand reaching out for Annabeth's. There's nothing more to say, really.
In the corridors, the back of Percy's neck burns. People are always watching him, even with the hoodie. They've learned to recognise him.
They're not bad glances, he knows. They still feel the same as every high school bully and every concerned teacher and every pacing monster, though. He's spent so long making himself invisible, hiding as best he could in schools until he inevitably got himself expelled, cloaking himself from monsters, hiding behind rocks and shrines in Tartarus, making himself small.
Now he can't hide. And he doesn't know what to do with it. Even when he'd been a leader, of Camp Half-Blood or Camp Jupiter or the Seven, it was always for a battle, and he always knew what had to be done. Now, there is nothing to be done. Now, there is nothing to look at but him, Percy Jackson, boy with roman tattoos and a greek necklace and not as many scars as he should have.
Percy goes to the pool. There are other people there.
He doesn't know if he has the energy and the brainpower to pretend to be a normal swimmer, so he doesn't even try. He just gives the water a single longing glance, turns on his heel, and leaves.
He goes to see Hazel and Frank on the weekend after the first week of classes, Annabeth staying behind to get an early start on an assignment. She's taking five classes compared to the normal four.
"Overachiever," Percy tells Hazel, when she asks, but he must say it even more fondly than he thought because she just grins.
"How's praetorship?" he asks them.
Frank huffs. "Shouldn't you know?"
Percy laughs. "I was a Praetor and actually at Camp for what, like, two days? I have no idea."
"Good," Frank says, honestly. "Really good. The legions are growing in number again, we've buried all our dead with proper rites, and Jason's temples are going up. There's more shrines every week. Morale is high. Hazel and I, we're -"
"We're happy," Hazel finishes. "It's been good."
"I'm happy for you," Percy says, and he means it with his whole heart. These are two of the group he crossed the world with. He loves them so much he sometimes forgets about it, like how people forget that crystal clear water can be incredibly deep and not look it. That's how Percy loves the Seven - clear, deep. Endless.
"What's up with you?" Frank asks.
Percy chuckles. "Settling into uni," he says. "Trying to decide on a major."
Hazel eyes him critically. "And?"
"Trying to get used to people staring," Percy admits. "It'll be okay. I just have to wait."
"Yeah," Hazel says. "It'll happen. If people got used to me, who used to be dead, walking around, they'll get used to you."
Percy smiles, because it's true. People staring isn't the real issue, though. His reaction to it is.
"Anyway," Frank says, "we were just trying to work out a way to get the legions to practise with the water cannons without actually causing too much damage. Reckon you can help?"
"Sure," Percy says, and he spends the rest of his Saturday helping them plan and then the entirety of his Sunday whooping and halting huge clumps of water in the air to return them to their tanks. It's good.
It's so good, in fact, that he's caught off-guard by how he flinches when someone mentions his name as he goes past.
It's annoying him, now, but he's come to terms with how you can't reason your way out of psychological instincts after a year of Tartarus-fueled nightmares that now only wake him infrequently.
That just took time and patience and his mother's shoulder and Annabeth, lying in the bed across from him, alive, alive, alive. This will, too. He just has to keep going. The necklace around his neck may feel more like a collar and the tattoo on his arm more like a brand, but this too shall pass. He doesn't know where he heard that, but he has to believe it. This too shall pass.
When his History professor brings up the Second Titan War in the fourth week of class, Percy doesn't even think about his fear - he's just too angry.
"That's not what happened!" he says, hotly, in the middle of the silent class.
The professor pauses from where he had been jotting something down on the whiteboard. "Pardon?" he says, tone dangerous.
Percy's too mad to care, to be honest. They can't expel him, and for once he knows he's in the right. "Jason toppling the Kronos' throne and killing Krios was important,yeah, but it was hardly the only thing that happened in the war on the Titans!"
"I try to use full names for historical figures," the professor says mildly, as if Percy is just some idiot child. "And we don't have enough information about the purported battle of the Greek demigods against Kronos to say what happened for sure."
"People died in that battle," Percy hisses. This has always been his fatal flaw - he is too loyal to let their sacrifice pass by silently.
"Professor," a girl in the front row, eyes wide, interjects, "you might want to check your class list."
The professor does so, a quick glance down. His eyebrows shoot up, his face blanching.
"Yeah," Percy says, yanking out the Camp Half-Blood necklace he'd been trying so hard to hide. "Here are some full names for your history books, seeing as you like them so much. Charles Beckendorf. He liked to build things to make his girlfriend smile. Selina Beauregard. She looked after the pegasi and taught new campers how to ride and was always the first to get angry. Michael Yew. He liked shouting and loud music but he knew he was going to die and he went anyway. Ethan Nakamura. He was good with a sword and he wanted equality so badly that he gave his eye and then his life for it. Castor Pollux. It took me too long to learn his name but his twin brother still doesn't smile the same. I can keep going. I can always keep going. Do you want me to keep going?"
The professor shook his head. The whole room was silent.
"You should maybe not ignore half the battles when you teach a topic," Percy said. He noticed, a bit too late, that he'd started to make the sprinklers in the roof splutter a little. "Sorry," he muttered, turning them off.
"We all lost lives, Professor," he said. "Please don't treat them like they're not worth anything just because you couldn't be bothered to go find yourself a good source."
After that, he can't exactly stay in the class. He's too antsy, too worked up. Instead, he goes and says hello to Terminus and ditch his hoodie, teeth still gritted, and runs a lap around the entirety of New Rome. By the time he's completed the loop, the sun is setting, and he's built up a fine layer of sweat and all his anger has turned into an ache into his lungs.
"Alright," he mutters to himself. "That could have gone worse."
Yeah.
Maybe.
If he'd made the roof explode.
Still, he doesn't regret it. If he has to officially ask for the curriculum to be changed or something, he'll do it. It's not fair that so many of them died to be considered equal only to be dismissed out of hand by someone who wasn't even there to see it happen despite it happening within their lifespan.
He's skipped lunch, he realises, as his stomach growls. He gestures at the nearby aqueduct to drench himself briefly in water to clear off the sweat, then heads back inside New Rome.
He ends up in one of the areas frequented by students when he goes to find food, but it's not as bad as he thought. Sure, he's in a t-shirt, so everyone is staring at him and the Roman tattoo on his arm and the Greek necklace around his neck, but it doesn't matter as much. They're looking at him because he got mad about something he feels he's right to be mad about. It feels much better.
By sheer coincidence, he ends up in the line for burritos behind the girl who spoke up in his class. She brushes her waist-length hair behind her ear nervously, then turns and says, "Excuse me."
"Yeah?" he says, grateful but still cautious.
"My best friend died when we went against Krios," she says, plainly. "You're right. It's not right just to turn them into little factoid in history books, or, worse, pretend that what they did isn't worthy of remembering."
"I'm sorry," Percy says, and he means it. "What was their name?"
"Trix," she says. There's pride in her eyes, behind the tears. "They liked sneaking candy in from outside and they were the best at telling campfire stories. I miss them every day."
Percy doesn't know what to say to that, but they've reached the front of the line, so his classmate simply turns around and orders. He knows how she can do that. You have to, when you've been through what they have been. You just turn and keep going.
He buys two burritos, then heads to Annabeth's dorm. He just wants to sit near her for a few minutes, be quiet and calm.
"I yelled at a professor today," he says, handing her a burrito.
"I heard," she says, which doesn't bode well for his day tomorrow, but she doesn't seem mad or annoyed. She just runs a hand through his hair, carries him to the floor when his knees give out.
He ends up sitting on the floor, head against her shin, drifting off for a bit. It's good to not have to think.
Annabeth wakes him up at three in the morning. "Come on seaweed brain," she whispers, sweet and firm. "You need to get back to your dorm."
He does, half-stumbling, knees aching. When he crashes into his own bed, his roommate stirs - "Getting lucky?" Keith mutters.
Percy snorts. "Nah."
"Sucks to be you," Keith says, then he's back to snoring.
Percy takes a second to grin stupidly at the ceiling about how sometimes it does not, in fact, suck to be him, and then he's fast asleep.
Walking to breakfast the next day goes fine, surprisingly. He's being looked at, sure, but he doesn't care. No one stops him, no one yells at him, no one tries to grab at him. He's okay with the whispers. They feel safer, now, somehow. Like now that he's actually done something to deserve them, he can cope with them.
That doesn't mean he's not dreading his next history class.
It goes okay, though, the content having moved back to history from before Percy was born and thus had fewer opinions about.
At the end, the professor asks Percy to stay behind. Percy's almost ready for a fight, unable to stop the way his hand goes to his pocket immediately.
"I wanted to apologise," the professor says. "Is there any way I can get my hands on the Greek records? I'd like to include that in our curriculum too."
Percy blinks. He hadn't thought -
"Sure," he says. "I'm not sure if we have written records, but if not I'm sure some people will be happy to give you oral recounts. Try Chiron, at Camp Half-Blood. He'd know, if anyone does. He remembers every hero who dies under his watch."
"Chiron, the same as the one from the myths?" The professor looks a little too gobsmacked for Percy to not make a bit of fun.
"Yeah," Percy says. "The centaur. He's the one who taught me Greek and Latin, back before I even knew I was a demigod. He'd be mourning me if I was dead right now."
It's strange, that that's the best way he knows how to put how much Chiron means to him: here, he is the one who trained me and he is the one who would carry my memory forward into the future if it all went wrong.
"Okay," says the history professor. "And, Jackson, before you go… I know you didn't fight for me, but thank you."
Percy laughs, just a little. "I fought for everyone, professor. I fought to be able to be here, to learn. I want to keep doing that."
"Of course," the professor says, and Percy leaves, feeling impossibly lighter.
It's going to be okay, he knows now.
Sure enough, over the next week the mutters rise to a fever pitch and then drop again. The next time someone says his name when he's in the library, he's able to grin at them and say "Yeah? That's me. Got any questions?"
Annabeth swats at him when they squeak and run away, but he can't suppress his grin. "Don't be mean," she says, then, "Okay, break over, time for you to translate question three."
He groans, but he does.
They do join the sparring club. The first session is awkward, sure, but Percy didn't get to learn all the ins and outs of Roman technique in his few weeks at Camp Jupiter, and when he tells the instructor that, during a break, they seem to sigh in relief.
"Okay," she says. "We'll teach you as much as you want."
"I can show you some of the Greek moves too," he offers.
She grins at him. "That would be good," they say. "I like learning new things."
"Same," he says, and finds that it's true.
He and Annabeth end up putting on a demonstration of the Greek-taught hand-to-hand, and it's fun, even when he ends up face-first in the mat, Annabeth bending his arm uncomfortably behind the back.
"I yield, I yield," he says, then, when she let him go, wastes no time in splashing water into his face and shaking his hair back, grinning wildly. "Go again?"
Annabeth looks him dead in the eye, taking note of the water sticking to his skin, the rush of energy and power through his veins. "Absolutely not."
The crowd watching them laughs, first cautiously, then, when they realise Percy is almost howling himself stupid, louder.
In Latin, he still doesn't tell the class that he's seen half of the examples they're using in real life, because that just seems rude, but he does pipe up when he knows the answers. It turns out that having spent half his life running across the USA and then globe actually was good for school, despite what every single one of his high school teachers would have told him.
It's fun. He's actually, to his shock, enjoying class. When people look at him he tells himself it's because he knows the answers, not because they're a danger. He's pretty sure he's right.
He goes to the pool, sometimes, after class. There are people there, but he doesn't care. It's good just to jump into the water, sit at the bottom. A couple of people eye him with concern, as the minutes pass, but the beaded necklace lying gentle on his collarbone and the trident SPQR tattoo on his arm mark him for who he is, and their concern quickly fades.
When he goes back to the surface, there are some people trying to hype themselves up to dive from the highest platform. Percy grins, launches himself up there with the pool water, then jumps back down, willing the water to make itself into a pillow as he flops down, belly first. It's basically nothing to him - he fell from the St Louis Arch and then that glacier in Antarctica. Heights are comfortable places for Percy, as long as there is water below.
There's stunned silence, and then a few people clap. "You can jump!" Percy yells up, grinning. "I've got you!"
There's a second in which he thinks they might refuse his offer, then the first of the group just jumps off, whooping. He does as he promised, giving them a soft entry into the water, barely a splash despite the angle they entered at. They emerge a few seconds later, wiping water out of their eyes and laughing. "That was fun!" they tell him, then clamber out of the pool to run back to the ladder.
After that, he has to spend a good hour helping people do dives they wouldn't be able to land safely otherwise. Someone from the official diving team tells him they do technically have a machine that breaks the water surface tension, but he's doing a better job than that, and everyone's going to take advantage of it. Percy just grins at them. He has time, and he likes - this. Being able to do things for people, particularly now that this doesn't involve certain death.
Annabeth comes to find him eventually, and makes gentle fun of how he's gathered himself a bit of a crowd.
"I'm not doing anything!" he protests.
"No," Annabeth says, leaning into his shoulder, "you're just being yourself."
That, for some reason, makes him smile. It's true.
People's eyes follow them on the way out. Percy doesn't care.
The next morning, at breakfast, Percy sees one of the divers looking at him. He waves. They wave back.
Annabeth tugs on the necklace he's now wearing in pride-of-place against his chest. "I wonder if they'd let us make one for every year we're here, or if we should go back and get them from Camp."
"Maybe they'll give me more tattoo lines," Percy says, then winces. That hadn't been very fun.
"We'd match if they gave me a tattoo," Annabeth says. Percy laughs, bright. A few sets of eyes flicker over at the noise, but then return to their breakfasts. He's not the centre of attention, now, except for when he chooses to be. It makes all the difference, it seems.
Annabeth throws an arm over his shoulders, dragging him towards the muesli. "I'm glad you're okay," she says, quiet, serious. "You had me worried for a few days there, seaweed brain."
"Sorry," he says, watching her pour her cereal. He can't stop smiling - it's stupid. "I'm glad you're here."
"I'm glad you're here too," she says, setting down her bowl to press a quick kiss to his cheek. "We made it."
Percy feels his heart swell up in his throat. He wraps his arms around Annabeth, hides his head in the corner between her throat and her shoulder.
There may be eyes watching. He no longer notices. He doesn't have to notice, not anymore.