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phykios · 4 months ago

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Academic Dishonesty for Fun and Profit [read on ao3] 15k, rated G

Does Percy like his job?

Of course.

Well, mostly.

Kind of.

See, the thing is…

Percy is on his computer, which is half the problem.

There were a lot of things he could have been doing right now. Like grading, or finishing next semester’s syllabus, or responding to the avalanche of emails from anxiety-ridden freshmen and overbearing admins. Or grading. Gods, he has a lot of grading to do. Why hadn’t he listened to Paul when he said there was so much grading!

But to be fair, he is, technically, actually working right now, proctoring his Latin 3 exam. Never mind that he can definitely hear the kids in the front row whispering the answers to each other. Absently, he notes that Jamie has made leaps and bounds since her first Latin class—she’s the one supplying the answers this time around, rather than Junie.

But to be frank, the Minotaur could parade through the exam room in his tighty-whities and Percy wouldn’t care. Or even notice. He’s too busy refreshing his email over and over again, tapping Riptide against the wooden table.

Fucking ADHD.

He can’t focus on anything else, except for the fact that the mid-April soft deadline has long since passed, and he still hasn’t heard anything. Which could mean nothing. These things take time. Or it could mean he was rejected. Which would suck, of course, but it would also make things a lot simpler in terms of his immediate future. But there’s been no change to his application status since last December. So here he is. Not paying attention to the final. Refreshing his email.

Quickly flipping over to the Mythomagic subreddit, he refreshes that page, too. Nothing new.

He refreshes his email again. No news.

“Professor?”

Only years of battle training keeps him from jumping out of his seat. “Mm?”

Sierra, one of his straight-As, is standing before him, brandishing her exam. “I’m finished,” she announces, proudly.

He can see that. What, does she want a medal? “Great,” he says, “you can leave it on my desk and head out.”

“Actually, could I ask you a question?”

“...Sure.” He set down his pen, cautiously. “What’s up?”

She beams. “I was just wondering when you were going to post our last weekly quiz grades.”

Internally, he groans. “I'm working on it—promise.”

“Totally!” she chirps, “but have you gotten to mine yet? I was just wondering how—”

“I’m sure you did fine,” Percy interrupts, gently. Behind her, another student drops off his paper, and, blessedly, leaves without comment. “I’ll try and get the last of the quiz grades up in the next few days. Sounds good?”

Sierra nods, clearly disappointed. “Sure thing.”

But she doesn’t leave.

Percy rolls his tongue behind his teeth, counts to ten. “Was there anything else?”

“Yeah, so, a couple weeks ago, you mentioned the possibility of some extra credit? I’ve been reading Cicero, and I thought that maybe I could…”

But what Sierra was imagining she might do with Cicero, Percy will never know. Because, looking out of the corner of his eye, he sees that his email has just refreshed. And the subject reads “Application Update.”

His heart starts racing.

“...And so I have about three pages of an essay already written comparing him and Catullus and contemporary views on homo—”

Percy lifts a finger, and she falls silent, her jaw closing with an audible clack. “Sorry,” he says, tongue numb in his mouth. “Sorry, I’m so sorry, I just… gotta read this real quick.”

Fingers trembling, he moves his mouse, the cursor hovering shakily over the unread email. The email preview isn’t very long, a simple, “Thank you for your application to the…” which tells him literally nothing. He has to open it. All he has to do is press down, and open the email.

But his thumb won’t respond. The email remains unbolded, unread.

Just click already, he internally chides his thumb.

His thumb does not click.

Oh, for the love of—“Sierra?”

“Yeah?”

“I will give you one point of extra credit right now if you open this email for me.”

She blinks. “Seriously?”

“Two if you read it out to me.”

“Okay!”

Percy scoots out of the way, pressing his eyes into the palms of his hands. He might actually be sick.

He barely has a chance to hope that he didn’t leave anything embarrassing open on his computer, before her soft voice quotes, “Thank you for your application for the Campbell Fellowship for Bronze Age Research at the American Society of Underwater Archaeology. Attached is a letter about the status of your application.”

His heart is beating so loud, he’s surprised she can’t hear it. “Is that it?”

“Well, there’s also the letter.”

With his face covered, she can’t see him roll his eyes. “Can you read the letter as well, please?” Undergrads. Di immortales.

There’s a beat where Percy thinks he might actually explode, and then, her voice barely audible over the blood racing in his ears, he hears her read: “We are pleased to inform you that—”

“Wait.”

Pleased?

He stands. “I got in?”

“Uh—”

Perhaps a tad rudely, he yanks the computer out of her hands, bringing it up to his face. For once in his life, his dyslexia doesn’t act up, entirely cooperative as he reads for himself, in neat, tidy, Times New Roman: We are pleased to inform you that the ASUA has awarded you the Campbell Fellowship for Bronze Age Research for the upcoming academic year.

He gapes.

“Professor?” Sierra asks, shyly.

He’s in.

He’s in!

“I got it!” He shouts. Every head in the exam room shoots up, staring at him.

“You got it?” echoes Sierra.

Brandishing his computer, he can only gesture to the screen, excitement bubbling up in him like a Coke about to explode. “I got the fellowship!”

Fifteen pairs of eyes blink at him, uncomprehendingly.

“Uh, I’ll be right back.” Inelegantly, he plops his computer back down on the desk, snatching up his phone. “Give me—give me five minutes. Stay put.”

Bounding up the steps of the lecture hall, he already has the phone to his ear, dial tone ringing, and he barely makes it out of the room before his wife picks up.

“Percy?”

Now, Percy’s wife is a legitimate genius. She has known him almost her entire life, and in that time, she’s become a master at picking up the little nuances of his voice, the change in tone indicating the little undercurrents of emotion, no matter how hard he tries to hide it. She also knows that he knows that calling her in the middle of the workday is generally not helpful, as she’s usually in a meeting or deep in the zone, and taking her out of it is bound to mess up her flow for the rest of the day.

But of course, Annabeth is a genius. She knows him inside and out. And she knows he wouldn’t call if it weren’t extremely important.

“Annabeth—”

She doesn’t even let him finish. “You got in?”

He grins. “I got in!”

Over the phone, she gasps. “He got in!” Through the tinny connection, he hears her office cheering.

And in the empty hallway, he jumps for joy, punching his fist in the air.

***

Because his wife is brilliant, Percy doesn’t even realize that their walking date ends at the Greek Embassy until the three of them turn the corner. It’s just one of her many talents, making sure that Percy gets to his appointment on time.

Percy wouldn’t exactly call it the perfect weather for a walking date. Gray clouds blanket the sky, enveloping the tips of skyscrapers in mist, and through the alleyways, the wind howls, whipping at their jackets, sending Percy’s messy hair into further disarray. Even Annabeth, who has recently taken to keeping her curls in a short bob with a rotating collection of headbands so that they don’t get in my gods-damned eyes so I can see what I’m working on, isn’t faring much better. Still, he’s out with his wife and daughter, enjoying a leisurely walk down the streets of New York, and it’s hard to be in a bad mood with that kind of positive energy around. “Alright,” he announces, slowing to a stop outside the consulate. “Here we are.”

Automatically, Annabeth looks up, appraising the exterior, and Percy merely grins, awaiting her judgment.

She frowns. “That’s the embassy?”

Percy nods. “Uh huh.”

“But it’s so… nothing.”

He shrugs, readjusting his backpack, gripping the strap before it slides off his shoulder onto the wet pavement. In his other hand is his eldest daughter’s, squeezing it tight as she twirls around, her sneakers making little whirlpools beneath her feet. “That’s what I thought.”

Now, technically, it is a Tuesday, and Junie should have been in Pre-K, wowing all her teachers and outperforming all the other kids by a mile. But, well… turns out the genes run a little bit deeper than just looks. The teacher had not been exactly sure how Junie had managed to flood the classroom via the little sink in the corner, but it seemed pretty clear that she had. She hadn’t been expelled, exactly, but it had been suggested she seek education and enrichment somewhere else. Honestly, Percy and Annabeth were a little charmed by it. Apples and trees and all of that. But they did worry that it heralded things to come.

“I mean, there’s nothing,” Annabeth says again, craning her neck upwards. “No decoration, no sculpture… There’s nothing there!”

“Nothing but pilasters.”

She gags.

“At least the one in Boston is next to the bar from Cheers.”

She blinks at him, uncomprehending, and Percy makes a note to himself.

“So how long do you think this will take?” she asks.

“Dunno.”

“Because if it’s not that long we can just wait out here for you.”

He shakes his head, kissing her on the cheek. “Don’t waste the rest of your lunch break on me.” Besides, his back itches in the way that means it’s probably going to rain soon. “I’ll pick up Lucie from my mom’s place, and I’ll have dinner ready by the time you get home.”

Percy is long-since immune to the domesticity of such a statement. Or at least he thought he was, because the way Annabeth grins at him, leaning forward to capture his lips in a stronger kiss, makes him want to do a little jig with Junie, right here on the sidewalk.

His daughter certainly seems to agree, if the way she spins faster is any indication.

Annabeth slides her own bag off her shoulder, and pulls out a bulky file folder, handing it to him. “One last check?”

“Hit me.”

“Award letter?”

“Check,” he says, thumbing through the pages.

“Proof of insurance?”

“Check.”

“Background check?”

“With fingerprints, and without allegations of underage terrorism.” That had been a fun and nerve-wracking experience, getting his fingerprints taken. He had been sweating bullets for a week, expecting his brief career in monument-related arson to have the FBI kicking his door down.

“Visa application?”

“Plus immunization forms, birth certificate with apostille, and two hundred dollars cash.”

“Passport?”

He blinks. “I thought you had it.”

Annabeth snaps her gaze to him, eyes blazing. “Are you serious?”

“Kidding!” Reaching into the folder, he pulls out his shiny new passport, flapping it in the air. “Kidding.”

She swats at him. “Seaweed brain…”

“Sorry, sorry,” he laughs, kissing her again. “It’s all good, promise.”

“Don’t be an idiot in front of the ambassadors, or whoever it is you meet in there, okay? Save your dumbassery for something less high-stakes.”

Scoffing, he slips the passport back into the folder. “Excuse you, my dumbassery is only reserved for the lowest of low-stakes operations.”

“Just go and get your stupid visa.”

Percy crouches down. “See you soon, Honey Dew,” he says, kissing her forehead. “Go have fun with mommy!”

Junie’s only response is to kick water in his direction.

Yes, he stands and watches them leave, smothering a laugh, even as it begins to drizzle on him, until they turn the corner.

After checking in with the security guard at the door, he is directed to sit in the hallway, on a low, uncomfortable wooden bench. The floor is not marble, but it has the same kind of glossy shine to it, in a black and white checkered pattern that makes his eyes hurt. Tapping his foot, he casts his gaze around for something to focus on, and finds very little but blank walls, dim, yellow lights, and a fake marble statue in the corner of the winged, headless Nike (he knows that one on sight—Cabin 17 had made their own replica with an intact-head and placed it on their cabin roof after a series of Hermes-related pranks gone awry).

Directly across from him, mounted on the wall, is a large, nearly-square painting. From his vantage point on the bench, Percy can make out a brown landscape, a blue, cloudy sky, and… not much else. There are lines of white blobs, dots of red and green and blue, and it takes Percy an embarrassingly long time to realize that they are people. Okay, the blue blobs are cannons, and the white are soldiers, he presumes. The subject begins to take shape, clues falling into place before his eyes.

Percy is, after all, quite familiar with sieges.

He checks his watch. He made sure to arrive five minutes before his appointment, but it’s been fifteen minutes, and so far no one has come to collect him.

Returning his attention to the painting, for lack of anything else to do, he stands, leaving his folder on the bench, and walks over for a better look. He can see much more clearly this close, can much more easily make out the lines of attackers and defenders. The white-robed people, armed with curved swords, are defending some kind of castle on a hill, with walls and towers and… columns.

He frowns, tilting his head.

In the center, towards the top of the canvas, is undoubtedly a temple of some kind. He counts eleven columns, gleaming white, in a row, with a gaping hole in the middle, filled instead with a circular building with a terracotta roof. Beneath the temple, on the slope, are even more columns, and a wall unevenly dotted with arched openings.

There is something eerily familiar about the image that he just can’t quite place.

What the hell is it?

But he doesn’t have too much more time to dwell on it. “Mr. Jackson?”

An older woman with a shock of white hair strides towards him, her heels (her very tall heels, dang) clacking against the not-marble.

“Yes. Ms. Georgopoulou?”

She shakes his hand, firm despite her age. Her wrists have so many bangles, maybe it’s a covert kind of weight training. “Yes,” she nods. “Please, follow me.”

He takes a step to follow, before remembering that he left all his shit on the bench.

Swiping it from the bench, he turns, grinning sheepishly, only to see that she is already halfway down the hallway. Percy has to actually jog to catch up with her.

Several turns and one staircase later, Percy is in her office, seated on a leather chair that has seen better days, all but twiddling his thumbs while she painstakingly types in his application information. Which seems kind of a waste of time to him. On Paul’s recommendation, Percy had filled out his application on the computer, as he did not want to subject some poor admin worker to his terrible handwriting. If she’s just going to retype everything, why don’t they make the whole system digital?

Ms. Georgopoulou types slowly, precisely, her bracelets occasionally scraping against the ancient-looking keyboard. Every so often, she will gaze at him over the thick, brown rim of her glasses, appraisingly.

He stretches his mouth in a not-quite smile, feeling, once again, like a little kid who’s been sent to the principal’s office, waiting for the inevitable scolding or dressing down or disappointed sigh at his “antics.”

Squinting, she takes another look at his passport. “Ah!” Then she beams, years shedding from her face. “Perseus?”

He pauses. Only monsters call him by his first name.

Surreptitiously, he slips his hand into his pocket, fingering his pen, tensing his legs just in case he has to make a run for it. Wouldn’t be the first time an old lady turned into a demon, but boy does he wish it happened less often. It’s not even surprising at this point anymore. “Yes?”

But then, she does something maybe even scarier than spit venom at him.

She starts speaking at him in Greek.

He’s sure he looks like a dumbass, sitting there, eyes wide and mouth hanging open. “Um,” he starts. “Uh, I don’t—I don’t speak Greek.”

Which is true. He technically speaks ancient Greek because of magic genetic fuckery. But modern Greek? It’s about as foreign to him as Korean. Except he’s actually picked up some Korean just from the restaurant down the block from his mom’s first apartment. So really, it’s about as foreign to him as, like, Martian would be, or something.

Ms. Georgopoulou hmms at him, a wordless judgement, and goes back to her typing.

It feels like an eternity before she talks to him again. “You have somewhere to say?”

Percy nods, grateful for English. “I’ll be living in, uh, Piraeus.” Though he imagines he’ll mostly be living on his boat, or whatever island he ends up closest to for however long it takes to re-survey whatever part of the ocean he’ll be in.

More typing. She flips through Percy’s sheaf of papers, frowning. “Where is your proof of insurance?”

For a heartbeat, he panics.

Oh gods, did he forget the insurance?

He snatches them out of her hands, his own trembling as he thumbs through them. There’s no way he forgot the insurance. He and Annabeth double-checked, triple-checked—

“Here we go!” Percy brandishes the lucky paper, relief so intense it almost makes him dizzy. “Got my insurance right here.”

Thankfully for his nerves, the meeting wraps up fairly quickly after that. Percy hands over the cash for the visa fee (no card, no check, cash only, because of course), and is summarily shown the door, letting him know that he will be notified about the status of his visa application in no less than fifteen days.

More waiting. Joy.

Still, Ms. Georgopoulou is nice enough to lead him back out of the labyrinth of the consulate, rather than let him embarrass himself further by getting lost. Walking once again through the hallway with the painting and the checkered floor, he spies that same painting out of the corner of his vision, the one with the siege and the temple and all the little blobby figures—and it hits him, all at once.

“Oh!” he exclaims, stopping dead in his tracks. “It’s the Acropolis!” Because what else would it be?

Ms. Georgopoulou eyes him, oddly. “It is,” she agrees, with a tone that she probably uses on her grandkids. Her dumb grandkids. “See?”

She gestures to the label, and Percy has to squint to read the tiny letters.

The Siege of the Acropolis, reads the caption, once he manages to make the letters fall into place. Painting by Panagiotis Zografos, under the guidance of Yannis Makriyannis.

So he’s off to a great start.

***

Frederick Chase takes them all out for dinner the evening his visa arrives—by which he means all of them, including his mom, Paul, Estelle, and Junie and Lucie. They get a big corner booth in the back of a fancy, Japanese-Spanish fusion restaurant that one of Percy’s grad student colleagues had recommended, for which Percy is infinitely grateful, as Frederick had suggested a Greek restaurant at first, before Annabeth commented that Percy would soon be eating his weight in Greek food, and would probably prefer something else for the time being.

Some concern had been expressed about the littles one finding something to eat, but Estelle had taken to the chicken katsu with aplomb, and Junie had eaten enough of the tempura green beans that Percy wasn’t too sure there’d be room for dessert.

She sits in Percy’s lap now, painting water trails with her straw on the wood of the table, while his mom holds Lucie so Annabeth can run to the bathroom. Frederick, on his third glass of wine and more animated than Percy can ever remember seeing him, is regaling them all with stories from his own research trips, a handful of which had taken him to the Mediterranean.

“Let’s see,” he begins, counting off his fingers. “I’ve been to… Sardinia, Malta, Samos, Samothrace, Lemnos—oh, Lemnos!” The wine in his glass almost sloshes over the rim, and Paul has to move out of the way of his elbow. “Lemnos was wonderful. Such a lovely, remote island with all these incredible volcanic formations, and did you know that ANZAC used the island as a staging ground for the Gallipoli campaign?”

“Oh, really?” Asks his mom, genuinely interested.

“That’s what I was there for—I wanted to see whether the Axis had used the geography in the same, or set up their bases and commands in roughly the same places, as part of a broader investigation into how the Axis built off leftover infrastructure outside of Germany. In any case, I had a letter from the Ministry of Culture, I had all my permits, I even had the Deputy Ambassador notify the local Air Force base when I would be arriving.” He pauses to take a sip of wine. “All I needed was one historical map from the 1910s—just one—but the local commander would not let me look at it!”

Paul gasps, a little theatrical. The wine must be hitting him, too. “No!”

“Oh, yes. The man would not budge. Kept citing national security concerns. I told him, in not so many words mind you, but I told him that I had come all this way to see this darn map, and that the Greco-Turkish war had been over for almost a hundred years at that point, and not only was there no reason to keep the contents of the map classified, but satellite technology made the whole thing moot anyway, so what was the harm in letting me take a look?”

Chuckling, Percy spears the last of his potatoes, popping it into his mouth. He’s heard this story before, heard all about how Frederick managed to convince the stodgy Greek Air Force commander to let him study the map by promising him a citation in his article.

“So,” he goes on, “I am arguing with this man for what feels like hours, until finally he’s called away for something or other, and that’s when I realize.” Frederick leans in, a savage glint in his eye that Percy instantly recognizes as Annabeth’s war games face. “I don’t know what they were doing with it, I don’t know why it was there, but there, on his desk, was the map—and there, in the corner, was a copier.”

“Wait,” says Sally. Percy takes a drink of water. “Did you—”

“Make an illegal copy of a classified map from 1917 and smuggle it back to Virginia? Of course.”

Percy spittakes so hard it nearly comes out on his daughter’s head. Estelle thumps his back while he coughs, spots appearing in his eyes.

“Alright there, Percy?”

“Yeah,” he wheezes, “I just never heard that version before.”

Frederick blinks, cocking his head. He looks so much like his daughter it’s actually scary. “You haven’t?”

“You told me you managed to convince him by promising to put him in your article!”

“I did?”

“Yes!”

“Oh.” He flushes slightly, sheepishly dabbing at his mouth with a napkin. “Well, I, ah, must have given you the, um, undergrad version.” At Sally and Paul’s concerned look, he rushes to assure them, “Don’t worry, it was declassified the next year!”

Looking plenty worried, his mom shifts her concern from Frederick to Lucie, a grin creasing across her face. “Aw, sweetheart,” she coos, “looks like someone needs a change.”

Suppressing the last few coughs, Percy shifts Junie to Frederick, who is more than happy to take his granddaughter from him. “I got it,” he says, standing. “If the waiter comes back, make sure to order me some matcha brownies, yeah?”

Luckily, they’re already in the back, so it doesn’t take too long for Percy, kiddo and new diaper in hand, to make his way to the bathroom, and summarily run into Annabeth, who is just coming out of the women’s room, flicking her hands clean of water. “Oh!” She laughs, “fancy meeting you here.”

“Come here often?”

She grins, then shifts her attention away. Not that Percy is upset by that. “Hi sweetie,” she coos, wiggling her fingers. Lucie laughs, and Percy falls in love all over again. “Everything okay?”

“Just time for a diaper change.”

Annabeth steps aside, with a grand sweep of her arm. “Be my guest.”

The bathroom does not have stalls, and Percy breathes a sigh of relief. It’s not his fault that men’s rooms don’t generally have changing tables, and it’s nice not to get weird looks while taking care of his daughter. Or when Annabeth comes up behind him, and wraps her arms around him, hugging his torso, face buried in his shoulder blades. Like she is right now.

“I love you,” she mumbles into his back.

“I love you, too.” He cleans and changes Lucie with all the speed and grace of someone who’s done this a million times, and as he looks at his daughter’s face, feels the warmth of his wife pressed up against his back, the muffled noise of the restaurant and all of New York city in the distance, the sounds of the city as familiar as a lullaby, he is struck with an almost painful pang of longing. “I’m going to miss you so much.”

Annabeth tightens her arms around him. “It’s only for a few weeks. We’ll be there before you know it.”

“I can’t remember the last time we’ve been apart for so long.”

“Apart from being kidnapped by a rogue goddess?”

“Yeah, exactly. I can’t remember it.”

She snorts.

Picking up his clean kid, he bounces her in his arms, and is rewarded with a giggle. She’s just about old enough to transition out of diapers. She’s growing up so fast. “It just feels so real, now,” he says, quietly. “The visa, the plane ticket… I’m really going.”

“You are.” She comes around to his side, her hand never leaving his arm. “You’re going to go to Greece for twelve months, dazzle the crap out of the other archaeologists with your million shipwreck discoveries, and not have to deal with any grading or any undergrads the whole time. And we’ll be right there with you, the whole time.”

“Almost the whole time.”

“Almost,” she conceded.

“I just—I don’t want to waste this opportunity. I’m not…”

“What? Not smart enough?”

He shrugs.

In response, she rolls her eyes, then gently cuffs him upside the head. “Ow!”

“Percy,” she says, dead serious. “Do you know how many people apply for things like this?”

“I dunno… a few?”

“Try at least thirty per cycle. These are really prestigious grants. People apply from all over the world, in all stages of their careers. And you, seaweed brain,” she pokes him with her finger. “Beat out the competition.”

He feels the grin stretch across his face, slowly. “I did, didn’t I?”

“We did.” She kisses him. “Half of that proposal is mine.”

“The better half.”

“Of course.”

“Your name should be on this visa.”

“And it would be, if I could breathe underwater.”

“I can’t wait for you all to join me,” he says, eyes going misty.

Annabeth kisses him again. “We’ll be right behind you.”

They’re in the bathroom so long, dessert has already come and gone, but his mom manages to snag a matcha brownie for him before Paul gobbles them all up. Frederick leads them all in one last toast, to Percy’s great academic finds or whatever, but the true highlight of the night is when Annabeth nudges Junie, who, with a gasp of almost-forgetfulness, pulls out the little thing he’d seen her working at for the last few weeks, proudly presenting it to him.

“I made this for you, daddy,” Junie announces to the table. “I hope you like it!”

In her hands is a friendship bracelet, patterned with the Greek wave in blue and light green. Some of the waves are uneven, the crests a bit clunky, but in the center, Junie had woven an evil eye symbol in white.

“I love it,” he croaks. “Thank you so much.”

“Mommy helped with the mati, but I picked the colors.” She points at the band. “Blue is for the ocean. The green is for honey dew!”

He cannot stand it—he hugs his daughter, and doesn’t stop himself from crying.

***

Percy, who in the last seventy-two hours, has suffered air travel, jetlag, a mattress as soft as a concrete slab, the Athenian metro system, and one really, really steep hill, now faces his final challenge of the day. Swallowing his fear, he runs a hand through his sweaty hair, and steps up to the front desk of the library.

"Ah, signomi," he stammers, the word strange and unfamiliar in his mouth. The syllables are pretty close to ancient Greek, but the way they fit together is just… weird. "I have an appointment with, um, Aristides?"

The older lady at the front desk peers up at him over the rim of her glasses, her wrinkled hands resting on the pages of a yellowed book. With her red-dyed hair, large frames (are those Chanel?), enormous jewelry, and heavy eyeshadow, she reminds Percy of every school librarian he's ever had.

She leans in, hand to her ear, one eyebrow cocked. "Eh?"

"Aristides?" he repeats, a little louder. It echoes throughout the main hall of the library, and he does his best not to wince.

"Ah, Aristides!" She perks up, babbling at him in Greek. "Edaxi," she says, "one moment, please," before rising from her seat, and floating across the hall, where she disappears behind a large, wooden door.

Unsure if he should sit at one of the tables, Percy elects to stand, hands gripping the strap of his backpack, tapping his heel against the floor. An older patron in the corner of the room, his table piled high with books almost tall enough to wall him off from the world, glares at him.

It's a beautiful little library. The attached museum had been a beautiful little thing, too, and if it weren’t the middle of the night on the east coast, he would have called her up himself, and shown her around via video.

He channels her now as he looks around, observing. The outside had been all neoclassical, almost beating you over the head with it, with perfect, fluted ionic columns, tapering gently at the top. Inside, beautiful, grand, wooden bookshelves surround the room, their contents locked behind glass. Some of them he can read instantly, of course—the library has a hefty collection of ancient Greek literature after all—but the rest swims in front of his eyes, scratchy gold lettering blurring together with blue and red leather. Wandering over to something that won't make his head hurt, he stops in front of a glass display of a book, open to a delicately printed page of text.

It’s in Greek—ancient Greek, thank the gods—and to his delight, it’s the first few lines of the Iliad. Instantly, his shoulders unwind, and he relaxes enough to lean down and take a closer look, quietly mouthing the familiar words to himself. Percy doesn’t even bother with the label, instead tracing his eyes over the floral linework in the header illustration. He sees ram heads, fish, and pumpkins in the little cornucopia, and some kind of gorgon mask in the big, illuminated “Mu” that begins the poem. His master’s thesis had been a new translation of the Aeneid, but during that process he had come to appreciate the art of old, fancy editions of epic poems. It was kind of cool to see a physical, non-magical link to his past. He might be living proof of the Olympian gods, but plenty of mortals had dedicated their lives to carrying that legacy forward on faith and passion alone. And now Percy will carry it forward, too, without using his sword this time. It’s pretty cool, if you think about it.

A quiet voice behind him breaks the spell. "Mr. Jackson?"

Percy turns, and is greeted by a well-dressed man, probably in his early 40s. He looks as Greek as Greek can be, with a great beak of a nose and thick, wavy, salt and pepper hair. “Percy,” he insists, reaching out to shake his hand. “Thanks so much for meeting with me, Mr. Yiannopoulos.”

“Please,” he returns, in a perfect American accent. “Call me Ari. Come on, let’s talk in my office.”

His office is huge, definitely bigger than Percy’s apartment back home, and covered wall-to-wall with books, in so many languages that it makes his head spin. As Percy closes the door behind them, Ari sheds his suit jacket, tossing it over a spare chair squashed between two teetering piles of books. He gets the sense that this guy and Frederick would get along famously.

“You get settled in alright, Praetor? No problems with the apartment?”

Percy sets down his backpack on the 70s-era linoleum floor. The things he’s picked up from Annabeth still astound him. “Yeah, it’s fine. But getting here was a journey, let me tell you.”

“I’d bet,” says Ari, evenly.

“That hill is killer.”

“They’re building a new metro station in the neighborhood, but it won’t open for another few years probably.”

“How do you stand it?”

Ari shrugs, sitting down behind his desk. “Practice, mostly. But I live on campus here.”

“Heh, must be nice.” Percy sits in the chair opposite him, zipping open his backpack and rummaging around for his documents folder… until something occurs to him, and he suddenly shoots his head up. “Did you just call me ‘Praetor’?”

“Took you long enough.”

He blinks. “You’re a Roman?”

“Yep.” Ari rolls up his sleeve, revealing the familiar, stark harp symbol, with twelve lines beneath it, signifying twelve years of service. “Third generation legacy.”

Something in his brain might be broken. Or maybe it's jetlag. “You’re a Roman… but you work for the Greek government?”

Ari raises his brow right back. “And you’re a Greek, but you teach Latin.”

That does not at all clear anything up for him. “Did you know who I was when I applied?”

He shakes his head. “I only learned you were coming after the review committee circulated the applicants. I saw your name, and I had to basically beg my supervisor to let me be your liaison.”

“Okay… Why?”

“I’m glad you asked.” Percy doesn’t think he looks particularly glad. “Because, Praetor, you,” Ari glares at him, as sharp and pointed as the finger he’s thrusting into Percy’s face, “have a bad habit of attracting attention.”

Percy frowns. “Wait… Is this about the Gateway Arch? That was, like, fifteen years ago—”

“The Arch, Mount St Helens, the sinkhole in Rome,” he counts off his fingers. “Do you even know how much paperwork I had to do when you and your friends collapsed the Necromanteion in Epirus? Oh, and then you all decided that the best course of action would be to march on Athens and stage a battle on the Acropolis!” Ari slams his hand down on his wooden desk. “The Acropolis is one of the most popular tourist destinations in the entire world! We had to close the site for days! My bosses were about to have me crucified!”

Percy would scoff, but Ari is a Roman. He knows exactly what he’s talking about vis-a-vis crucifixion. “Well,” Percy counters, “my bosses were going to have me—and also you—obliterated if I hadn’t gone there.”

Ari glares again, a wolf stare so perfectly intimidating it could only have been taught by Lupa. It probably works on the skittish undergrads and beleaguered government employees he has to deal with on a daily basis. But Percy has also trained at Lupa’s knee. He’s faced the Titan king and the goddess of Earth. He has stared down Athena while hiding underneath a pastry cart—and has seen the exact same look on his two year old when she doesn’t want to be put down for a nap.

Sensing, perhaps, that he is outmatched, Ari blinks first. “Fine,” he grinds out, “but I’m giving you an assistant.”

“What? I don’t need—”

“Oh, yes you do. A grant this big comes with serious scrutiny, which will fall on my shoulders if you decide to trash another priceless heritage site.” He turns to his computer, quickly typing something out. “I’m sending you his resume right now. You are not to leave him behind or waste his time with useless data entry.”

“But—”

“Don’t worry, he knows his way around a boat.”

Percy gapes, his whole day suddenly upended. In all his time preparing for the fellowship, he had not expected that he’d have a permanent hanger-on. Especially one he knows nothing about! “You can’t just saddle me with some mortal assistant and call it a day!”

Ari levels him with another look. “Don’t be stupid—I’m sending you a legionnaire.”

“A kid?”

“Yep.” Ari finishes typing with a final clack that brokers no argument, before swivelling back to face him. “You can pick him up from the port when you head out Thursday morning. He’ll be waiting for you at Terminal B.” From a desk drawer, he pulls out a folder, sliding it across to Percy. “I’ve booked you two tickets for an overnight ferry to Crete. You’ll have one day to settle in Heraklion before you start your first survey. Any questions?”

Flabbergasted beyond speech, Percy can only take the folder.

“Great.” He stands up, and goes over to open the door to his office. “I’ll be checking in with you next week. Have a safe trip, Praetor.”

***

“How’s the kid?” Annabeth asks.

Percy groans, dropping his head back.

Over the Iris Message, Annabeth snorts. “That bad?”

“No,” Percy admits. “He’s actually been really helpful.”

“Then what is it?”

In truth, there isn’t a lot to complain about Arthur Taylor. A son of the Roman god Portunes, Arthur had spent the better part of his childhood sailing around the world with his mortal dad, before they settled in San Francisco when he was fourteen. After two years in New Rome High School, he had tested out of most of the classes, and was given permission by the Senate to take his senior year off for a long term Legion assignment—which, apparently, just so happened to be babysitting Percy.

Still, he’s a good kid. He’s an excellent sailor, knows how to operate the very expensive diving equipment that Percy had to rent for appearances’ sake, and, to be quite honest, keeps Percy from going insane by giving him someone to talk to.

There is just one slight problem.

“He keeps calling me ‘Mr. Jackson’!”

Annabeth, the heartless woman that she is, just laughs at him.

“I’m serious!” He whines. “It’s weird!”

“You know that I’m Mrs. Jackson, right?” She flashes the ring at him for good measure, like he’d ever forget one of the best days of his life. “What’s so bad about that?”

“It makes me feel so old.”

“I’m older than you.”

“And you’re aging beautifully.”

“Ha ha,” she deadpans. Then she yawns.

Percy frowns. “It’s not that late over there.” It’s only 8 AM here, and Annabeth seriously lives up to the night owl stereotype.

“No, but I haven’t really been sleeping well for a few days,” she admits. “Taking care of all three of us is hard work.”

A pang goes through him, cutting through the gentle morning sun filtering through the window. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. Sally’s pitched in a few times, and my dad has started sending me those fancy microwave meals.” She shrugs a shoulder, her t-shirt sliding down and showing some skin. Percy tries not to stare like a teenager. “We’ve been getting by just fine.”

“I know.” And he does. Annabeth wouldn’t let a little something like her inability to cook stop her from being the best mom ever. “I just miss you guys so much.”

Smiling softly, she leans forward, and he copies the movement. “We’ll be there next week,” she reminds him, “which means we’ll see you in just three weeks.”

“What if I just cut my survey short and met you in Athens?”

“Don’t threaten me with a good time. Besides, yesterday you told me you were onto something?”

Was it only yesterday? Gods, Percy’s sense of time is shredded out here. They’ve only been surveying for a little over two weeks, but it simultaneously feels like forever and no time at all. The only way Percy can really mark the passage of time is by his twice daily IMs back home. “Maybe,” he hedges. “I talked to some sharks the other day, and they said I should try and find this nymph who’s lived in this part of the bay since the twelfth century.”

“Any luck yet?”

“Not yet, but they said she liked to scare the tourists sailing back and forth from Chrysi.”

“Is that daddy?” Junie waddles into view, rubbing her eyes with her fists.

“Baby, you’re up so late!” Annabeth hoists their oldest into her lap, so she can get a better view. “What’s the matter?”

“Hafta go potty,” she mumbles. “Heard talking. Hi, daddy.”

“Hi, Honey Dew,” he says, almost tearing up. He misses his family so fucking much. “Are you being good for mommy?”

She nods, her eyes still droopy. “Miss you.”

“I miss you, too, kiddo. But I’ll get to see you in just a few weeks! And then we’ll have our big boat adventure!”

Smiling, she snuggles into Annabeth, burying her face in her t-shirt. “Adventure,” she repeats, dreamily.

“Come on, let’s go potty so you can go back to bed.” Annabeth took their daughter’s hand, waving at Percy from thousands of miles away. “Bye, daddy! Have fun on your survey!”

“Good night, baby!”

“Night night,” his daughter says, clumsily flopping her arm.

“Night, Percy,” says Annabeth. “Talk to you in the morning.”

“Sleep well.”

Annabeth blows him a kiss through the IM, and he catches it, rubbing it on his cheek, before swiping a hand through the image of her sticking her tongue out at him.

Good timing—from above, he hears Arthur ring the horn to signal they’ve arrived. Percy emerges from below onto the deck, shading his eyes against the bright morning sun. “Morning, Captain!” Arthur calls from the wheel. “We’re coming up on site 23B.”

“Excellent.” That’s the other great thing about Arthur. Aside from all of his other skills, he is also a whiz at deciphering their legacy data. “How’s the weather looking?”

“Another perfect day.”

They are currently cruising off the southern coast of Crete, cruising easily over the most perfect, bluest ocean Percy has ever seen in his life, beneath a bright, clear sky. It’s hard for the weather to not be perfect here.

“Alright,” Percy says, “if that’s the case, do you think you can head back to Ierapetra and pick up some more supplies?” Their little galley kitchen may be powerful, but it’s still pretty small, and they need to restock every few days.

“Sure thing,” says Arthur. “Any requests?”

“Just clear out their entire stock of peach juice for me.” It may not be blue, but it is delicious.

Arthur opens his mouth, as if to say something else, but then closes it, ducking his head, embarrassed.

“What is it?”

“Um,” Arthur hedges, hands gripping the wheel, “would it be okay if I took some time to go check something out in town?”

Percy frowns. “Sure. Is everything okay?” They haven’t been accosted by monsters yet, but he figures it’s only a matter of time. “Do you need backup?”

“What? Oh,” Arthur flushes. “No, nothing like that. I just wanted to sight-see a bit.”

“Sight-see?”

He nods. “There’s this house—supposedly, in 1798, Napoleon docked in town, incognito, for a single night, before he headed on to Egypt for the Mediterranean campaign.”

The kid’s been all over the world, has docked in every continent except Antarctica, but he’s practically bouncing to go check out some random house that maybe has a connection to the Napoleonic wars. Grinning, Percy makes a note to introduce Arthur to Dr. Chase at some point. “Sure,” he says. “Have fun.”

Arthur beams. “Thank you, Mr. Jackson!” And he looks so excited, Percy can’t even bring himself to be annoyed with the whole “Mr. Jackson” thing.

And if Percy decides to give the boat a little push after he dives in so that Arthur can get to shore faster… Well, there are multiple benefits to this decision. Arthur gets to shore faster, and Percy gets to have some time to himself.

Hey, just because having the kid around keeps him from going crazy doesn’t mean he doesn’t need some Percy-time.

Percy lets himself sink further down, enveloped by the warm, crystal clear blue water. Eyes closed, he tilts his head up towards the surface, breathing out a stream of bubbles, his t-shirt gently wafting in the calm undercurrents. A school of something swims past him, tickling his arms and face like a soft breeze.

Yeah. This is the life.

For a few solid hours, he just lets himself be moved around by the will of the ocean. He moves in something approaching a circle, simply drifting around the island of Chrysi. Dappled sunlight drapes like lace over the rocky seafloor and patches of seagrass, while parades of colorful fish stop in their tracks to look for a second at the weird obstacle in their migration path, before continuing on around him. Eventually, the current takes him by the waist and draws him further from shore, into the deepening dark of the sea. Beneath him, he can sense the slowly sharpening descent of the ocean floor, stretching further and further, past the hunting grounds of squids and octopus until, he knows, some hundreds of meters further south, the ground suddenly gives way to a steep, sudden cliff. And what lies beyond, no one knows.

Which is crazy to Percy. He’s seen the surveys, read the topographical maps, and even asked his dad, but despite the seventy or so years of dedicated surveying and the literal thousands of years of nautical travel and trade, there are still, somehow, unknowns in the Mediterranean. There are creatures down here even his father doesn’t know. There is magic here older than the gods themselves.

And there is also a nereid staring at Percy from behind a tall rock.

He yelps, tripping on himself. Yes, tripping underwater. It happens, and it’s just as silly as tripping on land. “Ahem. Hello?”

The nereid pokes her head out further. She’s pretty in the way that all nereids are pretty, by virtue of being an immortal in a pantheon full of pretty people, but there’s something distinctly different about her. Her skin is pale, her hair somehow sticking to her face, like she had just emerged from underwater… despite still being underwater.

Percy chances a swim closer. She doesn’t immediately run away, but she still seems pretty shaken up by the appearance of a sudden stranger. “Hey. Uh, I’m Percy. What’s your name?”

Her eyes widen, and she squeaks, blushing blue to the roots of her glossy, black hair. “My lord!” She bows, nearly tumbling into a full front flip, her long, skinny tail flipping against the rock with a thump so loud, Percy can feel the vibrations.

Oh good. She knows who he is. “Hi.”

“Hello! Good morning! Um, afternoon? My lord!”

The water ripples out from around her, shaking so hard she’s starting to cause her own localized whirlpool. “Percy is fine. Please.”

The nereid nods, sharply. “Lord Percy!”

Well, that’s about as far as he’s going to get.

She stares at him, starry-eyed, but still nervous. Also, she doesn’t look like she’s about to make off with him and drag him to her undersea lair, so that’s a plus. “So… what’s your name?”

“Eunice, Lord Percy!”

“Great—wait. Eunice?”

“Yes!”

Eunice. Huh. Well, he’s heard weirder. “Eunice. You live around here?”

She nods, her hair whipping in the current.

“I’m looking for—”

“For shipwrecks! Yes! Your father told us!”

“Right.” Oh he’s well aware. He’s had random nereids accosting him all summer to tell him about the incredibly fascinating sunken lobster fishing boats off the coast of Maine they had found, and how about they go check them out together, just the two of them? “Well, actually, I was talking to Kostas the other day—”

“The squid?”

“The shark.”

She nods. “I know him well! We are good friends!”

That had not been Kostas’ version of events. “He said you might know something about a bronze age wreck around here?” Specificity is important, he’s learned. There are so many shipwrecks around Crete, mostly from the last forty years, and specificity means he’s not wasting time chasing Cold War-era fishing vessels.

In lieu of an answer, instead she turns and bolts into the deep, almost smacking Percy in the face with her tail.

He stares after her.

Then, just as quickly as she left, she swims back, beckoning with one webbed hand. “Please, Lord Percy! Follow me!” And then she shoots off once more.

O… kay.

With only some trepidation, he swims after her.

She’s fast, and the further they go, the more she blends into the environment, but the sea puts his senses into overdrive. He can easily follow her bubble trail, weaving in and out of spiky rock formations, inching ever closer to—where else—the edge of that underwater cliff. Because of course. “Hey, Eunice,” he calls out. “Where are we going?”

“We seek the edge of the Minoan Crown, my lord!” She sends back. Which means absolutely nothing to him.

But it’s not like he can get lost, so, onwards and upwards. Or downwards, as the case may be.

The water grows colder, blacker, heavier. Pressure curls around his ankles and wrists like weights, but Eunice is not stopping, so Percy swims through the water as thick and heavy as molasses. He can still breathe down here, but something about the water is just… different. Awkward. Like it almost doesn’t fit in his lungs. More disconcertingly, he feels like he can barely see, the darkness is so impenetrable.

“Nearly there!” Eunice calls cheerfully. Percy wipes his brow, suddenly sweaty.

“Nearly there” turns out to be something of an overestimation, but eventually, she makes a right turn, and comes to a hard stop, Percy nearly barreling into her.

“Here, prince,” she says, approaching a dark shape in the dark(er) water. “Look.”

This deep, in this thick, complete darkness, he’s essentially blind. Still, he can sense that they are in an underwater cave, some five thousand or so meters beneath the surface. He has an impression of spiky stalagmites and packed sand. Cautious, he swims closer. His eyes essentially useless, he closes them, reaching out with his feelings instead.

The water here is still, unnaturally so. There is no life, no movement, aside from the gentle wave of Eunice’s hair. A cold hand brushes against his arm, and his eyes snap open as he jerks away in shock—not at the touch, but at the fact that he can suddenly see.

Eunice is softly glowing. Her skin, already so pale, is translucent, enough that he can see her bones, but now he can also see the bioluminescent spines protruding from her forearms, casting the cave in an eerie, almost ultraviolet light. “Be at ease,” she says, her voice lower, suddenly confident. “I shall be your light.”

It’s not great. He’d rather have a flashlight. But it’s more than enough to see the smooth, wooden curve of the keel which rises up out of the packed sand of the cave floor, about six inches from his face. He places a hand on a plank, running his palm over the whorls and grain of a piece of wood which had somehow, miraculously, survived all this time.

“Whoa,” he breathes, a stream of bubbles escaping his mouth. How has the wood not completely disintegrated by now?

“You must take care, my lord.” Eunice waves a hand, redirecting the current. “This cave has never known the anemoi, and a hero’s breath is a dangerous thing.”

He frowns, and then it clicks. “This cave is anoxic,” he says. “There’s no oxygen down here.” And no oxygen means no wood-eating organisms. No wonder the keel is so intact.

She tilts her head at the unfamiliar word, frowning delicately, a personality change equal parts eerie and sudden.

“Nevermind.”

With his portable nereid spotlight in tow, he swims around the exposed body of the ship, his astonishment growing with every look. Not only is the keel intact, but so is the deck, as is the single exposed mast, rising up into the black water, a thick length of rope—rope!—attached to the top. Turning and swimming down, he examines the spot where the ship emerges from its sediment casing. If the wood and the rope had survived this long, what else might there be? A sail? Some paint? What if the ship’s cargo survived, too?

“Eunice,” he says, remembering to pull his face away. “How long has this thing been down here?”

She shrugs. “I cannot say for certain, for I had not yet come into being when this vessel came to rest in this cave, its passengers long since drowned.”

The question is out of his mouth before he has time to register that it might be a little bit rude. “How old are you?”

But she doesn’t seem to mind. Eunice smiles, her mouth full of long, sharp teeth, glinting in the light of her spines, and Percy shivers. He vastly prefers the awkward, nervous Eunice from earlier. “I am old enough to have guided the Argo safely through the clashing rocks, to have been challenged by Cassiopeia, and to have mourned the swift-footed son of Thetis, pouring honey and ambrosia over the silver casket of the greatest of warriors.”

So, about as old as the Trojan War, then.

Which means this ship is even older.

He places his hand on the wood, and closes his eyes again, focusing, a trick he’s picked up from Leo.

Machines have stories, and so do ships. How they’re made, how they work, how they’re broken. Percy just has to be willing to listen.

“It’s not a cargo ship,” he says, mostly to himself. “It was a warship.” He can hear it, the furious beat of drums, the rhythmic grunt of oarsmen, the sharpening of blades and the readying of bows. The wood, hewn from a cedar tree, is warm beneath his touch, even here in the freezing cold dark. “And it was sailing north.”

“North?”

“It was… running away from something.” Limping away from battle. The captain had cut his losses, and had ordered his men to retreat. “There was a storm.” No doubt his father and uncle had been fighting again, this sad little warship caught in the middle of an explosive family dispute they had no part in. Percy hears the crashing of thunder, the howling wind, the mighty crack of a mast as it splits apart. “And then it sank.”

An all-too common occurrence. But where did it come from?

Percy frowns, stretching his senses further.

He sees round shields and horned helmets, and people exhausted by constant war. There is the spicy, floral red lotus, and the earthy, woody papyrus. A mighty river floods in an endless cycle, giving life in a barren desert. And in him is a spirit that covets this bounty, a feeling of envy so hot and sudden, it almost knocks Percy off his feet.

He has to—he has to write all this down. If this is what he thinks this is, then this could be the find of a generation. Maybe several generations. Frantically patting his pockets, he pulls out Riptide, converting it to normal pen mode, before he stops, and smacks his forehead, groaning.

Di immortales, he left his notebook with Arthur on the ship!

***

“Absolutely not!”

“Ari—”

“No!”

“Ari, this could be huge.”

“You’re talking about causing an earthquake!”

“A small one!”

“Are you out of your mind?”

“How else am I supposed to get it out of the cave?”

“Arthur, tell me you think this is a bad idea.”

“Um…”

“Iuppiter dique te omnes perdant, Percy, you’ve gone and corrupted him.”

“Look, it’s not Minoan or Mycenaean, it’s not Egyptian—it’s unlike any other ship I’ve ever seen before. The cave is anoxic, so the wood is so well-preserved, and Eunice says that it’s been there since before she was, so we’re talking 12th century, at minimum.”

“CE?”

“BCE.”

“...And it’s not Mycenaean?”

“Mr. Jackson thinks it could belong to the Sea Peoples!”

“Arthur—!”

“Sorry!”

“...The Sea Peoples. Really?”

“I mean… yeah. I think so.”

“...Let me make some calls.”

***

Calls are made. And Percy waits.

Luckily, he has a really, really nice way to pass the time.

Annabeth, naked as the day she was born, lounges on the cabin bed, stretching her arms over her head, before she flops over onto her back, limp and boneless. Percy, drinks in hand and equally naked, has to force himself to set the bottle down on the little table, rather than drop the damn thing and jump her all over again. “Water or wine?” he asks, shamelessly leering.

She shamelessly leers back. “Water, then wine,” she responds, already reaching for a glass. “I need to rehydrate.”

Originally, the plan had been for Percy to go back to Athens to meet his family after they arrived. However, given the potentially paradigm-changing archaeological treasure stuck in the Hellenic Trench, Ari and Percy had both decided it would probably be best for Percy to stay put, and have his family come to him, rather than the other way around. Which is fine by him. They can explore Athens as a family any time, but the perfect weather off the coast of Crete will only last for so long.

The tourists have begun to dissipate as the summer season gives way to a warm fall, so Percy, Annabeth, and the girls have the beaches and seas more or less to the locals and themselves. Junie is utterly enchanted by the Flying Dolphin, and has decided that her new favorite game is hiding in the various nooks and crannies aboard ship, then popping out to surprise him, giving her daddy a heart attack in the process. Lucie takes a little more time to adjust, laid low by a minor ear infection, made worse by the rocking of the boat. The only way to calm her, they quickly learn, is for Percy to hold her while they go for a dive, suspended in a little air bubble, her little eyes wide as she takes it all in.

Percy, Annabeth, and their family spend their days diving, fishing, making friends with the elderly women who come out every morning at sunrise for their daily swim, relaxing on the beach, and eating their way through the multiple gelato shops which line the promenade. Aside from a few hiccups, having this time with his family has been an absolute, perfect paradise.

Percy is pretty sure he and Annabeth are guaranteed a spot in Elysium. Whenever they end up there, he hopes it’s exactly like this.

Especially this part.

After about a week and a half, Frederick, sensing that Percy and Annabeth were in desperate need of a little alone time, had graciously volunteered to take Arthur and the girls inland on a tour of Minoan ruins. Percy had essentially been put on shore leave while Ari did his bureaucratic, six degrees of New Rome separation thing to make sure Percy’s plan isn’t completely idiotic, and maybe even viable, and Frederick was already chomping at the bit to see some old rocks which had once been palaces, so it didn’t take much effort to convince Arthur to go along with them.

So, with the kids away and work on hold for the time being, Percy and Annabeth are engaging in some truly excellent sex.

Like, a whole lot of it.

Dehydration is a very real possibility for both of them.

“Tell me you have more of that cheese,” she says, after downing a glass and a half of water.

“We finished off the graviera this morning. I’ll tell Arthur to pick up some more on his way back.”

She pouts. “You mean to tell me that I’ll be cheeseless for two more days?”

“Unless you want to get dressed and go get some yourself.”

“Honestly, I’m considering it.” She lifts one leg, grasping her knee and pulling it closer, stretching out a cramp—and giving Percy one hell of a view. “I’m going to need some snacks if you’re going to keep making me come like that.”

He grins. It had been explosive. “Hit your limit already?”

“Not even close.” Percy settles onto the bed next to her, wine glass in hand, and she lifts herself to kiss him, slipping the glass out of his grasp. “But seriously, we should probably eat. I think we were fucking all through lunch.”

“You hungry?”

“Give me like half an hour. You’re not?”

Percy frowns. He… really isn’t. “I’m fine.”

Annabeth hums, thoughtful. “How much do you eat out here?”

“The normal amount, I think.” Usually, he’ll have some yogurt and granola for breakfast, some cheese and salted fish for lunch, and whatever fresh fruit and cheese they had on hand for dinner. There’s an abundance of fresh fish, too, and catching some for a quick grill is comically easy out here. Arthur is largely in charge of grocery shopping, and he certainly doesn’t complain about the food, but he also seemingly has an endless supply of oregano flavored chips. Hopefully Percy isn’t accidentally starving him.

“Hm.”

“What?”

“Just thinking.”

“About?”

“You.” With her free hand, she trails a finger up his chest, her nail ghosting over browned skin and white scar tissue, leaving a pleasantly tingly feeling in its wake. “Ocean life seems to agree with you.”

“It certainly beats grading.”

“Mmhmm.” Her fingers move further north, from his shoulder to his neck to the back of his head. “Your hair is getting long.”

On reflex, he runs a hand through it, pushing it back from his face. “I can cut it.”

“Don’t.” She tangles her fingers in it, tugging, and smirks at his quiet gasp. “I like it.”

Thoughts of lunch are pushed to the wayside in favor of… other pursuits.

It’s only much later, as the rim of the sun just barely kisses the horizon, that Annabeth puts her foot down. “We have to eat something.”

“I can just catch us some fish,” he protests.

But Annabeth shakes her head, pulling on her underwear. “I haven’t been on solid ground for forty-eight hours. I want to walk around the old town, eat my weight in stuffed peppers, and then get another twelve of those giant sfakianopita, so that the next time we have a two day sex binge, I’ll have something more substantial to snack on instead of just cheese and nuts.”

“You can snack on my nuts,” he mutters, and is rewarded by Annabeth throwing his shirt at his head.

Still, solid ground is a solid idea. As much as he enjoys living aboard the Flying Dolphin, she is one small ship. Ierapetra isn’t exactly the big city, but compared to his cramped quarters, it might as well be as bustling as Manhattan. To his chagrin, Percy hasn’t actually spent much time in town, rarely venturing further inland than the corner shop on the boardwalk.

Annabeth laughs as he points it out. “Only you, seaweed brain.”

“What do you mean?”

“Your first instinct is to go for the bodega.” She laughs again, bright and bubbly, her curls bouncing in the evening breeze. “Guess you really can’t take the city out of the boy.”

Hand in hand, they wander the streets, Annabeth pointing out every architectural feature that tickles her fancy. She had used the flight to blast through an audiobook about Ottoman architecture, and she takes great delight in putting her newfound knowledge to the test. Almost as much delight as Percy takes in listening to her.

“So why is this one square?” he asks, as they are admiring the remains of a mosque with its tower broken off. “I thought mosques were supposed to be rounder.”

“It depends. Lots of mosques have unique layouts because of geographical limitations. This one is interesting, though. Look at the walls—see how they’re sticking out?”

Percy nods.

“And the tiled roof. This mosque is missing the qubba.”

“The what?”

“The dome.” She needs both hands to explain, and Percy tries not to pout at the loss. “Representing the vault of heaven. It’s not a requirement, but it’s still unusual for a mosque not to have at least one dome.”

“You know,” he says, “I have noticed that all the churches here have domes.”

Annabeth smiles, proudly. “They’re definitely related. Most dome architecture can be traced back to the 6th century, and the construction of the Hagia Sophia.”

“There weren’t domes before?”

“There definitely were,” she says. “Remember the Pantheon in Rome?”

“I was a little busy fighting some nymphs that day.”

“It’s basically a giant circle imposed on top of a big square. It’s the world’s biggest dome made of unreinforced concrete. But that means it’s also very heavy, and it needs a lot of internal support, which shrinks the available internal space. The Hagia Sophia, on the other hand, is so amazing because the architects basically invented an entirely new way to construct and support the dome. Instead of putting a sphere on a cube, the Hagia Sophia has pendentives in the corners to help bear the weight of the dome. They also reduced the weight of the dome by cutting windows into the bottom, which lets in a ton of natural light, and supposedly it makes it look like the dome is floating.” She sighs, happily. “I’d love to see it one day.”

Percy is already mentally composing his vacation request. “I’m sure I can get Ari to get us some time off after we officially discover the paradigm-shifting archaeological marvel.”

Annabeth takes his hand again, almost glowing. “I’d really like that.”

With renewed energy, they finish their ramble, settling down at the first restaurant they see once they emerge from the maze of streets back onto the beach. True to her wishes, Annabeth manages to eat her weight in stuffed peppers, while Percy devours almost an entire grilled octopus, using his fries to mop up every last morsel. They share a couple bottles of wine, and endless plates of fried cheese, as the sky turns from purple to blue, the twinkling lights of the cruise ships off the port like stars.

Percy has his arm around her waist as they walk back to the boat. He’s a little tipsy, and Annabeth is very sturdy. Still, he manages not to trip as they slow their roll, coming to a halt in front of the very annoyed looking young woman who waits for them at the dock, tapping her foot next to a giant package.

She doesn’t look like a local. Percy’s spent enough time with the frequent fishers that he can easily pick them out of a lineup. But she does look mad. “Um… can we help you?”

The woman sighs, tossing the sweaty strands of brown hair which have escaped her tight ponytail. “Percy Jackson?”

“Who wants to know?” Annabeth adjusts his grip on her waist, giving her more room to draw her knife.

“I need your signature for a delivery.”

Percy is pretty sure he would remember making an order big and important enough to need a signature. “Sure…?”

She hands him a clipboard and a pen. Then she stares at him when he does nothing. “Are you going to sign?”

“Sorry,” he says, “I’m a little confused.” Annabeth snorts. “Who is this from again?”

“Mr. Yiannopoulos commissioned the equipment from New Rome on your behalf.”

Oh. Now that he looks, he actually does see the Senate insignia on the top of the delivery form.

“What is it?”

The woman eyes Annabeth suspiciously. “And you are?”

“Annabeth Jackson.”

“Hero and Architect of Olympus,” Percy adds.

Turns out, that was the trick. The woman’s jaw drops open, her eyes widening. “You’re—you’re Annabeth Chase?” she gasps.

“That’s me.”

Percy chuckles, clumsily signing the form. The novelty of Annabeth having fans has long since worn off, but not the delight of seeing other people recognize her brilliance.

After an autograph and a selfie for Drusilla, who apologizes profusely for her attitude, Praetor, she had just been told to wait by the Flying Dolphin for an unknown amount of time, and you know how the Senate doesn’t always give all the pertinent details, Annabeth is giving her directions to their favorite gelato spot while Percy crouches by the package. “So, what is it?”

“I don’t know,” says Drusilla, still starry-eyed. “I only picked it up in Miami.”

Percy frowns. “Is that a card?”

Sure enough, there’s a Hallmark greeting card taped to a corner, nearly hidden beneath all the customs stickers. Tongue between his teeth, he gently pries it off, cleanly slicing it open with Drusilla’s pen. On the cover is a drawing of a dragon, lighting birthday candles with his breath.

“Who’s it from?”

“To Percy,” he reads the chicken scrawl inside. “Got a special request from NRU engineering to help make you a little present. As payment, I expect ten percent of every underwater treasure chest you find. (Babies are expensive!) Love, Leo.”

“What does it mean?”

“Who’s Leo?” Drusilla wonders.

Percy stands, grinning. “It means that Plan Earthquake is a-go.”

***

Plan Earthquake is pretty much exactly what it sounds like it would be.

The Aegean Sea plate is surprisingly active for how small it is, and seismic activity is pretty common in this part of the world. If, say, for instance, there were to be a minor earthquake originating from the Hellenic subduction zone, maybe it could potentially dislodge any archaeological detritus from where it was trapped in an anoxic cave almost six thousand meters below sea level, sending it floating closer to the surface, where it could then subsequently be discovered by some passing ship surveying the area for wrecks.

You know, possibly.

But first they need to get it out of the rock.

Unfortunately, Leo’s magic winch did not come with jackhammers, so Percy is warming up for the big act by gently shaking the packed sand apart. Eunice is helping, too, redirecting the currents to help clear away the loose chunks of rock. Annabeth is on standby on the surface, monitoring the seismological chatter, while Arthur mans the ship, and keeps an eye out for sea monsters.

“How you doing, hon?” Annabeth says into his bluetooth earbuds.

Percy shakes out his hands, jumping up and down. “Fine,” he confirms. “Think we’re almost ready to fire up the winch. How’s it looking up there?”

“All clear,” she confirms, after a beat. “Arthur says we’re alone out here. No ships, no uninvited guests.”

They should be. There’s no reason for tourist ships to come this far south of the coast, nor for shipping out of Cairo to come this far north. Also, the monsters have been leaving them alone for the most part. Hopefully they’ll stay away, instead of dropping in in the middle of Plan Earthquake and making things interesting. Percy breathes in, stretching out his arms. “Alright. Give me another hour.”

It’s long, grueling work, but bit by bit, they uncover the wreck, freeing inch after inch of preserved wood. To his delight, he finds that he was right—the packed sediment did preserve the paint. There’s no way it will survive contact with oxygenated water, and there’s no way he could explain away any pictures, so he commits each color to memory, all the beautiful ruddy reds and browns, and the gold and white geometric designs on the prow. It’s truly a masterpiece of construction, shell-first with mortise and tenon joints, sleek and sturdy and beautiful.

Though, he thinks as he starts attaching cables to the boat, maybe a little too sleek. Hopefully it’s sturdy enough to withstand the pulling.

“Eunice,” he calls, “you ready?” She’s not his first choice for an assistant, but he figures even she can’t screw up pressing a button.

She frowns at the machine, the image odd on her delicate face. If he didn’t know better, he would say she was afraid of it. “Prince, explain again, what would you have me do?”

Okay, nevermind. “You know what, just swap with me.”

“My lord?”

“Just keep the boat from shaking too bad, and try and slip water between the wood and the rock to help wiggle it out. I’ll man the winch.”

The winch is automatic, but Percy still has to keep his attention divided more than he’d like between the cable and the boat and the rock, making sure nothing goes catastrophically wrong. It’s slow going, and sometimes they have to pause the winch to maneuver around a particularly stubborn piece of earth, but between Eunice and Percy, they manage to slide the hull out of the packed stone. Percy winces a t every groan and every ding of rock against the wood, but that’s okay. No wreck is perfect.

A particularly spiky shard of rock scratches a deep line across the gold paint, and Percy kind of wants to cry about it.

Then, the winch abruptly stops, the mechanics whining in protest. The cables pull taut, and the wood screams.

It’s over in a second, but to Percy, it might as well be slow motion.

The keel can apparently no longer stand being dragged over the rough earth. Percy watches in horror as a catastrophic looking crack races across the wood, shooting up from bottom to top. The internal pegs on the mortise and tenon joints must have been more corroded than he thought, because as soon as they touch water, they disintegrate, and the ship pulls itself apart.

Percy swears.

“Are you okay? Percy!”

“I’m fine—it’s the ship!”

Eunice races over to the machine, overcoming her fear of technology to slam on the brakes.

“What happened?”

The port side of the hull has split in two, sharp splinters of wood floating in the water, and based on the creaking, the starboard side is just about on the brink, the force of the winch leaving it hovering in an awkward bend, listing to the right. The ship’s cargo has spilled out onto the rock, coins and ingots glinting in the soft light of Eunice’s bioluminescent skin.

“It broke,” he says, not at all able to keep the horror out of his voice.

“How?”

“I broke it.” A life-changing find that could upend the entire field of archaeology, and Percy goes and breaks it. He swims closer to investigate, running his fingers over the exposed wood.

“Talk to me.”

“The pegs must have been in worse shape than I thought.” Hopefully Percy can salvage at least one of them for further study. “The hull cracked towards the stern, and the joints just came apart.”

She swears. “How bad?”

“It’s not great.” The front half, suspended in the water, seems to have emerged mostly unscathed, but as for the stern, it is deeply, firmly wedged within the earth. “The stern is stuck, and I’m not sure I can get it out.”

“So, what now?”

Percy blows out a breath. “There’s nothing for it—we’ll have to keep going and excavate what we can.”

And break the other half of the ship in the process.

A lot of bad things had happened to Percy in his life. This doesn’t make the top ten, but it definitely makes the top twenty. Right in between getting kicked out of Goode and getting electrocuted by Thalia.

He takes a moment to mourn the loss of a beautifully made vessel, his hand over his heart, before waving back to Eunice. “Alright,” he calls. “Fire it up.”

Of course, he has to amend his list after he watches the winch rip apart the other side of the hull. This hurts way more than a lightning bolt to the chest.

But Percy’s been a soldier longer than he’s been an archaeologist, so he can get his job done, and grieve at the same time.

He takes a deep breath, calls on the power deep within him, and cracks a fault line.

It’s over, quicker and easier than blowing up Mount St. Helens, and less than forty minutes later he’s back on the ship, sitting too close to his wife in the galley, feeling sorry for himself.

“It’s really okay, babe.”

He groans, dropping his head in his hands. “I can’t believe I Schliemanned it!”

Arthur pokes his head in. “How are we looking on the scanners, Mrs. Jackson?”

Annabeth really likes Arthur. More specifically, Percy thinks she really likes it when he calls her by her family name. So he’s not surprised at her warm tone with him. “Minimal tsunami risk across the coast. Thanks for the save earlier.”

He blushes, mumbling. “It was nothing.”

She had sworn up and down to Percy that she had never been in any real danger. Percy did not believe Annabeth Ingrid Jackson about measures of danger (she feels the same about him, so it works out.) But his earthquake had rocked their boat more than a little bit. Annabeth hadn’t gotten far. And probably wouldn’t have made it over the side. But Arthur, all about safe harbor, had managed to grab her before anything too catastrophic occurred.

He slides in across from the now, tapping his feet against the base of the galley table. “So, what now?”

Percy pinches the bridge of his nose. “Now we wait. We’ll come back at some point in the spring, officially discover what’s left of the ship, and get it ready for surveying.”

“What’s left of it?” he wonders.

“I had to leave like a fifth of the wreck in the cave.” A whole fifth, including hull, keel, deck, and cargo. Annabeth rubs his back, and another wave of misery crashes over him. He can’t believe someone paid him over a quarter of a million dollars to come all this way and destroy the first priceless artifact he finds.

Arthur frowns, thoughtful. “Isn’t that a good thing, though?”

Percy lifts his head. “What do you mean?”

“Well, intact shipwrecks are super rare, even for stuff sunk in the last fifty years.”

“The Uluburun was mostly intact.”

“Mostly,” Arthur points out. “And it wasn’t stuck in a cave. What are the odds of a three thousand year old ship surviving being ripped out of a rockbed by an earthquake?”

“He’s right,” Annabeth says. “Honestly, the fact that it’s broken will probably add to its authenticity.”

Percy hums, noncommittally. They’re probably right. But he still feels bad about it. Bad enough that he feels like an hours-long swim to clear his head.

Annabeth is waiting for him when he climbs up on deck around midnight. Just Annabeth.

“Where’s Arthur?”

“Arthur went to bed,” she says. “I ended his watch for him.”

“You’re not the captain.”

“There was a power vacuum, on account of the captain going swimming with the fishes.”

He kisses her, the last dregs of his bad mood floating out to sea. “I’m so glad you’re here.”

“Me, too.”

They hold each other, swaying to the gentle motion of the waves, under a dark sky littered with stars, and Percy has a strange, distinct feeling that they’d done this before. Maybe in another life. Maybe in his dreams. But something about this moment, so peaceful and beautiful, feels eternal, immutable, like a cornerstone of the universe.

“Guess what?” she murmurs into his collarbone.

“Hmm?”

“I’m pregnant again.”

He goes warm, from the tips of his toes up to his chest and his cheeks. “Really?”

“I’m surprised it didn’t happen sooner, given how excited you get on the water.”

Then he blushes for an entirely different reason.

“Sorry.”

“So not a problem.” She kisses him again. “So, so not a problem.”

***

Percy takes a sip of lukewarm water. It gets hot in Greece in early March, and this room, even with all the windows and doors open, is still pretty stuffy. “Excavation is currently underway at the Chrysi site, and is expected to continue through June, before resuming this coming September. By then, we should have completed both the trilateral and photogrammetric surveys of the site, and may be ready to begin excavating the cargo and other material for preservation.” He clicks to the final slide, a picture Arthur had taken of him, Annabeth, and the girls on the deck of the Flying Dolphin, and the audience politely coos, applauding while holding cups of hot tea.

Which makes sense, since this is a tea talk, something that apparently exists. But why do they all drink hot tea for these things? It’s over sixty degrees fahrenheit outside!

“Thank you so much,” says the moderator, an older woman with straight, white hair, who speaks fluent Greek in the most Jersey-ish accent he had ever heard in his life. “Really, really intriguing stuff. Shall we open the floor for questions?”

The audience is made up mostly of young grads, dutifully scribbling away in their notebooks, with some older academics scattered among them. They sit on couches and armchairs and rickety-looking wooden seats, lined up in rows, and the unlucky ones who didn’t get a seat either are relegated to the porch outside the salon, leaning against the door, or squished three to a person on the piano bench in the back.

A girl in the front row with dark, curly hair and a flannel shirt raises her hand. She doesn’t look that much older than him. Actually, she might be a few years younger. That’s kind of a sobering thought. “Thank you so much for such an interesting talk. My question is, you have all these different types of data, between the legacy data and the weather patterns—how do you keep it all organized?”

“With difficulty.” His audience chuckles. “For something with this many moving parts, I have to do it manually. However, drawing my own maps gives me the freedom to adapt on the fly.” And add data that would be, uh, inconsistent with mortal abilities. “Plus, my wife helps me keep everything straight.”

Annabeth flashes him a thumbs up from her front row seat. Junie flashes him two, and Lucie kicks her feet, distracted by the amphora on the bookshelf next to her. He hopes that Annabeth, at six months pregnant, still has her reflexes ready if Lucie tries to make the bookshelf baby’s first lava rock wall.

From the back of the room, a thin, reedy man with round glasses and a scruffy black beard raises his hand. “How do you choose your areas to survey? What made you pick Crete?”

The fish tell him. “I have specialties in deep-sea diving and open water sailing,” well, that’s one way of putting it, “so, the Aegean is just a little too shallow for my tastes. Plus, there’s been so much maritime traffic in the Levantine Sea since, well, forever, it seemed like a natural place to start.”

To the left of the first girl, another girl raises her hand, her sleeve falling to show off her amazing red figure pottery tattoo. “Thank you so much for sharing. The colors are just so bright and so strong, do you know, or do you have any theories as to why it hasn’t degraded?”

He and Annabeth have spent days hammering out the details Percy would fudge, drilling the answers so often they become automatic, but he’s still proud of himself for not tripping over his words when he answers, “It’s unclear as of right now. There’s still a ton of tests that need to be run, but my best guess would be that, after it sank, the ship ended up in some kind of anoxic environment, maybe like the Bannock Basin, that was able to preserve most of the organic matter.” He ducks his head, full of false modesty. “Of course, that’s just a theory.”

Annabeth smirks at him from the corner of his eye, and he really has to fight back the answering one which threatens to spread across his face.

The tea talk wraps up in due time, and the chairs and couches are summarily put back into place as the audience all moves out onto the porch, carrying plates of crackers and cheese and tall, thin bottles of ouzo. Percy hangs behind, lingering at the podium, entertaining the stragglers who come up with questions and “more of a comment, really” and whatever else, leaning against the wooden mantle now that the project screen which covered it has been retracted back into the ceiling. Annabeth has more or less let the kids roam the now-empty salon to their hearts’ content, allowing them to check out the art and artifacts with strict instructions to Junie not to touch, so she can hold court with Percy. He’s grateful, always, for her steady support.

“So you think it’s more of a warship,” says an older man, with a shock of white hair but the energy of a college student.

Percy nods. “At first glance, other than weaponry, the cargo looked like it was mostly looted material—jewelry, precious stones, that kind of thing.”

“I saw, those raw sapphires? What an amazing find!”

Next to him, Annabeth surreptitiously covers her brand new sapphire bracelet with her other hand.

“Where are you headed next? My wife and I have spent pretty much our whole careers excavating in Crete, so if you’re headed back that way in June, we’d love to take you two out to lunch.”

Annabeth’s eyes light up, a calculating spark. “Your wife is an archaeologist, too?”

He nods, proudly gesturing to a silvery haired woman, chatting in Greek with the moderator, her hand over her mouth as she laughs. “I study Bronze Age Crete, she does Hellenistic, and together, we’ve been excavating at Mochlos for, gosh, I don’t even remember how long.” Catching Annabeth’s expression, he asks her, “But you’re not an archaeologist, yeah?”

“Unfortunately,” she shrugs, ruefully. “I’m an architect.”

“Somebody has to bring in the bacon.”

The man laughs. “Well hey, it’s handy to have an architect out in the field! And to get to bring your kids with you, too…” He shakes his head, his gaze, like a magnet, turning back to his own wife. “I don’t have to tell you how special it is to have someone you love doing this work with you.”

Annabeth takes his hand, squeezing, but Percy has no qualms about public displays of affection, so he does not hesitate to sling his arm around her shoulders and kiss her on the cheek, loud and sloppy. She shoves him, laughing, and as he hears Junie and Lucie start playing around on the old piano in the corner of the salon, on this beautiful warm spring day in Athens, Percy can’t remember if he’s ever been happier.

***

They decide to extend their trip past the end of May. Estelle had been put out all year that she wasn’t able to live with her big brother on a boat and explore the Mediterranean for ancient shipwrecks instead of having to go to school, ugh, so Sally and Paul agree that they are all in dire need of some island time. Percy had to return the Dolphin at the end of his fellowship, and while he was sorry to see it go, the Amalia is a little bit nicer. The man he rented it from said it belonged to his yiayia, and he had brought it with him when he moved from Poros to the mainland. Where the Dolphin was all business, the Amalia is all homey, quiet pleasure. The man, Kostas (Percy had snorted, and Annabeth had had to kick him) had done his best to remove all personal traces to make her fit for rental, but Percy can still sense the love in every inch, from stem to stern. He runs his hand up the mast, and he’s nearly bowled over by the strong rush of emotions practically radiating from her—love, sorrow, and a pride so strong it makes his heart hurt.

As nice as she is, she still won’t hold all nine of them—the family plus Arthur, who is well on his way to becoming Sally Jackson’s third child—so Percy is spending more time on shore this one month than he has all year. He’s had to move out of the Piraeus apartment, too, but Paul got an amazing deal on a vacation rental apartment in Kolonaki, so Percy wakes up every morning to the sight of the Acropolis from his balcony, sipping on a nice, cold glass of peach juice.

Don’t get him wrong, it’s pretty nice. There’s not a lot to complain about.

But he’s very excited to get back out on the water for one last ride.

Just him and the love of his life.

He had no destination in mind, just somewhere far enough from shore to see if they could catch a glimpse of some dolphin pods. Annabeth, just about ready to pop, is lounging on the sun-drenched deck while Percy takes a call in the galley. “How do you feel about Nat Geo?” Ari asks in lieu of a greeting.

“Like in general?”

“Have you ever had media training?”

“...No?”

“Well, you’re going to.” Through the IM, Ari is happier than Percy’s ever seen him, his features smoothed out into a broad, happy grin. “The permit application just landed on my desk. I’m fielding requests from all over to get a glimpse of the Chrysi wreck.”

“I thought my problem was that I attracted too much attention.”

“You keep making life-changing discoveries like this, Praetor, and you can attract all the attention you can handle.”

“Hope so,” says Percy, “because Eunice told me that she heard from her sister that there’s another Bronze Age ship floating around Ithaca that needs discovering.”

He squints, suddenly suspicious. “You’re not planning another earthquake, are you?”

“Not currently, but who knows. There are a lot of subduction zones around Greece. Lots of places for ships to get stuck.”

But Ari just sighs, throwing his hands up in defeat, though his smile has come back. “Whatever, fine, whatever you need. Make your little earthquakes.”

Then, from above deck, an earth-shattering scream rips through the peaceful afternoon.

“PERCYYYYYYY!!!”

“Whoops, that’s my cue,” says Percy. “Gotta run, send me the Nat Geo details later!”

Swiping his hand through the image, he dashes up to the deck, expecting to find a pod of dolphins waiting in the water below.

Instead, he has to pivot, hard, and get down to work bringing his third daughter into the world.

The dolphins return later in the evening to meet the new little sea princess, then graciously offer to escort them back to shore, where his family (and a doctor) gather at the docks, ready and eager to meet their newest relative, little Thalassa Amalia Jackson.

“Thalassa?” Sally asks, holding the tiny thing, her voice soft with wonder.

“Annabeth’s idea, actually,” says Percy, hovering as the doctor checks his wife over. “Born amid ships.”

“And made amid ships, I suspect.”

Percy blushes, scratching his neck. “Guilty.”

“I also get to name the next one,” says Annabeth, exhausted but proud and healthy

“You can name every single one of them.” A deal like that shouldn’t be made lightly, but Percy doesn’t care. He’d give her the world if she asked for it. A name is nothing. “Except Olivia.”

But Annabeth just grins. “No take-backs!”

#based on a series of true stories and characters #my fic #pjo fic #percabeth #classics percy returns #the shipwreck hunting fic #my god this thing took so many forms #special thanks to no2ticonderoga and darkmagyk for letting me borrow arthur i promise to return him safely

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