Not The Same

Y/N walked up on the deck the next morning groggily, neck feeling a bit stiff. She looked at the open sea, and then observed Annabeth and Tyson. Taking out the bag Hermes left for her, she ruffled through it, trying to look for a balm.

"Yeah, I fixed your head when I woke up but I guess you slept the wrong way too long," Annabeth said.

"Thanks," Y/N yawned and closed her eyes, feeling the breeze.

"So...I overheard you and Percy talking yesterday. Are you and....Harris?" Annabeth cleared her throat and asked her.

"Woah, um-" Annabeth's words seemed to wake Y/N up properly. "Yeah," she chuckled, "I'm not so sure about that. I didn't exactly.."

"Well I think he kind of likes you. I mean..the way both of you look at each other?" Annabeth told.

"It's not the kind of feelings you guys have, if that's where you're going," Y/N said. If there was something she was confident about, it was her feelings for Percy. As for Harris, she won't deny that there isn't something but...it wasn't the same that she had for him. She hated to admit it but ofcourse, apart from the fact that Harris was a great friend, all these new stuffs with him was...just a distraction.

Annabeth blushed and looked at her, "I don't know. Percy and I are just not...I don't know. We don't have the thing that you guys have."

"Then clearly you guys have something more," Y/N chuckled and looked at her. Annabeth just stared at her for some time and said, "I know."

Y/N observed her expression but it felt...weird. Her eyes were not the same that Percy held when she came to know about his feelings. It's like...she wasn't content with what she had. It made her feel a bit bitter. She had what Y/N wanted to have but she just...

"I know you guys have fights and all but it will be fine soon. I mean, we have a lot of things going on right now. So you guys don't really have the time to be all lovey-dovey," Y/N sighed and sat down.

Annabeth on the other hand felt bad. Bad for keeping it from her. But, obviously, it was for their friendship right? It would make things worse if she told her friend that the 'I know' wasn't meant for Percy and herself.

It was for the fact that she knew about Y/N's feelings.

The said boy arrived a moment later, followed by Clarisse. He walked towards Annabeth and held her hand. Y/N got up and excused herself saying she needed to use the washroom.

Clarisse grabbed a pair of binoculars from a zombie officer and peered toward the horizon. "At last. Captain, full steam ahead!"

They looked in the same direction as she was, but they couldn't see much. The sky was overcast. The air was hazy and humid, like steam from an iron. If they squinted real hard, I could just make out a couple of dark fuzzy splotches in the distance.

The engine groaned as they increased speed.

Tyson muttered nervously, "Too much strain on the pistons. Not meant for deep water."

After a few more minutes, the dark splotches ahead of us came into focus. To the north, a huge mass of rock rose out of the sea-an island with cliffs at least a hundred feet tall. About half a mile south of that, the other patch of darkness was a storm brewing. The sky and sea boiled together in a roaring mass.

"Hurricane?" Annabeth asked.

"No," Clarisse said. "Charybdis."

Annabeth paled. "Are you crazy?"

"Only way into the Sea of Monsters. Straight between Charybdis and her sister Scylla." Clarisse pointed to the top of the cliffs.

"What do you mean the only way?" Y/N asked, entering shortly after, "The sea is wide open! Just sail around them."

Clarisse rolled her eyes. "Don't you know anything? If I tried to sail around them, they would just appear in my path again. If you want to get into the Sea of Monsters, you have to sail through them."

"What about the Clashing Rocks?" Annabeth said. "That's another gateway. Jason used it."

"I can't blow apart rocks with my cannons," Clarisse said. "Monsters, on the other hand..."

"You are crazy," Annabeth decided.

"Watch and learn, Wise Girl." Clarisse turned to the captain. "Set course for Charybdis!"

"Aye, m'lady."

The engine groaned, the iron plating rattled, and the ship began to pick up speed.

"Clarisse," Percy said, "Charybdis sucks up the sea. Isn't that the story?"

"And spits it back out again, yeah."

"What about Scylla?"

"She lives in a cave, up on those cliffs. If we get too close, her snaky heads will come down and start plucking sailors off the ship."

"Choose Scylla then," he said. "Everybody goes below deck and we chug right past."

"No!" Clarisse insisted. "If Scylla doesn't get her easy meat, she might pick up the whole ship. Besides, she's too high to make a good target. My cannons can't shoot straight up. Charybdis just sits there at the center of her whirlwind. We're going to steam straight toward her, train our guns on her, and blow her to Tartarus!"

She said it with such relish Y/N almost wanted to believe her.

Almost.

[ TIME SKIP ]

Yeah, Clarisse plan was a fail. The boiler room got overheated and led to a blast.

The worst part was that Tyson being a Cyclops went down there to fix it, because of being immune to fire but it didn't work out. Annabeth got a lifeboat ready and used Hermes' Thermos. She managed to get Y/N and Percy out in a rowboat with a makeshift sail stitched of gray uniform fabric.

Y/N woke up a while after and felt a terrible headache. She squinted as Annabeth sat next to her, tacking into the wind, telling her to rest a bit more since she just made her drink Ambrosia.

"Uh..thank you. Where...how did you find me?" Y/N asked in a weak voice.

"I just found you floating after searching for a while."

After she felt a bit better, she immediately worked on her group healing technique. Well, it drained her out of energy, so Annabeth advised her to get some sleep again.

Moments later Percy tried to sit up and immediately felt woozy. He noticed Annabeth next to him.

And Y/N...lying behind him. He turned slowly and looked at her face, light dark circles appeared on her face. His gaze softened as he thought about their dumb fight back in camp. Maybe it was better if they didn't bring her along. She didn't want to come anyway right?

"Rest," Annabeth said. "You're going to need it."

"Tyson...?"

She shook her head. "Percy, I'm really sorry."

They were silent while the waves tossed us up and down.

"He may have survived," she said halfheartedly. "I mean, fire can't kill him."

Percy nodded, but he had no reason to feel hopeful. He'd seen that explosion rip through solid iron. If Tyson had been down in the boiler room, there was no way he could've lived.

Waves lapped at the boat. Annabeth showed him some things she'd salvaged from the wreckage-Hermes's thermos (now empty), a Ziploc bag full of ambrosia, a couple of sailors' shirts, and a bottle of Dr Pepper. Most of his stuff had floated away, but he still had Hermes's bottle of multivitamins, and of course he had Riptide. The ballpoint pen always appeared back in his pocket no matter where he lost it.

Percy was about to call Y/N when Annabeth interrupted and said, "Don't wake her up. She healed us. Let her get some rest."

He suddenly felt angry and said, "Well, why did you let her? Clearly she was injured right?"

"Don't tell me I volunteered for this! You think I didn't tell her?!" Annabeth replied.

"She was weak so you could've just shut her mouth or something!"

SMACK!

Percy looked at the hand that hit his face. "Gosh, do you guys ever talk normally?" Y/N muttered weakly, "Who do you think Annabeth is to stop me from doing what I want?"

Annabeth looked a bit amused and offended. Percy stared at Y/N's face, her eyes still closed as he observed her hands moving towards his own. She held his hand lightly and said, "I'm fine. Just don't kill each other when I'm sleeping."

Percy cracked a small smile and looked forward at the sea, leaving her hand placed on his own.

They sailed for hours. Now that they were in the Sea of Monsters, the water glittered a more brilliant green, like Hydra acid. The wind smelled fresh and salty, but it carried a strange metallic scent, too-as if a thunderstorm were coming. Or something even more dangerous. Percy knew what direction we needed to go. He knew that they were exactly one hundred thirteen nautical miles west by northwest of the destination. But that didn't make him feel any less lost.

No matter which way they turned, the sun seemed to shine straight into their eyes. They took turns sipping from the Dr Pepper, shading ourselves with the sail as best they could. And they talked about my latest dream of Grover.

By Annabeth's estimate, they had less than twenty-four hours to find Grover, assuming his dream was accurate, and assuming the Cyclops Polyphemus didn't change his mind and try to marry Grover earlier.

"Yeah," Percy said bitterly. "You can never trust a Cyclops."

Annabeth stared across the water. "I'm sorry, Percy. I was wrong about Tyson, okay? I wish I could tell him that."

Percy tried to stay mad at her, but it wasn't easy. They'd been through a lot together. She'd saved my life plenty of times. He felt Y/N's finger tap his hand, almost like she was...trying to make him feel better.

And herself too. Well, she was probably the only one who acknowledged Tyson.

"Annabeth, what's Chiron's prophecy?"

She pursed her lips. "Percy, I shouldn't-"

"I know Chiron promised the gods he wouldn't tell me. But you didn't promise, did you?"

"Knowledge isn't always good for you."

"Your mom is the wisdom goddess!"

"I know! But every time heroes learn the future, they try to change it, and it never works."

"The gods are worried about something I'll do when I get older," Percy guessed, "Something when I turn eighteen."

Annabeth twisted her Yankees cap in her hands. "Percy, I don't know the full prophecy, but it warns about a half-blood child of the Big Three-the next one who lives to the age of eighteen. That's the real reason Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades swore a pact after World War II not to have any more kids. The next child of the Big Three who reaches eighteen will be a dangerous weapon."

"Why?"

"Because that hero will decide the fate of Olympus. He or she will make a decision that either saves the Age of the Gods, or destroys it."

Percy let that sink in. "That's why Kronos didn't kill me last summer."

She nodded. "You could be very useful to him. If he can get you on his side, the gods will be in serious trouble."

"But if it's me in the prophecy-"

"We'll only know that if you survive three more years. That can be a long time for a half-blood. When Chiron first learned about Thalia, he assumed she was the one in the prophecy. That's why he was so desperate to get her safely to camp. Then she went down fighting and got turned into a pine tree and none of us knew what to think. Until you came along."

On their port side, a spiky green dorsal fin about fifteen feet long curled out of the water and disappeared.

"This kid in the prophecy...he or she couldn't be like, a Cyclops?" Percy asked. "The Big Three have lots of monster children."

Annabeth shook her head. "The Oracle said 'half-blood.' That always means half-human, half-god. There's really nobody alive who it could be, except you."

"Then why do the gods even let me live? It would be safer to kill me."

"You're right."

"Thanks a lot."

"Percy, I don't know. I guess some of the gods would like to kill you, but they're probably afraid of offending Poseidon. Other gods...maybe they're still watching you, trying to decide what kind of hero you're going be. You could be a weapon for their survival, after all. The real question is...what will you do in three years? What decision will you make?"

"Did the prophecy give any hints?"

Annabeth hesitated. Maybe she would've told him more, but just then a seagull swooped down out of nowhere and landed on their makeshift mast. Annabeth looked startled as the bird dropped a small cluster of leaves into her lap.

"Land," she said. "There's land nearby!"