Apollo kids come to camp at a younger age because Apollo is, well, Apollo. He tells almost every mortal he sleeps with that he’s a god, so the parents know to take their demigod children to camp before it gets too dangerous.

Breaking Through

Fandom: Percy Jackson and the Olympians

Rating: Gen

Genre: Family

Characters: Lee Fletcher, Michael Yew

Lee’s newest brother needs something. He isn’t going to stop until he works out what.

For @flashfictionfridayofficial​ #157: Need More Space. I’m having a lot of fun figuring out some backstory and history for these boys, I have to admit. This was written on tablet, which hates Tumblr and vice versa, so will sort out the formatting when my laptop decides to behave again, whenever that’ll be… Word count 787. 

*****

Lee’s newest sibling was tiny, and very, very prickly. He hadn’t told them anything about himself yet - not his age, where he came from, or whether he had any mortal family - but all the signs were pointing to yet another abused demigod child struggling to adjust to his new reality.

The only things they did know was that his name was Michael Yew, and that despite not sharing any physical characteristics with their father, Apollo’s legendary temper seemed to have been inherited by this particular son. Maybe it was just because he was short (Lee had heard that short people tended to be angrier but that tidbit of information had come from a smirking John from cabin eleven and Lee’s spine had prickled so he didn’t think it was true), but Michael seemed to be on a hair trigger where anything and everything could set him off.

Several people, from both cabin seven and other cabins alike, had ended up in the infirmary with arrows where they shouldn’t be, and Michael had only been in camp a week.

The other thing he’d clearly inherited from Apollo, aside from the temper, was archery. Lee had been one such unlucky sap with an arrow through his thigh when he’d tried to talk to Michael and made the mistake of doing so when a bow was in reach. It was a mistake he’d just made again. Michael seemed to enjoy making thighs into pincushions (maybe he secretly liked seeing them fall down to his eye level).

Emily Teague, his eldest sibling and the current head counsellor, shook her head with a sigh as she patched him up. “You need to give him more space,” she told him. “Let Michael come to us when he’s ready to open up. Trying to force him will only make things worse. He’s still adjusting to everything.”

The pale golden glow faded from his thigh and she pulled her hands back, passing him a small square of ambrosia. Lee nibbled on it obediently, the familiar yet homesick-inducing taste of his mom’s homemade cottage pie sliding over his tongue, and frowned.

He didn’t think Emily was right, this time. He’d been at camp long enough to see others adjusting and this didn’t feel right. His sister was smart, and Lee knew she’d tried to help Michael settle in, too, before he snarled and swore at her every attempt, but giving Michael space didn’t seem like the right thing to do.

Michael had taken longer to shoot him the second time.

Their tiny little gremlin of a new brother needed something from them, and Lee wasn’t going to stop until he worked out what.

It earned him three more arrows and three more reminders from Emily, and took him another ten days of poking at a very volatile younger brother, but eventually Lee was rewarded with another small fact about Michael Yew: he was nine years old.

Considering his height, Lee had been sure he was younger than that, but his spine hadn’t prickled so it was the truth.

The second breakthrough came two weeks and another arrow later: his mom was alive but his stepdad was, to use a censored equivalent of Michael’s description, a bastard (yes, that was the censored version; where a nine year old had learned that language, Lee didn’t know, but his own vocabulary had been impressively and colourfully expanded since knowing Michael). There were also younger half-siblings (mortal ones) in the equation and it didn’t take long to put two and two together.

Lee finally discovered his angle of attack.

Clearly, Michael’s idea of half-siblings was not a positive one. It took a single conversation with Emily (Lee knew this wasn’t something he could do alone) to get the ball rolling, and immediately Operation Prove We Do Want Michael Around began in earnest.

Lee made sure he was at the spearhead of it; he’d been the one to reach out the most persistently, and he wasn’t retreating any time soon.

It began small, making sure that Michael wasn’t overwhelmed by the attention, but no less vital for that. Invitations to join activities were no longer put off by Michael’s attitude and renewed in enthusiasm, small gifts kept ending up in his bunk (if Lee saw Michael angrily dash away tears one time, he kept that to himself, especially when he realised nothing got thrown away), and the entirety of cabin seven joined the mission to make sure their newest, youngest brother realised that he was one of them and wouldn’t be tossed away or shunned.

In short, the thought that Michael needed more space was completely overturned; it wasn’t space their little brother needed, it was love and a real family.