#pjo chiron

Leo: It’s nice to be wanted sometimes, you know?

Chiron: NOT BY THE GOVERNMENT-

black-is-beautiful18:

The casting so far for PJO has been ‍. However, I find it funny how y’all were mad about Leah being cast as Annabeth but don’t got absolutely nothing to say about Mr. Glynn playing Chiron. I’ll remember that. Y’all was making thee dumbest excuses only to be silent now. Y’all clearly don’t think we don’t notice that but we do and we’re not forgetting it anytime soon.

It’s almost as if y'all don’t like the idea of black girls being casted in lead roles, especially when said lead role is a romantic interest :0

why does no one talk about that meeting chiron was busy at during tower of nero? the meeting between different godly pantheons to discuss a crisis?? he saw bast and mimir??? they created a joint task force???? like that’s surely setting up another crossover spinoff book?????

Fandom: Trials of Apollo/Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard
Rating:Teen
Genre: Adventure, Friendship
Characters: Will Solace, Magnus Chase, Apollo, Nico di Angelo, Alex Fierro, Meg McCaffrey

Only one more chapter to go after this one, and it’s honestly incredibly surreal that we’re nearly done. This chapter contains one of my favourite scenes from the entire fic, I have to admit - and guess what, I drew it!  The art is, once again, lurking at the end of the chapter.

Reminder that there’s now a discord server for all my fics, including this one!  If you wanna chat with me or with other readers about stuff I write (or just be social in general), hop on over and say hi!

<<<Chapter 28

WILL (XXIX)
The Best Healers Are The Worst Patients

Logically, Will knew that he wasn’t injured any more.  He had been injured, and badly, but between Magnus and a Norse god who was apparently Frey, he knew that he was completely healed.  His brain, however, had yet to get the memo and was sending protesting signals whenever he moved too far or fast, so while Nico and Apollo’s clinginess was a little overwhelming – especially both of them simultaneously - he couldn’t say he wasn’t grateful for the help staying upright.

Not having to make his own way back to camp was definitely a bonus.  He sank comfortably into his dad’s power as it swelled around him, enveloping him in a warm, safe light before they re-emerged in the middle of the cabins.

Some more summer campers must have arrived, because there were far more faces staring at him than he’d expected to see, although none of his own summer-only siblings seemed to have reappeared yet.  His present siblings were sat around cabin seven’s table, eating what looked like lunch – was it really only lunchtime?  Will’s sense of time was completely skewed after running through Jotunheim, Valhalla and then nearly dying in Asgard.  Did any of those places operate on the same timezone as New York, anyway?

Pushing away the too-complicated thoughts on how timezones worked across multiple worlds, Will focused his attention on the five familiar faces, both glad to see them all again, and glad that none of them were manning the infirmary, because that meant that no-one needed help or observation right then, and as a healer he was always happy to have no patients.

The other campers were milling around as well; the Hermes contingent were bothering the Ares cabin as they tended to do, judging by the outraged yells coming from the cabin five table and the sniggers from cabin eleven’s.

The Olympian twins materialising in the centre, near the hearth, along with three campers certainly got everyone’s attention in a hurry.

“Will!”  Austin and Kayla were first to move as the eldest and longest-legged of his present younger siblings, shooting up from the benches and almost stumbling in their haste to get to him, before skidding to a halt as the god next to him registered.  “Dad?”

“It’s good to see you kids again,” Apollo grinned, holding out the arm that wasn’t still clinging to Will – and keeping him upright, although Nico on his other side was having a pretty good claim to that role, too – in an open invitation for a hug.

Gracie was the first one to slam into him, young enough not to have any hesitation, but the others followed suit almost immediately until there was a mass of cabin seven limbs in an awkward group hug.  Will had no way of getting out of it, even if he wanted to, and when he felt Nico try to pull away, he grabbed his boyfriend’s sleeve tightly.

The son of Hades sighed, but ceased attempting to escape.

“Welcome back, young heroes,” Chiron said, his approach betrayed by the clip-clop of his hooves on the stones.  “Lord Apollo, it is good to see you back again.  Lady Artemis.”  He dipped his head in the goddess’ direction.

“It’s good to be back,” Apollo replied, not extracting himself from the group hug. In fact, Will thought he tightened his grip on them all.

“Dad, are you-” Austin asked, a head above most of the youngest ones and crushed against Will’s chest.

“Back to my proper godly self?” Apollo finished.  “Absolutely, thanks to your brother here.”

That was not the way Will would have phrased it, not in the slightest, but with his father’s arm clenched around his shoulders and Nico grabbing his hand and squeezing it tightly, he didn’t have much room to protest it, either.

“What happened?” Kayla demanded.  “Why are you all covered in blood?  Are you hurt?”

“Will needs the infirmary,” Nico inserted dryly, although there was an unmistakable undercurrent of concern.

“I’mfine!” Will protested, trying to pull away from all the hands and arms as his sibling’s suddenly-panicked attention turned on him.  “I got healed, remember?”  He tried to tug his hand back from Nico to ruffle the hair of his younger siblings reassuringly, but Nico held on tight and his other option was dropping his bow and trying to escape his dad, which was even less possible.  “You, on the other hand-”

“Will?” Kayla interrupted, sounding absolutely terrified all of a sudden.  Austin’s skin had paled considerably as well, and Will wanted to curse when he realised where their minds were going.

Apollo cabin had lost two head counsellors – two big brothers – in two consecutive years. Will had been head counsellor for longer than Michael now; following the grisly pattern of his big brothers, it was past the time he was due to die, too.

And he nearly had.

“Hey,” he said, adopting the reassuring big brother voice he used to chase away nightmares in the middle of the night even while his own swirled around in his thoughts.  He tugged his hand away from Nico insistently and this time, his boyfriend let go and he was able to gather the two of them into his own hug.  “I’m fine.  I’m not leaving you.”

“Your top’s more red than orange,” Kayla told his shoulder; to Will’s alarm, there were tears in her voice. “Will, you-”

“I’mhealed,” he promised her.  “I won’t say it wasn’t bad, but… god of healing?” he reminded all of his siblings, even if he wasn’t talking about the one they would think he meant.  “I’m okay, I promise.”  He shot a glare a Nico.  “Death Boy over there is overreacting, and needs to go to the infirmary himself, as does Meg.”

His boyfriend did, to his credit, grimace apologetically, apparently just remembering cabin seven’s recent track record, before defending himself.  “As you’re proving, when it comes to others you wouldn’t care how many gods of healing were involved, you’d still lock them up for ‘observation’ for a week.”

Apollo chuckled. “It’s not a bad idea,” he pointed out. Will had hoped his father would at least keep quiet, even if he’d have most liked it if Apollo had helped him reassure them, not worry them more.  Apparently, that was not happening.  “You’re physically and emotionally drained and need to rest.”

“I can sleep just fine in my own bed!” he protested, before a sea of worried eyes focused on him pleadingly and he faltered a little.  “Guys…”

“Please?” Yan asked, their eyes wide and threatening the same tears Kayla wasn’t even trying to hide. This particular little sibling was good at turning on the waterworks when they wanted to, and Will had been forced to learn by necessity how to resist them, but this time, with the rest of his cabin looking at him equally distressed, he realised he had no choice but to cave.

“One day,” he said firmly.

“Three,” Nico countered, but Will was having none of it.

“Who is the head healer here?” he pointed out, hoping Apollo wasn’t going to override him again. “One.”

“Two?” Jerry ventured, and Will shook his head at him fondly.

“One,” he repeated. “I’ve left you lot unsupervised long enough.”

That, at least, managed to get a watery laugh out of the eldest two, while the younger three pouted at him in betrayal.

“One with the right to extend it if it turns out you’re not as fine as you say,” Austin clarified, and Will sent him a glare with no actual heat in it.

“We’ll see about that,” he allowed, knowing whyhis brother wanted the reassurance but also not willing to completely hand over autonomy of his own care, otherwise they’d keep finding excuses to keep him in as long as possible.

His siblings seemed to realise that was as far as he was going to give, because their shoulders slumped, but they didn’t try and debate it further.

“And what about you, Dad?” Kayla said instead, her blue eyes fixing their father’s bloody and ruined HOTEL VALHALLA shirt with a suspicious look.  “That’s a lot of blood.”

“Blood, not ichor,” Apollo reassured her.  “I’m completely immortal again, Kayla, you don’t need to worry about me anymore.” Will looked up at him to see a slightly sad expression on his face.  “I’m sorry you ever had to.”

Kayla didn’t look convinced, but there was no real arguing with a god, even if that god was their dad.

“I sense now is not the time to hear your story,” Chiron inserted himself back into the conversation. “Will, I believe the three of you have beds in the infirmary with your names on it, and your siblings will not rest until you’re in yours.”  It was an amused observation, but Will suspected the old centaur had another reason for not wanting them to recite their quest in earshot of the entire camp.

There was no way Chiron hadn’t known that they had ended up mixing with the Norse pantheon, and if the disaster that had been the Greco-Roman reintroduction was anything to go by, he probably didn’t want that becoming common knowledge.

“Nor will I,” Nico added in. “Come on, let’s go.”  He ducked back under Will’s arm, yanking it back from Kayla and Austin in the process and slinging it over his own shoulder. Apollo, much to Will’s surprise, ceded his own grip to Austin, who clutched at Will as though he thought he was going to disappear.

“I’ll see you there,” the god promised.  “I won’t leave without saying goodbye.”

Will watched him walk a few steps away, shadowed closely by Artemis, although the goddess remained silent and ignored the gawking campers, and stop in front of Meg, who’d been drawn into cabin four’s group, her half-siblings huddled around her and talking a mile a minute.  As he did so, his appearance shimmered until he wore Lester’s face again – and remembered, to Will’s relief, to change his green HOTEL VALHALLA t-shirt, or what remained of it, into a plain white one.  The less blatantly Norse things they left on display, the better.

He didn’t hear what the two said to each other, mostly because his own cabin were nattering in his ear as he was half-carried towards the infirmary, but he did see Meg throw her arms around Apollo in a tight embrace.

There was no mistaking the fact that the past six months had forged a bond between the two of them that defied explanation, and Will wasn’t going to pry into it.

“Will, why is there a bloody hole in the back of this t-shirt as well?” Kayla demanded suddenly, drawing his attention back to his immediate surroundings and the fact that his younger sister had positioned herself as his effective rear-guard, thereby giving her a perfect view of what had been the exit wound.  “Did you get impaled?”

“I’mfine,” he reassured her again, for what was no doubt not the last time.  Nico made a quiet noise of disagreement, and Will cuffed him around the head before he could freak out his siblings more than he already had.  “There was a god of healing with us.”

“Thankfully,” Nico muttered under his breath.  Will pretended not to hear him.

It didn’t take the cabin seven plus Nico procession long to get to the infirmary, even with Will stumbling more than he cared to admit, his weight almost entirely being carried by the combined forces of Nico and Austin by the time they got there.  He couldn’t really fight his escorts when they arrived and he was deposited straight on one of the beds.

“Right, let’s get you out of this.”  In his absence, Kayla and Austin shared the role of running the infirmary, and it was Kayla who was taking charge now as she planted herself firmly in front of him and started loosening the straps of the quiver.  “How many arrows did you get through?” she asked idly as she worked.

“No idea,” he admitted. “Lots.”  She laughed, sounding utterly unsurprised, and he ducked his head down as the last straps came undone and she pulled it away.

“Good thing you took it with you, then,” she pointed out, setting it to one side.  “Now, let’s have a look at this ‘fine’ injury site.”

Austin clearly took that as his cue to deploy a pair of fabric scissors on Will’s long-suffering t-shirt, refusing to let him even start to claim he could take it off normally. The only reason Will didn’t complain was because the clothing was ruined already.

That, and the palpable relief that settled over all of his siblings when his torso was bared and there was no sign of injury, not even a scar.  Austin probed at the area, much the same way Will himself had probed at Lester’s healed wound, back when they’d first arrived in Jotunheim, and must have come to the same conclusion, because he stepped back after a few moments.

“There’s no sign of damage,” he proclaimed to the rest of the cabin, which was exactly what Will had been telling them all along, but he couldn’t really blame Austin and the rest for wanting to double-check.

“Can we rethink my stay, then?” he asked pointedly, only to receive several withering looks in response. That was a no, then.

“I will personally sit on you if you try and leave before they clear you,” Nico told him.  Will got the feeling this was some sort of payback for all the times he’d forced Nico in for observation, although in his defence, Nico had needed it.  And honestly, after the shadow travelling Will knew he’d done in Angrboda’s home, he wanted to keep an eye on him again, anyway.

“I wasn’t planning on you leaving, either,” he said, and his boyfriend’s dark eyes narrowed.

“Will, I’m not the one that got kebabbed by a spear.”

“No,” Will agreed, “but you did shadow travel several times, and you know my rules on that.” He frowned.  “And can you not terrify my siblings?”

“You did that fine all by yourself,” Nico retorted, “Camp Half-Blood t-shirts are meant to be orange, not red.”  He pointed at the ruined fabric Austin had tossed into the designated ‘unsalvageable clothes’ bin.  It did look rather horrifying, if Will was honest although he had, unfortunately, seen worse.

“What happened to your bow?” That was Kayla again, blessedly changing the subject as she inspected the golden bow he had yet to let go of without touching it.  “This is one of Dad’s, isn’t it?”

“It’s Will’s now,” Apollo corrected, walking in through the door.  Meg hadn’t followed, and Will made a mental note to chase her up as soon as he got the chance, too.  His dad looked like himself again, the Lester appearance gone.  Artemis ghosted in behind him, clearly not interested in letting her twin out of her sight at least until he returned to Olympus. Considering the past seven months, Will couldn’t blame her.  “His broke, so I gave him a new one.”

“I thought it was just for the quest,” Will blinked, finally putting it down on the bed next to him.  “There are plenty of bows here for me to choose from. I’m not a good enough archer to warrant that one.”  It had made sense, on the quest, for Apollo to make sure he was still armed after losing his own bow; after all, even healers needed something to protect themselves with.  It wasn’t that he didn’t want the bow – it was a gift from his dad, of course he wanted it – but he didn’t feel like he deserved it.

Kayla huffed, and for a moment he feared she was upset – after all, if any of them diddeserve one of their dad’s bows, it was the best archer in camp.  But it wasn’t one of her sulky huffs, it was an amusedone. “That just means you need all the help you can get,” she teased, flashing the same grin she’d worn when giving him the refilling quiver.

His siblings laughed for the first time since bundling him into the infirmary, much to Will’s relief.

“Skill has nothing to do with whether or not you should have it,” Apollo corrected, “and I don’t take back my gifts.”  Will knew that, he did, but it felt surreal that he really did have one of Apollo’s own golden bows for life.  “That bow’s yours now, Will, and there’s no-one else I want to have it.”  Apollo walked over to where he was sitting and put a hand on his shoulder, crouching down until they were at the same level. “You did well on this quest.  I’m proud of you.”

Will felt his cheeks heat up a little.  “Thanks, Dad.”

“And don’t you go scaring me like that again,” Apollo added, pulling him into a gentle hug.  “I didn’t give you that bow for you to take it as an excuse to stand on the front lines and get yourself hurt,” he murmured in his ear, too quiet for his siblings to overhear – although Nico was likely another matter entirely.  “I’ll admit it didn’t work so well with gods in the mix, but the point of it is keep you safe while you save others, understand?”  Will blinked, a little startled.  “Let it be a reminder that you need to stay safe, too.  You’re a great healer, Will, one of the best I’ve had the privilege of fathering in centuries, but you can’t heal others if you’re dead.”

His embrace tightened, a steady warmth pressing against Will’s skin and curling around him protectively, one warm hand resting on the back of his head.  After a heartbeat, Will returned it slowly, fists bunching in the back of his dad’s t-shirt and mind blanking a little at the fact that this was real.  He, a demigod, was actually getting to hug his godly parent.  It had been initiated by his godly parent.  Not keeping him upright, not a group hug, but a proper, parent-child hug, like he didn’t even remember ever getting from his mortal mom.

“I’m sorry the quest – that I – needed so much from you,” his dad continued, still too quietly for anyone else to hear.  “I’m sorry it hurt you so much.  You didn’t deserve that.  You didn’t deserve any of that.”  Moisture beaded in the corner of Will’s eyes and he trembled as the fabric his face pressed into grew damp, tightening his hold on his dad.  Apollo’s hand buried itself deeper into his hair, pulling Will closer to him until there felt like there wasn’t even room for air between their torsos, and for just a few moments, he could forget about the rest of the world and sob quietly into his dad’s white t-shirt.

They stayed like that for a while, Will’s face buried in his dad’s shoulder and hands fisted tightly around fabric as he committed the feeling to memory, before he remembered that they had an audience of his younger siblings silently watching him break down and forced himself to take a few deep breaths, trying to get himself back under control.  As his tears stopped, Apollo let out a quiet sigh and drew back fractionally. Reluctantly, Will loosened his own hold in preparation for when he pulled back entirely.

Apollo didn’t immediately, although he raised his head and let his voice carry through the infirmary, words no longer just for Will’s ears only.  “I’ll still be watching over you once I’m back on Olympus.  All of you,” he clarified, head shifting in a way that told Will he was looking at the rest of cabin seven.

“Apollo,” Artemis spoke for the first time, her tone warning.  “We need to go.”

The god sighed again but slowly stood back up after giving Will one last squeeze, slipping out of his reluctantly loosening grip.  Warm hands lingered on Will’s shoulders for an extra second before Apollo let go entirely, and even once they were gone, he could feel the phantom heat leaving an invisible imprint of his father’s touch.

“I know,” Apollo said reluctantly, then turned to Nico.  “Keep looking out for him,” he requested, “and yourself, too.  You’re a good kid, Nico di Angelo.”  He gave him a grin.

Nico nodded in response. “Don’t go turning mortal anymore,” he said.  “I don’t think Will could take it if his dad vanishes again.”

Apollo laughed softly. “It’s not on my to-do list,” he said. “Three times is quite enough.”

“You’d think once was enough,” Artemis rolled her eyes, before her voice regained its urgency. “Apollo.”

“I know, I know.” Apollo reluctantly turned away, reaching out to give the rest of cabin seven brief hugs that Will suspected left the same warmth lingering in their wake, before heading for the door.  He only looked back once he reached the threshold. “I’ll try and see you all again soon.”

He stepped outside, and a bright golden light flashed from beyond the doorway, followed almost immediately by silver.

Chiron walked in a moment later, accompanied by a quietened Meg, and sighed heavily, fixing Will and Nico with a tired look.  “It seems we have a lot to discuss.”  The centaur turned his attention to the rest of cabin seven.  “Would you leave us for the time being?  Your brother will not be leaving that bed under my watch, I can promise you.”

None of them looked happy about it, but Chiron was not one to be disobeyed, so after a brief hesitation, they filed out.  Kayla stooped down to pick up the quiver, but left the bow where Will had set it down. It occurred to him that he should probably check with Apollo next time he saw him whether the bow would still immolate people, and if so, what the criteria was.

It was only once Chiron was certain they were out of earshot that the centaur nudged the door closed with a hind hoof and returned his focus to Will and his two quest companions. “Apollo was trapped in Valhalla?” It was less of a question and more of a statement, but Will nodded anyway before giving a rundown of everything that had happened, Nico and Meg interrupting him at various points to clarify something or correct him.

By the end of the tale, the centaur looked openly worried.  “Odin means to open up communications between the two pantheons?” he asked.  “I cannot see that ending well.  I fear this child, Magnus, will run afoul of Zeus’ temper sooner rather than later.”

“Did you know Annabeth had an einherji cousin?” Nico asked suddenly.  Chiron shook his head.

“She did not tell me that, no.”  His tail swished from side to side.  “But I cannot see Athena being ignorant of that fact, and certainly not if Frey is aware of Annabeth’s parentage.  In fact, Odin may be looking to use that connection to smooth things over.”  He frowned.  “Even amongst those counted wise, Odin has few peers.  Whatever it is he’s truly planning, it is beyond my comprehension.”

Will leaned forwards. “You’ll let Magnus in when he comes, right?” he asked.  “I think there’s a lot we could learn from him.”

“You just want to talk healing with him,” Nico called him out, and Will felt his cheeks heat up slightly, although didn’t back down.

“And what’s wrong with that?” he demanded.  “The amount of trouble our lot get into, the more healing knowledge we can get, the better!”

“Should Magnus arrive, I see no reason to turn him away unless Olympus requires it,” Chiron reassured him.  “Thanks to his relationship with Annabeth, he is no doubt better versed in the Greek ways than any of you are in the Norse, so I do not think he will make too many waves, but I must bow to the will of the gods – our gods – in this matter.”

It was as good an answer as Will could have hoped for, he supposed, and he slumped back against the pillows.  Chiron chuckled.

“It seems that I should let you three rest now,” he said.  “Will, perhaps your siblings can be persuaded to let you out this evening for the burning of the shrouds if you behave yourself now.”

Patient or not, Will was still head healer.  There was no way he was missing that.

It took some persuading, outright arguing, and eventually Nico siding with him – but only on the caveat that they come straight back afterwards – but he got his way.  It was the symbolic end of their quest, and after napping all afternoon (if he and Nico had ended up curled up together in the same bed, well, his siblings didn’t seem to care as long as it meant they stayed put) he was definitely strong enough to sit by the fire for the ceremony, although he wished Apollo was still with them.  It had been his quest, too, although Will could admit the idea of burning a shroud for his dad filled him with a very specific brand of terror.

He’d spent enough time fearing Apollo’s death since January.  Now that his dad was, finally, a god again, that was a fear that he was all too pleased to bury.

Cabin seven shrouds were normally plain gold, but his was neatly embroidered around the edge with healing prayers in golden thread, barely visible unless someone looked closely. None of his siblings admitted to being behind it, but Jerry was by far the best of them with a needle in the infirmary, so Will had a strong suspicion that even if it hadn’t been his idea, his had been the fingers used.

Meg’s siblings had gone all out on hers, with soft greens and browns decorated with peach and grain motifs.  The girl in question had been all too happy to throw it on the fire and watch it burn, the flames reflecting off of her glasses and turning the rhinestones a deep orange.

As the only inhabitant of cabin thirteen, Nico had no siblings in the camp to create his own, but to Will’s pride, cabin seven had taken that task upon themselves despite also having his to make.  It was black, the same deep, light-absorbing black of his sword, with a deep purple trim and bones picked out in white embroidery.  Nico didn’t cry when he saw it, but his grip on Will’s arm – because he refused to let go for an instant as though he thought Will would make a break for it if he did – tightened, and he looked at the ground rather than watch it burn.

Their quest was over. Apollo was back on Olympus, a god again, and everything was finally put to rights for perhaps the first time since Percy Jackson had been claimed, all those years ago.

Chapter 30>>>

Fandom: Percy Jackson and the Olympians/Trials of Apollo
Rating:Teen
Genre: Family, Friendship
Characters: Michael Yew, Will Solace, Apollo, Nico di Angelo

During the Battle of Manhattan, Michael Yew fell into the East River; his body was never found.  Two years later, a homeless kid known only as Ferret has a chance encounter that changes everything he knows.

This was supposed to be a short Michael lives!AU because I refused to write another longfic when I have too many planned already.  At over 16k words, ‘short’ is not the word I’d use.  I’ve given Michael a bit of a dirty mouth, so a language warning on this one, as well as a panic attack.  Disclaimer that I have no idea about homeless culture in New York.

Reminder that there’s now a discord server for all my fics, including this one!  If you wanna chat with me or with other readers about stuff I write (or just be social in general), hop on over and say hi!

Ferret snarled at the asshole that had veered his car into a puddle and deliberately splashed muddy, gross, New York puddle water all over him.  “Screw you, too!” he spat after the vehicle as it sped away, straightening back on the road until it was in the middle of the carriageway where it belonged, leaving no doubt that the assault had been entirely intentional.

He hated bastards like that. Being ignored?  Being ignored was normal.  Most people liked to pretend he didn’t exist, and Ferret wasn’t the biggest fan of that, but he’d learnt the hard way that it was better to the usual alternative – behaviour like that.  Why some assholes thought it was funny to pick on homeless kids, he’d never know, but he hated it.

Once upon a time, he’d retaliated far more viciously – he wasn’t afraid of fights, and he wasn’t afraid of starting fights – but then people had started calling the cops on him, and Ferret liked the cops even less.

The cops hated him, too. There was something about him that rankled them; it was probably the fact that Ferret was the only name he’d give them, and no matter how hard they investigated, they’d never got another name.

Ferret had let the investigations happen, until it became apparent they were going nowhere.

The cops didn’t know who Ferret really was – the problem was, Ferret didn’t know who he really was, either.

His first memory was waking up on the bank of the East River, seeing some unfamiliar faces, and then passing straight back out again.

His second memory was waking up behind a dumpster, with some rugged, rough-looking older men sitting around him.  There had been pain – pain in his arm, pain in his chest, pain in his leg – and when he’d tried to sit up, automatically taking the situation in – four men, mostly malnourished but one guy looked like he could enter a brawl and win, between him and the main alley, unlikely he’d be able to leave easily – he’d almost screamed as his body protested loudly.

“Easy, kid!”  The guy that looked like he could win a brawl had caught him as he fell backwards, lowering him back down without his permission, not that he could do anything about it.

“Good to see you awake,” one of the others had croaked; he was missing several teeth, giving him a gappy mouth, and straggly light brown hair had looked like it was in sore need of a brush.  The matching beard had looked worse.  “You’ve been out of it for two days.”

“You got a name, kid?” a third had asked – this one the youngest-looking, barely into adulthood with cropped hair that would probably have been blond if it hadn’t been so dirty.

He hadn’t recognised any of them, and something inside him had bristled.  “The fuck are you guys?” he’d snapped, trying to push himself upright again, gritting his teeth against the pain.  Brawler had put a hand on his back, a support he had neither asked for nor was grateful for.  “What do you want?”

Fear.  That’s what had been coiling in his chest – the fear of the unknown, the fear that he had no idea how he’d got there, no idea why he was there, no idea who he evenwas.  His instincts had screamed danger at him, but he hadn’t been able to see any outright signs of it.

“We found you passed out by East River,” the fourth one – tall and lanky – had said quietly.  “Not far downstream from Williamsburg Bridge. From the looks of you, you were on it when it collapsed?”  It had been a question, but he hadn’t had an answer and said nothing, instead glowering at the man.  “We’ve kept an eye on the news, but no-one matching your description’s been on the missing list and you don’t look like you’ve got the money for hospital so we brought you to our patch.  None of us are in the business of letting kids die on the streets.  The name’s Rook.  This fella’s Jimmy” – the youngest of the four – “then you’ve got Scout” – the gappy-mouthed one – “and Mika.”  That was the brawler guy keeping him upright.  “So, you got a name, kid?”

“I’m not a fucking kid,” he’d snapped, on an impulse he didn’t recall but fell into the familiarity of as the words came out.

Jimmy had failed to stifle a snort.  “You look like you’re about twelve, kiddo.”

“I’m-”  The words had died in his throat as he realised he didn’t know how old he was.  He’d bristled instead.  “None of your fucking business.”

If the men had been insulted, they hadn’t shown it.  Instead, he’d got a fond eyeroll from James and Gappy that made him want to punch them. The pain pulsing through his body had stopped him.

“How long have you been on the streets?” Rook had asked.  “You got a patch of your own to get back to?”

Was he a street kid?  A glance down at what he was wearing had told him he probably was – a faded orange tee had been ripped and torn, whatever words had once been on it illegible.  His jeans hadn’t look much better, and there was a disturbing amount of staining on both items that had looked dark and potentially red.  Shoddy bandaging around his leg and arm was badly done, but there had been no way for him to try and re-do them with the pain in his arm.

“Hell if I know,” he’d grumbled, not realising what he’d admitted until the words were out and it was too late to take them back.

Four pairs of eyes had widened.  “Shit, you hit your head?” Mika had asked, a hand immediately brushing through his hair. He’d pulled away sharply and let out a pained hiss as his chest – his ribs, something told him, three cracked and one broken – had protested abruptly at the movement.  “What do you know?”

He’d bared his teeth at them and snarled.  Unfortunately, they’d taken that to mean exactly what he hadn’t wanted to let on – he knew nothing.

“In that case,” Rook had said, seemingly the leader of the little group of four.  “You’re staying with us.”

“The Hades I-”

“We’re not letting an injured kid out on the streets alone,” Rook had overruled him.  “If you want to bugger off once you’re healed up, that’s your call, but until then, you’re staying with us.”

And that, really, had been that.

That had been two years ago. Ferret – “we can’t keep calling you ‘kid’.  If you don’t know your name, we’ll give you a nickname.” “He’s small and feisty, how about Ferret?” – had ended up sticking with the four after he’d healed up, and they’d taught (re-taught?  He still didn’t know if he’d been a street brat before) him how to survive on the streets. Where the shelters were, which shelters to trust and which ones to steer clear of.  Safe places and danger zones, how to dodge the cops when they came calling.

None of them knew how old he was, despite two years of checking the news for missing kids, and then going back even further than the destruction of the Williamsburg Bridge in case he’d been on the streets before that, there was no record of a kid that looked like him at all – black hair he kept in a short pony, barely brushing his shoulders when loose, brown eyes, and undeniably short.  The men had, eventually, settled on a guess around the thirteen mark, although Ferret protested it, which made him maybe-fifteen now.  He still hadn’t breached five foot, much to his frustration – compared to tall and lanky Rook, he really did look like a little kid.

Life on the streets was tough.  Ferret might not remember what it was like to not be on the street, but he still knew that the life he was living was rough – and it wasn’t made any easier by the Monsters.

He didn’t know what they were.  None of the other guys ever seemed to see them, and for the most part the things left him alone (although not always, and Ferret was glad he was a fast healer, even if that was something the others found a little odd about him – apparently a broken leg wasn’t supposed to heal perfectly in four weeks without any professional medical attention; Mika had been convinced he’d have a gammy leg for life but Ferret’s leg never bothered him after it healed up), but sometimes he got attacked by what everyone else invariably called untrained dogs, or crazed drunks.

No-one had ever called him out for killing them, even though he knew that was what he was doing.  Then again, when they died, they all turned to dust. He didn’t know what the others saw, but it certainly wasn’t that.  In the wreckage of the Williamsburg Bridge, he’d found a bronze-coloured weapon no-one else seemed to see, just a knife but it was something he could use and he was under no illusions that without it, he’d be long-dead.

Ferret wasn’t entirely sure he was sane; even if he knew what he was seeing, doubt crept in every time no-one else saw monsters masquerading as humans, as dogs – as pigeons, that one time a flock of something mean and nasty had come for him and only been scared off when he’d run into the subway just as a train had thundered past, echoing in the tunnel and sending the birds packing.  His fast healing meant he didn’t so much as scar from the encounters, either, and more than once he started to wonder if it was all in his head.

They’d never found a head injury – not that he’d trusted the others near his head for several months, so any signs of it would have been long gone by then, anyway – but considering he already had one glaring brain problem (two, if you counted the fact that reading was a real headache and letters wouldn’t stop swimming around long enough for him to make out the words; most of the research into missing kids was being done by his four pseudo-guardians because Ferret inevitably started tearing up papers or narrowly missing library computer monitors with his fist when he got frustrated) another wasn’t as far off the cards as he’d have liked.

Soaking wet – considering it was August, New York had entirely too many puddles for asshole drivers to splash all over homeless kids with barely any spare clothing to change into – he stropped back to their patch, his meagre collection of pilfered earnings stuffed in his backpack.

The advantage of being small for his age (he assumed, although even if the others were right and he was fifteen, not even being five foot was far too fucking short), was that he was good at getting around unnoticed.  He was also very fit and strong for his size – jimmying open windows, sneaking into unguarded houses and snatching cash and food wherever he could find them was almost disturbingly easy.

Rook, Scout and Jimmy didn’t look quite so malnourished any more.  Ferret considered it repayment for looking after him when they’d found him, and for still looking out for him two years later.  Monsters aside, people tended to leave him alone when the other four were with him – especially Mika, who still had his brawler’s appearance. Ferret provided the food and cash; they provided the shelter, safety and experience.

He’d had to go a decent way out of their patch this time – stealing in the same areas all the time drew attention, he’d learnt the hard way after cops caught up with him one time and he’d spent the night in lock-up before one of the local shelter helpers (one of the good, safe, ones) had turned up with bail in hand and got him out of there.  The four older men had fussed over him for the rest of the day, ignoring him when he snapped at them to drop it.

Ferret had a hell of a temper and he knew it – the various dumpsters in the area knew it; several of them were dented from where he’d grabbed the heaviest things he could (or most breakable, depending on his mood) and hurled them against the metal.  He always hit the same place with every object, leaving some deep dents in the metal by the time he was done.  Other people knew it, too – it was the main reason he got into fights – but the four he lived with found him more adorable than threatening, for the most part.  They let him rage and destroy things and exhaust himself before offering him what food they had to spare and Mika (it was always Mika) squeezed him in a too-tight hug.

All the regular homeless in the area knew he was the quartet’s ‘kid’.

He was the other side of Manhattan now, though, the streets less familiar and his wariness ramped up to eleven as he trudged his way back towards his usual territory.  He’d made a good haul today, any residual guilt at stealing long since trampled by necessity and his hackles raised by the asshole driver to the point that he simply didn’t care.  He stomped as he walked, dodging puddles because his boots – the same ones he’d woken up in, his only ones – were getting worn through and he didn’t want soggy feet to go with soggy jeans and the too-big tee Scout had picked up from a homeless shelter for him a while back.  As always, other passers-by ignored him, preferring to pretend the scruffy kid didn’t exist than acknowledge his existence and the fact that yes, New York had a thriving population of homeless kids.

All the passers-by except the ones that weren’t, because there was hissing, snarling, and Ferret had his knife out of his pocket straight away even as he broke into a run. He didn’t know this area well enough to use it to his advantage in a fight, and a glance around showed him five women with snakes for legs (why did that exist) and three huge, black dogs with glowing red eyes bounding after him.

That was more than Ferret had taken on at once before, and he only had one knife.  Well, he had other things that counted as weapons – broken pieces of metal, mostly, with a few shards of glass – but he’d learnt the hard way that no matter how many of those he threw, they never did a lick against the Monsters.  Eight monsters at once… he couldn’t outrun the dogs, and the snake-ladies were unfairly quick, too.  He’d have to find somewhere to bottle-neck them, force them to fight one at a time, but he didn’t know of anywhere nearby where he could.

He skidded around a corner, nearly knocking over a kid all in black who he shoved out of his way desperately, to an indignant shout that quickly changed into a noise of alarm – that was different, but Ferret couldn’t focus on that right then, not when he was being chased.  His eyes constantly glanced around, looking for somewhere, anywhere, he could turn to his advantage so he hopefully survived the encounter, and he spotted a narrow alleyway half flooded with puddles.

Apparently he would be getting wet feet after all, but it was that or death, and Ferret could always dry his boots once he got back to his home patch.

He spun to a halt, knife out in front of him, and eyed the opening, waiting for the first Monster – one of the dogs, they were the faster of the two types chasing him.  Then he heard the commotion.

The dogs were yelping and snarling in the distance, and the snake women were hissing something fierce. Part of Ferret wanted to peer out of his hastily-chosen alley to see what was going on, but common sense honed by two years on the streets, where attention was bad, just wanted to lay low in the hopes of avoiding a fight he’d struggle to win.

His decision was made for him when a yelping dog with arrows – literal arrows – in its side came barrelling into the alley, jaw open and tongue lolling rabidly.  Ferret dodged to the side, leaping up to grab the side of a fire escape and monkeying his way up a few feet, out of immediate biting range of the huge beast, before dropping down onto its back, knife sweeping straight for the thing’s neck.

It disintegrated into dust, dropping him the last few feet to the ground.  Pain lanced through his ankle, but he grit his teeth and ignored it, whirling back around to face the mouth of the alley before the next Monster came through.

It didn’t.

Instead, the same goth-wannabe kid in his black clothes burst in, a wicked-looking black sword in his hand.  Dust glittered in his hair, the same kind Ferret was currently standing on.  Ferret raised his knife defensively – he’d never fought another human before, but unless something was hiding beneath those all-black, skull-motifed clothes, the kid seemed completely human to him.

Dark eyes zeroed in on his knife, then flickered down to the dust at his feet.

“You killed the Hellhound?” Ferret couldn’t place the accent, but it wasn’t a New Yorker’s.

“The fuck are you?” he snarled back, not letting the blade lower in the slightest.  “What did you see?”

Did this random kid – although he looked to be barely younger than Ferret’s own estimated age – actually see the Monsters for what they were?  Had Ferret finally, somehow, found someone else that saw what he did?

“I saw you being chased by a pack of Hellhounds and Dracaenae,” the kid said.  “We dealt with the rest, but one got past us.”

The Monsters had names.  Ferret almost couldn’t believe it – after two years, he had actual proof that they weren’t just all in his head.  One part of what the kid had to say, however, stuck out at him.  “We?”  The guy wasn’t alone?

As if in answer, another voice floated into the alley.  “Nico? Did you get it?”

“Nope!” the kid – Nico – chirped, sheathing his sword, “looks like the demigod they were after knows how to fight back.”

Demigod?

Ferret cautiously lowered his knife a little as the other’s weapon was put away.  The word was familiar, in a weird way – the sort of familiarity he had in faint spurts, but could never cling to long enough to work out why.

“Is he hurt?”  The other voice got louder.

“I’m fine,” Ferret snarled before Nico could try and check him over.  His ankle would heal up soon enough, and he had to get back before the others started worrying after him.  “Thanks, or whatever, but I’ve got places to be and you’re not it.”

Annoyingly, Nico was between him and the exit, but the other kid looked like he could be pushed past without much trouble, so Ferret limped forwards regardless.

“Wait!” Nico protested, moving to stand in front of him.  “There’s somewhere-”

Whatever he was about to say got cut off when his companion finally appeared.  Where Nico was all black and pale, the other guy was bright – blond waves tousled down around his ears, light blue eyes widened in what looked like shock, and he wore a bright orange tee that looked a lot like the one Ferret had woken up in, two years ago.

He couldn’t read the black print on it, not with the ripples of the fabric as the blond guy moved, dropping a longbow into the muddy puddle and stumbling a couple of steps forward, before staggering back against his companion.

“Michael?”

The name came out strangled, choked up with a bunch of emotions Ferret didn’t care to try and identify.

“What?” Nico demanded, and Ferret found himself under scrutiny again.  “Will, do you know this guy?”

“Michael?” the other guy – Will, apparently – repeated, and while the name was a question it didn’t feel like he was unsure about it.  “You’re alive?  Where- Why-  How?”

The level of emotion rolling off of him was palpable, and Ferret didn’t want to even begin dissecting it. The name rolled around in his head, but he couldn’t let his hopes rise.  What were the odds that, after two years of scouring everything he and the others could find to try and work out who he was, he’d happen to bump into someone in the street who knewhim?

Not worth placing any bet on, that was for sure.

“What are you on about?” he snapped, resuming his push forwards, but neither Nico nor Will moved out of his way, and when he tried to push past them, he found that both of them were stronger than they looked.  Ferret’s unusual strength for his size gave him no leeway in trying to get around them.

“Michael,please,” Will begged, and there were tears forming in those blue eyes.  “I know it’s you.  It’s me, Will.  Will Solace.”

Ferret’s “I don’t know you,” was drowned out by Nico.

“Are you sure it’s him?” the dark-clad teen asked.

“Yes,” Will near-whispered. “That-  That’s Michael’s camp necklace.”

Ferret’s knife-free hand flew to the leather thong around his neck, with its seven clay beads.  It was a bizarre collection, and he hadn’t ever been able to make heads nor tails of whatever the various designs on them were supposed to be, but he’d kept it anyway, because it was a clear link to the past he didn’t remember.

“It’smy necklace,” he snarled.  “Get out of my way before I make you.”

“But…” Will trailed off, looking absolutely heart-broken.  “Michael.  Why didn’t you come back?  I – we – thought you died.  What happened to you?”

Ferret attempted to muscle his way past them, but both of them were taller than him and Nico grabbed his arm.  “Don’t you dare walk away,” the taller boy snarled, suddenly feeling dangerous. Ferret shifted his grip on his knife. “You owe Will an explanation.”

“Nico-”

“Why?” Ferret demanded. “I don’t owe him-”

“Because he’s your brother!” Nico snapped, and Ferret was abruptly cut off as the word slammed into him.  Automatically, he looked at the other teen – about his assumed age, blond and bright with blue eyes, nothing like Ferret’s black hair and brown eyes – trying to find any indication that it was true.  “And when you didn’t come back after the war,” the other boy continued, clearly not done, “you left all the responsibility for your siblings on his shoulders. He was thirteen.”

Ferret should say so what and walk away.  The urge was there, but when he tried to say the words, they died in his throat. There was something about the blond boy, maybe the tears in his eyes, although Ferret wouldn’t call himself soft enough to be affected by that, that made him pause.

“I don’t fucking know,” he lashed out instead, tearing his eyes away from Will, because Will was difficult to look at, and focusing on Nico instead, because Nico was easy to snap at.  “I don’t fucking know.  I woke up on the edge of the East River one day and I don’t fucking know how I got there.”

There was a sharp intake of breath from Will’s direction, but he didn’t dare look back at him, not even when the teen asked “you don’t know?” in a small, quiet voice.  “Michael-?”

“Two fucking years, I’ve been trying to find out who the fuck I am,” he cut him off.  “And now I run into someone who’s apparently my brother, when those gods-damned Monsters come after me yet-a-fucking-gain.”  It felt ridiculous.  It felt contrived as hell, and Ferret’s hackles came up even though something hopeful was blooming in the back of his mind.

“Amnesia?” Will asked, and there was an edge of hysteria to his voice.  Ferret had heard it amongst the homeless often enough to recognise it when he heard it.  “Gods, Michael.”

“What of it?” he snapped back, making the mistake of turning his head again.  “Not one missing persons report.  Not one.”  And that hurt, that he – apparently – had family who had never even bothered to look for him.

“We looked,” Will told him, eyes bright and intense and earnest.  “We were fighting monsters on Williamsburg Bridge, and you fell when it broke.  We looked for you, I swear we looked for you.  We found your bow, your quiver… but we never found you, or the others that fell.”

“You gave up.”  It wasn’t a question, and Ferret’s heart ached when Will sobbed, tears spilling down his cheeks.

“It was war,” Nico interceded sharply.  “A lot of people died.  Mortals think it was freak weather, but it wasn’t.  It was a gods’ damned war and there was only so much any of us could do.”

Mortals? Ferret frowned.  “I don’t care,” he said, stepping back.  If he couldn’t go through them, he’d have to go around instead.  Rook and the others had to be worrying about him by now – they went looking for him whenever he went missing, they were the ones that had bothered the shelter helper into bailing him out of lock-up that one time.  They didn’t give up on him, even though he was rude to them more often than not.

“Come back to camp,” Will begged him.  “Chiron or Mr D. might be able to help your memories.  Dad might be able to help.”

Go with two kids who claimed they knew him – no matter how convincing their story was – that Ferret had no recollection of to a place he didn’t remember, or go back to his four pseudo-guardians?

It wasn’t even a choice. Ferret had lived on the streets far too long for that.

“No,” he said.

Nico bristled, but Will’s face crumpled.

“You-”

“I don’t even know you,” Ferret snapped at Nico, stepping back a pace and willing his ankle not to crumple beneath him.  “I’m going nowhere with you.”

“Living on the streets, being attacked at every turn, isn’t worth it!” the dark-haired boy snapped right back.  “Camp has protective barriers.”

“I don’t give a shit,” Ferret argued back.  “I’m notgoing.”

Nico snarled, but Will’s voice interrupted him.

“Okay,” the blond said, and he sounded upset about it but also resigned.  “We can’t make you-”

“Ican-”

“-if you don’t want to,” he continued, overriding Nico’s hair-raising interruption.  Ferret moved another limped step away from the teen.  “I wish you would, but we can’t force you.”

He seemed genuinely honest about it, but Ferret still warily kept his distance.

“But,” Will added, raising his hands to the back of his neck and snapping Ferret’s attention to the beaded necklace he wore, too.  There were eight beads on it, most of them the same designs as Ferret’s own.  “You should take this.”

“Will, are you sure?” Nico asked, suddenly sounding hesitant as the blond unfastened the cord and started shimmying beads off of until he had one in particular in his hand.  Will gave a watery smile to his companion.

“I’m sure there’s a spare or two back at camp,” he said, “and even if there isn’t… Michael gave more to the war than I did.  It doesn’t feel right that I have one and he doesn’t.”  He held out the bead for Ferret to take.

Ferret wasn’t sure what possessed him to accept it, but he let Will drop it into his palm.  It was no larger than the others on his necklace, clearly part of the set even though its design, like the rest of them, didn’t seem to be part of a matching set at all.  The bead itself was a reddish-grey, like natural clay no-one had bothered to paint, but on it was a painstakingly detailed rendition of the Empire State Building. Surrounding it were minute words – names, Ferret realised.

“Keep it,” Will insisted, curling Ferret’s fingers around it until he was holding onto it tightly.  “And… if you ever change your mind – Camp is on Long Island.  Follow the signs to the strawberry farm.”

“I still don’t see why we can’t grab him and go now,” Nico groused, and Ferret edged away further, only to stumble as his ankle flared up and find himself parked butt first in a muddle puddle.

Great.  Just what he needed.

“Michael!”  Will was on his knees next to him in a flash, worried hands hovering over his ankle.  “Let me help.”

Ferret swatted at him, surprised when he met air – he’d thought for sure Will meant helping him up, but instead the blond’s hands were heading towards his busted ankle, out of swatting range.  “I don’t need your help.”

“I can heal you,” Will told him bluntly.  “I know you heal faster than most people, but I’d be much happier if you weren’t hurt at all.”

Ferret flinched as his hands made contact.  “What the fuck are you-”

A golden glow – an actual glow – shimmered into existence around Will’s hands, and warmth sank into Ferret’s ankle.  Gobsmacked, he watched with wide eyes as the other teen hummed a familiar tune Ferret couldn’t name but somehow knew he knew and the pain in his ankle lessened, fading away into nothing.

Demigod, Nico had said earlier, called Ferret one, and he didn’t have a clue what that meant, but he knew that whatever Will was doing wasn’t something humans could do.

It made his head hurt to think about.

“There,” Will said after a few moments, humming dying away to nothing and the glow along with it.  “All fixed.”  He gave a shaky smile, which Ferret ignored as he cautiously scrambled back to his feet, tentatively putting weight on the ankle to find no twinge of warning at all.  Suddenly, Ferret’s fast healing didn’t seem so bizarre after all – not if his apparent brother could do that.

“Thanks,” he said gruffly. “Now fuck off.”

“I hope we’ll see each other again soon,” Will said earnestly, pulling himself to his feet using Nico’s elbow.  “Please, at least think about coming to Camp.”

Ferret huffed and turned away to stalk out of the alley, before a thought struck him and he paused.

“I have one question,” he admitted, not looking back.  He got the feeling that, if he did, he might cave to Will’s bright blue eyes after all. There was just something about them that felt like they could manage to change his mind.  “How old am I?”

There was a stunned silence from behind him; obviously, Will hadn’t expected the question.

Ferret wasn’t expecting the answer.

“Eighteen,” Will said quietly.  “Your nineteenth birthday is on the twentieth.”

That was… three days away. The same day he’d woken up behind a dumpster to four older guys who more or less adopted him on the spot.

They’d called him twelve when it had been his seventeenthbirthday.

Ferret let out a bark of laughter.  “Don’t follow me,” he ordered, before slipping out of the alley and letting himself be swallowed up by the crowds of pedestrians walking around.

It wasn’t until he got back to the safety of his patch that he realised he still had Will’s bead in his hand.  He scowled down at it, at the names that somehow didn’t float around the same way words usually did for him, until his eyes caught one in particular.

Michael Yew.

That… that was him. He didn’t know how he knew, but there was a certainty that settled into his bones as the name flooded his mind. Finally, after two years, Ferret knew without a shadow of a doubt what his name was.

The sun was starting to lower, the brightness of the day making way for the vibrant oranges of sundown, and Ferret – Michael – knew that he had to get back soon.  Rook and the others would be having kittens about his absence by now.  With nothing better to do with the bead, and a new attachment to it that meant he couldn’t even entertain the idea of dumping it in the street, he hurriedly slipped it onto the leather throng around his neck, letting it clack into place next to the last one in the sequence – an intricate maze-like design picked out in silver against a crimson bead.

Then he hurried the rest of the way back.

Sure enough, all four were ecstatic to see him, pulling him into tight hugs even as he was scolded for taking so long, and he let himself relax.  No matter who he was, no matter who his apparent brother was, he had this.

He considered not telling them about the encounter, about Will and finally having a name for himself, but they’d been working just as hard as he had – harder, even – to find out who he really was, and he couldn’t bring himself to keep it a secret.

“I met someone today,” he told them later that evening, while they were dining on a feast of not-yet-expired bread he’d managed to swipe before everything went wrong.  It was the most heavenly fare they could ask for, outside of the shelter-supplied food they mostly lived on.

“Ooh?” Jimmy asked, waggling his eyebrows.  A small stone was thrown at his head; it landed spot on between his eyebrows, as intended.

“Someone who knew me,” he clarified, and instantly the air changed.

“You’re sure?” Rook asked, ever the cautious leader.

He nodded.  “Yeah,” he admitted.  “What he said about me… it fits with what little I remember.  Why I was on the Bridge, why my own fucking brother apparently never put out a missing report for me, where I used to live.”

“Wait, your brother?” Scout asked, astonished.  He’d lost more teeth over the past two years, so now there was more gap than teeth in his mouth, and his voice whistled when he spoke.  “You met a guy who said he was your bro?”

“What was he like?” Mika added, before he could answer.  He took a mouthful of bread to buy himself some thinking time.

“Too good to be true,” he settled on, once he’d swallowed.  Will, with his bright demeanour, bleeding heart, and tearful blue eyes seemed too nice.  “Doesn’t look a thing like me.”

“You think he was lying?” Rook frowned.  That was an easy question.

“Nah.  I still don’t fucking remember him, but he felt like he believed what he was saying.”  How he knew that, he couldn’t say.  Maybe it was the bead, warm against his sternum where it sat.  “He wanted me to go back with him.  Kid was crying his eyes out; thought I was dead, apparently.”

No-one asked why he hadn’t gone with Will.  Street life was like that – if you jumped at any sob story that seemed too good to be true, it probably was.  Best to check around first, see how much truth it had in it.

“So, what do you want to do about it, Ferret?”  Rook asked, before pausing.  “Did he give you a name?”

“Mine or his?”

“Either.  Both?”

He frowned.  “Kid’s name was Will.”  Will Solace he’d said, but the name on the bead had been Michael Yew and that felt far more natural than Solace did.  “He called me Michael.”

Mika chuckled.  “Good name,” he said, like that wasn’t his own full name.  “So, you a Michael, or you a Ferret?”

That was the question, wasn’t it?  He didn’t know – ever since he’d read the bead, felt the familiarity of the name embracing him, he’d been confused.  He’d been Ferret for as long as he could remember, but Michaelfelt right, like a missing piece slotting back into place after so long.  He shrugged.

“I’d say he’s our Ferret,” Jimmy piped up, leaning over and putting an arm around his shoulders.  He shoved him off, and the older man laughed. “Whatever the rest of the world wants to call him.”

Ferret – Michael – Ferret, yes, that felt more comfortable, he didn’t remember beingMichael, after all, rolled his eyes.  “Shut up,” he muttered, but none of the men were fooled.

“Ferret it is, then,” Rook continued, with a fond smile.  “So, what do you want to do about it?  Now we’ve got a name, we can probably find out more about you, if you want to know.  Or we can forget about it and keep going on the way we are.”

The older man looked at him, and Ferret knew what he wanted.  What all of them wanted.  They’d never hidden their distaste for kids like him – even if he wasn’t a kid, and that was a bombshell he still had to drop on them – living on the streets. If there was a reasonable out for him, they’d want him to take it.

Problem was, Ferret didn’t know what he wanted.  Life on the streets was tough, harsh and sometimes downright cruel, but he knew it, now. He didn’t know this kid called Will, or anything about that camp he wanted to take him to, or really anything at all about a different way of life.  He shrugged.

“Whatever,” he grumbled, and got a fond ruffle of his hair from Mika, who was not at all dissuaded by Ferret swatting his hand away.

“That’s okay,” the big guy said.  “You’ve got time to think about it.”

“It’s a shock,” Rook agreed. “Sleep on it, see how you feel in the morning.”

He was probably right – having something from his forgotten past appear in his life suddenly, in such a stressful situation, wasn’t doing Ferret’s head any good.  Hopefully it wouldn’t keep him up all night; Ferret had a solid ability to fall asleep wherever and whenever he could, thanks to life on the streets, but that didn’t mean he didn’t have times where things just circled around and around in his head and he didn’t catch a wink.

As it happened, when he curled up in his sleeping bag in the cranny behind the dumpster, he had no problems falling asleep at all.

He wished he had.

Fear.

Blood.

Golden, cold, eyes.

Tremors, falling, pain.

Screams.

Hellhounds and dracaenae and giants and empousai and a Minotaur and- and- and-

(How did he know what they were called?)

Lava, harpies, screeching, more screaming, blood, blood, blood, death-and-dying and blood on his hands, got to heal, got to help.

Arguments, shouting, curses and poetry and arrows and swords and-

A chariot that flew.

Gods.

Gods.

Prophecies,Olympus to preserve or raze.

Bright sunshine, a golden lyre made of light.

Faces.  So many faces.  Laughing, crying, screaming,dying.

Pain.

Going to die I’m going to die the bridge has to fall break the bridge!

“-ret!”

Snakes, Monsters, what’s going on-

“-erret!”

Demigod, father’s a god claimed welcome to cabin seven.

Blood, skull smashed in, giants safe-not-safe, death death death.

“FERRET!”

His eyes snapped open to worried faces looking down at him.  Arms were wrapped around his shoulders – he was shaking like a leaf, he couldn’t breathe, there was too much information in his head, like a dam had broken, shattered and everything was flooding in all at once.  His eyes started drifting closed again, darkness dragging him back down, but there was a tap on his cheek and a hand on his chest.

“Hey, Ferret, you gotta breathe first, kid.”

He dragged his eyes open again – an action that took far too much energy – but couldn’t even muster the energy to glare at the owner of the voice.

“In and out,” the voice said insistently.  “C’mon, Ferret.  In, and out. In, and out.  In, and out.”

A hand rubbed at his back firmly and he subconsciously arched into the grounding pressure, somehow wrangling his lungs into at least trying to let air back in again.

“That’s right,” the voice encouraged.  “Like that.”

Ferret felt like he was drowning – water, breaking bridge, falling-falling-falling – as he gulped down air, desperately trying to keep his head up, out of the torrent of whatever it was (memories, memories) trying to drag him under.  The hands helped – too many to belong to a single person, hands on his cheeks, on his chest, on his back, arms around his shoulders, holding him against a warm, moving surface – but he still couldn’t stop shaking, couldn’t steady his breathing beyond frantic gasps, couldn’t focus on his surroundings enough to know who was where, just that he wasn’t alone.

That he was safe.

“There we go,” the voice said, sounding relieved.  Ferret blinked, his chest still heaving, and Rook’s thin, tall figure solidified in front of him.  “You’re okay, kid.  You’re safe.”

Something nudged at Ferret’s mind, a tangible thread in amongst the chaos of thoughts and memories that didn’t seem to have a tether, and he scowled.

“’m not a kid,” he rasped, pushing himself fully upright.  Most of the hands fell away, but one stayed steady against his back in silent support.  He didn’t pull away from it.  “’m nineteen.”

Stunned silence met his declaration.

“No way.”  Jimmy shook his head in Ferret’s periphery.  “Pull the other one, Ferret.”

Ferret snarled at him, belatedly becoming aware that his face was very, very wet and scrubbing at his eyes with the back of his forearm angrily. Dawn hadn’t broken yet – how long had he been asleep?

“Did you remember something?” Scout asked, peering in close.  “That was a hell of a nightmare you were having.”

Ferret scowled.  “Will told me, yesterday,” he admitted.  “I turn nineteen on the twentieth.”  He ignored the probe about the nightmare.  They were memories, he was sure of it, but it was all too muddled and painful to even try to make heads or tails of, and when he tried to grasp at any of it, his breathing stuttered again.

The hand on his back rubbed reassuringly again, and he pressed his palms to his eyes, trying to force it back under control again.

“Who’d’a thunk it?” Mika chuckled in his ear.  “You really are small and vicious, huh.”

He got a snarl for that, but it lost any potency when another spiel of memories crashed over him.

Keep your temper in check.

Don’t let it rule you.

I hope you all die!

Ungrateful bitch! Is your pride that fragile you self-centred cow?

If Kronos doesn’t get you, I’ll kill you myself!

Ferret hunched over with a pained gasp, hands clutching the side of his head like a vice.  Fear, anger, despair punched him in the gut, almost a physical abuse, and he choked on a breath.

“Damn,” he heard one of the men whisper.  Arms wrapped around him again, and he half-heartedly fought to get free.  “What are we supposed to do?”

Phantom pain lanced through him, his leg and ribs screaming at him as he remembered falling, toppling sideways and hitting anything and everything solid on his way down.  He keeled over, but he couldn’t tell if it was in his head or if he was actuallyfalling.

“Not much we can do,” one of the others said, barely audible over the screaming in Ferret’s head, the noise and chaos of weapons ringing against weapons and blood splattering over every surface.

So much blood.

“All we can do is stick with Ferret and hope this passes soon.”

It did not pass soon.

Ferret lost track of time almost immediately, curling up in his battered sleeping bag with his hands clutching his head as thoughts, emotions and memories smothered him, out of sync and so jumbled he couldn’t begin to decipher them but impossible to ignore. There was death – his death, his siblings’ deaths – there was pain and grief and exhaustion, and just when it seemed like that was all it was, happier moments interspersed.

Will, looking younger but unmistakable as the same kid he’d met in the alley, flashed up several times. Other faces and names – Lee, Austin, Kayla – floated into existence, light moments of ribbing and teasing before suddenly he was staring at a bloody corpse, at golden eyes glinting with malice, monsters bearing down on them, intent on tearing them limb from limb.

He screamed more than once, but he didn’t know if it was just in his head.  He sobbed and choked on tears and snot running down his face, he thrashed and fought enemies long-gone.

Sometimes, there were touches.  Moments of lucidity when he blinked and it was Rook, or Mika that he saw.  When Scout tipped water into his mouth, and he heard Jimmy worriedly rasp he’s burning up.

The sun blazed down on him. Not in the alley, in the dumpster that gave shade and shelter, but in his head, scorchingly bright with a grin to match.  Take these, said a warm voice that cascaded over him like sunbeams and arrows that crackled threateningly appeared in his hand.  Live.

He’d died.

He hadn’t died.

He’d been certain he was going to die.

Everythingburned.

He’s getting worse, he heard dimly at one point, between rushing lava and the horns of battle.

Dark, light, day, night, black, bright.  Ferret- Michael- Ferret- Michael-

He didn’t know what was in his mind and what was reality.  Memories and nightmares blurred, if they weren’t the same thing in the first place, events jumbled and all out of order and someone help me I can’t do this.

More gentle touches, ghosts of them, and he didn’t know what was even real any more.

It was easiest just to scream.

—-

“His fever’s finally broken,” he heard.  Something cool swiped across his forehead.

“That was the most terrifying thing I’ve seen in my life,” someone else – Jimmy, he thought – concurred. “What has he even beenthrough?”

“We knew his life was rough,” Rook chided them.  “He’s always jumped at shadows.”

They were talking about him. They had to be.  He swatted away whatever was on his forehead and pulled himself into a sitting position, opening his eyes to see his four companions sitting around him.

“Easy,” Mika cautioned, a warm hand on his back.

“Drink some water,” Scout insisted, handing him a bottle that he grasped and tipped back.  “You’ve had nothing to eat for two days.”  Some bread – going hard, but still edible, especially with the water – was pressed into his hand.  “Try and eat.”

His stomach grumbled at him in concurrence, and he tore off a chunk with his teeth, chewing it stubbornly until water and saliva combined to soften it up.

“We’ll get you something from the soup kitchen when it starts serving,” Rook promised.  “How are you feeling?”

“Like crap.”  His head still hurt, and he had a shit-tonne of memories to sort through now they’d stopped assailing him randomly and seemed to have settled into some sort of order, but he was lucid and breathing wasn’t a chore. It was an improvement, at least.  “Some asshole decided to slam seventeen years of memories into my head all at once.”

“Does it even work like that?” Jimmy wondered out loud.

Ferret (he still wasn’t quite Michael, not yet.  Not that demigod – fucking demigod, what the Hades – son of Apollo who’d fought and almost died to save a bunch of gods’ seats of power.  They must have won the war, they must have done, otherwise Will would’ve been dead, but he didn’t know what the Hades had happened and his head was going to explode if he got any more new information) scowled at him. “Ask my gods-damned head,” he bristled, and got two hands up in surrender.

“Presumably meeting his brother triggered it,” Rook pointed out.  “But the how and why doesn’t matter.  What matters is that Ferret’s tired, spent the last two days in a nasty fever, and needs to rest.  We’ll work out what to do next once he’s feeling better.”

“I’ll be fine,” Ferret griped, but Rook fixed him with a look.

“You need some proper food in you,” he said firmly.  “I don’t know what you remembered, and I’m not asking, but you look like absolute shit, Ferret.”

To Ferret’s annoyance, he knew the older man was right.  His hands were still shaking a little – nothing like the tremors from earlier, but a far cry from being still – and the headache didn’t seem like it was going to leave him alone any time soon.  “Screw you,” he muttered, and got a relieved smile in response.

“There’s our Ferret,” Jimmy grinned.  “You’re not right when you’re not snapping at anything that breathes.”

Ferret flipped him the bird.

At his pseudo-guardians’ insistence, he barely left the cranny behind the dumpster for several more days.  His nineteenth birthday – nineteen, Ferret could hardly believe he’d jumped from maybe-fifteen-if-we’re-generous to nineteen in less than a week – came and went, accompanied by far too much fanfare (it was tame, compared to his slowly-organising memories of camp, even if at camp he’d usually joint-celebrated with Will seeing as their birthdays were only three days apart) from the men. They were, they insisted, making up for the last two birthdays that had passed completely unacknowledged.

Ferret called bullshit, but that didn’t make the traitorous part of his mind that loved every minute of it any less happy.  It was only a thrown-out cupcake with a cigarette lighter jammed into the too-crispy icing, but it was something.

It certainly didn’t make his decision any easier.

He’d dismissed Will’s plea to return to camp, figuring that with no memories it wasn’t worth trying, but now his memories were back, slowly sorting themselves out into something that was starting to feel less and less like watching a reel of someone else’s life and more like what could actually have been his own, the lure of camp was starting to call.

Monsters were getting bolder.  It was hard to fight them when he was being fussed over so much, but they were finding him, now.  More than once, he’d found himself having to throw his dagger straight at one – if there was one memory he was grateful for, it was the training that went with the instincts – and scrambling out to retrieve it from the dust when he got a chance. He was less impressed with the knowledge that the more he knew about who he was, the stronger his so-called demigod scent was, and the more monsters he was attracting.

If one of the guys got hurt because of him, Ferret (Michael, whispered a little voice in the back of his head, reminding him that he was feeling more and more like Michael again every day), would never forgive himself.

The guilt from his argument with Clarisse, for being the factor that made the Ares cabin not come and fight, was already bubbling away viciously in the back of his throat.  He’d read the names on the bead – so many names, ones he could put faces too, now, and get whacked by the sledgehammer of grief when he realised these were the names of the dead, that he’d never see them again even if he went back to camp – and wondered how many of them had died because the Ares cabin weren’t there.

And yet, part of him was getting desperate to see camp (again).  He was a bit old for camp now, he knew – Luke, damn the son of Hermes – had been the oldest camper by some margin at nineteen, and now Mic- Ferret was nineteen.  But, he reasoned, he was still being pursued by monsters.

Leaving to go to camp would mean leaving the guys – mortal, not even clear-sighted, just four well-meaning mortals that had found him half-dead and decided to help him even though they had nothing.  They couldn’t come with him, and he couldn’t leave them in a better place.  He was their main source of non-shelter food and money.

He hadn’t counted on the men working out his dilemma by themselves.

“You’ve got a home, somewhere, haven’t you?” Scout asked him, two days after his birthday.  “Is living on the streets really better than that?”

Ferret jumped, glaring at him from where he was sharpening his dagger – he didn’t know what the others saw it as, but they never questioned it – on a piece of stone. Hardly perfect, but it would have to do. “The fuck you talking about?” he demanded.

“You said your brother wanted you to go with him,” Scout continued, unperturbed.  “So you’ve got a home, yes?”

His thoughts flickered to camp, and his chest ached.  It wouldn’t be the same, but damn if he didn’t want to see it again.

“So what?” he grumped.

“Is it a bad home?”

“Huh?”

Scout sighed.  “I’m trying to work out why you’re still here, Ferret.  Life on the streets is for the desperate.”

“If there’s a good home waiting for you, you should take it,” Jimmy added.

Ferret huffed.  “What makes you think it’s a good home?” he demanded. “It could be a shithole for all you know.”

“If it was, you wouldn’t be considering it at all,” Rook pointed out.

“How-”

“It’s written all over your face, kid,” the thin man smiled wryly.  “You want to go, but you don’t want to leave us.”

He bristled.  “Who says-”

“Ferret. Michael.  Whichever name you want to go by,” Rook interrupted.  It was the first time he’d called him Michael and it silenced him instantly.  “We’re grown men.  We looked after ourselves just fine before we found you.  We’ll survive if you go back home.”

“We’ve always wanted you to be somewhere safe,” Mika added.  “When you didn’t have a place to go, the safest place we could find was with us. But now there’s a home in the equation – if it’s safe for you, that’s all we want.”

“Although you’re more than welcome to come by and see us whenever you want to,” Jimmy chipped in, as Ferret stared at them all.

“You’re ridiculous,” he said bluntly.  “Are you kicking me out?”

“No,” Rook assured him. “Not at all, Ferret.  It’s your decision, but don’t you dare decide to stick around with us because you feel bad about leaving us.  That, I won’t forgive.”

“You’re a good kid,” Mika told him earnestly.  Ferret thought about some of his memories, about how he’d been the reason they’d been down their best fighters, and had to remind himself that they didn’t know about that.  He hadn’t told them anything, because how the fuck did he even start to explain the demigod thing?  “Don’t throw your life away because of us.”

He’d thrown his life away for others once already – for Will, scared at the end of the bridge, for the rest of his siblings who had barely got out the way in time.  He’d known he was going to die.  He’d ended that life.

The eighth bead on his necklace, the one with all the names he’d poured over, didn’t let him let that life go entirely.  They’d have burned a shroud for him, that chapter of his life had closed, but Will had given him the bead, an end-of-summer award from after the burning of the shroud, re-opening the door he’d never thought he’d even see again.

It was Will’s birthday tomorrow, he realised.  Will, his gentle brother who’d ended up in charge of the cabin after he’d fallen from the bridge, who’d begged for him to come back but been willing to let him walk back out of his life anyway, if that was what was best for him.

Nico had been right. He owed it to Will, at least, to try. He’d been a terrible big brother, dumping everything on him like that, and two years of absence would be impossible to make up for, but he could at least step through the door his brother had hopefully left open for him.

The delighted whooping from the guys when he muttered that he might go visit – visit, he stressed – his brother, family, tomorrow, almost got the cops on them for disturbing the peace.

—–

It was a lot of a trek to get to Camp Half-Blood.  The last time he’d made the journey, it had been in one of the camp vans, and every single one of them had been terrified during the two hour trip.  Scruffy and clearly homeless, there was no way he could hail a taxi to get there, but if he walked it, he wouldn’t make it in time for Will’s birthday.  Monsters were also rife around the camp’s border; exhausted, he’d be easy pickings.

Rescue came in the form of one of the shelter workers, the same woman that’d bailed him out of the overnight lock-up.  One of the guys must have told her he wanted to get to Long Island (he hadn’t given them an exact address, but it had felt wrong to give them nothing at all, even though they’d never be able to reach camp), because she caught his attention as he shouldered his backpack with his meagre belongings in it – the guys’ insistence, despite him stressing that he was only visiting, not planning on moving back in – and started the trek out of their patch for what he steadfastly refused to be the last time.

To her credit, she didn’t ask questions.  The ride passed in silence, barring the radio blaring out some familiar music that did nothing to quell his nervousness as they grew ever closer to camp.  Naomi Solace had never been his preferred genre, but with her son as a half-brother, he was familiar with her music regardless. Hearing her on his way to see her son, on his birthday, didn’t put him at ease at all.

Eventually, they reached the signs for the strawberry plantations, and he directed her to stop on the side of the road, insisting that he’d make his own way.

“Are you sure, Ferret?” she asked, looking around at the wooded area with no signs of civilisation in sight – at least, not to her mortal sight.  In the distance, he could see the heartachingly familiar archway with CAMP HALF-BLOOD inscribed in Ancient Greek.  “This looks… rather creepy.”

“It’s fine,” he said shortly, jumping out.  “Thanks for the ride.”

“Ferret?”

He left her behind without a second glance, rucking his backpack further up onto his back before striding out towards the archway, celestial bronze dagger in hand.  On top of the hill, golden scales gleamed – Peleus, guarding the golden fleece, itself shimmering in the perpetual sunlight over the camp.

With every step, he felt less and less like Ferret, the amnesiac homeless kid who didn’t even know his own name, and more like Michael Yew, the demigod that belonged there. It was a strange feeling.  Downright bizarre, in fact.

He gripped the beads on his necklace with one hand, and came to a halt just outside the barrier. Beyond, he could see the cabins in the distance – something looked different with them, but he couldn’t tell what. The Big House sat where it always had done, and campers were hustling and bustling around in the same disorganised chaos he remembered.

It had changed.  Something had changed, and it wasn’t just him.

But it was still camp. Still, somehow, home, and Michael took the last step through the barrier, away from the mortal world and back where he belonged.

His feet wanted to take him straight to cabin seven, to the gleaming beacon of gold that called out to him like a song in his bones – home, family – but he hesitated.  He couldn’t just walk into camp and pretend nothing had changed.  The younger demigods wouldn’t know who he was, and the older ones, the ones he knew (how many of them would even stillbe here?  He knew who hadn’t died in Manhattan, but he didn’t know how many had left for college.  Will had been one of the younger campers, but he was turning sixteen today, officially part of the older cohort now) would likely be gone.

Michael turned away from the cabins and headed for the Big House instead.  Chiron would still be at camp – he’d know what to do.

He made it halfway before there was the familiar (and sorely missed) sound of hooves.  Turning, he caught sight of the centaur, towering above him as he always had done, heading straight for him in a near-gallop.

“My gods!” Chiron exclaimed, skidding to a halt just short of trampling Michael where he stood.  “When the dryads told me they saw you, I couldn’t believe it!”  He knelt down, onto his forelocks – it still didn’t lower him quite to Michael’s eye level, but it was close.  Warm hands grasped his shoulders and old eyes looked him over.  “Michael.  My boy. You’re alive.”

“I am,” he said, meeting his old teacher’s eyes steadily.  “Didn’t Will and Nico tell you?”

Chiron’s tail swished behind him.  “No. Did they know?”

“They found me… about a week ago?”  With the way all the days had blurred together with the cascade of his memories returning, Michael found he couldn’t put an exact date to it.  “Will gave me this.”  He held up his necklace, showing Chiron the eighth bead.

“Ah,” Chiron smiled.  “I wondered why he told me he needed a new one. But I have to ask – why did you take so long to come back to us, my boy?”

Michael clutched at his necklace again.  “I didn’t remember,” he admitted.  “Some guys found me half-dead and looked after me, but I must have had some sort of traumatic amnesia.  I didn’t remember a thing – not even who I was – until Will gave me this bead.”

Chiron made a mournful noise.  “You’ve been living on the streets for two years?” he asked sadly, “without knowing who you are?”

“I was fine,” Michael huffed.  “Found a celestial bronze dagger in the wreckage of the bridge which dealt with the monsters when they came sniffing but they mostly left me alone.”

The centaur didn’t look at all appeased, but he wasn’t a fool and knew when to drop it.

“I am still sorry you had to go through that,” he said, standing back up to his full height again, “although as you managed to miss a second war” – what – “I suppose there is some silver lining to be found.”

“A second war?” Michael demanded, thinking of how many of his siblings’ names were on the bead, how Will was the least-combatant demigod he knew yet would have been in the meetings, on the front lines again.

He’d yelled at Clarisse for not being there for them… but then he’d gone and done the exact same thing.

“There were less casualties,” Chiron assured him quickly.  “None of your siblings were lost.  Your father went through some, uh, interesting times, but I’m sure you will hear all about that at the end of summer fireworks.”

Michael didn’t even care what Apollo had been through.  His thoughts were far more preoccupied with a whole second bloody war he’d managed to miss.

“For now, if you are ready, I believe there are some people who would dearly love to see you again,” the centaur continued.  “Something tells me it is not a coincidence that you returned to camp today, of all days.” Mi