Call it a Pack, Call it a Hoard (Just Another Word for Home)

The saddest part is, Annabeth knows there was a time before. A time when her family didn't look at her with fear, when her room's door wasn't locked once a month, when her arms didn't sport a wide bite mark. She knows. She's not stupid. She knows.

She just doesn't remember.

When she first meet them, Annabeth doesn't want to trust them. She's never had anyone to trust with her back before, after all. Since she'd ran away she'd fought teeth and nails (fangs and claws) for each and every second she'd spent breathing.

But Luke offers her a knife -something she could stab him with- and soothing words of comfort, while Thalia blatantly ignore her bared teeth and low growl and tells her, we are like you, we see them too, we should stick together, dontcha think?

(And maybe, just maybe, Annabeth is reminded of the painful feeling of miss in her heart, something as important to her as air or water that she'd been denied her whole life, that Luke and Thalia can give her if she only extends her hand.)

So Annabeth sits down and listens, stories of gods and greeks and monsters, and for once feels like she belongs.

As it turns out, these two are not the answer to everything.

The morning after the full moon, she wakes up to them absolutely freaking. She tells and shows them, as best as she can, about the bite and the moon and the blackouts. They'll have an explanation, she knows. A myth to explain it. A cure, even, maybe.

They don't.

They do not know what she is.

And it hurts, of course- like a spark of hope being blown away. But at the same time...

They don't leave her.

That's the moment she knows she'll do anything for them.

She flips through a book about wolves once, while Luke is gone to steal buy food. She doesn't read much, because Luke is fast and dyslexia doesn't make her a fast reader to begin with, but there's still a word that burns its way in her memory.

Pack.

The word rolls beautifully on her tongue.

Pack.

Things are better, for a while- which, Annabeth will realize later, is kind of screwed up, because who would consider running away from monsters homelessly a bettering of any situation?- But, as things tend to often do, it all starts to go down.

Annabeth screams when Thalia's fingers turn to roots, cries when she's finally safe, and howls when the moon rises. she feels like she'd been skinned alive, like her arms had been cut off- except she's positive amputation would be much, much less painful than this.

Luke leaves.

Not literally, obviously- but little by little, he starts to drive her away.

It's okay, she thinks- he may not be like her, but Thalia was still a dear friend of his. If he needs space, she'll give him some- she gives him days, weeks, months, years. He'll come back, she's sure. He's part of her pack. He wouldn't leave her.

He'll come back.

(He never does.)

Percy, really, shouldn't be surprised. He'd always known humans weren't the only ones around- even if himself wasn't old enough to show it, his mother alone was proof enough.

He still is.

Everything goes way, way too fast- Ms Dodds, Grover, gods and greeks and monsters. They reach a camp his mother can't go to, and an ox-man challenge them to a fight.

" Run, Percy!! They'll explain you!! " she roars, her back facing him.

And truly, Percy doesn't want to- Sally is his jewel, his treasure, the only member of his uncommon hoard.

But Sally isn't just a jewel- she's a diamond. Hard to crack and dangerous when sharpened. He knows better than anyone what she can and can't do, and therefore he knows that if he stays he'll only be in the way.

So Percy turns around and run.

Later, they'll find a broken horn and give it to him, because what else can they give to a boy who lost his mother?

(Except he didn't; Percy will see torn-off scales and shallow paw prints, and know that she made it.)

He almost want to laugh when he learns about his father. All his life, Percy had considered himself half-human- and now here he is, the only one in a camp full of half-bloods without a single drop of human blood in him.

(Okay, maybe a little; Sally's ancestry isn't the purest. His point still stand.)

When the trident appears above his head, he does crack up, laughs until his knees buckle and his lungs scream for mercy.

He's a freak among freak, who'll never belong anywhere.

The first time Percy and Annabeth meet, it, predictably, doesn't go well. Should they spend an extended period of time together, they'd end up killing each other or loving each other. There'd be no in-between.

Obviously, they do end up spending an extended period of time together.

Annabeth recognize that feeling first. She'd felt the same toward Thalia, felt the same (feels the same) toward Luke.

She fights it. She really does.

(You can't think your way out of feelings)

It takes a bit longer, for Percy, because the only other person he'd felt similar to were his mother (and comparing his mother to Annabeth is just weird, so he avoids it) and Grover (who only really became part of his hoard during their quest). Only when everything is said and done and he comes back to his house for another year does he links together the warm feeling in his chest when he's with her, the growing frustration when she's not, and his hoarding habits.

(She's a beautiful zircon; not a gem you'd pick at first glance, not one to be used decoratively, but a precious one nonetheless, and a great source of knowledge)

This makes the sea of monsters the most frustrating place, as all the lives at stakes are his hoard's (Grover, his Tiger's eye, soon-to-be goat stew, and Tyson, his smoky quartz, maybe not the rarest, maybe not the prettiest, but tough all the same) because he knows that if only he was a little bit older, he could do a much better job at protecting them all. Oh, his power over water is pretty useful, don't get him wrong; but he's seen his mother, and he knows, if only he could shift even just a little, his scales could take the hits instead of their fragile skins and his claws could tear off what Riptide can't.

But he's not, so he settles with being Percy-the-half-god instead of Percy-the-half-dragon.

(Love it is, then.)

The Circe incident would have been funny, if it hadn't felt so wrong. Percy is a predator, a meat-eater, a hunter; the exact opposite of a rodent. When he turns back, his skin itches as if it belonged to someone else. It takes every ounce of determination he has not to scratch himself until he draws blood.

He tries to explain Annabeth- how his body didn't even feel like his, how utterly powerless he was- but the more he talks, the less sense he seems to make, so he just stops.

There is silence, for a while. Then Annabeth speaks up.

" I understand. "

(And really, how could she not? The only difference between him and her is that her transformation is a regular thing, and she isn't the one in control.)

The sirens call for Annabeth not with songs- but with howls. She howls back, wiggling, struggling against her ties- her pack is there, right there, why isn't she with them-

Water fills her ears, and the howls stop.

(She doesn't speak for some time after this incident.)

She may pride herself in her knowledge, but she's still unable to find words able to describe the bubbling feeling in her chest when Thalia is back.

After years of people leaving her, she finally has someone back.

Funnily enough, she's the one forced to leave this time.

The part of her she inherited from her mother, the one made of wisdom and built on reason, recognize the trap instantly; Leave, it tells her, he left and is never going back

But the other half of her, the one that race with the wind and relishes on the moonlight, howls in protest that he's part of her pack, always been, always will be, and whether this is right or wrong she'll do anything for him.

(that side wins.)

The worst part is, even now, she can't hate him.

Never before had she hated her curse so much.

Thalia leaves with the hunters.

The Camp find a deer mangled with much more violence than necessary the next moon.

Another year pass.

Percy and Annabeth IM each other all the time, for the tiniest reasons. Percy's teacher talked about the Parthenon, it made him think of her. Annabeth watched that really good movie, he should check it out when he has some time.

(One night, as neither of them can sleep, Annabeth tells him about that feeling she can't quite explain, the one that links her to him and Thalia. To her surprise, Percy describe to her a very similar thing, linking him to Sally and her and Tyson.

When the call ends, they both laugh until they cry.

They'd never thought they'd find someone who understands.)

Life as a demigod being as it is, they end up in yet another quest.

Annabeth hates the Labyrinth with a burning passion. It's devoid of sense, it's full of confusing scents, and most of all it makes her skin itch.

She theorizes that it's a side-effect to being in a place outside of time- a place where the moon can't have her. She should be turning but also shouldn't, she should be a human and a wolf, she should but she can't-

It hurts.

It shows. Her frustration, her pain, her anger, her sadness- it shows.

In her body language, obviously. Annabeth has always been a pretty expressive person- the kind of expressive who'd bare teeth and growl, that is. But that's not what I meant.

It shows on her body- her teeth and ears grow longer, pointier, the longer she spends underground. Her arms are just slightly longer than they used to be, her body just a little bit hairier. Thankfully, it's little enough for her to pass it off as something that'd always been there.

(She doesn't know if they actually trust her or not)

Percy grows his first scales in the Labyrinth.

Just a couple ones, right on the sides of his hips- small, black, and smooth, just like he'd imagined. They mean that soon, he'll be able to shift completely.

He just hopes he'll still be alive to experience it.

It's around that time that Percy learns the truth about Annabeth's curse- immediately, a lot of things that'd happened in the past few years make a lot more sense to him.

It's an accident, really. They leave the Labyrinth at some point, and the next thing he knows Annabeth's bones rearrange themselves and she's howling at the full moon.

He shows her his scales when she turns back- shows her she's not alone.

Neither of them are anymore.

(It's a wonderful feeling.)

That night, Annabeth distinctly remember the bliss filling her when finally finally she stops being human- but as per usual, she doesn't remember anything else. Which is why she's really surprised when she hears that she didn't attack Percy on sight.

Then she remembers ( forgotten details of old memories) that she didn't use to attack Luke or Thalia either, and she knows why she didn't.

No wolf would attack their own pack, after all.

Somehow, they make it to the next year, and Percy hears the Great Prophecy.

It makes him want to scream.

He's destined to die. That's it. That's the harsh truth. And he might bring down the whole Olympus with him.

He's destined to die. He's never going to shift for the first time, he'll never see his gems be happy again, he'll never fly on his mother's back again.

(He does scream.)

The Battle of Manhattan is long and exhausting. The demigods, the hunters- they all pay their part of the price.

Thankfully, they're not the only one fighting. There's a third party- a perfectly cut diamond, carrying a delicate crystal and an old aquamarine.

On Sally's back, both Paul and Rachel cheer at each enemy she brings down.

It's over.

That's the only thing Annabeth can think of as she watches her knife being buried in Luke's side- her brother, her friend, the first one she'd called packmate. It's over. He's leaving, again, but this time, she has no illusions that he's ever coming back.

It's over, she thinks, and Luke stops breathing.

It's over.

(At last, Annabeth gets closure.)

It's a weird feeling, knowing that the world won't end anytime soon.

They have no quests to fill, no monsters to kill, no oppressing deadlines. Just each wounds to heal, houses to build, and shrouds to burn.

It's a weird feeling, peace.

They can get used to it.

(Six months later, Percy vanish.

The howls can be heard all the way to New York.)