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Drew Tanaka had not been at Camp very long, but you didn’t have to be to start hearing stories about Percy Jackson. Sometimes it felt like you couldn’t go ten steps without hearing about something fucking crazy he’d done, like fight the god of war and win, or go on a quest to the Underworld and come back, or get on the FBI’s Most Wanted list at twelve. By the time she actually met him, she had no idea what to think of him.
“Oh, hey. Drew,” the guy said, not really looking up from where he was painstakingly attempting to weave a friendship bracelet. The Hermes Cabin apparently had a lot of activities with him since his dad only had one kid right now, but despite that, they hadn’t ever spoken to each other before and it was hard not to be awkward.
“Hi, Percy, right?” Drew sat next to him, a little nervously, shoving her misgivings to the back of her mind and forcing the sort of confident facade that had gotten her this far in life. He was one of the better-looking guys at Camp, she decided, for all that he didn’t seem to notice, and that didn’t really help matters.
“Yeah. Do you know how to do this? I’m kinda struggling here.” He looked up at her. God—or, gods, she guessed, Percy has some long eyelashes.
She’d be jealous if hers weren’t also pretty awesome.
“Not really. I’ve only been here for like a week.”
“Really? I guess we’ll just have to muddle through then. Here’s what I’ve got so far…”
They spent the next hour or so chatting and attempting to make bracelets. Hers actually looked pretty good by the end, while Percy had gone off the rails at some point and chosen chaos. It looked kinda cool, but at that point, she didn’t think it counted as a bracelet, maybe a tiny tapestry or something. By the end of arts and crafts, Drew had almost completely forgotten all the crazy stuff he had supposedly done in favor of badgering him to introduce her to his dryad friend Juniper and the naiads in the lake.
It was a great day.
Getting claimed by Aphrodite wasn’t necessarily a surprise, but the sudden makeover was. The Blessing of Aphrodite they called it. She huffed and flopped back on a bit of grass by the lakeshore. The outfit was hot, sure, but not her style and frankly it wasn’t all that comfortable. She’d already gotten some smarmy comments from a few campers and wasn’t a fan of the immediate hit her reputation had taken just from finding out who her mom was or the attention it brought her.
“You okay, Tanaka?” Percy asked, making her jump. She looked around confused when she didn’t see him coming from the campfire, then jumped when a little splash hit her ankle. Drew yelped and Percy snickered as she whipped her head around to look at him.
“Right,” she said, staring at him sitting on top of the water like solid ground. “Son of Poseidon. For some reason I never considered the implications of that before now.”
Percy grinned at her and flopped over onto his side, mirroring her position. As he studied her, his smile began to fade into a concerned frown.
“Seriously though, how are you doing?” He asked.
Drew looked away, looking up at the stars above rather than at the surreal image of the guy lying perfectly dry on top of the water.
“I’m…conflicted.” She told him. “On one hand, it’s nice to have the mystery solved, but on the other…”
“You’ve still lived with only one parent your whole life and even if everything is changing, that still isn’t, not in any way that makes a difference beyond the number of things out in the world that want to kill you?” Percy asked.
Drew’s breath caught.
Yeah. That was a good way to phrase it.
Percy sighed, and Drew looked back at him. He was on his back now, one arm tucked under his head as he gazed up at the stars.
“It’s kind of a bitter pill, honestly,” she finally said.
“I get that.” He said.
They were silent for a long time after that, lying in companionable silence. Just when she thought he had fallen asleep or something, he finally spoke up again.
“This life is hard, Drew.” He told her, and when she looked back at him again, his eyes caught her with an intensity she’d never seen from anyone before, save maybe Mr. D. “This life is hard and dangerous and scary. But I promise you, Drew Tanaka, those people back there?” He gestured toward the campfire. “They make it worth it. I know you’re new to this, and maybe haven’t found your people yet, but I swear to you, crazy as they seem, once you find the ones you click with, those people are some of the best I’ve ever met.”
Drew found her eyes watering, just a little, and refused to acknowledge it.
“What if I don’t click with anyone?” She asked, a little desperately. “What if I don’t find somewhere I fit?”
Percy cocked his head. “Then at least you’ll have me, for what that’s worth.”
Before she could come up with a response to that, she heard someone calling her name from the direction of the campfire.
“That’s Silena,” Percy recognized her first. “Come on, I’ll introduce you!”
Drew snorted. “We’ve already met. She’s my sister, remember?”
“Yes, but you haven’t figured out how to get the good gossip from her yet, have you?”
All up, she thought later, sitting between Silena and Percy on the porch of the Poseidon cabin, not a bad night. By the time Beckendorf joined them in teasing Silena, she thought she might actually be able to be happy here. Someday.
“Hey, Tanaka,” Percy said, sinking onto the ground beside her.
“Hey,” she replied dully. It had been a long fucking year and both of them felt it heavy in their bones. They were still covered in monster dust and blood and dirt and Drew barely noticed because the gravity of what Silena had done was weighing her down like lead in her stomach.
She hadn’t had time to be angry or hurt, hadn’t had time to grieve. It was always onto the next fight and the next, and suddenly here they were on fucking Olympus for a fucking party.
Silena was dead.
Silena was a traitor.
Silena was dead.
Percy tugged lightly on Drew’s sleeve until he got her attention, then held out his arms slightly in an offer of a hug that could be easily ignored if she didn’t want it.
Drew sobbed into his shoulder for longer that night than she’d ever cried in her life, angry, devastated, relieved, grieving, exhausted.
It had been a long year, but at least Percy was here.
“You threw that fight,” Clarisse observed, both of them watching Piper walk away victorious.
Drew huffed. “I never wanted to be a councilor. Never thought I would have to be.”
Clarisse sighed, but stayed sat beside her until the arena cleared out. Once everyone was gone, she stood, offering Drew a hand up. “Come on, girl, why don’t you show me what you’ve really got.”
Drew grinned, a sharp thing born in the blood of her enemies on busted, gold-dusted streets in Manhattan. “Sounds like a good time.”
Rachel Elizabeth Dare showed up in Drew’s life at one of the worst possible times, but over the course of months had managed to lure her in like a feral cat. Instead of food, she dangled good music, quality art supplies, and occasional bits of prophetic gossip. Soon she found herself in Rachel’s cave almost daily, just hanging out, sometimes talking, sometimes not.
It was by talking to Rachel that Drew finally realized why she felt so different from her siblings.
“I think I’m aromantic,” She told Rachel one day, a bitter laugh escaping her. “I’m a daughter of the fucking goddess of love with no desire for love. How ironic can the Fates get?”
Rachel looked at her smiling. “Thank you for trusting me enough to tell me.”
Drew rolled her eyes, avoiding feelings at all costs, as per usual.
“I don’t need that sentimental shit,” She said, but appreciated it regardless, not that she would ever admit it.
Rachel was aro-ace, partially because of the whole Oracle thing, but they had had long conversations about it before and how she had realized she wasn’t all that upset about the forced celibacy as she’d thought she would be. It was part of the reason why Rachel was the one she was telling.
“You know she’s the goddess of more than just romantic love, right?” Rachel said after a while of comfortable silence, mixing a particularly gross brown for a shadow.
Drew snorted, but otherwise didn’t respond. The words stayed with her regardless.
In the months that Percy was missing and Piper was in charge of the Aphrodite Cabin, Drew found herself hanging out with Pollux more than she ever had. He and his twin brother Castor had been attached at the hip for as long as she’d been at Camp. But now that Castor was dead, she had noticed the Son of Dionysus’ self-imposed isolation and had taken steps to draw him back into the Titan War survivors' circle, if not the rest of Camp. There were so many new kids that sometimes it was hard to remember that less than thirty had remained in the wake of the Battle of Manhattan, but that group tended to gravitate together more often than not.
Pollux hadn’t spoken much at first, and she hadn’t pushed him to, content to sit in silence in the craft room working on her art projects after Rachel had gotten her into drawing. After a few days, he’d asked what she was working on and when she’d told him about her long-shot idea about making weapons able to be stored in tattoos, he got invested pretty quickly. The next day, he’d shown up with a couple of the few magic books available in the Big House and a gleam in his eye.
From then on, whenever they weren’t training or helping with battle preparations once the Camp learned of the imminent war, they were holed up together in the Dionysus Cabin, craft room, or Rachel’s cave, trying to bring her idea to life.
Rachel was a massive help when she was around, not often having much advice magic-wise beyond the occasional “my snakey senses are telling me that’s probably not the way to do it” hints, but having a wealth of artistic knowledge and ability and all kinds of ideas for tattoos and how to incorporate weapons in an otherwise mundane-looking tattoo when they realized that the tattoos would need to actually represent the weapons involved in some way. When they finally came up with a viable idea, Pollux offered to be her guinea pig, not particularly caring too much about what designs would end up on his body.
“Castor died because he got disarmed and wasn’t able to defend himself,” he told her. “Something like this could have saved him if he’d had a backup on him somewhere. Even if it doesn’t work right away, I don’t mind getting stabbed at by an amateur tattoo artist for the sake of future demigods.”
A lucky three tattoos later, they actually managed to store and retrieve a knife from a tattoo on Pollux’s leg, two tries later, they managed to include a function where he could will the weapon back into tattoo form even when he wasn’t touching it, meaning it could essentially do what Percy’s sword could do, just not automatically.
The last tattoo she gave him was a grapevine curling over his bicep, his brother’s spear cradled between vines and leaves, less as an extra weapon and more as a permanent reminder of the matching half of his soul lost to the Titan War.
(Not to say he didn’t stab a few dracaenae with it when the Giant War found its way to the foot of Half-blood hill…)
She also gave herself a few—with Rachel’s help for a couple, even if she had to be the one to do at least a few lines for the magic to work—small ones at first, and pretty simple and minimalistic. A dagger on the side of her ankle, a couple of bands around her biceps that held bronze-tipped staves and spears on both sides, and her favorite: another long, thin dagger, almost a short sword, with a hilt that sat beneath her rib cage and above her naval and the tip on her sternum, just barely visible in a lower-cut shirt.
It was a reminder for her, no matter what beauty that others saw in her, no matter how they viewed her, Drew Tanaka was a warrior.
(It was also a fun new party trick where she could reach into her bra and pull out a sword. Ten out of ten, she loved the intimidation factor.)
In some ways, the Giant War was less painful than the Titan War, for Drew, at least. There were still deaths, though not nearly as many and no one she was particularly close to. It was still war, though, still a battle bathed in blood and sweat and dirt and monster dust, and in the wake of it, as word of Pollux and her disappearing weapons got around, she began to get customers for new tattoos.
Clarisse was first in line, of course, grumbling about spears being a pain in the ass to carry around in everyday life. She ended up with a dozen between both biceps, a sword on each thigh, and was the first to ask for a pair of shields to be incorporated into a massive drakon piece on her back. She actually laughed out loud when Drew suggested hiding a bunch of knives in its scales.
“Absolutely-fuckin-lutely, do you even have to ask?”
Next came Annabeth Chase, who refused to ever lose a weapon at the worst possible time ever again. She got a spider web on one side (where she’d been stabbed in the Titan War) to remind her of her hubris and hide a couple of spears, then did the same as Clarisse and got her drakon bone sword tattooed on the side of one thigh and a celestial bronze one on the other. Later on, she came back and got a back piece done of the labyrinth where she hid not only knives but also a variety of other weapons, like a garotte, a bow and a couple dozen arrows, four celestial bronze knuckles “for if I ever want to fist fight god in a parking lot again”, a silver coated short sword, and a fucking magic laptop.
(Drew had never thought about using tattoos to store things other than weapons, but now that there was proof of concept, she definitely had ideas.)
Then came Percy, with a manic gleam in his eye and a question about how much she wanted for getting a fucking armory hidden beneath his skin.
Drew, who had thus far not even considered the possibility of getting paid to tattoo her friends (sisters and brothers in arms, comrades, family), had uncharacteristically blue-screened.
“Uh,” she said. “A hundred bucks?”
Percy just stared at her for a long moment, then dragged her to his mom’s apartment in Manhattan where she and Percy’s step-dad (apparently his mom murdered his first one? Icon behavior) had sat her down and talked about minimum wages per hour and how many hours she was putting into each tattoo, not to mention how much time she had spent creating her process and how artists of all kinds tended to be criminally underpaid for their work and even if she wanted to do all her friend’s tattoos for free, what about after that? Wouldn’t it be a good idea to establish pricing now in case she ended up, say, opening a parlor in New Rome where most of the population were either current or retired warriors?
Long story short, she ended up walking out of the apartment the next day (“Just stay the night, Dear, Percy can take the couch”) with a five year plan and a few thousand bucks because apparently Percy had acquired an infinite credit card when he was twelve and had forgotten all about it until he regained his memories after drinking Gorgon blood on his Alaska quest, had found it in his old wallet when he got home and had come straight to her when he found out about her tattoos, excited to have something worthwhile to splurge on. They had spent about half the night sketching ideas for the back piece he wanted as well as a few others he might eventually get.
The money he’d given her was apparently a combination of him paying for the tattoo he wanted and some start-up money so she could get some more supplies and like, an actual tattooing setup that wasn’t just people sitting/lying on random furniture in Rachel’s cave. Pollux and Rachel were picking her up from Percy’s place in Pollux’s pickup truck because Pollux wanted to help, and Rachel knew where to get supplies and had also mentioned something about a possible apprenticeship with a friend of hers.
Drew had a lot of feelings about this development in general, but the main one was an odd, sort of melancholic understanding that she was going to live, actually live a whole life where she would not only make it to adulthood, but actually have a job, maybe even her own shop where she would be performing a service that had the potential to save demigod lives just by doing something she liked to do. It was strange, especially for a girl who’d come to terms with not having that long of a life-expectancy. She had talked to Percy about it a bit as well, and he had given her a wry smile.
“I’m happy for you,” was all he’d said, and Drew had come to the painful realization that whatever security she could achieve in her life, Percy would probably never have. Sure, she was a daughter of Aphrodite, but Percy was a son of one of the Big Three. The fact that he had made it this far in life was a miracle and a half, maybe even a few dozen stacked on top of each other considering the kinds of shit he’d been involved with, and they had no way of knowing what the next escalation would be, what else he would have to do in order to survive. How long he could survive.
Now here she stood on the curb outside his apartment, the idea that this gift from Percy was partially in case he would never see her again tearing her heart to fucking shreds as she looked out over the busy street. No, she decided. He’s lived this long, done so many impossible things, survived against unimaginable odds, and she had to believe that he would do so again, if not for himself, then for them. For all the demigods, all the friends, all the children that he fought for, gave up immortality for, now he would survive. Now they would help him, include him, support him, make sure he always knew he had people to come back to, that he would be missed, so fucking missed, give him something to fight for.
But maybe there was a way to give him a bit of…insurance.
She steeled her nerves and straightened her spine.
Drew Tanaka left Percy Jackson’s apartment with goals, a fire in her soul rekindled, and a crazy, stupid idea that she had an inkling may change everything.
That night, after she returned to Camp Half-Blood, excited to try out all her new equipment, still in a bit of shock over the friend of Rachel’s who had decided to do an apprenticeship with her (even seemed excited about it) and a bit high on the novelty of actually having a decent amount of money in her account, Drew gave her usual offerings to the gods before dinner, then hesitated for a moment before tossing in another.
For Percy Jackson. Thank you, for everything. Remember what you fight for. Remember to always find a way back home.