[Third Person Pov]
A slow rhythm began to form between them, though it was still fragile—nothing solid yet, only the tentative pattern of shared hours in short, uneasy days. With little else to occupy the time, Lucian and Zoe found themselves bonding over the smallest, most ordinary things. Conversations that started as nothing more than a way to fill silence gradually carried more weight. She asked about his childhood and past; he asked about her time with the Hesperides and adventure with Artemis.
Beyond bathing him—an act she performed with brisk, almost clinical efficiency—Zoe went further still. One afternoon she prepared an entire meal from the sparse supplies they had, then insisted on feeding him herself.
She stabbed a piece of food onto the fork and held it out, eyes narrowed in warning.
"I swear on the virtue of my goddess, Lucian, if you bite my hand I will stab you with this fork. Now open wide."
"I'm not hungry—" he began, turning his face away from the determined set of her mouth.
Zoe set the plate down with a soft clink. She reached out, pinched his cheek between thumb and fingers until his lips were forced into a ridiculous fish-like pout, and spoke two words with deadly calm.
"Open. Wide."
"Yes, ma'am," Lucian muttered, thoroughly cowed.
He closed his mouth over the fork with a small, almost delicate *chomp*. Zoe blinked. The gesture was oddly endearing—cute, even—until it became something else entirely.
"Let go of the fork, Lucian!" she protested, yanking. The utensil did not budge.
His voice came out muffled around the metal. "Never."
"Why are you suddenly being so difficult?" she hissed, glaring daggers at him.
"Because I'm embarrassed," he answered, still refusing to release it, "and this is how I retaliate when I feel this way. It's my coping mechanism."
She stared at him for a long moment, then laughed once—sharp, surprised—before finally prying the fork free. The rest of the meal passed in quieter stubbornness, but the air between them had shifted, if only by a fraction.
---
Later that night Zoe lay on the grass, hands folded beneath her head as a makeshift pillow, back turned toward him. The stars wheeled slowly overhead. Crickets filled the silence that the two of them did not.
"Honestly," Lucian said, voice soft and almost gentle, "why are you still even here? You could have left by now. There's no real reason for you to stay."
"Lucian…" Her answer was equally quiet, shaped by the hush of midnight and the wide dark sky.
"Yeah?"
"Can't you see I'm trying to sleep? Why are you talking to me?"
He laughed under his breath and shook his head. "Right. My bad. Good night. May Hypnos bless your dreams."
"Hmph. May Hypnos bless your dreams as well," she replied, the small huff that followed unmistakably fond.
After a while she glanced over her shoulder. Lucian stood a short distance away, eyes closed, posture still, as though sleep had claimed him while he remained upright. She bit back a smile and turned away again, settling deeper into the grass.
---
The pattern repeated in the days that followed. Zoe made herself useful in every way she could: cleaning the residual grime from his skin with careful hands, preparing whatever food she could manage and ensuring he ate, sitting near him in companionable silence so the isolation would not hollow him out. When night came they slept close enough that each could hear the other's breathing.
Lucian's intuition insisted that Artemis must have reached camp by now. In the thin borderland between waking and sleep he tried, again and again, to send a message through his dreams. The skill was unfamiliar; the metaphysical weight of the heavens still pressing against his shoulders made every attempt feel like pushing against stone. Yet he persisted. A demigod's dreams answered different laws than mortal ones after all. If Percy and Grover could share an empathic bond across distance, then perhaps he could reach the one person he trusted would always answer: Annabeth.
He shaped her name in the dark of his mind, over and over, hoping the connection would hold long enough for a single clear thought to travel.
…
When Annabeth opened her eyes inside the land of dreaming, there was only darkness.
It was not the crushing, airless dark of Tartarus or the hollow emptiness of a nightmare. This darkness felt familiar—almost gentle—carrying a faint warmth that should not have belonged in a place like this. She recognized it at once, the recognition arriving not as thought but as pure instinct.
"Lucian…"
She began to run.
In the featureless black there was no ground to push against, no horizon to measure distance by, so her sprint looked like frantic running in place. Yet she felt the space shift around her. Somewhere ahead the void began to thin, resolving into a single clear image: Lucian, kneeling, the dark and crushing weight of the heavens balanced across his shoulders. A streak of white had already begun to claim the dark of his hair.
"An—An—Annabeth!"
His voice reached her in broken, grainy fragments, the connection thin and unstable.
"Lucian! You're okay! What happened, where are—"
"Not enough—time! Listen—carefully!"
The force of his gaze locked her in place as surely as if the shadows themselves had seized her wrists. Every word that followed came strained and clipped, pieces of sentences lost to the failing link, yet the essential meaning burned through.
"No matter what—if a quest about me appears—Nico and Bianca are forbidden from going!"
"Promise me, Annabeth!" The roar tore across the distance. "No matter what! They are not allowed to participate! Promise me!"
"Okay! Okay! I promise! Now wait—you're getting farther away!"
She chased the fading figure through the endless void, legs pumping harder even as the image of him shrank.
"I'm sorry—not a lot of strength—short on time! I'm okay, don't worry, I'm not in any immediate danger!" His voice grew thinner with every word. "Please, Annabeth, I can't risk it—"
"I love—"
"LUCI—"
The connection snapped like a frayed rope under too much strain.
Both of them woke with a sharp gasp, hearts hammering, lungs working as though they had truly been sprinting.
Annabeth stared at the familiar ceiling of her cabin, blanket clutched tight to her chest. The residual echo of Lucian's urgency still clung to her. She had never heard that particular edge of fear in his voice before—raw, almost desperate. Whatever reason he had for keeping Nico and Bianca away from any quest involving him, it ran deeper than simple caution.
---
Across the distance, Lucian exhaled slowly and opened his eyes. The night air felt thin in his throat. Zoe was already sitting up, watching him with open concern; his ragged breathing had pulled her from sleep.
"Are you okay?" she asked, making no effort to hide the worry.
"Yeah. Just light-headed for a moment. Sorry." He shook his head, trying to settle the lingering disorientation.
Zoe was on her feet at once, closing the short space between them. "Are you sure? We can switch. You should rest for a bit."
The offer, the soft urgency in her voice—both were still so unlike the sharp-edged girl he had first met that they startled a quiet chuckle out of him. "No, it's all right. There's no need. But… thanks for the offer."
---
Later that day, while Zoe went to prepare lunch, Lucian remained exactly where the curse demanded: kneeling on one knee, the immense weight of the heavens grinding down against his shoulders. A thin streak of white had become more apparent in his hair. He suddenly let out a low, irritated grunt.
Luke, leaning against a nearby structure of stone, raised an eyebrow. "What?"
"I don't know why," Lucian muttered, face twitching, "but I'm suddenly feeling really annoyed."
"What?" Luke repeated, genuinely confused.
Lucian's mouth curved into a thin, teasing smile despite the inexplicable irritation simmering under his skin. "Maybe it's because I have to look at your face. Could you turn around? Or cover it with a bag?"
Luke's expression flattened. He reached for the hilt of his sword and drew several inches of steel from the scabbard with a quiet metallic hiss.
"I'm getting really sick and tired of you."
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