Artemis' Nights with Percy
The hunt stretched over three nights.
Artemis had not meant to let him linger. Percy was a trespasser, an anomaly—but when he moved beside her in the undergrowth, wolves at his heels, she found his presence oddly… natural.
He made no sound, though branches bent beneath his weight. He breathed like the forest itself, slow and patient. Even her Huntresses, sharp-eyed as hawks, did not sense him until he chose to step forward.
On the second night, they stalked a great white stag. The air was tense, the moon high. Artemis drew her bowstring—and froze. The stag's eyes gleamed gold, old as prophecy.
"Do not," Percy whispered. His hand brushed her wrist—light, careful, as if he feared to startle her more than the animal. "This one carries a line. A hundred generations depend on him."
She lowered her bow. Not because of his words, but because for the first time, she felt it too—time spiraling outward from a single heartbeat.
When the stag bounded away, she turned on him. "You meddle."
"I protect."
His eyes held no mockery, only certainty. It unnerved her more than any man's arrogance. That night, while her Huntresses slept, Artemis lay awake staring at the moon, her hand still tingling where his fingers had brushed her skin.
Athena's Hours with Percy
In Athens, Percy returned. Not as a supplicant, not as a rival, but as a conversation.
They sat across marble tables covered in scrolls, wine untouched, owls shifting restlessly above. Their voices wove through arguments like blades clashing.
"Justice cannot be bent by circumstance," Athena insisted.
"Time bends all circumstance," Percy countered.
"You speak as though you are greater than law."
"No. I speak as though law is meaningless without time to uphold it."
At first she argued for the sake of victory. By the second night, she argued for the joy of hearing his answers. By the third, she caught herself smiling in the pauses.
She realized she had leaned forward, close enough to see the faint constellation-like flecks in his eyes. She forced herself back, spine stiff. "You are unlike the others," she admitted reluctantly.
"You too," Percy said simply.
The words were not meant as flattery. And that, more than praise, unsettled her.
The Forest Fire
One evening, Artemis' woods caught fire—flames spreading unnaturally fast, stoked by Hephaestus' careless forge. Trees screamed, wolves fled, her Hunt panicked. Artemis ran into the smoke with bow drawn—only to find Percy already there.
He did not fight the fire. He stilled it.
The blaze froze mid-leap, flames suspended like painted ribbons. Embers hovered, glowing softly but harmless. Percy walked through the inferno as if through tall grass, his hand brushing each tree, turning blackened bark back to green.
When the last flame guttered into smoke, Artemis stood trembling—not from fear, but from the sight of someone bending destruction itself to mercy.
"You… stopped time for the forest."
"I do not serve only men's hours," Percy said quietly. "The wild has its own clocks."
Artemis had sworn never to need anyone. Yet that night, when she dreamed, she dreamed not of the hunt, but of a hand steady against chaos.
The Olive Grove
Athena brought him to her sacred grove, where the oldest olive tree in the world spread branches like arms over the city. Its trunk was gnarled, roots twisted deep into forgotten soil.
"This tree has seen every empire rise and fall," Athena said.
Percy placed his palm against it. "I was here when it was a seed."
She almost laughed. Almost. But the weight in his voice stopped her. He was not boasting. He was remembering.
They stood in silence for a long while, side by side, the city bustling below, the stars watching above. For once, Athena did not feel the need to speak. For once, silence was not empty.
When she finally turned, she found him watching the stars, not her. And for a reason she could not name, that hurt.
Two Different Longings
Artemis longed in motion—in the chase, in the fire, in the restless night where her vow pressed against her ribs.
Athena longed in stillness—in scrolls, in silence, in the spaces between words where a hand should rest.
Neither admitted it. Both denied it. Yet their lives, for the first time, had begun to feel… incomplete without him.
And Percy, steady as the hours, let them draw close without demand.