The Path Of Glory (Annabeth Chase x Male Reader)

10. Fight At The Top

They spent two days on the Amtrak train, heading west through hills, over rivers, past amber waves of grain.

They weren't attacked once, yet Y/N didn't relax. He felt that they were traveling around in a display case, being watched from above and maybe below. Something was waiting for the right opportunity.

He spent his day alternately pacing the length of the train—he had a hard time staying still—or looking out the windows.

Once, he spotted a family of centaurs galloping across a wheat field, bows at the ready, as they hunted lunch. The little boy centaur, who was the size of a second-grader on a pony, caught his eye and waved. He looked around the passenger car, but nobody else had noticed. The adult riders all had their faces buried in laptop computers or magazines.

Another time, toward evening, he saw something huge moving through the woods. He could've sworn it was a lion, except that lions didn't live wild in America, and this thing was the size of a Hummer. Its fur glinted gold in the evening light. Then it leaped through the trees and was gone.

Their reward money for returning Gladiola the poodle had only been enough to purchase tickets as far as Denver. They couldn't get berths in the sleeper car, so they dozed in their seats. Y/N's neck got stiff.

Grover kept snoring and bleating and waking him up.

Once, Ethan shuffled around, and his fake foot fell off. Y/N and Annabeth had to stick it back on before any of the other passengers noticed.

"So," Annabeth asked him once they'd gotten Ethan's sneaker readjusted. "Why do you need to run?"

"What do you mean?"

"When you were asleep just now, you mumbled, 'Run, run, run.' What were you dreaming about?"

He didn't want to talk about it. These dreams made no sense after all. At best, Annabeth would take him for an idiot.

"Hey, what would you do if it was your dad in the Underworld?" he asked to change the subject. "I mean, like Percy's mom."

"That's easy," she said. "I'd leave him to rot."

Y/N stared at her a moment. How could someone wish something like that to their parent? "You're not serious?"

Annabeth's gray eyes fixed on him. "My dad's resented me since the day I was born, Y/N," she said. "He never wanted a baby. When he got me, he asked Athena to take me back and raise me on Olympus because he was too busy with his work. She wasn't happy about that. She told him heroes had to be raised by their mortal parent."

"But how...I mean, I guess you weren't born in a hospital...."

"I appeared on my father's doorstep, in a golden cradle, carried down from Olympus by Zephyr the West Wind. You'd think my dad would remember that as a miracle, right? Like, maybe he'd take some digital photos or something. But he always talked about that arrival as if it were the most inconvenient thing that had ever happened to him. When I was five he got married and totally forgot about Athena. He got a 'regular' mortal wife, and had two 'regular' mortal kids, and tried to pretend I didn't exist."

Y/N stared out the train window. The lights of a sleeping town were drifting by. He'd have liked making Annabeth feel better, but he didn't even know what having a dad was like.

"Maybe..." he began. But he stopped. No, he didn't know what to say.

Annabeth kept worrying at her necklace. She was pinching a gold college ring that hung with the beads. It had to be her father's. Y/N wondered why she wore it if she hated him so much.