Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Peter was mildly terrified. That’s putting it lightly actually, Peter felt like he was about to cry, vomit and pass out in an instant. He wasn’t sure where he was, why he was there or why Aunt May and Uncle Ben had left him.

He’s fairly certain it has something to do with their disastrous visit to the Stark Expo a few days before. Understandable considering he’d attempted to protect himself from a Hammer drone, that was intent on killing everything, with a fake, plastic Iron Man repulsor, and had to be saved by the real Iron Man. Then again that hadn’t even been mentioned in the conversation proceeding the drive to Long Island, so who knows?

They had explained to him, briefly, very briefly, the night before, sat together on their old worn-out sofa with tears in Mays’ eyes as they spoke about not seeing him for a while. His mum had an “interesting” family – they didn’t know much about them apparently, he’d asked – and because of them he needed to go somewhere else for the summer. Every summer. To help him more than they could. Ben had told him that he’d find out more when he got to camp, Peter hadn’t liked that very much.

So, here he was. 8 years old, alone at the bottom of a hill, on a Thursday when he was definitely supposed to be in school, next to a deserted road on Long Island with nothing but the clothes on his back and his summer homework. He looked around, dazed, at the surrounding trees trying to figure out where he was supposed to be going. Eventually, after a few minutes of staring around the side of the road, he spotted a small wooden sign, probably handmade, about halfway up the hill. He stepped closer, squinting a bit behind his thick framed glasses to read it, Dolphins, maybe? Delphi Strawberry Services, he read as the words came into focus, surrounded by vines and painted strawberries that had clearly been drawn by a young child.

The name was familiar, but he couldn’t figure out why until he felt the card cutting into his hand. When May had pulled him, crying, out of the car to get him ready for them to leave she’d pushed a business card into his hand. It had crumpled in his fist with how tightly he’d been clutching it, but it was still legible. The same design was on the card with the address he was probably standing at. This was camp, apparently.

There were no directions on the sign, or people for as far as Peter could see (admittedly not far, his glasses had broken at the Stark Expo and they didn’t have the money to get new ones yet), he didn’t know where he was supposed to be. Bored out of his mind, he started climbing to the top of the hill, there was a cool looking tree and even though he was terrible at climbing trees he really wanted to try and climb this one.

Peter trudged slowly to the top of the hill, chest burning and legs aching as he got to the crest of it, to lean against the really cool, really tall oak tree. Realising that attempting to climb it, especially after walking up that hill, was probably not a wise decision, he turned to what lay beyond the hill. At first glance there was nothing special, just field upon field of strawberries. Then something shifted.

Like a curtain had been pulled back, the strawberries disappeared, replaced with a valley that, while it did have some strawberry plants at the edges, was definitely not a strawberry farm. One area was filled with large cabins, arranged in some kind of shape around a central firepit, each spectacularly different from the last, something Peter could see even from as far away as he was. The rest contained pavilions and buildings that seemed to be Greek? He couldn’t really tell, but there was definitely a structure that was literally spewing Lava!

Peter blinked and rubbed his eyes, checking to make sure he was actually seeing this. He edged closer to the other side of the hill, eyes gleaming as he took in the sight. The architecture was amazing, even as an eight-year-old he could appreciate when a building looked good and by God did these buildings look awesome. With the light gently refracting off the lake in the middle of the area (were those canoes?), the valley almost looked like a dream.

So distracted by the camp, Peter didn’t notice the roots sticking out of the ground as he slowly made his way down the hill, tripping on one and practically rolling down the rest of the hill. Unable to stop himself, he let it happen until he fell onto something – someone, judging by the noise of surprise.

Peter scratched the back of his head, looking up at the person he bumped into, except it wasn’t a person. It was a horse, but it was human from the waist up. Had he hit his head harder than he thought?

“Welcome to Camp Half-blood.” The creature spoke as it bent somewhat awkwardly to help Peter back onto his feet. “I’m Chiron, trainer of Heroes.”

Peter blinked at the being slowly, struggling to comprehend the, apparently talking, horse-man hybrid thing that may or may not be a hallucination.

“What are you?” He spoke eventually, almost too quiet for Chiron to hear, but the creature smiled down at him and began to lead him to the only structure that wasn’t built with Greek architecture in mind.

“I’m a centaur. You’ll learn more about that in time, for now let’s get you to the Big House so you can be introduced to the camp. What’s your name, child?”

“Peter. Peter Parker.” His words were still quiet but held more strength than they had before, reinforced by the centaur’s kind smile as they stood just outside the building.

“Nice to meet you, Peter. I think you’ll enjoy your time here.”

Reaching the mentioned Big House, Peter realised why they’d called it that, it was indeed a big house. A four-story sky-blue farmhouse, one you’d be far more likely to see in the Midwest than Long Island, with peeling paint, white trim and a full wrap-around porch stood out like a sore thumb amidst the pristine architecture of the rest of camp. On the porch was a large fold-out table covered in an assortment of playing cards and what Peter thought might be battle plans? Chiron stopped in front of the table and a fleeting expression of sadness and maybe anger crossed his face before he quickly recovered and turned back to Peter.

“Usually, I would be introducing you to Mr D. however he isn’t here at the moment and I don’t know when he’ll be returning, so moving on.”

As quickly as they stopped, the two moved on into the front room of the building, a white-painted infirmary with 12 beds, thankfully none were currently occupied, and then further back into a room with an overhead projector. The centaur ushered him to sit on one of the assorted bean bags as he fiddled with the thing, letting out a small sigh when the tape started. The moment it did, with a guy prancing onto the screen claiming to be Apollo and music that hadn’t been popular since the 1960’s in the background, Peter knew it was going to be a long day.

Once the absolutely awful orientation video – seriously what even was that? Who approved it? – had been seen and sufficiently slandered, he was introduced to a few campers. Annabeth Chase, a daughter of Athena who looked like she was one stupid joke away from kicking either Connor or Travis Stoll - both sons of Hermes and surprisingly not twins despite their identical mischievous grins. The daughter of Athena attempted a smile, which came out as more of a grimace, apologised for the boys as one of the most senior campers, and quickly shooed the three away so she could talk to Chiron.

Taking the incredibly strained smile as a cue, the Stoll brothers all but dragged the small boy out of the big house and towards the cabins. Seeing them up close was extraordinary, each of them so unique, some in very interesting ways. (The Ares cabin looked like it had been painted in blood, and Poseidons’ like it had been decorated by a bunch of drunk fishermen having an argument.)

“Unfortunately for you,” Travis said as they showed the boy the Hermes cabin, “We don’t have enough room so you won’t get a bed. Hopefully you’ll be in your proper cabin in no time.”

Peter just blinked at the older boy.

“For now, let’s get you settled and then we’ll show you around.”

The rest of the day was spent in a flurry of activity. Peter was moved from one place to the next, never staying anywhere long enough to learn names

The Stolls’ had him try a little bit of everything as they went, nearly killing someone during his attempt at archery, himself on the lava climbing wall and probably gave himself a concussion the first time he picked up a sword. Unsurprisingly, they are very heavy and not fun to carry when you can barely lift a backpack.

Peters’ feet were dragging behind him by the time they decided to take him to the strawberry fields. Seriously could they have chosen anything more boring as the last activity before dinner.

Taking it upon himself to do something fun, Peter snuck off while the two brothers were not-flirting with a few of the Demeter girls. He’d seen a fire on the other side of the camp earlier and it was infinitely cooler than the strawberry fields, even if he didn’t know what it was for.

He’d just made it into the building filled with fires and metal and people, when he very nearly met his death for the fourth time in as many hours, falling face first onto a flaming bench after being pushed by someone.

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Harley had been attending camp, year-round, for a while when it happened. He'd gone to find Nyssa and was in the process of dragging her into the forges to show her his latest design on the celestial bronze potato gun, when he tripped and fell into another kids back. The kids stumbled forward, clearly surprised with wide eyes as he nearly fell into the pit of red-hot coals.

“Oh, my gods. I’m so sorry! I really didn’t mean to push you over. I promise I didn’t mean to. Are you okay?” Harley rambled as he pushed himself up, still clutching onto Nyssa’s hand as he checked on the other boy.

“It’s fine Harley. Both of you boys are okay, right?” The two nodded as Nyssa checked them both over before turning to the other boy, “You’re new, aren’t you kiddo? What’s your name?”

“Peter.” The kid spoke in a small voice, almost inaudible against the loud noises of the forges.

“It’s nice to meet you, Peter.” She smiled at him, “I’m Nyssa, this is Harley.”

The boy nodded and smiled a little in response before the Stoll brothers came barging in, looking vaguely worried.

“Hey Nys, have you seen the new kid? Peter? He ran off and Chiron will kill us if we lost him and he somehow got himself killed.” Conner panted slightly, clearly having run from wherever he’d been.

He and Travis looked around for a moment before seeing Peter stood slightly behind Nyssa, then groaned. He stared the boy down for a moment, before pinching the bridge of his nose and letting his brother deal with it.

“Please never do that again. You gave us a heart attack kid. You haven’t even been here a day and I can already tell you’ll be about as much trouble as Harls over there.” As the older camper spoke, Peter glanced over at the mentioned boy, who still held a wide grin on his face as he looked at him.

“Sorry. I got bored at the strawberry fields and I saw the fire. It looked interestin-“

“Peter, do you like building things?” Harley interrupted, excitement clear as he bounced and swayed on the balls of his feet.

“Yeah! I like Legos and my Aunt May bought me this really cool Chemistry lab kit for Christmas and its awesome!” Peter spoke animatedly for the first time since he’d stepped foot over the camp boundaries that morning.

The older campers sighed, looked at the kids and shook their heads, deciding to simply let it be. They turned to Nyssa and the older Hephaestus kids, drowning out the noise of the two young boys.

Within approximately two hours, which the boys spent building a model trebuchet, Peter and Harley were decidedly best friends (it definitely had nothing to do with the fact that they were the youngest campers by a solid few years). When the conch sounded for dinner, the two – along with most of the Hephaestus cabin let’s be honest – had to be dragged to the mess hall. By the time they got there though, the kids were once again balls of energy, already over being dragged away from their project. Their moods were quickly dragged down again when the older campers wouldn’t let them sit together for dinner.

“I know you want to sit with Harley, Peter,” Connor began as he took the child to the Hermes table, “But we have a system for dinner. Cabins have to eat together because it’s the one meal when everyone’s here. You can sit with Harley at breakfast and dinner, and at the campfire later. Think you can wait until then?”

Peter nodded solemnly, pouting a bit at being separated from his new friend, but accepted that he wouldn’t be able to talk to Harley again until after dinner. Dinner itself was fascinating though, there were no trays of food out anywhere, which was incredibly confusing, until he grabbed a plate and looked up at Travis for what to do next.

“Think about what you want to eat. Trust me.”

Peter frowned a little but closed his eyes and thought about his favourite dish from the little Thai place down the road from May and Bens apartment. He could practically smell it, but after a second the smell became all too real. For at least the 3rd time that day Peter was convinced he was going insane, then he opened his eyes and his plate was filled with noodles and chicken. Eyes sparkling, he looked at Travis again, who just laughed at the awed expression on his face.

He was less impressed by having to scrape a portion of his meal into a fire for a godly parent he didn’t even know, but he murmured a quick “please tell me who you are” as he did before following the Stolls’ back to their table.

When everyone was close to finishing their food, all having gone up to the hearth to sacrifice the best part of their meal, Chiron stood up next to a very not-centaur-friendly table and stamped his hoof a few times in quick succession to gather the attention of the campers.

“Heroes! We have a new camper joining us. Peter Parker, unclaimed. Treat him well.” A few people turned to the Hermes table to watch the young camper for a second but quickly grew bored and looked back to their plates. “The next game of Capture the Flag will be on Sunday; team leaders this time are Ares and Hephaestus. Now, I believe it’s time for the campfire.”

Cheers rang out through the dining pavilion as Chiron finished speaking, stamping one final time to dismiss them fully, and groups of campers began to stand and make their way to the amphitheatre.

Harley ran over to Peter the second he could get away from his siblings, waiting as close to patiently as an 8-year-old with ADHD could, bouncing and swaying on the balls of his feet as he watched Peter scoff down the last of his food. The second Peter put his plate down Harley grabbed his hand and all but dragged him in the direction of a growing fire, chattering all the while.

“C’mon Peter! I want to show you my favourite spot to watch the campfire,” he exclaimed as he pulled the other to the top row of seats, “No one else will sit here with me, say they get too cold this far up but camp looks so awesome.”

Peter tore his eyes away from the fire below to look around, almost audibly gasping when he saw the rest of the valley. From the second highest point in camp, with the fading summer sun behind them the strawberry fields seemed to glisten, taller vines dancing softly in the light see breeze. A sharp contrast to the lava wall on the other side of camp that even now, inactive for several hours, was emitting a slight red glow across the valley.

He looked back at Harley, smiling widely at the other boy and quietly thanking him for showing him. Harley only looked happier as Peter watched the camp from up high, glowing in the flickering light of a campfire that was growing by the second.

Maybe camp wouldn’t be as bad as he expected?

Chapter Text

The next morning, after an eventful night of the campfire followed by attempting to sleep on the floor because the Hermes cabin didn’t have enough beds, Peters lessons and battle training began. As an unclaimed demigod he’d be taking lessons with the Hermes cabin until he got claimed by his godly parent, when he’d move to whichever cabin was dedicated to them.

He'd already proven the previous day that this wasn’t going to be easy. He was small, even for his age, riddled with glass bones, paper skin and asthma, and he was 0.25 on his prescription away from being legally blind. It was going to be horrible.

The cabins first session was archery, so he was kitted out with a bow bigger than he was and a bunch of arrows that had been roughly shoved into the earth before him for “easy retrieval”. Chiron, who was overseeing his first proper lesson (apparently, he did that for everyone, but it had been some time since a new camper had shown up), had been demonstrating the proper form for archery and Peter was not doing as well as any of them had hoped.

Somehow, literally none of them could figure out how and Chiron had been teaching heroes for millennia, he had shot the arrow behind him and gotten it stuck in Chiron’s tail.

“I haven’t seen someone manage that since Percys first lesson,” Chiron remarked quietly as he reached back to free the arrow.

“Maybe it’s a sign of how much better he’ll be at other things? Perce is still shit at archery but he’s our best swordsman.” Connor spoke beside him, staring at Peter, who had shrunk into himself the second the arrow loosed from his bow.

“Perhaps. How about we start him with some hand to hand before we get to sharper weapons?”

So he ended up in the Colosseum-type structure on the other side of camp, stood with the Ares kids and waiting for someone to tell him what the hell was going on. The Ares kids were definitely the strongest looking campers, whether they actually were Peter didn’t know yet but he’d probably find out soon given the way his week was going.

He barely listened as an older camper, probably only 14 but still, demonstrated the proper form for self-defence. Knowing how to protect himself was probably a good idea, both because of the whole “son of a Greek god” thing and because he was clearly a magnet for trouble even outside of camp (See: The Stark Expo Incident).

Minutes later he was pitted in his first fight against the only Ares camper who didn’t look like he was about to immediately murder him. Peter did not have high hopes for the fight if he couldn’t figure out what moves the older was going to make before he made them.

Peter survived about 3 hits by dodging below and making an aborted attempt at taking out the other guys legs before he was hitting the ground. He wheezed, clutching his chest and remembered that he did in fact have asthma and maybe this wasn’t as cool as he’d thought it was.

“Well he’s definitely not a child of Ares.” The camper who’d taken him down joked as Peter tried to stand back up.

“Yeah I know. My godly parents my mum, that’s what Aunt May and Uncle Ben said, anyway.”

The admittance of his mother being the deity made the Stoll brothers and Chiron pause, they’d been under the impression that Peter would end up being the son of Hephaestus, given what he and Harley had been doing the previous day, but obviously they were mistaken. Of course, it wasn’t necessarily unusual for male gods to have children with male mortals, but it was unheard of for them to be in a female body whilst doing so – other than Apollo on occasion but very, very rarely.

With how long it was taking Peter to get back up after one hit, Chiron made the decision to stop his physical training for the day and start on his “mythology” lessons. Usually Annabeth would be doing the teaching, as Athena Cabin Counsellor and one of the senior campers, but considering she was currently tearing her hair out about her missing boyfriend one of the other Athena kids would be doing the lessons for a while.

Malcolm was chosen, as the next most senior child of Athena, so Peter, as the only new camper, was taken to the Athena cabin. It was infinitely cooler than the Hermes cabin – most of it was filled with bookshelves and desks, whiteboards lined a whole wall and a table in the middle of the room was covered in blueprints and 3D models. Most of the models appeared to be weapons, one was a huge ship and another was a dragon, Peter didn’t know what the correlation was but they were cool.

“So. How much do you know about the Greek gods?” Malcom asked once the two were settled at a desk , books and scrolls lying around them in a language Peter couldn’t quite make out.

“Not much,” Peter admitted, “I’m not really interested in history stuff, and my aunt and uncle never mentioned my mum, or my dad really, until like 2 days ago.”

“Right, okay, I can work with that.” Malcolm muttered as he flipped through pages of a book on Greeks myths and legends, “Let’s start with the Goddess’ then.”

The two spent a few hours going over an extensive list of the Greek goddess and talking about Peters father in an attempt to logic who his godly parent was. In the end, Malcolm was pretty convinced that he would have a new brother by the end of the week – he didn’t tell Peter of his suspicions though, not wanting to raise the boys hopes in case he wasn’t actually a child of Athena.

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Peter was sat on the steps leading up to the forges, scribbling notes on a project he and Harley had decided to start building (Peter wanted to make an Iron Man suit out of Celestial Bronze, Harley wanted to build the drones from Star Wars, they ended up settling on C3PO as a compromise when Nyssa told them they wouldn’t be building anything if they couldn’t get along).

Harley was definitely a hands-on, no-plan, covered-in-grease mechanic, while Peter was more of a precisely measured, detailed-plan-before-we-start, make-sure-everything-is-clean engineer. Considering this you wouldn’t think they work well together, but despite knowing each other for literally a singular day they worked like they’d known each other for years, knowing what the other needed before words were said to break the constant stream of nonsensical chatter. Anyway, Peter wanted to add Iron Man repulsors onto the model C3PO and once he told Harley the story of the Stark Expo Incident (carefully leaving out quite how close he’d been to death, he knew the other would probably understand but still) the other was on board too.

A fully functioning Iron Man suit, complete with repulors, is very difficult to make, especially when only one of them has actually ever seen Iron Man, and even then only once in person for about 10 seconds. Repulsors especially, are not easy to make, even when you have a detailed plan, so Peter was writing out all of the experiments they’d need to do to figure it out – complete with a full list of equipment, methods and conclusions, how he’d been taught to in science and tech classes - based on his one up-close look at the real Iron Man suit, when he heard Harley yelling from behind him.

“Peter! Look up!” Half of the Hephaestus cabin turned to face the newcomer at Harleys shout, all accustomed to the ridiculousness of a claiming and were all sufficiently surprised. Peter, hearing Harley, looked up himself and nearly passed out on the spot.

Peter was a child of Athena. The glowing owl with an olive branch in its mouth that had been floating above his head for at least a minute was proof. He honestly wasn’t sure what he’d done to get claimed so fast, according to the Stoll Brothers it usually took at least a week if the camper came with no prior knowledge of the reality of the Greeks pantheon. Peter had been claimed in less than 48 hours, a new record if Travis was to be believed (Peter was still on the fence about that.

Well, guess he was getting a bed after all.

“Peter Parker, Son of Athena.” One of the older Hephaestus kids bellowed as loud as he could, alerting not only those in the forges, but also those closest to them.

Quickly a large group had congregated near Peter watching as he tried to swipe at the spectral bird above his head that flickered slightly upon contact before fading. The ones who had seen him around with Harley, talking about their working trebuchet or their plans for a mecha suit were all a bit confused.

Apparently, as Peter would later find out, a lot of them had been absolutely convinced that he would be a son of Hephaestus, some had even bet on it judging by the grumbling as piles of gleaming drachmas changed hands.

Peter turned to Harley, who’d run up to him while he was distracted, confused. He understood, vaguely, how everyone at camp was connected by having a godly parent, but the whole aspect of “Claiming” hadn’t really made sense.

“So my mums Athena?” Peter asked as the crowd began to disperse.

“Yep! I was kind of hoping you’d be my brother so we can be together all the time, but Lady Athenas really cool too. She’s like super smart and really good at battle strategies!” Harley exclaimed, guiding Peter back inside so they could start actually building their Iron Man.

Peter nodded as they got to the workstation that was now designated his – given to him earlier that morning, partially because they were all convinced he’d be their new brother by the end of the week and mostly because he and Harley were getting along so well, but now he was the first non-Hephaestus demigod to have a workstation in the forges. Pretty cool, if you asked Harley, which Peter did.

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That evening at dinner Chiron announced Peters newfound parentage, to the mild shock of everyone who hadn’t already known, because again, really quick claiming time. The Athena cabin cheered as Peter went to their table instead of Hermes’ after he’d gotten his dinner.

His new siblings welcomed him with (mostly) open arms, Malcolm smiling and nodding as though he’d known all along that Peter would end up with them. It was kind of weird, having been introduced to most of them as their brother, not just another camper as he had been with Annabeth and Malcolm, but they were nice, if a bit annoyed about having to share a cabin with a literal kid.

Annabeth, as the cabin counsellor, took him to the Hermes cabin along with the Stoll brothers after dinner to get his belongings and show him around the Athena cabin more than he had been earlier in the day. Once again, he marvelled at the design of the room, and how much more him it felt than his previous cabin had.

“I didn’t really say it earlier, but welcome to Athena, kid. I promise we’re usually a lot more welcoming, but there’s a lot going on right now that’s sending us all a bit insane.” Annabeth spoke as she helped Peter but his meagre amount of belongings on and around his bunk.

“Is it something to do with the battle plans on the desks?” He asked in response, mostly innocently although there was a devilish look in his eyes when Annabeth answered.

“I shouldn’t be surprised you figured it out that quickly, you’re definitely my brother. The thing is, it’s a really long story and I don’t know how well you’d handle it.” Peter pouted as he thought back to when Harley had mentioned something from the previous summer the day before, everyone in the vicinity had looked almost scandalized and quickly shushed him before Peter could learn anything.

“Harley knows.”

“Harley was there. We tried to keep him and the other young kids out of it, but it’s not exactly easy to hide such a big thing from them.” Peter frowned, he wasn’t a baby, and he definitely wasn’t stupid.

He told her as much as she laughed, looking lighter than she had since he’d gotten there, and if Malcolm was to be believed since Percy had disappeared.

“I know. We’ll talk tomorrow, okay? Get Malcolm to help explain it as well, and we’ll let you know what we’ve been working on.” Peter was beaming by the time he and Annabeth made it back to the campfire, running up the stairs towards Harleys favourite seat (which was quickly becoming Peter’s favourite as well) at the back, fully intent on telling him everything.

Sort of surprisingly to Peter, Harley was both enthusiastic about him knowing, having someone his age to talk to about the whole thing was probably a good idea, and kind of upset that he had apparently mentioned it enough for Peter to want to know.

“Come and find me after and I’ll tell you all the bits they leave out.” Confused, Peter stared at the other boy, but he’d started rambling on about their plans for the Star Wars droid, so it was probably best that he didn’t say anything.

It would all be okay, eventually. He hoped it would anyway. Peter turned back to the campfire and closed his eyes to listen to the singing and laughing from below, and Harleys excited words from his side.

Chapter Text

Seeing the way that almost the entire Athena cabin was nervous was kind of making Peter wish he hadn’t asked about the previous summer.

The group were sat around the desks covered in blueprints and models. All of the older campers wearing grim looks and the younger ones just looking upset. Peter honestly wasn’t sure if he really wanted or needed to know now.

“This,” Annabeth started cautiously, fingers twisting a ring on her right hand as she spoke, ”This is going to take a while. To talk about last summer we need to go back to 2006, when this specific mess started.”

She took a deep breath, and Malcolm, who was sitting at her side, placed his hand gently on her elbow. Steeling herself, Annabeth swallowed before she started again.

“At the winter solstice in 2005, the year-round campers went on a field trip to Olympus, supposed to make us all feel even more awe for them or something. While we were there, a camper stole Zeus’ Master Lightning Bolt. We didn’t find this out until the summer solstice the next year, but that camper was a son of Hermes, his name was Luke.” Annabeths voice started to shake, eyes clouding as she looked down at the desk. “He was tricked by the Titan King Kronos into stealing the bolt and a few years later into causing a war.”

“Percy, son of Poseidon, who is currently missing, you’ve probably been told, was one of the group, the others being Annabeth and Grover who you haven’t met, to return the bolt and was the one who uncovered Luke as the traitor.” Malcolm continued when Annabeth faltered slightly.

“The next summer, he poisoned Thalias tree to break camps defences and nearly killed us when we went on a quest for the golden fleece to heal her. Basically he kept trying to kill us every few months until last summer. He got almost fully possessed by Kronos.”

Peter genuinely didn’t know what to say to any of that. He’d known that something horrible had happened, guessed from the way almost everyone seemed to freeze at the slightest mention of the previous year, but he never would have guessed what actually happened.

“I’m not sure you’ll remember, but there was a big thing in late August last year about freak weather and the island of Manhattan being basically the only place affected?” Peter nodded, he remembered Aunt May panicking about how the hospitals were going to be overrun and then being incredibly confused when they weren’t.

 “Well, that was Kronos’ fault. He got the god of dreams, Hypnos, to put the entirety of Manhattan to sleep for almost a week so he could try and get into Olympus. He failed, we fought them off, but not without a lot of casualties and fatalities.”

“I said yesterday that we tried to keep Harley out of it,” Annabeth spoke again after a moment of silence, “Well, a lot happened and we kept anyone under the age of 12 here, with the Ares cabin, but that’s another thing all together. We didn’t want to involve the kids.”

Peter really wished he hadn’t asked now. It was horrifying to think that Harley, who was actually younger than him (not by much but it counts), had fought in a war, even if the older campers had tried to keep him out of it. He also regretted that Harley had said he’d tell Peter whatever the Athena campers had missed out of the story.

“What’s happening now?” Peter asked after a moment of silence, wincing the second he asked.

“In December, Percy went missing. I said goodnight to him and he went into his cabin and the next morning he was gone, disappeared. A few days later, a Roman demigod turned up with a daughter of Aphrodite and a son of Hephaestus – Jason, Piper and Leo.”

“Harley mentioned him. Said he’s building something in the woods that no ones allowed to know about?” Annabeth nodded.

 “He’s building us a ship. We think that Percy got taken to the Roman camp, in California, so we’re going to find him. Before anything worse happens.”

“So you’re all going to California?” Peter asked after a few moments of thought, still a bit confused about the now.

“Just a few of us. The Prophecy of the Seven was given last year, we think that me, Percy, Jason, Leo, Piper and whichever friends Perce has made, will be those 7. We’ll be setting off in about 2 weeks probably.”

Peter nodded slowly. He really hoped everything went okay, both because he didn’t want to have to fight with basically no training, and because he didn’t want his friends or siblings to have to fight either. He knew they could, they had even, but he still didn’t like the idea of it.

“You okay, kiddo?” Malcolm asked, after Peter had been silent for a little too long.

“I’m okay,” Peter mumbled looking down at the battle plans on the desk, “Is there anything I can do to help?”

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That was the beginning of the end for the Athena cabin, all quickly realising despite any earlier reservations they may have had (mostly about the fact Peter wasn’t even 10 years old) that he really, really was their brother.

He was surprisingly good at making battle plans and helping the rest of them with ideas, amazing considering he’d never done anything like this before. Peter was probably one of the best strategists they’d had in years, especially without any kind of training for his natural abilities.

Plans were explained and consequentially improved to make different demigods more effective, or to remove a risk that really didn’t need to be there. By the end of the talk, all of them felt at least a little bit better about the incoming war and Peter didn’t really have any questions for Harley, which he was very happy about.

Peter was eventually let go, and ran off almost immediately to the forges, hoping to finish up his plan for building the Iron-Man repulsors (even if that felt a bit childish now that he knew what happened the previous summer). Harley was, as always, in the forges at his bench between Peter and Nyssas, working on the helmet for their creation, so focused on it that he didn’t realise Peter was there until he turned to go to the soldering station (Nyssa kept saying he was too young to have one at his own station, the rest said he was too much of a liability for it so, for now, he had to go to Beckendorfs old bench, that had become a random station with almost everything on it).

“Peter!” he exclaimed the second their eyes met.

“Hey Harley. Annabeth told me about everything. I got to help with the plans for this summer, so that was cool.”

Harley almost dropped the metal he was holding, the Athena cabin were notorious for not letting anyone under 10 participate in their battle plans, even if they were an Athena kid, so the fact that they let Peter when he’s been there literally 3 days is a feat in itself.

“They let you plan for this summer?”

“They let me help. And actually listened to my suggestions for revisions to the plans they had already made.” Peter clearly didn’t realise how important that was, if the sheepish look on his face was anything to go by.

Peter also clearly didn’t want to discuss the talk that had taken up the better part of the morning, so Harley mentally shrugged, grabbed one of Peters hands and dragged him to the everything bench, so they could talk about the project wile Harley soldered.

Nyssa appeared a few minutes later, ready to scold Harley for using something dangerous without supervision (no one really understood why she still did this, considering that Harley hadn’t listened to her since 6 months after he got to camp and realised that she wouldn’t go through on any threats to keep him out of the workshop), and almost bodily dragged him away when he startled and the heated piece of metal fell to the bench.

Peter yelped when the end of it touched his hand and almost burnt a hole through the joint of his thumb. It didn’t go through, thankfully, but he was left with a quickly blistering burn and the most intense pain he’s ever felt.

“Oh shit,” Nyssa muttered as she saw Peters hand, “That’s not good. Okay you two, we’re going to the infirmary.”

She quickly grabbed one of Harleys hands and Peters uninjured one as gently as she could, before all but dragging them across the valley to the Big House. The door slammed open to a blond-haired boy a few years older than Peter, and a smaller boy with black hair who looked to be about the same age arguing about something to do with Iron?

Peters ears were kind of ringing, head fuzzy from the burning pain despite nothing touching his ears. The blond boy looked up when they entered and, seeing the vaguely harried expression on Nyssas face, quickly jumped up, effectively ending the fight to check on a patient.

“Nyssa? Harley? What happened, is that the new kid?” He gently pulled Peter over to a bed and sat him down before looking over his reddening hand.

“That’s Peter, son of Athena, been here 3 days. Accident with a soldering iron, I brought Harley cause he’s terrible at telling me when he’s injured so I want you to check him out as well.”

“Why do you let children use soldering irons, Nys? What the hell?” He sighed, pulling an unlabelled jar out of a draw next to the bed.

“He’s not supposed to use it without supervision, Will. He snuck off to use it when I wasn’t watching.” Nyssa shot a glare at Harley as she spoke.

Peter barely heard what the two were saying, vision blurry with tears and too distracted by the searing on his hand to really care. He hissed as something cold touched his hand and blinked away the tears to see the blonde boy, Will maybe, covering the burn in a cream from the jar.

“Okay Peter. Your hands going to be fine, this is by far not the worse soldering iron injury I’ve seen, but it’s going to hurt something terrible.”  

“It’s not the most painful injury I’ve ever had,” Peter muttered out, largely as an afterthought as he watched the reddening skin of his hand soothe with the cream.

“You’ve been hurt worse than this?” Nyssa asked after a moment, prying but trying to seem like she wasn’t, one arm holding Harley back from where he was trying to look at Peters injury.

“I got caught in the Stark Expo Incident a few weeks ago,” He replied, as if that explained everything, which to him it did, “I had a lot of scrapes and bruises and a massive handprint on my shoulder.”

Peter looked up as Harley managed to escape Nyssas grip and lunged forward to grab onto Peter and make sure he was definitely okay. Neither boy saw the relieved looks shared by the 3 older teens in the room, even if they were still mildly concerned by how unaffected Peter seemed by the entire situation.

“Okay, well,” Will began as he scooped some of the cream into a separate, smaller jar, “You’ll be fine, just put this on every few hours when it starts to hurt again. It should heal in a few days, but if you need anything come back here and I’ll take a look for you. Sound good?”

Peter nodded in response, even though Will was speaking in Nyssas direction, as Malcolm came bursting into the infirmary. He waved at him with his good hand and watched as several emotions rushed over the teenagers face at the sight of him, before finally settling on relief that he – apparently – wasn’t badly hurt. Malcolm sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose, before looked at Nyssa with as much seriousness as he could muster.

“You need to speak to your cabin about how to explain things. All I got told was that Peter was in the infirmary because of an accident. With you lot that could mean anything from ‘he nicked his finger on a piece of metal’ to ‘his arm got blown off by a faulty machine’. We all know Harleys penchant for creating things that explode.”

Nyssa at least had the decency to look vaguely apologetic before the rest of Malcolms words set in and she was glaring daggers at him. Harley and Peter watched as the two devolved into an argument about safety measures, giving them a few minutes before getting bored and wandering out and back to the forges to continue with their project. They’d worry about the consequences of sneaking off later when Malcolm and Nyssa finally realised they were gone.