// Grover Underwood & Percy Jackson & Annabeth Chase // Grover Underwood & Sally Jackson // Grief and Mourning // Implied/Referenced Character Death (but as we all know he wasnât dead) // The Hobbit References // Hurt/Comfort // happy ending i promise! // 12.5k
The late-autumn sun has long since set and the birds have long since fled back to their nests when the green analog clock of the microwave flashes bright throughout the kitchen, releasing a canned and screechy beep.
Itâs far too old, like much of the âmodernâ technology of the Big House, probably edging up on thirty years old. Grover manages to get to it before it can let out another ungodly squeak and wake up Chiron, who would undoubtedly have questions as to why Grover is reheating Sally Jacksonâs vegetarian enchiladas at two in the morning. Considering heâs Lord of the Wild, he wouldnât be under any obligation to tell Chiron, but ten years of working for the man has made Grover susceptible to things like his no-bullshit stare and crossed arms.
Grover quickly transports the glass tupperware from the microwave to the polished concrete surface of the kitchen island, grabbing a fork and sitting down.
The Big House is silent around him; Chiron, Argus, and Dionysus are fast asleep at the dead of night, and the guest rooms and house infirmary lie empty. He can hear occasional wing beats from the Harpies, easing through their nightly patrols, and out the kitchen window the strawberry fields stretch out into the night. The only light comes from the moon and the occasional torches placed along the pathways, the bright yellow-white glow of the kitchen lights an outlier. For once in his life Groverâs glad to be awake at this hour; no battle or injury or nightmare to shock him into his body, just the dark peace that comes after war and the landscape extending far beyond him.
He takes a bite of the enchiladasâthe Jackson family recipe, passed down generation after generation, which Grover swears one day he will get his hands onâand picks up his pen, staring at the blank sheet of his notebook in front of him.
He can feel it. Water and oil, his thoughts and emotions bead against each other as if they are some childâs homemade lava lamp, shaken, taking over his vision. They dance, they swing, swirl and swish. And then they separate.
Grover grapples at the kitchen counter, like he could recongeal his brain if he could just hold it hard enough, and then itâs all falling out of his graspâwater and oil are natural repellents, he knowsâand away. Grover is left gasping for breath, Sallyâs enchiladas on the floor, broken glass scattered on the island, and his hand bleeding.
A minute later, clutching his bleeding hand under the faucet of the kitchen sink, Grover realizes that the presence in the back of his mind that had been sleeping calmly has disappeared. He paws at it, mentally; gropes for the impression of the calmness and warmth of sleep and something that has always felt in his brain like the smell of freshly ground cinnamon mingling with petrichorâbut there is only something blank, something white, something missing.
He sinks to the kitchen floor.
jacobvanloon
