Chapter Text
“Can I borrow your compass?” David looked over at Annabeth, who was currently staring at a blueprint with the intensity and focus of an Olympic gymnast. She got like that sometimes, a certain sort of locked in, unblinking intensity that would be terrifying if not for the pencil she was currently gnawing on and the frankly uncomfortable looking way she was pretzeled into her chair.
Annabeth reached into her bag, still not taking her eyes off of her homework or even really moving her head at all, and wordlessly pulled something out from the front pocket. She held it out in his general direction.
“Thanks.” David had already started reaching for it when his brain caught up with his eyes. “Uh. Not that type of compass?”
The pair was currently sitting at a table, in a campus library, in the bustling heart of New York City. It was a crisp autumn afternoon, and they both walked over to the usual study spot the architecture students claimed right after the last class of the day. Hana had dipped for a minute to bring the group coffee, but right now it was just David and Annabeth. Annabeth, who was currently trying to hand him what looked like a bronze encased, steampunk, nautical style navigation compass. It even had a slim chain, with a hook on the end, like some sort of Victorian pocket watch. The strangest thing? was that it was absolutely beat to shit. The bronze was tarnished and dented, and there was a series of spiderwebbing cracks in the glass lens.
Annabeth looked up at him. Blinked, in what felt like a very slow and deliberate motion, as if to say well, what else do you want, then?
“I need a drafting compass. Why do you even have a magnetic compass in your school bag?”
“For knowing which way is north, obviously. Why would I have a drafting compass in my school bag?” She tucked it back into the front pocket of her backpack.
David looked at her. Looked at the drafting notebook she was currently, actively sketching diagrams into. Looked at the blueprints she was marking up, ones that needed to be recreated perfectly to scale and properly measured out, up to and including the column base diameters. For a homework assignment. For school.
Annabeth continued to look at him incredulously.
“You…are working on Mrs. Ballen’s assignment, yeah? Why aren’t you using a drafting compass?”
“I…” Annabeth took the pencil out of her mouth, twirling it absentmindedly between her fingers. “Because I can draw circles just fine?”
“Wait, have you been freehanding your blueprints???” He felt his heart rate spike.
“…Yeah? I don’t see what the big deal is, everything’s measured out properly.”
“The big deal is that Ballen’s a hard ass, she’s going to dock points for sloppy work! Besides, you can’t just…not use the tools, the plans won’t translate when building!”
“Sloppy work?” Her eyes sharpened.
David felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up, as some primal hindbrain shouted at him to stay very, very still. Like he was being glared at by something much bigger, something on the edges of his psyche and out of the corner of his eyes that was…unnatural? No, too natural, the feeling like a great raptor glaring at a mouse.
Then she sighed, and the weird vibe in the room returned to normal.
“Here. Check my work if you don’t believe me.”
She slid the mess of papers over to his corner of the table.
David looked down, expecting her diagrams to be sketchy in more ways than one.
He blinked.
“Okay, there’s no way in hell you didn’t use a drafting compass for this.” He spread out the technically perfect documents, looking for any sort of error, even just line overlap. Nothing appeared. Did Annabeth use a computer and print them out? Was this some sort of elaborately stupid practical joke??
“I told you, I don’t even have one, my brother borrowed mine like eight years ago and never gave it back.” Annabeth furrowed her brow slightly, a flicker of what David assumed was the Cain instinct passing behind her eyes.
“Okay, well, I straight up don’t believe you.” He tapped a finger on one of the papers. “I’ve seen your handwriting, there’s no way you can write like that and also somehow be able to draw this well without tools.”
“You know what?” She tore a fresh sheet of paper out of her notebook, slamming it down dramatically on the table. “Tell me what to draw and I’ll prove it.”
“Ok, then draw a circle!”
Annabeth stood up, angling herself in a way that David could see the paper clearly. Then, in one smooth, fast motion, she brought the pencil to paper and…drew a circle.
It doesn’t sound impressive at all, unless you have ever tried to draw a circle in your life. One that’s an actual, mathematical circle, not an oval that’s misshapen in some way, one that ends exactly where it began without any overlap or stray marks.
“Done. What else?” Annabeth didn’t bother to look over at David, didn’t see the shock and envy spreading across his face.
“What the fuck, do it again!”
She circled the previous one, spaced out exactly two centimeters wider.
“What the fuck. Seriously, that’s insane.”
“It’s not that big of a trick? Like, over half the kids I grew up with can do it.”
“Is there some sort of secret summer camp technique you all learn? Is that it?”
“Not really.” Annabeth twirled her pencil like a little baton. “The crafty types at camp just have steady hands. It’s actually one of the things we used to use to sort kids into cabins, before we redesigned the system.”
“Uh huh.” David tried to not look skeptical, as he did every time Annabeth’s ‘summer’ camp came up and she dropped a little piece of info that made it sound like a cult compound.
“Besides, even if you can’t freehand draw circles, you can just spin the paper instead. You just set your hand up as a base like this…” She put the pencil back to paper, this time resting her outstretched pinky and ring finger on it as well.
Using her other hand, she spun the paper underneath in a slow arc. The result was another pristine circle graphed onto the scrap sheet. “And ta da! You’ve got a circle.”
David watched the process intently, trying to memorize the hand position well enough to copy it. Annabeth picked up on it and did it again, much slower this time, but now that he was actually trying to pay attention, something he hadn’t noticed before stole his focus.
Annabeth’s hands were absolutely covered in scars. They weren’t wrecked to the point of losing function, all of her fingers sat straight and no joints were swollen or bent out of place, but there were large, wrinkled burn scars across her palms, interspersed with raised white knicks and older, less shiny burns that had mostly calloused over. long, thin lines crisscrossed across her knuckles and the backs of her hands, along with more pockmark burns and shorter gashes. She was straight up missing the fingernails on her pointer and middle fingers on one hand, although that was harder to spot thanks to her blue nail polish covering the missing spots, and the chewed down ragged look of the fingernails she did have remaining.
David blinked. How had he not noticed that?
Annabeth caught his surprise immediately. She spread her palms out, giving him a better look with a self deprecating little smile. “The burns are from not using a hot pad while grabbing a cast iron pan, the fingernails are from a climbing accident, and the other scars are the result of learning how to use a butterfly knife.”
He blinked again, and yeah, on the second glance, the scars weren’t as big or as shocking as they first seemed. It made sense that Annabeth would have some impulsive teenager scars, didn’t everyone?
David decided to focus on what was important. “You know how to use a butterfly knife?”
She made a so-so motion. “Sort of. Not as well as I’d like. My friend Travis was the only one I knew who owned one, and he got his confiscated before we could practice enough to actually get good.”
“You just have a bunch of interesting talents, huh.” David mimicked her earlier motions, spinning his paper around to see if her trick actually worked. His first attempt wasn’t perfect, obviously, but he could see how it would work, if he tried a couple times.
“Oh, not really. As far as natural talents go, I’m a pretty standard camper.”