![[pjo] Am I missing something?](https://preview.redd.it/5gf1cpmhjt4d1.jpeg?auto=webp&s=bed333cd3220c6379c54838e80f8959dbf4fc6ed)
The sound over this is “you’re just a man” and like? Am I mistaken? I found Percy being very unsympathetic entirely valid given the 4 years worth of murder attempts. I really don’t see how Percy could be expected to support her in that moment, especially after iirc she snapped at him when they were talking about it. I have a lot of sympathy for Annabeth here, but I’m not the one Luke has been trying to kill. It seems insane to me, but maybe I’m remembering the scene wrong? Haven’t reread in a while and the creator insists that this is about the fact that given that Luke raised and cared for Annabeth she needed support here and Percy didn’t provide it, so maybe she didn’t snap at him.
The Battle of the Labyrinth Chapter 17:
Annabeth lifted her head. Her eyes were red from crying. “What… what was wrong with Luke? What did they do to him?”
I told her what I’d seen in the coffin, the way the last piece of Kronos’s spirit had entered Luke’s body when Ethan Nakamura pledged his service.
“No,” Annabeth said. “That’s can’t be true. He couldn’t—”
“He gave himself over to Kronos,” I said. “I’m sorry, Annabeth. But Luke is gone.”
“No!” she insisted. “You saw when Rachel hit him.”
I nodded, looking at Rachel with respect. “You hit the Lord of the Titans in the eye with a blue plastic hairbrush.”
Rachel looked embarrassed. “It was the only thing I had.”
“But you saw,” Annabeth insisted. “When it hit him, just for a second, he was dazed. He came back to his senses.”
“So maybe Kronos wasn’t completely settled in the body, or whatever,” I said. “It doesn’t mean Luke was in control.”
“You want him to be evil, is that it?” Annabeth yelled. “You didn’t know him before, Percy. I did!”
“What is it with you?” I snapped. “Why do you keep defending him?”
“Whoa, you two,” Rachel said. “Knock it off.”
Annabeth turned on her. “Stay out of it, mortal girl! If it wasn’t for you…”
Whatever she was going to say, her voice broke. She put her head down again and sobbed miserably. I wanted to comfort her, but I didn’t know how. I still felt stunned, like Kronos’s time-slow effect had affected my brain. I just couldn’t comprehend what I’d seen. Kronos was alive. He was armed. And the end of the world was probably close at hand.
“We have to keep moving,” Nico said. “He’ll send monsters after us.”
Nobody was in any shape to run, but Nico was right. I hauled myself up and helped Rachel to her feet.
“You did good back there,” I told her.
She managed a weak smile. “Yeah, well. I didn’t want you to die.” She blushed. “I mean… just because, you know. You owe me too many favors. How am I going to collect if you die?”
I knelt next to Annabeth. “Hey, I’m sorry. We need to move.”
“I know,” she said. “I’m… I’m all right.”
She was clearly not all right. But she got to her feet, and we started straggling through the Labyrinth again.
“Back to New York,” I said. “Rachel, can you—”