Chapter Text
Annabeth is becoming intimately acquainted with the specific, soul-crushing boredom of "Holding."
In the industry, "Holding" is the polite term for the purgatory where background actors are stashed until a production assistant deems them necessary to fill space.
The reality is that she is exhausted by the life of a background actress.
It was a career that had claimed her by a trick of fate when she was only seven years old. While other children were learning to ride bikes in the suburbs of Richmond, Virginia, Annabeth had been cast off the street to play a minor, recurring role in a long-running daytime soap opera. At the time she hadn’t truly understood what it meant, but it didn’t take her long to fall in love with it, the adults spoke to her like a peer and not an annoying child which was enough to make it her favourite place.
Annabeth didn't know how to do anything without pouring 110% of herself into the effort; she had never been capable of indifference or casual interest. In a professional world where everyone else was a seasoned veteran thirty years her senior, she had felt the weight of her own youth and decided, quite early on, that she had to mature or be left behind.
Little Annabeth had thrived, though she always remained in the periphery. She was the recurring face for a few episodes, the girl in the background of a season finale. If fame was quantified by her numbers then the only notable one was that she had managed to cultivate nine thousand followers on a public social media account
She doesn't truly make any waves but she had been okay with that for a short period.
As she grew, acting became something she did only for herself. While her pride struggled to grasp why she was constantly relegated to the role of a side character, the "Best Friend #3" or "Girl at Cafe", her brain insisted there were more important things to worry about.
Namely, coming from a strong academic household, school.
In the Chase household, academic achievement was the only acceptable currency. Her father, Frederick, was a man of logic and history, a man who viewed the arts as a pleasant hobby but a disastrous vocation. Annabeth had been the valedictorian of her high school. She had conquered Architecture and Design with a pre-law track at Stanford. By the time she graduated that spring, she already had an internship waiting for her at a top-tier firm.
And yet she delayed it.
She had spent 6 months longer in San Francisco in the wake of her graduation before deciding. She sent the emails, politely requesting a deferred start date. She had readjusted her documents, packed her life into three suitcases, and moved to New York City on January 1st. She had told herself this was it: one chance, one year, and then she would move on.
In the twenty-two years of her life, Annabeth hadn't allowed herself to be selfish. She had given so much of herself for far too little in return, bartering her time for the approval of people who cared nothing for her personal dreams
She had, in many ways, lost herself to the academic pursuits, the chase for glory. Though, glory didn’t just look like degrees on a wall and a fancy office in a tall glass building.
At night, her memory drifted to the long hours on set, the sight of her name in the rolling credits, the tactile thrill of dress rehearsals and fittings. In her dreams, the call sheet was different. She saw ‘Annabeth Chase’ written right at the top, right at the beginning, the lead.
But New York was proving to be fickle. She tried and she tried, and yet she couldn’t help but say to herself, I’m a failure.
Three months had passed, and all she had to show for her move were a handful of background roles. Annabeth was not someone who could acclimatize to failure; the blows never softened with time. Every rejection felt like a personal indictment.
Virginia had stripped away her vanity, and San Francisco had taught her she would never be the loudest person in the room, but through it all, she hadn't let go of her artistic hope.
“Extras on set in three minutes!” a voice barks. It is a production assistant who looks like they haven't slept or showered in forty-eight hours, yelling in her general direction without making eye contact.
Annabeth shakes herself out of her thoughts, extricating herself from the cold concrete floor. Her costume, a pair of nondescript jeans and a long-sleeved button-down, feels stiff. Her hair is pulled into a long, tight braid down her back. She had taken to doing her own hair and makeup; the sets never had enough staff for the background talent, and even when they did, they rarely possessed the expertise to handle hers.
Her joints crack in protest as she moves, reminding her she has been there since 4 am.
She can still smell the cold catering coffee, from where it was sitting in the cup by her feet. She picks it up and drank it anyway, free coffee was free coffee and she was never one for bells and whistles.
Part of her still revels in the "ugly" side of the magic, the work that happens behind the cameras and the polished productions the world eventually sees. She looks at the rigging on the ceiling, calculating the load-bearing capacity of the steel beams. She likes analyzing the camera shots and the lighting setups, watching the set designers dismantle worlds and rebuild them in a matter of hours.
She had, in a lot of ways, grown up on these sets.
After her mom had left, her dad hadn’t really known what to do with her. And by the time she had turned 7, with a step-mom and step-brothers who enjoyed tormenting her, they had become a welcome escape. Her father, Frederick, had been only too relieved to send her off for a few hours, and her stepmother was overjoyed to have her out of the house. On set, Annabeth wasn't the "difficult" daughter; she was the "professional" child.
School and the set. They were her only two constants. It made sense that when confronted with the end of one, she had fled toward the other.
Annabeth watches with a hidden, sharp longing as the other extras walk toward the filming space together, chatting about their next auditions. They ignore her, but it wasn’t like she had made much of an effort to introduce herself anyway.
She had sequestered herself in a corner, hidden behind a mountain of LSAT prep books. The heavy textbooks were balanced on her knees, a physical weight that reminded her of her obligations. Studying was the one clause of her move to New York. Despite being a fully grown adult, she had acquiesced to Frederick’s harsh tone when he told her she couldn't "throw her life away" for a few background roles.
It doesn't matter much, Annabeth has always hoarded knowledge like a dragon with its treasure. She loves the act of learning, and her roles these days were so flat that "understanding the character" took all of ten minutes. Today, she is playing "Student in Library" today. Her motivation is to look like she is reading. Revolutionary.
The LSAT is a perfect distraction from the crushing boredom of sitting in Holding for twelve hours just to be a blur in the background of a scene.
Such is the life of an extra.
As she steps onto the polished floor of the "library" set, the lights blind her for a second. The smell is oddly real, old paper and dust fill her nose, making her nostalgic for the hours she had spent at Stanford.
“Alright, atmosphere!” the 1st AD shouts, his voice echoing in the vast space. “Positions! You, girl, over by the far shelf. Open a book. Look studious. Don’t look at the lens.”
Annabeth nods, holding back a scoff and maintaining on her face a mask of professional neutrality. She walks to the far shelf, her boots silent on the carpet and opens her LSAT prep book to page 412, focusing on a particularly thorny analytical reasoning section. She is a professional, she isn't going to look at the lens.
She feels the familiar hum of the set settle over her. The cameras begin to move on their tracks while the lead actors, two beautiful people who looked like they had never known a day of "Holding" in their lives, take their places at the center table.
Annabeth lowers her head, and focuses on reading. She has nine months left of her "one year." Nine months to prove to her father, to the world, and mostly to herself, that she isn't just background noise.
“Quiet on set!”
Annabeth takes a breath, her heart hammering against her ribs, she is going to have to figure this out, and soon.
𓅓 𓅓 𓅓
That night, cocooned in the quiet of her studio apartment, Annabeth opens her email.
She had lucked into the place through a friend at Stanford who had originally attended NYU. While Annabeth loved Rachel, she was the first to admit the girl was fundamentally out of touch with reality. The studio had been a purchase Rachel made herself, albeit by meticulously saving up her staggering monthly allowances, and it was far more casual than anything her parents would have chosen. Now, Rachel was letting Annabeth rent it month-to-month at a rate that was borderline criminal for Manhattan.
“It just sits there, empty,” Rachel had told her, wearing a look of practiced indifference.
Annabeth had spent weeks deflecting the offer. She wasn’t used to accepting handouts and wasn’t ready to start then.
“Come on, you’d be doing me a favor. Apparently, it’s bad for the plumbing to leave property empty for long periods, and I’m moving to Paris for the year.” Rachel had clasped her hands together, throwing herself into a performance of desperate, pleading theatrics.
It was only the weight of the staring regulars at her favourite coffeeshop that finally forced Annabeth to agree. Even then, she had only relented after settling on a monthly rent she could actually afford from the savings she’d scraped together working through school and with the firm. Now, she couldn’t thank Rachel enough. The bliss of returning to her own sanctuary, with no roommates and no judgment, felt like a minor miracle.
Sitting there at the top of her inbox was a new message from her management company, CENTAUR.
Subject: Wide casting call for secret project (Major Streaming Service)
Good afternoon Ms. Chase,
Below is a casting call for a new project. Public information is limited, but this is a large-scale production with heavy fantasy elements. There are strong indications it may be an adaptation of a popular book series. I have included the descriptions for an un-named female protagonist.
I believe you are a strong candidate for this. Please review the sides and let me know if you would like to submit a self-tape
Best,
Chiron
Chiron had been her manager since she was seven, doubling as her acting coach and mentor. He had shepherded some of the biggest talents in the industry, and Annabeth still found herself surprised that he had ever chosen to take her on. By the time he found her, he had been mostly retired, his decision likely having more to do with the fact that she lived near his home in Virginia than anything else.
The acting lessons were more so baby sitting now that she thought about it.
Nevertheless, she is incredibly grateful, and as she skimmed the character description she can't see why she isn't a good fit for the role.
The character is clever, tactical, and strategic, cautious yet headstrong. She is hyper-independent, determined, and unapologetically stubborn. The synopsis mentioned Greek mythology, and the director listed at the bottom is a name that carried immense weight. However, that is all that is given, along with a short, two-page script.
Whatever the project is, it is being guarded like a true secret.
Annabeth burrows deeper into her blankets, hesitating before she hits Reply. This could be it, the role she has been waiting for, the one she had moved to New York to find. And yet, it feels like a shot in the dark.
𓅓 𓅓 𓅓
The self-tape leads to a callback.
Annabeth had received plenty of callbacks in her time that had ultimately led nowhere, but she can't stop her hope from blooming like a weed, unwanted and obtrusive.
The wait for that Friday feels like it takes years. Standing in line, she grips her script hoping she isn't ruining the pages. They are a mosaic of color-coded notes and neon sticky tabs, every line analyzed over and over. She had contacted Chiron who had booked her in for a slot at 5 pm that Friday, the last possible choice available.
She scans the room, instinctively categorizing the competition. They sit on flimsy folding chairs, a row of girls who all look impossibly confident. Most are mindlessly scrolling through their phones; she recognizes most of them from recurring lead or side roles on network procedurals. Only one or two of the others look like her, fidgeting with their scripts, twirling hair around nervous fingers, or tapping a rhythmic, anxious beat against their knees. She can’t help but feel she, like them, looks out of place.
Don’t psych yourself out, she tells herself. She is just as worthy. She has just as much of a right to be in this room as anyone else. If anything, there is a chance they were auditioning for different parts, in a large scale production like this it isn’t uncommon for people to try out for lead roles and be assigned elsewhere as a better fit.
But Annabeth wants this character badly, feels emotionally tied to her, and had spent hours doing whatever research she could.
Upon seeing the director's name, she had spent the week researching him with the intensity of a law student prepping for the bar. Diysus was a legend, known for hit series across Netflix and Amazon. He had a reputation for elevating unknown actors into stars, possessing a knack for weaving mature, intense storylines into high-fantasy settings. He apparently also throws killer wrap parties.
Annabeth can feel her hands sweating just thinking about it.
Rumors circulate about his unconventional methods, his insistence on practical sets and grueling stunts, and a personality that fluctuates between manic expression and cold apathy. He was at the top of every actor's "wish list,". Opportunities like this don’t drop out of the sky, they were one in a million.
It was the exact sort of opportunity Annabeth needs, to break out from the background roles she was stuck in, and finally be taken seriously.
To her left, two girls are whispering, their voices carrying easily in the quiet room.
“Wait, Kelli, did you hear who they cast for the male lead?” the first whispers.
“No, but he better be cute,” the second mutters. Her face was a mask of bored indifference, and Annabeth realizes why she looks familiar. It clicked, the girl had played a zombie cheerleader in a recent Hulu original. “I’m expecting a romantic subplot at the very least.”
Annabeth has barely a second to process the insider information before she hears her name being called.
“Annabeth Chase? Anna-beth?”
The intern, whose nametag identifies her as Juniper, is practically vibrating with caffeine-induced enthusiasm. Annabeth scrambles to stuff her color-coded script into her book bag, her pulse beginning a frantic rhythm against her ribs.
She had tried to dress the part based on the little she knew. Based on her obsessive study of Diysus’s previous work, she knows he despises the "Hollywood glam" look. He prefers light to natural makeup, hair kept out of the face and tactical outfits. She had opted for pale tan cargo pants, a dark brown belt, and a muted rose-colored thermal. Around her neck hangs a simple cord holding her father’s engagement ring
Her running shoes are beat-up and grey, less a "look" and more a symptom of her bank account, but she hopes they add to the practical, tactical aesthetic. Nevertheless, she knew the importance of embodying a role, and hopes her initiative shows off. She had even left her braid slightly messy, an imperfection that went against every one of her normal instincts.
The room looks like any other room. Upon entering she notes the black curtains along the back, the fold up tables and chairs set up at one end and the lights pointed towards the other. She at once notes that everyone sitting at the table looks tired, it is the last of the callbacks after all. She can just make out the figure of Diysus who appears to be sitting on a much more comfortable chair than the people around him.
But it is the man beside him who makes the air vanish from Annabeth’s lungs.
It is Rick Randin.
She would have recognized him anywhere. He was the author of her favourite fantasy book series as a child. That’s when the pieces start to click.
Anyone else likely wouldn’t have recognized the writer, he isn’t very public and the only pictures of him that can be found are on the back of his books. But Annabeth isn’t like most people, her strong attention to detail served her well, Rick looks just like his picture but maybe a good 15 years older.
And if Rick is here.
Oh my gods. They are adapting the Half-Blood Chronicles.
Annabeth finally understands why she feels so viscerally connected to the script, why she was more nervous that she has ever been coming to the call that afternoon. She had idolized the character of Sadie Kane since she was eleven. Sadie was the strategist, the clever partner-in-crime who was the only one capable of keeping up with...
And that’s when she sees him.
Positioned in the shadows behind the production team is a man her age. He looks older, sharper than he had on the posters for his Marvel movies or his Netflix breakout series from his youth.
His light eyes glow almost fluorescently in the dark, and for a brief second she swears they meet her own cold ones.
“Earth to Anniebeth. Let’s get moving,” a man beside Diysus snaps. His assistant, or his servant, Annabeth thinks uncharitably, was already looking at his watch.
She snaps into focus. Her love for Rick’s books had blossomed into a lifelong obsession with Greek mythology. As a self-appointed "Daughter of Athena" just like Sadie, she had spent the last week learning it all.
Preparing for the casting call had meant hours re-reading the myths, familiarizing herself with the world, and most of all practicing all the names and ancient pronunciations. She had even, in the last few days, begun to learn small pieces of Modern Greek, hoping that it would cement her further into the character.
She can't remember the last time she had had so much fun delving into a role, she crosses her fingers behind her back, thinking desperately that hopefully it wouldn’t be the end of it.
She takes her position on the taped "X" on the floor. The script is sparse on stage directions, but she knows this is an emotional pivot of the story. She mimes holding a map the size of a tablet, her brows furrowing in a calculated display of strategic frustration.
She waits for her cue. A reader standing off-camera began the scene in a low, casual voice.
“Hey,” the reader says. “Why are you still up?”
Annabeth doesn't look up immediately. She lets the silence stretch, heavy and thick. “My mother didn’t give me a 'gift,' Perseus,” she says, her voice steady but laced with a hidden bitterness. “She gave me a curse that people mistake for a talent.”
She finally lifts her gaze, purposefully avoiding the eyes of the judges. She forces herself not to blink, letting her eyes glass over with unshed tears while her shoulders slump to show the exhaustion she's feeling.
“When I was seven, I thought Wisdom meant knowing all the answers. I thought it was about being the girl who never got a question wrong.”
She laughs, a dry, hollow sound, from the cavern and base of her lungs, expelled as if escaping unbidden from her throat.
“But Athena doesn’t care about "right" or "wrong." She cares about efficiency. She looks at a battlefield and she sees the math. She sees how many lives it takes to win without looking at the people behind them.”.
She shakes her head, a small, weary movement as if she were finally admitting a secret she’d kept since childhood. In that moment, she isn't Annabeth the actress; she is a girl looking at a mother she hates and desperately wants to impress.
The reader speaks again, his delivery intentionally flat as if trying to break her concentration. “You’re not her, Sadie. You don't have to think like that.”
Annabeth whirls away, crossing her arms tightly over her chest. She lets the tears leak out now, hidden from the camera’s direct view.
“Then who am I?” her voice breaks on the last word. Her hand grips the ring at her neck. “If I stop now, if I stop calculating the cost of this war, then every person we’ve lost to Kronos... everyone becomes a waste.”
She wipes her face with a harsh, impatient swipe and turns back to face the room. Her gaze is steely, her jaw set with a controlled, terrifying rage.
“Do you know why the Parthenon is still standing after two thousand years?” she asks, her voice dropping to a dangerous, low hum. “Because it was built to withstand the weight of history. I was built the same way. So don't ask me to 'take a break.' Ask me how we’re going to take Kronos down. And then, ask me how we're going to march to Olympus and make them regret ever making us play their games.”
The silence that follows is deafening. Annabeth takes a physical step back, a ritual to separate herself from the character, and looks up.
Her breath hitches. Diysus is staring at her with a gaze that can only be described as unimpressed. He looks bored, his hand supporting his chin as if he is waiting for a commercial break.
No.
She refuses for this to be it.
But she can't move. Stuck in her spot she hears his assistant rattle off a short note about how she will be contacted if she makes it through and otherwise will not be contacted, to not reach out if she hasn’t heard back in 2 weeks, etc. etc. etc.
But as she turns to leave, her peripheral vision catches something. It is small, a mere twitch of the lips, but she swear she sees a faint smile on Rick Randin’s face.
Then again, she is a background actress in a thermal shirt in the middle of Manhattan in the summer. She was probably just becoming delusional.
𓅓 𓅓 𓅓
If she had thought waiting for the callback was torture, waiting to hear back from said callback must be what it feels like to be sent into Tartarus.
It had been fourteen days. Three hundred and thirty-six hours.
Annabeth spends every one of those hours trying to convince herself that she doesn't care. However, with each passing day she can't help but feel slightly more dejected, it turns slightly into bitterness.
By day, she is back in the trenches, working a background gig for a high-budget medical drama. She spends ten hours a day standing in a polyester nurse’s uniform in the back of "Operating Room 4," pretending to check a chart while the lead actors deliver lines about heartbreak. So much for medicine.
By night, she retreats to her apartment. She hunches over her desk, the glow of her laptop the only light in the room, and loses herself in the structural integrity of 12th-century Gothic cathedrals and re-reads of Greek myths.
And then, unbidden, she would remember those light eyes.
Unsettlingly bright. The kind of eyes that seemed to catch the studio lights and hold them, making everything else on the soundstage look dull by comparison.
Percy Jackson.
The name had shifted the industry, a tidal wave that had knocked at the doors of every other household and seeped through the cracks, reshaping the landscape of Young Adult television. He had been cast as the unknown lead in a Netflix show, playing a kid with supernatural telekinetic abilities. Annabeth remembered the posters, they were everywhere.
At thirteen, he had been the face of a generation, a boy with messy hair and a charming scowl that had eventually spanned five years and four seasons. It had become the most-watched show on the platform, a cultural phenomenon that had turned its child stars into gods.
Anyone who thought the end of the series would have marked the end of his career were sorely mistaken when before the final season had wrapped, he had been announced as the successor of Iron Man in the MCU. At only 18 years old, he had booked his dream role.
It was the ultimate Hollywood promotion. He had gone from a telekinetic kid to a global superhero, his face plastered on everything from lunchboxes to skyscrapers. Annabeth hadn’t seen the final Avengers film when it came out just a few months before, but it was like everyone else had. From what she heard, they had watched his character die a painful, valiant death, a scene that had allegedly cost forty million dollars to film and had left half the audience in tears.
And now, almost laughably, he had found his next role.
The information had leaked in the week following her audition. The industry calls it a "homecoming." She remembered seeing the articles, the "Golden Boy" returning to the streaming service that made him, starring in a dark, gritty reimagining of The Half-Blood Chronicles. It was almost too perfect, too scripted. He even shares a name with the titular character, Perseus Johnson, though the show was branding itself as a "prestige fantasy drama," something on the level of Game of Thrones, slightly removed from the lighter tone of the books.
Annabeth hadn't watched his breakout show. She had been too busy attending high school and filming background roles for laundry detergent commercials to invest in a sci-fi epic. She hadn't seen his superhero movies, either.
She stares down at her phone again, the screen dark and silent. The bitterness flares again, a sharp spike that she tries desperately to push down. If she doesn't get this role, if she is forced back into the background while Percy Jackson played the hero again, she thought she might burst into a million, loathing pieces.
𓅓 𓅓 𓅓
Annabeth’s phone is ringing.
The vibration against her nightstand sounds like a jackhammer in the silence of her studio apartment. Annabeth groans, squinting against the aggressive blue light of the screen.
It is 6:45 am.
Her first instinct is to silence it and bury her face back into the sanctuary of her duvet, but her eyes catch the caller ID.
CHIRON.
The adrenaline hits her all of a sudden. Chiron calls her often, usually in the late afternoon to dissect a scene or just to hear about her day in the city, but he never, ever calls at 6:45 AM.
“Annabeth”, his voice comes through the speaker, gravelly as it always was.
The silence on the other end of the line lasts only a second, but in that second she could feel time slowing down, the always loud New York, quieting.
"Pack your bags," Chiron says, and she can hear the unmistakable smile in his tone. "You booked it. You’re Sadie Kane, Annabeth. You're the lead in The Half-Blood Chronicles."
Annabeth screams.