Will so badly wanted to be a party guy back then. When he realized that wasn't realistic, his attitude was more that he wanted to be able to last at least three hours at parties, and then just two hours, and then suddenly he was doing it! He was going to frat parties and clubs and drinking bad beer and having an awesome time doing it!

But back at Camp Half-Blood, as a sixteen-year-old kid, parties weren't his thing, no matter how badly he wanted them to be. Everyone else who had fun at parties drank the cheap beer the Stoll brothers got from the gas station down the street until they were sick. They played truth or dare and jumped into the freezing canoe lake in just their underwear.

Will couldn't get behind any of that; he just wanted to dance to Taylor Swift and have a good time. Drinking underage is a bad idea, peer pressure is never a good thing, and jumping into the cold canoe lake can give you hypothermia!

Usually, Will retreated to the infirmary around nine and waited for someone who got hurt in a boozy accident to stumble in looking for a bandage, which of course, he would happily provide.

So that particular August night wasn't any different. He left the end-of-the-summer party around nine—nine-fifteen, actually, because he was feeling rebellious that night. He had less than one drink in him and had almost lost one of his Adidas slides when Sherman Yang flat-tired him because Pitbull music started playing.

He got his slide shoe back but with some casualties.

After he'd had enough, Will threw his strawberry stems into the compost and started heading out of the north woods.

"Hey, Willy! Leaving so soon?" Connor shouted over the music.

"Uh, yeah," Will said. "I should probably head over to the infirmary."

"Hey, listen," Connor said, lowering his voice. "Have you seen Annabeth?"

"No," Will said. Why would he have seen Annabeth? Annabeth hated him because he got mad at her for wrecking the Apollo cabin's chariot, which she did. She wrecked his chariot and didn't even apologize because she was too busy being sad about her missing boyfriend!

They didn't speak again after the incident, and Will isn't sure if it was because they didn't have anything to say to each other, or if she was still mad about the whole thing. Why would she be mad? It wasn't her chariot that was completely destroyed!

Will had always been a good guy, and if there was ever a reason to be concerned about someone, he would always be concerned, even if he didn't like the person who may or may not be in trouble. "Why?" he asked Connor. "Is she okay?"

"Uh," Connor started. "Well, we uh..." He scratched the back of his neck awkwardly. "Yeah. Everything's fine."

Something about that made Will feel like everything was not fine, so he took the long route back to the infirmary.

He wasn't being nosy, per se, but... Well, he was being nosy. When the baddest, toughest bitch at camp is in trouble, you want to know about it!

The walk back took him through the Grove of Dodona, over a couple of sleeping satyrs, and past someone's trap from a game of capture the flag. He tripped over a rock and came face-to-face with a couple making out in an overgrown bush. He did not play off his embarrassment well.

"Be safe!" he said to them.

He emerged from the grove into a flat open terrain usually used for archery practice or a faster game of capture-the-flag. Will couldn't see himself playing capture the flag and doing well; he could have been a decent battlefield medic except he wouldn't be able to keep himself from healing the other team's players.

He passed the odd collection of rocks the campers called Zeus's fist. Whoever named it must have had a serious case of alcoholism because it didn't look like a fist even if he were to squint.

Will was ready to walk away and head back to the infirmary for a cup of hot chocolate, but he didn't, because something happened that changed the trajectory of his life.

His medical instincts took over as his nose was filled with the otherwise nauseating scent of vomit and what he thought might be weed. He was sixteen, and unfamiliar with what marijuana smelled like, but he knew enough to make an educated guess.

"Hey," he said calmly, trying not to trip over the body. "Are you okay?" He nudged the person's ankle with his Adidas slide, earning a groan in response. He took that as a no.

"Oh, shoot," he said, realizing his mistake. That person had a broken ankle. "Can I splint your ankle?"

Will doesn't ask Annabeth for consent to splint her ankle anymore; he's done it so many times since then.

She rolled over onto her back and stared at the dark sky with bloodshot eyes. So that was where Annabeth ended up, and why Connor was so worried about her.

Will crouched down and sat next to her. "Hey, let's roll you back over," he said. He chose not to tell her that he was putting her in the recovery position for people who've had too much to drink. If it were anybody else, and if he were anywhere else, he would have called 911.

But this was Camp Half-Blood, and this was Annabeth Chase. He'd heard she was fun at parties, but drinking herself sick seemed out of character for her.

She gagged into the grass again, so Will held her hair back because there's nothing worse than cleaning the barf out of your hair. "I might have some water in my bag." He opened his satchel and retrieved his water bottle. Under normal circumstances, he never would have been comfortable sharing his water bottle, but he figured this qualified as a medical emergency. Sanitation rules kind of went out the window.

Annabeth waved him off and gagged into the dirt again, but no dice. That is, nothing was coming out because there was nothing left.

"You'll feel better if you drink some water," Will insisted.

She grabbed the bottle at last and took a lazy sip, letting some of the water dribble down her chin.

She tossed Will's water bottle onto the ground, narrowly missing the puddle of vomit, and then collapsed, resting her frizzy hair on his lap. "I'm tired," she declared.

Annabeth Chase was completely and utterly wasted. And she smelled like weed. Will didn't need to be a future doctor to know that something was very wrong.

"I know we're not exactly close," he said, "but I'm here if there was ever something you wanted to talk about."

She looked up at him through lidded eyes. "You're glowing."

Sure enough, Will's arms were pulsing a faint light. "Guess I am."

"Please don't tell Percy," she said.

"I won't," Will said. He probably wouldn't even have had the opportunity if he had wanted to.

She took his hand in hers and squeezed.

He squeezed back just so she would know he was there for her.

"Hey, Connor seemed kind of worried about you," Will said.

"Please don't tell him anything."

"I won't, but we should tell him you're okay."

She grabbed his arms even tighter. "No, stay. Don't leave me."

Never had she ever given him a reason to be this nice to her, except for this. Seeing that she was just a person who could get depressively drunk like anyone else was sort of reassuring to Will. It was a reminder that sickness is the great equalizer.

"I'll stay," he said.

She pressed her face into his shirt and sobbed harder than he'd ever seen a drunk person cry before. These were heartbroken sobs, and he sincerely doubted they were fuelled by alcohol alone.

He ran his hand through her hair and whispered words of encouragement.

"I'm so stupid," she said.

Will chuckled. "I'm pretty sure nobody's going to remember it in the morning."

"Connor will. You will."

"I'm not actually sure what it is you did, so that's just Connor," Will said. "Annabeth, I know he's a goofy guy, but he knows when to get serious. He won't tell anyone if you ask him not to."

She hiccuped into his shirt, and Will somehow managed to push his fear of snot aside. "Or I could threaten him," he joked. "Because I'm just so scary."

He thought he heard a giggle between cries.

"You can't tell Percy," she said again.

Will continued rubbing circles on her back. "I can't tell him if I don't know what it is."

She looked up at him. Her eyes were dull like all the life had been drained from them, with dark bags beneath and dirt on her cheeks.

And then she told him everything. She told him what Connor had found when he cleared out some bunks in the Hermes cabin that afternoon, and how all the memories kind of just hit her like the eighteen-wheeler Will's mom used to tell him his long-lost father drove.

Will never thought he could bring himself to hate anyone, but for her, he hated Luke Castellan.

"Please don't leave me," she begged again.

"I'll take care of you," he said. "I promise. I'll always be here for you."

Will likes to think that even ten years later, he's been doing a pretty good job of keeping that promise.