Cressida didn't return to the Dionysus Cabin, she went to Percy's. And the second she did, she ran into his bathroom as her adrenaline crashed and her stomach contents came up. She couldn't do it. She had never been on a quest without Percy, and she didn't want to go on a quest without Percy. She just wanted to know where he was, if he was ok. She just wanted him back.
Eventually after cleaning herself up, Cressida changed into one of Percy's camp t-shirts. And as she slipped into his bunk, wrapping herself in the sheets that smelled like him, she was brought back to the day he went missing as she began to dream.
Percy had come to camp for a few days during his Christmas break and they'd just had dinner. Her brother was arriving tomorrow, so it meant that Percy only got her to himself for a few hours the next morning, so he said he'd sneak into her cabin, and they'd go for a canoe ride and watch the sunrise. So she'd kissed him goodnight with the promise of seeing him in the morning.
Except he never came.
He didn't come to wake her up, he didn't come to breakfast or his first activity. So, when Cressida when to check up on him, she'd had a near heart attack when he wasn't there. Not to mention the fact that his bed was perfectly made as if he'd never even slept in it because Cressida knew that her boyfriend was incapable of making his bed that well.
So they tried Iris messaging him.
Nothing went through.
Cressida had no idea how many drachmas she spent, how many hours she begged the rainbow goddess to show her Percy. Grover had no response from his empathy link. Sally had no idea where he was. And since Zeus had recalled the gods to Olympus, she couldn't even ask her father for help.
She remembered the day very clearly as she stood in the Big House, tears streaming down her face from pure fear and panic as she spoke to Chiron about Percy's kidnapping.
"Miss Lynn," he'd said. "We have no evidence that he has been taken. Perhaps he simply-"
"Don't you dare say he left!" she interrupted. "We're talking about Percy here. The same Percy who promised to never leave me behind. Who never complained about everything my brothers and my father threw at him for liking me. Who waited over a year for me to deal with my grief so we could be together. Who put almost every charm on this bracelet. Percy Jackson turned down immortality, he turned down being a god, so he didn't have to lose me. There is no way in Tartarus Percy left me, especially without an explanation. Someone's taken him. Someone's taken him from me, and the gods won't be able to help whoever dared do it."
And she'd stormed out of the Big House to find Annabeth.
Another thing Percy had done for her is that he wanted to teach her something normal. Ever since they'd gotten together, he'd been teaching her how to drive. When she'd come to visit, which was pretty frequently, Paul was more than happy to lend them his car as Percy took her to a relatively empty parking structure and they just drove.
He had a system. For every skill he demonstrated that she then got right, parking, turning, reversing, she got a kiss. And let's just say that she graduated to road driving pretty quickly.
So with her partner in crime, they stole one of the vans and journeyed into the city, towards the Empire State Building where Cressida was going to get some answers. It had been near closing when they rocked up.
The security guard wasn't there. There wasn't anyone there, but the doors were still open. Cressida went straight for the elevators as she pressed the up button over and over and over again, but the metal doors didn't open. The lights didn't even come on.
"Cress," Annabeth said softly but the heartbroken girl only drew her spear as she stabbed it at the gap between the doors, trying to wedge them open as she grunted. But nothing budged, nothing moved, the doors weren't even scratched.
And that only added to the emotional hurricane inside her.
"You can't take him away! You can't ignore me!" she screamed before she threw her spear at the doors, and it bounced off harmlessly. "Please," she begged as she sank to her knees, tears streaming down her face in an endless river as she banged on the doors with her bare hands. "Please I just want him back. I just want him back."
Annabeth was in tears as well as she dropped to her knees to hug her, Cressida crying on her shoulder. "Why did they take him? Haven't I lost enough?"
"We-we don't know if they did take him," Annabeth pointed out.
"It's the only thing that makes sense. What else could take him from inside the barrier? He's gone, Annie. He's gone."
"No. No, he's not," she said as she pulled back to look at Cressida's face. "What is it that you always say? That Percy is too stubborn to be killed?"
"But-"
"But nothing!" Annabeth interrupted despite the tears on her own face. "He's alive and we're going to find him. I promise you. I swear on the River Styx we're going to find him."
"But I -"
"But let me tell you what's about to happen. We gonna sit here and we're gonna take a minute to cry and to miss Percy. And then we're gonna get up, we're gonna wipe our faces and we're gonna find Percy."
Cressida shuddered. "I knew I befriended a daughter of Athena for a reason."
Annabeth gave a teary chuckle before something occurred to her. "Cress...do-do you love Percy?"
She made a broken sound.
"I don't know. But I - I think I was starting to."
And their tears were silent as Annabeth hugged her friend and time went on.
And when Cressida startled herself awake to find herself asleep in Percy's bed, the pillow soaked with her tears as she was reminded of Annabeth's words.
Take your time, take your minute to be upset, but get back up again.
Percy was alive. He had to be. He wouldn't have been taken without a purpose.
So, with a deep breath, she wiped her face, and she got up.