“I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God
who has endowed us with sense, reason,
and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.”
—Galileo

Annabeth Chase has always hated change. 

Big or small, visible or internal: change implies off-track, out of control. It means throwing every pattern carefully crafted and dutifully followed out the window in favor of the terrifying Unknown.

Unknowns get you hurt. They get you maimed, or killed. They lead to tear stained cheeks and thought spirals in the dark, revisiting a chain of events and torturing its links until sleep finally brings you new nightmares to parse through. Had they moved left instead of right. Had she not come back for a bracelet. Had she, or hadn’t she.

In the end, they all amount to the same thing: failures, and Annabeth cannot bear to make that list any longer. This doesn’t have to happen. Every question has an answer, every puzzle its logic. Even labyrinths have an exit.

She can’t rewrite the past, so she makes sure to protect the future. 

It is a conscious decision. At age nine, she gets her hair braided out of her face (practical, utilitarian). She trades jeans and colorful sweaters for sensible cargo pants and wears her armor more often than her camp tee.

She’s reasonable, the most level-headed of the Athena cabin. She trains and trains and trains, and doesn’t let people get too close, aside from Luke. He becomes a renowned swordsman and a brother to all, she watches him go through similar motions. They both harden, fighting back to back with just enough space between them for Thalia’s ghost.

It is the way. Logic, thorough planning, foresight. Athena’s darlings, learned the hard way.

She is an exemplary demigod, glory giving a shine to her name and keeping her chin high. 

Poseidon’s son destroys all of that like a wave crashing a sandcastle.

𓅓

He’s fidgety (most of them are).

Angry (again, have you met Clarisse?)

Scared, and hiding it poorly. 

Percy Jackson is the human equivalent of a five foot bull in a china shop, breaking rules and pots alike. He trips and falls, holds his sword wrong, doesn’t even buckle his armor correctly. It is honestly a miracle he ever got to live this old while being this ignorant of their world.

"What's wrong with you?" he'd sputtered, hurt flashing across his face, arms still shaking from a fight he shouldn't have won that easily.

Annabeth doesn't spend long pondering on the question. She's only a product of this environment, best for Percy to learn the lesson quick. Santa isn't real, the Tooth Fairy either. There is no comfort for children of the Gods, only terror, death, and nightmares.

You've got to grow up, kid, she thinks as she watches—still— Luke train him from afar.

His quest is bound to be a disaster. Grover knows it, Chiron is too gentle to say it, but Annabeth isn’t. Even as he picks her (as is her due), even as she steps foot past Thalia's tree for the first time in six years (he can't even manage to not put his entire foot in his mouth about it), she doesn't let up.

It isn’t necessary for the quest that Percy Jackson likes her.

They are soldiers on a mission. Companions by fate, led by prophecy and imbued with a purpose greater than the three of them could ever fathom.

She plans around him, a wild variable, and she’ll get them where they need to be.

She can do this. She will be her mother’s pride, she will make sure her first quest ends the way she has planned it to. In honor and glory, the Gods pacified and camp cheering.

Then she watches as all hell breaks loose.

𓅓

There’s no such thing as routine where Percy is involved, Annabeth quickly learns— only chaos. He sends a severed head to Olympus, jumps off the St Louis arch to his death, sits gilded on a deadly throne and fights the God of War all in the span of a week.

(She can't even think about the Underworld right now)

Annabeth can’t plan for any of that. By the end of summer, his head is a mop of crazy curls, his fighting stance is stillinconsistent in spite of Luke’s lessons, and he smiles at her like none of that matters. He’s okay with messy, unplanned, all sorts of unknowns. He rolls with the punches, and gets up every time.

All of that would give her more than enough reason to stay away. Continue to map around him, rectify course, get back on track.

She lends him her necklace, instead.

𓅓

It doesn’t make sense. Neither of them have set out for it to happen, that’s for sure, and no one seems more surprised by it than Percy himself. She knows that because each hug she gave him—one completely unplanned, adrenaline and fear-led, the other calculated has startled him into perfect stillness, his heartbeat the only proof of life.

If he could only stay like this forever, he’d be much easier to handle.

Her return to camp is no less triumphant than curious. People keep looking at her, seizing her up as if for the first time. She realizes embarrassingly that bursts of physical affection aren't typically what she's known for.

Percy, for his part, comes back from the Underworld with a bead in his name and glory he doesn't even care for. He says as much to her, wishes he could shed it all and give it to Annabeth instead. Her whole life at camp spent vying for her own quest, for glory to Athena, and this is the thing that makes her smile from ear to ear.

Sally Jackson has to be an exceptionally good mother to raise a boy this selfless.

She makes the mistake of sharing that thought with him and watches pink rising across the smatter of freckles on his cheeks with rapt attention. There is something sort of magical, precious about the moment that she wants to remember as a first. She's not quite sure what.

It's only when she walks back to her cabin that she realizes something is off.

It is more than a feeling: the woods are uncharacteristically quiet around her. Silence surrounds her, ominous, potent, and dread starts filling her chest as she analyzes its source. She has trudged through these trails countless times, and while the ground still cracks beneath her feet, the air is quiet enough for her to make that the only sound.

One look up finally has her find the answer she's looking for: the owls permanently perched around the Athena cabin have all but turned their backs to her, the muffled rustling of their feathers the only indication of their presence.

It's as clear a message as Athena has ever sent. In aligning herself with the son of Poseidon, she has provoked her mother. No longer is Annabeth a blessed child, her pride, her herald.

It is a simple consequence to choices she's made. Annabeth accepts it with bitter resignation, her head hung low.

It is her first time being a disappointment.

𓅓

The final stab in her perfect tapestry (or ten year plan if you want to call it that) comes as a sour betrayal and aches like a wound.

Luke rips himself from her life and into a much darker future, and she can’t do anything to prevent it.

Hasn’t seen it coming.

As she stuffs her cap in her pocket and her father’s letter in her backpack, Annabeth Chase acknowledges the uncomfortable truth.

Change is happening around her, and she cannot control it.

𓅓

She tries to welcome some of it.

Space Mountain leaves her balance slightly off and her head vaguely concussed. Jaws puts her right to sleep. Candy tastes too sweet, or too chemical. Her father’s smile makes her want to run off again.

School is probably the biggest let down of all. Classes are either too easy, or impossible to follow. No one talks to her, and why would they? She doesn’t have a phone, doesn’t know what Tiktok even is, what’s the point.

But she promised Percy she’d try, and she wants to, because that would make him happy. 

Just be a kid, he had instructed her. 

So she does.

Every letter she writes has her worrying her lip to the point of chafing, unable to put words on the discomfort she’s feeling. It’s too much, too soon. She can’t adapt, she’s drowning, and her godly parent isn’t Poseidon so she’s sinking fast. 

She has no hand to hold in the dark, no one to talk to. Her father seems to struggle between treating her like she's still seven, or keeping a wide berth around her, cautious like you'd be around a wild animal. She supposes in his eyes, she must be. She remembers Percy's quizzical looks and knitted brows the first time he saw her.

At Camp Half-Blood, he'd be the standout. Out here, she's the fish out of water.

She dreams about Luke. She can’t tell if they’re nightmares or desperate wishes. Her family doesn’t feel like one, and the one she relied on she doesn’t even have a shrapnel to hang onto and remember them by.

She dreams about him, too, obviously. In there, there is no furrowed brow, no teary goodbyes, no danger. Percy is mostly smiles, cracking awful jokes that no one should even gratify with a scoff, balancing a pen that's not a pen on the tip of his finger like an idiot. It takes her longer than she would like to admit to figure out that those aren't visions either. That she just misses him.

Somewhere along the way, Annabeth's brain has decided she’d much rather live in Percy’s wild orbit than safely tucked away from it. She tries not to think about it too much.

And it’s awful, lying to him the way she does, pretending she can’t call. But it is much safer to watch him like this— a one way mirror, with no way to disappoint.

You’re kind of like my only friend aside from Grover, you know that right? He’d written in September.

She’d pressed a finger to the word, owls still quiet around her. 

They remain so for the rest of the school year.

𓅓

She changes her hair that summer, gets it braided the way the Aphrodite cabin has begged her to for years. 

Be a kid, Percy had said, and Gods know she has tried. The year has left her frayed inside, wire-taught, a nervous wreck. She can only hope he won't see through her when she gets back. That she can play the part well enough for him not to question the glaring gaps in her letters.

She stares at herself in the mirror, trying to assess how believable she can be.

She’ll get to camp, pretend everything has been fine, and fall into a comfortable step. Clarisse will no doubt lose her patience and capture the flag, Chris will forage every backpack for snacks, Brontë will have her bed guaranteed spider-free and proof by the time she unpacks. They'll train, and she'll regain her mother's approval, things will turn back to the way they were.

There is comfort in the familiar, no matter how messed up it is.

𓅓

In her dreams, smoke chokes tears out of her long before the flames reach camp.

𓅓

They come back with a stowaway—chaos, chaos personified—and another jab to Luke's memory.

Grow up, kid, she tells herself this time. It doesn't matter whether she's at camp or in the outside world. Things have shifted too far out of bounds for her to predict.

Percy has a monster for a half-brother, a prophecy written in his name, and Thalia's tree bleeds black.

To make matters worse, the resolve she’s had all year about maintaining a respectable distance implodes with eyes blue in both sadness and color, and she can’t do it.

She can’t refuse Percy anything. She can’t even hide things from him, doesn’t even want to. She has the spine of a gummy worm where he’s concerned.

She also can't bear to face this new world alone.

𓅓

The dreams that welcome her that night have him taller, his voice deeper, moodier than she'd anticipated. She isn't the only one who has changed, it turns out.

She wakes up rocked by the waves with Tyson's eye on her and Percy drooling on her backpack.

They’re still a good way out from reaching the coordinates, and the buoy likely won’t take them the whole way there. These are at least problems Annabeth can start solving— she lets her mind take them on, rolling through options in the dark.

After an uncomfortable minute or two, Tyson’s voice breaks the silence.

“Did you have a bad dream?” the Cyclops asks, obviously scared.

So much for quiet problem-solving.

She sighs. “It's nothing. I'm fine.”

She wraps her arms around herself, closing her eyes again.

Back to the buoy.

“Percy gets them too,” Tyson goes on, his big thumbs rubbing across the palm of his hands. “I hear him, sometimes.”

Right. Super-hearing, and all that. If Annabeth didn't know any better, she'd say he's worried about his half-brother. The thought brings something familiar to mind, and her gut churns. Trust Percy to be able to befriend a pet tarantula next.

She purses her lips.

“All demigods do,” she says, rubbing sleep out of her face before sitting up. In avoiding Tyson's gaze, hers lands on Percy, eyes scrunched shut and mouth slack with sleep.

She has watched him before, studied him like a test, once. Now she just finds his face a place to rest, calmer waters than the ones outside the boat.

“How long ago did he fall asleep?” She asks, softer.

Tyson hums. “Not long after you. He wanted to keep watch, in case Luke...” The rest of that sentence gets lost in awkward silence before the Cyclops eventually blurts out: “I'm sorry, Annabeth.”

“What for?”

“The bomb. I just wanted to protect my brother,” Tyson confesses, thumbs still worrying the creases of his palms. "I didn't mean to hurt yours."

“I—” she starts, then stops as Percy shifts next to her. He's thankfully still dead to the world, his nose now buried by her hand, eyebrow lightly twitching. A wild curl tickles the side of her pinky finger.

She closes her eyes. Tyson has been helpful, is the thing. Nothing like the other Cyclops she’s read about or encountered on the streets. Still, there's an uneasiness nestled deep within her, a feeling she can't quite shake. It isn't fair to him, but she's doing the best she can.

She takes a deep breath. “I know you were, Tyson.”

“I’m still sorry, though.”

Just like Percy, he’s honest to a fault. Annabeth hasn't met a whole lot of Poseidon's children in her life, but the two sitting in the boat with her seem to share the same traits. Weirdly human, decidedly kind. Built-in with a soft heart, tugging at hers.

“He wasn't always like that, you know,” she eventually says. “Luke.”

Tyson, surprisingly, nods in understanding. “What happened?”

She purses her lips. “Didn't Percy tell you?”

“He said Luke hurt you. And camp. And him,” Tyson recalls. “He seemed angrier about the 'you' part.”

There it is, again— Percy’s unbearable selflessness. It is so different from hers or the others at camp. Gods still mean nothing to him, glory couldn’t be further from his mind. She’d die to protect Olympus, because it is what is expected of her. He has tried to sacrifice himself at least twice, but it was to save them.

If she were any other girl, any mortal girl, she would do something about it.

But she is Annabeth Chase, daughter of Athena, and that takes precedence.

She rubs the side of her temple.

“Yeah, he’s like that,” Annabeth replies. She sighs. “You should take the next turn sleeping. I’ll wake you guys up once I have a plan.”

Tyson smiles, two big thumbs way up, almost immediately disappearing into sleep. His snoring acts as a companion for the rest of the night, and by the time Percy wakes up, she’s got their next ten steps figured out. Hopefully, that’s enough.

𓅓

On the princess Andromeda, He had offered they use Boon as a safe word.

It’s only when they reach Clarisse’s ship that Annabeth realizes how much she wished they’d kept using it.

Boon, she silently pleads when he tells her he trusts her decision to be the right one, and Clarisse makes another.

Boon, she repeats when he stares at her in terror of his own heart, hair golden and eyes storm blue. She wonders if he’s noticed his mood following the color of the currents yet. 

Boon, when he’s gentle and kind and everything else, and Gods it was much easier to handle him when he was a means to an end, a safe ten feet away from her.

There’s no point fighting it, is there? That nagging feeling, warming her chest like a match. It dawns on her, for the first time maybe that all these seismic changes around her aren't only stemming from the outside, and that Percy was right.

She has changed. Is changing.

It's not just her hair. She used to solely keep room for logic, fallacies, and Luke. Honor, safety, and family.

Percy isn't either of those things.

And she isn't stupid. She knows, has suspected since the beginning of summer that he's well on his way to being more. But he cannot be. He cannot be, because he's all she has left. Because something this big, this fragile, isn't meant to be carried by someone like her. The weight of it alone could crush her.

Still, when her head hits the ground in a resounding crack and Polyphemus roars in victory, she thinks she would have liked to try one day.

𓅓

She wakes up smiling for the first time in six years.

She has a plan. One that will fix everything. She will get her sister back and her family together again.

Luke can't see it yet, but she trusts Percy to get the Fleece.

That's what she zeroes in on, not the pang of worry coming with her friend's flaw blatant and exposed. If they play their cards right, this won't even matter.

She notices the blood on his shirt—a stab wound, easy to figure out who would be on the other end of that sword, harder to believe. She tries not to worry about that either.

Percy hands the Fleece to Clarisse selflessly, as Annabeth knew he would, and she smiles proudly. She still can't plan around him, and he still brings mayhem everywhere he goes, but she has trust. She has faith.

She can't wait for him to meet Thalia. Says as much in the back of Sally's car, and she was right about that too. Percy's mother is just as exceptional as Annabeth had guessed a year ago. She clumsily accepts the snacks Sally gestures to, tapping her son on the shoulder for him to pass around a frightening amount of candy.

“I don't know that now is the best time,” she tries, but eventually caves in. Poseidon might be Percy's father, but Sally Jackson is her own force of nature.

She pockets some, notes that Percy doesn't touch any of it.

She tugs on his sleeve discreetly, her hand reaching in between the car door and his seat.

“Hey. You're going to love her,” she assures.

His smile is tight-lipped as he acquiesces.

Percy Jackson is a terrible liar.

𓅓

They have been out cold for the better part of two days.

Thalia's brows are furrowed even in sleep, and Percy's eye, swollen shut, has finally started to heal. She stares at the broken nose, the burst lip, unwilling to think about what it took to get there. Tyson had mentioned it, and she'd selfishly been relieved to have missed it.

Percy's words still float in a corner of her mind, hurting more than the arrow she took to the shoulder. She could have told him then that she knew what it was like to have to pick between a sibling and a friend. That she had made that choice and continues to do so at every turn. She doesn't get how he can't see it.

Then again, insightful isn't really on Percy's list of shining qualities.

As she ruminates on the matter, she watches the nectar doing its work, slower on Thalia than it is on Percy.

There is no saying how much the last seven years have fared on her, what she'll wake up to, when she'll wake up. Annabeth is being selfish in her impatience, she’s well aware of that. Gaining a sister back won't ease the pain left by Luke's anger, but it might heal something that she thought would remain forever broken.

Gently, she lowers her head on the mattress right by Thalia's hand. Warmth radiates off her, light ozone scent so familiar it makes Annabeth’s eyes well up. She has missed her every day. Every day.

Thalia's chest rises slow and steady, peaceful.

Come back, Annabeth murmurs as her fingers grab onto Thalia's. I've missed you. Hurry.

She rarely prays to the Gods.

There is a level of pride involved, of course. Annabeth has been capable (more than capable, for the last few years) to fend for herself without the need for a leg up. But praying hasn't always been about asking. Sometimes, it is about gratitude.

She gets up on her knees, rummaging through her pockets for the snacks Sally had left her and a box of matches. She places the offering in the pyre outside, far enough from the infirmary that the smoke won't bother anyone.

Then, for the second time since she turned twelve, Annabeth lights up a match and prays to her mother.

There are a lot of apologies, and a lot of thank yous. She hopes they're enough, but knows she would find them lacking. There are no words strong enough in the Greek or English language to express what Annabeth is feeling.

So she thanks Athena, thanks Zeus. And in quieter, smaller part of her heart, she thanks Poseidon, too.

When she gets back to the infirmary, the sound of owls welcome her home.

𓅓

Change is starting to be associated with hope, and Annabeth lets the seed take root.

In a swift, truly wonderful moment, years of pain are undone. She's seven again and her sister's arms are wrapped tight around her. Tears she's refused to shed unless completely alone finally roll down her cheeks.

Thalia is here, and she's alive.

She ignores the pang in her chest as Thalia inquires about Luke, and the furious swirl in the water pitcher by Chiron's desk.

She lets the Aphrodite kids braid her hair for the bonfire they plan on having that night, her heart ten sizes bigger, her smile to her ears. She could dance with naiads, that’s how happy she is. 

As she stares at her reflection in the mirror, Annabeth wonders about the little girl Thalia left, and how much of her remains. How much has been sharpened by fear, dumpster diving and grueling training. If certain friendships and heartbreaks can now read on her face, or if all of that is only visible to her.

Brontë's eye catches hers before her sister has a chance to look away, the two of them alone in the cabin for what must be the first time in a week. They're still licking their wounds, patching up campers, and she must not have slept for more than a couple hours in a row.

“What is it?” Annabeth asks, suddenly nervous. The issue with happiness when you aren't accustomed to it is how scared you suddenly become of losing it again.

“Nothing,” Brontë replies, rubbing the tiredness out of her eyes. “It’s just nice to see you like that. Happy, trying new things.”

“Oh,” she flushes. “It’s just hair.”

“You don't usually let it down, is all.”

She tugs on a braid, studying its loose end. The curls are a nice addition.

“Did Percy see it yet?”

So here’s what they’re not going to do. Annabeth is not going to pretend she doesn’t get why Brontë asked her that, because that would be insulting both their intellects. And in turn, Brontë won't judge her for the pinched look she’ll wear when she admits: "I don't think this is the kind of thing Percy notices."

“Ah.”

And her heart has the gall to speed up at that, being flayed open as it is by her sister's knowing tone.

There is a part of her that wants him to notice, craves it like Icarus craved the Sun. It's still alien to her, and fairly recent.

“You never know. He might,” Brontë kindly adds as she gets to tucking the corners of her bed in. Trust her to never miss a cabin check, even on three hours of sleep.

Annabeth hums noncommittally, forcing the turmoil in her throat down, down, down.

“I don’t think Mother would approve,” she says, her lip chewed and worried. It's the easier issue to address.

For two years, she has risked Athena’s ire and tested her mother’s patience. Every letter, taking twice as long getting to Annabeth. Every picture Percy sent mysteriously getting lost in the mail. She wonders, sometimes, if he ever got any of hers.

“Are the owls still ignoring you?” Brontë asks.

“Not since we saved camp.”

“Seems to me like she's forgiven you, then.” Brontë hums. There's a singular, stubborn wrinkle on the corner of her bed, which she smooths over with a frown.

“You don’t think it’s a mistake? Opening up?”

Brontë pauses to consider. “I don't know. When you look at it logically, what do you see?”

Well.

There is Grover, clapping in rhythm to a song. Clarisse with her head held high, and the smallest of smiles. Tyson filling the Poseidon cabin with clever devices.

And then Thalia, sitting across from her. All of them tied by a string of fate, all leading to small, human choices that Percy made with her. For her.

Her heart swells, too big, too soon. In the mirror, her eyes are glossy and bright, her cheeks a shade darker. There she is, changing again. If she looked closer, she could probably see it. Her heart, smooth like sea glass, sharp edges polished, soft to the touch. She wrings her hands together.

“Changes. Some good, some bad.”

Her sister smiles at her, then pats her on the shoulder. “Atta girl.”

𓅓

He notices.

𓅓

It comes out as a clumsily stitched together string of words, blurted out as flames lick the side of their faces and campers gather around the bonfire.

“Hey, you changed your hair,” Percy smiles before taking a big gulp of his drink. She can’t tell what horrible concoction Grover and him created together, but the mix of sodas swirl dark enough for her to stay far away from it. “It's nice.”

“Yeah?”

And it’s ridiculous, to feed on something as small as this. To defer to emotion over logic. He’s Percy, just Percy.

(He's never been just Percy. Ever)

“It's cool. Pretty,” he adds, or at least she thinks he does, because his face disappears almost entirely into his cup.

She burns, bright and awkward, happy. Up until now, she has only known how to be a demigod. This might be her first time just being a girl. There’s a slight lull following the revelation, cheeks heating up and furtive glances cast his way as they sit on a log in relative silence. 

In truth, she hasn't allowed herself to look at him fully since he woke up. She doesn’t need fuel to add to that fire. She needs to stop adding fuel to that fire, actually, if she wants to leave unscathed. As a son of Poseidon, Percy’s already dangerous enough.

Clarisse hasn't been shy about letting her know how many ways he jeopardized the quest before they got it back on track. Grover has avoided her gaze each time she pressed him about it, but his face had betrayed him all the same.

She'd seen it herself when his eyes refused to leave the arrow in her shoulder.

It might be safer to look at him from a distance from now on.

She takes a deep breath. Next to her, Percy's leg bounces up and down, perpetually restless. Far off in the woods, a camper howls at the moon.

She lets out a sigh. He takes another sip.

She looks at him. Up close.

Burns the easy smile, the mess of curls, freckles on the bridge of his nose into her brain. Lets the thud of her heart grow louder, embers tended to tenderly. Maybe Icarus wanted to feel the heat of the sun before he took a tumble.

When he stares back, she lets the word beautiful take shape in her mind, wonders if he's seeing, what he's seeing. For a minute, it looks like he's going to say something. Maybe another compliment.

(Now who's fishing?)

The word Boon quietly echoes through her, a thousand little pins pricking her skin.

Then Thalia joins her on the stump, Grover calls for Percy, and he steps off, still wary enough of her sister to steer clear of lightning range.

She really wishes he wouldn't.

𓅓

Thalia Grace has historically always thrived with change. 

Annabeth remembers that. She also remembers her as a goddess of her own, however sacrilegious that is. Nothing ever phasing her, her first protector, bold, unafraid.

Seeing her stuck at the age she last saw her while Annabeth has had a chance to grow doesn’t ease her guilt out in the least. Thalia says it’s fine, that she’d do it all over again, but Annabeth has heard her cry her rage into the forest more than once.

She’d stopped tailing her after that.

She’s just as formidable a demigod as Annabeth recalls, is the thing. Excels with a weapon in hand, outsmarts a good chunk of the Athena cabin. But there’s a broken edge to her, a set jaw that doesn’t quite relax, a deliberate avoidance of the Hermes cabin. An anger at her own father that Annabeth can excuse, but feels uneasy about.

It's unexpectedly harder for the two of them to reconnect now that they're mismatched pieces, but it doesn’t keep them from trying.

The Percy of it all doesn't make it any easier. The two of them are frosty at best, and while Annabeth isn't surprised by his decision to return to New York City a full week earlier than necessary, she can't say she isn't hurt by it. The news that they'll enroll in nearby schools doesn't soften the blow by much, and while Percy promises he'll keep writing nonetheless, his voice sounds a little sad when he does.

He wishes her luck, his shoulders low, fingers fidgeting with the second bead of his necklace before taking off with Blackjack.

There's still the barest hint of a scar on the bridge of his nose.

If it is about him, the great prophecy is two summers away. If it is about Thalia—

She hasn't shied from letting her feelings on the matter be known. She will not be a weapon, nor will she be tricked into being one. She is as stubborn as ever. Or maybe she's just scared, Annabeth muses as she watches thunder strike stronger, harsher than she remembers as soon as rage builds in her sister. It lights Thalia's face with bright white, makes her look down at her own hands with an expression Annabeth isn't familiar with.

She doesn't want to think about Percy being right. She has also seen him carry an entire warship away from Charybdis, drown the God of War, and survive a six hundred and thirty feet tall fall down the Mississippi river. Point is, they're both a risk.

There is a chance for Thalia to be the child of the prophecy. Annabeth cannot ignore the alternative.

Still, the protectiveness with which Thalia acts reminds her of him too much, and the parallels Annabeth is starting to draw make her stomach feel like it's lined with lead.

She tosses and turns in her bed about it.

Her brain, treacherous in its devices, has already started forming a plan.

There is a solution to her problem, sort of a last resort. Chiron looks to her with sadness in his eyes when she asks about it before embarking to school.

She doesn't want it to be. But she is still Annabeth Chase, and she needs a contingency plan.

It doesn't matter if her heart doesn't agree with it.

𓅓

In her dreams, Thalia is crying. Percy is covered in soot, and Grover's eyes are wide with terror.

𓅓

School provides a surprisingly good distraction. Thalia's presence and the new environment —Percy was right, Brooklyn isn't that bad—make it easier to blend in.

It is a weirdly healing time for the two of them. They’re finally making up for those lost years, patching up gaps one nasty candy bar at a time. Music in particular seems to bring the most life back into Thalia, soft grunge perpetually playing in the background of their dorm room. Soon, their walls are covered with posters, and Annabeth gets accustomed to the sound of moody guitars.

Movies still aren't Annabeth’s thing, but her sister makes them a little more bearable, throwing popcorn at the screen and calling characters names when they're being stupid.

They've both elected to leave the horror genre alone—nothing scarier than their actual life after all— favoring action flicks and vintage rom-coms instead. Those, she'd told Thalia in a threatening tone, were not to be mentioned to Percy under any circumstances.

Not that Thalia ever would. For that to happen, there would have to be open communication between the two (which is as likely to happen as a snow day in July at this point). Annabeth is perplexed about it until she remembers that birds of a feather flocking together is only a saying. It doesn’t matter that they both run hot, jumping head first to protect the people they care about. That they are completely unafraid to speak their mind, regardless of which God they might anger.

Their biggest point of contention is also a trait they share, and where Annabeth suspects the heart of the issue lies.

It isn’t just that Thalia resents Percy for taking Annabeth's attention away. It’s that she resents him for getting to know her and seeing her grow up while she stood frozen in time. She knew Annabeth first. Percy might know her better.

It makes Annabeth’s life look like this: every Iris call Thalia intercepts has her roll her eyes and push the volume of her headphones way up. Every hangout Annabeth has tried to initiate has backfired spectacularly, Percy moody and uncharacteristically quiet, Thalia’s jaw so tight there hasn’t been a single sunny day on their outings. Every minute spent talking or thinking of one has her filled to the brim with guilt about the other.

It makes her absolutely miserable.

It takes a mission to Maine for Thalia to actually address it. It’s a simple call from Grover, two demigods rescues in a boarding school. Both Thalia and Percy volunteer immediately, and Annabeth agrees to monitor the situation.

The sigh of relief Chiron let out tells her he’s well aware of the volatile, competitive nature Percy and Thalia share, and is no fool as to why. He reminds her, kindly, that she has yet to make a decision.

She has pulled the pamphlet out of her bag from time to time, with the bathroom door locked. Studied it so thoroughly she could recite every word with her eyes closed. It is a solution, she reminds herself. Maybe the wisest one, considering. By removing herself from the equation, she might tip the scales in favor of Olympus. She could live safe, forever, never to be prey again. Never to be used. She could also put a lid on that traitorous heart of hers and squash its wild beat down to a murmur.

On paper, it's a win-win.

In reality, well.

She pulls on the edge of her dress, regretting her choice with every minute the cold seeps through. Sometimes, she really misses utilitarian Annabeth. It’s only after she readjusts her hair for what must be the fifth time in ten minutes that Thalia chirps.

“You know we’re not really attending the school dance, right? Just infiltrating it.”

“Blending in will yield better results if we’re meant to extract them without attracting attention.”

Thalia hums. “Earrings are a nice touch.”

She shakes her head. Not addressing that.

“What time did he say he was coming again?” Thalia sighs, making a show of looking at her watch.

“Three.”

“Yeah,” she says as she pulls on the sleeves of a blazer much too big for her. “He’s definitely gonna be late.”

“You don’t know that.”

Thalia’s scowl would rival Medusa’s.

“Come on,” Annabeth pushes back, pacing next to her. “You got off on the wrong foot. Percy's actually—”

“For the last time— just because you like him doesn't mean I have to.”

“Grover likes him, too.”

“Grover's a goat. He likes chewing on tin cans. Doesn't mean I should do that either.”

Annabeth rolls her eyes. “You sound like my mother.”

“Ah, so she’s met him.”

“Thalia,” Annabeth sighs. “Please.”

Thalia stares on, and she tries not to fidget under the weight of her gaze. “What is it about him? Seriously.”

“Seriously?”

“Yes.”

Annabeth stands a little straighter. “He’s a good friend. He stands by his own. He’s kind, he’s brave. He’s funny when he shouldn’t be. He saved my life, multiple times. Helped save yours, even if—”

“Even if?” Thalia’s eyebrow raises in challenge.

“He thought you might destroy Olympus,” she reluctantly finishes.

Thalia scoffs. “And you want us to be friends!”

She purses her lips, chews on the inside of her cheek. This is what the conversation always circles to. This is where it will always end. Some things are to be set in stone, change impossible. She sighs, swallowing the bitterness back. “Never mind.”

She crosses her arms against her chest, unwilling to keep the ball rolling if that’s the direction it’s going to roll in. Runs her fingers through the end of her braids and pulls on the hem of her dress some more. Maybe she shouldn’t have gone so short. Thalia’s eyes narrow.

“It's that important to you, huh,” she asks, suddenly serious.

Annabeth holds her stare, takes another deep breath. “Yes.”

Thalia hums then, taking a moment to consider her. She doesn’t need to ask her sister what she sees. It’s pretty obvious she’s been made.

There’s a lull where words aren’t necessary and her Thalia’s eyes read like scrying bowls. Then, she simply reaches across to readjust the strap of Annabeth’s dress. “Here,” she says, producing a lipstick out of her pocket. It’s a nice shade of plum, nothing too crazy. “Put this on. Boys like that always like a little bit of a statement. They’re kind of cockatiels, in a way.”

Annabeth blinks, gingerly staring at the lipstick, then at her. It’s a strangely off-color olive branch for them, but an olive branch all the same. Gently, she tips her chin up, letting her sister help apply it before pressing her lips together. Thalia still dotes on her the same way she did when she was seven. She probably always will.

“Gods, it’s so weird,” Thalia says, inspecting the result. “The last time I saw you, you could barely tie your own shoelaces.”

“Hey,” Annabeth protests, vaguely offended.

“Now you’re a full-blown teenage girl with an annoying boyfriend.”

She flushes. “I never said boyfriend.”

Thalia’s eyes roll into the back of her skull. “Crush. Guard dog, whatever.” She holds her hand out, knocking the side of Annabeth’s cheek with a finger. “There, perfect,” she says, strangely earnest.

“Thanks.”

“So, what’s all this for? You planning on telling him any time soon, or?”

“Gods, no,” she grimaces. Hades, she’ll probably take that to the grave.

“Why not?”

She frowns. Thalia is like this. Blunt and to the point, diving off the deep end, straight into a fire while Annabeth is too busy staring at her feet checking for saw traps.

“He’s the first friend I made since Luke left,” she says, words sounding heavier than she means them to. She tries not to mention him if she can. “I just— can’t lose that,” she finishes pitifully.

Thalia pauses to consider her. “Ah. So you’re afraid.”

She is, quite frankly.

She's terrified.

Now that the dust has settled, she's been able to see a new pattern emerge.

It isn’t just Percy being a liability. It’s her, too. She used to put the Gods on a pedestal. She used to fight for glory and Athena. Her head and heart in the same place, only looking at the road ahead of them. Now they’re not even on speaking terms, as exhibited by the pamphlet burning a hole in her coat pocket and the lipstick in the other. Her head is full of Percy—when’s the last time he smiled? Has Tyson reached out lately? How is he still getting taller? and her heart is full of fear. She’s looking back, sideways, can’t focus on forward at all.

The idea of doing anything about it feels like playing with matches and weighs on her stomach like a stone.

“It’s fine,” she finally replies to an unimpressed Thalia. “I’m handling it.”

Thalia mutters something that suspiciously sounds like definitely, and she elects to ignore it.

Thankfully for the two of them, Sally Jackson pulls up in the street before Thalia has the opportunity to question her any further.

She forces a smile, clears her throat, keeps her shoulders high.

“You know, you say all this,” Thalia whispers into her ear, “but I haven’t seen you this nervous since I smuggled a microwave into our room.”

“The mission is making me nervous.”

“Okay, well, the mission wore a suit from what I can see, so try not to lose your mind.”

This, right here is why you shouldn’t confide in sisters.

𓅓

She doesn't, for the record. Lose her mind.

Percy cleaned up nice—maybe a little too nice if the looks they get on their way to the Westover gym are any indication, but she can be normal about that. Thalia makes a concerted effort to be good, which extends to saying hello and even exchanging pleasantries with Percy’s mother during the ride, which Annabeth is eternally thankful for. Percy looks like he’s waiting for the other shoe to drop, but he seems to be willing to give it a try. Blame that big heart of his, no doubt.

They find Grover looking mildly uncomfortable by the punch bowl, a couple of disgruntled teenage girls glaring at him for somehow taking the lion’s share of the wallflower spots.

He fills them in quickly, and Annabeth barely has time to set a plan in motion before Thalia hijacks it and twirls Grover in direction of the dance floor.

This leaves the two of them alone, of course, and her heart does not speed up in the least. She can do this. Calm, composed. Even though she spent hours picking a dress and doing her hair. Even though she’s glad she put on Thalia’s lipstick, because she has caught Percy staring twice already.

Heart and brain still aren’t on the same page.

So her hand doesn't get clammy when she grabs for his, her feet don't trip when she leads them to the heart of the dance floor, and her eyes definitely don't lock into his for longer than necessary.

(She might be a terrible liar, but she can at least give it a try when it comes to herself)

“Nice suit,” is all she manages to say to him before losing her nerve.

They're off to a fantastic start.

Percy winces. “I knew it. It's stupid, isn't it? My mom even got me a corsage,” he groans.

“What happened to it?” She frowns.

“Oh, I gave it to Grover. Figured he could use a snack.”

She can't help it. She laughs. He makes her laugh, when he’s not spiking her blood pressure. Gods help her. The fingers clumsily holding onto her waist pinch at her sides, and she gets a little lost in the feeling. A little.

She hums. “Well, it's a good look.”

“Yeah?”

Yes, she wants to be brave enough to say. You look like a boy in one of those movies I’ve learned to like. Dashing and all sorts of things I don’t want to think about.

She forces a shrug, instead. “I mean, at the rate you're growing, Sally's probably gonna have to give it away in six weeks but. You know.”

“Hey, don't be mad, that's like the one thing I got going for me,” Percy jokes.

It truly is a mystery for the ages that the one guy who turns her insides into goop doesn't seem to possess any awareness whatsoever. That could be part of a curse. Maybe she should talk to one of the kids in the Aphrodite cabin, one of these days.

He looks down. “Are you, uh, gonna be able to run in those?” Percy asks, pointing to her heels.

“They switch back into boots if I click my heels twice. A trade with the Hephaestus cabin, I won them playing cards two summers ago,” she explains. She never thought they’d be of use.

“Oh. Cool,” Percy nods. “They take you to the Ozdust ballroom, too?”

“What?”

“Wicked? The wizard of Oz?” he says, like that should mean anything to her. “Ugh—I forgot you don’t like movies.”

“Hey, I like them, now!” Annabeth protests.

He blinks. “Wait, really?”

She does, now. She really does.

In his genuine excitement, Percy brings her closer, his eyes shiny and bright, hands holding onto her tighter. She might need to click her heels sooner than she’d thought.

“Yes,” she begrudgingly admits, “just not the horror ones. Gods—stop smiling, you’re freaking me out!”

“Not a chance. Oh, this opens a world of possibilities, Wise Girl—” Percy grins before getting lost in thought. He licks his lips—a tick she knows he has, so she should know better— and her gaze follows. Her heart skips a beat, her train of thought gets lost. All quiet on the Western front.

Unfortunately for her, at this distance it’s hard for even Percy not to notice. Blue light fades into pink, it’s tough to tell if he’s blushing or if she’s imagining it.

“Hey,” he starts, blinking what might be nerves out of him, “one of these days, maybe we could—”

“Oi! Lovebirds—ten o clock!”

She doesn't get to correct Thalia before their rescue mission takes a sharp turn, doesn't get to dwell on Percy not correcting her in the least either. Instead, she clicks her heels, takes her knife out.

Her first school dance ends with her having already assessed all possibilities for the fight ahead of them, and as she topples off a cliff, she considers that this could be another solution.

Fading away from the story entirely.

𓅓

It isn't that easy. With Percy and Thalia's flaws so clearly on display, Annabeth has forgotten hers. She can plan, and plan, and assess all she wants. At the end of the day, she gets tricked all the same.

Luke leaves her behind with a look she's never seen on his face before. Cold like marble, his scar red, angry. For the very first time in her life, Annabeth is afraid.

Of him. For him.

The two truths are all she can focus on as the unbelievable weight of the Sky pushes heavy on her shoulders, and her breath leaves her body in a panicked staccato.

Luke left here there. He left her, as bait. For whom? Percy, indubitably. Thalia, two for two. But that can't be it. There has to be another angle. Her brain churns and churns, trying to make sense of the pieces of the puzzle, knowing her friends are probably already on their way to find her.

Dread battles with exhaustion, mind running a thousand miles a minute until the Goddess of the Hunt falls to her knees in front of her, ready to take on Annabeth's burden.

Artemis' beautiful, ageless face winces as the trap takes hold, and a familiar guilt turns Annabeth's insides out.

This is why she'd wanted to stay at camp all these years. To keep people like Thalia, Luke, her Dad from getting hurt because of her. She'd stupidly thought that by becoming the wisest demigod, the most cunning, she'd be strong enough to never need a sacrifice in her name again.

In most Greek myths, the outcome doubles as a lesson. From her father's, she'd learn to guard her heart. From Thalia, to become strong enough on her own.

Looking at Luke's torn face when the General points out she'd outlasted her welcome and thinking of Percy's hands shaking around her waist as he had pulled her away from the Sirens, she realizes some lessons clearly need to be learned twice.

"You have until Winter Solstice,” the General mumbles to Luke. “See if her little rat pack comes scurrying.”

She doesn't feel Luke's hand on her back. She doesn't hear Artemis' pained breath.

The second the Sky lifts off her shoulders and onto another's, she collapses from exhaustion, heaviness in the back of her throat.

𓅓

In her dreams, her sister is there, and Luke's hair is longer. They're in a Jersey sewer, rummaging through the finds of the day. Her stomach is crying for food, the stench is awful, and she has blisters the size of eggs on the back of her feet from all the running.

She's happier than she's ever been. To be understood is to be loved, she'd heard somewhere.

She thinks she understands, now.

She could stay here forever, frozen in time, free of pain.

Eyes like a raging storm and the scent of sunscreen surround her as she lets the dream slip away from her, and as she wakes, she thinks of a boy clumsily leading her around a school gym.

𓅓

Luke waits what could possibly be two days to a week before showing his face again. It is impossible for her to know the exact time, kept in the literal dark as she is.

In the time she has spent unconscious, she has been separated from Artemis and placed in what seems to be some sort of cell. The walls, bare, wet, remind her of a cave her father had once insisted they visit. Something about human soldiers hiding in its nooks and crannies for days, waiting for the right moment to strike.

She hadn’t paid much attention then, too young to have known war, battle, or the weight of a weapon in her hand. Her belt is lacking her knife, of course, and she wonders if Luke is holding on to it.

It doesn’t look like it.

“You know I didn’t want to have to do this, right?” he says, veering for sincere as he steps closer to her. She can see little more than his outline, feebly lit by a faraway torch.

Her mouth draws into a thin line. “Yet you did it anyway. We always have a choice, Luke.”

She’s tired of him finding excuses. They’ve all been hurt, some more than others, but half-bloods don’t end up at camp by mistake. That his hatred of Olympus has drawn him to considering siblings as enemies will never sit right with her. “This isn’t what Thalia would have wanted.”

“How would you know?” Luke scoffs. “You think because you share a room and a tube of lipstick you know every part of her? Do you visit her in her dreams? Do you hold her when she cries? Has she told you that all she can remember from that time is the whistle of wind in branches and never-ending fear?”

The revelation comes across as a shock, Thalia hadn’t said anything about it. Then again, Annabeth had been so busy rejoicing in her sister’s return that she might have missed the signs.

“She may be angry, and she has every right to be. But she protects people. You used to do that too.”

The blow lands. It may not be a knife, but she knows how to wield words to hit just as well.

“I told you I didn’t want to do this,” Luke says, hurt. “It was the only way.”

“You’d justify murder with arguments like these.”

Luke’s eyes narrow. “Percy would understand. He gave me the Fleece. He made his choice too, don’t forget that.”

Now she’s the one recoiling. Re-framing Percy’s actions, however unfortunate they were, is a low that makes her blood boil. “You used his loyalty against him. You set him up to fail—”

“He can do no wrong in your eyes, can he?” Luke spits, throwing is hands up. “How is it that when I make tactical choices, take hard decisions, you’re so quick to call me a monster, but he knowingly sacrifices camp, and you’d place laurels on his head?”

She flushes, rattled by the accusations. Would she, really? She has always prided herself on being objective and observant. Could Percy be a blind spot so big she’d forgive him crimes she blames Luke for?

The memory of him, terrified at the realization of his own flaw brings her back to reality. He was thirteen then, scared of being too human to handle the world of the Gods.

He still might be, she thinks with hope in her heart. She needs him to, because unlike her, or Luke, he won’t just stand up for his own.

“He. Didn’t. Sacrifice. Camp,” she pushes through gritted teeth. “He gave the Fleece to Clarisse. He was always going to get it back. I’m sorry you forgot what it meant to be a Hero, but it’s not too late to remember.”

She jumps in, angling for freedom in spite of her limbs still screaming in pain. Luke grabs onto her wrist before that, shoving her back— a freezing cold seeping from his skin to hers.

She holds back a gasp. Something’s terribly wrong. “Luke,” she says, and he shakes his head.

“You’ve made your choice, Annabeth,” he says as he retreats into the shadows, leaving her alone once more. “I can’t keep trying to convince you you’re on the wrong side of the fence. Some day, you’re going to have to find out. Hope you’ll look back to this moment and know I was right.”

𓅓

It isn’t Percy’s scream that scares her to her core.

It’s Thalia’s.

Somewhere out there, they’ve just suffered an unthinkable loss, and she feels it two-fold. Her sister, crumpled on the ground, Percy’s face, shell-shocked, a plastic figure in his hand.

They stay still, unable to move, scrap metal around them and ozone fried stench in the air.

There is nothing Annabeth can do to help. She can only dream.

𓅓

She doesn’t rejoice at the sight of her friends.

They look bruised, battered, wrong. Percy's jacket hangs off his shoulders in tatters, his eyes are hollow in a way she doesn't want to read into. Grover is limping, and Thalia is…not looking at her.

She's looking at Luke, and the way he's holding Backbiter against her throat.

“What happened to you?” Thalia's voice breaks the last of Annabeth's heart. Her shield is up, her spear charged, and she's staring at him like she's finally lost faith.

He makes a compelling argument to her. But she knows Thalia better now, and the hurt in her eyes is that of someone who has reached the final stage of grief. “You're not Luke,” she bites. “I don't know who you are, anymore.”

Don't, she begs as she watches them fight and tear each other apart.

Don't, she pleads as Percy cries out in pain, the clouds heavy between his shoulders.

Don't, as Zoe falls limply on the ground, and Luke topples off the mountain.

The scream that comes out of her sounds barely human. She can't help it. She's held it in too long, the hopes of a family reunited, of things not being broken beyond repair.

She cries and cries the way she hasn't allowed herself to since she was seven, heavy sobs rocking her chest as someone—Percy—wraps their arms around her.

She can't go on. Can't accept how far things have changed. This is not what was supposed to happen.

“I'm sorry, I'm so sorry,” she hears Percy whisper against the crown of her head.

Luke is not dead, and that is not his body, broken on the rocks.

Nobody has the heart to contradict her.

𓅓

There is a chance life doesn't totally fall apart on her. That Luke's soul can be rescued, that Grover finds Pan without losing his mind in the process, and for she and her friends to maybe spend more than ten minutes outside of camp without fearing for their lives.

Her mother's words to Percy, overheard on Olympus ring through her head like a warning.

I do not approve of your friendship with my daughter.

It is at least good of her to be forthright about it. There are only so many signs Annabeth can ignore.

Percy doesn’t seem as rattled by it as he is by Artemis’ decision, and she wonders if somebody told him. She watches him grow pale as the Goddess of the Hunt makes her new lieutenant known, his knuckles white with fear, breath only letting out once Thalia takes the oath.

Her sister only looks at her once silver shines on her skin, apologies in her eyes, but no regrets.

Annabeth simply nods. She understands the desire to take destiny into your own hands.

She could not have joined them then, cannot join them now.

Percy is the demigod of the Prophecy. There is no other option. Somewhere inside of her, the last two sentences that were balancing like Damocles’ sword fall into place.

Her mother comes to find her to deliver her own version of comfort—wisdom, as expected.

“There is no need for your heart to be burdened so soon, my daughter,” Athena says, not unkindly. Below them, naiads dance the end of Winter, beautiful wisps of pearl following them as they float. Annabeth doesn’t dare look her in the eye. “He will not live past sixteen.”

“Prophecies aren't always straightforward,” she hears herself protest. Even to her ears, her words sound small, childish.

She looks up. Her mother’s gray gaze glazes over her with a tinge of pity, and embarrassment burns through her chest.“I am not talking about the Prophecy. I have known Heroes like Percy. Fought them, cared for them, watched them cross into Hades. When they burn that bright, their flame tends to dim too soon.”

Even then, she'd known her Mother was right. It hadn't kept her from giving him her hand, and agreeing to a second dance.

Neither of them seem able to speak then. She welcomes the silence like an old friend. Her chest feels too tight to think of words right now, anyway.

It is so drastically unlike the moment they shared at Westover Hall. Her hands aren’t clammy with nerves, and her dress is more gray than white. She’s way shorter than him—no magic shoes this time—and he’s wearing black, like a funeral.

On Olympus, the music follows the whims of the listener.

To her, the tune sounds like a slow waltz, something neither of them is proficient enough to dance well.

She lets her cheek rest on his chest, feels his chin rest upon the top of her head. It’s more of a swaying hug than anything else, really.

It’s fine by her. It’s what they both need.

𓅓

Annabeth Chase has long accepted that she cannot trick fate, and cannot control change. The Unknown used to be terrifying, probabilities haunting her every step.

The determination with which Percy decides the prophecy will be about him and not Nico sears the rest of it into existence.

At nearly fourteen years of age, she has settled into this cold truth:

She is in love with Percy Jackson, and she will lose him.

𓅓

She thinks that preparing for it can ease the pain. That allowing herself one day, one perfect summer day where they go to the movies—he doesn't call it a date, so she won't— and maybe enjoy each other's company for an afternoon cannot hurt more than Fate.

Then she watches a girl write her number on the inside of his wrist and learns that there can be more painful things than death.

𓅓

So he knows other girls. Big deal. Clarisse is a girl. Silena, too.

She gets a bad feeling about this one, though. Something in the way she'd stared at him and only him, in spite of Annabeth standing right next to them. Something about Percy remembering her full name and number with ease, when half of Chiron's lessons go into one ear and leave out the other.

Something about her being mortal, normal, pretty.

Her sour mood clears a path around her at camp, makes even Clarisse wince.

“Wow, easy,” she says, Annabeth's shield ramming into hers a little heavy. “What's gotten into you? You fight with Sea Twerp again?”

Again?

She doesn't want to fight with Percy. She never sets out to, that's for sure. But every mention of Luke has water boil in their cups and every plea she makes ends with the both of them storming out, jaw clenched (his) and tears (hers) threatening to spill.

So they don't talk. They simmer and stew and fester, and it makes her miserable.

There's so much she wants to tell him. That she likes the freckles across the bridge of his nose. That he's gotten much better at fighting. That her favorite thing to see, no matter how much stress it causes her, is the way he smiles when he's ready to wreak havoc.

That she's done being afraid of her own feelings, and that she misses how easy talking used to be when they were twelve and he was barely more than a stranger.

She stays in the arena too long, mindlessly hitting every goal post and parsing through her thoughts until a familiar voice pulls her back.

“Are you going to tell me what that was about, earlier?” Percy calls as he straps his bronze armor on. Seems like he’s the only one willing to spar with her right now.

“Are you going to tell me what that was about, earlier?” She fires back, and watches him blush.

That’s what she thought.

She huffs. “Let's just train. I know you're rusty.”

She might not be an Ares kid, but it does come easy to her, sparring. She's used to Percy's moves, how much heat he can handle, the weight of Riptide against her shield. It's the only kind of conversation she feels like having right now.

They fall into a practiced rhythm, something she wouldn't call graceful, but a sort of dance nonetheless. She likes seeing him like this, too. Focused, only on her.

There is no hesitation when he parries her hit, or when he lands a particularly heavy blow on her shield. He doesn’t hold back, neither does she. A long time ago, Luke had been the better swordsman. She doesn’t want to tell Percy he might have taken that title from him, had he stayed.

With a swift twist on her feet, she gets close enough to grab Percy’s arm and knocks the back of his knee with hers.

He falls easily, and it's with a ragged breath that she realizes he has let himself fall. All these years spent studying him for patterns she could predict. She'd never thought she'd see the day he would be doing the same. She kicks him flat in the chest, his back hitting the ground with a harsh thud, a smile growing from ear to ear.

Gods. Apollo has got nothing on him.

“Feeling better?” He asks, pure trouble.

“Don't make me kick you while you're down,” she says.

She loves him.

She cannot lose him.

𓅓

Annabeth has been longing to lead a quest since she was eight years old. Everyone knows this about her, and she’s worked her entire life at camp towards it.

Still, when Chiron gives her the go ahead and she finds herself alone in that attic, she suddenly wishes she hadn’t been so eager. Clarisse’s face, haggard and haunted is burned into the back of her mind. Chris’ drastic weight loss does not bode any better.

The Labyrinth will not care how much she has studied, how hard she has worked. It will swallow her and her companions all the same, a hungry beast without soul.

She waits for her prophecy with what she hopes is dignity, smoke billowing out of the Oracle’s emaciated face in green ribbons. The words she spews push on the scar tissue around Annabeth’s heart until they rip it right back up.

You shall delve in the darkness of the endless maze,
The dead, the traitor, and the lost one raise.
You shall rise or fall by the ghost king's hand,
The Child of Athena's final stand.
Destroy with a hero's final breath,

And lose a love to worse than death.

She doesn’t wait. She runs out and straight into Chiron’s office, eager to try and escape the weight of the words, unable to outrun them either way. She should have known the Fates would find the irony in her prayers and gift her a quest poisoned with tar.

The rage and despair she feels is such that she breaks rules twice in a day. One as old as Olympus, the other only existing in her heart.

She keeps the last sentence to herself, just like she did the Great Prophecy’s, and stares at Percy like a ghost.

The arms he wraps around her in the quietness of her cabin prove her he’s still very much here, solid and alive, and she tries as best she can to banish the thought far, far away. His heart is jack-hammering against her ear, he still smells like summer, and his mouth is resting against the top of her head.

She has thought about kissing Percy since she was thirteen years old.

Now on the edge of fifteen, she’s standing there wondering if she’ll ever get the guts to find out.

𓅓

Hera’s words echo Janus’, and Annabeth doesn’t have to look at him to know Percy’s staring like he’s trying to figure out a riddle.

She thinks about San Francisco.

She thinks about family, old and new.

She thinks about promises.

She can’t tell Percy the truth, not yet, not in the dark with Tyson crying himself to sleep and Grover as terrified as he is.

Maybe the traitor of her Prophecy is herself.

𓅓

The version of Luke who visits her in her dream is neither the one who begged on her stoop, or the one she used to know. He exists in between, both touched by Kronos and pristine, and he looks at her sad and sore.

Just like when he showed up on her doorstep, she wants to slap him. Would like to get angry again, not like she did then, cold as ice. Like the child he hurt, the sister he gave up on, betrayed, and tricked.

She never got to grieve him publicly. Luke’s name has turned sour in every mouth at Camp, drove Thalia to swear off love for eternity and is a never ending source of tension between Percy and her.

She hates him and misses him all the same, hates herself for not being able to give up as easily as the rest of them. Hates that no one will give her the grace to feel these emotions in any other way than in the dark, alone.

He has ruined everything, continues to poison all he touches. Her friendships, her home, her future. Still, for a second, seeing him so scared and in pain, she’d wanted to help.

This time, he doesn’t waste his breath on begging. The words go straight to venom.

“I wish you never got on that quest,” he spits. “I wish I’d killed him before he ever stepped foot outside of camp.”

He doesn’t mean that. Maybe he does.

Tears roll down her face, and Luke shakes his head. “You don’t get to cry, Annabeth. You brought this on yourself. I asked you for help, and you picked him. You pick him at every turn. It’s like Thalia and I never existed.”

Anger wakes her up, and she chokes it back, refusing the tears she feels coming. She cannot even grieve him while awake.

𓅓

Annabeth couldn’t tell you when it first started. When Percy stopped being a name, and became this.

The boy she’d trust even in the face of death, a boy she could draw from memory better than every landmark she had studied til her eyes burned. A boy with a hero’s soul, growing bigger and bigger by the day.

There is a non zero chance that he does not come back from this. That the prophecy writes him off as planned and Annabeth doesn't ever get to see him laugh, smile, or drool anymore.

She has never been impulsive, not since she got to camp. But here, now, with heat licking the side of his face the way the bonfire did a little more than a year ago, she can't accept only committing a sight to memory. She doesn't want a sad smile, a streak of gray, smoke dirtying his chin. She wants to feel.

She wants to know.

So, she reaches across the Rubicon without much care for the Gods' Plan or her own, and gives her first kiss away to the boy of the Prophecy.

Time stops for her.

(Does it stop for him?)

(Does it?)

She catalogues it all: Percy's lips, soft and warm against hers, the tip of his nose pressed into her cheek. Her fingers (which she cannot keep from trembling) loosely holding onto the leather cord of his necklace, not quite pulling him forward, too scared to actually hold. Giving him an out, even now.

She has fought monsters, almost got lost in the fields of Asphodel, got thrown off a cliff, been shot at. She has carried the weight of the Sky on her shoulders. She has lost brother and sister time and time again. This is by far the bravest and most terrified she's ever been.

She pulls back, ever so slightly.

He chases after her.

He chases after her.

She opens her eyes. His breath comes out as ragged as hers and his eyes look Mariana Trench blue, which is to say almost entirely black. She has never felt this alive, probably never will again. She kissed him, and he kissed her back.

“Be careful,” she whispers as a warning.

To him or herself, that one's unclear.

She puts her cap on before doing something stupid like kiss him again while he sits there, eyes shining dazed and cheeks flushed. She burns the sight so deep into her brain she makes sure it will hurt for the rest of her life before running to the safety of the shadows, heart pounding so loud he can probably hear it anyway.

He kissed her back.

Now is the time to turn away so as to not watch him leave.

𓅓

She turns anyway.

Orpheus never stood a chance either.

𓅓

The two weeks she spends planning his funeral are the worst of her entire life. So bad she can’t even remember the color of the sky above camp, or if she’s fed or slept at all.

There’s a vague recollection of Clarisse, gently pouring water on her face to scrub tears and grit away.

He can’t be dead. He can’t be.

He was alive just now, wasn’t he?

Lips on hers moments ago.

The shroud is the wrong shade of blue, campers aren’t mourning right. He can’t be, he can’t be, he can’t be.

No one has even told Sally, yet. She’s probably baking cookies or restocking the pantry in anticipation of his return.

She can’t. Annabeth has prepared for this since she was thirteen years old, and she’s still stuck in place. She stands, immobile as camp moves around her, owls cooing, as if to comfort her.

A long time ago, her mother’s disapproval had seemed like the worst thing in the world. She regrets ever paying it any mind.

If she could run it back, unravel the tapestry of choices, she would dance with him until the very end of Winter Solstice. She would tell him he’s the prettiest, most frustrating boy she’s ever met. She would watch every Star Wars movie with him, twice. She would not let go of his hand. Would kiss him without any life or death imperative, just to find out. Keep kissing him instead of running away.

She doesn’t say any of that out loud. The platitudes that come out of her mouth during the ceremony sound far away, even to her.

Then, the minute they lower the shroud into the pyre, Percy Jackson walks up the hill.

𓅓

She has never been this furious before. Like break an inordinate amount of plates mad, slap someone angry.

It is one thing for Percy to show up alive and well. It’s another for him not to mention how, and think her stupid enough not to have figured it out. So he spent two weeks on Ogygia while she was crying her eyes out, and Sally lost her mind. So they say Calypso’s curse is one of the cruelest the Gods have ever cast, such a beautiful girl all alone for millennia.

Two weeks. Fourteen days Percy won’t talk about. Fine, she’d rather not now.

The worst part is the pity. Malcolm has spent more time at the arena than at the cabin, avoiding her like the plague, Beckendorf grimaces every time he sees her across the dining tables. Clarisse is the only one daring enough to say anything about it, Brontë on her heels.

“You know you’re being stupid, right?” Clarisse cuts through the chase.

“Hey—” Brontë protests. “That’s not the tone we discussed.”

Clarisse’s eyes roll far in the back of her head. “We don’t have time for this. Annabeth, you’re too smart to behave the way you are. He’s alive. And he’s not insane,” Clarisse pushes, an edge to her voice. “Not everyone is lucky to say the same.”

She considers Chris’ face, gaunt, haunted still. Clarisse’s refusal to go back into the Labyrinth, not even for her. She’s right. Percy is alive. That should be all that matters.

Still, when he has the gall to offer up the mortal girl as an option for her quest while looking anywhere but at her, she can’t help but know she won’t make it easy on him.

What a coward, an absolute coward.

She spends the entire ride back to the city with him in complete silence, grinding her teeth to a pulp.

They don’t talk about Mount St Helens, because why would they?

Sally picks up on the shift immediately, watches her with understanding while Percy runs away from the two of them to call the girl.

She’s always been able to see through more than the Mist.

Selfishly, Annabeth finds herself wishing for Sally to be hers. Aside from Thalia, she has never had anyone to go to for advice, or to simply listen. It isn’t fair for Percy to win the lottery on parents too.

“Did he do something stupid?” Sally simply asks, her hand reaching out to hold Annabeth’s.

“No,” she replies miserably. “I did.”

𓅓

Rachel Elizabeth Dare is, of course, absolutely insufferable.

She takes everything in stride, and nothing seriously. She jumps right into the quest, uncomfortably unpredictable and surprisingly smug for someone who didn’t know about this world until two minutes ago. She butchers Annabeth’s name, which is either forgetful or plain rude, and Percy doesn’t say anything about it. Not that she needs him to fight her own battles. Rachel doesn’t seem like much of an opponent anyway, if the hairbrush in her pocket is anything to go by.

Still. She’s pretty (not her fault) in a way that feels expected. Fiery red hair and paint stains on jeans, resolutely human. And maybe she isn’t smug, just easy-going, someone adaptable. Someone who doesn’t need to plan for every outcome, who doesn’t zone in on microscopic details and struggles to get out of their own head. She laughs like it’s easy, she answers like she has nothing to hide. Honest.

The observation leaves Annabeth queasy, angry at herself for letting a mortal make her feel inadequate in any way. Anxious at the path she sees ahead. She can’t get to the center of the Labyrinth, but she can follow that thread, no issues.

She knows she’s not being fair, that she could be nicer to the girl. She just isn’t in a very charitable mood. She has never set out to be jealous, or possessive. She shares a cabin with twenty kids, and she knows damn well nothing is every really yours at camp half-blood. She has helped brothers, sisters, strangers countless times, she’s given everything to the Gods.

So it surprises her how fiercely her heart has decided to claim Percy as hers, when nothing indicates that to be true.

(Except for the fact that she kissed him. And he kissed her back.)

For the quest, and because Percy is looking at her like she’s at risk of growing serpents out of her braids, she tries. Asks her where she’s from, what her parents are like. It turns out they at least share one thing—two, if Rachel’s glances towards Percy are anything to go by— in being shafted on the parental front.

She thinks about her own. What they’d say if she were to never resurface. Athena would demand a fair assessment of her feats before considering her for Elysium. Her dad might not notice she’d gone at all.

The memory of Sally’s warm hand around hers, keeping her grounded softens her a bit.

Then Rachel jokes about something Annabeth doesn’t understand, Percy chuckles, and she’s back to square one.

𓅓

He doesn’t trust her with Luke, that much is obvious. Reluctantly, Annabeth agrees to stay back, her hat a talisman she’s reluctant to part with.

Nico shares no interest in spending time with two teenage girls, and immediately goes for a nap, traitor that he is. This leaves her alone with her thoughts— and Rachel. Trust a son of Hades to fall asleep in what is essentially a tomb.

The girl steals a couple looks at her when she thinks Annabeth isn’t paying attention, her mouth twisted and bitten quasi raw. Her incessant pacing, as well as the rubber bracelet she keeps snapping against her wrist are rapidly driving Annabeth insane.

“He’ll be fine,” Annabeth huffs when Rachel’s bracelet threatens to snap. Gods, she is so obvious about it.

Rachel nods feebly. (Okay, normally, maybe. She doesn’t know her enough to know.) “Yeah. That hat’s pretty cool, by the way.”

“Gift from my mother,” Annabeth reluctantly says. “Athena, goddess of wisdom.”

“Oh. Why a hat?”

Gods, give her strength. “Because,” she replies through gritted teeth, “Monsters can smell people like Nico, Percy and I from a mile away. The hat makes it harder to find me.”

Rachel takes it in, pensive for a blissful moment, then—“Wait. That’s all she did to protect you?” she asks, incredulous. She grimaces. “And I thought my Dad sucked.”

“It’s not her job to protect me,” Annabeth snaps, heat rising to her cheeks. “I can do that myself.”

The girl looks at her with pity then, and for a very short moment, Annabeth almost feels like smacking it out of her. Then, Rachel bites her lip again, and averts her eye. “Sorry. I shouldn’t judge. This is all.. new to me. Percy didn’t talk about that part.”

What has he talked about, then? Nope. Not going there.

“He wasn’t raised the way I was,” she offers begrudgingly.

She can’t help the bitterness and envy seeping through her voice, knows Rachel picks up on it.

“Annabeth,” she starts, her thumb picking up on her bracelet once more. “I didn’t mean to—I’m not trying to—” Rachel tries, and Annabeth truly can’t deal with this right now.

Percy’s alone with only a sword and her hat, Nico’s snoring is bouncing off the walls like crazy, and she’s forced to babysit a girl who on paper is nothing short of perfect for him. She waves her off, pushing the feeling as far away as possible.

“It’s fine. We’re good. I’m not Percy’s keeper anyway.”

Maybe he only kissed her because she was the only girl around.

𓅓

Luke isn’t Luke anymore. Pan is dead.

Percy won’t even meet her eye.

She has failed more than her quest. No amount of research, preparation, or hope has sufficed. Small human choices (she never should have kissed him, never), none of that mattered.

You will lose a love to a fate worse than death.

She’d expected it to be him. There is no respite knowing the Prophecy was talking about Luke. The edge in Percy’s voice as he makes it understood that he’s come to the same conclusion hurts like a fracture.

She stares at him, confused and frustrated.

Sometimes, she wonders if the Mist is the only thing Percy can see through.

Clarisse had warned her time in the Labyrinth passes differently. That the costs might far outweigh the gains. She had prepared for death. She had not prepared for the unbearable weight of loneliness.

It’s with Annabeth’s entire life lying in tatters that she climbs out of the exit for what she needs to be the final time. The sob that comes out of her is ugly, like a stab through the gut, a wounded doe. The last time she unraveled like this, Percy had held her until they were safe.

This time, he stands far away from her, and his eyes are red-rimmed, set on the wall.

Clarisse was right.

𓅓

Summer that year ends bittersweet and lonely. No amount of peering through Daedalus’ laptop or preparing for school makes it any better. The drachma on her bedside table lay there, unused, and Percy’s birthday passes quietly.

She wonders if Rachel got a call.

It is none of her business. There is a war looming, and a year before the Prophecy comes to a close. What Percy does in his free time should be the least of her worries.

Still, when her eyes land on the printed tickets to a movie they never got to see, she can’t help but let resentment build again.

She’d been so happy, then. Foolish, foolish girl.

The printouts lands in her trashcan without fanfare, ink blotted and edges charred. She’d never taken them out of her pocket.

She returns to her laptop with a determined sigh and a groan. There is a war to plan, she can’t afford to be distracted.

If she presses the keys a little harder than she means to, it’s purely accidental.

𓅓

Her sister slips into her room and back into her life in a flash of silver and a bow strapped to her chest.

Annabeth barely has the time to gasp before a pair of arms crush her into a hug that feels long overdue.

“I heard about Luke,” Thalia simply says, distant hurt coating her voice.

She feels the same. Smells the same. She may never be able to change, but right now, that’s a net positive.

“I’ve missed you, so much,” Annabeth whispers into the crook of her neck.

They don’t say anything else for a while. Her sister just lets her cry softly into her shoulder, soothing her with a tut and a kiss pressed against her hair. Still doting on her.

She tells him of Luke’s eyes glowing gold, strangely cold, like a corpse. Empty. Voices her fears out loud for the first time.

“I think he might be really gone, this time,” she confesses, her throat closing up again.

“He’s been gone a long time,” her sister murmurs.

She accepts the truth only in the safety of her arms, nods feebly. She cannot remember the last time she’s been touched without the intent to harm.

Family, Luke had promised.

She only lets go of Thalia when the sun starts dipping low on the horizon, the two of them taking a seat at the foot of her bed.

“What does Kelp head think?” she eventually asks, her hand circling Artemis’ silver bracelet.

“Your guess is as good as mine,” Annabeth answers moodily. This gets her a look, one she really could have lived without, and she presses. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

Thalia nods. “Ookay, so kissing him didn’t solve your issues, then.”

Her eyes widen. “How do you know about that?”

“Thelekines,” Thalia shrugs. “They don’t do much, but they sure get chatty.”

“I don’t wanna talk about it,” she repeats, fists balled up into the carpet. Gods. If Thalia knows, then the rest of Olympus can’t be far behind. Humiliation burns anew, and she flushes in shame.

“Okay, then. We won’t,” Thalia pacifies. “Boy talk isn’t really my forte anyway. And it’s not like I swore an Oath or anything.”

She glares at the floor, lavender carpeting completely at odds with her own personal tastes. Her dad had picked it when they first moved in. A good color for a teenage girl, he’d said, parroting the words of the realtor. When was the last time she’d been one of those?

It takes Annabeth thirty more seconds to give in. “I thought he was going to die.”

Thalia nods, bumps her shoulder against hers. “I could always kill him for you.”

“Thalia.”

“What! I’m a hunter. I hunt.”

“It’s just. I thought…” Annabeth starts, voice uneasy. “I thought it meant something to him.”

“Who says it didn’t?”

Her fingers catch onto the carpet. “There’s this other girl—” Gods, even to her ears, this sounds pitiful. When did she become this, this..

“Annabeth,” Thalia stares at her like she’s not the brightest demigod in her cabin. “As long as you exist, there’s no other girl. Trust me.”

“You weren’t there to see it,” she protests.

“And you weren’t there last year. It was like…” Thalia recalls. Her brows furrow. “Annabeth. I don’t think anythingexists to him outside of you.”

And it’d be nice for her if that were true, she thinks selfishly. But Percy hasn’t called, and his birthday present is gathering dust on the top of her bookshelf, right now.

She spends the rest of the afternoon carefully dodging the subject by asking her about the Hunters’ new recruits, which Thalia isn’t blind about but kindly entertains. On the back of her desk chair, her belt dangles, the knife strapped to it catching the light every so often. Thalia’s eyes rest on it for a while.

She doesn’t have to say it, because they both remember.

There was a time where this knife was everything to Annabeth, and she wouldn’t even take it off to sleep.

Thalia’s face twists in sadness, and Annabeth grabs her hand wordlessly. Luke may be gone, but his shadow reaches them even here.

𓅓

Malcolm chooses to leave Percy and her alone in the cabin, and she can’t imagine why.

(she knows exactly why)

He has grown at least an inch since they last saw each other. His gray streak still rests across his forehead, his eyes are still bluer than the ocean.

She is still terribly, horrifyingly in love with him. She’s also at the end of her rope, and profoundly angry.

Showing him the extent of the full prophecy, which she’s been carrying alone for years, doesn’t help in the slightest. Life seems to desert his face for a second, pale as a ghost but then he goes straight to deflecting, because of course he does. Percy can’t be serious even in the face of his own impending doom.

For some reason, this is the straw that breaks the camel’s back. Can’t you see, she wants to yell. How blind can he be, really? Three years now, she’s begged for a different outcome, for a different boy to be plagued with such a burden. Not him, she’d prayed to Aphrodite, offering every snack Percy ever shared to her instead, please, not him. The utter mortification of stooping so low still sticks to the sole of her shoes every time she steps past the Goddess’ cabin, and here he is, shrugging it all off.

“I knew we shouldn’t have shown you the Prophecy,” she shakes her head, frustration getting the better of her. “All it did was scare you. You run away from things when you’re scared.”

“Me? Run away?” Percy bites back, accusatory. She frowns, the nerve on this guy. Yes, she ran, but it’s not like she’d meant to leave him behind. In many ways, part of her is still buried under that mountain.

He’s the one who left. The one having a grand old time with a mortal girl, trading the fate of her world for a vacation in the sun. “Yes, you,” she says, stepping closer. “You’re a coward, Percy Jackson!”

For a second, she sees the scales tipping either way. He’s angry enough to do something stupid. She’s heartbroken enough to speak the words she swore she would never say out loud.

Then, he sighs, and she sees it tip towards her. “Maybe you should go on that vacation with Rachel,” she cuts. The effect is instantaneous. Percy steps back, as if burned.

“What? Annabeth—”

“Since you don’t like our company,” she shrugs. It’s not as bad when she’s the one breaking her own heart.

“That’s not fair,” Percy says, hurt.

Nothing is.

She loves a boy the gods are leading to the slaughter, and he’s acting like he doesn’t care.

She walks past him and into the woods. This time, when the owls are quiet, it’s only to give her space.

𓅓

From there, things go from bad to worse. Clarisse wraps herself into trivial fights like a blanket, finding any excuse not to launch her entire cabin into a war they all sense might be lost already.

She could care less about that chariot, Annabeth knows. She just wishes people would realize that too. Much like she’s left a piece of herself at Mount St Helens, Clarisse’s soul has long been fractured, leaving shards from Charybdis to Scylla, by way of the Labyrinth.

Her own people call that weakness. Annabeth calls it love.

When she stares at Brontë’s empty bed, left unmade as she’d dropped everything to lead a battalion out in Jersey, she gets it. Sending her sister to quasi-certain death is not a choice she would have made, but Brontë is her second in command. She’d made the decision before Annabeth had the chance to see her off.

She thinks of her, years ago, watching her torture herself over her hair, and whether or not a stupid boy might notice. The mirror reflects an entirely different girl, now, steely determination in her eye, battle armor almost fused to her body. Some of her braids are getting matted, and she can’t find it in herself to care.

It is August fifteen, and Kronos’ shadow has never grown longer.

𓅓

Hestia’s words echo against her ribcage, leaving her hollow.

You bear the curse of Achilles, the goddess of the Hearth had said. Percy hadn’t denied it. They hadn’t even had time to talk about it. He’d collapsed on the floor, and gazed at her with both confusion and something else, too complicated for her to dissect as he came to.

The warnings Hermes heads fall on deaf ears, her mother’s guidance towards a plan that feels both perilous and highly unlikely to succeed barely registering.

She’s too busy staring, trying to find a tell, anything different about him. His skin is still tan and dusted with grime from both camp and the trip to Olympus. The water hasn’t washed his gray streak—a strange, small comfort. On the outside, he’s the same boy she’s always known.

You’re a coward, Percy Jackson, she’d lashed out.

How long after had he drowned himself in the Styx?

Was he ever planning on telling her?

All of a sudden, the past year seems ridiculous, insignificant. She’d spent the better part of it scared, hurt, angry or torn. Annabeth decides then and there that this is the moment she puts it all behind. Pride be damned, her mother’s advice fully ignored. Had she been able to stay away from him, she would have done so years ago.

There is nothing she wouldn’t give up for Percy Jackson.

Memories of Luke’s pained face suddenly rise to the surface when she remembers she already has.

She watches the God of Travelers, overcome with guilt, trying to finds the words to apologize. She has failed him, and the fury radiating off him makes it clear that he’s aware of this. He grows tall, punishing. Gone is the friendly facade. The Olympian takes her betrayal as a father would.

“You should have saved him when you had the chance,” is all the ammunition Hermes needs.

She had wanted to help, had wanted to believe him. Then she’d thought of Thalia’s heart, broken, Percy’s wounds, his anger. He had always been mad that she kept hope for him. Mostly because it kept the door open for her to get hurt any further.

She’d closed it in Luke’s face thinking it was the right choice. Janus and the sight of the open sarcophagus had shaken her enough to doubt it.

Hermes might curse her if she doesn’t try again.

She waits until he disappears to burst into tears, shame washing over her in waves. All her life she’d feared choices, variables, thwarted plans. She’d prided herself on at least being dutiful enough to pick the right ones.

She’d picked wrong, that time, and in turn condemned them all.

The sob she lets out comes strangled, guilt choking her, and Percy’s hand on her shoulder feels entirely undeserved. The confession threatens to rip out of her, so she shuts her mouth close, forces it down. Not now, not in front of the others.

“Did you—Did you bathe in the river Styx?” She asks, even though she already knows.

Percy squirms, eventually gives in and tells her about his trip with Nico. On the matter of how he managed to stay sane, and get out of the river alive, he remains frustratingly elusive. She realizes not long after that all he did was follow Luke’s footsteps, and another sharp pain stabs her right in the chest.

“Oh, Luke..”

As has been par for the course, any mention of him has Percy stiffen, the parallels she draws between their trip to the Underworld enough for him to close up. She doesn’t have the energy to challenge him. Besides, she’s done being angry.

Instead, she searches his face for any sort of regret, or sorrow. She finds none.

She cannot blame him. He’s been stabbed, punched, thrown around, burned alive. And now, he’s meant to fight a losing battle and lose his life in the process. If anything, she should take this as a proof of life. That he’s still blasting towards Olympus kicking and screaming, only with a bit more planning.

It makes her proud, even hopeful.

There might be an after, for him. A trick surprising even the Fates.

He studies her, brows furrowed in confusion, probably trying to decipher her. Whatever he sees mellows him enough to only sigh in surrender, and press the elevator button down.

𓅓

Thalia reappears at the perfect time, a vengeful angel all dressed in silver, thirty hunters in tow. It takes Annabeth everything in her not to drop her dagger and run into her arms right there and then.

As the lieutenant of Artemis, Thalia can’t be seen showing any preferential treatment. It hasn’t stopped her from sending Annabeth letters over the course of the last two years, as well as occasionally dropping by. Still, she shouldn’t—

Her sister wraps her in a bone crushing hug, her bow discarded to the side.

“I’m so glad you’re here,” she whispers into Thalia’s hair.

It strikes her that they are now eye level with one another.

Annabeth must have grown, then. They’re both sixteen now, one forever frozen in a silver shroud, the other on the threshold of adulthood. The days Annabeth considered joining the Hunters feels like a distant memory now, fear-led.

That too is growth, she reminds herself.

It is a strange realization for her that she used to be so terrified of change, and now mourns the permanence of Thalia’s state.

She would have liked to see her grow old.

𓅓

Percy is many things. Sleek is not one of them.

He tries to maneuver her out of danger every chance he gets, readying himself for increasingly dangerous battle plans that hinge on his sole involvement. She hates every second of it.

Her mother’s words come back to haunt her, harsh but true. When they burn that bright, their flame tends to dim too soon. She had resented them then, resents them even more now. The curse of Achilles is pulling him towards an early grave that he seems eager to jump in.

She can’t even blame him. They all feel it. An undercurrent of urgency, pulsing through the Manhattan ground, monsters growing stronger, half-bloods falling more desperate. For every beast she takes, another ten show up. Even the most highly trained of soldiers can fall to odds this bad.

“if anybody can do all that, you can,” Percy reassures her as he pushes her away towards another mission. He doesn’t want her to see him die again, she figures. That mountain feels so far away from them now, ages ago—until he finds the gall to ask about it, right in the middle of it all.

A kiss for luck. The nerve on this guy.

She glares at him, all but ready for a punch until the fear in his eyes morphs into something deeper, same as the day. He is afraid to die, after all. Her heart tugs and relents—spine nowhere to be found once again.

She sighs. Still. If he wants a kiss, he might have to come and take it this time. She shakes her head. “Come back alive, and we’ll see,” she says, watching the red on his ears extend to his cheeks.

She moves to lead her battalion towards the bridge, determined not to turn back.

As she steps down the street, she feels his gaze burning a hole in her back until she’s completely out of sight.

𓅓

In the end, it isn’t a monster who gets him. It is one of theirs, a half-blood full of rage and bitterness.

She doesn’t think. She sees the knife, and leaps. In hindsight, this is probably the stupidest thing she’s done to date. Percy’s curse shields him from harm, she’s barely more than mortal. Still. It’s what they’ve always done. He saves her, she saves him. It runs deeper than muscle memory at this point.

She falls limply to the ground, barely registering a scream, or the thud of a helmet being bent out of shape.

I’m okay, she wants to reassure him. I was right where I needed to be.

She passes out shortly after that.

𓅓

She wakes on a flat bed alone, her right arm throbbing and her head swimming. She would do it ten times over.

Percy finds her not long after, kneeling almost like a knight in a painting. Wrong millennia, she wants to joke. He would like that.

His eyes are the softest blue when he’s concerned. She can’t tell if the ambrosia is causing it or if the poison has made her mellow, but she smiles at him for what feels like the first time in a year.

You’re cute when you’re worried, she thinks, maybe says out loud. He really is.

Percy’s hand refuses to leave hers, rambling about a soft spot. No. His Achilles spot. She frowns.

“Where is it?” she asks.

“On my back,” he murmurs, close, close, not close enough to her. She reaches out.

“Where? Here?”

He helps her trace a path down along his spine down to the small of his back. Around them, the air is quiet, heat burning through fabric, radiating down her fingers. His lips part in a soft breath.

This is it. His tether, electric, the only place he could ever be hurt. To her, this might be more intimate than a kiss. There is a chance she’s touching a part of his soul, right now. As her gaze gets lost in his, she realizes he would let her.

Is letting her.

There is so much she wants to say, still.

She rambles about Luke’s visit partly because she can’t stomach hiding this a minute longer than she should, partly because she trusts that he won’t read into it the way he would have just a day before. She’s thankfully right about that. He smiles at her, reassuring—Gods, she’s missed his smile.

She looks up. She must have stared into his eyes a million times over the years. In them, she’s read fear, laughter, pain, anger, confusion. In more recent years, he’s been more guarded, looking away more than meeting her eye. Scared of him reading her like a book, she hadn’t fought it.

Today is the day she lets him see.

Today is the day he shows her how much he’s been hiding, too.

His fingers are still laced with hers, he’s not running, not asking for anything. He just.. lets her see. Waits for her to take it all in. It takes a while, could be a minute, or an eternity. Kronos doesn’t have the monopoly on time.

He looks so soft, like this. So open.

She thinks he might kiss her.

She would kiss him back.

Because the Fates hate her, and Aphrodite definitely cursed them, someone interrupts them to bring news of ever evolving battles. What else is new?

𓅓

As everything threatens to collapse around her, Annabeth takes to cleaning her knife. It might be the only remnant of a crumbling routine, as well as the last keepsake of a time where Luke meant family. She can feel Percy’s eyes on the back of her neck, and the hour get darker by the minute.

They won’t have time to talk again. Around them, demigods try to get up from the rubble. They make a fine army, limping to their deaths. She shakes her head, banishing the morose thought.

They’re still standing. There is still hope.

Percy turns to her, this time the one with a confession. She’s long suspected he’d been dreaming of them. The three stooges, as Luke used to call her and Thalia. She doesn’t need to ask what he’s seen.

As she once told Chiron, she remembers. Family, broken, rebuilt, washed in rage and gilded by a Titan. It doesn’t surprise her that Thalia doesn’t believe her capable of killing Luke. She can see it in Percy, too. Doubt, even as he chooses to trust her with the revelation of a possible chip in Luke’s armor.

I don’t want him to hurt you any more, Percy confesses. He almost sounds like he’s begging. Like it’s tearing him apart to watch her suffer, a powerless spectator to a Promethean fate.

She purses her lips.

She knows the feeling well.

𓅓

She can feel the Fates toying with her still when they decide to test her resolve by bringing the mortal girl back, but Annabeth won’t falter.

She will rescue the stupid girl, because it’s the right thing to do, and because she’s Percy’s friend.

Rachel stares right through them as if ghosts in her story, which is just as unnerving as her appraising looks towards Percy used to be.

She doesn’t have time to be a girl anymore, however. She can only be Annabeth Chase, daughter of Athena, leader of a dwindling army. Whatever Rachel wants to be is not her problem.

Besides, Percy has never looked as impressed with her than when she came out of that helicopter. That ought to count for something.

𓅓

It takes Silena’s death and Clarisse’s broken rage for Annabeth to shed the last remnants of her childhood. Bodies are littered around them, orange tees soaked red.

Brontë’s lifeless corpse glares at her with empty green eyes.

She emerges from battle a completely different person, and when she climbs into the elevator, she gives Percy the words he’s been wanting to hear for four years.

“You were right about Luke.”

He does not gloat. He does not rejoice at the thought. In truth, he looks as sad and broken as Annabeth feels about it.

His hand searches for hers as she keeps her eyes resolutely forward, the sight too difficult for her to bear for long. Behind them, Grover hums something, an old tune, a song that feels a little like ambrosia and dulls the ache.

She has lost everything, including hope.

𓅓

When she faces Kronos, she doesn’t see the boy with the cereal box who gave her the knife she pushes back with. She doesn’t see the boy who told her stories to keep the monsters at bay, who made sure to let spiders know they weren’t welcome in whatever dingy place they found to spend the night.

“Family, Luke," she says, tears in her eyes. “You promised.”

This will be her only eulogy. She might never be done mourning the boy who stayed at camp for years, making sure she was okay, because of a promise they made to each other, and because he loved Thalia like she does Percy. She can’t see him anymore, but she will remember.

Her arm breaks in two places, the pain barely registering in her body, but she falls down anyway. It’s only then that Luke’s face contorts, fighting its way to the surface, and she understands the last words of the Prophecy.

She tosses her knife to Percy, begs him to do it. Prays to every God, and watches the Prophecy come to a close.

Luke stabs himself in the one spot he knows to be vulnerable, with the knife he gave her, to protect his family.

𓅓

Olympus will be rebuilt, its ruins still smoking. Athena, in her infinite wisdom, sees her need for permanence in world of perpetual turmoil. She has chosen this path, she reminds herself, but it might continue to cause her great pain.

Her mother’s pointed look as she stops breathing and Percy gets offered to bleed gold says so, anyway.

Suddenly, she sees herself at fourteen, Artemis’s silver shroud a possibility that she’d turned down in favor of a life she hadn’t been ready to give up on.

Her world gets just as quiet as Percy considers the offer, then turns back to stare at her.

She knows what he sees.

Like she said, Orpheus never stood a chance.

He turns down Zeus’ poisoned gift without a second thought, and her chest sags with relief.

He will not be the Gods’.

As they walk back to camp in silence, his hand brushes hers, and she thinks he might be hers.

𓅓

Percy’s sixteenth birthday passes quietly, funeral shrouds half burned keeping camp morose, and spirits low.

With a slow hand, Annabeth washes Clarisse’s hair like she once did hers, braids it the way Silena taught her to. Makes her bed the way Brontë did, reorders books in the Athena cabin following Malcolm’s system.

Hestia’s fires continue to burn throughout the rest of the day, and the cake Tyson helps her bake is lopsided, but probably edible.

She brings it to him as he stares off in the distance, feet dangling above the water by the docks.

His face, just like hers, is a map of loss and exhaustion.

Still, she smiles, and he notices.

She is in love with everything about him. The nervous ticks, the wild variables, the messy unknowns. The bad jokes, and even worse temper. The gray curl in his hair, the uneven tan. The dent in his cheek when he smiles, all trouble. The way he looks at her like she holds all the secrets to the universe, and then some. In awe, almost reverent.

Definitely reverent, she blushes.

He tries to tell her in so many words, stilted, awkward, chocolate cake on his fingers and water betraying his every emotion. He never learned to tame it. Soft touches of it, dew drops and tendrils dance across her skin love her the way she has always wanted him to.

She tilts his chin towards her, watches his eyes widen, then a hopeful smile form. Water kisses the edge of her lip.

Percy follows, not long after.

𓅓

Annabeth Chase has always hated change. 

Big or small, visible or internal; Change used to mean off-track, out of control. It meant throwing every pattern carefully crafted and dutifully followed out the window in favor of the terrifying Unknown.

Unknowns got you maimed, killed. hurt.

But as her hand gets lost in Percy’s hair, and she recounts the billion of small, human changes that led to this very moment, she amends her fundamental truth.

There is growth in the unknown. Possibilities, hope.

As the sun shines on her back and water blankets her like a fort, she thinks she can embrace some.