Dependency
Disclaimer: I do not own this. Thank you for your time.
Annabeth Chase is a child of Athena and that, she knows, is not only responsible for her wisdom or her creativity, but it is also responsible for her independent nature.
An independent nature that she nurtured as she grew up with a distant father, which broke free when she ran away, and that subdued as she met Thalia and Luke – an independent nature that had since become stronger because of Thalia's loss and Luke's sorrow. One that not even Chiron or her own brothers and sisters could break, one that she thought no one would be able to break.
Until she met Percy Jackson.
A boy from the prophecy that Chiron had allowed her to read years ago, a boy she knew would most likely die.
And she became dependent on him.
Had Annabeth realized it earlier, she would have tried harder to prevent it: a child of Athena becoming dependent on a son of Poseidon? The thought was as preposterous as it was aggravating. She did not want him and she certainly did not want to need him. Annabeth knew that people were temporary and their presences fleeting, the only person she was sure would be a constant in her life was herself.
Yet, as quest after quest occurred, as battle after battle was won, Annabeth slowly came to the realization that something had changed. It wasn't just Percy or the new hero he had become or even his changing physical appearance; no, something had changed between them, something had changed in her. She no longer fought his every decision or even his very presence (if anything she sought him out). She could no longer call him a friend without feeling as if the word was not accurate enough and yet thinking of them as more than friends would cause her to blush profusely. She could read him better than anyone else and the flaws that she noticed in him made him appeal all that much more to her.
Annabeth fell in love him. She, an independent child of Athena, had chosen to bind herself to another person in the most trying of ways.
And now here she was, searching for that same Percy Jackson who had disappeared days ago. A disappearance that had caused a strain in her with every breath and thought.
Annabeth had let herself become dependent on another person, worst of all she had let herself become dependent on Percy Jackson, and like all of the people Annabeth depended on, he had left her.
She had fallen and she needed him to pick her up, she needed him to help her, and that very thought of dependency (so against her nature) disgusted her.
AN: So, my first story for Percy Jackson and it's a little bit angsty. Mostly, I just wanted to focus on Annabeth's almost total inability to function when Percy was gone during "The Lost Hero", I just thought it was really interesting once you remember who her mother was and really how she acted early on in the series. Anyway, that was my two cents, I hope you enjoyed it!