Orokid: So... I just finished up reading the first book of the series and I decided "Hey, might as well write a fanfic for it now" and... Okay, I admit there was more of a thought process. Sort of. It was more that I finished the book an hour ago, and I sat down instead of continuing to clean my room. I saw my computer and, all of a sudden, a fountain of ideas seemed to spurt within my head. Oddly enough, I decided to actually sit down and write instead of letting it disappear as quickly as it had come. I wrote this in probably less than a half an hour, and I didn't bother to do anything more than read through it two or three times. Hopefully, that's enough, and there aren't that many errors.

This is my first Percy Jackson fanfic, and I kind of like it the way it is. I wanted to write something when I picked up the book, although I admit first person point of view is sometimes hard for me to follow once in a while. Nonetheless, I still wrote something- which, to me, is awesome since I don't seem to be able to write all that much anymore. X3

Disclaimer: I have no ownership to anything that has to do with the books or the characters. I own my life, and that's about it. Sometimes, I wonder if I even own that.

Should Have

She should have hated him.

She had read the stories, felt the frustration her mother had felt with Poseidon the day that she had met him, recalled the various things that their parents had once fought over throughout the many millennia. She knew all of the things that should have fueled her desire to overcome his heroics with her own, to prove herself more worthy than the son of the great three. She should have hated him based on his actions alone, jumping head first into things without thinking a plan through, slashing his sword without any more than a gut feeling to pull him this way and that.

But she couldn't. No matter how quick he was to raise his sword in the air to fight for the gods, no matter the things in the past that had gone on between the goddess Athena and the lord of the oceans, she couldn't bring herself to hate someone who would think nothing of himself and would make sure that she and their friend was okay. The logic that had been instilled within her to resent the blood of the sea did nothing to her, did nothing to stop her from watching him silently with her cool grey eyes and carefully analyze his every move.

She didn't even notice how much she used to do it before then, but she came to realize it the more she did it. Her eyes would always somehow find him, whether he liked it or not, and she would quietly watch as he'd work on a maneuver that was probably a tad bit harder than a new camper at Camp Half-Blood could do. She didn't look for weaknesses in his steps (although it wasn't hard at all to find them), nor did she memorize them for the intention of battle in the near or distant future. She watched him because she wanted to.

She watched him because something within her needed to.

She bit the inside of her lower lip, gnawing upon the inside of her mouth lightly as she attempted to find the logic within her thoughts and feelings. He was nothing more than whom she called 'Seaweed Brain', nothing more than a nuisance who was the son of a god who shouldn't have had children. Her birth had been something her mother had done during a fleeting romance with a mortal, a sanctified birth which didn't cause the Earth to rumble at her very existence. He wasn't even supposed to be alive, let alone conceived- and yet he still stands, his eyes brooding like a storm above the waves, processing things and a destiny that she has yet to understand.

A destiny that she's still a part of, whether she liked it or not- although a part of her still yearned for the chance to prove herself to the gods as a child of Athena, wise and yet dangerous, knowledgeable about both war and life without it. She had always wanted to chance her skills upon a quest, and through him, through the boy she had often called names, she had found herself able to do exactly what she wanted to. She had fought the servants of Aries and Hades alike, and lived to tell the tale only because she had gone alongside him, the boy who shouldn't exist.

At times, she knew that she could feel her mother watching her, proud about her daughter's accomplishments. Others, she could feel her mother's blood boil within her veins, frustrated with something that her daughter had yet to understand- although she normally chalked it up to the idea that it was because she had befriended her mother's enemy. Whether it was something more than that, something beyond the words of friendship, something she both feared and appreciated, she didn't want to acknowledge it yet.

Silently, she watched as he slowly turned with his sword in hand, body sweating beneath the heat of the sun's brutal rays, his blue orbs watching the intelligent grays that gazed softly at him. The murky, mysterious depths of his ocean colored eyes cleared to show a happiness that she had yet to understand, although she knew that it was only a matter of time. She herself was slowly coming to terms with what her heart and mind tried to tell her.

She should have hated him- and yet, no matter how hard she tried, it was very much the opposite.

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Orokid: Not sure what to say about this other than it is my first attempt at this particular fandom as well as at the character types. I'm sure I'll get better when I start reading through the other books, but this is (I think) fine for the moment. I hope I get Annabeth's feelings down about Percy enough, and that you, the reader, enjoyed it. Please tell me if you do, don't, or if you like purple ice cream. It's cool no matter what you want to say. :3