A/N: This is my first story, so please be kind. ^^ Dont hesitate to review honestly,though. This was inspired by someone (I wont vulger names) on devianART who openly expressed their disllike of Annabeth, and proceeded to go in depth about her lack of character development and how she was all bad for Percy. I have nothing against expressing your opinion,but I had to write this to convince myself about all the things I previously thought of her...
Ill shut up now.
Annabeth was brave.
Wise daughter of Athena, the goddess of war. It kind of came with the territory. She'd taken on people, tackled problems, and battled creatures that belonged in nightmares... and never seemed to stay there very long. But hey, no big deal right? It'd been her specialty since age seven. Yep, if she could handle Medusa, Psirens, Furies, a goddess with serious PMS, and her father (she definently saw the resemblance), she could handle anything. All she had to do was stay level-headed and keep moving forward. Yeah, she could do this...
'Were you ever alone before?'
She caught her breath.
The idea left her starstruck. Come to think of it, was she? Even as she was starting out, a seven year old half blood runaway on the streets, she had stumbled across Thalia and Luke. She never would have made it without them. Her mind started to boggle, like when she tried to read the textbooks at school, as her thoughts trailed off to the next situation. Medusa? No, she hadn't done that alone. She'd had a quest then. That was the only way she had made it out of camp to begin with. The Psirens? No way. She wouldn't be sane, much less alive right now. She continued down the list until there was only one left.
The Titan War.
That was a no-brainer. She had lost so many friends in that fight; Beckendorf, Silena, even some of her own cabinmates. No. No way she would try to take credit for that. She hadn't done anything worth merit.
Well... Except saving a certain seaweed brain.
He'd told her himself she had guarded his Achille's heel, and even if she hadn't noticed it at the time, she damn well knew that was 100% her. A smirk crawled unto her lips as she reminisced of all the other times she'd saved his neck. Shewas the one who'd pushed him off the bench seconds before Aunt Em, a.k.a Medusa, petrified him into a permanent garden knome. Shewas the one who'd covered him while he was (supposed to be) escaping off of a bus full of Furies. Shehad figured out how to get out of the Labyrinth. She even had the laptop to prove it. Annabeth laughed, letting her head lean forward. Maybe it had gotten so big her neck could no longer support it. Her hair fell in front of her eyes. As she went to brush it back, she focused on a small section of her bangs. It was discolored from the rest of it, being blonde. This part had faded to a gray-ish shade, almost like it had aged before the rest of her. Her stomach felt tight and her eyes started to burn as a single realization made it's way to the front of her mind.
He had taken the sky for her.
Her hands trembling, she hit rewind on her montage of memories.
Their first fight with Medusa. Yes, she'd been the one to keep him from looking at Medusa, but he'd been the one to kill her, not Annabeth. And on the bus with the Furies, shed given him her hat to turn him invisible and escape, but he'd used it to turn around and save her. He'd jumped in the ocean to keep her from being possessed by the Psirens magic, even when shed forced him to let her hear them. He'd been equally, if not more brave in the Labyrinth, and in the fight with Kronos... She didn't even want to think of how much she owed him. That was it. The tears were falling now. There was no more pretending.
"Oh gods... Percy...!"
She shot up, and looked around. He had to be here, he couldn't just be-
There was nothing.
Everywhere she looked, there were endless pine trees, and in one direction, an even wider sea. The summer wind brushed her face like his hand used to, and she could swear on the River Styx she smelled him all around her.
She was crying now, really crying.
All the feelings that made her whole body shake, that made her heart feel like it had been rung out like a towel, that made it impossible to have one sane thought, or to take one breath without screaming, she let out in sobs that didn't suit someone as composed and strong and mature as she was.
Or rather, as she seemed to other people.
Truth was, Annabeth wasn't any of those things. She couldn't have been. If you had asked anyone, they would beg to differ, and seven months ago, she would have done the same thing. But Percy had held it in place. The four years since she'd met him, he changed her. He broke pieces of her, fixed them, and even created new ones, all in such beautiful wrapping. She'd let him so close. Thinking... knowing he was her permanent.
That seaweed brain was what kept her together.
And there was no way she could do this. Not alone.
