First Percy Jackson Fic. REWRITE. Used to be called Trying Again.
Read on!
"Annabeth?"
"What, Seaweed Brain?"
Percy and his girlfriend, Annabeth were laying on the sand of the beach at Camp Half-Blood. Percy had his hand intertwined in Annabeth's, and the gentle rushes of the waves made everything around them seem so peaceful.
"Have you ever thought about death?"
Annabeth tensed, and pushed herself onto her elbows. "What do you mean? Why? Have you?" she said, an edge to her voice.
"I mean, like what do you want to do after death?" Percy soothed.
Annabeth relaxed, and slid back into the sand. Placing her hands on her stomach, she sighed.
"I don't know, Percy. I don't really think about it. It's kind of a dark subject, you know," pointedly looking at Percy, who shrugged.
"But I guess, I would want to try for rebirth so I could possibly get into the Isle of the Blest. I mean, I wouldn't exactly like to spend the rest of eternity in the Fields of Asphodel or something. Elysium would be good, but you know me."
Percy laughed. "You were always the overachiever."
Annabeth smiled. "Well, you're always the underachiever."
"Touché."
"What would you do, Seaweed Brain?"
"I would try for rebirth too, I guess. But only 'cuz I could be with you in the Isle of the Blest."
Annabeth blushed and grinned, slipping her hand back into Percy's. She leaned her head against his shoulder, breathing in his salty boy smell.
Everything around them was so peaceful, and finally the way she wanted it. No wars, no fights, no Percy-almost-dying. Just the gentle rush of waves on the seashore.
Psh. How long will THAT last? Annabeth thought, sarcastically, before she dozed away in the sand, her hand still clasped with Percy's.
All was quiet.
3 months later
"Percy! Behind you!" Annabeth shrieked, tortured, while watching her boyfriend on a quest she had not been able to take part in.
She had summoned an Iris-message in order to check up on Percy, only to find that he and Clarisse were battling a group of three Cyclopes.
Percy turned, startled to hear Annabeth's voice, but at the same moment, the biggest Cyclopes clubbed him in the back, and he crumpled to the ground.
"Percy!" Annabeth cried, helpless, her voice cracking, and she frantically prayed to whatever god could help her that she could be with her boyfriend.
Oh gods, please let me be with him right now. Please, I NEED TO BE WITH HIM, she panicked. Percy had not gotten up. He always got up.
Suddenly, there she was, on the battlefield, next to Clarisse. She was battling the two Cyclopes on her own, and the third was slowly making his way over to her.
The buff girl just stared at her.
"When did you get here?" she said, but Annabeth ignored her, searching the area for Percy.
From behind her, Clarisse let out a small cry, and she whirled around. The Cyclopes had Clarisse in its meaty fists, and it was squeezing her. Clarisse was slowly turning blue.
Sprinting forward, Annabeth whipped out her dagger, and with a jump and a downward thrust, she plunged the dagger into the heart of the monster.
The Cyclopes let out a bellow, dropped Clarisse, who lay on the ground, gasping, and with a last shout, he evaporated into dust.
The other two started forward, but Annabeth was too fast for them. Her heart pounding with adrenaline, she quickly finished them off.
With the Cyclopes gone, Annabeth whirled around again to look for Percy.
There he was, lying limply in the grass. Annabeth sprinted over to her boyfriend, and fell to her knees, leaning over Percy's battered body. She let out a small cry at all the cuts and gashes on his body.
Clarisse ran over, having finally gotten up from her near-death experience. She put two fingers in Percy's neck, and shook her head.
"I'm sorry, Annabeth. There's no pulse."
"That's impossible!" she shrieked. "Percy was under the Curse of Achilles! He can't be dead!"
Clarisse's eyes looked sadly at the distraught girl. "The Cyclopes hit him on the lower part of his back. I'm sorry."
Annabeth let out a horrible cry that shook the woods around them, and echoed for miles around. Then she burst into tears and flung herself onto Percy's limp body.
"Why? What did he ever do?" she sobbed, her body shuddering with every breath she took. "No. No! NO! Percy!"
She took him by the shoulders, shaking him, and still crying. "Wake up, Percy! Wake up! Come back!" she cried.
But Percy remained limp. Annabeth furiously kissed his lips over and over. "Come on! Seaweed brain! Wake up! Come on!"
Eventually, Annabeth stopped kissing Percy, as his lips had finally gone cold. She sat there, on her knees, head down, and sobs started to wrack her body. She leaned down, lying her face down on Percy's cold chest, and cried.
He was gone.
Hours later, when a search team came to find Percy, they found Annabeth still softy weeping into Percy's shirt, which was now soaked through with her tears.
Chiron gently lifted the crying girl onto his back, where she kept her eyes shut, and just gripped him tightly. Tears still streamed out, and she shook with silent sobs. Nobody spoke.
The search party returned with Annabeth and Clarisse an hour later. Annabeth was finally asleep, which was good, so she didn't have to look at Percy's limp body being carried into Cabin Three.
Annabeth's grimy face was streaked with tears, and even in sleep, she looked pained. Chiron prayed that Morpheus would grant her a peaceful night's sleep that night.
He watched as Clarisse, showing her soft side, gently tucked the heartbroken girl into her bed.
All was quiet.
Annabeth groggily got up the next morning, after a horrible night's sleep. She thought of Percy, remembering his smile, the amazing way his eyes lit up when he was near the ocean, his hand intertwined in hers...
She shook her head as tears started to form in her puffy red eyes again. The only way she was going to be able to get through the day was to keep herself together, and that wouldn't happen if she kept thinking about Percy's dimples, his shaggy black hair, and the way it fell just so across his forehead...
It was harder that she thought it would be. She started to cry again, but the bells rang, signaling the start of breakfast. She walked out the door, forgetting to put new clothes on or brush her hair.
Annabeth walked into the pavilion, looking like a troll doll with her giant afro hair, but people took one look at her face and immediately felt her pain. It was all in her eyes. They were filled with heartbreaking pain and sadness.
Annabeth sat down at the Athena table, and everybody crowded around her, murmuring their sorrow and apologies, saying that they knew how she was feeling.
But they don't, she thought. They didn't love him the way I do. They didn't know what it was like to watch him as he looked at me. They never saw how his eyes lit up whenever he was near the sea. I loved him. I wanted to have kids and grow old with him. But now... I can't. And they'll never feel my pain.
She stood up and wiped the tears from her cheeks. She went over to the offering fire, and scraped all of her food into the fire. She wasn't hungry. So she sent a silent prayer to her mom. Just let me die. I want to die.
The last thing that Percy remembered was Annabeth's scared face, looking at him through an Iris message, crying out his name.
He sat up, and then realized he had been lying down. Percy took in his surroundings, and came to terms that he was in the lobby of the Underworld in LA.
Percy stood up, and a pain shot down his back, and then disappeared. Percy hoped he had a drachma so he didn't have to wait in the lobby for all eternity, like many there.
Aha! He had one, and he walked up to the front desk, where Charon was eyeing him.
"Finally dead sonny, or just trying to sneak in again?" he asked, with no humor in his voice.
"I'm dead," Percy said, his voice cracking. He was dead.
He silently handed Charon the drachma, and with a nod, the boatman led him to the elevator, which was already packed with people.
After a long ride, Percy reached the Judgment Pavilion, where Thomas Edison, George Washington, and Shakespeare voted him able to go to Elysium if he chose to. Percy told them that he would rather be reborn, and try for Isle of the Blest. Shakespeare nodded, saying that he was a brave boy.
Mrs. Dodds came to collect Percy. She gave him a sickening smile, and laughed. "Couldn't stay alive, honey?"
Percy ignored her. He was thinking about Annabeth, and wondering if he would ever get to see her again. Probably not.
Mrs. Dodds and Percy finally reached the River Lethe.
"Jump in, honey." the Fury said cruelly.
Percy took a deep breath, and with Annabeth in his mind, he jumped.
Annabeth was miserable. It had been four months since Percy's sudden death, and not once had she smiled. She had sat in her room, on her bed, just wasting away. She didn't eat. She didn't drink. She barely slept.
She only drank and ate what Chiron practically forced down her throat.
Her body grew frailer and frailer every minute as she lay in bed, remembering all of her memories and all the special places that she had with Percy. All her special memories floated through her brain in random orders, like waves.
The sparkling lake where she and Percy had shared their romantic underwater kiss, and Clarisse and the others had started panicking when they hadn't come up after 20 minutes.
Percy's stunned face when she kissed him at Mt. St. Helens.
Percy's strong face looking up at her on the beach, the day that they had spoken about death.
Percy coming back from Calypso's island, and the jealousy she felt deep down in the pit of her stomach.
Percy slowly changing back into a human after being a guinea pig at Circe's island.
She remembered Riptide, gleaming in the sun, as he destroyed another monster.
Percy struggling, tortured, holding up the weight of the sky, as she herself had done.
Annabeth reached up and touched the gray streak in her hair, remembering how Percy's was an exact copy.
She remembered she would never be happy without him.
Annabeth sank further back into her pillow, her heart rate slowing down. Her breathing was raspy, and finally she started to slip away.
She saw Hermes coming closer and closer to her, his winged shoes flapping. He traveled down a far away tunnel of light that slowly reached its warm rays to her spirit, as her body grew cold. Her heart shuddered to a stop, and her spirit rose slowly out of the cold body.
And for the first time in a long time, she smiled.
Annabeth slowly woke up next to Charon's desk. He was peering at her, and then asked her if she had a drachma.
She reached into her pocket, and to her surprise, she found one there. She handed it to him, and he said nothing as he took it.
Annabeth was granted access to Elysium by Charles Dickens, Amelia Earhart, and Daedalus, but she remembered the conversation she and Percy had had so long ago.
"I choose rebirth."
16 years later
Beth walked down the street with a hop in her step. It was her birthday, and the best one yet. She was going to get her drivers license now, and her parents would be so proud!
Beth was an 'A' student in all honors and AP classes in her junior year of high school. Nobody knew where she got her smarts from; her parents were both artists that had basically failed out of high school. Beth had a smart yet pretty, tough girl image she had to uphold.
Besides her parent's lack of smarts, Beth had had a perfectly happy life, but something inside her had always felt empty, like something was missing from her life.
Beth's curly blonde hair swished against her shoulders as she walked, and her gray eyes took in everything around her.
However, they missed the boy walking towards her, who was not paying any attention to where he was going, and was completely oblivious to Beth's approaching figure.
Beth, caught up in studying the architecture of the nearest building, didn't see the boy either.
She crashed into him, head on, and fell to the sidewalk. She looked up, and saw a gorgeous black haired boy with the most intense green eyes she had ever seen looking concerned at her.
Her heart thudded hard in her chest, so loud she was sure he could hear it. "Sorry," she said meekly.
"That's okay," the boy said, as he got up and swept dust off of his dark jeans. Then he helped her to her feet, taking her petite hand in his.
Beth's face burned. This beautiful boy was holding her hand. Holding her hand. Beth had never had a boyfriend before, but in fifth grade, she had a crush on an older boy named Lucas. Her stomach had felt fluttery whenever she saw him walking home from the high school.
But with this boy, this boy, he was different. Beth's chest burned, and she felt like she was going to barf.
Was this love at first sight? Beth didn't know, and for some reason she felt like this wasn't the first time she had seen him.
Beth realized she was staring, and brought herself back to reality. Her cheeks flushed. She let go of the boy's hand, but her hand still tingled where he had touched it.
Beth let go of her jitters, and decided to make the first move. "Hi, I'm Beth. Sorry for walking into you."
She stuck her hand out for him to shake.
The boy laughed. He had a nice laugh, and it made Beth feel good inside. Everything about this boy made her feel good and tingly inside.
"Hi," he said, taking her hand in his. "I'm Preston. Nice to meet you."
Their eyes met, and Beth's breath caught. There was something very familiar about this boy.
Preston hesitated. "This is weird, but I don't think this is my first time meeting you. Do you go to my school?"
"I go to Brookline High School. Where do you go?"
They were still holding hands. It felt right to both of them. Their hands fit together like they were made perfectly for each other.
"Oh. I go to Marshall Private School. Oh well, it doesn't matter," he said, looking into the Beth's sparkling gray eyes and her blonde curly hair that, for some reason, had a tiny streak of gray in it.
Just like his.
Without saying another word to each other, they clasped hands, and walked down the street, just looking into each other's eyes, looking deep into one another's souls.
At the corner, Preston stopped, and took a hold of Beth's other hand.
"Beth," he said, his voice raspy, almost a whisper. "This is so strange. I just met you, yet I feel like, I feel... like I have to do this."
Preston leaned in, and then slowly and tentatively pressed his lips to Beth's.
Beth tensed, and then relaxed right into him, kissing him passionately. It was strange, yet it just felt, right.
They stood there kissing; on the corner, barely knowing each other, yet knowing everything about one another.
The noise around them stopped as they kissed.
All was quiet.
R&R!
Love, Isabel :D