When Percy first fell to the ground, Annabeth couldn't quite believe it.
Not here. Not in the midst of a battle they'd managed to win. Not when his voice, bright and victorious and calling her name, had rung through the air and collided with her own screams when she had realised that this wasn't a victory. Not to her. Not to a camp that had launched into yells of delight, pounded their fists in the air as they ran towards the son of Poseidon, and then stopped. Stood still.
Saw the blood that streaked his face, the closing of two seagreen eyes, the defeated body of a boy who'd never been deafeated before. Killed an empousai to have it kill him. And when she saw his grin, mouth open so she could still see his tongue on his teeth as he pronounced her name, she whispered his back. And then screamed it. And heard the sounds coming from her own body as though they weren't hers anymore. She fell to the ground, clutching his hand to find his sword closed in on itself, penform, lid tight as though it would never open again.
Orange tshirts blurred, hooves clattered, a wail escaped her lips as a blue shroud, decorated with a trident, covered her boyfriend. Her best friend.
The world of demigods and campfires seemed to pass her by, the storm in her grey eyes seeping away in her tears. But all she saw, time and time again, was the jerk of Percy's head as it hit the ground, brute force arching him back onto his heels before he fell. Time passed her by, and she would never forget that.
And as Camp Half-blood called back to her, Chiron consoled her, friends coaxing her to come home, hug them, grieve together, she did not. Not when he wouldn't be there to welcome her.
No god could help her, now. Not even her mother's words could rouse the hold his death left, keeping her under like seaweed around her legs as she struggled forward. 'Seaweed brain.'
For a moment, Sally Jackson's grieving face came to mind, pain in Annabeth's stomach at the crumpling of her body as she swallowed the news. Her son.Never coming home. To either of them.
But the night brought her to the beach where they had sat to watch the fireworks, and dreams of Hoover Dam, fighting monsters, kisses, arguments, responsibility to herself, her home, and eyes that understood without asking …
The waves lapping against her feet sent her the smell she would never sense on him again. But looking at the horizon, she felt him, sleeping along the tide, the edge, the bubbles along the foam. And she dried her eyes, stood up,chin raised high as though a hand had set it there.
Annabeth put a leg in front of her. And then another. And another. A repeated line of something she'd heard before, though she couldn't place where, formed on her lips to take her home; Truer now than it ever had been:
Wisdom's daughter walks alone.
Wisdom's daughter walks alone.
Wisdom's daughter walks alone.