[Hey everyone! This is wisedomsdaughter (no, I did not spell it wrong. Check my profile)! My first fanfiction, because I had a fail of a computer that didn't allow me to log on, and apparently you can't post stories using your iPad. So it took me a lo-o-o-ong time before I could actually post something, but there you are! Review and I will try to PM you…eventually. If you want to flame, please tell me why it sucked. Thanks!]

Annabeth wanted to cry.

Why couldn't that damn Hera just leave her alone? She'd done everything. She suffered for so long, until Percy came into her life. Then she had Aphrodite toy with her feelings, Luke's feelings, Percy's feelings. She and Percy had saved the world, saved Olympus, saved the gods. They'd had a relationship, for a few amazing, fantastic months, and Annabeth thought that maybe, just maybe, that the gods would give them a break.

Then Percy disappeared. She remembered it as clear as crystal, broken chips of sharp crystal jabbed into her brain, stuck there forever like some ugly mold. It was a beautiful day. It was breakfast time, and in those sweet, short months they'd made a ritual; Percy would laze in bed in his shorts and Annabeth would go over and wake him up with a kiss and they'd walk to breakfast together (with the Athena cabin trailing after them, of course). So that fateful morning, Annabeth had gone over with a huge smile on her face and went in to find…nothing. Everything was in place; his desk was covered in a pile of dirty clothes he'd sworn to take out, there was a Snickers bar wrapper on the ground, a pair of his old sneakers hanging from his bedpost, but he himself, Percy Jackson, was gone.

At first she figured it was all just a joke. That he was hiding somewhere and would try and scare her when she walked past. So she'd checked the bathroom, under the bed, threatened with the silent treatment, but nothing. So she'd brought her cabin to breakfast swearing that she'd kill him the next time she saw him. Breakfast passed without a trace of him. Annabeth was scared. Yes, she, the Annabeth Chase, was worried about her seaweed brained idiot boyfriend! She knew he wouldn't miss breakfast for the world, and he couldn't have planned a surprise just for her by himself.

She looked everywhere. She looked behind every cabin, searched the woods (with the help of some friendly nymphs), checked the beach, scoured the amphitheatre, turned the whole camp upside down and came up with a familiar nothing. She reported his missing to Chiron, and made every camper at Camp Half-Blood look for him. She prayed to Athena for help, but didn't get a reply. At lunch, she burned offerings for Poseidon and Aphrodite, praying for Percy to come back. Before dinner, coming back empty-handed, she called Sally with her call phone and told her tearfully about Percy's disappearance. They cried to each other and she sprinted over to Percy's apartment to cry.

Percy…his name was printed everywhere. Everywhere she looked, she was reminded of Percy…how Percy led her down one dead-end alley where they encountered a hellhound; how Percy had dragged her into a café he claimed had the best chocolate cookies and they'd had a picnic in Central Park which quickly turned into a water-fight; how Percy had complained about how he was sure books just un-lodged themselves from their shelves to fall on his head and get him in trouble with the librarian…

Annabeth missed him. She refused to let anyone near her because they always set her off on the wet-works, until finally Rachel dragged her to her cave to have a girl-talk.

"Annabeth, I'm your friend. We're all your friends. If you want to talk, please know that you can say anything to me." Rachel said, sitting cross-legged on the rug with a plate of candy in her lap.

Annabeth kept quiet. She tried not to focus on the colors of the rug, how they looked like Percy's eyes, how the purple of the curtains looked like Percy's English notebook…

"Annabeth." Rachel put the tips of her fingers under Annabeth's chin and lifted her face up. "Talk to me. Just talk."

Then the dam broke. Annabeth sobbed, said things she couldn't even remember, talked so fast about things so random she wasn't sure Rachel could keep up, but she just kept going and going until she ran out of steam. Then she cried for who-knows-how-long.

"Annabeth, you don't have to worry about Percy," Rachel soothed. "Remember Percy? He fought the Minotaur when he was twelve, and won. He had lived, Annabeth. Remember when Percy blew up the volcano, and everyone thought he had died? He didn't, though. He had lived."

And so she had gathered herself together and searched for him outside of camp. She used up hundreds of drachmas IM-ing random people, random places where he might be. She and Blackjack flew around where she thought he might be, and when she felt drained and weak and helpless and scared, she tried to remember what Rachel had said.

He had lived. He had won, killed every monster coming his way, and he had lived.