1. a girl falls
.~.
She is teetering on the edge of a cliff when Percy spots her.
How are you? his eyes ask, not daring to say the words allowed. After all, she is only as opaque as a window, and he can look right into her.
"I didn't know it would hurt this badly," she whispers, answering the question that never needed to be answered. But somehow speaking has a soothing rhythm to it, and once she starts, she can't stop.
Hot, sleepless, summer nights, she thinks. Back when she was two and they would sit on the porch swing together, rocking gently.
"There's Hercules," her father would point and the stars would somehow come to life, forming this complicated puzzle that somehow turned specks of light into things.
He doesn't know what to say. She can see it in his eyes. Perhaps she is out in the open, but love is blind, so what can he possibly see?
"Annabeth-" he reaches out towards her.
"I told myself it wouldn't hurt when he died," she has lied to herself, and it has created a hole inside of her. "I didn't think I would care. Why do I care so much?"
"He was your father." the words are strained, hurting, like words often are. Percy reaches for her arm. She lets him have it.
"But I didn't care." She lets a single tear fall down her cheek, the memory of a lost childhood.
"Because you were afraid?" the words strike her, push her off the cliff. And she falls. The girl falls.
She is sobbing in his arms now. "I didn't know it would hurt this badly, Percy. Why does love hurt?"