Just a little passion project!

If you like this, please check out my story Oceans Away, and maybe provide some feedback on another story I'll continue later on, called Wordlessly.

I hope you enjoy!

When he saw that girl with the honey-blonde hair glare at him like he had just stabbed her puppy, he didn't know what to think.

To be fair, he wasn't really in the mood to think. He had just lost his mother. He had almost been killed by some psycho bull-man. He had just learned that his best friend was half donkey. Or was it half goat?

I mean, yeah sure. She was kind of cute. But he wasn't even properly conscious, let alone in shape to answer some girl asking him if he was "the one".

By the time he had woken up and gone on a full-blown quest with her, however, he realized that maybe he had made a new friend - a friend for life even. She was annoying. And bossy. And a major know-it-all. But everything around him was changing faster than the speed of light. It would be nice to have someone to hold him through it.

Percy didn't know what her problem was.

I mean, yeah, Tyson wasn't the most attractive. And the fact that he had one eye was a slightly disconcerting. But he was still human. Or, well, half-human. At the very least, she could treat him like one. More importantly, he didn't get why Tyson's presence made her constantly angry at Percy. Girls are weird, huh?

But she was still his friend. And he would stand by her no matter what. Against the son of Hermes. The Sirens. Polyphemus.

After having nobody in his life to turn to (apart from Grover, Chiron, and his mother), he sure as heck wasn't going to lose her. Weirdly, he felt like he might even jump in front of a sword for her. And he had only known her a year.

So once she made peace with her past and became friends with Tyson, he felt proud. And maybe a little softer towards her. Maybe Annabeth wasn't that bad. Maybe there was more to her than she let on.

She was his friend, after all. And he wasn't going to let her go.

Puberty was depressing.

The one shot he got at dancing with his best friend was in a high school gym surrounded by people they didn't even know. Which, of course, doesn't sound too bad if you actually know how to dance. Or if you're actually taller than your partner.

But no. He had to be the scrawny, clumsy one, awkwardly shuffling around to a nonexistent beat, embarrassing himself with every step he took, every word that stumbled out of his mouth.

Yet, when he lost her, that was the memory he kept coming back to. That was the moment that he kept wanting to relive, over and over like a record on repeat. As he traveled along the east coast, tearing down everything in his past just to get an inkling of knowledge about where she was and whether she was okay, he recalled every little movement of their feet. The feel of her cool hands against his clammy ones. That twinkle in her eye that put him on top of the moon.

He missed her. Badly. And when he got her back, it felt like cold water dripping down his throat after weeks of dehydration.

That day, in the throne room of Olympus, he recreated that strange little dance. The shuffling of their feet to their own personal song was the only thing that mattered to Percy. Screw Atlas. Screw the gods. Screw every single monster who dared to keep him from getting his Annabeth back.

All he needed was her.

He liked spending time with Annabeth. He really did.

But he didn't realize that he loved it so much that what seemed like five minutes in an underground cavern somehow turned into an hour.

When she got her first quest, he had mixed emotions. He was proud of her for finally getting what she had always wanted. But he was scared for her life. He couldn't bear to lose Annabeth again. Not after last winter. And if he lost her permanently…

Gods, he couldn't even imagine.

So when he feigned being the calm one, patting her back and inhaling her lemon-scented shampoo, he swore to himself that he would do anything he could to protect her. Even if it meant sacrificing his own life.

Of course, he didn't think it would actually come to that. Yet, Percy found himself in that very situation, yelling at her to leave while the volcano around them spat out fountains of liquid fire. That's when she surprised him with that kiss.

And throughout his time on that lovely island, all he could think of was the taste of her lips. The feel of her breath on his cheek as she bid him goodbye. As sweet of a farewell as that was, he didn't want that moment to be their last. So he came back.

And was promptly disappointed. She seemed to hate his guts for the rest of the quest. Yelling at him, hating on Rachel, pining after Luke…

But he would wait for her. He would stay with her every step of the way, even if she didn't want him to. He would be right by her side until she decided she wanted to be right by his. And if she didn't… well, he would cross that bridge when he got to it.

Either way, he would never leave her alone again. Because as far as Percy knew, a relationship that started with a kiss on top of an active volcano filled with man-eating monsters was definitely a permanent one.

He couldn't bear to be around her anymore.

Being with her was a constant reminder that he would die on his sixteenth birthday. A reminder that, soon, he wouldn't be able to protect her anymore. Within weeks, she would be at the mercy of this cruel world and he wouldn't be there to save her from it.

So he hung out with Rachel instead. Yes, Rachel was a good friend. She kept him distracted from the fact that he was about to die. She was easy to talk to, and she seemed to understand everything he'd been through. She was there for him, just like he was there for Annabeth.

Too late, he realized what he had really done. That he had done the very thing he had sworn to protect Annabeth from. He had hurt her.

He did all he could to reverse it. He plunged himself into his work. He took every chance he could to ensure that Annabeth would live in a safer world. When he reached for her under the River Styx, he did so in hopes that, although he most likely wouldn't live, his sacrifice would help her. That he would give her the gift of a better life, in which she wouldn't have to worry about Kronos, or Luke, or that trouble-making butthead she called Seaweed Brain.

When she took that knife for him, he realized that, no matter what he did, he couldn't actually save her from death. He couldn't control what happened to her. And that's what scared him the most.

Annabeth was precious. She was beautiful. She was brilliant. She was loving. She was the blue to his sky, the water to his sea, the smarts to his brain. She was his purpose in life. She was the reason he got up every morning. He lived for the knowledge that she was breathing the same air as him, walking on the same ground as him, dancing to the same song as him. A life without Annabeth was no life at all.

So what was the point of becoming a god when he wouldn't have that bright smile and those sparkling grey eyes lighting up his day?

There was none.

And the day he realized that ended up being the best day of his life.

I hope you liked it! Feel free to give me any feedback, good or bad!