Disclaimer: I don't own Percy Jackson, its concepts, or its characters. No money is being made out of this.

That they would be broken they had all expected; that they would have been unmade and pulled back together, restarted from scratch like a god's pet project, pale and bony shadows of their previous selves, no one had been quite ready for.

Chiron had explained – gently, she'd remembered, as if not to startle them, and Annabeth would have been annoyed if she hadn't been so grateful – that they'd been expecting madness, if not death. No demigod had ever come back from Tartarus, she'd heard a thousand times, as though it was supposed to make it okay-er for her.

But it was easier said than done. No one really knew what to do with them, or how to act around them. All they seemed to understand was that she and Percy were now a single unit, like two scraps of metal molten into each other.

That was fine by her.

Without her noticing, it was Hazel's presence she ended up craving the most outside of Percy's. Nico's, too, in a deeply empathetic way, but he kept disappearing on her, while Hazel seemed to lead some semblance of a normal demigod life. It was fascinating to Annabeth; as if the younger girl were paving the old path anew with her glittering gems, just for Annabeth to follow.

Hazel trained, she ate, she slept; she stayed at Camp Half-Blood even though it probably didn't feel like her home, and she laughed and loved even though she knew her time on earth was borrowed and unpredictable. It made Annabeth want to do something, to at least get out of the infirmary bed; to try.

As she watched Hazel walk by toward dinner, Annabeth placed one foot on the floor, then another. She smiled at a startled Percy and held out her hand.

It took Piper several months of charmspoken effort to get her fully away from Percy for the first time. Not "next room" away; away as in actual miles and miles of concrete jungle between herself and her boyfriend (how she hated that word now, how inappropriate it seemed for what they shared). And even then, Annabeth was in such a sour mood she was sure Piper would have been better off hanging out with a harpy.

But Piper had said grumpy was better than dead-eyed, and that she'd take what she could get.

Because the thing was that mortals made Annabeth angry. Not only would they never have to go through what she did, but they reminded her all the time that she wasn't truly safe (because they were), that it could keep happening to her indefinitely.

Piper held her hand the entire time. "I missed you," she said.

Thalia came to see them almost as soon as they were back at Camp, the world finally safe again (for maybe the next couple of months at least, if they were lucky). Annabeth was surprised to catch a glimpse of Artemis herself outside the infirmary door, as Thalia sat on the edge of her bed. Percy was sleeping next to her, a crease in his brow and his fingers tight around hers.

"She is deeply sorry over what happened. That she couldn't keep you from falling, or protect you in there," Thalia explained. Annabeth felt a hundred years older than her, but she supposed that was how Artemis's magic worked.

"It didn't really have anything to do with her," she said, hoping not to sound unkind.

"She protects all women who stand alone."

"I wasn't alone." She squeezed Percy's hand.

Thalia smiled. "No. But at some point we all are."

Sitting at the campfire, the sea breeze on her face and Percy's warm chest behind her, Annabeth almost felt okay for a second. They certainly looked like they were doing better, if the others' barely-concealed relief was anything to go by. Their songs seemed disproportionately upbeat as well, as if they were desperately trying to get Percy and her to stay afloat. In what, exactly, Annabeth wasn't sure.

She must have let the bitterness show, because Percy kissed her cheek and tightened his arms around her. She turned her head to nuzzle his jaw. She knew their friends were doing their best. It wasn't their fault she and Percy had been around living nightmares for perhaps too long to ever fully wake up. "I just keep seeing them, you know?"

But the breeze, and the singing, and Percy.

"Yeah. But they aren't here right now."

No. Not right now.