Hey Guys! I wanted to do something different, and I kinda just came up with this idea for a story about Annabeth. I wasn't really sure about it and almost didn't post it, but then I decided to just do it. Hopefully it's alright.

EDIT 10/21/14: Being as I wrote this almost a year ago, before Blood of Olympus came out, the ending didn't match up with Riordan's. Normally this wouldn't be a problem, but since the rest of this follows the story line, I decided to edit it to make it match as well. SO, SPOILERS FOR BoO! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!

Anyway, enjoy and feel free to leave a review and let me know what you thought. :)

Disclaimer: I do not own PJO/HoO.

"I ran away when I was seven," she said. "Then with Luke and Thalia, I thought I'd found a family, but it fell apart almost immediately. What I'm saying… I hate it when people let me down, when things are temporary. I think that's why I want to be an architect."

"To build something permanent," I said. "A monument to last a thousand years."

~The Last Olympian

"What do you want to be when you grow up?"

Most of the time, the question is met with ridiculous, unrealistic answers, dreamed up in the innocent minds of children who don't know any better and don't have to; a rock star, a superhero, a princess. Other times, they're simple, stereotypical answers that change ten times within the course of five minutes; a firefighter, a ballerina, a doctor.

Not for me though. I had known better from the beginning. My mother's genes made me too realistic and levelheaded to ever allow myself to become caught up in the fantasies that ruled other, normal children's' everyday lives. I was too smart for them. No, my answer to that question (which wasn't asked of me very much at all, due to the lack of people that actually cared), was based on more than just daydreams and fairytales.

An architect. It was a simple enough answer; a little mature, maybe, for a little kid, but a good enough response nonetheless. But see, the thing about asking aforementioned question, is that very rarely, do people bother asking why that child wants to do such-and-such with their life. Mostly because little children don't usually have a valid answer, so, really, there wouldn't be much point in inquiring. I, on the other hand, did have an answer and a real answer at that.

Architects designed things, beautiful, strong, successful things. Permanent things. I wanted to build something worthy of admiration; something that would last.

I was a little girl, far from normal, facing circumstances far bigger than myself…alone. Everyone and everything in my life had proved to be a disappointment at one point or another. I had no one to count on, no one to rely on, and no one to love. My family despised me. I had no friends. I only had myself.

I was special, I knew that, and it was proving to be way more of a burden than I'd been prepared for. My mother was a goddess. I was half-human, half-divine. I had been left at my father's doorstep the day I was born, and he hadn't even wanted me. I knew no one else like me. Nobody understood, and I wasn't doing very well with finding someone who did. Quite the opposite, really.

Athena had abandoned me.

The days turned into months, months turned into years; time passed on, and things were only getting worse. Now, I not only had an evil stepmother to deal with; but two little twin monstrosities to go with her. My dad now cared even less than he had before, and she had never liked me from the start. Now, she had mama bear instincts to go along with her insensitive outlook, and everything that went wrong always seemed to point at me.

I couldn't take it anymore, and it was quite obvious no one could take me either. I got the hint. I wasn't wanted, hadn't been for a while, and I did something about it. I ran.

Fredrick Chase had driven me away.

For two weeks, I survived on my own, having nothing and no one to aid me on my journey to nowhere in particular. I was attacked often, ate little, and slept even less, with nothing to my name except the ratty pajamas I wore and the old, rusted hammer I'd found in an alleyway.

My saving grace came in the form of two older kids, who were just like me. They took me in, gave me food, water, and protection. They gave me a family, much better than the one I'd left behind, and for a short while, things were beginning to look up.

Until the night we got to the camp. The goat-boy had found us the day before and had insisted we go with him to a "safe place." We'd followed, though not without obvious reluctance from the older two, and had made good timing, until the monsters had found us. We ran, and made it, almost, sort of. They'd caught up and were taking one or all of us with them. She'd stood tall, telling us to go, and charged the beasts, sacrificing herself so we could live. One second, the girl had stood, the next, a giant white pine tree had taken her place. She was gone, and she took the last hope of family with her.

Things were different after that. Years went by and I made my way through the ranks. So did he, and eventually, as I got a little older, my heart would flutter strangely in his presence and my face would grow warm and pink. I hid it well, pushing it aside, willing that feeling to go away, though it never really did.

He went on that quest, and barely made it back. He was different after that; darker, sadder, angrier. The scar he now bore proved to be much more than superficial, and it saddened me more, every time I saw it.

The camp had become more of a prison than a home. I couldn't leave, though I longed to. I didn't care that it was safe here, and I didn't care that I had nowhere else to go. I'd seen nothing but the same faces and place for four years, and I needed to get out. There was a prophecy, a big one, and it involved someone special, someone important. Only then, would I even have a chance of leaving camp. That demigod would be my ticket to the outside world. They would go on a quest, and if they allowed me to go with them, so would I.

Then, a year later, he showed up, soaked, and traumatized, crying for his mother, and turned my entire world upside-down. He had apparently killed the Minotaur, the proof was in his hand, but, looking at him, it was still pretty hard to believe. There was no way he was the one I was waiting for. No way.

Two days later, he was completely awake, and he was annoying, to say the least. I hated him, period.

Strange things happened, and my suspicions wavered, but I still waited. Then, he was claimed, by the god of the sea, and I was blown away. He was the one I'd been waiting for? He was my ticket out? It was unbelievable, but true.

He was chosen for the quest. I volunteered to go too, and we were off. It was hard, scary, and dangerous, ridiculously dangerous, and we had a lot of close calls, but we made it back. We'd succeeded, the first in many years to do so, and, quite surprisingly, we'd become friends. I'd even decided to try living with my dad again, and for the first time in a long time, I was happy.

But the one whom I'd looked up to for so long; my hero, my friend, turned out to be a traitor.

One quest turned into two. He was my best friend, my partner, and he was slowly becoming, no matter how hard I tried desperately to deny it, something more.

Suddenly, she was back again.

As it turned out, they weren't good at sharing leadership. They were destined to be either the best of friends or the worst of enemies, and most of the time, it looked like they were taking the "worst of enemies" route.

I was captured, deceived, and betrayed. They both came to save me, but I noticed him first. When it was all over, I chose to stay. With him. Then she chose to go instead, and this time, it was for good. It was just me and him.

Thalia was gone again.

He'd saved my life. He'd broken the rules to rescue me; he'd traveled across the country to save me; he'd held the weight of the sky for me. He tried, over and over again to tell me…

Things got complicated, as if they weren't already. Ancient evil was brewing. The person I'd trusted for so long with my life had fallen under his trap. It was blatantly obvious, over and over, but still, I refused to believe it.

All of a sudden, it apparently wasn't just me and him anymore. There was someone else. She was loud and colorful and obnoxious. I didn't like it, and I definitely didn't like her. At all.

Two quests turned into three, and this time, I was leading it. It was the chance I'd been waiting for all my life, but now, I wasn't so sure I wanted it anymore, because it was definitely the most dangerous quest yet. I was Wisdom's daughter. Knowledge was in my blood; planning was second nature, but for the first time in my life, I was going in blind. And that gods-awful prophecy didn't help one bit, particularly the last line: and lose a love to worse than death. I spent that entire quest, not only worrying about leading it well and getting everyone home alive, but also about that last line, fearing it meant the one person I just couldn't stand to lose.

Not halfway through the miserable expedition, we were missing two members. It was just me and him and it was painfully obvious that we had taken on way more than we could handle, but we kept going, like we always did, because it was the only option we had.

Then came the errand from the Lord of the Forges.

The heat, the Telekhines, the explosion… the kiss… I knew he was gone, dead, blasted to smithereens. I couldn't bring myself to even look behind me as I ran back through the tunnels, back to the god that had sent us, sent him to his death, in the first place.

I returned to camp, and the next two weeks were some of the worst weeks of my life. I was the only one who'd come back. Four of us had gone on that death quest, I had led them, and I had completely and utterly failed. The worst part was that I'd lost him. Yet again, I was alone, left behind and let down. It was the story of my life, and I really shouldn't have been surprised, and I really shouldn't have dwelled on it as much as I did, but this time was different. This time… it hurt more.

Next thing I know, the guy is here, and he's alive, and he's walking in on his own shroud burial. I was relieved, and overjoyed, but then I figured out where he'd spent those last two weeks, and I was hurt and absolutely mortified, but most of all, I was mad. The nerve of that Seaweed Brain. He didn't come right out and say it, but I knew, and now, just when I thought I was getting close, I had more competition than I'd ever had before.

Then, he told us his "brilliant plan," and I totally lost it. I was angry, so incredibly angry. I wasn't the nicest, calmest person when I was upset but he was the only person who could make me that furious. Still, deep down, way deep down, no matter how hard I tried to deny it, I knew he was right, so I had no choice but to swallow my pride (no easy task for a child of Athena with a hubris problem), and head back out on that gods-forsaken quest, and this time, with an extra "friend," who I'd much rather have run through with a weapon, preferably a sharp one, than cooperate with.

The entire quest definitely went down as my least favorite thus far. I'd put up with an obnoxious teenage girl, seen a god die, fought countless monsters, and witnessed the evil Titan lord possess the body of the one I'd used to consider family, and maybe still did. Nevertheless, we did it, we "succeeded", although the entire trip turned out to be for nothing in the end, which had me pretty miffed, to put it bluntly. But we made our way back to the city, dropped her off along the way, and touched back down at camp again, just in time to fight a battle against aforementioned Titan lord's army, which was horrible in every sense of the word.

Then, to polish off an excruciating, overall terrible summer, I left him standing at the top of Half Blood Hill, and didn't even bother to look back.

Now I was disappointing myself.

I didn't see him again until the end of the next summer, days before one of the biggest wars in demigod history, and it had been right after a small quest that had come inches away from failing, and had resulted in the loss of a great camper.

But at least he wasn't dead.

That day was the first time he saw the Great Prophecy, his prophecy, and it had all been downhill from there. He was scared; I was insensitive. He ran; I let him. When he didn't come back that night, I started to worry.

He called me the next morning and said to assemble everyone with armor and weapons, to meet him in the city, and to get ready. It had begun.

I knew something was different about him the second I saw him. When I asked, he didn't really answer, and we didn't really have to time for me to pry further.

The war began, and chaos ensued, but we were managing to hold our ground. We had fought through the night. The sun would rise in less than an hour. I was fighting monsters upon monsters, slicing, jabbing, and sidestepping in the deadly dance I'd perfected over the years. Suddenly, I froze and turned, barely evading a dracaenae's blade. His back was to me, and between the two of us, an enemy half-blood was about to stab him.

I wouldn't know why until a few hours later, but I had a horrible feeling and I went with my gut, jumping in front of the knife at the last second and taking the hit for him.

I cried out. Blood soaked the sleeve of my T-shirt and my whole arm was on fire, as what was obviously poison, spread painfully through it. He turned, wide eyed and horror struck, as he took in the scene before him. For someone normally so mentally slow, he was quick when he needed to be, putting the pieces together in a second. I watched with blurry, tear-filled vision, as fury and rage replaced the horror in his eyes and he took it out on every enemy within sword-reach, particularly the traitorous demigod, whom he hit with his sword hilt, definitely hard enough to dent the helm, and maybe the guy's head if we were lucky, which we, of course, weren't.

He swung the sword in an arch, driving everyone away from me, and yelling, "Get back! No one touches her!" After that, I wasn't sure what happened until I was snatched up by my armor in his Pegasus' teeth, eliciting another cry of pain from my mouth as my arm twisted back around and we swooped into the air. Pain ran up and down my arm, reaching as far down as my midsection, until, finally, I blacked out.

When I opened my eyes again, I was in an uncomfortable chair, a view of the city before me. There were many faces in front of me, all but the only one I wanted to see.

Finally, he came, looking concerned and utterly adorable. We talked, he worried. Then he showed me that point on his back, and it all made sense. I didn't know how and I didn't know why, but that bad feeling I'd gotten had saved his life, and that was all I cared about.

The war raged on; peace by day, battle by night, and I fought, whether I was healthy enough to or not. We were being driven back, getting closer and closer to losing it all.

All of a sudden, she shows up. She, of all people, had to show up, in the middle of a WAR, and I had to save her. I was mad, furious really, and hurt, so hurt. She was here, he let her be here, and there was nothing I could do to change that. The only remotely satisfying part was the look on his face when the two of us reached the ground. After that, I was gone, away from him, heading anywhere but there.

The drakon came next and the truth was reveled with the heroine's last breath, and it finally hit me. I was wrong, he was evil and he was… gone. I was upset, but mostly angry, disappointed with myself for being so, ridiculously thick. But that was over now, and if I had to fight him, then I would. I had to. I owed everyone else that much.

The battles continued and we were slowly driven farther and farther back, until ultimately, we stood, fighting, just feet away from losing the war, and with it, the world. Some semi-decent help arrived, and the tiny spark of hope refused to be lost just yet. The Titan lord went up to the home of the gods, and we followed.

We climbed up the devastated mountain, hoping against all hope that we would make it in time, that we weren't too late.

The final fight was dire. I got hurt again, and there were more than a few close calls, but finally, finally, we got the upper hand, or rather, it was given to us. The knife was handed over, my knife, formerly his knife, and with it, he stabbed himself, and everything seemed to stop.

He looked at me, blue eyes weak and dying. He asked me if I loved him, and I finally knew the answer. No, no I didn't. Not like that.

A minute later, he was gone. It was all over. We had won. He had betrayed us all; he'd betrayed me, but he was a hero in the end.

Luke was gone.

But he wasn't.

We were amassed by the gods, congratulated, thanked, and given rewards. My dream came true, but the best gift wasn't one given by our immortal family.

They offered him immortality, godhood, and he said…no. He said no, and I knew it was for me.

That night was worth all the devastation and carnage of the previous few days. It was perfect in every way, and he was finally mine.

The peace that followed only lasted four months, four completely amazing months, but four months. Because then, one morning, he was gone, and my world was turned upside down again.

I spent months searching, and praying, and searching some more, all to no avail. Even after I knew where he was, I didn't calm down. I was worried sick. I ate too little, drank too little, slept too little, and was on the brink of insanity. Then, finally, after months of waiting, and work, and more waiting, we were on our way.

Never had it felt so good to be in his arms again. He was here, he was alive, and he was okay. I was a warrior. I was strong and trained to kill. I never cried, not in public, at least, but when I was with him again after so many painful months, I almost lost it.

I was elated. I didn't care that we had another war to fight, that the odds were horrible, or that our Roman counterparts thought we had declared war. He was with me again, and I simply didn't care about anything else.

My death quest came along, and I had to say goodbye to him, possibly forever, but I had no choice, and I did what I had to, because I was not normal and didn't have the luxury of living a peaceful, mortal life.

When the ceiling opened and he came for me, the liberation was almost unbearable. I had succeeded, against all odds and the many, many failures of my siblings, I had done it and now, we could be together, which was all I really cared about.

Those hopes crumbled when we tumbled into that pit. Everything about my miserable life was unfair, and it seemed, no matter how much good I'd wound up doing, it was all destined to end in excruciating pain and failure.

I was apparently allowed no happiness, that was that, and I had dragged him down with me.

I loved him so much, and I knew it was selfish, but despite how bad things were, I was kind of glad he'd fallen with me, because at least then, I'd be with him. We'd die together and at least, for really the first time in my life, I wouldn't be alone.

Then we made it. Through hell itself, we'd made it. We were alive, beat up and battered, yes, but we were alive and we were together. We'd witnessed terrible things, things that we'd never forget, and we would probably be scarred for the rest of our lives. We would forever be indebted to our new, hastily made friends for sacrificing themselves for the two of us to live. We would never be the same, but we were alive, together, and, despite the current, bleak circumstances, we were happy.

The battle was hard and rough, though nothing the seven of us and a few Olympians couldn't handle. The initial fight was over, though the Earth Mother was wide awake and heading to destroy our home. We still weren't done.

We made it home just in time and despite being severely outnumbered, the two camps were united, against all odds, and together, we got pretty far. Way farther than anyone could have hoped to get, and we covered a lot of ground while the trio in the sky took care of the primordial goddess.

Suddenly, the sky exploded, and despite the painful losses we'd suffered, the war, and with it, the entire quest, was over. It was done. All done. It had been horrible, every second had, but, amazingly, and at a great cost, we had succeeded.

Rebuilding began, peace was officially declared between the two camps, shrouds were burned, tears were shed, new friendships were formed, and injuries were tended to. Out of the ashes, rubble, and monster dust, we were still here, alive and mostly well.

We made plans for the immediate future, he and I. And life seemed like it would begin again. And despite everything, we were happy; for the first time in a long time, genuinely happy.

My entire life had been full of disappointments and people who let me down. My goal in life was simple: to build something permanent. I had never questioned it and never even considered doing anything else. I had never been able to rely on anyone, and the few who I did, ending up letting me down. They were always temporary, and I hated it.

I set out to build something that would last, something grand, and magnificent, and worthy of respect. I was going to make something that wouldn't let me down.

I hadn't known it at the time, but I'd meant that in more ways than one. Sure, I would grow up to be an architect one day, and yeah, I'd end up building something pretty great that would last for a while, but I'd redesigned Olympus from the ground up. Building a physical structure wasn't actually the main concern anymore.

I would build something permanent; something that would last; something that would never crumble or break. It would be something that no amount of money could ever buy and no demolition crew could ever break down.

My mom had abandoned me and left me to fend for myself. My dad had never wanted me, and drove me to running away as a little girl. Thalia had died, then came back to life, and then became an immortal, leaving me again. Luke had betrayed me, and even though he was a hero in the end, he had still died.

They had all disappointed me, in one way or another. They had all let me down. It happened over and over again.

But there was one person who never did.

Six years later, at the age of twenty-two, we were married. Not once had my faith in him faltered and not once, did he disappoint me. He had broken the rules over and over for me. He had held the weight of the sky for me. He had saved my life an innumerable amount of times, and I had done the same for him. I loved him.

He was my best friend, my partner, my hero.

And though every other person in my life did, Percy never let me down, and I knew he never would.

"We're staying together. You're not getting away from me. Never again"

He had promised, and had kept it.

It didn't matter what everyone else in my life had done, or really, not done. It didn't matter that our roads to each other had been rocky and complicated. We were together. That was all that mattered.

We had built something together that no man, god, monster, Titan, or Giant could ever tear apart. We had built something to last; something beautiful and valued. We had built something strong enough to last way longer than a thousand years.

It had been a hard, dangerous journey, but we had done it.

Together, we had built something that would last forever.

Together, we had built something permanent.

Thanks for reading! Please leave a review and let me know what you thought!

-LiveLaughLove728