A/N: Enjoy! And please leave a review!
Annabeth chased her younger brothers around the yard, watching as the sea crept closer, then would suddenly go back out, in an endless cycle, never to come completely to shore, never to completely leave.
She wondered if the sea ever tired of its own monotony.
"You're it!" Bobby screamed, tagging her. He and Matthew ran away giggling, pieces of their dark hair whipping around with the wind. Annabeth sighed, but continued to chase after them. Her sweatshirt didn't do much to keep out the rain, and she was starting to get cold.
"Let's go inside," Annabeth finally said, looking around at the tall, once-green trees that had turned shades of red and yellow for Fall. "We can make hot chocolate," she added as sort of a bribe.
The twins shared a look. "Just five more minutes," Matthew pleaded.
"Please?" Bobby asked. "We'll actually go to bed when you tell us to!" As if that would ever happen. Her brothers never listened when she babysat.
"Fine," Annabeth said. It couldn't hurt to get rid of some of her brothers' energy. "Five more minutes. But you have to actually listen to me."
"Deal," they said.
Bobby and Matthew started running again, and Annabeth chased them for a while before checking her phone and seeing that it was time to go in.
"Matthew! Bobby!" she cried, the rain coming down hard around her. "Time's up."
Apparently, the twins' hearing had suddenly stopped working, because they ignored her, and started walking towards the cliff, which was had been off limits to them since before Annabeth could remember. Which was a really long time.
"Get back here now!" she yelled. Of course, no answer. And Bobby was walking close to the edge now. Too close. He started running, and almost slipped from all the rain, but managed to catch himself at the last minute. Her heart nearly stopped. Sure, her brothers were annoying most of the time, but that didn't mean she wanted them dead.
Annabeth sighed, breaking into a run, feeling cold and wet and tired. She could barely see, the rain was coming down so hard. She was about to catch up with the twins, yell at them and take away their electronics, when she took a step. And felt nothing but air underneath her.
It seemed like she was falling for an eternity, the air rushing around her, and her brothers' screams in the background. Annabeth could feel herself hitting little rocks and ledges, and she did her best to curl up in a ball.
Suddenly, she hit her head on a ledge, and pain exploded throughout her brain.
Not now no no no no no.
And that was when she hit the water.
It hurt too much to open her eyes, and Annabeth was so cold from the water... In that moment, she felt as if her clothes weighed fifty pounds.
She was able to stay afloat for only about a minute, screaming for help, before the dark, colorless tide pulled her under. Annabeth managed to get her head out of the water a few times, but after that she succumbed to the ocean, with the knowledge that she would never see her father or stepmother or brothers again.
So this was how she died. Lost in the very thing that she needed to stay alive: water. Annabeth had always found it quite ironic that things worked out that way: the fact that what kept you alive could turn its back on you and kill you at any given moment.
She supposed cancer was like that too, with your body turning on itself, until you slowly -but painfully- surrendered to death.
For some reason, she felt incredibly calm. Annabeth Chase was going to die; and she accepted that fact. She had few friends, and her family would be fine; her stepmother never liked her anyways, and though her brothers might be saddened by her loss, they were probably young enough to forget Annabeth, the only thing left a foggy memory of watching their sister die. The only one that would be truly inconsolable was her father, and in his world, he had already failed at being her father the time she ran away at age seven, convinced her family hated her.
That was the last thought that went through her mind before everything went black.
The next thing Annabeth remembered was waking up on the dry rocks of the beach. It took her a minute to realize where she was, the events that had just occurred, being surprised for a minute that she was still alive. She started gagging and coughing up the seawater almost immediately, as Bobby and Matthew looked on, their eyes red around the edges.
Had they somehow managed to pull her out?
Suddenly, a tall figure stood in front of her, a skinny boy with sea-colored eyes and dark hair.
"His name is Percy, and he pulled you out from the water, Annie," Matthew informed her, seeing the confused look on her face.
"And then we called nine-one-one," Bobby added.
Annabeth turned to thank him, but he was already gone.