It's been months since she saw him in person, but Annabeth would know those shoulders anywhere.

There's also the fact that he's walking a giant hellhound on a leash, but she notices the shoulders first. Old habits die hard, apparently. It's a beautiful day and the park is crowded with people, friends and families and pets enjoying each other's company, yet somehow her eyes picked him out in the crowd.

She doesn't know why she's surprised. Even with everything between the two of them, she will always carry a part of him with her. Apparently that part is his shoulders.

He hasn't noticed her yet, but Mrs O'Leary is another story altogether. She must recognise Annabeth's scent or something, because one sniff in her direction has the dog barking her head off. The mortals scattered through the park stare unabashedly, and for a moment Annabeth wonders what they think they're seeing, that they don't even try to pretend like they're not looking.

And then those shoulders tighten, and she's stopped counting the days since the last time they spoke, but Annabeth still knows that he thinks his dog has sensed a monster nearby. She struggles to find the words to greet him, to reassure him, but they stick in her throat. He starts turning around, hand casually reaching into the back pocket of his jeans, and for a second Annabeth considers just hiding, finding a convenient bush and throwing herself into it but then those sea-green eyes brush over her and stop, and she knows she's caught.

There's really nothing in the world that can prepare a person for Percy Jackson smiling at them.

A certain amount of confusion comes over his face at first, but it's wiped away almost immediately by one of those stupid grins of his, the one that takes over his face and makes everything around him light up like a Christmas tree.

Gods, why did she keep following? She should have just found another path to take the second she saw those stupid shoulders, found somewhere else to be. But no, she hadn't been able to keep a lid on her curiosity (and that's all it is) and now here she is with no escape.

"Annabeth!" He looks for a moment like he's about to run towards her, but he checks himself at the last second. The grin fades to a subdued look that makes Annabeth's heart hurt a little, no matter how much she tries to hide it.

He walks towards her with some actual decorum, and she forces a pleasant smile onto her face and tries to convince her feet to return the gesture. They don't.

"Percy, hi." A laugh stutters past her lips, and she stamps on a wince at how awkward it sounds. Acknowledging that won't make it any less awkward, after all. "What are you doing here?"

It's been maybe ten months since they last caught up in person. She used to know down to the minute how much time they spent apart, back when there wasn't so much of it between them. But that's like a whole other life away, now. He lives at Camp and she goes to university and they haven't been a they since they were seventeen years old.

It's July. He's almost 21, she realises. She tells herself her chest doesn't ache, and completely fails to believe it.

"Uh. Walking my dog." He's trying to tease, but she can hear the strain entering his voice, see the way his eyes tighten in the corners. A small, vindictive part of her thinks, good. At least she's not alone in this.

"No, I mean – here, the city here." Annabeth wants to words to come out like a friendly question, but she finds herself crossing her arms over her chest defensively, her voice turning hostile. She can deal with Percy Jackson. She can even deal with Percy Jackson in her city, in her park, right in front of her. What she's finding difficult to manage right now is the surprise. "Near my apartment, here."

Annabeth expects some kind of excuse, awkward, stuttering sentences pushed out as he avoids her gaze. What she gets instead, is a frown. Behind him, Mrs O'Leary whines.

"I thought you lived out east," he says after a moment, and she feels her stomach drop to her feet. "Closer to the university."

There is, right now, one gold drachma sitting on her kitchen bench. It's been there for a month, maybe six weeks. Every day she passes it, she thinks about throwing it in a rainbow to Percy, telling him about the move and her new place and why doesn't he come out to California to check it out?

But the drachma is still on her bench, and here is Percy Jackson, in her city, in her park, right in front of her with absolutely no ulterior motive. He'd genuinely had no idea he might run into her here, because he'd genuinely had no idea that this was where she lived. Because she hadn't told him.

She had, Annabeth realises, been waiting for him to IM first. Dimly, she wonders if he'd been doing the same back at Camp.

"I moved. Recently, though. I was going to tell you," she adds lamely. "I just got…caught up."

Percy nods, but his expression has shut down, turned into a mask of politeness. He never used to be that good at switching off his feelings, and Annabeth abruptly feels every mile and every month of distance between them as they stand in the middle of the stupid park. Around them, hundreds of people are enjoying the day, going about their business with no idea that the world just came right up and slapped her life in the face again.

"Right," he says shortly, and even his body language is turning away from her. "Look, it's been great seeing you, but I should—"

"—Go," she finishes for him. She bites the inside of her cheek to control her sudden urge to cry, remembering times when finishing each other's sentences brought them closer together rather than whatever this is now. Her hand twitches, like she's going to offer it to him for a handshake or something, but that's way too awkward and terrible even for this situation. She tucks an errant curl behind her ear instead. "Yeah, no, me too. I might see you around?"

Before the words are even out of her mouth, she's cursing herself inwardly. At least she could have made it a statement, a dismissal, instead of a too-desperate question.

Sea-green eyes flicker away from her. "Yeah. Maybe."

There's a pause, where neither of them move. And then they both turn on their heel at the same time and walk away from each other without a further word.

Annabeth goes home to her new apartment. She tosses the drachma back into a pouch with the others, and tries to wash the thoughts and memories of him out of her head. She stands under the shower until her skin turns red. And then she crawls into her pyjamas, drops herself into bed and tells herself she won't cry until she finally falls into an uneasy, restless sleep.

For the first time in months, Annabeth dreams of Tartarus.

Whatever fears they have on that long fall down aren't enough. Whatever expectations they've had are overwhelmed. Whatever hopes, prove hopeless. The single, solitary reason they make it through is because of a stubborn, desperate determination to keep their hands locked together and to drag each other onwards

The worst thing about Tartarus, isn't what happens to them inside it. Tartarus isn't only a place; it's a living, breathing, thinking thing, and it breaks off a piece of itself inside them even as they crawl out over the threshold. Tartarus is something that stays with you, becomes a part of you, long after you've passed through its doors.

They try. They give everything they have to each other after it's all said and done, and then they scrounge around and give more. They're the only ones that can calm the nightmares, but every time they look at each other, it's a reminder or what happened, what they went through, what they'll never, ever be able to escape.

She's the one who voices it. It's late on a Wednesday night, or maybe early Thursday morning, and they're curled up on the floor of his cabin. Wrapped around each other. It might have been a sweet scene, if heartbreaking, but there are scratches on his face from her fingernails and she wears bruises on her arms. There is no sweetness left here. They mistake each other for the monsters more often than they save each other. Just because they're the only ones that can help, doesn't mean that they don't hurt more.

Every time I look at you, she says, I see the end of the world.

And he has to let go of her, because clenching his fists and hating himself are more necessary than holding on.

I know.

Annabeth leaves the next day, returns to her boarding school and forces herself to remember the definition of normal. Percy stays at Camp, because he knows he can't.

It's six months after they make it out that Tartarus wins anyway.

Waking up the next day is a chore, not the least because of the pounding in her head. Annabeth grabs a spare pillow and shoves it over her face, and might have stayed there debating the pros and cons of suffocation all day if she hadn't realised that the pounding is not, in fact, in her head after all.

Grumbling to herself, she hits the floor and shuffles her way to the front door, dagger in hand. A monster probably wouldn't bother with knocking, but it's better to be safe than sorry. She just about rips the door off its hinges when she opens it, ready to take a piece out of whoever happens to be standing on her welcome mat.

She almost loses her grip on the weapon. "What." Her incomprehension is so complete, it's not even a question.

Opposite her, Percy Jackson looks a mixture of sheepish and relieved. There are shadows under those sea-green eyes that weren't there the day before, but the way he's smiling (at her?) helps to smooth them out. "You really don't want to know how many doors I just had to knock on to figure out which one was yours."

Actually, Annabeth kind of does want to know that, but she's too busy trying to process the fact that her ex-Percy is standing on her doorstep with a styrofoam cup in one hand and another one stacked on top. It literally makes no sense whatsoever, and that thought makes her want to smile, because when did he ever make sense?

"What are you doing here?" It's the same thing she asked yesterday and she can see by the way his eyes dip that neither one of them need the reminder. "I mean – how did you even know this was my building?"

He shrugs with the shoulder not attached to the arm holding his cups. "Mrs O'Leary tracked your scent. She wouldn't fit into the lobby though, so I had to figure it out from there." There's a pause, before he murmurs a quiet oh yeah under his breath, and hands her the topmost cup. His hand trembles. His voice is apologetic when he speaks. "It might be kind of cold…"

Barring their run-in yesterday, it has been ten months and seventeen days since Annabeth saw Percy in person. Three months and six days since they spoke, and that had been Camp talk about an overcrowding issue in the Aphrodite cabin. She went back and counted, because apparently she hates herself. And now here he is, on her doorstep with coffee and shaky hands and that stupid, hopeful smile, and…

And the word Tartarus drifts across her mind. Those shadows under his eyes are there for a reason.

In lieu of saying anything with meaning, she takes a sip of the coffee. It's lukewarm, but still strong enough to make her realise that her hair is a mess, and her pyjamas consist of a pair of boxers and an old singlet, and she is absolutely not wearing a bra right now. Not that he seems to have noticed, or cared.

"It's good," she reassures him, and it occurs to her that it's been three and a half years since he's had occasion to get her coffee, and he still remembers how she takes it. "Um. Do you want to come in?"

"Yes." The word trips out of his mouth almost before she's done talking, and he makes a face at himself. "Only – only if you want me to, though. You don't have to offer just to be polite. I was kind of a jerk yesterday."

Annabeth's lips part, only for her to realise that she has no idea what to say in the face of that. He was kind of a jerk yesterday, but she can't say that she hadn't given him reason to be. And he can't say that he hadn't given her reason for her reason. What a mess.

"We were both surprised," she says, settling for something totally neutral. She takes another sip of coffee to fortify herself. "But you should come in. Just give me a couple of minutes to – um. Give me some minutes."

She needs to get into something that doesn't have Tweety Bird emblazoned across the front. She takes a few steps back, opening the door up wider for him and trying to ignore the way he grins and then looks awkward about it immediately after. Like he doesn't know if he's allowed to find it funny that she looks like a wreck.

To be honest, Annabeth doesn't know either. She heads to her bedroom, glancing back at him a couple of times. On the third look, she catches him inspecting an ornament, and scowls. "Don't do that rearranging thing you do! You know I hate that!"

He laughs, setting the ornament down. The sound follows her into her room.

She shuts the door quietly, setting her coffee on top of her dresser before her body sags against the wall. Because Percy Jackson is in her apartment, and she'd clearly been wrong about the whole moving away from the university in order to have more space thing, because she feels like she's in a New York matchbox with the way everything not-Percy is closing in on her.

Annabeth swaps her dagger for the coffee and drains the cup like it's been spiked with booze. She should probably shower, but the idea of standing around naked for any prolonged period of time, knowing that he's just in the other room - no. He's seen her covered in blood and guts and other unidentifiable substances, it'll be fine. Besides, it's been less than twenty four hours since she scrubbed herself raw, anyway.

She tugs open a drawer and plunges her hand inside, dragging out whatever comes first to hand. Which, granted, is what she usually does when she dresses herself. But she's particularly aggressive about it today, because the last thing she wants Percy to think is that she's concerned about dressing up for him. Not that he's ever really noticed what she put on her body before, but-

Annabeth tugs on a t-shirt and lets herself drop onto her bed. The mattress squeaks and she bounces a little, pressing the palms of her hands to her eyes. But nothing. They aren't together, haven't been together now for longer than they were together. Even including the time that Hera stole from them.

It's like this every time. She can remember thinking, four years ago now, that she didn't know if it hurt more being with him, or without him. And every time the months and the distance stretches out a little further between them, she convinces herself that they're definitely better apart. That a scarred heart is better than an open wound with him lodged inside it.

And then they see each other again, and she's pitched right back into that uncertainty. Three and a half years should be enough to get over a boy, shouldn't it? But no matter how many showers she takes, Annabeth still hasn't managed to scrub him from under her skin, any more than she's been able to rid herself of the memories of what Tartarus did to them

What they did to each other.

He is still sitting out in your lounge, you know.

Annabeth just about trips over her own feet as she scrambles up off the bed. How long has she been sitting there feeling sorry for herself? Five minutes? Ten? A quick glance at her alarm clock confirms that it was seven, and she wonders if seven still falls under the umbrella of 'some minutes' as she scraps her curls up into a bun at the back of her head.

The urge to double check her appearance in the mirror is there. She ignores it, slamming the door open a little too hard, fast enough that Percy doesn't have time to recover from the way he reaches for Riptide.

They stare at each other, grey locked with green. And then she notices that he has one of her rulers in his hand, and she huffs at him. "Percy, I told you not to rearrange things."

He blinks at her, and then a grin breaks across his face. That familiar pen returns to his pocket, and he reaches for his coffee cup (which almost definitely doesn't have coffee in it) as he carefully sets the ruler down. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I'm putting it back, see?"

Annabeth crosses her arms over her chest. "That's not where it goes."

For a second everything is so familiar, she feels sixteen again. Those two golden months where everything had been okay, and time had stretched on ahead of them instead of between them. But instead of teasing back, his face falls, and he mumbles an apology in her direction. The ruler flaps, like he doesn't know what to do with it.

And Annabeth feels her heart break for the millionth time, and wonders why she invited him in. This isn't going to end well for either of them. Maybe they should just leave it, let the gap grow wider, bigger.

Their hands brush against each other as she gently divests him of the ruler, and a shock runs through her that she can't pass off as static. That's why, she thinks, and can't decide if the electricity warms, or burns.

"It's fine," she manages, ducking her head so that their eyes won't meet again. Not right now at least. She clears her throat. "You can sit down, you know. I haven't had the chance to booby-trap the furniture since I moved."

That gets a startled pause from him, and he eyes the couch dubiously. "I think that makes me want to sit down less?"

Less than he already wanted to sit down? Annabeth grumpily reminds herself not to analyse every word that comes out of his mouth, because when did he ever think about what he was saying, anyway? She pointedly sits down, and despite his words, Percy follows almost immediately.

The silence is oppressive. Something that by definition is an absence shouldn't be able to claw up her throat like this. It feels like she's being strangled with her own tongue, and she stares down at the ruler she'd relieved him of in lieu of breaking the hold it has on her.

Tartarus didn't just ruin their romance. It stole their friendship from them.

"Why didn't you tell me you moved?"

Leave it to Percy, of course. Anyone else would have tried to force some kind of awkward small talk, or attempted to lead the conversation towards the topic. Or just left. But no, he has to dive right into the heart of what's bothering him, and Annabeth can't decide if she wants to hug him or hit him for it.

She can, at least, decide to match honesty with honesty. They both deserve that much from each other. She swallows, looking up at the ceiling.

"Because every time we talk, it's like this." Her hand twitches, indicating all that space between them, every awkward look and every awful silence. "I miss us, Percy. And I wanted to tell you, but whenever I thought about IMing you, I couldn't stop thinking about how awful the time before was, and how much I'd hoped it wouldn't be then either. The last time we spoke was about adding a second story to the Aphrodite cabin, for crying out loud."

She wants him to protest. She wants him to demand she stop staring at the ceiling, wants him to tug on that determined expression and insist that he's still her friend, her best friend, her boyfriend, the love of her life.

But he doesn't.

"Do you still think about the end of the world when you see me?" He sounds exhausted, and she hates that she's the cause. More than that, she hates that she can't fix it.

Them.

Annabeth peels her gaze from the ceiling. "No." Her tone matches his. He doesn't look right on her couch, which is ridiculous, because how does anyone look right on a couch. "I see the end of us. It hurts more."

It's a terrible thing to say. It's a terrible thing to believe, to experience, but they both know that the reason she saw the end of the world in the first place is because he threw it over for her. Percy Jackson decided that being with Annabeth Chase was more important than anything, more important than everything, and they were both called on that decision.

Surviving Tartarus had been one thing. Living with the choices that landed them there, the consequences of that, was - is - something else entirely. They hadn't been able to stand it, in themselves or in each other.

And here she is making that decision all over again. It hurts more. Three and a half years, and not being with him still hurts more than the end of the world. Annabeth doesn't know how to live with that. She doesn't know how to live with herself, believing that.

"I can't say sorry." It's not just exhaustion in his voice. It's something worse, bone-deep and broken. "That's the worst part. I can't apologise, because I know I'd make the same choices all over again. I don't even know how many times I've gone back to that afternoon in Rome, holding on to the ledge. And I know what's going to happen, but every time it's the ledge I let go of. I couldn't - I can't let go of you, Annabeth. Never again."

If life were kinder to Annabeth, that would have been a confession, the words she's been waiting to hear, and they'd be making out right now. But it's not a confession, because she knows that. She knows it in the same way she knows she wouldn't force herself to fall without him, if they had it to do over again.

There are a lot of people in this world, and she loves him more than all of them. It's hideous.

She closes her eyes. "Don't make this harder than it already is, Percy."

He snorts. The couch creaks, protesting under the shift in weight as he stands up. She knows without asking that this is not where he planned on taking the conversation when he decided to knock on all the doors in her apartment building that morning.

"This has already been three and a half years of the hardest thing I've ever done in my life." It's a bitter honesty, because they've both done things that should have been harder. His footsteps swallow up the silence as he heads for the door. "I'm going to be in town for another week."

Annabeth keeps her eyes shut as she nods her understanding. It's stupid, but if she doesn't watch him leave, maybe she can pretend he's still there.

The door shuts with a quiet click. Annabeth sits and listens to the sound of her own breathing for a moment, before she carefully picks herself up and heads for the shower.