PT: It'll be more of a stream of consciousness than anything; thus there may be some zooms into other spots of time. And hallucination is part of it as well. So it's bound to be confusing. And kudos to anyone who gets the two literary references I've slipped into this :) I beg for the comments to be intelligent; and beware of cheesiness and, in fact, OOCness that actually is partially intended, though I do explain it.
Disclaimer: Percy Jackson isn't mine...
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Little notes slipped under the pillows. Every day. Percy receives one every day, jotted down—jotted, with a sloppy sprawl of words—onto a pristine slip of paper; its color is blue-gray like the untamed sea; its scent is of salt and sunflowers. Funny, how it can smell like sunflowers; it is always first on Percy's mind, though he knows sunflowers have no scent (not that he would know). Each day he wakes, wild hair tousled from nighttime battles, eyes bleary from lax slumber; then the hand he reaches unconsciously under the pillow brushes the watery paper. Not bothering to stifle a long yawn, he would pull it out, unfold and read the fuzzy text, his eyes brushing every word—then let go and slide back into the clouds above.
He has taken to the covers. Ever since she died.
His days are wasted—lying under the covers, deprived of food and drink by his own despairing threads. Eternal mourning.
He will starve, like the loyal red hare, whose master died at the hands of his captives.
Days are years—if this is endurance, Percy believes it to be at a wicked balance.
Nothing lifts him from this pseudo-death. He is sick, sick with grief, sick in mind, sick in body, sick in heart. He endures, and pain is weakness leaving the body; but who can say such about one who continues to reopen the wounds? Who out there can proclaim such with through-and-through honesty? Percy Jackson is not dragged down. Percy Jackson does not leave the shattered pieces lying on the ground. Percy Jackson moves on. Percy Jackson is wonderful with mending.
Something, then, must have removed all his limbs.
People are like glass—they break over time, many times over, to be fixed over and over again, or else left to die. They change. He is grieving, bending backwards like the woman watching her lover melt in the rain for her. And he does not need to, either.
The world is surreal now, but a swirl of pigment behind sparkled glass.
Today, the words are of a poem, longer than most. Whoever slips the notes beneath his pillows seems to seek comfort in poetry; all the notes are copied-down verses. He lets the words fall into his heart before he slips back to a sky of rest; somewhere, somehow, someone—the sprite of a messenger who delivers these notes in the first place?—sings and whispers, croons, the lyrical words into his ear:
It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of Annabel Lee;
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.
A tear emerges, seeps through the covering lid; down it slides, trailing salt and water.
Unfathomable. The name...how can there be such similarity? How can one from another time know? How can a mortal tell the future?
A maiden, a maiden...a beautiful, strong maiden. Blonde and pretty, intelligent and powerful. And by the sea...
I was a child and she was a child,
In this kingdom by the sea:
But we loved with a love that was more than love—
I and my Annabel Lee;
With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven
Coveted her and me.
What was love?
Out of blue, Percy lets loose the first vocal breath he had released in moons upon moons. Wondering if, somehow—from somewhere—that she is speaking to him. She. Perhaps she is speaking from Elysium, telling him to move along—but what is life without her?
Your mother.
Your best friend.
Your fathers.
He chokes a bit—what has he been curled up for?—mourning, eternal mourning?—and because his best friend died, his love has died...but—she would slap him, tell him off for being so stupid as to mourn just because she is gone...
ALONE, bellows cruelty, his mind, GONE. It explodes into a thousand shards of refracted light, reflecting sun, reflecting death, reflecting black.
And this was the reason that, long ago,
In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
My beautiful Annabel Lee;
So that her high-born kinsmen came
And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulcher
In this kingdom by the sea.
Because she was already gone, and now she was gone again.
Right?
For the first time, comes the tipsy, uncertain whisper curling in the still, still air—no one visits him, they all left him alone in his cabin, because nothing ever, ever worked. Whispering into the still indoor air, a secret, "Annabeth?"
The angels, not half so happy in heaven,
Went envying her and me—
Yes! that was the reason (as all men know,
In this kingdom by the sea)
That the wind came out of the cloud one night,
Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.
Why won't Hades let me visit?
Are they jealous of our love?
Then again—what love? What love? Where is that love? They loved each other, but they were young, and friends as well. They were not childishly romantic, with crayons and pastel hearts, and Valentine's cupids...they had been bantering and gloriously bright with sun. They loved each other, but they also were comrades in bronze.
And now he has been thrown into mourning.
The monster was huge, not something they could not handle. But the thing had been cunning, and bled poison as well as attacked with it. It killed her, burned away at her bloodstream as Percy screamed and tried not to cry—he is not the sort to cry; he did not cry. He does not cry.... But she slipped through his fingers, even when the battle was won and the creature lay dead. Slaughtered.
But our love it was stronger by far than the love
Of those who were older than we—
Of many far wiser than we—
And neither the angels in heaven above,
Nor the demons down under the sea,
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
Somewhere over the sea where she died, Annabeth's soul is flying back to hold him close and whisper back to the small pearls of saltwater tearing dark streams onto his face. She has never been like this—this gentle in life.
For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise but I feel the bright eyes
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling—my darling—my life and my bride,
In the sepulcher there by the sea—
In her tomb by the sounding sea.
You're beautiful, he whispered to the burning flames as they danced and ripped her burned body. And so, so strong. Today he cries into the fluffy clouds where he wishes she is, holding him, stroking him, like a new tender mother if not the warrior lover.
She could be gentle, and how could he forget? Only now she holds grace, none of the awkwardness she possessed for comfort in life. And yet there is the way her hands move—crookedly, as if wondering whether to slap him; scream at him for breaking. Or else to continue loving him until the end of time, until he lifts himself from the cloudy bed and tumbles outside to meet the brightness of the sunshine.
She binds his finger with red thread before dying again, and again he is, was, seeing her body leaving in the flames, dancing; dancing, dancing, dancing, twisting. Her sun-caught hair is singed again, and yet here she creeps next to him in his sleep, whispering sweet pretty somethings.
She slips them in here for you.
She knows.
Soon he falls asleep, resolving not to break the next day, as she curls up to be his living lullaby—or dead—so he would learn to mend his arms for one night. His hands could heal then.
She is gone the next day, and he cries, for a day has passed with his dreams and the poem resounding in his mind, clanging like the beautiful bells of a church. But then he lifts his hands—he finds himself smiling, whispering "Annabeth" and thinking of seeing the sun that shyly peeks from under the curtains.