indelible (adjective)
1. (of ink or a pen) making marks that cannot be erased
2. not able to be forgotten or removed
From the moment Rachael Elizabeth Dare meets Perseus Jackson, she knows she will never forget him.
She is thirteen, on a vacation she doesn't want to be on with parents who don't care, and will never care, and quite frankly she doesn't want them to care. They try to appease her with a trip to Hoover Dam but she grows so sick of their uppity criticism of anyone and everyone in sight that she escapes as soon as possible.
She is in the midst of searching for a bathroom, and her mind is pulsing with anger and her lime green Converse are pounding the pavement, and her nose is running so she whips out a Kleenex from her jeans pocket when suddenly she hears footsteps that are not her own, and she whips around, her red hair flying and why is there a bronze sword sticking out of the center of her chest?
She looks around. Her green eyes widen and time seems to freeze, and vaguely she registers that there are several things she could be terrified of right now.
One is the massive army of dead-or are they dead?- skeletal creatures that are rapidly approaching and what the heck are those things anyway?
A second is the fact that no one seems to notice aforementioned skeletal army, which means they're another of her terrifying visions.
And a third is the wild-eyed black-haired boy who is currently removing a bronze sword from the center of her chest and finds it completely one hundred percent normal that she's not hurt at all.
She begins to scream at him, because honestly you can't just go swinging swords around at people, and then she begins to ask questions, because just who is this kid and why is he carrying a sword, and why didn't it hurt her and really, what the heck are those skeleton things?
He attempts some sort of hypnosis on her (it fails, of course, her therapists have tried this crap for years so she's quite used to resisting, not that his actually works) and she begins to notice a steadily growing panic in his eyes- eyes, she realizes, that are sea-green, just like hers- and all of a sudden she registers that whatever these skeletal things are, he can see them too and she is not alone.
Either they're both insane- a definite possibility, she admits- or what she's seeing is real, and the second is enough to convince her that she should probably help this green-eyed black-haired boy, whoever he is.
"Bathroom!" she shouts as the skeletal things come even closer, and she shoves the boy into the bathroom behind her- later, she affirms that it thankfully was a men's restroom- and the skeletal things come to a screeching halt in front of her and she realizes that now she really is alone because besides that boy no one else can see them and holy crap they're even more terrifying up close.
But she stands her ground, and this, Rachel Elizabeth Dare supposes, must be what courage feels like, because she knows no matter what she has to help this boy.
So she does what she does best- start rambling on as quickly and loudly as possible until they leave her alone out of sheer annoyance.
"Did you see that kid? It's about time you got here. He tried to kill me! He had a sword, for god's sake. You security guys let a sword-swinging lunatic inside a national landmark? I mean, jeez! He ran that way toward those turbine thingies. I think he went over the side or something. Maybe he fell."
The skeletal things leave- she thanks whatever gods exist- and it's then she realizes that she is trembling. She checks that the scene is clear, and with shaking hands she opens the bathroom door and lets the boy out.
"Do yourself a favor," he says, trembling nearly as much as she. "Forget it. Forget you ever saw me."
It's later that she realizes that this is impossible. She cannot possibly forget him.
She has already memorized the sweep of his ebony hair, the color of the sea that flows through his eyes, the crazed expression on his face, his name (though she doubts it is entirely real, because who would name a child Percy Gotta-go?), and the fact that he is the one person she has met in her thirteen years on this planet who sees what she sees, this imaginary world- or is it imaginary?- that lies beneath the surface of reality.
Rachel Elizabeth Dare will not forget this boy, whoever he really is. Somehow, she knows he has the answers to her never-ending questions. He is embedded into her mind, an indelible image that cannot be erased.
She is daydreaming, sitting in the back of a private jet on a flight back to Manhattan, and she inks into her jeans a picture of a green-eyed boy with a bronze sword and a whole lot of courage.
This is the Taylor Swift song, so to speak, of my fic collection, in that it is in some manner a reflection of my life. Dedicated to a boy who will never read this. For something you probably care about a little more, this will be multi-chaptered, kind of an exploration of Rachel's feelings and relationship with Percy throughout the last two books of the original series and beyond. TLH and SoN will be disregarded, updates will be sporadic, reviews will be greatly appreciated.