(I know I'm sorry this isn't an update but I'm working on it trust me just go with it.)
Disclaimer: I do not own these beautiful characters or any of these beautiful song lyrics. Enjoy!
Percy was fighting to keep his eyes open as he stared out at the sky through the van's window, the cloudy water stains distorting his view of the stars. It was always weird to see so many lights in the sky for Percy, when he was so used to a bright orange atmosphere to comfort him at night. It was weird, but he did always feel a sense of reassurance, and he could only figure it was because of the constellations hidden inside them. It was sometime in the early morning/late night, maybe 2 or 3 o'clock, and he and Annabeth were in Wyoming doing a small favor the goddess Demeter.
You mean, almighty immortal gods need teenagers to pick up their favorite pair of Primordial Gardening Shears? All. The. Time. Percy was only just recently reminded that Wyoming was actually a real place, and not some sort of urban legend, because seriously, does anybody even live in Wyoming? Five bucks says that anybody other than a child of Athena or a fifth grader could not tell you the capital of Wyoming. But anyway, the two of them had agreed, because that's what you do with a grumpy Grass Deity who has a surplus of gardening tools readily available. (Why couldn't she just use one of those instead of making Percy and Annabeth drive hundreds of miles into what was probably the most obscure state in the country?) The Gods had been asking him and Annabeth for a lot of favors lately, and the specifics were begining to blur together, along with the numbers.
Annabeth was next to him in the driver's seat of the van, her steady grey eyes focused on the road and her head swaying slightly to the music on the radio. They had switched drivers about an hour ago so Percy could sleep, or at least pretend to. At first he had tried to distract himself by counting the cars on the highway, or by turning on the radio and finding the classic rock station, or really by doing anything but fall asleep. Every night since Tartarus, or actual hell, had been it's own miniature hell, haunted with waking nightmares about losing Annabeth or losing control and killing his friends, or the agonizing and terrifying combination of him lashing out and- well, you get it. He was always exhausted lately from staying up every night in a pointless attempt to avoid them, and the dark circles under Annabeth's eyes along with the slight tense of her shoulders told him she was going through something similar.
It was an unspoken barrier between the two, and Percy knew that if they didn't sort it out soon, the wall would just get thicker and thicker. But he was too unsure of who he knew he was now, after the war, and maybe a little bit afraid of what he'd become. It was constantly on his mind, that one day, she might not be there to hold him back. Every time there was a debate with the counselors in the meeting room at the big house, or every time a conversation with Annabeth got a little too tense, Percy wondered, Is this the moment? Is this where I snap? The disruptive thoughts swirled through his mind until eventually he just stopped talking entirely, forcing himself into his chair so hard that the withered plastic arms would crack and crumble. Often, even Annabeth couldn't get him to leave the room after everyone else had gone, leaving him in silence and only comforting him later, at night, when the visions that were plaguing his mind were the loudest. So he, selfishly, really really did not want Annabeth to discover that part of himself, because after all that he had lost, he could not lose her now; he couldn't lose the one thing that woke him up from the nightmares and made every day worth living. He couldn't lose her. He wouldn't.
He tried to keep that thought in his mind, tried to believe that everything would be ok. I won't let you go. Never again.
Percy's eyelids eventually fell closed, and his last thought before he fell asleep was that he knew that Annabeth was slowly slipping away from him, or maybe he was slowly slipping away from her.
He woke up sluggishly, blinking his eyes slowly and feeling in his daze like there was something- not right. It took him maybe ten seconds, but then he realized that he had slept dreamlessly. Completely peacefully. He was trying to register this, as it would have been the first time in months, when he heard a soft, airy birdsong accompanying the radio. He moved his glance to Annabeth and realized it was her quietly singing along, her rosy lips lazily murmuring to the song playing on the radio, as if she didn't quite know the lyrics but she knew the melody by heart. It was very Unannabeth; she never really sang unless her voice would be drowned out by the other campers at the campfire, and Percy had never even thought to comment or to ask her about it. He listened to her voice carry the song's harsher rhythm, and his heart stopped as his breath went utterly still as though his entire body had forgotten whatever it was doing, so that Percy's entire self got lost in the sound of it. She sang shyly, and her voice was soft and delicate, two things not often associated with Annabeth, and still he heard it over the radio; it was almost like she was one of the Sirens they had seen so many years ago, before either of them had really known what the important things were, and he couldn't help but be pulled into her lullaby. Percy wasn't even sure she was on key, but, looking at her hair shine like silver rain in the moonlight, he felt like Annabeth in this moment, like this pocket of serenity they had found, was something he should hold onto and keep, something that would escape him forever if he didn't catch it. Percy let the song's lyrics dance through his tired mind as he closed his eyes and got high on the feeling.
There are questions I can't ask
Now at last the worst is over
See the way you hold yourself
Reel against your body's borders
I know that you hate this place
Not a trace of me would argue
Honey, we should run away, oh someday
Our baby and her momma
And the damaged love she makes
But I don't know what else that I would do
Than try to kiss the skin that crawls from you
Than feel your weight in arms I'd never use
It's the God that heroin prays to
To be alone with you
The strangest songs are always the ones you hear after midnight, long after the world falls asleep. Percy's hand reached across the center console and slipped into Annabeth's, and for a moment he let himself dream of a future where maybe their song ended up alright.
So, yeah, not my best work. I really need to work on characterization. But it's getting there, or at least I hope. Thank you to anyone who read or reviewed this, I love you and I'm sorry to subject you to this monstrosity.