trúðu mér
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Annabeth sees him first, under a tree on a hill just outside base. He's eagle spread on what is essentially her front lawn-what has been her front lawn for five years-unconscious, gripping a metallic horn rather tightly in his hand. A normal girl would notice first, the gash on his forehead, the glittering object in his hand, his ripped up skin, perhaps even something even as shallow as his appearance (tattered clothing, tanned face, scarred hands, dangerously unfocused eyes that were jadeemeraldnavyaquamarine)
But Annabeth was never an ordinary girl, and so when she sees things, she chooses to lock in on the small patch of drool on his chin. Later, when The Boy Under the Tree wakes up, she will read this as a sign, a sign that this boy was far too insubordinate, too reckless, too stupid (too good) for her, a sign that he was a waste of her time. But Annabeth was always too curious for her own good. So she wrinkles her nose in (partial) disdain, and summons her mentor, Chiron. He arrives in his wheelchair, optimistic and wise as ever, and cocks his head in bemusement, both at the boy lying on the ground before him, and at the blond-haired, grey-eyed girl wrinkling his nose in disdain next to him.
Annabeth hates the boy even more by the time she helps the Apollo cabin lug the boy's prone, unconscious body and dumps it on a bed in the infirmary. She turns around hands on her hips, and faces her mentor in a manner that is reminiscent of all her half-brothers and half-sisters of the previous centuries, and promptly announces to Chiron that she will have nothing to do with this boy anymore.
Of course, now Fate decrees that she will have everything to do with this boy.
The boy wakes up precisely four days, eight hours, and seven minutes after his mishap with the Minotaur, and Annabeth soon learns that this boy's name is Perseus ('Percy' he insists) Jackson-gods know why his mother gave him that name-and that he is every bit as stupid as she imagined he was. Now if only she can figure out whom his father is.
Later, the Oracle, the mystical, rather repulsive crone who resides in the deepest darkest depths of the attic above the Big House, announces, that she will finally get a chance to save everyone, to prove herself as she always dreamed, she wants to hug the old hag. When she tells her that the insubordinate boy-Percy-is to lead her quest, her chance to prove to everyone that she is not a ditzy, naïve twelve year old, she doesn't know whom she wishes to kill first.
The quest is announced at the campfire. Uproar emerges.
'Silence!' Chiron says.
'Why?' Luke, her best friend and confidante (even more so now that Thalia's a pine tree now, she thinks bitterly, despite the fact that he is five years older than her) asks, furiously, his blue eyes so much like his fathers, yet so unlike his in that moment, flashing. 'She's, and only twelve years old, she will kill herself out there, and you won't do a thing about it when it happens, neither will our 'oh so glorified parents', so why am I supposed to just sit there, and let her leave like a lamb for slaughter?'
'As much as you and I wish to protect her, the Oracle has decreed this, so it will happen-'
'And that's the way it always will be huh? Blindly following orders, that for all we know could get us killed, while our commanders drink nectar all day, and watch 'Hephaestus Bashes Heads' on OEN without a second thought about us?' Luke throws his cup of eggnog across the camp fire. It hits a pillar of the dining pavilion with a loud, uncomfortable clang, the eggnog hissing against the enchanted embers. 'Fine.'
Annabeth finds him outside Thalia's cabin, his head in his hands, clutching a rare picture of them as a family, sobbing. His tears land on Thalia's face, and in the end this is what gets to her, because how is it, that the fates could tear someone like Thalia away from her, away from Luke? This is what gets her to understand what Luke has been ranting about for five years, and it is despicable.
She sits down next to him. 'Do you think about her sometimes?' she asks with a sadness no twelve year old should have.
Luke turns to her, beautiful blue eyes puffy, and bloodshot, and she thinks, Thalia would've hated to see him like this. 'Yeah, Princess. I think about her every day.'
They leave along with Annabeth's old keeper Grover the next day, and Luke meets them at the top of the hill, while Grover and Percy leave, with a peculiar look in their eyes to hail a cab. He hugs her, resting his chin on top of her head, in a familiar gesture that reminds Annabeth of the good ol' days. It makes her heart ache, for Thalia, for Luke, for everything she's lost.
'I'm gonna miss you' she says, and she's kinda proud of the way her voice only cracks a little bit.
'Me too, Princess. But you'll be alright, 'kay? You always are 'Beth.' He presses a kiss into her hair, and a few tears fall into her mass of blond snarls ('Princess curls' Luke and Thalia used to say with wide grins.) He gives her a watery smile. 'Now go make Thalia proud.'
FIN.