Annabeth
It was unexpected, the phone call, and it hit her hard in the stomach like a brick. If she'd only tried harder to make things better between them, to reconcile their relationship, maybe the guilt wouldn't be looming over her as it was.
Frederic Chase. Dead.
It hung over her like a dark cloud, swirling with black thoughts of guilt and betrayal. She hadn't even known he was ill. She was the world's worst daughter.
Too often she'd heard the words "Your pride will hurt you." but she never believed it, went about being her usual prideful self. Her father didn't want a child and resented her, so she grew up with mutual feelings of resentment to her father. She ran away to escape him and his abusive wife, her step-mother, and her pride told her she would never forgive him.
Never.
Even after he saved her when she was fourteen, and for a brief few days, it was like they were a family. Then the arguing began and she found solace in the family of someone else, the dysfunctional, broken, but nevertheless loving family of Percy Jackson. His family were the ones to reassure her that her father did love her. Of course he did. But it's hard to love the bastard child of the woman whom he once loved and never forgot, sitting there amongst his otherwise perfect family as a sore reminder of that woman who loved and left.
Yet here she was today, a strong young woman aged 22, sobbing over the father she hardly knew, hardly loved. The pain clutched at her heart with it's cold fingers and racked her entire body. He was gone, and there was nothing she could do about it. Her pride had wounded her, wounded her greatly, and she was damn certain it was deeper than a flesh wound. Gods, she could feel it in her soul.
~oOo~
His funeral only renewed the stabbing shame she'd tried to repress. It was dull and gloomy, held in a large church with a domed roof. The priest warbled on about what a good person he was, how everyone would miss him, how he impacted all of their lives - leaving out the important parts, like his eccentric collection of old airplanes and his obsession with battles of history, and the parts everyone tried to forget, like the bastard child who ran away aged 7.
Her father hadn't lived to see his daughter's wedding, his sons' proms, grandchildren. Whilst he could've been sat on an armchair in front of the fire with a baby on each knee and wrinkles in his eyes, he was laying stiff and cold in an ornate box, dressed in the black suit he hated so.
Life was cruel, something she'd learnt long ago.
Time passed, and the wound healed, and after a while it was nothing more than a bad memory in the back of her mind. But of course, Frederic never forgot. Everyday he watched over his family from his resting place, finally at peace. Annabeth had gotten married a year later, and even though he wasn't walking her down the isle as he should've been, he still couldn't believe how beautiful she'd become. Blonde hair, smooth skin, white dress.
He watched her when she was throwing up and her husband was holding back her hair and her brothers were making obscene jokes and laughing at her.
He watched her when she held her baby for the first time and he cried, truly cried, for it was a beautiful moment. That was how it should've been, all those years ago, when the golden cradle arrived at his doorstep containing the most gorgeous baby he'd ever laid eyes on.
Sometime Annabeth could sense his presence, and she knew he was watching. In that way, that was how they reconciled.
When her time came, he greeted her with open arms.
I'm not really sure what this is. Kinda feelsy, angsty... I have a serious obsession with Annabeth and her dad, so :/
Review/favourite!