It had been a couple of months now, thing's should've been better.
They should be able to sleep alone. They should be able to sleep in the dark. Percy should be able to control his anger, stop lashing out at the new campers, punching holes in his cabin's walls. Annabeth shouldn't have bags under her eyes.
The other campers were carefree and as happy as ever, another war was done with. All the blood and pain was a thing of the past. Campers were going off to college while new ones still bustled in, wide eyed and infatuated with the world they had just uncovered. Annabeth was jealous of them, their ability to just move on. They didn't have to hear the screams of the person they loved every single night when they closed their eyes. Ignorance is bliss, she had said.
Percy's knuckles were black and blue and turning yellow. They always were. He had destroyed majority of the training dummies in the arena, slashed them to pieces. He'd broken plates, smashed two chairs in the big house and flooded the boy's bathroom at least twice. Under normal circumstances, Chiron would have been furious, but Percy wasn't normal. At least, not anymore.
It had been a month, or three. Days blended together when you didn't sleep. In her mind, she was chained up in the brutal darkness, chains wrapped around her ankles and wrists. Her filthy orange t-shirt was torn to shreds, barely clinging on to her bony shoulders. She could feel her bruised cheekbone throbbing. She was aware of the blood slowly dripping down her thigh, the shard of hard, cold rock pressing into her spine. Laughter echoed of the dark rocks around her, a low, guttural voice growled at her, taunting her. Large, dirty hands slapped her across the face. She cried out as the hands moved down to her chest, groping her. Tears mixed with blood on her face as the creature laughed. "Percy!" she cried, her voice cracking with desperation. In return, all she could hear was the sound of his screams.
Percy's eyes bolted open when he heard her first cry. He was used to the sound by now. It didn't bother him as much as it should. He figured that since everyone else had to deal with him and his fury during the day, he had to deal with Annabeth at night. At first Chiron had been completely opposed to letting Annabeth move into Cabin 3, because it was strictly against the rules and campers had always been with their siblings, but when the Athena kids complained that they couldn't sleep with her there and that Percy was the only one who could wake her, he reluctantly agreed. When he opened his eyes, she was tossing and turning violently, crashing between him and the wall. Slowly and carefully, he rolled over onto his side and caught hold of one of her arms, pinning it to the bed. He began kissing up her arm, starting at her fingers and moving up to her neck, planting soft kisses on her fingertips, her forearm, her shoulder, her collarbone. He had rolled over so he was on top of her, hovering over her on his elbows. By the time he was kissing up her jawline, her body was still and her soft grey eyes were wide open and staring at him while tears drifted down her cheeks.
"Good morning." he said, his voice husky and low from lack of sleep.
"It's midnight." she whispered, her voice impossibly small.
"It's still morning." he said, staring back at her.
Her hair was wild and tangled, spread around the pillow behind her head in all directions. Her eyes were huge and light, shining with fresh tears. Her cheeks were wet and Percy could just barely see the remnants of a bruise on her cheekbone. This was a side of Annabeth he rarely got to see, open and vulnerable. He wasn't sure if he liked it or not.
"Im sorry." she whispered looking away from his face.
"Hey," he said, forcing him to look at him. Fresh tears rolled down her face. "You're worth it."
In a second, his lips were on hers, gentle and quiet and soft. She responded by reaching up and reaching her arms around his back, rolling them over so she was laying on top of him, her legs straddling his hips.
She pulled away first and laid her head down on his chest as he began to draw lazy circles on her back. Her hair smelled like vanilla and Percy could feel how thin she'd gotten over the past month as she laid on top of him.
"You alright?" he whispered.
"Yeah," she said, her voice muffled by his shirt. "Same old, same old."
"The one with the guy and the chains?" he asked.
"Y-yeah." she said, her voice cracking.
"Gods, I'm so sorry, Annabeth. I'll never let anybody touch you like that, ever again." he whispered.
"Don't be sorry. If it weren't for you, I wouldn't be here right now." she said, turning her head to look at him, his green eyes shining in the moonlight that flooded through the open window.
"We'll be okay, right?" she said quietly.
Percy hesitated, "Yeah, we'll be okay. As long as we're together, right?"
"Yeah, as long as we're together."