Annabeth had too many moments where she was forced to mourn Percy. They had always been false, though, had always led to his miraculous return.
They found her after the battle with her arms wrapped tightly around him, vacant eyes staring down into a silent face. They could have been statues. There was a part of her, the part that was young and miserable and suddenly alone again that dramatically wished that they were. She wished that they could be preserved like this, him in her arms and still warm enough that she could lie to herself and pretend he was alive.
It would be tragic, yes, but it was a very Greek notion.
Percy would have laughed. Then again, Percy would have had to be alive to laugh.
They couldn't part her from the body, even after he grew cold.
Buried beneath her ridiculous desire was that cold logic that she'd inherited from her mother, the one that told her that there was no Percy to hold. That there was madness in grief. That he wouldn't want her to act like this.
Piper held her hand when they finally managed to take Percy's body into another room on the Argo II. She didn't demand that Annabeth talk, didn't try to fill the silence that had collapsed over the entire ship. That was something she had always appreciated about her friend.
She held her hand the entire night, not once managing to unstick her tongue from the roof of her mouth.
Annabeth couldn't be sure if she had ever been sent into silence like this for so long before.
Leave it to Percy Jackson to be the one to manage to do it, even after death.
The flight was not fast enough in Annabeth's opinion, as she stood on the deck of the ship, her fingers clenched so tightly around the rail that she had lost feeling in them. She was a statue. She was a Greek tragedy.
They'd sent word ahead, and camp now knew that when they came home, they would be a few short of seven. Silence was like heavy pressure aboard the ship, except for the moments where it was expressed in the quiet sobs of Hazel late at night, far away from Annabeth and her quiet grief.
This was what war did, Annabeth told herself as she stared at endless sky. In victory, there was loss. They had fought the earth, and the earth had taken back.
"Annabeth?"
It took her a moment, but she finally managed to unstick herself, head turning so she could glance over shoulder. Jason stood behind her, face pale, eyes sick with grief. Her lips pursed then parted. Where were her words now? Why was she coming undone when she had spent her entire life building herself up?
"We'll be home soon."
She blinked, and her eyes burned. "How am I going to tell his mom?"
It was the first thing that she had said in the three days following Percy's death. Jason looked surprised, but she was sure it was because she was talking to him about this and not someone else. His lips thinned out, the scar on his mouth pulled taut with the expression.
How in the world was she going to tell Sally Jackson that her son was an idiot? A self-sacrificing, noble, heroic idiot who thought death was the only way to save her?
Jason took a step forward, body stiff, uncertain. He was about as good with emotions as she was, and here she was, somehow seeking what little bit of comfort she could allow herself before facing everyone with him.
"I don't know," Jason finally said. He reached out, his fingers on her shoulder and squeezing tightly. "You don't have to, if you don't think you can."
She shook her head. "It has to be me."
They stood there, his hand on her shoulder, warm and comforting.
The nightmares started up again after that.
Nightmares were not a new thing for Annabeth. They weren't a new thing for any demigod, and she really wished that she could use that as a comfort. But not every demigod had been through Tartarus and lived to tell the tale. Not every demigod had battled for the fate of the world against Gaea herself and lost their best friend in the process.
That was the worst of it.
It wasn't that she had lost Percy as someone she loved wholly, with every part of her body. It was that she had lost her best friend, that someone else important to her had gone away.
It was that she had lost Percy when he had understood the same trauma of Tartarus and had been there to hold her when she cried out in the middle of the night and whom she could shake awake when his own nightmares became too much.
She woke up drenched in sweat the first night back in Camp Halfblood, her clothes sticking to her skin, her hand reaching out for the empty space next to her that would always be cold and too put together.
She had lost the only person in the world who could understand her, and there was nobody who could comfort those fears now.
But her nights weren't just filled with the impossible abyss of Hell. They were filled with Hazel's screams and the ash of a branch that no longer existed. They were filled with Percy's fury and the way he had unleashed it on the earth, drowning it while it drowned him.
She cried, and there was no relief in that.
Annabeth had already gone to one of Percy's funerals. She'd even been the one to make his shroud, the one they use now. There was no miraculous turn of events this time around, there was no coming back from the dead for him.
Part of her recognized that it was cowardly, but she crept out of camp that morning and headed to Manhattan instead. She couldn't say for how long she stood outside of the Jackson-Blofis residence, just that the sun was creeping up high by the time Sally opened it and looked at Annabeth with surprise.
This was a stupid idea, she knew that. Her chest constricted as her eyes focused on a spot directly behind Sally. "I haven't been avoiding you."
From her peripheral vision, she could see the momentary flash of confusion on Sally's face and then the overwhelming sadness. "I never thought that you were."
She had never been good at this thing before, the emotions that came with talking to someone who was hurting the same as her. Or hurting in general. Annabeth Chase was a lot of things, but emotionally connected was really not one of them. That came from a lifetime of being hurt, of being left.
"I should have come here immediately," Annabeth found herself saying. "I couldn't. Not after - I should have said it in person. I could have sent someone else, instead of having Chiron…"
She trailed off, the words dying in her throat. As much conviction as she had on the Argo II with Jason, in the end, she just couldn't do it. She had tried, by IM, but that was cheap. She knew that. So in the end, it had been Chiron and Grover who had gone to Sally Jackson, when it should have been Annabeth.
She was a coward.
She was a little girl who had lost the only boy she had ever truly been in love with.
She was lost.
Sally crumpled, and Annabeth didn't hesitate to go to her. There was a tiny, insistent voice that told her to run away, to not let anyone touch her, but she ignored it. Sally needed her as much as she needed Sally right now, and they stood outside of the doorway and held each other until it hurt too much to cry anymore.
"I don't blame you," his mother whispered fiercely. "I don't blame you for not being able to do it."
"I wish you would," Annabeth croaked. "It might make it easier."
Sally pulled back, her hands on Annabeth's shoulders. Now that she was really looking at her, she could see that the woman had aged tremendously, almost too much in a short time. This was what it was like for a mortal parent to have a demigod child, what so many of them must have to deal with when they went off on quests. When they didn't come back. Her hair was streaked with gray, her face gaunt.
"Are you hungry?" Sally asked instead of commenting on Annabeth's statements.
She wanted to be hated and blamed. She wanted to be shoved away, not embraced. She wanted a reason to feel low about herself and to mourn Percy hideously.
Numb, she found herself nodding. She couldn't remember the last time she ate. Last night, probably. She wasn't the kind of person to stop eating, to stop caring for herself, but the memories of it came and went as they pleased.
"I wanted to make my own memorial for Percy," his mother was saying as she led Annabeth inside and quietly closed the door.
The kitchen was crammed with more blue cookies and cupcakes than she was sure either of them could eat, even if they included Paul. Definitely if they included Paul. And yet the idea of getting sick to her stomach on Sally's baking for Percy seemed right.
When Annabeth sat down at the table, Paul did come out. He sat next to his wife, one hand over hers, one hand on the food. He gave Annabeth a wan smile that she couldn't return.
They weren't quiet, because that wasn't how Percy Jackson could be mourned or celebrated.