"I think we should take a break,"
She can see the shattering panic in his eyes as he tries desperately to keep his composure.
"What do you mean a break? Am I doing something wrong? Is this because of the tutoring because I can find someone else—"
"Percy," she says, reaching across the table and gently taking his (shaking) hand. "This has nothing to do with you. It's—" She closes her eyes and takes a breath, trying to keep her own composure which is worn paper thin these days. "I'm not breaking up with you. I'm not. It's just, with everything that's been going on. After..." [Tartarus] "I feel like I'm finally out on my own in the real world. No supernatural threats. No wars to fight. And...I realized I know who Annabeth daughter of Athena is, but I don't know who Annabeth Chase is. And I'm trying to figure that out."
"And Annabeth Chase doesn't like me?" He's not even meeting her eyes now.
"No, no. I just…" She tries to find the words to explain without making this worse. "This relationship has been so new and we're still figuring out what we are without death staring us down. And, I think I need to figure myself out first."
Silence from the other side of the table.
"Percy, say something, please."
"Where does this leave us? What do I do?"
"We're still...us. Of course we are. Friends. Just pressing pause, taking a step back. I don't think I can imagine my life without you now."
"But you want to."
She opens her mouth, but doesn't know what to say.
"You want to imagine a normal life, a life without camp, without monsters, without all of this."
She grinds her teeth into the nervous spot she's biting inside her cheek. "Is that such a bad thing?"
"It was supposed to be you and me versus the world, Annabeth. I don't...I don't know who I am without you."
"That's the problem, Seaweed Brain," she says gently, squeezing his hand. "For me and for you."
He nods morosely and she can tell he's fighting off tears. Not for her, but for his own pride.
"Okay?"
"Okay."
She releases his hand and pushes back from the table. "I'm gonna be late for class."
"Let me walk you," he stands to follow her.
"I'll make it on my own." She has to stand her ground on this because if she doesn't start now she never will. She shoulders her bag and stands there facing him, knuckles white on the straps.
The silence that used to be comfortable has turned back to awkward.
"Well, I–" he says, motioning vaguely.
She can't stand this. But she nods and keeps her distance.
Where there should have been an embrace and a kiss, a promise of
, there's an awkward side hug and a rushed apology, the threat of uncharted territory again.
"I love you, Percy. I'm so sorry."
"Don't be." He swallows hard. Brave face on. Guilt gathers as a knot in her stomach-she's supposed to be the only person he can let go around. "You're the smartest person I know. You'll figure this out."
She offers him a smile (that doesn't reach her eyes) and turns away, leaving him to go back to his mother's apartment and her to walk slowly to class wondering if she just ruined the best part of her life.
The silence is the hardest part. She wants to keep him at arms length, to give herself breathing room, but she hadn't realized how much they spoke. And how much it meant to her. She finds herself absently checking her phone, and always being vaguely disappointed. He's respecting her like he always has. What have you done, her inner voice sighs in exasperation.
She gets out of class at 4 and actually takes her bag up to her dorm room instead of getting straight on the F train and heading to Percy's place.
Normally she spends her evenings and weekends there, and some nights, accidentally of course.
She hadn't seen anything wrong with it. After all the trauma they shared they needed each other. They protected each other from everything—the nightmares, the monsters, the mundane realities of finishing high school. And they were in love, of course they were. She hadn't even thought of doing anything differently.
But then she had spoken to Piper the last time she and Jason were visiting camp.
Piper and Annabeth had snuck out of their cabins and down to the beach to talk and catch up. Being best friends and going through the end of the world together then suddenly losing all communication (just because demigods and cell phones didn't mix) sucked. A lot. Annabeth was talking about how great everything had been going for her and Percy in New York and the plans they were making for the future and Piper sat there listening with a look on her face almost like sadness.
Finally, Annabeth asked, "How are things out in LA? It's got to be nice, just you and Jason and no camp."
Piper stared out at the ocean, like she was trying to find the horizon despite the pitch black country sky and pitch black sea. "It's good. Everything's going great. School's great. Hard, I mean calculus is a bitch, but its fine. And my dad has been so great since I've been back, and Gleeson and Mellie are the best—" Just trailing off these wonders in a monotone, after her rocky upbringing and hellish past year any one of these should have at least put a smile on her face.
"But?" Annabeth asked.
"But it doesn't feel real. It feels like at any moment everything is going to fall apart, or maybe I am. Maybe everything that happened, everything I did broke something inside of me. Maybe it'll never go back to being ok."
Annabeth knew the feeling. "Are you having nightmares?"
"It seems like every thought I have, even when I'm awake, is a nightmare. I just keep thinking that an attack is coming and I'm going to die or my dad or Gleeson or his kid." She shook her head.
"Or Jason?" Annabeth said, to her it was always Percy, the one she feared losing the most. Most of her nightmares had been centered around him for the past 3 years. It was unthinkable.
"Jason," Piper said his name like an apology.
"Is everything ok between you two?"
She sat there for a moment without answering-searching for the horizon in the black and gathering her thoughts.
"Do you ever feel like the only reason you're with Percy is because you can't function without him? Like we got together in a crisis and everything we've done has been in the context of imminent death or worse and now that all that's over we're just together because no one else gets it, you know? And what if," she's broken a dam now, the worries are all flooding out. "what if being together is only making it worse? What if I can't move on because I'm convinced that what happened to us all and being in this relationship is who I am now?"
"I don't know, Piper. I guess I never really thought of that."
"I mean," she says at a whisper after a moment's silence, "what if I'm not really in love with him?"
"Has something happened to make you think that?"
"Everything that happened. Hera messing with our minds, my mom being the damned goddess of love."
"But what about him? Let's think this through. What about Jason makes you think you're not in love with him?"
"Nothing. Nothing he is literally perfect. Irritatingly so. The perfect boyfriend."
"But it sounds like you don't like that."
"No, yes, I don't know. Sometimes I just wish we could talk we could be ourselves without this burden of the future over us or these weird unspoken expectations of what a boyfriend and girlfriend are supposed to do."
"So you just want to be friends with him?"
Piper digs her toes into the sand. "Maybe?"
"Well, are you attracted to him? What do you feel about him?"
"Of course I'm attracted to him, you've seen him."
"Are you saying he is attractive or you're attracted to him?"
"I—"her voice broke into a gasp at the screech of the harpies.
Of course it didn't matter if you had saved the world and were working through PTSD with your friend who you hadn't seen in months, the harpies would still eat you for dinner if you were out of bed. Annabeth and Piper both grabbed their knives and bolted, making a mad dash into the cover of the woods before creeping back to cabins six and ten, promising to finish the conversation at a less perilous time, but they never got the chance.
Jason and Piper had to unexpectedly leave early the next day after Piper got a call from her dad, via Chiron—some kind of bad news.
So, that was how Annabeth started her fall semester of Senior year with a head full of doubts. Piper's words just kept ringing back to her over and over again,
And soon it stopped being Piper's voice and became her own, after every date, after every kiss, every time she woke up in his bed or on his couch and had to rush across town to make it to school. Was this commitment? Or codependence-an unhealthy symbiosis that would eventually end in heartbreak?
Without Piper around and away from camp she had no one but Percy to talk to and she couldn't very well ask him. She started feeling more and more isolated, from the people at her school, her roommate who she hardly spoke to, her friends at camp who were all away for the year, and even Percy who was right at her side.
So she started doing what she did best: problem solving.
The problem: Annabeth may or may not be in an unhealthy relationship by virtue of the (extremely traumatic) circumstances of its formation and growth.
The components: Percy, Annabeth.
Percy, whose fatal flaw was loyalty, Percy who had quite literally saved the world on multiple occasions, Percy who was putting the pieces of himself back together and still full of laughter and excitement about life and hope for the future. Percy who she had fought with through thick and thin who she knew inside and out.
No, the problem wasn't Percy. So, Annabeth. Annabeth who was a runaway turned camp counselor, Annabeth who grew up under the care of a centaur, Annabeth who dreamed of going on a quest. Annabeth who let nothing stop her Annabeth who fought in the same battles as Percy had, who had the same scars, who had used her skills to leave a lasting impact on the immortal Mount Olympus. Annabeth who now found herself having finished said designs, resigned from questing, left camp, removed herself from the insanity and the danger of demigod life. What was left?
It was the problem of the first day of school—'what did you do over the summer?' 'introduce yourself and say one interesting fact' 'what do you do for fun' The answers 'fought the earth goddess in the ancient lands', 'my mother is Athena', and 'relish the fact that I'm still alive' wouldn't really play well with her classmates. So she lied, for as long as she had been going to a boarding school, she lied.
But here she finds herself: 18 and no identity. That scared her. It scared her enough to text Percy to meet her in the park on her lunch break. It scared her enough to keep her from crying as she tried so so hard not to break the heart of the person she loved the most, or at least she thought she loved the most. She wasn't quite sure anymore.
Her roommate is so shocked to see her when she walks in that she just stands there, staring.
"Hi," Annabeth says, weakly, looking up from her textbook (she's been staring at the same sentence for the past hour and it's making less and less sense. Dyslexia and tears are a bitch of a combination).
"Sorry, hi, I'm just surprised to see you here."
"I know, I, uh, I should be around a bit more now. I'm trying to focus on my studies more."
"Oh, cool," she plops onto her bed and opens her laptop. At least she didn't have a lot of questions.
When Percy finally does text later-a blurred reminder that he is there for her if she wants him, underneath a row of hearts and sea creature emojis that he put as his own contact name-
she completely powers off her phone in response. What is she supposed to say to that?
Her chest feels tight and heavy, like an overpacked box that might break open at any second. For the daughter of a wisdom goddess she doesn't feel very wise. For a problem solving strategy this seems to be creating more problems.
The first week of Annabeth without Percy isn't a week of wild self discovery, it's just sad. The knowledge that he won't contact her and the fear that he might battle in her mind leaving her frayed and angry, at Percy, at herself, at every mythological entity she's encountered over the last decade. Frayed, angry, scared Annabeth's phone stays off or on Do Not Disturb all the time now. When she isn't in class she's laying in her bed staring at the wall swimming through a sea of less and less coherent thoughts. Then, even when she is supposed to be in class. day she walks across campus to sit on a bench and stare at a different wall. Her homework piles up, her grades stumble. On Friday she takes her backpack (and her pity party) to the library hoping to get some work done, at least to repair the damage that she had done to her current gpa during the week.
An hour in someone else sits down across from her at her table with the greeting, "I am literally going to kill myself."
Annabeth looks up startled, abruptly torn from the intricacies of microeconomics, into the face of a girl she recognized from her statistics class. "What?"
"I'm going to kill myself," the girl repeats, "if I have to read one more page of this bullshit."
"But you just got here," Annabeth points out.
"This is the fifth week of school, we're already halfway through this book, I think I'm allowed to be angry with it."
"Fair enough," she concedes, and tries to find her place to pick up in the blur of text below her.
"You're Annabeth right?"
She looks up again, "Right."
"Hope you don't mind if I sit here."
"Not at all, just trying to get some work done."
"Oh my bad," she apologizes.
"You're fine, sorry."
, the voice in her head isn't happy with how this interaction went.
she thinks back, trying harder and harder to focus on the task at hand.
, it says.
She has her first nightmare that night. It's Nyx, and Akhlys (again), and Arachne all together and Percy with his rage and his dark eyes killing them all and Hera laughs as she points him toward Annabeth next. She jolts fully awake and is on her feet before she even remembers where she is. Not in Tartarus. Not at camp. Not with Percy.
She tries to slow her breathing down and stop the tears but they come anyway so she leaves the room as quietly as she can and claws her way outside choking, gasping for fresh air. It's 3 am. She could call Percy. She has before. He would pick up and his eyebrows would scrunch together to see her so upset and he would talk her down and out of it and say
. Percy, her Percy. But not anymore. Now he was no one's Percy and she was trying to be her own Annabeth and she was failing. She slumped to the cold ground against the wall of the building and choked on another sob. By all the gods she was failing.
"So did you break up with your boyfriend or what?" Her roommate has entered for the seventh day in a row to find Annabeth actually in their room, which up until this point was a rarity. She's never even had a proper conversation with the girl.
The question creases Annabeth's brow and sits her up from her slump on the uncomfortable bed. "Sorry, what?"
"You said you spent a lot of time with your boyfriend and that's why you weren't here,when we met for like the first time a week into school. And now you're here all the time so did you guys break up or what? Not that I'm complaining that you're here it's fine whatever, you know, it's just sudden."
"No we didn't break up."
"You just no longer spend time together or speak to one another?"
Annabeth sighs,
is her immediate reaction, but she doesn't want to be rude. She doesn't want to alienate someone else. "We're taking a break. I just need some time."
"Was it serious between you two?"
"A year officially."
"Damn. What did he do?"
"Nothing. Nothing at all, it's just me. I can't make my mind up."
"I think you already have. It's why you did a pre-breakup on him. You had to break it to yourself slowly, I did the same thing to my first boyfriend. You'll find the right person. You're not gonna get it right the first time."
She's laying in bed that night, only having slowly slumped down farther from her initial position and having said goodnight to her roommate when she asked if it was OK to turn the light off. But nothing's changed. She's still staring at the ceiling as if it has the answers, her mouth still tastes like death, and nothing will ever change if she keeps up this way.
The next day she wakes up with her alarm clock and swears that she'll try harder: that she's acting stupid and childish and if this is all she is outside of her relationship then it was high time for it to go. Her phone lays as a brick on her desk as it has for the past two weeks. She picks herself up and tries to go shower. She really does. But the line is too long and it just seems a bit too much and she can put on a big headband and put her hair in a bun and no one will notice (right?). It's only been… well it's been a few days since she showered. And since she ate a meal that wasn't a out of the vending machine by the elevators. But she's fine. She's trying. She's going to do better.
She slides into the plastic chair in her cold first period classroom and notices, in some unoccupied corner of her mind that her bones are pressing harder on the plastic than they used to. The statistics teacher is passing back tests from earlier this week. She remembers taking the test because of the panic she felt when she walked into the room and found out it was test day. For an ADHD dyslexic student Annabeth did her best, and her best was very good. She was dedicated, worked around her disadvantages with planning and studying. But apparently this fog she was in was too much for the combination. She had skipped one too many classes, used the internet on one too many homework assignments, and ultimately got taken by surprise by the test and when the paper hits her desk she finds herself too scared to turn it over. The voice in her head goads her into it,
.
It turns out it isn't a C, it'san F, and even worse a note in red pen 'Please see me after class'. Her face burns as she quickly shoves the paper into a random page of her textbook. Anything to get it out of view, of her and others.
"We had lots of good grades on this test," the teacher says in an encouraging tone, "Good work, everyone! Let's go ahead and get started on the next chapter. Pull out your notes. This is chapter 8 on binomial probability…"
When the bell rings Annabeth stands up, gathers her books (and what's left of her pride) and walks to the front of the classroom as the rest of her peers surge toward the door for mid morning break.
"It said on my test to come see you."
"Yes," he sighs and walks over to his desk. "Come sit down."
She knows what's coming, and only hopes she can keep her composure during it. So, she sits in the chair that's next to his desk that students normally sit in when they come to ask him questions about the work. (She has never sat there before.)
"Annabeth, I have no problem saying you're one of my best students. Up until the past few weeks, I would have even put you in the running for a class award. But, I don't need to tell you that with your performance slipping the way it is, with that test grade I just gave you back, and all the class you're missing… well my concern is your college applications. You need to think long term."
"I understand."
"I can do two things for you. One I want you to correct your test for half credit, that should bring your grade up by two letters if you're willing to put in the work."
"I am, yes. Thank you."
"Two," he says, "I want you to go see one of the counselors. I'm not a therapist, but I know something is wrong. I don't want to hear what, I don't need to know your business, but you need to fix it. So talk to one of the counselors. Correct your work. Come to class. And we'll see if we can work this out, ok? Can you do that?"
"I can do that."
Walking out of the classroom she felt the now familiar burn of tears in her eyes and lump of misery blocking her throat.
the voice in her head says.
College applications. She hadn't even started hers, up until well now, she had assumed she would be going to New Rome University where she would have a full scholarship and guaranteed spot after a relatively short application. She and Percy were going to take the December DSTOMP and they had been studying together. That was the plan. Her ACT scores were good, her GPA
good. No problems. But now…well now she's not so sure.
There's a flyer in the drawer of her desk, among a stack of others like it that she accumulated during the first week of school. Different offices and services and clubs all wanted their message in front of the students. She had put them in a neat stack and filed them away in the bottom drawer of her desk which was where hopes dreams and all the papers she didn't need went to die. It was a mess of haphazard stacks and shoves and folds but at last she found it—a pastel yellow flyer in bold font for Student Mental Health Services.
She holds it (triumphant) before unceremoniously shoving everything else back into the abyss and slamming it shut. She then sinks back against the wall, sitting in the floor by her desk staring at it like it might burst into flames and burn her or just vanish.
IT'S OK TO NOT BE OK!
YOU DON'T HAVE TO GO IT ALONE
SMHS IS HERE TO HELP YOU!
We Have Trained Counselors And A Licensed Psychologist Here To Help You Succeed Beyond The Classroom! Don't Wait!
A phone number.
A building and room number.
, she thinks,
She almost laughs out loud.
She lays the flyer on her desk and decides to go to class. She slips on her shoes, grabs her bag and walks across campus. Except its raining. And by the time she makes it into the classroom not only is she soaked to the skin, but also a full 30 minutes late which counts as an absence. She stands outside the door deliberating: 3D design or not. Ultimately she can't bring herself to walk in and up to her assigned seat on the front row so she doesn't.
Despite the fact that she has already skipped five other classes this week.
Despite the fact that she thinks of 3D design as her favorite class. But now it's just one more thing that doesn't make sense.
The Common Application is really something at 2 am when all you've had to eat is a Diet Red Bull. It's Friday night. Annabeth knows because her roommate is gone to a party and Annabeth briefly entertained accepting her invitation to go with, but all she knows about non-demigod parties is 1) alcohol and 2) hooking up. She's not dumb enough to drink underage on school property, and the thought of hooking up with someone—even someone else's eyes or hands on her during a dance makes her skin crawl and her stomach turn. She tries not to think about him but she can only imagine how hurt Percy would be if she did that, and, well she thinks she's already hurt him enough. Besides, she has things to do.
She selects her colleges and realizes that a commonality is emerging—these are Without Percy schools. They're mostly in California to be near her dad, USC, UCLA, and far away from New York which will always be not only full of gods but full of him. This big city will always be the silent battleground she nearly died in two years ago, and her own silent battleground ever since. No, it'stime for a change of scenery. He could keep New York. She picks Harvard and MIT, too; she has family up in Boston and some rosy childhood memories tell her it wouldn't be a bad place to end up.
But, for all of them she marks her residence will be on campus. She tries to quash the romantic fool in her mind reminding her that she thought she might be married or engaged or at least the co-signner of an apartment lease with Percy Jackson by this point next year. Or at least she thought so two weeks ago. Now she's just Annabeth Chase, high school senior, 3.6 gpa, intended major architecture.
"Hey, I texted you last night, did you not get it? It never even said read." Her roommate is back and conscious and in one piece. "It's no big deal I just didn't know if my phone is fucking up or something."
"Oh god, no mine's been off. Let me check." Annabeth pulls her phone from under a pile of school info packets on her desk. She has to wait for it to wake up and find a signal. It buzzes and buzzes with missed notifications once it does.
"Dang is that your ex?"
She stares blankly at the screen as the notifications roll in. Right at the top is the text from last night. "Yeah I got your text. I should probably actually keep this turned on since I'm paying for it." She croaks out a fake laugh, shoves her phone in her pocket and heads toward the door.
"Where are you going?"
"Oh, uh, on a walk." Annabeth quickly lies.
Her roommate raises an eyebrow but nods. She lets the door close behind her and starts off toward the counselor's office. The flyer said they have Saturday hours, she guesses at a boarding school they'd have to be more accessible. She pulls the flyer out of her back pocket and grips it with white knuckles as she checks the building and room number for the fifth time.
she thinks as her (shaking) fingers close around the tarnished metal door handle.
It opens into a waiting room, an empty one blessedly, the receptionist looks up from behind the desk and gives her a blank smile. "Hi, how can I help you?"
"Hi, one of my teachers recommended I come see a counselor."
"You're in the right place, but we only have one in today and she's with an appointment right now so—"
"It's alright I'll wait."
.
"Ok what's your name and student ID number?"
Annabeth tells her, then sits in a pleather chair as instructed. As soon as she sits down she finds herself openingup her messages. One from her dad, but he would just assume she was busy studying. The rest are from Percy, all from Percy.
9/27 3:51pm
friends can still text each other right? i'm sorry I was such an idiot earlier,
take all the time you need you know im here for you always. whenever. whatever.
9/29 11:15am
hey i know you were supposed to tutor me but you don't have to worry about it i got
something else worked out
9/30 2:28am
i know this is literally the last thing you want since you told me to go away but can
you just let me know you're doing ok.
10/7 1:11 pm
so i DEFINITELY just failed the act
10/7 1:17 pm
you're really worrying me. if you're getting these please respond i swear we don't have
to talk. just let me know you're ok
Missed Call from (chain of emojis) 10/7 11:46 pm
Missed Call from (chain of emojis) 10/8 10:12 pm
Her thumbs are hovering over the screen, as if she would actually type a response when the door opens and the counselor comes out.
"Hi, come on back," she shakes Annabeth's hand, introduces herself.
Annabeth politely reciprocates.
She walks her back to a hall with a row of offices. Hers is the first one, and plushly furnished in browns. Brown carpet. Brown worn couch. Brown bookshelf. Browning potted plant.
She sits in a spinny desk chair and gestures to the couch for Annabeth, who sits on the edge as if to bolt at any moment.
"Tell me a little bit about yourself, Annabeth." She has a pen and legal pad at the ready, eyes intently fixed on Annabeth's face.
she thinks.
"Well I've been going to school here for the past three years. I'm doing design and architecture. I want to be an architect."
"How have you liked it here? What activities are you involved in?"
"I like it a lot, the specialization option as a high schooler is what brought me so I mostly focus on school work."
"Yes, but you live here in a community of people. What are you doing when you're not studying."
"Well…I study a lot."
"Okay, so what brought you to my office today?"
"I've been having a hard time lately. I failed my stats test and my teacher said to come see you."
"What's been giving you a hard time? It sounds to me like academia is your forte."
"I broke up with my boyfriend and I had a really hard summer. There's a lot going on right now."
"And all of this has you upset and out of the habit of studying?"
She nods.
"I can't help you get your grades up. And it seems to me you should already have that in hand. Do you mind telling me what happened this summer? Is there something there you need to work through?"
She thinks about reuniting with Percy after his kidnapping, of facing Arachne alone in the dark with a broken ankle, of fighting tooth and nail through the living pits of the abyss and choking on her terror, losing a friend, only for them to come home and get a pat on the back and a seat at the campfire. It's hard to sing silly songs when your soul feels scarred from everything you've seen. "I can't, I can't talk about it, right now. If that's alright," she manages to choke out.
"That's completely alright. You don't have to share anything with me that you're not comfortable with. What about your breakup?"
She nods.
"So let's talk about your boyfriend. What's his name?"
"His—"her voice catches. "His name is Percy."
"And Percy broke your heart?"
"No, I broke up with him. Well I didn't even break up with him I just needed to take a step back with everything that's been going on—"
"Your hard summer?"
"That and school. It was just a lot. So, I said we should take a break but I couldn't face him after and I haven't spoken to him in two weeks."
"So you're not talking to him and you're not studying either?"
"No."
"What have you found yourself doing?"
"I sleep. A lot. Probably more than I need to."
"Looking at your attendance here on the computer it looks like you've been missing a lot of class as well."
"Yeah," she croaks out through the ever familiar lump in her throat.
"How are you feeling about that?"
"I feel like a failure."
"Annabeth," she says gently. "You are in one of the most rigorous schools in the state, and even with this setback you have above a 3.0. You're acknowledging you have a problem and seeking help. You're here. You are not a failure. Ok?"
"Ok," she agrees verbally and keeps her dissent quiet.
"You are a high achieving student with big goals. My worry is that you put too much stock in them, and without your relationship to give you an emotional outlet you've momentarily lost sight of them. You need to find joy in the process again. So what I want you to do is to focus on your future. You're a senior, you have big things ahead. Your current situation is not your final destination."
She nods. "I think," she says to her knees and the carpet, "I'm scared that I might not know who I am outside of my relationship."
"That's a valid concern and it shows that you have a lot of maturity to be considering that. I think, Annabeth, it's important for you to remember how young you are. It's not a handicap-it's an advantage. You are at a turning point, a crossroads. Most people your age don't have near as much figured out as it seems like you do, but you should still be figuring yourself out. And you still will be for years as you adjust to college then adulthood, and you know what? That's okay. It's good to think about who you are and what you value and to let yourself change and evolve as your life does. Does that make sense?"
"I think so."
"Perhaps what's best for you now is to learn independence. If you're out of a relationship then stay out. Make something of yourself before you try to make something with someone else. Alright?"
"Alright?"
"I want to give you some homework, but I'm sure you have enough of that so just think of it as practical steps to keep you trending in the right direction."
She turns the page of her legal pad to a blank one and dictates as she writes. "Since you're having a hard time I know your tendency will be to beat yourself up, I want you to prioritize self care. Make sure you're eating 3 meals a day, drinking water, getting exercise, showers. Basic stuff but it is so important. Second make a goals list. Personal professional whatever you want it to be: in five years where do you want to be, what do you want to be doing, and who do you want to be with. Just good to think about. And lastly I want you to find some friends and do something off campus, go to the zoo go see a movie whatever. Social interaction will do you wonders after a breakup especially one like this. Sound good?"
"Sounds good. Thank you."
She stands up and offers a handshake again. "It was such a pleasure to meet you, Annabeth. Come back any time."
Annabeth takes the homework paper from her and folds it up until it is a tiny rectangle and shoves it in her front pocket. Her roommate has gone out again by the time she makes it back across campus. Her entire chest feels like she's forgotten how to breathe even though she is breathing just fine. She puts the folded up flyer and homework paper next to each other on her desk and the tightness of her chest moves to her stomach as she pulls out her phone and opens back up her conversation with Percy.
She chides herself.
She does take it off do not disturb,
, she says.
When her roommate gets back, she's all smiles. "Hey you're back. We're going out for pizza tonight you wanna come?"
is on the tip of her tongue. It always is. She's never had mortal friends. She's never wanted them. She's a master of excuses and avoidances. But her homework is to go out, and as stupid and irritating as that is, she thinks Melissa might be right. That maybe if she has a chance to see what she's like among new people who don't know her, maybe she'll start to find out who she is.
"Sure, why not."
"Really? Cool I'll let them know."
And she really does seem pleased. Annabeth notices. From the surprised raise of her eyebrows that melted into a smile. Maybe tonight will be fun.
Tonight is not fun. She crams into a cab with four other people who she doesn't know aside from her roommate to drive across town for overpriced tourist pizza. Its after dark before they even leave and the whole group seems quite content to sit in the pizza parlor until it closes and Annabeth fades farther and farther from the group.
She doesn't have anything in common with them. She has seen things they wouldn't believe. They have interests she could never match. She finds herself missing Percy. Sitting there surrounded by people that are supposed to distract her from him, she finds herself reliving quests and dates and ultimately their last conversation.
'You'll figure it out' he had said.
She had really gone and ruined it hadn't she. The one thing she always wanted, the one thing she had, something permanent. A promise. A connection deeper than any of that and she ruined it. Now she's sitting here realizing that t
She stands up from the table.
"You ok?" her roommate asks, she was the only one to look away from the conversation.
"I'm good. I just need to make a call."
She steps outside the restaurant and presses his contact name before she can think to stop herself.
He picks up on the first ring, because of course he does. Because he isn't like her. He's loyal to the people he professes to love.
"Hi," he says.
Her shame is closing over her throat. He doesn't deserve this. He doesn't deserve to be treated like this.
"Annabeth? You there?" The note of concern is there.
"Yeah, yeah I'm here."
"Are you ok?"
"Yeah I'm fine. I just wanted to see if you're ok."
He laughs a little bit, she can practically see his smile she knows it so well. "Yeah, I'm ok. I was worried about you."
"I'm sorry. I'm sorry I'm still trying to work through some things."
"Oh," he sounds a bit deflated.
"I just wanted to make sure you haven't given up on me yet."
"Never. Never in a million years."
She could start crying again. She remembers hanging over that pit. Telling him to let her go. He said, "Never." She strangles a sob into a whimper and clears her throat. "Ok, ok I…I have to go, Percy."
"Annabeth,"
"Yeah?"
"Please don't go missing like that again. It scares me so bad. Monsters are still out there."
"I know that, Percy. I can take care of myself."
"I know, I know. I just like to know you're safe."
She stays silent for a moment, watching the traffic along the street. "I love you."
"I love you, too," he says. And she hangs up before she does anything stupid.
When they finally make it back to campus at 1 am they get written up for breaking curfew, landing them all tickets to next Saturday morning's detention. She silently swears to herself to never leave campus again as she gets into bed. Maybe it's the anger, maybe it's the exhaustion from therapy and socializing, but she actually falls asleep instead of having her regularly scheduled stare down with the ceiling tiles.
The next day is Sunday which normally would be a lazy day (at Percy's) but nothing is normal anymore so she sits at her desk and works on college applications and essays, forcing herself to take breaks and eat meals.
She finds herself thinking about how the last time she was immersed in a project, the mark of Athena, it was Percy who despite his own ordeal and responsibilities was watching out for her health, making sure she ate slept, talked about her problems. Now she was having to learn to do it herself.
Monday night at 11 when her roommate asked if it was okay to go lights out she realized she had worked through dinner. She had finished her whole application, personal essay, and two school specific essays. Three more to go. She was so intent on getting them done that she had missed not only a meal, but an entire evening. She grabs her phone and a granola bar from her stash in her desk and walks downstairs. Time for a break.
She sits on the bench right outside the doors of her building and eats her pathetic excuse for supper. She had put her phone back on silent today during class and her work and decides to check it now while she's supposed to be taking a break from work.
No messages. No missed calls.
She should be happy, she thinks. Nothing to stress over. They just spoke.
, she thinks. Perfectly articulated, the constant tightness in her chest and tears in her eyes are forced withdrawals. She thinks back to the winter when those feelings were her only constant companions in his stead. While they were ripped apart not by fate but by a certain goddess's ill will and she never knew where he was or who he was with. It had been excruciating. And they had both learned their lesson. Never again. Yet here they are.
She clicks to compose a new text.
10/15 11:11pm
Yes, friends text.
10/15 11:12pm
Friends also can randomly confess their love and say I miss you. Totally fair game.
10/15 11:14 pm
ik Jason does all 3 of those on the regular
10/15 11:15pm
Damn, replaced already.
10/15 11:15pm
there was a line (shit eating grin emoji)
10/15 11:17pm
i hope you know that was a joke. bc in all seriousness no matter your decision
mine is made. there's no one else for me annabeth. if that counts for anything
in your calculations
10/15 11:21pm
I don't deserve you, Percy. That should count in yours.
10/15 11:22pm
I'm bad at math and in love with you that should count for something
10/15 11:27pm
I have to go to sleep. Talk to you later.
Tuesday is catch up day. She got most of it done last week, but she still has a few stray homework assignments that she skipped which are sitting in the grade book as 0s and hurting her averages. Most kids would still get 0s for turning in rushed work this late after the due date, but her teachers like her. Her grades start to come back up over the course of the week. Last is the stats test. She sits down and painstakingly fixes every problem, reworking and reworking until her solutions come out every time. Even as embarrassed as she was about the private call out and the counselor, she's thankful for the grace on her test. She isn't about to let it go to waste.
She stares at the note on the test paper, please see me after class, and finds herself replaying the counselor's meeting in her head.
Gods she hoped it wasn't. She couldn't stand to be like this—in-between and undecided-forever. She also thought about the homework that she had largely ignored after the socializing went wrong. But had it? Had it really gone wrong. It had gotten her to talk to Percy. Wasn't that a good thing? He was the problem she was trying to solve, and she knew she owed it to him not to cut communication off so suddenly, but the last three conversations she had with him felt like pricking her heart. Every word he spoke was in love and longing. He was sure of how he wanted this to work out. She can't match that anymore. She feels like even aside from her insecurities that she has gone one step too far, that if she ever looks him in the eye and says
again that neither of them will quite believe it. But she can't bring herself to end the separation. Maybe it's her pride. Maybe she doesn't know how.
What if the break turns into a breakup? That's her worry. What if this is actually better for her? Can she live with that? Could she face starting from scratch without the one person she knew?
No, no she can't. She's done so many strong impossible things but letting him go? She's too selfish for that. But what if she stays? What if there's always going to be this tense worry between them now that 'something permanent' is just 'something to occupy them until one of them changes their mind'?
She's not doing that.
She needs him to know that she hasn't changed her mind. She needs him to know that leaving him was never her intention.
Seeing him again now is all she wants. But she's scared she won't be able to handle it.
Wednesday is all homework and studying for midterms. She starts to feel her normal pre-exam readiness: a strong combination of subject knowledge and superiority over all the kids cramming and freaking out. Maybe it'll all be ok now. The ship is righting. The storm is passing.
It's midnight when she falls asleep on her homework, momentarily slipping under then jolting back awake. She's been staring at the same problem for untold minutes now. And it's getting late. Energy bar wrappers litter the floor around her trash bin, the beginning and end of her sustenance today.
She wants pizza. From camp. Pizza and Percy and someone who knows her beyond Annabeth Chase from room 206 or Annabeth Chase the bright student or Annabeth Chase the future architect or Annabeth Chase who won the design competition.
Annabeth Chase was a laundry list of achievements. She was a beautiful facade to what felt like a murder maze. Sometimes you escaped, sometimes you didn't.
The murder maze was the Daughter of Athena. The bane of monsters, the traumatized little kid who grew up into a traumatized teenager grasping for family, for stability, for a future. And losing them all. The Daughter of Athena was a quester, a camp counselor, a friend, a hero by some reckonings, a coward by her own.
The only person who saw both sides was her. Her father had seen a glimpse of the crossover on Mt Tam, but he could never fully understand what his daughter's life was. No matter how much she wanted him to. No matter how much he tried. Thalia had seen both the year she came back and went to school with Annabeth, then she had chosen a side, becoming a piece of myth herself. The seven only saw her in crisis, the camp saw her as a leader, but sitting in her empty dorm room in the dark? She isn't any of that. She's a scared seventeen year old with no one who understands her. She doesn't even understand herself.
She finds herself pacing the room.
Logic, reason, wisdom. Those are the things she values. As a child of Athena she came by them naturally.
What does a logical person do? What does logic dictate?
, she thinks.
She grabs her phone off her desk and finds him in her contacts. Athena always has a plan, that's what she had grown up drilling into her own head, to be worthy of her mother. Who was the exact opposite of that? Poseidon. The ocean is unpredictable, it never stays the same. It still has power. No one in their right mind would call the sea god or his son weak. Their differences that they came by from their parents should have made it hard to work together—two opposite approaches, two different leadership styles bound for a power struggle. But it had never happened like that. Instead they were two sides of a coin, balancing each other out…
"Annabeth, hi," he sounds breathless on the other end of the phone.
"Hi," she doesn't know what to say. She doesn't even know why she called.
A beat of silence.
"Is everything ok?"
"Yeah," she runs her free hand through her tangled hair. "Yeah everything's fine I just. I wanted to talk to you, I guess."
"About what?"
"I don't know. Gods, Percy nothing makes any sense." She laughs out a breath and forces a smile to keep the tears in the corners of her eyes from falling. Gods, she misses him.
"I know. Gods I know. It's getting worse all the time."
"What do we do?"
"I thought you were figuring that out. Athena always has a plan, right?"
"What if I don't? What if I don't want to have a plan? What if I'm just tired and have seen enough?"
"Enough of what?"
"Gods of nothing. Everything. I just can't take it anymore."
"You'll work it out. I know you will."
"What if I can't? What if the final enemy I lose to is just being a person?"
"Annabeth, where are you?"
"My dorm."
"Let me come over there. Please. I can't stand this. I can't stand that I can't at least be there for you while you work this out."
"You can't."
"Why not?"
"Because," she swallows hard. "Because I don't think I'm ready for that yet. And if I don't..." If I don't have a plan I might not be able to stop myself. I might not be able to keep myself from falling back into old patterns. I can't need you anymore.
"Ok. Ok. You'll let me know though, if I can help. Please say you will."
"Yeah. Yeah I will. I'm sorry I called. It's late I shouldn't bother you."
"You're not bothering me. I…I'm just glad to talk to you." The 'I miss you' is there. In his voice in the silence after.
"Good night, Percy. I'm sorry."
"Good night."
The line clicked dead.
, she thinks clutching the still warm phone to her chest. But the whole problem was that no one could see both sides like she could.
Well, no one but Percy.
And Percy wanted to fix it. He couldn't stand to see the people he loved in pain. Especially Annabeth. She knew he would move heaven and earth to fix this for her but maybe it couldn't be fixed. Maybe the identity crisis of reaching adulthood just gets doubled when the teenager walks in two worlds. And she had to chose her life and her world for herself.
Annabeth daughter of Athena had history and loyalties. She had a past. Annabeth Chase had a future, marketable skills, insatiable dreams. Making the choice, the logical choice, between the two—of course she had to step out of her relationship to make it. Beforehand, Annabeth Chase had never even been an option. Because when Percy was there the choice was already made. She didn't exist without him, the question now was could she exist after him?
Thursday is a blur of classes after a restless night and studying in her room after that until 5:00 on the dot.
10/18 5:00pm
hey im sure you're still working just remember to eat dinner
Sure enough she was about to set into the edits on her original personal essay and would probably have spent long past 6:30 when the cafeteria closed tearing into it and reworking.
Before she can respond another one arrives
10/18 5:02pm
i know you can take care of yourself but i was worried
10/18 5:05pm
I'm on my way down now thanks for the reminder.
10/18 5:06pm
(some smiling emoji)
She grabs a sandwich and soda out of the cooler, swipes her id and sits down by herself outside. It's just chilly enough to keep any other crazy people from joining her. Here he was looking out for her even when things were weird and broken. He knew what time dinner was, that Annabeth on a project is an unstoppable machine, and that he wasn't there to help. So he tried his best to be anyway. Wasn't teamwork better than independence? Wasn't absolute trust in someone who deserves it better than pride and self reliance? She had grown up in a camp of Greek demigods. They were all about getting the glory and solo quests and personal skill, but even among that fiercely independent group there was cooperation. Camaraderie among siblings, teammates, questing groups. You learned quickly on the battlefield who really had your back.
She had the scars to prove it.
A jagged white mark on her forearm was the knife she took for Percy in the battle for Manhattan. And he had repaid her a thousand times over in Rome. He could have saved himself pain, scars, nightmares, flashbacks, and trauma to deep to speak of if he had let her go when she told him to. He didn't. If she had tried to be independent then, she would have died. She had conquered her enemy in the tunnels under Rome by skill and skill alone, she had restored the Athena Parthenos to Greece ending a millennia long conflict. She had carved and carved and carved something for herself. And as long as Percy was first in and last out fighting his battles she had been right beside him, something new but not only now. For the past five years. Ever since she had brought him into the Big House in the middle of an argument with Chiron to get her own quest, she had been carving out something for them. They were both established. Each leaders warriors and strategists in their own right. They didn't want glory or immortality, they wanted each other.
And is it a little fucked up sometimes? Maybe so. But so are they. A childhood and youth of war will do that. But this is the roses coming out of that. It has to be. She has to believe that the fates left something good for them because up until now both of their lives have mostly sucked.
Gods was that her decision?
Not much of a love song.
No, it isn't even that. She isn't a child of the Big Three, if she stayed away from other demigods and kept her head down she ran a chance at a normal life. She could go to Harvard, get a degree far away from the madness and just let the horrors of her childhood fade into the background as she made a career and a life. She could find love somewhere along the way, or maybe not. Maybe she could be one of those kickass business women who keeps all their money to themselves. The path away from her past, away from the gods, definitely held the least guaranteed misery. The best shot at not dying young. Most people don't even keep their high school friends and sweet hearts into adulthood. She could finally grasp the forbidden fruit of normalcy. That picture…it was almost too strong for her to resist.
Then there was the other side. There was a life among the demigods, a family. A future in New Rome that she had previously never even dreamt of. There were children, with her hair and Percy's eyes. And they were members of the legion. Proud of their heritage. Raising the next generation. Safe. Among their people. That family dynamic at the camps that she had such a connection to, maybe it's not something to run from, maybe it's a part of her identity.
But the problem with Annabeth is that she wants both.
Its 2 am when she wakes up from a nightmare. Nothing spectacular. Just enough to ruin her chances of sleep. It was Arachne (again). She climbs out of bed and reaches under her mattress, fingers closing around her bone sword.
, she wants to say,
But she's shaking so badly it doesn't do any good. So she steps into the bathroom out in the hall and calls Percy. It rings out, goes to voicemail. She hangs up. Tries to slow her breathing, can only think about why Percy might not be answering, fails, calls him again.
This time he answers, incoherent with sleep.
"Hey what's going on?"
She can hear the expression on his face, the squint of his eyes. She's seen it enough times. She's seen it change from sleep to worried protector in a matter of seconds upon realizing she's had a nightmare, and she's watched his go from blissful sleep to awake and screaming. She's had to be his protector, too. She lets out a sob. "Nothing, nothing I just wanted to hear your voice."
"Are you ok, Annabeth?"
"Yeah. Yeah," she breathes deeply and thinks about those nights with him. "I am now."
"Ok," he says.
And she hangs up. Yes, she's made up her mind.
She can't get back to sleep so she sits huddled in the corner of her bed, back to the wall, sword at the ready. Eventually her eyes stop darting back and forth from shadow to shadow and her breathing slows. She carefully reached into the floor and grabs her computer. With steeled nerves and trembling fingers she removes the schools from her college application. She sees her future. She sees it clear as day and now all she has to do is reach out and take it.
It's scary. The time between making a decision and speaking it out loud.
, says the voice in her head. This is a mistake. Even after these painstaking weeks of torturing herself and forcing separation from Percy. She keeps hearing Piper's voice over and over again. But maybe Piper was wrong. Maybe she and Jason were different people from Annabeth and Percy. She was scared, gods so was Annabeth. But the alternative was far far worse. She finds herself thinking of the myth of creation, of the creatures with four arms and four legs and two hearts separated by the gods and spending their whole lives searching for their other halves, to get back together. That is the world she comes from. No wonder they fit together so perfectly. No wonder being without him is like being in withdrawals.
. She just wants this to be over. But she doesn't know how to get from here back to where they were. What if they can't get back to normal, even the weird new normal they had?
Detention lasts from 8 to 10 am on Saturday morning. She slouches into the classroom barely awake only to be handed a piece of paper and a pen and told her assignment is to write a letter of apology. A letter, really, she wants to say to the proctor. All the farther we've come from clay and fire and we're still writing letters? She sends a text as the proctor stares her down. But she drops her phone into the plastic box as she's told and picks a seat near the door. She wants to be out as soon as this thing is over with.
10/20 7:58am
I get out of detention at 10. Meet me in the park at 10:30.
She's so frustrated and distracted that before she can get through the first sentence 'To the school administrators: I apologize for breaking curfew' she has misspelled and scratched out half the words. By the end of half an hour she has written a two sentence letter that looks more like a redacted document from all the ink on it. Hopefully this won't actually be read by anyone.
Every minute is agonizing. She hears the phones in the box buzz a few times which sends bolts of anxiety through her body. She's never been great at sitting still at the best of times, and this morning its early, there is nothing to focus on except her own anxiety and their table in the park at 10:30. She taps her feet, listens to the sounds of the classroom, squeaking shoes, sighs, tapping pens, the obnoxious ticking of the huge clock over the board.
Her roommate and the rest of the ill-fated pizza group are all there as well, looking to be just as miserable as she is. Serves them right, she thinks, they got her into all this.
She grabs her phone the second the timer rings, practically pushing people out of the way to get out of the classroom. She's in her school uniform (because the only punishment worse than detention was putting on a school skirt and button down on a weekend) so she stops in her dorm room and throws on more acceptable clothes, the jeans she's worn for a week and the hoodie she slept in. If Percy loved her, then he got her. Not a dolled up version of her. She doesn't realize until she was out the door and two blocks away that it was his hoodie. AHS swim.
She doesn't even check her phone for his response in her hurry to get out. To see him. It's like tunnel vision.
He's already sitting there when she turns the corner and it comes into view. She suddenly feels like she's back in New Rome in June and the only thing that matters is getting back to him and never letting him go again.
She didn't mean to run. She meant to take this slow and rational and talk him through it and make promises and ask for his answer. A proper closing chapter to mirror the one that started all this madness last month.
He looks toward her and smiles when he sees her. That smile that she fell in love with six years ago that somehow the world hasn't managed to break yet. Then he's moving toward her and she's in his arms and she can feel his heartbeat through his shirt and she wants to stay this close forever.
"I missed you so much gods I'm so sorry I'm so sorry I'm such an idiot I can't believe—" the words pour off her lips into his shoulder where her face is buried.
"Annabeth," he says, low and gentle.
"It wasn't fair of me to do that to you and I—"
"Annabeth," he says again, more insistent. He pulls back and cups her face in his hands, warm against the chilly fall air. "I love you."
"I love you, too."
"Breathe, ok?" he laughs.
She hugs him again, starting to smile. "Can we get lunch? I'm starving."
"You brought me all the way over here so I could buy you pizza?"
"You got me there." She takes his hand and they start walking.
After a few minutes of listening to their footfalls he squeezes her hand. "How's your thinking coming along? Do you think you've found Annabeth yet?"
"I think so. I think…I think demigods walk in two worlds. I walk in two worlds but I don't have to choose between my past and my future-Annabeth Chase, the daughter of Athena. I can be a demigod and an architect. I'm not going to NRU, I'm applying to UC Berkeley, so I can still live in New Rome, but I can start a career. No more running."
"You're finally building something permanent."
She stops walking and takes his other hand to face him. "I have been. Ever since I met you I've been laying the foundations, even if I didn't realize it."
"So Annabeth Chase—"
"Could stand to become Chase-Jackson." It comes out so quickly, so easily it takes them both by surprise. She grasps for words, "If that's what you want, I mean."
He kisses her in response. Right there on the sidewalk, lips meeting, hands in her hair. They fit together like puzzle pieces. Except that they're both smiling too much and Annabeth even laughs out of pure relief as the tightness in her chest and the lump in her throat finally dissolve into the bright morning sun and the green of his eyes.
"I'll take that as a yes," she says.
He laughs, then his brow furrows as they start to walk again. "Wait did you just propose to me?"
He looks so confused she can't help but grin. Of course nothing's changed. Everything might break apart around them but they had a universe between them. "Come on, Seaweed Brain. You're not getting a ring till you buy me pizza."
a/n: the title and Mood for this fic are from Fall Out Boy's 'The Last of the Real Ones'. thank you so much for reading!
guess whos back ayyy,, do people even do authors notes anymore? lol its been 5 years since i posted anything so im sorry,,