A/N: Just a short, angsty Percy/Annabeth one shot, set almost immediately after Percy returns from Calypso's Island.
"I thought about it, you know," he says, sitting down on the deck next to her. She had just ran out of the Big House in a hurry for reasons unknown to Percy. He looks at her and sees for the first time how worried she actually was about him. Her face is streaked with tears, her gray eyes full of concern, her blonde hair not even combed. His heart aches at the sight, knowing it was his fault.
"About what?" she asks, sniffling. She tries to put up a facade, but he sees through it. She looks down at her hands, anything to avoid eye contact with him.
"About staying," he says, looking out to the water. He lets his feet dangle off the side of the dock, the water calming him down. "About never leaving. Leaving all of this," he gestures to the camp behind them. "Leaving the prophecy," he sighs softly and takes a deep breath. "About leaving you." He tries to meet her eyes, but she keeps her focus on her hands. She swallows, most likely chocking back tears.
"Why didn't you?" She asks, her voice filled with sorrow. She brings her knees up to her chest, hugging them tightly. She doesn't want to admit it, but every word he says breaks her heart even more. She'd worried about him for days and days, thinking she had lost her best friend; thinking she had lost her everything. Now, here he was, telling her things she could have lived her whole life without knowing.
He shrugs as if it's no big deal to be telling her these things, as if she won't care. "Maybe I should have," he says, leaning back on his hands. "It would have been a lot easier."
"For you, maybe," she spits back at him, her voice no longer filled with sorrow. It's filled with anger, it's filled with pain, but most of all, it's filled with jealousy. He scrunches his eyebrows in response.
"Do you know how hard it is to live everyday knowing that I'm only one day closer to saving or destroying the world?" he asks. "To know that when you hit sixteen, your whole life is going to end? To know that no matter what you do, it isn't going to matter because you'll just be in hell after the day ends, anyways?"
She looks down, a tear falling from her gray eyes. She doesn't know what to say in response to his true feelings, and it's the first time she's ever been speechless. "What do you want me to tell you?" she asks softly, a few more tears falling. He shrugs once more.
"What are you supposed to say? There isn't anything," his voice is softer now too, as if he understands that he shouldn't be unloading his problems on her. He knows he can, but this isn't the time. Not like this; not when he's just happy to finally have her back. "I didn't stay," he pauses, meeting her gray eyes with his sea green ones, "because the thought of losing you hurt me worse than anything I've ever experienced."
She doesn't say anything. She leans her head against his shoulder, taking in his scent; something that she had missed while he was gone. She still doesn't take anything, just drinks in the fact that he's still here and that he isn't going anywhere; not for a year or so, anyways. Her heart aches at the idea of the prophecy nearing, his sixteenth birthday nearing every day.
He leans his head on hers and closes his eyes, also drinking in the fact that she's here. Her lemon scented hair, her gray eyes, her know-it-all demeanor; he missed it more than he wanted to admit. He had lost her once before at Westover Hall and for the first time, it deems on him that Calypso's father is the reason for the gray streak in both his and her hair. He finds it kind of cute how the both have a gray streak in the same spot, but he'd never admit it out loud.
"You could have stayed," she finally says, breaking the silence. "You could have escaped the prophecy and not have to worry about anything," she tells him. She pauses, taking a deep breath. "Coming back was a stupid idea. At least you could have survived there, had a sixteenth birthday but not have to worry about everyone trying to kill you." Stupid as it may be, he chuckles at her response.
He nods, watching the waves overlap each other. "I could have," he says, "but you don't call me Seaweed Brain for nothing, now do you?" For the first time in two weeks she smiles.
They stay there until the sun goes down and another two hours after that. They watch the stars, the lay down, they skip stones, but they don't speak. There's no words to be spoken. For now, they're just happy to have each other. Things are about to get very, very complicated; the war, his birthday coming up, but none of it matters because right now, they have each other, and that's all the two of them have ever needed since they were twelve.
