Disclaimer: I do not own PJO.
Her breath was as fragile as the stars, those glassy shards that hung in the night sky.
And every time she inhaled, he didn't, hoping he could make up for the air she was missing.
"We're living a lie," Annabeth whispered to him one night. "We're living a lie, Percy. You can't love a lie,"
But he did.
In fact, he loved her so much that he spent every night in the hospital, talking to her, reading her stories, letting her tiny fingers curl around his yellow-gloved ones. He had grown used to the sound of her wheezing.
He wanted to hold her so badly, with an incredible yearning, like that of lovers who have been torn apart.
He wanted to dress her up in the tiny clothes his mother had sent him. He wanted to see her smile, to speak her very first word. He wanted to take her to preschool on her very first day, watch her impress the teacher with how advanced she was (she was the granddaughter of Athena, after all). He wanted to teach her how to ride a bike, to watch her eat ice cream for the very first time, and get it all over her clothes.
He wanted to go to her middle school graduation, to embarrass her in front of her friends. To wait for the moment when she called him Dad instead of Daddy.
He wanted to give her advice about her boyfriends, to watch proudly as she walked onto the stage at her college graduation. (From preferably Harvard.)
He wanted to walk her down the aisle at her wedding, to give her away.
One day, she looked up at him from within the small incubator. Her eyes were finally open, and they were as blue as the sea, as blue as the many wishes the open, salty water contained. She looked at him, and started to cry; a pitiful, mewling sound that was barely audible.
His mind went through the hazy web of lies.
"Shh," he whispered, placing a finger to his lips. "It's all right. It's going to be all right."
He almost believed it himself.
Almost.
She was getting stronger every day now, gaining weight when the doctors had said she wouldn't. Harsh words on an unforgiving tongue. Like pulling out snakes when you're expecting to find diamonds.
But she was his diamond, his shard of light in the empty night sky. Together with Annabeth, the three of them formed a constellation.
Small, maybe; but a constellation still.
And then one day, like a cloud coming in to cover up the bright sky, to break up the constellations, the incubator disappeared.
And her along with it.
He had fallen asleep for three hours. It only took three hours for the cloud to cover up his sky, for his world to implode.
Sophia Ancora (it meant hope in Latin) Jackson had been born early, with one not fully formed lung.
She died two weeks later.
"You were living a lie," Annabeth told him with that I-told-you-so look on her stony cold face. Perhaps she was afraid to cry, because that would cause her to feel and Annabeth preferred numbness. It was better to lock away all emotions, hide them behind a locked door. Don't let the world see, for it is a harsh and unforgiving place.
"I love you," Annabeth whispered to him that night, her hands tight around his waist.
"Of course," he muttered back, not truly knowing if he believed it. It felt more machinelike than emotional when he spoke.
(Percy finally understood what had happened to Frederick Chase. The man seemed to have a mind that was only half there, something that had been going on for a very long time.
Frederick Chase had lost his daughter too, only she was still alive. Perhaps that was worse. )
Was there a lesson the gods were trying to teach him? Trying to show him something, maybe?
If so, what?
That love is a lie?
Or that there were far worse things than Tartarus?