Evanescence
Chapter 2. The Little Things.
"I wish I could wake up with amnesia, and forget these stupid little things..."
~Amnesia, by 5 Seconds of Summer
A/N: Hello. Today is Nov. 11, so it is unfortunately a few weeks too late for the weekly update. As per usual, shit really happened in my life; but that's life, you know? The real world's tough. But it gets better; it must.
"Annabeth," I repeated, tasting her name on my tongue. I haven't had to say it for three years.
"Can I help you?" She repeated, looking concerned. "What is wrong? I really don't believe we've met…?"
She is definitely Annabeth, there is no fault in that. But how could she not recognize me? Unless the world is playing a very, very cruel game, I think I'm either missing something or she's deeply mistaken. But my Wise Girl was smart, capable, and would definitely not pull at my heartstrings like this, so there's definitely a gap of knowledge on my part.
"You don't recognize me?" I said, visibly upset now, and I could see Annabeth getting nervous. Not nervous as in I'm lying and I'm worried, but nervous like I've got a crazy customer and I don't know how to deal with him. I've gotten a lot better at controlling my domain in tandem with my emotions, but I can already tell you that Thailand's not going to have a good day in terms of tides and storms.
I want to peek inside her mind and memories, to see what is wrong and who is muddling with it all, but I've made a promise to myself and to her to never concern myself with such a behavior and I could not go back on my words now. Especially when I need her (or not, but I still love her, and unfortunately, I also have a hero complex.)
"Hello, sir? I think you may have the wrong person. If we have a problem, I'd love to help you connect to our manager in the back. I'm sure John can help." Annabeth said firmly.
It absolutely agonizes me, but I respect it if she does not want to talk. However, I have a very strong feeling that something more sinister is happening, something so bad that involved the gods or something even more. Something that had the power to play on our vulnerabilities and caused my oversight. Something very, very wrong that had gone on for a while.
I quickly thanked her and apologized, she looked puzzled, but at least she did not call her manager on me. But what I do know, is that that was absolutely Annabeth, and Hermes has it coming for him.
"HOW DARE YOU." I marched in back to the USPS, hands lighting up with power. "WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU DO?"
I roared, and the temperature of the entire storage unit dropped to sub-zero quickly. Storms started brewing across New York, and my mind is filled with the sound of turbulent waves and thunder cackles.
I hadn't been able to react or think, simply too stunned to think about the implications of what had just happened, but my temper grew quickly once I left and teleported into the unit where I just saw Hermes at.
Now, I understand that it probably was not something that Hermes did, probably not by a long-shot (he's always the deliverer, nothing more and nothing less) but he had made this arrangement with her, and if there was something going on I definitely deserved to know. He should have told me.
Hermes continued on evaluating and sorting packages like I was not there, which made me incredibly infuriated and frustrated. Nothing thinking clearly, I lunged at him, pinning him against the conveyor belt and gritted my teeth. "Don't make me ask again – What. The. Fuck. Happened."
He pushed me off, and dust himself off. Throwing his staff out, Martha and George turned into huge snakes on the floor, hissing and not very friendly all of a sudden.
"I don't recommend you doing this." He said calmly, referring to the fight and the fact that I wanted to pursue the truth.
"I need to know. I deserve to know. How could you?"
"Please don't."
I balled my fist, raising it to my side. "Or what?"
"Percy, ask yourself this, do you deserve it? Do you really deserve to know?"
"Whatever it is, yes. I love her."
"What makes you feel so entitled to her? Does she even have a choice?"
"She loves me, and of course she has a choice! I let her leave me!" I said, fantasizing a scenario where I could just beat the shit out of Hermes for some information. Of course, I would not do that – that'd prove how childish I am, but also I am in general, not a douche bag. Hermes had been nothing but kind (except for now) to me throughout the millennium.
"That's Old World thinking. You didn't let her leave you, Percy. She's supposed to have a choice. She doesn't owe you anything."
"Something is clearly wrong," I injected. "I need to help her."
"She seems fine," Hermes said. I can't believe how nonchalant Hermes seem to be.
"She doesn't remember my name. That's not right. Her memories are gone and I can't just sit on the sidelines and do nothing."
Hermes paused, stuffed another package back into his bag and sighed. "I can't do anything about that. I'm just the messenger. Not a god of memories. I can't do anything, I'm sorry."
I gritted my teeth. I don't understand why I have been so temperamental all of a sudden – I hadn't been this way for years. But the scabs on my heart had just been ripped apart, and I think for all these years, I never got the closure that I deserved.
Deserve.
But Hermes really had a point – did I deserve to know what is truly happening? I'm not dumb – there's a reason why Annabeth handed the letters to Hermes for him to distribute them to me over these past periods of time. Why did she do that? For some reason, she knew that things may not go well, that maybe she'd forgotten things (me) and she wanted to reassure me of her well being. I don't get it, but I think Hermes knows.
I want to know, but do I really deserve to? Maybe she wanted to be left alone; maybe she was afraid of my wrath and entitlement, of what I would do if she had let me down any harsher. Had I really been so horrible and ignorant? Had I really been so terrifying? I feel awful for even thinking that I had let her leave instead of her leaving on her own accord. It was that traditional Greek thinking, but it was not an excuse.
"Percy, it's going to be alright," Hermes said, putting his hand on my shoulder to placate me. Martha and George returned to his staff, eyeing me cautiously.
I shrugged him off but did not make any more aggressive gestures or statement. I don't think things are going to be okay; things are not okay and sometimes they aren't going to be okay. But what I know is that things have to be okay; even if Annabeth does not care for me anymore, I want to make sure that the memory loss was not of any malignant origins.
"She told me to find her," I said, unfolding Annabeth's letter carefully from my pocket. "Her words, right here. I'm not trying to force myself on her. She wants me to find her, I swear."
Hermes teleported and took the letter from my hand before I could react. He materialized some lemonade how of thin air (?!) and poured it on the right-hand upper corner of her letter.
"Hey!" I said, confused enough to not yet become as angry as I thought I should. "What the hell are you doing?" I stormed up to grab the letter back but stopped when I saw the faded ink on top of the letter.
In Annabeth's handwriting, her initials "WG" was scrawled on.
Hermes sighed. "I suppose you're telling the truth. I'll tell you everything I know – which isn't a lot, so don't perk up, but I suppose that she does want to find you."
I took the letter back and glared at him, upset that Hermes had information that I was kept from, but also paid attention and gestured for him to continue. I touched the sand dollar on my neck, the necklace that once belonged to Annabeth, and reminded myself of my promise to stay calm.
"This," He pointed at the corner, "proved to me that it is Annabeth who wrote the letter. She would not let me read any of it, and I swore on the Styx I won't unless you come running with the letter. And only then, I have to validate the letter by pouring some lemon juice on it to see her initials before helping you. Oldest trick in the book." Hermes clicked his tongue.
"Why—" I began.
"—so you don't counterfeit something to get information from me." He finishes. "Annabeth thought of everything."
He then twirled his staff around a little, thinking, before continuing, "now, I don't know what caused this memory loss, but she knew that something was happening to her. Something that involved you and the war that was happening. She said that it's not important, and emphasized that it doesn't really matter in the end. What she did know is that she foresaw something bad happening to her and that she wasn't able to tell you."
I wanted to cry; it was heartbreaking, but I know precisely why she couldn't tell me. She thought that I would have destroyed the world if I knew something this bad (did she know that this something was going to cause her amnesia? Did she think something even worse was going to happen?) was going to happen to her. She did not trust me, but she shouldn't have. I wasn't stable and it took the break up with the love of my life to help me finally realized that. But it was already too late.
"She came to me upon the referral of Apollo to get me to help deliver these letters to you. To keep you happy, to keep tabs on you, so to speak."
I was so embarrassed that both Apollo and Hermes knew that Annabeth had to do this to keep me in line. But it's not the time for me to wallow in my fragile ego: Annabeth was right, I would have been doing much worse without these letters. I'm feeling so many conflicting emotions, but misdirected anger should not be one of them.
Subconsciously, to distract Hermes from my sad, sad state, I blurted, "What did she pay you for this? You don't just service for free." Before I knew that Annabeth lost her memory, I just assumed that she had an in with drachmas and had paid one each to Apollo. But if she had planned all of this pre-emptively, she could not have had that much drachmas in savings.
"I don't need payment from her. She understands my pain. The pain with Luke." Hermes said, "but that's irrelevant. The point is that she might have been threatened by something terrible, even death. She felt that it was unstable and unideal for you to fight whatever this is for her, but wishes to rekindle and reconnect once everything is over."
He paused, "I'm not sure what she meant at first. But it seems like she was waiting for the end of our War two years ago."
Thanks for reading another chapter! As per usual, I would encourage you to read Wonderwall, which is the story preceding this fanfic. If you did, you would know exactly what had happened to Annabeth as the story was written in her POV. Older, 18+, fans are also welcome to read Seaside Encounters by Tales After Dark, my alter ego for adult fanfics.
Please leave a review and send in some speculations on what happens next! (Also, reputation is out oh my gods)
