Rock. Before he disappeared they used to hold hands and skip rocks across the lake together, laughing as the Naiads yelled at them. When he disappeared she realized that he was her rock, keeping her steady and skipping across the lake, without him she was like a little kid throwing a rock for the first time only to watch it plunge straight into the water.
"What if it lines up like it did in the Trojan war… Athena versus Poseidon?"
"I don't know. But I just know that I'll be fighting next you."
"Why?"
"Because you're my friend, Seaweed Brain. Any more stupid questions?"
If she stood there long enough she could almost feel his arm around her back, guiding her as she skipped the rock across the water with a simple flick of her wrist. It was their thing to do. They would sit at the foot of THEIR tree as the sun set and skip the flattened stones across the water in sync with one another.
They would laugh each time when they forgot to put the 'skip' in their rock and it would plunge down deep into the water. They laughed sheepishly every time an angry Naiad jumped out of the water, or dived deeper to avoid the skipping stone.
As she sat there under their tree, the cold brisk wind flipping her hair in the way of her eyes, she couldn't think of anything but how much she missed him. The warmth he carried, the words he always had to reassure her. He was the one that kept her from plunging into the deep end numerous times.
He was ALWAYS there for her, no matter the time, place, or day. Hades, even during Sally's wedding when she was running late he went looking for her, just to make sure she was okay.
Without him she would have fallen over from the stress, pressure, and anxiety she was always dealing with. It was a miracle that she was still skipping across the lake of life. It was common knowledge that to keep a rock steadily skipping you needed a strong, steady hand to keep the rock even and going.
And maybe she had never realized it before, but the more she looked at it, she was that stone and Percy was the calm hand keeping her steady as she skipped. And when she stopped skipping across, he dived under deep, jumped in, and brought her back skipping right again.
So she would wait for him, as patiently as possible, she would keep skipping for him, and she, Annabeth Chase, would most certainly not dive under.
Unless, of course, it was to save her Seaweed Brain.
