Life
There is another universe out there where he is with Annabeth and they are happy. Maybe they have a small apartment in the city, one with a broken radiator and age-blurred windows and floorboards that creak when they walk from room to room. It is filled with used and comfortable furniture found at flea markets, worn blankets from his childhood, books upon books on sturdy shelves that line the walls like art. Weapons rest on the same shelves as their DVDs and candles; nectar and ambrosia wait in their pantry next to cereal boxes and crackers. It is a confused mess of two worlds smashed together, and sometimes he gets overwhelmed thinking about the dual lives they try to lead, but it is theirs, all of it. It is home.
Here, Annabeth curls up on the couch with her sketchbooks and fills pages with her dreams of towering columns and gables, fountains and statues and gardens. Here, Percy leans back and flips through the channels on the television, rubbing circles into the cold soles of Annabeth's feet, kicked up into his lap.
Here, they sit on the kitchen floor at three in the morning and eat pasta from the pan, take long gulps from the same bottle of wine. They can laugh about certain things, now, talk in low voices about others—like Thalia, Bianca di Angelo, Charlie and Silena, Luke. They talk about their parents, about Olympus, about what might come next. Percy plays with the fingers on Annabeth's left hand and thinks about the ring he's stashed at the bottom of their closet. It's slim, silver, with an inlay of pearlescent coral, and he starts to sweat every time he thinks about it. Annabeth, oblivious, as far as he knows, leans over to kiss him. She takes like wine and chapstick and he can't look away.
Here, they sleep in until noon and shower until the water runs cold. Here, they come back from quests scratched and bleeding and exhausted, patch their wounds, fall into bed and fall into each other until the night is impossible to resist. They get take-out and invite Grover and Clarisse and Will over, try to keep the Stoll twins from breaking everything they own, hope that Rachel doesn't succumb to any prophecies that might throw their lives into more chaos.
Here, they build something they hadn't known possible. They still search for new demigods, visit camp, take occasional trips to Olympus, and fight monsters on the way to dinner, but these things gradually become parts of their everyday lives, their new normal.
There exists this other universe, somewhere, where he is with Annabeth and they are happy. Percy does not know what this place is like, but as he and Annabeth fall through open darkness, Tartarus waiting to catch them somewhere far below, he feels this other life press an ache against his chest. He misses it. He misses the warmth of their place in the summer, the slick slide of Annabeth's skin against his as they lie in bed, the way her candles light a fire in her eyes and make the rooms smell like vanilla and sugar.
He misses a place he has never been, a life he has never lived, but he is here, with her. They are together. And wherever they are headed, that will have to be enough.
