See You Again
"I love you." Percy murmurs, brushing her hair back from her face, stroking his thumb across the tender skin of her cheek. "So much, you have no idea."
"I love you more." Annabeth replies, voice thick, tears threatening to spill from her eyes, catching his hand in hers.
He tilts his head, pondering her statement. "No," He replies thoughtfully. "That's impossible, because I love you more than space is big."
Annabeth tilts her face up to meet his, confused. "Space doesn't end."
He smiles, the skin around his eyes crinkling. "Exactly." A tear spills onto her cheek, and he wipes it away, still smiling softly, before continuing. "I love you infinitely more than the biggest infinity in the known world, and this time spent with you will go on and on and on, even when I'm not here anymore."
"How can you say that? How can I keep spending time with you, on and on and on, if you're not here?" Annabeth chokes out, suddenly drowning in tears, and he pulls her against him, letting her feel the solidity of his chest, the slow beat of his heart.
"Because you'll remember it." He whispers into her hair. "And I'll remember it, and I'll spend every day up in heaven watching you figure things out."
His arms around her are feeble, the hug not as reassuringly tight as it once was, and she can feel tremors running up and down his body as he works to stay upright.
She can feel the IV and various other tubing attached to his right arm pressing against her ribs, and the nubbins in his nose helping him breathe tickle her ear. But she doesn't say anything, because she can feel it in her heart that this is their last hug, and she wouldn't trade this last almost-perfect moment for the world.
"And then when you finally finish up here, I'll be waiting when you walk through, to pick you up and swing you around and hug you as tight as I can. And you'll know it's me, because I'll be the one wearing a tux and holding a bouquet of blue roses and white daisies, just for you."
She cries into his shoulder, burying her face there, begging this moment to last a little longer-she never wants it to end, but in the face of impossibility, the smallest, most desperate prayers are the ones she finds herself silently mouthing to whatever entity waits in the sky to greet the love of her life at the end of his long battle.
"Every day without you is so long." She whispers. "How am I supposed to get through so many of them?"
"Easy. Take it one at a time-and never forget that at the end of it all, I'll be waiting. Each day brings you 24 hours closer to getting another of your favorite hugs."
He leans back, smiling down at her, and then lays back in his bed, patting the space beside him for her to curl up.
She does, without hesitation, and places her ear back against his chest, listening to the soft beating of his heart-still going, for now. Slowing down, giving up, but going on, to steal away these last few moments with her.
"You're my home, Annabeth. My family, forever. I'll never give up on you, and I'll always lead you when you're lost." He tells her, his tongue almost stumbling over his words in his urgency to get them out. He's been awake for almost two hours now-more than he's been consecutively awake for over a month, and he knows his time is almost up. "I love you." His clumsy, cold, underoxygenated fingers find hers and twist them together. "I love you, I love you, I love you."
"I love you too." Annabeth whispers back, her voice barely audible around the lump in her throat. "You hear me, Percy Jackson? I love you too, forever."
He sighs, and when he speaks again, his voice is just a breath. "See you on the other side, Wise Girl."
"See you there, Seaweed Brain." She murmurs into his shirt, and then he slips into sleep, unable to stay awake any longer.
He's not dead, not yet. Not quite gone. But he will be, maybe only minutes from now, so she doesn't move, because she can't stand the idea of leaving him to die alone, even if he's asleep.
A nurse comes in maybe a half an hour later-Annabeth and Percy's favorite, the one that always wears Snoopy scrubs-pausing when she sees Annabeth cuddled up with him, crying silently into his shirt, and then going about her business, checking his charts, clicking around a few times on the monitor.
"You want me to tell the doctor you're going to skip chemo tonight?" She asks, on the side of the bed where Annabeth's back is facing.
"That'd be nice." Annabeth replies, her voice hoarse. "I'm just-going to stay here with him."
Snoopy nurse gently places one of her reassuringly warm hands on Annabeth's bare arm, squeezing softly. "All right, sweetheart."
As she's going out the door, she stops, hovering in the doorway, looking back at them. "You know, Annabeth-everything's gonna be okay. You'll see him again."
Annabeth manages to muster a watery smile at the nurse's words, glad for them. And they're true, aren't they? Her doctor's already told her that the chemo isn't working. She's in Stage 4. The tumor in her heart is growing so big that it's crushing her lung, and they can't remove it without killing her.
She'll see him again. Until then, she'll take each long day one at a time.
Later that night, she's woken by the Snoopy nurse in the dark, and she knows, and before the nurse-Lily, her glinting nametag reads-can even get the words out, she's crying again.
"Sweetie," Lily tells her, a soft note in her voice that most nurses are lacking, "He's gone. It's time to say goodbye."
She nods, and turns back to him-his cold fingers, just beginning to turn stiff, are still held in hers, and she disentangles from them to lean forward and plant a kiss on his forehead.
When she pulls away, she takes the time to kiss her fingers and press them to his lips, trailing them down his throat, across his chest, back to his hand, for one last squeeze before she stands, unsteady, and leaves him behind.
The only thing she takes from his room-the only thing he hadn't already had her take back to her own room-is the Nemo plushie that she bought him from the gift shop as a joke and that ended up rarely leaving his bed.
Nearly seven months later, she's sitting on the floor of her hospital room, leaning against the side of the bed, flipping through pictures of him-and them.
Jokingly doing duckfaces for the camera, leaning back in his hospital bed together. Him making fish faces in the gift shop, holding the Nemo plushie beneath his chin. Pictures of her standing in a wheelchair, arms flung out wide while he pushes her down the hall, eyes bright and cheeks red with exertion, but a lopsided grin on his face nonetheless.
Them making chocolate chip cookies together in the hospital cafeteria-one of the more sympathetic nurses let them in-and him dumping two and a half bottles of blue food coloring in them because blue's his favorite color and he wanted the insane experience of eating a blue cookie.
He had food coloring and flour everywhere.
She smiles, and then grimaces as she feels her chest sieze up-it's done this from time to time, but this time it doesn't go away, and even with the breathing mask she has to wear to keep her nearly-collapsed lung inhaling, she can't breathe.
But it's okay, because she knew when she woke up this morning that this day wasn't going to be as long as all the others.
She grabs Percy's Nemo plushie, hugging it to her chest with the pictures, and leans her head back, smiling, before sighing and letting herself fall into sleep-the blackness that's been encroaching on her vision more and more with each time her chest siezed.
She used to find it ironic, that the very thing that was supposed to keep her alive was killing her. Now she just feels grateful, that it gave her the chances it did, and isn't about to keep her away from what ended up giving her more life than any heart ever could.
When she opens her eyes again, everything's hazy and white for a minute-and then she sees him, and he might not exactly be wearing a tux like he said, but he's wearing black dress pants and an untucked button-down white shirt, holding that promised bouquet of blue roses and white daisies. And he might be barefoot and his hair might be messy but that's okay because it's him, and he's hers.
She runs to him, elated at how easy it is to breathe the fresh air, at how light her feet feel, and he drops the flowers to catch her and swing her up into her favorite hug in the entire world.
And everything is okay.
