bittersweet symphony

(made of bitter dreams and sweet regrets)

14: sirens

He holds her close under the water, surrounded by that protective bubble (why can't life have little bubbles like this? a place where no one could hurt her?), and he lets her cry into his shoulder. She feels his hand rubbing up and down her back in an attempt to comfort her, and even though she will never tell him, she is so happy that he's here right now, that it's him holding her and telling her it will all work out in the end. She wouldn't have anyone else.

It hurts. It hurts so much that she can't stand it, and the fact that she can't fix it makes it even worse. She feels like her heart has been put in an ever-tightening vise, and she can't break free as it squeezes and squeezes her pounding, bleeding heart. She almost wishes that she had a glass heart, so that it could just break and get it over with - but she doesn't, she has to feel and think and hope, even though she wishes with all her heart that she didn't. Dammit.

She knows that her mother is proud of her as a person; she's the favored child. She knows that - she tells herself that, anyway, to ward her demons off while she can. But in reality, in the world outside her bubble, she realizes that if she were to drop dead tomorrow, her mother would be sad, yes - but she has eternity. She had spent millenia watching her children die. What did one more matter? Just one more. That's all she is. An expendable resource. A renewable resource.

And her father - gods, her father. So scatter-brained but so strong, even if he himself didn't see it. But he couldn't bend...and he would break. She can see that, just as she can see her mother's pride in her. He was so protective, so loving...he did love her, had always really loved her, but he just couldn't show it. He was a man, after all; too many feelings and an itty-bitty emotional range to hold them in. So he poured his love onto his girlfriend-fiancee-wife, and then on their sons, but he didn't save any for her at first. By the time he had...well. She had already been gone by then.

She doesn't know why she wants her mother and her father together. She doesn't know why Luke was there. She doesn't...doesn't know...

You can't lie to yourself, Annabeth.

She does know. She's always know. Isn't it every little child's dream - a mommy and daddy who love and hold each other together? Her childhood was so fractured; she had taken her first steps in a shabby college apartment. She had never known who or what she was until she struggled through Mythology on her own and everything clicked. Her mother had claimed her before she got to camp, isolating her from her brothers and sisters before she even set foot in the magical boundaries. She has never had the security of a real home with two caring parents, and she wants it. She wants it so much.

And Luke. Luke who held her when she had nightmares, Luke who made her hot chocolate, Luke who taught her to fight, Luke who gave her piggy-back rides, Luke who was her deepest confidant, Luke who gave her her dreams, Luke who bought her books on Greek architecture, Luke who rocked her to sleep, Luke who fended off the monsters, Luke who was so handsome, Luke who was a big brother, Luke who was so much more, Luke, Luke, Luke -

She doesn't hate him. Can't hate him, really, not matter how much she reminds herself of what he's done. Part of her is still in shock - Luke poisoned Thalia's tree. Luke is killing Thalia's memory. Luke is defiling and degrading Thalia's sacrifice. Luke set a pit scorpion on Percy. Luke conspired to drag the three of them into Tartarus to feed the Titan Lord. Luke was breaking down the camp's borders. But every time she tries to hate him, she sees him smiling and dancing in the moonlight and fixing hot dogs and roasting marshmallows that he had stolen from a convenience store.

She wants him to be good so badly that her mind refuses to accept what Luke has become. She knows it, but she can't change it. She can't.

So she cries into Percy's shoulder, safe in the bubble in the middle of the ocean where nothing can get in the way of her pain. She cries as that vise tightens around her bleeding, wounded, poisoned heart (she's becoming Thalia's tree, so hurt, so broken). But still, some small corner of her dying heart screams out. It is so tiny that it barely comes out as a whisper, but that whisper is enough.

You have him. You have Percy.

And his hands comfort her as he holds her close and lets her cry. He brought the bubble, she thinks. He saved me, she ponders. The sirens...the sirens...

The sirens were wrong. She feels her heart squeeze again, but it's a different kind of pain this time - a quiet pang, almost not there. It is another kind of hurt, a softer kind, and she doesn't know whether to laugh or cry, so she does both. She chokes on her tears as the laugh spills messily out of her raw throat, and she feels Percy's arms tighten protectively around her.

She, in turn, tightens her grip on him. She can feel her tears grouping in the juncture where her head sits, her forehead pressing against his neck. I won't let this go. She can't let this go.

Love hurts.

The sirens were wrong, she thinks. They messed up.

They didn't have Percy.

This is better than the sirens.

Inspired by the song "Sirens" by Angels and Airwaves. "I can hear you breathe/I'm feeling the shake/And the sound of my heartbeat/Can't let go.../Do you know/I'm feeling the pain/Of my first love/I won't let it go.../Can't let go..."