Thalia paced outside the Empire State Building.
'What's taking him do long? Did the Olympian gods hurt him!? No, no. They wouldn't do that, they've been trying to get over him for decades. Well, a century now-'
She was snapped from her thoughts from Jezebel's obnoxious complain; "Gods dammit, he's still alive!"
"Feeling the love." Percy commented on her remark then immediately turned to Thalia saying, "Let's go crash my service."
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Annabeth hadn't been to the memorial since the first year Percy had been gone.
She felt like she was seventeen again (she was still seventeen, but back when she was aging normally) where all the campers looked to her for guidance, seeing as she was the unspoken vice-leader of Camp. The pressure of trying even harder to keep her composure, the depression of Percy, the guilt from ruining his god hood, heck, even the exhaustion from treading Tartarus and fighting a war weighed on her already overworked shoulders. She cracked.
She remembers Clarisse's biting words; "Girl, you'd better man up real quick! The Camp is in chaos, they already lost their best leader, don't make them lose another leader." Before she went to the Ares kids calling her name she stopped in her tracks and turned her head halfway around, leaving her face sideways, not looking her in the eyes."Percy would never let it come to this if he were here." She coldly remarked, leaving Annabeth, alone and hurt, to stand there and think about that for a long time.
Apparently Annabeth droned out when the speech of honor and sacrifice started because snapped out of memories when it ended.
Chiron stepped up onto the stage with a sad face and a blue cloth in hands. He hung the shroud up, revealing that there was a beautifully stitch trident upon it. He moved around to face the crowd, his face looking even grimmer. Annabeth had never seen Chiron express emotions as openly as he was now.
"I will now ask one of his closest living friends to say a few words." He turned to the daughter of Athena who was holding back tears. "Annabeth Chase." Even though he said it as though it were a statement he had question in his eyes. Annabeth nodded.
She felt claustrophobic with all the eyes that were surrounding her and shakily and slowly made her way to the stage. She got there after what seemed like hours.
She blabbed on about courage and sacrifice for a minute, just like the speech she tuned out on, but then she stopped.
"You guys probably hear that all the time don't ya? Well, I'm not going to talk about that stuff right now. I'm gonna talk about the reason why we're here, Percy." She surprised herself when she said it, she hasn't talked about Percy in forever, but the proud and approving nod Grover encouraged her to keep going.
"You guys know that he was the best swordsman, and that's no lie, his second year at Camp, which was my sixth year, I could not beat him for the life of me, and now that I think about it I even couldn't really beat him in his first year.
"You also know that his fatal flaw is personal loyalty. He wouldn't know when to cut his losses, to save a friend he would sacrifice anything. Which is pretty good for you all because if he hadn't sacrificed what he did we wouldn't be here today. It was especially good for me, without his flaw I would have been toast long before Gaia.
'But you guys really don't know what he was like. He had a great sense of humor, he would even be sarcastic in the face of death, it was irritating and inspiring at the same time. Percy also really liked to play extreme pranks with the Stoll brothers on the other campers.
"He had trouble staying dead too. In his forth year at camp he blew up Mount Saint Helen's with his earth-shaking powers. Percy went missing for two weeks after that and we burned his shroud, thinking he was dead. I was so sad. I lost my best friend and I still had a quest to complete. But he crashed his funeral-"
Before her sentence could be completed, her tongue stopped working at the sight of an open-armed Percy.
"Just like he is now." Annabeth finished her sentence when her tongue got over the shock. The kids, who were previously confused on who this intruder was, looked like they have recently been tased.
I am so evil and sorry because I will be gone a week without writing!