I have tears in my eyes right now… this is over… some of you probably didn't think I would ever finish this, huh? Well I did! Ha! IN YOUR FACE!

~GoGreen43

Stranded

Epilogue

(Three Months Later- New Year's Eve)

-Annabeth POV-

Over the past three months I have been driven crazy by the media, my coworkers, and some people I had thought were my friends.

After the six of us survivors from the plane crash told our story we have been shrouded by news reporters trying to get the scoop that doesn't exist, constantly told how courageous we are, and looked at like we're some sort of group of superheroes.

It's as if everyone thinks that we're all fearless, and because we were stranded on an island for a month we have become these individuals that you should look up to. Everybody wants to be like the six of us. They want to be heroes.

But they don't know the extent of what the island has done to us.

Mark Twain once said, "Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear." Whenever someone tells me how courageous I was and how fearless I had to be to survive, I think of that quote. The fear is still there. I have reoccurring nightmares from the island, so bad that I wake up screaming.

That's one of the reasons why Percy and I moved in together.

That's also one of the reasons why I can't seem to get enough sleep.

A year can change a person, whether or not you want to be changed in the first place. Sometimes I'm sitting in my office and I think that I'm back on the island... I'm lucky I have Piper and Malcolm to keep me sane.

The sad thing is, Percy was the worst out of all of us. Some nights I wake up to his screams, and when I do, I can never seem to wake him up. It's almost as if he's in some sort of deep sleep, and he can't wake up until the right time.

That's another reason why we moved in together. I don't think I could handle him hurting himself if when he thrashes around. He never really talks about his nightmares, but I know he's reliving me jumping off the cliff.

I know it.

Even though our lives sound completely shitty, it's actually the opposite. Besides the lack of sleep, nightmares, the media, and occasional flashbacks, our lives are pretty amazing.

Percy and I live with each other, and occasionally Thalia will stay over if Jason and Piper need some alone time (wink-wink). I moved into his penthouse, which is pretty freaking big, in Long Island. The six of us, plus Jason, Piper, Katie, Travis, and occasionally Beckendorf and Selina all get along and often have group gatherings.

Usually Percy and Beckendorf are in the lab all day and all night, so when one is off, the other is working. Now because Percy and I are dating, he doesn't work for thirty six hours straight anymore… sometimes twenty four, but I'm guilty as well.

But hey, we're getting better.

"Uh, Annabeth? You okay?"

I looked up, slightly startled to be shaken out of my reverie. I saw Piper, standing there in all her glory. Her eyebrows were furrowed in confusion and she had a frown on her face. A frown doesn't suit her very well…

"Annabeth?"

"Sorry, just lost in thought. Need something?"

She let out a long sigh, and sat on one of the chairs in front of my desk. "Were you on the island again?"

I scowled at her, ignoring her question. Why is she always so nosy? She's making me sound like I should be in a mental asylum!

"Annabeth!"

"No, I wasn't on the island, Piper! God, why are you so freaking nosy all the time?"

"You know I just want to help you, Annabeth."

"By making me feel like I'm in a mental asylum?"

Piper's hazel eyes gleamed with mischief, something that told me she's been spending way too much time with Percy. "You brought up the mental asylum thing, not me!"

"But you're talking to me like a doctor would talk to their mentally insane patients!"

"And you're the one working on New Years Eve! Not to mention you and Percy are hosting everyone at your penthouse! You're just making your evening a whole lot more stressful than it has to be."

"You're at the office too!"

"I'm only picking up some papers. I know I'm taking a sick day tomorrow, so I'm just being prepared."

I gave her an awkward smile, causing her to laugh out loud. "I guess I taught you well, Pipes."

"Only you, Annabeth. Only you. I'm just glad that you're back to your old self… dealing with a mental Annabeth is the worst!"

My eyes narrowed. "What do you mean, mental?"

Her cheeks flushed under my hard stare, and she held her hands up in defense. "Hey now, I wasn't the one who brought it up."

"But you wish you did."

"You know me so well."

I smiled, leaning back into my chair. I took everything in, every single detail, and permanently stashed it in my brain. I never want to forget this feeling. I'm finally at ease with myself. I mean, you never know when you're going to get stuck on an island.

"It feels good to be back."

Piper wore a soft, sad smile. "You know you were only gone for a month? And that you have been back for three times that long?"

I gave her a knowing look. "I've been back physically, Piper, but not mentally. And now I guess it finally feels like I'm all here. For three months I've left a part of myself behind on that island… and now I feel like I got that part of me back."

"Did you talk to Percy or Thalia about this?"

I sighed. "It's a lot easier to tell this to someone who wasn't there. Percy would get all Aristotle on me and try to do too much to help me. Thalia is the same way. They're healing too, Piper. I can't forget that."

"True, but you're healing too."

I leaned forward on the chair, putting my head in my hands. "You don't get it, Piper. No one gets it. The reason that they're having these nightmares... the reason that they're constantly calling and texting me in the middle of the night to make sure I'm alive is my fault."

"You can't blame yourself for doing a noble thing. Annabeth, you jumped to save Percy. You were clawed by that creature when you were trying to help the others… it's not your fault."

"Then why do I think it is? Why can't I get that out of my head?"

"I don't know."

I sighed, and started to gather my papers on the desk. "I need to get going… you know, get ready for that party tonight."

"Annabeth, you should really tell someone what-"

"I'll see you tonight, Piper."

I got up from my seat, and with the last bit of dignity I had, I walked out of the office with my head held high. I was only able to keep the tears from falling until I got to my car.

Tears streamed down my face and kept me from having a clear point of view, in more ways than one, so I decided to wait in the car until I calmed down. I have had mental breakdowns from time to time, but I've just been lucky that each time I was able to hold it in until I was alone.

Sometimes the blame that I place on myself can become too much.

Once I finally was able to calm myself down and get a hold over my emotions, I put my Ford Excursion into drive and drove out of the ramp, heading straight towards the penthouse that I shared with Percy.

There was a private parking sector that Percy had bought out so that we can park there as much as we please. Apparently, not only does his job pay well, but he's a trust fund baby, like me. His father, like my mother, was very rich and everything that his father owned went to him when he died.

When I walked into the penthouse I was met with this empty feeling. No one was home besides me, and it just felt very cold and very lonely.

My hand itched toward my cell phone to call Percy and demand that he come home so that he could cure this loneliness. But unfortunately for me, I knew that he was knee deep in a submarine project and he would be arriving to the party late.

Let alone come home and cure this emptiness of a penthouse.

Walking to the kitchen to start cooking for later, I checked my watch. I had three hours to get ready before people started to show.

I had to get moving.

I started to make a mental list of everything that had to be done. Thalia and Piper were going to make desert to bring over, Juniper was making a fruit salad and a normal salad, while Katie was bringing the booze, and Selina was bringing the New Year's Eve party stuff.

All I had to do was clean and make the pasta dishes. Easy enough.

Before I even started to do anything, I heard someone open the door. Knowing Percy shouldn't be coming home this early and that my friends would have called before coming early I had a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach.

I grabbed the frying pan from the stove next to me and I crept into the hallway to hopefully sneak up on the intruder.

When I saw a familiar mop of raven black hair I let out I breath I didn't know I was holding. "God, Seaweed Brain! You scared the shit out of me!"

I heard him chuckle and place his keys on the mantle. "Sorry, Wise Girl." He walked over so he could see me and his eyes widened a bit. I probably looked like a flustered crazy person with wild eyes, hair all over the place, and a frying pan in hand. I quickly put the pan behind my back with a sheepish smile.

"A frying pan? Really? What were you going to do? Fry me to death?"

I glared at him and took the pan out from behind my back, looking at it with a small smile. "There is a lot of things I can do with this to kill a person, let alone knock them out."

He laughed a bit before he caught a glimpse at my full face. The laughter died down and his eyes widened even more. "Oh… you weren't kidding."

I gave him a sweet smile. "Of course not."

"Remind me to never mess with you."

I laughed and sat the pan down on a ledge before walking up and giving him a hug and kiss. "Noted. So now you should tell me why you're home so early."

"What, you're not happy that I'm home early?"

I let out a frustrated sigh. "You know that's not what I meant, Seaweed Brain. I'm just saying that you usually don't come home this early and I'm wondering why. That's all."

"Is coming home to see my beautiful girlfriend not enough?"

I turned my glare up a notch.

"Okay, okay, I'll tell you. Piper called me after you left the office. She told me what happened. I was a little worried, so I came home early to talk about this. Why didn't you come to me when you first felt this way?"

I took a deep breath before looking into his eyes. In the sea green I could detect a lot of swirling emotions. Worry was the most prominent

"What did Piper tell you, exactly?"

He gave me a look but responded anyway. "She told me everything, I guess. That you were off in your head for quite a while and that it took some time for her to reach you. She also told me that you blamed yourself for the nightmares the rest of us have, and that you're putting it on yourself."

I turned away from him and walked into the living room to sit on the couch. He needed to hear my words.

"Percy, if I hadn't gotten myself into trouble back on the island, no one would have thought that I was dead. You guys wouldn't be having these dreams that I didn't come back, or maybe they have to watch someone else they cared about be put into my position. Can't you see that it's my fault?"

"Annabeth I don't know how many times I am going to have to tell you this, and quite frankly I don't care. It was not your fault. If it was your fault, it would be my fault as well. Grover has reoccurring nightmares about him not being able to find me in the middle of the ocean."

"But that's not your fault, Seaweed Brain. It's not your fault that the raft drifted!"

He nodded. "Yeah. It's a lot like how it wasn't your fault that you were in the wrong place at the wrong time, or how you were put in an impossible position to save yourself and possibly kill everyone on the island or put yourself at risk to save everyone. Sure, if you didn't do what you did we wouldn't have these nightmares. We wouldn't be alive to have them!"

Tears streamed down my face and I could see Percy tearing up as well. He just gathered me up in his arms as I sobbed into his shirt, trying to come to terms with what he had just told me.

"I really hate it when you're more logical than I am," I choked out, pulling away from his warm embrace. "If that's how you usually feel around me, I don't know how you do it."

He just laughed, using his thumbs to wipe away the tears coming from my eyes. I reached up to do the same thing for him. "That's why you're my Wise Girl."

My fingers found their way to his hair and I pulled him in for a deep kiss.

Let's just say we had an hour before people started to show when we started to get everything ready.

oOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOo

Once people started to show up, I put the pasta in the oven and Percy turned on the TV to some college football bowl game that was going on.

Katie and Travis came first, which really wasn't a surprise. The person who brings the booze is generally the first person to walk in the door, and the first person to crack it open. Percy and Travis went to the living room to watch football while Katie and I sat in the kitchen.

"How are you holding up? Piper texted me as a heads up earlier today."

I glared at the glass of wine in my hand. "God, how many people did she text?"

"Is that why Percy is here besides the lab?"

"You know us too well."

She gave me a wink before taking a sip of her wine. "It's my job."

"Your job as an analyst?"

"No, my job as a friend."

After talking with Katie for a bit, people started to show up. Piper and Jason, Thalia and Nico, Juniper and Grover, then Beckendorf and Selina. I had a feeling that Beckendorf had stayed later at the lab to cover for Percy. I could never thank that guy enough for what he's done for us.

Once everyone had arrived, ate, and made themselves at home, we were all crowded in the living room with the New Year's Eve show in Times Square playing on the TV. Everyone either had one of Thalia's killer brownies or booze in hand and we were chatting up a storm.

Somehow we started to talk about the island. Of course in our official report about the island, we all had to leave out the bit that there was a Hydra there with us. If we told anyone about that we would all be shipped straight to Loony Ville.

"How did you guys figure out that there was a creature on the island with you?" Jason asked.

Percy took this question. "Well, when I went out to scout the island I found a bunch of claw marks on a tree that was so high up it didn't seem to belong to anything I knew."

Juniper added, "And when he told me that I didn't believe him until I saw the marks for myself. In all my years of studying trees and wildlife I had never seen anything like that."

I could tell that this piqued Katie's interest. "How did you know that when Annabeth got clawed that this was the same thing?" I felt Percy stiffen behind me.

"The similarities from the wound to the marks on the tree were astounding. Only, the marks on the tree had to be forty to fifty feet in the air," Juniper explained.

"How big was that thing?" Jason asked, his voice in awe. "It must've been enormous."

I nodded. "It was very tall and very wide. I don't think I've ever seen anything like it."

The conversations went on like that for a while, and I started to notice something. It seemed to be that everyone was avoiding the fact that I jumped off the cliff to kill the Hydra. The people who were on the island with me, especially.

It was only after Beckendorf asked Percy about the water levels on the island that I spoke. "It did happen, you know."

The room went quiet, and the only thing that could be heard was someone singing a song on the TV. "It happened. I jumped off the cliff… I nearly died. We can't just keep putting that off."

The silence overtook the room once again before a gruff voice from across the room spoke, "You're right. It haunts all of us… we can't run from our fears. Not anymore." To my surprise it was Nico Di'Angelo in all his glory that spoke up.

He gave me a wink that I had seen only once before. After he saved my life. I couldn't hold the smile that was dying to break out.

Then, people started talking.

And we all listened.

Nico talked about how he didn't think he was able to lose someone that was like a sister.

Thalia talked about how she didn't know what she was going to do without me, someone she had really come to relate to.

Grover talked about how he felt that he let me down.

Juniper talked about how she never felt so much loss before, and how much it hurt to see Percy in his state.

Percy talked about how gut-wrenching and horrible it felt to see me jump for him. He opened up like he has never opened up before, and I'm so proud of him.

I talked about the guilt I feel because they all feel that way.

When the clock struck midnight, I didn't feel like Cinderella. I wasn't running away from my dreams and from what could have been anymore. And I wasn't the only one.

The island that we were stranded on for a month changed us. It brought out the good, the bad, and the ugly in each and every one of us.

And that evil that we felt… that ugliness that we witnessed had stayed with us even after we left the island. Because we refused to face our fears for so long. Because we didn't want to go back to the island, because we didn't want to face it, it never really left.

But when that clock struck midnight on New Year's Eve and my boyfriend pulled me in for a kiss, I never felt so alive. I could finally feel everything without the guilt on my shoulders and the demons of my past clawing at my mind...

I was finally free.

-The End-

I'm a little misty-eyed right now. I can't believe this is happening… Stranded is completed, and done with. I hope you all very much enjoyed this story, and I wish you all a happy new year's. But before I go, I have to fill you in:

Taken will continued to be updated on now that this story is over.

Hecate's Daughter will be starting up after Taken, and little sneak peeks will be given out throughout the rest of the story.

Remember to Review or PM the word Waffles to get an extra preview of the trilogy, Hecate's daughter!

~GoGreen43