Here I am again! So, Percy has officially left San Francisco. He isn't exactly on good terms with Annabeth right now, as his leaving was kind of abrupt and left her blindsided and alone- the mortals don't know what she's going through. If you can't guess, the time is in between Book 4 and Book 5, in late November, Thanksgiving time for Americans.

Nobody, it takes a few days for me to write a chapter, I try to post on Tuesdays or Thursday/Friday.

Annabeth's POV:

Sometimes, Percy could be really annoying. I thought we had one more month together. Another month to try and see, maybe, if he felt anything towards me before going to New York to spend time with Rachel Elizabeth Dare. But no! Nico di Angelo had to show up with Mrs. O'Leary and take my second crush to go fight my first crush, without me. It would've been so much easier had we gone together at winter break and I'd left him. Nico had always acted kind of weird around me, like he didn't like me or something. I'm sure he took some pleasure in taking away Seaweed Brain from me. After he'd left, all the others did too, must've picked up on the bad mood I was in, even though I had also been working on the laptop Daedalus had given me, which always made me happy to discover what the inventor had put inside. His sacrifice to stop Luke still hurt, but not as much as the fact that he had to die to stop…Luke. Whose promises really had meant nothing, who'd tried to poison Percy, who'd tricked me into saving his life, who'd tried to kill me with the weight of the sky itself. If I couldn't trust Luke, who could I trust? Thalia? Grover? Percy? The rest of camp could be traitors for all I knew, even Malcolm, my half-brother, or Connor and Travis, the sons of Hermes who liked pranking me with spiders and loved Bobby and Matthew to a fault.

Thanksgiving would probably suck. Before, Percy and I were going to spend Thanksgiving with Sally and Paul, who'd married recently, but now that was a no. Percy was probably having a nice Thanksgiving dinner with a family who loved him for who he was. And I had Bobby and Matthew for siblings, instead of Tyson, who was a sweetheart. For a father, I had Dad, who'd chosen Helen over me, while Percy got Paul who was at least partially understanding of him. A mother? Helen was in no way good for that position, but Sally was really…well, she was a mom. She was accepting and she was, well, perfect. No wonder Poseidon had taken an interest in her.

Needless to say, I was dreading tomorrow, the Thanksgiving Thursday. I didn't have much to be thankful for. I could be heading to Great-Uncle Hades's realm this August. Percy could be heading to Hades's realm this August. Or Luke. Anyone. And what if Percy didn't make the right choice, fought for the wrong side? I'd heard the prophecy years ago and it still gave me nightmares. It was all depending on Percy- on his sixteenth birthday.

Which meant we were probably all going to have to pray to Mount Olympus for the next months until August eighteenth. I didn't have much faith in Percy right now.

"Annabeth!" Helen. Ugh. She'd 'tried' to be nicer ever since I'd moved to San Francisco for Dad, and Bobby and Matthew had been the same, I was their 'sister', according to Dad, and Helen would grimace every time, but at least they were nice. She was like a cat who'd sheathed her claws, and at the first sign of trouble, would slide them right out. Dad thought it was such a big improvement of her attitude towards me, he didn't do anything about. "Come watch the turkey while Frederick and I go out with Bobby and Matthew." I paused. Seriously? She got to go out with my stepbrothers and my dad while I got to watch a freaking piece of poultry cook in an oven?!

I sighed. This was really going to be a long Thanksgiving.

Percy's POV:

I'd tried to Iris-message Annabeth thrice. Which had lost me three drachmas, and I had five. She hadn't picked up at all- still mad at me. Since calling my mortal friends would earn me a spot on the monster radar, I couldn't talk to Laura, Joey, Amy, or Mark. I supposed I could try some of the people at Camp, or Thalia, but they were having their Thanksgiving feast at Camp and the Thalia was the lieutenant, they were probably tracking some weird pig or something.

I remember when she screamed at me to get out, less than three days ago. It wasn't like it was totally unexpected that I'd have to leave really soon- one month wasn't all that long. Though, coming into your house, happy that you had no more school, to see Nico di Angelo- no offense to him, but that kid was creepy. But anyway- and learning that your best friend (or so she said) had to leave a month earlier than usual to go defend New York in a war that could kill him- that would be very, very anger-inducing, or at least it would for me if Annabeth had to go. At least we'd sorted out the fact that Annabeth had kissed me on Mount St. Helens before running off and was actually mad that I accidentally got blasted to Calypso's island. That was kind of messed up. Girls.

But now, she was mad about this. Apparently, I was the child of the Big Three who was supposed to save/destroy Olympus. Shouldn't she by happy that I was going to head Luke off, instead of joining him and Kronos like Chris Rodriguez and Luke himself? Deep down, Annabeth probably thought Luke would change his mind and come back to her like Chris had come back, though preferably not crazy.

Even though I was sure rational Annabeth knew that Luke was never coming back, Annabeth used to know him and I remembered unbridled adoration in her eyes when he gave us the 'gifts' in our quest.

I remembered the disbelief in Annabeth's eyes when I told her Luke had lured me into the woods and unleashed a scorpion that scarred me, when I told her Luke had fallen and was never coming back and she stubbornly said that no, I can feel he's alive. I remembered my jealousy then, how it made me wonder if Luke was Annabeth's romantic soulmate or something after all.

"Percy!" Paul. "We need to go down to the school and finalize the transfer papers for you." I nodded, debating. "We'll be back in half an hour, tops."

I went for it. "O Iris, goddess of the rainbow, please accept my offering. Show me Annabeth Chase." Throwing the drachma in, I was surprised to see Annabeth's face- her tan, the golden curls and her gray eyes- shimmer into view, but her eyes darkened as soon as she saw me- she must not have known I was the one calling.

"Just stop it." Her voice was bitter. She was sitting in the kitchen, to her back was the turkey, the oven light on. The house was silent, and Annabeth was scowling. When I looked back at her, she was already dissolving the mist connection.

"Anna-" she'd already ruined the Iris-message, and I was down to one last drachma. She was being kind of unreasonable, but girls were always a mystery to me. I didn't get why she was this upset that she wouldn't talk to me and her last words before I left were 'Perseus Jackson, GET OUT OF MY HOUSE!'. So I was guessing she wasn't going to talk to me if I used my last, and very-much-needed, drachma on Annabeth Chase.

Whatever her reasons for trying to cut me out, I knew Annabeth wouldn't be so unreasonable as to skip winter break in camp because of me, we'd meet then. For now, I hoped her Thanksgiving would be nice, I wouldn't be stopping by Camp but I knew they would be having a great Thanksgiving with or without Annabeth or myself. Annabeth's Thanksgiving with Frederick, Helen, Bobby and Matthew, though, I was glad I wasn't a part of after all- Helen was a menace sometimes and while she liked me since I'd saved Annabeth and she was trying to be better about Annabeth there were still the attacks that left her angry about the partially destroyed house, Annabeth she could be nasty towards.

Mark's POV:

I wasn't sure what I was thankful for. Percy's departure? Nope. Joey and Amy dating? Eh. School being out? Obviously. But besides those things, nothing big had happened since Halloween, except for Joey and Amy starting to date and all that.

My Thanksgivings were always fun and happy, I knew Annabeth had been looking forward to it until Percy had left a month earlier than expected for some weird thing that they hadn't quite explained to us. I didn't even want to know at this time, to be honest. After Percy left, Annabeth's bad mood was so tangible it was like it was suffocating us, and I left the house first.

I felt bad about it later, except Annabeth clearly wanted to be alone, she was muttering to herself in what I thought was Greek, almost punching the keys on her keyboard with her fingers and glaring at the door where Percy had left.

The Monday after Thanksgiving Break's end, Annabeth, Amy, Joey, Laura, and I met up at lunch, without Percy though. It was weird- we hadn't hung out like this since last spring, that day when Percy appeared at the door and I made Annabeth cry. Eighth grade. So much had happened since then. And now it was weird to see Annabeth without Percy doing something stupid by her side. It was weird to look over in Greek and not see Percy smirking while Annabeth snickered due to something the teacher, or Percy/Annabeth, would say. It was weird to see Annabeth running in front of the class and passing everyone else alone, weird to see Annabeth only go inside the Chase household, weird to meet Annabeth at Mitchell's (a REALLY GOOD ice cream shop) without Percy already swiping some of her flavor to add to whatever weird blue special flavor they'd come up with next, weird to watch Annabeth come in at lunch without Percy. I couldn't even imagine what Percy was doing without Annabeth, I'd only ever seen him with her, really. They went to Camp together. They had lived together.

They were Percy and Annabeth.

So so sorry that it's been so long, my evil kitty got mad at me and gave me a lovely hand injury that it kinda hurts to type with. I'll probably do at least one more chapter without Percy because it'll be September when they see Percy and Annabeth together again…