"I am your thought, but the water's amnesia
My name's on the tip of your tongue
My image is slipping, though your memory is gripping it
This is my breath in your lungs"
~ Echo by The Hush Sound
a/n: Thank you to Guest (updated!), I Am Definitely Jeff Bridges (ayyyyy thank you! Yeah, Annabeth close your fridge! But she probably doesn't have much in it anyway - excited for you to read the next chapter), FutureOlympian (I MISSED YOU SO MUCH - I feel ya. Work can get a lot! So glad that you get to see these new updates! Hopefully these changes are welcomed divergences from the Wonderwall series...), RandomPotato2 (ahhh I love exploring the blurred lines of morality! She had to make such a hard choice:(), GrimoireHeart (yes, it's a reference to All Too Well! I love that song. And my favorite parts are these snippets of their life together, too... Some haters gotta hate, just appreciate that I have you all), CrackHeadBlonde (me too!), Wumertil (excited for you to see wha'ts next!), and hancakes (ikr? These people are indeed with the government) for your amaizng reviews. Thanks a bunch! They made my day.
xci.
"You drove," Annabeth exclaims, surprised.
"Yes," he admitted. "I have never really done that before."
Touched, Annabeth searched his green eyes. They are human. "Thank you for coming to save me."
"You saved yourself." He says softly, "though, anything for you."
xcii.
"You're so quiet," Percy says, glancing at her from the corner of his eyes, worried. He's frowning deeply.
Annabeth does not reply.
In her mind, she replays her escape.
She thinks about Clark's sunglasses sliding down when he fell, the metal rod impaled firmly in his chest. Annabeth recalls his accusing stare, shock and betrayal clear as day.
One of that man's eyes was blinded, and perhaps that was why he chose to wear sunglasses indoors, but the fading light from the remaining eye was etched into her mind. It was blue, so blue , and it reminded her of Luke.
She thinks about her own death so much it all feels like a memory but it's the others' that plague her and crowd her, constantly, awake and asleep.
"Annabeth," Percy tries again, and her name on his tongue sounds so safe, so familiar, but her mind is a million miles away. She can't concentrate on explaining what happened to Percy despite her best efforts.
Fortunately, he doesn't rush her. Left hand on the steering wheel, Percy reaches for hers with his right; she flinches slightly, and he hesitates for a second before retracting his hand and putting it back on the steering wheel. His knuckles are white from his tight grip.
Annabeth wants to apologize, but she doesn't even have the strength for that. She feels guilty and while it's a familiar feeling to her, she hasn't revisited its intensity in years.
She looks down.
Her hand is still slightly sticky with blood (for when she peeled the bloody socks off), and the gun is still sitting in her lap. The grip is coated with steel: of course, the mortals would not be able to hold the gun otherwise.
She thinks back to how she murdered Clark, and indirectly, Jared. Annabeth thinks about how she sent Echidna to her doom, not telling the mother that her son was already sent to Tartarus. Annabeth knows that if anyone is the true monster in this case, it's her.
Dimly, she thinks about how many more years of therapy this is going to require, but scoffs internally at that ridiculous thought. Being alive is enough of a luxury as it is, how can she even afford to think about her mental wellbeing at this moment?
Thankfully, she is as well as she can be physically.
Gods bless Percy, because Percy turned the heater in the car all the way up, and he offered her a coat (many sizes too big, but she isn't complaining) so Annabeth can take off Jared's old clothes. She doesn't want the smell of a dead man to remind her of what she's done.
Still, the white linens she wears underneath are not that white anymore, and she's feeling as traumatized as she was the day she fished herself out from Tartarus.
It's a terrible feeling. She's just glad that she isn't completely alone.
"I just needed a minute," Annabeth says after a couple hours, shifting, "how many days has it been?"
"I thought you fell asleep," he says thickly, "it's been nine days since the Solstice. I'm sorry it's taken me this long to get here."
"Don't be," Annabeth shakes her head.
"Let me know if you want to go for a bathroom break, we are a bit aways from the lab now - but we still aren't far enough. Not until we leave the state and I get my powers back."
Annabeth hmms in acknowledgement. "How did you find me?"
Percy takes a hand off the wheel and fishes something in his pocket in response.
It's her sand dollar necklace. She accepts it, careful to not taint the necklace with the blood that caked on her hand.
"Well, as my father says, what belongs to the sea can always be returned to the sea."
Annabeth carefully ties the necklace around her neck. "That's so cryptic. I thought you don't have your godly powers here?"
"No, but I am part ocean. Something about being a personification of the sea, as my mother used to say. Either way, I could sense the sand dollar when it was taken away from you, and I followed it here. I figured that you weren't far from the necklace, wherever you were."
"Thanks," Annabeth is touched. She remembers how empty the corridor was when Echidna and her first broke out, "you distracted the agents when you retrieved the necklace. I was wondering why security was so sparse."
A faint smile appears on his lips.
"I may have exploded a water tank or two. And their toilets, maybe."
Annabeth laughs for the first time in a week and a half, at the absurdity of the thought of exploding toilets, and her chest feels light.
So light.
xciii.
Annabeth kisses him, feeling the roughness on his chin. She traces a finger down his neck, seeing his Adam's apple bob under the faint moonlight.
Formerly, she could sometimes see vaguely golden wave-like patterns on him, as if there is an undercurrent of riptides running right beneath his skin, shimmering and fluid. She doesn't notice them until they are gone.
The slight glow that usually accompanies him is absent, too. His hair doesn't seem like it defies gravity as much, anymore. She isn't used to the bareness, but she likes it.
"You have some stubble," Annabeth vocalizes her earlier observation.
"Oh?" He asks absentmindedly. "I suppose I age here. It's taken me more than a whole week to drive to the lab."
"You age?"
"I don't have my divinity here, after all."
"And you sleep?"
"I tried not to when I was driving here," he admits, "but I nearly crashed out of fatigue, so I suppose I do."
"Then sleep. We can both use some rest," she says, reclining their seats and pulling in some blankets around them. God or not, his presence makes Annabeth feel safe and protected, and she hopes that she can be of some solace to him, too.
xciv.
It's another uneventful day of driving, away from civilization. Percy didn't have the foresight to conjure cell phones before he plunged into Alaska to find her, so they are isolated for all intents and purposes. When she asks him how he knows which direction to head to, he gives her a half-coherent answer about how he can feel where the heart of the Western Civilization is. He just knows .
She doesn't question it.
Then, Annabeth thinks about her father: he is probably worried sick that she never showed. She considers calling him when they stopped by a gas station, but she realizes that she doesn't have her father's number memorized. That's sad.
So, Annabeth settles for vowing that she'll make an effort to remember it when she returns to New York.
Sometime late evening (it's difficult to tell when it's always dark), they decide to stop next to a parking lot somewhere in one of the National Parks, among some hills and ranges, and Percy suggests that they spend some time outside of the car for fresh air.
"It is many, many degrees below freezing outside." Annabeth states, eyeing the outside wearily, thinking that this may possibly be the most outrageous idea anyone has suggested to her. "We'll both die."
Indeed, they could barely drive on some of the less maintained roads in parts of the wilderness out here. Dying of hypothermia after being stuck in a secret government lab for nine days is not of her particular interest at the moment.
Percy doesn't seem fazed. "I have a surprise. You'll like it, I think. Do you trust me?"
Annabeth nods, surprising herself for how fast she responds. She isn't built for trust, but how can she not trust him? There is no one else in the world for her to trust.
Annabeth clutches her coat tightly, and wonders if she should be reaching for Jared's jacket for another layer of warmth, but Percy hops out of the car into the dark, and when he opens her door, it doesn't feel like her face is in any danger of falling off from the cold.
If anything, it just feels like a chilly November day, when the leaves are brown and the air tastes like maple syrup.
"I heated the atmosphere around us; it's a nifty trick that I still get to do, even out here." He explains, eyes twinkling. "I'm not about to let you freeze, Wise Girl."
She accepts it and takes his hand, stepping out of the car.
He leads her near the edge of a cliff, in the middle of a circle of melted snow, and sets down a small blanket. He sits, and she follows suit. He produces another blanket to wrap around them, and Annabeth leans on his shoulder and closes her eyes, breathing in the clean air.
For a second, she can almost pretend that everything is normal again.
She misses that normalcy.
"So," Annabeth asks after a brief moment of silence, "what are we waiting for?"
It's so quiet at where they are. Aside from the exhaust of their car in the background, the only sounds are of their breaths. At this temperature, there is no wildlife wandering around.
Percy crooks his head slightly to the left, before glancing at her and whispering, "soon."
And she waits, and she sees it, and she gasps .
A beautiful ribbon of green starts to stretch across the sky, reaching and twisting. It is a beautiful sight. She has never seen anything quite like it before.
"How did you know?" She asks quietly.
"Eos, or Aurora, is the goddess of dawn. She is technically a Titaness, the sister to both Helios and Selene. Since the Titanslost influence, I suppose that Eos keeps herself scarce, too. She mostly dwells in the north now; sometimes deep down in the south near Australia, I heard. I felt her presence earlier in the night, so I figured that we'd be able to catch a glimpse."
Annabeth knows better to say that she has always thought of the Aurora Borealis merely as a weather phenomenon. It seems like nature is always intentional, and always rooted in the deities that make up these forces of nature; that's been demonstrated to her again and again.
The sky is fully lit up in green now, and she looks at Percy.
He is looking away and if he senses her stare, there is no hint of notice.
His gaze is trained at the skies; Annabeth wonders what he is thinking. However, she is afraid to ask.
She settles thinking to herself instead. Despite what happened in the past week, she is happy and grateful to relax for a second with him, here in Alaska. She drinks in the present, but she thinks about the future, too. It's easy to picture what that can look like with Percy, if they can just stay, forever away from the rest of the world.
"You know, it's nearly midnight in the East Coast," Percy says after a little bit.
Annabeth hmms in acknowledgement.
"It's going to be the New Years," Percy continues, looking out at the mountain ranges now. They can barely see the white peaks illuminated under the northern lights, sitting peacefully in the distance. "I'm sorry that I couldn't take you around to experience all of the New Years there are like I wanted to."
Annabeth gives out a small laugh. "I'm just grateful that I'm alive."
"Me too," he says, eyes finally trained on her rather than something far, far away.
"Make a wish?" She suggests.
"I don't need to."
He closes in, then, and they kiss.
xcv.
Half asleep, she turns to his warmth and mumbles.
"I think I was drowning before I met you."
A pause.
"And now?" the boy whispers.
She considers.
"I am the water."
a/n: it's annabeth's birthday today! she's turning 27! tell her happy birthday! please leave a review if you've enjoyed :)