"I get it now that it's too late

I never stopped feeling guilty

I'm over it, I promise that

I just gotta sing it out of me"

~Green by Cavetown

Thank you to hancakes (ah, so glad that you like that line! Athena has no excuse, she just didn't want to deal with the mess:/), Hellewise (thank you! means a lot to me that you read that a/n and ah, I hope for forever happiness for the two, too), UxysRaze (thank you! Means a lot to me :)), and TheDells (yessss I'm excited for you to read it! I wish I have time to write spin off stories for this universe because it's so fascinating) for your amazing reviews. They keep me going!

Guys, do me a solid and listen to The Wisp Sings by Winter Aid on my playlist as you read this chapter

cxi.

Annabeth can barely focus on setting dimensions for balconies on Rivet, let alone endure Becky recounting the entirety of her vacation to the Caribbean during the winter break. It's really a special kind of torture; Annabeth wonders if she should submit a suggestion to Hades for him to obtain a record of this screeching for the poor souls in hell.

"Annabeth," Mary Ann says, slightly startling Annabeth. She braces herself for what the executive assistant has to say. "Delphine wants to speak to you. Can you go to her office in five?"

Annabeth nods. She has expected it. A reprimand from the Partner is almost warranted after she takes off an extra week of work without contacting HR, Mary Ann, or anyone at Pallas&Co. She's been at the firm for a year and a half now, and she is up for a potential promotion for the Associate position later this year. Delphine has been one of her biggest supporters at the firm, and it would be a shame if Annabeth squanders that relationship.

Shockingly, Annabeth can't find herself to care all that much.

Where emotions should run, her heart feels cold and numb. Annabeth wills for some feeling to come: fear of the future, dread of what drew Percy away yesterday, jealousy of Becky and her perfectly mundane life, loss of her newfound normalcy in adulthood. But there is nothing.

She'll go to the stupid meeting and put on a pleasant face, and promise Delphine that she'll double down on site visits and new designs, but the professional life she's worked so hard to build over the past eighteen months presents itself as yet another thing to worry about, another hurdle for her to go through at the moment.

She has a job that lets her build perfect structures that reeks of permanence, away from burning cities and napalm skies of the gods' world.

That's always been the end goal for her, and for a while, she's lived this new life.

Annabeth has busied herself in work so much so that she doesn't have to think too hard about what comes next. However, she would be fooling herself if she thinks designing the next mall or apartment complex brings her the satisfaction she so craves. There has been no sense of belonging until Percy comes, and even the sense of purpose being the official architect of Olympus brings has its limits.

Is it the balance of operating in both the gods' world and the mortals' world that she needed, or is it him? Annabeth scowls internally at the thought. She doesn't need him; she just wants him. But lately, there is no distinction in that.

Annabeth wants to be angry or bitter like how she was in her teenage years, but she doesn't have the energy for it. She doesn't even have the appetite to understand. She hasn't even had a chance to digest how she feels about the murders she's committed less than two weeks prior and now she has to pretend to be normal. It's not fair. She's not one to complain about fairness, but a Hera-induced eight-month nap sounds awfully nice right about now.

As Annabeth pushes through the glass door to head into Delphine's office, she composes herself and let an easy professional façade settle through. She shoves everything under, deep inside her, so that these petty little feelings won't drown her. It's always worked: demigods are good at compartmentalizing and cutting parts of themselves off that only serve to overwhelm. Emotions, people, things, places – anything.

It's easier to stay afloat when you wear indifference as a life vest. Maybe sooner or later some of this would crush and drown her, but for now, Annabeth endures. After all, it seems like they may be on the cusp of a war.

cxii.

Ten days pass by and life almost feels like it's back to normal, but she hasn't heard from Percy in that whole time.

He must have been busy, Annabeth justifies. It's best if I don't interrupt him. Or maybe that's just an excuse she gives herself to not think about him and what happened in Alaska.

Annabeth still see flashes of blank stares of those mortals in her nightmares.

More than that, she feels occasional flashes of unsettlement, compounded by a kind of static in the air that raises the hair on her arms. Storms of all kinds brew throughout the East Coast and mild earthquakes peppered the Eurasia continental plate; there are even some rumors that Yellowstone is going to erupt due to some observations of the recent seismic activities.

Annabeth has no doubt that it is his doing. Maybe Poseidon needs some urgent help organizing the seven seas; she's heard that underwater politics have always been a sort of a mess (but surely it doesn't warrant this kind of a response?)

Mortals are suffering, but does Percy care?

Maybe foreign is not the right word, but she senses that he has been trying to distance himself. Has the sea god's brush with a semi-state of mortality in Alaska changed how he view the feasibility of their relationship, and of himself? Is there a silent resolution that she wasn't aware of?

So when she gets off work early on a Wednesday, Annabeth swings by Sweet on America for a bag of blue candies and sits on her couch, reaching out to him with her sand dollar in hand.

Hey, you okay? She prays, but there is no response.

I missed you. Annabeth gives it a few more minutes. Still, there is no evidence that he hears her.

I have your favorite candies, she tries again, feeling more and more ridiculous.

How silly is this? She hasn't given it much thought before, but the balance of power in the relationship is absolutely one-sided. Annabeth doesn't like to feel helpless; she is a warrior. But though Percy does a damn good job to make her feel like she has jurisdiction over their dynamics and time together, things aren't ever really in her control.

If Percy decides that one day he doesn't want to see her or hear her again, there won't be anything that she can do about it. She would just pine after smoke.

Annabeth shakes her head. Since when has she developed so much dependency on him? Has she not learned? She can't quell the sick feeling in her stomach and the ache in her arm.

She contemplates taking a quick shower to calm herself down, but she can't help but feel that something is very, very wrong.

Are you alright? Are you angry at me? Give me a sign if you're busy.

Still, silence.

Annabeth sighs. She's not going to try again and make a fool out of herself; the humiliation she experienced in her mother's temple is still fresh in her mind.

The senses of abandonment jut with prominence in her mind. Athena had ignored her when she begged for her mother's attention on her knees just ten days ago, and now, the man she loves is ignoring her, too.

Maybe this is the gods' idea of fun, but it certainly is not hers. She is so lonely, damnit, and maybe she's been a little scared of Percy since his display of power, but Annabeth wants nothing more than to surround herself within the safety of his arms and sleep.

cxiii.

The air thickens with a sourly sulfur smell. Annabeth hears a sluggish pop before Percy tumbles out from the thin air, blindingly stretching one of his arms to balance himself.

She has never seen him like this before.

"Percy!" Annabeth exclaims in alarm, blinking traces of sleep away.

The stink of grief rolls off of him like riptides, tearing her living rooms apart with wafts of rotten eggs. Annabeth is reminded a little of the angry bubbly hot springs that she's visited in Iceland during college, and she realizes that perhaps that is what Percy is embodying at the moment. There is no mistake that he is mourning; the world is attuned to the gods and she is a part of it. His demeanor and presence, at the moment, demands to be felt.

"What's wrong?" She asks to tease out further details. She takes him into her arms and guides them both back to the couch. They both sink in it. Any frustration from prior bleeds out of her.

The sea god closes his eyes, clearly in pain. He turns his head away.

"It's my brother," Percy starts, and he buries his head in his hands. He doesn't show (or perhaps feel) emotion as liberally as he had in Alaska, but she sees a proxy for how potent his grief is when the apartment shakes and the tilted glass frame on her wall threatens to fall and break.

What do you do to comfort an all-powerful god that you love? They never really specified in her copy of the Demigods Survival Guide.

Annabeth wants to ask him which brother he is referring to, but that won't help at the moment. Instead, she holds him close, muttering words of comfort and ease in his ear..

It's a bit of an awkward affair; demigods lose friends and siblings all the time so she is no stranger to loss. But how can she help a deity cope? Annabeth knows that Percy had lost Achilles and some of his mortal children before, but what can possibly be the right thing to say to comfort him at this moment?

At camp, heroes take solace in the fact that when they die, they will either head to Elysium or Isle of the Blest. Loss is easier to deal with when you know that one day, you'll see your loved ones again in the afterlife.

Friends and lovers can reunite in death. This is what Annabeth told Piper when she was grieving for Jason's death, and this is what Annabeth told herself when Luke and Silena and Charlie and Lee and Michael (and so, so many others) died.

But this is not the case for Percy and his immortal brothers. Gods, monsters, and other deities don't have souls: if Percy's brother is really gone, his essence unrecoverable, then Percy will never see him again. It is an irreversible wound.

Her heart aches for his.

She presses Percy's head close to her chest, quietly singing an ancient Greek hymn she learned at camp. Annabeth is no child of Apollo, but maybe it can still provide some relief. Percy lets out a small sigh against her collarbone. Some of the tension in his shoulders leave with it.

Annabeth rubs his back slowly with her palm. He lifts his head slightly, and she can see the wet glowing blotches that he's left on her blouse.

"I'm sorry," he starts, looking at her shirt, "I didn't even know that I can cry," but she shushes him. Annabeth can swear that his form flickers a little, edges blurring, before he pulls himself to be solidly tangible again in her embrace.

"Don't be, Percy. I don't mind." She kisses the crown of his head, brushing some of his black hair away from his eyes. "Do you want to talk about it?"

"No," he mutters, but his body language suggests otherwise. Percy shifts so that his sets his head on her lap. He stares at her ceiling when she tries to meet his gaze.

"Triton is usually a pain in the ass, you know?" Percy laughs bitterly, and Annabeth is a little surprised that Triton, out of all of Percy's brother, has been the one that he is referring to.

Annabeth can't find it in her heart to agree with Percy's jab; to encourage him to keep talking, she settles on cupping a palm around his cheek and stroking it gently with her thumb instead. His chin is smooth again, and Annabeth finds herself missing the near-mortal version of the sea god that existed in Alaska. She shakes her head mentally – now is not the time for thoughts like that. That's selfish.

"I don't think we ever got along that well, maybe because of who my mother is, or maybe because we seldomly see eye-to-eye in all things regarding underwater politics, but I can't believe this happened."

"I'm really sorry, Percy." What happened?

He turns his head and looks away, "They killed a god, Annabeth." He stares emptily into the air, handing her something, "Triton is gone and he's not coming back and there's nothing I can do about it."

Annabeth looks at the golden handcuffs in her hand; she didn't even notice that they were gone in the first place.

cxiv.

"I know you won't like it," Percy starts, "but they have to pay for this."

"Who did this? Who has to pay for this?"

She already knows the answer.

"Humans. Mortal actions and perceptions are responsible for this." Percy says, but he doesn't stop, "pollution of our waters had been a strain for all sea deities but that doesn't really threaten the extent of our divine power and existence. What is more puzzling is that there had been some sort of a campaign to erase all historical mentions of my brother.

"I didn't take him seriously when he first mentioned that there had been deliberate attempts to destroy his temples some years ago. Civilizations knock things down to rebuild all the time; some of these nexuses of power are unfortunate victims in the process. Plus, portrayals of him in popular media never ceased, so I didn't think this was a problem.

"I don't know who had the idea to weaponize belief first, but they had. Tri never said anything about this if he felt it, but these agents we encountered tried to erase any traces of his mention in anything they had access to. Mine, too, but I was never popular in literary works." Percy says, shaking his head and Annabeth's heart seizes.

"Still, this can't be enough. That's too easy." Annabeth counters. It would be catastrophic if gods can be killed so easily.

"It would be," Percy agrees. "These agents probably got their hands on a god-killer, somehow. Like what Medea wanted to do to Apollo and my brother-in-law."

At Annabeth's confused look, Percy added, "Helios. He was married to my half-sister Rhodes.

"Anyhow, weapons like that exist, and apparently we haven't been careful enough to seal them all away. They usually require the essence of a god to activate, and if a god is weakened enough beforehand, weapons like that can turn the being back into the ether. Chaos. Whatever term you prefer."

"Sam," Annabeth breathes.

Percy nods. "They probably used him as the catalyst in this sick experiment. I don't think he even knows. And I'm almost certain that the agents didn't really think they would succeed. After all, they thought Sam was mine."

Maybe they were targeting you in the first place, Annabeth wants to say. She has so many more questions for Percy, but she knows that no one has definite answers.

Moreover, there is no escape or excuse of what human nature may be like after the deliverance of this truth. Unlike what Mencius from ER18: Classical Chinese Ethical and Political Theory, Rousseau from Phil3: The True and the Good, or all the thinking and philosophy from The Good Place wants her to believe, human nature is not good. Not evil, per say, but very susceptible to moral corruption.

Human nature dictates people to be inherently uncomfortable with things they don't understand and beings that are perceived to be different. Annabeth doesn't have to be fully human to see the various forms of prejudice that resides in the world.

More than that, it is the curdled fear that stems from the unknown and the limitless greed clawing at the promise of potential power to be harnessed for profit.

The antagonistic agents are weaponizing these tendencies, and some of that intended harm has already been effective.

But what does this mean for Percy? What does this mean for the two of them?

hey have to pay for this, he says. Annabeth does not like it indeed.

She recalls Grover's warning to her last summer: Perseus is a destroyer. As the god of loyalty, what will he do to protect those of whom that he is loyal to?

cxv.

Annabeth doesn't remember how she fell asleep that night, but the sheets next to her is cool when she wakes.

A/N: as per usual, commissioned art for this chapter can be found on my ffn discord

I've got the next chapter ready, so let me know if y'all would prefer me to just update tomorrow or stretch these out because the story is ending ~soon~ Would also love to hear your thoughts for this chapter :) Please review; they matter a lot to me!