I'm sorry. This took so long, and I promised it would be three or four days, didn't I? Ugh. Well, guess what? 50 reviews! Thank you all so much!
Nothing could go wrong: Oof, that's okay. Can't you reset your password? But okay. Thanks!
SunBear: Oof. The iNtErNeT. Yeah.
Thanks! Welp, the Jasper I'm throwing a wrench into too (you'll see) and yeah, Percabeth has multiple wrenches at the ready hehehe but yeah, poor Percy. It did look a bit like he was getting ditched I guess.
Yeah, Annabeth's mother kinda sorta abandoned her when she was very young, so I'm not sure if there's really even a relationship there XD. Yeah, Piper won't be too happy. You'll see.
YES. THE FRAZEL CAMEO! (That's true)
Hmm, yeah, I'd say so. Anyway, thanks!
The8horcrux: [chapter three] Yes, yes it is.
[chapter five] Thank you! I do think that is what Percy would say.
[chapter six] I think so too.
[chapter eight] what are these questions? Okay. Thanks!
[chapter nine] Well, it's not like Annabeth regularly goes on dates with guys she kinda sorta thinks are insufferable.
Azure Bluet: Well, then I'm glad you're committed lol. Yes, drama! And yeah, too easy...it's not like I'm going to write nine chapters and call it quits. Athena is a problem..hopefully one resolved in this chapter, and hopefully you can see the purpose of why this is here. Annabeth's father is a StAlKeR. Okay, I'm kidding. Piper will have some...catching up to do.
Poseidon1702: Thanks.
In hindsight, maybe leaving Percy Jackson alone and clueless at some pizza parlor in Lakeview wasn't a good idea, especially when he probably could have driven her home. But at the moment, Annabeth lacked sense, so instead she called Piper.
"Annabeth? Aren't you on your date?" Piper asked cheerfully. "What-" but Annabeth steamrolled over her friend and roommate, talking right over Piper McLean.
"Piper, I need you to pick me up. I'm in Lakeview, outside Paolo's Pizzeria-" Piper was silent, but when she did speak, her words were confused.
"Annabeth, what's going on?" she laughed.
"I wish I knew."
Piper was there quicker than it had taken to drive to Lakeview- something that scared Annabeth. The fear and concern she saw in Piper's eyes told her all she needed to know. "Seriously, Annie, what is happening here?" Annabeth had since walked away from the pizzeria, not wanting Percy to know that she was waiting out for someone else instead of him- even if there was no reason she shouldn't be.
"I have to pack. Or- something. Thanks for picking me up, but I really need to go..." Piper pulled away from the curb slowly, deliberating her next words.
"Why couldn't Percy drive you home? What happened to your date, and where are you going?" she asked, her barrage of questions chipping away at Annabeth's calm façade.
"I'm not ditching our date and making him drive me home. Nothing happened, and, uh...San Francisco. I guess." Piper raised her eyebrows. "It's personal." Piper, while looking no less satisfied, shook her head and didn't pry, something Annabeth was thankful for.
"Fine, give me no details. However, how was your date with Mister Percy, anyway? Even though it appears you've ditched him to hang out with me-" Annabeth raised her eyebrows at her- "which I am okay with, but still. I didn't get you all dolled up so you could give me nothing."
"I'm giving you my loving company," Annabeth told her. Piper looked unimpressed, shaking her head.
"That's boring," she said as Annabeth opened her mouth to object, "I want details about your date with Pwercy Jackswon."
"Don't call him Pwercy Jackswon, that's such a terrible name," Annabeth told her. "And I want to catch a flight as soon as possible, so hurry up on getting us home and if you're lucky I'll tell you when I get back." Piper raised her eyebrows.
"That's all you're giving me? Jeesh, tough crowd." Annabeth rolled her eyes.
"That's all I'm giving you."
Annabeth pulled up next to a house in San Francisco- no lawn, and no driveway, just another one of the homes in the cramped city, uncharacteristically nervous as she stared at the door. You're strong. So what if you haven't seen them in nineteen years? So what if your mother is here for the first time in years?
The door swung open as she climbed the stairs, her father's face a wave of cold water. "Annabeth. Come in." His voice was like stiff cardboard, but wavered at the end. "We've been awaiting you." She didn't bother to dignify him with a response. It felt like some sort of cold family gathering. Except that this time it was her actual family.
And she knew when she walked in, she would see the face she hadn't seen in longer than she could remember.
And when she did walk in, she didn't see the face she hadn't seen in longer than she could remember.
"Annabeth."
There it was.
"Mother."
Athena Chase looked no different than Annabeth remembered- so little change in her features that Annabeth wondered if she was remembering her wrong. Athena's face was impassive- even as she gazed upon her daughter for the first time in roughly 24 years. Annabeth hoped her own words were just as stiff.
Annabeth was aware that Helen, her stepmother, was somewhere in the house, and Bobby and Matthew, the twin stepbrothers, were probably also somewhere in the house, but the silence that surrounded her mother, her father, and Annabeth herself was front and center in her mind.
"You look well." Annabeth told them both, barrelling on before they could respond. "You know, well for two people who were probably worried sick about their firstborn child who they abandoned. No? Weren't worried, I see. Well. That's just fine and dandy." It wasn't that Annabeth was bitter or something. Just a little confused. If she ever had a child, she wouldn't have jumped ship and abandoned them. If said child ever ran away, she would be worried sick.
But her father had a new family made of twins and his not-soulmate wife, and her mother had already left.
"Annabeth," her mother started. Annabeth's glare could have frozen her in place, but Athena didn't flinch. It was from her that Annabeth had gotten her gray eyes, after all. "You aren't in the position to make comments about that-"
"Oh, you sure? I think it's only fair that the daughter you walked out on makes some comments about it, after all, you weren't there to prove otherwise." If looks could kill, Annabeth thought, Annabeth would have been dead long before now. But the cold look in her mother's gunmetal gray eyes was scary, somewhat. Annabeth, however, was not about to back down. If she backed down, that was a weakness. There was no way that was happening when she was facing her mother.
"That, Annabeth, is hardly fair." Athena cautioned. "I left for my career, for you," Annabeth laughed humorlessly, sounding like ice.
"For me? You left us behind for me? In what universe does that make sense?" Annabeth was aware of her father's gaze, resolute, behind her, both staring at Athena.
"You can stop your staring, Frederick, I'm not your soulmate, I never was, and you're married," Athena snapped. The time stilled. What? Annabeth saw Helen in the corner of her eye, standing in the doorway, and could picture her father's shocked and betrayed expression.
"What." Helen said.
"What?" Frederick asked.
"What?!" Annabeth questioned.
Everything she had believed from a very young age was wrong. Her soulmate parents hadn't split apart, because she didn't have soulmate parents. She couldn't say that they were a failed pair of soulmates, because they had never been soulmates…or so Athena said. If this wasn't true…was her whole assumption about soulmates wrong, too?
Athena's gray gaze seemed blue under the lighting- like Lake Placid, as calm as its waters, as if what she had said, which had rocked their family, had meant nothing to her. Perhaps it never had- after all, Annabeth thought Athena had only stayed so long because she felt she owed it to Frederick Chase being her soulmate. Wasn't that why she had married him? She'd left, after all. Annabeth never thought that the two had shared a real love- after all, if they were soulmates, like so many people that met their soulmate she had assumed they had married because of those marks. Not for love, because if Athena had loved Annabeth, then Athena wouldn't have left Annabeth, and that was what she had done.
"I said what I said, didn't I? Frederick, you and I were never soulmates. You can stop gaping. It's not like I ripped the rug out from under your feet- there isn't a rug in this quaint home of yours." Annabeth's father closed his mouth.
"What about what you said, then?" he questioned. "About the marks, being the same? He held out his wrist, turning it so that the inside was exposed to the light. Annabeth's eyes were instinctively drawn to the spot- his soulmark, after all. Inked in black on his skin was the same little tattoo Annabeth remembered seeing on her mother's collarbone- the little owl flying an aeroplane.
Annabeth realized that on the spot the matching soulmark should have been on Athena's neck, there was nothing- not even a smudge of ink. They couldn't be removed after all. The one in Annabeth's hair could only be hidden and dyed, it grew as normal hair did.
"It was then. It isn't anymore. Soon, yours will fade, the ties that bound it to your skin after all these years finally severed in the light of wisdom and kn
owledge." Annabeth stared.
"Then who's your real soulmate?"
"There isn't one." Athena said coldly, her voice like ice. Annabeth knew she didn't care about the fact- it was just the way she was. "There are a fair amount of people who don't have soulmates. We're a small minority, but a group nonetheless. Our soulmarks, soullinks, soulbonds, soulmates…they're nonexistent. Our 'soulmates' come up every once in a while, but they fade. Our versions of soulmates are different, after all. We don't need them. And some have multiple soulmates. Annabeth, when I left I expected I would have a daughter who was studied and learned, not gaping."
"Excuse me? I have studied and learned. I work at an architecture firm, and a bookstore. I went to two universities and have been paying off my own student debt without any help from you. I don't even care about soulmates, and why? Because of you. You've ruined so much of my life already. I don't want to see you again."
"Annabeth," Athena said. Annabeth knew it wasn't a plea, or even an ask for her to turn back. It was merely her mother's version of a goodbye. "There are no right answers." Unable or unwilling to decipher her mother's cryptic words, Annabeth made to open the door, but looked back first- at her father, pain still in his eyes, at Helen, who watched him silently, at Athena, whose gray eyes met hers for only a moment.
"Goodbye, Father, Mother, Helen." She said awkwardly, not really expecting acknowledgement. "I'm sure you understand why I don't want to stay, I have to work and feed my cat and apologize to my roommate. I'm sure you understand that I don't feel welcome here after everything that happened when I last lived in a home with any of you. This chapter of the book has closed, and I have little doubt that this is the last one." Annabeth closed the door.
She felt almost relieved, to not be in the same suffocating house as her biological family and her stepmother, to be almost out of the woods, but everything she'd built herself up off of had tumbled down taking her with it. Yeah, there was Thalia and Luke, the second pair of failed soulmates, but they were the second pair, not the first. Everything Annabeth had gone off of with them, she had started with her parents. Her sob story, even if she didn't like to advertise it, had begun and had now ended with Athena and Frederick Chase.
Were soulmates that bad of a deal now, when she now knew it wasn't the problem here? They weren't soulmates. The parents she had blamed Destiny on had only themselves to blame, Athena, really. Luke hadn't been right. Maybe Thalia hadn't been right- were their parents the same way, soulmateless and thinking that they really were meant to be?
Annabeth pulled out of the street and waited at the traffic light, smiling at a pigeon she saw eating a bread crumb, even though she knew that in San Francisco, feeding pigeons was illegal. She wasn't sure why. They were just birds.
There was a text from Piper beeping on her phone, but Annabeth only glanced at it and then ignored it. Are you okay? Why would she be okay? She hadn't given Piper the whole story- in fact she hadn't given her very much of it at all- and she doubted Piper knew what she would be getting into when Annabeth got home, and it wasn't her fault- but Annabeth was tired, and she didn't know what to do.
I went around all my life picking myself up from the failed soulmates that started it all. Now I'm not the failed soulmate product after all. But then…what am I?
Ah...doubt, sadness, and family trouble...did any of you think I could write a sweet story that wasn't full of other feelings? Surprise. Anyway, I hope you see what the purpose of this was, besides a convenient stop to any and all Percabeth. :)
P.S: English Sunset, by the Moody Blues.
P.P.S: ThatGirlWithaCat is a wonderful beta, just so ya know.