Perseus offered her a hand to help her up, and she took it without hesitation. He kept holding it after she was standing, just as she expected him too. Despite the fact that the deck was empty besides them— and would likely remain that way for a few hours at least— it still felt like a brazen gesture, and Annabeth had to suppress a nervous swoop in her stomach.

"Are you sure you're rested enough?" she asked, partially trying to distract herself from her nerves, partially because she was genuinely worried about it. He'd been dead on his feet just a few hours ago. Up close she could still see little lines of tiredness around his eyes, but he just squeezed her hand in reassurance.

"Positive," he said, "Besides, I have a foolproof remedy for overexertion. Come on."

He started walking towards the bow of the ship. Annabeth followed, and not just because they were still holding hands.

"Foolproof," she repeated, keeping her tone neutral. She couldn't tell whether he was being serious or not, though she had no idea what a serious remedy would entail, given their limited supplies and lack of access to just about everything.

"Foolproof," he confirmed. He was suppressing another type of smile, she could see it in the way the corners of his mouth twitched. Had to be a joke then.

"That seems like a tall order if you ask me," Annabeth said, keeping her tone light. She could feel him looking over at her, his smile having broken free, but she was looking towards the horizon now. Teasing him.

"Well, it only works on myself," he said, turning back towards the sea, "But you can join me, if you'd like."

He leaned against the railing, still not dropping her hand.

"That depends what it entails," Annabeth retorted.

The grin that flashed across his face made her glad she hadn't agreed to whatever he was going to do outright.

"Come on," he said, tugging her hand lightly.

Annabeth hadn't paid much attention to the figurehead of the ship so far, but she definitely was looking at it now that Perseus was starting to climb over the railing on top of it. It was a cast of a dragon's head, made from wood and the same shining bronze metal that Perseus's sword was crafted of. It was huge too, big enough that when Perseus was standing at the edge of it, there was still room for one more person.

Annabeth followed him up.

The wind was stronger up there. She'd finally undone the braids Piper had given her earlier in the day, and now she was regretting it as the wind swept her hair in every direction. The sea looked farther down below from this angle, flat and unforgiving as hard-packed ground. Annabeth had a feeling she knew what his cure-all was now, and she wasn't sure she liked it.

She glanced over at Perseus, but he'd already sensed her nervousness, tightening his grip on her hand.

"Do you trust me?" he asked. He had to raise his voice to be heard over the wind. His dark hair was blowing in every direction, but she was too focused on his eyes to be distracted by it. They weren't sparkling in amusement like they had the last time he'd asked her this question, instead piercing her with a startling sincerity.

That afternoon by the river felt like so long ago, even though it had only been a few days back. The question of trust that had been posed to her then had been a joke, nothing entirely serious. But now, everything had changed between them. He was asking genuinely, even if it was under the guise of something else.

Of course she trusted him. There was no reason for him to even ask, because she'd already poured her soul out to him, and he'd taken it reverently, with gentle hands and an open heart. How could she not trust him, and how could he not know it?

But looking into his eyes now, her mouth went dry. He'd already known some of her secrets when she'd told him, and that had still been terrifying. This felt the same in a strange way. Like vocalizing her trust in him gave it power.

She said it anyway.

"Yes."

Her voice was almost carried away by the wind, but she could tell by his smile that he'd heard her.

When he leapt off the side of the masthead, she was right beside him.

There was the rushing thrill of the fall, and then the sudden darkness of the water. They were still holding hands, and even though Annabeth couldn't see him anymore, she could still feel his touch, strong and secure. She kicked her way to the surface, gasping for air as she broke through the water to the cooling evening air.

The first thing she realized was that it wasn't cold, even though it should have been. Maybe her muscles were just shocked from the sudden change in temperature, but a second later she felt something strange beneath her feet, something moving. She stopped treading water experimentally, and found she was still floating. The water was swirling around her, keeping her above the surface with no effort on her part.

She turned to Perseus, wonder probably splashed across her face. Looking at him brought her to the third realization, which was that not only was he still dry, but she was as well. Even her clothes were spared.

"How…" she started to ask, but the answer was as obvious as it was elusive. He just grinned, smug at rendering her speechless.

"Remember how I said you'd know when I was showing off?"

She splashed water at him for that, but she was laughing all the same. He was too, unbothered by her attack, probably because he could remain dry no matter what.

"If you let go of my hand you'll get wet," he warned. That was fine, since Annabeth had no intention of letting go of his hand. She didn't feel the need to say that out loud, though.

"Won't this make you more tired?" Annabeth asked, unable to help the worried thought from slipping out of her mouth. He shook his head, driving away her concern.

"No. It's simple enough to do, and being in the sea revitalizes me anyways."

"That's why Leo dumped seawater on you earlier," Annabeth realized in amusement. He laughed, light and free.

"That, and he was irritated with me. Really it was doubly effective."

The sun was nearly gone, but the sky was still lit up in brilliant color; pinks and purples melding into a dark indigo at the higher edges of the sky. Stars were starting to form above them too, the brightest ones first, but Annabeth knew the less brilliant ones would follow.

They stayed in the water a long time, swimming around and splashing each other, laughing all the while. Annabeth felt her worries lift off her shoulders one by one. The quest, her secrets, the repairs they needed to make and the ever-dwindling time they had left to do it all faded from her mind. All that mattered now was keeping ahold of his hand.

It had to end eventually, though. Even with Perseus using his powers, she started to tire, and she didn't want him to strain himself either. It was starting to get foggy around the water too, making it hard to see.

By the time they used the ladder on the side of the ship to climb back on board, it had shifted completely from evening to night. With a start, Annabeth realized it was the first night she'd spent awake and on deck aboard the ship. She'd never seen so many stars in her life, not with the total, overwhelming darkness being in the middle of the sea afforded them.

"There you are," she said, pointing out into the distant sky, where she'd caught sight of a constellation. Even before she'd met him, it had been one of her favorites. Now it easily took the top spot.

He gave her a blank look.

"Your constellation. Perseus," Annabeth prompted, "It's right over at the edge of the horizon."

She'd expected realization to spread across his features, but all she was met with was more confusion.

"What do you mean?"

Annabeth was suddenly reminded of the fact that he hadn't known who the Argonauts were when she'd brought them up a few days ago. It occurred to her that maybe that had been indicative of a more significant gap of knowledge than she'd realized. It would be ironic, all things considered, if she knew more about the Greek heroes of old than he did, but it seemed like that might be the case.

"You know about Perseus, don't you? The one before you, I mean."

He nodded, though his eyebrows were pulled together in confusion.

"I was named for him."

That made her explanation easier, at least. Still, with so many stars in the sky and nothing to draw their patterns on, it would be difficult to show him exactly what she meant.

"Constellations— they're patterns of stars in the sky, to make a picture. Some of them are just random things, but some of them are records. Stories."

He only looked slightly less confused.

"Look," she said, taking his hand and straightening his finger into a pointing position. He let her move it exactly where she wanted it with no hesitation. She moved her head closer to his, so she could see where she was pointing from his perspective, and he leaned forward slightly, so they were at an even height.

"The North Star," he said. He glanced over at her uncertainly, but he needn't have been. She smiled at him to let him know he was correct.

"Exactly. Now do you see the three stars on her side, that make a box?" she traced them out with her finger as she spoke. His hair brushed against her cheek as he nodded.

"That's the body of Callisto. And those stars poking out the side are her tail."

"Tail?" he asked, turning away from the stars to look at her, one eyebrow barely raised.

"She's a bear," Annabeth clarified, "Or was a bear. Now she's stars, but first she was a human, just a mortal girl. But Jupiter fell in love with her and sired a child."

"And that turned her into a bear?" he asked. The corners of his mouth were turned up in a small smile now, a little amused, a little teasing. She should have minded, but she didn't at all. It actually had the opposite effect, making her chest feel warm.

"Sort of. Juno got wind of the whole thing, and was going to kill Callisto and her baby. So Jupiter turned them into bears, and threw them into the sky by their tails. That's how they got so long."

"So what you're saying is Jason is lucky to not be a bear. Or stars in the shape of a bear."

Annabeth nudged him with her shoulder in scolding, but she couldn't hold back her laughter. He grinned, triumphant in having caused her humor.

"If he was, he would have been Arcas, the child," Annabeth said, moving his finger from the top corner of Castillo's body to the brightest star at the tip of Arcas's tail, "See, it's the same shape. Just upside down."

He looked back towards the stars, squinting in concentration. She watched as the lines between his brow smoothed out in recognition, his eyes tracing the patterns in the sky. Annabeth lowered his hand, now confident that he could find what he was looking for without her guidance.

"And there's more of these?" he asked, craning his neck backwards to look at the full array of stars.

"Hundreds more," Annabeth confirmed, following his gaze upwards, "But I only know some of them."

"How do you know any?" Perseus asked. He'd straightened back up to his normal height, but he was still standing close to her, their shoulders pressed together comfortably.

Annabeth bit her lower lip, hesitating. He looked down at her, curiosity on his face morphing into concern as he saw her expression.

"Some I read about," Annabeth said, which was true enough. Being the governor, Jason had access to an extensive library, which Annabeth had taken advantage of more than him and Piper put together. Some of the patterns she'd learned there, from scrolls and maps with meager explanations for how the constellations came to be.

But most she'd learned from Luke, from him guiding her hand towards the stars the same way she had guided Perseus's seconds before.

That had been a happy memory for a long time, but now she felt a wash of sadness thinking back on it. She'd done a good job of dividing the before and after of Luke, compartmentalizing the things he'd done for her and things he'd done to her in neat categories that never touched. But now they were starting to bleed together, a jumble of confusing emotions she wasn't quite sure how to sort through.

Perseus seemed to sense that the answer to his question was more complicated than he'd anticipated, because he changed the topic.

"Show me Perseus?" he asked. She would have obliged even without his pleading eyes and hopeful smile, but they certainly helped.

The fog had only grown since they'd made their way to the deck, obscuring the lowest parts of the horizon, but thankfully Perseus had already moved slightly upwards in the sky.

"Go back to Arcas. You see the brightest star, the one at the very tip of his tail?" she used her own hand to point this time, and he leaned down again to see from her perspective. Once she was certain he'd oriented his view, she pulled her finger in a diagonal line north, halting when she reached the middle star in the constellation.

"Do you see that bright star? That's his middle. There's one straight line going down, three protruding from the right side, and one from the left."

She wished she had a scroll and some ink to draw it out for him. Even a patch of dirt and a stick would do, but the imperciseness of her descriptions didn't seem to bother him. He watched as her finger outlined the shape of his namesake in the sky.

"I think I see it," he said. She couldn't read his expression, what with his face being parallel to hers, but his voice sounded confident.

"The left line is his sword." Annabeth said, drawing his eyes towards the cluster of stars with her finger, "The middle one on the right is Medusa's head, the top one is his head, and the bottom his legs."

"Seems like a bit of an awkward position to be trapped in for all eternity," Perseus said, straightening up and stretching his arm behind him as if he was holding his sword above his head, the same way the constellation was.

"I think once you become stars you probably stop feeling discomfort," Annabeth said, looking over at him in amusement.

"Must be nice," he said, lowering his arm.

He said it like a joke, but she detected an undercurrent of something else beneath his words. Wistfulness, maybe, or perhaps just a hint of something more bitter.

"I think it'd be sad," Annabeth said, truthfully. Her answer drew his gaze away from the sky, towards her, but she kept her focus on the stars. There really was an abundance of them out in the ocean. She found herself wondering how many other figures in the sky were lost when you got back to land and humans and light. Suddenly the little knowledge she did have about the night sky felt woefully inadequate.

"Why?" he asked, surprise laced in his words.

"I guess… it would just feel incomplete," she said. She paused before she spoke again, trying to organize her thoughts. He waited for her. She knew he would.

"Their stories are over, but they still have to pass through the sky every night, and change every season. They're never settled, but they don't have any possibilities either."

He considered that for a minute. It was quiet except for the wind rustling their clothes and water lapping against the sides of the ship. The fog was growing stronger, building up from the water to the open air. Soon she wouldn't be able to see the other end of the ship through it all.

"It must be peaceful, though. To always know where you're going," he said, finally. She glanced over at him, but he kept his focus on the horizon.

"I thought I was the one who was supposed to be aimless," Annabeth said. She was half-teasing and half-not, but he smiled softly anyways.

"I don't think you are anymore," he said, finally drawing his eyes to meet hers. His smile had faded away already, leaving an unreadable expression on his face.

"No. I don't think I am," Annabeth agreed.

There was a silent understanding then, a conclusion drawn from words unspoken. That the change was due to him, at least in part.

Annabeth had never envied the heroes defined in constellations. They'd had mostly difficult lives and horrible deaths, and being written in the sky in an unending cycle of movement had always seemed a poor way to repay them for it, in her eyes. But there was something to be said for certainty, even if it was the unending kind.

Annabeth had always considered herself different. Her story wasn't finished. Her existence wasn't written out for her in a celestial map, ready to be put on repeat for eternity.

But wasn't it, a little bit? Heroes were written in the sky, while heroes walked the earth below. Stars hovered above that were not quite frozen in place, but always in a state of freezing. There was something unshakably similar in their existence, a kind of perpetual repetition on a cosmic scale; one that hadn't started with her, and wasn't likely to end with her either.

Her path seemed so very wide open, and yet so inevitable all at once. Looking at Perseus now, she would swear their fates were as sure as if they'd been written in the stars. They were meant to meet each other, meant to be together.

There was no uncertainty to that as she looked into his eyes. And maybe it was her imagination, but she thought he felt it too, that insatiable pull they had towards each other becoming stronger by the second. They were so close, so very close—

And then he pulled away. Annabeth barely registered her disappointment before she saw the panic in his eyes, and realized that something was very wrong.

"We need to move," he said, stepping away from her in a wild, jerking gesture, "We need to—"

Whatever else they needed to do was swallowed by a horrific crashing noise, and a jolt so powerful Annabeth was knocked to her knees.

A ship emerged out of the fog, black sail visible even in the darkness of the night. A man in a golden helmet stood at the bow of this new ship, an equally golden sword gleaming by his side. He jumped down onto their deck, landing upright as if the five foot drop had been no issue at all.

"Hello, little brother," he said, pointing his sword at Perseus, "I look forward to destroying your ship."