A/N: New story out! I had so much fun writing the first chapter of this story- it was supposed to just be a one-shot, but after thinking about it, I've decided to split it across multiple chapters. 'Ad Meliora' is a Latin phrase that means 'towards better things.' Enjoy! - CursedByAmelia
Chapter 1: Death By Raccoon
Well, at least you know that when your boyfriend of two and a half years cheats on you for a carrot-haired, gold-digging minger, raccoons won't judge you, only scratch you with their creepy, poky little hands.
Seriously. Thalia's wretched 'pet' had been sitting at the end of my bed, ripping apart one of my stuffed Winnie-the-Pooh bears for the past half an hour. It had already disembowelled the first bear. My roommate (and slightly delusional best friend) had found him, malnourished, in some random trash bin one day, feeding him little bits of peri-peri chicken until he was coaxed out the bin.
Now, that would have been all well and breezy, except she then decided to 'adopt' him- and by that, she meant move in with us, two broke college students, razor-claws and all. He now roamed our two-bedroom flat with ease, destroying every small, furry item he came across.
Flocculent, fluffy entrails dripped across my sheets and onto the floor. I glared miserably at them as the crude red crocheted heart flew across the bed and landed by my feet, bearing the message 'I love you, sugar boo' in swirly white copperplate.
I almost retched at the sight of it.
Thalia's ghastly little spawn-of-Satan could assuage it's sadistic desires on the stuffed animal all it liked, I never wanted to see it again. Luke, my little mewling motley-minded moldwarp of a boyfriend- ex-boyfriend- had given it to me on our second anniversary. In fact, he had given me an entire collection. I still remembered the look in his fake, but still very pretty golden eyes, and his smile, gorgeous white teeth, which by the way-
"Shut up, dumb brain." I mumbled angrily to myself. He was a liar, and a cheat, and an idiot, but despite all his disgusting, unredeemable qualities, I knew I was the biggest fool. I pounded my forehead with the last bear, glowering at it's matted fur. I was supposed to be smart.
"Somehow, I am going to make you all the cause of my problems," I hissed at him.
Winnie-the-Pooh number three gazed dolefully back at me. Stupid bears. My inner pyromaniac wanted to slowly burn every single one. Yeah, that sounded nice. I broke a small, vindictive smile at the thought.
The raccoon threw me a disdainfully hypocritical look. You know, for a raccoon. "Oh shut up," I muttered.
"Annabeth?" a voice came from the door. I growled and sunk back into my blankets, tearing off the lid to what had to be my fourth tub of Ben & Jerry's that day. (Half-Baked Bye Bye Brownie, empirically proven in a 2014 Oxbridge study to be the ultimate break-up flavour.)
"Annabeth!" Thalia's muffled voice was louder now, and she knocked on the door loudly.
"Go away!" I yelled back, wiping off a bit of snot that had resided unpleasantly on the top of my lip. "I haven't finished wallowing in self pity."
Luke was a slimy little ragwort weed who deserved to be chopped up into little pieces and fed ever so slowly to the university janitor's cat, while-
"No!" she replied. God, why was she still there. "Is Octavian in there? I haven't washed him today yet."
The aforementioned demon-child hissed at me, and I flipped him off sarcastically, throwing the last hellacious Pooh bear at him. He pounced on it with feral glee. Then again, I supposed, death by a blood-thirsty Guadeloupe raccoon wasn't that bad either. Maybe I should invest in some voodoo dolls.
"Annabeth?" an insistent call came from the door.
"What do you want?" I groused, stabbing the spoon viciously into the ice-cream carton and imagining it was Luke's head.
"For you to unlock the door." her voice was exasperated and flat. I shut my mouth stubbornly, crossing my arms as I let the ice-cream melt sullenly in my mouth. It was too sweet now.
"You've been in there for three days, Annabeth. And when you emerge you look like some kind of Franken-sulk."
"I don't sulk…" I muttered to myself, crossing my arms and lowering my chin into my chest pettily.
"Yes, you do." Thalia snorted from the outside. Shit, she heard me?
Thalia continued, "And if you don't get your ass out here right now, I might just have to explain to Mrs. Jackson the real reason why you've been off 'sick' for her past two lectures."
"Please. Mrs. Jackson's like the nicest human being on the entire planet. I'm, like eighty-five percent sure- no, ninety percent sure that she'd understand. And plus, I'm her favourite student." I retorted, hearing Thalia muttering, frustrated, outside the door.
"And besides, I am sick." I complained, and as if to prove my point, I sniffed very loudly.
Thalia gave a short laugh. "Yeah, right. Sure, you're lovesick."
"That's not… touché. "
"Well, alright then," Thalia's voice had a tone of finality, "if you won't come out, and I can't get you out, then I'm just going to have to call someone who will. Someone who's gonna save my mental health, and your degree."
"Oh, really," I scoffed. "And who, may I ask, is this mystery chevalier?"
I could practically hear the smirk in her voice. "Your mother."
I gasped in horror. "You wouldn't."
My mother was, I would unashamedly say, the scariest person I'd ever met. She'd once made the army Staff Sergeant- who'd run the Junior Marines camp she made me go to as a kid- cry. And he'd told me he kicked kittens to get him in the mood for work every morning.
"I would." Thalia retaliated, pausing for a few moments, "Oh! Unless, of course, you'd be willing to conduct yourself back into society." she added sarcastically.
I groaned, and sat in silence for a long time. As much as I loved her, my best friend could be a nasty piece of work sometimes. Sighing, I got up, edged around the remains of Pooh bear number three, and pulled open the door. Thalia stood outside, bright blue eyes gleaming with triumph. I was half tempted to slam the door back in her charming, smug little face, but she stuck her foot in the door before I could initiate my plan.
"See, that wasn't so hard, was it?" she grinned at me, in an annoyingly optimistic fashion. Octavian shot out of the door behind me, and curled around the legs lovingly as she petted him. Traitorous little two-faced procyonid.
"Shut up," I grumbled, pushing past her as I stormed into the small kitchenette, "I need caffeine- what in Tartarus happened here?"
I looked around in disbelief. I had only been… well, absent for a few days, but already dirty dishes littered the sink, the tap was leaking, and a putrid smell wafted up the vents from an empty juice carton lying abandoned on the table.
"Oh, I see how it is," I scorned whirling round on Thalia who stood sheepishly in the doorway, "you just woke me up to clean up your mess."
She rolled her eyes at me. "Of course not. I'm going to clear this up. Right, uh, now."
I raised an eyebrow as she pulled open the dishwasher and started stacking plates haphazardly on top of each other.
"And no offence, Annabeth, but you kinda stink." she added, switching on the tap.
I pulled a face at her, grabbing one of the remaining clean glasses and filling it with water. Gulping it down in three large swallows, I had to admit she was right. I hadn't washed my hair in God knows how long.
"You're unbelievable…" I muttered, storming out of the room to drown my sorrows with a nice, hot shower. Or maybe a bath.
Yeah, a bath sounded nice.
Unfortunately for me, my fantasy of soaking in an sweet, jasmine-scented bubble bath to exfoliate my troubles was not to become reality, by virtue of the simple but extraordinarily vexing fact that Thalia had clogged the drain. Again.
To her credit, she had apologised and offered me a copy of The National Geographic magazine as a conciliator. God knows where she got it from, because she claimed that scholastic texts gave her hives, but I was slightly mollified nonetheless.
Anyway, for now I had to make do with the old shower, which was permanently stuck on one temperature like an old man who refused to change his ways.
The water trickled down my face, warm enough to be slightly uncomfortable but not hot enough to scald. With each lathering of soap, I scrubbed away the dried tear-stains on my cheeks, the restless feeling in my skin, scorched away the emptiness and coldness Luke had left behind, devoting my attention to nothing but the water and the sound of it clattering against the shower floor like tumultuous rain.
I rubbed my face a raw pink colour with facewash, before squirting a generous dollop of lemon-scented shampoo on my hands. I relished the feeling of the frothy suds trailing down my back, through my hair, washing away the dirt and the grease, smoothing out the tangles with the last of Thalia's conditioner.
Stepping out the shower, I wrapped myself in my towel and grabbed my toothbrush off the stand, squirting a gargantuan amount of mint-flavoured toothpaste onto the worn bristles. I stood there for a solid six minutes, brushing my teeth not twice, but three times, to make up for all of last week. Once I had finished, I twisted the towel up into a knot in my hair and slipped into an old spa robe Thalia had gifted me for my sixteenth birthday about three and a half years ago.
Shooing Octavian off my bed, I pulled the sheets entirely off, shoving them in a hamper basket and retrieving fresh ones from the airing cupboard. Tucking the corners in, I was just replacing the last of my pillow cases- shutting the damned raccoon out of the room so he wouldn't obliterate my cushions- as Thalia barged in, carrying two hot cups of coffee.
"There you go! Don't you feel better?" she asked, setting one of the cups on my dresser as she sipped from the other one, Octavian rumbling affectionately around her ankles.
"Yeah," I replied reluctantly. And I had to admit, my fresh sheets and clean face was running somewhat parallel to my messy thoughts, which had somewhat organised themselves over the past few hours.
"I know best," she smirked, leaning back against my door frame.
"Well, apart from that time you left your spare locker key in your locker, and when you lost the original, the spare was completely useless." I raised an eyebrow.
"Technicalities," she scoffed, waving a hand.
I couldn't help myself- I chuckled, for what seemed like the first time in days, pulling out the pair of tracksuits and oversized hoodie I had been holed up in for the last 72 hours.
"Oh, no you don't," Thalia interrupted me, snatching the clothes out of my hand and shoving them in the hamper before I could do anything about it. "You are not putting on those manky old clothes again."
"Why?" I whined, "They're comfy..."
"Because we're going out clubbing. Which, you ought to know, is scientifically proven to be the best way to get over a break-up." she grinned, a gleam in her eye.
"Speculatively," I grumbled, unable to stop myself correcting her, "speculatively proven."
"Whatever," she cast aside my revision without regard, "but going out means dressing up. And you know what dressing up means?" Her blue eyes glimmered with delight.
I groaned. "I'm not letting you use me as some sort of doll-"
"Too late!" she cackled, shoving me down into the chair in front of my vanity, "You're not escaping this one, Annabeth. No way, josé."
I sighed and caved, just like I always did. Allowing her to yank a hairbrush through my hopelessly tangled curls, I flipped through my bartered copy of The National Geographic.
I knew we would be here for a while.