A/N: I'd like to thank some of the people who helped me out: AlEmily360, SapphireTrafficker, tigerlilycorinne, AshenMoon42, Lesbian101, Shiuanc2, and LadyHW.

Against her better judgment, that evening, after her last class of the day, Annabeth found herself climbing into the passenger seat of Percy's car.

"So, where do you want to go?" Percy asked, twisting in his seat to face her before she even had the chance to buckle herself in.

"I don't know," Annabeth said. She looked at the sun, already setting even though it wasn't even five-thirty. Vibrant shades of orange and lilac painted the sky and turned the shadows golden.

"Hmm," Percy hummed, facing forward and tapping his hands against the steering wheel. The light cast an amber glow over his features, softening the plains of his face and casting delicate shadows of his eyelashes when he looked down. "Well, where do you need to go?"

Annabeth thought for a second. All she knew was that she wanted to be not here. "Somewhere to escape to," she finally said.

"I know just the place." The car made a low grumble as he pulled out of the parking space and onto the road. He drove down the street and got off of an exit ramp and towards the freeway.

:::

Annabeth watched the scenery blur past her. They had long ago left the college campus, through quiet suburbs that turned into rolling hills. Now, the only thing outside were greenish-yellow fields of grass, and forests of vivid orange and red deciduous trees. Every once in a while, they passed a house, lit windows contrasting with the quickly darkening sky.

"You aren't taking me into the middle of nowhere to kill me, are you?"

Percy jumped and the car swerved. He set it back on track. "I forgot you were there for a minute. You were so quiet…" he said, not taking his eyes off of the road. He glanced over at her for a second. "Maybe I am. Maybe that was my plan all along."

Annabeth snorted. "But seriously, where are we going?"

"I'm not telling."

Annabeth groaned. "Why not?"

"Because I want it to be a surprise."

"What if I don't like surprises?"

"You'll like this one," Percy told her. And then under his breath, he muttered, "I hope."

Annabeth let the silence extend between them before she finally shook her head and looked back out the window. "You're impossible."

They only stopped once, to get gas at a run-down gas pump. Annabeth listened to the music playing softly from the radio and the tone of the car beeping as Percy filled up the tank. When he was finished, he went into the aged wooden building next to the pump to pay. Annabeth watched a seagull hop around the lot.

"Are we near the coast?" she asked once Percy came back. He closed his door and the beeping stopped.

He shrugged and shook his head, starting the ignition.

Neither of them spoke for the rest of the car ride. Annabeth watched the terrain outside change as they drove farther. The hills became shorter, the trees became small coastal shrubs and bushes. Eventually, the hills were replaced by sand dunes, covered with ice plants blooming with small pink flowers.

"We're going to the ocean," she confirmed. Percy remained silent, but she didn't need him to reply. She could tell by the way he relaxed out here that he was bringing her someplace special. The longer they drove, the more the slope of his shoulders lost their tension, the deeper he seemed to breathe, and a small, calm smile seemed to take shape on his face.

Somewhere to escape to.

Annabeth didn't know how she could have expected them to end up anywhere else.

When the ocean came into view, Annabeth felt herself unclench. The sky was dark by now, and the ocean reflected the inky blackness. There was no horizon, only a vast expanse of sea and air. The waves crashed against the sand, kicking up a spray of saltwater and leaving trails of foam along the sand. Annabeth rolled down her window and breathed in the clean night air.

It was a different ocean than she had grown up with, but an ocean nonetheless. When she had moved here, she had been drawn by the nearness to the coast, but a two-hour drive was really only practical in theory. She'd never ended up coming out here.

Eventually, Percy turned into an empty parking lot next to a large expanse of beach. Annabeth was out of the car first, stepping out of her shoes and onto the sandy pavement. She walked up the sand dunes, feet sinking into the sand. It was still warm from a day of baking in the sun, despite the coldness of the air. Annabeth wrapped her jacket around her as the frigid coastal wind swept through her clothes.

She waited for Percy, who was grabbing something from the trunk of the car. He stuffed it under his arm and followed her up and over the dune.

The water was even better up close. Annabeth felt like running, like taking her hair out of her ponytail and letting the wind run through it. She felt like laughing, and so she did. She ran to the edge of the water, feeling the sand turn hard under her feet and the wind turn sharp and icy on her face. Like thunder, the waves crashed in front of her and she let the freezing water wash over her feet. She laughed again, from the shock of the cold and the shock of feeling free.

She looked behind her. Percy was laying on a woven green and grey blanket, watching her. She couldn't make out his face, but she could tell he was smiling. She walked back to the dunes, dry sand sticking to her cold, wet feet.

"The ocean has always been somewhere I go when I want to escape," he said when she reached him. He handed her her shoes and socks, which she had dropped by the car. Annabeth brushed the sand from her feet.

"It's a good place," she said.

Percy nodded. "Back when I lived in New York, my mom and I used to go to a cabin in Montauk. I used to sit by the sea for hours, sometimes with her, sometimes by myself. When you look out there, it's like—" He paused, searching for the right words. "—It's like you're standing at the edge of everything. As far as you can go."

Annabeth hummed, pulling on her socks. She glanced at Percy, but he was staring straight ahead. "Sailors used to think they could sail off the edge of the world."

"I know," Percy said. "I used to think that's what happened to my dad."

Annabeth stayed silent, gazing at the roiling water. She wanted to reach out, maybe grab Percy's hand or rub his back, the way Piper did for her.

"My dad died on a sailing trip," he said, turning his green eyes to her. They seemed oddly colorful in the dark landscape. "At least that's what everyone says. That's what my mother told me. But sometimes I think he just left. He just wanted to escape from everything and so he just left.

"Don't get me wrong, my mom's been great. She's the best person in the world. But... it would have been nice to have a dad." He wrapped a hand around his arm, over the scar she knew was under his long sleeve shirt. "A real one."

Annabeth scooted closer and put her head on his shoulder. She knew the pain of not having a parent, but the difference was that she had been the one to leave. She couldn't imagine what it must feel like to be the one left behind.

"Sometimes I think I could do that too," he continued. "When I stand at the edge of the water. But I don't think I could leave everyone, even if I really wanted to."

Annabeth hummed. "You're too loyal."

"Maybe," Percy said, he looped his arm behind her, leaning back. He blew one of her curls out of her face.

"Sorry." Annabeth moved her hair out of the way. She was sure it was horrible, turned monstrous by the wind and her earlier run. She sat up to tie it up, pulling an elastic off her wrist.

"Wait," Percy said, and immediately looked like he regretted it. Annabeth stilled, holding up her hair. "It's just...it looks nice."

"It's a mess."

"No, it's like—" Even in the dark, Annabeth could see Percy's flush. "—princess curls."

Annabeth snorted. "If anyone here's the princess, it's you." Instead of tying it up into a bun, she twisted it into a thick braid. She wanted to settle back onto Percy's shoulder, but she was afraid the moment had been broken.

Percy laughed. "Nothing wrong with being a princess. I think I'd look fantastic in a tiara."

Annabeth giggled at the image. "Never said there was."

She sat back, shivering. For a second, she wondered what she was doing. It was a Monday. It was October. It was nighttime. And she was lying on a beach in the cold with a boy who wasn't her boyfriend, a fact that would have been irrelevant if the boy in question wasn't Percy.

Percy interrupted her train of thought. "So what did you need to escape from?"

Annabeth let out a gentle breath. "I—" She didn't know what to tell him. Of all the secret keepers, she was the most culpable of all. But he had told her about his father and he had taken her here. He had bared himself for her.

"You don't have to tell me if you don't want to," he murmured.

And he didn't expect anything in return. Annabeth wanted to give him something of herself.

"I have a friend," she said, laying back onto the blanket. Percy peered over her. "She's in the hospital. Has been for...a long time. Thalia." She took a breath, giving herself a second to get used to the feeling of the words leaving her lips. Thalia's name rested there, in the air between them. Finally allowed to take up space.

"What happened?" Percy shifted so that he was laying next to her, his shoulder pressing against hers. She held onto that warmth, tethering herself to this place.

"She was amazing. Brave. Strong. Passionate. She never let anything get in her way, never let anybody treat her less-than. She knew exactly what she was worth." Annabeth thought about her friend, letting the memories wash over her like the crashing waves only meters away. "She, Luke, and I were all really close. And—"

She paused, realizing one necessary part of the story. The reason Thalia had been so anti-timer in the first place was because of Annabeth and Luke. Because she refused to face the fact that her time with them was shorter than it should have been. She became desperate for a way to draw out their time together, and when she finally had to confront the inevitable truth, she turned on the timers.

Annabeth cleared her throat. Percy hadn't seemed to notice her hesitation. "She became fixated on the timers. She'd go to the protests—she'd bring me to the protests, even though I was way too young. She read every news article, every conspiracy blog. It was an obsession and Luke and I followed along. Whatever she did, we were with her. Until she went too far." Annabeth blinked back tears. Most of her memories of Thalia were bittersweet, but this one was nothing but painful. "She tried to remove her timer."

Percy inhaled sharply.

"She's in a coma. At a hospital in New York. For five years. Five Years. I haven't spoken to her...not even about her, in five years. Luke is the only other person who knew her and he wouldn't talk about her. Piper only knows a few details." Five years of not talking about her best friend. Sometimes it felt like Thalia was being erased, growing further and further away in memory.

Percy wrapped his arm around her shoulders and pulled her into his chest. She wasn't crying, not yet, but she had to focus on slowing down her breathing. In. Out. In. Out. She clenched her fists. In. Out. In. Out.

"I feel like I'm letting her down," she admitted. Like the words were being pulled out of her, something she'd never said to anyone before. "I don't want her to be forgotten. I don't want to forget her."

Percy rubbed a hand on her arm. She used that now familiar warmth to anchor herself. She tied herself to him, to the feeling of being wrapped in his arms. She wouldn't cry. She didn't want to cry about this again.

"You're not," he was saying, "You're not."

"We were a family," Annabeth said, closing her eyes. "She promised."

:::

Annabeth tried not to feel embarrassed. She didn't like being vulnerable in front of people, no matter how much she trusted them. And to her surprise, she trusted Percy. A month ago, she never would have been able to predict such a thing would happen.

Percy still had his arm around her and he was playing with one of her curls that hadn't made it into her braid. She should pull away from him. Lying here, she could feel every breath, every expansion and contraction of muscle. She could feel his heartbeat. She didn't want to pull away.

What she should do and what she wanted to do were two irreconcilable things.

"Percy?" she asked. She wasn't sure she if should bring this up, but she wanted to know. She felt him shift.

"Mmhm?"

"Do you think the timers are good or bad?"

Percy was silent for long enough that Annabeth wasn't sure he had heard her question. Finally, he sighed and answered. "I don't really believe in good and bad. Black and white. Nothing is ever really that simple and I think creating that kind of, mmmm… dichotomy? Can be pretty harmful."

"What do you mean?" Annabeth asked.

"Well, I don't think timers are either good or bad, they are only perceived that way by the people who have them."

Annabeth sometimes forgot how smart Percy was. She tapped his head. "Where'd all that kelp go?"

He smirked. "Back to the sea, I guess."

Annabeth looked down at her own timer, glowing blue as always. It had always been evil in her eyes, pure and simple. But maybe her anger was misplaced.

"Honestly, I think people should just forget about them," Percy said. "The time you have is the time you have, whether or not you have the timers. You just have to make the most of it."

"Yeah, I guess so," Annabeth said. Easy for you to say.

"My dad didn't have a timer. Maybe if he did, my mom would have known before he left…" He drifted off in thought.

"But what about how people act?" Annabeth said. "People can be so...cold to those with shorter times. And so cruel. It's ruined lives." She thought of her mother. Her father. Her stepmother. She thought of Luke and his fury on their date.

"But that's the people who are flawed. The timer in itself is harmless, but it's people and their fear of their own death that makes them bad. It's just knowledge. Knowing the truth doesn't change what it is."

"But there's a reason people say ignorance is bliss," Annabeth countered. She pulled away from him, sitting up on her forearms. Percy raised an eyebrow.

"Maybe. But I never really thought about my life in minutes."

"That's because your time is normal," Annabeth said. Didn't he see how that was a privilege?

"Yours too. And yeah, maybe we're lucky to be able to. It's just… you only get so many seconds in life. That's set, from the time you were born. But what you do with your seconds… the possibilities are infinite."

Annabeth gave him a skeptical look. He pulled her back down, back against the sand.

"Look," he said, pointing at the sky. Above them, the night was clear and more stars spread across the blanket of the sky than could be seen from the city. They glittered down at them from millions of light-years away. Annabeth remembered the stories she used to read. Cassiopeia. Orion. Pegasus. Even Perseus was up there. "Think of it like this. It's impossible to know how many stars exist. We can try and count them, but we'll never really know. So to us at least, there's an infinite number. The universe keeps expanding and stars are born and stars are dying."

Annabeth nodded. Percy was drawing lines between clusters of stars with his finger and she tried to follow along. He didn't seem to be following any of the preconceived patterns, instead, finding designs of his own.

"Sorry, this is kind of getting away from me. What I'm trying to say is knowing how many stars there are wouldn't change the night sky." His hand stilled before he began tracing the constellation Perseus. "It wouldn't change the stories we find from them. Or the experiences we have under them." He turned his head to look at her. He held her gaze for a second and Annabeth felt her heart skip. She hoped Percy couldn't feel it like she could feel his.

"The point is," he finished. "There's just as much point in counting seconds as there is in counting stars."

:::

Annabeth hadn't realized she had dozed off in the car until she woke up. She stared at the reflection of Percy mumbling the words to a mellow song on the radio. He was beating out the beats of the drum and bobbing his head. Outside the car was pitch black, the hills and trees from earlier passing by unseen.

Annabeth had zoned out when she realized that Percy had noticed her watching him. His smile was devious.

"What am I, a basilisk? You know you can look at me head-on. It won't kill you."

Annabeth sat up from the window, rubbing at the indent the seatbelt left on her face. "Was that a Harry Potter reference?" she said blearily.

He rolled his eyes. "Don't sound so surprised. It's not like it's a worldwide literary phenomenon."

"Mmmm." She stretched her arms and twisted in her seat. "Yeah, yeah, whatever. Where are we?"

"About thirty minutes from campus."

Annabeth sighed. "And what time is it?"

Percy glanced at the car clock. "Half-past twelve."

Annabeth groaned. "I have so much homework to do."

Percy glanced at her smiling and laughed. "Annabeth Chase priorities."

Annabeth rolled her eyes, smiling. "Keep your eyes on the road."

Percy and Annabeth talked away the previous tenseness on the whole drive back. By the time they got back to the campus, Annabeth no longer felt sad or hopeless or angry. The only thing she felt was that unnamable feeling in her gut, one that she was able to identify now, but still refused to name. The feeling that shall not be named.

Annabeth smiled despite herself.

:::

Sometime around one in the morning, Annabeth arrived back at her room. She tried to be as quiet as possible opening the door, just in case Silena was asleep. She usually stayed up late, at least later than Annabeth, but recently she had been going to bed earlier and earlier.

Inside her room was dark. Annabeth rubbed her frozen fingers together and peeled off her clothes, throwing them in her laundry hamper. She'd have to vacuum the sand on the floor tomorrow. Crawling into her bed, Annabeth laid in the darkness in silence until she heard a soft sniffle.

She waited for the sound to come again. Training her ears on the opposite side of the room, she heard it from under the covers. Crying.

"Silena...are you alright?" she asked tentatively. The pile of blankets shook in a way that Annabeth guessed was no. "What's wrong?" Annabeth said softly, crossing the room and tugging on one corner of the blankets.

Silena didn't answer. She just let Annabeth pull the blankets off of her face and turn her desk lamp on.

Her long, perfect hair was tangled in a ratty bun, her eyes were puffy and her face was bare. Her eyes were red and bloodshot like she had been crying for a long time. She sniffled, staring into the space above Annabeth's right shoulder.

"Oh, Silena," Annabeth said, brushing some of her hair off of her face. "What happened?" Silena looked at her like she wasn't really seeing her. Her eyes seemed broken somehow, like shattered glass.

"He's gone," she said, her voice breaking and the words coming out in a weak sob. Her voice scratched and she closed her eyes. "It's over."

"Who?" Annabeth asked. Silena moved the blankets back over her face and Annabeth suddenly understood.

"Charlie...he's gone."