A/N: I'd like to thank some of the people who helped me out: AlEmily360, SapphireTrafficker, tigerlilycorinne, AshenMoon42, Lesbian101, Shiuanc2, and LadyHW.
Silena had gone to stay with her family in the days before Beckendorf's funeral. Annabeth's room felt empty without her. Quiet.
She sat on her bed, facing Silena's side of the room. She'd always loved how Silena decorated—bright bursts of color, photos of her family and her dog, pressed flowers blue-tacked to the wall. A picture of Beckendorf smiled up from above Silena's pillow, put there so that every time she woke up, he'd be the first thing she'd see.
Annabeth sent her another attempt at a comforting text and waited for Silena's monosyllabic reply.
Annabeth- I wish I had the right words. Just know I care about you.
It was a pathetic attempt, really. She'd looked up "what to say to someone when someone dies" and now the words tainted her search history. But selfishly she kept thinking what will people say when I'm gone?
Silena- thanks
Annabeth- if you need someone to talk to, im here
Annabeth secretly hoped she wouldn't want to talk to her. She wasn't sure what she would say. Even in her texts, she used borrowed words.
:::
Annabeth skipped creative writing. She didn't have a good reason—and she knew that—but she couldn't bring herself to leave her room. She thought about Beckendorf—kind, gentle, strong. Tall. She hadn't really known him, having only met him the couple of times Silena had brought him around. She felt bad for her lack of response to his death. Whether she knew him or not, he had still been a man—a boy—who was gone too soon.
Yet, as she sat in her empty dorm room, all she could think of was the ocean, and how it felt standing at the edge of the world, under all of those stars, all those possibilities. She knew that if she left her room, there were only so many places she could go to. She felt trapped.
Percy- you missed class
Percy- we did last minute revisions
Percy- you ok?
She didn't want to respond, but she knew she had to. Their project was due tomorrow night. Another deadline. She dreaded it—would Percy still want to be her friend when it was over? Insecurity whispered at the back of her mind. After this, there would be nothing tying him to her. That he knew of.
Percy- I heard about beck, silenas your roommate right?
Annabeth looked up when Silena walked through the door, followed by her dad, whom Annabeth had only met once before. He nodded at her in acknowledgement. Annabeth stood up and crossed the room, wrapping her arms around Silena. She stood stiffly, face blank. She was wearing all black—Annabeth wondered if they had just come from the funeral.
"Hey, are you—how are you doing?" she asked her softly. Silena's dad began packing her clothes into a duffle bag. "Are you leaving?"
"Just for now. She will come back for a little bit afterward," her father said, moving to Silena's desk. "Any of this?"
Silena nodded, pointing out some of her books. "Those ones." Her eyes moved around the room, sweeping past everything as if it was all unfamiliar to her.
Annabeth watched as they moved around the room methodically. Silena stood out somberly against her colorful walls. Annabeth wanted to do something, but she stood helplessly as Silena unstuck the photo of Beckendorf from above her bed. She stared at it in her hand.
"Appa, can you give me a minute?" Silena said.
Her father stilled. "You sure?"
Silena nodded. Her father closed the door behind him, leaving the half-filled duffle bag on the floor by the closet. Silena sat down at her desk, opened the third drawer, and laid the photo on a stack of papers. Silence filled the room and rushed past Annabeth's ears, drowning out the world. She was grasping for something to say, anything, before Silena spoke.
"Do you believe in heaven?" It was said so softly that Annabeth wasn't sure she'd heard it at all.
"I try not to think about it," Annabeth said, knowing as she said it that it was the wrong answer. Even if it was the truth. Silena just nodded her head slowly. "How are you doing?" Annabeth asked again, despite the redundancy of the question. Silena still hadn't looked up from the photo in the drawer, until she pushed it closed.
"I feel like," Silena paused. "Like when he died, he took everything with him. And people just keep asking me for more."
"What do you mean?"
"'How are you doing? Are you okay? How are you feeling?' Constantly." Silena looked up at her, eyes ringed in red. Tears left wet streaks down her face, but Silena didn't seem to notice. "Nothing. I am feeling nothing. I have nothing left to give you. Grief, anger, happiness, love—they're down there with him, buried in the dirt."
Annabeth pressed her lips together. Every word she had to give was the wrong one. She had experienced loss before, but there was always hope. Or decision. She decided to leave. There was hope she'd wake up. The only death she'd mourned before was her own.
"We had so many plans. Impossibilities. A thousand of them. We would have gotten married, honeymooned in Italy. We knew we didn't have the time, but he always said there was time for hope. I guess he took that with him too." Silena sniffled and wiped her face with the back of her hand.
Annabeth rubbed a hand on Silena's back. Silena stood up and picked up a stack of papers from one of the drawers. She left Beckendorf's picture. She looked around the room like she was seeing it for the last time. Annabeth watched her compose herself before she landed on something to say, the wrong thing as always, but something.
"It'll come back. Everything will come back."
Silena opened the door to the dorm. Her dad pushed himself off the wall and picked up her now-packed duffle. Silena gave Annabeth a small, empty smile. "I wouldn't wait on it."
She closed the door and she was gone.
:::
Annabeth sat with Percy in a Starbucks two blocks from her dorm. She leaned into one of the big leather chairs surrounding a small electric fireplace and wrapped her hands around her cup of chai tea latte to warm them up. The corporate feeling made her long for Hazel's shabby, but cozy, shop.
Percy leaned forward in his chair, opposite from her, and rubbed his hands on his face wearily. He moves them up his face and through his hair before settling them on the back of his neck.
"Wow, I had no idea," he said. "I mean, I didn't spend a lot of time with him, but I feel like this is something I would notice."
"I didn't know you knew him," Annabeth said. She had finally agreed to meet Percy to go over their paper. She thought it was near perfect, but Percy insisted. Instead, they ended up talking about Beckendorf.
"I didn't," Percy said, leaning back and sipping his coffee. "Not really. Not enough, I guess."
"You can't always tell," Annabeth said. "And most people don't think about death all the time."
"You do." Percy looked at her intently. She shrank under his heavy gaze.
"I don't." Could he read her that well?
"You do. I don't know why, but you do. I've seen you glance at your timer constantly, your fingers tap to the rhythm of the seconds."
Annabeth was astonished. She didn't even stop to think about how Percy had noticed all of these things about her, but instead focused on how readable she was. Was she really that transparent?
"Uh, look, I'm sorry," Percy said, looking away from her. "I'm just—"
"No, no, it's okay," she said, cutting him off. "We're both stressed. Someone just died. It's perfectly fine."
"But still, it's your business," Percy said, hands rubbing his face again. Annabeth noticed that he did that a lot. Touch his face. Her mother would have told her to stop so that she wouldn't get pimples. Annabeth, of course, said nothing. He sighed, pulling his bag onto his lap. "Should we work on the project?"
They worked together in silence. Their project was mostly done before they had come in, so after Annabeth read it over and ran spell check, she killed time checking her email, going through her playlists, and reading through her assignments for other classes. She wasn't sure what Percy was doing—he wasn't on their shared document.
Finally, she closed her laptop. "I think we're done," she said.
Percy looked up. He sighed. "I guess so."
Annabeth paused. Another ending. How could she express that she wanted this to be the beginning of something? "I can turn it in tonight. And I'll print out a copy for Monday."
She hesitated to get up, and Percy did the same. They sat there, looking at each other, waiting for the other to do something. The hum of the Starbucks around them fell away. Annabeth should say something else, but everything that left her mouth was a mistake.
"I know the project's ending, but," Percy said, pushing a hand through his already messy hair. "I mentioned it a few weeks ago. I have a friend whose boyfriend knows a lot about timers. I thought maybe...that would be interesting to you? We could go visit him or something."
Annabeth felt both relief and trepidation wash over her. Percy was suggesting they see each other again, but under such strange circumstances. And she wanted to find out more—what was wrong with her and her timer? How was Percy involved? But she couldn't ask the questions she wanted answered with Percy there. Then again, she might not get another chance. "I'd like that. Just text me when you know more."
"Yeah, I will." He checked his phone. "I've actually got to go. This was—" He smiled at her, a full real smile. The first one she'd seen in a while. "—nice. Considering."
She smiled back. It felt foreign on her face. "Yeah, nice. Considering."
:::
"That's not allowed in here."
Annabeth looked down at her hand, holding a nearly empty Starbucks cup. She looked up. Hazel stood behind the bar of the coffee shop, eyes glaring, mouth smiling.
"It's contraband," she said. Annabeth tossed the cup, discarding the rest of her tea.
"Sorry," she said, walking up to the counter.
"Sorry you had to throw out your tea," Hazel said. "You know you could just make that at home? Without having to pay five dollars for hot water and leaves."
Annabeth rolled her eyes. "Then where would I go to be yelled at?"
"I get that for free," Leo's voice said, coming from a stool behind the bar. Annabeth hadn't noticed him.
"Do you work here too?" Annabeth asked, surprised. The quiet coffee shop didn't seem like the type of place Leo would work.
"No, he just pesters me until I let him behind here," Hazel said, nudging him with her elbow. He shrugged her off, grinning. "My boss would kill me if she saw this."
Annabeth rested her hip against the counter, leaning against it. She wasn't sure about Leo yet. She didn't want to jump to conclusions about him—after all, she'd been mostly wrong about Percy so far, but there was something about him that...annoyed her. Maybe it was the nervous expression on Hazel's face as she periodically glanced at the employee door.
"Well, I'm just here to waste five dollars," Annabeth said, taking out her wallet.
Hazel shrugged. "It's okay, you can have your hot water for free." She moved to the side to grab a cup.
"You sure?" Annabeth slid her wallet back into her pocket.
"Yeah, why not? It's on me." Hazel said, putting a bag in the cup and filling it with hot water. She passed Annabeth the cup and Annabeth took a grateful sip.
"How come you never pay for my drinks?" Leo complained.
Hazel gave him a withering look. "Trust me, I pay dearly."
Annabeth watched them over the screen of her laptop after she settled into her usual armchair to work. She watched as Hazel teased Leo, and how he joked and got in her space. Annabeth wasn't sure she'd be able to put up with Leo if she had been in Hazel's place. But I'm not, she reminded herself, turning back to her screen and focusing on her work.
By the end of two hours, her back hurt and her eyes were strained. She closed her screen and twisted in her seat, hearing her back crack. She winced. At least she had been productive. She'd been so absentminded about her school work recently, it had fallen to the wayside. With all of the credits she was taking, she couldn't afford to be lazy. If she was to earn an honorary graduation in the spring, she needed every A she could get.
A fresh, steaming cup was placed on the round wooden table next to her. She looked up.
"Another one, on the house."
"Hazel, you seriously don't need to. I can pay for it," Annabeth said, taking the tea anyway. Hazel sat in the armchair across from Annabeth's, slouching comfortably.
"It's okay. I like doing things for people." Hazel waved her off, closing her eyes.
"Are you off?" Annabeth asked.
Hazel nodded, eyes still closed. "Yep, as of five minutes ago."
"Do you like it?" Annabeth asked. "Working here?"
Hazel opened her eyes and sat up, crossing her legs. "Yeah, sure. I mean, work is work, but it's pretty nice. Why?"
Annabeth shrugged. She didn't really know herself.
"You don't have a job, right?" Hazel asked.
"Don't really have time. Or see the point." If she was going to die in a few months, what would she need to save money for?
"Do you not pay tuition?" Hazel asked, eyebrows knitting in confusion.
Annabeth shook her head. "Full ride. And I've saved up with summer jobs and tutoring the last few years so I wouldn't have to work for my last one."
Hazel blew out a sharp breath. "Jeez. I forgot that you—"
"Yeah."
They sat in silence for a few minutes. Annabeth wanted to close her eyes. She was so tired and she could feel a headache blooming behind her temples. Instead, she picked off some of the nail polish on her thumb. She couldn't even remember when she had put it on...at least a week or two ago, when Silena had been more than happy to lend her some colors. She stopped picking at it, wishing she had never started.
"What happened after your accident?" Annabeth asked softly. The shop was mostly empty save for the bored-looking worker that replaced Hazel and a man in a suit having a phone conversation at the other side of the room. Still, Hazel looked around nervously before leaning in.
"You mean the one that…" She glanced down at the bandage covering her wrist. Annabeth nodded. "I don't know. I just kept living."
Annabeth watched the suited man pin his phone between his ear and his shoulder to wave his hand around. She knew Hazel was waiting for a response, but she wasn't sure how much to say. How much to reveal.
"There was never a possibility for me," Annabeth started. "But now that there is...I don't know what I would do with it."
Hazel shook her head sympathetically. "Don't you have dreams?"
Annabeth thought about her degree. She thought about Percy. She thought about the places she'd never been, the things she'd never seen. "I never thought of them as dreams. They were just...fantasies."
"I kind of know what you mean. When I didn't—when I woke up at the hospital after everything, I didn't know what to do. I was so young, I wasn't even in control of my own life yet. And it had been planned for me since the moment my timer was put in. My mom was just as lost as me."
"What did you do?"
Hazel seemed to be in another world, drifting back to her past. "I don't know. I just kept going, I guess. We moved. I did all the things normal people did—I went to high school, then college."
"Is that what you dreamed of?" Annabeth asked.
Hazel seemed to contemplate the question for a minute before smiling softly. "I wanted to be an equestrian."
"Like a horse rider?" Annabeth asked, eyes widening. She smiled. That actually seemed so in character for Hazel.
"Yeah, I've always loved horses." Hazel's smile turned sad and she picked up her forgotten coffee cup, bringing it to her lips.
"So why didn't you?" Annabeth asked her.
Hazel shrugged. "Like I said, we were pretty lost after everything. So I just did the expected thing—high school, college, job. I'm not mad about it. I like what I'm studying and I think I'll enjoy my job for however long I get to be working at it."
Annabeth thought about this. If she wasn't going to die in nine months, would she still want the things she wants now? Would she let herself want more?
"If your timer had been normal, do you think you would have done everything the same?" she asked.
Hazel just smiled and sighed, rubbing her hands against her legs. "I've asked myself that a lot. But it's not good to dwell. Things ended up this way; there's no way to go back and change it." The "even if you wish you could" hung off the end of Hazel's sentence silently. "But it's not the same for you. You have a chance to change it. You need to figure out what's making your timer change and hold onto it."
Annabeth wondered if she'd be saying the same thing if she knew what it was. Who it was. "I'm not sure I want to let myself," she said instead.
"Let yourself what?"
Annabeth tried to think of the right word. She thought about what Silena had said, right before she left. All of the impossibilities. "Hope."
