A/N: I'd like to thank my betas: AlEmily360, SapphireTrafficker, tigerlilycorinne, AshenMoon42, Lesbian101, Shiuanc2, and LadyHW.
Annabeth woke up feeling a confusing combination of warm and cold. She shifted against something hard and knocked her elbow into it, wincing as she remembered where she was. She tried to maneuver herself without dislodging Percy, the apparent source of warmth against her back. She sat up, blinking in the early morning light that was peaking through the mountains. A breeze moved across the surface of the lake and she shivered in the cold. Behind her, Percy stirred.
She looked down at him, noting the red around his ears and the line of drool at his mouth. She should have felt at least a twinge of disgust, but she just felt even more endeared to him. She nudged him and he grumbled.
"Mmm," he said. She rolled her eyes.
"Percy, get up."
He blinked his eyes slowly open, first looking at her and then looking around him at the lake. He sat up, rubbing at his eyes and squinting in the sunlight.
"You drool when you sleep," Annabeth told him, sliding off the hood of the car. She stretched her cold muscles, shaking them out. She couldn't believe she'd fallen asleep on the hood of a car, in the mountains, in October. Maybe not her smartest move.
Percy grumbled even more, wiping at his mouth. "Well, you kick."
She stared at him, aghast. "I do not!"
He grinned, stretching out his arms and then shivering. "You do. I'd be scared to wake you up. You might headbutt me." His playful shudder turned real in the cold.
"I don't headbutt people when I wake up," Annabeth whined, hopping from one foot to the other as she waited for him to unlock the door. He slid off the car, balling up the blanket and opening her door first.
"So what do you do?" he teased.
Annabeth climbed into the front seat, disappointed to find that it was about as cold inside as it was outside. "You'll find out," she said, then snapped her mouth shut. She didn't have to see Percy's face to know that he was raising his eyebrow.
"Oh?" he said. She looked away to hide her embarrassed blush as he slid into the front seat and attempted to start the car.
"I judo-flip them," Annabeth said, in a failed attempt to save face. Percy laughed good-naturedly.
"Y'know, the more I learn about you, the more I like you."
She finally turned to face him and he was already looking at her, a fond expression on his face. Annabeth couldn't help but return it.
"Ah! Here we go!" Percy said, slapping the dashboard as the car finally started. "Ready to go?"
Annabeth looked out at the peaceful lake, now shades of blue and gold in the morning light. She wondered if she'd ever be able to find this place again. If it really mattered. She turned to Percy, who was still watching her. "Yeah," she lied.
:::
As far as revelations went, Annabeth's revelation about her feelings for Percy barely shocked her. Entering her dorm room again after Percy had dropped her off sometime in the afternoon, she considered calling Piper. Part of her wanted to share her night with her friend, but the other part of her just wanted to bask in the feeling of… whatever this was, for just a little bit longer. And she knew what Piper would say. Reality could wait, Annabeth decided.
Annabeth took a lazy Saturday to herself, watching a movie and reading the beginning of a book. The rain from the night before had left a clear, sunny day. It was still cold outside, but Annabeth could appreciate the warm light drifting through her window from the comfort of her bed. In the sunlight, the dorm room didn't seem so lonely.
She lazed about, stealing a Korean Face Mask from Silena's collection and messily painting her nails. She wondered when the next time she'd see Percy would be. She didn't want to be too hasty—she still had to deal with her Luke-shaped problem, and even though she could guess, she couldn't be sure how Percy felt. Yet, she still enjoyed the thrill that went through her every time she thought about his hand in hers.
In the evening light, she let her eyes drift around the room as the sunset painted orange squares on her wall. Silena's side, still half-empty, didn't seem so depressing now. Her pictures looked happily at Annabeth. Her eyes moved past Silena's cleaned-out desk before doing a double-take. Stuck to the third drawer was a bright pink sticky note.
Annabeth rolled out of her bed and onto her feet. She crouched at Silena's desk. Had the note always been here and she just never noticed? No—Annabeth would have noticed. Which meant that Silena must have been here in the time since Annabeth was gone.
In the familiar sparkly blue scrawl of Silena's favorite gel pen, she'd written a note. And by the name at the top, it was for Annabeth.
Annabeth,
Open this drawer in 6 days.
I love you,
Silena
She'd drawn a little heart next to her name. Annabeth took the note down and looked at the drawer. Her fingers itched to open it, but she didn't want to go against Silena's directions. It must be important if Silena had come back for just this.
She returned the note to its place, pressing hard to make sure it would stick. Something about it scared her. Maybe it was something about the specificity of six days, or maybe it was the fact that Silena had left it and gone, without taking or leaving anything else, or even waiting for Annabeth to come back.
As the light of day faded, Annabeth's mood darkened. The anxieties she'd spent the past night and day ignoring were coming back, and they whispered at the back of her mind, along with the new ones that had come with the note.
Though she fell asleep in her own bed, in a warm room, Annabeth found that she slept far less restfully than the night before.
:::
Six days moved like molasses. She watched them tick by on her calendar, and on her timer, mourning the loss of six days to nothing but waiting. She tried to be productive—she finished all of her school work, she emailed her dad (and received a response shortly after), and she talked to Piper. She recounted her night with Percy, but not her revelation. Even so, Piper seemed to have guessed.
"Oh, Annabeth," she said, shaking her head. "I think you're a lot more predictable than you'd care to know."
"Annabeth frowned. "Only to you."
Piper shrugged. They were sitting in one of the study rooms in Vospar, one of the many science buildings on campus. Piper had shrugged off her parka (somehow her Oklahoma to LA upbringing had made her even less prepared for cold weather than Annabeth's San Francisco-New York) and was now just wearing a cropped green cardigan over a turtleneck. Annabeth tugged at her t-shirt and wondered how Piper wasn't hot.
"Are you mad at me?" Annabeth asked, trying not to sound too pathetic.
"Of course not," Piper said. "Well, maybe that you even asked that question. But you know I'll always support you. I think that's what I was put on the planet for."
"To support me?" Annabeth said. "You're worth a lot more than that."
Piper shrugged again. "I don't know if I have time for anything else. It's turned out to be a lot of work," she teased.
Annabeth rolled her eyes. "Well," she started, before realizing she had nothing to say to that.
"It's okay," Piper said, leaning back in her chair so that the front two legs were in the air. She lost her balance, leaning back too far, but Annabeth caught her and pushed her back upright. "Thanks."
"No problem," Annabeth said. "See, I can support you too."
"I'll keep that in mind," Piper laughed, leaning back in her chair again, this time bracing her knees on the edge of the table. "I wish they had the spinny chairs instead. Those are much better."
:::
Annabeth didn't even realize it was the sixth day until she woke up to knocking. Blearily, she sat up, looking around the dark room. It couldn't be past seven, but the knocking just got louder. She stumbled out of bed, tripping on the blanket wrapped around her ankle. Her mind was moving slowly and for a second she couldn't remember why she wasn't still in bed.
Oh right. Knocking.
She opened the door, blinking in the hallway lights at the person in front of her. It took a second for her to note the university shirt before it clicked that it was a university staffer. Was it the RA? She still couldn't remember what she looked like—actually, did they even have an RA?
The staffer looked at Annabeth with a tired, but vaguely sympathetic expression. In her hands was a basket of fruit and mini bottles of shampoo wrapped in crinkly plastic. There were some slightly wilted-looking white carnations lying among the chocolate strawberries. Annabeth couldn't understand why the university was bringing her an edible arrangement at seven in the morning.
"Good morning," the staffer said, handing Annabeth the basket. She took it, the sound of shifting plastic wrap hurting her ears. She set it to the side, on Silena's swivel chair.
"Um, hi—" Annabeth said, but then the staffer handed her a small pack of paperwork, on top of which was a somber-looking brochure. On the cover was a sad-looking twenty-something staring at an empty backpack. The title read "Dealing With The Death of A Roommate" and underneath was the number for the school's counseling center and the words "How the University Will Support YOU Through This."
"We are very sorry for your loss. Please take this complementary…" the staffer pauses, looking at the edible arrangement. "—basket from us to you. You can use the counseling center if you need help, as well as the many other university resources for students like you. Underneath your brochure, you'll find the paperwork to—"
Annabeth stopped listening, staring at the brochure with tear-stung eyes. She forgot to breathe for a second, and then all of the sudden it was pushing out of her as a sob. The staffer faltered, staring at Annabeth with something like sincerity.
"I'm sorry, are you—" she started, stepping towards Annabeth and putting an awkward hand on Annabeth's shoulder.
"So, Silena, she's—" Annabeth said, even though she knew the answer.
"...You didn't know," the staffer said softly, breaking the professional facade. "I'm really sorry. I always just assume that they'll tell them beforehand."
And that was really the kicker. Because Silena had known. She'd known and she'd left little hints, post-it notes and pink athletic tape, and little comments. But Annabeth had been so wrapped up in her own shit that she hadn't even noticed.
She sank into Silena's chair, the basket crumpling behind her. She felt—she felt—she wasn't quite sure. She was aware of tears falling from her eyes and onto the stack of papers she was still holding. She was aware of the staffer, still holding onto her shoulder and bending over her. She was aware of the little post-it note in the corner of her eye, glaring at her. Accusing her of not being there.
"I am so sorry. I really recommend going to talk to someone—a counselor or a friend," the staffer said. Annabeth looked up at her. "I have to go, but, um, friends and family have a week to sort through stuff before the room is cleared out. And you'll have to fill out your roommate forms." She stood up, backing away from Annabeth. Annabeth didn't even have time to process the words "roommate forms" before she was gone, closing the door behind her and leaving Annabeth in the darkness.
:::
It took until the next day for Annabeth to open the third drawer, as Silena had directed. She had spent all of yesterday, lying in bed, watching the sunlight slant through the window. It seemed wrong now, that the day would be so bright, would cast their room in such a cheery light when Silena was… dead. Silena was dead. It was hard to wrap her mind around. She'd never known anybody who had died before (besides Beckendorf, but she'd not known him well). It was hard to imagine that Silena was just...not coming back.
Annabeth usually tried not to think about death, at least not in detail. It was hard to be her and not have some sort of constant awareness for it. But she had never thought about the after. Not really.
She thought about one of the last things Silena had said to her. "Do you believe in heaven?"
Annabeth wasn't sure what to believe: heaven, or worm food, or maybe the underworld of Greek mythology. It was such an abstract concept, so unknown that it frightened her a bit. The close inevitability of whatever came next was a promise she wished the universe wouldn't keep.
But that was where Silena went, and she wasn't coming back. As horrible as these past weeks had been without her, it would only get worse.
Annabeth unstuck the post-it and set it to the side, numbly pressing her finger over the little drawn heart. She opened the drawer and took out the contents without looking. She splayed them across the floor and picked the first thing that stood out to her. The picture of Beckendorf, smiling from the shiny paper. She hoped that wherever they were, they were together.
She dug around her own drawers to find a piece of tape. Leaning over Silena's bed, she taped the picture back to its rightful place. She knew that in less than a week it would be gone again, along with the rest of Silena's photos and drawings. But for now, she wanted things to be as they were.
She carefully stepped between pieces of paper to find her spot on the floor. She brought a blanket around her shoulders, tugging it close for comfort. A chill had settled over her and had been weighing on her lungs all morning. Every breath of air she took in scraped against her throat and left her voice ragged.
She picked out a journal, pages thick with paint and water damage. Flipping through it, she realized it was Silena's art journal. Little doodles of clothes designs and small animals surrounded bulleted lists and intricately painted landscapes and faces. She caught her finger between a page and stretched it open, revealing sketches of her—working on homework, watching Netflix in bed, doing her makeup. She hadn't realized Silena had been drawing her all those times. She hadn't realized she'd paid so much attention.
She set aside the journal, determined to go through it more thoroughly another time. She sifted through the other papers. Some were just misplaced school syllabi and assignments. Some were little notes Annabeth had left her—reminders to take Advil after a night of partying or words of encouragement before tests that she had left and then promptly forgotten about. They'd only lived together for three and a half months, known each other for six, but already their friendship had a catalogue of moments that Silena had collected and cherished.
In between sheets of paper, Annabeth found a letter. At least, she assumed it was a letter. A piece of binder paper had been folded into the shape of an envelope, stuffed full to bursting, and across the back was Annabeth's name, written in simple pencil. She unfolded it with shaky fingers, letting sheaves of printer paper fall out.
On the inside of the folded paper, Silena's handwriting crammed itself into every available space, filling out the lines. At the top was her name.
Before reading it, her eyes traveled to the papers that had fallen out of the letter. Her eyes widened as she realized it was sheets and sheets of printed-out text conversations. Between Luke and Silena.
Luke- do you know what she was doing there
Silena- no, she just went to the aquarium
Luke- with percy
Silena- yeah, i think so
Annabeth put the papers down and looked back at the letter. She wanted to believe that Silena had a good explanation for this, but Annabeth couldn't help but feel betrayed. All of her suspicions had been confirmed—Luke really was keeping tabs on her. And Silena was helping.
Annabeth coughed out a breath and tried to focus on the paper in front of her. The loopy words swam in front of her eyes. When she closed them, angry tears slid down her face. She dug her fingernails into the short carpet, and when that didn't work, she dug them into her palms. The sharp pain grounded herself and she tried to control her breathing. In. Out. In…
Annabeth,
I wish I could have said this to you in person. But I was scared. I was scared you'd hate me. I just want you to know, before you continue reading, that I'm sorry. I am so sorry. I really love you Annabeth, and I am so sorry if I hurt you.
I want to explain myself. I didn't realize why he wanted to go to brunch with me. I never really liked Luke, so I thought maybe he wanted to get to know me better. To prove me wrong. He kept asking all of these kinds of invasive questions about you and me and he gave me a bunch of mimosas and I said some stuff I shouldn't have.
It was the beginning of the semester and you were just getting to know Percy, so I mentioned him. Luke got really weird about that, but I just thought it was normal jealousy, right? But then, after that meeting, he texted me about Percy a few times. You can see what he said in some of the texts I printed out.
Annabeth looked through the text messages, looking for the ones with the earliest dates. The first ones were in August, right after school had started.
Luke- so he's in her english class? What does he look like
Silena- tall, black hair, tan, attractive
Luke- not funny. They get along?
Silena- not really. She talks about him a lot though
Annabeth shook her head. She didn't remember talking about Percy that much...but that wasn't really the point. The point was that Silena still didn't give her a reason as to why she was doing any of this. So she continued reading.
I don't know how, but he found out about my timer. He said he'd tell everyone about my timer. I know you wouldn't understand because you never tried to cover it up (until recently, I guess), but that's just something I don't want people to know. It's my thing, right? I should be the only one to say who and when and how I tell people about it. And I didn't want people to know.
He used that against me and then when I started doubting myself, he threatened to tell you that I'd been spying on you. He said you'd hate me if you found out. I only had a few weeks left—I didn't want to spend them being hated by my friend and roommate.
Luke began harassing me about giving him more info, saying he was going to tell you about the letters and my timer. Like, he'd text me almost every day. I realize now that he wouldn't have done that because it would have threatened your relationship, but I was so scared. I didn't want to lose you, and I believed I would. Luke can be very persuasive. Sometimes he got really angry with me.
I am really sorry. I think it was because of my letter that Luke punched Percy. And why he's been even more of a dictator recently. These last weeks after Charlie's death, I couldn't stand him texting me. I thought if I didn't see you anymore, he would stop. I wish I could have seen you before. I wanted to tell you earlier. I swear, I was just so scared. Please don't hate me. I don't think I could die knowing that you hated me. I really care about you Annabeth, and I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me.
Love,
Silena
P.S. please keep anything you like from my room. My dad and some of my friends are going to come on the 29th to get the rest of it
Annabeth looked through the other snippets of Silena and Luke's conversations. Details of her life, her private confidences with Silena were shared with him—it made her feel sick. Blood thundered past her ears and she ran to the bathroom, breathing heavily over a sink. When the wave of nausea passed, she looked at her dazed expression in the mirror—her bloodshot eyes and dull skin. She splashed cold water on her face and shook out her hair.
Back in the dorm room, she checked the calendar. It was the twenty-eighth today. She wasn't sure she wanted to be there when Silena's dad and all of her closer friends came to pack up her stuff. She wasn't sure she wanted to come back afterward either, but that was a problem for another time.
She frowned at the calendar. It was a Thursday—she had classes today, didn't she? Yesterday too, and she'd forgotten to email her professors. She had forgotten to email her professors and now she was going to miss class, and miss assignments, and get bad grades on her tests, and now she was going to fail her classes, wasn't she? She wouldn't get to graduate, honorary or not.
She knew the thoughts were irrational as she was thinking them, but she couldn't stop. She felt the nausea surface again and she wobbled on her feet. She clutched her phone to her chest and moved over to the window, not caring when she stepped on some of the loose papers on the floor. Staring out the window and the golden trees, she dialed the first number she could think of.
:::
"Oh, jeez," Piper said when Annabeth opened the door. Leo peered over her shoulder. "I didn't realize this was a 911 situation."
Annabeth just turned back into her room and settled onto her bed.
"I can make him go if you want me to," Piper said, nodding towards Leo, who was untying the basket of complimentary goodies. The flowers were wilted, petal edges turning brown and stalks going limp.
Annabeth shrugged. She didn't want him there, not really, but she couldn't find it in herself to care enough. He had known Silena, right? Or at least he knew Beckendorf—they were in the same program.
"You knew Silena, right?" she asked him. He looked up, teeth clamped around a chocolate strawberry. Piper crouched down to shuffle over the papers on the floor.
"Yeah, I know her," Leo said. "Hey, where'd you get this basket? This is killer."
"It was complimentary," Annabeth said.
Piper stood up, papers in her hands. "Jesus, Annabeth. Silena's…"
Annabeth nodded, answering Piper's unspoken question. Leo was staring at her, face suddenly stricken and pale, dying white carnations clutched in a fist.
"So, she—she's also—" Leo said, crushing the carnation stalks. His face closed off, eyebrows smoothing and face going to a cool neutral as his eyes focused on a point past Annabeth's head. Piper walked over to him and rubbed his back, peeling his hands away from the flowers.
"I'm going to call Jason," Piper said, taking her phone out of her back pocket. Annabeth tensed.
"He's coming here?" she rasped. Her mind felt overloaded, her space invaded (both physically and figuratively). She wasn't sure she could handle another vague acquaintance in her room.
Piper seemed to sense her distress. "No, just to—hey, Jason. Do you think you could come?—Yeah, so Annabeth's—mmhm, Leo—thanks. I love you." She moved to Leo, slowly pulling him out of the room. "Jason's coming over," Annabeth heard her explain. "Do you think you could go hang out with him? I think Annabeth really needs me to be here right now."
The door closed behind them and Annabeth was alone again. She wondered at Leo's reaction. For all she knew, he hadn't known Silena that well, and Beckendorf was only a friendly classmate. But something in his expression denoted a certain kind of familiarity, if not with the person, then with the feeling of loss.
It took a few minutes before Piper was back, knocking at her door. She let her in and Piper made her way to Silena's side of the room, taking her place in her swivel chair. Annabeth wanted to tell her not to sit there, that was Silena's, but she knew it was irrational. Besides, it wasn't anyone's anymore.
"So," Piper said, toeing one of the papers on the floor with her shoe. "What's all this then?"
"My inheritance," Annabeth said, a grim version of a half-joke. She gave Piper a half-hearted half-smile to go with it.
Piper leaned down to collect some of the papers, flipping through Silena's texts with Luke. "Woah," she said. "So you were right."
"It's not as gratifying as I thought it would be," Annabeth said.
Piper looked sharply up. "I'm really sorry. Do you—do you want to talk about it? I'm sure you're feeling awful."
Annabeth did not want to talk about it. She knew what Piper wanted—emotions and feelings and heart-to-hearts. But Annabeth's emotions were as stormy and convoluted as the sky outside was clear. She shook her head.
Piper's lips thinned into a frown. "You can, y'know. And you should. It's not good to hold things in."
"I know," Annabeth said, laying her head on her pillow and staring at her ceiling.
"That sort of stuff will just sit there and rot."
"I know," Annabeth snapped, but immediately felt bad. She'd called Piper here, but now she was getting angry at her.
Piper let out a long, affected sigh. "Silena was...one of the kindest people I've ever met. Even knowing she did this…" Annabeth heard the crumple of paper in Piper's fist. "...I'm sure she had a reason."
"She wrote a letter," Annabeth said. "It's somewhere there." She sat up to watch Piper look through the papers on the floor. Her eyes quickly scanned over the letter once she found it.
"You know what you're going to do," Piper said. Not a question.
Annabeth sighed and moved to the end of her bed, leaning over to take a chocolate strawberry from the condolence basket. "Yeah," she said, biting into it. "I do."
:::
Annabeth left early. The sun was still low in the sky, the morning grey and drizzly. The twenty-ninth was shaping up to be a perfectly miserable day. Even so, Annabeth preferred it to the bright and sunny weather that had taunted her from outside her dorm window.
There were very few students in the school library. Perhaps because it was a Friday, or maybe because nobody wanted to wake up at seven in the morning to trudge through the rain and study. But Annabeth wasn't there to study. She sat in a seat in full view of the doors and set her backpack on her lap. And she waited.
For someone who so valued punctuality, Luke managed to be five minutes late. Five heart-pounding minutes. He spotted her right away when he came through the doors and nodded at her grimly. She returned his nod, carefully keeping an apathetic expression on her face.
"Hey, babe. I heard about what happened with your roommate. Are you okay?" Luke said, taking the seat next to Annabeth. She bristled at him calling Silena "her roommate," with the absence of familiarity she now knew they had.
"I'm okay," she said shortly. She started to unzip her backpack, but Luke caught her hand. He tilted his head down, catching her eyes and holding them with his gaze. All of his faux sympathy was packed into his clear blue eyes as he rubbed his thumb against her wrist.
"Seriously, you can tell me," he said.
She tugged her arm away. "I'm good," she said coolly. He narrowed his eyes for a second and sat back as she unzipped her backpack the rest of the way.
"So why are we here?" he asked, glancing around the empty library. He motioned at the binder in her hands. "Did you ask me here to study?"
Annabeth inhaled slowly, acknowledging her anxiety, and then letting it go, exhaling before opening the binder. "My terms," she muttered to herself. In the place her anxiety vacated was anger.
"Wha—" Luke said, before the contents of her binder caught his eye. "Annabeth?"
"Silena left me a little gift," she said, taking out the printed-out texts. Luke's eyes scanned the papers. His face went white—finally caught in the lie.
"Those are obviously photoshopped," Luke said, but Annabeth could tell that even to him it sounded flimsy.
"Luke…" Annabeth said. "Let it go. It's over."
His eyebrows scrunched and his hands raked over the papers, gathering them up. "I just wanted to protect you. Babe—Annabeth. You know I only ever want to protect you, right?"
Annabeth felt the beginnings of anxiety flicker in the back of her mind, but she closed her eyes and took a deep breath. The warmth of the library—where she spent so many hours working, writing, learning. Hours with Piper. Hours of being confident in her work, knowing she was worth every second she put into it. This was her place, not Luke's.
"Come on, Annabeth. Family. Remember?" Luke said, reaching for her hand. She moved it before he could touch her.
"This isn't how you treat family," she said. "I won't let you treat me like this."
Luke's eyes narrowed, his features growing cold and steely. "What about you, Annabeth? You never text me anymore. You never call. You never want to go out. Instead you're off with Percy fucking Jackson doing god knows what," he snarled.
"Luke…" Annabeth's anger left her and she felt an emotion she hadn't been anticipating. Pity. "This hasn't been working for a long time. Even before I met Percy. I don't know if it ever worked. Not really. You need to let it go."
Luke tried to reach for her hand one more time and this time she let him. He squeezed her fingers, hanging on to her. When he spoke again, he sounded smaller and more familiar than he had in years. He sounded something closer to the Luke she knew before, the one she sat in hospital lobbies and chilly apartments with. "Please...you're all I have."
Annabeth smiled wetly at him. This had to happen. He knew it just as well as she did. But it didn't make it any less bittersweet. They had been something to each other once, something besides a burden. "You need to let me go."
His grasp loosened and she pulled her hand back into her lap. She shuffled her papers back into her binder and set it inside her backpack. She was about to get up and leave, but she reconsidered. She set her bag on the floor instead. Luke was slumped next to her, watching her as if he couldn't believe what was happening.
She pressed her palms against the table, feeling something solid just to ground herself. Her hands shook slightly. She didn't look at him when she finally said "I think you should leave."
When he didn't respond, she glanced over. He was staring at her, wide-eyed.
"But...I love you," he said softly. There was still a part of her that longed to reach out, to place her shaking hands on his face and tell him it was okay. Family, we promised.
"I know," she said, fingers splayed on the wood table. "But I don't need it anymore."
