A/N: I'd like to thank my betas: AlEmily360, SapphireTrafficker, tigerlilycorinne, AshenMoon42, Lesbian101, Shiuanc2, and LadyHW.

Annabeth was sure that if she never had to step foot in another hospital again, she would die happy. Or, well…

She didn't feel shocked. Not like the last time. She didn't feel sad either, nor worried. Perhaps she was a little bit worried about how sad she was not feeling. Mostly, she felt numb. And frighteningly, relieved. Like she had been holding her breath, and now she could finally let it out. Like she just ended a long march to the inevitable.

Maybe this had been one of the things she was waiting for, whether she knew it or not.

Even when Luke entered the emergency waiting room, her heart didn't skip a beat. Her stomach didn't turn over nervously. Her hands didn't start sweating. When he turned his blue eyes on her and gave her a polite nod, all she could do was stare blankly ahead.

"Um, Ms. Chase? Mr. Castellan?" A nurse said from the doors that led into the ICU. Annabeth tried to focus her indistinct stare onto him as she stood up. She looked at her seat, before realizing that she didn't have a bag to grab; she hadn't taken anything with her after the call, she'd just left.

"You can follow me." The nurse turned around and pushed through the swinging doors without checking to make sure Luke and Annabeth were following. She walked silently behind Luke's own nervous gait.

"Here you go," the nurse said, stopping outside of a door at the far end of the hallway. "Ms. Grace is just through here."

Luke entered the door first, while Annabeth followed mutely behind. It was a single room—Thalia didn't have to share with any other hospital patients. (Damn, you got a single?) It was drabber than her last one, no wilting flowers, get well soon cards, or mostly deflated balloons. Not enough time had passed.

Thalia's father, who Annabeth just knew through brief meetings as Mr. Grace, as well as Jason, who Annabeth remembered to be Thalia's half-brother, were already standing around the bed. Jason was crying lightly while Mr. Grace stood stoically, wearing a frown on his face.

And there was Thalia, lying on the bed like Annabeth had known her for so many years. A ventilator was pressed over her nose, and various other tubes extended under her hospital covers. Her eyes were closed, sleeping again. Annabeth let out a shaky exhale.

"I'm glad you could be here," Mr. Grace said, not looking very glad. He mostly looked tired. "Thalia left something important for both of you to read."

Luke nodded, but Annabeth shook her head. "But what happened?" she said, hoping for an explanation that was different from the one lying in the bed in front of her.

Mr. Grace gave her a withering look. "She tried to remove her Timer again. A few days ago. Obviously, it wasn't successful. She didn't even get it out this time, just alerted the sensors and lost a lot of blood."

Annabeth moved to the side of Thalia's bed, pushing her hands under the covers to seek out Thalia's hand. She gripped it hard, noting how cold it was.

"So what, you just decided not to tell me? Anyone?" she asked. Had they just kept this from her? How many days was "a few"? How long had Thalia been in this hospital bed?

"No, um." Mr. Grace suddenly looked very uncomfortable. "We only found her today."

Annabeth's mind felt like it was on overdrive. So she had just been alone? How long was it that she had been unconscious, by herself? Where had she been? On a bed? In the bathtub? Had she been sprawled on the floor, looking delicate and broken like last time? Suddenly, Annabeth felt enraged. She wheeled on Luke.

"Where were you?" she yelled, but it came out half-choked by a sob. It felt like the floor was crumbling beneath her. "Doesn't she live with you? Shouldn't you have been there?"

Luke looked at a loss for words. "I—we had a fight. A week ago, maybe more. It was a Saturday. She went to stay at her dad's." He looked beside himself with guilt.

Before Annabeth could turn on Mr. Grace, he said calmly "I didn't know. I was on a business trip. I only found out when I got back and—" Annabeth was only semi-satisfied to see that he couldn't finish the sentence, that he was being affected too.

"So she was alone," Annabeth said, accused. She was distraught—it was just the same as before, it was always the same, why was Thalia like this, why hadn't anybody been there. "And nobody thought to see how she was doing."

Luke narrowed his eyes at her. "I didn't see you blowing up her phone or knocking at her door," he said venomously, and equally as accusatory. Annabeth blanched. She hadn't tried to contact Thalia because she was helping her. She was easing the pain! So that it wouldn't feel like such a loss when Annabeth died. How stupid she'd been; she was such a bad friend it wouldn't have mattered either way. And now it was all for nothing. Annabeth would probably be long dead the next time Thalia woke up.

"I—I was—" she tried to stutter out an excuse, but found she didn't have one. Instead, she turned to Mr. Grace. "Is she going to be in the same hospital as before?" she asked. "In New York?"

Mr. Grace's shoulders slumped. With a pained look on his face he said "That's actually why I wanted you to be here." He pulled out a folded-up piece of lined paper, something that looked like it was torn out of a spiral-bound notebook, out of his breast pocket. He slowly started to unfold it and smooth out the creases with his fingers, like he was carrying an important document and not a ripped piece of scrap paper.

Luke stepped back into the wall. By the look on his face, he seemed to catch on before Annabeth did.

"I'll let the both of you read it for yourselves," Mr. Grace said, handing it first to Annabeth. She couldn't force herself to read the messy words scrawled on it, but her eyes were still drawn like magnets to the page. "I want you to know that I've already decided to… honor her requests."

Annabeth looked to her right, to Luke who was now reading over her shoulder and looking a little green. She looked back at the paper, at Thalia's aggressive handwriting. And she read.

I don't think this will be necessary, but just in case, I want to get this down. The last time I tried to remove my timer was not an accident, it was not a fluke, and it was not a mistake. There were mistakes involved, obviously, but I'd do it again in a heartbeat. Fuck, I am doing it again.

I talked to a guy in New York and he told me how to do it, for real this time. I know most people don't get it—who cares if there's a little piece of machinery in your arm giving you helpful information. Well I fucking do. I never asked for it, I never wanted it, and I never wanted to know the exact fucking moment of my death. Look at what it did to Annabeth, to Luke! They knew they were dying before they even got the chance to live. I don't want a piece of corporate technology governing my life or my friend's lives. It's fucked.

I'm pretty sure this will work, but if it doesn't and I end up in the hospital again, don't give me another timer. Don't wait for me to wake up again. Don't keep me there, tubed up and plugged into the walls. I've never had a choice with this. Let this one last thing be on my terms. Please.

I don't want to live my life asleep. I don't want to live my life waiting.

Annabeth's hands were clenched so hard around the paper that the edges were starting to crumple. She bit her lip to keep from—well, she wasn't really sure. Luke put his hands over hers, with a type of gentleness that she hadn't received from him in a long time. He extracted the letter out of his hands, folding it and giving it back to Mr. Grace. His hands shook slightly, and when she looked at him, she saw he was crying, tears leaving shiny tracks down his otherwise calm face.

Annabeth rubbed her eyes and was surprised when she pulled her hands back and her fingers were wet. She was crying too, but she hadn't even noticed.

Mr. Grace took the letter back from Luke, folding it and placing it back within his sport coat pocket. He cleared his throat. "We are disconnecting her this afternoon, as per her wishes."

Disconnecting. Like she was an old television, something to unplug and toss away. Annabeth had never hated Thalia's father so much.

She knew she was grasping at straws, but she didn't care. "I mean," she said, trying to find a way for this awful day to end without her oldest friend dying, "This is only a note on a scrap of paper. That can't, that can't stand as a last will, right? Doesn't she need a witness or something?"

Annabeth looked at Thalia's expressionless face. They hadn't removed her piercings this time, and her hair was still jet black from the last time she had dyed it. It hurt more to see her like this, the real Thalia, the way she wanted to be known, but once again in a hospital bed.

"After she woke up, she drafted a last will and testament with a lawyer." Mr. Grace's face soured. "I'm afraid to say that she was quite serious, and the requests from her note stand."

Jason lowered himself onto a chair and put his head in his hands. "I only found out about her a year and a half ago," he muttered, to no one in particular. "I find out about my sister and then I lose her."

Annabeth ignored him and grabbed Thalia's hand again, yanking it from under the covers. Her various tubes and wires pulled at her skin dangerously. Annabeth turned her wrist over to her timer. "But her timer," she said, pointing at it, "it's not supposed to run out for five more decades. There's still time." She sounded desperate, even to herself.

Luke laid a hand on Annabeth's shoulder and she automatically flinched away. His face clouded over and he pointed to Thalia's wrist, tapping the hard screen of her timer. "It's over, Annabeth," he said, resigned.

Annabeth turned back to the timer, taking in the numbers.

.56

Four hours, twenty-seven minutes, and fifty-six, five, four, three…

"But, but it was—"

An unfamiliar voice behind her said, "Timers are not as exact a science as they would like to have you believe." Annabeth hadn't noticed the doctor, who was moving towards Thalia's bed and picking up the clipboard at the end of it. "Doctor Tamirisa," she said, eyes squinting sympathetically at each person in the room.

Mr. Grace stepped forward, hand out. "Dr. Tamirisa, Mr. Grace." The doctor shook his hand.

"Mr. Grace… the father, I presume?" At Mr. Grace's nod, the doctor smiled lightly. "Can I speak with you in the hall? There are a few formalities I'd like to go over with you." Then to the rest of the people in the room, she said "Feel free to stay in here as long as you would like. I can ask for more chairs to be brought in…?" With no responses, she nodded and stepped out of the room with Mr. Grace.

Annabeth slid Thalia's arm, which she was still holding, back under the blankets. The TV in this hospital room wasn't muted, something Annabeth hadn't noticed before. The murmur of voices and canned audience laughter filled the room. Annabeth tried to concentrate on that instead of the steady beeping of Thalia's hospital monitor. She rubbed her clammy hands on her sweatpants. What time is it?

Luke cleared his throat. Both Annabeth and Jason turned to look at him, and his eyes widened like a deer in headlights. He opened his mouth and closed it, before opening it again and settling on "I like your hair," directed at Annabeth.

Annabeth bit back a scathing reply. Is this really the time?! Instead, she just said, "Thanks."

"Thalia would have liked it."

"She did."

And then they were silent again. She bent down on the side of Thalia's bed, resting her knees on the beige linoleum floors, and positioning her face against the mattress.

She didn't lift her head when Mr. Grace re-entered the hospital room twenty minutes later, nor when he left again an hour after that. Luke didn't try to say anything else, and Jason just sat on the other side of the bed, resting his hand over Thalia's and responding to messages on his phone every once in a while. Annabeth's phone was probably blowing up, especially if Jason was talking to Piper, but she only let the thought cross her mind for a second before pushing it away.

Instead, Annabeth focused on Thalia, on all the things she loved about her. Thalia was so brave, and so determined in everything she did. Sometimes she was too determined and it crossed the line into pure stubbornness, but it was never anything Annabeth could fault her for. She could have such a temper sometimes, but it was because she cared so much it was overwhelming.

Annabeth remembered when Thalia tried to help Annabeth get over her fear of spiders by showing her how she coped with her fear of heights. It had been hard to get her out of the elevator, but eventually, she had stood by the glass by the edge of the Chrysler Building observation deck, pretending she wasn't hyperventilating. Annabeth had tried to distract her by pointing out the constellations that Thalia had once taught her. Annabeth was still deathly afraid of spiders, but the lengths Thalia was willing to go to help her made her ache inside. Annabeth couldn't imagine her life without Thalia. Even when she was in the coma, there was still the hope that she would return to her.

Annabeth's back hurt from being bent over for too long and her knees had gone numb. When Mr. Grace came in for the last time, she lifted her face off of Thalia's bed and straightened her back, rolling her sore neck. She sat back on her heels and looked up at Mr. Grace, who was looking more appropriately distraught.

"The nurses are going to come in fifteen minutes and…" he waved his hand in a vague motion at Thalia's machines. Annabeth's stomach turned over and she felt like she would be sick. Had it really been four hours? "So you should all say your goodbyes. And…" he swallowed. "You don't have to be here when they, um, but you can be. If you want to."

Annabeth stood up and moved away from the bed as Luke bent down, moving his head right beside Thalia's ear and whispering something. She watched his lips move, and despite all of her dislike for Luke and hesitancy about Luke and Thalia's continuing relationship, she hoped that Thalia could hear him, could hear all of them.

After a few minutes, Luke moved away, squeezing Thalia's hand before shuffling, head down, out of the room. Annabeth was not sure he was coming back.

On the other side of the bed, Jason gazed down at Thalia's face before saying, "I wish we'd had more time together." He moved back, leaning against the wall, letting Mr. Grace settle into the space he had vacated.

Annabeth watched as Mr. Gace smoothed a hand over Thalia's forehead, pushing her fringe back. He leaned over and kissed her forehead lightly, whispering softly as he pulled away. He stayed where he was, breaths ragged and eyes watery, trying to hold himself together. Thalia had always described her father as absent, and usually in a dismissing or disparaging tone. Annabeth didn't doubt her, but looking at Mr. Grace's face, she could tell he really cared about his daughter. She couldn't imagine the regrets he must have, buried behind his fake stoicism.

Annabeth stayed by Thalia's bed even as the nurses came in, busy preparing for the work ahead. Thalia's timer steadily counted down, reminding Annabeth that in a few precious minutes she would be losing her friend. She tried to think of something to say to her, but what was there? One of the nurses gave Mr. Grace a significant look, and he nodded.

"Wait, wait," Annabeth said, panicking. She bent her head towards Thalia's. This close she could hear her faint breaths and see the shallow rise and fall of her chest. She tried to think of what to say. What she would like for Thalia to hear before she passed. Quietly, she whispered "I love you. I'll always love you. I'll think of you when I look at the stars."

She pulled away from Thalia, nodding to the waiting nurses, who flitted back to the head of Thalia's bed. They removed her ventilator and pulled out the IV. The beeps from the monitor slowed. Annabeth felt like they were pulling her lifeline instead of Thalia's; she could feel her muscles grow weaker and her once-pounding heartbeat slow to a dull throb within her chest. She watched Thalia's face as she heard the line go flat.

It looked no different than before.