Disclaimer: All rights belong to Rick Riordan. I take no credit, and I do not mean to break any copyright rules. This is simply a work of fiction made for enjoyment. No money is being made.

Rating: T for dark themes and violence

Chapter 20

"I've never seen this island before in my life," the captain swears, taking off his hat and staring at the small yet picturesque island in front of them. "My entire life I've sailed these waters, and there was never anything here before."

Annabeth looks ahead at the pale sand, the turquoise water lapping gently against the shore, and the vibrant green palm trees swaying gently in the wind. She can't see any sign of habitation except a few small row boats tied to a fallen tree just out of the water.

"Are you sure this is where you want to be dropped off?" the man asks, turning to her with an uncertain expression on his face. "This whole thing is shady to me. Islands popping up out of nowhere, looking like it's straight out of a fairy tale."

The more mysterious the island is, the better chance it's part of Annabeth's world - although, it could be the lair of some terrible monster and not where her friends disappeared to. It's always a fifty-fifty chance.

But those boats look familiar. Yes, most boats that size do look the same, but Annabeth's gut is telling her that she's in the right place.

"Yes," she says, sounding confident. "This is it."

"Alright, then. If anything happens, you know where to find me."

Annabeth presses a small bag of coins into his hand. "Thank you so much for your help. I wish you clear skies ahead."

The old man grunts, but he sounds pleased. Annabeth judges the distance from his fishing boat to the shore and decides she may as well swim it. She has no bags to carry, just two weapons secured tightly on her belt and the clothes on her back.

She dives over the side before the man can protest and begins crossing the distance. It's not terribly far and she reaches the shore in about fifteen minutes. When she turns back, the man waves at her before adjusting his sails.

The sun is high overhead, but the temperature on the island isn't so hot as to be uncomfortable. Annabeth wrings out her hair and clothes as best as she can before setting off through the woods, following a small path that hadn't been visible from the water.

Ten minutes into her walk, the sun has already mostly dried her off and she's noticed a strange lack of insects. She can hear them in the trees and the bushes, but they don't come near her. In the treetops, birds sing and flutter around. Wild flowers bloom brightly in a myriad of colors.

Annabeht crests a hill and what she sees blows her mind.

She's crossed the island almost entirely. There's a valley below her, with a few huts in a circle, a central hearth in the very middle. There's a few caves carved into the hillside that she's standing on. Just behind the huts is a massive garden filled with all sorts of foods and flowers, perfectly weeded and kept up. A small lake shimmers brightly on the opposite side of the garden, and then there's another beach just beyond that where the island once again fades into the sea. There's a mist that covers the ocean on the other side. Annabeth and the fisherman had sailed through a similar wall in order to get close enough to see the island. Annabeth wonders if it's a magic boundary of sorts, shielding this mysterious floating island from the rest of the world.

She stands on the hilltop for another minute before she sees a small group of people walking out of the forest. She recognizes them instantly and begins descending.

They reach the central hearth at the same time she does.

"Annabeth?"

She smiles shyly, not sure how they view her now. It's been almost three months since she last saw them - since she left them in their time of need. "Hey, guys."

Frank breaks out in a relieved smile. Behind him, Will pushes past to give her a hug. Nico, as usual, hangs out in the shadows, but he looks better rested than Annabeth has seen him in a while.

The rest of the crew is there as well. Annabeth exchanges greetings with them all. At the back of the group, she spots another girl.

"Silena?" Annabeth wades through the crowd of people towards her. "What are you doing here?"

Silena has red-rimmed eyes and she looks frail, as if a shout might shatter her to pieces. Still, she manages a smile when she sees Annabeth.

As Annabeth hugs her, another girl steps out of the woods. She has caramel hair braided down her back and evenly tanned skin, and she wears a cotton Greek chiffon with a braided golden belt and matching headband. Although she looks to be about the same age as them, Annabeth can see a sort of timelessness in her eyes that makes her seem a lot older.

"Calypso, this is Annabeth," Will says. "Annabeth, meet Calypso, our gracious host."

Calypso smiles tightly. "It's nice to meet you, Annabeth. Welcome to Ogygia."

Will and Frank take her on a tour of the island, Silena and Nico tagging along silently in the back. Once they're out of earshot of Calypso, who had gone straight to her garden, they lower their voices and catch her up to speed.

"Calypso is this immortal daughter of a Titan. She was cursed to live here on Ogygia forever because she sided with the Titans in the first Titan War," Frank begins.

Annabeth glances over at Silena, an earlier conversation returning to her memory. "That wasn't the entirety of the curse, though. Wasn't she cursed to fall in love with whoever came to the island? But it was always someone who could never stay."

Frank nods, looking a bit surprised. "You know about her."

"Just that much. And that Percy once landed here, and he chose not to stay."

"Right. So Percy saved Olympus a few years ago and as part of his reward he demanded that Calypso's curse be lifted. Well, the gods kinda complied - they lifted the part of the curse where only one person every few millenia would land here. They didn't lift the part of the curse where Calypso is stuck here."

"So she's tied to the island, but people can come and go as they please?"

Frank nods again. "Ogygia's magic still remains, so it's hidden from mortals. And the island still moves. It was in Italy when we came to stay with her, after Sciron sank the Pax, but now we've drifted all the way to Greece."

"I noticed," Annabeth says dryly. "I almost didn't find you guys. It took me weeks."

"Weeks?" Frank frowns. "Oh, that's another thing - time passes differently here on the island. We've only been here for a few days."

"Calypso's turned this place into a safe haven for anyone who needs it," Will cuts in. "She's been incredibly kind to us, especially considering the whole Percy thing."

"I bet she's glad for the company, no matter who it is." Annabeth has been agonizing over her choices for her future for the past few months, but at least she has a choice - Calypso doesn't.

"We're the only ones on the island right now, but she said that some of the gods have always come and visited her over the millenia and that since her curse has been lifted, a lot of displaced demigods have been around." Frank looks sympathetically in her direction. "She's been so sweet to everyone - I can't believe she can be so kind after all she's suffered."

"So why did you guys come here instead of New Rome?"

"We weren't sure if the power of the pearl was stronger than the magic boundaries of the camp, and we didn't want to put all those people in danger," Will explains. "When we came here, we were honest with Calypso from the start, but she doesn't mind."

"Her exact words were 'If Sciron manages to destroy this island then maybe I can finally leave it,'" Frank adds.

"Calypso was born thousands of years before Sciron if she was a Titan's daughter," Annabeth reasons. "She was trapped here before Sciron died the first time. No wonder she's not afraid of him."

"Don't take this wrong way, Annabeth," Will says, "but why did you come back? I thought you were in love with that blond guy."

"I was," she says. "Still am, to be honest. But I couldn't return to the normal world after living in this one. As a woman, I had almost no rights. They treated me like a porcelain doll that had fallen off the top shelf. In this world, people don't really care if you're a man or a woman. All that matters is who you are." Annabeth scuffs at the sand with her boot. "Also...I kept having nightmares. I almost skewered my maid when she woke me up one day. And then there was this huge storm one night. It was so violent that I was sure Poseidon himself was coming after me."

Frank and Will glance at each other, then at the ground.

"I came to finish the mission," Annabeth continues. "I came because I left Percy and Beckendorf rotting at the bottom of Sciron's ship, and I couldn't live without knowing what happened to them. When that storm came, I could feel it in my soul that something horrible had happened. I thought - " Her voice catches. "I thought that Percy might have died."

Frank and Will don't meet her eyes. She looks past them at Nico, whose eyes are darker than ever as he distractedly spins his skull ring around his finger. And then she looks at Silena, who has tears streaking down her face.

"It's true, isn't it?" Annabeth presses, not wanting to hear it but needing to know. She travelled hundreds of miles by herself because she couldn't go on without knowing. "Sciron killed them."

Frank covers his face with his hand, and Annabeth realizes he's crying. Will clears his throat.

"There was an explosion a few weeks ago. A nereid witnessed it and reported it back to us. Someone rigged Sciron's ship with Greek fire and blew it sky high. No one could have survived it."

Annabeth looks back at Nico, who looks as if he's trying to slink into the shadows. "Can you feel it when someone dies?" she asks him. "Do you know for sure?"

Nico glances over at Silena before answering. "Every soul that was on that ship is now in the Underworld," he says.

"And Percy and Beckendorf - they were on that ship."

Nico pauses before nodding once.

Although part of Annabeth had known the moment she woke up during that storm, she still feels as though she's been gutted. She staggers back a step, then another.

"We waited a couple days just to be certain," Will says. "Then we sent out word to the others. We're burning their shrouds tonight."

So that's why Silena's here. She came for Beckendorf's funeral. Annabeth remembers how happy they looked that night in New Rome. She can't even begin to imagine how painful this must be for the other girl.

Annabeth's heart literally aches, and she and Percy weren't even together. How does Silena even have the strength to stand?

Calypso walks over to them at that moment. She takes one look at Annabeth's face and she knows that her timing couldn't have been worse - or better. She smiles sadly and takes Annabeth's arm gently.

"Come," she says. "I'll make you something to wear for tonight."

Annabeth follows her along the path back to the little village, her mind completely frozen for once in her life.

"Percy wasn't an easy person to love," Calypso says as she sits down at her loom and begins weaving. Annabeth sits on a stool nearby, holding her arms to keep herself from falling apart. "He always has this sense of duty. He could never leave his friends when they were in danger, and he would risk everything to keep them safe."

Annabeth tries to imagine Percy and Beckendorf realizing that the only way to stop Sciron was to blow him and his crew up - even if it meant sacrificing themselves. The saddest part is that it's easy for her to picture in her mind. That was Percy's fatal flaw: he would do anything for his friends.

"It was different between us," Annabeth says, winces as her heart clenches in her chest. She feels like someone has their fist around it and is squeezing as tightly as they can. "I rejected him. I left him on that ship to die."

"There was nothing you could, Annabeth. Percy was so stubborn. He wouldn't have left as long as Sciron was a threat. And from what the others told me, there was no way to take him down. He created the perfect trap."

"My mother used to say that there's always another way out. There must have been some way in which we could have saved everyone. I just wasn't smart enough to think it through." Annabeth hangs her head. "That's why Percy liked me. He liked how intelligent I was. In the end, I wasn't smart enough to save him."

"You're starting to sound like him." Calypso's fingers weave expertly, blurring together as she works. "Out of all the heroes that came to my island, none were as selfless and insecure as him."

"Percy didn't consider himself a hero. He said he was more like the gods' errand boy."

"But the gods only send the greatest of heroes to my island." Calypso pauses to flip her hair back over her shoulder. "I knew Hercules, Achilles, Odysseus, Jason, Perseus, Theseus, and many others whose names even you would recognize. All the men who came to my island were the greatest heroes of their times. Percy is the one who came in this century. Whether he considers himself it or not, he's one the greatest heroes to walk the earth."

"I remember when I first realized who he was. He explained what it was like being a demigod. He told me that he didn't have a choice. He could either serve the gods or bad things would happen to him. He told me about some of the heroes who tried to retire and what happened to them. He said he liked to think that it was his choice, even though deep down he knew it wasn't." Annabeth wipes at her eyes. "He was so sad. He was a terrible liar, especially to himself. He knew all along exactly what his life would be like."

Calypso's eyes swim as she weaves. It might be Annabeth's imagination, but her fingers seem to work furiously now.

"That's why he was different than most of the heroes who landed on my island. Hercules and Odysseus and Perseus and even Theseus - they all thought themselves invincible. And don't even get me started on Achilles. When they were trapped here with me, they treated it as a kind of vacation. I healed them, fell in love with them, and they took advantage of me. And I let them, because I was so lonely and desperate to be loved back. But Percy wasn't like that. He spent every day pacing the beach, worrying about his crew mates and his friends. When he spent time with me, he genuinely gave me his attention. He cared about the real me, not just the fantasy of a beautiful girl living alone on an island for all eternity. He knew what it was like to be played by the gods," Calypso has to stop to wipe at her own face. "His leaving broke my heart more than any of the others. When they left, I was mad at the gods for my curse. When Percy left, I was furious with him. He claimed to be so loyal to his friends, and then he left me behind."

"He didn't have a choice," Annabeth whispers. She doesn't feel jealous hearing about Percy and Calypso's story; she just feels even more sorrow for the both of them. They're both pawns, pushed around by the gods when they get bored.

Calypso shakes her head. "No. He couldn't have stayed, even if he wanted to. The gods are cruel in that way. But Percy didn't forget me. He couldn't stay on Ogygia, but he was loyal to me. He demanded the gods to release me from my curse. All the other heroes who stayed here, who claimed to love me - some of them have become gods, and even they haven't returned."

"Percy would have been a terrible god. He's much too mortal."

Calypso smiles weakly. "Yes, he is. And that is why he's so good."

She unthreads her loom, ties off some pieces, and then ducks into her cave for a few minutes. When she returns, she has a beautiful white dress tailored to Annabeth's exact size.

"Thank you," Annabeth says as she accepts it. "And not just for the dress."

As the afternoon wears on, more and more people begin arriving. Annabeth stands on the beach with Frank, welcoming them all with tight smiles and even tighter hugs.

Jason, Piper, and Hazel from New Rome arrive together in a small boat. Rachel travels in by herself, her red hair a stark contrast to the black dress and shawl she's wearing. Grover and a few nature spirits blow in - literally.

Last to arrive is a girl with spiky black hair, electric blue eyes, and wearing silver jewelry in places Annabeth didn't know a girl could wear jewelry. She's flanked by a couple girls, also wearing black and silver.

Annabeth stares at her, an old memory resurfacing in her mind. When she and Thalia face each other, she can see the other girl pause as well.

"I know you," Annabeth says.

"Yes," Thalia responds slowly.

"Your mother used to sing at some of the parties I went to when I was younger. We used to hide from the adults and sneak off to play in an abandoned room." Annabeth frowns. "But you used to be years older than me."

"I've been immortal for a few years now. It seems you've caught up to me." Thalia smirks. "There was a guy, too, wasn't there? Blond hair, blue eyes. He was always pick-pocketing things and getting into trouble for it. Luke, right?"

"Yes," Annabeth agrees, although she feels another pang go through her heart. The hurt she feels for Luke is completely different than the hurt she feels for Percy, but it's still pain.

"I haven't seen him since I ran away and my mother died. How is he?"

"He's good," Annabeth manages. "He's not - he's not part of this world, though."

Thalia nods in understanding. "How did you end up here? Last I saw of you, you were playing dress up and being forced to learn manners."

"Percy," is all she can say. Once again, Thalia nods as if that's all the answer she needs. She claps a hand on Annabeth's shoulder.

"It's good to see you again. It's too bad it's under these circumstances."

When Percy had told Annabeth about his friend Thalia, she had never imagined it was the same Thalia that she had grown up with. Annabeth, Luke, and Thalia had been friends for years before Thalia had suddenly disappeared. Her mother had died shortly after, and though Annabeth was sad, she hadn't thought about the girl in years. She had just been a kid when it all happened.

Seeing Thalia again like this is so strange and yet it also feels so right. It's like all the loose threads in Annabeth's life are tying up. Each time one does, it reassures Annabeth that she made the right decision to return, even if it's so painful in so many ways.

Everyone gathers on the beach after sunset. Two funeral pyres are created side-by-side, one covered in a sea green shroud the shade of Percy's eyes (Calypso had remembered even years later) and other the color of the fire in a forge with a hammer embroidered in the middle. The ground around the pyres is covered with a silver flower that bloomed as soon as the moon rose and casts a hauntingly beautiful glow over the proceedings.

Without meaning to, Annabeth and Silena somehow end up at the front of the pyres, their backs to the sea. Everyone else stands on the opposite side, looking to them.

Annabeth vaguely recognizes that the white dress she's wearing is the one from her nightmares. She'd seen this coming from the very beginning, but she had no idea that it would be Percy's shroud on the funeral pyre - and that it would be two of her friends dying, not just one.

A hush falls over those gathered, until the only sounds are the waves against the shore, the rustle of the leaves in the soft wind, and the background hum of insects waking up. Silena steps up to Beckendorf's pyre, placing her hands gently against the stone table.

"Charlie was - he was - " She breaks into sobs and steps back, unable to speak.

Annabeth realizes that everyone's looking to her now. She definitely did not prepare for this.

"Beckendorf was one of the greatest heroes I've ever met," she begins, reaching out and wrapping an arm around Silena and holding her tightly. "He was intelligent, kind, and brave. Whenever something went wrong, he was the first person to show up, ready to face whatever the problem might be. And for us, the problem could be literally anything, from a gear out of place to an angry god. But he never once faltered. He adapted to every situation flawlessly, and his confidence in the face of danger was an inspiration to all of us. On the Pax, he was Percy's best friend, but he was also a crew member, and his ease with people turned him into the glue that held us all together. He was a bridge between stations and a friend to everyone. He was one of the first people I turned to for support and guidance, always seeming to know exactly when I needed help or just someone to listen. He was optimistic even in the face of the worst odds, and he never lost faith, which is something most of us can't say." Annabeth squeezes Silena's shoulder. "Beckendorf didn't just die a hero; he lived as a hero."

There are a lot of sniffles in the crowd. A few other crew members step up and share stories about Beckendorf or speak more about him. Someone hands Silena a golden Drachma, and she places it in on the shroud.

Everyone settles back in again, Silena retreating to the audience, and Annabeth knows that it's Percy's turn. Although she knows it's not fair to him, the words just don't flow out of her mouth like they did for Beckendorf. Her relationship with Beckendorf was the same as them, and it was easy to call up good memories. With Percy, her relationship was much more complicated. She thinks of just as many bad memories as good ones.

"Percy's fatal flaw was that he would do anything for the people he cared about," she finally begins. "He died trading his life for ours. And he died to save us from a huge threat. His whole life was one of sacrifice, so it just seems unfair that it had to end that way. But life isn't fair, and there's no one who knows that better than us." Annabeth wipes at her face. "Percy was a complicated person. His moods changed like the sea; oftentimes friendly and warm, but other times violent and dangerous. He could be the nicest person you ever met, or he could be the last thing you saw before Hades. Those of us who knew him well, we understood. We accepted him as he was. He was our captain and our leader, a person we never underestimated and never doubted. No matter what threat we faced, we knew that with him, we would come out on the other end of it."

She looks out at the crew gathered and sees people nodding.

"Percy didn't like to think of himself as a hero. He was hyper aware of his insecurities and his shortcomings. He didn't want to be held to a standard that he thought he fell short of. He preferred to call himself a pirate for this very reason. But he was wrong. He was the opposite of a pirate in every way that matters. He was brave and selfless and more generous than most of us could ever dream of being. He wasn't just a hero; he raised the bar for what a hero should be."

More nods. Annabeth releases the breath she'd been holding. She was worried that the others would think her eulogy too harsh, or too fake, but it's exactly what they needed to hear.

"Percy Jackson was never ours to have. He belongs to the sea, and it's time we release him."

Frank steps up and hands one torch to Annabeth and one to Silena. Together, the girls stand at the front of the pyres and touch the flames to the kindling.

Beckendorf's fire is red and true, while Percy's burns a blue color. Annabeth smiles a little through her tears; he would've liked that it was blue.

From the edge of the circle, Calypso begins to sing. Her voice is hauntingly beautiful, and Annabeth is swept away in it. She reaches over for Silena and they hold each other until all that's left is ashes blowing away into the light of the rising dawn.