Chapter Twelve: Ego sum Paenitet
Disclaimer: I really don't want to rehash this. I'm not Rick. Gods people take a hint.
Author's Note – Hey everyone! I know I did not update yesterday, so today I have an extra long and extra extra fluffy chapter. Seriously, you're gonna be whipped by the end of it. Since I decided to give you a taste of the Percabeth to come, I wrote this. Hope you're satisfied for now. Also, THIS DOES NOT MEAN THEY ARE BACK TOGETHER YET. Now, please read, review and enjoy!
P.S – Take care and stay safe!
P.P.S – Spread the word if you like this fic! Also, the title of the chapter is literally my apology to you for the slow burn.
"Saying sorry to someone just means you value the person's company more than you value your ego."
Annabeth's POV:
I woke up feeling better than I had felt in days. It felt like I had eaten ambrosia for breakfast, lunch and dinner and bathed in nectar. Of course, doing that would've resulted in me being burnt alive, so the analogy didn't really work well.
I went to the main deck and found that everyone except Percy were still asleep. "Perfect." I thought to myself. Now was the perfect time to apologize.
He must have sensed my presence because he turned around and looked at me. How did he always know where I was? It's like he had me radio-tagged or something.
We were both looking at each other awkwardly, me shifting my weight from one leg to the other, hands on my hips and him with a sort of sheepish look, rubbing the back of his neck with one hand.
"I'msosorryIwasbeinganidiot" both of us said at the same time. There were identical expressions of shock and incredulity on both of our faces.
I was shocked because What the hell was he apologizing for? After he had asked me to come to dinner, remembered every tiny detail about me, cared about me enough to leave me alone when I said I did not remember him and being nice enough to not make me feel guilty about it, I had snapped at him and said some horrible stuff. I had basically mocked the past 5 years of his life without a second thought and here he was, saying sorry, TO ME?
Percy's POV:
"Wait wait wait, am I still sleeping? The ship feels pretty solid to me, and I'm pretty sure I woke up about an hour ago." I thought to myself.
Because there was no way Annabeth-fricking-Chase would say sorry to anyone who she had only known for a week or two. Hell would freeze over before she would admit she was wrong. Her fatal flaw was hubris for Hades' sake!
And yet, here she was, nervous as an ADHD, dyslexic demigod before a 3 hour standardized test.
"Did you just apologize?" I asked, while at the same time she said, "What are you saying sorry for?"
I laughed a little, dispelling some of the tension and answered, "I am sorry I did not leave you be, that I kept trying to talk to you, hoping you would remember me. It must not be easy for a child of Athena to feel inadequate, unsure of herself for the first time. Besides, it must be freaky, hearing a stranger tell you your own deepest, darkest secrets." I said, my voice stumbling over the word stranger.
"You're not a stranger Percy" she said softly.
"No?" I asked, "what am I then?"
"You're my friend."
And I was okay with that. We were friends long before we were a couple. Some of our craziest and fondest memories were of us as friends.
I hadn't saved Annabeth from the sirens when I was 13 because I liked her, I did it because she was my friend, just like she didn't save me for Circe because she liked me.
As friends, at least I had a chance to build it better the second time round, make us more permanent.
So I smiled, and I joked. "About that apology of yours…"
Her face grew serious, and she said, "I'm sorry Percy. I shouldn't have said what I said. Truth is, I don't really know what I remember, I get these glimpses, I got one yesterday when you…uhhh…..told me about the immortality thing." Her face was crimson.
"Anyway, I may not remember everything, but I don't have to know all about you to know that you're a good person, that anyone would be lucky to have a friend like you." She said.
I knew there was a lot of stuff she had left unsaid, a lot of stuff she couldn't bring herself to apologize for, so I shrugged nonchalantly and said "S'okay".
Her eyes widened in disbelief, "Just like that?"
"Just like that" I answered.
We talked for a while about New Rome, about Camp Half Blood, and before I knew it, everyone was up, and we were sitting down for breakfast, Piper and Leo shooting smirks in our direction, with Jason looking at Piper (why couldn't they get together already!). Frank and Hazel were in a world of their own.
Leo decided to once again don his mantle of "Chef Leo – Tofu Taco Expert," and so breakfast wasn't from enchanted plates that gave us whatever we wanted, breakfast was tacos, and it was better than whatever those plates could have magicked up for us.
"So when are we getting to Atlanta?" Jason asked, finally finished with ogling Piper.
"Tomorrow morning or so." Leo said.
Everyone groaned. No one liked extended travel on a magic ship to someplace just because the Wine Dude told us to go there. Specially when nothing interesting ever happened.
After finishing breakfast, Leo went to make sure everything on the ship was working properly, Jason, Piper, Frank and Hazel decided to play cards for a while, I wanted to swim for a while, the water always seemed to energize me, while Annabeth had this weird look in her eyes and she was clutching what looked like a silver coin in her hand.
Deciding that swimming could wait, I asked Annabeth if she wanted to talk about whatever was bothering her. She looked surprised, almost as if she did not expect anyone to pick up on her mood.
"Honestly, Wise girl, the day I stop being able to read you is the day Hades starts wearing a bright yellow sundress." I thought with a smile. I didn't say anything of course, merely waited for a reply.
She was biting her lip, thinking it all out. I knew she was probably weighing the pros and cons about telling me about her problem.
Annabeth's POV:
"How does he keep doing that." I thought to myself. It's like he knows exactly what's going through my mind. Earlier, when I couldn't bear to apologize for accidentally insulting the memory of all of his friends, my friends, who had perished in the last war, he had simply nodded once, smiled and assured me it was alright.
Even now, when Piper and Leo, who had known me for years and Frank and Hazel, who had gone on a quest with me did not pick up on the fact that something was on my mind, he knew.
Just like he knew everything else about me. When we had first met and Piper had filled in everything for me, I had said it was impossible for us to be together because he was a son of Poseidon and I was a daughter of Athena. It would be a foolish match at best. And I was many things, but I was not foolish.
Since then, my view had changed. Whenever he joked with Piper, or talked to Hazel about god knows what, a sinking, horrible feeling took root in my gut. He was an easily, effortlessly likable, no, lovable person.
I snapped out of my thoughts as Percy cleared his throat, waiting for a reply.
"Sure, lets talk." I said, the words coming out of my mouth before I could stop them. I did not regret my decision however, his smile more than chased away my apprehensions. The left corner of his mouth lifted a little higher than the right, eyes twinkling with mirth as he smiled lopsidedly at me.
We decided to go back to his bunk since mine was littered with half finished drawings, papers and blueprints.
I saw that his room was sparsely decorated. There was one photo of his mom, and I could sorta see where he got his smile from. Apart from that, there was a navy blue hoodie that looked nice and cozy, and….a watch.
"Percy" I asked, "what's the watch for? And why don't you wear it?"
He looked a little nervous, almost as if he was hiding something. "Ummmm nothing, no reason. It's just a watch." He stammered out.
I narrowed my eyes. I may not know him the way he knows me, but I was good at reading people. More importantly, Percy was a horrible liar.
"Oh yeah, then you won't mind if I do this right?" I asked as I took his watch, strapping it onto my wrist. It did not immediately do anything, so I started having my doubts about whether it really was a magical item or not. The clock face looked pretty standard, and the strap was also plain leather.
I frowned a little, and decided to press the crown, the button that changes the time on the watch. Percy saw what I was about to do and tried to stop me, but I was already out of his reach.
Immediately, the clock face was covered by a celestial bronze sheet, which began to spiral outwards, kind of like a camera shutter. It was four feet in width, polished bronze and lined with soft leather on the inside. The leather strap of the watch became a brace that wrapped around my arm, the process taking no more than a minute. The shield seemingly came out of thin air, not making any noise. I could tell it was strong, but at the same time, incredibly light.
"Why did you not want me to see this Percy? And why do you not wear it?" I asked him.
He was blushing a little bit, and I realized I still couldn't see the front part of the shield, the business end. I knew Thalia's Aegis had an image of Medusa that straight up terrified everyone, so I was kinda curious about what Percy's shield would look like.
I slipped off the brace and flipped the shield while Percy just looked at me with a look of…. resignation. I briefly thought about offering to turn away and stop poking through his stuff, but my curiosity got the better of me. I flipped the shield.
Percy's POV:
"Great, she's going to kill me." I thought. Despite my protests, she had taken my watch, had figured out it was a shield and now wanted to see how it looked.
She froze. For a solid minute, I thought she was going to say something again, get angry, beat me up, whatever.
Instead, her breath hitched a little, and she gasped. The front was decorated with pictures of the two of us, there was a scene depicting the island of the sirens, with her lashed to the mast and me trying to calm her down, then a photo showing the two of us looking at each other, holding matching strands of grey hair in our hands, smiling softly. There was a part depicting both of us holding hands on Charon's ferry, one where I had raised my hand up in goodbye, and she was going away, that had been at the labyrinth when I had thought I was going to die.
But the best photo was right in the center, the two of us in a bubble of water, at the bottom of Lake Half Blood, just looking into each other eyes, right before we had been about to kiss.
"Tell me about the shield Percy." Her voice quiet, subdued, but heartrendingly emotional, almost as if she were keeping her eyes dry solely through her willpower.
"That's actually not my first shield." I said in a strangled sort of voice, a little hoarse, a little raspy.
"Tyson made it for me and gave it to me right after we had come back from the Sea of Monsters. But then, next year, it saved me from a manticore attack and was dented in many places. So I had him fix it. Then of course, the year after that, it saved my life against Kampê as I threw it at her in the Labyrinth."
I breathed in and continued "Then I sort of started using a regular shield for a while, right until the day of my 16th birthday. We had just become official, and I sort of had the shield remade with all of my memories of us and Tyson's skill. I showed it you after it was complete."
"I actually had Tyson make an extra if I ever needed it." I finished, you know, to add that final dose of pathetic-ness.
"Why put us on the cover of the shield though Percy? A shield can get dented, broken, lost, damaged." She whispered, and I got the sense she was no longer talking about the watch.
"Because that's what we were like Annabeth." I replied.
"We endured so much, fought so hard, that it left some cracks. Either because I was clueless, or because you were so stubborn, we did not admit we liked each other, and it drove us apart for a while. You thought about Luke, I saw Rachel for a while, and both of us were dented, unhappy."
"BUT" I continued, my voice stronger now, "we got through it all, we faced all of it, defeated every monster, every enemy thrown at us. We survived, we persevered, and eventually we became stronger because we were together. We were together, Annabeth, and we fixed ourselves, so that when you were taken, I knew nothing bad would happen to you, that it would work out in the end."
"You must be so disappointed now then." She said, a little bitter, still holding back tears, fighting a losing battle.
I looked at her, my eyes finding hers, "Wise girl, if you think I'm giving up on us just because two Goddesses decided to mess with our lives, then you've got another apology to make. After going through all we've gone through, I'm not letting someone as petty as Lady Thunderpants come between us."
She smiled a little, her eyes already wet.
"I'm glad to hear that Seaweed brain." she said.
"Say it like you mean it." I joked.
Her eyes twisted up in confusion, a small frown marring her face.
"Huh?"
"Nothing, song reference" I said.
"Now tell me about what's bothering you."
And so she did, talking about how when she had first woken up, she had seen her mom near the Caldecott tunnel, half crazed, raving about the Mark of Athena, restoring honor and prestige to the diminished goddess, about how her mom had wanted her to kill all the Romans.
I couldn't believe Athena, the most logical, cool-headed and yes, cold Olympian would be reduced to such a state while Aphrodite herself had no problems. What terrified me most was the part where "Wisdom's daughter walks alone." I was not prepared for her to go again, to put herself at risk without any of us supporting her.
But she did not need to know all that. She had told me everything because it was weighing on her as well, and she was terrified about what was going to happen. So I did the only thing I could do to help her, I told her everything would be okay, that when the time came, we would ALL be there for her, and she smiled at me gratefully, a genuine eyes shining, world brightening smile.
And I hugged her. I couldn't stop myself, didn't know if she wanted me to, but I held her, and I didn't let her go, no, I couldn't let her go.
After a second, she hugged me back, slotting so perfectly against me that for a second, I forgot she did not remember me, I forgot everything.
And then she pulled away. It was already night. I had an idea.
"Hey Annabeth, come with me." I said.
"Where?" she asked.
"Just come with me"
We worked our way past the supply rooms and the armory. Toward the stern of the ship, we reached a set of wooden double doors that opened into a large stable. The room smelled of fresh hay and wool blankets. Lining the left wall were three empty horse stalls like the ones they used for pegasi back at camp. The right wall had two empty cages big enough for large zoo animals.
In the center of the floor was a twenty-foot-square see-through panel. Far below, the night landscape whisked by—miles of dark countryside crisscrossed with illuminated highways like the strands of a web.
"A glass-bottomed boat?" she asked
I grabbed a blanket from the nearest stable gate and spread it across part of the glass floor. "Sit with me."
We relaxed on the blanket as if we were having a picnic, and watched the world go by below.
"You know why I like this place so much?" I asked softly.
"The zoo truck to Las Vegas." She said simply, and then her eyes widened.
I meanwhile, could hardly breathe, hope etched across every feature of my face.
"I remember that now. We were 12, in bad shape, struggling to go across the country, and we talked, and we became friends. Its….Percy we've known each other since we were twelve" anguish and desperation on her face, as if she couldn't forgive herself for forgetting. Her breaths became shallow as she hyperventilated.
"Hey Wise girl" I said, attempting to use a soothing voice, almost as if I were talking to a scared Pegasus.
"Don't worry, none of it is your fault. Besides, you're remembering, even if it's a little bit, you're remembering. Memory is overrated anyway; we can always make new ones." I said.
I scooched over to her side and rubbed her arm gently, hugging her a little. Slowly, softly, she calmed down as the enormity of the memory, the onslaught of emotions passed. But I did not let her go, and she did not ask me to.
Before I knew it, the drone of the ship's engine, the dim light, and the comfortable feeling of just….holding Annabeth made my eyes heavy and we both drifted off to sleep.
"Not really sure how to feel about it
Something in the way you move
Makes me feel like I can't live without you
It takes me all the way
I want you to stay"
Author's Note: The main plot resumes from the next chapter, I sincerely hope you all liked what I did with this one, since I would be crushed if you didn't. No worries though, I'm cool. If there's some criticism or question or anything else, feel free to PM me.
P.S. – I know I've ended my second consecutive chapter with sleeping and its probably coz I'm sleep deprived myself, but you're all kidding yourselves if you think the sleeping scene in MoA wasn't totally ASAFDGSFDHGAFJKHSKJGHKJFDJSHGLJKSHGKSDHKGHSKJGH