she makes the sound
PROMPT: "... I was listening to "Dissolve me" by alt-J and all I thinking was Percabeth.." - captain anon
His dream starts off calmly enough. He's with her, and that's never a bad way to begin.
They're sitting at some booth in a worn down fast food place, burger wrappers and french fry cartons littered across the table in no specific order. Life is good and Percy is happy because Annabeth has got a little mayonnaise on the corner of her mouth and he knows she'll hit him if he tries to lick it off.
He tries anyway.
She laughs as she swats at the side of his head, and his smile is just short of goofy in love. Or maybe he's already there, he can't tell because she's really cute when she sips soda from her straw and that's pretty much all he can think about.
Reaching across the table, he entwines his fingers with hers. He's watching her smile at the sight of their hands linked together – like they'll always be. It's them against the world, and that's never going to change.
But it's then that he hears it.
It starts off as a low keening, buzzing in the back of his ear. It only takes a second for the noise to morph into a hiss, like steam pouring out of a boiling kettle. He's shocked, eyes going bright with curiosity as he searches for the source of the sound.
He's known that he is a demigod for years, so it's only natural for his first reaction to feel unsettled. His senses kick into fine tune and he searches for danger on another level of conscious.
He's not sure what changes everything.
One moment, they'd been content and happy and in love, but then, all of a sudden-
"Percy!"
There it is. It's frustrating enough to have visions of Tartarus haunting him in his nightmares. It's double worse to be attacked by flashbacks during the day. But this—to have them during his dreams, in his escapes… Percy is shaking his head in disbelief when he sees one of them. One of the arai.
She is sheathed in shadow and brings an earthy scent with her presence. His breath is cut off with a gag as he inhales the musty smell. She glides forward with a sickening grind of her teeth as her tongue comes out to moisten her bruised purple lips.
The restaurant in the background flickers in and out; the lights are off and on, off and on. Then it's gone. All of it. The tables, the windows, the food.
And they're back in the pit.
Annabeth's gone by the time his eyes whip around to where she had been sitting only minutes ago, the two of them sharing a strawberry milkshake. The space she occupied is empty and Percy's thrown off guard. He's disoriented because he could have sworn they'd just been in Burger King, definitely not the ninth circle of Hell.
"Percy!" he hears again. His hands shake as he pushes himself off the ground, ignoring the grind of sharp sand digging into his palms. He's searching for her. For signs of struggle, for clues to where she might have called him from. His heart is smashing against the walls of his chest and he isn't sure if he's breathing.
Then he sees her; she's already locked in battle. One hand wielding the knife he could have sworn she'd lost months ago in their fall, and her other up in a defensive block. The ara remains slashing forward, intent on raking her blood caked claws across Annabeth's body.
Percy advances, his hand already reaching into his pocket for the ball point pen kept there – except, he isn't. He's not moving. His sneakers are locked in the ground and now…he's sinking. Sinking into the warm depths of black sand. He knows where this is going; he remembers Alaska. And that doesn't stop the quake of fear shuddering through him as he struggles to release himself.
Annabeth is becoming tired, he can see. Her moves are slowing, attacks pushed forth with less effort. She's losing will, and it's a desperate fight.
He screams, screams for her to keep fighting, that he's coming, just give him a second. She turns, locking eyes with him for only a fraction of a second, but that's all it takes. The ara's claw nicks Annabeth's cheek and she whips back around to get knocked in the sternum with a bony gray elbow.
Annabeth is on the ground and she's trembling, desperately flicking her knife to deflect the evil spirit's eager talons. Percy hates himself. He can't get out, he thrashes his body from side to side, but only succeeds to let his body sink quicker.
She screams and Percy can't see. He's struggling, fighting, trying to get them out of this mess, except for that he can't save her. The ara flexes her wicked long claws, snapping them forward in a movement that pushes a burst sulfurous air against Percy's sweat-dampened face. And she almost gets her, she really does.
"Annabeth, no!" he shouts, but he knows it's too late. The knife Luke had given Annabeth in her childhood, with a promise of family and love, is now sunk hilt-deep in the throat of the spirit. And Annabeth realizes what she's done a second too late.
The woman bursts to dust, but not without leaving her mark. Annabeth keels over just as soon, and she's screaming. It's loud and painful and desperate and if Percy could breathe before, he certainly can't now. Her voice shakes and rattles but she keeps screaming. And it's his name that's passing her lips.
"Percy!"
He shoots up with a gasp. And reality's done a one-eighty.
Darkness surrounds him, only interrupted by a square frame of blue light filtering in from the window. The walls are black and the sheets are indistinguishable from the rest of the dark room, but he knows he's back. Whether by the familiar brush of his cotton sweatpants, or the worried girlfriend pinning his arms to the mattress to keep him from flailing, he knows that this is his bedroom; this is his home.
"Shit," he mutters, stuffing his face into the crook of Annabeth's neck, where he knows he'll feel her pulse strong, repetitive and loud. Where he knows he'll find her unmarked by the memory of the arai. She's warm and lets go of his arms enough to pull him closer to her embrace. She's whispering into his ear.
Her words are soft; he doesn't understand them, not in the slightest. But he finds himself calming down. The lingering sweat on his forehead dries and the tears that soaked his eyes only minutes ago seem to have retreated. He breathes in and out, and she's still there. She's still whispering. Still letting him know that they're together, and always will be.
Annabeth's soft voice is like the whisper of wind over sea current. Her breath is mist and her words are the soft lap of waves on the shore. She makes the sound, and it calms him down.
"It's only a dream," she tells him. "Gods, it'll only ever be a dream, I swear."
And he believes her, because she is the embodiment of the sea he needs to survive. To live on. She is his narcotic, his sleep-aid, his only true necessity. And as long as she's here—as long as she moves and speaks and breathes, he is living on.
A/N: Originally posted on January 20th, 2015. Follow pjowriters on tumblr for more yo