Chapter 4
Hi! I usually save these for at the end but I wanted to say, think of this as Part 1 of an entire chapter, Part 2 coming soon…
Percy's POV
"What?" Annabeth and I's outraged tones rang out in perfect harmony. (Sorry, I don't know if that's grammatically correct but). "Um, no that's not- let me finish my-" The doctor immediately tried to explain his previous statement but Annabeth wasn't really in the mood to listen. "Who the heck do you think you are? Coming in here and telling me I wasn't pregnant, I was!" She was just on the border of hysterical, but I rubbed her back and she took a deep breath. Her grey eyes searched mine and she repeated, softly, "I was." Her voice sounded so desperate, so vulnerable, so… not Annabeth. My eyes still locked with hers, I motioned for the doctor to continue. He did so, quite uncomfortably, "My apologies, what I meant to say was, Annabeth, you were pregnant, but not with one baby, with two." My hand pressing down a little bit harder in Annabeth's shoulder kept her quiet. "And, it was a completely healthy pregnancy, or that is what we could tell so far with the tests we have run." He paused, "I assure you, Mrs. Jackson, we have one of the best teams in the country, and all signs indicate that you and your babies were completely healthy. I-"
"Stop." My voice was deadly calm, and anyone who knew me would know that that is a sure fire warning sign for anyone in a 10-mile radius of me to turn around and start running the hell away. Even the doctor, a complete stranger, looked like he was seriously starting to regret taking our case. "Uhm, sorry? Stop what?"
"Stop referring to our baby in the past tense. You told me that Annabeth is still pregnant.
So stop saying was." I said, I kept my voice down, but my accusation was clear. I hated when anyone who I cared about was hurt, and here we were, Annabeth just come out from surgery, and some idiot, tactless doctor referring to my child in the freaking. Past. Tense. So excuse me if I was a little mad.
"And she is, but with only one child, not two." The news took a little while to sink in, but when it did Annabeth slumped back onto her scratchy hospital pillows and my hand left her shoulder as I ran it through my hair and collapsed into the little armchair by her bedside. "I'm very sorry to say that your daughter died this morning, a still birth, at 3:57 am, at 6 months old. Really, you do have my deepest condolences, and if there is anything this hospital could do to make this hard time easier for you, please do let us know. We are currently doing all that we can to try and figure out what caused this, and in the mean time, we are going to ask for you to stay one more night, just for observation." His words were meant to be sincere, but I could tell that this was a speech he had probably delivered thousands of times before. He went on to explain some more technicalities, but I was no longer listening, my daughter was dead. My child was being denied of her twin. I knew twins, I had grown up with the Stoll twins, and I knew that they always had each other's back. They both had a constant companion to rely on. And my child would never have that. There was a whole life that had just been cruelly snatched away from me. From the world. A little girl who would never call me 'dad' or Annabeth 'mum'. A granddaughter who my mum would never get to spoil. My mind flashed forward to all the things I had imagined myself doing if we had had a girl. Being the overprotective dad, teaching her how to swim, spoiling her on her birthday, making Christmas dinner, all the things I would never get to do now. I felt so frustrated I could punch the wall. At least in my problems in past I always had a solution, and now, I just felt so helpless. And it wasn't like I hadn't had problems, before, but they all had answers. Difficult, might-kill-you, solutions, but solutions all the same. Monsters weren't dying, so free Thatanos, Annabeth got captured, so go rescue her. But now, there was absolutely nothing I could do except accepting the fact, and moving on. And I had never been good at that. A gasp from Annabeth brought me back to the present, and I hastily blinked back the tears, that I hadn't known were threatening to spill down my face. Her face had gone pale, even whiter than before and I strained to hear her mutterings; "Artemis… curse… daughter… gods… son… love… pregnant… twins… Athena…" Understanding that whatever was going through her brain clearly wasn't something the mortal in front of us would understand, I interrupted his little speech, which was still going on. "Excuse me?" I tried my very hardest to be polite, when in reality I wanted to pummel the guy for not saving our child. It wasn't his fault. A little voice that sounded remarkably like Annabeth's spoke in the corners of my mind. "My wife and I would only really like to be alone for a little while, this is quite a shock." The words were so not what I would say, but I said them anyway, hoping that the doctor would get the message. Unfortunately, he didn't. "Yes, yes. Of course… You know, many couples like to have company during these times…" My words had only started him of onto another little speech. Somewhere in between grief counseling and interactive therapy, I snapped into what Jason calls 'I-saved-the-world-mode'. It had given us absolute luxury treatment once when I was out with him and Grover buying my wedding suit. Fed up of being given judgmental glances and having to hear snide comments about not being able to afford the suits I was looking at, (which I could of course, Poseidon had given me an unlimited credit card that I could use my entire life, 'this is only for important things,' he had said, 'which is everything you want, my boy'. I had used it for my extra classes to get my high school degree and then for my college tuition. Mom was over the moon. I had also used it to buy a car, and other things until I got a job, after that, I tried to be independent) I gave one glare to the annoying salesperson, and suddenly he was all smiles and free wine. I raised one eyebrow and the doctor started backing away towards the door, still rambling on about how there's still so much to live for. Honestly, if I was the type to kill myself when stuff got rough, I'd be dead about 50 times over. As soon as he was gone I walked over to the door, eyes peeled for anything remotely suspicious looking. I shut it with a click and quickly walked over to Annabeth. "Wise girl, what are you talking about?" She didn't answer me, shaking her head again and again, mouthing the word 'no'. I tried again, "What curse? Are you cursed? What do you mean, Artemis? Athena? Tell me what's going on." I was seriously starting to worry now, whenever the gods were involved, it was never anything good. They acted like a bunch of 5 year olds who had just been elected president. Annabeth started off in a shaky voice; "I forgot about this one completely, but there was this story about a demigod, a long time ago, back in the Greek empire, he was a son of Athena, and he fell in love with one of the hunters of Artemis while they were camping in a forest near his house. He, he, kissed her, and so she broke her vow to Artemis. When Artemis found out she was so angry that a son of Athena had 'cursed' one of her 'daughters' that she set a curse upon all future daughters of Athena." Her voice was still a little bit shaky, but she now seemed surer of herself. "It said that every daughter of Athena who fell in love with the man she would have children with, before she was 13, because that was the age of the maiden who broke her vow, would somehow have many, terrible complications during her pregnancy."
Annabeth's POV
By the time I finished my little story, Percy was practically seething with rage. He looked worse than that time Conner had painted the entire Poseidon cabin pink, and in the process had found a box of my birth control tablets, which he had promptly gone and displayed to the whole camp. He got this fire in his eyes, the sea green colour that I had grown to love was still tinted with red, but they looked so much more determined than before. He suddenly pulled me towards him and gave me a fierce kiss, "Nothing else is going to happen to you, don't worry." He looked at me with a hard, serious look in his eyes. "Stay in the hospital and don't go anywhere. I mean it Annabeth, stay here until I come back, who knows what else the curse could be doing." I had a million things I wanted to say to him. I wanted to tell him that he couldn't tell me what to do, that I knew how to take of our baby, that I wanted to come with him, wherever he was going, that I would go where the hell I wanted, but most importantly, I just wanted to tell him that I loved him. And so I did. He smiled at me, albeit a little forced, it was a warm smile, and it gave me confidence in whatever he was going to do. He then turned on his heel and walked out of my room, his long powerful strides covering the distance in just three steps. Just as he had rounded the corner I called out, "Seaweed Brain?" His head reappeared around the door. "Don't die, yeah?" He laughed and his head disappeared again. "I try."
A/N: What is Percy gonna do? I tried to make it a little bit angst-y, as you can (hopefully) see, but also as you can (hopefully not) see, I'm not very good at it. So this story will have it's share of twists and ups and downs and stuff but I'll try to make it like not depressing or anything… It's not really my style exactly.
Hey… So yeah basically no one replied to the question I asked in the last chapter so there goes my chances of being one of those cool fanfiction authors who like rule the site… I'm talking about you PiperElizabethMcLean and LiveLaughLoveTogether13, and like loads more…. I don't know them personally so maybe that was a bit creepy to mention them in my A/N, (Do I need like their permission or something?, sorry x) but I'm sure you guys will have read one of their stories, or one of the other cool authors who I have favourited (It would take way to long to list them all, but they are all AMAZING) Anyway, it's pretty clear that I'm just trying to add on more words now so I can tell myself that this chapter is longer than it is, so I'm just gonna say bye! As always, please review/fav/follow for moreeee ! Which is coming soon, like I said at the beginning- Consider this as Part 1 of the chapter I had planned out for this one (In my head because I'm not organized enough to actually plan out my story, I write whatever comes to me, like this curse thing? Completely out of the blue! So that it why I am VERY OPEN to ANY suggestions/ideas/anything …. Okay, it's official, I am so desperate… Until next chapter…