Now, doesn't the beginning of this look familiar... Kudos to the few of you who spotted that at the end of the last chapter!

Disclaimer: I own nothing.

Enjoy!

Annabeth lay sprawled in a bush with a very definitely male body resting on top of her. She cried out in pain and Percy sprang to his feet. "I'm so sorry, let me help you up, are you okay?" He extended his arm.

She closed her eyes, wincing as she shifted her weight slightly. Opening them again, she glared at him. "You landed on my arm, now move." She pushed herself up, ignoring the hand he extended while trying to forget about the thorns that scratched at her arms and legs, as well as her throbbing limb. He stepped back, hands held up in surrender as she collected her clothes and began to shrug on her clothes as quickly as possible while hurting herself as little as possible. As it was, she was achieving neither.

He strode over to where she was struggling and pulled her coat over her shoulders quickly. She turned on him, no longer making eye contact, and hissed, "Leave me alone!"

His eyebrows crumpled together. "Annabeth, I don't understand, I thought you knew, I thought that's what we-" She was striding off in the direction of the fields, scarf wrapped hastily around her neck and her jumper draped over her arm, leaving him talking to thin air. He followed. "Come on Annabeth, let's just talk..." She ignored him, striding furiously towards where her brothers were kicking Percy's football around.

"Bobby! Matthew! We're going. Now!" she shouted over the wind that was picking up as she neared them. They turned to her and pouted, starting to whine about leaving, obviously having forgotten their previous promise to Percy. "I said, NOW!" she roared, her voice cracking slightly, emotion colouring every syllable. The boys exchanged glances - they barely ever saw their sister like this, but when they did, they did what she wanted, when she wanted - and followed her docilely, scampering along to keep up.

Percy's voice piped up from behind them. "Um, Annabeth, can I have my ball back?"

Annabeth grabbed the ball from where it was clutched in Matthew's arms, whirling to face Percy and hurling it at him with all her might. With her left arm. "Have your damn ba- argh!" she cried out in pain.

"Annabeth, are you-" he began in concern.

"Do you not understand 'leave me alone'?" she screamed over the wind that was whipping her hair around her face. "It's probably the first time a girl has ever said it to you, so maybe I should spell it out. I don't want to see your face again. Go away and don't come back. Has everyone always loved you before? Well surprise, fucker, you've just met the exception that proves the rule." By now, her voice was low, yet still somehow distinct over the gale blowing. She heaved a sigh and looked away over the fields and said resignedly, "Get the hell away from me. Go and find someone else 'who just wants a bit of fun'."

Grabbing each of her brothers' hands, she marched off to the gate nearby that lead out onto the road, head held high, jaw clenched. Silence reigned for the first few minutes, then Matthew quietly muttered, "The weather's not that bad. You don't have to worry about us so much that you almost pull our arms out of our sockets to make sure we don't get wet. A little rain never hurt anyone."

Bobby shook his head, whispering back to Matthew, "I don't think she's worried about us. I think Percy upset her." Both boys turned to look at her as they walked along. Bobby tugged on her coat sleeve. "Annabeth, are you okay?" he asked softly.

She slowed, then stopped, looking down at the two earnest faces on either side of her. She smiled sadly, her eyes damp with unshed tears. "Not really, right now, no." They hugged her waist tightly from either side and she gently put an arm around each. "I will be soon though, with you guys at my side. I just need to be sad for the moment, okay?" They nodded, put their hands back in hers, walking back to their grandmother's in a comfortable silence.

Just as they reached the house, the heavens opened and rain poured down on the trio. Heather opened the door, ushering them in quickly and urging the boys to change into dry clothes. "Are you okay, Annabeth?" Heather looked in concern at her granddaughter.

She ran her hand over her hair and forehead, shading her eyes for a minute from the world, before shaking her head that no, she wasn't okay. Giving her Gran a teary-eyed smile, she dashed up the stairs with her stuff, narrowly avoiding the boys who were rushing back down the stairs.

Once safely inside the room she called her own at her Gran's house, Annabeth dumped her bags against the door and stumbled over to the bed against the far wall. Picking up the book on the table, she opened to where she had left off the previous week, poring over it as if it held all the secrets to life. She read the page once. Then again. And again.

The words swum in front of her eyes, the tears that filled them exacerbating the effect of her dyslexia. She gave up with a groan, slamming it down on the covers next to her and resisting the urge to throw it against the opposite wall. Her arms lifted to cover her eyes.

Suddenly, she jumped up, surreptitiously wiping the few droplets that escaped her eyes before they could form real tears. No, he didn't deserve her tears, or her time wasted wallowing over him. With sharp, jerky movements, she walked back to her bag and began to dig under all her books in search of her phone.

Of course, things were never that easy.

First Annabeth gave herself a paper cut, then her hand got stuck and she tore a hole in the lining of the backpack. When she finally managed to get her hand free, it jerked from underneath the books, her knuckles whacking painfully into the door and the momentum knocking her over from where she had been crouched. And she still hadn't found her phone.

For a few moments, she lay there, half sprawled against the door, pitying herself, and hoped that someone would have heard the racket she had made and come and check that she was alright. She just wanted someone to care.

A few moments. Silence. No-one was coming.

She sighed and picked herself up off the floor, finding her phone resting in the side pocket of her bag. She wandered back to her perch on the bed, legs crossed, and messaged someone she knew would care.

AnnabethChase: Hey.

AnnabethChase: If you're around, I could really use someone to talk to.

She waited for a few moments, tapping her nail against the screen in a nervous gesture. Just as she was about to throw her phone down on the bed, he responded.

OwenSawyer: Oh sweetheart, what's wrong?

AnnabethChase: It's... just been a day, you know?

OwenSawyer: Not really. Why don't you tell me about it?

She mulled over what she wanted to tell him, considering she hadn't exactly told him about her slightly-more-than-friendship with Percy. She decided on sticking as close to the truth as possible.

AnnabethChase: Some people just aren't what you think.

His response was immediate.

OwenSawyer: What do you mean by that

AnnabethChase: I'm not going to go into every dirty detail, but I found out one of my friends wasn't who I thought they were today.

OwenSawyer: Oh

OwenSawyer: I'm so sorry, it's never nice to find that out. It always feels like a betrayal, doesn't it?

AnnabethChase: Yes.

AnnabethChase: And I'm at the point where I'm starting to question whether it was my fault, whether I missed something, whether I'm not good enough.

OwenSawyer: No! Don't say that, don't start to think that! It's a long, dark path if you go that way. No, sweetheart, I'm sure it's their fault. Sometimes people just aren't who they say they are and we fall prey to that. The only bad thing that says about you is that you're too trusting, too sweet, that you haven't let the world beat you down yet or make you cynical. If that's the only bad thing that can be said, you're doing pretty well.

OwenSawyer: Anyway, that's what I'm here for; to beat all of those nasty people away.

AnnabethChase: This is starting to sound like a fairy tale, with a princess in a tower and her knight keeping the world far away from her.

OwenSawyer: I thought it was the dragon who kept everyone away?

AnnabethChase: Does it matter? Anyway, you'd never do anything like that to me would you?

OwenSawyer: Never.

OwenSawyer: And how dare you ask me that question?

AnnabethChase: Prithee, milord, I never meant to cast aspersions on your good intentions.

OwenSawyer: Humph. You're forgiven.

OwenSawyer: But prithee? Really?

...

Distracted as she was from her distress over her and Percy's (lack of a) relationship, Annabeth was unaware of the hushed telephone call going on downstairs.

"Look, I don't know, that's all the boys told me."

"So let me get this straight," Annabeth's father's voice trickled out of the phone that was clutched tightly to Heather's ear as she hovered by her kitchen table, keeping an eye on her grandsons playing in the next room. "Annabeth's been meeting a boy in the park every week for the last few weeks when she was supposed to be looking after the boys, and neither you nor she told me?"

"Frederick!" Heather warned exasperatedly. "Not the important bit here! And even if it was, she wasn't doing anything dangerous, she kept an eye on the boys all the time and it's what she should be doing at that age."

She heard a huff at the other end of the line. "Fine. Anyway, so she came home and she was almost crying and the boys had said that she and this 'friend'-" she could almost hear the way he sceptically raised his eyebrows "- had been shouting at each other. Is that right?"

"Yes. Something about 'having fun', but the boys weren't very clear. All they knew was that the boy had made her very upset."

"What was the boy's name?"

"Frederick..." she cautioned. "Don't go interfering at her college now - she would hate that."

"I know, I know. I'd just like to not have to refer to him as 'the boy'."

"Percy."

"Percy. Hmm. Well, thank you for telling me, Heather. I'll have a chat with her tonight about it."

"Wait! No! Don't do that. She made it fairly clear when she got home that she didn't want anyone to talk to her, and if she wanted you to know about this guy, she would have already told you about it. If you spoke to her about it, I think that she'd think you were just interfering."

"Oh." He sounded deflated. "I see - you're right, of course."

"Just be aware that she might be a little more delicate than normal. It's not the end of the world though - she hasn't known him long, I think, and people that age fall in and out of relationships all the time."

"Yes. Yes. Thank you, but I really must go now. Work to do," he murmured distractedly, before hanging up. She shook her head fondly. Fathers really didn't do well when they found out their little girls were growing up.

...

Dinner that evening was inevitably awkward. Annabeth, despite being cheered up fractionally by OwenSawyer, was still despondent and adamant in not letting Percy get her down. As a result, she was full of brittle, overly cheerful smiles and tension, snapping occasionally at the smallest thing that annoyed her, before settling her ruffled feathers. Her gran acted similarly, determined not to bring up the elephant in the room, while carefully watching over her favourite granddaughter. The twins, who could usually be relied upon to supply a steady stream of chatter, did their best but their conversation about the latest game that they wanted seemed overly loud. Even their youthful voices couldn't drown out the tense atmosphere.

Annabeth's night wasn't much better. After an evening of attempting her homework (of which she got most of it wrong), she tossed and turned under her duvet, sleep only claiming her in the small hours of the morning - sleep with too many dreams and not enough rest. So when she rose, washed and made her way to school, "Gosh, don't you look like the walking dead?" was not exactly the first thing she wanted to hear out of her friend's mouth.

She turned away from her locker, where she had been determinedly searching for her chemistry books that she knew she had put in there just yesterday, to face Silena. "Gee, thanks for building up my self-esteem so well. And you're normally so tactful too."

Silena blushed lightly, the rose that tinted her cheeks matching the top she was wearing perfectly. "Sorry." She tucked a strand of hair that had escaped her ponytail into a clip. "I just meant - are you alright? Do you want to go home and get some rest, or talk to someone?"

Annabeth puffed out her cheeks and stood, giving up on her search for her chemistry book; she would just have to share. "I'm... fine. Well, no, I'm not exactly great, but I just didn't sleep well last night."

The other blonde haired girl side-eyed her, then shrugged, flicking her hair over her shoulder. "Well, if you say so. Come on, Charlie's waiting on me," she caught her hand, dragging her away. Annabeth finally managed to break free after a few moments of struggling.

"Wait, I have to close my locker first!" she protested, met only with Silena's impatient stare and her tapping foot. Before long both girls were entering the room where they normally hung out, Silena dramatically flinging herself across the threshold and running to meet her boyfriend, arms flung wide. While the two lovers enacted something that might as well have been out of a film, drawing all eyes, Annabeth stood at the door, wondering where to sit.

The boys had been sitting with them for long enough now that everyone had their preferred seat in the classroom, and no-one messed with the set up. Unfortunately, her place was next to Percy, who was apparently engrossed in Silena and Beckendorf's little display, although she saw him shift uncomfortably when she looked at him, as though he was aware of her gaze. After recent events, she was decidedly against sitting next to him, no matter the stir it would cause. She would just have to refuse to answer all questions her move provoked.

Resolved, Annabeth went and sat next to Thalia on the floor, a space that normally belonged to Travis Stoll. Thalia raised an eyebrow at her but said nothing. Conversation continued as normal - mostly complaints about the day ahead - and no-one commented about the seating change. Until Travis arrived.

He strolled in the door, Connor following just behind, so closely that, when Travis stopped in the centre of the circle after noticing his space was occupied, his brother walked straight into the back of him. Travis flicked an annoyed glance back over his shoulder, but quickly refocused his gaze on Annabeth. "Huh. Uh… What..." He scratched the back of his neck as he stuttered, until Connor clearly became fed up with being blocked from sitting down. Grabbing his brother's head and forcefully turning it in the direction of Annabeth's usual seat, he shoved him out of the way, muttering unflattering epithets under his breath.

At the discovery that the space was between Percy and Katie, Travis' smile widened dramatically and he happily tripped his way over the table, plonking himself and his bags down. "Hey," he drawled suggestively, slinging an arm over Katie's shoulder. Shrugging him off disgustedly, Katie glanced over at Annabeth, giving her a look that clearly communicated why would you do this to me? Looking as regretful as she could, Annabeth tried to apologise but clearly nothing could compensate for the arm that had once again found itself draped across her shoulders. Twisting her mouth, Annabeth allowed her gaze to slip past Katie's, and then grey clashed with sea green.

His eyes were unreadable, in the second that they made contact with hers. He carried on staring unperturbed, but she quickly glanced away, casting her eyes to the floor. Not ready to deal with that yet.

Their usual hubbub, which had died down in the awkward moment when Travis walked in, began again, everyone relaxing into conversations as they realised there was nothing more to see. Annabeth even began a quiet discussion with Thalia about politics (which the dark haired girl claimed it was too early for but then proved herself wrong a few minutes later by a particularly impassioned rant about social services). Soon enough, the bell rang, indicating the beginning of first period, and everyone shuffled to gather their belongings. Annabeth and Thalia sat still together for a few moments. Annabeth watched Percy leave the room without a word.

Once the others had mostly left, the two best friends moved to get their things. Thalia suddenly spoke up. "It was nice to talk to you again - we haven't spoken just the two of us in a while." Annabeth hmm-ed in agreement. "It was a surprise though, you sitting next to me." Annabeth looked up, to find Thalia regarding her calmly. She didn't respond. Thalia returned to packing her bag. "You know, it's funny," she noted, "Percy didn't seem too eager to sit down today either. He came in and had a quiet but seemingly determined conversation with Beckendorf, and he gestured to the door several times. He seemed quite put out when Beck sat him down in his usual spot." Annabeth stopped altogether, watching her best friend stand by the door. "I wonder why that is, hmm?" With an inquiring eyebrow, she left.

Annabeth huffed out a semblance of a laugh - Thalia was known as a force to be reckoned with, loud and brash, happy to say it how it was, but it was really when Thalia was quiet - as she just had been - that she was at her most dangerous. They probably wouldn't discuss it any further between the two of them, but she had just been informed that Thalia was very much aware that Annabeth had not taken her advice with regards to Percy, and had faced the consequences.

She sighed, lifting her bag onto her shoulder. At least the first meeting was over with.

Sorry, not very exciting, I know. I also know the next few bits might tend towards angst, more than fluff, so I'm trying to keep them down, so this doesn't become an entirely depressing story. That's said, it is coming. Thank you for reading xx