DaughterofNike16 - I totally understand what you mean by that. They were acting a little old for their age, but I can't honestly say that it was the worst thing for a eleven/twelve and thirteen year old to do, if they're mature enough. And let's face the depressing fact; we have toddlers today who are being shoved into beauty pageants looking like hookers with flippers and hair pieces and fake eyelashes, overly tanned bodies, and clothes that even Lady Gaga or Madonna would wear.

I don't mean any of this negatively, I'm just stating the facts. I hope you're not mad at me, 'cause I love you like a friend, hon. :)

Nevertheless...

I don't own PJO, God bless, and hope you enjoy. :)

~Future

Annabeth's POV:

I coughed as the last of the putrid vile escaped me, leaving me to only heave up air.

"This is just about to get annoying," I sighed, leaning back against the wall. Percy sat on his knees next to me, smoothing my hair back behind my ears and tying it in a low pony tail.

"I think it's getting worse. Do we need to go on and leave?" He put his hand to my forehead, and I pushed it away. "You feel warm," he said, a slight glare in his eyes.

"I'm fine," I said, nausea still floating in my stomach. "I'm just…"

"Sick," he finished for me. "Wise Girl, honestly, it would be no trouble to leave. We could leave the kids here and take you to the doctor, and then I'll come back and get them after the fireworks,"

"No," I said harshly. "I'm not going to miss the fireworks. I'll be fine. I just need to get my head clear. I might go out on the water in a bit, as it does help to calm me." I smiled. "Now, go on, get out of here, check on 'em and get some dinner."

"You're not coming?"

I smiled and rolled my eyes. "I don't think it'd be smart for me to eat, Seaweed Brain. Okay? Love you," I kissed his cheek. "Now, shoo! I need to clean myself up."

I gave an award winning smile, which he appeared satisfied with.

"I'll check on you in a while," he said, walking out of the bathroom, and I sighed a sigh of relief.

I had to tell him. I had to tell him and there was no way around it.

Looks like I wasn't the only Athena daughter keeping secrets.

Suddenly, the door opened again, and I sighed. "Percy, I asked you to – Audrey?"

His nose was red, his eyes puffy, and he sat down next to me in the stall, sniffling, tears running down his cheeks. "She-she-she has can-can-cancer."

He looked at me hard in the eyes. "Why didn't you te-tell me?"

"I –" I started, when I realized that I didn't have an answer. "We just…we just didn't want to hurt you…"

"It's going to hurt me no matter who tells me!" He shrieked. "Whether it was you or Dad or Chiron or Jamie! It was going to hurt no matter what!"

He stood and stomped off. "Audrick!" I called after him, but he didn't listen. I closed my eyes and leaned back against the stall. "Zeus, why did I tell him to leave?" I said.

Percy was pretty good when it came to Audrick, when I was the clueless one, not that he could understand Hayley whatsoever. But with Audrick and Chelsea I'd always been clueless. In fact, he was the one to first figure out that Chelsea was allergic to cheese and chocolate, or that Audrick didn't like Johnny Cash but Chris Tomlin. Cheerios were a no with Audrick; Chelsea was addicted to peanut butter and Beethoven gave her a headache but she listened to him anyway.

I'd have never known that without Percy. Without him, I never would've been able to guess at the hints Chelsea was dropping about her period starting, or that Audrick liked a girl named Kellie in fourth grade. Which leaves the question; where would I be without Percy?

I coughed and opened my eyes, puking yet again into the toilet.

I hoped I'd understand this one. I really did.

Percy's POV:

I left the bathroom as Annabeth had told me to, going on my search for Hayley. It was a few minutes after I'd ran into Tommy on his way to the Dining Hall with Chelsea.

I'm not sure how I felt about him, but he wasn't anything like Clarisse, so I trusted him.

Barely.

Walking around the camp, I smiled warmly to myself, thinking and reminiscing in all the good times we'd had there.

Hayley learned to swim here on the fourth of July nearly seventeen years ago. I had still been an eighteen year old twenty years ago.

Sometimes, you forget just how fast time passes. It felt just like yesterday I was proposing to Annabeth, or going house searching.

That was a memory I was particularly fond of, and it engulfed me, dancing before my eyes, the vision of a melting road to my side.

…

The car horn honked outside of my apartment, and I looked up drowsily. 7:18…on a Saturday? "What?" I asked as if she could hear me, to which she only responded with another honk of the horn.

"Coming!" I screamed, and she either heard me or was tired of giving everyone, including herself, a head ache. Dragging on a dirty pair of jeans, some clean socks, my shoes and a short sleeved tee, I walked down the stairs and prayed for the best.

"Yes?" I asked, coming to her Honda.

"We're going house hunting, remember?" she asked my playfully, cocking an eyebrow. "Or did poor little Seaweed Brain forget?" She added in a child-like mocking voice.

"I didn't forget," I said. "I just…" it was useless, so instead I smiled and pecked her lips. I slid over the hood of her car (which I knew she would hate) and hopped into the passenger side.

"I hate it when you do that," she confirmed, turning up the radio. I smiled.

"Where to, Miss?"

"To the stars," she replied softly, grinning from ear to ear. Annabeth had fallen in love with the movie Titanic, and I'm not going to lie and say I didn't enjoy watching it. It's a great film, and I'm a sucker for a tear-jerker.

For Annabeth's sake, I mean.

I buckled my seatbelt as she pulled out of the apartment buildings and set off down Main Street. "Seriously, though," I said, "where are we looking for houses at?"

"I'm thinking a country house or two, then maybe we'll take a tour of some condos. Rachel's excited to be our guide," she smiled, and I remembered then that Rachel had decided to become a real estate agent/interior designer, and she got paid a good amount for doing it, too.

"I like the sound of a country home," I said, and she gave me an odd look. "What?" I asked defensively.

"Well, you just seem more of a city boy type, Old Percwee," and she laughed. Ellie, Katie and Travis' daughter, had started calling me that the moment she could talk (and it's not like she could say much).

"Naw, Annie," I leaned across to her seat so I was closer to her. "I've always dreamed of whistling out the back door and yelling, "Well doggies!"."

She laughed loudly, shoving me, and I laughed, even though it kind of hurt my ego.

Annabeth was a big fan of The Beverly Hillbillies and used to make me watch reruns with her all the time. I didn't mind; it gave me something to do and I got to get out of the house while Mom and Paul cared for the new baby, Emily.

I loved Em and all, I really did and do, but I couldn't stand to hear her scream all the time and know that I couldn't do anything about it.

But she was all grown up now, well, at least she was now a fraction of my age.

"So, country house first?" she asked me. I nodded and grinned, staring at the collage of road to my right.

…

"Rachel!" Annabeth smiled and wrapped her in a hug. They'd become friends some time ago, one year when we were visiting back at camp, about twenty years old or so.

"Annie," Rachel laughed. "It's good to see you, too. Percy." She nodded to me and I nodded back. Rachel and I weren't as good as friends as she and Annabeth were, but we were okay. We still talked sometimes, usually on a visit to camp, and she'd tell me about her art and how her studies at the Art Institute are going, what prophecies had been given at camp, any new quests, etc., etc.

"Rachel." I meet her eyes, and she grinned, and then led us inside. She was an intern at a real estate firm, and they were testing her skills out in the field.

"So, this house was built in 1934 by some returning soldiers. Their families lived here for generations. It's been renovated inside and out by the previous owners, and they're ready to sell. The most historical markers are still intact, which I thought would interest Annabeth a lot."

Annabeth ran her hand across an old nightstand, and then looked to me. I was still mesmerized by the entirety of the place. It was made completely of wood, with creaky floorboards that sounded like home. Artifacts decorated every inch of the place, even a framing of an early nineteen hundreds portrait of someone named John Harold, which I guessed was the soldier's father.

I could just imagine him, sitting there, smiling proudly, and imagining his own son in the war, fighting for America and its freedom from communism.

"Percy?" Annabeth snapped in front of my face.

"It's-it's amazing," I stuttered, shocked at being drawn out of my world. I glanced at Rachel. "How much?"

"Well, it's, uh…let me show you the rest of the house first." She said, giving a completely false smile. It's a good thing she dropped out of law school. She wouldn't make a good lawyer.

We smiled back, though, following her up one flight of stairs out of what seemed like hundreds.

"That means it's expensive," I whispered to Annabeth about halfway up the staircase, acting like I was fanning money.

"Well, duh, Seaweed Brain," she laughed quietly. "I never said I was a cheap girl." She winked, and I held in my laugh.

Rachel showed us the master bedroom (which needed some major renovations. I thought she'd said it was remodeled. When, that should've been my next question), followed by the master bath and two extra bedrooms on that floor. There was a nursery built in on the third floor, with three cribs already installed.

I'll be the first to admit that it wasn't catching my eye, any of it. Nothing just seemed to fit. It was all wrong, all not Annabeth and me. The cribs installed, well, that just took away the fun of buying our own, if we had kids of course. Plus, the house was much too big.

Maybe Annabeth was right. Maybe I am a bit of a city boy. However, I'd rather live in a crowded apartment than a four-floor, story, whatever house with too many breakable artifacts.

I didn't earn the nickname Seaweed Brian for nothing.

A few minutes later, after being shown the kitchen, dinning room, living room and den, Rachel finally led us back to the front door and clasped her hands, smiling approvingly. "Well," she said, "what do ya think?"

Annabeth and I exchanged a glance. "It was –"I began, but Annabeth stopped me.

"It's just a little too much," Annabeth said exactly what I was going to. "We need something a bit smaller, a two, maybe three story. A little closer to the city is what we need. Goode Elementary and the high school are too far away from us. And, for another thing, Percy and I are so clumsy we'd end up breaking everything in here."

She smiled at me.

Sometimes it amazed me at how good Annabeth was at correlating with my emotions. It made me feel almost special, in a childlike way.

Rachel sighed, relieved. "Good. I wouldn't be able to stand painting in a place like this. If you hire me to paint, not saying that you will but – ugh, never mind."

Annabeth smiled. "If we ever need something done with a really steady hand, I'll give you a call. So, the next house?"

"Right, right!" Rachel said, scurrying us out of the door. "This next one, it's perfect! Ooh, no, wait, it's so perfect we're going back to the city first and looking at the condo there and then we'll go to the perfect one!"

She spoke so fast I'd barely enough time to even organize it in my brain.

She'd drove us with the company's vehicle, so we got in the back seat and Rachel got in front, starting up her engine and clicking her seatbelt into place. Rachel took off before I even closed my door.

We arrived at the condo maybe twenty minutes later. It was huge, I'd give it that. Had a full balcony with which you could see half of Manhattan. It was spacious and the kitchen was wonderful. The furniture was top of the line, and the kitchen was already stock piled with all the necessary items.

Annabeth fell in love immediately, her eyes gleaming with hope. Was this the house? Could it be?

"How much is it a month?" I asked Rachel, opening the fridge. Not to find something to eat, but to think. I had to be the only person that ever did that. It helped, though, so what could I be angry about?

"About, um…" she bit her lip and twirled her hair.

"Rachel…" I said slowly.

"It's about three thousand a month, give or take a thousand…maybe two…"

I looked at Annabeth. Her heart was crushed. "We don't have the money, with the wedding and all…" I trailed off as she broke her glance with me and stared hard as a rock at the ground.

I sighed and ran a hand through my hair. "Let's see the next one," I tried to say in an upbeat voice. I failed horribly. "I'm sure it'll be better than this one."

Annabeth didn't seem so sure, and her look was ice cold as she followed Rachel out of the condo complex.

The car ride was short and dreadfully boring. The radio stopped working, and we had only a light fuzz as company. Annabeth sat with her arms crossed, glaring crossly at the seat.

"Annie," I tried to reason, "it's just that we don't have that kind of money."

"We could," she spat.

"Yeah, you know, if we didn't have to eat or needed to bathe or to have electricity."

"It's not my fault we need those things."

I resisted the urge to snort.

Annabeth sighed. "I'm sorry. I'm just thinking about something."

"What?"

She bit the tip of her thumb. "Well, it's just, the future, I guess. I've been having this weird dream and…" she avoided my gaze and turned to face the house we were parked in front of. Her frown turned into a wild, Leo-Valdez-worthy grin, and she jumped from the car to get a better look.

"We'll take it!" she said, and I knew she meant it.

It wasn't bad, either. There was a pool in the backyard, a gorgeous upstairs and attic, a basement fully equipped with man-cave qualities, the kitchen made Annabeth die and the master bedroom was sheer genius. It was as if Athena herself had built this.

That wasn't even the best part. It was only 115,000, after taxes, just under out budget of 125,000. That left us money to buy new furniture and still have enough to pay our first month's bill.

"Where do we sign?" She asked Rachel, clicking a pen.

Rachel beamed. "Yes! My first sale. You'll have to come back to the office with me, and I'll contact the owner with your negotiations, and you should have an answer within the next twenty-four to forty-eight hours."

Annabeth's face was that of a small child standing under the Christmas tree on Christmas morning before her parents got up; the anxiety of wanting to know what was under the decorative wrapping.

A sparkle danced in her eyes, and the sight of a melting road reflected in her irises.

…

The vision melted back to reality, Chiron standing in front of me. Night had fallen fast, and the stars twinkled in the sky.

"Percy? You're awfully far into the forest."

So I hadn't stopped walking.

"I was thinking," I said simply, turning on my heels.

"I think you're forgetting something." Chiron held up a card and pushed it into my hands. "Give this to Annabeth for me." I felt the card questioningly and a sickening realization hit me. "Now, get going, you're going to miss the fireworks."

I took off without another word.