I got a grand total of zero reviews for the last chapter. I was pretty sad. Will you review this one for me? Please?
VI.
She's sort of glad that Rachel got a fancy cave when she became the new oracle. She'd grown up being terrified of the attic, when even a trip past the stairs was nerve racking. She supposes that if you didn't know Rachel was in there, the cave would look pretty ominous and scary, but she's such great friends with the frizzy haired oracle that it feels comfortable to just walk right in.
She wants to talk to someone. It's an unusual feeling, and she hasn't felt it in a long time, but for some reason, she just has to. Normally, her first choice would be Tyson, or Grover, but neither of them are anywhere near camp, and... well, occasionally she does like talking to... other girls.
Anyways, Rachel's a pretty cool girl. Well, at least for being a mortal.
The red head is in there already, painting a picture of someone that looks a little too familiar. It's only when she fills in the eyes with an unmistakable green that she realizes it's Percy.
At first, she feels guilty for not knowing what her best friend looks like. But somehow, she overcompensates by telling herself that she's spend half a year trying to push all thoughts of Percy out of her mind, so it's okay. Also, he's the one who went and got himself kidnapped. It's his fault.
Rachel turns, slightly surprised. "Hey, A. Didn't see you there."
Her feet are still frozen to the ground. She leans a bit farther forward, scrunching her eyebrows, and examines the painting of Percy.
"He has a freckle on the left side of his nose." She brings herself back to reality.
"Okay." Rachel says, and throws a cloth over the picture.
Her green eyed friend is sitting, silently sketching out a recreation of Monet's Water Lilies in charcoal. The daughter of Athena is still seated on a squishy bean bag, and she doesn't know if she'll have the energy to get up. In the last six months, she's lost so much weight, because of her unbelievable amount of stress, and missed meals. Her once powerful muscles have been reduced to barely twigs, making even the simplest tasks difficult. Armor that fit her perfectly last July now hangs loosely around her shrunken body. She has no power in the legs that could have run miles without stopping. Everybody's noticed, and she knows it, but they use their discretion and don't say anything.
She's spent the last half of an hour thinking of what she should say to Rachel, and watching like a little girl as the art blooms from the tip of her fingers. Every time she settles on something to ask, a little voice tells her Rachel doesn't have the answer.
The little voice says that, no, Rachel doesn't know why she's as broken and sad as she is.
Rachel doesn't know where her lost hero is any better than she does, or even Jason, who's started to remember more about his past life.
Rachel is as lost as she is, but she at least has the power to move on.
"He's going to have forgotten all about us, isn't he." The words tumble out of her mouth before she can stop them. She doesn't even phrase it as a question. It seems inevitable. He won't know who she is.
"Mm."
Rachel doesn't even look up.
"Because every time something good happens, it ends. Especially if you're me. Right?" Of course, she thinks, Percy had lasted considerably longer than the others. Even Luke, the real Luke, ended so fast she feels that she never even knew him. She always imagined him the way he was before they met Hermes at his mother's house. But deep down, she had always known he had changed. He wasn't the same. Percy was always the same annoying, stupid person she'd first met. He never changed. Now he's gone, and she wonders how much his death will change him.
"Sure."
"We'll find him, right?" She needs the reassurance that they will, and that he'll be there waiting for her. She hates not knowing when the ship will be done. She hates not knowing where in California he is. She hates not being able to look at him and knowing exactly what he's thinking. She hates not knowing anything. As a girl of Cabin #, she's grown accustomed to knowing everything, and, as head counselor, knowing more than anyone else. She thinks that since Rachel has at least some insight to the the future, she'll know something that the rest of them don't. And the blond needs to know more too.
"I don't know."
Frustration fills her up, a new feeling instead of numbness or tears. Rachel won't tell her anything.
"You know, don't you. You know. Why won't you tell me? Tell me now!" She cries, feeling unreasonably angry. She watches Rachel tense up, and then observes as all her muscles slacken and the anger is sucked from her face.
Sad green eyes meet her grey ones.
"I don't. Believe me, Annabeth, if I did, you would be the first person I'd tell."
"Before Chiron?" She asks, her voice small, weakened from her sudden outburst.
"Before Chiron."
"Oh." She feels stupid and weak, and slumps back into the beanbag. It was a dumb thing to say. Whenever anyone knows anything, they call a camp meeting, and the plans are altered slightly so as to find him faster. There are also mandatory "Percy meetings", where current plans and other tidbits are shared.
"It's okay, Annabeth. I know you're stressed."
Honestly though, she past stressed.
Externally, she looks about as sane as always, and she confines most of her ridiculous thoughts to her own head.
Internally, she's gone off the deep end.
She can't even blink without seeing Percy in chains, or brutally tortured, bleeding until there's nothing left to bleed, and left by Romans, a dead corpse.
Once, she spent a whole day looking up Roman torture methods, and she can only hope that he's smart enough not to be as big of an idiot over there as he is on the east coast.
It seems like too much to hope that the Romans don't have a mini Colosseum where he can be ripped apart by live wild animals.
His personality alone could probably get him killed in two seconds flat, just for being annoying, but the fact that he's Greek just increases his odds of being viscously slaughtered in more ways than even a daughter of Athena can imagine.
"They won't do anything unspeakably horrible to him, though, right? I mean, just because he's Greek? Or if he says something dumb and they don't know him, so they take it seriously and torture him to death, right?" The words rush out of her mouth, without giving her time to think about them.
Rachel slowly shakes her head. "I don't know, Annabeth. But if they're planning on it, we'll just have to get him back before they do, won't we?"
Looking up Roman torture methods is actually really cool. What? No, I'm not insane.
:) Review!
~PurpleShadowMonster