[A/N: I apologize if I took so long before updating. You guys know the reason why. The wedding was incredible. :D

readwritereview: Nope, it wasn't. I just thought how Percy would say that line and that's what came into my mind. I think it's better if you hire both of them. I'll get Travis and you get Connor, what do you say? :D I totally like that song. I just think that David Guetta is totally incredible. And I feel sorry for the scissor. Kidding! :D

You're not the only one. I grew up with people telling me that I act and talk older than my real age. But there a couple of times when I'm totally filled with energy and goes around rolling on the floor like a freaking kid. Sometimes I wonder if I'm ADHD, too. (Hmm. Maybe I'm a demigod. :D )

CimFan: Um, really? Worse than the spoiler in The Mark of Athena? I doubt that. :D

thggymnast998: Sort of. I like doing that to readers. And don't die; this story's not done yet :D

R3D N3BuLOS17Y: The wedding was awesome. :D

Percabeth37: What food? Can I have it? :D Thank you for reading. :D

Juzko Disco: You read this at your school? You didn't get caught, did you? :D

blondee-boo: Thank you for understanding. And about your question . . . MMM, just wait. :D

PJOWisegirlandSeaweedBrain: Um, is your phone okay? I apologize for making you drop it and tell your I'm sorry for making you freak her out. :D

Percabethfever: Aphrodite didn't just transport Percy because she knew that they have to find their way back to each other on their own. Some of the Campers will appear soon, so just wait for them. And, um, I guess you mean you love the story? :D

Potterjay all the Way: Cool, we have the same favorite bands! :D

gingerbeibs10: I'm actually writing original stories. I'M THINKING ABOUT POSTING MY NOVELS HERE, WHAT DO YOU THINK? :D

ThreeBulletsAtTheDangerParad e: I'm actually starting to like My Chemical Romance. And blink-182? Um, is that a band? And hey, you haven't added me yet! :D

Goddess of the Dark Flame: Thank you. :D

Kate: I apologize for making you cry. And why is your life crappy? And what drink was that? Just curious! :D

Jahgo: Thank you. Honestly, I get my inspiration from the books I've read, the music I like and, of course, from the love of my life. My girlfriend. I have incredible taste? Wow. Didn't know that. I'm feeling proud, actually, because of all of you. And the saga I'm writing? I hope it gets published. :D

Crystal: I'm sorry but I'm like Rick. I LOVE CLIFFHANGERS! :d

Guest: I mentioned before that Percy doesn't have the curse of Achilles for this story. I'll be glad to read those million quotes! :D

FoxyChick: I have no idea who you are and your reviews are kind of making me feel uncomfortable. I have a girlfriend - something you already know about. And, um, gator?

Again, I want to say I'm sorry for making you wait for a couple of days. This chapter's not exactly very long but I hope you'll still like it. Don;t forget to leave a review! :D


WISE GIRL'S SEAWEED BRAIN
Chapter 27: KNOW THY ENEMY

ANNABETH

I was tired of crying.

I swore to myself that no more tears were going to escape my eye, but every time I saw the picture . . . well, I couldn't help but bawl my eyes out. At the beginning, there were a lot of them flowing continuously down my cheeks but as time went by, my eyes seemed to had dried up and refused to produce any more moisture.

It didn't hurt. It was beyond painful. Whenever I viewed that photograph in my head, I found myself shaking. The feeling was the same when I broke up with Percy. This one's worse on its own way.

Before, I knew that what I was feeling was a product of what I did. This one was connected to that, but a whole lot agonizing. There. I said it. My heart and head were both messes. I couldn't think straight. I knew if my mother knew about this, she wouldn't be proud of me.

I was at Camp, trying to clear my head. I knew Percy would be looking for me. There's a good chance he'd be here sooner. I wasn't sure if I was ready to talk to him so I went out of my cabin to the Arena to release some anger. I didn't want to end up gutting Percy. I still loved the guy.

On my way, I passed Clarisse. She eyed me suspiciously and I got the feeling that she knew what was going on. After the war, Clarisse's attitude had changed. She wasn't much of a troublemaker as she was, mostly because she had a boyfriend now, Chris Rodriguez – the demigod she'd rescued from the Labyrinth. Chris was, for a while, not right in the mind. Until Mr. D cured him. Since then, Clarisse didn't spend much time beating other campers up. She was still the same Clarisse – tough, a fighter at heart and a bit of a . . . tomboy.

"Prissy called," she said when I got close enough to hear.

So that's how she knew.

"He Iris-messaged me, asking if you were here," Clarisse continued. "You weren't, that time, and I have no idea when you got in. He asked me to inform him when you're here. Should I?" she asked.

I sat down on one of the benches. Clarisse sat down next to me. For a moment, we just sat there in silence. "No," I said.

"Would you like to share what happened?" she asked, concern lacing her voice. I looked at her, checking if she was indeed Clarisse La Rue, and not some doppelganger. She smirked, seeing my expression. "You know, Annabeth, if I kill every single person who gives me that look, there won't be any Camper left in here."

"Sorry," I said lamely. Clarisse just shook her head, not saying anything. For a while, I thought whether I should tell her what happened. I didn't want to, but I knew I needed to. If I tried and kept it to myself, I wasn't sure what would happen to me.

I told her.

Clarisse, for once, kept her mouth shut and just listened to me talking. I kept my eyes trained on a point and avoided eye contact with her. I didn't trust myself enough. I knew that if I looked at her, I'd start crying again.

I was wrong.

Even with my eyes trained on something, I found myself crying again. The pain of it all was too much. Seeing the photo of Percy and Samantha, and knowing what they did, was too much for me to handle. I started crying again.

"That Jackson," Clarisse growled, cracking her knuckles. "I swear if he shows his face here, I'll beat him into a pulp."

I wiped the tears from my eyes. "No, Clarisse. You can't hurt him. I'm still in love with Percy."

Clarisse scoffed. "He's not the only one who I want to crush right now, Annabeth Chase."

I frowned. "What?"

"Not what, daughter of Athena, who."

"Who then?"

"You," she said, looking into my eyes.

"What?" I asked, flabbergasted.

"Let me ask you one thing, Annabeth," Clarisse asked, stopping me. "Who was the one who let broke up with Jackson? Who was the one that encouraged him to discover what he really was feeling for that Samantha girl? Who threw him like he was nothing but garbage – "

"I didn't!" I protested, growing more upset. I knew I was wrong trying to talk to Clarisse and what she was saying was proving me right. "I broke up with him because I wanted him to have a chance to figure things out – "

"Look where it got you," she said, cutting me off yet again. "I'm not saying that Jackson didn't do anything wrong. He did. And that's why I want to sucker punch his sorry face, but you do know that this all started with you, right?"

"Do you really have to remind me that, Clarisse? I do know that this happened because what I did – "

"And do you even understand the gravity of what you did to him?" she challenged. "Annabeth, you're the last person in this planet that I thought would play the victim card, and don't get me wrong; you are. But so is Jackson. He's a victim of this situation as you are, more actually. He was hurt by circumstances and by the very person whom he thought would never do that to him. And he got pushed around by people who like to think that they know what's best for him and make his choices for him."

I was speechless. Clarisse had hit all the right spots. It all started when I broke up with him. I told him I wanted him to find out what he was feeling for Samantha – and that was true – but I realized that a bigger part of it was because I didn't think I could stand the thought of sharing his heart with anybody, or the fact that there was a good chance that Percy might just abandon me in the end, so I made the choice myself and broke up with him without even pausing to consider what he would feel. I did what I did for myself.

"I'm not taking his side on this one," Clarisse continued. "But I'm not taking yours either. Both of you made mistakes, which is natural for people. We make mistakes, Annabeth. And most of the time we make them with the people that we never want to hurt. But that doesn't mean we have to be ruled by guilt over it. What matters is how we face what we did and find a way to make sure that the mistake we made counts. From what you told me, Percy was trying to make up for what he did – "

"Oh, he wasn't," I said with a wave of dismissal. A while ago I agreed with her, but now I didn't. Percy wasn't trying to correct hat he did. He lied to me about it.

"He didn't want it to do with you at first, remember?" Clarisse asked. "But you were too eager to sleep with him – "

"I knew I shouldn't have told you about that. I knew you were just going to use it on me."

"Yes, I am. I'm going to use it to get inside that thick skull of yours," said Clarisse. "Let me ask you one thing, Annabeth Chase, is it really such a big deal that Jackson had sex with another girl? For Zeus's sake, you weren't even together when it happened! If Chris did that because I broke up with him and hurt him, I'm going to punch his face and beat myself up, because I knew it was on me. It was just sex."

"It wasn't just the sex itself, Clarisse!" I yelled. Some of the few campers who were at Camp inched closer to where we were, clearly eavesdropping. But I didn't care. "I'm mad for the fact that he lied to me about it!"

"Because he didn't want to hurt you!"

"And that's supposed to make it okay?"

"No," Clarisse said firmly. "But put yourself in his position, Annabeth. What would you have done? Would you have told him?"

"Of course!"

"Easy for you to say; you're not in his position. He lost you because of some selfish reason – and don't tell me I'm wrong because I know I'm not. And you went back to him, right after all of this happened. Do you think he'd want to lose you all over again? Jackson was hurt; it's only natural for him to find comfort and that Samantha girl gave it to him. You were the one who pushed them together, because you are some freaking daughter of the wisdom goddess who knows what's best for everyone just because you're smart. And you're problem, Chase? You don't listen to anyone. You think you know everything there is to know about everyone but you don't. You're clueless. Just because Athena's your mother doesn't guarantee that you're right about every single decision you make."

I didn't have an answer to that one. From the moment I found out that the wisdom goddess is my mother, I'd always felt like I can solve anything thrown at me. My life is consisted of acquiring knowledge and using what I gained and turning it into something useful. It's in my nature to know things but hearing what Clarisse said, I found out that when it coems to life, I couldn't just apply what I know and hope for the best.

"I'm a daughter of the war god. You are, too, as Atehna's the goddess of war. You know what's one of the good things about war?" she asked. "It teaches us how to fight for what we believe in, and from what I can see, you're not fighting."

Clarisse then rummaged through her jacket pocket and brought out a small object. I didn't know what it was until she she shifted her hand and the sun hit it, making it glisten. It was a mirror.

"Since when did you start bringing mirror?" I asked out of curiosity.

"If you ever tell anybody about this, I will kill you," she threatened. Clarisse handed me the mirror. I looked at her in confusion. "Look," she instructed. I didn't know what she was up to but the expression on her face made me follow. I looked in the mirror. "Who do you see?"

What I saw was a blonde, gray-eyed girl whose eyes were red from crying. She looked terrible. "Myself," I said.

"Now there is your real enemy, Chase," Clarisse said. "It isn't Samantha or Jackson. It's the girl staring back at you in the mirror. I think it's about time you come to terms with her."

I was about to look back when the sky darkened, creating shadows. There was a gust of cold wind and I shivered. Clarisse stiffened and drew her sword. My hand went for my belt where I was keeping my dagger but found it wasn't there. I remembered I left it in my bunk.

A shadow that appeared to be thicker than the rest appeared in front of me. Before Clarisse could lunge and attack, a skinny teenage guy with messy black hair that was very much like Percy's, dark eyes and pale skin materialized. A skull ring was on his left hand.

Nico di Angelo, son of Hades.

"What are you doing here?" I asked.

He straightened and dusted himself. "I could ask you the same thing," he said. "What are you doing here when Percy needs you?"

I sighed. "Look Nico, I know you're friends with him but – "

"Sally's been trying to reach you," he informed me.

I frowned. "Why?"

Nico looked me in the eyes. I found his unsettling. "Annabeth," he said in a quiet voice. "Percy's been in an accident."

The following evenst were nothing but a blur.

I could recall having difficulty in breathing, grabbing Nico's hand and forcing him to tell me what happened, and telling Clarisse that I had to go.

Shadow-traveling was unpleasant, but I didn't care much about it. All I wanted was to find out how Percy was doing. In a flash, Nico and I emerged from an alley near the hospital where Percy was being treated.

I rushed through the glass doors, used the signs to find where the emergency room was and found myself in a corridor where Paul and Sally were sitting. Paul was holding Sally's hand and was rubbing her back. Samantha was also there, which kind of ticked me off, but I put it aside. All that mattered was Percy.

"Sally," I said in a soft voice. I'd been crying for almost a whole day now and my head was hurting. Nico burst into where we were panting, his face covered in sweat. Sally turned to me. Sally was gritting her teeth, obviously forcing her tears back, but when she saw me, she broke down and ran to me, pulling me into a bone-crushing hug.

"Oh, Annabeth. Percy's . . ." she said but wasn't able to finish. She just held on to me, crying.

"How is he?" I asked Paul over Sally's shoulder.

Paul shook his head. "It's bad, Annabeth."

Sally broke away from our embrace. "His car was hit by a speeding truck. Witnesses said that his car just suddenly went out of lane and spun, hitting two more before stopping in the middle of the intersection. That's when the truck hit him." Sally then looked me in the eyes and I saw the worry I was having reflected in hers. "He was on his way to see you."

My knees buckled and I slowly fell to the floor. So Percy got into an accident because of me? When will I stop hurting him?

"The doctors had been working on him for nearly an hour now," Paul informed. "We'd been trying to reach you but we couldn't. That's why I called Nico to look for you." Of course they couldn't; I turned off my phone as soon as I arrived at Camp.

Just then, the door of the emergency room opened and a man walked out. Sally, Paul, Samantha, Nico and I all rushed forward to him. "How is he?" asked Sally.

"Is he going to be okay?" asked Paul.

"Can I see him?" I asked.

The doctor removed his mask, revealing a tanned face. His name plate informed that he was Doctor Clarington. "Your son received fatal injuries, Ma'am," he said to Sally. My hand flew to my mouth, muffling the cry that was escaping. Sally leaned to Paul while he supported her in remaining upright. I saw Nico holding Samantha's arm in the corner of my eyes.

"He has a fracture on his skull, three broken ribs, a broken leg and a metal punctured his stomach. Also, your son has severe brain hemorrhages. It was cutting off the supply of oxygen to his brain. Another thing was it seemed that your son had been attacked. There were bite marks all over his neck and shoulder." I didn't even blush on this one. This wasn't the time to be ashamed of what I did. "One more thing was that his body seemed to be rejecting any form of medication and surgery, rendering everything we did useless."

"W-what exactly are you saying?" Sally asked.

The doctor gave her a sad look. "I'm sorry, Ma'am, but I'm afraid your son isn't going to make it."


[Next - Chapter 28: AS I LAY DYING]