Thank you so much to the reviewers, favourites and followers.
I've hit a bit of writer's block, so it would mean the world if you could review a few suggestions on where to take this fic.
Enjoy!
She told herself to stop crying.
She told herself to start eating again.
She told herself to start reading again.
She told herself to let him go.
To train again.
To smile, to laugh.
To help train others.
To keep planning buildings.
Like he would have wanted her to.
And then she'd see the lake where they shared their first kiss, or the woods where they first played Capture the Flag, and her walls would break and the tears would come flooding back again.
Annabeth buried her head further into her pillow. It was already wet from her tears. One hundred years. It had been one hundred years since she'd last seen him. The gods had made her friends immortal as well. It was a cruel trick of that god Thranx, to never let them die. Making them live on without each other. And the worst thing of all was she knew he was going through all the pain in the world every second she moped around. That he was going through it for her.
She had gone through every second in her head. What she should have done differently. How she should have recognised the look in his eyes, the look he got when he was about to do something stupid. She should have held onto him, never let him go. Or maybe impale them both on his sword so they didn't have to live through this.
The whole camp was different now. The Poseidon table stood empty at the front, a homage to where he would have sat. Chiron had this sad look in his eyes. He stopped playing his terrible music loudly, stopped making jokes. Clarisse was constantly angry at the world, Calypso planted mourning flowers. The tree nymphs made sure they never wilted. The satyrs played sad songs on their pipes through the night.
Cabin Three was always locked. The lights were off and the place seemed cold. The flowers wilted and the water turned to ice. The young campers would dare themselves to go and touch the door. They seemed to think the place was inhabited by ghosts. It might have been, the way the immortal campers refused to walk past it.
The sea nymphs had risen to the other demigod's when he was gone. They still kept up the traditions he had started. If had been Percy's idea, from his own personal experience, that the campers who had just joined the Hermes cabin needed somewhere to keep anything valuable. So he had created a few little bubbles that were just for them, and submerged them under the water. He would bring them up when they asked, and they could have it for the day. Annabeth had to stifle a sob. He had been so considerate.
Grover was a mess of untamed hair and tears. He cried a lot. He stuck to his task, bringing in demigod after demigod flawlessly. Talked about returning to his roots, literally, the roots he sprung from. Juniper looked at him and bit her lip, worry stretching across her pale green face. The Lord of the Wild kept wandering around like he expected to see Percy running up to meet him, with a joke already on his lips. But it never happened. Once Annabeth saw him knock on the door to to Cabin Three, and then break down on the doorstep when there was no answer.
Jason said that they would be fine without him, that he would lead both camps. He said it to reassure Piper. Piper punched him in the nose. Then she marched of and managed a week of roses and begging before she kissed him again. Annabeth didn't blame her. In the hardest times it meant the world to have someone to hold onto. Leo didn't make jokes the same way, spending hour after hour in bunker 9 to escape the sadness of the camp. Hazel walked around in a daze. Frank kept turning into a tiny insect so nobody knew when he cried. He didn't try to lead, didn't set out to be the hero. That probably why people respected him. Nico was even worse than the rest of them, never stepping out of the shadows, never speaking. He disappeared even more than he had before, barely even there at all. Only when Hazel needed him would he utter a few words. And every day he would stand before all the camp and declare that Perseus Jackson was not yet dead, not yet entered his father's realm.
Zeus was even more angry, making stupid decisions. Aphrodite kept breaking down and weeping about wretched true love and happily ever afters. Hestia sobbed quietly into the hearth. Because of them Percy's wish eventually came true. The anniversary of 50 years since his disappearance was when they announced it. Annabeth wasn't there to witness it. She spent the day sitting by the lake that was exactly the shade of his eyes. Dionyseys was demoted to a minor god, sent out of the camp. He was happy to go and spend his days in mortal bars drinking gallons of wine. Hades replaced him in the council. Hestia's throne sat next to his. Hades started paying more attention to Nico, just like Percy asked him to. Even Hera shed the odd tear.
And through all that Athena sat there, still and composed. She did not offer her shoulder to her crying daughter, instead telling her to hide her emotions and set an example. Told her to get over the foolish son of Poseidon and carry on studying. She wasn't like a mother. She never had been.
Poseidon was ripped with grief, and the tides were either slow, going far out for hours before returning, or angry, great waves crashing down on the shores and hurricanes ripping up towns and piers. He looked broken, his beard wild and his sea green eyes but even then he was more of a parent to her than Athena. He held her when she sobbed, and made the flying horses trust her enough to let her ride them. She would fly up into the clouds and let her emotions show through, the wind on her face blowing away the tears.
That was the only time she could be weak.
The camp looked up to her when their saviour disappeared the first time, and they do the same now. Except back then everyone knew he was coming back, that they would find him eventually. But now it had been a century since they had last seen him. The young campers would tell stories of him, sing songs of how he saved the world. Only the immortal campers remembered him.
So she would make herself busy from the moment she woke up to the moment she fell asleep. She would train for an hour, then have breakfast. Teach the youngsters how to climb the lava wall, or how to show a flying horse you're their friend. Then she would teach an hour on Ancient Greek, the train till lunch. Eat. Train again. Then set up the teams for capture the flag, and make sure everyone who had a sword knew how to use it. Then stand at the side with a box of ambrosia and a flagon of nectar. If the memories of him started to overwhelm her, she would run through the trees scouting for the injured. Then they would win, and she would start the campfire going then leave. She would swim in the lake, working on the different strokes. Then she would allow herself to think of him. Of his eyes that were the perfect shade of blue-green, of his stupid little jokes. Then she would get out, dry herself and go back to the campfire. Talk to Rachel, then make sure the littler ones got to their cabin's safely. Then, when all the lights were off and the place was empty, she would go and stand next to his cabin. Press her hand against the shells, just like he did. Then she would go to her cabin, and tuck herself up. It was an extension of the Athena cabin, a tiny room that was just hers. The walls were soundproofed. She didn't want to wake the other campers up with her screams.
Train. Eat. Teach. Teach. Train. Eat. Train. Prepare teams. Help out. Start the campfire. Swim. Cry. Get the others back to their cabins. Sleep. Dream. The same every day for one hundred years.
Every night she would close her eyes and let the dreams take her away. Sometimes they were nightmares, dreams of Tartarus or of losing him. Every so often she would dream of all the moments she shared with the son of Poseidon. They were worse than the nightmares. Because she would wake up and get dressed and walk to his cabin, only to find it empty and cold. Only to remember that he wasn't there anymore. False hope is so much worse than no hope at all. Because you can never truly heal if you have false hope.
And then, every so often, she would see him. See him covered in scars and bruises. See the whip flaying the skin on his back, see countless birds ripping at his face. See him scream and yell and cry. But he never wished to leave in her dreams. No matter how much pain he was in, how tired he was, he never begged.
He looked different now. She hated that. His muscles were more pronounced, his jawline straight and his cheekbones high. He looked so different to the long haired, geeky boy from New York she had fallen in love with. His eyes didn't dance and shine anymore, his mouth wasn't constantly ready to break into a grin. If eyes are the windows to the soul, he had truly broken. But he loved her. She could feel it. By the way he kept on going, struggling through to come out at the end. She remembered what he said when they had just fallen into Tartarus, when there had seemed no hope.
"We'll get through this, Wise Girl. There's always a light at the end of the tunnel."