GO FORWARD AND BE EATEN.
GO BACK AND REGRET IT FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE.
NOT MUCH OF A CHOICE, IS IT?
I love you all for reviewing! Short drabble, hope you like it.
Well, this won't do, Aphrodite thought, looking down from Olympus, onto Camp Half-blood and the young demigod tossing and turning in her sleep.
I must speak to Hera, she realized, and swept off.
Later, she and Hera watched Annabeth as she cried out and twisted the sheets around her legs, unable to wake from the nightmare.
"You see?" Aphrodite told her, "She needs this as much as he does. I know he has troubled dreams too, even if it is a drugged sleep. Just a few nights."
"No," Hera told her flatly, "I don't care. I don't like her anyway, and I'm not going out of my way just to make them comfortable."
"But they're no use to you dead or mad!" Aphrodite shouted, exasperated.
"It's not going to kill them," Hera snapped, "Or drive them crazy. Depression isn't the same thing."
"This isn't depression," Aphrodite shouted, pointing to the image of the imaciated young woman, "This is torture!"
"Fine!" Hera cried, throwing up her hands and turning away, "Do what you want. But they can't wake up. Not ever. Not even in a dream can they know. And it can't take her out of her usual schedual."
She left, and Aphrodite turned back to Annabeth.
Annabeth wept into the pillow in the empty cabin, trapped again in Mount St. Helen's, the heat blistering her face. She was running, but this time towards the mountain, because despite the shaking earth and a voice, Gaea's voice telling her that she was weak, and useless, she had to find Percy. Save Percy. And then the world exploded. The gound wasn't shaking, it wasn't even there. The fire surged around her, blistering her skin and she knew that she was too late. Percy was gone. There was nothing left but the fire, terrible and consuming, nothing but pain and heat and flame. But then her hand was encased in someone elses, and the fire didn't hurt anymore. Percy's hand dragged her up, out of the inferno and into water, cool and soothing on her raw flesh. She couldn't really see Percy, but she knew he was there, in the sunlight filtering through the surface of the water, and the gentle current that caressed her face, making her hair float out around her face in a golden halo. He was holding her hand, pressing it to his warm chest. She could feel his steady heartbeat under their entwined fingers. The beat to which her life constantly played.
Smiling, Aphrodite observed Percy and Annabeth as, unconciously, their hands curled around the others. She was really glad she had been able to convince Hera to tansport Percy to Annabeth's side while they were sleeping. And now, for the first time in months, they slept without nightmares.
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