Annabeth
I had a headache. That was the first thing I became aware of after switching back in. "Where? When?" I muttered, still a bit dissociated. "Still in central park exactly where you left, about an hour later" Percy's voice said to my right. I moved my right hand a bit and Percy gently took it. Like most body parts of most demigods, his hand had a few scars on it. Some from monsters, some from Gabe. They provided not only living proof of what he had suffered through, but also a great surface for grounding. I ran my finger over his hand, he let it happen because he knew that I needed that and he was an amazing boyfriend and I just felt like pointing that out. I didn't know which scars had what origin story, but I knew that some of them were from Tartarus. Some were from the quest to mount Tam and some were from Mount Saint Helens. He had done these things for me. The scars were my fault. "What happened?" I asked. "We decided to donate the drakon flesh to the homeless and now they're coming" "We should probably help them cut everything up" "Good idea"
Together, we went to a spot where a few people were already trying to get their hands on some food Percy drew riptide and began cutting the drakon up with surprising skill. "Get out of the way" Someone told Percy. "If course, sorry" he said and stepped away. From his voice I could tell that this wasn't just doing someone a favor. This was fearful obedience. I smelled the air. Beer, a massive trigger for Percy. I quickly pulled him away from the crowd and to a bench that was conveniently located nearby. "Don't hurt me" Percy said. "Where's Gabe?" I asked. "He's here. Please don't hit me. I'll- I'll give you…" Percy started checking his pockets, probably for cash. "Percy, calm down" I said. "Gabe is not here" "He's not?" "No. You turned him to stone, remember?" 'Right. I'm scared" "Want a hug?" "Yeah" I slid closer and wrapped my arms around Percy's shaking body. "Listen. Smelly Gabe is gone. You turned him to stone. That was four years ago. He's so far away now. He can't hurt you anymore. You are safe with me" "Safe" He repeated. "I like safe. Safe with you" "Yeah seaweed brain. You're safe now" He hugged me back and started crying into my shirt. That would probably leave salt stains, but I didn't care. I knew Percy needed this right now and… "You're an awesome girlfriend" Percy muttered, almost as if he had read my mind. "What would I do without you?" "I could ask you the same thing. We'd both be dead many times over without each other" I said. "True" I noticed Percy was recovering from his… what had it been? A partial flashback? Probably something like that. "You've done so much for me. I'm sorry" "Annabeth, what the Hades are you talking about?" "Mount Tam. Mount St Helens. Tartarus. You protected me, but you got hurt so much. I'm so sorry for that" "You blame yourself for that?" "Yeah" "Aww, Annabeth, that's not your fault" "I don't really understand how that is cute" "I didn't say it was cute" "You said 'Aww'" Percy though about that for a few seconds. "I guess guilt is a form of harm, harm that I can prevent, so it triggers my protective instinct. I see that you should be, in a sense, protected and signaling that is why cuteness exists" "Okay. I guess you can view it like that" "So, where were we? You blame yourself for things that happened to me" "I've been out for how long now? Five minutes? And I'm already getting really emotional. Great" "That's my girl" I couldn't help but chuckle at that. "But seriously, I made mistakes that caused you suffering. How is that not my fault" Around two minutes ago, I had had to comfort Percy. Now the roles switched. "Listen, I see where you're coming from. But you're failing to consider one important factor here. You didn't force me into harm's way. In fact, you repeatedly asked me to stay safe wherever you could. That makes it not your fault. What I did was entirely my choice and my responsibility. You are not to blame. You're not to blame for anything that happened to anyone" "What about the time I almost killed Connor?" "You did what?" "He put a spider in my bed and I got kinda angry. He had to spend three days in the infirmary" "Okay, maybe that one was your fault. Anything else you blame yourself for?" He half-jokingly replied "What is this, Therapy hour with Percabeth?" "I mean, that's like half of our conversations, so yeah. So, what else is your fault?" "His death" I said after a while "Luke?" I nodded. "Why?" "Well, I gave him my knife…" "Well, at that point, there was a choice to be made. Either Luke dies or Kronos takes over the world. What would be the better choice?" I though about it. What did I want in life? I remembered what the sirens had shown me. A world where I could fix everything. And there was a lot to be fixed, especially with the Olympians. Luke could have given me that. Seeing him die- option one- had been one of the worst moments of my life. Then I thought about camp half blood. These demigods where my family. Realistically, Kronos would have destroyed that place. Seeing my first real home destroyed would have broken me entirely. "The first one" I eventually said. "Right. And you fought so hard to defend Luke, and only that allowed for the first thing to happen. You helped Luke be a hero"
"You're saying he had to die to beat Kronos. But what if that hadn't been true. If I had stopped him from becoming Kronos' vessel, he could have lived. I should have convinced him" "Annabeth, when would you have done that?" "On Mount Tam" "Think about it. He fell off a cliff and survived. No demigod should have survived that" "You survived falling off the empire state" "Because of the curse of Achilles. The logical conclusion from that is that Luke already had the curse at Mount Tam, so the procedure had already begun. There's nothing you could have done. Nothing was your fault" "I looked at Percy through teary eyes. When had that happened? Well, talking about Luke was always… difficult, emotionally speaking. The memories were just too much, the way his dying body was laying before me on Mount Olympus. "It's not real" I told myself. "It's just memories" I must have thought out loud as Percy immediately reacted. He didn't pull away from me, but I knew that he would at the slightest sign of me not wanting to be touched by him. Sure, my awareness of and ability to interact with the outside world decreased significantly when in a flashback- which was exactly when I might not want it- but I almost always retained enough control to pull off a slight twitch, which would be enough to alert Percy. But right now, I didn't need that. I liked him being there for me. "Everything alright?" Percy asked. "Apart from my oldest friend dying right in front of my eyes, yes" "Yeah, do you need help with that?" "Just grounding" Percy did his usual thing; squeezes (those worked wonders against panic) circling my palms with his thumbs, running his hands up and down my arms and after less than a minute, I was fully grounded again. "You know" he said "It's nice when you can do more than just nod or say 'mhm' and can actually tell you what you need" "You know what" I copied him "It's nice to not have an experience that is so retraumatizing that you're too terrified to think a clear thought let alone say sentences. But sure, tell me all about how my flashbacks make your life harder" "That's not what I said. I just remarked on how this one was easy to deal with" "Sure. It's just that statements like this often contain a subtextual message of 'unlike what is usually the case' so you would have been complaining about how my flashbacks are normally harder for you" "That was not my intended message. However, I do understand that years of abuse have conditioned you into expecting harm in any situation" "Okay seaweed brain" I said, the serious tone in my voice now replaced with slight amusement. "What the Hades was that?" "A heated argument speedrun?" " What about 'However, I do understand'?" "I figured being factual might deescalate the situation and it seems to have worked" "I'd say my amusement at the language you used was the thing that deescalated everything, but sure. Making the other person be too amused to continue arguing is a good tactic" "Being funny helps against a bunch of things like rivers of- wait, no, that would be triggering" "Thanks. For not triggering me" "That's, like, basic decency but whatever." "Right, I forgot about that" "I know. But I'm happy to remind you every day" "Are you saying that I have a bad memory?" "I'm saying that your experiences are frequently overridden by the expectations you have because of the people who treated you badly. But now, those expectations don't apply anymore so I'm ready to undo those overrides every day" "Gods dam it guys, stop being so cute" "Oh, hey Pipes. How come you always show up when we're doing something cute?" "First of all, love radar. Also, I've been with you for like an hour now. An hour which you mostly spent not being cute" "Yeah, but you came over to this bench just as we started" "You came to the bench to be cute together" "We went to the bench because Percy got triggered by the smell of alcohol and I needed to support him" "Same thing" "You think so?" "Of course. You guys supporting each other are cute as Hades. The level at which you care about each other and protect each other is just insane, sometimes even too much in Percy's case, essentially when he makes the toilets explode" "Yeah, sorry about that" "We couldn't use the bathrooms for two days after that" "I already said I was sorry. The thing is that if I'm being too protective, Annabeth can usually counterattack it by saying 'are you implying that…' followed by some variation of 'boys are more capable than girls', which is usually enough to make me take anything back. Seriously, don't say anything that could be seen as even remotely sexist in her vicinity. You'll regret it" "Don't worry, wasn't planning to" "That accusation gets seaweed brain to take back almost anything. But most of the time, he doesn't have to because, as I already mentioned, sometimes I like to be the protected one" Following my implied instruction, Percy once again wrapped his arms around me, riptide in his hand. It was still in pen form, but I knew Percy could change that any second. Suddenly, I had an idea. "Riptide can write, right?" "Yes, that's how we- right, amnesia barriers. Yes, it can" Percy demonstrated how it worked; take the cap off at the front, touch it to the hilt, writing tip is exposed. "Now turn it into a sword, would you" Percy did. "Now, see how that was way faster? I think you should just keep riptide this way. Like, you just cut the opening time from almost two seconds to less one and if you practice enough, you could probably get way lower" "That's honestly such a good tip. I think I'll do that from now on" Percy put riptide back in his pocket, cap on the back.
"Now, where was I?" "You were protecting me" "Right, thanks" Percy continued where he had left off. "Are you sure it doesn't bother you? Because you're like really good at tolerating things you don't really like" Piper asked "Yes, I am sure. Why do you think it would bother me?" "Because being overprotected gives people a feeling of being unable to accomplish anything for themselves" "Makes sense. But Percy rarely gives me that feeling and even if, my hubris takes care of it. Also, the comfort I get from feeling completely safe for a moment would outweigh anything else anyways" "Stop. Being. So. Gods. Dam. Cute" "No" Percy said. "Fine" I said. "Annabeth, stop being gay for Piper" "That's not how that works. I mean, it would help in this situation, but she's too… is there a romantic equivalent to the word hot?" "I don't know, you're the one who knows words" "I guess you could say she's romantically attractive, but that sounds weird. Why do we not have a word for that if we have the word hot? There's a few other examples of it as well" Percy gave Piper a look that I interpreted as "She's having an ace crisis. Let her be" I followed his advice and kept going. "For example, we have the word horny, but no word for when you really want to hug someone" "I think that's called being sad" "Not necessarily. You can also want to hug a specific person because you emphasize with their sadness or maybe you just think they're cute. Or maybe you're still behind on the hug debt you accumulated during years of childhood emotional neglect because the interest rates for that are insanely high. That is actually my constant state" "I mean, it wouldn't make sense for debt to be a temporary, on-and-off state, right?" Piper remarked. "You're right, it wouldn't. Well, sometimes I do get enough of it, so maybe it's more like a credit that you pay off in rates. If we cuddle enough, I won't crave it as much until the next rate is due, which may take up to five minutes" "Unless you hit a creativity spike and design temples for two hours again" "Sorry for literally doing my job" "Right. Wait, does that mean that I contribute to redesigning Olympus?" "By providing me with oxytocin? I guess so" "I wonder if I can put that on my resume" "The whole mortals-don't-know-about-the-gods-or-Olympus thing might get in the way there. Also, I don't think oxytocin provider is a respectable job description. At the end they'll think you work at a pharmacy I frequently buy hormone supplements at"
By the way, Happy birthday Percy