7

"I think she's pretty cool," Percy had said about his mother, and it only took some basic observation from the moment of first meeting her for Annabeth to realise that he had been understating things.

Is Sally Blofis perfect? Is she, in fact, some goddess of joy, sent down from the heavens to spread peace, harmony and love among the mortals who walk the earth? Statistically speaking (and Annabeth is good at statistics) it's unlikely, but having known Sally for a whole fifteen minutes now, she has to admit that the evidence lies largely on the side of yes.

Maybe there'd been half a second of surprise, of Sally being taken aback as she saw Percy and Annabeth on her doorstep without prior warning that they'd been coming – maybe there had been, but Annabeth couldn't say for sure either way. What she can say for certain is that it had been Annabeth whom Sally had hugged first, as if they'd known each other for years.

"It's nice to meet you dear," said her mother-in-law, before turning to Percy and alternating between smothering him in a motherly hug and scolding him for his various failings as a son including:

a) never calling

b) not telling her that he was visiting

c) getting married without telling her

d) not introducing her to his wife for almost a week after the wedding

and two dozen others, all the way to

z) being too obvious in his attempts to avoid Paul's cousin Colleen's efforts to get him to give her a tour of the Hudson River three days ago ("I was busy, I'd just got married!" "That's not how she sees it, Percy.").

With that out of the way, along with an introduction to Percy's stepfather Paul (offering some context, if not sense, to the Colleen thing), the four of them are settled around the dinner table, digging into a delicious variation on Caesar Salad that, for some reason that Annabeth can't quite work out, is blue. No-one else seems to have noticed this, but if it's poison, it tastes better than she'd have expected. A radio on the side plays James Taylor (or possibly Jackson Browne, because, despite having met James, Annabeth's brain insists on confusing the two of them).

"Estelle's going to be crushed that you dropped by while she was at school," says Sally. "She's a huge fan of yours."

People regularly tell Annabeth that she's a modern-day Aphrodite or that her music has saved their life, but for some reason this makes her blush in a way those comments never do.

"She's met Annabeth already, Anyway, growing up's about learning to deal with disappointment," says Percy. "Like when I found out that even though my Latin teacher looked like James Bond and sounded like James Bond, he wasn't Ja-"

"Estelle's always been a much more realistic child than you were, dear," says Sally, a twinkle in her eye. "You know, the first time I took Percy to an aquarium, he was convinced that the fish were talking to him?"

"Percy the fish-whisperer?" asks Annabeth, grinning.

"It's better than what Estelle said when I took her to one for the first time," says Percy indignantly. "She pointed at a Mekong Stingray – that's a super endangered type of fish, and that one specifically, I'd brought to that aquarium after we found it injured – and she goes, 'that one looks like it would taste good with syrup and cream!' Can you believe it? Me leaving home and working my butt off to save its life and my little sister wants to eat it like it's a pancake?"

"Very practical," says Annabeth. "I'd rather be stuck on a desert island with her, of the two of you."

"You know, Estelle complains a lot less than Percy when food's short too," says Sally. "She's a real stoic."

Percy's jaw drops. He looks at Annabeth, then to Sally, then back to Annabeth. "This… this was a mistake," he says slowly, which draws a cackle from Paul.

"I think it was an excellent idea," says Percy's stepfather, clearly enjoying the show.

"I have lived my whole life being a good upstanding person," says Percy, shaking his head. "I'm a good husband, I'm a good son. And this is how you repay me?"

"I think it's been pretty clearly established today that you're just about the world's worst son," points out Annabeth.

"I am literally perfect and have done nothing to deserve this," says Percy. In an apparent attempt to salvage some dignity, he loads his plate up with more food and crams slightly too much salad into his mouth just as the final chords of the song on the radio play, for a moment leaving the only sound in the room the crunching of lettuce in his mouth while the other three look on and smile.

"That was 'Doctor, My Eyes,' Jackson Browne's" (rats, thinks Annabeth) "great debut single from 'seventy-two. We'll be leaving the records off the turntables for a little while now, though, as we've got a guest with us live in the studio," says a voice she recognises as the DJ Apollo's. "In his five studio albums so far, he's covered everything from Chinese economic policy to Tom Brady's role in deflate-gate, and what's more, he's made it fun to listen to: he's picked up three Grammys and numerous other awards along the way, and his last three albums have all hit the top spot on the Billboard 100. For the last few weeks, though, it's been his personal life that's been grabbing the headlines, so I hope you'll join me in extending a warm welcome to Luke Castellan!"

"Oh, I'll turn that off," says Sally, "we don't need to be listening to interviews while we're eating."

It's a kind gesture, but Annabeth doesn't want sympathy. She doesn't want anyone to think that she can't stand to hear Luke's voice when he's probably going to be talking about anything but her, the girl that everyone knows he cheated on. "You don't have to on my account," she says, smiling weakly. "Really, it's fine, I'm not bothered."

Sally, mercifully, doesn't push it, though Annabeth catches the worried glance that Percy sends her way when he doesn't realise she can see him.

"…I'm really not comfortable talking about my personal life in general," Luke's saying.

"So Percy, when are you due back on the ship?" asks Paul.

"Um, five months," says Percy hurriedly through a mouthful of food. "But there'll be like two months of delays probably, so, longer."

"...in fact, I've always tried to let my music do the talking for me,"

"Do you know where you're headed this time?"

"Yeah, Mariana Trench. I don't know why, it's not like we have the tech to get to the bottom of it, I think it's just a prestige thing for the guys funding it. We've got backing from the Avatar guy this time around."

"… I never thought I'd find myself in a situation where I couldn't write the lyrics, or the music to express my feelings in the right way…"

"The Avatar guy?" asks Sally.

"Yeah, and Titanic."

"James Cameron," supplies Annabeth, only half-paying attention.

"That's the one!"

"… fortunately I'm not the only person who's ever made a mistake, and other people have been better at writing songs about it than I have, so the first one I play is going to be a cover."

"There's lots to do before then obviously," says Percy. "And I was thinking it would be nice to drop in on Annabeth in the studio next week, see the master at work. I could take Estelle then to help her over her disappointment. Even though she's already met Annabeth, because I'm a perfect brother as well as a perfect son."

"I know there's exactly zero chance she'll have stuck around to listen to me talk, and I probably deserve it, but I'd like to dedicate this song to Annabeth."

Time slows to a crawl, and Annabeth's painfully aware that everyone at the table is working very hard not to look at her.

"She's got you wrapped around her finger," says Sally, but the comment's a relic of a dead conversation, and there's silence after she speaks except for the sound of Luke's guitar. She catches a glimpse of the future there, sitting at the Blofis dinner table, of a life spent motionless, waiting for the next blow, the next reminder that Luke loved her once, a life spent as so much jetsam caught in her ex's wake. It feels like she sees it all stretching out before her, but she can't have spaced out for long, because when she's brought back to earth by Percy gently taking her hand under the table, Luke is still singing.

"I love to see

Your hair shining in the long summer's light

I love to watch

The stars fill the sky on a summer night

The music plays

You take his hand

I watch how you touch him as you start to dance

And I wish I were blind

When I see you with your man."

Her palms are so sweaty that she doesn't need to drop Percy's hand so much as simply slide out of his grip as she stands abruptly. There's a moment of silence when clearly no-one knows what to say, but they needn't worry: she's no intention of keeping them waiting. "Sally, could you point me to your restroom, please?" she asks.

Annabeth's moving as soon as the door down the hallway is pointed out to her, and by some miracle even manages not to run there.

She stays in the bathroom longer than anyone who wasn't suffering from extreme constipation would, but the Blofis-Jacksons are kind enough to leaver her alone with her thoughts. She shivers at the feeling of violation, at the feeling of Luke intruding into this home like he's grasping at her with his hands, at the sense that he's trying to make her a part of his story, of his brand. She knows that she's going to have to make statements, give interviews of her own, for people to view her as anything more than Luke's ex-fiancée. She hates that he can do this to her without even knowing it.

At the same time, she hates herself for caring. There is, simply, no way that what Luke thinks or wants or is doing should matter to her, no way that she should respond with anything other than a dismissive shrug of her shoulders. She has her whole life ahead of her, she has a marriage to figure out, she has a new album to record, she has, more or less, a plan.

And here she is, sitting on a stranger's toilet with her head in her hands and trying not to cry because it would ruin her makeup, for a reason that she knows and that makes her all the more angry. She hates the soft, human part of herself, the part that wants to forgive and forget, to kiss and make up, the part that asks her in a whining voice, wouldn't you be happier if you were still with Luke?

And she can't tell it it's wrong, because, at least a little bit, she's still in love with him.

She leans sideways to press her head against the cool times on the wall. She breathes in deeply. She stands up and flushes the toilet even though everyone will know she's not been using it for all this time, and dabs some of the roll at the corners of her eyes, and then steps back out into the hall.

Lunch has been cleared away, but she can hear Percy's voice from the kitchen along with the clinking of crockery being cleaned.

"…think I should go check on her? She's been in there a while."

Annabeth stops as she realises they're talking about her, presumably not having heard the flush. Sally's voice answers Percy's.

"I'd give her a few more minutes. It obviously shook her a lot, poor thing."

"You like her a lot," observes Paul.

"Sure," says Percy. "She's cool."

"I think that's called avoiding the question," says Sally.

"No-one asked me a question," defended Percy. "And I answered anyway!"

"Oh?"

"You should probably know that it's not really relevant in the way that you mean, anyway. We're married, but we're not, like, married married. "

"I'll need that one explaining to me." Paul's voice, bone-dry.

"So – I mean, I won't pretend to understand exactly how it all happened, it's all a blur, but you've seen the YouTube highlights of the concert, right? It was all pretty spur-of-the-moment. I think anyone else would've woken up in the morning and started the divorce right away, but we're going to keep going for six months or so until my trip to the trench, then bring it to an end."

"Say if it's not my place to ask, Percy," says Sally, "but why? How's it better to pretend to be married for half a year than to carry on with your lives as they were?"

"From my point of view, Annabeth's funding my research for about a decade," he says. "Basically the agreement is that I'm being employed as her husband, which is fine. There are much worse jobs in the world. For her, I think it's all to do with image, and brand and stuff. I think the idea is that if we divorced instantly, the whole thing would look like one major meltdown – obviously the whole night of the concert was a mess, but it looks worse if she too obviously regrets it straight away. I think the idea is that if we divorce in a few months' time, the news frenzy isn't so bad, and people say, well she gave it a go, probably I wasn't the world's worst possible choice. It shows accountability for her choices, or dedication, or a bunch of other stuff people like. An image thing."

"It sounds like you've got it all figured out," says Sally. Her tone is measured and neutral.

"It's weird," says Percy. "But the weirdest thing is that it doesn't feel that weird. She's easy to be around. I like her team. Speaking of, do you remember Grover Underwood, from, what grade was it-"

"Percy, darling, just be careful," says Sally gently.

"I think it would've been eighth-" He pauses. "Careful of what?"

"I don't like to think of you getting hurt."

"I mean… we're both expecting it to end. I don't think there's any illusions about that."

"No, and I'm not saying you're making a mistake, but… well, you know what it's like to be married. I can't speak for the way you're working things out with Annabeth, but I think being married necessarily means you have a certain amount of intimacy with each other. I don't think you can have a business relationship like that without a personal one. So…" Sally laughs to lighten the mood. "I'm not good at this. I'm not trying to tell you how to live your life. But be sensible about it."

"Yeah," says Percy quietly. "Yeah, of course."

There's a brief silence, and Annabeth takes it as the opportunity to rejoin the world of the living. She offers a weak smile as she rounds the corner. "Hey," she says. "Sorry about that, just had a bad turn for a minute."

Her apology is waved off with assurances that it's nothing to worry about and that they hope she's feeling alright now.

She thinks of the way that Percy took her hand under the table when he saw before anyone else what Luke's song was doing to her.

It's not really relevant, he'd said. She's funding my research for a decade. Fair enough. He doesn't owe her anything more than she's paying him for.

She picks up the stack of plates on the counter that Percy's just dried. "So," she asks brightly, "where should I put these?"

"Hi, Rachel speaking, who's this?"

"Hi Rachel," says Annabeth, already squirming uncomfortably. Grover sits across from her, scratching nervously at his beard. Percy's stayed at his parents' house for the afternoon, leaving the two of them at Annabeth's dining room table, still trying to deal with the fallout of Calypso's allegations. "I'm, um." She pauses as she tries to figure out how to introduce herself. "My name's Annabeth, I'm Percy Jackson's wife."

"Oh," says Rachel. Even down the phone line Annabeth can tell it's a loaded term. "Annabeth Chase, right?"

"That's me."

"I figured you'd be in touch soon. Well, I figured it would be one of your team, but it's good that it's you."

"I guess you've been following the news, then?"

Rachel scoffs. "You got me, I'm not a hermit. I assume you're calling to ask me if it's true?"

Annabeth hesitates, but only for a moment. "I'm not, actually," she says. "I was wondering if you might be willing to make a statement saying that it isn't?"

"I don't really want to get involved in all this gossip stuff…"

"I know, I appreciate that, but I wouldn't ask if I didn't think it was important. He needs some protection against some of the stuff that's being said about him."

There's a crackling down the phone line, like Rachel's just sighed. "Look," she says slowly. "I'll make your statement. I know couple of guys who can get it into tomorrow's gossip columns, and if you want to put me in touch with anyone else I'll give it to them too. But I'm doing it for Percy, not for you."

Annabeth frowns. "I wouldn't expect you to do it for my sake."

"Yeah," Rachel says bluntly, but doesn't follow it up with anything. The conversation feels over, but the other woman doesn't hang up, like there are still words waiting to be spoken.

"I'm sorry," says Annabeth. "Is there anything else you want to say about it?"

That seems to wipe away Rachel's hesitation. "It's not very kind," she says. "I won't pretend to know what kind of understanding the two of you have come to, but you should look after Percy better. He's a good person. He doesn't deserve this."

"I know-" begins Annabeth, but Rachel cuts her off.

"Do you?" she asks. "It doesn't look much like you do. He can't just disappear into the background, because you've stuck him in front of the cameras too many times, so everyone wants to know more about him, but you're not actually sharing anything, so all the papers have to go on is his crappy school record and a couple of badly written local news pieces about teenage hoodlums from about ten years ago. Maybe you haven't been paying attention, but Eris' article is just the latest. I know that's not what Percy's like, and if you've actually spent any time with him, you should know it too, but you've done nothing – literally nothing – since that first press conference together to challenge that image."

"I didn't think-" started Annabeth, then cuts herself off. Rachel, mercifully, doesn't hit her with the 'obviously' that Athena would have done. "You're right," she amends. "I forgot he was… normal."

"I get it," says Rachel, sounding like she means it. "There comes a point where you forget that most people don't have a personal publicist, right?"

"Right," echoes Annabeth.

"I did see that press conference you did, though," says Rachel. "That was good. You worked well together. Both beautiful, both charismatic. You can make it work, if you're not deliberately setting him up to fail."

"I'm not," says Annabeth strongly.

There's a pause. "Ok," says Dare. "It was nice speaking to you then, Annabeth. Best of luck to you – I hope this thing works out for everyone's best."

The phone cuts off with a beep like a brick wall. Grover's phone returns to the screen with her contact information, with a red R in place of a profile picture.

"We're not setting him up to fail," says Grover, quietly.

"Not deliberately," says Annabeth, but she sees how it looks from the other woman's perspective: the marriage has been sold from the start as a whim, an eccentricity, and barring the press conference they hadn't done a whole lot to present him as anything more than an accessory on Annabeth's arm. "We need to do a big PR push for him," she tells Grover. "Find out the sexiest things you can about his work and shove it at any journalist who'll listen."

"Sexy?"

"He risks his life in the deepest parts of the ocean to help save our planet for the sake of the children, that kind of thing. Sexy."

"I had a mental image of a giant squid in a bikini, but your version's way better," says Grover. "I'll sort it."

Annabeth starts thinking of a squid in a bikini. Annabeth quickly chooses to stop thinking of a squid in a bikini. "In the meantime," she tells him, "I'm going to write him a song. The sort of thing that people will look back on as really awkward in a few years because we broke up after it hit the charts."

"You say that like lots of people have written that kind of thing," says Grover.

Annabeth shrugs as she picks up a guitar from next to the bookcase. "Billy Joel, Shania Twain. Taylor does it all the time."

"Most of those weren't exactly written for the same reasons as you're writing this one," her friend observes.

She gives a gentle strum and lets the sound warm the apartment. She smiles. "No," she agrees. "No-one's got anything quite like what Percy and I have."

Percy was going to the Mariana Trench in an experimental new type of submersible when I originally wrote this, and then the whole Titan thing happened... I will confess I wasn't quite sure what to do with that whole conversation!

Anyway hope life is good and that you continue to enjoy the story.