A/N: Hey guys! Back again with another update, more percabeth related this time! Hope you like it!

"We're born to die so what matters is how much we want to live," she says to the sky, flicking her cigarette.

The words hang in the air for a second and she takes the chance to glance at him. Sure enough, he's frowning at her, eyes zeroed in on the cigarette as if he can make it go away by glaring hard enough.

"No."

He says it with such petulance that she sighs. Sometimes she thinks Percy Jackson only exists to contradict everything she says. And though it's annoying enough to roll her eyes and turn back to watching the empty street, it's not enough for her to walk away.

Deep down, she knows she could never actually walk away from him.

They're friends.

Somehow. (She's still trying to figure that one out).

His glare burns the side of her face and she really should hold her own and resist, but she can't. (She never can with him).

"What?" she asks, giving up and turning back to face him.

"You're wrong," he says. He even crosses his arms.

"Whatever." It's really not worth getting into. All she wants is to watch the night sky and empty street in silence with her cigarette.

"No, not whatever, do you really believe that?"

She could pretend that she doesn't know what he's talking about but they both know she's too smart for that. Shifting a little on the step she's sitting on, she shrugs in favor of giving an actual answer.

It's something she read somewhere once and it stuck with her. And yeah, she could believe it. Besides, it makes her feel like she has more control. If there's one thing her air of lazy nonchalance betrays, it's her need for control.

"Well, it's wrong," he continues stubbornly.

She sighs, beyond done with this conversation. "So you've said," she responds in the driest way possible, taking a long drag of the cigarette.

Percy's glare hardens at the action and a part of her is pleased. Good, he needs a taste of his own medicine.

"We're not born to die," he says in a cool, low voice, the complete opposite of his heated glare.

She turns to look at him, surprised at the change of pace.

He's still glaring, directing it at the cigarette in her hand but he knows it's actually towards her. Continuing in the same tone, he scoffs. "That's the dumbest shit you've ever said."

It's an anger that she's never seen from him before and she wonders if she's finally broke his patience. Honestly, she's a little mesmerized by the way he's talking.

"Do you think a book starts just to end? Do you think a flower blooms just to wither? Do you think we are brought into this world so that one day we just die? Seriously?"

She's never seen his sea-green eyes so dark.

"Things begin to live, create, inspire, hell even just to exist. A book begins to tell a story, a flower blooms to add color to the world, we are born to live."

The words are beautiful, but his tone is so low and cold that she shivers despite the summer night. Her arms come to wrap around herself as if she can protect herself from the truth of his words. (Spoiler, she can't).

"Death isn't the end goal, it's easy to die. It's much harder and infinitely more incredible, to live. So what matters," he stresses her words from earlier, "is how we want to live."

The silence that follows the end of his speech stretches on long enough for the sky to get a shade lighter.

Sometime during that hour or so, she puts out her cigarette and feels the visible deflation of his tense shoulders.

Percy knows the world in a way she's never seen it before, and though she might not quite understand it yet, she thinks she wants to try. The way he spoke of life, as if it's full of wonders and she's never been wonderstruck until that moment.

But she knows that though he speaks of living as a grand, spectacular thing, the tension that he carries in his shoulders when he's around her isn't helping. Then again, she thinks, as she stands up from the step she'd been sitting on, legs wobbling a little as she walks to the trash can a few feet away, neither are these cigarettes.

The astonished look on his face when she tosses the rest of the pack is amusing since he has to know that it's because of him she's doing this.

She walks back over and holds out a hand to help him up.

He takes it.

Percy had gotten what he wanted by just staring hard enough, and since it worked for him, she decides to give it a try.

So as they walk down the street, she turns her gaze to him, staring in the hope that maybe one day she'd get what she wanted too.

A/N: So what did you think? Mostly about life but I thought it was a good segway after the last chapter, wanted to make this one more percabeth and character oriented. If you've been reading my work for a while you know that Percy's sentiments in this chapter reflect my own.

What about you? Please Review, I'd love to hear your thoughts!

And as always, thanks for reading!

See ya! :)