Chapter Text
In times like these, she’ll wonder if her name will end up in texts of mythology: Annabeth Chase, hero.
Listed among the greats, like Achilles, Atalanta, Aeneas . In the rare moments where she finds the humor in herself to do so, she’ll think the whole fantasy kind of ironic—Annabeth Chase, who’s always wanted something permanent, to be immortalized herself. Maybe in a hundred years, another fresh-faced demigod sent head first into a suicide-mission will think of Annabeth the Proud, Annabeth the Boastful. Maybe in a hundred years, her story will be a warning. An example of what not to have done. An example of what not to get into.
Then, Piper presses her weight further into Annabeth’s gaping stomach wound, and Annabeth claws at the hard stone beneath her, a sort-of scream strangling its way out of her throat. Fuck. Should not have gotten into this.
Piper’s bronzed skin pales a sickly shade of green as she tries to staunch the blood rapidly seeping through her hands. “I’m sorry, Annabeth, I know, I know it hurts, just hold out a bit longer, yeah?”
She can only huff out a breath in response, not trusting herself to nod without vomiting.
They’re in the middle of fucking nowhere in Croatia, on some recon mission that shouldn’t have taken half the amount of time that it actually did. Knowing Annabeth’s luck, it shouldn’t have been all that surprising that they ran into an aeternae nest, all saw-toothed and hungry for demigod blood. Because, of course, the one shortcut Annabeth insisted on taking was the one that led them here. Here, with her stomach spasming with aeternae venom, fully paying the price for being proud and boastful and so, so stupid.
Piper dutifully swallows down what must be another gag, readjusting the grip she has on Annabeth’s abdomen. “Leo should be here soon, we’ll get you to the infirmary before we know it.”
“Yeah,” Annabeth wheezes. “R-right.”
She doesn’t doubt Leo, necessarily. Rather, it’s her body and its ability to keep itself functioning when it’s lost about one and a half liters of blood that she’s lost confidence in. She can’t really remember when she stopped believing in it. For all she knows, it’s always failed her. The edges of her vision have gone black and fuzzy, like the warped lines of a dream. It’s a little comforting, in a way. She’s never had pleasant dreams before. The one she’s in right now isn’t too bad of a start.
It would be so easy. To close her eyes and drift. For once, she wouldn’t have to deal with this —this burden that’s followed her since birth. When was the last time she got to rest? In another universe, probably.
“Hey.” Piper’s voice floats, and Annabeth can’t really pin where it’s coming from. That’s probably not a good sign. “ Hey. Annabeth. Don’t fall asleep on me, damn it. Annabeth , look at me.”
Her eyelids burn, but she miraculously forces her eyes open. At some point in their ordeal, Piper started crying, tears leaving wet trails across her soot-covered cheeks. That’s also probably not a good sign. Piper, for all of her emotional intelligence, has never been a crier.
“That’s good, darling, just stay like that. You’re gonna be alright.”
It’s easy to want to believe her. But Annabeth’s dying, not stupid. She knows where this is going. Despite her best efforts, her lids begin to flutter again, ready to succumb to the blankness-
Then the world explodes.
A chasm erupts behind them, the lot that held the aeternae nest beneath it falling apart probably fifty feet across. Dozens of buildings collapse at once, the cacophony of it all making her head reel. An incredibly small part of Annabeth mourns the architectural death of all the buildings that sink below, rough-cut stone and pillars crumbling like loose sand. The much, much larger part of Annabeth begins to hope that one of them will take her down with it if it means she can finally close her eyes and rest.
She doesn’t get the chance. Another shockwave bursts through the clearing and Annabeth is forced to open her eyes with a small gasp. From her side, Piper stumbles, though she never once loosens her grip on Annabeth’s abdomen.
But then she frowns, squinting at something in the near distance. “Oh, fuck.”
Annabeth, with all the strength she can muster, angles her head to where Piper is staring. There, she sees him.
She’s never seen him so frantic before. He fights as if he’s doing so without thought, as if his body had only one goal to move, move, move. Not even during Manhattan did he look like this, when she’d taken a knife in the shoulder for him. If she thought he was scary then, well. This-
This is something wholly different. Even simply in the way he’s standing, he radiates power. Raw, unrestrained strength. Annabeth knows this isn’t the end of it. There’s more in him, and she’s not sure if she wants to see how much.
He’s at her side within seconds. His hands, caked in blood and grime and whatever else, gently cradle her bleeding body.
“Annabeth,” Percy croaks. “Are you okay?”
She wants to say something, anything. But everything hurts , and the only sound that claws its way out of her throat is a soft whine. It makes his brows knit. Despite everything, his face is still soft.
“We’re getting you out of here, yeah?” He smooths down sweat-soaked hairs away from her face. “You’ll be up and at ‘em in no time.”
“Don’ wanna,” she breathes, the words like acid in her mouth. “So tired.”
“Come on, Annabeth, open your eyes for me.”
There’s a pause, the light sound of fabric brushing against itself. Then, the pressure against Annabeth’s abdomen lifts. She nearly starts crying at the relief before it all becomes much, much worse, and suddenly she’s being hauled off the ground, and the angle of her torso twists at the stomach wound with searing pain.
Someone’s carrying her, she realizes belatedly. Someone’s carrying her, and they’re running.
Her breath is hot against Percy’s solid chest. “Be careful.”
She can feel the way his scoff courses through his body. “As if you’re in any position to be telling me that.”
“Just keeping you on your toes.”
She can’t help it when her voice slips, words trailing into a scratchy breath that makes Percy tighten his grip on her shoulder and the dip of her knees.
“Keep talking to me, baby. You need to be awake to be able to nag me, don’t you?”
“You’re so bossy,” she whispers, but she manages to keep her eyes open. Trained on him. The slope of his nose, the knot that’s nestled its way into his jaw as he grits his teeth from exertion. Those sea-glass eyes, pinned on something in the far distance. He’s so beautiful. He really is. She’s happy to die if it means he’s the last thing she’ll ever see.
Somewhere up ahead, she hears someone shouting and the whir of machinery, smells the tang of bronze. The Argo II must be near. Percy shouts something too, but it’s all garbled and fuzzy, like she’s underwater. It’s kind of pointless. There’s not much time left for her, she can feel it—the cold, creeping darkness.
“Percy, hurry!” Leo’s voice, thick with panic. “Holy fuck, the aeternae - We have to cut ‘em off! Cut them off! Hurry!”
Cut what off? Annabeth thinks dimly. She’s definitely heard that before; an unwelcome wave of deja vu settles over her. At least this time, she’ll be dead before she falls back down there.
She feels Percy hiss, the grip he has on her nearly painful. His muscles tighten against her body as he turns his head to whatever horde of monsters must be following them. It must not be good, given the look he gives Annabeth. The look, the one where he knows he’s going to do something reckless and dangerous, but is determined to see it through anyway.
It’s almost enough to make her smile. He’s just so fucking beautiful.
With the last remains of her strength, Annabeth fists the front of Percy’s shirt. The fabric chafes against her skin, and it feels like her knuckles are rubbing raw. Her body is burning . “I love you.”
Something in his eyes flashes, twisting into something she can’t place. Fear, anger, desperation. “Don’t you fucking dare-”
He’s too late. She’s already floating. The last thing she hears is Percy’s guttural shout, the crack of the earth beneath them as the world begins to crumble.
And Annabeth dreams.
-
Surprisingly, it’s Jason standing watch when Annabeth opens her eyes.
She’s never been able to read him, the son of Jupiter. A part of her chalks it up to him being Roman, the product of an entirely different Pantheon; they’re quite literally from two different worlds. Though, she knows that’s not an excuse. To be honest, she’s just not sure how to approach him, Jason Grace—praetor of the Twelfth Legion and long-lost brother of Thalia. A wary representation of Camp Half-Blood’s future and an unwelcome reminder of her blonde-haired and blue-eyed past.
Annabeth has no problem this time, however, with interpreting the worry painted over Jason’s features as she pushes herself up to her elbows, blinking away the sleep and the painkillers and the ambrosia. She’s in the Argo II’s infirmary, tucked beneath rough-spun cotton blankets in some cot near the center of the room.
“Don’t strain yourself,” Jason says, walking over with nectar. “You’ve been out for a while.”
She takes it, wrapping her burning hands around the cold glass. “What happened?”
Jason purses his lips, arms crossed protectively over his chest. Always so guarded , she thinks. “We got Piper’s stress ping after you two were attacked. It was supposed to be a quick rescue, since all we had to do was fly down and pick the both of you up, but…”
Annabeth frowns. “But?”
“He, um…” Jason scratches at the underside of his jaw. If Annabeth knew any better, she might even say he looks nervous. “Percy kind of… Lost control. Jumped off the ship even though we told him not to. It was like he couldn’t hear us at all. We tried getting it through to him that Piper said you weren’t under any active attack, but he thought…”
This time, when Jason trails off, Annabeth doesn’t bother to get him to speak up. She’s already pieced together the pictures, the ugly pictures (thousands of square feet reduced to rubble, historical buildings brought down to ash, monster blood and bones stuck to his skin in a wash of fine golden dust), and a familiar spool of guilt starts to unfurl in the pit of her stomach. She’s been trying not to think about it, the implication of being Percy’s leash, but it’s becoming harder to ignore. And it scares her.
(All of that destruction in the palm of his hand. All of that destruction because of her own incompetence.)
“So he blew up the clearing,” Annabeth says, quietly.
Jason nods. “The aeternae nest opened up from underneath, which caused a, uh, stampede of sorts. We were trying to figure out how to block them off, since we wouldn’t have been able to drop the ship and get you guys on otherwise. Frank kept saying we should get down and fight back, but then Percy just… Cleaved the ground in half. He got you onboard and we’ve been charted for Athens ever since.”
The room is starting to spin, though whether it's from her injury or Jason’s recount that’s making her nauseous, she’s not sure.
“He’s never been able to do that before,” Annabeth says, mind racing. Water has always been Percy’s domain, and it was something proven. Something familiar. This—his control of the earth, his capacity for ruination—is entirely new territory.
Jason cracks a weak grin, though it disappears as quickly as it came. “Well, he is the son of the Earth Shaker.”
The bit doesn’t land. She swallows down the tightness in her throat. “Has he been alright since then?”
“Define alright.”
“Nothing too impulsive? Has he been, you know…” Annabeth’s cheeks burn . She feels like a mother reprimanding her child. “Cooperative?”
“There’d definitely be something wrong with Percy Jackson if he wasn’t at least a little impulsive,” Jason says. “But he’s been okay since we got you back. A lot of pacing around and restless waters, but he’s not going crazy anymore.”
Something hot flashes wildly in her stomach, a whip of defensiveness that she doesn’t know the source of. Percy isn’t crazy , she wants to scream. You don’t understand what we went through. You could never understand what we went through. He’s just scared and hurt and tired, and this is all just a way for him to cope, a way for us to cope.
But she can’t muster the strength. She’s just so, so fucking tired.
“Okay,” she says instead. “Thanks Jason.”
He gives her a stilted nod, murmuring a quiet, “I’ll let him know you’re awake,” before letting the door of the infirmary close behind him.
It doesn’t even take a minute before Percy bursts into the room, green eyes wet with anxiety as he all but collapses at her side. His hands find their way to her cheeks, the rough calluses on his thumbs scratching at her skin as he pulls her tight. The grip that she has on him, the grip that he has on her , should be alarming, should ring a bell—but Annabeth, above all else, understands. She understands the fear that has his body shaking against her own. She feels it in her very being, a shaky breath slipping past her lips when his familiar weight settles against her chest. Something tight in her stomach—something she didn’t know was there—slowly begins to unwind.
“Annabeth,” Percy breathes. He squeezes her, once, before pulling back. His eyes search her face for hidden wounds. “Annabeth, you had me so worried-”
His voice cracks. She bites down on her lip, the back of her eyes burning as she smooths a hand down his hair.
“I’m okay,” she whispers, and he nods. “It’s okay, I’m okay, I promise. I’m sorry for scaring you.”
He lets out a wet laugh at that. “You damn should be, pulling a stunt like that.”
“Ouch, Jackson. You think a silly old stomach wound is gonna have me kicking the bucket?”
“From the looks of it, yeah.” His hands slip down to her own, loosely caging her fingers. “I thought you were dead. You were unconscious and barely breathing, and there was, there was just so much blood and-”
“Hey.” She lightly flicks the soft bits of his palm. “No spiraling. I’m here now, and that’s all that matters, hm?”
Percy takes a breath, shaky. “Yeah. Yeah, you’re right. I was- I was just so scared. So scared I couldn’t even think, Annabeth.”
That thing in her stomach starts to twist again.
“I know, I know.” She wets her lips. “But you need to make sure you’re staying with the rest of the group. What good would it have done if you got yourself hurt all because you ran after me?”
He hangs his head a little at that, ears tinted red. “I know, I just… I really wasn’t thinking, I know-”
That thing in her stomach coils, squeezes. Percy’s starting to frown, and Annabeth wonders if she’s gripping his hand as tightly as her chest is beginning to feel. “And you could’ve endangered the rest of them, too. All that damage you did, Percy—what would we have done if Piper fell through the chasm? What if I fell through?”
Percy’s brows knit. “Annabeth, you-”
“That was so reckless of you, Percy-”
“It’s my job to protect you.” It’s as if he’s sharpening his words, tined perfectly to poke right at her biggest fears. “I don’t understand why you’re getting so upset, all I was trying to do was help.”
“You can’t destroy an entire fucking clearing and call it helping,” she snaps.
Shit. Too much. She opens her mouth to apologize, to smooth down his edges, but-
“What the fuck?” Percy’s voice is taut, his eyes hardened and narrow. “Why are you so fucking angry at me? I was worried out of my mind, Annabeth, I’m sorry I overreacted a little.”
Over the course of their relationship, Annabeth has started to forget how easy it is to fight with Percy Jackson. She feels her hackles rise, a million words trapped behind her teeth, and suddenly, she’s twelve years old again, arguing over whether or not Poseidon had truly wronged Athena. She’s sixteen years old again, staring at his face and wondering what was so wrong about her that he refused to be with her that last summer, yelling and screaming because it’s the only thing she ever really learned how to do.
“You can’t go around destroying everything you see just because I’m hurt!” Why is she so angry? When did she get so angry? “You can’t become a liability on my account, don’t you get it? I can’t fucking let that happen!”
“Why are you so upset that I’m trying to help you?” Percy seethes. “Can’t you swallow your goddamned pride just this once?”
A whip in the face. That’s what it feels like. Annabeth’s mind immediately rears back, ready to tend to her wounds. She blinks, the back of her eyes stinging with something hot. He’s right, this is what all of it, everything they went through and everything they will go through, boils down to: her stupid fucking pride.
“I was-” Her voice cracks, embarrassingly so, and she clears her throat. “I just don’t want to see you getting hurt because of me.”
Percy’s silent—but only for a few, terse seconds. Something in his shoulders release, and he wilts, his hands gentle against her face as he swipes a thumb over her cheek. His skin comes away wet.
“We’ve always been better at arguing, huh,” he mumbles, and she laughs, the sound thick in her throat.
“Call it deja-vu.”
When she shifts, patting the crumbled sheets on her cot, he doesn’t hesitate to join her. He leans back against the metal headboard, arms open wide, and she settles into the familiar crook of his shoulder, head against his chest. He’s warm and comforting, and all of a sudden, she feels so fucking stupid for getting upset over the very thing she fell in love with him for. Burying her face further into him, she squeezes her eyes shut and wills her tears away.
“I love you,” she says, because she doesn’t say it enough.
He rubs a hand down her shoulder. “I love you too.”
A little later, he mumbles into her hair, his breath warm. “I’m sorry. I just kept thinking it was my fault you got hurt. It was my fault. I shouldn’t have let you go on that mission alone.”
She knows that he knows that Piper was with her. She hears the truth hidden between his words anyway: I shouldn’t have let you go on that mission without me. The thought settles uncomfortably in her skin, in her chest, in her stomach-
But Annabeth is too tired to argue with him any longer. So she presses her lips to the underside of his jaw, and whispers back.
“It’s okay. I’m okay.”
---
She remembers the first night all too easily.
Mid-July. The kind of air that hangs low, tacky. Leo had set the ship on course for Athens, picking up pace where they had left off earlier. Only a few hours before, Reyna, Nico, and Coach Hedge had dissolved into the shadows, taking along Athena’s statue back to Long Island.
(She’d caught Nico right before his departure at sunset, tying ropes around the Athena Parthenos’s pedestal like a giant backpack being slung over his shoulders. The 40 foot tall statue had drowned his already slight frame. It made him look kid-ish, in a way she hadn’t seen in him in a while.
Percy had been standing around, awkward. His brows were terse, mouth set with an emotion Annabeth couldn’t really put a pin on. She must have interrupted some kind of dialogue between the two—one that clearly hadn’t ended entirely well.
“Hey,” she said, quiet. Nico’s head snapped up.
His mouth twisted into something nameless. “Hi.”
Percy slipped a hand into hers, rough calluses brushing against her own.
Talking to Nico fell into an entirely different light after coming back up to the surface. All at once, she understood him too well—the permanent rings under his eyes, the cracked skin of his knuckles, the way he never spoke more than he had to.
And, as Nico wrapped another round of rope around his hands, she understood his need—the desperate, animal, primal need—to leave.
He chewed at the inner bits of his cheek, gaze stony, clearly waiting for Annabeth to speak. She should say something. What would someone headed for a suicide-mission need to hear at a time like this?
Annabeth blew out a breath. What else was there left to say?
“Good luck,” she whispered.
Nico turned around. The sight of his back was becoming all too familiar.
“Yeah,” he said. “You too.”)
The trio’s departure left the ship feeling significantly more empty than usual. The celebratory Argo II reunion she had been imagining for the past week felt like a lifeless pipe-dream at that point, everyone too exhausted and bloody and bruised to do much other than sleep the rest of the day away.
She couldn’t really complain. It meant everybody turned a blind eye to the way Annabeth bee-lined for Percy’s bedroom when dusk fell.
Falling asleep with Percy was something as easy as breathing to Annabeth. Back when they first started dating, it was a notion that made her heart pound—the way his body slotted perfectly next to hers, the heat of his skin that sunk deep into her bones. It felt like something close to vindication. She’d spent so much of her life thinking she couldn’t have him, but there he was—legs slung around her own, hand pressed to the dip of her waist—right next to her.
Now, it’s a little more like survival.
The way they held each other was just a bit too tight to be called cute. The way her nails dug into his skin, as if she would lose him in her sleep, was a little too much to be called clingy. And the way both of them only really got thirty minutes of sleep at a time, starting awake in fits and screams barely clamped down by the slap of a hand—well, they’d both passed the realm of normal a long time ago.
It was in one of these thirty-minute windows where Annabeth woke with a jolt, heart racing to an alarming degree and a cry caught between her teeth. The tang of blood pooled in her mouth. All she could feel was flames.
She scrubbed a hand over her face, less a soothing gesture and more a desperate itch to get it off, get it off, get it off.
You’re not down there anymore. You’re alive and you’re safe, and Percy’s right there with you and he would never leave-
Annabeth’s hand absent-mindedly grazed the soft cotton where Percy had tossed and turned throughout the night. His side of the bed was cool to the touch.
She was on her feet before she could think better of it. Thick, ice-cold dread clawing its way across her body, so intense she was sure it would render her useless, she ran out to the only place think of. The only place with open air. The only place on the Argo II that didn’t make her feel like she was on the precipice of suffocation.
July’s humidity clung to her skin the moment she burst out onto the deck, fear ready to vomit out of her mouth, when she caught a familiar figure leaning against the railing.
“Percy,” she breathed, hurt and terror melding into hot, hot anger in the back of her mind. “Where the hell did you go-”
And then he turned. Something in her stomach dropped, words failing on her tongue.
Percy looks-
Percy looked awful. A sickly, waxy sheen had replaced his usual tan, especially pallid in the white light of the moon. His sea-salt waves stuck to his forehead, glistening with sweat. He looked like he ran a marathon, promptly threw up, then went back to run another. Paper-thin lines, dotted with red, scattered his forearms as if he’d spent the night clawing at them. When he raked a hand through his hair, Annabeth just barely made out matching red crescents on the soft flesh of his palms.
“Percy,” she started, head swimming. “Percy, you look-”
Words spilled onto her tongue like vomit, trapped behind the jail cell of her teeth. You look like you did in the Labyrinth. You look like you haven’t slept in days. You look like you’ve died and come back. You look like you’re back in-
“I can’t stop,” he breathed. His voice cracked in a way she hadn’t heard since he was 15. “I can’t stop dreaming, Annabeth. I want to stop. I’m always down there, I can’t leave -”
“Percy.” Annabeth reached for him, but he flinched hard enough that his back slammed into the railing, the sharp ring of his bones hitting cold metal only deadened by the ratty t-shirt he was wearing.
The force of it all shocked them both—Percy’s eyes were blown wide, breaths coming in short, gasping pants. It was like he didn’t know what to do with himself, refusing her touch.
Annabeth wasn’t really sure what to do with herself, either. The tips of her fingers had gone numb.
Percy’s chest stuttered. As if his lungs weren’t used to breathing air that wasn’t acid. “I’m- I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, Annabeth, I don’t- I don’t know why I did that.”
She couldn’t open her mouth. Couldn’t speak. Couldn’t move herself from where she was, planted five feet across the boy she loved, the boy who was killing himself in his sleep and looking at her like she was all the reason for it.
(Because, if you ask Annabeth, she was. She still is. He’ll throw himself back in there all for her and they both know it.)
“Percy, I-”
All at once, her voice failed her. Heat climbed up her throat, burning through her skin. She only barely made it to the railing before vomiting up acid, her lungs screaming for air. Tears, hot as liquid flame, trailed down her cheeks and pooled at her hands. The intensity of her pain paralyzed her. She couldn’t get up. Her body wouldn’t move.
She only barely registered Percy’s presence at her side, the feeling of his hand against her back like ice. Too cold. Too much. It did nothing to break the fog, the slow numbness that comes with the knowledge that you’re dying.
Annabeth Chase and Percy Jackson were dying.
“Holy shit, oh, fuck ,” Percy whispered. Desperation leaked from his voice. “Annabeth, fuck, what’s happening-”
She wasn’t used to hearing him sound so scared and that terrified her. She opened her mouth to speak, but something about the strain on her throat made her stomach pump and bile flood her mouth, so she only shook her head. Leaned her head against the cold railing of the Argo II. Let the salt of her tears crack her dry lips.
Later, once it didn’t feel like her body was actively rejecting itself, Annabeth took a breath.
“I’m okay,” she said, though it felt superficial. “It’s okay, I’m okay.”
“Let’s go to bed.” The way he said it made it sound like he was begging. “Let’s just go to bed, yeah?”
He took her underneath her shoulder even though he was the reason she ran out here in the first place, whispering sweet comforts against her ear as they both hobbled back to his room. He tucked her beneath his covers, petting her hair and pressing his lips to the top of her head even though he was the reason she ran after him in the first place. It was never, and will never be, up for discussion with Percy—he always protects her.
It’s been studied that, though never quite one-to-one, the heartbeats of romantic partners can synchronize in sleep. As they laid in bed, Annabeth pressed the palm of her hand to Percy’s chest, breathing in the steadfast pulse that drummed almost desperately following the beat of her own.
Into hell , it seemed to whisper to her.
Annabeth pressed the palm of her hand to Percy’s chest, and stayed awake for a long, long time.
---
If Annabeth were ever to end up immortalized in Greek text, she thinks she’d be Thisbe.
Not Atalanta, not Hippolyte. She won’t be remembered for the way she fought, for the bare of her teeth. For the claw of her hands.
No, she’ll be remembered for the way she loves. Fiercely. Wanton. Without thought—which is something that usually comes so naturally to her, daughter of wisdom and sage. She’ll be remembered like Thisbe, named always with a twinge of something sad, a kind of pity that only comes to heroes that fall to the inevitability of tragedy.
She’ll be remembered for the way she loves Percy Jackson: like it burns to do so, as if it were in spite of herself.
And the way that’s killing them both.