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The day started out normal.
Well, as normal as a day in the life of a teenage demigod could be.
The plane ride was long, longer than Annabeth had the time for especially when her friends needed her.
It seemed like they always needed her.
This time was no different; Grover, Piper, Jason, and Apollo of all people— or was it Lester now? Honestly Annabeth couldn’t keep up with the gods’ antics at this point — had run into some trouble out west. A lot of trouble out west. Between Piper’s frantic and vague thirty second phone call from a random payphone somewhere with a Malibu area code at ten in the morning and the news report of fires and inexplicable explosions sounding off along the foothills of Oakland, the two of them buy plane tickets on her father’s card — he probably won’t mind — and get on the next plane from New York City to Oakland, figuring Zeus owed the both of them enough not to strike them out of the sky out of sheer pettiness.
Her leg was jiggling the entire three and a half hour flight, her anxiety eating a hole through her nerves with every passing minute. Annabeth figured that anxiety felt a lot like ants crawling on the inside of her stomach, picking away at the soft tissue with their sharp and numerous pincers, the pain sharp and ever present. Annabeth also that that whoever described anxiety as something as harmless as butterflies were fucking stupid.
But that’s not the point.
Percy was a saint through the ride, never letting go of her sweaty palm and every so often giving her what he thought was a reassuring smile even though it didn’t quite reach his eyes. She noticed how his left hand never left his pocket, his deft fingers fiddling with the cool metal of Anaklusmos. Kind sea-green eyes find hers when she needs them most, when the gut-clenching anxiety threatened to make her nausea manifest itself in the physical world onto her lap and the seat in front of her, kept it at bay.
She didn’t mention the fact that his own hand was trembling.
Or that his nails were bitten to the quick, the cuticle on his thumb raw and bleeding.
They weren’t strangers to life or death situations; demigods ate near-death experiences for breakfast, especially The Seven. After the war, Tartarus, and beating back Mother Nature herself, not much scared Percy and Annabeth. It hadn’t been an easy transition, going from constantly being on the run and fearing for their lives to living like semi-normal New York teens, not by a long shot. Percy still called her when the nightmares seemed a little too real and Annabeth had a hard time looking at the stars at night. But they were managing as best they could.
No, the problem wasn’t the fact that their friends were in danger, the issue was that they weren’t there with them.
The ride felt simultaneously like it took ten eons and ten minutes because before either teen knew it, the plane was landing. Before the captain could even give them permission, Annabeth whips out her phone, shaky fingers turning it off airplane modes and hungry eyes searching the screen for any notification, a text, missed call, email, social media DM, anything , and finding nothing at all.
She isn’t sure if that worries her more or less.
The trek through the airport went by in a blur since neither or them packed anything more than a backpack. The two of them sprinted to the pick-up area, while Percy ordered an Uber to the hastily scrawled address Annabeth hardly had time to write when Piper gave it out less than six hours previous.
Two minutes later, they were strapped into the back of a Ford Focus and on their way to where they were needed. Part of Annabeth, the one that was stuck on social niceties and manners, felt bad for the poor man driving the car. He tried to make conversation with the two of them, asking them all kinds of questions about where they were from, how their flight was, what their business in the Bay was for, if they wanted any snacks, and if they wanted to change the music, all of which were answered by monosyllabic responses from Annabeth whilst she watched her phone’s notification center like her life depended on it and Percy tried to get someone, anyone on the line to no avail.
Eventually, he stopped trying, content to listen to his own music as he drove, a weird mix of 80s rock and gregorian chants that Annabeth didn’t comment on. Soon enough, they’re pulling outside of a beach house and the two of them are out of the vehicle before it’s even finished moving, tennis shoes kicking up sand as they raced for the door, drawing their weapons instinctually.
“Piper?” Annabeth calls as she knocked on the door so hard her knuckles hurt. “It’s Annabeth and Pe—” The door swings open before she even has the chance to finish speaking and a hundred and fifty pounds of teenage girl is in her arms, her bandaged arms wrapped around her tightly as her deceptively slight shoulders shook.
It’s then she notices that Piper’s crying, crying like the world’s ending.
Annabeth’s stomach drops into her shoes, dread washing over her faster than she can stop it as she holds her friend on the porch.
Percy walks in behind her, Riptide held aloft in his left hand, a fierce expression on his face. “Pipes, what’s wrong, are you safe?” he demands, authority in his tone brokering no room for argument. Sharp sea green eyes sweep the room for a threat before settling on the small group standing vigil outside a locked door including a tired-looking little dark-haired and bespectacled girl who could only be Meg, Apollo in his human form looking very, very beat up, and what he believes to be a pandos , a creature he’s only heard Annabeth talk about in passing.
“What happened?” Annabeth urges, holding the sobbing girl up and shaking her lightly even as she begins to feel sick to her stomach. The girl just holds on tighter, her cries hysterical. Apollo turns his brown eyes to meet with Annabeth’s, unmistakable sorrow lining them.
She has to fight the urge to bolt right then and there.
“Where’s Jason?” Percy adds, lowering his sword slightly when no immediate danger is found. “I thought he was with you.”
If at all possible, Piper begins to sob harder, her hold tightening enough to bruise before terrible, horrible understanding hits Annabeth like fifteen tons of bricks. Trembling fingers halt their trails through her matted locks as her everything clicks into place for Percy as well.
His eyes widen as his grip tightens on the hilt of Riptide involuntarily. “No,” he murmurs, something like horror twisting his features slowly. “Piper,” he says again, an edge of hysteria in his voice, “ where’s Jason ?” he grinds out. “Does he need backup? Point me in the direction and I’m there, just say the word and I—”
Piper just shakes her head miserably, taking large breaths to make an attempt at steadying herself before her face crumples in on itself, more pain in her puffy, red-rimmed eyes than she’d ever seen. “I-I tried,” she rasps, her voice shredded from crying so hard. “But he- I… he’s… ” she gasps, grief overtaking her as Annabeth’s heart cracks while the younger girl weeps in her arms.
She doesn’t notice her legs gave out until she sees Percy crouched in front of them, quiet rage and anguish making his face stony when he utters one singular word: “ Who ?”
“Caligula,” Meg offers solemnly, her glasses sitting crooked on her face. “He… He tried to kill us, really kill us, but Jason stopped him.” She looks down at the floor, her small face wracked with sadness. “He was a hero.”
“Alright,” her boyfriend says simply before stalking to the door, unadulterated fury and grief coming off of him in waves.
With strength Annabeth never even knew she had, she somehow deposits Piper on the couch and intercepts Percy with a hand on his shoulder, sorrow making her chest tight. His shoulder is taut under her hand as she turns him to face her. “Don’t,” she beseeches quietly. “Not yet.”
His gaze softens as the tension in his body disappears, fading into bone-deep weariness. “Can we see him?” Percy asks in the quietest voice Annabeth has heard since they were twelve and he thought his mother was dead. “Please?” he adds, his voice raw with emotion.
Piper nods once, looking like she’s trying to pull herself together. “My dad’s on his way,” is all she tells them before she slumps into the couch, anguish overtaking her once more.
The group outside the door part to let them go through and Annabeth is surprised she’s not full-on sobbing right now. Jason is like a younger brother to her. He was always so brave and honorable and kind. There’s no way a light as bright as that, like Jason, could be snuffed out as easily as a candle. No way. What would Thalia do, knowing that her actual baby brother was gone?
Annabeth tries to keep her breathing as even as possible when she pushes open the door to what looks to be a guest room with Percy’s comforting presence right behind her.
The first thing she notices is the smell.
There’s only been one other time she’s been in a room that smells like this, like blood and fear and death: at the top of the Plaza Hotel in New York during the Battle of Manhattan, when Apollo campers had turned the area into an infirmary for the wounded. Then, it had been worse, the screaming and moaning of the injured paired with the smells and sights had been enough to keep most non-medics away according to Percy since she was in and out of consciousness the entire time she was there. But she did remember the smell like it was yesterday.
The sickeningly familiar smell makes her stomach roil as she steps into the nicely furnished bedroom and the body on the bed, thankfully covered by a sheet.
And for the first time since Tartarus , Annabeth prays, really prays, not just the usual praying she did during ceremonies or dinner or when she needed guidance; she prayed for a miracle, for something in the Universe to make it so that the body under that sheet wasn’t the brightest boy she’d ever known, hoping against all hope that it just wasn’t Jason .
Then her frantic gaze fell onto the nightstand and on the bloody metal sitting on top of it, glinting in the late afternoon sun that shone through the closed blinds.
Jason’s glasses.
Annabeth crumbles to her knees and her heart shatters into a million pieces as Percy holds her on the hardwood floor. They cling to each other like their lives depend on it as grief wrecks them both.
Jason, who was the first to stand up for someone weaker.
Jason, the one who would nosedive into danger if that meant helping someone who needed it.
Jason, who laughed easily and loved hard.
Jason, the son, brother, boyfriend, teammate, praetor, leader, and friend was dead .
He was gone from this Earth like he’d never existed in the first place.
And there wasn’t a damn thing she could’ve done to stop it.
Then, and only then do the tears start to fall.
She does not get up for a very, very long time.