Archive of Our Own

The universe truly works in peculiar ways.

For as long as humanity could remember, the soulmate system had been put in place. No one knew how, and no one knew why. All anyone knew was that it was, and that was that. No one questioned the system, and everyone abided by the system.

The system was beautifully constructed, and each person has one chance to meet their soulmate. When two soulmates meet and make physical contact, a glowing aura was created around them, and their life only blossomed from there as they spend the rest of their lives loving one another.

One chance.

That was all that was given to soulmates to find one another, and it worked surprisingly well. It was unheard of to miss the one chance to meet your soulmate. It just didn’t happen.

If two people were about to miss each other, the universe would change their paths once again to meet. Sometimes, it would involve two people being forced together like magnets, which could be humiliating. Other times, two soulmates would start radiating glitter and confetti, which was a much more entertaining twist of fate.

The soulmate system was supported by the entire world. It’s created so much beauty and happiness in the world. People didn’t miss their soulmates. Ever. The soulmate system was flawless.

Well.

Almost.

Annabeth groaned as her roommate banged on her door for the fifth time in as many minutes. She ignored Piper’s insistent pounding against the wood and the knocks that reverberated throughout her room, and instead pulled her pillow over her ears to block out the world.

She was absolutely exhausted from working late, and now Piper wanted her to get up and walk her to Starbucks like she was incapable of getting herself there. Rooming with that girl was a terrible idea, truly.

The banging finally stopped, and Annabeth hummed happily into her pillow, turning over onto her side and drifting back off into another dreamless sleep. Piper seemed to have other plans.

Annabeth’s door was kicked open loudly, and Annabeth nearly jumped out of her skin as she was met with Piper staring at her through the now adjacent (and surprisingly not broken) door.

“What the hell, Piper?” Annabeth said with a hand over her heart. “Are you trying to kill me?”

“I’ve been knocking for the past five minutes.”

“Oh, really? I didn’t notice.”

Piper raised an eyebrow, doubtful. “Get up. We’re going to Starbucks.”

“We are not,” Annabeth replied pointedly, snuggling deeper into the bed. “You might not have worked, but I did, so I’m going to go back to sleep while you leave me alone.”

Piper crossed her arms and leaned against the threshold of the door. “You’re coming with me if I have to wrestle you into clothes and drag you down the street on a leash like you’re a dog.”

Annabeth lifted her nose into the air, defiant. “No.”

Piper laughed in disbelief. “Oh, yeah? Think I won’t drag your twenty-four-year-old ass down the street?”

“I’d like to see you try.”

Piper cracked her fingers and then her neck before approaching Annabeth on the bed. Annabeth screamed playfully as Piper jumped onto the bed and started pulling her by the foot until she landed with a thump on the hardwood floor.

Annabeth likes to think she put up a good fight, but twenty minutes later, she found herself walking down the New York sidewalk grumpily. Piper looked thoroughly pleased with herself.

“How’d you sleep?” Piper tried in mock politeness.

Annabeth just shot her the nastiest glare she could muster at eight in the morning.

“Not well?” Piper pouted her lip, and Annabeth had never wanted to punch her more.

“Are you just going to ignore me the entire walk?” Piper pulled Annabeth into her side and pressed a wet kiss to her cheek, which Annabeth immediately wiped off. “You love me too much to ignore me. Remember?”

Annabeth shoved her off, still appalled that she’d been woken up against her will. She was an actual adult, paying her own bills and filing for taxes, but here Piper was acting like her mother. It was simply and utterly gross.

“Annabeth,” Piper whined. “I want attention.”

“You get no attention ever again,” Annabeth snapped, pointing towards the glass doors of the Starbucks. “Go get your drink so I can leave.”

Piper gasped. “You’ve gotta come with. The pink drink is absolutely to die for.”

“I hate you.”

“Come on,” Piper said gleefully.

Annabeth obediently followed Piper through the doors, and the refreshing air of the room hit her head on. She didn’t go to Starbucks very often, so she apparently missed the remodel of the place. It was much more modern than she remembered, and she thinks she might actually come more often if this is the way the environment was.

They were immediately greeted by the workers there, and Piper hopped to the front of the ordering station to order whatever drink and snack she’d been craving. Annabeth opted to stay behind and admire the build of the place instead.

The lights cast a warm glow over the café, and it felt extremely homey. There was a cute handwritten menu hanging on the wall in front of her, and dark wooden chairs and tables lined the sides of the shop. There were metal bars apparent overhead that added to the rustic, warm feel of the place.

Annabeth let her eyes wander over to the baristas behind the station. There was a frail lady looking ready to fall with the slightest gust of wind that wrapped in the classic dark green apron. She called out to someone on her left, and when Annabeth looked over, she was met with –

Annabeth let out a low whistle, eyeing the boy making someone’s cappuccino. He was built strong, and his muscles could be seen through his shirt, flexing with every movement. The muscles were definitely present, but not overbearingly so. And his shoulders…

She swallowed hard. Dear lord…

Annabeth traced the edges of his broad shoulders with her eyes, and then she looked up at his face and lined his features. He had raven black hair, and his eyes were so green, enhanced by the dim glow of the room. Even from a distance, she could tell his eyelashes were long and delicate against his face, and everything about him screamed perfection.

As Annabeth stood biting her lip in appreciation, a certain someone managed to startle her for the second time that day. Annabeth really needed new friends, and she told Piper just that.

“Cute, right?” she whispered into Annabeth’s ear, ignoring Annabeth’s earlier statement.

“Understatement,” Annabeth muttered back, turning her attention to Piper.

“Go talk to him,” Piper urged, elbowing Annabeth roughly. “He might be your soulmate!”

“He’s not my soulmate.”

“You don’t know that until you touch hands. Or other more fun body parts.”

“I wasn’t planning on getting a drink, so the universe would’ve already colored both of our hairs rainbow by right about now.”

Piper threw her head back and laughed. She’d met her soulmate almost a year ago, and she’d been one of the few people to almost miss them. The universe decided to spontaneously color both of their hairs a neon rainbow, and people got quite a muse out of that. Annabeth actually thought Piper and her soulmate, Jason, were perfect together. They’d been together less than a year and they were happy as can be.

“The universe is just giving you a chance before you embarrass yourself by walking out that door.”

“I’m so not going.”

“Go.” Piper shoved Annabeth forwards aggressively.

Annabeth stumbled, shooting Piper a scathing look, who just smiled all too sweetly. She was really getting too comfortable with her spot in Annabeth’s life. As Annabeth approached the counter, she tried to calm herself to prevent the inevitable embarrassment to come.

“How can I help you?” the old lady from before asked with a little waver in her voice.

“Uh… I’ll just get a venti dragon drink,” Annabeth said, reading off of the menu.

“Will that be all, dear?”

Annabeth nodded, fishing her card out of her pocket and shoving it into the chip scanner. The lady called out to someone to start making her drink, and Annabeth wordlessly stepped aside for the next person, waiting for her name to be called out.

As she waited, her mind drifted back to the whole soulmate situation. Most people found their soulmate before the age of twenty-five, but it seemed Annabeth wasn’t that lucky. She didn’t mind too much, but it did kind of get annoying when everyone around her was constantly showing off their own partners.

It wasn’t like Annabeth wouldn’t meet them eventually. She knew she would– it was just that she was starting to feel like she’d meet them when she was fifty years old living with ten cats. The soulmate system, though embarrassing, didn’t have any flaws. She’d find her soulmate, but she had to go around touching people for it if she didn’t want some crazy scene to break out. Unfortunately, Annabeth wasn’t about the touchy lifestyle, so she knew she was going to end up trailing confetti all the way home when she finally did meet them.

God, how morbid.

Someone called out her name in the shop, and she was brought back to a halting reality. She walked the small distance to the pick-up counter, and she realized that the guy to call out her name was the one she’d been… admiring earlier.

“Annabeth?” the guy, Percy she read, asked her.

“That’s me,” she answered with a smile.

The guy looked at her kindly, and she pretended not to notice the way his eyes flicked up and down her body. “The dragon drink is amazing. Good choice.”

Annabeth smiled, and her heart did a little flutter in her chest. “So I’ve heard.”

Percy bit his lower lip and extended the drink out towards her. “Here you go.”

Annabeth looked at his hand, and a part of her mind called out to her that he might be the one. She reached out towards the drink, willing her body not to shake, and their fingers were centimeters way, about to touch, and time stopped, and–

“Percy!” someone yelled from behind the counter.

His hand jerked back as he looked over his shoulder before quickly turning around and handing her the drink with a rushed grin. “Nice meeting you, Annabeth.”

Percy wandered off to somewhere cut off from her view, and she half hoped that something crazy happened that signified they were soulmates. She was so close, and now he was gone, and nothing was happening.

Her face fell when the world was still carrying on around them. It was something about the encounter that had made her incredibly excited and antsy, and she got her hopes up. She guesses that was her first mistake.

She turned around with a sigh and locked eyes with Piper, who looked apologetic.

“I’m sorry, Beth,” Piper said. “I really had a feeling about that one.”

“It’s fine,” Annabeth brushed off, making towards the door, desperate to get out of the room that felt all too stuffy now. “You always have a feeling.”

“This one was different. It was the feeling that I’d felt right before meeting Jason, and when Hazel met Frank.”

Annabeth shrugged, holding the door open for Piper. “Guess you’re not the love expert you thought you were,” she teased.

Piper looked very reluctant to leave, and then she stopped in her tracks all together. “Go back and kiss him.”

“What?”

“Just try it,” Piper said, shoving Annabeth by her back and against her will.

“No!” Annabeth ran past Piper who was trying to shield the exit. “If we were soulmates, something would’ve happened already. Let it go.”

Piper looked insulted. “Fine. Let’s go.”

Annabeth and Piper walked down the block back towards their shared apartment. Piper was abnormally quiet, her mood effectively ruined by the whole ordeal. To be honest, Annabeth’s was too. Piper had been shoving her towards guys for a while now, ensuring Annabeth that each one had to be the one, and she was let down every single time. Each time hurt Annabeth just a little bit more than the previous times.

Despite her own mood, Annabeth tried to cheer Piper up.

“What’s wrong?” Annabeth asked softly, elbowing Piper gently.

Piper wailed miserably and kept walking.

“Piper?” Annabeth prompted.

“I want you to meet your soulmate.” Piper sniffed. “You deserve it.”

“I’m fine, Piper.”

“You’re just so lonely.”

“Uh, what?”

“I don’t want to see you sad.”

“I’m telling you I’m not.”

“You say that, but I know the truth, honey.”

“What the fuck?”

Piper looked like she might actually start crying. “We need to find your soulmate soon.”

“Why are you more sad about this than I am?”

“Because I’m the love whisperer!”

“Calm down,” Annabeth breathed. “Let’s just go have some fun.”

Piper perked up at that. “Drinking?”

“No. I have work tomorrow, but we can do anything else.”

“Drinking!”

“Piper, no!”

Piper cackled manically. “I love me a good bottle of tequila. Come on, we have to start getting ready now.”

“It’s not even nine in the morning?”

“We must drown our sorrows in alcohol,” Piper said seriously. “Stop complaining and let’s go!”

Somehow, despite her efforts not to end up at a club, Annabeth found herself stuffed into a warm room filled with too many perspiring bodies.

She sat at the bar, swirling her glass of alcohol, still not entirely sure what it was anyways. She just watched as Piper danced on the dance floor with Jason pulled closely into her back. Typical of Piper to invite her out and then ditch Annabeth in favor of her boyfriend, to be honest.

Annabeth turned around to face the bartender, the view of all the couples moving to the beat of the music too much for her to handle. The entire day had just been spent with a dull feeling pushed to the back of her mind. She tried not to let it get to her, but it hurt when everyone around her was falling in love and she was stuck working on blueprints all night like the loveless idiot she was.

She just wished that she could find the guy already and be over with it. She was already twenty-four, which she knew was by no means old, but she had always imagined herself meeting her soulmate in her early twenties, which has since passed. It just stung a little bit.

Annabeth took a big gulp of her drink, taking in the satisfying burn of the liquor as it made its way down her throat. It wouldn’t be able to fix her problems, but at least it would do something to help her forget it.

As Annabeth kept sipping her drink, relishing in the filter it put over her, she looked around the club’s flashing lights curiously. There were so many people pressed together in the center of the room, bouncing to the steady rhythm, and Annabeth felt gross just looking at the people grinding all over each other. From where she sat, she could still feel the heat radiating off of them, and the room just looked all gross and musty. Maybe she was saving herself from suffering on the dance floor by being single.

Just as she was about to go find literally anything else to do, her eyes caught sight of someone familiar. The boy from that morning, Percy, was standing along the edge of the room, his arm wrapped snugly around a red-headed girl. He was smiling and exchanging words with what seemed to be a few of his friends, and it made everything sting just a little bit more.

The girl cuddled into his side, who she assumed to be his girlfriend, looked utterly content with where she was. Annabeth wished she had that for herself; she just wanted to forget her life for once.

Annabeth snapped back around in the seat, chugging down the rest of her drink. She brushed her tangled curls out of her face and clenched her teeth together, flagging down the bartender. “I’ll take another.”

The bartender, the name Dionysus written on his nametag, immediately started filling another glass. “Boy troubles?”

Annabeth noticed the slur in his voice, but wisely chose not to comment on it. “One could say that.”

The drink was placed in front of her, and Annabeth looked at it guiltily. Her liver would not be very happy tomorrow, and neither would her boss. With the amount of drinks she planned on consuming that night if this feeling of sadness persisted, she would probably be sweating out tequila by tomorrow morning.

She wasn’t sure how long she had been sitting there, but another drink in and someone’s sliding into the seat next to her.

“Hey,” a voice said, sounding low and deep.

Annabeth looks up from her hands wrapped tightly around her drink to analyze the guy. A part of her wanted it to be Percy from before, but it wasn’t. This guy had blonde hair and blue eyes and he was currently eyeing Annabeth like she would be his next meal.

The hairs stood up on her arms as she looked at the guy some more. Her inhibitions were off, and the alcohol was really starting to affect her vision. He had a kind smile, but it still made her feel like something was about to go very, very wrong.

“Can I buy you a drink?” he asked smoothly.

Despite that feeling building inside of her, Annabeth decided she could have some fun. She was probably just overreacting, and he was attractive enough for her to be pleased. It was probably just her drunken state of mind that was creating the paranoia.

“I don’t even know your name,” Annabeth said, voice sultry.

“I’m Luke.” The guy smiled at her and licked his lips as he looked at her. “You owe me your name now.”

Annabeth giggled, leaning her elbow onto the counter drunkenly. “I’m Annabeth,” she whispered loudly before breaking off into another fit of giggles.

“Gorgeous name to match the body.” He locked eyes with her, and pleasant chills ran down her back.

“Says you,” she flirted. “Sexy if I’ve ever seen it.”

Luke laughed. “You’re pretty intoxicated, huh?”

“Using big words like intoxicated? You’ve surely captured my attention.”

Luke grinned again, but this time it looked slightly more like baring his teeth. “How about that drink now?”

Annabeth winked, which he took as a yes. He flagged down the bartender, saying something incomprehensible to Annabeth. She just focused on admiring his features and forgetting everything else that was wrong in the world. When she finally came to, Luke was hunched over the table and shielding her drink from her sight.

“What’s taking so long?” she questioned with the tilt of her head.

Luke faced her again, and she noticed him jerk his hand back into his pocket. “One martini coming right up.” He lifted the drink by the glass stem and placed it in front of her.

She looked at it and then back at him, a bit hesitant. But he seemed nice enough to her, so she lifted the drink to her lips and took a small sip. It didn’t taste any different, so she sat and happily downed some more, definitely at a pace too fast for her brain to keep up.

Her and Luke were exchanging flirtatious comments, and as the hours passed, he kept giving her more and more drinks. Everything became more and more fuzzy, and she didn’t know any better, thinking it was just the alcohol taking over her system. At some point, she found Luke leaning closer to her, whispering words into her ear.

“What do you say we get out of here?”

Annabeth’s body flushed with heat. She couldn’t find any words, and she could barely move, but she managed to nod her head, and then Luke was grabbing her by the waist and leading her out the door before she could protest.

It took her way too long to realize that he had led her through a back door, and by the time she figured it out, he was pressing his lips to her and shoving her against the brick wall of a dark alley.

Annabeth let out a surprised squeak as Luke pulled her tighter against him and forced her mouth open. Annabeth couldn’t move or push him off, and her entire world felt like it was spinning. Each breath came harder and she was feeling dizzier and weaker by the second. She didn’t realize that he put something in her drink until it was too late.

Luke grabbed her curled hair and threaded his fingers through them, pulling harshly for her to expose her neck to him. He trailed his mouth up her neck, and Annabeth’s stomach churned at the realization of what was about to go down.

“Stop,” she choked out, wriggling in his grasp.

He just pulled her lips back to his, and she stilled.

“Let go,” she slurred, pushing him away with as much effort as she could.

Luke stopped for a moment but kept his grip in her hair. “Isn’t this what you wanted?”

“No,” she cried.

Luke’s gaze darkened. “Yes, it is.”

He resumed running his hands over her body, and tears streamed down her face. She wasn’t in control of her body, and something was severely wrong, and he did something to her, but she couldn’t stop it.

“Luke,” she tried again. “Stop, please.”

Luke growled and pulled away from her, and she breathed a sigh of relief, wiping her face.

“Thank you–”

Annabeth felt a piercing pain in her abdomen, and when she looked down, there was a knife embedded in her stomach. Crimson stained her skin-tight dress and spread through the fabric, and she stared down at it in shock.

The blood flooded out of the open wound, and the knife was still piercing her skin and the handle held by Luke, but then he twisted, and she fell to the ground in agony. She felt him pull it out, and she prayed that he would walk away, that she would have any chance of survival, but instead he takes a step forward and leans over her crumpled form on the ground.

“You should’ve just let me,” he said, and when she looked him in the eyes, petrified, his eyes look pure black. Luke lifted the stained knife for her to see before bringing it down onto her chest, right over her heart, and she screamed.

She was in a world of pain and shock, and something inside her told her that this was the end. Something sounded behind her, and Luke looked up before dropping the knife and running. Annabeth was left on the ground, her blood pooling below her, and tears stinging her eyes as she awaited the dreaded moment that darkness would overtake her.

Her vision went fuzzy for a moment, but then it cleared, and she saw someone, Percy, standing over her, eyeing her without any clue as of what to do. Annabeth lifted her hand to grab onto his upper arm and squeeze, needing something to hold onto as she passes over to the feeling of nothingness.

Percy told her something, but it passes through her ears as the blood loss takes a final toll.

She blinked again, staring up at the night sky, and she heard Percy panicking again, begging her to make it until they get here, until the ambulance and the medics get here, so she can survive.

She knew she wasn’t going to survive.

She blinked one last time and looks at Percy, not wanting to be alone in her final moment. Percy stared back at her, his eyes lining with tears, and Annabeth stared back. She took a shaky breath, filling her lungs with as much oxygen as she could manage, and then nothing comes back out.

The pain was gone.

Annabeth sat up with a gasp, her hand immediately flying up to press against the wound. Her heart was racing as her mind tried to grasp what had just happened. She had expected her hand to pull away from her body bloody, but when she lifted her hand to her face, it was clean.

She looked down to her abdomen frantically, pressing to the spot where the wound had just been. There was no hole, no pain, no anything. It couldn’t have just been a dream– it had felt way too realistic, except it had to be a dream. She had died, so she couldn’t be sitting here unless it was just an extremely vivid dream.

Piper threw her door open and Annabeth jumped.

“You’re going to be late!”

“Uh.” Annabeth was trembling. “For what?”

“For work…?” Piper raised an eyebrow. “Are you okay? You’re looking really pale.”

Annabeth licked her lips, looking for a response. “I had a nightmare, you could say.”

“Hm.”

Annabeth ran her fingers through her hair, massaging her scalp. “I don’t work on Wednesdays, Piper.”

Piper blinked. “Yes, you do.”

“The firm’s closed on Wednesdays.”

“What firm?”

“The architecture firm…?”

A beat passed.

“Annabeth.”

“What?”

“You don’t work at an architecture firm.”

Annabeth paused and then laughed uneasily. “I’ve been working at one for years now.”

“Are you feeling okay?”

“Are you?”

“Annabeth. You’re a teacher?”

Annabeth choked on air. “I hate kids. Why would I ever become a teacher?”

“I’m sure your students would love to hear that.”

“Can you please stop it?”

“I’m being completely serious. You need to get up and get to work, like, now.”

Annabeth’s heart was starting up again. Something was very, very wrong. She couldn’t pinpoint exactly what, but the feeling of uneasiness resounded in her.

“You’re scaring me, Piper. I’m not a teacher.”

Piper stood, dumbfounded. “You’re a kindergarten teacher at the elementary school down the street. Your id is on the table, and you need to put it on and go so we can afford this place. You’re the one who insisted we move somewhere nicer, after all.”

Annabeth scrunched her eyebrows together, looking towards the wooden nightstand on her right. She scanned the surface, and sure enough, her eyes fell on a plastic card with her picture on it. There she was, a picture of her smiling plastered on the front with her name printed on the side. She was a registered kindergarten teacher, but she had no recollection of anything at all.

“Did you seriously fake an id?” Annabeth asked, holding the plastic up to examine it.

“Why would I fake that?”

“I swear if you’re messing with me…”

Piper raised her hands defensively. “I’m not!”

Tears lined Annabeth’s eyes on reflex, and her lower lip began to quiver. She willed herself to stop because it couldn’t be that big of a deal, but her eyes involuntarily continued to tear up. It was starting to seem like last night wasn’t as much of a dream as she had previously thought. Or, Piper was just pulling a very elaborate prank.

Piper noticed her tears and immediately grew concerned. “What’s going on?” she asked, rushing towards Annabeth’s side on the bed.

“I don’t know.” Annabeth sniffled, rubbing her face. “What did we do yesterday?”

“You went to work and then we watched Disney movies and got drunk.” Piper rubbed Annabeth’s back. “I didn’t think you got that drunk.”

“I don’t remember any of that.”

Piper’s voice got stuck in her throat. “What– what do you remember, then?”

“I remember being an architect and going drinking last night, and then–”

“Then?” Piper pressed.

“And then I died.”

Piper’s jaw slackened. “Annabeth. You’ve never been an architect– never even interested in that type of thing. And, you’re definitely not dead.”

“Except I did die,” Annabeth said miserably. “I remember dying outside the alley of a bar after someone stabbed me, and now I’m alive, but as a different person.”

Piper was silent for a moment before speaking up. “I think you should go to the doctor.”

“No. I have to be dreaming right now.”

“I am living proof that you are not dreaming, and I’m telling you that you need to go to the hospital.”

Annabeth laughed wetly. “What will they do?”

“Maybe you hit your head a little too hard, or something. You’re awake in this life, so whatever you’re remembering is clearly not the reality.”

“So, what, you think I have some sort of amnesia?”

“It’s the only explanation.” Piper breathed out. “You need to call in sick to work.”

Annabeth nodded, pulling a blanket around her shoulders tightly in search of any comfort it would provide. She was alive in a life she had no recollection of, which would mean that she had never died like her memory was telling her. She tried to convince herself that she was just in a dream right now, in a coma after the accident of the previous night, or seriously messed up in this life and just waiting for everything to come flooding back, but something told her that she really did die last night, and it was about to make everything spiral out of control.

Piper spent the better half of the week home with Annabeth, trying to help her through her confusion and fear. Annabeth still couldn’t remember anything of the supposed lifetime she was living in, and even after a trip to the doctors, everything was still a total mystery.

She knew she needed to do something, but she didn’t know what. She couldn’t just go on living life in an alternate timeline, or whatever this was, but what other choice did she have? She couldn’t just snap out of whatever this was. Annabeth wanted so badly to just understand what was happening, why this was happening, but she couldn’t. She was stuck.

Annabeth had to go to work at some point again, and it had to be soon. Again, absolutely terrifying, but she and Piper had spent the night preparing Annabeth for the next morning where she would find herself teaching a group of grimy, germ-infested children.

“Let’s go over it one more time.”

Annabeth shot Piper a look. “I know all their names.”

“Do you know the problem kids?”

“Yes, mother.”

“Lesson plans ready?”

“They’re kindergarteners. How much of a lesson plan do I really need?”

Piper held a hand over her heart and looked at Annabeth with mock pride in her eyes. “You’re ready.”

“Let’s hope so,” Annabeth sighed. She really didn’t want to show up at the school she apparently worked at. She had to go through the front office and do whatever it was that teachers did, and then she had to sit for eight hours with kids entirely too excited for life.

Piper all but shoved Annabeth out of the apartment they still shared in this timeline, not even giving her a second glance before slamming the door shut behind her. Annabeth glanced longingly at the door, imagining she was still under her warm covers and not about to drive to her job that she doesn’t even remember. You know, the usual.

If you were to ask Annabeth, she would tell you that she had no idea how she got to the school because in her mind, one second she was standing outside her apartment and then she was standing outside the front office the next.

The school was huge, to say the least. There were two stories and it was built in a medieval style, the roof coming to points and creating an overall old-vibe. Even though she wasn’t an architect anymore, she was still just as in love with the building.

There weren’t many students there yet, which she was thankful for because it would’ve been entirely too overwhelming if they were.

With a trembling hand, she pulled open the glass door to the front office and was immediately greeted brightly by the people inside.

“Hey, Annabeth!” a man called with a small wave of the hand. “Feeling better?”

Annabeth blinked. The boy had brown hair and eyes with a scar running across his face, and Annabeth had absolutely no idea who he was. When Annabeth didn’t respond, the man scrunched his eyebrows.

“Are you still sick?”

Annabeth licked her lips, deciding she should probably say something before someone called the cops on her for impersonating Annabeth Chase. “No, no. I’m fine.”

The man, Ethan Nakamura Annabeth read off the id card, smiled brightly. “Well, I marked you off as here, so just head on over to your classroom. Have a good day!”

Ethan looked down at something on the counter in front of him, leaving Annabeth to figure out which way she went to get into the school. There were halls on both sides of the counter in front of her, and Annabeth just chose to head down the one closest to her and hope she chose right.

It took a lot longer than Annabeth would care to admit to find her classroom. She walked around the school twice and up an alarming number of stairs before she found the door marked with her name. If anyone asked, no she was not lost, she was just stretching her legs at seven in the morning, and yes, people do that.

She grabbed the lanyard from around her neck and jammed it into the lock before twisting and pushing the door in. Annabeth was about to walk in, but someone called out behind her.

“It’s Annabeth, right?”

When she turned around, she was met with green eyes staring back at her, and her heart stopped. Of course he would work here and throw her even more off her game than she already was.

When she looked closer, she noticed that he was extremely nervous. He was looking at her like she might vanish into thin air, and he was all pale and shaky.

“Yeah. Percy,” she acknowledged in return with the tilt of her head, pretending to read his name off of his lanyard.

“Are you, uh– You’re okay?”

“Yeah,” she lied. “I didn’t know you worked here.”

She wanted to bang her head against the wall the second she said it. Of course she didn’t know he worked here, but obviously he did since he approached her first. Saying she didn’t know he worked here had to sound suspicious considering they’d supposedly been working together for a year, if not more.

“I’m a fifth-grade teacher,” he said, giving a nervous smile. He still looked like he had seen a ghost.

“Oh.”

They shifted around on their feet awkwardly. She didn’t know what to say to him, and apparently, he didn’t either. The only thing she knows – knew – about him was that he worked at Starbucks and he had been the one to watch her die in her past life. Not exactly a great foundation, in her opinion.

“Well,” Percy started, and Annabeth breathed a sigh of relief, “I should probably get going.”

“Yeah…”

He gave her one last awkward smile before turning around and hurrying off in the direction she could only assume his classroom lay.

Her mind was really feeling twisted today. Unless Percy had two jobs, his life had changed along with hers. Apparently when her world restarted, everyone else’s did too?

She shook her head to clear her thoughts. It was too early to start panicking already, so she pushed her door open once again and stepped inside to begin the longest day of her life.

Somehow, she had managed to make it through most of the day. There were only two hours left before she could go home and scream, and with these kids, she definitely needed it.

The class of twenty kids would not shut up once, and Annabeth remembered seeing a sign in a bathroom that said bang head here. She could really use that right about now. One kid decided to throw a tantrum and grab onto her leg, and she actually spent almost an hour just trying to get him to stop. Another kid peed himself, and Annabeth thanks herself for having each student bring boxes of clothes in the beginning of the year, not that she remembered doing so.

Eventually, the kids settled down, and that was how Annabeth found herself sitting on a chair with the kids in front of her, reading them a book for storytime.

As much as she hated being a teacher, even after one day of doing so, she could see why people did it. Yes, there were times when being a teacher felt like juggling three cars while on a tightrope while also on fire, but there were also times when the kids were quiet and just so consumed in wonder and ignorance that it made her heart ache.

“Miss Chase?” a kid exclaimed, raising his hand and waving it around, nearly smacking another kid beside him.

“Yes, Octavian?” Annabeth asked, looking down at him while her fingers paused on the page she was showing the kids.

“Can we read a different book? I don’t like this one.”

Annabeth internally screamed. “Maybe tomorrow. Right now, we’re going to just finish this one.”

“But it’s boooring,” he dragged, flopping backwards onto the carpet. “My mom got me a book about killing doggies. Can we read that?”

“I–” Annabeth struggled for words. “That’s not something we should be reading, Octavian.”

“My mommy lets me.”

“Uh…” Goodness, take back what she said about the wonders of teaching. It sucked ass. “Let’s not–”

Annabeth was cut off by the static of the overhead announcements, and she thinks that maybe it was for the better because good lord, how was one supposed to respond to that?

Annabeth quieted the class down as they started to whisper, listening for whatever the office was about to say.

“We are initiating a code red two–”

Her stomach dropped.

“This is not a drill. Lock all doors and turn off all lights. Do not answer the door for anyone and remain silent.”

The speaker continued on, but it all blurred together in her ears. A code red two meant an active shooter on campus, and it wasn’t a drill, so she had to hide the kids except she had no idea what she was doing.

She stumbled to her feet, dropping the book beside her, and looked around the room. Her eyes caught onto the closet in the back, and when she had looked inside earlier, it hadn’t been big enough to fit twenty small children, but it was her only choice and she had to try.

She ushered the kids towards the room, many of whom were beginning to feel the seriousness of the situation and were crying all too loudly. She shoved the kids in, and they were compact in the room, with one kid screaming his lungs out.

Annabeth’s head snapped behind her as she heard bullets ring out somewhere down the hall. She turned her attention back to the kids, pressing her fingers into a pressure point on the screaming kid’s neck until the screaming stopped and he slumped to the floor. She slammed the door shut and locked it with the key on her lanyard.

The shots kept ringing out in the corridor and she could hear people screaming in pain. It was like she was in a movie, and she could hardly believe that it was happening, and that it was so fast. She ran to close the blinds of the window and looked around the room to make sure everything was closed or off. The lights were already off, and the kids were locked away and she thought that she did everything she could, but then her eyes tunneled in on the door.

She couldn’t remember if she had locked the door.

There was a lot of commotion in the halls, and she didn’t want to open the door, but she couldn’t remember if she locked it, and she couldn’t put the kids’ lives in danger, and–

Annabeth never got a chance to check if the door was locked because a body appeared in front of the small window and a hand started shaking the handle. She held her breath, paralyzed in fear, hoping, praying, pleading that she had locked the door.

The handle kept turning, and time stopped, but then the handle stopped, and she thought she was safe. The intruder shook the handle once again, but it didn’t budge. Annabeth knew she should’ve moved, she should’ve done something, anything, except stand there, but she couldn’t. Her feet were locked to the ground, watching the handle.

The lock on the door started to turn slowly, and her stomach turned to lead once again. The lock circled, almost tantalizing her, but then a small click rang out as the locked was now opened, and something told her what was about to happen.

The handle was turned again, but this time it wasn’t stopped. The door began to move backwards, and she could hear her heartbeat rushing in her ears. A body appeared again, but this time there was no barrier.

She glanced down at the person’s hand, and there was the gun, grasped tightly within the person’s fingers. Her eyes trailed back up to identify the person, and she saw a familiar face.

Ethan Nakamura stood tall, eyes locked onto Annabeth.

Annabeth tried to say something, but nothing came out. She stood tall, looking him in the eyes as he smiled a malicious grin, proud of what he was doing. The gun in his hand lifted up, everything slowed.

The shot rang out in the classroom, and there were cries around her, and sirens, but she was already long gone by the time she hit the floor.

An arm tightened around Annabeth’s waist, and she’d never jumped more in her entire life.

She jerked upright in a foreign bed, memories flushing her mind immediately. Her hand pressed to her forehead, a piercing pain spreading across her skull.

She grit her teeth, rubbing her forehead until the pain began to subside to a dull throbbing. She figures there are four options for what just happened.

One, she was dreaming the whole teacher lifetime while sleeping in the original timeline.

Two, she was in the teacher timeline and dreamt the shooting.

Three, she survived in the teacher timeline and was dreaming now.

Four, she died and went to Hell.

Number four was looking promising right about now.

Annabeth settled back into the bed, her mind desperately trying to process what was happening. She sat there for a good chunk of time, unaware of her surroundings apparently, as someone behind her pressed a long kiss to the space just behind her ear and nudged her neck with their nose.

Annabeth didn’t move, and her breathing shallowed out. She had no idea where she was or who she was with, and she couldn’t figure it out in the darkness of the room.

“Why are you up so early?” a man said, voice raspy. “Everything okay?”

Warning flashed through her mind. She didn’t recognize the voice at all, but it felt intimate, as though she’d been listening to the voice for her whole life.

The person behind her lifted his head up to look at her. “Why are you breathing like that?”

Annabeth swallowed audibly. “Who are you?” she said, trembling.

The guy scoffed. “It’s four in the morning, Annabeth. Stop playing.”

“Who are you?” she repeated, more demanding.

The guy sat up, and Annabeth did too. He scratched his head. “Lee Fletcher, your husband…?”

Annabeth scowled, clenching her fist until her nails pierced her skin. “Just my luck…” she muttered.

“What?”

“I don’t know,” she admitted, looking around as her eyes adjusted to the darkness. “I don’t know what’s going on.”

Lee reached forwards to rub Annabeth’s back soothingly, and she couldn’t muster the energy to pull away. “Let’s get you back to sleep, baby.”

“No,” she choked out. “I don’t know who you are, or where I am.”

His hand paused on her back before continuing its ministrations. “You’re in our bedroom. Come on, let’s get you back to sleep. You’re probably just sleepy.”

Annabeth snorted, though this was far from funny. “I’m not sleepy.”

A beat skipped.

“I died,” she said, monotoned. “I was a teacher and I got shot, but now I’m here in bed with you. Oh, but get this, before that, I was an architect and got stabbed to death at a bar.”

“Uh–”

“Yeah.”

Annabeth knew she was probably handling this the wrong way. After all, it had only happened twice, but twice was two times too many, and she had no fucks left to give. If the pattern continued, she’d be dead soon anyways.

“You– you seriously don’t remember anything?”

Annabeth avoided looking at him. “Mhm.”

He took a deep breath and then got out from under the comforters of their bed. He didn’t even acknowledge her again before promptly walking right out of their bedroom door.

He probably did the smart thing, to be honest. The whole situation was definitely psychotic, after all. Annabeth sat in the bed, emotionless. She didn’t even want to try and fix anything, because dying was exhausting.

Annabeth looked towards the doorframe as steps came back towards her, and she actually braced herself for him to bring a bat and start swinging or come shoot her again. That was definitely not what she got.

Instead, Annabeth was met with Lee holding an infant against his chest and looking at her expectantly.

Annabeth’s jaw dropped as she looked at the baby. The baby, a girl she noted, was dressed in a fuzzy pink onesie and sucking on a pacifier as Lee held her close. There was a blanket hanging around her and tucked into Lee’s arm. She was so small and couldn’t have been more than a few months old.

“Get dressed,” he told her, swaying the baby slightly. “We’re taking you to the hospital.”

Annabeth nodded, but her mind was somewhere else. “Is that…?”

“Your baby,” he confirmed. “Brielle.”

“I have a baby?”

He looked extremely concerned. “You do, and the fact that you don’t remember your four-month-old daughter is a problem, which is why we need to get you to the hospital.”

Annabeth knew going to the hospital wouldn’t do anything, but she also knew that doing nothing wouldn’t either, so she stood up off the bed, ignoring the chill of the hardwood floor, and looked around her for clothes to throw on.

She didn’t know the room well enough to grab anything, so Lee grabbed some leggings and a black sweater for her to throw on. She muttered a thanks, and turned around to change, not comfortable under his gaze.

The next half hour was spent in silence, except for the baby that was now screaming in the backseat of the car. Annabeth’s head was pounding, and the high-pitched cries did nothing but exacerbate it.

“How far are we?” Annabeth asked, leaning her head against the side door.

Lee looked at her before averting his eyes to the road again. “Another twenty minutes.”

She groaned, closing her eyes. The baby’s screams were getting worse, and she just wanted it to stop.

“So,” Lee prompted. “You don’t remember anything at all?”

“Nothing,” Annabeth whimpered in distress.

He smothered his mouth with his palm, switching lanes. “I don’t– do you want me to tell you?”

Annabeth thought for a moment. The last thing she wanted to do was listen to her supposed husband tell her things about her life that she knew wasn’t true, but he could reveal something that was important, so she gave in.

“Yeah,” she sighed, opening her eyes and sitting straighter in the seat. The baby just kept wailing.

“Okay, well… we have a baby. She’s four months old, and her name is Brielle Fletcher. She’s a good baby, and she doesn’t usually cry like this. We got married three years ago, and we dated for five before that.”

“How’d we meet?”

“High school sweethearts,” he said gently, looking at her hopefully. “I asked you to junior prom and we’ve been together ever since.”

“Are we soulmates?”

He shook his head slowly. “Neither of us ever found our soulmates, but even if we did, we wouldn’t leave each other. One of the things that brought is together is our whole philosophy that love is built over time, not simply given to people.”

Annabeth wished she couldn’t see the desperation, the hope in his eyes as he tried to find something to bring back her memories. “I’m sorry…”

His eyes started to gloss, and he moved his eyes back to the road. “You’re a pathologist at New York Presbyterian.”

“Is that where we’re going now?”

He shook his head.

“Tell me about us,” she tried. “Did we want kids?”

He laughed humorlessly. “You didn’t want kids at first, but you changed your mind. After being in labor for two days with Brielle though, you swore you didn’t want any more kids.”

Annabeth felt incredibly guilty. Lee looked so pained, but he was trying to keep it together, and she could tell that he was trying for her. He looked so desperate to find out what happened to his wife, and he looked at her with so much love and worry, and she felt bad that she just couldn’t reciprocate it. Even after less than an hour with him, she could tell that he deserved so much more than she could ever give him, especially now that this was happening.

He cleared his throat. “You said you died?”

“Yeah. I had–” Annabeth was cut off with by the baby giving a particularly deafening scream. “I remember two lives before this one, and I remember dying in both,” she spoke over the hysterics in the backseat.

“You ended up dead in both, uh, lives?”

She nodded, glum.

“How?”

“Someone stabbed me outside a bar, and then someone shot me in a school shooting.”

Lee gripped the wheel tightly, and she knew what he was thinking. She’d already died twice, and if it continued on, she would be dying a third time, and it would probably happen rather soon. He looked panicked at the thought of something happening to her.

The baby’s wails kept on going, and Annabeth tried to ignore them, but the throbbing in her head only got worse with every piercing cry.

“Can you please make the baby stop crying?” she snapped through gritted teeth.

Lee looked at her, alarmed by her outburst, but chose to stay quiet. “She’s hungry, Annabeth.”

“Then feed her,” she replied, deadly calm.

“You have to do it. She’s still breastfed.”

Annabeth snapped her head towards him. “You don’t have a bottle, or something?”

“No.” He looked to her pleadingly. “Can you please hop in the back and feed her?”

“I don’t know how!” she protested.

“I’ll help you, but please, Annabeth. I know you don’t remember, but she’s still our baby and you’re her only source of food.”

Annabeth whimpered quietly, looking in the rearview mirror to look at the blonde baby. “Okay.”

She unbuckled her seatbelt, wiggling her way around the center console and into the back, banging her head on the baby carrier clicked into place. She sat up again, breathless, and stared at the infant.

The little girl, Annabeth’s little girl, stared with wide eyes at Annabeth, already starting to calm down. She held out her little arms towards Annabeth and gave a toothless grin, hiccuping slightly. Annabeth cautiously unbuckled the straps of the baby carrier and put her hands under the baby’s arms and neck, pulling her out and against her chest.

The baby immediately wrapped her small fist into Annabeth’s tangled curls, looking up at her with a tear-stained face. Annabeth felt a connection to the baby, and she knew that the love for it was inside her in this lifetime, but it was still different. Annabeth looked down at the baby, terrified.

“You got her?” Lee asked, looking at her through the mirror.

“Yeah,” Annabeth said, adjusting the baby so that she was cradling her with one arm. “Now what?”

“You have to get her to latch.”

Annabeth had no idea how to do that, but she didn’t really want to ask him, so she just lifted her shirt and did her best. It took a minute of fumbling around, but eventually the baby did latch on and begin sucking.

It all felt so weird to Annabeth. She was actually breastfeeding a baby, but she doesn’t even remember having a baby. Annabeth felt flushed and embarrassed, but she just focused on the baby, looking at her chubby cheeks and blonde eyelashes.

“Everything okay?”

Annabeth hummed in response, still staring at her baby. Somewhere inside her, she felt a strong love for the child, and she knew that it really was her baby. Maybe not in this mind, but in this timeline, she did love this child beyond belief, and it soothed Annabeth a bit to know that.

The baby fell back asleep a while later, but Annabeth just kept staring at the baby who found comfort in her mother’s arms. She didn’t want to let the baby go, so the rest of the ride was spent just focusing on the light child and imagining what could’ve been.

When they did finally get to the hospital, Annabeth was forced to put the baby back into the carrier, and together, the three of them walked in. Lee was holding the carrier in one hand, and he was holding Annabeth’s shaking hand with the other, which she appreciated.

It had only been two lives, but she was already beginning to forget who she was. Lee offered her comfort as the doctors and nurses put her through test after test, finding nothing as Annabeth knew they would. It hurt, knowing that this wasn’t going to end in her favor, but she’ll take what she can get, and right now what she can get in the love and care of her husband, even if she couldn’t give it back.

The beeping of the machines was hypnotizing, and Annabeth was being lulled to sleep on the hospital bed. She had already been through a bunch of different tests, and after the head ct, she was ready to just knock out on the rough sheets of the room she had been put in.

She blinked slowly, just thinking of everything that had happened. This was the calmest she’d felt in what felt like an eternity. Everything definitely wasn’t okay, but it wasn’t so bad that she couldn’t pretend that it was.

The baby started babbling, effectively drawing Annabeth out of her sleepy haze. She opened her eyes again and in front of her was her husband holding the baby in his lap. Brielle was with her fingers shoved into her mouth and she was wriggling in Lee’s grasp.

Lee looked at her apologetically, but Annabeth just smiled endearingly. The baby already wormed her way into Annabeth’s heart. Just looking at Brielle instilled a sense of peace inside her, and a part of Annabeth wanted to hold her daughter. So, she did.

“I’ll take her,” Annabeth whispered in the empty room, holding her arms out towards Lee.

Lee obliged and stood up to carry the baby over, placing her onto Annabeth’s lap. Annabeth’s hands immediately rested on Brielle’s back.

“I didn’t mean to wake you,” Lee told her, opting to stand by Annabeth’s side as she held the infant against her chest.

“It’s okay.” Annabeth gently brushed the blonde hair on top of Brielle’s head. Brielle immediately took interest in the iv inserted into Annabeth’s arm, grasping her tiny fist around it and tugging. Annabeth winced as she loosened Brielle’s grip, giving her a quiet, “No.”

Instead of whining as Annabeth had expected, Brielle just settled her head against Annabeth’s chest and closed her eyes, falling asleep in what felt like seconds.

“She does that a lot,” Lee told her.

“What?”

“She likes to rest her head against your chest and just listen to your heartbeat.”

Annabeth looked back down to the child in her arms. Brielle had no idea what was going on and she was the calmest of them all. Suddenly, Annabeth understood the phase ignorance is bliss to a whole other level.

“Poor baby,” Annabeth noted. “She has no idea what’s happening.”

Lee rested his hand on Annabeth’s shoulder and squeezed. “We’ll figure out what’s going on.”

Annabeth listened to his words and wished they were true. This life– it wasn’t bad at all. It wasn’t her life, and it never would be, but it would be good enough for her. All she’d wanted was someone to care about her – to not feel the deep emptiness inside of her, and she had that. Only a few hours into whatever this situation was, and Annabeth was already getting used to it and wishing that she could stay here forever.

She had a family here. She didn’t know them, but she could, and she knew she could come to love them. She had a child, and she had a husband. She had a life here, and she wanted so badly for it to be hers. But it wasn’t.

“I don’t think we will,” Annabeth said. Something was coming, and she knew it. She could feel the dread settling in her stomach. The same dread that had filled her that night at the bar and the second the announcements turned on it that school. She didn’t know how she knew that something bad was coming, but she did. There was something inside her warning her of what was to come. She wanted to cry and break down, and she wanted to lay down and never get back up, but she knew she couldn’t.

So instead she just pulled her baby in closer, holding her and breathing in the smell of baby powder and warmth. She focused on the small stature of the baby, and the obvious love and trust the baby held for her mom. She watched her baby press her ear against Annabeth’s chest and count the heartbeats in her chest, praying with everything in her that this family would be okay.

When her pain started to spread from her heart and travel down her limbs, to her toes and the tips of her fingers, Annabeth was hardly surprised. The machines around her started beeping, and the baby started crying again. Annabeth could see the doctors flooding into the room, and her eyes didn’t miss the green-eyed doctor that was yelling orders and trying desperately to save her life. She heard the cries of her husband, pleading for her to stay with him.

Her breathing was labored, and it was getting difficult to hear. Something whispered in her ear, telling her that it was heart failure. Annabeth didn’t have it in her to fight, so she turned her head to the side to look at the family that had been hers for the past few hours and that would’ve been enough for the rest of her life.

She blinked once, and Lee was standing to her side, holding Brielle. She blinked again, and she was gone once again.

This time when Annabeth woke up, she immediately burst into heart-wrenching sobs. Everything she had ever wanted had just disappeared before her eyes, and she just doesn’t understand what she did wrong to deserve this.

Annabeth didn’t even bother getting up and figuring out where she was this time. Instead, she just lay there for days until dehydration took her over, ignoring the calls at her door, unbeknownst to her from a certain green-eyed boy, praying that the suffering would come to an end if it was imposed by her own hand.

Annabeth lost track of how many times she died. It felt like endless void of death, and she was beginning to find it funny. You’d think that after dying countless numbers of times, she would be used to the concept, but it was quite the opposite. She had never been more scared to die.

She was spending her days pondering over philosophical questions and researching different religions, because whatever was happening definitely didn’t fall under science. She was constantly nose-deep in books, reading over religions and punishments. None of them even came close to explaining what was happening to her, and she was ready to give up and just accept whatever divine punishment was coming her way.

Annabeth thinks she must’ve been stuck in this endless loop of death for at least a year, dying at least two hundred times in two hundred different ways. It was never the same. She woke up in a different place, surrounded by different people. It was different every single time, and that’s what irked Annabeth the most. There was never a constant in the lives she lived, and it made it that much harder to draw connections and understand why this was happening.

She’d tried everything at that point. She’d do everything to stay alive, but it always ended with some freak accident, or her body simply shutting down. As much as she hates it, she did try to kill herself, but she always woke up again, stuck in another life that was not hers. Nothing made sense.

This time, almost exactly a year since she’d first died in the bar, she had a best friend, Will Solace.

Will definitely thought Annabeth was having some sort of meltdown, but he was still a good enough friend to humor her anyways, which is how Annabeth found herself sitting in a library booth and whispering hurriedly to him.

“So I’m thinking that maybe I’m not actually dying,” Annabeth told him. “That first night that I ‘died,’ I hadn’t actually died. I got hurt and ended up in a coma, and my body is trying to wake me up by showing me why I don’t want to die,” she finished, excited. “What do you think?”

Will clicked his teeth. “I think… that you’re insane.”

“Will.”

“Seriously, Annabeth. I’m telling you that you’re not dead, or in a coma, or whatever.”

“There’s no other explanation.”

“There is, actually.”

“What?”

“You hit your head a little too hard last night.”

“Haha. So funny.”

“I’m serious. You need to go to the hospital.”

“I know the drill by now. I go to the hospital, spend thousands unnecessarily, only for them to find nothing and for me to die in the end.”

“That’s…”

“Not crazy,” she finished for him.

“Quite the opposite, actually,” he corrected.

“I’ve found different case studied about this,” she protested, shoving a medical mystery book into his face. “In Arizona, someone got hit by a car and she reported dying a few times while she was in a coma.”

Will snatched the book to look at it closer. “It also says that she remembers dying three times.”

“So?”

“How many times do you think you died?”

“Two-hundred.”

“Do you see my point?”

“Help me keep looking then,” she groaned, dropping her head onto the table, ignoring the stares she got from people around the library.

“The day you died,” Will said. “What do you remember?”

“I went to Starbucks in the morning and then I went drinking with my friend.”

“Why were you drinking?”

“Piper said I was lonely since I haven’t met my soulmate.”

“Did anything happen that day that seemed out of place?”

“You mean like dying? Yeah, I’d say so.”

He shot her a look. “What if this has something to do with your soulmate?”

Annabeth snorted, leaning back. “Yeah, right.”

“I’m serious.”

Annabeth breathed out, twirling a strand of hair. “What could this possibly have to do with soulmates?”

Will frowned. “You’re right.”

“Aren’t I always?” she teased.

“Unfortunately.” Will stood up from his chair. “Let’s go get something to eat.”

“I don’t wanna.”

“Just come on,” Will complained, dragging Annabeth by the arm until she fell out of the chair.

“I hate you.”

“You’re my best friend.”

“I’ve only been your best friend for a few days now.”

“Correction: You’ve been my best friend since we were in diapers. I’ve been your best friend for days.”

“Wow, you’re annoying.”

“I’m still half convinced that this is all just one big prank.”

“Get the stick out of your ass.”

“You’re the one with a stick up your ass,” Will retorted, pulling at her arm until she stood up. “You need to have sex. Maybe you’ll loosen up.”

“Oh, yeah? With who? Not all of us have found our soulmate,” she said, looking at him pointedly.

“My soulmate is the best soulmate ever.”

“Great sex, I’m sure.”

“Oh, yes.”

“One lucky boyfriend you’ve got there.”

Will snickered, tugging at her arm again. “Come on.”

Annabeth was practically dragged by the hair down the streets of New York, forced to listen to Will go on and on about whatever was going on in his life. It was refreshing to have someone talk about themselves for once. Most people were constantly bugging Annabeth, scared for her life, so Will was definitely a nice change of scenery.

“Do you feel like going to that Chinese place down the road, or the Italian place?”

Annabeth pursed her lips and flicked his forehead. “We’ve been over this. I don’t know either place.”

“Oh, that’s right. I choose Italian.”

“M’kay.”

They walked the few blocks towards the shop, and they were seated right away. Will insisted on ordering for her, so she wasn’t really expecting a giant bowl of pasta to be brought out and set in front of her.

Will was over the moon about the food, and he immediately started to dig in, wolfing down the food. Annabeth watched him in disgust as he forced more food into his mouth. She’s not even sure he swallowed the food from before.

“You’re not eating,” Will pointed out, mouth full. “Why?”

“I’m not hungry,” she deadpanned, looking him up and down.

“Why not?”

“Stress? I don’t know.”

“If you’ve really been dying, then don’t you think you’d be used to it by now?”

Annabeth widened her eyes and tilted her head as though to say take a look at this idiot. “It gets worse every time it happens, actually.”

“Why?”

“Because the first few times, you have hope that it’ll end. As it just keeps happening, you begin to realize that it’s not ever going to end. You lose hope.”

Will looked sympathetic.

“Do you really not believe me?”

Will set his drink down. “I believe that’s what you think happened,” he settled for. “I think that you remember dying, but I’m not sure that it actually happened because it’s just not possible. People don’t just die over and over again for no reason.”

“I’m telling you that it’s happening.”

“And I believe that you think it’s really happening.”

“Please, Will.”

He thought for a moment. “Okay. If it’s really happening, there has to be an explanation behind it.”

She nodded, listening intently.

“This reason– it has to be somewhere. It’s like the universe is sending you a message. You aren’t going to just keep reliving your death unless there’s a sign telling you why.”

“There is no sign.”

“There is. You just haven’t found it.”

She blinked, dumbfounded. “How do I find a sign if I don’t know what I’m looking for?”

“My best guess is that it would be right in front of your eyes. It would be so obvious that you wouldn’t even think to look.”

She pondered this. “I still wouldn’t know where to look.”

Will leaned back, pushing his pasta aside to settle deeper into the conversation. “You said that it’s different every time?”

“Exactly. I wouldn’t know where to look because it’s never the same situation.”

“Well, what if it is?”

“It’s not.”

“Maybe it seems like everything is changing because it is– everything except one thing.”

“I don’t understand.”

Will leaned forwards to whisper the next part. “Think about every life you’ve lived. Has anything, no matter how small, been the same?”

Annabeth thought, but nothing came to mind. It was always different. Different jobs, different houses, different people, different deaths. It was different.

“Out of everything that has changed around you, what has stayed the same?”

“What is the constant?”

Will’s words had left her bothered for the rest of the day. He was right, of course. Things like this didn’t happen for no reason, and if it seemed like it was, then Annabeth was missing something.

Annabeth had been delving deep into the books, and deep into the ethics of life. She’d been so focused on looking for connections that ran deep that she hadn’t realized that there was something she was missing right in front of her eyes.

Annabeth stood next to Will, waiting for the subway to approach so he could walk her home. They had spent the rest of the day in the library again, just trying to spark something in Annabeth’s memory, to no avail. 

She remembers that the first day had been somewhat the same because she had Piper with her, but she also doesn’t think that it counts because she hadn’t technically been in one of the lifespans to start off with. Annabeth wishes that she could have Piper in one of her lives again because she really missed her best friend. She hadn’t seen Piper since the morning before the school shooting, and just thinking about her made Annabeth ready to cry.

Will nudged her arm gently. “You okay?”

Annabeth wiped her eye with the sleeve of her jacket, which was actually borrowed from Will. “I’m fine. I’m just really missing some of my old friends.”

Will bit his lip nervously. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay.” Annabeth took a deep breath before continuing. “I’m probably going to spend the rest of my day trying to hypnotize myself to find connections in the lives.”

Will rubbed her arm comfortingly. “Start tomorrow. Today, you should just get some sleep.”

“I just don’t–”

Annabeth was cut off by the sinking feeling in her gut returning again. Her heart sped up and she filled with dread instantaneously at what she knew was about to happen. Her senses were bouncing off the walls right now, and she just wanted to cry some more.

“What is it?” Will asked, concern filling his voice.

“I’m going to die,” she whispered, almost imperceptible.

“What’d you say?”

“I’m going to die.”

Will paused. “No, you’re not.”

She nodded. “Yes, I am. I’ve been through this before. I know when something’s about to happen.”

Will looked around the platform suspiciously, looking for anything that could pose a threat, but there was nothing. He turned back to her. “Nothing’s going to happen,” he repeated, his voice beginning to tremble.

Annabeth shook her head and nibbled on her lower lip, looking around her carefully. The feeling was intensifying within her, and she knew it was only a matter of time. Annabeth’s eyes scanned around her again as Will called out to her to step away from the edge of the platform.

Annabeth ignored him and kept analyzing her surroundings. It was like somebody was whispering in her ear, telling her to keep looking, keep paying attention, that she was so close. The constant, the constant, the constant, where was the constant?

Her stomach dropped just as her eyes caught sight of a man across the tunnel, standing on the platform opposite of her with his eyes locked onto hers.

Percy stood rigid, eyes locked onto hers, and Annabeth’s mind was blaring. The constant, the constant. It was she same, she realized. It was always different, but it was the same every time.

The constant.

Annabeth stepped towards the edge of the platform to call out to Percy, but then someone was stumbling into her from behind, and she lost her balance, tipping out onto the railway tracks.

The wind was knocked out of Annabeth as she slammed onto the ground. She banged her head against one of the tracks, and she was extremely dazed. Somewhere behind her, she heard Will screaming himself hoarse, begging her to get up.

Annabeth couldn’t move as her head was flaring with pain from where she hit it. Now there were people on both sides of the track, reaching forward to extend their hands towards her, trying to get her out.

She lifted her head from the ground to look up, and she saw Will reaching over the ledge trying to grab her. Her vision was clouded, and she couldn’t make any words out other than the petrified screams of the people underground with her. She tried to think of what to do, what to say, but the only thing she could think of was Percy.

Somewhere to her right, a loud noise started approaching rapidly, and more people were yelling at her to get up, but she couldn’t. Instead, she lifted her head again to look head-on at the subway barreling towards her. She closed her eyes and braced for the impact, and the last thing she heard before the hit was the sobs of her best friend standing behind her, pleading for her to do something.

This time, she didn’t even feel the moment her life faded away.

Annabeth’s mind was racing the second she woke up. She didn’t know where she was, or who she was with, as usual, but it didn’t matter because she finally knew.

Percy.

Every single time she died, Percy was there to see it. He was the one to stand over her as she bled out that night at the club, and he was a teacher at the school shooting. She tries to recall every life she’d lived, and she only became more sure as time went on.

Percy’s life had been changing with her. His life was never the same, but he was still always with her. Percy was the constant.

Relief overtook her for a moment, but it was quickly replaced by pure fury. He was there every single time and he had to know something. He was probably the one causing her world to collapse right underneath her own feet. He’d seen her die countless times and he never once tried to help her. It was extremely suspicious in her opinion, and the second she saw him again, she was gonna send her fists flying straight towards his face.

The only problem was she had no idea how to find him in a world where his identity literally changes all the time.

Annabeth flopped down onto the bed she was sitting in to stifle a scream into her pillow. She really needed to yell at him now except she didn’t know where he was. Just her luck. She kept thinking for what felt like hours, criticizing herself for not realizing something so obvious until now. When someone slammed open the door to her right, she swears her heart jumped out of her chest.

“Get up.”

Annabeth blinked at the girl standing in the door. She had silky black hair cascading down her shoulder in a braid and was dressed in a purple t-shirt. Annabeth, of course, had never seen her in her life.

“Who are you?” Annabeth really had no fucks left to give.

The girl’s face hardened. “Get up.”

“Listen,” Annabeth started, throwing her legs over the edge of the bed to stand up. “I don’t really have time to talk to you and get you all caught up, so I’m just gonna go.” Annabeth made to move by the girl, but an arm shot out to stop her.

“You’re not going anywhere.”

Annabeth shoved her arm off. “Who are you?”

The girl scowled. “You know who I am.”

“This would be a lot faster if you just told me.”

“Reyna. Happy now?”

“Eh.” Annabeth shrugged, pointedly stepping by the girl. “Well, Reyna, long story short, you’re probably going to see me die today or tomorrow, so I’ll just do you a favor and leave.”

“Hilarious. You’re coming with me.”

“I literally have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Don’t play dumb. You promised me that you’d go that art museum with me today.”

Annabeth whistled. “You are just a ray of sunshine.”

Reyna looked like she was about to deck Annabeth. “You’re going to that museum with me if I have to drag you by the toe.”

“Did you hear that whole ‘I’m probably going to die today’ thing?”

“I did. I chose to ignore it because I don’t know what it means.”

“It means,” Annabeth stressed, “that I’m not the Annabeth you know. I’ve lived around two hundred lives and died each time, and now I woke up in this universe which means I will also be dying in this life.”

“Are you on drugs?”

“I’m dead serious.” Annabeth paused. “Did you notice that pun there?”

Reyna actually smacked Annabeth upside the head. “You are my roommate and you are also going to that museum. No getting out of it.”

“Are we friends?”

“Huh?”

“You just don’t seem like someone I’d want to be friends with.”

“Words hurt, Annabeth.”

“I don’t know who you are. I’ve already told you that.”

“I think you’re looking for excuses.”

“It was a serious question. Are we friends?”

“Unfortunately,” Reyna deadpanned. “Some may even say best friends.”

“Who says that?”

“Me!”

Annabeth shifted awkwardly. “I really have to do something, and I don’t know how to explain it.”

“Do whatever it is you need to do afterwards. Come on.”

“You’re going to watch me die.”

“I’ll risk it.”

Annabeth whined and stomped her foot. “I don’t even know you and you’re already a pain in my ass.”

“Oh? A pain in your ass, specifically?”

“Yes.”

“I’m honored. Now, can you please stop playing? We’re going to be late.”

Annabeth shook her head, exasperated. “You’re going to learn the hard way.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Reyna started to back out the door, making uncomfortable eye contact with Annabeth. “If you’re not ready in ten minutes, I will punch you.”

True to her words, Reyna really did punch Annabeth when she took precisely eleven minutes to get ready. Eleven minutes was pretty good considering Annabeth had no idea where anything was, but Reyna would not hear it. Annabeth was really getting tired of this Reyna chick.

Annabeth found herself dragging her feet beside Reyna on the New York sidewalk, rubbing her quickly-bruising arm and grumbling to herself. She didn’t have time to go to an art museum when Percy was somewhere around here probably plotting her very demise. She was already brainstorming ways to escape from Reyna because honestly, an art museum was nowhere near as important as saving her own life. Priorities, you know?

After a good thirty minutes of walking, she still couldn’t figure out a way to get out of the situation with Reyna. That was exactly how she ended up in line listening to Reyna gush about the Renaissance art where she’d rather be doing literally anything else.

“Where do you want to go first?” Reyna asked, looking down at the map of the museum.

“Away?” Annabeth offered lamely.

Reyna ignored her. “We should start at the top and work our way down.”

Well, that didn’t work.

“Follow me,” Reyna said, not even looking up.

Annabeth did follow her, but her mind drifted back to Percy. She really needed to find him because whatever was going on, she now knew that he was the key to it all. The answers lie within Percy, and she needed to find him soon before she spontaneously combusted out of pure frustration and desperation.

She still had no idea why he was the answer. Something about him was calling to her and she felt like she should’ve known what it was, but nothing floated to the top of her mind. The only thing she knew for a fact was that he was causing this, and he was going to get a piece of her mind when she saw him. He’d seen her die every single time and he never once said anything, and it only made her more sure that he was the one killing her over and over again, even if it wasn’t his direct actions that did it.

Annabeth’s eyes darted towards the left where Reyna was preoccupied with some old sculpture hidden behind a glass display. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a flash of black hair, and her heart jumped up as her head snapped towards the guy, only to find that no one was actually there at all.

Fantastic. Now Percy was actually making her see things that weren’t there.

Annabeth shuffled her feet along the ground, waiting for Reyna to be done with her absurd fascination with a clay sculpture so they could continue on with their day. She tried to remind herself that every second she didn’t find Percy meant that she was one second closer to finding him. It didn’t help as much as she hoped it would.

“Where do you want to go next?” Reyna asked, looking at Annabeth over her shoulder.

Annabeth stifled an annoyed groan. “I don’t care.”

“Can you at least pretend to care about this?” Reyna rolled her eyes and continued on to the next sculpture.

“How exciting! Clay!” Annabeth said in mock enthusiasm. “If you wanted to see clay, should’ve just gone to Georgia. None of this interests me, and even if it did, I’m a bit too distracted to care.”

“Just pick the next section to go to.”

“I thought you wanted to work your way down? Let’s just do that.”

“Not if I have to listen to you huff and puff like a toddler.” Reyna turned to face Annabeth. “We could go to the area with a bunch of abstract art by artists we didn’t even know existed, or we could go to the architecture section, or – what?”

Annabeth’s eyes lit up at the word architecture. It had been so long since she’d gotten the pure, unadulterated joy of staring at blueprints and messing around with expensive design programs. “Let’s go to the architecture section.”

“…Really?”

“Yes, please.”

“That is the last place I would’ve expected you to want to go.”

“Why?”

“You hate architecture. You’re always telling me all about how difficult architects are to work with, and that they’re a bunch of nobody wannabes.”

“I love architecture.”

“Are you feeling okay?”

“Not really, but that’s besides the point.”

Reyna gave Annabeth a skeptical look.

“Come on,” Annabeth said with a smile, grabbing Reyna by her upper arm. “It’s architecture time.”

Annabeth dragged Reyna through the museum, ignoring Reyna’s protests of, “You’re hurting me.” Annabeth was much too excited to worry about tearing Reyna’s arm off. It sounded more like a Reyna problem, anyways.

After quite a few wrong turns through the corridors of the museum, Annabeth knew she got them lost. They were surrounded by glass walls covering a bunch of hay and other weird grasses, and there wasn’t even an ounce of an idea on how to get them out of there.

“I think we’re lost.”

“You think?”

“In my defense, you shouldn’t have let me drag you all over.”

“It was not willingly, believe it or not.”

“Oh, please. I didn’t even grab you that hard.”

Reyna didn’t even say anything– she just lifted her arm to show Annabeth the red finger marks. Oops.

“I don’t see anything,” Annabeth lied.

“Mhm.” Reyna looked around the empty room for any sign of escape. “Why don’t we ask someone how to get out?”

“Do you see any museum guides to help us out, because I don’t.”

Reyna bit her lip to withhold an insult. “Maybe if you actually bothered to turn around.”

“I don’t know how I could possibly be your friend. You actually piss me off so much, and–” Annabeth spoke as she turned around to look, but she stopped dead in her tracks because there he was, the green-eyed man, staring at the two of them.

“Oh, hell no.” Annabeth stormed off in Percy’s direction, brushing off Reyna’s confused warnings. Percy had the sense to take a step back in the wake of Annabeth’s fury, but it sadly didn’t do him any good, because the second she was close enough, her hand was flying across his face in a sharp smack.

Percy tumbled backwards, reaching up to clutch his stinging cheek. “Why did you do that!?”

Annabeth scoffed, reaching up to smack him again. Hard.

“Stop!”

Annabeth tried to calm herself down before she broke and threw something very large at his head. She didn’t know what she would’ve thrown, but it would’ve hurt. Instead, she opted to yell at him very loudly.

“Why did I smack you?” Annabeth seethed. “You keep killing me!”

“What?”

“You’ve watched me die hundreds of times and couldn’t have cared less!”

“You– you remember that?”

“You remember that?” Annabeth mocked. “You killed me!”

“I didn’t kill you!”

Annabeth kicked his shin, and he bit back a sharp cry. Reyna tried to pull Annabeth backwards, but she just elbowed Reyna sharply instead. It’s not like they were actually friends, so she didn’t feel too guilty.

“Stop hurting me! I didn’t do anything!”

“I keep dying and you’re the only person ever there, so it’s pretty obvious you’ve killed me in every way imaginable!”

Reyna reappeared behind Annabeth to try and warn her to stop harassing the poor museum guide, but it only fueled her on. Annabeth whipped around to shove Reyna away. “Fuck off!” Annabeth told Reyna, her eyes deadly. “Just leave!”

Percy looked relieved that Annabeth’s attention was off of him, but Reyna just looked betrayed. “Do you really want me to leave?”

Annabeth, and for some reason Percy too, responded with a resounding, “Yes!”

Annabeth didn’t even wait for Reyna to leave, and she doesn’t even know if she was actually planning to leave anyways. Annabeth just turned to Percy, curled her fist, and sent it flying towards him.

Percy managed to dodge her fist and take a giant step back. “Can you stop hitting me? I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

“You just asked me if I remembered, so you obviously do know what I’m talking about!”

“Just– slow down, will you?” Percy rubbed the back of his neck. “I’m just as confused as you are.”

Annabeth snorted. “Yeah, I’m sure. You’ve only watched me die about a million times, including yesterday’s whole getting hit by a subway scandal.”

“So… you remember that?”

“How could I possibly forget?!”

“It’s just… I haven’t actually found anyone who knows what I’m talking about when I say I’ve died before.”

Annabeth’s mind slowed. “You’ve died before?”

“About as many times as you.”

“How do you know?”

“Uhh. Whenever you die, I know I’m about to die too? For some reason, I seem to be right behind you in death.”

Annabeth was breathing hard from her anger episode. “So you remember when I died the first time? And the second?”

He nodded, cradling his own arm. “The stabbing and the shooting. I remember.”

“You didn’t cause those?”

Percy’s jaw dropped. “Why would I– I’m not a murderer!”

“So you’re not causing all of this to happen? All of the different lives?”

“I’m insulted that you would even think I know how.”

“I don’t get it.” Annabeth dropped her strong demeanor and replaced it with one that was just exhausted of all of this shit. “I thought you were the reason for all of this.”

“Again, insulted.”

Annabeth dropped her face into her hands, something she found herself doing a lot more than she did about two hundred lives ago. Of course it wouldn’t be as easy as finding Percy and scaring him into changing things to the way they were.

He wasn’t the person that was making her life the way it was, and sure he could’ve been lying, but he didn’t seem like he was. Annabeth felt a weird compelling force that made her believe him when he said he didn’t do… whatever this was. He was just the person who had to watch her die, and–

Wait a second.

“You watched me die and you never once warned me!?”

Percy choked. “I–”

“You knew when I was about to die but you didn’t even try to help!”

“Why are you yelling at me!? I’ve had to watch you die hundreds of times!”

“I know! I’m yelling at you because you just let me die hundreds of times!”

“I’m sorry!”

“Why didn’t you tell me that you were dying too!? You didn’t think it was important!?”

“I didn’t tell you because you kept fucking dying before I got the chance!”

“You could’ve tried!”

“By the time I even saw you, you were already dead or dying! Also, how I was I meant to know that you dying pertained to me!?”

“If you weren’t a complete imbecile, you would’ve maybe thought, ‘Hey, she keeps dying, and I keep dying too. Maybe I should see what’s up!’”

“Well, now you’re just being mean!”

Annabeth hmphed. “For good reason.”

“I just thought you dying was engraved into the universe. Fate, or whatever.”

“You’re just dumb.”

“You didn’t say anything either!”

“I didn’t know that you were dying! Because I kept dying first and you never tried to save me. Remember?”

Percy clenched his fist and rolled his eyes. “Okay, fine. I’m an asshole because I never tried to save you even though you were already dead by the time I realized you were there. Can we just try to figure out why we keep dying?”

Annabeth scrunched her nose. “You’re a terrible human.”

“Yes, I know. Everything about this situation is my fault, and my fault only. You played absolutely no part in any of this,” Percy deadpanned.

“Exactly.”

“Oh my god,” he muttered. “Let’s just go figure this out.”

“Go where?”

“Anywhere that your friend isn’t staring at us like we belong in the psych ward.”

Annabeth turned around and saw Reyna hovering in the doorway behind them, listening to everything they said, and indeed looking ready to send them to a mental hospital. Annabeth turned back to Percy. “She’s not my friend.”

Percy nodded, visibly swallowing. “We can, uh, go get some pizza and talk it out?”

“Don’t you have to finish your shift here?”

“It’s not my job,” he countered. “It is, but it isn’t. Same situation with your friend over there.”

Annabeth gave in. “Fine.”

Everything felt to be moving incredibly fast, but she just didn’t know how she was supposed to act in this situation. She needed to figure out what was going on, and it seemed like that would only be possible if she did it with Percy. It was a bit out of the ordinary to talk it out over food, but really what else were they supposed to do? It’s not like they could break into FBI quarters and look at a bunch of government secrets that might hold the key to everything.

Annabeth’s throat felt tight as nodded to him again. It was insane, but they had to start somewhere. Might as well be over some greasy New York pizza.

Hours later, they found themselves sitting down in some random empty pizza parlor, the food long gone as they wasted time just talking and musing over possible ideas. They hadn’t even come close to an idea that made sense, so at this point, they were just having fun.

“Wait,” Annabeth laughed, sitting straight in her seat. “I think I know what happened! You put drugs in my Starbucks drink and now I’m just super high and imagining everything!”

Percy raised his hands in defeat. “You caught me. I put some fairy dust in there. It’s some hard stuff.”

“And the reason I see you is my subconscious is trying to tell me that you’re behind it all!”

Percy laughed. “There’s only one flaw.”

“What is that?”

“I wouldn’t know where to get drugs even if I wanted to.”

“Lies. You just admitted your guilt.”

“I think that you’re just trying to trick me, because the real reason we keep dying is you’re some type of immortal playing with me!”

“Oh, am I now?” Annabeth asked, amused.

“You are! Have you ever watched Supernatural?”

“I have.”

“Do you remember that trickster that made them relive the day over and over again, and Dean kept dying?”

“Vaguely.”

“You are the trickster. I am Dean.”

Annabeth smirked. “Now we’re talking.”

Percy sighed and leaned forwards, his small smile fading. “For real though, we need to figure out what’s going on.”

Annabeth’s grim face matched his. “We do.”

“I think some research might help. I mean, if it’s happened to us, it has to have happened to someone else too, right?”

“We don’t know. I mean, the chances of this happening are, what, zero? There’s no way for us to know for sure.”

“But we both ended up in this situation, and we found each other which means that the chances can’t have been that low.”

“I think we were put here for a reason, though. We were supposed to find each other, so I don’t think it was we were put here individually so much as we were put here together.”

“It can’t hurt to try.” Percy looked around the empty parlor. “Do you want to go now?”

Annabeth thought for a moment before shaking her head. “My brain’s gone to mush by this point. We can start tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow it is.” Percy lifted his wrist to glance at a watch she hadn’t noticed before. “It’s almost six.”

“We’ve been here for five hours.”

“Yeah. We should probably get going.”

Annabeth nodded but bit her lip. She wasn’t exactly sure where she would be going now that she probably would get kicked out of her shared apartment with Reyna if she even showed her face. Maybe she’d be able to find someplace open overnight and crash there.

Percy seemed to notice her shoulders drop. “Do you need somewhere to stay?”

Annabeth shrugged dejectedly. “I’m sure I’ll find somewhere.”

Percy shook his head. “I have my own apartment, and I’d much rather be with someone who will actually remember me.”

“Are you sure?” Annabeth asked, hesitant. “I mean, we don’t even know each other.”

“I think watching someone die gets you pretty close to them,” he joked. “You’re more than welcome.”

Annabeth wanted to say no, but her mouth betrayed. She licked her lips and nodded, stumbling to stand up. “Okay. I– I’d like that.”

Percy ended up paying for both of them, and Annabeth let him because his bank account would just refill in the next life anyways. When they opened the door to make their way back to Percy’s apartment, they finally noticed the rain dropping from the sky.

The sky was a dark grey, and the rain was actually pouring, coating the sky and ground so you couldn’t even see two feet in front. They stood there staring at the rain, unsure of how it had started, and they hadn’t even known.

“Do you have an umbrella by any chance?” Percy asked.

“Do I look like someone who would carry an umbrella.?”

“Fair enough.” Percy stared at the droplets for a while longer when lightning shot out across the sky and shook the ground beneath their feet. “We should probably make a run for it.”

“I don’t really want to.” Annabeth stuck her hand out into the rain. “We’re going to get soaked and I don’t have any extra clothes.”

“You can borrow something of mine when we get there. It’s only a five-minute walk from here, I think.”

Annabeth’s body did an involuntary jump, her stomach burning at the image of her dressed in one of Percy’s big shirts, it dropping down her body and barely covering her ass. Her face flushed, and she prayed Percy couldn’t see it. She’d barely even spent a few hours with him, and her body was already getting excited at the thought of spending the night dressed in one of his shirts and nothing else, and–

She shook her head to rid of the thoughts. She definitely couldn’t feel that way after a few hours with a guy, even if he was so easy to get along with, and his eyes were the perfect green, and his smile was just–

Again? God, she needed to get a grip already.

Percy turned his head to her, and if he noticed the pink flush, he didn’t say anything. “You ready?”

“Ready as I’ll ever be.”

Percy reached down to grab her hand wordlessly and Annabeth’s heart did a flippity-flop. She told her heart to flippity-stop.

Percy took one look at her, giving her the sweetest smile, before pulling her out the door and into the rain. Within seconds, her hair was drenched and covering her eyes. She had to rely on Percy to drag her through the streets and pray that her hand didn’t slip out of his. Annabeth tightened her grip on him, and she grinned as he squeezed her hand reassuringly.

They started laughing as they rushed down the road, a thrill running through their blood. Finally, finally, Annabeth found someone that was here with her, and who understood the constant confusion and frustration she held, and it was exhilarating. She was still completely lost, but it was better to be lost when you had someone by your side to ground you to reality.

Annabeth nearly tripped as Percy took a sharp turn and she threw her head back to laugh, her voice matching Percy’s laughter. The excitement coursing through her body was something she would never forget, and in this moment with someone she barely even knew, she felt the best she’d felt in a long time. Everything was perfect, until it wasn’t.

In a single moment, everything changed. Her stomach dropped and she stopped in her tracks, all too aware of what was coming next. Somewhere beside her, she could hear Percy yelling through the rain, asking her what was wrong, but she didn’t respond. She dropped his hand, not willing to let whatever was about to happen to her happen to him too, but then he was by her side, wrapping his arm around her waist and pulling her in close to talk into her hear, to ask her why they’d stopped.

Lightning shot out across the sky, lighting the sky up in an array of blues and purples, and then lightning struck seconds later, this time a sharp red appearing through the sky. The rain kept pouring, and Percy’s arm was around her, and she could feel chills run through her body. The hairs of the back of her neck stood straight, and she could hear a crackling above her.

She didn’t try to run, because she knew all too well that there was no delaying death. Death didn’t care who you are. If death was coming for you, then there was no escaping. It was inevitable, and she knew in that moment that it would be over soon.

A loud crack ripped through the sky, and then Annabeth’s body was on fire, electricity running through her veins. Everything hurt, and sparks of pain flew through her, throwing her backwards onto the pavement. She landed on the ground hard, and Percy was right beside her, but by the time she actually hit the ground, her brain was already fried, and she was already long gone.

When Annabeth woke up in a foreign room surrounded by the soft white duvet of the king-sized bed she was in, she grabbed a glass vase off of the bedside table and hurled it at the wall, watching as it shattered into a million sparkling shards.

She had no idea where to find Percy now. Of course she would die when everything was at its very finest. She was expecting it to come at some point, but couldn’t the universe at least had waited until the next day?

A sound broke out in the house and then Annabeth definitely knew she wasn’t alone.

Annabeth knew she had to get out of bed at some point and figure out how to find him now, but she also knew that it wasn’t going to be easy to do since there was currently a giant diamond ring sitting on her left hand. Somewhere in the house she was clearly in, her husband was probably wide awake which meant sneaking out to meet up with another guy would be a challenge, to say the least.

Annabeth stared at the glass some more, contemplating walking straight through it just for the fun of it. Maybe it would give her an excuse to go to the hospital to get stitches so she could go find Percy. Only problem was even with that plan, she didn’t even know where to start.

Actually, they’d talked about going to the library the day before, so that was her best bet. Annabeth looked around the bedroom and actually wished she could go back to sleep because man, getting struck by lightning was physically draining. Instead, she threw back the covers reluctantly to stand up and carefully hop over the glass. She managed not to get stuck by any sharp pieces as she left the room in search of her apparent husband.

As she walked through the corridors of the house, she realized that it was actually really nice. There were lots of windows lining the walls that let the natural morning light illuminate the walls and make everything very warm and homey. There were pictures hanging from the wall of her with people that she didn’t know. She ran her hands along each picture until she landed on one of her and a guy that she couldn’t bring herself to look at. Annabeth was dressed in a sparkling white dress with the prettiest lace train, and she felt her heart pang again. It never got any easier knowing that the person who loved her had no idea that she would never love them back.

Annabeth heard a curse from what she assumed to be the kitchen, so she continued on her mission, still refusing to look at the man in the picture. She crossed the living room, noting the cushioned white couches with fluffy blankets thrown over them. It looked so lived in and comforting, and she is reminded of everything she can’t have once again. Annabeth steeled herself again, rounding the corner to the kitchen, preparing herself for whoever would be behind the corner. She looked around, and was completely unprepared for when she saw–

“Percy?”

There he was, standing in front of a huge marble countertop and making a cup of coffee. He looked up at her, startled, as she called his name. His face went from relief to confusion in seconds.

Annabeth didn’t even hesitate before running into his arms to embrace him. Her heart was already pounding, so glad that he was okay. She’d never actually seen him die until the night before, and it was utterly terrifying. Especially after knowing that he was stuck too.

“What are you doing here?” he asked, rubbing her back. 

“Uh–” She stuttered for words and pulled back. “I live here, I think? There were pictures of me on the wall, so I assumed this is my house.”

Percy looked around awkwardly. “I woke up on the couch. I thought I lived here too.”

Annabeth nodded, though she didn’t know why. Instead she lifted her hand to show the ring. “Woke up with this on my hand, so I was looking for my husband. I’m not sure where he–” It dawned on her. “Oh my god.”

Percy choked on air and lifted his hand where there was a silver band “Yeah.”

“We’re–”

“Married.” Percy dropped his hand. “This is new.”

“Uh.” She couldn’t look him in the eyes. “Is it just a coincidence that we end up married as soon as we find out we’re both repeatedly dying?”

“I wouldn’t think so, no.” Percy looked her up and down, though not in a mean way.

Annabeth gulped and looked down, only now realizing that she was wearing a long t-shirt that was very obviously not hers. They were married and that means that they’d probably had… and he’s seen her…

She prayed he didn’t notice the flush travelling up her neck.

“Do you want some coffee?” he offered.

“Please,” she groaned, sliding down into a chair in front of the island and leaning her head onto her arms. “Are we going to the library still?”

“We can if you want to.” Percy shuffled around the kitchen for another mug. “I have no idea where we are though.”

“In New York, undoubtedly. I’m sure there’s a library somewhere around here.” Annabeth lifted her head to place her cheek onto a hand. “I don’t know where we’d start looking though. Maybe magic around the world?”

Percy snorted, pressing a button on a machine until hot coffee started spewing out. “Magic?”

“Do you have better ideas?”

“I was thinking more along the lines of religion and punishment. Some sort of divine torture.”

“Would it apply to us if we aren’t that religion?”

“I don’t see why not. I mean, something happened here.” Percy slid a steaming cup of coffee across the island towards her, which she accepted with thanks. He leaned onto the counter and looked her in the eyes. “Maybe this is some sort of philosophical or theological question.”

“What could it possibly be asking us?”

“What is the meaning of death?”

“After dying two hundred times, I still couldn’t answer that.”

Percy lifted his own mug to his mouth. “Maybe we both died after that guy stabbed you the first time. He might’ve come back to stab me and now our ghosts are both trying to find some life in death.”

“Maybe our ghosts were sent to hell.”

“That sounds more realistic, yes.”

Annabeth laughed humorlessly. She gulped the hot liquid in her mug, ignoring the burning in her throat as she swallowed it. She could feel her tongue burned and the coffee felt flavorless, but if it would bring her any comfort or dull the headache she could already feel coming on, then she would take it.”

“We can leave to go to the library in an hour, if you’d like.”

Annabeth snapped her fingers and pointed at him. “Sounds like a plan.”

“You’re so weird.”

“Yeah, well, you married me. Who’s the real loser here?”

“I’m compelled to say it’s still you.”

“I want a divorce.”

Percy rolled his eyes good-naturedly. Annabeth watched as he lifted the mug back to his lips, and she got distracted by the plumpness of his lips and the cut of his jaw. She only now saw what he was wearing– a simple white t-shirt that was a bit too small for him, and plain grey sweatpants– and wow, did he look good. Annabeth figured she was allowed to thirst for him now that they were married anyways. Annabeth kept staring at him, and he raised an eyebrow and was about to retort something, but of course he got cut off by the sharp cry that sounded within the house.

Annabeth’s eyes widened as she turned around in the direction of the noise. The crying continued, and it was high pitched, and she’d heard it before. “Is that…?”

Percy was frozen. “A baby? Yeah.”

Annabeth cursed and jumped off the chair to rush in the general direction, Percy following close behind. She really hoped it wasn’t a baby, because if it was, then they were in very big trouble.

Annabeth threw open a door and was met with the sight of an infant sitting upright in a white crib, wailing with her fingers in her mouth.

“A baby,” she breathed out. “We have a baby.”

Percy grit his teeth, staring at the crying baby. “We have a baby.”

Annabeth wanted to actually cry. She wanted to cry because this time, the baby didn’t have anyone there for her. Both of her parents weren’t actually her parents, and they were going to die, and the baby had no one.

The infant in the crib looked at Annabeth as she cried, holding out two chubby arms towards Annabeth. Annabeth dragged herself over to the crib, only hesitating for a few seconds before giving in and picking up the baby in her arms. The crying immediately stopped, and the baby rested her head against Annabeth chest, shoving her fingers into her mouth to suck on them.

Annabeth felt a tear of her own slide down her face as she turned to face Percy. “We don’t even know her name.”

Percy motioned in the direction of a wall with lettering on it. “It’s Sophia.”

Annabeth whimpered, hugging the baby close as she bounced. “We can’t have a baby, Percy.”

“I know.”

“We can’t.”

“But we do, Annabeth. We can’t just leave her here.”

“We don’t know anything about her. We don’t know how to take care of a baby, or what she’s allergic to, or even how old she is.”

“She can’t be any more than six months old.”

“We don’t know that,” Annabeth hissed. “We’re going to die at some point, and she’ll have nothing. No parents left at all.”

“I know it’s unfortunate, but there’s–”

“Unfortunate?” Annabeth bit her lip. “We can’t have her with us.”

“What do you propose we do?”

Annabeth was silent.

“Exactly. We just have to do our best for now, and it’ll all be over before we know it.”

“For us! It’ll be over for us, but we don’t know if this timeline will keep going and we’ll leave her with two dead parents!”

Percy rubbed his forehead. “There’s nothing we can do except figure out what’s going on, and fast.”

Annabeth looked down at Sophia, and really took her in. She had blonde hair on her head, and her eyes were a vibrant green– very clearly the daughter of the two of them. Annabeth couldn’t take it; knowing what would come at some point hurt so much more when you knew who you’d be leaving behind.

Annabeth sniffled, hugging the baby tighter. “Let’s figure this out then.”

It turns out, having a baby with someone else who knew nothing about babies was practically asking for disaster. Sophia would not let Percy even hold her, and if Annabeth put her down for even a second, the screaming would start up again.

“Take her,” Percy yelled over the cries. “I can’t take it anymore.”

“I’ve been holding her for hours! It’s your turn.”

“She wasn’t screaming when you held her!”

Annabeth forced herself to sit up on the couch. “Give me the damn baby.”

Percy rushed forwards, holding the baby with his arms out in front of him like she was a ticking time bomb. “You shouldn’t talk about your baby like that.”

“Shut up,” Annabeth told him, reaching for Sophia. The second Sophia was in her lap, the crying calmed down again. “I have no idea why she keeps crying whenever I put her down.”

“Babies just do that. They want their mommy, so they just yell until they’re picked up again.”

“I have a headache now.”

“Me too.” Percy tilted his head. “I don’t think we’re going to the library today.”

“Absolutely not. We’d get kicked out in seconds with this screaming kid.”

Percy sat down on the couch next to her, watching as Annabeth handled Sophia. “She’s cute, though.”

“Of course she is. She’s my baby.”

“And mine.”

“You’re ugly, so she clearly got my genes.”

“That’s not what you said that day at Starbucks. And this morning when you couldn’t stop staring at me.”

Annabeth snapped her head towards him. “You heard that?”

“You two weren’t exactly subtle. Was pretty obvious this morning too.”

Annabeth grumbled under her breath, and Percy bumped her shoulder.

“It’s fine. We’re married with a baby after all. I’d hope you find me attractive.”

“Your personality is disgusting.”

“Oh, sure,” he said teasingly. “The worst personality.”

“Mhm. Even your own baby can’t stand you.”

“That’s low, Beth.”

“I speak only the truth.”

Percy settled his head against Annabeth’s shoulder, and it felt all too intimate. “We should go out to eat later. We can talk everything over and spend time as a family since it seems that we’ll never get to actually have one.”

Annabeth flicked his nose with the hand that wasn’t holding Sophia. “We are your family for today.”

“I’d like to take my wife and kid out for dinner. Think it’s too much?”

Annabeth’s heart fluttered. “Not at all.”

When Annabeth found herself sitting across from Percy in a booth of a restaurant he’d insisted on and watching him handle Sophia, her heart absolutely melted. He was playing with Sophia, delighting in the little giggles that slipped from her tiny mouth, and it had to actually be the cutest thing she’d ever seen.

Percy held Sophia above the table, moving her around and pretending that she was flying, complemented by the whooshing sound effects he’d been making. “We’ve got a flyer, Annabeth.”

Annabeth reached across the table to bop Sophia on the nose. “Our little Supergirl.”

“She’s not a dog, babe.”

Annabeth raised an eyebrow. “So we’re doing that now?”

“We’re married, aren’t we?”

“Nothing more than a mere technicality.” Annabeth sniffed haughtily. “I don’t actually know much about you.”

“I disagree. I’d say we know a lot about each other. Every square inch, to be more specific.”

Annabeth covered Sophia’s ears jokingly, grinning at the delighted squeal. “Children present, babe.”

“Please. She doesn’t know a thing we’re saying.”

“And I’m sure that’s because we’ve avoided talking about things like that.”

“Like what?” he asked innocently.

She shot him a look.

“You said it,” he defended, holding a hand in the air while the other held Sophia on his lap. “We did conceive a child somehow.”

“We didn’t do anything.”

“We definitely did. I’m sure I can help fog your memory as to what we did, if you’d like.”

Annabeth tossed a small piece of bread from the basket on the table directly into his eye. “I’m not doing anything with you tonight.”

“We’ll see about that…” Percy said with a smile through grit teeth. He turned his attention back to Sophia, giving her his finger to wrap her hand around. “She’s actually a really good baby.”

“Say that again when you’ve had to deal with ten tantrums in the past two hours.”

“It’s not my fault she screams if you put her down.” Percy lifted Sophia and tried to lift her across the table to Annabeth, which was more difficult than it seemed because she kept squirming in his hold. “She’s gonna get cranky again if you don’t feed her.”

She grabbed Sophia and cradled her in her lap. “What do you want me to do? Pull out my boob in the middle of a restaurant?”

“First of all, if you needed to, then yes. But second, we brought a bottle. It’s in the diaper bag.”

Annabeth tilted her head and turned to search through it, one hand staying to support the baby. “I didn’t put it in.”

“I did,” he said with an eyeroll. “You didn’t listen to me when I said to pack it.”

“I don’t listen to a lot of things you say.” Annabeth pulled the bottle with formula out with a triumphant smirk. “Your voice physically hurts me.”

“You love my voice.”

“Incorrect.” Annabeth popped off the bottle’s lid and held it to Sophia’s lips until she opened her mouth eagerly. “How do you know so much about babies anyways? Do you have a kid?”

Percy nodded, mischief in his eyes. “I do have one. Right here.”

“I’m serious.”

“No. I have a little sister though, and I helped my mom with her a lot.”

Annabeth stuck her lower lip out. “That’s so cute.”

“No need for the mocking.”

“I’m not mocking you. It’s really sweet of you.” Annabeth looked down at Sophia and her eyes just took in the curves of her face, lingering on the blonde eyelashes and emerald eyes. It just took her breath away, getting to stare at her daughter like this. Sophia wasn’t her daughter, but she also was, which is a really weird thing to say, but it’s what it is. Sophia is hers, and she doesn’t think she’ll ever get over it.

Annabeth knows it’s a terrible idea to get attached. She’s going to be leaving soon, but she doesn’t want to leave her behind. This– it was a life that she could live. It was a life that she’d always wanted, a life that she’d always worried she’d never get. Now it was here, staring her in the eyes, except she knew that there was nothing she would ever be able to do to stop the universe, or whatever greater power was at play, from tearing it all away from her in seconds.

Her heart tugged in her chest, staring at the baby and everything she could ever want. It was insane because this was Percy’s baby too. She barely knew him, and she had a baby with him, and normally she’d be so against something like that, but she found herself wanting it even more. It felt so right, and she could feel herself falling, and every part of her knew that there was no stopping the torment of emotions that was sure to come.

When Annabeth was pulled out of her reverie with the waiter bringing their steaming foods out, she looked up to Percy. Deep within the whirlpool of his eyes, she could see, she could feel, the things he felt. Pain, regret, confusion, adoration, love.

She tried to push away the tug in her gut, tried to ignore the pounding in her heart as she ate with one hand still cradling a baby quickly falling into a deep sleep. She managed to make it through the meal, and they filled pained silences with light-hearted conversation, very clearly avoiding the feelings she was sure both of them felt.

When it came time to pay, Percy didn’t hesitate before throwing a card out, and Annabeth pushed away the churning deep in her stomach. It was too much, and it wasn’t enough.

“You two look cute,” he whispered lowly as he stood, watching as Sophia snuggled deeper into Annabeth’s chest, fast asleep. Her lips were parted as she breathed, and Annabeth could feel every burst of warm air against her neck, and she was trying really hard not to cry.

“Poor baby was tired,” she settled for, supporting her head as she stood.

“Let’s get you girls home,” he insisted, reaching out for Annabeth’s hip to pull her close. He pressed a sweet kiss into the baby’s head, and she understood when he pressed one to hers too. Something was pulling them together, but it was easier to pretend it wasn’t there than to acknowledge that it existed at all.

Annabeth walked close to Percy’s side, and she could feel the warmth radiating off of his body. She wanted nothing more than to go to their home and lay in bed with their baby, just taking in everything they had while they still had it. She was going to suggest that they go and do just that, but someone interrupted before she got the chance.

“I’m so sorry, dears,” an old lady said, stepping into their path. She really was the definition of an old lady– the skin around her eyes and mouth was wrinkled, and she quivered with every step she took as she held onto her cane. She even dressed like an old lady, with her flowered gown and glasses hanging on a chair around her neck. It really made Annabeth wonder what the lady could possibly want with them.

“Ma’am,” Percy said cautiously, subtly wrapping an arm around Annabeth as though to shield her from a possible threat. “Did you need something?”

“Oh, yes.” She chuckled, and Annabeth was surprised the force of the air from her lungs didn’t blow her into dust in the wind. “I just had to tell you two that you are the most beautiful soulmates I’ve ever seen.”

Annabeth’s breath caught in her throat. “We’re–”

“We’re not soulmates,” Percy finished for her.

The old lady’s arm shook as she put her weight onto the cane. “Of course you’re soulmates! You’ve got a beautiful baby together, and I’ve been watching you two all dinner. Only soulmates could act the way you two are.”

Percy rubbed his neck, feeling small under the lady’s peculiar gaze. “It’s a long story, but… we’re not.”

“Oh, you two. If you’re not soulmates, then the system might as well not exist at all.” She chuckled knowingly to herself. “I believe you two must be soulmates, but if you insist you are not, then… perhaps in another universe.”

Annabeth forced a tight smile, really just annoyed at the cryptic message. “Maybe.”

“Undeniably.” The lady winked. “I must be going, but it was very refreshing seeing a young couple in love, if not soulmates.”

Annabeth gave a smile, hugging the sleeping infant closer to her chest as Percy said something to her that she didn’t quite catch. The lady’s words had sent her mind spiraling off on a tangent once again and this time, she couldn’t bring herself out of it.

A blaring alarm was set off in her head, and she’d never felt more lost than she did now. They weren’t soulmates; if they were, they would’ve known by now. The soulmate system was perfect. The system did not mess up. They were not soulmates. It was impossible.

It just made the revelation sting a little bit more.

She loved him. Somehow, within the last two days, the last two lives, she fell in love. She is Annabeth Chase. Annabeth Chase does not fall in love in two days, except she did. She doesn’t get close to people, and she certainly doesn’t find herself wishing she could stay just a little bit longer in a life that never belonged to her, so why was it happening now? This type of thing- it only happened to soulmates. Only the two people that were made for one another, that were compatible in every single way and deemed each other’s other halves by the universe itself, loved each other so intensely and so suddenly.

She tried to brush it off as some twisted form of baby fever, or just a longing for genuine human interaction after what’s felt like an eternity, but it was so much more than that. Annabeth genuinely loved him, and she would never be able to explain why. It hit her, and that was it. There was no going back, and there was no explanation. They weren’t soulmates– that much was clear– but it was also clear that she didn’t want to leave his side, or this life that they had both built and stolen.

The haziness takes over her mind, and all she thinks that night is that she wants more. She doesn’t want to die; she doesn’t want to leave. She wants him, and the baby she’d already had some form of attachment to, and the life where people see them as the soulmates neither of them had ever actually had.

Annabeth wants it so strongly, and the want floods her veins, traveling through her from the bottom of her toes to the tips of her fingers. She wants to hold her baby close for the rest of her life, and she wants to wake up to someone who loved her, and yes, maybe Percy didn’t love her yet, or maybe he never would because they weren’t each other’s other halves, but even she could tell that he was content with things how they were. Percy would survive, and so would she.

It didn’t matter though.

It didn’t matter how much Annabeth willed herself to stay grounded, or how much she prayed, hoped, desired the life she was currently living. In days, or in hours, or even in mere minutes, it would all end. She would wake up and everything would be different once again. Sophia would be gone, and she wouldn’t get the chance to live a life similar to the one she could only ever dream of. It would be over before she knew it, and she didn’t know if the infant would continue on without parents, or if life for her would continue on as normal, or if she would never have even existed at all.

It was for that reason that instead of dropping to the ground and sobbing until she couldn’t breathe, she pulled her baby in close, feeling the infant’s heartbeat in her chest, feeling the feather light touches of the fragile fist against her blonde curls as Sophia tugged lightly. When she wanted nothing more than to retreat into her mind, she reached out instead, pulling Percy in close and resting her head on his warm figure. When Percy reached his arm around her and dragged her closer, Annabeth managed to withhold the quiver of her lip, the shaking of her hands as she held on to her dream.

She was aware of every surrounding. She could feel the baby’s breath tickle her skin, and she could feel her hair brushing against her shoulder. She felt the gentle touches of Percy’s hand against her back and the nudge of his nose on the back of her ear. She just wanted to stay awake, and get every single moment with them as she could.

She tried.

She really, really tried.

Eventually, the sleep did overcome her. There was no preventing the exhaustion from taking over her body. Her vision blurred and she no longer had the strength to fight it. Annabeth focused on the small figure bundled in her arms, and the warmth the arms around her offered, and for a moment, everything was perfect.

Everything was perfect until it wasn’t, because when she woke up the next morning in a new bed with a new life, she started screaming. She screamed and screamed, and she might’ve even torn her vocal cords, but it didn’t matter because it was gone. Everything was gone. There wasn’t a baby, and there wasn’t a marriage. There wasn’t the hope at a life worth living, and it broke something inside her that would never be fixed.

Annabeth asked herself a million questions, the breath being taking out of her until her vision was dotted black.

What was going to happen to Sophia?

Was Percy okay?

What had happened?

Would it ever stop?

Why did it have to be her?

Why?

Life went on as normal, or as normal as it could with her dying every few days. It was hard, but Annabeth tried to forget that one specific life. It was by no means the most painful death but leaving everything behind in that one life hurt more than she could’ve ever imagined. After living at least another fifty lives, the pain began to dull, but it would never disappear. It was always there, lurking in the shadows of her mind, reminding her of everything she lost.

The only thing that helped Annabeth not go completely insane was having Percy with her. He knew how much it hurt, and he was just always there to support her. They became best friends quicker than expected, but then again, living the most bizarre deaths was a pretty unifying activity. He comforted her and made her feel as though maybe there was hope after all. He was the reason she was still holding onto that last strain of hope, the last strain of sanity inside of her.

As time went on, her love for him grew stronger until it was all she could feel. It wasn’t just an attraction she felt, but a need. She needed him, and he was a part of her. It felt so similar to the ancient myth of having soulmates be two parts of one body. Percy felt like her literal other half, and even knowing that they weren’t soulmates, she loved him. They never ended up talking through the feeling boiling beneath the surface, but they both knew. They had stolen kisses in the dark, and whispers in each other’s ears when no one was watching, and she wouldn’t have it any other way.

They weren’t official, and they probably would never be official, but their love was transparent. It was all that both Percy and Annabeth knew anymore. The inevitable pull towards one another in a time when nothing else in the complex universe made sense. The soulmates that never were.

Annabeth’s eyes scanned over the book she was reading, but she didn’t pick up on the meaning behind the words because it was so true. They’re really the soulmates that never were.

The night the old lady approached her made something really click for her. The lady telling them that they were soulmates and being insistent that they were was definitely not an ordinary occurrence. Once again, it was that sinking feeling in her gut that made her track down the nearest library and start some research many lives ago. That time though, she threw everything she thought she knew off the table. Every single book she could find on soulmates made its way into her reading pile because it all felt so right.

She spent days at a time in the library, reading until she was physically incapable of doing so, and of course she died a few times in the process (getting stuck under a pile of books, and then a building fire, go figure), but she didn’t let it deter her newfound vigor. Percy had helped her read, which she was incredibly grateful for, but she ended up empty-handed. In the hundreds of books on soulmates she worked her way through, not a single one mentioned dying day after day and night after night. She ended back at square one, looking through philosophy and theology, and anything that posed even a remote possibility.

Countless lives later, she was still stuck in a library day and night, pointlessly reading through books that obviously wouldn’t be of any help, but she still couldn’t put down because just maybe it would be the right one. It never was.

Annabeth slammed the book she was reading shut, letting the glares she received slip off her back. Her eyes were starting to blur, and she was still just as without information as before she’d started reading. “I can’t do this anymore.”

Percy didn’t even look up from his book, titled a simple Philosophy by some author whose name she couldn’t pronounce. “We’re almost through the pile in this library.”

“My brain hurts.”

He did look up that time. “Why?”

“I’ve been reading without break for– I’m not even sure how long.”

“Five hours,” he offered.

“Five hours,” she said, exaggerated. “Five hours is a damn long time to be reading.”

“I’m aware.” He closes the book in his hands, placing his finger within the pages to hold his spot. “Go take a break then.”

“One cannot simply ‘take a break’ without feeling utterly disgusting for not working to solve the problem.”

“Oh, you goon,” Percy teased fondly. “Just go see if there are any books we missed then.”

“Now that I can do.” Annabeth stood from the wooden chair she’d been perched in, her back popping deliciously as she stretched. “I might go get a snack while I’m at it.”

“Bring me back candy.” Percy pointed at her excitedly. “Gummy worms.”

“Sour?”

“Sour,” he confirmed with a dutiful nod. Percy held out one hand for her, and she moved in to take it. He pulled her in close, reaching up to press a sweet kiss to the corner of her mouth and squeezing her hand to let her know of the unsaid I love you.

Annabeth squeezed his hand back three times before slipping her hand out of his and settling for clenching it by her side. “I’ll be back soon.”

She stalked off towards the opposite side of the library, weaving in and out of the bookshelves and giving herself a chance to stretch her legs. When she did reach the other end of the lengthy building, there weren’t any books left that they hadn’t read, as she had already suspected.

Annabeth shrugged, because she could at least say she checked, before heading on over to the small shop set up in the corner of the empty library. She hadn’t ever seen a library with a convenience store inside, but she supposed it works in her favor seeing as reading works up one hell of an appetite. She grabbed a few random snacks, consciously picking up a hefty bag of sour gummy worms on her way through the store.

She tapped her fingers on the counter as she paid, wanting to get back to Percy and steal the gummy worms from him, which was a surprisingly entertaining game. When the cashier, someone with two speeds, slow and stopped, finally checked her out, she wasted no time in finding her way back, deciding on whether or not she was going to demand her give her a kiss before she gave him the candy.

Annabeth expected to find Percy where she had left him, sitting in the chair and reading, his tongue pressed between his lips as he concentrated, but instead he was standing on the opposite side of the table, leaning over something that she couldn’t quite pinpoint what it was.

“Everything okay?” she questioned hesitantly from a few feet behind him.

Percy visibly tensed at her voice and closed whatever he had been reading, shoving it away as he turned. “Yeah.”

Annabeth tilted her head and said, “Whatcha reading there?”

He looked to the table filled with books and then back at her. “It’s just some old article– nothing important. It’s from a newspaper that came out in the 90s.”

Annabeth focused on the paper, and his words definitely seemed true. On top of one of the books was a crumpled newspaper, stained a rustic brown and looking like it came directly from an antique shop down the street. The lettering was fading and the paper itself was covered in specks of dusts that made her want to sneeze just looking at it. “Why were you reading it?”

“I just found it sitting over there,” he said, referring to a shelf adjacent to them. “It caught my eye, I guess.”

Annabeth could sense something was off. He was being oddly nonchalant about the newspaper that looked like it belonged to someone during World War II. She wanted to question him, but instead she just inquired, “Did it have anything useful?”

Percy hesitated, if only for a fraction of a second, but it still caught Annabeth’s attention. “No.”

Red flooded Annabeth’s vision as she moved him aside to grab at the paper. “I can read it, then?”

She’s stopped as Percy wraps both of his hands around her upper arms. “It’s nothing important, Annabeth. You still have to finish reading the other book too.”

Annabeth took a moment to observe him. He looked almost embarrassed, and she decided to drop it. “Do you promise it’s not important?” she pouts.

Percy pushed a curl aside and rested his palm against her cheek to press a kiss to the other. “I promise.”

She tells herself that he was probably just reading something weird and didn’t want her to know, or that he was reading some form of ancient porn. He wouldn’t lie to her, she hopes. Annabeth settled down into a chair again, tossing him his snack with a frown. She really wanted to know what was in the newspaper, and it was like it was calling out to her with a vibrant glow to it. She wanted to just grab it, because if it wasn’t important then it wouldn’t matter if she read it, but she had to trust Percy, so she shoves those thought back down her throat.

“Were there any more books?” Percy tried, deciding to sit next to her and open the bag of candy, offering a few to her that she ended up declining.

“None,” she said. “This place is void of anything useful.”

Percy looked pained, and again the warning in her rose. “Right.”

Annabeth grabbed her book from in front of her, opening it back to the page she’d left off on. Words were close to tumbling out of her mouth, because he was hiding something, and normally she would’ve said something, but things were different now. She stayed silent, opting to trust that he would never hold something back that could mean the end of them both.

They tried to go on as normal, but Percy’s mind was somewhere else, and Annabeth knew it. The conversation was dry and strained, and it was so painfully obvious that Percy was uncomfortable, and it burned a little. Eventually, Annabeth returned to her book, and Percy knew better than to grab her attention again, turning himself back to his own book, but his mind went back to that one article that he knew might’ve meant the difference between life and death.

Percy watched as Annabeth slept on the couch, just utterly exhausted. Two days after the library incident, nothing had happened yet, but it only meant that the next death was rapidly approaching. As he focused on the slow rise and fall of Annabeth’s chest, he began to feel the guilt in his throat again.

At the library, when Annabeth had went to get snacks, something had happened. He didn’t know what it was, but it was like someone snapped and everything was different. One second he had been reading about the joyous wonders of philosophy and the shelf in front of him was empty, but then the next second, there was a single paper settled on it. It was nothing special– the newspaper was just a piece of old paper, but the thing was that it just appeared. He swears that it hadn’t been there, and then it magically was, and that alone was disturbing.

He really became perplexed though when someone told him to look at it. The thing is– that person said it in his head. There was no one around him to talk, and it was almost like he told himself to go pick it up, except it wasn’t his voice. Percy didn’t know how, but he just knew that he was supposed to get the newspaper, and so he did. He grabbed the newspaper, looking around to see if anything was out of the ordinary, but it wasn’t, so he looked down to read the header which is when his heart stopped.

Psychiatric Patient Claims to Relive Deaths with Soulmate.

 Like that, the world seemed to come to a grinding halt. He read on and on, and it only became clearer that it was the exact same situation him and Annabeth were in.

Psychiatric patient in New York claimed to have met his soulmate while reliving the deaths of each other. The patient believes that they’ve lived thousands of different lives with their soulmate, except there is no evidence of this supposed soulmate. The patient, Chiron Brunner, was forcibly sent to a private facility to cope with his distress. Doctors believe there to be a mental deficit within this man as the soulmate system doesn’t cause this type of distress to develop within mankind.

Percy locked the name into his head– Chiron Brunner. He was the person who seemed to steal the words from Percy’s lips, and Percy knew that whatever was happening to him, Chiron may have held the answers. Percy needed to know what was happening, and if a psychiatric patient might hold the answers, then Percy needed to find him. So he did.

It took a lot of calling around to different hospitals in New York, but he finally managed to find someone by the name of Chiron Brunner. Percy could feel it in his bones– the answer to the torment of deaths was held by this man. Percy didn’t know how he knew, and maybe he was wrong. Chiron seemed to be mentally handicapped if he was in a psychiatric ward, but somehow, Percy knew otherwise. Something told him otherwise.

That was exactly how Percy found himself staring at Annabeth’s sleeping form on his couch, stuffed under a few blankets. He hadn’t told Annabeth what he knew, and he felt bad about it, but he needed to know if his suspicion was right. He couldn’t tell her and get her worked up or have her tell him that he’s just reaching for any answer and talk him out of meeting with Chiron. He needed this, and telling Annabeth meant he risked the only lead he had.

Percy stepped back from Annabeth, silent in the dead of the night. He had already called ahead to the facility to let them know of his visit, and he needed to leave now to make it. With a final glance at her, praying that she’d forgive him, he turned around and made his way out the front door of his current apartment thankful that she hadn’t woken up.

The venture through New York at night was hectic, but he managed to get on a subway and just get a moment of peace before he really ended up talking to someone that could be the key to it all, or who could spit nonsense at him. It felt like an eternity, but he eventually made it to his stop where he stepped out of the train and worked his way up and back into the New York night sky. The walk to the hospital was lonely, and he felt like he was being watched, though he knew he wasn’t. The streets were empty, which was definitely not a normal event for New York, but he carried on.

Percy stared up at the psychiatric hospital once he reached it, suddenly feeling very insignificant. The building was huge and vaguely ominous, not a single light visible inside except for one lamppost posted in front of the entrance. Chills ran up and down Percy’s arms, but he shoved his fears deep down inside of him and braced himself for what he was about to experience.

When he stepped inside, it was void of people except for a single lady standing behind a desk covered by a thick glass. Percy approached the desk, glancing around severely put off by the condition of the building, before speaking.

“I’m here to see, uh, Chiron Brunner.” Percy shoved his hands into his pocket where he could feel the newspaper he’d stolen from the library.

“Name?” the lady deadpanned, pushing a pair of wired glasses up her nose.

“Percy Jackson.”

“ID?”

Percy’s fingers worked through his pockets, looking for his wallet he was only seventy percent sure he’d shoved in here. He breathed a sigh of relief when his fingers wrapped around the familiar leather, pulling it out to show his license.

The lady scrutinized Percy’s appearance, snatching the card from his hand to compare the pictures, even though they looked the exact same. Some people, right?

Reluctantly, the lady handed the ID back to him and motioned him towards the glass door on his right that buzzed open. She didn’t even spare him a second glance before telling him, “Room 304, Third floor on the right,” and leaving him to fend for himself.

Percy put his hands back into his pockets, suddenly very on edge as he made his way through the dimly lit hallways and up three flights of stairs, not a clue as to where the elevators were, of if there even were elevators. The fact that Percy was pretty much just allowed to waltz in and walk around like he owned the place says a lot about security in there, but he’d be out soon enough.

Percy counted the numbers on the doors as he walked around the third floor until he came to room 304. He paused outside the door, and actually considered turning around and leaving because this was just wrong, and Annabeth really should’ve been there because it was her business too. He shook his head and steeled himself. He was just trying to protect Annabeth from any false hope, or at least that’s what he’d keep telling himself.

With a shaking hand, he knocked lightly on the door and then waited for a response. It was a decent amount of time before a response, and Percy had just been about to knock again when a voice called out, “Come in.”

Percy reached towards the doorknob and twisted it, the hinges creaking as he pushed it open. Sitting in a wheelchair in the middle of the room was a man with a blanket thrown over his legs and facing the window. The moonlight faded into the room, and the hairs on the back of Percy’s neck stood up. The bed to the right of the man looked unused, and the room was empty except for that bed and the man in the wheelchair.

Percy swallowed, and he was sure it was audible in the echoing room, but he pushed through. “Are you Chiron Brunner?”

The man didn’t move. “Yes.”

Percy closed the door behind him slowly and took the tiniest of steps towards Chiron. “I’m Percy Jackson. Is it okay if I talk to you?”

Silence. And then, “You may.”

Percy stepped to the side of the wheelchair to look Chiron in the face. Chiron’s eyes flitted to Percy for a moment before returning to gazing out the window. “I’m not sure where to start…”

Chiron heaved a breath, and for the first time since Percy had entered, he moved to turn the wheelchair towards Percy. “Are you here to inquire about my alleged psychiatric meltdown?”

“…yes.”

“Is there anything in particular you’d like to know?”

Percy blinked. He hadn’t expected Chiron to be so willing to talk. “I just– there was an old article in a newspaper about you. It mentioned that you were claiming to have lived many lives and died. Is that true?”

“It depends on what you mean. It is true that I claimed that to have happened, but many believe the actual events to be false.”

“Were– were they true?”

“I believe them to have been, yes.”

“I just– Can you give me a rundown of everything that happened?”

“Do you mean before or after I was sent to this hospital?”

“I mean during the lives you lived.”

Chiron chucked humorlessly, as though remembering dark times. “I can only tell you what I believe to be true from my point of view. Others would disagree with these events.”

“I’d like to know what you think,” Percy said gently.

“Well, I lived my life as a camp director. That was my living, and one day, someone appeared. I believe that person was my soulmate.”

“But why?”

“For reasons to follow.” Chiron’s fingers fumbled on his beard. “You know of the soulmate system. One does not miss their soulmate. The universe doesn’t allow people to miss each other.”

“Right.”

“The universe didn’t work out that way for me.”

“What do you mean?”

“I met the girl, if only for a moment. We didn’t touch, so we didn’t find out if we were soulmates. However, that night, I ended up watching her die. I died the following morning.”

Percy stayed silent, heart reverberating in his chest.

“The thing is– I woke up again. When I woke up, it was a new life. A couple of days later, I ended up watching the same girl die, followed by myself. It was a never-ending pattern. I died hundreds of times in hundreds of different ways. The only thing that stayed the same was the girl dying in front of my eyes. That part never changed.”

“What happened then?”

Chiron cleared his throat. “We found each other. We tried to figure out what was happening, and it took a long time, but we finally found out. We realized we were soulmates, and we’d always felt like we were, but we never officially knew.”

“How did you know, then?”

Chiron looked Percy in the eyes, and even through the dark, Percy could see the pain in Chiron’s eyes. “I did the same thing you’re doing now.”

Percy’s breath caught in his throat.

“I’m assuming you believe you may be in the same position. Not many people are ever interested in a story such as mine.” Chiron tilted his head. “Am I correct in assuming this?”

Percy managed to nod meekly. That’s why he had been so compliant. “I think I’m stuck. I’ve died hundreds of times, and I don’t know why.”

“I think you do.”

“I don’t, really. I’m just looking for anything that might be an answer.”

“Percy Jackson,” Chiron started. “I don’t think you’d be here if you didn’t already suspect why you’re stuck in a never-ending loop of death.”

“I mean– We’ve looked for anything, but we can’t find any information about soulmates having this problem, so we figured…”

“You seem to have forgotten something, Mr. Jackson.”

Percy paused. “What?”

“You did find information on soulmates. You’re here right now.”

“Well, yes, but–”

“Tell me, Percy.” Chiron gave the smallest hint of a smile. “What position are you in?”

“The exact same one as you were.”

“Do you believe me to have truly experienced the things I speak of?”

“I have to believe them. I think it’s happening to me right now.”

“Then tell me, Percy. Do you think you’re soulmates with the girl you’re stuck with?”

“I think it’s possible,” he settled for. “But we’ve touched, and there’s never been any signal of us being soulmates.”

“Did you touch before or after the deaths started?”

Percy had been about to answer that yes, of course they’d touched before, but he stopped himself. That day when they’d first met– they didn’t touch. They were mere millimeters away, but they didn’t actually touch. Percy curses himself, because somehow, he hadn’t even thought back to the day they’d met until this singular moment, and he somehow didn’t pick up that they didn’t touch.

“No,” Percy whispered, dazed. “I don’t think we did.”

“Then why could you not be stuck in a universe where you die until you understand?”

“I guess I could be.”

Chiron nodded, old and wise. “I think you’ve known all along, since before you got here. At least since you found the newspaper you speak of. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have bothered to show up. Not many people do show up here.”

“Are you saying that you think I’m stuck with my soulmate?”

“I believe that to be the case,” Chiron confirmed. “Do you?”

Percy licked his lips nervously. Annabeth– he’d felt some sort of pull the first time they’d met, and she’d later told him that she did too. And when they found each other in this form of hell, they’d somehow fallen in love. He can pinpoint the exact moment he fell for her, and he knows it was seeing Annabeth at that diner, holding his baby and smiling down at his daughter– their daughter. It shouldn’t have been that to fall in love for someone, but it was for them. It hadn’t made sense at the time, but now? It seemed like it was the only explanation that did make sense.

He and Annabeth had to be soulmates.

“I do.”

Chiron reached forward to pat Percy on the hand, which only felt a teeny bit weird. “I know how you must feel. I went through the same thing many years ago.”

Percy’s stomach churned. “Why are you here. I mean, I know you’re not insane, because I’m living your exact words.”

“People don’t believe words that speak out against the soulmate system. I made the mistake of bad-mouthing the system, and because people think of the system as flawless, they felt the only explanation was that I was mentally unfit. That’s the reason I was sent here.”

“But that was so long ago. Why haven’t you been able to leave?”

“I don’t have any family left. I have no reason to leave here anymore. This place doesn’t let patients leave without family, so I’m stuck in a loophole again, I suppose.”

Percy’s heart threatened to leap out of his throat and down the hall back where he came from. “But what about your soulmate?”

“That’s the other thing.” Chiron laced his fingers on his lap over the blanket. “I never saw my soulmate again. Once we found out what was happening, we ended up dying again and waking up in the original timeline. There was no evidence that my soulmate existed after that.”

“I don’t understand. If you were soulmates, you should be together.”

“That’s where you’re mistaken, Percy. Soulmates are meant to find each other, and many stay together forever, but there has never been a rule that they have to be with one another. Soulmates must find each other, but they can still live without each other.”

“But that doesn’t make sense!”

“The soulmate system doesn’t care about you living your happily ever after. The only thing that matters to the system is that you know they exist. In my case, I found my soulmate and the system did its job. I woke up and never saw her again, but it didn’t matter to the universe because the only thing that I needed to know was that she was my soulmate. You need to be ready for that, Percy.”

“Why would the soulmate system do all of this only to pull us apart?”

“The soulmate system isn’t as flawless as everyone seems to think.”

Percy could hear blood rushing in his ears. “You said I have to be ready for that. Do you mean to go back into the normal world?”

“No. It happened to me, and it happened to the person to go through this before me.”

Percy’s heart stopped.

“You need to be ready to say goodbye.”

Annabeth stood rigid, practically growling at the wall in front of her. When she woke up the next morning, Percy was nowhere to be found, and she had almost thought she’d died and just didn’t remember, but she was still in the exact same place, so that was clearly not the case. It was pretty apparent that he had just decided to vanish off the face of the Earth without telling her, which is specifically why she was standing in the middle of the room, and like she said, growling at the wall.

Eight in the morning, and still no sign of Percy. She’d been up for well over an hour by that point, and she was already cranky because who even leaves their best friend/girlfriend/whatever they were without saying something along the lines of, Hey, I’m leaving so don’t wake up and start growling at a wall when you realize I’m not there?

Annabeth uncrossed her arms from in front of her and decided to go make coffee in an attempt to calm her nerves. As she slammed cupboards open and closed in the kitchen, she continued to practice yelling at Percy in her head.

He’d been acting weird since he found that newspaper in the library, and she honestly should’ve known better than to let it slide. Whatever it was was so very obviously not of little importance, unlike what he had tried to tell her. The second he got back, she was going to give him a piece of her mind. Yeah! Take that, Percy.

Unfortunately, once the coffee was finished brewing, it did very little to settle the rising anger she felt, which was getting worryingly common. It’s just– he really had to leave without telling her? In a normal life, sure whatever, but in a life where they seem to be magnets for the most bizarre deaths? Where the world was all too keen to fire literal cannonballs and blast their heads off, or have them choke to death on a mozzarella stick? Yeah, no. He definitely should’ve told her where he was going, or at least been decent enough to leave a goddamn note.
The growl didn’t drop from her face when she heard the lock of the apartment door turning and the door being pushed open slowly, as though trying to stop the squeak of the hinges.

Annabeth lifted her chin as she saw Percy step through the door, turning around to shut it silently. He hadn’t noticed Annabeth standing there about to be his very own cause of death in this life.

“Where were you?” she snapped.

Percy whirled around, eyes wide and surprised at the thought that he could’ve possibly been caught sneaking out. “Uh.”

“Just sneaking off in the middle of the night for fun, huh?”

“No, I was just–” He paused, unsure of what to say to ease her qualms.

“Just what?”

“Annabeth.”

It was then that she noticed the waver in his voice and the dejected slump of his shoulders. He looked absolutely worn out, and like he was about to collapse and let the world burn around him. Whatever she had been about to say slipped her mind as she really took in is appearance.

“Are you okay?”

Percy wringed his hands together, unable to answer, and his eyes were brimming with tears. “We need to talk,” he said instead.

“What about?”

Percy opened his mouth to try and tell her anything that would explain it, but he couldn’t. “Let’s sit down.”

Annabeth let Percy lead her back towards the couch by her hips, looking up to get a closer look at his face. “What is it?” she asked, starting to get more frantic by the second as she watched his demeanor change.

Percy smothered his mouth with his palm, exhaling slowly. “I don’t even know where to start.”

“I can’t help you if you don’t talk to me.”

“I just–”

Annabeth’s heart clenched painfully as his voice cracked. She pressed a sweet kiss to his lips and then held his face in her hands. When she spoke, it was soft. “Talk to me.”

Percy locked eyes with her, and she knew something was very, very wrong.

“Do you remember when we were at the library and I found that newspaper?”

She hummed in acknowledgement, dropping her hand to his.

“I lied. I said it wasn’t important, but it was.”

Annabeth felt a weight off her chest, if only for a second. If he was feeling guilty, then she could handle that. “I know, but it’s okay. It’s not a big deal.”

He pulled away from her. “It was. It was about the soulmate system.”

“Wait. Why are we talking about the soulmate system now?”

“I think it’s why we’re here, living all these lives.”

Annabeth laughed, but it was really lacking mirth. “What makes you say that? We already ruled that out.”

“It happened to someone else.”

And just like that, the world seemed to stop spinning.

“What?”

Percy clenched his jaw and tried to look anywhere but her. “Someone else went through everything happening to us. That’s where I was– I went to go talk to the guy.” This time, he brought his eyes to hers. “They were soulmates, Annabeth.”

“No,” she insisted. “No no no. We would’ve known if we were soulmates, and there isn’t a reason for us to be dying like this.”

“Do you remember the day we met?”

“What does that have to do with this?”

“We never physically interacted,” he told her. “We met, but we didn’t actually touch. We missed each other.”

“But we’re touching right now!” she insisted. “Why would we still be stuck here if we’re soulmates?”

“By the time we did interact, we were already stuck in the loop. We just didn’t know it.”

“No.”

“Think about it. Everything with us was so easy. There were a million signs– we just didn’t see them.”

“You mean like waking up married? That old lady insisting we were meant to be?”

He nodded.

“Bullshit.”

“Annabeth–”

“If we had missed each other, there would’ve been some sort of sign! We wouldn’t have just been thrown into the deep end of the pool and told ‘swim, idiot!’”

“This was the sign. Being stuck until we realized why we were stuck.”

Annabeth bolted to her feet and turned to face him. “You’re telling me we’re soulmates that missed each other, and the universe decided to let us die until we found out?”

Percy stood up too, towering over her. “I wish I could say no.”

Annabeth thought for a moment before speaking harshly. “Show me the article.”

“What?”

“The article. You say that it’s happened before? I want to see it myself.”

Percy scoffed, reaching into his jacket pocket and pulling it out before tossing it her way. “Have at it.”

She caught it midair, wasting no time before uncrumpling it and scanning the pages. Sure enough, everything he said was right there on the page. Her hand clenched around it, the pages crinkling loudly between her fingers. “Why would you not tell me this?” she asked, waving it in his face angrily.

“I didn’t want to get your hopes up.”

“Oh, so letting me find out you did all this behind my back was so much better?”

“You’re getting mad at the wrong person here.” Percy stepped forwards to pull her into a tight hug. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, but I just needed to know.”

Annabeth pressed her face into the crook of her neck, needing to stand on her toes to reach with their height difference. “So we’re soulmates?”

“We’re soulmates,” he breathed into the top of her head, his eyes closed.

Annabeth was still so mad, but he was right. She wasn’t mad at him, or at a single person really, because no one could’ve predicted this. Mad at the universe, maybe? A greater power? The soulmate system itself? Aside from that though, she was tired. She was just so tired of everything being thrown her way, and if it was coming to a close, then she couldn’t complain. Maybe it was for the best.

“So what do we do now?” she muttered into his chest. She could hear his heart pounding.

Percy squeezed tighter. “Annabeth.”

“What?”

“It’s not just that we’re soulmates.”

She lifted her head. “There’s more?”

He kept his arms around her waist, not ready to let go. “The system– it only cares that we know we’re soulmates.”

“And we do.”

“The guy I went to talk to told me he– he never saw his soulmate again.”

It was like her entire world was thrown off balance. The scale that was so precariously balancing had finally tipped and left her drowning. “What do you mean he never saw his soulmate again?”

“I mean that once they knew, the loop was broken. Their lives went back to normal, but they never found each other in the end.”

When she spoke, her voice was deadly calm. “What are you trying to say?”

A single tear slipped down Percy’s cheek. He was trembling, and his next words pained him to say. “He told me to be ready to say goodbye.”

Her senses were on overdrive. A million thoughts raced through her mind; he had to be messing with her. It couldn’t be possible that they would go through everything they did only to be pulled apart for the rest of their lives, all because they missed each other that first time by nothing more than millimeters. The world couldn’t be so cruel as to rip them apart after all of this, after everything she fought for.

“Say goodbye?” she asked, her voice strained.

“I’m so sorry,” he whispered. “I’m so sorry, Annabeth.”

“We’re never going to see each other again?” Her voice was completely, utterly broken.

“I don’t know,” he confessed. “I’m hoping we do.”

She cried out. “It’s not fair!”

“I know.” Percy ran his fingers through his hair, and he actually felt like ripping them out. There was still so much unsaid between them, and if he didn’t say it now, it seemed like he never would. He just couldn’t risk that. “Annabeth.”

“It’s not fair!” she repeated, oblivious to him calling her name, desperate.

“Annabeth. Look at me.”

Annabeth stopped her panic for a moment and listened. When they locked eyes, there were a thousand emotions that words could never even begin to describe. It was a flood of despair, grief, anger, frustration, desperation, love, and the dam holding everything back was breaking before their eyes.

Somehow before Percy opened his mouth, she knew the words that were going to come out. It was the three words the two of them had been dancing around, not ready to face the reality, wanting to come to it on their own terms at their own times, except that their time was rapidly disintegrating before they even had a clue. Annabeth had fallen for him long before she was ready to admit it, and now she didn’t have a choice, and neither did he.

“I love you.”

Annabeth listened to the words gracing his lips, and she wasn’t in control of her body. At some point, she was pressed up against him, and she could feel every burning part of him. His lips rough against hers, and his hands pressing into her back desperate for more more more. She could only muster the three words back to him, breathed breathlessly against his lips.

“I love you,” she cried out too, letting him pull her away from the world that destroyed them, and ruined them for anyone except each other. Time slowed and stopped, tugged and twisted around them, and she didn’t care anymore. All she’d ever wanted was to find her soulmate, and now that she did, he was going to be gone before they’d ever get a chance to build something permanent. So she let him kiss her until her lungs burned, and then some more. She let him tell her just how much he loved her, and she showed him how much she needed him.

Annabeth didn’t know how much time was spent whispering sweet nothing into each other’s ears, promising to never forget, to try and find each other. She had thought she lost hope long ago– she reached rock bottom long ago. She realizes now that none of those times spent crying alone, wondering when it would end, were her lowest points. No, her lowest point was here as she held onto the person she loved, knowing that he would be ripped from her, leaving a gaping hole in her heart that would never, ever be fulfilled again.

Annabeth needed Percy, and Percy needed Annabeth.

They were each other’s halves, each other’s soulmates.

Annabeth knows then that she has to try something. There has to be a way to get out of this mess. She spent the rest of the day with Percy, tanged on the bed in his apartment, talking out loud and hoping that they could conspire a way to find each other again. They prayed to the gods above, or the greater God, or anyone who could have the power to fix this. They searched and searched, but their time was running out. They knew that once they died for the last time, there would be no finding each other again.

“Don’t lose hope yet,” Percy whispered against her shoulder. “It’s not over yet.”

And Annabeth tried to listen to him. She spoke with a glimmer of hope, thinking that just maybe they could figure it out. It didn’t matter though, because they both knew exactly how this was going to end. It was that gut feeling that had followed them from day one, that feeling that wouldn’t go away until it ended. Annabeth knew without a doubt that the end was near, and they hadn’t found foolproof way to save themselves from the eternal separation, so she settled against him and closed her eyes.

Tears trickled down her face, and she knew Percy was crying too from the soft gasps for air he was making. They promised to find each other, agreed to meet up when it was all over, but it was abundantly clear that it’d never happen. The universe worked in peculiar ways, and if it wanted to keep them apart, then it would.

They waited together for the final blast, but nothing came. It was quiet, and they both knew, but nothing was happening. Annabeth made the mistake of letting hope shine through again, because the second she did so, she could feel herself slipping away. She didn’t know what it was, if it was a brain tumor running its course, or her lungs failing, but it was happening.

As she struggled for breath, Percy squeezed her one last time, leaning over her to look at her face for what would be the last time. His tears fell faster now, and they dripped onto her face, but she could no longer feel them. She gasped for air, and she needed to say it just one more time.

“I love you so much,” she cried out, chest moving in shallow breaths. “More than anything.”

Percy cradled her face, not wanting to watch as the life faded from her eyes, but he forced contact to stay, knowing that she wanted- no, she needed him to guide her through this. Her whispered her name like a prayer, rubbing her back and sobbing over her body as the last signs of life left her.

The last words Annabeth would ever hear from him was his torn, strangled, pleading, “I love you too. Never forget it.”

Annabeth managed the smallest hint of a smile, and her chest rose again in the slightest of breaths, and then it was over. No breath ever came back out, and so Percy knew that the love of his life was gone forever.

It didn’t take long for Percy to follow after, sobbing over the body of the girl he loved, of the girl fate had so cruelly tore away from him. He just wanted one more day, but it didn’t matter what he wanted anymore because the only thing that mattered was the twisted system so wrongly worshipped by humanity. When Percy finally crossed the threshold to the other side, his last thought was of Annabeth, and this time, he directed his hope to her, hoping that wherever she was, she would be okay.

The next morning when Annabeth wakes up, Piper is there standing beside her bed with a welcoming smile.

Piper tells her, “Wake up! You’re going to be late to the firm!”

Annabeth loses it.

Five Years Later

Life went on as normal as it could for Annabeth. She hadn’t seen Percy since that last night she spent with him, and it ruined her forever. Now, at twenty-nine years old, she was alone in the world, not really sure of what she had left. There were times when she wanted to just end it all, but she held on. She did it for Percy.

Life would never be the same for her. She didn’t look up to the system as she once had before. Annabeth lived one day at a time. It was amazing how she’d changed from the beginning of it all. One would think that living thousands of deaths would make someone used to the idea, but it had the opposite effect on her. Annabeth lived cautiously, afraid of what would be around the corner and what it could mean for the life she had been so desperate to keep while she was stuck in the loop.

There was only one good thing came out of the system’s trap. Every life she’d lived never existed. The school shooting, the accident on the subway– Nothing. There was no trace of the deaths ever happening anywhere except within her own mind. It was as though she imagined the whole thing, except she knew she didn’t. She knew her and Percy’s daughter she had so quickly come to love was safe, wherever she was, and the first daughter she’d had was somewhere with a mother who could give her their all. The children of the school were safe, and the people she’d met along the way were happy with their best friends by their side, because none of it had happened except inside of her.

It was the least the universe could do, and it was the only thing she would ever thank the universe for.

Annabeth did try to find Percy many years ago. She went to the Starbucks she had met him at, and she tracked down every apartment, every library, every single place they had ever been together, but he was never to be found. It was all so real for her, but it was nothing more than a bad dream for those who observed from the outside. She didn’t confide in many people, learning quickly that it would cause nothing but chaos.

The pain never disappeared, but she learned to live with it. Annabeth didn’t want to get married anymore, and she didn’t want to have kids. If it wasn’t going to be with Percy, then she didn’t want it at all. It was never the definition of a life she wanted to live, but it would suffice. She told herself to give up, that it was all over, but somewhere deep, deep inside of her, she held onto the dream, and, god forbid, hope that she just might find Percy again one day.

She never did.

When Annabeth found herself sitting down in a small café, typing away on her computer the story of the love she found but lost, she found herself cursing the universe. The soulmate system was supposed to be flawless, and people thought it was because people always found their soulmates. That part was true because people did always find their soulmates. But it was far from flawless.

The soulmate system was supported by the entire world. It’s created so much beauty and happiness in the world, or so people thought. People didn’t miss their soulmates. Ever. But they did lose them. The soulmate system was flawed. No one except her and Percy would ever know.

Annabeth took a deep breath, trying to calm the tears she could already feel rising as she thought of Percy. She resumed typing on her laptop for hours with nothing else to do, having long ago given up on being an architect. It was how she spent her days now, sitting around and waiting for something, anything, to happen. It wasn’t a surprise anymore when nothing did.

It was the same every day, an ironic contrast to five years prior. Nothing ever changed anymore. She woke up in the same life surrounded by the same people. She felt the same dreadful feelings every day. It was never any different.

And then suddenly, it was.

It was like static electricity in the air. Annabeth looked up from her laptop, feeling more than she’d felt in longer than she could remember. Her eyes scanned the café, looking for the difference in atmosphere, looking for what caused it.

Her heart skips a beat when she sees the boy with black hair and green eyes staring back at her. They stare at each other for what feels like eternity, and then she’s scrambling to her feet, and he’s pacing towards her.

The world stops.