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Annabeth had always been abandoned. Left behind. The last picked for anything.
Those who she thought friends turning around after using her for her brain and leaving her.
“Thanks Annie, but you know I need to take this opportunity.”
“Look- I know what it looks like-“ “Annie, I’m sorry but I have to go!”
“C’mon, you know I’m being logical here, right? It’s nothing personal, Annie.”
There’s a reason she hated being called Annie.
She used to cry at night when no one was looking, before she found Thalia and Luke.
Wondering why people did that.
Become her friend but ending up using her.
It happened with Luke, too.
Thalia had been the only friend she knew hadn’t tried to use Annabeth for anything and leave.
But she died.
Luke had been, too.
Before he betrayed her.
Luke’s attempts to goad her into helping Kronos had just made her even more angry. The rage in her scared her at times. But Annabeth knew that in terms of logic she was just one angry, traumatized 12-year-old against people three times her size. She was fighting above her dojo.
The worst thing was; the thing that really made her stomach roll, squeeze and flip like molten steel in hatred, Annabeth knew Luke knew how angry, hurt and confused being used, of all things made her. He had comforted her once, back then, about it.
Annabeth understood this sort of frustration better now, considering all she had done for the gods.
However, logic won out in her frustrations with the gods. Because, logically, they were the best option.
Why was her worth to others purely based on what she could do for them?
Annabeth was so sick of being treated like a tool, being treated as second choice to someone, anyone, who was better.
Self-doubt didn’t come naturally to Annabeth. That self-confidence came with knowing you were highly intelligent and owning it.
But it did start to.
Her head a shifting hurricane with ‘second choice’ and ‘they’ll leave you in the end, why bother?’
It was a good thing Percy could control hurricanes, then, wasn’t it?
Percy came.
Percy didn’t save her. This isn’t a story where the hero saves his maiden fair.
But he came and he stayed, where no one ever did.
At the beginning, Annabeth couldn’t help herself but to push him away. She was tired of abandonment. She could handle herself and she knew it.
The gods had other ideas for them, it seems.
She slowly saw him for who he was, and slowly started shifting to his gravity.
Percy was the eye of the hurricane, it seemed.
There had been so many chances on the course of their questing together for Percy to abandon her for a better life.
For Percy to turn around, and say the words that would commit himself elsewhere.
For Percy to give up on her and leave.
But he didn’t.
He wasn’t romantic; he was clumsy, overly sarcastic and not above average intelligence but he had his own charms.
Percy showed Annabeth her own worth with his own stupid loyalty.
Percy giving up immortality for her really had broken the dam of anxiety and fear for her. Annabeth remembered covering up her sobbing while Percy wasn’t looking in the throne room of Olympus because the relief and how deeply that moved her. How much it meant to Annabeth and how much of her worth he showed her that day from one massive, grand gesture.
Percy, never giving up on her no matter how dire the situation was no matter how logical it would be to leave her and save himse-
Seaweed brain.
Valuing her opinion in ways no one else had other than Thalia, Luke and Chiron had done.
The pain surrounding her self worth and abandonment slowly dissolved as he was steady as a rock in his persistence to stay by her side.
And through her love for him it went from ‘Why was her worth to others purely based on what she could do for them?’
To
‘Her worth was based purely on what she could do for herself and those who have proved themselves worthy of her help. No more, no less.’
And while Annabeth recognized that basing her worth on any sort of achievements instead of just being herself wasn’t good, it was also hard for her as a ‘gifted kid’ to tear herself away from that toxic mentality.
But that was fine.
Because as soon as she recognized her worth- light. Bright and warm.
She had reached the eye of the hurricane, and Percy was right there beside her.
She could feel the power that came with it coursing through her, the strength and steel that seemed to line every bone in her body.
Her breathing easier, grace and understanding filling her lungs.
Annabeth remembering the pure strength and power that had lit her being up with an easy happiness when Praetor Reyna had recognized her as an equal.
The depth of effect that Percy had on her very soul… Annabeth couldn’t even put it into words.
She remembered when Hera had taken Percy for a half year.
Annabeth had woken up, feeling drained- like there was no battery to her circuit. Confused and disoriented the way she would’ve been if someone had put the measurements and scale on a blueprint through a random number generator and drew the entire structure to defy the laws of physics without the use of magic or math.
In short; she had felt uppity the entire time. Like she’d been pushed back into the hurricane and Percy’s voice wasn’t there to guide her back to the eye of the hurricane safe and sound.
Insides torn and raw, like Hera herself had taken a shredder to her flesh- attempting to take the steel from Annabeth’s bones herself but failing.
When she found Percy…
Oh gods, how could she even begin to express how she had felt?
What logic, math, music or dance for this was there? This unprecedented amalgamation of so much- so much time, so much vulnerability riding on every possible explanation she could offer for how she felt?
Furthermore,
How could she express that in a singular kiss?
She had tried, back in New Rome.
And then again in Tartarus, the only explanation she could offer a deep and clinging kiss.
Logic failed her.
Words failed her.
Sometimes all she could do was cry and kiss Percy.
But something gave Annabeth the sense that Percy needed that too.
The space they’d built together, in the eye of the hurricane.
He needed her strength, her dependability and ability to save their lives in a single string of sentences.
Annabeth could see the need in his eyes.
Something told Annabeth she had taught Percy about himself just as much as he had taught her.
He had shown Annabeth her worth. Her strength, her iron will and power. Annabeth never felt like the scared kid she was back then, begging people to stay when she knew they would ultimately leave.
Annabeth sometimes wondered what she had taught Percy about himself.
She had asked before but it had never quite made sense to her.
Either way, the profound way that they had allowed each other to grow and continue growing with each other- that was the basis of their relationship.
And like Hades she would ever let it go.
So Annabeth will just kiss softly. Deeply. Play with Percy’s hair just in that fond way that she knows drives him a little mad.
Let her fingertips set new roads alight onto Percy’s skin. Let those roads be permanent, peppered with purple-black craters that mark her work.
This was the only way Annabeth found the words to express this depth of emotion she felt about him.
The words spelled in little kisses down his back.
Percy may have had, like a good archaeologist, rubbed away the dirt around the precious artefact that she was, but it was up to her to identify it as such.
And she had.
And by the Gods, she knew it.