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In the dream, Annabeth is stumbling through a dark forest. Branches whip at her face, stinging her eyes, but she doesn’t dare slow down. She hears the arai cackling above her, their leathery wings flapping louder and louder as they close in. Her chest burns, her breath comes out in desperate wheezes, her exhausted muscles ache - adrenaline and fear have pushed her body far beyond its limits but the inevitable crash is coming soon.
Her foot catches on a fallen stump and her broken ankle finally gives out, sending her sprawling to the rocky ground. Her palms are scraped and bloody but she grips her makeshift weapon anyways, turning to face the monsters that have finally surrounded her. Their smiles are ghastly, faces gleaming with malice, but the most horrifying part is seeing her surroundings morph into a slime-covered wasteland as the veil lifts to reveal the bowels of the pit she is trapped in. The trees are festering boils, the monsters are pulsating blood cells, and suddenly she’s sinking - she feels the primordial churning of Tartarus beneath her and she is too paralyzed with nausea to defend herself against the claws that shred her skin apart -
- and she wakes up, drenched in sweat, a scream trapped in the back of her throat. She’s up and out of bed in a flash, roughly pushing the covers aside in her haste to get to the bathroom.
She moves on autopilot, barely registering the cool tile beneath her feet before she’s vomiting into the toilet. It’s acidic against her throat, and in the lingering haze of her nightmare she wonders if this burn is actually fire from the River Phlegethon. In the mirror, she sees the corpse-like wisp she became in the Death Mist staring back at her with dead eyes. She looks down and rests her elbow on the porcelain bowl as the salt of her tears mingles with the bitter taste on her tongue.
Distantly, she recognizes the sound of bare feet padding towards her from across the room. She wipes her face roughly with the back of her arm and closes her eyes, trying to take deep breaths. She can sense Percy’s heat close by as he kneels beside her but she makes no move to face him. She doesn’t want him to see her like this.
“Go back to bed, Percy,” she croaks, hating how weak her voice sounds. “I’m fine.”
He ignores her, of course. She hears the sound of tap water running and then feels his fingers comb through her hair. He carefully brushes her the damp curls out of her face before bringing a warm washcloth to her cheeks. He wipes the cold sweat from her brow and the last traces of bile around her mouth - she lets out a shaky breath at his gentle touch.
“What happened?” His voice is husky with sleep, but the concern in his tone somehow puts her on edge. Something about his demeanor makes her feel like a rabid animal he wants to calm down. She turns to face him and is stunned by his ethereal glow even under the cheap fluorescent lights of their bathroom. He looks like soft perfection in his bedhead and ratty black sweatpants, the exact opposite of the appalling wreck she must be. His chest is bare and the golden outline of his tattoos radiating from his flawless skin remind her of his godhood - an old hurt rises within her, unbidden.
“You wouldn’t understand,” she hisses. It comes out sharper than she intended and immediately feels a pang of guilt. She knows, she knows it’s not his fault that she fell into Tartarus, that she is still plagued by these harrowing nightmares, that the burden of saving the world twice has left her raw and bleeding, but in this moment his immortality feels like salt in an open wound. The gods had abandoned her in the hellish pit where even they, with their supposed infallibility, feared to tread. Her body may have survived but something in her was broken permanently, shattered like glass.
She’s taped her sanity back together countless times before, but after nights like these it still takes everything she has just to pick up the shards. She has no capacity to soften her edges, especially not for the sake of a god. Even if Percy was different from the others, he was an immortal - not to mention his loyalty was pledged to the gods first and foremost. He had stood by the Olympians when they had left her for dead, the council who at several points had considered her nothing more than an expendable mortal.
Annabeth squeezes her eyes shut to block out the poisonous thoughts. You’re projecting, a voice that sounds suspiciously like her old therapist echoes in her mind, and she knows it’s true, she recognizes the coping mechanism but she can’t do anything to stop it. Her dream is still poised above her head like a guillotine, excruciatingly vivid and razor-sharp. She’s trembling, she can’t breathe, she needs space before she says something else she regrets.
“Please, just leave me alone for a while.” To Annabeth’s horror, it comes out as a choked sob instead of a firm command. She clamps a hand over her mouth to hold back whatever is coming up - dry heaves or residual tears or more resentful words - because she’s stronger than this, dammit, and she absolutely refuses to go to pieces over a nightmare out of the blue. She won’t let Tartarus win now, over a decade after her she clawed her way out. Annabeth Chase is a warrior, a fighter, a survivor - she won’t admit defeat even if it actually kills her to keep it together this time.
Percy takes her clammy hands in his warm ones. He runs his thumbs over her palms tenderly, soothing the crescent-shaped cuts her nails have created from clenching her fingers so tightly. “You don’t have to do this alone, Annabeth.” His voice is thick with emotion. She looks into his ocean eyes and sees only compassion, but for some reason his gaze makes her feel horribly frail - her brain interprets this as a threat and the defensive response is already escaping her lips before she can swallow it down.
“I already did.”
The cruel words come out as a scathing whisper that she instantly wishes she could unspeak. She turns away from him before she can see the hurt in his eyes or the way he will recoil from her stinging reply. And really, wasn’t it only a matter of time before this happened? Percy is good and sweet and whole and she is too broken to reciprocate his endless kindness in the way he deserves. No matter how much she buries herself in the monotony of mortal life, she has endured too much violence to deal with emotional stress in a healthy way for either of them.
Some scars never truly heal. And how can she expect someone as bright as the sun to love her unconditionally when it feels like darkness will never stop trying to drag her back into the pit?
Part of her knows it’s the trauma corrupting her logic but she’s too burnt out to fight off the vicious thoughts. Percy is still as stone beside her and Annabeth waits for the worst to happen - she has pushed him away time after time and this is the last straw, he’s going to walk out of her life and never look back -
Without warning, Percy wraps his arms around her waist from behind and pulls her tight against his chest. His heartbeat is strong and sure against her spine and she can feel the tension automatically dissipating from her shoulders. She feels like a block of ice thawing in his warm embrace. Her fear and stress melt into exhaustion and she lets herself collapse against him. Percy tucks his chin into the hollow of her neck and murmurs a vow into her ear.
“I swear on all the gods, I will never let you go through that a second time. You’re not getting away from me. Never again.”
Her last defenses crumble at the promise in his words and Annabeth can’t find the resolve to keep the floodgates closed any longer. Hot tears spill from her eyes, scalding and caustic as the sobs rips their way out of her chest. She has never, ever let herself cry like this. Not when there was always a battle to fight or a demigod who needed to see a brave face. The Great Wars were too fraught with danger to consider giving in to even a moment of weakness, and by the time such threats had passed, her walls were too carefully constructed to allow for any kind of breakdown.
But in the safety of Percy’s arms, Annabeth lets herself feel the emotions she has repressed for so long - the terror and anger, the despair and loss. She drowns in the horror of her past ordeals, somehow knowing that Percy will be able to pull her out when she needs to resurface. He presses kisses into her hair, the nape of her neck- the sensation of him enveloping her is a lifeline as she sinks to her lowest depth.
Her convulsions ebb when the last of the tears drip down her cheeks, taking the remnants of her nightmare with them. The tiny bathroom is quiet except for the sound of her shuddering breaths echoing off the tiles. Percy rubs calming circles into the small of her back, steady as the tide, smoothing away her edges until they are as silky as beach glass.
After her breathing finally slows, Percy loosens his grip and moves to her side. He cradles her jaw and brushes the wetness from under her eyes with the pad of his thumb, a question burning in his gaze. She catches his hand against her cheek and stares back at him, eyes stormy with emotion.
His forehead puckers with worry and his expression radiates so much love that she can’t help leaning forward and pressing her lips softly to his. He sighs with relief, a gentle exhale against her mouth, and pulls her fully into his lap. The heat of his bare chest flush against her ignites a thrill that spreads to her toes.
He feels so good, the pleasure of his touch stitching together the ragged hole in her chest left in the destructive wake of her panic attack. She tries to deepen the kiss, frantically chasing the electric feeling of his mouth against hers to distract from the pain, but Percy stills and pulls away from her.
“Annabeth.” His tone is serious but his gaze is reverent, green eyes turbulent as the sea. His cheeks are flushed gold and Annabeth feels desire prickling in the pit of her stomach, a welcome replacement for the anxiety that had rooted her to the floor. “Talk to me?”
The softness of his plea makes her heart ache but she doesn’t want to process this messy knot of emotions just yet. It’s too raw, too real- his touch is a much easier antidote for her open wounds.
She shakes her head, trying to find words. “Can you just,” her voice catches, “just hold me? Please?” The request comes out needier than she would have liked, but it has the intended effect. Percy groans and pulls her tighter, burying his head in the crook of her collarbone. His lips are feather-light against the hollow of her throat, but she doesn’t want his softness. She threads her fingers in his hair and drags his face up to hers, crushing her mouth to his in a searing kiss, hot enough to burn away all of her lingering dread. He tries to slow her pace, responding to her passion with a sweetness so devastating she’s scared she might start crying again.
She untangles herself from him just long enough to shuck off her sweater, desperate to lose herself to the feeling of his skin against hers. But the reflection of movement in her peripheral vision draws her attention - she sees herself in the mirror once more, a pale spectre with white scars littering her body. She’s again struck by the horrible contrast to Percy’s unblemished skin, the perfect lines of his shimmering tattoo.
Annabeth Chase has never been a self-conscious woman; in fact, on a different day, she would feel proud of the proof she had triumphed in so many battles. But tonight, each scab just reminds her of past failings, the price of her mistakes - how much more would she pay before she was completely unrecognizable? Did she even have anything left to hold on to, or had she lost it all in Tartarus? She can almost see the Olympians laughing at her now: Annabeth, the hero who had once refused immortality, now terrified by the proof that she was so easily wounded. She hunches her shoulders, turning away from her reflection and from Percy.
“Don’t look at me.”
Her voice cracks and she hates it, hates how exposed she feels with a lifetime of flaws laid bare on her skin. She gathers her previously discarded sweater around her chest, a flimsy armor against the renewed sensation of vulnerability.
Percy is quiet for a moment. He sits back on his heels as Annabeth tries to inhale and exhale on counts of five, one of the coping mechanisms that had once been drilled into her. As usual, it doesn’t work that well - she preoccupies herself by wondering why she ever thought seeing a counselor was worth her time until Percy’s urgent voice surprises her.
“Did you know I have all your scars memorized?”
His large hands ghost over her still-exposed upper back and her breath catches. “They’re all mapped out in my mind,” he whispers as he moves closer, “just like the constellations.”
He places a lingering kiss to the top of her spine, right above the ugly blemish she knows is left from where the sky rested on her neck. She shivers at the cool press of his lips.
“This one reminds me that you’re strong enough to carry the weight of the world.”
He reaches around her arm to press his palm lightly against her right collarbone, resting against the healed bump of bone that had formed after Kronos nearly snapped it in half. “This one is proof you’d rather die than give up on those you love.”
He grips her shoulders again, fingers tracing over the deep cut left on her bicep. It’s fresh enough to still be a hardened scab instead of a faded scratch and Annabeth remembers the knife that had sliced her skin open not too long ago.
“This one you got from saving my life, despite being nearly dead yourself.” His voice is a low rumble, burning with anger and awe in equal measures. Trembling, she reaches her hand over her shoulder to grasp Percy’s knuckles without turning around.
“Every single one of these marks is a step that brought us together. They’re precious and beautiful, and as much as I wish you had never been through this much pain, I can’t imagine you without them. They’re part of you, which means they’re perfect. I’ve thought that since the first time I saw them, Annabeth. That’s when I knew you were it for me.”
His grip tightens around her shoulders and she feels his declaration anchor her back to reality, as clearly as if his hand had grasped hers from the ledge of a cliff and pulled her out of the pit’s gravitational pull. The torrent of emotions in her chest finally peters out - if she was drifting out to sea before, Percy has managed to bring her back into harbor. She takes a deep breath and this time her lungs expand with clean air, washing away the sting of acid that had filled her chest before.
Percy continues moving his lips against her spine. She lets his sweet words lull her into a sense of security she hasn’t had in a long time, feeling safer than she had ever felt at camp, before the wars or after. And later, when he carries her to bed and nestles himself under the covers with her, she finally lets herself believe the murmurs of love he breathes against her skin.
It feels like healing.
And the next time she dreams of the fall, she knows she is not alone.