Work Text:
Annabeth didn't speak much to Percy after Tartarus. That place had affected them more than either of them would let on. It seemed so easy to make jokes and hug while in the pit, but outside she was faced with the fact that she'd made fear her own.
On her first day back, she didn't sleep. She sat in bed, trying to make sense of what happened. Nothing made sense.
None of it made sense.
She got to witness Percy's deterioration in front of her own eyes and wondered how much of what he said in the River Coyctus was just the river speaking or him as well.
Then she had to ask the question if what she thought in Tartarus had really gone away so quickly.
She didn't sleep the next day, or go out of her room at all. She hid her new sword under her bed and stared at the wall.
She didn't sleep the day after that and finally Piper came to check up on her, since she hadn't shown her face to anyone. Piper said Jason was checking up on Percy who'd actually managed to get up, lock the door and push something heavy in front of it.
Annabeth didn't talk. Every time she opened up her mouth, it fell flat. Too much effort. It was much easier to stay in her room and pretend her throat was too sore to speak even though she'd spoken all the time while breathing literal acid.
Annabeth slept after that. She got a nightmare, which she was expecting.
She wasn't expecting Percy to be there, waiting outside the door with a blue chocolate chip cookie in each of his hands.
She wasn't expecting the view. The sky. The night sky and the stars and the moon and the cool breeze and Percy's hand in hers and the water and the tears and the poison and Percy drowning Achlys-
She pulled away, ran back to her room.
He'd apologised, hadn't he? For scaring her. Not for quite literally torturing the embodiment of misery.
Did he feel sorry for that? Was he supposed to?
She slept again, made sure the doors were closed. The nightmares got worse. And they were about Percy.
Sometimes he died. Sometimes he let go, let her fall. Sometimes he really had left and she was alone and blind and in pain whacking at anything she would sense with a rock so they wouldn't kill her. Sometimes he was on the edge of the platform watching as he drowned Achlys in her own poison and tears.
That was a lot of the time.
One night, she went down to where Percy and her came to look out the bottom of the ship, the last place she could go to think.
His face. His face when he drowned Misery. His face wasn't one of protecting her. For a split-second, at least, hadn't he been drunk on power. Hadn't he enjoyed the feeling of making misery, miserable.
Being afraid of your boyfriend was not the recipie for a healthy relationship, no matter how in love they were.