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The anger had come first. It was usually his first instinct, but he had good reason. It had sustained him—kept him awake, kept him from collapsing. He had tried everything to get through to the gods, even so far as taking Blackjack to the top of the Empire State to try and reach Olympus since the elevators had been out of commission. An invisible barrier had stopped them, a barrier keeping him the thing he coveted the most. There was a mini-hurricane off the north Atlantic coast that day, one that had baffled many meteorologists and reporters, but Sally Jackson had merely sighed into her cup of coffee as the news buzzed in the background, a world-weariness beyond her years withering away at her livelihood.
Now, two months later, the rage hasn’t disappeared. It has only folded in on itself, compacting and condensing into a hot bitter piece of coal lodged deep within his gut. Annabeth had been ripped from him before. But never for this long. And never had he felt so helpless. He knows there is nothing he can do to get her back except wait. Once wasn’t enough, was it?, he thinks bitterly, digging his nails into his palms until bloody crescent-like indents remain in their place.
He finds it impossible to think straight, to eat at the dining pavilion without glowering at every camper that got in his way, and he rushes from his vacant table away from all the laughter and commotion. The whole camp had felt her loss—she was the very pulse of their community, but he knows they don't quite feel the grief the way he does. Their pulse may be gone, but he feels like his very heart has been ripped out of his chest and his lungs are collapsing in on itself, desperate for the thing that had sustained them all this time. He is restless and the sight of the Athena cabin in the distance taunts him, makes him feel as though he’s inhaling glass, the fractured shards piercing his lungs. And suddenly hot tears are building at the corner of his eyes, threatening to spill over and show the world the ruined shell of a man that he is. He doesn’t bother to blink them away, and the tension rises to the surface, peaking in a formidable wave seconds away from crashing.
So he goes to the sea. He slips off his worn sneakers and feels the coarse grains of sand under his toes, giving away as he digs them into the ground. The waves lap up the shore and kiss his feet, as though sensing his presence. It’s reassuring, he thinks, to feel the tides push and pull with the thrum of his heart, to feel the ebb and flow of this eternal cycle under his control.
Maybe that’s what he’s seeking. Control.
It’s also the only part of him that hasn’t been torn away, hasn’t slipped right through his fingers like the solemn smoke of the summer’s funeral pyres. The sea is all he has left. And it has nothing to with his bloodline.
He closes his eyes and he remembers because right now his memory is the only thing keeping her alive. He remembers the silvery shine of her eyes under twinkling Paris lights, he remembers how holding her always made him think ‘So this is what I was born to do’, he remembers the sound of her correcting him—annoying and endearing all the same. He remembers the feel of her silky golden curls beneath his fingertips, the way she’d wince when he'd try to help her untangle it. He remembers the effortless beauty she embodied when she greeted him every morning with a unkempt bun haphazardly piled on top of her head.
It’s an unbearable pain, he thinks, to be gifted something as precious as her and inevitably lose it. His hands had just been memorizing hers and now they close around nothingness. He knows strength and brilliance and hope courses through her veins like lifeblood and he knows she will survive the hurdles tossed her away. That doesn’t make it hurt any less, though. He just wants to see her again.
His mind wanders to that sweltering August morning, the lemony scent of her hair in the air, grounding him. They had raced to the bottom of Half Blood Hill and Annabeth had won, of course. He had tackled her victorious stance to the ground and they had rolled around in the grass, wrestling, until he leaned up to kiss away the noise of indignation she had made. His mother had later welcomed them both with warm cookies and an even warmer hug, and standing there in his tiny apartment with the two most important people in his life, he had never felt more at home. Annabeth had to leave that afternoon to move into her dorm at the boarding school fifteen minutes away. She had been reluctant to leave and he had been reluctant to let her go. She’d shot him a shy smile as she stood up from her position against his side on the couch, brushing off imaginary crumbs from her shorts, and turned to him.
“Go with me?” she had asked.
“As long as you hold my hand,” he had replied, reaching for both her hands and cupping them in his, pressing a tender kiss to them while pointedly ignoring the sly glance his mom shot his way.
The grin she had flashed him in response had knocked the breath out of him and he’d struggled to remember what they were talking about. A smile like that from her had been few and far between for three years and he had been determined to make them a common occurrence.
They had ridden the subway to her school together, the warmth of her body pressing into his as she leaned back into him under those dreadful fluorescent lights that somehow still managed to make her look like the most radiant thing in the world. He’d helped her unpack her belongings, all of which had fit into a single truck, and he’d felt his heart clench. The slow sink of the sun into the horizon had bathed her hair in a fiery glow and he could have sworn he’d never seen anything more breathtaking.
“So this is goodbye?” he’d asked ruefully, squeezing her hand.
She’d laughed and stepped forward to kiss his frown away, a familiar sensation spreading down his body, one that he’d never grow used to. “You make it sound like I’ll never see you again. I’ll come visit as soon as I can. Sunday, probably.”
“Promise?”
“Promise.” She’d sealed it with a deep kiss and he’d wondered what he’d done to deserve her. “You’re stuck with me.”
And she was right. He had been grateful he got to love someone in a way that made saying goodbye so hard, but he had been more grateful he didn’t have to.
He sighs now, the memory of her—of them—filling him with an excruciating nostalgia, the ceaseless longing in his heart amplified tenfold. He leans into the silence that settles over him, suspending him in this moment in time—the breeze ruffling his hair, the faint white glow of inky skies, the shape of her soul pressing against his. He feels her in the night, in the caress of the wind and the soft gleam of moonlight and the cool water beneath his feet, renewing him over and over again. She is everywhere and nowhere all at once. There is a distant ache in his back, the ghost of her trembling fingers imprinted into his skin. He opens his eyes and holds on.