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The day started normally enough, Magnus thought. He and Annabeth hadn’t caught up in a month, and it was nearing the end of her winter break, so she wanted to spend the day with him.
“I’ll be back later, probably nine o’clock or something,” he announced to TJ and Alex as they sat upside down on their floor lounge’s sofa. What they were doing exactly, Magnus had yet to fathom.
“Mhm, that’s nice, have fun,” Alex brushed off casually, more invested in whatever he was looking at on his smartphone. TJ, on the other hand, was scrutinizing Magnus’ face.
“You’re not gonna go fight giants or something looking like that, are you?” Magnus’ friend inquired, appearing genuinely confused.
“What? No. I’m gonna go meet up with Annabeth. Is there something wrong with how I look?” Now Alex’s attention had swiveled onto him.
“You look like a depressed old man,” Alex confirmed. This was not an unusual observation for her to make. Magnus looked down at his sneakers and cuffed jeans and beige sweatshirt.
“Okay,” Magnus accepted, “rude.”
“It was a compliment! It’s cute!” Alex clarified with a hint of exasperation.
Magnus put his face in his hands so his friends couldn’t see it getting red. “Oh my gods, okay, I’m leaving.”
“Bye- wait .” Alex wriggled from her position to shapeshift into a cheetah and zip away. TJ and Magnus only waited a minute or so before she zoomed right back with something in her mouth. She spit it out before handing it to Magnus. “Here, you can have this back.”
“Gee, my own denim jacket. Wow, I’m so flattered,” Magnus deadpanned. Besides the teeth marks on the sleeve, it was otherwise the same as when he misplaced it four days ago.
“You’re welcome,” Alex didn’t miss a beat. “I’d hate for you to freeze to death out there.” She cocked her head to the side like she was sharing a secret. Magnus scoffed and shook his head
“PDA!” TJ interrupted them, still upside-down. “You two are being wildly inappropriate.”
“I’ll show you inappropriate,” Alex said haughtily. TJ could hardly utter a ‘ please don’t ’ before she got on her tiptoes and gave Magnus a peck on the cheek. His entire body froze into a block of ice, and TJ pretended to gag in disgust.
“Oh, don’t look so proud of yourself, lover boy,” she huffed.
“I can’t help it,” Magnus put a hand on his cheek and sighed, utterly lovesick. “Okay, gottagoloveyoubye~ ”
“Uh-huh, yeah,” TJ and Alex both shooed him off.
Magnus swung his jacket over his shoulder, and left the hotel with more of a skip in his step. If he spent his trip in the elevator flapping his hands in excitement, then that was his business.
Magnus met his cousin at the notorious Make Way for Ducklings sculpture. Now that he’d gotten the hang of it, teleporting to the place was a walk in the park, quite literally. Annabeth was already there when Magnus finally appeared. From a normal person’s view, it would’ve seemed like he had always been standing there, but to Annabeth there was a faint ripple in the air before her cousin stepped from behind the curtain of reality’s fabric. She got over her brief existential crisis after a few beats and went to greet him.
Annabeth prided herself on a lot of things, her perceptiveness being key among them. She had picked up quite a bit about her cousin in the brief time they’d reconnected. For one, he didn’t like being touched. The first time Annabeth had tried to even shake his hand, he cringed unconsciously at it.
Another thing was that he tended to look anywhere but her face, even when talking to her. His tired gray eyes roamed across his surroundings like a dense, lazy fog rolling over a field or a plume of smoke swallowing a fire. He slouched like a pill bug curling into itself, and his hands- when not stuffed into his pockets- tended to occupy themselves with idle fidgeting. Magnus had a soft voice with an underlying grit and the distinct hint of a Bostonian accent. It was the kind of voice that made you want to listen more, but had very little else to give.
He was an oddball, just a different kind of different than she was used to as far as demigods went. Annabeth didn’t have much experience with the Norse variety, so it was impossible to tell whether or not all that was just Magnus stuff.
To Magnus, he thought his cousin was alright. She always stood to her full height, shoulders back and chin up, and stared at things and people while blinking very little. She tended to mess with her hair when she began contemplating things, curling it around her finger or flipping it over one shoulder in a golden ripple. Magnus was constantly reminded of one of those nocturnal barn owls he’d catch glimpses of in a forest, if he was lucky. There was a confidence to Annabeth that he envied, she was like a sharpened blade slicing through her problems with deadly precision. Most importantly, she was patient, and exceedingly kind.
They strolled easily down various streets, making small talk about friends and escapades and future plans. Annabeth had quite a few interesting friends. It seemed like her life was rarely dull, inside or out of college life. Magnus had some bizarre stories to relate about his unusual hallmates that got a concerned eyebrow-raise or incredulous scoff, as well. He was so caught up in listening to his cousin talk, he wasn’t paying much attention to where exactly they were going.
Annabeth said something, but for some reason he couldn’t hear her. Magnus felt his mouth go dry and his legs get weak, his entire rib cage constricting like a boulder landed on him. His strides slowed as something nagged at his perception. All he could think about was how familiar the street looked, the rows of apartments, the intersections, the light poles.
Fuck, this was his old neighborhood. Fuck. They had ended up in Alston , of all places. He didn’t want to be here. Magnus’ entire body begged him to turn and run the other way, his mind wanted to be anywhere but here . Hell, freezing to death in Nifelheim was more preferable. The longer he stood there, the more addled his brain became, memories leaking and jumbling and mixing into one big unintelligible soup. It was making Magnus’ head hurt. There was the row of trees he passed by every day on his walk to school, here was one of his neighbor’s buildings. A bit further was where he and his mom lived.
( Wrong, it was burned out years ago, he saw it on the news, they had to refurbish the entire building. Everyone thought it was a gas explosion. They blamed the pilot light. )
“Are you alright, Magnus?” Someone to his right asked, concern apparent in their tone. When he looked at the person, he realized she looked a lot like his cousin, except much older than he remembered. His mom said he wasn’t supposed to talk to his family, they’d take him away. Something bad would happen. Something bad did happen, and he couldn’t remember exactly what . He just felt the cold steely dread of it lodged in his gut.
“What?” Magnus turned to look at her, but his eyes seemed vacant and far away, lost and focused on some distant focal point rather than his present surroundings. It was a look Annabeth had seen far too often on the teenagers and children around her, a look she could recognize in the mirror sometimes. She held out her hand.
“Magnus, can you take my hand?” He did what she asked, with a painful slowness to his movements. His grip in her hand was weak. “Okay, that’s great, Magnus. You’re doing great,” Annabeth said, calmly leading her cousin somewhere quieter. Her analytical mind examined all her surroundings, eyes sweeping across buildings and pathways, intersections and the chaotic swarms of human bodies. Eventually, she turned to one particular alley and Magnus trailed behind her.
It was fine until it wasn’t, until Magnus abruptly stopped and began trying to pull himself out of her grip like a wild fox caught in a trap. “Hey- Fuck - let go of me!” Annabeth released him easily. Magnus stepped back and squinted at her like she was unrecognizable. His shoulders were tensed and his breathing irregular yet deep, the heaving tide of rising panic was so apparent to Annabeth. He was coiled like a spring, glaring daggers at her, the way a cornered cat puffed itself up to look bigger and scarier than it actually felt.
“Magnus,” Annabeth used a low and soothing tone, holding out her hands placatingly, “I’m Annabeth, your cousin.” Annabeth had been through this kind of stuff before, she knew the typical song and dance. She’d done this with Percy so many times, it almost came naturally. “You’re alright, just take some deep breaths.” He had a hunted look like he was about to turn heel and run, which was the last thing she wanted.
Magnus put his shaky hands to his face for a moment. He just shook his head silently. He moved his hands to his hair and began pulling at it. He let out a pained groan from somewhere in the back of his throat. “No… no she- she- I haven’t seen her in years.” Then Magnus stopped talking altogether. He rubbed at his forehead with his palms, yanking at his disheveled hair in frustration.
He hunched down and hugged his knees, eyes squeezed shut so tightly that it seemed even tears had trouble escaping. Her cousin just shook and rocked, trying to ride the waves of whatever was going through his head right then. It always hurt when Annabeth had to watch this happen, the total powerlessness of it. The waiting was the hardest part. She promised Magnus she’d be there for him, and now she was just standing there.
She was thirteen when she swallowed her hubris, but that didn’t kill it. It just turned it into something she could wrestle back down, so she told herself what she knew to be true: Annabeth couldn’t reach him like this, and she might make it worse, and the most rational thing to do was wait for him to come back to the present. It hurt, but Annabeth was a pragmatist. Telling herself that made it hurt a bit less.
Eventually- about 5 minutes or so- Magnus finally relaxed, the tension unraveling until he felt like nothing but a limp rag doll. When he wiped the tears from his face and looked around, he didn’t recognize his surroundings. It seemed to be outside, but was a narrow area sandwiched between brick walls. He was leaning against something cold, and there was the wet smell of recent rain in the air.
His knees were starting to ache, so he stood up to stretch his legs. He must’ve been crouching there for a while, then. Magnus couldn’t quite remember if he was waiting for someone or something, but he supposed he dozed off for a few seconds. At least, he just assumed that until he noticed Annabeth standing next to him. He hadn’t even noticed she was there, and it startled him. He wasn’t supposed to talk to Annabeth. His mom told him not to.
“Hey, Magnus,” she greeted warmly, like she was welcoming him home.
“What are you doing here?” He blurted. Annabeth frowned, seeming concerned. Usually when he started getting concerned looks that’s when it was time to leave, but she was his cousin.
“You don’t remember what we were doing?”
“N-no, not really.” It wasn’t even like things were fuzzy, they simply weren’t there at all. His head was pounding, now that Magnus was thinking about it.
She searched his face for a few seconds, her bright silver eyes roaming around his features uncomfortably. “We were walking through Boston, catching up and everything.”
“Right…,” he nodded stiffly. He looked down at his hands, and the clothes he was wearing. His jacket felt familiar. When he wiped his wet face with it, it smelled like coconut shampoo and cinnamon gum. It smelled like Alex . He took a deep breath and just remembered her for a moment.
“Right, yeah, I remember. Sorry, I’m okay,” Magnus relaxed and looked at his cousin again, his eyes focusing somewhere near her jawline. It was easier than looking into people’s eyes, usually he stared at them too long and started freaking them out. He didn’t feel like putting in the mental effort of looking away every few seconds. “I think I just spaced out for a second there.”
“Magnus…,” Annabeth folded her arms to herself. Her eyebrows pinched in an expression that could have been pity or exasperation. “Let’s get out of here,” she turned and walked deeper through the alley, and Magnus followed until they emerged to the other side. He kept following his cousin along sidewalks, a bit surprised that she seemed to know the city layout so well.
“Do you come to Boston a lot? You seem to know where you’re going already,” Magnus commented.
“Oh, I just looked at a map,” Annabeth shrugged. “Dyslexia makes me more of a visual learner.”
“That’s pretty incredible.”
Annabeth looked back at him over her shoulder and smiled. “Pros to being a child of Athena.”
They continued making their way through the streets, conversing very little. Annabeth asked him if there were any good coffee shops around, and he mentioned one that he and Samirah frequented. It was a few blocks down from Fadlan’s, which was an added bonus.
Unfortunately, an inquisitive young husky being taken for a brisk walk decided to trot up to Magnus- who was perpetually cursed with animals taking a liking to him- and sniff at his hand. He immediately jolted and pulled his arm away from the dog and moved to Annabeth’s other side, as if to shield himself from the curious canine whose tongue lolled out of his mouth as he yanked on his short leash. It was just a dog, he told himself. Even if it had black and white fur and a bushy tail and blue eyes and a wolfish head, it was not a wolf. It’s a dog. There’s a difference, he repeated, there is a difference. He liked dogs.
The husky gave him one last look with its bright and intense cerulean eyes before continuing on with his apologetic owner in tow. The lady might have said something, but Magnus hadn’t heard her. He didn’t want to look at people and he didn’t want to hear people talking and everything was getting too loud and too bright, so he just grit his teeth and set his shoulders and looked at the ground. He held onto his cousin’s sleeve with two fingers so he didn’t lose her, though.
“Someplace less crowded?” Annabeth suggested.
“Quiet. Outside,” Magnus muttered tersely, staring intensely at the ground in front of him. He pinched the cotton fabric between his fingers, and felt at his shirt hem with his other hand. It was somewhat relaxing as a distraction.
His cousin veered slightly off-course to a public park. As soon as Magnus felt the pavement give way to natural dirt and grass, he felt the stress unwinding in his tensed muscles. Annabeth walked over to the shade of a large oak tree. She didn’t sit down, since the thought of bugs crawling on her made her terribly anxious. Magnus sat and leaned against the tree’s thick trunk and heaved a sigh. He rubbed at his temples to stave off a headache.
“You feel better outside,” Annabeth observed. She was always very observant, and Magnus didn’t know whether to be more impressed or scared.
“Sure. Pros of being a child of Frey, I guess,” he said sarcastically. Usually, it did make him feel better, but there were still so many people around and it was a very small park situated in a giant city. Plastic and aluminum cans littered the walkways, someone was smoking a cigarette on a nearby bench, the typical Boston smog trawled around the air. It didn’t help much. Magnus liked his room better, or maybe somewhere deep in a forest, or something. This was almost more irritating, because he could easily pick out all the things that were bothering him.
Annabeth knelt and placed her hand on his shoulder in an effort to ground him. Magnus pulled away from his cousin nervously, extracting himself from her grip. His face twisted into a pained expression, still a bit sweaty and flushed with anxiety. She was half worried he was going to throw up or something.
“Nnn- sorry- please don’t,” he groaned. “I just- I can’t- sorry. I’m trying to get better at, you know…” he trailed off pathetically. Magnus was trying all the time to get used to people, being around them and talking to them and touching them. He didn’t understand why it was still so hard. It made him want to scratch his skin off. He hated that he couldn’t stand it, still. Magnus tried rubbing his hands together, focusing on the texture of skin against skin. He really wanted to bite his hand, but Annabeth would have probably told him to stop.
She stood back up and rummaged through her purse a bit. “Do you want something to fidget with? I think I have one of Percy’s things in my bag.”
“No. It’s usually not this- this,” he blinked hard and rubbed his hands together as if to generate warmth, “bad.”
“It’s not an inherently bad thing,” she told him. “I mean- I can't say anything anyways, I have OCD.”
Magnus kept wringing his hands, trying to shake out all the energy building up like static. He turned to face her general direction, but his eyes were roaming somewhere around her shoes. “No shit, huh?”
“Yep. Very fun,” Annabeth snarked. She still constantly checked her locks, had to tap her fingers along her dagger a certain way, had to get out of bed three times. “I’ve had a lot of help with it though, and other stuff.” Magnus didn’t reply to that, he just moved to start running his hands through the grass. Whenever his palm passed over it, the tiny stems all seemed to reach out, as though magnetized to cling to him.
“You really should talk about this with someone,” Annabeth said gently. “The triggers, I mean. It helps. It does.”
“Yeah. Sure.”
“I’m serious.”
“I- I can’t…,” he admitted. “I don’t know. It’s like whenever I try everything just… shuts off, you know?”
“I know.”
“I don’t even know how to talk about it.” That’s all he could call it, it . He could think about it , sure, but verbalizing it made his mouth zip shut. Did he start with his mom and uncles fighting downstairs that one Thanksgiving, or whenever he noticed his mom becoming progressively more neurotic and depressed? Did he start the morning of his birthday when he saw his mom standing numbly in front of their electric stove? He remembered it was electric, because the burning smell was so unusual.
“Well, you know, my therapist told me that trauma memories work differently than normal ones. You probably just remember the small things, right? Like colors or the way something smelled.”
“Yeah,” Magnus swallowed thickly. It was like Annabeth was hitting the nail on the head and lodging it into his sternum. Blue, he recalled everything was bright and blue . He blinked harshly again, sparks dancing behind his eyelids.
“You have to make your brain process it. It’s trying to, and it can’t.”
“Okay, can we stop talking about this befff- before I have another panic attack- panic attack.”
“Sure, yeah. Of course.” It wasn’t just a panic attack, she wanted to explain to him. This was how Annabeth helped people: information. Even if it hurt like a bitch, it was something tangible and useful. Information could be both a weapon and a salve, but she didn’t want to hurt her cousin with it. Annabeth could tell he was sweating, and he kept feeling at the blades of grass. “Do you need anything?” Magnus shook his head. He took a deep breath and exhaled it slowly.
“I’m really sorry about this,” he sighed. Magnus seemed terribly exhausted. He appeared… wilted, like a drooping flower deprived of water and sun and care. His shoulder hunched and his eyes vacantly drifted to some middle-space and his complexion looked paler than usual. “Today wasn’t supposed to go like this. I’m not trying to be difficult.”
“Magnus, it’s fine. You don’t have to explain,” Annabeth sympathized. She looked like she really meant that, somehow both heartfelt and impartial altogether. “How long has this been happening?”
Magnus began rubbing at the bottom hem of his jacket and fiddling with some of the buttons. The texture of the cotton fabric was soft, the metallic buttons were hard and cold. It still smelled like Alex. He chewed on his lip. “Years… ever since my mom…,” he didn’t have to finish the sentence. Annabeth knew.
“I don’t know, maybe it’s just been worse lately.” He didn’t get why, after finally having a place to stay and friends to rely on, his brain was punishing him with stress and insomnia and bad thoughts about everything. It sucked, and he didn’t know how to even bring it up to anyone, either. So there it sat, fermenting away in the back of his mind until it rotted him from the inside-out.
“I never really had anyone to, you know,” Magnus continued very quietly, staring down at his restless hands, “help me. Well- Hearthstone and Blitzen tried to sometimes. We weren’t that close. And when therapists got involved, I never stuck around to talk to them.” It felt like this was all his own fault, in retrospect. People tried to help him, and he didn’t want it, and therefore he suffered because of it. Now, he didn’t know how to get that back. It was stupid, and really pathetic.
“Don’t beat yourself up about it,” his cousin defended. “It wasn’t your fault. I- I did the same thing.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, I mean,” Annabeth twirled her index finger with her curly blonde hair, “I ran away from home and stayed away for as long as I could. I could have gone back to my family, but, well… details.” She smiled, wholly embarrassed with a tinge of bitterness.
Magnus swallowed thickly and kept staring at a particular patch of grass. There was a ladybug there. “I’m sorry for not reaching out to you when I was… when you were looking for me before- I should’ve gone with you,” he tried to explain. If he just went with his cousin and uncle instead of fishing that sword out of the river, he would never have died. Sure, lots of good things came of it and lots of bad things were prevented thanks to it. However, his life could have been different, maybe in better ways. He’d never know.
Annabeth just shook her head, her curly blonde hair bounced and swayed. “You can’t change the past. I don’t blame you, I probably would’ve done the same thing. Being with me would’ve got you in trouble, anyways.”
Magnus leaned back against the oak tree and gave a bitter laugh, staring upwards at the sun glittering between the gaps in the leaves. Most of all, Magnus wondered why his cousin was being so nice to him. “Gods, we’re fucked up, huh?”
“Don’t say that,” his cousin objected, always the voice of reason. She folded her arms like she was fighting off a winter chill. “We couldn’t control what happened.”
“Didn’t ask to be born, we were just happy little accidents,” Magnus huffed, rubbing at a blade of grass between his fingers. Born to people who either didn’t know what the fuck they were doing, or didn’t care enough to try.
“Exactly,” she agreed. Magnus wasn’t sure if the sarcasm flew over her head, or if she was just ignoring his pessimism. “Anyways, I’m not feeling sorry for myself. Things can be better, they will be better.” She stuck her chin up, as if in defiance to all the gods above.
“Or else,” Magnus finished. “You sound like Alex sometimes.”
“I take it that’s a compliment?”
“It is,” Magnus affirmed. “But, like, you’ve actually gone to therapy,” he said wryly. “Maybe I should call her…”
“Does she know?”
“She knows enough.” And she was smart enough to guess the rest, be it her intuition or her experience.
“You’re friends seem like good people. I know they care about you, so talk to them,” Annabeth implored. She was right, Magnus knew she was, but it was still difficult. “If you want to reschedule or something-”
“I- well- I don’t wanna bother you…”
“ Bother me?” Annabeth reeled a bit. “Magnus, I like spending time with you. Actually, maybe you should come to the west coast. It’d probably be a nice change of pace.” No bad memories associated with California, is what she meant.
“Um- yeah, maybe,” Magnus conceded.
“It’s warmer there, too.”
“That’s nice. I guess.”
“Great,” Annabeth softly clapped her hands together and stood back up. When she looked down at him, her eyes sparkled brightly. “You still feeling up for coffee?”
Magnus got up and brushed the back of his pants. “I think so. As long as we sit outside, if that’s okay.”
“Of course it is.”