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Annabeth Chase was not a girl prone to regrets. She had never been one to look back at her choices and second guess them, not one to dwell on the mistakes she made (few as they were, in her opinion.) She had a brilliant mind, clever and crafty and always working out the angles on any problem placed before her. Annabeth Chase was used to thinking her way through every situation backwards and forwards, through all the twists and turns in the time it took most to simply understand the question being posed. With this ability to break things down to their simplest form and understand the best options, she rarely took a bad turn.
But bleeding out on the carpet of the 66th floor of the empire state building, only alive because the hat her mother gave her was still on her head rendering her invisible, Annabeth Chase was forced to realize that this time, she just might have made a mistake. And this one was going to cost not just her, but everyone else too, everything.
In truth, her situation was her own fault. She thought she could sneak down into the occupied floors and steal the plans for the titan’s advance- could learn their tactics and equip her friends to repel the invaders. She thought she could make it undetected, could slip past the guards and trust that her hat, which had never failed her before, would see her through.
And really, it hadn’t failed her. The hat worked like a charm, just as it always had. But she hadn’t accounted for dumb luck and misfortune. She was creeping past a pair of empousai, careful not to make a sound when the wall she was sneaking along exploded. It was only the enhanced reflexes and perception from having joined with Artemis that allowed her to dodge the initial spray of rubble and not be pulverized by the cinder blocks. But, as the ceiling rumbled, there was only so much she could do.
She came to under a lot of rubble, hat knocked off her head and knife stuck under her thigh. She could hear voices coming closer and only had moments to react before she would be discovered.
She tried to push on the rubble pinning her down, but it was too heavy for her to move. Trying to pull her leg out sent a jolt of agony through her. Annabeth leaned up and shifted to try and see her foot on the other side of the chunk of whatever pinning her down-
If she wasn’t already pale and cold, seeing her foot facing a direction it wasn’t meant to turn would have made her so. The foot and ankle looked fine, so it was probably an injury above the joint- likely her knee that got shattered and twisted. After the spots cleared from her eyes and she felt like she could breathe again, she was reminded of the voices now a lot closer.
“...happened! Was it those stupid demigods, or one of our own?” Desperately, Annabeth reached for her hat covered in plaster dust and sitting just out of reach under a small chunk of drywall. She scrabbled on the dust and debris, fingernails scratching the rough floor before finally hooking on the brim and yanking it to her. She slammed the hat on her head, just as the voices came into view.
“Looks like we lost a couple of guards in the crash.” one says to the other. From where she’s pinned, Annabeth can’t see either of them. She holds her breath as the duo poke around the rubble a little bit, clearly stalling from returning to wherever they had come from.“Yeah. But I don’t see anything else. The impact striations- this was blunt force damage. But no scorching- means no heat.”
“I know what scorching is, dumbass.”
“So what, some sort of suped up demigod?”
“Nah. Lastygonian roid-rage would be my bet. Hyperion sent a couple up here.”
Finally, finally, they left. Annabeth pushed and pulled at the collapsed pieces of building holding her down, but no matter what she tried, they refused to budge. She was stuck behind enemy lines with no way to safety. After struggling for some time, she realized there was really only two options before her: Lie here and wait for the battle to be over, whatever happens, or take off her hat and hope they would kill her quickly. Neither choice appealed, but they were the only paths before her. Fate really was cruel.
“Oh, childe.” Out of the shadows cast by the flickering lights and the broken walls, a woman in a gray cloak stepped into view. She walked unerringly across the fractured floor and over the rubble, eventually standing above Annabeth and looking down at her. Annabeth knew she was still invisible, could feel the hat pressing in on her head, but the woman's milky white eyes found her nevertheless. “You chose this path.” she waved a hand, and suddenly all of the rubble vanished. The walls of the building, the floor, everything besides the two of them was suddenly gone.
“What did you just do?” Annabeth demands, grabbing for her knife, only for it to vanish from her hand.
“You are dead, Ms. Chase. Your fate was, as you predicted, to die under that rubble. I merely expedited the process. There is… discord among the fatua, the fates. This timeline, this reality is doomed. The choices remain to be chosen; there are still paths to be walked, but they all end within weeks, maybe months of your time. As such, there is an opportunity.”
“An opportunity?” Annabeth asks.
“Indeed. Among the realities, there come points where the tapestry winnows down to a single thread. A single choice that can send everything spiraling into a million different directions. One person’s actions can make or break everything they know. You, little mortal, faced two such choices in your life. The first was passed with grace and the needle pulled through. But the second, there you sealed your doom.”
“What were they?” Annabeth asks, “Wait, you can’t tell me, can you?”
“Not the trial passed, no. But, I can share the choice that you lost. The gamble made and bargain struck that shook reality to pieces. It was here, among the stones.”
The woman waved her hand once more, and reality blurred before refocusing. They were standing in the middle of the scene Annabeth knew well.
The first thing she saw was herself, stepping away from checking on Percy after he was body checked by Atlas. Atlas himself is straining to get his footing as the sky presses down upon him, a red hairbrush not too far from his feet. The girl who threw the brush, Rachel Elizabeth Dare, is in the back of the scene near the shrubs, watching the center of the mesa. In the center of the mesa, Thalia kneels before Lady Artemis, off-center due to the missing space in the dust. Zoe had lain there and been thrown into the stars for her service by Artemis.
“Here?” Annabeth asks.
“Does it come as a surprise? It was, after all, one of the greatest choices to affect your life.”
“I know that, but. I didn’t expect…” Annabeth trails off, unsure of herself. She is not prone to self-reflection, but if this is truly the moment she made the made the wrong decision.
“It was here that you forged a new path and left your previous life behind.”
“But, I thought I was the one making the choice, that it would be something I did myself to shape the world. Not what I could do for them.” Annabeth says slowly, hesitantly, as if facing a hydra with only a steak for a weapon.
“You misconstrue; let me explain. It was your action and inaction that would decide the fate of the world. Because of the circumstances, the situations you were in,” she waves her hand once again, and a stream of images fly off into the distance, branching and flowing from this moment onward. Some of them are familiar while others are incredibly foreign, “were you to stay the path you walked, there were two differing outcomes in the end. Both meant keeping your relationships intact, influencing the events as they played out. Your relationship to the people was insignificant, but your presence was paramount.”
“In one such future, you would venture forth with the seed of hope in your heart. Nurtured by the actions kept hidden, watered by friendships and dreams, you would proceed to the highest point of the war- the deciding point of victory where you would face a choice once again- to save or to raze. To follow your dreams or to follow your heart.”
She can see the thrones of Olympus, broken and shattered. The brazier in the center of the room overturned, and a goddess bloodied beside them. Percy and Luke both stand, stagger, and clash together once more.
“Here you would face the choice of who to follow and support- as only you and them were destined to stand and decide- at least with the way things played out thus far. To whom would you ally, oh clever one? To whom would you lend your shallow blade, and to whom would you betray?”
Annabeth can see herself don her hat and vanish, creep around the room to circle behind Percy and wait until the right moment, when he was distracted and weak, only for her to sink her blade into his back, whispering softly to him her apologies. The image whirls and accelerates as Luke and Kronos combine into something more, as she stands by his side as the rest of the traitors are rounded up and killed. She sees the world being plunged into darkness as the monsters revel and swarm until the will of the titans is exerted once more, and the field cleared. She sees herself growing older, standing loyally at his side as they rebuild civilization. As she rebuilds civilization- her designs and her work being raised as the pinnacle of achievement. She sees herself designing and building monuments and palaces and houses and bridges and everything- her dream realized as the architect of reality. She sees the council of titans built in the war fracture, splinter, as they turn on each other. She watches Luke/Kronos have to kill those once loyal to him, and have to face turncoats in every corner as it all comes undone. She watches as he kills her, believing her to be a traitor as well, even as she pleads and promises fidelity. But even after her death, she sees her projects remaining for millenia to come long after her death and her name is forgotten. Annabeth sees everything she could have ever dreamed of coming true- her legacy an indelible part of the new world that was built.
“Be you a faithful companion, a lover, or just a lackey, your actions shaped the world to come.”
The clock unwinds and she’s back in the throne room of the gods. This time, she doesn’t try to hide- she stands firm and visible and when the time comes draws the eye to her. She talk to Luke, pleads with him, and miraculously, he heeds her words. She passes him the knife, and he shatters his own bindings, sending the lord of time spiraling back down into the broken bits and pieces. The timeline fractures from there, with her taking Percy’s hand, leading him to safety, with her vanishing into the mists beyond the throne without a word, with her trying to attack him, her sobbing in his arms, her dying on the floor- but the world rebuilding. The gods retake their place, the titans sent back to their prisons, the monsters dispersed and the demigods rewarded. The world is remade, but without the cleansing promised and the infidelity of power.
“Which was the right choice?” She asks, watching an image of her and Percy building a crib in an apartment somewhere.
“What makes you think there was a right choice?”
“Well, you’re here, aren't you? Why show me all of this? Why tell me these things?”
Luke traces fingers across her cheek and promises her eternity.
“WHY?!” she shouts.
“As I said, there was discord. You represent a dead timeline. This future is certain, and it ends quickly. There is no recovery, and all will perish at the hands of another or to the unraveling at the end. You are no more.”
“However, there is an opportunity at stake. A derivation to be determined. Due to the nature of this weave, there will be power left open to be used. Power which could be tapped into to change the fabric of things. Nothing can be done to save this place, but to ferret away some pieces of it would perhaps be doable. Yet, we cannot let you meddle in our work even if we were to rescue you. You would have to take another form- your thread replaced.
There is an amenable time willing to accept the transition and see the consequences of such a drastic patch. A world where people die young and yet, could possibly not.
The question we have for you, Annabeth Chase, Daughter of the Once Grey Wisdom is this: What are you willing to give to see a better world? Are you willing to play this game, to follow our rules?”
“Anything.” Annabeth says, voice firming once more with conviction. “I’ll give anything.”
“Oh, foolish mortal to offer so much for so little in return. You do not understand the bounty you reside with, but that is not our concern. A deal was offered, and a deal accepted even if the term were so wretchedly uneven. We will accept your everything. Now, a choice. Who will you pick to be crowned? To be sent into our experiment?”
Annabeth made her choice, told the lady what she wanted and felt the weight of her decision settle on her shoulders. And then, as the world shivered and shook, as embers caught fire and even the blank space they had been occupying frayed, the lady smirked.
“You who are to be the watcher, will rest far from your home. You may see that which unfolds, but your reach is little and the distance vast. Our sister welcome you to their home and accept you, Goddess.”
Annabeth never thought about what becoming divine would be like. She’d tasted the edge of ambrosia before, felt the bring heat of combustion inside of her veins, but never actually thought about what it would entail to slip her mortal coil.
She screamed in the blackness, in the nothing as she was remade. Her teeth itched as her eyes bled ichor and her skin flayed itself black. Pressure built and built on her ribs until they retreated into themselves, bone splintering into bone as density skyrocketed. Her mind unraveled, thoughts stretched to incomprehensible madness squeezed through a vice and strained across space and time. Her awareness of herself was overblown by the sudden feeling of her domain, the self ripped and stretched and knitted back together as something much larger and much greater than it had been. It was overly fullness corpulent and yet an unending unceasing unsatisfiable hunger inside her as the pit yawed. Existence and reality and everything frayed and come together, seams splitting in the world only to tie themselves back in new spaces.
Annabeth sneezed in the emptiness of nothingness and found herself at home. She was the distant starlight, the faint cosmos at the edge of perception. She could see her home, her once home, a cabin and woods and a small bay and a boy lying on a bed drooling in his sleep. She reached to feel him one more time, but all she could touch was the emptiness between them. And she knew, then, what this was. She had become divine, as was hampered by the agreements of divinity- she could not interfere. She could not breach the distance without invitation, invocation- she was to watch as he suffered it all over once more, but this time, without her.