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We’d been in the Underworld for about six months now.
It was weird. In a lot of ways, I got why we were down here, but at the same time, I couldn’t shake the feeling that we shouldn’t be here.
We were allowed to go anywhere that wasn’t one of the fields of the afterlife, which meant we had a lot of room to move in, but we weren’t allowed to see our dead friends. I didn’t mind that too much.
If we saw any of them, I’d have to ask about Percy, and I didn’t think I was ready to know what’d happened to him.
Thinking about Percy was easier now than it was before. It still hurt, but it was more of a stab wound instead of my entire body screaming in agony. He should’ve been here; I shouldn’t have pushed him away.
I shook my head. Thinking like that wouldn’t help us any; I had to focus.
I was supposed to meet up with Jason and Reyna today. I got along with Jason well enough. He reminded me of Percy in a lot of ways, but he was different enough that I managed to separate the two after a while.
It was Reyna who was still a bit tense. We’d talked about the whole thing with Circe’s island, but that didn’t really completely fix things. Didn’t mean it wasn’t awkward though, especially since she almost felt like she was angrier with me now than she was at the start at times.
When I got there, I found the two fighting about something. Reyna looked frustrated and Jason looked lost. I almost didn’t realize why it was painful to look at before I remembered.
It was just how Percy and I used to look when we used to fight about Luke.
When I got there, Reyna huffed and stormed off, leaving Jason frustrated, sad, and lost. I wondered if that was how Percy felt whenever we’d have our fights.
“Everything alright, Jay?” He looked up at me in surprise before sighing.
“Reyna… well, she’s-” he was struggling to find the right words and I figured out what he was thinking.
“She’s annoyed at how close you are with me?”
He looked surprised before sighing and nodding. “Yeah. It’s like we can’t go two conversations without you coming up and she’s always annoyed about it.”
Well, that explains a bit more about why Reyna didn’t like me. Although that did mean this would be very awkward for them to talk about, it would be needed.
I wasn’t about to let something like this happen again.
“What was it about?” I figured it wouldn’t hurt to ask.
Jason shifted nervously before looking at me. “It was about you.”
I nodded. “Lemme guess; she doesn’t like me and doesn’t like that we’re friends?”
Jason laughed sadly, which was kind of weird to say. “Got it in one.”
I decided to cut to the chase. “Do you like her?”
“What?” He turned to me with eyes wider than they’d ever been.
“Do you like Reyna? And before you say yes, you know exactly what I mean when I ask that.”
He blushed and nodded. “Uh, yeah, I do.”
“Why don’t you tell her then?”
Jason shrugged. “I was kind of expecting to get to that point but ever since we got here last year, it’s been fight after fight. We can’t go one conversation without almost strangling each other.”
Gods, was this what Percy and I looked like from the outside? I felt like I owed Silena an apology.
I shoved that thought aside before I got angry; Jason didn’t need that now. “Jason. You like her, don’t you? Go tell her.”
Jason sighed. “It’s not that easy, I-”
“Yes, it is,” I cut him off. I couldn’t stand to see this happen again, not with how my case ended. “You go tell her. Now .”
Jason looked like a deer in headlights before nodding quickly and running off. I had a feeling they’d be fine.
A few hours later, I found the two of them cuddled up under a poplar tree. Jason saw me and gave me a quick smile before turning back to Reyna, kissing the top of her head. I tried to ignore how much it hurt to see that.
They deserved to be happy.
If there was one downside to being around everyone all the time, it was the fact that I couldn’t avoid seeing Thalia for a decade.
Ok, maybe I’m overexaggerating, but ever since I learned she’d hidden the fact that she had a brother, I tended to avoid her more often than not. Maybe I was being a bit petty, but so much had happened during that time that I couldn’t bear to look at her.
I did plan on talking to her eventually, but she took that choice away from me today.
“Hey, Annie,” she’s the only one who could get away with calling me that these days. “Think we can talk?”
I was kind of glad for that. I’d been meaning to talk to her for a while now, but I kept chickening out.
“Sure,” she took me to a spot far from anyone else and I was glad. I just knew I’d be a mess by the end of it and I didn’t want anyone to see that.
“So, where do we start?” I asked her when we were alone.
She sighed, looking at me sadly. “I guess I’ll start with the beginning. About why I never told you about Jason.”
I nodded, figuring it’d be a good place to start. “I just… I told you about Magnus, I told you about my dad, I told you about everything. I don’t get why you didn’t tell me something like this.”
“I thought he was dead,” she whispered and I felt a vat of ice water drop over my head.
“What?”
“When I was about nine or ten, Beryl took us to Jack London Park. I left for barely a minute to get something from the car and when I came back, he was gone. She said Hera took him. I blamed myself for a lot of it. Maybe if I’d been there,” she shook her head. “It’s no use thinking like that. He’s alive after all. It just hurt too much to think about. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.”
I threw my arms around her and she held me close. I was technically older than her now, but she still acted like an older sister around me. “I’m sorry I was mad at you.”
“It’s alright, Annie. Not your fault.”
We sat down and I leaned into her embrace. I was growing taller than she was, but it didn’t matter to her. She threaded her fingers through my hair like she used to when I was younger and I felt like a kid again.
“When I first saw you, it was like I was looking at Jason again,” she mentioned and I blinked.
“Huh?” I was eloquent like that.
She laughed and kissed the top of my head, making me feel even more like I was seven again. “You were so small, blond hair, those eyes that were almost blue. It was like seeing Jason but as a girl. It hurt a bit at first, kind of like it did with him but a bit different.”
“Is that why you were so tense at first?”
“Mhm. Should’ve figured you’d pick up on that,” she squeezed my shoulder and leaned her head against mine. “I never regretted it, you know. Never regretted letting you in.”
I teared up and turned to hide my face in her shoulder. “I love you, Thalia. I’m sorry about-”
“Shush you, water under the bridge. I love you too.”
Of all the ways to learn things about a person, I didn’t expect it to be like this.
Nico and I were given the newbies to train and they were something alright.
“No, Leo, you can stab a monster in the ass and expect it to die,” I told him for the eighth time this session. He reminded me of Percy too, but a Percy who was unable to take things seriously.
It didn’t help that he tried to flirt with everything that moved, including me, which led to us almost having an altercation as Chiron would put it.
“Ok, ok, whatever you say, boss,” He was cheeky like that. It was endearing sometimes, but most of the time he was pushing his luck.
Piper was a bit less annoying to deal with, but still a bit of a pain at times. Drew had taken over her at least, and she was getting a bit less likely to get on my nerves though, so there was that.
Reyna didn’t like her in the slightest, which might have had a thing to do with the looks she was giving Jason. I didn’t want to get in the middle of that, so I figured they’d be able to handle it on their own.
Speaking of Reyna, she walked up to me after the session ended, shifting a bit nervously. “Can we talk?”
I had a feeling I knew what this was about so I nodded. She shot Piper one look before we moved which I’ll admit I found pretty funny.
She took me somewhere far, which might’ve looked like she was taking me somewhere private so we could talk, but it looked to me like she was trying to prolong the conversation we’d have.
I couldn’t exactly blame her; I’d been pushing actually talking to Rachel for a while now. She’d become the new Oracle when we made it down here and I just wasn’t ready to look at her, never mind actually talk.
Then again, maybe I should talk to her. Given how I told Jason to just talk to Reyna and I told them to get on with it. Plus, I wasn’t exactly the best towards her and she was friends with Percy.
It wasn’t like I had to become best friends with her; I had a feeling we wouldn’t be all that close regardless, but we did need to talk at least once. I’d do that after I was done with Reyna.
Speaking of Reyna, she stopped walking after a bit and sighed. “I think that’s enough postponing,” she turned to me with a wry smile. “I imagine you know what I was doing?”
“Mhm.”
“And you know what this is about.”
“I do.”
Reyna nodded. “I suppose that makes things easier,” she sat down on a bench nearby and I took a spot next to her. “I was jealous of you getting closer to Jason.”
“Cutting right to the chase then? I can work with that,” I thought about how to put my next bit into words. I didn’t want to mess this one up. “I kind of get where you’re coming from.”
“Oh?” She tilted her head. “How so?”
“You were friends with that oblivious guy for a while and thought you’d end up getting together down the line then he becomes friends with this other girl and all of a sudden all you can see is the two of them getting together. Did I get that right?”
Reyna blinked. “Uh, more or less.”
I nodded. “It was the same with me and Percy,” I sighed and looked out to the distance. “Before he… we were getting closer. I thought we’d get together, then Rachel wrote her number on his arm. I don’t think they knew each other that long at the time, but I didn’t care at that point. I was jealous.”
Reyna hummed quietly. “And you let that get in between the two of you. You’d fight a lot and it pushed the two of you apart.”
“Yeah,” so many times I wish I’d acted differently. Maybe he’d still be with us if I did. “Our last conversation was a fight. I guess… I was hoping I’d be able to spare you from my mistakes.”
Reyna was quiet for a while before putting a hand on my arm. “Thank you, Annabeth.”
I turned to her then. “It’s nothing.”
She was quiet for a moment before giving me a hesitant look. “Do you think we can start over?”
I thought about it for a moment before nodding. “I think I’d like that.”
I found Rachel quickly after that. I wanted to get this over with as soon as possible.
She raised her eyebrows when she saw me coming to her. “Annabeth Chase. To what do I owe the pleasure?”
I stopped and tilted my head. “Did becoming the Oracle change how you talk?”
She snorted. “Nah, just wanted to say that. What’s up?”
I took a deep breath. “I wanted to talk about… how we were before all this.”
She nodded. “I was wondering when you’d want to. How’d you want to do this?”
I considered her words for a moment before sighing. “I’m sorry about how I treated you before. I thought you’d end up taking Percy from me. He was more than just someone who could’ve been my boyfriend, he was my best friend too and…” I shook my head. “I thought he’d leave me completely for you.”
Rachel looked at me for a while before shrugging. “I guess that makes sense. He mentioned how a lot of people left you so I figured that might’ve had something to do with it.”
I blinked. “Did he talk about me a lot?”
Rachel snorted. “Oh, all the time. Couldn’t go a conversation without him bringing you up.”
“Think you could tell me?”
She just smirked and I knew it’d be good. “Oh, I’ve got so much I can tell you.”
She told me about how he never shut up about me, about how he kept bringing up our quests, our time together, how I was his best friend. It was a bit tough to hear in places, but I needed this. I needed to know he cared about me as much as I cared about him.
In turn, I’d tell her about my time with him. I cleared up a few questions she had about our quests, and about what Percy was like in the demigod world.
We talked for what felt like hours and we reached a mutual point. We wouldn’t exactly ever be best friends, but we were the closest people to Percy besides Sally. In terms of connections to Percy, we were the only ones the other had.
The next six months moved in a blur. I’d managed to become friends with Reyna and got closer to Jason. Thalia and I were closer than ever, and Rachel and I found time once a week to talk about Percy.
But I couldn’t get Silena out of my head. She’d been at the forefront of my mind ever since I learned she’d been the spy. I hadn’t talked to her since, at least not in any way more than a few orders.
She’d changed from how she was and I didn’t like it. Silena was always full of life and always full of love. Looking at her now, completely down all the time, it didn’t feel right. I didn’t know how I felt about her.
There were days I wanted to hold her, to hug her and never let go, and there were others when I wanted nothing to do with her. My feelings were a jumbled mess and I didn’t know what to do.
So when Silena came to me, I didn’t know how I’d react.
“Hey, Annabeth,” she looked nervous, giving me a look I didn’t recognize.
“Yeah?”
“Can we talk?” She sounded scared that I’d say no.
But after a year of being stubborn, I guess I was tired of ignoring her. “Sure.”