Work Text:
Christmas Eve in San Francisco, New Year’s at the Jacksons’. The timeline had seemed sensible to Annabeth last week, when she finally made up her mind and informed all parties concerned about her plans for the holidays. Her classes ended on the 19th, her internship on the 20th, which should have given her enough time to pack and fly in from Seattle. But who the hell had time for packing when she had blueprints to finish? Or evaluation reports to turn in? And numerous farewell parties to juggle, because her friends and supervisors seemingly had all the time and the money to throw at the world.
Tomorrow , she promised herself as her body suddenly found itself glued to the bed when she made it home from her last day of office yesterday. Tomorrow , she dismissively thinks in the morning when she leaves her little studio for the first get-together of the day, brunch at a four-star hotel downtown.
The day wanes quickly. The list of unchecked things-to-do looms on her shoulders, up until Coworker #6 boisterously starts weaving another story that snatches Annabeth’s attention. Supervisor A picks up the remaining threads of that conversation, makes it their own to elicit expected laughter and witty quips. It goes on, and on and on and on. When the braid frays into a few moments of silence, the list begins weighing on her again, its omen doubled now, and Annabeth finds herself burrowing deeper into the din of food and drinks through the hours. The more exhausted she feels, the brighter she smiles.
It only fully hits her when she shuts her door and she sees all her things still in place: the little Polaroid constellation, mostly of her and Percy; the sofa’s corduroy surface sinking under volumes of design anthologies; several unwashed tumblers of coffee littering her kitchen countertop. She hasn’t packed a single thing even though in less than three days, she’s supposed to be—
Her heart sinks, and she has to grip her cane to steady herself. She hasn’t even bought tickets for the flight yet. If she can’t get a six-hour plane ride to San Francisco, the alternative facing her was 19 hours on a bus.
She’s not sure she feels anything at either of those scenarios, plane or bus. Dismay at the 13-hour difference and annoyance at the dismal state of the country’s transportation options, maybe. Stinging numbness lines her mouth like some spectacularly fucked-up lip gloss, quickly leeching whatever warmth she’d accumulated throughout the day.
A few minutes pass before Annabeth makes the daunting executive decision to remove her coat and sit down on her sofa.
She should be rush-buying a ticket, instead of mentally painting onto the eggshell ceiling a portrait of her father being dismayed that his daughter isn’t home for Christmas as though she’s Rachel Dare realizing her prophecies onto canvas. But Rachel isn’t much in the business of looking into the past. Annabeth would make a terrible Oracle, because her endeavor shifts into seeing in her mind’s eye what Frederick must’ve looked like, gotten up to, felt during all the Christmases she hadn’t been there.
What’s one more?
Don’t be stupid , the better-trained part of her mind says. Pull out your phone. Find a mover. Box up your stuff Book a flight. It’s doable if you stop dragging your feet now. You still have time.
She does get around to the first step at some point, though the airline’s homepage very quickly replaces the ceiling as her canvas.
What’s one more…
A quick look around her apartment, and she fails to muster any other feeling but defeat.
But I have to. Then, maybe… One more day? Christmas Day instead of Christmas Eve? Then I could just book tomorrow.
As though that excuse isn’t going to land her in this exact scenario, the only difference being tomorrow instead of today .
A breath leaves her—she feels it leave her—and the well of silence fills her ears. It’s the last thing she hears for a while, as though she were a conch shell letting the air inside rattle and whittle away at her walls, the emptiness its own roar. After an entire day’s worth of voices both her own and otherwise streaming into her ears, the difference is staggering. Staggering enough that she misses the figure that steps into her apartment, disregarding that her door is solid.
She can’t tell which comes first—the bladed end of her cane landing on her guest’s sternum, or Alabaster pausing in his tracks right before he’s about to sit down next to her. Either way, he greets her with, “Aren’t you supposed to be packing?” complete with a judgy tone and a bitchy eyebrow raise.
“Aren’t you supposed to knock when entering other people’s houses?”
“I also rang the doorbell, just so you know. But you weren’t responding so I thought I’d let myself in.” As Annabeth lowers her cane, Alabaster turns on his heel to examine her place. “It’s good that it’s your last day here. How can you have, like, zero security measures here?”
On a better day, Annabeth might’ve given a response that would start a verbal firestorm that would last a good two hours. Today, she just sighs and lets her head hit corduroy.
Alabaster inhales sharply as he pieces things together. “Ah.”
“Yup,” Annabeth mumbles.
“So I’m not the problem. I was starting to get offended at your lack of excitement, considering that we last saw each other four months ago.”
“Four months, 3 weeks, 6 days,” Annabeth softly says. “Almost five months. I count, Tory.”
He makes a sound that he probably intended to be a snort, but tremulous emotion warps it into a punched-out gasp as if she’d kicked him in the gut. Close enough, because he goes to his knees before her. It's worrying, how exile has made him so sensitive to every affection. Annabeth’s fingers weave themselves into choppy russet locks as he rests his cheek against her thigh.
“You count. Do you know what day it is, then?” Alabaster mumbles.
“The 21st. Soon to be the 22nd.”
“You haven’t asked why I’m here.”
“... I can guess why.”
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
“It didn’t occur to me, not until you—Well, it actually just occurred to me,” admits Annabeth. “It’s hard enough keeping track of things happening right now.”
His head shifts on her lap. Through thin lashes, she can see irritation brewing in those radiant— radium , really—eyes. “If you weren’t in the mood for company, you could’ve just said so,” he petulantly says, and it’s enough to make Annabeth’s eyes narrow, other hand wrapping around her cane again. “I just don’t want to be the only person who remembers that he was still good at that point.”
She closes her fist in his hair to drag his head up, forcing him to look at her. “He was himself,” she tells him flatly. “Good, my ass.”
A bare ghost of a grin slices across Alabaster’s face. “You’re angry.”
“Tired of people telling me how I should remember Luke, more like.” Luke was now only hers in memory—the bastard and the boy and the brother all in one but not at all the same entity, a holy trinity like she knew the Christian God was supposed to be like. Based on the philosophical-religious ramblings she’d pieced together from Claymore, anyway. If Annabeth couldn’t reconcile the bastard that had manipulated her into holding up the sky with the boy who’d begged for her life in front of a Titan (almost as though he were the fourteen-year-old on the streets again, proclaiming himself her brother), then what right did anyone else have to make up their minds about him?
“Everyone else tells you he’s the boogeyman. It must be nice hearing someone say the opposite.”
“It’s still not the truth. Just what people want to remember of him.”
“You don’t deny it,” he notes. “It must be nice. Variety and all that. Someone who remembers him for something other than the war.”
She finally lets go of him, but Alabaster remains in the same position: arms folded across her lap and neck craned up at her.
“... The Tampon Thief,” Annabeth offers.
Alabaster coughs. “Ah, yes. The Pad Poacher.”
“Maxi Mugger.”
“Menstrual Monitor.” An abrupt giggle slips past Alabaster’s lips. “Ours used to always be synced up. It was fucking annoying. And you weren’t even in Eleven anymore, but you still kept using up our stock. Gave Luke double the headache.”
“Yeah, then Ethan paid the Stolls to steal back from Six’s supply. Then he learned about communism.”
“The Red Tide creating a Red Scare.”
“Mhm.” Annabeth sighs.
“He loved us. You, most of all.”
Not enough. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have…
Something must show on Annabeth’s face. The mirth from Alabaster’s eyes fades, and he pulls himself up against her side.
“Is it really that much of a burden?” he asks.
Annabeth glances sidelong at him. “Is that curiosity or envy?”
He chooses not to answer. "I was the one who collected him from Mount Tam.” Finally out with it, the reason for his visit. “Mother and I, we were the ones tasked with patching him back up. It wasn’t easy, mending him physically—but by far much easier than coaxing him into living again. I made all kinds of pleas to him. For the cause, for the demigods we handled, for me.” Alabaster smiles self-deprecatingly. “But he only responded when it was you I talked about. I guess I should’ve known.”
What a burden. Luke abandoned her anyway. Something salty beads at the corner of her mouth.
Annabeth leans towards Alabaster, and his lips capture the trickle of her tears.
“Don’t cry,” he murmurs, guiding her braids behind her ear. “Save it for when I leave.”
Leaden despair drops in her chest. “Are we not seeing you over the holidays?”
“In a week, maybe.” Alabaster presses a kiss to her knuckles. “I don’t think I can see Percy right now without accidentally creating a rift in the time-space continuum or punching his face in. I’ll celebrate Christmas with Claymore.”
Right. Family. Who lived in a place that she hadn’t booked tickets for yet.
Annabeth is so tired. She wilts in Alabaster’s arms. She feels a little hypocritical; the best of Luke has stayed with her despite the horrors he’d delivered and her unwillingness to admit it, and yet she can only seem to remember the worst of her father. This night so many years ago, the same night Luke had tried to bring her and Thalia under Kronos’ reins, her father had put himself in danger gunning down monsters on Mount Tam. And here she is: unable to even fucking pack her things.
“If you’re worried about making it to California…” begins Alabaster, then he wiggles his fingers in front of her face, blinding green weaving in between the gaps. “Don’t be.”
Annabeth’s eyes widen, and she sits up to look at him. “Tory—”
“You can stay with me and Claymore; we’re in the area for Amazon business. If by Christmas, you decide you wanna be with your family, I can just pop you on over.”
“You—” Annabeth could practically melt in relief. “You go away for an insanely long stretch of time then show up just when I need it… We’re going to fight so much.”
Alabaster scoffs. “I wouldn’t expect any less.”
“And I’m going to fight with your dad even more. I need to know what he’s done with your interior design now.”
“He’s not my dad.”
“He’s just as much not your dad as I am not your lover,” Annabeth harrumphs, already pressing Alabaster down into the couch.