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Sometimes, Annabeth feels like she’s drowning. Everything piles on her at once. There are weeks where her troubles weigh her down, and it seems as if nothing will relieve her pain. Other weeks, she is so completely, incandescently happy that she wonders if sadness is just a myth. But those are the exceptions. Most of her days are an endless purgatory.
..
Annabeth gathers her clothes from the floor and throws them into the hamper, landing over the edge. She digs through the drawers next to it to step into a pair of underwear and a loose tank top. She walks over to the desk and grabs the old mint tin and a lighter.
She looks back at Percy, who hasn’t moved, one naked arm slung over his forehead. The sheets are tangled at the foot of the bed. Sunlight trickles through the window like raindrops, projecting blurry shapes onto his shiny skin. His chest rises and falls at an increasingly slower pace, and she throws a pair of boxers at him. He starts, Annabeth smiles, and she slides open the window. Bare tree branches block much of the view, but there isn’t a whole lot to see anyway. Cool air hits her face.
It’s a Sunday afternoon, and the lack of having anything to do both calms and frustrates her. No classes for the next week and a half, and no work for the next few days. Just her and Percy, wasting daylight.
Annabeth doesn’t feel much of anything when she gets high. It doesn’t happen often to begin with. She gets the same airy effect when she runs on only a few hours of sleep, which is more often than not. She likes getting high because she chooses that feeling. Like her body is a bag of sand and her head is hollow. Nightmares and anxiety are not the most optimal sources for nothingness.
What she’s been seeing for the last several months are far from nightmares, but terrifying in their own right. There’s a little girl in the distance. Every single time, she’s unreachable. All Annabeth can make out are dark curls and a small body. Annabeth swims toward her, but the tide forces her to stay in place. The girl stands at the shore, waving.
The floor creaks, and lips press against her shoulder. Percy rests his chin on the spot and braces his hands on the windowsill. “What are you thinking?”
“I’m scared,” she tells him. Annabeth doesn’t know where the words came from. He’s good at extracting her thoughts like that, but it never fails to take her aback. Percy may not be a mind reader, but he knows her mind like no one else.
“Of what?”
“Or I’m just… sad. I don’t know. I thought I was better.”
The emptiness sneaks up on her from time to time. There’s a leak in her heart, like the smallest crack in a dam, that grows bigger, then gets patched up, then wears down, and the cycle repeats. It has been three months and eight days since she woke up with too much blood pooling between her thighs, but right now, it feels like yesterday.
Red is Annabeth’s least favorite color. She hates fluorescent lights more than anything, and the smell of antiseptic makes her sick.
When she passes children sitting in grocery carts or strollers, she has to douse the spark of envy in her chest before it consumes her. She’ll put her hand over her chest or Percy’s, but all she’ll think of is the silence that echoed in that hospital bed.
He’s quiet for a moment. Then he says, “You can always talk to my mom.”
Annabeth knows he’s been lost and frustrated. He’s unfairly resigned himself to feeling inadequate. There’s a difference between the knowledge of something existing, and that thing actually existing as a physical part of you. There wasn’t much Percy could do but be there for her, which to him wasn’t enough. He wanted to take all of her pain as if it was his own. He had held the sky for her, after all.
Impossible things—impossible to mortals, that is—have happened enough times that any justification otherwise is thrown out. Soulmates are a lovely concept, but Percy had quite literally tied their souls together. Annabeth may not be the only person able to kill him anymore, but that hasn’t severed the tie.
She turns to face him. “I want to talk to you. Without saying anything.”
He raises her hand to his lips, inhaling then exhaling into the fresh air. “There,” Percy says, then begins to cough. “Same plane.”
Between the two of them, Annabeth had always assumed he’d be the stoner (not that she was). Turns out that Percy’s so go-with-the-flow that he doesn’t need weed to be relaxed. He’s a world class Annabeth Relaxer, but sometimes not even he helps.
“You’ll have to take, like, ten more.” She runs her thumb over the crinkled paper. She doesn’t like the scratchy feeling in the back of her throat, but it’s a small price to pay.
What’s that? she had asked, having followed Luke into the forest. It was late, but she couldn’t sleep, and her newly acquired invisibility was a terrible blessing.
No, was all Luke said, keeping his eyes low. He didn’t seem surprised that Annabeth had been watching him. That happened before. It had made her suspect, just a little bit, that he was immune to her concealment.
C’mon, I’ve already seen it. Just tell me, tell me, tell me.
When you’re older, kid.
He’d been telling her that for five years. The thing was, he kept getting older too.
You’re no fun, Annabeth complained.
He put that thing in his mouth again and blew it away from her. Can’t be dad and brother. Go back to sleep.
Having a slowed mind is a death sentence in any other circumstance. Upstate New York has its array of monsters, just not as many as the city. Should a monster break through their door, they’re done for. But Annabeth likes being all kinds of restrained with Percy. She feels the safest with him. It’s not that he’ll push her out of the way to keep her from harm—whatever they do, they do together. They can be perfectly relaxed at one moment and guard each other’s six at the next.
Something Annabeth loves most about her and Percy is how partner doesn’t have a single definition. Life, love, battle. All encompassing. Whether she needs space or to be enraptured by his attention, he’ll do whatever she needs. She does the same for him.
That isn’t to say that things are good and sweet even in turmoil. Sometimes their arguments blow up enough that Percy sleeps on the couch or Annabeth stays at a friend’s place for the night. She doesn’t think it’s a bad thing to need space. For most of her life, she’s shared a bedroom with others, she’s used to living with others. She has the rest of her life to live with Percy. When one of them needs to be alone, they don’t blame the other. The most redeeming part is that loneliness between them is foreign.
They haven’t lived in the apartment for long, so it isn’t lived in, but it’s the first home they’ve shared that doesn’t house anyone else. The walls are nearly bare, and the only possessions with signs of wear and tear were bought from thrift stores.
The kitchen is Annabeth’s second favorite. Messy in an organized chaos way—Annabeth takes credit for the organization, Percy begrudgingly takes credit for the chaos—it reminds her of Sally Jackson’s kitchen. Stories lie in the dents in the cabinets, and the nonstick fry pan, and the flower vase that gets refilled every other week without fail.
Overall, Annabeth’s favorite place in their young home is the bedroom. The apartment is theirs alone for the next year, but their room is even more private.
Percy takes one more drag and sets it in the little glass dish on the windowsill. Annabeth watches his muscles shift, takes note of the few prominent veins, thinks of the blood flowing through his body.
“Is it weird that I want to crack open my chest and put you in there?” I want to keep you forever, is what she really means. Nothing is forever. But if she could have anything, just one thing for the rest of her life, it would be having Percy at every moment. He’ll always be there, even if he isn’t physically present. That sort of faith in a person should deter her, but she’s had years to accept it. Loving Percy isn’t a choice, but more so a fact of life.
He falls back into bed, looking at her through drowsy eyelids. “I think that’s the most romantic thing you’ve ever said.”
“Ever?” Figures that she’s on substances.
“Yes. No.” He chuckles lightly. “I don’t think I needed ten.”
He looks older in the shadows, despite only being twenty. The gray in his hair is as prominent as it was at fourteen, but Percy is far from the same boy who traveled across the country for her. Annabeth is far from the same girl who was left to hold up the world, who afterwards was kept in the depths of Luke’s ship.
She thinks of how he shared the gray with them. Annabeth has made peace with the fact that Luke will never leave her mind. She has long accepted that she doesn’t want him to. Her memory of him will age, lasting longer than the years she knew him and thought she knew him.
She lays next to Percy, and his arm stretches beneath her neck. She can feel him playing with the ends of her braids, twirling the curls between his fingers. Annabeth watches the ceiling fan spin the heat in the room, listening to the little whooshes.
“You know the whole ‘we knew each other in another life’ thing?”
She nods.
“I think it has to be true,” he says wondrously, like he’s dedicated years to studying such a phenomenon and has just found the answer. Or it’s just the weed talking. “I don’t know how the love I have for you only came from this lifetime.”
It’s such a line, but the thing about Percy is that when he expresses love in any way, it’s the most sincere he’ll ever get. Her chin wobbles.
“I really wanna marry you,” he continues, and Annabeth feels terrible that he loves her. She feels terrible because if she’s had these feelings for four years, and she’s talked about them before to no avail, then they may never go away. Annabeth wishes that being better was linear. Even when she feels good and loved and entirely worthy of it, she just thinks of the bad and how nothing fucking lasts.
“How would it be any different from now?” she asks.
“It wouldn’t be, I guess. Other than all the financial benefits.” Annabeth lets out a laugh. “It just feels kinda wrong to call you my girlfriend. Millions of people have girlfriends, you know?”
“Millions of people have wives.”
He pinches her arm. “Are you trying to be irritating?”
She laughs again. Percy’s so easy to mess with, and it’s such a simple thing to do anyway. It’s their oldest form of communication, perpetrated equally.
“Anytime someone under the age of, like, twenty-four gets married,” Annabeth says, “I have so many questions.”
“Same. Like, what, have you been together since you were sixteen?”
Annabeth snorts and shoves his face. “Shut the fuck up.”
The marriage talk is just a daydream for now. There isn’t even a ring (she’s checked). Annabeth would like to focus on getting her degrees and graduating with a stable job first. Whenever she pictures a wedding, all she can really see is a Manhattan courthouse and those very closest to them.
They’d almost eloped once at eighteen. Who said it was a good idea for two impulsive teenagers to be madly in love? They got into a lot of stupid shit after that second war. It’s strange to think that that wasn’t a long time ago. Call it a midlife crisis, in the child soldier way.
Enough time passes that she’s sure Percy has fallen asleep, but then he says: “Hey, is the ceiling moving for you, too?”
Annabeth looks at him. His eyes aren’t even red. “There’s no way you’re that high.”
“You know I have low tolerance. It’s, like, vibrating.”
It is shifting around a little. “Fucking hate popcorn ceilings.” It was ugly to see in his childhood bedroom, and it’s ugly to see now. Maybe her next project will be to scrape it off.
“Same,” Percy says. “I like when you get all interior design-y.”
“Interior and exterior.”
“Hell fuckin’ yeah.”
“Do your eyes ever glitch?”
He pauses. “Gonna need an example, wise girl.”
“Like you’re focusing on something, like writing on paper, and for a millisecond you stop seeing. Your focus is lost for that millisecond, and you’re like what the hell just happened.”
“Wait, yes. I think that happened with the vibrating ceiling.”
“I don’t like how you’re calling it that.”
They both break out into a fit of giggles. They’re a little stupid when they’re high, but also very sentimental for some reason.
The last time they did this, Percy promised her that he would make up for it. He would make up for all the love that had been kept from her, from childhood to adulthood. That’s a whole lotta love, she told him. Then they realized she had quoted a Led Zeppelin song, and the conversation derailed, leaving that heavy promise unresolved in her mind.
Her father doesn’t know anything. Annabeth hopes she isn’t a bad person for it. Frederick didn’t want Annabeth, so why would he want her baby? It’s fine. She doesn’t detest him anymore. She doesn’t detest that she loves him, either. As Annabeth gets older, she understands his perspective more. In college with an unexpected little human to take care of. So she doesn’t blame her father for not wanting her. No, what she resents is his absence and dismissal as she grew up. He got a family he wanted, but he couldn’t erase his daughter. Mutual resentment, justified.
It’s just something I have to accept, she had told Percy. He’s never fully understood the relationship between father and daughter. They speak to each other every few months or so. Annabeth never calls first. Sometimes she debates ignoring him, but then she thinks hey, he’s trying to talk to you, and hey, he’s literally paying for your schooling and apartment. The least she can do is exchange a few how are yous and what’s news.
It’s not like her father needs to know anyway. Percy’s family only knows because Annabeth had somewhat disappeared in the aftermath. It hadn’t even been that long. Three months in total, one month of knowing. She’d read through hundreds of online forums, but they all just made her feel guilty. She’d only wanted the baby for three or so weeks before it was taken away. Other women had experienced several miscarriages, had been trying for years, had nearly gone through the pregnancy to its completion. It shouldn’t hurt Annabeth as much as it does. She should be grateful that it wasn’t worse.
She still worries that Percy blames her. It’s those same insistent demons that once sent her spiraling out of fear that he blamed her for their fall. It took years to forgive herself, and she’s terrified that it’ll take years to forgive herself for losing their child.
“I have this dream,” Annabeth says breathlessly, “that I’m sitting on the roof of a house. I don’t know where I am, but there’s water all around and no other houses. The roof is brown. I can see the Earth’s curve from all sides. And in the distance, the sky is really dark. It inches closer, and I start to hear thunder. I’m stuck on the roof. So I pray, but no one answers. The spirits and gods were scared of the storm, so they left. I don’t think dreams have to mean anything.” She licks her lips. “But that one scares me. I hate when my dreams tell me what I already know or have already thought of.”
“What’s that?”
“Everything that happens to you is your fault. In one way or another.” She turns onto her side, folding her arms over him. “You’re really kind, Percy. I don’t tell you that enough. I’d understand if you were mean.”
He makes a noncommittal noise. “I get more angry than I should.”
“But you’re not mean. If anyone deserves to be, it’s you.” The fan spins around and around and around. The shadows are soft. Her gaze drops to the seashell attached to the pull chain. Like a goddamn mobile.
“Baby, what’s this about?”
What else?
Annabeth hates when something tragic happens and people cite it as God’s will. Like yeah, that twelve year old’s life was cut short because God thought it was time. Percy and Annabeth weren’t ready to be parents, and they won’t be for a long time. They’re two broke college kids who are chronically depressed and get panic attacks and can barely take care of themselves. But if some god out there had made that decision for them… it makes Annabeth so angry to think about. It’s one of the reasons why she hates overthinking. Here she is, vengeful of some hypothetical almighty.
She has come to realize that she doesn’t breathe much. It’s the least detrimental of her problems, but she can’t dissect the shortness of breath. Annabeth has to literally remind herself to take deep inhales and exhales. She takes a breath for five counts, then shakes her head.
“Nothing,” she says. Her eyes burn.
Percy rolls over to be half on top of her. His skin is warm against hers. He strokes her forehead with his thumb, calloused against scarred skin. “You don’t give yourself enough credit. I’d be terrible without you.”
She knows that he knows she’s in her head. Another thing Annabeth loves about Percy is how he knows when to push and when to carry on. It’s frightening to be known so well, but she wants to cry for how grateful she is to have him. She stands by what she said. He could tear her throat out if he wanted, but he chooses to kiss her thin skin instead. Annabeth doesn’t know how she can repay him. He’d tell her that this isn’t a point system, and that that is just how love works. She knows him, too.
“You have your family.”
“That’s different.” He smiles slightly, in that teasing way that makes what he says less serious. “When are you gonna get it through your thick skull that I can’t live without you?”
“I know. I just don’t know how much I like it.”
“Tough shit,” he says simply.
They both laugh, and Annabeth feels her leaking heart patch up, just a little. She thinks of that little girl, waving to her from the shore.
“Let’s go somewhere for a few days,” she says, caressing his cheek. “Maybe Montauk. Take me to the seaside so I can die on the sand.”
Percy kisses her palm. “I’ll spread your ashes into the water.”
And that just may be the most romantic thing he’s ever said.