Work Text:
“Are you coming back?”
Andy lifted her head from her shoulder. “What do you mean?”
“When you leave tonight,” she said, sounding a lot older than fifteen. “Are you coming back?”
She shrugged, “I guess. Probably.”
“But your mom—”
“I like seeing my mom, sure,” she said, fiddling with her hands, picking the skin around her fingernails almost absentmindedly. “You know I do.”
“She’s getting married,” Annabeth said. “To this guy?”
“Much better than the last guy she almost got married to,” Andy said, trying not to sound so far away. “At least this time my father won’t— he can’t take me away this time, and hold it over her head.”
“Andromeda,” Annabeth’s hands played in the ends of her hair, rough cut, tangled at the top of her shoulders. “Andy.”
“I know,” she said. “I know, he was just trying to protect me. I know that my mom was trying to protect me, by marrying that pig. I know, I know, I know, I know.”
“I didn’t think you didn’t,” she said softly. “I just meant, it would be okay if you went. For a bit, at least.”
“Can’t stop training now,” she said. “How long till I turn sixteen now?”
Annabeth didn’t say anything to that. She never had. When they had been kids, and had found the prophecy together, she had cried for days. Andy didn’t think she had anything left in her to cry out, all these years later.
She had never cried. She had raged. She had pleaded. She had kicked Thalia’s tree trunk, back when Thalia had been more pine than girl. She had felt grateful when Thalia returned to shoulder the burden. She had felt guilty for feeling grateful. She had been scared.
But crying just seemed moot.
“Do you think?” she had asked, almost a year earlier, when they had been stupider, and the stench of mortality had only hung over the one of them. “That when you built that thingy—”
“My monument?” Annabeth had asked dryly, stretching out, taking a break under a tree during their strawberry field chores. “That thingy?”
“Yes,” she had said simply. “Do you think that when you build that, and it lasts a thousand years or whatever.”
“Or whatever,” Annabeth had said, not quite sotto voce. “Yes, what about it?”
“Can you like, carve my name into one of the bricks, or something? Like Andy Jackson woz here. You need to misspell woz though. Like the graffiti I showed you at the skate park the other week?”
Annabeth hadn’t found this funny. She had laughed, but it had been a wet, ugly thing. More like a fish choking than any expression of humour. “Andy, whom did you think the monument was for?”
She had leant over then, close enough to inhale the air Andy had been exhaling, her breath hot against her skin. And then she had kissed her.
Andy had been too busy trying to remember how to breathe, to even make fun of her for saying whom unironically.
“I might go, for a bit,” she said, thinking about it. “I don’t know.”
“It was scary,” Annabeth said. “Going back to live with my dad and stepmom. Living a mortal life after living here for so long.”
“You only got here two months before I did,” Andy pointed out.
“I know,” she rolled her eyes. “And what a lovely two months it was.”
“Hey!”
“No,” she continued. “I mean that I’ve done it. Twice.”
“I recall,” she said.
“Shush. I’m getting somewhere with this. I mean, the first time sucked. And the second time, well, it wasn’t not hard work. But I guess it became worth it after a time? I suppose? And just because it’s different, doesn’t make it bad, I guess.”
“Is this the bit where we pretend that I’m not going to be sent to a farm upstate next year?” she yawned.
Annabeth glared at her, “Don’t say that.”
“Why not? It’s true.” She paused, “Well, more like a farm out west.”
“Andromeda Jackson.”
“Fine, fine,” she rolled her eyes at her. “But the point stands.”
“I know it does,” she said.
“Can you make my statue like… super ripped and stuff, when you put me in your sick millennium monument. I want to be like that statue of Artemis in Ephesus.”
“Covered in boobs?”
“What?”
“The statue of Artemis in Ephesus is covered in breasts,” she said. “Well, some scholars actually think it might be bull testicles because of a ritual associated with her, but I was never interested enough to read all the arguments about it.”
“Sure,” Andy stretched out her shoulders, rolling one side, then the other. “Titty testicle statue. Sounds sexy.”
She snorted.
“But why don’t you just ask Artemis what they’re supposed to be?”
Annabeth’s face made it clear how appetising she found this prospect. “You’re going to get the ugliest statue known to man, just for that.”
“And a sexy statue? Come on, I can pose for it now?” She jumped to her feet and stuck her hand in the air a la Superman. “Or maybe this?” her knees bent and body almost fell to the ground, caught by her hands.
“That’s not especially heroic, Andy.”
“I’m Spider-Man?” She rolled onto her back so she could look at her again. Her hand reached out to brush a few of her braids away from her face. “Who’s more heroic than that? Forget aristos achaion, I wanna be like aristos New York-ion.”
“You are a travesty to the Classical Greek languages,” she said.
“I’m something.”
“Well,” Annabeth said. “Are we going back to post cards and email then?”
“What do you mean?”
“When you go stay with your mom. I might be at camp, but you’re not.”
“Right,” she said, thinking about it. “Right. Right. Yeah. Um, I suppose? I don’t know if my mom has a computer, actually. Aren’t those expensive?”
“Seaweed Brain,” Annabeth said, clearly stuck between laughter and genuine upset. “Everyone has a computer now. Your mom is a professional author, she definitely has one. Just ask her if you can borrow it.”
“Right,” she said. “Of course. Right.”
“And you need to email me,” she said.
“Iris messages are pretty expensive,” she agreed. “Every night?”
She shrugged, not even embarrassed, which was funny since Andy’s face had been right red for at least the past five minutes. She was pretty sure it was, at least, given how hot it felt. She touched it, and it was like she’d been sitting next to the bonfire for an hour. “I’ll be checking. Deal?”
“Yeah,” she swallowed thickly, standing up with her, taking her hand. Annabeth held out a pinky finger, and she curled hers around it. It was less binding than a vow on the Styx. It was far more solemn than that. “I promise.”