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The first time it happens is a week after their first quest. They’d just finished up a (very successful) game of Capture the Flag when Percy trots up to her, sweaty and grinning, his face smudged with dirt, and something hidden behind his back. Then, casual as anything, he holds it out to her like he’d been doing it their whole lives. “I got this for you.”
Annabeth narrows her eyes at him. “What’s that, and what’s it for?”
“Huh?” Percy blinks, then looks down at his hand, apparently having forgotten what he was holding. “Uh, I’m pretty sure it’s a daisy. It’s not really for anything, I guess. It’s just pretty.” Annabeth just keeps carefully studying it, so he starts to lower his hand, expression gentle and understanding. “You don’t have to take it if–”
“No!” Annabeth snaps, her hand darting out to grab the stem before it can retreat any farther. She focuses very hard on not squeezing it tight enough to bruise the delicate thing. “You said you got it for me, so it’s mine now.”
Percy’s eyes squint up over his smile like they always do when he’s really happy about something, and she quietly wonders to herself if he was directing it at her or the flower. “Okay, good. And just so you know, I did actually ask one of the dryads if it was okay to pick, so you don’t have to worry about them cursing you or anything. My mom taught me manners.”
Annabeth laughs as a way to mask the fact that she hadn’t even considered the fury of nature spirits, despite the fact that it should have been her first thought. She wants to say something, maybe to demand an answer or maybe to offer thanks, she isn’t sure, but before she can, the dinner conch sounds, distant but insistent, and Percy turns his head towards the Pavilion before grinning back at her. “See you at the campfire?” She just silently nods, and Percy tears off towards his cabin to wash up.
Annabeth is left alone, still a little wrongfooted, but she quickly gathers herself and makes her way back to Cabin Six, the daisy cradled close to her chest. She’s studying the flower with every step, so focused on the soft white petals that she nearly runs headlong into Malcolm, who’s coming down the steps as she’s going up. “Woah, careful there,” he says, balancing her with a steadying hand on her elbow. He glances down at the flower she was still being so very careful with, then back up to her face. “Whatcha got there?”
Annabeth feels her cheeks heat up in an instant, and she shoulders past her brother to the safety of their cabin. “Nothing! None of your business!”
Malcolm immediately puts his hands up in surrender, a smile playing at his mouth. “Okay, not my business. Got it.”
She’s relieved when Malcolm, true to his word, doesn’t follow her, and she’s free to unearth the encyclopedia from under her bed. She hesitates for a moment before sneaking over to Nellie’s desk to steal a couple sheets of plain white paper to line the pages. Then she gently lays the daisy in the middle of the page, and closes the book over it. She can feel her heart pounding away in her chest, and, before she can think herself silly, she sends a quick prayer to Chloris that she hadn’t completely ruined the fragile gift.
With her unexpected ritual complete, she quickly cleans up for dinner and rushes to meet up with her siblings. She’s determined to not think about it too hard, but she doesn’t stop smiling for the rest of the night.
It takes a while, but eventually Annabeth understands, really and truly, that Percy’s desire to give her flowers isn’t a one-off. She doesn’t have to desperately covet and preserve each and every one of them, hoarding them away in secret so that she’ll have a record when the well finally dries up. Life as a demigod is hard, nearly everything has a price and can vanish in an instant, but there are a few things she’s learned she can count on. Apollo will always raise the sun in the east, Cabin Nine will always make camp activities 20% more dangerous in an attempt to help, and Percy will carefully pluck and present her with any pretty flowers that catch his attention. Annabeth has a dusty old encyclopedia stuffed to the bursting with daisies and dandelions and dogwoods to prove it.
So, when they’re walking up the driveway leading to West Hall and Percy hands her the bright yellow blossom of winter aconite, she doesn’t feel the need to stash it away, safe and sound. Instead, she takes it with a startlingly self-assured smile and carefully weaves it into the braid hanging over her shoulder.
To her surprise, Percy actually trips, and she furrows her brow. “What’s wrong?”
Percy casts a glance at Thalia, who is leading their march, but she’s not paying them any real attention. Percy awkwardly clears his throat. “You, uh, actually kept it. The flower, I mean.”
Her furrow gets deeper and there’s a little wisp of doubt curling in her chest. “Did you not want me to keep it?”
“No!” Percy blurts, and Annabeth can see the way his cheeks are flushing from more than just the cold. Thalia glances over her shoulder at them, so Percy deliberately averts his gaze and Annabeth covers her smile with her hand. “No, I do definitely want you to keep them,” he insists, his voice lowered to keep their conversation private. “I just… didn’t think you did.”
Annabeth refrains from telling him about her archive of devotion back home and just squeezes his hand. “I like this one. It matches my dress.”
Percy’s smile is wide and brilliant enough to put Apollo out of a job and he squeezes her hand back. “Yeah, that’s why I picked it.”
Annabeth wants to reply, but that’s when they make it to the front door of the school, and Grover comes out, anxiously dancing from hoof to hoof while he regales them with his exploits, and suddenly it’s mission time. Annabeth tells herself that she’ll talk to Percy about just how much his little gifts mean to her when she has more time.
She never actually gets to have that conversation because she never gets the time. One thing leads to another, and she sees the manticore about to attack Percy and she leaps onto its back without thinking. She falls over a cliff, she’s taken by the enemy, and before she knows it, she’s holding up the sky. Luke is there, he tricked her, and the delicate blossom is being trampled under an unthinking boot. It’s the first time she’s ever lost one of the flowers Percy gave her, and she feels her heart get crushed right along with the aconite.
But then the sky is off her shoulders and Percy is there and the world is saved. She’s at another dance, just like the interrupted one at West Hall, though this one is on Mount Olympus. Just like last time, Percy offers her a brilliant yellow flower, though this time Annabeth’s eyes widen and she looks around, face paling. “Percy,” she hisses. “You can’t pick flowers here!”
Percy laughs, the sound quiet and fond. “Don’t worry, I didn’t. I told you, my mom taught me manners.”
With that assurance, Annabeth carefully takes the flower and braids it into her hair. “Okay, I guess. Where did you get it, then?”
“I asked her, over there,” he explains, waving at a goddess across the room. Annabeth looks over to see a goddess with long green hair the color of spring grass and a basket of freshly picked blossoms on her arm. It’s Chloris herself, waving back with a knowing smile on her face. Percy turns back to Annabeth. “She seemed to know you, for some reason.”
Annabeth feels her cheeks flush, thinking about all of the prayers she’d sent to Chloris over the years, and she hopes Percy is too much of a Seaweed Brain to notice. “Well, she is a goddess. Knowing more than you think she should is kinda part of their whole deal.”
Fortunately, Percy accepts that excuse and he takes a deep, calming breath. He wipes his presumably sweaty palms on his pants. “Uh, Annabeth? There was, um, there was something I wanted to ask you.”
She cocks her head to the side. “Yeah? What is it?”
Percy studies her for a moment, words forming in his mouth, but she can see the moment he changes his mind. Instead, he offers his hand and a sheepish smile. “Um, well, we kinda got interrupted at the last party we went to, and I was wondering if maybe we can try dancing again?”
Annabeth feels her cheeks split open into an almost embarrassingly wide smile and she takes his hand. It’s warm and fits with hers like a puzzle piece. “Yeah. We can try again.”
She wants to tell herself not to think too much of it – it’s just a dance, after all – but as they awkwardly sway in time to music only they can hear, she knows she won’t have much luck.
Over the years, Percy keeps giving Annabeth flowers, and Annabeth keeps each and every one, even on quests, even during battles, even when they’re wandering through the Labyrinth and Rachel is there and she’s so, so mad at him for being such a boy. She always makes sure to tuck them behind her ear or pin them to her shirt or weave them into her hair before she carefully preserves them, tucking them between the pages of an architecture textbook now that her encyclopedia is more flower than fact. Every time Percy sees her proudly wearing his gifts, his face lights up and Annabeth’s heart warms like a cat lounging in the sun.
But then she stops getting flowers.
It’s not his fault, of course it isn’t. Percy presses a stalk of pink foxglove into her hand and a kiss to her cheek, promising to meet up with her after breakfast, like he always does, and then he’s just gone. He’s stolen from his bed in the middle of the night, leaving Annabeth with empty promises and books full of long-dead flowers.
Every day he’s gone is a day Annabeth spends baring her teeth at the Fates, insisting they give him back. She searches high and low, calls in every favor she can think of, and she never ever falters. She will find him, she will keep him, and no plans made by a meddling goddess are going to stop her.
In the evenings, though, she takes off her armor, she sheaths her blade, and she lets her face fall. She sleeps in the Poseidon cabin now, and nobody says anything about the flagrant disrespect for the rules, not even the sea god himself. She curls up on Percy’s favorite bunk and every night she flips through her flower collection, determined to remember each and every one of them.
A bright fuchsia azalea plucked during a walk through Central Park.
A cherry blossom he’d picked from the tree outside his apartment and carried all the way to Camp.
A stalk of heather from Virginia when they’d stopped there on a quest.
A purple iris given to her after they’d successfully defended New York.
A brilliant yellow blossom that still glows faintly, gifted by a goddess.
And, of course, a lone white daisy, simple and unassuming and all the more lovely for it. She doesn’t dare touch it, still terrified it will shatter even after all these years, but she cherishes it, more than anything. Percy may be gone right now, but he was here and he loved her and she can prove it.
She doesn’t stop looking, even when she finds out that there’s apparently a whole Roman demigod camp that she never knew of and Percy is there, probably as lost and memory-less as Jason. She doesn’t admit it to anyone, but the amnesia is what scares her the most, because she knows Percy. She knows he can handle any physical threat. But the very idea that she’s just a memory to be erased from Percy’s mind and that he might never fully recover? That she might not ever get another flower from him again? She doesn’t let herself think about that.
Instead, she makes herself think about flying warships and a second once-in-a-lifetime world-ending prophecy, and before she knows it they’re sailing for California and he’s there. He’s right there, and Annabeth forgets to think about anything and she’s running towards him. Then, for just a moment, she’s furious, and she flips him over her shoulder just like they’ve been doing during sparring for years and she’s yelling at him and he’s laughing and smiling up at her like there’s nowhere else he’d rather be than on his back in the dirt with her knee planted on his chest. Then she’s smiling right back at him and tears are stinging in her eyes and they’re kissing and everything is at least a little bit okay.
Unfortunately but unsurprisingly, things aren’t okay for long, and they wind up fleeing New Rome with an angry Legion in hot pursuit. Annabeth can’t really make herself care too much, though, because she’s in the stables non the Argo II with Percy and his arms are around her and for the first time in months she feels solid.
“Oh, I almost forgot. I got you something in Alaska,” he says suddenly. She shifts forward to watch him curiously as he rifles for something in his pocket. “Some of my memories are still kinda fuzzy, so I’m not entirely sure why I got it, I just knew I had to. Sorry that it’s kinda messed up; you don’t have to keep it if you don’t want to.”
Then he pulls out a cluster of flowers, tiny and blue with bright yellow centers. A little crushed from the travel, but wonderful all the same. Annabeth lets out a wet chuckle and presses her fingers to her lips as she takes the flower from him because it was all too perfect.
Forget-me-nots.
“Thank you,” she says softly, eyes tracing over every leaf and petal. “It’s perfect.”
Percy smiles at her like he’s thinking the same thing about her, and she can’t resist the urge to lean forward and kiss him. She knows right then and there that she loves this boy with every atom of her being, and he loves her right back, quests and monsters and Olympus itself be damned.
She thinks to herself that she’d very much like to marry Percy one day. One day when they’re older and settled, maybe with a whole garden of flowers that have no use other than being pretty. Some part of her deep down knows that one day he will ask her, and she thinks he’ll get down on one knee and present her with a ring with the same manners and sincerity that he’d used to present every flower. She thinks that she’ll say yes, and she thinks that when she walks down that aisle, ready and eager to dedicate the rest of her life to a man who's had her heart since before she knew how to properly give it away – to a grinning, dirt-smudged boy who claimed her, not through a demand, but through the simple, selfless act of giving – she'll be cradling a bouquet of white daisies. Simple and unassuming and all the more lovely for it.
She’s quite happy to let herself think about it all she wants.