Chapter Text
Camp Half-Blood had never been this quiet, and yet, it had never felt so afraid. Not afraid of the monsters, nor of the Prophecy of Seven that hung over their heads like a guillotine. They were afraid of her.
Annabeth Chase sat on the steps of the Big House, a map spread across her trembling knees.
Physically, Annabeth was fading. Her Black skin, which months ago glowed with the warmth of bronze under the sun and the vitality of adolescence, now held an ashen, dull cast, as if someone had turned down the saturation of the world around her. Her braids, usually a work of hair architecture—tight, clean, proud—were now loose and frizzy at the roots, falling over her face in a messy curtain that she swatted away with irritated hands.
Her brown eyes were the most terrifying part. They were sunk deep into dark sockets, bloodshot, vibrating with a manic intensity that bordered on madness. She wasn’t blinking enough. It seemed as if, were she to close her eyes for even a second, reality would finally finish shattering.
Rachel Elizabeth Dare approached her cautiously, hugging her own elbows. The Oracle, with her messy red hair and paint-splattered jeans, stopped two meters away. There was pity in her gaze, a deep, viscous sorrow that Annabeth detested.
"Annabeth," Rachel said softly. "The wind spirits haven't brought anything new. Maybe you should..."
"Maybe I should what?" Annabeth's voice sounded raspy, like ground glass. "Sleep? Eat? If you’ve come to tell me to 'have patience' again, Rachel, I swear I’m going to burn down your cave."
Rachel stepped back, biting her lip. She was wary of her, feeling a mix of fear and compassion. Seeing the strongest girl in camp reduced to an exposed nerve was painful.
"I’m just saying you’re killing yourself. And he wouldn’t want that."
Annabeth jumped to her feet, and the map fell to the ground.
"He isn't here to want anything!"
Before Annabeth could advance on the Oracle, a large, firm hand closed over her shoulder, anchoring her to the ground.
Clarisse La Rue was there.
If Annabeth was a building about to collapse, Clarisse was the reinforced concrete foundation. The daughter of Ares looked immense. Her dark skin shone with a thin sheen of sweat, healthy and alive, in stark contrast to Annabeth’s sickly pallor. Her hair, a black cloud, curly and voluminous that defied gravity, framed a face with a strong jaw and sharp cheekbones. She wore her worn leather jacket despite the heat, and her physical presence alone displaced the air around her.
"Beat it, Dare," Clarisse growled, not looking at the redhead, her dark eyes fixed on Annabeth. "Go paint the future or whatever it is you do. I’ll handle this."
Rachel nodded quickly, grateful for the excuse to flee, and vanished into the woods.
"Let go of me, Clarisse," Annabeth hissed, trying to pull away. But she was weak. She had been surviving for days on coffee and rotten adrenaline.
"No," Clarisse said. Her voice wasn't kind, but it wasn't cruel either. It was solid. "You’re coming with me. We’re going down to the lake."
"I have to be near the Big House, I have to..."
"The phone will ring just as loud down there. And up here you stink of desperation and you're scaring the newbies. Walk."
They didn't go very far, just enough for the cabin lights to become distant dots and the noise of the dining pavilion to fade. They settled in a small cove near the canoe docks, a secluded spot where Clarisse lit a small campfire that crackled against the dampness of the shore.
The lake water lapped gently at the sand, but the sound didn't calm Annabeth. She was sitting on a fallen log, predictably, staring at the map again, tracing invisible lines with a trembling finger under the firelight.
"Eat," Clarisse ordered, tossing her a protein bar.
The bar hit Annabeth’s chest and fell to the ground. She didn't pick it up.
"He’s not on the map, Chase," Clarisse said, pausing her sharpening. She looked at the girl across from her through the flames. She saw how Annabeth's t-shirt hung too loose on her now, how her collarbones jutted out painfully under her dark skin. "You can stare at that paper until your retinas burn out, but a magic X isn't going to appear."
Annabeth didn't answer. She kept muttering coordinates and names of cities.
Clarisse let out a sigh, drove the spear into the sand, and leaned forward, trying to use logic, trying to offer a tactical solution for a problem that wasn't military.
"Listen, I know you're worried. But it's Jackson. That idiot is harder to kill than a hydra." The daughter of the War God tried to sound sure, comforting in her own gruff way. "He’s alive, Annabeth. You know it. He has instinct, he’s powerful, he’s the most powerful demigod there is. He’s probably punching monsters and looking for a phone booth right now. We have to be patient and..."
"I KNOW HE'S ALIVE!"
Annabeth’s scream tore through the calm of the lake, making Clarisse tense instinctively.
Annabeth jumped to her feet, throwing the map into the sand, but she didn't even care. She started pacing in circles around the fire, her hands tugging at her own braids, hyperventilating.
"Of course he’s alive!" Annabeth shouted, spinning toward Clarisse with wild, bloodshot eyes. "That’s not the problem! The problem is that I don't know where! I don't know if he’s cold! I don't know if he’s hurt! I don't know why he isn't here and who has him or who took him!"
"Calm down, I know that..." Clarisse stood up, alarmed by the erratic energy radiating from the girl.
"Don't ask me to calm down!" Annabeth interrupted again, her voice breaking into sharp shards. "You don't understand. Nobody understands. Everyone thinks I miss him because he's my boyfriend. It’s not just that!"
Annabeth stopped pacing and clutched her chest, gasping as if the damp lake air had turned toxic. Tears ran free down her face, gleaming on her dark skin in the firelight.
"Percy..." she sobbed, and the name came out like an open wound. "Percy is humanity, Clarisse. He is pure humanity. He made the choices. He jumped into the void. He chose to save the world not because he was a soldier, but because he was good."
Annabeth took a staggering step toward Clarisse, pointing at herself with a trembling finger.
"Everything I know about being human, I learned from him. Before him, I was just a demigod. I was a strategy. I was armor. I was the girl who survived by the hammer. But he... he taught me to stop. He taught me to feel."
Her breathing turned into a painful wheeze. Annabeth seemed to be shrinking, collapsing under the weight of a terrible truth.
"Percy was human choices. He chose hope," Annabeth whispered, her voice dropping to a terrifying thread, almost airless. "But now he’s not here. And I... look at me, Clarisse. Look at me."
She pointed at herself again, hands shaking violently, her face a mask of absolute agony.
"I am not choices. Without him, I don't know how to be human." Annabeth closed her eyes, and her body jerked with a spasm of pain. "I am just... human pain. I am made of the things the world has taken from me. I am a monument to suffering."
Annabeth doubled over at the waist, as if someone had punched her in the stomach. The nausea of grief hit her.
"I’ve loved him since I was twelve, Clarisse," she said between dry heaves, her voice sounding sick, desperate. "Almost from the moment I saw him. And since thirteen... since thirteen I have lived with the certainty that he was going to die."
Annabeth looked up, and the desolation on her face made Clarisse want to look away.
"I spent four years trying not to love him. I spent years telling myself I didn't care, hardening myself, preparing for his funeral because the prophecy said he wouldn't make it to sixteen. I tried to protect my heart, Clarisse, I swear I tried."
Annabeth let out a pitiful moan, pulling at the collar of her t-shirt as if it were choking her.
"But we won. He lived! I begged the gods, I pleaded with them every night to let him live, and they did!" Her voice rose in pitch, hysterical. "Finally... finally I let my guard down. For the first time, I allowed myself to think about a future. About growing old. I allowed myself to believe we could be happy."
Annabeth stumbled forward, grabbing Clarisse's jacket in desperation, shaking her weakly.
"And now that I finally allow myself to love him without fear... now he's not here. And no one can tell me where he is. And my brain..." Annabeth hit her temple hard, hating herself. "I am a daughter of Athena, I'm supposed to be the smart one, but my brain isn't enough! Nothing I know is useful to find him. I am useless without him."
The confession hung in the night air, brutal and final. Annabeth was empty.
Clarisse felt something break inside her, watching the strongest girl she knew reduced to that: an outline of pure pain. Annabeth swayed, her knees giving way in the sand.
Clarisse didn't wait. She crossed the distance in one stride and caught Annabeth before she hit the ground.
"I’ve got you," Clarisse said, wrapping Annabeth in her strong arms, pressing her against her chest, against the hard leather of her jacket, trying to hold together the girl who was coming undone.
And then, Annabeth screamed.
It wasn't a battle cry, nor a tactical order. It was a howl of despair, an animalistic, broken sound that echoed over the dark water of the lake, tearing through the night. Annabeth clung to Clarisse, digging her fingers into her back, and collapsed completely.
Clarisse felt the impact of that scream in her own bones. She squeezed Annabeth tight, feeling how fragile the girl felt under her leather jacket. She had always thought of Annabeth as a bronze statue: immovable, brilliant, hard. But now, holding this body racked by violent spasms, Clarisse realized with horror how small she actually was. Without her armor of sarcasm, without her plans, without her pride... Annabeth was just a girl who had held too much weight for too long.
Clarisse’s dark eyes, usually full of fire and mockery, crystallized. A layer of hot, furious tears clouded her vision, though she refused to let them fall.
Dammit, Clarisse thought, feeling a painful lump in her throat. Damn the gods. Damn the prophecies.
She knew how to fight drakons. She knew how to break enemy lines. But she didn't know how to fight this. She didn't have a weapon to kill the absence. She couldn't stab the pain that was devouring her friend from the inside out. She felt useless, a feeling she detested, while she felt Annabeth's ribs expand and contract against her chest in a rhythm of panic.
Clarisse blinked to clear the moisture from her eyes, feeling a fierce, protective rage. She hated seeing her like this. She hated that the girl who held up the sky was being crushed by the earth. But above all, she hated knowing that Annabeth was right: they had won the war, but Annabeth had lost the reason she had wanted to win the war.
"Cry," Clarisse whispered in the darkness, her own voice hoarse and trembling, betraying the wetness in her eyes. "Cry it all out. I’ve got you. I’m not letting go."
While Annabeth sobbed against her neck, soaking Clarisse's clothes with hot tears, the daughter of Ares held her position. She stood there, motionless as a rock in the middle of the storm, bearing the weight of her friend's collapse, with glassy eyes reflecting the flames of the campfire and a silent promise burning in her chest: Jackson would come back to her.