Chapter Text
It's a day after the Fleece worked its magic on Thalia's tree.
Well. Technically it hasn't been a full day yet, it's later that same night, but it feels like ages have passed. After Thalia and Percy have both been stabilized, Annabeth stays with them under the canopy of the makeshift infirmary tent. With her dagger across her knees, her thumb running over its metal hilt.
She hears Luke's voice. The way he sounded when first looking, and then not looking at her: "It was mine first, remember? Everything ends up where it should."
He had wanted the Fleece to awaken Thalia. Annabeth ducks her head, feeling her eyes prickle. She had told him about it, and she saw the instant hope - but he had used that hope to fuel his hate. She winces, closes her eyes as she sees the way he fought Percy in her mind again. How Luke had thrown him to the ground, the slope of the hill, and beat him to a pulp, hammering Percy into the grass with blow after blow; beating him bloody and then he lifted his sword...
If he hadn't been stopped, Percy would be dead.
Annabeth swipes her hand underneath each of her eyes, blinking and glancing over at Percy. His skin is still paler than normal, white save for the red and purple bruises underneath his eyes, the swelling just above his lips.
He thought Luke was his friend. He told her that, after Luke had left camp last summer. His voice was breaking, cracking and quiet. "...I thought he was my friend," Percy had whispered. "Like, a REAL friend." He had dropped his head and sniffed, recapping his sword. "But I guess he wasn't."
Annabeth's heart had ached, because - Luke was still her friend. Her family. He clearly still cares about her, but ...she looks at Percy's at once bloodless and bloodied face in the flickering of light and shadows. She clenches one hand around her dagger that was Luke's. Wind catches at her braids and flutters across the tent overhead. She shifts closer to Percy, where his hand still rests at his side, fingers slightly curled.
I am, she wants to say. I'm your friend, Seaweed Brain.
She thinks of what he had said to her, when they were at CC's spa. "Tyson's dead, Grover's lost. If I had to choose between saving you and saving Olympus, Annabeth - I'd burn it all down."
She had been worried, then, because of the fact that in his sincerity, there was an intensity. A darkness. But her heart had thudded with something else, something like gratitude, too. And honestly something more, something that made her stomach flutter. She never had anyone swear to do something so immense for HER. Thalia took her to Camp, she had said they take care of their own, but Percy...he keeps on choosing her. He told her that it only took him two days to see how special she was; he considered a choice the right choice because it was hers. She is used to being scoffed at, to see rolling eyes or hear grumbles about her being an owl head or wise girl, but Percy is the only person who doesn't seem forever frustrated by that.
He was on their first quest together, but he had the right to feel like that. Annabeth understands, or at least, she can extrapolate. He'd only just found out that he was a demigod, his mother was taken...and she was the person he cared about the most.
Annabeth can't relate to that.
She can think six steps ahead, but the human choices, like she said to Percy - one of those is how she feels about her mom, the desperate desire for approval; and her dad, for whom, because of whom she feels hurt. A deep, digging sense of hurt and anger when she thinks about him for too long. Because he might love her, but he loves his mortal life more. He loves his new wife, and their kids, and he hates the incursions of monsters. He's... exasperated by her, she thinks. By her decisions and choices. She couldn't just be a kid, like she couldn't enjoy horror movies or rollercoaster rides.
She looks at Percy again, thinking of his earnest questions about whether or not she loved it, and had she watched Jaws?
"I'll tell you what," she now says, blinking her eyes and raising them upwards. "I'll try watching it again, or - I'll watch something else, some more movies with you, okay? Just." She extends her hand and curls it around his, squeezing. "... you need to wake up. This can't be the way you go out. It isn't gonna be. It's not." She rolls her lips, tears burning in her eyes as she glances over to where Thalia lies. "It isn't for either one of you. You're both strong. Too strong to- go out like this."
She won't be able to handle it. She puts her palm under Percy's fingers, rubbing her thumb across his knuckles and the back of his hand. He isn't feverish, but he's still clammy. Still pale. Still not opening his eyes and speaking in that soft way that he does to her. Although the last thing he had said was loud, harsh- he had shouted her name.
He was bleeding, and his eyes were burning as he charged across the grass to her. He would have stopped everything, she knew. If she hadn't said she was okay, he wouldn't have left her side. But then... Would he have been engulfed by Thalia's lightning then? Could she have thought ahead and kept him safe?
But no, she had been in pain, but knew he needed to keep fighting.
Did he, though? Is this worth it, when the Great Prophecy hangs over them? Could she, should she have changed anything?
"The prophecy won't be changed, Annabeth Chase," says the heavy tone of voice that accompanies footfalls- hoofbeats.
Wind rises as her face does, and standing with his shadow falling over her as well as two campers beside him is
"Chiron," she breathes, untangling her hand from Percy's as she stands.
"Yes, child." He sighs. "Please sit down, don't trouble yourself." Looking back to the taller of the campers that had accompanied him, "thank you, Clarisse," he says.
The daughter of Ares nods, her chin jutted as she shifts her hand on the shaft of her spear. "Yes sir. I'll go back to the barrier," she adds. Eyes shifting to Annabeth, she asks "you good, Chase?"
"Yes," Annabeth responds. "Thanks, Clarisse."
With one more short nod, Clarisse turns and heads back along the hillside. The other camper who had come with Chiron now enters the tent. It's little Will Solace, bearing blankets and bandages. Chiron has saddlebags that he slings over his haunches with a "here, lad," and Annabeth hears a sloshing sound come from within. "I stopped to gather from our nectar stores," the centaur says.
"Thanks Mister Chiron!" Will carefully takes the pithos containing nectar within and brings it to Percy's side. Putting down the large bundle of cloth he carries, the skinny boy picks up and dunks a strip of cloth into water, a tub of which remains beside the beds, and places it on Percy's forehead. "His fever seems like it's gone," Will says. "Which is great."
Annabeth nods, softly saying "thank the gods," but her focus goes back to Chiron where he stands with head inclined under the apex of the tent. His eyes are on her as she says "-what do you think, Chiron? Since Thalia has returned."
Chiron digs his front right hoof into the ground briefly. "This has not changed the Great Prophecy, Annabeth my dear." Chiron gets wrinkles in his smooth forehead. "-I'm afraid it has only complicated it."