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Annabeth wants, desperately, to say that she knew. That she saw it coming. Wishes that her cherished wisdom has translated to some kind of foresight about what would happen.
She should have known.
She didn't know.
He's always been so human, so much more human than her, Poseidon's ichor worth so much less than Sally’s influence. She just forgot. He makes the myths of his father's children seem distant.
But still. Annabeth should have known.
Poseidon is the Father of Monsters. And Percy is his son.
—
Clarisse’s boat is iron and rust and death. Annabeth hates it. It makes the air smell like blood no matter where you stand on the deck. That's half of why she parks herself up by the wheel, to get away from the enclosed stench of the cabins below, the rotting flesh and the thick flakes of metal.
The other half of the reason is kind of the same reason as the first half: she parks herself up near the wheel because that's where Percy is, and the air smells like true ocean there because that's where Percy is.
She's never really talked about it to him, mostly because it's entirely too weird to make a comment to him about how he smells.
Hey, by the way, Percy, did you know you always smell vaguely salty and oceany, but not in the dead fish kind of way, in a good way? And I really like it?
No. Gods no. She would rather take another trip to the Underworld. Not happening.
But it's the truth. He always smells like clean ocean water. The smell gets stronger when he's around true water, so it's nearly overwhelming now. But she prefers it to anywhere else on deck, where it smells like war and defeat.
Percy is kind of fascinating to watch pilot the ship. He moves instinctively, at times murmuring coordinates to himself under his breath. Even nearing the mouth of the Sea of Monsters, the wind passes affectionately through his hair, tugs at his clothes like a fond sibling.
Finally, he looks over at her, and there's a curious pinch across his features, half self-conscious, half… pained? Perhaps? It puts a perfect crinkle right between his eyebrows. “You're staring,” he says. It's not phrased as a question, but it has the bearing of one nonetheless.
Annabeth’s cheeks go hot. Instead of answering his not-question, she poses one of her own. “You're grinding your teeth.”
“Yeah,” he says, frowning. “They just started hurting out of nowhere. Maybe it's a stress thing. Are stress toothaches a thing?”
“Why would I know?”
He shrugs, and the whole ship wobbles, just a bit. She doesn't think he notices. “I don't know. I guess I just figured you keep whole mental libraries about random fun facts. If I had to ask anyone if stress toothaches are a thing, I would ask you.”
She can't help the pleased prickle in her chest at those words. The sheer confidence he holds in her is as flattering as it is terrifying. “You should consult a doctor. Or a dentist.”
“Yeah, that would go over great. Hey, doc, I keep going on these life-threatening quests to save the world and also the Greek gods- which are real, by the way- and I think I might be getting a stress toothache. Thoughts? I already don't floss. They're gonna kick me out pretty soon.”
And because it's in good fun and the air smells clean and salty around him and his eyes are stormy gray like the sea around them, and because Annabeth sorely needs a laugh, she laughs.
She should have known. (Stupid. Stupid not to see. Later, it will all make sense.)
—
C.C. of C.C.’s Island Resort and Spa is soft-spoken and warm and Annabeth can taste the power in the very air around her.
It’s like that, sometimes, with beings from the world of the Gods. The Olympians in any disguise leak power. It comes from strongly magical items. Powerful naiads and dryads have the aura. She felt it around Thalia. Feels it around Percy. It's the sensation of magic and potential straining at the reins of a stubborn chariot driver. The echo of a body attempting not to shatter under an overflow of strength.
C.C. feels like that at soon as she swans down the stairs to greet them. It makes Annabeth wary of her. Creatures and beings that powerful are not always to be trusted.
They watch a brave hero sail on jetski to his death, a fun snack for the sirens.
There’s not really a polite way to turn down the dress, even though she sort of really wishes there were. It’s clean, at least, and fits her well, but it makes her stomach crawl, a little bit. It’s a consolation prize to see Percy suffering through his own fancy clothing, but at least they both don’t smell like sweat and shipwreck anymore. He’s still grinding his teeth though. The furrow between his brow clings stubbornly.
They walk into C.C.’s office crawling with creatures, and watch her do magic, real magic, and everything snaps into place. Circe volunteers the information herself.
“Turning Odysseus’s men into pigs,” she says, waving a hand, “that was the old me. I’ve changed. I’ve come so far. I’m not a monster, or a god, or a demigod. I am banished here, and I make the best of it by helping people.”
She looks over them both and her eyes are sharp, like she can see straight through them. She glances over Annabeth and nods, humming, like Annabeth is a picture starting to take shape. Then she looks over Percy, who sets his jaw stubbornly.
The furrow is still there, and Annabeth leans closer. He looks over at her, and she murmurs, “Headache?”
Percy is powerful, she knows. Gods, she knows it, and he’s young now. It scares her, thinking of how strong he could get, when he nearly pried their ship out of the jaws of Charybdis herself, changing the pull of the greatest whirlpool the Sea of Monsters has to offer. But she remembers Thalia, and the way Luke would have to drag her around after bad fights, static sparking in her hair and a glazed look in her eyes. Remembers how Percy was after the fight with Ares last summer, half-dead in the back of a taxi and drooling on her shoulder, his pulse thready and weak. Magic costs power and sometimes it makes him tilt and lean and ache. Human bodies can only hold so much divinity, and demigods like Thalia and Percy get a heavy share.
His frown deepens. He winces and shakes his head. “No. I mean, sort of, but it’s the toothache.”
“Still?” Annabeth asks.
“Oh!” says Circe. “My goodness. Yes, I would have forgotten. You all must be brand new here in the Sea. We’ll see if we can get you something for that, Percy. We might even be able to speed it up somehow. The teething is always unfortunate.” She walks behind her desk and starts rifling in some of her drawers. “You know, I did always wonder why your father made it such a long process. Surely he could find some more efficient way, get it out of the way, but no, weeks and weeks and weeks of it. But we can fix that, surely. Certainly easier than fatal flaws, I must say.”
“Sorry, what?” says Percy. His voice is starting to gain some of that deadly edge to it that it gets sometimes, when he tips over from alarm into fierce focus. “Teething? I’ve already got teeth, if you couldn’t tell.”
Circe stands up. She tilts her head at Percy. “Well, of course, silly, but your second teeth.”
“I already have all my adult teeth,” he insists, but Annabeth has a sudden, sinking feeling in her stomach. It’s been so long since they had a Poseidon child at camp. Maybe… but no. Surely Chiron would have remembered?
Circe’s mouth forms a perfect o of understanding. Then it melts into something entirely too like pity for Annabeth to appreciate it. She smiles and it’s sugary sweet, sympathetic, gleeful. The face of a woman who likes magic and likes curiosity and likes to watch people become something else. “Oh, sweetheart. I meant your other teeth. You came to the Sea of Monsters. Your father really didn’t warn you?”
“Percy,” Annabeth says hurriedly. She pulls at his arm and feels the slight shake to it. “You should sit down.”
He looks over at her, and his eyes are panicked. His pupils are wider than normal. (She’s so stupid. So prideful. So convinced she could do it. She should have listened to Chiron. He shouldn’t have come.)
He turns back to Circe. “Warn me about what?”
“Well, your fangs, of course. And whatever else comes. It’s always different, really. No two children the same. But with Poseidon, well.” She laughs, gentle and chiming and horrifying, horrifying in this room with Percy as something inside him starts to shift and click and it will never be the same again, Annabeth knows. “You always know you’ll get something strange with Poseidon. He is the Father of Monsters, after all. Really, you’re quite fine work, for him. Minimal extra limbs, average amount of eyes, well formed teeth, even if you’re about to have some more.”
She looks down at her drawers. “Ah! There it is.” She scoops out a jar and shakes it. She opens it up to expose sparkling black sand. “Here. This can speed up the changes for you, if you’d like. Just get them all out of the way.” She leans closer, conspiratorial, and stage-whispers, “I know I always like skipping to the end results, don’t you?”
The pitcher on her desk explodes.
—
Annabeth’s fatal flaw is pride, and she’s proud of it. It’s not for nothing. She is that good. She dumps a whole slew of godly multivitamins into the guinea pig cage, and backs up as it explodes with a deafening boom. Curled up in the middle of the crushed stand, surrounded by a half a dozen enormous pirates, is Percy. She lurches in and grabs his arm, going to haul him up, as Circe shrieks and starts to flee, and-
(It makes sense, she knows logically. All magical transformation is similar to some degree, and one type can speed up another. It makes sense, but she didn’t think of it. It feels like all she’s doing lately is not thinking of things.)
She almost jumps. Almost pulls away. It’s the immediate, instinctive reaction. But she swallows it. Holds on as Percy reflexively unsheathes fishhook claws against her skin, webs splitting between his fingers.
She’s been speaking to Thalia’s tree for years. Bark and pine needles in the towering shape of an old friend. This isn’t so different, she rationalizes. At least Percy is still here. She'll accept anything, if he’s still here.
She hauls him up to his feet and says, “We have to go,” and doesn’t flinch when his pupils are too wide, his eyes a sharper blue than they should be.
—
Percy hauls them both onto the deck of the ship, Annabeth clinging to his back as he scales the boards, digging furrows into the sea-stained wood with his new, gleaming white claws. They both drop onto the deck. He goes flat on his back, heaving, and Annabeth retches up seawater on her hands and knees. He sits up and asks, “Are you okay?”
She wipes her mouth with her hand, and grimaces as it does absolutely nothing, because her hand is also wet. Percy is dry, because the ocean loves him, even if Poseidon is never around himself. “I-” she chokes out. She tries to find the strength to say, I’m fine. But what comes out, miserable and broken-hearted and small, is, “I thought I could do it.”
Percy slides closer, and wraps her into a hug. She sinks onto his shoulder, and cries. She closes her eyes into the sting of the salt water and sobs, horrible and humiliating. He fists his fingers in her jacket, and she thinks about claws and wide pupils. She thinks about the embrace of parents. About the lack of it.
Here she is, with her friend, as the Sea of Monsters changes him forever, and he’s giving her comfort. Just the thought of it makes her cry even harder.
The ship steers on impassively, easily, because the son of Poseidon is here, and he won’t let them die like that.
When Percy finally releases her, he pulls back and says, “Well, another adventure for the books, huh? Maybe next time you let me tag along, though.” There’s an edge of lingering panic in his voice.
She’s so close to his face that she can see it. He watches her with blue eyes and massive pupils, like a deep-sea creature, made for the dark. He blinks with a nictitating membrane that he doesn’t seem to notice, too worried to blink like a human, to look away from her for even a second. Across his cheeks, subtle and small, in the sparkling sunshine of a golden morning, there is a dusting of scales the same color as his skin. Still Percy. Still Percy.
“Yeah,” she chokes out with a laugh. “Next time, you’re invited, Seaweed Brain.”
Later, as they talk about the sirens and what they saw or didn’t see, Annabeth watches his hands. It’s strange, to see them suddenly so different. To see him suddenly so different, and yet the same.
He catches her staring, and looks down at his hands. He flinches at the sight of them, and curls his hands into fists, hiding the retracted claws in his palms. There’s a flash of loathing in his eyes that makes Annabeth sit up.
“Can I see?” she asks, impulsive.
He glances up at her. He’s back to blinking like a human, but in the sunlight, his nictitating membranes are pulled over his pupils, protecting his newly sensitive eyesight. “Why?” he asks, a bite of defensiveness in his voice.
“Because I’m curious,” she admits. Because she wants to know everything about him, so she can know when and how to reel him back in. So she can keep him alive. (She ignores the part of her brain that whispers that knowing about his claws isn’t half as important as knowing about his fatal flaw. Maybe it is more curiosity than anything. But when does Annabeth actually ask for things she wants?)
Percy gnaws on his lip. He looks down at his fists, and she spots it again, the flash of self-loathing. Then he sighs, heavy, because he’s a creature of generosity at his core, and slowly extends his hands to her. “Sure. What can it hurt, at this point?” he laughs, a little hysterically.
Annabeth takes his fisted hands and forces her thumbs into the center of his palms so they unfurl. They uncurl reluctantly, like wounded animals. The backs of his hands are sprinkling with a dusting of sparkling scales, one that she suspects with some bit of Percy intuition will only get thicker. The scales are the same color as his slowly-tanning skin, outlined at the very edges by shimmering silver.
She spreads his fingers. In the gaps between every finger but his thumb, webbing spreads, similar in color but vaguely translucent, enough to see her own fingers between his. Where nail beds used to rest in his fingers, the tips of razor-sharp claws protrude. The bone is glossy and white, like new teeth. She passes the pad of her thumb over the back of his hand, down the webbing, across the tip of a new claw.
He sits perfectly, rigidly, unnaturally still. He only twitches when she touches the base of his thumb claw and an involuntary shiver ripples down his shoulders. The claw twitches at the slight pressure.
“Did you know this could happen?” he asks quietly. She wants to strangle whatever put the tremble in his voice. She wants to hit herself for her answer.
“No,” she says honestly. Her stomach twists at his distraught voice. Terrified of his own body, and trying so hard not to show her. Not to be mad. Not to feel any kind of way about the violent and sudden difference. “I didn’t think… it never even crossed my mind.” She pauses. “I’m sorry, Percy. I should have thought about it. I should have realized. I should have-”
“Stop,” he interrupts. She looks up, away from his hands, to his face. His eyes are closed, his face downcast. “You couldn’t have known.”
She could have, though. She should have. That’s her job.
After Thalia died, she obsessively read everything she could find about children of Zeus. She memorized the stories of ancient heroes like it could somehow bring her closer to the girl that was never going to come back to her. Like she could rationalize the useless sacrifice of it all by consuming whatever other histories she could find. The foolish errand of a foolish little girl who hadn’t learned to accept her losses yet.
She didn’t do that with Poseidon children, because it hadn’t felt necessary. Percy lived, at least until the end of his first summer. She knows the basic heroes, of course, but she should have studied more. Maybe then she would have been prepared. Maybe then he could have been prepared.
She’s not stupid enough to think that this transformation would have stopped him from coming after Grover. He would have come anyway. He just would have been ready for it.
“Luke was right,” Annabeth says, apropos of nothing.
That makes Percy’s eyes snap open.
She shrugs at him. “Gods, monsters, demigods. We’re all one big messed up family, aren’t we?”
“You’re the queen of comfort, you know that?” he snarks. She catches the edge of wounded hurt to his voice.
“No, that’s not-” She once again curses her inability to say anything right when it comes to friends. She’s bad at this. It’s maybe the only thing she’s bad at. “I just meant, you’re not any different now. This doesn’t change anything. You’re still Percy.” She grips his hand, and smiles at him. “I mean, how much weirder is this than the toilet water incident?”
That, finally, gets a startled laugh, and a shy smile. But it fades quickly. “You’re fine with this?” he asks. “Really?”
She stares at him, his too-wide pupils and whole extra set of eyelids and the scales just starting to come in. She pictures him with fangs. What will they be? Jagged like a shark’s? Sharp like an eel’s? Blunted like an alligator’s? Divine heritage in the form of unwelcome changes, and a body that no longer feels like his own.
Percy Jackson with scales and fangs and claws in the place of nails is still Percy Jackson.
(She thinks of the Great Prophecy. Thinks about Thalia. Thinks about fatal flaws and about loyalty and about, Annabeth, I would burn it all down. If she were as smart as she knows she is, she would pull back. Would wrap walls around her aching heart before he can climb into it and break it sometime in the next three years. She doesn’t want to love a dead boy. She doesn’t want to lose anyone else. She doesn’t want to care about Percy Jackson.
She thinks it’s probably way too late for that, now, though.)
“I am fine with this,” she says. “Really.” You can be any kind of monster you want, if you just keep living, Percy.
He huffs, and she watches as, finally, some of the cut of tension in his shoulders eases. “Okay,” he says. “Cool. Thanks.” A pause. “I’m gonna get so much shit at camp.”
She snorts. “Is the big bad hero afraid of a little teasing?”
“The big bad hero is afraid baby campers will try to gut him,” he says drily, “and that the older campers will try to push him in the lava pit.”
The monster in Annabeth’s stomach roars protectively. “Don’t worry,” she says, “I’ll protect your honor.” She says it jokingly, to disguise the way she’s already planning to socially punish anyone who actually does give Percy shit for it.
“My hero,” he says sarcastically, but her heart leaps at it anyway.
She looks back down. She’s still holding his hand. He’s warm, his palms just starting to develop the weapon calluses that Annabeth has had for years, though they’re slightly different, from a sword and not a dagger. She tilts her head, considering. The golden light of the morning is still hanging in the air. The sea glitters poisonous green, and the sun casts the whole deck in a warm glow. It makes his white claws gleam golden.
She thinks back to watching her stepmother declaw kittens, the way she had pushed them out. On an impulse, she runs her thumb over Percy’s palm, searching. And there, at the base of the thumb, she finds it. She presses, hopeful, and-
Percy lets out a strangled yelp and jerks back, but Annabeth keeps a hold of his wrist. She watches, fascinated, as his claws involuntarily slide out to their full glory, nearly a full inch of wickedly hooked bone. “What the- how did you find that so fast?” he complains, his voice cracking.
Annabeth laughs. “Athena never fails,” she says. She stares, transfixed, at the curve of them, gleaming in the sunlight. The part of her that can never relax enough to stop planning is terribly, perfectly delighted with them. Nevermind that Anaklusmos will always return to him eventually. Percy will never be without a weapon again.
“Alright, weirdo,” he says finally, when he must have had enough of her staring. He pulls his hand back, and this time, she lets go. His claws retract. “That’s enough poking for you.”
“When we get back to camp, you should go see Lee. Let him take a look at things.”
“Demigod-monster physical?” Percy says dryly. “Sure. Sounds like a blast.” He pushes himself to his feet. “I’m gonna take a lap, make sure everything’s working right.”
“Sure,” Annabeth says, politely pretending not to know that everything on the ship is already working fine. She’ll let Percy have a minute, if he needs one.
“Go get dry,” he says gently, and goes to walk away.
As he turns, she catches a flash of scales on the back of his neck, vanishing under his collar. Impulsively, she calls, “Percy?”
He turns back to look at her and for a moment he’s so sun-soaked and wind-swept that it steals all of her words. Her stupid, brilliant, reckless, wonderful friend.
(It’s far too late to not care about him. She’s already ruined herself for that. When he dies, it’s going to wreck her. She’s going to miss him so much, so much more than Thalia, and she misses Thalia like the world itself.)
“Your scales are cool,” she blurts, and, flushing all the way down her neck, scurries down beneath the deck of the ship to hide.
—
Before they reach Polyphemus’s island, Percy spits out his first tooth. He cups it in his hand in a puddle of drool and blood, and makes a face at it. He jokes, “Should I keep them all and make a necklace?”
Annabeth rolls her eyes and calls him “Such a Seaweed Brain.”
In the gap from where it came, peeking out of the raw, irritated flesh of his gums, there’s the perfect, gleaming white edge of a shark tooth in its place.
—
The next time she sees Percy, he pulls off her Yankees cap and appears out of nowhere, and Annabeth could cry she's so relieved to see him. Alive. And Grover’s alive, and even Clarisse. She didn't fail them badly enough to doom them. Percy is here, and he's alive, he's alive, and the Fleece is here somewhere, and her heart could sing like a bird, because Thalia Thalia Thalia they can bring back Thalia, and then maybe, just maybe, Annabeth can figure it out and have her whole family back together, old and new, and Percy and Thalia can be like the siblings that she knows they'll be, and and and-
(Hubris. Again. And she's so caught up in thinking about how the Fleece can change Thalia that she forgets to warn him. Again.)
—
(Backbiter stabs through Percy’s abdomen and he feels the blade tugging at his soul. The world tilts and it spins and when he blinks he can half see the Styx and her eternal ferryman waiting for him. He collapses to the floor of the elevator and thinks about celestial bronze, for killing gods and demigods and monsters.
But there are still people counting on him. He can't afford to die yet. He can't follow in Thalia’s footsteps.
He drags the Golden Fleece over to him, drapes it over his stomach.
For half a second, the spinning subsides. Charon and the Styx fade from view. And then the pain hits. Worse than the stabbing, worse than being blown up beside Charybdis, worse than anything he's ever felt before. He doubles over, claws scrabbling at the floor, ripping up gouges of metal as his skin bubbles and boils and his gums twist and his spine splits. It's like lava igniting within him and carving its way out.
The Golden Fleece is impassive, uncaring. Divine magic to strengthen divine magic. Not just to fix what is broken, but to make stronger what is there. To speed up a process.
For a full minute, elevator music plays on The Princess Andromeda, and Percy Jackson screams as he grows new skin, new scales, and a whole second row of shark teeth.)
—
“Whoah,” is what Clarisse says, alarmed, looking over Annabeth's shoulder. “New look, Jackson?”
Annabeth whips around, and Percy staggers out from the depths of the cruise ship. Blood is running in thick rivulets down his chin. Gills flutter breathlessly on his neck. Scales have overtaken his high cheekbones and his arms, and his skin pulses, just barely, with some kind of phosphorescence. Warning stripes.
“Bad fleece,” Percy gasps, and Annabeth catches a glimpse of a second row of shark fangs, pointing in like a fish trap, behind his first row of teeth. “Very bad fleece. Please take it away to camp to bother someone else.”
The pegasus behind them whinnies, and his eyes flick over. “Oh, hey, Blackjack. Could you give Clarisse a hand?”
—
They run off The Princess Andromeda, sprinting down the boardwalk in search of Grover and Tyson. They find their friends in a blue car along with Sally Jackson.
“Mom?” Percy exclaims when he spots her, too flabbergasted to remember for a split second. Annabeth watches that moment pass, and then he skids to a halt. He takes a few steps back, panic flashing in his eyes. His pupils are wide wide wide. Light pulses across his skin, frantic like a heartbeat.
Annabeth, already halfway in the car, sees Sally see her son. The scales and the claws and the blood starting to crust around his mouth from his own violent, sudden transformation.
Fear stabs through her, and she goes to climb out of the car, to stand in front of him, whispered conversations between her dad and her stepmother ringing in her ears of, -not natural, Frederick! It occurs to Annabeth that maybe she was right, and no parents can truly be trusted.
And then Sally’s eyes flash, so much like her son, and she says, “Perseus Jackson, I swear on your father's name that if you are not in this car in the next five seconds-”
“Alright, alright!” Percy exclaims, and jolts forward, throwing himself into the front seat. He buckles in automatically, and Grover yanks Annabeth the rest of the way into the car and slams the door for her.
Sally peels out of the parking lot as fast as she can while avoiding a speeding ticket, and asks, “Everyone okay?”
There's a murmur of agreement that Annabeth watches Percy not participate in through the rearview mirror. Light is still spasming across his exposed skin.
“Percy, sweetheart,” Sally says, throwing frantic glances back in all the various mirrors as they start to speed away into Long Island. “Are your gums actively bleeding or did you just bite someone really hard? Nice set of chompers, by the way. Been waiting for those to come in, honestly.”
Annabeth gapes.
Tyson nods. “They are good teeth.”
“Ms. Jackson,” Grover exclaims, “did you know this would happen?”
“Did I know? No. But I got pregnant from the guy who made pegasi, Grover. For a truly panicked three months, I was trying to figure out what I would do if my baby came out as a mermaid. Honestly, Percy, sweetheart, the fact that we don't have to install a pool in our living room feels like a win to me. And you didn't answer me, young man. Are you bleeding, or did you bite someone?”
“My blood,” Percy says, clearly dazed. “Didn't bite someone. Did claw Luke real good across the face, though. I was sort of panicking. Blood’s just from, uh…”
Sally hisses through her teeth. “You touched the Fleece with intent.”
“Yeah.”
“And your teeth came in all at once.”
“Pretty much.”
“Oh, sweetheart. I'm sorry, that sounds painful.”
“Wait, back up,” Annabeth demands. Her heart is still pounding. She still sort of wants to crawl through the divide in the seats and shield Percy from his mother’s eyes. The instinct to trust no parent is howling in her chest, and the monster inside of her that is all vicious, protective possessiveness can’t quite believe what she’s hearing. The acceptance is too easy, too kind. She needs proof. “What, exactly, was the plan if Percy came out as a merman? A merbaby?”
Sally meets her eyes in the rearview mirror. She smiles crookedly, so perfectly Percy that it takes Annabeth's breath away. “Fish-bowl Baby Bjorn,” she says, her voice both perfectly joking and deadly serious.
Tyson howls with laughter.
“You're not mad?” says Percy, voice shaking.
Sally glances over, and her expression melts. She reaches over to grab his hand, and squeezes hard. She runs her thumb across his scales, and light ripples out from her touch. “Mad about what, Percy? You're always my boy.”
Percy holds his mom's hand, and closes his eyes, and cries so hard it shakes his whole body.
In the backseat, Annabeth cradles Grover's head against her shoulder as he weeps with Percy's relief, empathy link singing in the thin space between them.
And despite the howling monster inside of her, despite the instinctive distrust and the urge to hide herself, hide Percy, Annabeth gets it. She wonders if Sally knows the Great Prophecy. Wonders if she knows how little time with her son she has. Wonders if this is the forgiveness of a parent who knows their son's moments are fleeting. Wonders if this is just how a parent is supposed to love their child: like a thing they want, even when it comes bloody and fanged.
—
When Luke appears to attack the camp, in the smoke and the mayhem, Annabeth sees him among the carnage. And across his cheek, in an ugly mirror of his scar from Ladon, are four brand new, angry-red slashes, as if cut by fishhook claws.
She watches, horror in her heart and pooling in her gut, as he swings Backbiter high to cut Percy’s head from his shoulders, like she’s watched him kill a hundred monsters, a little girl in awe of the hero he was. He goes to kill her best friend and she distantly registers that Grover is screaming. Backlit in the smoke and the light, the form of him on the hill is a smear of darkness in the shape of wrath.
And a monster wearing the skin of her brother goes to kill her best friend.
—
Thalia stumbles into the Big House, and wraps Annabeth in a hug that makes Annabeth feel like she’s seven years old again. Then she looks behind Annabeth, and lightning crackles in her eyes, across her skin. She straightens like the fighter she is, and levels her spear at Percy. Her dark eyes do not see a demigod. They see a monster.
—
Annabeth finds Percy face-down in the fountain in the Poseidon cabin. Well, face-down isn't quite the word for it. He's curled up mostly on his side, at a strange angle, wrapped around the base of the fountain. The good news: she's found him. The bad news: the saltwater fountain in the Poseidon cabin has steadily grown throughout the space since Percy got back in the early summer, and it now has the fountain base, and a huge underwater cave burrowed into the bedrock beneath the cabin. It's also about fifteen feet deep in the part where Percy is curled up, taking a nap.
The surface ripples with shimmering light, distorting his figure far below. She sighs, but she refuses to jump in. She takes the second-best option. She sheathes her knife, and tosses it, guard and all, into the water. Her aim, even fifteen feet down, is spectacular. She watches it hit Percy perfectly in the side.
The thing she forgot about: the Toilet Incident, and other hazards of startling a Poseidon demigod. The whole fountain explodes, soaking everything around it. Water sprays everywhere, drenching Annabeth and the entire contents of Percy's cabin.
In the aftermath, as she's wiping water from her eyes, Percy hauls himself up onto the lip of the fountain. “What the hell,” he demands, tossing her knife back to her. He's a sight, crawling up out of the fountain, his blue eyes almost black with pupil, claws gripping the shimmering gray stone, scales glittering in the half-submerged darkness of the cabin. Like always, it makes Annabeth catch her breath.
“You're late for archery,” she tells him. “You were scheduled with Athena cabin today.”
He makes a face. “No one wants me at the archery range, schedule or no.”
It's true. He's abysmal. He's actually banned from using the bows alone. But Annabeth was counting on him being there.
“I got worried,” she asks. “What were you doing?”
His shoulders hike up to his ears. “Nothing,” he says, a blatant and obvious lie.
She arches an eyebrow at him.
He stares back. She wonders if he’s noticed his habit of engaging his second eyelids when he’s lying. If he hasn’t figured it out, she’s not telling him. Maybe one day he’ll get good enough at lying to trick her, and then she’ll have her secret weapon. (It occurs to her that a normal person might not spend this much time obsessing over their best friend’s eyes. But when has Annabeth ever been normal?)
“Really,” he insists. “I’m fine. I was just napping. Promise.”
Her suspicion grows. He wouldn’t promise her things if he were lying. He knows how badly that would hurt her. But nonetheless, she knows him. He never took naps in the bottom of the fountain last summer, and even though the gills are new, the water-breathing is not. This is a development, and more than that, it’s a development he didn’t tell her about on his own. Which makes it deeply, deeply suspect.
“Napping,” she says skeptically. “On the rock floor of a fountain, when you have a perfectly good bed about ten feet away?”
He shrugs, trying to be casual and mostly missing the mark. “Poseidon kid,” he says. “My instincts are weird sometimes.” A pause, in which she stares at him, expectant. His face softens in partial defeat. “They’ve been… more intense recently. The… instincts.”
Annabeth’s stomach flips. “What kind of instincts?”
Percy shrugs again. He stands up off the lip of the fountain. “Napping,” he says. “Now, come on. We’re missing archery.”
“You hate archery.”
“But you don’t.” His blue eyes glow in the semi-darkness of the cabin. He knows her so well, it makes her want to stab him.
“You’re all wet,” she points out. “Do you need to-”
The water evaporates off his skin, dissolving into nothingness, leaving him perfectly dry.
“Change,” she finishes with a sigh.
He’s already walking out of the cabin with a laugh.
They go to archery.
Annabeth shoots well. Her aim is improving.
Percy shoots horrifically. He nearly spears a dryad with a stray arrow, and eventually Lee Fletcher takes the bow from his hands with a gentle, “You know you can skip this activity if you want, Percy, right?”
Percy points to Lee, making eye contact with Annabeth, and mouths, “See?”
She shakes her head at him.
But after that, she pays attention. Well, even more attention than usual. And, sure enough, Percy is behaving strangely. Vanishing into the Poseidon cabin at odd hours, flopping down into the shallows of the lake when no one else is around. It’s only mildly concerning, as opposed to deeply concerning, but Annabeth worries anyway.
But trying to bring it up to Percy to get answers would be mission suicide, she knows. For someone who spends so much of his life worrying about other people’s feelings, he hates talking about his own. He would clam up fast and hard. You can bring a son of Poseidon to water, but you can’t make him drink, or something like that.
Which leaves Annabeth with her backup plan.
She finds Grover at Arts and Crafts, and manages to steal a spot next to him where he’s weaving a net. “Something’s wrong with Percy,” she says. “Do you know what?”
Grover looks up, concern flooding his face. “Something’s wrong with Percy?”
Annabeth deflates. “You don’t know what’s wrong?” She had been hoping Grover would know. Since returning from the Sea of Monsters, Grover and Percy have been all but attached at the hip. They’ve been best friends since Percy arrived at camp, but this is a different level. It’s the empathy link, Grover has explained. They’re weirdly in sync. They share pulses of emotion, intuition, even the occasional thought.
Once, while taking a break from sparring, Percy had told Annabeth, “If Grover doesn’t get Hillary Duff out of his head within the next hour, I’m gonna have to kill him. He’s had the same song stuck in his head for three days. I can’t take it anymore.” He ended up singing different songs to Grover in his horrible, off-pitch voice until Grover, doubled over with laughter, finally managed to banish the song from his head.
Another time, Annabeth had been in the strawberry fields with an increasingly irritable Grover, until finally her friend stood up and stormed away, growling, “I swear, if they don’t stop touching him, I’ll set the naiads on them.” She had followed to find an irate Grover yelling at a group of dryads for getting too handsy with Percy at volleyball.
They’ve never been closer. She had been hoping Grover could sort out the confusion. But he’s mystified. “I don’t know. I mean, I’ve been dreaming about poison ivy a lot, but I don’t know if that’s a Percy thing. What has he been doing?”
Annabeth explains. Grover abandons his net-weaving. He looks at her thoughtfully. “Bad news,” he says, “I have no idea what’s wrong with Percy. Good news: I know who might.”
They find Tyson in the forge, working happily with Beckendorf. He’s hammering away at a sheet of metal with a critical eye, but he brightens when they walk in. “Friends!” he bellows, and charges at them. He sweeps them up into a joint, crushing hug.
Annabeth fights the instinctual itch to stab him. It’s lessened over the summer, but she’s never quite managed to fully banish the part of her that sees him and thinks of Thalia first.
He sets them down, and Grover says, “Hey, bud. We’ve got a question for you.”
Grover’s theory is that, as the person who actually lives in the same space as Percy, Tyson might have some insight. But when Annabeth asks him if he’s noticed that anything is wrong, he just shrugs.
“Itchy,” Tyson says.
Grover frowns. “Uh, not exactly what we were asking, bud, but-”
“No, not me,” Tyson clarifies. “Percy. Percy is itchy.”
It’s Annabeth’s turn to frown. “Itchy? Itchy how?”
He shrugs, a massive, rippling movement. “Just itchy. Keeps looking for a rash, but there isn’t one. Bad though. He's shedding.”
“Shedding?”
“Scales,” Tyson confirms. “Says the water helps. Takes naps there.”
And all at once, it clicks into place. It’s so simple. It’s so stupid. “Di immortales,” Annabeth says. “I know what’s wrong with Percy.” Both of the boys turn to her expectantly. “We need to go to a store.”
Sneaking out of camp to go to a store is the easy part. So is finding what Annabeth needs. The hard part is what comes next.
They’re standing in a row in the Poseidon cabin when Percy walks in. Grover’s hands are on his hips. Annabeth’s are folded over her chest. Tyson is just standing there happily.
Percy freezes in the doorway. His eyes flick over them all. His skin pulses, a little flicker of nervous phosphorescence. “Uh,” he says. “Why do I feel like I’m about to be expelled from school again?”
“Percy,” says Grover, “this is an intervention.”
“An intervention?” His voice is incredulous. “An intervention for what?”
Annabeth cuts to the chase. “Your scales are dry.” She doesn’t phrase it as a question, but the way he blanches is answer enough.
“No,” he denies.
Annabeth and Grover glare.
“...Yes,” he amends after a moment. “But it’s not like there’s anything we can do about that. It just is what it is.”
Gods, Annabeth hates that phrase. She hates this stupid, sacrificial boy who would throw away his life and his body and the world to protect any of the people standing before him, but when confronting his own problems, just accepts them.
Annabeth reaches into her bag, pulls out a bottle, and throws it at him. She watches him flinch for his pocket before remembering, and then reaches to snatch it out of the air. He flips it over to look at the label. Then he looks up at her. Down to the bottle. Back up to her. “...Did you sneak out of camp to buy snake oil?”
She rolls her eyes. “It’s jojoba oil, Seaweed Brain.” She pulls out another jar. “And Vaseline. And a pumice stone for you to get the old scales off, instead of just shedding everywhere. I figure you can use the Vaseline for any particularly dry patches, and you can put on the other oil in the morning before you go out to do stuff. And you should probably stop doing the thing where you dissolve all the water off of yourself, I bet it’s making the dryness worse.”
“Annabeth,” he cuts in, exasperated, “I have magical fish scales. Putting normal oil on them will not help.”
She arches an eyebrow at him. “Well, have you tried?” she asks imperiously.
“Annabeth.”
“Percy.”
“Annabeth.”
“Percy.”
“An-”
“Okay,” Grover cuts in, rolling his eyes. “Annabeth, you’re not making your point better.” He steps forward, and points the pumice stone at Percy threateningly. “And you. I have been itchy for weeks. I know you hate taking care of yourself. I hate it, but I know. But, listen to me very closely, Percy Jackson. You have one week to either use these oils and make me stop being itchy, or let us know that the oils aren’t working so we can find something else. Or, Pan help me, I will come in here and put Vaseline on you myself. Don’t test me.”
About three days later, Grover appears at the dining pavilion, looking immensely smug. “No itching,” he reports to Annabeth.
She laughs. “Go team.”
Percy never directly admits to using the oils. But he stops flopping in the shallows of the lake at every given opportunity, so she’ll take it as a win.
—
It takes Camp Half Blood about a month and half to catch on to the pattern, which is about a month and a half longer than Annabeth was hoping for.
It takes Grover half a day to figure it out. It takes Percy three days. As always, her boys know her better than she thinks.
It is, of all strange things, a joint effort between herself and Clarisse.
The first one is a Hermes kid, who makes a snide comment as Percy passes. “If this is the watered down version, I’d hate to see the dad,” he jokes. In Capture the Flag that Friday, Annabeth abandons the goals of the Athena cabin to drop a hive of enormous bees with poison-ivy wings on him.
The second is an Ares kid who sneers in the sparring ring that Percy is the perfect partner, because he prepares them for what it’s like to face a real monster in battle. Then he makes the mistake of getting in the ring with Percy, who proceeds to beat him black and blue with Riptide alone. But the real whammy is getting assigned toilet duties for a month straight by Clarisse, flexing her abilities as head counselor.
The third is a daughter of Aphrodite who snidely wonders about how far down the changes go, in the middle of the dining pavilion. Annabeth makes no pretenses about that one. She stands up from the Athena table, tosses a full tureen of gravy at her head, and tries to stab her. It turns into a full-camp food fight, and the violent attempted stabbing ends only when two of Annabeth’s older siblings haul her off of the Aphrodite girl kicking and snarling. She gets three weeks of kitchen duty for that one, but she considers it worth it.
The fourth is an unclaimed kid, who everyone nonetheless knows is a son of Apollo. He goes straight for the throat, and accuses Percy loudly near the climbing wall, “We all know you’ll go crawling to Luke’s army eventually. Look at you, the gods won’t want you.”
Clarisse handles that effectively by sniping, “Projecting much, are we?” which prompts a whole round of jeers and cackles, and makes the kid flush fiery red with rage. And then Clarisse hunts him down in the next Capture the Flag to push him into a mud pit.
Percy corners them in the armory after a month and half, despite clearly understanding the deal far before most people at camp did. The silent, tacit agreement between Annabeth and Clarisse to protect the boy who got them out of the Sea of Monsters alive, and was forever changed by it. And that anyone who mocks him for it will be swiftly, brutally, humiliatingly dealt with, preferably in front of as many people as possible.
Clarisse, Annabeth thinks, is just repaying her debts. Annabeth herself, on the other hand, is doing what any good friend would do: making it downright social suicide to harrass her friend.
“You all know I’m not a swooning fairytale maiden, right?” he asks, dropping his newly dented armor from a particularly rough sparring session in the repair bin. “You don’t have to, like, defend my honor.”
“I’ve never defended anything for you, Prissy,” Clarisse bold-faced lies.
Percy levels her with his best unimpressed look, the one that is brutally effective on account of being ninety-percent Sally Jackson.
It doesn’t work because Clarisse is pointedly not looking at him. “If I happen to put a few newbies on their asses for personal reasons, that has nothing to do with you,” she sniffs.
Percy rolls his eyes. He unbuckles his greaves and tosses them down. His scales flash dimly in the glow of the armory torches. His gills flutter erratically, like they always do when he’s flustered. “I’m just saying, don’t go around making enemies just because of me.”
“If someone walked around camp calling Grover a goat freak,” Annabeth asks, “what would you do?”
His eyes flash, literally. His nictitating membranes snap over his eyes, and his pupils glow with eerie predator phosphorescence, like an anglerfish preparing to strike. “...I would handle it with utmost grace,” he blatantly lies.
Annabeth shoves him lightly. Light ripples out across his arm from the spot where she touches. She ignores the flip it puts in her stomach.
“Okay, yeah, point taken or whatever,” he says. A pause. He bites his lip, jagged shark fangs trying to poke out. He’s gotten more careful about his smiles, his yawns, everything since his fangs grew in. Annabeth misses the way he used to laugh, open mouthed and shaking his whole body. “Thanks for looking out for me.”
“Always.”
—
(Thalia hits Percy Jackson in the chest with a lightning bolt, choking on ozone and fury and loss, and who does this son of Poseidon think he is? She hates Zeus, but gods damn it, she’s still Thalia Grace. She’s still storm and lightning in the shape of a person. She’s still the one who knew Annabeth and Luke first.
She hits Percy Jackson in the chest with a lightning bolt, and he topples backwards into the creek. When he rises, thousands of gallons of water rise with him, and his skin pulses with angry fractals of light. He bares snarling fangs at her, gills rippling. His claws are extended, scales lifting off his skin to make spines of shadow. His eyes burn like a promise of death in the darkness, like the cold fury and crushing pressure of the deep blue sea, and Thalia knows she was right about him: he’s a monster.
But he’s Annabeth’s monster.)
—
Annabeth holds the sky.
Percy and Thalia and the Hunters come for her.
Thalia goes to kill Luke, bitter vengeance and blind rage.
And Percy goes to hold the sky.
(This is the difference between them, Annabeth thinks. This is the difference that her younger mind was too rose-colored to see. Thalia will wound, and Percy will protect. She loves them both ferociously anyway, but she feels it like a chasm between them, a type of misunderstanding that the two of them will never be able to breach.)
Afterward, she touches his hair, the new grey curling through the strands. “Hey,” she croaks with a smile. “We match.”
Percy snorts. “Next time,” he says, eyes glittering with fondness, “let’s just get friendship bracelets or something.”
Standing in the throne room of Olympus, Annabeth grips Percy’s hand so hard his claws cut into her, even retracted. Her heart is in her throat, and she thinks… she thinks… she’s so selfish, but she wants-
Thalia kneels in front of Artemis, and, less than twenty-four hours away from sixteen, dedicates herself to the immortal Hunt.
And Annabeth, a selfish, selfish creature who has never forgotten her losses, weeps silently. (It’s so unfair, she thinks. At least she knew how to exist without Thalia. At least she figured that one out, even if it ached in her heart every day. It’s so cruel, to live in a world that will make her lose both of them.)
—
A son and daughter of Demeter and Hecate stumble over the boundary together one day in the late summer, after the battle. Annabeth shows them around the cabins, the dining pavilion. She takes them down to the lake and points out the woods. They tour the forges and the pegasi stables. She leads them mechanically, and points things out mechanically, and tries not to see their dead campers in their favorite places. Tries not to see her brothers and sisters on the porch of the Big House and in the Arts and Crafts cabin.
The Battle of the Labyrinth swallowed countless campers into the maw of the funeral pyres. The memory of them hangs around anyway, a smog choking the campers every day.
The new pair of demigods is older. The son of Demeter, a boy named Caleb, is already seventeen. The daughter of Hecate is younger, but she’s sixteen. Still older than Annabeth. Both of them are, but they’re still wide-eyed, watching everything with awe. They haven’t lost anything yet, haven’t made any siblings just to watch them die. They don’t have a best friend who is doomed to die.
Annabeth hates them for that. (Annabeth has less than a year, and then he’s gone, gone, gone, and this time the hollowness that filled her up while he was gone to Ogygia will stay.)
“So, what’s the deal?” the daughter of Hecate, Abby, asks. She nods to one of the harpies perched on the roof, preening. “Like, why are some monsters allowed in here?”
“The harpies are staff,” Annabeth says. “And anyway, the lines between us and them are utterly arbitrary. They’re your family as much as I am.”
“So, how do you know which ones to kill?” Caleb asks.
And Annabeth, mechanical and numb and trying not to think of her brother weaving tapestries at the loom beside them, says, “Just use your discretion.”
Later, on the way back to her cabin after departing the tour, she hears screaming. And not the usual kinds of Camp Half Blood screaming. Not prank screaming, or cheering, or playful jeers. Actual, genuine, panicked screaming, and a battle roar. A familiar battle roar.
Annabeth yanks her cap down over her head on instinct, and breaks into a dead sprint. She crests the slope of a hill toward the strawberry fields, and whips around, trying to find the source of the screaming. She finds it, and her heart drops into her stomach like a stone. She starts running. Out of the corner of her eye, she spots Katie Gardner on the other side of the fields drop what she’s holding and break into a run as well.
Backed in against one of the strawberry fields is Percy. Riptide is out and swinging, and he’s engaged his shield from Tyson. Caleb and Abby are circling him. Caleb’s hands are raised, and roots are quickly swallowing Percy’s legs, holding him in place. One of Abby’s hands is extended, gold light crackling around them. It swells and twists around Percy’s head, clearly trying to do something to him, if failing. With her other hand, the daughter of Hecate holds a scimitar, edging in closer to test the waters and slash at Percy only to be violently rebuffed. The ground is starting to tremble violently.
Annabeth prays, Hang on, hang on, hang on. She’s halfway there.
Abby darts in and takes a reckless swing at Percy’s neck. He ducks, and with a flash of bronze, disarms her. And Caleb pulls out a dagger, and lunges for his exposed back.
Annabeth screams.
And the strawberry plants explode in all directions, a wave of vines and lashing leaves.
The earth roars and trembles, sending Annabeth to her knees.
And when she looks back up, Katie Gardner is standing in front of Percy, celestial bronze scythe drawn, snarling at the new campers, “Back! Back, both of you! Or I choke you to death here and now!” She’s tall and terrible and for a moment, she looks so much like Demeter that Annabeth’s stomach churns, and her heart quails in fear.
Both Abby and Caleb stare, aghast. They’re much more thoroughly wrapped in vines than Percy was. Given half a second without being attacked, he slices himself free and staggers out.
“What,” Katie growls, “are you doing?”
“It was scaring a dryad!” cries Caleb.
“Seriously?” Percy exclaims. “Aspen and I are friends! We were just messing around!”
Annabeth has never been able to quantify Percy’s friendships with the nature spirits of camp. The naiads, she gets. But the dryads? She’s never understood it. She suspects maybe it’s his empathy link with Grover driving him to get closer to them. But he’s also just a friendly guy, when given the opportunity.
Aspen takes this moment to melt out of the ground. She’s a tiny dryad, quite young, Annabeth suspects. From a sapling, maybe. She’s openly crying. “We were just playing,” she whispers to Katie.
Katie, if possible, grows even more furious. “You just attacked him for nothing?”
“I-” Abby flails. “Look at him!”
Annabeth is looking. Abby’s slash didn’t kill him, like the girl had probably hoped it would. But he’s clutching the side of his neck, red blood pouring down to soak into his shirt. She slashed straight through his gills.
“Yeah, I’m looking,” glowers Katie. “Newbies, meet camp veteran and son of Poseidon, Percy Jackson. Jackson, meet the newbies.”
“Oh, we’ve met,” Percy grumbles. “Can I go? I’ve gotta-” He makes a gesture with his free hand.
Katie glances back. “Shit, Jackson, yeah. Go get that looked at.”
Percy starts stumbling away, clutching his neck.
Annabeth pulls off her cap, ignoring the way he jolts and snarls reflexively as she appears in front of him. He softens upon seeing her. “Hey,” he says, trying to be casual.
“Idiot,” Annabeth scolds, sliding under his good arm to support him as they stumble back down the hill.
They don’t head to the Big House, or the Apollo Cabin, or anywhere for normal healing. They trip into the Poseidon Cabin, smearing blood all over the door and the entryway. Percy tips himself straight into the saltwater fountain. Red billows out from his neck and he gasps, spine twitching. His dorsal fin raises and lowers, his shirt rippling with it. “Ow,” he hisses. “Ow, ow, ow.”
Annabeth leans over him and watches the delicate flesh stitch itself back together. She doesn’t say, You can’t die on me, Jackson. I’m supposed to have a whole year left, but she certainly thinks it.
“We should put me in the orientation film or something,” he says after a long moment, as he sits up with a newly-whole neck. “Say, Hey, we promise this particular monster is actually supposed to be here.”
Annabeth hums. “Not a bad idea.”
“I was joking.”
He was. She was not.
A week later, she and Katie and Silena film a new section to add to the orientation film: Scary Friends, or, How To Tell Who Is Welcome At Camp. If they’re here, they’re welcome. Scales and fangs and single eyes and wings and come what may. Between demigods and monsters, the differences are semantic.
(Annabeth has a year to figure out how to not break beyond repair when he dies. She’s not optimistic about her odds.)
—
The weak spot of Percy’s Curse of Achilles is perfectly set in the small of his back, slightly offset from his spiny dorsal fin. Anyone reaching for it would get a handful of razor-sharp, venomous barbs. Annabeth brushes it with the pads of her fingers, lighter than breathing, as if it will snap him in half. The scales there are soft and warm, and her hands come away smelling like jojoba oil.
If he were a true fish, he would have a slime coat, and his scales would be cool to the touch. But he’s not a fish. He’s the most truthful demigod of all of them, in body. Flesh and muscle and skin and bone that refuses to pick one world, and instead clings to both with stubborn, beautiful, heartbreaking loyalty.
When she touches it, his whole body shivers, and he exhales not through his mouth or nose but his gills. They flutter and he closes his eyes. “You can’t take another knife like that, Annabeth.”
Anger flashes in her chest for a split second, and then vanishes just as fast. His scales are warm beneath her fingertips, ghosting over the one place he can die from. “I can and I will, if I have to.” It’s not a threat. It’s just truth.
He makes a wounded noise. “You shouldn’t. It’s not like it’ll change anything.”
She snarls under her breath. It’s a weak noise. Her whole body still hurts. But the very fabric of her being refuses it. The ichor and the blood and all of it, all of it. She refuses. She’s not giving up a single extra moment with him until Kronos himself takes the final blow. Loyalty is Percy’s thing, and determination is Annabeth’s. “I still have to be here when you’re gone, Percy Jackson,” she accuses. “Don’t ask that to be any longer than it has to be.”
He sighs, nose and mouth and gills, eyes closed. His skin glows, halfhearted, beneath her fingers, like he’s already half decided to be a ghost. “Okay, Annabeth,” he says, like a boy who has decided that his last day alive won’t be spent arguing with his loved ones.
Annabeth gives up on gentle. Gives up on soft. She flattens her palm against Percy’s iron skin, and his one human part. His scales are still warm. Not cold yet. Not yet.
—
At the end, the very end, all cards down and everything come to a close, Annabeth looks Luke in the eyes, and croaks, “Family. You promised.”
And her brother comes back to his own eyes to stab himself with her blade, his blade, the story come full circle.
She and Percy hold Luke as he dies.
He looks Percy in the eyes and chokes out, “-a blessing, Percy. A blessing to have fangs. Bite when you have to, okay?”
And Percy, who is not a being of forgiveness, just nods. Understanding at last. “Okay. I will.”
The boy she had convinced herself was eternal dies in their arms.
The boy she had known was doomed all along sits beside her and breathes and breathes and breathes and lives.
Standing before the Olympian Council, before his father and her mother and all of the gods watching expectantly, Perseus Jackson is offered immortality by Zeus himself.
And Percy, Percy Jackson who followed them across the country and through the Sea of Monsters, who held up the sky and held her hand through the Labyrinth, who dove in the Styx to protect them, looks back at Annabeth and Grover, standing in the side of the room. He smiles, and Annabeth thinks this might be worse. To lose him not to death, but to life, impossible and eternal. But he would deserve it. He would deserve it.
Percy, their Percy, Sally Jackson’s Percy, turns back to the Olympians, and says, “No, thanks.” And he writes a new story, just like that, on the spot. Not Luke’s way. Not Annabeth’s way. Not Thalia’s way. Percy’s way. Love and trust and acknowledgment, just like that.
And Annabeth cries. She holds Grover’s hand on one side and Thalia’s on the other, and she cries and cries and cries. Thalia squeezes her hand and says, “Chill, Annabeth. You didn’t really think he would say yes, did you? He’s your monster. And you all are his.”
When Percy meets up with them, afterward, Grover says, “I’m proud of you.”
It makes Percy grin shyly, wide and fanged in the way he only is for them. He rubs the back of his neck. “Well, what was I gonna do? Just leave you behind? No way. I’ve worked way too hard to make sure we all get to be dumb and old together.”
“Looking out for everyone,” Grover says, looking at Percy like the only other person in the world who can truly see the inside of his heart. Because he is. “Like you always do.”
“Hey,” Percy shrugs. “What can I say? Someone’s got to take care of all of us monsters.”
Annabeth makes him a blue cupcake for his birthday. They kiss, and it’s like fireworks. It’s like having a best friend.
They get thrown in the lake. And in the deep blue, glimmering depths, bubbles swallow them up to make a pocket of air, just her and Percy, both of them dripping wet. Percy glows like a fallen star, eyes flashing and grin huge and monstrous, fangs glittering. She grabs him by his scaly cheeks and kisses him again. He tastes like salt and blue frosting.
It’s like a storybook ending. You kiss the mermaid, and that’s the end. But it’s not the end. It’s not going to be the end. Percy is sixteen and the world did not end and he’s alive, and Annabeth is never going to have a countdown again. From here, she’s only counting things up. And she’s going to start with kisses. She’s off to a pretty good start. How many other people have underwater kisses, after all?