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Annabeth sat in the darkness of the infirmary watching one of the people she cared about most lying dead asleep. Camp was nearly silent around her; the warm summer breeze carried in the sound of crickets and the waves of Long Island Sound lapping against the shore.
Percy lay still and boneless against the bed. Percy was never still, always spinning a pen or tapping his feet or humming and bouncing on the balls of his feet. It felt fundamentally wrong seeing him lying so motionless. Even his face was still, with none of the shifting moods she’d learned to read. He was too pale, the darkness of his blackened eye and broken nose standing out starkly against his skin.
Thalia was in a room in the Big House – nothing seemed to be wrong with her other than exhaustion. Chiron said she needed rest “in privacy”. He didn’t say it out loud, but Annabeth heard the “away from Percy” as clear as day. Now she spent her days pacing between their rooms restlessly, torn between who to keep her vigil over. Percy was making it easier for her. He wouldn’t wake up. Couldn’t heal. The lightning burns crossing his chest burned angry red, and his breath was shallow and ragged. Thalia stirred occasionally, murmuring or sparking with tiny jolts of power. Percy barely breathed, so still and silent she almost believed he was-
Annabeth forced the thought deep into a pit in her mind and scrubbed at her red eyes. Everyone she’d ever loved left her, one way or another. Her mother. Her father. Thalia. Luke. Even Grover withdrew, vanishing into the Wild. Now Percy was on the edge of joining the world’s smallest, most depressing club. She took Percy’s hand on an impulse and squeezed it. His hand felt warm, and callouses covered his palms and fingers. Annabeth remembered his letters, how he’d told her about skateboarding in Manhattan and scraping his hands too many times to learn a new trick. She’d called him a Seaweed Brain and moved on. Now she traced the callouses and slumped against the bed. He’d never taken his own safety seriously enough. He took too many risks for someone so full of life and love.
“Please don’t do this. Please don’t leave,” she said softly. Her voice sounded more ragged than she remembered. “You’re… important. Not just to the world. To me. And this is unfair.”
She remembered meeting him, passed out at their door with tears on his face and a Minotaur horn in his hand. She remembered him collapsing in her mother’s temple as soon as they were becoming friends, and remembered the panic and desperation she’d felt while they fled the chimera and she begged him to open the door and let her save him. Then the tunnel of love. She’d seen the panic and the tears in his eyes while the suffocating gold of the throne swallowed him, and still he’d looked at her with those blue eyes and told her everything was okay. Tossed against the sand like a ragdoll by Ares, standing on the slippery deck of Clarisse’s ship in the raging storm and falling into the whirlwind, running towards her on Luke’s ship with a rip in his shirt and a heavy bloodstain that he brushed off a little too quickly. Chiron warned her she might lose him. Warned her that even if he survived what it was to be a demigod, every battle they fought could be in vain when (if) he turned sixteen.
Annabeth felt her face grow hot, tears spilling from her eyes and landing on the bed. She pressed her forehead to his hand and took a deep, shaky breath. She could still see him and Thalia falling, still see her sister kill her best friend. She could still see his skin smoking.
Percy was strong. Percy acted confident, always ready with a sarcastic joke or a mischievous smile or something so unexpectedly kind and earnest that she never knew what to say.
Percy never abandoned her.
Sometimes Annabeth wondered if the gods truly were as cruel as Luke said, because the one person who never left her was the one person the Fates seemed determined to take away. The tears came faster, and she tried to stifle a sob. Much good it will do. He hasn’t woken up in almost three days.
Percy shifted on the bed and let out a sharp breath. Annabeth stiffened.
“Percy. Percy? Are you awake?” she asked urgently.
His voice was a barely audible rasp, rough with pain and fatigue. “...abeth…”
She squeezed his hand a little tighter. “I’m here, I’m here.”
Percy’s face twisted. “Hurts.”
Annabeth’s heart broke a little, because this was Percy who always smiled at her when anything hurt and told her it would be okay. “I know. I’m sorry,” she choked out. She pulled her hand away. He caught at her fingers, and his eyes fluttered and half opened. They were blue like rain on the lake, and they looked lost. “...leaving?”
She leaned forward and brushed his hair back from his hot forehead on an impulse. He pressed into her touch with a sigh. “No. I’ll stay right here, okay? I promise. I- just stay with me. Come back, okay?”
He sighed again, eyes fluttering shut. “...kay, Wise Girl.”
She stayed, tracing her hand across his forehead and brushing the curls back. He breathed a little easier.
“...thank y…” he whispered, drifting back to sleep before he finished the word. Annabeth said nothing. When he woke up for real, she would be at his side, no matter what. He didn’t know it yet, but Chiron was moving Thalia back into the infirmary tomorrow. Annabeth wasn’t going to leave the only person who never left. She wouldn’t leave her sister either. They could wake up in the same room with their friends at their sides.
She brushed the last of the tears out of her eyes. No, no more leaving. They would all be friends. She would make them be, and everyone would be okay because Thalia could take care of them and take care of the prophecy and finally they would be safe.
If the Fates hurt the ones Annabeth loved one more time, she would crumble Olympus to dust, stone by stone.
If the Fates hurt the ones Annabeth loved one more time, she would break.
She felt the knife Luke gave her pressing against her leg from where it hung at her belt. We take care of our own, she thought. And I will protect all of them. I can save them.
Percy sighed in his sleep again, a soft exhale hitting her hand.
For now, all Annabeth needed to do was stay. She would be there for Percy as he always was for her.
She swore it on the River Styx.