Chapter Text
“You always do this.” Annabeth says, quiet and accusatory, the words sounding sharper out loud than they did in her head.
Percy frowns at her. “Do what?”
“Sacrifice yourself.” For me.
She leaves that part unspoken.
Despite everything, he smiles. “Sorry, Wise Girl. I can’t help it. It’s a habit.”
She thinks she’s experiencing déjà vu. She’s looking at Percy as he is now, sitting right next to her, maybe for the last time. But not just this Percy. It’s like she’s seeing several different versions of him at once, superimposed on top of one another.
The boy that pushed her into a stairwell in St. Louis two years ago, and gave himself over to a deadly golden throne so she didn’t have to. The boy who, a year later, would trust her even when she lied and save her even when she’d told him she didn’t need saving. The boy who’d crossed the country to save her again that winter, who’d nervously danced with her, first in a crowded school gym and then in the halls of Olympus itself.
Even the boy who’d collapsed in the rain after killing the monster that had taken his mother from him. She can still remember that day so clearly, that spark of curiosity at the first sight of him, coupled with something else. A primordial sense of recognition, somewhere deep in her bones. Like even then a part of her had known they’d be bound together, for better or for worse.
And then there’s the Percy that’s here now, right in front of her. Older, taller, the lines of his face sharper, the bags under his eyes more pronounced. Hair a little grayer, just like hers. Shoulders broader, but more bowed, like he was still carrying the weight of the sky, of the world. And she supposed he was, in a way. Prophecy was its own kind of weight. One that she could only help him carry so far.
His eyes are searching her face. She’s thought of those eyes, for a long time, as ocean-colored. Not just blue, because they didn’t always look entirely blue. Sometimes they seemed more gray, or green-ish, or even close to black. As changeable as the waters of his father’s domain.
Now though, they look as startlingly blue as they ever have, brilliant in the fiery light of the lava nearby. She tries to memorize the exact color, to count every single shade she can see in his irises. Just in case this is her last chance.
“You can’t talk me out of this one, Annabeth,” he says, voice quiet and laced with resignation. “There’s no time.”
She shakes her head, feeling tears welling up in her eyes, a tightness growing in her throat. “There’s never any time.”
His eyes look glassy too, she notices, like he knows this is their last goodbye. She wants to be mad at him, wants to yell and scream in his face for daring to just accept the inevitability of his death,for daring to just leave her like this.
And lose a love to a fate worse than death.
Prophecies are never straightforward, as a rule. But this one feels pretty clear cut. She loves him (In the simplest, most clear-cut way of putting it, he’s her best friend. How could she not?) and she’s going to lose him. Right here, right now. She can already feel him slipping through her fingers. But she wants, so badly, to hold on. For just a little longer.
And he’s still here, smiling at her again, a little sadder this time, and reaching out for the cord around her throat. “Maybe I just need some luck to make up for it.” His fingers ghost over the beads, brushing the hollow of her throat, and she shivers, another memory rising to the forefront of her mind. The cabin on the beach in Montauk, the intensity of his gaze on her as she'd leaned in to put the necklace on him. She’d thought it was goodbye then, too.
You’re gonna need all the luck you can get.
When Annabeth leans in, it’s with the intent of pressing her lips to his cheek, of putting all that luck and every inch of belief she has in him and a dash of blind, naive, hope into one touch. Like she can miraculously defy fate entirely with that simple gesture.
But somehow, by accident or instinct or impulse, she ends up kissing him on the mouth instead, urgent and desperate, her fingers tentative and feather-light on his jaw. And then he’s kissing her back, lips soft and yielding against hers, and she’s tasting saltwater and her brain is catching up to her body and she pulls back suddenly, letting him go.
Her head is spinning. She immediately feels colder, despite the heat of the forge. Apart from her lips. They’re still warm. Almost feverishly so.
She can’t bring herself to move away entirely, and so there’s a singular, delicate moment before Percy opens his eyes, when he’s still right in front of her, in her space. His hand is hovering by the back of her neck, their breaths still intermingling, and Annabeth thinks it would be so, so easy to just lean back in and do it again. To give him just a little more luck. It’s an absurd, nonsensical idea, just like it had been the first time.
And then the moment passes, and she’s sitting back and reaching for her cap and trying not to look at him, trying to ignore the scarlet cast of his skin and his shaky hands and the question in his eyes.
Annabeth doesn’t know why she did it. She never does anything without a good, logical reason. But this one keeps slipping out of her grasp, like something blurred in the periphery of her vision she can never really focus on, no matter how hard she tries. She should really say something, explain herself, tell him that she’s sorry and it was a stupid thing to do and she wasn’t thinking and it doesn’t have to change anything between them and-
And, and, and..
But none of it really matters. She’s losing him either way. And there’s no time.
“Be careful, Seaweed Brain,” she says instead, voice hollow, putting her cap back on. It’s a bland goodbye, but it’s all she has. All she can say without saying far too much, or not nearly enough. Without breaking down completely.
Annabeth stays in place for a second longer, allows herself the luxury of meeting those tempestuous eyes of his one last time, and then she lets him go.
When she reaches the passage out, she hesitates. She swears she can still feel the full force of his gaze on her, despite her invisibility. So she looks back, as woefully misguided as Orpheus in the Underworld.
Percy’s still there, where she left him, crouched down and staring into space, one hand loosely gripping Riptide, the other touching his lips with something that looks, impossibly, like something akin to reverence. When his gaze moves in her direction, she finally leaves, breaking out into a run.
She’s forced to stop at a crossroads to figure out a way back to Hephaestus, and that’s when the dam breaks. She falls to her knees and just cries and cries, like she hasn’t cried since that day on Mount Othrys. And when the tears trace their way down the dirtied, shattered planes of her face and spill into her open mouth, they taste just like her first kiss with the boy she was always destined to lose.