Work Text:
The dream, again.
Percy felt it all. The splintering wood of the raft under the bare, calloused skin of his feet. A too-bright sun that didn't scorch, only freckled his skin, against a too-blue sky he would never see again. The rocky beach that peeked through the thin morning fog hanging in the air, the meadows of rolling fescue grass, the perfectly set table on the thinnest layer of gravel - everything was familiar, but off-centre. The island had an impression of reality, but its texture was never quite right. Percy felt like a child opening a pop-up picture book for the first time, his knuckles drifting down hardback gloss.
Still, he felt the cold waves on his skin, kissing the shoreline, as he took a step forward towards dry land. The sun was nearly high, but not yet. Lunch wouldn't be for a few hours. Percy was thankful. The sight of a girl cursed to anticipate heartbreak sitting in front of a meal he couldn't - wouldn't - share with her would tear straight through him.
He never actually saw Calypso, in these dreams. A whiff of cinnamon would catch in the gentle breeze, but he guessed it was a part of her punishment to be invisible even in Morpheus's realm. Percy didn't know if he wanted to see her anyway - not when he left and especially not now. He wasn't sure he could stomach the question.
Are you happy there? At home?
He assessed the ever-growing garden of blues and reds and greys as he walked towards his former resting place. The blooms were never half as luminescent as they were at night when he could see the stars, brighter and closer than they were on Long Island. Close enough for him to consider believing in heavens, in bigger things like destiny. He vaguely recalled Annabeth teaching him the constellations too, brushing fingers belonging to braver, younger versions of themselves, passing Beckendorf-branded telescopes and hot chocolate under a shared blanket.
Something ached below his ribs, though whether it was at the thought, or the upcoming vision he knew too well, he couldn't say. He reached the mouth of the cave.
In the cave, past the white sheets partitioning off different rooms in her home, he spotted his own figure, nearly lifeless, a sprawling mess of thin and mottled-pink skin and bones. The least gracious kind of guest. As always, his breathing was shallow, his curls burnt and choppy at the edges. His eyes were screwed shut, but he was far from motionless - his sleep was always fitful here.
It wasn't luck that had saved him back then. Just fate, a delayed death. That's what Calypso had meant. He wondered if she believed there was a difference between a hero and a lamb raised to slaughter. He wasn't sure if he did, anymore.
Percy thought dreams had escaped him on the island, because he could never remember any of them when he woke, but that wasn't it. He knew now that he had dreamt - it was just always the same one.
He watched his bottom lip - all teeth-dented and peeling and bloody - quiver and fall open. No sound came out, but Percy heard.
Annabeth.
Cracks wove through the floor, tiny fissures opening up with a pop as hard stone burst at its seams. Hot steam hissed and stung his eyes, sent ash down his nostrils and throat, the tips of his fingers blackened and burnt with soot and dust. He couldn't move, nor bind himself to any fixture nearby, so his body succumbed to fire and lava. The broken ground gave way to the pressure as he held his breath.
Percy tumbled down, down, down, and then the world around him fell to magma and hot rock and orange light blazing in the dark honey of her eyes. It was the image of her he'd memorised and imprinted on his heart. He knew this because the moment was always better recalled in his dreams than in his mind. Here, he could see the sharp lines of her eyebrows, the fear and indecision and doubt as she studied him hard - looked at him like he'd left his brain behind - a harsh frown pulling at her lips. Percy loved that look - the one that meant she cared.
He watched her fingers twitch on the ground, her nails caked with dirt and viciously filed off, but even now, even here, with both of them coated in ash and dust and flames, he knew it was the last time he'd ever see her. But even then, Percy found he couldn't move the way he so desperately wanted to when he brought his eyes back up to her mouth. Chapped and full and warmer than anything else in that damn volcano. He couldn't just do it - lean in and finish it - alter and finish the memory -
Percy.
No.
Go. Go - now! I'll hold them off -
NO.
The words didn't come out - his vocal chords knotted. He lost the argument that it had to be him, that only he carried the sea and all of its weight in his veins and it had to be him, because something was ripping him away and he couldn't scream louder than the wind or untangle himself from time or stop a lamb to slaughter to slaughter to slaughter to-
The world in front of him crumbled in angry fits. Boulders tumbled down and split on rock on magma on lava that broke her skin and splayed her lungs with the fingers of a heavy, crackling hand of fire that left Annabeth gasping and heaving and burning, eyes begging, pleading with him to go and he wanted to shout, to tell her to run, to get up, because the Telkhines were in the corner of his vision. They finally spotted the prey he'd been cowardly enough to leave behind in the form of his- his-
The last thing he saw were watery wide eyes and scorched bare sinews and blood-red blood-flesh and his knotted vocal chords tore with the sound of I'm sorry- I'm SORRY-
"She can't hear you," a distant voice comforted, attempted to, brushing his curls. The voice of the island. But Percy couldn't hear her either, because all he heard was the Scream, screaming, under broken glass and there was so, so much fire in those golden eyes and -
His eyes shot open, breathless gasps caught in his throat as he choked on smoke, pain, desire.
The light was blinding.
Summer sun dawned on his eyelids, but any sensation of warmth that touched him still felt too close to being aflame.
Percy tossed the covers over his head, his callous fingers drifting across the dents and bumps of his collarbone and temple as he tried to tuck himself in. It still surprised him sometimes, the tangible defacing of his skin, a sort of divine retribution he received for trying to save others. Living with it.
You caused quite an explosion.
He'd tried, really. To keep the quest on track, to save the world, to be good. It just no longer seemed to matter whether or not he tried. Time passed, destiny won, he hurt most and saved few and was still compelled to live. He wondered where Nico was.
His tracing fingers found the ridge, the specific bump he unknowingly sought - a scar angrier than the others at the base of his throat, parallel to where she'd kissed him just moments before the burning. The longer - harder - Percy pressed into it, the better he felt. He needed reminders. That, no matter the aftermath, it hadn't been her stuck in the volcano that day. He'd saved her. For now, it had to be enough.
The scent of saltwater taffy in his pillow eventually filled his nostrils, a pitiful gift for the son of a sea god, but one he took comfort in all the same as he rolled onto his stomach, praying for sleep.
Demigod 101 taught you that dreams lingered. They made a home in your consciousness when you jerked yourself awake until something more terrifying shoved you out of your nightmare-induced stupor. Percy usually shot out of bed prepared to take on that bigger threat. Dreams were omens, and almost always bad.
But when his bleary eyes opened today, his ribs were all set to break under his thundering heart as he got ready. It was difficult to imagine things could get worse. His face had been pallid in the mirror as he brushed his teeth with too much force, gums raw and red, and there was nothing he could to erase the delirium pulling at his features. What sobered him was the knowledge he'd earned being just a little older and wiser - it was too early in the day for gratitude.
The image of Annabeth at the bottom of Mount St. Helens drowning in fire branded itself behind Percy's eyes. It itched and clawed at him, his chest keeping a steady pounding in his ears like a cursed metronome as he walked to breakfast.
Camp air was always cool and dewy in the morning - it carried just enough saltwater in the light breeze to calm him. The equally impressive facades of the cabins still endured, weeks after the battle. But Percy now had to step around blood-speckled rubble, the earthy soil was littered with shrapnel, and the trees had been scorched in masses, to say the least. He caught sight of a few dryads on his way to the dining pavilion - teary eyed and whittled to the bone with exhaustion - and all he wanted in that moment was to call Grover and ask for some help. But things weren't so easy anymore.
The golden sunlight that usually cast itself on Camp in the summer just felt fluorescent now - stale and lacking in warmth. All it did was spotlight the tension in the air, laced with dread and grief. When Percy looked around the tables in pavilion, he only saw tight lips, narrowed eyes, the edges of everyone he loved hardened to a knife-point: the most piercing, brittle weapon. Minds turned to maps and intel missions, hands were molten with bronze and steel and soot, war cries echoed against the clang of metal-on-metal in a cacophony of mourning. As if they could be strong enough for those who'd fallen, and that would make everything okay.
Kids looked at him too, but there was no strength in his eyes left. Under the oh so Great Prophecy, Percy was merely the harbinger of the end, a pseudo-Angel of Death.
When he finally let his gaze rise from his plate of half-eaten pancakes, he let it fall onto the curve of her back. He watched her breathe, like he always did, after the Dream. The rise and fall of her chest proved something he couldn't convince himself of alone, and soon the pounding waves in his bloodstream began to recede, making way for colour, movement - other sensations to observe. Something else in him calmed when he followed the movement of her hands on a map while she spoke - no, commanded. Taught. Led. The strongest and best of them all, always, even now.
There was always strength in her. Percy just felt too weak to carry it these days.
Still, he looked. It was about the only thing he could do without causing her pretty features to contort because she was trying not to cry.
Then her head tilted and dipped to her right, as if to meet his stare, but Percy knew better these days. He shoved his pancake-remains across his plate with a fork, determined to keep his head down. It was only through his peripheral vision that he noticed the Athena kids rising for their turn to burn offerings, noting distantly that meant they'd make their way to the right-side of his table, so he let his gaze drift over nothing in particular to his left as the noise and bustle of the pavilion finally reached his ears. It was louder than he'd realised, the teasing jeers and hesitant laughter no longer muffled. It was as if he'd recently developed the power to place himself underwater while on land. He finally felt like there were other people in the room with him. How long had he been down there?
"Percy."
He would've liked to say he didn't jump, or erupt in goosebumps at the sound of his name in her mouth without any vitriol. She'd said it softly - hesitant - like there was a chance he wouldn't respond to it. If he could believe it, he might've said it was fond. The way it was before the volcano, the island, him.
Percy turned to his right so quickly he nearly gave himself whiplash trying to greet her. He skimmed the sight of her new braids (pretty) and the beauty marks on her cheeks just to check she was unchanged, absorb as much of her image as he could before it got weird. Unharmed, alive, here.
He exhaled, though he couldn't recall when he started holding his breath.
"Annabeth," he answered on instinct, her name a parody of the oft-exasperated tone she used with him. He hadn't meant to say it that way, not this time, but a part of him still hoped she'd tilt her head and give him that look, like she was giving him another chance to earn a smile.
She didn't today, but her eyes went a little wide, and the tension in her shoulders fell away. Percy sat up a little straighter, the subtle shift of a blooming flower to light.
"We've got training later," she continued, eyes darting to the empty seat next to him on the bench, before giving him her full attention again. Something hummed beneath his skin.
"Yeah."
A useless, breathless answer.
"Will you spar with me?"
Percy blinked. His fingers drummed on the glass of ice-cold OJ in his hands, dipping into drops of condensation as he took in the question. It'd never been a question before, and the mess in his ribs couldn't figure out how to react to that. Given the last three days of silent treatment and cracked eggshells, he supposed he was just grateful.
"'Course," he nodded. The words that had stuck to his throat before their last fight found their way out now, as he coughed with the effort of saying them. "You don't have to ask, you know. When would I not?"
Annabeth shrugged, toeing the stray gravel kids inevitably tracked onto the stone floor of the pavilion, kicking it off the nearest ledge. "Wasn't sure if you'd still be around."
"What does that mean?"
She pursed her lips, eyes averted from his again even though he hadn't stopped looking at her once. "Nothing."
He tried to look at ease. Normal, unbothered, constructing an expression close enough to whatever his face usually did when he looked at her, instead of letting the sulky petulance filter into his voice. He didn't get the chance to try it out.
"I'll see you later."
As Percy watched her catch up to Bronte, he wondered whether what he had with Annabeth had ever been easy. Not the part where he cared, but the part where he cared too much. It was a consequence of his inexperience with people he could rely on. He stuck to them like a leech when he found that he could. No, it'd never been easy with her, and he doubted it would ever be.
He just didn't think it was always this hard.
"You're leaning."
Percy heaved with his hands on his knees, spitting out blood to his right where he'd bitten his tongue before looking back up at her. She'd barely broken a sweat today.
"What?"
"On your right. You just told me how you'll swing your sword by leaning too far forward. I thought we got rid of this habit."
Annabeth's voice was chiding, so cold and admonishing it rubbed him the wrong way when her eyes bore into his, but he couldn't find any trace of warmth or humour in them. Not recently, not for a while. Wasn't she the one who'd asked to train together?
"Well, those are hard to break right?" he retorted, a question that came out too jagged for what was meant to be a joke. She frowned.
"We have a war to prepare for Percy. You need to take this seriously."
That did it.
"Yeah," he coughed, swiping the back of his hand hard against his mouth before standing. He didn't need a mirror to know how icy the blue of his eyes looked.
"Whose fault is that again?"
The question should've landed where it hurt, hardened the furrow of her brows into stone and released a barrage of defences Luke didn't deserve. He was provoking her, and he knew it, but today those wide intelligent eyes seemed to latch onto something else, some minuscule tension in his shoulders, before she looked into his cold blues.
The upwards shift of her irises turned them gold-flecked in the light. He traced the few, tiny beads of sweat slip down the smooth slope of her neck, past the worn-out collar of her shirt. Suddenly, the thick scent of strawberries and tangerines seemed to engulf him.
He tucked the shiver down his spine away.
"No, habits aren't hard to break," Annabeth huffed, refusing the bait. He raised his eyes to hers then, unable to resist searching for what she'd seen in him. "Not when I break them."
She lunged before he could recover, and his body went into auto-pilot again.
Later that night, when he replayed every second he got with her in his mind, he remembered keeping up with her as his muscles played a game he'd forgotten the rules to. He focused on one phrase in his mind: stay balanced. In the way that she oft reminded him, in the same way Luke had taught him first, when he was wiry and weak and afraid.
What's the fucking point?
"Focus, Percy," Annabeth scolded. Her voice was cold again. The steel of it struck against his burning body, his nerves awry as he retaliated. Whether it was in obedience or rebellion he wasn't sure, but the next clang of Riptide crossed against her dagger pulled them face to face - too close - not close enough -
He didn't falter when he otherwise would've today, with her in front of him like this, too close to the burning he still saw when he blinked. When he saw flame and ash in her pupils, he forced his fingers to tighten on the hilt and end this, eardrums pounding the same way that thing in his ribs had all morning.
Her dagger flew across the arena, landing with a hard thud that echoed.
Annabeth spun away in retreat, shoving distance between them as if people fought fair and fights were clinical and they could just reset like this when she was disarmed. Like the people they were fighting against and for adhered to the rules she built altars on.
All for what? For this? For blood?
He wasn't sure what compelled him to step forward. But he did, bringing his blade down to catch her with the blunt side, but something had thrown her off-kilter too, so the tip of his sword met her cheek before its flat plane pressed against her throat.
Percy finally stilled.
Her eyes were bright, so vivid and furious and engaged that he almost faltered. It was like staring into a memory of her, cosplaying the kids they had been before their weapons had really known what it meant to draw blood. Gold and red and wet and warm.
His sword was stained by the teardrops of blood streaming down her left cheek. Bile rose up his throat at the cost of giving her what she'd demanded.
Percy didn't want to leave her eyes, to pull away, to leave the semblance of closeness and shared understanding they were playing at, but she was bleeding, and there was still lava in his eyes. So he dropped his sword, wordless and pained and so, so guilty -
Annabeth's fingers caught his wrist. Her eyes were studious, a flicker of concern (for him?) forming in them at her own expense.
"You didn't sleep well."
"Annabeth," Percy said, breathless enough from the sparring to convince her it was the exercise. It was the only good excuse he had. "You're hurt. I'm sorry - I'm so sorry I should've - let's just-"
"Did you have a bad dream?" she pushed, stepping closer, pressing the cold bronze blade of Riptide harder against her throat, almost hard enough to draw more blood, just to be near him. Her eyes were bottomless, relentless in its interrogation. She'd have paid more in flesh for a chance to see through him.
Percy pulled Riptide away and stepped back, scorched, unable to stomach another second of this.
"What makes you think that?" he answered, though his voice was strained, tired beyond his years. "I just won."
He flicked Riptide's cap on before turning towards the infirmary for some ambrosia, ready to turn his back on those wide eyes that saw too much and not enough. They were too close to the ones he saw last night - glossy and lit up by flames and crumbling rock and begging for a different ending.
"Because you were using a different kind of strength. The stuff that eats at you - you were using your emotions and letting yourself get riled up-"
"So what?" he almost spat, the words falling faster, fast enough his voice squeaked in that embarrassing, high-pitched tone it did when he was tired. Fuck, whatever. "It worked."
"It won't when you've worn yourself out," Annabeth huffed, equally frustrated and pent-up with rage she was still determined to conceal. He felt like a rubber band, pulled taut and ready to snap, the Fates testing however far he could be stretched. "Like when you flood camp when you're pissed. And if your opponent knows that's all they need to-"
Percy whipped back around to face her, toe-to-toe, the girl defiantly staring up at him with hard eyes. He smelled lemons under the dusty sand, and a wave of nostalgia sent him reeling. His fingers trembled at his sides.
"Luke doesn't know me."
"I was talking about Kronos."
"What's the difference?"
Percy was baiting her, he knew it, and it was cruel. But he had a feeling the truth was worse this time, that if she found out all the nightmares he'd had of her dying, they'd have to talk about it, his self-sacrifice, how deep his scars ran and if he'd actually accounted for them all.
Annabeth's eyes - those wide, piercingly dark ones - held his gaze, but they weren't warm. She always looked at him like this, these days. Like he'd died, and in his blues she saw someone else.
"You didn't answer Percy," her voice penetrated the vacuum of air between them, brittle in a way it never was, before the labyrinth.
"What did you dream about?"
Fire. Glass. Your flesh scorched red and black and your tears in ash and dust and magma and rock and I couldn't sa-
"Ogygia."
The admission tasted like broken glass.
He'd never called the island by its name before. The word always shattered before the sound reached her, but today its shards cut his mouth clean open to reveal itself.
"Is that what you wanted to hear?" he pushed, but it sounded like a plea instead, like he was asking a different question.
Percy watched her lip stiffen, eyes frantically running all over his face like she could finally find some semblance of the boy she used to know instead of the weak shadow he was. But she only recoiled in disbelief, eyes watering and blinking too fast, and he had to look away from the proof that he'd broken her heart in real time. Not before, not in a dream - now.
Annabeth shoved past him, hard enough so he stumbled backwards, desolate and ashamed.
He'd been treated like a poor imitation of the prodigal son upon his return, turned upside-down into someone crawling home repenting, though he wasn't sure what he was asking forgiveness for, when he said it to her weeks ago. The only thing he'd wasted was time. Maybe he'd been a little careless with his life, too. Greater good or otherwise, recklessness begets penance.
I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry -
He felt sorry for a million things. A little for himself, too, when Chiron looked at him with sympathetic eyes and Annabeth stormed out of the Big House that day. Chiron said it wasn't his fault, but blame had to be meted out regardless, and with all the gifts he'd been blessed with (courtesy of an absent father who'd cursed him by giving him life), this was just another fucking trial he'd nearly failed.
Percy didn't understand why, not even now. Why it'd been so hard to leave the island, or the dread and melancholy pooling in his gut when he thought about it, why he couldn't just tell her that his shoulders were weighted and his fate was destructive and he didn't know how to exist around her knowing wreckage was all that lay in his wake. Not then, not now.
Half a million people. Injured. Ill. No one died, but -
Save Olympus, or destroy it.
The impact event left a crater-sized hole in his chest. He remembered thinking maybe it was better that he had died. Let Hephaestus return home and tell everyone his fate, imprison himself on paradise so he could never be to blame again. Days like this taunted him, reminded him why he should have.
He'd walked along the beach for hours after Haphaestus's visit, but the facts of the matter were already laid bare, right there in the sand. The chances he'd survive this war were slim. Calypso told him as much. The slim possibility Annabeth didn't wasn't an option. So he came back.
But he was always going to come back wrong.
Annabeth didn't ask about his dreams again. Not that summer, not when he spent the next weekend at home, nor the rest of that painful, horrible year.
After the war, Percy turned down immortality, left Luke's corpse in the hands of his father, and did his best to make sure that none of this would never happen again. Everyone he knew and loved had paid the price for a new world with their forgotten childhoods and betrayals and grief-shaped holes in their hearts.
When he sat down at the dining pavilion in the morning after, stinking of rebirth and unmarred skin, he tried to find it. That point in time his life went down the world's longest rollercoaster drop - he knew it as the minute that volcano blew up. Every turn after led to a downwards spiral. He'd found out he was meant to die, and it was like the fabric of reality had been pulled from underneath his feet. Annabeth had been right, infuriatingly precocious as always - rollercoasters couldn't compare to the real thing.
Percy felt he should've been relieved by Luke's martyrdom, like a light would flicker on at the end of the tunnel and guide him out of his head. But he hadn't planned on his survival, and truthfully he no longer knew what to have faith in beyond this.
Camp. His mother's apartment.
Annabeth.
He relied on her like air, an oxygen mask in the shape of her lips on his. Nothing mattered more. He'd known that, even when he was too terrified to pay for that truth with his life. But he'd needed it then, and he needed it now.
She was always that. Grounding. His axis in a spinning world. He didn't know if he was anything close to that in hers, but he hoped to be, someday.
"Do you think about it?"
Her voice broke through his thoughts. Percy was brought back to the setting sun in front of him, the hot metal hood of his stepfather's car pleasant underneath his shorts. His eyes flicked over her frame - clad in a magenta swimsuit and his faded checkered flannel - and his heart stuttered and raced and broke all at once at her image. It took him too long to recall her question.
"About what?"
Annabeth's eyes were still trained on the sea's horizon, like she was looking for something. Somewhere.
"Ogygia."
Percy thought about lying. The island always stilled something in him, froze his insides in a way that made his blood clot with the memories he'd tried to let time dissolve - more than 365 days now. But the way he'd stopped breathing back then wasn't something his bones let him forget, the fracturing of his body and soul he'd had to work so hard to piece back together, all without her by his side.
"Not the way you think I do."
He felt, rather than heard, Annabeth stifle a snort, something like an amused grunt coming out instead. He felt the beginning of a smile - rarer now, though it felt truer too - pull at his cheek.
"How would you know what I think you think about?" she teased, something light percolating her words no matter how serious she'd tried to be. He hoped that'd been his influence.
Percy shrugged, letting the smile take over in full, let her bring him back to life.
"You know me. I know you. You're asking if I regret coming home."
When his eyes finally pierced her, she faltered only slightly, but enough for him to catch. His hand found her palm without thinking, signaled only by the comforting weight of her fingers interlocked with his. His thumb brushed the underside of her wrist.
"I wouldn't have blamed you," Annabeth murmured, fragile and distant, as if she were talking to someone else, eyes returned to the distance ahead.
"You came back to die."
She said it like it was the truth. Like it was an irrefutable and stubborn fact, one that she was still grieving, even though his palm on hers was slick with sweat and solid evidence of how nervous he was and how alive, the kind of worry he only had because his heart was still beating.
Percy exhaled, too aware of what she already knew. It was a fact, but it was just as inevitable for him as it was for her. It was a hygiene factor of being a demigod, the self-fulfilling prophecy of his life. It scared him then, when he first realised - truly realised - but he followed through.
He would test Fate's patience, throw himself into every stairwell if it meant that at the end of the day, he could still be here, one way or another. Sitting next to Annabeth on the beach in Montauk, their knees knocked together, shoulders pressed to the other's, her knowing wide eyes boring straight through him without worrying that she'd see how much he loved her - wanting her to. He'd died for it before, and would die for it again.
"No. I came back to you."
Her gaze fell back to the shore.
Percy tried.
"Look, Ogygia was… it was peaceful. There were these invisible beings - or maybe it was just magic, I don't know - who'd set the tables and do the laundry and cleaned up. It would've been comfortable, I guess, not having to do any chores-"
That earned him a real snort.
"- but I wouldn't have been happy."
He squeezed her hand when she didn't deign him with a response. He didn't try to rush her out of silence, but to prove he was real. There. Hers.
Percy just wasn't sure who he was proving it to.
"Maybe you could've," she finally spoke up, after too long a beat. "If you'd given her a chance. Given yourself time."
"Annabeth-"
"The point is you would've been safe," she barrelled on, rambling now, clearly stuck on the point as she envisioned a future for him that didn't include her. He tried not to flinch.
"You wouldn't have had to swim in the Styx or lead an army of children to their deaths or-"
"It was never about me being safe. About protecting me from the world," Percy interrupted, urgent and desperate to get her to just look at him. His grip on her palm tightened again, just so she'd finally see that he was there. How much it meant that he was.
Her dark brown eyes were now amber glass in the setting sunlight. They were glossy, stormy, beautifully distraught in a way he was never able to really capture or explain when his mother asked him not to spare any details.
"It was about protecting the world from me."
Her bottom lip trembled at the confession, begging for promises he wanted to pour straight into her mouth, ones she'd never ask for.
"Percy-"
He chuckled, not a forced sound, but a sincere attempt to cut off whatever new way she'd come up with to blame herself for his choices. "I turned down immortality up there. If I wanted to live forever I would've taken the godly gig - why get stuck on Neverland instead?"
Annabeth was silent for a moment, brows furrowed with a worry he couldn't ease. Percy didn't want to push so they ended up arguing again, the way they had all year only to spend most of it alone, but he couldn't bring himself to construct any more jokes or half-truths.
He scrambled through his mental catalogue of thoughts instead, the ones he'd tucked away to tell her last year, the half-formed but sincere feelings about her intelligence or her eyes or her undeserved kindness or the question of if she saved everyone who would save her when he was gone-
Then Annabeth's head fell into the crook of his neck, and he was struck silent by the warmth of her cheek on his shoulder. Like she was made to rest there, close to the thrum of his heart.
"I don't know what Neverland is," she admitted, a little shy. A sharp thrill shot through his veins, that familiar and pleasant humming underneath his skin now returned.
"I'll show you."
"Someday."
He'd thought about that a lot, in the last year. If Someday was a thing they could have. He was still re-learning the shape of hope, but the fabric of the future became more tangible the longer he sat next to her like this.
"It's just, that's what mattered to me most, you know," she whispered into the little space between them, her temple tucked under his chin. Her voice was so small he thought the wind would carry it away, leaving him grasping, empty-handed no matter how much he wanted to hold her words in his hands.
"Saving you. It still is."
Percy didn't always know how to be what she needed him to, but he'd damn well die trying.
With shaky breaths he shifted his weight to detach from her, for a second and no longer, before leaning towards her shoulder. His fingers, amateurish and fluttery and afraid, lifted the collar of his shirt to reveal the glaring white mark on her soft brown skin, everlasting proof of his hubris, delusion, and failure. It was the burden she carried for loving him, for being the reason he learned the meaning of restraint. It still pained him to look at it.
So he didn't. He lowered his lips to the scar in reverence.
"You did."
He let her hand on his cheek pull him back up to her, save them both from drowning as they breathed in the other's air, his hands deep in the grooves of her hipbones and her neck and her sides as he shifted her onto his lap so the weight of her replaced all the hurt he carried, even if it was just for now, if it was all they could bear to kiss and forget and kiss again.
But he was always a loose cannon, and she looked like a vision of an angel he'd dreamt of once with her braids lit up by orange sunlight, softer and holier than the harsh-red flames the nightmares painted. His hands drifted down her arms, slowly pulling away his flannel so it fell onto the hood of the car and his fingers could feel the racing pulse of her bloodstream against his.
Her heart slammed against his chest when they collided like atoms in a nuclear collision, the energy reverberating and rejuvenating his weary bones, so he couldn't help but tell her something real when she gasped against his skin.
"This is why I came back. What I stayed alive for. You."
When she kissed him hard in answer, bite his bottom lip and part hers, he prayed she could swallow the truth of it on his tongue too.