(no subject)

[unrestrained]

Shard: Five / "Oh... you are so in trouble."
Type: Sig Positive
What it is: ANNABETH SNEAKS INTO HIS ROOM

Details:
» Percy is a sappy boyfriend, news at eleven.
» Annabeth sneaks into his room and rolls her eyes at him because PERCY YOU ARE ABOUT TO BE SEVENTEEN. YOU ARE AN ADULT. stop being scared of our chaperon.
» They go hang out on the bottom of the ship they're in-- which is glass so animals can go free-- and reminisce.
» ...Then he sort of proposes to Ananbeth explaining he wanted to have a SAFE life with her where they could grow old and go to college (which is not something they should be able to do but now is an option-- since demigods die)
» Annabeth actually says yes?!? Mostly... Just "not right now" since they're in the middle of a war and Percy's priorities.
» Apparently Percy was having a nightmare when she showed up but those details are foggy. He'll know a kid named Nico has five days to live and is probably in Rome where they're headed.
» Percy hasn't had contact with his father since August-- nearly a year ago.
» Annabeth decides not to stress it and says he should just hold her for a while. So they kiss, cuddle, etc and eventually fall asleep.
» TO BE WAKEN UP BY FRANK IN THE MORNING. (at least it wasn't coach hedge's baseball bat).

At first, Percy thought he was still asleep. When he’d lost his memory, he’d spent weeks dreaming
about Annabeth, the only person he remembered from his past. As his eyes opened and his vision
cleared, he realized she was really there.
She was standing by his berth, smiling down at him.
Her blond hair fell across her shoulders. Her storm-gray eyes were bright with amusement. He
remembered his first day at Camp Half-Blood, five years ago, when he’d woken from a daze and
found Annabeth standing over him. She had said, You drool when you sleep.
She was sentimental that way.
“Wh—what’s going on?” he asked. “Are we there?”
“No,” she said, her voice low. “It’s the middle of the night.”
“You mean…” Percy’s heart started to race. He realized he was in his pajamas, in bed. He probably
had been drooling, or at least making weird noises as he dreamed. No doubt he had a severe case of
pillow hair and his breath didn’t smell great. “You sneaked into my cabin?”Annabeth rolled her eyes. “Percy, you’ll be seventeen in two months. You can’t seriously be
worried about getting into trouble with Coach Hedge.”
“Uh, have you seen his baseball bat?”
“Besides, Seaweed Brain, I just thought we could take a walk. We haven’t had any time to be
together alone. I want to show you something—my favorite place aboard the ship.”
Percy’s pulse was still in overdrive, but it wasn’t from fear of getting into trouble. “Can I, you
know, brush my teeth first?”
“You’d better,” Annabeth said. “Because I’m not kissing you until you do. And brush your hair
while you’re at it.”
For a trireme, the ship was huge, but it still felt cozy to Percy—like his dorm building back at Yancy
Academy, or any of the other boarding schools he’d gotten kicked out of. Annabeth and he crept
downstairs to the second deck, which Percy hadn’t explored except for sickbay.
She led him past the engine room, which looked like a very dangerous, mechanized jungle gym,
with pipes and pistons and tubes jutting from a central bronze sphere. Cables resembling giant metal
noodles snaked across the floor and ran up the walls.
“How does that thing even work?” Percy asked.
“No idea,” Annabeth said. “And I’m the only one besides Leo who can operate it.”
“That’s reassuring.”
“It should be fine. It’s only threatened to blow up once.”
“You’re kidding, I hope.”
She smiled. “Come on.”They worked their way past the supply rooms and the armory. Toward the stern of the ship, they
reached a set of wooden double doors that opened into a large stable. The room smelled of fresh hay
and wool blankets. Lining the left wall were three empty horse stalls like the ones they used for pegasi
back at camp. The right wall had two empty cages big enough for large zoo animals.
In the center of the floor was a twenty-foot-square see-through panel. Far below, the night
landscape whisked by—miles of dark countryside crisscrossed with illuminated highways like the
strands of a web.
“A glass-bottomed boat?” Percy asked.
Annabeth grabbed a blanket from the nearest stable gate and spread it across part of the glass
floor. “Sit with me.”
They relaxed on the blanket as if they were having a picnic, and watched the world go by below.
“Leo built the stables so pegasi could come and go easily,” Annabeth said. “Only he didn’t realize
that pegasi prefer to roam free, so the stables are always empty.”
Percy wondered where Blackjack was—roaming the skies somewhere, hopefully following their
progress. Percy’s head still throbbed from getting whopped by Blackjack’s hoof, but he didn’t hold that
against the horse.
“What do you mean, come and go easily?” he asked. “Wouldn’t a pegasus have to make it down two
flights of stairs?”
Annabeth rapped her knuckles on the glass. “These are bay doors, like on a bomber.”
Percy gulped. “You mean we’re sitting on doors? What if they opened?”
“I suppose we’d fall to our deaths. But they won’t open. Most likely.”
“Great.”Annabeth laughed. “You know why I like it here? It’s not just the view. What does this place
remind you of?”
Percy looked around: the cages and stables, the Celestial bronze lamp hanging from the beam, the
smell of hay, and of course Annabeth sitting close to him, her face ghostly and beautiful in the soft
amber light.
“That zoo truck,” Percy decided. “The one we took to Las Vegas.”
Her smile told him he’d gotten the answer right.
“That was so long ago,” Percy said. “We were in bad shape, struggling to get across the country to
find that stupid lightning bolt, trapped in a truck with a bunch of mistreated animals. How can you be
nostalgic for that?”
“Because, Seaweed Brain, it’s the first time we really talked, you and me. I told you about my
family, and…” She took out her camp necklace, strung with her dad’s college ring and a colorful clay
bead for each year at Camp Half-Blood. Now there was something else on the leather cord: a red coral
pendant Percy had given her when they had started dating. He’d brought it from his father’s palace at
the bottom of the sea.
“And,” Annabeth continued, “it reminds me how long we’ve known each other. We were twelve,
Percy. Can you believe that?”
“No,” he admitted. “So…you knew you liked me from that moment?”
She smirked. “I hated you at first. You annoyed me. Then I tolerated you for a few years. Then—”
“Okay, fine.”
She leaned over and kissed him: a good, proper kiss without anyone watching—no Romans
anywhere, no screaming satyr chaperones.
She pulled away. “I missed you, Percy.”Percy wanted to tell her the same thing, but it seemed too small a comment. While he had been
on the Roman side, he’d kept himself alive almost solely by thinking of Annabeth. I missed you didn’t
really cover that.
He remembered earlier in the night, when Piper had forced the eidolon to leave his mind. Percy
hadn’t been aware of its presence until she had used her charmspeak. After the eidolon was gone, he
felt as if a hot spike had been removed from his forehead. He hadn’t realized how much pain he had
been in until the spirit left. Then his thoughts became clearer. His soul settled comfortably back into
his body.
Sitting here with Annabeth made him feel the same way. The past few months could have been
one of his strange dreams. The events at Camp Jupiter seemed as fuzzy and unreal as that fight with
Jason, when they had both been controlled by the eidolons.
Yet he didn’t regret the time he’d spent at Camp Jupiter. It had opened his eyes in a lot of ways.
“Annabeth,” he said hesitantly, “in New Rome, demigods can live their whole lives in peace.”
Her expression turned guarded. “Reyna explained it to me. But, Percy, you belong at Camp HalfBlood.
That other life—”
“I know,” Percy said. “But while I was there, I saw so many demigods living without fear: kids
going to college, couples getting married and raising families. There’s nothing like that at Camp HalfBlood.
I kept thinking about you and me…and maybe someday when this war with the giants is
over…”
It was hard to tell in the golden light, but he thought Annabeth was blushing. “Oh,” she said.
Percy was afraid he’d said too much. Maybe he’d scared her with his big dreams of the future. She
was usually the one with the plans. Percy cursed himself silently.
As long as he’d known Annabeth, he still felt like he understood so little about her. Even after
they’d been dating several months, their relationship had always felt new and delicate, like a glass
sculpture. He was terrified of doing something wrong and breaking it.“I’m sorry,” he said. “I just…I had to think of that to keep going. To give me hope. Forget I
mentioned—”
“No!” she said. “No, Percy. Gods, that’s so sweet. It’s just…we may have burned that bridge. If we
can’t repair things with the Romans—well, the two sets of demigods have never gotten along. That’s
why the gods kept us separate. I don’t know if we could ever belong there.”
Percy didn’t want to argue, but he couldn’t let go of the hope. It felt important—not just for
Annabeth and him, but for all the other demigods. It had to be possible to belong in two different
worlds at once. After all, that’s what being a demigod was all about—not quite belonging in the
mortal world or on Mount Olympus, but trying to make peace with both sides of their nature.
Unfortunately, that got him thinking about the gods, the war they were facing, and his dream
about the twins Ephialtes and Otis.
“I was having a nightmare when you woke me up,” he admitted.
He told Annabeth what he’d seen.
Even the most troubling parts didn’t seem to surprise her. She shook her head sadly when he
described Nico’s imprisonment in the bronze jar. She got an angry glint in her eyes when he told her
about the giants planning some sort of Rome-destroying extravaganza that would include their painful
deaths as the opening event.
“Nico is the bait,” she murmured. “Gaea’s forces must have captured him somehow. But we don’t
know exactly where they’re holding him.”
“Somewhere in Rome,” Percy said. “Somewhere underground. They made it sound like Nico still
had a few days to live, but I don’t see how he could hold out so long with no oxygen.”
“Five more days, according to Nemesis,” Annabeth said. “The Kalends of July. At least the
deadline makes sense now.”
“What’s a Kalends?”Annabeth smirked, like she was pleased they were back in their old familiar pattern—Percy being
ignorant, she herself explaining stuff. “It’s just the Roman term for the first of the month. That’s
where we get the word calendar. But how can Nico survive that long? We should talk to Hazel.”
“Now?”
She hesitated. “No. It can wait until morning. I don’t want to hit her with this news in the middle
of the night.”
“The giants mentioned a statue,” Percy recalled. “And something about a talented friend who was
guarding it. Whoever this friend was, she scared Otis. Anyone who can scare a giant…”
Annabeth gazed down at a highway snaking through dark hills. “Percy, have you seen Poseidon
lately? Or had any kind of sign from him?”
He shook his head. “Not since…Wow. I guess I haven’t thought about it. Not since the end of the
Titan War. I saw him at Camp Half-Blood, but that was last August.” A sense of dread settled over
him. “Why? Have you seen Athena?”
She didn’t meet his eyes.
“A few weeks ago,” she admitted. “It…it wasn’t good. She didn’t seem like herself. Maybe it’s the
Greek/Roman schizophrenia that Nemesis described. I’m not sure. She said some hurtful things. She
said I had failed her.”
“Failed her?” Percy wasn’t sure he’d heard her right. Annabeth was the perfect demigod child. She
was everything a daughter of Athena should be. “How could you ever—?”
“I don’t know,” she said miserably. “On top of that, I’ve been having nightmares of my own. They
don’t make as much sense as yours.”
Percy waited, but Annabeth didn’t share any more details. He wanted to make her feel better and
tell her it would be okay, but he knew he couldn’t. He wanted to fix everything for both of them so they could have a happy ending. After all these years, even the cruelest gods would have to admit they
deserved it.
But he had a gut feeling that there was nothing he could do to help Annabeth this time, other
than simply be there. Wisdom’s daughter walks alone.
He felt as trapped and helpless as when he’d sunk into the muskeg.
Annabeth managed a faint smile. “Some romantic evening, huh? No more bad things until the
morning.” She kissed him again. “We’ll figure everything out. I’ve got you back. For now, that’s all
that matters.”
“Right,” Percy said. “No more talk about Gaea rising, Nico being held hostage, the world ending,
the giants—”
“Shut up, Seaweed Brain,” she ordered. “Just hold me for a while.”
They sat together cuddling, enjoying each other’s warmth. Before Percy knew it, the drone of the
ship’s engine, the dim light, and the comfortable feeling of being with Annabeth made his eyes heavy,
and he drifted to sleep.
When he woke, daylight was coming through the glass floor, and a boy’s voice said, “Oh…You are
in so much trouble.”