I'll be here forever

chapter 39

I had a particularly bad nightmare that night.

Percy and I had taken the tent out and set it up in that baseball field, exhausted. We'd crawled inside and fell right back into the position we'd started in; his arms around me, the feeling still better than any other in the world. I'd fallen asleep almost immediately.

I wasn't a misty version of myself, this time; this time, I was me. But I knew right away that I wasn't the one controlling what was happening.

I hit the water, and it stung my body, while the air was knocked out of my lungs. I sunk in the freezing water, and I couldn't see, either. It was cold. It was so, so cold, and my limbs felt like the were about to detach. I knew that Percy and I had fallen in together, but I'd lost my grip on him, and I felt alone.

And then there were the voices. They wailed into my ears, heartbroken, millions of lamenting souls. They were worse than the cold. They weighed me down, and I sank further. "What's the point of struggling?" they told me. "You're dead anyway. You'll never leave this place."

It would be so easy... just sink to the bottom, give up, let the river carry me away. I could let myself drown, and all my worries would wash away. It was all pointless anyways.

But then I felt Percy grip my hand, and I was jolted back to reality. I didn't want to die. I couldn't see him, but I knew he was there, and that was enough.

Together we kicked upward and broke through the surface. I gulped in the searing air, grateful for it, even if it tasted like ash.

The water swirled around us, and I realized that Percy was making a whirlpool to keep us above water. And even though I couldn't make out my surroundings, I knew we were in a river, and rivers had shores.

"Land," I croaked, hoping he could hear me, "Go sideways."

Percy was near dead with exhaustion. I knew that water usually gave him energy, but not this water. It must've sapped every bit of strength out of him to help us get to the surface.

The whirlpool below us began to dissipate. I hooked an arm around his waist and began to swim, but the current worked against me, pushing us back. Thousands of heartbroken voices wailed in my ears, getting inside my head. But I had to get to the shore. If for nothing else, for him.

"Life is despair," the voices said, "Everything is pointless, and then you die."

"Pointless," Percy murmured. His teeth chattered from the cold. He stopped swimming with me, stopped trying to go against the current, and began to sink.

I turned, and I glanced back at him, and I saw him. I hated the look in his eyes. He seemed as if he were already dead. Like nothing mattered anymore. He was ready to give up, ready to let the river take him to the bottom. He looked ready to let himself rot there. He looked as if there was nothing left to fight for, nothing left to live for, and he was giving up. He weighed me down, sinking us, and I didn't know what I could do to fix it, fix him. And even as I pulled and pulled and tried to swim toward the shore, he sank.

I refused to let him die. I refused. We'd come this far.

But he seemed determined to give up completely. The look in his eyes broke my heart, shattered it into a million pieces. He looked like he was already gone.

Then the dream started to fade away, my vision fading to black.

"No!" I screamed, "Bring me back! Let me save him!"

The dream didn't listen, and it faded completely, leaving me in never-ending blackness.

And then I woke, chest heaving. I jerked forward, only to crash into someone.

"It's okay, it's okay," Percy said softly, grabbing my shoulders. He'd moved. I must've woken him up.

I looked upward, and he met my gaze, his eyes crinkling in concern. I couldn't get it out of my head. How dead he looked. How I couldn't save him. So different from how I've always seen him.

And then I broke down in tears, my body shaking as I sobbed. Percy understood. Instead of asking, he gently pulled my into his lap, holding me. I cried into his chest, taking fistfuls of his shirt into my hands, and tried to forget the look in his eyes, forget the way he just wanted to sink to the bottom of that goddamn river. I just couldn't.

"You're okay. It's just a dream. You're okay," he murmured, rubbing my shoulder. Still the only thing that echoed in my mind was the "pointless", and the way he'd said it, giving into the voices of the river, over, and over, and over.

"Was that a bad one?" he asked me, when I finally pulled myself together enough to stop crying. I didn't trust myself to speak, so I nodded, my face still buried in his chest, still clutching handfuls of his shirt.

I don't know what I'd do without him, without waking up next to him in the mornings, without his voice being this first and last thing I hear, without his hand in mine, without the glances he gives me, without every part of him. I couldn't survive, couldn't keep going without the assurance of him, his very presence.

And maybe that's not healthy, maybe I'm too dependent on him, but I don't really care. With the things we've been through... I need him. Every part of him. I think I always will.

"Percy?" I asked, my voice shaking, muffled.

"Mhm?"

"Can you- just... promise you won't leave me?"

"I promise. I'm not going anywhere, not if I can help it."

I sighed shakily, and Percy set to the task of braiding my hair, his fingers taking up the pieces gently, sending me back to the aftermath of the first nightmare I had.

My hair had grown since then, from chin length to just below my shoulders, and I was thinking about cutting it again. It was nice having it up and out of the way while fighting things, and it kept my curls a little more manageable.

"Do you wanted to tell me about it?" he murmured, concentrating on his braiding.

"Not really," I told him. I never wanted to experience that again, so instead I pushed it into a box, a box where I kept everything that I wanted to forget. That way, I didn't have to think about it, didn't have to remember it, and it didn't bother me.