Percy Jackson Fanfics

Requiem For a Family

Title: Requiem For a Family
Author: highfivingjesus
Site: Archive of Our Own
Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/839470

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It is the first time I've caught a glimpse of a Percy I could live with.

And he is beautiful.

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It feels as if this room could swallow me whole. I think it's willing me to disappear from this place of humanity, where other people are content and some are aspiring and others just sort of drift. They are all set and comfortable in their skin but mine is trying to force me out, elsewhere.

Life is trying to run me over.

My knuckles turn white on the receiver.

Dad's face flashes across the screen, a picture that I had to take candidly while he worked.

I won't let it.

I don't hear when Percy moves to stand in the doorway, but I can feel his eyes on the back of my head and everything about the touch of his attention smoothing fingers across my back makes my skin pebble. I do my best to ignore him. For now.

After, though, when I've broken my own heart, I will need the Percy that I've only caught foretastes of, when he forgot that he's supposed to hate me. I will need the Percy he was before life tried to run him over, too, by killing his mom and shoving him into the uncertain hands of his absentee father.

I accept my father's call for the last time.

"Annabeth!" he puffs into what is probably his office phone, while he tinkers away at one of his model airplanes. I switch it to speaker and set the phone in front of me. I don't mind if Percy hears. "Where have you been? Your mother called and said you ran off again. You can't keep doing that, Annabeth, honey."

I think about what I want to say to him, but I'm not sure how to word it yet. I keep quiet while he continues to prattle on about responsibility and maturity and stability, about needing family and a home and a good start to the rest of my life. It's all meant to be very soothing and convincing, and the tone he's chosen this time is the fatherly kind that isn't loud and angry, but rather soft and understanding. It makes my blood burn hot in my skin so I dig my fingers into the fur of the rug I'm sitting on and try to breathe evenly.

I can hear Helen in the back, asking him who he's talking to. To his credit he does try to shoo her but she's much too stubborn for him and he's much too pliable. I can hear her demand the phone of him; she's chosen the angry and loud tone instead of pretending to understand that she's the devil.

"Annabeth!" I like how they start their phone calls the same. Huffy and aggravated and immediately using my name to show who they blame for these feelings. They're matching; it's kind of cute. "Where the hell have you been? What's this on the news about you and some boy? What have you gotten yourself into now? Do you know how this looks…" She pauses, like maybe she's realized that I don't care how it looks for her family. "Do you understand the implications this makes against you?"

But Percy's not who everyone seems to think he is.

In fact, just last week he accidentally told me that his most intimate act was kissing his girlfriend for nearly five minutes in a public restroom. And I didn't count it as intimate at all, but rather vile and odd.

"Yes, Helen."

"Then why, in the name of all that is good and right, would you move in with him?"