7 Years: Annabeth's Story

7 Years: Part 5

    once I was eleven years old, my daddy told me go get yourself a wife or you'll be lonely

It had become a matter of fact in the camp. Everyone knew Annabeth Chase did not have any friends, but that she was going places. She would be a name they would remember for centuries, so really, she didn't need friends (wrong, wrong, wrong, because now you're crying alone). And if Annabeth ever wanted any or had any feelings towards anyone, she never showed it.
It was the way life was at camp and every summer when the new campers arrived, they adjusted. Until one didn't. Annabeth's calculations had never included the wild card with sea-blown black hair and piercing green eyes that unnerved her. But the wild card had a quest and suddenly, that old dream she'd tried to suppress was a possibility again and weren't two dreams better than one (in that, you were right, little Beth, because dreams crash so easily and to have many is to want to live)?
She went with him and it was too hard not to trust the boy whose fatal flaw was loyalty. He won't leave you, he couldn't, his flaw wouldn't let him. Even if he hated you, he would stay, and that was all Annabeth needed. It didn't matter to her how or why, just that he did, because no one else ever had and all she wanted was a permanent person in her life. Once, she had thought it could be Luke, except suddenly he was the bad guy.
He said it was for Thalia that he was doing it and that ripped Annabeth's heart out of her chest every time she thought about it. Thalia had sacrificed so much, had sacrificed her life, for them and this was not the way to honor her, but at the same time, would it be honoring Thalia to abandon Luke and fight him?
But then Thalia was back and Annabeth blinked because she had gone from no one to two people again and it reminded her too much of how things had been that she panicked and backed away, feeling cornered in the memories. What if it happened again? What if she lost them again, could she really survive that again?
Quests came and went and she held the weight of the sky on her shoulders- and she was strong enough, she did it, and she stared at the world and knew that whatever it threw at her, she would be able to handle it (how wrong, young girl, because the pain is worse when it's your heart). She was no longer afraid, but now it seemed she'd missed her chance.
Where did the redhead come from? Maybe she had misjudged Percy's loyalty?
No, she hadn't. She felt it in the kiss on Mount Saint Helens and when he told her where his Achilles's spot was and the world had melted around her as she felt the importance of what he was telling her and the pure trust he put in her.
It was that moment. Annabeth fell hard and fast in that specific moment. She had thought about it earlier, but her heart had been conflicted- there was Luke and Thalia and Percy and nothing was logical about any of this. She saved Percy's life and took that knife for him. Hadn't Thalia done the same for her? That was what she'd trained for, to protect the ones she loved. He saved hers when he brought her to Will just in time, that was what he trained for, to protect the ones he loved.
The fact that Athena might not be pleased with her choice never crossed her mind. Percy was all she needed and he was hers and she was his and they could face the world together. She knew it. They would go down in history. The buildings and temples would have her name on it, but that wouldn't be all. There would also be the stories told around campfires for the rest of time, about how Annabeth Chase and Perseus Jackson had become heroes of Olympus.