νεκρός || Annabeth Chase x Fem!OC

Vol. 1-17: I get in my feels over ice cream

TEMPEST

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I immediately stalked off to the hammocks where a bunch of old pirates probably used to sleep. I went ahead and laid in one, despite not being able to fall asleep. In a way, it's both a blessing and a curse. I don't deal with that nagging tiredness, or the nightmares, but I can't escape anything.

Annabeth was still up with Percy, trying to keep lookout with him. I had a feeling she was apologizing for my piss-poor behavior, which.. Fuck, I can't lie. I felt bad about it. Percy was just some random boy. He didn't do anything to me, and I knew I'd humiliated him.

I was ashamed.

That feeling just reminded me so much of my own existence, of when I was alive. I've never had a friend, really. Never. Not a single time. I always push them away somehow, make them loathe me. Kind of with things like this. Now, I knew I'd have to sit through the rest of this stupid quest and get the Fleece back to Camp Half-Blood, and then I'd leave again.

It's crazy to think I was considering asking Annabeth to be my friend.

I poked around some pirate crates mindlessly as I thought about that. How stupid was I? Thinking that we had one or two conversations meant that we could be friends. I don't even know what a friend really is. I haven't felt emotionally connected to anyone since my family died. I felt like I had been starting to understand Annabeth. Like maybe, just maybe, I wasn't going to push her away. Then I go and fuck up. Because that's what I do. I fuck everything up in my path even if I don't mean to.

My dad really named me well, I think.

I started thinking about all of the people I can encountered through the past few decades. How I used to watch them with their friends. Every few years or so, I'd think I wanted something like that. I would see girls my age whispering to each other and pointing at cute boys they liked. I've never gossiped before. I would see them at the mall together, just shopping and hanging out, talking about entirely ordinary things, like a TV program or their home lives, and I wondered what it would be like to share that with someone.

I think if I could cry, I would have in those moments, and in the current one. I think I would have cried because of how much I hate myself.

I stared at my hands, which weren't really my hands. If I took one of these wooden nails and ripped myself open the point you could see my bones, I wouldn't feel it. It'd just patch itself back up and I'd be on my merry way. And thinking about that made me remember that I am not human anymore. I am a ghost. And ghosts don't get to have friends.

I remembered one time in the eighties, I saw a group of teenage girls walking around with ice creams. One of the girls dropped hers, and all of her friends- including her- were laughing. They just thought it was the funniest thing in the world. Then they went back to the ice cream shop, and all bought the girl a new ice cream cone. I remembered sitting on a nearby bench. I hadn't even been doing anything. But, I used to go to that mall and people-watch. And I remembered watching them, and wondering what it would be like if I dropped an ice cream cone. Would anybody buy me a new one? And when I realized the answer was no, I left the mall and didn't come back for a while.

I often wonder what it's like to be normal, but I guess that night on the ship, I was in my feelings, and really thinking about it. What would it be like if I had been born fifteen years ago, in the early nineties, and I was still alive? I wondered if I could walk into Camp Half-Blood and make a friend. Just one would suffice, I think. So many secrets are piled up inside of me, and I think I'd want just one friend to tell them to. Even the simple ones, like little pranks I've pulled, or maybe a few small things I stole, or things I've overhead about another person.