The first time Annabeth ran from home, she was seven years old.
She didn't remember the reason as clearly as she remembered Helen's unkind words about something she did or didn't do — because she never knew what they were in her father's house — and she escaped the place by jumping through the window of the woman's office. The night was cold and less than welcoming to a child, especially one with so much fear on her face and tears in her eyes, but it wasn't worse than another dinner on a table they wouldn't set with a plate for her, with food she would have to cook for herself.
It was kinder when she met Luke, but even he advised her that living in the streets wouldn't be better than having a roof upon her head. Especially when winter was already ruthless, and the season had barely begun. Luke, Grover and Thalia took her to camp, where she spent the night and the following day, and only then they managed to convince her that the risks of being a missing person weren't worth the peace she had just found there, with them.
So, she went back anyway, and wished she hadn't when no one even noticed she had been gone.
The second time she ran away, it was because she had regretted leaving the camp instead of signing up to stay the whole year. She was nine, and she was absolutely sure that it would take her father at least a month and a half to realize she didn't come back home — but in her childish fantasy, and the wanting to just see if things would magically change, she went back to their house, and ran away back to camp within the first month.
Chiron wasn't one to bend the rules, but he did let her add her name to the year-rounders list, and asked her to not comment on anything. If she didn't mention it, the other campers wouldn't even question, and it would be better than explaining why she had come back or the reason why Chiron let her stay so easily.
The third time happened when she was thirteen, and she didn't think it would happen at all. But her father and stepmother and half-siblings had decided to make an impromptu trip to God-knows-where — she hoped it was the depths of hell — and forgot to remember that she was spending the day out with Grover and Percy. So, when she came back to an empty house, without a note and without a message and without anything at all, she already knew what had happened.
She was left behind, and it was the first time the sadness turned into full-blown anger.
She took everything she remembered ever bringing to the house, and took one of her father's suitcases to fit it all in, and then decided she would ask anyone to have her, at least for a while. She didn't want to bother anyone with having to house a pre-teenager, especially when she did have a perfectly good house to stay in regardless of its other inhabitants, but the hate she felt was something she needed to deal with away from Helen's crystal things and her father's old, historical stuff.
She found herself back on camp, and Chiron didn't ask, that time. Deep down, she knew he wondered why she still went back instead of staying at camp, and she also knew that he only didn't make the offer out loud because he knew the answer. She wanted things to change, she wanted a chance for them to be better, and her logic didn't quite reach that part of her heart yet.
The last one, she was fourteen, and they were all in the most magical place on Earth, or so they sold it as. It had been a surprise when Helen and Frederick told her to pack her things and join them, but she understood that it had come from Matthew and Bobby, who asked her, innocently, which car seat she wanted. Her father and step-mother seemed a bit taken aback, apparently remembering that there was someone else in the house, and Annabeth simply said she didn't mind which one she'd take.
She travelled by the window to the airport, and tried to sink to the seat whenever Helen stuttered before mentioning her name in the middle of the conversations. She was also by the window in the airplane, beside a stranger and her father on the aisle seat.
