It was pretty early in life when Annabeth discovered that failing wasn't a thing.
Or, rather, perhaps it was — but it never was, and would never be, a possibility for her, in her life, in her future, in her past.
Failure was bad, and she was supposed to be good. A good daughter, a good sister, a good student, a good person that shouldn't, and wouldn't, by any means, waste her father's time and money by not being somewhat successful in whatever it was that she had to do.
Because being good meant not failing, of course; but she was supposed to be the best in everything she attempted, even if it was something that came from someone else's mind and ideas and ideals.
The best, and the best at what they did couldn't fail. They couldn't misstep, or make a wrong choice, or take the wrong path — according to her father, her mother, her stepmother. She was supposed to know better, to be the best, to never make them once doubt her ability to be someone in life.
She was five when she first learned that she should be ashamed of things she couldn't exceed expectations on. She was five, and had just learned how to write, and she hadn't remembered that 'fish' didn't have plural when it came to a shoal, and she had lost a few decimals on her grade of the small poem she was supposed to write.
She was six when she learned that it wasn't an option not to be the best in Math, and that she should know how to divide things regardless of how the numbers swam all over the page. Annabeth had gotten two out of five questions wrong, and her father was more than displeased with the whole thing.
It was when she began hiding the rare papers that had anything less than an A splattered clearly on them. And even those, when she handed them proudly to her father, were considered nothing more than her obligation — she was expected to be the best student, and she was expected to make sure every penny spent was worth the trouble.
Annabeth was nine when she first won Student of the Month, and she was nine years and six months when she realized that the same achievement would be a burden more than a blessing. Her father wasn't happy, not exactly, beyond sharing Helen's happiness that they would only pay half the school's monthly payment, and she was now expected to win it every month.
And that she did, because she didn't want to learn how it would be when she didn't win it anymore.
She was eleven when she figured it out, and it was the first time she had had a panic crisis. Alone, in the school bathroom, missing one class for the first time in her life — and she made up something, so she didn't have to go back home, that day, only to end up in Thalia's doorstep and not say a word for eighteen hours straight.
But Annabeth tried, because it was normal in her reality that she needed to be the best, the best, the better. She tried, because that was the least she could do — she wasn't good in anything else, but she was smart (or so people said) and, therefore, studying and being a good student, the best student, was the bare minimum she could give her father in return.
Annabeth tried. She tried to make Math as easy as trigonometry and history were. She tried to make reading less headache inducing. She tried to make algebra less teary-eyed. She tried to make her panic crises less frequent, and her anxiety less visual, and her presence in the house less noticeable. She tried to make her trophies take less space, her medals a little less loud, her pride a little less shining.
She tried to keep a brave face when she won the Mathematics Olympics of New York and there wasn't someone clapping for her in the crowd in front of the stage.
