Mistakes (percabeth)

Prolouge

"You can love someone so much, but you can never love people as much as you can miss them."

John Green

Percy Jackson and Annabeth Chase had always been everyone's favorite couple. They had been best friends since they were twelve years old and had fallen in love over the years. They were the one couple that everybody was sure of, that never fought and never allowed anything to get in the way of their relationship.  After everything they had gone through, nobody thought there was anything that could possibly tear them apart.

Their first few years together were amazing. They fell more in love every single day. They went to college together in New Rome, hung out with the rest of the seven, and of course became counselors at camp together. Annabeth even moved in with him.

Percy proposed on their seventh anniversary. It wasn't a big spectacular event, but it was perfect. After a wonderful dinner in the city, they went for a walk at camp, and Percy proposed there on the beach.

In the moments where she allowed herself to think about him, when it wasn't too painful, Annabeth often found herself wondering where it had all gone wrong. They had had a promising future, and they had been so in love.

She couldn't pinpoint exactly what happened. When she looked back on it, all she could remember was a bit of withdrawal from each of them, less talking and more silence. They started fighting about little things that didn't really matter, but in the heat of the moment, they would both get worked up.

At first it was bearable. Just little tiffs that they could forget easily, and go back to the way it had been. But that changed when Percy lost his job teaching marine biology as a professor at NYU. They said they had "found someone better for the job" which everyone knew meant, you kind of suck at this and we could do better with someone else.

With only Annabeth's job as an architect, money began to be a bit of an issue for them. Unpaid bills were stacked on the counter at all times. Things were tense even in their best moments. What was once a small but frequent amount of fighting turned insurmountable; every night it would be something new, until they didn't even know what they were fighting about.

One night, it all got to be too much.  They were about to lose their house and could scrounge up no money to pay any of the bills.  Percy was exhausted from searching for a job that just wouldn't come.  Annabeth was exhausted from working over time on architecture to make up for the money that was not coming in.  It started out small as all the others had, but quickly grew in volume and heat as all the months of not talking and trying to get by on one salary caught up to them in one giant tidal wave all at once. 

Words that neither of them really meant came pouring out without a single thought to stop them.  It was as if the dam that both of them had put up had cracked one too many times and had finally broken, and now all the pent-up feelings and words they were too afraid to say came pouring out. 

It was too much.  They tore at each other, no longer even thinking about what they were saying, until Percy screamed at her to get out of his house.  And she ran to the bedroom, desperately grabbing handfuls of random clothes, because how could she care about clothes when she had just realized that it had all gotten to be too much, that there was no way they could be as they once had been.

She stumbled out of the bedroom with a bag in her hands, and she just stood there, looking at Percy, silently begging him to say something, anything, that would allow her to unpack the bag and fall into his arms.  It was what she wanted the most in that moment, to be able to forget everything they had said and go back to how it was those first couple months, when everything was so simple and their relationship was effortless.  

But nothing was ever that easy, and as he looked at her that night she saw nothing in his eyes.  Not compassion or love like she used to see, not even the sadness or desperation that she was so used to seeing now.  His eyes were cold and lifeless as he stared at her, and in that moment she lost all the blind hope that she had restored, and she knew that he was gone.  She took a deep breath, and said two words.  She didn't scream or cry or swear.  She said, very calmly, "Goodbye, Percy."

And she walked slowly out the door, closing it softly behind her.  As soon as she heard the click of the door behind her, the tears started.  An endless, heavy flow and they were not so much tears as a sign that the string that had been holding Annabeth together for the past several months had finally snapped, and with it went all of her hope that maybe, just maybe, they could get through this.  And so she did not even make an effort to stop it when she began to cry that broken, incoherent crying that only comes when you have lost something that is irreplaceable.  She knew that trying to hold herself together would only make it worse, and so she fell apart completely as she drove away from the best thing she had ever known.  She though she had understood how bad words could hurt, but she knew now that she had been hopelessly mistaken.  She understood now, how words had the power to build something beautiful over time, but also had the power to destroy it in a matter of seconds.  Soon, her crying got to the point where she could no longer see past the tears flooding her eyes and she was forced to pull over.  

And so Annabeth sat there, and she cried.  She cried until there was absolutely nothing left, and it took way too long, but finally, she drifted into a sleep in which the pain was still there, but it was not so horrible.  And that became her life.  She knew the pain would never leave all the way, but it slowed to a dull, quiet, but still vaguely noticeable throb.  If she didn't think of him, it was bearable.