Percabeth Oneshots

Someone Like You

(A/N) By me. AU. As usual, I will accept a prompt from the person who can name the singer of the song which is in the title.

Percy Jackson had heard rumors about Annabeth Chase long before he ever saw her. Not that "seeing her" in the traditional sense seemed to be an option.

She was a ghost, a myth, a phantom in the engineering department. Other students whispered about her in the hallways with a mix of reverence and fear.

She was always working on something—blueprints, sketches, schematics—at all hours of the night. Some claimed they’d spotted her in the library at 3 AM, hunched over a massive drafting table, muttering to herself in Ancient Greek.

Percy had only seen flashes of her—once during orientation, another time at a lecture. But each sighting left him more confused.

For one, her hair was a mystery. It seemed to be a different length and color every time he caught a glimpse. Blonde and curly one day, short and dark the next, then pulled back in a messy bun with streaks of blue chalk dusted through it.

Then there were the outfits. Did she have a million identical gray hoodies and black jeans, or did she just… never change?

But the most unnerving thing about Annabeth Chase was her presence.

Like that time in History of Ancient Civilizations class. Their professor had been going on about Pompeii, explaining the city’s destruction as the result of Mount Vesuvius erupting.

Annabeth, sitting in the back with her hood pulled over her head, had raised her hand.

When called upon, she’d looked the professor dead in the eye and said, “Oh, that’s right, the volcano erupted. That’s definitely what really happened.”

The silence that followed was chilling. Percy didn’t understand why, but he felt an all-consuming sense of terror. The professor stammered for the rest of the lecture.

And then there was the Red Bull incident. Percy swore he saw her in the cafeteria once, shaking a handful of pills into her palm and downing them with an entire can of Red Bull.

He wanted to ask her if that was safe—if she was okay—but her glare when she caught him staring made him reconsider.

“Dude, don’t,” Grover had whispered when Percy brought it up. “You don’t just talk to Annabeth Chase. She’ll melt your brain.”

But Percy couldn’t stop being curious. He started noticing the details that no one else seemed to care about.

The way she always seemed to have a sketchpad with her. The dark circles under her eyes that spoke of weeks—maybe months—of sleep deprivation. The occasional muttering that sounded like blueprints coming to life in her head.

And the questions. So many questions. Where did she come from? Nobody knew. How was she so smart? Nobody could explain it. Why did she seem to radiate an aura of quiet chaos?

The final straw came during a group project. Percy had been paired with her.

He found her in the library at 2:47 AM, surrounded by a mountain of books and papers, furiously sketching something that looked like a cross between a catapult and a jet engine. Her hair was tied up with a pencil, and she was wearing mismatched socks.

“Um… Annabeth?” Percy ventured cautiously.

She looked up, blinking at him as if surprised he existed. “What?”

“I—uh—I’m Percy. We’re partners for the group project?”

“Oh, right,” she said, turning back to her sketches. “Just don’t touch anything, and we’ll get an A.”

That was the beginning. Percy never quite figured her out, but he never stopped trying to. Annabeth Chase wasn’t someone you understood. She was someone you survived.