Silent Musings

Silhouettes

featuring -

a wooden pier - memories - some tears - and an unlikely friendship 

A cold breeze nicked Annabeth’s ears as she sat, her legs dangling off the pier at Camp Half-Blood. It was one of the only things that had survived the mass destruction of Gaia’s forces. Her tired grey eyes were the dull, aching colour of bread mould. Her blond hair hung in tattered strands around her shoulders. For once Annabeth was getting what she had always wanted - silence at camp. But it was the wrong kind.

The tears swum in her eyes as she lowered her head to look at the water. The waves rolled under her feet, gentle, calming, soothing. The way she should have felt now that she was back home. But camp had lost a lot of it’s warmth lately, just as it had lost so many of it’s heroes. 

Footsteps echoed on the wooden floor of the pier. She turned her head to see Nico di Angelo walking toward her, his black boots causing the loud clunks which shook the wood under her. She turned her gaze back to the water.

The footsteps stopped. Nico lowered himself next to her. Annabeth noticed he wasn’t carrying the sceptre anymore. 

Silence reigned once more.

Annabeth watched their shadows in the dying light of the sunset, silhouettes, floating the dark green waves licking her ankles. One slumping, wispy curls sticking out from a ratty ponytail. One curled up, skinny knees locked together, feathery hair whipping in the wind. Far apart. 

She turned to face him. “What do you want?” she demanded, then immediately regretted her harsh tone. His eyes were more sunken than ever, his skin already losing the little colour it had gained. He looked tired. His chin trembled. His eyes were lowered, moist. “Sorry,” she murmured.

A loud neighing from the skies caught their attention. She looked up to see a majestic pegasus, spreading it’s glossy wings against the bleeding sky. 

"Blackjack," whipered Nico. Annabeth nodded. The pegasi had been taking rounds of the shy over the shattered remain of camp for days now, a tribute to the ones fallen in war. Especially Percy. 

Something inside of her broke. The tears took over, making a little lake on the khaki fabric of her shorts. A waterfall down her cheek. An ocean in her eyes. She could taste them now, their tarty saltiness. Their sorrow, their bittersweet nostalgia. Their pain. She could taste her life, measured out in teaspoons. She could feel them winding around her face like vines, intent on trapping her, enroaching her, holding her captive until she died from their vice-like grip. 

A sudden iciness spread across her shoulder. A hand, long-fingered and pale, was perched on her shoulder, looking tenuous, unsteady, unsure. Her eyes found the owner of the flighty hand, and his face looked, in all it’s tenacity, like the lost ten-year old they had found at Westminister Hall. 

Hurt. Broken. Like when he had found out his sister died. Like when she watched her boyfriend die, her hands cradling his wounded head. A million woven bandages couldn’t have saved him.

Nico wrapped his arms around Annabeth’s shaking shoulders. For once, it was him comforting her, not the other way round. She simply sat and wept. Nico wept with her. 

Over Nico’s shoulders, Annabeth looked at the water again. The silhouettes were closer now, intertwined in a shaky embrace. The ripples in the water distorted the shadows as the wind started up again. Blackjack’s neighs echoed in Annabeth’s ears. The trees’ weary branches whistled in the breeze. 

But somehow, looking at those silhouettes wrapped around each other, like solid black rocks in the shifting waves of the water, she knew it would be alright.

Footnote: Please keep in mind that I wrote this four weeks before Blood of Olympus came out. It was also written chiefly to satisfy my needs of Nicobeth friendship. There is never enough.  If there are any inconsistencies in character based on what we may have learned in BoO, well, I’m sorry. But anyway, I hope you enjoyed it!