Dreams (A PERCABETH AU)

Chapter 20- Time to Tell of Your Sins

Percy POV

"Percy...I'm going to see Luke."

My stomach plummeted to the floor. I stopped what I was doing to stare at her, unable to move or come to terms with what had just come out of her mouth.

For a moment, my mind went completely blank.

I'd had a lot to say before but now I was lost for words. Not a single part of me could understand why she would even want to see that monster.

Maybe I was a little too harsh on her...or a lot too harsh on her. She had every right to be mad at me, I'd been a jerk—apparently, it's what I do—but this was too far.

She wanted to see Luke? Over my dead body!

And after a good few seconds of absent-minded thinking, the only thing my stupid brain could come up with was a slightly bewildered:

"What?"

She sighed, her grey eyes drifting briefly across the pool table before they met mine. I suppose what was left of my stomach fell at that point too.

I hated that she looked so innocently beautiful right now.

"I've been thinking about it all day, really..." She started in that soft tone of hers. The one that always made me melt inside. "I just want to see him once."

Anger pelted its way through my veins. The kind of anger that had always got me into trouble. There were other emotions that followed—emotions I had yet to understand; confusion, jealousy, fear.

"You are not seeing him." I commanded, surprised at the harshness in my own voice.

"It's not your decision to make, Percy." She replied evenly.

How can she stay so calm about this?

"Annabeth, you're not going!"

"I have to know!" She cried. "I have to know why he did it. What made him turn so bad..."

It was infuriating—the way her innocence shielded her understanding of why anybody could be so cruel in this world. And it wasn't infuriating in the way that I hated that quality about her, it was one of the things I loved most about her, but it was infuriating in the way that it kept her vulnerable.

All I wanted to do was keep her safely inside my arms so that nobody could touch her.

"What is there to know?" I yelled, unable to control myself. "Why would you even want to talk him? He's a total psycho! Have you forgotten what he did to you?"

"Of course, I haven't forgotten, Percy." She sighed.

"Then what is it?"

"You just don't understand...he wasn't always bad."

"Oh dear God, not this again." I stepped back, utterly speechless as I rubbed my forehead before aggressively smoothing my hair back. "I can't believe we're having this conversation again. Are we always going to be doing this? Arguing with each other over Luke...of all people."

"No, of course not." She frowned desperately, stepping closer and pressing her hands to the table. "I know he's not right in the head. I know he has problems. I haven't forgotten anything. But just because I can't forget...doesn't mean I can't forgive."

When she finished explaining herself in that angelic, silvery tone that could calm storms ripping across mountains and tame seas that spit out cold fire, I just stared at her.

It was one of the things I would never understand about her; that forgiving nature. The inability to hate anyone. Ever.

We were polar opposites in this situation so much so that it was almost laughable.