Seaweed Brain Forgets...

The Stable After Dark

*Lets say Annabeth called Blackjack to escort Percy and them to meet Bacchus. Skip ahead to Annabeth sneaking into Percy's room! BEST PART OF THE BOOK! Well, one of them at least*

"Percy," a voice whispered. For a moment there I thought it was Reyna, that all the business with the Greeks had been nothing but a dream. Of course it was a dream! There's no way that Annabeth was for real, she was too... godly. 
But when I opened my eyes, there she was, standing over me. This triggered something in the back of my head, a memory. I tried to pull it forward, but it just wouldn't break loose.
"Wh- what's going on?" I asked, "Are we there?"
"No," she whispered, "It's the middle of the night."
"You mean..." My pulse started throbbing faster than it was when I was running from the gorgons. I was in my pajamas, in bed. It was highly likely I'd been drooling, making some weird noises while I dreamed. There was a one hundred percent chance I had bed-head and morning breath. "You sneaked into my cabin?" 
She rolled her eyes, "You're gonna be seventeen in two months. You can't seriously be worried about getting in trouble with Hedge."
"Have you seen his baseball bat?" Then her words sunk in as my mind started waking up, "Seventeen?" She blinked in surprise, then understanding.
"Your birthday is August 18th." She informed me with a sad tone, "Two months."
"Oh..." Great, another thing to add to my list of non-memories.
"But anyways," She quickly changed the subject, "I just thought that we could take a walk. We haven't really had time to talk. I want to show you something- my favorite place aboard the ship."
My heart was still racing, but it wasn't necessarily from fear anymore. "Am I allowed to brush my teeth first?"
"You'd better," She said with a smirk, "And brush your hair while you're at it."
"Yes mom."

Annabeth pulled me through the huge yet cozily cramped ship downstairs to the second deck. We passed the engine room, which looked liek a very dangerous, mechanized jungle gym, with pipes and pistons and tubes jutting from a central bronze sphere. Cables resembling giant metal noodles snaked across the floor and ran up the walls. 
"How does that thing even work?" I asked.
"No idea," She answered, "And I'm the only one besides Leo who can operate it."
"How reassuring." 
"It should be fine. It's only threatened to blow up once."
"You're kidding, I hope."
She only smiled, "Come on."
We ran past supply rooms and the armory. When we were about to reach the stern of the ship we met up with two wooden doors that opened into a large stable. The room smelled like hay and wool blankets. Three empty horse stalls lined along the left wall. The right wall had cages fit for tigers. 
Right in the middle of the floor was a large see-through panel. Far below us, the night land whisked by- miles of dark countryside crisscrossed with illuminated highways like the strands of a web.
"The boat's glass-bottomed?" I asked.
Annabeth stole a blanket from a stable gate and spread it on half of the glass floor. "Sit with me."
The two of us lay on our stomachs on the blanket and watched as the mortal world flew underneath us.
"Leo built this place so that the pegasi could come and go as they pleased." She said, "He didn't realize that they prefer to roam free, so this place is always empty."
My ADHD kicked in and I started thinking about Blackjack, roaming the skies far behind us. It was still a little hard to wrap my head around the fact that I had a black pegasus with an insane obsession with donuts.
"Wait, what do you mean come and go easily?" I asked, "Wouldn't they have to make it down two flights of stairs?"
She knocked on the glass, "These are bay doors, kind of like a bomber."
I gulped, "We're sitting on doors? What if they opened?"
"I suppose we'd fall to our deaths. But they won't open. Most likely."
"Great."
She laughed. "You know why I like it here? It isn't just the view. It's a... a memory." I looked around, what could she remember from a stable? Did she have a horse. I looked at her face. It was pale with the light from below us reflecting onto her. There was a slight strawberry tint to her cheeks, giving me a hint to the memory.
"Does it have something to do with me?" I asked. She nodded.
"You're getting warmer." She said. I stared blankly at her, wishing the memory would just rush forward. Sadly, it didn't.
"I can't remember." I sighed. She nodded.
"I figured." She propped herself up on her elbows, "It was our first quest together, when we were twelve. You, me, and Grover were traveling to Vegas in the back of a zoo transportation truck. But it was actually a poachers transportation truck. Grover was mad. He would have beaten those guys with his reed pipes!" We laughed. I couldn't remember Grover, but I knew I missed him. 
"Why would you be nostalgic for that?" I asked. She looked me in the eyes.
"Because, Seaweed Brain, it was the first time that you and I actually... talked." She started playing with her necklace, the leather one like mine, only hers had a gold college ring strung on it. Beside that was a red coral pendant. She caught me looking.
"This?" She held up the pendant, "You gave it to me, when we first started dating. You found it at your father's palace at the bottom of the sea." She pressed the pendant close to her chest. 
Who knew I was such a romantic? I guess this girl brought it out in me.
"You were saying, about the stables?" She smiled.
"It also reminds me how long we've known each other. I mean come on, Percy, we weretwelve. Can you believe it?"
"No," I admitted, "So... you knew you liked me from that moment?"
She smirked. "I hated you at first. You were annoying, then I tolerated you for a few years. Then-"
"Okay, fine." She grinned.
"I missed you, Percy." She said. To be honest, I missed her too. I still do, I miss those memories I don't have. 
When that eidolon was in me, I didn't even realize it until Piper brought it forward. When he was gone, it felt like she'd removed a manticore spike from my neck. My soul settled down, my head screwed on straight...
Annabeth, she had the same effect. The past few months I hadn't even realized how much it hurt not to have her, not to know her. But now that I was, I knew that I had missed her this entire time. 
I knew that I was falling in love with her again. 
Oh gods, what was I gonna tell Reyna? I mean, there's no way I could break her heart like... like this.
"Annabeth," I said, a little hesitantly, "I... I think I'm..." but then I changed my mind. Now was not the time to tell her, "I was having a nightmare, when you woke me up." 
Then I proceeded to tell her all about it. Every single gory detail.
"Nico is the bait," She muttered, "Gaea's forces must have captured him somehow. But we don't know exactly where they're holding him."
"Somewhere in Rome," I said, "Somewhere underground. They talked like he still had a few days, but I don't know how he can hold out so long without oxygen." 
"Five more days, according to Nemesis, "Annabeth said." The Kalends of July. At least the deadline makes sense now."
"What's a Kalends?"
She smirked again, apparently this was pretty normal for us. "It's just the Roman term for the first of the month. That's where we get the word calendar. But how can Nico survive that long? We should really talk to Hazel."
"Right now?"
She shook her head, "No. It can wait until morning. I don't want to hit her with news like this in the middle of the night.
"Yet you have no problem waking me up to take a walk." She grinned. "The giants mentioned a statue," I remembered, "And something about a talented friend guarding it. Whoever she is, she scared Otis. Anyone that can scare a giant..."
She turned to look down at a highway below us.
"Have you had any sign from Poseidon lately? And contact?"
"Nothing I can remember. Why? Have you seen Athena?"
She wouldn't look me in the eye.
"A few weeks ago," she admitted. "It... it wasn't good. She seemed really off, maybe it's the Greek/Roman schizophrenia. I don't know. She said hurtful things, that I failed her."
"Failed her?" There was no way. I'd known Annabeth for about a day and a half (well, you know what I mean) and there was no way this girl could disappoint anyone. "How could you ever-?" 
"I don't know," she said miserably, "On top of that, I've been having nightmares of my own. They don't make as much sense as yours." She didn't say anything else. I wished I could do something to make her feel better, to fix things so that we could both be happy. 
But something in my gut told me there was nothing I could do other than just be there for her. 
Wisdom's daughter walks alone.
She looked to me and smiled just a little, "That's it, nothing else bad and evil until the morning. We can figure everything out then. For now... well, I've got you back. Sort of..." Subconsciously, I knew that she had me back. Not even Reyna was going to stop that, but there were still a lot of obstacles in our way for now. I grinned at her.
"Right, no more talk about Gaea rising, Nico being held hostage, the world ending, the giants-"
"Shut up, Seaweed Brain." She ordered. 
We sat in a comforting silence for a little while looking out the bottom of the boat. Annabeth lay on her stomach with her chin resting on her hands while I sat criss-cross beside her.
"Annabeth?"
"Hm?"
"Can you tell me more about my past?" I asked. She looked up at me.
"What do you want to know?" Truthfully I only wanted to know about her. I shrugged, "I never finished the first kiss story." She informed me with gleaming eyes.
"Do tell," she pushed herself up to sit by me.
"After we kissed, the entire camp came out of the bushes and threw us in the canoe lake." She laughed, "But then you created an air bubble for us down at the bottom. They probably waited for us for a half an hour!" We laughed. 
She and I spent another few hours talking about the past. She told me about all of our quests, about Tyson and my mom and stepdad. She told me about Thalia and Silena and Beckendorf and Rachel, her best friend. When I asked how they'd met, she only smirked.
"You and I have a different opinion on that, so I think I'll hold off on that story." 
We were talking almost the entire night. Eventually the gentle hum of the engine and the dim light of the celestial bronze lamps caught up with us, and we fell asleep on the glass doors.