My Lost Hero (Percy Jackson/ Heroes of Olympus)

My Lost Hero

Two days. That's how long he'd been missing. Well, precisely, he'd been missing for one day, twenty two hours, and about thirty three minutes. But really, did it matter?

No. All that mattered was that he was gone. And had been gone longer than I could stand.

I have spent about fifty golden drachmas trying to contact him through Iris Message.

No such luck.

So I tried his landline. Sally had picked up, but I didn't want to break the news to her just yet. I assured her that all was fine and that Percy was just off, doing an errand for Poseidon.

I wanted to believe that. I got to the point where I honestly believed that Percy was just tied up on a top secret mission for the gods.

I made it through three unbearable days before I thought enough was enough.

There had still been no words on the whereabouts of Camp Half Blood's hero.

So I picked up the phone I had secretly kept for emergencies, and dialled his mobile number. Surely he would pick up because the only two people that know his mobile number is Sally and I, and we only called for emergency purposes. Sadly, it rung out. No. I would find where he was hiding, or being hiden, if that was the last thing I ever did.

I redialled.

I was clutching the phone so tight that my finger started to cramp. Yet again, after eight rings or so it transferred to voicemail.

The phone was still pressed to my ear. "Percy..." I whispered. I sobbed, crying Percy's name softly into the phone over and over. "Percy, please..." the emptiness of my heart, like the emptiness of the other end of the phone, compelled me to swear in oath, and an oath I wouldn't break until the day I found my missing boyfriend.

I wouldn't stop to rest, or engage in any unnecessary luxuries until he was found, safe and sound all in one piece.

I dialed his number again, my hope slowly crumbling. My heart sped up when, on the sixth ring, the phone was picked up.

"Hello?" I whispered, renewed vigour in my voice. "Percy?"

A series of crackling noises came through the line. Then a woman's sweet, syrupy voice that spoke fluently and smoothly in my ear, so clearly that I swore she could've been right next to me. "Give up, Annabeth, honey. You'll never find him. Not until the time is right. When you find the one with the missing left shoe, then some answers will be revealed."

I heard the click of the receiver and felt a sense of searing loss.

A missing left shoe, the woman had said. I was doomed.

And who the Hades...? Oh. Of course. Of course Hera would be responsible for this painful mess. Coincidental, yes?

I stood up suddenly, the simple Nokia phone clenched in my white fist, and screamed in rage, flinging the phone across my cabin.

It shattered into a thousand pieces against the wall. I subconsciously compared my shattered phone to my shattered heart.

Once whole, but from the palm of one's hand, shattered, the pieces scattered.

Percy had held my heart in the palm of his hand, and now that he had disappeared he had taken my heart and my worth with him.

All that was left was the aching, broken shell. The inside was shattered and unusable until someone that filled it, made it whole, returned. I lay on the floor clutching my face with my hands and sobbed once more.

For Percy, once affectionately nicknamed 'Seaweed Brain' was now referred to as the Lost Hero.

And he wasn't just THE Lost Hero.

He was My Lost Hero.

And nothing would stop me from finding him.