Work Text:
When Percy was gone, Annabeth had lost all sense of purpose.
She wasn’t reliant on him – by all means, Annabeth was a strong, independent woman who took care of herself and everyone else around her without help. When she lost him, though, grief had taken over. It had eaten away at her very being, leaving her an empty shell of herself. She felt responsible, somehow, and she missed his stupid remarks, and his cracked lips and salty skin. She sunk into those feelings, desperately mournful, and lost herself.
It was a good day if she remembered to brush her teeth, a great day if she could bring herself to shower. Usually, a week went by between instances, sometimes more. She bathed with wet wipes to stay fresh, but getting herself to actually go into the bathroom and be in water was too much. She let her hair go, too, not shaving her legs or armpits and letting the curls on her head knot up until a brush couldn’t even touch them. It was like this for months – she thought he was dead, she punished herself for it, she was too depressed to remember to bathe or sleep, hated herself too much to eat. She had lost a significant amount of weight, her once athletic build now lithe and frail. The blonde poured everything she had into searching for Percy and getting school work done, maintaining her A average and looking in even the cleverest godly hiding places for her boyfriend.
Jason had regained his memory, which had given her a sliver of hope, but then months kept passing. After nearly five months of him being gone, one since she herself had been back to Long Island Sound, she had given up all hope. Percy was dead. She couldn’t feel him anymore. He had left her – just like everyone else did.
When she woke up on the third Tuesday in April, the blonde felt an emptiness inside of her, and it wasn’t just from not eating. It had been there for a while, but now it was stronger – the feeling that he wasn’t coming back.
She went about her morning like usual, getting out of bed and tucking her hair behind her ears, sitting at her desk to finish an essay as she yawned. She got five words in before the tears started, the emptiness all-consuming.
Her stomach growled, reminding her that it had been three days since she’d eaten. That emptiness was all consuming, too.
How could she keep doing this? He was lost, gone, and she was writing an essay?! Living her life? Sure, she wasn’t eating – her body showed that. She didn’t have time for food. Of course, she nibbled here and there – but when it came time for her yearly physical at the Big House in March, she had lost 11 pounds. And it felt strange, but more than that it felt right. Percy was missing. Annabeth didn’t deserve to eat, not until she found him. He was out doing who knows what, fighting who knows who, maybe even dying in the streets and she had the audacity to eat a grilled cheese with the Athena cabin? Her weight loss was right because it showed her that she and Percy were still connected. If he was suffering out there somewhere, so was she.
That’s how it started. After about a month, it became a habit – and after it became a habit, it became an obsession. It was something she could control when everything else was out of it. And, gods, watching that number go down was invigorating.
But it wasn’t enough. She knew it wasn’t, because last time she checked she had stopped losing, because her body was still mostly-functioing, because she was alive, because he was gone and she wasn’t.
Annabeth knew what she had to do before she left her dorm at school, and camp was the only place she could do it. She didn’t know how she would do it, but she threw Daedalus’s laptop closed anyways and wiped her eyes. She had to do something. It was a spur of the moment decision, but she wasn’t able to think enough to stop herself from acting. She slipped easily into her old jeans and camp shirt that she grabbed from the floor, both dirty and slightly ripe with sweat, and headed for the door. Her stomach growled before she got there, and she looked towards her mini fridge.
She wasn’t going to be around much longer anyways. That had to make up for one meal, right? And she was way too hungry to really care at this point. The blonde opened the fridge, frowning at the single cylindrical object inside. Had she really not bought food in that long? The can taunted her, colorful and inviting, leftover from her roommate’s birthday, and she briefly debated if it was worth it. But she sighed, making her second rash decision of the day by grabbing it up and making her way downtown to the train.
—
When Annabeth got to camp, thankfully Chiron wasn’t there to greet her – he would have pulled her aside and talked to her, like she was seven years old again and he was her father. She was on the fence now, her “breakfast” making her brain work a little better, and she wasn’t 100% sure whether she wanted to go through with it. But she had to, right? To make things right. To be with Percy. But she knew now that Chiron would easily get her to tell him her plan, and just as easily talk her out of it. Instead of the centaur meeting her at Thalia’s tree, however, Piper did. Annabeth hadn’t seen Piper all month, and seeing her there beside the strawberry fields made the older girl’s heart skip.
The two girls had been growing close over the past few months (before Annabeth hid herself away in her dormroom in March, of course). Piper acted as a shoulder to cry on and a voice of reason when Annabeth wanted to run for the hills or slam her head into a text book. Recently, though, since the realization that Percy wasn’t coming back, Annabeth had felt her feelings towards Piper…changing. She noticed things she didn’t before, like the slight dip between her hip and thigh, and the way her coffee colored eyes glistened when she told a story, and the exact way she moved her lips when saying Annabeth’s name. No amount of fasting could punish her enough for those feelings – how dare she feel things for another person when her person was gone? She couldn’t let herself fall down that path. She hid herself away, opting instead to wallow in starvation and self-hatred. But now, there Piper was. Right there, her lips moving in that familiar lilt that accompanied any words she said to the blonde.
“Dude. You look like shit.”
“Thanks,” The shorter responded, averting her puffy eyes from Piper’s gaze. She knew she looked like shit, but that didn’t mean she liked hearing it. It didn’t matter, though. She had a plan – something rough and pieced together on the train ride over, but a plan nonetheless. Looks would mean nothing when she was gone. “I try my best.”
“No, I mean… Gods, Beth, you’ve lost weight. Your clothes are dirty. Your hair’s a mess… You look like shit.”
Annabeth shrugged, and the dark haired girl frowned sympathetically. She held out her hand. “Listen. I may hate being in cabin ten, but I have picked up a few tricks from it. I can’t do much, but…. you want some help with that hair of yours?”
The shorter girl preferred not to think about the feelings growing in her gut, the ones that had spurred the avoidance of Piper for the last month. She had a plan. She needed to stick to it, and yet…The frilly, butterfly feelings that she had gotten only with a handful of people rose up. She had to avoid it. This time, though, she couldn’t escape it. Not when her dark eyes were dancing like that, her face seconds away from a grin.
Annabeth didn’t want to say yes, but she nodded solemnly and allowed herself to be dragged down the hill to the Aphrodite cabin, her objective feeling less and less solid as she did so.
—
On the way down, she came up with a different plan. The ideas she pieced together initially, the ones including lethal means and notes, were only worth it if her other means of suffering weren’t working. There was a scale in the cabin ten.
(She tried to ignore the fact that the bargaining meant she didn’t really want to end herself, focusing instead on the idea that maybe she wouldn’t have to.)
“Can I use your bathroom?” Annabeth sniffed as they stepped into the cabin. It was oddly warm for April, and humid – it looked like all the year-round Aphrodite girls were out sunbathing and pampering their skin. Perfect.
“Uh… Yeah, of course, it’s right there.”
Annabeth nodded, making her way over to the door and slipping in. The first thing she did was look in the mirror – which was not hard to do, considering every wall was adorned with one. It was a gaudy, glorious room, with flowers and mirrors and marble, and it made Annabeth feel out of place within it. Still, she needed to check – if she was right, it was just proof that her plan was the correct choice.
She made sure the door was locked before peeling out of her dirty clothes. She had to check. She had to know. Was she making the right choice? The hope she had that she was wrong, that the scale would show a few pounds less, made her feel guilty. Was she really so shallow that a lower weight would keep her from the justice of ending her life? However, she wasn’t able to think about it too much. Starvation made her brain wibbly and unclear, which was probably why she even had this idea in the first place. She couldn’t bring herself to care.
She stepped on the scale in the bathroom, her now-pale body bare to the elements to get the most accurate weight.
Percy had been gone 129 days, 10 hours and 17 minutes.
Annabeth had lost 21 pounds, 5 ounces, and three pants sizes.
She was barely more than skin and bones at this point, at least compared to her usual. Normally she was an athletic build, weighing more than some of the other girls her age, but she never really cared. She was healthy and stronger than 90% of the older boys at camp, and that was what mattered. But now… now, shrinking felt so right. Her body was suffering. She could eat when Percy was safe, but while he was in peril, so was she.
It wasn’t logical, and she knew that. But it made sense, and the farther she went, the more it felt real. The more it felt right. Except… Except this was the same weight she had been last week. And the week before. All it did was prove her point – she was still alive.
Annabeth donned her clothes and started towards the door, her decopaged plan more solid in her mind than ever.
—
After returning to the main room, Annabeth followed Piper’s gesture to sit on the bed in front of her while she readied to detangling spray and brush. The hairbrushing was nice (though Piper had to stop and really work on a few knots) and the conversation was comforting. Annabeth’s shields fell and she slumped into Piper’s touch, relishing the connection as they talked. She’d missed this. She’d missed touch. The only person she ever let touch her had winded up presumed-dead, and it had been a long, long time since gentle fingers worked their way through her lush curls.
Gods, she missed him.
“Jason’s great,” Piper was saying, her hands wrapped in blonde tangles. “It’s just… I don’t know. The relationship was built on lies. Hera put those memories in my head, and that’s the Jason I fell in love with. I love him now, too, at least I’m pretty sure I do, but….How can I be sure? How can I know that I really love him if half of my memories are made up? Sometimes, I feel like I’ll only know if I tried…nevermind. My bisexual is showing.”
Annabeth nodded at Piper’s nervous laugh, but her mind was elsewhere. She didn’t deserve this. To feel… loved. Cared for. Not while Percy was out there. They were connected, and she hadn’t been able to feel him for months.
Gone.
“That makes sense. For me, I sometimes feel…like, me and Percy….” She paused. Was she really willing to divulge this information? Tell how utterly weak she was? “...Nevermind.”
“What? Booooo, tell me! You can’t just start a sentence like that then stop.”
The blonde winced as a knot was yanked out of her hair.
“Well…”
She knew what she didn’t want to say. She didn’t want to say how lost she felt without him. She didn’t want to say how it felt like someone had taken a pitchfork and punctured her heart, twisting and turning until the muscle was too disparaged to truly exist anymore. She didn’t want to say that she’d fallen so hard for this boy that his death was enough to send her over the edge, that she’d all but acted on thoughts of ending her very own life without him. She didn’t want to say how she felt like his death was her fault, how she distracted him, how if she had just been strong enough to reject him, to say no, that he wouldn’t have been so absent minded to let himself get taken. She didn’t want to say how she was starting to mourn without even knowing if he was dead, or how she wanted desperately for someone to take the weight from her shoulders, or how much she longed for a normal life, with a boyfriend who was alive and not part of ten million prophecies. She didn’t want to say that Piper’s gentle voice and dry humor had been filling the Percy-shaped hole in her heart.
“Percy and I…” She tried, stopping herself when she heard her voice crack. Gods, she missed him. She missed his gentle hands on her shoulders when she got too tense, she missed his salty lips against hers, she missed his messy mop of dark hair shedding all over her bed… She was so lonely it hurt, physically. How silly that was, that she was so obsessed with a boy that her body couldn’t function without him? How silly was it that she longed so badly for touch and love that the pain was debilitating?
And then Piper was in front of her, nodding and seated cross legged on the bed. Her eyes were dancing softly at Annabeth’s lips. Had she always been this pretty? How silly was it now that she noticed Piper’s warm breath on her face. How silly was it that her brain was reeling, thinking about how close she and Piper had gotten over the last few months. And oh, how very, very silly it was that her heart began to beat faster and her palms got sweaty as she noticed Piper’s bosom leaning forward towards her, and how silly was it that she missed Percy so much that she had started paying more and more attention to her new friend, and how very, very SILLY was it that she most definitely liked how close she was.
The silliest thing was that when Piper kissed her, Annabeth didn’t pull away. They sat in that warm embrace for a moment before the shorter girl’s instincts kicked in and she jolted back, looking immediately towards the open window and seeing a flash of Percy from her memory.
And then it all fell apart.
“Oh my God,” Piper said breathily, falling backwards onto her hands, her eyes wide and frightened. “Oh my God! I totally didn’t – I didn’t mean to – I mean, I – I love Jason! I love him! I didn’t mean to– oh my god.”
Piper’s panic was barely noticed over the roar in Annabeth’s ears. She leaned back against the bed frame, breathing fast and face hot, tears pooling in her eyes. Piper was still going on, but the older girl didn’t notice – she was too busy hyperventilating.
What had she done?! She had broken a vow, one that had never been explicitly stated, one that never needed to be. She had cheated. She knew it in her heart, because she had allowed herself to start falling for her friend the minute she realized Percy wasn’t coming home.
But what if he did?
The thought was loud in her mind, overcome only by the horrible guilt she was feeling. If Percy came back, she was a traitor. She had betrayed him by moving on, before even finding proof he was gone. It had been ages since he was seen, yes, but she knew now that he would be back. She felt it now – just at that moment, something had changed. He was alive. She knew it in her heart that he was, a feeling that wasn’t there before. And she had basically stabbed him in the back.
Nevermind the fact that Annabeth had never even admitted to herself that she liked girls like that. No, that could be dealt with later. For now, she was losing her absolute shit over the fact that she had done something utterly, horribly, desperately wrong.
She didn’t love Piper. She loved her like a friend, yes, but not in that way. She thought she was attractive – at least, her body did, heating up when she was around and getting all sweaty. She was good friends with her. But never in her life would she love someone like she loved Percy.
He was everything. He was the heart to her head, her Achilles Heel, her ride or die forever. He was her second love, first reciprocal love, and her favorite person on the planet. And he had been since that summer when they were twelve, whether she liked it or not.
Piper was not someone she loved in that way. Piper was filling a gap, and, for how bad she felt for betraying Percy, she felt almost as bad for using her – even if it was subconscious. She had used her best friend, led her on, listened to her boy troubles and let her make a move, and she had cheated on her boyfriend, breaking everything they had built, all without even confirming he was gone, and –
And she couldn’t breathe. She had been hyperventilating, ridiculously so, and now her vision had blacked out and all she could do was cry.
She cried for Percy, for how much she missed him. She cried for herself, for making such a shameful mistake. She cried for Piper, the poor girl that she had given the impression of love to… She sobbed desperately, for everything and nothing, her cries so heavy she felt her stomach churning around the sugar in her stomach from this morning. She was too nauseated to handle it, and one more sob pushed her too far. She gagged and coughed, the contents of her stomach coming up and splattering on Piper’s bed.
And then hands were on her, pulling her hair back and shushing her gently. Annabeth gagged again, everything coming up all at once just like it was in her head.
She needed Percy.
“You okay?” Piper’s voice was saying, shaky and small. “Look, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean–”
“It’s okay.” Annabeth sniffled, wiping her mouth and nose on the back of her sleeve. She looked at Piper, her face red with embarrassment and shame. “I’m sorry.”
“What? Don’t be sorry!” Piper all but shrieked. “No, I’m sorry, I read too far into things, and I wasn’t thinking, and – oh my Gods, I’m so sorry. I thought you were gonna say that, like, you and Percy were – like – fighting before he went AWOL, or something! I just– I acted without thinking, and my stupid gay brain said that – that I’d know if it was real with Jason if I – Gods, I’m stupid.”
“You’re not stupid.” Annabeth insisted, quietly as she stared at her sick on the bed. She really should move, but she couldn’t. She hurt too much. “I…. I’ve just been lonely. I miss him so fucking bad. And you’ve been nice. And–” She paused. Gods, what had gotten into her? “And I think I like girls.”
She said the last sentence so fast, Piper wasn’t really sure she heard it.
“You– What?” The taller girl choked, a smile creeping onto her face. “Annabeth Chase likes girls? Like, like likes?”
Piper couldn't help it. Annabeth looked so miserable, she didn’t want to do it, but she let out a laugh. Annabeth’s eyebrows furrowed as a tear dripped down her cheek.
“What?”
“ That’s what we’re focusing on?! Half the camp already filled me in on that part! They all saw how you looked at that Silena girl’s ass when she was still alive! And just a couple months ago, when Clarisse the beast wore that v neck and her tits were out?! Girl we knew . “
“Well, I didn’t!” Annabeth cried, finally moving off the bed as tears came into her eyes again. She stood and stared at Piper, arms wrapped around herself as she did so. “All I know is I’m a straight A student, a straight shot with a bow, and– and I’m straight! And I’m in love with Percy.”
She was crying now, shuddering as sobs wracked her now lithe form. Piper smiled sympathetically.
“Well, half of that’s true. You are in love with Percy.” She paused before coming over to the blonde and wrapping her in a hug. Annabeth’s arms stayed in, close to her chest, as Piper enveloped her and began to rock back and forth.
“You’re okay, Beth. You’re okay.”
“I’m not, though,” Annabeth sobbed into Piper’s chest. “I cheated. I cheated on the one person who means everything to me. I – I ruined us .”
“Dude. He might be dead. I’m really hot. It doesn’t mean anything.” The taller girl said, giggling a little when she complimented herself. She didn’t really believe it, but she hoped the gratuitous language would make Annabeth laugh. It did, but she was still crying. “Look. I know it sucks. I fucked up, you fucked up. But it’s okay. If he–”
The shorter girl let out a sob.
“ WHEN he gets back,” Piper corrected, “We can explain the whole thing.” She paused. “Annabeth Chase, are you in love with me?”
“No.” Annabeth said softly, pushing away from Piper’s chest. “No, Pipes, I’m sorry. I don’t. I– I love Percy. Even if he’s dead, I love him…. I –”
“Good! Because I’m not in love with you. Problem solved. It was a ten-second-fling. Not even a minute. Deal?”
Annabeth nodded, and they were silent for a moment before she let out another choked sob.
“I messed up so bad.”
Piper nodded, brushing Annabeth’s hair back and speaking softly. “Yeah you did, girl. What did you even eat for breakfast?! You puked barbie-dreamhouse pink all over my bedspread.”
A flush broke over the blonde’s face. “I hadn’t… I didn’t eat for three days and… I….” She sighed. “A tub of strawberry frosting.”
Piper laughed. “What, was that like, your final meal request?? Who eats just frosting?”
Annabeth was silent.
“I…” Her eyes weren’t meeting the taller’s. She fiddled with the hem of her dirty shirt, and her voice cracked when she spoke. “Yes?”
“Oh my gods. No, no you weren’t. You weren’t going to…” Piper’s eyes were wide. “Beth. No. Please, tell me you weren’t-”
“But– But he’s alive, I can’t now, because that– that would hurt him, I can’t–” She was hyperventilating again, and had to stop to breathe heavy out of pursed lips. She didn’t want to be sick again.
“...He’s alive?”
“I felt it. Just now. He’s out there, somewhere,” Annabeth choked out, nodding, “I haven't eaten in three days except a whole tub of frosting this morning, and kissed my best friend, and puked on your bed, and–”
“Okay, take a deep breath. We have so many topics of conversation to go over right now.” Piper moved her hands in a STOP motion. Annabeth sniffled. “First, you were going to fucking kill yourself. Okay. Glad you’re not now, but what the fuck, Beth?! Two, what do you mean you haven’t eaten in three days?! I knew you’d lost weight, but that’s bad. Like, the models in my dad’s movies, bad. And three – oh my gods. Percy’s…. you’re sure?”
She nodded.
“Okay. Let’s go talk to Chiron. About all of this. Deal?” Piper held out her hand, and Annabeth took it, nodding. “....And I’m gonna throw out my bedspread.”